S1E3: How to start investing in the UK

0:28Right then, T, time to record the Money Week advert. it summarises the biggest news stories that you need to know about, from pensions to investing, tax to the budget, or even what to do with the£1 coins while you're sat on the toilet. Along with their own analysis, they pulled together pieces from the top publications, like the FT, Economist and Wall Street Journal, to give you a balanced look at what's going on. If you want to give Money Week a try, you can get six issues in print and on the app for free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money. After your trial, you'll save an extra£5 on a quarterly subscription, exclusive to Making Money listeners, so that's moneyweek.com forward slash m-o-n-e-y there's a link in the description get out of the mindset that you have to be rich to invest

1:11have you heard the word investing and thought that's not for me because it's too risky expensive difficult you know whatever well i'm here to tell you that that's wrong today you're going to learn why investing is so important for building wealth and how anyone can do it simply It's about as simple as putting money into a savings account. Over the last 10 years, I've made enough money by saving and investing a little bit every month that I could now stop working for five years if I wanted and I'd be okay. I mean, I'd have absolutely nothing left at the end of it, but I probably would have had a good time.

1:41So today we're going to sit down with Kalpana Fitzpatrick, digital editor of Money Week and author of Invest Now, and we're going to explain to you how you can get started with investing. The very basics, which is all most people need anyway. Invest Now. Invest Now. Just do it. There you go. I really enjoyed that. Very satisfying. What would you say is your worst ever investment? So my worst ever investment, I would say actually is not investing at all. Ah, good answer. That's a good answer. That's my answer to that. So yeah, it's something I wish I'd started like at a very young age, as soon as I started working, in fact.

2:22Like when I started work at age 16, working in a shoe shop as a Saturday job too. And I'd spent some of it and I'd put some of it into a bank account, which is fine. It was still good. But I feel like if I'd started investing, then it would have been a lot better. And I'd given my money the chance to grow a lot more. But no one told me about it. Or they did, but they told me about it in quite a negative way. So I thought, okay, that's not for me. And that was it. Probably people that don't invest themselves as well. Yeah. Yeah, well, it was, well, one of those people was my dad. You know, he told me, don't do that stuff.

2:57No, that's not, that's not for us. Just put your money in a bank account. It's safe, it's sound. And that was it. So that's what I did. You say that my, my parents, like my dad, my dad's in oil and gas and my mom's a doctor and they never once taught me or my siblings about investing. And it was always like, get a good job, work hard, save your money. And now my sister's buying property and like my brother's investing. And we were like, why did you never tell us about investing? I think it might be the generational thing or just they just wanted to focus on like getting good jobs and stable. But I definitely say my worst investment was not investing in Facebook shares when I had the chance and Apple shares when I had the chance.

3:33But now I invest in everything. Talk about the real money. Come on, stop ducking around it. Don't make me expose myself. So I think that kind of scarred me a bit because I hate missing out on opportunities. So now I just go into everything. so I work in cryptocurrency and my worst investment I put 8 ,000 into my friend's project and it's now worth about five pounds so because I don't want to miss buy the dip so now's a great time to buy apparently because I don't like to miss opportunities I tend to go into very risky ones because I think it's going to make me a millionaire overnight so I think I need to kind of find a nice little balance and I think that kind of like gets us into the episode quite nicely because I think there's like a common misconception around it being gambling so I just want to introduce you first of all if that's okay Calvin there so you're the digital editor of money week is that right and you wrote you wrote a book which we've got a copy of here invest now so yeah one of the one of the the starts of the book around these myths and I think that's kind of what holds people back a lot from investing and Tomein just touched on it there about trying to get you know rich quickly or going into speculative investments can you just tell us kind of why people shouldn't see investing as gambling.

