I post about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

In this week’s chapter, Julia Cameron suggests something so challenging to me personally that I’m sticking it above the cut to see if it would be challenging to you too.

Media Deprivation

For one week, I ask you to experiment with turning all devices off. This still includes no reading. But it also expands to include no e-mailing, no texting, no searching the Internet. No talk radio, no TV. And yes, I can feel the protests as I type this.

I could do a week without TV. I could actually probably do no email. I would hate to go without WhatsApp since that’s where my friends (and frequently my kids) live. No podcasts would make me sad. And no reading? NO READING? I don’t think I’ve gone a week without reading since I learned to read, 50-odd years ago.

How about you? Could you manage a media-free week?

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Over the past couple of months, I’ve been writing about my family’s financial history and inherited money stories.

If you missed it, you might want to read this post - in which I learned about my nan’s 1930 arrest, aged 23, that her relatives “refused to have anything to do with her”, she’d lost her parents young, and was “of no fixed abode”.

Finding family

When my eldest son and I first met with the genealogy people at the library, they said there was someone who would be more than happy to do even more research. A few weeks later, he dropped off 120 pages of printouts and notes, in plastic folders (mostly from Woolworths, which made me smile) and fastened with treasury tags.

At the library, they talked us through the papers, which was super helpful because it was completely overwhelming - both paternal grandparents had multiple siblings, so many family members I hadn’t previously known existed.

We learned that my grandad’s grandad was named James James and he married an Elizabeth Campbell. Their son - my grandad’s father - was William Campbell James, so they gave him his mother’s surname as a middle name, which my grandparents then passed down to my dad: Harold Campbell James. I don’t know if that was unusual then. It feels like it would have been.

Also my grandad’s grandmother was called Matilda Knight, which is just a great name.

Another thing that jumped out was that my nan’s maternal grandfather died ‘at the workhouse-hospital Brownlow Hill, Liverpool.’ Oh no! I said, the workhouse. Is this my money origin story? But, no. It was the workhouse hospital, which was apparently open to anyone, and he left £716 13s 6d to his son, Benjamin. The equivalent of £78,000 today.

My nan’s maternal grandmother died just five years later, leaving £584 18s (£63,000 now) to Benjamin, who was a joiner. And apparently became a fairly well-off one.

A horrible death

Nan had told us one of her brothers had died a horrible death on the lifeboat. As I remember it, the story she told was that he’d tied a rope around his waist and the rope had become tightened and, effectively, cut him in half.

A few years ago, I emailed the local RNLI and asked if they had any more information and received this response:

George Cross was injured during a service on 18/12/19 from which he never recovered and died on 12/10/22, but it was recorded as due to that injury.

When we moved back here - actually, I just noticed, exactly 100 years after George’s death - we went to an open day at the lifeboat station and I asked again. They were very excited to look at the records and even found photographs. George is in the middle on the front row.

The library pages included a Roll of Honour from the Lifeboat Station, in memory of those lost while serving New Brighton lifeboat:

George Cross, Second Coxswain, 40 - Suffered serious kidney damage after being thrown violently across the boat, aboard the Queen, 18 December 1919, and died three years later on 12 October 1922.

Literally only as I typed this here and looked at the dates and the notes from the library did I realise that George wasn’t nan’s brother, he was her father. She was 16 when he died.

On the 1921 census, he is listed as ‘widowed’ and the family was living with his brother.

I’m typing this up in real time as I pore over these pages. When they first showed us in the library, they flicked through, highlighting certain things, but it was a lot of information and I didn’t, couldn’t, take it all in.

The one thing I couldn’t see was how Nan had been orphaned. We learned in the newspaper article about her arrest that she’d lost her parents young, but not when or how.

A couple of pages after realising George was her father, there was her mother: Mary. Died in 1916, aged 34. George and Mary had nine children, including Nellie, my nan. Three of the children died. The last one in 1916. So I assume Mary died in childbirth or shortly after. So my nan was ten when she lost her mother.

Good fortune?

She was, I suppose, lucky to have had an uncle willing and able to take the family in, particularly with so many children. But lucky feels like a strange word for a girl who lost her mother at ten and her father at sixteen.

I loved her madly, but she was tough. Sometimes mean. Now I feel like I know her a little better. I was 15 when she died. I wish I’d had her in my life for longer. But I’m glad I had her at all.

Since this is such a sad story, I’ve chosen a happy photo. My nan, Nellie Millicent Cross, is in red.

If you’re interested, you can read more about my family history on my author Substack, here:

Have you learned about your own family financial history? I’d love to know.

Leave a comment

You might also like…

…this post in my Decades series - an interview with Marion, 93, about her financial life.

And this post from Rachel Lipson at The Purse

Share Good Fortune

I post about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

I know this quote is everywhere now but I’ve always loved it. The first part used to be the tagline on my blog.

(Before I changed it to “Almost as sweet as a regular-sized person” from Will & Grace. I’m 4’11”.)

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Thank you so much for the lovely response to last week’s relaunch. I was very nervous to post, but I needn’t have been. I should have known!

A subscriber did tell me that the name change sent my email to spam and then I noticed my own emails had gone to spam, so check yours just in case. But if that’s the case, you probably won’t see this. That is a conundrum.

No update from me this week - I have a bit more family financial history to share but a LOT of papers to go through to find it and I haven’t had a chance and then after that, I’m going to be writing about how I ended up doing a paper round in my fifties and why I love it so much.

The money interview with Anna Brones (featuring some of Anna’s beautiful work).

Anna Brones is a writer, artist, and educator based in the Pacific Northwest.

She works as a papercut artist, hand cutting illustrations from single pieces of paper, and is the author of several books including Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break.

She also produces Creative Fuel, a newsletter devoted to exploring the intersection of creativity and our everyday lives, and leads art and creativity workshops.

She is currently working on her next book Cold: Lessons of Place, Presence, and Practice (Knopf, 2027).

What is your relationship with money currently?

Up and down. I’ve been self-employed since 2013, and despite having made it work for over a decade, there is the constant underlying question “how do I make money as a creative?”

I’ve always had a mix of income streams, which is the only way that I know how to make a creative business work. My main ones right now are online shop sales and wholesale, newsletter, and the book advance for the book that I am currently working on.

I’ve been working on this book since 2024 and I’m so thankful that it was a significant advance—I was shocked when the offer came in. I calculated out how long it would take me to write the book (I figured 18 months, I’ve now been working on it for 25… but who’s counting) and then calculated how much that would be monthly.

Paired with my newsletter and shop income, it was the first time in my life that I was able to have a regular income and didn’t need to worry about scrambling together an assortment of projects.

Since those installments come in four chunks, I am kind of scraping the barrel right now so it will be really nice when this manuscript is finalized and the next part comes in.

As writers and artists, society tells us that we shouldn’t expect much—the “starving artist” trope just continues to stick around.

Even if we don’t believe that message, it’s really easy to internalize. This can even lead to feeling shame when you’re adequately paid for the work you’re doing.

At the end of the day, most writers I know just want enough money to be able to write the next book, and most artists want enough money to keep making the work they love making.

But why do we feel we aren’t allowed to have incomes that allow for comfortable lifestyles?

While the need to make money can be a creative constraint just like a tight deadline, the stress of feeling like you’re constantly on the edge does not make for good work. Creative work is not better because someone suffered to bring it to life.

Back to my own business: I am proud of what I have built and I have worked really hard to get it to a place where it at least feels semi-stable.

I am also the primary income earner in my household, so this adds an extra level of stress, and both my husband and I work for ourselves. There’s not a fulltime salary or benefits in our household to fall back on.

Living in the US, healthcare and health savings are always at the back of my mind, a kind of low grade stress that never really goes away—there’s a constant voice in my head that says “what if something happens to you?”

I do have enough money for indulgences—I buy the nice cheese! I spend a silly amount on coffee beans! I go on international trips!—but I also feel entirely behind on some of the signs of “success” that are common in my age group.

I am 42 and don’t own a house. I moved back to the area where I grew up, and it feels almost impossible to be able to afford anything around here.

I can tell myself all day long that money doesn’t define someone’s worth as a person, and yet I can easily spiral when I compare myself to my friends or think about what the future looks like.

