I first wrote this as a guest post at the personal finance blog, Thrifty Enough, which no longer exists. I’ve reached out to the former owner of that site as well as the new owners of the spinoff site, The Money Mix. I have everyone’s permission to republish this article since it was no longer live on any site.
This post starts with a woman’s story of recovery and so I’m listing this as my third article in my series, titled Inspiring Women in Recovery.
That being said, I’m making some edits with how my thinking has evolved.