A tale of two Johns: same name, different fate

Hi guys, I thought I'd give my South American stories a short break (I'll get back to it soon enough) and share something that shocked me that happened recently. I think I may be guilty of trying to give everyone in the impression that life in London is fantastic through both my blog and Instagram and to be fair, London has been absolutely brilliant for me, but not everyone. I remember when I was last in Singapore, I answered the phone at my parents' home when they were not in and accidentally spoke to an uncle I have not spoken to in years - he asked me when I was moving back to Singapore and I laughed theatrically in a condescending way, telling him that life in London is a thousand times better than in Singapore, so why the hell would I give up the good life in London for Singapore? Perhaps it was the way he asked the question that provoked such a response, but the honest answer is how good or otherwise your life is in whatever country you life in depends primarily on whether not you have a good job and earn a lot of money - a lot of other things (such as the state of your government - don't get me started on that wanker Boris Johnson) really don't matter as much. So the piece of news that shocked me is that one of my good friends (let's call him John) is giving up on London and moving to a rather small town up north, near Newcastle after his boyfriend had been assaulted and robbed on the street they live in.

I've known John for about 15 years and he has moved from one working class job to another in central London - he doesn't have a degree so the only jobs he can get revolve around customer services and indeed, I have interviewed him for one of my posts in the past. He is not earning that much money and doesn't own the house he lives in - furthermore, his father sustained a prolonged illness before passing away, draining him financially towards the end. One day John woke up, looked in the mirror and realized that he is in his 50s and barely has a few thousand pounds in the bank. He earns a decent salary for his kind of job, but most of that goes on paying the rent, buying food, paying for transport, phone and utility bills and at the end of the month, there's nothing left to save. To make things worse, London is a very expensive city when it comes to real estate and people like John have been forced to move several times to poorer and worse neighbourhoods as rents are increasing faster than his salary. He is currently in a neighbourhood in north-east London which has a rather high crime rate but is rather affordable when it comes to rent and his partner has been assaulted and robbed recently whilst on his way home from work. Like John, his partner isn't exactly highly skilled and also works in customer services. So the two of them have decided to resign from their jobs, gave notice on their rental apartment and have decided to move up north to a town near Newcastle where property prices are much lower and he may actually afford to buy something modest before retiring. Sure, I am very disappointed to see an old friend move away from London, but under the current circumstances, of course I can understand why he has arrived at this decision.

Should I have been surprised at John's decision? Perhaps not - I had discussed the correlation between poverty and crime in my blog in the past, so this is a topic I should understand but of course, in reality, friends like John don't come to me telling me what their bank balance is or asking me for money. That's just not the kind of topic you would normally raise with your friends in casual conversation and I suppose even if John did experience money problems, he might have chosen to keep that to himself rather than share it with me. He told me that his decision to move north was not just about money but more about finding a safer, more peaceful place in the countryside for retirement. And as for John's partner being assaulted and robbed on the way home, I suppose that's the kind of thing I am used to reading about in the news but I am somewhat desensitized to it all until it happens to someone you know. So John is returning to the area in Northern England where he grew up, about 30 years after leaving there in search of the bright lights of London. I can sense his frustration of course, as I too came to London in 1997 in search of higher education, better opportunities, freedom, fun, sex and adventure. I suppose I had more than my fair share of good luck compared to John, but having been to South America recently and rewatched the movie Evita, the following lines from the song 'Eva beware of the city' comes to mind and this was Magaldi warning a naive 15 year old Eva Duarte that she was too young to leave her hometown for Buenos Aires and this is what he sings as he is pleading Evita not to get on that train to go to the big city. 

The city can be paradise for those who have the cash 

The class and the connections, what you need to make a splash 

The likes of you get swept up in the morning with the trash 

If you were rich or middle class ...

