AIBU to find this depressing rather than inspiring?

[freecuthbert]

I really try my hardest to scrimp and save whilst on a low income. I'm a hard worker too but my industry is massively underpaid.

I keep seeing articles about people and how money savvy they are and how great their money management skills are, buying houses young and retiring early. But they usually have a good/high income to start with, some inheritance or gift from family etc.

Today another article like this has cropped up. A couple has over 5.5k income a month and have about 3k disposable income. They are set to retire early because they're so good at managing money and they would like to share their wisdom with us so we can achieve the same. Except me and my partner earn far far less than them. We'd feel well off on just the 3k, which is what they have leftover.

I am also pissed off that at the bottom of their expenses is "other costs: child support and repaying interest-free loan for a new boiler: £401.18". What a way to disguise the actual pittance the guy pays in child support, meanwhile he gets to hobnob it and retire at age 40? Also very telling that his child is simply just another expense no different to a new boiler.

I honestly haven't read past this because it really got to me. I don't feel inspired at all, I only think "what a knob". And I find it kind of depressing because I feel like no matter how hard I work I won't ever be able to achieve this, which they apparently think is purely down to good money management. I'm sure that is an aspect of course, but definitely a lot more to it than that!

So, AIBU? I'm sure I'll get a few responses telling me I'm just being jealous or to just not read these articles!

Article for those interested:
inews.co.uk/news/uk/how-i-manage-my-money-couple-photographer-royal-navy-plans-to-retire-40-earning-974132

I hate these articles. Watched a program on being mortgage free and the advice was basically "pay off you mortgage" or "downsize to somewhere that means you no longer need a mortgage" or "magically own some land and build a house with the money from the money tree". Utter crap.

Money Saving Expert is where you need to go for proper money advice and tips.

Thanks, I already use MSE and do everything I can given my current situation to budget and save. Not financially unstable and manage to put something aside each month, but thank you for your concern about my financial situation My daughter is in good hands and well taken care of

@littlepattilou
Eg, Kylie Jenner being the world's youngest SELF MADE BILLIONAIRE was one of the big news stories of 2019. Utter shit. She is not self-made at all. She came from a famous family.

Agreed. A few years ago Victoria Beckham won some entrepreneurial award for her fashion business. The fact that she and David were already multi millionaires when she thought she'd have a go at fashion designing was completely ignored. Most people would probably have a crack at trying to start their own business if they had millions to fall back on it it went tits up....

Didn't it end up coming to light that Kylie Jenner/her team had lied about her billionaire status and forged some things? Still very very rich and successful (still not self made though), but not quite billionaire. It was a while ago though so my memory is a little foggy.

DD says i sound like a funny daddy

fuddy duddy - I hate auto correct

He does sound a right knob. I feel sorry for his son.

But why did he need a loan for his boiler? If he was so good with his money wouldn't he have rainy day savings?

I would love to see the monthly outgoings of his ex-partner who is rearing his child.

I thought the exact same thing @pallisers. I wondered how the article would go if they analysed how his ex manages her money.

So true, rainy day savings for the boiler is like first rule of financial planning in the UK isn't it?!

Couldn’t agree more.
Smug gits

Interest free loans are a sensible way of spreading out payments.

God, I'd hate to live in a campervan but I do think the poor bloke is getting a hard time on here! You've no idea what kind of dad he is or his the state of his ex-partner's finances!

Eg, Kylie Jenner being the world's youngest SELF MADE BILLIONAIRE was one of the big news stories of 2019. Utter shit. She is not self-made at all. She came from a famous family.

It reminds me of the old joke about the elderly billionaire answering a curious little girl who asked how he did it:
"Well, when I was 8, I bought an ordinary dull apple for 10p, spent two hours polishing it until you could see your face in it and then sold it for 20p. Then I bought two more dull apples....Then, when I'd sold a dozen apples, I bought a rough, splintery wooden apple box with my £1.20 profit, spent a whole day sanding and painting it and sold it for £2.40. And then, when I was 9, my billionaire oil-baron grandfather died and left me his entire fortune."

If he had a savings pot for the son, I think that would be mentioned in the outgoings, and no doubt highlighted in the article as well!

I completely agree. Of course, it would be spun as an amazing achievement that he had made; any benefit to his DS in the absence of love and emotional giving would be entirely co-incidental.

But why did he need a loan for his boiler? If he was so good with his money wouldn't he have rainy day savings?

It doesn't suggest that he had a lot of confidence in his plan to live in his camper van - making a long-term investment in a boiler for a house instead of just patching it up until he was away and off on the open road

I would mention in passing (if it hasn’t already been said upthread) that age 40 is for many, the normal “retirement” age in the armed forces - a time when you are starting to lose some physical fitness and get a bit long in the tooth.

Having said that, the “pension” achieved at that age is normally modest, and not normally sufficient to actually live on.

@StillRailing

So true, rainy day savings for the boiler is like first rule of financial planning in the UK isn't it?!

I had the windows replaced in our house a year ago. I could have paid for them up front but I took out a loan as the interest is so low I’d sooner do that and keep my savings.

I have an interest free loan on my sofas which is £39 a month which made more sense to me than taking out a chunk of savings not long before I was due to give birth. Someone I know used to take everything out on finance though, even wallpaper! I think they ended up with no wiggle room in their budget at all because their outgoings were so high, and they couldn't really save up to get themselves out of that rut.

