My Dad Went Bankrupt, It Changed How I Think About Money

28:59You know, oh, I don't trust pensions is a big one for people that went through the Robert Maxwell kind of period. I do trust property. Yeah. Say it's bricks and mortar. The stock market's high risk. You're going to lose all your money. Because someone said it to you once when you were a kid or your parents lost money in the stock market. So you're like, I'm never going to invest in the stock market. And then you hold that belief for the rest of your life. Yeah, one of my friends, his family have done quite well in property over the years. And I was having a joke with him the other day. And I was talking about the stock market.

29:27And I talked about index funds. And he just kind of went, index funds, silly. And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, well, it's all just like numbers. It's not real. It's not tangible. I like property because it's tangible. I was like, you've got a Tesla on the drive, mate. Don't tell me that Tesla's not owning a slice of Tesla. It's not a tangible business. You've literally got one right there. You know, it's weird how people are like, oh, I can touch the bricks. You can go to Coca-Cola's headquarters and see that that's a real business. You can go to every supermarket in the country and see that this is a real product.

29:56The phrase that particularly resonates with that with me is, I just want the money in my hands. I like it under the mattress. That's right, yeah. I like cash. Osborne did pensions freedoms. Most ridiculous phrase you've ever heard in your life. What was his name? George Osborne. George Osborne. Pension freedoms. I'm going to offer a personal political opinion here. which is, I think he did that basically to raise lots of money, lower taxes to buy an election. It was an awful thing to do. Because he gave people the ability to spend their pensions. To take all their pension money out in one go. So he ripped them out and created tax on them.

30:33And the classic example was you can take all your money out of the pension and buy a Ferrari as one of the politicians. Or a parking space in Dubai, didn't we? Yeah, that's what people were doing. But you paid lots of tax. So in terms of tax, it was an absolutely terrible thing to do. Pensions are there to give security in longer life. So they're not bad. But I had one friend who was taking all of his money out from a pension to buy a buy-to-let flat. And when I pointed out to them, at the time, he was taking money from outsider's estate to insider's estate from inheritance tax. And he was going to be paying 40 % tax on 70 % of the amount of money that he was going to get.

31:08All of these reasons why he shouldn't be doing it. And he just kept saying, yeah, but I just want my hands on the money. It is your money. It's in your pension, right? You've already got it. You can take it whenever you want. So lots of people have those sorts of hang-ups around different types of money, and they are a type of self-limiting belief. But the sort of self-limiting beliefs that I'm talking about are more about your behaviours. The fact that we could talk about spending, for example, spending habits. I'm fed up, so I'll buy something to make me feel better. That's a belief. Well, if you can afford that, great.

31:43But if you can't afford that, That's going to actually cause you a problem and is therefore a self-limiting belief. Yeah. So I know people that are pretty bad with money. And because they've struggled all month when they get paid, they're like, I deserve to blow a load of money. And then they're back in the cycle of being skinned again. So I'd want to ask, I'd be interested to know with those people, what is it that makes them think that the thing that they're buying is going to give them well-being? I'd like to explore that with them. it could, I'm not a psychologist or therapist, so I'm not going to get too deep into this, but a lot of that will go back a long, long way.

32:22So let me tell you a quick story. There was a guy called, there is a guy called Mark Bristow, one of the very early people on our podcast, and he's a money coach. And he told this most amazing story. He, all his life had been that person that you've just described, never really accumulated much wealth, never put money into savings and pensions always blew it and quite often on other people buying gifts um and so forth and on his kids when he when he had kids and it was quite late in life that he went for some um some therapy in his case and they took it right back to he was a small child in a department store with his mum and dad and his mum he got lost and he was lost for about 10 minutes in this department store which is pretty terrifying the age of four or something like that and then when his mum found him absolutely tore him off shouted at him and told him off because she was scared and worried yeah can't blame her you can understand the situation but for him that set in his brain my mum doesn't love me oh and he kept that belief without realizing it all his life and it was a lack of self-worth that meant that when he got money he would just give it away because he wasn't worthy of having money so that's how deep these self-limiting beliefs can go do you think it's always that deep that for people i had like some therapy um and i found it kind of annoying sometimes that i would be like i just want to talk about work this week and it's like yeah so tell me about your your mother and i'd be like oh there'll be a relationship with your mom when you were five and I'm like, is it always that?

