50k guaranteed or flip for a million? (The answer says a lot about you).

0:01Would you flip a coin for a million or take a guaranteed 50 ,000? There is a gender split, shock horror, between the men versus the women who take a risk when it comes to their money. And we're going to talk about the study and why it's so important that we all choose to flip the coin. There's a new trend of billionaires actually deciding to buy land and property in New Zealand. But this might not necessarily be the influx of money that you're going to want, because it could push the everyday person that lives in New Zealand out of the property market. AI has literally hacked its way out of a closed environment test.

0:33The whole thing is kind of scary. Feels like a freaky movie. We're going to talk about what is happening with the top seven AI tech stocks. And why has Apple become the most valuable of all of them? And finally, LVMH is on the way back up thanks to Dior. So we're going to be talking about the Lady D bag and whether Sophie likes it. And secondly, why it all comes down to maybe the branding. This is the Curve Weekly where we read the finance news so that you don't have to. I'm Abbey Foster. I'm a child accountant, finance content creator and presenter. And I'm Sophie Hall-Wright, ex-radio TV producer who was very exhausted not understanding the economy or anything to do with money or investing.

1:09So we started this podcast. But before we dive into the headlines, a quick word from today's sponsor. This episode of The Curve Weekly is made possible by Pathfinder KiwiSaver Plan, helping you invest alongside your values. Pathfinder's one mindful money, best ethical investing provider for five years running. So we've teamed up with them to bring you the ethical hotline. Got questions about the ethics of an investment or unsure where you draw the line? Submit your questions via the link in the podcast show notes and thank you so much to Pathfinder for making this episode of The Curve Weekly possible.

1:37Pathfinder Asset Management Limited is the issuer of the Pathfinder KiwiSaver plan. A product disclosure statement is available at pathfinder.kiwi. Okay, at the time we're recording this, it's official. The Curve Fund is now live. We don't have enough people in this studio. No, it's very exciting. I don't know if you can hear the clapping, but this has been a huge, there's been honestly so much work that's gone into this. So for everyone that's worked on this behind the scenes, the team at, you know, the Curve, outside of the Curve, even Abby, you helping fill in on the podcast, there's just been so much happening.

2:12So just wanted to say congrats to everyone and thank you to everyone for the support and making it happen. It's outrageous to think that people can now invest with us. Did you see our little trailer video that went out? Yeah, so exciting. What do you think? Always lovely. You guys are always going to do something really cool. Oh, God. Okay. But I mean, we're very, I think everyone's very tired, but we're very proud. But if you would like to find out more about the Cove Investments and what we've just launched, you can obviously find it on our socials, but we'll also link to the website in the podcast show notes.

2:40We're going to play the trailer just because why not? We've been sitting on this for months, our biggest announcement ever. We started in a dingy little studio. Recording every few weeks, quietly assuming no one was listening except our parents and maybe our friends. And then one day we looked up at an event and there was 250 women and we didn't know a single person there. You told your friends, your friend told her sister, her sister told her mum. You've been our entire marketing team. And then as the community grew, we launched the Investing Club. Hundreds of you joined, but we kept hearing the same thing.

3:10You just wanted to invest alongside us. So we've now been talking about investing for years. We've built an incredible community of over 100 ,000 women around the world. We can't quite believe we're saying this out loud, but... You can now invest with us.

3:36Abigail Rose Foster. Are you in the red or are you in the green this week? How are you going financially? I'd say I'm in the red. I've had a lot of invoices. to pay this week which and I'm I'm a stickler for like as soon as an invoice comes in it's out like I have to thought about being an accountant I know I know but no but paying those invoices is like it's quite okay right yeah what about you I think I'm actually when I say in the green I'm not oh wow I have all this new income or anything but I haven't blown the budget this month yet I'm fine I'm really trying this month to be onto it so we've got some really good stories to talk about today.

4:14And the first one I was almost wondering if we start with is the article that came out with the study around the coin flip. Yes, of course. So basically, it was a YouGov poll. I want to get the numbers right here. So 4 ,600 UK adults, which is not loads, but good enough. Basically, they were asked if they would take£50 ,000 guaranteed or flip a coin, so a 50-50 shot to win a million. What would you do? Okay, I want to do a little round the room here. And I'm quite devastated that we don't have a roaming microphone. But I want to actually first ask emily and lucy okay if i've got a coin flip and i could say to you here is 50 000 that's guaranteed or you flip for a million if i if i don't get the million do i default to the no i get nothing nothing yeah shit so you either get 50 000 now or you flip to either get a million or nothing i think i'm flip whatever i'm off okay stunning now we're moving on to lucy come over here please we have a fake million here that you could win if i flip a coin but you also could just take a guaranteed 50 grand what are you choosing do you know what i might actually just take the 50 grand okay that's fine you say that oh nice great addition it's almost like she's paid to be here um so yeah so 73 took the safe money basically in the uk which shows that we're quite risk adverse actually though if you put specifically into women that number was 82 chose the guarantee versus 63 % of men, why aren't more of us taking more risks?