When you work for yourself, it’s easy for a scarcity mindset to be your baseline. Even in the moments when you’re doing well. You never know when the rug will be pulled out from underneath you. You are constantly thinking “this could change at any moment.” I have come to know that feeling well, and I’m ok managing it, but it’s certainly not for everyone.

On the other hand, working for myself also means that I have a fairly slow, quiet life that I get to live on my terms. I don’t have to show up at an office, I don’t have to use Slack. I can take the afternoon off if I want to. I’m not willing to give that up.

What’s your earliest money memory?

One time at the grocery store when I was maybe 6 or 7, I was put in charge of paying. It wasn’t my money, I think my mom had just given me the right amount and was letting me pay so that I could learn what that felt like.

When I handed over the money to the woman working at the checkout, I got very confused because I did not get any money back. I did not understand the concept of “change” yet. I just thought that when you bought groceries, you were also given some money!

What advice would you give your younger self about money?

Sell out and go corporate at a young age so you build some wealth and then bail to become an artist and writer!

Kidding, kidding.

But there is a part of me that wishes that I had worked a more significant “real” job earlier in my life to build a little more of a financial buffer.

I would also tell my younger self to learn more about personal finance and develop financial literacy. I think if I had paid a little more attention when I was younger, I would have saved a little bit more. Compound interest!

That’s easy to say, but I also can’t imagine having gotten to where I currently am professionally without doing all the fun things I did in my 20s and early 30s and I wouldn’t give any of those experiences up.

Money has never been my primary focus, interest, desire, or way that I define success. That being said, I think that we do ourselves such a disservice when we say “I’m bad with money!” Particularly those of us in creative fields.

Instead of getting down on ourselves, we should be asking why as a culture we don’t value creative labor.

The monetary system that we function in wasn’t made for us. It’s no surprise that it continually feels so difficult.

I just finished reading a book called Cults Like Us, and in the context of billionaires with mass wealth and power, the author wrote about using the term “taking money” instead of “making money.” I appreciate that framing and am trying to employ it more.

A lot of us are trying to scramble for scraps, and feel a lot of shame around money and putting a financial value on our work. Meanwhile other people are exploiting workers, ruining the planet, and buying mega yachts, and their fifth home. We need a mass, systemic overhaul.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

I’ve never made any big purchases I regret, but looking back, I do wish that I had been more diligent about putting small amounts aside in a savings or investment account.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?

Boring answer: our car was totaled a few years ago, and we decided that we would switch to an EV. It was the first time in my life I had a car loan, and it felt like such a big investment at the time. I am thankful for that car every single day now, particularly now as petrol prices skyrocket.

Fun answer: every single trip I’ve ever been on.

How are you planning for retirement?

I have never worked a job with benefits, which means that I have never worked a job that offered 401ks or any kind of matching program. This is one of the real drawbacks of working for yourself.

When I started my first business in my early 20s, I had an acquaintance who was a financial planner. He encouraged me to start a Roth IRA1 and I am glad that he did. For many years I just put what I could in it, but now I put enough in every month so that it maxes out every year. That acquaintance ended up being a real jerk, but at least I got a retirement account out of it.

Now I have a financial planner who lives locally, and my favorite thing about him is that he never makes me feel any guilt or shame about where I am at.

I know a lot of people would say that if you can manage your investments on your own, you don’t need a financial planner. But that’s not something I am interested in doing, so it’s either have a financial planner or do nothing. He encouraged me to open a SEP IRA2 two years ago, and if my business makes extra money I try to put it in there.

This all feels good, particularly as a self-employed writer and artist, but then sometimes when I read about how much someone has in their savings account in The Purse’s Home Economics newsletter it all feels laughable. I’m not going to change things overnight though, so I just plug along and do what I can. I think this is what most of us are doing.

I don’t really do any detailed long-term retirement calculations, it’s definitely a little bit of “do what you can and hope for the best.”

I do wonder what retirement is going to look like for my generation. There is so much uncertainty, so in many ways, I think there isn’t a way that you can actually plan.

I would hope that in my later years I have enough to be able to feel a relative level of quiet and calm. I don’t want to feel chronic anxiety of waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me.

In an ideal world, I would love to have enough to work on the projects that I want to but not have them have the pressure of making money, be in my garden, drink coffee, buy the occasional extravagant ingredients to make meals for friends, go on a trip or two.

What would you do with £10,000 (or local equivalent)?

My husband has been building me a studio on my parents’ property and it’s functional and usable but still needs an assortment of things to be fully completed. I would put it towards getting that finished.

When I finished drafting the answers to all of these questions, I sent them a close friend to proofread (another essential thing you need if you work for yourself: people you trust to weigh in on your work), and she texted back, “Excuse me that $10,000 is for our trip to Paris.” I guess that’s settled then!

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

This time of year, my favorite little luxury is going to the local nursery and buying a plant. An immediate mood booster!

I just bought a couple of marigolds the other day for this exact purpose. Then you plant them and extend that mood boost for months.

If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?

Whenever I talk to friends, there is often so much shame wrapped up with money.

We feel bad about what we have and haven’t done, we feel shame about the number in our bank accounts, we feel shame for not having spent enough, and we even feel shame when we have more money to spend.

Where does that come from? How do we manage it? I would be curious to learn how different women manage their own money shame and work through it.

Thank you, Anna!

Leave a comment

Creative Fuel with Anna Brones

A weekly newsletter about the intersection of creativity, art, and everyday life.

I post about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

I am terrible at allowing events to unfurl. I am working on it.

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For almost five years, this has been a Substack about women and money.

Particularly money at midlife. What we thought life would look like by now, how we ended up where we are, and what we might want instead.

But one of the things I’ve come to understand, over the hundreds of posts and interviews, is that money isn’t separate from the rest of your life. It’s tangled up with everything: work, relationships, ambition, shame, security, freedom, grief, hope.

In 2023, I started a second Substack that was intended to be my author newsletter. Instead, it became a place where I wrote about writing; pop culture; our experience of fostering (and adopting) cats; the suitcase of memorabilia we found after my parents died; and whatever else was on my mind.

Without really meaning to, I found myself circling the same themes in both newsletters.

Because really, it all comes down to the same questions:

How do we live now?

What does “enough” mean?

What makes a good life?

Plus my boys are growing up and branching out into their own lives, so my life is going to change dramatically.

So, from today - my 55th birthday - The Ladybird Purse is becoming

Good Fortune

Don’t worry if you’re a long-time subscriber (or, for that matter, a new subscriber) I’ll still be writing about money - about my own financial situation and attempts to improve it - and I’ll still be interviewing women about their financial lives, I just want to make room for the other things I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about:

love, loss, books, family history, pop culture, ageing, creativity, cats

and the startling realisation that you are no longer young

and you never will be again

Why Good Fortune?

Because, in some obvious ways, I don’t particularly feel lucky. I’m not where I thought I’d be in several areas of my life.

I lost my parents much sooner than I expected to.

(If I die at the same age my mum did - there’s no reason I should, but still - I’ve only got six years left.)

My writing career of sixteen years feels stalled and uncertain.

Despite thinking that writing publicly about money would (magically?) fix my finances, I still have debt, no savings, no security.

And yet.

I really love my life.

Waking up at 5am to find Noodles asleep across my legs.

Morning coffee in bed with a book.

Catching the sunset on the prom after the cinema with my boys.

Dancing in the kitchen while I cook dinner.

"Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives."

I always thought I wanted a big life, but it turns out I don’t, not really. There’s a Barry Manilow song I love called Sweet Life. That’s what I want. And that’s what I’m lucky enough to have.

So this is me, at 55, thinking about how the next however many years might go...

Money, midlife, mortality…

and feeling lucky anyway.

If you’re somewhere in the messy middle of your life, and things don’t feel as clear or as sorted as you thought they might, you’re very welcome here.

Hi.

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P.S. It’s probably going to take me a while to change all the mentions of The Ladybird Purse everywhere. Please bear with!

If you missed the book club announcement post, start here →

I post about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

Read more

The last couple of weeks I’ve been writing about my family’s financial history and inherited money stories. This was inspired by something I learned recently about my dad’s mum, my nan, Nellie.

