There are few 50-somethings left in banking, corporate law and powerful managerial jobs, and there’s about to be one less. Most of us here have at least a few years before the big 5-0 hits, but even the spryest among us have recently been heard muttering about “getting older” and all that entails.

Enter Lucy Kellaway, the FT careers and office life columnist (our description, not hers) whose work we often highlight for our readers. A month ago, Kellaway was writing about the disappearance of 50-somethings from banking, finance and corporate law in London: “In about 200 bankers I could see only one person who seemed to be my age — and that was the chief executive. As I walked back through the City, I stared at the people going home: a sea of commuters in their twenties, thirties and forties.”

Today, she’s one of those disappearing 50-somethings — and writes that she wants you to disappear with her: Next summer, she will retire to become a teacher of trigonometry in an inner London school. She’s even gone so far as to create an NGO to encourage more of her peers to do the same.

“Not everyone thinks that’s a great idea,” she writes, “When I told my fellow columnist Gideon Rachman about it he looked at me in befuddlement. ‘Let me see if I’ve understood,’ he said, brow furrowed. ‘You are leaving a job you are good at, where you get money, praise, freedom, glamour and flexibility. You are swapping it for something that is less well paid, difficult, has no freedom, no glamour, is intensely stressful and you may be rubbish at it. Or am I missing something?’”

Not an FT subscriber? The Guardian has a bit more with no paywall.