34:02How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb's going to really want to change.

34:08Chris Budd:Yeah. So it's that space, you know. Because it can feel quite overwhelming to be like, in order to realise why I blow all my money, I've got to uncover childhood trauma that I'm not even aware of. That to me is. It depends how deep the problem is, doesn't it? You know, I always stress to financial planners who, so I found an institute to help people, financial planners do this. I do talks and all the time I write articles. And I'm always keen to say you're not therapists. So if somebody starts to uncover this sort of stuff, you need to stop because you're not trained to do this. They need to go and get therapists.

34:48All we're trying to do in this financial well-being space is to just ask a few questions to open up the mind a little bit. So you're absolutely right. You've got to be careful sometimes with this stuff. So it depends on the person, doesn't it? And how serious the issue might be, you know. Can we have some of those questions so that the people at home can kind of play along? What are some of the questions that you would ask someone to open up? What does money mean to you? It's one of them. But actually, do you know what? This comes back to the I wouldn't start from here point. a lot of uh very trendy question financial advice so-called over the last decade has been about this what does money mean to you what's your relationship with money actually let's get away from the money how the hell do you answer that as well well yeah it's a really meaningless question in some ways so what makes you happy what brings you joy look back in life look back in life and what were the times that gave you joy can i be really honest right like i said this to my partner the other the day i whenever i go to the till now and i buy something and i don't have to sit there looking at the receiver going is this about to bounce you know i get so much joy out of that i walk up in the petrol station scan it and turn off and walk away yeah and i'm like i know it's gonna clear that is honestly this is i this elevates me this feeling it's like a feeling of freedom and i get so much joy out of that and that's a money related so i'm not gonna try and analyze you no go for it no no i'm really not because i'm not qualified i'm on a free session but but what you're doing there is you are anchoring your well-being to money yes so what makes you happy what brings you joy and i'm not asking you can answer that yourself but i mean for acting on because we were thinking about this before this episode and i think what makes me happy with money or like what's my relationship and for me it's just like you being comfortable because i've had i've driven my mercedes into a petrol station way before the podcast and i had one pound 22p and i'd like scoop that from my car put one pound 22p in my mercedes and drive off and that was my life and then i'll go into tesco's and i'm like is the car going to decline or i'm on holiday and just now i came back from dubai and obviously a war started and lots of flights got cancelled and i'm thinking like we talk about emergency funds on the podcast i would have been stuck there and like i can't afford a hotel the old me because i just lived very like on the paycheck to paycheck so for me the ability to be like if something goes wrong i can afford to buy another hotel if my son wants something i can buy it for him if i want to go on holiday i don't have to be like can i afford it for me it's not about earning a lambo it's about being free to do what i want and that doesn't need to be yeah just the freedom feeling anti-fragile yeah feeling like It's like, oh, my whole life could be rocked if something happens.

37:30So you asked for a question that your listeners could ask themselves. This is quite a good question. So you've got that now. You've got that degree of financial security. Then what happens?

37:45What's next? Enjoy life. Go on holidays. Tell me how you'll enjoy life. Take my kid on different holidays. Be able to send them to a good school. That's the next thing on my list. because private school is expensive. So yeah, maybe look at that. But yeah, really just provide for my family. I'm happy every day. Like no matter what I do, I'm happy. I enjoy my job, which I've always thought it's really important to enjoy your job because people go nine to five, they hate their job just working to make the money. But I actually enjoy what I do, this and my sales job. So what is it you enjoy about your job?

