When consumer debt swallows you whole

But you try really, really, really, hard and climb back out...

Hiking around Cyprus

Money has always been a difficult part of my life. Something I felt little security around as it seemed to evaporate in front of my panicked eyes. I've spoken a few times about how I ended up in debt so I won’t travel deep into that here, but you can read about me making a big girl decision to turn my financial life around in this post if that’s something you’d like to do.

In January I decided to pay off my debt ahead of traveling in 2025 and sadly I didn’t manage it, but at the same time I’m really proud of the steps I’ve taken. This challenge has been hard and also felt like opening the curtains and letting the light in. Like taking in a breath of crisp morning air. It’s felt like a season of becoming.

Having debt is something I don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed about anymore. There was a time it was an unsafe secret, not fully expressed even to those who wouldn’t have judged me or had debt themselves - I have found if something is in our close vicinity and normalised, we can either swing to one extreme or the other. It’s immensely important to decide the things you might like to write about and share with others and those you don’t. Contrary to popular belief you don’t need to share every morsel of your life and serve it on a plate for people to devour or push back to you across the table. Some things in life are sacred, just for you, and I believe we would all be a little more joyful if we kept a few safe secrets and the most intimate parts of our life, well, intimate (mainly shedding tears without the camera, giving to others without always getting likes in return or not documenting our partner moving out on TikTok).

I wish I’d been able to do something else with that money, I’d be lying if I told you I was thrilled about the mountain I found myself at the base of. That I had known nothing that arrived in a cardboard box would make me like myself or validate my existence. Nothing would prove to people I was different than how I feared they perceived me, but regret is best reserved for ordering the wrong dish at a restaurant or accidentally using baking powder instead of bicarbonate of soda in your sticky ginger cake. But I learnt something, and I wrote my life anew instead.

For eight months I threw everything at my debt and have now cleared half of it. Now I am using those debt overpayments towards our travel fund. Each month I pay just a smidge over the minimum payment (I pay just over because it truly does make a difference). There’s a book called ‘Die With Zero’, I’ve not read it in it’s entirety, but the author talks about looking at your life in sections or as I like to think of them, seasons. There is a season where you spend all of your money, go travelling or perhaps be reckless. There’s another when you might be saving or investing a little more, another when you may be raising a family. He talks about how we shouldn’t trade our life to earn more money than we need and shares some rather shocking statistics about people’s saving and spending habits, especially in retirement. It was a way of seeing things I hadn't been aware of before and I felt my shoulders ease from away from my ears. I didn’t need to be rich, I needed enough money to be someone who had choices. Looking back, my twenties was the time I might have spent my money on experiences instead of things (and a rather painful divorce), but there are no do-overs, and that’s okay. I learnt lessons some may not learn for another ten years or perhaps will be lucky not to endure. A crash course in the pain that devours you after a marriage ends, the relief that subsequently comes a long while after, the never ending evenings of wondering when you left yourself and then finally witnessing the sunlight peak over full breasted hills as your world lights up once more.

I am now twenty nine and it feels like for me the time to see the world is now. I want to turn thirty in India, eating delicious food with the man I call home and if that means spending a little longer to pay off the final bit of debt then I am at peace with that. Mainly because I know, as much one can in this current time, I have said no thank you to a life revolving around the constant acquisition of things, which inevitably leads to trading more time for money to fund the acquisition of a new sofa. But this isn’t just harmlessly buying Stanley Cup charms. It’s feeding a machine much larger, much more dangerous and unstoppable. One that’s keeping us awake at night, up with the Jones’ and is drawing all life from the once bountiful earth turning what was luscious unsavoury. A handful of global cooperations that that control most of what we eat, wear, spend our finite time and believe. You have to know that, and say no to it, and go without, and sometimes maybe not have as long eye lashes when they are just your own, but I have found great happiness here.

I will need to buy things, this isn’t all or nothing. I brought a new winter coat as my previous one tried its best to keep me on ice, is three sizes too big and has a little hole in the pocket I use to loose filters in - I quit smoking seven years ago. I guess the real difference is I no longer buy things I can’t afford, so if everything goes to plan myself and my new coat should stay out of this pickle in future.

