The Money Gains Podcast
Welcome to the Money Gains Podcast, where we talk all things money and how to grow your bank balance. Hosted by Sammie Ellard-King, Money Content Creator of the Year 2024, we chat with the sharpest minds in personal finance to give you real, actionable advice – no fluff, no jargon.
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The Money Gains Podcast
Financial Planner Reveals: Why You’ll Never Retire (Unless You Do This) - George Agan
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In this episode we welcome Chartered Financial Planner George Agan to the show.
George reveals why UK workers, even on £40,000, face a retirement crisis that could see their money run out in their early 70s and how small percentage increases in pension contributions can add hundreds of thousands to your retirement pot.
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George on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@PrinciplesPersonalFinance
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✅ Why default pension contributions will leave you broke
✅ How small increases create massive wealth
✅ Why the state pension triple lock is unsustainable
✅ How to reframe retirement planning as "buying time"
✅ Why you should start with rough targets rather than waiting for perfection
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DISCLAIMER:
This video is meant for educational purposes and should not be considered financial advice. When you invest your capital is at risk. Past performance is not a guarantee of future success.
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How do you know if you're going to have enough for retirement and is it even possible anymore on a UK average salary? Joining us is Chartered Financial Planner, George. Welcome to the Money Games podcast, man. How are you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm good. Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to this. Mate, I've been
SPEAKER_02:diving into your content heavy. Oh,
SPEAKER_00:I apologize in advance.
SPEAKER_02:But for context, you're Chartered Financial Planner?
SPEAKER_00:Yep, that's
SPEAKER_02:right. By day?
SPEAKER_00:Yep, Chartered Financial Planner by day.
SPEAKER_02:And content creator by night?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's exactly how it works, actually. Yeah, just... The wee hours I'm doing the content. So yeah, I'm a chart financial planner, a fellow personal finance consultant, I'm a director at a company called Flying Colours Advice. So we're kind of independent advisors. So my kind of day job is kind of helping individuals answer the big questions. Have I got enough? Am I going to be okay? How do I plan my retirement, my business exit, all that kind of stuff. And also I have my own channel called Principles of Personal Finance. It's a bit of a word from the mouth. I kind of wish I'd called it something a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah. Well, PPF actually stands for Pension Protection Fund. It's where the pensions get dumped when they go bust. Then no. So I couldn't abbreviate to PPF. So yeah, so I've got my own channel. It's kind of a medium-sized channel, about 25,000 subscribers or so. It has a pretty good audience now, which is great. And the kind of the content I do, has had a real evolution, if I'm being honest. I started more general kind of finance topics when I started the channel about four years ago. And then I ended up just because of kind of self-reinforcement from the algorithm more than anything. What YouTube's really good at, which you'll know yourself, is it's really good at kind of finding your audience and telling you as a creator what they seem to enjoy. And that kind of led me down doing more and more retirement kind of tax planning, kind of the more complicated stuff around kind of what I do as an advisor on a day-to-day basis.
SPEAKER_02:Which probably feeds nicely over into the business as
SPEAKER_00:well. Yeah, there's no two ways about it. It's ended up being kind of a really big source of people working with me, which has been great. I've had regular periods where I'm just at capacity now because of it, which is fantastic. And yeah, it seems to be going from strength to strength, which is great.
