semi-hypothetical scenario here for the world weary wise men of STW.

imagine you were rapidly approaching 30 years old, had a dead end job, dated qualifications, crap job history etc etc etc. basically stuck in a rut after too many years playing on bikes and not planning for the future. on the plus side you have no debt, no kids, no responsibilities and you have 10 million facebook points from your ’round the world’ photo albums. you’ve had some fun, but basically you need to get on the property ladder and make a decent life for you and your schoolteacher girlfriend (who is grade A marriage material and far too sexy to waste her life on no worthless bum)

now what would you do about it if you had 15 grand to play with?
do you blow it on fast cars, wild riding adventures and keep the dead end job?
do you invest it? (kind of need help with the details here, i do not speak the language of finance)
buy or start a business?
re-train for a mega cool job? pilot/stuntman/lion tamer etc…

i need to wipe my slate clean. i have no idea where to start. where better than a forum full of mountain bikers that i’ve never met? i love the internet.

now what would you do about it if you had 15 grand to play with?

£15k ain’t going to change you life, so just stick it in the bank for a rainy day, knuckle down and grow up.

Train as a nurse, then after 25 years you can be as happy as me.

No

£15k, if i had that i would be putting it aside as a house deposit, In theory there is nothing wrong with renting except, the way it works in the UK sucks.

For £15k my dream to become a woman can finally come true :O

Can you post a photo of this sexy schoolteacher girlfriend first?

She’ll have long summer holidays, a few k would get you both a great one together. Some proper luxury then propose. Spend the rest on a romantic exotic wedding abroad (expensive for a holiday but cheap compared to most weddings), get the ring on her finger and ding dang do you go back to being a bum. You’ll get at least 5 years out of that before she starts to question her choice to marry a bum, 10 years or more if you have kids. Then by the time you are in your 40s she’ll be starting to get old and fat and won’t want to leave you and will settle for being married to a bum. Will eventually resent and hate you so make the most of the good few years you get before this happens.

Being sensible if you need to get on the property ladder then 15 k will go towards a deposit. Not quite living the dream though!

i bought a repossesion for £90k with a £18k deposit, sold it 12 months later for £107k so now i have £35k

do something similar?

Yes, £15k can change your life, but it depends what you do with it.

(Re-)Training can open up a new career path. Likewise, taking off on a trip for a few weeks/month can give you a new perspective on things and therefore encourage you to explore something completely different. And simply taking a career-break/time-out (which can easily cost £1-3k/month) can give you the opportunity to do the same.

Ok – serious answer.

If you really want to change your life, the £15k is irrelevant. Put it away somewhere and get on with what you want to do with the rest of your life.

yeah mortgage deposit is top of the list but i’ve been day dreaming all day and need to bounce some silly ideas around but there’s no one home to talk to!

i wonder where the nearest stuntman school is….

Train to become a teacher then you’ll be as happy as me, being verbally abused, treated like sh.. , have way too much paperwork which cannot physically be done, be inspected by others who tell you that you need to improve but don’t tell you how to improve, be given ridiculous deadlines. But the money is good and every now and again you get one or two moments when you see a light turn on in a kids face that believe it or not makes it worthwhile.

Then comes family, house, car and a reasonable budget to blow on bikes.

It all depends what you want from life. A dead end job is only a dead end job if that’s what you want or is it a stepping stone to something different or better. It’s not all about the money be happy in what you do – no amount of money can replace someone who is happy at home and in work – if they live in a caravan or a palace.

What’s important to you?

8k on a top spec santa cruz carbon v10, 6k left over for hookers.

edit: and a grand on some maths lessons!

i bought a repossesion for £90k with a £18k deposit, sold it 12 months later for £107k so now i have £35k

i’ve got a mate who did something similar. he’s on my list of people to speak to in the next few weeks.

Training can open up a new career path.

this is tempting. a few years ago i would have known exactly what i wanted to do but now i’m not sure. certainly gaining new skills to secure more rewarding employment would make a massive difference

Can you change your life for £15,000?

I’d say so. I sort of see what Onion’s saying, but for me personally, fifteen kay could open up opportunities I might otherwise not have, given my current finances…

Pends where you are though dun’t it? I mean, even a pound could change your life…

If I could roll back the last ten years,

£15k, if i had that i would be putting it aside as a house deposit,

… is about what I’d do.

i’m definitely thinking of ‘doing’ stuff rather then ‘having’ stuff. i’m not into flashy toys or clothes, i don’t drink and go wild (not anymore).
i was thinking more along the lines of the opportunities available like training and education. the stuff that would actually change my daily life

Buy to Let

Do a winter season

Save the £15k for when a little one arrives.

Personally the second one sorted my life right out!

do you mind me asking what your “dead end job” is?

You could use the money to have a career break and try new things, or put the money toward retraining to do something you’d prefer to do for the rest of your life.
Which is what i might do should I redundancy come my way…

Put the money somewhere safe whilst you decide what you want to do, a 30 day notice account is good as the money is not instantly accessed and so not frittered away i’ve been there done that, booze and gambling 😳

I’ve not been happy with my situation for 10 years but it is only that last 18 months or so i’ve known what I want to do and i’m now making that a reality via a college course and then going to uni next september. And i’m the other side of 30.

