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The Wealth Paradox & Why Millennials Are Falling Behind, with Avion Gray. · The Curve

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The millennial generation, which is a huge part of our audience, is the first in history
0:05
to be worse off financially than our parents.
0:08
We do not have the ability to build wealth through property, in the way that our parents
0:12
and grandparents did.
0:14
If we are able to get on the property ladder, we're doing so later.
0:18
To build wealth we need two things, we need time and money, and when we're younger we tend
0:21
to have less money.
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And a lot of time ahead of us, and when we're older the reverse is true.
0:27
We call it the paradox of wealth.
0:29
What if we correct it?
0:30
What if we give people when they're younger a bit more cash to put into the markets?
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And if you think about traditional saving, what it asks us to do is to kind of sacrifice
0:39
bit by bit the current self sort of sacrificing giving up money today.
0:44
And that saving habit is what's the benefit of future self with whom you feel no connection.
0:49
Any reward in life requires risk.
0:51
There's risk in everything we do, asking somebody on on a date, open communication.
0:56
But if we start thinking about the risk we take with our money in the same way.
1:03
I was very nervous for this podcast interview because I felt like Sophie, do not sound stupid
1:11
in this interview.
1:13
And that is honestly because she is just amazing.
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The things that she's achieved, the things that she's doing, her perspective on and
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investing was just something else.
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So, her name's Evian Gray, she's the co-founder of Belong, which is a financial tech platform
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that's based here in the UK, and we actually had her co-founder Sam Rosenberg on the show.
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Not that long ago, I think it was episode 144, the new way to borrow and invest smarter.
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So she raised millions of pounds alongside Sam to build this business.
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But before that, she has a Bachelor of International Business and a minor in finance.
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She went to Stanford University and an MBA.
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She worked in investments, like kind of like Vick used to.
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She worked in product development for a financial tech company as the product manager.
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She is just amazing and she's really passionate about trying to empower particularly millennials
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to invest before it's too late.
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Because the statistics show that unfortunately, we are the first generation that's going
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to be worse off than the generation before us, which is the first time in history that
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that's either happened.
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So, she's trying to change that with her amazing business, but we spoke about the island
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that she grew up in the Caribbean, a place called Trinidad, which has like a million people.
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We spoke about her first money memories.
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We spoke about all of the ways that she invests, she invests in funds and ETFs and the S&P
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have 100 and she also invests in individual companies and it was so amazing to hear her
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approach to investing.
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It's kind of similar to I've wanted to invest for a long time, so I think you'll really
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love it and without blabbing on any more, here is the conversation.
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Okay, I know I've said this off mic, but I do just need to repeat it.
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Your LinkedIn.
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This is quite seriously one of the most impressive pages I've seen on the internet.
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I was like, people say Instagram is the highlight reel, your LinkedIn, this is the bio, okay,
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I'm just going to read it.
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Product and business leader, turn entrepreneur in the fintech space.
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I'm building a product to revolutionise the way people secure their financial futures.
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And I just thought, shit yeah, go have like being, I don't know, I felt like so many of
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us feel uncomfortable self-promoting, particularly as a woman, you're kind of like, oh, I've just
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got this.
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It's like, no, it's got to go, you talk about all sorts of really important topics.
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You're not sure of inspiration in terms of things that you care about and want to change
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about the world that we're currently living in.
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What is your favourite or most passionate subject to talk about?
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I think to start with, securing our financial futures is so important.
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Because when you look at the role that money and finances play in society, it is important.
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You know, for so many reasons, not just buying things, educating ourselves, it's so important
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in the way that we feel and the way that we approach our life and ourselves and self-esteem
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and all of that, right?
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So I look at the bigger picture.
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I really do believe that when it comes to, you know, the difference between saving money
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in a bank account and putting it somewhere where it can grow for you, it's about your attitude
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to us risk.
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And, you know, I fundamentally think that people, and I wish for the world, is that people
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start viewing risk as more of a fee and a mission, right, an admission to the party.
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Any reward in life requires risk.
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There's risk in everything we do, asking somebody on on a date, there's risk.
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You put yourself at risk.
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You're so scary.
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You put yourself at risk.
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So scary.
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You just think in your life.
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All the things that we do every day, there's a little bit of risk in a lot of the things
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that are good.
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I mean, even like open communication.
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Being vulnerable.
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Yeah.
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Wearing your heart on your sleeve, it could be something as simple as hitting the snooze
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button one more time when your alarm goes off and you know you have some place to be.
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And you take that risk that maybe you'd get the green lights on the way there or the
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tree and it's on time or what if we start thinking about the risk we take with our money
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in the same way?
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You must take the risk to get the reward.
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And I think people tend to view risk and when I say people, I was there.
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I was this person, tend to view risk as punishment or as pain when really it is the admission
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to the party, right?
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So it's almost like if you want to go to the party, you need to get a ticket and you've
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got to mention that that ticket is a tiny bit of risk or a lot doesn't matter, but like
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if you don't have any, you're not allowed.
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And when we invest our money and you know, you kind of see it's going to go up and down
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every day.
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So let's talk about that for a second because there might be full beginners listening
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to this.
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Oh yeah.
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So anyone that's not watching this video and you're just listening, I was doing a little
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like kind of zigzagging.
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Exactly.
6:18
Exactly.
6:19
Yeah.
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Can you in the simplest terms explain what you mean by that like businesses are almost
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like live organisms, you know, and some case this is this is real weird and I've never
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said this before, but it's almost like sometimes they've had a massive lunch and they're a
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bit fuller.
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Sometimes they skip lunch and therefore maybe they're a bit hungry.
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You know, like they expand, they get bigger and shrink and it doesn't mean it's changing
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there.
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Like permanent value, like if you've got a bloated stomach, it doesn't mean that is your
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stomach forever.
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It goes up and down.
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Yes.
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The companies and like the size of them and the way that they're valued and how much money
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you can make from them changes, it's always moving.
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But that is like just part of business and part of the economy and yet people see the
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ups and downs, people use the word risk when it comes to investing and everyone just thinks,
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oh, I'm not, I'm not very risky actually, so, so no, that's not for me.
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Yeah.
