I paid off my £225,000 mortgage at 37 — I was earning just £25,000 a year

At 44, Gemma Bird lives a ‘privileged’ life, in a palatial Georgian-style mansion in Essex with her husband Adam, 51, and two children, Brontë, seven, and Brody, 13.

But life wasn’t always as comfortable as it is now for the social media influencer, who boasts 500,000 followers on Instagram as Money Mum.

Long before Instagram, Gemma had a laser-focused goal: to get on the property ladder young.

In her teens — living at home with her parents rent-free and juggling three jobs at a medical centre, pulling pints in a pub, and training as a driving instructor — she managed to put away a large proportion of her £14,000 salary, adding extra to her pot by washing neighbours’ cars and selling items online.

‘From when I was small, I was always saving money, like picking pennies up on the way to school,’ Gemma tells Metro.

‘I didn’t come from a rich background at all, but my parents were always like, “we can’t afford to give you a deposit for a house, but we can help you by not charging any housekeeping as long as you save”.’

And save she did, until at 23 years old, alongside her then-partner (who was earning £25,000 a year) the self-confessed ‘grafter’ bought her first house for £165,000 — a feat that now sounds almost mythical to many younger Brits.

After moving into estate agency work, Gemma was putting every bit of spare cash she had towards her mortgage when a wealthy client told her that the secret to becoming rich was simple: buy houses and rent them out.

Asking colleagues which areas were ‘up and coming’, she bought the cheapest property she could find in Walthamstow — £109,000 with a 5% deposit in 2007. Her £3,500 savings only made up half of what she needed, so despite the fact he ‘didn’t have much’, her dad believed in her enough to invest the rest.

She later went on to buy two further properties, in Waltham Cross and the north of England, using additional savings and equity from the other homes to build her portfolio.

But the reality of being a landlord was far less glamorous than she had imagined, with Gemma calling her first foray into investment ‘an absolute headache’ that ‘didn’t make any money’, and claiming she’d ‘never want to do it again’

At age 29, Gemma then had to start over following the breakdown of her first marriage.

Although the 50/50 divorce saw her receive £66,000 from the sale of their shared home, with the other two properties tenanted, she was forced to moved back in with her parents and take a part-time job at a bank on £7,500 a year (which later increased to £15,000 when she was able to go full-time).

‘I felt like I lost everything overnight,’ she recalls. ‘It was horrific. I was in the worst place in my life. I was like, I’ve got two properties that are in negative equity, I’m divorced, no kids, I just don’t know what to do.’

Shortly afterwards however, she met Adam online, and things quickly turned around.

When she moved into his Essex home in 2013 — then worth £380,000 with £225,000 left on the mortgage — she soon became pregnant with Brody. In turn, she became determined to clear the debt entirely herself, both to support their growing family and give both partners an equal footing in terms of contributions to the place.

Gemma rented out their spare room to French students, rented out the driveway on a parking site, and started an Amazon underwear business. She doubled down on budgeting too, even replacing salon visits with at-home haircuts courtesy of Adam (who isn’t a hairdresser, but is apparently nifty with the scissors).

Whether turning plug sockets off to avoid appliances using electricity on standby, taking her own snacks to the pub, or cutting open almost-empty toiletry containers to scoop out the last drops, Gemma was ruthless about looking after every penny.

She also sold the two Walthamstow houses, each for over £100,000 more than what she’s bought them for (profits were split with her dad), but kept hold of the one up north, despite joking that it’s ‘still in negative equity now’.

At 37, Gemma was able to pay off her home’s mortgage balance completely, which she says made her ‘feel loads happier, and a lot less stressed.’

Even then though, financial security proved fragile. Shortly after reaching their goal, Adam lost his job in sales, so rather than being able to enjoy their new mortgage-free lifestyle, the couple doubled down on keeping expenses low, funnelling the money that would once have gone towards repayments into a separate pot.

This gradually built up until it was enough to cover stamp duty and fees on a new ‘forever’ home, which they moved into in 2024, having sold the last place for £775,000.

Gemma’s online career began almost accidentally around this time, when she went for a coffee an influencer friend.

She recalls: ‘I was picking up receipts in Costa, and she said, “Why are you doing that?” I told her that if people haven’t put their points on their loyalty card, I could then go to the counter and say, “Oh, sorry, I forgot to put my points on my card last time, can you put them on?” Then I’d get free cups of coffee.

‘She was like, I don’t get it, why do you need to do that, to which I said, because I earn about £15,000 a year, I’ve got two kids, and my husband’s just lost his job. We ain’t got no money.’

When the friend revealed they made the same in a month through Instagram, Gemma went straight home, picked up her phone and started vlogging about her reality — an antithesis to the ‘perfect’ lives she was seeing on most social media accounts.

Posting her first budgeting tips as Money Mum in 2020, she quickly tapped into a national mood of anxiety about increasing bills and shrinking wages. Followers flocked to her ‘No Spend Day’ and ‘Make Money Day’ challenges, while practical advice — from snagging freebies to making meals go further — spread rapidly online.

Her rise was astonishingly fast. She hit 50,000 Instagram followers in January 2021 and doubled it within weeks. By 2023, she was interviewing then-prime minister Rishi Sunak.

Two years later, she has appeared on Loose Women, spoken at Downing Street to campaign for compulsory financial education in schools, and released two books — the first of which, Save Yourself Happy, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

This career certainly isn’t without issues, and she has faced criticism from some for being too frugal, especially after bringing her own cereal on a recent holiday to the US.

‘People are like, it’s only a fiver,’ she explains. ‘But that’s why I’m going to America, because I’m careful with the other things.’

Gemma insists her message is not about deprivation, adding: ‘I’m such a believer of spend half, save half. Obviously be mindful, because if you’re buying a coffee every single day, and it’s adding up to a couple of 100 pounds a month, that’s a lump sum you can save. But you need to be able to treat yourself and have a life; we only get one.’

Her personal rule for luxury purchases is simple: if doesn’t have enough in her account to buy something at least three times over, she can’t afford it at all.

That philosophy — part common sense, part anxiety management — has become the foundation of her brand.

Even now, with television appearances, sponsorship deals and half a million followers earning her making ‘lots more’ than ever before, the mum-of-two still speaks like someone who expects everything to vanish overnight — which is perhaps precisely why so many people trust her.

‘It’s changed my life,’ she says. ‘But I feel I’ve changed it; no one’s done it for me. And I’m exactly the same as five years ago. I still worry, I still save money, I’ve just got this career out of it, which is crazy.’

Still, it’s important to Gemma that her story isn’t used to minimise others’ struggles or suggest financial freedom is in easy reach for everyone.

‘It was the timing of the market, you can’t do it now,’ she says. ‘But I do believe when you’re young, if you are in a good situation where you’ve not got loads of outgoings, that’s the best time to save.’

The creator urges the younger generation to start as early as they can, putting away whatever they can for their future through taking on side jobs and living as cheaply as possible.

‘If at 18, you saved £500 a month, that’s £6,000 a year,’ Gemma explains. ‘Do that four or five years, you’d have a really good starting balance to get on the ladder.’

In her view, the system is skewed against lower earners, but education is key to helping Brits from all backgrounds deal with the ‘massive divide’ of stagnating incomes alongside spiralling housing costs.

Gemma adds: ‘We need to be helping young people and teaching them about debt, mortgages, interest rates, loan to value — all these things — because they’re facts of life.’

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المصدر: Metro UK