Habits: Make vs Break - BOD030

0:00Perhaps it tells you something about me that when I was doing my paper round, when I was literally I'm like 14, I would buy a bag of minstrels at the end and have one minstrel after each house. You've watched 30 episodes of Bank of Dad You have unlocked the secret feature Well done, you will be wealthy, guaranteed Hi and welcome to the Bank of Dad podcast I'm Kate and this is my dad Pete Hello And we're here to teach you the money lessons we were never taught at school There's no judgement, no jargon Just real talk about how to handle your money Got my knees out again I imagine we've been inundated with comments about how sexy they are I don't know how to apply Yes I'm sure that's what people think they go ooh Pete's knees there's a whole section of the internet dedicated to your knees exactly it's called OnlyFans come on if there's people using your pictures for OnlyFans you should be getting a car yes yes absolutely never mind moving on very unlikely in this universe or any other yeah moving on what are we talking about this week well more importantly how was Toronto I don't know because I haven't been yet that's because we're filming this so this will come out yeah when i come back or not yeah the week after i'm sure it was epic so i haven't been yet i'll ask you again when we record next i will but it's yes i'm going to toronto for less than 72 hours to see my favorite band ever the mighty rush so there we go you can't pull that off no i know i knew that before doing it for everyone on audio dad did the weird shaka it should really be that wow okay okay okay so we this week we're talking about habits after the deeply confusing episode on tax yeah we went pretty deep well not confusing because I did actually feel like I learned something but after the complexity of tax yeah we're taking to a slightly lighter episode this week on habits specifically the ones to make and the ones to break yeah for sure um important part of winning with finance.

2:00So let's get into it. Actually, before we do, it's time for Wanky Word of the Week.

2:11Yeah. That's time for, all right, habit stacking. Habit stacking. We were uncertain whether we'd done this one before. I don't think so. I think we just might have mentioned it briefly. Yeah, habit stacking is the method of getting a habit to stick by linking it to something else, to another habit that is already in place. Taking your medication straight after you do your teeth. Yes. So you do your teeth as a matter of habit. So you know that's when... And you link your meds or whatever to... That's the very next thing you do. Yeah. Yeah, or you always have a cup of coffee first thing. That's when you take your medication.

2:46That's when you do X or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's when you message your great aunt Mildred. Yeah, because it's something you want to embed, do regularly, but you're more likely to remember it if you link it to a habit which is already embedded habit stacking make sense there you go all right okay section numero uno okay starting out so people often think making habits is all about willpower do you agree partly i think it's a little bit about that yeah financial habits in this case there is definitely an element of willpower, eventually you need to decide you're going to do something and take your money in hand.

3:27The problem with willpower is fickle. I mean, I know a thing or two about that, right? Because every time I watch one of these back, I think, geez, I need to lose some weight. And if it's down to willpower, it isn't going to stick long enough. So by removing willpower, sometimes you need that willpower. It's like a starter motor on an engine. It Once it's running, you want it to sort of continue. So I prefer systems, building habits so that they become automatic because that's really the way to succeed long term. I think it's exhausting to think, you know, for the rest of my life, I'm going to have to force myself to do something.

4:07No, and I think as soon as you start to reap rewards... Yeah, well, then you think, okay. Then you go, huh. There's merit in this. So the first time I got my thousand pounds from the government after putting four grand in my lifetime, myself like oh my gosh this shit is worth it totally worth it so then i didn't mind putting not that i minded anyway because i actually got quite a lot of gratification from seeing the number that i put aside yeah actually we had someone comment recently on a video saying that yes you're right saving is delayed gratification but i also feel the satisfaction of of saving i've done that already watching the number go yeah um but reaping that reward yeah that's yeah sometimes reward in and of itself yeah it's a reason why again countless times over the decades i've been doing my job i have linked financial success with kind of health right deep irony i'm still overweight right i've been talking about it for 30 years right but it's true the same kind of factors of success the mental yeah and things like accountability you know there's a reason why Weight Watchers and Semi World have groups and it's shown that those who stay to the group get better results for longer as opposed to just going in weighing and going home, all that sort of stuff.

