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Gordon Ramsay is one of the most successful restauranteurs on the planet, and is reportedly worth over $50m, but this was wasn’t always the case. There was a time when he had to pretend to be poor in order to borrow money from his relatives. Here he reveals his secrets for extracting cash from your own relatives.
Ramsay told us, “I haven’t always had the vast amounts of cash I have to today, and that meant approaching other people for the money. I find it’s always best to approach relatives before any professional lenders. Blood relatives are best, but in-laws will do at a pinch.
“Twenty grand for a house deposit might sound like a lot of money to you and me, but to old people that’s nothing, most of them have that tied up in premium bonds.
“Probably.
“Anyway, these are my top tips for getting elderly relatives to give you their cash when you want it:
- Don’t tell them you have a Porsche. Trust me, I know the urge to show off is a very strong one, but fight it. Park it half a mile away and get the bus the last part of the journey to their house. If there is a bus stop right outside their house even better.
- Make it look like you cut your own hair. Obviously you’re using expensive stylists because of the ‘experience’, but no one wants to lend money to someone paying over £100 for a hair cut. I’ve perfected the ‘just got out of bed look’, so feel free to use my template.
- Only give homemade gifts on birthdays and Christmas. Obviously you could afford to splash out on a nice well-aged single malt for your father in law, but it’ll be much easier to ask him for cash in the future if for the last two years you’ve been giving him a wine glass you’ve painted yourself on with children’s acrylic pens.
- Mention your DIY misadventures, repeatedly. Nothing screams ‘I’m not flush with cash’ quite like the lengthy tale of you struggling to replace the architrave around a door because ‘tradesmen are SO expensive these days’. If you don’t know what any of these words mean, YouTube someone doing it and base your story on their experience.
- If they come for dinner, pretend all the vegetables were grown in your garden, as ‘supermarket veg is extortionate’. Even if you bought all the veg from Tesco, have a bowl of dirt or soil in the kitchen to add authenticity and pretend you grew it all to ‘save a few quid’.
In the end, my cunning tactics paid off, and I got the loan I needed from my father-in-law without having to reveal my true financial status. It’s all about smoke and mirrors, my friends. Make yourself look skint on the surface, and you’ll have your relatives opening their wallets faster than you can say “Kitchen Nightmares”, cheers!
