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Transcript

Frances Cook on Why You Don’t Need to Be Perfect With Money. · The Curve

• 0:00
  I've never done this before, an introduction about the guest that you're about to listen to
• 0:04
  while she's sitting on a seat facing me, listening to everything I say.
• 0:08
  So we have the amazing Frances Cook joining us today.
• 0:11
  Where to even begin?
• 0:13
  She was a financial
• 0:14
  journalist in mainstream media.
• 0:16
  In the last two years, has gone out by herself?
• 0:19
  Yeah.
• 0:19
  Gone out by herself.
• 0:21
  She has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people.
• 0:24
  Okay,
• 0:24
  that's a bit of an exaggeration, but about everything from personal finance to investing.
• 0:29
  and this conversation is probably not what you would expect from her.
• 0:32
  There's so much beautiful
• 0:34
  vulnerability about her life and the way that she looks at her own finances and I think for someone
• 0:39
  who you would consider to get everything right and do it by the books, she's actually really
• 0:44
  honest about the way that she approaches everything which is real and human and not perfect.
• 0:49
  So it's an amazing conversation and yeah, I hope you really enjoy it.
• 0:57
  Frances, before we get started, I just need to clear the air with the audience and say,
• 1:02
  if my voice sounds a bit odd, I just choked on some cheese.
• 1:05
  We've got a delicious platter of
• 1:07
  cheese and crackers.
• 1:08
  It's 11 in the morning.
• 1:09
  And I came in and made a joke saying, as if he
• 1:12
  was going to have cheese and crackers for breakfast.
• 1:14
  And here I was scoffing cheese
• 1:16
  and had a little choke.
• 1:16
  So apologies if I sound a bit raspy.
• 1:19
  So great to be here with you.
• 1:21
  I, it's really funny because as I was preparing for this interview, I was thinking, and all the
• 1:26
  questions that I wrote were very much, you know, how do you calculate this?
• 1:30
  How do you split this?
• 1:31
  You know, really quite meticulous in terms of the right way to do finances.
• 1:37
  Because I remember when
• 1:38
  we first had you on the podcast, which must've been forever ago now, four years ago.
• 1:44
  I mean,
• 1:44
  it was just after my first bubba who's now we're looking at skills for him.
• 1:48
  That's wild.
• 1:49
  We were recording in Vic's spare room with wires everywhere.
• 1:54
  It was absolute chaos.
• 1:57
  But at the time, you know, I was a total beginner with money, with investing.
• 2:02
  I was so fresh.
• 2:04
  And I remember the things that you spoke about, and I just pedestalled you,
• 2:07
  as if someone that knows exactly what they're doing and has, you know,
• 2:11
  got all their splits done perfectly, and she puts this in here.
• 2:14
  And, you know, we were talking off mic and obviously knowing you better now since then.
• 2:18
  And your approach to money is quite interesting because while you're a financial journalist
• 2:23
  and while you've spoken to hundreds, maybe thousands of professionals, the way you approach
• 2:29
  money actually is not that different to myself.
• 2:32
  And so today in this episode, I just wanted to get to know you a bit more.
• 2:36
  And I know that you know the right way to do things, but it'd be really cool to speak
• 2:41
  about the theory of what you know to be true, but then also being honest about how you manage
• 2:46
  things because I know from experience there's times where, yeah, I'll talk about the 50-20-10
• 2:53
  whatever rule in terms of how you should split your pay, but do I do that every single pay?
• 2:58
  No.
• 2:58
  And I think that it's really refreshing for people to hear, you know, people that put on
• 3:03
  pedestals realizing actually we're all human and we don't necessarily do it the right way all the
• 3:08
  time.
• 3:08
  So I'd love to start by hearing what you were like with money before you started the podcast,
• 3:16
  Because you've worked in media a long time.
• 3:19
  Before that, I'm imagining that you weren't like, oh, I know what I want to be a journalist in, money.
• 3:25
  Because you were good at it, maybe it was the opposite?
• 3:28
  Yeah, very much so.
• 3:31
  It's funny, when I came into journalism, my mum's a maths teacher.
• 3:35
  And bless her, I don't think she'd ever call me a disappointment, but on some level I must be.
• 3:41
  She tried to tutor me all through high school and it was a disaster.
• 3:44
  don't recommend that for a good teenager mother relationship and so I've never been someone who
• 3:50
  thought I was like good with numbers certainly not good with money I've always had a job
• 3:54
  but I would spend it as soon as it was out of my hands someone who went through real periods of
• 4:01
  sort of feast and famine of the money situation as I was a kid and I do think that leaves a mark
• 4:08
  in terms of how you handle money.
• 4:10
  So I was very much like spend money before it's gone
• 4:14
  sort of mentality.
• 4:15
  I had a real scarcity mindset with it.
• 4:17
  Didn't consider myself good with it.
• 4:19
  And then got into journalism was like, awesome.
• 4:21
  All I have to do is really like work hard for
• 4:24
  pay rises and everything will be fine.
• 4:26
  And I was a general journalist, moved up to a senior
• 4:29
  journalist, became a court reporter.
• 4:32
  Loved that until it starts to wear on your soul.
• 4:37
  There is a certain point at which you cannot be sidelines for the worst day of people's lives.
• 4:41
  For too long, it starts to build.
• 4:44
  So I hit a point where I was emotionally exhausted from that.
• 4:47
  Moved into politics.
• 4:49
  Loved it.
• 4:49
  Then hated it.
• 4:50
  Same thing in terms of the exhaustion, but I got sick of being lied to every day.
• 4:56
  So ran out of time on that and then hit business journalism of all things.
• 5:00
  And loved it.
• 5:02
  Really surprised myself.
• 5:04
  Loved it.
• 5:05
  partly because it's not actually as much numbers as I had thought at first.
• 5:10
  Business is people,
• 5:11
  it is relationships, it is how everything is interconnected and it is underlying so much of
• 5:18
  everything in our lives.
• 5:20
  You start to see the way society operates moved by money and that's
• 5:24
  very addictive and I got more and more into this world and thought I actually think I love this and
• 5:30
  maybe money can be for, you know, people like me.
• 5:33
  You mentioned when you were younger, the feast or
• 5:35
  famine thing, because I've experienced that chronically, but it wasn't so much that my
• 5:41
  parents' financial situation was swinging in roundabouts.
• 5:44
  It was the way that I spent money.
• 5:46
  As soon as it was in my account, it was then gone.
• 5:48
  So for the last, well, before the curve,
• 5:52
  for 10 years, I would spend money.
• 5:53
  The first week would be, oh God, this is so fun.
• 5:57
  It drinks on me.
• 5:58
  And then the second, third, fourth week was, oh my God, forgot, forgot.
• 6:03
  I've got three more weeks.
• 6:04
  How am I going to do this?
• 6:06
  When you mentioned that, was it more actually that your parents and your home life changed
• 6:12
  at times and therefore that influenced your sort of feast or famine approach with money?
• 6:18
  Yeah.
• 6:18
  And it's a little bit tricky to talk about because I would never want my parents to feel
• 6:22
  that I was ever criticizing them or what they've done.
• 6:26
  Um, but it is also interesting as I've grown up and honestly, really only in my thirties,
• 6:32
  starting to realize just how unstable a lot of my childhood was.
• 6:36
  There were, there were issues with getting enough food on the table where we had a friend
• 6:41
  of the family donate some eggs and then someone else we knew gave us some potatoes.
• 6:46
  And my mom went out and bought a sack of carrots because that was the cheapest thing in the
• 6:49
  supermarket.
• 6:51
  Um, and that was like frittata for weeks, you know?
• 6:55
  And it was, you know, that sort of thing really can leave an impact.
• 6:59
  There were times when we had it really good and there were times where we really didn't
• 7:05
  have enough.
• 7:07
  And I feel like that instability and that feeling of you don't know what's coming next
• 7:12
  can, it leaves a mark in a lot of ways.
• 7:15
  And I think I still see that in how I talk about money, where I'll often talk about money
• 7:19
  in terms of money as freedom, money as stability, money as nobody can ever tell you what to
• 7:23
  do.
