How to get ahead with your money and access real financial freedom with Bola Sol | Future Self Series Ep. 8

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1:54just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

2:13What is up? I'm Grace Beverly and welcome back to Working Hard, the podcast shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing. Because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice. What is up and welcome back to Working Hard if you are new here. A PSA that we are now deep into the Future Self series which is a series I'm releasing across my entire maternity leave but basically it's all about reverse engineering the exact life you want. So we're starting at the end, we are working backwards, we have been going through topic by topic on the specific things that you need to do to get there to have your ideal plan for the type of life you want to build for yourself.

2:51Obviously if you're a regular and you've been following along each week and have stuck with me this far, both me and your future self thanks you. But for today's episode we are going to be diving into the topic which makes a lot of us squirm but you know I will not stop speaking about on this podcast and that is money. Because we do not believe in gatekeeping money conversations on this side of the internet. We do not believe in women not talking about money. We do not believe in being quiet when it comes to money. We believe in building up financial literacy and we believe in knowing about our own finances and feeling empowered to have the tools to be able to get to our dream life, which is definitely gonna require some money and some money conversations so we know what direction we're even going in.

3:32I think it's so easy to ignore money conversations or actions because they are terrifying. Like it's easy to not look at your bank balance and only think about the next few weeks rather than the next few years. But I can promise you, you are doing yourself a disservice. We are not having that head in the sand approach. It doesn't need to be too scary. And what we're going to be doing is making that less scary by giving the right information. And I think all of this matters so much because women are just not taught this stuff. And we're taught actually specifically not to talk about this stuff.

3:59We're taught it's kind of unladylike. We're taught it's just not necessarily our area. Like my husband deals with the finances. No, the hand that feeds you is the hand that can starve you. And we are not standing for that over on this side of the internet. And, you know, we're not taught about money at school, we're often not taught it at home and the financial industry has historically not been built with us in mind. The gender investment gap means that women are 35 % less likely to invest than men and we hold 60 % more of our savings in cash rather than putting it to work. The gender pension gap in the UK sits at around 35 % because women are more likely to move to part-time work or take time off their careers due to childcare without their partner supplementing their pension which is a great idea to be talking about if you are taking time off work to have children or going part-time in order to be a caregiver all of these different things none of these are small numbers and the thing that makes me most frustrated is that it's not down to a lack of capability or ambition it's a lack of access to the right information at the right time and it is whole entire parts of industries that have been kind of marketed as masculine and marketed as for their men and that sets us back.

5:05It is so recent that we've been able to even have credit cards without a male co-signature and we're not there anymore so let's make sure we're not there anymore in terms of the way we're actually dealing with money and talk about money. So no matter where your starting point is, whether you are starting from zero, whether you feel behind, whether finances have always felt like they weren't for you and your money just always feels like it's absolutely flying out of your account, there are steps that you can take today that will actually move the needle. So that's what this episode is here for and that's why I have got the perfect person to talk you through it.

5:36Bolasol is both seriously qualified and an absolutely brilliant communicator. She's basically a financial fairy godmother which made her absolutely perfect for this episode. She's a certified financial advisor, an international speaker and a money columnist. She's also written two books, How to Save It and Your Money Life, the second of which is written specifically for women trying to build their futures. So if you're not where you'd like to be right now with money or you feel scared at the idea of setting up some systems for your future self, this episode isn't about making you feel behind. It is about giving you the exact tools so that this journey feels a bit more achievable and more importantly empowering and like something you are allowed to be ambitious about, especially as a woman.

6:16As with all of these episodes, Bola has shared some very specific practical frameworks and tools for us to use in the Working Hard newsletter. There is homework after each of these episodes so that you don't just listen to them and then never think about them again. This whole series is designed to be almost course-like in the way that by the end of it I want you to have very specific tools for designing your future. The newsletter is in the link in the description and that is going to be sent out the day after this episode goes live but for now I will leave you to the amazing bowler and I will see you at the end of the episode.