5:26Accountability, measuring, tracking, all that sort of stuff. There's a reason these things work and they work across domains, not just finance. Yeah. All right. So when you look at people who are good with money, what do they have in common? Do you know what? The first person, I mean, obviously I've worked with plenty of wealthy people over my time. Yeah, that's why I thought it was a good question to ask you really. Actually, the first person that came to my head was Rog. Okay. Rog is brilliant with money. Always has been. Yeah. And it's just effortless to him. There are other people as well, but it's just, you know, he's always just been consummately in control and in command of it all.

6:03For those unsure, Rog is the co-host of the Meaningful Money podcast. Yeah, my best mate in the world. Bestie. He's not family, but he might as well be an uncle to you. Yeah, absolutely. There have been lots of bromance, gay, secret love allegations, that kind of bestie. Between me and Roj. Well we've been mates for nearly 30 years and we think identically and we just make each other laugh. If anything happened to you money questions, go speak to Roj. Roj will look after you. And my former business partner at Jackson's now retired. And Chaz. And obviously co-host of Meaningful Money. So Roj is a massive part of our lives and he's always been a real inspiration to me financial wise.

6:37He's the one much, much early on i mean literally not long after we met he was telling me you need to make sure you're sorting out your pension and all this sort of stuff he taught me some of those things even though we were both advisors in a sense really early on of course so he was the first person so you ask people are good with money what the sort of habits and we're going to get into kind of specific things but the kind of message i wanted to get right across is that it's control so keeping hold of things not doing stuff by default in other words being our keyword intentional intentional being deliberate nothing good happens by accident as a rule particularly not with finance so you've got to be in control and that's it doesn't I don't mean like anything you can take it too far I don't mean being controlling or being miserly or anything like that just knowing what's going on making decisions with intent setting things up to win yeah that's all the clients i've worked with i've worked with two lottery winners in nearly 30 years most people and even i've not worked with that many people who have inherited vast wealth most of myself most of myself made so you can learn key lessons from that and these we're going to talk about some of those today okay all right so good habits to build so if someone wanted to improve their finances this month what are like let's say three first money habits you would encourage them to build.

8:05Yeah, right. So bear in mind target audience, right? So these folks looking maybe to sort of get started or embed better habits. Maybe they're naturally good with this stuff, but they want to improve. I think the best practical habit, the first one is to track your spending, right? Everything comes down to money in and money out. So money in, we can do some things about, but if you're salaried, you get the same amount broadly every month, right? But the thing that's in your control is what goes out, right? So I think you can track that. I mean, you can do that in a million ways. You can literally carry a notebook around with you.

8:40But I mean, when's the last time you spent any cash? Well, exactly. But do you know what? I know he won't mind me saying this. So Ben, my boyfriend, has been... I am really quite anal with finances and really quite hot on it, evidently. I'm not at the point of buying a house, with help, of course. And he's like, I want to know how you've done that. Now, he's had a completely different lifestyle. He'd been living away from home since he was 16, apart from a brief time back during COVID. So he spent a lot of his time paying rent. But we've literally taken it right back. I'm like, if you want me to show you, I'm more than happy to.

9:14And it's right back to the basics. And I've just taught him about pay yourself first, that kind of thing. But we were looking at in versus out. Because he's like, I don't know where it goes. All right, well, let's find out. Let's find out. Let's see where it went. And for him, and I think I imagine a lot of people, it was the little expenses and that's what's good to track you know if you've spent a 300 quid on a I don't know a weekend away yeah or like you know those things it's the little things and a really good example with him he has a climbing membership at a local climbing centre it's really good for him mentally and physically he loves it I think it's about 40 quid a month so pretty reasonable really and he was like oh cool right so I spent 50 quid at the climbing centre this month okay that's great and I was like hang on but that 40 quid is your membership 50 is everything else what's this yeah and it was just like drinks and you know whatever and he was like oh I didn't realise that was on top of that that that was on he thought it was 40 and he'd only spent 10 right you know and he was like oh shit and I was like do you know a really easy fix bring a water bottle with you yeah exactly and then you're not buying water yeah and he was like oh okay but he didn't realise no and it was just looking through most people don't realise I think because it's easier never to spend money.

