We Had £40,000 of Debt and Nobody Knew

0:00Just quickly before we get into the episode. At the minute, we're really trying to understand how people in the UK are saving for their futures. We hope that we can turn it into something really useful, maybe a rapport or a video on my channel. We'd love your input. It would take about five minutes. It's completely anonymous. And if you're up for it, you can find a link in the description.

0:21£39 ,390 between us. It's just shy of£40 ,000. We were putting petrol on the credit card and like nappies on the credit card. We were paying so much every month, but we were always on zero. Megan was in her early 30s when she finally faced up to over 14 years of living in debt. I feel like for so long, I always had in the back of my head, I can't do this and somehow we're here now, debt-free, which is just the biggest relief of my life.

0:48So I joined uni when I was 18 and it was like my first, I was the oldest child and the first taste of living outside the home. And I've always been like a bit of a homebody. I grew up in a very small town, that sort of thing. and it was like my first bit of freedom um so I remember my parents who were divorced would give me a hundred pound each per month and this was like for me to live for like food and fun and stuff and I like blew it all in one week and my dad took me to a coffee shop and gave me like a bit of a dad lecture all about like how I should budget and that sort of thing and it all just went sort of over the head and um and I had an overdraft on my bank which I thought was 200 pounds and I remember visiting the bank to ask them about it and they said it's actually 1 ,200 pounds and that's sort of that's how the ball started rolling in my head I was like I wasn't like oh no this is I should reduce that it was like oh this is exciting like money I can go out I can see friends I can have dinners I don't have to bother my dad anymore like it was that sort of feeling it didn't feel um it felt normal almost yeah it didn't feel like a worry at all at the time i just thought it was interest free so i knew what that meant i knew that there was no charges or anything and i just thought when i'm grown up in the real world with real job i'll just pay it back and i just thought it'd be really easy yeah it's the same it in it felt to me it was like this is money to live off like you you you have to be in the overdraft it was like this is how i'm going to survive get through uni the rbs have given me an overdraft and a free football so i'll sign up with them like it was literally like here's a free thing you can get with it and then that money is is to be spent i'd never considered how to pay it back no i think it's a bit cheeky because we're all a little bit vulnerable at university i never had an overdraft i got to uni and then barclays same thing 1200 pound overdraft i remember it clearly and then next thing i got letters for credit cards in the post so it's like you're very vulnerable and they're just like here's some free money and you're like cool let me let me have this free money yeah you're not very old 18 doesn't seem very old and my dad was really warned me about credit card so when I got my first one just sent to me randomly in the post I didn't ask for it he told me to throw it to the back of the wardrobe never look at it again which I did but I just I just didn't think about that with the overdraft I thought um maybe that's maybe in my head I thought that was different I'm not sure do you think that these kind of lessons from parents work then because you know he seemed to really try and drill it into you about that and then you got into the position you did they had quite different ways of doing things the way I always say it is uh when we'd go out for dinner with my dad he would pay on like tesco vouchers he'd have like those tesco club cup points and we would get water and like maybe no pudding you know it was like quite thrifty uh and my mum we would go out with her and we would get like cokes with the dinner and we'd get puddings and that sort of stuff so it was like i had a very different i feel like money upbringing in one was quite maybe spent a bit more and then the other one maybe didn't so after uni you went off to work as a local newspaper journalist what was your life like then what was your financial situation like then um so after uni i got my first job and it didn't quite happen like i i thought obviously in my head when i was 18 i would just pay it back really quickly there was a very small paper in my hometown of it's called siren sister in the cotswolds i know siren says siren very well my nan lived in oaksy oh really yeah my friend lives in oaksy oh really there's like 10 people there yeah one of those 10 yeah um and it was called the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard and I was so proud when I got that job because I was like I was a journalist at uni and I was thinking like can I get a journalism job it seemed quite hard but um I remember just like muscling in for work experience and then the editor joked that I just never left I just I got a job so I'm not leaving now and but it was like I think I was on uh 14 ,000 pound a year um I was like a real trainee journalist and my boyfriend at the time and I got a flat um we live very near to my parents but we got a little flat and started like you know having bills and that sort of thing and spending money on food and stuff but in the end I did um I decided to do a 0 % balance transfer so I transferred the overdraft over to a credit card um on 0 % so then I thought oh okay the overdraft's clear and now we'll just pay off that credit card but I said it's a minimum payment so it would just take like I think it was like 30 quid out of my account per month or something and I just forgot about it so I had about£1 ,200 on there and then I also was in and out of my overdraft so that was the situation then.

5:12A few years went by and I think I then went back into my overdraft and then I got this£10 ,000 loan out because I was living in Oxford, wasn't very happy, had gone through a breakup but then I met someone new who's now my current partner, we both weren't very happy in Oxford, we wanted to leave and just without telling anyone, I decided, because I'd quit my job with no other job lined up, and I thought, like, what am I going to do? I've got no savings, I've got, like, this two grand of debt, so I just logged on to HSBC. I, there was, like, a little, I remember a little sort of message at the top saying, apply for a loan, and I clicked on it, and there was, like, a little scrolly bar that was, like, how much do you want to borrow?

5:52So I moved it to, like, 10 grand, why not? It was, like, how much do you want, how long do you want to pay it back for? So I moved it over to, like oh five years I was like oh how old do I be 29 okay and then I just clicked like apply and at the time it was it was a really good interest rate it was like 800 pounds on top of the 10 grand which I think is actually incredible now thinking back but then I didn't mention it to anybody I just thought I think I briefly mentioned it to my partner who I'd only been with for like a few months then and he was like he doesn't even know what to say and I just went for it and then the money was in my account about a minute later and I had like 10 grand.

6:25Do you think it's you had no job at the time as well i just quit yeah so i didn't have anything and you had nothing lined up and they lent you 10 grand yeah do you do you think they were reckless in lending you that money or do you think that you know you were you shouldn't have taken out the loan that's a good question because i have made affordability complaints before but never about that loan um i've made it more about credit cards but i actually can't remember if the crossover was if I'd just quit or if I was working my notice period or something. I really don't think they should have given it to me, no.

7:00Would you have told them that you were employed, do you think, at the time? I probably would have told them I was employed, yeah. Right, okay. I think I was being quite reckless with it. You said there you did some kind of affordability complaint. So basically, I couldn't afford this debt when you gave it to me. Yeah. Has your attitude changed at all about yourself looking back now? Because I went through a similar thing of getting into a lot of debt in my 20s and clawing my way out of it. And I think for a long period of time, I was like, oh, circumstances or this or that. But actually I had been on quite a bad path with my own spending for a whole period of time.

7:35It just got worse because I got access to more money. I think, you know, but you give me 50 pound or 50 grand, I'd have done the same thing with it, which was just thrown it away, essentially. Do you look back differently on yourself now? And maybe do you think differently about that period? Yes, I do. When I first started documenting my journey paying off debt and someone mentioned affordability complaints in passing, I immediately disregarded it because I thought that's not for me. I was reckless. It was my fault. I've done this. And then as time went on, I learned that it's a two-way street, isn't it?

