Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Shopping addict ‘didn’t open post and moved cities’ after racking up £40k debt

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When she was at university Maddy Alexander-Grout was forced to deal with an addiction that left her £40,000 in debt. And in an effort to escape the consequences of her shopping addiction Maddy even moved cities while refusing to open any post.

Now she has launched an app to help others who find themselves in such a situation. BirminghamLive reports how her issues began when she started university with undiagnosed ADHD, which combined with her newfound freedom saw her quickly spiralling into a shopping addiction.




Maddy used credit cards, overdrafts, store cards and even turned to a hardship grant from her university to fund her addiction, buying non-necessities like clothes, shoes and CDs. It didn’t take long before the “hole that burned in my pocket” turned into £40,000 debt, but despite the staggering debt, Maddy was “really ashamed” of her spending habits, as she told Sky News.

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This led her to keep her addiction a secret from everyone but her housemates, who only knew that the uni student couldn’t pay her household bills. In hindsight, the neurodivergent money expert now understands her addiction was spurred by a psychological need for people to like her, buying the trendiest clothes and going to as much as possible only to “spiral” into her addiction even more when she woke up hungover.

She started backing away from her family as she didn’t want them to have to “bail me out” and avoided her roommates because of the debt with them that had started piling up. In a last-ditch effort to get away from her staggering debt, she refused to open her post and moved to a different city.

But when a bailiff arrived at her new house, she turned to Citizen’s Advice determined to try to get out of the “horrible situation” she found herself in. However when they urged her to declare bankruptcy, Maddy decided to take things into her own hands.

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