38:17Talking to people, going to events, traveling, meeting new people. Yeah, it doesn't feel like work when you're just having cool conversations and then you do a deal at the end, you get some commission rather than like typing doing being an accountant i would hate that or something with the screen all the time i like interacting with people so just being happy really and being able to have the freedom so so i won't ask any more questions but if this was a financial planning meeting that i was running i would keep going and keep asking you about what it is that you get what where does well-being come from your job this kind of stuff um because look let's get into it let's get a bit of theory out to try and explain what i'm getting at here so one of them is about how money can actually get in the way of well-being.

39:01There was a study done in Canada where they put an advert out for blood donors. And they got a whole lot of people emailed their responses in. And they emailed them back and they said, they put them into three groups. The first group, they said, see you on Wednesday at 10 o 'clock. By the way, if you turn up, there's$50 in it for you. The second group, they said, if you turn up, there'll be$50 we will give for charity. And the third group, they said, if you turn up, there's no money, you'll just turn up and give blood. The lowest turnout on the Wednesday was from the group they offered money to.

39:33Really? The highest turnout was from the group they offered no money to. People give blood to feel good. It's purposeful. You don't give money because you want, sorry, give blood because you want money. And money actually got in the way of it and put people off. So money can actually be the enemy of purpose. So what is it that you get out of life that gives you joy and well-being is the question to be asked. When you get people who are, sometimes you get to deliver that, the favourite line of any financial planner is, good news, we've done the cash flow forecast, you're working now because you want to, not because you have to.

40:10Right, lovely thing to be able to say to a client. Then you might say, so what would you do next? And they might say, well, I'll carry on working because I enjoy it. Great. They often will say, I'm going to stop right now. Okay. Then what happens? Then what will you do? The number one answer, I would say 19 times out of 20 will be travel. Because we've all put that off through our working lives with a limited amount of holiday. Okay. So you're going to go to Machu Picchu and do the trip of a lifetime. When you come back, then what happens? What will you do then? Because going traveling isn't a purposeful thing it's an enjoyable thing um one of the chapters in my book is called beware the bucket list because people often want to tick off that bucket list and do the things they've been putting off and that's great that's that's fun i'm not saying don't do that but once you finish that bucket list then what happens where does meaning and purpose come in your life because that is one of the biggest sources of well-being yeah one of my friends was in a pretty bad car crash he's fine in the end but he got a big payout as a result of it um and he's done that kind of like traveling thing for a while because you know he bought a couple of houses and lives off the income essentially from the money and i'd meet up with him and he's like oh i don't know i don't really want to go abroad he's like you know you're just spending all of your time with people that are just kind of in this halfway house stage of life of oh i'm looking for something like people who travel it's like you know they're either quite young he's like i feel like i'm getting old now for a lot of the places i went to thailand and i felt like i was an oap so you go to bali and it's just kind of people that are just floating around and a lot of lost souls and he's like yeah he's like i'm done with it and now it's like what am i going to do just never work again so he's still in step one yeah he hasn't looked at step two the theory of of joy and well-being and he hasn't looked at step three how will that apply to him that's why that model is works so well because we all get to step one and try to build financial security without thinking what's next let me give you another bit of um another bit of theory so there's a quite well-known harvard study on happiness where they went to lots of teenagers um 18 year old or so um half of them were harvard students half of them were poor area of boston where harvard is and they said to them what do you think will make you happy as you go through life and overwhelmingly they all said uh money and fame were the two things that they expected to bring them well-being and then they went back every two years and said to them how happy are you and what are the sources of your happiness or otherwise and they kept doing that now for about 80 years they've got lots of other cohorts so this is massive longitudinal study and um overwhelmingly what happened was people who said that they were wealthier were no happier than people who were not wealthy and people who were famous were no happier than people who happier than people who weren't famous.

43:08That was not a contributor to their well-being. So what was the quality of their social relationships? Not the quantity, the quality of their social relationships. So if you've got some money and you're feeling a bit unhappy, think about is your money helping you create communities, be involved in a community? So one of the things that I do, my life has changed since studying this stuff. I wrote the Financial Well-Being book 10 years ago, and my life has changed since I've done that because I apply the principles. One of the things I do is I love music and I love vinyl. So I now buy and sell vinyl at markets.

