Emma Edwards

other information because it's just not working.

And then people get stuck in the cycle for life because they think there isn't enough.

And don't get me wrong, for some people there really isn't.

But sometimes it's because there's other things going on further back and you can't keep money or invest money if you don't know how to manage it.

And if your approach to attempting to manage it is a symptom of how you feel about something else.

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 uh 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 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.