SPEAKER_02:One of the things that people don't necessarily understand is what the difference between an IFA firm or an independent firm versus, say, one that's not. What's the kind of difference?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. So you've got either independent financial advisors or restricted. I've got to absolutely say you can get excellent advice from both. And bad advice. And bad advice. Yeah, independent will not save you. No, I'm only joking. Do not cut that. Yeah, so basically you can get advice from both. However, the big difference in independent, especially if it's independent and whole of market, which is always the firms that I've always worked for, is that you basically the way I see it is that you've got your client you're advising and as the name suggests you are not affiliated to any product provider any solution you can effectively look at the whole of the market and understand what do we need to do to solve this person's problem and how can we negotiate with all the different providers we've got to get them the best possible deal and get them the best outcome. Now restricted advisors would argue that they can do very similar but the only difference is that they have a select panel which may be restricted. So the UK's largest wealth manager, St. James' Place, are a great example. There's also Quilter. Yeah, these kind of big names who you'll know of. And effectively, my understanding is that they can only really choose their own products, so to speak. They can't, for example, go and do other pensions with other providers. So that's the key difference. And that's, it's one of the reasons why I've always, when I became an advisor, I always wanted to work for independent firms, just because for me, I see it as kind of an alignment. And I like to be able to say to my clients, you know, look, my only loyalty is to you in this. And we're going to solve your problems. And we're not going to be affiliated to any provider.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I quite like that because it's kind of similar to the mortgage market in a way. There's restricted mortgage advisors and this whole of market mortgage advisors and tend to be when it comes to that you end up with a better rate at the end
SPEAKER_00:of it in a way I would say it's you know I haven't heard the argument why restricted would be better if we're looking purely just objectively you've got two advisors who are both doing the same thing you've got one who can choose whatever provider and you know leverage all the ability around speaking to different providers and all the rest of it versus one who is restricted to just a set of providers why would the position be better for restricted Now, a restricted advisor might be able to come on here and say this because X, Y, Z. But, of course, it would.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Advice is a good thing in either way. Correct. Picking the right one for you and your circumstances and lifestyle and who you feel most attached to as well is a big, big decision for a lot of people. But, obviously, a big part of what you do is that big word, the big R word, shall we say, retirement.
SPEAKER_01:Oh,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. And, yeah, It's a difficult thing for people to get their head around and it's a scary thing for a lot of people and a lot of people worry that they won't have enough and they don't even know how to establish that. that question in their lives. So how would people approach this and what's the first thing you would do?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think, so you're absolutely right. So there's a Nobel Prize winner called William Sharpe, like an absolute mass genius, and he called it the nastiest, hardest problem in finance retirement planning. And the reason why is because there's so many variables. You've got, you don't, none of us, apart from very flexibly, know how long we're going to live. We don't know what investment returns are going to be. We don't know what inflation is going to be. We don't even know necessarily the tax legislation that's going to occur across a multi-decade period So it's really tricky to kind of know the exact position. I would say for anyone making a step, trying to understand what enough is, is ultimately just realize that you don't want perfect to be the enemy of the good. You want to be directionally correct first. So the way we do it with clients, like let's say I've got clients coming to me who wants to know, can I retire, which is kind of one of the big things that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. At the heart of it, we do cash flow planning so basically we will use kind of a fit for purpose cash flow modeler there are some excellent ones out there unfortunately most of them only are available for professionals but there are some other really good ones um and we will basically look at all the different income sources look at their what they're invested in and then look at okay if you were to use either this pot or your different income sources how can you be in a position where you um you know, you've got enough in various market conditions. So what we do as a firm is we look at basically, do all the analysis on their pension parts. Maybe they've got some rental income, they've got state pensions kicking in later. There might be some defined benefits income. We'll then have a really good conversation around expenditure and go, okay, this is what your lifestyle is expected to cost. Not only your basics, but also your aspirational stuff. You might want to help your kids out. You might want to go on some big holidays. I'm sure you'll probably need to replace a car. These things need to be factored in. And then we'll basically, using some analysis, we'll look at, okay, is your money projected to run out that's okay but what age yeah and if we were to look at adverse market conditions let's say the market drops or we see higher inflation like we have done the last couple of years how how secure how strong is your plan so that's what kind of professionals do when you're kind of nearing or approaching or kind of planning for your retirement and But I think probably the question within the question is, how does someone who's maybe a little bit younger understand what enough is going to be for them later? Which is kind of the key thing. Now, I think that what I would probably suggest with this is that it's good just to be directionally correct. So certainly the way I'm planning for my own retirement is I'm basically just thinking, okay, you know, it's kind of like that Warren Buffett or might be Jeff Bezos thing is that instead of trying to think about like we're going to, perfectly predict the future we're going to think about what's not going to change so what's not going to change you're probably still going to have a certain level of bills you're probably still going to want a certain lifestyle what's the cost of this What are your other income sources? When is the date that you want to potentially retire? And then you can use some very basic rule of thumb guides to give you an idea of how much money you would theoretically need if your only assets were these pots. Now, it's not as simple as that because you've got things like state pension kicking in later. You might go, well, actually, I've got a rental property that I'm renting out. That's going to reduce the capital amount. But again, going back to my point on perfect being the enemy of the good, you just want to kind of have a broad figure to understand, right, am I kind of saving anywhere near enough at this level?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. For someone to say that, say, earning an average salary, let's say 40 grand, slightly over the average median salary in the UK, but let's say they're earning 40 grand, they don't have a bit of rental income, and they're like a bit worried because all they're doing at the moment is 5% contribution and a 3% employer match on auto enrolment. Yep. Like, that's not... enough, right?