• 7:25
  sometimes it's very obvious to me that what I am building is a wall against the world
• 7:33
  and the things that can happen to make sure I don't experience that instability again.
• 7:37
  It's so interesting that you preface that answer with wanting to protect your parents,
• 7:42
  because I completely understand.
• 7:44
  I actually wrote an article for a publication once and I was
• 7:48
  speaking about, I spoke about my dad and it actually caused a lot of family drama because
• 7:55
  the way I spoke about it really upset him.
• 7:58
  And I felt so gutted about it because it wasn't what I
• 8:01
  meant to do at all.
• 8:03
  It's a really hard balance because to be able to change your money story
• 8:08
  and to be able to grow and develop in a new way, you have to look at where you've come from and
• 8:13
  where you've been and then to educate others to do the same.
• 8:18
  Using your own personal experience
• 8:20
  is so important to lead by example and to help people feel more connected to you.
• 8:25
  So I really
• 8:25
  understand that sensitivity around talking about it, but do you then look at the way that you grew
• 8:34
  up and some of the tendencies that you had before you started learning more about money?
• 8:38
  Can you
• 8:39
  pinpoint some of those as examples of, oh, I can see why I was doing that as because of this,
• 8:44
  as more of a, and again, it doesn't need to necessarily be putting the blame on anyone.
• 8:50
  It's more just looking at the way you responded to what you were taught or what your
• 8:56
  world was like growing up.
• 8:58
  Because I know there's so many examples for me, but for someone who's
• 9:03
  never looked at their money story or perhaps connected the dots between how their parents
• 9:06
  were with money and how they are now, hearing some of your examples may help to ring a few
• 9:11
  bells for people.
• 9:12
  Yeah.
• 9:13
  And it's funny, isn't it?
• 9:14
  Because like I was brought up with so much love
• 9:16
  and I think that's the number one thing to be loved all the time from your parents.
• 9:20
  And so
• 9:21
  that's always a thing as well as then other external forces come and your parents will be
• 9:26
  doing their best to deal with it.
• 9:28
  But external forces can be really powerful.
• 9:32
  And I think that's
• 9:33
  the other thing of why I'm so pushy on, you know, have your savings, have your investments,
• 9:38
  don't be totally reliant on a job.
• 9:39
  All of these things certainly don't be reliant on a partner.
• 9:43
  All of these things that can come that it's very focused on the unexpected will come.
• 9:52
  You should already be prepared and ready for it because that's what life does.
• 9:56
  And I don't think that's unique to me.
• 9:58
  I think everyone has their own experience of that where
• 10:03
  life throws you a curveball.
• 10:04
  I mean, we've all experienced that multiple times in the last few
• 10:07
  years, just in terms of global events.
• 10:10
  There's been several curveballs just in the last sort of
• 10:12
  five or six years.
• 10:14
  There's only so much you can do to protect yourself against them,
• 10:16
  but doing the things that you can is super, super powerful.
• 10:20
  And so I think I was always very driven
• 10:23
  to work hard and to build something for myself.
• 10:28
  You know, I've had a job since I was 14 and that
• 10:31
  was stability for me, you know, being able to get my own car, pay for my own petrol money,
• 10:38
  have that freedom and to be able to get the things that I wanted in life was amazing.
• 10:44
  But I didn't necessarily future-proof at that stage.
• 10:48
  At that stage, I was totally focused on
• 10:49
  the freedom side of things without thinking about long-term freedom.
• 10:53
  It took me until my late 20s
• 10:55
  to really figure out, oh, I'm going wrong with money and I can do so much better on this.
• 11:01
  Um, so it was, you know, go and get a job, do the best you can at that job, work your
• 11:08
  way up, really throw yourself into that and prove your worth.
• 11:12
  And then as I'm getting pay rises, I'm sort of like, Hmm, I'm still not any further ahead
• 11:17
  than I was.
• 11:17
  And I'm not feeling any less stressed than I was.
• 11:20
  And maybe I'm the problem here.
• 11:22
  And how is that happening?
• 11:25
  And so that was, you know, just as I started getting into business journalism and I mean,
• 11:29
  journalism drill down to it.
• 11:31
  journalism is just find out something you didn't know before, tell other people about it.
• 11:36
  Right.
• 11:36
  And so I started a personal finance podcast and was like, yeah, this will be for people who are
• 11:41
  smart, but don't necessarily know about money.
• 11:43
  Hello, it's me.
• 11:46
  And so I started interviewing these people.
• 11:49
  And it's so amazing when you call people up
• 11:52
  as a journalist with a podcast and say, Hey, I'd love your time.
• 11:56
  And you get these incredible
• 11:58
  industry leading experts to give you an hour of their time for free and you can ask them whatever
• 12:02
  you want.
• 12:03
  I mean, what an amazing job perk.
• 12:06
  And so I started looking into that and realizing, okay,
• 12:09
  there are some very easy wins here.
• 12:10
  There are some low hanging fruit.
• 12:12
  I still wasn't paid
• 12:13
  like amazingly compared to a lot of people.
• 12:15
  I was paid better than I was, but not amazing.
• 12:18
  But there's some very low hanging fruit in terms of just handling a couple of things slightly
• 12:23
  differently.
• 12:24
  It makes very little impact on my life and I can build so much more stability.
• 12:28
  And that's so powerful.
• 12:32
  And I started to see these wins you could get for very little effort.
• 12:35
  And then that's, that's addictive.
• 12:37
  I love what you just shared.
• 12:38
  And I think that
• 12:39
  it's a really similar story to me and the curve, you know, I all of a sudden realized,
• 12:44
  oh my God, I'm doing this so badly and I really want to do it better.
• 12:48
  I want to know.
• 12:49
  so I asked questions and I asked more questions and you've done the same thing over a much longer
• 12:54
  period of time if you look at where you were and how you used to handle money and that that stage
• 13:00
  that you spoke about where you thought oh gosh like my pay rises kind of aren't doing anything
• 13:05
  and they're not helping me get ahead and I still feel the same I think that's such an important
• 13:10
  point what were the things that you were taught or that you learned through those interviews and
• 13:15
  through your journalism that made you look at the way that you were handling your money
• 13:19
  and thought, okay, I'm not doing this right.
• 13:22
  And then I guess the second part of that question is,
• 13:25
  what did you implement to change?
• 13:27
  Like where have you landed now after all those conversations?
• 13:31
  One of the biggest watershed moments for me was just realizing you can get ahead with
• 13:38
  no extra effort, just knowing where to aim your effort.
• 13:41
  One of the very first episodes I did was
• 13:42
  on KiwiSaver and talked to this lovely man.
• 13:46
  I'm pretty sure it was Tom Hartman from Sorted.
• 13:48
  He's
• 13:48
  still so lovely.
• 13:51
  And talking to him and I'd known for years, I'd seen some article about,
• 13:57
  oh, you should have your KiwiSaver and different funds at different times of your life.
• 14:02
  And I was like, that sounds hard.
• 14:05
  I will get to that soon.
• 14:07
  And that continued for like five years.
• 14:09
  which I look at and I'm like that's so much money and we um so I sat down and finally it's on work
• 14:16
  time and because I actually take my job seriously even if I don't take the rest of my life seriously
• 14:20
  I actually finally was ready to look at this properly I ran the numbers my real numbers of
• 14:25
  what I was earning at that time how long I had until retirement what I could do and I was just
• 14:29
  in the standard conservative kiwi saver at that time yikes yep and I was projected to have 220,000
• 14:39
  I think, by retirement.
• 14:42
  And then we ran the numbers of how I just switched it to growth.
• 14:44
  So no extra money from me, nothing else changed.
• 14:47
  I just changed a setting in terms of where my
• 14:50
  money is going.
• 14:52
  And it doubled it.
• 14:53
  And I just, it blew my mind that it could be that much of
• 14:58
  a difference for that little effort.
• 15:00
  And then, and then I Googled KiwiSaver comparison being like,
• 15:05
  I don't know, has one of my colleagues done this before?
• 15:07
  And it's just going to tell me what's the
• 15:09
  best fund, even better.
• 15:11
  No, one Google and up came the KiwiSaver fund finder.
