I Started Investing 6 Years Ago - Now I Can Retire At 50

0:00This episode was made possible by Vanta. If you're building a business and you need to prove that you're compliant with security standards like GDPR or SOC 2, then Vanta can save you a lot of time and money. You can book a demo using the link in the description. One thing I've learned from interviewing hundreds of people about money is that numbers are only part of the story. Today we're speaking to Neil, better known as Neil Invests, not just about his portfolio but his journey and what got him here and whether it's everything he thought it would be. is that is the um you know the invests content like is that one of your biggest pieces of content like short form yeah it is i was thinking this i was gonna say it's hilarious it's the first video i saw of yours and i was like damn i've seen this he's like he's coming in and i message you and you're like i'm coming on the podcast i'm like oh i was already following you and you weren't following me and i saw it i was like oh my god he follows me i felt that was like a life-affirming moment for me i was like oh my god neil invest follows me you were like due to due to her catastrophic clerical error you know when i don't know if you get this as like a creator but when you see someone else's video and you get jealous that you didn't like make it it's one of them i was like guys you know i've been planning that six months it came into my head six months ago i was desperate for april fall's day to come around oh you saved i bought the best before and i had it all written out and everything and i practiced it loads of times i knew it was going to be a banger but also those videos where you build your personal brand and be a real person personally they do better than the stuff where I'm explaining a socks as I say.

1:30Definitely. The second biggest video I did was bloody four weeks ago, and it was saying how expensive it is to fill a Panini album. It was like a million views. I told people about that. It's like 1 ,600 quid. So the Panini stickers. Yeah, yeah. You quoted an algorithm, didn't you? Yeah, it was 1 ,200 quid. 1 ,200 pounds. If you were to buy the individual packs. I had the son reach out to me saying, can we interview you for this? I was like, no, no, no. Let's talk about my trading two and two code. i think um yeah because my my son was like they give these books away for free i was like well did you know mate because he was like because they give them away for free don't they it's a racket they basically give the sticker book away for free but to guarantee that you can complete the whole book you need to buy 1200 quid's worth of stickers it was like do you remember when we were younger you used to go build a battleship buy a magazine once every two weeks first magazine 99p and you get the beginning bit of a battleship then you gotta buy a magazine for the next three years to build open it ends up costing 1500 quid yeah i had i had a t-rex where it was like you know you can um first bits free and like over 7 000 magazines you build this t-rex i just added a leg i had it on my windowsill for years no one finishes them but that leg probably cost you about 200 quid the funny thing is that uh it was my mom's boyfriend at the time who i'd grown quite fond of and like he would like bite me every week and we build a bit and then he left her so I just had this like leg as a memory of like you know just another man walked out my life trauma speaking of early age trauma mate like um I've been quite interested to chat to you about this because I think you're we're strangely similar in a lot of ways um I don't know if that's a thing amongst finance creators to be honest but I would like to ask you about your desire for wealth building and retiring early has that come from a good place for you uh has it come from a good place um it's come from right from childhood i think i heard you talking about it in an episode like i was always the sort of person that would be emptying out the penny jars and counting my money and i would love i go to bed and spend 20 minutes counting out my pennies and working out how much i've got and i at that time it was around saving up for possessions I used to, one of the things my parents taught me about was very much, you know, if you want a hi-fi, which I wanted, or a guitar, you have to save up, you have to work for it.

3:51So I realized that money was a tool in order to be able to bring that sort of joy. But then as I got a little bit older, I always wanted to have some sort of wealth. Now, I went on a different path that we'll discuss, I'm sure, in a little bit. But I was desperate to make that happen somehow. I didn't want to be in the system for 40, 50, 60 years. That was the last thing I ever wanted. it is a path I had to take for 20 years to get to a point where I can start to move out of it but did it come from a good place I think it came from it yeah it's not for me about Lambos and gold watches and gold chains and gold chains it's more about that freedom and that's where that desperation for wealth generation came from I I'm not a lazy person I loved working hard I love doing the things I want to do but I hate being stuck in a system where you have to ask permission if you want a day off tomorrow why do you think you're not free i do now yeah okay so now you see now you've in a way have you ticked that box scratch that itch almost no i've begun to so i was made redundant last year um i've been creating content for six years that redundancy gave me the kick up the ass to try and make a go of it that comes with its own pressure as well you know every month i earn a different amount up and down brand campaigns affiliate whatever it is ad revenue it goes up and down it's uncertain when you have a day job you get paid at the end of the month however you've performed however the business has performed so i don't feel completely free because i am binded to that because i've not reached my financial independence numbers yet once i get to that point i will have an enormous sense of i have a pot now that i do not need to do another minute of work for the rest of my life and i'm not going to run out of money do you mind asking how much that number is yeah so my plan is 540 000 pounds by the time i'm 50 so i've gone on a granular level of detail to work out exactly how much i need to pay my bills um for my house that's everything all of the bills the mortgage the food etc and i also have a private pension that at current rate will be worth around 700 000 pound by the time i'm 57 so the goal is to use an isa bridge 540 at 50 to bridge to reach pension and with a five percent withdrawal mine's five percent i'm prepared to take that risk because of i know the pension's coming at a five percent withdrawal i'll then when i access that 700 if the markets continue to behave have over a million at 57 which i'll be able to release 40 50 000 pound a year are you planning to run that isa bridge down to zero or are you gonna you want to have money left because five percent is quite a low withdrawal over only seven eight years yeah you could go much higher i could go much higher so five percent is 27 000 pound on 540 so that is enough to pay everything now what i would you know that's a that's a very moderate standard of living but i am a pretty moderate person i get my joy for very simple things you got your chickens mate so you got the protein sorted the butt nuggets i literally laughed at a video of yours where it was like chicken butt nuggets but no i I can't remember what it says yeah farm butt nuggets on my chickens yeah I keep chickens I grow vegetables that's where I get my joy from being outside that's very cheap to do and it also gives me food because I grow veg and my favorite thing is in the middle of summer going out getting a few eggs getting a courgette getting a bit of salad making a courgette omelette and a salad on the side from stuff that I've grown and harvested that is just joy for me so yeah it is a conservative and I could take more.

