Latest / The Curve / Money buys freedom, not things: a financial coach explains.

Transcript

Money buys freedom, not things: a financial coach explains. · The Curve

0:00
Today's guest is Hannah Mayfield.
0:01
She has flown all the way from Lisbon.
0:04
She's based herself there but she was originally from the UK and she was also a fashion buyer but
0:09
now she's a financial coach.
0:12
So she had a really unique situation when she was in her early 20s,
0:16
someone close to her passed away and left her a sum of money.
0:18
So she was in a position where
0:20
she needed to figure out how to best invest it and hopefully grow it for the future.
0:25
So while
0:26
now she's a financial coach she went through a whole lot of self-learning where she spoke to her
0:31
friends about investing and she really tried to educate women about how to be better with their
0:37
money so her approach is unique it's quite relaxed honestly it made me feel like I need to chill out
0:44
a bit and we spoke about so many different things from are you a default yes spender or a default
0:49
no spender whether or not a 50-50 split with your partner is fair are Nepo friends keeping the job
0:55
market alive and we have her on the couch for 45 minutes so you'll be getting a little bit of
1:00
everything in this conversation.
1:02
Hannah firstly welcome it's so nice to have you here I'd love
1:09
to say you're flown specifically from Portugal but that's not the case.
1:13
Kind of yeah it was on the
1:15
lineup for sure yeah love it love it yeah we have an international guest but you are originally from
1:20
the UK.
1:21
Yeah born in London.
1:22
And so what was the the big reason for moving to Portugal because
1:25
it does feel like there's a huge amount of business owners that have flown the cope and there's a lot
1:31
of people living particularly in Lisbon.
1:33
It was a lifestyle choice I lived in like Berlin at the
1:35
start of my career for a bit I lived in Spain for a while and then I ended up in Spain for some of
1:40
the pandemic and then I just woke up one day and was like oh I can never go back I just acclimatized
1:44
to a different kind of life and then kind of was figuring out what my criteria was I said I want to
1:50
live in a small city international community be able to hike and do outdoorsy stuff at the weekends
1:55
and then Lisbon just fit all the criteria.
1:58
I'd never been, so I just moved there.
1:59
I just packed up my stuff and rocked off.
2:01
Yeah, I think that that's the best thing that's come out of COVID
2:03
is working and living in different ways.
2:06
You know, for so long we were all trapped to the office
2:09
and we had to sort of work nine to five
2:12
and it's really given it a good old shake up.
2:14
Like the fact that you've got a successful business,
2:16
you've got a life that you love there in Lisbon
2:18
and you're not compromising anything.
2:20
You're actually just getting all the benefits
2:22
of being able to pick where you want to be.
2:24
I think that's amazing.
2:25
So let's start from the beginning.
2:26
So you used to work in a totally different industry.
2:29
You were in fashion for a long time, which is the industry that I would say is notoriously terribly paid.
2:35
I mean, there's a lot, but for some reason, fashion is one of those industries where everyone knows it's a cool job and everyone treats, well, it appears from the outside, treats their staff in a way where it's like anyone would take your job at any time.
2:49
So you basically should work for free.
2:52
what was your experience in the fashion industry and what was the pivot for you like you've now
2:57
a financial advisor and creating finance content which for anyone who doesn't already follow Hannah
3:02
will link all of her accounts in the show notes because it's so educational and I learned so much
3:08
from the work that you do but yeah what was the reason for the pivot were you sick of the industry
3:13
did you want better pay how did that whole transition happen it was a lot of it was I
3:18
wanted to be remote basically and I'd started a pajama brand with a friend and that didn't we
3:24
kind of did a couple collections and then we're like oh this is really hard to do this independently
3:28
and have an independent kind of fashion brand and then I was thinking okay what else can I do what
3:33
else do I know a lot about and just my lived experience was I knew loads about money and
3:36
investing and I'd been teaching my friends it so I was like okay let's go into this I actually find
3:41
it really annoying that loads of people don't know this and if you're not in the right circles you're
3:44
just never gonna find out this information that's really life-changing and important
3:48
so yeah I kind of started talking about on the internet and then got my financial advisor
3:52
qualification because I thought if I'm helping people with money so I'm a financial coach so I'm
3:56
like working with people on their own finances every day and I just wanted to make sure I'd done
4:00
my due diligence if I was talking about this topic I wanted to make sure like I understood it properly
4:04
so I did all of that could we talk about you just mentioned that you when you were younger and sort
4:08
of I guess throughout your life you've been way more on top of money and you've you realized it
4:12
was something you knew about but a lot of your friends didn't how did that happen because for a
4:18
lot of us I think there's a there's a pivotal moment where we either are at rock bottom
4:22
financially and we need to find a new way forward or we come into money and we realize we don't want
4:28
to be frivolous with it or spend it on things that are not important I guess what was the moment where
4:33
you started to teach yourself to be better with money I was always really good at budgeting and
4:37
saving because I knew if I didn't budget and save I wouldn't get to do anything and I always had
4:40
this massive appetite for travel and like paying for uni and like doing all the things I wanted to
4:45
do learning to drive so I was always like obsessive about but like saving I was really good at it
4:50
naturally I didn't find it that hard to be frugal mindful with my money and then when I was 22 my
4:55
dad died and I received like a lot of money that he you know he didn't make it to retirement age
4:59
and I had this lump sum and I was like I don't know what to do with money I've never had any
5:04
conversations about growing money so it was just this big thing I had to learn how to navigate and
5:09
what to do with and the stakes obviously really high because you're like okay there's everything
5:12
he's worked for this is a big amount it's not like okay I'll start with like 50 quid a month
5:16
it's like okay I need to learn this properly so I really and I just couldn't find a good financial
5:20
advisor basically I just couldn't find a trusted person and I'm the kind of person where I want
5:24
to understand everything so I really kind of did a deep dive on okay how does property work and then
5:30
it kind of took me a bit longer to get to the stock market because I just had such a preconception
5:34