• 15:15
  And I just put
• 15:16
  in my details into that.
• 15:17
  And after 15 minutes, it's like, here's your best options ranked.
• 15:21
  15 minutes.
• 15:22
  And I'd put it off for five years.
• 15:23
  And all it took was me sitting down doing it.
• 15:26
  And I could have $200,000 extra, but no extra work for me.
• 15:30
  So I was like, A, this can be so
• 15:31
  much easier than I'm making it.
• 15:33
  And B, this can be so much easier for nothing more from I lose
• 15:37
  nothing.
• 15:39
  And I was just like, where else am I missing these easy wins?
• 15:42
  Many places.
• 15:43
  But you
• 15:44
  have to have that realization of, yes, life can be hard.
• 15:49
  And yes, we all start at different places
• 15:51
  with our money.
• 15:51
  And it is extremely real in terms of there are things that hold us back
• 15:57
  that can be hard to get around.
• 15:59
  But don't start with those things.
• 16:01
  Take the easy wins.
• 16:02
  There are
• 16:03
  easy wins that almost all of us can access and they will make a huge difference to your life.
• 16:07
  It might be night and day.
• 16:08
  I think that's such a brilliant and motivating piece of advice,
• 16:13
  especially for someone that feels overwhelmed with the amount of things to do.
• 16:17
  You said the
• 16:18
  KiwiSaver moment was a real penny drop.
• 16:20
  Okay, wow.
• 16:21
  Oh my goodness.
• 16:21
  I could have doubled just by
• 16:23
  literally clicking growth.
• 16:25
  Obviously, that's a huge one.
• 16:27
  Your retirement savings, I mean,
• 16:29
  oh my god I remember Vic suggesting we did an event on KiwiSaver and I was like that sounds
• 16:34
  so boring let's absolutely not do that I didn't even know it was investing you know so
• 16:38
  what other things over the years have you been like oh yoink I'm going to collect that and
• 16:44
  implement it in my life oh that's something I'm going to pick up and do because the growth piece
• 16:49
  in terms of growing your wealth is enormous but I'm imagining like me the whole sort of
• 16:55
  feast and famine, like spending a lot of money.
• 16:57
  What are some of the other things when it came
• 16:59
  to personal finance that you implemented that have really revolutionized and changed
• 17:05
  how you think about approach and work with your money?
• 17:08
  I think one of them is actually,
• 17:10
  this is going to sound really woo, and I sometimes get turned off by woo.
• 17:13
  So if anyone
• 17:14
  is immediately going, I hear you.
• 17:17
  But actually mindset is so much more crucial than any of us
• 17:22
  want to admit, especially those of us who pride ourselves on not being woo, we probably need to
• 17:27
  address mindset more than anyone else.
• 17:29
  Because if you think that something is not for you,
• 17:33
  if you think that you're just not good at that, if you think that that's, you know, for other people,
• 17:38
  you're never going to look at it.
• 17:39
  You're never going to find out the things there that are
• 17:41
  probably actually really easy to do.
• 17:42
  Even if you don't get to the top levels, you might get to
• 17:44
  level two or three, still worth it.
• 17:46
  And so addressing that mindset of certain things are
• 17:49
  not for people like me is so important.
• 17:52
  And that is a bit of an ongoing practice.
• 17:55
  But I think it's
• 17:56
  also why I'm quite focused on, you know, I talk to people a lot about sort of various different
• 18:02
  ways they can handle their money.
• 18:03
  And I'm always really careful.
• 18:05
  Like, I don't want to be like,
• 18:07
  this is the correct way to do it.
• 18:10
  And I think I don't even really believe that there is a right
• 18:13
  way to handle your money.
• 18:14
  I think there are options.
• 18:17
  I think you do need savings.
• 18:19
  How much?
• 18:20
  Okay, let's talk about your options.
• 18:22
  How are you going to build up those savings?
• 18:24
  Let's look at
• 18:24
  your options.
• 18:26
  And there's more than one way to pay off debt.
• 18:28
  That's for a reason because different
• 18:29
  things work for different people.
• 18:31
  And what I want for people is to sort of take the pressure off,
• 18:37
  to be like, here is the correct way to handle your money.
• 18:40
  You know, the correct way to handle
• 18:42
  your money is if it's given you the life you want to live and you're not feeling too stressed.
• 18:46
  And that can be so different for different people.
• 18:49
  And so I think always starting with that idea of
• 18:53
  what do you want your life to be?
• 18:55
  Like what makes you happy?
• 18:56
  What brings some spark?
• 18:58
  What brings
• 18:58
  some joy?
• 19:00
  What makes you feel good?
• 19:02
  Okay, working backwards, reality of life, often making those
• 19:06
  things happen takes money.
• 19:08
  So now working backwards, you want to be really present for
• 19:11
  your kids.
• 19:12
  You want to be able to be there to pick them up every day from school.
• 19:15
  Okay,
• 19:17
  how are you going to change your career to make that happen?
• 19:18
  How are you going to change your
• 19:19
  money life to make that happen?
• 19:22
  How can you make this work in the way that is realistic for you?
• 19:28
  Good with money doesn't mean a pile of gold that you sit on and you hoard and you never spend and
• 19:32
  you're deprived, but you've got cash and good for you.
• 19:34
  It's what does your life look like?
• 19:36
  What do
• 19:37
  you care about?
• 19:38
  What values do you have?
• 19:40
  How do you make that work?
• 19:41
  Could you use yourself as an
• 19:43
  example?
• 19:43
  So could you share, because we speak a lot about the 50-30-20 situation, but there are
• 19:49
  other ways to think about how to split your money or how much to put into savings and blah, blah,
• 19:54
  blah.
• 19:55
  But also what you share about it being really personal and choosing what works for you.
• 20:00
  I'm so that kind of person that's like, I want to do it right.
• 20:04
  Yeah.
• 20:05
  I want to do it perfectly.
• 20:06
  Tell me how.
• 20:07
  And that's not possible and it's not a thing.
• 20:09
  I think that's a former gymnast coming out.
• 20:10
  A hundred percent.
• 20:12
  It's the competitive gymnast being an absolute psycho.
• 20:15
  A hundred percent.
• 20:17
  Are there any other classic ways that you've heard people talk about it?
• 20:22
  And then where did you land with how you looked at your life?
• 20:26
  See, I do quite like the 50-30-20.
• 20:28
  but I like it as a starting point, not an end point.
• 20:32
  And so I think about, you know,
• 20:34
  you and I live in very different parts of the world, right?
• 20:36
  You're in London.
• 20:37
  I'm in Tiamuti, center of the universe.
• 20:38
  I've got horses next door.
• 20:40
  You're in Tiamuti?
• 20:41
  Yeah, it's great.
• 20:42
  I've got an investment property there.
• 20:43
  Go say hi.
• 20:44
  There we go.
• 20:45
  Great place.
• 20:45
  Stop, this is so exciting.
• 20:48
  It's the best place to be investing, girl.
• 20:50
  I mean, honestly, I did think it was a good one.
• 20:53
  But now that you're there, I'm feeling very, you know,
• 20:55
  reaffirmed in my decision.
• 20:56
  Was this one of the ones that you've seen in person or not seen in person?
• 20:59
  Haven't seen it.
• 21:00
  So if you could go and do a little drive-by, I would appreciate that.
• 21:02
  Come and visit it and then go to Red Kitchen and that'll be the best coffee.
• 21:05
  It'll be great.
• 21:06
  This is so fun.
• 21:09
  I don't have time this trip, but next time I do a tour.
• 21:12
  Excellent.
• 21:13
  So, you know, I sort of, the 50-30-20, right, is a useful starting point in terms of this
• 21:19
  is where you should be thinking about the splits of your money.
• 21:22
  You know, reality is most of our cash is going to go to the necessities of life, keeping a roof over your head, keeping fed, yada, yada.
• 21:30
  But it shouldn't be everything because then you're not building up, you know.
• 21:35
  You also do need to have some fun or you're going to go crazy.
• 21:38
  Do not put yourself on a money crash diet.
• 21:41
  You will last two weeks and then like every crash diet, it will end, you know.
• 21:45
  So you've got to have some fun in life.
