S1E9: Getting out of debt: "I was so ashamed"

0:02Damo, what are you doing? well while we're waiting for our next podcast episode i'm sat here reading this magazine that's on the table about wallpaper very very quaint very old school you know what i never realized how much i missed those little rip-off sniffy perfume things that are in the middle but yeah i think um magazines are making a comeback mate in a world where everything feels digital and i'm just dying to put down a screen all of the time i quite enjoy sitting down with a magazine and having a read of it it's almost like you know buying a vinyl record yeah feels more real more tangible the music's more authentic it's richer yeah that's right which kind of leads us into today's sponsor one of the best finance publications in the uk is money week they're in print and online so you can get that nice magazine feeling in your hands money week sift and summarize the biggest stories in finance and then add their own journalism on top it means no more endless scrolling if you want to give money week a try you can get six issues in print and on the app absolutely free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money.

1:01After your trial, you'll save an extra five pound on a quarterly subscription exclusive to Making Money listeners. That's moneyweek.com forward slash money. And there's a link in the description for you. Rock bottom was, you know, getting paid and not having any money on payday. On the first of the month, I would get paid and then I was in negative because all of the payments were going out, you know working working like 60 70 hour weeks to dig myself out of it but you know that's all led me here all right so demo um obviously we went to uni together about 10 10 12 years ago back in durham i think it was a bit longer than that life has been hard man life has been hard uh since graduating but um we're all about building wealth making money on this podcast but a lot of people have to deal with debt or worry about debt at some point and before you can start investing you have to clear your debt i've known you for over 10 years but what's actually surprised me um doing this podcast is finding out that you had debt at some point yeah because you've as long as i remember you've always been good with money good at saving yeah quite the opposite of me so um yeah what happened where did you go tell me a bit more about your debt i was in manchester at the time so i'd left university and I was uh university is like a protective bubble isn't it where you can just kind of be carnage and I think that's you live on debt at university I'd taken out a couple of overdrafts and stuff and you know like had all of that so I was carrying that and then I went into the work the work environment and I was just a bit um naive so essentially I was working a job in Manchester and I wasn't really enjoying the employment and then an offer came along where basically I thought that I would come into a lot of money and that I was done so I quit my job it turns out that that wasn't the case the the the offer was a lie basically but what I did was I didn't come to terms with that very quickly and I spent 12 months just sitting on my ass trying to come to terms with the fact that that was a lie not paying any bills or anything and you know it turns out that was pretty expensive i mean how bad did it get i mean i remember in uni i i got my first credit card ran it up got a student loan didn't pay it back just spent it all in the club and like on a few books um so like how bad did your debt get so the amount of debt was probably in the the 30 to 40 000 pound range and it was a whole host of debts you know there was the priority debts which are you know council tax gas electric those bills that i wasn't paying because the promise that was made to me was there was going to be a cash injection that would just sort all of that out and i was just hanging on for this to come in and to be sorted from it and it you know obviously never did but then also i was using credit cards um there was a point then when i couldn't get credit cards so that meant that i had to then rely on payday loans and those payday loans were used to pay the bills um and then it got to a point where it became pretty obvious that i wasn't going to get this money and that the offer was a lie and it was at that point that I woke up and thought I'm going to need to get a job here pretty heavy how did it make you feel were you like yeah pretty shit I wasn't like oh well let's go but the thing was like I remember at the time actually being in it and and not really thinking it was that bad bad a deal and then I kind of came to terms with the fact that actually this situation isn't going to get better I'm going to have to go get a job and like dig myself out of this hole.

4:42Was that your job in debt? Yeah. So you had debt and then you go and went and worked for a debt company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that seems a bit stressful. Or you could learn a lot. You could genius. I will take the modest answer. Genius. So what I did was I made money out of telling people how to get out of debt so that I could get out of debt. Did you use any of those tips yourself? So it wasn't really for you. Well, no, I worked in the debt management industry. And what we essentially did was we either did debt management plans, which is where you take people's debt, and then you negotiate with the creditors on their behalf so that they pay less payments.

