Finance Expert: The Truth About Buying a House and How Her 652510 Rule Built $200K in Passive Income!

24:00It does bring me happiness. But for others, it might just be a facade. And later on in their later on in life, they just realized that actually no one really cared. The only person who cared was me. And although I did it for other people, it's now I realize that all the tradeoffs that have to make as a result of it. Because happiness and external validation, they're like cousins. But they're not the same guy. Do you know what I mean? They're like, they look, they kind of like of the same family, but one of them's like dysfunctional sibling. But they kind of look the same. You know, you look at that guy and his Ferrari go on must be happy.

24:35And he comes in and he's probably got a smile on his face because he's talking about his Ferrari. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what he's built himself on, I guess. But I don't know if that's happiness. You know, the guy without the Ferrari might be... I think universally, most people, what they want is the freedom and the choice at the time. I think more people are after that. And that can make more people happier than any state of simple. Because when you do end up going down the route of buying something to make you happy, you're on a hedonic treadmill. You're then buying the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

25:10You get those spikes of happiness. The never is really long -lasting, fulfilling happiness. So investing strategy number one is asking your employer about the investment scheme? Finding out if your employer has a project, a time at plan and making sure that you're invested into it. Enough to cover the match that they offer. What's strategy number two? The strategy number two is your own individual tax -advantaged investment account. This is a ISA in the UK. And this is where you put your own money after tax into an investment account. And then the money grows over time tax -free. So when you pull it out, at the end, you could with the UK, you could pull out in five years and ten years.

25:53Or in retirement, then you could withdraw that money tax -free. So both of them have tax advantages. One is when you put the money in, you're getting the tax -vonges, the other ones when you draw the money out. But they both have tax -advantages. And so you're putting the money in and it's growing tax -free. That's a really big deal. That's huge. That's money that's compounding for you and you're not paying tax on that. But there's a limit. There's a limit. Anually, it's 20 ,000. But in the UK and the US? It changes year on year. At the moment, I believe it's $7 ,000. But with a quick Google search, you could stay on top of whatever the current limit is for the account or the tax -vonged -advantaged account that you're investing in.

26:29So I get paid, I put it into my, in the UK, it's called an ISA. Yeah. And the limit is 20k. So if I put 20k in, let's say, if it goes to a 100k because the investments go really well, is the whole 100k tax -free? Yeah. You're not paying capital gains tax. You're not paying interest. I mean, sorry, dividends tax. So pretty much that's the first place everyone should really be investing if they want an alternative to investing in their pension. Yeah. That's the first thing you want to cap out because of the tax will benefit so come with it. Is it called a Roth IRA in the US? Yeah. That's right. So as Max contribution is $7 ,000 to $8 ,000 a year if you're 50 or older.

27:11Yeah, the specific amounts depending on where you are. Yes. Standard employee contribution limit of $23 ,000. Whereas in the UK, it's just a flat. 20 ,000 is the current. And with my ISA, this tax -free ISA that everyone is eligible to invest in. Do I then have to pick the things it invest in? Yes. Okay. This is the next. Oh, we could talk about this now actually. Yeah. So when you are deciding what to invest in, this is with the employer sponsored account, the employer sponsored retirement account, you actually just choose what risk profile you have and it will do that investing for you. So you'll say, I feel really risky or I'm not very risky at all.

27:50Yeah. And it does it for you. And it does it will invest on behalf of you. And so most of you don't even realize that they're investing, but they are investing through their company if they have that employer sponsored plan. Then the individual account is you doing the investing yourself. You're picking what to invest in. And what's your line of investing? My principle with investing is very, very simple and it's just keep it, keep it simple and do it for the long term. So I say index funds and target date retirement funds is what you want to invest in. What's that? An index fund is for our index.

28:22Think about as a list of companies. So the S &P 500 is a list of the largest, the top 500 companies to give us really simple. First, you 100 is the top 100 companies in the London Stock Exchange. The fund is a pot of money that invests in the companies on that list. So by investing in an S &P 500, you've invested in a small piece of the top 500 companies in the US. That's what an index fund is. And so even if one company goes down, you're diversified. And so there'll be another company that will and the other companies will bring it back up again. And what kind of performance can I expect from investing in the S &P 500?

29:07Historically speaking, the long term average has been 8 to 10 % per year depending on the years and the time frame that you're looking at. That is different to a one year holding period. It could go up, it could go down, you just don't know. So the longer you invest for the chances of you getting that 8 to 10 % on average increase. Is it to 10 % going to make me rich, Donisha? How long are you doing it for? You tell me. If you have a lump sum amount, you're like, okay, you know what? I have 2000 that I want to invest. What should I do with it? I was taking me five years to invest this. I would say 1 ,900 of that.

29:48Don't invest it. 100 of it invest. I'll say what I'm saying, there's 100. I want you to invest it for anyone listening. I want you to listen. I want you to invest that because I want you to see and feel the emotions when you see your money go up over time. Sure, it's going to be small. It's not going to make you rich investing that. But you're going to instill that good habit early on. And you're going to remember that. Because the remaining amount, you're going to put that towards increasing your income. That's the first thing you're going to do. Think of your income as a river. And your specific milestones, life milestones as buckets across the river.

30:29So you have retirement, you have your house deposit, you have your car payment, they're all saving up for. Those buckets will fill up faster up the quicker and wider that river is. That is your income that's coming through. If you don't have much of an income coming through, those buckets are going to take ages to fill up. That's why I say, if it's taking you a long time to save that amount, I actually would recommend you putting that money towards increasing your income first before investing it. If however, you have disposable income, you have an reoccurring amount that you can invest monthly.

31:04Use that to your advantage, harness the power of long term compounding growth because that is the thing that is going to make you rich. Sure, it will take 25, 30 years, but that is leverage that you don't get through your day job. It's your money working for you without you having to be there. So you would suggest if you're really at that early level to focus on increasing your income, investing in increasing your income. Yeah, that's the first thing. If you're figuring out, okay, I need to increase my income, it's taking me a while to earn this amount. And I only have a lump sum of 2005 ,000, focus on increasing your income.

31:37Yeah, that's what I would say. And how does one focus on increasing their income? There are a couple of ways to do this. So the easiest way to increase your income is asking for a pay rise. Increasing your responsibility, the work that you do, your contributions, and saying to your boss, your manager, this is the value that I've bought, this is the responsibility I've taken on. This is what the market is paying for a similar role, and this is why a pay rise is fair. The other option. Did you ever ask for a pay rise? Multiple times. Multiple, multiple times. When you're an investment banking. Yeah.

32:15It's one of those things where, if you don't ask, you don't get. Of course you'll get, but you sitting there and thinking the hard work is going to show without you asking for it, it's unlikely. I'm going to have to build a case and say, okay, these are the things that I've done. This is the things that we said we were going to do, or I wanted to work on in my performance review, which is what I had. Okay, to the end of the performance review, and these are the things that I actually did, and this is where I went above and beyond. So if I'm your boss, Nisha, if we just replay one of those conversations you had, you were saying a performance review.

32:52And what did you say to me? I would say, hey, Stephen. Hey. Three months ago. Six months ago, we spoke about the things that I needed to do to get promoted or to get a pay rise. And we mentioned X, Y, Z. And I've done all of those things here. And here is the feedback that I've got. Here is where I've gone above and beyond. And this is some extra things that other people, or the 360 feedback that I've done, and this is what it says. Yeah, and that's when I say, do you think that this is the bracket that we discussed? Do you think that's fair? Research shows that women are much less likely to ask for a pay rise.

33:35And when they do, they are less likely to get one compared to men. Is that kind of what you found? Yeah, I've seen those facts, and I think it's really such a shame that when women ask for a pay rise, it may not be seen in the same way as when a male counterpart asked for the pay rise. And the fact is that we can control. Are the being prepared? Having the book of all the things that you've done, but I recommend, and this is things that I've done when I was an organisation, and when I felt like, even I was being paid less than my male counterpart, is speaking, and I think, firstly, if there's a HR team in your department, speaking to them and asking, am I online, or am I aligned to the average for my department and for what my role is?

34:24They could give you a really good guideline as to whether you are underpaid, or whether you deserve a bump to be more aligned to the general pay in that role. And the second thing is, have an ally or have someone in your workplace that you'd always speak to, whether it's a mentor, whether it's a colleague, and it's worth always speaking to other people about money. It's such a taboo topic. We hate it. We hate talking to someone else about their salary, what they're making. But the more financial transparency that we encourage, the more we can learn from each other. Yeah. Open your answer person next to you, hey, this is what you get paid, as hard as that is, open up that conversation.

35:06But the other way to increase your income is actually through switching jobs, switching companies. Because there's so much research that's been done, and the most popular one is actually one cited by Forbes, that says, people who stay at the same company for two years or more on average and 50 % less over their lifetime. And I've made a video on my salary here by year over the last, over the nine years I spent in banking. And the biggest pay jumps that I saw, or from switching companies. So those are the two ways that I would actually say, yeah, increase your income by asking for more by switching.

35:53I do think one of the most effective ways that I've seen as well is just looking at the industry as well, and presenting a case from the industry. And people have done that to me several times, over the last ten years, they've come to me and said, the industry paid for my role and my seniority level in this part of the world, in this city, is this, I'm currently on this, is coming over conversation about this, to rectify it. And I can't think of an instance where I haven't been receptive to that, especially if it's justified, you know, because actually sometimes the employer doesn't know, the employer doesn't know that they might be underpaying you.

