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It's nearly impossible for me to overstate my respect for Elizabeth Warren. In this book, she and her daughter Amelia use their knowledge and research in financial policy and patterns to come to the alarming conclusion that having two incomes is actually dangerous if you live like you have two incomes, because now you're twice as likely to lose up to half your monthly cash flow.

We all know what deregulation of the banking industry did for credit card and mortgage debt. Warren places the desire for good schools and those schools being tied to housing tax bases against an uncertain job market and predatory lending. We use both incomes to get the house to get the school, thinking we did right by our kids.

In the late nineties, I wouldn't have believed Warren, and I still wish she would've said "parent" instead of "mom," but as I read this, I'm laid off. Three years ago, my husband was. We both have degrees, I have a master's. We're healthy and in our early forties. We work hard. But nothing is stable in this economy. I don't intend to ever ignore that fact again and have every intention of paying off my mortgage within fifteen years, because I'm tired of being scared. I want all my fixed costs to be much closer to one of our incomes so a job loss doesn't feel so financially and emotionally devastating.