5:20Or I made people bankrupt through things called IVAs and bankruptcy and something called a debt relief order. There you go. Just me and Ivo. What's an IVA? An individual voluntary arrangement or agreement. I think it is. I mean, you're talking well over a decade ago. But basically, an IVA is like a form of bankruptcy. It's an insolvency, which means I'm not solvent. I don't have enough money to pay my debt, so I'm going to have some of the debt wiped. But instead of bankruptcy where you go to court and most of the debt is wiped off, with an IVA, you pay payments every month for five years, and then at the end, the remainder is wiped off.

5:58I didn't want to do any of those. Yeah. So what did you do? Paid it all off. What, great, every month? Every penny, yeah. How did you break up the payments? It got to a point where on the first of the month, I would get paid and then I was in negative because all of the payments were going out. And I remember needing to roll over payday loans so that I could try and take out a payday loan to pay some others and things like that. For about six months, there was a period where I just had no money. I'm talking no money. I moved into a house share that was like 300 quid a month. all in uh shawford the girl with the rats oh yeah she had like 12 rats in the kitchen there was a rat in the kitchen i remember the girl with the dogs i don't remember the rats i don't think you invited me over though to be fair i didn't invite many people over me i was so ashamed yeah these were her pets like 12 12 rats in a in a in a like a big hot yeah they all just like in the corner like creeping um yeah so i lived in there and then what i would do essentially is um walk to walk everywhere i lost a load of weight in that period i need to start that again yeah you found it didn't you found that way

7:15um where i worked at this debt management place we had like a cafe with a card and what you could do with the card is you could buy your food um and then they would take it off your next month's wage so i would buy a sandwich and a soup i'd eat the soup for lunch and then i'd have the sandwich for dinner and i did that every day for six months so and that allowed me to just throw everything at the debt was that rock bottom i think rock bottom was you know um getting paid and not having any money on payday you know at that point and also it was difficult when i had my son which was a it was part of it was in the process of like paying off the debt and just being aware of the fact that like i had this baby and i would just be unable to go anywhere so if it because i didn't have any money so if it's if it was raining i would just be like pushing pushing him around in the rain because you were with you were with his mom you were separated so i felt really guilty about that but but now looking back he was tiny little baby so So he wasn't aware.

8:21And now he gets everything. He gets everything. He urances me. But I can allow him to. Do you know what I mean? So actually, but that was a low point for me, just thinking I'm an awful parent here. Because you couldn't take your kid anywhere. Yeah, just walking around in the cold. But at least you were there. Yeah, exactly. That's what's important. Yeah. And I was on a commission. Sales is kind of how I got into sales. And I worked like a dog. Did it give you a hell of a lot, a big drive, a lot of motivation to just knock off the desk? I smashed every sales record ever in the place. I progressed through the business quicker than anyone ever asked.

8:56See, this is what I know you for, like closing deals and like being the top bidder. All of that was built off the back of being in horrendous. So that's what set you off? Yeah, my back was against the wall, you know. And so like I just had to go in on Saturdays, go in on Sundays, just worked really hard, got promoted after like six months and got promoted again after six months. And I ended up at the end of it being on like, you know, relatively good money at a young age, 50, 60K a year. And that was all just going on paying off the debt. So it was actually a good thing in a way. Was that all before you had your kid?

9:27Yeah. Like this was like a crossover period. Yeah. Cause that's when you went quite, you disappeared for like a year. And you came back, you're like, Tia, I've just had a kid. And I was like, where have you been? So I thought it was just, you were like getting your head around being a dad rather than, I didn't know it was all the debt thing. Yeah. I was getting my head around being Damo at that point. because I kind of screamed my, but like in every sense of the word, I really threw a hand grenade into my life. Frag out. Yeah, literally frag out. So I really caused some issues in my personal circumstances throughout that period as a result.

