Wealth Manager Reveals: How To Make Your Child A Millionaire (From £120 A Month)

0:00Sophia, welcome.

0:01Sophia Jarvis: Thanks, Sammy. It's great to be here. I just want to start off by saying a massive thank you for being my founder buddy throughout the last like few months. I know. That's how we connected, wasn't it? Because I was like, I'm also building an app, so I know what you're going through. Yeah. And like, I just, yeah, honestly, thank you. Because I think we both drive ourselves a little bit mad sometimes. But having someone to be like, no, it's okay. It's all right. We're going to make it through. I know. And I feel like we've been going through a few of the same challenges as well. And it just is nice to hear that we're both as crazy as each other.

0:37Yes, yes. Which we've come to discuss off camera for sure. But Mia Wealth, congrats.

0:43Sophia Jarvis: Thank you. What's the journey been like? It's been a long one, but very exciting to be in this position now because we have a live app in the market with real families using it, which has always been my dream. but to begin with I have been in financial services for over 15 years I'm a chartered financial analyst by background and more recently I spent my career as a family wealth manager and the same conversation just kept coming up with my clients time and time again which was I wish we started investing sooner you know 20 or 30 years ago and sadly we can't go back in time but the conversation then naturally steered towards children because that's where we can make a difference and we can start investing for them you know as soon as they're born so I became known in the industry for setting up junior investment accounts the junior stocks and chairs I said that children can access at 18 and the junior pension that people don't know about you know that I'm obsessed with it and I'm sure we'll get onto it later I've got a few questions for you on it and that's for children to access when they're at retirement but I just became frustrated at how long it would take to set up these accounts as an advisor a lot of paperwork was involved, you know, back and forth.

1:50Sophia Jarvis: And I just thought there must be an app that's doing this really well. So I'll help adults look after their own wealth, you know, their ISIS, pensions, etc. But when it comes to their children, whether it's their own children or grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and they want to start investing for them, I will refer them to a number of different apps. And I looked at the investment app market. And yes, there are some providers that offer junior investment products, but typically it's a bolt on offering to adult accounts. And also they say they're for retail customers. Many of them, I don't believe, are suitable for retail customers.

2:24Sophia Jarvis: You do need to have some level of financial understanding to use them. You know, you have to select from over 3 ,000 funds and even just the terminology used is really confusing. And so I thought this is really interesting. There's a gap in the market here for an app that's solely focused on junior investing to make it really easy for parents, but also grandparents, uncles, aunties, godparents to buy investments for children. And so the idea just kept getting louder and louder in my head to the point that I thought, I'm going to have to leave my job and build this because it doesn't exist. And I know the demand is there.

3:00Sophia Jarvis: But before I did, I did a survey and I surveyed 400 millennial mums across the UK. And I asked them, are you concerned about your children's financial future? 93 % said that they were, which is actually higher than what I thought. And not surprisingly, the biggest concern was how are my children going to afford their first home? Because this is a challenge that, you know, we've all faced. And then I asked them, would you use an app like Mia Wealth in order to do this? And 88 % said they would. So I thought, okay, there's the validation that I need. But what was really interesting is what came out of the survey was that although the intent is there, you know, parents we all want to do the best thing for our children what i found was actually that it's really expensive to have children especially in those early years you're paying for child care so although the intent is there sometimes actually having money at the end of the month is a luxury it is and you know i always used to say as a financial advisor and i still stand by it which is that we need to focus on building our own wealth first before we build the wealth of others yes and having that emergency fund you know typically three to six times your monthly expenses but when I was having this sort of debate with myself thinking okay how can I solve this problem I was going around to my friend's houses that had children and family and I noticed that in every home it's just overflowing with stuff the number of toys you know now I've got girls myself it's the same like just plastic toys everywhere and I thought this is really interesting so I looked into it more and I found that collectively we're spending billions of pounds on gifts every year for children 8.5 million toys end up in landfill every single year what we're completely drowning in plastic yeah the average 10 year old owns 238 toys and plays with just 12 and so i thought well how can we redirect some of the money that's being spent on toys for children yeah into investments so that we've got a generation you know growing up able to afford their first home and that was how Mia Wealth was born.

5:01Sophia Jarvis: So yes, we are an investment app to help you invest for your children, but we're also a gifting app to help family and friends buy investments for children too. That has blown my mind. So 238 and 12 toys is what gets paid. That's thousands of pounds. It's thousands of pounds. We actually have a calculator on our website where you can put in how many gifts your child got for their most recent birthday, how many they actually play with and if you had invested the rest what would that be worth when they turn 18 and family and friends you know when you turn up to a birthday party oh there's the big table huge but you're but you're also it's well-meaning you know they want to buy gifts because you know they want to show their love in a way and it's also a bit rude sometimes to turn up with no present but actually when we've spoken yeah they compete when we've spoken to family and friends and we've said you know and i do it now for my girls but we say would you rather have an alternative you know gift that can grow with them and investment to their future a lot of them still you know they would they would prefer that option yeah because like you can buy them a really nice gift or whatever and then you could send a little link out as they're like here this is the thing like when there's no presence but we'd love for you to contribute to i don't know tobias's future i picked a posh name but um that was like it i think i'd be lovely like i i well you know me I'd be all over that I'd be like yeah 100 % do do that but I think it does make you think instead of the potential waste and space in your own home like I or my friends with kids um like you go in their living room and it's boxes and boxes of lego and stuff and it's like it's cluttering as well it is you know and most of us we have smaller homes now we can't afford to have big mortgages you know interest rates have gone up and I've got toddler twins and we have a small home and I just want to declutter all the time you know I don't want to come in after a long day of work and just you know trip over plastic toys but that is the reality um that many you know many of us face and so yes we're solving that problem as well where we're helping parents declutter by giving family and friends a different way of gifting and you mentioned the link and that's spot on that's exactly what we offer through mia wealth so my girls turned one recently and i just sent their gift link to their mia account to all of our family and friends oh nice and 70 chose to invest so they got an extra 350 pounds invested for their future wow from one which is going to compound over time that's one birthday and that's just one birthday so i'm going to do it for you know christmas birthdays going forwards um so that that money can be you know put to good work Well, yeah, it's absolutely mental when you look at these numbers because, you know, we've spoken about investing on this podcast many, many, many, many, many, many times.

7:50And I'll bang on the compounding drum to like my, I have no, no, nothing left in me. But when you extend that amount, because a lot of people say, look at this from the age of 30, when usually they kind of get into it a little bit and they're like, oh, I should maybe look at this or 35 or whatever. So the calculation is usually done over sort of 30, potentially even less if you're in your 40s, right? But when you start putting it in 65 years, the growth is nuts. So like potentially, of course, because past performance is not a huge indicator of success. But£100 into a junior stocks and shares ISA invested in a global fund could be way over a million pounds by the time that they hit retirement age from£21 ,600 in actual contributions.

