I’m a self-made millionaire and I’ll give away 99% of my fortune when I die because I don’t want to ‘burden’ my two children with riches
- Dave Fishwick revealed he will give away 99 per cent of his fortune when he dies
- He revealed he doesn’t want to ‘burden’ his son and daughter with his millions
- Read more: Bank Of Dave: Meet the farm labourer’s son worth half a billion
A self-made millionaire has revealed he will give away 99 per cent of his fortune when he dies because he doesn’t want to ‘burden’ his children with his riches.
Dave Fishwick, 51, from Burnley, who launched his own bank during the 2008 financial crisis, admitted he wants to ensure his loved ones will continue to work hard, rather than relying on his millions.
Speaking to the Daily Star he said: ‘It’s important that you have that work ethic and I think hard work puts you where some good luck will find you. My kids don’t always agree with that but they are good kids.’
Dave Fishwick, from Burnley, revealed he will give away 99 per cent of his fortune when he dies as he doesn’t want to ‘burden’ his children with his riches
‘It’s so important that the children work hard because I have seen lots of people who have become successful and wealthy and they spoil their kids and the kids have no understanding of money whatsoever.’
Dave, who left school at 16 without any qualifications, has loaned more than £27 million to people and businesses since setting up a community bank.
His bank, which is still going strong today, operated on a not for profit basis and all surplus money went to good causes
Dave, who started his own bank, arrived in his Ferrari to watch the filming of ‘Bank of Dave’ the Netflix film in 2022
Unable to call himself a bank, he put up a sign on his town centre premises which read ‘Bank on Dave’ (Pictured: Dave and his wife Nicola attend the world premiere of Netflix’s Bank of Dave)
From his desk at his small headquarters in Burnley town centre, Dave has loaned thousands of locals to cover everything, from funeral expenses to IVF.
His children Sarah and Connor are both working professionals in their own right with his son working as a police officer while Sarah works for an animal charity.
The down to earth businessman’s extraordinary life was recently captured in the recent biopic called Bank of Dave which trended number one on Netflix.
James Bond star Rory Kinnear played him in the feel good film which also starred Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor.
It’s a captivating feel good story that caught the eye of Hollywood scriptwriters, who have turned Dave’s battle with the banking giants into a big-budget biopic.
Speaking to the Mail Online previously, he said: ‘People who rob banks go to prison, but banks who rob people get paid bonuses and get bailed out.
Dave Fishwick (left) and Rory Kinnear (right), attend the world premiere of Netflix’s ‘Bank of Dave’ in Burnley, England on Sunday
Rory Kinnear (centre) plays Dave in the new biopic based on his life, which came out on Netflix
‘The truth is, we’ve been badly served by the banks in the past and we need change. Banks that are too big to fail are just too big to exist.’
‘I like going home. I like my own bed, and being around family,’ he says.
‘When I’ve had a really tough day — and I’ve had plenty of tough days — I open my front door, I can smell apple pie, and my wife, Nicola, will have run me a bath with a bottle of beer there. What can be nicer? Burnley is where I’m from, where my pals don’t care who I am, and rightly so.’
However the Burnley that Dave lives in today is a far cry from the one he grew up in.
Born in 1972, he was raised in a modest terrace with an outside toilet in a town that was slipping into decline after the collapse of the textile industry and closure of local coal mines.
‘My dad had two jobs: a farm labourer in the morning and he worked in the mill in the afternoon fixing the looms,’ Dave recalled.
‘He did 6am until 2pm on the farm, then 2pm until 10pm at the mill, and my mum worked in the same mill as a weaver.’
Bullied at school because of his NHS prescription glasses, Dave dropped out of formal education aged 14, and by 16 was working as a builder’s labourer.
‘I was up and down ladders all day with buckets of cement in each hand for £27.50 a week.’
Bullied at school because of his NHS prescription glasses, Dave dropped out of formal education aged 14, and by 16 was working as a builder’s laboure
Dave Fishwick (left) and brother outside their house on the back street where he played with the gas tar on the cobbles and built old gokarts
He recalled a ‘fork-in-the-road’ point one bitterly cold day.
‘It was a moment of recognising that I wanted something different,’ he recalls. ‘You start making yourself a roadmap, some achievable goals. That first step can be tiny, but it’s the hardest one.’
It led Dave to embark on a money-making experiment. Passionate about cars, he visited garages and asked them to take a chance on his salesman skills.
One let him clean and sell a Vauxhall Cavalier. Anything over £70 he could keep.
He got £97 — earning £27 for two hours work, the equivalent of a week’s wages. He was just 17 and ‘onto something’.
It was the start of years of hustling and juggling endless makeshift roles — yet cars remained his first love.
After spotting a gap in the market for companies selling vans and minibuses, he set up David Fishwick Minibus Sales in 2003.
Today, the business operates all over the world, although its headquarters remains in the same modest Burnley garage.
Not that Dave’s burgeoning wealth insulated him from the impact of the 2008 financial crash.
Almost overnight, banks stopped lending money to his customers, meaning they in turn were unable to buy his vans.
Faced with the inevitable impact on his own business, Dave decided to take matters into his own hands.
Dave, who has also been the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, has always shied away from talking about his poverty-stricken background
‘The customers weren’t doing anything differently — it was the banks that were the problem,’ he said.
‘I’ve always felt that people who work hard and are still stuck through no fault of their own need a net to fall on, to help them bounce back up again.
‘And if the banks weren’t going to do it, then it was going to have to be me.’
Which was all very well in theory — but in real life involves vast expense, a mountain of red tape and a licence to open a bank.
When Metro Bank opened in 2010, it became the first new High Street bank to be given one in 150 years.
Dave decided to apply anyway. ‘Everybody said: “You’re going to end up in trouble for this.”
‘But what was I doing wrong? All I was doing was giving people the best rate of interest on the High Street, guaranteeing 100 per cent of their savings with my own money, lending that money to people and businesses who can’t borrow from a High Street bank, and giving what is left after overheads to charity.’
The banks took a different view. ‘When I met the then head of the financial regulation authority, the first thing he asked was where I was from,’ Dave recalled.
‘When I said Burnley, that put him off for starters. Then he asked whether I went to Oxford or Cambridge. Basically, he said I had no chance. I’ll be honest, I wanted to punch him.’
However Dave was not easily put off and unable to call himself a bank, he put up a sign on his town centre premises which read ‘Bank on Dave’.
For while Dave pulled himself up by his bootstraps to make his fortune selling vans and minibuses, he also launched an astonishing mission to make sure everyone else prospered alongside him
Twelve years later, that business is still going strong. Dave never did get his licence, but Burnley Savings and Loans — the locals call it Bank of Dave — employs its own unique lending model, linking savers with businesses desperately in need of loans.
At first, Dave personally assessed every customer himself, but that job now goes to his right-hand man David Henshaw, a 60-year-old former bank manager, who makes decisions on a personal case-by-case basis rather than a computer algorithm.
Borrowers with a good credit record are charged 8.9 per cent interest, while investors can make 5 per cent on their savings. In the beginning, it was all Dave’s money.
He has helped all manner of people since, from a struggling dog biscuit business to nurses and hairdressers.
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