‘In my 20s, I ended up landing a huge tax bill and had some fines around paying my taxes, that’s when I realized I had no control of my finances. I knew that I was making a decent living and that I could afford to buy a house but I just didn’t know what I was doing with my money fundamentally.’
Looking at the life Patricia Bright leads, you would never guess she wasn’t confident in her finances. One of the UK’s leading influencers with over 4million followers across YouTube and Instagram, the 33-year-old mum of two has made over $1,000,000 (£771,000) on YouTube alone and according to one of her most popular videos, pays herself a salary of £65,000 a year.
Not only does Bright own her own home in London, paying off her 460,000 mortgage in full, but she also has a £771,000 investment portfolio. The influencer life looks pretty nice, right now, huh? But it hasn’t been easy to get there.
‘I have an accounting degree and I worked in finance for five years but in my 20s, I still wasn’t in control of my personal finances,’ she tells me over the phone from her four-bedroom home in South London. ‘I think a lot of people, we can have our degrees or jobs but don’t know how to function as real life adults. When it comes to personal finances, a lot of people go through life fumbling around until they face hardship.’
That epiphany came for Bright not just after her huge tax bill – which came when she didn’t pay tax on her side hustles or for the first two years after incorporating her company – but when she realised she’d wasted over £135,000 in her 20s alone on making silly financial mistakes. (You can watch that YouTube video here, trust me, it’s a great one.)
‘I realized that I wasn’t the only one [making these mistakes] and I wished there was someone else who was talking about money so I wouldn’t have made them myself,’ she tells me. ‘I almost felt obligated to start the conversation because of my own problems.’
The conversation she’s referring to is her second YouTube channel, The Break and podcast ‘Caught Off Guard’ which aims to help women step up their financial literacy. Amassing over 320,000 subscribers in less than nine months, it’s clear there’s a huge appetite for it.
‘It's been crazy,’ she says. ‘I started it seven months ago and it's gone from zero to 300,000. We’ve had some viral videos at some points and the comments have just been so amazing in relation to how transformative it’s been for people.
‘I've had messages from people saying that watching my content has helped them get out of debt or they’ve saved £6000 over the pandemic or they’ve come up with a financial plan they’re really confident in. I'm not, you know, saving the world but I am opening up a conversation around finances that a lot of the time hasn't been discussed.’
It’s a stark contrast to her typical content, her main channel – with near 3million subscribers – largely focuses on fashion and beauty. She says it was challenging pivoting into a new topic, especially one she was still learning about herself, being so known for one niche, but the subscriber count for The Break shows a shifting tide in YouTube content in particular. As influencing becomes one of the most desired fields of work among young people, transparency around finances is of growing necessity. In fact, Patricia’s most viewed videos on The Break are all around how she budgets her own salary and how she made over one million dollars as a YouTuber.
‘People definitely don't talk about it as much as they should,’ she says in regards to a lack of transparency in the influencing industry. ‘It doesn’t benefit anybody to be so secretive about salaries, how you spend your money or how you invest. I think sharing that information is so powerful because it enables people to make the best choices for them.’
‘We've watched enough makeup tutorials,’ Bright continues. ‘When I started out there were no makeup tutorials and now there are so many amazing ones and that’s great, but there’s loads now. This type of information, about financial literacy, is something new that needs to be delivered in a way that’s fun and engaging and helpful for so many people.’
That’s the defining characteristic of the channel. Watching her videos, Bright manages to make subjects as boring as accounting, mortgages and the stock market feel like a fun conversation with a friend. But more than that, she takes away the fear that comes with talking about money.
‘There’s so much jargon around financial information,’ she says. ‘I have a conspiracy that it’s done like that on purpose to make it more complicated. So my job is to translate that information into something more attainable and enjoyable so people feel like they can take control of their finances without feeling overwhelmed.’
It’s important for women in particular. You may already know the dire stats that only one in five women hold an investment (compared to one in three men), but did you know young women are more likely to seek advice for all other lifestyle areas before money? According to investment solutions firm Fidelity International, only 12% of young women have ever sought financial advice despite over 47% admitting money problems impact their mental health.
‘We don't talk about it with our friends or family,’ says Bright. ‘It’s just not considered the right kind of conversation to have. So then people don’t know that there are companies that can help them reduce their debt, or where they can get loans without any financing, or that it is possible to buy a house at 23 if you save a bit more.’
And she’s seeing success in starting that conversation already. ‘I had a message from someone who was an artist, in the last three months of watching my videos she got out of debt and made the most money she’s ever made,’ Bright tells me. ‘She saved £15,000 in three months over lockdown.
‘I was like “What the hell, how did you do that?” and she explained to me that she’d been making money before but she never had any at the end of the month and she couldn’t understand why,’ she continues. ‘I have a spreadsheet that over 20,000 people have downloaded which is a simple budgeting spreadsheet. So she used it to look at what’s going on with her finances and then take control and make better decisions. That’s what a lot of people are using it for and their stories are amazing.’
After you have a baby, there's an energy you feel to just get stuff done.
And it’s not just her subscribers who are benefiting, the brand pivot has also come at an important time for Bright. Creating the channel days after she delivered her second child, the new challenge has helped her maintain her sense of self while caring for a new-born.
‘After you have a baby there’s almost like an energy that you feel,’ she says. ‘They tell women to, you know, sleep and rest after you have a baby but sometimes you just want to get stuff done, particularly things you haven’t been able to do because you’ve been pregnant. I’d had this idea for ages and so once I had the baby I was like “You know what, I’m going to do this” and it was really invigorating and a way for me to feel like me again.
‘Plus I want to be an example for my daughters, I’m really about living and leading by example so hopefully they’ll look at me and be like “Mummy likes working and being productive” and they’ll be into that as well.’
Well, with a mum like Bright, it’s clear their futures are bound to be.
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Women Are Proven To Be Better At Investing Money, So Why Do We Avoid It?