8:09like i yes i did spend the money and take out the debt but should they have lent it to me in the way they did so i did make in the end two affordability complaints and i won one and the other one was rejected but it was i'm really glad i did it but i do i do look back and think like yes i overspent a lot and i was like silly in the way i sort of like yeah i was the same like i would you could give me i could have won the lottery and i would have just blown blown through it probably or most people do yeah um but i do think as well like i felt like i was really young i've talked a lot about that 10 grand loan i took out um and being 24 and i always get a lot of sort of chip for people being like oh 24 isn't even young but i i really felt like i had no idea like no clue about money or the world or anything at the time so i think it i think it is young and i think um the the the length of time it can take to pay something back that you can get in an instant we need to think really carefully about how we protect young adults so that we don't then sign them up to decades of essentially kind of like punishment for paying this back it's like a it's like a sentence isn't it of five ten plus years it took me until like my late 20s really to dig my way out of what I did in two years you know in my early 20s no because I was the same I thought for such a long time that um even when me and my partner were both deep in debt we kept thinking when we get a promotion or when the kids are out of nursery or when like we kept thinking oh I'm sure the next thing we'll be able to pay it back but it just it just doesn't seem to work like that you said you said your father said throw your credit card to the back of the cupboard yeah what do you remember when you actually either got out the cupboard or got a new credit card I never got that one out the cupboard must have just gone somewhere I don't know where but um the first credit card I got was when I did that balance transfer um I had such an awful history I was very like I abused balance transfers like that was my way of like so I we I had all these credit cards and then once I maxed out one I would find balance transfers which they would just give me readily I don't know why and move it to like sometimes I'd get like a two-year term and I'd think I'd have like a moment of like relief proper relief and then and then that other credit card that I moved it from would suddenly be empty and obviously you know you should then be like okay put that one down but no I was like okay back to tap tap tapping away and then I just cycled would continue until i had three credit cards on the go they give you the balance transfer because they know that you will probably not pay it back within the interest-free term they also get the three percent fee i worked for barclay card uh when i was at university um in their call center it's based in in teesside in near middlesbrough because they say that the accent's friendly so they base them in these places so when you call up you you've got these like friendly northerners not me but like this is why they base it in there you might have sold me a credit card I definitely sold you some PPI, mate.

10:58You want that? You can take that straight away. You need some of that, mate. Yeah, it was at the time of PPI mis-selling. I didn't do it because I didn't really get out of the training because I quit to just go back to uni. But yeah, I remember just the sheer amount of people in arrears was like staggering. You're talking like 10 % to 20 % of all people with a card were missing payments. so there's and they're getting late payment fees and they've regulated it a lot now so this was like 2009 this was the same era as payday loans so the business was getting the fees you know the business was not like the balance transfer zero percent oh aren't we nice they know the data they've got millions of data points where they go 30 percent of people that do a balance transfer will never pay that off and we'll just get the interest on the minimum payments forever that's you could get them you know yeah and i thought i thought foolishly that i was somehow like beating beating the system by not you feel like you're adulting right yeah and i thought oh i'm never gonna pay interest it's okay like i could do it but obviously like there was a time when i was paying off all my debt i decided for fun i would add up all the interest i'd ever paid on my barley card and it was like two and a half grand and i thought how have i done that when i've been doing all these 0 but there's all the like the as you said the transfer fees and like the little random bits where I have to pay interest and it was like 100 quid a month.

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13:57If 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 when you got the 10 grand did your attitude to money change because i know if i have a good month in sales i'm like i'm rich and then yeah so did you feel yeah did your attitude to money change when you got that 10 grand when i had that 10 grand yeah when you received it did you feel like you'd earned that money almost like it was kind of not debt so oh i'm rich now like you said um i definitely didn't feel like i'd earned it but i did feel a bit like i was rich like because we moved to birmingham then so i used some of it on like my path of the deposit for a flat some of it on rent some of it and then I didn't have I didn't have a job three months so I lived off it but I also did like silly things like when my partner was at work he got on a job immediately he's an accountant so he was going to work every day and I was like I'm off to Asda and I'd like buy stuff for the bathroom and for the kitchen and he'd come home to like all these random like little bits like trinkets around the house and um and then when it was very nearly ran out I was like oh I need to do something fun with it as well so i booked a 500 pound spa break for us as well just to just to go just to finish it off and then it was all gone within like months and then i was like oh i've got to pay this back to i'm 29 yeah then then it kicks in right and um i i like how honest you are because it's not easy for you to people to admit that you know you spent it on a spa break and things like this what was the psychology behind that decision you know what were you thinking my gut instinct was just to say to you then like i just want to just go on a star break i just that's fine i don't know i just i just wanted to go on a bar break like um it was a really nice center parks one and it was you got two days in the foot have you i don't know if you've been to center i love center with the bicycles and yeah best one of the best holidays ever the spas though are just i didn't know i went as a kid i wasn't i wasn't in the spa i didn't know they had a spot yeah it's called the aquasana spa yeah the sherwood forest one's pretty good i think um no bedford one we went to yeah but you got like it was this overnight package where you stay in one of their like spa suites and they've got this amazing bathtub on the balcony and they give you like fizz all the time and and you get two full days in the spa and it was great so i was like splash out on that um but yeah and yeah just because i just because i thought i don't want to spend the last bit on i think i had a job by then definitely so i thought i didn't want to spend the last bit of this precious loan on like rubbish so i thought i was doing so one experience yeah do you do you ever think you know reading the brief and like listening to you talk there's kind of this thing in that point of your life where it's like oh i we should have these things we should be able to go on holiday or go on a spa break even if that means getting ourselves into debt to do it do you think that that's a common attitude amongst young people i do yeah because i think um like a lot of my partner and i think i've said this a few times before but one of the one of the biggest things he says it's like oh why do I work as hard as I do if I can't like if I can't enjoy my money and do stuff so but even but even though that meant us going into debt so like we were like oh but we should go on holiday like we went to I took out I think I put or one of us put two grand on a credit card for a holiday to Turkey because we just thought well the you know social media is a huge part as well because we're seeing all our friends and strangers go on holidays and spa breaks and have all these lovely things you don't know how they're buying it do you but I think you think I definitely thought, oh, I want to do that.

17:23And also you think as well, like life, one of the big things that I hate at the moment, sorry, jumping ahead, but like now I'm a mum, is when you see that whole thing about, oh, you've only got 18 summers with your kids. It's in my head. And then I think like, I've got on holiday because I can't waste one of these precious summers. But you can't, I don't know, I can't live like that. I just have to block all that out now. Yeah, I think there's two elements, right? It's like when people say, why can't I enjoy my money? When you take out debt, it's not your money, it's someone else's. and all you're doing is taking money off your future self.

