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Thriller writer Lee Child: I bought a Renoir with the crazy fee I got for writing a screenplay By York Membery Updated: 17:01 EDT, 7 September 2024 e-mail View comments Thriller writer Lee Child Thriller writer Lee Child is best known for his Jack Reacher novels which have sold more than 100 million copies globally. The books have been adapted for cinema, with Tom Cruise in the title role, and turned into a hit Amazon Prime TV series starring Alan Ritchson. Coventry-born father-of-one Lee, 69, and his American wife Jane divide their time between their Wyoming ranch and New York townhouse.
What did your parents teach you about money? My parents Audrey and John met in 1947, having known nothing in their young lives except economic hardship and war, and that defined their financial attitude. Save for a rainy day, never borrow, focus on job security, think about pensions, never indulge, and turn the light off if you leave the room – even for a minute. I was one of four boys and grew up in Birmingham back when people were paid in cash on Friday – prompting the saying: ‘As rare as a pound note on a Thursday.
’ My conclusion? If you want to escape being ruled by money, you always need slightly more than you think. Have you ever struggled to make ends meet? I was broke as a student, like everyone. I made pretty good money at Granada TV, where I was Transmission Controller, but even so we struggled when our daughter was born – we had a mortgage on our Manchester home, the house to fix and all the normal new-parent stuff.
Like being nibbled to death by goldfish. We had overdrafts for a decade. Have you ever been paid silly money? The silliest was by a famous movie producer who asked me to turn a concept he had bought into a screenplay.
I didn’t really want to do it – I had decided to chill that summer – so asked for a ridiculous fee. That’s the polite thing to do – they then tell you it doesn’t fit the budget, nothing personal, everyone saves face. But the guy agreed! It was 11 days’ work and I bought a Renoir with the money.
The movie was never made. Good screenplay, though. What was the best year of your financial life? My pay arrives in fits and starts, irregular and unpredictable, and in 2016 a whole bunch of things happened to come in together – old movie bonuses, a new movie payment, old book royalties, the front-loaded part of a new book deal, and so on.
Wow factor: Lee Child has a brownstone townhouse in New York City and a ranch in Wyoming It was spectacular – easily the best numbers I ever had. But emotionally the best year was my first as a writer in 1996. We paid off the overdrafts, and could finally afford curtains for the dining room.
The most expensive thing you bought for fun? I’m prey to that old-guy thing where at last we can afford what we craved as teenagers. I love music and wanted to be a rock star. The words ‘electric guitar’ still give me goosebumps.
So I bought a vintage Fender Telecaster made the year I was born. It cost $20,000. Stupid really – it doesn’t sound all that different, and I can’t really play anyway.
Big star: Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher What is your biggest money mistake? I have no concept of financial sophistication, my decisions are ignorant and random. I have no shares or bonds or investments. If I could, I’d keep cash in a coffee tin buried in the back yard.
I don’t really trust financial advisers. I wonder, if you’re such a market genius, why are you calling me on the phone? Why aren’t you lying on a beach in Barbados, rich, happy and retired? Best money decision you have made? I’ve made money on some houses, and lost money on others – but my best investment was the £3.99 I spent at WHSmith on pads of paper and a pencil, to write my first book.
That paid off big time. Read More RAF veteran and writer John Nichol: My watch is bespoke..
. for airmen who've used an ejector seat But the decision I’m happiest with is to give a lot away, mostly for education: I support about 100 students around the world – 40 of whom are in Britain, mostly at Sheffield, my old university. But I do some on-a-whim things, too.
Once, I saw a woman in a wheelchair struggling to get up a kerb. I helped her, and then wheeled her to a medical supply store down the street, where I bought her an electric wheelchair there and then. I never even knew her name, but I hope she’s still buzzing around.
Do you have a pension? I have half a career’s pension from ITV and half a lifetime’s old-age pension from the UK government. I paid for them, so I claimed them. In America everyone saves up for themselves, in an IRA – an Independent Retirement Account, not the other kind of IRA.
There are tax advantages, so I max it out every year; I have to take it within four years from now. Lastly, I’ll get the US old-age pension [which Lee’s been paying into since moving to the States in 1988], which you can take any time between 65 and 74, though I haven’t started claiming yet. So I’ll have four pensions.
I guess I must have listened to my parents. Do you own any property? I have a brownstone townhouse in New York City and a ranch in Wyoming, which has a house – although you wouldn’t know that from the deed. Out west, you buy land.
If it has a house on it, well, good for you. The legal process doesn’t care either way. If you were Chancellor, what would you do? My dad was a tax inspector and a tax history buff.
It’s clear that our notion of ‘tax’ is essentially a 19th, or at best a 20th, century concept, from when money was slow to move and always visible. Now it’s hidden, hyper-mobile, and cheeky. Profits made in Britain show up as expenses owed to a shell company in Luxembourg.
I would abandon corporate taxes altogether for big multinationals. I would tell them, if you want to do business here, you need to buy a billion-pound licence first. What is your number one financial priority? To cross my fingers and hope this crazy ride lasts to the end.
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