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Podcast Episode Notes Making Money
Episode Title
How to Close the £100k Wealth Gap
Episode Summary In this episode, hosts Damien Jordan and Timeyin Akerele discuss the significant pension wealth gap between men and women, which averages around £100,000. The discussion features Emilie Bellet, Founder and CEO of Vestpod, who aims to empower women financially through education. The conversation explores the reasons behind this wealth gap, its implications, and strategies to overcome it.
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Key Themes and Concepts
- The Gender Pension Gap
- Definition: The gender pension gap represents the disparity in pension wealth between men and women, with women retiring with approximately £100,000 less than men on average.
- Causes:
- Women are often primary caregivers, leading to career interruptions or part-time work, which affects their earning potential and pension contributions.
- The predominance of men in senior positions and higher-paying industries.
- The Motherhood Penalty
- Women may face penalties in earnings and promotions after childbirth, often resulting in lower lifetime earnings and retirement savings.
- The societal expectation that women take on primary caregiving roles exacerbates this issue.
- Childcare and Flexible Work
- Childcare costs in the UK are among the highest globally, which can deter women from re-entering the workforce.
- Solutions proposed include:
- More flexible work arrangements.
- Government-subsidized childcare to support working mothers.
- Encouraging shared parental leave to distribute caregiving responsibilities evenly.
- Financial Education and Mindset Shifts
- Emphasis on the importance of open discussions about money within households and among friends.
- Encouraging women to start investing as a way to build wealth, highlighting that investing does not require large sums of money to begin.
- Addressing the societal stigma around discussing finances openly to foster healthier conversations about money.
- Investment Trends Among Women
- Research shows that women often have a more cautious approach to investing, resulting in higher returns once they do invest.
- Women are generally underrepresented in discussions surrounding investment compared to men, who are often associated with taking financial risks.
- Salary Negotiation and Workplace Equity
- Historical reluctance among women to ask for raises; however, recent trends indicate that women are becoming more assertive in salary negotiations.
- Importance of equitable workplace practices, including transparent salary structures to close the pay gap.
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Strategies for Closing the Wealth Gap
- Encouraging Early Investment: Start investing small amounts early in one’s career to take advantage of compound growth.
- Education on Financial Management: Provide resources and support for financial literacy, targeting young women in particular.
- Creating Safe Spaces for Discussion: Foster environments where individuals can discuss financial struggles and successes without judgment.
Key Takeaways
- The £100k wealth gap between men and women in pensions must be addressed through societal and workplace changes.
- Flexible work policies and a focus on shared childcare responsibilities can help bridge the gap.
- Financial education is crucial for empowering women to take charge of their financial futures.
- Open discussions about money can dismantle the stigma and lead to healthier financial habits.
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Conclusion The episode serves as a call to action for both men and women to engage in financial discussions, promote equitable practices in the workplace, and encourage a cultural shift towards financial empowerment, especially for women. By addressing the gender wealth gap, society as a whole can benefit from increased financial inclusivity and stability.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01You know what I love, Damo? Things that save me time. You don't have YouTube Premium, mate, so I just don't believe that. Granted, I'll give you that one. However, I've got one for you. A great time saver in personal finance is Money Week magazine. They spend a lot of time distilling the biggest stories in personal finance down into consumable chunks, so you don't have to scroll and scroll. They give practical tips on savings, investments, pensions, the UK economy, the global economy. It's like your five a day, but for finance. If you want to give Money Week a try, you can get six issues in print and the app absolutely free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money.
0:34After your trial, you'll save an extra£5 a quarter on the subscription, which is exclusive to Making Money listeners. And that's moneyweek.com forward slash money. But there's a link in the description if you just want to click that. You know, I went for a meeting with a financial advisor who asked me, where is your husband? Emily Belay is the founder and CEO of Vespod, a digital platform and community that empowers women financially through education. The gender pay gap is often referred to as a mother penalty and this has a knock-on effect. In retirement women are estimated to have £100 ,000 less than men on average.
1:08This is not just important for women. If you're in a couple this will have a big effect on your finances and not just in retirement. So how do we close the gap? Not just in terms of pay and wealth but how we approach and talk about money in general. We each gonna have like a very personal situation when it comes to money, I mean it's personal finances but I think having open communication is really really important.
1:37Could you just describe what the gender pay gap is in the modern capacity, what it is like today? Yeah, of course. You know that you have to pay men and women the same for the same job if you don't that discrimination or that illegal in the UK because there's an Equal Pay Act since 1970. The gender pay gap is slightly different. is the difference in hourly rate, in hourly earnings between men and women. And we still have a difference of about, I mean, depending on age and what we look at, 10 to 15%. When we look at the full pay gap where you have the part-time, you'll see that the difference is slightly higher.
2:15So women still earn less than men. And why is that? You will see less women in senior positions. That's usually the funnel where you all go to university, you get your first job. But then something happens is that women are still the primary carers. So, they may have children, they may not have children, but for those who have children, they tend to drop out of the workforce or work part-time or have different flexible arrangements. And that means they're not going to be in a workforce for a few years. They come back, they can miss out on some promotions. So you see that the pipeline looks a bit like that and looks a bit thinner for senior women.
2:52So we call this the motherhood penalty. There's a lot of penalties when we talk about women and money, but that's going to be a gap in earnings. Sometimes it's also because of the jobs women do, depending on how they're doing lower paid jobs versus men. We tend to see bigger gaps in finance, for example, where you will have more men, especially at the top. It's really looking at this pipeline and helping women along the way so that they don't lose out on earnings and possibility to earn more money for themselves. This is the pay gap. In terms of where we are, it will still take 169 years to close the gender pay gap, according to the World Economic Forum.
3:35There's still a lot of work to be done. It's improving slightly, but COVID has been really hard also. With COVID, it means staying at home, having kids around. I mean, I see for myself, I had children and from one day you had to be taking care of them, doing homeschooling, being at a desk with their iPads and them working on their lessons, you working next to them. And now it's how do we try to bridge this gap is really the next question. You call it a motherhood gap in that capacity. You said, obviously, there's plenty of problems, but that one problem there, I think sometimes if you talk about gender pay gap, you get pushback because I think a lot of men think that they're then being called sexist when they're not what you're saying is it's a feature of the fact that we give women the primary care role yeah how do we fix that so I think I mean of course it it these are going to be generalities and each you know couples and you know they're going to be different in how they raise kids and we also see a lot of single single mom you know raising raising kids so they will have a lot of um different different issues.
