I grew up on public assistance in rural Ohio.

My family didn't have much, and I grew up determined to be different. I studied. I got confident. By the time Brandon and I got married, I was sure I had a handle on our finances.

I did not.

I knew how to budget. I knew how to be careful. What I didn't know was that careful isn't the same as protected. That saving money the conventional way — slowly, in accounts you can't touch — leaves you more exposed than it feels like it does.

I thought financial confidence meant knowing the rules. It took years to realize I'd been playing the wrong game.

In 2011, we opened a coffee shop in Chicago's South Loop. A community center funded by coffee. We wanted to prove you could do good and make money at the same time.

The first two years, we paid ourselves from the tip jar. I took a W-2 job on the side just to make ends meet. Looking back at my journals from that time, I was vomiting from stress. Literally. But I kept moving because I didn't know what else to do.

Then came the hardest six months of our lives.

My mom had a severe stroke. Brandon's grandmother died. We had a miscarriage. Brandon ended up in the ER with appendicitis. We almost didn't make it through as a couple.

We kept going. Barely.

On July 23, 2013, our friend Mark — who had an office down the hall from our café — hosted a documentary screening.

When the credits rolled, I was furious at him.

Not because it was bad. Because it was the opposite. Because he had known about this for years and we never let him tell us (he tried). We'd been grinding through all of it — the tips, the debt, the hardest six months — and this information existed the whole time.

I sat down with Mark as soon as possible after the film ended and we mapped out what we needed to do.

We started Bank On Yourself designed policies. Kept the money accessible. And within 2.5 years, we paid off all of our student loans.

Then Brandon turned 40.

I had promised him years earlier — anywhere in the world he wanted to go. He chose Ireland at Christmas. We bought the tickets in July.

At the end of July, I got a call from our staff while I was on the treadmill at the gym. I walked home in the rain. By the time we got there, the water was covering our ankles.

Significant revenue lost. Bills still due.

But we had cash.

We didn't need a loan. We didn't go into credit card debt. The money was there because we'd built it to be there — liquid, accessible, ours.

We still went to Ireland.

A couple of weeks into the trip, I found out I was pregnant. Ireland became our baby moon.

We came back on January 2nd and sold the coffee shop.

Everything we'd built — through the tips and the debt and the hardest six months and the flood — had gotten us to a place where we could choose what came next.

That's what liquidity actually means. Not a number in an account. Options, when you need them.

That's why I do this work. That's what I want for the people I work with.