Are you rich?

[beagrizzly]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

I just think some people are destined to have nothing, any money they do get just slips through their fingers.

Reminds me of that lottery winner - somebody Carroll perhaps? - who could've lived very well for the rest of his natural, but instead spunked the lot on stupid st in fairly short order. If memory serves, now back living with his mum. There are many similar stories.

[jdw100]

Ken_Code said:

The Gauge said:

I'm 52 and have never really been able to have savings. A few years ago my wife got £40k redundancy package but that didn't last long after buying a car, sofa, boiler, carpets, new patio and our first holiday abroad in 18yrs.

We now only have about £1k in savings.

You and I have a very different attitude to money. I could not imagine having no savings, getting £40,000, and then just spending nearly all of it. I’m actually feeling stressed just reading about you doing it.

Me too. I just wouldn't be able to sleep.

I’m amazed we get stories here (not UK) of something happening - flight delays - and a family of four have to sleep on floor of the airport because they can’t afford two extra nights hotel expenses.

It always Aussies. You can find somewhere for £25 a night if not too fussy. Four could probably get by on £20 for for two days food as well.

If £100 extra expense is going to have you sleeping on the floor of an airport then maybe you shouldn’t be going on a holiday?!?


Mate of mine is GM for a very nice hotel. There was an accident and a guest was injured.

Turns out that the guy who had accident wasn’t able to work for six months and on the third month his parents had to start paying his mortgage.

So you and your wife decide to stay for 7 nights at £400 a night but only have enough cash for two months mortgage payments and you are self employed with no insurance.

Obviously hotel are coughing up a decent amount but even so….

Point being I could never have gone on holiday with just two months of mortgage payments in the bank.

[kambites]

I guess the feeling of wealth is more a question of being happy to live well within your means than how much money you actually have. Someone obsessed with material possessions is probably never going to feel rich however much they earn because they'll always find a way to spend what they have and still want more. For the huge majority of people it's far easier to create savings by spending less than by earning more.

Obviously that doesn't apply to someone really poor.

Edited by kambites on Thursday 6th June 11:42

[ChocolateFrog]

beagrizzly said:

Reminds me of that lottery winner - somebody Carroll perhaps? - who could've lived very well for the rest of his natural, but instead spunked the lot on stupid st in fairly short order. If memory serves, now back living with his mum. There are many similar stories.

Micheal Carroll the Lotto Lout.

Think he gave a chunk of it to criminals.

That said the house he bought should be worth over £1m today on its own. Maybe he sold that and spunked it too.

[Jim H]

beagrizzly said:

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

I just think some people are destined to have nothing, any money they do get just slips through their fingers.

Reminds me of that lottery winner - somebody Carroll perhaps? - who could've lived very well for the rest of his natural, but instead spunked the lot on stupid st in fairly short order. If memory serves, now back living with his mum. There are many similar stories.

Yeah… But he did have a Banger racing track in his back garden for him and his mates at the height of it all iirc.

That’s got to be a fond memory.

[borcy]

beagrizzly said:

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

I just think some people are destined to have nothing, any money they do get just slips through their fingers.

Reminds me of that lottery winner - somebody Carroll perhaps? - who could've lived very well for the rest of his natural, but instead spunked the lot on stupid st in fairly short order. If memory serves, now back living with his mum. There are many similar stories.

Mikey Carroll, I worked with someone who was a friend of the family. Classic tale of wine, women and song. He went through a 'roman emperor' phase.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Nigel_O said:

For me, ‘rich’ means more money than you need.

I've got enough money to live like a king for the rest of my life. Provided I die next Tuesday.

Edited by TwigtheWonderkid on Thursday 6th June 12:42

[Truckosaurus]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

I've got enough money to live like a king for the rest of my life. Provided I die next Tuesday.

Indeed. I've always considered myself 'Supermarket Rich', in that in my whole adult life I have been in gainful employment and have been able to walk around my local supermarket placing items into my basket without worrying about the price.

