Ep. 93 How To Start Investing, Clear Your Debt & Take Control Of Your Finances With Simran Kaur

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1:32Simran Kaur is a VC investor, angel investor, financial columnist, and the founder of Girls That Invest, the world's largest investing podcast for women. She's received so many accolades in her time, from young New Zealander of the year to Forbes 30 under 30, but she started out in healthcare as an optometrist who read a few research papers on investing. Her journey is really fascinating, and she was so incredibly full of actionable advice. My favourite quote of hers is, it takes someone intelligent to explain something simply. She is a quintessential example of exactly that. You know I'm passionate about financial literacy, so we really got into the frank financial questions that you wanted to ask and she made everything so digestible and accessible.

2:14Before we get into the episode, please make sure to like the video and even give us a little subscribe if you are into interesting conversations with interesting people about how we can all improve our lives.

2:29Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I could not be more excited for this conversation. I feel like we are very aligned in a number of areas. There are so many exciting things that people talk about online and I find the most exciting of all of those things. The really interesting information, education, how we can empower ourselves by knowing more. That to me is life improvement more than some of the glow up. stuff. So I absolutely love that from you. And I think that what you've done is absolutely incredible. Thank you. That means a lot. I completely agree. When people talk about like, how do we empower women?

3:03My answer is always woman having more money lets them make more choices. That's how we empower ourselves. And being able to feel empowered with the information to know what you should be doing with that and how to keep hold of that or how to make it make more money and all of those different things. We spend a lot of time talking about finances on this podcast, but also generally kind of how important it is to know the information that you need to know to give yourself a great life. And I really respect any people who spend a lot of time online making sure that other people have that information.

3:35I start every episode by asking each guest whether you feel like at the moment you are more working hard or hardly working. Well, this week I am in the UK and I'm here for work, but tomorrow I'm going to Thailand for two weeks, no phone, nothing. So working hard until now and then I will be hardly working. Are you off right after this podcast? I am flying to the airport. Oh my God, do we have champagne? Prosecco? I'm very excited. That is so exciting and I'm so jealous. Would you like a plus one? Would you like to come? Yes, I really, really would. That's a good answer. And I feel like the importance of sharing rest and recuperation could not be overstated.

4:16And I'm very glad that you're getting that time off. I would love to know, especially for anyone who might not be familiar with your career, a little bit of a whistle-stop tour of how you got to where you are now so that we can have some context. Yeah, of course. Well, my name is Simran. I'm an angel and VC investor from New Zealand, but I didn't start off that way. I didn't start off in the world of finance. I was an optometrist, which is crazy. You were talking earlier about your eyes hurting and not wearing your glasses, and that stressed me out a little bit. But I started off in a family that was very like, hey, Sam, you should go study, work hard, get a good career and save your money.

4:56And that's what financial success is. And somehow you'll be able to afford a home and do all that. And I just thought, OK, that makes sense. And I, you know, I felt like I did the right thing, went to school, studied optometry for five years. And on the side of that, I just had a passion for being creative. And I would start these e-commerce websites, grow them, sell them. And I would take the money from that and initially spend it all on Sephora. Like all these Sephora packages would come to my parents' place. And I realized that maybe that wasn't the right thing to do with my money. And so I started just learning more about investing.

5:32And I took investing elective papers at university, elective papers in New Zealand when your degree says, hey, you should do a couple of papers outside of what you're usually doing. And I went and studied financial markets at Yale, which again was just like an elective paper that you can take. And I realized that investing is actually not that hard. And it really angered me because I'd spent my whole life being this science person that was like, oh, well, I can understand this, but money, finance, like numbers, I'm not a numbers person. And so I started investing and it started to make sense. And I use that knowledge to, I guess, grow my wealth and start putting my money into different things, mainly the share market, mainly index funds, nothing crazy.

6:19But I realized that there were a few things that started to happen that other people were reacting differently to. And so what I mean by that is in 2020, March the 13th, the share market dropped. And that was a really good thing because I was like, oh, shares are cheaper. That's like, I don't know going to um a skincare store and all your favorite skincare products are like 20 % off like I love this and I went to work and all my colleagues at work um were like this is really scary I'm losing money I'm going to pull money out of my retirement account right like your reaction is like it's my reaction that's not what you do that's not what you do and so that's when I realized hey there's actually a gap between very intelligent people that are you know doctors and optometrists and pharmacists and lawyers all my friends are amazing um but no one's talking to them about investing and let me just share my journey it now is a um you know fantastic resource with the world's largest investing podcast newsletter for women we're in 190 countries we have millions of downloads and it um i didn't expect it to grow to this but from there i just keep doing that every single day.

7:31Going from strength to strength. Honestly, it's incredible to watch your career and to watch what you've done. I think that there's so many things in there that I'd like to unpack. I think that overall, you're such a great example of someone who has been able to let kind of life and their career trajectory and where they've educated themselves inform the next step. And what I mean by that is that I think it's both what you're doing is obviously incredibly important within the investing space and within the education space. And I'm a big, big believer in meeting people where they are. So, you know, that means bringing information on investment to Instagram.

8:10It means presenting it in the same way you would usually consume content on Instagram, but obviously based on investing, based on financial empowerment and education and literacy. And I believe that you've done that so incredibly well. But I also think on top of this, it's such a great example from a career point of view of the fact that you've kind of allowed your interests and little bits of your education, but really more what you're spending your time doing, what you really enjoy to inform your next step. I think at that stage that you decided to start Girls That Invest, it is undoubtedly, I think it's fair to say, quite a big step for someone who, I know you did electives in finance, but you didn't study finance.

8:51Could you give me some advice for if you were talking to someone who wants to take another step in their career, but maybe feels like they don't have the right qualifications or they haven't had the right educational background and they're getting that kind of imposter syndrome based on or just a fear that they're not ready for that type of thing. I think that would be great to have some advice from you on that. That's a really good question. And I always find that when it comes to pivoting or realizing what you can and can't do, people really like to box themselves and go, well, I can only do this one thing.

