THE FINANCIAL ADVISER WHO WAS HOPELESS AT SAVING

CATHERINE MORGAN, 36, a selfemployed financial adviser, lives in milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, with husband gareth, 39, a manager for a mortgage company, and sons george, seven, and thomas, four. they have joint annual earnings of around £100,000, with £6,500 in savings. Catherine says:

GIVEN our healthy household income, and our jobs (I work around the children’s school hours so save on childcare), people might assume that we have far more cash in the bank than the average person.

However, I’m an emotional spender, so when life is challenging — like when Thomas contracted bacterial meningitis as a newborn — my instinct is to blow money on clothes or soft furnishings.

That’s part of the reason — together with five years of crippling nursery fees, two-year-long maternity leaves and the fact that our income is variable as I’m self-employed — that we are £20,000 in debt and only started saving money last October, once Thomas was in school. as a child, my father would take me to a building society where he would pay money into a savings account for me. Then one day, when I was about 11, I discovered that the £3,000 had gone as he had needed it to support himself after leaving the family home.

That seemed to trigger in me an instinct to spend money as soon as I had it — fearing that if I didn’t, someone else would. Thankfully, I have the knowledge and skills not to let the situation get out of hand, and we are repaying our debt and working towards building savings.

Our aim is to put away £90,000 over the next few years; we are considering sending our sons to private schools and need to know that at least the first three years’ fees are covered before the start.

I’m confident we’ll be able to do it on what we have coming in, despite the hefty £300,000 mortgage on our four-bedroom detached house, as we’re now taking the sage advice we’re so good at giving to others, about how to get the most out of money.