Nischa Shah_ They_re Lying To You About Buying a House_ My 652510 Rule Built _200K Passive Income_(M4A_128K)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We put a lot of pressure on people today that
as soon as they start working, they need to get
onto that property ladder. But there's ways to build wealth
that don't require you to be in the real estate game,
including three numbers that everyone should know when it comes
to their personal finance sixty five, twenty fifteen. Just knowing
that creates a better life of yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Nichshe Shah is the former high profile investment banker turned
financial mentor whose content has helped millions rethink their relationship
with money.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Break free from crippling debts, and take the first steps
toward building lasting wealth. Everything is trying to pull you
away from your money, cost of living, going out, prices,
going up, fighting against marketing to keep your money in
your pocket. You earned this, so it's becoming harder and harder.
And I've gone through it there if I followed society's
version of money until I realized that if I continue
living this way, the freedom the choice options I want

(00:47):
aren't going to exist. Hold on, give you a second,
and I felt really trapped at times. I don't know
how to escape. And they know a lot of people
are probably hearing this and thinking I'm also in that place.
And so I really feel like my purpose is to
help as many people to go from feeling trapped to

(01:07):
freeing themselves and using money to do that. Wasn't expecting that. Okay,
so people are hungry for easy money tips and needs
to stay the same regardless of how much you earn.
So we can talk about the Peace of Mind Fund,
and doing that puts you ahead or fifty nine percent
of Americans. Then there's building your emergency buffer, and this
does more for your emotional well being than earning over

(01:30):
two hundred k. But with the way cost of living
is going, you cannot save your way to retirement. So
this is when you want to move on to investing.
That is the easiest way to make money. And my
principle with investing is very very simple, and it's just.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Listen to my regular listeners. I know you don't like
it when I ask you to subscribe at the start
of these conversations. I don't like saying I don't like
it being in there. None of us like it. It's frustrating.
Do you know what's also frustrating. It's also frustrating when
I go into the back end of the YouTube channel
and I see that fifty six percent of you that
frequently to this podcast haven't yet subscribed, and so many
if you don't even know that you haven't subscribed, because
I see in the comment section you say to me,

(02:06):
I didn't even realize I didn't subscribe, and that actually
fuels the show. It's basically like you're making a donation
to the show. So that's why I ask all the time,
because it enables us to build and build and build
and build, and we're going for the long term here.
So all i'd ask you is, if you've seen this
show before and you like it, help me, help my
team here, hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to
build this show for you. That's my promise. Thank you
to all of you guys that do subscribe means the

(02:27):
world to me. Let's get on with the show. Mecha,
shut with your YouTube channel, which has accumulated almost two
million subscribers in an incredibly short period of time. What
is the goal? What is the mission that you're on?
What is it you're trying to do?

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Money touches almost every part of our life and impact
so many choices, from where we choose to live, what
we choose to do for a living. What are weekends
even look like. So my mission is really sad. It's
take the complicated financial jargon and turn it into easy, practical,
actionable money tips up anyone can implement and understand, and.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
What kinds of people and what kinds of financial situations,
because obviously we've got millionaires on one end of the week,
people like me at eighteen years old that are struggling
to even get a couple of quid together to feed myself.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
The principles of money stay the same regardless of how
much you earn. And although my mission is to help
make money more accessible, the principles, the underlying thinking, the
mindset can be applied whether you're making fifty thousand, five
hundred thousand or more.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
And we don't really learn about money.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
We don't.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
We don't. Nobody in school was teaching me about money.
My parents didn't teach me about money growing up either.
So someone like you who can simplify some of these big,
complicated words or terms or strategies, I think is of
the moment, but also more needed now than ever, because
people are complaining about cost of living ices and prices
going up in inflation on all these kinds of things.

(04:04):
Is that what you're seeing.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Absolutely, and at the same time, it's becoming harder and
harder to save our hard earned money because everything, whether
it's marketing, whether it's needs going up, everything is trying
to pull you away from your money.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
And who are you.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
I'm a qualified accountant, so I studied finance at university initially,
then I qualified as a chartered accountant, and then I
spent nine years in banking.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
And do you think your sort of psychological or emotional
or I don't know, trauma response to money plays a
role in our relationship with money.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Absolutely, We definitely all have our unique relationship with money,
and a lot of it comes from our upbringing. It's
like an invisible backpack that we carry that we don't
even realize that we're carrying it, and it could be
fed through us through what we've experienced firsthand, or whether
we've just been on a fly on a wall hearing
a conversation between our parents, and what might feel invisible

(05:05):
at the time has such a big impact on the
way you see money, how you use it, how you
earn it, grow it, spend it, save it everything. But
that said, you can understand what to do to start
making it and turning it into your favor.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
What was your relationship like with money when you went
to university.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
I didn't understand what money meant to me, so I
followed society's version of money. So I bought all the
things to make me look better, all the things to
make my lifestyle look better. And I did that after
graduating for years and years and years. That was the
path that I followed for a very long time, until

(05:44):
I realized that if I continue living this way and
spending my money this way, the freedom, the choice options
I have or that I want aren't going to exist.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Was there like a catalystic moment where you realize that
or was it just an accumulated feeling.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
So for a long time, I believed in this blueprint,
go to school, get a job, climb the Laddin security
will follow. And I did that to the tea for
almost a decade. Nine years in banking, and I say
I was about halfway into my career where I was
me I met this amazing woman. She was basing my mentor,

(06:22):
and we were working on multi billion dollar transactions late
into the nights for weeks in a row at times,
and we were in the middle of one of the
largest deals that we've done, and overnight she lost her job.
Overnight she was made redundant, and the very next day
I was asked to replace her. And I remember thinking

(06:44):
at the time that this person believed in financial security,
this person believed in the blueprint, and it was taken
from her, and now in her shoes. What's to say
that the same won't happen to me? And that was
the first time I saw a crack in the system
and I realized, if you give someone else the power
to feed you, you're also giving them the power to

(07:06):
start you. And that's when I really understood, Okay, I
need to learn about money. I need to stop spending
it in the way that I'm spending it. I need
to stop having this mindset around money, because what it's
done right now is it's kind of trapped me. So
what I did is took it, took the power back
of my own hands, did everything I needed to learn
how to save, spend, invest budget and it came very
easily to me because I was in banking. It was

(07:29):
financial lingo and I could simplify it very easily for me.
And that's really where my mindset, or my change in
thinking around money changed, and that's the same moment where
I started my YouTube channel.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
Okay, that was it because a lot of people bury
their heads in the set. Sand I was looking at
some stats earlier on that said, the vast majority of
people just have this sort of avoidant relationship with their
financial situation, with financial literacy, with their bills, with their
bank statements. I mean, there's like long standing jokes from
the internet that people just to open their banking apps,
they just don't look at it.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah. Yeah, there's even a terminology for this, and it's
called the Ostrich effect, and it's a cognitive bias that
explains people will avoid looking at negative financial information because
of the fear of how it makes them feel. It's
the same reason why we don't check our bank account
after a night out, or we don't open there's a
pile of bills on our table and we don't check them.

(08:25):
But it's that thing avoiding it, thinking that oh, it's
just going to disappear if I don't look at it. It's
that thing that keeps you stuck. It's that a thing
that makes you realize, oh, I don't even know which
direction I'm going. It's a disorganized finances.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah. So if someone's listening to this right now and
they resonate with this idea, if they're slightly avoidant, they
don't really have a plan. They're kind of just they
get paid, they answer their bills, and then they wait
till the next payday. They're not being intentional with their money.
Is there a step one in taking back control?

Speaker 1 (08:56):
The very first thing, number one that I would say
to do is build a piece of mind.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Fund, a piece of mind fund.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
This is not about maths. It's not the mathematically optimal
thing to do, but it is the psychological because, as
you've discussed, money is as much about emotions as it
is about numbers. So what I'll say is, go through
the last thirty days of your bank statements and calculate
exactly how much it costs for one month of your living.

(09:29):
So mortgage, rent, utilities bills, minimum debt payments, car payments,
and whatever that total is. That's the amount that you
want to saved up for your piece of mind fund.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Okay, So I go through my lost thirty days of
my bills. I find out that it's cost me let's
say a thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Okay, that's one month of your core living expenses.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, so I need to save one thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
You don't need to investep. You don't need to save it.
You don't need to it's not for a holiday. The
reason why you want to save this is because when
life does what it does best, which is throw curveballs,
you want to make sure that you have a handled
If a boiler broke, breaks, your car dies on a
Monday morning. The last thing you want on top of
the stress of dealing with that thing is the financial

(10:13):
stress of how you're going to pay for it. That's
what this thing covers. It tells you I've got peace
of mind. Whatever life throws at me, I can handle it.
And saving that one month of living costs puts you
ahead or fifty nine percent of Americans and thirty percent
of people living in the UK. Fifty nine percent of
Americans unfortunately can't pay for a one thousand dollar expense,

(10:38):
and thirty percent of people in the UK can't cover
one month of the living expenses if something.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Happened is what is step two? In that regard?

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Step two, this is where we do move into the
mathematical optimal thing. This is you cut the financial bleeding, okay.
And what I mean by that is I get so many,
so many times you'll ask me, niche I have four
thousand and five thousand sitting in my bank account, what
should I do with it? And my first question back
to them is do you have any high interest rate debt?
Because if you have savings of two thousand dollars earning

(11:09):
four percent, but you also have credit card debt at
twenty percent, you're leaking money more than you're making it.
It's like pouring water into a bucket with holes in
it and wondering why it's not going to fill up.
So what you want to do is you want to
take all of your debt that you have, rank it
from highest to lowest in terms of interest in terms
of interest rate, and then everything above eight percent you

(11:30):
want to make minim payments across everything first, and everything
above eight percent. You want to throw your extra savings
into the highest interest rate first, to the debt with
the highest interest rate, and then move down in that order.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
An interest rate is that paid monthly or yearly.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
It's paid monthly, paid monthly.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
So if I have one thousand pounds loan on a
credit card and the interest rates ten percent. I'm paying
one hundred pounds.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Paid monthly over the year, they're going to pay one hundred,
but that's split out into monthly payments, assuming that they're
not drawing down more on that credit card.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Are you against credit cards?

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Credit cards are good if you're using them the right way,
really good if you're using them in the right way,
and that means the points that you're using, the rewards
that you get for it, the bonuses that you get
from it, or really helpful only if you're paying them
off in full every single month. If you're not using that,
or if you're not doing it in that way, which
is kind of what they want you to do, because
they want you to miss these payments because that's how

(12:24):
credit card companies make money. Are your missed payments. If
you're not doing that, then the benefits to stone weigh up. Okay,
it doesn't make sense use credit cards, but use it
in a way that stacks up in your favor, not
in the credit card company's favor.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
It's almost paradoxical that you'd use a credit card but
only if you can afford to use a credit card.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, you got to think about it.
Can I can I pay for this thing outright in cash?
If I can, then I could ship put it on
my credit card. And that's the anomally is property if
you're using it to make money healthcare, education, but for
anything else unless it's making you money. Yeah, that's the
way you want to think about it, because it does
encourage extra spending otherwise.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Okay, so I'm going to pay off my high interest.
That's first, with any spare cash that I have. Yeah,
what's number three?

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Number three is build your emergency buffer. Okay, so this
is your core living expenses that we've already calculated in
step one, and you want to times up by three.
If you are single, you have predictable income, or you
want to time that I six. If you are head

(13:29):
of household, you have a mortgage, you have unpredictable income.
That's your emergency cushion, and it protects you from the
bigger life things. It's the third thing you want to do.
It's protect you if you lose your job, if you
have a health scare, if there are dependents that you
need to care for. This kind of buys you that time.
But there's really interesting research from Vanguard that actually showed

(13:52):
saving three to six months of your living expenses does
more for your emotional well being than earning over two
hundred K.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
So just the peace of mind again, is.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
That breathing room. Yeah, three to six months of breathing
room in your bank account. It just moves the needle.
It's the peace of mind, is a security, it's a stability,
one of the core human needs. And it's interesting because
we're kind of looking at making more money and earning
more and we're chasing the next number, and actually the
thing that's going to have the biggest impact or move
the need on our financial wellbeing is at this stage

(14:26):
having that three to six months of living expenses saved up.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
It's all relative, right at the end of the day. So,
and it's incredibly stressful and I've been there when you
don't know if you can pay this month, when if
you don't know if you can feed yourself, but also
the sort of back of the mind knowledge that if
something were to happen, you'd be screwed. It's an incredibly
stressful way to live and you might not even realize
the stress consciously, but you might just feel it. It

(14:50):
might just be an angst in your life.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, and this applies at any income level, even people
earning six figures who are living paycheck to paycheck who
don't have that emergency buffer in place, they have that anxiety.
And also that same report showed that having that three
to six months with the people that they surveyed, their
productivity at work was better just from knowing that they
didn't have that financial stress.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
I know millionaires people that have a lot of money
that are in a similar position in the sense of
they are stressed and anxious because their overheads are also
in the millions every month, and there's a lot of
money coming in, but there's a lot of money going out,
so there's still sometimes just one or two months away
from being at zero. Yeah, it's a different type of
stress because their sort of subjective experience and a lifestyle

(15:33):
is better on a day to day But it's interesting
that it's really relative to your outgoing exactly. What's the
fourth point then, So I've got so far, I've got
have a piece of mind fund, which is one month's expenses.
Number two is payoff high interest rate debt. Number three
is build an emergency fund, which is three times your
monthly expenses. If you're single in six times. If you're

(15:55):
in a relationship and there's people depending on you.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, most people actual we stay here. A lot of
people just save, save, safe, safe, save, And I just
want to before we move on to step four, I
want to say that if you're saving, you only want
to save for one of two things. The emergency fund
on the piece of fund minds fund that we spoke about.
And the second thing is for any goals that you
have for the next five years, whether it's a house deposit,
carpa car deposit. Other than that, you don't want to

(16:20):
be saving that money. It's going to be the value
is going to be eaten away quicker with inflation if
you're just keeping it saved in a bank account. So
that's when you want to move on to step four,
and that is investing.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
Okay, So you don't want to save, you don't want
to oversave.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
You don't want to oversave. Know when to stop saving
and start investing.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
And when does one start investing in?