17:53You're bringing consumption forward from your future self and you're denying that future self the ability to spend that money. So it's, you know, you're going to, you find the can at some point that you've kicked down the road. And then how are your peers paying for it? Was it 70 % of Coachella tickets were bought on buy now, pay later? Wow. Or something? Wow, really? Yeah, and this is like all these influencers like, we're so rich, look at us, look at us. And majority of the tickets are bought on finance because Klarna was like an official partner and they released the statistics so they're all on the never never I mean it's you know how how is someone who who you went to school with who's raised in a similar area who does a similar job to you got a nicer car bigger house and better holidays it's all debt that is the answer and I sort of wish I'd known like I I felt like I know it's not really dramatic but I honestly felt like me and my partner were the only ones struggling along with credit cards and overdrafts and debt and I thought all our friends and family were just great somehow with money or savings or and we were just how are they doing how are they doing we felt so like it's so insignificant in comparison there and i know that's on us but yeah it was awful feeling yeah and it's interesting now that you you use social media to kind of project the other angle of it of like you know the grinding the grind out of the debt essentially it's like a what do they call it like a anti-influence or you know that they influence I'll de-influence you, yeah.

19:13I'll de-influence you with the reality. Yeah. Why did you decide to put it online? I'm a journalist by trade anyway. I've been a journalist since I was 21. That's what I studied in uni. And so I always was, I love sharing anything that happens to me. I'm always like, can I do a first person piece? You know, I always want to write a piece about it. So when I decided to pay off the debt, I thought, oh, this could be a fun sort of thing to sort of document. And I just thought in my head at the time, you know, I'm sure it'll be like, didn't imagine it'll get big. I thought it would be like something small to motivate me, meet some other people paying off debt, that sort of thing.

19:46And it just exploded. And I just almost wasn't really prepared for it. I think a lot of people can relate to it. I mean, I got one credit card. I was doing all right with it. Went on holiday, rinsed out. Was taking money out the cash machine on my credit card. I didn't know you're not meant to do that. And then once I got maxed out, I was like, I'm never getting another credit card again. So it's all right if you, it depends on like your appetite. I was like, I deserve this holiday. Like you said, I was like, I want to have fun. i've run out of money but i want to keep i want to extend my trip and then i just blew it all in the credit card and i'm like i probably shouldn't be trusted with credit cards so it's a learning process i think you've got to do it but obviously a 10 grand loan and like a one grand credit card are different things yeah well i wish i'd had that thought i wish after i'd finished uni i wish i'd had that thought of oh i've paid off i'm gonna pay off this debt from uni and and carry on but it just never left it only really started hitting me once we'd had kids and once because we start how I sort of think about it is before kids we were just sort of spending frivolously thinking oh we'll sort it out then once we had kids and like child care bills like huge like a thousand pound a month then the debt repayments were a thousand pound a month between us and then we had a mortgage payment of like a thousand pound a month and we thought that's when it became like we were putting petrol on the credit card and like nappies on the credit card and we weren't doing holidays and we were trying not to be frivolous but it was just like a black hole then of spending yeah is that the moment is that when you realized it was an issue then yeah i think that it took a while for the sort of penny to fall in my head but that's when we we were starting to get quite distressed by it yeah no i wasn't after i had kids i felt like i was worried all the time but before kids it was very up and down it's like such a huge rise and a huge fall like i'd be like really really upset about it thinking oh what am i doing i need to be a bit more careful and then i'd just be like oh i'm young i'm mid-20s i've got no responsibilities no house no kids no you know life is for living i want to go on holiday and it was like it was that but it was so dramatic all the time yeah so how did it shift so in terms of the spending and how you built the debt up how much was the debt sorry by the its worst point what was the total balance do you think when we added it up in july sorry when we added up in june 2024 it was uh just shy of 40 000 pound between us okay but it probably was a lot higher because we had we put 15 grand on the mortgage at one point um so you did like a refinance yeah yeah there was another time where my partner got a bonus from work quite a nice bonus and uh a few thousand uh and we put loads of that on a credit card but didn't do anything else after like didn't change our spending habits or learn to budget or just shop back up so yeah so the the what i would like to understand is kind of what was this it seems like it shifted from like consumption around treats holidays things to basic essentials were going on the credit card so there was like a path is that right yeah so it started with yeah the whole list turkey like spa break um meals out we used to just like sunday night we'd be sitting in our flat and we'd be like oh let's go to miller and carter you know that sort of thing we just go down and spend 100 quid um and then i think it was very it was like a dripping sort of feeling like very gradually i was feeling a bit worse and worse but it always was a way that when one of us was feeling bad about the debt the other one would try and reassure them it's going to be okay so we'd have that sort of cycle between us um and then it kept going going so we had our first son and then obviously our childcare bills and things and that's when it felt because we had a house by then as well we managed to buy the house with some family help and that's when it felt like yeah we weren't doing holidays I think we went glamping at one point but we we were trying to be a bit better but it just felt like it's hard to describe it just felt like we were paying so much every month but we were always on zero or always in like the minuses like my overdraft was always maxed out and then more like I always was like above my overdraft like I remember this is one of my most awful moments I'd just given birth to my second son and I was lying in the hospital bed my partner had just gone home to go collect our first son from his grandparents and um I just thought like we haven't got any food in the house so I thought okay I'll do a shop so I was uh I just thought because not doing anything I'll lie there and um order a few nice nice bits treats things for the week and it came to like 100 and so quid and I just put it on the credit card and I just remember like such an awful feeling because I thought I've got this new baby here I've got another son at home and and I'm on maternity leave now for like 10 months and I just felt like sick like and another moment that comes to mind is when I was in Asda and I had my eldest baby with me so he was the only one I had then there's now of my second son and he was very small in the pram and I remember I only bought like 30 pound worth of things including some nappies and like maybe bits for dinner I couldn't I can't remember and I tried to tap my card because my credit card and it wouldn't go through um and I didn't have any any way else of paying because my overdraft was maxed out so I was just standing there at the self-service sort of having a little bit of a panic moment and so I just I just rang my mum in sort of like, I think I rang her, but I don't know if she picked up.

24:47So I think I remember texting her and I was like, look, I'm in Asda. I was like, I'm really, really sorry. I just need 30 quid. Can you just transfer me 30 quid, please? I just want to buy X, Y, and Z. And she immediately was like, yeah, sure. And that sort of, I think she was at work and she just immediately sent it over so I could buy. But I also remember, I think I had something like a toe blurring in my basket. And I remember a moment of sudden sheer guilt. I was like, I'll put that one back and I'll just have the nappies and the dinner. and then I bought with the money that my mom had sent and went home but that was a horrible feeling because I didn't want to ring my partner because I knew that we were in this sort of situation together and he might not even have the money sometimes like we were in a very weird cycle of um some of us sometimes I'd have money sometimes he'd have money so sometimes I'd ring him at the petrol station and be like my car won't go through can you transfer me 20 quid and he'd immediately send it and then I'd pay for petrol and go on and sometimes he would do the same he'd be like I'm in Tesco I need uh and it was you know yeah and it's the same with our balance transfers actually if you don't mind me saying like um sometimes he would have a great 0 % interest deal and I'd have nothing and so we would transfer as much of our collective debt onto his and he would pay it off you know and then sometimes or I would pay him a bit of money a month it was like a really weird that's why we always thought of it as our 40 grand debt because yeah whose was whose at that point yeah I don't know yeah that makes it my first son triggered me to take finances a bit more seriously so yeah I think kids do definitely have that effect on you you got some skin in the game moment when you've got a kid.

