Are you worse off than your parents?

25:43I think we've seen over the past few years what can happen when people have got basically zero barriers to investing, which we know is still quite a complicated, fraught process that you need to be informed about if you don't want to lose life-changing sums of money. And then at a more basic level, when it comes to just managing your money day to day, it doesn't help that the wider economy is pushing all of us towards using digital money exclusively. And that that undoubtedly makes it easier to overspend, easier to borrow and harder to delay gratification. and younger people are no longer having that basic grounding in the finite nature of money unless they are given physical cash.

26:37And there's interesting research which shows that actually even today with the rise of digital money, it's a myth that you've got to immerse children in that world so they understand it. It's a bit like that kind of wider myth that, well, you know, we've got to teach children how to use iPads and iPhones at the earliest possible age because, hey, this is the world we live in now. It's like actually, you know, it's doubtful that immersing children in that world is really beneficial for them. And it's similar for digital money. If you're not giving them physical cash and saying, look, it's real.

27:10It doesn't grow on trees, to use that old fashioned phrase. And it is finite. and you might think that you can borrow extra, but there's always gonna be a bill at the end of that. And the problem is that the wider digital economy that we have now doesn't want to talk about that bill. It's not in their interest. It's not in the retailer's interest. It's not in the financial company's interests. They all have a vested interest in making us borrow more and believe that actually digital money is limitless. And if you wanna spend more, go for it. And unfortunately we know that works against a lot of the basic principles of sound, long-term financial management.

27:50Yeah. Apple Pay is the devil in that sense. Oh my God. Yeah. Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, I refuse to have it. Credit card, I refuse to have it. Like these things that I, cause I can't trust myself. So I had Samsung Pay or whatever it's called on my phone. I had to take it. So I was just tapping everywhere. Really? Sometimes I'm like, oh, I don't have my wallet. I won't buy it. But I always have my phone. So if you always have your phone, you're always going to buy it. So I prefer to just have my card and my wallet. I don't have my wallet. I can't buy it. That's interesting though, because you have had to come to that realization of your own accord and you've had to set those boundaries and limits within your own life.

28:19Same with credit cards, yeah. But what I fear is that if you're older and more mature, perhaps you have got that ability to self-regulate. When you're younger, we all know, cause we were all young once, we maybe still are technically, even when I was at that age to have that and resist overspending on my debit card was a massive ask. I don't know how a young person today can do it if they can literally buy whatever they like at 3 a.m. in the morning. It's just, it's crazy. I didn't resist. I mean, I get the impression that you're probably maybe more sensible than me, but like I was a hot mess at that age.

28:56And it was still pretty, it was like an analog world in that sense of like, spending was, there was a few barriers, wasn't there? Yeah, and you had credit cards marketed to students. That's what I got mine in university. They hit your door at 18. That's it, I was in uni. It literally came through my door, it was like, oh, I've never had any money in my life and here's a credit card with a thousand pounds on it. God, that's sweet. So many people. And then they increased my limit. Yeah, exactly. And then I ran that up as well. I was like, sweet, free money. And then you get like, you know, you don't understand how to pay it and you get a default notice at 18 and that thing stays with you for six years.

29:25I can see how people in their young, just get into a mess, run up a phone bill, don't pay it, credit card, blah, blah, blah. And then six years that carries with you. Completely. And whenever I talk about this subject, my motto is learn the easy way, not the hard way. That's what I always urge young people to do because there are so many people, you know, within our generation and indeed yourself, you've learned the hard way. Oh, yeah. What, you know, partaking of that can mean for your finances. And the problem is that we just do not have enough education around what the consequences of overborrowing are.

29:59Yeah. last time we recorded to me and you were having some real dramas with your accountant so how's that been going mate they're sacked so drama sorted um they're a big corporate firm um they didn't really reply to my emails very quickly like took a week or two at times um and they charged me way too much i mean i've got pretty simple taxes and yeah they were charging me thousands they saved me some money but yeah um i had to move on slow and expensive pretty much yeah this is one of the reasons that we're really happy to be partnering with tax app It's a tech platform that makes self-assessment simple.