• 21:46
  You've got to be enjoying life.
• 21:47
  You could be hit by a bus tomorrow.
• 21:49
  but then you've also got to have your savings your investments and be building to the future
• 21:53
  so for someone like you if you look at the 50 30 20 and then you go well i live in london
• 21:59
  and it's insane and i'm also trying to build a business and so you know i'm not able to pay that
• 22:06
  much i'm investing back into the business i live in a high cost of living area there's going to be
• 22:11
  a really high base cost cool you know that the 50 30 20 is the starting point and then you just
• 22:16
  kind of nudge it up because that's reality right now and then it's looking at it and being like
• 22:20
  okay does that come out of the fun or the future whereas for myself I'm in a different phase of
• 22:26
  life slightly older than you we're not going to talk about how much just a smidge I actually
• 22:30
  thought we were the same age and smidge older really yeah 38 this year oh you do have two
• 22:37
  children to be fair I do yes and they age me substantially you probably had them around
• 22:43
  my age, right?
• 22:44
  Yeah.
• 22:44
  But I see what you're saying.
• 22:47
  We all have different
• 22:49
  lives that we're living at different times and you go through seasons.
• 22:53
  So starting with the 50,
• 22:54
  30, 20 could be a good starting point, but you might be living with your parents to save money
• 22:59
  for a house.
• 23:00
  Therefore, you might only be spending 20% of your pay on essentials.
• 23:04
  You have to adjust
• 23:05
  based on where you're at, what season you're in.
• 23:08
  Is that kind of what you mean?
• 23:09
  Decide how you're
• 23:09
  going to use that as well.
• 23:10
  Right.
• 23:10
  So I very deliberately looked at, um, I want to earn as
• 23:15
  much as I can and put my living costs as low as I can, because that's a huge lever.
• 23:18
  Like you look
• 23:18
  at that 50, 30, 20, and you're like, well, 50 is obviously the biggest one.
• 23:22
  And if I can attack
• 23:23
  that, then I've got so much more future and fun.
• 23:26
  So I very deliberately, we first moved to Hamilton,
• 23:29
  um, and then onto Tiamutu, um, and very deliberately have targeted living in places
• 23:35
  where A, I want to raise my family around extended family.
• 23:40
  So that was a lifestyle choice as well.
• 23:43
  But it was also very much a financial choice
• 23:44
  of that's going to bring my living costs down
• 23:47
  and I can direct that money elsewhere
• 23:49
  and I can build faster.
• 23:51
  And so it just gives you that freedom of,
• 23:54
  here's a starting point.
• 23:55
  Now what levers do I want to pull
• 23:57
  to create the life I want to live?
• 23:59
  And the life I want to live is mortgage-free
• 24:01
  and investments and around the people I care about.
• 24:05
  And so I could pull those levers.
• 24:07
  One of the things that you mentioned at the beginning of this episode was the idea of
• 24:12
  having experienced instability means that you have perhaps a more heightened
• 24:18
  expectational fear of things coming crashing down, life happening,
• 24:22
  which I can completely relate to as well.
• 24:26
  With that in mind, how have you approached your finances with relation to your family
• 24:31
  and your partner?
• 24:32
  So you're not an individual, right?
• 24:34
  I'm right now living in London in a pretty independent way where there's not people
• 24:41
  relying on me.
• 24:42
  I'm not financially intertwined with a partner.
• 24:44
  How do you balance that personal
• 24:48
  finance piece, having joint financial goals as well as having, I'm imagining your own financial
• 24:54
  independence on the side?
• 24:55
  How have you balanced that?
• 24:56
  Like what's the setup there?
• 24:58
  Also, it's a
• 24:59
  weird one for me and my husband because we've been together since we were 17.
• 25:03
  So that was a lot of
• 25:04
  growing up together and a lot of time where we lived together, but we were very conscious that
• 25:10
  we were young and we weren't married yet.
• 25:12
  And I'm fiercely independent.
• 25:15
  I'm a real, like,
• 25:19
  I often, anytime my husband will say something that I perceive as overstepping a boundary,
• 25:23
  I'm like, you can't cage a shark because great white sharks can't be put in aquariums.
• 25:29
  They die.
• 25:30
  They have tried everything under the sun.
• 25:32
  They cannot do it.
• 25:33
  There's something about if you put them in an aquarium, they're just going to die.
• 25:35
  And it's true, though.
• 25:36
  If you put boundaries on me too much, I will straight up spiritually die.
• 25:42
  So hard no.
• 25:43
  And so we didn't share finances for a long time.
• 25:46
  We did know what was going on with each other.
• 25:49
  He was probably relieved not to share finances with me for a long time because what he knew
• 25:53
  that was going on with me was not great.
• 25:57
  He actually started investing before I did and he
• 26:00
  often had savings.
• 26:02
  We are both people who really prioritize independence and really prioritize
• 26:07
  stability, but we've often in the past had very different ways of going about it.
• 26:13
  And part of us
• 26:14
  growing up and mashing our lives together more and more, like now we run this business together,
• 26:20
  which is a wild choice.
• 26:21
  You know, they say don't start a business with friends.
• 26:23
  Try your romantic partner.
• 26:25
  Like, we're working from home together.
• 26:27
  Don't you worry.
• 26:28
  That's my next line of questioning.
• 26:30
  There we go.
• 26:31
  You know, we're working from home together.
• 26:34
  We are managing the children together.
• 26:37
  And then at the end of the night, we, you know,
• 26:39
  clock off everything and look at each other and go,
• 26:41
  I still quite like you, I think.
• 26:43
  You know.
• 26:43
  It's pretty amazing.
• 26:44
  It's pretty good.
• 26:45
  He is lucky that I like him a lot.
• 26:48
  I don't think there's anyone else.
• 26:50
  Like if we break up, I've told him it's just me, the kids,
• 26:52
  the cats.
• 26:53
  Like I'm not interested in any other men.
• 26:55
  Like, no thanks.
• 26:56
  I think I'm probably a lot
• 26:57
  to handle.
• 26:59
  But what helped us sort of align our financial goals was again, starting with the life
• 27:05
  goals.
• 27:06
  It's really easy to get bogged down in.
• 27:07
  You do that and I want to do it this way and blah,
• 27:09
  blah, blah.
• 27:10
  When you start with the shared goal of what do we want out of this life we're building
• 27:15
  together.
• 27:16
  What matters to us?
• 27:18
  What are we trying to build?
• 27:19
  Both in terms of the opportunities we'd
• 27:21
  like to be able to take and in terms of how we want to feel going through our lives.
• 27:26
  I don't
• 27:28
  want to feel stressed with money.
• 27:29
  I don't want to feel like I'm one disaster away from my life
• 27:33
  falling apart.
• 27:35
  And that's very similar for both of us.
• 27:37
  Both of us have a really high priority on
• 27:39
  family, really high priority on stability and on creating systems where we can withstand
• 27:48
  most situations.
• 27:49
  Don't want to tempt fate.
• 27:50
  There's always something that can happen.
• 27:52
  But creating those walls against the outside world problems.
• 27:56
  And once you've got that sorted,
• 27:58
  it's so much easier to work back from that and say, okay, where do we want to live?
• 28:04
  How fast
• 28:04
  do we want to pay off the mortgage?
• 28:06
  What sort of investments do we want?
• 28:08
  How much are we going to
• 28:09
  work that together.
• 28:09
  And probably 80% of our money is pooled and shared now, but we both still have
• 28:17
  our own separate investments as well, our own separate savings as well.
• 28:22
  And I think that's
• 28:23
  really important.
• 28:24
  You want to be able to handle your money in a way, or at least I do, where,
• 28:29
  you know, you're a grown adult.
• 28:30
  You shouldn't have to be totally answering to someone else.
• 28:32
  You should be on the same page.
• 28:34
  You should be working towards your goals together,
• 28:36
  but you shouldn't be necessarily answering to someone else.
• 28:39
  And where you put that line is
• 28:41
  probably going to be different for every couple, but I do think you're going to want to have
• 28:45
  some level of working together and independence.