26:12The stakes are higher. I can't remember who has said it. It's like, you know, before you have kids, you're playing at a different casino table to everyone else that does. You're playing life on easy mode. Yeah, I wouldn't say that easy mode. It feels easy mode. It feels like easy mode. What I mean is like... Looking back, it feels like easy mode back then. Once you've got a kid that literally will die if you don't look after it, you're playing at a higher stakes table and you start to go, well, should I be blowing all this money on stuff when they're going to suffer as a result? The one thing I want to say is you've got more than 18 summers with your kid.

26:39You've probably got 85. Because they don't go and leave home at 18 and never see you again. No, I've realised that, yeah. I think they'll hang around. That's like some Instagram shit to make you feel bad. You've got one summer with your kid as a baby, four summers with your kid as a toddler. So those are the ones that get me. And I'm like, my son is three now. I've missed the baby stages gone. I'm like, just have another baby. No, but no, no, no, no, no. But you'll never be a little, I can never hold him again like a little baby. Obviously, yeah. But I think about the people I enjoy hanging out with the most and they're all in their mid thirties.

27:10So I'm thinking like when my son is in his mid-dirties, forties, fifties, I'm going to have a great time with him. I'd sit there and have a beer with my man of a son. Do you know what I mean? A lot back on in life. I'm excited by that. I feel like as parents, you tend to think, oh, at 18, it's over. It's not. Yeah. That's the one with the back chat. I like him thinking I'm the world. Yeah. Well, the back chat is big now. It started already. My son's 13. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, you're going to be in the corner. He's like, do it then. I'm like, where did you learn this phrase? do it that his new do it then is his new favorite phrase do it then he's like do it then i'm gonna turn off the tv do it then i'm like i think one of his little friends told it to him but it sounds so cute when he says it because he's like a little three-year-old do it then dan do it then i'm like okay fine so what was what was the conversation at the point you were like this is enough we need to fix this what was the conversation you're having with your partner so um the moment i can shopping, it was in May 2024, and I was with my two kids, and they were three and one at the time, maybe less, no, three and one, and I went to buy some trainers for my partner's birthday, which is in May, and they were like 70 quid trainers, and I thought, yeah, I'll get those, and I remember standing in the queue with my barley card, sort of, like, waiting, and while I was waiting for the assistant to come over, I was, like, doing, like, mental maths in my head, and I was thinking, like, this is my third credit card, and I thought, oh, it's quite close to being maxed out, and my overdrafts always maxed out so I was suddenly thinking like like the panic was rising and I was thinking what am I gonna do when this one's maxed out and I thought oh I could do a balance transfer then I thought but I'll need a fourth credit card and I said I can't have a fourth credit card I think that's when the penny dropped I was like I can't have I think four was one too many for me I was like I can't have four credit cards when I got back and I said to him like I didn't tell him about the trainers but I said oh um maybe after your birthday we can talk about like how we're going to pay off this debt um and he was like yeah I've been feeling I can't remember the exact conversation but he said that he'd been feeling the exact same um and we really should start doing something about it so it was really good that we both felt quite strongly about it in the moment and i remember after his birthday because it was june the 3rd that we started properly um and and then just carried on and yeah and somehow somehow we're here now debt free which is just the biggest relief of my life do you do you feel like you'd enabled each other before that point definitely yes yeah we were both like the relationship i was in before he was a bit sort of cautious sometimes about spending and then i don't know about dave but like when i met him he was like yeah let's go to miller and carter yeah let's do this barbara yeah let's go on holiday like and i was big like that too when him someone was like oh should we have a takeaway the other one was like yes let's have it so we were we were yeah definitely egging each other on um which probably wasn't wasn't great or if one of us was a bit nervous and oh maybe not maybe we should save money then the other one would be like oh come on we work really hard like you know we've had a really tough day oh come on the kids have been crazy today let's have like a little treat you know food is our big one so that's where a lot of our money went this like sickening when you think back and it's like i spent 30 grand on meals no i couldn't even add it up yeah no we did a budgeting episode and the amount i spent on takeaway shot me and then my partner just like two months ago she's like i've quietly just been keeping your receipts from your takeaways she's like you know this month you spent like 200 and something pounds and i was like what i didn't realize that i spent so much i'm like okay the budgeting and you just go fall back into old habits so first i stopped it for a while then like after yeah i'm right back into the same habits but it but then it attaches like an element of guilt to something that you love and you become really conflicted in in the activities it's okay to like food and like restaurants but when you're putting it on a credit card you have this it's like bittersweet right you're like oh this is we didn't we shouldn't have done that it becomes a naughty thing now i'm more financially stable in my life i can go out for a meal and not worry about the cost and that is like that's the best bit of it to me not standing at a petrol station forecourt or anywhere going is this car about to bounce i still have that anxiety i'm like there's loads of money on there i know it's not going to bounce and i'm looking going like it's that ptsd of those times where i'd be stood in the queue praying that they would let me go a couple of quid over i've put like 50 something p in my mercedes like at the petrol station got all the coins from my car and put like 53 p in my car you could put you could put 3p you could put whatever you want no you can't they have signs now saying like £10 minimum and I'm thinking Tia be screwed here we used to wheel his Mercedes in we'd have your leg out inside the Flintstones just like getting this car in and then put 50p in and then spend 20 quid on a night out come out come out with my gold chain and be like yeah here's like 53p in there we're going out tonight somewhere we've got money to go out though always got a bit of tequila bottle somewhere yeah yeah you said you had a was it a plan for three years to clear your debt was that how did what was the plan what was the structure how did it work out uh so we both had full-time jobs oh i worked four days a week they were they were full-time and we like got like a spreadsheet like an excel google sheet sort of thing and we just we went through this one night where we looked at like like properly looked for the first time at like every penny of debt we had so we went through we had six credit cards between us and two overdrafts so we like wrote down every balance to the penny like we wrote down the term like how long it was non-percent interest for or if it was being charged interest like what was the most important one um at the start like I didn't even count my overdrive because I thought wow that's just my overdrive but then eventually I was like okay actually hold on that's a big thing too that's 1 ,500 pounds of money that's like there you know like no it's not mine um and so we added up all of that and that came to I'll never forget the amount 39 ,390 pounds between us so just shy of 40 ,000 pounds and um mine was 22 ,502 pounds and his was 16 ,888 pounds remember figures burned into my brain and um and then we once we'd added up all that and had like the shock of our lives thinking oh oh gosh that's 40 grand then we thought like okay well how are we going to do this so we on like on the same spreadsheet we wrote like in little columns like what his salary was what my salary was every month and then we wrote down like every bill so like to the penny how much council tax was how much water was how much our mortgage was how much you know all these little subscriptions you have that you don't realize like amazon prime and like the new york times which you know i canceled that sort of thing um we tried to cancel stuff that we felt we didn't need but we kept we kept things like netflix and amazon because we thought well we're gonna be at home for a while so we're gonna need it um and then what then we did like um we tried to sort of work out okay so after all the bills have been taken out and all the debt minimum payments like how much we've got left I think it was between us we realized we'd have 600 pound left a month um for all the groceries petrol fun anything else which is also a lot less than what we've been like tap tap tapping on the credit card um so we worked out that if we could stick to that and luckily all our balances credit card balances were on 0 % so we thought we worked out that if we kept going at the rate we were and the interest went up didn't go up then we would be done by three years and we thought um then we thought okay so how are we going to split that 600 quid because it didn't want to just be like random because this was where we were going wrong so we thought okay let's have 300 quid of that is food which doesn't seem very much at first and then we but we we also wanted a bit for fun because we thought well again we're going to do this three years so we were like okay how about like 200 quid for fun and then like 100 quid for petrol does that all add up and it was that's like nothing at first and we really had to hone it because that we kept like spending too much on food and then we realized oh someone's ill and needs a prescription like and then we thought where does that go in the budget and like there were things that or like someone's birthday came up and we'd have to have the difficult conversation of like do we just say like we're not getting presents this year and like Christmas came around and we thought you know like how are we going to do Christmas so we started trying to save like 50 quid a month for Christmas um but it really helped having that sheet because I became a bit obsessive with it because I would start looking at it all the time and being like right where can we what can we do with that and like I used to get my nails done all the time and like I used to get nice blow dries and stuff and like that was cut all that out I cut out anything that we felt like we didn't need like we stopped buying clothes like I'd buy the boys clothes on vintage that sort of thing but then that's when I had the I'd like the the want to sort of make a bit more money on the side because I thought 600 pound a month I don't know I was just worried that and I sort of wanted the debt to go down once the first few months had gone past and we actually for the first time in our lives were seeing the debt go down rather than just up all the time or just like you know what's that word um just staying the same um it was like it gave me like such a drive to want to make it go down faster how long did it take you in the end um 16 months instead of three years yeah yeah so what helped helped speed it up so we started trying like little things on the side um me mostly like i would do like loads of things i hadn't even considered before like i learned about cashback which i'd never done like all those things like top cash back and you know trying to get money from from what you buy um bank switches I did my first bank switch and panicked through the whole time thinking it'd go wrong but I got like 200 quid from that which was great and then I and I would sell my clothes on vintage um I tried to pick up extra work like I did the I freelanced at the vote one night but I remember being really ill and I went um in like Shropshire to do like sit up at the count and like then just be ready to report the count at like 3am and i got 300 quid for that and like counting the votes yeah i know like um reporting so i was a journalist oh i see what you mean so i just sat in the press area waiting then wrote down the count then rang the i think i was doing it for pa press association then rang them and then um and i got some money for that so every penny would go on the debt and then once i got more and more i was like okay what i was gonna do and at that point i then started earning money through my tiktok um well you probably know once you've got to a point on TikTok, like 10 ,000 followers, which I reached in, which is crazy now to even think about, I reached that in 30 days, and I could join the creator rewards program and start earning money through my videos, and once I did that, like a lot of people told me, oh it won't be anything, like it's really low apparently, so I wasn't expecting much, but I think I started in June, and by September I made a thousand pound in a month, so I was just like, oh my goodness, so I chucked all of that straight on the debt, and then just thought, oh let's keep making more videos and talking about it and yeah it really really helped i know that i know not everyone can do that but it just yeah it really helped yeah not everyone can go on social media and become a big phenomenon like you but or damien but it's when you said about the side hustles and like finding little jobs everyone thinks oh a side hustle has to be damien always says it has to be like a big crazy business but like he did delivery takeaway driving like you can do little bits like a new voting thing and just make a little bit of money here and there it all adds up Yeah, I delivered takeaways like Friday, Saturday, and lived off that money and then used my wages to pay it down.