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32:27That's vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description though, so you can just click that. Okay. So can we talk about the good side of the digital experience? Yes. Well, you might not think it's good, but what do you think of say like people like me, like Finfluencers and that access to education or information, let's not call it education, that might be a stretch, the access to people like me chatting about money online? I think it is a healthy development overall because ultimately the mainstream financial media has tended to discuss issues that affect older people. I remember when I first started out in financial journalism.

33:09When I tried to get young money on the agenda, I was told an awful lot, our readers don't care about this stuff. I was always incredibly skeptical about that because A, you cannot hope to attract a new readership if you just keep writing for an older audience. So try it and see. And secondly, a lot of your older audience actually care more about their children and grandchildren than about themselves. And they want to try to figure out what helpful advice they can pass on. Now, I think some of the financial media have cottoned on to that idea. And there's a lot more coverage aimed at younger people over the past 10 years, which is great.

33:51But is it breaching those young people? And are we finding enough, you know, appealing down-to-earth ways to talk to young people, not necessarily. So the online space has got much more of a healthy range of opinions and information for that generation. What I fear is that anybody and everybody can set themselves up as an influencer. And I'm sure you find it incredibly frustrating that for everyone who's trying to be balanced and informed and helpful, you've got so many more that are just in it to make money people that do well people that i see the mainstream media picking up and saying oh this is someone just because they've got a bit of audience online and then i see the practices that they're doing on youtube and being like yeah this is in breach of sponsorship rules you blatantly taking money behind the scenes here to promote this i know you are because i've had the same emails and these are people that are hiding behind the guys of you know i'm one of the good guys so yeah it is frustrating and i i won't lie I think for a period of time, that made me have a much more negative perception of the Finfluencer space because I would see exactly the same practices as you did.

35:06And I felt that if there were no breaks on that, then anybody, once they got to a certain level, would have their head turned and would think, well, if I'm going to keep up this level of popularity, I've got to do X, Y and Z. And also, I mean, I've had it in my career where certain corporate opportunities come along and they are incredibly difficult to turn down because you're thinking, well, you know, accepting that could be the difference between me paying my mortgage this month and not paying my mortgage. So I get why people do fall into that trap. But I think as time has gone on, I feel that I'm not the only one who has that dismay.

35:42And there are lots who realize that actually, if we want to try to help that next generation, we can't just turn away from that space and say, no, it doesn't matter. It's full of, you know, hucksters and sharks. that actually the most important thing we can do is to try to be within that space ourselves and to offer a voice of reason. My little brother's 27 and he just had a birthday party a few weeks ago and loads of his friends came and said, oh, we love your podcast. Like we listened to it. It's really helpful. It really helped me so much. And some of my like younger cousins are like, oh, Damien's channel.

36:16I watch this channel. It's so useful. I get it with some of my friends, but I found more my brother's friends and like the younger generation, they really find this kind of content useful and learning about ISAs and bonds and stocks and all these things. My brother's investments are much more balanced than mine. He's got his ISA sorted. He's got all these things. I'm just heavily into risky things. So I do feel like the younger generation are definitely benefiting, like millennials, they're benefiting from the YouTube influencers. I think you've got to give them credit as well. As in more credit, as in they know how to sniff out a shark or someone who's, I don't know.

36:49I think people are cute to scammers and they kind of know when someone's genuine or not. And I think, you know, this perception that younger people are just all invested in ultra risky assets is a little bit wide of the mark. I think it's possibly because we, again, coming back to what I was saying earlier, we're very internationally influenced. We possibly believe there's more of that American, you know, go big or go home culture in investing. We think there's more of that in the UK than is actually the case. If you look at the data from the big investment platforms, they show that younger people are more cautious investors than you would think, that they're making more sensible decisions than you'd think.

37:30So I think we need to slightly bust that myth. Do you find that the younger generations are more likely to share stories about money online? Yes, yes. And they are much less buttoned up than the older generations about this. And I think the whole movement to try and get people to talk about their salaries, particularly in the context of the gender pay cap, is a fascinating one. Because I think the older generations would see that as the most gauche thing ever. Oh, you can't do that. You can't gauche it. That's not proper. That's not the way it's done. As a salesman, we used to get our payslips out every month and slap them on the desk.

