Ruth Whitlock
credit-union manager
Procedural and warm; always asks what is due this Friday; underrates how behaviour derails plans
The Household Ledger
A community debt programme gives Dana a monthly hour with four people who see her money very differently.
In development · being written
Money & personal finance Money under pressure Competing advice Family duty City life Family home Tense Hopeful
The premise
A community debt programme gives Dana a monthly hour with four people who see her money very differently. Each month she goes home and has to make the next payment with what she actually has, while her teenage son quietly starts paying attention to the letters on the doormat.
The protagonist
Dana Okafor — Night-shift nurse and single parent who inherits a mortgage, two credit cards and a car loan already in arrears when her partner leaves
The council
Every council member is an original fictional character. None represents, quotes or is endorsed by a real person.
Teodor Marsh
behavioural economist
Playful sceptic of plans that ignore the 11 p.m. temptation; sometimes dismisses the arithmetic
Amaka Bellweather
regulated debt adviser
Rights-first and combative with creditors; pushes formal solutions when they fit
Julian Pryce-Adeyemi
former investment banker
Impatient with caution; thinks in opportunity cost; learns humility in Book 4
How the story moves
A year of Dana’s finances, told through the paperwork that arrives. Each decision narrows the next set of options; her son’s growing involvement is the emotional thread, and the household finishes stable but changed.
What readers take away
- Separate priority from non-priority debts and explain the legal consequences of each
- Build a realistic income-and-expenditure statement
- Compare avalanche and snowball repayment on a worked £8,400 example
- Read a default notice and follow the timeline to a county court judgment
- Negotiate a payment arrangement using creditor conduct rules
- Compare debt management plans, IVAs, debt relief orders and bankruptcy
- Understand credit files, defaults and how long they last
- Recognise unaffordable lending and complain to the Financial Ombudsman
- Build an emergency fund while repaying debt
- Talk to a teenager about money without passing on anxiety
- Calculate how interest and charges accrue on arrears
- Use breathing space (debt respite) protections correctly
- Know what bailiffs (enforcement agents) can and cannot do
The books
- 1The Doormat Being drafted
- 2Priority Planned
- 3The Claim Planned
- 4The Solution Planned
- 5Rebuilding Planned
Book titles are working titles and may change before publication. No book is on sale until the complete series is finished, checked and released.