10:29Back when everything was in cash, you had a finite amount and you had to make it last. Now it's much more invisible, so it's harder to track. But the flip side to that is that these apps now make it so easy. And Monzo is brilliant. And he's not with Monzo. He's not with Monzo. He's with the main bank, isn't he? Sort of a classic bank, isn't he? No, he's with Barclays. Yeah, Barclays, right? So a sort of traditional bank. Yes. But same thing, just looked in the app and looked at, right, in and out this month, and you could just see it all listed. Does it categorise? Not that I could see. Because Monzo's good for that.

11:01If you spend something, it'll ask you if you want to categorise it. Yeah, it does. Once you've categorised it, it'll remember that pay. So if you're using the same coffee shop every time, you put that it's coffee or just like eating out or whatever as a category and it'll do that every time. And so it's kind of handy to categorise. Oh, I spent quite a lot on eating out today. Yeah, so maybe this coming month I'll determine I'm going to make my lunches or four out of five days I'll make my lunch. But the point of that story with Ben is that by just taking a few minutes, it only was 10 minutes that we looked through.

11:30He was like, oh, okay. That's a little thing that I didn't realize was adding up as much. And now he does and he can take action. So tracking and spending is the first of three habits, I think. But no good tracking if you're not going to do something about it. So I think it's worth sitting down for 10 minutes, maybe once a week, maybe certainly once a month and saying, okay, so what have I learned from my tracking? And what do I need to do as a result of it? Because otherwise there's no point. You're just tracking for results. and it's sort of nice to have, but if you don't use that data for something.

11:57So some kind of weekly or monthly review or even both, it doesn't need to take any time at all. Look through, that's more than I thought I was spending on eating out or at the climbing place or whatever, a golf club. Let's make a change there. And then the third thing is you've alluded to already is to pay yourself first. It's like the core habit for building wealth. There's no doubt about that. So that is, as we've talked about in several things before, you know, when you get paid, you set your savings to go out that same day or the day after. And before you pay debts. Before you pay debts, That was the one that threw Ben off.

12:33He's like, but I've got a bit on my credit card to pay off. I'm like, doesn't matter. How much are you saving? Yes. How much are you going to put aside? Put that aside first. And then you do the debt. Yeah, then pay your debt. Then pay your rent, pay your mortgage, or whatever. Because it sounds counterintuitive, but if you just spend, save what you've got left, you won't ever save. And that's the key point. You've got to pay yourself first. spending, do something with that, review it, and then pay yourself first. Those are the three, I think, kind of fundamental core habits. I think that's good.

13:01All right. How important do you think automation is when it comes to saving, investing? So automation removes decision points. It removes inflection points where you have to decide something. And that's good to a point, right? So it kind of, you're pre-thinking, you're saying, right, I will do this automatically. If you, so if you set, right, I want to save, I have determined I'm going to save 200 quid a month. you set that to go into a savings account or into your ISO or whatever the day after payday you think that through once and then you set it to happen and then you don't have to think about it again so the power of automation you only have to think something through once rather than sitting down every month and for the 8th month in a row you say I'm going to save£200 this month just automate it and it happens it's a fine line though, it's like anything automation is brilliant unless you take it too far because it's the danger is you abdicate so let's say you suddenly get a big pay rise you could have you could afford to do more than you could do 250 a month but you don't because you've stopped having to think about it yeah yeah so there is a that's why we kind of advocate doing an annual kind of review hour hour and a half and and look at a bunch of things every year um but also sometimes throughout the year something might trigger a bit of a review of things and a pay rise would definitely be one so now i'm earning another hundred pounds a month how much of that am i going to put away set it straight away whereas as we've said before i've seen people who started at 50 quid a month and then eight years later they're still paying 50 quid a month despite earning half as much again as they were when they started spending 400 a month or right you know yeah exactly so automation is vital just stay intentional intentional automation is what we should call Nice.