38:06That's sales. That's commission though. You could learn a lot from salespeople. We get a bad rep, but honestly, like we did well and we earned money and we all knew what everyone earned. And you know, no one was getting taken advantage of and the women could earn as much, if not more than men. Women earn more than men. All my sales jobs are women make more than men, 100%. If you're a woman out there and you want to earn a load of money, go work in sales. They just do great, they do great. And unfortunately there's probably like all sorts of negatives to being a woman's salesperson, but the money was always equal.

38:36And it was, if you sold, you sold. But anyway. No, that's my second career sorted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That idea of sharing wages, when people are like, oh no, that was always alien to me because I've always shared what I earned with my colleagues. Yeah, and I think there's a feeling as well that the old status quo has somewhat gone out of the window. And you just have to make up your own rules. You have to make your own way. You have to establish success on your own terms. and I am all for younger people, not necessarily saying, you know, screw having a house, screw having a family, screw all those traditional milestones, just saying screw it for the sake of it, you know, that's not necessarily the way to go, but certainly saying I'm going to have success on my terms and I'm not going to think I'm a failure just because I don't own my own home by the age of 30, because I don't have a family, because I don't, you know, have the most amount saved into my pension.

39:28I mean, apart from anything, you have to let go of the perfectionism around pensions because for me, it's about the art of the doable. I mean, I feel very strongly that those targets that are thrown out there by the pensions industry are a lot of the time ridiculous. Like if you're 30, you should be saving 15 % of your salary into a pension because that's what you should do, halve your rage for the ideal pension target. It's like, well, what if you're trying to buy your own home? What if you're trying to get through the cost of living crisis or pay off a loan? You know, these one size fits all rules are really unhelpful and they contribute to this feeling among young people of, well, what's the point?

40:03I can't save 15%. I haven't got 100 grand in pension by 30. Yeah. Might as well go to Ibiza. Exactly. I totally get that. But I think the best way to approach this whole area is to say, I'm doing what I can. And the fact that I'm saving anything into my pension is a miracle. And we should applaud young people who just stick with their workplace pension and don't opt out. You know, my attitude is positive reinforcement rather than, you know, more the carrot rather than the stick. I think that's the best way to go. So are we actually more screwed than our parents' generation? It depends on your definition of success.

40:40Yeah, and screwed. I think in some respects, we are definitely worse off in terms of housing, wages, savings, and pensions. Yes, we are worse off. But in terms of - Memes, we're good. Memes, we are fussing that. Emojis, gifts. All the important stuff. Risk investment sorted. In terms of more flexibility, more freedom, more rights, arguably, certainly as workers, and the ability to define success on our own terms, then in some ways I think we are better off than our parents' generation were. Yeah, the whole COVID point. Look at what our generation did. we got told not to leave the house and the country still ran.

41:28And I think we've become pretty good at turning negatives into positives to the point now where the whole of the world is more flexible in its work, outborne out of the worst event that could possibly happen basically. Yeah. And if I think about my career now, I am working less and earning more than I was pre-COVID. I have really good work-life balance and I get to do something that I enjoy and that has purpose. and that utilizes my skills. And you might think, well, surely everyone should be in that position. But I feel very blessed. And I do think that a lot of people are actually a little bit better off than they think they are.

42:10And it's because they do have options. And the most important thing is to just understand and educate yourself about what those options are. So it's one reason why I wrote the book. when it comes to, if you want to get on the housing ladder, I accept it's not for everyone, but if you do want to do that, there's a lifetime ISA. Now, it's not going to solve the whole problem. It's not going to be the complete solution, but it's going to be a help. And if you don't know about that, then you're one step behind already. So there are little things and little hacks that you can do along the way that can help you achieve certain goals.

42:47And also for younger people, they know that they're not necessarily going to have the same job for life. They're not necessarily going to have a really paternalistic employer who's going to take care of them, give them a fantastic pension, give them all these benefits. They know they're going to have to fend for themselves a lot more. So how do we do that? Well, we talk about our financial challenges and we look for ways to improve them and we get ideas, we crowdsource. And I think what's really interesting is if you go on a forum like Reddit, yeah, you can check out Wall Street bets and see a lot of crazy stuff on there.

43:21But if you look at the personal finance community on Reddit, UK personal finance, you know, it's incredible, A, how big that community is. And B, the fact that, you know, what people are doing there is that they are seeking this crowd wisdom in terms of what they could or should be doing with their finances. And yes, you're going to get, you know, some blowhards on there who make out that they have all the answers. But generally speaking, I think it's lovely that people just want to offer their input and their advice. And in a way, yes, OK, I think people should become informed and understand how taxes work, how investments work, you know, speak from a position of being informed.