4:45Yeah, absolutely. And actually, I'm glad you mentioned the myths first, because I feel that is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to investing. Everyone I spoke to just say, oh, I don't do it because it's like gambling. It's not gambling, or I'm not rich enough to do it. And you don't need a lot of money to get started. So that's quite an important message. And yeah, and also, how do you get started? Because it's really complex. And it's also this perception that it's going to make you rich quick. It's about getting rich slowly. So I'm going to go back on the taking the high risks. And actually, it's all about doing it quite sensibly, but knowing how to do it sensibly and not expecting an overnight fortune.

5:29That's not how it works. In terms of it's not gambling. Gambling is like, you know, you go into you make a bet against something, you either win or lose. When you're investing, you're putting your money into a company a business in hope to get something back so you know that business is going to try and do well and when it does well you get share of that and that's how it works so yeah so I'd say yeah and also it's really important as well like there's a lot of taboo around money it's something you don't talk about we didn't learn it at school especially investing and as I said my dad told me not to do it he obviously he meant well and he actually he did start me off on a very strong ground by putting my money into savings accounts.

6:10And that was still good. But I felt like this is the next level of making your money work for you. And that's what investing is all about, where you do, you know, you work day to day, you spend your money, you work, you save it. But investing allows your money to sit somewhere and allow it to grow. So it's growing while you're sleeping. And yeah, so it's simple. And one thing I would say is when people think about investing, one thing I do think about is, oh, I need to go and buy loads of stocks and, you know, think about which companies I'm going to buy, which ones I need to sell. And I really want to make it clear that that's not what investing is about.

6:45You don't necessarily need to go and look for individual companies. It's about putting your money into specific funds, which gives you exposure to loads of companies. And that's what's so good about investing is that you're not relying on one company doing well. So we spoke about Apple earlier, whether Apple does well or not you're not relying on just Apple if you invest in a fund that has exposure to the FTSE 100 say you're getting exposure to the entire FTSE 100 there as well so yeah it's about the route that you take and knowing how to do it properly as well is so important I think the thing that I say to people that are new investors to try and frame it to them is if I said you've got to cook a meal you don't have to be a Michelin star chef to kind of feed yourself and I think a lot of people that the media perception of investors is we're looking at the Michelin star chefs and saying this is this is cooking when it's not really whereas there's certain investments that are essentially ready meals that you can you know just pick up off the shelf and consume that that will do the job very well yeah absolutely so I'm quite sensible when it comes to investing and that's the message that I really like to put across in my book is to do it safely and do it the right way so there is that no you know I'm going to lose all my money overnight actually it's just growing sitting there growing slowly and but it's quite important that you you you have the vision that it's a long-term thing so not an overnight return of fortune it's not about that it could take five years it could take 10 years it could take 15 years but this is something that you're building for your future whether you want to maybe retire early or you know planning to save for your children if you've got children or you know there's some major life goal that you've got in the future that you want to achieve and this is the way to get started so you might say 25 pound a month 50 pound a month whatever it is you have to work out what's affordable for you i think one thing from your book that that will help kind of bring this to life because i know people are going to sit there and go why would i just keep my money in cash because why would i take any risk with the money you know i'll just earn money put it in cash is it this the 72 rule that you've so could you explain that to us and kind of explain what i'll do let me explain why you shouldn't leave it just in a savings account because people listening might be thinking first is well what's wrong we're putting money in a savings account i'm saving that's still good so and i put it in my book as you know cash is making you poor essentially leaving money in your cash in itself is a risk so when you put money in a bank account you get a set interest rate and that's fine that's still good for your short-term um savings and everyone should have some sort of short-term savings, whether that's your emergency fund or short-term goals that you're going to spend in a year or two.

9:20That's absolutely important. But that interest rate is lower than the rate of inflation. So let's say if inflation was 2 % and the interest rate was 2%, the actual real rate of return on your savings is zero. Yeah, you're standing still. So yeah, so with investing, actually there's a potential to beat that inflation and you also benefit from compound interest, which is interest on interest where your money is growing at a faster rate. So that's really important. Now, the rule of 72 is about, people might often used to ask me, how do I double my money? Because that's my ambition. I just want to double what I've got.