14:47So what is one small habit that can make a really, really big difference over time? It's a positive habit for building wealth, yeah? Yeah. Small increments. I've mentioned this before as well, but there will be definitely an element of this which is repeating the same stuff. There's only so much to understand. I feel like in our first 21 episodes, we covered pretty much everything that most people need to know. And so we get to the point where, yes, it's a bit repetitive, but honestly, we need to hear this stuff time and time again. So regular small increments because it can make a huge difference over time, but you don't feel, because the increments are small, that we've talked about.

15:24So if you start, say, investing or saving 100 quid a month, set a calendar reminder three months down the line and make it 110. You won't even notice the 10 quid. And as soon as you realize you didn't notice that, you think, gosh, I'm going to make it 125. But by putting a reminder in your calendar to revisit your savings amount, it forces you to do it, reminds you to do it. If you do£100 a month and then in eight months' time you change it to£180. It's a bigger jump. It feels like a bigger jump. Yeah, or in four years' time you realise, jeez, I'm way behind here, I should have been saving more, I'm going to move from£100 to£300 a month.

15:58Yeah, that's massive. Tripling the amount you're saving. You're more likely to feel that. Whereas, I don't, it's a rubbish analogy, the sort of boiling frogs thing. Sorry, RSPCA. You know, a frog won't jump out of a pan of boiling water if you turn up the heat gradually. Really gradually because it doesn't feel the difference. I can't imagine that's true. Well, speaking as someone who sat in a wood-fired hot tub this week, it's an incredible thing. My boyfriend and I have been together for a year, so we went away this week. And we went to this gorgeous little shepherd's hut and they had a wood-fired hot tub.

16:30Oh my God, it's amazing. But unlike a bath, which gradually cools, keep the fires going, this thing just continues to heat. Sounds like bliss. You get in and you're like, oh, this is gorgeous. and then you're like, oh my goodness, it's getting better and better and better. Oh my gosh, I am actually, I can feel, I'm starting to reach a boiling point. Feel my blood boiling. Like, it's not, it's incredible. So I would say the frogs would notice, but then they're not sentient. Well, maybe they are sentient. Regular small increments. Right, bad habits to break. So the flip side. The flip side. What are some common bad habits that maybe quietly hold people back?

17:02I think most of these are habits of omission. That is, not doing stuff. Yeah. As opposed to doing bad stuff. There is an element of that. Yeah. But so it's almost the inverse of what we said. So not tracking. Yeah. It's a sort of default habit. Yeah. If Ben hadn't gone through, he wouldn't have realized how much he was actually dropping at the climbing center. So the benefit of tracking was he knew that. So it's, argue whether it's a habit or not, not doing something, but it's a kind of default behavior. You just carry on as you are. Yeah. Not saving, obviously, because you never have anything left because you've not tracking and you're not paying yourself first so no there's not being intentional I think those are those are your kind of core negative flip sides to the ones we talked about I think there are obviously some more insidious ones though so it's I would love to know the stats but it's incredible just how much like online gambling is happening it's easier than it's ever been you know it used to used to be a bit seedy going into a betting shop you know now it's just an app on your phone now it's just an app on your phone and it's linked to your bank account and it's just like it's too easy and that can be you know online bingo or other gaming or stuff like that or buying it you know in-game tokens all that sort of stuff it can just be too easy um buy now pay later you know what i feel about that yeah um sort of again it's it's easy to click that option on checkout and say well i'll pay for it in 30 days it's interest-free it's no harm in that i consider a gateway drug 30 days it's a long time as well it is it's easy to forget and suddenly like oh crap that money's going to go out of my bank account and it's not there.

18:39Whilst away, I had to pay £250 on tyres. So I had a tyre blow. So if I, before I'd left... Spent everything. No, before I'd left I'd done a couple buy now pay laters. Yeah. And now I've come back, I've got to pay it and I've had£250. That you weren't expecting go out. Unfortunately you have an emergency fund for exactly that reason. Right? And it's... But that's why you do it, right? So having an emergency fund and not going with buy now pay later makes for much more predictable finances, right? Yeah. Much more peace. So these are the bad things, really, that we need to try and avoid. Yeah. Okay, so why do you think it's so easy to fall into these habits?

