Steve Smith sold Poundland for £50 million in 2000 (Picture: Murray Sanders)

He might live in a mansion worth £6.5 million, but the man who founded Poundland has revealed that he now lives on £10 to £20 a day – because that’s all his wife will let him have.

Multi-millionaire Steve Smith, 52, lives in the 13-bedroom mansion in Shropshire with his wife and three children, but is given the paltry hand outs because he can’t be trusted with cash.

The businessman sold the chain for £50 million in 2000 and gave half of the cash to his parents.

Speaking to the Telegraph, he said: ‘On a day-to-day basis my wife gives me a little pocket money. The problem with me is that if I have any cash on me I spend it, so she’ll give me about £10 or £20 a day.




Mr Smith started Poundland with a stall on Bilston Market in the West Midlands, before opening his first store in West Bromwich at the tentative age of 18.

And when he sold the chain for £50m 10 years later, he gave his parents half of the sale – to pay back a £50,000 loan that his dad had given him to kick-start the business.

Steve Smith lives in a sprawling mansion in Shropshire with wife and three children (Picture: Murray Sanders)

‘When I was 18 I saw a vacant shop in West Bromwich one Sunday and negotiated a deal. By the end of the first year we’d turned over £1m and made a profit of £6,000 selling everything from black bin bags, to watches to rocking horses’, he said.

‘By the time I sold the business for £50m in 2000 we employed five and a half thousand people, had a million customers through the doors every week with a turnover of £200m and an annual profit of about £4.3m.’

He added: ‘The first thing I did was give my mum and dad half of it. My dad had lent me £50,000 to start the company so I suppose it was a good return for him. If it weren’t for my dad learning the trade and passing it on to me then it wouldn’t have happened.

‘Money gives you lots of different opportunities but it’s important not to forget where you’ve come from’.