9:23And I often find that what you've done in the past never goes to waste. And we have this fear of like, oh, if I'm pivoting in my career, well, did I just spend five years learning about the eyes for no reason? Or did I like spend 18 months working here for no reason? But what you do in the past gives you a different perspective and it gives you something that other people don't have. And so when I started Girls That Invest, my platform was to say, hey, I'm not someone that comes from an investing background. I'm at that time a retail investor, but I grew up in the science space. And so we learn through research papers.

10:03You don't like your doctors and your optometrists. They don't give you a medication based on like a gut feeling. They're like, no one goes, I feel like I want to try this one today and see what happens. It's based on, well, okay, last month, you know, this journal came out and these were the steps and I read the research paper. And so my brain works in what does the research paper say and therefore what do I do? And so I just brought that to the investing world. And I was like, hey, I'm reading all these research papers about investing and I'm just going to, in my own ways, share what they say.

10:35And that was just such a helpful thing because suddenly people that didn't have time or access to reading, I don't know, the Wall Street Journal or reading, you know, new literature on behavioral finance were like, oh, it's distilled in a language that I can understand. And this girl talks about investing on one hand and then Love Island like two seconds later. It's just a different way of talking about the same topic. Yeah. And that's how we get important topics into our everyday kind of content is exactly that type of integration. Like I constantly have this battle with myself on social media of I'm like, oh, God, I shouldn't be posting about my workout or what I'm watching on TV or like my weekend because it's not my brand.

11:15And then I've always kind of I just always like check myself and I'm like, no, if you can't see it, you can't be it. And we need more representation in a lot of different areas. And me just sitting there being like, I have a business. I have a business. I have a business. like it's not it makes it inaccessible it doesn't make it a full picture and like that is the beauty of social media when you can really get it right in terms of being able to give like a fuller representation and I love what you said there about essentially using your difference and your perceived lack of qualification as a different angle like essentially what you've done is said yes this is not my educational background and do you know what that means rather than that meaning that I'm unqualified.

12:01It means that I understand people whose education is not in finance and therefore I am able to educate people on investing as someone who was also earning a salary that wasn't from a bank and was investing this in terms of what I wanted to be able to invest it in and actually seeing your difference as a USP that you bring to the space rather than seeing your difference as something that discounts your success or makes you unqualified for it. I completely agree. And I think the outcome speaks for itself. Before Girls That Invest, when I was younger and I was trying to look for content or look for communities where I could learn about investing, they didn't exist for women.

12:43And so when I thought, well, if this isn't here and I'm already on this journey, why don't I just share my journey? And as long as I'm being honest and sharing where I'm from and sharing that this is me learning and you can learn alongside me. That was all it took. And now, you know, there's a dent in the world. We get hundreds of messages every day of people saying, I now invest because of your book. I now invest because of your podcast or newsletter. I think if you tell yourself, who am I to create change, then you leave it up to the systems that already exist and they're not creating change.

13:18So, So, you know, is the outcome really working? I think that's such a powerful quote. I mean, we can see what you've done with that type of ethos and with that view. And I think that it is really empowering to hear that point of view, because what it essentially says is, well, first of all, if you weren't ready, you wouldn't have the opportunity, I think is a big part of that. But also, if we wanted everyone to do things in a copy and paste way, then we would just keep getting the outcomes that we've already got. and actually like you can be the difference in the way you want to see this or the product you want to create.

13:49I'd love to know how you actually educated yourself on the markets in order to be able to initially invest as someone who was investing their savings and moving on to both talking about investing and doing investing pretty much as a career. It was those research papers. It was reading about what was going on and it was understanding how I learned things which you know for so long was like, okay, well, what does the data say? And okay, actually, wait, people trying to pick and choose individual shares, that's what you read online or what you, you know, watch movies about as the best way to make money.

14:26But that's not true because all the studies find that even the most, like most qualified investors in the world, the people that, you know, are fund managers for some of the largest funds in the world that are ivily educated, 92 to 98 % of them don't beat the market over a 15-year period. Wow. 92 % to 98 % of them don't beat the market. And so we think that maybe I should try and pick and choose what's doing well, or maybe I'm really interested in this company and that company, but if the best of the best can't do it well, this is their job, then I'm going to realize, well, maybe I should just put my money in funds and diversify and have a little bit of a portfolio, maybe 5 % to 10 % of speculative investments, which is a jargon way of saying picking and choosing companies.

15:14But when you look at that, then suddenly everything else just becomes noise. Do you think there's a part of that, though, that makes it a little bit scary to get into investing? Like if someone told me that the people who were highly qualified were not beating the market, I'd be like, oh, well, there goes my chance. That's a really good point, actually. When people say beating the market, what it essentially means is, well, if I can't beat the market, maybe I should invest in the market. And so I think that's the way I took it. If you look at the results of a fund called the S &P 500, which is just the top 500 companies in the US, so it's like your Apple and your Amazon and your Google and your Microsoft, the performance of that fund over a 40-year period has its ups and downs.

16:03So you've got the GFC, you've got the Gulf War, you've got the dot-com bubble, COVID-19 recently. But the trend of it eventually is a upwards trend with lots of little ups and downs throughout. And what the data shows and the papers show is, well, actually, if you invest in the market, just in that, that's a much better way of hedging your risk than trying to pick and choose. Right. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that's where understanding is so important, because I think that that's exactly where people feel isolated from something like investing, because I'll see something like that and be like, well, that's me disqualified.

