Reply #5: Bingo. During the years we lived at the poverty level

[EFerrari]

we had a car but we couldn't always use it.

And there's another thing that happens when you are struggling with poverty. It's akin to denial. I remember when I came down with apendicitis as a kid, my mom took me to two different doctors hoping that one of them would come up with a different diagnosis because she had no way to pay for the surgery. It's not that she was a bad parent, she was a great parent. But, we were poor and it must have been overwhelming for her to think about where those thousands of dollars would come from. The human brain can only take so much before it resorts to "tilt".