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It's so problematic because you cannot rely on a salary for wealth creation.
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Exactly.
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But why is that so hard for so many of us to understand?
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Oh, gosh.
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I think, you know, what you were saying about going up and down when you understand it
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because you have a company that could be fundamentally strong.
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That company doesn't change from day to day, but on the stock market, you have people
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buying and selling their stock every second of the day.
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And that's what causes the price to go up and down because on any given day, if more
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people are buying, then selling, it's going to go up a bit and if more people are selling,
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it's going to go down a bit, but the fundamentals of the business are still strong.
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And that up and down every day, notching up and down could be reaction to a piece of news.
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And often it's a piece of news that isn't even directly related to the company, but directly
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related to the industry that the company is in.
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It could be a competitor.
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It could be something that affects the company, something going on in the macro economy
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and the broader economy that affects kind of the stock price and just investor sentiment
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that day towards this company.
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Let's use an example.
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So let's look at what is a company that you really like?
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What's a company that's listed, a public company, people who buy shares of, it doesn't have
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to be related to like really anything.
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What's a company that you quite like?
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Let's go with Apple.
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Okay, Apple.
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Apple is a company that sells all sorts of electronic products, right?
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As far as there's laptops, that doesn't change from day to day.
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The company still functions in the same way.
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It's, I mean, unless something's gone absolutely horrible, you know, they're fully
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closing down.
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But generally, on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you can wake up and assume
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they're still selling MacBooks and iPhones.
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Yes.
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However, if you go and look at how that company Apple is doing on the stock market and it's
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gone down a bit or up a bit, it's not necessarily because there's a huge change happening in
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that company, right?
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Right.
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Exactly.
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And it could be a piece of news about Nokia or a piece of news about…
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And Nokia, what the fuck from the past?
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Sorry.
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I used to have Nokia.
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That's a stretch.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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Or it could be a piece of news.
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And Nokia made a comeback.
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Exactly.
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Or would you get my dress?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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It could be a piece of news about semiconductor supply.
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Okay.
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Right.
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Not many people know what that is.
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So a component that goes into the iPhone, it could be a piece of news that says, you
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know, there's going to be a shortage and supply of an element that goes into one of their
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products.
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Or let's just say this is totally random, let's say there was a huge manufacturing era
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with one of the versions of the MacBook and all of them are needing to be recalled and
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they're going back because there was a fault in it.
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That kind of doesn't look that great, right?
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It sort of looks like, oh, maybe there is a problem with this tech, maybe they don't know
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what they're doing.
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And so what you mentioned before about like investor sentiment, a lot of people might
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see that news and think, oh, yeah, I don't trust Apple, I'm going to take some money
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out of that.
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Yeah.
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And that's what caused the price.
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Now that day, and it's usually just tiny notches, just up and down, up and down on the
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back of some of these things.
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And sometimes it could be some other things, more like broader economy news that may not
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only impact Apple, but the entire market.
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So the entire market might be down a bit one day on the back of news about interest rates
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or instability in some part of the world or anything like that.
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And I think if you don't know that part, and all you're looking at is Apple and Apple
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has gone down, and you don't have the context that every public company that people can
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invest in is down pretty similar amount that could panic you, but it is so easy to understand
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when you get it.
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I would love to quote something that you said that I thought was just, first thing incredibly
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interesting and I think very relevant to what we're talking about right now.
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So you said the millennial generation, which is a huge part of our audience, is the
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first in history to be worse off financially than our parents.
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And for the first time, we're breaching that code that every generation should be doing
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better than the one before.
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Why is that more important now, more than ever, in relation to that?
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There's research going on all over the world about why this is the case.
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And there's things like when we came of age, there was the financial crisis.
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Regardless of what research you look at, one of the key points that are made around
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this is the fact that we do not have the ability to build well through property in the
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way that our parents and grandparents did.
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And that is just a fact.
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So generations that came before us largely use property to build wealth.
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So you bought a home, you sort of used your mortgage or kind of the equity that you're
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building up in your house as you repay your mortgage as your mechanism for building wealth.
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And you retire and then you downsize, right?
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So you sell this bigger house, you have all this equity built up because now your mortgage
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is probably paid off.
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That's your nest egg for retirement, whether it's to bequeath some of it to your kids or
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just to take care of yourself during retirement.
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And if you look at what property prices did in the 80s and 90s, just in general, those
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generations had a really nice appreciation in property prices, then we are not seeing
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today.
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Well, yes, I think there's two things, right?
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There's definitely the fact that the rate in which property is increasing in value and
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becoming more valuable and therefore people making money through property has slowed.
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And also, who has 300 grand to put on a deposit?
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That's the other thing.
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You know, it's, and I know that they say, ah, it's always relative to every generation,
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you know, and, but I don't think it must not be.
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It's almost impossible on even a really good salary to be able to put away that much money
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at a point in time that you can then buy young enough exactly to make those games and
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properly, like it's just all of a sudden they had that kind of job moment of course.
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Yeah.
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And so it's, it's that we're excluded, we're being excluded.
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And if we are able to get on the property ladder, whether it's through saving up or inheriting
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some money, we're doing so later.
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And there's statistics around this.
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So if you look at the boomer generation at age 30, something like 58% of boomers own
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their own homes, millennials that falls, it's cut by in half, probably around 30%, millennials
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own their own home at age 30.
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And I think what we're not doing is replacing that with anything at a fast enough piece
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to sort of fill that gap.
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And so for anyone who doesn't own property, just to explain as well, the reason why, and
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this is sorry if this is super basic, but when you leverage, like when you borrow money
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from the bank, your earning returns on all of that money, exactly, not just your deposit,
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not just the money you put in initially.
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And so this is obviously leading to an incredibly amazing Fintech platform that's been started
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in the UK.
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But it's true.
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When you're older, you don't have much time and you've got a lot of money.
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Exactly.
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And when you're younger, you have no money and a lot of time.
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And hopefully a lot of time.
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We call it the paradox of wealth.
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Yeah.
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So annoying.
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Isn't it?
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Yeah.
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Like if I could invest my entire paycheck, I would be doing that and I would be so
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sweet.
