I Earn a Normal Salary & Could Retire at 43

0:00On this podcast, we often speak to investors, economists, and money experts. But I think some of the most interesting conversations that we have come from people outside of the finance industry. Today's guest is Cam, a serving soldier in the British Army and the creator of the Savvy Squaddy YouTube channel. So Cam, why did you want to join the Army?

0:19Cam:Well, do you know what? I ask myself that question every day. But no, I think from a young age, it was always something I really wanted to do. I was quite an outdoorsy kid, playing outside, building dens, running around with sticks and toy guns and all that. And that sort of followed me from my teen years. And then I suppose I kind of wanted to continue that into my adult life and maybe play with some real guns. So I joined when I was 19 back in 2024. Sorry, 2014. I joined in 2014. And I joined a Challenger 2 regiment. So Challenger 2 being the main battle tank, so a big tank pretty much, called the King's Royal Assiles.

0:55Cam:And they're located down in Tidworth. and yeah so um it was never really a level of um i want to join because like to serve my country or be patriotic that never really crossed my mind um especially at a young age when i was really into it um it was just i probably just want to play with some fun yeah it just sounded fun the adventure of it um and and the challenge of it as well where where are you from in the uk i can't quite place your accent somerset somerset is where i'm originally from but as we might get into in the military you move around a lot so no of course yeah yeah but you could have told me that your accent had a bit of a foreign twang to it almost like but yeah i get it's the somerset kind of drawl almost yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what it is it has got like you know like the southern twang that you get in america it's got that kind of like relaxed relaxed vibe i've always wondered that from your videos oh thanks what was um obviously making money podcast is the topic and we're going to get into the money in the army and that kind of stuff as well but i would like to That's what money was like growing up for you.

1:53Cam:Yeah, sure. So from what I can remember, at least my formative years, so sort of like my kind of pre-teens onwards, it was quite tight. And part of that was, or mainly because just before the 2008 crash, my mum and my stepdad bought house on two household income. Then crash happened, stepdad lost his job. And then it was my mum supporting me and my sister and my stepdad for a period, all on her own, like her own wage, as well as trying to pay a mortgage that was meant for two incomes. So it was quite tight. And I remember she would budget everything to the penny. So she knew exactly how many miles it was to work.

2:35Cam:She knew like the miles per gallon her car would require. So she knew exactly she would budget to the penny how much fuel she would need to put in. So she would be at the fuel pump, like, you know, just teasing that little, trying to get every last drop. um and uh and but then the challenge was that is when something unexpected would happen um that threw a spanner in the works and even though it was one of the memories that sticks out for me i can't fully remember how old i was but the school i was at we needed like two quid over for like a school trip or something i can't remember what it was for she had to write a note to the teacher to say could she pay it after she got paid because we didn't have the money uh to uh to pay it and school was absolutely sound and fine um but yeah so it was quite tight like my diet was mashed potato peas and and whatever meat was the cheapest of that week and i that was like for six seven years um yeah and i think that that really did influence then sort of how uh i see money and manage money into my later life um i've got three older brothers so when my parents divorced when i was uh six my three older brothers with the old man me and my younger sister with my uh with my mum and you can really see the difference between me and my sister and how we manage money compared to my three older brothers who aren't as good with with their finances more financially secure or like your was your biological father is that what you're saying yeah when they split yes no he was no no i was the lucky one i think right in terms of the influence your mom was in terms of the influence yeah i think i was the lucky one well me and my sister So we're the lucky ones with that.

4:11Cam:So yeah. And then like my sister bought her first, well, the house she's living in now at like 21. She's paid off already. And yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. That's a good setup. I want to talk a little bit about the army though, first of all, because being in a tank. So what is your day? Are you just in a tank? Not all day, but like you're spending time in a tank with like a couple of lads. My only experience with Tank is war movies, like Fury. Yeah. Brad Pitt and... We're definitely not that good looking. No. You're Shia LaBeouf. Pretty good looking guy. Thanks. So I should clarify, I'm no longer on tanks.