7:22And I'll decide whether I do that or not. But reaching that number, and it's very interesting you ask that because I've recently been going, I've worked with a independent financial planner, Ian Dempsey. I'm going to do some content on it. And I worked out that my dream always used to be to have a farmhouse and land, acres of land. And once I got to that point, I would feel completely free. Now, the reality is he did all of the numbers we went through on a real detailed level for hours and hours and he said I can make that happen for you in three years and when he said that it terrified me because it meant liquidating some of my ISA and potentially pushing that financial independence number what it made me realize is that my number one goal is not the farmhouse it's that level of security from stocks and shares ISA and a pension that means that I am free absolutely 100 % free from the system and that is something that I'm obsessively working towards make happen you you mentioned a lot uh in your videos and just i think earlier today that um not having to conform to i can't take a lunch break now or i've got to do this do that have you got your personal freedom and you're now chasing financial freedom and how does it feel if you have got your personal freedom it's awesome it is unbelievable now i got to a point where i was pretty senior in in in industry so i was head of department for a multi-billion business at one point and with that comes pressure and it looks relatively glamorous traveling around the world doing all sorts of stuff really cool projects now I did do really cool stuff but it is always Monday morning 8am you're starting you're working you could be traveling a couple of times that week you're away from your family there's a customer meeting on Thursday I don't care if it's your son's birthday you're in that customer meeting in Kings Lynn or wherever it may be I missed my kids birthdays for three years in a row seems to be made redundant I haven't missed it and I'm at home every single day when they get home from school so it's absolutely awesome I think I have to constantly remind myself of of you know how awesome it is in that sense I find because I I think there's a tendency to work a lot you know when you when it becomes your own thing I I work every hour of every day a lot of the time yeah but but then at the same time I you know my barber I my barbers I always booked up but for me it's like you can come on a wednesday at two currently i'm like yeah i can actually like and in the past i could never do that and those are the moments i'm like this is awesome exactly the exact same thing because i used to always have to book months in advance to get the saturday morning yeah the saturday morning or the the 6 p.m on a thursday it's like so busy right and the last summer was my favorite because i'd just been made redundant i got a healthy package that meant that the pressure was off a little bit in terms of the content creation and what i would do is i'd work until midday every day and if i don't know if you remember last spring it was glorious last spring and summer was absolutely glorious my wife would be coming home from her work at lunchtime because she was split and i'd be like she'd be like what's for lunch i was like steaks on the barbecue let's go out and have it and this is a monday afternoon at one o 'clock i mean that is the life in it it is the life that is the life you certainly haven't always had the life though have you no no no so i think one of the stories i've seen doing the rounds at the minute was your financial irresponsibility in a younger age i think i heard a story about you sleeping on your sister's floor can you tell us how you got got to that point like what was going on there yeah okay so it all started really coming into my a-levels um and in my a-levels uh i did well at gcse's i loved my uh life from 11 till about 16 playing football with my mates and then something happened in my a-levels tell you what happened i discovered beer and women that's what happened right but to a an excessive extent on both and like so i was a 17 18 year old and i just neglected them completely the beer and the women they didn't get neglected the the academic side of things but it's spiraled immediately because i would miss the day of school i have nightmares about it now reoccurring nightmares really still 20 years on like this was a real trauma for me i've only actually been able to talk about this stuff in the last couple of years because i felt so much guilt and shame so i would spiral i wouldn't turn up for school i'd feel guilty about how that was and then i wouldn't turn up the next day because i didn't want to face the consequences of the previous day and then you know so throughout a levels i must have missed half of all of the school days i didn't turn up for a maths a level exam i said to my mom one night right i'm going to revise i lived in a little village with a bunch of um with it there was a house with a bunch of chefs that i used to work with at a at a spa i said i'm going to revise i took all my books and they were having a party and i basically it was a night before my a-level maths exam i went to a party until 6 a.m and the maths exam was 9 a.m i actually turned up for it but i got an n i got an n which is nearly what does that even mean like nearly you didn't even write your name on it no that's a u yeah that's what i thought you i didn't No, I've never heard of N before.