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Stop saving after they've saved a three to six months
of the living expensive Okay, that's the third step. At
that point, once they've done step one to three. This
is the point and the reason why I say this
sleeping is because if you start investing before you've got
from steps to one to three and you don't have
your saving set aside, and the market goes down and
you have an emergency, you're gonna have to pull that
money out at a loss, yeah, or you're gonna have

(17:04):
to go into debt, which is why that was step
two cut the financial bleed link. So it's really important
to have steps one to three done before you even
think about investing. Okay, those three to six months, it's
your core living expenses. So it's forget all you're spending
on the things that you love or the things that
might make life good. It's just the things that you

(17:24):
need to absolutely survive because if you do lose your job,
you're not gonna be out partying and spending loads of money.
You're gonna think, Okay, how do I pay my bills
for the next three months? How do I survive for
the next month. That's the thing that's going to cover
that off, Okay.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Right, Yeah, So it's not like the season ticket at
Manchester United or the Leuviton Jackets. It's just you're you're
heating your bills, your food survival. Yeah, So number four
is investing.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Number four is investing for a while. We've heard of
the phrase save for retirement. Yeah, saving for retirement. You
cannot save your way to retirement with the way cost
of living is going, with the way inflation is going,
with the price retirement is going to cost by the
time you get there, saving is just not enough. You
have to be investing your money. And there are two

(18:13):
main ways that you can invest. But before I even
say that, most people know that they should be investing,
but they don't do it. They say I'll do it
tomorrow or next week or next year, or when I'm
rich or when I'm rich, and then by the time
they do start, they've missed out on the most powerful
lever that they had going for them, which is time.
That is one of the most important things when it

(18:35):
comes to investing because of the way when you start
investing with small recurring amounts, it just compounds over time.
So early often when it comes to investing, there's two
avenues to invest through. The first is through your employer
sponsored retirement account and the second is through your own
individual tax advantaged to account.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
What are those two things?

Speaker 1 (18:59):
The first is done through your employer, so what they
do is they invest on behalf of you. In the UK,
you're automatically enrolled into it. In the US, you'll have
to check with your HR and get yourself enrolled into that.
And what this stares is your company before it pays
you or puts money into a bank account, it takes
a small percentage you could decide how much, and it
puts it towards investments for you on behalf of you

(19:22):
pre tax, so you're not paying tax on that amount
you're putting into an investment account, and then that money
is compounding for you pre tax.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Do all employees do this?

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Most employees do it. Not all employees do it. And
some employers have a match, which means if you put
some money in, they will also match that amount that
you're putting in.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
How do I know if my employee does this?

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Check with your HR and is there a cap? There
is a cap to how much they will match. Yeah,
so say if they match up to three percent, then
you want to put in the three percent, But then
you could keep going. But at this stage you don't
even need to go over the match. At this point
of the steps, you just want to put in enough
to meet that match because you're getting the tax an affair,
and then you're also getting free money from your sponsored

(20:03):
plan on top of that. You don't want to leave
that on the table.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
And when can I pull that money out?

Speaker 1 (20:08):
When youre retirement? So this is for your retirement. You're
looking after your future self. Is today's you planting seeds
for future you? That's what this is about.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
What about people that say, listen, retirement's a long way away. Yeah,
you know, I'm going to be what sixty five, seventy five,
It's just a long way away. I want to live
a good I want to live it up now.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Sure. I don't want to be putting money in a
box that I can't open.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
For fifty years and you want to spend the money now?
Just live the good life.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
I The most important thing when it comes to money
is understanding what you want and then making sure your
money backs those decisions. And I say this because when
I was in the graduate scheme, there were two very
different people who worked in my team. And the first
person who sat opposite me on the bank of seats
in front of me, he used to come in in
his ferrari and he on Monday morning when we're talking

(20:59):
about what we did are wed, what we did on
the weekend, he'll talk about the Michelin Star restaurants. He
tried the last minute trip to Italy and his computer
screen was the next car that he wanted. And on
my left was Phil, who later became my mentor, and
he came in with his pack lunch. He wore the
same shirt Tai Combo that I could probably remember and
sketch up from memory. And he had his holidays. He

(21:22):
had his vacations, but he was not more selective about them.
And I didn't see it at the time, but now
it is so clear to me that they were chasing
very different things. The person opposite me, he was chasing
this good life, this stories, the status, the memories, and
that was important to him and he went for it.
But Phil and I visited him just before I came

(21:45):
to La him his wife, his two kids, dogs in
their countryside home, and he was enjoying the retired life.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
He was.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Loving life. He bought what he wanted, which was early retirement, freedom,
time choice. Neither path is wrong, but both paths both
people required taking a series of trade offs. Both had
to make some sacrifices, and I think that's the thing
that people miss Sometimes it's so easy to say yes

(22:15):
to the thing right in front of you because the
benefit is there. The benefit is the media. You don't
realize what you're going to miss out on later on
the life.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
So the guy that was set up posite you with
the Ferrari, what was the trade offs he was making.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
He was probably going to be end up working for
the until he had retirement money to spend. He was
going to spend his life at banking, but he was
going to live it big. But he wouldn't have the
freedom the choice the time because his spending and his
income matched each other. And So what I want to
just say is for anyone saying, oh I just want
to live it big, I want to enjoy the money,

(22:48):
find out what is the thing that's most important to
you and make sure your money choice is stack that decision,
because the wrong choice isn't choosing the wrong path, it's
just not knowing that you even had a choice in
this whole thing.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Do you think the guy that's opposite you with the
Ferrari was in any way insecure? Was there an element
of seeking validation?

Speaker 1 (23:10):
There might have been, Yeah, there might have been that
might have been what made him happy. But I think
it's also not having the self awareness to if that
made him happy, then by all means, but if it
didn't make him happy. And a lot of people do this,
do this me included, I've gone through this. I've done it.
When you don't know what makes you happy, you end
up just doing things that gets you the external validation.

(23:31):
And for some people it might mean, Okay, you know what,
I actually do enjoy this new car. It does bring
me happiness. But for others it might just be a facade.
And later on they later on in life, they just
realized that actually no one really cared. The only person
who cared was me. And although I did it for
other people, it's now I realize that all the trade
offs I had to make as a result of.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
It, because happiness and external validation. They're like cousins, but
they're not the same guy, do you know what I mean?
They're like they look they're kind of like of the
same family, but one of them's the like dysfunctional sibling,
but they kind of look the same. You know that
guy is in his ferrari, you go on, must be happy,
and he comes in and he's probably got a smile

(24:12):
in his face because he's talking about his ferrari.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah yeah, and that's what he's built himself on.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
I guess, but I don't know if that's happiness. You know,
the guy without the ferrari might be.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
I think universally most people what they want is the
freedom and the choice of the time. I think more
people are after that, and that can make more people
happier than any state. Is simple because when you do
end up going down the route of buying something to
make you happy, you're on a hedonic treadmill. You're then

(24:42):
buying the next thing and the next thing and the
next thing, and you get those spikes of happiness. The
never is really long lasting, fulfilling happiness.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
So investing strategy number one is asking your employer about
their investment scheme.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Finding out if your employee has yet of retirement plan,
and making sure that you're invested into it enough to
cover the match that they offer.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
What's strategy number two?

Speaker 1 (25:05):
The strategy number two is your own individual tax advantaged
investment account. This is a ISA in the UK, and
this is where you put your own money after tax
into an investment account and then the money grows over
time tax free. So when you pull it out at
the end, you could with the UK, you could pull

(25:26):
out in five years and ten years or in retirement
then you could withdraw that money tax free. So both
of them have tax advantages. One is when you put
the money in, you're getting the tax of ranchers. The
other ones when you draw the money out. But they
both have taxi ranchers, and so you're putting the money
in and it's growing tax free. That's really a big deal.
That's huge. That's money that's compounding for you and you're
not paying tax on that.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
But there's a limit.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
There's a limit annually. It's twenty thousand, but in the
UK it changes year on year. At the moment, I
believe at seven thousand dollars. But with a quick Google
search you could stay on top of whatever the current
limit is for the account or the taxbile advantage account
that you're investing in so I get.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Paid I put it into. In the UK, it's called
an iSER and the limit is twenty k. So if
I put twenty k in, let's say if it goes
to a one hundred k because the investments go really well,
is the whole one hundred k tax. Three.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, you're not paying capital gains tax, you're not paying
interest sorry, dividends tax.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
So pretty much that's the first place everyone should really
be investing if they want an alternative to investing in
their pension.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, that's the first thing you want to cap out
because of the tax will benefits that come with it.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Is it called a roth IRA in the US, that's right,
says max contribution is seven thousand to eight thousand dollars
a year if you're fifty year older.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, the specific amounts depending on who you are where
you are.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
YAH. Standard eployee contribution limit of twenty three thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Interesting, whereas in the UK is just a flat twenty
thousand is.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
The current And with my iSER, this tax free, so
that everyone is eligible to invest in. Do I then
have to pick the things it invests in?

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yes, okay, this is the next Oh we could talk
about this now. Actually. Yeah, So when you are deciding
what to invest in, this is with the employee sponsor
that account, the employee sponsor retirem account. You actually just
choose what risk profile you have and they will do
that investing for you.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
So you'll say I feel really risky or I'm not
very risky at all.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, and it does it for you, and it does
it will invest on behalf of you. And some of
people don't even realize that they're investing, but they are
investing through their company if they have that employer a
sponsored plan. Then the individual account is you doing the
investing yourself. You're picking what to invest in.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, and what should I invest in.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
My principle with investing is very, very simple, and it's
just keep it, keep it simple, and do it for
the long term. So I say index funds and target
date retirement funds is what you want to invest in.
What's that an index? Funders put out an index. Think
of it as a list of companies. So the S
and P five hundred is a list of the largest

(28:04):
the top five hundred companies. To keep this really simple,
for Z one hundred is the top one hundred companies
on the London Stock Exchange. The fund is a pot
of money that invests in the companies on that list.
So by investing in an S and P five hundred,
you've invested in a small piece of the top five

(28:24):
hundred companies in the US. That's what an index fund
is and so even if one company goes down, you're diversified,
and so there'll be another company that will and the
other companies will bring it back up again.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
And what kind of performance can I expect from investing
in the S and P five hundred?

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Historically speaking, the long term average has been eight to
ten percent per year, depending on the years and the
timeframe that you're looking at. That is different to a
one year holding period. It could go up, it could
go down. You just don't know. So the longer you
invest for the chances of you getting that eight to
ten percent on average increase.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Is eight to ten percent going to make me rich?

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Though, Nisha, how long you're doing it for? You tell
me if you have a lump some amount that you're like, okay,
you know what, I have two thousand that I want
to invest. What should I deal with that? It was
taking me five years to invest this, I would say
one thy nine hundred of that, don't invest it. One
hundred of it invest I'll say, why I'm saying this

(29:28):
one hundred I want you to invest it. For anyone listening,
I want you to listen. I want you to invest
that because I want you to see and feel the
emotions when you see your money go up over time. Sure,
it's going to be small, it's not going to make
you rich investing that, but you're going to instill that
good habit early on, and you're going to remember that

(29:49):
because the remaining amount, you're going to put that towards
increasing your income. That's the first thing you're going to do.
Think of your income as a river specific milestones, life
milestones as buckets across the river. So your retirement, you
have your house deposit, you have your car payment that
you're a saving up for. Those buckets will fill up faster.

