The hidden cost of the cuts

The threat of redundancy is more prominent in today's economy. In today’s climate, losing your job is a very real fear for many.

Thoughts of how you will be able to pay for your mortgage and feed your kids can be an incredibly panic inducing one. However, it’s often the smaller things that can see your situation spiralling out of control; a credit card you can’t pay for, a loan that you’d never worried about being able to afford before.

This was the situation Elaine and Martin Spafford found themselves in after Martin was made redundant from his job as a TV engineer. With five children, all of school age, between them suddenly they realised that they would have to come up with an alternative income and fast.
 “I was a head housekeeper and receptionist in a hotel,” explains Elaine. “It was quite a distance for me to travel, though, and on minimum wage after paying for petrol, it really wasn’t worth it.

 “Martin had been in his job for 28 years when they started making redundancies. At first, they hinted that some people would be made redundant, but you never knew exactly who it was going to be and they didn’t have voluntary redundancies. By the time he was actually made redundant, the package had decreased and Martin was feeling very disheartened with it all.”

Up until then, the couple had credit cards and loans that you would find in a usual household. It was all manageable and something they didn’t really think of as a problem. However, when Martin lost his job they realised it was something that could quickly spiral out of control.

 “We’d never worried about debt before and we were managing just fine,” remembers Elaine. “We didn’t think about it – it was easy and we just used it for everyday life like many people do. If it hadn’t been for the change in our circumstances, we probably would have carried on in that vein without a thought. “However, when Martin was made redundant, we could see that without getting an income immediately, we wouldn’t be able to pay it off and we would have got into serious problems very quickly. His redundancy package meant that benefits were out of the question and realistically we didn’t want to go down that route anyway.”

Elaine had, in fact, a few years earlier tried Kleeneze. It wasn’t the right time and after deciding she didn’t understand the network marketing side of it enough, she left. The couple’s situation had now changed, though, and Kleeneze was once again on the cards.

 “We knew we could make the income from the retail straight away to tide us over until we got to grips with the networking side of it all,” she explains. “In our first month we made £676. Within three months we were making over £700. By six months it was £1,200. That was all retailing. You can earn anything you want with the retailing.”

 They were finally back in control, but it was more than having an income that gave them happiness. “Martin had really had enough of working for someone else by the time we joined Kleeneze,” said Elaine. “In fact, that was probably the main reason we joined. You know where you stand having your own business. Our last income was £2,200 and that’s just great considering we fit our hours in around all the family commitments we have as well. I know that if we want more, we can just do more. We’d never look back now.

I wish everyone could see the potential of Kleeneze.”