about it and then when I went into that rabbit hole I was like oh this is great and this is
5:38
really easy and then that was kind of the thing I started teaching my friends a lot more about
5:42
because it's it's really easy to do it with small amounts as well for everyone it's a bit more
5:46
accessible we've spoken about what happened with your dad and I'd love to ask a few more questions
5:51
about that if you feel comfortable talking about it um but that makes a lot of sense to me initially
5:56
where you just said you know it's everything he'd worked towards all of a sudden there's this thing
5:59
that's been left behind that he spent his life creating and building and the emotional connection
6:06
you have to that money is quite different to a salary or money coming in yes it's a bigger amount
6:11
but there's actually more of a connection to wanting to do right by him which I think is
6:17
I mean it's awful that he died and you were so young yeah it was like sudden unexpected and he
6:23
was 56 so as you get oh I knew it was young and that's what's really sad about it I think you're
6:27
like oh he didn't get to retire and I do all these things and then I think when you get older like I'm
6:31
34 now like it's actually not that it's not that far away really you kind of have a different
6:36
perspective on it as well a lot of it was just because he died young because it was like stuff
6:40
like a pension so things like that I grew up with a single mum so my experience of money was like
6:45
very living on small amounts and having to be really careful and really budgeting kind of thing
6:52
so this was just that's why it was a completely different thing that I had to learn yeah I imagine
6:57
that that would have been quite an overwhelming time to then think okay shit I need to really
7:01
quickly upskill and learn what to do with it from the time that he died into really learning and
7:07
then making decisions about what to do with it where did where did you put it and and how has
7:11
it evolved in the last decade I remember someone saying I don't make any sudden decisions like
7:17
until a year after grieving so I think that was quite a good and I was just so busy I had to
7:21
finish uni I had to like relearn my whole uni my whole myself I missed so much of it and then
7:25
reset everything so it's just like a very tough time so I didn't do anything with it at first
7:30
and then property obviously I lived in a house growing up and then you rent a house at uni so
7:35
it was like okay I get how this works so that was and I think in the UK as well there's such a
7:39
mentality that property is really safe so that was kind of the first thing I learned about but
7:44
at the time there wasn't like I didn't use YouTube but there wasn't anyone like doing short form
7:49
content about investing yeah so it was just a completely different thing so I read books
7:54
basically so I wasn't going to talk about property yet but I actually think maybe it is a good place
7:58
to start especially given that was the first investment that you made yeah firstly if we were
8:03
to sort of zoom out and look at the property market at the time obviously you know 10-15
8:09
years ago it was a very different world did you choose to invest in property and do you still have
8:15
money in that asset class yeah I think basically most of my money is in property and rental
8:21
properties and then I rent in Lisbon so that's kind of how I've I guess keep everything location
8:28
independent and I'm just not I'm not really ready to settle in one place yet so it works quite well
8:33
so when you bought property it was a different time there was different returns and now things
8:39
have really changed and you just sort of touched on that by saying you know most people think about
8:43
property and they think oh I can make heaps of money in property because we all know it
8:46
yeah we live in buildings it makes sense to a lot of us but when you zoom out and you look at what
8:52
boomers our parents you know they made money in that asset class because buying a house was four
8:56
times their salary and now it's seven sometimes more you talk about this quite a bit on your
9:01
channels about repositioning or thinking about property in a different way and perhaps it's
9:06
actually not the way for a lot of us to buy property given it's changed a lot since you
9:13
first bought have you sold out of that asset class or are you going to hold on to it for a long time
9:18
what are your thoughts about property in general like I'm having conversations about my friends
9:22
as well we're saying that we think that property is now you kind of just buy it to live in it as
9:28
opposed to I think before there was this mentality of like this is that you're set for life if you
9:33
can get on the ladder yeah your golden ticket you don't need to worry about anything else and I think
9:37
now people like oh even if I've bought a house I probably still should be learning about investing
9:42
and trying to do other things because it's just not I think we've kind of realized like oh okay
9:46
it's maybe not such a given that we're going to have this dramatic growth we've always seen and
9:50
I think the interest rates changing is a big one because like kind of all my I guess adult life
9:55
growing up we had these super low interest rates and that created one reality and then now there's
9:59
these high interest rates I think everyone's like oh okay do you want to just explain that
10:03
yeah that's the thing that doesn't understand so like the idea of a two percent interest rate
10:07
basically means you're leveraging a lot of money but you're not paying a huge amount of interest
10:11
I'm assuming what you're getting at is when those interest rates are higher you're essentially just
10:16
paying interest off and it's a lot of interest when you zoom out over say a 30-year mortgage
10:22
period yeah I think it depends if you're kind of talking about rental property or residential
10:26
property obviously I think residential property people are now like oh maybe I shouldn't go to
10:29
the max of my budget or the max that I could borrow because actually that's a really high
10:34
mortgage payment if we're looking at a five percent interest rate whereas I think before
10:38
when the interest rates were so low it was like oh well why wouldn't I just
10:43
buy as much as possible because it didn't really make much difference a huge amount as it does now
10:47
to the monthly repayment and have you thought about selling I'm actually selling one right now
10:51
the first it was the first one I bought which is a flat I bought it because I thought it's gonna be
10:54
really good more for capital gains and like the long-term increase and I just don't think that
11:00
it holds true anymore but you're not selling out of other no I'm happy with the other ones I'm just
11:04
gonna get rid of this one what is the difference like how are you looking at your properties and
11:07
thinking this one's no longer a good financial investment well it's a really old building which
11:13
at the time I thought was a good thing because I was like well they're building loads of new builds
