How I Make My Money: From Finance to Adventure Business Owner

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In our ‘How I Make My Money’ series, we look to find out how people in the UK make a living and money. This week we spoke to Chris Bone, 40, who lives in a village near the Lake District National Park. He owns a three-bedroom apartment and has two roommates. Chris left his job in finance, where he earned six-figure sums a year, to start his own adventure business in the countryside. With his salary from Adventure Solos and income from housemates, he now earns around £30,000 a year.

Monthly budget
My income: My annual income is around £30,000 per year. This includes a small salary from my business, Adventure Solos, as well as rental income. I currently pay myself a salary of around £1,200 per month, so my annual salary from the company is around £14,500. I have an income of around £1,300 a month from housemates who pay rent and contribute to bills. Each housemate pays around £650 per month. Combined, my monthly income comes to around £2,500 per month.

My monthly expenses: Mortgage, £600; gas, electricity and water, £300; council tax, £200; internet, £35; housekeeper, £65; meal box subscription, £100; supermarket shopping, £150-200; mobile phone bill, £10. My monthly mortgage payment, energy bills and council tax are largely covered by the income I receive from my housemates.

I have spent most of my career working in corporate finance, specializing in financing growing technology companies. I worked for a venture capital firm and a few different banks over a period of about 15 years. My first job in finance was a graduate position. Around 12,000 people applied and there were seven interview stages. Only 10 people were hired, and I was one of them, with a starting salary of £25,000 a year in 2005. I often worked long hours, including nights and weekends. Twelve years later, my gross annual salary was between £120,000 and £130,000 a year, working nine to five in finance. Much of that rightly disappeared into taxes, but I still made enough net money to be able to go on adventures, while putting aside considerable sums each month for my retirement, savings and buying a house. I was making way more money than I needed for the lifestyle I enjoyed. I had enough money to take trips to California, Mexico, Zanzibar and an expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. While living in London, I briefly rented a room in Mayfair for £2,000 a month. It was a strange place, both the neighborhood and the house, so I quickly moved to Clapham and lived in different shared accommodation for between £850 and £1,250 a month. At the age of 29, I became, I believe, the youngest director in the bank I worked for at the time. It was at this point, however, that I started to realize I was a little fed up. I just wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know if it was me, the company I worked for, or the industry as a whole.

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I also had less in common with some of my colleagues. My idea of ​​a good weekend was leaving the city for a little adventure in the countryside. Some of my colleagues generally preferred to go to fancy bars and feel the effects the next day. A colleague was telling me how many Jaguars he owned and that he was planning to check out his pool for the summer. These things didn’t interest or impress me, and I didn’t want to fall into the same trap.

In 2018 I bought a flat at auction near my family in the North West of England. It’s a three-bedroom apartment that cost me £225,000 and needed some work. My real estate purchase was not very well received by some people around me at the time. They thought I should have bought a property in London. I also made a request for flexible working which was refused for business reasons. I left my job and career in finance in early 2019. I started operating my own business called Adventure Solos in September 2019. We organize adventure and camping events for travelers in solo. I remember when my first ticket sold out and everything became very real and I had to deliver something. It was exciting but a little scary too. For a long time, I made the mistake of significantly undervaluing tickets. Shortly after moving and leaving my job, I also took a job in a pub, working for less than £10 an hour. I did this one or two nights a week to get to know some of the people in the village. It was a really difficult time and I had more money going out than coming in. The lockdown had a major impact on Aventure Solos, and I had to cancel and refund every booking. I got a job at Tesco and they were great at helping people like me who had fallen through the cracks of government financial support. At one point, I even worked at a small financial consulting firm for two months, just to get back on my feet. Now Adventure Solos is back up and running and growing every day. My income from the business is relatively modest and quite below the average salary in the UK. I earn a salary of around £14,500 from the company currently. In the first two years, I put more money into the business than I took out. I’m gradually building it up so I can pay myself a more sustainable salary and get back to a point where I’m putting money into my retirement and savings accounts again. Currently, the number of hours I work and the income generated have little correlation. During the first few years of running the business, I was working more hours than ever before. I often worked 80 hours a week. Now I work about 55 hours a week, 40 of which are behind a desk and 15 at events.

Chris Bone looks to expand his adventure business after leaving the finance industry (Picture: Supplied)

Running my own business has been a great challenge, but also a great experience. I now feel more in control of my own destiny and have more independence. I would have regretted not trying to start my own business if I had stayed in the financial industry. I am very motivated to make sure that money is not an issue for me. There’s nothing worse than struggling to make ends meet week after week, month after month, wondering how you’ll pay the next bill or put food on the table. Money has been tight for me at times, lockdown being a good example, but I was lucky enough to have assets such as equity in the house, so on the scale of things it was tight likely that I will find myself homeless or penniless. For now, I live a similar lifestyle to the one I had when I earned several times what I earn now. As a society, I think we are conditioned to always want more, to always look for a promotion and a raise, to always upgrade the luxury car that is being financed. I see it as a somewhat unsatisfying loop. My life goals are pretty simple. Maintain the balance between work and life that I found this year. Being healthy, having time to exercise, especially in nature, eating well, and spending time with the people I love. From a business and financial perspective, I want to grow my business so that my income can support future life options. For example, I would like sharing

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