CHAPTER ONE
My Story

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

-Oscar Wilde

Independent Woman

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Long Island. Like many women, I came from a very traditional household. In witnessing the dynamic between my mom and dad, I decided I wanted to be more like my dad: I wanted to be the one who made the money. I learned at an early age that money equals power. I was brought up with the notion I could be anything I wanted to be-even president. I never felt like I had to compromise or that a profession like finance was too male. It never even occurred to me. My dad worked in finance, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.

I'm human, just like everyone else. I've had some great successes, great failures, and I've had to rechart my financial life in the face of change more than once. I built a successful business, got married, experienced a painful and financially damaging divorce, and then had to rebuild. My firm was sold, I almost lost my career, and I have had to rebuild again. But I've also followed my passions. One of those passions is financial planning. As a child, my banker father exposed me early on to the financial world. He taught me strong money values, the importance of working hard, and gave me my love for being smart with money. He took me to work with him before there was a "Take your Daughter to Work" day. My mother was a big part of that passion too. She is a certified public accountant (CPA), and she also went back to school later in life, when I was 13. After graduating from college, my career moved quickly up the corporate ladder, including eight years on Wall Street at JP Morgan Chase, three years as a vice president at Citibank, and two years as a director at Lord Abbett Investments. By the time I turned 30, I was earning $500,000 a year. I thought I had it made! I had met and exceeded so many goals in life. I was financially independent and confident in my ability to support myself. I refused to learn normal domestic duties because I had determined that would not be for me. I thought: If I make the money, then I will be safe, be able to make my own decisions, and have freedom. What could possibly go wrong?

This line of thinking is nearly always a preamble for disaster. As women, we can often set ourselves up for failure. Life takes us to unexpected places all the time. In my case, it led me into a marriage that, in the end, severely compromised my happiness, my confidence, and my financial bottom line. I made the wrong choice in my life because of my unhealthy emotional state. It wasn't for lack of intellect or knowledge. In fact, bad decisions are often fueled by either conscious or unconscious emotional responses.

Money Can't Buy Me Love

When I got married, I had no idea what I was in for. I was vulnerable and trusting, which made me the perfect victim. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? All the while, I carried the bulk of our shared financial burden. I had come into the marriage as the primary breadwinner, and that showed no signs of changing any time soon. We never had a joint account. He had his money, and I had mine. I thought that would protect me. I always paid my own bills, so at first, I didn't realize I was paying for nearly everything. Bills came in, and my income went out. My husband had his own reasons for not chipping in. He referred to himself as a "serial entrepreneur," who would never work for anyone other than himself. He was stubborn, unwilling to undertake traditional work, and dependent on my financial support.

He said he was an ex-hedge fund manager who had retired twice by the time he was 30. His money was his and was "unavailable" for paying bills. I soon realized that his finances were a mess. On the surface, he was successful and well-to-do, but scratch the surface, and he had terrible credit. He'd never paid back his undergraduate or law school student loans. He had accounts under his control in his father's, his mother's, and even an old girlfriend's name, in which he would sock money away. He had more than a dozen companies set up in his name, creating such a quagmire around tax time that his files would arrive in a box nearly as tall as my 5 foot 5 inches. It was impossible for me to figure out what was going on with his money, but he always seemed to know what was going on with mine. I simply accepted his lies and wrote the checks because I was taught to always be responsible and pay the bills on time. My stellar credit rating was very important to me, and he knew it.

Three years into this unhealthy relationship, my father passed away. The ground slipped out from under my feet, and I was spinning out of control. Looking back, I can say with some certainty that this time in my life was my rock bottom. And then one day, I was surprised with a marital separation agreement that my husband had drafted completely on his own. When I arrived at home, I was ambushed by six witnesses waiting for me to sign a 100-page document that I'd never seen before. After reading only six pages, I realized the agreement stipulated I hand over 50% of my business.the only thing I knew I had control over was 100% my own. The rest of the day turned into a blur as I was bullied into signing the document through verbal abuse and threats. My professional side knew something was very wrong, but the emotional toll of the situation was just too much for me to take. I signed the agreement under duress. I literally gave away half of what I earned and half of what I had worked tirelessly to build. Through my signature, it was his.

When the divorce began, money was literally flying out the window as quick as it came in the door. Ultimately, I found myself on a long, lonely road to divorce. It was a process that lasted for years and included countless contract negotiations and financial red tape that threatened not just my earnings to date, but my future earnings as well. Once the relationship ended, the financial conundrum began. My ex-husband felt he was entitled to much of what I earned and almost all that I built. Never mind that I made most of the money and paid the bills. That was not enough. He wanted it all. And worst of all, he felt that it was his right. He told the divorce attorneys and the judge the financial planning practice was his and he was suing me for it.

It was an arduous, six-figure-plus divorce with emotionally driven decisions affecting me at every turn. I owned two houses, but while the titles of those homes were in both our names, the mortgages were in my name alone. This meant that, for a long time, my ex was living in one of those homes while I paid the mortgage, bills, and car payments. He was living the dream while I was trapped in an emotional and financial nightmare. Relief was nowhere to be found.

Anyone who knew me asked, "Why would you do that?" The short answer is that emotions were fueling my decisions. Of course, it's never as simple as that-emotions never are. For one, I had fabulous credit and, as taught by my parents, felt driven to pay every bill for which I was responsible, fair or not. I knew that in the long run, I would be punished if I didn't pay the bills. One of my biggest reasons for staying as long as I did was FEAR. It wasn't just the threats my husband levied against me, but I was afraid of losing everything I'd built. The only thing I still had control over was my business. I'd created it and watched it start to thrive despite everything that was happening in my personal life. It became my lifeboat, so I started to think that if I could get to a certain benchmark in my career, I could make things start to happen in my personal life. "When I make X," I'd reason with myself, "I'll walk away."

For weeks, he and his staff refused to provide me with a copy of the marital separation agreement. When I finally received a copy of the agreement, I went to see a dear trusted friend, who is also a family law attorney. We reviewed the entire agreement and found that not only did it ask me to sacrifice half of my business, but it also appointed my ex-husband as executor of my estate-he was to receive 50% of my future inheritances and get to use my credit for the rest of his life and many more stipulations that, in hindsight, were crazy. If I violated any stipulation, including moving my business, the "agreement" stated I would owe him five million dollars in a "liquidated damages clause." On top of everything else, as soon as divorce proceedings started, I was sued for alimony and temporary support. It was literally a one-sided financial catastrophe.

After endless tears, my friend offered a glimmer of hope. She said the document was so egregious that she didn't believe it would hold up in court. It was clear to any unbiased bystander that I was manipulated and coerced into signing the agreement. I hired an attorney and prepared for battle. During the divorce, I was bleeding cash. I could not make money fast enough, and I was in the red every month for the first time in my entire life. I was fortunate to have an emergency fund, something I advise all my clients to have, and it allowed me to get through the almost four years of negative cash flow. I remember one month my attorney bill was $50,000. I was paying it by credit card at the attorney's office and crying. I was not my best self! I pay off my credit cards in full at the end of the month. Then I thought of a quote from one of my favorite movies, It's a...