16:42Whereas actually, what I can see there is a great opportunity to be able to break into it without even having to do much. Because if you're following the market, you're not needing to be sitting there on your own little trading desk, which I think is the way a lot of people see investing. I think, especially over the past few years, this rise in, well, the representation we see online of personal investors. I'm not talking hedge fund managers. I'm not talking bankers in general, although probably still similar, but people who invest their own money and have been able to do very well off it. It's a very specific look and profile.

17:18I would say that the way it's represented is very like you didn't see my Lamborghini outside I was literally about to say you didn't see my five Rolexes when I came in and the fact that you're a man yeah like as in that's really to me what I've seen when I've even tried to like dabble within the space and I think that that means that a it gets a bad rep in some ways but also because it's represented as so too good to be true, especially around things like cryptocurrency, I think that it makes it feel like there's only a few winners. You can't be one of them. Therefore, sit with your money in your bank account and that's the safest thing.

18:01And I think one of the best things I've learned about investing recently is that when your money's in a bank account, it is at risk because essentially it's not going up with inflation anywhere close a lot of the time. And I think that's what really kind of hit home with me. I was like, oh, either way, we're putting it in some sort of bank account. And of course, you shouldn't be investing more than you can lose, especially not if you're doing anything like day trading. But actually, like seeing it that way, to me, I was kind of like, oh, this is why we need to be really empowered on this. I have a gripe with how when men do things, it seems really difficult.

18:36And when women do things, it seems like sweet and easy. Like careers like nursing and teaching, which were predominantly done by women in the past are like, oh, that's so sweet. She became a nurse. And if a man in a suit does something, it's like, well, I guess it's kind of difficult. I think about that type of thing a lot. What I've never truly stomached is the fact that, and this is like internalized misogyny the fact that when I'll see you posting about investing I'll be like amazing you've made it so accessible that's great I'm not saying it's easy but it's accessible it's you know something that we've kind of accessed and therefore we can all do whereas when I'd see a man's like investment page I'd be like this person has done this like really difficult thing and is therefore like teaching down if that makes sense do you know do you get what I mean I mean that in the least I think that's like internalized misogyny it's because you've made it accessible.

19:28Whereas I'm not sure I would say about a man's page, he's made it investing accessible. It's more that they are like, have shown what they've done. I have a quote that I love. Well, it's not really a quote, it's just something I say. It's now a quote. It's a quote when it's on the podcast. It's a quote now. Thank you. Which is, you know, it takes a really smart person to explain things simply. And if someone can explain something in a way that feels like simple and light and easy, it's because they get it versus if you're listening to someone and they're using big words and they're like yeah so capital markets and securities and this and that he doesn't know what he's talking about because if he can't teach me in a way that a five-year-old would understand then is he just regurgitating words that's that's very valuable and I think very true a lot of the time and I think there's a lot of there's there are obviously topics that are not going to be understood by everyone but I do think that something like investing is not one of those topics and at least can be very much broken down to, you know, a base level.

20:25So on that topic, I'd love to do just that. I'd love to speak first about when someone should think about investing, like when should they start thinking about putting their money somewhere that is not their own bank account? I like that question because it's something that comes up a lot and people go, well, should I pay off my student loan first? Should I, if I have a mortgage, should I like pay that completely down, which to me is like, we're going to be like an R50s. But I often say, if you're trying to decide when to invest, you want to make sure that you at least have three months of money saved up in an emergency fund, three months of your living expenses, because you don't want to be using your investment account like an emergency account.

21:11You know, if something happens, your laptop dies, or you've got a dental emergency and these things cost money, you don't want to go, oh, I've got to pull a few grand from that investment account. So having a savings account set up, paying off high interest debt, so anything that has a 7 % rate or higher, that's something that we like to pay down first. And the reason why the number seven comes up is the share market annually returns around 7%, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the year. But if you're losing more than 7 % and you can only make 7 % with that dollar, you're going to use it to pay that money down.

21:48And if you have those two things set up, then you can start saying, well, okay, I've got three months of living expenses saved up. For me, that's about$7 ,000. I don't live too expensively. I've kind of got management done on my other sort of debt that I have. I'm not going to pay my mortgage down. I'm not going to pay my student loan down. So now I can start investing. Okay. And what types of proportion of our salary should we be investing? I like to look at it by reverse engineering it and deciding, how much money do I want to have invested? So let's say you decide that when I retire, I'd like to have half a million dollars or I'd like to have a million dollars.

22:33You can use an investment calculator, put that million dollar number in, put 7 % on the return, put 2 % on the inflation box, and it will tell you, hey, Grace, you should probably put in $500 a month or£500 a month into your investment account. And that, on a 7 % return, should leave you with£500 ,000 when you retire. And so I don't like using percentage-based answers because for someone that's not earning a lot, 10 % is really hard to do. But with someone that's, you know, maybe a lot more income, they probably do 20 or 30 % if they really wanted to, but it depends on your goal. Yeah, I do think it's really tough because I do think there are a lot of like buzzwords and percentages out there in terms of like what you should be investing or how you should be splitting your salary.

23:22And I think that especially with living costs now, the like a lot of that was built based on a, and don't get me wrong, some of them are, you know, still super useful and you can use them and you can adapt them to what you personally are able to do. But everything is so expensive now. And a lot of this was based on a salary that and an assumption that you could make an average salary, have two kids, still buy a house, you know, all of these different things, which actually just is not even close to true anymore, especially somewhere like the UK. And I think that it's, you know, a great way to talk about it in the way where, you know, you can take those things as insight.

24:02So I feel like being able to take some of those insights as a starting point and being able to work out your fixed expenses. So how much you actually need to be able to live, how much you generally spend per month, obviously, if there are any of if there's any like wiggle room in there, so kind of like semi fixed expenses, and being able to go at it from that standpoint and like work it back to something that works for you. I do think it can be incredibly intimidating online now having like, well, you should be saving 50 % of your salary. And you're like, cool. Well, is anyone going to give me that?

