Emma Edwards

Yeah, debt for me, again, it was a symptom of many other things.

And I think particularly as young women, I'm sure it's true for people in their late teens and early 20s now, but definitely for me, like late 2000s.

A lot of spending is a performance of femininity and womanhood and desirability by men at that time.

We dress a certain way to look thinner, to look taller.

We spend a lot of money on all of these things.

And if you are dealing with a lot of those things, you can sort of...

ultimately disregard particularly when you're young and you think you've got the rest of your life to figure it out you can disregard how much it's impacting your finances because you're just trying to fix whatever lifestyle magazine or you know teen or adolescent magazine told you you needed to fix at that time things are a lot more inclusive now or getting that way and we're kind of we might rather than reading about cellulite creams or whatever we might learn about how to love ourselves but

on so many levels particularly with buy now pay later ads and all that kind of stuff and there is a very much have it now pay for it later or have it now deal with it later or feel a certain way now and deal with it later so yeah that's how I got into debt and to be honest my debt spending was was no different to any other spending a lot of people you know go into debt because they were flying to Dubai or buying handbags or it was there was none of that big stuff it was just

a combination of that symptom spending of mental health issues or, you know, a bad relationship with myself as well as my money and it being my emergency fund because I didn't have any savings.

So even if I wasn't

buying something because I deserved it, because I'd had a bad day, because I was having a bad body image day or whatever, I would be fixing a flat tire with it because I didn't have any savings.

I couldn't keep any money.

And so investing in wealth creation was never even an option because I couldn't even hold on to any money to fix my tire, let alone invest or save.

Yeah, it's individual to everybody.

And obviously, your spending being a symptom of something, what that something is can be on a sliding scale.

And in some cases, there needs to be professional intervention.

Obviously, we can't disregard that.

And it's often difficult talking about it because I kind of tell my story and I go, and then I changed my habits and I did this.

And people are going, how?

It is, it's a lot of things and it's a bit like the science of behavior change.