36:26That's a genuine possibility. I mean, that sounds a crazy talk, but sometimes employees don't know, because a lot of roles that were hiring for these days are new roles. They're not roles that existed ten years ago, even in podcasting, like there's, it's hard to find benchmarks for what people were paid in podcasting ten years ago, for different roles that now exist in our industry. So it's worth having a non -ass conversation. And I do think, I do think from the employer standpoint, it's worth leading with the value that you've brought, like you've said, versus blunt demands, because humans are human beings.

37:03And you can turn someone's nose up or their backup by the way in which you deliver your message, but delivering it from an evidence -based perspective, and saying, these are the accomplishments that I've made, and these are responsibilities I've taken on, and this is like the industry average, and I love being here, and I want to stay here. So I was wondering if it'd be possible to have a conversation about my salary. I'd receive that very, very well. And even aligning it to your company's objectives. This is what I was doing. Yeah, exactly. Here is what I've done aligned to your objectives that you're looking for, exactly.

37:37And you talked about saving for a house as well. Do you see buying a house as a good investment? Because it is the first thing most people do, right? It's like the first thing we're told as part of the script of life when you get some money, save it up, get a mortgage. A lot of our view about buying or renting, or buying a house, is actually formed from what we saw our parents do, and what we saw the generation before us do. And so even looking at my life, formed from the way my parents thought, they came to the UK as immigrants, and when they bought their first house, it was like the epitome of success.

38:19They had this thing that they can, that represented wealth for them, that they can touch, they can see, they can feel, it represent disability, security, and then when we moved out of that terrorist home into another home, it was between two stations in a catchment area, so me and my sisters got access to better schools. That was then their happiness. That was then their goal and the milestone achieved. And for the previous generation, and still the way people see it today, when people say, we need to build by a house for wealth building, it's because a big factor of it is that it was a forced mechanism of saving.

39:03So when you're buying a house or paying for a mortgage, that's not optional. You have to pay it. You then can't then spend that money on anything else. And so as a result, those monthly payments are going towards building your equity and building this house's value. And as a byproduct is building wealth for you. So for someone listening to this, if they're hearing this conversation, they say, OK, you know what, I have a goal to buy. And they run the numbers. It makes one sense for them. They're doing it for the long term. Then I'll say that's a really good goal to have. Go for it. But I think we put a lot of pressure on people today that they need to buy house and as soon as they start working, that they need to get onto that property ladder.

39:47So if you're listening to this and thinking that I don't have a goal to buy a house, then there are also ways to build wealth that don't require you to be in the real estate game. I think there's something psychological about paying rent that you never see again. That makes you think that it's a terrible idea. Yeah. And sometimes when you look at the mortgage payment versus the rental payment, you go, well, they're the same. Yeah. And I'll end up owning this chunk of concrete. So I might as well go for the chunk of concrete. Yeah. But if you are choosing to rent and actually there's been studies that's on this, almost nine out of 12 regions in the UK and the same applies for other areas in the world as well.

40:25It's renting is or can be cheaper than buying in that equivalent neighborhood. And so if you are renting and you're saving money on that difference, then you've got to be disciplined and sensible enough to know that you need to invest the difference. What do you mean? So if your rent is 1500 and to get that mortgage and you check the mortgage payments and do you realize that with the interest that you're going to be paying on the mortgage or the other things that come into buying a house or the stamp duty that you're paying, the property tax, the repairs, the maintenance insurance. If you factor in the cost of both and you do run the numbers and you say, okay, renting is cheaper than buying, then getting a home.

41:06That difference is what you want to be able to invest. It's kind of a way for you to say, I'm creating my own forced mechanism of saving. This is my own version of a mortgage. I'm the man I'm saving, I'm going to set up a investment account and I'm going to automate it and I'm going to put money into it every single month. And that's the way you're going to build wealth. That's just as legitimate. And actually I went on to the property ladder and the money that I put in towards that flat hasn't grown as near as much as the money that I made through the stock market. By investing in the S &P 500.

41:43So tell me about that. So you bought a property in London or somewhere in North London. To live in. And I bought it in 2017. And it's gone up in value. I'd say about 10%. I've had about eight years. Then you can pay that to the stock market. So sure there's a number side of it where people think, okay, I need to buy a house to build wealth. But that's what I'm trying to explain that. Actually, if you save that money and you invested it, you might be better off financially. But coming back to your point, yes, it's that psychological thing of, okay, do I want to pay that money on rent or do I want to buy the other psychological part of it is also the comfort of knowing that you have somewhere.

42:30And this is a big reason as to why I bought the comfort of knowing that no matter what happens, you have this place. It's yours. The landlord conserved you notice you can do whatever you want the flat within certain restrictions and rules. And you have this piece of that belongs to you. And so that's the psychological comfort that came from it. Sure, we could talk about the numbers and what investing will do and how much you can make on that. But the bit that often gets forgotten about is the invisible side, which is. The peace of mind, the psychological comfort of just owning a home. So, can I ask how much did your apartment cost in London?

43:11530. So if you spent 530K on it, presumably on like a mortgage or something at the time. Yeah, it was on a mortgage. So 530K, it's gone up 10%. Yeah. It's gone up about 50K. About 50K. So it's now worth 580. But if you put that amount of money into the S &P 500. Well, the thing was the house and the flat as you could use the mortgage. You wouldn't put that full amount in it because you had the mortgage. But if you put that deposit amount into it. Yeah, the deposit amount. Yeah, the amount that you would put on just the down payment, the stamp duty that would have also paid. If I saved that amount and then put it put that amount, whatever it was, and invested that, that's the comparison that I would have made.

43:53So how much was that intel that you paid into that? I put about 50K down. Okay, it's 50K. And probably the net return on that. If it's gone up 10%. Yeah, so 10. 55K. Yeah. In the S &P 500 in the same time has delivered roughly 10 to 12 % per year on average. It has more than doubled in value since 2017. So you would have probably got pretty incredible return on the S &P 500. Even in the last five years, the S &P 500 has grown 90%. Yeah, makes sense. So it's almost doubled in the last five years alone, which means you would have basically doubled your money just investing it in an index fund. Are you looking at that from the lows of the COVID?

44:43Yeah, it says even with the COVID lows, it says so it's more than doubled in value since 2017 driven by strong growth and technology despite the COVID crash in 2022 pullback. Yeah, that's the case. Case in point that we're looking at building wealth just through one mechanism that feels like it's urgent and needs to be done by everyone. Actually, if you're looking at it purely from a numbers and building wealth perspective, there are other ways to do that. My brother is what's an investment banker. He now works full time helping with my money and helping my companies. He went to LSEs. He's very smart guy.

45:23He's always been like the boffin in the family. He always talks to me about this term opportunity cost. So when I told him, I said, I want to buy this house and Cape Town. He was like, this is going to cost you X millions. Think about the opportunity cost. And he always, every time I say I want to do this, he's like, think about the opportunity cost and he basically stands in the way of it. What is opportunity cost? And why should people be thinking about this when they're spending their money? So every pound of dollar that we spend is one less that we could use on something else. And that is the opportunity cost in essence.

45:58And we often don't think about life in terms of opportunity cost because we only look at the thing that is in front of us. So brother was telling you about how you can make more money investing somewhere else. But what you saw is this one thing in front of you and you thought, no, I don't even know if I'm going to make this money elsewhere. I don't know if that's going to happen. This thing is right in front of me. And that's the thing with the opportunity cost. There's always a trade off of what you can see and what you can't see. But with every decision you make, there's something else that you're saying no to is coming out the cost of something else.

46:28I was thinking about that as you were talking and just to give a bit of color to this for people at home. And a good example of opportunity cost. So like yesterday I bought lunch for the team, right? And the lunch cost $100. It was like the salad bar in Los Angeles, cost me $100. $500 who cares. But then when I think about the numbers you shared earlier on, if I'd taken that $100 and put it into the S &P 500 in 40 years, assuming I got 10 % return a year, which is like the average of the S &P, that is almost $5 ,000. So in terms of opportunity cost, buying the team lunch for $100 has effectively cost me an opportunity $5 ,000 that I would have had presuming that return in 40 years from now.

47:10So that lunch yesterday actually cost me potentially roughly $5 ,000. Yeah. And I guess for you, it's... That's the last time the team had got the money. But on the other side, you might have missed out on how the team felt going to that lunch. And the invisible benefits that you might have got from that. Whether it was just the memories at that moment in time, whether it's the motivation, whether it's the culture that you're bringing in, that's the thing that you might miss out on if you choose that $5 ,000 in X years or time. And I guess it's a balancing act as well. You know, I was thinking about the guy you mentioned with a Ferrari.

47:44And if he were to die today, one could argue that in fact he played life correctly. Absolutely. Because he lived in... He saw it, he did it. And this is, I think, the difference you see in people. Some people have that long -term view. I want my money when I'm 65 or 17, my pension fund. And other people play a bit more short -term in their life and go, I just want to have good experiences now. And so it's hard to understand who's right because we don't know how the story ends, I guess. Yeah, and I think there's a fine line, but there's also a way to balance living in the present we're planning for the future.

