"Don’t internalise the idea you’re bad with money, when really you’re underpaid."

And, yes, I had a Harry Styles rollercoaster gif to hand.

Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly newsletter about women and money. I’m not a financial advisor and not qualified to give financial advice.

In one of the many money books I’ve read over the past few years, the author (I’m not being coy; I genuinely can’t remember which) insisted that no one should be paying interest on a credit card. Many credit card companies have 0% transfer offers they said, and once you approach the end of your current card’s 0% rate, you should apply for another and transfer the balance.

At the time I read this, I owed some money (not a lot) on a credit card, but my credit rating wasn’t good enough (and possibly income wasn’t high enough) to be approved for a new card at all, let alone a 0% card. And then, because I’d ruled myself out mentally, I forgot about 0% cards altogether.

Reviewing my finances at the start of this year, I remembered 0% cards are a thing and figured I might as well apply. I only owe £1600, but the interest is coming up to £50 a month, which is a lot.

So I applied. And, to my surprise and delight, I was approved - 0% on transfers and purchases for 19 months. I was going to save so much money! I made the balance transfer and the new card company emailed to tell me it had gone through. For a week, I woke up every morning and checked the app for my old card in anticipation of seeing the balance become zero.

Didn’t happen. After a week, I started to worry that I’d put the card details in wrong. What would happen if I had? Surely it would be reversed? I had a vague recollection of someone paying the wrong card and not being able to get the money back, but no, that couldn’t be it. I couldn’t remember double-checking, but I must have done.

Another couple of days went by and I checked the new card to find the transfer had been reversed. I put it through again, triple-checking the numbers that time. I googled to see how long it should take and apparently it should be done by the following day.

The following day, the transfer was showing on my new card but still hadn’t zeroed on my old card. I called the new card company to ask what was up.

And they said they don’t accept balance transfers. Just don’t accept them. I asked why not? What’s it to them who pays the card? They’re still getting paid. I pretty much heard the guy shrug down the phone. They just don’t. Oh.

Bugger.

Thanks to the new card being 0% on purchases too, it’s not a total disaster. I can put all cash spending on the new card and pay the old one off a lot faster (with the freed up cash) than I would have done before, just not instantly. Plus it should actually improve my credit rating since the percentage of credit I’m using has gone down. Oh and then my original card increased my limit by £1000, which will also help. (But also serves as a reminder, if one were needed, that credit cards are predatory and credit scores are a scam.)

And in the past, whenever I got a credit card, I thought woo hoo! free money! and bought a bunch of stuff. I didn’t do that this time. I did think ooh! candles and perfume samples and that book I’ve wanted for ages and… But thinking it, knowing I could buy them if I wanted to, seemed to be enough. I didn’t need to actually buy them. (Okay, yes, I bought the book. Of course I did.)

I’ve added the new card to my banking app so I can see what I’ve spent and separate out the relevant amount to pay my old card. And I’ve got a spreadsheet to keep track of the 19 months and any purchases I do make outside of the usual, because I know myself well enough to know that I will definitely do that.

So all in all, it’s been a good experience.

And if you’re paying interest on a credit card, do check to see if you can get a better rate, don’t assume you’ll be turned down. (I’ve also read that you can call your current provider and ask them to give you a better rate, but that never worked for me in the past.) But check the small print (on both cards!) first.

Talking of spreadsheets…

Last week, after reading about my tax cock-up, a friend messaged

I’d pay money for a webinar on how to do the spreadsheet thing.

which made me laugh, since I didn’t exactly think it was a good advert.

But I had been wondering about webinars… What do you think?

This week’s interview…

…is with Sarah Rushbrooke, who I got to know via her Substack, The Foibles of a Florist. I absolutely LOVE her floral arrangements and had been expecting to fill her interview with photos of them. But then she mentioned her bookshelves…

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An interview with Sarah Rushbrooke

Sarah Rushbrooke is an English florist and writer based in Glasgow. She runs a floristry business called Rook Botanics offering weddings, funerals and workshops. She writes a weekly newsletter The Foibles of a Florist and hosts a monthly podcast Flowers & Folklore.

What is your relationship with money currently?

It goes up and down. Last year was the first year of running my business without having a part time job on the side.

I’ve nailed some parts of my business, which is naturally very seasonal, but it means I’m having to get comfortable with a boom and bust cycle. I’m known for my wreath workshops, so November and December are wildly busy, and then January is crickets. My business pays me a monthly salary, but it still feels uncomfortable.

There were lots of costs to get back into floristry. When I started running workshops, it took about three workshops to even break even from the cost of buying buckets and secateurs. I wasted a lot of time wishing I had seed money to start my business.

If I want longevity with my business I do need to be bringing in more money. I’m able to look at it with a level head though. During my time at uni I was so scared of money I’d go months without checking my balance because I was too ashamed to see how deep into my overdraft I was.

Could you talk a bit about how and why you came to set up your own business?

Starting my own business, Rook Botanics, happened really organically. I worked in a flower shop when I was 14, ended up taking a gap year before University to spend a year at college to complete a BTEC in Floristry. It was always just a back up, in case my ‘proper’ career didn’t work out. I had no idea what my proper career path would be, but I saw how little the other florists in the shop got paid and I figured that floristry could never be a sustainable career.

I studied Religious Studies at University, initially I had thought I wanted to be a journalist, but I ended up working in Internal Communications and then Marketing within the charity sector. It made me incredibly jaded. I was paid incredibly poorly. At one job I was managing 8 different social media accounts (alongside a lot of other duties) and was being paid less than £20k.

