Chapter 4: Where’d It Go?

Seven quid.

I’m sitting on the sofa bed at half eleven on a Wednesday night, banking app open, and the number is just — sitting there. £7.34. Looking at me. Like it’s embarrassed for both of us.

Two weeks ago I had a hundred and forty-eight pounds in this account. I know this because I checked it the day after my second pay went in. I screenshotted it. I actually screenshotted my bank balance like it was something to be proud of, because for about six hours it was the most money I’d ever had.

And now it’s seven quid thirty-four.

Where did a hundred and forty pounds go? In two weeks?

I scroll down. The transactions. Every tap, every time I held my card against a machine and didn’t think about it.

I start counting.

Supermarket meal deal. £3.75. Then another one. Then another one. Then three more. Six meal deals in two weeks, because packing lunch means getting up earlier and I’m already getting up at six for the Saturday shift and I just — couldn’t be bothered. Twenty-two fifty. On sandwiches and crisps and a drink I forgot about before I’d finished chewing.

Bus fares. £2.40. £2.40. £2.40. Sixteen single fares in two weeks. Some days it was both ways — to work and back, or to school and then to Sienna’s. Thirty-eight quid forty. On buses.

I should have a pass. The monthly pass is sixty-something quid up front and I didn’t have sixty-something quid on the day it mattered, so I’ve been paying singles. Which costs more. Because of course it does.

Then there’s the Just Eat. Friday night, Sienna’s place, splitting an order from the curry house on Great Horton Road. My half: eight seventy.

Phone case. Amazon. £9.99. The old one cracked and I was scared the screen would go next. It arrived in a shoebox-sized box and the case is pink even though the picture looked coral. It’s fine. It’s also a tenner.

Spotify. £12.99. When did that go up? I check last month. £12.99. The month before. £12.99. Accha. So it’s been that for a while.

iCloud. £0.99. A quid a month to store photos I never look at.

And then one I don’t recognise. INKD SUBSCRPTN. £7.99.

Oh. Oh no.

The workout app. The one Sienna sent me on TikTok three weeks ago. Free for seven days, then £7.99 a month. And I thought yeah, obviously I’ll cancel it before the seven days. Everyone says that. Everyone means it. And I’ve used it once, for eleven minutes, and apparently that cost me seven ninety-nine.

I get the calculator out.

Spotify: £12.99.
iCloud: £0.99.
INKD whatever: £7.99.

Twenty-one pounds ninety-seven per month. On subscriptions.

I sit with that number. Twenty-one ninety-seven. Every month. Automatically. A slow leak I hadn’t noticed.

Then I make it worse. I convert it.

I earn six-forty an hour. Twenty-one ninety-seven divided by six-forty.

Three point four hours.

Three and a half hours of scanning tins and stacking shelves and saying ‘do you need a bag?’ four hundred times. Spotify, which I actually use. And then iCloud and that workout app, which — no.

Almost a full shift. Gone.

I can’t sleep.

I lie there and add it up. All of it. Meal deals. Bus fares. The Just Eat. The phone case. The subscriptions. A Costa I forgot about — £3.50 for an oat latte because Sienna was getting one and it felt weird to just stand there. A quid twenty for a Fanta at the vending machine at work. Two quid for a birthday card for Priya. A Greggs sausage roll after school — £2.40, because I was starving and the bus was late.

I’m lying in the dark doing maths on my phone calculator and the total keeps getting bigger.

£110.66.

A hundred and ten quid. And the rest went on my phone top-up — ten pounds — and the twenty I gave Mum for the electric. That’s £140.66. There’s still about twelve quid I can’t find. Something between the bus and the Greggs and — whatever. It’s gone. That’s where a hundred and forty-eight pounds went. In fourteen days.

None of it was big. None of it felt like spending. Every single one of those purchases, I tapped my card and thought nothing. Literally nothing. The machine beeped, the number changed somewhere on a screen I wasn’t looking at, and I walked away with a sandwich or a bus ticket or an oat latte I didn’t even like that much.