4:43But it's also, I think, flexible work. We talk a lot about that in companies at the moment. I think it's been improving with COVID, but you've seen a lot of companies that people are asking people to go back to work and be in a physical space. I think flexible working, it's something that can really help in terms of bridging the gap. When we look at some countries that have been successfully trying to close this gap, so I'm thinking Iceland and the Nordics, So they've been doing a big push around, of course, this flexible work. It's also thinking about childcare. The cost of childcare, especially in the UK, is one of the most expensive in the world.
5:21Women tend to look at the cost of childcare, tend to look at how much they're earning at work. They try to compare the two and they're like, oh, actually, all my salary is going to go into paying a nanny or paying for childcare. So, you know, I'm going to take care of the children for a few years and then I'll go back to the workforce. So I think it's, you know, trying to think about childcare differently. And in some countries, you know, there's a lot of help on childcare. It's subsidized by government to try to help women to stay in the workforce to be able to continue their career. And it's also, you know, sharing these caring responsibilities.
5:54So sharing caring responsibilities means, you know, I'm taking a maternity leave. You can take a paternity leave, but both partners can take time off. So that will, you know, rebalance a little bit. That means, you know, some men will also take some time of work, which is interesting and it's implemented in some companies and sharing this cost of childcare. So when women look at the cost of childcare on their own salaries, can we look together at a budget and think about, okay, what are the choices we're going to make together as a team to try to make it work for men and women? You talk about Iceland and I know Iceland, they operate a maternity system where it's like a use it or lose it benefit and that incentivize the men to take it basically.
6:33But their population is quite small, isn't it? And do you think that scales to a country like the UK? Because it would be a hell of a cost, wouldn't it, to businesses or government, whoever's going to pick up that bill? Yeah, I think it would be a huge cost, but I think it's really key that we try to find ways to help women because there's a lot to lose in the end. You know, the money that women don't earn, it's money that's not being saved, that's money that's not being invested, taxes to you. So I think there's ways to really make it work as a model. And also thinking about, you know, equal pay and certification and declaring how much you pay men and women in your organization.
7:11So a lot is still to be done, I think, for women and to bridge these gaps. But if we have like paternity leave, which I think a lot of, especially in England, and a lot of businesses will be like, oh, the man didn't have the baby, so he can still be at work. I think it's very old thinking. But I mean, I work from home and I've got a 16-month-old and my partner stopped working because she's like, I'll look after maternity leave for a bit. And then when it ended, we thought she'd go back to work. But childcare is so expensive. And also there were social benefits for having the mother raising the child rather than sending your kid to nursery school.
7:46So we decided that it would be better for her to just stay off work and keep looking after the kid. but do you think that it would have knock-on effects if men started staying at home and raising the kid and women going back to work yeah i think we i think we could have both i think it's changing you know the beliefs we may have of you know women stay at home and you know the dads go back to work and when you see more dads actually you know taking their kids to the garden and and you know doing other things with their children i think it's good to have also this you know balance thing between having mom and dad.
8:21One can take a few months off, then the other can take a few months off. That will allow you to have maybe your kids a bit longer at home and being with both parents. I think that's really helpful. But there's other ways to do it. If you decided that maybe I'm going to stop working and my partner will carry on working, how can you help them financially? Because we don't often have these conversations of, okay, you're losing out because you're staying at home. Women still do most of the unpaid work. So men will do about, I think, one third of the unpaid work overall. So that means women, when they're at home, they're still working, right?
8:54They're taking care of the children, they're cooking, they're doing the groceries, you know, they may work on a community project, whatever they're doing. But in terms of finances, how can you help them and support them? So one way is, for example, to pay into their pensions, or it's to contribute more to the household budgets. So these are ways that can be implemented, but more, you know, at a personal level in terms of bridging this gap. If your partner is not working for a long time, can you think about paying into her pension or his pension to make sure they keep their earning and their savings while you're still working because they're going to go back into the workforce eventually or they won't.
9:32It's making sure they're also building wealth because that will make sense for both of you together, not having this inequality also as a couple. Yeah. From a tax planning perspective, it certainly makes it easier. I mean, if you look at the child benefit system, it penalizes certain, there's like tax traps that exist and the government have even acknowledged that they need to rectify that because you could be on like 50 grand a year as a combined household income and you cross over that threshold, you get punished. Whereas if two incomes of 49, you actually, you don't get taxed as much. And this whole household view, like a more holistic view would certainly help.
10:07You've got three kids, right? If you don't mind me saying, how did you find that then, this process? and how have you managed that situation? So three kids, I'm an entrepreneur, but I worked in finance before. So I also had some savings and building my business. But I think we've always had a very open relationship with my husband around how do we manage finances? How can we find certain things? So I think it's, I mean, we each kind of have like a very personal situation when it comes to money. I mean, it's personal finances, But I think having open communication is really, really important. And then trying to figure out what's going to be the best solution for both of us.
10:48And I see very often that it's, I'm doing my thing. My partner is doing his thing. But when you start, you know, when you have a family, when you have a household, you have to manage that as one piece. So it's really important, especially for women to still have their own money and have their own pot, have their own, you know, emergency funds, have the separate, you know, bank accounts. I think very often we think, oh, we're together. We put everything together. So I think it's having your own bank accounts, having your own security net, but also managing a lot of these decisions together. We used to value women because they were doing a lot of unpaid work at home.
11:20But now you're expected also to work and to take care of the children. And that means a lot of juggle. And that's not easy. But, you know, with the cost of living and, you know, you may both have to actually work. So it's how do you organize that? And it's quite interesting. I've interviewed Ev Rodsky in the US, who's doing a lot of work around fair play and around looking at household responsibilities. So it's not just the money, but it's everything that's going to happen in a household. And how do you split that between partners? Because it's all these little things of, you know, picking up the kids, doing the homework, maybe doing the groceries, preparing dinner.
