Is the system designed to keep you poor?

0:01You know what I love, Damo? Things that save me time. You don't have YouTube premium, mate, so I just don't believe that. Granted, I'll give you that one. However, I've got one for you. A great time saver in personal finance is Money Week magazine. They spend a lot of time distilling the biggest stories in personal finance down into consumable chunks, so you don't have to scroll and scroll. They give practical tips on savings, investments, pensions, the UK economy, the global economy. It's like your five a day, but for finance. If you want to give Money Week a try, you can get six issues in print and the app absolutely free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money.

0:34After your trial, you'll save an extra£5 a quarter on the subscription, which is exclusive to Making Money listeners. And that's moneyweek.com forward slash money. But there's a link in the description if you just want to click that. There is too many people that benefit from the next generation getting into debt. There's too many people that benefit from the next generation not really bothering to vote. I sit in round tables in Treasury. I speak to HMRC. They all sit there and say the right things, but nothing is changing. then you have to think, well, maybe they don't care that much. Abigail Foster is a trained accountant and founder of financial education company Ellens.

1:08She's also written a book, The Money Manual. People go to me, how do I invest? I want to make an extra 100 quid. And then I look, their tax code's wrong. I'm like, well, you're giving away thousands of pounds there. You dedicated your book to those who have ever been made to feel inadequate when dealing with money. For me, I just was so aware from a young age that money wasn't abundant. Money wasn't always there. lots of these things that happened to us growing up impact how we feel and think about money and it's therefore going to impact how we educate ourselves about money as well. In the book you write the uncomfortable truth is that it doesn't benefit those in power for the next generation to be financially confident.

1:44What do you mean by that? I stick by it because actually if the next generation were financially and politically educated they would make different voting decisions. They would be better with their money which would probably cause a lot of the financial institutions to have to re-look at what finance means and how they make money. And I just think there is too many people that benefit from the next generation getting into debt. There's too many people that benefit from the next generation not really bothering to vote and things like that. So I stand by it. And it's why I do so much with the next generation, because I really want that to change.

2:20I really want them to see a world where they're represented, see a world in which what they do actually matters and what they do can change the course of their lives rather than just being like pushed down the routes that we have now like our education system for instance has been the exact same for like 200 years you know it was put in place for like to teach us how to work in factories and that's why we all sit in rows facing a teacher that faces us and it's why we teach math english and science because that's what we needed for a basic level to work in a factory and yes we've slightly adapted and we now might have politics or economics at a level but really the core principles like the nine to five again it was the factory hours it's just the the whole principle hasn't changed that much um and i think that that is damaging more than we realize because the world of work has changed and the way that our next generation make money has changed but yet the education system hasn't yeah my son at the minute so he's in school and he's at that age where he's kind of hitting puberty and I see the struggles he has and then I see how the education system wants him to be and they're like oh you know he's his English isn't good enough so we need him to improve and I just think all the time do we need someone to be average at English in the world or should we go what he's really good at is is chatting a lot maybe we should try and foster that and put him into sales it feels like we just push people to be mediocre in this broad range of subjects.

3:52Yeah. Which once you spat out of school is completely useless to you in that sense, right? Yeah. And like, for instance, I'm dyslexic and I've got all the NeuroSpicy stuff. Like I am a whole spectrum of things and that wasn't recognised at my school. I was only recognised dyslexic in like the last two years of my school and they said, yeah, but it's no one else is dyslexic. I was like, there's 600 students here. Chances are I'm not the only one, but their way of kind of protecting themselves from that because they thought, oh, it's because she's thick, which is not true, is they were like, well, you're kind of good at math.

4:21So just do that. Just do that and do it well. And actually, I don't think they realized that that was probably the better thing to do for me is to just let me specialize in what I'm good at and not try and make me average at other things. But for many students, they don't get that opportunity. And it is really damaging. You're right, because we're not letting people be really epic at what they're good at. We're trying to force them into what the education system looks like rather than what it should look like for them. Obviously, I'm not a teacher. I just get to go into schools and teach finance.

4:52And to be honest, I think all teachers should be knighted because there is so much on their plate and they constantly having to just reinvent the system themselves within the classroom whilst also following the rules. And I think that's just so unfair. And I just don't think the system suits anyone, really. It doesn't suit the kids in it. It doesn't suit the teachers that are trying to teach it. And then we can come out and I can sit here and be like, finance education should be put on the curriculum. Because I do believe that. But that's very easy for me to say how that in practice is going to work.

