Play and Win
✨ 🛑 I only had £55 left in my account, the repair bill for my van was £3,200, and debt collectors were calling every day. That was the night everything changed. 🛑 My name is Adrian Pavel. I’m 36 years old and I live in Manchester. I’m just an ordinary construction worker. I’ve been working on building sites for nearly ten years, mostly through subcontractors. The money was enough to get by, but only just. In the good months, I would bring home somewhere between £1,400 and £1,700 after tax, assuming there was enough work available. My wife, Eleni, wasn’t working at the time after the birth of our daughter. We thought we could manage for a few months. But then everything started falling apart. The winter of 2025 was an absolute nightmare. Rain nearly every day. Building sites kept shutting down. Contractors delayed payments. The company I’d been working with for over six months started delaying my wages. At first, they blamed cash flow problems. One week turned into two. Two weeks turned into nearly two months. When you’ve got a wife and children at home, it’s no longer just a delay. It’s a disaster. As if that wasn’t enough, our landlord put the rent up by £120 a month. We started cutting back on absolutely everything. Food. Heating. Anything that wasn’t essential. We even started saving money on medication at the pharmacy. Every day things got worse. Then came the final blow. My van broke down on the M60. Clutch and gearbox. The local garage quoted £3,200. Without my van, I was nothing. No one wants a tradesman who can’t get to site or carry his tools. I was losing money every single day while the van sat in the workshop. At first I managed with credit cards and an overdraft with my bank. Then I had to take out a loan. I kept telling myself: "I’ll repair the van, get back to work, and pay it off quickly." But it didn’t happen like that. The interest kept growing. The bills kept arriving. My son got ill. Everything spiralled downhill. The debts got bigger
