My Son Secretly Had £40,000 of Debt

0:00This episode was made possible by Vanta. If you're building a business and you need to prove that you're compliant with security standards like GDPR or SOC 2, then Vanta can save you a lot of time and money. You can book a demo using the link in the description. They say our money habits are shaped by our parents, with many of them formed before we even turned seven years old. So I wanted to find out where my relationship with money came from. And to do that, today we're going to sit down with the one person who's been there from the beginning. So Sue, I'm a big fan. I remember meeting you about a decade ago, probably a bit longer, as a wide-eyed, innocent university student with a ginormous Afro, and I was just burning through my student loan.

0:41Good times, good times. Don't forget your gold trainers that you were wearing. Oh, gold is just something that I've always carried. I love a bit of gold. Yes, good memory. But for our audience, who are you? Please let them know. I am first and foremost Damien's mother, his PA, his general dog's body and also his boss. Would you agree Damien? Yeah I think so yeah. You know all the secrets. I'm trying to get something out today. But you raised Damien as a single parent. I did. How was money day to day when you were raising this little troublemaker? um very tight I have to be honest um living months to months paycheck to paycheck everything was paid for that was my priority the mortgage came first the bills you know I wasn't getting red letters or anything like that I just hadn't got any money left after I paid for everything so I had to be quite creative very strict with myself very strict um and that's how it was for many many years because I was so scared of just um not paying the mortgage of losing my home and I thought I can't let that happen because we were happy there you know so it was also a time when people were losing their homes because it was the early 90s so this you know it was a time when interest rates were very high double digit teens and people were it was the biggest period of people losing their homes, I think, in modern British history.

2:16Yeah, it was happening all around us. It was terrible. Negative equity, people losing their homes. I managed to get to the dizzy heights of 15 % interest on my mortgage. Now, if that happened now, I think most of the country wouldn't be able to pay their mortgages. It would be an absolute catastrophe. But it was difficult then, although we had very small mortgages in comparison to now. So, yeah, it was a worry, a big worry. And it went on for a few years as well. It wasn't just one year. It went on for a long time. Until Ray turned up. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I worked and that's what I did. Try to advance my career as much as you can when you're looking after a child on your own and you've got commitments at home.

3:08um so yeah i carried on and carried on until we got to the point where i could actually move um move to a better area move to a better school for damien and then i met ray was this up in birmingham no this is in staffordshire where where we are now we moved yeah because i got offered a very bad school and where we were living at the time i don't know if it was just a moment in time but there was a lot of issues a lot of gang issues yeah it was not good we were living in a part of Birmingham near somewhere called Aston, which had a lot of gang issues. Yeah. And I think I got offered a school that was right in the middle of all that and you were basically like, we're moving.

3:43Oh, it was like an on-the-spot decision, you know. He, for some reason, we were outside the catchment area, even though we all lived on the same estate. It was one of those. So all my friends could go to the school. And I got offered the school where it was like, oh God. I just said, no, it's not happening. And I sold up, moved. and Damien got into a really nice school in a really nice area and the rest, as they say, it's history. Out of curiosity, what job were you doing at that time? So when I had Damien, I worked in recruitment, specifically sales recruitment. So I was recruiting sales reps, sales managers, sales directors for big companies, you know, Rank Xerox, Coca-Cola.

4:29um probably the worst job you could ever have if you have a baby it was tough because it's hard hours or a lot of work in recruitment yeah a lot of work but also that mental pressure every single month of am I going to hit my target that was what ground me down really um I had a basic salary but but it wasn't brilliant probably like car salesman you know a lot of it is based on commission and I yeah I was really really stressed with every month thinking oh here we go again I've just scraped through am I going to have a good month next month bad month miraculously I managed to do it for about seven years and was actually quite good at it um but I don't know how but I remember having dinner with your financial advisor when I was a little kid yeah um Clive Clive we We used to go Chinese.

5:24He got me onto lemon chicken. I'd be like, what's this? You know, like lemon chicken with the batter on it. It was so good. Everything in there was like, going back to food. He paid. Yeah. To be fair, he was so helpful to me because I'd arranged my mortgage with him. And when I realised I was going to, you know, I was going from being employed to being a broke single parent, sort of overnight almost, I rang him and said, I don't know if you can help me, but I've got this situation. And he said, right, OK, I'll come around and we'll discuss it. And he did the financial advisor thing where they go through all your debts, all your bills, and he's writing it all down.

