Divorced & Debt Free

By Keema Mingo

“Culture defines self-worth by net-worth or the appearance of net-worth.”

Money Matters: Having Your Finances Make Dollars & Sense
For some, divorce means more than just the dissolving of a relationship—it also means the destruction of their economic wealth. Money differences are a major cause of marriages ending today and many people suffer financially after a divorce, but that wasn’t the cause for MoneySmart Woman™’s founder, Cindy Morus. She walked away debt-free. “Debt and other things caused the divorce,” Morus says. Because their perception of money was different, she and her ex-husband became financially strained, yet they weren’t able to find any professionals to help them. She says their “situation” wasn’t bad enough for consumer counseling and not good enough for other types of financial planning. Even after applying gift monies and tax refunds to their debt over the years, they still weren’t able to get out of debt. So her marriage ended, but because of an IRA she opened when she was 21 years old, Cindy Morus was able to use that money to clear her balances and walk away from her marriage debt-free.

Because she struggled to find professional financial guidance to help her in her time of financial need, Morus decided to train as a certified financial planner so she could help others cancel their debt and save money. “It wasn’t what I wanted but I felt people needed basic financial training in order to succeed” says Morus. So she decided against regular financial planning and became a financial recovery counselor instead. Through the years, she realized that even though she personally enjoyed working one-on-one with people, that type of service was usually too expensive for the people she really wanted to reach…hence the birth of MoneySmart Woman.

More Than Planning Your Dollars
Morus admits that financial planning is a good service, but that’s not what she does. Her program precedes financial planning. “My clients don’t have the resources a financial planner requires. A planner wants to manage her portfolio and sell her investments. My program’s purpose is to get her out of debt, discover her values concerning money and help her make better choices about money”. MoneySmart Woman™ serves a population not currently reached: women who are earning between $50K and $150K a year, 34-57 years old, read O Magazine and love to shop at Target. MoneySmart Woman™ isn’t looking for single, professional women working on Wall Street, although she can certainly help them, too. “Our clients are women in debt and with families who have fears about their debt. They are living paycheck-to-paycheck and making good money, but can’t seem to get ahead. They are worried about money for the kids’ college funds and about their retirement.

MoneySmart Woman™ Helps the Dollars Make Sense
“Finances are emotional. Most people have their established money personality by age 8”. Morus says that people either do what they were taught as a child or they go against the grain. We are also influenced by how our society reacts to money and measures a person’s worth and life by the kind of car she drives, the clothes she wears, the house she lives in, the school her children go to, etc. “Culture defines self-worth by net-worth or appearances of net-worth.”

MoneySmart Woman™ teaches that handling money is an emotional decision, and that by taking practical steps a person will discover why they handle money the way they do. MoneySmart Woman™ shows people how to have a healthy relationship with money. That means not fighting about it or waking up at night worrying about it. A person is supposed to be at peace with money, not having money emergencies; but actually possessing enough money to handle unexpected situations that come her way.

Morus says that there are many money personalities including saver, spender, saint, and avoider among others. These personalities determine how a person looks at money, and in a marital relationship, these views can influence how one spouse views the other. For example, if one person in a marriage is a spender and the other is a saver, the saver may feel that if they are saving, they cannot spend. So whenever the spender spends, the saver hoards. The saver may feel that their money habits are okay but the spender may think the saver doesn’t want to have any fun because they won’t spend money. MoneySmart Woman™ gives help towards balancing differing money personalities.

Morus once had a client who wanted to save money. In their conversation, the client revealed that she had been giving her husband $60 a week for breakfast and lunch because she wanted to make sure he had money for food whenever the office staff went out to eat. Morus talked to them to find out if he had to have the money for social issues (not wanting to be the co-worker without money) or for convenience purposes. After further investigation, they discovered that the issue was more about convenience (eating on the run) than social status. Cindy showed her client that the $60 a week her husband spent actually added up to $5000 a year that they could have used in other ways. Solution: the wife made sure her husband had food to eat every day at work and the husband agreed to eat home cooked meals for breakfast and lunch instead of prepackaged food. As a result, they took the $60 and put it toward their debt and when the debt got lower, they were able to save. In this relationship, the wife was the insecure saver and the husband was the free-spender. She was concerned about how deep in debt they were, yet she desired to save money at the same time. MoneySmart Woman™ helped them find a way to do both.

Walking the Road to Financial Recovery Takes 12 Steps
Many women have tried a variety of ways to recovery financially; using books, watching financial shows on TV or attending seminars - yet they haven’t been able to find a solution to their money problems. MoneySmart Woman™ has a simple program that is broken down into 12 achievable steps. “It can be incorporated into a busy woman’s life and is designed to be integrated in a year long series. There are no quick fixes.” Morus also says that MoneySmart Woman™ is a program that prompts a lifestyle change and one that teaches people about choice. People have come to her with their financial difficulties, budgeting issues, and debt concerns. She can help them with those situations but that won’t solve their problems. She says you can give them a fish or teach them how to fish; you can pay their bills now or teach them how to manage their funds for a lifetime. Her plan guides people through the emotional and mechanical side of money with the intent to overhaul their former ideas about money.

The 12 step series has 12 sections—one for each month the person is in the program. So, if you join in June and your sister joins in August, you won’t be in the same section of the program at the same time (you’ll be in section 3 and your sister, section 1). Each week the client calls their counselor twice, and during the meeting the client will participate in a group session. While on the call, she can discuss her problems and possible solutions as well as hear testimonies from others about their successes and failures. These conversations (the subject of each meeting) are based upon the section of the program the client is in.

Each section has a combination of emotional and mechanical issues for the client to work on. In lesson 1 for example, the client is not given a spending plan, but is told to focus on the future, beyond their debt. The client is asked what their dream would be if their debt problem was solved. Morus has discovered that most people in debt don’t dare dream because they are focusing on their money issues. Once they discover their dream, they set up a dream jar and track the money they save. She suggests that when the client is tempted to spend money but finds a way to save it, she should put the money in the dream jar and celebrate her accomplishment.

One client asked Morus if she could help her save $1,000 within a year. Morus said yes she could. Her suggestion: save $2.74 a day!

What’s The Bottom Line?
The bottom line is that when it comes to money, we all have choices, and the choices we make will determine our financial future. Many people handle money the way they do because that’s the way they’ve always done it. Morus says it’s easy to maintain habits simply because it’s difficult and time consuming to do anything other than what we are used to doing. MoneySmart Woman™ teaches people how to break their money habits, how to be conscious about money and how to make better choices.


With MoneySmart Woman's™ help, by this time next year you could have traveled the road to financial recovery and arrived at a place where your money makes lots of dollars and a lot more sense.

For more information, go to www.moneysmartwoman.com

Keema Mingo has been working in the media (television, radio & print) for 10+ years. She has a Bachelor's in Theology, a Bachelor's in Mass Communications and a Master's in Cinema/Television. Keema is a single mother of 2 and currently resides in Charlotte, NC.
kmingo@breatheagain.org