My sister, aunt and I had tried to find her online a few times, but never could. We weren’t even confident of her name - Nellie was most likely short for something, but what? Helen? Ellen? Eleanor? The only thing we knew was that she had a bunch of brothers, at least two of whom were on the lifeboats, and that they were a “notorious” New Brighton family.

Every Friday, there’s a free genealogy session at the local library, so my 21yo and I went along and told them I’d never been able to find anything about my nan. Maybe three minutes later, they found her on the 1911 census. Not long after that, one of the volunteers slid her iPad across the table to show me this:

At first, I laughed out loud. My sister and I had joked that the reason we couldn’t find Nan online was that she was a fugitive, maybe in witness protection. But then I read the article.

The condescension of “I hope you will be a better girl from now on…” and referring to her as “the girl” through the rest of the article.

That her relatives “refused to have anything to do with her”, she’d lost her parents young, she was “of no fixed abode”.

She was 23. My little nan.

I cried.

(“I knew you’d cry!” my 21yo said.)

Later, the same volunteer pointed out that there was fewer than nine months between my grandparents’ wedding and my aunt’s date of birth, but it wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realised the pregnancy and wedding were in the year after the arrest.

I can only assume she got pregnant on purpose, knowing - or hoping - that marriage and safety would follow.

My grandad was lovely. She was horrible to him. At first I thought surely she must have been grateful to have been rescued? But maybe she felt trapped by the very thing that saved her. Maybe he was her only option, and she resented him for that? I can understand that.

Or maybe none of it happened this way. Maybe they were happy and in love at the start. Before my dad was born. Before the war. Maybe it was only later that things changed between them. By the time I knew them, they’d been married for forty years.

I do know one thing: if she hadn’t stolen those bangles, I wouldn’t exist.

More next week.

In the meantime, if you’re interested, you can read more about my family history on my author Substack, here:

Have you learned about your own family financial history? I’d love to know.

Leave a comment

If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Along with four years of archive posts, paid subscribers can access The Ladybird Purse book club.

We’re reading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron and you can get 25% off your paid subscription via this link:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

Following up with Suw Charman-Anderson

This week, rather than a normal interview, I’m sharing a follow up interview with Suw Charman-Anderson. Usually, follow up posts are for paid subscribers, but since the book club is happening on Thursdays, I thought I’d share one with everyone.

I first interviewed Suw two years ago and you can read that interview here:

Suw Charman-Anderson recently launched Ymestyn, a program of structured practice for intermediate Welsh learners which helps them expand their vocabulary and memorise important grammatical concepts.

Suw is also the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). She is currently researching and writing a report on the barriers to gender equality in the workplace and how we can overcome them.

She writes two newsletters on Substack: Word Count, a compilation of interesting stuff to do with writing, reading, TV and film; and the Ada Lovelace Day newsletter, which is currently focused on her gender equality work.

What has surprised you the most about your financial journey over the past two years?

Although I’m no stranger to financial struggles, I’ve never had a year as bad as last year. It was truly appalling.

In the summer of 2024, after my first Ladybird Purse interview, I started to worry that I might not raise enough sponsorship revenue to continue running Ada Lovelace Day, my event for women in STEM. I did some research, found that almost all my sponsors were not planning to continue and that other companies in the tech industry were pulling their horns in, so I made the difficult decision to close the event.

I had made the assumption, years ago, that whenever ALD did come to an end, I’d have a high enough profile that people would want to work with me. That turned out not to be true. At all.

Then I worked with a couple of friends on spinning up a new consulting business, but that turned out to be more challenging than any of us had anticipated. I’ve done consulting before, and really enjoyed it, so perhaps got a bit overexcited about the project. But although we spent a lot of time developing webinars and having conversations with potential clients, none of our leads came good. With the economy as it was, and is, I really struggled to know what to do next.

I have pivoted several times during the last 18 months, but am hoping that I have now created a business that I can build into something financially self-sustaining.

But, despite the fact that my deepest financial fears came true, with the help of my husband and friends, I have weathered the storm in relatively good spirits (even if my savings are gone and my credit card is creaking).

Friends had been talking about ‘survive to 25’, which morphed into ‘exist til 26’. I don’t know if 27 will be heaven, but we can hope!

What’s one financial decision you’re especially proud of from the last few years?

I started paying National Insurance. As I mentioned last time, when I started my business over 25 years ago, my accountant advised me not to pay NI or income tax, but instead to take money out of my business as dividends. That means I’ve got very little in the way of NI contributions. When it was possible to buy missed years, I didn’t have the money to do so. I’m not sure if I can make up all the years, but I am at least now paying some NI.

Is there a money story from your past that you see differently now?

I still struggle with financial ambition, but I realise now how important it is to prioritise earning a good living. I have always put autonomy and exciting experiences ahead of money, largely because it felt like wanting money was somehow dishonourable. I realise now that I often made excuses to myself for my low income and avoided thinking about money because I felt ashamed about how little I earnt.

Worse, when I was in my 20s, I had no idea what ‘good money’ even looked like – I once had a temping job paying £12.50 per hour which was, in the mid-90s, a pretty good hourly rate. That employer begged me to stay, but when my contract was up, I left. I had no idea that I was on to a good thing, no idea at all. I still wonder what would have become of me had I stayed in that job.

The last 18 months has seen me hit rock bottom, financially, but in terms of my financial ambition, I am finally getting to grips with the idea that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be paid a fair wage.

What would “financial freedom” look or feel like to you right now?

I’m working hard on developing my own “basic income” – recurring subscription payments that create a slowly increasing minimum revenue below which I won’t fall. Once that gets to a reasonable level, I can relax a little.

The project is called Ymestyn and it’s a program of structured practice for intermediate Welsh learners which I launched two months ago. I’ve been learning Welsh since 1998, and, ironically, it was an attempt to support Welsh learners online in the early 2000s that ended with me being deeply in debt. Looking back, I was just too early!

Now, my Welsh is better, there’s a good online payments infrastructure, and I’ve been able to build out a program using existing tools. I’ve had some lovely feedback about the content, so the next challenge is marketing. I love the work, the business plan is eminently doable, so I’m feeling hopeful about my future for the first time in years.

What would you say to the version of yourself who did the first interview?

You can’t go back. The work you did 15 years ago, before Ada Lovelace Day, is not available now. The world is different. You are different. You need to look forward and not try to recreate your past just because it feels comfortable.

Also, people might talk a good talk, but if they don’t have any budget then there’s no point talking. Don’t let them waste your time.

(That said, I’m not sure how I would have come up with Ymestyn two years ago, or even a year ago. Sometimes, you have to walk round in circles for a bit until you get a different perspective on the world.)

If you could write a money memo to your future self two years from now, what would it say?

Remember what you have survived. Whatever has happened over the last two years, you are strong, you are smart, you have good people around you, and you are much more resilient than you think.

Is there a money lesson you’ve learned that you wish more women knew?

A lot of the money advice I got when I was younger was predicated on the idea that I’d get married and have a husband to look after me. I really didn’t appreciate at the time just how sexist the advice I was getting was, or that it was leading me to make some really bad decisions.

Other people’s assumptions, 25 years ago, about how the world worked bore no resemblance to how the world actually worked then, or how it works now. And it’s taken me a while to realise that.

But the thing is, that’s not my fault, and all I can do now is the best I can.

And part of that is viewing financial decisions through the lens of “Would I be doing this if I was a man?” If the answer is no, then it’s time to think hard about what I’m doing and why.

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Read more follow ups here.

If you missed the book club announcement post, start here →

I post about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

Read more

Let’s gloss right over my current money situation…

…and take another look at my family’s financial history.

A few years ago, my Aunty Barb wrote down some of her life story to share with the family. It wasn’t specifically about money, but money runs through it all the same.

We never felt afraid during the war…

To my age group, it was kind of exciting. Our parents felt it though. All our parents found money very tight and even though they had coupons for things, they had no money to buy.

One of the things my mum did was to exchange coupons for goods on Magazine Brow opposite the Pilot Boat Pub. A big house, my mum began to talk to the lady who lived there and coupons came into the conversation. She had two girls, one a bit older than me and one a bit older than Mo [her sister; my mum], so the solution was that my mum gave her the coupons we couldn’t use in exchange for clothes the girls had grown out of. This was great, Mo and I got some nice things.