9:57And yeah, like my son came along within that period. But yeah, it was tough. It was tough. It was like a big transition for you. Because in uni, it was like, you know how it is, we got student loans, they all carefree. We're just like in the club having fun. like playing a bit of sports, just going out. But then you went from that to like, I guess, I say uni is like one of the highlights of my life. Well, for fun, not for like, you know. So you went from like super fun and us - Well, I was like Mr. Popular at uni, wasn't I? I was like Freshers Week director and stuff. Yeah, that's where I met you.

10:28I met you in the club and you're like, I like your style. And I was like, I like your style. And then, yeah. So how did you go from like the best times of our lives or one of the best times to like, I thought I was gonna be rich and now I'm in super debt. And everyone's graduated and everyone's got jobs now, even though we were in a credit recession or whatever, but everyone had jobs. How did you feel just being in debt? It was a massive wake-up call and really soul-destroying that I'd put myself in this position through my own naivety and that I'd been taken advantage of by someone who I believed.

10:59And that ended up costing me years of my life in terms of progression. I can now look back and say it was a positive because what that showed me was that if I work harder than anyone else in the room, you know, I'm actually good at sales. So if I put more hours in than everyone else, I'm just going to batter them in terms of that. And off the back of that, I then moved into the investment stuff and I did really well in that. And then I moved into the accountancy side and just applied the same things every time. It was just like, I'm good at chatting. If I work more hours than everyone else, go in, find out who the best salesman is, sit next to him for three months and learn what they do and then do it better than them.

11:38then you know it's super easy um but i learned all of that through the debt so i actually learned that i am capable of you know being the best salesperson in the room essentially so obviously a lot of people have debt in england um one in four one in four people are in a what like a precarious position whereby if something rocks their world they they slip into debt so did you find that like when you're working damage, obviously one in four people, do you find a lot of people keep it quiet? Like it's like a kind of like a stigma or like shame to do with being in debt? Yeah. Or do you feel like a lot of people own up to it and they're like, I need to fix it.

12:17Or do most people just do like the ostrich head in the sand? Yeah. They call you when the wolves are at the door, when like, when they're in a really bad position. And in a way it would be better if they faced up to it earlier because you could take steps to control and manage the debt. once they've missed loads of payments and the bailiffs are at the door or the debt collectors there's a big difference between the two like a debt collector can't force their way into the house they they can say oh we're here you can just tell them to go away whereas a bailiff report pointed by you know can they take your car and stuff yeah yeah yeah if they've got a court order like to seize goods yeah um whereas a debt collector has no rights to collection they're just trying to get they buy the debt off the debt company and then trying to get you know they buy like for pennies on the pound.

13:01And then they're just trying to recoup and they act as if they're like bailiffs so that they can get money when we are like, but anyway, someone coming to your house for money, for debt is not a good position to be in. That's most people that call. But what I learned from managing finances or managing debt for people or getting them out was it's everybody, it affects everybody. Like I said, I didn't pass the, we had footballers calling in. We had like - Yeah, you said there was like a millionaire footballer who went into debt. He wasn't a millionaire. He was earning debt. He was earning 30 grand a week or something, but he just was spending it all.

13:34And he built up a lifestyle whereby he had like an interest only mortgage. He leased a Ferrari. His missus was spending a lot of money on credit cards. He had like a hundred grand loan, a few hundred grand on credit cards and all his money was going out on that. And then it was like, I've got three years left in my playing career and half a million to a million quid in debt. And what am I going to do? And the answer was on paper, mate, you need to go bankrupt because you can't afford to pay this debt. that's crazy yeah and then you get like the most common reasons really are relationships like mine it made me feel pretty normal like toxic relationships or when it goes bad at people go into debt after after the relationship but also just like good relationships where the one partner loses their job and the other one takes on that burden but they actually can't afford to do that you know so they get into debt also as well a lot of people don't talk about money in relationships and they might have a perception of like oh I'm the one that's good with money in the relationship and they get into debt they don't communicate when divorce leads to debt but not necessarily because of the breakup and like giving half the money but because one person in the relationship was the money person it's really common that the woman manages the household finances I found and the man doesn't do anything that's quite common what happens is if the a woman leaves the relationship or they split up.