There is no advice to be found here. I try my best to only share that with people I know, love and ask for it, although I forget this often and start telling people to stop using face wash without any warning. It healed my life long acne, try it...

I’m just a girl who decided enough was enough, and that she was enough, and that enough would never be enough, if enough wasn’t enough right now.

I made a commitment first and foremost to not incur any more debt. Starting small is a wonderful place to start anything. Even if I wasn’t paying any more than the minimum payment, I wasn’t going to put myself into any more. The first month I managed this I cried and it gave me enough motivation to roll down the hill built from pound coins that were no longer mine.

To break an addiction, an addiction by definition is repeatedly doing something even though it harms you and not being able to stop, disgust has proven to be a good course of action. ‘Ultra-Processed People’ by Chris Van Tulken uses this method. While you read his book about how the ultra-processed food industry is coming for your life-span and your children, you continue to eat it. By the time you reach the end you’ve discovered supermarket bread goes slimy in your mouth and most of these foods taste the same and you actually don’t fancy them so much anymore. This was the same way I quit my unhealthy drinking habit. In choppy waters I held onto Catherine Grey’s book The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober like a life raft. Following this pattern, I learned all I could about consumer debt, who profits and how, the normalisation, the lie of continuous growth and limitlessness of humans and how the current economy depends on us purchasing things we’ll take a life time to pay back. Working so many hours just to pay off things we brought yesterday, it’s no wonder we want to gift ourselves a fleeting dopamine hit. Something is deeply missing from our culture and it’s too late. There is no going back in time, there is only creating a new life. The one that comes after our knees buckle beneath us. One that brings us back to our true nature, to our gardens and our soul.

Secondly, I made the miserable choice that I wouldn’t spend any more money on anything I didn't need. Our needs are unique apart from those that sustain life. I have heard people recite that the key isn’t to spend less but earn more. I work freelance so earning more was potentially an option and I absolutely worked more, but deciding to pay out less where I could was much easier than acquiring new clients. When I was employed full time and already spending eighty percent of my precious life working and another ten commuting this would have felt nearly impossible. Not to mention the fact a pay rise must be given at will from another, and often in contracts you must disclose if you work somewhere else too.

Living with less taught me a few things. Mainly it wasn’t miserable, it was wonderful. I missed nothing, my life filled up with a joy that had the scent of freesias. My life felt a lightness and luminosity it had been craving for the longest time. This meant no new outfits for summer weddings (horror), no new shampoo before I’d used what I had and returning my one nail file to the place it lived so I wouldn’t loose it. I’d love to tell you my house doesn’t get messy anymore with the reduction of stuff, but it still does. I am currently writing this to avoid all and any tidying tasks. I must have reduced my spending by at least £5000 this year by just arguing with myself about something ONLY being seven pounds.

I sold everything that didn’t bring me joy. I hid some items away and set an alarm to go looking for them in six months to see what was still left. Vinted was super helpful and no amount of money wasn’t worth it, who do I think I am turning my nose up at £2.50? You know? I still have things to sell when I can muster up the strength to take pictures of them.

Where I could I brought second hand. Again, Vinted was my best friend. I needed a new sports bra and brought one new with tags for £5, my friend complimented me on it just yesterday. We really wanted a table and chairs for our patio and checked Facebook market place every day. Nothing came up but while walking to see my mum, someone was giving away a set outside of their home for free. We carried it home and sitting down to drink a cup of tea outside, smiling at my partner, I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.

We made a promise to use all of the food we had purchased. Food waste is a massive issue and it breaks my heart to know something was flown in from another country just to end up in my compost bin. I try to buy British as much possible as I would love to live in a country that still grows some of its own food and I really hope a farmer somewhere is benefitting. We are lucky to live somewhere that we have other options than to buy ultra-processed food and have the means to cook our own meals, so we did just that. We ignored use-by-dates and pickled, jarred, and enjoyed every weird and wonderful creation. We grew some vegetables this year and after eating purple sprouting after it’s just been cut I can confirm it is so wonderful you may be reduced to tears. If you have the space and time, give it a go. It’s a joy and heartbreaking all at once - a real emotional rollercoaster.

I walked everywhere I could and I took the train which is not hard for me as taking the car increases my chance for a heart attack ten fold.

