My Money Story

Growing up in a small town on the edge of Staffordshire, it was the norm to start learning to drive the minute you turned 17. Like the local driving instructor would pick you up from school on your 17th birthday for your first lesson. Add this to the fact that you were kinda stuck if you didn’t have a car! There was buses and trains but these were once an hour and would go to one of two places so I always knew I wanted the freedom of a car as soon as possible.

My parents made it very clear that if I wanted a car, I would have to buy myself one. So during my teenage years my biggest goal was to save enough money by age 17 to buy myself a car. I got a “proper” job, working in a pub, as soon as I could, just after turning 15. Prior to this, I had made a little money through babysitting and tutoring but this job was the first time I felt like I had real money.

The pub job kicked off my obsession with making and having my own money. I felt rich on my £5 per hour wage. For the two years that I worked at this little country pub, I would work Friday evening, all day Saturday and most of Sunday often getting paid over £100 per week. This was big bucks to my teenage brain. Although, I wasn’t as committed to saving as I would later become I did managed to save just under £2k from this part-time job in time for my 17th birthday. The perfect amount needed to buy a second hand Ford Fiesta who I named Fred.

Fred was perfect but freedom comes at a cost and for the next year I would spend all my wages (I had moved to a higher paying job not long after I turned 17th, earning £7.50 per hour 🤩) on petrol, takeaways and random shit. This meant that by the time moving to uni rolled around I had no money to my name. I literally had to borrow money from my dad to cover freshers week.

I chose my uni and course specifically for their study abroad scheme which was integrated. Meaning I would still graduate in three years rather than the year abroad adding an additional year onto my programme. Doing it this way meant I saved around £7k on fees!!

What I wasn’t told about before applying was “proof of funds”. This is a set amount of money that you need to prove in order to get a visa. The amount depends on the institution that you are going to but in general for American institutions it ranges from £15k-£20k. An amount you have to prove you have access to in cash!

Fortunately, you can use your student maintenance loan as part of the funds and because I was spending the year abroad I was eligible for £10k. But that still left £8k that I needed to have in cash, as the institution I had a place at needed me to prove I had £18k. As a student with £0 to my name this was a massive shock and put a huge spanner in my plan to spend a year in the states. Something I’d been dreaming about since I was little.

I immediately went to the department and asked for advice. Their solution, “just get your parents to transfer you the money and then you can transfer it back”. Yeah that was not an option for me!

So this is when I started becoming intentional about my spending and began to save every single penny of extra income I earned. Six months later, I had £8k in the bank and all my paperwork in order to get my visa. *Queue global pandemic and the world shutting down*

Yep this was March 2020.

My uni essentially cancelled the rest of my first year, we all fled back to our family homes and my hospitality job didn’t exist anymore. To top it all off my year abroad was cancelled. So here I sat, twiddling my thumbs at my parents house with £8k in the bank that no longer had a purpose.

I realised that the sheer amount I had managed to save whilst being a full-time student and the finance knowledge I had acquired was not the norm for someone my age. No one around me was talking about finance and I was absolutely obsessed. So I took to the internet and started sharing my knowledge and finance journey online.

Fast forward two years and I graduated with a £34k networth having shared my entire journey online for all to see!