Anne Robinson is avoiding inheritance tax. Good for her. No, really. Good for her. “I’ve given it all away,” the woman I mainly remember as the host of The Weakest Link told Saga magazine last week, of her estimated £50 million fortune. I say estimated because she also told them she has “genuinely no idea” whether she is worth that, in much the same way — I presume — as I have genuinely no idea what my own net worth is, since I haven’t checked my bank account in a week because I know I overspent on Tuesday and I don’t want to think about it. Again: Good. For. Her.
“I’ve given it all away. I don’t want the taxman to have it. I’ve spread it around quite a lot, to the children. They may as well enjoy it now.” It’s a tricky one, isn’t it? On the one hand, I think we should all pay our taxes, and it’s always the middle classes who end up paying this one because the really rich are very good at not doing so. (Which, incidentally, seems to be why I know a lot of people in their thirties who are building extensions at the moment. Good for them.)
On the other hand, it’s that last sentence that endears me to Robinson. “They may as well enjoy it now.” She’s right. At 79, Robinson is part of the most economically lucky and successful generation in history. Her daughter —who I learnt last week is called Emma and is 43 — and her grandchildren, 14 and 13, (congratulations all!) are not.
I have no idea what Emma does for a living or what her personal financial circumstances are, and I will die happy never having bothered to find out. But the principle is a good one, isn’t it? Robinson has lots of money, more than she could ever use. It would be quite weird if she just sat on it and thought, “Hmm, no point in giving this to my relatives who didn’t live through the most economically beneficial decades in human history.”
So good for Anne Robinson. And good for a lot of people, actually. “Millennials set to become ‘richest generation in history’” was the headline that caught my eye in The Times the other day. Millennials “who are defined as being roughly born between 1980 and 1994” will benefit from the biggest transfer of wealth in history “as wealth is passed after death from the last of the property rich generations”.
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That means everyone born from about 1945 to 1979. But then there’s the kicker sentence: “In some cases, it will mean many millennials finally realising the dream of home ownership at about the time they themselves retire.” Which seems a little late in the day, honestly. So why not do it now, like our Anne?
A good logistical reason, I suppose, not to do it now is that most of that huge inheritance is tied up in property. Last year the estate agent Savills published data showing the over-65s have £2.58 trillion in property, and only £147 billion in mortgage debt. Truly, good for them. The reason why that generation is the most economically successful in history is largely because of the remarkable way in which house prices have increased over their lives.
Now some of you reading this will be thinking, “Hang on, this idiot child seems to think I am eating from golden plates. I am not rich. I am just about getting by.” And some of you will be right. But many of you will not be.
One in four pensioners is a millionaire. But that’s only when you take the cost of their house into account. Again, this is all about property. Many of these millionaires will have a reasonably small amount of money coming into their bank accounts each month. They won’t feel well off. They won’t go out to dinner much. They won’t go on expensive holidays. But they are, incontrovertibly, irrevocably rich.
And one day, their children are going to wake up and realise this. I’ve seen it happen: people who have spent their whole lives thinking of themselves as lower middle (or even, in some cases, working class) by background will suddenly look around and think, “Wait… my parents bought a terraced house in north London in 1992”. Am I… Hang on. Am I one of them? One of the rich people?”
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Imagine it. It genuinely must be quite a jarring experience. You work all your life, saving what you can, and you probably won’t buy a house with it because homes on average cost 8.8 times incomes, whereas in the 1970s they cost just 4.7 times. Work work work, and nothing. And then one day, you wake up, put on a black suit and pick up some flowers, and find more money in your bank account than you could ever have imagined. Years of work didn’t buy you a house, but this did. What does that do to your understanding of the value of work, to your understanding of fairness and just rewards? Probably quite weird things, I suspect.
Moreover, how does that feel to those around you who don’t benefit from a similar inheritance? Those who have also worked all their lives too and still don’t own property? Pretty unfair I’d imagine. It’s going to do some pretty weird things to the social fabric. Millennials could be the richest generation in history. Might we also become the most financially and socially divided?
This monumental transfer of wealth is going to have some very odd consequences. I’m not quite sure what they will be yet. But it doesn’t seem like it will be anything good. Still, a lot of us will end up with really nice houses, I suppose. Good for us.
American girls can invest in as many British finance boys as they like
Congratulations, Natalie Biden — granddaughter of the more famous Joe — who I learnt yesterday is dating a man the newspapers are describing as a “former London public school boy”. Another victory for British soft power.
Reading about Ms Biden’s romance, I was reminded of one of the weirder social media phenomena of recent times. Young women, mostly American, are making videos with titles such as “How to find a British finance boyfriend” or “How to find your British Mr Darcy” in which they instruct their peers to head to key post-work watering holes near the City or the Inns of Court in London.
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They are all very amusing to the British eye. You and I both know that having a British finance boyfriend carries a high risk of long, dull nights in overpriced steak restaurants and — worse — having to learn the rules of cricket.
Plus you’ll still be going to those same rubbish pubs in the City, where TikTok told you to pick him up, and where you pay £7 to stand in an alleyway protecting your warm pint from the flailing arms of his braying colleagues. But that message doesn’t seem to have reached our sisters across the pond.
It’s unsisterly of me to say it, but I think we should keep quiet about it. It’s important British men have somebody else who fancies them. Otherwise they might start bothering us instead.