4:52Cam:No, I know. Yeah. For the audience, I transferred to be an army photographer. A really small trade was in the army back in 2019. But life inside a tank regiment, sort of the day-to-day is we're responsible for the maintenance of the tank. So I was a gunner, so I was in charge of all the gun equipment, keeping it clean, keeping it all maintained and usable. You'd have a driver who would do all the driver stuff, the engine and the tracks and all that. You'd have an operator who would be responsible on exercise when you're deployed there. They are responsible for loading the gun, essentially, and keeping us fed because they've got what we call the BV, the boiling vessel.

5:31Cam:It's the cooker. It's just a little tub of water in that boils. so you put your rations in. And then obviously you have the commander. So it's a four-man crew. The gunner, so my main seat, where I did most of my, I did about four years there, is essentially sat between the commander's legs. So you have the command, in the turret, you can imagine it, you have like the commander on one side and the operator on the other side and they're usually the ones with their heads poking out. The driver's down below and then the gunner is sat essentially between the commander's legs. So I'm getting all of the, all of the farts that he does.

6:02Like there's no air for me.

6:04Cam:The pro of that is, though, is absolutely when it's like when it is tipping it down outside, they're getting soaked and I'm staying nice and dry. But yeah, so but day to day was mainly maintenance and just upkeep of the tanks of the fleet that we had. And then you'd go and exercise every so often. You'd deploy it. At the time, we would go to Canada for about three months. And that's where a huge training area and you do all your high end battle maneuvers and tanks because there was plenty of space to have imaginary fights over miles as opposed to a couple of hundred meters. um and then uh we would uh i did opcabrit 2 and 4 so that was uh deployed to estonia uh and that's part of the enhanced forward presence in estonia essentially we've got um a battle group there uh just in case you know russia wants to do anything and one thing that's happened in in like modern war is that you see how tanks become quite vulnerable to say like drone warfare and stuff were you looking at that as a soldier thinking this is different to maybe what i would have expected going into this did you were you worried about that no um only because so when i was in on on the chalice it was between 2015 2019 so ukraine hadn't kicked off yet and the whole sort of drone warfare we're now seeing today um certainly wasn't in our mind it may have been in the mind of like the more kind of bigger picture thinkers yeah um but it never trickled down to us so it was never really a concern i can't remember this the statistic but it's quite high of like essentially your survivability on a battlefield in a tank you're quite a big target because because you've got quite a big punch so therefore you're also quite a big target so high survivability no no sorry low survival yeah yeah what's it like in the actual tank is it for me i just imagine be claustrophobic but i am six foot five and but like is it hot do you have fresh air air conditioning is it dark yeah so it is dark so especially if you're if you're closed down so the cupolas and that are shut um you have like you know it is dark um it can get quite hot um and it's i'm not claustrophobic so my gunner's seat uh that's that's the smallest seat you have the least space um i'm a bit of a short ass so i could barely touch the floor anyway so it was fine but yeah definitely for taller people they'd struggle um yeah just hot and sweaty and everything is you know well it's metal so when i was in estonia on kabrit 2 uh that was a winter tour so i think uh one of our exercises it was down to minus 20 or so so you can imagine when on a tank when everything is metal um is it is freezing and now and if it's really hot it's really hot in there yeah and there is vents like air con but that that's that breaks and it's never a priority to fix do you form quite like a tight unit as a four and obviously i can only imagine that amplifies if you go to war together say but is it is it like a little it's like this is our spot yeah definitely So we, sort of day-to-day on the tank park, you wouldn't, you're not necessarily always working as you're for.

8:55Cam:It's normally just the gunner and the driver who are doing all the actual manual labor of keeping the tanks up. It's when then you deploy on exercise or operations or wherever is then where you then really gel. So when we would go and train in Canada, the exercise you would do is, I think I did, was 32 days. so that's 32 days in the field living essentially off a tank living together as a four and doing everything together as a four uh and yeah you really do bond and and gel and um the uh my driver who was uh back then like we're still in contact today he's left of uh the military now but yeah we're still in comms chatting always and did you pick did you pick to be in in a tank to start with because you were like this is the biggest gun that kind of decision you said well you said i wanted to touch some guns yeah pretty well initially because when you think army you think oh infantry frontline warfare and then so initially i was going to join the rifles um and then i had a why do i want to do that let's go tanks pretty much was my was my thought process so i was like tanks are still well tanks are cooler in my eyes so um so i i made the switch from like rifles to then um well i wanted to go royal tank regiment rtr uh but they had just amalgamated uh and then the recruiter said well you can join krh that's located in the same place and they have the same...