38:12I got a four-bed house and then rented the other three rooms out individually. So I was living for rent-free in the place. Nice. I was getting paid to live there, plus living off the takeaway money. So that's kind of like how I drilled down the debt. But it still took me five years because it was about 40-odd K by myself. Yeah, well, I had Dave as well, who obviously was paying. we did it a bit differently I would try and hustle as much money as I could because my amount I was paying was a bit lower was he would just put a set amount on every month um and then when I started learning a bit more I think what I because a few people say to me oh where would you be now without TikTok or Instagram and I say like I probably would have found something else that makes me sound like really arrogant I'm not I just mean like if TikTok hadn't worked obviously TikTok was working for me and Instagram so I threw all my efforts into it but if it hadn't maybe I would have you know you can see these people being like vintage resellers and stuff like and doing all these other side hustles i probably would have just tried to find something else that fitted me i've always loved a side hustle when i was a kid in school i used to bring back cigarettes from nigeria and sell them to my classmates and then like last summer i opened in nottingham carnival we were selling alcohol and food and like burgers so like it can be like a one-day two-day hustle you can make a lot it can be like a regular thing it can be just got to think outside the box yeah yeah yeah and we're now trying to save we're trying to save 40k as like a full circle moment.

39:31A few to the debt sort of situation. Save, like in what form? But how are you saving that money? In a few ways. So I'm trying to learn a bit about investing. So I've invested a bit. And then we're also, we're trying to move house. So we're saving a big lump sum for that. I just saved in lots of different pots. Yeah. What kind of investing are you doing? Stocks and shares, ISA. Yeah, yeah. Don't ask me too much about it. Do you know what you're buying inside of it? Say again. Do you know what you're buying inside of it? Yes, I do. I couldn't tell you right now because it's on my phone. I forgot what they're called.

40:04Vanguard something? Yeah, like a Vanguard. Like an index. Yeah. I did a course on everything. I was like, I want to know. I don't want to just throw my money. Did you pay for that course? I did, yes. I was happy to pay, though. Whose course was it? It was Stocks and Savings. Oh, I know them. Yeah, I know those guys. Yeah, it was a really nice course because I feel like, I hope they don't mind me saying this, it was like investing for dummies sort of thing. And I feel like a dummy investing. I got the only one. not the early one i've got a free course i can share it with you oh cool yeah okay sorry i didn't know about that i know it's ours is free we give it away i'm always happy to read more because i feel like i still need to learn more about it because i look at the and i haven't i invested quite a big bit and it's been okay but i'm too nervous now i even had a dream about last night it's really weird isn't it i invested an extra 700 quid in it and i woke up like oh maybe that's a sign i should try and do more no the hardest the hardest thing about investing is managing the self because the the gyrations of the market over a long period of time couldn't like shape people out the market so you know for someone who comes from a cash world like you say typically they they expect things to be quite linear they're not in the stock market so you need to be able to be comfortable with the fact that you can see a 20 drop in the value of your funds you know when you get to like quite large amounts you could lose thousands in a week on paper yeah that's the hard thing yeah the actual like what to buy and where to buy it by by a globally diversified portfolio inside of a tax efficient account rinse repeat that for 30 years and you'll be fine that that's that's the broad but like the hard thing is sticking to oh trump's kicking off with iran and my portfolio is down 20 what do i do with that that that's the like that's the thing you need to get your head around yeah because you will have that it helps that i also don't really know know how to take the money out now so i didn't know how to get it out so i just thought i did have a little panic when i first invested it and i said to dave i was like i need i think i should get it out and he was like no i'll leave it and i went on and i was like i don't know how to get it out when you were just like because the clearing the debt thing is i know it's a hard hard concept for everyone how what made you actually stick to it and like how did how do you manage keeping on track and not you know being like oh let's just buy some takeaway or let's go on this holiday how did you stick to your plan?