8:37which is like when you first saw those numbers as a wealth manager looking at that with kids

8:43Sophia Jarvis: like what went through your head yeah I'll tell you a story of what happened to me and how this idea initially got sparked so you know I was fortunate enough to be born into a family where my dad worked in pensions you know that is a very small percentage of the population and so we spoke about pensions around the kitchen table which again is really unusual so you can probably tell why I'm so obsessed with pensions now but on my 18th birthday my dad gave me a piece of paper and it was a pension statement and on the pension statement it said£70 ,000 now I was completely blown away I thought you know my dad's just giving me£70 ,000 in this pension like where has he found this money from so I said to him you know thank you so much this is incredibly generous where have you found£70 ,000 from it's a huge amount and he said I haven't what I've been doing is I've been investing£120 a month into a junior pension for you, which yes, does exist.

9:39Sophia Jarvis: You can get pensions for children. And the government tops it up by 25 % every month. And again, all contributions into a junior pension benefit from this 25 % uplift from the government, which again, people don't know about. It's because you get your basic great income tax relief. So my dad was putting£120 a month in, the government was putting£30 a month in for free. and based on an 8 % average annual return, it was in a global equity index portfolio. It was now worth£70 ,000 by the time that I was 18. And this just completely blew my mind. And what he said next was just this light bulb moment in my head.

10:17Sophia Jarvis: And he said, look, you can't access this now until likely 60. But this is a really good thing because of the power of compound interest. assuming you don't even put anything else into your pension now for the rest of your life it's likely to be well over a million pounds assuming the same investment return if you didn't touch it if you didn't touch it the same return so he has given me one of the best gifts that he could have ever given me now it's taken me a while to appreciate it you know as you get older and you start thinking about your own retirement but it's not a worry that i have because i know that there's this pot here that was started from when i was born and it's compounding over time and likely to be worth over a million.

10:54Sophia Jarvis: And it's also meant that during my adult life, I'm able to make financial decisions, not thinking about, okay, do I spend on that? Or do I put money into my pension? Because I know, and I still do contribute to my pension, but I know that I don't have to put, you know, a large percentage of my salary each month into a pension. I see. It's made life more flexible for you in the day to day. Exactly. Because I know that that money has been compounding and it still continues to. And also So it's the best way we can teach our children about investing and the power of investing is for them to experience it themselves.

11:26Sophia Jarvis: So me inheriting this pot, which I couldn't access and I still can't until I reach retirement age, but seeing it go up and down in value from such a young age and understanding that that's what it's like to be an investor in the market. That's the best gift that I've been given. Yeah, and you just had the best 10 years of growth rates going through it as well. So, you know, it must be, it must have grown quite significantly since then. as well so yeah that's really set you up but i'm like the numbers around junior isis are growing fast so it's a industry which is on the up and i think largely education in this fat area has improved um openings were up 52 this last year up to 1.4 million why do you think now parents are suddenly waking up to this do you think a few years ago i moved my stocks and shares isa from one provider to another.

12:19And that's because I was paying super high fees to actually buy stocks, but also for account fees to actually use that account. And so the account that I switched to was Trading212 because they have industry low fees, no commission on trading stocks and funds, and plus is super intuitive and has a wide range of funds and stocks which you can use as well. Trading212 for me are one of the best on the market. And right now you can get a free fractional share worth up to£100 when you open a Stocks and Shares ISA and deposit just£1 into your account. As always, capital at risk when you invest and please do your own research when it comes to investing.

12:56And now back to the episode.

13:03Quick one on GainsApp, which is the app I've built. If you're anything like me, you've got your Monzo over here, your Halifax over there, a savings account there, a credit card there, a business account there, and it's very, very complicated and difficult to stay on top of your finances. You tap for a coffee over there, you've got your meal deal, you'll get your bits that you pick up on the way home. And if I actually asked you how much you spent today, it's very difficult to do that. But Gaines is pulling all of your accounts into one easy to manage dashboard. From there, you can see everything, all of your spending laid out visually for you.

13:30You can move spending into different categories and you can set up budgets across multiple accounts. We also offer instant cashback by a gift card, saving you three to 20 % at every single major retailer in this country right now, which can add up to over£1 ,000 a year for a 30-second step. So not money that you can sniff out as Christmas covered, flights, holidays, whatever that

13:51Sophia Jarvis: might well be. The average household also overspends on bills by roughly£500 a year. And that is something that we built into GAINS to track your upcoming bills, tell you when you're overpaying and give you options to switch your bills onto a much cheaper tariff. You can download GAINS for free and connect your first bank today. The link is in the show notes or you can scan a QR code on screen and let's make life less expensive together.

14:18Sophia Jarvis: We're seeing this cultural shift, aren't we? Where, you know, if we take parents being millennial generation, most of us, because we've now started investing for ourselves or more aware of our pensions, if we're employed, you know, or, you know, if we're not employed and we're setting up our own pensions, we're just more aware of the power of investing. although there's still a long way to go because in this country you know we both know financial literacy is so low because we're just not taught these things yeah but we do have this generation you know of millennials really waking up to it and that's being now passed down to younger generations and so we are seeing this cultural shift and even if we look at the number of new jisa subscriptions it used to be there was a higher weighting towards cash but now actually there's a higher weighting towards stocks and shares GISAs.

15:03Yes, because there's two versions, isn't there? Yeah. For someone listening, there's a cash ISA savings version and a stocks and shares ISA version.

15:10Sophia Jarvis: Exactly. Which is confusing as well. It is confusing, but because children have a long time horizon, typically longer than five years before they reach 18, normally when parents set it up or if not from birth, they can afford to take on more risk and therefore it's likely that a junior stocks and shares ISA would be more suitable for them. So we're seeing parents understand this as well and set up the junior stocks and chairs I set. However, there's still such a long way to go. So although we are seeing a percentage growth increase year on year, it is estimated that 90 % of children, if we take the 14 million children in the UK, still don't have an investment in their name.

15:50Sophia Jarvis: And if we put that - 90 %? 90%. Wow. So if we put that into context of, if you think of a class at school, so let's say there's 30 people in the class, only two children in that class actually have an investment in their name and it's not because the product isn't around the junior isa has been around for a long time but i really believe it's how we access it yes and that's what we're aiming to change through mia wealth which is just making it so much easier for people to access and in a way that's easy for them to understand as well because as I said at the moment you can open these accounts at you know an incumbent but it's sort of lost in a sea of so many other things that it gets quite confusing for people oh I agree with you and like we've got a long way to go with education in this space and those numbers are staggering like two out of the 30 kids in the class like if you were to increase that to 510 like think of the material wealth which will go back around for those children as they grow up like it's going to have a much wider effect as we know with investing um if you're building wealth for you and your family eventually you're going to spend it in the uk economy which is going to then make everyone more materially richer over a period of time potentially of course depending on where that money goes but the average 18 16 to 18 year old scores two out 2.3 out of 10 on basic financial literacy tests so we're potentially building wealth for our kids but we're not teaching them what to do with it which is quite dangerous in my opinion it is and it's a worry that a lot of parents have which is you know we we want to be doing this we want to be investing for our children but what happens at 18 with the junior stocks and chairs isa for example when they i get this all of the time when they access it yeah and it's it's a really you know valid fear because you just it's almost like lottery day isn't it for a child yeah you're 18 50 grand yeah and they could just go blow it in thailand or wherever they want to go i would have definitely have done that me too probably but the actually the way that you need to reframe it is that you it's about engaging the child way before them turning 18 you know this isn't a surprise on their 18th birthday Like, you know, the story that I shared with my dad with the junior pension, it's different because I couldn't access it until I was 60.