11:56And this will take a lot of your time. So how can you split that a little bit more equally with your partner? And you can include this conversation as part of a more holistic and also financial conversation. How, if you don't mind me asking a personal question, how does it feel to be a woman in a world where you know that these gaps exist? So I think that's why I set a Vespa on coming from finance, where I was one of the few women working in the space. And when you look at all these gaps and structural issues and barriers, it's quite important to try to do your bit, but also focus on your own journey.
12:36We're all doing what we can. And at the moment, it feels like it's a big responsibility for everyone to do more and bridge these gaps and stuff like that. So I think it's trying to make it work for yourself, for your household, for your family, and then try to change what doesn't work around you. For me, Vespod, it's when I started to look at all these gaps. That comes from a more personal experience. I was very lucky to study finance and economics and start a job in finance. You feel very privileged to be able to work in this industry. You earn more money. But at the same time, I still wasn't investing some of my money.
13:14I wasn't aware of how to do that. I came from France. It's conversations I didn't have with my female friends. I would hear guys talking about investing and making more money. I was working for an investment fund and for a big American bank. I realized, of course, we have these gaps of gender pay gap, and we can talk a little bit about the wealth gap and the pension gap and how that works. But it's also having this conversation around money. Money is so central to our lives, and that's going to be a driver for a lot of the things we do that buys us options. It's a super useful tool. How do we supercharge it?
13:48Unfortunately, if we don't take care of money, if we don't have these conversations from an early age, and that means probably as a kid and also as a teenager and in our 20s and first job and stuff like that, then we pay the price later on. There's a lot of choices we take without not necessarily knowing what's going to happen. The motherhood penalty just happens because you're pregnant, you're going to have a child, You don't necessarily plan for what's going to happen. You take time off work. But actually, there's a massive effect, a knockdown effect, like a few years later of these decisions you take.
14:25So I think there's a lot around education, education in personal finances, but also in terms of, you know, what we need to know, men and women around what's going to happen and at which point we can make better decisions. You know, finance has been, you know, historically, you know, built by men. You have a lot of, you know, main leaders. so women don't necessarily recognize themselves and they feel i think there's a lot of also you know childhood belief and this is for men and women thinking oh you know i'm not good at math i'm not going to be good at at investing so maybe that's not for me or i don't understand a lot how do i get started you see men women tend to hold more cash isa individual savings accounts uh rather than stocks and share isa they're not necessarily thinking about you know pensions and growing wealth or they think you know they'll do it later so i think having this education very early on is is really important.
15:12Women need to feel that they are part of the economy. They can invest, they can grow their wealth, they can participate in the economy. I think that's really important in terms of investing. They tend to see investing as something that's not core to what they need in terms of money management. That's really what we're trying to change, is really trying to help women make their first investment. I think it's having different conversations about money and really, you know, using our own words to just talk about investing, because that should be, I mean, I think there's a lot more people now investing money and you see a lot of platforms where it's super easy and you can invest your spare change.
15:51But I think women need to, you know, get into investing. And then they're doing really well. When you look at, you know, a few pieces of research that have been - But you buy the men on the whole. Yeah. The temperament's better. Published recently, yeah. Yeah. They tend to return, you know, depending on some of the research, they tend to be quite small but you know if it's 1.8 more than than than men that's really interesting that means we can learn something from women actually investing money and the way and the way they invest money and the way they perceive um investment 10 to 15 of my audience is female which is is quite large which is about 150 000 women a month will watch the main channel and you know they're welcome and i love them but it it it does it it's strange to me that if i made content on how to side hustles that would shift to 50%.
16:36It's almost like they engage with areas of finance and then like you say, this investing piece, there's plenty of women that do and I'm not trying to say no women do, but there's a big difference between saving side hustles and investing, you know, a 40 % swing, which is massive, right? And the information is really easy to digest, you know, just buy a global index inside of a tax wrapped account like an ISA, rinse, repeat, you know. Too much drama, right? It can sound quite intimidating and quite jogging. I've made 100 videos on exactly what that means. Yeah, of course, of course. I see what you - You know what I mean?
17:09Yeah, yeah. Starting a side hustle is harder than starting a passive investment. You know, it is. It is. Yeah. I think there's a lot of the, you know, maybe misconceptions and beliefs also around investing and money. And I think there was a very interesting study done by Starling Bank a few years ago. And they were showing in terms of press and what people read that in women's magazine, you will see articles about saving and repaying debt and how women are spenders versus savers. And you should control how you spend money. And on men's publications, that would be around investing and making more money and building your wealth.
17:45So I think there's also all these biases around what we can do. Pink and blue. Pink and blue, exactly. And it takes time to actually change the mentalities around investing and around money. and that will come with re-educating herself a little bit and changing our mindset. But not all women are like that. Some women invest and they're really bold with their finances and we see a lot more actually happening in the space. I'd love to see more female financial advisor female content creator. There are quite a few also in the US who are doing quite well and the message doesn't need to be complicated but it needs to suit women.
18:26So it's not like we need to reinvent everything and make everything pink. But it's more maybe explaining things in a different way, nurturing women maybe a little bit more into making their first investment. But when women invest, then they should be able to, once they earn more money, also to put more money at work and understand that it's the way to build wealth. Do you think that some women might lean towards saving and side hustles more because they have more purchasing power than men? I think they have like 80 to 90 % of purchasing power, like all decisions are made either through women or through their influence.
19:00You mean in the house? Yeah, in the household. In the household, yeah. And yeah, they make most, do you think that's part of it? They say, okay, I have to manage all these finances and all these outgoings. Let me just look after my money, keep it safe and savings. Do you think that has anything to do with it? Yeah, I think there's something around, yeah, keeping money safe and thinking cash is safe. But as we all know, you know, cash over the long term is not going to be safe. So I think there's a discussion around, yes, you need to have your savings. you need to have your emergency fund? How can you build a plan to make sure you have this for the short term, but also you start building for the long term?
