How long to earn a million pounds?

The old quip “Beer money, champagne taste” can be levelled at several acquaintances of mine – not least a good friend who lives in fine style for the present, but reacts like Dracula to sunlight when he hears the word ‘pension’. Jousting over our contrasting lifestyles – “You can’t take it with you!” comes his retort – reminds me of our different visions of what we can do with our money. After all, we will see a good deal of the stuff over our working lives. Research from the Prudential in 2014 reckoned that the average Brit would have earned a million pounds by age 46. 1 That made for a great headline back in the day. But in truth a million wasn’t what it used to be even then. And it certainly isn’t now, after several years of especially uppity inflation. For what it’s worth, Prudential calculated it’d take a man (I’m one of those) 28 years to notch up his millionth pound earned (assuming average wages for his age, starting at 18). But after those 28 years, a million would only be…