Is this 26 year old banker deluded to think she can retire by 35?
The Times ran an interesting article on Saturday suggesting youthful financial idealism is not dead.
The paper unearthed 26 year-old Elizabeth Gregory, a former trader at Morgan Stanley in London, who now works for Advanced Currency Markets SA in Geneva.
Gregory, who said she's 1,000 a month better off in Geneva, thanks to a lower tax bill, confirmed to us that she aspires to get out before she gets old.
"The opportunities to strike it big through one fantastic year are fewer than they used to be, but I still plan to retire by 35," she told us.
Gregory's plan is simple: to work hard and spend little. "I'm a banker of simple means. I don't intend to pay for Porsches and round the world cruises.
"My aim when I left uni was to earn 1m and stop working," she adds. "This was based on the rough calculation that I could find 5% yield somewhere, and would then end up with around 35k after tax. I remember living very comfortably on less than that in my first year out of university."
Lee Smythe, managing director of Killik Chartered Financial Planners, suggests a pot of 1m may not necessarily be enough for a 35 year old retiree, however. "If you're a cautious investor, you'd probably only be looking at a return of 3-4%. If you want 50k a year after tax, and you want to cover inflation, you'd need 2m to begin with."