9:58I've got 10 ,000. When will it turn to 20 ,000? So it's a really simple rule that kind of gives you a guideline because obviously nothing's guaranteed in life. It never is. and so say if you I'm trying to find the simplest way to explain this without a chart say if you put the idea is that if you had an interest rate of 3 % and so basically you would divide 72 divided by 3 and that's how long it would take you to double your money so if it was 1 % so 72 divided by 1 it would take you 72 years to double your money. So if you're getting 1 % on cash it's going to take you 72 years to double your cash.

10:36The more you can earn, the faster you can double your money. This is a really simple rule to kind of give you a little bit of a vision about how your money might double over time. It's not guaranteed because obviously one thing that is really important also to highlight is the understanding that stock market has its ups and downs. So we've seen the FTSE reach a record high this week at the time of speaking. And prior to that, it was quite low and it's had its ups and downs. It's been a difficult year for investors. and again that's sort of looping back to why it's a long-term thing because you need to give the market time to ride those ups and downs and eventually you'll see an upside and yeah so it's really important to understand that because I remember when people during the pandemic when a lot of investments may have seen go down and come you know companies weren't doing so well I remember people phoning me and saying oh do you know what like oh my investments are they're I'm doing really bad.

11:31I'm taking my money out. That's it, I'm done. Mistake. And it's just really having that patience and that understanding more than anything, understanding. It's always different as well when it's the money's on the line, because I think you kind of need to go through a few ups and downs before you start to become used to them. Like you spoke about the example of the, when it dipped in 2020 around March, because of the pandemic, I canceled to buy in the house at that point to put all my money into the market. And my mom was like, you are insane. and I was like, mom, Google's dropped 30 % or whatever in a few weeks.

12:03There's no way that business is 30 % less impactful as it is now. But I'd seen the 08 crash, how much that had come down and how much it recovered. And I'd missed that because naively at the time I was like, oh, it's clearly quite risky. So I think over time, people, you become more used to the risk. Yeah. And if you were to see the charts, I mean, you could go, speaking of Google, look at some charts and you'll see the ups and downs of the stock market. it's the my message is that that is normal yeah and to understand that is a feature not a bug yeah exactly and you've just got to have that understanding that that is normal i also think it's important that for people to realize they don't need to be an expert to invest i think most people think oh i've got to become a master at this topic when in reality i would say master your field your craft you know whatever you do like and just put your money to work in the stock market long term don't think I need to be Warren Buffett in order to play this game you know be the Warren Buffett of mechanics or whatever it is you do with your day job and I think that distinction then kind of leads us on to the question of you've mentioned like individual stocks individual businesses and then these index funds which are a lot more passive and broad where do you if you're a brand new investor what are you saying to them in terms of that relationship between stocks and index funds yeah I mean essentially a fund gives you an exposure like I said to a number of companies and with passive funds, essentially they mirror a certain index and it might mirror the FTSE 100.

13:27So when the FTSE 100 is up, your investments will go - So that's the top 100 companies in England. Top 100 companies in the UK, yes. And any index that you choose. And they're quite popular with investors. The opposite of that is active funds where you're paying a slightly higher fee for your investments to be managed by a human. And what they will do is loads of research and essentially stock pick what goes into your portfolio etc they don't always get it right and they don't always just because it costs more just because there's a human like picking these investments for you doesn't necessarily mean they're going to deliver higher returns so anyone starting out I would say passive funds are definitely a great way to get started and in terms of what we're saying about stock because it's also like really important like people think they do need to be traders and I remember having a conversation with someone once and they said oh I don't do the investing stuff and it's I just don't have time and I didn't know what she meant I thought what do you mean you don't have time it's it's about as simple as putting money into a savings account as far as I'm concerned once you get started just you know you're there she's like well I can't really I've got time to really monitor my phone and check prices and when I need to buy and sell and I thought that leave that to the traders that's their job you know they've got a team behind them they're doing research etc you don't need to do that it's a long-term game you know, buy and hold and, you know, let your money grow over time.