£15k, if i had that i would be putting it aside as a house deposit,

The thing with that is house prices are still way overpriced in the UK compared to normal wages IMO. The financial policies of the current and last governments since the financial crisis hit has been to stop them dropping to the damage of the rest of the economy (again IMO).

Re-training is a good option, as long as you have a clear idea of something that you will enjoy, really make a choice about enjoying your working life, not just thinking about future earning potential.

Chuck it all in, walk the Pacific Crest Trail (pref. together).

That should help.

What I would do, and this is me, is use the money to hold the bills at bay whilst also doing some part time hours, and retrain as something innately useful, teacher, fireman, social-worker (err), etc. House deposit is just another loan for some other sofa/bed/walls and isn’t something that will change your life in any meaningful sense imo.

Train as a nurse, then after 25 years you can be as happy as me

Hows that then? (I’d like to explain it to my Mrs who has been a staff nurse for 29 years)

Good call Kev. An amount like that could help fund something like education/training which may well than have a value way beyond money.

Ear Kev; bin Oirish Dave’s photo show in Hoxton the night, innit? Seen that Martin Payne in’t I?

Was good fun. 😀

If I could roll back the last ten years

……. I would start a business with seven and a half grand and save the rest for when I actually realised where I should have spent the first lot, in order to help the business, with the benefit of hindsight.

I wasted a LOT of money in my first few years in business 🙂

To the OP – £15k could go a long way to setting up some kind of business, depending on what it is. Or getting professional training/qualifications. I just got a similar amount which I’ve been investing in photography gear for weddings etc.

I wasted a LOT of money in my first few years in business

It’s a photography business innit? Can you let me know where you wasted the money please? 🙂

my ears aren’t burning TBH elf

It’s a photography business innit? Can you let me know where you wasted the money please?

Printed adverts mainly – complete waste of money, Yellow pages, experimenting with superfluous gear, badly thought out promo material bought in large amounts which was dated within the year and non-reprasentative of current work, expensive suits which wore through within three months (cheap linen suits now), paying for online listings (the free ones brought in just as much custom), paying (a lot) to be a member of a local networking group full of lawyers and financial advisors – got some business from that, but spent a year pretending to be someone I’m not, and pretending to like a bunch of brown-nosing w’nkers in suits.

Frittered huge amounts on loads of gear unrelated to the business of wedding photography – Lee filter kit and polariser, huge Manfrotto tripods – landscaping stuff really – I was still thinking like an amateur rather than a pro – running things like a hobby instead of a business. I should have been buying radio poppers, decent strobes, a proper set of sample albums and perhaps space at wedding fairs.

The boring purchases tend to be the best….

Thanks for that, really useful info – sounds like I am making some of the same mistakes you did. 🙂

Back the OP, learn a language, read “the 4 hour work week”. Then yes, £15k can change your life.

Your semi-hypothetical position sounds like a pretty good one. A bit of money in the bank and as far as future work is concerned a blank slate.

Save 13 grand and once you’ve secured a a position doing something enjoyable and worthwhile treat yourself with the other 2.

Thoroughly recommend becoming a firefighter, I did this aged 42 after being a photographer for 20 years and it’s the best move I ever made. I love it to bits! Plus working 4 days on 4 off I still get to do the photography and/or have lotsa time to ride.

Whatever you do don’t leave your job and live off the dosh, you’ll end up with nowt.

invest in yourself. 15k still buys a lot of education or training. 15k will buy you an ou degree or prop you up while you train and work part time to learn a new trade.

yes it’s a life changing amount of money but only if you enable it too.

Re-train. Re-educate. I am. [decided to study an MA part time]. It’s hard work, but now is the time to do it [late 20’s/early 30’s before kids etc.

Watch some of these as well to help align your mind
Do Lectures

10 million facebook points from your ’round the world’ photo albums

Do you have a passion for photography and can you do something in that field or are these just holiday snaps? £15K can set you up as a wedding/portrait/commercial/paparazzi photographer.

I do think with £15k you could make some good positive changes (as well as some negative changes: coke and hooker habit?)

With about a 1/4 of that Mrs Mugsy and I chucked in our engineering consultancy jobs in the UK, she took a plane, I took a self drive hired 7.5 tonne truck and moved our life,including 1 1/2 year old son to France. Mrs Mugsy has a similar job in France, and I work freelance for my old company, either from home (near the alps!) or away on international projects. We won. We still think ‘this is to good to be true’. We are in a financial situation which we could never imagine being in the UK. And in a few years time I’m thinking of retraining as a European Mountain Leader, taking people out into the hills.

I like your thinking, and wish you the best.

Not enough money to make a huge difference really. A years retraining or a damn good adventure or a good chunk towards a deposit on a house.

I’d probably go for a adventure before settling down in the OPS position – actually that is what I did.

Re-train in somethign that allows you to work as a contractor? More moeny and as much (although unpaid) holliday as you want?

thanks for the replies! really interested in the true life stories of people making a change to their own lives. i’m gonna be readin sneakily at work today with not much chance to reply but to answer a few comments;
pacific crest trail is on the to-do list!
i have worked as a photographer in the past doing a lot of freelance stuff for car and bike magazines. i’d rather keep it as a hobby to be honest as it was a constant pain never knowing where the next job was coming from.