18:14Yes.

18:15Sophia Jarvis: But with the junior stocks and chairs, I said, children can access it at 18. So actually engaging with them earlier and to say, you know, this is an investment account that we have been building in your name. Give them an oversight of it and also an opportunity to teach them what it means. and at Mia Wealth what we've done is because we don't want the ownership to be on just parents investing because as we spoke about you know it's really expensive having children lots of parents we know we don't have money left over at the end of the month but by involving the family and friend network through gifting what we've done is that when a family or friend member gives a gift so buys an investment for that child which is deposited in the junior stocks and chairs I said we encourage them to send a message along with that gift so it could be a voice message a video message a text message okay so at 18 that child is aware of the investment account because we engage with them before they suddenly access it and they then inherit this pot of money but they also inherit and unlock all of the messages from all of the family and friends that have been supporting their journey and their story over potentially 18 years and we hope that means that they are more responsible with that money because they know that you know this is something that lots of people have been involved in yeah and if you get that and you go through it in one go it would be really quite like i i'd be like choking up yeah you'd be like wow thank you so much especially as well because there is a large potential like some of those people might not even be with us anymore etc so you get that message and yeah i think that that's true i think a combination of education and what you've done there would be a really nice way of grounding it And of course, like you're going to get a black sheep in the, in the crowd every now and then, and someone's going to go off and wax it.

20:00Like they have control at that point. But I think if you can teach them, it's then what potentially happens at that point. Because what I like to say to someone is like, well, at 18, if they do decide that, yes, I want to go into a gap year and I want to go and travel around Thailand and I want to have a great time. well okay how do we facilitate making that happen for you how much do you need out of that pot here's what happens if you take five grand out of that pot to the potential growth of it if you keep the rest of it invested so they understand like okay well yeah there's also like a contributing factor to the growth as well um as well as having fun like there's always a balance and a trade-off which comes with those things which i think is really important and i think if someone had done that with me at 18 I'd have been a lot more conscious about the decisions I still I still would have made some bad ones because I'm young and I think it's important you do but it would have given me the ability to sort of see into the future a little bit and understand what could

21:02Sophia Jarvis: potentially happen if I made those decisions yeah and it's a really good point and it's you know all about thinking about money in terms of your goals and like your short medium long-term goals and we're building an app for 18 year olds so that when they graduate off mere wealth they are onto nina which is our app for 18 year olds and as part of that we help them not only have the financial education around you know what this money means and where it's being held it converts from a junior um isa and junior pension into an adult isa and adult pension but then we ask them these questions around what's your goals for this money because money is also there to be enjoyed you know and we want to encourage them to continue investing of course but as you say if they want to take some money out and use it you know why not like it's also there to for them to have fun um it doesn't always have to be on your life at that point you are literally never going to be 18 again yeah like you've got that opportunity but you know a friend of mine did it and i was going to talk to you today about this and i've saved it for you i didn't tell you about it on our little pre-chat but a friend of mine did this and their parents gave him the money but he used it to buy the house at university that we then rented off him wow so then he was actually making money back off his own house which he then had um the mortgage on at that young age obviously there was help from parents involved i'm not going to say there wasn't but like it became an asset for him and then he was away post-university he didn't have those big debts that you you know us we would have had by taking out large student loans etc so i think that there's so many opportunities with that money for someone at that age and it doesn't always have to be like a use it all it can be used partially towards something it can be experiences it can be so many different things but what it does do is it gives them choice yeah and opportunities that they might not have had and that's you know why i get up in the morning to be honest because it's it's knowing that all those children are going to grow up with those opportunities and that choice that they wouldn't have had otherwise potentially um and also it takes the pressure off bank of mum and dad you know bank of mum and dad we've seen the stats but i think they handed out like 10 billion pounds last year or two years ago to help first time buyers onto the property ladder yeah you know that's a huge amount that's going out and so you know as a parent you could say to your child well we've been investing for you over 18 years this is your money now but you're you know also now financially independent and you've got to be sensible with that money too and the education that's why the education piece is so important because i think it's fundamental it's it's everything and that's you know it's on it's on us as a business to help support you know the child and the parent through that journey but also why you know the great initiatives that are going on outside of that with just helping people understand yeah well like i always say this as well to the parents they're like well i don't know what to teach them and i'm like well learn and then teach them because and it will put it in your own brain as well.

24:01And so there's a double-edged sword to that, is that you're going to get better with your own money and investments off the back of teaching your kids it.

24:07Sophia Jarvis: Yeah. Because they say that's the best way to learn something is teach it to somebody else, explain it to somebody else. So I think it just has this kind of like whole theory. But I just want to go through like the parameters around the junior ISA so someone is super clear about it so we can break it down. So what essentially is a junior stocks and shares ISA? and how does it work?

24:35A little break in the episode here. Have you guys been meaning to write or update your will, but just keep putting it off? You might have done everything right to protect your financial future while you're here. Your savings are building, your ices are ticking over, maybe you own a home and you've been contributing towards your pension. But what about after you're gone? And that is where a will comes in to make sure the people you love are protected when you are not here, financially and emotionally too. saving them time and stress when they're going to need it most. Without a law, the laws of intestancy decide what happens, and that does work for some people, but for others, they want to say in something this important.

25:10And yet it is the one part of the money plan that we all put off, me included. Right now, leading estate planner Octopus Legacy, part of the Octopus group that you know and love, are offering you the chance to update or write your will for free until the 31st of October. Charities cover the cost of wills up to£150, which means simple wills are free and wills with trusts are discounted. You can choose whether to write or update your will online, on the phone or in person. Many people who use this service choose to leave a gift to charity as part of their will as a thank you but you don't have to in order to claim this offer.

25:44To claim your free will today, head to will.octopuslegacy.com forward slash money gains or you can follow the link in the show notes below and if you are watching on video, you can also scan the QR on screen. Offer ends soon, so sign up now before appointments get booked up. And now back to the episode.