Should I tell John to stay for another year or two, that things would get better? Or should I just wish him all the best and promise to visit if I am ever in his neck of the woods? I chose not to say anything as I didn't know what to say and I was afraid of challenging his decision since he had already made up his mind, so what's the point? I did come to London as an immigrant, my first job out of university was absolutely dreadful and there was really nothing to suggest back then that I would one day have a nice job that could earn me enough money to make me rich in a place like London. Gosh, I tried so many different things along the way and to be quite honest, I didn't know what I wanted to do or what I would be good at. I worked in different industries, I tried starting my own business - this wasn't that different from John's experience as well. I have seen him change jobs a number of times, working in different environments, different companies, different jobs - I remember even trying to help him break into a new industry at one point as I knew he had some brilliant skills that were simply not being utilized in his role as a customer services manager. I never asked him how much he got paid, I just assumed it was enough. It was tough for him for many years as he was the only son and he had an elderly father who was in ill health for many years, I knew that put a strain on him financially to try to provide for his father. After his father passed away, I thought that would at least make things easier for him financially - but here's the challenge with living in a city like London. It is such a expensive city and if you're not making a lot of money then you will not be happy living here. 

You need a roof over your head and people end up paying a lot of money on rent in a place like London. Other basic things cost more or less the same though - your phone bill is going to be the regardless where you live in the country, a tub of ice cream from the supermarket is going to cost the same anywhere in the country. However, the cost of housing is drastically different in areas of the country where the population density is a lot lower than central London, where market forces have sent property prices through the roof. Recently, my friend Darren bought a house very close to where I live (I can just about see his front door from my living room window) and the price tag was just over £1 million - now that figure doesn't even include the £80,000 he has to spend to renovate the place as it is somewhat rundown and unloved. In the town where John is intending to move to in October, you can easily buy a rather decent flat for just £80,000 and if you're renting, it is a lot cheaper consequently. John may not be paid as much after he moves up north, but he may be a lot better off financially because he will pay far less for rent there. So let's do some calculations: you get paid at the end of the month, you need to set aside some money for rent, your living expenses, you need to pay the bills and taxes. If there's any money left at the end of all that, you can save it and obviously the more you earn, the easier it is to accumulate more savings over time. Obviously there are people in London who do not earn a lot of money, it gets even tougher for them if they have children - how are you going to bring up a family when the bulk of your earnings will go on rent? Can you imagine walking into a supermarket with your kids and worrying about not being able afford certain items?

Here's the thing about John: he isn't lazy, he works very hard. Gosh, he works a lot harder than I do and he gets a lot less sleep and leisure time than I do. When you work in customer services, you have a shift that is 9 hours long (with a one hour break for a meal). Sometimes he gets the early shift which means getting up at the crack of dawn, sometimes he gets the late shift which means not getting home before midnight. It is not an easy job, I have popped into the store where he works before and I know he is constantly on his feet all day on the shop floor, he barely ever gets to sit down unless he is on a designated break - compare that to me where I am sitting at my desk all the time and the only time I stand up is to go get a snack from the kitchen. I can have a long nap when I want to, heck I can even bugger off to South America for a whole month on holiday if I want to; yet somehow it has not really paid off financially for John despite working so incredibly hard. But that's the thing: John has always been employed, he has always worked so hard, it is not like he doesn't have the skills to be gainfully employed in a place like London. What he does lack however are the opportunities to progress beyond what he is currently doing and that has been obviously frustrating for him. There are many 'average' people who are like John - they are not exactly failures but they are hardly successful either. Heck, I just spoke to a friend of mine in corporate finance who had just spent his entire summer surfing in Bali and Queensland. He makes so much money that he can afford to take holidays like that and he's only in his early 30s. So for people like John, life is okay or average I suppose but his situation is unlikely to improve despite the fact that he obviously works so hard.

