Making Money Against the Odds
A former engineer finds financial salvation through network marketing

Money, November 1998
By Mari McQueen

In December 1992, Kathleen and Matt Brennan were mired in $19,000 worth of credit-card debt. Both had good jobs – Kathleen was a supervising mechanical engineer at a Commonwealth Edison nuclear plant, and Matt was a risk manager with a clearinghouse at the Chicago Board of Trade. But after years of freewheeling spending early in their marriage, they had few reserves to build a college fund for their children or to save for retirement. Despite her M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, confesses Kathleen, “Most people knew me as someone who didn’t watch her finances very well.”

That’s when a friend invited the couple to a Primerica seminar. By demystifying sophisticated investment terms and strategies, the presenter introduced the Brennans to the basics of investing. For instance, a discussion of interest rates convinced Kathleen to eliminate her credit card debt and shift the interest payments into investments. Feeling empowered, the Brennans made a commitment to drastically reduce spending and to begin investing more of their … income for the future.

Within five months of the seminar, the couple [was] debt free and building a nest egg that included term life insurance policies and mutual funds – all products [marketed] by Primerica.

And that’s not all. Impressed by how Primerica helped her family improve its finances, Kathleen quit her … position with Commonwealth Edison to join Primerica. “If we can be as educated as we are and not know these concepts,” the mother of four remembers thinking, “there must be a huge market” of people who need this financial advice.