Money buys freedom, not things: a financial coach explains.

0:00Today's guest is Hannah Mayfield. She has flown all the way from Lisbon. She's based herself there, but she was originally from the UK and she was also a fashion buyer, but now she's a financial coach. So she had a really unique situation when she was in her early 20s. Someone close to her passed away and left her a sum of money. So she was in a position where she needed to figure out how to best invest it and hopefully grow it for the future. So while now she's a financial coach, she went through a whole lot of self-learning where she spoke to her friends about investing and she really tried to educate women about how to be better with their money.

0:37So her approach is unique. It's quite relaxed, honestly. It made me feel like I need to chill out a bit. And we spoke about so many different things from are you a default yes spender or a default no spender? Whether or not a 50-50 split with your partner is fair. Are Nepo friends keeping the job marketer live and we have her on the couch for 45 minutes so you'll be getting a little bit of everything in this conversation hannah firstly welcome it's so nice to have you here i'd love to say you're flown specifically from portugal but that's not the case kind of yeah it was on the lineup for sure yeah love it love it yeah we have an international guest but you are originally from the uk yeah born in london and so what was the the big reason for moving to portugal because it does feel like there's a huge amount of business owners that have flown the coop and there's a lot of people living particularly in lisbon it was a lifestyle choice i lived in like berlin at the start of my career for a bit i lived in spain for a while and then i ended up in spain for some of the pandemic and then i just woke up one day and was like oh i can never go back i just acclimatized to a different kind of life and then kind of was figuring out what my criteria was i want to live in a small city international community be able to hike and do outdoorsy stuff at the weekends and then Lisbon just fit all the criteria I'd never been so I just moved there I just packed up my stuff and rocked off yeah I think that that's the best thing that's come out of Covid is working and living in different ways you know for so long we were all trapped to the office and we had to sort of work nine to five and it's really given it a good old shake up like the fact that you've got a successful business you've got a life that you love there in Lisbon and you're not compromising anything you're actually just getting all the benefits of being able to pick where you want to be.

2:24I think that's amazing. So let's start from the beginning. So you used to work in a totally different industry. You were in fashion for a long time, which is the industry that I would say is notoriously terribly paid. I mean, there's a lot, but for some reason, fashion is one of those industries where everyone knows it's a cool job and everyone treats, well, it appears from the outside, treats their staff in a way where it's like anyone would take your job at any time. So you basically should work for free. what was your experience in the fashion industry and what was the pivot for you like you've now a financial advisor and creating finance content which for anyone who doesn't already follow Hannah will link all of her accounts in the show notes because it's so educational and I learned so much from the work that you do but yeah what was the reason for the pivot were you sick of the industry did you want better pay how did that whole transition happen it was a lot of it was I I wanted to be remote basically and I'd started a pajama brand with a friend and that didn't we kind of did a couple collections and then we're like oh this is really hard to do this independently and have an independent kind of fashion brand and then I was thinking okay what else can I do what else do I know a lot about and just my lived experience was I knew loads about money and investing and I'd been teaching my friends it so I was like okay let's go into this I actually find it really annoying that loads of people don't know this and if you're not in the right circles you're just never gonna find out this information that's really life-changing and important so yeah I kind of started talking about on the internet and then got my financial advisor qualification because I thought if I'm helping people with money so I'm a financial coach so I'm like working with people on their own finances every day and I just wanted to make sure I'd done my due diligence that if I was talking about this topic I wanted to make sure like I understood it properly so I did all of that.

4:04Could we talk about you just mentioned that you when you were younger and sort of I guess throughout your life you've been way more on top of money and you've you realized it was something you knew about but a lot of your friends didn't. How did that happen because for a lot of us, I think there's a pivotal moment where we either are at rock bottom financially and we need to find a new way forward or we come into money and we realise we don't want to be frivolous with it or spend it on things that are not important. I guess what was the moment where you started to teach yourself to be better with money?

4:36I was always really good at budgeting and saving because I knew if I didn't budget and save, I wouldn't get to do anything and I always had this massive appetite for travel and paying for uni and doing all the things I wanted to do and learning to drive. So I was always like obsessive about, but like saving, I was just really good at it naturally. I didn't find it that hard to be frugal and mindful with my money. And then when I was 22, my dad died and I received like a lot of money that he, you know, he didn't make it to retirement age. And I had this lump sum and I was like, I don't know what to do with money.

5:03I've never had any conversations about growing money. So it was just this big thing I had to learn how to navigate and what to do with. And the stakes are obviously really high because you're like, okay, it's everything he's worked for. This is a big amount. It's not like, OK, I'll start with like 50 quid a month. It's like, OK, I need to learn this properly. So I really and I just couldn't find a good financial advisor, basically. I just couldn't find a trusted person. And I'm the kind of person where I want to understand everything. So I really kind of did a deep dive on, OK, how does property work?

