Get rich quick

The Sunday Times Rich List offers a valuable insight into how one could go about becoming rich. So here are my top 10 tips on raking it in:

1. Get yourself a Y chromosone - there are 1,019 men and just 96 women on the list.

2. Celebrate your birthday in Spring - Taurus and Gemini are the most popular star signs in the list.

3. Have a foreign birth certificate - of the top 10 richest people only three are British born.

4. Go to work - 762 of the richest 1,000 people are self-made, only 238 inherited their bank balance.

5. Get a mortgage, or two - land and property is the most popular way of making money. 

6. Live in the South East - the majority of rich people live in London and south east England.

7. Keep on making it - if you want to get into the top 50 you will need more than a billion pounds.

8. Invest wisely - Robert Tchenquiz has fallen out of the rich list after losing money in the credit crunch, he probably regrets his decision to invest in supermarket chain Sainsbury's.

(Previous editions of this blog suggested it was Vincent Tchenguiz who had invested in Sainsbury's and that he had lost £650 million in the credit crunch - please see comments below).

9. You don't have to be glamorous - yes, there are plenty of footballers and pop stars listed, but not all those listed made their money in glamorous industries: James and John Martin made £200 million from their ejector seat business, Alan Murphy made £200 million from loo rolls, Peter Salson has pocketed £175 million from coat hangers and Doreen Lofthouse has made £165 million from cough lozenges.

10. Give it away - the rich list isn't all about keeping it to yourself. The Sunday Times Giving List gives credit for philantropic acts. Top spot goes to hedge fund manager Christopher Hohn who has recently donated £235.8 million to Aid/HIV, education and humanitarian causes.

Comments

[Jim Donovan]

Every developed nation seems to have a Rich List complied by a respected business magazine or major newspaper. For English speakers, New Zealand has a Rich List; Australia, too. So do the USA, Canada and Britain. Highly skilled forensic financial analysts (i.e some journo with a minor English Lit degree and 2 years on the business pages) undertake take deep research (a quick skim of public share registries, guesstimates of property values, and wild stabs at private company valuations) to carefully develop (over a long lunch at the Queens Head & Artichoke) a ranking of the top plutocrats among us (while completely missing many with real dough).
By the way, you need at least £40 million to make the UK’s Rich 2000 list (sigh).

[Carol Lewis]

If you want to see how the Sunday Times really does put the list together please go to www.timesonline.co.uk/richlist
and watch our video

[Sean Bellew]

Vincent Tchenguiz was listed jointly with his brother, Robert, in last year's Rich List with a combined estimated wealth of £850 million.

This year Vincent was listed on his own, with an estimated wealth of £200 million.

Therefore, unless Robert's wealth was zero in last year's list, Vincent's estimated wealth has not fallen by £650 million.

Furthermore, Vincent has no exposure to Sainsbury - it is Robert who has the, extremely well publicised, holding.

[Carol Lewis]

Author of the Rich List Philip Beresford replies: "Yes - it was not clear enough in both the printed and online edition. On p14 in the printed edition we should have actually had an asterik by Vincent Tchenguiz to say that this £650m fall from last year was largely as a result of his brother falling out of list altogether.

Neither did we make it clear enough when referring to the Sainsbury's shares that these belonged to Robert. This will now be changed online to make it clearer."

We have also rectified our blog post to make this clear.