SPEAKER_00:No, I think that's one of the big, and I did a video on this specifically, where what I did is I looked at, okay, you've got various different kind of bodies who put out, this is what we believe is going to be enough in retirement. Probably the most famous is the Pension Lifetime Savings Association, the PLSA, who do publish their kind of income requirements. Now, I don't have to hand the exact amount, but it's quite a lot. Generally, like comfortable, I think is over 45,000 or something, maybe even higher now. that they've increased it. And that kind of will give you, they'll go, okay, to produce this, if you were to either live off your investments or buy an annuity, which is a guaranteed income for life, you're going to need a pot of X or a certain amount. And this pot is going to need to be absolutely massive. So what I did in the video is I went, okay, using the cashflow model, the tools that we use or I use with clients every single day, let's say you had somebody who just did the default. So did, you know, minimum contributions, was on average earnings, What would happen if they were to just build that pot up and then they wanted to retire on the pension lifetime association amount? Money ran out way scarily early. I think it was in the very early 70s.
SPEAKER_02:Really?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:From a retirement at 65?
SPEAKER_00:No, I think I did a retirement at 60 in the video. I wanted to kind of anchor it. Instead of to state pension age, I wanted to anchor it to what people would kind of see as... I think when we speak to most people about when would I like to consider retirement, Most people anchor to 60. Now, using the phrase most people does not mean that's right for you. I just want to kind of acknowledge that. It's really individual. But if we use that just as a yardstick, that's what we found. And the reason why it was such a big drop in the pot is that what you were finding is you were finding that their needs on the pot were very high before the state pension kicked in. And then the state pension offered some support, but the pot was going down at a rate that it just exhausted way too early so um that was a bit of a sobering kind of realization which is like okay well firstly that it doesn't look good because that means that the average person is not going to be on track if they stay in the default pot but there are a lot of assumptions underlying this which not necessarily give us some hope but give us some kind of food for thought, which is that there was a great paper, I think it was from the IFS, who looked at the Pension Lifetime Savings Association figures. And they basically made the point, went, okay, hold on a second. The Pension Lifetime Association figures assume you don't have a rent or mortgage. They assume that you've got your own home, which I know is a bit of a dream for a lot of people, and you're not paying any rent or mortgage in retirement. How many people, if we factored that in, are actually living that quality life now? So if we added in the goal for retirement plus rental income, how many people are earning that in work? And the reality is hardly anyone. It was like about 70% of people aren't even earning that in work. So the question that you put back onto that is that, okay, well, if we're telling people you need this in retirement and they're not even able to have that lifestyle in their working life, surely something's not right. We're either setting the bar too high or something else is going wrong there. So I think the thing which I've rightly got pushed back and I had pushed back on on that video rightly so is that saying, look, the Pension Lifetime Savings Association, they are just, you know, they are... They are useful yardstick because somebody has to come in and be like, if you want this quality of life, this is how much it costs you. And in fairness, if you have a look online, maybe after watching this video or listening to this, they are useful because they will give you a breakdown of if you meet this standard, we would expect. holiday in the med we would expect you know a certain kind of style of retirement and someone's got to do that work but um they're not necessarily going to reflect the amount that you need and what's enough for you
SPEAKER_02:yeah it's like a holiday in the med one um local holiday uk-based yeah a car yeah and like a standard family home which you would sort of expect at those levels it's not drastic and the number is quite scary