14:55The man has no idea how to manage their finances and just gets into loads of debt. So it's not the divorce that costs the money. It's the loss of the support, you know, so that was really common. And then reckless spending was a proportion of it, but not as much as you think. Most people it's, there's a shock that enters their life. And because they have no emergency fund or backup, they end up like borrowing and then it's a slippery slope. People think, oh, I'll borrow on this credit card and then I'll pay it off. But then, you know, like things come in threes, they end up losing their job and this happens.

15:32My circumstance was quite unique, really. Not many people are just sitting on their ass for a year waiting to win the lottery. Yeah, it might not have been the best idea. It doesn't really seem like you as well. You're quite, so do you think that was an old you? Yeah, yeah. Because I can't see you sitting around waiting for anything. No, no, I don't, no. well this is the whole thing it showed me that i am in control and i i change i dictate where my life goes you know that it's as someone who positions themselves as not a finance expert i try and be more relatable than that but as someone who's like i'm good with money in my own ways it's hard for me to sit here and say i was terrible at one point but i actually think that that's why i'm good now i needed that shock otherwise i'd have just kept bumbling along and not really saving not really spending the paying off the debt made me like realize i can live off next to nothing and then i was like well what am i going to do with this money and then it's like oh investing and you know and that's where i got to and i'm before then i was slightly materialistic now i'm i've never have been since i don't really care for possessions yeah i know you all buy new trainers unless i tell you to yeah you tried on them before

16:44I've had a couple of debts, but not as wild as yours. But I was in Israel back when I used to have credit cards. I went on holiday, spent all my holiday money, and then I just started withdrawing money from the cash machine with my credit card. Terrible idea. Never do that. Because of the interest rate. The interest rate. And I thought my limit was meant to be like a 2 ,000 limit. They let me withdraw up to five grand. So I'm like, oh, maybe I haven't hit my limit yet. So I kept on withdrawing it. I go back to London, they're like, you're six grand. And I was like, what? And what people don't realize about credit cards is they, a lot of them will put the payments in order of how costly they are.

17:19So there'll be a cash withdrawal interest rate. So that means that you pay an extra rate on cash withdrawal. So anyone you take out, but let's say you take a grand out, but you owe five on the card. They'll put that grand at the back. So if you pay a grand off, it doesn't pay off the cash. The cash sits at the back. So they're saying, no, you've got to pay the full five grand off before you get rid of the cash that's on the higher interest rate. So they really try and like put you in a corner with that. Never take cash out on a credit card. I trust my learn the hard way. I was like, how did I take out X amount?

17:48I'm paying out, paying back way more. So from that day, I now don't own a credit card because I can't be trusted. I'm too impulsive. If I see, if I'm having a good time, I'll spend. If I'm like, if I see something that I shouldn't really be buying, I'll be like, stick on a credit card. So now I just spend what I have. I don't think I've got it with me, but not a sponsor, but I, well, I used to think I'll never use credit cards again, but actually now I'm at a point in my life where I do use them. I use an American Express in order to get the perks around flights and stuff because I like a cheeky upgrade if I can get one.

18:21And I pay that off in full every month and I use that for the benefits. But I've had to grow into that over time and be honest with myself about am I the kind of person that can pay it off in full or not every month? And for a long period, I wasn't. I was like you where it was like, oh, it's three grand. or zombies on a night out. I think I stopped getting drunk and that stopped me. Well, you know, you're on a night out and I'm like, Mr. Sensible, he put a few zombies in me, mate. Zombies are very naughty cocktails in Manchester. Yeah, buy everyone a drink then. So your relationship with money changes over time, I think, and obviously how responsible you are with money.