19:34But it's, you know, when are you having this first conversation about building wealth? And I think that's quite tricky because, I mean, talking about my own experience, you know, studying finance and studying corporate finance, I never learned anything about personal finances. And I feel I had many opportunities to do that, maybe you know through my parents maybe through university school but i didn't and then i started working in finance and again like i had you know i went for a meeting with a financial advisor and that's what i talk about in in my book who asked me where is your husband so the industry was still feeling and this is just one probably you know it's one anecdote but it feels like wow i'm trying i'm trying so when can we have this conversation and i feel um with some male friends we could have this conversation around investing, like, you know, are you looking at this stock and these stocks or crypto, even if they tend, you know, it's risky investments, it's following the hype, you know, it's not what you should be doing, but trying to think about how do we build wealth and how do we open up more about finances when we talk about, you know, salary negotiation.
20:39I think it's really important to have a peer group where you can also have these open conversations and talk a little bit more about money. And how you make these decisions and they extrapolate out in terms of the compounding and what they do for your wealth. So what do we see in trends for women's wealth then? Is there a gap there? So there's a massive gap. So we talked about the gender pay gap. So the gender pay gap will feed into the gender pension gap and the gender wealth gap. So when we look at the gender pension gap, women will retire with about 20 % of pension savings of men. There's different studies, but basically women will tend to retire quite poor.
21:17So why is that? Because they tend to earn less than men, so that's less money being saved. But when you save in your 20s or 30s, that's when probably you have your children or 40s, this money that's not going to be saved is not going to be invested for another 30 to 40 years. So you have the compound effect of not putting money at this specific time. And then we talked about investing. and when you shy away from investing, you shy away from making your money work and you leave your money in cash because you think it's safe, you're also losing out. So this really extrapolates in terms of the pension and one statistic that's quite striking is women in their 20s today will retire with spots that are 100 ,000 less than men.
22:02So that's actually... How much less, sorry? 100 ,000 pound less. Oh, okay. I thought you meant percent. I was going to say that. No, it's still 100 ,000. No, but it could be 100%, it could be more. So it's, you know, how do we bridge the gap? And it's by making the right decisions. When we look at, you know, pensions, workplace pensions, and automatically saving into a pension is great. But if women are still earning less than men, you know, this amount of money is also going to be smaller. So I did some analysis of UK pensions, workplace schemes, and this report found that by being in the default fund, you tend to lean quite cautious.
22:38And that can cost someone as much as£15 ,000 a year in retirement by not going in and picking their own funds where they're more aggressive in terms of equity position. 90 % of my audience are male. I make a video, 200 ,000 views, hundreds of thousands of men go away, make that decision. They end up just by going, I'm not in the default fund, I'll go 100 % equity. It's like a little thing that shifts a massive needle. And at the end, a woman might be like, I worked at the same place, earned the same money, put into the same pension but he's getting 15 grand a year more income why because he's got a little bit of education yeah so that explains also this you know the pay gap is the relation you know the risk risk reward relationship and where do you see yourself on this scale but if you don't have the education and if you feel like you can't talk to anyone about it uh so education is great but then it's how do we implement that um do i work with a financial advisor if you don't have enough money to find an advisor you probably think oh you know i don't have enough money to invest and i can't do it myself.
23:36It's also postponing this decision. Then the more you postpone, of course, you're losing money and you're scared and stuff like that. I think women are making super smart decisions. When they invest, they invest really well. They make great return on their investments. It's just spreading the message around start earlier, start much earlier, first job. That's the same for men and women. You think you're not going to have enough disposable income. just try to put a little bit more in your workplace pension maybe your employer is doing is doing something to also boost your pension are they matching your contribution can you look into that are you able to sacrifice a little bit more money for the short term because that means you will have more in the long term so i think these messages are really important in terms of you know delayed gratification but i think today the issue is also i speak to a lot of women who don't who are not going to have enough disposable income maybe because they dropped out of the workforce for a few years, they're raising their kids, they may be struggling with finances, and they feel like, I don't actually have the money.
24:37There's the cost of living. I don't have money to invest. It's telling them that you can even start very small. That's the way to do it, actually, and increase your contribution over time. I think that's why also there's a lot of people interested in building a side hustle, having some extra cash that they're going to be able to put into their savings, try to get on the property ladder. So there's a lot of issues that we see at the moment where it's really important not to make investing this very scary and big thing because they need sometimes to rebuild also their savings and the money they have on their emergency funds before they go on to investing some money.
25:16I read a report that said that women don't like to ask for raises as much as men. In your experience, do you think that's even remotely true or do you think that's just one of these reports they make up? Because I've worked in sales my whole life and the best people I've known in sales have been women. So actually, I think there's a lot of new reports now coming up that show that women are actually asking for more money and they get their salary increases. So I think there were conversations that women ask, but they don't always get what they ask for. And that could be around maybe some biases and stuff.
25:47But actually, women now are asking for more money. They want more money. because they know that's going to have like a massive impact. So again, we're having these conversations, you know, in the community. And I feel, yeah, women are making a lot of progress. Do you think that it's a zero-sum game in the sense of for women to get more, men need to get less? No, I don't think so. I think, you know, there's more money for everyone. So, you know, men should negotiate their salary. Women should negotiate their salary. And of course, you know, there's always a bit of preparation. You know, you need to, you know, have done the work.
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26:19work. There's all the basics, but I think men should learn more and women should learn more. I don't think it should be a transfer of wealth. If you look more broadly, we are seeing actually a transfer of wealth at the moment. Women are inheriting more money than before and they're also making more money from work. We're slowly seeing a shift where women will also have more money, which is going to be quite interesting to see in terms of how financial institutions react to that, how do they serve women, maybe differently. Maybe women want something else from their banks, from their financial advisors, their wealth managers.
26:57We really think women are going to have more money and how are they going to invest this money now is going to be also quite interesting. You think that it will benefit men as well? I think, I mean, hopefully it will benefit everyone. Having a more equal society that's more balance should benefit, I think, everyone. Everyone knows a woman as well. Everyone's got a daughter or a sister or a mother that they would like to, you know, surely everyone. And then for me, even like recently on maternity leave, like I really appreciated having my partner's salary coming in on. So it's going to be more money for the household.
