I’m a 40-year-old teacher on £47,000… and this is my investment plan so I can retire before I’m 60 – with a £750,000 pot

Former primary school teacher Ross Williams had never thought about retiring early. But when his father stopped working at 68 three years ago and was unable to enjoy the retirement he’d planned due to ill health, Ross decided he wouldn’t make the same mistake.

The 40-year-old from Cornwall, who left his job as a teacher last month to become a courier driver, has since been saving everything he can into a private pension.

His ambition is to retire at 58 – a decade before his state pension is due – and travel around Europe in a motorhome.

To achieve this goal, Ross, who was earning £47,000 a year as a teacher and expects to get a little more in his new job, invests about £700 a month into a stocks and shares Isa.

To turbocharge his returns, he is funnelling his money into tech stocks – which have been booming in recent years. By investing in a fund that holds the world’s largest tech firms, such as Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia, via investment app Plum, Ross has managed to return around 15 to 16 per cent per year for the past three years.

While the US tech giants and their peers have skyrocketed in value in recent years, piling all your savings into them is a high-risk strategy – there are growing fears that the massive investment in artificial intelligence (AI) that has fuelled the rapid growth is a bubble that could burst, sending share prices plummeting.

Investment experts strongly recommend splitting your holdings across a diverse range of sectors and geographies precisely to protect against such events.

However, Ross is sticking to his guns. ‘I don’t believe – and I could be proven wrong – that these companies will completely nosedive and lose all of their value,’ he says.

‘I don’t think it’s going to crash. If it does, I think it will pick itself up quite quickly because we’re in an economy where we all need tech to survive.’

Ross has built up a £19,000 pot so far. By his calculations, if he continues to invest £700 a month and manages to secure a high rate of return each year of 12.5 per cent, he should be able to retire at 58 with £750,000.

If Ross were to get a more standard rate of return of around 7 per cent, he would retire at 58 with £368,242.

He also has a workplace pension which will be worth around £10,000 a year when he reaches the state retirement age, which is expected to be 68 for Ross, along with the state pension that is currently worth £12,548 per year.

But regardless of his return, Ross says this would feel like a huge achievement.

‘I think there’s a taboo that you have to earn a certain amount of money to invest. I was earning about £40,000 when I started and I’m quite happy with where my pot is already,’ says Ross.

Will Bryant, director of wealth strategy at Plum, says: ‘Too often, investing and wealth-building have felt like something reserved for a select few.

‘Yes, investing comes with risks, but it’s been proven historically to be the most reliable route to achieving inflation-beating returns and major financial goals over the long-term, such as retirement planning.’

While the returns can be better than cash savings in the long term, it is recommended that you only invest money you will not need to access for at least five years to ride out market ups and downs.

Ross felt confident enough to put a significant chunk of his salary into savings because he had built an emergency cash buffer of about £10,000.

He also has £5,000 in a Lifetime Isa, and a wedding fund of about £2,500, for a ceremony that is planned for next year.

He made sure to cut out any ‘unnecessary’ spending, such as his subscription to YouTube and eating at home more regularly, so that he could put money towards his investments.

Ross says: ‘The dream is to retire early and buy a mobile home and explore Europe in the warmer months with my partner Leanne and my dog.

‘I just want to future-proof myself. I’ve looked at my dad, who’s not particularly healthy at the moment. He worked until he was 68 and he wanted to do all these nice things with his retirement, but unfortunately he can’t because he’s not well enough. I don’t want to be like that.’

So is Ross’s savings plan realistic? We asked savings and investing experts to see if his strategy stacks up.

There is one big mistake that Ross is making, they warn. By investing into a stocks and shares Isa instead of a pension, he is shielding his returns from tax but also missing out hugely in other ways.

Savings expert James Blower, of Zopa Bank, says Ross should try to put more money into a private pension to get more benefit of tax relief on the contributions.

Anyone who contributes to a self-invested personal pension (Sipp) will receive tax relief at their marginal rate. In Ross’s case he would get an extra £20 paid into his Sipp for every £80 he saves. He could hold any investments he likes in this account.

When it comes to his hopes of setting aside £750,000, experts say this would be enough to retire on at 58. Guidelines that are widely used by the pensions industry suggest you need £546,360 in your pension to retire at age 55 and live a moderate lifestyle.

This would be enough money to draw an annual income of £32,700 and afford a fortnight in the Mediterranean every year and running costs for a three-year-old car, as well as a £59 weekly food shop.

The exact amount that Ross will need in retirement depends on how much he expects to spend while travelling around Europe.

But he will have an extra income from his teacher’s pension from age 68, which means he would be more than comfortable in retirement with this level of savings. He will need to spend more of his savings or have a leaner few years at the beginning of his retirement until his pensions kick in.

As for his investment strategy, experts warn Ross is leaving himself exposed. Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, said: ‘We’ve seen an extraordinary run for tech stocks over the past decade or so. There is a risk this gives certain investors the false impression that tech returns will always be outstanding.

‘There are growing concerns this is unsustainable and that a market correction is overdue.’

A benchmark that tracks the global stock market called the MSCI World returned 21.6 per cent in 2025 and 19.19 per cent in 2024, so it is possible to generate high returns with a wider spread of investments.

Are you planning to retire early? Tell us how you’ll do it: money@mailonsunday.co.uk