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.

Agreed!

Yep, exactly this.

Helps if they don't have any kids either.

I took a peanut butter sarnie (on cheapo white bread) to work for YEARS because it was all I could afford and, strangely, am not a millionaire in my 50s.

Well we took packed lunches more often than not but I am not sure their maths on that stacks up.

The article says they saved £40,000 over 10 years just on the packed lunch approach. That works out as £2,000 per year each. Assuming 4 weeks annual leave plus 8 Bank Holiday days then that is 232 days per year. That works out at £8.62 per day saved. Let's assume that even a frugal packed lunch cost them something to prepare so their calculations must assume an average lunch bought from a shop costs £9. Really?

Maybe I am out of touch. I retired in 2021 and was working from home from March 2020 onwards. But I don't remember a Tesco Meal Deal costing even half that. And they apparently retired 7 years ago and were basing their calculations on the preceding 10 years so I call BS on that. Unless they assume everyone is having lunch in a restaurant every day.

Not read the whole thread but felt compelled to jump in to say the Donegans most certainly ARE NOT MLM. They’ve made their money through passive investing. And they don’t live miserly lives - they live abroad a lot of the time, exploring countries they’ve always been intrigued by. Often these are lower cost locations. They give out free financial literacy lessons which is why they were awarded the British Empire Medal in 2024. This would not have happened had they been scammy MLMs.

I would recommend anyone who thinks this all sounds impossible to look up their free Rebel Finance YouTube videos. They transformed my attitude to avoiding looking at pensions etc.

It helps them to promote their YouTube channel :)

I did a bit similar, not to that extent but I scrimped and saved to pay off my mortgage early. Few (and cheap) holidays- camping in France, youth hostelling in UK and abroad. Spent evenings in the library so I didn't have to put the heating on, cycled everywhere. Ate lots of bean stews and yellow stickered foods.

I retired early with lots of exciting plans, foreign travel etc. Then Covid hit and I couldn't do any of it. That was followed by three glorious years, but last year I got cancer and now can't travel, go to shows, restaurants...

To my younger self I would say, don't get into debt if you can avoid it, but enjoy life while you are still young and healthy enough to make the most of it. Life's too short.

So they are not retired at all? They are now just grifting of vulnerables instead?

It’s not clear what form their 1m takes - house, pension, cash savings? Either way it’s not enough to retire at 35/40 and live in the UK.

I’m retired and I’m doing it without having anywhere near £1m and I wasn’t an high earner. It is doable.
I get it’s not for everyone but it’s definitely doable

They're the Rebel Finance School people.
They don't have kids and they sold their flat and move around the world. They don't charge for their Youtube series and they share useful and informative financial education. They don't say "you have to do what I do", they just say "this is what we're doing and this is how it works for us". They both had well paid jobs previously and their frugal lifestyle and investing at the right time means they can live off their investments.
Wouldn't work for me, but there are still things I can take out of their approach.

I don’t think they’re grifting and I don’t think I’m vulnerable so that’s quite a statement 😂

they say they are at a stage where “working is optional”

No property - they don't have kids and travel so they don't need a stable base and see cash tied up in property as not working hard enough for them, they sold up and invested in tracker funds essentially. I guess some in pensions but a big chunk in ISAs and other investments.
They say they lose money running Rebel Finance School - that it costs more than they receive from advertising income.
I guess they might have book sales and don't know if they charge for events and things.
I think they shared their actual net worth and expenditure as part of the course - they have several million invested and the returns exceed their living costs annually.

Isn’t this like Kirsty Allsopp who bangs on about buying a house at age 21 and it turns out she got a chunk of the deposit from her father - the multi-millionaire Baron Allsopp? 😂

Maybe that's how my dad retired early. He never ate lunch!?

It seems daft though because if you stop earning at 40 odd then you'd have to continue to be frugal for the rest of your life to make it last till you die. Which seems shite.

Thanks, but that wasn't my point.

My point is, if you can't look at the entire concept of financial planning for retirement and change just a few small things based on their advice, then you can dismiss it. Because no, I can't put away 60k a year.

But if I'd known more about financial planning and investments, I'd have accused.ulated a lot more by now. We put down a 20% deposit on our house 10 years ago. Interest rates were very low. If we'd only put down a 10% deposit, and had invested the other 10%, we'd have been much better off. Same with overpaying the mortgage.

If you think that you don't need a single piece of financial advice that can improve your standing, crack on.

If you think you could improve your present or future lifestyle - then maybe put your pride aside and read the advice and see what you could implement?

I'm proud of my friend, and jealous too. But as I say, I would think myself an idiot if I ignored her success and ignored every possibility.

I'd have to save ALL of my wages for 40 years to save up £1million.

Which is actually quite a boring premise for an article- ‘Couple earning good money have been saving their their money so they can retire early’

Only if you left the money in a bank account where inflation erodes its value @TheSeventh. I want to give you an example: I had what I thought was a crappy pension that I hadn’t checked on for about two years. The last time I checked, it was worth a few tens of thousands. Imagine my surprise when I phoned up full of bluster to discover that in fact, it had grown to about 200k. What was a piffling amount previously suddenly looked good. That wasn’t because I was earning loads - in fact, I had stopped paying into it as I had swapped jobs. It was due to the effects of the market compounding. Google Rebel Finance on YouTube. It’s 101 personal finance for dummies - I include myself here and 99% of the UK population. The best time to have acted was yesterday. Second best time is today etc!

This ‘jam tomorrow’ approach has a major flaw I think.
How do you know you will be alive in 10/20/30 years to enjoy the money? Or even in good health so you can do what you want?
We have big pension pots but not at the expense of enjoying our lives.

As for the couple being high earners, I know plenty of high earners who are ‘skint’ or having nothing left to show for it once they leave their jobs because they spend everything they earn. Lifestyle inflation on top of actual inflation means they do nothing to build their wealth.

The way to create wealth is to grow the gap between your income and your spending and invest that gap.

I could have written this. We were thrilled with our offset mortgage years ago and proceeded to chuck everything at it. What fools! We now sit in a house that’s probably dropping in value, have some investments but we would have been millionaires had we put even a fraction of that mortgage money into the market.

Are you saying your interest tops up your pay to a full time equivalent salary?
Otherwise if you're supporting a family on 2 days pay you need to be publicising your own finance guide!

Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us. I live in the moment. I couldn’t imagine depriving myself for a future I might not have x

If it makes them happy, great, but to me it isn't a quality of life I aspire to. You need to live for now and plan/prepare (as much as possible) for the future, but that future isn't guaranteed.

You can also find jobs that are fulfilling. Maybe they hated theirs, but there are ways to find something you enjoy that also pays. Not for everyone, but would prefer to keep that as a goal. Find a fulfilling job, contribute to my local community, enjoy fun things with my friends and family, while putting a bit aside for a more comfortable retirement in the future.

I wondered that too - £1m isn’t what it used to be and wouldn’t go very far over 40-50 years. It’s £20,000 a year notwithstanding they would obviously make some interest on that but it’s still not going to be a luxury lifestyle.

Personally I would rather try and be sensible and aim to retire around 55-60 knowing that I haven’t put my life on hold for an unpromised future.