27:30For maternity benefits. Yeah, exactly. Other than statutory pay. Yeah, exactly. I think it starts at like 100 or like 80 % and then it goes down after six months or something. So it does make a huge difference to the household when your partner's earning more as well. And the UK is desperate for productivity and growth. And if 50 % of your workforce are not at capacity, it's the easiest way to just get them working and incentivize them to work properly. Get them working and also promoting women within organizations. Like women-led businesses tend to have a better return on investment. So it's promoting these women and making sure you have enough senior leaders, women on boards, women at the top management is super important.
28:12As a business owner though yourself, can you understand, and most businesses in the UK are SMEs, right? They're small businesses. They're not all these mega corporations. Can you understand the conflict and the pressure on those businesses to promote women that then might leave the workforce for a year, two years? That's hard for them to shoulder that? Yeah, I think it's hard, but if you have excellent women in your team, you want to promote them, you want them to be the best they can and give them the best opportunity. and I know it's hard and there's so many things in business, you don't know, but men may leave also your business.
28:47So I think there's so many uncertainties around that. So I think it's trying to nurture your employees and women and especially mothers because they tend to be quite time poor. They will really give the best to your organization and that's what I've seen from my experience. I work with a lot of women who have children. They're like mega efficient, they're mega committed. so again you know that's a good investment especially if you look after them they're loyal because they appreciate the flexibility and stuff so they show up 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, I had to move on.
29:38Slow and expensive. Pretty much, yeah. This is one of the reasons that we're really happy to be partnering with TaxApp. It's a tech platform that makes self-assessment simple. Whether you're self-employed like me, a freelancer, or a director like Demo, big dog. Instead of sending endless emails, bills, and spreadsheets to your accountant, you just connect your bank, answer a few questions that are only relevant to you, and your tax return can be ready in as little as 15 minutes. TaxApp is really easy to use, and it's HMRC-recognized software. So it's safe, secure and legit the price is also decent so if you're self-employed with one income stream it's just 89 pounds as a one-off fee no big accountancy fees and we also have a discount code of course if you need to file a self-assessment this year give tax app a try we've left a link in the description and use the code money10 for 10 % off your first tax filing that code is money m-o-n-e-y one zero so mr carolet i hear you are a salesman elite salesman yes one of the best they say I've got a little bit of experience in the game, yeah, I could say.
30:36You've done a few deals. Bill, Bill. What would your compliance team say about you? They would say that I am always nagging them and that essentially I just have beef with compliance. I love the team. Compliance slows down all my deals because every time I get to the finish line, they've got to check documents, KYC, GDPR, and it's just a nightmare. It slows the deal down by like two, three weeks. It's always on both sides as well, isn't it? Sometimes it can be blocked on the other side. Well, that's where today's sponsor can help. Indeed. Vanta helps companies of all sizes get secure and compliant fast.
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31:43That's vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description though, so you can just click that. With the women that you speak to then, are there any mistakes that you see them making when they approach investing? I think the first mistake is not starting today. So they're sort of delaying because they want to do more research. And I think one of the big barriers is choosing a platform, choosing an investment platform. They're in front of this, like, I think in the UK, we have, what, 25, 30, maybe more investment platforms. And they're like, which one do I choose? I don't know.
32:15You know, you postpone your decision. And I'm like, that's okay. You're not marrying this investment platform. It's actually really easy today. Because the ISO rules are even more flexible. Exactly. And you can change that. So, you know, just get started. Pick a platform. If you want to do some, you know, there's some nice platform, as you say, where you can invest almost nothing. You can round up your savings so you can do that. It's just a nice and fun way that's not probably not going to pay for your retirement, but that's a nice way to get started. You can decide, you know, do your budget, decide how much you want to put something you, you know, you can swap.
32:45Maybe you spend less on this or you go, you negotiate or you renegotiate your subscription. You can sell a few subscriptions. The money you gain, you put it on an investment account on a stock center and you can get started. It's also telling them, you've been working for a long time. You probably have a workplace pension. You probably have a few different workplace pensions from previous jobs. Can you start with that? Maybe you could consolidate them, but you already have money that's sitting there. It's already invested. Can you actually look at your risk profile? We talked a little bit about risk.
33:17I think your point about risk earlier, I think that's a big mistake of thinking, I don't want to take too much risk because I'm quite risk adverse. But actually, risk is more an opportunity. So I think reframing risk and telling them, you know, you're not going to use this money in your pension for another 30 years. You can take a lot more risk than, you know, the default fund you're in. So I think this risk and all the disclaimers around risk. Calling it risk is the wrong thing. Calling it risk is the wrong thing. Yeah, because risk in people's minds are life or death, right? Exactly. That's how you think about it.
33:46You don't think about it as potential upside and volatility. You know. So I think that's like a second mistake. So this one can be solved by really looking at understanding, you know, what you invest in and how you can build your portfolio. So I think, yeah, starting earlier and probably thinking about risk differently. This analysis paralysis, I see all the time. People take a month to decide the platform and then they're like, OK, now I've got to pick a fund. And that's another six months worth of decisions. And it's like just chuck the money in. It's not going to break it. You know, you can always change later down the line.
34:19Yeah. And what I've seen also is people who followed friends advice or followed the news and they jumped into an investing trend. So, I mean, we've heard like probably crypto. You've heard about that. I've lost, I'm familiar. I've lost, I've lost some money listening to friends and yeah, trusting friends. Now, yeah, you've got to do your - Ex-friends. Ex-friends. Enemies. And probably, probably do your research. If you, if you haven't investing any, invested any money and you just pick one crypto or one stock, that's probably not the right way to do it. So I would say if you want to do that, just invest 95 % into something that you think is like solid standard that follows the rules of diversification and long-term investing, and then have a bit of money to play if you can afford to lose it.
35:01And you may earn a lot of money, but you may lose everything, but at least you're aware of that. And I think if you've made these mistakes with investing, you may be like, oh, I've tried investing a few years ago. i've lost so much money but it's actually different it's not the same investing when we talk about you're speculating you're speculating gambling and you're on your trader and we've done a lot of podcast episodes around you know what is what is a trader versus a long-term investor don't follow the hype but i think it's really difficult to comprehend until you have actually made this mistake so it's talking to these people who can share and that's why we're telling them you know start very small make your mistakes very early with you know small amount of money you learn from your mistakes and we've all made a lot of mistakes i mean when i built my first portfolio i had just a handful of stocks trying to sell at the right time by the right time paid you know a lot of fees losing some money but i think until you actually experienced it and you have this you know skin in the game i think it's really hard to comprehend so if you start with a smaller portfolio you make your mistakes and then slowly you rebuild your you think a lot of people start like that i definitely started i was like oh this oil stock this one that one then you lose money and I literally didn't invest in stocks for like two years because I was like, well, I'm not good at investing.