We had fun with what was hidden in the corners of our house. We used our walking boots, I sketched and painted a little and I wrote a lot. We played cute x-box games, something I have never done and I loved it.

I brought a subscription to an app that changed the course of my financial history for ever, and that is no exaggeration. It’s called Financielle and it was maybe £25 for the year. I plan my budgets in there, add my savings, mark my debt as I pay it off like a good school girl, set goals AND discovered sinking funds. These are basically little pots that you save money into over a period of time so you don’t dip into your monthly income when the time comes. For example you might have a Christmas sinking fund that you put £25 a month in, a hair fund you put £25 a month in, a car insurance fund you put £50 a month in and a holiday fund etc. They call it ‘financielle broke’ when you first start using sinking funds because it feels like you have no money left after you’ve put everything into cute little purses, but they will save your life, every time. I created an emergency fund for the first time ever of £750 - it’s not a lot but it would save me from a little pickle. Once I’d hit my first goal of saving my emergency fund I started throwing my excess off of my debt - this was the amount I had left after my fixed expenses, flexible expenses and sinking funds. I can’t thank the women who made this app enough.

I split my flexible expenses into weekly amounts and paid myself on a Monday. If I had £400 pounds in my spending account you best believe I would spend it like I was riding around on a Tiger in Las Vegas, and not be able to tell you where it went.

I cancelled all of the subscriptions I no longer needed and didn’t really use things like Topcash Back, reward credit cards or vouchers away from essential spending. More times than not they persuaded me to spend more. Spend £50 and get £1 off? I would be putting things into my cart just for those 100 sweet p’s. I did however trade my soul and all of my data for supermarket club cards.

I reduced my social media consumption as much as possible and this really had an accidental knock on effect to not knowing everyone was wearing those gold chains with little black clubs or clovers on or whatever they are.

As a trained yoga teacher I reached out to the local gym to see if they’d like to offer a class at their gym. They said yes and it is the highlight of my week. Yoga is air to me and to share that with others again has been spectacular.

My friends and I go to each others houses for dinner now.

I stopped using skincare and when I wear makeup I try to go without base makeup and just use blush, eyebrow pencil and a lip product. My skin has never been better. It was hard to begin with but the results have been worth it for me. After I’d been doing this a while I discovered a book called skin sobering that really confirmed what I thought I knew. Substacks like Jessica Defino’s really helped too. I read somewhere that the average American woman spends $200,000 in her lifetime on skincare and beauty. I could travel the world for a long time on that…

Throughout the year I had to say no to a few things and it was hard. I want to go on holiday with my best friend but I couldn’t with saving to travel and paying down my debt. She still loves me, thank god.

I stopped getting my hair dyed and it’s returned to its light brunette reality. I am getting loads of new growth (yay) and I look more like my mum and I couldn’t be happier about that. I don’t get my nails done or my eyelashes, or anything like that. I never have and sometimes I am tempted but I am also lazy thank god. I also got over the fear that I would become an unwashed, unkept person if I stopped using certain products. I can still take pride in my appearance, which I do, without participating in everything. I’ve grown in confidence and that does something to someone.

I turn off all of my lights when I remember and we do try to not use the heating very much. I enjoy keeping it on a manual setting. Not only are we really trying to save money, but for the little rituals I would be sad to leave behind. I keep it off until the moment I truly need it. Only after I’ve wrapped up, my jumper sleeves have devoured my hands and I’ve filled my hot water bottle. After I’ve pulled my favourite tea cup close to my face and let the steam rise to warm my cold nose. When I first lived in this house there was no heating and I couldn’t afford to have it installed. After that one winter of sitting inside wearing my coat I have never wavered in my gratitude for heating. I don’t mind that feeling of discomfort, the cold concrete before the warm earth. It might sound crazy, but being cold makes becoming cosy all the more glimmer filled. And sticking my feet in-between my partners thighs is 10/10.

The next chapter of our life I’ll be moving around with only that which I can carry and this feels immensely freeing and thrilling to me. I am extremely excited about packing and selecting only what’s essential. Joy is not often found at the bottom of baskets, at the back of overflowing wardrobes or in the opening of credit card statements.

It’s found in the knowing that all you have is all you need.