Carilyn Marrero thought the way out of debt was a bigger paycheck. It took her five years to accept that it was not.
"No matter how much money I earned, I was still in debt," she wrote in answers to questions from Cranberry Journal. "It took me five painful years to realize that earning more would not, by itself, change the way I managed money."
Marrero is co-founder of CM Freedom Finance, where she works as what she calls a transformational financial coach. Her company's website says she spent more than 20 years in the hospitality industry and that she coaches in English and Spanish. She says her focus is the Latino community, especially working adults and first-generation entrepreneurs who earn a steady income but still live paycheck to paycheck. She has written a book around her own framework, which she calls Método Libre.
Her argument arrives at the season that tests it hardest. The weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's stack gifts, travel and family expectations on top of the usual bills. She wants readers to look at that pressure before it lands on a credit card.
A paycheck is not a plan
Marrero offers her story as one person's experience, not a typical or guaranteed outcome. Her mistake, as she describes it, was a common assumption.
"My mistake was believing that earning more money would automatically get me out of debt," she wrote. "For five painful years, I kept making money without changing my relationship with it. What I learned was uncomfortable: a bigger paycheck was not a financial plan."
What changed, she says, was her attention rather than her income. "I needed to examine my habits and learn how to manage the money I already earned," she wrote. "That realization changed my focus from simply making more to making more intentional decisions."
Raises have done less work than usual lately. Wages and salaries rose 3.1 percent in the year to September, less than prices did, so many households earning more on paper are not ahead.
Knowing is not the same as doing
The misconception she most wants to correct concerns financial education itself. "A misconception I want to challenge is that knowing what to do with money automatically means you will do it," she wrote. "Financial education needs to help people turn knowledge into practical skills, consistent habits, and confidence in their decisions."
There is research behind the distinction. In a research brief published on 14 September 2018, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau described a pathway in which financial skill contributes to financial behavior, behavior contributes to a person's financial situation, and that situation contributes to their sense of financial well-being. The bureau said the pattern held when it controlled for income and other factors outside the reach of financial education. Confidence in one's ability to reach financial goals, which the bureau calls financial self-efficacy, also contributed to behavior.
The study measured associations in survey data. It does not show that better habits can overcome an income that is too small, and Marrero does not claim that they can. The research, she wrote, "supports an approach that goes beyond providing information, while recognizing that income constraints and financial hardship also matter."
A thinner cushion for Hispanic households
The Federal Reserve's survey of household economic well-being for 2025, published in May, describes the starting point for many of her clients. Fifty-five percent of all adults said they had a rainy day fund that would cover three months of expenses. Among Hispanic adults the figure was 43 percent. It was 61 percent for White adults, 38 percent for Black adults and 68 percent for Asian adults.
Smaller shocks show the same strain. Sixty-three percent of adults said they would cover an unexpected $400 expense with cash or its equivalent, which includes a credit card paid off at the next statement. Twelve percent said they could not pay it by any means. Ten percent said they would borrow from a friend or family member.
Marrero adds her own caution. The figures describe financial vulnerability, she wrote, and do not establish its causes.
One pattern in the Fed data does line up with her emphasis on routine. Among adults who said they always had money left over at the end of the month, 86 percent had three months of expenses saved. Among those who never had money left over, 13 percent did. That is a correlation, and income likely plays a part in both. It also suggests why a regular surplus, however small, is worth protecting.
Holiday pressure and family obligations
The National Retail Federation forecasts that retail sales in November and December will reach $1.013 trillion, up 4.2 percent from 2025. In its annual survey of 8,094 adults, conducted on 1 to 7 October with Prosper Insights & Analytics, 56 percent of holiday shoppers said the state of the economy would affect their spending plans. Half of those who planned to start shopping early said they were doing so to spread out their holiday budgets.
Marrero's concern reaches past gifts to the obligations many people feel toward relatives. One of her five takeaways is aimed squarely at that. Readers should "set financial boundaries that let you support loved ones without sacrificing your stability," she wrote.
She sees the season as an opening as much as a risk. It gives people "an opportunity to recognize the emotional and family pressures that influence their spending before taking on more debt," she wrote. Debt built this way rarely feels like a choice. In one survey of heavily indebted borrowers, most said their balances came from ordinary spending such as groceries.
Cranberry Journal checklist: before the holiday spending starts
Compiled by Cranberry Journal from Ms. Marrero's five takeaways and the figures above.
- Name one inherited money rule. Write down a belief you grew up with, such as never saying no to family or never discussing money, and decide whether it still serves you.
- List your triggers. Note when you are most likely to overspend, whether from guilt, comparison or a late-night sale, before the season starts.
- Set a holiday total first. Start from take-home pay, subtract rent, food, transportation and minimum debt payments, and fit gifts and travel inside what is left.
- Decide family support in advance. Choose what you can give or lend this season and say it plainly, so a request does not become a new card balance.
- Keep one debt and one savings habit running. Pay one balance above the minimum and set up an automatic transfer to savings, even a small one.
- Test your cushion. If a $400 surprise would go on a card today, count building that buffer as part of the holiday budget.
Marrero's summary of her own approach is simple. "Lasting financial progress requires more than a budget," she wrote. People "need to address the beliefs and habits shaping their money decisions so they can reduce debt and build wealth with purpose."
The holiday bills arrive in January. Her advice is to decide what they will look like in November.
Ms. Marrero's title, clients and book are as she described them in written answers to questions from this publication. Her years in hospitality and her bilingual coaching are as stated on her company's website, read on 3 November 2026. Her quotations are from those written answers. Savings figures are from the Federal Reserve Board's Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2025, published in May 2026 (Table 25, Table 27 and Figure 25). The research on financial skill and behavior is from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's brief Pathways to Financial Well-Being, 14 September 2018. Holiday figures are from the National Retail Federation's release of 20 October 2026 and its survey of 8,094 adults conducted with Prosper Insights & Analytics. The checklist is this publication's work.
Topics moneypersonal financeemergency savingshousehold finances