Tapping the card doesn’t feel like money leaving. It feels like nothing. Just a sound and a green light and then you move on with your day and somewhere, invisibly, your balance drops by three quid seventy-five and you don’t feel it because you didn’t hand anything over. You didn’t watch the notes go. You just — tapped.

I put the phone down. Flip it over so the screen’s gone.

But my brain won’t stop. If I spend like this every two weeks, that’s — two hundred and eighty a month? On nothing? I earn about three hundred. That leaves me twenty quid. Before anything unexpected. Before anything at all.

No wonder there’s seven quid left. The numbers add up perfectly. It’s not a mystery. It’s just me. Three quid seventy-five at a time.

We did this in PSHE once. Year 9. Miss Kaur made us do a pretend budget for a pretend person with a pretend salary. I got full marks. Didn’t help.

Thursday. Work.

Darius is in the break room. He’s got a Tesco meal deal in front of him. Some things never change.

‘You look rough,’ he says.

‘Cheers.’

‘Bad sleep?’

‘Something like that.’

I sit down. Darius has his phone propped against the ketchup, watching a highlight reel of some goal. ‘Did you see that? That’s filthy,’ he says. I glance at the screen. Some midfielder I don’t recognise doing something ridiculous with his left foot. ‘Mate, I could’ve done that,’ I say. He snorts. ‘You play?’ ‘I played in Year 9. I was terrible.’ ‘Yeah, you look terrible.’ I kick his chair. He grins and goes back to his sandwich.

I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to tell him I’ve got seven quid to my name and payday’s a week away. I’m not going to —

‘I’ve got seven quid,’ I say.

He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t look surprised. He just nods.

‘Payday?’

‘Next Friday.’

‘That’s eight days.’

‘Yeah. I can count.’

He eats his sandwich. I drink my water. The clock on the wall says quarter past. Someone walks through, opens the fridge, closes it, walks out. The break room smells of someone’s leftover curry that’s been in the fridge since Monday and is developing a personality.

‘First time running out?’

‘I didn’t run out. I’ve got seven quid.’

‘Maya. Seven quid is running out. That’s — what, two bus fares?’

‘Three. If I walk one way.’

He puts the sandwich down. ‘Can I ask you something? Don’t get offended.’

‘Great start.’

‘Do you know where it went?’

‘Yeah. I figured it out last night. Meal deals. Bus. Subscriptions. A phone case. A Costa.’

He nods slowly. Like I’ve described something he recognises.

‘You know what that’s called?’

‘Being skint?’

‘Nah. Well, yeah. But the thing you did — going back through and working out where it all went. That’s the first step. Most people don’t even do that. Most people just look at the number and panic.’

‘I did both.’

He almost smiles. ‘At least cancel the workout app.’

‘I’m cancelling it tonight.’

‘Tonight.’

‘Tonight. I promise.’

‘Because you said you’d cancel it before the free trial ended, and look how that went.’

I throw a balled-up napkin at him. He bats it away.

I cancel the workout app on the bus home. Four screens, two pop-ups asking if I’m sure, one offering me 50% off if I stay, and a final screen that says ‘We’re sorry to see you go!’ No you’re not. You got my seven ninety-nine and you know it.

Spotify I keep. I actually use it. Every day.

iCloud — ninety-nine pence. It’s nothing. Except nothing times twelve months is £11.88 a year, and that’s almost two hours of work. For what? Photos of my food and screenshots I’ll never look at.

I open Settings. Downgrade to the free tier. Delete some photos. Done.

That’s £8.98 a month less. Slightly less stupid. That’s all I’ve got.

I text Sienna.

just cancelled that workout app btw
the one u sent me

loool did u ever even use it

once
eleven minutes

maya 😭
how much was it

7.99 a MONTH

allow it thats so peak
i cancelled mine ages ago

SIENNA
u could have told me

i forgot lol
ur welcome

Saturday. Nani day.

