The Start of my Debt Free Journey

When I first started sharing my debt free journey, I was in £133,000 of debt (this was back in 2018) and people could not get their head around why I didn’t just go bankrupt.

I told the social media following I had back then that my goal was to pay it off (over time of course) live a normal life (have somewhat of a social life, create memories for my children and go on a family holiday) whilst paying the debt off! I was laughed at by a lot and the rest I think applauded to be polite but didn’t really thing I stood a chance. 

I did everything I planned, I went on holiday with my kids, I ate out at restaurants, I stayed on top of ALL my home bills and cleared large chunks off my debt, by 2022 the debt was below six figures, I’d cleared the £33,000 part and even continued to chip away at my debt by making money as a freelance digital marketer and juggling side hustles like Amazon FBA and product flipping on eBay.

The debt dropped to around the £80,000 mark before and old HMRC bill caught up with me of £20,000+, that put me back in six figures worth of debt, I was deflated and wanted to chuck in the towel, after my time of feeling sorry for myself was over, I went straight back into the mindset of ‘you put yourself in this mess, you get yourself out’ 

As you’ll have guessed by the remaining balance of £74k, I continued hustling my way out!

The reason this is a ‘restart’ of my debt free journey is because, I grew tired of being a digital marketer for other people, my job is to grow peoples businesses online and im bloody good at it as well, I started to get the urge to want to focus on growing my own online brand – explained in my last blog:  https://tonytomlinson.com/i-quit-my-job-in-debt/

So in short – going bankrupt was never really an option I strongly considered, the way I see it, if I started a digital marketing business back in 2018 when I was tackling £133,000, and have now cleared over £80,000 of debt (because of the additional 20k) then I’ve actually already done the task im now setting myself out to do! Only this time, Im more passionate because i’ll be growing my own online businesses not others.

So from quitting my job, to laying out my debt reveal for month 1 of my new debt free journey, let’s see if I can do what I think I can and i’ll vlog and blog the journey as it goes.