Hi, I’m Elle. I’m a former Occupational Therapist, a recovering overachiever, and someone who spent most of her life believing that being good with money simply meant spending as little as possible.

I can confirm that is not the answer.

I grew up in financial scarcity.
When I was three, my dad left and my mum, brother and I lived in a council-provided caravan because there was no housing available. The church gave her a car that could not reverse. She wore the same clothes endlessly, lost six stone because she could not afford to feed us all and the dog, and I wore one nappy a day because that was all we could manage.

Then everything flipped.
My mum met my stepdad, a corporate bank manager who saw money completely differently. Through him, I learned that money could be a tool. He sold shares to fund trips to Florida and paid my private school fees, and a financially comfortable retirement was always his main focus. We went from scarcity to stability almost overnight.

But even with stability, scarcity never left me.
I hated withdrawing money.
I clung to every penny.
If I owed my mum money, I would panic about paying it back. She sometimes had to drive me to the cash machine and make me withdraw it.

The money mindset from my early years was still running the show.

At 18, my stepdad encouraged me to get a credit card to build a credit score. I handled it responsibly, but my student loan was a different story. At the time, student loans were marketed as almost free, so I treated mine exactly like that. I bought clothes, DVDs, nights out, travel, meals, anything that felt fun. I burned through every penny without thinking about the future.

When I graduated, I had a degree, a new diagnosis of epilepsy and no sense of direction. I took a job earning £7 an hour and drove 200 miles a week just to get there and back. Then I decided to retrain as an Occupational Therapist. Thankfully, the NHS funded the course and I didn’t need to take on more debt.

My financial spiral came later.
As a new graduate earning £21k in Surrey, my rent alone was £1050 a month. Then I met my now-husband who earned more and could spend more. Trying to keep up with his enthusiasm for exploring London pushed me into overspending and eventually debt. Combined with dentist appointments, spontaneous weekends and holidays I promised myself I would pay back later, the amount grew quickly.

I never actually knew the full number.
I avoided it.
I was ashamed of it.
It felt easier not to know.

The first time I faced my debt was when we came to apply for a mortgage.
Our combined debt was £29,000 and £24,000 of that was mine.

Oddly, that moment was the turning point.
Saving for a house forced me to confront my patterns and change my behaviour.
Learning about money psychology finally explained why I had been behaving the way I had.
And for the first time, I understood how deeply scarcity had shaped my decisions. But it still took another 3 years before my mindset started to change.

My default thought pattern was that I always believed I would never have money and that if I did, I would lose it.

In 2023, that belief almost felt true.
My mum became seriously ill.
My stepdad had a stroke.
I had to stop working to care for them.
My husband was made redundant twice.
Our safety net felt like it was shrinking by the day.

But something unexpected happened.
I learned that money appears in more places than you think when you stop believing it is permanently slipping away.
I learned that my decisions improved when I reduced overwhelm.
And I learned that clarity is more powerful than discipline.

That experience shifted me out of scarcity and into something steadier. I began to understand that financial stability is a behaviour, not luck, and not a personality trait.

Now I am building towards financial independence.
Not the aesthetic version.
Not the extreme frugality version.
The psychologically grounded version.

- steady
- clear and simple systems
- behaviour change
- money that supports life rather than dominates it.

I am here because I love money. Not in a materialistic sense, but in a behavioural sense. I love understanding it, talking about it, and helping people rewrite the patterns they learned in childhood or chaos.

Spend Like You Mean It is where I share the psychology that helped me understand my patterns, build simple systems, reduce cognitive load and finally feel safe with money.

No shame.
No guilt.
No pressure to know better.
Just simple, evidence-informed behaviour change, one steady habit at a time.

Disclaimer: I hold an MSc in Psychology and an MSc in Occupational Therapy. The information shared here is educational and reflects research and personal experience. It should not be considered financial or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate professional for individual support.