5:30And then it kind of took me a bit longer to get to the stock market because I just had such a preconception about it. And then when I went into that rabbit hole, I was like, oh, this is great and this is really easy. And then that was kind of the thing I started teaching my friends a lot more about because it's it's really easy to do it with small amounts. as well for everyone that's a bit more accessible we've spoken about what happened with your dad and I'd love to ask a few more questions about that if you feel comfortable talking about it but that makes a lot of sense to me initially where you just said you know it's everything he'd worked towards all of a sudden there's this thing that's been left behind that he spent his life creating and building and the emotional connection you have to that money is quite different to a salary or money coming in yes it's a bigger amount but there's actually more of a connection to wanting to do right by him which I think is I mean it's awful that he died and you were so young yeah it was like sudden unexpected and he was 56 so like as you get old I knew it was young and that's what's really sad about it I think you're like oh he didn't get to retire and like do all these things and then I think when you get older like I'm 34 now like it's actually not that it's not that far away really you kind of have a different perspective on it as well a lot of it was just because he died young because it was like stuff like a pension so things like that I grew up with a single mom so my experience of money was like very living on small amounts and having to be really careful and really budgeting kind of thing so this was just that's why it was a completely different thing that I had to learn yeah I imagine that that would have been quite an overwhelming time to then think okay shit I need to really quickly upskill and learn what to do with it from the time that he died into really learning and then making decisions about what to do with it where did where did you put it and and how has it evolved in the last decade I remember someone saying I don't make any sudden decisions like until a year after grieving so I think that was quite a good and I was just so busy I had to finish uni I had to like relearn my whole uni my whole myself I missed so much of it and then reset everything so it was just like a very tough time so I didn't do anything with it at first and then property obviously I lived in house growing up and then you rent a house at uni so I was like okay I get how this works so that That was, and I think in the UK as well, there's such a mentality that property is really safe.

7:41So that was kind of the first thing I learned about. But at the time there wasn't, like I didn't use YouTube, but there wasn't anyone like doing short form content about investing. Yeah, so it was just a completely different thing. So I read books basically. So I wasn't going to talk about property yet, but I actually think maybe it is a good place to start, especially given that was the first investment that you made. Yeah. firstly if we were to sort of zoom out and look at the property market at the time obviously you know 10-15 years ago it was a very different world did you choose to invest in property and do you still have money in that asset class yeah I think basically most of my money is in property and rental properties and then I rent in Lisbon so that's kind of how I've I guess keep everything location independent and I'm just not I'm not really ready to settle in one place yet so it works quite well so when you bought property it was a different time there was different returns and now things have really changed and you just sort of touched on that by saying you know most people think about property and they think oh I can make heaps of money in property because we all know it yeah we live in buildings it makes sense to a lot of us but when you zoom out and you look at what boomers our parents you know they made money in that asset class because buying a house was four times their salary and now it's seven sometimes more you talk about this quite a bit on your channels about repositioning or thinking about property in a different way and perhaps it's actually not the way for a lot of us to buy property given it's changed a lot since you first bought have you sold out of that asset class or are you going to hold on to it for a long time what are your thoughts about property in general like I'm having conversations with this about my friends as well we're saying that we think that property is now you kind of just buy it to live in it as opposed to I think before there was this mentality of like this is that you're set for life if you can get on the ladder yeah it's your golden ticket you don't need to worry about anything else and I think now people like oh even if I've bought a house I probably still should be learning about investing and trying to do other things because it's just not I think we've kind of realized like oh okay it's maybe not such a given that we're going to have this dramatic growth we've always seen and I think the interest rates changing is a big one because like kind of all my I guess adult life growing up we had these super low interest rates and that created one reality and then now there's these high interest rates I think everyone's like oh okay do you want to just explain that yeah and it's listening that doesn't understand so like the idea of a two percent interest rate basically means you're leveraging a lot of money but you're not paying a huge amount of interest I'm assuming what you're getting at is when those interest rates are higher you're essentially just paying interest off and it's a lot of interest when you zoom out over say a 30-year mortgage period yeah I think it depends if you're kind of talking about rental property or residential property obviously I think residential property people are now like oh maybe I shouldn't go to the max of my budget or the max that I could borrow because actually that's a really high mortgage payment if we're looking at a five percent interest rate whereas I think before when the interest rates were so low it was like oh well why wouldn't I just buy as much as possible because it didn't really make much difference a huge amount as it does now to the monthly repayment and have you thought about selling i'm actually selling one right now the first it was the first one i bought which is a flat i bought it because i thought it's gonna be really good more for capital gains and like the long-term increase and i just don't think that it holds true anymore but you're not selling out of other no i'm happy with the other ones i'm just gonna get rid of this one what is the difference like how are you looking at your properties and thinking this one's no longer actually a good financial investment well it's a really old building which at the time I thought was a good thing because I was like well they're building loads of new builds and this will be a really good kind of differentiation but there's just always problems with the building and so it just feels like a bit of a risk if anything keeps going wrong with it like a financial risk the service charge has gone up loads since I bought it it's maybe doubled so and then put that with like the high interest rates and the fact that people don't really like leasehold flats anymore I was like I'm just gonna cut you know cut my losses on this one And yeah, just admit it hasn't been like the growth one that I kind of maybe thought it would be.

