I used to work in restaurants, gaining experience until I felt ready to go freelance. Then, right when I got a business offer and quit my job, I found out I was pregnant, and I didn’t have a partner to share the journey with. Managing the business required all my time as well as leading a team in another city, so I had to let it go. I ended up without a job and about to become a single mom with no one to help support my daughter. I found a temporary job and worked until she was born, but then the business closed. After giving birth, I was unemployed and a new mom, which was quite a shock. It was time for me to reinvent myself

This is how I fell into debt: “After the birth, I started working as an employee and the money wasn’t enough to support the two of us. I tried to find work and make enough money, but I didn’t earn enough to cover my expenses, so I started to accumulate debts. In addition, I was overwhelmed with motherhood. My daughter had a health problem from the age of six months and I barely found an opportunity to work.

The additional problem, and perhaps the main one:
“I never received a particularly successful financial education. I always say I was a rich child to poor parents. I grew up in a home where my parents had reasonable financial capabilities, and they spoiled me and showered me with gifts. I learned to live at a high standard of living that didn’t match my financial reality. As long as I was on my own, I managed to balance and get by. However, I had no reserves or savings, and I didn’t know how to cope without the things I was used to buying (and my taste is expensive and unique). I’m not wasteful by nature, but I didn’t live within my means.

I fell into debt without realizing what was happening to me. I took loans with monthly repayments without looking ahead. I was immersed in daily survival—managing, doing laundry, getting up at night—and I couldn’t see the economic situation I was in. I earned as much as I could, and every time I went into overdraft, I took another loan. If I happened to earn a lot, I spent the money. I would reward myself by buying various indulgences without understanding the financial implications of those expenses, but in the end, those indulgences added up to thousands of shekels.

For five years, I lived like this. There were times I earned 6,000 or 10,000 shekels, and sometimes I didn’t earn anything. By the time I approached Paamonim, I was 30,000 shekels in overdraft and had 270,000 shekels in debt with monthly repayments of 7,000 shekels. I think many people are in a similar situation to mine, living far beyond their means. They survive and live life without awareness of their budget management. Their spending is out of control, and the easiest and most accessible solution is to take a loan or spread payments. A lot of people around me rely on their parents, take loans, and live beyond their means without understanding that there is a way to live differently.”

How I Dealt with the Debts:
“At the beginning of my mentoring process with Paamonim, I did an assessment with Gila, my mentor, and I understood the true picture of my financial situation. This was the most important thing I did—looking my debts in the eye—and there was no way I could have done this without Paamonim’s guidance. When I realized how bad the situation was, we thought about drastic actions to take, such as selling the house or taking on another job in the evenings while leaving my daughter home alone.

I chose not to compromise on these two things. With Gila’s help, we defined a series of solutions tailored to my immediate improvement. Gila helped me gather all the financial data from the past six months, refinance my loans over a longer term to avoid insolvency, and separate my business account from my personal account. Until then, the business account was part of the personal account. There was no control or understanding of business expenses versus household expenses, and the loans were scattered across several places.

The most important realization I had was that loans were no longer an option for me. The word ‘installments’ no longer exists in my vocabulary. We built a very organized budget that included everything I couldn’t live without, and anything beyond that was removed from the list. I meticulously recorded everything I spent, even just for a falafel. I learned to differentiate between a real need and a want, balance my budget, identify deviations, prioritize things I wanted outside of emergency situations, and accepted help from close ones who wanted to help.

It was hard for me to turn to my parents for help because I didn’t want to burden them. With Gila’s encouragement, I decided to ask them and received significant financial and emotional support.”

Housing:
“I’ve been living for three years in a new apartment I bought from a contractor. It’s a three-room apartment in the central region. I pay 5,500 shekels for the mortgage. I bought it before I understood my financial situation.”