I also saw a very dark side of charities, a lot of power hungry egos and toxic workplaces. Also a lot of legit crimes happened, that really shook me up. As I was approaching my thirties I started to spiral. I felt I was becoming cynical. I was also a soft person in a sector that kept telling me to grow a thicker skin. But I wanted to stay soft, it’s what allows me to be empathetic and caring.

Every year my partner and I would throw a Christmas party for all our friends. I’d get a stupidly big tree and buy cheap champagne from Aldi. Each year I had a Pinterest board for the aesthetic. One year our lounge ceiling fell in and we had to close off the room and turn our tiny spare room into a make shift lounge.

Nothing stopped me from throwing this party - except the pandemic. I knew I needed to do something to try and stay in good spirits. I offered to ordered in fresh foliage and moss and I’d teach my pals over Zoom to make a wreath. I dropped bags of greenery on people’s doorsteps and we had an absolute blast. I loved teaching. It planted the seed for Rook Botanics.

The following year my Grandma, who was my best friend, died. I had promised to make her a heart shaped tribute of pink carnations. A friend from floristry college made her casket spray and we walked together in her studio in Derbyshire, working on the arrangements. She was a little older and much wiser for me. She gave me a gentle kick up the arse. A very, very much needed kick. I told her how much I missed flowers and spoke aloud how I didn’t think anyone could make money from flowers. It wasn’t until that point that I realised I was stood next to a very successful florist who had managed to make a career from floristry. I had actual proof that flowers could pay the bills.

In summer that year I left my full time job, found a part time job and launched my business. I turned 30 in August 2021 and felt excited for my future. My first Rook Botanics’ wedding took place in September 2021 and I just loved it. In July 2023 I left my part time job to run Rook Botanics full time. I definitely jumped before I was ready and it’s been up and down, but incredibly rewarding. I had a very successful last quarter of 2024 and this is the year of me really putting myself out there.

I wrote a story about the beginning of my business and the impact of my Grandma, it got published in a book and I read it on stage at Edinburgh Book Festival last year.

What’s your earliest money memory?

My mum lied to our local newsagent about my age so I could get a paper round when I was 12, when you legally had to be 13. It was around this time that I realised some of my friends could say yes to every outing and they’d always get the latest CDs and DVDs or whatever. It’s taken a lot of time and work to have a much healthier attitude towards money.

What advice would you give your younger self about money?

Don’t internalise the idea you’re bad with money, when really you’re underpaid.

I started working in a flower shop when I was 14 and was paid £3.50 an hour. I started working on wedding flowers when I was 16, but it wasn’t until I was 18 that I was paid £5 an hour. I was often compared to my sister, who was ‘much better with money’, when she had the head start of earning a lot more because she worked at Boots, on a much fairer wage.

I was always a bit of a splurger. I knew from a very young age what I loved. And a lot of the things I loved were very expensive! I’m not sure I’d want to change that about my younger self though, I learnt so many good lessons along the way.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

It pains me to say this, because I love it so much, but our flat.

When me and my partner bought our flat (my Grandad left me some money when he died, I’m not sure I ever would have been able to save enough of a deposit without it) we had a survey carried out and thought we had done our due diligence. But it’s a tenement, built in 1904, and the previous owners had rented it out for a decade. They had done a million quick fixes and it has cost us so much money to fix things. They’d done dodgy electrical work, done a right cowboy job of adding an ensuite, they’d also done a really poor job of fixing a ceiling that then fell on my dog - thankfully she’s a greyhound so she was speedy enough to run out the way.

It’s definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things, and definitely worsened my opinion on landlords. I’ve got lots of great stories though. The year two of our ceilings fell down is a really good conversation filler, if there’s ever an awkward gap to fill.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?

After buying our flat we had a smidge of money to decorate the place. In hindsight, that budget was never going to cover even a third of the flat, and we have naively not budgeted to fix broken things.

But in rather typical Sarah fashion I splurged it all on having a custom bookcase built in my lounge. We’ve been in this flat for 8 years (our flat anniversary is 25 January!) and every time I look at it, it makes me so happy. When the carpenter came over I asked him if he’d ever seen Beauty and the Beast. He said he had two daughters and was very familiar with the film. My brief to him was to make me feel like Belle.

It meant we spent 4 years sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the bedroom because there was no budget for a bedframe, and to date we still haven’t finished decorating the whole flat. No regrets though. I have a bookcase with a ladder.

Do you have a pension? If not, do you have a plan?

I set up a pension pot when I tried going self-employed several years ago (back in my marketing days). I was in a very good habit of topping it up regularly, but I’ve definitely been too slack with it recently.

What would you do with £10,000?

Replace our bathroom. We had a leak during lockdown and so the floor got ripped up. It’s been like that since. It’s just a cosmetic issue and lots of other things like to break around our flat, so it’s not been a priority. My nephew said it looked like a bathroom from a haunted house, which is honestly kind of my vibe, but I’d rather cobwebs hanging from chandeliers than exposed floorboards.

My biggest worry is becoming complacent with my home and just learning to live with broken things.

That feels like a very boring answer. And there is a small part of me that thinks I would maybe splash a chunk of it finally visiting Shetland and just spending as much time needed to see some orcas in the wild.

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

I’m a sucker for a Lush bath bomb and they are pricey nowadays! Either that, or there’s a local ice cream spot called La Gelatessa that does the most incredible gelato. I would get a wee tub for me and a pal and take a walk around Queens Park.

If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?

What’s the best piece of money advice have they been given?

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THE LATEST POST ON MY OTHER SUBSTACK, HAPPY ENDINGS…

…is about my mum’s 1959 holiday in Austria.

"The view from the top was marvellous. I took some photos, I hope they turn out."