5:23It's going to be so difficult. You've got to train maybe 2 ,000 teachers across all the schools in the UK to be mediocre at finance. I don't know. Is that a good idea? It's just, it's really difficult. There's a lot of nuance in finance, isn't there? And I think sometimes oversimplification of things can be dangerous. just to say to people, oh, you should invest. Yeah. From people who don't invest and don't understand that actually it's the emotional part of the investment journey that's the hardest, seeing it drop 20 % and riding that. You know, teachers aren't armed for that conversation. No, and they have so much bias that they don't realise, which is absolutely fine.

5:59Like I sit in these classrooms and teachers say things like, it's not worth it to go to uni anymore. Okay, well, it might be for your circumstance and maybe a few of the kids in your class that you know really well, it might not be. But there'll be a kid sat there that then thinks, well, I want to be a doctor. Okay, fine. I won't bother going to uni then. That's mad from a teacher. It is. You'd be like, well, why would I even come to school then? Well, honestly, you would be amazed. And I don't mean any disrespect to them because that's just them talking to their class and it's their lived experience.

6:28And so much of what they say from their lived experience is probably really helpful. But it's often the finance topics that come out where they have a lot of confidence for people that don't actually understand it. And they'll say things like, oh, don't go to uni. It's too expensive. Or I've genuinely had teachers say, the only important thing is buying home. Buying home is the only route to success. And that's really damaging. Because if you were a kid in central London, in a state school in central London, that's thinking, where on earth am I going to buy a house? Like it's going to be a really difficult conversation versus the conversation about buying a house.

7:00If you are a kid in the west of England or northeast England might be slightly different conversation. There might be houses more within price range i don't really know like the ins and outs but there is a geography element there's a cultural element there's a religious element to finance all these things that we can't we it's just really hard for us to create just one curriculum and be like right this is what you should teach and then be able to teach it to the teachers like overnight basically i've been stupidly naive and not recognizing the fact that teachers probably impart life wisdom on the kids in their classes oh my god every every life experience they i yeah you think it's almost inappropriate like a therapist saying oh you know this is how i think you should do it you know they shouldn't but that's they have so much one-on-one time with these kids and these kids like as much as i remember battling with some of my teachers i definitely there were teachers i looked up to in my school and i was like she's really cool what does she do how can i get there because also when you're like 14 15 your parents aren't very cool so then you try and look for other influences in your life and when I was in school we had Bebo like it wasn't really gonna like keep you up at night was it you weren't scrolling Bebo and like you would Instagram now and so I didn't have lots of external impact on my life being like oh actually I want to be like Kim Kardashian whereas now they have not only do they have their like their kind of immediate environments like schools they also have social media and they're being impacted by all of their opinions as well so it's it's honestly I don't the next generation have it really difficult in my personal opinion it's it's almost too much I want to come back to the education bit in in the second half of of the conversation but I want to focus on this point around you know the powers that be or they whatever that means not wanting to teach people because I think you're quite uniquely positioned in in all of the people that do what we do course of influencer you're probably the most plugged into the kind of establishment.

8:56You've worked with the Bank of England, HMRC. Yeah. You work a lot with number 10, number 11. You were like the Rishi Samba thing. Yes. Yeah. Do you know what that is? Yeah. What is the Rishi Samba thing? Like Rishi Samba. I don't want to. I wish. You imagine. You explain and then ask the question. Okay. So basically at the end of the conservative era, they were doing anything to kind of get their name out and one of that was social media and they were doing really well. They were doing a lot on social media and they contacted me and a couple of other creators and said, will you come in and interview Rishi after the spring budget?

9:34But he walked into the interview and the first thing I did was like look down because I realised he was wearing Adidas Ambers. So he was wearing a shirt, jeans and Adidas Ambers which obviously for the Prime Minister, a bit rogue, right? Yeah. And I remember looking at them and thinking, hmm, okay, someone's going to have something to say about that because that's interesting. And the video just went viral and got picked up for all the wrong reasons. I'm there with really serious questions being like, right, how do we help the next generation? What's the spring budget mean for people? But the only thing people are remotely interested in with my video is the fact that within the first shot, you see he is wearing Adidas ambas and they're like, what are those?

