THE HOUSING BOOM BUT NOT FOR ME!!
I class myself as lucky in many ways but despite being an agent my timing is pretty rubbish as i missed the property boom due to punting my life away and then not having the ability to buy due to poor credit.
Kelly found out about the money owed on the house when a statement came through the door and it took a load of explaining and she was so pissed off due to the house needing loads of work that it started to put pressure on our relationship and i found at that time in my life i turned to the one thing i knew which was punting and was like Fck it cos when your in that casino/bookies/card room no-one really knows who is up against it or doing well and it was my release from all the pressure despite it heaping more pressure on in other areas.
To make it up to Kelly i took out a 2nd loan on the property so we could get the kitchen done/ buy her a car/ get a boob job (her not me) but i had lost the kitchen money before i had even stripped out the old one so i secretly took the worst piece of finance i have ever taken with the kitchen company and took the finance on an 8k kitchen (more later) but within 6months i was spending hardly anytime in the midlands as my relationship was crap so was paying for a house i never lived in and was driving up and down the motorway to play poker at Walsall as leaving work at 6pm i could get to their good comps by 9pm or Luton by 7.30 and was doing ok in poker then losing most of it before i got to the door and then driving back down south for work the next day. I was at my unhealthiest ever eating meals at 10pm plus the obligatory sandwich sweets redbull for the drive home coupled with 2hours sleep in the car park before shaving in the office and doing a full days work and as i was in my mid 20s could manage this for 4days on the trot then i would have 2 days to recover.
I was a mess!!!
When we eventually split up it was messy and by the time all the charges for early redemption had been applied to my accounts i was left with £456 having had 50k deposit 18months earlier plus i owed a loan credit card and this poxy 8k loan on the kitchen at an exorbitant rate which ended up costing me 20k to pay back in total so i hope the people living in my old home really enjoyed that kitchen and Kelly's new fella enjoyed the boobs as i never really got to use either of them!!

My Dad had expected to see some of the cash from the sale of the house paid off the red book so was obv disappointed to find only £456 and it took some explaining but i was accomplished at this by now and i was earning £60k plus so promised to pay monthly but like most promises in those days they didnt mean a lot.
The only way i could get hold of money now was to win it or borrow it from non mainstream ways and it was at this stage in my journey where i think i was at my luckiest but it was more of a lucky to be alive...