26:05Sophia Jarvis: So a junior ISA is a junior investment or savings account for a child. And it has to be set up by a parent or legal guardian of the child initially. Once it's set up, then family and friends can contribute. Anyone can contribute. you have an allowance each tax year that you can put money into the GISA that includes both the stocks and shares GISA which is an investment GISA and the cash GISA which is held in cash and that's a£9 ,000 annual allowance that both parents, legal guardians, family and friends can put money into. If you keep money in the junior cash GISA it is essentially the same as putting money in the bank you get an interest rate but what's different is that the growth in the account is tax-free because it's within that JISA wrapper and if you put money into the junior stocks and shares ISA you don't get an interest rate but you have that money invested into the stock market and that can go into funds or direct equities it's up to you but that money will go up and down obviously with the performance of the funds but when we look at sort of the suitability of those different accounts, we've chosen at MIA Wealth to only offer the junior stocks and shares ISA, so we don't offer a junior cash ISA.

27:22Sophia Jarvis: And that's because typically over a five-year or longer holding period, it's likely that the returns in a junior stocks and shares ISA will be higher based on historical market performance than it would be in a junior cash ISA. And because children have typically a longer time horizon, that's why we've chosen to offer that one over the junior cash ISA. And what's important to realise with the junior ISA is that any money you put into it is legally that child's money so once you put money in you cannot withdraw it only the child can withdraw it at 18. I wish we had these when I was like growing up or they were more of a thing because I like my mum will hate me saying for saying this but like I had the post office account and then she used to borrow money off me and then like put it back in and you know back in the day things would be tight or whatever or you know and she'd be like oh can I borrow 50 quid out of your account I'm going to give it back to you and pay it and stuff and that that that came into my head I was like if it was in a junior riser you would have never been able to touch it and I would have got better interest over the course of those years but another factor with junior risers then is that um that nine thousand pounds allowance sits outside of your own allowance yeah so children actually have a really generous allowance because adults as you know we have £20 ,000.

28:39Sophia Jarvis: So it's separate to that. So each child gets their own£9 ,000 allowance. Now, if we take 14 million children in the UK and we times that by 9 ,000 each, that's essentially £126 billion annual allowance that the government are saying that you can put money in for a child tax-free to have. Now, we actually are only using 2 % of that. So 98 % of that allowance is not being used at the moment even though the government have said you know you do have this allowance collectively to put money into a tax-free account for your child 1.6 trillion sitting in cash at the moment as well yeah large large amounts of those individuals have children which is just yeah it's wild right so there is a shift that we need to make there um but we've mentioned investing and what to do with it you know that's the next question we're going to get and this all sounds great but you've mentioned funds you mentioned some of obviously others offer stocks as well i know that's not something you're looking at but like what do we do like i've got the app like oh my god like now i need to put this is what people do and i get it right because it's one it's your kids money and you're thinking about the future and you know it's going to give you anxiety especially if you don't know what to do in the next step how do you approach that bit So I've been working on something super exciting for the last 12 months, and I am very, very proud to finally bring it to you.

30:07And it is called GainsApp. My whole thing with this was we've been speaking to many of you guys about the rising costs of living and how hard it is to actually manage your money. So I thought, why not actually solve this and build something for you guys that you can use every single day? So GainsApp is literally that. You can connect all of your banks in one single place and see exactly what's going on with your spending. We even pre-categorize all of your spending super visually so you can see what's going on and make plans for your big goals ahead. Plus, we've layered in something called instant cashback and we've calculated that the average UK salary could save£1 ,091 a year just by using GainsApp for your spending.

30:49And it's super simple to use, easy to connect. We are FCA agent status as well. So your money is super safe. And you can get started right now by following the link in the description or visiting gainsapp.com. And now back to the episode.

31:05Sophia Jarvis: Yeah. And this is the most important part, because as I said, you know, the junior ISA, for example, has been around for a long time, as has the junior pension, but we're not seeing people use it. And I think it is because it is really confusing. And so a parent might start the journey but then drop off along the way because there's been something that's you know might have intimidated them or they've just got fed up to be honest because of the experience yeah what the hell does that even mean it's got like 12 words in it exactly and just weird acronyms and it's just language that doesn't really need to be used and doesn't mean anything to most people so the way that we've designed the onboarding experience at mia is our goal is to help you set up a junior investment account in less than five minutes oh cool so you onboard it's fully digital end-to-end and i say this almost being like obviously but actually that's not the case in so many um providers there's you know some at some point along the journey there's a paper form involved but if you ask most a busy parents but just people these days if they even have a printer two weeks later the letter comes through you're kind of like drive to get that done is gone yeah exactly in the moment when it's digital exactly you know we've had when we were first onboarding customers we're doing live onboarding calls you know we had women breastfeeding whilst also setting up their junior investment account for their child so you can do it in a very short space of time also also that you're busy and that's so important multitasking yeah multitasking to the to the max um so you can set up your account in less than five minutes but most importantly when it comes to the investment selection we have offered you only two funds and i say only two funds for a very good reason because actually because children do have a long time horizon, it's likely that, you know, we default depending on their age.

32:46Sophia Jarvis: So if your child is 13 or under, they therefore have a five year or longer time horizon before they reach 18. This is for the junior stocks and chairs ISA. And if your child is 13 or over, they have a time horizon of less than five years before they reach 18. If you have the longer time horizon, we default to a higher risk fund. And if they have the shorter time horizon, we default to a medium risk fund. because of the relationship between, you know, the longer the time that you're invested, the more risk that you can take on. Now, the parent can switch between the two, but we found actually by just offering two and defaulting to a particular fund, it helps them with that decision.

33:22Sophia Jarvis: And we've also got supportive videos along the way. Now, those videos are of me, unfortunately, so you have to see my face through the journey. But actually, we found that that has been really helpful because, you know, if they do want to have a bit of extra explanation as to what is a fund and what does high risk mean versus medium risk you can just take a pause and actually watch one of the videos so although you've put education with it we have yeah because it's so important i've essentially what we've created is almost replaced how i was as an advisor and put it in a digital format so that people don't need an advisor to set it up i thought of that question well here it is yeah and so don't worry because everything's covered here exactly and then the the default fund offerings that we have so the higher risk is a low cost global equity index fund and the median risk option is a low cost multi-asset fund managed by some of the best investment managers in the world.

34:14Sophia Jarvis: You have to pay them a small fee obviously to do that, but it's their responsibility to manage that portfolio in line with what's going on in the market. It's not something that you need to worry about. And I know it's higher risk and yes, we obviously have to caveat that, but a lot of people would argue that a 100 % global equities fund is actually not that risky. It's certainly not as risky as like putting it all on Apple or, you know, buying some crypto or something like that. It's a very well diversified investment. Exactly. So you've, you know, although it's a global equity index fund within the portfolio, there's hundreds of companies that you're exposed to and therefore it's really well diversified and it's being managed by, you know, an expert investment manager that's looking at it for you every single day.

