I Was 15 the First Time I Became Responsible for the Roof Over my Head!

When I was 15, my mum told me I had to start paying my own way. She was sick of me asking for stuff I needed - like new school uniform.

I was told that if I didn’t get a job and pay my own way, she was going down to Social Services. I’d be taken into foster care because she couldn’t afford me.

It wasn’t the first time she had threatened me with going into care.

She had left the house one morning a year before this, telling me she was off to report herself to social services so they’d come and take me away. I believed she was capable of doing this to punish me. I was scared she would.

When she arrived home a couple of hours later with no social worker in sight, she told me she had decided to give me one more chance.

So when this new job or care threat was issued, I took it seriously.

One of our neighbours cleaned the head office of Gateway Building Society for 2 hours every evening. She got me a job there too. Monday to Friday, 5pm-7pm, after school.

Earning £17 every week made me feel rich.

I really enjoyed the freedom that having money gave me.

More importantly, money kept the roof over my head.

The next threat of being removed into care came when I left high school.

This time the ultimatum was ‘if you go to college, you have to leave this house. If you get a job and pay board, you can stay’.

I’d recently interviewed for and been accepted into a full time BTEC business and finance course at the local college.

I badly wanted to do this course.

So I figured out a workaround.

I discovered that if I joined the YTS (Youth Training Scheme), I could do the course two days a week and work three days a week at Griffin Factors where my best friend Nicole worked. It was the perfect compromise.

I earned £35 a week on YTS and paid £20 a week board.

Nine months’ later, the £20 a week board was no longer enough to keep the roof over my head.

If I didn’t get a full-time job, I’d have to leave.

This time, I could, if I was being generous, call it motivation.

Because college was boring. Nobody there wanted to learn so it just became a monumental piss up.

I loved Griffin and wanted to work there full time and get paid more. Now I was motivated to make it happen.

As YTS trainees, we rotated departments.

The timing of this ultimatum was lucky.

I was working in Personnel as HR was called then and the Manager liked me.

So when I told her my situation, she sorted me out with a full-time job there.

My full-time wage was £80 a week. I paid £55 for board.

Then I became an adult.

• In age. I was now 18.

• In relationship terms. I was engaged to Gavin.

• And in terms of adulting.

My friend Steph from Griffin lived in a shared house. She told me they had a double room available for £60 a week.

£60 a week for freedom?

Or £55 a week to stay at home waiting for the next ultimatum.

Easy decision.

From that point on, going back home was not an option.

I had to create money every month.

At 19, Gav and I had a mortgage. that needed us both earning a full time wage.

At 21, Gav and I had split up and I was engaged to Jeff. We married when I was 22 and he was 30.

We couldn’t afford to buy Gavin out but Jeff contributed to the mortgage. We still needed two full time salaries.

At 25, Jeff and I bought a 3-bed house with a 125% mortgage.

We often needed more than both our full-time salaries. Debt became our housemate.

When we split in 2006, we sold the house. Multiple re-mortgages later, we still made £40k profit.

In 2008, I was fired from a job after three days. Unemployed for the first time in my life.

My Rheumatologist signed me off job seeking for three months so I entered the world of welfare benefits.

Servicing the debt that had followed me from the house became a mountain I could no longer conquer.

In March 2009, I was declared bankrupt and my landlord gave me notice to leave.

I left Worthing to live with Bill in Surrey. All welfare stopped because he was working.

The six months between moving to Surrey and finding a job was the only time since I was 15 that I had no responsibility to create money.

And I hated it! Lol!

I started an Avon business to make some pocket money. I found it really hard not having any financial responsibilities - or independence.

Nine months later, July 2010, my temporary contract ended, I was fired again.

The very next day, I started the business I have today.

My priority was replacing the part time salary, fast. I achieved that within a couple of months.

And since we moved here in 2013, I’ve been the breadwinner.

Sometimes that scares the shit out of me. As a Spoonie, some days it’s a lot.

Some moments, I want to run away. Tired of having so responsibility.

Most days I LOVE it!

I find this way of life exciting.

It means I can do what I want to do.

And…

I’m in charge of allocating my spoons.

That was not the case for the first 40 years of my life when I tried so hard to fit myself into what society expects.

• I don’t have enough spoons for long days of hard hustle. So I don’t do that.

• I don’t have enough spoons to work a full-time job in an office. I wish every employer recognised how beneficial working for home can be for those who thrive working remotely.

• I don’t have enough spoons to do things that drain me - like hours of sales calls, sending cold emails or getting up at 5am to hit the day running. Nope!

Conserving energy is a priority,

To prioritise my energy, I developed a set of spoon-saving shortcuts that I live by.

These shortcuts create capacity by removing as many of the micro spoon-stealers as possible.

I’ll share the list with you next time, so you can combat your micro spoon thieves too.

th April.