5:41Like that is, I think that is the biggest question that comes out of this. I understand, I know women are more risk averse. We see it. We know it's investing, it's all of it. Like we're just, I feel like we're biologically more risk averse. But in this day and age, do we need to be? I would like to counter that and say I think it's not true. I don't think. Okay. Okay, I know. She's like, righto, backing up some stats. Yeah. I'm the riskiest person I know in all areas of my life. I don't think it's a gendered thing. I don't think women are necessarily less risky than men. I think we don't understand the odds.

6:16I don't think we understand the fact that you are getting an outcome that is 10 times better. And I also think that we don't really understand the idea of statistics as much and the idea of how flippant it would be to flip a coin for a million. I think a lot of us see that I don't know I I just think it's not true I don't think we're less risky I think we have less education definitely agree with that but I would just caveat that the two of us are both like considered quite risky people anyway that we started businesses and we work in the industry that we work in like we're quite good at like putting ourselves out there so I wouldn't say we represent the majority of women like and I that's where my jump would come in is I would say I've got a lot of girlfriends I know that are incredible at what they do but I know that they would choose the 50.

7:06It's the loss aversion theory there's this like mindset isn't it that like if you drop 20 pounds it's like ruins your day and if you find 20 pounds it only like makes you happy for a minute that sort of element and actually I think people would suffer more with the loss of the million than basically just like taking the 50. So I was looking into the stats of this the expected value of the million dollar coin flip technically is like 500 ,000 and it's basically the idea that it's 10 times the guaranteed offer of like to either take 50 grand or flip it you think of it as I'm not going to have anything but it's just like it's so like if it's a coin flip it's a 50 50 chance of getting a million that is not bad odds you know and it's crazy to me like when I first saw this article someone actually asked it to me before I read it and my immediate reaction was the same as Lucy's I said I'll take the 50 grand definitely and then I read it and was like oh no no I wouldn't do you think it comes down to it so like if you could if you could think about what you'd about you'd spend that 50 on like I think a lot of people might take the 50 being like right well I need it because I need to spend it on xyz whereas if feel someone that's already financially more comfortable and might have like somewhere closer to that in savings you'd be like ah risk it all I think so I definitely think so I think that someone that has more financial security feels like they can be riskier oh and I think I think that that is the difference as well like let's say you have 200 grand already invested and you the 50 is there it's either you're gonna have a million or nothing at all you're not in such a desperate situation that you would just take the 50 because it's guaranteed because you know how much better the upside is but yeah I think you're right it would be really interesting to dig into like the people that said like the 82 percent of women that said no I just want to take the guaranteed money if like what their financial situation is if it's more precarious than men yeah but I just thought it was quite interesting because then I was thinking about okay there's actually 10.6 billion pounds sitting in UK adult savings accounts.

9:14Yeah. Over 10 billion. And I was like, God, this is earning, you know, like 1 % of interest. Yeah, ridiculous. It's literally sliding backwards. And this is for anyone that's, you know, doesn't really know too much about inflation. It's basically just the idea that this is just getting smaller each year. So it's basically the LPC, if you imagine inflation sits around, well, what is it at the moment, like 2.6%, If you're earning 1 % on your account, it means effectively the money in your account is not keeping up with inflation. And therefore, the value of your money is decreasing over time. So you could have bought for£100 last year and now cost£102.

9:49But if you left£100 in an account that made you 1%, you actually only have£101 this year. So you can't afford what is now£102. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think that's the hardest thing for people to get out of their heads. They think, well, it's earning some interest, so that's okay. And I'm like, no, what you need to compare it against is what inflation is. And I think there's, you know, it's even worse when you think about people leaving money in their current accounts. I am so anti leaving money in your current account because effectively, the only... Can we play a fun game? How much money does everyone here have in their current account?