11:16
and this will be a really good kind of differentiation but there's just always problems
11:20
with the building and so it just feels like a bit of a risk if anything keeps going wrong with it
11:24
like a financial risk the service charge has gone up loads since I bought it it's maybe doubled so
11:31
and then put that with like the high interest rates and the fact that people don't really like
11:34
leasehold flats anymore I was like I'm just going to cut you know cut my losses on this one and
11:38
yeah just admit it hasn't been like the growth one that I kind of maybe thought it would be
11:43
and then the other ones what's the reason for holding on to them their houses so I don't have
11:48
the whole leasehold thing the leasehold just for anyone that doesn't know basically means that the
11:51
property you don't actually own the land as well as the house leasehold means that you're kind of
11:56
like leasing the land ownership yeah you own the property but you have to pay there's a freeholder
12:00
that you pay like ground rent to and then you sometimes depends on the type of building you'll
12:03
pay a service charge and because this is a kind of a bigger block of flats the service charge has
12:08
just gone a bit crazy there are stats that say 63 percent of millennials and gen z's really regret
12:14
buying a home why is that like what are the main regrets do you think it is that we all still are
12:21
buying into this mentality that it's going to give us all of this you know like golden ticket towards
12:25
wealth or do you think it's something else i'm my kind of speculation is i think because there
12:29
still is this pressure to get on the property ladder especially from i feel if you're kind of
12:33
like a millennial like the boomers are like I don't know but like boomer parents I feel like
12:37
they're like you need to buy a house like get on the ladder and they're really encouraging of it
12:41
so you feel like maybe a rush and then I think if you buy the wrong place or wrong location and then
12:45
you want to move or your job changes or you realize like I have seen some videos people
12:50
being like oh we bought this big house and now we've got this massive mortgage and we want to
12:53
downsize and things like that it's just hard to get out of I think because of stamp duty so
12:57
basically in the UK if you want to buy a house you have to pay quite a lot in stamp duty so if
13:01
Can you just explain what that is for anyone that doesn't live in the UK?
13:04
Yeah, it's basically a tax.
13:06
So whenever you buy a house, you have to pay a chunk, a percentage chunk.
13:09
It depends on how expensive the house is, exactly what percent you pay.
13:13
And you'll just never see that money again, basically.
13:15
So it's quite, it kind of stops people from moving around too much
13:19
because you're like, oh, well, I'll have to pay stamp duty again.
13:21
And that's also a bit of a factor of why I think people say, you know,
13:24
don't bother buy a house unless you're going to be there for 10 years.
13:26
And I think some of it is because there's this big expense
13:30
that you're never going to get back.
13:31
If you buy a house, you kind of want to make the right choice.
13:34
So I guess, what are your thoughts then for anyone that's unsure about property
13:37
or as someone who still owns property, what do you think about renting versus buying?
13:41
It depends.
13:42
But I mean, I just see a house as a retirement plan.
13:45
I'm like, ideally, you do want to be probably have bought a place by the time you're maybe
13:48
like 40.
13:49
So you can have a 25, 30 year mortgage and you're kind of on track to have something
13:52
paid off for retirement.
13:54
Right.
13:54
So you see it more as, okay, you want to, when you've stopped earning, be in a house
13:58
that you own because you're then not having to constantly pay for something but you maybe don't
14:03
need to invest in that until you a know definitely where you want to be and also you choose a house
14:08
that has longevity and and how you want to live where you want to live yeah ideally although
14:13
you're probably always going to have to I don't know change at some point but yeah I just think
14:18
of it like a retirement plan you could I think there's a lot of arguments people say well you
14:21
could just rent and then put the money you'd save into investments and then you'd kind of have the
14:25
equivalent in a different kind of asset that you could I guess switch into a property but I don't
14:31
know it's very simple just if you live in a house just buy it if you can and pay it off I think it's
14:36
just like a cleaner way to think about but everyone's situation is different right so it kind
14:40
of depends it's just also like when you look at the amount of money that you have invested in
14:43
property and then you compare the returns in the stock market it's so hard to not think this is a
14:49
terrible financial decision particularly in the UK I would say yeah it's a really weird one I don't
14:55
know how I feel about it and I'm it's almost like I'm coming up against this constant part of my
14:59
brain that's like no property is good but I'm like but is it in the UK maybe not like New Zealand is
15:06
a very different kettle of fish when it comes to property because we don't have stamp duty
15:10
but yeah it's just this so ingrained in us buy a house buy a house so it's a good way to think
15:16
about it if you look at the amount you're thinking about investing in property and the returns kind
15:20
of being flat and then you compare that to what you would make in the stock market and then you
15:25
layer on the rent side of things to figure out what actually makes sense because it is a lot
15:30
cheaper to pay I think interest only in a house you own than rent to someone else I think when
15:35
you're making really personal life decisions as well it's good to think about the finances but I
15:40
also you just have to do what you want for your life as well and what's best for you and what
15:43
feels like some people will just want to own I think you can do all the maths and the sums but
15:48
I just think it's being a bit aware that actually if you have a chunk of money that's working for
15:52
you instead of being tied up in a house it might not be this way of thinking about it that's so
15:56
cut and dry like house always better okay god I love that inclusive yeah I just keep using all
16:03
of the people that come on this podcast for my own personal gain and it's still not helping I'm
16:07
still very confused I'll have my financial coaching session at another time yeah I'd love
16:13
to speak about your own relationship with money and how you started interrogating yourself with
16:19
how you spend what is important to you because I know in your 20s when you were more I don't know
16:27
frugal is the right word but you're really conscious about the money you had and where
16:31
and how you wanted to spend it how did you get into a place where you felt really confident and
16:38
knowing what is important versus not and how did you block out what everyone else thinks?