(30:13):
The quicker and wider that river is. That is your
income that's coming through. If you don't have much of
an income coming through, those buckets going to take ages
to fill up. That's why I say, if it's taken
you a long time to save that amount, I actually
would recommend you putting that money towards increasing your income
first before investing it. If, however, you have disposable income,

(30:33):
you have a reoccurring amount that you can invest monthly,
use that to your advantage. Harness the power of long
term compounding growth, because that is the thing that is
going to.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Make you rich.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Sure, it will take twenty five thirty years, but that
is leverage that you don't get through your day job.
It's your money working for you without you having to
be there.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
So you would suggest, if you're really at that early level,
to focus on increasing your income, investing in increasing your income.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, that's the first thing. If you're figuring out, Okay,
I need to increase my income. It's taking me a
while to earn this amount and I only have a
lump sum of two thousand and five thousand. Focus on
increasing your income. Yeah, that's what I would say.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
And how does one focus on increasing their income.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
There are a couple of ways to do this. So
the easiest way to increase your income is asking for
a pay rise, increasing your responsibility, the work that you do,
your contributions, and saying to your boss and your manager,
this is the value that I thought, this is the
responsibility out there I've taken on. This is what the

(31:37):
market is paying for a similar role, and this is
why a pay rise is fair. The other option, did
you ever ask for a pay rise multiple times? Multiple
multiple times when.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
You're in investment banking.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, it's one of those things where if you don't ask,
you don't get. Of course you'll get, but you sitting
there and thinking the whole work is going to show
without you asking for it, it's unlikely. It's going to
have to build a case and say, Okay, these are
the things that I've done. This is the things that

(32:11):
we said we were going to do, or I wanted
to work on in my performance review, which is what
I had got to the end of the performance review,
and these are the things that I actually did, and
this is where I went above and beyond.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
So if I'm your boss, Niche, yeah, if we just
replay one of those conversations you had, you were sat
in a performance review, and what did you say to me, I.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Would say, Hey, Steven, Hey, three months ago or six
months ago, we spoke about the things that I needed
to do to get promoted or to get a pay rise,
and we mentioned X, Y Z, and I've done all
of those things here and here is the feedback that
I've got. Here is where I've gone above and beyond.

(32:52):
And this is some extra things that other people are
the three sixty feedback that I've done, and that this
is what it says. Yeah, and that's when I'll say
do you think that this is the bracket that we've discussed.
Do you think that's fair?

Speaker 3 (33:05):
Research shows that women are much less likely to ask
for a pay rise, and when they do, they are
less likely to get one compared to men. Is that
kind of what you found.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, I've seen those facts, and I think it's really
such a shame that when a woman ask for a
pay rise it may not be seen in the same
way as when a male counterpart asked for the pay rise.
And the fact is that we can control are the
being prepared, having the book of all the things that

(33:37):
you've done, but I recommend and this is things that
I've done when I was an organization or when I
felt like even I was being paid less than my
male counterpart. Is speaking. Firstly, if there's a HR team
in your department, speaking to them and asking am I
online or am I aligned to the average for my
department and for what my role is, they could give

(33:59):
you a really good guy align as to whether you
are underpaid or whether you deserve a bump to be
more aligned to the general pay in that role. And
the second thing is have an ally or have someone
in your workplace that you'd always speak to whether it's
a mentor whether it's a colleague, and it's worth always
speaking to other people about money. It's such a taboo topic.

(34:23):
We hate talking to someone else about their salary, what
they're making. But the more financial transparency that we encourage,
the more we can learn from each other. Openly ask
the person next to you, Hey, this is what do
you get paid? As much as hard as that is,
open up that conversation. But the other way to increase
your income is actually through switching jobs, switching companies, because

(34:48):
there's so much research that's been done, and the most
popular one is actually one cited by Forbes that says
people who stay at the same company for two years
or more on average and fifty percent less over their lifetime.
And I've made a video on my salary year by

(35:10):
year over the last over the nine years I spent
in banking, and the biggest pay jumps that I saw
or from switching companies. So those are the two ways
that I would actually say, yeah, increase your income by
asking for more by switching.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
I do think one of the most effective ways that
I've seen as well is just looking at the industry
as well and presenting a case from the industry, and
people have done that to me several times. They've over
the last ten years, they've come to me and said,
the industry pay for my role and my seniority level
in this part of the world, in this city. Is
this I'm currently on, this is coming out a conversation

(35:49):
about about this to rectify it. And I can't think
of an instance where I haven't been receptive to that,
especially if it's justified, you know, because actually, sometimes the
employer doesn't know. The employer doesn't know that they might
be underpaying you. That's a genuine possibility. I know that
sounds like crazy talk, but sometimes employers don't know because
a lot of roles that we're hiring for these days

(36:09):
are new roles. They're not roles that existed ten years ago.
Even in podcasting, like there's it's hard to find benchmarks
for what people were paid in podcasting ten years ago
for different roles that now exist in our industry. So
it's worth having an honest conversation, and I do think,
I do think from the employer's standpoint, it's worth leading
with the value that you've brought, like you said, versus

(36:35):
blunt demands. Because humans are human beings, and you can
turn someone's nose up or their backup by the way
in which you deliver your message, but delivering it from
an evidence based perspective and saying these are the kind
of the accomplishments that I've made, and these are the
responsibilities I've taken on, and this is like the industry average.
And I love being here and I want to stay here.

(36:56):
So I was wondering if it would be posible to
have a conversation about my style. I'd received that very
very well.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
And even aligning it to your company's objectives. This is
what was doing. Yeah, exactly, here is what I've done,
aligned to your objectives that you're looking for. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
And you talked about saving for a house as well.
Is do you see buying a house as a good
investment because it is the first thing most people do, right,
It's like the first thing we're told is part of
the script of life. When you get some money, save
it up, get a mortgage.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
A lot of our view about buying or renting or
buying a house is actually formed from what we saw
our parents do and what we saw the generation before
us do. And so even looking at my life formed
from the way my parents thought. They came to the
UK as immigrants and when they bought their first house,

(37:50):
it was like the epitome of success. They had this
thing that they can that represented well for them, that
they can touch, they can see, they can feel, it
represents a stability, security. And then when we moved out
of that terraced home into another home, it was between
two stations in a catchment area, so me and my

(38:12):
sister's got access to better schools. That was then their happiness.
That was then their goal and the mass stone achieved
and for the previous generation and still the way people
see it today when people say, oh, we need to
build buy a house for wealth building is because a
big factor of it is that it was a forced

(38:35):
mechanism of saving. So when you're buying a house or
paying for a mortgage, that's not optional. You have to
pay it. You then can't then spend that money on
anything else, and so as a result, those monthly payments
are going towards building your equity and building this house's value,
and as a byproduct, is building wealth for you. So

(38:59):
for someone listening to this, if they're hearing this conversation,
they say, okay, you know what, I have a goal
to buy and they run the numbers. It makes sense
for them. They're doing it for the long term. Then
I'll say that's a really good goal to have, go
for it. But I think we put a lot of
pressure on people today that they need to buy a
house and as soon as they start working that they

(39:21):
need to get onto that property ladder. So if you're
listening to this and thinking that I don't have a
goal to buy a house, then there are also ways
to build wealth that don't require you to be in
the real estate game.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
I think there's something psychological about paying rent that you
never see again that makes you think that it's a
terrible idea. Yeah, And sometimes when you look at the
mortgage payment versus the rental payment, you go, well, they're
the same, Yeah, and I'll end up owning this chunk
of concrete, so I might as well go for the
chunk of concrete.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah. But if you are choosing to rent, and actually
there's been studies that's on there almost nine out of
twelve regions in the UK, and the same applies for
other areas in the world as well. It's renting is
or can be cheaper than buying in that equivalent neighborhood.
And so if you are renting and you're saving money
on that difference, then you've got to be disciplined and

(40:11):
sensible enough to know that you need to invest the difference.
What do you mean, So if your rent is fifteen
hundred and to get that mortgage, and you've checked the
mortgage payments and you've realized that with the interest that
you're going to be paying on the mortgage, all the
other things that come into buying a house, so the
stamp duty that you're paying, the property tax, the repairs,

(40:31):
the maintenance insurance. If you factor in the cost of both,
and you do run the numbers and you say, if
you're renting is cheaper than buying than getting a home,
that difference is what you want to be able to invest.
It's kind of a way for you to say, I'm
creating my own forced mechanism of saving. This is my
own version of a mortgage. I'm the man I'm saving.

(40:53):
I'm going to set up on an investment account and
I'm going to automate it, and I'm going to put
money into it every single month, and that's where you're
going to build wealth. That's just as legitimate. And actually
I went onto the property letter and the money that
I put in towards that flat hasn't grown as near
as much as the money that I made through the stock.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Market by investing in the SMP. Friend, So tell me
about that. So you bought a property in London.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Or yeah, in North London to live in, Okay, and
I bought it in twenty seventeen, ok Yeah, and it's
gone up in value I'd say about ten percent. Okay,
I've had about eight years. Then you compare that to
the stock market. So sure, there's a number side of

(41:42):
it where people think, Okay, I need to buy a
house to build wealth. But that's what I'm trying to
explain that actually, if you save that money and you
invested it, you might be better off financially. But coming
back to your point, yes, there's that psychological thing of Okay,
do I want to pay that money on rent or
do I want to buy the other psychology good part
of it is also the comfort of knowing that you

(42:04):
have somewhere, and this is a big reason as to
why I bought the comfort of knowing that, no matter
what happens, you have this place it's yours, the landlord
concerve you. Notice, you can do whatever you want to
the flat within certain restrictions and rules, and you have
this piece of earth that belongs to you. And so
that's a psychological comfort that came from it. Sure, we

(42:26):
could talk about the numbers and what investing will do
and how much you can make on that, but the
bit that often gets forgotten about is the invisible side,
which is the peace of mind, the psychological comfort of
just owning home.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
So can I ask how much did your apartment cost
in London? Five thirty So you spent five hundred and
thirty k on it? Yeah, presumably on like a mortgage
or something at the time.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, I was on a mortgage, so.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
Five hundred and thirty k. It's gone at ten percent.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah, it's gone up about fifty K fifty K, so it's.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Now worth five eighty. But if you'd put that amount
of money into.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
The s and P five hundred, Well, the thing was
the house and a flat is you could use the mortgage.
You wouldn't put that full amount in it because you
had the mortgage, but if you put that deposit amount
into it, Yeah, the deposit AMOUNTAE, Yeah, the amount that
you would have put on the down payment the stamp
duty that I would have also paid. If I say
that amount and then put that amount whatever it was
and invested that, that's the comparison that I would have made.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
So how much was that INTEL that you paid into
the property?

Speaker 1 (43:33):
I put about fifty I think K.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Fifty K, and probably the net return on that it's
got ten percent. Yeah, so fifty five k in the
S and P five hundred in the same time has
delivered roughly ten to twelve percent per year on average.
It has more than doubled in value since twenty seventeen,

(44:01):
So you would have probably got pretty incredible return on
the S and P five hundred. Even in the last
five years, the S and P five hundred has grown
ninety percent.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
So it's almost doubled in the last five years alone,
which which means you would have basically doubled your money
just investing in an index fund.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Are you looking at that from the loads of the COVID.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
Yeah, it says even with the COVID loads, it's so
it's more than doubled in value since twenty seventeen, driven
by strong growth and technology. Despite the COVID crash and
twenty twenty two pullback.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Y case in point that were we're looking at building
wealth just through one mechanism that feels like it's urgent
and needs to be done by everyone, But actually, if
you're looking at it purely former numbers and building wealth perspective,
there are other ways to do that.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
My brother is was an investment banker. He now works
full time helping with my money and helping my companies.
He went to LSSI. He's very smart guy. He's always
been like the buffing in the family. He always talked
to me about this opportunity cost. So when I told him,
I said I want to buy this house in Cape Town,
he was like, yeah, this is going to cost you

(45:09):
X millions. Think about the opportunity cost. Yeah, And he
always every time I want to do this, he's like,
think about the opportunity cost. And he basically stands in
the way of it. What is opportunity cost? And why
should people be thinking about this when they're spending their money.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
So every pound of dollar that we spend is one
less that we could use on something else, and that
is the opportunity cost in essence, and we often don't
think about life in terms of opportunity costs because we
only look at the thing that is in front of us.
So rather was telling you about how you can make
more money investing somewhere else. But what you saw is

(45:46):
this one thing in front of you, and you thought, no,
I don't even know if I'm going to make this
money elsewhere. I don't know if that's going to happen.
This thing is right in front of me. And that's
the thing with the opportunity cost is always a trade
off of what you can see and what you can't see.
But with every decision you make, something else that you're
saying no to is coming at the cost of something else.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
I was thinking about that as you were talking, and
just to give a bit of color to this for
people at home, and a good example of opportunity cost
So like yesterday I bought lunch for the team, right,
and the lunch cost one hundred dollars. It was like
the salad bar in Los Angeles cost me one hundred dollars. Fine,
hundred dollars, who cares? But then when I think about
the numbers you shared earlier on if I'd taken that

(46:23):
hundred dollars and put it into the s and P
five hundred in forty years, assuming I got ten percent
return to you, which is like the average of the SMP,
that is almost five thousand dollars. So in terms of
opportunity cost, buying the team lunch for one hundred dollars
has effectively cost me in opportunity five thousand dollars that
I would have had presuming that return in forty years

