I decided to take Mr Piper and his wife out to dinner on Sunday to say thank you, and to see what else I could learn from this multi-millionaire. When I phoned him up, the first thing he said to me was "did I tell you, I've just purchased a Bentley. I've always wanted one. You must come and see it". Bentleys are very expensive motor cars, and so it was something else to look forward to seeing when I met up with Mr Piper on Sunday.
Bentley:
On Sunday, I arrived at the train station, and Mr Piper pulled up outside in his Bentley. It looks exactly like the one in the blog picture above. It was an old classic car, which was absolutely top of the range in its day, and as he drove me to his new house, I got the story behind it. He said he has wanted a Bentley for over 20 years, but didn't buy one before as he lived in an area of London where he was afraid it might get vandalised, as he didn't have a garage. This showed me that Mr Piper is prepared to wait for things, as he could quite easily have got a house with a garage many years ago. I will remember the lesson of patience, from this.
The car is a Bentley Turbo R, built in 1985. Mr Piper now has well over 4 vehicles (transit van, road car, motorbike, Bentley, can't remember the other one), all for different purposes related to his living, and property maintenance . He fixes and maintains them all himself, as he used to be a car mechanic. He got the Bentley from a specialist dealer, and did lots of research on the internet about the car, and it's price, for about a year beforehand. He said that when he purchased the car, there was a problem with the indicator lights, but rather than pay a mechanic over £100 to fix them, he instead purchased the parts for £3.50, and fixed it himself. The skill of being a mechanic which he picked up years ago, is still serving him well and helping him to save money, many years down the line.
I forgot to ask him how much he paid for the Bentley, but later at home, I checked the internet and the average price of that car is now around £20,000. You can bet your life that he purchased it in "cash", i.e with no loan. When the car was built in 1985, the original cost was $145000, which could probably have purchased a few houses at the time, so Mr Piper sure knows how to choose his cars for value!
New house:
Mr Piper purchased a 2 bedroom house last year with lots of land and about 5 outbuildings, including 2 garages. He paid £300,000 cash for it and said he likes it as he can park all of his cars there. The property needs a bit work doing to it and Mr Piper is doing all of it himself with occasional help from friends. I myself have helped him to cut down trees. He said he has now been in the property for 6 months, and it is truly amazing how much work he has done from fixing fences to landscape gardening, rubbish clearance, minor re-wiring, painting and decorating, etc.
He's got many more chickens now, and told me of all of the cheap chicken coops he found on eBay and Gumtree. The chickens lay eggs which he and his wife keep, or sell at the local market. I've never used Gumtree before, it's a website a bit like a private advertising site, where some people also give stuff away for free. The lesson I learned was to use Gumtree (www.gumtree.com) as he was talking about it so much that I figure if it's good enough for a millionaire, then it's good enough for me. He has started off many jobs in the property, and most people would think it needs no more work doing to it, as it already looks great, and everything works.
He had a new, massive "country style" wooden front gate which was so well made and clean that I was sure he must have had it specially contracted. He said he made and hung, the gate himself with a friend, and I started to wonder if there was anything he couldn't do. He had water drums connected to his roof gutters (many outbuildings, equals many gutters), and he collected water which he used to water the garden, feed his chickens and wash his vehicles. I thought this was very ecological, and saw the lesson that recycling things and not wasting them, is an excellent way to conserve money.
I looked around at the sheer scale of the place, and reckoned it would take 2 years to get everything the way Mr Piper wanted it. At the same time, knowing him, I bet it wouldn't take him that long! He then told me that the day before, an immersion water heater had broken down in one of his investment properties, and the tenant was complaining, so he spent the whole day fixing it. Amazing that he is even able to find the time to do this. He said to me "I can't wait until I sell all of my investment properties off, then I can spend my time doing other things".
Drawer:
As we were all about to leave for lunch, Mr Piper said "wait, I need you to give me a hand with something first". He took me to the garage and showed me that one of his friends had a broken wardrobe drawer (which you put clothes into), that had simply fallen apart. Mr Piper had offered to glue it together for him. It was a simple job that he did not need me to help him with, but I realised that Mr Piper was planning on teaching me a lesson, just like Mr Miyagi taught The Karate Kid, in the film of the same name. There were lots of tools, spare parts, and chemicals in the garage, and I realised that they represented many ways to solve any problem. He used glue to put the drawer together, and clamps to hold it while the glue dried.
