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I feel people still don't understand how much a billion is. One Million dollars would still be life changing for most people here, but consider that 1 million seconds ago was 11 days ago, 1 Billion seconds ago was 31 years ago.
To put it in another perspective, a very bad investment would yield you 0.1% monthly. This means that if a billionaire was to invest money the worst way possible, he would have to spend over 1 Million dollars per month to ever decrease his fortune.
If you had an infinite money machine, that as long as you don't spend more than a million per month it just keeps on growing, would you ever work? Yeah, thought so, billionaires are the same, they might have hobbies, and those hobbies might be something others consider work, but they're not working.
I personally believe that if a person ever gets 1 Billion dollars he should receive a letter congratulating them for winning capitalism, and informing them that any cent above 1 Billion will be taxed at 99.9999% (including investments).
I've always liked the saying "The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars" to really drive it home.
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
And tax their idle stock 1%, per share, per day.
Eat the rich
I don't know about a million being life changing. Can't even buy a house for a million over here... Especially in USD, lol.
It's enough to wipe out most people's student loans, and buy a reliable vehicle, then put a down payment on a house. That's life changing.
Well, lucky you. But when houses cost over £2m, £1m down payment won't make me able to afford shit.
That's still a 50% down payment on that house, your mortgage payments will be a lot less than your rent. So you'll have a place of your own and more money every month, plus be investing in your capital instead of pissing money away. If that's not life changing for you then nothing is.
There's a 4.5x household income limit for mortgages in the UK. So if your combined income is £60k (for a family where both parties have average UK income), the most money you can borrow is £270k. And then you look at something that's not immediately falling apart and you see this https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/67606066/ you instantly know that you can't afford anything even with £1m in your pocket.
That's unless you want to settle for a garage transformed into a "one bed house" https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/66317679/
Another option would be to move to some part of London like Barking, but I'd rather live in a shed than a drug den.
So yeah, I'm happy for you if £1m is life changing for you.
But also as a general rule places don't let you spend over 30% of your income in rent, 60K that you mentioned for a couple is £4186 per month, so the maximum rent of that hypothetical person is £1256. Which wouldn't also allow you to rent a house like the one you showed, so it's pointless. The house where a couple that earns 60k lives can absolutely be bought for close to 1 million (if not less). Whoever is living in a 4 bedroom house like the one you pointed out earns a lot more than 60k and so they can finance the rest.
There's no limit on rents in the UK. You can spend all of your money on it if you wish.