(46:44):
from now, So that lunch yesterday actually costs me potentially
roughly five thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, And I guess.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
For you it's that's the last time the team again.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
But on the other side, you might have missed out
on how the team felt going to that lunch and
the inversible benefits that you might have got from that,
whether it was just the memories at that moment in time,
whether it's the motivation, whether it's the culture that you're
bringing in. That's the thing that you might miss out
on if you choose that five thousand dollars in xs
of time.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
And I guess it's a balancing actor as well. Like
you know, I was thinking about the guy you mentioned
with a Ferrari and if he were to die today,
one could argue that in fact, he played life correctly
absolutely because he saw it, he did it. And this
is I think the difference you see in people. Some
people have that long term view when you think, no,
I want my money when I'm sixty five or seventy

(47:35):
in my pension fund, and other people play a bit
more short term in their life and go, I just
want to have good experiences now. And so it's hard
to understand who's right because we don't know how this
story ends.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
I guess yeah, and I think there's a fine line.
But there's also a way to balance living in the
press that we're planning for the future by understanding that
you are going to allocate a specific amount of the
money that comes in towards the here and now, and
then the rest you are going to look used towards
the future you. Because there's something very rewarding about spending

(48:05):
now when you know the future you has already been
looked after. It makes you want to spend it without thinking, oh,
what is this coming at the opportunity cost of Do.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
You think people should buy a house if their objective
is to make money, or do you think there are
other opportunities like the s and P five hundred, like
using your tax free ISA.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
A lot of people listening probably don't have or on
their way to building a deposit or working the way
to have the money for a deposit. If they're putting
themselves under pressure and they think that they're just buying
a house to build wealth, I would say, actually look
into investing through that stocks and Shares ISA as a
start that is tax free if you haven't even started

(48:48):
investing through that stocks and Shares IA, which by the way,
seventy five percent roughly of people in the UK aren't investing,
So yeah, I would definitely say open that up first.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
And do you think one should split a proportion of
their investments into different categories of risk because you've got
like crypto on the one side of it, which sometimes
feel like being at roulette table, and then you've got
things that are typically safe like this SMP five hundred.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Yeah, I'm gonna say with the stocks and shares actually
when you invest in and a lot of people also
want to invest in crypto, but they also want to
invest in individual stocks as well. Should I go after
the next big winning company stock? Should I invest in
the stock? What I want to say is that there's
two parts to think about, the returns but also the
behavioral concepts, how you feel when it comes to investing,

(49:38):
because you're one of the biggest impacts on market performance
is your contributions, but also your behavior. So Fidelity did
a re found that people who who invested in funds

(50:04):
underperformed the fund that they were in. It sounds impossible,
it sounds ridiculous. It sounds impossible. How can you be
underperforming a fund that you're in. But then when they
looked into it, they found that when fear and anxiety
takoba or when the market dropped, these people bought, sold, bought, sold.
They essentially danced in and out of the fund as

(50:24):
a result, underperforming that the fund that they were already.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Holding because when it went down they sold.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Yeah, when it went down, they sold. When they went up,
they bought. And so what you want to do is
you want to invest in something that makes you buy
and hold. Fidelity looked into the groups of people that
had invested in their funds to see which group performed
the best, and when they looked into it, they found
one group significantly outperformed all other groups when it came

(50:51):
to investment returns, and that was dead people. Dead people
outperformed the living when it came to investment returns because
they didn't touch their investment account. They just set it,
forget it. They didn't chase the next company stock, they
didn't go after the thing that's going to go up
really quickly and down really quickly. And that all ties

(51:12):
into the behavior. You're not letting your emotions drive the investments.
And by the way, they found out, the second best
performing group were the people who forgot that they had
a fund in the first place. So when it comes
to deciding what allocation you want your portfolio to be,
it's understanding, okay, what is going to give you the returns,
but also what is the thing that's going to help
you stay the course even when the market goes and drops.

(51:37):
What will make you feel like, Okay, I could still
stay and hold my position. That's how to decide what
kind of percentage portfolio you want for yourself, and I've
done that with my portfolios. With crypto, it's less than
two percent of my overall portfolio. I've invested the amount
that I feel like it won't make a difference if
I lose it, and if it goes to the moon. Great.

(51:58):
And that's how when I say somewhere here, the last
thing I want to do is encourage people before they've
even set up the financial foundations to invest in something
that can go up and come go down. When seventy
five percent of the population isn't investing. And the reason
why they're not investing is because, and I keep hearing
this from time and time again from the people I

(52:18):
speak to, is either they're really scared that Lou're going
to lose money or they don't know where to start.
And so when it comes to losing money, I always say,
do the foundations first, set up your portfolio there, and
then move on to speculative assets should you want to
go down that path.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
I remember the first time I invested, and I downloaded
this app and I put some money in there, and
then I watched it, and I was watching it so much,
and it was going up and down and up and down,
and like three four months later, I sold it and
I didn't really make it. I think I lost a
a couple of hundred quid or whatever. And then I
watched that same investment over the next five six, seven years.
Just go to the moon. Yeah, it went up, and

(52:58):
I remember thinking, I like, I should have just kept
it in. And then the best investment I ever made
correlates to what you were saying, because I lost my password,
I like lost the password to log in. Yeah, and
so I couldn't do anything about it anyway, And I
watched it and it went down and up and down
and up and down and up. But over five years
it went really really high. And so when I first
started investing in crypto and I invested in etherorem and

(53:18):
now Bitcoin, my strategy was the same. My strategy was
get the private cues and give half of them to
one person that I trust and half of them to
other person that I trust, and even if I want to,
I can't do anything about it. And that's proven to
be one of my greatest returns in investing because I
just I don't even know what's going on with it.
I'm not paying attention.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Yeah, and that's the thing. You've just taken the motions
out of the equation. Yeah, there's no fear, greed, there's
nothing else that controls your financial decisions other than logic.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
I think actually, on that first investment I made, when
I was like, must have been at my early twenties.
I needed the money, like I didn't have the emergency
fund or a piece of mind fund. So when it
started to go down a little bit, naturally you kind
of panic. I think in that the second season of
Life Forere, I started investing in etherorem in bitcoin. It
didn't really matter if I lost the money, So it
made it easier to hold my nerves. And I think

(54:07):
nerves are such a huge part of investing. It goes
to what you said earlier, like it's worth taking one
hundred dollars or one hundred pounds or whatever you can,
which is a really inconsequential number of money and putting
it into some kind of S and P five hundred
or even a stock, just to feel that almost to
like train your psychology and emotions of like what the
ups feel like and what the down feel like.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
So your investment strategy, your portfolio, you mentioned it.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
There, Yeah, what does it look like. It's forty funds, Okay,
what kind of funds? Index funds, the S and P
five hundred. I also do international markets a UK, so
emerging developed across all sectors. I also do, and I
keep it very very diversified s and P five hundred

(54:51):
target date retirement plants that automatically rebalance. So target date
retirement band for anyone who's listening and wondering what it is,
it's eventually a fund that has different types of investments
within it. So you could go on to a platform
of your choice that you use to invest and you
could type in target day retirement fund And at the

(55:13):
end of every fund will have a year, and so
you want to pick the year that is the closest
to the year that you plan to retire. So if
you plan to for time twenty fifty, that's the year
that you'll pick. And what that fund does is it
rebalances and the the percentage of different investments changes to

(55:35):
become more conservative as you approach retirement.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
So it starts to protect you a little bit more exactly,
so it goes risk off, it kind of goes less risky.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Well, it becomes less risky because you don't want to
be investing the same when you don't have that much
time as you if you're investing in your twenties thirties,
you have enough time to ride out the stock market waves.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
So that's forty percent of your portfolio.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
That's thirty percent is real estate.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Okay, in all parts of the world, No.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Just from the UK, just Uka. Then I'll say about
twenty five percent I'm putting back into my business at
the moment, and then the remaining is between crypto and
at cash, cash and cash reserves.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Ok what about investing in yourself because because you know,
we think about education and skills and stuff like that,
should we be investing a small amount of money into
ourselves and some.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Capacity one hundred percent? I think you just don't stop
investing in yourself at any point in time. It goes
down to increasing your income, increasing your skills, increasing your value,
which then has a knock and effect on everything else
that you're investing into.

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you made a video about forty books that you've read
that improve your own financial literacy. If there was one
book that you recommend people to read that you think
is most accessible and will advance their financial literacy in

(57:50):
the most profound way that did that for you, what
book would you recommend?

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It's not actually
about financial literacy, but it's around money mindset. And the
other book to start with when it comes to financial
literacy is also the Richest Man in Babylon. When people
don't learn about money is because they find it quite
boring and not very interesting. So The Richest Man in

(58:16):
Babylon does a good job and intertwining a novel into
financial literacy concepts.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
I've not read that book. I've heard a lot about it, though.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
It's the underlying principles when it comes to money don't
really change much, and it really starts at the basics
when it comes to saving and spending. So it's a
good starting point.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Are there any other principles of building wealth that we
haven't talked about? I mean, we haven't talked about payday routines,
but I've had you talk at length about what we
should do when we get paid every single month. Some
of the things we've talked about already, like knowing your
reference point, which is was point one, right, that.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Was your peace of mind fund. I guess knowing your
reference point is essentially just understanding where your finances break
down and what buckets they fall into. So I would
actually say this is really important for anyone to know.
And it's the three numbers. It's called the sixty five
twenty fifteen, and it's three numbers that anyone should know

(59:20):
when it comes to money and their own personal finance.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
Okay, sixty five twenty fifteen, Okay, and.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
The way it works is you want to the idea
of it is to take your net income. This is
your take home pay after you pay taxes, not the
number on your job description, the number after you paid
state contribution all other taxes. And you want to split
that into three buckets. The fundamental, which is your core

(59:47):
living expenses, everything that is essential to your living costs,
mortgage or rent, utilities, groceries, minimum debt payments, car payments,
all of that should make up approximately sixty five percent
of your net income. The twenty percent that's for your

(01:00:09):
fund spending. These are for the pottery painting that you
booked last minute, the Glastonbury tickets, the pilates class That
should make up about twenty percent of your take home pay.
And the remaining fifteen percent that's for your future you.
That's today's you, planting seeds for tomorrow's you. And that

(01:00:30):
should go to savings, investments, and extra debt payments. And
those are three good numbers that I think everyone should
know and understand. Is a good starting point to try
and benchmark your numbers or your income against those spending categories.
I would say, however, if you are someone who's living
closer to paycheck to paycheck, those numbers might look slightly different,

(01:00:52):
and it might be that you you want to die
down that fun percentage to have enough saved over for
the future you so you could continue contributing to your
savings investments, or if you're finding that your housing and
mortgaging is higher than eighteen ninety percent, start with when
it comes to future, you start with what you can.

(01:01:14):
Whether it's saving two percent, three percent, starts somewhere. You
just want to build that habit.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
And in terms of spending, should I you mentioned cars
earlier when we talked about houses briefly, Should I be
buying a car? Should I be leasing a car?

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
A car is Let me just say it's one of
the two areas that most people overspend. And it's because
you don't just buy the numbers. We buy the emotions
of the car, how the car might make us feel,
how will look like in the car, the family memories
will create in the car. And I know because I
did this when I got my first job. The very

(01:01:53):
first thing I did was upgrade my car. I went
into a car show room, found a car that I
thought i'd look call in, walked out with the car.
An hour later, drove out with the car and didn't
run my numbers, didn't check if I could afford the
monthly payments, and for the next couple of months was
figuring out how I was going to make the rest
of my finances meet. And car dealerships know this, so

(01:02:13):
they all manipulate the monthly payments in a way that
makes you buy more car than you could afford. And
if you don't understand how the numbers work, this is
probably one of the quickest ways to destroy your chance
of building real wealth. The way I recommend buying a
car is to buy something that's three to five years
old straight. And I say three to five years old

(01:02:36):
because at that point it's enough. It's depreciated enough as
someone else's expense and won't depreciate as much during the
time that you have it. But if you are someone
who is wealthy and you don't mind taking that hit
on the depreciation, or you want a nice car every
couple of years and you want to trade it in
and you don't mind the fact that it's not the

(01:02:57):
best financial choice, then lease. That's how I think of
the buy and the lease situation. Then you also want
to think about how much can you reasonably afford as
a monthly payment when it comes to the proportion of
your income that you're spending towards it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
So would you do you buy new cars or dold
you no?

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
I actually, at the moment it was more economic call
for me to get a taxi everywhere. So I don't
have a car.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
So you've ran the numbers and thought the amount I'm
traveling away from home makes more sense just to get.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
A taxi it ay every time. Yeah, I'm saving on
the for me, and it makes sense for this point
in my life. It might be in five years, ten
years time that I want an Ico car and I
don't want to restrain myself from having it. But for now,
with the numbers, I can use that numb that amount
somewhere else.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
What about other things we spend money on? Where are
the big sort of traps in spending that we haven't mentioned?
So we talked about cars, talked about houses, What about
iPhones and iPads and technology?

