A woman from Hartlepool has managed to clear her debt and buy a house with the help of the online bank Monzo app, which she says has “changed her life”.

Former police officer Imogen Grylls, 30, was struggling with poor budgeting habits and a fluctuating £500 student overdraft debt after moving to London from a small town in Wales.

Ms Grylls said: “When I had money in my account, I could just see that I had money in my account. I didn't know what to use it for.”

She told Express Money that the impact this debt burden had on her was “quite damaging”. She said she was “constantly thinking about it” and it impacted a lot of decisions she was making, such as not being able to do things with friends.

However, she noted: “The best thing for me was being honest with my friends and family and they were very supportive.”

Ms Grylls’s financial situation began to change when she discovered Monzo. She credits the digital bank’s budgeting tools and Pots features with helping her pay off her overdraft debt with another bank and improve the way she manages her finances.

Ms Grylls said she’s also managed to achieve major financial milestones, including saving enough money to buy a house. She managed to save around £10,000 in one and a half years for the deposit.

Ms Grylls said: "Monzo has genuinely changed my life.

“It is so freeing not to have any debt, I do still use credit now but in a much healthier way.”

Ms Grylls and her partner have also used Monzo's Joint Account feature to manage their finances.

Over the past five and a half years, they've put a total of £41,000 into their “Shared Tab”, allowing them to keep track of their combined spending.

She said: "It's so much easier to actually keep tabs on what we've both spent rather than having to say, 'Oh, well, you owe me £3.50."

Using the joint account, Ms Grylls said the pair were able to save for their mortgage, bills, and groceries, which total just over £1,000 a month.

Delving into the next financial milestones she’d like to meet, Ms Grylls said: “I’ve begun to think more long-term about finances, saving money for holidays and looking very far forward towards retirement and saving for later in life.

“Short term, I’d like to build a safety net, that I can rely on should life throw us any curve balls.”