Allow me to talk about another friend whose name is also John, so let's instead call him RS (long story but those are the initials for a nickname he has). I've known him since 1999; like John, RS didn't go to university and seems to jump from job to job totally randomly - when I first got to know him, he was running a restaurant in Spain. Then he was running some kind of VIP service taking care of British celebrities on holidays. Then he started selling high-end expensive wigs in England, then he was promoting winter holidays in Lapland (in Finland). Then he disappears off to Africa to do some contract and reemerges in London after that contract ends and gets a job at a radio station. I have to add a disclaimer at this point that this is not in chronological order as even I can't keep track with the number of times RS changes jobs - his life is chaotic to say the least and he comes across as the kind of person who gets bored with a job after a few years, that's when he quits to go try something brand new. It does seem counterproductive in that he never climbs a career ladder long enough to become really good or senior at anything but like a cat, he always lands on his feet whenever he tries to do something crazy and new. RS isn't crazy rich but financially, he's very comfortable in spite of the way he changes jobs so often. He lives in a nice big house and drives a very expensive car. There's a part of me that admires RS for having that chutzpah to just throw caution to the wind each time he changes jobs, because he wouldn't do it unless he knew he was going to be make it work. To be honest, I can't figure why RS always seems to make things work - it can't be purely luck because he has been very lucky for over 20 years. Why do people like RS somehow keep succeeding and manage to make quite a lot of money no matter what they do whilst my friend John is working so hard and still not tasting even a small amount of the sweet success that seems to follow RS around no matter what he does?

After all, both John and RS seem to have quite similar backgrounds, with the both of them coming from working class families in the north of England, yet the outcome of their careers are vastly different. You see, this is what I really want to put my finger one and figure out: why would one person be so successful without really trying that hard whilst someone can work so extremely hard and is only rewarded by mediocrity at best? After all, John did the sensible thing - he worked very hard and stuck to one role (customer services) yet he has not been rewarded for it financially. RS on the other hand did the opposite, there's a complete randomness (even irresponsibility) to what he does but somehow he manages to make things work out regardless in the end without fail. You see, sometimes, when someone fails to perform well in his career, I can quite easily diagnose what the problem is: a lack of social skills, barking up the wrong tree in terms of industry, a mismatch of skills/talents, a lack of demand for that kind of services or at least some kind of personal flaw like laziness or an unwillingness/inability to adapt to new conditions. But when comparing the situations of these two friends, the outcome seems to defy logic - it's not like RS is somehow stunningly clever: with or without a degree, such intelligence is a gift you are born with, but even then I don't think this is case with RS. And John doesn't come across as stupid either by the same token, hence I just can't quite figure this one out I'm afraid and this bothers me, when things just don't make sense. Oh if only it was that simple, I'd just be doing what RS is doing and we can all just copy him, right?

There's a part of me that wants to tell John not to give up on London - millions of people like John, RS and myself have made our way to London in search of everything from further education, better jobs, wealth, sex, love, fun and success. I suppose when I heard that John giving up on the city I call home, my gut reaction was, "what's wrong with London? You'll regret giving up London for the north. London is a great place and that's why I am here." I would attribute some of my success to being in the right place at the right time, thus it is somewhat comforting for me to believe that as long as I live in a city like London, it will always be easy for me to find opportunities to continue making good money. However, I suppose the harsh reality is that the opportunities in a place like London isn't for everyone and if you're not well educated or if you're working class, it could be far harder to access all the good opportunities that do exist in London. And of course, there's a difference between maximizers and minimizers: of course there is no way I could promise John that he would become rich and successful if he chooses to stay on in London for another five or ten years, but I know the possibility of that happening would be negligible if he moves to a rather small town up north where property is cheap but there's not much happening in terms of job opportunities. All London has to offer is hope, based on a belief that some people do get very rich here. People like RS and myself: we're maximizers, we would roll the dice and hope for the best knowing that there's no guarantee of success. But people like John, he was once a maximizer and that was what brought him to London in the first place all those years ago, however he has now changed his mind to become a settler instead. 

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic - what do you think? Do you know people like John or RS? Do you share some of the worries that John has? What would you advice John? What about RS - do you think that his success can be replicated or is it impossible to try to follow in his footsteps? Is there anything wrong with John becoming a settler instead of a maximizer? Would you like to live in a place like London? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.