Fashion and finances - a lesson learned by Maria
At age 14 I landed my first paid job working in my hometown as a Saturday retail assistant. My parents didn’t have the money to give my brothers and I pocket money and they certainly couldn’t afford to buy us high street clothes. I wanted my independence and didn’t want to put any pressure on my mum who was always trying to make ends meet. After years of hand me downs from cousins and being obsessed with fashion, I actually lied to the shop owner at the time, saying I was age 16 to get myself the job!
Every Saturday, the first thing I'd do when I got to work was rummage through the latest stock arrivals and reserve my choices. At closing time I'd spend my entire wage on outfits! Happily pretending to be 16 while earning £15 for working a Saturday, I was the only girl out of my friends that had the independence to buy my own clothes every week. Pretty soon I was lending clothes out to friends and had quickly developed a popularity for picking out items for the women shoppers that came into the shop on a Saturday.
But not all stories have happy endings! My fashion obsession soon escalated into me spending way outside of my means in my 20's, racking up thousands of pounds on credit cards. All driven by my love of beautiful and unique clothes!
The regrettable reality was that most of these purchases I'd wear once for a few hours before stowing them away like museum pieces.
When the time came to buy a house in my 30s, I had zero saved up for a deposit. Instead, I found myself with a sizeable credit card debt to pay off before anyone would even consider giving me a mortgage.
I want WearMyWardrobeOut rentals to help bridge the gap for those in my community who are trying to balance saving for their future, with their love of fashion so that they don't unknowingly make choices that will limit their finances or rack up debt buying fashion items that they will wear only once.
