When her husband Marcus died of a heart attack at 39, Elena was left with more than grief. The Seattle schoolteacher was suddenly a single mom with two small kids. She was also saddled with massive debt, including a $340,000 mortgage, a joint home-equity line of credit (HELOC) with a $50,000 balance and a shared credit card with $20,000 outstanding. Must Read Marcus, an impulse buyer, had also accumulated $70,000 of his own consumer debt and taken out an additional $10,000 private loan that Elena had ...