My golden years
Sport isn’t cheap... Steve Redgrave sat me down and said if we row together you get some of the sponsor money
Q What did your parents teach you about money? A To be careful and treat it with respect. My dad, Ewen, was a vicar and my mother, Jean, looked after me and my two sisters. While I never got the feeling that money was tight, we certainly weren’t rich. There was a sense that you have to be careful with money.
Q Who was in charge of household bills? A My mum. She is a saver and my dad is a spender. So I had a range of opinions on what I should do with my pocket money growing up.
Q How much pocket money did you receive? A It sounds so small, but I operated on 20p a week when I was six or seven years old. I was never interested in saving and bought comics and sweets – three sweets for a penny. That was quite a lot of sweets when you had 20p.
Q What was the first paid work you did? A When I was 18 I worked in a cake factory that made individually-wrapped fruit cake. I was in charge of the cutting machine and was paid £120 a week. It was great fun being on a production line, surrounded mostly by women who used to take the mickey, and it was a good job the year after I left school – before I started at Oxford University. But it put me off eating cakes.
Q How did you fit in time to go rowing? A I used to work from 8am until 4pm and then drive in my mother’s car from where I lived, in Portsmouth, to the Thames Valley, where I used to row. I’d train for hours, get home at 10.30pm, then start all over again the next day.
Q Have you ever struggled to make ends meet? A No. In my first year at university, where I was studying Geography, I got a chance to row with Steve Redgrave in a pair. Steve, with two gold medals, had a sponsorship deal and he sat me down and said: ‘Right, if we’re going to row together, you get some of the sponsorship money.’ I think I got about £4,000 in the first year from his sponsors, just because I was his partner. That was a big leg-up because then I didn’t have to think about working and earning in the holidays.
Q What was the money like when you rowed for Great Britain?
A Rowers don’t make a lot of money, but we had a sponsorship deal for Sydney 2000 worth £1million – but there were four of us and it was spread over four years.
Q Have you ever made silly money? A Oh yeah. I’ve done three or four commercials and they’re always well-paid because they’re not paying you for the time but for the endorsement of the product.
Q What’s the typical fee for a commercial? A It’s in the realm of £30,000 to £40,000. It might only take a day to film, but your time is not what they’re paying for.
Q What was the best year for money made? A I think it was 2004 or 2005 off the back of a fourth gold medal at the Olympics. I made a healthy six-figure sum.
Q What’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought yourself? A A BMW 6 series bought in 2007 for £30,000.
Q What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made? A Taking out an endowment mortgage in the early 1990s. It’s going to mature in two or three years at about 50 per cent of the amount it was supposed to reach.
Q And the best financial decision? A Bricks and mortar. I bought my first home – a two-bedroom house in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire – in 1993, when I was 22. I paid £45,000 and sold it for £100,000 in 1998. Then I bought another house in Henley – this time a three-bedroom house with a bathroom upstairs instead of downstairs – for more than £100,000. I’ve still got that place and rent it out – I’ve got a one-house property empire. It’s an asset that’s outstripped any savings or investments that I’ve ever had. It’s been really solid. I have made a couple of hundred thousand pounds I would have thought. I hesitate to have it valued as I don’t want to sell it.
Q Do you save into a pension or a tax-friendly Isa? A I have both. I’ve saved into a pension since my mid-20s and it seems to be doing quite well. I save £12,000 a year into it. The earlier you start, the better it is. I use up my maximum Isa allowance each year and invest in stocks and shares.
Q How actively do you manage your Isa investments? A I don’t play an active role. I don’t watch the prices go up and down every day. I tend to look at the Isa at the start of a tax year and see how it is doing every two or three months.
Q What is your approach to risk? A I’m risk averse. My portfolio of shares is diverse.
Q What do you think of the new pension freedoms at age 55? A I think they’re great. I’ve always disliked the idea of annuities. It’s restrictive to have to buy them especially as their value depends on when they were taken out.
Q Are you thinking of drawing down your pension at 55? A No. That’s a great problem to have but I don’t have it. I don’t plan to retire any time soon.
A Do you pay off your credit cards in full? A Yes. Credit card firms only make money out of people who don’t or can’t pay on time. I have a Coutts MasterCard. It gives me travel insurance and a concierge travel service.
Q How much cash do you typically carry? A I’ve got £30 and €45 in my wallet – I go to Europe quite a bit.
Q What’s your favourite little luxury? A Gin is my weakness and Hendrick’s is very good – it’s an interesting newish gin made in West London. It’s about £30 a bottle.
Q If you were Chancellor, what’s the first thing you’d do? A Drop the duty on a bottle of gin.
Q Do you think it’s important to give to charity? A Yes. I support a medical research charity for children, Sparks, with my money and my time. Time is what charities predominantly ask for in my case – turning up at events, dinners and corporate fundraisers. Without charities as a society we would be a lot worse off. There are lots of things that taxpayers’ money is not going to pay for.
Q What’s your number one financial priority? A To provide for our twin sons, who are nine this year, and our daughter, who is seven. I think you’d struggle to find any parent who’d say anything else. I’m not talking about saving money for them, just making sure they’re comfortable and well-brought up. That’s the key.
Q Do you prefer fame or fortune? A Fame is ludicrous. I’d go for fortune. People want to be famous for all sorts of odd reasons, but you can’t control fame.