48:17By understanding that you are going to allocate a specific amount of the money that comes in towards the hero now. And then the rest, you are going to look used towards the future you. Because it's only very rewarding about spending now when you know the future you has already been looked after. It makes you want to spend it without thinking, oh, what is this coming opportunity cost off? Do you think people should buy a house if their objective is to make money? Or do you think there are other opportunities like the S &P 500, like using your tax -free isre? A lot of people listening probably don't have or on their way to building a deposit or working the way to have the money forward to deposit.

48:59But if they're putting themselves under pressure and they think that they're just buying a house to build wealth, I would say actually look into investing through that stocks and shares. I saw as a star, that is tax -free. If you have an human started investing through that stocks and shares, I saw which by the way, 75 % roughly or people in the UK aren't investing. So yeah, I would definitely say, open that up first. And do you think one should split a proportion of their investments into different categories of risk? Because you got like crypto on the one side of it, which sometimes feel like being at a roulette table.

49:35And then you've got things that are typically safer like the S &P 500. Yeah. I'm going to say with the stocks and shares actually when you invest in, and a lot of people also want to invest in crypto, but they also want to invest in individual stocks as well. Should I go after the next? Big winning company stocks. Should I invest in the stock? And what I want to say is that there's two parts to think about. The returns, but also the behavioral concepts. How you feel when it comes to investing because your one of the biggest impacts on market performance is your contributions, but also your behavior.

50:14So, fidelity did a risk found that people who invested in funds underperformed the fund that they were in. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds impossible. How can you be underperforming a fund that you're in? But then when they looked into it, they found that when fear and anxiety took over when the market dropped, these people bought sold bought sold they essentially does in and out of the fund. As a result, underperforming the fund that they were already holding. Because when it went down, they sold. Yeah, when it went down, they sold when they went up, they bought. And so what you want to do is you want to invest in something that makes you buy and hold.

51:03Fidelity looked into the groups of people that had invested in their funds to see which group performed the best. And when they looked into it, they found a one group significantly outperformed all other groups when it came to investment returns. And that was dead people. Dead people outperformed the living when it came to investment returns. Because they didn't touch their investment account. They just said it, forget it. They didn't chase the next company stock. They didn't go after the thing that's going to go up really quickly and down really quickly. And that all ties into the behavior. You're not letting your emotions drive the investments.

51:43And by the way, they found out the second best performing group were the people who forgot that they had a fund in the first place. So when it comes to deciding what allocation you want your portfolio to be, it's understanding, okay, what is going to give you the returns. But also, what is the thing that's going to help you stay the course even when the market goes and drops? What will make you feel like, okay, I can still stay and hold my position. That's how to decide what kind of percentage portfolio you want for yourself. And I've done that with my portfolio is with crypto is less than 2 % of my overall portfolio.

52:17I've invested the amount that I feel like it won't make a difference if I lose it. And if it goes to the moon, great. And that's how, when I say somewhere here, the last thing I want to do is encourage people before they even set up the financial foundations to invest in something that can go up and go down when 75 % of the population is an investing. And the reason why they're not investing is because, and I keep hearing this from time to time again from the people I speak to, is either they're really scared that they're going to lose money or they don't know where to start. And so, when it comes to losing money, I always say, do the foundations first, set up your portfolio there and then move on to speculative assets.

52:59Should you want to go down that path? I remember the first time I invested and I downloaded this app and I put some money in there and then I watched it. And I was watching it so much and it was going up and down and up and down. And in like three, four months later, I sold it and I didn't really make it. I think I lost a couple of hundred quid or whatever. And then I watched that same investment over the next five, six, seven years just go to the moon. Yeah. And I remember thinking, I should have just kept it in there. And then the best investment I ever made correlates to what you were saying because I lost my password.

53:30I like lost the password to log in. Yeah. And so I couldn't do anything about it anyway and I watched it and went down and up and down and up and down and up. But over five years it went really, really high. And so when I first started investing in crypto and invested in Ethereum and now Bitcoin, my strategy was the same. My strategy was get the private keys and give half of them to one person that I trust and half of them to the person that I trust. And even if I want to, I can't do anything about it. And that's proven to be one of my greatest returns and investing because I just, I don't even know what's going on with it.

54:01I'm not paying attention. Yeah. And that's the thing you just taken the motions out of the equation. Yeah. There's no fear. Greed. There's nothing else that controls your financial decisions other than logic. I think actually on that first investment I made when I was like, must have been at my early twenties, I needed the money. Like I didn't have the emergency fund or a piece of mine fund. So when it started to go down a little bit, naturally you kind of panic. So I think in that the second season of life where I started investing in Ethereum and Bitcoin, it didn't really matter if I lost the money.

54:30So it made it easier to hold my nerves. And I think now I was just such a huge part of investing. It goes to what you said earlier, like it's worth taking $100 or £100 or whatever you can, which is a really inconsequential number of money. And putting it into some kind of S &P 500 or even a stock just to feel that almost like train your psychology animations of like what the ups feel like and what the down feel like. Yeah, exactly. So your investment strategy, your portfolio, you mentioned it there. Yeah. What does it look like? It's 40 % funds. OK, what kind of funds? Index funds. S &P 500. I also do international markets, the UK.

55:08So emerging developed across all sectors. I also do. And I keep it very, very diversified. S &P 500 target date retirement funds that automatically rebalance. So target date retirement fund for anyone who's listening and wondering what it is. It's essentially a fund that has different types of investments within it. So you could go onto a platform of your choice that you use to invest and you could type in target date retirement fund. And at the end of every fund will have a year. And so you want to pick the year that is the closest to the year that you plan to retire. So if you plan to retire in 2050, that's the year that you'll pick.

55:47And what that fund does is it rebalances and the percentage of different investments changes to become more conservative as your approach for time. So it starts to protect you a little bit more. Exactly. So it goes risk off. It kind of goes less risky or it becomes less risky because you don't want to be investing the same when you don't have that much time. So if you're investing in your 2030s, you have enough time to ride out the stock market waves. So that's 40 % of your portfolio. That's 40 % 30 % is real estate. Okay. In all parts of the world. No, just in the UK. Just in the UK. Yeah. Then I'll say about 25 % I'm putting back into my business at the moment.

56:33Okay. And then the remaining is between crypto and cash, cash and cash reserves. Okay. What about investing in yourself? Because we think about education and skills and stuff like that. Should we be investing a small amount of money into ourselves and some capacity? 100 % I think you just don't stop investing in yourself at any point in time. It goes down to increasing your income, increasing your skills, increasing your value, which then has a knock on effect on everything else that you're investing into. It's a really interesting time to be leading a business. New skills are constantly being invented and ones that did exist a few months ago are now all of a sudden essential.

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57:54And you can tap into tomorrow's talent at 5 .com slash diary. And for 10 % off your first order, use code diary. You actually made a video about 40 books that you've read that improve your own financial literacy. If there was one book that you recommend people to read, that you think is most accessible and will advance their financial literacy in the most profound way, that did that for you. What book would you recommend? Think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill. It's not actually about financial literacy, but it's around money mindset. And the other book to start with when it comes to financial literacy is also the richest man in Babylon.

58:33When people don't learn about money, it's because they find it quite boring and not very interesting. So the richest man in Babylon does a good job into twining a novel into financial literacy concepts. I'm not rid of that book. I've heard a lot about it though. It's the underlying principles when it comes to money don't really change much. And it really starts with the basics when it comes to saving and spending. So it's a good starting point. Are there any other principles of building wealth that we haven't talked about? I mean, we haven't talked about paid every teams. But I've had you talk at length about what we should do when we get paid every single month.

59:14Some of the things we've talked about already, like knowing your reference point, which was point one, right? That was your piece of mind fund. I guess knowing your reference point is essentially just understanding where your finances break down and what buckets they've all into. So I would actually say this is really important for anyone to know. And it's the three numbers. It's called the 65 for 2015. And it's three numbers that anyone should know when it comes to money and their own personal finance. Okay, 65 2015. Okay. And the way it works is you want to the idea of it is to take your net income.

59:58This is your take home pay after you pay taxes, not the number on your job description. The number after you paid state contribution, all other taxes. And you want to split that into three buckets. The fundamental, which is your core living expenses. Everything that is essential to your living costs, mortgage rent, utilities, groceries, minimum debt payments, car payments. All of that should make up approximately 65 % of your net income. Okay. The 20%. That's for your fund spending. These are for the pottery painting that you booked last minute, the glass and re tickets, the Pilates class. That should make up about 20 % of your take home pay.

1:00:48And the remaining 15%. That's for your future you. That's today's you planting seeds for tomorrow's you. And that should go to savings, investments and extra debt payments. And those are three good numbers that I think everyone should know and understand. It's a good starting point to try and benchmark your numbers or your income against those spending categories. I would say, however, if you are someone who's living closer to paycheck to paycheck, those numbers might look slightly different. And it might be that you want to dial down that fund percentage to have enough saved over for the future you.

1:01:26So you can continue contributing to your savings investments. Or if you're finding that your housing and mortgage is higher than 18, 90 % start with when it comes to future you start with what you can. Whether it's saving 2%, 3 % starts somewhere. You just want to build that habit. And in terms of spending, should I, you mentioned cars earlier and we talked about houses briefly, should I be buying a car, should I be leasing a car? A car is, let me just say it's one of the two areas that most people overspend. And it's because you don't just buy the numbers, we buy the emotions of the car, how the car might make us feel, how we will look like in the car.