A luxury plenty of people with bigger houses/families/etc don't have.

[RDMcG]

It’s a bit of a meaningless exercise- if you are 25 and have accumulated £120,000 you are probably on your way to wealth ( I was not BTW). If you are 75 and on a modest pension then that £120k is a lot less comforting.Do you have dependents? Working spouse? Do you live is a cheap area or in an expensive location?

I think a better way to measure this is cash flow. If you are making more than you are spending consistently over years then you are either rich or on the way.

I live in Toronto where an average house is over £500k so you have to have a good income to be comfortable . When I came to Canada first I bought a house for $50k which represented about 3x salary. No more.

[Ken_Code]

Truckosaurus said:

Indeed. I've always considered myself 'Supermarket Rich', in that in my whole adult life I have been in gainful employment and have been able to walk around my local supermarket placing items into my basket without worrying about the price.

In my first job I couldn’t do that. After paying my student loan, bike finance and rent I was left with about £8 per day to live off, which had to cover commuting, eating, and buying clothes.

I got used to working out how cheaply I could get my nutritional needs met, and struggled to get what I needed in months where my motorbike needed something fixing.

I still tend to look out for offers when buying things like coffee, or beef.

[The Gauge]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

The Gauge said:

but it will have happened at the wrong time of my life as it's when you're young that you really need the money.

My partners father is 75, owns two fully paid for properties and has (at a complete guess) around £1 million in shares and pension.

He drives around in a 12 year old battered Honda and has no interest in buying a new car. He doesn't really go on holiday, doesn't buy anything expensive, but if he needs to spend money on something (recently his fridge freezer and dishwasher dies in the same week) he will buy it. He lives well on a day to day basis, but doesn't spend anything other than money on living.

We have (half) jokingly suggested he give my partner some of her inheritance early as he doesn't really need it and it would make a massive difference to our lives right now. On the one hand I can understand that it is his money and why should he, but on the other hand he must realise that my partner is going to get it eventually and it means much more right now than in 10/15/20 years time.

We live in a crazy world where the elderly are hording money they don't need and the young are signing themselves up to massive mortgages and debt because they have no other option.

It's a difficult subject to discuss with them isn't it.

Years ago before they died my grandparents started moving their money around to avoid inheritance tax and put lots of it on my mothers name (their daughter). Fast forward a few years and my elderly mother could do the same, but she hasn't, and it's a too difficult subject for me to suggest to her. Maybe she wants to keep it in case she needs care home fees? Either way, she's kept it

[Shnozz]

The Gauge said:

It's a difficult subject to discuss with them isn't it.

Years ago before they died my grandparents started moving their money around to avoid inheritance tax and put lots of it on my mothers name (their daughter). Fast forward a few years and my elderly mother could do the same, but she hasn't, and it's a too difficult subject for me to suggest to her. Maybe she wants to keep it in case she needs care home fees? Either way, she's kept it

Maybe she’s seen how you spaffed £40k the moment it landed and thinking it’s not wise to gift you lump sums of cash.

[Ken_Code]

Shnozz said:

Maybe she’s seen how you spaffed £40k the moment it landed and thinking it’s not wise to gift you lump sums of cash.

I can imagine seeing everything you worked for for a lifetime spent on a new sofa and a week in Cyprus for someone else wouldn’t feel uplifting.

[richhead]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

My partners father is 75, owns two fully paid for properties and has (at a complete guess) around £1 million in shares and pension.

He drives around in a 12 year old battered Honda and has no interest in buying a new car. He doesn't really go on holiday, doesn't buy anything expensive, but if he needs to spend money on something (recently his fridge freezer and dishwasher dies in the same week) he will buy it. He lives well on a day to day basis, but doesn't spend anything other than money on living.

We have (half) jokingly suggested he give my partner some of her inheritance early as he doesn't really need it and it would make a massive difference to our lives right now. On the one hand I can understand that it is his money and why should he, but on the other hand he must realise that my partner is going to get it eventually and it means much more right now than in 10/15/20 years time.