SPEAKER_00:yeah i think that's the sobering thing which is when you look at the kind of descriptions, they're not kind of what most people, I think, again, I use the phrase most people, but I think what a lot of people think of retirement is kind of like these golden years that they're going to go and, you know, go on some cruises maybe or whatever, or they're going to go and do, you know, have some great holidays. And the description in the retirement living standards is not that for most, even the comfortable, it's not kind of like this huge, bombastic, amazing retirement.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's also like, we had Lisa Conway-Hughes on as well, and she talks, she's great, and she spoke about obviously retirement as well, and your first five years, like, you want to go for it, because you're like, I've retired, and also it's the seven-day weekend, like, you're off, and you're barely, you know, you're going from full working life you're not going to sit around. You're going to want to actually spend some of your money. And so factoring in that, obviously, as you get later into life, mobility becomes an issue. But actually, again, your costs could ramp up because of care required at those levels and things like that. So there's so many factors that have to be sort of looked at here. It's not just you need to get to 400 or 500 grand in savings.
SPEAKER_00:No, and I think it's a really good point. So what I do with clients is I say, right, there are three stages in retirement. There's kind of the go-go years, which is the start years where this is where we want to make sure that nothing is left off your bucket list that you haven't done, assuming you've got the money. So obviously that's part of why I'm here and making sure you've got enough. But assuming they've got the money, we want to make sure that you have that great start retirement because health isn't guaranteed. And the stats are when you get into your mid seventies, you're very lucky to avoid the health issues that are going to hinder your ability to do these kind of these big things. Middle retirement tends to slow down. that's just because the prospect, you know, certainly from what I've seen from experience, the prospect of going on these massive holidays, especially in Australia and all the rest of it, tends to, you know, wane a little bit. There might also be grandkids, there's other reasons. And then in later retirement, it really can slow down a lot. And if you're financially secure, you do often have a position where maybe there's more money coming in than going out because of your, your kind of your life actually isn't that expensive, you don't do as much. Now, the downside is that the risk is care. And care is a real, it's a really thorny issue for financial planning because basically you're saying okay we've got this thing that doesn't affect everyone it affects some people hugely disproportionately but if we factor in that this is going to affect you that's going to have a massive compromise in early retirement you know you're going to have to basically for a lot of people give up or you know maybe mitigate by selling the house or whatever your early retirement for something that might not affect you which is not a very satisfying financial planning outcome and But another thing just to kind of mention on retirement, especially for the kind of the younger and certainly the way I kind of approach it is that I think kind of we all have these kind of things that were handed down to from maybe older generations. And the older generation, I think would probably give us the idea of like, you retire at 60, maybe you get the watch from work and you know, like you're, you know, you go on some cruises or whatever, you know, that's kind of like the stereotypical stuff. Now, a lot of my clients would push back on this and say, that's George, that's not the retirement I'm living. And you know this, but that's the stereotype in our minds. I think for any, like anyone, basically probably even up to mid 40s, We're faced with a very, very different economic reality. For the vast majority of people, getting onto the housing ladder, if they've managed to do it, has been very difficult, which means the mortgage is much longer. It's been, especially for a lot of millennials, hit the financial crisis. And when they got into the workforce, they're still reeling from that. You've got Gen Z who have been massively impacted by COVID and all the implications from that. There's going to be another disruption with AI. That's all the negatives. What are the positives? Well, the positives are that actually, if you look at the structure of how we work now, it's never been more flexible to work. And therefore, you're not necessarily having this position where the work you take is going to constantly be five days in the office. I want to caveat, that's obviously the people who do physical jobs where that's not the case. So I'm not covering everyone here. But the point I'm trying to make is that I think it might be necessary for a lot of us to rethink, okay, what does, instead of retirement in this kind of stereotypical cliched way, what does my later life plan look like and for me personally because i think it's probably best to do it in the way i kind of think about is i think okay well i really love the work i'm doing right now i'm working really hard i've got a young son so i'm knackered all the time