14:52But if you are going to buy loads of individual stocks, it's probably also not enough to help you grow your wealth. And this is all about, I imagine if you're listening to this and reading about investing, et cetera, your ambition is to grow your wealth, right? Or maybe go to the moon. I don't know. Whatever your ambition is, you know, it's not necessarily going to happen with one or two stocks ever you probably want a wider exposure and it also comes down to diversification and you know not taking on too much risk because if you invest in just one company you are at the mercy of that company doing well and delivering so you've mentioned active fund managers but as you say even they get it wrong over a long period of time most of them don't beat the market you know in terms of just the what they look to be i think over a 30-year period you can probably count on one hand or two hands, the so-called experts that beat the market.

15:46But it seems wrong that someone could go, it seems so complicated investing. And then you go, actually, all you need is five minutes a month to buy this thing that's relatively passive and easy that just tracks a load of companies for you. And that will serve you well long term. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you nailed it there. That's exactly it. And it's just getting started, I think, is the hardest part. And I would always say to anyone, people do feel nervous and rightly so. It is, you know, the industry hasn't made it easy for anyone to get started. But I feel like that's changing. I see investment ads on television and that never used to happen.

16:23And it's becoming more mainstream. It's also about the trust. I've had comments made to me. It's like, well, they're probably going to steal all my money. What makes you think that? And it's because, you know, I've never heard of them. Who are they? It's quite simple. if you're really nervous about it do your research check up the company go on the fca's website which is a financial regulator make sure they're on there and also i'd suppose worth knowing that if you before you start putting money into loads of places quite a simple move is also just if you haven't made the use of your isa put it in an isa stocks and shares isa the most simple basic thing to get started with would be that and also you know that means your whatever you make from that that money is free from the tax man.

17:10So we don't want the tax man touching your money, do we? No, no, we do not. No, you've got none left though. You definitely don't want him touching your fiber. I think I owe him some money to be honest. No, you can harvest that as a loss. So yeah, I've got enough losses to show him, so it should be all right. So if we just hone in on it, because the index fund thing is like, if you're saying just get started, it's great for that because it's like, I would much rather bet on the fact that the top 500 businesses in America are going to know how to make money more than I would. I think that they're probably better at doing that than I am.

17:43So the one thing though is as people approach this, they're going to see FTSE 100, S &P 500, VWRL, all of these codes and names. It's another layer of confusion, isn't it? How are you approaching that from a beginner perspective? Again, I just want to reel back to saying that you don't really need to be an expert. and a lot of people, you know, they might say, what is the FTSE 100? And I mean, Google is fantastic for, you know, Google it and you'll know what the FTSE 100 is. And it's, it's, it's a learning curve. It's education. We didn't learn it at school and it is really, if you don't know what the FTSE 100 is and you really want to know, I'm not saying ignore it and don't go and learn about it.

18:24Just, you just have to read about it. Basically the top 100 companies, if one of them starts doing badly, top 100 companies in the UK, if one of them goes bankrupt or starts losing money, they fall out and then another one replaces them yeah is that how it works yeah it's that it can move so i can't remember which one's at the top but you know yeah it can it can move whichever one becomes at the top can move usually you get like a top five without looking at all the other countries like the front like the cac and all these other countries just stick on england if what's the difference how do you know if you go footsie 100 or footsie 250 because like what what's the benefits um it i mean it's where you want to invest if you want to know what's in the FTSE 100, I'd just go onto the London Stock Exchange website.