16:45
I think I just always knew what I wanted with money like I'd never found myself in a situation
16:50
where like oh god like I don't know where it's gone but when I was like maybe like mid to late
16:55
20s I got given the book just offhand like not super mindfully the book You're a Badass at Making
17:01
Money and there was stuff in there about your emotional relationship with money and I remember
17:05
reading that and being like oh like I have some weird stuff about money and obviously like growing
17:08
up with a single mom and having that one experience I think I always and I talk about it now I'm like
17:13
sometimes I think people would default yes spenders or default no explain that more so I think a
17:17
default no is like whenever someone looks something they want they're like no I can't have it and I
17:22
was very much like that whereas I think some people default yes where they're just anything
17:27
they kind of want to buy in their head is a yes and they'll try and get it and so when you read
17:32
that book did you rethink that yeah I read that and then I did this money personality quiz it was
17:36
very illuminating and I was like oh okay like I'm quite a fearful person with money it was called
17:41
the accumulator where you just want to keep money in savings and spend as little as possible which
17:46
makes sense like when you look at so I basically did a lot of interrogating of like okay what did
17:49
I see growing up like what maybe what I've learned from my parents and I think it just helped me come
17:55
to a bit more of a balanced place with money in terms of like being a bit more comfortable spending
17:59
for me I think some people like talk a lot about being going the other way and like getting control
18:03
of budget but for me it was like okay I can spend a bit more my own comfort I would say is one thing
18:07
because I would always pick I don't know like a bad time flight or you know things like that like
18:13
I think they're like small examples where it's like oh okay I can spend 10 pounds extra on a bit
18:19
of extra leg room or like those small things that make you more comfortable whereas before you I
18:22
would always pick the cost saving over my own comfort I think I'm definitely more on the fear
18:27
based save where you can for sure but for me it is also a necessity because I don't have much
18:34
actually for you when you swapped into being like okay I can spend more on comfort whether it's not
18:40
going at a 4am flight or whatever was it like a okay now I can spend more or was it just like
18:46
I'm being really tight just because I'm scared obviously I had more financial freedom so I could
18:51
but it was because I realized oh I have this certain way with money this like default mode
18:55
of being and maybe it isn't I don't need to be like this and I can be a bit more intense like
19:01
I was always very intentional but I guess yeah just a bit more not as fearful and not as restrictive
19:06
like you say it was just like a default restriction like I would just my brain would just be like okay
19:09
let's choose that option and then I guess by learning about my money personality I kind of
19:13
could see that okay there's other ways like I could spend a bit more here if I want to
19:17
one of the things that you're quite open about is the idea of being frugal and you talk about
19:24
trying to redirect our energy rather than just like saving a pound or a euro here and there
19:32
and actually trying to refocus on how can I bring more in but you're also really compassionate about
19:37
the fact that a lot of people feel way safer doing the option of I'm going to save which
19:42
is obviously what you just said you've experienced a lot how would you say you have reprioritized the
19:48
way you are with your personal finances and investing as a result of trying to refocus on
19:53
making more rather than cutting back I just think especially for women when you look at all the
19:58
stats that is always about saving and budgeting and not spending and it's kind of assumption that
20:03
women are really frivolous and want to go and like buy loads of handbags and stuff and actually
20:06
we're just not having conversations about like what are you investing in have you upped your
20:10
contributions like all the things that are more meaningful in the long run so that's what I'm a
20:14
bit more pro and like okay should you go for that promotion like how can you negotiate and like
20:20
talking about these things with our friends and I think for me I'm just trying to earn more like I
20:24
and that's been a conscious thing in my mind of being like okay what can I do where I could have
20:28
a slightly more higher paying career perhaps or what is you know what does the market want right
20:34
now like for now it's content creation is very like a lucrative skill so at the start of the
20:38
year I was like okay I need to get good at content like that was a really mindful decision of being
20:42
like okay this is like social content yeah social content because I think it's a skill I think
20:46
people are I'm just not good at it but it's like I just so I've been putting in the effort to try
20:50
and get good at it and kind of trusting that that will lead to more opportunities later down the
20:55
line so things like that I'm like okay what what can I see is a changing and how can I adapt I
21:00
think we're all going to have to be a lot more adaptable with AI and like things are just feeling
21:03
really uncertain and kind of upskilling where we can can we then talk about investing because I
21:09
know that you have a really ethical part of how you approach money and investing that is really
21:14
important to you and I'd love to know for you what feels ethical when it comes to investing spending
21:22
are there really hard lines for you that feel uncomfortable or again is it quite fluid
21:26
try to be very mindful and I think I had a massive spiral about this a few years ago about
21:31
like capitalism and the planet and ecology and I and it really I was just completely stuck it was
21:35
really bad for my whole work and business because I was like oh my god I can't even talk about this
21:41
but I've kind of come to the conclusion that we are in this really imperfect system and I'll try
21:45
and do what I can but equally there's certain things are a bit unavoidable and I kind of feel
21:50
like that about investing so I when I first started investing I was like I only want to do it
21:54
if I can do it somewhat ethically so the kind of I invest in ESG funds which are not perfect they're
22:01
not I think sometimes there's people oh they're greenwashing they're not actually that good but
22:05
I'm like, well, it's excluding some bad companies.
22:07
So I think they tend to exclude about 2% of the worst companies in the world.
22:10
So things like gambling, tobacco, some fossil fuels.
22:13
It's really hard to completely get out fossil fuels and just like a normal in a lot of the
22:18
funds, basically.
22:20
It's so interesting that you say you went down that spiral rabbit hole of, you know,
22:23
capitalism is absolutely, excuse my language, if there's kids in the car, fucked.
22:27
And then you think about the idea that, oh God, I shouldn't own property because people
22:32
are struggling to, you know, you can go so far down that.
22:34
It's hard, isn't it?
22:35
Because I think most women are the ones who think about that and then go down that rabbit
22:39
hole and then don't invest in general.
22:41
I feel like I have cognitive dissonance around what I know to be true and what is really
22:45
important for the environment.
