Debt free: Let DMC, experts help you manage your money

Have debt? Most people do.

Want to talk about it? Most people don't.

But shining a light on family financial issues by engaging and educating women is the goal of a new initiative by Deseret Media Companies.

Today, the "Imagine a Happier You" campaign launches with a website that offers loads of great financial advice, links, calculators and other tools to help everyone — but especially women — learn about money and how to take control of their finances, from the intricacies of budgeting to debt elimination and retirement planning.

If money problems have been weighing you down, consider this your weight-loss casting call: DMC also seeks three women who are willing to publicly and unflinchingly face their financial dilemmas in exchange for the kind of expert mentoring well beyond most people's means — or dreams.

Three women will be chosen to be mentored by experts for a year as they tackle their money woes and prepare for a more secure future. The expert mentors are being provided by the initiative's partners: Zions Bank, Merrill Lynch and AAA Fair Credit Foundation, a nonprofit credit and consumer counseling agency.

The public can follow and benefit from the women's experiences as they blog about their journeys and are featured in stories in the Deseret News and El Observador and on KSL-TV and Radio.

While money issues aren't gender specific, there are a lot of reasons to focus on women, said Sheri Dew, president and chief executive officer of Deseret Book and chairwoman of the "Imagine a Happier You" Women's Initiative. They are typically "the chief operating officer of a family, whether or not they handle the finances." Nearly all women are responsible for a household's money at some point. And, Dew notes, they make 90 percent of family purchases.

"Most women haven't had a lot of training" to handle money issues, she said. "We hope to help all women, regardless of their situation in life, be financially prepared." Most people, Dew added, don't know where their money goes. They certainly don't have a plan for where they'd like it to go.

"There are a couple of things that make women unique when it comes to finance," said Kevin Townsend of the WWT Group at Merrill Lynch, one of the mentors. "Typically, women outlive men, so they will have to look at issues that they may not have dealt with before. And, more often than men, women may leave the workplace to raise children or, later, to take care of their parents."