10:10What's the difference between those two regiments?

10:12Cam:Nothing other than their name and traditions and things like that. Is that Royal Tank Regiment more prestigious almost? So they were the, like, you could say almost like the first. So that was World War I. I'm probably going to get people in the comments now, like, they were really tank nerds. So they were, so, yeah, World War I, I think they were formed with the first tanks. And there's not really, there's three Challenger 2 regiments and they would be attached to, I'll try to explain it simply. If we were to deploy tanks, there would be a rotation of regiments that have tanks. So you have like, you know, there's multiple infantry regiments, but they all do the same job in that sense.

10:51Cam:You know, they're all trained to the same standard. So we have multiple regiments. So then if things, it's just simply rotation through. So then, so RTR, other than the name and the traditions, are you know they have the same role as krh as well as the other tank regiment which is queen's royal hussars qrh okay so when you joined were you a private is that right yeah essentially yeah so for i was it was within the royal armored corps class as trooper but yeah it's the same kind of rank they just call it a troop yeah like artillery i think they're called gunners okay and that's the same level and would that be the bottom level essentially yeah do you mind me asking what the pay was at that level back then 24 i would say low 20 thousands okay low 20 thousands well so in training at the top so when i was going through training it was i think 16 000 pounds uh phase one phase two training um and then once you got to like your regiment you had a bit of a pay rise because you're fully trained um and then it must have been low 20 thousands at that point um that's now changed uh people in training now get paid the exact same as those who have finished their training and that was partly to you know increase recruitment because if you've got a slightly older person who wants to join but might have some financial responsibilities uh where necessarily a younger person doesn't have those yet then they would be less inclined to join because they're going to have potentially the first six months of their career on a you know a much lower um income so they've now bought that in line uh with um normal like your fully trained privates and we actually just are i had our pay award announced yesterday um at the time of recording uh which was 3.6 percent um so now a private soldier joining the military uh whichever service is i think it's 27 000 pounds now they'll start on okay and you can join um that goes for the same for um your junior soldiers so you can join at 16 and go to harrogate they'll get paid 27k from essentially 16 years old i mean it's a great salary it's 16 well that's the thing after tax it's about 1900 pounds and there's lots of other points to the pay that are not direct money in your bank account, but are quite big savings.

12:56Is that right? Can you talk us through the whole package? What would you get as a private going in?

13:00Cam:So yeah, I think something that's quite, people fall foul of or are quite guilty of is you look at the salary and then you can make that comparison to others and you're like, well, that's less, I don't want to join them. Or, you know, I don't want to do that job, but there's a lot more to it. So one of the benefits we get is subsidized accommodation. So whether, if you're married with a family, you get subsidized housing. That's what I'm currently living in. and if you're single um you have subsidized accommodation which is normally situated on camp um the higher standard of that is like your your single room with an ensuite the lowest standard is probably more akin to a prison cell but you don't pay for that but you speak to them that you know uh the guys and girls that live in the sort of the less desirable accommodation they'll um uh you know they'll happily pay some money to actually have you know higher kind of living standards you're still talking cheap right yeah you live in winchester yeah yeah so i live in winchester i live in a three-bed service house um with a garage um and i think is it the rent is about 280 pounds and then with essentially council tax on top i think and my and garage is a separate charge all in all i pay 400 pounds a month wow for a three-bed house and winchester is like the most expensive place in the uk exactly you probably pay thousands for that Yeah, so I did.