1:02:08The family memories will create in the car. And I know because I did this when I got my first job, the very first thing I did was upgrade my car. I went into a car showroom, found a car that I thought I'd look cool in, walked out with the car an hour late up, drove out with the car and didn't run my numbers, didn't check if I could afford the monthly payments. And for the next couple of months was figuring out how I was going to make the rest of my finances meet. And car dealerships know this, so they will manipulate the monthly payments in a way that makes you buy more car than you could afford.

1:02:43And if you don't understand how the numbers work, this is probably one of the quickest ways to destroy a chance of building real wealth. The way I recommend buying a car is to buy something that's three to five years old, straight. And I say three to five years old because at that point it's enough, it's depreciated enough as someone else's expense and won't depreciate as much during the time that you have it. But if you are someone who is wealthy and you don't mind taking that hit on the depreciation or you want a nice car every couple of years and you want to trade it in and you don't mind that fact that it's not the best financial choice, then lease.

1:03:25That's how I think of the buy and the lease situation. Then you also want to think about how much can you reasonably afford as a monthly payment when it comes to the proportion of your income that you're spending towards it. So what do you buy in your cars or do you? No, I actually at the moment it was more economical for me to get a taxi everywhere so I don't have a car. So you've ran the numbers and thought the amount I'm traveling away from home makes more sense just to get a taxi every time. Yeah, I'm saving on the for me and it makes sense for this point in my life. It might be in five years, ten years time that I want a nice car and I don't want to restrain myself from having it.

1:04:01But for now with the numbers, I could use that number that amount somewhere else. What about other things we spend money on? Where are the big sort of traps in spending that we haven't mentioned. So we talked about cars, talked about houses, what about iPhones and iPads and technology? I think there's traps in spending and almost everything that we do that we don't even see. Going to a grocery shop, which is a fundamental living cost for everyone. You're fighting against marketing to keep your money in your pocket. You walk to a shop, a grocery store, they have the eggs, the milk, the bread right at the back, which makes you walk through the shop to get there.

1:04:41They have the premium products eye level, the sweets for the kids at the kids eye level. So these are also areas where you don't even realize that you're overspending because there's these subliminal marketing messages around you. So that's one area where people spend where it's just like spending with the necessities, but not even realizing that there's a way to save there. So what do you suggest going into those supermarkets with a shopping list? Yeah, I mean, that's one way going into going into the supermarkets with shopping list. Also checking if you're shopping at the cheapest supermarket near you, I mean, shopping at MNS and weight trozers, different to shopping at Audi.

1:05:20If that's where you want to save your money and you're more paycheck to paycheck, you don't think about where to save your money. Other areas where people overspend is everything now can be bought as an impulse buy. You could buy now pay later. There's Apple Pay on your phone. There's so many debt financing methods that make you pay more. And so just understanding, running this budget, running these numbers, understanding what you actually have available to spend towards these things, is a really good way of fighting against everything else that is trying to take your money away from you. What about like iPhones and iPads and stuff like that?

1:05:58Do you think people should be getting new ones or... The way I think about this is the law of diminishing returns. When you first get something, there's a really big impact on your happiness. When you first get you like an iPhone and you don't have an iPhone, that's good. That's big. You're like, that's walking around your iPhone. This is pretty cool. Then with every upgrade, that diminishing return starts to plateau. It's not as exciting. So actually thinking about, do I need the next upgrade or is that something I could pass up on? But always remembering that the first time you buy something is worth it.

1:06:32The upgrades after that, the happiness doesn't increase as much. And what about hand nails, dying your hair and all those kinds of things? Do you think people should be trying to sacrifice those kinds of things as well? I'm not in this camp of trying to save money on everything. I really do believe that you should have a percentage that you allocate towards the fun things in your life and not being restrictive about what it is that you love. If it is getting your nails done, getting your hair done, getting a new bag, go for it. Enjoy it. As long as on the other side, that's not at the opportunity cost of you in five years or you in ten years.

1:07:11Because you took about this time lifestyle inflation, which I've never heard before. What is lifestyle inflation? Lifestyle inflation is when as your income increases, you're spending also increases. In a way that you think might be necessary, but actually they are all necessities being hidden away as just upgrades and luxuries. So essentially you're spending rising at the same pace that your income is increasing. And what you want to do to counteract lifestyle inflation is you want to make sure that your spending increases sure you want to treat yourself, you want to reward yourself, but not at the same pace that your income increases.

1:07:52You want to make sure that the gap between your income and your spending is getting wider as you earn more money, not narrower. What's the best way for someone to track their money? Because there's lots of figures here. Some people aren't mathematically literate. Many people don't want to be in Excel documents. Are there simple tools or an app that I could use to track my spending and saving and income? So many bank accounts nowadays have category spending within them and I'll tell you what you're spending and what you're spending on. So if you are someone that even me, I don't set every single month and track every single transaction, but I do have a ballpark figure in my mind based on my banking apps about what I'm spending and where.

1:08:34And the key isn't, should I be allocating this much here? I've overspent here. Oh, I spent a little bit more on my trip than I needed to. The key is, are you saving 10 % minimum of your salary? Whatever you decide to do with everything else, that's up to you. And when you think about it that way, you think of this whole budgeting, managing finances. There's a lot more freeing. There's something that's restricting you. If you're someone who doesn't want to sit in the spreadsheet, spit in the numbers, just think, what am I saving and what am I spending? Am I saving the right percentage? Cool. Doesn't matter how I'm allocating the rest.

1:09:11That's what I recommend for those people. Are there like budget trackers that I already built that I can use? Because my bank might tell me how much I'm spending, but it doesn't necessarily inform me in real time of how much money I have left. Yeah. I mean, I have a budget tracker, which actually tells you in real time, it's not connected to your bank accounts, but when you put your numbers into it, it will tell you what you have left to spend for the remaining of the month. And what is that? Is that an Excel document? It is an Excel document. Yeah. Can I have your Excel document? Yeah, sure. I'll link it below so people can use it.

1:09:41What about money and love and how these two worlds collide? Because I was speaking to Kevin O 'Leary recently on the show and he was telling me that one of the reasons people end up in divorce is because of financial insecurities and pain and friction and arguments. Do you get a lot of messages from people about money, love, joint bank accounts, all these kinds of things? I have a lot of questions about from people asking, firstly, how to bring up the conversation of money. And secondly, how to manage their finances with a partner in a way that keeps the autonomy, but still makes it feel like you have a shared life.

1:10:22What are those big questions? When it comes to how to bring up a conversation, I guess with your partner, this is really important because the top two reasons why people argue or what couples argue is money and sex. And when it comes to money, it's lack of transparency, lack of openness and lack of shared goals together. And that's not to say, yeah, you should go on a first date and ask someone what their credit score or debt utilization is. But it is to say, having those conversations, asking the right questions in a way that can help you understand someone else's money beliefs in a way that can help you create a financial life together.

1:11:10So what should I be asking my partner? I'm your partner. What do you say to me and when do you say it? I think there's levels of the questions that you could ask someone. And if you're just getting to know someone, you can ask them something along the lines of if you found or if you won 10 ,000 tomorrow, how would you spend it? Lamborghini. That will tell you a lot about what they value. So then that automatically tells you that they probably value status. If you say, I'll probably save it. If I said Lamborghini, I'm going to rent a Lamborghini for two months. Yeah. What should you then do about that?

1:11:48You take that information and you understand this is what the person values. Yeah. Because money is just a symbol for what the person values. And if they want to spend it on a Lamborghini, that's not to say you should then judge the way they're spending. But you take that information, you understand what do you want to do with it? Is this way of thinking something that you want to have a life with? Okay. Is there a good answer to that question? I think it comes down to understanding because even if someone says I just want to save, you might think, okay, this is great. It's stability, security, but you might be someone who wants experiences.

1:12:23You want to spend on flights to take your friends and family away around the world. So it's just about understanding how your money values fit in with their money values. And are they completely in conflict with each other? Or are they actually, do they marry up and can you see yourselves creating a financial life together? Because if someone's like, oh, I'll spend all my money on status symbols and not save anything and you're a saver, that is going to be a cause for arguments. Yeah. Especially if you get bad news and things get tight. It's only just their job. And then when things get tight, you're really going to be focused on the money.

1:13:00Or you have kids and any sort of pressure on their budget. Exactly. And like other questions and those kind of questions come down further, further down the line actually, I guess as well when it comes to financial goal setting. But I guess another question you could ask someone and it comes back to what we spoke about at the start of the podcast is, where did your beliefs about money come from? Because so much of the way we think about money is inherited through what we saw our parents do, what we saw during our upbringing. And it has an impact on the way we are with money. It might be that we're an impulse spender as a result of it.

1:13:33It might be that we see debt in a certain way. It might be that we're really frugal. But what that does is that opens up a conversation of empathy and compassion rather than judgment. And that automatically can lead to more conversations about, okay, how do you view debt? How can we manage our finances based on your views and my views? And how can we work together as a whole to make this sustainable? And then the next question is, when it comes to family and kids and how you're going to manage your finances there, that's when it comes to like the third layer of questions. Where you ask asking someone what does our two year, five year, ten year goal look like?