43:43So twice a month, I'll Sunday market and I'm standing there selling a four quid Simply Red album, you know, or a bit more expensive Smith's album. But what I love about it is people come up and have a chat and they talk about music. And I've got such brilliant stories from people telling me about how music has made such a big difference to their lives and what records and all this kind of stuff just brilliant fun and i get so much well-being from doing that um and i buy collections of people and i keep all the ones i haven't got whispering quietly um and i sell the other ones but it's such a joyful thing to do and it's not about money it's about connections and social relationships i got finally i got recognized on a plane by two of our listeners shout out you guys appreciate you and uh we just had like the best chat on the plane like oh what's your podcast and then we were just chatting and like for me it's Screw the fame, obviously.

44:29I thought I just want the money, not the fame. But I like just - He wants the fame. I want the clout. I'm a clout demon. No, I just, I like talking to people and like learning about them from different - I did anthropology in uni. So I like learning about different societies, different people, what makes people tick. This guy's from Liverpool. He watches the podcast. This guy's from like France. He watches the podcast and like the difference in their attitudes to money. Just learning about people is cool, I think. But have you found, you know, when you have financial milestones in life, like you got a raise at work or something big you get a big bonus how do people kind of act afterwards because every time i've chased a raise and i've got the raise i'm like happy for a day or two yeah i need another race by the way um i'm happy for a day or two but then it's kind of it just kind of blends into life you're not like it's not as on the way to journey to the raise you're really excited then when you get it you're happy and then two days later it kind of feels like life is back to normal yeah so is there something about milestone financial milestones well you you've just segue beautifully into set point theory so that's what i meant to do yeah what's set point i was hoping i'd get one of those during this um so set point theory is a model of happiness that there was one study done let me ask you a question so there were two groups of people one had won a life-changing amount on the lottery and one had had a life-changing accident loss of limb type accident and they asked these people how happy they were before their life-changing event and happy after the life-changing event.

45:55What do you think the answer was? I know. So I'll let you... Well, I mean, if you lost a limb, I'm pretty sure you were happier before than afterwards. But for the other side, you'd be happy afterwards if there was something good. Yeah. So the answer was that there was no difference. The expectations, right? Yeah. You know, the person who lost their limbs probably thought that their life was over. And then six months down the line, they're like, it's not, I feel happy. The person who wins the lottery probably thinks, All my problems are solved. But six months later, they've still got problems.

46:27So your expectation of where you're going, it's that trajectory, isn't it? There's a great quote I heard attributed to George Michael, which was, being wealthy doesn't solve your problems. It just gives you different problems. It's quite like. No choice, B.I.G., more money, more problems. There you go. I think Zig Ziglar, we all know money won't make us happy, but we all want to find out for ourselves. Yeah, or Spike Milligan, they say money won't make you happy, but I'm willing to take my chances. he is making money i want to make more money follow me on instagram t is making money yeah i ran out of people to quote yeah yeah we had a little quote off so um set point theory is is exactly that that we go through life with a set level of well-being okay and it doesn't tend to change long term so you'll probably know somebody that is just happy being miserable right and then you'll know somebody like my daughter who just is always looking for joyful things to be doing when she walks into a room, we all feel a little bit better.

47:22But we all have our own set level of wellbeing. And what happens in the moment is something happens to make you happy or something happens to make you sad. So we oscillate around that level of wellbeing. Something makes you happy, that feeling will dissipate, and you'll just revert back to your set level. Something might make you sad, and after a while, you acclimatise, and you'll go back to that set level of wellbeing. So we oscillate around. So you get a nice big bonus, you spend it on something, that makes you happy. But after not that long a time, you realize that actually it hasn't made that much difference.

47:51Now, when we go above and makes us happy, that's great. You're not going to sabotage that in any way, of course. When you go below, then that's not so nice. When you feel sad, you want to get back up to your set level of well-being. So we do stuff to give ourselves a short-term hit of well-being. And what do we do? We buy shit. It's even called retail therapy. It's got a name. Retail therapy is not a good thing. Retail therapy is feeling... Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's so, so good. Sometimes it's good. Well, if you can afford it, if you can afford it, it is. So I love my cricket. I went to see Gloucestershire play a game of cricket.

