Things You Can Do With a £1,000

How to handle your money is probably among the most difficult tasks ever.

You never know whether to save, to invest, or simply have fun with it. Some people say it’s a matter of responsibility — of being a grown-up and build a solid base for the years to come.

I believe it’s a matter of priorities. I mean, the money is yours so you get to decide what to do with it, and perhaps you may just want to take it easy.

For instance, say you have a spare £1,000 coming from heaven — a tax return, a bonus at work, a genie granting a wish (why would you wish for just 1k?!) — and you can do whatever with it, what would you go for?

Assuming that you just want to live life as it comes, I’ve come up with a brief list on the things you can do with a £1,000.

Take your crew to The Guinea Grill in Mayfair

Have you ever wished to have a classy dinner you couldn’t normally afford? Then The Guinea Grill is the one for you! Their wide selection of meats and their expertise on steaks make of them one of the best steakhouses in London.

But you wouldn’t go there by yourself, would you? You could use a celebration (an important date or recurrence) and squander your money on quality food. So, say that you may want your crew to join you, to eat till exploding, drink till demolition.

Any other place you fancy going? Please just share away!

Commute with Uber for a week

Aren’t you tired of commuting with public transports every single day?

Fine, transports in London are second to none but with all the unexpected disruptions, the rammed carriages, the trains terminating before your stop, the stink and the heat, and all the times you’re smashed as f*** and you need to get to the other side of the city, it would be nice to get your ass just driven around.

And that’s when Uber comes handy! However, with their 1.5/1.6/1.9/2.1 surcharges, Uber has almost become more expensive than Black Cabs, so you need loads of money if you want to rely on Uber for a week and a £1,000 will surely do the trick.

So download the app, sit your ass in the car, and enjoy the ride!

Spend 2 nights at the Shard

Ok, in my entire life in London, I’ve never been at the Shard. I’ve walked past it and paced by the entrance but I’ve always been too broke to even afford to enter the building.

Yeah, the Shard is a real luxury, and you can’t go there with empty pockets.

I have no idea how much a room with a city-sight view may cost but I suppose you can spend 2 nights there for £1,000.

I picture spacious rooms, elegant decor, airy windows that give onto the Thames, and a fascinating outlook on the City of London. I picture a vast selection of breakfast, fresh and professionally cooked food, and then swimming in the pool on the top floor with a glass of bubbling champagne.

I’d go for it!

Gamble it at the Casino in Monte-Carlo

Don’t know about you people but this is something you might want to do once in your life. You can either win money and get to change your life completely or realise how flat broke you are.

In fact, this is Liam’s and Graham’s pick among the things they could do with £1,000.

They happened to have that individual amount out of savings and decided to spend it on nice stuff. Liam and Graham are two simple and regular chaps from Whitechapel (East London). They are true-born Brits, communicate with a slang that only an expert cockney would be able to decode, and they’re used to spend most of their days with their mates down at the pub watching football.

They don’t expect much from life. They appreciate what they have — being friends, doing fun stuff around the city — and they promise themselves that none of them will ever leave the other’s side. They’re dreamers, music aficionados, beer experts, and they always run short of money. More importantly, Liam and Graham are there when they need each other.

Anyway, they’re off to Montecarlo — all dressed-up and ready for the classy night. They make a stop at the Café de Paris near the casino and have a few drinks while watching the World Cup — Brazil was on.

They notice all those rich people around them — I mean those people you can tell they’re loaded. And the girls, just another level. They can’t wait to enter the casino and ask for the bill: £76 for 4 drinks, that’s really insane.

They make their way into the casino, pay the ticket, enter the main hall. It’s phenomenal! They don’t even dare to approach the main tables, they’re way out of their league. Or pockets. So they have a beer, finish watching the game and then sit at the machines. They don’t really lose too much money, in fact, they win 18 and 8 pence respectively. They would surely frame those bills.

They’re out and up for drinking into the night, so they make their way down this stairway that leads to a real chich spot called Buddha Bar: shishas, relaxing music, incense, soldier-like staff. They get a table outside and Liam takes a look at the drinks menu.

“Dude, we might have a problem…”, says Liam goggling, “the average price for a bottle of wine is around 200 quid!”

“You fucking kidding, mate?!”, asks Graham smirking. “Alright, look for the cheapest booze.”

That’s what Liam does and orders a £45 bottle of rosé.

They suddenly notice two tremendously sexy chicks sitting at the near table. The girls start peeking at them, giving looks and interesting smiles. Did I mention that Liam and Graham are two good-looking chaps? Yeah, that’s a fact.

So they start wondering about approaching the girls and how to make a move, considering that they come from completely different worlds — if not for the appearance, definitely for the amount of cash. They wonder about dating them, get to sail on their yachts, travel the world, have a taste of that wealthy life, get to know people who matter. They wonder how this could seriously change their lives, and they want to make it happen.

So, relying on manners proper of an English lord, Graham goes to sit with them. Liam (who looks just like a street cockney) joins right after.

They make conversation: the girls are from Ukraine, have 2 mobiles each, text with a lot of people. Upon the guys asking what they do, the girls say they mainly enjoy life, travel a lot and chill. They seem to have established a connection with the girls. Liam and Graham are now so impatient to get to move deeper.

One of them types something on her mobile and shows it to Graham. The message reads “Do you want to come to our hotel?” Graham’s eyelids stretch to his forehead while looking at Liam stunned.

Liam and Graham have the same thought. The two simple chaps from Whitechapel are about to experience the type of lifestyle they’ve barely heard about through the news or on tv shows. They’re about to be paid back for all the strains, the hard times, the monotony of a life they’ve happened to live. Everything is so unreal. They’re beyond themselves, they can’t believe they’ve hooked up with two beautiful girls and that dream of experiencing life at its wealthiest is suddenly coming true.

She types something else and shows it to Graham again but this time his expression changes completely. She shows Liam the phone with a giggle. Just one thing is written: “£1,000.”

“Oh, shit!…”

So they decide to leave. They call a taxi to go back to the hotel and when the car comes by, they realise they’ve run out of cash. Here starts their counting of the leftover change, coin by coin, and with the last 10 pence, they get to the amount to pay the driver.

What a night!

You know, in most cases, if you decide to gamble your £1,000 at the Casino in Monte-Carlo, you’re very likely to realise how poor and miserable you are — whether you’re actually playing at the machines or dealing with the people there.

How much money did they spend on that trip? Nobody knows — probably way more than £1k, even if they didn’t accept the ladies’ “sweet” invite.

The truth is Graham had booked that trip for his soon-to-be bride’s bday, but since they had broken up earlier that month, he decided to take Liam with him instead. Not the best replacement but definitely better than losing the money. And honestly, when you’re simple chaps from Whitechapel and you grew up not expecting much from life, a crazy night in Monte-Carlo with a mate can help to fill that big gap that somebody’s left right there. Right where it hurts the most.

It was never about the money, it was never about the £1k, nor about Liam’s scrounging a free holiday. It was about being there when a friend was drinking his sorrows, about trying to adjust the world while his world was already crumbling. It was about acknowledging that things could have gone differently. That they could have been born rich, elsewhere, perhaps having never met each other. And while drowning in a pint or two down in Whitechapel, the latter is what scared them the most. Because that world, for how broken, cracked, messy, raucous could be, was still worth more than £1,000.

Thanks to Liam’s and Graham’s story, we have one big learning. Among the ones above, there’s now one more item we can add to the list of things you can do with a £1,000:

Hook up with top-class prostitutes