12:25So a U is unmarked because it is so shit, you're not even getting a mark. An E is you've passed, it's a bad pass. An N is you've nearly passed. Ah. Oh. So I got an N in math and I got an E in biology and I got an E in history. All my own fault. The continuing shame associated with that then just continued to spiral. I thought, right, well, I got into university because this isn't back in the day when you could. I just rang up Liverpool and said two E's and an N. they were like sure come along and within the first term i just uh started doing the same thing not turning up but not only that i'm now not in a little village in staffordshire i'm in liverpool right and i'm 18 years old and i've got a student alone so naturally what starts to happen excess again so you know out all the time enjoying myself and then every day the shame in the guilt because i'm not turning up so the end of the first year of university i went to half the exams once i went to i passed bizarrely i have no idea i didn't go to the other half they said re-sit it i reset it it's biomolecular sciences as well so not the easiest of subjects i reset it in the second year i didn't turn up to one lecture in the third year i said right well we'll just try a different course i'm three years in now if i had a bit i was on the old plan where it was only like three grand each now it's what 10 10 grand in the third year i was like i'll try something else and my girlfriend at the time was doing american media media studies i was like i'll do that so you went to the final year and then just thought yeah sack this i'll start again so again yeah i'll i'll i've fixed myself i'm sorted i'm not going to do the same mistakes again same mistakes again and then halfway through that year my mom came up to visit me one weekend the relationship was dying i was in a bad place and she just took me home but she said you're in such a mess you ain't coming home so you're going to stay with your sister so at that point i got no qualification drowning in embarrassment and shame and guilt and i spent 18 months it was one of those two ups two downs on her very similar to this so on her dining room floor on a mattress feeling sorry for myself and i refused to sign on because i didn't i just pride didn't pride pride and i didn't believe i deserved it anything so i refused to sign on so i had nothing incoming whatsoever over what's the village what's the village in staffordshire from what you said you said i'm from a small village in staffordshire yeah where yoxel yoxel so i grew up in utoxeter do you know yoxel very well you only bought a house there yeah oh did you utox is about 15 minutes away from yoxel yeah yeah yeah so you grew up in yoxel so i grew up in birmingham until about 11 i got offered a really bad school in inner city birmingham at a bad time for birmingham and my mom was dating a man in utox at the time so we moved in with him and then they split up and we We just stayed in Newtuckster.

15:13I went to Thomas Alayne's High School. Don't know that. No. Loads of friends from Marchington, Abbots Bromley. Oh, yeah. That's where I grew up. That's my area. Yeah, that's where I grew up. We are the same person, I swear. How old are you? Older than you. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I heard you had an interview the other day, and you were like, people always think I'm older than I am. They do. Well, you know, because you know this. You get millions of views. You only ever concentrate on the negative ones. I'm 43. and a couple of times, I must have had 200 million views, twice someone has said, I'm sure he's in his bloody 50s and those are the ones I can remember.

15:48Yeah, yeah. Yeah, T gets stuff like that. I'd stop it, behave. You're getting too old. No, yeah, I mean, we're six years apart, right? So we were in that world at similar-ish times. Yeah, very similar, yeah. You were the same, were you, at university then? Oh, no, you were okay at university, weren't you? No, I was not, mate. No, no, I was a bit of a... Yeah, so what I... A bit of a... I met this guy on a dance floor going, like that, with like the bottles in his hand. I was like you obsessed with money my whole life. But for some reason, as soon as I got any of it, I threw it out the door, like in like reckless fashion.

16:23The first day I got to university, I'd worked all summer and saved up a load of money at a bar job. And I bought every single person in the bar a drink. Oh my God. One pound VKs, but there was still about 500 people in the room. 500 quid?

16:37Neil Invests:Yeah, he's like, he's just spent 500. This is why we came from this guy. I've always liked. He's bought every single person a drink in the bar, this guy. What are you chasing there? People to like you? I wanted to be liked. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to be liked. I think - So if you did that in the first term, then you would have been walking around campus with people high-fiving you. There's the guy who bought the first drink. He was him. That's what you were chasing. I ended up - That was probably worth 500 quid. Yeah, but I was Freshers Week director in the first year, which is basically you were in charge of the next year.

17:04So when we moved into second year, I was in charge of Freshers Week. I was the first ever first year to do that because I spent 500 quid buying everyone a drink. And I was like, oh, he knows how to party. But then that's a bad reputation to have of like, Damo likes to party. Well, you called me, when I did my video, you called me Van Wilder. Yeah. You're the bloody Van Wilder. No, because you were still in uni after like eight years. I'm never leaving. I did three years and done. You were like rolling it back. Van Wilder because, you know, he was like 35 at uni. So that's why. The other thing I did in my first turn, there was a house fire in my parents' house and no one was hurt.

