Women break free of debt ‘car crash’

An owner of five Anytime Fitness gyms has started a business to empower other women to take charge of their finances.

Owner of Life By Design works with Honor Mcdonald on her finances.

PAYING a debt after a car crash in her 20s and rebuilding after bankruptcy has given a local businesswoman a wealth of knowledge that she intends to share with other women.

Sunrise Beach resident Kim Lloyd started Life by Design, a 10-week immersion, to help women who felt incapable of managing their finances.

Mrs Lloyd said she was motivated to help other women after struggling through her own financial experiences.

"Everything that I've learnt from my hardships, from the bankruptcy and paying off that loan in my 20s, has all been to serve others," Mrs Lloyd said.

"For me with women's energy we tend to either fully rely on our partners for finances or we are so controlling that the masculine side feels almost emasculated from it."

Mrs Lloyd currently has six women enrolled in her program, one of whom thought she was "completely incapable of managing finances".

"I think financially I've always been really fine up until this point and then I separated from my husband and I found myself trying to juggle money, business and three kids," Life by Design participant Jane Davidson said.

"Life by Design is really about taking control and as women we want to be independent and fierce in the world … and I think we need to be prepared when circumstances change and having the control over the money and finances and feeling confident and capable with that.

"Kim's approach is very gentle, and she has such a wealth of knowledge.

"It makes you feel so capable."

Buying and crashing a car she could not afford meant Mrs Lloyd started her adult life with a large amount of debt.

"I spent my 20s learning how to pay off debt and I leant amazing money strategies, how to save, how to live within my means and I became very responsible with my money," Mrs Lloyd said.

But, despite Mrs Lloyd's financial lessons the Global Financial Crisis led to her husband claiming bankruptcy in 2010.

"The bankruptcy stripped us back to our core essence and what we actually need," Mrs Lloyd said.

"It was a traumatic process, but I knew that I had money from the property, and I knew that I could use my money to do something with it."

In a seemingly risky move Mrs Lloyd invested the leftover money into one of the first Anytime Fitness gyms and rebuilt her life, now owning five fitness centres.

The finance guru said rebuilding after her husband's bankruptcy "was miracle, after miracle, after miracle" and it taught her to embrace the creative side of finance.

"We can try and force things to happen but when you play with that creative space there are so many possibilities available to us, but we still need to take the responsibility around the numbers," Mrs Lloyd said.

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