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.

How to retire at 40 with £1m:
Have high-paying jobs
Get lucky with investments
Don’t have kids
Don’t get separated/divorced

Nope. None of that applies to me 🤷‍♀️

They spend their lives doing their finance courses and travelling round the world - that doesn’t really seem like a lack of imagination.

They are travelling the world , run the rebel finance thing at a net cost to them let alone the time involved and their net worth is over £2m now by following the principles. I followed some of the guidance last year and my investments are up 30% and mean I can retire now at 54.

I did think that. People in my small town are buying things like a Greggs pasty (1.30) or a supermarket meal deal (3.50). I'm not sure that my bagel with Philly and some fruit/yoghurt at home is that much cheaper!

Their brand of extreme saving sounds dire and dull, but each to their own. I wonder if they ever bought a round at the pub? Or perhaps they were the awful folks always mooching off the ones who retire a few years later but live their lives with a bit more balance, for pleasure and with generosity.

Many other people study, work hard and are successful but have very little disposable income and are continually doing their best to get by.

Hard agree with this. Lots of people have to live that lifestyle just to survive without the savings at the end. The headline is obviously click bait and they’ve done the sensible investing etc, But yes, check your privilege. It’s high paying jobs that have enabled this, not saving on lunches.

It’s both. You have to have spare money in the first place, but it is then prioritising investing rather than other expenditure. I’m not particularly planning to retire early as I like my job, but I’ve been taking investing more seriously now that I don’t have to pay for childcare and my salary has increased. I’m aiming to drop a day or two of work. Having the potential investment opportunity of the money in mind is useful to deter me from buying crap for the sake of it (for example).

There is obviously more than one way!
Please share your wisdom and how you have been able to retire at 42?

Tbf I pack a lunch and always bring my own flask of coffee and water. Will it net me £1m, no, but am I wasting £3.50-7 every day like my peers around me do? No. If they do it even 4 days a week only getting a coffee - and almost all of them get two AND an £8 lunch - they’re spending £728 a year on coffee that I am not.

Agree the headline is stupid, there’s a lot more to it than just making packed lunches. Also, I expect a lot of people doing this don’t have children.

I don’t actually have a £1m (but don’t think you need that much)
I’ve already shared

They CHOSE to live frugally because they were both high earners and that (combined with the fact they don't have children) meant they could put away enough to invest.

Lots of people HAVE to live that frugally anyway, and don't get to save anything,

Inherit enough to quit.
Have kids and be a SAHP - my mum hasn't 'worked' since she was 20!
Marry a man rich enough to support you so you don't have to do paid work to fund your lifestyle.

Depends how you define retiring.

One of the privileges that doesn't get mentioned is being born in or around London. It's much easier to save if you can leave uni and go back home to mum and/or dad in Essex for a few years while you do your Deloitte grad scheme.

Imagine working a 45 hour week and spending the weekend freezing and not having any enjoyment because you are saving for retirement nope not for me

This is all I can see that you’ve shared - but I may have missed something, please let me know if I did - so you bought a house at 21 with your DP and:

”we invested heavily in company shares (no risk), lived frugally but not in a joyless way. Always two holidays a year. Overpaid mortgage until mortgage free. Kids grown by now so could have 4/5 years of really aggressive saving. Both took voluntary redundancy.”

So how much do you think one would need to have invested to live off the interest? What sort of annual income do you find livable? I am happy to live frugally, been doing it my whole life!

Because even if we somehow managed to pay off our mortgage and then save up say £600k, at 5% we’d only receive £30k per year, which minus taxes etc would be tough to live on.

Very, very true, and it does annoy me when grads living with their parents while they do their training contract or whatever is made out to be some sort of super savvy move or sacrifice on their part. Being able to do it is an absolute touch, a massive financial leg up and a bit of a no-brainer for ordinary people.

I will say that though I was a bit scathing about the FIRE thing generally earlier, this pair are actually OK and by the sounds of things a few posters on here could do with learning a thing or two from them!

I moved to London when I 21 back in 93 and I said this back then, that if my mum lived in or around London, I would never have left home at 18.

You can probably manage with 3-400k but I don’t have that much. My husband took his pension at 55 and we live mainly off that.

It’s worth noting that it’s the BBC who have written the article, not Alan and Katie. The fact they’ve left out so much information suggests they probably didn’t even speak to them, just lifted bits of information from the internet when researching FIRE. Whenever they are interviewed they talk openly about making the choice not to have kids and acknowledging that their lifestyle is not for everyone.

And there we have it. You didn't retire financially independent. You retired to be kept by someone else.

Even 3-400k will generate a pretty miserly amount so if you have less, I sincerely hope your husband has a lot more!

Give over! You don't think they make money from it? I accept it might be a great product but this is not a 'goodness of their hearts' scheme - they are making excellent money! There is nothing wrong with that, if the product is good (and many of these on line finance are not good products) and they will be making cash from advertising if they do not charge

Give me your source. Come on.

They will be making something from advertising and from the B2B side of the business which does charge. Obviously they also have overheads so no idea whether they are making a profit at the moment.

However, not making money (or much money) now does not mean they are doing it from the goodness of their hearts. Pretty standard model- build the business based on trust then, once you have a good customer base, start monetising with carefully chosen affiliate links etc (being sure not to damage your brand by going in too heavy), then sell up. Exactly what Martin Lewis/MSE did and completely fine.

Hope that spending all of your time together doesn't make you hate each other and end up divorcing, using it in legal fees and having to go back to work after a huge gap in your cv...