I watched how he carried out the task, and wondered how much care and attention would he apply? What would he do when problems arose? Just how does a multi-millionaire deal with tasks? He just got on with the job without delay, and I helped by also applying glue and holding certain parts together while clamps were fitted. When there were problems getting certain parts to fit together properly, he dealt with those obstacles there and then, without complaint. He didn't stop until the task was finished. I timed the task, and it took 20 minutes.
Helping Mr Piper to fix that drawer showed me that he found time to do others people's tasks, in addition to his own. His friend had obviously given up on fixing the furniture and decided to throw it away and buy another wardrobe, but Mr Piper, who hates waste, offered to fix it free of charge, saving his friend time and money. What a great guy. I remembered the first interview I ever did with Mr Piper when he said to me that he thought most people give up too quickly and too easily. I think this was the lesson he was now teaching me, to be economical and to try to fix broken things rather than running out and buying new stuff.
Mr Piper does the maintenance work himself, for all of his properties, plumbing, building work, etc, despite having no formal training. Now I have seen how he applies himself to such tasks, by simply looking at how he approaches the simple task of fixing a drawer. It's nothing special, he just gets on with it. He takes action until the problem is solved. There is no mystery to how he does it, so why is it, that it was Mr Piper who fixed the drawer and not his friend to whom it belongs? Maybe that willingness to apply effort, and to not waste things is why he is a millionaire, and his friend is not.
Meal:
I couldn't wait to take Mr Piper and his wife out to lunch, as I wanted to say thank you for his advice. I also knew that most people would never get the chance to even meet a millionaire in their lifetime, let alone buy them lunch. Many people might say "he is the millionaire, let him pay", yet that selfish attitude only holds them back, because millionaires are people too, and appreciate their friends being nice to them. I said to Mr Piper, "take us to the best restaurant in town, I'm paying".
He drove us all to a local pub where they served food! They had a deal where they were doing 2 meals for £10, as well as other special offers. I came prepared to spend around £200, yet all of the food and alcoholic beverages for the three of us, only came to £48. The excellent book: "The millionaire Next Door", said that millionaires are cheap dates!
Some food was left uneaten, and Mr Piper asked the waitress for a bag to take the remaining food home so he could give it to his dog. He looked at me across the table, and said to me sternly "never waste food". As we drove away from the restaurant in Mr Piper's Bentley, I realised that he could have taken us to much more expensive restaurants, but he actually wanted to eat in a place where there was better value. I learned that the lesson was to always attempt to get value, no matter what the situation, and to not waste things.
Conclusion:
Mr Piper lives "cheaply", by this I mean he gets "value" out of everything. I see him as a re-cycler who re-uses and fixes things, rather than buying everything brand new. His television is one of the older CRT ones, but it has a big flat screen and you can bet he got it far cheaper than the modern LCD and plasma ones. His habit is not to waste things, and this is displayed in how he treats his money. He is so rich, he can afford to buy any car in the world, including the £1.7 million Bugatti Veyron (Grand Sport Version), but instead he chooses a £20,000 second hand classic car, which he waited 20 years for, and then spent a year researching, in order to get the best value he could.
From Mr Piper, I learnt the lessons of: frugality, total responsibility, self-reliance, action, economy, generosity, non-procrastination, ambition. He is the living embodiment of everything I read in the book "The millionaire Next Door", the only difference being that he does his own maintenance work, whereas that book said doing DIY tasks was counter-productive to wealth. Now I know it's perfectly OK to save money on building and decorating work by doing it yourself, and still create a lot of wealth.
Out in the world, when the question is asked "how do people become rich", many humans will step forward to offer up their own opinions, and it's hard to know who to believe. By looking at Mr Piper, I can see the truth with my own eyes. This is a man who started with nothing, has no university qualifications, yet he earns well over £100,000 per year, has a property empire of around £4 million pounds in real equity, and will easily make a couple of million more in his lifetime. He is a normal guy, whose habits have contributed to his economic freedom. Habits which I will also practice as I seek wealth of my own.
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