10:10Literally. It's like when, what was her name? Theresa May took the robot. It's that kind of moment, isn't it? Like, oh, don't do that. Exactly. So you're not one of us. So that was one of the videos that, yeah, went viral for, like I said, for all the wrong reasons, really. But yeah, sorry, the original question. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to cost you your contacts or your job or anything like that. But I want to ask, do you think those institutions are part of they, these systems that want to keep people down? Or do you think they genuinely do want to improve? I think there's a combination. I think, and I say this to their faces, so it's not going to cost me my job.

10:47I sit in roundtables in Treasury. I speak to HMRC and they are, or they have been, institutions that don't educate the people that they should speak to. Like, for instance, the reason I started working with HMRC is I DM them on Instagram and was like, your Instagram is not good. Like, it's just pictures of old white men. This is appealing to no one. You are - This guy. Well, this is the thing that - Well, actually, you're a middle-aged white man, I guess. I'm the minority around this table, mate. I feel underrepresented here. It's all black man and a woman. Yeah, it's our time to shine, finally.

11:21So that's why I did... It's a good hair team. Yeah, exactly. It's a priority, it's got level up. So, and I basically said to HMRC, I was like, you can't be this institution and have a bad social media presence. And it doesn't take much, but you need to do something. And they were like, fine, come in and talk to us. And it took six months of persuading them to be like, right, why don't you create some content that explains things like tax codes and explains things like child trust funds. And we finally got there, but it's their past that kind of haunts them that they haven't done a lot of education in the past and they haven't really been seen to be educating people.

11:56But the thing is, with HMRC as an institution, if I go through each one individually, you know, they are just the tax collector, really. They're not the ones that implement it, but they get a lot of the stick. Like everyone hates them because they're the ones that have to implement the tax changes, but they're not the ones that make the decision. Really, that falls within number 11 and number 10. and actually talking about them, yes, they do. Like they should be held more accountable for this because I sit in roundtables all the time where we talk about, should finance be in the curriculum? How do we help the next gen?

12:26And they all sit there and say the right things, but nothing is changing. I've been doing this for two and a half years and nothing changes ever. Like it's just the conversation goes round again and then we get another petition. Maybe this has been a bit unkind, but like another petition saying finance should be in the curriculum. Everyone signs it, they have a little conversation and then we just go around the circle again and nothing actually happens. And I think, again, with all of this, it just requires change from the top down. And I don't think that's happening fast enough because I think it doesn't benefit those at the top for it to change.

12:59I think that it's like a systemic problem across lots of issues in the UK. If we look at what's going on with water, how many successive governments have said, we have issues and underinvestment in the water supply and then here we are. you know it's almost like lip service isn't it where where they they say the right things because i don't know if you've experienced this but there seems to be a rotating table and you'll just get a new bunch of people come in and then you almost start again and also how demoralizing if you're a young person and you you look at the politics right now and you look at government and then maybe not necessarily this labor government especially with the conservative where you had people in positions of power that were like the education secretary and the next thing you know they're the chancellor and then the next thing you know they're like head of water and you're like how on earth are you qualified to do all of these positions and they're not really they're not specialists and therefore if you've not got specialists doing this then you have to think well maybe they don't care that much and then the unreal the unfair truth is they probably don't like and they're just there to get themselves into the next four years and with the conservatives they knew I think they knew that that wasn't happening and then with labor they've picked up like I don't know how to say this one with Labour they've kind of they've picked up a lot of the dregs from what's happened with the Conservative government but they're not really doing anything revolutionary they've not really taken on this situation and been like right this is all the things we're going to change they've just kind of carried on I think that's why people voted for Labour because they wanted to see a change but everything seems to be pretty much the same you have 14 years or whatever to think of a plan and then you get in and you're like what are we going to do?

14:36oh crap we're here Yeah. And I think they just relied on things like the VAT on private schools and farmers tax and all those little things. And I don't think also that it was even a landslide for Labour. It was just a landslide against Conservative. Like we just didn't want, sorry, it's gone very political, hasn't it, for making money. But we just didn't want Conservative. And so then it happened to be Labour. And I think it must be an incredibly difficult task. I get it. There's a lot of debt. There's a lot going on. I just, I feel like we've got two very, you know, we've got us and then you can compare us against the US right now.

