I Lived Alone at 16 on £60 a Month, Now I’m Building Wealth

Making Money

Marcia shares her journey of living alone at 16 on just £60 a month after her mother relocated, detailing the financial and emotional struggles that followed. She discusses navigating benefits restrictions,

Key takeaways

• Marcia lived alone at 16 on £60 monthly income support after her mother relocated to the Isle of Wight
• She manipulated bus passes and endured utility cut-offs while surviving on cash-in-hand work paying £25 per Saturday shift

Main topics

• Early independence & child poverty
• Benefits system & housing insecurity

Notable quotes

"The level of weight that is on your shoulders morning till night, there's nothing that feels worse than that in my opinion when it comes to finances."

Conclusion

Marcia's journey underscores that financial stability is achievable through disciplined budgeting,

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) Our sponsor today is Take the Next Step Invest. Inflation is a funny concept. It can be really difficult to really internalise because it normally happens in small enough increments that we don't really notice it. The price of something in a supermarket goes up by 15p. But inflation is one of the most corrosive forces in finance. It's been brought home by the cost of living crisis in recent years because the price jumps have been so drastic. The best lever that most people have to outrun inflation is investing. So if you have solid savings and money you won't need for the next five years, then think about it. Take the next step. Invest. Speaker 1 (0:38) The level of weight that is on your shoulders morning till night, there's nothing that feels worse than that in my opinion when it comes to finances. It's just that constant fear of what's going to be the next thing that tears me down, what's going to be the next thing that's asking for money I don't have. Speaker 2 (0:54) Marcia is a member of the Making Money audience and these are my favourite episodes. She's here to talk about her relationship with money, share her amazing story and she even brings a tear to Damien's eye. Speaker 3 (1:05) Marcia, thank you so much for coming. Speaker 2 (1:06) And thank you as well for the tiramisu and the snacks. Damien is going to be in love with you forever. You started your financial life a lot earlier than me, a lot earlier than most people because you were living alone at home at 16. How did that happen? Speaker 1 (1:20) I think adding menopause to adolescence would probably be the thing. My mum was kind of in her sort of late 40s, early 50s, didn't have the life she wanted for herself. And one of my uncles moved to the Isle of Wight, so she started going and visiting. And I think she just found her community. So she decided that she wanted to move to the Isle of Wight. And then at the time, we had a council house and my cousin had a council flat. So we just did an exchange. And initially my mum asked if I wanted to go to the Isle of Wight and I kind of said no. You know, I was 16, 15 to 16 at the time when we started talking about it. And all my friends, you know, where I was in school, all the rest, I just thought no. So the exchange got done, but it was under the guise that my mum was kind of living there. But obviously she wasn't. So, yeah, that was my... Speaker 2 (2:10) So you stayed in Birmingham and she moved to the Isle of Wight. Speaker 3 (2:14) Mm-hmm. Speaker 1 (2:14) The one that's down south, not the one by Liverpool. People always get them confused, Isle of Man and Isle of Wight. Speaker 2 (2:19) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I Speaker 3 (2:21) would have. I definitely did. And I live near Liverpool, and I have no idea. Speaker 1 (2:25) Yeah, it's the one that's got a speed limit. Oh, Speaker 3 (2:27) okay. Oh, yeah, the motorbike guys, that's the Isle of Man. That's Speaker 1 (2:31) the Speaker 3 (2:31) Isle of Man, yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you have a relationship with your mum now? Yeah, Speaker 1 (2:36) yeah, yeah, I've got a good relationship with my mum. I think I didn't. you know there was a lot of bitterness yeah there was a lot of bitterness from from my side because I just I didn't have that kind of adult hindsight and empathy and all of that at the time I just felt aggrieved that I'd been left in this position but you know looking back on it I do understand that my mum was you know she was really lonely and she spent a lot of her life kind of looking after a child on her own. You know, my dad was around, but they weren't together. He wasn't a kind of hands on dad. He was he was a great dad in terms of when I saw him, but it was like a Sunday visit kind of dad. So she did it all by herself. So I can understand she needed something for herself. You know, she has kind of apologised for