Love Song's Kelly Bayett Talks Family And The Fear of Money With Entrepreneur

I was five years old when my parents got divorced. Before my father left, he bought my mom a forest green Volvo with a beige interior. It was very square and very safe. My mom hated it. About a week later, she pulled into the driveway in a brand-new creamy Corvette with T-tops. It was beautiful, but I immediately noticed a problem: there was my mom, my one-and-a-half-year-old brother and me. Three of us, two seats. The math wasn't mathing, but she was beaming.

She had already put her personalized license plate on it that read "WE LOVE" with a frame that just said "Being Italian" — in case you were wondering what we loved — and was wearing her yellow shirt that read "Sicilians Do It Better" in navy velvet iron-on letters. In that moment, it didn't matter that my 40-year-old dad had left her for a 17-year-old girl. That car — and that energy — made her feel on top of the world, as if nothing could stand in her way.

My brother would crawl into the trunk space while I sat up front, the T-tops off, windows down, Donna Summer blasting as we flew down the freeway. And even though it would only be the three of us for a little while longer, we were the happiest we would be for a long time.

Throughout my childhood, the math not mathing was pretty much an ongoing theme. The only financial advice I got from my mom growing up was: "If you feel like you don't have any money, the best thing to do is spend more."

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