15:11And you've got Trump who like wakes up and tweets tariffs. Changes everything every day. Yeah, and it's just like constantly like playing with the politics. And then you've got our UK system that just doesn't seem to be doing a lot. Like, you know, the Mansion House speech promised a lot and then nothing really happened. The spring statement promised a lot, nothing really happened. And what's the autumn budget going to look like? Yeah. Yeah, it feels like they've wasted all their political capital chasing things that they've U-turned on. And now they can't really do anything that brave. I hope they do some brave things around taxation and stuff in the autumn budget.

15:45But the thing that I've worked with the Bank of England a little bit, been to some events. And through my brief interaction with them, the thing that became clear was they admit that they have a problem educating people. but then they want to tell people that have proven that they can educate people en masse oh we want you to do this and and my attitude was i think i should be the one to say how we should do this yeah you know i don't need you to tell me what content to make because to be blunt you're not very good at it no no i couldn't agree more and i say this to them as well because you know what you know why that like the rishi video went viral went wild is because it had three creators at the heart of it we were the ones that were like can we film it inside can we film it with him can we be sat on a sofa because these are the things that that are going to appeal to people because people are going to be nosy we've never seen inside that building right exactly i didn't say can you wear sandbers but we did say like can it be more relaxed like don't come in a suit and tie and these were all things that because we were sort of sort of we weren't in complete control of it because it's still number 10 but we were in a little bit more control that it did appeal to our audience.

16:54There was like more content, filming angles, things like that. Whereas, yeah, you're right with the Bank of England, it is slightly tougher because I get that they have restrictions, but yeah. And I think it's, unfortunately now more and more creators are working with the institutions. They are becoming almost more rigid with it and they won't really let you go outside the box. They want you just to bring your audience. But the problem is, and I don't think they understand, is my audience won't turn up if it doesn't look like me. If it looks like someone else using me they're not interested um and that is the major problem because then we can't get the the voice out there yeah it doesn't suit me to to make content the way they want to make it i can just sit in my studio and make my content and and talk about them as an institution or whatever yeah i find that that kind of that approach of 10 bits of content on the day they all say the same thing from 10 different creators can feel a bit jarring it's like why is everyone saying the same thing it's just like the like the mainstream news like in america you can change a channel and they'll all be saying the same thing on different news channels about the same topic so it's you people like the individuality and someone you can relate to or someone you can trust whereas it feels like bank of england hmrc they're just like very suited very stiff and very like not personal i guess we're trying to like we're called new media now like when i get invited to these things like it is alongside like the likes of bbc and sky and it's great and i'm so glad we're there because i do have an audience i have a community that follow me every lot that watch everything i do and so i'm glad that we're in the rooms but yeah i do think they need to need to not think of us like the traditional media where they just tell the traditional media what they want them to know and they need to remember that we are in our positions because people trust us because we are telling it from our point of view not from someone else's last time we recorded to me and you were having some real dramas with your accountant so how's that been going mate they're sacked so drama sorted um they're a big corporate firm um they didn't really reply to my emails very quickly like took a week or two at times um and they charged me way too much i mean i've got pretty simple taxes and yeah they were charging me thousands they saved me some money but yeah um i had to move on slow and expensive pretty much yeah this is one of the reasons that we're really happy to be partnering with tax app it's a tech platform that makes self-assessment simple whether you're self-employed like me a freelancer or a director like Damo, big dog.

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19:44That code is MONEY, M-O-N-E-Y 1-0. So Mr. O 'Carolet, I hear you are a salesman. Elite salesman, yes. One of the best, they say? I've got a little bit of experience in the game, yeah, I could say. I've done a few deals. A bill, a bill. What would your compliance team say about you? They will say that I am always nagging them and that essentially I just have beef with compliance. I love the team. Compliance slows down all my deals because every time I get to the finish line, they've got to check documents, KYC, GDPR, and it's just a nightmare. It slows the deal down by like two, three weeks. It's always on both sides as well, isn't it?

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20:56If you're a business that needs to prove security and compliance, visit vanta.com forward slash making money to sign up for a completely free demo today. That's vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description though, so you can just click that. Especially on the education piece, you know, old media might not necessarily be that into education. It's more just reporting. And I do think there are good educators within finance media, so I don't want to discredit them. But I think there's a lot more on the social media side that are more education focused. You know, this is an ISA, this kind of content.

21:32Do you think the answer maybe to education isn't through schools, it's through social media? The only reason through yes to social media is that there's more representation. You can find someone that looks like you. And I think that's really important. Whereas if it's just through schools, your finance teacher might be the most boring person on the planet. and it's going to be really difficult to make that any more interesting. But through social media, you might be able to find someone that looks like you, that sounds like you, that knows what you've gone through, and therefore they will represent something and it will just start to click more.

