Packed lunch = retired with £1m by 40.

[Allschoolsareartschools]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgdn3qqg7po
AIBU to say I've had a packed lunch for nearly 40 years but I dont have £1m & I'm not retired yet!
Am I doing something wrong?
Seriously how out of touch is this article? Good luck to them but its nothing to do with packed lunches.

They’re worth about £2million now with their investments spread across ISAs as well as pensions. They work on the principle that the ISAs will fund them until they can access their pensions.

They do a monthly “finance meeting” where they explain how much their investments have grown/fallen by, but they have enough to live the lifestyle they want, drawing on the growth of their investments.

https://rebeldonegans.com/market-volatility-net-worth-bounce/

Totally agree - I can only think people have jobs they hate that much that they can’t wait not to work at all - I don’t quite get it if it involves living a dull shit life whilst at your fittest - surely there’s a balance to strike

See I think most workers are living dull shit lives whilst at their fittest, slogging away, day in day out. I prefer the freedom to travel when and where I want and just spend each day as I please.

Oh please. Turns out they are not actually retired, they are content creators.

it most certainly doest cost them 15K to re-run the course once a year.

they are doing great knowledge sharing and it is important but this whole thing they are retired / they are losing money on the course is just not accurate

£1m invested should give you £50k pa income, and more if you include capital gains/take some risk. They wouldn't necessarily be spending the capital sum.

I'm currently living well off the income on £600k invested. It's amazing how little you need when you don't have the costs of going to work, don't have debts and live a fairly simple life. I don't think I scrimp particularly, but I don't spend on 'stuff' or on snacky convienience foods when out.

I'll be able to retire at 50. I wfh so pack lunches don't feature but I put the heating on as much as I like. I have achieved this by earning a lot of money and not spending it all. HTH 😀

A 5% return is not risk free though… so you could be losing money too!

I think we should be focused on making work more enjoyable. There’s nothing wrong with working for a living for the majority of us, and kind of by definition people are working because they’re meeting a need of some sort (eg doctor/nurse/teacher. Or they’re providing entertainment/leisure for others). I’d rather accept that I’ll spend my life working in some way but with people I like and doing something I see as worthwhile.

That said, I’m also intending to start investing once I’ve cleared my financial feet a bit and hope for 25-30 years of compound interest to work its magic.

First of all they do monetise through YouTube ads. And they do have affiliate links, and even books and merch.

additionally while they don’t sell their courses to public, they do have B2B business which sells its services to local councils, government bodies, and housing associations who pay them to run community entrepreneurship programs.

basically they saved and invested well AND they also run a successful business as financial content creators and providers of B2B corporate training programs. They B2C course is free but they are doing more than that.
this article is just disingenuous

I know a couple who did similar. They don't have £1m, but the wife retired at about 40 and the husband does the odd bit of (lucrative) freelance work. But they don't have kids and were happy to sacrifice everything for the dream of early retirement. For me, it would be too extreme. I value saving, but I also think life is short and unpredictable and you should take at least small pleasures when you can.

I actually like working. I don't want to retire in my 40s, not do I want to do a side hustle on social media and expose myself to public scrutiny. Their lifestyle is not aspirational to everyone.

My main objection to the article isn't that the Donnegans are wealthy and don't need to work - good for them. It's the heavy implication in the headline that they achieved this through packed lunches (and therefore anyone can do it) whereas in fact they are NOT an ordinary couple, they are financial content creators and this is literally their business. And the vast majority of ordinary people, no matter how many packed lunches they make, will not be able to retire by 40.

They don't sound very free TBH, they sound joyless and money obsessed.

I rather like my job , it is socially useful, i enjoy doing it and it pays me well enough to cover my bills, save and do fun things. I don't really think about money beyond - have I got enough to pay the bills and save?

Fuck spending 25 ywars of my life cold and miserable to retire early. The better course of action is surely to simply get a job you enjoy?

This pair have so much money and not the imagination to know what to do with it. Think I'd rather have empty pockets than an empty life.

They dont say anything about having children either. (Social services have been known to remove children from homes without heating.)
And hunting through bins with kids for nectar points etc isnt that feasible.
I dont believe a word of it actually.

This. Why is the BBC advertising for them?

And why is Mumsnet promoting it even more??

Why are people so angry, you can just ignore it.

People are annoyed by the promotion of the idea that you can retire at 44 and be a millionaire just by having "packed lunch".
So much absurd hype tends to get on normal peoples nerves.

It doesn’t say that though, that’s just the attention grabbing headline which is par for the course nowadays surely? Only an idiot would take that on face value.

the article details the many ways in which they lived frugally to get where they are.

@Hellohelga
the point is that 1 million is not divided into 2 then by years to get annual amount
lets say anyone has 1 million right now and decides to retire and take the 4% ie 40,000 as taxable income between the two people
this leaves 960,000 invested taking the long term 7% of UK stock market and 10% of USA stock market and arrive at average of 8% growth
so 960,000 invested at 8% means at end of year 1 you have spent 40,000 and gained 76.800 in interest/ dividends etc so now at the end of the year you have £1.036 800 as inflation is 3% so instead of 40,000 you take 41200 leaving you 995600 if that also grows at 8% you will end year 2 with £1, 075248
so in 2 years despite taking income you actually have more than you started with
so it is perfectly possible taking 4% to never actually use any of the capital at all
on other sites it states that they stopped working in 2019 with 1 million but due to their money being in a global tracker fund it is now worth 2.5 million
they also said in their course a few weeks back about being asked about buying a property again in the futureand they said that the money they had sold property for invested was outperforming the property market so they could buy back into it when they no longer wanted to travel
I could not live as frugally as they do but I retired with paid off house at 55 and live on my pension and investments I still pay tax

on a different tack their is a thing called barista Fire where you pay for your basics out of investments but take employment side hustles part time work as and when you feel like it, so maybe work part of the summer in the UK so you can winter in Greece not so much retirement as freedom to work when you want to in a job you want for as long as you want and you have enough so you can walk out of any job if you don't like it anymore

I agree. I don't know what's happened to my FB algorithms but every time I get short after short of people twittering on about 'underconsumption' or 'frugal living' as if they have discovered how to spit an atom.
Their magical route to success seems to be 'eat most meals at home', 'bring coffee from home', 'enjoy free events' and other such nonsense that surely most people do anyway?

Saved £8 each a day by taking a packed lunch. Must be rich in the first place to think it's normal to spend that much money on a work lunch.