17:45But the boiler blew up in the attic and I lost all of my possessions. I'd only moved to university with a suitcase full of stuff. And the insurance paid out. And my mom and her wisdom and her trust gave me the money, which for everything in my room, and I had a collection of guitars that I'd saved up for years for and worked for and all sorts of stuff. It was about£3 ,800. And at the end of the first term, gone. I bought, I re-bought one guitar, which I still got now, but everything else was gone. Gus, I do think university and being young is kind of for being financially responsible. I mean, ideally you want to, you know, start your investing at like age 18, age 16 and like build up your pension.

18:22But you've got to go through these to kind of live life. And if you don't learn in university, I mean, it took you a while to learn in university. But, you know, that's what you're meant to do in university. like learn spend money make mistakes and then hopefully graduate and get this and then afterwards graduate i do not regret a single bit of that yeah i've been my student alone so you were talking about shame there a minute ago and i think for a long long time i've held a lot of shame about that version of myself and how reckless i was and how stupid i was i carried all this shame and i need to go that was you in the past day and you've made up for it now you're pretty financially responsible because even now when i talk about it i feel like i need to go oh but i was an idiot like so do i do you know i mean like i i still i'm embarrassed by that version of myself but actually i should kind of laugh about it and be like it's fine it's hard to do because you if you spent years in guilt and shame it's hard to change that opinion of yourself now if your own personal growth and mental health and development you have to but it's still something i struggle with like i said i've only in the last couple of years been able to talk about this sort of stuff but i still hold an enormous amount of guilt and shame and because my parents both died young when i was young they haven't seen this version they just saw the world version now they saw me coming out the other side and starting to begin to to build something and create stability and a family and calm myself the bloody hell down but they you know my mom's dead 10 years my dad's dead 16 17 so they haven't seen any of this so perhaps that's why i still hold on to a little bit of a shame of it because i haven't been able to to show them i remember when my dad died i went up to his bedroom and his bedside cabinet was nothing else apart from my business card because I'd gotten a career then I was in Molson Corns I turned it around and I just broke my heart it made me feel proud that he had seen that I've actually managed to begin to build something.

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20:48If proving your compliance is something that you need to get done, you can get started at Vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description and we've also put a QR code on screen. That's not, I mean, it's like a regret more than a shame maybe, but you know, because... Yeah, it's a mixture. It's a mixture and I don't think I'll ever fully escape it, but it is what continues to drive me. And like you just said, T, you have to, some people have to be a bit of a dickhead. Yeah. Oh, I needed it, but I feel like ever since then, I've been trying to run away from that version of myself and prove to probably myself that I am not that person.

21:31Do you know what I mean? But you're the same person. You're just a better version. I've got zero shame. I've done a whole - Still like to buy a round of drinks. Yeah, you definitely do. I love that. But I've made so many mistakes in the past and I started investing late and I blew my student loan, two student loans. And you look back and you're like, oh, I wish I'd done this. I wish I started this sooner. It's better to go through that when you're younger, make the mistakes and say, okay, I'm going to improve myself than have a perfect start to life and then have a midlife crisis. So you couldn't like this.

21:58It's always, I just try and say, let me be a better version than I was yesterday. You can't go back, but as long as you're improving, it's kind of the goal. I 100 % agree. And it has created the life I'm able to have now, having gone through it and done it early. And all of that was out of my system and done. And I was sorted by the time I was 23. and I've only got better since 23. That's quite good. I had last year my mum telling me, oh, you've changed so much recently. We're all so proud of you. You turn up on time, all these changes. You're getting more responsible. I was like 37. So you know what?

22:30Like we all grow in our own paces and like I never feel guilty about stuff I did. Like I don't do bad things, but I made mistakes. But I just generally like, as long as you're getting better and you're conscious of it and you're trying and you're building the lives that you have built, then you know, you're going in the right direction. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. I was probably in my late 20s before I started to really sort myself out. Because after I graduated uni, I then really got into a mess financially. And drink and all of that. And debt. Debt, drink, all of that. Yeah, and bad people around me.

23:01So you surround yourself with bad people. I completely isolated myself and neglected all of the friendships that I had and wouldn't reply to texts and wouldn't go to family greetings because I had so much shame that I couldn't even. I had a lot of that. I remember one of my friends who's a friend now, he's a godfather to my son. He called me and was like, I'm up Manchester. And we didn't see each other a lot of the time. He's like, come out and I just blew it off because I just didn't want him to see me like that. Do you know what I mean? I just felt like I was disgusting to look at. And also, I remember going out for one drink for lunch with a friend of mine and we went to a Weatherspoons.

23:40And she was like, what do you have? And I'll just have a soda water. I couldn't even afford a Coke. because I couldn't even go out. What I used to do... Oh, no, I'm not going to go into it. Do it. Go on, say it. No, say it. Because I was... What I used to do, because I had isolated myself so much and I was surrounded in so much shame, I used to have about a budget of around£4 a day. And back then, it was about£2 for a small pouch of tobacco, the cheapest one you could get, which was drum. So I used to smoke. Grim. Horrible. Real stuff. I did hold the outpocket. Yeah, and I didn't even buy the filters because they were 69p.