I call it that in my head. Most Saturdays she’s here because Mum works and someone needs to make sure Yus doesn’t survive on Frosties and YouTube until six o’clock.

I’m back from my morning shift. My feet hurt. But Nani’s in the kitchen so there’s no escaping her.

She’s at the counter, and she’s got her handbag open, and she’s sorting the tins.

I’ve seen it before. Loads of times. But I’ve never really watched. It was just something Nani did — eccentric, old-fashioned, like how she won’t use the microwave or how she watches Pointless every day even though she gets maybe one question in ten.

But today I’m watching.

She’s got five tins on the counter. Old Cadbury Roses tins, the flat round ones, each with a label. Handwritten on bits of masking tape in Urdu, and underneath, in smaller writing, English.

کرایہ — Rent
کھانا — Food
بس پاس — Bus
مسجد — Mosque
گھر — Home

The last one — گھر, ghar, home — I know what that means. Money for family back home. In Mirpur. Nani sends money to her sister and her sister’s children every month. It’s not a favour. It’s not charity. It’s just what you do. Theek hai.

She’s counting notes. I can hear the papery sound from across the room. Twenty in the first tin. Thirty in the second. She counts under her breath — bees, tees — quiet, rhythmic.

She puts money in each tin. Every one. Including the mosque tin. Including the ghar tin. These are not leftovers. These are first. Before she’s spent a paise on herself.

I’m standing in the doorway watching my seventy-year-old grandmother do maths with five old chocolate tins, and something in my chest goes tight.

‘Nani.’

She looks up. ‘Accha, you’re back. Sit. I make chai.’

‘I’m fine, Nani, I —’

‘Sit.’

I sit.

She puts the kettle on. The tins are still on the counter, lids off, notes sorted.

‘Nani, can I ask you something?’

‘Haan.’

‘The tins. How do you know how much goes in each one?’

She looks at me like I’ve asked how water works.

‘I know what I need. Rent — this much.’ She taps the first tin. ‘Food — this much. Bus — this much. Mosque, ghar. What is left, I keep.’

‘But how do you decide? Like, what if one month food costs more, or —’

‘Then food tin gets more. And something else gets less. But every pound —’ she holds up a finger — ‘every pound knows where it goes before it leaves my hand.’

She says this in English. Like she’s said it before and she wants me to hear every word.

Every pound knows where it goes before it leaves my hand.

I look at the tins. Five categories. Her whole financial life, in five Cadbury Roses tins on a kitchen counter in a council flat in Bradford.

‘But what if something unexpected happens? Like if something breaks, or —’

The Nani look. I shut up.

‘This is why you do not spend what is not in the tin. If food tin is empty, food is finished for the week. You eat roti and daal. You do not take from rent. You do not take from ghar. Never. Each tin — you do not touch. It is for that thing only. Like a —’ She pauses. Searches for the English. ‘Like a promise.’

The kettle clicks off. She makes chai. She doesn’t use teabags — she never uses teabags. She boils the leaves in a pan with milk and cardamom and too much sugar. Puts a cup on the counter. Wipes her hands on the tea towel. The flat fills with the smell and for a second it doesn’t matter that it’s tiny and cold and the carpet’s given up on life. It smells like home.

She puts a cup in front of me.

‘You are worrying about money,’ she says.

‘No. I’m fine.’

She sits down. Picks up her own cup. Blows on it.

‘Beta, I can see. You check your phone —’ she mimes the scrolling — ‘and then your face goes like this.’ She does a face. It’s my face. It’s exactly my face when I check my balance.

‘It’s just — I don’t know where it goes, Nani. I get paid and then two weeks later there’s nothing left and I can’t even tell you what I spent it on.’

She nods. Sips her chai.

‘When I first come to Bradford,’ she says, ‘your nana — God rest him — he is working at the mill. Every Friday, he comes home. He puts the money on the table. All of it. Cash.’

She taps the counter like it’s that table.

