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You're listening to Life Kit

from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Stacey Bannick Smith in for Mariel Segara. I have reported on business and economics for more than 15 years. And the one thing I can say for sure is that money is tricky. Everybody wants

more of it and sometimes it can feel like this obstacle that is standing between us and the life we want, or at least the things we want.

You know, like a pair of sneakers, an exotic vacation, a new computer, a car to get to work, a house, the degree that we want. But getting enough

money for the things we want or need is not always easy, especially right now.

Americans are in a record amount of credit card debt and prices

are rising all over the place. So in the middle of all this, how do you make a plan? How do you

save money? How do you make a plan? How do you save money? How do you create a goal and reach it?

Monique White knows exactly what it's like to want something that seems out of reach.

It was a Dodge Charger.

And it had like touch screen and a sunroof.

Monique was 22 at the time, just out of college

and ready to set off into her future and her amazing Dodge Charger.

But at that moment, her past came back to haunt her.

I went to go apply for an auto loan and I was quickly denied and I was extremely confused so when I was denied I pulled my credit report and I saw a credit card from my freshman year of college that I

completely mismanaged. I also saw my student loan payments on there, you know, late

payments because I wasn't making payments on that so I just was

completely thrown off by the fact that something from four years ago could

...