• 28:49
  And because you were together for such a long time,
• 28:52
  did you have to actively both decide to grow your own, say, emergency fund separate,
• 28:57
  your own investment separate, as well as putting a percentage of your pay together for those future
• 29:02
  goals?
• 29:03
  Yeah.
• 29:03
  So the way we did it at first was we would get paid into our own separate bank accounts
• 29:07
  and then we would have the joint, you know, house bills and everything else.
• 29:12
  And we did that as a
• 29:13
  percentage split because, you know, you're paid differently at different times.
• 29:16
  So I'm a real big
• 29:17
  believer in terms of you can do a percentage split.
• 29:23
  Maybe you both put 60% of your income
• 29:26
  into the joint amount and then nobody's overly penalized for earning more or earning less.
• 29:31
  and it feels a bit fairer and you still have your own sort of independence.
• 29:35
  These days we do it
• 29:36
  differently, but bearing in mind that we've now been together forever.
• 29:41
  And so it's, you know,
• 29:42
  this works for us where everything comes in to joint account and then it's split out from there
• 29:49
  of we have joint bills, joint investments.
• 29:54
  And then we also have the same amount of money that
• 29:56
  we each get as a chunk that is ours to deal with.
• 29:59
  And from that, I have my spending, my investments
• 30:01
  my savings and so does he it's so cool it works really well because we still like he's a totally
• 30:07
  different investment style than me mine is winning just FYI love that totally different investment
• 30:14
  style for me and he can go and do it that's his money I have nothing to do with it and that's
• 30:18
  fine and great and he gets to enjoy it with that first round that you spoke about where it was 60%
• 30:23
  goes into the center and then 40% separately were there ever any moments where that didn't work
• 30:30
  where it came up against a, oh, this is uncomfortable?
• 30:34
  Or was it quite fair and consistent
• 30:39
  and felt mutually together and like you're building something as well as having that
• 30:44
  independence?
• 30:46
  Because, and I'm asking this always, I'm at the beginning of a relationship and I feel
• 30:49
  like I had the chance to craft how I do this quite differently, but it's really different coming into
• 30:55
  a relationship later in life where you've both had a lot of time to build your own assets and
• 31:01
  habits and whatever, whether someone has been together for a long time or whether they're
• 31:05
  getting together later in life, what are some really important things to think about to make
• 31:10
  sure that you're constantly on the same page financially and checking in or like conversations,
• 31:14
  like it's a really uncomfortable thing to talk about.
• 31:17
  There will also be a lot of people who've
• 31:18
  been married for ages and they've already got it done a certain way.
• 31:21
  How do you check in if
• 31:23
  what you have set up is still working.
• 31:25
  And I think you won't always necessarily be on the
• 31:28
  same financial page, but it's just figuring out a way to get around that and be like, okay,
• 31:33
  even if we do want slightly different things at this point, how do we get the best version of
• 31:35
  that we can?
• 31:37
  Because again, always remembering that life is short and you want to make sure
• 31:41
  you're both getting as much out of it as you possibly can.
• 31:44
  And it's coming back to those
• 31:45
  shared goals and values.
• 31:46
  And that really helps you remember that the problem is the problem,
• 31:49
  not each other is the problem, to always be a team that is attacking the problem,
• 31:54
  not a problem that is splitting you up and you end up attacking each other.
• 31:58
  And that is a constant thing that I think you do have to remind each other of.
• 32:02
  And so when you come
• 32:03
  back to those life goals and life values, that really, really helps.
• 32:06
  That's such good advice.
• 32:08
  I would love to know, you mentioned before your investment strategy is winning.
• 32:12
  Love that so much.
• 32:14
  How do you both invest?
• 32:16
  And then if you have different investing approaches,
• 32:19
  how do they come together with the joint approach?
• 32:21
  Like how and what are you investing in separately and together?
• 32:25
  So I think we both know deep down that index fund investing is the best.
• 32:28
  I thought you were about to say,
• 32:30
  we both know deep down that I'm the better investor.
• 32:32
  That's what I thought you were about to say.
• 32:35
  I mean, are we wrong?
• 32:38
  It's really funny.
• 32:39
  He does love to like compare our shares accounts
• 32:42
  and compare just the raw numbers of who's ahead.
• 32:45
  and I've been a good 10% ahead of him for the last year, two years.
• 32:51
  That's so fun.
• 32:52
  It's so fun.
• 32:52
  I love it.
• 32:53
  Oh, my gosh.
• 32:54
  He nudged up for a while because he did go hard on NVIDIA.
• 32:56
  He saw that coming.
• 32:57
  Good man.
• 32:59
  It wasn't like a huge part of his portfolio,
• 33:01
  but he did go a little harder on that.
• 33:03
  So he nudged up.
• 33:04
  He closed the gap to where I was only 8% ahead of him.
• 33:07
  8% ahead.
• 33:09
  Stunning.
• 33:09
  Just saying.
• 33:10
  Just saying.
• 33:11
  So, yeah, boring old index funds.
• 33:13
  I swear by them.
• 33:15
  I talk about them on my podcast all the time.
• 33:17
  And it's because they work.
• 33:19
  And all the data is there.
• 33:20
  It's just, it works.
• 33:22
  And especially since having kids, I haven't looked at my investments since my first was born.
• 33:27
  It's just on an auto payment.
• 33:28
  It goes in every fortnight.
• 33:30
  It's there.
• 33:31
  It goes into a global index fund.
• 33:33
  Easy.
• 33:33
  Done.
• 33:34
  I'm moving on with my life.
• 33:35
  I'm busy.
• 33:36
  And it's smashing my partners.
• 33:39
  Oh, so that's your individual investment strategy?
• 33:42
  Both.
• 33:43
  So individual and joint, my individual and the joint is fairly much the same.
• 33:48
  But he has fun with making some individual company picks and being like, I think NVIDIA
• 33:53
  is going to work.
• 33:54
  He's actually like changed his mind recently and said, I think AI is totally overhyped
• 34:00
  and he's betting against AI with some anti-AI picks.
• 34:04
  And they've been doing really well for him.
• 34:05
  He's having a great time.
• 34:06
  But he gets some big wins and then some big losses.
• 34:09
  And he loves it.
• 34:10
  And it makes him have fun.
• 34:11
  And this is why I say there's not necessarily a right way to have money, right?
• 34:16
  My index funds are technically beating his.
• 34:19
  But he still has a lot of index funds and then he has his own little picks on the side of that.
• 34:26
  And he's interested and he's still investing.
• 34:29
  And he's well ahead of anyone who has lost interest because they tried to do the right thing,
• 34:34
  found index funds totally boring, couldn't stick with it, didn't keep investing and stopped progressing.
• 34:40
  That's literally me.
• 34:41
  I find index funds really boring.
• 34:42
  There you go.
• 34:43
  So, okay.
• 34:44
  So for someone like you, Core Satellite, have you come across Core Satellite?
• 34:47
  Yeah, yeah.
• 34:48
  I do know this, but can you explain it for anyone that doesn't understand the Core Satellite?
• 34:52
  So Core Satellite is sort of 70 to 80% of your money, roughly, will be in something
• 34:58
  boring, standard, proven, like your good, solid index funds.
• 35:01
  Low fee, passive, do it.
• 35:03
  And then you have your fund with your 20 to 30% of your individual company picks, maybe
• 35:09
  a little bit of crypto please don't make that the full 20 maybe like five percent crypto um
• 35:15
  and this is not individual financial advice get a financial advisor this is not financial advice
• 35:20
  not financial advice you don't need to hear that again this is not financial advice exactly um so
• 35:26
  yeah the sort of 20 to 30 percent is your fun stuff that keeps you interested and maybe it'll
• 35:30
  work sometimes this stuff works really well i talked to um i got jane ju on the making sense
• 35:37
  podcast and she had a hundred thousand dollars invested by 25 amazing love this for her couldn't
• 35:44
  identify less with someone who is so motivated at such a young age we have nothing in common
• 35:51
  she's just like amazing she's got her life sorted she's so poised she's so like i'm just like
• 35:56
  i love you i am definitely not you um but she has been investing for a long time and she again
• 36:03
  Nvidia saw that coming.
• 36:05
  She uses AI a lot in her work.