18:58And I've gone from a point of being completely reckless with debt to saying I'll never get into debt again to now actually spending on debt and it benefits me Like I get a tangible benefit in terms of around flights and hotels and things like that through using debt. So, and it costs me nothing. Yeah, I need to do, I need to get an American Express card. But only a few things that you can pay off at all. That's the thing I can't. I buy myself overdrafts. I take no overdrafts on any of my bank accounts because in uni I was running on those overdrafts. Well, an overdraft's only good the first time you use it.

19:29Yeah. Because you get that initial grand or two grand. But then every month you're just in this hole. Yeah, you get paid and you're still negative. You're like, this is useless. And people go, oh, I like to have that buffer. Well, have a grand in your bank. Exactly. That's a buffer. Don't have a debt facility there. I mean, if you've got a free overdraft, I get it, whatever. But it's only actually beneficial the first time you use it because you suck an extra grand that month, isn't it? But then you run through it and you just do it. And you're just overdrawn. Yeah. But yeah, it was a very uncomfortable period in my life where I had to kind of come to terms with who I was and the fact that I'd caused so much damage in my life.

20:05And there was loads of shame around it. That's why I didn't speak to anyone. So you literally ignored everyone for, after uni when we were like the most popular people partying all the time, chatting to everyone. Everyone knows your name. You just ignored everyone. I thought I was just going to like fly in life like I did at uni. I mean, I thought like, oh, I'm that guy. That reality hits you hard when you graduate. I got absolutely slapped around my face by life. I remember one time Jay, one of my mates, came up to Manchester and was like, let's meet up. And I just made an excuse because I was so ashamed of like my life and my circumstances that I didn't want to see him.

20:36so I just hid from everyone for like a year or two while I got rid of it all. Didn't that make you more depressed? Yeah I mean I can't be any lower than rock bottom with nothing in my bank account at all points you know working like 60-70 hour weeks to dig myself out of it but you know that's all led me here. So how long did it take you to dig yourself out? I mean you get light at the end of the tunnel don't you? So you start paying down the debt and then over time you clear a debt and that frees up a bit of money. But I was the kind of person where I was like, that's all going on the next debt now.

21:10But every month it got incrementally better. There was a point, the first couple of months were tough because it was like, I had to use debt to live. So I was looking at like, how do I get rid of the really horrendous debts? The payday loans were so bad. That whole industry was horrible that i'm gonna say did they shut it down yeah yeah yeah they they basically shut them down but it made i mean it it made me so good at my job because everyone around me was just like people call it they got the problem is i imagine it's like doctors and nurses or any job you become desensitized to the issues of the people in front of you because you see them so often so all of the people around me were just like oh it's another person in debt like it's just another call to take another person to process whereas i deeply understood how how much emotional like you're a bit more empathetic yeah so i was like look just listen to me for 15 minutes i'm going to make all of this go away and that just meant that i was just really good at my job you know and that meant off the back of that that i i earned more money got promoted because i could empathize with the people that were coming through on the phone so it really played to my advantage in a weird way.

22:21And that, like you say, all that work ethic, all that drive, all that hustle is from that. It's never left me since, you know, and now I'm here sitting in a room with you like I was at uni and nothing's happened in the exact same place as I was back then. What's the scariest word in the English language to me? Tax. How's it make you feel, mate? Oh, stressed, sweaty palms, squeaky bum time. Don't like it. Mom is spaghetti. Yeah, exactly. that you got one shot, one opportunity to not go to jail for avoiding tax. Like, yeah, I don't like tax. It's scary. Tax can be really stressful, which is why we're excited about our partnership with TaxApp.