19:18Especially the ones like the nasty ones, but... Well, it's because it's frictionless. It's too easy. And especially the thing like gambling, it feeds on its fun. Exactly. You gamify gambling. Yeah. That's kind of the definition, I suppose. It makes it too easy. there's no shame in it and I don't like shaming people anyway but there was something a little bit seedy about going to a betting shop like it used to be do you know what I mean whereas it's now you know it's sort of advertised on telly so it just seems to be a part of life I think that should be illegal I think to advertise for gambling on television it's all well and good putting be gamble aware but that doesn't yeah it's just a little bit of ass covering it's not going to stop somebody who's got an issue is it so yeah I agree I think it should be illegal I think there should be much better protections in app as well.

20:07But, you know, we talk about lifestyle creep. I don't think lifestyle creep is a habit as such. I think it's a symptom of other habits. So the lack of intentionality, the lack of tracking of spending, the fact that, okay, I'm earning more, I'm spending more. The habit is spending what's coming in as opposed to paying yourself first and spending what's left. So it's just, it's easy because it's easy. you know there's so many benefits of the internet and phones in our pockets but we've got to understand that it's not a one way street and it takes energy and effort to be good with finances exactly right you know abdicating responsibility is easy just don't do it exactly it takes effort to eat healthily and go to the gym whereas eat whatever comes across you you know whatever comes across your plate Is that what you said about Olympic athletes didn't just roll out of bed and fall onto the podium?

21:04No. It was a lot of effort and hard work, blood spenders. And discipline and concentration and intentionality. I really wish there was a silver bullet. You know what I mean? Everybody's life easier. But if that's not life... You've watched 30 episodes of Bank of Dad. You have unlocked the secret feature. Well done. You will be wealthy, guaranteed. All right. So bad money habits. It's important that we're not making it like there's people who are good with money, people who are bad with money. like it oh no definitely not it's not what we're trying to say because plenty of financially savvy people have things that they struggle with for sure what do you think are some sort of money habits more negative ones that those financially savvy people even struggle with too yeah because financially savvy people are human too yeah and as long as it's humans involved we're going to struggle with different stuff we're unique individuals so that's always going to think so people who are generally switched on so maybe they've got the basics down like they're saving regularly they're building wealth all that sort of stuff then we're in the realms of kind of switching investments unnecessarily.

22:01So if they're into this stuff, they might be reading financial press or they're getting, I don't know, Finimize, which is a sort of daily investment newsletter in email or whatever. Yeah, yeah. It's really good, actually. I interviewed really early episode, like literally something like 2013 episode of Meaningful Money. The guy who founded Finimize, he sold it later on for a ton of money. Fair dues. Top bloke. Good for him. Massive, massive mailing list. Millions of people. Wow. So switching investments, you know, I've seen an advert for a fund, that looks good, I'll switch from this one to that one.

22:35Faffing with your investments generally introduces friction and cost and all that sort of stuff. I see financially savvy people continually chasing interest rates with their bank. It's like, oh, I can get an extra 0.05 interest over here. I will move all my money from A to B and keep doing that. I just think life is too short for that, but, you know, if it faults your boat, then fine. it's hard to say that's a bad habit but it is a bad habit where you're keeping too much in cash trying to get the best interest rate where you could be investing some people obsess over tax efficiency but kind of lose sight of the big picture what's really important I mean I spend my life talking about what's really important clients come to us at Jackson's because money isn't the point they want to get on with living and kind of get the money out of the way that's what we do but a lot of people don't do that they obsess over minutiae and particularly in our world retirement planning how much money should I take from which pot and when we talk fairly generally but some people are like no I need to know that to the pound forget it or delaying a decision a textbook a little bit of knowledge is dangerous so actually I know I need to do this but I just want to read one more book or I'll listen to just one more I'll re-listen to that podcast again and really get it in my head and of course six months later they're still thinking about it.

