This week we speak to Dr Ann Kaplan Mulholland, 63, who lives in Lympne Castle, Kent, with her husband, Stephen, 63, a plastic surgeon now involved in non-surgical cosmetic rejuvenation technology. Dr Ann has starred in the Real Housewives of Toronto.
Ann and Stephen purchased Lympne Castle in February 2023 for £5.5m and enjoy travelling all over the world. Ann, who estimates her net worth is around £500m, made her fortune in consumer finance and is a multimillionaire. She always travels first class and has a penchant for designer clothes. But when she’s enjoying downtime, she rotates between three outfits. For Ann, the more someone has, the less they want.
My income
My monthly salary from my work as a director at Lympne Castle is £6,250.
Globally, I have real-estate holdings in nine commercial and residential properties, with $2m (£1.6m) in rental income per annum. I have an investment portfolio, with $4m (£3.2m) in income per year. The net annual income from my insurance company is around $2m.
The income from all these holdings is reinvested to grow the portfolio and is not liquid. I also own a clothing company. Income from sales via the clothing company is donated to schools focused on positive social impact in fashion and to assist disadvantaged students of fashion.
My outgoings
There’s no mortgage on Lympne Castle as we purchased it outright. We don’t have debt and prefer to purchase properties outright. I don’t tend to see our utility bills, so couldn’t tell you how much they each cost! We also have household staff for the properties we use, costing a few hundred thousand pounds a year in total. I don’t like driving, but we have cars, and someone takes them out for a spin every now and then.
Stephen and I can spend £60,000 per month on travel. We like certain restaurants and can spend £300 a time eating out; however, the meal cost per person is always disproportionate. I’m a gluten-free vegan – a side of broccoli and I’m content.
We have six children, with some currently at university. The children’s higher education costs are around £150,000 a year for each child. This includes things like housing and overseas tuition costs.
I’d say I put £3m per year into various investments, excluding real estate. I don’t invest in the stock market as I don’t understand it. I invest in property, I provide loans and invest in businesses that I control or operate. In this current and unpredictable market, I invest in government bonds.
Excluding investments and real estate, I’d say my personal expenditure is around £1.5m a year.
I had an unusual upbringing and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. I was the daughter of a radiologist and a psychologist. My family has its origins in the Christie Cookie company and was very wealthy.
When I was 12 I discovered that I wasn’t adopted, as I’d been told. I’d grown up with my biological mother and a Scottish father who loved me as his own. I’d been the product of an affair between my English mother and a Hawaiian entertainer. With no animosity, I left home when I was 14 and lived on my own. I was driven to take control of my life from a young age. I knew I had to be the maker of my own destiny.
I rented out a room in a house and, while still at school, took on a job waitressing in a pancake house for a small wage plus tips. I also did a paper round and any other ad hoc jobs that came along. I just needed enough to pay my overheads.
After doing a degree in interior design, I completed an MBA and doctorate in finance. I launched a consumer finance business called iFinance in 1996, which I sold in 2022. It was the biggest non-asset-based consumer finance company in Canada, and I was typically paid about $250,000 a year as a salary. I wrote algorithms to establish whether or not a consumer would default on their loan or not. The business provided around $2bn of consumer loans for private medical procedures.
By 2017 I’d been doing some TV work and was approached by a producer to go to an audition. I wasn’t told what it was for, but it turned out to be for The Real Housewives of Toronto. I was given a stipend to appear on the show, but it wasn’t very much.
Last year, our eldest child left for university and Stephen and I had an empty nest. We looked at buying an apartment in London, including one overlooking Hyde Park, but everything was crazily expensive, particularly the service charges! The cheapest London home we looked at was listed for £8.5m and the most expensive was £150m. The service charges ranged from £48,000 to £320,000 per year.
I created an Excel spreadsheet of all the potential service charges and did a quantitative analysis of them. It didn’t make logical financial sense to buy an apartment like this. I think the prime real estate market is going to go down in the coming years due to high inflation and interest costs. Lots of the apartments in London we looked at also had dull neutral colour schemes, which I don’t like.