1:14:10And if we were to merge our finances together, what would that look like? Should we merge our finances together? Neither. My straight answer to this is no. We have very unique individual money personalities and habits. And we are getting married later in life where these personalities are really set in stone. And do you know how they say opposites attract in a relationship? The same goes with money, savers typically attract spenders and spenders typically attract savers. So if you have a saver saving and then a spender who's spending the savings, that's going to be a cause for arguments regardless of if there's financial shortcomings.

1:14:50So what I recommend is having a team fund and then a me fund. And team fund is for the grown up adult staff, the joint expenses, mortgage rent, bills, council tax. And this isn't 50 -50. You both pay into that proportionate of your income. 90 % of your household income that you're making, you pay 90 % of the expenses. You're bringing in 30 % of the household income, you're paying for 30 % of the expenses. That's a team fund and then you have the me fund. And this is for your own individual personality to stay alive, your own money habits. No one else can see the way you're spending here. If you have a match addiction, go for it.

1:15:36If you want to buy that nice watch, go for it. You can do whatever you want, spend this money however you want. If you want to save it, save it. But that way you're creating that unity but also having that autonomy. And I think this is really, really important for both parties, women and women. But specifically for women, you want them to have their independent access to their finances. And I've seen situations I've spoken to people who have merged their finances. And it's when the relationship has turned sour or unsafe, they haven't been able to know what to do because they haven't had the independent access to their money.

1:16:17Do you think people should be getting prenups? Did you get your married on you? I am. I think everyone has a prenup whether you know it or not. Pre -nubs, you could either have your own customized prenup or you could have what the state is telling you as what's going to happen if you decide to go your separate ways. Depending on where you are, the prenup holds different values. So some areas might not look beyond what the couple agree. And they just say, okay, this is what the couples agreed. This is how the finances are going to be split or the assets are going to be split. In the UK, and I'm not a divorce lawyer or anything, I don't believe that the prenup is fully legally binding.

1:17:14So it's useful to have in some circumstances, but it's the courts will still at past it and see what is fair as a couple. This term passive income is quite a popular term. What is passive income? The way I see passive income is money that you do not have to work or to invest time in to make. And in all honesty, I think the word passive income gets thrown around a lot. And people forget that the things that you do see that might be passive income streams required a lot of work upfront to start with. What are some passive income ideas that you think some people could pursue? Like the average person could potentially pursue on top of their 9 -5 job?

1:18:05I would go back to the easiest way for someone to pursue passive income is through investing. From the S &P 500 and stuff like that. That is the easiest way. If you want to, everything else, and this is how I see it, everything else requires some level of time or energy, because you could increase your income through a couple of avenues, if that's what you're looking to do. You can, like we spoke about, ask for a pay rise at work. You can, if that's not available to you, start up side businesses to increase your income. And there's two ways to do that. There's the tap and go that I like to call it.

1:18:39And it's ways to increase your income that you could do immediately. This isn't passive. This is things like putting a spare room on Airbnb or a dog walking or Ubering. They require your time for money. But they are immediate. The downside is there is a cap to how much you could earn because it's not leaning into your unique advantages, your market advantage, your unique selling points. The other side is value and skill -based income. And this is where you lean into your individuality, your unique selling point. You tap into your skills and you create businesses around that, that can scale. The downside with that, even if it is passive, say if you want to create content and then through that sell products, which you could then earn passively, with that kind of income stream, there's always, it always takes longer to make that money.

1:19:38And there's a time period where you are putting in more time or even more money before you start earning that. So when I talk about passive income, that's when I say sure there are avenues for passive income. But the easiest one that's accessible to everyone is investing. Everything else does require some upfront time or energy. I was, we were talking before, we started recording about stand store, which is a company I've become a coworker and that business allows you to sell digital products online. And we did this 30 day challenge and I was looking through the results of how much money people had made and also how much of a following they had.

1:20:09Because I think digital products are really like interesting entrepreneurial opportunity. And there was this one, I was going through all of them yesterday over in the studio and there was like so many people, but this is one that stood in mind because she had a thousand followers. And she's helping women to get control of binge eating and other sort of eating disorders by selling like digital products and information and really like a community. She had like a thousand followers or something. And in the last 30 days, she's made four or five thousand pounds doing that. She saw like 40 digital products and basically PDFs and stuff like that.

1:20:43And I was just like, this is a massive untapped opportunity for the vast majority of people who have spent 10 years, 20 years in a career and know something, have some kind of expertise. Yeah, using what you're learning through your day job and turning it into a business on the side that can be scalable. Not necessarily through creating content, which is what I think a lot of people think that they need to do. I'm actually like everybody knows something and there's a demand now for people to buy that expertise that you know, if you're especially if you've been in the working world for like a couple of years.

1:21:12Yeah, I'd say if you want to figure out what it is that that expertise is for you because sometimes we're sitting on a amount of knowledge, but we don't even know until we kind of take a step back and then look to see what that thing is. Ask your friends, what is it that you'd come to me for advice on because I know I have people in my life who I go to for advice on specific areas. If I want planning for an event, hey, what should I do? How should I do this? If I need help with Excel, hey, can you help me with this formula? If I've got back pain, just a quick message or what's happened to someone saying, hey, what can I do in this situation?

1:21:46Find out what people coming to you for advice on that kind of will give you a signal as to what people want to know about you what people want to learn from you and see if there's a way to turn that into an income stream. I mean, it's very much what you did. Yeah, it is exactly what I did. It's turning the finance knowledge, which at the time my tagline was sharing everything I know and I'm learning along the way to create life that I love. And it was me kind of doing it as an online diary, sharing this is what I'm learning. This is what I'm doing. And then it ultimately ended up into something that I do full time.

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1:24:08So if you want to build a career with them on your own terms, just head to Intuit .com slash expert. I'll put that on the screen. That's Intuit .com slash expert. Talk to me about that, journey. Was it faster than you expected? And are you in a place that is higher than you expected when you started? You've done 151 videos on YouTube. Yeah. And is it safe to say it's made you millions? Yeah. I would never have thought I was in the place that I am now through sitting in my spare bedroom and creating videos. Monday to Friday, I'll be going to work, Glitz and Glamour, meeting clients. There was a kind of a lure to it.

1:24:56And then the weekends I'll be spending in my spare bedroom, googling what's a roll, what's b roll. How do I do color grading? Which are all terms in terms of editing videos. It's all terms of editing videos because that's what I was doing on my weekends and evenings. While you were still at work. Yeah. I quit my day job just over two years ago. And so for a very long time, this was just a creative outlet for me. And I loved it. I found so much interest in it. But my purpose for it really grew as a channel grew. It grew very quickly from 1 ,000 to 50 ,000 within a few days and then 100 ,000 within a few weeks of that.

1:25:40And as the channel grew, I saw the comments that were coming in. Hey, I've just invested in this for the first time because of what you've said here. Or I've just asked for a pay rise at work because of this conversation. And when you see something like that come through, there is no amount of money that can be made through a date of that pizza. There is nothing. What was previously external fulfillment for me turned into an internal fulfillment. So it has been the best thing I've done hands down. And it is the thing that would continue to do even if I wasn't making money from it. You made one video seven months ago about things you stopped doing to waste your evenings after work.

1:26:27The video is titled Five Things I Did to Stop Waste In My Evenings After Work. Yeah. Because I had to be really disciplined with my time when I was working and banking. So what is the essence of that video? Is it telling people to use their time as an asset more effectively? So often we just are living in autopilot mode. We don't even think about the time that we're using and how we're using it. We are just coming home after work and turning on the TV and watching Netflix and just thinking to the couch because we've done that the day before and the day before and it's comfortable. And the essence of that video is to say there's probably more out there.

1:27:08If you're sitting there and you're in a place where you're thinking, I don't really like my job. I don't really like what I'm doing. I'm not really happy. I want to meet new people but I'm not doing that. Then this video is about saying, hey, come out of that autopilot mode that you might be in. And you have hours maybe on the weekend, maybe in the evening, that you can use to create a better life for yourself. It's almost like budgeting your time. It is budgeting your time. Exactly that. Thinking about how you can spend each hour in a way that brings you closer to the version of the life that you want.

1:27:49I think about that a lot of times because ultimately our time is the center point of our influence. It's the thing that's going to determine our long -term outcomes pretty much more than anything else. Whether we spend it reading a book that's going to educate us or learn how to color grade for YouTube videos like you did. Or whether we spend it, you know, watching Love Island on the TV or something. Like in the same way that that $100 is going to compound at 10 % a year in the S &P 500, that choice is going to compound. So let's play that out. So instead of watching Love Island, I decide to read that book he recommended about money.

1:28:22And then that means that I make a series of different decisions which change the trajectory of several areas of my life. I may be stopped spending as much. I try to start budgeting a little bit. I go and educate myself in a new skill. And if you zoom out on that as a graph over like 10, 20, 30 years, you're in an entirely different position because you used one hour differently 30 years ago. But you'll never see the return because it's so compounding. It's so hard to see. In the moment. But I really think about this a lot. I try and remind myself on a frequent basis that like the actual currency I'm spending is these hours that I have.