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But I just can't.
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Yeah.
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It's trying to look at different alternatives of wealth building because if properties
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not accessible, or even if it is on top of that, you know, like what are ways that we
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can grow our money, not necessarily by putting 150 per cent of your money in Bitcoin, because
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let's be honest.
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Yeah.
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Very risky asset class, but the truth is like millennials everywhere are struggling with
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the cost of living crisis, lots of people can't get into property.
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And it can feel really disempowering, putting 5 or 10 a week into the stock market.
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Yeah.
15:39
You know, it's not a lot.
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Yeah.
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So it can feel kind of like, I know I need to be doing more, but I can't.
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No, I totally get it.
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And these are things that I battled with as well.
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And there is something to be said for every little bit counts, because it came out in
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our research that people felt like little bits that need to add up just enough.
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It doesn't feel significant enough.
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I know.
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But I just don't feel that excited about a small amount, you know, I'm like such an all-or-nothing
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girl.
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I struggle with it.
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Oh, okay.
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Right.
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So essentially, in 2022, you and your amazing co-founder, Sam Rosenberg, Samantha, who has
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actually been on the podcast before, you raised nearly 3 million pounds for belong.
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Firstly, congratulations, because that is an enormous amount of money, you know, and
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I mean, we did half a million, and it was such a grueling, emotionally draining, mentally
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exhausting journey.
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So firstly, like, what was the intention when you were like, okay, this is an idea, this
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is how much we need.
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And then I'd love to go into after that, like, some of the things that you learned in,
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like, biggest tips for anyone that might be wanting to think about starting a business
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at some stage.
16:57
Yeah.
16:58
Because I think, if I zoom out into, so if you five years ago, who I imagine, there's
17:03
a lot of people listening who have never thought about founding a business, have never thought
17:08
about business in general, and probably the main reason they always thought that was
17:12
never for them is because they don't have any money to start anything.
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You know, and even if you're not a capital or money heavy business paying for an accountant
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or software, like it adds up, you know, and a lot of people don't have any spare money.
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So like, can we just speak about that for a second because the stats around women who
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go for funding is less than 2% for women and 0.02 to 0.03 for black founders.
17:37
Yes.
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It's pretty horrendous.
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It's horrendous.
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So there's really two ways to start, or let's say to fund a business, a new business.
17:47
It's either you bootstrap, what we call bootstrapping, which is paying for everything yourself.
17:51
I know.
17:52
I think that just...
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Do you know what it makes me think of?
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It makes me think of parts that can't happen.
17:56
You know these, like, some bootstrap bills, something that gets sunk to the bottom of the
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ocean.
18:01
Every time I hear it, it just sounds so intense.
18:03
It does sound intense.
18:04
So you pay for everything yourself.
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So you wipe out your savings, you know, a lot of people keep their day jobs to help fund
18:14
their start-up, their entrepreneurship, or you raise money from investors.
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So it's sort of just those two ways.
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I think if you take a step back, the idea has to come first, right?
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So developing the concept, the idea, the plan for the business.
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It doesn't need to be fully fleshed out.
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But you know, what we did early on was just start testing the idea with people in the
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industry, people we respected, people who we felt would have a view.
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Just testing.
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Just talking them for 10 minutes and pitching, right?
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What do you think about it?
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And it started kind of like getting its own legs.
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You have to be solving a problem, right?
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That is meaningful.
18:53
That is impactful.
18:54
That is big.
18:55
And I think most of us who start businesses want to grow a successful business.
19:00
And to do that, there has to be a need.
19:02
And then you need money.
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You need money to do just about everything, right?
19:07
You need money to hire people.
19:09
You need money to build, you know, an office, raw materials, regardless of what type of business
19:14
it is.
19:15
It's going to be capital.
19:16
And even paying yourself, like I hate this idea that just because you work in a business
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or you founded it, like, oh no, you should be taking 10 pounds or $10 a week.
19:24
You are working, hopefully, full time in a business, because you see, as you say, like
19:29
the potential to really like make a huge change and what your building is needed, therefore
19:35
you should also be renumerated for that.
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And whatever you can afford based on what's there.
19:39
But I just think that I mean, I went to an event yesterday at Google and I was speaking
19:43
to this woman who was wanting to start a platform for complex trauma therapists, matching
19:51
them, you know, it was really, it was such a cool idea anyway.
19:54
She's working her day job.
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She's bootstrapping.
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And she's working the weekend and she's totally burning out.
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And it's just such a shame because the world needs something like that.
20:03
But without money, it's very hard to make it happen.
20:06
Yeah, yeah.
20:07
And the money is there, right?
20:08
There is capital out there for the right idea, the right team.
20:14
There is capital for us to go out and tap into.
20:17
You really need to just develop the idea in a certain way, get it to a certain point
20:21
before you start speaking to investors.
20:24
And I would also say, you need to be incredibly passionate about whatever the problem is you're
20:28
solving because it's heavily hard work, but it's so rewarding, isn't it?
20:33
Like, for you to be working and belong and to be actually creating a product that's
20:38
going to hopefully change the financial position of millennial people, if you're real like
20:45
how amazing.
20:46
Yeah.
20:47
It's so cool.
20:48
Do you know what?
20:50
So, if you haven't listened to the episode with Sam, the whole concept, well, one of
20:56
the concepts and one of the products that you can do is essentially getting almost alone
21:00
kind of like you would put the house to put into the stock market.
21:03
It's just kind of like you're sort of leveraging or getting access to more money to invest
21:07
because you know you want to put it somewhere, just like you do at the house.
21:10
Yeah.
21:11
And it's just such a genius idea and a great example of if you're thinking or just putting
21:17
your hat on to be aware of problems around you, things that people struggle with and just
21:22
the knowledge that there is money out there.
21:25
Because at this event yesterday, there was this guy who got up and spoke and he was really
21:31
amazing.
21:32
Actually, he would love to give him on the podcast.
21:33
He was talking about how the world just needs more women in business and we need more
21:39
women in positions of how we need more money in the hands of women.
21:42
It was like really interesting to hear a guy stand up and speak about it.
21:46
But he said, you know, like whilst yes, the statistics are so low for women getting
21:52
funding.