24:37Exactly. And I would, I hate, I think that's why I hate giving percentages because I don't want someone to listen to this and go, well, I don't have 20 % SIM. So I'm, I guess investing isn't for me. Even if you have 10 pounds per week. No, absolutely. And what are a few signs that we can use to tell whether we are doing well financially? Because I think especially online, it's both easy to compare and hard to compare. And what I mean by that is that it's easy to compare because comparison is everywhere. And you'll kind of go onto Instagram and you'll be like, well, that person must be earning more than me or that person must be doing this.

25:10But it's also hard to compare because you have zero insight and we're really bad at talking about money, etc. I'd love to know if there are any kind of thermostat signs that we can use to start working out whether we're in a good place financially. I love this question because I remember seeing someone sharing that she had reached a million dollars in net worth, which is like amazing, fantastic, exciting. And then there were some comments under that going, well, you know, in 2024, like a million dollars isn't that much, like when you count for inflation and this and that. And I remember just thinking, what has the world done to us?

25:43Like, wow. Like what has happened for someone to go, well, that's not enough to live off. And so imagine the kind of mindset that you're going to have. You're going gets so stressed and you're going to have so much anxiety if you think a million dollars is not a lot of money. And so thank you for asking this. First of all, when it comes to trying to decide, do I have myself set up? The first thing is asking yourself, do I know my numbers? Do I know what my income is? Which a lot of us do, but do I know what my outcome is? Do I know what money is leaving my account every month? Can I tell you, if you asked me, Sim, what my bills are for the year?

26:19I sat down and I worked out my bills. It was$50 ,000 per year. And I was like, that's a lot. I hate that for me, but at least I know it. And I know that I just need to make a little bit more than that to, you know, not be in financial trouble. The second thing that you want to ask yourself is, do I know what my debt is and how much debt I have? If I can sit down and list it out, even just knowing what it is and having a plan for it is a good place to be. Because when you have debt, if you ignore it, you know, you put your head in the sand and you're like, I'll just deal with it another day. It just keeps growing and growing and growing and it snowballs.

26:58And I remember I would get parking tickets that I just didn't want to pay out of stupid principle. Like just, I was like, I wasn't there for that long. And that would start to snowball. This was when this was in college. And, you know, that's not a healthy place to be. And I am so embarrassed by it. I mean, I had like debitors coming to my parents' place being like, this girl owes$80. Like, where is she? I was like, it's just$80. Leave me alone. But you know, learn from my mistakes. I think the third thing to know if you're doing well financially is if you are spending less than you earn and you are investing the rest, that is a really, really healthy person financially.

27:39And that sounds really simple. but if you are making a hundred thousand pounds per year and if you are congratulations that's huge but if you're spending a hundred thousand pounds and making a hundred thousand pounds you're not going to do well because you're going to be stuck in the cycle of always needing to earn more and the person making thirty thousand pounds a year but spending twenty she's going to end up with a retirement fund that she can actually retire on and she's not going to have to keep fighting her way up. I'll give you one more that I find really helpful. When I get stressed about, am I doing well financially?

28:15Am I comparing myself? What can I do to make sure everything's set up? Having automated systems with your money, having your bank account set up in a way that you get paid and you get paid on Monday. And every Monday,$50 goes into your short-term savings account. $100 goes into your long-term savings account. $70 goes into your bills. And then another one goes into a account just to spend and have fun with, that's someone that has their life together. And if you can say, oh, I've ticked off like three of these things or four of these things, you're actually doing really, really, really well financially.

28:52I love that. And I think that's really simplified. I think that the most important part of what you said there or what like has hit home most to me is that if you're making more than you're spending and you're investing the rest, you're in a good place. And obviously, we've got to take into account things like debt and all of that that you've already highlighted. But I do think that that's one of the real downfalls of comparing yourself to people online who you perceive to be earning more than you or in a much better place financially, where actually we obviously have absolutely no insight, even if you've seen a screenshot of that person's Shopify or like whatever it might be like, there's a lot of that.

29:34And don't get me wrong, I remember one sales day that we had that I was like, oh my god, this has completely blown me away. And I do think it's very important to be able to have some transparency about these types of things. But I do think that you have no idea. We see people who are mega rich go bankrupt all the time. And I think that's all you need to see. As you said, someone who's earning$30 ,000 and spending$20 ,000 is actually technically making more per year than the person who's earning 100 ,000 and spending 100 ,000. And I think that's such a good lesson to be able to concentrate on yourself when it comes to your finances and don't allow whatever you perceive of someone else's finances online to sway you to either feel bad about yourself or to feel like you're not doing enough.

30:26If you are doing those things, you are doing well. And I think that what you also said about debt, and I'll stop speaking in a second. I'm not going to do this podcast, please. I'm enjoying this. No, but what you also said about debt and saying, like, the most important thing is just not to put your head in the sand, I think is very valuable and very honest. And I think that the amount of people who have issues with some debt from some areas, and I'm not talking student loan debt or mortgage debt, but you know, payday loan debt, Klarna debt, whatever it might be, where it's really, really easy to put your head in the sand.

31:08And that is also going to exacerbate the issue. And I feel like there's so much guilt around it. And there's definitely not enough conversation around debt. And I just think that being able to have frank conversations just being like the first thing you need to do is acknowledge it and make a plan because that is not going to go away until you've done that and there's so many ways to accrue debt now because it's really quite easy to that just understanding that probably the worst thing you can do is put your head in the sand I'm glad you brought that up with the idea of debt because at the end of the day so many people they look at debt like a personal failure and yet There are companies that spend, I won't name them, but there's companies that spend millions upon millions of dollars per year targeting millennial and Gen Z women to spend more, to take up payday loans.