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24:01So yeah. Yeah, shooting from the hip all the time, weren't you? Yeah. I think personally that you should take risks, but it should always be in areas where you have a unique skillset, an edge, expertise, like your job, things like this. Definitely. One area that I wouldn't take any risks is compliance. Yeah, the risk changes you grow in business and you need to be on top of it, which is why we partner with Vanta. Vanta automates a lot of risk processes and helps you see your risks in a centralized platform so you know what really needs your attention. Besides risk, the main thing Vanta does is automate compliance with security protocols you need to scale, like GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001 and SOC 2.

24:40The beauty of Vanta is they make it easy to prove you're compliant with these standards, saving you up to 90 % of the time it takes, and on average, half a million dollars. If you know what these acronyms like SOC2 are, you probably need Vanta. You can book in a demo at vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description. So Damo, what were the practical steps you took to actually get out of debt? Well, I'll talk about it from the perspective of not just me, but anyone in general, what they might do if they're in a debt position. First of all, you can seek advice. So there's free services.

25:13We'll link them in the show notes and the newsletter that you can call and they will give you advice around managing your debt and getting out of debt. But a lot of those solutions, anything where you don't pay what you've agreed will essentially result in a mark against your credit rating. These can be what's called a default notice. A default notice is if you've missed three months worth of payments, you've defaulted on the debt, they withdraw the debt facility and they mark your credit rate and say, and this person did not pay that debt. Then there's bankruptcy, which is the next level above that.

25:47Anything that's a mark on your credit rating will last for six years. And that's a long time, right? So that six year mark, you've got to consider if you're going to go to these services where they're going to restructure your debt or get you to pay less, that you're going to have to then live with that for six years. So just bear that in mind, A default notice will last for six years. Bankruptcy will also last for six years. After that six-year period, it's removed from your credit rating. This is why mortgage companies ask you if you've ever been declared as bankrupt because they can't really see that beyond those six years.

26:19Okay. So I didn't want that sort of action. So I focused on paying off the debt itself. The best way to pay off the debt, we're just going to assume you're in an absolute mess. first of all you need to identify what priority debts you have so these are things like council tax obviously where you live rent bills things like this these are these are the things where if you don't pay them you can either go to prison or it's going to affect your living situation if you've got arrears there when i'm talking about debt like if you're behind on payments you focus on those first you would call if it's council tax call the council tax say i've been struggling can I set up a payment plan the key thing is don't be scared to call these people when I worked at Barclaycard I think the stat was a quarter or a fifth of all people were in arrears so they were missing payments it was massive the team for collections on Barclaycard was huge and it's just simply that people fall behind and then they think oh the company's now the enemy I'm never going to speak to them whereas if you just speak to them they go yeah no worries we'll restructure it we won't mark your credit rating because we just want our money back please don't disappear because then we've got to go through this really expensive process to pursue you so don't be scared of them they're not the enemy they they will help you manage that debt so with council tax you can call them and what they'll typically do is spread the arrears out over the year they might be a bit more aggressive but that's typically if you've ignored them as soon as you start ignoring them they're going to go for you you know because they don't think they're not going to pay us go after them so priority debts first council tax any tax arrears if you're self-employed anything that's like a utility bill those kind of debts need to be paid first and then what you do is you get all of your debts you write them down how much you owe and most importantly what the interest rate is on an annual basis the apr every debt has an associated interest rate typically it will be in the past it was payday loans would be the highest but it's typically credit cards, then maybe a bank loan, car finance.