11:43And then the other ones, what's the reason for holding on to them? They're houses, so I don't have the whole leasehold thing. The leasehold, just for anyone that doesn't know, basically means that the property, you don't actually own the land as well as the house. Leasehold means that you're kind of like leasing the land ownership. Yeah, you own the property, but you have to pay, there's a freeholder that you pay like ground rent to. And then you sometimes, depends on the type of building, you'll pay a service charge. and because this is a kind of a bigger block of flats the service charge has just gone a bit crazy there are stats that say 63 percent of millennials and gen z's really regret buying a home why is that like what are the main regrets do you think it is that we all still are buying into this mentality that it's going to give us all of this you know like golden ticket towards wealth or do you think it's something else i'm my kind of speculation is i think because there still is this pressure to get on the property ladder especially from i feel like if you're kind of like a millennial like the boomers are like i don't know about like boomer parents i feel like they're like you need to buy a house like get on the ladder and they're really encouraging of it so you feel like maybe a rush and then i think if you buy the wrong place or wrong location and then you want to move or your job changes or you realize like i have seen some videos people being like oh we bought this big house and now we've got this massive mortgage and we want to downsize and things like that it's just hard to get out of i think because of stamp duty so basically in the uk if you want to buy a house you have to pay quite a lot in stamp duty so if you kind of explain what that is for anyone that doesn't live in the UK?

13:04Yeah it's basically a tax so whenever you buy a house you have to pay a chunk a percentage chunk it depends on how expensive the house is the what exactly what percent you pay and you'll just never see that money again basically so it's quite it kind of stops people from moving around too much because you're like oh they'll have to pay stamp duty again and that's also a bit of a factor of why I think people say you know don't bother buy a house unless you're going to be there for 10 years and I think some of it is because there's this big expense that you're never going to get back. If you buy a house, you kind of want to make the right choice.

13:33So I guess what are your thoughts then for anyone that's unsure about property or as someone who still owns property? What do you think about renting versus buying? It depends. But I mean, I just see a house as a retirement plan. I'm like, ideally, you do want to be probably have bought a place by the time you're maybe like 40. So you can have a 25, 30 year mortgage and you're kind of on track to have something paid off for retirement. Right. So you see it more as, OK, you want to, when you've stopped earning, be in a house that you own because you're then not having to constantly pay for something.

14:02But you maybe don't need to invest in that until you know definitely where you want to be. And also you choose a house that has longevity and how you want to live where you want to live. Yeah, ideally, although you're probably always going to have to, I don't know, change at some point. But yeah, I just think of it like a retirement plan. You could, I think there's a lot of arguments people say, well, you could just rent and then put the money you'd save into investments. And then you kind of have the equivalent in a different kind of asset that you could, I guess, switch into a property. But I don't know, it's very simple.

14:31Just if you live in a house, just buy it if you can and pay it off. I think it's just like a cleaner way to think about. But everyone's situation is different, right? So it kind of depends. It's just also like when you look at the amount of money that you have invested in property and then you compare the returns in the stock market, it's so hard to not think this is a terrible financial decision, particularly in the UK, I would say. It's a really weird one. I don't know how I feel about it. And it's almost like I'm coming up against this constant part of my brain that's like, no, property is good.