21:53
If he, he says he gets like, you know, 6,000 pictures or whatever a month and the amount
21:58
of women coming through is so small.
22:00
Yeah.
22:01
So it's not just the idea that we're pitching our ideas at the same rate.
22:06
It's just the fact that there actually aren't even people putting their hand up with an
22:09
idea to do it.
22:10
Hearing stories like yourself is really important, I think, just for representation that this
22:15
is a path you can go down if you want to.
22:17
Yeah.
22:18
Absolutely.
22:19
I'd love to move on to just a bit more about you and who are and like what your experience
22:25
was with money because we know a big picture how you feel about the world and the state
22:31
of which our entire generation is going to be like a lot worse off there.
22:37
You know, and it's kind of something we've never seen before, but your own personal experience.
22:42
Can you give us an idea of what your childhood was like?
22:45
Yeah.
22:46
So I grew up in the Caribbean, hopefully you hear the accent.
22:49
Yeah.
22:50
I tried so hard to keep hold on to it.
22:52
Oh, good.
22:53
I would tell people like when I was a, not when I was a child, but I moved to the US to
22:57
go to college.
22:59
And when I first got there, I would try to shed my accent.
23:01
Like I would try to like classic.
23:03
I mean, two months in, I had an American accent.
23:06
I was just trying to, you just trying to assimilate.
23:09
Yeah.
23:10
But now I try to hold on to it.
23:12
So we're in the Caribbean.
23:14
Yeah, it's Trinidad.
23:15
Okay.
23:16
Trinidad.
23:17
So just off the coast of Venezuela.
23:19
It's an amazing place.
23:21
It's small island.
23:22
It's two islands Trinidad and Tobago, two islands one country, extremely ethnically diverse.
23:29
Really?
23:30
I think it's probably one of the smallest places on earth with so many ethnicities that
23:36
are indigenous to the island.
23:38
Really?
23:39
So amazing.
23:40
So there are black Trinidadians about half of the population is Indian.
23:45
There are Chinese Trinidadians.
23:47
Indian Trinidad, it's just, it's just a beautiful place and they all talk like me, which
23:51
is amazing.
23:52
It's so unique.
23:53
Yeah.
23:54
It's so unique.
23:55
It's so unique.
23:56
I grew up with and a family of four girls, I have three sisters, I'm in the middle.
24:02
And I was not raised with tons of money.
24:04
So we were just probably a lower middle class, lower middle class, we had enough.
24:12
So we had our essentials, but we didn't have a lot of luxury.
24:17
My dad was an insurance and my mom was sort of an entrepreneur, did a lot of businesses
24:22
out of the house.
24:24
And.
24:25
And so everything from hairdressing to sewing, eventually trained as a chef and went into
24:36
catering and kind of stuck with that.
24:39
And we had the essentials, so we had everything we needed.
24:42
We had food.
24:43
What do you mean by that?
24:44
Yeah.
24:45
Yeah.
24:46
So we had, I don't know what it feels like to be hungry, right?
24:48
So we had, you know, three square meals a day, we had the clothes that we needed.
24:52
We went to good schools.
24:54
So my parents spent whatever money they had to put us into private school.
25:00
So we went to what I would say is the best private school on the island.
25:04
And my dad worked really hard to pay those school fees.
25:07
Four kids.
25:08
Four kids.
25:09
Oh, she just did.
25:10
So that was his pride and joy.
25:12
My parents were the same, you know, like it was so hard for them to send us to the schools
25:19
that we went to, but that was what they prioritized over everything else.
25:22
And I think it's not until you get older and you understand how hard it is to have enough
25:26
money to do the things that you want to do, let alone having little, tiny people you
25:30
have to care for.
25:31
And having to be so selfless and just put them and what they need first, like it's just,
25:38
it doesn't really hit you.
25:39
I don't think until you're, for me, it's really been in the last couple of years, the
25:43
sacrifice that goes into really does to putting your children's education above all else.
25:49
So in terms of learning about money, so you, you now obviously, and a completely different
25:56
situation, we're not only you managing your personal finances, but you're also managing
26:00
business finances, where did those learnings come from?
26:04
It's a bit of a funny story, actually, if I think about my first memories of money and
26:08
money management, my Godfather, when I was a child, we were inseparable.
26:13
I had this amazing Godfather.
26:15
So cute.
26:16
Who was best friends with my grandmother?
26:19
He didn't have kids of his own.
26:21
So my parents decided to make him my Godfather, and it was the best decision ever, because
26:29
I became his child.
26:32
You know, I have my earliest memories of, I learned a lot from him every fortnight when
26:37
he got paid.
26:39
He would bring me $20.
26:41
So $20 like clockwork every fortnight.
26:44
And $20, I thought it was a lot of money.
26:47
So $40 a month, and I am like four years old, or five years old, I probably might earliest
26:57
memories of this, and I had a Pringles 10 piggy bank, which I think probably a lot of people
27:03
did.
27:04
He laid up like the red one, the original.
27:06
Original.
27:07
Nice, great purchase.
27:08
You kind of cut the slate in the lid, and I saved that money, and it would just pile
27:13
up, pile up, right?
27:15
My sisters would come and borrow some money when they needed some money.
27:20
They weren't jealous.
27:21
It was sort of like Aravillian's got Aravillian's rich, like, this is so good.
27:29
It was kind of like, we have a rich sister.
27:32
If they needed to buy something, if they needed something extra for school, then my parents
27:37
wouldn't buy.
27:38
Like I would learn money.
27:39
How would you learn it though, like would they have jobs to pay that?
27:42
No.
27:43
They're picking back like the chores, and I remember keeping like a register of how much money
27:49
I was lending out.
27:50
And so from a very early age, I started to understand, number one, the power of saving.
27:54
Of course, the money wasn't growing in the bank.
27:56
It was sort of just sitting there and I was actually using money, like inflation, but
28:02
I didn't know that back then.
28:04
But the power of saving and the pride that comes with having money.
28:11
And I understood that as a child.
28:13
And it's not an arrogant pride.
28:15
It's more of like, I can help my loved ones in when they need a fiver, and that feels
28:20
really good.