22:07Like, you know, it's not unusual that I have a lot of women that follow me because I am a woman and that is unique in this space. And that's what they want. They don't always want to be told about pensions by a guy because they go, well but you might not understand the fact that there's a gender pension gap things like that um so yeah i think there is a place for both i think the school curriculum needs changing from a fund like from honestly from the base level up and i think finance should be a part of that the same way i think things like mental health and more focus on like physical health should be a part of the new curriculum but then also social media has a great part to play because it can provide the kind of spectrum of people that you want to be seen on there and like just provide more representation it's also where the audience is yeah you can't you can't tell the kids not to go on social that's where they're going to be watching all the videos they're on you know those platforms so yeah go to them don't try and force them to go the other way it's exactly what i said to the institutions when i go to them and say this is why you need to be doing it because so for so stats wise so i've taught i think we worked out the other day i've taught 58 000 students myself in the last 18 months and I basically take data from anyone that's like I think 14 plus we do this thing called Slido and so they provide us with their like anonymous feedback on things and I ask them if they know who HMRC is I ask them lots of different questions but we asked if they knew who HMRC is and one in four and I think it's about data roughly of around 20 ,000 students said they had so one in four knew who hmrc is but obviously three and four have no idea and like you know who they are unfortunately i've been dodging them for years um yeah that's crazy that makes a lot of sense because taxes hmrc i find it so confusing but i'm self-employed and tax is just mad confusing and like you said i don't feel like they're trying to make it easier for you to learn and they'd rather you make the mistake and be like by the way you've got a tax bill of xyz and now you owe us money rather than just being like if you do this you'll save money in your tax bill and when I call them up to ask them for help I sit on hold for 45 minutes and they hang up on me so it's like it feels like there's a barrier to entry and they don't want you to like you said they don't want you to kind of learn about these financial things yeah it is really hard because obviously when I work with them the people behind the scenes genuinely do like their marketing their PR team really want people to understand because that's their job but I can understand from an from an external point of view why it feels like that with HMRC because you're right like I so I'm a child accountant by profession that was my career pre this and so when I worked as an accountant as like I my very first job was like doing bookkeeping and accounts for like Mr.

24:39and Mrs. Smith vibes and I used to sit on the phone to HMOS for hours and it was so boring and it's really difficult because they don't really understand the person on the end of the line you don't really understand even though hilariously I was being I was training to be an accountant so I should get it but it was still too complicated and I think yeah that's the problem is like the previous experience people have with it is what makes people so resentful of it now 58 000 kids in 18 months yeah roughly that's through ellen yes is that right yeah can you explain what what that is yeah so i started a company called ellen it stands for elegant and intelligent it's it kind of means nothing and everything um nothing and everything i just basically needed a name for my business that wasn't like we teach finance in schools um and i want i wrote a bunch of words of like what i wanted the business to represent and i wanted it to be like intelligent led but like classy because all the other finance education was very like it just felt really young like and childish and actually young people deserve better than that I think they deserve like proper education anyway so my company teaches finance in schools we teach from year one through to year 13 and we basically like I designed a curriculum for every single year um but we go into schools all over the UK we've got one in Scotland now um but we have schools in Wales we have schools in England and yeah I just absolutely love it like there is a bell curve of interest so like um it's the other way around like peaked interest is like year one two three my favorite years hands down because they are obsessed with learning they want to tell you everything they've ever learned about finance then as kind of in junior school at end of junior school beginning of senior school the interest kind of dips a little bit year nine is by far the hardest year to teach ever i just teach investing in year nine because it's the only they're remotely interested in is that like age 14 yeah roughly because life is so hard for you in year nine that's what they think anyway and trying to engage any any gender in year nine is just impossible but then by the time you get to like 10 11 12 13 the interest is back again because they are absolutely terrified that life is about to hit them like a truck and they need to understand everything um so yeah i am i'm incredibly lucky we now it's not just me now thankfully we have a team and we have teachers that go and teach all over the UK now um but yeah it's the favorite part of my job um but it's unfortunately with schools it's not the most well-paid part of my job because you can't charge schools that much because they don't have the money hence why I do everything else I do so how do you add it onto the curriculum like is it uh now how does it work like it's an hour a week or I wish no so most of the schools can literally just like give you time to do like an hour in the year so often they'll get me in once in the year and I have an hour with like each year group depending on the school sometimes if the school is like low on budget they will put or low on time as well they'll put years together I think one of the biggest classes I've ever done was like almost a thousand students in one room teach them all at once yeah year one to year 12 honestly it felt like that it was a senior school and they basically I think it was year nine through to year 13 which is intimidating so yeah which is why now when I speak to like prime ministers I'm like you don't scare me year 9 scare me yeah thousand teenagers is pretty intimidating the way they can dress you down a 15 year old yeah and also unlike adults will smile at you regardless of what you're saying they're like oh that's nice you two are doing it now versus versus year 9 if you are not interesting they will yawn at you they will look down on their phones yeah yeah yeah like they're not they don't need to lie to you like life is too hard when you're in your nine why lie like they just kind of will turn off so you have to be engaging which is why i'm i talk quite fast and i am very punchy and like that's why i suppose why translates well to social media because i'm used to trying to engage a very short attention span yeah a very short attention span group of people um but yeah honestly so i think yeah the largest probably about a thousand but you yeah you you take on the responsibility of giving them what they actually want i don't think i've ever had a class where they didn't want me there which is unusual i speak to a lot of other school providers and sometimes it's really difficult to get them interested but actually i've yeah i've never had a school where they were like we didn't need this i didn't want to get taught this they're obsessed they really want to know which is why i think that we're doing them a disservice by not changing the education system yeah yeah especially or even just an hour a year it's just not much what is one of the most important skills you could possibly have yeah because the thing is is like you said they're then picking up from somewhere else and a lot of them and you really notice some skews but a lot of them are picking because tiktok is their google like that's their search engine and so then they're finding people that like they then search crypto whole load of other content creators or influencers that aren't necessarily qualified are being shown to them and that's their education and obviously TikTok feeds you more of what you're looking at.

