Two years ago I dropped out of university.
I'd just been diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, and the film degree I'd started wasn't going to happen. I was unwell, at home, and had no real idea what came next.
What I did have was time. And somewhere in that time, almost by accident, I got obsessed with personal finance.
This week, I was featured in The Times. Read the full piece here: "I saved £35k last year": the frugal students dodging debt, written by Hodan Sultan.
How it actually started
I started reading everything I could find about money — the stuff nobody teaches you at school. How bank switching works. How ISAs work. How to make small amounts of money go further when you don't have much to begin with.
There was no grand plan behind it. I was stuck at home, unable to do the thing I'd gone to university for, and money was one of the few subjects I could actually get my hands around from a laptop on the sofa. So I kept reading, kept taking notes, and started noticing how much of it simply isn't taught anywhere — not at school, not really anywhere, until you go looking for it yourself.
Eventually I started sharing what I learned online, mostly because I wished someone had explained it to me sooner. That turned into Jamie's Finance.
Two years on
Two years ago I genuinely couldn't have imagined this. I was just a student who'd had to stop, trying to make something out of a situation I didn't choose.
I'm now back at university studying finance and investment management, running my content, and building a business off the back of something that started as a way to fill my time while I was ill.
None of it followed the order I expected. The degree stopped, the illness didn't go away on a schedule, and the thing that ended up working was never the plan — it was what was left once the plan fell through.
If you're in the middle of your own setback
If you're going through a setback right now that feels like it's knocking you off course, I want you to know it doesn't have to be the end of the story. Sometimes the detour becomes the whole thing.
I don't think that's true for every setback, and I'm not going to pretend illness is some secret gift. It wasn't. But the part where I had no idea what came next — that part didn't last forever, and what came after it was better than the plan I'd lost.
Read the full feature
The Times piece covers the wider story of frugal students finding ways to avoid debt, and my part in it. Grateful to Hodan Sultan and The Times for the feature, and to everyone who's followed along so far.
Read the full article on The Times →
This is only the beginning.