We certainly weren’t on the lookout for a castle, but after browsing online I made an enquiry about one for sale in Kent. In February 2023, Stephen and I purchased Lympne Castle for £5.5m. The property had been listed for £11m. It turns out I was buying a full-time job and not just a property! The castle is Grade I listed, so even plugging in a hairdryer can be complicated.
Living in a castle is expensive, but I think our costs are a lot lower than King Charles III’s at Buckingham Palace. I do pity him in that regard! In the winter, I think it will cost £15,000 per month to heat Lympne Castle.
We’re renovating the castle and its gardens and creating outbuildings on site for weddings, accommodation and events. The castle sits in 139 acres. We’ve spent £1m getting parts of the roof fixed.
As an estimate, I think the total renovation costs could come in, just for the first phase, at £21m. But I am working hard to ensure this sum is lower and closer to £10m. I am looking at every single pound being spent and every quotation received. I’m buying furniture from UK auction houses online and some of the chairs I’ve got cost £30.
With a castle, it’s like going in for a facial and coming out having had a colonoscopy. Things don’t always go to plan and if you think a sink needs changing, it turns out the pipe work in the entire castle needs redoing.
While renovations at the castle are in full swing, Stephen and I have a docu-reality TV show in development, which will be available in the UK, Canada and the US. It’s about Lympne Castle and our adventures to transform it. I also plan to make fashion a major part of the show.
We have a few different properties we make use of abroad. As well as the castle, we have a house in Toronto, with Drake living next door. It’s probably worth around $40m. We also use a 17,000 sq ft penthouse in Las Vegas, which we got for around $18m. It’s worth more now. It has a 360-degree view of the Las Vegas Strip. We also have properties in Victoria, Vancouver and Waikiki we rent out.
I’m not looking to buy more properties at present. I think the property market worldwide is going to go down, but I think there will be better opportunities to buy in a couple of years. In future, I might invest in property on The Brando, or in Thailand, Hong Kong or the British Virgin Islands.
We spent thousands flying first class and enjoy staying in Dorchester Collection hotels or Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. We like staying on Necker Island, owned by Sir Richard Branson, at a cost of around £2,000 to £3,000 a night. Another favourite is The Brando in Tahiti, again at around £3,000 a night. We’ve been to 20 counties this year, but some of the trips were for business. Stephen and I also love hiking and biking, which aren’t expensive hobbies.
I’d say I personally spend about £1.5m a year, excluding investments and real estate. If I was given £1m tomorrow, while I admit it wouldn’t really be noticed, I would put the money into government bonds for two years, and no longer. There’s no incentive to put money into cash savings.
Teaching children the value of money is very important to me. When one of our kids was younger, I wouldn’t give her a doll she wanted straight away. I made her do chores. She’d get one dollar per chore. She eventually got the doll and now has an extremely good work ethic. Our children had to earn the money for the things they wanted, even while enjoying a great lifestyle.
All our kids went to private school, each costing £25,000 per year per child. At one point, we had all the kids at private school at the same time. Some are still in higher education and we are paying their housing and tuition fee costs. These can be £150,000 per year for each child if they are overseas. We’ve encouraged our children to pursue careers they enjoy, rather than simply follow the money. If they do something they enjoy as a career, the money will come.
I’m not motivated by money and never have been. I don’t have a desire to be known as a person of means. I want to be known as a person of value. At heart, I see myself as an academic and I don’t want money to change me. I’m certainly not motivated to become a billionaire and I’m not attracted to wealthy people.
As long as my husband is beside me and we have fun, that’s all I want. I don’t have any financial goals as we have everything we need. We have a castle and Buckingham palace isn’t for sale! We have enough. The more you have, the less you want.
I’m not sure what else we can buy. I have a closet full of purses, but I never carry a purse. How much more can someone want?
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