36:12Bye. Like I just lost some money. I'm not doing that again. And I was like, I think I was in university in my first year. And then, yeah, a few years later I started again and like went with a bit more, a bit more knowledge. But do you think that puts off a lot of people? I think that puts off a lot of people. And when you, you look at some, some of the trading platforms and the social investing where you're like following stocks, we talk, you know, like Tesla and the headlines and people look at, you know, Elon Musk and they're like, I should be part of it or I shouldn't. I think they make their first investments.
36:40They're looking for a very quick return. They make an investment,£50. Two weeks later, they're like,£45. I'm just going to sell. That doesn't work. You told me I would make money with investing. It's really talking about this long-term, long-term. I think it's not a five-year's game. Unfortunately, it's like a 10-year's game. That's why we've been here long enough and people have I've followed us and stuff, but it's not just coming, giving a quick investment advice and leaving. It's for them to have this very long horizon. Yeah. I think the perfect analogy is like the gym and, you know, people can read all the theory in the world, but unless you get in there and start lifting some weights, you don't know what it feels like.
37:20You don't know what it's like. And you're not going to get ripped after a day. It takes time, takes years potentially. And people have that attitude with the gym. They think, okay, well, a lot of people want to get skinny real quick, don't know but yeah if you approach it the same with investing i've been investing now for over a decade and it's completely changed my life and i think that after 10 years you see some real gains you know that's when you start if you passively invest consistently and what's interesting is this analogy with the gym actually is people think you know i'm going to the gym i'm getting fitter i'm getting better but with investing it's actually don't touch your portfolio too often so you're investing you're buying you're selling you think you're getting better but actually probably you're not getting market returns.
38:01No, no. Having a more passive approach where you don't need to think of your portfolio and change your allocation and look at your investments all the time, some of the platforms can do that for you. As you say, you pick an index fund, a global index fund, and you just have a regular investment every month that goes into that. It's now super easy to do, but it's showing people that it's actually easy, that it works over the long term and you have to trust your patience and trust doing nothing with your investments. Yeah. I think Peter Lynch said it's not having the brain for it, it's the stomach.
38:35That's the most important organ in terms of investing because I can't give investment advice, but I could sit anyone down and in two minutes just say, do this, do that, and do that consistently every month for 30 years and that'll be okay. But can you ride that ride for 30 years? And I think that's why women probably make better investors because they have a better temperament. Men are more go, go, go, go, go, you know, they're more aggressive. They want to make a move. They just want to do stuff. Whereas women might be slightly more long-term focused. Maybe that's why the women make better investors in the data.
39:08I think, yeah, what we've seen in the research is women tend to be quite diligent. So they probably take a little bit more time to get started. But once they get started, I mean, if they work with an advisor, they tend to stay with the same advisor. They tend not to change their portfolio that often. So as you said, not react to market fluctuations, so maybe a little bit less emotions in their investing and the long term. So they align their investment portfolios with their goals very often and they have something in mind. They want to pay for their kids' education or they want money for their retirement and they will leave their portfolio grow until they actually reach their goals.
39:42One thing that was interesting in the briefing call that you did, you mentioned around how people treat their children and that we even treat children female like young girls differently to men like pocket money and things like this it's that embedded yeah it's that embedded i think when you look at financial habits they acquired from a super young age from three to seven years old so you may have had this conversation very openly with your family or sometimes you was just observing what your you know parents or people were taking care of you were doing with with money so So are your messages you receive like money super scarce and you may grow up with this mindset?
40:16And on pocket money, that's quite interesting that girls tend to receive less pocket money than boys. So again, you know, that's the parents, you know, starting this habit. But now what I see on conversations we've been having with some friends is that women tend to put more money into their girl spot now than boys to bridge the gap and to give them, you know, this head start in life. life, you can save for your child, you can put money into their pensions from child's pension. They're like, okay, just in case to bridge this motherhood penalty and everything we've talked about, I'm just going to give her a head start and put money into her pension.
40:56Again, having this conversation from a very young age is important. It's what you can do financially for your kids, but it's also teaching them how to manage money from a very young age. You can start really young with concepts such as delayed gratification and maybe budgeting, shopping lists, some things that are quite small. They will grow up with great money habits that they can then apply to their own finances when they start managing their own money when they're at uni or they get their first student loan. They will know how to manage this first income, how to put it into different pockets.
41:34The role of delayed gratification is important because that will teach them about investing and maybe spending a little bit less today to have more tomorrow. So yeah, it's super important to start, but we need to think about our own beliefs also around money and what we think when parents give more money to boys than girls. That's a massive gap already. I find that very opposite. Any time I wanted money, I was like, Dad, she'd be like, go and work. But my mom would be like, mom, and she'd be like, yeah, have some money. Then my sister, anytime she wanted money, she was like, dad, and he would just give her money.
42:04And then my mom would be like, no, go and work. So yeah, I think it was the other way around. But understanding the value of money, I mean, you said, you know, you want money, go and work for it. I think that's the best way, and that's the best thing you can teach your kid. You know, we talk a lot about pocket money and should you give pocket money or not. I don't think you need to give pocket money to your kids. I don't give pocket money to my kids for them to understand the value of money. but it's maybe working on very practical things or having a shopping list just for yourself. So they're working on the list with you.
42:35You go in the supermarket with them and you will see two products that are priced differently. One is white label, one is a brand. There's a big difference in price. Is one better than the other? What is the choice I'm going to make? And at the end, looking at how much money I've spent versus how much money I've budgeted. And slowly, that will help children make these daily decisions. What we've seen during COVID is, I mean, I'm sure you've done it, I've done it, like prone to impulse spending and especially on Amazon and online platforms, because now we want to buy stuff today. We want to receive it the next day.
