RE: What would you do?11 Dec 2020 00:56
BG - depends on how you define life-changing. This will be different for every individual, but needs to be judged against the general economic backdrop, including thinking about how much things cost and other ways of earning this amount of cash.
I define life-changing as leading to a significant change of one's lifestyle. In my humble opinion, £100k is nowhere near enough to significantly change one's life in the UK or Europe. It's not coming from my personal wealth point of view (how valuable is £100k to me), but rather UK/EU prices and salaries.
If somebody thinks it is, there are easier ways of accumulating that amount within a few years by changing your spending patterns/changing jobs/getting a second source of income, etc. I think most people will burn through £100k before they realised what happened. It's not enough to live off the interest, not enough to quit working, not enough to safely start your own business venture and it's less than the price of an average house in the UK. There might be a very limited number of people to whom this will be life-changing, but I reckon most folks who think £100k will significantly change their lives will actually be the ones who burn through it faster.
I could never understand people playing with their daily income - if you are grinding it out at 5-10% annual gain, you are getting jack sh.t in absolute terms (treat the Mrs to a nice dinner). Even if you hit a once-in-a-lifetime multibagger, that's not even enough to buy yourself a new car, never mind change your life. It's very easy to double-bag your daily income - just work an extra day. Completely risk-free too.
As far as UK average personal wealth goes, UK household debt is simply scary, and in many cases is driven by very loose spending patterns, fuelled by very aggressive finance sales (FCA should know better than allow the current practices, but what do they care) and complete lack of financial education, and often, common sense. Fools and their money are easily parted and throwing £100k into a bottomless pit won't fill that pit.
So we'll have to agree to disagree.