This is odd and tells us something about what an excess of money does to people’s sense of security in old age.
I am not sure there comes something called security. Infact I see “wealth” as something that makes the “wealthy” insecure. Most of the tears over tax-free-cash, inheritance-tax and tax/Ni relief are problems of wealth.
I don’t know Craig Coben but we have a few friends in common and if you put Fulham season holder as how you want to be known, you must have a decent side. We used to get in to Fulham for £1 , my son and me – playing in the park down from the ground. But I digress.
I do know the number his flight partner had in mind as “security” and I would be surprised having that much in the bank would have made him secure.
The trouble with having the money in your pot is that it isn’t a wage (an AgeWage) and even if it runs into tens of millions of pounds, it’s not security.
That number never quite turns up!
Was Craig’s number 42?
Millions?
Thousands per week or per month or per year?
The phrase “42 roads a man has to walk down” is, of course, a playful combination of two different sources: Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
While Dylan’s song asks “how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”, Adams’ book states the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” is 42.
The two concepts combine to create a humorous, nonsensical question and answer that is also a parody of searching for deep meaning.
42 is the conversion factor that at £1M produces an RPI-indexed income starting now, which gives a single person a comfortable retirement. However, the number needs to be 60 for a couple
https://www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/
Then you will need to account for tax in which case the number needs to be 80