6:06He's typing away. And he went, hmm, yeah, you really are broke, aren't you? Yeah. So he devised a budget for me and said to me, we can make it work. you can make it work for a year without a job if you only spend 15 pounds a week can you do it now if you said that now i know you'd laugh because that's like three coffees for you to make you'd be absolutely climbing the walls wouldn't you let's face it but then 15 pounds i thought i'm on my own here i've got a small baby he doesn't need any food um that's is going to be food and I did it and for a year I spent 15 pounds a week on food shopping I did it so you know I have him to thank for that he he really helped me um so yes it's all about education isn't it though again him saying to me money coming in money going out this this is what you need to do and you basically need to um batten down the hatches and he did give me a bit of a lecture really and said unless you can commit to only spending 15 pounds a week it's not going to work you're at risk of losing your home and he was very clear about that so yeah i did 15 pounds a week yes impressive and where was damo's dad at the time uh married to somebody else did he give you any help financially?

7:38No not for many years we had a complicated relationship and yeah I had to accept quite early on it was me and Damien and I had to make sure that I could support myself and if he did give me any money that was a bonus but for probably nine years until Damien was nine or ten I never got a penny no. Probably after I met him for the first time right because I remember going to a parents evening once when we were when I was nine and looking around and thinking you know like people have a man the kids all have a man with them like what's going on and I remember asking my mom I was like do I have a dad and she was like yeah and I said I would like to meet him when's the first time you met him I was probably nine yeah um and then he was very patchy he would let me he would he would say he was going to come to see me and then not turn up and I remember sitting at the window looking out the window waiting for him and he wouldn't turn up he was very my mom will stay classy and not speak ill of of her uh ex-partner and a dead person because My father died ultimately, but he was wholly unreliable as a man, as a father.

8:43I imagine as a partner as well. He was all over the place. That's why you try to be in the opposite direction. Definitely. When I had my son, very similar situation at the same age, 25, which was how old you and my dad were, I made the decision not to kind of run away from the responsibility and face into it because I just didn't, you know, like, as a kid you're just like why does my dad not want to see me yeah do you know i mean yeah so i didn't want that for my son yeah fair enough good man what were the what were the hardest parts that you remember uh hardest parts actually was not the lack of money i have to say because i was happy in my little two-bedroom flat um i could go home at night you know with damien i was happy to have a baby.

9:32So that was fine. But it was trying to hold down a job by far was the worst part for me. And also, I didn't have a car, believe it or not. So I actually had a mortgage around my neck, age 22. But I didn't own a car until I was 30. So trying to do everything with a baby, then a toddler, just walking the streets with the pushchair, trying to get to work on two buses, it was really really difficult we used to go to the supermarket on the bus and it'd take like the whole day yeah because you're just like an hour on the bus and then you've got all these bags of shopping and you'd have to hope there was no one on the bus that was going to like scream at us or cause drama because you go through some pretty tasty areas oh yeah we spent a lot of time on buses and we spent a lot of time walking yeah hence i was probably three stone lighter than i am now um yeah it was that was the difficult thing really was trying to keep everything going whilst having a full-time job that was very demanding.