how it all went down in the end. But I think at the time I understand she needed something and. as hard as it was, it's definitely character building. Speaker 3 (3:30) Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:30) Definitely. Speaker 3 (3:31) I mean, it's lovely that you've come together in that because it could have been the end, right? Yeah. You know, it's like, Speaker 1 (3:36) like Speaker 3 (3:37) you say, the abandonment and even just the guilt on her part because maybe years later she probably thinks, oh, you know, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah, she couldn't talk about Speaker 1 (3:44) it for quite a while. To be fair, it was almost just like shut down as soon as I'd start to kind of try and say something about it. I think the hardest thing was that initially, because of the setup of it, obviously my age, it was back in the day where parents would get income support, which at the time was literally £60 a month. It wasn't sort of big amounts of money. That's what she left me with to be able to have some money to kind of get on with. So she gave me that book. So if I started working... then she would lose the income support and so would I obviously because it was for having a child in education so it meant I couldn't work I mean cash in hand I was able to do obviously but I couldn't get an official job and obviously at 16 17 you're not going to get you know some laws have changed around it now but you're not going to get a full wage that you would if you were 18 plus so the amount that I would have been able to earn wouldn't have been enough to pay the rent and the housing housing cas tax Speaker 2 (4:44) that Speaker 1 (4:45) I would have then had to have paid because as soon as the income support would have disappeared other things would have then had to have been paid for so they would have looked at it that if I'm living with my mum and I'm now earning money and I'm paying towards the household that bolsters what she's already doing and therefore the benefits stop so I was in a really difficult position because I couldn't necessarily carve a way for myself yet. I had to just be under the radar, kind of trying my best. And then in the, I moved in in February 98. And then by October, my mom had some health complications and needed to register with a GP on the island. So she had to let the housing association know that I would be there by myself thinking that they'd just be fine with it. But I was still 17 until the following April. So legally they couldn't let me be there by myself. So I got a letter from my mom as a kind of copy of what she sent on, let's say the Wednesday. And then on the Thursday, I got an eviction notice from the housing association. Because that's going to help you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because they were saying, you know, like, you're not the legal tenant, you know, you're not of age, da da da. I guess I don't know where I got the resilience from, I'll be honest, I really don't. But I wrote to my local MP, who was Estelle Morris at the time. and just said like, look, this is my situation. This is the only home I've got. If you end up putting me in some sort of a hostel or something like that, by the time I'm then 18, I'm going to be back on a housing list for the council anyway. So, you know, for the sake of a couple of months, can we not just sort something out? She fought quite hard. You know, her office fought hard at the time. And eventually, by July 99, so like a few months after I was 18, I got my welcome to your new home letter. So, um, so Speaker 2 (6:34) let you stay there until awesome. But it was, Speaker 1 (6:37) yeah. Squeaky bomb moment for months. How long were Speaker 3 (6:40) you, you were surviving off 60 quid Speaker 1 (6:41) a Speaker 3 (6:41) month. Yeah. And obviously it was in, it was pre 2000 this, right. So, I mean, first of all, you look amazing, right? I was going to say, how long ago was this? The Speaker 1 (6:51) hair's fresh. So it's kind of, it's helping. The face is fresh as well. The Speaker 3 (6:56) skin is glowing. No, I was just thinking like, wow, that's like, you look. You look great. So anyway, 60 pound a month. I don't really know how much that was back then in the grand scheme of things. It's obviously not Speaker 1 (7:18) a Speaker 3 (7:18) lot Speaker 1 (7:18) of Speaker 3 (7:18) money. It Speaker 1 (7:19) was probably quarter of fuck all. It was not enough to cover my bills at all. So even though I wasn't paying. the rent and I wasn't paying council tax, but I had to pay everything else. So even just things like water, gas, electric, travel, food, it didn't cover. So I got really good at, um, Jimmy and my bus pass to make it last for, you know, sometimes two months instead of one. Um, pretty much, you know, I don't know what I haven't, you know, things