Priya rents the small house at number 7, tracks every penny without apology, and is the person the whole street somehow ends up consulting at kitchen tables — usually by having a phone with a calculator already open slid gently across to them. Project coordinator by day; by night, custodian of a deposit-saving spreadsheet named, without irony, Freedom.
Morgan Close · No. 7
Priya Shah at No. 7
Priya, 28 · Project coordinator
Five years into the deposit campaign: £19,400 of a £25,000 target, updated on the first of the month, celebrated with precisely one nice coffee. Fluent in the way that comes from doing it the slow way — no windfalls, no help, just rate-chasing, meal plans and a ruthless relationship with subscriptions.
Blind spot: the mirror image of everyone else's — she under-spends on herself to a degree her friends stage occasional interventions about. Knows the price of everything; needs reminding of the point of some of it. Favourite saying: “Set the slider to ten years. That's your plan.”
Life on the Close
The houseshare's monthly garlic-bread dinner is her ecosystem-services contribution — Liam's pension exists in its current form because of her. She and Rachel at 14 have a Sunday walk that is nominally about steps and actually about money, life and the rebuilding of both. She admires Sarah Morgan's planner discipline; Sarah admires her savings rate; neither has said so.
The story so far
October 2026
Slid the Compound Interest Visualiser across the houseshare's kitchen table at the exact right moment. Liam's pension survived.
Ongoing
Freedom: £19,400 / £25,000. On current form, target lands late 2027 — sooner if the promotion she's circling comes through.
Threads to watch
The last £5,600 · the promotion · the first-home decisions waiting after the target (and how much she'll finally allow herself to enjoy it)