29:39So it's going to feed you more and more dangerous things about crypto necessarily, or about something that you're researching. It's an echo chamber. You just keep seeing more and more of the stuff. Which is why I always try. It's not, I'm like, I, you know, I always say like, I'm not uncool to these kids, but I try and say like, follow me because you will get a variety of things. You're not just going to get me talking about investing. You'll get me also talking about tax codes and pensions. Versus if you just go and follow someone on TikTok that just talks about crypto, all of your knowledge is just going to be around investing.

30:08which is, I won't lie to you, boys in general are the hardest to convince to be educated about anything other than investing. Like when I go and teach in six forms, all the boys want to know about is investing and crypto and how they can make millions of pounds. Like that's kind of their thing. Yeah, it sounds like my son. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, you know, I'm who I am. He knows who I am. I've got a plaque on the wall that says I'm pretty good at what I do. And he's like, no, no, I'm just going to buy, I'm just going to buy Shiba Inu. know forget all that global index stuff just just give me some crypto because a guy on tiktok said he makes thousands a week on it yeah but this is something that should be taught in schools like they want to know don't they want to know you can't stop it they're learning it anyway online so you might as well teach them properly in school so that they have like a grounded education rather than a risky um some random guy who's invested in the coin himself pumping it for you yeah and that's where your education is coming from and this is the thing like honestly they could probably do entire courses on social media as well for young people to understand teach them that like social media is a highlight reel and that means that you are going to see highlights you are never going to see the people talking about all the money they lost you're going to forget about that person that you followed for a year that told you how amazing it was that's now disappeared off social media because you're on to the next thing but what you forget to realize is that guy that's disappeared he's disappeared for a reason because the money's gone and actually the only way he was actually making money was you were buying his course do you know what I mean and like the fact that he was teaching you about something that he said made money that wasn't actually how he's making his money and he's just it just can be so dangerous because young minds are so impressionable I try I try my hardest to like show different sides of it but like for instance last uh like um end of last year I did a story which actually like did like took off and lots of I had loads of engagement on it because for instance for me I talk a lot to the institutions we talked about and I talk a lot about finance education curriculum, getting it there.