10:22Like their transaction account? I know for a fact I have£100. So I'm absolutely killing it at this game right now. Everyone come around to the mic. Lucy, hello. I think I've got about 41 pounds in my like tap like yeah I'm really proud Emily I the face that you have right now is making me think you've done something naughty I've got 5 ,000 pounds I'm like no I'm kidding I don't I have I have 300 pounds that's really good though how much have you got Abby are we about to have you yeah massively well I have it so basically because my rent comes out of here i do have over 2 000 in it but you're about to pay reen i'm about to pay rent which is around 2 000 but my statement still stands that don't need money in the current account because it means the bank is using your money to make more money and we don't like that i think people worry about this like 50k versus a million and i'm like you've got money that you're just letting leak out of your account anyway you know you're not properly putting it into place so yeah and i think also if you were to then look at a teen year period so yeah we're saying the idea of one year of inflation.

11:29If you're only getting 1%, inflation's at about 2.5%, then there is a gap that you're losing. But imagine if that's over a 10-year period. That's 10 % over a 10-year period. If you look at the stock market, over 20 years, it's returned like 11%. So you really need to like, I just, it kind of shocks me that there is still so many people that think it's safer to not take the risky option. I think it's not. I think in genuine, personally, and you know i've said this before it comes down to education like people aren't educated enough i think our government and to be honest global governments do a terrible job at kind of making the financial education seem easy to digest like you know especially in the uk we're made to then put like all these disclaimers on our content and like whenever we talk about investing it's like yes but your capital is at risk and so then people hear that and go oh okay it's too risky i'm like yeah and i'm like no no no no we need to make it more engaging more inclusive just easier for people so we'll see i couldn't agree more you're preaching to the choir or the converted or whatever that is yes so we have got some kind of weird but amazing news out of new zealand yeah that basically billionaires are setting up shop in new zealand and i want to follow suit which i think was amazing married or something you know and then you can buy property actually if you have enough, if you have millions, you can buy in New Zealand.

12:54And it's basically you get like a free visa. It's like a golden visa, isn't it? Like when you buy in, is it Portugal? You basically can just basically be a resident there, which, you know, it's a nice idea. So backtrack. Yes. There's all of these hugely wealthy people who have bought hundreds of acres in New Zealand. Yeah, like Peter Thiel, so the guy behind PayPal, he acquired 477 acres on New Zealand's South Island. I am actually really sad to say I've never been. to New Zealand. Please come when we're there. I'm definitely coming. I did Australia when I was 21. And I should have just gone over.

13:29What are you thinking? You're so close. I know. I should have just gone. Anyway, sorry. So Pete Thiel, the PayPal guy, acquired 470 acres, New Zealand, South Island, and was basically granted citizenship despite never having actually lived there, which I think is wild. But, you know, it's really, like, I think it's lovely. I think a lot of people for a long time have been like, you know, the US is the place to set up and you have to be here and there's nowhere else you can go. And actually, we're just learning that that isn't the case. So there's all these millionaires, billionaires. It's literally like everyone sort of talks about it as like the billionaire bunker.

14:02The idea that if the world completely implodes, people are moving to New Zealand. And they are preempting that by buying these outrageously expensive properties or land. The only problem with this, though, is like the wealth inequality gap gets quite skewed when millionaires do this sort of thing. and I'd hate to see that happen to New Zealand. Can you explain that? So what happens when you have like millionaires and billionaires coming in and like buying up property and land is effectively that like it's the money to them is like nothing. So they can buy like four or five houses but actually it starts to then shift the house price up and makes for the everyday person trying to buy a flat or a house in that same area really difficult.

14:40And even though they're not living there, we have this problem in London. You have entire streets in central London that have no one living in them but the house prices are like skyrocketed because basically foreign investors buy them as investment and they just sit completely unused. And then we have problems where people can't buy homes. And I'd hate to see that happen to New Zealand where you have all of these millionaire billionaires buying up assets, buying up land because they can. And then it shifts the price of everything up and just shifts out those that were living there already. Yeah.

15:09I mean, I think the interesting thing about this. So for anyone that doesn't know, Rocket Lab is a New Zealand business. us. So it was valued at$40 billion and the founder is Sir Peter Beck. For anyone that was in the investing club, we spoke about this maybe a year and a half ago. The share price has gone up an outrageous amount. But the kind of headline here, which is exciting and weird, is that he's kind of going for Elon Musk and SpaceX. So let's just explain what he's done, this big acquisition he's made, and why we're tying it back to the idea of billionaires buying property in New Zealand.