24:18So I used to roll up drum and smoke them without a filter just all day and then get a two-liter bottle of cider. Or white lightning. It was Frosty Jacks. And then when my sister went to bed at 10 o 'clock, I just cracked both of them out up until 6 o 'clock in the morning and just drowned my sorrows. Horrific. What do you think your sister thought of you in that moment? like did you do you think she saw kind of potential or do you think she was like bloody hell he's useless the latter because i was you know i got a couple of jobs that i stuck out for a couple of days at a time and that was it i spent 18 months doing this every day um and i was yeah i was completely my parents didn't want me back in that my mom and stepdad didn't want me back in the house my sister was kind of doing a favor for the family so i was an extra burden then so additional shame and I just yeah drown me Sarah's everything your younger sister but she's older but you think it's the shame that was the debilitating factor it was almost like self-reinforcing because of that it was the shame and the guilt and then the self-multiplication to to numb that away yeah and from from consuming your content and your story and like I think you would admit this yourself the person I think that changed your life was your partner yes yeah so I met my partner then about so I was on the floor for about 18 months I met her after about 12 months and she became the only person on my life then and we fell in love immediately and very close, very passionately in love.

26:01And we kind of felt like it was just us against the world. She was the only one I had. I was the only one she had. But she was also driven and academic. I mean, she's got like three degrees now and a master's. And capable and smart and all of these things. You had a packet of drum. I had a packet of drum. And I've been uni for four years and got nothing. Can you imagine? Why the hell did she? I'm obviously a charmer. I'm not. so yeah she gave me a chance i suppose and she then uh applied for a job for me and the night before i said you've got an interview tomorrow morning i was like what the hell have you done that for and the other half of me was like maybe this is an opportunity and that was an interview at molson cores where i then subsequently subsequently went on to spend 10 years so what what is that business so the cause is in the beer yeah brewery of course like carling um is that Burton in Burton-upon-Trent.

26:57So we are from the same place. Burton-upon-Trent was where I was on my sister's floor. Oh, really? Because that, Molson Cores was walking distance. It was a 40-minute walk. Because I was sitting in a car. I don't know if that's walking distance. Burton-upon-Trent. It is when you're broke. I never knew you were around Burton. I used to go, we used to take the bus from Mutoxa to Burton to go to the Chinese buffet in Burton. Is it Wing? Wing was. Wing was. Wing was. Still goes there now. It's a banging buffet. It really is. Teppanyaki bar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. so i went back there mate i was about to say he loves his food looking back there it's incredible i'll still go now my kids love it yeah yeah uh yeah i went to john taylor you know oh yeah yeah yeah so that was the other that was the other part of the problem is that john taylor was such a highly academic school everyone else is getting a's they all went on to do phds be professors be do philosophy at bristol or whatever it was that they were doing and then i was just weird so that's additional compounding but yeah so then i started emulsion and quarters the beer giant bass back in the day yeah bass breweries and then there was a lot of these big mergers wasn't there and there was um a lot of the big american beer companies bought out burton basically i always know burton because it stinks it stinks of like beer and marmite beer marmite and curry because that was the second place they were curry foods where they make all the ready meals yeah so like can you imagine the smell of this place yeah yeah curry yeah marmite's attached to the breweries because they take the yeast to make the devil's armpit sweat of a spread that people think oh it's so good for you i'm like mate it's the off it's the beer people are pouring that stuff down the drain and they make marmite out of it sell it yeah no it's a great product i love it yeah yeah not for me not for me so you you were in the dynamic and cutthroat world of packaging is that right yeah well it started because i um because i obviously i had no qualifications and no background again sliding doors you know someone just gave me a chance and said here you go you can start on the phones basically taking orders from all the not the pubs but the depot centers and creating beer deliveries so i did that for a couple of years i remember going into when they offered me the job the recruiter said what would you like to learn obviously i've got no experience this sort of stuff i said listen if you get this is 2006 seven if you give me 12 000 pound i'll be over the moon and they said we're pleased to tell you we're going to offer you 16 800 pound my life changed overnight i was like that's as far as i'm concerned a million pounds i've never seen any sort of money like that over the course of a year so i was like this is really an opportunity that i can't screw up um so yeah i was on the phones and then moved into work made up into packaging and then into r &d and then looking after packaging innovation and sustainability across central eastern europe in the uk i mean you were quite senior and i'm only joking when i say packaging but you did some cool stuff right really cool stuff yeah you know because the world cup starts today you'll be watching this later but uh i remember 2014 uh croatia had qualified for the world cup and i were desperate for them to do it because i was looking after a brand called a zuzko in croatia which is their version of carling you know highly commoditized beer uh and we were creating uh 21 cans all with like modric perisic all the players on the back with their shirt number and names on it at the cool projects like that i did thermochromic ink which is you know when it turns blue when you call it down oh yeah i did that across central eastern europe i did the cobra glass which if you go into in india now is still served there's some really cool stuff yeah what i'm interested in is like what was the switch there between i'm just going to drink and not do anything and then i'm going to sleep on the floor i'm still going to drink to oh i've got this opportunity and now i'm off what why did why didn't you just keep drinking and being a mess because i found someone you you were motivated by your partner i was motivated by my partner within a month after getting my first paycheck now obviously i'd start the relationship with my sister was getting somewhat tarnished because of my behavior i had to get out so a month after getting my paycheck and my paycheck was six weeks because it was two weeks before or four weeks and four weeks after i went into the bank this is pre-banking and i went up to the teller and i said and i said to her how much is in my account and she went oh my god look she didn't say oh my god she was like oh you're quite a lot there's like 1600 quid in there we've got a high road ahead and i'm like bawling i was like oh my god right the next day i said to my wife let's go flat hunting shopping to rent somewhere and within a week we'd found somewhere and within two weeks we'd moved in and that was the day we moved in was England against Portugal when Ronaldo got Rooney sent off.