31:57And I basically had this conversation with someone in parliament who was an MP and he basically was like, it's not happening. Why do you keep doing this? Like, it's not going to happen. I just think you're wasting your time. And I came off this call so disheartening because I was like, what is the point in all of this? What is the point in what I do? What is like, why does it matter? And he basically like said some other things about the fact that I was a woman. And basically the only reason that I was in these rooms was because they needed me to be there because otherwise you're mental yeah and I basically and I spoke about this online because I was like there's so many times where I come online I'm very bubbly and I'm like oh my god it's amazing we're doing great things and I just went online I was like you know what it's actually crap like I don't know if I what I'm doing is even worth it anymore like what is the point like why should I care why should I go and teach finance in schools why should I go on social media like what is the point um and actually it was quite interesting to see the amount of engagement from that from lots of people being like all these people that like are just ghosts on social media that like look at my stuff but don't ever comment or like suddenly you're like no no no don't go anywhere we actually do need you and I'm like okay right fine um and knowing that actually maybe if I like compared myself to two years ago things have changed like influencers and finance content creators have had a huge rise in the last year and you know maybe i've been a part of that so who knows we'll see yeah and you don't know the impact that you have on people and i think no you might not change policy if you look at like a gary stevenson he wants to change the way that we run the country and we tax things and he's going after the political angle my view is i'll just empower individuals to make a change in their lives and hopefully you know invest a little bit make themselves more comfortable they can impart that wisdom to their kids and then there's just this ripple effect and you know there's these systemic issues like education but the social media allows you to go straight to the source right and and i think that's an amazing thing and even if you if at the end of it you can say 10 000 families have a different outcome in their retirement because of the work i did it's probably 10 times more than that you know that what an amazing thing how many people actually get to do that in in their careers no i know is it like it's it's i love it i always say this i love my job i used to be an accountant so i really do know about not loving your job um but i yeah i am really lucky it's just a very it's a it's just a very weird world isn't it that mp sounds like a sad lonely man yeah i know like you know imagine imagine being an mp going you're not going to make a difference why you're even doing this yeah ask him ask him the same thing i know yeah yeah can you can you take us into the class of a year one teaching them about money like what are you saying to these kids it's honestly if you want to feel great about yourself go and teach you year one class it's brilliant like i felt like taylor swift like honestly they so you go in and obviously so year one you're talking to like age six to seven um don't know if you hang out with many six seven year olds but basically they are just like excited about life because like not much has happened to them it's great i love that i wish i was six again to be honest sometimes but basically you go in and you talk about what is money and you get them to like tell you like what is cash what coins all that kind of thing then you talk about how you earn money So them understanding the concept that their parents don't just freeze when they go to school and then reappear when they come back, like they might be off doing jobs.

35:15I think mainly it's just about having the open conversation and making sure that their mindset is one of curiosity. Because there are stats that say by age seven that your money mindset is formed. And so therefore, the people forming your money mindset are the people you have surrounded yourself with from birth to seven. and for me that can look like you have kids in their like end of school years that don't want to talk about money and it's because from a young age they were always told that they shouldn't or it's like a dirty word kind of thing do you do you believe that the money mindset is locked at seven or formed at seven i do think it's it starts to be formed because you can hear it out the voices of those like year one two three where they'll say things about money that aren't that are clearly what adults around them have said um and it's usually phrases like you know money doesn't buy happiness and um or like money's good and things like that they and these are phrases that adults have said to them like six-year-olds don't just wake up thinking about money or they'll say things like we don't have a lot of money and that's always really sad when i hear a six-year-old say that because i think oh like why are you hearing that yeah but it's not a disrespect to the parents like you know parents have got their own stuff to deal with like worrying about everything is impossible but yeah but they so I do think their mindset is starting to be formed by seven for sure because that I can hear them talk about it do I think it's fixed no I think you can definitely change it I just think it's harder if you don't talk about it in those school years because if you are trying to change the mindset of an 18 year old versus changing the mindset of an eight year old it's so much harder to convince them that life is easier when you're 18 and everything feels really difficult and confusing versus trying to say to an eight-year-old well let's start laying some foundations now so you don't feel out of your depth yeah how you talk about money around kids so i had a family interaction recently where we were watching the tv and there was a there was some kind of billionaire on on on the tv and they said in front of a 10-year-old oh they're all evil we should just we should just get rid of all the billionaires and i was just thinking you're teaching that 10-year-old that to have a lot of money is evil, makes you evil.

