Three questions worth working out.
Not demonstrations. Change the inputs and the answer changes, because the arithmetic underneath is the real thing.
Compare two careers
Twenty years of total pay, side by side. Banking starts higher and climbs faster; actuarial and accountancy start lower and step up when the exams are passed.
- First career
- Second career
A model, not a survey. It starts from typical London entry pay, applies a growth rate that reflects how quickly that career normally progresses, and flattens towards a realistic senior ceiling. Real pay depends on the firm, the year and you — but the shape of each curve is the point. Eighteen of the forty-eight careers appear here: the ones with a researched starting figure and progression pattern. The rest are missing because inventing a curve for them would look more precise than it is, not because they matter less. Investment banking, sales and trading, quantitative analysis and economics were re-based in September 2026 against published London salary surveys; the other fourteen curves have not yet been through the same check, so compare shapes rather than reading the gap between two lines as a precise figure.
Compound growth
The gold line is what you end up with. The grey line is what you put in. Watch how much of the distance between them is created by the last ten years alone.
- Total value
- What you paid in
7% a year is a common long-run assumption for global shares before inflation. The chart is arithmetic, not a forecast: it compounds whatever rate you set. Real investment returns vary, can be negative for years at a time, and the amount taken out can be less than the amount paid in.
Risk against return
Every asset class plotted by how much it swings against the return it offers. The figures are illustrative, not measured. Hover any point; the dotted line is the trade-off they imply.
Hover, tap a point, or focus the chart and use the arrow keys.
Show these figures as a table
Illustrative teaching figures, not measured returns. They are rounded to show the shape of the relationship between risk and reward — that nothing sits in the top-left corner — rather than to report what any asset actually returned. Real returns arrive unevenly, vary enormously by period, and past performance does not indicate future results. For measured figures, the Barclays Equity Gilt Study and the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook (Dimson, Marsh and Staunton) publish long-run UK and global series.
Read it as a menu rather than a ranking. Nothing sits in the top-left corner — high return with low risk — because if it ever did, buyers would arrive until the price rose and the return fell back onto the line.
The numbers are rounded and illustrative: they are chosen to show the shape of the trade-off, not to report what any asset returned over any particular period. Crypto is included because people ask about it, and because it makes that shape obvious — far to the right, and not correspondingly far up.