10:32I don't remember being poor though. I was going to say, you were obviously a baby at some of this, but when you became a kid, did you remember, did you feel like money was tight or did you not really think about it? Everyone around us was in the same position. And actually, because you worked, I felt like we were better off than most of the people because a lot of my friends, their parents didn't work. They were at home. When we went to, yeah, so, and I would go to the YMCA, which was like a kids' club. And people would always comment on the fact that I had Nike clothes was on and they'd be like oh you've got nike all the time and it's you know so i felt like i was all right yeah i remember that wasim like one of his uncles had like a bmw and we all thought well this is this he's he's a made man he had like a 20 year old bmw we were just like this guy's clearly loaded and then when we moved to utoxeter which is in the in the midlands um i remember then being like oh there's there's levels here because there was because where we moved to was a bit a lot more affluent than inner city birmingham so there was kids with more money but still it was it was like we were all similar and then it was when i got to durham that's when i realized oh no there is some wealthy people when i was seeing some of the arab international students with 40 grand a week to spend at uni you know like they were they were going and gambling 10 grand a night in the casinos on their budget that's when I realized there's a whole level of wealth here that I've never really considered so I never thought we were poor when I was a kid I always thought I had everything I needed and you're in an environment where everyone's the same so you're not exposed to it uh yeah I mean I really didn't feel either particularly poor I just felt that we lived a very simple life and I had enough money to pay for that so that was fine I always had all the clothes I wanted if I asked for something for like my birthday or Christmas I probably got it you know like I got a hi-fi system one year I got an N64 one year these were like big gifts and then we would go on holiday once a year so I will and my friends weren't going on holidays yeah that was um I used to save the family allowance that was the holiday money I used to save it every single week in fact shamefully that was the only saving that I ever did because family allowance like uh from the child benefits from the government just checking yeah sorry yeah it's the old fashion i just wanted to hit the buzzer for seeing yeah uh yeah that was um yeah that was the only amount of saving that i ever did and it certainly wasn't for the future it was for the summer yeah yeah because if if i was going to work really hard which i did we were getting a holiday deserved it so mate you've started your company t unlimited open for business it just made more sense financially for me really it's a bit more admin though tell me about it i bet you haven't sorted out your accountancy stuff yet that's that's a problem for future to me mate not right now but i know you're fine at zero i am actually i genuinely think it's probably the best finance product I use within the business because every single business that I run has a Xero membership.

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14:57Vanta saves you up to 90 % of the time it takes to prove you're compliant with these standards, and on average, half a million dollars. If proving your compliance is something that you need to get done, you can get started at vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description, and we've also put a QR code on screen. When you guys were at home, did you talk about money with Damien? I tried not to. You know, at a certain age, it's not appropriate anyway. I'm sure your five-year-old can't comprehend what an electric bill is. It's pointless, really. So, no, I tried not to. I probably said to you, we can't afford it a few times.

15:33I might have said that. But, no, it was my problem to deal with, not a child's. I remember you'd shown me your budget when I was older, maybe 15, 16. Yeah. When we were living in Staffordshire. Yeah. You had like a budget spreadsheet. You would show me that. Obsessed with spreadsheets. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything was on the spreadsheet down to last penny. Yeah. Because I say a lot of your money habits have formed before the age of seven. And like with my partner, I'm always like, don't say we can't afford this. Or like say that's expensive to my son because these things leave impact.

16:08So do you remember your mum saying things were expensive or not really? No. I just remember liking money a lot at an age. I remember counting it. and I remember you borrowing some money out of my little stash. I did not. There was like a place in the lounge where we had the phone, like a landline obviously, with some like cloth over it and I used to keep my money under there and I remember lending you some once. I always remember being drawn to money, counting it, getting it out of the penny jar at my nans and like lining them all up and counting them. I've always been interested in money. People would say it was my dad.

16:47People would go, oh, you like money like your dad. And I obviously didn't know him because he wasn't around. So I don't know. To me, it's always been innate. It's like a characteristic I was born with. Yeah, I mean, definitely. You've always discussed money, even when it's like you randomly come out with something. I remember when she said to me, Mom, Mom, Mom, I'm going to be a millionaire. I'm going to be a millionaire. Well, you used to say this about 20 times a week. Yes, Damien. Oh, yeah. I'm going to be a millionaire. Yes, Damien. And then there'd be a pause and you'd go, how do I do it?

17:25If it was that easy, I'd have done it myself. So you've still not got any tips. How old was I then? Oh, you'd be about nine. Hungry from the young. Yeah. Where do you think that came from? I think that was genetically programmed into him by his dad. I really do. Because he was just obsessed, totally obsessed with making money and becoming wealthy. And do you think it's always been like that? Or do you remember a time when it changed? I think it's been like that for quite a long time, really. But that's OK. That's part of your personality. And it's good to have drive and ambition. Definitely. as long as it's not the be-all and end-all in your life, then...

18:12No, I just think it's like the scorecard. It's kind of like the way you measure progress, in a sense. I've always kind of just had the desire to do something, and money is probably the measuring stick for that a lot of the time. I also am interested in it, not just, oh, I want money so that I can buy things. I like the world, the mechanics of it. I always liked the look and the feel of money. I thought like the pound coins were like beautiful. Aesthetically pleasing. Two pound coins, yeah, yeah. Like the actual, the cash itself and like foreign notes. I used to go to the post office and just swap to get some South African notes because they got like the big, you know, they got elephants on them.

