I hate headlines like this.
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@thebaywindowgirl yes in one of the branches of this thread someone dug a bit deeper and discovered the guy hasn't actually retired from his financial coaching business, this whole thing is just advertising for it
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To angrily overthink this further, it really does illustrate how people in the UK (and probably the wider Western World) are so completely isolated from one another by income bracket we don't really understand each other's lives. All of this couple's friends are presumably in finance or life coaching so to them making lunch instead of buying it sounds so outrageous they presumably approached the BBC and got themselves interviewed about it because they think they've done something so unusual. When really the unusual thing is that it worked.
We were just talking about this kind of thing a few minutes ago. My wife keeps detailed financial records and she looked at how much we spend per year on clothes. It turns out to be $263 per year for our family of three, or about $88/person/year, averaged over the past 26 years.
She looked up the national average, and it's around $1,500/person/year! We buy most of our clothes second-hand and wear them a long time.
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@thebaywindowgirl yes in one of the branches of this thread someone dug a bit deeper and discovered the guy hasn't actually retired from his financial coaching business, this whole thing is just advertising for it
You too could retire at 40, just buy my "How to make sandwiches course for 5 easy payments of £2599.
Life lessons include:
What is a supermarket?
Butter vs Margarine
How to get the stone out of the avocado -
I hate headlines like this. You read the article and discover she works in finance, he runs a life coaching business whatever that is, and they retired once their savings hit £1 million which didn't come from making their own sandwiches.
Meanwhile out in the real world most of us have been bringing packed lunches to work since the 2010s at least and are still one unexpected vet bill away from a couple of months of home haircuts.
@afewbugs@social.coop this headline lacks punch
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You too could retire at 40, just buy my "How to make sandwiches course for 5 easy payments of £2599.
Life lessons include:
What is a supermarket?
Butter vs Margarine
How to get the stone out of the avocado@Workshopshed @afewbugs @thebaywindowgirl
Be aware, your students might first need to be told the stone gets removed from the avocado before eating... this could be a 500 quid add on of course
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@afewbugs extra bonus.
They're not retired. They run a YouTube channel and free (for your contact details which they are amassing) course, which is currently running at a small annual loss but which they clearly expect to gradually turn into money via YouTube earnings and a book deal.
https://rebeldonegans.com/does-rebel-finance-school-make-money/
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@raccoon normally no, I'm really bad at it
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@afewbugs to reiterate, saving £40k over 10 years is over £75 *a week*. Just on sandwiches between the two of them.
Edit: they *saved* over £75 a week, so the initial lunches were higher
@SquirrelwithaninvisibleW @afewbugs
£40k is the median salary in the UK. To save £20k each they both need to be in the top 10%.
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@afewbugs “The two rarely had takeaways and always took packed lunches to work. ‘We were £40,000 better off over 10 years from just that one lunch habit," says Alan.’”
Works out that between them they were spending over £75 *a week* on lunches before going DIY.
‘Aside from their good incomes, their extreme saving habits meant they were able to retire early.’ Though the article doesn’t mention their salaries outside of ‘good’ so it kinda renders the whole piece redundant.
@SquirrelwithaninvisibleW @afewbugs 75 a week isn't _that_ hard to achieve if you go out and buy lunch every day at some deli or lunch counter or even the petrol station. That's 15 a day for two people, that's certainly not nothing but it's not millionaire territory either.
So fine, that saves you 40 grand over a decade. That's significant.
But 40 grand isn't going to get anyone from age 40 to retirement age, so the lunch thing is far from the whole story and just a stupid clickbait headline.
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@afewbugs Grrrrr. This exactly. Without recognizing the privilege they started with.
@afewbugs oh and a further thought, in the US, you can’t easily retire early even with $1M in savings as health care is tied to employment. Some jobs, if you work there long enough, you get to keep health care when you retire. Otherwise, for healthy folks, can’t get state Medicare until 65.
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@amenonsen @catch56 I'm now wondering if it really is that big, if it's foreshortening or if the whole picture is AI
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I hate headlines like this. You read the article and discover she works in finance, he runs a life coaching business whatever that is, and they retired once their savings hit £1 million which didn't come from making their own sandwiches.
Meanwhile out in the real world most of us have been bringing packed lunches to work since the 2010s at least and are still one unexpected vet bill away from a couple of months of home haircuts.
These two undoubtedly came from privilege to begin with. They absolutely reek of it.
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@amenonsen @catch56 I'm now wondering if it really is that big, if it's foreshortening or if the whole picture is AI
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@afewbugs Grrrrr. This exactly. Without recognizing the privilege they started with.
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@SquirrelwithaninvisibleW @afewbugs
£40k is the median salary in the UK. To save £20k each they both need to be in the top 10%.
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@SquirrelwithaninvisibleW @afewbugs
£40k is the median salary in the UK. To save £20k each they both need to be in the top 10%.
@svavar @SquirrelwithaninvisibleW @afewbugs
I was made redundant, and effectively 'retired' - it's not easy to find new work when you're over 50! - 20 years ago. I never earned over £25k a year (I think I got to the giddy heights of £24k...).
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@afewbugs It's a big steaming pile of bullshit. For the reasons you say. But also because a million at 40 will probably run out before you are 70 assuming two people drawing minimum wage and 2% inflation.
@keefeglise @afewbugs that’s a really good point. Even if we assume they’re mortgage-free, £1m won’t last their literal lifetimes. Have they effectively saved their way into cosplaying poverty for the next 40+ years…?
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@MiaMarkTwo @aegir @afewbugs ah, the ol’ save money by making all your Christmas decorations. You’ll just need this die-cutting machine (£££), an array of artisanally aged woods (from one bespoke supplier in the Outer Hebrides) and stuff you’ve probably got laying about the house, like gold leaf and Swarovski crystals.
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I hate headlines like this. You read the article and discover she works in finance, he runs a life coaching business whatever that is, and they retired once their savings hit £1 million which didn't come from making their own sandwiches.
Meanwhile out in the real world most of us have been bringing packed lunches to work since the 2010s at least and are still one unexpected vet bill away from a couple of months of home haircuts.
@afewbugs The title is incredibly misleading. They didn't pack lunches as part of their job. It wasn't for charity, either.
They simply brought their own food to work, which most people on this planet do, anyway, because you can't go out to lunch every single day.
Journalism has become a BIG FAT JOKE.
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But I think the thing I really hate about these type of headlines is how they feed into victims blaming. People aren't poor because they don't have enough money for a decent life and it's really hard to claw your way over life's obstacles without money rather than having them knock you back further. They're poor because they spend too much money on sandwiches instead of making their own, the lazy idiots
Bloody good rant @afewbugs
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