42:13I think once we started seeing the debt come down which we'd never seen before that was a huge motivator so that was really good but also like it was like a challenge and I love a challenge and once I started realizing this could work and also I was talking about it all the time so I felt like I'd made myself really like accountable like I was showing the world like I was trying to do this and I didn't want to fail and also things like we'd never done before it seems really sort of might seem trivial to some people but if we were going to like the aquarium for a day I'd just rock up buy on the door go in kids want ice creams you know should we have lunch out that sort of thing um and then go home whereas now I realize now that if you buy like in advance like you might save 10 % on the door like if we take like little snacks in a bag and a little drink that'll save us another like 20 quid when things are really expensive it's just little things like that so we because a big thing for us is that we didn't want to have a miserable three years we thought it was going to be a three years we we still wanted to have the odd takeaway so we would do things like have a chippy which is like 20 quid instead of have a a wingers which is like 40 quid for us or something do you know what i mean on uber eats um or what i was about to say oh have you not got wingers around you sounds like something i want to eat though it's so good yes chicken but it's just really good um oh sorry no wingers yeah it's like chicken chicken stuff chicken and chips um or we'd like another small small thing um we'd order all the time when we debt on uber eats and obviously they mark that up a lot so we'd start like walking to get our weekly takeaway and then save like five or six quid each time it was like really little things like that like but we would save money so we thought well as long as we're trying and like making the most of free day outs free days outs as well like just going and having a picnic in the park and like having a movie day at home rather than splashing out in the cinema that sort of thing yeah yeah if you think back to your own childhood do you remember the meals that you had with your parents as much as you'd like the times do you mean i think we we tend to kind of go oh let's get him the ice cream let's go for a meal out let's go to lunch and the thing and it's like how much of that do you honestly remember you know you spend hundreds on it i like what you said about like these little changes like for example i always used to just my car insurance would expire and i miss payments they find me for late payments and now i just pay for the whole year up front and then i didn't realize they give you a discount if you pay all year up front instead of paying every month yeah and then things like i go work out and every day i used to buy like a ribina or bottle of water on the way and i'm like i've got squash at home i can just get a bottle put squash in it put water to save myself like two quid every day so it's these little changes that don't hurt you that much and but you like making planning ahead did you get any advice about clearing the debt at all at the time i think i was a bit nervous because i didn't want to the only people i would have asked for advice were my mum or dad and i was just very nervous telling them telling them about it i had to really get up the courage um uh so no no i didn't know you didn't go to any debt charities or debt services no once we once we worked out all the figures and realized that we possibly could because i think that was the problem we never thought we could do it we kept seeing all this money all our pay like salary come into our account then all the debt payments and all the bills leave and we just thought we felt like we had nothing left but once we actually really looked at it and added everything up and i took our heads out of the sand we realized there was a little bit left so we thought oh let's try and see if we can do this first ourselves for a bit and see how we get on it wasn't like it wasn't quite at the situation where we thought we can't even live we thought well we have a few like that 600 pounds we've got to live so yeah there are i used to work in the debt management industry when i was in crippling debt it was pretty funny really because i'll be like people like oh my debt situation is so bad like mine is so much i think it's why i was good at the job because i could like empathize with people but yeah But yeah, it would always just be an income and expenditure.

45:58So you do a budget with them and you would see kind of where their money was going. And then you'd look at debt management plans, IVAs or bankruptcy. And some of the stories that we would get, I remember the first time when I realized it doesn't matter how much you earn, some people are just going to get themselves in debt. I had a football player from MK Doms on seven and a half grand a week. And he called in and he was just like, oh, I'm struggling with my finances a little bit. So I went through it with him. he had a million pound mortgage on interest only was renting a ferrari 250 grand on credit cards 150 grand loan and he was like oh my partner is like a similar position to me and he had to go bankrupt oh my goodness like basically it was like the advice was like you're never you're never going to clear this and he was like i've got two to three years left on my career and i'm starting to think i need to get on top of this because i've got no money saved you know seven and a half grand a week this was in 2012 as well so this was like a lot i mean it's a lot of money now but back then I was like, damn, this guy's bawling out his brain.

46:55Yeah, it was all just, he was living like a Premier League footballer, but he was like a League One. So he was just living above his means and it wiped him out. He's probably got a job now because he didn't earn it. He didn't save any money in that period. A lot of people have asked me online, why didn't I just go bankrupt? But I didn't think we felt like we were quite at that stage of desperation. You don't just go bankrupt. People don't really realise how that impacts you long term. Yeah. Like for the rest of your life, mortgage applications will say, have you ever been bankrupt? Because the impact is six years.

47:28Once it goes past the six years, it can't be seen on your credit file. So they ask you. But if you lie, that's mortgage fraud. So, you know, even though it'd be like, oh, yeah, it was 30 years ago. You have to say, yes, I have been bankrupt. And they might just go, we will never lend to someone who's ever been. But that's their own criteria. Right. There's also like that all over your finances. it goes to court right like you know it's it's when someone says why don't you just go bankrupt it's like that's you don't know what you're saying no you know no well as well as people would say why didn't you just get an IVA it's a form of insolvency yeah I'm scared you didn't make sure your store is still awake what's an IVA for our audience sorry I didn't wonder what that was for involuntary individual voluntary agreement agreement I probably should have google that right so i used to sell ivas which is going to sound really obtuse to people but they are big business so what you would do is you it's a type of arrangement where over five years someone will pay back some of their debt but they're still going insolvent they're still wiping debt so the failure rate on them was really high yeah but the arrangement fees for setting these up are thousands of pounds for the companies that do them so you know i would set up i mean i left this in i thought the industry i don't anyone who's listening now just go speak to a debt charity don't speak to one of these organizations that sells debt services because they'll make three to four grand on every iba and we would sell 40 a day well i don't know i'm allowed to say this sorry i'm not but the iba that was suggested to me was from step change and i had at the time i had nine grand left of my loan and also because i was in my mid-20s i think i had a bit of a stressy moment about it and then I had two grand on a credit card and then a bit of overdraft and they suggested it to me and then I rang my mum and was like what do you think?