28:21
So it's that esteem.
28:22
It's that sort of you just carry your head a little higher.
28:26
It's almost a quiet confidence.
28:28
It's yes.
28:29
Yes.
28:30
It's a quiet confidence that you've got yourself and the people around you.
28:34
Which is why I got you exactly.
28:37
And I think all of this sort of poured into how I behave with money today as an adult.
28:42
What is your approach to money now?
28:44
I definitely understand the importance of growing it, right?
28:49
Of having money, putting it away, putting it somewhere where it's growing for me.
28:54
And so I have a salary.
28:57
One of the things that I've started doing recently that is just so powerful is to shift
29:02
in thinking towards paying myself first.
29:04
That's just neither landed with me, so please speak to me about it.
29:08
And Samantha, my co-founder, is a huge proponent of this.
29:13
And I probably learned it from her, actually, where she says, pay yourself first like it's
29:17
a bill.
29:18
Your wealth building is a bill.
29:20
We pay our rent.
29:22
We pay our electricity bill.
29:23
Pay yourself first.
29:25
As soon as that paycheck lands, what's some way?
29:29
Direct debt is standing on a pay yourself first.
29:31
I'm not negotiating that.
29:33
Non-negotiable.
29:34
Our financial futures are more important than some of these bills like, and these, and
29:39
these subscriptions.
29:40
And we pay on, on standing order.
29:43
Okay.
29:44
That landed.
29:45
The idea of what's more important, you and your future, or Netflix, or watching Netflix,
29:50
giving your money to Netflix over yourself, or giving your money to the cafe down the
29:56
road instead of yourself.
29:58
It's the idea.
29:59
It's not just what you get from it.
30:00
It's the fact that you have a finite amount of money prioritized yourself.
30:05
Yes.
30:06
And so now I have a, of course, on belong, I have a top up that comes out of my bank account
30:13
every month right after my paycheck hits.
30:16
Is it a percentage of your salary?
30:19
It's a budget thing.
30:20
So I do kind of sit down with all of my expenses and I decide, okay, I have responsibilities
30:27
I have things to pay.
30:29
What can I afford to set aside the word my wealth building?
30:32
And I have a number.
30:33
And I'm hoping that as time goes on, that number increases.
30:36
I definitely don't want to put myself under strive to do it because then if you're extending
30:43
yourself too much to do it, you're more likely to stop, right?
30:46
It has to be a nice, comfortable amount.
30:49
And so today, part of that amount goes towards just a top up going directly into my belong
30:54
account.
30:55
And part of it goes, what's paying off my boost loan.
30:58
Could we explain boost loans for anyone who's listening that doesn't know what you're
31:00
talking about?
31:01
Yeah.
31:02
So you hit on it so fee early on in the podcast where you talked about the paradox of wealth
31:07
and what it is is you said it.
31:10
So it is, it came out in our research.
31:12
When we started, Sam did about six months of behavioral research.
31:16
When we were kind of coming up with the concept for belong, how did dig into why people
31:20
don't save?
31:21
Why do we struggle with saving?
31:24
Why?
31:26
Right.
31:27
And especially people who understand what it means to save, we know better.
31:33
We know what we should be doing, but we're not doing it.
31:35
The key insights that came out of that research was number one, the idea of present bias.
31:42
It's this kind of connection that we have with our present self.
31:46
So we so strongly fave our present selves over who we are right now today, exactly gratifying
31:52
this self today, reducing pain for our self today, making our self daily feel comfortable.
31:58
Redification.
31:59
So this is the idea that right now I'm cold.
32:01
I need a hotty.
32:03
Right now I'm hungry.
32:04
I need an apple.
32:05
Yes.
32:06
Right now, my lips are dry.
32:07
I just put some lip gloss on.
32:09
It's like, I prioritized me in this moment beyond anything else.
32:12
Yes.
32:13
Anything else.
32:14
And so much more than we connect to ourselves in the future.
32:18
And if you think about traditional saving, what it asks us to do is to kind of sacrifice
32:23
bit by bit, the current self sort of sacrificing giving up money today.
32:29
And that saving habit is supposed to benefit a future self with whom you feel no connection.
32:34
Right.
32:35
So think about yourself in 30 years.
32:36
I can't.
32:37
And that's what traditional saving tells us like we should sacrifice today to benefit
32:45
a future self whom we just don't feel connected to.
32:49
But then why is it that so many men still saving invest and women don't if it's a human
32:57
experience?
32:58
Obviously, it's the generations of representation of the idea that we've never had to deal
33:03
with money blah, blah, blah.
33:04
But is this still a common experience amongst men and women?
33:09
So even those that do save an invest, it's this constant like, this doesn't feel right
33:16
because I'm not prioritizing me right now.
33:19
It's not like a gender thing.
33:21
Like was there anything that came up in the research that was like specific to woman or
33:26
yeah, I think it is a common problem right across genders.
33:30
Right.
33:31
So we saw meals in our research exhibiting the same present bias.
33:37
It is, if you think about just evolution, this favoring of the present self, there's
33:41
a reason that we do that right self preservation.
33:44
If you think animal instinct kind of preservation in the wild, you know, like fight or flight,
33:52
that kind of thing.
33:53
What do I need?
33:54
It's a survival instinct.
33:56
Yeah.
33:57
Yeah.
33:58
There's a reason that we have that as humans and and we just believe that it's manifesting
34:03
itself a bit dangerously in our financial lives.
34:06
And that's across the board, men and women.
34:09
Men do tend to be less risk averse, whether it is, you know, they're in the workplace with
34:15
other men and they talk about saving and investing or what you're doing.
34:18
And it's kind of like, you know, the conversation with men, you know, in our research, it shows
34:23
that it's just a bit, bit more evolved with men.
34:27
So that's not the idea though that women are more risk averse in general.
34:32
Is it more the I or is it or is it the idea that we're just not privy to a lot of those
34:36
conversations?
34:37
I think we're just not privy.
34:39
We are, you know, maybe I don't buy into it 100%, but I have heard it before that we
34:45
teach our sons to invest and we teach our daughters to save.
34:49
Oh, the amount of gets heard on the podcast.
