Kumiko Love was getting ready for the 2018 holiday season when she noticed something alarming — she was still paying off debt from last Christmas.
“I was doing a lot of impulse shopping — a lot of guilt spending because, at that time, I was a newly-divorced single mom and I had a lot of guilt over that,” says Love. “I was trying to provide the best Christmas and holidays for my kid.”
While her son likely had a memorable holiday, that type of spending further delayed a long debt payoff journey she had started in 2011 when she got her first student loan bill.
Now an accredited financial counselor, founder of The Budget Mom and best-selling author of “My Money My Way: Taking Back Control Of Your Financial Life,” Love points…