31:38I don't know if you remember that. 2006. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, the thing about they say a good relationship is where you make each other better. I think, I don't know if you made her better, to be fair. She sounds like she's got a pretty high bar. But she definitely made you better. And I think that that's interesting that you can pinpoint it to that. Yeah. And it's really, you know, we're in a very different place now, obviously. I'm the main breadwinner now. but she went straight into the NHS grad scheme as she was head of ophthalmology at 21 years old and I'm like six weeks into answering the phone at Molson Coors she was so far and ahead of me um and we just yeah we made it work but you know we lived with each other what more do you need at that point we'd found herself a place I'd started to prove myself we'll come on to another story in a minute uh where i was keeping you know the job down and turning up and i was getting the bus in like an hour getting up at six o 'clock in the morning every day to get it and i was doing that never missing a day bringing an income in we had expectations now i had responsibility i didn't have responsibility living on this floor no one was telling me not to go and buy two liters of cider and a pack of drum every night i had a reason and some of them on my team and on my side to try and turn things around.

32:55Were you happy at that moment then? Unbelievably, yeah. Yeah, because when you come out of something like that, there's no other way of explaining it. It's traumatic. And looking back, the reality of it was, like I say, it was 2005, 2006. It was before all of this sort of stuff. I was depressed is what it was. I'd gotten myself into a position where I was depressed and I just wasn't dealing with life and I was spiralling as a result of it. And I saw an out. and it's just another sliding doors moment had i not met my wife uh who knows where i'd be now what what kind of advice would you give to someone who might be listening who's in that position who's looking for a sliding door way out because not everyone can just go you know go meet the love of your life no they can't and the biggest thing um i can say and i would love to go back and i wouldn't go back to myself at 20 years old 21 years old and say buy apple or buy nvidia in 2012 i would just tell myself it's actually going to be okay you know it's not as bad as you think it is times are going to get better you just got to keep going now like i say there will be some people in this situation now and i feel for them it is horrific at the time you think the world is going to end some people go even darker with their thoughts as you can imagine you can find yourself in that position i thankfully didn't get to that point where i was thinking about that sort of stuff there will be people probably potentially even listening to this in that something will something will change if you believe and if you start to give yourself a break talk to yourself say it's not going to be as bad as you think it is it's impossible to say that now um you know in the moment but give yourself a break things things will change yeah it's like do you want do you want an easy life for a good character because like the price of the one is the other in a sense and like when you're in those kind of rubbish dark times that's almost like what you pay so that down the line you are someone who who someone with the ability to dig yourself out of it ultimately i think that the most interesting and successful people you meet are those that have their own version of mine in your story yeah you go through that you come out the other side and on top of that losing my parents young as well uh you can i kind of i'm pretty resilient now there's not much i was going to say that before you know when t said oh it's better to have it young than old even if something catastrophic happened to you now i think you're pretty anti-fragile you would be able to deal with it right yeah because you've had this i've been homeless i've lost my parents young i've been through horrific depression and trauma i've treated myself like crap and come out the other side of it there's not much you can do to me now really but i will say that at the time it's really hard to see that the other side like we were i think two years ago in my old job we were doing the podcast we had all these people talking about investing coming on and i never told anyone but my company was not paying me they went into like it wasn't liquidation but the the ceo just wasn't paying everyone and kind of did a runner so i'm just sitting here talking to all these people about money and i'm like i haven't been paid for like three months and i was like it's gonna be fine you didn't tell me that yeah i know because I mean, we're talking about money to the British public.

36:07And I'm like, I haven't paid for three months. And we're talking about like investing and pensions and all these things. I remember thinking like, if I just get a new job and I just get a good salary, I'll be so happy. And I got the job, I got a higher salary. And then like six months later, I'm like, I need a raise. I need more money. I'm like, you prayed for times like this on your current salary. Like you prayed, I want to be here. Now I'm here and I'm like, be grateful for when you get out of it. And a lot of the times as humans were just like, what's next? What's next? It's hardwired. It's hardwired.

36:32What's next? yeah um but you were emotionally intelligent enough to realize that and reflect upon it and then speak to yourself but i had a good partner who's like it's gonna be okay it's gonna like you're gonna get through it she was like but coming out the other side what i mean is like saying that you were you know once you've got the once you got the second job then and everything was starting to move on you were emotionally intelligent enough to be able to realize that this is all you wanted this is all i wanted yeah so it's like just be grateful for where you get to like now you're like i need my financial freedom so i don't need to work anymore but you're like, I've secured my freedom to not have to go to meetings and have a haircut whenever I want.