34:51
Herve said, my brothers all learned about this, but I didn't, yeah.
34:56
And you know, I just think throughout history, even in my culture, the woman is the one
35:00
who kind of saves the money, right?
35:03
Stashes it whether it's under the mattress in a purse somewhere.
35:06
My grandmother used to keep her cash in her bosom.
35:10
And like we are just comfortable by the way.
35:12
I know we are just like the ones at stash money, right?
35:17
Whether it is to take care of the home, take care of the family, whereas the men have
35:21
just been more likely to go out and put it at risk, you know, or, you know, be more adventurous.
35:26
I just really struggle with the words put it at risk.
35:30
And I love kind of bringing things right back to the side of this conversation when you
35:33
said the word risk needs to be rebranded massively because even when you said it, I, I noticed
35:41
like a reaction, but I'm on book with investing.
35:44
So it's like, I don't know, I feel like the idea of just a risk, I wish it wasn't even
35:49
referred to it in that way.
35:50
We don't need a new need for it.
35:52
I think we do.
35:53
I think we do as well.
35:54
Let's workshop this.
35:55
Yeah.
35:56
We don't have any ideas.
35:57
Please let us know.
35:58
Otherwise, we will work on this behind the scenes, but just quickly back to the paradox and
36:02
the boost loan.
36:03
So the paradox is that when to build wealth, we need two things.
36:07
We need time and money.
36:08
Money needs to compound and grow over time over the long term.
36:11
And when we're younger, we tend to have less money and a lot of time ahead of us.
36:16
And when we're older, the reverse is true.
36:18
So we designed the boost loan to correct that paradox.
36:21
And it's very much patterned after a mortgage on a house.
36:26
And we just said, look, what if we corrected?
36:28
What if we give people when they're younger a bit more cash upfront to put into the markets
36:33
to allow that to grow on compound over time?
36:36
Because if you invest twice as much cash, it's going to grow twice as fast.
36:40
So if you invest a hundred pounds and it grows ten percent, that's ten pounds.
36:45
If you invest two hundred pounds, it grows ten percent, that's twenty pounds.
36:49
So just on an absolute money basis, twice as much money grows twice as fast.
36:55
And so that's what the boost loan does.
36:56
And it's a low interest loan that you can pay back every month.
37:00
It all goes into the market and then you pay it back every month out of your pocket.
37:04
One of the things that Vic has always spoken about, she always says, don't invest what you're
37:11
not willing to lose, which I think in itself really exacerbates the idea of risk.
37:17
What that says to me is, and this is when I first started learning about investing, this
37:21
was kind of what I thought it meant was, okay, well, don't invest if you plan to never
37:26
see that money again, which I think is kind of an, I don't know, the more I've learned,
37:31
the more I kind of disagree with it, because I don't believe if I put money in the S&P 500
37:37
for a long period of time, that I'm never going to see that money again.
37:40
If the economy is absolutely down the toilet, I'm probably packing a bag of fish to fry.
37:47
It's running into a cave somewhere, do you know what I mean?
37:50
So like for me, I'd love to hear you all kind of rebuttal to that, because what you're
37:54
essentially saying is, actually, invest more than you have, because your returns could
37:59
be greater.
38:00
So can you speak to that?
38:03
I agree with you, Sophie, on the, don't invest what you're not ready to lose.
38:09
I think it's overstated.
38:11
There are some investments that could go to zero.
38:14
There are some things with crypto, all of these things I can go to zero or close to zero.
38:18
But I really think it's, it's assets specific or what you're investing in.
38:22
Like you said, if you put money into the S&P 500, the chances of that going to zero is
38:29
very slim.
38:30
It's not happened in history.
38:32
And so I do think it's a bit of a, of hyperbole.
38:36
What we're saying with the boost loan, though, is yes, we're loaning you the money
38:40
upfront, but we're doing so based on an affordability assessment.
38:45
The size of the boost loan that you want to take and you can borrow up to one times your
38:48
cash.
38:49
So if you have $10,000, I could get another $10,000, right?
38:54
Well, that's on two of, like it's not outrageous.
38:57
You're not borrowing four X, your cash, like you would with a house, right?
39:01
Right.
39:02
Like with a house, you put down 20% you borrow 80, it's 50, 50.
39:06
And whatever size boost loan you want to take, we make sure you can afford the repayment
39:10
every month.
39:12
So on a $10,000 boost loan, you're going to be paying back something like 200 pounds
39:17
a month for five years.
39:19
What is the minimum that you would need to get overturned in the stock market to pay that
39:23
off?
39:24
The interest on the boost loan is 6% fixed today.
39:27
The stock market has is proven to return more than 6% over the long term, right?
39:33
So with the boost loan you don't invest in individual stocks, you invest in them in
39:38
the broad market index.
39:40
So indices like the S&P 500, which over the last 10 years have done 14, 15% a year.
39:48
So let's, so there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that aren't necessarily
39:52
in the UK.
39:53
They're all over the world.
39:54
Yeah.
39:55
So belong was only available in the UK right now.
39:56
Yes.
39:57
Yes.
39:58
Yes.
39:59
Right.
40:00
Whether it was loaning money from a bank, from your parents, if they have money, you
40:06
know, the concept is essentially paying off a loan.
40:11
So so interest they have to pay off for more benefit.
40:17
That's kind of the general concept.
40:18
Yeah.
40:19
Yeah.
40:20
So I guess like maybe it would be best to speak more about the kinds of things that you
40:25
personally invest in, for example.
40:27
And even maybe we sort of sidestepped the idea of the boost loan and we look at what
40:31
you actually put in the market and why you choose those things.
40:35
Like what is in your portfolio, what index funds or ETS, where do you put your money that
40:40
feels because you have got a loan?
40:43
So you almost like are doubling down on your confidence in what you're investing in
40:48
a way.
40:49
Yeah.
40:50
So I'd love to hear like what do you invest in?
40:51
Yeah.
40:52
Sure.
40:53
So personally, I put my money in the S&P 500.
40:57
So my money that's with Belong is in the S&P, so my cash and my boost loan.
41:03
And the S&P 500 is.