48:28It started to rain, stayed there for an hour. And after an hour, I gave up, I came home. And on the way back, I stopped in Rough Trade Records and I bought two records for 50 quid. And on the car on the way back, I went, you idiot. You've literally done the very thing that you do lectures about. but I could afford it. I could afford that 50 because it didn't cause me a problem. But there will be plenty of people out there whose spending habits are causing them a problem and understanding that it's not their fault. It's because of this short-term hit that they need of wellbeing. So what could they do instead?

48:59They could get that hit. Yeah. Just go outside and stand at the sunshine, hug a loved one. Delay. Delay is a really good tip. So my spending habits have changed. If I see that there's an album come out that I want to buy, for example, I'll go on Amazon, stick it in my basket, and I will then leave it for a few days. And after a few days, I'll go back and look at it and go, do I actually want that? And yeah, maybe I do. So I'll buy it. But quite often, I'll go, I must have just been feeling a bit low a couple of days ago, and delete and get rid of it. So if there are people who are listening who've got spending problems, then there are other ways of getting your well-being than spending.

49:35i was gonna say other side of the coin is there a time in your life when chasing money is good like you know lock in like the next five years i'm just gonna work 10 hour days like maybe you start a business or like i don't know you you have your first kid or something is there there times when it's good to just forget everything i'll forget my well-being i'm just gonna lock in and focus on money i've never done it myself because i always just want to have a good time but are there times when you should say forget everything forget my health forget my relationships I'm just going to Damien can probably relate I've been locking in since I was about 18 yeah I need to unlock you get you out but yeah if you've got a lot of debt for example things like that I'm not going to say you should never do that because I'm not trying to live other people's lives for them I just get the theory out and the research out as well as my own lived experience and the time of 20 years as a financial planner and say I've never yet seen that being a good thing not exclusively not at the risk of everything else not the debt of course if you've got massive debt getting out of it is a really important thing to do but that's not at the expense of seeing your kids or like work going being healthy yeah yeah exactly um so in the early days of ovation i sat down with my wife about five years in the first five years were really really hard i've still got the scars um we talk about the dry toast days because there was one day i had to have dry toast for my lunch because i couldn't afford to go out me putting anything on it.

50:58And after five years, I said to my wife, do you know, I think this is going to be okay. I think I can build this into a decent little business. Now, we've got a decision to make. I can either work really hard, 10 hour days, six days a week. I would try and get home to see the kids before they go to bed, but I won't be here for tea. And I'll be gone before they get up for school. And I think we could be quite rich. I think I can actually build this into quite a big business and we could be quite healthy. Or for the next 15 years, I can be taking the kids to school, home for tea, tucking them into bed, not working weekends, and I think we'll be okay.

51:34What do you want me to do? And, sorry, I knew it was going to go at some point. Without a beat, she said, the second. Without a second's agitation, she said the second. So that's what I did. And if she said the first, would you have? Oh, I would have said no.

