Mom's Got Money

CHAPTER 7Protect Your Family With Emergency Funds and Insurance

Toward the end of August back when I was 18 years old, I stood outside in the middle of the night in eerie silence. All around me, things were still. There wasn't any wind or noise. There were no snapping branches or animal sounds or pitter‐patter of rain. There was just darkness. I stood out there next to my Dad, who woke me up and told me to come outside and witness a once‐in‐a‐lifetime event—standing in the eye of a hurricane.

I grew up in south Louisiana on the north shore of New Orleans. I spent my summers as a kid digging in crawfish holes and swimming in the bayou. Hurricanes are a normal part of life there, so much so that the people of south Louisiana throw hurricane parties.

Every fall, my dad would inevitably have to board up our windows, and school and work would be canceled for a few days as the bigger storms rolled through. Then, the storms would leave, my siblings and I would have a lot of sticks to pick up in the yard, and life would go back to normal.

But Katrina—she was different.

Hurricane Katrina came just as I headed off to college. In fact, my parents were in the middle of dropping me off in my college dorm in New Orleans when an announcement came over the loudspeakers on campus that the city was evacuating for the storm and that all parents and students should leave. So, I left all my belongings in my dorm room—mini fridge and all—and headed back home to wait out the storm as always.

I expected ...