19:05It's all listed there. And it's quite, you know, it's really simple to just go on there and have a look. You'll see loads of businesses you know. Yeah, you'll see. Vodafone and BP. Yeah, I can't remember which one was at the top last time I looked, but it was one of those. So yeah, just go onto the London Stock Exchange and have a look if you're really interested in knowing what's in the FTSE 100. Also, when you open your investment account, when you, be if you you know a fund that you might pick so you might pick one that's literally you know S &P 500 I don't know whichever you pick you can actually find out from even from your investment platform what's what your money's got um being invested so it's just a case of having a little dig around and looking at the paperwork linked to your account and depends how much interest you want to take um one thing you know people are genuinely interested and that's great if if it's going to confuse you and what i don't understand it you might end up finding you're holding yourself back yeah so try not to get too bogged down if if if if it's just a case of like i just don't understand it and i want to know that's great but if it's like you're looking at it and it ends up confusing you and it ends up being a barrier then that's not a good thing yeah i'm not so i'm not against education at all obviously it's really important that everyone learns and finds out as much as they can yeah we spoke to andrew craig and he taught he wrote the book like how to own the world and the message is there that the majority of people should just diversify across everything because no one really knows what's going to happen so you're spreading your bets and I think these questions of FTSE 100 or FTSE 250 or the S &P 500 you can eliminate that by just buying a global index fund which is all the businesses everywhere you know so you're you're buying thousands of businesses across the whole world I've been investing over a decade now and the longer I do it the more I just think I should probably just buy a global index Yeah.

20:50You haven't done it yet. No, I do. No, what I'm saying is I thought as I became a more sophisticated investor, that I would go more into individual businesses and become more competent. And actually, I've just realized over time that the beginner option of just buy everything is actually the one that served me best because the best thing that I can do is just buy it, leave it, kind of forget about it long term. Absolutely. And that's another thing you can do. And you don't necessarily have to even have one fund. You can have two or three. I would say someone don't have too many because then it becomes hard to manage and you don't know what's going on and it can get quite confusing.

21:24Yeah, it's kind of like it's like going to the gym in the sense of someone will be like, oh, a bench press or an incline or a decline. When in reality, if you just do that consistently over a long period of time, you're probably going to be in good shape. And I think it's similar with investing. It's not this analysis paralysis of thinking, what is the very best thing that I can buy? It's more the action of showing up consistently over a long period of time. Yeah, absolutely. And that consistency message is really important as well. I mean, if you're going to, say you're going to invest and you do a small lump sum now and then you forget about it, then I'm not saying that's a bad thing because it's whatever you can afford, but even if it's ad hoc, but just try and do it consistently, small amounts if that's what works for you, some little amount each month.

22:07and that way you can sort of take advantage of the ups and the downs of the market. So yeah, it's really, I think that's just consistency is key. And I love the analogy about linking it back to exercise. Actually, it's just about being consistent and seeing results over time. I talk about my apple tree, my garden, and talk about how some years it does really well, a bit like the stock market, and other years it doesn't. But on the whole, I get quite a lot of apples from that tree. so I'm quite happy and it's fruitful so I don't know if you can relate that to investing I think you can if you think of it in some sort of way to um you know not every year is going to be perfect and not every return is going to be perfect but it's you know I water that tree I look after it and then it looks after you yeah and it looks after me over time yeah yeah the same it's the same apples yeah not every not every day in the gym is a good one but you you just consistently show up and you see the results over time and you can't ever pin it down to like it was that day in the gym that made me fit it's it's the habit of going consistently and i think what people need to do with investing is kind of related to things in their life like cooking in the gym and these habits that we have that are good for us long term that people understand because it is just that it's just it's all these wrappers of jargon and barriers around it that make it seem more complicated than it needs to be.