SPEAKER_02:you gotta look at me thanks man
SPEAKER_00:yeah yeah thanks these lights these 4k cameras yeah these lights are flattering but when you get in the edit you're gonna be a lot of the crypt keeper um um however um you know i would like to be in a position where you know if i work hard and if i have enough saved at 50 maybe i drop a day you know and I get a little bit more time and then maybe if I can maybe do that again at 60 maybe I'd continue working to 70 75 because I love what I do and I think if you speak to somebody and say you're going to have this boomer retirement where you finish at 60 and this is what it's going to cost you it's good as kind of like a prompt for action so it's like okay maybe I need to save a little bit more into my pension which is generally good advice for the vast majority of people but But I think what's probably a better framing is to say, okay, well, you're like, unless you're in the NHS or in the police, you don't have the security of these gold-plated final salary pensions where you get a guaranteed income from your employer. What do you have? You have an ability now to be much more flexible in your approach. So the way I would see it, because ultimately what a financial planner does is we financially and otherwise help craft the life you want to lead. What I would say to someone younger is not to completely... scare the you know what out of them by saying you need to try and get a million pounds i would say okay let's work this backwards what is the life that would be most like what was the life that would give you the best balance between work and freedom and how can we craft this financially so that happens as early as possible
SPEAKER_02:so let's go back to the conversation uh around that individual with the 40k oh yeah and the auto enrollment and that's all you're doing yeah the even a 5% or 10% increase in savings or investments at that point from net salary has a drastic impact with time. What... Did you look at that as well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I did. I did. And that's why you're leading me in with that question. Yeah. So what I did is... May
SPEAKER_02:or may not have watched
SPEAKER_00:previously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry. The listener didn't tell at all. So basically, financial planning is the art of using levers, basically as in like, okay, what are the alternatives that we can look at to, as I was saying, to kind of craft the ideal life? And... If we just go, okay, you're going to keep a flat level of saving forever and you're going to try and hit a 60, you're disaster. You know, it's a disaster. And it's like, oh no, I'm screwed. But actually if that person just does a few little extra things and there's multiple things they can do, of course they could retire later. But another thing could do every time you get to a certain age, why don't we just bump up your increases? So I think in the video I did a couple of percentage every couple of years and that actually had an enormous impact because what was happening is that they were, as they were going through life and this not for everyone, but this for a lot of people, people does track, which is as you kind of develop into your 40s, into your 50s, you kind of hit peak earnings. If you just bump up your contributions when that happens and you don't let lifestyle creep, which is the ever-escalating cost of your expenditure, kind of take hold, then that same person was absolutely fine in the cash flow panel, certainly was in a much, much stronger position. So the picture I'm trying to paint here is that all is not lost with this stuff. It's just that you do the big thing that all of us have to do is we have to take control of our finances because we're in a position where we don't have the security final salary schemes we don't have affordable housing we don't have you know there's loads of things we don't have what we do have is the ability to adapt and the ability to get access to incredible information via your podcast.
