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'Is £100k a good salary for a 27-year-old?' How to be a personal finance wanker

CONCERNED that not everyone in the UK knows about your high income? Why not kick up a massive fuss about it? 

Write to a newspaper for advice

Feign concern about your enormous income, multiple homes or large capital sums. Questions can include ‘Is it realistic to retire at 35 on my pension of £200k a year?’, ‘How do I manage my six-property retirement portfolio?’ and ‘I forgot I own a controlling interest in Monster Beverages’.

Appear in the Home section of the Sunday Times

Earn so much that your talentless spouse, who enjoys a large private income, fancies themselves an interior designer? Belgravia townhouse full of vintage shit? Then you deserve a double-page spread showing off your artfully-placed rusty printing plates hanging on your Portland stone wall.

Share your wisdom with poorer friends

Ideally through a newspaper, advise pals who are saving for a deposit on a two-bedroom flat in Zone 8 that they should have bought 60 Bitcoins back in 2013, like you did. Obviously it was risky and they should only invest what they can afford to lose, which is why you only put £45 grand in.

Give out down-to-earth economising tips

There’s a cost of living crisis, so publicise your sacrifices. You’ve cut your flight budget to business class? Got rid of your driver? Decided to gift a Picasso to the nation to reduce your tax bill? Admit it and inspire others to follow suit. After all, everyone’s going through it.

Start a consultancy

Why let your wisdom go to waste? Found a consultancy, complete with YouTube channel and podcast, so it can be available to everyone to a fee. Headlines such as ‘Financially free at 40, but fulfilled?’ and ‘Following your dream: a guide to harnessing your wealth’ will bring in clients who are even bigger tossers than you.

Nights out in the 1980s: A user's guide

WERE you lucky enough to come of age in the greatest ever decade for nightlife, the 1980s? Here are the rules you followed.

Shirt, chinos, no trainers

Nightclub bouncers watched Miami Vice, agreed it was the height of sartorial elegance and anyone dressed like that could afford infinite rum and cokes, and imposed the same dress code on a generation of teenage boys. Pink shirt, tan chinos, slip-on loafers with little gold chains on.

Ra-ra skirts, puffball skirts, so much f**king hairspray

Teenage girls, similarly trying to get into clubs while five years underage, cycled through a range of nonsensical never-revived fashion choices like cheerleader skirts, satin polka dot puffball skirts, and their dad’s blazer over a minidress, all anchored with a helmet of rock-solid highly flammable hair.

An hour’s queue

All the pubs – no exceptions – kicked out at 11pm. So all nightclubs – one per town – had queues outside from 10.30pm that took an hour to get to the front of. You were queuing and sobering up for an hour to get inside for a maximum of two hours, then got sent away for wearing casual shoes and because the girls you were with were obviously underage.

Mandatory lager

Lager was as new and exciting as cashpoints in the 1980s and yuppies drank it in adverts. Consequently every lad out there couldn’t wait to get a cool sharp Harp down them even though it tasted like fizzy piss. It was either that or Newcastle Brown.

Mandatory fags

Everybody smoked in the pubs, but nightclubs were that bit more grown-up so everybody smoked even more. There was a blue haze like a layer of milk a foot above everyone’s heads at all points, and by the end of the evening your eyes were streaming and you stank.

Wedding DJ

The wedding DJ who’s been playing the same set, made up of songs he personally likes and he doesn’t give a f**k if you don’t, was every nightclub DJ in the 80s. He talked over every track and his set climaxed with Black Lace’s I Am The Music Man, which includes the Dambusters theme, Match of the Day and Here We Go and triggers a near-riot.

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