Working Hours:
“Over the past year, I’ve been working 28 monthly hours as an employee. As a freelancer, the workload varies—it could be 60 hours over four days, and at times, there’s no work at all. The situation is challenging because I always need to be ready for work opportunities, so I can’t take a full-time salaried job. Besides, the income from salaried work isn’t enough. In the restaurant industry, conditions are tough for mothers. As an employee, I earn a reasonable salary, but the only way to earn more per hour is as a freelancer. This creates a vicious cycle—I tried working as a freelancer to earn more, but the work wasn’t consistent. Since I wasn’t earning, I couldn’t invest in the business, so the business didn’t grow.”

Free Time:
“I don’t really do anything in my free time. I’m mentally overwhelmed, always in survival mode, and I have no desire to go out. Therefore, small purchases compensate for the difficulty and the fact that I don’t have money to do something else.”

Income:
“My salary as an employee is 7,000 shekels (the income is consistent, but I work as a freelancer and don’t receive employee benefits). As a freelancer, in a good month, I can earn 5,000 shekels, but in reality, there are months when I don’t earn anything. Supporting a child alone with one salary is very difficult.”

Employment History:
“I worked as an employee in the restaurant industry over the years. I’m a perfectionist, and it’s very hard for me to compromise on professionalism and not earn in line with my professional abilities. Early in my career, I accepted this, but I reached a point where my salary as an employee wasn’t enough to make ends meet. That’s when I began developing my freelance business more intensively.”

Bank Account Status:
“As of today, I’m 6,000 shekels in overdraft, and my debts have been reduced to 165,000 shekels within a year. Additionally, when my daughter was born, I opened a savings account for her and deposit 200 shekels each month (using her child allowance and adding 50 shekels). I had to resist the urge to touch that savings account.”

Monthly Fixed Expenses:

• Mortgage: 5,500 shekels
• Electricity: 200 shekels
• Phone and Internet: 220 shekels
• Fuel: 550 shekels
• Insurance and Pension: 640 shekels
• Property Tax: 500 shekels
• Water: 100 shekels
• Gas: 70 shekels
• Healthcare Fund: 250 shekels
• Medical Expenses: 300 shekels
• After-school program: 300 shekels
• Extracurricular activity: 180 shekels
• Food: 1,500 shekels
• Maintenance fees: 300 shekels
• Clothing and footwear: 300 shekels
• Home maintenance: 200 shekels
• Loan repayments: 1,600 shekels
• Cosmetics and pharmacy: 320 shekels
• Gifts for events: 150 shekels
• Monthly outing with my daughter (museum/movie): 100 shekels
• Miscellaneous and emergencies: 150 shekels

Car:
“A 2007 Suzuki, valued at about 30,000 shekels. I’ve had this car for seven years since my daughter was born. The car is in good condition. I bought it from my parents and paid two-thirds of its price.”

Variable Expenses:

• Summer camp: 1,300 shekels
• Entertainment in August: 1,500 shekels
• Birthday party for my daughter: 800 shekels
• My birthday: 400 shekels

My relationship with the bank:
“The bank clerk I had before approved loans without hesitation. I kept asking, and she kept giving. When I approached Paamonim, the clerk had been replaced, and the new one told me, ‘Don’t even talk to me about loans—I’m not approving anything.’ That’s when I understood that banking should genuinely consider the customer’s well-being. It’s clear to me that if banks and credit card companies didn’t grant loans so easily to people who can’t repay them, our economic reality would look different. During the process, I understood that the choice to take a loan or not is in my hands because banks and credit card companies are businesses that profit from selling loans.”

What I Gave Up:
“A lot. I realized I could give up things I previously thought I couldn’t live without. For example, I no longer buy new clothes or extravagant gifts for friends – this out of the question, I simply can’t afford it. Those are the small things I have to face. In the past, I used to go to a beautician for nail care and facial treatments because that was important to me—it was my standard. That no longer happens, and I’ve stopped buying without thinking too much.”

Future Plans:
“Stabilize my income versus expenses, then increase income, create a situation where I have savings for emergencies, and repay loans as quickly as possible.”

Dreams:
“To finish the mortgage, live a good life, and have a decent pension.”

To read the full article in Hebrew- on the Mako website-click here