There was no shortage of momentous events in 1997. It was 20 years ago that Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister on a wave of New Labour optimism, Britain handed Hong Kong back to China and Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris.
Less earth-shatteringly, the former Alliance & Leicester building society and the mutual insurance company Norwich Union both floated on the stock market. The rest of the world has probably forgotten, but it was great news for me: I happened to have savings in both, so I received a couple of hundred quid in free windfall shares.
Instead of splurging on a holiday, I decided to put them into a tax-efficient Personal Equity Plan, which for younger readers was a prehistoric version of a stocks and shares ISA. My plan was to re-invest the dividends and build up a portfolio over time.
At first, there was very little in the way of dividend to reinvest, just a few quid.
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