My money story, starting from the bottom up and why vulnerable people are prone to spend money they shouldn't

I have felt a sense of lack throughout my life. One of the areas this translates to is money. I have more research to do in terms of how adverse childhood experiences affect our relationship to money, but one thing I do know is that, no matter how many self help books I read or however much I attempted to change my mindset, it did not work. 

ROCKY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WORLD OF WORK
For the last 25 years or so, I have bumbled along in low paid jobs, some of which I have enjoyed, some not so much. Sadly, the one time I was really starting to make some progress, I had one of my mental health episodes. At the time in 2006, I was doing what to this day was my favourite ever job, working in ISA Reconciliations. It was something I was good at, working with and reconciling figures, and there was barely any phone calls involved. 

But it was a secondment, and by the time I was well enough to come back to work, that position had already been filled by someone else, and I had to go back to my previous job. A few months later, I took the plunge and moved up north, which was a good thing, and that particular mental health episode meant my exit from Christianity, which was very much a necessary part of my life. So there were pros and cons. 

But when I moved up north, I ended up doing temporary work for a while, as well as stupidly losing an accounts job at a well known retailer due to my naivety with certain methods of communication. I take full responsibility for that. 

Eventually, after doing a variety of temporary jobs, the recession in the late 2000s hit and I ended up being out of work for just over a year during 2010 and 2011. Even by this time, I was somewhat desperate to exit office work and go into some sort of spiritual work; I knew that the work I'd been doing wasn't really me. But I didn't have any ideas of how to make it happen. 

I'd gotten into self help books a little while back, the type that tell you how to live an amazing life and make lots of money. Little did I know at that point that there is a lot more to making money and starting a business than just changing your thoughts, and I made one or two rash decisions. 

THE MOST STRESSFUL JOBS I HAD
In 2011, I applied for a job near Harrogate, a very nice town that I miss greatly.

Harrogate. Photo courtesy of Flickr

I got the job, and actually, the job that I did for the majority of my time there was easily one of my better jobs, working with numbers, sending payments and allocating money to accounts. I worked with a guy from The Gambia who I got on really well with and we worked in a very similar way. If I could pick one person to work with again, it would be him. 

But the organisation was dodgy as f**k; in the long term it was closed down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and both the two directors were suspended from practicing for three years, due to their tax avoidance schemes. There were numerous complaints from customers; ultimately I think they drew people in because of their cheap fees, but it really was a case of 'you get what you pay for'. The poor staff that worked there, some of whom were amongst the hardest working I've ever met, were overworked and underpaid. 

And for me, things got to a point where there was just too much work, I got really stressed. There wasn't any cover for when myself or Lamin was on holiday, and I remember 2 weeks which Lamin had off where I think I came in every day around 6.30 am and stayed until around 6 pm, just to keep up with things. It was too much for me, and obviously, I didn't get paid for doing the extra time. In fact, it was this organisation that taught me that going the extra mile isn't necessarily the best thing to do. Sometimes, it's good to do so, but if you do so over a period of a few weeks without any reward, then that is an issue. 

I took redundancy in March 2013, and then, after being unemployed for a few months, had a temporary job at a wholesalers a few miles outside of Leeds. I struggled with this job too, there was a lot of work, and even more crucially, I didn't enjoy the actual job and found some aspects of it really difficult. I had an excellent boss who was exceptionally good at her job, but things came to a head when I blew up in the office after a particularly stressful day, and the next day I told my boss that I wanted to leave, and did so not long after. 

I spent a month in France doing some voluntary work, had quite a traumatic experience just before I came back to the UK, and moved to Huddersfield. I was on benefits for two or three months; maybe I should have taken time off sick as I wasn't in the best mental state. Little did I know what was to unfold in my next job. 

Image courtesy of Flickr

DIRECT GOLF UK - THE WORST JOB EVER
Work stress is horrible - really, really horrible. I'd been through enough of it during the last 2 years, but this particular place was hands down the worst. It treated its suppliers disgracefully, always paying them ridiculously late, the owner was a nasty piece of work and the work itself was too much. Every day I was dreading coming into work, and was using weekends just to recover from the stress. There was one day where again I snapped after a phone call pushed me over the edge; I was so unsuited to jobs like this. My boss was not the problem, I got on reasonably well with her, nor was the finance director above her; he was a good guy who got treated like crap. I didn't particularly get on with some members of my team, but I am still friends to this day with one of the people on another team, so there was one or two positives. But the job was awful, I've never really been a golf fan but I was almost put off golf for life.
It was during this time that my brother died - in fact, on the day I found this out, I'd messaged a friend to say that I couldn't cope with this job. I took two weeks off to be with my parents and attend the funeral. When I went back, my boss threatened to put even more work on me. I didn't blame her, she was ridiculously overloaded with work herself. But I couldn't cope any more and quit not long afterwards. It was no surprise to me when Direct Golf closed down. Again, there were some very hard working and capable people there, hopefully they managed to find new jobs. 