32:01And they make them beautiful and they make them seem like good choices. And sometimes when they're used well, they absolutely are. But to be penalized for paying late for something that you probably shouldn't have been buying in the first place, but someone else has convinced you to, that's really hard. And when you get rid of the guilt of being bad with money, if you get rid of... Women in the UK could not get credit cards until 1974. Man went on the moon in 1969, I'm pretty sure. We went to the moon before we could give women credit cards. You could not open a bank account without your father's involvement.

32:39Until the 1980s, you could not get a mortgage on a house as a single woman. You'd have to go to a bank and they'd be like, go get your dad to co-sign. And if your father wasn't in the picture, your mother wasn't enough. You literally could not buy a home. And so we think like, oh, I'm a woman and I spend a lot. I'm bad with money. Like you weren't allowed to be good with money. And now we flipped the script from being unable to be in control of your finances as a woman to being like such a tool for marketing and such a tool for money making for, you know, all these big corporations. and I you know I think a lot and we've talked on the podcast before about how women are depicted as spenders and really irresponsible with money despite the fact that women all the statistics show that women have more savings that they invest better like all of these different things and it is like it's kind of designed in a way to make us feel a little bit shit about it and actually I do think what you said about like once you remove the guilt you get to a point where you just need an action plan.

33:41And I think that that is incredibly important. And I have no doubt that there will be someone listening to this who has that, you know, when you feel bad about something and you try not to think about it. And every time you think about it, it ruins your day. My parking tickets. Literally. That is what debt is. And like, I've had enough friends who've had it, enough people who've messaged to have it to know that like, it is an underlying thing that completely takes away from their life because every time they think about it, they're like, you know, it literally sends shivers down your spine. It will ruin your day.

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34:48I'd love to speak a little bit closer on like, what does an action plan look like for someone who's listening to this and thinking, yep, this is me. Like, good to hear about it. Good to hear there are other people, but like, I really need to do something about this. What would you encourage for them to do? So when it comes to debt, there's two ways that you can deal with it. There's the snowball method and the avalanche method. And all you have to do is you have to get pen and paper, write down. This is the hardest part, writing it down. But write down all the debt that you have. So do I have car debt?

35:18Do I have, you know, pay loan debt? Do I have anything that's like on a personal credit card that's more than 7 %? Write it all down. Do I have an IOU with someone? And then next to it, put down all the interest rates on that debt. So maybe some is like 4%, some is 10%, some is 25%. And write down on a third column how much money is in that. So is it a$3 ,000 loan? Is it a$15 ,000 loan? And depending on what you prefer, some people like to do the snowball method where they line it up based on the smallest debt that they have to the largest, and then they pay it off that way. And what's good about that, that's what I personally like, is you build momentum because you're like, okay, I got rid of the$2 ,000 debt.

36:03Now I feel encouraged and inspired to tackle the $10 ,000 one. And then eventually when you get to the$50 ,000 one, you're like, I'm making progress. It's good. And then you've got the avalanche method, which is where you write it all down based on what debt has the highest interest rate, because that's going to cause you to lose more money. And you pay that off more quickly. Nothing is more powerful than accountability. So tell someone, make it a Google doc and share it with your best friend and say, hey, every month, I want you to come and check and make sure I have crossed these off. And if I haven't, please say something.

36:37This is probably the hardest tip that I've ever had to share, but tell someone that you're in debt. It's not easy and we feel shame, but I truly believe, and I know it's easy to say now in the financial position that I'm in, but I don't believe that my worth has anything to do with how much money I have. If I was in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, I'm still a worthy person. I'm still a good friend. I can still go and tell my friends and have fun, but tell your friends so that they can help you and hold you accountable. When I was in a position where I needed to get better with money, I would go to like, my friends keep bringing this one story up.

37:14I don't even remember it. They're like, you came to get ice cream with us and you just didn't buy ice cream. And you just sat with us watching us eat ice cream. And they're like, we felt so bad for you, but that was my choice. I wanted to save. I had a goal to get rid of debt or I had to go to, you know, save up for something else. And your friends will understand. And if they don't, that's a blessing to let go of friends that aren't here to help you in your journey. And there's something so powerful about telling people that takes away the kind of stigma that you've put on yourself. And, you know, as we've talked about that stigma comes from all different areas, but just like the relief of being able to tell someone and being like, now I've told someone and obviously tell a responsible friend and someone who's not going to use it as gossip or whatever it might be but like tell someone or your mum or your sister or your dad or like whatever like tell someone and use that as the first step to share the guilt even if you're not going to get rid of it yet and I don't mean to put that guilt on them but I just mean to literally like a problem shared is a problem halved and actually just being able to be like do you know what I have this problem yes can take away so much of it let me tell you this hilarious story of when I was 13.

38:27This was right at the beginning of e-com brands really existing and I'm not going to say the company that it was, it's still around today, but I had£25 a month. So I got£25 a month as like my expenses money, pocket money, whatever it might be. And I was going on holiday and I saw this, I was looking for bikinis and at the time I would, like the majority of the time I would go and find something in person but 25 pounds was not gonna get me a bikini not least because fast fashion didn't yet exist I fell down that hole later but I remember finding this bikini on this website and I remember it being like 28 pounds or something and so I was like well I can't quite get it but I kind of can and I I went to like go to click on the button.

39:23It said pay in three. And I was like, oh my God, amazing. I could officially afford this bikini. I'm actually savvy. I'm actually savvy. And what I didn't read was the interest on it and how much I would actually have to pay on top of that. And I had to pay it one in three over the next three months. So I was like easy because actually that means that I also have, you know, however much money left for the rest of this month. Cash flow. Yeah, cash flow. Exactly. My early days of cash flow. and I bought that bikini and I didn't set up a direct debit so I'd obviously had to come back and do this and I was 13 at this point so like I don't have a fucking clue how to set up direct debit but on top of that I probably didn't have like a good calendar system and so I just forgot to pay it back the next month and this is very off-brand for me now but I the next month I remember seeing the bill and it was suddenly like over 50 pounds and I was like oh well first of I only have£25.