We live in a crazy world where the elderly are hording money they don't need and the young are signing themselves up to massive mortgages and debt because they have no other option.

maybe he wants to leave it to a cats home or something

[Byker28i]

RDMcG said:

It’s a bit of a meaningless exercise- if you are 25 and have accumulated £120,000 you are probably on your way to wealth ( I was not BTW). If you are 75 and on a modest pension then that £120k is a lot less comforting.Do you have dependents? Working spouse? Do you live is a cheap area or in an expensive location?

I think a better way to measure this is cash flow. If you are making more than you are spending consistently over years then you are either rich or on the way.

I live in Toronto where an average house is over £500k so you have to have a good income to be comfortable . When I came to Canada first I bought a house for $50k which represented about 3x salary. No more.

Nice, I liked Toronto on our Canadian trip last year, some very nice areas

[Zolvaro]

Shnozz said:

The Gauge said:

It's a difficult subject to discuss with them isn't it.

Years ago before they died my grandparents started moving their money around to avoid inheritance tax and put lots of it on my mothers name (their daughter). Fast forward a few years and my elderly mother could do the same, but she hasn't, and it's a too difficult subject for me to suggest to her. Maybe she wants to keep it in case she needs care home fees? Either way, she's kept it

Maybe she’s seen how you spaffed £40k the moment it landed and thinking it’s not wise to gift you lump sums of cash.

Ken_Code said:

Shnozz said:

Maybe she’s seen how you spaffed £40k the moment it landed and thinking it’s not wise to gift you lump sums of cash.

I can imagine seeing everything you worked for for a lifetime spent on a new sofa and a week in Cyprus for someone else wouldn’t feel uplifting.

You two are a charmingly judgemental pair aren't you. It's his money his life, if he wants to live it differently to how you would that's fine. He's not got his hand out asking for anything.

[Shnozz]

Zolvaro said:

You two are a charmingly judgemental pair aren't you. It's his money his life, if he wants to live it differently to how you would that's fine. He's not got his hand out asking for anything.

Au contraire. It very much seems as though he expects a hand down.

Harsh as it may sound but he started by saying he’s never been able to save anything and in the next sentence says how they went through a not-unsubstantial sum of redundancy pay in a jiffy. With that approach to a windfall it’s little surprise that they’ve never saved anything. As dull as the 50/30/20 rule is or even just a 10% save what comes in rule, you could have surely stuck aside 10% of a £40k sum to give you a better float.

[Ken_Code]

Zolvaro said:

You two are a charmingly judgemental pair aren't you. It's his money his life, if he wants to live it differently to how you would that's fine. He's not got his hand out asking for anything.

He literally wants a hand-out from his mother. Were you responding to the wrong post?

[Zolvaro]

Shnozz said:

Zolvaro said:

You two are a charmingly judgemental pair aren't you. It's his money his life, if he wants to live it differently to how you would that's fine. He's not got his hand out asking for anything.

Au contraire. It very much seems as though he expects a hand down.

Harsh as it may sound but he started by saying he’s never been able to save anything and in the next sentence says how they went through a not-unsubstantial sum of redundancy pay in a jiffy. With that approach to a windfall it’s little surprise that they’ve never saved anything. As dull as the 50/30/20 rule is or even just a 10% save what comes in rule, you could have surely stuck aside 10% of a £40k sum to give you a better float.

He said it would be nice if his mother made the same sensible estate planning as her parents. which is a pretty reasonable position in my opinion.

He spent money he had on things he believes he needed, people do a lot lot worse than that with money that don't even have.

[Ken_Code]

Zolvaro said:

He said it would be nice if his mother made the same sensible estate planning as her parents. which is a pretty reasonable position in my opinion.

He spent money he had on things he believes he needed, people do a lot lot worse than that with money that don't even have.

You said he doesn’t want a hand-out, but he does. He wants his mother to give him money.