14:19Cam:So my salary after the pay rise, so I'm a sergeant, so I'm on$47 ,000 now with the new pay rise. And last year I did a video on it. Essentially for me to live exactly how I live now, like in Winchester with not see a dip in my living, my lifestyle, my family's lifestyle, I'd need to earn about$90 ,000. Wow. So it's all that other cost that people don't consider. um you know uh our medical is really like you'll get seen a lot quicker uh with you know um within the army and the military our dental is free um pension is amazing which we'll get into you get fed a lot don't you whoa so there's there's on-site caterer like and um it's it's subsidized people will complain about the quality of it but it is cheaper um other people so the newer blocks are now getting kitchenettes so people can now cook for themselves um and there's different tiers to the accommodation so the more sort of ensuite uh rooms with a kitchenette in like the common room area they'll you know you'll pay more for that than you would your sort of room with a wardrobe and a bed and shared um toilets and showers but a private can do sorry a soldier can decide the quality so they could go i'm going to give up a bit of pay and have a nicer room no no so unfortunately it's um the combination is depending on where you're posted so if a private joins a unit and then they're um and that unit is at one of these locations which are um under don't have amazing accommodation then unfortunately they're just going to be that's where they're placed and they don't really get a say in that um so it's depending on where you're located and how updated those facilities are within that camp it will then depend on you know the the style or the standard of accommodation um but that that subsidized accommodation is a huge factor because um whilst again we might look at salaries and compare salaries more often not the more accurate won't be like well what's the disposable income and what can you what can you actually so okay your salary is that much but actually your disposable income is this much and while someone might earn a few thousand pounds more well they've got to pay also a lot more in utilities and your rent or a mortgage and all these things um so it's it's that level of disposable income people should within the forces and that should look at um and the lifestyle they're able to to sort of lead because of it so what were you spending your money what kind of lifestyle were you leaving living and yeah what were you spending your money on back then um so when i was uh a trooper and an allowance corporal i was i just felt very boring like i'd go out like we go out on the weekend every so often but i wasn't one of these people that would go out every weekend and waste my money on just booze and that we would you'd have a few they'd get to the end of the month and they'd have nothing to show for it in fact they'd be in an overdraft or something and you're in the same position you're just a bit smarter and you've put a few hundred pounds away still living all right but like um and you get to the end of months and you've got you know still a balance in your bank um so i was i was fairly again because of the child my childhood i was putting away maybe on average about 800 pounds a month um even even back then in your 20s in my 20s yeah yeah yeah uh and when we go away so as a fairly new trooper in when i joined the regiment um i moved or not moved i got um sort of like a temporary posting to canada for eight months um and i was doing i was a safety driver so where you have the exercising troops they're off training but you also have the safety staff who follow behind kind of making like taking notes and you know they'll give feedback on how to improve and all that um now i wasn't one of them i wasn't qualified but i was their driver so um it was a great sort of eight months to do um but whilst we are whilst there when we do go overseas you'll get extra money so um you get LOA which is i think local overseas allowance so that's a it's like a contribution in terms of well this place is a bit more expensive to live so here's a top up so if you need to go and buy some extra bits and bobs you're not out of pocket as much and then you get lsa which uh longer separation allowance and that's tiered i think there's 15 levels depending on how many days you've done out of bed um and uh it will you'll i think at the time it's probably like seven pounds a day um for like a quite a low level do you think that like as a total package the army is quite well paid yes controversial i know well some um overall yeah i think um like like i said i'd need 90k or So to live how I live now on civilian street.

18:50Cam:And like, it's certainly not impossible. I could leave the forces and go into a job like that. But realistically, I'm not going to walk into a job straight away at a young age. I also don't think you're going to earn 90K as a photographer. You know what I mean? Like as a comparative job as well. I mean, you don't get to be a gunner in the civilian street, right? Well, exactly. Well, that was one of the reasons why I then, I enjoyed my job as a tank room and a gunner, but it's not, you know, it's not transferable. Yeah, it's not transferable. And I did photography and videography as a hobby. Found out then it was a job in the army.