49:17And then she was like no. Insolvency for nine grand is crazy. Yeah, she said that's for something. She gave me an example of someone she'd known who had had an IVA once. She was like you're not in that sort of situation. She said don't do it. I think that whole industry is questionable. I think the IVA product is, it suits the industry in the sense of it's bankruptcy, it's insolvency. But calling it bankruptcy is not right. It's insolvency. Some of the debt is wiped. But the creditors are all getting some of the money back. So, of course, they're going to go, yeah, we'd rather that than it all be wiped.

49:54Through the bankruptcy, they can get assets. But you're often talking about people that rent, don't have an asset, don't have a car. So even if the bankruptcy goes in and values everything they own, it's going to be like, well, they've got 50 quid. Do you know what I mean? so it's like the industry pushes that as a solution as if it's great and i think it in my opinion it suits the industry more yeah and bankruptcy is a credible option for a lot of people it gives them the relief but it's definitely not an easy way out and people who are like oh i've got 10 grand i'll just go bankrupt like that is a wild decision you know yeah it's making me anxious just thinking about even though i haven't done it lots of people do ivas and they change their lives but i definitely they're a profit making product so there's an industry behind that that wants to sell them yeah because they make money out of them lots of money you know yeah so yeah always be careful before you do anything like that um go on mate sorry no i was just going to say you mentioned that you would have asked your mum for advice but you a little bit you didn't want to um there's a lot of shame and fear with debt when did your family find out about um your situation uh so i told when i set up the tiktok account i had no fear that my mom and dad would be on tiktok so i was sort of okay about that but then um because as i said i'm a journalist and i at the time was working for birmingham live and once the tiktok started doing quite well i went to my editor and i said i'd love to write i showed him and because we'd had talks about money before and i said i'd love to write a story about this and he he was a bit nervous at first and he was like you sure like you don't have to don't feel like you you know it's a big thing to write about and I was I was determined um so I wrote my piece and then it was like ready to go online and like in the paper for a certain day and that's when I thought hang on like there's more chance my dad is gonna look at Birmingham live you know to see maybe what I've been up to or something um my mama wasn't too nervous telling about like so I did tell her and the one thing she said was like I told her the number and she was like oh she was like maybe don't let it get any higher than that and I was like okay that's why thanks and then I saw my dad oh it was a whole debacle I rang him because there is I've gone through messages on my phone it made me feel a bit sort of upset reading them but like messages from years ago of me confessing to my dad my dad helping me trying to like maybe like lend he lent me some money once to repay my overdraft and I would pay him back interest free and then he would he has sent lovely messages like you know um you know really try and get a handle on this now you know you can you can do this that sort of thing and this was like a decade ago and obviously never did and so I sort of would avoid telling him about it and and I would go like I'd go around his questions that sort of thing um to obviously try and avoid lying about it and um so when the story was going to come out I remember ringing him and saying oh I uh I'm starting you know I'm going to pay off debt and he was like are you sure yeah you've said this before and I was like yeah I'm really taking it seriously this time like we're really doing it me and David like we're really we're really determined to do this and I said there's a piece coming out I've written for the paper so you might see that I just want to let you know and he was like oh how much is it and and I was like oh oh it's about and I was like oh my god and he's like what he's like about three grand maybe and then so I was like I was too nervous to say and then after I was like I've got to tell him you can't read that it's like this much money um because not to make things too complicated but we say it's 40 grand because that was me and David but at the start I only shared my own debt attached to my name which was about 22 ,000 pounds so the whole story was I'm gonna pay off 22 ,000 pounds not three grand and um I remember texting my stepmom first and being like I've got to tell dad something and I'm really nervous like and then she was like just tell him you'll be fine and um so in the end I just this sounds like the chicken's way out but I text him and I was like you're gonna see a story it's coming out on Sunday and it's the full extent of my debt I just want you to know that I'm on it now and like please don't worry it's gonna be okay and then on the Sunday he obviously read it and he sent me a message being like i've just seen the story and i now understand the full extent of the debt you're in and it was very professional sort of message and he was like you know you've got a long long road ahead of you and he's like i'll support you and it was really nice you know so they've both been really supportive um i did a video when i paid it off when i finished like all the payments of me ringing them and there's sometimes still watchbacks it's so sweet because they're like oh hello like i rang them separately and uh and i was like oh i'm debt free and they were both like oh it's amazing well done so yeah it was really nice yeah full circle remember that's great i definitely relate to the telling your parents to not lying to them but trying to give them like you know get get around the question in like a platonium what's it called what do politicians do in a nice way politic political way bullshit bullshit yeah there you go that's all bullshit your parents without lying without lying is an ass spin yes spin spin your parents no i get i still i saw my dad like the other few weeks ago and he still gives me chip for it now he was like i can't believe like you sort of like i was like i didn't lie and he was like oh yeah but you you avoided the truth and i was like yeah i suppose liberal yeah and it and parental support in those those times i think i i i knew two lads i don't really know them much anymore and in that period where all of us were kind of in debt you know we were just all on credit cards and stuff the cresley bears we used to call ourselves because we're just always maxing out the kresleys we literally got a whatsapp group called the kresley bears um yeah shocking they still go in there sometimes i'm like this group is wild uh but two of them have were always when everyone had sorted their lives out and like become adults essentially in in our like mid to late 20s they just continued on that path and i know today they're still like that and the difference was that their parents would keep coming in and paying off the debt and then they would just run it all back up again they never had that kind of moment of like no no you you you've got to walk this road now like your dad did he said you got a long road ahead of you i'm here to support you but you've got to walk that road there was no offer this time of like did i want any money to borrow like you know i'm sure like if i'd been absolutely dying like i'm sure you would have yeah and my mom offered too like my mom they handled it differently my dad would would go through it with me and he paid off my overdraft and then I had to pay him back a set amount every month so it was finished and then my mum would sometimes give me a bit of money not very much like a hundred or so for like a credit for my credit card but then that always made me feel like full of guilt because I wasn't getting anywhere so it was not like it was money that's going into the abyss so yeah I think you have to walk that road at some point in your life of you know I messed up and now I've got to dig myself out the hole otherwise you just never really learn I think this is why it's so good to do it to kids where you go, here's£10 for the day.

