Divorce — Made Her Good with Money
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After living in debt throughout her 20-year marriage, her greatest achievement post-divorce has been taking control of her money.
This is the success story of someone I know. I am telling this story with her permission, but not disclosing her name because it’s not important to the story.
The couple met at work in their early 20s. They got married two years later. They never had children of their own, but they did become guardians to his nephew who is now an adult.
The marriage was not one that she looks back on as being good. She states that they rarely had conversations of substance especially when it came to money.
Their favorite thing to do as a couple was to go to the casino and gamble. It was not a healthy habit as they went even when there was no money to gamble with. They used credit cards on those occasions.
They did a few cash-out refinances to pay the debt. They borrowed money from her dad to pay for home repairs.
Although there were problems, she loved her husband and never thought they would divorce. She was shocked when almost three years ago, he told her that he wanted out of the marriage.
A few months after dealing with the shock of her husband leaving, she started being proactive about making her life better.
For one, she began looking at her financial situation and she took steps to increase her financial literacy. Up to this point, she was living check to check. She did not know how to save, invest and had attempted to budget on several occasions but never stuck with it for long.
She had to figure out what to do about her 3-bedroom home. She wanted to keep it but didn’t know if she could afford it. After looking at her numbers, she learned that she could keep it if she got a roommate. She let her co-workers and family know that she was looking for a roommate and she was able to find one quickly.
Her roommate stayed for nearly a year, which was a blessing. They became friends, which helped her get through the hardest year of her life.
During the year that she had a roommate, she was proactive in increasing her financial literacy. She attended personal finance courses and even worked with a…