15:01But I'm like, but is it in the UK? Maybe not. Like New Zealand is a very different kettle of fish when it comes to property because we don't have stamp duty. but yeah it's just this so ingrained in us buy a house buy a house so it's a good way to think about it if you look at the amount you're thinking about investing in property and the returns kind of being flat and then you compare that to what you would make in the stock market and then you layer on the rent side of things to figure out what actually makes sense because it is a lot cheaper to pay I think interest only in a house you own than rent to someone else I think when you're making really personal life decisions as well it's good to think about the finances but i also you just have to do what you want for your life as well and what's best for you and what feels like some people will just want to own i think you can do all the maths and the sums but i just think it's being a bit aware that actually if you have a chunk of money that's working for you instead of being tied up in a house it might not be this way of thinking about it that's so cut and dry like house always better okay god i love that inclusive yeah i just keep using all of the people that come on this podcast for my own personal gain and it's still not helping I'm still very confused it's a bit vague I'll have my financial coaching session at another time yeah I'd love to speak about your own relationship with money and how you started interrogating yourself with how you spend what is important to you because I know in your 20s when you were more I don't know if frugal is the right word but you're really conscious about the money you had and where and how you wanted to spend it how did you get into a place where you felt really confident and knowing what is important versus not and how did you block out what everyone else thinks I think I just always knew what I wanted with money like I'd never found myself in a situation where like oh god like I don't know where it's gone but when I was like maybe like mid to late 20s I got given the book just offhand like not super mindfully the book you're a badass at making money and there was stuff in there about your emotional relationship with money and I remember reading that and being like oh like I have some weird stuff about money and obviously like growing up with a single mom and having that one experience I think I always and I talk about it now I'm like sometimes I think people would default yes spenders or default no explain that more so I think a default no is like whenever someone looks something they want they're like no I can't have it and I was very much like that whereas I think some people default yes where they'll just anything they kind of want to buy in their head is a yes and they'll try and get it and so when you read that book did you rethink that yeah I read that and then I did this money personality quiz it was very illuminating and I was like oh okay like I'm quite a fearful person with money it was called the accumulator where you just want to keep money in savings and spend as little as possible which makes sense like when you look at so I basically did a lot of interrogating of okay what did I see growing up like what maybe would I learn from my parents and I think it just helped me come to a bit more of a balanced place with money in terms of like being a bit more comfortable spending for me I think some people like talk a lot about being going the other way and like getting control of budget but for me it was like okay I can spend a bit more my own comfort I would say is one thing because I would always pick I don't know like a bad time flight or you know things like that like I think they're like small examples where it's like oh okay I can spend 10 pounds extra on a bit of extra leg room or like those small things that make you more comfortable whereas before you I would always pick the cost saving over my own comfort I think I'm definitely more on the fear-based save where you can for sure but for me it is also a necessity because I don't have much actually for you when you swapped into being like okay I can spend more on comfort whether it's not going at a 4am flight or whatever was it like a okay now I can spend more or was it just like I'm being really tight just because I'm scared obviously I had more financial freedom so I could but it was because I realized oh I have this certain way with money this like default mode of being and maybe it isn't I don't need to be like this and I can be a bit more intent like I was always very intentional but I guess yeah just a bit more not as fearful and not as restrictive like you said it was just like a default restriction like I would just my brain would just be like okay let's choose that option and then I guess by learning about my money personality I kind of could see like okay there's other ways like I could spend a bit more here if I want to.

19:17One of the things that you're quite open about is the idea of being frugal and you talk about trying to redirect out energy rather than just like saving a pound or a euro here and there and actually trying to refocus on how can I bring more in but you're also really compassionate about the fact that a lot of people feel way safer doing the option of I'm going to save, which is obviously what you just said you've experienced a lot. How would you say you have reprioritized the way you are with your personal finances and investing as a result of trying to refocus on making more rather than cutting back?

19:56I just think, especially for women, when you look at all the stats, it's always about saving and budgeting and not spending. And it's kind of assumption that women are really frivolous and want to go and buy loads of handbags and stuff. And actually, we're just not having conversations about like what are you investing in have you up to pension contributions like all the things that are more meaningful in the long run so that's what I'm a bit more pro and like okay should you go for that promotion like how can you negotiate and like talking about these things with our friends and I think for me I'm just trying to earn more like I and that's been a conscious thing in my mind of being like okay what can I do where I could have a slightly more higher paying career perhaps or what is you know what does the market want right now like for now it's content creation is very like a lucrative skill so at the start of the year I was like okay I need to get good at content like that was a really mindful decision of being like okay this is like social content yeah social content because I think it's a skill I think people are like I'm just not good at it but it's like I just so I've been putting in the effort to try and get good at it and kind of trusting that that will lead to more opportunities later down the line so things like that I'm like okay what what can I see is like changing and how can I adapt I think we're gonna have to be a lot more adaptable with AI and like things are just feeling really uncertain and kind of upskilling where we can can we then talk about investing because I know that you have a really ethical part of how you approach money and investing that is really important to you and I'd love to know for you what feels ethical when it comes to investing spending are there really hard lines for you that feel uncomfortable or again is it quite fluid try to be very mindful and I think I had a massive spiral about this a few years ago about capitalism and the planet and ecology and I and it really I was completely stuck it was really bad for my whole work and business because I was like oh my god I can't even talk about this but I've kind of come to the conclusion that we are in this really imperfect system and I'll try and do what I can but equally there's certain things are a bit unavoidable and I kind of feel like that about investing so I when I first started investing I was like I only want to do it if I can do it somewhat ethically so the kind of I invest in ESG funds which are not perfect they're not I think sometimes there's people oh they're green washing they're not actually that good but I'm like well it's excluding some bad companies so I think they tend to exclude about two percent of the worst companies in the world so things like gambling tobacco some fossil fuels it's really hard to completely get out fossil fuels in just like a normal in a lot of the funds basically it's so interesting that you say you went down that spiral rabbit hole of you know capitalism is absolutely excuse my language if there's kids in the car fucked and then you think about the idea that oh god I shouldn't own property because people are struggling to, you know, you can go so far down that.