35:03Are you ready to take your first steps into investing? We're thrilled to partner with Trading212, the app that makes investing accessible and straightforward for everyone. With Trading212, you can open a stocks and shares ISA that's packed with features, zero commission on your investments, industry low FX fees, and access to thousands of ETFs, funds and individual stocks from markets all over the world. The app is incredibly intuitive, designed to help you invest with confidence, whether you're a total beginner or already a pro. Trading 212 is FCA regulated and the client's funds are protected by FSCS protection.

35:37Honestly, I am such a fan of how easy it is to use that I've started recommending it to friends who are new to investing themselves. It's simple and secure and it gives you all the tools you need to build your portfolio. And here's the best part. Right now, Trading212 is offering you guys a free fractional share worth up to£100 when you sign up and deposit just£1. To grab this offer, head to the link in the show notes or use the code MGP when signing up. As always, remember your capital is at risk when investing. ISA rules and T's and C's and other fees may apply. So why wait? Start building your future with Trading212 today.

36:11And now back to the episode.

36:17so here's here's obviously the the big debate which i'm gonna be honest right and i just i really i know you've given the example about your dad and that it made me feel like this question but i just can't get my head around junior sips i can't do it i can't bring myself to do it because the thing is for me where the my reasoning is and you may disagree and i'm sure you do in a lot of ways but i find that where the world's gone so like fast paced right now um and we're seeing like change happen in like rapid because of technology it's just sort of a sort it seems to be like a hockey stick curve and i feel like we're only just sort of at the start of that curve up um like looking if i was to have a child and um i started putting into a junior pension like 57 years from now feels like a wild decision in my head um whereas a junior isa at least is semi-flexible so the reasoning behind that is because uh like i still contribute to my own pension because i have a limited company and it's tax efficient to do so but i all of my net income pay it's not going in a pension it's going as i said because i'm well i want to be way more flexible i know there's a downside to that as financial advisor you probably tell me off for not doing the tax relief but that's how i think i i want flexible pounds and i call them flexible and slow pounds and that's how i judge like judge that so how how are you approaching this conversation and how and what are you i can see you're itching to reply no no i i i'm smiling

38:00Sophia Jarvis: because it's a really valid point and it's a completely fair view and it's one that many people share and I get it you know I do because we don't know what the world's gonna be like in 57 years or however you know whenever the retirement age and what that's going to be but my answer is always these different products whether it's the junior socks and chairs I say the junior pension you know even junior premium bonds which we know we haven't touched on yet there's not one's better than the other or one's good and one's bad they just offer different advantages and disadvantages and so when I was an advisor I used to say to the families I was working with just do a little bit of all of them because they all have you know if we look at the advantages they all have different advantages so you're right the junior stocks and chairs ISA offers more flexibility you know the child will access that sooner at 18 instead of waiting until 60 for the junior pension but the biggest benefit of the junior pension is the compound growth and the fact that you get this money from the government you get this 25 uplift so what I used to say to my clients is just put 100 pounds in the junior pension you know it doesn't have to be your own 100 pounds it can be grandparents grandparents love the junior pension it's a way to leave their legacy and just put 100 pounds in because even just putting that 100 pounds in you get the uplift of that 25 pounds extra from the government and then even if that child did nothing more and didn't put anything more into that pension by the time that child turned 60 assuming an eight percent investment return each year based on historical market performances it's likely to be worth over 10 000 pounds wow just that hundred quid it yeah because of 60 years of compound growth yeah of course of course so it's just like that before and yeah that definitely changes the way I would see it because it's just putting a bit in yeah get it open just get it open um and also it opens that conversation to then talk to your child about a pension you know that's what I'm doing with my twins you know they've got a junior pension they've got junior socks and chairs I said and they've got junior premium bonds now the way that I allocate it is I put they've got both got 100 pounds in their junior pension at the moment actually that was from grandparents for their first birthday they've got 100 pounds in their junior premium bond just in case we win a million pounds i know it's very unlikely but you never know you've got to be in it to win it yeah absolutely and then the junior socks and chairs is what my husband and i regularly contribute to so that's where we set up an automatic direct debit okay and that's the one that we're focused on because they're going to access that sooner but also if we think about you know the wider macroeconomic picture in terms of retirement in the uk we do have a retirement crisis on our hands and we're living it we do and we're going to be living way longer like some of the gene therapy stuff now where it's like reverse aging because they're saying we're going to be living into the hundreds and you're that's scary right it's so scary and you know the world is evolving so quickly as you said but we're going to need to fund this long life yeah and the average man is currently retiring with i think it's about 156 000 pounds that's the average pension and for a woman it's 81 ,000 you know we know that there's that gender pensions gap and that part seems like a lot of money you know today because you think wow that's that's a big amount of money but actually when that has to last you over 30 40 50 100 years it's you know it starts to look quite scary and so one way we can solve the UK retirement crisis but also close the gender pensions gap is just open pensions for children because at least then it is an unknown we don't know what's going to happen we don't know if the state pension is going to be around whether we can rely on that but at least you've just you can see it's sort of hedging your bets yeah a little bit just putting that money around this it's like put five grand in there for a child or it's donald trump did it in the us with the thousand dollars in for the children's account but andrew craig's like to boost the uk stock market it's like five thousand pounds of it must be invested in like uk small to medium cap companies so like liquidity goes into the uk economy um which and if you look at the results of them i think up to like 2024 that it's very decent solid returns if you look at their market as a whole and that would compound quite nicely over the course of that 50 odd years that would be an interesting way of looking at it i think that's where i sort of would perk up about it um do you want to see something like that from the government to sort of help get kids and equally as well you know we have a declining birth rate would that help increase the potential birth rate in this country like what's what's your view on that yeah i mean i think you know the idea of investing for children from the moment they're born as a way to boost the economy makes so much sense because you know if we take the junior pension for example if you invested for every child when they were born and put money into a junior pension it would take huge pressure off the state you know would we even need the state pension because everybody's retiring on you know bigger private pensions and at the same time we've got that financial education piece going on because we've got this whole generation of children growing up with pensions understanding what it's like to be an investor in the market and the government did do something similar with the child trust fund so between i think it was 2002 to 2011 yeah if you had a child um that was born within those years the government and you were claiming child benefit the government invested um or gave you 250 pound voucher that you could put in a child trust fund now that could have been invested or it could have been kept in cash so they that was a great initiative it didn't necessarily come to fruition in the way that they had expected because the fees were quite high on the investment accounts and i think there wasn't the education around whether you should keep it in cash versus investments and obviously you know over that period it would have been quite a big difference in return depending whether you kept it on cash or investments there's also 1.5 billion still unclaimed in child trust i know it's wild isn't it which is so if anyone's listening that you have a child between born in between the ages or the years of 2002 and 2011 you can go on the government website and just check um you just google child trust fund and you can see but that was a great initiative in theory and i would love to see the government do something like that to support i agree i think it'd be awesome it just makes so much sense the problem with that is that they're just thinking about the next two three years of can we stay elected but i actually think it would do completely the opposite by the time you know andrew sort of made the point that with market growth it's kind of like this uk sovereign wealth fund but for its like younger generation where it's just going to carry on compounding and all of this money is going to be circling around the UK economy into businesses which need the capital and it should sort of really kickstart the economy and he reckons as quick as like three to five years.