have changed. I haven't been on a bus for. some time now so i don't know what a travel pass looks like but it used to just be kind of printed to say the date that it ran out so you could just kind of keep your old ones and like with a little scalpel just cut out the numbers and fit different numbers on there so it looked like it hadn't run out yet so i got good at doing that um i would say there was definitely probably a week out of the month every every month where i either didn't have gas or i didn't have electric um if it was winter I'd try and kind of put more in the gas and less in the electric because I needed the heating. But I think probably from maybe around the June, the July of the year that I moved in from the February I started doing like some cash in hand work Speaker 3 (8:35) which Speaker 1 (8:35) wasn't a massive amount of money but it felt like a huge amount of money. I got kind of a really low amount like 25 pound but it was like a few hours work on a Saturday. So by the time the end of the month come I'd kind of got double just over the the money that I was used to getting so that really helped because it allowed me to just to breathe a little bit that if you know I needed a new pair of shoes it wasn't that I couldn't eat that month and things like that like things were things were pretty like hairy when people say oh I've got no money you know and they're living with their like mum and dad and you know they're saying oh do you want to go to town or do you want to go and do this I'm saying like no I've like I've got no money at the minute but I mean like no money. If you said, I'll give you a million pound now, just find me two p. I'd be like, shame that I've missed out on the opportunity. Like it was really like tough times. I look back on that, that young girl and I feel really proud of her because I know how it felt to kind of. go from, you know, everything felt okay at home. You know, I never felt like we didn't have money, you know, even though my mom would do jobs here and there. But I remember listening to the episode with your mom on there, with Sue on there, Speaker 2 (9:48) talking Speaker 1 (9:49) about how back then. any kind of work that you did almost like the benefits would just get stopped immediately so it didn't kind of pay for single mums to work my mum was trapped in that so she'd get work every now and again but it would have to be under a certain amount of hours and it would have to be kind of just enough to kind of help with certain things but it wasn't you know really pushing us forward but I never went without I always felt like I had whatever I needed I had what I wanted um so to go from that to living on my own and you know my friends are talking about going places and I'm thinking do I need should I get bread or should I buy that toilet brush that I need to get you know it's things that as a 16 year old you kind of you're not expecting to have to think about you know so I think it was yeah it was definitely tough times. Speaker 3 (10:36) Were you already fairly independent or was it like a bit of a shock because it it feels a bit like home alone you know where it kind of wakes up in the house and it's like What do I do? Yeah. Was it like that? Speaker 1 (10:45) It kind of felt like that. I mean, probably for about a year before my mum officially moved, she'd kind of gone for periods of time, you know, like a week at a time. And I was good friends with the neighbour. Like she was kind of the same age of the, it wasn't her house, obviously, but I used to go around there and I'd have people to be with and things. It was always a bit of a secret from my dad's side of the family because I don't think he would have really approved. But it was just nice to kind of be left by myself with that trust, you know, that I could look after myself. So that felt like a good thing. But it would be kind of, you know, sometimes just a weekend, sometimes a week. And then it started getting slightly longer. So I'd started to get used to being more self-sufficient, but only to a point. I was cooking the food that was already in the fridge, in the cupboard. I was washing my clothes and the bills were paid, the washing powder was bought. So I could do all of those things. I was a capable person in terms of looking after my physical self. But understanding how you pay bills, what bills need to be paid, what the importance of them was, that was just new. I didn't know any of that. Did Speaker 2 (11:58) you ever have any situations where you're like, ran out of food or like you had do you remember any any occasions when you just had to deal with a huge obstacle I Speaker 1 (12:06) remember um I had someone that was supposed to be coming around for for dinner the one day um wasn't going to be anything spectacular but I was just putting together a little chili and rice