37:06And so we should always remember the bits that we're enjoying, we're grateful for. Otherwise it never ends. Otherwise, you're always chasing a faraway dream. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in that sense, your financial goal is a foregone conclusion, right? You will hit it at some point, but you're sprinting towards it because you're telling yourself you need it sooner rather than later, probably because of perceived insecurity around your income and that. And I think that that's potentially another trap for you. As in like you're just going to rapidly sprint through the next few years, get to that goal and then, you know, you won't have enjoyed what is quite a remarkable period of your life right now.

37:43Yeah, that is such an important point. So looking back 12 months ago, that was the happiest I've ever been in my life. Just coming out of redundancy, starting to work on the content creation, having steaks on the barbecue at Monday afternoon, making more from the content creation and I was making from head of department for a multi-billion pound business. Joy. 12 months on, eight months on, when my TikTok account got banned and lost 150 ,000 subscribers, and a couple of things dried up a little bit, but I was still making more than I was before. And I found myself in a position again where I was saying, oh, it's all going to collapse.

38:22Our job, our main job and your side hustle is so volatile. Yeah. and because of our backgrounds i believe we're both in fear of it just disappearing tomorrow at any point so you're right i am racing towards it and if truthfully told i'm way ahead of 50 i've been able to achieve that but i still feel in panic mode until i get there and i sometimes have to reflect on that and think to myself am i appreciating fully what i have on a monday afternoon at 3 p.m when the door is open and my kids come in and i'm there and i've got dinner planned and i've worked just up until that point am i fully going well this time two years ago i was on a plane to serbia or i was on the m25 and that's what most that's what most people are doing at three o 'clock on a monday afternoon i'm not so it's so important to try and reflect on that and make sure that you're realizing that that's the point and i have and i when i was speaking to Ruth before about this had have had to force myself to reflect that now I'm 43 now between now and 50 are probably the brightest and healthiest years that I'm going to have in my life these are the most important my kids are 13 and 15 now I've got them for a few more years it is so important to realize that and how lucky I am to be in the position I am to be able to do what I'm able to do and I have to force that upon myself because of that hedonic treadmill because of that more and more more because of that desperation to get to that number above and beyond anything else because of the desperation to never go back to where i was so it's an important point when when did you discover investing uh um so what happened to me was i always wanted to have a certain level of wealth i always believed you've talked about this i think before t that you always believe you're gonna be wealthy oh definitely yeah but you already is It's pretty easy to believe that when your parents are absolutely wadded.

40:17My parents are not absolutely wadded. They own a block of South Kensington.

40:23Neil Invests:It's like a block. Guys, this is not... That's hilarious. The guy wrapped in gold. Look, I'm the only one here who doesn't have a property, so you guys pipe down. If I was wadded, I have a couple of houses. You've got a crypto portfolio. Yeah, sorry, go on. Don't tell him about that. You were saying... Yeah, so I don't believe in his manifestation stuff. I think that's BS. I'm going to get some comments for that. But I don't believe it. Oh, just think to yourself, there's no religious story. I'm not a religious person where a guy is saying, I want to win the lottery. I really want to win a load of money.

40:59And God just says to him, go and buy a lottery ticket. And he's like, no, no, just make me really rich. Just do, give me the money. I says, I will, you just go and buy a lottery ticket. And I was like, no, I'm not prepared to do it. Like that sort of manifestation, I think, is BS. You've got to take action. You have to act upon it. Otherwise, you're just dreaming every day. But I then spent 10 years, 15 years in corporate, got to a successful point. But I was like, I want more. I want that freedom. I want to be able to free me and my family from the system to do whatever I want to do when I want to do it.

41:31How do I do it? I woke up on January 1st, New Year's Day in 2020. and 20 and i was like right it's the only um new year's resolution i've ever kept i was like right what are we gonna do do i buy pallets and break them down and sell it do i do amazon fba what do i buy a window cleaning business laundromats do you remember all of these sort of typical top 10 side yeah yeah yeah like you get a buzzfeed article that says all that stuff atm machine yeah all of that all of that bs which very few people success yeah there was a call for jesus neil invests there you go neil takes off first neil in the string vest um so i settled upon after about six weeks throwing myself into this having bought rich dad bought out by robert kiyosaki at the end of that book i learned the difference between assets and liabilities went moved on from there to andrew craig consumed his books i realized actually investing is the way that it's that i'm going to be able to achieve this now investing is great because it's one of the few things that is an inverse correlation between the amount of work you put in and the results you get out most people think you put more work in and you're going to get better returns you're not so i went on a journey of learning and becoming obsessed about um about investing obsessed watching everything reading every book i could get my hands on and by the end of february 2020 i got my bonus from work which was four thousand pounds and i threw it in and because i had spent nearly every waking minute of the day for the last two months reading about it when the market dropped by 40 in march i threw more in so i was 40 was it 30 or 40 down march 2020 i lumped in in six months it came back up again i was like right this is it right i spent how many times you go on the calculator side oh you've got your own compound interest calculator i had you said the other day compound interest calculator so i was like you need to change the calculator side i know the calculator side but yeah we made We made a financial interest.

