“I spent my twenties being reckless with money.”
Which is odd, given I’ve spent the last decade inside UK banks and fintechs, in financial crime and compliance. I understood it professionally. I just hadn’t made it work for me, personally.
For years, that stayed private — friends and family who knew what I did would quietly ask me to look at their own money over coffee.
Then a close friend needed a holiday loan and had never heard of a 0% purchase credit card. I wrote something up for him. One explanation led to another, and I ended up writing the book I’d needed in my own twenties.
Then my son was born — and I wanted to hand him something I was actually proud of.
This is that version: The M&G System, rebuilt properly rather than rushed.
“You were never stupid. You were just never told.”
Let’s fix that.
— Mustafa AlsoodanyFounder & Author, Money & Growth 101
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A few years ago, during lockdown, a close friend of mine was thinking about a holiday. Nothing extravagant — a week in the sun. The problem was paying for it. He’d been looking at a loan and wasn’t happy about the rate, and he told me so in the resigned, slightly annoyed tone of someone who assumes that’s just how it works.
I asked if he’d looked at a 0% purchase credit card. He hadn’t heard of one.
That stopped me. He’s a sharp guy — good job, good head on him — and here was a basic tool that could have saved him real money, and nobody had ever put it in front of him. Not at school, not at work, not by his bank. Why would they.
So I said: give me a bit of time, I’ll write something up for you. I opened my laptop and started with his exact situation. Then the different types of credit card. Then the credit score sitting behind them. One thing led to the next.
Somewhere in the middle of that, I realised I wasn’t writing a note any more.
I was writing the book I’d needed in my early twenties — the one nobody handed me. I published the first edition myself, start to finish. If you had a copy, you might have spotted the odd typo. I’d rather it existed with rough edges than sat perfect and unpublished on a hard drive.
One small example of what the system actually looks like in practice: I bought a £12,500 car using two 0% purchase cards instead of a car loan — about £312 in fees instead of over £1,500 in interest. Not glamorous. Just the boring, repeatable stuff that adds up.
And then my son was born.
That changed the stakes. One day he’ll be the twenty-something staring at a screen, wondering why nobody explained any of this. I want to hand him something I’m genuinely proud of — not a rushed first attempt, the proper version. This is that version: rewritten, expanded, checked far more carefully than the first.
But it’s still, at its heart, the same thing I opened my laptop to write for a friend who just wanted a straight answer about a holiday.
This is plain-English money help, not regulated advice — I teach the system; the decisions stay yours.
If money feels foggy, you’re in the right place.
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