In 2019, Siobhan and Declan Kelleher were carrying €28,000 in mixed debt — a personal loan, two credit cards, and a car finance agreement. Both were working, both earned decent salaries, and neither could explain where the money was going each month. That was the first problem they decided to fix.
Where the audit started
Siobhan pulled three months of bank statements and categorised every transaction by hand. It took a weekend. What she found was not dramatic — no single category was wildly out of control. The issue was cumulative: small subscriptions, irregular grocery overruns, and a habit of treating takeaways as a weekly default rather than an occasional choice.
The system they actually stuck with
They moved to a cash envelope method for groceries and discretionary spending. Each payday, a fixed amount went into a shared savings account earmarked solely for debt repayment, before any other discretionary spending happened. They targeted the highest-interest debt first and did not touch the repayment pot for three years.
What made it work
Declan credits monthly check-ins more than any particular tool. Every first Sunday of the month, they reviewed the previous four weeks together — not to judge, but to adjust. By 2022, the debt was cleared. The process was slow, occasionally frustrating, and entirely replicable.