I spent two years with less than £200 in my account and learned more about wealth in that time than in all my years of comfortable employment. Broke is not a financial state. It is a teacher that forces you to see value where others see waste.
When you have no money, you stop buying solutions and start building them. I could not afford a £50 monthly SaaS tool, so I learned to write Python scripts that did the same thing for free. I could not pay for content creators to make my videos, so I learned to record and edit them myself.
The vast majority of people with money outsource their problems and never learn how to solve them. They pay for convenience and lose the skills that create independence. I had no choice but to become capable, and that capability became my most valuable asset.
I witnessed friends with good salaries stay trapped in jobs they hated because they lost the ability to live on less. Their expenses grew to match their income, then exceeded it. When you know how to live on £200 a month, job opportunities open up that others cannot accept.
The core issue lies in how we define security. Most people think it comes from a steady paycheck and a full bank account. I learned it comes from the ability to generate value from nothing but your own skills and existing assets.
I started my first real income stream by packaging blog posts I had already written. Cost to create: £0. Time invested: six hours of organisation and formatting. First month revenue: £340. The second month: £520. All from content that was sitting on my hard drive collecting digital dust.
I use Amazon affiliate links (allnoworg1pro-21) in everything I publish. One link per post, always relevant, always disclosed. It adds perhaps £100-400 monthly depending on traffic. Not life-changing alone, but meaningful when combined with product sales.
The difference between being broke and being wealthy is rarely a single big break. It is a series of small assets that compound. One blog post, one tool site, one video, one bundle. Each one teaches you something, earns a little, and builds confidence for the next.
I tested the "safe" path for years. University, employment, steady progression. It provided comfort but not wealth. The breakthrough came when comfort was no longer an option and I had to make money or face the consequences.
For anyone currently broke and reading this, your situation is not permanent. It is actually an advantage if you use it to learn skills that paid employees never develop. When money returns, you will have both the income and the independence.
Being broke taught me that you do not need money to make money. You need creativity, persistence, and the willingness to package what you already know.