19:16Cam:And then I was like, well, let's transfer and do that. And the trade course that we do at the time was eight months long. And that's up at RAF Cosford. It's a tri-service course, so near Birmingham. And it was in those evenings. So at that point, that was summer of 2019 I started that course. And it was at that point where I had between 20 to 30K just sitting in my savings account, like not even a high interest one. like so my experience as as as um in my teen years was like oh yeah save money put it away but then i never knew what to do with it um so it was just like i had all this money sitting in a savings account and um and it was then in the evenings where after i would finish you know the course for that day i'd go back to my room and i then just started looking a lot more into like investing and what can i actually do for this money um and then i started looking more into oh well what about the pension because we're always told that oh the armed forces pension is amazing but i never knew actually how amazing it was and then you have the other side of the pensions changed a few times over the last sort of couple of decades so you have the old and bold who don't really understand the old pension but also don't understand the new one telling newer soldiers that their pension is rubbish because they're comparing it to one that you know like closed really good final salary ones that they got in the past yeah so so the one that they're referring to is the armed forces pension scheme 75 um that finished in or that we then moved to the o5 scheme in 2005 so it closed to new applicants um but anyone on the scheme obviously um it was honored uh and that one was um you for another rank so not an officer you do 22 years from your 18th birthday as long as you do 22 years you get an immediate pension when you leave so you could have if someone joins at 18 they do 22 years at 40 40 years old they're getting a pension for life so very expensive we'd be there mate yeah we'd be there in the wrong industry so like like he says expensive because it's 40 50 year commitment potentially exactly and so whilst the newer schemes that we've now moved on to are less financially generous like there's um so that's what they're comparing it to um it's it's also quite wrong and disingenuous to compare a pension scheme that closed 20 years ago when especially when i think it's like 70 percent of people joining the military today are under the age of 21 so like they weren't even born weren't even born then um uh to yeah tell these like this newer generation come through that their pension is terrible when it's still like and also on the background that all pensions over the last two decades have i've got a lot well yeah you get someone like um i don't know british gas going oh my pension was amazing back in the day you know it's they don't exist anymore it's the same everywhere the db schemes have tightened up for everyone it's not just the army exactly i'm just trying to like educate people on that and like and our armed forces pension scheme which we're now on a 15 so that came into effect in 2015 um it's still probably one of the best what is that what do you get if you know what are the rules around that so two years minimum service um and it's from the first day of paid service so as soon as you start training two years and then you're entitled to a pension it's a it's not a final salary when it's a career it's a care so it's career average revalued earnings.

22:27Cam:So essentially every year it's one 47th of our pensionable pay, which is about just over 2%, um, gets put into our annual pension. So not a pension pot, our annual pension. So what, how much we'll actually get paid. Um, so, uh, and then, uh, every year that's revalued with the average weekly earnings index. And that happens, um, essentially for, you know, your career. And then obviously as you progress up to promote, you promote, you get paid more, then more and more gets put into your pension. And then our contracts or our careers are normally 24 years. Where the older scheme had an immediate pension when you left, so if you did your 22 years or whatever left, you had an immediate pension for life.

23:12Cam:In order to get an immediate pension under this new scheme, you have to serve until 60 years old, which for the majority of people is just not going to happen because we all join sort of 18, 19, and we're going to be leaving in our early 40s. So we're not going to get an immediate pension, which means it's deferred. And it's deferred until state pension age is now linked with the state pension age. But as a form of retention bonus or to retain us, they introduced something called the early departure payments, the EDP. And what this will do is when I leave the forces, let's say I'll be 43 when i leave i'll get a tax-free lump sum at age of 43 and i'll have a taxable monthly income up until state pension age but it's a percentage of the um pension so you are still going to get an income yeah if i'll still get a an income taxable yeah it's it's it's an income so it's normal like pension it's a pension benefit solution it's not the pension uh the was it the finance act 2004 essentially prohibited pensions being paid before the age of 55 which is one of the reasons why the 75 then has to change um so that's um so we'll get that paid that early departure payment is paid then up until um state pension age and then at state pension age it stops and then the actual armed forces pension takes over um the the edp it's not necessarily enough to live off um but it's certainly enough to give you sort of freedom flexibility might be enough to pay your mortgage things like that so um my projection uh if i sort of continue on the career progression i'm on my annual pension will be in today's money i think it's about 24 000 pounds from state pension age um uh but the early departure payment i think was about 800 pounds a month okay um so uh but again basics covered right yeah and there's no other workplace pension that i'm aware of that offers that offers that and something else people don't realize is obviously in civvy street you have to contribute to your pension we don't we don't pay a penny towards our pension that is reflected in our pay so that is a consideration when they think about our pay awards and stuff like that it's like well they don't contribute to the pension so you know we might get less of a pay award because of that but all the other public sectors all have to contribute part of their salary to their pension we don't so you get all your salary and they just kind of put to about 147th into your pension and then when you retire if you retire before 60 you get kind of covered yeah yeah that's quite cool money has covered that gap and then sort of what i'm then trying to do is okay well to draw in that gap of what for me it'd be what if state pension age age stays at 68 for me then what 25 years um you know i can invest passive index funds and then in an isa and potentially over that kind of 25 years if i if i have a big enough pot i can withdraw and then edp mixed with kind of that isa income retired in your 40s could retire in my 40s additionally i could take that edp income and pile more into like just pile more into investing and then the other thing i i is a potential we claim we can claim our pension early at age 55 it's just reduced because it's paid out for a longer period of time um but that also doesn't affect the edp so i could almost that edp could be invested from like age 43 to 55 where i then maybe retire on with more of an income overall but yeah um my uncle was an officer in the army and i asked him like oh what kind of things should i ask and he and he just he just mentioned that When he served, the officer pension was different to the soldier's pension.