41:06
So the S&P 500 is an index of 500 of the largest companies in the US across all different
41:17
industries.
41:18
So it's very diverse.
41:20
So you have a bit of Apple, Microsoft, Delta Airlines, like Walmart, McDonald's, you
41:26
name it.
41:27
So they take all of their stock prices and they kind of smush them together into one index.
41:32
So the price of the S&P 500, as it moves every day, it reflects all of these underlying
41:38
companies, share prices.
41:40
It's a great way to just diversify and buy the entire US market.
41:43
And so you don't invest in like the UK market or other like more niche funds or anything?
41:50
Not today.
41:51
So I do that on Belong and then I also do a bit of stock picking.
41:57
Oh, cool.
41:58
Yeah.
41:59
When we talk about that, I'd love to hear how you pick stocks or like the kinds of things
42:03
you're interested in.
42:04
Yeah.
42:05
I'm a big proponent of diversification.
42:06
So you know, the S&P 500 investment on Belong with my boost loan is sort of my long
42:12
term, very diversified pot.
42:14
That's just going to grow and I'm going to continue boosting.
42:18
And then I have my little portfolio where I pick and that was my first worry into investing
42:24
actually 12 years ago, I started investing.
42:27
I set up a brokerage account in the US and started picking stock.
42:32
How cool.
42:33
Yeah.
42:34
And that's probably we wouldn't, you would never, I imagine, say get a boost loan to
42:38
invest in individual stocks.
42:39
No.
42:40
Right?
42:41
Because like the risk there is much bigger.
42:42
The risk is bigger.
42:43
People do it with margin loans.
42:45
You're like an agent is risky, yeah, because a single stock can go up and down a lot bigger
42:52
swings.
42:53
It's more volatile.
42:54
What's your like investment approach when it comes to picking stocks?
42:58
Yeah.
42:59
By the stocks of companies that I like as a consumer, it's such an easy, brilliant, obvious
43:06
way to explain it.
43:07
Yeah.
43:08
I believe that.
43:09
I think if you are that delighted with a company's product and you are an extreme user,
43:14
there's probably millions of you out there.
43:16
And so that was one approach.
43:18
The second approach was a bit more cheeky, was buying companies that I thought were great
43:24
that had a bit of trouble, something happened, a shock to the company where the stock price
43:29
fell a bit.
43:30
And I would kind of buy it at that point.
43:31
But the company itself was still, so you were going shopping on sale.
43:36
Yeah.
43:37
Exactly.
43:38
That's exactly it.
43:39
You were taking your little shopping trolley around and you were like, I know that I
43:44
really like that cereal, but also I realized that there's some weird rumour that there was
43:50
a dead bug in a packet recently and therefore that share price dropped, so I'm going to
43:55
purchase that company.
43:56
Yeah.
43:57
It's the idea that like, it's not that the actual business is totally failing or it's
44:01
got a terrible leadership team or it's not making money, it was almost superficial hits
44:07
to the share price.
44:08
Right.
44:09
Is that kind of what you do?
44:10
Yeah.
44:11
That's kind of what I was doing.
44:12
I loved doing that by the way.
44:13
Yeah.
44:14
With Netflix.
44:15
Right.
44:16
And I make so much money because something could happen.
44:19
It could be some scandal, some executive scandal.
44:23
It could be something like that that doesn't really impact the fundamentals of the business,
44:29
but the investor sentiment changed that day or that week and everybody started selling.
44:35
And love that.
44:36
It's kind of like Warren Buffett.
44:37
I think it's Warren Buffett.
44:38
Charlie Munger had a quote that said, be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when
44:45
others are greedy.
44:46
It's that kind of thing.
44:49
They can I just pop in here to just say hello and also, I love the way that Avion is
44:56
explaining how she invests when a stock takes a dive, you know, like a piece of news comes
45:01
out.
45:02
Which they do all the time.
45:04
And then investors react and pull their money out.
45:07
And then you have potentially a buying opportunity and this is something that we've seen actually
45:11
just last week.
45:12
Haven't we, though?
45:13
Yeah.
45:14
With the AI space and everything's going on there, there's been a lot of stock stiving,
45:19
a lot of stocks rebounding, a lot of opportunities that we could really get on board with and
45:24
take advantage of.
45:25
And you know what, the stock market is the only place that when prices go on sale, everyone
45:30
runs for the hell.
45:31
So it's great to have a place like the Investing Club or we can talk about how we don't run
45:36
to the hills.
45:37
We run through one towards the cheap prices and we buy, we don't want a shopping spree.
45:43
We got a shopping spree.
45:44
We take advantage of those incredible opportunities.
45:47
So yeah.
45:48
And yes, with the club because, you know, navigating what's happening in the world
45:52
of investing or the stock market and a lot of that news can be overwhelming.
45:55
It's hard to wait through like what to do when stuff like this happens.
46:00
That's exactly why the Investing Club exists so that we can all break down like what's
46:03
happening in the news, we can all share what we're doing, like are we buying, are we selling
46:06
what's happening.
46:07
So if you're interested in the way that Avion's talking about how she invests and you're
46:11
thinking this sounds really fun, but I kind of don't know where to start.
46:14
Start with the Investing Club.
46:16
We will put some of the details in our podcast show notes.
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See you there.
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So when you go shopping, how much would you invest when something like that happens?
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So because for me, I've done this once before and I was with Netflix and it was because
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we spoke about it on the Curve Weekly about how Netflix was struggling and all the things
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that were going on.
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But I thought exactly that I really believe in this.
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Everyone listening to this podcast must be so sick of me telling this story.
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It's like my hero journey that I just like will not shut up about, but I went and put
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3,000 in which is quite a lot and that was such a good decision because it went up so
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much.
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For you, does it just to paint away our financially with how much you put in or do you have like
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a thesis around how much you will put in when something like that happens?
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I have a bit of a thesis, so I usually know how much I have to invest, right?
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So I usually like have a bit sitting there and cash, just ready to go.
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And my thinking is sort of, you know, if it's something like a bit of news, that's absolute,
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that's a shock, I'd probably put all of my amount in.
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So I kind of know, I have it airmarked.
