All of us, from birth up until our retirement.

Not only should we look after ourselves, our family and our dependents right now, most societies expect us to provide the money to do this after we can no longer work.

Mean Fifth is a place to share the learnings, skills and expertise I have developed in helping myself and my family build the pensions and savings for our retirement.

Mean Fifth is named after the growth target I want to average each year: +20%.

The more growth you achieve with your pensions and savings, the lower the contribution needed to achieve the same retirement fund.

For example, if you put £1,000 into a fund for a child when they are born, if all gains are re-invested, when they turn 70 years old, with an average annual growth after costs of:

  • 5% the fund will be worth £30,000.
  • 8.12% the fund will be worth £236,000`
  • 14.07% the fund will be worth £10 million.^
  • 20% the fund will be worth £348 million.*

Yes, you saw that correctly – compound growth makes a sizeable difference – an annual performance 4x higher results in a 10,000x improvement after 70 years. Inflation also makes a difference in reducing the value our investments because money is worth slightly less each year.

For example, adjusting for inflation, if you put £1,000 into a fund for a child when they are born, if all gains are re-invested, when they turn 70 years old, with a reduced average annual growth after costs of:

  • 3% the fund will be worth £8,000.
  • 6.12% the fund will be worth £64,000`
  • 12.07% the fund will be worth £2.9 million.^
  • 18% the fund will be worth £107 million.*

There must be a catch – and there is – but it is quite straightforward: no-one teaches us how to invest, so we either have to trust the professionals, or we have to teach ourselves. I have taught myself these skills and if I can help even a few people learn the same skills and gain confidence in them, then retirement will be better for more people.

There is obviously the question of risk – as we all know investments go down as well as up – but I will show you ways to analyse and manage investments to reduce the risk of failure: I have been doing this for over 25 years. The logic behind my investment approach is best summed up as follows:

I want to buy something for £50 which I think is worth £100.

Most of us like bargains – I have spent years focussing on identifying investment bargains based on financial analysis, logic and forecasting.

Please remember, not every investment will turn out to be profitable, but over 15 years the good investments have significantly out-performed the poor investments (including one bad investment in which insider fraud left the share worthless), I have achieved an average annual return of 14+%.

`The FTSE All Share achieved return including dividends as calculated by me between April 2009 and April 2024

^My actual achieved return in the past 15 years (6 April 2009 – 5 April 2024)

*My target return. Please note that tax treatment will almost certainly change over time, but under current rules, if the initial investment is in a junior ISA, this would never be subject to direct taxation.