23:24Yeah I'd say cut out the noise there's just so much noise around it and also get out of the mindset that you have to be rich to invest. I hear that so many times. Someone will say, I really, you know, they'll read an article. I love your article. It's a shame I don't have enough money to invest. And actually, you know, if you can find a few pounds per month, then you've got enough money to invest. It really can be as simple as that or it can be as complicated as you want it to be or as simple as you want it to be. so i think let's we've obviously spoken about how simple it is i want to now talk about kind of like the effect that it can have in terms of the compounding over the long term i'm going to whip up a compound interest calculator because okay you do it because i cannot mention those big numbers i don't want to put you on the spot so i mean you can just give me a second while we while we bring this up i think if we base it on investing in like a global index fund which is just a fund that buys thousands of companies spread all over the world at once.

24:28And we look at an amount. I mean, what do we say is an amount that someone could invest, guys? Hit me with a figure. 100 pounds a month, 50 pounds a month. Yeah, that sounds decent to me. And we go with an average rate of return pre-inflation of 9%. It's important that we say pre-inflation and we should probably talk about that in a minute, but that's probably the long-term global average. And if we say for 30 years. So 9 % a year for 30 years. 9 % a year for 30 years. And what we've spoken about risk and fluctuation, if we look back at the last 50 years, there's only actually been one or two years that have hit that 9%.

25:02Most of them are like plus 20 % down 15%. But when you average it out, that's where you get the 9%. So don't go into this expecting that every year you're going to get 9%. It will fluctuate, but long term, you'll hit that average. Okay. And then we'll say£100 a month again. If I calculate that. So you will have put in£36 ,000 over the time period, it's saying, but you would have earned£148 ,000 in additional gains on top of that. So that would leave you with a total amount of£184 ,000 from£36 ,000. And this is - That's great. Yeah, with a simple investment, essentially. I mean, if you scale the numbers, if you put 200, 300, the numbers only get bigger.

25:48And it's quite easy to find one of those calculators as well. Just any of the investment platforms will have it. So you can really, it's so easy to compare like what, you can quite often put in your goals. This is what I want to invest per month. This is my initial lump sum. And it can give you calculation on average return. So average might be something like 5 % to 8%. on a very good year it might be nine percent plus on a bad year it might get like two percent i don't know so it really obviously as we say it fluctuates so that's um yeah it's a really good calculator actually to find one like that and really work out your goals we'll link one in the show notes but i think it's it's just that realization that with a hundred pounds a month which you know 50 pounds whatever that you could be in a position where actually just by saying that's getting put to one side i've got hundreds of thousands of pounds in tax-free cash at the end of it that i can you know do whatever I want with I think is quite powerful really.

26:40Yeah absolutely. Tamayne do you want to hear a fun fact about tax? Don't get me excited I'm all about tax facts. Are you? I love a bit of tax. This is new to me. Well okay so in 1970 the tax code was around 1 ,500 pages now today 2025 is 22 ,000 pages. Hefty. Very so there's around 10 million words and there's more written about tax than any other type of law or legislation in the whole of the UK. It's one of the most complicated tax systems on the planet. We know how complicated tax can be, but we've got a tool that can help. TaxApp. TaxApp make it really easy to file your self-assessment. And if you're one of the 12 million people that needs to do that, the deadline is coming up on January 31st.

27:27With TaxApp, you don't need to have a lengthy back and forth with an accountant. And you don't need to navigate the complexities of HMRC on your own. You just sign up, add your info, and they'll guide you through it. So you can submit your tax return in as little as 15 minutes. We've left a link in the description. Prices start from£49, but if you use the code MONEY10, you get 10 % off your first tax filing. That's M-O-N-E-Y-1-0. There's also a QR code on screen if you want to use that. Okay, T, talk to me about your attitudes towards risk. I mean, I like a bit of risk in my investments, but I definitely would say since the podcast, I've toned it down a little bit, not quite as gung-ho and like carefree as I was in risk.

