Nicole Haddow

And the reason I had those credit cards was because I was just really, I was trying to get ahead.

So I worked as a freelance journalist a lot in my 20s.

At one point, I moved to Sydney to work for magazines up there.

So I was paying really high level of rent.

I had unstable income.

And sometimes the credit cards were just a way to cover the gap.

I was moving a lot in share houses.

I was absolutely spending money on things I shouldn't have, travel and clothes and that sort of thing.

But a lot of it in my mind was I'll sort this out later.

It'll all come together.

And when I realised at 30 that it hadn't come together and I was no closer to finding a solution, I knew that I had to make some serious changes.

Well, that day I was sitting by my friend's parents' pool.

So, you know, we looked like we were having this lovely time by the pool and we were having a lovely time by the pool but the reality was that we were at my friend's parents' house and I'd just moved home with my mum and dad.

So...

Trying to break that cycle of creating that persona was also part of the challenge.

I don't think my Instagram feed would have been nearly as interesting in the year that I was power saving, unfortunately.

But that's what you've got to do.

Absolutely.

So I talk about this a lot in the book and that was something that was a real shock to me because I was moving in circles where people really went pretty hard, to be honest with you.

We had pretty good social life.