We did something similar with sweet coupons and sugar. We would save some sugar each month and get the bus to Exmouth Street in Birkenhead where there was a little homemade sweet shop. We would give our sugar, coupons and money and get sweets, not a lot, but just enough.

I never had toothpaste or a brush when I was growing up, we had salt on the end of a flannel. When I started work at the age of 14, the first thing I bought with my money was a tin of toothpaste and a brush. It was in a round and flattish tin, pink and solid, but it tasted better than salt. I am 84 and haven’t had a filling in ten years and I still have all of my own teeth.1

Another goody we had for free was from the USA. We took an empty (clean) jam jar to a shop in Liscard called May Pole. We would show the children’s ration books and the assistant would fill it with peanut butter. We had never heard of it but we loved it (still do).

One other goody - from Canada this time - a food parcel at school. They usually had a tin of streaky bacon (that was yummy), a tin of spam, a tin of egg powder and a bar of chocolate. Each parcel had the name of the sender and we would write a thank you letter and they would be sent to an address in Canada.

The bacon was gorgeous, crispy, we hadn’t had streaky bacon like that before, the Americans and the Canadians sent them to us (years later when we went to the USA and Canada, we tried every shop that we could, but it must have just been a wartime way of preserving the bacon).

We children were never hungry, we would go on a Saturday night to our local veg shop. No-one had a fridge, so veg left on a Saturday night to Monday morning would be bad, so the shops used to sell perishables off. I would take my Mum’s big shopping bag and say “6 penny worth of fades please.” The shop owner, Norman Flowerday, would take my bag and fill it. (There would be carrot, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, onions and sometimes apples. If it was autumn, there would be plums, damsons, all sorts).

My mum would have gone to the butcher for a large marrow bone, the butcher would chop it into 3. Upon returning home, it would be put into a very large pan to boil, then simmer. When there was a hole all the way through the middle, the bone would be discarded and the pan put somewhere cold to set the next day, usually Sunday. The marrow out of the bone would be transferred to a basin and the residue in the pan skimmed and then all the veg and marrow put in with an Oxo cube, seasoned and stewed.

The scouse would do us for Sunday lunch and Monday dinner, so for 6p two meals full of goodness for four people. If there were apples or any fruit, it would be pie and custard for pudding.

Mo and I never had a birthday party. Mum would make a cake and just the family would sing Happy Birthday. We never got presents, Mum never had enough money.

Because Dad had an illness, he lost a lot of work. Usually as winter arrived, he would become ill. When he was ill, he couldn’t go up to bed, he couldn’t leave the warm room with the fire, so he would sleep on an old mattress on the floor. We only ever had one fire lit, so the rest of the house was freezing. We would have everything we could find on top of us in bed. When we woke up, there would be ice on the inside of the windows.2

Coal was rationed, we could have bought more, but Mum never had enough money. One of neighbours had an old, deep pram. Mum and I used to walk down to the Docks with it - I think it’s about 3 miles - and we would go to the gas works and shovel coke (used coal) into the pram. It was a waste product so was free for collection. Then we would push it home again.

I was of an age when being poor was embarrassing, even though most were poor. I used to want to walk down the side streets, but that was impossible. It would have made the journey even longer so we didn’t. Mum would stack the coke on the fire and it used to stay lit all night for my Dad. There were no benefits in the 40s, we had to go to Ogdens and ask for money. I felt so sorry for my Mum. She always got some because my dad was disabled from the job.

There was no NHS, you had to pay a doctor to see you and pay for prescriptions. My dad had to have an inhaler and brown liquid to put in it. They had to pay for it so he never used the correct dose so as to make it last longer.

I went to work straight from school aged 14 (in 1947) in a Drapers shop (Millars) on King Street. I received £1.10 shillings (50p) per week. I gave my Mum £1 and kept 50p for myself. I also got 1% commission each month on sales that I kept for clothes and fun. I rode to work on my bike so as not to pay bus fares.

I’m so grateful my aunt wrote these memories down before Alzheimer’s took them from her.

Such ordinary experiences, but incredible for me to think know this is how my mum, aunt and grandparents lived, what they went through. Hardship, resilience, embarrassment, resourcefulness and so much love.

More next week.

In the meantime, if you’re interested, you can read more about my family history on my author Substack, here:

How much do you know about your own family financial history?

Did/do you talk to your parents/grandparents about money?

Leave a comment

If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Along with four years of archive posts, paid subscribers can access The Ladybird Purse book club.

We’re reading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron and you can get 25% off your paid subscription via this link:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

The money interview with Ana V. Ramirez

Ana V. Ramirez is a Venezuelan visual artist working in Richland, Washington. Her latest work is driven by her love of houses coupled with the frustrations of the current housing market. She expresses these feelings by combining her photography and other elements into meditative mixed media collages. Ana writes about the realities of being an artist and the stories and experiences that influence her art.

Photographs and Stories

Making photographs, exploring what it means to be an artist, and inspiring others to follow their creative dreams.

By Ana V. Ramirez

What is your relationship with money currently?

For a while things were comfortable and I had finally come to a place where I was at ease with my finances. I had a corporate job that paid well so I got used to having a steady paycheck and knowing how much money I would make every month. I had some disposable income which allowed me to travel, and to put money in my retirement account. I made money selling my art but I didn’t have to rely on that.

That comfort came at a price, though. It was crushing my soul.

In January I got the dreaded call where they told me my job had been eliminated. I didn’t like the job… but I liked the predictable income.

Now my relationship with money is anxious and tense. I am feeling the sadly familiar pressure of uncertainty. The moment I start to think about money (which is often) I feel scared and I get a knot in my stomach. There are so many unknowns—and the current economic climate isn’t helping.

Health insurance (or lack thereof) is one of the things that causes me the most anxiety. Not being insured is dangerous—one serious illness could leave me with nothing. But insurance is also very expensive. I’m going to have to choose the stress of spending the money over the stress of the potential cost of being sick. It’s the lesser of the two evils.

Right now things are okay. I have savings (the job change wasn’t entirely unexpected) and I am collecting unemployment benefits. That means that for the immediate future I’m safe.

I keep reading how relying on myself is better than relying on, and working for, someone else. But can I really make enough on my own? Will local markets, art sales, and teaching be enough?

I’ve done the math and it’s possible. And wouldn’t that be amazing? To be able to say “I did it!” would make me so proud. This change could be the catalyst that gets me where I want to be.

What’s your earliest money memory?

When I was eight years old, my parents separated and my mom and I moved to the US. In order to do that, everything we owned was put up for sale. I remember being in our house and seeing strangers put prices on everything. As a kid I didn’t quite understand what was happening or why.

Fast forward to adult me, every time I have moved and had to sell/give away a lot of stuff it brings up feelings of insecurity and loss.

What advice would you give your younger self about money?

Spend less on things and more on activities.

My mom died when she was only 70 and I wish I had spent more quality time with her. Money is much better spent on experiences with loved ones than on clothes and shoes.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

Selling the apartment I had in 2005. It was the middle of the real estate boom and it sold in a day for a lot more money than I paid for it. But I didn’t buy another place at the time because I had moved to California and the prices there were way too high.

The money slowly vanished and I’ve never been able to buy another place since.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?

Travel. My first trip to Scotland was amazing. I got to see some of the Scottish Highlands and I even made it to Shetland!

My second trip to Scotland was to the Isle of Harris and it sparked my creativity like nothing else.

Locally I’ve traveled to several national parks and the Washington and Oregon coasts with my dog.

Every trip I have taken has inspired me and improved my outlook on life. I’ve never regretted any of them.

How are you planning for retirement?

I just started my retirement account in 2022 so there’s not much in it. Before that I didn’t have the extra income to do it.

Now that I am self-employed/between jobs I’ve had to pause the deposits but the money will stay there and earn interest in the meantime.

Before I feel comfortable adding to my retirement account again I have to be able to afford the basics and health insurance. Saving for retirement is a future me problem.

What would you do with £10,000 (or local equivalent)?

Oh that would be fun! First, I would book a week stay at an ocean-front hotel with my dog. The last time we did that was last summer and it’s always great.

Then I would use the rest to pay down my car loan. I hate having car payments and paying off my car sooner would be such a relief.

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

A couple of fancy cupcakes from a local bakery. And I would eat them both!

If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?

