In response to Saving Ninja, here are some thoughts on if I lost everything
Here’s the premise:
You wake up one rainy morning and after checking on your accounts you find out that you’ve been ‘wiped-out’ by a cybercriminal. You’ve lost all of the money and assets that you’ve ever owned and you can’t get them back. What will you do?
This nearly happened to my mum a few weeks back; no word of a lie. She was contacted by “BT” on the phone to help her fix her computer. Three hours later she transfers out all of her savings to a “safe account”. She was doing them the favour. She did managed to stop the call, phone the bank and halt the transaction but came very very close to losing all of her savings (maybe £100k).
Now thinking about that, what would I do afterwards? Probably go through the stages of grief. We are all human and that’s what we all do.
The trick would be to have at the end of it acceptance and hope. And I’m a very happy go lucky guy.
Personally, I regret that I am very money conscious. I think I’m good with money but it does mean I can’t look at any material (or immaterial) object and not think of how much it costs and how the owner is wasting his money.
Look a Hugo Boss belt for £95 – what a joke, who would wear something like that?
This food looks good but £17.50 for a pizza – mamma mia!
Imagine you had an extra sense besides sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste and you could sense money – but all that sense did was panic you into not spending anymore – like a hoarder. Having money and not planning to spend it is hoarding and a lot of hoarding is a bit stupid. For example, I own a barrel of whisky which might make 300 botttles (with a £4000 tax bill when it’s taken out of bondage) but I’d struggle to drink all of those in the rest of my life and I don’t even drink right now anyway – so I have more than I need.
A long long time ago, GFF actually ran out of money – just for a short period of time but I had no money at all. What that time taught me was that you can be liberated – liberation from all sorts of things – as Dylan said, when you ain’t got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose.
So in conclusion to Saving Ninja: I would hope that I’d gain more than I’d lose – but I can’t imagine the process will be short and I’d hope that I come out of it a better person than right now.
Thanks, GFF
Gentleman's Family Finances 
I’m a money-hoarder just like you GTT! It’s a very good trait to have as it can propell you into financial independence. But, like you said – you need to know when to spend it. Everything is bad in abundance, even money-saving tendencies 🙂 No one wants to be Ebenezer Scruge!
I admire that you’d carry on and learn from it, do you think your Mum would have followed a similar path?
Thanks for taking part!! 🙂
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Without wanting to get too philosophical about it I think that there’s a lot in the sense of freedom that comes from having nothing. Eschewing material things is, at least partly, the basis of a number of religions around the world.
It makes me realise that my unthinking reaction to losing everything would be to think about how to rebuild it. That’s speaks to your “money sense” point. I wonder if a healthier reaction might be to think about how to live with significantly less ‘stuff’. Interesting stuff! Thank you.
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