Being single isn’t easy.  Especially in today’s recessionary dating economic climate.

I realised my new Austerity at Home program wasn’t going according to plan when I overheard my son tell a playdate that we didn’t have an X Box because his mum was poor now. “Is that why you live in a flat?” his friend asked.  My son nodded sagely.

I like writing for a living.  Especially in investment management where I get paid to write about debt, risk and the prevailing economic environment.  It’s a challenge to write convincingly about complex  investment strategies designed to persuade a sceptic public of investor skill and human decision-making in an age of technology that frankly, suggests otherwise.

Creative work environments help me formulate my thoughts and crystallise ideas. Writing can be solitary. I enjoy a team dynamic.

It’s not easy being a mum, especially if you try to be a good one.  Being shamed back into your old job by a 7 year old’s perception of your finances is one of my all time top comedic family moments.  It’s also much more prevalent than you’d think.

I started reading Broke by economist David Boyle by chance. The tagline is Who killed the Middle classes?

I once wrote a letter to King’s College Cambridge, requesting a bursary at the end of my first year of university.  I kept my begging letter short and for impact wrote “I am black and working class”.  Five days later I received a cheque for £500 (an enormous sum for someone in my situation).  I subsequently wrote myself out of poverty the hard way enjoying equal helpings of tragedy, luck and tremendous good fortune. I’m still black and working class, but thanks to my own mum’s endeavours I’m also very well educated.

Money earned in a single generation skips the middle classes and so I’m richer than I need to be, but not as wealthy as my children would like.

Broke analyses how affluent middle class families were afflicted by a new austerity for which they only have themselves to blame.  It can’t end well, so it’s up to me to change my narrative.

I don’t know when or how my life became so dramatic – a tragi-comedy of errors and sudden bid for independence that ruined faux, familial idyll, changing everything for the better.  But as a writer I have more perspective now: on other people’s lives not just my own.  I also have funnier anecdotes (every writer’s bread and butter).

I thought it would be healthier for me to write and work from home. Apparently, my kids don’t need me healthier.  They need me wealthier.

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THIS IS NOT MY FLAT