Moving used to be a super stressful event for me financially. Scraping together a month’s rent in advance as well as a 6 week deposit has always been challenging. This time round, I’ve not only got my rent and 6 week deposit ready, I have also got enough cash lying around to cover (one of) my housemate’s deposit which will then be returned to me via the tenancy deposit scheme where we’ve got the deposit for our current place. That’s a total of nearly £3 000 and I haven’t touched any of my proper savings accounts.

I’m going to miss a private garden but I’m not going to miss maintaining it

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This spell of my life isn’t the first time that I’ve tried to cut back on my spending. I’ve been in tons of debt since 2010 and made various attempts at sorting out my lavish spending from 2011 till 2016. Since I didn’t know that my day-to-day spending was my biggest issue, I tried to do the sensible thing and made an effort at reducing my fixed spending – rent and transport.

• In 2012, I moved out of my £1200* room in a 2-bed Canary Wharf house that I lived in mostly alone, to share a 4-bed house with some mates near Turnpike lane. This saved me £500 a month in rent and bills.
• In 2013, I let my girlfriend move in with me. She paid me £250 a month for her share of the rent and bills. She was also a keen cyclist so I started cycling about 80% of the time, saving a total of around £300 a month on rent, bills and transport for a few months.
• In 2015, I made some radical (at the time) changes. I moved out of London into the cheapest place I could find for £400 a month including bills. It was also 3 miles / a 15 minute bus ride / an hour’s walk to work. I was certain this would be the move that allowed me to kill debt fast. IT ALL WENT SO WRONG!

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