37:30And I know that there's a lot of billionaires that are probably dickheads. There's also probably some that aren't. And I don't think you should teach kids that having money is an evil thing. What is the ripple effect of that? And I was thinking, you've really got to watch what you say. It's huge because that character, for instance, the person that you were saying that overheard their parents saying money is evil, probably will make huge life decisions with that subconscious knowledge. Because for instance, even at 18, they'll go well do i want to go to uni well no so if you go to uni you might earn more money so therefore what's the point i i don't need to earn more money i just need to like earn enough money doesn't buy happiness yeah yeah and then the next level they're in a job and they go well actually i'm good enough to get promotion but they'll go well i don't want more money because i don't want other people to judge me for having more money and it will just have these like ripple effects i'll spend it because trying to get more money is a bad thing and they're not thinking that it's just deep inside of them yeah core memory kind of vibe even if we look at our older generation like my parents generation they're in their like mid-60s they're obsessed with owning homes like they they like they genuinely think the only route is to own a home and that's the only way to make money and that's because in their generation it was like my mom could buy my mom was a hairdresser at 22 and owned a flat in what world is any 22 year old hairdresser she was in croydon so we'll give her that but like in what world would that happen now like she was just she bought it just on her own like it would be almost impossible to do that now and it wasn't back then so that and house prices were like shooting up in the like 90s and it was all you know a different time so if you compare that to like now it's really important that we don't put too many biases on our next generation of things that we believe to be true now just because it and then when they come through it might not something you said at the beginning um about finding these teachers that can inspire you said one or two teachers inspired you it's hard to be inspired by someone teaching you if they don't if they've never bought what do you know what do you know about this what do you know about social media you don't even have a social media honestly it's why like it's why the schools bring me in is because i have lived experience so the kids like when the kids and also especially the boys always try to catch me out they're like what about this and then i can explain it and they're like oh okay she knows what's talking about it's fine um and that is like that is really hard for teachers to have that have all of that and be able to educate as well so yeah i don't honestly if i had the answer my current answer is i've written a curriculum i'm the moment anyone in power wants to actually do it like they can have mine and they can implement everything i've built into schools if they want it but yeah at the moment i'm just having to do it school by school i do think there is on the curriculum but i'm not sure how so basically i've had pushback from teachers before going, no, it is there.

40:12And yeah, so basically, finance is on the state school curriculum, but only 20 % of state schools have to follow it. If you're an academy, you don't have to follow that curriculum. There's lots of anomalies. And if you're an independent school, or you're a Scottish school, you don't have to follow that particular curriculum either. So there are only roughly 20 % of schools that do. The ones that then do, it's very light touch. Like I'm talking, even in year 10 and 11, 12, they're doing savings and what are banks, which oh wow like it's not interesting and you're not going to get the kids like thriving they're just going to be like oh fine i'm learning about it it's not going to change your life that much no no and are they lumping it in with it's in pshe basically which is like sexual education and finance yes well yeah and then if you compare it to like independent schools so the private sector it is within their curriculum so a lot of them do it um but that's just obviously only what is that like very very small number of schools in comparison was what four percent of kids are only in independent schools so it's yeah it's not being so technically yes it's on the curriculum is it done as well as i think it should be done no yeah i think there was a survey of kids that had had the education and half of them said they didn't remember it they don't remember having it so it's only in 20 and then 50 of them don't even remember so only 10 of kids to actually even getting it.

41:32Yeah, and if you're only getting it like once in a year as well, because that's all they really have to do to sign it off, you're probably not going to remember much. If you miss that day of school, you're not going to remember any of it. Like there's lots of problems with the current system, really. I personally think as well, there's something to be said. You could start integrating it into like all the different subjects. Yeah. But we're not rewriting it today. No, in the math classes, you talk about compounding interest and these kind of things. You talk about history of cash and history. I think so.

41:59Talk about geography of Bitcoin. History of finances. The history of finance is fascinating. It is. And, you know, if you want to talk about politics and the attitudes of parents, if you teach kids about 2008 and the early 90s and the 70s and these periods, you get an intergenerational understanding of why your parents think that the stock market is a scam or that banks are a scam. And these kind of things, you go, well, actually, mom, this was a bank crisis led out of mortgages born in America. It wasn't the stock market per se. You know, we should be teaching them about the bias that they're getting fed down the line.

42:33Yeah. And also it will help them understand, okay, I can appreciate why my mom might think the stock market is a scam. She lost everything in 2008, you know. Yeah. I would love it to be fed into every element of it, but maybe that's a big ask. And also I think we would say that because we work in finance and we talk about finance all the time. And I think it's awesome and so interesting. versus I have friends that are heavily in the mental health space that think that the education system needs complete reform to include mental health at its forefront and like understanding your mindset and your mental health.