22:46
But then in terms of gender equality, having more money in the hands of women, there is
22:51
no perfect way to ethically invest.
22:54
How do you get to a place where you just are okay with it not being perfect?
23:00
When you were in that hole of, oh God, I just don't even want to do any of this.
23:02
I want to tap out of like earning money and starting a business because I've so been there
23:07
how did you re-emerge and think okay I'm going to take part in this but I'm also comfortable that
23:11
not being perfect yeah I kind of accepted it it's not ideal and this is how the whole system is set
23:17
up so like we all need a private pension and that is all based on investing and you know the more
23:22
you look into it and we're like oh it's kind of it is a bit unavoidable if you want to have more
23:27
wealth and financial freedom and wiggle room then you kind of need to put your money into these
23:31
things but yeah I only do ESG funds so I invest I'm an index investor but I would never do just
23:37
like an all-world one I always want to do the ESG option where some of the bad companies are excluded
23:41
because I think if everyone did that these bad companies wouldn't have as much money going to
23:45
them I mean you can argue it both ways I think some people are like oh what's the point and I'm
23:49
not going to be like judgy about people that do it however but for me I was like I just don't feel
23:52
comfortable right so it's basically you might do uh the S&P 500 excluding BP or excluding the
23:59
companies that are extracting oil, for example.
24:02
So you specifically look for the funds that are
24:05
the ESG versions of these indexes.
24:08
So you're getting as much diversification as possible,
24:10
but avoiding things like oil and tobacco and gambling and things like that.
24:14
Yeah, exactly.
24:15
So it's screening some of the worst companies out.
24:19
Would you be able to share some of those with us?
24:21
I know that this is not financial advice,
24:23
and there is definitely your own research that needs to go into this.
24:27
But even if it's just a
24:28
couple and why you chose them because I think particularly with ETFs when there are so many of
24:33
them and when people all of a sudden feel excited about investing then they also might listen to you
24:38
talking and think perfect I really want to invest in that way too but then they look up ETFs and
24:43
there is 5,000 of them can you explain like maybe even if it's not the specific but like what to
24:50
look for and how to narrow it down so they don't have the overwhelm of picking you kind of need to
24:54
have your strategy first a lot of people ask me like what's the best platform and I'm like the
24:58
platform doesn't really solve the issue if you don't understand what to invest in you kind of
25:02
need to know like you were saying there's so many you kind of need to know what you're looking for
25:05
before you get on the platform a lot of the time if you do feel comfortable sharing any examples
25:09
that would be amazing if you don't that's also fine but would love to try and help someone
25:13
listening feel like they know what to do if they're wanting to find investments that are
25:18
ethical but also really diversified so if you know you want to do index investing
25:22
you kind of can find your who you want to use for that and then just look for the ESG version
25:27
so you're going to have to pick like your provider of index fund so some of the biggest ones are like
25:32
the two biggest ones are Vanguard and iShares and then you're going to need to pick your geography
25:36
so some people would do all world some people do S&P 500 which is just America and then you can
25:42
just find the version of that that has the ESG at the start.
25:45
One of the things that you speak about
25:46
which I love and I'd love to explain more particularly when we're in a time where the
25:50
stock market is just everyone is absolutely losing, I need to stop swearing, losing their
25:57
minds about what's happening.
25:59
A lot of people are falling victim to this idea of the panic cell
26:03
and they don't understand what's going on, especially when it comes to investments and how
26:07
much psychology is involved with this.
26:10
So can you just explain what is going on with our brains and
26:13
how we can use that information to try and avoid emotional decisions when it comes to the amount
26:19
of noise that is just constantly around particularly at the moment when it comes to
26:25
this impending stock market crash because there are a lot of people panicking about it but I think
26:31
diving into psychology and how our brains work is really helpful context.
26:35
It's a case of I think
26:37
knowing your strategy and sticking to it so I'm a long-term buy and hold investor so I'm like okay
26:42
the whole point is that I'm just gonna ride out and I have the timeline like there's nothing I'd
26:47
need this money for in the next five ten years so I'm just gonna ride it out if like well not if
26:53
like when things go down because we've had these amazing years of growth so like it's just
26:58
inevitable that at some point it's going to go down um and just being okay with that and knowing
27:03
that's the price of admission as well it's like okay well you don't get this amazing growth that's
27:08
way better than a savings account without some kind of downside and the downside is it goes up
27:13
and down a lot and you have to manage your own feelings over that and just being like it's going
27:18
to happen and also I think for people who are in jobs as well it's really good to if we have a
27:23
downturn I think there's this there's obviously the investing perspective but then that would
27:27
mean the whole economy is probably struggling as well so you would be maybe at risk of losing a job
27:32
and things like that so there's lots of other knock-on effects that it is good to prepare for
27:36
and be mindful and be like okay maybe I'll try and have more runway in my emergency fund like
27:40
what would happen if I lost my job but equally yeah but the investing side kind of trying to
27:46
stick to the plan like I had a my kind of first test I guess was I was I started investing stock
27:51
market 2018 so I had the wobble in 2020 with COVID and I just didn't log in it's amazing you did that
27:56
with your first wobble because I think the the first wobble is the hardest it's like the first
28:01
heartbreak is the hardest you know you all you want to do is sell because you're freaking out
28:06
so the fact that you held on for the first one's kind of amazing but yeah I was like okay I'm a
28:09
long-term buy and hold like that's what I've decided let's just not look can you explain
28:13
the psychology around loss aversion and what that actually means because I think if you understand
28:22
that you will find those wobbles a lot easier to not react to yeah so loss aversion is we feel as
28:29
humans our psychology is we are way I think there's there was a study or something they would
28:33
ask you okay if you found 50 pounds how would you feel and people are like oh I'd feel pretty happy
28:38
like you know they feel good about it but not such an emotional range whereas if you lost 50 pounds
28:42
people like really felt it and I think it's because we're hardwired to feel lost and try and
28:48
keep ourselves safe and things like that when it comes to money like seeing the number go down is
28:52
going to be incredibly stressful for a lot of people but the thing I always say as well is
28:56
the number on your screen you still own the same amount of investments so you still own the same
29:01
amounts of bits of companies it's just that's what someone will pay for them on this day on
29:05
this exact moment of time.