40:22But second of all, by next month, based on this rate, it's going to be fucking like£75 to£100. And I was like, oh my God. Anyway, so I just like very much stuck my head in the sand about it. And I spent every single day going to bed crying about this bikini. And I took every single babysitting job there was. I took every single like odd job. I was going like ham. I was like, I am on my debt repayment plan. And I remember this letter then came through and this bikini had got to like£125. And I remember I was like in floods of tears after weeks of actually months at this point of only thinking about this bikini and how much debt I was in.

40:59I phoned them up and I was like, I'm 13. Like, please, could you put me on a plan to be able to pay this back? Like, I think I should be able to pay it back in six months. And they were like, you're 13. They were like, we could get in huge trouble for this because they obviously hadn't asked for ID or anything. And so they actually ended up wiping the debt. But that's a story. But I remember at that time, and obviously I've had like situations not like that, but like where, you know, something like that has got like a bit out of control. And I just remember it tore me apart for literally like months and months and months over this one bikini.

41:30And every time any of my friends, like we talk about debt now, or we talk about like someone just being like, I just don't know what to do about this or like this or this. And like, I remember the feeling like the sinking feeling every single day of genuinely being like, I am never going to get back on track. I will pay£1 ,000 for this bikini. Anyway, that's a really long tangent. I have to say, was it a cute bikini? It wasn't. And I look back at it, it was like pink polka dot. And it wasn't even like a nice triangle shape. It was like a, you would, it was very appropriate for an 80 year old, I would say.

42:07But my taste has improved as well as my financial management, I will say. I hear growth. So do I. Anyway, so we don't take up the entire episode talking about my bikini debt. When we're going into investing, like right at the very beginning, what terms should we really know to be able to start out and do it well? Let's start out with like the process of how you would invest and what terms you'll come across. So if you're like, OK, I hear you, Sim, I want to start investing. The first term that you need to know is a broker. and a broker is just an now an online platform but back in the day it was the person that you would call up and say hey like john i want to invest i have a little bit of money that go awesome like here's a few options for you thank god we don't have to call up people anymore i don't think i'd be an investor if i had to make phone calls relate relate and so often these are brokers there's so many out there now but you know there's hargraves there's vanguard there's free trade, there's trade 212, there's plenty.

43:07And so a broker is just the online platform that you go to and you buy your shares. I like to think of a broker like the website, like think of like, like ASOS, for example. And then there's lots of different options within that broker that you take to a checkout and you pay. That's as simple as it is. So broker is the first. The second is the type of things that you can buy. So you're on the website, you're looking at what you can buy. and it starts to get a bit confusing because there's index funds there's exchange trade funds and then there's individual investments and the best way to break down all three is shares or stocks are the same thing people get them confused but there's just so much jargon that doesn't need to exist it like really gets to me and that's just an individual piece of one company so if you own a single share of apple that's like going to an apple store and like you know touching a brick on the store and being like, I own this brick.

43:59It doesn't mean you can go in and be like, give me the newest iPhone. I literally own this company. But it means you own a little piece of that company. And if the company does well and other investors think the company is valued more, then your individual piece is valued more. So you might buy it for$100 and then it's worth$150 after a few years. And then you've got funds. And funds are basically a basket because rather than trying to pick and choose individual different companies, you might go, well, that's really hard. And Sim said earlier that 92 to 98 % of professional fund managers don't pick those companies really well.

44:34So maybe I'm not going to. And so a basket is just filled with 100 or 200 or 1000 different companies. You're buying a piece of that basket. And so if you put in$100, your$100 is spread across all those companies. And those baskets can be index funds, they can be mutual funds, They can be exchange traded funds. And that all starts to sound really confusing. So I'll leave you with one to begin with because I don't want to overwhelm anyone. But the most popular one that you'll hear about if you talk to any investor is an index fund. And that's just a basket filled with an index for a list of the top 100 companies in the UK, for example.

45:12That's the FTSE 100 or the top 500 companies in the US, which is the S &P 500. and so that's a really great way to get started because if you know a tesla does really poorly which it is right now it kind of drops down on that list maybe it was number 10 now it's number 20 and so your investments automatically reshuffle and then ai is doing really well so nvidia shares are going up that's a chip manufacturer that ai needs and so those shares go up and so the percentage that you have invested in that goes up and because it's all computerized it's not requiring a lot of fees. And I invest in venture and I angel invest now as well.

45:53That's very high fee orientated. And if you're investing in a hedge fund, they're taking 20 % of your money, whereas an index fund is taking 0.08%. So quite a difference. And so suddenly you go, okay, I know what a broker is. I know what a share is. I know what an index fund is, but people keep talking about capital, what on earth is capital? Capital is just money. People talk about capital markets. It's just money. People say so-and-so company raised$20 million in capital and it sounds really exciting. They just fundraised. It is no different to Girl Scout cookies being like, we made$100 today.

46:30People invested. It seems so overwhelming and it's this idea of what I was saying earlier. If you put a man in a suit and they say words, we think it's really complicated. It's just another language. But once you learn the language, it's actually really easy. And so when you're taking those first steps and, for example, you've decided to put some of your savings from the month in an index fund, should you just set it and forget it? I believe in setting and forgetting. I believe that investing is not me with five different screens waking up every morning with my cold brew after my cold plunge. It's not the life that I want to live.

47:08If I invest, I can do other things with my life. Money is great, and I'm sure we'll talk about it later, but it's not everything. And investing is just something I do to give me choices and freedom of time to do other things. And so investing should be as exciting as watching paint dry. It should not be like highs and lows and ups and downs. Once my cousin texted me and he was like, you know, my investment made like 100 % return and I should move it and I'm excited. And I was like, what are you doing? That's how you lose money. the best investors are actually women. Women tend to outperform our male counterparts when we invest by 0.4 to 1%.