26:43Sorry if I'm using the wrong terminology. And I was just wondering, does that create any form of animosity at all in the army, do you think?

26:51Cam:There's always been an officer-soldier divide, and there always will be. So the 75 pension, so with another rank, so your soldiers, it was 22 years of service from the age of 18. Any service before 18 didn't count. with officers it was i think was it 16 years service from the age of 21 or i might be getting my numbers mixed up there but it was less service from a slightly because normally they would do uni and come in um but it was they were required to do less service uh for then what would end up to be also a higher pension um but the new pension so the 15 scheme is the same for everyone it's just average earnings 147.5 salary okay so it kind of unifies yeah even though the officers obviously earn more it's like well they're still yeah yeah it's the same scheme it's the same scheme it's just they earn more so their pensions you know it will be more i never heard of an army photographer before this i'm really interested to know what does the job entail do you still get a gun do you like go if there's a war are you on the battlefield taking pictures instead of like shooting who's taking all the pictures that you look at online yeah so so people like so um so in world war ii a lot of that footage and photographs that we have are from what at the time was the army film and photographic unit so the afpu they were headquartered out of pinewood pinewood studios and um they were uh soldiers either trained in how to use a camera or a lot of them were like journalists who then became soldiers but then you know joined that trade and a lot of that footage that we have today is because of of military photographers um so that's our core role is if and when we are involved in another conflict um we would then go and document that at the moment because we're more of a peacetime army it's then um more about like strategic communications and like projecting what we're able to do, you know, like highlighting, here's our capability to reassure the taxpayers, sort of show where the money's going.

28:39You make content for the army to like social media content and stuff like that, are you saying?

28:44Cam:Yeah. Like you'd interview a general about like what's going on. Yeah, so we do sort of both internal and external communications. So we do like, and yeah, pretty much. Do you work with recruitment as well? No, no. Getting people into the army? No. No, no, we have nothing, that's been contracted out to civilians. So we have nothing to do with recruitment. A lot of what we do is, of course, for posterity reasons. So in 100 years' time, just as we now look back on the stuff from World War II, in 100 years' time, we had photographers out in Afghanistan embedded with the infantry and all that, capturing what they do.

29:16Cam:So, yeah, in many years' time, they look back and look at those images and video of Afghanistan. So that's our core role. But whilst we're sort of a peacetime army, we're training for that, but also we do all the other sort of kind of corporate communications. My uncle won an award for a picture he took in the army. Really? Yeah, I'm going to get my camera and get it out. My phone's on it. We can keep talking, I'll whip it up. Yeah, he was a colonel, I believe, but he liked photography. Yeah. Do photographers get like special kind of, you know, like a medic, right? And I think it's probably seen as pretty bad form to shoot the medics.

