Jon Lee was born in Croydon, south London, but grew up in Devon and won a scholarship to Sylvia Young Theatre School as a teenager after starring alongside Jonathan Pryce in Oliver! at the London Palladium. In 1999 he joined the pop band S Club 7, who sold 14 million albums worldwide and had four No 1 singles in the UK before splitting up in 2003. The band re-formed for a tour in 2015 and again last year, with five members. Lee, 42, went travelling and ended up staying in India for three and a half years, returning in 2020. He has performed in Les Misérables, Jersey Boys and Aladdin in the West End. He lives in Cornwall with his mother, Wendy, his sister Cassie and his brother-in-law.
How much is in your wallet?
I very, very rarely carry cash any more. I live in Cornwall now so pretty much everything I get is off the internet anyway. There’s no Deliveroo here. There’s no nothing here. You just have to order everything and get it delivered from Amazon unfortunately. All I’ve got on me now is a pound coin for the gym locker and that’s about it.
What credit cards do you use?
About seven years ago I did take my eye off the ball a little. I had two or three, and if you don’t stay on top of them, when it gets to the end of the month it just goes up and up. After a while I realised how much money I was wasting paying interest. The worst it got was when I owed about £20,000 each on three different cards — 50 or 60 grand all in all. With contactless it’s easy to lose track, especially with a credit card, as you don’t see it come straight out of your account. In the end it was just the realisation when I actually sat down and worked out how much extra money I was wasting, giving to credit card companies that I didn’t need to give them. So I cleared those debts and got rid of all of those cards and now I just have one Lloyds Bank credit card and I make a point of paying it off every single month.
Are you a saver or a spender?
Overall, I’m definitely a saver. It was instilled into me at a very young age by my parents that if you don’t need it, put it away, put it away, put it away. So that’s what I did from the start. I’ve always been quite sensible. I’ve never gone without anything that I really want. But at the same time I’m not very frivolous. I don’t really need to have designer things. Like, if there’s a coat I like, it doesn’t matter if it says Gucci in it or Primark — if I like it, I like it. I was very young when S Club started, so I was getting large sums of money at a very young age. I bought a few flats on my dad’s advice, so that was wise on his part.
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How much did you earn last year?
The last year has been a good year. A great year actuallybecause of the S Club reunion tour last October. The most I earned from S Club was the last couple of years in about 2002 or 2003, when we did a tour and a movie and another TV series. I can’t give you precise figures, but it was enough to buy four flats with no mortgages in south London by the time I was 21, which I still make a rental income from today.
The S Club money was split evenly between all seven of us, so the group might have earned a million but each of us only walked away with £140,000, which is still amazing. When the band split, obviously you take a bit of a dip in income, but then I went straight into musical theatre in the West End, doing lead roles for maybe four or five years. When I was 12 I was performing in Oliver! and getting paid £500 a week, which was a lot of money for a 12-year-old. And I saved the lot. I was very good.
Have you ever been really hard up?
No, not really. Having the flats set me up so well that when I was between jobs — and there might be six months or eight months or whatever, where I didn’t work — I never had to panic because I always had an income coming in every month from four flats. So I was always all right. I was very, very lucky. I bought them for about £120,000 each about 20 years ago and they must be worth nearer £300,000 each now. Each one has probably given me over £100,000 in rent over the 20 years as well, so it’s been a great investment for me. I live in Cornwall with my mum and my sister and her husband in a massive place we bought together. I live in the barn conversion away from the main house.
Are you better off than your parents?
Yes, absolutely. My dad was a builder and Mum was a housewife. Looking back on it now, we weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we never felt like we were poor. I do remember when I was about 11 when Dr Martens boots were like a big thing. All the kids at school had them and that was one thing that I really, really wanted, and we just couldn’t afford them. I remember getting a pair of “Dr Michaels” instead. Bless my mum.
Do you invest in shares?
I’ve just done it this year for the first time. I’ve just opened my first Isa and my first pension. I wanted to go into stocks and shares and things like that, but I just don’t understand them. My brain does not work like that. I just felt much more comfortable giving it to my accountant to sort out for me. Cryptocurrency is not something I’ll be dabbling in. It absolutely terrifies me.
What’s better for retirement — property or pension?
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It will be property. At the moment the pension is a great tax relief, so I can put however much I want into that each year and it’s saving me this year a big tax bill because obviously we earned a lot of money last year. When I’m ready to sell my flats, I’ll go on a nice cruise somewhere.
What’s been your best investment?
One hundred per cent absolutely my four flats. Without doubt. My dad helped a lot. The area where we bought was where we lived at the time so we knew the market and knew the area. And if I bought somewhere that needed a bit of doing up, my dad could go in there and do that. We bought and sold quite a few houses together at the time. Did I get involved in the painting and decorating myself with S Club playing in the background? I have done occasionally, but I’m just so bad at it. Once, this guy had just freshly plastered the ceiling and I tried to fit a new light and made a massive hole in the new ceiling. Even if I offered to help Dad would just say, “You know what, we don’t really need you.”
And the worst?
After S Club had finished and I’d worked in the West End for a couple of years, I decided I was going to go to America and try my luck over there. I got my visa and spent quite a bit of money on all these new headshots and rented an apartment in West Hollywood and went over there and then the writers went on strike and the whole industry just shut down completely. There were no auditions. There was no nothing, so that put me out of pocket for about eight grand, but then I ended up staying there anyway and had a great time for a year.
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What’s the most extravagant thing you’ve bought?
My extravagance is travel rather than material possessions and I do like to treat myself and stay in some really nice hotels, although I’ve never spent more than maybe seven or eight hundred pounds for a night. That’s a lot but it’s not insane.
What’s your money weakness?
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My dogs, Lolly, Colin and Bruno, have definitely been the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought. They’re wild street dogs from India. I found them as puppies — I was only supposed to be there for ten days, but I ended up staying for three and half years — and it cost me eight grand to fly them back to the UK via Dubai during lockdown.
What is your financial priority?
I’m 42 now and feel like I have enough. If S Club keeps ticking over the way things are, I’ve got enough to live a very, very comfortable life. I don’t really see age as a barrier to carrying on with S Club into my fifties and sixties. If people are still going to pay me to get up on stage and dance around to Reach then why not?
What would you do if you won the lottery?
I would buy a place with a lot of land and open up my own animal sanctuary, a rescue centre. It’s been my dream since I was a kid to have pigs, goats, donkeys and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, that’s absolutely where I would spend the money.
Do you support any charities?
I’m an ambassador for British Heart Foundation. Obviously last year we lost Paul from S Club due to an underlying heart condition, so we started working with the charity. I also support the Motor Neurone Disease Association, as my dad sadly died from motor neurone disease six years ago.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learnt about money?
It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it really, really does make life a lot easier. I would advise people to go out and spend and enjoy yourself, but just always make sure that you’ve got just enough for when the shit hits the fan.
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S Club are performing across the UK including at Alderfest, Brighton Pride and York Races. @mrjonathanlee82 @sclub
