I was in £21k debt at 22 with terrible credit score – how I paid it off to buy £295k first home in three years

AT just 22 years old, Seb Brantigan was in £21,000 of debt and things looked bleak.

The entrepreneur from East Sussex had racked up thousands of pounds worth of debt across several credit cards and in an overdraft – and it was snowballing fast.

“There were times it kept me up at night. It almost felt like I had shackles around my ankles and I was in a kind of financial trap,” he told The Sun.

Seb, who is now 26, first got himself in hot water back in 2019 while he was trying to fund his dream of becoming an entrepreneur.

He was working at his local council at the time but it wasn’t fulfilling for him – what he really wanted was to run his own digital marketing business.

Alongside his full-time job, he was doing whatever it took to get his business, DBSS Digital Ltd, off the ground.

That included paying for online courses, advertising, and flying to conferences around the world.

The conferences took him as far as Los Angeles and there were pricey flights and accommodation to pay for.

“I was just spending any available penny that I had, funds that I didn’t have,” Seb said.

But as he hadn’t gone to university and didn’t have a business or marketing background, he felt he needed to spend the money to learn everything he could.

“It was snowballing but I thought, I’m going to pay it back somehow and I’m going to turn it around,” he said.

“For each credit card I could only get a few thousand pounds but it was still quite easy to go out and get more debt.”

By 2020, things had got even more out of control.

At its worst, the debt amounted to a huge £21,000 and Seb considered an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) – although he ultimately decided to try paying it off by himself.

An IVA is an agreement with creditors to pay all or part of your debts so you can avoid bankruptcy.

Seb’s credit score had also plummeted to about 400 out of a possible 999.

Experian considers credit scores between 0 to 560 to be “very poor”, which means you’re more likely to be refused most credit cards, loans and mortgages.

The amount Seb was able to borrow was going down and he started worrying he would never be able to buy a house.

“I was trying to stay optimistic but it felt literally like a weight on my shoulders,” he said.

But even when his debt was at its worst, Seb wanted to keep pushing through.

“I thought if I can just make enough sales then I can really make this work, so if I give up now I’m always going to be wondering ‘what if’,” he said.

And luckily, things did start to turn a corner with the business in early 2021.

It was finally making more money and it gave Seb a little breathing room to start thinking about how to pay off his debts.

The business co-founder decided to call up all of his credit card companies and explain his situation to see if he could get any help.

“Essentially I just said, look, I’ve got lots of other debts and I do want to pay this back but I just need a little bit of help, is there anything you can do?” he said.

Barclaycard agreed to reduce some of his interest payments, wiping about £300 off the account.

Some of the other companies weren’t able to wipe the interest but they agreed to pause it for a short amount of time.

It was at that point Seb felt he would actually be able to get to grips with his debt.

He set up a spreadsheet to keep track of all of his debts and how much he was paying off each month.

The spreadsheet was ordered from the smallest to largest debts, and he was also keeping track of different charges he needed to pay.

Seb made sure to pay off the cards with the highest interest first, tackling them one by one.

Initially he was paying off about £200 a month but he later managed to increase this to £400.

Every time he got paid, he would pay his bills first and then immediately tackle his debts.

Whenever he got extra money it would go towards paying off the credit cards.

Seb gave himself a tiny budget of £100 for disposable income and decided to live as frugally as he could.

“I would just be very careful what I would spend and very rarely go out,” he said.

“I was very conscious of every penny, every pound I was having to spend.”

He cut back on takeaways and coffees and put plans to buy a car on hold, as well as trying to negotiate all his bill costs down.

“It was quite difficult going from spending lots of money to not very much at all,” he said.

“It was quite isolating as well as I didn’t go out very much to see people.”

He said it had also been hard to make the change as his family didn’t have good spending habits when he was growing up so it was a new skill to learn.

But it was all worth it when he finally managed to clear his debts at the end of 2022.

“I’ll never forget making the last payment on my credit card,” he said.

“It was just like being on top of the world.”

Seb said he felt proud that he’d managed to stick to paying it off and had done it in a way that wouldn’t affect his credit score long-term.

In fact, his credit score had started improving a lot that year and he was even able to start saving again.

He began working a lot to save up for a house deposit and managed to build up £20,000 over a year.

Meanwhile his data analyst girlfriend Lydia, 27, had been saving for several years too and had £10,000 for a deposit.

It meant that in March 2023 they were able to buy their first home together.

They bought a two-bed house in Woodbridge, East Sussex, for £295,000 with a £30,000 deposit, and are now preparing to welcome their first child.

“When I was in a lot of debt, I was thinking ‘will I ever get out of this and be able to get my own home?’,” he said.

“I probably couldn’t have really dreamed of it at the time – it just seemed like a bit of a faraway pipe dream to be honest.”

Now, Seb says he’s in a much better financial position.

He says he does regret his overspending as it caused a very stressful period in his life, but he’s learned a lot.

Research from Tesco Bank suggests three in 10 (29%) of people wish they’d started saving sooner and regret not boosting their savings earlier in life.

Meanwhile 12% said they regretted not having an emergency savings pot and 11% think they should have learned more about how to build their savings.

Seb says he now has an emergency fund in case something does go wrong and he’s more in control of his spending.

“With my business the income is up or down, so if I’m having a better month, then I’ll just kind of budget and allocate a bit more disposable income,” he said.

“If I have a month where it’s not been as good, then I’ll try and cut back a little bit.

“I wouldn’t say I budget as strictly as I used to when I was in a lot of debt, but it’s good to have a bit of an idea of what you’re spending at any point really.”