51:51Chris Budd:Yeah, leave her. well you're the wrong woman for me your wife yeah right i i i probably would have would have had a go at it and i think it probably would have made me very unhappy well i don't i don't think i know it would have made me unhappy um i have a very good relationship we have a very close family very love love my kids and they and uh yeah that was absolutely the right decision so to go back to your question not at the exclusivity of health social relationships etc it ain't worth it just chasing the money the exclusivity of that it doesn't work it doesn't bring well-being and there are many many wealthy people who look back and say i wish i spent more time with my kids like that brawny ware book five regrets of the dying nobody said i wish i'd spend more time at the office i'm so glad you said i reaffirmed my life because my dad was very he worked he was in oil in nigeria and he was flying like every month one month in london one month in nigeria but then he took us on loads of holidays so like we had lots of family time on holidays but generally he'd be gone for a month and he still does it to this day but me i'm as once i once covid hit i said i'm just gonna work from home forever i go to the office one two days a week but i'm pretty much work from home i can pick up my kid from nursery and for me that's more important to me than i keep getting job offers yo come to this country come do this and i'm like but i won't have the freedom to come and do the podcast i won't have the freedom to work from home pick up my kid from nursery spend time with him take him to the park in the middle of the day um go do kind of cenex workout in the middle of the afternoon so yeah i think yeah i'm glad you chose the second choice i'm trying to choose the second choice as well go back to that that three steps step two which should really be step one is my point is understand what the theory says about what makes us happy and it's those five parts of well-being and the blend between them and money being used to further those then how does that apply to me what will give me purpose and meaning in life am i getting good quality social relationships then how much money do i need need to achieve all of those things and the thing is when you do it that way around the amount of money you need it's an awful lot less than you thought um who are the happiest people in the world i would say buddhist monks never seen an unhappy buddhist monk they don't have much they all point is that they don't have anything now i don't want to be a buddhist monk i don't want to have nothing i like my records i like my books and what have you um but i don't need anything like as much as i thought i did when i was 25 have you ever failed to change someone's opinion Oh, God, yeah.

54:18Oh, my Lord. All the time. Lost friends on the odd occasion. My epitaph will be he was never too far from an opinion. So, yeah, absolutely. But if somebody's got a different opinion that's valid, that's cool. It's science-based, peer-reviewed. My beliefs are not truths, right? Go back to that. So if somebody got a different opinion to me and I try and explain it, why they're wrong and they don't agree, I can see they've got a good point. Yeah, fair enough. But there are plenty of people out there who think that accumulation of money is the point of their life and that will make them happy. And I know that that's not right.

54:59You might hear wood chipping outside because in this week's episode of the neighbours doing random ass shit while we film, there's people on the street chipping up trees, mate. Last time they were digging out an alcove next door, now they're just digging up the road outside. so yeah yeah yeah so do you advertise a date when you're going to be doing this and then the case will can find out yeah it's a bit mad we only filmed two days out of every six weeks but it just so happens that the hard labor happens at the time that we're doing it so you say you've struggled to convince some people if if someone is listening now to all the friends that didn't you know that you've lost over the years or just someone at home that's like no i'm not convinced what would you say to them?

55:42So I went on a Buddhist course a few years ago for the philosophical kind of perspective because it's a really interesting philosophy Buddhism and there was quite 50 60 people there for this course and quite near the beginning we were all sent out to go into our little rooms with about five of us with one of the leaders and we were just asked just discuss with each other why you are here and why have you come to this course and the leader was gentle soul we all said something similar we all said we just want our brains to slow down a little bit life is just happening so fast we just want to find some calm and peace in the world and then somebody said to the leader um if we were if buddha was here buddha himself was here and we asked him the question you know the meaning of life and and what what will make me happy what would he say and the leader smiled and said he'd probably say go and have a cup of tea you'll work it out and i thought this is the religion for me i love that no finger wagging no this list of things to do and don't you work it out so i'd say something similar you know if you're not happy do something about it happiness takes work happiness just doesn't happen to you happiness takes work and effort and in this world that we live in there is so much crap going on the news is so depressing advertising exists to make you happy right so there's one thing you can do shut out advertising from your life when i go to the movies um my son uh and i love love going to movies together so uh He will go in first, watch all the adverts and the trailers, and I'll sit outside reading a book.

