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Inheritance | Debt | Money
The Inheritance Wasn’t Enough
How a whopping great inheritance put my friend back into debt
A friend of mine recently inherited £800,000 ($1.1m). Or more precisely, his wife did, from a great aunt who had sold her house on Dartmoor, Devon (UK), to a hedge fund manager from London for a fortune.
It was a surprise, that’s for sure. They weren’t wealthy and had been living in rented accommodation for years with their two boys.
He had always wanted to be a hairdresser. At school, he had cut people’s hair and was destined to be a barber. But after travelling to Australia, he got himself a job in a kitchen and found he had a flair for cooking.
When he returned to Devon, he took a job in a local gastropub and within a few years, he was head chef pulling in £40k a year. He had also got married and had his first child on the way. All good!
Well, you would think so. Unfortunately, when they set out to try and buy a house, everything was out of reach. While both had good jobs, both he and his wife were notoriously bad with money and had racked up bad debts over the years.
When they approached the bank for a mortgage, they were refused, and so kept renting, kept working and had another child.
