Card Declined

From praying my card would go through to making £4,520 from my phone this month.

Card declined.

My stomach turned over and I felt a, now too familiar, sense of panic wash over me.

I told my kids to wait at the checkout while I ran outside of the supermarket to get some phone signal. Finally connected by the internet gods, I managed to move a little money over from one of the ‘spaces’ I had put it into in my bank account.

This was a habit I got into last year.

And the truth is, it came about because there wasn’t enough money.

There wasn’t enough to pay our bills and buy us food and I had to prioritise feeding my children, which often meant letting bills bounce and being sure to move any money I did have into a ‘space’ where it couldn’t be taken out by a direct debit I wasn’t expecting.

If I’m honest, I have spent more of my adult life worried about money, than I haven’t.

I was a single mum at just 24, and looking back now, I can see I was nowhere near in a financial position to have a baby.

With that said though, I am pretty resourceful, have a really good work ethic and a fair amount of delusional optimism, so I have always made it work… just about.

But this time last year was the worst it had been.

I was a few years out of my divorce, having sold my house and used the money to try and bail out my failing business.

It did not work.

The business failed anyway, leaving me with nothing but debt to my name.

I’d been working as a divorce coach for about a year, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I desperately needed to find a way of earning money but everything I considered, every job ad I looked at, left me with the same questions.

How can I earn the amount I need to support us, when I’m barely employable and how can I fit a full time job into the hours my children are at school?

Little did I know that I was about to discover something that would change everything.

But before I get to that, a little context is probably helpful.

I have three children. The oldest, Ethan, is 20, he’s the one who made me a mama way back in my early 20s. A happy accident that changed the course of my life and became my reason for everything.

My little ones are ‘shared’ with my ex husband. Monty, who’s 11, and Betsy, who’s 8. And I say ‘shared’ in inverted commas because they are with him every other weekend during term time. During the holidays, that arrangement stops and he has them for 6 nights. In the summer, that’s 16 nights. Split across 3 separate occasions. I’ll spare you the exact calculations, but I’m sure you can do the maths, the care of our children is not really shared.

Every school run is me. Every packed lunch is me. Every club, every play date, every day off sick…yep, all me.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that I don’t miss any of their childhoods, when I know so many women who have to give up half.

But, what it does mean is that the hours I can work are limited. Very limited.

So back to that eternal looping conversation in my own mind.

How on earth could I earn the salary of two people with working hours of barely one.

And there was another problem.

I haven’t had an employed job since my eldest was 2.

That’s 18 years of working for myself. Whilst I know a little about a lot and possess a fair amount of entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t think I am very employable. At least not in a role that would provide the salary I need.

And I know I am not alone in this problem.