SPEAKER_02:And
SPEAKER_00:your YouTube. Hit the nail on the head to take action. But the responsibility is on us to do it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure. It is a massive difference. When I run those numbers on my own life and when we do these videos on them, the difference, even in a couple of percent, once you factor in compounding and time, it's just enormous. It can end up being in the hundreds of thousands of pounds over a longer period of time, which is quite a big difference to your life, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 100%. And the, because I do have some younger clients and the nature of what it is, is that they tend to be those who kind of like, you know, earning a lot of money and really kind of just need to outsource the finance aspect. But the bit that I really try and frame with them is instead of being like, you know, this kind of generic advice of like, yeah, we're funding your retirement, I go, okay. What I know of myself and what I know of young people is that they really like life autonomy. They like control. So if you think about it, the way I try and frame it with them is, okay, what are the tools we've got? We've got tax relief and we've got the ability to let time be our biggest asset here. So the way I frame it with these clients, I say, why don't we consider your saving as buying time? So the way it works very broadly is if you look at kind of a 6% return over kind of 30 years, you'll be in a position where let's say you have 5,000. Again, I'm just kind of doing mental mass here so this will be a bit off so don't people in the comments don't come to me you know that equates to about 30,000 over that period I believe if you get that level of return and if you think about it that way it goes okay well if I was to save 5,000 a year which I think is about 416 pounds or whatever again don't quote me on this a month that then will put you in a position where you go okay well 30,000 a year that is almost a year of my life so how can I connect myself and buy time So that ultimately I can leverage this really powerful force because the only way that this is not going to feel like an impossible sacrifice is if you can connect your future self to your present self. And for me personally, that's what I do myself. When I think about my kind of pension savings and if I have to get some money in and I can maybe throw it into my pension, I think, okay, fine, I've done that. I've not been able to buy something this month that maybe I would have thrown some money out. But that theoretically could end up being an extra year of my life or what is more valuable to me, the extra year of my life is more valuable to me actually. And yes, it does cost a decent amount of money, but ultimately it's palatable because you've got the magic of compounding on your side. 100%.
SPEAKER_02:How do we manage this and how would you manage this with the clients? We live in this society at the moment things are getting more expensive it's getting a lot harder and a lot of individuals are living for today and not tomorrow yeah and so they juggle this with the you know i get it if i put a post out about this guarantee you 90 of the comments will be yeah well like i don't know who i'm going to be in 30 years or i don't uh want to give up how I want to enjoy my life now and these types of questions which I'm sure come up with you quite a fair bit but I imagine once they've come to you you're down you mustn't enjoy your time now yeah live off fake beans and turn the lights off here's my fee but the I I get it a lot. And juggling that, and I imagine you do too. I was going to say that when they come to you, they're probably a touch more ready.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But still, it's like a conversation you must have. It's like, well, I do still want to go on the holiday.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And... you know there's a great phrase advice you know it's like um if it's the best plan is the plan you can stick to and as an advisor you've always got to be really attuned to kind of this barbell strategy where you're kind of you're part like motivational you're going to do this we're going to i'm going to push you like a personal trainer would push you in a gym um but another part is like but i don't want to give you an unrealistic plan you can't stick to so you've i often go back and i'm working with a client now where we've been back and forth on that and i've been like i'm going to give you a stretch target and it became clear that they were really struggling with it so i was like no we need to We need to adjust this because what I can promise you is yes it might be slightly watered down from what I originally proposed but if you can continue to do this for 10 years you're going to be in a really good position so there is that I think there's two bits that I want to answer on what you just said which is really interesting which is so there's one which is kind of like the view of like I don't know what I'm going to be I'll tackle that but there's another side which I always want to mention I always try and kind of throw this out here every so often because I think it is important people like us as in people who like live and breathe money kind of acknowledge this which is that you know some people for a lot of people a lot of the UK they are really struggling right now and you know cost of living been hammered you know not really