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
I think there's traps in spending and almost everything that
we do that we don't even see. Going to a
grocery shop, which is a fundamental living cost for everyone.
You're fighting against marketing to keep your money in your pocket.
You walk to a shop, a grocery store. They have
their eggs, the milk, the bread right at the back,

(01:04:13):
which makes you walk through the shop to get there.
They have the premium products eye level, the suites for
the kids at the kids eye level. So these are
also areas where you don't even realize that you're overspending
because there's these subliminal marketing messages around you. So that's
one area where people spend where it's just like spending
all the necessities but not even realizing that there's a

(01:04:35):
way to save there.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
So would you suggest going into those supermarkets with a
shopping list?

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Yeah, I mean that's one way going into going into
the going into the supermarkets to shopping list. Also checking
if you're shopping at the cheapest supermarket near you. I
mean shopping at mins and waitros is different to shopping
at AUDI if that's where you want to save your
money and you're more pay to pay, checking you thinking
about where to save your money. Other areas where people
overspend is everything now can be bought as an impulse buy.

(01:05:07):
You can buy now, pay later. There's Apple pay on
your phone. There's so many debt financing methods that make
you pay more. And so just understanding running this budget,
running these numbers, understanding what you actually have available to
spend towards these things is a really good way of
fighting against everything else that is trying to take your

(01:05:29):
money away from you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
What about like iPhones and iPads and stuff like that,
do you think people should be getting new ones?

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Or the way I think about this is the law
of diminishing returns. When you first get something, there's a
really big impact on your happiness. When you first get
your like an iPhone, and you don't have an iPhone,
that's good, that's big. You're like walking around your iPhone
and this is pretty cool. Then with every upgrade, that
diminishing return starts to plateau. It's not as exciting. So

(01:05:58):
actually thinking about do I need then selpgrade or is
that something I could pass upon? But always remembering that
the first time you buy something is worth it. That
upgrades after that the happiness doesn't increase as much.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
And what about hair nails, dyeing your hair and all
those kinds of things. Do you think people should be
trying to sacrifice those kinds of things as well?

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Or I'm not in this camp of trying to save
money on everything. I really do believe that you should
have a percentage that you allocate towards the fun things
in your life and not being restrictive about what it
is that you love. If it is getting your nails done,
getting your hair done, getting a new bag, go for it,
enjoy it as long as on the other side, that's

(01:06:41):
not at the opportunity cost of you in five years
or you in ten years.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Because you talk about this term lifestyle inflation, yeah, which
I've never heard before. What is lifestyle inflation?

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
Lifestyle inflation is when as your income increases, your spending
also increases in a way that you think might be necessary,
but actually they are all necessities being hidden away as
just upgrades and luxuries. It's essentially your spending rising at

(01:07:15):
the same place that your income is increasing. And what
you want to do to counteract lifestyle inflation is you
want to make sure that your spending increases. Sure, you
want to treat yourself, you want to reward yourself, but
not at the same pace that your income increases. You
want to make sure that the gap between your income
and your spending is getting wider as you earn more money,
not narrower.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
What's the best way for someone to track them money?
Because there's lots of figures here. Some people aren't mathematically literate, Yeah,
many people don't want to be in excel documents. Are
there simple tools or an app that I could use
to track my spending and saving and income.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
So many bank accounts nowadays have categorized spending within them,
and it'll tell you what you're spending and what you're
spending on. So if you are someone that even me,
I don't sit every single month and track every single transaction,
but I do have a ballpark figure in my mind
based on my banking apps about what I'm spending and where.
And the key isn't oh should I be allocating this

(01:08:13):
much here, I've overspent here, Oh I spend a little
bit more on my trip than I needed to. The
key is are you saving ten percent minimum of your salary?
Whatever you decide to do with everything else, that's up
to you. And when you think about it that way,
you think of this whole budgeting, managing finances, there's a
lot more freeing. There's something that's restricting you. If you're

(01:08:36):
someone who doesn't want to sit in the spreadsheets, spitting
the numbers. Just think what am I saving and what
am I spending? Am saving the right percentage? Cool, doesn't
matter how I'm allocating the rest. That's where I recommend
for those people.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
Are they like budget tracks that are already built that
I can use, because you know, my bank might tell
me how much I'm spending, but it doesn't necessarily doesn't
necessarily inform me in real time of how much money
I have left.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
Yeah, I mean, I have a budget which actually tells
you in real time. It's not connected to your bank accounts,
but when you put your numbers into it, it will
tell you what you have left to spend for the remainding.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
Of the month. And what is that is that? An
EXL document?

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Is an Excel document? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
Can I have your Excel document?

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
Sure, I'll link it below so people can use it
if they want to use it. What about money and
love and how these two worlds collide? Because I was
speaking to Kevin O'Leary recently on the show, and he
was telling me that one of the reasons people end
up in divorce is because of financial insecurities and pain
and friction and arguments. Do you get a lot of

(01:09:33):
messages from people about money, love, joint bank accounts, and
all these kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
I have a lot of questions about from people asking firstly,
how to bring up the conversation of money, and secondly,
how to manage their finances with a partner in a
way that keeps the autonomy but still makes it feel
like you have a shared life.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
What are those big questions.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
When it comes to how to bring up a conversation
I guess with your partner. This is really important because
the top two reasons why people argue, or what couples argue,
is money and sex. And when it comes to money,
it's lack of transparency, lack of openness, and lack of
shared goals together. And that's not to say, yeah, you

(01:10:24):
should go on a first date and ask them what
their credit score or debt utilization is, but it is
to say, having those conversations, asking the right questions in
a way that can help you understand someone else's money beliefs,
in a way that can help you create a financial
life together.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
So what should I be asking my partner, I'm your partner,
what do you say to me? And when do you
say it?

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
I think there's levels of the questions that you could
ask someone, And if you're just getting to know someone,
you can ask them something along the lines of if
you found or if you won ten thousand tomorrow, how
would you spend it Lamborghini? That will tell you a
lot about what they value. So then that automatically tells

(01:11:11):
you that they probably value status. If you say, I'll
probably save it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
If I said Lamborghini, I'm going to rent a Lamborghini
for two months? Yeah, what should you then do about that?

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
You take that information and you understand, this is what
the person values. Yeah, because money is just a symbol
for what the person values. And if they want to
spend it on a Lamborghini. That's not to say you
should then judge the way they're spending. But you take
that information, you understand what do you want to do
with it? Is this way of thinking something that you
want to have a life with.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
Okay, there is there a good answer to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
That question, I think as it comes down to understanding,
because even if someone says I just want to save
you might think, okay, this is great stability security. But
you might be someone who wants experiences. You want to
spend on flights to take your friends and family away
around the world. So it's just about understanding how your
money values fit in with their money values and are
they completely in conflict with each other or are they

(01:12:09):
actually do they marry up? And can you see yourselves
creating financial life together. Because if someone's like, oh, I'll
spend all my money on like status symbols and not
save anything and you're a saver, that is going to
be a cause for arguments.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
Yeah, especially if you get bad news and things get
tight and someone loses their job, and then when things
get tight, you're really going to be focused on the money,
or you have kids and you know, any sort of
pressure on their.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Budget exactly, And like other questions and those kind of
questions come down further further down the line. Actually, I
guess as well when it comes to financial goal setting.
But I guess there's another question you could ask one,
and it comes back to what we spoke about the
start of the podcast is where did your beliefs about
money come from? Because so much of the way we
think about money is inherited through what we saw our

(01:13:00):
parents do, what we saw during our upbringings, and it
has an impact on the way we are with money.
It might be that we're an impulse spender as a
result of it. It might be that we see debt
in a certain way. It might be that we're really frugal.
But what that does is it opens up a conversation
of empathy and compassion rather than judgment, and that automatically

(01:13:20):
can lead to more conversations about, Okay, how do you
view debt? How can we manage our finances based on
your views and my views, and how can we work
together as a whole to make this sustainable? And then
the next question is that when it comes to family
and kids and how you're going to manage your finances there,
that's when it comes to like the third layer of
questions where you ask asking someone what does our two year,

(01:13:43):
five year, ten year goal look like? And if we
were to merge our finances together, what would that look like?

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
Should we manage our finances together?

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
Niche My straight answer to this is no, we have
very unique individual money personalities and habits, and we are
getting married later in life where these personalities are really
set in stone. And you know how they say opposites
attract in a relationship. The same goes with money. Savers

(01:14:12):
Typically attract spenders, and spenders typically attract savers. So if
you have a saver saving and then a spender who's
spending the savings, that's going to be a cause for arguments.
Regardless of that, there's financial shortcomings. So what I recommend
is having a team fund and then a me fund.
Team fund is for the grown up adult stuff, the

(01:14:37):
joint expenses, mortgage, rent, bills, council tax And this isn't
fifty to fifty. You both paining to that proportionate of
your income ninety percent of your household income that you're making,
you pay ninety percent of the expenses you're bringing in
thirty percent of the house old income. You're paying for
thirty percent of the expenses. It's a team fund, and

(01:15:00):
then you have the me fund, and this is for
your own individual personality to stay alive, your own money habits.
No one else can see the way you're spending here.
If you have a matchro addiction, go for it. If
you want to buy that nice watch, go for it.
You can do whatever you want, spend this money however
you want. If you want to save it, save it.
But that way you're creating that unity, but also having

(01:15:23):
that autonomy, and I think this is really really important
for both parties, women and men, but specifically for women.
They want to you want them to have their independent
access to their finances. And I've seen situations. I've spoken
to people who have merged their finances and it's when
the relationship has turned sour or unsafe. They haven't been

(01:15:46):
able to know what to do because they haven't had
the independent access to their money.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
Do you think people should be getting pre nups? Did
you get pretty you're married? On you?

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
I am? I think everyone has a pre up, whether
you know it or not. Prenups you could either have
your own customized prenup or you could have what the
state is telling you as what's going to happen if

(01:16:20):
you decide to go your separate ways. Depending on where
you are, the prenup holds different values, so some areas
might not look beyond what the couple agree and they
just say, Okay, this is what the couple's agreed, this
is how the finances are going to be split, or

(01:16:40):
their assets are going to be split. In the UK,
and I'm not a divorced lay or anything, I don't
believe that the prenup is fully legally binding. So it's
useful to have in some circumstance, says, but it's the
courts will store look past it and see what is fair.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
As a couple this term passive income, it's quite a
popular term. What is passive income?

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
The way I see passive income, it's money that you
do not have to work or to invest time in
to make. And in all honesty, I think the word
passive income gets thrown around a lot and people forget
that the things that you do see that might be

(01:17:25):
passive income streams required a lot of work up front
to start with.

Speaker 3 (01:17:31):
What are some passive income ideas that you think some
people could pursue, Like the average person could potentially pursue
on top of their nine to five job.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
I would go back to the easiest way for someone
to pursue passive income is through investing from.

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
The S and P. Five hundred and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
And that is the easiest way if you want to
everything else, and this is how I see everything else
requires some level of time or energy. Because you could
increase your income through a couple of avenues. If that's
what you're looking to do, you can, like we spoke
about ask for a pay rise at work. You can
if that's not available to you, start up side businesses
to increase your income. And there's two ways to do that.

(01:18:10):
There's the tap and go that I like to call it,
and it's ways to increase your income that you could
do immediately. This isn't passive. This is things like putting
a spare room or Airbnb or dog walking or ubering.
They require your time for money, but they are in media.

(01:18:32):
The downside is there is a cap to how much
you could earn because it's not leaning into your unique advantages,
your market advantage, your unique selling points. The other side
is value and skill based income, and this is where
you lean into your individuality, your unique selling point, you
tap into your skills, and you create businesses around that

(01:18:55):
that can scale the downside with that, even if it
is passive, say you want to create content and then
through that cell products which you could then earn passively.
With that kind of income stream, there's always it always
takes longer to make that money, and there's a time
period where you are putting in more time or even

(01:19:17):
more money before you start earning that. So when I
talk about passive income, that's when I say sure, there
are avenues for passive income, but the easiest one that's
accessible to everyone is investing. Everything else does require some
upfront time or energy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
Yeah. I was obviously we're talking before we start recording
about stand store, which is a company I've become a
co owner, and that business allows you to sell digital
products online. And we did this thirty day challenge, and
I was looking through the results of how much money
people had made and also how much you are following
they had because I think digital products are really like
interesting entrepreneurial opportunity. And there's this one. I was going

(01:19:49):
through all of them yesterday over in the studio and
there was like so many people, but this is this
one that stood in mind because she had a thousand
followers and she's helping women to get control of binge
eating and other sort of eating disorders by selling like
digital products and information and really like a community. She
had like a thousand followers or something, and in the
last thirty days she's made four or five thousand pounds

(01:20:12):
doing that. She's sort of like forty like digital products
like basically PDFs and stuff like that. I just thought
this is a massive untapped opportunity for the vast majority
of people who've spent ten years, twenty years in a
career and know something have some kind of expertise.

Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
Yeah, using what you've learning through your day job and
turning it into a business on the side that can
be scalable, not necessarily through creating content, which is what
I think a lot of people think that they need
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:20:37):
Yeah, I'm actually like everybody knows something, and there's a
demand now for people to buy that expertise that you know,
especially if you've been in the working world for like
a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
Yeah, I'd say if you want to figure out what
it is that that expertise is for you, because sometimes
we're sitting on amount of knowledge where we don't even
know it until we kind of take a step back
and then look to see what that thing is. Ask
your friends, what is it that you'd come to me
for advice on? Because I know I have people in
my life who I go to for advice on specific areas.

(01:21:08):
Or if I want planning for an event, Hey, what
should I do? How should I do this? If I
need help with Excel, Hey can you help me with
this formula? If I've got back pain, A quick message
or what'sapped to someone saying, hey, what can I do
in this situation? Find out what are people are coming
to you for advice on that kind of will give
you a signal as to what people want to know
about you, what people want to learn from you, and

(01:21:31):
see if there's a way to turn that into an
income stream.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
I mean, it's very much what you did.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
Yeah, it is exactly what I did. It's turning the
finance knowledge, which at the time my tagline was sharing
everything I know and I'm learning along the way to
create a life that I love, and it was me
kind of doing it as an online diary, sharing this
is what I'm learning, this is what I'm doing, and
then it ultimately ended up into something that I do
full time.

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
And that's changed your life in a pretty profound way.

Speaker 1 (01:21:59):
I wouldn't be here for if I didn't take the bet.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):
Every single one of you watching this right now has
something to offer, whether it's knowledge or skills or experience,
and that means you have value. Standstare, the platform my
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(01:22:24):
This is a business I really believe in and already
three hundred million dollars has been earned by creators, coaches
and entrepreneurs just like you have the potential to be
on stand store. These are people who didn't wait, who
had me saying things like this, and instead of procrastinating,
started building, then launched something, and now they're getting paid
to do it. Stan is incredibly simple and incredibly easy,
and you can link it with a Shopify store that

(01:22:45):
you're already using if you want to. I'm on it,
and so as my girlfriend and many of my team.
So if you want to join, start by launching your
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(01:23:05):
in your learning and growth, there's a real career opportunity.
With our sponsor into It, the maker of TurboTax and
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(01:23:28):
you learn and gain experience. On top of all of
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just head to intuit dot com slash expert. I'll put
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(01:23:53):
Talk to me about that journey. Was it faster than
you expected? And was it Are you in a place
that is higher than you expected when you started? You've
done one hundred and fifty one videos on YouTube. Yeah,
and is it safe to say it's made new millions.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
Yeah. I would never have thought I was in the
place that I am now through sitting in my spare
bedroom and creating videos Monday to Friday, I'll be going
to work glitz and glamor meeting clients. There was a
kind of allure to it. And then the weekends I'll

(01:24:32):
be spent spending in my spare bedroom googling what's a roll,
what's b role? How do I do color grading?

Speaker 3 (01:24:40):
Which are all terms in terms of editing videos.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
It's all terms of editing videos, because that's what I
was doing on our weekends and evenings while you were
still at work. Yeah, I quit my day job just
over two years ago, and so for a very long time,
this was just a creative outlet for me, and I
loved it. I found so much interest in it, But
my purpose for it really grew as the channel grew.

(01:25:05):
It grew very quickly, from one thousand to fifty thousand
within a few days, and then one hundred thousand within
a few weeks of that. And as the channel grew,
I saw the comments that were coming in, Hey, I've
just invested in this for the first time because of
what you've said here, or I've just asked for a

(01:25:26):
pay rise at work because of this conversation. And when
you see something like that come through, there is no
amount of money that can be made through a date
of that beats up. There is nothing. What was previously
external fulfillment for me turned into an internal fulfillment. So

(01:25:46):
it has been the best thing I've done, hands down,
and it is the thing that would continue to do
even if I wasn't making money from it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:55):
You made one video of seven months ago about things
you stopped to waste your evenings after work. The videos
titled five things I did to stop wasting my evenings
after work.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
Yeah, because I had to be really disciplined with my
time when I was working in banking.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
So what is the essence of that video? Is it
telling people to use their time as an asset more effectively?

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
And so often we just are living in autopilot mode.
We don't even think about the time that we're using
and how we're using it. We are just coming home
after work and turning on the TV and watching Netflix
and sinking into the couch because we've done that the
day before and the day before and it's comfortable. And
the essence of that video is to say, there's probably

(01:26:42):
more out there if you're sitting there and you're in
a place where you're thinking, I don't really like my job.
I don't really like what I'm doing. I'm not really happy.
I want to meet new people, but I'm not doing that.
Then this video is about saying, hey, come out that
autopilot mode that you might be in, and you have hours,

(01:27:06):
maybe on the weekend, maybe in the evening that you
can use to create a better life for yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:27:11):
It's also budgeting your time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
It is budgeting your time exactly that, thinking about how
you could spend each hour in a way that brings
you closer to the version of the life that you want.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
I think about that a lot, because ultimately, our time
is the center point of our influence, Like it's the
thing that's going to determine our long term outcomes pretty
much more than anything else. Whether we spend it reading
a book that's going to educate us, or learn how
to color grade for YouTube videos like you did, or
whether we spend it, you know, watching Love Island, yeah
on the TV or something like In the same way

(01:27:45):
that that one hundred dollars is going to compound at
ten percent a year in the s and P. Five hundred,
that choice is going to compound. So let's play that out.
So instead of watching Love Island, I decide to read
that book you recommended about money, and then that means
that I make a series of different decisions which change
the trajectory of several areas of my life. I maybe
stop spending as much, I start budgeting a little bit,

(01:28:06):
I go and educate myself in a new skill. And
if you zoom out on that as a graph over
like ten twenty thirty years, you're in an entirely different
position because you used one hour differently thirty years ago.
But you'll like never see the return because it's so compounding,
is so hard to see. It's invisible at the moment.
But I really think about this a lot. I try
and remind myself on a frequent basis that the actual

(01:28:28):
currency I'm spending is these hours that I have, and
how intentional and well placed and aligned they are to
my long term goals is maybe maybe the most important thing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
And that's the most powerful thing that you have.

Speaker 3 (01:28:41):
Exactly what about your happiness? Is what makes you happy?

Speaker 1 (01:28:44):
Nishe The way I'm living right now, which is doing
what I'm doing for a living, is making me extremely happy,
and it's the happiest I've been since starting a career
in that thing It comes back to finding a meaning,
in a purpose in what you're doing. And to say

(01:29:04):
that I make money from helping people get better with
their finances. I don't think there's stuff and you can't
get much better than that. I don't think there's many
jobs in life that are more rewarding than giving back
in some way, however that looks like for you, through

(01:29:26):
your own skills, your own expertise, your own unique selling points.
I can't imagine a better place for me myself to
be in. And it's taken a long time to get
to that, but it's been good. It's been a journey,
but it's it's been a good one.

Speaker 3 (01:29:45):
AI is this, you know, the topic of the moment,
because it's just impacting everything. It's impacting people's ability to
get jobs. It's impacting how I'm hiring as an employer.
It's impacting how I do my creative work, and even
me as a podcast as well. I was wondering, if
what you're doing, how you're thinking about AI.

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
I've seen more and more people leaning into AI to
get money tips and money advice, and I think that's
great because everything's had the expertise. If you're looking at
what was available twenty years ago versus what was available
five years ago, versus what was available a year ago
to what's available now. There's so much more information that
is vastly available at your fingertips for you to learn
financial literacy and be prepared for it. The thing that

(01:30:27):
I would always ask people to remember is don't forget
the emotional side of money, because greed, fear, that all
comes into how you're managing your finances as well. Yeah,
so use AI use it to your advantage. I think
it's brilliant and I think you always need to lean
into it, But there's the human component that can never

(01:30:48):
be taken out of the equation, especially when it comes
to money and finance.

Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
Could I not just go on like chat YOUBT and
ask it to be my personal accountant every month and
tell it my situation, tell it my goals, and then
tell it to give me advice every day, week, month
on what I should be doing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
I think that would be a great starting point to
understand what do I need to do it if I'm
absolutely crueless. That's not to say chat Chat GUPT is
always correct. I probably know there's some errors in it,
so take it with a pinch of salt that if
you're starting from scratch, even saying, hey, this is my income,
this is my spending. How do you recommend I budget?

(01:31:24):
Give me three or four ways to consider it. Yeah,
that will be a way for you to take. If
that's a way for you to take that next step,
then definitely think that's the avenue to be explored.

Speaker 3 (01:31:36):
Jack, you were telling me the other day that you're
now using AI a lot for financial support and advice.
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
So I've got like this prompt on chat GPT where
if I've asked it to be the world's best financial
advisor for me, and I screenshoted all my bank statements.
And every time I tell people this, they kind of
WinCE because it's like a lot of window into your life.
And I don't kind of know the GDPR or whatever
around it, but it's been so useful. So I've screenshotted

(01:32:05):
everything on my bank statement, and then it tells me
how much I spend a month, how much I can
put into investments and stuff. And I also screenshotted this
investment account I had, and it told me that I
was overpaying on my investment account and that I should
switch to another one because the fees were better, and
then it was like, you don't have enough in savings,

(01:32:26):
so you should stop investing and put your money into savings.
Gave me advice on a savings account to put it
into with a high interest, like four percent interest. And
it's actually been game changing because it's kind of a
base knowledge that I wouldn't have had an understanding towards.
And I get very excited when I listen to these
podcasts because I sit here and they tell you, like

(01:32:46):
once to invest in. And I think it was a
particular guest we had on she said you should invest
in this kind of stock, and I said like, oh,
what do you think about this stock? And it was
just like, don't be silly, You're not this person. And
it's just been really helpful for me to kind of
understand it's it's advice changes and the justs.

Speaker 3 (01:33:04):
Oh was that Kathy would was it, Tesla? Yeah, what
I told you to behave yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:33:10):
Because I asked it to be brutally honest about all
the advice it gave me. And I was like, Kathy
Wood had this advice, tell me, tell me should I
put it in? Should I put all my money into Tesla,
and it was like, look, you're not. Kathy would like,
you don't have enough. It's kind of what you said
about having emergency funds, So you don't have enough in
your emergency funds. Top that up first, and that's like,
if you want to invest in Tesla, we'll have another pot.

(01:33:32):
So the new one, I've done trading two one two,
and you can do pies. So I've got a safe
one and a not so safe one and then a
high interest account.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
That's really interesting Jack that that you've done that, and
I think that's that just shows the power of AI now.
And there's two really interesting things that I picked up
on them. The first is that it's very tailored based
on you, which with AI, it's probably understood who you
are as a person from the information that you've fed

(01:34:01):
to it, your risk profile, your amounts. The bank statement
had your savings, and from that it derived a profile
and gave you the correct information based on your current situation.
And the second thing that probably doesn't get mentioned in
maybe podcasts that you've done so fast even is the savings.

(01:34:25):
The putting it into a high interest savings account is
a very easy basic personal finance tips that actually do
make a difference when it comes to habits, but also
it's easy that's passive income for you. They would get
missed out on a lot of the advice if you're
watching a specific investing focused YouTube video or podcasts. So

(01:34:45):
it just harnesses the power of chat GPT. I don't
know yet if or I don't know if we have
any information about how much information we can actually feed
into chat GPT and where that goes. But it sounds
like it's just you've given it the underlying framework or
this is my current situation, and it's given you the
correct initial guidance at least, and then you've been able
to say, okay that makes sense for me, or no,

(01:35:07):
I'm not going to listen to this.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Yeah, I think the I keep asking it, like am
I on track, and it changes its advice. So although
it's been really good initially, I think I'm now with
that base knowledge is going to go and sort of
and everything I've learned on these podcasts as well just
kind of go and run with it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:25):
Yeah. Yeah, And that's really important thing because you know,
there's there's so much information online when it comes to
money that you don't actually know who to listen to
and who to get advice from and who to trust,
because you could be scoring through TikTok and the first
video you see is put all your money into Tesla
or crypto or one asset, or you can see another

(01:35:46):
one that says I'll stop buying glates so otherwise you'll
die broke. And then the next video might be mine,
and you might think, oh, well, the last two people
just told me BS, why should I listen to this person?
And so finding a person who whose principles and philosophy
aligned with your way of thinking is a way that
will keep you motivated and inspired to want to keep

(01:36:08):
getting better with finances. And so you've probably got that
information from chat GPT and it said to you, hey,
based on your profile, this is what's important, and you've
kind of leaned into linked into that. I thought this
is right for me. Actually, this makes sense, and you've
probably actioned it. And so as it's a fine line
between finding someone who you resonate with and also understanding

(01:36:30):
that their principles aligned with.

Speaker 3 (01:36:32):
Yours, I would say to that, how much do you
think about credit scores? Because I absolutely butchered my credit
score before I even realized it. Existed. My credit score
was in the bin. I got two ccjs, which are
county court judgments, which is where you really fuck up
because I didn't know any thing about money when I
was eighteen nineteen years old and they gave me these
credit cards and I'd overdrafted and defaulted and didn't pay
them back and went to an ATM put it in.