6:47Do conversations about money make you anxious? Does budgeting, investing and saving make you feel out of your depth? How about the idea of negotiating a pay rise. Do you feel a bit squirmish? If you answered yes to any of those, you are exactly in the right place. Hey everyone, I'm Bola Sol, financial advisor, columnist and author. Thank you so much for that introduction, Grace. I'm so excited to be part of the Future Self series and most importantly, to help you all become financially free. For this episode, we're deep diving into all things finances, why getting them sorted can set your future self up for the ultimate success and why this is so important for women.

7:25And we will be finishing on an exercise that's gonna allow you to properly audit where your finances are right now and reverse engineer your future money goals. I love taking time to audit my finances. Nothing gives me peace of mind like knowing where my finances are. Even if everything isn't perfect, I love to know the direction I'm heading in. After years of working with clients, I've noticed one thing again and again. So many of them have told me that they're naturally bad with money, but I truly believe that this is a myth. What they and you need to realise is that money is a skill and the only way we can get good at this skill is through being in environments where these conversations are normal, which wasn't the case for many of us growing up.

8:04No one is naturally or genetically bad with money. Instead, most of us have just learnt bad habits along the way that are now harder to shape or we were never taught what to do with our money in the first place. And another thing to point out here is that the gap in financial education is gendered. The European Central Bank found that only 15 % of women in Europe are financially literate compared with 27 % of men. In fact, you might have noticed most of the financial courses on how to build wealth typically target men only. I remember finding out when I worked in the corporate world that the guy sitting next to me who I joked with every day was getting paid double what I was.

8:41Nothing was funny once I found that out. So I really think it's crucial we close this financial literacy gap. I've literally dedicated my whole career to it because money isn't everything, but it does give you freedom. Freedom to walk away from a toxic job, to raise a family, or to leave a difficult situation. And for you all listening, the beauty of being in your 20s and 30s is that you have ages to get it right. You have access to the biggest asset of all on your side, time. Getting your finances sorted early means there's more time to let the savings and investments compound and it's genuinely more likely your future self will be financially free as a result.

9:18But before we get into it properly, I know some of you are listening to this feeling like you're already too far behind and it's easy to brush the topic of money to the side, particularly if it feels uncomfortable at the moment. Of course, money can be stressful depending on what season of life we're in, but it's never too late to turn things around when it comes to your finances, so please stick with me. I can promise you that no matter your starting point, you have the power to change course. So let's get practical. If you're in your 20s or honestly at any point where you want to seriously get ahead, here's where I'd start.

9:50Step one, emergency fund. The very first step in all of this is setting aside three to six months worth of living expenses for a rainy day. This will act as your financial safety net and cover unexpected life events, things like a sudden job loss, medical or dental bills or urgent repairs. It avoids you having to use credit cards or loans which can come with heavy interest charges and one thing's for sure we want to avoid any debt possible. It's essential you do this before investing as it will mean you don't have to panic sell anything during a crash in the stock market which is particularly important in today's current political and financial climate.

10:24Now the thing with an emergency fund is you need to know where to start and I know three to six months can sound like a lot. It's okay you start with one week worth of expenses then two then three then four and another thing that's really important. Make sure you separate your emergency fund from your savings. I've had clients who've told me they're saving for a house and they have lots of money and then when I say great where's your emergency fund? They're like oh it's in there too. Make sure you separate it. Put it into an ISAR where it can have some interest and you have easy access to that money because that's the point of having an emergency fund.

10:55Step two, investing. After you've done this we can move on to investing. One of my favourite topics. Now investing may seem daunting at first but once you get a hang of it and find the reliable funds that work, it becomes easier to manage. If you don't know already, women are less likely to invest and more likely to hold money in cash savings often for longer than they should. In fact, Boring Money's 2025 estimate puts the UK gender investment gap at, guess what? 678 billion pounds. And this isn't because women are worse investors. The research actually tends to suggest the opposite once women do invest.