22:34It's hard, isn't it? Because I think most women are the ones who think about that and then go down that rabbit hole and then don't invest in general. I feel like I have cognitive dissonance around what I know to be true and what is really important for the environment. But then in terms of gender equality, having more money in the hands of women, there is no perfect way to ethically invest. How do you get to a place where you just are okay with it not being perfect when you were in that hole of oh god I just don't even want to do any of this I want to tap out of like earning money and starting a business because I've so been there how did you re-emerge and think okay I'm going to take part in this but I'm also comfortable that not being perfect yeah I kind of accepted it's not ideal and this is how the whole system is set up so like we all need a private pension and that is all based on investing and you know the more you look into it and we're like oh it's kind of it is a bit unavoidable if you want to have more wealth and financial freedom and wiggle room then you kind of need to put your money into these things but yeah I only do ESG funds so I invest I'm an index investor but I would never do just like an all world one I always want to do the ESG option where some of the bad companies are excluded because I think if everyone did that these bad companies wouldn't have as much money going to them I mean you can argue it both ways I think some people are like oh what's the point and I'm not going to be like judgy about people that do it however but for me I was like I just don't feel comfortable.

23:53Right. So it's basically you might do the S &P 500 excluding BP or excluding the companies that are extracting oil, for example. So you specifically look for the funds that are the ESG versions of these indexes. So you're getting as much diversification as possible, but avoiding things like oil and tobacco and gambling and things like that. Yeah, exactly. So it's screening some of the worst companies out. Would you be able to share some of those with us? I know that this is not financial advice and there is definitely your own research that needs to go into this but even if it's just a couple and why you chose them because I think particularly with ETFs when there are so many of them and when people all of a sudden feel excited about investing then they also might listen to you talking and think perfect I really want to invest in that way too but then they look up ETFs and there is 5 ,000 of them can you explain like maybe even if It's not the specific, but like what to look for and how to narrow it down so they don't have the overwhelm of picking.

24:53You kind of need to have your strategy first. A lot of people ask me, like, what's the best platform? And I'm like, the platform doesn't really solve the issue if you don't understand what to invest in. You kind of need to know, like you were saying, there's so many. You kind of need to know what you're looking for before you get on the platform a lot of the time. If you do feel comfortable sharing any examples, that would be amazing. If you don't, that's also fine. but would love to try and help someone listening feel like they know what to do if they're wanting to find investments that are ethical but also really diversified.

25:20So if you know you want to do index investing you kind of can find your who you want to use for that and then just look for the ESG version. So you're going to have to pick like your provider of index fund so some of the biggest ones are like the two biggest ones are Vanguard and iShares and then you're going to need to pick your geography so some people would do all world some people do S &P 500 which is just America. And then you can just find the version of that that has the ESG at the start. One of the things that you speak about, which I love, and I'd love to explain more, particularly when we're in a time where the stock market is just everyone is absolutely losing.

25:54I need to stop swearing. Losing their minds about what's happening. A lot of people are falling victim to this idea of the panic sell and they don't understand what's going on, especially when it comes to investments and how much psychology is involved with this. So can you just explain what is going on with our brains and how we can use that information to try and avoid emotional decisions when it comes to the amount of noise that is just constantly around, particularly at the moment when it comes to this impending stock market crash? Because there are a lot of people panicking about it, but I think diving into psychology and how our brains work is really helpful context.

26:35it's a case of I think knowing your strategy and sticking to it so I'm a long-term buy and hold investor so I'm like okay the whole point is that I'm just gonna ride out and I have the timeline like there's nothing I need this money for in the next five ten years so I'm just gonna ride it out if like well not if like when things go down because we've had these amazing years of growth so like it's just inevitable that some point it's going to go down um and just being okay with that and knowing that's the price of admission as well it's like okay, well, you don't get this amazing growth that's way better than a savings account without some kind of downside.