28:07So yeah. Yeah, shooting from the hip all the time, weren't you? Yeah. I think personally that you should take risks, but it should always be in areas where you have a unique skill set, an edge, expertise, like your job, things like this. One area that I wouldn't take any risks is compliance. Yeah, the risk changes you grow in business and you need to be on top of it, which is why we partner with Vanta. Vanta automates a lot of risk processes and helps you see your risks in a centralized platform so you know what really needs your attention. Besides risk, the main thing Vanta does is automate compliance with security protocols you need to scale, like GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001 and SOC 2.

28:46The beauty of Vanta is they make it easy to prove you're compliant with these standards, saving you up to 90 % of the time it takes, and on average half a million dollars. If you know what these acronyms like SOC2 are, you probably need Vanta. You can book in a demo at vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description. Let's talk about inflation then and kind of how this impacts all of it, really. Yeah. So, I mean, inflation is running high. If you've been watching the news, it's probably the one thing that keeps coming up and up and up. So it is essentially the price of goods and services.

29:20so if you are using energy lately you will well you will have noticed your energy bills and as you keep turning those lights off you will notice your food shopping's gone up you're filling up your car it's costing you a lot of money petrol prices may have come down a bit but they're still quite high from the summer last year so all this is really you know essentially denting household budgets so but the important message is if you're in a position to save investing as far as I'm concern has become a lot more important now because you want to be in a position where you're fighting that inflation as much as possible.

29:57You're not necessarily going to do that in a savings account where actually interest rates have gone up. So that's important to say as well. And they're great for short term savings, great for your emergency savings, which everyone, by the way, should have before they start investing. And that should be maybe like at three to six months of your annual income. And that's just a, it sounds like a lot. That's a really good theory because we were thinking about whether you, half the time I save and then my savings end up going on like fixing an emergency. So you should have an emergency fund and then your long-term investments.

30:32Yeah, and your emergency fund is, say if your car breaks down, boiler breaks down, or if you've got a ceiling in the kitchen that's starting to leak like I have, it's going to cost you a few thousand pounds to repair. it stops you you know reduces the risk of you falling into debt essentially and that's where that's when all the financial problems start and so anyone who's thinking about investing and listening to this think about your debts and think about your emergency fund first and yeah and make sure you've got enough money to pay those important bills it should never be money that you want to use in the next few months weeks etc yeah so I want to be kinder to tea now let's be nice to tea thanks guys appreciate you Because if we're saying that you should diversify globally through stocks and shares because, you know, no one really knows what's going to happen and it's good to spread it around, then by the same logic, shouldn't people diversify into other assets like cryptocurrencies?

31:26You know, would you say that as a diversification is... You can't ask me this. No, you can. You can. Yeah, go and carry on. If we're saying we diversify across a broad part of companies because we don't understand what's going to happen long term and we want to spread our bets, then by the same logic, you should also include cryptocurrency and that shouldn't you? Because we don't know what's going to happen long term and we want to spread our bets. Yeah. So one thing important to remember, I suppose, is I'm quite boring and sensible when it comes to investing. Everything that I've mentioned here is quite a sensible way to do it.

31:59With crypto, it's high risk. It's probably... And with high risk comes a reward. Not necessarily. Eight grand to 50p. Not necessarily. It's not regulated. So it's also really important that I would say, if you are interested in diversifying into high risk assets like crypto, let's say, or if you want to get into FX trading, these are all high risk strategies. And you're more likely to lose money than you are to make it. And I know people have had a good run. They've had been lucky, but there's equally people, you don't hear people talking about the bad luck that they've had. Survivorship bias.

32:37We just see the winners. Yeah. Because everyone's on social media shouts about how much they made, not how much they cost. Yeah, no one's going to go on and just say, guys, I lost my money. And it was a lot. You do get stories like that coming out, but you don't see them as often as, I've made so much money, copy what I'm doing. So I would say, first and foremost, maximize. If you've maximized your ISA, you've got good emergency savings put away. you're in a good shape, you've cleared your debt and you've got enough money to pay your bills. You're in a good position and you've got a little bit of a pot of money that you're happy to, what I'm going to call play money and you want to put it into crypto.