(01:36:53):
It didn't come back out. Yeah, And then I found
out that I had destroyed my credit rating before I
knew what it was. And I hear this quite a
lot from people. They don't understand and the importance of.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):
It, or you don't realize the importance of it until
you're looking to buy something big, because that's what it impacts,
the credit score. It two people can go into a
car showroom and choose the same car, and the amount
they pay for it will be completely different based on
the history, the credit background, and so there are. It

(01:37:22):
is something that you need to think about, is something
that you need to make sure you're paying off in
time in full your credit card, for instance, And it
is definitely one of the main things or one of
the things people should always look at and consider. And
you can check your credit rating online for free. There
are websites that do that and you could check it.
Just make sure all of your details are correct. If

(01:37:44):
there's any anomalies, correct that. But most importantly, just make sure.
And it really comes down to it, are you paying
the things that are outstanding all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:37:53):
I think most people, especially younger people, don't actually realize
that they have a credit score and that they can
check it right now for free. And they also probably
don't realize that things like being registered to vote has
an impact on their credit rating, because I remember the
first time I looked in to check my credit score
and I was like forty five and it said the
reason why, one of the reasons why it's low is
because you haven't registered to vote.

Speaker 1 (01:38:12):
Is what the hell registered to vote? That? That's one
of the things. Even something like you call up your
credit card company or you're the company that you have
a debt at and say, hey, can you increase the
amount that I have available? What that does is it
reduces your utilization when you're using debt, and by just
saying okay, you have instead of utilizing fifty percent of

(01:38:33):
your credit available, you're now using twenty percent. What companies
now see is oh, Okay, then they're being sensible. They're
not really relying on this stet on their day to
day living. So there's a couple of things that you
could take into account. But even if you do, and
again people don't realize this. Even if you do have
interest rates because you're not paying your debt off in time,

(01:38:53):
you can negotiate that. You can call up the company
and say, Okay, this is they're just rate i'm paying,
but this is what I have planned. This is how
I plan to pay off my debt, and I want
to do it over the next twelve eighteen months. Can
you reduce or can you look at reducing my interest rate?

Speaker 3 (01:39:12):
I have these personas here, there's three of them, and
I was wondering, there're three different people at three different
stages of life. When you think about the advice you'd
give these people, does it come back to this framework,
this sixty five twenty to fifteen framework, really, regardless of
what stage they're at.

Speaker 1 (01:39:26):
You know what, most things in finance do come back
to that framework that's sixty five twenty fifteen or even
a variation for it. With Andy, he's just started his job,
he's early on in his career, he's making less now
than he will in ten years, twenty years time. So
it may not be that his paycheck allows for sixty
five percent to go towards his rent and his car,
which is what he wants something new of. It might

(01:39:47):
be that it might be seventy or seventy five percent.
But the key is, especially at this stage, the most
important thing that he has going for him is time.
So save, invest early, do it recurringly, which is often,
and harness the power of long term growth is what
I'll say to Andy when it comes to the new phone.
Remember that there is a trade off for every decision
you're making. If it's not an absolute necessity or an

(01:40:10):
urgency that can be spent and the value of that
maybe thousand dollars today can be worth significantly more in
ten years or twentyears' time. So balance that together again
if there's budget, because after he's put down the money
for a save, he's investing. If he wants to spend
that on the fun then go ahead with him.

Speaker 3 (01:40:30):
Though, do you think his risk appetite should be a
little bit higher? Because I when I look at Andy here,
he looks like he's early twenties, maybe late teens or something. Yeah,
with him, I think you need to take risk. You
need to go work at an AI startup because he
wants to fill that bucket of knowledge with like really
high yielding relevant skill. Yeah, so I don't know. I

(01:40:53):
think of him, I go bro to roll the dice.
You've got nothing to dose, you ain't got a mortgage,
get and got kids.

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
In your twenties, you can pay the lone long term game.
Absolutely everything feels like it's urgent in your twenties. You
feel like you need the promotion, you feel like you
need to investor where you feel like you need the
payd rice immediately. But decades over dopamine and he's got
a long time and the things that he learns now,
the things that he invests in, the skills and the
risks that he take, he can bounce back from that.

(01:41:20):
And even when it comes to investing, Actually, when you're
in your twenties, you can be more risk of us
because you have the upward trend of the market that
will see you through. So twenties is the time to
take the rest, take all the tiny experiments, and just
be a sponge where you absorb everything. Yeah, that's what

(01:41:40):
I'd say that about Lisa in the middle there, Lisa
is she's got a mortgage, she's got an income, and
she's got a good amount of savings, and she is
keen to start investing, but she doesn't know where to start.
And this is where a lot of people fall into.
They have the savings sitting aside, and this is she's

(01:42:00):
doing really well someone like in Lisa's position. But if
anyone listening to this is similar to Lisa's position, chances
are they're not investing because they are scared and fearful
of what to do and they don't know where to start.
So Lisa, I would say, have your emergency fund in place,

(01:42:23):
pay off for any debt. It doesn't look like you
have any debt. If your mortgage isn't over eight percent,
you can make more from Instead of paying down your debt,
you can make more investing. So you're great to start
wanting to invest. And I'll say keep it simple, do
it for the long term. Keep it simple you want
to especially if you're just starting out, your emotions and

(01:42:43):
the behavior is going to pay a key part in
your investing. So one hundred percent of your portfolio, stick
to index funds and target data retire might funds at
the moment, and then if you are ready as you
get more senior, you haven't increased your income, then you
can dip into other assets should you want to.

Speaker 3 (01:43:00):
And we've got Matt over there, who's a single parent
earning about so Lisa was earning roughly one hundred and
forty thousand a year. Matt's earning sixty thousand a year.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
Over over fifty percent of his income is going towards
his rent. He has a credit card debt of one
thousand and five hundred. So the first thing I would
say looking at someone in Matt's position is, if you've
already saved for your piece of mind fund you the
first thing you want to do is pay off that
high interest rate debt. It is like running with weights
on your ankles. You want to take them off so
you can start moving on to the next path of

(01:43:32):
your financial journey. So focus on paying off that credit
card debt. He wants to increase income sources, but has
little time outside of work and being a dad, So
that says to me that he probably doesn't have time
or energy to spend on trying to see if something's
going to work and see what comes out of it.
He wants to make an immediate source of income. So

(01:43:55):
the easiest way to increase your income is getting an
increase in your current job, getting a pay rise, and
if not, switching companies to see if you get a
pay rise that way. When I'm looking at my own career,
when I stayed at the same organization, it was the
increase was between three percent five percent, sometimes a bit
higher if I got promoted ten percent, and then when

(01:44:15):
I switched companies, it was always between twenty and thirty percent.
When I moved, and I know that is I was
in a lucky place where I had the movement to
get those pay jumps and to get that salary increase,
and not everyone's in that position. But if you have,
or if you're in an industry which there is a
hot there is more path to earn more than I'll
definitely say, first and foremost, increase your income. You don't

(01:44:37):
have to turn any more time towards it, given you
also have children to look after as well. If you've stopped,
if you've already exhausted those two avenues, then the next
thing I'll say if you want an immediate income is
picking up income streams that unfortunately might be tied to
your time, but they will have an immediate impact on

(01:44:59):
your income because that's probably what you might be looking
to do because your rent and I'm guessing your other
living expenses are taking up a lot of your take
home pay, so you want to find out that extra
buffer to start paying towards the debt that you have
things like So this could be things like selling secondhand
stuff online, selling products online, renting out a spare room
if you have that on Airbnb, things that you don't

(01:45:21):
actually need to put capital in to make money straight.

Speaker 3 (01:45:24):
Away from of the things you never spend money on
at this.

Speaker 1 (01:45:28):
Point in my life. Me specifically, I don't think I've
bought a designer item in two years, which is a
lot for me because I was stripped out in the
designer way beforehand. I've found that my validation in life
has come through my work and through internally, and it
took me on a journey to do that. And I

(01:45:49):
just don't believe in the premium prices that you pay
for promoting another product or a brand if it's for utility.
If you're buying a branded item or a designer for utility,
I e. This design or this brand works better, then
go for it. But if you're doing it purely to show,

(01:46:13):
then for me at this point in my life, it's
just a no go. I could spend that money in
other ways that brings me a lot more fulfillment in
different ways.

Speaker 3 (01:46:21):
Do you spend on fast fashion instead of the luxury
high and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:46:26):
Oh that's a good question. No. I don't spend on
fast fashion unless it's a really urgent, last minute buy
and I haven't found anything else. But I tend to
have a capsule wardrobe, which means I could play around.
I spend a good amount on quality pieces and that's
important to me, quality pieces that I could use time
and time again and can switch in and out of.
And I think for me when it comes to clothing,

(01:46:48):
it's more just okay with work, it's what can remove
the decision making for me. What about books, I think
that is one area that I love spending money on.
There's an infinite return, there really is. And actually some
of the breakthroughs I've had have come from the books
that I've read, even the first book that I read,
which is a bridge I had poor Dad. They're just

(01:47:09):
that concept of understanding assets versus liabilities. Just knowing that
from an early age can start changing your thinking in
a way that you wouldn't be able to have having
a normal conversation. Because the people you hang around with,
the people who you spend time with, they have a
massive impact on where you end up. And I think

(01:47:32):
it's easy to say, just hang out with another career
or just hang out with a new crowd that pushes you,
but actually for a lot of people, they don't have
access to that. And that's where books, podcasts, YouTube videos.
It almost has that averaging effect of the five people

(01:47:54):
around you. It mirrors that effect. So even if you
don't have acts says to the people who you want
to learn from, by reading their book, watching the videos,
listening to the podcast, you can still gain that knowledge
and it's almost equivalent to you sitting with them.

Speaker 3 (01:48:09):
For an hour. So you're think people should definitely subscribeys.

Speaker 1 (01:48:14):
Subliminal messaging we're black a lot like me.

Speaker 3 (01:48:18):
Is that an intentional choice?

Speaker 1 (01:48:20):
It started off because when I was doing my YouTube
channel alongside working in banking, I had to find every
way possible to eliminate any sort of decision making that
will stop me from doing the thing. Yeah, and so
it was a way for me to create a system
not rely on motivation. So there was about four outfits

(01:48:40):
of black that would always change from and it made
my life a lot easier. Now this has carried through,
it's been a lot of It just makes me think
about things less. But no, I do also wear other
colors just as much as just happens to be that
black is sixty percent of my wardrobe.

Speaker 3 (01:48:57):
Ni shall we have a closing tradition on this podcast
with a last guest for the next not knowing who
they're leaving it for. And the question that's been left
for you is who is the one person that was
slash is responsible for the person that you are today
and the reason why you were sitting here.

Speaker 1 (01:49:15):
It goes back to the person who when I started
my YouTube videos and I got a lot of noise
and a lot of people saying, oh, like, what is
she doing? Does this make sense? The person who really
kept me going was my dad. Yeah, he saw my

(01:49:36):
videos and he said to me, what you're doing is
so good for the world. Your education is going to
help so many people don't stop and I didn't. So
thanks Dad for believing me when there was like nine
or ten views on my videos. I wasn't expecting that.

Speaker 3 (01:50:11):
It's crazy how someone just saying a few words at
the right moment can be so sort of pivotal to
your like trajectory. Does he know how much he inspired
all of this?

Speaker 1 (01:50:26):
I don't think he knows the eident to her. I
sent him like a message maybe a few months ago,
telling him like, hey, remember that day when I showed
you my YouTube video and it was just me in
my dining room and I couldn't even speak properly, and
it was set up in a weird lighting and it
was getting nine or ten views, and you said, don't

(01:50:47):
stop keep passing this education down. And I said to him,
I didn't send that message to him, and said, I'm
so glad you did that because I've continued because of that.
And we're not really wordy with each other. But I
think he heard it. I don't know if he knows
the extent, but I think he'll be happy to know
the extent of it.

Speaker 3 (01:51:08):
Now you got the shoes joke.

Speaker 1 (01:51:13):
Thank you? Thanks? Yeah. I think.

Speaker 3 (01:51:20):
Who is the one person that was is responsible for
the person that you are today and the reason why
you're saying year now and that is dad.

Speaker 1 (01:51:27):
That is dad.

Speaker 3 (01:51:29):
He must be pretty shocked to some degree, like no
one could have imagined and your channel would be this
big and you'd be reaching this many people.

Speaker 1 (01:51:38):
He didn't expect it. I didn't expect it. I think
he believed that for him, he believed that a job
was security for us. I'm one of three girls. I'm
the middle sister, and all he wanted was for us
to get a good job and be secure. So whilst

(01:51:59):
this is beyond I could ever expect. When I quit
and I quit taking a big pay cut, that was
hard for him.

Speaker 3 (01:52:05):
How big was the pay cut?

Speaker 1 (01:52:06):
Eight?

Speaker 3 (01:52:08):
So you were on twenty to twenty pounds, yeah, which
is about three hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:52:15):
And I was just about to get a six figure bonus.
Why I left before a six figure bonus, just before
the biggest bonus of my career. I negotiated it. I
spent months negotiating it, and two months before that six
figure bonus landed, I resigned.