I managed to take a bit of time out and eventually got a job in early 2016 at Hollybank Trust near Mirfield, which started off as a specialist school, and indeed still has a school operating for children with special needs, but had expanded into having 9 care homes, mostly for adults with learning disabilities. I worked as the administrator for one of the homes. I stayed there for just over a year, and then went back in September 2017 after a permanent position became available, remaining there until early 2021. 

After another mental health episode, I took up delivery driving for just over a year, and upon moving to Manchester, I had a job in an opticians for 1 and a half years. 

WANTING TO ESCAPE THE MATRIX
I've never particularly liked working for other people, and have considered myself not far off from being unemployable for a little while. I now realise just how much my undiagnosed mental health conditions have held me back in the workplace. I'd wanted a means of escape for a good while, even back as far as the late 90s/early 00s, when I thought I'd end up in some sort of full time Christian work. 

Life coaching is one industry that 
people try and get into that shouldn't.
Photo from Printerval

And then I was taking a life coach course in the late 00s. I even remember saying to an interviewer that I wanted to go into life coaching work. Not surprisingly, I didn't get that job. I thought the self help world where the likes of Tony Robbins presided, would be my next great opportunity. Even though I was basically pretty fucked up and no-one with any sense would want to take much life advice from my good self. 

Then I wanted to be some sort of holistic therapist. But all of these desires were more of a fantasy, I never knew EXACTLY what I wanted to do, and didn't have the drive to make anything happen. I even tried out Network Marketing, but never went very far with that. For most people, Network Marketing is something to be avoided in my opinion. 

One thing I am reasonably good at is writing, and I thought that maybe I would write a book about my life and it would sell a lot of copies. In the end, my mental health experiences from the last few years became too much for me to write about and I shelved that idea, although I have just started on a work of fiction which is loosely based on my life, which I intend to stick with, even if it doesn't turn out to be successful. 

Things eventually came to a head after I'd signed up for a course last year. 

THIS WAS IT: A CHANCE TO LEARN PROPERLY HOW TO SET UP A BUSINESS
At the time, I was working in the opticians, which was a minimum wage job. I couldn't see a way to improve things in the conventional work world, and I still thought I'd have something to offer from my life experiences. So I signed up to a course that had a lot of great reviews from people who'd gone on to thrive in business, and the person who runs the course is genuinely very successful and good at what she does; certainly she has a proven track record. 
We decided that life coaching and possibly running courses was the best way for me to go. I did struggle with certain aspects of the course and didn't feel quite aligned with some of the methods, but kept going for a bit; the people doing the course were very supportive. 
I even did a workshop with the woman that I'd connected with long distance; it seemed to go quite well. 

But after I went through my mental health episode this year, I realised that I'd been kidding myself that I was in any position at all to set up a life coaching business; one of my friends recently told me that he would never come to me for coaching having seen my struggles over the last few years. And to be honest, I wouldn't go to someone like myself for coaching either. 
I spent quite a bit of money on that course, and I regret it. It was ultimately just another way of me trying to escape reality and thinking I could be a success in the spiritual arena. 

Now let's talk about the money aspect of both religion and spirituality, and how vulnerable people can be exploited. 

ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD
There are some people who use religion and spirituality to exploit vulnerable people and make money from them. They promise that they can help people that are struggling. Essentially they are selling a product, just like salesmen, and many of them have testimonies of how their work has changed people's lives. 
Their work might be helpful to some, but as a general rule, I'd say if you are vulnerable and your life is a bit of a mess, your life is unlikely to be massively changed by any of the healing modalities within religious and spiritual communities. You need to try and find someone who is trauma informed, which is not easy. 
Vulnerable people are particularly prone to giving other people money when they shouldn't, because they want a solution to their problems, and it's so easy to get sucked into thinking that their lives can be changed with the help of people who are good at what they do. Now I'm not saying there isn't a place for healing modalities and services - but if you are anything like me, you've never succeeded in work and relationships and your mind has always been a bit of mess - be VERY careful of what you spend your money on. There are some really, really good people around - but quite a few people I came into contact with are snake oil salesmen. You have to be really discerning, which can be hard when you have a lot of accumulated trauma. 

This is something I'm going to put into practice now. Essentially I am starting from the bottom up, my dreams of escaping the matrix absolutely shattered. I don't particularly want to go back to office work, and I really don't know what I'm going to end up doing. For now, I am signed off sick, but that isn't what I want long term. Life is a rollercoaster.