47:46There was a study by Fidelity that looked at millions of investment accounts. And it was because women don't check their portfolio often. They invest in the same thing, usually broad market funds, and they just have an auto-invest set up so that every month, maybe$200 are put into their account. They don't worry about it. The news says, hey, this is happening or that's happening. I was a share market columnist. I used to write these articles, but even I knew that this is just information, but this is not going to change how I invest. No, I think that's really valuable. And should we be investing in cryptocurrency?

48:20Oh, I think that investing should be something of a spectrum. And you can start off with sort of lower risk investments like index funds or exchange trade funds, or even just, you know, having your money in a high interest savings account that's still an investment in itself and then you move across the spectrum and you get to like blue chip companies with blue chip individual companies companies that know and very well things like coca-cola it's probably not going anywhere then you have your high growth companies and on the other end of the spectrum are things like bitcoin cryptocurrency nfts remember those and i think what makes a good investment portfolio is deciding what your risk tolerance is.

49:02For some people, that is, hey, I might have 2 % of my entire portfolio in Bitcoin, in a cryptocurrency, but that's enough because if it goes up and down, which it will, I can sleep easy at night. For someone else, that might be up to 5%. But the rule of thumb is you don't invest in speculative investments like those for more than 5 % to 10 % of your entire portfolio. So yes, if you believe in them, why not? But if the ups and downs of it are going to cause you to not be able to sleep easy at night, then that's when you realize, hey, what I'm investing in is not aligned with my risk profile and something needs to change.

49:39Yeah. And I feel like a lot of investing or conversation around investing online is very trend-based and very trend-led because that's obviously what explodes. And that's what people are suddenly like, I just made a million on Bitcoin. I put one pound in three days ago. And that's like very much the kind of storyline. Incidentally, I did just check my like random Shiba Inu stock that I bought like four years ago. How's that doing? The thousands. Made£5 ,000. It's so much. But anyway, don't. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Lunch is on me. Anyway, I was really, really impressed the other day. The only reason, as I said, I very much said that and forgot that.

50:23And I was like, the other day I saw some press about it and I was like, ah, wait a second. I was like, I'm going to go check that one. Anyway, what is your take in, because I will say that there were other kind of cryptocurrencies in there that had gone completely down to zero. So that's worth remembering as well. But I would love to know what your take is on investing in trends. investing in trends i believe when you invest in a company you should imagine asking yourself would i buy this entire company like let's say let's use like apple as an example it's one that everyone knows if you would say hey i want to buy a share of this company if someone was offering you the entire company of apple that's like something you have to own for you know like five ten years would you buy it then and if the answer is yes if you're going to hold on to it absolutely that's a great investment.

51:11If you're buying, you know, an alternative coin and you're buying it because you're like, I actually think there's value in this and I can see myself holding it for at least five years because I see the benefit of it, then yeah, you should absolutely invest in it. But if it's a investment made on the hopes that you make quick money, there's no quick money. And for every crypto millionaire, there are people that have lost hundreds and thousands of dollars in crypto. And I often talk about my own experience, like investing was something that I've been doing for a long time and something that I've been doing to slowly increase my wealth.

51:45But investing is not the reason that I can, you know, I'm not jumping on private planes. I'm not going out and, you know, paying for fast delivery on my Uber Eats. Like I don't have that kind of, you know, cash flow. Ultimate luxury priority delivery. Who does that? And how do they get there fast? and do they just speak? I think they don't go other places first. Okay. Because I have been known to do it. The rumours are true. I do occasionally. That's crazy, Grace. But it's only when, for example, I get home really late and I'm like, this is going to be an eat dinner and go to bed situation. Or if I feel like on the verge of...

52:27I also do have a blood sugar issue, so maybe it could be, you know, medical expenses. And you get to save those two minutes that they It took quicker to get to you. Exactly. Exactly. Which productivity, really. Yeah. Working hard or hardly working. Spend money to make money, baby. Time is money. So I'd like to talk to you quickly before we end about, I've heard you speak before about the fact that you've achieved everything that you could ever want to achieve. First of all, I think that's amazing. Congratulations. But on top of that, that you don't necessarily always feel fulfilled. And I'd love to just hear a little bit about that from you.

53:02Of course. I took down my vision board because I achieved everything that was on my vision board. That was a really nice feeling. And, you know, within, I always say like success is really fun, but to get everything you want so early and so young is hard. You know, within 36 months, within three years of starting Girls That Invest, I had become a Forbes 30 under 30. I had published a book. I had sold around the world. I had, you know, the Girls That Invest became a multimillion dollar company. we had taken no investment and bootstrapped and so there were all these things I got to I went to Antarctica like I just what more could you want what more could you want did you go through the Drake Passage no I flew in oh wow yeah it takes two hours to fly in and it takes two days to go through the Drake Passage and like I guess this is my Uber Eats yeah see I would But I'm really pleased for you.

54:01Thank you. And I came on this trip to speak at the House of Lords. And this is my second time speaking at the House of Lords. I've gone around the world and done the most amazing things and met the most amazing people. And I realized that all the money problems I had were solved by money problems, but they didn't solve my non-money problems. I think that's really valuable. And I think that, well, I spend a lot of time thinking about how much our self-worth and the idea of fulfillment is tied to financial success, where I don't think that's where it actually comes from. I don't think fulfillment comes from financial success.

54:43I think that financial success is a huge privilege that cannot be understated. And, you know, there's all of this money doesn't buy happiness. I think that that's quite sure past a certain point, but before a certain point, like we cannot negate the situations that, you know, people have to be in because of money issues and all of this. I do think that we have this false tie between output, finances, self-worth and fulfillment. And I don't know how many people you would speak to who have achieved a lot, who genuinely considers themselves fulfilled if they're not taking a number of other boxes.

