Celebrity Big Brother’s David Potts: I saved thousands while working in Magaluf

In our How I Manage My Money series, we aim to find out how people are spending, saving and investing money to meet their costs and achieve their goals. This week, in our celebrity edition, we speak to Ibiza Weekender star and Celebrity Big Brother winner David Potts, 33, who reveals how he went from earning £10 a week working with horses to building a television career, and why he is now buying a second property. What was money like in your household when you were growing up? Shorts I come from Bolton, which is a very working-class town, but I think I was quite lucky. My mum was a sports therapist, and my dad was a policeman, so we had a very stable upbringing. We used to go on holidays and got nice presents, but we were never just given whatever we wanted. If I wanted money to go to the cinema with my friends, my parents would say: “Right, come and help us do something around the house first.” I’ve got two brothers and all three of us grew up knowing that if you want nice things, you’ve got to work hard for them. My parents both worked incredibly hard and still do. What’s your first memory of earning money? I got a paper round when I was about 12, but I only lasted about two weeks. I think I did it for one day and then my mum ended up doing most of it while I was at school. My first proper job was working on a farm. The woman who owned it looked after horses and RSPCA animals, and I’d help her after school and at weekends. I got paid £10 a week and I absolutely loved it. I’ve always been relatively good at saving as well because there was always something I wanted, whether that was new riding boots or something for one of the horses. My mum always had this envelope system because she was self-employed. She’d have a holiday envelope, a shopping envelope and all these little pots of money. If we wanted to save, she’d tell us to put it in an envelope. Looking back, I probably learned quite a lot from that. What did you do before television? I qualified as a horse-riding instructor and did that for about three years. Then I realised I wanted to work Monday to Friday because I was a bit of a party person and weekends are the busiest time when you’re working with horses. I got a job at Royal Bank of Scotland dealing with people’s ISA accounts and calculating savings and interest. Then I worked for Tesco Mobile. How did Ibiza Weekender change your finances? Not straight away. People think that as soon as you’ve been on TV you’re absolutely loaded, but that really isn’t the case. Before filming my first series of Ibiza Weekender [an ITV2 reality show that focused on young people holidaying for the weekend], I borrowed £1,000 from my mum and dad because I wanted a new wardrobe and some spending money while I was out there. For the first series, I think we got paid about £80 a day. You were paid per filming day and then you’d get paid again when you came back to London for press and extra filming. But it definitely wasn’t life-changing money. How long did it take before television felt financially secure? A long time. I’ve been doing this for about 10 years now and I’d say it took at least three or four years before I felt financially stable. After my first series of Weekender, I was still working in a pub near my mum’s house. Then I moved to Magaluf and worked entire summer seasons there in between filming. I used to earn a fortune in Magaluf. My rent was around €100 a week and I’d earn about €500 a week. It was really cheap to live there at the time because your rent covered pretty much everything. I managed to save a good few thousand pounds doing that. I’d fly from Magaluf to film Weekender, then fly straight back to carry on working, then fly back again for more filming. Looking back, it sounds insane, but I loved it. It wasn’t until I started getting other opportunities like Celebrity Dinner Date and Celebs Go Dating that things really started to snowball financially. What has been the most lucrative work you’ve done? Pantomime is a really good payer. People don’t realise that, but there’s not a huge amount of television work around at Christmas unless you’re doing something like Strictly. That’s one of the reasons so many people in television do panto. It can easily be a five-figure payday and it’s also great fun. Then obviously shows like Celebrity Big Brother, Celebs Go Dating and later series of Ibiza Weekender all became much more financially rewarding than they were at the beginning. By the final series of Weekender, I was earning a lot more than the £80 a day I got when I started. What’s the best purchase you’ve ever made? My apartment in Bolton. I’ve lived here for five years now and I absolutely love it. I’m also in the process of buying a second property in Bournemouth, which is really exciting. One of my best friends lives there and the flat came up for sale in a building I know really well. It was an absolute steal. I plan to rent it out. I feel like I’m in my investing era now. I’ve got a nice car, I go on lovely holidays and I’ve had some amazing experiences, but property is where I want to put my money. What’s your biggest money regret? Probably not saving a bit more when I was younger. I enjoyed myself a lot and I don’t regret that, but if I’d put a little bit more away, I probably wouldn’t have needed to borrow that £1,000 from my mum and dad. And I definitely spent too much money on Jägerbombs. How do you manage your money now? Because I’m self-employed, I don’t have a salary. One month I might earn one amount, the next month it could be completely different. That’s why I’m really careful with money now. I save a lot more than I used to and I don’t really spend money on designer things because that just doesn’t interest me. I like my mortgage adviser because he breaks everything down for me in simple terms. I looked into stocks and shares at one point, but I decided property felt safer for me. Do you have a pension? Not a traditional pension. I have what I call my own version of a pension, which is essentially money that I’ve put aside and don’t touch. I know I probably should have a proper pension, but when you’re self-employed it can all feel a bit overwhelming.