Not many people would count themselves “lucky” to have spiralled into £15,000 worth of credit card debt, but that’s how mum-of-two Amy Todd feels.
Now 36, the Glasgow-born high school careers adviser first fell into the debt trap as a 19-year old student studying primary education, when she got her first credit card to pay for a party bus to celebrate a friend’s birthday.
‘To make it easier for everyone to pay their share of the cost, I said I’d get a credit card and they could transfer the cash to my bank account,’ she says.
‘I was then planning to use that to pay off the card in full, but somehow it didn’t happen. I ended up spending it out of my current account and was left with £1,000 sitting on this card and no way enough income to pay it off.’
At the time, she wasn’t paying any interest on the balance but after 12 months, Amy started to panic that the debt would get bigger and bigger when she started being charged.
‘That’s when I learned about balance transfer cards that let you switch the outstanding debt from one credit card to another card that doesn’t charge interest. It was a domino effect from there.’
Rather than putting a repayment plan in place, Amy says she just kept transferring the balance from card to card to card over the next seven years. Each time she transferred, there was a charge, taking the amount she owed up gradually.
‘I was just thinking, it’s fine because I’m not paying any interest and I was making the minimum payments and, when I could, a bit more.’
When she was 26, her son was born. She took maternity leave from her job as an engagement co-ordinator for a call centre and when her leave ended, she quit.
‘Up to that point I was trying not to spend more on credit cards but I’d decided that when my mat leave ended I wanted to go back to uni to study careers guidance. I wanted to do more with my life than keep working in a call centre.
‘But paying for both of us, earning no money and still trying to cover living costs – that’s when things started to spiral. I had my main Aqua card to spend on everyday stuff. I’d run it up to the balance limit and then transfer the whole lot to a new card.
‘I went on comparison sites that would show me the cards I was most likely to be accepted for and then I’d just apply. I was telling myself I’d pay more than the minimum each month and start to get the overall amount back down, but it just wasn’t happening in reality.’
By 2024, Amy had given birth to her second child, a girl, and had two ‘day-to-day’ credit cards – her existing one with Aqua and another from Barclays.
She had another four credit cards charging 0% interest at the time and just kept adding to them. Like so many others, she kept a close eye on her credit score throughout.
‘It didn’t really change because I was keeping up with the minimum payments,’ she says.
Amy used ClearScore, but there are various other credit rating agencies that allow you to keep an eye on how likely you are to be approved for credit or loans, including the biggest three – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
At its peak, Amy owed £15,000 on credit cards and had a £1,000 overdraft.
‘I still felt okay about it,’ Amy says. ‘I knew everyone had debt – it was just accepted. I also thought because I wasn’t paying interest, it wasn’t that bad. And by that time I’d also bought a house through Help to Buy so I had been approved for a mortgage as well – I figured it was fine.’
Then she started to hear more and more talk about interest rates rising and reality hit her hard. It was February 2024 and she had until October 2026, when her mortgage deal needed to be renewed, to get her finances under control.
‘I was on a five-year fixed rate at 1.7% and my mortgage payments were £400 a month. I knew it was going to go up and I wouldn’t be able to keep everything going. I was so, so stressed. I just knew it was make or break time.’
That night, Amy ordered a book on Amazon How to Fund the Life You Want by Jonathan Hollow and Robin Powell.
‘It changed everything for me. It taught me how to budget, how to start living below my means and most importantly I learned about investing.
‘Suddenly I realised how much money I was wasting instead of building wealth for future me and a switch was flicked in my brain to stop spending aimlessly and start getting intentional with my money.’
Amy began by downloading a budget spreadsheet from online and fixing her spending rigidly. She also joined MoneySuperMarket’s SuperSaveClub.
‘It took seconds to sign up and I earned a reward just by checking my credit report. Now I get tips to help improve my score, and I can see all my outstanding balances in one place.
Amy says she was amazed how easy it was to change her spending habits with that help.
‘I just hadn’t known anything about it before. I was going into the corner shop every other day and spending £30 – just by stopping that I saved literally £300 a month.’
She also gave herself a fixed amount to spend in the supermarket each week.
‘It meant I didn’t go in for bread and milk and come out with new outfits for the kids. I managed to save a £1,000 emergency savings fund to begin with. That allowed me to most unexpected costs like the hoover breaking or a new car tyre without having to put it on the credit card.
‘Because I was also learning about investing, I started to put money into a stocks and shares Isa as well. That was a gamechanger.
‘I’d always assumed that investing was for people with loads of money and it would never be something for someone like me. But I realised anyone can do it and now I’m actually building wealth for me and my children.’
Discovering the power of investing to grow her money, Amy was spurred on to change other habits.
‘If I could do overtime at work, I did it. I started using cashback sites to pay for everything, I sold things on Vinted and bought the kids’ clothes and other things from there using that balance.
‘I signed up for cashback site JamDoughnut and now I make between £4 and £7 a week just by shopping through there. That money goes straight into savings or investments.’
Amy’s now paying back her remaining debt at £500 per month and saving and investing another £500 per month.
‘Next I’m hoping to build an emergency savings fund of three to six months’ worth of outgoings to give myself some breathing space,’ she says.
‘Then I’ll start saving for more travel and adventures with the kids and I’m aiming to get to £100,000 invested in a stocks and shares Isa.’
Amy is shocked at how easy it was to get into debt – and how companies continue to appeal to those with already rocky finances.
Just last week Amy says one of her remaining credit card providers upped her limit from £3,600 to £9,200. ‘It’s just so irresponsible.’
She also highlights the danger of using apps that claim to help you improve your credit score but actually “enable” you to borrow more and more.
‘I recently went to check my credit score and the first thing that popped up was a banner showing me how much I could get on a whole list of credit cards.
‘The old me would have had that without even thinking about the consequences. How is that useful to anyone who’s in debt to get them out of it?’ she asks.
This aside, Amy says she now feels ‘just really excited’ about her and her children’s future.
‘It’s more than just the relief of getting out of debt and being able to sleep because I’m not stressing out about money all the time. I am now building this generational wealth for my children. It’s opened up a world I didn’t think was ever open to me.
‘I actually feel quite lucky. Without having got into such a bad place with money, I don’t think I would ever have learned any of the positive things I have.’