Speaker 3 (01:52:32):
Why didn't you just wait?

Speaker 1 (01:52:35):
There's always going to be a carrot waved in front
of your face, and that carrot's going to come in
different shapes, sizes, forms, and it's going to be a
distraction to keep you on the default path. The carrot
for me was that bonus telling me, hey, just wait,

(01:52:58):
just wait another two months, and wait another year, and
another year, and five years, and ten years, and just
wait to you're sixty. And I had this once in
a lifetime opportunity that was just exploding on the side,
and with it came all these people saying, Hey, I'm
so thankful for all of this. And I was getting

(01:53:20):
dms from people just pouring their life story to me.
And there is no monetary value that beats at there
really isn't. And so I took a step back around
my numbers. It was an eighty four percent pay car.
I thought, it still covers my mortgage, It covers my
basic living expenses. The biggest risk isn't quitting my job.

(01:53:43):
The biggest risk is letting this once in a lifetime
opportunity pass me by and never knowing where that path
could have taken me. That was the biggest risk, and
the hardest part was actually just letting go of the
identity that I wrapped myself in.

Speaker 3 (01:54:02):
Yeah, what was that identity?

Speaker 1 (01:54:08):
I My title was my identity. I'd worked in banking
for nine years and I could set at dinner table,
cling onto my title, say I worked in finance and
feel externally validated, and so that move too. Quit at
the time that I did from a career, a corporate

(01:54:29):
career which I've worked so hard for. It's like it's
what I wanted for so long. And then just to
let go of that and say I'm letting go of
that identity. It took so much reframing in my mind
and so much mind work and so many things I

(01:54:50):
had to do to make myself feel comfortable to say, Okay,
I'm not letting anything else dictate the way my life
goes from here. It was a lot of work and
and say, if anyone else is listening to this, thinking,
I'm in a place where I'm unhappy. I really want
to do something new, but I'm scared, and I don't
know what other people are going to say and what

(01:55:13):
society youre going to say if I quit or take
this other path. I could say the things that I
did that really helped me. I'm the first is spend
more time on the path that you want to go
down than around the people that are telling you otherwise.

(01:55:37):
Because so often we're half and half out we're interested
in something, but we're not obsessed with it. And when
you're interested, you just kind of just do whatever needs
to be done. But when you're obsessed, you're going to
do whatever it takes. And this applies to anything to
changing your career, to being a parent, to being an entrepreneur.

(01:56:01):
Become obsessed with that thing that you want to do,
because that will give you the courage to make the
hard decisions when they come. The second thing, and I
think I made a video on this too. I wrote
down on my phone on an Apple notes, and I
wrote down all the things people were saying to me,
the external noise, and underneath that I had what my

(01:56:24):
inner voice was saying. And it's really easy when your
inner voice isn't loud for it to be diluted by
whateveryone else around you is saying.

Speaker 2 (01:56:36):
That.

Speaker 1 (01:56:36):
At that point, if anyone said anything, or if anyone
is saying anything to plants, he's with doubt in your head.
Look at what your inner voice is saying, reader, repeat it.
Let that be louder than anything else that is happening
around you.

Speaker 3 (01:56:50):
And what was the external voices saying.

Speaker 1 (01:56:53):
When my channel started picking up?

Speaker 3 (01:56:56):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:56:58):
Being shared into what type of groups of people I
know and friends of friends and friends of friends, and
it was just you know, when you're just starting something
new and someone is breaking barriers, it's just trying to
pull them back, pull them back a little bit. This
isn't you mocking them?

Speaker 3 (01:57:14):
Sadly?

Speaker 1 (01:57:15):
Yeah, why are you saying your numbers online? What are
you doing? Lol? And You've just got to remember the
reason why I'm saying my numbers online. That is hard
to do. It's hard to sit there and say this
is my salary over nine years. It's hard to do that.
But I remind myself it should be transparent. Is to

(01:57:37):
help people make the decisions that help them with money.
It's the same reason why I came back and said,
I want to say this because it's the transparency. And
I think the third thing I think everyone should like
kind of take onto account when they're making I don't

(01:58:01):
give you a second.

Speaker 3 (01:58:02):
There's where's this emotion coming from? It's very deep inside you.

Speaker 1 (01:58:11):
There was a lot of pain during my career and
I felt really trapped at times, but I don't know
how to escape. But also because I know a lot
of people are probably hearing this and thinking I'm also
in that place, and so I really feel like my

(01:58:32):
purpose is to help as many people to go from
feeling trapped to freeing themselves and using money to do that.
And so I guess that's why I'm feeling like it's
bringing it all up, because this is just alignment for me,
and it's just like bringing back the memories of where

(01:58:53):
I was at that time and what I had to
do to like just take that cut. Because at the
end of the day, no one else has to deal
with your with the decisions you make in life more
than you. They have to deal with maybe the consequence
of a moment, but only you have to deal with
the consequences of all the decisions that you make in life.

(01:59:15):
Only you have to go to a job and whether
a company that you don't want to work in. Only
you have to live that day. Only you have to
be with a partner, if that's the reason you chose,
if if you chose because everyone else is saying it,
only you have to do that. Only you have to

(01:59:36):
grow old with the memories of what could have, should have,
would have been, and live with the what if. And
that's why I guess there's so many people that I
know and that probably listening to this that no, deep down,
there's something more out there, and I just want to,
if anything, give them the courage to say take that risk.

(02:00:00):
It's usually a calculator risk. And if it's to do
with your money and finances, spend some time, make sure
you have your emergency fund out, whatever it is that's needed,
but align your money to match your life decisions, because
it could really be freeing.

Speaker 3 (02:00:20):
Have you spoken much about the pain.

Speaker 2 (02:00:24):
Why?

Speaker 1 (02:00:26):
It's my content's personal finance, so it's not really about me,
it's about personal finance. I'm just trying to educate people. Yeah,
I didn't. I probably would have spoken about it here
if you didn't ask me the question about where it's
come from. It's taking me back to the start. And

(02:00:46):
sometimes you go into a journey and you get tunnel
vision and you forget why you did it, and you
forget where you started, and you forget all the people
that helped you on that journey. And there was a
lot of people that helped me and at different points,
my partner, my mom, my dad, my sisters, like they've

(02:01:07):
all helped me at different points. And people I learned
from my mentors, like It's just all a reminder as
to how it started and how different things have lined up.

Speaker 3 (02:01:26):
What was the hardest day when you look back through
that transition that you've been on, What was was there
a hardest day, a hardest moment.

Speaker 1 (02:01:32):
The hardest day was that morning when I emailed my
manager to get on a zoom call and I said,
I'm turning down that bonus. I'm leaving banking. That was
the hardest.

Speaker 3 (02:01:48):
If I was a flower in the wall, Yeah, what
would I have seen that day?

Speaker 1 (02:01:53):
You'll see a girl in her late twenties taking or
saying no to a path that could make money. And
that was very certain, and that followed the default path
to go to a path where she wasn't sure if
she was going to make money. She didn't know how
it turned out, but she did it because it meant

(02:02:15):
so much to her. And she did it because she
saw the impact she was having. And in her ten
years or nine years in banking, she's never felt like
she's had that impact on individuals. It's been for corporates
or for sovereigns. It's never been for specific people or
day to day people who need it. And she did it,

(02:02:37):
and she didn't know where I was going to lead her.

Speaker 3 (02:02:42):
Is there an element of being a first or second
generation immigrant that ties into this because I hear so
often when people come up to me in the gym
and you know, the mother's African, like my mother's African
and I was born in Africa and to my mother's
Nigerian and put tremendous weight on you know, going to
university and becoming a success in the eyes of the public.

(02:03:04):
And then I hear a lot from sort of more
Asian first generation immigrants or second generation immigrants that they
feel like, you know, the doctor lawyer, can't remember what
the third one was, doctor lawyer something maybe finance.

Speaker 1 (02:03:16):
Do you think that plays a role into why you
go down a certain path?

Speaker 3 (02:03:20):
Yeah, in terms of like if you're at home and
you're you have first generation immigrant parents and they see
successes like one of three jobs, it becomes harder to
break out, Like breaking out basically makes your failure at home.

Speaker 1 (02:03:35):
I think there's two things. I think it's definitely that's
a big part of it, but also seeing what your
parents did and how hard they were to get you
onto a path of security, which is a job, and
then saying yeah, you would really hard, and I'm throwing
that away. There's a lot of guilt that comes with that.
So I think it's I think it's both. I think

(02:03:56):
it's did you feel with that guilt I did at
the time, massive guilt? Massive guilt. I couldn't tell anyone
that I was quitting until after I quit. The only
person who knew was my then boyfriend now husband.

Speaker 3 (02:04:09):
Your parents didn't know.

Speaker 1 (02:04:10):
They didn't know till after I quit. I couldn't tell
them why because I knew that if they said something,
I might have just changed my decision.

Speaker 3 (02:04:21):
And you think they would have said something.

Speaker 1 (02:04:24):
I don't know, But when I told them, they supported
it because they knew yours also too late. I think
they might have just said, hey, this is secure.

Speaker 3 (02:04:35):
Well, maybe there's something in that. Maybe in those big decisions,
where as you say you're going to deal with the
consequences yourself, both the upside and the regret, maybe consensus
and focus groups aren't needed in such a moment when
we should be tuning into the voice inside, because yeah,
external voices will just complicate those things. But I also think,
you know, I say this to people a lot, when

(02:04:56):
they come up to me and they say I'm in
this situation. I'm in finance and working in the city.
I've got this dream of being a violin player in Peru.
The first question I have to ask them is like,
could you go back if you're wrong? Because if you
could go back if you're wrong, then that's what we
call a I think it's a type one decision in business,
which is a door that is reversible. And so many
people spend one year, three years, five years, ten years,

(02:05:18):
twenty years of their life stood in front of a
type one decision, a door that they could walk back
through if they're wrong. And actually, it's just like such
a crazy shame not to make those type one decisions
at speed if it's reversible. And it's so crazy because
like ninety five percent of the time when I ask
someone that question, they respond they said, yeah, I could
go back to investment banking if I was wrong. I'm like,

(02:05:39):
go do the violin thing, then go fuck up, fail,
it might work out whatever, but come back here if you.

Speaker 1 (02:05:45):
Can, so yeah, you won't have that pain of what if?

Speaker 3 (02:05:48):
But what if? Yah? And I remember reading that study
from Bronnie Bernie Ware, palliative nurse who interviewed people on
their deathbeds, and it was I think the number one
regret is not living the life that I think I
could have lived. I've always remembered that. I thought, Okay,
so if it's reversible, then maybe go through that door
as fast as you can. Nisha, thank you so much
for doing what you do. It's really incredibly important, and

(02:06:10):
I think the very fact that your channel has been
so resonant, so far reaching speaks to an unmet demand
in people's understanding of finance, but also having a voice
that they can very much relate to that simplifies, makes
things complicated, things accessible, but also just a human being
that is relatable in many forms. Your intentions of why

(02:06:30):
you're doing what you're doing are so abundantly clear, and
I could see that in the emotion. I could see
that you really really do care about other people, and
actually your decision to take a leap from the world
of investment banking, which was much more secure and high
status in many people's eyes at that moment in time,
was one also inspired by the fact that you want
to do good for the world, and that is exactly

(02:06:50):
what you're doing. So I highly recommend everybody goes and
checks out your channel. I'm going to link it below
if they want to continue this conversation because you make
very actionable, concise, clear video and all the subjects we've
talked about, but many more. And also to go follow
you on social media, which will also link everywhere else.
But I just want to thank you for your time
and hopefully we can talk again soon when you've written
a book and the book comes out.

Speaker 1 (02:07:12):
Thank you so much, Stevan, It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (02:07:16):
This has always blown my mind a little bit. Fifty
three percent of you that listen to this show regularly
haven't yet subscribed to this show, So could I ask
you for a favor. If you like the show and
you like what we do here, and you want to
support us, the free, simple way that you can do
just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my
commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll
do everything in my power, me and my team to
make sure that this show is better for you. Every

(02:07:37):
single week, we'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the
guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll
continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.
We launched these conversation cards and they sold out, and
we launched them again, and they sold out again. We
launched them again and they sold out again. Because people
love playing these with colleagues at work, with friends at home,
and also with family. And we've also got a big
audience that use them as journal prompts. Every single time

(02:07:57):
a guest comes on the Dire of a CEO, they
leave a question for the next guest in the diary.
And I've sat here with some of the most incredible
people in the world and they've left all of these
questions in the Diary, and I've ranked them from one
to three in terms of the depth, one being a
starter question and level three. If you look on the
back here, this is a level three becomes a much

(02:08:18):
deeper question that builds even more connection. If you turn
the cards over and you scan that QR code, you
can see who answered the card and watch the video
of them answering it in real time. So if you
would like to get your hands on some of these
conversation cards, go to the Diary dot com or look
at the link in the description below

Speaker 2 (02:09:00):
And