I was debt-free but I racked up £36k in just two years even though I moved back home, I couldn’t stop spending

A MUM has revealed how she went from debt-free to owing £36,000 in just two years.

Tolu Frimpong and her husband found themselves 'drowning in debt’ back in 2018 after previously being incredibly careful with money.

The mum-of-three, who shares videos about her journey to financial freedom on her YouTube channel, says that she began accumulating debt when they decided to buy a house.

In a recent video, she explains: “Before 2013 we’d been married for a few years, we had our flat in Croydon.

“We moved back in with my husband’s parents in order to save money for a deposit to buy our own property.

“Prior to this we had been saving here and there and prior to that we hadn’t been able to save that much because we’d had to pay all of our money towards bills.

on Money Saving

I paid off £25k worth of debt in 11 months – here’s how you can too

I had £10k of debt after divorce, I paid it off using these money-saving tips

“We didn’t have any money left over at the end of the month to save.”

Tolu says that they were able to ‘save aggressively’ while living with her husband’s parents and eventually they got a mortgage on a place of their own.

But despite securing the property they were in need of even more funds before they could move in.

Tolu explains: “We had the money for the deposit we had the money for the stamp duty what we didn’t have was the money for the refurbishment

Most read in Fabulous

RELO-KATE

William and Kate want to move to Windsor this summer to be nearer the Queen

BAR OUT

Barman quits job after his boss bans him from getting drunk on his day off

TAT'S THE TRUTH

I'm a tattoo artist – I tell clients three common lies when things go wrong

FIGHTING FIT

I'm the heaviest I've ever been at 11st 5lbs, says Gemma Atkinson

“We couldn’t move into it because it was in such a state.”

The couple made the decision to take out a loan in order to complete works on the house and planned to host lodgers to help pay it off.

However, the lodgers never came and the couple got carried away with their money.

“When money’s not your own you spend it so frivolously we were spending money like it was nothing,” Tolu says.

“We were burning through money so quickly that we took out an initial loan from the bank and that loan wasn’t even enough to cover all of our costs.

“So we took out a second loan, in total we took out about £20,000 worth of loans to refurbish the house.”

With their loans blown on the house the couple were forced to use their credit cards to pay other expenses, but still they did not cut back on their spending.

Tolu recalls: “We went on holiday twice in that time with no money, at that time we’d already accumulated over £30k in debt with two young children.

“I was on maternity leave so my income was so much lower so I was literally blowing cash.

“Myself and my husband ended up in £36,300 worth of debt in the space of two years. In a short space of time we went from owing nobody money to owing everybody money.

“The expenditure was so much higher than our income at the time so every month we were just getting deeper and deeper into the overdraft.”