I was born in the Soviet Republic of Lithuania. My financial education was nonexistent for about two decades after my birth. Neither my mother, nor my grandmother ever talked to me about financial management. Money was not a taboo, it was just the way everyone was raised in our family: you lived from paycheck to paycheck, sometimes asking for advance, sometimes borrowing from friends.

I graduated from college at age twenty, got married, got my first job, and then money trouble started, followed by marriage problems. My mother was by then living in the United States, and was wrapped up in(…)