1:28:56And how intentional and well placed and aligned they are to my long term goals is maybe maybe the most important thing. And it's the most powerful thing that you have. Exactly. What about your happiness? What is what makes you happy, Nisha? The way I'm living right now, which is doing what I'm doing for a living, is making me extremely happy. And it's the happiest I've been since starting a career in banking. It comes back to finding a meaning in a purpose and what you're doing. And to say that I make money from helping people get better with their finances. I don't think there's stuff. And you can't get much better than that.

1:29:41I don't think there's many jobs in life that are more rewarding than giving back in some way. However that looks like for you. Through your own skills, your own expertise, your own unique selling points. I can't imagine a better place for me myself to be in. And it's taken a long time to get to that. It's been a journey, but it's been a good one. AI is the topic of the moment because it's just impacting everything. It's impacting people's ability to get jobs. It's impacting how I'm hiring as an employer. It's impacting how I do my creative work and even as a podcaster as well. I was wondering what you're doing, how you're thinking about AI.

1:30:29I've seen more and more people leaning into AI to get money tips and money advice. And I think that's great because there's everything's at the expertise. If you're looking at what was available 20 years ago versus what was available five years ago versus what was available a year ago to what's available now. There's so much more information that is vastly available at your fingertips for you to learn financial literacy and be prepared for it. The thing that I would always ask people to remember is don't forget the emotional side of money because greed, fear, that all comes into how you're managing your finances as well.

1:31:05So use AI. I use it to your advantage. I think it's brilliant and I think you always need to lean into it. But there's the human component that can never be taken out of the equation especially when it comes to money and finance. Could I not just go on like chat to you, T and ask it to be my personal accountant every month and tell it my situation, tell it my goals and then tell it to give me advice every day, week, month, on what I should be doing. I think that would be a great starting point to understand what do I need to do if I'm absolutely clueless. That's not to say chat chat you've always correct.

1:31:38As you probably know there's some errors in it. So take it with a pinch of salt. But if you're starting from scratch, even saying, hey, this is my income, this is my spending. How do you recommend I budget give me three or four ways to consider it? Yeah, I'll be a way for you to take that next step then definitely think that's avenue to be explored. Jack, you were telling me the other day that you're now using AI a lot for financial support and advice. What are you doing? So I've got like this prompt on chat GPT where I've asked it to be the world's best financial advisor for me. And I screen -shot it all my bank statements and I every time I tell people this, they kind of win because it's like a lot of window into your life.

1:32:25I don't kind of know the GDPR or whatever around it, but it's been so useful. So screen -shot it everything on my bank statement. And then it tells me how much I spend a month, how much I can put into investments and stuff. And I also screen -shoted this investment account I had. And it told me that I was overpaying on my investment account and that I should switch to another one because the fees were better. And then it was like you don't have enough in savings. So you should stop investing and put your money into savings. It gave me advice on a savings account to put it into with a high interest, like 4 % interest.

1:33:01And it's actually been game -changing because it's kind of a base knowledge that I wouldn't have had an understanding towards. And I get very excited when I listen to these podcasts because I sit here and they tell you like ones to invest in. And I think it was a particularly guess we had on. She said you should invest in this kind of stock. And I said like, oh, what do you think about this stock? And it was just like, don't be silly. You're not this person. And it's just been really helpful for me to kind of understand. It's advice changes and the just. Oh, was that Cathy Wood? Yeah. It was it was it Tesla?

1:33:32Yeah. It was what I told you to behave. It was like, it gave yourself. Because I asked it to be brutally honest about all the advice it gave me. And I was like, Cathy Wood had this advice. Tell me, tell me, should I put it in? Should I put all my money into Tesla? And it was like, look, you're not Cathy Wood. Like you don't have enough. It's kind of what you said about having emergency funds. Yeah. So you don't have enough in your emergency funds. Top that up first. And that's like, if you want to invest in Tesla, we'll have another pop. So the new one that I've done trading to one to. Yeah. And you can do pies.

1:34:01So I've got a safe one and not so safe one. And then a high interest account. That's really interesting, Jack. That that that you've done that. I think that's that just shows the power of AI now. And there's two really interesting things that I picked up on then the first is that it's very tailored based on you, which with AI is probably understood who you are as a person from the information that you fed to it. Your risk profile, your amounts, the bank statement had your savings. And from that, it derived a profile and gave you the correct information based on your current situation. And the second thing that probably doesn't get mentioned in maybe podcasts that you've done so fast, even is the savings, the putting it into a high interest savings account is a very easy, basic personal finance tips that actually do make a difference when it comes to habits, but also it's easy.

1:35:00That's passive income for you. They would get missed out on a lot of the advice if you're watching a specific investing focused YouTube video or podcasts. So it just harnesses the power of chat GPT. I don't know yet if, or I don't know if we have any information about how much information we can actually feed into chat GPT and where that goes. But it sounds like it's just you've given it the underlying framework of this is my current situation and it's given you the correct initial guidance at least and then you've been able to say, okay, that makes sense for me or no, I'm not going to listen to this.

1:35:34Yeah, I think the I keep asking it like am I on track and it changes its advice. So although it's been really good initially, I think I'm now with that based knowledge is going to go and sort of and everything I've learned on these podcasts as well, just kind of go and run with it. Yeah, yeah, and that's really important thing because you know there's so much information online when it comes to money that you don't actually know who to listen to and who to get advice from and who to trust. Because you could be scoring through TikTok and the first video you see is put all your money into Tesla or crypto or one asset or you can see another one that says I'll stop buying lattes.

1:36:13So otherwise you'll die broke and then the next video can't might be mine and you might think, oh, well the last two people just told me BS why should I listen to this person. And so finding a person who whose principles and philosophy aligned with your way of thinking is a way that will keep you motivated and inspired to want to keep getting better with finances. And so you've probably got that information from chat GPT and it said to you, hey, based on your profile, this is what's important. And you've kind of leaned into the lean to that. I thought, this is right for me. Actually, this makes sense and you've probably action to it.

1:36:51And so it's a fine line between finding someone who you resonate with and also understanding that their principles align with yours. I would say to that. And how much do you think about credit schools? Because I absolutely butchered my credit school before I even realized it existed. My credit school was in the bin. I got two CCJs which are county court judgments, which is where you really fuck up. Because I didn't know the thing about money when I was 18, 19 years old and they gave me these credit cards and I'd overdraft and defaulted and didn't pay them back and went to an ATM, put it in, it didn't come back out.

1:37:20And then I found out that I had destroyed my credit rating before anyone it was and I hear this quite a lot from people. They don't understand the importance of it or you know, you don't realize the importance of it until you're looking to buy something big. Yeah, because that's what it impacts the credit school. It's two people can go into a car showroom and choose the same car and the amount they pay for will be completely different based on the history. Yeah, they credit background. And so there are it is something that you need to think about is something that you need to make sure you're paying off in time in full your credit card, for instance.

1:37:53And it is definitely one of the main things or one of the things people should always look at and consider and you could check your credit rating online for free. There are websites that do that and you can check it just make sure all of your details are correct. If there's any anomalies correct that but most importantly just make sure and it really comes down to are you paying the things that are outstanding all the time. I think most people especially younger people don't actually realize that they have a credit score and that they can check it right now for free. And they also probably don't realize that things like being registered to vote has an impact on their credit rating.

1:38:29Because I remember the first time I looked in to check my credit score and I was like 45 and it said the reason why one of the reasons why it's low is because you haven't registered to vote. Yeah, what the hell? Yeah, you registered to vote that that's one of the things even something like you call up your credit card company or your the company that you have a debt and say hey can you increase the amount that I have available. Or that does is it reduces your utilization when you're using that. And by just saying okay you have instead of utilizing 50 % of your credit available you're now using 20%.

1:39:00What companies now see is okay then they're being sensible they're not really relying on this debt on the day to day living. So there's a couple of things that you could take into account. But even if you do and again people don't realize there's even if you do have interest rates because you're not paying your debt off in time you can negotiate that you can call up the company and say okay this is the interest rate I'm paying but this is what I have planned this is how I plan to pay off my debt. And I want to do it over the next 12 18 months can you reduce or can you look at reducing my interest rate.

1:39:37I have these personas here there's three of them and I was wondering there's three different people at three different stages of life when you think about the advice you give these people does it come back to this framework this 65 2015 framework really regardless of what stage they're at. You know what most things and finance do come back to that framework the 65 2015 or even a variation for it with Andy he's just started his job he's early on in his career he's making less now than he will in 10 years 20 as time. So may not be that his paycheck allows for 65 % to go towards his rent and his car which is what he wants something new of it might be that might be 70 or 75 % but the key is especially at this stage the most important thing that he has going for him is time so save invest early do it recurrently which is often and harness the power of long term growth is what I'll say to Andy when it comes to the new phone.

1:40:30Remember that there is a trade off every decision you're making if it's not an absolute necessity or an urgency that can be spent and the value of that maybe thousand dollars today can be worth significantly more in 10 years or 20 years time so balance that together again if there's budget is after he's put down the money for a savings investing if you want to spend that on the fund think it had. With him though do you think his risk appetite should be a little bit higher because I when I look at Andy here he looks like he's early 20s maybe late teens or something yeah with him I think you need to take risk you need to go work at an AI starter because he wants to fill that bucket of knowledge with like really high yielding relevant skill yeah so I don't know I think I've hit my go bro just roll the dice you got nothing to do they've got more jet and got kids.