27:12And the downside is it goes up and down a lot and you have to manage your own feelings over that and just being like, it's going to happen. And also I think for people who are in jobs as well, it's really good to, if we have a downturn, I think there's this, there's obviously the investing perspective, but then that would mean the whole economy is probably struggling as well. So you would be maybe at risk of losing a job and things like that. So there's lots of other knock-on effects that it is good it's good to prepare for and be mindful and be like okay maybe I'll try and have more runway in my emergency fund like what would happen if I lost my job but equally yeah but the investing side kind of trying to stick to the plan like I had a my kind of first test I guess was I was I started investing in stock market 2018 so I had the wobble in 2020 with COVID and I just didn't log in it's amazing you did that with your first wobble because I think the the first wobble is the hardest it's like the first heartbreak is the hardest you know you all you want to do is sell because you're freaking out so the fact that you held on for the first one's kind of amazing but yeah I was like okay I'm a long-term buy and hold like that's what I've decided let's just not look can you explain the psychology around loss aversion and what that actually means because I think if you understand that you will find those wobbles a lot easier to not react to yeah so loss aversion is we feel as humans our psychology is we are way I think there's there was a study or something they would ask you okay if you found 50 pounds how would you feel and people like oh I'd feel pretty happy like you know they feel good about it but not such an emotional range whereas if you lost 50 pounds people like really felt it and I think it's because we're hardwired to feel lost and try and keep ourselves safe and things like that when it comes to money like seeing the number go down is going to be incredibly stressful for a lot of people but the thing I always say as well is the number on your screen you still own the same amount of investments so you still own the same amounts of bits of companies it's just that's what someone will pay for them on this day on this exact moment of time that's a really great way to explain it it's a temporary sale yeah like it's just based on vibes like people at this moment in time are willing to pay loads for your investments because everyone's like yeah it's great we love it we'll we'll pay a lot for it right now and then if we have a downturn people just aren't as willing people don't want to put their money in so they're just not going to pay is high a price for it.

29:26I'd love to do a bit of a quick fight. There's a few topics that you've covered on your socials, which I love. And I realize there's a bit to cover. So we don't have to go into a huge amount of detail. But there was a few things that I thought this is so interesting. And I love your take on it. I think one of them is like the job market at the moment is like dire straits. A lot of people are feeling quite scared about how to find a new job. What do you think that people need to be aware of when it comes to the job market just in general right now? I think it's just being prepared probably for, okay, what happens if you do lose your job?

29:57And like thinking about it and planning for it if you can financially is always going to be smart. And then yeah, I think the thing I did on my socials was about getting jobs through friends and networking. And I like I was never a network person. Like that's just not really my vibe. And then I think as I got older, I was like, oh, okay, like that's how things are sometimes done in the world. I heard once, which I thought was really interesting, like life isn't a single player game. It's a multiplayer game. And if you try and play it like a single player, you're not going to get as far. And I thought it was a really interesting analogy.

30:26I like that a lot. Let's just talk about what actually the definition of that means and why it relates right now to what's happening in terms of jobs and earning money. Yeah, we do a shallow dive. Yeah, we do a shallow neco dive. So nepotism is basically when people kind of get jobs or positions from more from their connections or from their wealth. And it kind of started, I think, from Hollywood, like Nepo babies and kind of people realizing like, oh, all of the people who are getting the really good acting jobs are like sons or daughters of famous actors who are obviously in the Hollywood scene.

30:55And then I just kind of thought it was a fun phrase. So I just said Nepo friends, like if you have your friends that are kind of like getting you in jobs and things like that. And I guess it is more just a take on like networking, which sounds a bit boring. But it is it's knowing people and having connections. And I think, yeah, being more visible, telling people what you're looking for, maybe. I agree. The more people you know, the more conversations you've had, like probably the probabilities are higher that you're something, you know, at some point or you're here or something. Or if you're connected to more people on LinkedIn, you'll see them kind of like something that might be a job or, you know, like things like that.

