My first day as a 'financial adviser' was June 28th 1982, over thirty-three years ago. The eighties were the 'glory days' for financial services – on the back of her Falklands victory Margaret Thatcher was leading a Tory government committed to entrepreneurial endeavour. Making money was good – and there was plenty of that in the City of the eighties with a Stock Market boom (at least until the fateful crash of October 1987), deregulation of the Banks and everyone a shareholder with the privatisation of BT, British Gas and others. Margaret Thatcher sold the family silver and saved the nation or so we were told. 

Gordon Gekko the protagonist of the film 'Wall Street' played by Michael Douglas as a voracious trader who believed that 'greed is good' defined the zeitgeist of the era. As did Tom Wolfe's brilliant satire of the whole self indulgent quagmire in  'Bonfire of the Vanities'. 

Me? I just plodded on quietly talking to people about savings and financial protection and inviting them to make sensible decisions, rather than not. As my career progressed and my family grew I began to experience the benefits of a good income. No champagne and swimming pools but a sense of making progress, paying our bills and putting some aside. The excesses of the City were remote and faintly distasteful to me insofar as I ever thought about it.

Imagine my delight then when I read a report recently about a new movement 'Earning to Give' which encourages young people to go into the most lucrative careers their skills allow, in order to give the money to specially chosen charities which are vetted for effectiveness. This is not idle posturing – so far 200 people have signed up to 80,000 Hours, a not for profit organisation founded in Oxford in 2011. The name refers to the length of the average career. 

There are some wonderful examples of modern day philanthropy. Sacha Romanovitch is the new chief executive of accountancy firm Grant Thornton. She has limited her own wage and implemented a scheme to apportion the firm's profits amongst staff. This could boost salaries by 25 per cent. It's happening elsewhere too: Dan Price, boss of Seattle company Gravity Payments, introduced a new minimum wage of $70,000 for staff and reduced his own $1m salary by 90 per cent to the same amount.

And it's not just the youngsters. Two of the wealthiest men in the world, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, have signed the “Giving Pledge” agreeing to give away more than half their fortunes before they die. Our own Richard Branson is a fully paid up member of this exclusive Billionaire's Club. 

A new mantra then to replace Gekko's ghastly 'Greed is Good'. 

'Giving is Good'. 

Now that sounds more like it...I could sign up to that. 

What about you?

Regards,

Nicholas.