15:42because it's quite funny. The billionaires that are buying property are these tech giants. New Zealand's sort of always been known as this economy that's really held up by agriculture. Yeah. And all of a sudden we're kind of, we've got this now business that's a tech giant. The reason we wanted to bring up the billionaire bunker and all these international people buying these ridiculously huge properties in New Zealand is, interestingly, most of the money or these people are coming in as tech founders, generally from the US. So they've built these huge tech businesses and then they're putting their money in property in New Zealand.

16:18New Zealand definitely has not been known as a tech economy. We export things like butter and meat. It's so weird going to British restaurants and it's like New Zealand lamb. It's a real point of pride, I think, for New Zealanders. Our meat and our dairy agriculture industry has always been kind of the main thing that props the economy up. But there is this business that we actually spoke about in the investing club like a year and a half ago that is doing kind of amazing things. And it's sort of flipping on its head, this idea that maybe we, New Zealand and the economy, could also have some tech billionaires.

16:54Yeah, or space. So Peter Beck is the founder of Rocket Lab, so a New Zealand company that we said obviously valued at 40 billion. but the idea the difference sometimes obviously you can be like tesla where they're building everything from the ground up or you can buy it in and specifically he's agreed to pay eight billion us dollars for a satellite comms provider iridium um and it is basically buying your way up the ladder and it's the difference between what's been happening in the us where they're like building and they're all investing in their own different world so when it comes to like buying versus building and like where you start like i think a lot of people think especially with like space companies, AI companies, they have to start off the bottom and work their way up.

17:31Obviously, basically what Peter Beck's doing is saying he's just going to come in and buy himself up the ladder. I think, you know, if you compare it to like other economies or other situations that have been happening in the last few years, so we talked about SK Hynix and how it was basically coming out with a much cheaper, efficient version of something that ChatGPT has been building for years. And I think it would be naive of investors to say, well, America's been doing well for so long we don't need to think about other environments we don't need to think about new zealand or we don't need to think about the rest of the world because america's got the mag 7 and therefore they're the leaders of everything seven like the top tech companies in the world yes exactly mag 7 sounds way better though but can't it sounds like a car brand just quickly as well on the buy versus build thing so the founder of rocket lab who has just made this bid to buy was buying the satellite company he basically said that it's saving them like 10 to 20 years so he's trying to fast track to catch up with these other American companies.

18:30Yes. And one of the quotes that he said is like, whoever has the rocket has the keys to space. So he's obviously kind of trying to go after SpaceX and Elon Musk, right? I assume so. But also it will come down, like you won't just be able to do it without like a lot of support within New Zealand. Like you guys don't have as much space as the US has. As soon as you started talking, I was like, don't shit on New Zealand. I could feel myself getting my backup thing. No, no, no. Love New Zealand. but like geographically you're like you are struggling for space it's the same with like the UK like the US can build data centres overnight we cannot in the UK because there just isn't enough space like and that's just how it is and I think New Zealand it would be very interesting and I would be very interested in like keeping an eye on Rocket Lab and like what he's going to do next but you know don't I wouldn't I know he's like it's a direct shot like mask and all the rest of it but I'm like okay it's pretty big dick energy isn't it it is I would not be saying that far away it's like It's quite big dick energy in a very small pond, effectively.

19:27Yeah, cute. I mean, he's a sir, so he's obviously doing something right. He must have been knighted for something. There is a lot of sirs, but yeah. But I think the interesting thing about this story is the idea of tech is now apparently the third largest export in New Zealand. Tech in New Zealand? I mean, what on earth? Like it's generating about 11.4 billion now, which is dairy and tourism obviously have forever been kind of like our main areas. And like, I don't know, I just, I'm looking at this thinking, I'm kind of excited to see other companies, like whether it's New Zealand or whether it's other parts of the world, there's for a really long time being this emphasis and kind of, I don't know if reliance is the right word, but the US has been like the exception.

20:12It's been the place where people innovate. It's where all of the biggest tech companies list on the stock market and where they grow and thrive. But maybe, you know, Trump's trying to shut out globalization in other countries is actually going to mean that other parts of the world start to really pull their socks up and actually jump into the AI or the tech race. Yeah. So I was just looking as well at what your New Zealand tax rate is specifically for businesses. And also you have a flat 28 % corporate for most companies. And I wonder if another pull is like if the taxes and the tariffs that are so volatile within the US are then like pulling these billionaires into different countries, New Zealand being one of them where maybe it's much more stable.

