I work with a woman who is in an abusive relationship. When we first started working together Natalie would mention that she hadn’t been out for after work drinks with friends since she had gotten re-married because her husband was jealous. I blew it off as exageration.
However, so not the case. Her husband is extremely controlling and jealous. We work with and interact with the most successful sales representatives across our company. He is extremely suspicious and abusive towards my co-worker Natalie, and is threatened by the fact that we work with these highly-successful men. He is also constantly checking up on her and limits what she can and can’t do.
About six months into working together, I arranged for a small happy hour with two other female co-workers and I sent her an Outlook invite, which she accepted. She said she was going to come but was taking hell for it at home. Leading up to the evening she mentioned that they fought about this night constantly. She made the mistake of saying to her husband “I would rather be dead than talk about this one more time.” Her husband took that as a suicide pact and emailed our Vice President to tell her about Natalie’s state of mind. Can you believe that? Emailed our VP! So that brought to light to everyone now the fact that she is in this crazy relationship.
When the evening finally rolled around we went to wine bar by the office. He kept texting her, calling her “whore” and an “alcoholic”. He had his sons, her step-sons, call her several times. She was in tears during the evening.
When I asked her why she stays with this man, she said that she couldn’t walk away from the marriage financially, as they owed back taxes, because they had taken money from their 401K to put a down payment on their house. And he always played the emotional card about being single dad with the boys. She has a daughter from her previous marriage and when I ask her what she would tell her daughter if she were in this situation. She says she would tell her daughter to “run!”
Which leads me to my number one reason why every woman should have an emergency fund; it’s your “walk away money”. Whether you are in an abusive relationship at home, in an abusive situation at work, a dead-end job or whatever, every woman should be able to walk away. Without an emergency fund, many women find themselves stuck and unable to escape. As Suze Orman says in her book Women & Money:
“Taking care of yourself is not secondary to everything else and everyone else. You deserve to have financial security that is all yours, that you know you can always rely on in a personal emergency.”
So whether you are single or married, happily or not, make building your emergency fund a number one priority.
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