OPENING the monthly bank statement, Laura Helen’s heart sank. Despite husband David, 43, bringing home £3,000 a month as a mechanic and having a second job washing pots in a pub, they were mired in debt. Together, David and full-time mum Laura owed £54,000.
She says: “We felt like we were drowning.” Laura, David, daughter Tegan, now 15, and son Tyler, now 12, lived in a rented four-bedroom farmhouse in Gorran, Cornwall. “We were on the brink of bankruptcy most months and at one point I worried we’d be left homeless,” Laura says.
“I’d lie awake at night, my heart racing, imagining us without a roof over our heads. “The fear of losing everything was overwhelming. “Although we borrowed from friends and family, the £3,000 per month we had to pay on rent and bills wiped us out.
“The kids wore hand-me-downs and I made all our meals from scratch, using honesty-box veg and eggs from local farms. "We stretched every pound, were living to work, and it wasn’t the life I wanted for us.” Laura says the couple’s perilous financial situation came about after they adopted Tegan in 2014.
A long legal battle over the adoption resulted in enormous costs. “We took out a £12,000 loan and maxed out our credit cards to pay the fees,” says Laura, pregnant with Tyler at the time. “I left my job as a nursery nurse to care for both my newborn and a three-year-old.
Despite having their much-wanted children, the couple, who married in May 2007, struggled. “I’d wa.