‘I was offering great advice but I wasn’t following it’: the personal finance guru who spiralled into debt

What happened when a financial influencer lost control of her own budget?

I used to be known as the coupon lady," says Lauren Cobello, 43, who commanded $5,000 per YouTube video as a personal finance influencer. I was a regular on the Today show and Good Morning America, I was blogging, working with newspapers. I had no financial background but I'd got my family out of $40,000 debt by couponing and budgeting and people wanted to know how I did it."

Friends invited her to church groups and seminars to share her financial wisdom. From there, she was invited on local TV, and influencing followed. By 2016, she was a mother of four posting several times a day; she employed two staff, had written three books under her married name, Lauren Greutman, and launched a family budgeting podcast with her then husband, Mark.