• 36:07
  Her partner is in that space.
• 36:08
  And she was
• 36:08
  like, went hard, did really well.
• 36:11
  That was a big part of how she hit 100,000 invested by 25.
• 36:15
  Now it could have gone the other way, but she has youth on her side, lucky thing.
• 36:21
  And so she can make some of those moonshots.
• 36:23
  And so I think, you know, maybe that moonshot
• 36:25
  will work out for you really well, in which case, love that for you.
• 36:29
  Maybe it won't.
• 36:29
  Either way,
• 36:30
  you're investing and you've got your core that is there doing its boring thing and ensuring that
• 36:35
  you don't tank everything just for the sake of staying interested.
• 36:39
  Personally, like do you need
• 36:41
  more than the index funds to keep you excited or is that enough?
• 36:45
  You're not interested?
• 36:45
  I'm very
• 36:46
  like boring and lazy with my money.
• 36:50
  It's so funny because my entire life, obviously I run a business
• 36:53
  where I talk about money and it's, it's, I'm on social media talking to people too much about
• 36:56
  money.
• 36:57
  My whole life revolves around money and talking about money.
• 37:00
  And yet in many ways, I find
• 37:02
  money really boring and uninteresting.
• 37:04
  I like the possibilities that money gives you.
• 37:06
  I like the ways
• 37:08
  you can change life based on it.
• 37:10
  So I am so fine with my money just autoing in to my low fee global
• 37:18
  index fund.
• 37:19
  And I don't think about that again.
• 37:21
  And I'm going to the playground with my kids on a
• 37:24
  Saturday and I can get myself an overpriced coffee because the cafes next to the playgrounds know
• 37:29
  they've got you they know you need that caffeine real bad and they can charge you seven bucks and
• 37:36
  it's not great coffee I'm still buying it they know they've got me um like there she comes again
• 37:42
  Frances trotting on in all of that life exactly and so you know I can go and do that and I'm
• 37:50
  hanging out with my kids and I'm doing literally anything other than thinking about my money
• 37:54
  but my money has enabled all of that to happen and enabled it to happen in a stress-free way
• 37:58
  that's what I love one of the things you just mentioned was you don't really check your
• 38:02
  investments what about early investors people that aren't feeling super confident what do you think
• 38:07
  is a good amount of time to be checking them is it again dependent on what like excites you
• 38:12
  what is a good amount of time versus what are you going to do I can tell you exactly what you are
• 38:16
  going to do when you start investing you're going to check it every day every week going to be
• 38:20
  looking at that little graph and you're going to be like up and down.
• 38:22
  You're going to be
• 38:23
  emotionally invested.
• 38:24
  You're going to be like, ah, it's gone down.
• 38:26
  I'm going to lose all my
• 38:28
  $10 that I put in there.
• 38:29
  And then it goes up and you're like, woo, I made a $2 dividend.
• 38:32
  I'm rich.
• 38:33
  You know, the right thing is one thing.
• 38:37
  What's going to happen is that.
• 38:39
  Because we all do.
• 38:40
  Because it's scary and exciting.
• 38:43
  And I kind of love that people get overly into it at first,
• 38:46
  but then hopefully it becomes boring.
• 38:48
  I check in on it properly, maybe quarterly,
• 38:52
  sort of every two or three months.
• 38:54
  I do check the numbers against my husband's sort of monthly.
• 38:59
  Oh, just letting you know, I'm still ahead.
• 39:01
  Still better than you, FYI.
• 39:06
  But yeah, sort of like quarterly.
• 39:08
  I probably wouldn't go less than annually, just in case.
• 39:12
  what is a simple asset allocation that you like do you literally only do indexes mainly or have
• 39:20
  you got some going into other things whether it be commodities like gold or a little bit of crypto
• 39:26
  or I know you've got your mortgage so you obviously also have property is it basically
• 39:30
  just property and index funds pretty much um I did I mean everyone keeps going on about crypto
• 39:36
  and I'm very intrigued by it.
• 39:37
  I still don't see the use case.
• 39:40
  I talk to some very smart people
• 39:42
  who I respect a lot who are interested in crypto and they invest in it.
• 39:47
  And I'm very much good for
• 39:48
  thee, not for me.
• 39:50
  It does not fit my investment profile.
• 39:52
  It doesn't fit my investment goals,
• 39:54
  but I have invested in businesses that serve crypto.
• 40:00
  So that is one of the few things I've
• 40:02
  done i do i do do a smidgey of core satellite i am probably 90 index funds and i have a little um
• 40:09
  i hit a devil with a2 milk that wasn't a good time that wasn't a good idea don't buy the dip on that
• 40:14
  one um but that was like 200 bucks so who cares i kind of just wanted to see what happened i knew
• 40:20
  if i had skin in the game i'd pay attention what happened bad bad bad bad bad don't do it yeah the
• 40:25
  milk carton is fully empty.
• 40:28
  So yeah, keep that to like, thank God it was only 200 bucks.
• 40:33
  But yeah, a little bit in sort of businesses that serve crypto.
• 40:37
  So we're talking like data centers
• 40:39
  and things like that, or tech companies.
• 40:42
  Are you able to talk about any of them and why you've
• 40:44
  chosen them, but not crypto?
• 40:45
  I look at it and it's the greater fool theory of investing.
• 40:48
  You
• 40:49
  are buying something and hoping that someone who's a greater fool than you will come along
• 40:53
  and pay more.
• 40:54
  Interesting.
• 40:54
  So it doesn't work for me.
• 40:58
  It's purely speculation of I think price will
• 41:00
  go up.
• 41:02
  And I like a business that is doing something, generating something, employing
• 41:07
  people, earning money, and that's I'm getting a slice of them earning money.
• 41:11
  It's not just someone
• 41:12
  came along and paid more for it than I did.
• 41:15
  So that's why a business that serves crypto works
• 41:17
  for me, crypto doesn't.
• 41:19
  You can get funds that are crypto adjacent.
• 41:23
  Okay, cool.
• 41:24
  So I love a fund
• 41:25
  for anything.
• 41:26
  So you do more of that approach than specific stock picking.
• 41:29
  You wouldn't go and sort
• 41:30
  of pick a stock.
• 41:31
  That's more your husband's approach.
• 41:32
  I mean, I might.
• 41:33
  I just haven't had
• 41:33
  the time and I can't be bothered.
• 41:35
  It doesn't excite me.
• 41:37
  So does that mean that you don't
• 41:38
  ever have to think about selling your investments?
• 41:40
  Hopefully.
• 41:41
  So you don't have the whole, if this
• 41:43
  happens, I'll sell because everything you're doing is pretty consistent following the market.
• 41:47
  And I'm very much at the building phase right now.
• 41:49
  I am paying off mortgage.
• 41:51
  I'm building up investments.
• 41:53
  I'm building up my business.
• 41:55
  I just am not at the start spending that phase.
• 42:01
  Yeah.
• 42:01
  But I also do think, I think one of the problems when we talk about retirement is it feels too far away.
• 42:06
  So I'm very interested in the idea of early retirement, despite having no interest in quitting my job.
• 42:12
  I would like the option to go part time or to do, you know, and I potentially could ease off a lot on what I'm earning.
• 42:21
  I'm potentially closer to that than I think of it.
• 42:25
  I just really enjoy my job and the harder I work, it tends to generate more money.
• 42:29
  but I like the idea of early retirement and making financial goals feel more immediate
• 42:34
  because I think it works with everyone's money psychology a little bit better.
• 42:38
  I have yet to
• 42:38
  meet someone who truly thinks in 30-year time frames and truly is like excited and jazzed for
• 42:45
  that 30-year goal.
• 42:46
  I think it's total bullshit.
• 42:48
  Some people lie to you but they're lying.
• 42:50
  Yeah,
• 42:50
  they're lying.
• 42:51
  Yeah.
• 42:51
  There's a stat that says that thinking about a person in 10 years, like sorry,
• 42:56
  yourself in 10 years is the equivalent of thinking of a stranger.
• 43:00
  Totally.
• 43:00
  You will change so much
• 43:01
  in that time.
• 43:02
  Yeah.