23:58Haven't had the benefit. Yeah, that makes sense. So even those who get this stuff, it just introduces a different level of different layers of stuff to deal with, unfortunately. Okay, let's make these habits stick there. So first of all, why do some people find it easier to start a good financial habit than actually complete it? Do you know what, Kate? As I get older and older, I've realised a few things about people. Right. Do share your wisdom. Including myself. wisdom I think is probably pushing it I reckon and it might just be me but I reckon there's a a kind of limit to how long people people generally can kind of stick at something before they need a bit of a kick up the ass to get going again and I reckon it's about three months so in other words let's say again talking about myself you join Weight Watchers or Slimming World right and you're like laser focused full-on great results really early about three months in it just starts to taper off you put a pound back on and it just starts because you kind of lose interest I think that's a real thing I'd love to know if there's studies on it but I just think there's something where we kind of lose interest we tend to be all in on something get really excited about something and then eventually it sort of kind of loses its luster and we kind of fall off so I call that sort of the 90 day fall off so I think that's a thing I'd love to know if there's any actual science behind it it's just an observation from my point of view so maybe like setting rewards yeah or some kind of reminder I think that's why sometimes accountability is good having a review where you're you've got something that excites you and you kind of remind yourself of it so something that kind of undoes that 90 day fall off thing I think would be useful and we talked about habit stacking and thank you over the week so you know what's an example of habit stacking for finance so you could say right i'm going to do my like weekly spending check when i'm having my sunday morning coffee that i really look forward to so get up lazy sunday morning half 10 11 o 'clock i make a really really nice coffee and i'll just flick through and i'll use that as my point to just look at my finances when I'm writing the list for the weekly shop before I go I'll do the same thing so I know how to spend or whatever whatever it is so link one habit that you want to get better at to one that you've already nailed so these are just good ways of trying to stick it out for the long haul let's go for budgeting that is a really basic habit that forms all other habits I think in terms of finance if they've tried budgeting and it never lasts what should they do differently this time?

26:52Okay, so I mean you can make it fun maybe reward yourself so if you stick to your budget you know there's a little reward obviously don't make that reward you know go on a spanking night out and blow the rest of your money or whatever that will defeat the object but you know put some kind of reward element I do think that sort of incentives drive behaviour so if you can incentivise yourself somehow habit stacking we talked about make it as frictionless as possible anything that's an effort i mean notwithstanding what we said that you have to put some effort in yeah no olympian fell out of bed onto the podium there's effort involved anything that's an unnecessary hurdle in the process eliminate yeah so i mean one of the best things about our sort of two account system that we've talked about is that it removes a load of stuff that you have to kind of think about budgeting so if your electric bill is the same every single month you don't have to budget for it you just leave that in the bills account and all your budgeting is in the spending account oh yeah i don't think you don't think about your car insurance or your mobile phone bill or whatever because it's all goes out my nationwide and i always make sure i've got 500 in it which more than covers your bills massive yeah yeah right and that'll serve you very well when you're in your own house and the bills go up a bit and all that sort of stuff so because it just removes the amount it reduces is the amount of work you have to do if really you only have to budget half a dozen lines like food um travel you know gifts that sort of thing then you can say okay that's easier as opposed to food travel gifts water heating yeah every single month you ran down all you and it's like i'll write that down food eating out food buying like like in greek you're just yeah it's something it's a little confusing it's a reducing number of categories don't over granularise things certainly not a word over granularise yeah definitely not is there any kind of like time frame for how long it takes for a habit to stick they say don't they say it's like 3 weeks 21 days there's loads of different studies some say 21 days some say 30 some say 60 I think we're individuals and I think there are some things that unfortunately you'll probably always have to work on just because were wired that way.

29:04So make it as easy for yourself as you can, I think, with the kind of rewards thing and simplifying where possible. Yeah, I always have to have rewards. I used to have like... It's all right, though. That's okay. It's not something to be... When I was studying, which wasn't a lot, when I was revising for GCSEs, and I would be reading through textbook pages and making notes or whatever, I would put like skittles on certain paragraphs and I could eat the skittle once I'd read that paragraph. Raps tells you something about me that when I was doing my paper round, when literally I'm like 14, I would buy a bag of minstrels at the end and have one minstrel after each house.