20:52You don't have Donald Trump. Like this is the BSL sign for Donald Trump, by the way. What's BSL? British Sign Language. Oh. ASL is Australian. Is it really? Is it actually it? Yes. Like officially. if you're listening basically bsl is british sign language um and the bsl sign for trump is effectively you take your like four fingers and you put them over the front of your face and you like wiggle them because effectively it's like his wig oh my god that is so funny and it's like very well known i love that yeah but that's what i end up doing this my brain goes but anyway back to the story which is that i think if you didn't like you obviously have much more stability within new zealand and that could be one of the pools as well as the tax rates as well because obviously pizza back's got a lot of assets so i wonder what his tax iberness is like so after the break we are going to be talking about the the tech and ai space and i there is i don't even really know there's so many things that have happened this week in terms of tech and ai almost like escaping the sandbox if you don't know what we're talking about we'll explain next but quickly we've just got a word from today's sponsor something that we often get asked is whether you can actually invest ethically it's such a common concern honestly a lot of people think money is bad and so they assume that investing must be too.

22:04Yeah, I feel like pre-2000s, most investing focused entirely on profits and that was above planet people, all of those things. But things have changed now and it's so much easier to invest in a way that balances both financial returns as well as doing the right thing. And that's why we partnered with Pathfinder because they make ethical investing understandable and accessible. Thanks to Pathfinder for making this episode of The Curve Weekly possible. Pathfinder Asset Management Limited is the issuer of the Pathfinder KiwiSaver plan a product disclosure statement is available at pathfinder.kiwi so this week a story came out well actually several similar which do feel a little bit like a horror film don't they oh 100 so basically open ai so chat gbt were testing two of its models and they call it like a sandbox testing where effectively like if you think of like putting kids in a sandbox in theory they can't get out of the sandbox and they're like just playing within in the sandbox right yeah so it's like it's meant to be almost like a controlled environment a controlled testing environment sandbox versus sandpit it's the same thing it's it's like you know when you're like three and you're chucked in a sandbox you're given a digger and a spade yes the idea is the kids can play they're left alone in the corner and you're kind of like we've done our job they're safe and they're in an environment they're not going to hurt themselves that's kind of the point yeah it's a confined controlled environment to test something exactly and they They were testing various models and basically the idea behind it was that they escaped.

23:31The AI cheated. It broke into another company. Honestly, the way they talk about it was really, really creepy. It got through cracks. They don't really realize. Well, they were basically, in so many words, saying they're not sure how it did it, but they're going to try and shut it down. They were also saying they expected it to. It was almost like, in hindsight, when they were talking about it happening, because the prompt and what it was told to do was essentially that. So it basically achieved the thing that they were trying to, yeah. Anyway, it is creepy and it's scary. But there's also like a lot of conversation at the moment around all of the big AI founders trying to freak everyone out.

24:09So they're saying, they're doing all of this sort of PR and storytelling around like, this is the end of humanity. and that you know they're almost like doomsdaying ai and i don't know how you feel about it abby but like firstly when i read the story and heard about it i was like oh that's so scary but i'm also just like is this all just a big pr stunt like i don't i don't know yeah i would say that these companies are too big for this sort of stuff to come out and them not to have had some involvement in it um so i think there is a little bit of scaremongering but i think it's also a way of like keeping us in the controlled environments of our own i suppose of keeping us staying within chat gbt or within claude or within gemini because they're the ones that are like okay so it's really scary on the outside but don't worry we're going to protect you we're going to protect your info and i think that has led to these like peaks and troughs but yeah there are wild amount of companies that are spending millions almost like you know we're looking towards the billion now of like how much they're spending on AI.

25:10And it's creating a really volatile market. And the reason that we wanted to talk about this is Apple and Tesla have had very different results. Apple has basically just overtaken NVIDIA as the world's most valuable company. So it's now nearly worth$5 trillion. Yes, but obviously, and as everyone listening will know, these things are trillion dollar companies one day and then they fall back below the next day. It all comes down to the share price. But yes, go on. Sorry. Well, I just want to ask why, like what is happening? Because I'm hearing so much conversation around the idea that Apple is now the only of the Magnificent Seven that's not really heavily going all in on AI infrastructure.