11:29So this is where I want you as the listener to really lean in and start investing earlier than feels comfortable. Also, remember, it's okay to be uncomfortable. That's where the real growth is. As I mentioned earlier, the single greatest advantage you have in your 20s is not your income, it's time. And let me explain what I mean by that. Compound growth means that money invested in your 20s has decades to do its work and money invested in your 40s simply doesn't have the same time span. Two people can invest the exact same total amount and end up in radically different places purely based on when they started.

12:04And this matters disproportionately for women for reasons that aren't our fault. Women are more likely to take career breaks, more likely to work part-time during caring years and statistically live longer, meaning our money needs to stretch further. The pension gap between men and women in the UK is substantial too. The stats show that in the UK, women retire with total pension savings worth nearly 55 % less than men when they reach retirement. That's insane to me. So investing early isn't a nice to have for us, it's crucial for staying afloat later on down the line. If you're specifically wondering where to actually start with investing, here's the first thing to do.

12:41Check your workplace pension first and make sure you're opting in and getting your full employer contribution. This is tax-free money you don't want to turn down and such an easy way to move towards long-term wealth. After this, look into setting up a personal brokerage account with an investment platform like Hargreaves Lansdowne, AJ Bell or Trading212. Please remember, think about the cost and the fees associated with the platform you choose. Now here's what I really want you to think about when it comes to fees. When you're getting started, if a company says something like, oh we only charge 0.15%, that seems small and it might seem small at£10 or£100 but let's say, and I'm hoping, your wealth goes to a million, for example, that's now£1 ,500.

13:25And you might be thinking, did I make the right choice? So make sure you're thinking long term about the cost and the fees associated with the platform you choose. And then once you've chosen that account, you can then transfer money into a stocks and shares ISA and preferably into a low cost diversified fund. Diversified because you're spreading your money across hundreds of companies instead of betting on one or two. So no single company can wipe you out. And low cost because you can't control what the market does but you absolutely can control what you're paying to be in it. That's one of the only levers you actually have and here's my top tip be careful you don't get into FOMO investing fear of missing out so even if you've seen something that's a hot trend on social media think about where you're getting your information from are they qualified are they educated should they be giving you advice at all and don't just go into something because you've heard it's popular that's the way many people lose money and I'll tell you a secret it's the way I lost money in 2020.

14:18There was a stock called GameStop and it was really popular online and I got in and I was just like yeah I've got a thousand pounds let me see what I can do with it and then I watched the stock drop and I lost money and it taught me Bola do not do what everyone's doing, don't follow the hype, make sure you do your research and know where you're getting advice from. Step three negotiating your salary. The third thing I want to talk about is the negotiation gap. So many women I work with have never negotiated a salary, not even once. They've accepted the first number offered every time because they thought that asking for more would make them seem difficult or ungrateful.

14:54But guess what? We need to flip the script. Here's the maths that should make you uncomfortable in a useful way. A pay rise isn't a one-off game, it's a new baseline that every future rise and pension contribution builds on top of. Failing to negotiate early doesn't just cost you a few thousand pounds, over your career, it can cost you a life-changing sum. And if the idea of asking makes you feel sick, just know that companies are expecting you to do this. For any role, there'll often be a salary range where there's budget flexibility to hire within those parameters. Recruiters also have conversations with hiring managers before making offers to candidates to see how much flexibility they have on compensation, just in case the candidate counters.

15:35So as long as you come with evidence and a specific figure rather than a rise because vagueness makes it easy to say no, it will be totally fine. The worst they can say is no, but it's always worth an ask. And just remember that the person across the table has almost certainly negotiated for themselves. You're not being difficult, you're doing what everyone else in the room already did. The first time I negotiated my salary, I jumped from£35 ,000 to£70 ,000. It was one of the best career decisions I have ever made for myself. I remember during the interview process I was so nervous but one of the things that I've learned is that you need to ask for the salary of the job that you're doing not based on the job you used to do and guess what you actually don't have to tell them what your old salary was you need to talk about the salary and the range that you want now based on the responsibilities you'll be taking so even if your voice shakes a bit still ask.