I would love to hear the stories of middle-class women making it work on their own. How do you do it? And how do you stay positive during the challenging times?

See more of Ana’s work on her Instagram.

Learn more about her latest work here

Photographs and Stories

A deeper story

In my last post I shared a hint of a new project I’m working on: Paper Houses. There have been times in my life where making something has helped to heal my heart. Where the act of creating finds an outlet for my grief. This project is one of those times…

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a year ago · 31 likes · 27 comments · Ana V. Ramirez

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Share The Ladybird Purse • Talk Money to Me

If you missed the book club announcement post, start here →

I post about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

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A couple of nights ago, I had a dream about a fish. It was in a tank, or at least behind glass, and it seemed to be desperately trying to get my attention. It was vivid and weird enough that when I woke up, I googled ‘fish dream meaning’.

Apparently, dreaming about fish generally symbolises ‘abundance, prosperity, personal growth, and emotional depth.’ Good to know! ‘Large fish can represent significant opportunities or big ambitions.’ Nice.

(“May also be a sign of pregnancy.” Good luck with that one!)

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been writing about and sharing family history memorabilia on my author Substack, here:

But I thought I’d share some of the money stuff here too. Starting with my mum’s parents.

My maternal grandparents, Winifred and Eric, 1930

Eric, my grandad, had bronchial asthma from working in a tobacco factory - as my aunt points out in a short memoir she wrote, they didn’t have masks in the thirties - and was often too ill to work, so Winifred made extra money by taking in boarders during the summer.

New Brighton was a thriving resort back then and I think they were always booked and busy. They only had a small terraced house with, I think, two bedrooms and a box room, so during the summer months, my mum had to give up her bedroom and sleep in the cupboard under the stairs.

One of the items in the suitcase my sister found after our dad died was my grandmother’s guest book.

Everyone talks about how at home they felt and how my grandmother managed to make sure wonderful meals even while they still had rationing.

More next week…

How much do you know about your own family financial history? It’s not something I’d thought much about until recently. At least not beyond my parents.

Leave a comment

If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Along with four years of archive posts, paid subscribers can access The Ladybird Purse book club.

We’re reading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron and you can get 25% off your paid subscription via this link:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

The money interview with Katie Lee

Katie writes the Aldhill Mystery series as KJ Lyttleton and the Maz Star comedy sci-fi series as Katie J Lee.

She started life as a bookworm and nerd before becoming a tech journalist and web 2.0 entrepreneur. She once went undercover on the X-Factor for Marie Claire magazine, got electrocuted on YouTube, and made the Queen giggle at the launch of the royal website (but not all on the same day).

She has been selected as a finalist for the BAFTA Rocliffe writing award once and shortlisted twice. She was shortlisted for the Funny Women screenwriting award and won Best Drama Short at the Berlin Flash Film Festival.

She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her husband (children’s author-illustrator Alex Milway), two daughters and a miniature schnauzer.

What is your relationship with money currently?

Currently thinking about money makes me want to perch on the edge of the bath whilst gulping in air. I go through phases of feeling very secure and flush and during that time I’m all magnanimous and “I’ll pay,” about everything. But when I don’t have a fixed contract for work – like now – I start to feel like we’re all going to be out on the street by the end of next month.

I don’t want to get carried away, but I think this might have something to do with the fact that my mother was constantly saying that all through my childhood.

I always think I’d be richer if I’d just been a bit bolder about risk and debt. But my reaction to feeling skint is to just stop spending money and hope for the best. Somewhere out there is a highly detailed budget spreadsheet wondering what it did wrong. But when you’re freelance, laying out your annual outgoings against your current monthly projected earnings is the best way to give yourself a stomach ache.

Despite being incredibly cautious with money, I’ve always bought us houses we can’t really afford. My logic has always been, the bigger the house, the more space for lodgers, and it’s worked so far! We’ve only ever had one nightmare with a lodger. She was called Elvira from Transylvania (honestly). Maybe one day I’ll write a Substack about her.

What’s your earliest money memory?

All my early money memories involve abject terror – see above about being “out on the street” – apple turnovers and the devil.

My dad used to take us to a bakery in Oswestry and he’d offer to buy us something. I would ask for an apple turnover and then feel a horrified pang that this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back and we’d be living rough tomorrow. I was like that with anything they bought me, but the apple turnover day really stayed with me.

Despite the fact that my parents were always talking about how the “business was going to go under” and my mother was constantly shuffling credit cards, my closest sister and I were sent to private school (the only two of six children. It’s a long story). I had a scholarship and a bursary, but my parents could never afford what was left to pay. My mother used to say things like “I’ll sell my soul to the devil to keep you in that school.” (As you’ll have gathered, she has a flair for the theatrical statement.)

I have a lot of horrible memories involving money at that time. I once had to go into Oswestry with my sister and the school secretary where we cashed in some insurance policies (or something – I never really understood what) and then paid our own school fees. The secretary was really snooty about it and I felt like dirt. Both of my adult sisters each paid a term of fees and I found out many years later that one of my teachers had actually paid a term too. I was so ashamed. The principal once told my father (who was struggling with heart disease at this point and having a lot of stress-related angina) he would stand in the driveway to stop me returning. (Looking back, I can’t believe my dad told me about that. They certainly didn’t cushion me from worries!)

Eventually, my dad said I’d have to leave the school. A friend had told me about a charity that paid her school fees so I forced my dad to apply to a few (he didn’t like the idea of taking charity, which was ironic given he let the Latin teacher cough up his own cash), and one of them agreed to cover the last of my fees. Suddenly I could go on school trips and not worry about things. It was amazing.

I should say, through all this, my friends never treated me any differently. I went to a lovely school. Admittedly, some of the parents were snobs about the fact we lived on an estate, but only the nouveau riche types who were insecure about their own status. Despite the lovely friends, I still came out with a huge chip on my shoulder.

What advice would you give your younger self about money?

Teenage me, I’d probably say, stop freaking out that you’ll be bullied for being posh if you have to go to state school. You won’t be! Looking back I think I’d have loved it. I met my husband when I was a teenager and he went to one of those local state schools. I’d have had a ball – and been so much less stressed about money.

Twenties me, I’d say stop worrying, you’re minted! I’d tell myself to get a bigger flat and stretch myself on the mortgage while borrowing was so cheap and my income was decent. I’d probably say start a pension because you’re going to spend all those ISAs you’ve so sensibly saved.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

Here are the boring answers: I could have been cannier about investing in rental property and all that sort of business, but I just felt weird about earning money by taking it off young people (lodgers notwithstanding). I probably shouldn’t have bought my current massive seaside money pit thinking it was all finished and in good shape. But it’s an amazing house and I love it.

All my major mistakes were in my twenties when I co-founded a web publishing business. I was 25 and my two business partners were men nearing forty. They insisted on paying themselves £40k to my £17k because they said they had families to support. Loads of my staff were being paid more than me for a long time too. I took on extra freelance work to make up the difference and ended up with an infection in my lymph nodes. I thought I had cancer!

I also agreed to take a smaller share in another business we started. Shortly after, when our investment company wanted to give me shares in a third business in return for being a consultant, my partners told me it was “all for one and one for all” and I’d have to split my shares with them. Unbelievable. In the end, the VCs decided not to bring me in.

The final big mistake was when I quit my board position because my partners and the board refused to agree to a sale that would have saved some people’s jobs. I should have paid more attention after I quit because when my partners eventually put the business into administration, they used our other company to buy it out of receivership without telling me.

I ended up with a smaller share in my own company, a lot of bad press specifically aimed at me (despite not having been there for about 6 months), and, in the biggest slap in the face, a share of the overdraft debt to pay back. I was buying a house at the time and nearly six months pregnant and getting dragged on Twitter. It was not fun.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?

An ancient woodland in Kent. Hanging around with VCs and older people in my twenties meant seeing a lot of people buying second homes. I thought that wasn’t really for me. A place to go and camp whenever I felt like it, or somewhere to wander around when I was feeling miserable in London was far more up my street.

We’ve had it for about twenty years and it’s slowly transformed from a dormant, badly managed woodland to a beautiful working coppice with wildflowers and glades and critters in every corner. I love spotting a weasel or a lizard skittering between the log piles. Magic.

How are you planning for retirement?