29:07
That's a really great way to explain it.
29:09
It's a temporary sale.
29:11
Yeah,
29:11
like it's just based on vibes that people at this moment in time are willing to pay loads for your
29:16
investments because everyone's like, yeah, it's great.
29:18
We love it.
29:19
We'll pay a lot for it right
29:20
now.
29:21
And then if we have a downturn, people just aren't as willing.
29:23
People don't want to put their
29:24
money in.
29:25
So they're just not going to pay as high a price for it.
29:26
I'd love to do a bit of a quick
29:28
fight.
29:28
There's a few topics that you've covered on your socials, which I love.
29:32
And I realize there's
29:33
bit to cover so we don't have to go into a huge amount of detail but there was a few things that
29:37
I thought this is so interesting and I love your take on it I think one of them is like the job
29:41
market at the moment is like dire straits a lot of people are feeling quite scared about how to
29:46
find a new job what do you think that people need to be aware of when it comes to the job market
29:50
just in general right now I think it's just being prepared probably for okay what happens if you do
29:56
lose your job and like thinking about it and planning for it if you can financially is always
30:01
going to be smart and then yeah I think the thing I did on my socials was about getting jobs through
30:06
friends and networking and I like I was never a network person like that's just not really my vibe
30:11
and then I think as I got older I was like oh okay like that's how things are sometimes done in the
30:15
world I heard once which I thought was really interesting like life isn't a single player game
30:20
it's a multiplayer game and if you try and play it like a single player you're like not going to
30:23
get as far and I thought it was a really interesting analogy I liked it a lot let's just talk about
30:27
what actually the definition of that means and why it relates right now to what's happening in
30:32
terms of jobs and earning money yeah we do a shallow dive yeah it was a shallow neko dive
30:37
so nepotism is basically when people kind of get jobs or positions from more from their connections
30:43
or from their wealth and it kind of started i think from hollywood like nepo babies and kind of
30:47
people realizing like oh all of the people who are getting the really good acting jobs are
30:50
like sons or daughters of famous actors who are obviously in the hollywood scene
30:55
and then I just kind of thought it was a fun phrase so I just said nepo friends like if you
31:00
have your friends that are kind of like getting you in jobs and things like that and I guess it
31:04
is more just a take on like networking which sounds a bit boring but it is it's knowing people
31:08
and having connections and I think yeah being more visible telling people what you're looking for
31:13
maybe I agree the more people you know the more conversations you've had like probably the
31:18
probabilities are higher that you're something you know at some point or you're here or something or
31:23
if you're connected to more people on LinkedIn you'll see them kind of like something there
31:26
might be a job or you know like things like that it's hard to plan for because it's not as
31:32
strategic as I'm going to apply for 50 jobs.
31:34
It's a much slower burn I'd love to talk about the
31:37
singles tax because you've spoken about this on your socials as well and just the idea of
31:42
how expensive it is to be single in 2026 how can we talk about this not just in a way that makes
31:46
single people feel sane but also people in relationships really understand how much this
31:51
is impacting people's finances?
31:53
I'm just very aware of the cost of living.
31:55
And I think a lot of it is because I grew up with a single mum.
31:57
And I don't think we would have survived if it was now.
32:00
I find it quite scary because I think we probably just made it financially.
32:06
And I think with all the pressures that everyone's facing now,
32:08
I think about single mums.
32:09
I'm like, how are they doing it?
32:11
Or single people in general.
32:13
I'm just very aware that everything has got a lot more expensive.
32:15
And there are a lot of people out there who are struggling.
32:18
And a lot of people are really seriously being put into poverty.
32:20
and that's kind of like not the topic of my video my video was a bit more like okay you're gonna
32:24
have to pay for a hotel room on holiday on your own and things like that I think it's just good
32:28
to be aware of other people's financial situations and be a bit like mindful of it and I just wanted
32:33
people to feel seen because it is a big thing if you're paying for everything on your own and just
32:38
doing life on your own like it's just a lot isn't it it is and I think as much as we don't want to
32:44
lean into that classic old school trope if you need a partner to be financially stable or you
32:49
You know, you want, if you're in a hetero relationship, the idea of the man's going to save you.
32:53
You know, I think we definitely try to move on from that.
32:55
But also the idea of combining and joining teams with somebody is like inevitably, normally, like two is better than one.
33:03
So it's not necessarily that you're expecting someone else to carry you along, but it is easier when you're sharing that responsibility, whether it's a financial or an emotional thing.
33:16
A problem shared is kind of a problem harped.
33:18
And so I think there is definitely a financial disadvantage if you are trying to do all these things alone.
33:24
And I would love to hear from someone who is in a relationship, who is also very financially aware.
33:30
What are your thoughts about combining money and bringing your lives together financially?
33:35
Yeah, I don't have any hard or fast rules like you should definitely open a joint account.
33:40
or I know there's a lot of people who talk about,
33:42
okay, like you figure out how much you each earn
33:44
and then you do a percentage contribution
33:46
to the household income that's based on your income.
33:50
So you both kind of have the same amount
33:51
of disposable leftover.
33:53
I think you just have to be a team
33:54
and talk about it openly
33:55
and kind of get on the same page of,
33:57
okay, where do we want to go?
33:59
Like, what are our financial goals?