16:30On the point of salary, let's be honest, since 2020 a lot has changed. I remember in my mum's generation, she's a baby boomer, if I found out that somebody was made redundant, they were usually a lot closer to paying off their mortgage than we are at this stage. Now I was made redundant for the first time before I was 30 years old and if there's one thing it's taught me, it's that we all need to have different streams of income. We need to have multiple streams of income. That's why it's important to invest, it's important to increase your salary and potentially look at other ways you can make money.

17:00Now I'm not about burnout but I am about staying smart with your money and your options. I know people who are doctors, lawyers, accountants and they have side hustles as well simply because they know that we are in a world where you need to have your fingers in different pies. So make sure if there's something you've been thinking about that you can do, that you can make extra money, go ahead and explore it. Step four, permission, which underpins both steps we've just gone through. If you take one thing from this episode, it's this. I want to give you explicit permission to want to make money.

17:33In my work, I so often see so many women who feel the sense that ambition around money is somehow distasteful. And I want to call that out because it's really holding a lot of you back. As I said earlier, money isn't the whole point, but you can't deny that because money equals options. It's the ability to leave a job that's making you burn out. It's the ability to leave a relationship that isn't right. It's the ability to take a risk, support someone you love, or simply not lie awake stressed at night. Trust me, I've been there. If you believe money is ethically wrong, you are less likely to ask for more, earn more, invest more, and build more.

18:07So try and shed that limiting belief as soon as you can. It's not doing you any favours. You can't deny money equals options. One thing I want you to be careful of is how you speak to yourself about money. Saying things like I'm broke or I'm skin won't do. Let me tell you why. You would never speak to your best friend that way. You would never say you're broke or you're skin. So don't do it to yourself. Make sure you're speaking to yourself positively about money. And even if you are having a shortage of money, tell yourself I'm having a temporary cash flow problem, but I'll be back up soon. Grainger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, You're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation.

18:50Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Grainger's$2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it. So you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. Mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash.

19:32Modafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Modafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy. To learn more, go to mod.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, ModAlert ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's mod.com. you save you invest you keep an eye on spending so why do your finances still feel so complicated quicken helps you put the whole picture together and make sense of what to do next connect accounts from more than 14 000 financial institutions and see how all the different pieces of your financial life fit together with quicken you can make sense of your options and decide what to do next quicken know what to do next see how at quicken.com Right, let's do something practical together.

20:41I want you to actually do this, not just listen to it. Grab a pen if you can, or come back to it later if you're driving or walking. I'm calling this the future self-exercise money edition, and there are four steps. Step one, working out the gap. Picture a day in your life, five or ten years from now, or whatever timeline you set for yourself at the start of this series, and put a rough number on it. The annual income you'd need to actually live that way or have that lifestyle. Most people have never once asked themselves this and the moment you do, planning for your future life gets a lot clearer.

21:13Now something important here, freedom doesn't require endless accumulation so I want you to think carefully about what's genuinely enough for you. Be clear on what makes a good life by your own definition rather than what looks impressive to other people because if your desires keep expanding, no level of income will ever satisfy you. Then write down where you actually are right now. What you earn, what you've saved, what you've invested, if anything, what you owe. No judgment in this part, just facts because you cannot navigate from a position you refuse to look at and then look at the distance between those two things.

21:47That gap is what you're working to close and when you've got that gap that brings beyond to step two, creating a buffer. What's one single thing you could do this week that moves you towards closing that gap. You might start by setting up a small automatic transfer on payday. For some of you, it's finally checking what your workplace pension is invested in and whether you're contributing enough to get the full employer match, which is genuinely free money that people leave on the table constantly. For others, it's opening a stocks and shares ISA and putting in a small amount. Even a modest contribution monthly is enough to break the seal.