28:28I would put that to one side because it's specific to a vehicle. So I wouldn't typically focus on overpaying that, but the order will normally go credit cards, loans, and overdrafts in that order. You get the debts and you order them by interest rate. You pay the minimum payment on every debt. So this is the minimum required payment they should really call the minimum payment the interest payment they call it the minimum because it's psychologically people go oh well i'll just pay the minimum when in reality all you're doing is servicing the interest really yeah if you look at a new thing every day if you service just the minimum payment on a credit card there's um the amount that you pay and interest is insane there's a website called whatsthecost.com where it can calculate for you if i if i pay the minimum on this card how long will it take and if i overpay it by 10 pound a month how much will that shave off and a 10 pound overpayment will cut the payment term from like 20 years to 10 you know so we'll link that that website and it's important for people to play around with that and understand that paying the minimums all you're actually doing really is just giving them money for free so it's always just the interest always if they called it the the um you screwed if you pay this low payment or like the interest only payment then people would overpay it but because it's the minimum it sounds really soft it's like oh yeah i'll just pay the minimum but anyway you order your debts by interest rate you then pay the minimum payments on all of the ones apart from the highest interest rate and then you just hammer that with an overpayment until it's gone and then what you do once you've cleared that debt because you've been overpaying it you then take that overpayment plus the minimum that they were requiring and apply it to the next highest interest rate.

30:11They call it snowballing and avalanching. Snowballing is a method whereby you pay off the smallest balance first. So if you've got a 10 grand debt, a five grand debt, and a 200 quid debt, you pay off the 200 quid debt because psychologically it makes you feel good. And then you can take that money and put it somewhere else. Psychologically, that might make sense. But from a math perspective, you pay off the highest interest rate first because it's costing you the most money yeah there is a lot to be said though about clearing off a debt and feeling good about it and if that's if that's your thing maybe the snowballing method works but but you could end up you're gonna end up paying more you'll pay more overall because the interest rate is higher on the other ones so if you've got a card at 70 27 and one at 15 the one at 27 is costing you 27 pound on every 100 on it on an annual basis whereas the other one's costing you 15 so if you focus on the 15 you're losing out on that difference right so you focus on the highest interest debt first to pay it down.

31:10And there's no magical way to pay off debt. You just have to pay it off. And I think that's, it's like a, people want like the hacks and the tricks. And in reality, it's go earn some more money and pay off the highest interest debts first and hammer them. I took out a second job. So I was working at the debt management company. And then I was also washing pots at Pizza Express on a weekend. So I was working silly amount of hours. Because I was doing like, you know, I get to work at like half seven, eight when the office opened and I'd leave at like seven. It was an hour walk each way. I'd go in on Saturdays, nine till three.

31:48And then I'd work at Pizza Express from 6pm till 1am, washing pots Saturday and Sunday. That's why you went quiet. Yeah. Just grinding out. when i had my son later on in the line that's when i stopped the pizza express because i had to see i wanted to see my son um but yeah but then what that taught me was like actually i don't mind that grind like i personally don't like it and you know even when i was set up the youtube channel i was earning 100 grand a year in my accountancy sales job i was earning good money through youtube as well and i was still delivering chinese take away because i just needed that i loved it do you what i mean it's like i just i remember daily thompson do you know the runner the old school runner he used to train on christmas day and he'd say that i could train on christmas day not because i think it'll make a difference but because i know that my competitors aren't and that that's kind of i used to just drive around my takeaways on a thursday night knowing that ever or friday night knowing that everyone else was going and getting drunk and what would happen is between six and nine i would earn 30 quid 40 quid and then i would use that for the night out and it It was like completely guilt-free then because I had a lot of guilt around spending money because I felt like everything should be going - Into the debt.

33:04Yeah. But then I realized actually this fits around my life really well. I enjoy it. It's like I planned my whole YouTube channel and all of that whilst driving around delivering Chinese takeaways in Manchester because it was just so easy work. Like there's no mental process when you're doing pressured sales and stuff. It's very taxing on the brain. driving around delivering Chinese I was able to think and I schemed this whole YouTube thing whilst doing that and then applied myself to that I've always worked a lot since then but yeah I mean my point is that if you want to get out of debt the best way to do that is to increase your earnings and to focus on the highest interest at first and hammer them there's no magic bullet that's good advice unless you want to go bankrupt which is a which is an okay option especially if it's going to take you six years, longer than six years to pay off the debt.