29:55Do photographers have that protection? like war correspondents have the blue hats don't they where it's like oh just leave him alone he's

30:01Cam:no so we don't we're still soldiers first so we'll still have our weapon systems with us um and um there is so our old head of trade he has a he has a cool video he likes to pull out where he was head cam video of him on patrol uh and they get contacted uh and so he's a soldier first so he returns fire and does all the stuff we're trained to do and then he picks up his camera and while it's uh under fire and the the rest of the um of the section he's with are you know engaging the enemy he's then taking photos of that and he's got um he has this really cool video uh where he's like it's his head cam video and then as he takes the photo you know the photo that he's taken of that like you know pops up on screen and it's a sort of a great um i don't want to say advert but like it really showcases what what our role really is um because you know picture paints a thousand words uh and um part of our role especially in combat will be um an element of you know well here's the narrative that we want to put out um or to counter you know because naturally especially in this age of like information warfare um an adversary could say oh well the british army have gone and done this and you know like cropped in on an image which makes us look really bad but we've got the other image which we can actually release and be like well here's the bigger picture here's the context um so so that's quite an element of our job as well um one of the guys when he was in afghan he was tasked with photographing from essentially from point of injury back all the way back to bastion so when he was on patrol and someone unfortunately got blown up he had to then photograph the whole process of all the medics attending to him the helicopter coming in being medevac back to bastion and all that and he had to do that for then to be essentially training material so then the doctors and that in the hospital could understand the processes that were happening so then they could tailor their sort of their procedures and you know be more prepared and understanding of what actually it's like here's the picture we've got slap on the screen we've got an audio only audience a lot of people so can you describe what you can see in that image yeah so that's um uh someone in a i don't know what helicopter that is but he's on a gpmg so general purpose machine gun and he's he's looking out the window as it's flying over it's a desert yeah but that's an amazing photo right and my uncle's pretty good at taking pictures that's lovely that oh wow um so that's kind of how i knew that that was part of that world that's how i got introduced to the army photography and you don't really consider all of the stuff you see on like the beaches of dunkirk and things like this it's like someone's got a camera you just think oh we get the images somehow there's there was there's a quote i like i i don't remember i can't remember who said it but it was the brave ones shot bullets the crazy ones shot film yeah um and it's like yeah because those those guys are like d-day and that they didn't have they had a pistol that was it and then obviously the film cameras that they had carrying all their then the actual rolls of film and everything yeah and just to be like bullets fly i'm gonna stop and this is an angle the lighting's lovely here like do i mean like that kind of whereas everyone else is i just get to cover yeah get get my mission done you know they're like actively trying to capture the vibe of that moment like you said it must be You've got to be built differently.

33:09Different gravy, as they say. Do you see there's a potential for the job to become, to not exist in the sense of we could just put body cams on everyone. You've got the new meta glasses. You could have all the soldiers just recording everything that's going on around them. Drones as well could just capture the imagery that's going on.

33:28Cam:I think there'll always be a need for us and then we'll evolve because there'll be need of all the processing. Who's going to process all the images. And all that. So and then as and when, so, you know, we'll be venturing more into different technologies as it comes out to, you know, maintain our capability and expand it. So whilst we're called army photographers, I do probably a lot more video than I do photography now. I do a lot more sort of graphics and all sorts of where like kind of content production in general is what we do. It's probably more accurate. It's just not, I suppose, a sexier of a name.

34:05um but that's how i know you because of your channel um savvy squaddy i just stumbled across i mean being a uk finance creator you get to learn everyone in the space and i always like i liked your channel because it's aimed at aimed at people who serve in the army yeah it's kind of you've got like an animation uh you did that before everyone else as well you're like a faceless channel i

34:25Cam:would call it yeah yeah but so the reason well the reason behind that was um and i kind of shot myself in the foot in that you know the workload i do everything myself so the workflow for it is Lots of animation. Yeah. But it was more at the time I started it, it was, I wasn't sure how like the chain of command and people would react. And I was like, I'd rather be anonymous and have a positive effect than, you know, have the army or someone try and shut me down. Because God, even though everything I talk about is public information and I link all my sources and all that, you know, someone might try and shut me down.