1:41:23In your 20s you can pay the long term game absolutely everything feels like it's urgent in your 20s you feel like you need the promotion you feel like you need to invest right away you feel like you need to pay by immediately but decades over dopamine and he's got a long time and the things that he learns now the things that he invests in the skills and the rest that he take he can bounce back from that and even when it comes to investing actually when you're in your 20s you can be more risk of us because you have the upward trend of the market. That will see you through. So 20s is the time to take the risk take all the tiny experiments and just be a sponge where you absorb everything.

1:42:05Yeah that's what I'll take. What about Lisa in the middle there Lisa is she's got more gauge she's got an income and she's got a good amount of savings and she is keen to start investing but she doesn't know where to start. And this is where a lot of people fall into. They have the savings saying aside, and this is she's doing really well. Someone like in Lisa's position. But if anyone listening to this is similar to Lisa's position, chances are they're not investing because they are scared and fearful of what to do. And they don't know where to start. So Lisa, I would say, have your emergency fund in place.

1:42:48Pay off any debt. It doesn't look like you have any debt. If your mortgage isn't over 8%, you can make more from, instead of paying down your debt, you can make more investing. So you're great to start wanting to invest. And I'll say keep it simple. Do it for the long term. Keep it simple. If you're just starting out your emotions and the behavior is going to pay a key part in your investing. So 100 % of your portfolio stick to index funds and target date different type of funds at the moment. And then if you are ready as you get more senior, you have an increase your income, then you can dip into other assets.

1:43:24Should you want to. And we've got Matt over there who's a single parent earning about. So Lisa was earning roughly 140 ,000 a year. Matt's earning 60 ,000 a year. Over 50 % of his income is going towards his rent. He has credit card debt over 1500. So the first thing I would say looking at someone in Matt's position is if you've already saved for your piece of mind fund, you, the first thing you want to do is pay off that high interest rate debt. It is like running with weights on your ankles. You want to take them off so you can start moving on to the next path of your financial journey. So if I go some paying off that credit card debt, he wants to increase income income sources that has a little time outside of work and being a dad.

1:44:05So that says to me that he probably doesn't have time or energy to spend on trying to see if something's going to work and see what comes out of it. He wants to make an immediate source of income. So the easiest way to increase your income is getting an increase in your current job. Getting a pay rise. And if not switching companies to see if you get a pay rise that way when I'm looking at my own career when I stayed at the same organization, it was the increase was between 3%, 5%, sometimes a bit higher if I got promoted to 10 % and then when I switched companies, it was always between 20 and 30%.

1:44:44When I moved and I know that is I was in a lucky place where I had the movement to get those page amps and to get that salary increase and all everyone's in that position. But if you have or if you're in a industry which there is a there is more path to earn more than I definitely say first and foremost increase your income. You don't have to put any more time towards it given you also have children to look after as well. If you've stopped that if you've already exhausted those two avenues, then the next thing I say if you want to know immediate income is picking up income streams that unfortunately might be tied to your time, but they will have an immediate impact on your income because that's probably what you might be looking to do because you're rent and I'm guessing your other living expenses are taking up a lot of your take home pay.

1:45:31So you want to find out that extra buffer to start paying towards the debt that you have things like. So this could be things like selling secondhand stuff online selling products online renting out a spare room if you have that on Airbnb things that you don't actually need to put capital in to make money straight away from. How many things you never spend money on? At this point in my life, me specifically, I don't think I bought a designer item in two years, which is a lot for me because I was stripped out in the designer where beforehand I've found that my validation in life has come through my work and through internally and it took me on a journey to do that and I just don't believe in the premium prices that you pay for promoting another product or a brand.

1:46:23If it's for utility, if you're buying a branded item or a designer for utility, i .e. this design or this brand works better, then go for it. But if you're doing it purely to show, then for me, at this point in my life, it's just a no go. I could spend that money in other ways that brings me a lot more for filming in different ways. Do you spend on fast fashion instead of the luxury high and stuff? Oh, that's a good question. No, I don't spend on fast fashion unless it's a really urgent last minute buy and I haven't found anything else, but I tend to have a capsule wardrobe, which means I could play around.

1:47:01I spend a good amount on quality pieces. And that's important to me quality pieces that I could use time and time again and can switch in and out of and I think for me when it comes to clothing, it's more just OK. With work, it's what can remove the decision making for me. What about books? I think that is one area that I love spending money on. There's an infinite return. There really is. And actually some of the breakthroughs I've had have come from the books I've read. Even the first bit that I read, which is British dad, poor dad, they're just that concept of understanding assets versus liabilities.

1:47:38Just knowing that from an early age can start changing your thinking in a way that you wouldn't be able to have a normal conversation. Because the people you hang around with, the people who you spend time with, they have a massive impact on where you end up. And I think it's easy to say just hang out with another crew or just hang out with a new crowd that pushes you. But actually for a lot of people, they don't have access to that. And that's where books, podcasts, YouTube videos, it almost has that averaging effect of the five people around you. It mirrors that effect. So even if you don't have access to the people who you want to learn from by reading their book watching the videos, listen to the podcasts, you can still gain that knowledge.

1:48:32And it's almost equivalent to you sitting with them for an hour. So you're saying people should definitely subscribe. Always. Sublone or messaging. You wear black a lot like me. Is that intentional choice? It started off because when I was doing my YouTube channel alongside working and banking, I had to find every way possible to eliminate any sort of decision making that will stop me from doing the thing. And so it was a way for me to create a system, not rely on motivation. So there was about four outfits of black that I'd always changed from. And it made my life a lot easier. Now this has carried through.

1:49:13It's been a lot of just, it just makes me think about things less. But no, I do also wear other colors just as much as just happens to be that black is 60 % of my wardrobe. Mecha, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next not doing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you is who is the one person that was slash is responsible for the person that you are today and the reason why you are sitting here. It goes back to the person who when I started my YouTube videos. And I got a lot of noise and a lot of people saying, oh, like, what is she doing?

1:49:53Does this make sense? The person who really kept me going was my dad.

1:49:59Yeah, he saw my videos and he said to me, what you're doing is so good for the world. Your education is going to help so many people don't stop. And I didn't. So thanks dad for believing me when there was like nine or 10 views on my videos. Okay. I wasn't expecting that.

1:50:36It's crazy how someone just saying a few words the right moment can be so sort of pivotal to your like trajectory.

1:50:46Does he know how much he inspired all of this? I don't think he knows the extent to him. I sent him like a message maybe a few months ago telling him like, hey, remember that day when I showed you my YouTube video. And it was just me in my dining room and I couldn't even speak properly and it was set up and a weird lighting and it was getting nine or 10 views. And you said, don't stop. Keep passing this education down. And I said to him, I didn't send that message to him and said, I'm so glad you did that because I've continued because of that. And we're not really worthy with each other, but I think he heard it.

1:51:27I don't know if he knows the extent, but I think he'll be happy to know the extent of it now. You have the rich dishes, Joe. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah.

1:51:45Who is the one person that was irresponsible for the person that you are today and the reason why you're saying you're now and that is dad. That is bad. He must be pretty shocked to some degree, like no one could have imagined and your channel would be this big and you'd be reaching as many people. He didn't expect it. I didn't expect it. I think he believed that for him, he believed that a job was security fast. I'm one of three girls. I'm the middle sister. And all he wanted was for us to get a good job and be secure. And so whilst this is beyond I could ever expect, when I quit and I quit taking a big pay cut, that was hard for him.

1:52:31How big was the pay co? 84%. So you were on... 220? 220 pounds. Yeah. Which is about $300 ,000? Yeah. And I was just about to get a six -figure bonus. So I left before a six -figure bonus just before the biggest bonus of my career. I negotiated it. I spent months negotiating it and two months before that six -figure bonus landed, I resigned. Why didn't you just wait? There's always going to be a carrot waved in front of your face. And that carrot's going to come in different shapes, sizes, forms. And it's going to be a distraction to keep you on the default path. The carrot for me was that bonus.

1:53:21Telling me, hey, just wait. Just wait another two months and then wait another year. And another year and five years and ten years and just wait to your 60. And I had this once in a lifetime opportunity that was just exploding on the side. And with it came all these people saying, hey, I'm so thankful for all of this. And I was getting DMs from people just pouring their life story to me. And there is no monetary value that beats that. There really isn't. And so I took a step back around my numbers. There was a 84 % pay car. I thought it still covers my mortgage. It covers my basic living expenses.

1:54:06The biggest risk isn't quitting my job. The biggest risk is letting this once in a lifetime opportunity pass me by and never knowing where that path could have taken me. That was the biggest risk. And the hardest part was actually just letting go of the identity that I've wrapped myself in.

1:54:27Yeah. What was identity?

1:54:34I... My title was my identity. I'd worked in banking for nine years. And I could set a dinner table, cling onto my title. Say I worked in finance and felt externally validated. And so that move to quit at the time that I did from a career, a corporate career, which I've worked so hard for. It's like, it's what I wanted for so long. And then just just let go of that and say, I'm letting go of that identity. It took so much reframing in my mind and so much mind work and so many things I had to do to make myself more comfortable to say, okay, I'm not letting anything else dictate the way my life goes from here.