44:03But I don't ever want to make out that people are not entitled to an opinion about finance just because they didn't study business and economics, because I think that's incredibly elitist. Yeah. In the same way of like financial advice in this whole idea that you should be a qualified advisor to have a valid opinion. I actually think sometimes the advice industry has been the most predatory aspect of finance for a long time. Well, that's the problem, isn't it? I mean, the fact is, it's in financial advisors' interest to say we're the gatekeepers here. only we can tell you what to do with your finances.

44:36And there was this concept that I heard about when I worked in financial trade media because I worked for a publication aimed at financial advisors back in the day. So I spoke to them every day, got to know them. And the best ones were those who, you know, weren't so much financial advisors, but they were people who had real emotional intelligence and were kind of more like life coaches in a way. I know some good financial advisors, like you said. And what they say is, I'm a planner. I help people plan towards their goals. I look at their whole life and say, you want to retire here and you want to be on a boat and you want to do this, let's get you there.

45:12Rather than my job is to go, I'm going to pick an investment for you. Because that's just a load of nonsense really. Because that's a simple thing to do. And this picking the investment and wrapping it in an ISA is not the valuable bit that they do. Yeah. And I think I sort of unpacked a lot of that culture within my book. So when I talked about, you know, the evolution of investing away from these traditional gatekeepers in the city, you know, and the fact that financial advice and investing was really the preserve of the wealthy and the educated and an elite within society, how technology came along and completely broke that system, mostly for better rather than worse.

45:56But then also how it came along and broke the model of active fund management. Now, that's not to say that I don't think active fund management, you know, I think that active fund management is dead. It's not. I think it still has a place. But certainly as a financial journalist, I became very aware as the years rolled by that, you know, these big fund houses have got big budgets to woo the media, to get them to write very positively about active funds, to ignore passive funds and how much cheaper they are and the fact that actually it's very rare to beat the market consistently over a long period of time.

46:35You know, it was in the industry's interest to kind of dazzle journalists into ignoring that stuff and to just concentrate on a few active funds here and there that did perform well for a period of time until they didn't. And if you take Neil Woodford and what happened there. Oh my God, I heavily invested in the Neil Woodford fund. Oh, did you? It scared me off the market for like a couple of years. I mean, that's such a good example of why. It was going well and then it just. They pumped it into the floor though. They continued to advertise it as it was collapsing. I mean, so many things went wrong there and it is an extreme example.

47:11But nonetheless, I think we cannot ever go back to that world. And, you know, like I said, when I was a financial journalist, I used to be, you know, wooed by these fund houses in order for me to write positive pieces about them. But in my book, I make it very clear that actually with passive investing, you know, there is an alternative there. There's something I want to come back to. You've alluded to it a second ago, but I've read it, you talk about it extensively. And it's this idea of today's generation and these kind of, these milestones that we have that have come from a previous generation.

47:47And you often talk about like compromise in finance. Can you just kind of share that? and what you feel? This is a slightly controversial view. I do think that younger people absolutely have a point when they say that the milestones that their parents achieved are no longer there for younger people. It's hard, it's far harder to achieve those same milestones. So I believe, as I said before, that you should define success on your own terms. But that does also mean that you will have to compromise on some of those idealized goals that you might have inherited, say, from your parents or your grandparents.

48:30And I know this because I feel that there is no chance I could ever have got the same type of property in the same kind of area that my parents did, you know, at my age. So I had to compromise. I got an ex-local authority place in London. I'm a leaseholder. If I had a choice, I wouldn't be a leaseholder. I don't like the system. I don't like the fact that those charges can go on into the future, that they can rise at any time. I understand that there's some government action on that now, but it's just not a great system. You do feel like going back to the Middle Ages. But overall, I felt like that compromise was worth making so that I could get on the housing ladder.

49:10And I think too often younger people, you know, they're not prepared to make a decision and be okay with it, even if it's not ideal or optimal and I know that's controversial to say that because that can often be misinterpreted as you haven't managed to get on the housing ladder you haven't managed to save or invest or put more into your pension therefore it's your fault no it's you making a choice and sometimes that choice means that you are going to have to have trade-offs in your lifestyle in your quality of life in the here and now. That's just a fact of life. And if you can't say that out loud, then basically you're saying that young people can never hope to have any kind of long-term wealth.

