IT’S JUNE OF 2022, and I’m driving my teenage daughter to the Seattle airport. It’s an hour drive each way. She’s meeting up with her class for a once-in-a-lifetime, 10-day school trip to Europe. This is something that was in the works for over a year. The trip was expensive, and we had been paying in installments, the last payment just debited from our pandemic-depleted checking account.

I’d recently made the transition to full-time writer, and while things were starting to look up, the cost associated with the trip was a struggle. As such, I was extra careful to make sure that my daughter was prepared. Passport. Check. Plane tickets . Check. Spending money. Check. Carefully curated, carry-on-only bag. Check. Traffic was awful, but we made it.…