29-03-2025
‘I knew nothing when I started investing 40 years ago. Now my Isa is worth £1.7m'
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In her 30s, Jane Perry took a leap of faith and poured her money into shares, despite knowing 'nothing' about investing.
Now at the age of 76, she has reached the status of Isa millionaire, with a portfolio worth £1.7m.
She urges everyone, in particular women, to invest, to make their hard-earned money go further.
In 1984, Perry was working at a market research bureau 'because that was the only company that didn't seem to discriminate against an unqualified woman arts graduate'.
She closely followed the privatisations of the 1980s, as state-owned businesses such as BT and British Gas were floated on the stock market and millions of ordinary people became investors for the first time.
'I came from a family that had absolutely no experience of the stock market at all and I was very dubious about it,' she explains.
But she asked a colleague who was 'older, richer and wiser' to explain how it worked.
'I took a deep breath, drained my cash savings account and put in an order for an awful lot of BT shares,' says the mother of two.
In the 1980s personal equity plans were introduced to encourage savers to invest in British firms. A Pep allowed you to invest in shares or investment trusts and receive income and capital gains tax-free. They were replaced with Isas in 1999.
Perry opened her Pep with NatWest in 1987, putting in £2,400, and made her first investment in consumer goods giant Unilever, which today owns iconic brands such as Marmite, Persil, Dove and Colman's mustard.
But later that year Black Monday struck and the stock market crashed. She was so unimpressed with NatWest's handling of the crisis that she moved her Pep to Alliance Trust Savings (now part of stockbroker Interactive Investor) after using the trade press and national newspapers to research the best options.
'They offered to manage a Pep for you for free as long as you bought at least one Alliance Trust share, and if they were running it for free I could afford to buy a few shares,' she says, 'Even if Alliance Trust (now renamed Alliance Witan) was completely disastrous, I was avoiding the high costs of NatWest.'
Perry, who lives in London with one of her sons, put half her original sum into Unilever shares, and the other half into communications company WPP.
The next monthly standing order that she opted for was a regular investment into Foreign & Colonial, Britain's oldest investment company.
Perry discovered which investment trusts were doing well and how to invest her money through the Association of Investment Companies, the trade body for the sector, which printed monthly newsletters and hosted events. She appreciated their 'unbiased' nature: 'You were never quite sure if someone else was recommending something because they had an interest in it.'
Despite having been a complete novice, Perry says she quickly became sure of herself.
As she grew in confidence, she started attending the AGMs of the firms she invested in: 'They invited you for a chat and a glass of wine and they were very pleasant events.'
Perry didn't come from a large amount of family money, and was 'always slightly averse to spending it unnecessarily'.
'We were not very rich when I was a child and I never wanted to be poor,' she says, explaining her motivation for investing so there was 'no danger of running out of money in the future'.
She didn't choose a cash savings account because she didn't anticipate ever having to withdraw her money in an emergency. She had a steady job and was confident in her investments.
My biggest mistake
In her 40-plus years of experience, only one investment trust investment turned out badly, she says: the Woodford Patient Capital trust. Launched by former star fund manager Neil Woodford, who suffered a spectacular fall from grace, it is now known as The Schroders Capital Global Innovation Trust.
The fund has lost 90pc of its value since it launched, with losses mounting after Mr Woodford's investment empire collapsed in 2019.
Perry has invested the maximum allowed each year and has only ever made one withdrawal – £150,000 a few years ago for a family emergency.
Her returns 'fluctuated' but she always reinvested dividends and 'the magic of compounding ensured that the total value went up relentlessly'.
Looking forward, Perry is thinking about how she can leave her wealth to her sons in the most tax-efficient way possible. She has already signed her home away to them but her Isa holds an even more special place in her heart.
'I have an emotional attachment to my Isa. I've had it for a very long time, it's done me very well. I don't want to break it up and give it away so I think that'll be the last thing to go.'
She retired in 2003 and now spends a day a week volunteering at the Victoria and Albert Museum, cataloguing jewellery collections. She has also written a book for the museum, Traditional Jewellery in Nineteenth-Century Europe and given numerous talks on what has become her specialist subject.
Perry has thrived in the still male-dominated world of investing and wants to encourage women to break free from cash Isas, which are incredibly popular but do not have the same potential to generate life-changing returns.
The so-called gender Isa gap stands at £6.6bn, according to HMRC. This gap is most pronounced among 30- to 39-year-olds, when women have 46pc less money invested than men.
'There are very few women that I meet on the investment trust AGM circuit. You see the same faces and meet the same people and they're almost all men,' says Perry.
Perry believes that women sometimes lack the confidence to start investing, and too often think that it's better suited to men.
'I would absolutely encourage women to invest. You don't have to know anything about it.
'Invest small sums regularly and pick a large global investment trust, they're easy enough to find, they've been around for years – centuries in some cases – their dividend is as secure as almost anything can be,' she advises.
Perry's advice: confidence is key.
'I've been through Black Monday, the dot-com crisis of 2000 and the banking crisis of 2008. Each time everybody says 'this time is different,' but it never is.
