The 2016 Personal Finance Report

CAR TROUBLE | Jacqueline Sheppet’s Mini Cooper expenses blew her budget

Jacqueline Sheppet thinks of herself as reasonably good with money. She is a high-school math teacher,

“This was just after the war, 1947. I was starting out in the war surplus business, because I’d been in the army overseas. I didn’t have…

“My twin sister, Kristine, [Steuart], was a marketing manager, and she and her colleagues were each managing their own million-dollar marketing spend. They kept seeing…

“In 1982, I left my core competency of real estate and invested in the stock market—and I lost heavily. Interest rates went to 21 per…

“It wasn’t the housing industry collapse that hit us—it was the credit crisis, because people didn’t have the credit to be able to buy anything.

“We started our company in 1999, and in early 2000 was the dot-com bust. We tried to find investment capital but couldn’t.

We raised funds from…