Articles like the one you quoted or from very privileged individuals would irk me BUT as someone in my 20’s who grew up with only negative things said about my generation/me and with pretty gloom prospects, I do find it aspiring to actually see people my age or older with potentially a similar background made it («made it» being dependent on what you personally want out of life and see as valuable I suppose)

I had a fairly rough upbringing, had to move out at 16 and actually left my own country on my own and «chose» to be living abroad every since (let’s say coming home is never really a viable option, let alone moving back in with my parents to save on a deposit!) my parents have never really been accessible for help (whether emotional, physical or financial) even sporadically and in fact my dad never even paid child support and my mom started having kids (me) as a teenager and never actually stopped so money wasn’t really something we had and definitely not something we had spare. So growing up it was incredibly hard to think people like me could aspire to anything.

I am grateful that unbeknownst to me at the time, leaving home at 16 and choosing to go abroad was the best thing I could have done, and I am now in a spot in life where I could have never even thought I could be and while my plan is not to retire at 40 (and in fact due to the specificity of my job and lifestyle I might never really be able to retire) it’s definitely to invest so that the work I have put in doesn’t go to waste in a few years. I obviously don’t know the background and stories of all of the people you have seen but if I told you about my wage now which is absolutely irrelevant you might think that my advice is irrelevant to people like you who might not earn in that bracket or feel like they won’t ever earn in that type of bracket, but it really is more about the journey to get there. What a millionaire does with his money is irrelevant to me because I am not a millionaire but I might look at what they did to get there and sometimes it’s irrelevant as it’s family wealth or big financial helps, but sometimes it’s smart investments or smart choices or taking a risk and in those cases I do study it and see if it might be applicable to me, even if I don’t have this type of money can someone like me do something like that too and how does that translates into my own earnings and financial capacities?

Even if you think someone is a prick or up in cuckooland they might still actually have something to teach you, whether it’s a bold choice they made, how they invested their money and grew their wealth, or how they saved themselves from going bankrupt or bounced back from bankruptcy and I do think that a lot more than what you think is applicable to any kind of wages.

I spend a lot of my time trying to teach my siblings about basic (and slightly more complex) economics and pass on what I have learned, unfortunately it’s not looking like my sibling will go to uni (I didn’t really either) so it’s extra important for me to make sure they learn to work smart (rather than or alongside hard) because I know our family upbringing will give them a disadvantage in life and they will have to fight harder than some to get where they want to be.

YANBU to find inherited billionaires giving advice to people who earn peanuts incredibly irritating OP (I do too) but you would be unreasonable to not dig to see if anything they do could apply to you and is something you could also do at your scale. I have never find (financially) rich people inspiring but they have definitely inspired me at times to look at my own finances and choices and re-assess if I am doing life the best way I could.

In fact a Mumsnet poster many many many years ago who happened to be incredibly irritating because continuously bragging about her wealth to the point anyone eye-rolled at her posts, once made a post that really resonated with me about women and finances and it definitely made me reassess my life/choices and it unexpectedly kick started me in the right decision, so sometimes the most irritating people might actually have the most wisdom and the most to teach you in the subject you are interested in (even though gosh they genuinely can be annoying )

@Linning I love your well thought out response, but the main issue I'm having here is it seems the guy is a deadbeat dad and was able to save up considerably more because he has been contributing very little financially to his son's upbringing, meanwhile he reaps the rewards of this. In the article it's like he is excited to stop helping his son as soon as he is 18 and to palm his cats onto someone else because they don't fit into his early retirement plan. I find this the opposite of aspirational and don't think this should be flaunted as being money savvy. That's what really irks me about this particular article.

All sounds quite Take a Break?

@melodypondisasuperhero

There was one that really made me laugh, it was in the US I think; she got a job at the charity her mother ran in a lower cost of living area than where she was before at the same salary. Her mother then gave her a condo as a wedding gift. After a little while they moved out of the condo to live rent free with her grandparents and rented out the condo for more money. Now retiring at 32 or something ridiculous. And then she had the gall to end it with “if I can do it, anyone can!”

I have an acquaintance who inherited a very large sum of money when she was a teen and has never had to work. Before the pandemic she posted a picture on Facebook saying "travelling around the world with a toddler is a wonderful experience, if we can do it anyone can, you just have to make the choice!" A very straight talking friend pointed out that actually most people don't have the ability to make a choice like that due to the funds required!

This sort of thing appears in many forms, all of them annoying.

I used to live in a very small house, at least by the standards of my area, with a larger than average family. The bathroom was particularly small.

I'd occasionally read an arcle or book from the library about making a small house or bathroom work, inevitably they were bigger than mine, often by a fair bit.

The most infuriating was The Not So Big House series. Here she was saying more efficient se of space, smaller house so you can make up for it with better design and finishes, the house will be more usable. Except my f-ing house was smaller than any in the book but the retirement cottage. They had living rooms, dining rooms, "away" rooms which were basically studies, several bathrooms at least.

Bloody maddening.

You're not wrong of course.

OP - you don't know he's a "deadbeat dad" - you're making assumptions based on copy from an edited article.

He's not a high earner and is presumably paying the CSA calculated amount. His son might spend a lot of time with his dad thus reducing payments. His ex partner might have married a billionaire

I've got money already saved to cover DD's years at university including a year abroad. No doubt you'll want to do the same for your daughter. Maybe that's what the bloke has done.

Unlikely katewinsome! I think I hope vodka is trolling their Insta. ‘So inspiring. Maybe I too can reduce my children to a small monthly payment and retire early’