31:28It's hard to plan for because it's not as strategic as I'm going to apply for 50 jobs. It's a much slower burn. I'd love to talk about the singles tax because you've spoken about this on your socials as well and just the idea of how expensive it is to be single in 2026 how can we talk about this not just in a way that makes single people feel sane but also people in relationships really understand how much this is impacting people's finances I'm just very aware of the cost of living and I think a lot of it is because I grew up the single mum and I think I don't think we would have survived like if it was now I find it quite scary because I think we probably kind of like just made it financially and I think with all the pressures that everyone's facing now I think about single mums I'm like how are they doing it or single people in general like I'm just very aware that everything has got a lot more expensive and there are a lot of people out there who are struggling and a lot of people like really seriously being put into poverty and that's kind of like not the topic of my video my video was a bit more like okay you're gonna have to pay for a hotel room on holiday on your own and things like that I think it's just good to be aware of other people's financial situations and be a bit like mindful of it and I just wanted people to feel seen because is a big thing if you're paying for everything on your own and just doing life on your own like it's just a lot isn't it it is and I think as much as we don't want to lean into that classic old school trope if you need a partner to be financially stable or you know you want if you're in a hetero relationship the idea of the man's going to save you you know I think we're we definitely try to move on from that but also the idea of combining and joining teams with somebody is like inevitably normally like two is better than one so it's not necessarily that you're expecting someone else to carry you along but it is easier when you've you're sharing that responsibility whether it's a financial or an emotional thing a problem shared is kind of a problem hub and so I think there is definitely a financial disadvantage if you are trying to do all these things alone and I would love to hear from someone who is in a relationship who's also are very financially aware what are your thoughts about combining money and and bringing your lives together financially yeah I don't have any hard or fast rules like you should definitely open a joint account or I know there's a lot of people who talk about okay like you figure out how much you each earn and then you do a percentage contribution to the household income that's based on your income so you both kind of have the same amount disposable leftover I don't I think you just have to be a team and talk about it openly and kind of get on the same page of okay where do we want to go like what are our financial goals because most life thing events are financial events at the end of the day like buying a house having a kid looking after parents like all the things that life might throw at you career pivots or starting a business like they're all financial things so I think it's with for me the relationship is just about being able to talk about it and being aligned on the same page and I think if you look at the stats around breakups and divorce a lot of it is for money and it's probably I think the more open you can be in talking about it and figuring out like oh what feels fair what feels right like having the open conversations I think is the most important part not necessarily there's like one structure that's super equitable you have to do everything down to like the tiniest percentage but just in general being on the same page if like okay this is what we want and we're going to do it together.

34:44Did you meet your partner later in life or yeah and so you came at it with financial knowledge and also financial assets yeah and I think that's happening more and more you know um I'm the same you know when you meet someone in your 30s, I mean, you are in a different position to when you're 18 and leaving uni. And so meeting people later in life means it's a good thing, I think. You know yourself more in all the ways, but it also has this added complexity around, you know, firstly, it's so hard for things to be equal anyway. How did you decide what felt right for you? And you don't need to go into specifics around what you have set up with your partner, but do you have any advice for people who are feeling a bit confused by the romantic notion of combine everything because you're in a relationship and you should be an economic unit I love planning for the future like I love thinking I'm such a dreamer I love being like okay what do we want to do and I think especially living in Portugal it's kind of it's not a straightforward a life path so it's a bit more fluid in terms of oh should we buy somewhere or and what might that look like and yeah I don't know if I have any like good answers but I think it's just being I just feel really like we're a team and I can rely on him and he could rely on me and we're both kind of figure it out together and we're both aligned with where we want to be and like I am a bit older come I'm in my 30s now but equally if I think about how long kind of hopefully my earning potential is going to keep going up and like over our lives how that might change it's quite interesting as well to be like I feel kind of at the start because we haven't really done loads of stuff yet in terms of buying or things like that or having a family.

36:22I wonder if for you because you had inheritance and you have investments like if I look at mine I have investments for sure but they're not enormous and I wonder if you guys are in a more equal playing field therefore it doesn't feel like you need to be making decisions on what's mine is mine and yours and all of this. I feel like we're just at the start like I feel like oh we're quite young and we're like starting out on this whole thing together so I'm like I don't know I'm not deepening it that much. I'm just like love this yeah really making me realize I need to chill the fuck out honestly one of the things that you do talk about which you you're not experiencing yet but is the idea that when you are married or when you have kids 50 50 isn't really a fair split because on the outside you could say okay like we're going to split things 50 50 but actually if you look at the average earnings drop for women when they have kids it's 42 percent whereas and that's just in the first sort of five years after having your first kid whereas if you look at men they have the opposite their salaries go up so how do you try and reconcile that because for me it makes me really annoyed and I don't really know what the solution would be that makes me feel comfortable with it there's a lot of talk about gender roles as well at the minute and obviously kind of trad wife movements and things like that and it's just a bit inevitable that it is really unfair that one person has to have the child and it's kind of so I've again like I'm not a mother but I've just always been a champion of women and I look at mothers and I'm like oh my god you're just doing the most and you deserve financial stability and I just really want you to be okay and again it's probably because I had a single mom and I've witnessed like okay what happened when my parents got divorced and you know my mom if she I mean she had a job but yeah I just kind of think about these things and making sure you're okay and I think also if you're a good team with your partner and the person you're having a child with it's like okay how can I make sure we're both financially okay whereas the the hit is just taken disproportionately by women in the minute because inevitably like you know in general they end up taking a step back from their career if the world was like perfectly set up maybe both of you could work three days a week really good jobs and it wouldn't impact your career prospects but things are set up economically that most jobs are full-time that's quite hard to navigate with parenthood so that someone probably takes you know I've had a lot of conversations people take the flexi career as well so it doesn't on paper seem like oh I'm taking this huge hit where I'm like not working or I'm at home I'm a stay-at-home mum but maybe you're kind of being okay well I'll be freelance for a while and then oh I don't end up putting as much in my pension if I don't have that job that's doing it for me and that these like sneaky things that over time really compound and then like you're saying people probably maybe if you hit 40s 50s and you're getting divorced you're like oh I've got a tiny pension pot because I've been doing the flexi career or I've had the step back because it's not just the short term it's the long-term impacts I think that are the biggest you know if you zoom out and you think okay right I might not be earning right now but it's being supplemented by my partner or whatever that's one thing but yeah it's the compounding nature of of not putting as much in investments yeah it's the invisible stuff so on the surface you might be like oh well he's contributing more to the household let's just I'm using like you know heteronormative gender norms here because that's kind of the the case of who's being impacted but it's okay well where's what's happening I'm maybe losing my career like your ability to earn an income is for most people their biggest asset like how much you're going to earn over your lifetime so if that's being shrunk that's going to kind of a penalty on you and then if you're not putting money in your pension that's a huge asset that could be smaller for you and they're not obvious that's not the household budget that's not the monthly stuff that maybe you're talking about and it's the things that people maybe aren't aware of of being like oh wait a minute you're getting a way bigger pension than me even though on the surface you're maybe contributing more to the bills so I think it's having it is financial literacy and awareness of being like oh what are we going to do about this and there's not really a perfect solution but it's I think being a bit aware about it and being able to have conversations and being like oh I'm taking a bit more of a hit here perhaps and this doesn't track well for me in 20 years time.

