Man who sold his own life on eBay and bought remote tropical island reveals how he actually funded it
Back in June 2008, a bloke made international headlines when he listed his ‘entire life’ for sale on eBay.
Ian Usher had gone through an ‘unhappy divorce’ and was wanting to move on with, well, a complete fresh start. The Darlington man decided to put up quite literally everything from his home to his car up for auction from Perth, Australia, where he was living at the time.
The now 61-year-old then went viral all over again for buying himself a remote tropical island off the coast of Panama. And Usher has now revealed to LADbible how he actually funded it.
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So, of course, the obvious understanding would be that he bought the island with the money he made from ‘selling his life’, except that’s not actually quite true.
Usher explained that his ‘Life For Sale’ auction didn’t totally work out as the winning bidder pulled out because they didn’t have a mortgage sorted to be able to do it.
“The top bidders that I contacted, none of them were in a position to actually complete the purchase,” he says. “And ultimately, I’d already committed to setting off on my travels. So I had to go back to a bog standard plan B because I couldn’t get anyone to actually pay up for what they’d said.”
He then decided to just sell his car and home and everything else individually before setting off on his travels where he planned to achieve as many ‘goals’ as possible in 100 weeks.
While he admits it was a ‘bit of a disappointment’, Usher was still able to visit a long list of countries and do all kinds of activities from skydiving, meeting Richard Branson, flying a jet fighter plane, visit the Great Wall of China and drive across Route 66.
And all that travelling was mostly funded by the savings he’d made from working a year and a half ‘driving trucks in the mines in Australia’.
“The house sold after six months of travel,” he explains. “I’d got through maybe 60-70 percent of what I’d saved and then the house sale came through.”
But that’s not quite what funded the big island purchase.
The tale of how Usher’s auction all panned out is told in the book A Life Sold and this led to a whole new load of cash coming in.
“Walt Disney turned up and bought the movie rights for the story, just as I ended the two years of travel,” he says. “They kindly topped up the bank account for me and it was their money that allowed me to go, ‘Oh, I can buy an island in the Caribbean – why not?’
“So thanks Disney for that.”
Usher did add that the film giants haven’t ‘got round to making the movie yet’ and isn’t sure it ever will happen.
But either way, it’s thanks to that ‘great timing’ of the Disney cash things kept lining up for Usher ‘to continue the adventure’.
In late 2015, he sold his rural island and nowadays he runs House Sitting Magazine as he enjoys a ‘freedom lifestyle’ house and pet sitting all around the world with his partner.
Jess Battison