49:56And I just don't think it's right to say that. Do you think as well that we need to look at what we consider wealth? Because as an example, right, my nan, she owned her own home from quite a young age, but did she ever go to a full moon party in Thailand? And did she have a party with on a boat in Poland and you know sink a load of Ukrainian lads at beer pong we did I did I absolutely they didn't know they didn't know what the poor things they were like come on let's see what you've got they didn't realise I went to you I just sunk them really yeah it was one of the proudest moments of my life wow it's like the beer pong world championships it was on a boat in Poland with some yeah I play better when I'm drunk as well so like you know I can do you know we did that is an unusual skill to have to get better or something the more drunk you get.

50:43I think it's like conditioning. Do you know what I mean? The husband spent three, four years of uni and they're living in a house share for five years where we did beer pong pretty much every Friday night. Champong was like when we've been paid. Champong? Champong. We used to get a bottle of champagne or like cava or whatever and fill up the red cups with that so we had the champong on payday. But anyway, I digress. What I'm saying is that to me is wealth. That like, I got experience. And my nan, she never travelled anywhere. She didn't like pasta because it was plain. I'm like, you put sauce on it now.

51:13Do you know what I mean? She's like, oh no, just plain white stuff. I don't eat that. Foreign muck or whatever. She'd have meat and two veg every night. And it's like, yeah, she's got an asset. And she might tell me that I should be on the popular ladder, but it's like, have you lived like I have? It's fair to say that, you know, the older generations, like the horizons were more narrow. The world was much smaller and the opportunities were far fewer, especially if you're a woman. I mean, when my mum was my age, more or less, you know, she couldn't order around in a bar, you know. It's quite incredible to think how in the space of, you know, my mum's lifetime.

51:53She couldn't order around. Yeah. I give that example in my book as just a contrast between the opportunities that were available to her. I'm not saying like the be all and end all is whether you can order - Yeah, screw your house, at least you get a part of it. It's important, right? Right, nonetheless, I think to be able to order a ring. I want to speak to social freedom and like your equal standing, that you should be able to walk up to a bar and order a drink. Yes, but my attitude is, I think that a woman like me should have the right to do something like that, but also the right to own her own home if she wishes.

52:27It's about choice. And it's about the choice between having an asset like a home or enjoying things more in the here and now. Now, personally, I don't think it has to be a, you know, black and white choice between the two. The point is that for me, to take an example, you know, I feel I'm at that stage now in my life and my career where I can do more things that I enjoy, where I can go on trips and travel and enjoy life a bit more. And it is partly because I scrimped and saved when I was younger and I was able to work towards a place where now I have choice and I have options. And I can do that, you know, because I did some of the hard yards when I was younger.

53:17And I think the problem is now if we take away that choice from younger people, then I fear that the, you know, consumer economy that we have, you know, experiences, digital nomads, you know, all these seemingly attractive options that sometimes they can just be a consolation prize for not having the things that ultimately will mean that you're in a much more secure position in the long term. I think, for instance, if you get to retirement and you don't have your own home, you are just going to be much more worse off because so much of your housing costs, so much of your pension income will be eaten up in rent.

53:56And that's not something that we discuss enough. And I think the point is we're not saying if you get to that point in life and you're having to pay rent, you have failed. It's a case of no, but you need to be aware that that is, that's what's going to happen. with the world being more open now i mean i was a bit like the opposite of you i always wanted to travel thailand america wherever my whole life and like whenever i got my i'm like yeah holiday time let's go travel but do you think now that the world's more open a lot of i know a lot of my friends are moving to thailand dubai and they're like oh i can get a house with a pool in dubai for like two grand a month whereas here i've got to pay two grand a month i get a tiny little shed in the end of someone's garden in london in like central london so do you think people are moving to like Thailand, Dubai, Spain thinking like one of our producers moved lifted lives in Spain now do you think people thinking well I don't need to buy a house here like I might just move out the country in 20 years and go get a mansion in build my own chateau in France I've been thinking about that like you can just buy some land and build your own build your own some people thinking like I can just spend have loads of fun and like not worry about leave England in 20 years and go buy a house for half the price somewhere else and have a pool in the I mean that That could work out.