43:07And that sends, you know, the wrong message to kids. Like you buy something, you get it tomorrow. They see all these Amazon packages. They're like, what did you buy today? Is there something new? Even if you're not spending a lot of money, but they see what you're doing. And if you don't explain, you know, what's the rationale behind it? What's the budget? what's you know the overall picture they can get a little bit lost and pick up some of these of these habits my parents were big on doing chores like do wash the dishes you get five pounds wash the car you get 20 pounds things like that but um you said before that you're rubbish at doing chores in the house yeah i don't get paid for them i grew up getting paid for chores i'm not doing it for free now there's an argument that you shouldn't pay the kid to do the chores really well that you They should just do the chores.
43:48They should just do it. I don't pay for chores. Yeah. There was when you spoke to our producer, you mentioned that you left the finance world because you were one of the only women in the space. Can you explain that decision? What prompted you to leave? So I left finance because I wanted to do something else. I think that was the first reason. I wanted to build a business. I wanted to solve an issue that was important to me. and Vespod was one of the solutions and one of the things I did. But looking back at my time in finance, yeah, I think very few women within the space. We talked about this pipeline.
44:30So a lot of women as junior banker, but then as you grow up and you become more senior, you will see less women in these types of jobs. And at some point I was trying to find role models or leaders, find women who have been doing this career who also had, I mean, it was important for me to have a family. How could you combine the two and juggle the two? And I thought, okay, I'm going to see what I can do in the world of entrepreneurship and see if I can solve some of these issues. But I think now that it's important to see more. I mean, it's still important to see some senior women there. There are now some pipeline.
45:09They're trying to solve these issues and get more women into these senior positions. But it's also, I think it's a great career. for women. So, you know, it's, you can make a lot more money. You're going to work on super interesting things. It's going to be really intense. It's going to be really challenging, but I would invite a lot more women to consider, you know, having a career in finance. And today, you know, it's not something I would, I would write off of, you know, going back to finance or, or investing. You know, I spent a lot of time working for, for private equity funds. So I was amazing you know to be to be able to do that so i think we'd love to see more you know more women also in in this space do you think it's fair to say then that say on the investing side or the trading floor where the expectation is maybe to work 100 hours a week say that the woman can't say i want to do that job and have kids because to the man it's like you can't do that job and have a life you just do the job yeah you know so it's how do we make this these places a bit more flexible and allow women to have whatever they want and not all women will have families you know uh so So it's making sure, and there's all types of diversities that we want also in these banks and financial institutions.
46:18And I think that's really what they're trying to do is to have different people work and make the bank and fill in these roles. But it's not something that is always working, especially if you have a job where you have to travel a lot of the time and you want to be at home with family or you want to do different things. So I think it's really a personal decision of where you see yourself. and it's also what your employer can offer you to try to help a little bit more and keep women in these types of jobs. So it's having this pipeline of women that are going to be here, that are going to grow through these organizations and be able to lead these organizations.
46:55You know, I don't think it's meant against women. That's, you know, this thing, it's how do we work together to have more diverse places? Because that's, you know, you have to reflect, you know, what's happening in the world. I think it's naive to think that women can't do a job that a man can do. Debra Mida smashing it. It's crazy. Yeah. It is crazy. And when you made the jump to being an entrepreneur, is that the same business that you run now? No, it was another business, actually. What did you do? It was another business, a little bit more tech. So I started to look at, you know, tech. And I was living in Shoreditch at the time.
47:29And there was all these really tech cool businesses. So I started to sort of consult and work with a few businesses. I was doing business plans for them. I'm looking at how they could raise money. and I started a business. It was a recruitment platform for startups. So very quickly, we put a team together, raised a bit of money. So I run this business for a few years before setting up Vespod. But I always had this idea for Vespod at the back of my mind, especially since having had this meeting with an advisor who asked me, where's your husband? And I thought there's really something to do in the space.
48:02But what wasn't clear for me was what was the solution? What is the product I could build? And I didn't want to go head on into tech. So I thought, what else, what else can I do? And Vespod started really as a, you know, weekly newsletter, the cliche of the, you know, kitchen table, writing, building your own website. And that's what a lot of people are doing today is, you know, what can you do without funding? And the goal was to, you know, bootstrap and try to make money from this business and not raise capital too early. Was your first business a failure or did you exit? No, we closed the business.
48:36So you can call it a failure. How did that feel? Yeah, I feel really bad. Pretty shit. Pretty bad. Sometimes good, sometimes shit. Pretty bad. No, super bad. Because also, as you say, working in finance and private equity, and then you set up your business, and people are like, you know, good luck and amazing. Your parents think you're a bit crazy. You still do it. And when it doesn't work, you're like, wow, I've done everything for that. And also, I think in the UK, in Europe, failure is not something… It's not welcome. It's not like America. It's not welcome. You're meant to learn from your mistakes.
49:11It's all about me. And I think you have to try otherwise. And I could have stayed in banking and I could probably go back to banking if I want to. So, I think I always had that in the back of my mind. That's not what I want to do. But I think you learn so much from actually… from failing. So, you're trying to… I mean, it's always this risk-reward. So, you know, the more risk you take, of course, you increase your risk of failure, but also of success. So I think it's, yeah, digesting this and learning from it. And I guess that's why VestPod, you know, has been bootstrapped and we're trying to make to be sustainable and we're trying to build a business in a different way.
49:49What's your like overall goal or like your purpose? Overall purpose is really to get every single woman to start investing money and hopefully build wealth. but we're here at the very beginning of their journey. So it's to show them the options they have. Of course, we need to do all the money management thing because when I started Vespa, I really want to focus on investing, but realize actually organizing your finances, understanding you have this emergency fund, you have different goals, you want money to be aligned with these goals and how you create these different buckets of money and then make your first investment.
50:23Make it quickly and slowly increase your contribution over time. So we talk a lot about how to make that easy for you. So leverage some of the platforms online, some of the robo advisors probably to get started, or as you say, invest passively in an index fund. So how can you do that very, very quickly? And then we talk about how you can try to save a little bit more, how you can make your life a bit more sustainable, how you can increase your salary, maybe build a sale business. So we try to talk to a lot of people who can help you improve your money journey. And I think it was important to have these conversations.