18:51Yeah, they got crazy things. I thought they were kind of beautiful. But yeah, my dad was obsessed with money supposedly. Yeah, very much so. But unfortunately that sort of took over his life and he forgot about the people in it. Yeah. You know, so that's an example really of how I don't want it to be. Yeah, he was obsessed and would pursue it through bad means. He would try and get money any way possible, whereas I would like to think that I've got a bit more of a conscience and I wouldn't sell myself out or the people around me to get money, whereas he would. You know, he didn't have many friends at the point he died.

19:33do you think back in uni when i met you do you think you had a good relationship with money no i know you didn't no terrible i can never tell you i just thought this guy's a great fun like when we met we met in the club and this guy's a great night out so like i never really thought about that the ultimate irony of being obsessed with money and then being absolutely terrible with it for for a long period of time which i don't know where that really came from you know i don't know why there was that kind of contradiction um yeah i went i worked all summer at a pub to get a load of money together and then blew it in like two weeks when I got to uni.

20:02Well hang on Damien you forgot about something there the fact that you worked to get a load of money for uni because I was like drumming it into him you can't go with nothing you've got to have money behind you you know they're giving it the parents speech all the time and he did he worked hard got a load of money together and then we all decided to go to America on holiday and asked Damien if he wanted to come with us like a final blowout before he goes to uni what does he do he goes with his mate drew and spends a lot i don't see i don't remember the offer to go with you

20:40i tell you like i'm not this this it's an important lesson i needed to learn this whole thing but what what i should have done in hindsight is gone here's my money mom can you send me 100 quid a week of it i tried i know yeah but i probably wouldn't have done it but like i would You know, it was so not good for me to have thousands of pounds in my bank account plus an overdraft. You know, I just thought this is a bottomless pit of money. I've never had this much money. Did you get a student loan as well? No. So the negative of Ray joining was that we didn't qualify for the issues. I live in a life of grinding poverty.

21:11This man turns up just before I go to uni and I'm like, I have no grant for uni. And then I went there and Hamish Barcraft living in a castle was like, oh, yeah, because everything's dividends, we get full grants. I was just like, what? This is unfair. Yeah, he was a Hamish Bullen. He lived in a Scottish castle, but it was like, technically my parents have no income. They're like the landed gentry that he was getting the full grant. But yeah, that was one downside of Ray showing up. No, so I survived after, I mean, I had enough money that I probably could have spent like 70, 80 quid a week at uni, which isn't enough, you know, when you buy one pound drinks.

