starting point

It was a rainy and overcast Monday morning in February of 2018. I was stood in line at a Starbucks on the corner of Bothwell and Wellington in Glasgow, watching the rain trickle down the branded glass door to my right. Just minutes ago I was stood under the Hielanman's Umbrella at Glasgow's Central Station, chittering with the cold but sheltered from the rain to order my breakfast on the Starbucks app. My iPhone 7 was practically new but planned to replace it soon. I transfixed myself on it to avoid a conversation with a sketchy-looking beggar. "I've no change mate, sorry," I said solemnly, as he gestured his cup toward me.

The branch selected, I ordered a double-shot Grande Caramel Macchiato, with almond milk and two...no, three pumps of Vanilla Syrup, oh and the caramel drizzle. And a Berry Bircher for health, complete with a shitty single-use plastic spoon. A hearty and wholesome breakfast fit for any slightly overweight, moderately sleep-deprived 20-year-old. On the app, I exchanged £5.79 from the in-app wallet at the checkout for 481 calories, 55 grams of sugar and 150mg of caffeine. Which, once consumed, was almost double my recommended daily sugar intake, 19% of my daily calories and more than a third of my daily recommended caffeine intake. Oh, and there's only £4 left in the wallet - best top it up whilst I'm here, eh?

I'd been up late the previous night working. At the time, I was on call one week in every two and whilst on-call, I was averaging around 12 hours of overtime to meet the demands of the role. Yep, at just 20-years-old I was regularly working more than 50-hours per week. My social life was hit-and-miss, my diet unhealthy and my relationship with money in tatters. I was earning good money, all-in I was taking home nearly £35k, but my spending was quickly getting out of control. Granted I was pretty good at saving, but even better at spending. I had my digs to cover, a phone contract and food money for the working week. Then were was bar tabs, technology upgrades, shopping hauls and bi-weekly date nights I was using to hold-aloft a dead-end relationship. 

Plus I had car, a Ford Fiesta afforded to me by Arnold Clark by way of a personal contract purchase. I had a piece of paper that guaranteed perpetual car finance debt. Once the repayment term was done, I was to hand the car back and take out another deal on a new car, but I didn't care. I could afford it, so I was having it. 

Before long I was pumping more than £200 per month into the fuel tank just to get me to work each day. Who cares if that's more than the car itself each month, there's no point in "owning" a car if you don't drive it every day, right? And for the privilege of parking said car, that was another £125 per month. Add to that the obligatory morning Starbucks and I was spending more than a third of my pay each month on simply getting to work. I had an issue but I was totally blinded by what I thought I deserved.

Friends and family, even some colleagues, commented on my choice of commute, "surely that costs a fortune, no?" To which I'd say, "nah, it's about the same as getting the train." It wasn't. Not even close. I'd just say that to make myself feel better about it. The fact was that I felt I worked too hard to commute on the train everyday. I felt I deserved my own warm, dry and comfortable little pace with cupholders and a radio on my way to work, even if it did cost five times more. I'd say to myself that I could forgive the horrendous traffic and the road rage I'd inevitably suffer and the anxiety of "will I make it to work on time" each morning because I was in my own fully-financed little bubble of comfort. But the truth of it was I was skint and miserable and needed a way of validating to myself that I was doing the right thing, I needed something that felt like luxury to me.

The closer it got to the end of each month, the closer I came to the next fat pay cheque, the quicker it seemed my available balance would dwindle. I'd start supplementing my income with the little savings I had, and with a credit card. After just a few months of this, I was caught in a cycle. I was making payments of hundreds of pounds per month against a credit card, but would carry a balance each month and spending even more on it the following month. We're not talking about massive figures here but it was a problem nevertheless. I tried paying off that credit card bill in full one month, running out of money instantly and surviving for the rest of the month on the credit card I'd just cleared! 

I was "learning by doing" in both my professional life and in my personal finance life. Granted I'm glad I learned as early as I did, but at the time I felt I was stuck in an elevator with only a down button, falling down a spiralling staircase I built for myself.

"Is it...Aedan?" The staff in Starbucks always have a hard time pronouncing my name. I grabbed my order, passed a thank you over the chest-height bar at nobody in particular, then made for the door. Checking my Apple Watch to make sure I wasn't late, I realised I had 20 or so minutes before I needed to burst through the office doors. If I had a particularly bad bout of on-call, I'd make a point of not showing my face a minute earlier than I was obligated to. So I took a seat, removed my ThinkPad from my back pack and powered it on, removing the lid from my Berry Bircher whilst it woke from standby. Often when I was  on-call I wouldn't even bother turning off the laptop. I punched in the password and took a swig of coffee, which was always mediocre but disguised with sweet synthetics to make it bearable.

I had a quick scroll through my emails before Googling "how to get out of credit card debt," which returned all the advice you've heard before but isn't all that helpful. So I refined my search a bit, going through a series of searches including, "how to change bad habits," and "how to escape the rat race," which eventually led to a word I thought I was familiar with. Minimalism. That's that kinda pretentious sort of art, right?

I started browsing a few blogs, flicking my eyes over an article or two until I stumbled across a documentary on Netflix called Minimalism, A Documentary About the Important Things. Little did I know the changes that would follow from such as simple as a Google search. I clicked on the documentary and watched the first 5-minutes or so, before glancing at the clock. "Shit, I'm late."

~ Aedan.