Posts by Matt Hallett

The thing I’m most proud of was what I did for my parents. I was only 22 when I started out, so Ihad another 40 or 50 years to recoup if things hadn’t worked out. But my parents were so closeto retirement age that it wasn’t even a case of sink or swim. It was…

I bought my first home, and thought, “Hang on, if I rent out these tworooms, that money will pay for my mortgage. Then, all I have to do is pay for the house bills, andit’s actually cheaper than living in student digs.”The second lightbulb moment was after the lodgers had moved in and everything was…

If you can create additional rooms out of the same physical asset, it means you can get more rentfrom those additional rooms; it’s simple maths. We did that, and my dad said, “Oh my God, I’min a hell of a lot better position. You’ve managed to make you and I the equivalent of what myannuity…

It was already a four-bedroom house when I went in, and he’d done a bit of a Bob the Builderrenovation. I had to redo some of the things, but I wasn’t really bothered because I’d got it£10,000 cheaper than I was originally happy with, and it was now in a better condition.By this point, I…

My parents weren’t in a position at the time to lend me any money: I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I haven’t got a trust fund I can just call upon. What I decided to do was take the income that I’d received from my properties and speak to my…

One day, I just woke up and thought, “No, I don’t even want to get out of mybed. I can’t be bothered to do anything.” For me, that was the first time I’d ever experienced it,and that lasted for a solid week; I didn’t interact with anybody. The house that was beingrenovated was only two…

It was only four months after I had finished my own house. I was thinking, “Shit, I want to buythis house, but I don’t have any money. How am I going to do this?” I put the offer in and I had 5 no real concept of how I was going to do it. Luckily,…

As soon as I finished university, I got a job with a multi-national blue-chip organisation. Eventhough I had a computing degree, I went into their finance department. I didn’t like the job, itwas a means to an end. My parents were living in Switzerland, but they had a house just outsidePortsmouth, and I would live…

I got my first job when I was about 14 or 15 It was working as a restaurant runner, for £2.50 perhour. I used to do an eight-hour shift to get my £20. I got a few tips, but it knackered me out, sosix months later, I stopped doing that.I was keenly into computers and…

I didn’t have the most standard teenage years. My mum had really bad eyesight, and had to go infor an eye operation. She was already blind in one eye from an operation that went wrong as achild. So she was really fearful of having this operation done. She went in to have the operationon her…