25:49And so you see all of its like competitors, all these big tech stocks, heavily, heavily investing in AI infrastructure, whereas Apple is doing kind of, it's almost like they're zagging. Well, others are zigging, zigging, zigging. Yeah. So, yeah, Apple, obviously, as you said, is part of the Magnificent Seven, but it hasn't gone all in on its AI infrastructure. compared to obviously rivals within it. For instance, it rents its AI power from Google instead of building its own, which obviously we talked about earlier. Like, is there something to be said about buying something in as opposed to or renting something effectively as opposed to building it yourself, which takes longer and requires more manpower.

26:24But results, Apple's up 23 % this year. Which is huge, actually. It is. It is in comparison to the fact that the Magnificent Seven is down. I think one of the main reasons Apple's been okay is because if you look at the rest of the Magnificent Seven, like they're the only ones i.e. Apple the only ones that kind of doing it on their own and not really having to like invest in others whereas if you look at like Musk alone he runs obviously five different companies Tesla, SpaceX, XAI, X, Neuralink you know amongst others and basically one like one looks like it's feeding the other constantly it's just a constant back and forth and therefore how real is this money if it's going from one business to another that actually is all owned by him anyway and it's kind of like it brought a farce to his like what was it has trillion dollar wealth anyway because it's like well what does it all actually mean it's not real wealth like yeah it's not what he's got in his bank account but if you think about like tesla sold 430 million dollars worth of batteries to xai so tesla being one of his companies xai is another then tesla selling 143 million dollars in car sales to spacex and then spacex investing back into xai uh i think that was roughly around two billion dollars then you've got tesla investing two billion in xai which is technically part of spacex it just it's just a constant yeah it's a constant like circle of reinvesting back into each other's businesses but honestly it happens a lot with these big companies like they are almost trying to be the pyramid so like they're the businesses at the top but anything that needs to funnel up into them they also want to own or anything that they like the production side they want to own and then everything kind of funnels into one but then how real is all of it when you look at the share price of apple doing well and the other ones kind of not do you think the scales will tip and all of a sudden this money being poured into ai and they'll all kind of rise back up again or do you think apple's onto something with being the sort of outlier that's not intertwined with everyone i'm interested to hear your take on it i think as an investor i have been overly looking at like emerging markets and markets outside of the US for this main reason that I think we are heavily over invested in AI do I think that they are also becoming too big to fail yes and so I can't mean like they have so much money that they will figure out a way to win because yes yeah too much like that you know something like what is it the Magnificent Seven make up more than the stock market of Japan Canada and UK combined like they're too big like they're too big at this point and so I would never obviously tell anyone to do anything because it's financial education not advice but I would be looking at other markets for the growth because I think there may come a point where these guys they're so big that where does their growth go they're just they just are what they are now like they're just these massive monster companies it's chic it's luxurious it is Dior it is Dior is saving the day so lvmh which are just colossal so it's louis vuitton moe hennessy moette moette apparently it's classy to say the t sorry i always thought it was moe yeah and my grandma would always be like moe and i was like granny you're really you're embarrassing stop it and apparently she's right it's moe fair well basically lvmh and the luxury world have been struggling for a long time to lvmh have tons of brands they've got we actually have talked about this quite a bit Because Vic is obsessed with this.

