Simon Reeve: Al-Qaeda made me a bestselling author — and quite a bit of cash

Times

11-07-2025

Simon Reeve grew up in Acton in west London and left school with one GCSE. At 17 he considered suicide before taking a job as a post boy at The Sunday Times. His 1998 book The New Jackals, investigating the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people, led to work as a travel documentary maker and, since 2003, he has travelled the world exploring some of its most inhospitable countries. He lives on Dartmoor in Devon with his wife, Anya, and their son, Jake, 14.
How much is in your wallet?
Right now, I have about £35 in my wallet, but I do usually carry a little bit more emergency cash in my bag too in case a train I'm on has decided to drop me at the wrong station and I urgently need to get a taxi across the country. I'll always have a fiver on me for a healthy tip for a mini cab driver and cash is often king when I'm in some of the more dangerous destinations I visit. The trickier the place, the more careful you need to be about having the right amount of cash to pay off the local warlord or to get your way through a roadblock. One way you do that is by not having all your money together, because that is utter muppetry. You keep it in on different parts of your body and in different bags like a squirrel hides its nuts. I often keep some in my sock and on one occasion I had to tape some behind my scrotum.
What credit cards do you use?
I do have a credit card, but I'm not mad on using it, mainly because I never manage to keep track of what I'm spending. I definitely pay it off as I hate being in debt and I'm always quite nerdily careful about that. I didn't inherit anything. I've never had any great store of wealth to fall back on, and I've always been quite crap with money so I try to prevent myself from getting into debt and spending beyond my limited means.
Are you a saver or a spender?
I've saved a fair bit into exciting things like pensions rather than my ready savings account. I don't have loads in a savings account, but I have always been quite a spender. I've always tried to enjoy life as much as possible.
How much did you earn last year?
Precise figures shall not cross my lips, but I've been doing pretty well the last few years. For reasons that utterly escape me, I'm still allowed to make TV programmes, and even more bizarrely, people have allowed me to go on theatre tours of the country where I'm chatting to paying audiences. I can't believe it. That has been a magnificent, fun, life-enhancing and, of course, financially marvellous thing to do. We're talking very low six figures which is more than I ever would have imagined at any other stage in my life or growing up. My most successful time was when I wrote the first book on al-Qaeda, which nobody read till 9/11, then in the aftermath of that, it became one of the three bestselling books in the US. I made quite a bit of cash from that. I'm not telling you how much as it's a little bit immoral. My first paid work of any sort was earning £1.70 a week as a 12-year-old paperboy, before my favourite job of all time, stacking shelves for Asda, which I loved so much I would have done it for free. For the last few years more than half my income has been from theatre tours and other speaking events, and the rest is TV work and writing.
Have you ever been really hard up?
I grew up on the edge of inner-city London with friends and family around so at the low point of my life in my mid-teens when I was really struggling I had a safety net around me. I flunked out of school without any real qualifications and eventually I got £16 a week on income support. I was partly living at home, partly on friends' and family's sofas. My lowest point, when I was 17, was applying for a job as a white van driver on Wembley Trading Estate and even though I was the only person applying, I still didn't get the job. It was terrible at the time, but I now use that as a constant reminder of how fortunate I've been since. Now the test of how I'm feeling financially is that I can go into a supermarket and buy food and not panic about the cost, although I do still go for a bogof [buy one, get one free] bargain.
Do you own a property?
I own our home. I'm very, very proud of that. We have a big old barn of a house in Devon on Dartmoor, and in proper middle-class, middle-age poncery we have been renovating the way people of my age do. My wife also owns the basement of her family home in north London, which is super lucky for her and us. I haven't invested in property ever. I've never been very sensible with money, basically. I could never see the sense and the value in doing that and if I look back now, that was obviously my biggest financial mistake. At the time I was more interested in squatting, renting, couch surfing and spending my money on life.
Are you better off than your parents?
My dad was a maths teacher at a comprehensive school, and my mum was a part-time occupational therapy worker in the local hospital and between them they were able to buy a semi-detached house in west London, so in terms of housing, I'm much poorer than them. My dad died 20 years ago, and my mum still lives in the family home and it's blooming hard to make a comparison because my parents were and are from a generation where you don't talk about money at all, so I don't entirely know. I think in one sense, yes, I probably am wealthier in terms of available money.
Do you invest in shares?
Generally I've been quite rubbish about investing in shares. It's definitely something I need to get much better at because I need to be thinking about my retirement as they'll soon get somebody younger, funnier, cleverer and better looking. That's one reason why linking up with Nutmeg and talking about finance and global investing has been a real benefit to me. These are turbulent times out there, and we need to be thinking of how we can grow our money carefully. It's also important to me to invest ethically and sustainably; that money is used as a powerful force for good, because I think it's massively underrated as a tool for improving lives for people and helping to look after our environment.
What's better for retirement — property or pension?
I plan to spread it around a bit. I don't have an investment property or an investment portfolio. There are other options apart from property and investing. I'm not massively keen on us all using the nation's housing stock as our own individual investment vehicles. That isn't working out great for the country. I do have a pension, and I'm stuffing into that as much as I can, because obviously the government helps you by giving tax breaks on it. I haven't got ten flats in Doncaster that I'm renting out and have no plan to do that so I'm going to stick with investing, and hope that provides for me in my old age, or when the BBC pushes me off the end of the pier.
What's been your best investment?
Around the time of the financial crisis, I suddenly remembered that I'd bought some gold years and years before. So, I had these little mini gold ingots about the size of a large Yorkie bar, which I'd bought when I was preparing for the apocalypse. I can't remember how much I paid for them, but I sold them to a gold dealer next to the Savoy on the Strand, for two or three times the price. I think they'd risen from about £3,000 to £9,000. And I've lost count of the number of times some of the more nefarious characters I've encountered on my travels have tried to persuade me — on and off camera — to get involved in their dodgy business ventures, including one dubious warlord who tried to convince me to get involved in the export of organic ethical cocaine. Luckily, even after being plied with tequila, I haven't signed on any dotted lines.
And the worst?
I did lose my mind, like everybody else, when there was the dotcom boom. I went off the advice of mates who said this company could only rise in valuation after it launched on the stock market and it turned out my mates were wrong. I lost about £10,000 and the gradual realisation that I was an idiot was sickening and it's made me a lot more careful since.
What's the most extravagant thing you've bought?
I went and bought myself a fancy Breitling watch from Harvey Nichols for £1,200, which was a lot of money for me. It did, in truth, pathetically make me feel special for a moment and I did love it, and it does feel like something I can hand on, but it stopped working ages ago, and it's going to cost as much as I paid for it to get it fixed.
What's your money weakness?
Travel kit in all its forms. Anything lighter, stronger, I'm a total sucker for it. Anything made of titanium, I'm going to be paying for that, because my travel kit is my tools. And my wife takes the mickey out of me about the number of bags I buy. I've got enough to supply Argos.
What is your financial priority?
To understand more about money and invest more carefully for the future, because I want to protect the planet, I want to look after people, and I'm a father, so my main priority has got to be look after my lad for the future.
What would you do if you won the lottery?
I'd spend some, I'd save some, I'd invest some, I'd splurge some and I'd give some away.
Do you support any charities?
The World Land Trust, which is buying up tracts of land to try to protect it for our planet's future, which seems like a very sensible and wise sort of investment.
What is the most important lesson you've learnt about money?
Start thinking about it early, don't panic about it but start investing small and help that through focus and just leaving it to grow.