55:06Yeah, no, I think, look - It might be my plan. That could work out, but there is again, always a risk that 20 years down the line, that option looks nowhere near as appealing as it does right now. Yeah, you want to be near your grandkids and like your friends and you don't want to go retire in Thailand. I do think again, though, that is another level of wealth that we have in our society that future generations in flexibility, mobile work. You can - You work away. I can work from anywhere. My mom, like people now you go, oh, where are you going on holiday? I'm just going to Spain. To my mom, that was another world when she was a kid.

55:42Now it's like standard. I'm just popping over. Pop to France for the weekend. Oh, I saw a thing on Instagram. Some two friends wanted to meet up and they were like, one lived up North and one lived down South. And the trains were so expensive. They're like, let's just go meet in France. And then they flew to France and it was cheaper than getting a train to meet in between London and wherever because the trains are so expensive. It's a whole other conversation. Yeah, that's awesome. But yeah, like you've got the option to go meet your friend in France rather than taking the train up north because it's cheaper.

56:07So we have that flexibility over work and location. Completely. What I will say is that I think the greatest asset you can have is freedom. And I think for me, that's my ultimate goal when it comes to the balance between work and life. We talk a lot about work-life balance And I think it's definitely an overused phrase. And yet, post-COVID, I can never go back to the way I was pre-COVID. And I feel that one of the few good things to come out of that whole period is that our generation was told, your jobs are non-essential. Unless you work in the NHS or in retail or those kinds of jobs, your job is non-essential.

56:53Stay at home, make it work, figure it out, do what you need to do. But otherwise, you're on your own. And I think we all turned around and went, okay, my job's non-essential, is it? Well, in which case, I am going to make it work for me. Therefore, if I don't want to work as many hours in an office with a boss who is a mini dictator or a David Brent or just makes my life hell, I don't have to. You worked at the same place I did. How do you know? Yeah, but we've all had those experiences. I mean, I had those experiences throughout my 20s. That's one reason why I am now probably never going to go back to full-time employment.

57:29Never say never, but I am probably the most committed freelancer that you will ever meet. Because for me, being able to control my working life is the most precious asset that I can have. and that's what I worked really hard for as well in my 20s. It wasn't just to buy a property and all the rest of it. It was also so that I can work anywhere that I want to. If I want to go visit my parents, I can do. If I want to take a day off, I can do within reason. If I want to have my life so that I can concentrate on my core priorities outside of work, that's possible. That's true freedom. You think the COVID pandemic changed a lot of people's approach to investing as well, apart from not just working?

58:11Because I mean, I'm never going back to the office, hopefully. I've even closed like a deal on a boat in France like we were on a boat going to an island and like I had a client and I just closed a deal and he's like it's very loud I'm like I'm on a boat and then I turned on my camera he's like oh you're on a boat and so like it's the freedom to work from anywhere I really like that's a real boss move right now I know right I closed a deal on a boat in France it's a salesman move if you're billing it doesn't matter I put it on Instagram it's a great show I might show it again it was such a great show it was like a speedboat I'm just there like pretending that I'm with a background and they're like it's very loud I took off the background.

58:38You had a fake background. I did a fake background. I was like in a library. Exactly. They're like, it sounds very loud. I'm on a boat. Yeah, it didn't work. Just there like this. But yeah, I feel like my brother got involved in investing in the pandemic. I got heavily into crypto and other things in the pandemic. And like a lot of people made a lot of money for investing. Do you think just because we're at home, you've got the internet there, you're like, the younger generation is like, Oh, let me see what I can do with this digital money. completely it was it was an absolute game changer um because for the first time young people they were stuck at home a lot of young people did have spare cash because they weren't going out they weren't commuting getting a bit of furlough yeah yeah yeah because that's the thing furlough you you weren't allowed to work you can't spend it because you can't go out so you're saving hundreds of pounds a month on travel yeah so so you know what else are you going to do other than try to figure out how to make some extra cash and do that through investing.