45:09Sophia Jarvis: Yeah I agree and also it's the if you think about mental health you know there's such a strong link between your financial situation and your mental health whereas if we've got a generation growing up with investments in their name, you know, whether they access at 18 or whether it's, you know, at 60, you're going to feel better as well because you know that you've got this pot of money that's, you know, could be growing alongside you. Whereas, you know, most of us, we enter the workplace, you know, if we get employed at 22, that's when we normally get enrolled in a pension. We have no idea what it is.

45:45Sophia Jarvis: We've got no idea what it is. And then suddenly you get to, you know, later on your 40s, 50s, and you start thinking about your retirement and then you have this almost panic of thinking, I haven't, you know, I haven't done enough. It would get rid of all of that. Yeah, it really would. And that's why, you know, the original idea for Mia Wealth was when my clients kept saying to me, I wish we had done this 20 or 30 years ago. Totally. And that's what, you know, this would solve for children because it will have been done for them from the moment that they're born. Yeah, no, 100%. I'd love to quickly touch on junior premium bonds because this is something I haven't gone into either.

46:18but I also have my own growth of premium bonds too but I that I've come to terms with a way that I think it works um but I'd love to know how you would factor it in for kids because with adult premium bonds I'm like once you put your emergency fund together keep a touch of like a month's worth of liquid cash and then the rest of the three to three to four months that you add on on top that's a really good place for it because then you can potentially you know win win the big being the big bucks although you know we've seen the rates but again you've got to be in it to win

46:50Sophia Jarvis: it so how does it work with kids yeah junior premium bonds are really funny account aren't they and so if you talk to anyone outside of the uk people are a bit like what is this and it's actually a government initiative but if you look at the advantages of them you know they are it is 100 backed by the government so you've got 50 000 pounds that you can put in same for kids and that money is safe with the government, you get this benefit of being entered into a prize draw every month. So one pound essentially is one bond and that's one ticket into the prize draw. So the more money you have in premium bonds, the more pounds you have, the more entries you get into the prize draw and the more likely chance that you have of winning.

47:30Sophia Jarvis: You can win anywhere from£25 all the way up to a million pounds. I have heard if you win a million pounds, they call you the day before and then they knock on your door. so i'm always waiting for the call or the knock on the door but yeah i mean i haven't won in months so it is it is one of those things where most people don't win and most people don't win obviously the million i'm 25 quid is my max yeah damn it and i've got friends that have like a couple hundred quid in and i've done like thousands i'm like how i know it's just it is a complete lottery but the they say the probability of winning is equivalent to 3.8 percent now and we have to look at that in line with inflation because although it is a safe place to keep your cash and i love that idea around your emergency fund there is the risk that your winnings of premium bond don't keep up with inflation so inflation is currently at 3.3 percent so yes it's a little bit ahead of that depending on how you're looking at inflation but it means that really you need to think about it is whatever you're putting in there you're going to get the same out you know you actually don't see the money go down in value but if it's just keeping pace with inflation you're not seeing any growth in that money and then the worst case is if the average prize draw probability was actually lower than inflation then the real value of that money that you that you've been putting in holding and premium bonds will have actually gone down yeah um and that's just something for people to be aware of so with junior premium bonds it's typically something that grandparents actually gift for grandchildren.

49:03Sophia Jarvis: It's a great gift. It's a lovely gift because it's, you know, they're wanting to support their grandchildren. It's a chance, isn't it? It's fun, you know, especially as children get older. You know, they can actually have oversight and access their account from 16 and they can see what it's like to be in that prize draw. Oh, that was my question. So if they win, what happens? Like if they won 100 grand or 25 quid or whatever their prize was, like, can they not touch it? And is it in their name as well? From 16, but prior to that, it's the parents. So the parents can still withdraw the money on behalf of that child.

49:35Sophia Jarvis: And then from 16, it's the child. And as I said, you know, I've got it for my twin girls just because it is a bit of fun. You never know, they could win a million. but in terms of long-term growth and long-term savings that's where you know we look at actually what could you get investing that money in a junior stocks and shares ice or junior pension versus junior premium bonds and although you know you don't get that prize draw from investing in a junior stocks and shares ice or junior pension it's likely that the investment return over a long time is going to be higher than the prices that you win in junior premium bonds so when i was a financial advisor I just used to say that to my clients you know keep a bit of money in there because it is fun but actually if you're thinking about building up that child's wealth or even your own wealth you know potentially look at investments over premium bonds.

50:22So you're playing the field is one gang with here right?

50:25Sophia Jarvis: Yeah a little bit of. Yeah a little bit here a little bit there. Yeah. And it's got all got potential and that's the way you're looking at it. Yeah and as I said also it's an opportunity for me to speak to my daughters about it when they get to an age where they understand that's actually my next question oh so i because i know you've got the twins yeah are they identical yeah they are yeah i've got identical twin cousins have you thomas and james they'll be listening to this so um oh it's special but it's so funny like you go to parties and my mum now and she's she's like right get out of the way who's who i can tell um but they are extremely alike like my other half charlotte can't tell like and how old are they they're in their early 30s now okay and this and they're really identical still wow it's amazing yeah one they've just got slightly different shaped heads and like that's how you know and they'll have different haircuts these days but back in the day they'd have same outfits same haircuts like it was difficult um but yeah having spent a lot of time with them like and they've got different mannerisms they're different people they've got different personalities very much so yeah and which i find so interesting oh it's amazing i've got twin sisters as well have you yeah and twin but they're they're polar opposites so one looks like the dad and one's the spitting image of the mum so yeah lots of twins then and in your family i know i'm screwed yeah good luck yeah i know i'm gonna picture my mum like with a double pram like so i know gosh it's i mean yeah hats off to you know parents of triplets and more because even just having twins that was it's been a whirlwind it really has and I'm the same as you I've got lots of twins um in my family so I did always have a feeling that I'd have twins so we went for a early scan at about six weeks when I found out I was pregnant and I did pre-warn my husband I said I think there'll be two heartbeats he was like yeah whatever the doctor was like congratulations you're having twins and I've never seen anyone drive home so quickly to open up an excel spreadsheet to be like how are we going to financially manage because I just left my job to start Mia Wealth at the same time so yeah it's been a whirlwind but they are identical they're very different personalities similar to your cousins and they have different head shapes as well it's quite common with identical twins so there's a peach and a pear theory so one will have more of a peach face and one will have more of a pear face when they grow up get them to like pretend that they're telepathy yeah because they do it now in christmas and even now like everybody knows it's not a thing and they know that they're they're getting fooled but everyone's like wow like the christmas did they ever sort of pretend to be the other because i think they did growing up all the time yeah it's funny it's like parent trap oh yeah that film so good it's so funny you say that like i literally love that film lindsey lohan yeah banger movie it's so good it's my like i'm really hung over and i'm feeling really sorry for myself and then like once a year i'll whack it on and just relive it and it is one of those films you can keep watching again and again it's aged so well it has it's a great because it's just done yeah i love it i'm gonna watch that tonight i might have to join you yeah um but you're there how old the girls sorry one okay so right yeah we're not we're not talking about stocks and shares i says yeah no but they say you know your your money mindset is formed by age seven.

