Sort Your Life Out's Stacey Solomon supports dad-of-five with secret spiralling debts in tonight's show
He had been keeping the truth from his wifeStacey Solomon offers her support to a dad-of-five in tonight’s Sort Your Life Out as he reveals he has secret spiralling debts.
Stacey and the Sort Your Life Out Team will be seen travelling to Milton Keynes to meet Bianca and Ollie Parej.
The couple are parents to five kids under nine and are battling clutter in their three-bedroom, shared ownership semi.
Compliance agent Ollie has been down on his luck in recent years, having been made redundant twice.
He has also racked up big debts on credit cards and loans while struggling to make ends meet.
But can Stacey and the Sort Your Life Out team do enough to make life a little easier for them?
Sort Your Life Out: The Parej family
When Stacey, Dilly, Rob and Iwan arrive at the Parej’s family home, they are pleasantly surprised. There appears to be slight attempts at organisation going on, with drawers assigned to first aid kits and umbrellas for the kids all lined up neatly.
But the family is seriously lacking storage. Ollie and Bianca bulk buy food for their big brood but some has to be kept in the garden shed.
Don't miss a single story! Add us as a Preferred Source in Google for all your television news
There is also 106 storage cubes taking up the house. One bedroom alone has 36.
Stacey explains how this can actually backfire: “The more storage you buy, the more you are going to fill it up.”
Ollie and Bianca go on to reveal how they have ended up in such a cluttered house.
“Bianca had just stopped working because childcare was so expensive,” he says. “We were living well within our means, and then I got made redundant.
“All I could think of was, ‘How are we going to cope?’ That fear of, ‘How am I going to pay the bills?’ I genuinely worried about whether we were going to lose the house and everything we’d worked for.”
Bianca adds: “It was devastating. He had a great job and then it was all taken away.
“We were so grateful to get help from friends and family. Everything we were offered we took, just in case. Slowly but surely, that’s when everything started to spiral out of control.”
As a result, they even ended up with four buggies and three vacuum cleaners.
SYLO: Ollie’s secret debts
The family’s house is boxed up and taken to the warehouse to be sorted. Ollie then becomes emotional while looking at his late nan’s tea set.
Stacey asks if they were close. Ollie replies: “Yes, she only recently passed.”
He continues: “Nan was always there for me. In 2023, I built up a lot of debt. The only person I confided in was nan. She was the only one I felt safe to do it with. I didn’t tell Bianca at all.”
Ollie tells the cameras how he kept his debts hidden from his wife because he was “ashamed”.
He continues to Stacey: “When I couldn’t make ends meet, I had a zero per cent credit card. It got used up and up and up. Then that was full, so I got another zero per cent interest card. I’ve been doing the zero per cent interest card shuffle to try and pay off the debt.”
Stacey tells him: “It’s so easy to get into that situation. The credit card is due in, so then what do you use to pay that off? Another loan. It’s such a massive thing to keep to yourself.”
‘Nan knew she was near the end’
Ollie admits: “I didn’t tell Bianca until a few months ago, when nan was passing. One of the things she said was, ‘You need to make sure Bianca knows’.”
He then begins tearing up, saying: “Secretly, I think nan knew she was near the end and she wanted to make sure one last time I was alright.”
Stacey gives Ollie a huge hug. She then asks if he wants some air, but he just settles for a tissue instead.
The SYLO team can’t help with finances. But they can improve the family’s home life. Tune in tonight to find out how they get on.