• 43:02
  So your approach is essentially set and forget, spray and walk away kind of vibe.
• 43:08
  What is that ad?
• 43:10
  Bam and the dirt is gone.
• 43:11
  Oh my God.
• 43:12
  Do you remember that ad?
• 43:13
  Yeah.
• 43:14
  Spray and walk away.
• 43:15
  Loved it.
• 43:16
  Okay.
• 43:16
  Right.
• 43:17
  So you don't look to sell.
• 43:19
  That's great.
• 43:19
  I'm going to
• 43:19
  move straight past all my sell questions.
• 43:22
  What about this concept of enough?
• 43:24
  You know, you're
• 43:25
  talking about the idea of potentially early retirement, maybe having the option to pull
• 43:31
  back on work if you wanted to, having the option.
• 43:34
  Have you and your husband got some kind of,
• 43:39
  if we get here, we can both do X, or we are working towards this big overarching goal,
• 43:47
  and it is this.
• 43:49
  What does that look like?
• 43:50
  Because I know the idea of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years
• 43:54
  feels foreign but have you given yourself or together a target and if so what is that
• 44:01
  if we really wanted to we could probably hit it in five to ten years um just from the work we've
• 44:07
  put in so far it really does build up faster than you think that's amazing once you start building
• 44:13
  it this is the problem with money right the first steps feel so small that it's almost pointless and
• 44:19
  you look at the people who are on level six or seven and you say, but I want to be there.
• 44:24
  Like that looks amazing.
• 44:26
  You can't get there without going through level one, level two,
• 44:29
  level three.
• 44:29
  It's like a PlayStation game.
• 44:30
  You cannot skip to the end.
• 44:32
  It's so true.
• 44:34
  Yeah.
• 44:35
  And you're going to feel like those first steps are going to feel so small and so pointless,
• 44:39
  but they're what everything else builds from.
• 44:41
  I couldn't have got further ahead of my career
• 44:44
  without chasing those initial promotions and pay rises.
• 44:48
  I then used those promotions and pay rises
• 44:51
  to build savings investments that gave me stability
• 44:54
  that let me take bigger swings.
• 44:55
  Having that stability let me quit my job
• 44:58
  when they were ducks and start my own business.
• 45:02
  And starting a business, super risky.
• 45:04
  Didn't know it was going to work out.
• 45:05
  I had a six month runway where I was like,
• 45:07
  well, we can survive.
• 45:08
  Let's give it a crack.
• 45:10
  Boy, did it work.
• 45:11
  And now I earn far more than I did.
• 45:14
  wasn't guaranteed.
• 45:15
  I could take that swing because I built it along the way.
• 45:19
  And now I have so many
• 45:20
  other opportunities that I'm investigating and we can hit those other goals in probably five to 10
• 45:26
  years, like I say, because I made those small steps.
• 45:30
  It's like a hockey stick in terms of like
• 45:32
  how things build up.
• 45:33
  The first little bits are so, so small.
• 45:35
  And then all of a sudden you're
• 45:36
  on this upwards curve that is almost straight up.
• 45:39
  It's so true.
• 45:40
  And I am really guilty of feeling
• 45:43
  a little bit humbled and annoyed, I would say, positive and a negative adjective about the idea
• 45:49
  of being where I am versus where I want to be.
• 45:51
  But from experience, and we spoke about this on
• 45:54
  your podcast, you overestimate what you can achieve in a year and you underestimate what
• 45:58
  you can do in five.
• 45:59
  And that is so true for my financial journey too.
• 46:03
  Starting with paying off
• 46:04
  debt or starting building an emergency fund feels boring and like snooze fest.
• 46:09
  You have to do it.
• 46:10
  You need the training wheels to get to the motorbike.
• 46:13
  You do.
• 46:13
  You do.
• 46:14
  Come and listen to my podcast to hear you talking about that.
• 46:16
  That was just a genius moment that came up when we were recording.
• 46:18
  I didn't even plan it.
• 46:19
  I loved it.
• 46:20
  I immediately heard you say it and was like, that's a social clip.
• 46:22
  I think that's a great little metaphor.
• 46:24
  It's so funny when you produce and podcast, you so think like that.
• 46:28
  You're presenting, researching, editing in your head.
• 46:30
  Yes.
• 46:31
  But the second part to the question is the idea of you're enough.
• 46:35
  So do you think that your number will change?
• 46:36
  because I guess the reason I wanted to ask it is because there's this sort of, I don't know,
• 46:43
  I guess sort of endless pot that you could be working towards, investing towards,
• 46:47
  that can also be not particularly motivating if it's not tangible because it's just like,
• 46:52
  well, it's just this road that I have to walk for the rest of my life and I can't see an end
• 46:57
  in sight.
• 46:57
  I think that can be kind of shit for some people.
• 47:00
  But I also don't want to feel like
• 47:01
  I'm constantly changing my goalposts of where I'm trying to get to because now I want this and now
• 47:06
  I want that.
• 47:08
  How do you keep yourself in check with what enough would look like for you?
• 47:14
  And you have to have an enough, right?
• 47:16
  I think you really do.
• 47:16
  Because I mean,
• 47:17
  look at, let's go to an extreme.
• 47:18
  Look at Elon Musk.
• 47:20
  What a loser.
• 47:21
  Like why?
• 47:22
  No one in the world, like literally, even if he wanted to do the most outrageous things,
• 47:28
  I don't think he could spend all his money, even if he tried to.
• 47:31
  And he looks miserable.
• 47:33
  Like I look at his life and I look at the way he's acting
• 47:36
  and I'm just like, there we go.
• 47:39
  Proof that money doesn't necessarily buy happiness.
• 47:41
  Now money can
• 47:42
  be amazing for helping you build happiness, but look at what he's built.
• 47:45
  And he does, I'm sorry,
• 47:46
  he just looks like a loser.
• 47:48
  But so you have to have your enough and you have to know what matters
• 47:52
  to you that the money is enabling you to get to.
• 47:55
  And I think money itself shouldn't be the goal.
• 47:57
  It's what will money enable me to get to?
• 47:59
  And so I really, you know, having a paid off home,
• 48:03
  Okay, you still have to pay for rates and insurance.
• 48:06
  But that is still stability.
• 48:07
  That is a roof over your head that almost certainly people can't take off you.
• 48:13
  It would have to go really wrong for a paid off home to be taken off you.
• 48:18
  So that's huge for me.
• 48:19
  And then probably like a mental sort of benchmark for me is a million dollars in assets, whether
• 48:26
  that's shares, whether that's property, whatever.
• 48:28
  But a million dollars in income generating assets.
• 48:31
  I do not include my home in that.
• 48:32
  your home is not an investment.
• 48:34
  I'm sorry.
• 48:35
  People get mad at me every time I say that,
• 48:37
  but it's true.
• 48:38
  People don't like it because they have to put so much into buying that home and
• 48:42
  paying it off.
• 48:43
  I understand it's frustrating to hear that that's not enough, but it's not.
• 48:48
  You need income generating assets if you don't want to be eating cat food when you're old.
• 48:53
  You can't go and spend your house to buy groceries.
• 48:56
  Exactly.
• 48:56
  Exactly.
• 48:57
  You need actual money to do that.
• 48:59
  So yes, your expenses will be less because you're not paying
• 49:01
  rent because you own the house you live in, but you can't pay for anything with that.
• 49:05
  Exactly.
• 49:05
  Exactly.
• 49:06
  And who knows what's going to happen with the pension in the future.
• 49:09
  And so if I hit sort of a million dollars in income producing assets, that's amazing.
• 49:14
  And
• 49:16
  would I stop work then?
• 49:18
  Probably not because I really enjoy my job.
• 49:22
  I get so much meaning from
• 49:23
  it.
• 49:23
  Like I get at least once a week, but often more.
• 49:28
  Someone will DM me being like,
• 49:31
  I just bought a house thanks to, you know, following what you talk about.
• 49:35
  Or I've just
• 49:36
  started investing for the first time and it was so much easier than I thought it was going to be.
• 49:40
  You know, I'm going and it's fine and the market's just taking a dip and I'm not even scared.