29:52She owns a lot of this stock. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Like the Loewe, Celine, Givenchy, Fendi, they've got it all. But Dior, and I actually think it's not unsurprising because Dior have done something that I think luxury brands have been struggling to do for years, which is to market to every type of bank balance. Like they have been able to market their lady Dior bags to someone that wants to spend like four to like 15 grand on a bag, but also develop a beauty brand that effectively gives you the look of those bags but in a like 40 50 pound lipstick which is still a lot of money for a lipstick but it becomes somewhat more achievable and it becomes like this like asset that you have in your bag that makes it look almost like gives the look of your bag being more expensive because you've got the lipstick in it i just so agree with this because i have if i see someone whipping out something like that i'm like oh shake love jealous it's so weird it just gives you the aura of you got your stuff together like it's expensive isn't it it's like we're not really investing anything but yeah it's a feeling of luxury without actually breaking the bank exactly like lvmh like getting out like getting down to the numbers like they're generated 38.6 billion euros of revenue in the first half of 2026 but obviously their costs have been so much higher and luxury buying has been declining rapidly over the last few years like following covid and also i think following this like new era on social media of what does like wealth mean to people i think there was a big influencer drive back in like 20 yeah 22 of like you had to have the urnaz you had to have the it piece of jewelry you had to spend money and then things started to shift and it was like actually do we really need to spend that much money on luxury time actually the luxury and it's like really been rewritten i would say more by a gen z like younger generation they're just like well that's looking unachievable so they've made the idea of time and kind of fair enough it depends on the sector but yeah dior has had the strongest demand by far across the whole of their roster it generated 6.2 billion of recurring operating profit approximately 71 of lvmh's total it's like crazy it is and it's why even like one percent growth like matters to them and like they'll probably like lean into certain brands at the moment because maybe you know and also as we know these fashion houses have trends like Louis Vuitton has a trend at one point and everyone was carrying around the like never full bag then Lady Dior's have become like quite fashionable I think I think the lady because obviously the Lady D was meant to be based off of like Princess Diana wasn't it and I think the crown probably did a lot to like play into like driving you know money and eyes back to the Lady your bag yeah I think it's just it's something as well that's quite timeless and I think a lot of people at the moment if they are going to invest they need to invest in like things like bags they want to invest in something that's not going to be trendy now and date in two months time it is really interesting the idea of luxury brands being something you can invest in when fashion is so trending I think a really interesting point here as well and this is something that Vic does talk about quite a bit is the idea of like spinning off businesses so you know if there is a big portfolio of brands for example like there isn't in lvmh if such an enormous amount of their revenue is coming from one business like 70 is not nothing of course they're going to spend more money on research and products and marketing on deal and go double down on that whereas some of the other brands and businesses might be getting like no love and so if something then gets kind of like spun out as its own business separate too that's often when it then can breed and become its own thing again yeah it's almost it's weird because like a lot of businesses buy other businesses to grow yeah sometimes it can have kind of the opposite effect where it sort of becomes the forgotten child yeah I don't think a lot of people realize that obviously LVMH owns so much as of what it does and I think I see different brands as kind of different things like I really like Loewe but like I wonder if the puzzle bag so that puzzle bag is like very trend it's very on brand and like there was a stage last year where everyone had it and it was beautiful I haven't seen of much of them recently and I think whereas the Lady D bag like Dior have been able to consistently try and keep their like level of trends just like up for as long as they possibly could and like you also have the story behind Dior you have like Christian Dior and you have like the brand of like what they represent and the Dior woman whereas I wonder if with some of the brands that we have today within LELVVMH they're struggling to find out who they are like I don't know what Celine woman is or like what a Loewe woman is I suppose I also just think of Celine and sunglasses I don't really of course yeah so do I everyone's got the Celine sunglasses

34:41okay Abby before we wrap up we've had a question come through which I thought was quite exciting because it's a New Zealand, sorry, it's a UK question. Do you want to read it out or do you want me to? Yeah, of course, I'll read. So this is from Olivia. She said, hey, while you have Abby on the podcast, can you talk about the triple lock state pension in the UK and how it could affect the economy? Yeah, so I could talk about this for days. The triple lock, oh my God, I don't even know what this is. Isn't that terrible? No, no, no, it's okay. Sorry, I gave you a daily look. I was like, no, it's state pension and then workplace pension and the two separate things.

35:14people think they can live on the state pension it's actually like 12 ,000 pounds a year not to live on it and then the workplace pension is what you put aside into your account your workplace should match it ideally if you can if you put more in and they'll match more, amazing kind of like a pay rise and you can't access your pension until you're like over 65 okay, yeah, god that was like a whistle stop tour through pensions, so the triple look agreement which is what Olivia is asking me about is to do with the state pension, so that first one so right now the full state pension is £241.30 a week, which roughly works out just under the£12 ,570 personal allowance limit.

35:50Sorry, or a week? A week. £241.30 a week. And basically, years ago, there was something... She's going to buy a coffee with that, basically. Yeah. One a week. Well, what happened a while ago is that number needed to keep up with the cost of living. And so they introduced something called the triple lock agreement, which meant that the number should go up by the higher around 2.5 % annual earnings or inflation. But what happens is it means that state pension actually rises quite quickly every year. And the state pension is a colossal amount of money that the government has to find every year to pay out because we have an aging older population.

36:28We have a growing population over the threshold, which is 66 and rising for the state pension. And they're all on this. If they hit the threshold which is basically that you have to have worked for 35 years which most people have you are entitled to the full state pension and you can take this whether you're a millionaire or completely broke and so the government have to spend this money out and it means that every year it rises and rises and rises and the government basically just can't afford it and i assume basically what olivia is asking me is like can you talk about it so we've talked about it what it is but can you explain the impact it has on the economy my personal opinion is it can be really damaging to the economy.

