Spending the last few dollars in your bank account can feel liberating and terrifying.

Understanding the collective brokeness of most Americans and the normalcy of spending the last of your money on needs or wants, Reckon asked readers to tell us what they would spend the last of their money on. These stories and testimonials appear in the Broke & Bothered newsletter and on our site.

Name: Brittni S.

Location: Alabama

Spent her last: $40 on gas for her minivan

An ‘I spent my last’ story, as told to Reckon.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I have a husband and three girls so we seem to get down to our last $50 to $75 a lot, especially in the winter and summer time when our energy bill goes crazy.

While it doesn’t feel great to get down to our last, we know how to make it work and sometimes that looks like scrounging in the pantry for food until payday.

We are a lot of times living paycheck to paycheck and crossing our fingers that no big bills like the mortgage or our credit card payments get taken out before our next payday.

Having a family means I have to think about how my financial decisions also impact them, which means I typically spend my last on the one thing that can get us all from point A to point B: a car.

I use our minivan every day; it’s a Nissan Quest that can fit my whole family. I fill that minivan up once a week and some of those weeks it takes the last of my $40 to put gas in it.

If we didn’t have gas for the minivan then life would be horrific. I would have to worry about how to get my kids to and from school and how I would get to and from work, which is why I don’t mind spending my last to gas it up.

I have to prioritize and make smart decisions with my last, because if not it will only exacerbate the money problems I already have.

Want to read more ‘I spent my last’ stories like Brittni’s? Click here to read real stories about people who spent their last.