21:48Yeah, especially in Durham, yeah. Yeah. But I just blew it all on stupid stuff and then I just had to live off. I got 30 quid a week because I got 20 off you and 10 off Joe, I think. Your dad? Uncle Joe. It was off Uncle Joe. Oh, was it? Okay. Yeah, so every Wednesday that money would land. Yeah, and I used to do the once a month Asda food shop, which was hilarious because Damien's always loved his food and is very aware of what he eats. And you can imagine a student giving you a shopping list. you would expect it to be beer pizza cheap wine oh no pasta curly kale over there remember that day with the curly kale mom can you get me some curly kale some broccoli some asparagus and i obviously it's got sell-by date it wouldn't last a whole month so i basically go around the house with like ed and polly and my mates and be like right i'll feed you for a week but i'm coming to collect at the end of it because if i fed if i fed them all like just bought made i would then get fed for the other few weeks well i did wonder why you wanted five shower gels all on one shot no i don't know i don't think so to be clean yeah well i think no in a in a shared boy's house and a shower gel and toilet roll just get fleeced off you you just have to hide them people just stealing them yeah they get burned through yeah i was aware that you probably weren't the best food money then so that's why i thought the food shop was a good idea and it made me feel good as a mother that you were eating something i was beyond terrible i was i mean i would like i blew all the money and i didn't have my money to pay my rent do you know i mean so i was i was not responsible this is why we were having a conversation before with um uh a lady about her debt and how she got into debt in her 20s yeah and it's so easy it would be so easy for me to be like oh this and this but really i was reckless and i was always heading on that path i was it was always going to blow up do you know i mean yeah well you're a risk taker that's one of your qualities and that actually has worked well for you yeah but it can also go the other way as well i think that's why i became friends yeah yeah i mean you're a risk taker but i definitely think like at that point in my life uni was a good place because it was very controlled and the sums weren't that big yeah but i was you know an idiot with money you just mentioned debt um we did an episode about damo's debt and debt in general uh did you talked to your mum about debt because i remember i didn't notice i don't even think i realized all the podcasts that you had a debt or like we were out every day and you never mentioned oh i've got loads of debt so did did they most share well i mean i know there's a period of time where i went very quiet on everybody and that includes you and you always mix it up you're like i thought you were doing well and like there was eight years nine years between you us leaving uni and you doing your masters in manchester that's the period where i was in debt the first like five years of it or six years and no i didn't tell anyone i didn't tell anyone i mean like my mom was saying about the family it's kind of like you do it yourself i think that that also means that there's a lot of shame around that kind of thing i would like the previous guests we had she would go to her mom and say mom i'm stuck i would i would not do that do you know i mean oh i wouldn't with my parents either i mean they had no idea um i don't we don't talk about money as a family historically um in fact if i would ask my mom a question or my dad a question about money they'd say mind your own bloody business we're better at it now we talk about money now i think since doing the job i done has opened up the whole family well yeah you ray and uncle joe we talk about i talk about money with you guys probably more than we would have in the past yeah definitely opened the conversation up a lot and i don't know why families don't talk about it it's it's not a dirty word is it and i i know it's not a competition who's got the most and who hasn't it's just healthy conversation about money and families and it never happened in our family i mean that's a lot of fun it's like taboo in british culture to talk about money generally but obviously we're trying to change that but like it's always traditionally like even my household we don't talk but the only time i ever heard about money they're like your school fees cost a lot you better get some good grades but like i never they never really we didn't talk about money how much things cost like obviously it's like go get a job get your work experience but they never really talked i never mentioned what i owe this that so i think it's pretty normal in this country to not talk about yeah but i i hid my debt from from you from the family i wouldn't i wouldn't talk about it and there was a lot and i was in like pretty bad living situations in manchester and it's sad that But, you know, not necessarily me, it was my choice not to talk to you, but it's sad that we create this situation in families where kids don't feel comfortable to go to their parents and go, I'm in a really bad spot here.

26:37Well, I still don't know, Damien, how much debt you're in. We've never had that conversation. Let's clear the air now. I mean, I probably don't know how much it was because I think it was like 40 grand of official money, but then there was lots of money that come out of the woodwork. I was in a bad relationship and I had friends that came out of the woodwork and go, oh, your previous partner borrowed eight grand off me. I had their debts that I had to pay as well. I don't know is the honest answer. I imagine if I chalked it up, I don't want to sit here and people be like, hold on, he said 30 grand on that episode, 40 grand on that episode.

27:09This guy keeps ratcheting it up. Now he's pretending he's from the Enns in Birmingham. He sat there with his cardigan on. yeah so i think um i think it was like 40 grand of official debt and then there was lots of stuff that just kept rearing its head you know years later i thought it was done and then it would be like oh no there's this bill or this bill that you didn't pay because moving house a lot at the time you know so there was a lot of like and i wasn't the one signing up for the houses yeah but i was associated with them so after a while it would be like they're not paying this money you've got to pay it or you were tracking you down so you know there was a lot of peripheral i don't i yeah i wouldn't like to give an answer but it was a lot it took a long time to pay off and i was hammering it i was working two jobs how would it take you again i don't i don't know i don't know like it's just this big blur maybe four or five years to like really straighten myself out um of working like two jobs two to three jobs and the sales jobs as well so i was doing six days a week in the sales job you see i had debt as well when damien was little but i had what i call manageable debt and what now people would not even probably class as debt which is an overdraft once i got into my overdraft when i bought my flat um it was a good old days of 100 mortgage literally I woke up I gave buying the flat no thought whatsoever I probably you know I've debated over buying a blouse more than I thought about buying my first property because everybody just used to go out and do it 100 % mortgages it was cheap you very rarely got turned down you know it was so lax it was unbelievable that so nobody rented that I knew all the girls I work with, all the guys I worked with, everybody had got their own places.