received pay rises inflation's gone through the roof and kind of the analogy I give is that like I am a podcast fan you know love stuff like this and you know I listen to the occasional the health ones because I like the gym as well so like Andrew Huberman and that kind of stuff yeah but I'm going to be negative don't give him too much comfort so but he's like oh yeah all you need to do is you need to get up in the morning, you need to have a look at the sun, you need to take your vitamins, you need to do 10 press-ups, you need to have an ice bath or whatever nonsense you're spouting again. And the analogy I would give is that my sun rolls around and it's like everything is chaos and it's like, Christ, I am just surviving. It's a miracle I put on shoes this morning. And There are some people with finances where it's like, you know, a great example is like, you know, single mothers, I don't know how the hell you do it because our mat leaves dreadful. I know this, I've just been through the calculations with it all. And I want to kind of say that, you know, if you're one of those people who's struggling, I think the way I would probably frame this kind of talk is saying like, it's like your health. like that human example, it is good to have the knowledge of like, right, if I can get to a position where my situation allows this, I'm going to do this because yes, it is optimal to, you know, see some sunlight in the morning and ideally get a workout. But sometimes I also need to accept that my life doesn't have, it doesn't allow that based on the constraints I have. And same with personal finance. I think the reason why you're kind of you know, any kind of saving habits, any kind of framing can be so powerful is because the thing that's ultimately going to dictate whether you're successful finances or not is knowledge and then habits.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They're the big thing. So I think it ultimately is one of those things where we need to kind of acknowledge that some people can't do it at this moment in time. Now, going back to that in relation to the person who says, I don't know who I'm going to be. I really would throw in that sort of, you know, that sort of Warren Buffett ism, which is like, okay, but you enjoy all these things. now whether it's the things that cost you money whether it's just living assuming you're going to be alive which we have to assume that's going to be the case going forward you are going to need that in the future but what thing you are not going to have in the future is you're not going to have the benefit of time you can't go back to when you're 25 years old and get the advantage of the tax relief and the advantage of the compounding when you're 45 50 and i know because i see it in my comments that the people when they get to 50 and they've got nothing saved start to really panic yeah And they start to go, okay, I'm really in a tough position right now. And even high earners then have to sacrifice a lot to then get to where they want to be because they can't use time to their advantage. So again, coming back to that, which option do you choose? And again, coming back to that, the best plan is the one you could stick to. The thing I would advise is use these amazing resources, get your knowledge. Sacrifice a little bit and have the best intention to increase that because I can promise you your future self will thank you. I'm not saying don't go on holiday because you're putting more into your pension. I'm saying try and be self-aware with it and find the line yourself, basically.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it could be the difference of St. Lucia or Greek islands. They sound pretty good. Yeah, they sound great, but there is a severe cost factor. difference in those yeah likely right yeah or it's the four star instead of the five or the three and four you know they're they're trade-offs
SPEAKER_00:i would probably yeah i prefer to frame it as like it could be the difference between you finishing a job that you hate at 58 or 60 versus having to work all the way to state pension age yeah because i think that's a more emotive thing you know then because and that's the reality for a lot of people as well um something
SPEAKER_02:like i wanted to to unpack before it goes out of my head because I think it's a really good point is that you're in this season at the moment where the young child and it's expensive and it's time and they will get older and then they may or may not depending on how much they keep asking you for but generally it gets less expensive over a period of time when they're younger and in these formative years they are more expensive and so you go through seasons of life where you're less flushed but continuing some level of savings, even if you were at 15% and now you're at 3%, is still something,
SPEAKER_00:right? Yeah. And I love the idea of pay yourself first. And that's actually a mantra that I've stuck to in this period. Now, admittedly, I've got a job which has allowed me to, so again, coming back to these caveats, you know, but, when I was speaking to my wife about it, I was like, no, we're not going to change the amount we invest because like I've said, this is a minimum that we need to put in for our future. And I'm not going to budge on that. You know, we can make lifestyle changes. Um, But the thing about... I bet