1:55:22It was a lot of work. And I would say if anyone else is listening to this thinking, I'm in a place where I'm unhappy. I really want to do something new, but I'm scared. And I don't know what other people are going to say. And what society want to say if I quit or take this other path? I could say the things that I did that really helped me. And the first is, spend more time on the path that you want to go down, then around the people that are telling you otherwise. Because so often we're half and half out. We're interested in something, but we're not obsessed with it. And when you're interested, you just kind of just do whatever needs to be done.

1:56:14But when you're obsessed, you want to do whatever it takes. And this applies to anything, to changing your career, to being a parent, to being an entrepreneur. Become obsessed with that thing that you want to do. Because that will give you the courage to make the hard decisions when they come. The second thing. And I think I made a video on this too. I wrote down on my phone on an apple notes. And I wrote down all the things people were saying to me, the external noise. And underneath it, I had what my inner voice was saying.

1:56:53And it's really easy when your inner voice isn't loud for it to be diluted by whatever else around you are saying. At that point, if anyone said anything, or if anyone is saying anything to plant seeds without your head, look at what your inner voice is saying. Read it, repeat it. Let that be louder than anything else that is happening around you. And what was the external voice is saying? One more channel style picking up. It was being shared into what sort of groups of people I know, and friends and friends and friends. And it was just, you know, when you're just starting something new and someone is breaking barriers, it's just trying to pull them back.

1:57:37Pull them back a little bit. This isn't you. Mocking them subtly. Yeah. Why are you saying your numbers online? What are you doing?

1:57:47You're just going to remember the reason why I'm saying my numbers online. That is hard to do. It's hard to say there and say, this is my salary over nine years. It's hard to do that. But I remind myself, it should be transparent. It's to help people make the decisions that help them with money. It's to say me's where I came back and said, I want to say this because it's the transparency. And I think the third thing. I think everyone should like kind of take them to account when they're making. I don't give you a second. Where's this emotion coming from? It's very deep inside you.

1:58:36There was a lot of pain. During my career. And I felt really trapped at times. I don't know how to escape. But also because I know a lot of people are probably hearing this and thinking, I'm also in that place. And so I really feel like my purpose is to help as many people to go from feeling trapped to freeing themselves and using money to do that. And so I guess that's why I'm feeling like it's bringing it all up because this is just alignment for me.

1:59:15And it's just like bringing back the memories of what where I was at that time. And what I had to do to. Like just take that cut because at the end of the day, no one else has to deal with your. With the decisions you make in life more than you. They have to deal with maybe the consequence of a moment, but only you have to deal with the consequences of all the decisions that you make in life. Only you have to go to a job. And wherever a company that you don't want to work in, only you have to live that day. Only you have to be with a partner. If that's the reason you chose, if you chose because everyone else is saying it, only you have to do that.

1:59:59Only you have to grow old with the memories of what could have should have been.

2:00:08And live with the what if. And that's why I guess there's so many people that I know. And that probably listening to this that no do you down there, something more out there. And I just want to, if anything, give them the courage to say. Take that risk. It's usually a calculator risk. And if it's to do with your money and finances. Spend some time. Make sure you have your emergency fund or whatever it is that's needed. But align your money to match your life decisions. Because it could really be freeing. Have you spoken much about the pain? Why? It's my conscience personal finance. It's not really about me.

2:00:55It's about personal finance. I'm trying to educate people. Yeah. I didn't. I probably wasn't spoken about it here if you didn't ask me the question about where it's come from. It's taking me back to the start. And sometimes you go into a journey and you get tunnel vision and you forget why you did it. And you forget why you started. And.

2:01:23You forget all the people that helped you on that journey. And there was a lot of people that helped me at different points. My partner, my mom, my dad, my sisters. They've all helped me at different points. And people I learn from. My mentor was like, it's just all a reminder as to how it started and how different things have lined up. What was the hardest day when you look back through that transition that you've been on? Was there a hardest day or hardest moment? The hardest day was that morning when I emailed my manager to get on a Zoom call. And I said, I'm telling down that bonus. I'm leaving banking.

2:02:11That was the hardest. If I was a flower in the wall. Yeah. What would I have seen that day?

2:02:19You'll see a gallon of late twenties taking or saying no to a path that could make money. And that was very certain. And that followed the default path. To go to a path where she wasn't sure if she was going to make money. She didn't know how it turned out. But she did it because it meant so much to her. And she did it because she saw the impact she was having. And in her 10 years or nine years in banking, she's never felt like she's had that impact on individuals. It's been on corporate, so for sovereigns. It's never been for specific people or day -to -day people who need it. And she did it.

2:03:03And she didn't know where I was going to lead her. Is there an element of being a first or second generation immigrant that ties into this? Because I hear so often when people come up to me in the gym and the mother's African, like my mother's African. And I was born in Africa. So my mother's Nigerian and tremendous weight on going to university and becoming a success in the eyes of the public. And then I hear a lot from more Asian first generation immigrants or second generation immigrants that they feel like the Dr. Lawyer, I remember the third one was Dr. Lawyer something. Counting on it. Maybe finance.

2:03:41Do you think that plays a role? Into why you go down a sand path? Yeah, in terms of like, if you're at home and you have first generation immigrant parents, they see successes, like one of three jobs, it becomes harder to break out. Like it's breaking out. It basically makes you a failure at home. I think there's two things. I think it's definitely that's a big part of it. But also seeing what your parents did and how hard they worked to get you on to part of security, which is a job. And then saying, yeah, you worked really hard and I'm doing that away. There's a lot of guilt that comes with that.

2:04:19So I think it's both. I think it's... Did you feel with that guilt? I did at the time. Massive guilt. Massive guilt. I couldn't tell anyone that I was quitting until after I quit. The only person who knew was my then boyfriend and now husband. Your parents didn't know? They didn't know until after I quit. I couldn't tell them. Why? Because I knew that if they said something, I might have just changed my decision. And you think they would have said something? I don't know, but when I told them, they supported it. Because they knew I was also too late. I think they might have just said, hey, this is secure.

2:05:00Well, maybe there's something in that. Maybe in those big decisions where, as you say, you're going to deal with the consequences yourself, both the upside and the regret. Maybe consensus and focus groups aren't needed in such a moment when we should be tuning into the voice inside. Because, yeah, external voices will just complicate those things. But I also think, you know, I say this to people a lot when they come up to me and they say, oh, I'm in this situation, I'm in finance, I'm working in the city. I've got this dream of being a violin player in Peru. The first question I often ask them is, could you go back if you're wrong?

2:05:32Because if you could go back if you're wrong, that's what we call a, I think it's a type one decision in business, which is a door that is reversible. And so many people spend one year, three years, five years, ten years, 20 years of their life stood in front of a type one decision, a door that they could walk back through if they're wrong. And actually, it's just like such a crazy shame not to make those type one decisions at speed. If it's reversible, and it's so crazy, because like 95 % of the time when I asked someone that question, they respond and they said, yeah, I could go back to investment banking if I was wrong.

2:06:04I'm like, go do the violin thing then. Go fuck up, fail, it might work out whatever, but come back here if you're, if you can. Yeah, you won't have that pain of water if, any more. The water if, yeah. And I remember really met study from Bonnie, Brony Ware, palliative nurse who interviewed people on their deathbeds, and it was, I think the number one regret is not living the life that I think I could have lived. I've always remembered that, I thought, okay, so if it's reversible, then maybe go through that door as fast as you can. Nisha, thank you so much for doing what you do. It's really, it's really incredibly important.

2:06:35I think the very fact that your channel has been so resonant so far, reaching speaks to an unmet demand in people's understanding of finance, but also having a voice that they can very much relate to, that simplifies, makes things complicated, things accessible, but also just a human being that is relatable in many forms. Your intentions of why you're doing what you're doing are so abundantly clear. And I could see that in the emotion. I could see that you really, really do care about other people. And actually, your decision to take a leap from the other investment banking, which was much more secure and high status in many people's eyes at that moment in time, was one also inspired by the fact that you want to do good for the world.

2:07:15And that is exactly what you're doing. So I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your channel. I'm going to link it below if they want to continue this conversation, because you make very actionable, concise, clear videos, and all the subjects we've talked about, but many more. And also to go follow you on social media, which I'll also link everywhere else. And I just want to thank you for your time. And hopefully we can talk again soon when you've written a book, and the book comes out. Thank you so much, Stephen. It's been a pleasure. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say.

2:07:45The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show, Week after Week means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had, and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24 % of people that listen to this broadcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can, now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

2:08:21Thank you. We launched these conversation cards and they sold out. And we launched the McGinn and they sold out again. We launched the McGinn and they sold out again. Because people love playing these with colleagues at work, with friends at home, and also with family. And we've also got a big audience that used them as journal prompts. Every single time a guest comes on the diar of a CEO, they leave a question for the next guest in the diary. And I've sat here with some of the most incredible people in the world. And they've left all of these questions in the diary. And I've ranked them from one to three in terms of the depth.

2:08:50One being a starter question. And level three, if you look on the back here, this is a level three, becomes a much deeper question that builds even more connection. If you turn the cards over and you scan that QR code, you can see who answered the card and watch the video of them answering it in real time. So if you would like to get your hands on some of these conversation cards, go to the diary .com, or look at the link in the description below.

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