53:50Sophia Jarvis: And that's really the way that they're, I mean, they observe everything and they understand so much more than we realize. So just even the way we talk about money at home and, you know, with, you know, your partner in front of them, that is having an influence. And so as soon as they are going to be a bit more aware, I do want to start talking to them about investments, but most importantly, show them as well and be like this is your portfolio you know this is what we're investing into for you but so is you know granny grandpa aunties uncles like everyone is here to support you and just have those open conversations so that by the time they turn 18 and they reach the point that they can start investing for themselves or withdraw part of it or all of it um they're making an informed decision and that's really important probably helps having a mum in financial services yeah and my husband is as well so it's really sad okay right it's really sad at home because we talk about investments all the time i remember on our first date we talked about investments i was like this is so weird it's so sad yeah but kind of cool for me anyway i find that cool my other half's like just tell me what i need to do and like all right mate and then i'm gonna go she goes but um the um what i wanted to know from you we had the lovely will rainey on i don't know if you know him but he has a book called um grandpa's fortune's fables um if anybody's listening with with young kids it's excellent so it's all like gamified you learn um credit investments mortgages etc um really really interesting and it's a great book and everyone i've sent it to has messaged me back and been like amazing this is brilliant thank you so much um but when do you think you would start to approach these types of topics and games and things with them and getting them to understand that this is a pound and because it's harder in today's day and age when we grew up we had notes and pound coins to do it with and it was a lot more tangible yeah we had piggy banks didn't we and it was sort of you know and you would well i would do a house tour and then i'd get a bit of money and walk down to the corner shop yeah and but it was amazing i loved it and 50p would literally get you so much yeah like what freddo's they used to be 5p and now they're like you get like a whole bag of like penny sweets it's like so good coca-cola bottles for days i know but now it's you know this digital age and i think that's why you know for example us at mia wealth we we're building a proposition whereby we don't know what age yet but whereby children can have a view only oversight of their investment account oh nice so that they can actually engage through the app itself and do it that way because i think you know we're growing up in this digital era they've got to be able to understand it from that perspective and just the way you you know you talk about money at home as i mentioned you know even just sayings you know we've all been brought up with various sayings depending on the family that you're brought up in whether it's you know money doesn't grow on trees and things like that and it can be we just say it because it's just that's what we've been taught as well but it can be unhelpful some of the stuff that we say around our children and it's really just you know i know that the uk in general is on this mission to get more people investing and that really starts at home and and with our kids that's how we change things yeah no i completely agree yeah i think we're we're millennial generation we're sort of like we've definitely woken up to that and i think that's going to pay off massively i think that we as you're right we're seeing this cultural shift it's going to keep going um and you know large parts of millennials we we might we're not might not be able to save but we can definitely help gen z we can help the younger generations i i get lost in what they end up calling it could be called now gen 80 gen z gen 97 um but i just want to say like i think you're one of the most inspiring people that i've met and i genuinely mean that because to do what you have done with two young girls um i think is absolutely incredible and um I think what like you're on such a mission and drive and I imagine it's probably driven by the girls as well um but yeah I just wanted to say that because I I think what you've come from what you've done like anyone at that point could have gone and put it on the back burner for a couple of years like why why did you just go right sod it I'm just gonna keep going yeah well thank you so much for saying that I really appreciate it and you know I won't sugar coat it it's been a really hard journey leaving my job and finding out i was pregnant at pretty much the same time it's actually the next day yeah oh god like yeah you're gonna do that no i'm not i'm gonna become a fintech founder oh and now i'm pregnant with twins uh so going through that journey i mean there's so many days that i just think even now you know i just think this is really hard yeah um you know i i had a security of a nine to five were you wealth manager of the year and you as well.

58:48Sophia Jarvis: Yeah, I was wealth manager of the year. I was, and I was loving it. You know, I really enjoyed being a financial advisor. I got a lot of purpose from it, but the idea that I had for me a wealth, it just got so loud in my head that I had no choice. I was like, I have to build this because if I'm not going to build it, who is? And then throughout the journey of now becoming a mum myself, it's just amplified that even more because this mission is so deeply personal to me now as a mum the first users of meal wealth were my daughters and it was this incredible first like full circle moment and my team so I've got an incredible co-founder she's got two girls as well so we we all had our children on the app testing it with our own children before we went and expanded to other families and so all of us are driven by that mission.

59:39Sophia Jarvis: And, you know, we spoke about it before we started recording. As a founder, you often have to have an unhealthy obsession with something. That's what drives you. And this mission is so much bigger than me. I have an unhealthy obsession with getting access to compound interest for children. You know, my mission is to improve the lives of millions of children across the UK by changing that stat that 90 % of kids don't have an investment in their name. you know even if we just increase that a little bit it's going to have a huge impact on so many lives and that's why i keep doing what i'm doing 100 i think like i always said i wanted to do an app and it would be like the the next phase but every time i sort of looked at it i was like it's getting harder um and then it was just our community just being like this doesn't exist this doesn't exist this doesn't exist and i was like oh my god this is getting and you're right it's the voice it gets louder and louder and louder and then when the cost of living really started kicking in then i was like all right i am not accepting this like i have i have i don't know if i have i think i have a responsibility to myself even though i feel like i have a responsibility to the community as well but to do it because if i'm like well if no one else is going to do it like i'm going to do it um and i'm just one of those people like if if you get with this you're going to help so many families change their kids lives and with gains app it's the same it's like well the more i can help them it's going to help me it's going to help my family as well and so i think if you have if you go into something like that with that kind of mission like it's very difficult for those bad days those hard days the issues that you get as we know building fintechs it is not easy um it's sort of you you can back them off easier because you're like, well, it's bigger than me.