34:57Cam:That never happened. But, and then the other thing is to connect with my audience, you know, I want to be in uniform, but policy and all that i can't really be in uniform and do secondary roles and all that type of stuff so the way to get around that was animated character um we weren't taught that on our course or anything so that was something at the start of covid um i just buried myself into like a lot of just professional developments i had this idea this is what i'm going to do right now i need to teach myself like after effects animation photoshop graphic design uh and i've and then and now that our trade is slowly also moving towards that as well like a a lot more graphics and like after effects and other tools for the toolkit essentially for us to be able to produce the content but um yeah i could it was at the start of covid wasn't it as well there's quite a big explosion of like uk personal like finance youtubers so when everyone started and then obviously then quite a lot of people like sort of died off um and i was like well i kind of want to get involved but i'm going to niche down even further and and just essentially focused solely on the on the armed forces community you've done the right thing because you know in a way slightly different but i niched into the uk because everyone always thought you have to speak in dollars to be able to make finance content online on youtube work because everyone does right and you had like the big guys like graham stefan and andre jick at the time i'm just going to speak in pounds and focus on the uk and the advice that i was getting at the time was like it won't work but you you went army and i think you just become the guy right and yeah Within the army, are you considered like, oh, that's where you go for the information?

36:29Because you put out really good stuff.

36:32Cam:Yeah. So I get like clerks or HR specialists, like even messaging me saying, yeah, I use your videos all the time to like help explain like the topics and that to the soldiers. I don't actively go around and be like, oh, hi guys, I'm the Savage Squad. But my voice is becoming obviously a lot more recognisable. Yeah, you've got a pretty distinct voice. So people now are like, I just finished a course, and we had to do a presentation. And after my presentation, one of the guys came up to me and goes, am I placing your voice correctly? And I was like, yeah. Cool. But, I mean, I wouldn't want the Army, and they wouldn't, anyway, promote me because then the other thing is I don't want to be seen as a mouthpiece for the EMOD.

37:11Cam:Because then you start to lose credibility, especially, like, you know, soldiers can be quite cynical. um so uh it's very important that everything i do is like publicly sourced and i'm not a mouthpiece for the mod it gives me a bit more freedom to say and like share my opinion a bit more and upset some other people i've had complaint already against me um because i upset someone but um so i i wouldn't want the army or the mod to essentially promote or share my stuff um at least officially i know people within chains of command um do um and that's very good of them and I appreciate that. But I mean, I've been doing it, what, five years now?

37:50Cam:So it's like, oh, it's grown. What is it that made you start learning about investing? And what's the first thing you invested in? First thing I invested in was, I can't remember the first, it was Vanguard. So I opened up a Vanguard account tail end of 2019, I think it was. So whilst I was on my photography course, that's when I had that sort of 20, however much it was, 25K or whatever it was, sitting in a low, you know, essentially losing out to inflation. So what can I do with this? I don't want to buy property. So it was just curiosity. What can I do with it? Start looking into investing. At the time, Mama Furfer.

38:25Cam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she essentially completed her YouTube channel. And then, yeah, opened up Vanguard and started with Vanguard. And then, yeah, I've been doing that pretty much ever since. Then I transferred over to Training212. but um you started in the right way though you know you didn't go stock picky blow all your money fx trading you know i was very i mean like i have a bit of fun money so like you know i've just you know a bit of you know a bit of experimentation and a bit of fun but oh yes index fund index fund and yeah by start of every month's buy and i don't even look at it now um and then yeah and it's just grown and then so and what i try to teach people so i had that sort of like 25 30k i obviously it's great in hindsight but i sort of did the backwards math and like had i started from like day one week one and invested where would i be now and i think the portfolio would be almost half a million pounds um how do you classify day one my first day of page like so my first my first paycheck yeah if i started investing then my portfolio would be about half a million i think you did pretty well mate like don't beat yourself up about that No, no, no.

39:34I was. No, no.

39:35Cam:But it's an example I tried to give to the junior soldiers. It's like you're in a position now where you have very few financial responsibilities. You have a lot of disposable income. Put some money aside every month at the start of the month. And then just do it. If you do it religiously for your 24-year career, you'll be absolutely sorted by the time you leave. Obviously, I'm not like go completely frugal and never have fun. I'm like, you know, pick a set amount, whether it's 300, 400, whatever, do that and then enjoy the rest. I'm not like, you know, you can't have fun. Absolutely have fun, but also set something aside.