22:19Write down what it is for you and then most importantly, take action. And once you've done those, it's time to take an honest look at your salary. You need to think about the life that you want in a few years and if your salary is going to be able to take you there. So let's say for example you say look I want a five bedroom house, two bathrooms with a drive and a garden. That house may cost a particular number and if you look at your finances and you look at your salary what you can start doing is looking at the number you need to get there. You look at the salary you're on, the multiplier which is usually 4.5 of your salary and see will you be able to get that desired dream.

22:54Now your dream may not be a house it could be something else but the point is make sure you start looking now because it may take a few years for you to get where you want but trust me the process is always worth it and then most importantly take action planning is one thing but executing is much better what I want you to remember is you can save all you like you can save on the coffees you can save on the streaming services but what you have to do is ask for a pay rise because that's what's going to get you to your goal a lot faster and when you do get there remember don't let life inflation get to you What I mean by life inflation is, once you start getting to that salary that you want, don't increase your lifestyle.

23:30Don't start saying, I'm going to go from one holiday a year to three holidays a year. Don't necessarily just think, I'm going to upgrade my car because I have more money. Remember your goals and remember what you're building. And most of all, remember, trust the process. Once you start building these habits we've spoken about, momentum will do the rest of the heavy lifting. Over time, with discipline, saving and investing will begin to feel like the new normal, rather than loads of effort. For a lot of people, hitting new savings milestones may be the first 1k, 2k, 10k save, and it marks a huge psychological turning point.

24:02And particularly if you've invested this money, the massive compounding gets much easier to believe when you're watching it happen in real time. Trust me when I say, the moment your savings are enough to let you walk away from a situation that isn't right, or your investments start carrying real weight without you doing anything at all, that's when it stops being a spreadsheet exercise and starts feeling empowering and like freedom so please trust in the process. I'll tell you a little story. There was a time I was at work and a manager did not like me. He had no idea that I had other streams of income so he felt that he had the power over me that if I lost this job I would be struggling financially.

24:37Little did he know I had different streams of income. I want you all to be in a place where you have options because when you have options you have peace of mind so please trust in the process. We've come to the end of the episode now. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you feel more empowered to take control of your finances now, whatever situation you're in. And please remember, getting dangerously ahead with money in your 20s isn't necessarily about earning a fortune, and it certainly isn't about being naturally gifted with numbers. It's about starting earlier than feels comfortable, asking for more than feels polite, and understanding that every pound you invest now is a pound towards freedom for your future self.

25:15I'm going to hand over some money reset framework tips for you, so make sure you check it out in the newsletter. Take care. Right, I loved that episode so much. She is so incredibly inspiring and so good at communicating a lot of these topics that just feel heavy and feel big and feel like much easier to put your head in the sand about. So I just want to say a huge thank you to her for contributing to today's episode. She's just had a baby herself, but she insisted on being part of our series when we asked her. She's doing this recording on the first day out of her maternity leave which I feel very very grateful for and I know that you will feel just as grateful but also a massive massive thank you to you for listening to this episode.

25:56By listening you've not only hopefully learned a lot from this future self series but you're also supporting the podcast and our entire team during my maternity leave and I hope the value that we've been providing means that that's a great mutually beneficial experience. This week we're going to be posting a lot about money and personal finances and investing and all of that on the working hard instagram so that you can get the practical tips and actually take some actions from this episode so i will see you over there and otherwise i will see you next week where we are going to be taking a whiplash topic turn and we are going to be talking about how to reverse engineer your skincare routine in a way that your future self will thank you for i told you at the beginning of this series i wanted to deep dive on specific topics that a you loved most from the podcast but b might not be talked about in a kind of wider future self life improvement sense but actually in all sorts of ways have made a massive difference to the quality of my life and are all topics that you have asked for more episodes on so i hope you have a wonderful week and i will see you then

26:55grainger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Grainger's$2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. When you're running a growing business, the right systems can unlock your full sales potential and make fulfilling every order effortless.

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