‘And I sit here and I divide. Rent. Food. Electric. Stamp money for the letter home. Every week. Same thing. And at the end, maybe one pound, two pound left. Maybe nothing. But I know. I always know where every paise went.’

‘But Nani, everything’s different now. Nobody uses cash. It’s all cards and apps and —’

‘The money is the same.’

‘Card, cash, tin, phone — the money is the same. If you don’t tell it where to go, it just — goes. And then you sit there —’ she points at me — ‘asking where it went.’

I open my mouth. Close it. Because she’s right. Completely, exactly right.

She finishes her chai, puts the lids on the tins one by one, and puts them back in her handbag. She carries them with her. Her system goes where she goes.

I sit at the counter after she’s gone to check on Yus, and I stare at the spot where the tins were.

Five tins. Five categories. Every pound has a job before it’s spent.

It’s a system. A proper system. She’s been running her finances on it for decades and she’s never had a month where she looked at her balance and said ‘where’d it go?’

I think about my banking app. The tap and go. The invisible spending. No tins. No counting. Just a number on a screen that gets smaller and I don’t feel it until it’s gone.

Nani doesn’t use an app. Nani uses tins. And Nani’s never had seven quid to her name on a Wednesday night wondering where a hundred and forty pounds went.

Saturday afternoon. Yus is at his mate’s. I sit cross-legged on the sofa bed with my phone.

budgeting app uk free

I scroll past the ads and the ones that want £5.99 a month for the privilege of telling me I’m skint. Monzo keeps coming up. It’s got this feature — Pots. You can split your money into different pots, each one labelled.

Like tins. Digital tins.

I download it. Free. I keep the NatWest for my pay coming in — that’s where my pay goes — but Monzo is where I’ll sort the money out. I set up an account: photo of my ID, a selfie, verification. Ten minutes. I’m in.

I create pots. Bus, food, fun money. And phone.

Four categories. Not five like Nani. But the logic’s the same — I think. Theek hai. It’s a start.

Then I make a mistake.

Sunday afternoon. TikTok. Some girl, probably twenty-two, probably lives in London, definitely has better lighting than me. ‘HOW I BUDGET ON A LOW INCOME’ in bold letters. Hundreds of thousands of likes.

She explains the 50/30/20 rule. Fifty per cent on needs. Thirty per cent on wants. Twenty per cent on savings. Sounds clean.

I get the calculator out. Three hundred quid a month.

Fifty per cent needs: £150. Thirty per cent wants: £90. Twenty per cent savings: £60.

My needs. Bus pass — sixty-odd quid. Phone: fifteen. Mum’s electric: twenty. Food: forty being careful. School stuff: fifteen. That’s a hundred and fifty. Already. And I haven’t included the times Mum asks me to grab milk or the fact that my school shoes have a hole in them.

My needs eat the whole fifty per cent. Sometimes more.

Which means wants — the ninety quid — is actually about thirty. And savings?

From the other room, Yus shouts: ‘Maya! Where’s the remote?’

‘Where you left it!’

‘I didn’t leave it anywhere!’

‘Then it’s still there, innit?’

I look back at my phone. The TikTok girl is showing her spreadsheet. Colour-coded. She’s got a category for ‘holiday fund.’

I close TikTok.

The 50/30/20 rule wasn’t made for me. It was made for someone with enough money for the percentages to actually work. Someone whose needs don’t eat everything.

Nani didn’t use percentages. She looked at what she had, looked at what she needed, and divided it. No formula. Just: this is what I have, this is what I owe, this is what’s left.

That’s what I need to do. Not follow someone else’s maths. Build my own.

Monday night. Notepad — an actual physical notepad, because I want to see the whole thing at once.

I write down what I earn. About three hundred a month. Variable — some months two-eighty, some three-twenty. I use three hundred.

The bathroom door opens down the hall. Mum. I hear the tap, then her footsteps coming toward the kitchen for water. I flip the notepad face-down on the sofa bed and pick up my phone, pretend I’m scrolling. She fills a glass, stands there a second.

