I paid off my £13,000 debt in 13 months — here’s how I did it

Despite struggling with £15,000 of debt, Megan Smith Evans was still impulse buying.

She’d spend £200 a month on takeaways here, £300 on days out there — the 33 year old even bought a puppy for a £1,000.

Megan’s finances initially started to spiral during the pandemic, when her work as a tattoo artist dried up, and she lost much of her income.

She took out a £10,000 loan to help support her struggling business in 2020 — and her spending continued to snowballed.

‘My minimum credit card payments were hundreds and hundreds of pounds, it felt all consuming,’ says Megan, from Birmingham.

But now, Megan’s managed to overhaul her finances.

Megan says it was back at university, when she had an interest-free student overdraft, that she realised how ‘normal’ it felt to be in debt.

After graduating, her first credit card was used to buy tattooing equipment, and the leftover funded a trip to New York. She eventually ended up with three credit cards, plus the loan and her overdraft’s remnants.

Megan, says: ‘I’m a self-confessed shopaholic. I love spending money. I love buying things.

‘I love doing experiences and booking holidays on a credit card, I get such a dopamine hit from treating myself. It’s so easy to do, and it’s so easy for debt to mount up.’

In 2024, she spent £2,000 on Christmas presents, with the bill was placed entirely on a credit card. The initial lump-sum of her £1,000 cocker spaniel puppy was also just the beginning, as she then spent £1,000 a month on training and food.

But Megan says felt ‘horrible’ as the money started to rack up, and ended up with minimum card payments that amounted to hundreds of pounds.

In January 2025, while her tattooing business had recovered from the pandemic, she didn’t many clients booked in. ‘Getting a tattoo is a luxury, and no one has any money in January, so I had hardly any clients,’ she said.

At this point, the value of her debt had hit £15,000.

It was when she realised she may have to buy essentials, including food, on her credit card, that she realised something had to change.

‘I thought, ‘this is ridiculous, I need to do something about it,’ she said.

So Megan decided to try a no-spend January challenge — and it ended up being a watershed moment.

She said: ‘Unless it was food, travel or essentials, I didn’t spend anything.’

With this new moment came a new strategy: a colour-coded calendar, which she used to keep track of her spending habits. Days where she didn’t spend anything would be coloured in green, days where she spent on essentials were orange, and pink indicated overspending.

‘It was really motivating,” she said. ‘I found it really tough though, I was going from spending anything I wanted to not spending anything at all.

‘I also made a TikTok account to keep myself accountable. I just thought, if I put this out in the world, I’ve got to do it.’

As she was paying off the debt and spending less, she realised that she was getting that same dopamine hit that she used to from spending.

Just over a year on from starting the challenge, she’s paid off a staggering £13,000 — with just £2,400 left to go.

She’s aiming to get this paid down by March, as her original goal was to get rid of £15,000 in 15 months.

For the first time, Megan also created a budget so that she could track exactly how much her bills were, and what she could afford to repay.

The first few months were ‘miserable,’ but by March 2025, Megan switched from no-spend to low-spend months, meaning that treats were banned, but she was allowed to go out on special occasions, provided she stuck to a strict budget.

Since starting her journey, Megan hasn’t used her credit card to make a single purchase — and her number one tip for anyone trying to get rid of debt is to do the same.

Every Friday, she pays herself a weekly wage and puts any remaining funds towards her debt. She’s also managed to create an emergency fund.

She says: ‘Every week is different, if I’ve made a few thousand pounds, I’ll pay off £400 worth of debt. If I’ve had a less good week, I’ll pay off £50.’

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