Judy Lawrence is the owner and president of Common Cent$ Budgeting Corp., a financial counseling firm based in Albuquerque, N.Mex. She counsels individuals, couples and small businesses through her practice, and reaches many more people through money management seminars and lectures and radio and television appearances.
Lawrence began her own financial planning habits as a child, when she developed a "five jar" system to save money for her various goals. Later in life, however, she began to realize that many other people did not have any experience in budgeting and financial planning. As a career counselor at a technical college, she worked with many women who were re-entering school and the workforce, usually because they were recently widowed or divorced. While helping them to develop budgeting skills, she created a workbook, based on her own family budgeting system, that eventually became The Budget Kit: The Common Cent$ Money Management Workbook. The Budget Kit and a later book, The Money Tracker, were both designed to be easy, non-intimidating workbooks that people could begin using immediately, regardless of their prior experience with budgeting.
Lawrence received both a B.S. and an M.S. in Guidance and Counseling from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. She is a trained mediator and settlement facilitator, providing court-appointed services for divorce cases and other legal issues. Lawrence is also the author of The Family Memory Book: Highlights of Our Time Together, and a coauthor of Daily Riches: A Journal of Gratitude and Awareness.
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