34:01
Because most life thing events are financial events
34:04
at the end of the day,
34:05
like buying a house, having a kid,
34:07
looking after parents,
34:08
like all the things that life might throw at you,
34:09
career pivots or starting a business like they're all financial things so I think it's with for me
34:14
the relationship is just about being able to talk about it and being aligned on the same page and I
34:19
think if you look at the stats around breakups and divorce a lot of it is for money and it's probably
34:25
I think the more open you can be in talking about it and figuring out like oh what feels fair what
34:29
feels right like having the open conversations I think is the most important part not necessarily
34:35
there's like one structure that's super equitable you have to do everything down to like the tiny
34:39
percentage but just in general being on the same page of like okay this is what we want and we're
34:44
going to do it together did you meet your partner later in life or yeah and so you came at it with
34:49
financial knowledge and also financial assets yeah and I think that's happening more and more
34:54
you know um I'm the same you know when you meet someone in your 30s I mean you are in a different
35:00
position to when you're 18 and leaving uni and so meeting people later in life means it's a good
35:06
thing I think you know yourself more in all the ways but it also has this added complexity around
35:12
you know firstly it's so hard for things to be equal anyway how did you decide what felt right
35:19
for you and you don't need to go into specifics around what you have set up with your partner but
35:25
do you have any advice for people who are feeling a bit confused by the romantic
35:29
notion of combine everything because you're in a relationship and you should be an economic unit
35:33
I love planning for the future like I love thinking I'm such a dreamer I love being like
35:37
okay what do we want to do and I think especially living in Portugal it's kind of
35:43
it's not a straightforward a life path so that it's a bit more fluid in terms of oh should we
35:47
buy somewhere or and what might that look like and yeah I don't know if I have any like good
35:53
answers but I think it's just being I just feel really like we're a team and I can rely on him
35:58
and he could rely on me and we'll both kind of figure it out together and we're both aligned
36:02
with where we want to be and I am a bit older I'm in my 30s now but equally if I think about
36:08
how long kind of hopefully my earning potential is going to keep going up and like over our lives
36:12
how that might change it's quite interesting as well to be like I feel kind of at the start
36:17
because we haven't really done loads of stuff yet in terms of buying or things like that or having
36:22
a family I wonder if for you because you had inheritance and you have investments like if I
36:26
look at mine I have investments for sure but they're not enormous and I wonder if you guys
36:32
are in a more equal playing field therefore it doesn't feel like you need to be making
36:37
decisions on what's mine is mine and yours and all of this I feel like we're just at the start
36:41
like I feel like oh we're quite young and we're like starting out on this whole thing together
36:45
so I'm like I don't know I'm not deepening it that much I'm just like I love this yeah really
36:49
making me realize I need to chill the fuck out honestly one of the things that you do talk about
36:55
which you're not experiencing yet,
36:58
but is the idea that when you are married
37:02
or when you have kids,
37:03
50-50 isn't really a fair split
37:05
because on the outside, you could say,
37:07
okay, like we're going to split things 50-50.
37:11
But actually, if you look at the average earnings drop
37:13
for women when they have kids, it's 42%.
37:16
Whereas, and that's just in the first sort of five years
37:18
after having your first kid.
37:20
Whereas if you look at men, they have the opposite.
37:23
Their salaries go up.
37:24
So how do you try and reconcile that?
37:27
Because for me, it makes me really annoyed.
37:29
And I don't really know what the solution would be that makes me feel comfortable with it.
37:33
there's a lot of talk about gender roles as well at the minute and obviously kind of trad wife
37:36
movements and things like that and it's just a bit inevitable that it is really unfair that one
37:40
person has to have the child and it's kind of so I've again like I'm not a mother but I've just
37:45
always been a champion of women I look at mothers and I'm like oh my god you're just doing the most
37:49
and you deserve financial stability and I just really want you to be okay and again it's probably
37:54
because I had a single mom and I've witnessed like okay what happened when my parents got divorced
37:59
and you know my mum if she I mean she had a job but yeah I just kind of think about these things
38:04
and making sure you're okay and I think also if you're a good team with your partner and the
38:09
person you're having a child with it's like okay how can I make sure we're both financially okay
38:13
whereas the the hit is just taken disproportionately by women in the minute because inevitably like
38:19
you know in general they end up taking a step back from their career if the world was like
38:23
perfectly set up maybe both of you could work three days a week really good jobs and it wouldn't
38:27
impact your career prospects but things are set up economically that most jobs are full-time
38:33
that's quite hard to navigate with parenthood so that someone probably takes you know I've had a
38:37
lot of conversations people take the flexi career as well so it doesn't on paper seem like oh I'm
38:41
taking this huge hit where I'm like not working or I'm at home I'm a stay-at-home mum but maybe
38:46
you're kind of being like okay well I'll be freelance for a while and then oh I don't end
38:49
up putting as much in my pension if I don't have that job that's doing it for me and that these
38:54
like sneaky things that over time really compound and then like you're saying people probably maybe
38:58
if you hit 40s 50s and you're getting divorced you're like oh I've got a tiny pension pot because
39:04
I've been doing the flexi career or I've had the step back because it's not just the short term
39:08
it's the long-term impacts I think that are the biggest you know if you zoom out and you think
39:13
okay right I might not be earning right now but it's being supplemented by my partner or whatever
39:17
that's one thing but yeah it's the compounding nature of of not putting as much in investments
39:23
Yeah, it's the invisible stuff.
39:24
So on the surface, you might be like, oh, well, he's contributing more to the household.
39:28
Let's just I'm using like, you know, heteronormative gender norms here, because that's kind of the case of who's being impacted.
39:34
But it's okay, well, where's what's happening, I'm maybe losing my career, like your ability to earn an income is for most people, their biggest asset, like how much you're going to earn over your lifetime.
39:44
So if that's being shrunk, that's going to kind of a penalty on you.
39:48
And then if you're not putting money in your pension, that's a huge asset that could be smaller for you.