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This is how much I want to put into three stocks, and I have three grand, and I'm going
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to put a grand each.
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Like I kind of have that math workout worked out.
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If it's something where I feel like it might go lower, I'll put half in and just take
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that gamble that if it goes lower, I can put the other half in or if it goes up, I put
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the other half in still.
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So you kind of average yourself in, let's use that example because I think it's such
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a good one.
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I would say Levi's put out all these jeans that accidentally were missing the bum patch.
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And all these people were getting their jeans in the mouth, putting them on and they had
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a giant hole in the butt.
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A giant hole in the butt, yeah.
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And you thought, okay, I'm going to buy Levi.
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This is such a disaster, but also I know that they're going to make it come back.
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Right.
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So you go and put half of your airmarked amount in.
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At what point and how often do you watch what's happening with that share price before
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you make the decision on that second, you know, airmarked amount?
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The second, I kind of follow the news, so you, the new cycle, you know, so like if there's
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a lot of chatter going on, like the buns were missing and then there was another batch
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where the zipper was missing.
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And then somewhere, there was only one leg and I'm like, okay, this is a real disaster.
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This is going on and on and on.
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I'm going to wait because this is in my go lower and I really have fun with it.
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I think that's another point like we're laughing with like, I really have fun with it.
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I don't take it too seriously.
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It is money that, not that I can afford to lose, I'd flip it and say it's money that
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I don't need to live.
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I love that.
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So let's put a different perspective on it.
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Generally when you buy a stock, when it's on sale, do you then like, it sound like you
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had about 10 investments or sort of 10 individual stocks as those ones that you've collected
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over say 12 years or have you sold some bought new ones like what's your approach with that?
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I've held most of them.
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I would say I'd probably have about a dozen in my portfolio today and eight to nine-ish.
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You've sort of had for the entire 12 years.
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Wow.
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Can you listen?
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By the way, this is me just saying for anyone listening, this is also with just said
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that I've bought these at a time that made sense for her when it was something going
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on.
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This is absolutely not going copy her portfolio because if you've been listening to this
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conversation, which hopefully her, you know that's not a good investing approach, but
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I would just love to know what kinds of companies you see value and then you've still held.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It's very techy.
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Tech heavy.
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I mean, when I look at my portfolio today, I'm just like, you were meant to be a fintech
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founder.
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It's finance on tech.
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Really?
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Yes.
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I still have JP Morgan.
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I still have Delta.
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Apple.
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Still holding that.
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I've got Tesla.
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Did you buy something that was at like a funny blip?
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I had an interesting journey with Tesla.
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I bought Tesla early-ish.
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I would say around 2015.
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Oh, it's so long ago.
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And then they had some car fires.
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I remember and I sold.
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I like freaked out and sold.
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That would have been the perfect opportunity to buy.
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I know.
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I know.
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I know.
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And then I bought it back.
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I have a couple of really tech techy ones, like a company called ServiceNow, which is
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quite expensive now, but I bought it really cheap.
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And then another tech company called Palo Alto Networks, which is in like cyber security.
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Yeah.
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Oh, my God.
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It's so awesome that you stockpicked.
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I get it's so interesting to hear your approach to it.
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Yeah.
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I really resonate with what you said about it just being fun.
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And honestly, this is going to sound like a total self promotion.
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But like, that is why I love the Curve Weekly.
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Our podcast every week with does a giant scan of all the news and she presents all those
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things when they're happening.
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And I think it's because only up until very recently, I now have, as you're talking about,
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some earmarked money that I am putting aside each month that I can go and put into things.
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So it's right.
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It's almost this active approach in a way where I hear all these things happening about
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businesses.
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I can decide if I think it's a blip or if it's actually a disaster and do not invest.
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It kind of be involved in what's happening in the economy.
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It's like really empowering and exciting.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It is exciting.
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And I think once you get into it, because like the bug bit me, right?
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You get into it and you just start being really tuned into these companies and the economy
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and what's going on.
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And then you write out your first dip.
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And I really feel like you write out at least three dips.
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You kind of get the hang of it.
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It's kind of like, do you mean it's also goes back down?
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And then it goes down.
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So if the stock kind goes down.
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Hold on.
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Hold on.
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Hold on.
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Hold on.
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You write out about three of those and it's like a muscle that you build.
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And then it's kind of like, okay.
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I got this.
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It's going to be fine.
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It's going to come back and over the long term, it likely will.
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Right?
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And you make loads of money.
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I've just absolutely loved this conversation.
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Thank you so much for being so open about how you invest.
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It's moments like these that I think, how am I so lucky sitting here having this conversation
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with you because it's conversations like this that now are recorded with a microphone
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so that so many people can listen that we're able to democratize just the idea of investing.
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You know, there's amazing platforms out there like Belong and there's all sorts of trading
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platforms that you can use.
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And I just think the number one thing now is conversations to get as many women doing
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this as possible.
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Like send this episode to all of your friends that are scared of risk because it is not
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risky.
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It is not risky.
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It's not risky.
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And you just need to get started.
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Dip your toe in.
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Right out.
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Three dips.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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You're not going to come to us crying until you're not crying.
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You've had three.
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You got to earn your stripes.
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Yeah.
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And I promise you like, you know, the bug bites you and then you're just like, this is
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fun.
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And while I'm sleeping.
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Yeah.
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What's happening?
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This is great.
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It's so good.
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Oh, yeah.
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Thank you so much for your time.
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Thank you.
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And all the way you do.
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It's such a pleasure.
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Thank you for having me.
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Thank you so much for listening to Raisin the Curve.
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These conversations are designed to teach you everything you need to know to be better
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with your money, saving, to investing, to talking with your friends about your salaries
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for that stuff.
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Leave a comment.
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Let us know what you thought about the episode.
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It only takes one second, and it would really make our week a month, our year.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So please do it.
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Okay.
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Love you.
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Bye.
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Okay.
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Quickly.
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The Curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial
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advisors.
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Our platform exists for educational purposes only, and it doesn't provide personalized investing
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advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment or
54:24
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We're here for any knowledge and support you need, but the final call is always yours.
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You got this.
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Yeah, we know you got this.