37:05I think it needs to be means tested, i.e. it cannot just be handed to every person once they hit retirement age. I think there should be a means test to it because it's too much money for the government to find. We've got lower birth rates, which means we've got lower amounts of people paying into the tax system. And therefore, if we've got a bigger chunk that's having to go out to pay for the state pension, which is a benefit, then we've got a discrepancy here and we've got gaps so everyone has this misconception that the state pension they paid into their national insurance and the money's there that's not how it works it pays out the taxes of today and back when the state pension was introduced which was just after the world war so like i don't know the 1940s sorry my history is terrible but they introduced the state pension basically because there was lots of men that came out from the war couldn't get jobs and they were near retirement anyway and so the state pension was there to kind of bridge that gap for like two or three years they were retiring you know to like they're retiring and then like two years later they were dying right that was just like and so the government like that's okay we can cover it for two years but now someone retiring at 66 some people living into their hundreds and that's 40 years of that state pension the government has to find and pay out and also there's people with lots and lots of money that basically just take the state pension because they can and they're not repurposing back in to the state and so therefore all of us that are paying taxes right now are having to fund that and it's just not the math is not mathing um I think it's a big problem I think it needs to be adjusted to something called a double lock um so that basically it doesn't rise as quickly but also more importantly that it needs to be means tested and sorted out so that the most vulnerable older people get it and when they need it but those that don't need it don't shouldn't be taking it do you think in a way the state pension should just be totally taken out in general for the average working person in the sense that so many of us think, oh, I've got the state pension, so it's fine.

39:02I could opt out of my workplace pension or I'm not going to invest more because I've got the state pension. It's almost like this backstop or security blanket that people think they have and they don't realize how low it is because no one can do anything with 200 pounds a week. No one can rely on that. But I almost feel like it's just it's really confusing to have two and actually if it was the onus was more put on the individual in a way obviously it'd be great if workplaces had to pay more and therefore it meant that people were kind of bolstered and okay when they hit retirement but I just think the whole system here is too confusing having two.

39:38I think the title as well like people think the state pension is just a state given right it's not it's actually a benefit and the government could decide to not give it out and I think that's the thing that people forget like if the government one day we don't have the funds anymore, we can't release the state pension, everyone will be like, oh my gosh, I haven't been putting into my workplace or thinking about my future. And that's the danger. I think it should be more of a, you're right, it's more of a benefit. It's almost like an unemployment benefit. Well, it is. Sometimes it's unemployed, you get the benefit, but it's not the guaranteed you can live on the state pension.

40:05Exactly. There isn't that difference between universal credit and this. And yet people have these mindsets where they're like, oh God, I wouldn't take universal credit. But they're like, oh no, the state pension I'm owed. And I'm like, no, you're not owed anything. Like we put into the tax system, especially like the older generation, I'm like, you may have been paying tax for like X amount of years, but does that actually equate to what you're taking out of the system? You know, you think about the NHS or actually, maybe I'll stop because I could get really controversial because I'm like, you know, older people really forget how much they cost the tax system as well.

40:35And so with all of that, and then the smalling, like the reduced new generation, it's just not sustainable. I also just think in general, like getting someone's head around one pension is enough brain power, let alone getting your head around two. I mean, I remember when we first got here, I was like, hold on. Like it took me ages to understand. I think just in itself, it's already confusing. Investing is already overwhelming. If we could just simplify it and it's like, you need money to retire, invest. This is the way to do it. One path. It's easy. It's straightforward. I think there would be a lot more people that would take investing more seriously here.

41:12maybe we could get 10 billion out of people's savings into investment accounts. Okay, great. Any more questions for Abby? Send them through. I think you're here for another week, right? Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry guys. We've got another week with Abby. So send any questions through. You've got, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Hi, for anyone that would like to find Abby or learn more about her content, because she is just constant. I mean, honestly, the amount of content you put online is insane. I'm like, how are you doing that? Magenta on the team. Absolutely. She is working overtime. But yeah, Abby Rose, Abigail, Roast.

41:43Yeah, that's me. Let us not forget the phone. I'm on everything now. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, everything. It's all good. But thanks, Debbie. We'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to The Curve Weekly. Make sure you hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening so you're always up to date with the latest finance and investing news. And feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you thought about this episode because we would love your feedback. We've got new Curve Weekly episodes for you to listen to every Monday. But until then, listen to Erasing the Curve. These are our in-depth podcast episodes where we chat about all things money.

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