Last night I took the MoneySaving Towers team out for our 1,000,000 dinner; to celebrate the fact that we’d hit that many people on the e-mail list. Actually this happened back in February and there are well over 1,370,000 receiving the weekly e-mail now. Yet we’ve been so busy, this is the first time everyone could get together.
Last night was to thank the team.
Sitting there and seeing the 13 faces of the team, each of them talented and dedicated, was a real pleasure. They’ve gone from strength to strength, building knowledge, skills and specialties which mean it’s far more of a group effort than it used to be; most were fresh graduates when they started but are now skilled MoneySaving or technical professionals. And don’t worry, for once I didn’t celebrate in MoneySaving style, it was the works, posh nosh and champagne. After all a million people is quite an achievement.
And I want to thank you too.
I made a little speech last night to the team; explaining how proud I was of what we’ve collectively achieved. And I think it’s important to relay this wider message to regular forum contributors and board guides. The posts aren’t just helpful, educated and intuitive, adding to the collective pot of MoneySaving wisdom, but more so they show endless care and compassion to others in difficultly and the real attempts to help, often almost viscera.
You may be surprised that the thing I believe that’s most revolutionary about what the site’s done, isn’t bank charges or council tax reclaiming. It’s the slow burn underneath it, the ongoing change of attitudes that people have. The march away from debt, towards stable finances, that leads to a less stressful life and the ability to have more from your money. To highlight that, I told the team last night about an e-mail we’d received, one of countless similar that are the reason we come to work every day… and I thought I should share it as part of my thanks to you.
“Thank you so much in advance for your help with this and indeed for everything your website and the people who service it have done for me and so many thousands of people like me. I was no more than a few days from taking my own life a couple of months ago, because of the serious money problems I was experiencing, but your website gave me hope and after reading virtually every article on money saving and debt management, and since receiving a refund from my bank, I am pleased to say I am much better. I can see the light and although I still have about £40k to pay off, I now know that suicide is not the answer(especially as I didn’t have life insurance, so my girlfriend would have killed me! See? I can kind of laugh about it now).”
There are many in the forum who deal with kindness to these circumstances every day, the Debt-Free Wannabee section is packed with it. And every other board, from those who dedicate themselves to helping others unlock mobile phones or deal with travel queries, adds to the wider collective gain.
Thank you.