59:33So I think it was a, yeah, it was a real watershed moment. And I think a lot of the crazy trends that we saw in that period reflected that strange time. And now things have settled down a bit more. We've obviously been through the cost of living crisis. So people no longer feel as gung ho as they once did. They're not taking the same kind of risks that they were when it seemed like money was free, right? And in the US, you know, the stimmies that, you know, people got in the post, it was like monopoly money. Well, we might as well invest this. What else are we going to do with it? And that's what drove a lot of those, you know, quite extreme events in the stock market.

1:00:15But we have settled down now. And I think hopefully younger people kind of had a bit of a baptism of fire through that period. And I talked about, you know, these sort of trends in my investing diary. how they can turn anyone's head. I mean, I got addicted to these free trading apps. I was checking my portfolio multiple times a day. My parents had to stage an intervention at one point. Step away from the phone, you know, but it was good to learn about those things for myself in that way. And now I would say I'm a much more sensible investor. You know, I practice what I preach in the book, but I think we've all got to just get on with it and do it.

1:00:52And sometimes, I'm just, you know, learn things the hard way. I know earlier on I was saying - I was going to bring that up. You said something, you can learn the easy way or the hard way. My dad always said that, like when I got suspended from school one day for getting too good grades and working too hard and being amazing. He didn't do anything wrong. It wasn't my fault. I got set up. But I got suspended. My dad's like, look, you're going to learn the easy way or the hard way. You seem to like the hard way, but which is not always ideal, but it makes more of an impression and you remember. So, you know, to try to dig myself out of a hole and not make myself seem like a total hypocrite.

1:01:23I do think there's a difference between learning about borrowing and learning about investing. I think with investing, it is inevitable that you are going to lose money as an investor. You cannot prevent that from happening. You cannot guarantee that that won't happen. So you will have your gains. You will have your losses. You will have to take that on the chin and just learn to be OK with that. You've got to learn to be OK with the risks of investing. whereas with debt I feel that that is a whole set of risks that you don't need to take on that you can learn about the easy way whereas investing you've just you just got to start do it you know try to try to stick to the sensible rules if you can and um not get too hung up if you don't perform as well in certain months or years because that's going to happen yeah it's like the laffer curve where it's it's like you think you're a genius you get a bit of gains Everyone thinks they're Warren Buffett, this is easy.

1:02:19Then they get spanked by the market. And it's like, okay, I'll just buy an index fund. I think everyone needs to go through that journey. And so long as you're investing money that you can afford to lose, I know that sounds a bit of a strange concept, doesn't it? Only invest money that you can afford to lose. It's like, what are you saying that like this money here, which I've worked really hard for, I'm happy for that to just, as you said, gets completely lost in the markets. But in a way that does help to keep you grounded when it comes to investing, because otherwise if you are investing, I mean, that's why we say you've got to save and invest.

1:02:56You know, I'm team saving and team investing. Have savings, but also invest. And the money that you invest is not money that you're hoping will, you know, mean that you can get on the property ladder within the next couple of years. It's not money that you need to have for a really important goal in your life. I say in the book that I invest because I have dreams, because I think the financial industry gets too hung up on the need to have goals. And fundamentally, today, I think it's really hard to have set goals. I'm going to do this by this age and this by this age. Like, life is unpredictable.

1:03:29I had no idea I'd end up being where I am today, like 10 years ago. No one saw that. No one saw it. Exactly, you know. So the way I like to think about it is that I have dreams, and that means things I would love to do. It might not be entirely in my control. things might come along and knock me off knock me off path but if I can achieve those things I'd love to and I came across an amazing quote by Gloria Steinem who said dreaming is a form of planning and for me having dreams doesn't mean I'm just being some utopian idealist it means that I am hoping that my future will be better and that I can do some amazing things and I am investing in the hope that if those dreams do happen, I've got money there.

1:04:16And that's why I invest. Like I said at the beginning, if investing is an act of practical hope, then so long as I'm investing, I have hope for my future and I have hope that dreams will happen.

1:04:31If you want a bullet point summary of this episode, you can sign up to our newsletter using the link in the description. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review. It really makes a difference and lets us know that we're doing a good job. And remember, this is not financial advice. The reason it's not financial advice is because it's not tailored to you. We can explain the principles of building wealth, but if you want personalised advice, it's worth speaking to a financial advisor. As with everything financial, please do your own research. We really encourage that because no one cares more about your money.

1:05:01I'm Damo. I'm T.

1:05:12Thank you.