In our How I Manage My Money series we aim to find out how people in the UK are spending, saving and investing money to meet their costs and achieve their goals.
This week we speak to Karl Emanuelsson, 47, who lives in Maidstone, with his wife, Rohini, 52, and their three sons, Khush, 14, Tegh, 13, and Arnav, 11. Karl, a former investment banker, and Rohini, an ex-management consultant, quit their high-flying jobs to focus on their retreat business and property portfolio. The couple take home £10,000 a month from their rental properties.
Monthly budget
Our income: Our income varies significantly each month and comes mainly from renting out two large retreat venues, including Manor Sun Retreat, and eight other buy-to-lets. On average, we take home £10,000 per month. The income from our passion project, Y42 Radical Retreats, also varies significantly. We tend to make a profit of between £2,000 to £10,000 on each retreat run.
Our outgoings: Mortgage, £2,800; groceries, £1,000; council tax and utility bills, £700; car lease, £370; car insurance, £140; car fuel, £190; other insurance policies, £350; entertainment and travel, £600; clothes and other regular expenditure, £750; childcare, £600; credit card repayments and interest, £1,500. We probably spend about £700 a month on eating out, date nights and local adventures with our sons. We can spend £30,000 a year on holidays.
I grew up in Sweden. My father was a university lecturer and our family ran a small hotel. We had a nice car and house, but as Sweden is all about equality, I always felt slightly guilty. Our holidays were frugal and involved camping with four kids and a big dog rammed in a Volvo.
After a mandatory year in the Swedish army, I moved to London to study economics at UCL. This was my big life adventure and I never went back.
In 2001 I got a job at Goldman Sachs, earning £30,000 a year. With my first payslip I bought massive speakers and an amplifier as I wanted to become a global superstar DJ. I moved on from Goldman Sachs in 2003, but continued working in investment banking. By the end, I was earning around £60,000 a year. I quit corporate life in 2008 to focus on building a property business and work on other opportunities. I was too much of a rebel for corporate life and always wanted to do my own thing.
I met Rohini, then working as a management consultant, at a cheesy nightclub in Leicester Square in 2001. I was celebrating getting a job at Goldman Sachs and she was celebrating her 29th birthday. We got married in 2007. The plan had been to have a big Indian wedding, but it all got too intense, so we eloped to Las Vegas and got married in the Grand Canyon.
The years rolled on and to others, it looked like we had it all – high-flying jobs, a lovely home and three beautiful sons. But we were living in a state of constant stress and worry. We were stuck in our heads, fuelled by sugar, coffee and adrenaline. We were on the brink of divorce.
Rohini worked silly hours as a management consultant and had a breakdown. She experienced full burnout. We thought rest might help her recover, but things got worse week by week. The GP could only offer medication, which Rohini didn’t want to take, and talking therapies weren’t effective.
Rohini always loved going to yoga ashrams with monks in the past, so I took her to one in February 2018. In just a few days she began to feel like herself again. Sometimes the darkest moments in our lives can be the biggest blessings. It was due to the gift of Rohini’s burnout that we embarked on an epic journey of healing, development and personal growth, later enabling us to help others. Rohini quit her corporate job in 2019.
Rohini and I now run Y42 Radical Retreats, helping people with their wellbeing, relationships and love life and businesses. Our radical Loving for Couples Retreat, for example, touches on areas like sacred sexuality and deep healing exercises to help couples deepen and strengthen their relationships.
We’ve run 30 retreats to date and each make a profit of between £2,000 to £10,000. In the future, we would like to build retreat boutique hotels and healing villages globally.
Since quitting our jobs to focus on our retreat business and property portfolio, our life has been a rollercoaster ride and not recommended for the faint-hearted, risk averse of average Joe Bloggs. Giving up a regular monthly guaranteed income isn’t just about financial security, it’s also about giving up an identity that people respect to some extent. Many people are, at best, confused about our life choices, especially as we are now seen as akin to professional hippies.
We’ve been put under a lot of financial stress and taken on a lot of high interest debt and spent way more than we planned getting the retreat business going. One of our goals is to clear all our credit cards and never use them again. We’re considering restructuring our portfolio and potentially selling the manor house we own as it would provide resources for bolder projects and help consolidate our finances. We use QuickBooks, and our accountant, to track all our spending and tax affairs and keep on top of our cash flow.
I have been passionate about property for a long time and much of our income comes from rental properties. We take home around £10,000 per month from our properties. Some are standard buy-to-lets, but others are larger and often used for private events.
Our first investment property was a four-bedroom ex-council flat in Highbury and Islington in 2002. During the pandemic, we purchased a 400-year-old manor house for £475,000. Over time, we built a portfolio of 12 properties, at one stage valued at around £7.5m and with a turnover of roughly £400,000 a year. We’ve since had to sell a couple to pay debts and fund Y42 Radical Retreats.
We never believed in saving in personal pensions managed by financial institutions with extortionate management fees, since they provide poor returns in comparison to running businesses or investing in properties. Our retirement plan was to build a property portfolio which would give us cash flow and freedom to do whatever we needed to in later life. This has just about worked out so far, thanks to rising property values and our focus on cash flow rather than equity gains, even with bumps and bruises along the way.
We put all our eggs in the property basket which means accessing liquid cash has been difficult. Ever worsening legal rules, mortgages and higher bills has now led us to re-evaluate our UK property portfolio.
With hindsight, we should have spent a bit less and put away a portion of our income into savings accounts, stocks or more liquid investments to spread our risk. Our plan is to start doing that as soon as possible. It’s never too late!
Money is incredibly important for freedom and to have an impact. Money is an energy frequency and a reflection of self worth – all paths of personal growth and having great relationships lead to self love. We want £1m in cash reserves to help our kids and enhance our lifestyle.
In the growth work we’ve done, we’ve noticed some really big energetic holes and poor beliefs around money which we have worked on intensively and continue to do so.
We’re committed to manifesting abundance in all areas of our life – we seek to experience and help others “have it all”.
Want to take part in How I Manage My Money? Email money@inews.co.uk.