I always thought my husband – children’s author-illustrator Alex Milway – would be our pension plan. He didn’t earn much but I figured he would in future. But although he’s sold over 500,000 copies of his Hotel Flamingo series, we still don’t get reliable royalties. So now I’m praying the massive money pit sees us right when we downsize. Either that, or we’ll be turning this place into a tumbledown seaside boarding house. It used to be one back in the old days.

I’m also writing books myself in a vain attempt to earn more, but I’m too slow at writing.

What would you do with £10,000?

The sad answer is I’d probably just hoard it and feel happy knowing I had a 10k buffer in my account in case things go tits up. I have had some really stomach churning years where my income drops to almost nothing and I lie awake worrying about how to pay the mortgage. One time Alex said to me, “What’s money for if it’s not for spending?” and I was absolutely flummoxed. It hadn’t occurred to me that money was to be spent on enjoying life.

If you forced me to spend it on something I’d get the cabin fixed up at the woodland and maybe buy a second hand campervan. We had to sell ours when we had a lean year. We lived off the £5000 of £50 notes we got for it for months. I hid them in the wardrobe. I’d just had a baby and was probably a bit insane.

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

Either a book or a curry. Those are two of my favourite treats.

If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?

I’m fascinated by other people’s finances. I wish it was OK to just ask for a glimpse of people’s bank statements.

I feel quite ignorant about money still. I’d like someone to explain holidays, for example. I don’t really understand how people afford annual holidays or how much they cost. I suspect most people don’t do what I did and spend every penny on the house so perhaps they actually have some disposable income? I used to have a holiday savings account and I just hoarded it instead. The idea of using £5k for a week away makes me feel a bit sick.

I wonder if other people are more comfortable juggling debt than I am or do they just save? My husband and I still don’t really understand how to go about taking a proper foreign holiday. A week in Dartmoor is about the limit of our ambition.

Katie’s Substack:

My Top Secret Project

Books, music, culture, and personal stories from screenwriter, author, ex-tech journalist and massive nerd-pedant Katie Lee (aka KJ Lyttleton). Shh, don't tell anyone.

By Katie Lee

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Share The Ladybird Purse • Talk Money to Me

If you missed the book club announcement post, start here →

I’ll be posting about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

Read more

Hi and welcome. I’m so happy you’re here.

I’m back from my ten days away and life feels so busy! It’s not actually any busier than before I went away, but after ten days of only having to please myself, being home feels like a lot. It’s all good, but still. A lot. While I was away, I actually caught myself thinking I get a lot more done when I don’t have other responsibilities.

This week, I was planning to write about something I recently learned about my nan at a family history session at the local library. But someone phoned yesterday to ask me to go back this week because they have more information, so I’m going to wait and see what that is.

It also only just occurred to me to reread my 93yo aunt’s memoirs (she really only got as far as twenty years old) through a money lens, so I’ll be sharing that too.

In the meantime, I write about my family history (via the suitcase of memorabilia my sister found after our parents died) here:

Leave a comment

If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Along with four years of archive posts, paid subscribers can access The Ladybird Purse book club.

We’re reading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron and you can get 25% off your paid subscription via this link:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

The money interview with Hayley Dunlop

Hayley Dunlop is an author and creative copywriter who spent the first 15 years of her career working in media and PR before realising that wasn’t what she wanted to do at all. Originally from Bristol, she now lives just outside London with her husband and two children. Hayley writes rom-coms with nerdy hearts, and her second novel publishes this summer. You can follow her on Instagram or subscribe to her Substack newsletter.

What is your relationship with money currently?

I’m a natural spender, not a saver, but over the last few years I’ve been making an effort to get better at the latter, especially since the publication of my debut novel, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, in 2025.

My publishing contract didn’t come with an advance, so any earnings from the book are from sales-based royalties, which I get paid twice a year. I’ve done a very crude calculation that I receive roughly £1 per book sale, although that doesn’t include tax or the commission I pay to my agent, so in reality it’s closer to 50p. During my first full year as a published author, I made just under £3,000, before tax.

While I adore writing and feel so happy that my book has found a community of readers, the maths is painfully clear: it’s EXTREMELY hard to make a living from writing books alone, and I can’t imagine ever being able to resign from my job as a copywriter.

The truth is, however, that I’m not – and never have been – motivated by money and wealth. As long as writing books feels fulfilling, I’ll keep doing it. I also feel it’s important to be clear about the fact that I’m not the main earner in my household, which is a huge privilege when it comes to being able to write books without depending on them for an income.

What’s your earliest money memory?

I won a school competition to meet an author in a local bookshop. My mum cellotaped enough coins to the inside of my Garfield lunchbox so I could buy the author’s book and get it signed.

When I returned home, proudly clutching my autographed copy, my mum was horrified to discover all of the coins still neatly taped inside my lunchbox. I had accidentally stolen the book.

What advice would you give your younger self about money?

Follow your instincts, not the money – even when it makes you feel like the odd one out.

I was once headhunted by one of the Big Tech companies for a role (naming no names, but I refer you to the memoir Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams...). The high-profile job was basically mine, along with a massive salary, tons of benefits, three free meals a day etc etc... as long as I answered certain questions in certain ways to the Silicon Valley big wigs during the final round of (nine!!!) interviews.

The recruiter coached me on what to say but, the thing was, I didn’t agree with what they wanted me to say AT ALL. So I gave honest answers, instead. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, and I’m so glad I didn’t, as my life would have turned out very differently if I had gone against my gut feeling.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

As my first maternity leave was coming to an end, I decided not to return to the very high-pressured job I’d been doing beforehand at a global media brand. When I nervously called my manager to resign, he launched into what appeared to be a pre-planned speech about how times were tough and the business was struggling, but before he could finish I interrupted him and blurted out “I’m resigning.”

Only with the benefit of hindsight did I realise he was probably about to offer me a generous voluntary redundancy package that many of my colleagues went on to be given. If only I had kept my cool and let him finish speaking...

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?

In 2021, as covid lockdowns were ongoing and I’d finished the first draft of what would eventually become my debut novel, I decided to invest in a package of book coaching with someone I’d been virtually co-writing with since the pandemic kicked off.

The investment – almost £1,000 – was substantial, but the joy that process brought me was huge, and the difference it made to my novel – and to my author journey as a whole – was priceless. It’s undoubtedly the best and most important gift I’ve ever bought myself. More than anything, it felt hugely empowering to back my creativity with such a big investment without waiting for permission to do so.

How are you planning for retirement?

Alongside being a published author, I have a PAYE career that’s already spanned nearly twenty-five years for many companies and organisations, including my current role as a Senior Copywriter for a creative agency in London. This means I’m lucky enough to have numerous pension pots that I – and my employers – have paid into over the years.

That said, I have no idea how much money exists in each of these pots, let alone in total, and I keep meaning to combine them into one. Let’s just say financial-based admin and numbers are not my biggest strengths...

What would you do with £10,000 (or local equivalent)?

A couple of years ago I would have just passively bunged it in my current account and frittered it away on this and that (childcare, kids’ activities, various memberships and subscriptions I probably didn’t need). But now – having finally bothered to start learning about how to maximise savings returns – I’d probably pop half of it into my cash ISA account and put the other half aside for tax-deductible creative writing expenses like solo writing retreats and commissioning artists and designers to create marketing materials for my novels.

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

Always a book! Specifically, I would pre-order a book from an author who doesn’t have the backing of a massive Big Five publishing marketing machine, and I would also make sure I shouted loudly about my pre-order to my community of readers. Speaking of which... here’s the pre-order link for my forthcoming book, I’m Dreaming of a New York Christmas!

If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?

One of my favourite books about the world of work, which I’d urge everyone (especially men) to read, is Lean Out by the late, great Dawn Foster.

The book is over ten years old now, but in an era where AI-peddling tech bros are relentlessly shoving their products down our throats and women are being increasingly pressured to embrace (or ‘lean into’) them in the workplace, it’s arguable more relevant than ever.

That’s why I would love to open up conversations about more radical and matriarchal financial ideas around things like Universal Basic Income, communal living and Village Savings and Loans Schemes.

Becoming an Author ✍ By Hayley Dunlop

Thoughts on writing and the wobbly road to publication.