29:08They all lived on their own, living the life, you know, going out in Birmingham at the weekends. It was great. So I moved in. I got no washing machine, no sofa, nothing, absolutely nothing. And I put a load of stuff on overdraft. Good grief. 14 years later, I still got it. And I just never, ever paid it off. and then I had a credit card, big mistake, which was being used as the emergency fund rather a lot. So if ever I was a bit short or were on holiday and I hadn't quite got enough pesetas as it was then, I'd get the credit card out. So, yes, those two things followed me for years, literally 16 years probably until I'd paid them off.

30:00The thing that was bad about my period of being in debt, the bad timing was the prevalence of payday loans at the time. Oh, yeah. That was the peak period of really aggressive high interest rate payday loans. And I got stuck in that. And that was the – because like you say, the amount of debt is one thing. It's the types of debt. Yeah. You know, the interest rates associated to them and the repayment schedules that can really spiral. And I think that's what made that debt so bad. And then there was council tax debt and things from previous houses where they're not messing around. You know, that's bailiffs, CCJs, like coming to your house kind of stuff.

30:39So I had a lot of quite aggressive high interest debt and a lot of very serious action debt. The overdraft stuff, people just live in them because you can. And I think that's why you probably didn't pay it off. For a long period of time, it's almost like, well, of course I've got an overdraft. and I'm in and out of it all the time. It's just like the way of life, wasn't it? Absolutely, yeah. How did you feel when you got out of debt after 14 years? Oh, I'll tell you what. Well, Ray paid the credit card off. Go on, Ray. Go on, Ray. I did the overdraft and what I did was I thought, I'm not going to kill myself here.

31:17So I basically reduced it by£200 every month, like a soft closing down of the overdraft. and um oh it's it's an amazing feeling i've never gone back to it and yes we do have a credit card because i think everybody needs a credit card in in today's society all right i can't be trusted uh well the cash machine we have we do the uh you know the martin lewis we do it you know pay the whole balance every month um so yeah i don't have it on a direct debit i have to physically pay it Otherwise, it just takes the minimum payment and it's too tempting. But, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, look at me, look at me, because I've got two incomes now.

32:05I totally get it. Never mind single parents, anyone who is single at the moment, living in a property, paying everything on their own, it's tough. Bills are so high. I don't know how some people, but like you say, single parents, you know when you hear what the the average income is you think that's the average so that means potentially up to 50 percent of the population are below that yeah and some of them are single parents single income part-time workers whatever it's like must be so tough as an existence yeah i mean the benefit system has changed so when you were little after i'd had you i couldn't rush straight back to work so i wasn't very well my plan was always just to you know get on with it get out to work doesn't work like that it didn't work like that for me I wasn't well so I had to stay off for about a year and um went on benefits income support uh which did the job you know it it tidied me over it for a year it was tough but I did it um and I got a newborn baby you know i was staying in it wasn't it wasn't awful um but as soon as you went back to work even if you went back to do a part-time job everything stopped yeah so it's so much better now because you have got the flexibility to be able to work part-time you hadn't then so all the single moms were either out of work for years or they were all working full-time they weren't doing part-time there's no incentive to get into work because you just lost everything yeah everything The only thing you got was your 25 % discount for council tax.

33:45And your child benefit. And child benefit, yeah. So, yeah, you lost everything. It wasn't great. It didn't really encourage you to want to go out to work. But my philosophy was I can't better myself and I can't better Damien's life unless I'm working. Because, as you know, with the benefits, it's a fixed amount of money. it's it just you just scrape through on it you can't build on that no you can't build on it and you know we'd have situations where the washing machine would blow up or something could happen and now out comes the credit card well that's that's no way to live because it all catches up with you which is what happened but i knew that if i was in it in work even though it would be very very difficult while he was very young and you know i had to pay nursery fees my nursery fees were higher than my mortgage but that's not changed either i was about to say nursery fees are insane yeah well they were then as well it's just that you know they were a smaller amount but they were still more than my mortgage so when i first went back to work i used to get home and think why am i doing this i'm i'm i'm not got any more money than if i was sitting on the dole um And however, you can't advance yourself and you can't better yourself unless you're in work.

