A Certain Memory From A Rough Patch In Life Stayed With Me For The Long Haul

As you move through life, especially times of struggle and hardship, certain things stick in your mind. One of those things for me is when I was working as a telephone based mortgage broker for MoneySupermarket.com.

The UK was in the grip of a financial crisis and housing market crash and just before it happened (and it happened fast), I’d bought a house at peak value and borrowed more than the value of the house to raise money to buy 2 investment properties.

Then I split up with the girl who I did this with, followed by the mortgage industry being crushed resulting in my income dropping to a third of what it was in conjunction with the housing market crashing and my house losing about £30k.

I was trapped and I was laid off from about 3 jobs and about to fall behind on my mortgage payments and there were NO mortgage jobs anywhere… but then MoneySupermarket advertised for mortgage broker position.

About 30 people applied for the role and it was bloody miles away from where I lived (Wales) but I had to have it. It was mine or else life would come crashing down around me and also my parents. Read my full story if you want the long version.

You had to present to the rest of the candidates and interviewers, why you were the best person for the job. What. The. Fuck. This was literally the worst interview experience ever and I had so much riding on it too.

Anyway… I got it!

But it was still shitty money and would leave me about -£300 per month personal cashflow but at least I had an income. I shit you not, on the day I started there was actually a redundancy meeting and everyone did eventually get laid off.

Here’s the part that I think is burned into my brain

The type of people who rang up to enquire about mortgages from the MoneySupermarket.com website were generally higher income earners. You got a ton of calls just ringing up to talk about their mortgage options and the available deals with no intention of doing their mortgage through you so there was no shortage of people to speak to. You still ended up taking basic details though and one of those details was their income.

I remember this like it was yesterday. I was driving miles to get to the office yet couldn’t afford the petrol for the car and then I had to sit there all day, knowing after working a full month that I still wouldn’t have any money – in fact I’d owe more. I’d have to sit there day in day out taking call after call and it seemed every dam person was doing well for themselves except me.

I remember speaking to people in their early 30s earning £30k, 40k, 50k. I was in my mid twenties and was well and truly in the shit with no visible way out or any plausible way to turn my life around and it just seemed that everyone else was cruising through. Why was it so hard for me? How did I end up in this mess. If only I could just earn £30k, I’d at least have more coming in than what was going out. They all seemed like they were doing so well at such a young age and to me at that time, it seemed like I was a million miles away from achieving it.

Life’s a funny thing. You never really know how things are going to turn out. 

What happened next is I drew a line in the sand and made a decision that I was going to change my life no matter what and dig myself out of this mess. I had no other choice after all other than to crumble and drag my parents down with me.

So that’s what I did.

These people who I used to talk to on the phone who I thought were a million miles away from where I was at and who’s success I used to dream of. Well it seemed totally out of reach at the time and to anyone else looking at my situation it probably seemed a bit far fetched too…

But now I’m the same age as the people I used to speak to. I’m actually in a better position than that. I’m earning more and I achieved one of my other dreams at that time that also seemed a million miles away in that I emigrated to a dream life in Australia.

The most important and valuable thing though, is that through this horrendous experience and being forced to dig deep for unbelievable amounts of grit and determination to claw myself up and up out of the hole… I’ve learned and developed a hell of a lot more practical, mindset and character skills that I just wouldn’t have if I’d have simply cruised through some corporate ladder… so bring on the next 10 years!

One quote really resonates with me now and that is:

“Most people overestimate what they can do in a year but severely underestimate what they can do in 10 years”