The Queenager: Eleanor’s Letter (July 1st 2024)

Dear Queenagers

The sun is shining and here I am in London – while everyone I know is either at Glastonbury (when was it dubbed Glasto and how did it become part of ‘the season’ and BBC schedules???) or on a sunny beach. Indeed my offspring are in Naples and Barcelona.. while the most exciting place I am going this summer is Devon. Actually I’m not moaning about that: I LOVE Devon we’ve been going back to the same surfing beach – near my husband’s cousins – for the last twenty years. Just inhaling the ozone from the surf and looking at the waves rolling in from the Atlantic lifts my spirits; ten days down there on my trusty boogie board and I feel scrubbed clean, like all the stress and city grime has been sloughed off! There is something soothing about going on holiday to somewhere super familiar. Yes, I love a bit of foreign adventure but if the sun is shining in blighty the British beach is hard to beat (and the great thing about a surfing holiday is if the weather is bad then the waves are good and you are wearing a wetsuit so sun is not essential!). And – no airports!

On Wednesday I continued my military theme by giving an after dinner speech to Top Flight, a very exclusive group of some of the most senior women in Defence. We talked about how we hone our personal stories; what people say about us when we are not in the room, how to sing the best song of ourselves. How it takes practice and confidence and women are often not that great at it, but that if we are going to become leaders we need to tell people who we are, what we believe in…if they are going to follow us. Male leaders tend to be very good at this, throwing out signifiers as to why they are so impressive constantly. Women, not so much… The Defence talked about how hard it was to be at the spearhead of change every day. How as women we are told constantly we already have equality, that everything is fixed, but that was not their experience. I said that’s because we DON’T yet have equality. Women have been given the lanyard, entry into male institutions but they are not yet set up for us (one of the military women laughed and said no-one was allowed to menstruate officially in the army till about last year). The World Economic Forum report underscores this. It calculates it will take 132 years for women to have parity with men: that although we enter institutions in the same numbers at the top women still have less than 25% of the jobs; we are still living in a world created by and set up for men. The gender revolution is ongoing, it is only 100 years since women got the vote (make sure you use yours on Thursday!) and we are in the foothills of what a gender-balanced world will look like. So we all need to keep working to get there. It is gaslighting to say we are already there when we are only just beginning!

Talking of telling stories, I’m feeling a bit like I’ve been locked into a barrel and am about to go over Niagara Falls as everything is gearing up for the launch of my book Much More to Come: Lessons on the mayhem and magnificence of midlife on August 1st. That’s a month tomorrow. I’ve written that title quite  lot over the last few days. I’ve been churning out (sorry expertly crafting and honing) articles to promote the book for all sorts of glossy magazines over the summer and autumn (they have crazy deadlines always months out of whack, so they are doing Christmas issues as we are all sizzling in shorts). When I was a Mag editor I was always being invited to taste Christmas puddings or mincepies in July… NOT appealing.

Talking of the fun stuff, I’ve also been doing some long overdue financial admin… I can feel you all groaning but hang in there just for a bit because it really matters. In fact it is a crucial part of the ongoing gender revolution I was banging on about above!

I am staggered by how often I am asked by you lovely Queenagers about money and what you should do with it. (Given I have always avoided this as much as possible in my own life it is particularly ironic.) But given that many of us have been working for thirty years, often in lots of different companies when it comes to our pensions it can be hard even to locate them all. (I thought I had one from the Telegaph in my 20s but it turns out I cashed it in and bought an MX5 instead… yes it was fun zooming around in a convertible but my now future self would have been happier for that £15k to have been earning compound interest…) The average Queenager has worked for 11 companies – tracking them down is crucial if we are to get all we are owed (a staggering £50 billion of pension pots is sitting in pots unclaimed, that’s around £16k each by our age, eeek!).

I  was asked the other day by a Queenager who worked in the City about whether I had a good Financial Advisor. Which is partly why we at NOON have decided to team up with AJ Bell again to do a whole series of events over the next few months on midlife finances. We’ll be kicking off with a deep dive into tracking down and consolidating those pesky pensions – we’ll be running a free webinar on this where you can come and ask a super-expert all your questions on July 16th sign up on that link. I’ll be hosting and asking some questions too!

It’s easier than you think. Having spent an hour or so on it last week I can personally report a huge sense of smug satisfaction at finally having got them in order. It’s like a nagging worry at the corner of my brain has been aired and resolved. As Noon Advisory Board member Baroness Helena Morrissey (a career-long asset manager) always says: “Financial health is like physical health – the key is to do a little, often.”

I’m not so great at that, I’d rather be in the pond – but if we are going to live a rich Queenager life, pivot into purpose, become the women we always wanted to be – all that good stuff. It’s really important we get our finances in shape for the long term… and if you get on it now it’s not too late to make a big difference. One of the things I did when consolidating my pensions was to move my hard-earned cash out of companies whose ethos I didn’t admire and into funds which support green energy and female founded businesses. (My pal who is a bigwig in things Green says that this is one of the most important individual acts we can make in terms of saving the planet. That really matters.) If you want to know more about what you can do check out this article we’ve written on about making the best of your Queenager pension on NOON.

I also think – and I write about this in my book – that we are a pivot generation when it comes to our money. Our mothers thought a man was a financial plan. We are the first generation who are having to get to grips with this ourselves – and we need to. The gender pension gap is 35% – meaning women retire with 35% less than men and we live longer. So anything we can all do now to beef up our pension pots has got to be worthwhile. Use this handy checklist from AJ Bell to help you get started.

And if your pension is a bit meagre, don’t give up: even if you start paying £200 a month into a pension at the age of 40, you would have a pot worth £150,000 by the time you’re 65 years old, assuming your savings grow 5% a year and basic-rate tax relief. And if you’re 50 or even 60 it is still worthwhile! The most important thing is to get started and get on top of your finances. We can help you or you could sign up here sign up for the AJ Bell Money Matters newsletter.

Looking forward to seeing loads of you tomorrow night for the NOON Circles (if you want to join one they are for paid subscribers all the details are here )– I’ll be beaming in by Zoom from our London Circle to see you all. Do spread the word! And VOTE!

Much love

Eleanor

By Eleanor Mills