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Share The Ladybird Purse • Talk Money to Me

If you missed the book club announcement post, start here →

I’ll be posting about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

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(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

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Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly money newsletter. I’m so happy you’re here.

Moving straight along to the interview this week because I am away from home on a cat-sitting/writing/reading retreat and I have three books to get back to (Streisand’s autobiography; Lifeboat at the End of the World by Dominic Gregory and Bromantasy by Máire Roche).

This week’s interview is with Emily Lowrey, who I have known online for years and have been meaning to ask her to do this interview for ages. I was finally prompted by seeing her comment that she “manufactured [her] dream job” which is one of my very favourite things a woman can do.

I’ve included some of Emily’s photos too. She’s super talented.

But first…

If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Along with four years of archive posts, paid subscribers can access The Ladybird Purse book club.

We’re reading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron and you can get 25% off your paid subscription via this link:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

The money interview with Emily Lowrey

Emily Lowrey’s YouTube channel, Micro Four Nerds is all about photography, and trying to get the best results from whatever camera gear you have.

What is your relationship with money currently?

Complicated! I’ve come from a very poor single parent family background, and now that I’m doing relatively well, I struggle a lot with the idea that everything could be gone again tomorrow. And you’d think that would lead me to hoard the money? But it doesn’t.

I think I’ve definitely inherited that learned behaviour of irrationally wanting to spend or allocate every penny the moment I get paid. I’m trying to learn to let money sit, and be comfortable having it, and not have it be a very emotional exciting (or scary!) thing when money hits my account.

I genuinely feel a bit of a panic if money isn’t allocated and just sits there. It’s so unhealthy.

What’s your earliest money memory?

My mum somehow always making ends meet, and always somehow finding a way to get me the thing I was mithering for even if she couldn’t afford it. Usually from a catalogue.

She hid all the negatives so well I grew up thinking I could always get what I wanted if only I shuffled things around enough. She’d always have money in little envelopes by the door labelled things like, “weekly shop”, “gas & electric”.

What advice would you give your younger self about money?

Ohhh... that when I’ve been miserable in jobs in the past, I convinced myself I “deserved a treat” and I would take out interest free finances much too often. Usually on tech gadgets. This led to having very little spare on payday, which would make me more miserable, which would... you guessed it. More finances. So. don’t do that!

Also, I think I should have taken my pension a lot more seriously. I’m really late to the game and trying to make up for it now.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

Getting an Amex card. This was when I started making good money from YouTube too, so there really isn’t an excuse. I decided to be “money smart” and collect points via an Amex card. I learned even when I have plenty of money coming in, it can be easy to get into debt if you’re stupid like me.

I’ve since given myself a 100% ban on all debt aside from our joint mortgage. I can’t be trusted. No credit cards, no finances. I even own my phone handset outright. I may “lose out” on the perks of credit cards, but I can sleep better at night knowing I don’t owe anyone anything! Reaching debt free is such a freeing feeling and I wish I’d done it a lot sooner.

I messaged you after seeing you say you’ve “manufactured your dream job.” Can you talk a bit about that? What’s the job? How did you get started? And how do you make money from YouTube?

I started YouTube in the winter months in the off-season from wedding photography, and slowly over time that became more profitable than weddings, so I shifted to full time YouTube about 3 years ago now. I have an agent who helps me organise brand deals, and I sell my own products like photo presets and in-person workshops.

Income wise I have 5 streams: ad revenue, sponsorships and brand deals, affiliate revenue, my own products and workshops, and then I also sometimes get paid to be the face of marketing campaigns for brands on their socials. I did a campaign with Dell and Snapdragon last year for example which was surreal! Oh, and I do the odd public speaking event at photography shows or brand events, but those don’t happen too often.

I’ve sort of accidentally manufactured my dream job. I get to test cameras and lenses (sometimes before they’re released to the public) and I can create photos and content on my terms. This usually looks like lots of travel -- I love travel photography! -- in 2025 I went away I think 17 times? To Japan, Iceland, Poland, Valencia, Amsterdam, Finland, Greece, Madeira, and a few places I’ve forgotten. I also had paid-for press trips for new products in Lisbon, Tromsø, and Frankfurt.

I’m very lucky that I get to work with my dream brands like Lumix, DJI, and Insta360, and basically get paid to chat to a camera in my PJs at home, or to take photos around the world! I love teaching photography, sharing tips and tutorials with my audience and helping people get the best out of older or more entry-level camera equipment. I think there’s so much NEW NEW NEW in the industry that people feel isolated or “not good enough” if they don’t have a brand new camera, so I make a point to take out ten year old cameras and show people that with the right techniques and skills you can get great results no matter your budget.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?

I had some cash to spare at the end of this tax year so I decided to be semi sensible and semi fun. I put £7k into my SIPP and spent 3 grand on some cameras I’ve been coveting for a while. Weirdly, putting a lump sum into my pension felt as good as the new shiny cameras.

OH! and can I have two answers? One of my oldest friends had a baby and is a stay at home mum, so every so often I like to take her out to relax. I booked us a spa break in the Lake District one time, and booked her her own room so she could have a peaceful night’s sleep! Then another time I took her to London to see one of our favourite bands. She works so hard and has so little money and time I try to spoil her whenever I can.

How are you planning for retirement?

I have a SIPP that I pay a non-negotiable £1000 a month into, and then at the end of the year I will put a lump sum in if it makes sense to do so. I just invest in a simple global tracker. I really have a lot of time to make up for.

Prior to YouTube I was a full time wedding photographer for about 10 years and I just “never got around” to opening a pension. So much lost time!

What would you do with £10,000?

I’m in the process of moving house right now, so I would splash out on a projector for the living room and other household things. As it stands, with my “NO DEBT EVER!” rule, it may take us a few months to save for things one by one, and methodically do each room as we go. Which is fine. I’m excited to feel the value of that, and learn some discipline. But if I was given £10k I would definitely expedite the process haha.

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

This might sound terrible! But one thing me and my husband love to do when the weather is nice is take a nice long walk to town, get a cold drink or two to go (like a canned gin and tonic for example) and then walk home the long way via the canal. Maybe sit on a bench, have a chat, watch the world go by. It makes “getting our steps in” into a little semi-healthy date. So I’d definitely do that.

If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?

I’m really fascinated with how our upbringing affects our relationship with money. I certainly have a lot of bad habits to unlearn myself.

Like, is the way my mum used to splash out on a catalogue the reason I felt confident in taking out loads of finance agreements? If she could always somehow make it work, why can’t I? Is the reason I have anxiety about money just sitting in my account because I feel like a fraud? Or because my mum used to allocate every penny in little envelopes?

Are there people out there that can just be completely objective when it comes to money? Does it feel like Christmas Day to everyone or am I just very very accustomed to not having any money?

It’s all so interesting. It’s one of the most important aspects of living in this society and yet we get absolutely no education on it.

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Share The Ladybird Purse • Talk Money to Me

If you missed the book club announcement post, start here →

I’ll be posting about a new chapter every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

Read more

Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly money newsletter. I’m so happy you’re here.

Short one today because I am away from home, cat-sitting, trying to finish my novel and not get distracted by the view.

Next week, I’ve got a brilliant interview I’m v excited to share. But first…

As part of the Ladybird Book Club readalong of Julia Cameron’s The Prosperous Heart (not too late to join!) I’ve been doing Morning Pages. You know about Morning Pages, right? Write three pages, by hand, every morning.

It took me a few days to get into a good routine with them. First because I kept forgetting and then because my hand would cramp before I managed three pages, but I think - thanks to habit-stacking with my morning coffee - I’ve got the swing of it now.

And I’m already finding it helpful. When writing about how I derive a certain satisfaction from juggling money - which I also wrote about here - I realised that it’s probably about control.

I’d been thinking it was more about making the best of a bad situation. A skill I’d learned and honed. But, writing about it by hand a couple of mornings ago, I wondered if it’s more about growing up feeling like I had no control around money.

As I’ve written before, when I was around 14, my dad was made redundant and my mum was diagnosed with MS. We’d been financially comfortable before and suddenly we weren’t. Not financially, physically, or emotionally.

My sense of safety was shattered at probably the worst possible time.

Is it any wonder I appreciate knowing where every penny is going and get a sense of achievement from twisting, flipping, stretching my money until I make it work?