1:01:32Sophia Jarvis: Yeah, exactly. And you know, same, same back at you as well, Sammy, you know, I'm really inspired by your journey and that's why I initially reached out to you because you didn't have to go and build an app alongside everything else that you're doing, but you just felt like the community were asking for it and you were the right person to turn that into reality and to actually take it from that. Delusional enough. Yeah, delusional enough, but to take it from that idea into an actual physical app it's a huge amount of work that goes into it but also what an incredible i think it's like with anything you know this and thank you thank you by the way that's very kind of you you just kind of think well if you can do it so can i and like that's why i look at it i'm like i looked at a lot of the like co the founders in fintech and i'm like wow they worked at these massive like goldman sachs ex-directors and stuff and i'm like yeah but like you had to learn and get there yourself and i'm like and i've always been the same because i'm not a financial advisor um and but i've lived life and i've made every money mistake going and so that's why i do what i do um and so but when it comes to fintech i'm like well i can learn this i know i can yeah um and that's why i've not done it alone similar to you with like a co-founder i think if i'd have done it alone i would have probably have quit but having having co-founders has definitely made it a lot easier but just having a sort of a shoulder to cry on when you need it and yeah you would pull each other up and back and down and you know we're out now and it's out and so and I love it I'm on it it's great oh cheers it's really good you didn't get anything that broke no I had a great experience everything worked perfectly for me amazing yeah no yeah well it's the beginning right as well I think probably the first iteration of what you put out to what it will be in a year's time it's going to be tenfold i'm sure you have multitude of things in the pipeline that you're like um it's going to get 20 times better yeah i mean we launched our beta on lucky friday the 13th in february love that and we're already on version 158 oh yeah it's a new release and we we're testing it you know i'm i always test it i want to test it myself so sometimes the new app release isn't till 3 a.m our tech team just working through the night they're incredible and so i'm waiting and there i am at 3am testing this app it's crazy that's why i said unhealthy oh yeah yeah i'm going on the thing and i'm like this hasn't changed he's like close the app open the app i'm like oh yeah yeah it's all changed and he's like yeah i know because i've i've literally by the time you asked me to do the thing i've already pushed two live versions i'm like i love you daniel my cto he's the best man and I think it makes such a massive difference having him because I can't write a line of code.

1:04:18I'm hyper ADHD, so if I look at lists or walls of text, my brain goes, no, instantly I have to visualise it or have a conversation. It's great for ideas and it's great for driving certain things through, but if you're writing a line of code, it hurts my brain, so I just can't do that. um but anyway look like i i don't want to uh talk too much about fintech out so we'll turn everybody off but look i think if there is a parent listening to this now they've got a child that's one two three five seven whatever that might well be and they haven't started anything yet um and then perhaps they're going oh god listen to this they're feeling a little bit guilty about it i want them to go away with something and go okay what's the first little action step that i can take today

1:05:05Sophia Jarvis: to perhaps get myself started yeah well first you don't feel guilty you know as a parent of any age children but especially you know those really early years we're time poor and it's one of those things that you probably come back to you know every now and then you think i should i should do that i should get that started for my child and then you probably tried to research it or maybe even started it with a provider and at some point along the journey just thought this is too complicated or run out of time or got distracted you know that happens all the time so my biggest piece of advice is just get started you know take this as your sign to get started and make it automatic make it really easy for you we encourage monthly contributions at mia wealth so when you've opened the account in less than five minutes we make it really easy for you to just set up an automatic direct debit and what's the lowest contribution that you can get in there?

1:05:56Sophia Jarvis: £20. Oh wow. So 20 quid. You can get started with either £20 one-off or£20 a month. Amazing. It's fully flexible. You know, life happens. Sometimes we need to pause our monthly contributions or amend them and you can do that in app. And it just means that it's one thing off your mental load, your to-do list. And you can also then feel really proud of yourself because you know that you have set that up for your child. You've got started. and you know when it's their next birthday you can then send a gift link out to family and friends and say you know if you want to give something a bit different this year a gift that can grow with them this is an alternative way to support that child's future 100 and there's some really cool calculators on your site as well and i think like go and mess around with those and yeah and have a play around put put some numbers go google calculator site compound interest and pop eight seven eight percent whatever you want to put in there and put 20 quid in there and then press 18 years or whatever however ages and see understand that level of growth that could come back from those contributions because someone will say oh well 20 quid is not going to do anything honestly go and do that and then come back and look at how big that can potentially grow because it it will shock you well we we offer that in the app as well so as you are onboarding you can put in you know what you can afford each month or what you think family and friends might gift and you'll get a projected value of what that could be worth when your child turns 18 straight away okay don't go on there then go on me or well for but it's but it's part of that journey because actually to visually be able to see it brings it to life so much more and 20 pounds a month you know from birth to 18 assuming an 8 investment return could be worth over 10 000 pounds by the time that child turns 18 so 20 pounds a month it's it still makes a big difference it does it's massive right but i think when you do that though that's the thing that i it drove me was like oh i can afford 50 for example let's say and then i did that and i was like i could do something yeah well exactly it sort of makes you think okay you know i always think about my life in coffees so so i think 20 pounds a month is a coffee a week so if i just reduce one coffee a week and put that towards you know whether it's my own investments or my child's investments and i know the impact that that's going to have because of compound growth over time it just makes you think about you know how we spend our money really doesn't it now i'm not saying no to all coffees i need my coffee but maybe i can just reduce it to you know three a week instead of four being a bit more savvy yeah you know sending one referral code to a friend and they you get 20 pound for signing up to whatever happened you put that in there like there's so many ways that you can get that 20 quid in there at least or more if you can afford it of course but if you can't like there's so many little things you could do like one thing a few surveys a month while you're on the train into work and you're getting 20 quid in there for your kids and stuff so you know think think of it like that as well i think it's a like a good way of like if you are on like everything's coming in and everything's going out like there are other ways that you can do this too um love this i knew i would it's one of my favorite topics and i don't think we've ever really done like a full deep dive into this because the power of it's so so incredible for kids um but yeah is it is it miawealth.com or.co.uk.co.uk and you can search for Mia Wealth on the app store app on google and download it and get started we will link all of that below um in case anyone's on the move and can't can't see that we'd also pop it in the email as well when it goes out um but yeah I really hope it goes well uh you deserve it you're a trooper um and yeah thank you very much for coming on Thanks, Sammy.

1:09:38Sophia Jarvis: Thanks so much for having me. And I've really enjoyed it. So I've been working on something super exciting for the last 12 months, and I am very, very proud to finally bring it to you. And it is called Gains App. My whole thing with this was we've been speaking to many of you guys about the rising costs of living and how hard it is to actually manage your money. So I thought, why not actually solve this and build something for you guys that you can use every single day? So Gainsab is literally that. You can connect all of your banks in one single place and see exactly what's going on with your spending.

1:10:14We even pre-categorize all of your spending super visually so you can see what's going on and make plans for your big goals ahead. Plus, we've layered in something called instant cashback. And we've calculated that the average UK salary could save£1 ,091 a year just by using GainsApp for your spending. And it's super simple to use, easy to connect. We are FCA agent status as well, so your money is super safe. And you can get started right now by following the link in the description or visiting gainsapp.com. And now back to the episode.