40:24If you were to have kids and you don't need to say if you would or wouldn't what would be the negotiables or the things that you would set up financially or talk about and have worked out before you felt comfortable doing that? Yeah, I guess it's just figuring out mat leave, where you're going to live, you know, expenses. Childcare is obviously the big one. How are you going to navigate that? If, you know, say for me, I live abroad, so I'm not going to have like grandparents helping. So it's kind of factoring all that in and be like, okay, well, realistically, how is that going to happen? Like who's going to look after them?

40:58What does that mean for careers? like having those conversations I think up front. I would love to round off this conversation by asking if there were hills you were dying on financially that you want everyone to be aware of let's imagine you're at the top of money versus no one's listening to you but you were screaming out like check your pension what would those things be? For me finance is all about life and being able to spend time with people and a lot of the reason I care is like I've had to take time off and my dad died and I'd be a carer for my nan so I think sometimes with money stuff we can get really into the numbers but actually and it feels so abstract I think that's why people struggle sometimes to put money aside or things like that but it's thinking about okay what the time freedom like do you care about I think freedom is like one of my biggest values so for me the finance leans into that because I always want to have wiggle room to do what I want to do.

41:46I think the reason that so many of us avoid that is because we don't know what we want and we don't question the life that we see everyone living and is that actually what I want do I actually want to live Do I, you know, and so I think step one is probably like what is the life you want and really spending time to get to know yourself and what that is and being honest, whether you're in a relationship with someone, if they also want the same kind of life because, and if you're not then, and also being brave enough to change that because the reason a lot of us avoid those conversations is because we're quite scared the answers are different to the reality we're living.

42:24and I do think if you add more of the emotion to it rather than the numbers it's so motivating too if you know that you're making a short-term sacrifice for three years to do a job you don't really like that you're earning good money and it means that you're going to be able to get to the next thing you want then fine but I think without the context a lot of us don't have the motivation to stick with the plan or to care about the numbers so I think it's really good advice. Yeah it kind of goes back to what you said at the start about reverse engineering like I always kind of in reverse engineering things and I think the financial goals or life goals it's like figuring out okay where do I want to be and then what do I need to do to get there oh it's quite scary I think I need to spend some time doing that yeah I think that the take that you have in general what I've learned from this conversation I would actually say is that the dogma and the intensity at which we approach finances doesn't need to be there and actually you can adopt a more fluid emotional relationship with how you are crafting your life.

43:25Your finances is a vehicle to get you there, but you don't have to identify as really financially savvy or really like you care about money or things. It's actually realizing that money in your plan is the way you can get to the life that you want. And that in itself is really beautiful and it's actually not tacky materialistic all the things that are attached to money which is why so many of us are like quite averse to thinking or talking about it if anyone does want to work with you um how is it they work in a coaching capacity and how could people get in touch so i do one-to-one coaching people it is normally people who have had a similar that they are normally they've had that lump sum and they just don't know what to do with it and they've got a bit stuck and maybe they've kind of tried the traditional finance stuff and they're like i just don't vibe with these people and a bit you know frozen um so you can have a look on my website for that yeah and i also just i'd put out a lot quite a lot of content so that's my main thing at the minute yeah very good content well thank you so much it was really amazing to meet you i'm sure that there's a lot of people that have got a huge amount of insight from this um from this conversation so yeah thank you for coming in i really loved it yeah so good thank you so much thank you so much for listening to Raising the Curve.

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