50:57Before setting up Vespa, I think I never had any money conversation with anyone, personal finance, not with my family. That was always something, a lot of secrecy around money, that it was quite taboo. It's quite impolite to talk about money. And same at school, especially at the time, I was like, no, for girls, especially, you don't talk about these things. So you don't talk about it, but then you just need to talk about it. and being raised in a world where I worked in finance and I raised investments and I make big investments to then not being able to talk about your personal investment, I really see a disconnect.
51:32We're trying to reconnect the two. We're trying to help women develop trust also in the financial world because you may not like banks, you may not like financial institutions, but you have to use these platforms if you want to grow your wealth. Trying to make it really practical to make it empowering and have this conversation. So it feels a bit like coaching, like talking to a friend about money and having a community where you can share. We hosted this big festival at Coco in Camden a few months ago where we had - I'm familiar with Coco. Yeah, familiar for the party and concerts. So we organize our festival there because we just want to change the mindset around money and investing so we could host these events in big banks.
52:20But that feels very corporate. It still feels a bit scary to see people in suits. So that was super fun to have people on stage, live music, and have this super honest conversation about how even people seem quite successful and these money experts who talk about their struggle with money and how we could all do a little bit better for our personal finances without the pressure of wealth and being rich and stuff like that. And the conversations around money are interesting because I see that a lot. And I've always been quite direct working in sales. Everyone would get their payslip out at the end of the month and everyone would look at their payslips together because it was like encouraged.
52:57Because it's like, if you want to be like them, you know, sell more. So I've always been quite open, but I'll sit with family or friends and now they'll be like, I've just got a brand new BMW. And I want to say, can you afford that? Because you haven't bought it cash. You've clearly got it on finance. This house that we're in is on a 90 % mortgage. and i know the rate's probably five percent but they're like i'm doing so well and i'm you know there's no you can't say that because it's rude you can't say that you can't say can you really afford the bema should should you not just put it in an index yeah because i know the answer is no you know but yeah like these kind of the it feels the whole the whole country's backwards on its conversations with money shows of wealth are championed and sensible conversations about how much i earn and how much i'm paid and you had a layer of you know social media on top where you you you compare your life with other people but as you say you have no idea you know how much money they actually have and maybe everything you know you you know debt and credit to to pay for all these things americans are definitely better at talking about money than europeans i think and but they're also better at going on social media and flashing in everyone's faces so they kind of feed into that but they i think they would be like can you afford that car they would just straight away hey dude are you sure you can afford that because you just borrowed 50 bucks off me last week like they would just tell it how it is whereas english people and i guess french people probably a bit more reserved and like you don't want to it's a bit crass to talk about money and all these things but it probably benefits you a lot talking about money from a young age and being open about it how different are the french to the i think it's a bit similar like we really don't like talking about it um but from my experience i mean i've had once a friend asking me you know how much i earn and i was still working in banking and i felt like wow i i can't tell her because maybe i don't deserve this money so there's a lot of conversations in your head yeah guilt also um And again, like comparison.
54:39So I think having, I think it's important in a group of friends to start having these conversations because you don't know what your friends can afford. And, you know, we talk about, you know, weddings and now there's lots of, you know, hands party and stag and, you know, you're like, you have to pay that. Gender reveal pie. Or you have to change. So how much have you spent on that cannon that puffs out blue smoke? Exactly. Put it in an index. My sister wants to get fireworks for a gender reveal party. I'm like, I'm not doing that. Yeah, I'm like, she wants the fireworks. I'm like, why? And she's like, we've got to let everyone know what it is.
55:06I'm like, it's a boy. There you go. Job done. We don't need to spend money to tell people it's a boy. Yeah, fling out a tweet. Yeah, exactly. I've done it now. It's on Instagram. Everyone knows. It's fine. No fireworks. But I thought actually that investing was a nice way to start this conversation because it's something that's quite new. It's something that's, you know, quite trendy. Your friends can be intrigued about it, especially like, you know, some of my friends, if they're not investing, we can talk about investing and, you know, how you can make your money grow and what does it actually mean, how you can get started.
55:34and slowly they're like, oh yeah, but I don't have enough money or I've been in this job and I didn't get raised. That will open a lot of other conversations or they're like, oh, we're struggling a little bit at the moment. You open all these conversations about money, starting with something that feels maybe a bit dry or that's investing where you don't necessarily have an opinion where you can do it. There's a million different ways to invest, but you can do it in a very standardized way today. You can give them very practical tips on how they can start investing and why it's important. They will start thinking about their own money and own investments.
56:10Maybe that's not something they've been taking seriously, but maybe not in a very organized way and not with external support. That's where they start to maybe see an advisor, or they start mapping their finances, or negotiating a salary. That will open up a lot more conversation, which is quite interesting. Yeah, and you can start with a pound. Yeah. You know, all it takes is a pound. And I think most of it is internal narratives that are destroyed if you just put that pound in and leave it for four months. Put it in, a quid, in a global index, leave it for a year and see how you feel. And at the end, you'll be like, oh, I can do this.
56:43My life hasn't ended. I haven't lost all my money. You know, can go again. Hey guys, did you know that we summarized all of our episodes in the newsletter? You can find a link in the description. and please remember this is not financial advice like we say a lot on the podcast investments can fall and rise in fact it's pretty much a guarantee past performance is no guarantee of future results so your money is at risk with investing and other fees may apply as with everything financial please do your own research we really encourage that because no one cares more about your money than you i'm damo and t this was an episode of making money from our company most it was filmed and edited by the team at flow spire jack and ben it was produced by ruth edwards and brought together by Will Stollerman.
57:25What about Ruth and Ruth is a dog? Yeah, shout out them too.
From the publisher
Women are so much worse off with their pensions than men - to the tune of about £100k on average. What is going on and how do we fix it? We're speaking to Emilie Bellet the Founder and CEO of Vestpod, a digital platform and community that empowers women financially through education
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This is not financial advice. The reason it’s not financial advice is because it’s not tailored to you. We 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 than you and if you learn the basics then it will change your life.
