When I was a little kid, your dad is kind of a superhero.

You know most people see it that way.

When Hailey McKnight was little, she lived with her dad in the country, just outside Austin,

Texas, surrounded by pastures and fishing ponds.

Her dad was this walking encyclopedia of nature.

He can identify pretty much any rock, any tree, any bird, just look at it.

Oh yeah, that's a pink-velled whiffle waffle.

Yeah, that's not a real bird, just a fly eye.

Anyway, Hailey says spending time outdoors with her dad are some of her favorite childhood memories.

Her dad needs to be this local rock and roll musician who eventually got a job fixing computers.

But then in 2001, the dot com bubble burst.

When I was around 14, my dad got laid off from his job and then just never got another one.

Were you concerned that he didn't have a job?

How did you pay for things?

I didn't really know how that was happening, but somehow we kept being alive.

I really didn't think much about it.

I'm Rime Cherez and welcome to This Is Uncomfortable, a show from Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.

This week we're going to hear two sides of the same story, a story about family and money.

And it is so thorny that the two people at the center of it, Hailey McKnight and Hailey's dad, Rick Carroll,

didn't even want us to down in the same room to talk about it.

So I talk with them separately.

First, we hear from Hailey.

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