Can you pinpoint something in your teens or childhood that still informs how you manage your money?

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If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Along with four years of archive posts, paid subscribers can access The Ladybird Purse book club.

We’re reading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron and you can get 25% off your paid subscription via this link:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

How Women May Earn Money

This is the final extract from How Women May Earn Money, a 1898 guide to respectable occupations for women. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.

Next week’s post will also have something not unrelated from my own family history that I only learned about last week.

CARING FOR HOTEL CHILDREN.

An enterprising school teacher spends her vacations a fashionable summer hotel in the mountains, and criticised for her seeming extravagance by some of her acquaintances who are not in her confidence.

She had stopped at that hotel for a day or two several years ago and had noticed how neglected were the children of those guests at the hotel who could not afford to bring governesses. So she resolved to return and offer to take charge of the children for a certain length of time each day for a small sum per hour.

She amuses the children, takes them into the woods for little picnic dinners, guides them in their various amusements and keeps them entirely away from their elders during the time they are under her care. The children are delighted, and she has enough of them to care for to more than pay her ex-penses during her vacation.

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Maybe you missed…

I interviewed a woman for every decade from teens to nineties. Click on the banner to read them all.

Share The Ladybird Purse • Talk Money to Me

If you missed the book club announcement post, start here →

I’ll be posting a chapter from the book every Thursday and the book club is limited to paid subscribers. (Because not everyone wants their money stuff to be public.) But you can upgrade with 25% off here:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB!

(I’ve also turned off the free trial option for the duration of the book club.)

Setting aside your skepticism for a moment, make a list of ten actions you could take, right now, that you suspect might make you feel prosperous—and that cost nothing.

~ Julia Cameron The Prosperous Heart

Read more

Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly money newsletter. I’m so happy you’re here.

Last week, I wrote on my author Substack1 that I was wondering whether I should just give up writing. Fiction, at least. It’s hard. I’m not even sure if I enjoy it anymore. None of my books have been particularly successful. Yes, I’ve had - and have - some lovely readers, but when I didn’t publish anything for six years, it felt like no one cared or even noticed.

But I don’t know what I’d do instead. I’ve got a couple of side hustles going on - the money coaching and Everyone Dies Eventually, my pop culture memento mori mugs - but neither of them is bringing in big bucks (yet!).

When I mentioned potentially giving up writing to my eldest, he was appalled. He gestured at the shelf where my sixteen published books live.

“Do you think all of these got published out of kindness?!”

Kind of, yeah. I’ve often thought I’ve been published because people like me, not because the books are good. I know this can’t be true (people don’t like me that much), but still.

And then earlier this week, I was tagged in a review of my latest novel on Instagram. The reviewer wrote “this book calmed my mind in a stormy moment and I am thankful.”

Perfect timing. I need to remember why I wanted to do this in the first place.

I wasn’t going to write any of this. I was just planning to share the figures. I’ll do that now. The advance figures are before agents’ fees (15%). The royalty figures are loose because I’ve always tracked sales rather than payments, but I’ve cobbled them together and they shouldn’t be too far out.

Total advances: £55,311

Total royalties: £64,5132

My 17yo was standing next to me as I was adding this up.

“Total income of almost £120,000,” I said. “Which sounds a lot—”

“Not really.”

Oh.

I divided it by the fifteen years I’ve been published - £8000 a year.

I earned £8000 in my first proper office job - as a “Girl Friday” in 1991. It was a starter salary even then.

“You’re cooked,” Joe said.

I don’t believe that. I haven’t worked at this for fifteen years without a certain level of determination. (And delusion.) But this is not sustainable. So I need to find a better way.

But first, I need to finish the novel I’m currently working on.

Does this feel like a lot to you, or not really?

Are you more “you’re cooked” or “keep going”?

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This week’s interview is with Sonia Bavistock, who writes Blooming Season:

Blooming Season

For midlife women stepping forward through style, identity, and honest reckoning.

By Sonia Bavistock

But first…

If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Along with four years of archive posts, paid subscribers can access The Ladybird Purse book club.

We’re reading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron and you can get 25% off your paid subscription via this link:

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

How Women May Earn Money

The penultimate extract from How Women May Earn Money, a 1898 guide to respectable occupations for women, is relevant to the above!

STORY-TELLING

A young lady who was not strong enough to do hard work3 conceived the idea of earning money by telling stories to children. She had a natural talent in that direction, and a little rehearsal each day soon brought back the natural training in elocution that she had had while at school.

She read stories and then repeated them in language that children could understand. Each evening she told one story of adventure, one of history and one based on ethical laws. Frequently this was followed by a fairy story, and, to send her audience home feeling as if they must come again, she often announced that it would be finished in the next evening.

She got the teachers in the different schools to announce her intention to tell stories to children, and from the first she had a good audience. As she charged but five cents admission and only kept the children between the hours of eight and nine, parents allowed their little folks to attend frequently. She told stories three evenings in the week, and averaged two dollars per evening after paying for hall, lights and heat, and also for the services of the young lady who sold tickets of admission.

It was not a large sum, but she could not have earned as much in any other way, and it really required but a small portion of her time.

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An interview with Sonia Bavistock

Sonia Bavistock is a writer for women and brands on the edge of their next evolution. With over a decade of experience in blogging, social media, and communications, she helps unlock voice and visibility through storytelling and creative clarity. Her work centres on identity, expression, and the beauty of becoming — guiding others to be seen not just for what they do, but for who they truly are.

What is your relationship with money currently?

I would say it’s evolving in a positive way. I’m looking at my bank accounts daily, managing my budget weekly, and being honest with myself about my spending habits and what they signal about the state of my nervous system, mindset and emotions.

I’ve also recently experienced a significant shift in how I value myself as a copywriter. I feel so solid in my talent, experience, and skill set that I can now confidently quote a copywriting project, knowing exactly what I bring to the table and everything – beyond the words on the page – that the client will receive in return.

What’s your earliest money memory?

I always remember money being a topic of stress in my family household growing up. My parents would always argue about money; my mum would hide purchases from my dad, and, looking back, my dad was definitely an overspender.

A happier early memory of money was my beloved Baba (Grandma) hiding coins in the bread she would bake for Serbian Orthodox Christmas. This tradition represents good luck, good health, and prosperity for the coming year, and she would always make sure her grandchildren found a coin.

What advice would you give your younger self about money?

Don’t spend every single pay cheque, sweetheart. It’s safe and smart to keep money in your account for when you need it, and to put money away regularly for bigger things you want in the future, rather than getting into debt and constantly having to crawl your way out of it.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

Investing tens of thousands of dollars in business coaches whose ‘strategy’ was to get me to do everything their way. All those months (and years) spent feeling like a failure, thinking that I was broken and that I was doing everything wrong – simply because I was never meant to do things their way. My heart breaks for those past versions of me. And yes, for that money spent too.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?

Every holiday and experience I’ve shared with my husband and our closest friends. These are the moments that make a life and stay with you over the years. They mean everything to me.

How are you planning for retirement?

My husband and I have our money invested in a few different ways. We own our home (with a mortgage) and are planning to buy an investment property. We also have self-managed superannuation accounts, with money in shares and crypto. We’re basically trying to cover all our bases.

What would you do with £10,000 (or local equivalent)?

Ooh, this is fun! £10,000 is roughly AUD $19,000, so my first thought is that I’d take my husband and me on a much-overdue holiday. But if we’re talking AUD $10,000 and it was a gift, I’d buy a Chanel 25 Mini Handbag because, frankly, it’s an investment that will only increase in value over time. Plus, it’s absolutely gorgeous!

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

For me, $10 would, without a doubt, be spent on two pots of Earl Grey tea (with lemon, not milk) at one of my favourite local cafés. With that, I get at least two hours of solo creative time to write, with a side of sparkling ocean views. That, to me, is a little luxury with a big positive impact.

If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?

I’d want to ask: “What do you believe money gets to say about you?”

Because I think for so many women, money is never just money. It becomes external evidence of whether we feel like we’re “enough”: successful enough, safe enough, solid enough, steady enough. I’m always interested in the emotional charge underneath the numbers; the stories, shame, pride, fear, and power wrapped up in them. To me, that’s where the real conversation begins.

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Share The Ladybird Purse • Talk Money to Me