56:30This is your money to last all day. Watch them blow it in five minutes. And then all day go, you blew your money. Like just to try and give them that lesson young rather than, you know, in your 20s where it can be devastating. Some people don't learn until they're 50, 60s and they get their pension and they take 25 % out and they blow it on crap. And then they're like, oh no, I can't afford to retire. You know, so I think it's so important. And as a parent, I know you are, it's the hardest thing to do to go to your kid, go yeah sorry you messed up there and you're just gonna have to take three years to sort it out when you could just step in and go oh yeah i'll make it better well it's the thing because my kids are my oldest son is five and i at the moment i have no idea like how to handle money around him like like how to he doesn't get pocket money or anything he's still so small and i yeah i think a good exercise maybe when they turn to about like six seven i think that's really helped with my son is go what do you want for dinner spaghetti bolognese go to the supermarket with them and go this is the money we've got to buy it help me and then they see the trade-off between ingredients you can't just get the top brand of everything maybe we want like a nice mince yeah so we'll get cheap pasta do you know i mean and you just kind of introduce that budget in that way yeah in a way that like makes it interesting for them and then failure like i said in terms of they need to experience the disappointment in a controlled setting so that they don't because you know you get to uni and you've got an overdraft you blow it in a week under bars and then that's when you learn the lesson yeah yeah yeah but i think even as someone who is good with money i don't know how to teach my son about money no i feel like i get a lot of questions as well about have i actually got a handle on my spending now and i there's a little what you said earlier like i am now financially secure so i feel like i can spend my money but like i'll get a takeaway like maybe i'll get two takeaways a week one week and i have that feeling of guilt suddenly but then i'm like hang on it is my money and i just have had a busy week and i would like to not cook um but i still have that feeling you know and i don't know i'm hoping that will go away eventually i think is the net worth going up you know is the number up and to the right so each year each month are you getting a bit richer than you were the previous month and as long as that's the case then you're well i think i'll say is that what you mean that's what i mean like are you getting richer yeah you know are you contributing to pensions or isis and are you is the number going up you know or down in the sense of a debt you know are you working towards the zero right that's a good point i think you just need to kind of give yourself a bit of slack it's taken me uh like to to this day i still beat myself up about spending which i shouldn't you You know, I can afford to spend money if I want to, but I still have like a guilt.

59:16And it's almost like that was the defining point in my psyche in my 20s of being like really skint because of the debt. And I've struggled to kind of shed that. And I think you've kind of got to have some checks and balances where you go, as long as this is happening, I'm doing okay. And for you, that would be, are we progressing? Are we getting more savings? Yeah. You know, and as long as that's happening, you can probably go, we're all right to have a takeaway. way that's a good point yeah that's a good point i've never thought about that so yeah yeah thank you yeah and then you want to get to the point where you're kind of like what is our goal you know how much do we need to retire and then let's plan that out and then let's work towards that number and then we can enjoy a bit of life because i do think people who are who have come from a large debt position it's almost like you're a recovering alcoholic it's like it stays with you forever and it affects you forever yeah um and you really struggle to kind of break that psychology i think i've been a bit nervous to talk about that part of it but i perhaps should more because it i think i hope i don't give this impression but i think some people might get the impression that i've just like super thrifty now or something and i'm just that's how i can save so much but i'm not like i i do still like to spend on food and i do still accidentally like today like you know not being organized enough and having to get an extra train ticket that sort of thing like you know i'm still that sort of person but i just yeah i think that stays in you but i like you said like the debt thing is a bit like trauma it stays with you forever but it i think it's like a secret superpower because i don't think either of you will get back into that situation or position again but at the same time i like you i'm a bit like you i missed a flight from miami had to buy a new plane ticket so i was having too much fun so these things they'll still happen because it's still in you but you know as long as you're aware of it and you're making the changes well i never want to go back into debt again yeah exactly so yeah yeah that's why we're so like so intent on like saving now and we have all these different we've got an emergency fund for the first time ever got like i have my own tax parks now i'm self-employed i've got we've got money for like the house anything that i've got coming up like i know you've probably heard of sinking funds i've never heard of sinking funds before i started paying off debt but like having a fund for like the car mot which is coming up in june has just been such a huge thing for me Because before I would get to June and they'd be like, that's 400 quid for the car.

1:01:29And I'd be like, okay, where am I getting that money from? And now I probably wouldn't struggle to maybe find that money, but I'd probably still take it out of my tax pot, which probably isn't the best idea. So now I've got this thing, like these little pots where I feel so much more like relaxed and reassured. Because I know that things that are coming up, birthdays, Christmas, are like taken care of, which is nice. Yeah. So do you see yourself differently now compared to the lady who took out the 10 grand loan? I do a little bit. I feel like she's definitely still there, but, um, I do a little bit.

1:01:59Yeah. I feel like I'm a bit more sort of prepared now and I know, like, I still like to spend and I'll still, like, I do love like luxury things a little bit more than, like, I'll always go for like, I love a lovely, a really nice meal out. Um, and I'll never be one to scrimp and have tap water. I'll be like, get me like that nice drink, you know, that sort of thing and that nice pudding. Um, but yeah, I do try. I do try really hard to like, like, I'm still very bad at buying clothes. Like I'll buy the odd thing but that's one thing I struggled to spend money on so I'll just live in the same pair of jeans for years that sort of thing yeah are you proud of yourself yes I am yeah I really am yeah I'm proud of both of us me and Dave because we I'm so glad we had each other to sort of motivate each other um and then you know that we could do it for our kids and stuff and we can because I had such horrible fears of them getting older and wanting to go on school trips or, you know, have nice holidays with us or have things that their friends had.

1:02:55Obviously, you know, I'm not going to give them everything, but, yeah, I just wanted to be able to give them what I feel. I feel they deserved, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think you would say to someone now that's listening that's in a similar position to you, what you are, you know, that hasn't kind of gone, right, now this is it, let's get it sorted? um what i always say is that like the big thing for me was just starting i feel like for so long i always had in the back of my head i can't do this because i just can't like my head was in the sand i wasn't looking at my accounts because ignoring all the statements and i thought it's impossible i'll be in debt forever but once i actually started and i like i added everything up and i figured it out i felt like it was a little bit more possible so actually opening my eyes to it which i know sounds really small like a really small thing to do but it really really did help um so i would definitely say like just just actually start and actually see if you could do it like give it a few months um yeah i think that sounds really basic advice sorry but no no and just believe that you can do it else sounds really cheesy but just believe that you can do it because for so long i thought i just couldn't do it and i think it becomes quite fun yeah it's like you feel good about yourself at once yeah you know every every year you're working towards towards a goal.

1:04:10Honestly, one of the happiest times of my life when I look back was this grinding period of paying off the debt. Yeah, I just used to walk everywhere because I didn't want to spend any money. And yeah, bulk make 30 portions of bolognese on the first day of the month. You loved your bolognese. It was crazy. Yeah, I just make it like, I make like 30 portions. I made a vat of bolognese and just like bagged it up. Bagged it all up for a tenner. I bulk made some wraps. That was good actually. But then by like Friday, I was sick of wraps. That's the thing. I'm like, don't you get bored of it after like day three?

1:04:39Don't ever get bored of getting richer, mate. Never get bored of getting richer. I might go back to those Bolognese days, mate. Yeah, yeah. And a little reminder just before you go, if you've got five minutes, it would be great if you can fill out our survey, which you can find in the description. Normally, this is where we'd say this isn't financial advice, and it really isn't. But if you want to speak to a good financial advisor, then we might be able to help. We've partnered with a few advisors to offer a range of services. From one-off flat fee guidance to ongoing advice. I'm actually using the guidance service to sort out my finances.

1:05:15If you'd like to understand your options, there's a link in the description where you can answer a few questions and then book a free call with my colleague, Will, so you can figure out what might be right for you. This episode was produced by Ruth Edwards, and it was filmed and edited by Ben and Jack at Flowspire. See you next week.