Jenna
🛑 My name is Jenna. I'm 26. I live in London. Not the London from the postcards. Not the London with the wine bars and the canal boats and the brunch places. I live in Croydon. South Croydon. The bit where the chicken shops outnumber the coffee shops and the high street looks like it gave up ten years ago. I rent a room in a house share on Selhurst Road. £580 a month. Shared bathroom. Shared kitchen. A fridge that smells like somebody else's leftovers. A window that doesn't shut properly in winter. And a landlord who replies "will sort" to every message and sorts nothing. I work at Greggs. The one on North End, near the Whitgift Centre. Early shifts. 6 AM to 2 PM. Five days a week if I'm lucky. Four if they cut me. £11.44 an hour. London. The most expensive city in the country. And I earn £11.44 an hour. After tax and National Insurance — about £1,550 a month. When I get the hours. Here are the expenses. Room rent: £580 (this is cheap for London — and it shows) Council tax share: £70 Phone: £25 Oyster card: £160 (zones 4-5, tram to East Croydon, then train or bus to work — TfL doesn't care if you're skint) Food: £180 (Lidl on Purley Way, own brand everything — I eat the same rotation of rice, eggs, and frozen veg every single week) Internet share: £15 Toiletries: £15 Laundromat: £25 (coin wash on the high street, £3.50 a load) Debt repayment: £280 (overdraft + credit card — I'll explain) Unexpected: £30 Left: £170. £170. That's not money. That's the gap between me and everything falling apart. And the gap gets smaller every month. But the real number — the one that wakes me up at night — is the debt. £14,500 on my overdraft and credit card. Plus £27,000 in student loans that I don't pay yet because I earn below the threshold — but it's there. Hanging over me. Getting bigger with interest every year. For a degree I never finished. And then there's my parents' debt. £18,000 on a personal loan they took out for me. Let me tell you how I got here. Four yea