and I was thinking yeah this this will be nice and I had probably about 10 maybe 15 minutes of the cooking left and the gas ran out and I didn't have any money and I felt so embarrassed because I was thinking obviously how am I going to explain to the person that's coming that oh sorry like the food's not ready yet and it's not going to be there so I did feel quite embarrassed but um I feel like when people talk about the universe looking after you I really got looked after that day because randomly British Gas came and knocked on the door and said that they needed to change the type of meter that I had And they fitted within that short space of time, they fitted a new meter and they had to give me like a pay as you go kit. And they said, obviously, you know, we've just topped it up a little bit for you for now until you're able to get out to the shop. So it was like maybe, you know, 10, 15 pound that they put on there, but it was enough for me to. finish the meal nobody had to know anything about my embarrassment and i genuinely felt with such a small thing other people might look at that and be like oh wow that was like tough times but for me i felt so blessed i felt like i had this kind of direct contact to the universe they saw me in in plight and did something about it you know i felt genuinely felt lucky and i still now think that you know miracles do happen and that was you know one of them Speaker 3 (13:34) Where I grew up after we left Birmingham, there was a lad that we went round to his house a couple of times and he lived alone at a young age and he was probably 16, 17. And I just remember he had like a little sofa, like an... you know, Nintendo 64, whatever. And then there was a room that was just floorboards and he had like a bench press with two tins of paint on a bar and he would just like work out. And I was like, this guy is living. I was like, this is the Speaker 1 (14:00) sickest show. No parents, nothing. But now Speaker 3 (14:03) I look back and think, oh, I feel really sad for him. And I wonder, what was your mental state versus what do you think you were projecting to your friends and how your friends saw you? Speaker 1 (14:14) I think I was projecting I've got this and I don't think that that's ever left me. I still struggle to allow people to help me because the fear that I'll become used to or reliant on that support and then it will be taken away from me has been a kind of residual from what happened. But I think at the time my friends didn't really understand because they couldn't have comprehended. how it felt. If I had a friend a year before that that was going through that, I don't think I would be able to understand it because there was no frame of reference for it. So it wasn't that hard to pretend to them. And I'd just be quite just open with people. You know, I was 16. I was the one with the, you know, the free yard. So everyone would want to come around to mine. That's Speaker 2 (14:59) what I'm Speaker 1 (14:59) saying. It's Speaker 2 (14:59) a Speaker 1 (14:59) party. Everyone's like, yeah. Respectful friends and all of that. It wasn't, you know, but... If you're going to come around using my gas and the electric, I turned into a bit of a parent, you know, using my gas and electric, my toilet roll or the rest of it. I'm not buying a drink. You know, you know, you can buy my snacks and things like that, because that was the way that I could still feel involved, but also not feel as though it was costing me something I couldn't afford. Speaker 2 (15:23) So Speaker 1 (15:23) I was able to kind of negotiate with that. But I think the cost mentally definitely developed OCD in those times. I mean. It was my cousin's flat prior to me moving in, so it was all decorated and that kind of thing. And because my mum was moving to Isle of Wight, I had pretty much all of the furniture, so a two-bedroom house into a two-bedroom flat. So I wasn't kind of living as your friend had to, but at the same time, if anything kind of broke or whatever, I didn't have the means to replace it. So I got pretty good at learning how to mend things, how to... rewire stuff, how to kind of, you know, get round it. But I had really bad OCD. So it would be toothbrushes, bottles of bleach, cleaning the skirting boards almost every single day. Just, I think mentally I kind of told myself that I might not have any money, but I wasn't going to have anyone thinking I'm a tramp. Speaker 3 (16:17) That Speaker 1 (16:17) was the thing that was helping me get through. I thought that's the bit that I can kind of, I can still have pride. I can still be. a home that people come into, you know, and think, yeah, this is all Speaker 3 (16:27) right. Speaker 1 (16:27) Shows you're on top of things, doesn't it? It's not dirty. It's like, look, Speaker 2 (16:30) I'm handling my life in a way. Speaker 1