Fairytale endings: not just for royalty and TV stars

Some people get lucky: they marry princes; others get luckier: they marry successful actresses. For the rest of us, says Emma Heap, Chief Growth Officer at 10X Investments, there’s always compound interest.

Royal watchers and other romantics will suspend disbelief for a few hours this weekend when Britain’s Prince Harry marries his American actress girlfriend, Meghan Markle. The pageant, likely to be reminiscent of weddings in childhood story books, will be “impossibly romantic and pretty damn glamorous”, says Heap, who adds that it will suggest that those cheesy scenes in childhood stories were indeed possible.

However, most of us have grown up and left the dreams of Prince or Princess Charming in the storybooks and “got on with the gritty but lovely business of real life”.

The white horses and golden carriages of our dreams have become family sedans (if we were lucky). The reality of teaching unruly classes or writing business proposals has replaced ideas of endless days writing poetry and brushing our hair or whatever else it is they did in those tales.

“Most of us do, however, hold on to the dream of one fairytale ending, a happy and dignified retirement,” says Heap.

The idea of Golden Years spent with loved ones doing things we love is a dream many of us hang on to. This is one happy ending that we can make come true for ourselves.

“This is not merely the stuff of fairytales, we only have to look around us to see that many people are living this dream,” adds Heap.

Truth be told, most of us think Meghan and Harry can keep that fairy-tale wedding and life in the limelight. The retirees we see relaxing in cafes or walking unhurried on the promenade, on the other hand, make us green with envy, and (hopefully) more determined to make that dream come true for ourselves.

The 10X formula to achieve this dream is simple: save 15% of your earnings for the duration of your working life (average 40 years) and invest it in a diversified high equity fund and pay fees of no more than 1%.

Over time, says Heap, the power of compounding, which the great Albert Einstein once described as “the Eighth Wonder of the World”, will be a huge help. Compounding, also known as the snowball effect, is where you earn returns on your returns.

If your reality is that you started saving late there is good news for you too. It is never too late to improve your retirement. You too can join the One Percenters.

“It is certainly easier than landing a prince or a TV star and much more pleasant than taking your chances on kissing frogs,” says Heap.

Ready to build your happily ever after? Join the One Percenters.