Gordon Ramsay Says He Won’t Be Leaving His Money to His Kids
(Facebook / Gordon Ramsay)
Rich parents play a tough balancing act when it comes to money and kids. You want to give them everything they need to be happy and successful in life, but you don’t want to turn them into lazy, entitled little shits. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is very concerned about making sure his children don’t grow up to be spoiled assholes, and that’s why he says he’s not leaving his $200 million fortune to his kids in his will.
”It’s definitely not going to them, and that’s not in a mean way; it’s to not spoil them,” he told The Telegraph.
Ramsay loves his kids, and for him that means making them get jobs and pay for their own phones and not letting them count on flying first class and inheriting $50 million without ever having to get out of bed. Ramsay grew up poor and left home at 16. His wife is a former teacher who grew up in a more privileged situation than Ramsay, and they say they sort of split the difference between them in terms of how indulged the children will be.
The kids get allowances ”” the oldest one is a university student who gets about $125 a week, and the other three teenagers get about $60 a week ”” and they’re all responsible for paying for their own phones and bus fares and such out of those allowances. They’re also taught about how privileged and lucky they have been, and that they’d better be grateful for it.
“The earlier you give them that responsibility to save for their own trainers and jeans, the better,” Ramsay said.
The kids all appear to have opted to get jobs to supplement their allowances, so it seems like Ramsay’s goal of promoting a good work ethic is paying off.
Ramsay doesn’t even let his kids fly first class. When they travel as a family, Ramsay and his wife fly first class, but the kids all sit back in coach–which is a thing you can do when your kids are teenagers.
”They don’t sit with us in first class. They haven’t worked anywhere near hard enough to afford that. At that age, at that size, you’re telling me they need to sit in first class? No, they do not. We’re really strict on that,” he told The Telegraph. “I turn left with Tana and they turn right and I say to the chief stewardess, ‘Make sure those little f–kers don’t come anywhere near us; I want to sleep on this plane.’ I worked my f–king arse off to sit that close to the pilot and you appreciate it more when you’ve grafted for it.”
“Working for it” and earning privileges is something Ramsay believes in a lot, so he says he and his wife are not leaving their money to the kids. He’s agreed with his wife to give each of the kids a 25-percent deposit on their first home, and that’s it.
That’s certainly not to say that Ramsay’s kids do not benefit from his success. They travel, they go to big events, they’re friends with other celebrity kids. Ramsay’s adorable 16-year-old daughter, Tilly, even has a cooking show of her own, which she wouldn’t have if she were just a random girl whose father wasn’t rich and famous. But the Ramsays are trying to make sure their kids have everything they need to be successful and happy on their own, and that includes a sense of gratitude and an appreciation for hard work. It just doesn’t include an expectation that they will at some point be handed $50 million dollars.