‘Not asleep yet?’

‘Nearly.’

She goes. I wait until her door clicks shut before I turn the notepad back over.

Non-negotiable. The money that leaves no matter what. I start scribbling. Bus pass — sixty-two quid. Phone top-up — fifteen. Twenty for Mum’s electric. Spotify — twelve ninety-nine. Packed lunch stuff, my share — twenty-five.

I add it up. Cross it out. Add it up again. £134.99. Call it a hundred and thirty-five.

What’s left: £165. I stare at the number. A hundred and sixty-five quid for everything else.

I start making pots.

Needs — £135. Locked. Goes out on payday. Bus pass, phone, Mum, Spotify, food.

Life — £100. Going out. Clothes. Whatever comes up. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Save — £30.

I look at the three pots. Needs plus Life plus Save. That’s two hundred and sixty-five.

Three hundred minus two sixty-five is thirty-five. Thirty-five quid sitting in my main account doing nothing. In a chapter of my life where seven quid nearly finished me.

I make one more pot. I stare at the screen for a bit, trying to think of a name.

Emergency — £35.

Not savings. Just — there. For when the bus pass goes up, or Mum needs extra for the electric. Or my shoes fall apart. The not-seven-quid-again fund.

£135 + £100 + £30 + £35 = £300. Every pound’s doing something.

I text Sienna a screenshot of the pots.

look at me being responsible

omg who are u
whats the emergency one for

for when everything goes wrong
which is always

loool fair
save pot tho 👀
thats proper grown up maya

Thirty quid. It’s not a lot. Nani saves more than that, probably, and she earns less. But it’s mine, and it’s on purpose, and yesterday I had seven quid and no idea why.

I look at the notepad. The numbers. The pots.

Every pound’s doing something. That’ll do.

Two weeks later.

I check the app. Thursday night. Payday was last Friday. First time in my life I’ve checked my bank balance without flinching.

Needs pot: empty. Bus pass, phone top-up, Mum’s twenty. All on schedule.

Life pot: twenty-two quid and change. Nando’s with Sienna on Saturday — fourteen quid, budgeted for. Shampoo. Tights for school. A Roblox gift card for Yus’s birthday — fiver from the Co-op. All from the pot. All planned.

Save pot: £22. Not thirty. I dipped in for Yus’s birthday — the Roblox card was meant to come from Life but Life ran out two days early and I didn’t want to give him nothing. So I took eight quid from Save and I felt it, properly felt it, like reaching into one of Nani’s tins. Twenty-two is still more than zero. I keep telling myself that.

Emergency pot: £35. Still there. Didn’t need it this month. That feels like winning.

The ‘where’d it go?’ feeling is gone.

Not because I have more money. I don’t. This month has been tighter, because I can see where it goes and that means I feel it leaving. But I know where it goes. I can point at the notepad and say: there. That was a bus pass. That was Nando’s. That was my thirty quid that I put in a pot and left alone.

I close the app. The estate is doing its evening thing — a car, someone’s music, the fox that screams every night at ten like it’s got an alarm set.

I think about the tins. Five Cadbury Roses tins and masking tape labels and Nani counting notes under her breath in Urdu. I didn’t use tins. I used an app. Same thing, basically. Tins or an app.

I pull the blanket up. I don’t check my phone again.

For the first time in weeks, I know exactly where I stand. It’s not comfortable. It’s definitely not safe. But I’m not checking my phone at midnight wondering where it all went, and that’s — yeah. That’ll do.

I fall asleep quickly. And I don’t wake up at two in the morning to check my balance.

That’s new.

What wakes me up at six is a text from Mum, sent at half five before her shift.

can we talk tonight, need to tell u something about work x

I stare at it. I read it again. Then I get up and open Monzo. Check every pot. Needs: empty. Life: twenty-two. Save: twenty-two. Emergency: thirty-five. Nothing’s changed since last night. I know nothing’s changed. I check anyway.

I get back into bed. I don’t sleep.