I couldn’t control the tears when I knelt beside my nine-year-old son, Lucas, as he slept in the dark. I’d just got a letter detailing that the mortgage on my home in Worthing, West Sussex, was going up by 67 per cent to over £2,000 a month [says Claire Cathcart, 40].
At the same time I was whittling away at my savings of £12,000 because I’d quit my £85,000-a-year job in September 2023 to start my own business. It was a terrible time — the responsibility for paying the bills rested entirely upon my shoulders.
I looked at everything I was spending and hauled it all in. I couldn’t renew on a better rate either because I didn’t have a regular income, so I had to deal with the interest rate hike — I was stuck with it.
The only option was to stop spending on non-essentials. I cancelled Sky Sports, Disney+ and AA car breakdown services — I discontinued the standing order to a savings account I’d set up for my son, and the life and pet insurance policies also went.
We stopped going to the local café, didn’t have takeaways and I cooked everything at home — I shopped carefully for food, only stocking up on what we absolutely needed to get by on. Visits to my parents became less regular — that saved on the fuel costs — and I cancelled a planned holiday to Mexico, losing the deposit.
This was the second home I bought after my divorce in 2019; the purchase price of £475,000 had been based upon my salary as a single earner and the 60 per cent share of the equity I received from the sale of my marital home. The percentage was given in consideration of my role as the primary carer of Lucas and my earnings being capped by working in roles that accommodated looking after him.
The house was barely habitable when I bought it in January 2022. But I snapped it up as it was much bigger than my last one, which I had sold in December 2019, and the beach was very close at the end of the road. It dates to 1929 and was on the market for the first time when I bought it — the 91-year-old lady who owned it had lived there her whole life, having inherited it from her parents.
• ‘To ease the pain of my divorce, I transformed my home’
I then sunk most of the profit I made from the sale of my first post-divorce house (£66,500)into renovations. I’d also spent £15,000 fighting a custody battle, so money was tight. For the first year and a half it all worked well. I had a great salary and could afford it, but when I became self-employed in 2023 my world fell apart financially.
I worked day and night on my business — The Elevate Hub, which gives support to HR professionals. At the same time I carried on improving the house — it wasn’t completely finished and I knew I had to get the best price from it if I was forced to downsize because of the mortgage payments. With a dog and three cats, renting was not an option, and I did not want to pay for a house that I don’t own.
I was just starting to think I had no choice but to put the house on the market when I got seven bookings for one of my courses, charged at a rate of £800 per person. It was such a huge relief; it went well and I got some great testimonials from it. More people signed up and 35 people attended in 2024.
The business kept growing, which meant the £2,000 mortgage payments have now became more manageable. Starting over on my own has been scary, but I feel I have gone through the worst with the mortgage rise. The dream was always to bring Lucas up by the sea. We love living here and I’m glad that we didn’t have to give it up — the previous owner had lived a colourful life and among the treasures that we found were trinkets, postcards and a beautiful turtle shell.
I’m making memories here just like she did. We’ve got through the hardest of times — I considered ditching self-employment many times and going back to a permanent, well-paid job — and it has been a hard route, but we survived and I am so glad we did, not only for our home but for my business and son.