29:40And that's where I get it from, folks. Yes, and that's why the weight's still on because I've been doing that since I was 14. Okay, if you could give listeners one habit that you would want them to take away from this episode, what would it be? It's tracking spending. Yeah. don't matter what level you're at you know if you're earning 70 000 quid a year right track your spending because it's amazing where it goes yeah i found it really interesting when i did it for a little while you have to do it all the time i think if you do it for like a month once a year yeah or if you feel like you know it's getting away from me a little bit then say right okay i will probably track it for a month and just see because it's where it goes And again, it's always, for me, those little ones.

30:25Yeah. Yeah, they really add up. Because they ain't that little anymore, for one. Well, no, they're not. And in a world of subscriptions, it's amazing how things get away from you. Yeah. And there are apps that can help you with this. I think Emma is one. It'll look through your things and sometimes spot double subscriptions or whatever. The most amazing app came across my Instagram feed. What's that? Last night. And I can't wait. I'm going to download it. I don't care if I have to pay for it. I'm going to download it. What does it do? it's I wrote it down it's essentially you pick your supermarket so whichever one you shop at Aldi's Lidl whatever pick it and then you write your sort of goals for like meals you want to make you know high protein low fat whatever you know whatever it is and then how many meals you want for the week and you set a budget and then you get like hello fresh style recipe cards you go left and right and decide and it'll build you a shopping list for that shop in your budget that's very cool right?

31:25what's it called? I was like I will pay I feel like we need to find that I will pay however much that is because that looks so good 70 pounds a month? Herbie Herbie H-E-R-B-I-E H-E-R-B-I Herbie Herbie I believe at the minute it's on only iOS right but it looked so good it does look good sounds good yeah it's a mobile meal planning and recipe application app designed to help users organise weekly menus import and yeah and like it makes a shopping list in your budget based on the supermarket that you choose can I imagine the databases behind that right yeah amazing but I literally it was like a I think it was about half half 10, 11 o 'clock last night what a world though that's fucking genius I know it's amazing I'm really excited I'm so gonna use that that's not how you get on Yeah, I will.

32:19All right, have I got it? It's a bit of a weird one to get. I know. Yeah, okay. Habit stacking is? Where you link a habit you want to form with one that you've already got set in stone. What's the one small habit that I think will make a really big difference over time? Tracking spending. The one small habit. Oh, small increments. So regularly increasing to how much you save or whatever rather than doing big jumps infrequently. how can we make sort of good habits easier to adopt oh you know you mean as in like gamifying them or rewards or that kind of thing yeah making it knowing what makes you tick and designing them for that yes

33:04making them frictionless oh yeah I was going to say what the hell was that yeah I don't know yes yeah removing obstacles maybe some good things that even financially savvy people struggle with so one of them was constantly faffing with investments another one was constantly chasing the best interest rate sounds like a good habit that if it's too detriment if it's constantly filling your brain and you're not living life yeah right I think obsessing with finance generally is a bad habit yeah sort of decision paralysis in the sense of I'll just do this I'll check this one more time before you actually do anything and no behold nothing's happened.

33:45I can't remember the fourth one. Yeah, no, that's good. The fourth one was obsessing over tax efficiency. Tax efficiency, yeah. You know, all these things sound good, but just very often taken too far. Particularly by people who are interested in this stuff. Yeah. And what's my kind of thesis on how people behave over time? Oh, your 90 days fall out. Yeah, fall off. Fall off, yeah. It's not a proper day, though. No, but it is now. Trademarked. I feel like there's a book in that. I don't think we're the ones to write that book. No, probably not. I'm not sure I could stretch it to 50 ,000 words anyway.

34:20We're also not professors of psychology. No, I'm not sure you need to be. I mean, there's one book I read recently.

34:30Basically, it was a book that should have been a blog post. Oh, really? It was like 50 ,000 words of saying the exact same thing. Oh, that's bad. Can't remember what it was. It was like this massive mega bestseller by some sort of wellness blogger in America. It was 90 % of it, I reckon. Yeah, I can't remember what it's called. It's just like, I can't believe this woman's still talking about the same thing. I gave up about a quarter of the way in. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. It was a total waste of time. That's never good. It's okay to give books up. It is. To give fair crap. Do you know what? I was really enjoying a book recently, and I did finish it because I did really, really enjoy the story.