55:28Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense. So Girls to Invest is a media company and there's a media company that I used to follow that I really loved and looked up to. And I just thought the founder was so cool. And I was like, I just want his life when I grow up. And I remember listening to a podcast where he was like, I'm taking antidepressant medication because I'm not fulfilled. And he had an exit that was like$27 million, like something dumb. and I just remember thinking well if that's not going to bring fulfillment I better like change like this ship is turning a little bit like it's not going towards having an exit and you know living on a beach and just being like life is good I think I realized impact makes me really happy and I was very lucky to win a Cartier do like an impact entrepreneur award it's a fellowship And part of that, it's really stressful.

56:22It was like a six month application process. And you had to share what impact am I making in the world through my business? And I started looking more deeply into impact measurements. And I was like, wait, this is the stuff that makes me so happy. The amount of people that say I've started investing because of this book or I've started taking my money more seriously. I've gotten out of debt because I'm not so worried. That's the stuff that makes me so happy. And it has nothing to do with like business KPIs. but that's what you grow up thinking. Yeah, no, that's so funny. And it's so funny that you say that because that's what this podcast is to me.

56:57So I know it sounds like stupid, but this, the reason I do this podcast, despite the fact that it is both a time drain and a financial drain, is the fact that - They're not as profitable as people make themselves. Oh my God, no, not at all. Not at all. Especially if you're not wanting to do certain things. but the conversations I have on this podcast and the insight I get on this podcast and the like the way it makes me think differently and literally just the action of spending one day a month talking to interesting and impressive people about what they've done their views on life etc etc I enjoy that so much as part of my month that I that is exactly why I do it and I think that this is the first thing that I've actually done that not hasn't been financially driven, because of course there are other reasons that I do everything else.

57:51But I actually introduced this being like, what do you enjoy in the day to day? Like I love, love, love working in the Tala office, for example. Like one of my favorite things is spending time working on product and sitting in rooms of like intelligent people, problem solving and working through issues and all of this. And I love that so much. And I was like, great, I enjoy that part of the journey. There's so much of that journey that I also don't enjoy. This, I enjoy this part of the journey. I enjoy doing the actual thing. And that has to count for something. And I think if I'd looked at this podcast three years ago, I would have looked at the financials for it.

58:28And I would have been like, in the end, what it works out as not worth the time and the effort and the drain it has on like, you know, It's a huge investment. But I sit here and I always have a good day. Like I always love it. And that if I'm in the position for that to be enough, then why just not do it? Because I could make more money doing something else. Like that doesn't make sense. We interview Millionaire Woman on the podcast and we had one last week that she said something that stuck with me so much. She said, and it was almost annoying, you know, when you ask people how they got famous or wealthy and they're just like, it's just happened.

59:05And she said, I followed my curiosity, not my money. And my curiosity always led me to doing things that I was just so good at and passionate about that the money just followed. I think that's a really great example. And I think that's really what you embody. You just do what you enjoy and the rest of it comes. Yeah, absolutely. And to get to that point is obviously a huge privilege. But when you are at that point, being able to value things other than output and productivity and finances, I think is, you know, starts to be a very good decision, especially when it's a marathon, not a sprint. And we're going to be here for a very long time.

59:42We could have honestly done a whole nother hour talking about like productivity and output and the impact it has on our self-worth. But another time. For another day. We will absolutely have that conversation. I'd like to end by asking what the best piece of advice is that you have ever been given the best piece of advice I have ever been given is to not compare myself to other people's journeys and that is very hard to do but I've learned that the you know I've been really lucky and I've been very privileged for the rooms I've been able to go to and the people I've been able to meet but the wealthiest most successful people are not always the loudest they're not the people that have the Lamborghinis and the cars.

1:00:22They're not the people that have the things that you attribute success to. And sometimes when you're, especially online and you're looking at someone's life and you're comparing yourself to their feed, they could be in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to afford the lifestyle that they're living. But you don't know that and you don't see that. You know that like brand new BMW, they're probably paying off very slowly or that trip that they took, they're still five months later paying off the credit card debt for that. and when I stopped caring about what other people were doing and just said this is what I'm trying to do this is the impact I want to have like I just became so much happier and I blocked a few like productivity accounts off my page that really helped too.

1:01:04Really tell me more about that. I'm not going to say their names but every time I'd see them it would just my cortisol levels would rise and be like do I need to be doing more and just it's not their fault that they exist they're helpful for other people, but that's not how I get motivated and I don't need to see it. Yeah. I think that's really valuable as well, because I think that for some people, that's exactly what they need to see. And for other people, that's exactly what they don't need to see. And I really encourage, like, that's what I think is so important about knowing yourself and knowing, are you the person who tends to towards not doing that or not working hard enough or not having a strong enough work ethic and your version of self-care is actually needing to push yourself further?

1:01:45Or are you the type of person who tends to like self-flagellation and being like, you need to do more and like you're not doing enough and all of that, in which case you probably don't need to be opening your phone to that. And I think understanding yourself and where you sit within that is one of the most valuable things we can do because that's exactly how we take information online and are able to digest it in the right place to, you know, for ourselves. Like that's changed so many times over the years for me, whether it's about following fitness accounts, whether it's about following business accounts, whether it's about following investment or finance accounts, like it's, it kind of comes in waves and it's all about knowing yourself and where you are at that point.

1:02:25Absolutely. And there's no shame in it. And it just, it just made me realize like there's inner work I need to do. I need to pause seeing this and human brains are not made to see like get up and work content every single day about it. Yeah. It's just, it's not normal and I shouldn't have access to it all the time. completely agree well thank you so much for joining me you've been incredible and what you do is unbelievable and we all feel very lucky to be able to cheer you on from the sidelines thank you this was amazing i had so much fun

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