43:29Financial interest, quick plug there. It's in pounds for one. You don't have to do that annoying thing of changing it from dollars to pounds. Yeah, it's one click. Yeah, no, no. No clicks. Yeah, but zero clicks. And you can add in fees with ours and inflation. Yeah, I know. But the platform's zero fees.

43:43Neil Invests:You got to get some calculator, you prick. Oh, I'm sorry. You know how much you made him laugh? Financial interest, go check it out. Great website. Yeah. Great calculator. That's the one that I used to use, four years before it existed. So I used to go on that every night working out my numbers. I'm like, right, if I get 8%, if I get 9%, if I get 4%, this is potentially going to turn into X, Y, Z. That also drove me to then change companies twice. I increased my income by 34 % each time I did that. And I was like, every penny that I made, I put into the market. I sacrificed my company car. I worked out that I was getting a company car.

44:23And with the benefit in kind and the loss of the car allowance, it was costing me 600 pound a month i gave it up about a 10 year old monday obita there's another another 600 pound i can put into the market every month now everyone's circumstances are different you might not have a company car but i leveraged every single angle that i could to put more money into the market and that's what i did and within five and a half six years that's put me in a position where yeah i'm nearly it's over it's over 100k now after you've got in the market right Right. So in my stocks and shares, I said, yeah, 175.

44:55175? Yes. Yeah. That's even despite the drop over the last few days. Now, I can't control when I started. The big thing to remember is I got a little bit lucky. I started in March 20, in February 2020, but I kept going, just like the content creation. I went through 2023 when we were all in the red all year. I was in the red. So I'd gone from being down, up to down, up to down, and the whole of 2023, I was in the red. Was it 23 or 22? 22, I think. 22. 22, 23. It was the Ukraine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I maxed my ISA by using all of the tools I possibly could. Then I started, after that, making money in the business.

45:33I used a business investment account as well, and I deposit all of the profits that I make in the business into that. I haven't talked about that on the channel, but that mixed with the ISA puts me at a point where I'm nearly there. Nearly there. are you proud because you talked about your shame before you proud of like things like this i am but i don't know not as much as i expected do you see i don't even see a smile on that but then you're like i've got so much shame but like when you're proud you're like yeah i guess so why are humans like that like we hyper expand um focus on the negative and not on the positive I don't know.

46:16Why is that? That's obviously a flaw in human nature. You can't drink it into negativity, haven't we? Like a negativity bias. And also, like, a big part of it was, look, a big part of it was throwing myself into it and driving it. I don't want to... I am so unbelievably lucky to be in a position where I'm maxing my ice out for five years. Most people are not in a position to be able to do that. And I'm so lucky to have had the gains that I've had. So I'm reflective of that. I'm so lucky for my privilege. the background that i went through but also then getting a corporate job and moving up the ladder partially because of the way i look and the way i sound um rather than you know there's a lot of privilege there's a lot of luck involved in getting to where i've got despite having gone through what i've gone through and doing the work that i've had to do so there's a element of there is an element of embarrassment in a way around getting to that point because most people i know aren't my uncle calls it working class guilt it's like the guilt of doing well when you know people maybe that haven't and like you kind of feel shame about discussing it because yes that means you're a what's the word when you care empathetic person yeah so yeah there is a level of embarrassment in terms of the what i've managed to achieve but there is of course underneath an incredible amount of pride and i am so grateful for what i've managed to be able to do and there has been a lot of luck associated with that but a lot of hard hard work as well so yeah you made the content though you put yourself on camera do you mean like did the single biggest separator between success online on digital platforms in anything in business or whatever is did you start or did you not like the amount of people i speak to i think i've i'm thinking of starting a thing I'm thinking of doing this go do the thing for a year then come back and then we can talk about don't think about it and do it don't spend all the effort you are on trying to research what the best camera is how many views did you have when you're using your iPhone still?

48:14I got to 70 ,000 subscribers 70 ,000 subscribers using an iPhone right you don't need all of the kit I didn't buy a microphone for two years you just need to bloody do it and you will learn along the way and you'll get better along the way it took me three years to get better along the way it took you quicker to be able to do it Toby has a different journey everyone has a different journey but you've all seen that picture of the two miners one's at the bottom and they just stop and there's gold diamonds and gold on the other side and the other ones just like digging away what they say perfection is that enemy of good or something if you're trying to make everything perfect like you never do it and then you should just start and it's the same with the investing right it's i this is why in my messaging recently because you know the regulator will want you to say you can lose all your money it might all go wrong be scared is like the tone often but i've just started saying if all of that can be true but just put a quid in i just look at it for six months just stick a quid in the worst that happens is you lose your quid and if everybody loses the quids and the regulator has a go at me i'll give them the quids back i'll give you a quid back because i just think like you say you just gotta have that skin in the game you just gotta start i can tell you can watch my content your content for years and you you'll learn more about yourself and investing in five minutes you just put a quid in and you've got to make the mistakes as well so So most people, when they start, they go into individual businesses.