35:11So I knew that if I just got my head down and, you know, crept along, it would get better, which it did. Speaking of creeping on and getting better, now that you've heard about Damien's debt in a bit more detail, how do you feel about him repaying all of his debt? I don't believe I can't believe you did it so quickly that amount of money I mean you must have you must have been so so focused you know that you've done a brilliant job there getting yourself out of that because that could have carried on for the rest of your life that could have impacted you for the rest of your life but clearly you recognize you need to sort it out yeah I mean I was I was helping people get out of debt at work and I was in much worse debt positions than them and I could kind of see what what you needed to do to if you wanted to pay it off what would happen if you wanted to get the debt wiped I could have gone insolvent I was definitely in the position to be like IVA or bankruptcy if I'd have called me I'd have been like you're going bankrupt because you're not you're not in a good place but I just sort of thought I'm not doing that I don't want that kind of stigma for myself and I don't want my family to bankrupt in his early 20s so i was just like i'm just gonna work twice as hard as everybody else and then as much money as i can and the good thing about sales is you have that uncapped earning potential yeah and it just made me progress through every business like from the outside perspective you guys must have been like oh bloody hell he's doing so well he's getting promoted at every business but the reality was the driving force was just like crippling debt that was just pushing me to work all hours of the day so that I could get out of it.

36:54So really, we were quite similar in that respect then. Without realising it, we're very similar that we recognise that you've got to work your way out of debt. Yeah, and then I've just kind of ridden on that momentum ever since, basically. There's obviously a genetics going on here. Sure. The debt gene. Yeah. And overcoming it. Sorry about that. Yeah. But you did just say something really interesting. you said like this thing can follow you for the rest of your life and i have a friend who damien knows i won't name him but he did so many payday loans then once he couldn't get any more his wife got loads of payday loans and he also gambles a little bit so now he's got kids and he's like yo t can you send me 20 quid for like milk and nappies and stuff and i'm like dude you've got two kids but it is because that debt doesn't go away and then you're always chasing and you're no matter how much you earn you're like if i'm paying off some of this debt i'm gonna be bro and I don't even know if he's paying off well, but like it stays with you and then you can't really build or start saving, investing.

37:51If you've got payday loans, you've got defaulted loans, you've got debt all on your back. So it's kind of, it's like a weight on your shoulders and it doesn't get better unless you change it. So what was it, Damo, that made you say, I'm like, do you remember the day when you're like, this debt, I'm going to hit it head on? Yeah, so I'd either had my son or I was about to have my son and I carried a lot of shame around that because it was nothing to do with him, to do with my identity of myself. I'm like, I think I'm going to be a millionaire. And what has actually happened is, I mean, tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt and I'm having a baby very young and no one around me is having babies.

38:27You know, like 25 is quite young to be having a kid. Had to kind of own up and tell everybody, call everyone. I called you very late in the process. You know, he was basically on his way at that time. I think you told me after you was born. Yeah, or just before. Yeah, I did everyone in like one call because I was just like, oh, I just didn't want to admit to myself that that was the position I was in in my life. You know what I mean? It was kind of, I had a very, I hated myself. You know, I let myself get into this position that I didn't want to be in. So I remember I was living in Eccles. It's a part of Manchester.

39:02and I was walking to work because I would walk everywhere because I didn't have the money for the tram. Even though I lived outside the bloody tram stop, I'd just watch this thing. I'd try and walk faster than it. I'd try and beat it every day. I lost so much weight. Anyway, I remember getting paid from the debt management company that I worked at and getting paid, what, like two grand or whatever, and then being instantly at the bottom of my overdraft because all the payday loans had taken all the money out. so it wasn't that I had no money you know nothing I didn't even I would only be able to borrow I'd have to go and find more loans and I had my son and it was kind of like right it's all out in the open now in terms of I'm having a baby and that my family think whatever they think about me probably like you know typical Damien God look he's made a right mess of his life I'm like are you going to make this better now or are you going to keep going down this path are you going to stop and like get on top of this, you know?

40:00And it was kind of like, I want to prove everybody wrong that this isn't me and that I'm going to be something. I'm going to do something with my life that, you know, one day I will astonish the world is George Stevenson, right? Well, I was at Stevenson College at Durham and that was his motto. And I just remember in that moment thinking, this is rock bottom. So we're only going to go up from here. uh and yeah i remember i and then i had to take out debt i was like okay so what am i going to do i need a hundred pounds to feed myself for the month so i'll take out one last payday loan or whatever i got the money from somewhere went and bought you know uh like three kilos of mince from the butchers at the arndale the like the cheapest mince they got and carried it home in this bag that was just like dripping from the bottom down the mancunian way like four kilometers It was just like this is a dripping bag of mince beef, mate.