My dad’s reckless money habits still haunt me in my 40s
By Richard Trenholm
My relationship with money has always been fraught. I feel guilty for complaining; I've always had a job and a safe middle-class life and yet, somehow, it wasn't enough.
I was doomed from the start. When I was 18, I grabbed every student loan, credit card and overdraft I could. Then I spent it all on CDs and weirdly-coloured drinks in the student bar. I stayed a few extra years at university, inflating my student loan to £35,000.
My degree led to a job as a journalist, working at the same company for nearly 16 years. I started in the summer of 2007 on a salary of £22,000. After bills and London rent, I could repay about £100 per month of my debt, which included credit card and overdraft debt of around £8,000. I was only covering the interest, so my dreary little debt actually went up.
I had a job but felt powerless
I travelled occasionally for work and lived in fear of my card not working thousands of miles from home. What’s German for “insufficient funds”? On one trip there was a mix-up about my company paying for the hotel, so at checkout the receptionist told me I had to settle the bill myself. I backed away, phone in hand, making noises about “calling the office”, then legged it to the airport and fled the country (work paid the bill the next week).
Spending money felt like one of the few ways I could actually control it. When I did have some cash I raced to spend it before anyone could take it off me. It mostly went on gigs and nights out.When I started using payday loans, it was for the odd £20 for a night out before payday. But soon I was borrowing to repay the previous month’s loan at blood-curdling interest rates. A few unpaid bills later, I learned about dealing with bailiffs.
(Empty) bank of mum and dad
My parents never taught me about managing my personal finances. If only we'd had Junei when I was a kid. Ironically, my dad worked in a bank and loan company. He was made redundant when I was 11 and things got extremely precarious for a few years. Watching my dad unload deliveries for cash-in-hand one Christmas Eve instilled in me a sense of responsibility, but mainly left me with massive anxiety around money.
Dad, who was very secretive about money, spent a chunk of his redundancy pay on a big stacking stereo system, much to my mum’s annoyance. My family now has a running joke: when one of us has some money, we caution them not to buy a hi-fi. It took me a few years to make the connection with my own reckless spending.
Keep the change
I straightened out a little in my 30s. My sister told me about the debt charity Stepchange, who helped me sign an individual voluntary agreement (IVA) with the credit card companies. They asked the lenders to stop charging interest, so I was now chipping away at the actual debt.
I still had major issues when it came to broaching money with my girlfriend (now wife), who bought her own flat through the government’s old Help to Buy scheme. When we came to combine our finances to get a mortgage and start a family I had to open up about my disastrous financial situation. Swallowing a lot of embarrassment and shame made me resent having to talk about money, which was unfair on the people around me. Like my dad, I didn’t want to admit my mistakes.
Settling down
As I entered my 40s I finally felt I was where I should be. Six years after I last defaulted, the bad stuff vanished from my credit record and my salary passed £50,000. I paid off my student loan, my pension surpassed £65,800, and we are now paying into savings accounts for the kids. Aside from our mortgage, I’m debt-free.
If I’m honest, I owe a lot to sheer luck. In 2014, I escaped the death spiral of payday loans when the government forced Wonga, the UK's biggest payday lender at the time, to write off millions of pounds of loans - including mine. Combining finances with my wife saved my credit record and I kept my job through the pandemic. Painful as it is to admit, a big part of the reason things got better was from a quarter share of the sale of our parents’ house when they passed away.
The struggle isn’t over
At 43, the cost of living crisis has brought my anxiety around money roaring back. By this point, I should have it together. I'm a father myself, a homeowner and a freelance journalist. But if anything, those things add to my worries. Childcare for two kids, bills through the roof, an uncertain job market; I should know what I’m doing, but that old feeling of being trapped always creeps back in. The old mistakes, too. When I use my credit card to buy anything from coffee to a new coat, I have to ask myself: am I buying a hi-fi?
My wife encourages me to trust that the work is out there and even if I don’t always feel like I’m where someone my age should be, at least I’ve learned a few things:
Don’t ignore money problems.
Don’t think you can borrow your way out.
Ask for help, ask early, and don’t let embarrassment or shame stop you asking.
Oh, and definitely teach your kids about money.