39:53
and they're not obvious that's not the household budget that's not the monthly stuff that maybe
39:56
you're talking about and it's the things that people maybe aren't aware of of being like oh
40:00
wait a minute you're getting a way bigger pension than me even though on the surface you're maybe
40:05
contributing more to the bills so i think it's having it is financial literacy and awareness
40:10
of being like oh what are we going to do about this and there's not really a perfect solution
40:15
but it's i think being a bit aware about it and being able to have conversations i mean like oh
40:19
I'm taking a bit more of a hit here perhaps and this doesn't track well for me in 20 years time.
40:24
If you were to have kids and you don't need to say if you would or wouldn't what would be the
40:28
negotiables or the things that you would set up financially or talk about and have worked out
40:32
before you felt comfortable doing that?
40:34
Yeah I guess it's just figuring out mat leave, where
40:37
you're going to live, you know expenses, child care is obviously the big one how you're going
40:43
to navigate that if you know say for me I live abroad so I'm not going to have um like grandparents
40:50
helping so it's kind of factoring all that in and be like okay well realistically how is that going
40:55
to happen like who's going to look after them what does that mean for careers like having those
41:01
conversations I think up front I would love to round off this conversation by asking if there
41:05
were hills you were dying on financially that you want everyone to be aware of let's imagine
41:11
you're at the top of the universe and no one's listening to you but you were screaming out like
41:16
check your pension what would those things be for me finance is all about life and being able to
41:21
spend time with people and a lot of the reason I care is like I've had to take time off when my dad
41:25
died and be a carer for my nan so I think sometimes with money stuff we can get really into the
41:30
numbers but actually and it feels so abstract I think that's why people struggle sometimes to put
41:35
money aside or things like that but it's thinking about okay what the time freedom like do you care
41:39
about I think freedom is like one of my biggest values so for me the finance leans into that so
41:44
I was when have we got room to do what I want to do I think the reason that so many of us avoid
41:48
that is because we don't know what we want and we don't question the life that we see everyone
41:52
living and is that actually what I want do I actually want to live where I am do I actually
41:57
even do I want a family do I you know um and so I think step one is probably like what is the life
42:04
you want and really spending time to get to know yourself and what that is and being honest
42:08
whether you're in a relationship with someone if they also want the same kind of life because
42:14
and if you're not then and also being brave enough to change that because the reason a lot of us
42:20
avoid those conversations is because we're quite scared the answers are different to the reality
42:24
we're living and I do think if you add more of the emotion to it rather than the numbers it's so
42:29
motivating too if you know that you're making a short-term sacrifice for three years to do a job
42:34
you don't really like that you're earning good money and it means that you're going to be able
42:37
to get to the next thing you want, then fine.
42:40
But I think without the context,
42:42
a lot of us don't have the motivation
42:43
to stick with the plan or to care about the numbers.
42:46
So I think it's really good advice.
42:48
Yeah, it kind of goes back to what you said
42:49
at the start about reverse engineering.
42:51
Like I always kind of am reverse engineering things.
42:53
And I think the financial goals or life goals,
42:56
it's like figuring out, okay, where do I want to be?
42:58
And then what do I need to do to get there?
42:59
Oh, it's quite scary.
43:01
I think I need to spend some time doing that.
43:03
Yeah, I think that the take that you have in general,
43:06
what I've learned from this conversation I would actually say is that the the dogma and the
43:11
intensity at which we approach finances it doesn't need to be there and actually you can you can adopt
43:20
a more fluid emotional relationship with how you are crafting your life your finances as a vehicle
43:27
to get you there but you don't have to identify as really financially savvy or really like you
43:33
care about money or things it's actually realizing that money and your plan is the way you can get to
43:40
the life that you want and that in itself is really beautiful and it's actually not tacky
43:45
materialistic all the things that are attached to money which is why so many of us are like quite
43:49
averse to thinking or talking about it if anyone does want to work with you um how is it that you
43:55
work in a coaching capacity and how could people get in touch so I do one-to-one coaching people
44:00
it is normally people who have had a similar that they are normally they've had that lump sum and
44:04
they just don't know what to do with it and they've got a bit stuck and maybe they've kind of
44:08
tried the traditional finance stuff and they're like i just don't vibe with these people and
44:12
a bit you know frozen um so you can have a look on my website for that yeah and i also just i'd
44:19
put out a lot quite a lot of content so that's my main thing at the minute yeah very good content
44:23
well thank you so much it was really amazing to meet you i'm sure that there's a lot of people
44:27
would have got a huge amount of insight from this conversation.
44:31
So yeah, thank you for coming in.
44:33
I really loved it.
44:34
Yeah, so good.
44:35
Thank you so much.
44:36
Thank you so much for listening to Raising the Curb.
44:38
These conversations are designed to teach you everything you need to know
44:41
to be better with your money,
44:42
from saving to investing to talking with your friends about your salaries,
44:45
all of that stuff.
44:46
And if you like what you heard,
44:47
we would love if you could please hit subscribe wherever you're listening
44:50
and leave a comment.
44:51
Let us know what you thought about the episode.
44:53
And it only takes one second,
44:55
and it would really make our week, our month, our year.
44:57
Yeah.
44:58
Yeah.
44:58
So please do it.
44:59
Okay.
45:00
Love you.
45:00
Bye.
45:04
Okay, quickly, the curve was created to empower
45:06
and educate you about investing,
45:07
but we are not financial advisors.
45:09
Our platform exists for educational purposes only
45:12
and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice
45:14
for your individual needs
45:15
and should not be relied upon
45:16
to make an investment or financial decision.
45:19
And always remember to do your own research
45:21
before making any investment or financial decision.
45:23
we're here for any knowledge and support you need but the final call is always yours
45:28
and thanks for being here you got this yeah we know you got this