57:23And only when the film starts, when he texts me, I run in and start watching the film. I will do anything to avoid adverts. Because they are designed to make you unhappy. That's why they exist, to say you need... You're unhappy, you need this thing to make you happy. Yeah, to make you happy, yeah. So it takes work to be happy. So, yeah, just have a think about it. And if you're... What's making you unhappy and change it. yeah one thing that i've done to improve my happiness in recently is i've installed minimalist phone not sponsored in any way just basically makes my phone into a brick and anytime i go on certain apps it'll be like do you want one minute five minutes or 15 minutes and that's your lot and as soon as you've done 15 minutes it kicks you out and then you kind of have to jump through loads of heaps to get back in and anytime i find myself on social media i stop and i just go on audible instead and listen to an audiobook and basically i'm just craving something in my ears or content you know we live in this world don't we of i can't go the toilet without having some content playing basically as i walk up the stairs just replace that with audible getting through like loads more books much wider perspective on the world and people's points of view i'm listening to a book at the minute which is um it's about a morbidly obese man who can't get out of his bed and then the apocalypse hits and it's set in like the in the covid and basically his like fat reserves are the thing that keeps him alive and it's like about his like lived experience as he comes to terms with the fact that the whole world is dead because the just eat app won't work and he's like why can't i order my six pizzas and but then like listening to this man's like daily struggles and his life and actually how because he's sat in this bed for 15 years he's researched all these random things so he's hyper intelligent he's like very humanizing of people that i probably looked at in the past when I've seen them and been like, you look at them, you look at their problem, you don't look at them as a human.

59:15So like reading is like, whereas content is very much, a lot of the news just is the opposite of that. It dehumanizes people. You know what I mean? Absolutely. LinkedIn is just all about people shouting, look at me, look at me, look at me. Oh my God. I hate LinkedIn. I actually, unless you want to sponsor the podcast.

59:35So I quite like social media if it's well curated. So I've moved from Twitter onto Blue Sky. And I like Blue Sky because I follow nice people. Well, we like to think that we put out positivity. So I try and make finance content on the main channel that can literally help people improve their lives. So they can take something out of the screen and do it in their life and they get better. And then we try and have conversations here that are not overly negative where possible. Sometimes in the financial world, it can get a bit negative, but... But my social media, I had an app that turns off my social media after like 20 minutes, but obviously I just open it again, and get back on Instagram.

1:00:08But what I've noticed is like, you'll be chilling and you see like a war, someone get blown up, this, all this depressing stuff. I follow two new pages. One is end doom scrolling. They've got the best videos of like random people throwing rocks down hills and stuff. And then halfway through the video, it stops and it's like, this is how many hours people spend on their lives on Instagram. We'll show you the rest of the video after, but like, could you be doing something better with your time? And I'm like, thank you, then I leave. And then there's another one called the good news movement. So instead of showing like all these wars, it just shows you like this gut father saving a kid this woman that's cured a disease someone's dog who with three legs has been adopted all the good stuff that goes on in the world that no one shows you because they just want to scare you and make you depressed so those two pages one gets me off the app and the other one shows me there is good in the world they've increased my happiness so much yeah yeah look if if your listeners wanted to take one thing away from this um and it's not about money and yet it is because as i say money is a distraction as much as it is a help.

1:01:04There's just one word that sums it all up. If you want to be happy, there's just one word that sums up happiness, kindness. Just be a bit more kind and you'll be happier. There's a great line, many books I could recommend to you, but one of my favorites is the Book of Joy, which is a discussion between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama about what is happiness, what is joy. And there's a lovely line in there from Archbishop Desmond Tutu when he says, joy is your reward for the giving of joy. Isn't that a great line? Kindness is selfish. Being kind makes you feel good. It's impossible to feel good if you're angry at people.

1:01:40You know, if you're shouting at someone because they've done something wrong, internally, you feel angry and tense. Whereas if you're kind to people, you feel happier, right? Don't try and win the argument online. Try and understand the other person's perspective. You know, just be a bit kinder in life and that will make a big difference. Yeah, we'll just block them.

1:01:59Chris Budd:see ya

1:02:04alright Damo what do you think about that one I loved him mate you can tell that he is friends with Pete Matthew you know they've got a similar kind of similar vibe similar energy if you don't know what we're talking about we'll leave that episode for you here for anyone that's on video and if you're listening on audio we'll put it in the show notes or wherever you get the links from and we'll see or hear you in the next one yeah nailed it Nailed it.

1:02:57for you. This episode was produced by Ruth Edwards, and it was filmed and edited by Ben and Jack at Flow Spire. See you next week.