• 49:44
  I know
• 49:44
  it's all fine.
• 49:46
  Or I've just paid off this huge amount of debt and I feel so much better.
• 49:49
  And
• 49:51
  not that I need people fluffing me up, but to know that your work has made a difference,
• 49:54
  a real tangible difference.
• 49:56
  These are people's lives and money is such an important part of
• 50:00
  people's lives and to have been able to be part of someone turning things around, making a
• 50:06
  difference, hitting a goal that they maybe never thought they would be able to hit.
• 50:10
  Like I genuinely
• 50:13
  feel so privileged to be part of that in people's lives.
• 50:15
  And I get so much meaning from that.
• 50:18
  So I
• 50:18
  would probably never stop work, but maybe I would hire some more people to do more of the behind
• 50:23
  the scenes.
• 50:24
  It would be great.
• 50:25
  Sheldon B, you know, Alex Cooper, just on the line.
• 50:27
  To be fair,
• 50:27
  I'm pretty sure she does most of the behind the scenes too.
• 50:30
  She is another one who I think couldn't pull back.
• 50:32
  She loves it.
• 50:32
  Yeah.
• 50:33
  One last topic I would love to quickly talk about is the idea that you've gone into business
• 50:37
  with your partner.
• 50:38
  Yeah.
• 50:39
  How on earth have you done that?
• 50:42
  And also, does it feel risky that both of your income is coming from the same business,
• 50:47
  that you're fronting it?
• 50:48
  Therefore, there's quite a lot of pressure for you to continue to show up and enjoy it.
• 50:51
  How have you navigated the risk involved in that?
• 50:57
  well yeah we do have a lot of income insurance specifically on me uh in case i get hit by a bus
• 51:02
  or get cancelled holy shit i need to do that yeah yeah it's a good idea um because really the and
• 51:09
  you can talk about future proofing and the hit by a bus factor is you shouldn't have anyone
• 51:13
  who can be totally irreplaceable in the business the reality is my business is based a lot on me
• 51:19
  that people trust me to not feed them nonsense about money.
• 51:26
  And I think in the age of AI,
• 51:29
  that's actually just going to become more and more important.
• 51:32
  And so I think that's always
• 51:34
  going to be how the business is built.
• 51:35
  The other thing is, you know, he used to work in the public
• 51:38
  sector.
• 51:39
  And so that was for a long time, I was private sector and swinging for those moonshots
• 51:45
  and chasing those pay rises and I earned more than him, but he was stability and in a job where
• 51:55
  people could get fired, but not really, you know?
• 51:59
  So he was stability to my wild swings.
• 52:03
  And so that really worked well for us at that point.
• 52:06
  Then he comes in to the business and he's
• 52:10
  still, you know, I always joke about like, I don't actually earn any of the money he does
• 52:14
  because he sends out the invoices.
• 52:16
  So good man.
• 52:18
  How many people would I trust to just totally
• 52:21
  hand over the financial reins of the business?
• 52:22
  Because all the content, that takes up my entire
• 52:25
  time.
• 52:26
  I'm doing, I'm interviewing people.
• 52:28
  I'm doing social media.
• 52:29
  I'm trotting along to be on
• 52:31
  TV and smile and wave and, you know, do all that nonsense.
• 52:34
  And then he is often doing the behind
• 52:36
  the scenes of the business, sending out the invoices and making sure we're on top of bills,
• 52:42
  making sure contractors are paid.
• 52:45
  I don't think I could fully hand over the finances of the
• 52:49
  business to anyone else.
• 52:51
  There's huge potential for that person to rip me off.
• 52:55
  The idea of it
• 52:56
  being someone who I've known for less than the 21 years I've known him.
• 52:59
  No way.
• 53:01
  But you don't work super close together in terms of you do the content and he does.
• 53:06
  So it's not.
• 53:07
  I bounce ideas off him.
• 53:08
  Do you know what?
• 53:08
  That's the other problem.
• 53:09
  Okay.
• 53:09
  So I've got to trust him
• 53:11
  and I've got to respect him.
• 53:13
  And so I really respect when I bounce ideas off him and say,
• 53:16
  I'm thinking about interviewing this person or I'm thinking about this topic and this and that.
• 53:20
  And if he turns around and says, I don't think that's a good idea.
• 53:22
  There's very few people who
• 53:25
  I would listen to and go, oh, why not?
• 53:28
  Like, what do you mean?
• 53:28
  I'm a genius.
• 53:29
  Of course,
• 53:29
  it's a great idea.
• 53:30
  I thought of it.
• 53:31
  But he turns around and says, I don't know that it's a good
• 53:33
  idea.
• 53:33
  And I'm like, ah, why?
• 53:36
  And so it has to be someone who I both trust and respect.
• 53:39
  There's not many people who hit that Venn diagram.
• 53:42
  That's so interesting.
• 53:44
  This is going to sound unbelievably rude,
• 53:46
  but the fact that he worked in the public sector,
• 53:49
  doesn't have content experience or business experience,
• 53:51
  and yet you have that trust for him?
• 53:53
  Yeah.
• 53:54
  On content and business finances is so interesting to me.
• 53:58
  Yeah.
• 53:59
  And amazing.
• 54:00
  I'm still driving it, but he knows me really well
• 54:03
  and he knows my weaknesses really well.
• 54:05
  So he's going to come at it from a totally different lens
• 54:07
  and be like, you've missed this and this.
• 54:09
  Again, I'm like, good point.
• 54:11
  Okay, love that.
• 54:12
  Okay, we're going to finish on five quick,
• 54:14
  like literally you have to answer them in two seconds.
• 54:17
  They're not like, because I realize time,
• 54:19
  we've got probably a minute.
• 54:20
  So if we were to give anyone listening
• 54:24
  some quick fire advice, go to, go and do this thing,
• 54:29
  what would be one number to calculate this week?
• 54:32
  Your enough number.
• 54:33
  What's one bill to review?
• 54:36
  Any subscription.
• 54:37
  One habit to automate.
• 54:39
  A bill payment.
• 54:40
  One thing to ignore.
• 54:42
  What you think you're good or bad at.
• 54:43
  That's just a story
• 54:44
  you're telling yourself.
• 54:45
  You can get better at anything.
• 54:47
  One belief about money that everyone
• 54:49
  should look at and try to let go of.
• 54:50
  That's not for people like me.
• 54:52
  Stunning wrap up.
• 54:54
  Inspiring.
• 54:55
  Mic drop.
• 54:56
  Love it so much.
• 54:58
  For anyone that wants to learn more about the things that you do,
• 55:02
  your podcast, your socials, where can they find you?
• 55:04
  Making Sense podcast.
• 55:06
  I love a good pun.
• 55:06
  So
• 55:07
  it cents like dollars and cents um and then at francis cook and zed on instagram tiktok facebook
• 55:13
  i'm everywhere you can't miss me come and let me hit you with money content thank you so much
• 55:19
  francis i really hope we don't do this again in four years and we do it way sooner thank you so
• 55:28
  much for listening to raising the curve these conversations are designed to teach you everything
• 55:31
  you need to know to be better with your money from saving to investing to talking with your
• 55:35
  friends about your salaries, all of that stuff.
• 55:37
  And if you like what you heard, we would love if
• 55:39
  you could please hit subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a comment.
• 55:42
  Let us know what
• 55:42
  you thought about the episode.
• 55:44
  And it only takes one second and it would really make our week,
• 55:47
  our month, our year.
• 55:48
  Yeah.
• 55:49
  Yeah.
• 55:49
  So please do it.
• 55:50
  Okay.
• 55:51
  Love you.
• 55:51
  Bye.
• 55:52
  Okay, quickly,
• 55:53
  the curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial advisors.
• 55:58
  Our platform exists for educational purposes only, and it doesn't provide personalized
• 56:02
  investing advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment
• 56:06
  or financial decision.
• 56:08
  And always remember to do your own research before making any investment
• 56:11
  or financial decision.
• 56:12
  We're here for any knowledge and support you need, but the final
• 56:15
  call is always yours.
• 56:16
  And thanks for being here.
• 56:18
  You got this.
• 56:18
  Yeah, we know you got this.