SPEAKER_02:that was a fun conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm just imagining what mine would be like if I did that. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:well, actually, she doesn't like looking at finances very much. It's a bit of a joke in our house where if I need to hide anything, I just put it in a folder called pension. Don't look in that. Don't look in that pension folder. Anyway, moving on swiftly. Now she knows. Yeah, now she already knows. What was I going to say? Yeah, I think that Seasons thing's really... and because I live and breathe this stuff and I'm with it all clients all day and I love it obviously you know I'm I have to remind myself of my own advice there which is that the key thing when you sometimes get a step back financially in the same way that if you have a step back with your health and maybe get injured it's not about thinking oh no you know I'm not I'm not where I need to be. You need to kind of allow yourself that time to breathe. Um, I'm not, I'm rubbish at it. Um, you know, costs have gone through the roof and I, um, you know, I really, I still want to be really aggressively building my net worth and I have to remind myself that this is temporary. This will pass. This is not the phase in your life to be, you know, to do that and that and that bit. It's
SPEAKER_02:hard. 100%. Sometimes financial planners need financial planners themselves. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why I'm here. I thought this was a session. It is. That's why I do this podcast, man. It's free sessions every week for me. It's great. But it is true because we had Alan Smith on last weekend. He's brilliant. And even he was saying he's dealing with all of these very complex situations every single day, but he needs to be held accountable too. It's like a personal trainer for him. And I agree. And I think what's lovely... about what you said there is that you clearly approach this with a personal finances, personal mantra, which is different to out-of-the-box advice or generic YouTube videos telling you to do£200 a month into your ISO, which just kind of forget that things change for you over your periods of lifetime. I've been suspect to that absolutely in my content as well. But as I've learned and grown and seen more, I think you have to open your eyes to the situations that people, everyone sees money differently and reacts money differently and has different situations. And that's going to have a drastic effect on your outcomes as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So the money scripts is what's called money stories. We've all got stories which are in our minds from childhood and all the rest of it. And a good advisor is, you know, is kind of able to be not, therapists but able to be attuned to it and just be aware of right this approach is going to work with this person this is going to be because it's all about getting the right outcome but you know the bottom line is is that if you're ever going to work with a financial planner make no mistake, they get to hold a really privileged position in your life as well because they kind of, you tell a financial planner, they know like basically what's going on with your life, what's going on with your finances, what your, you know, your hopes, dreams, aspirations, what your worries, they kind of get this kind of hybrid between, you know, they almost know as much about you as your doctor and your therapist at the same time. But it's a really privileged position. It's one of the key reasons why I love the job because you can have a really, really big impact. Like very recently, I had a client who's, they were you know and and i think the only thing i don't want to be out of touch with it is that naturally it skews to people have more money because they tend to have more issues so it's not necessarily a reflection of the wider population but a client who was um ultimately you know they were they came to me and they were like i've been working since 1985 i've never i've never had a you know kind of like a long period off i need to retire and and it was really clear from the planning there was loads of strategic stuff we need to do but i was like you've not only got enough, but you've got enough for a while. You know, you've had enough for a while. So, you know, you need to, and for various reasons, he wasn't able to retire immediately. We got to the next meeting kind of nine months later and he said, okay, but you know, I've been offered this because I'm leaving. I've been kind of headhunted for this new role. And it's, you know, it kind of makes sense. It's only for kind of a year and it's with people I like and it sounds great. And I was like, okay, that's fine. And I said, well, this sounds like a dream scenario as far as like what you could find as far as a transition for work but just to replay what you said to me we had a meeting you know 18 months ago and you said I've not had a break since 1985 you are this age you know you're already into what many people kind of the age of people are kind of heading towards retirement what has fundamentally changed and And I just kind of left that with them. They went away and they came back and they said, yeah, actually, I really, really appreciate the advice. I've decided to not take the role. We're going to focus on holidays, family and all the rest of it. And it's that kind of stuff, which is like, that's, that's kind of stuff is a plenty get out of bed for, because it's like, it's, it's not necessarily just the financial, it's kind of, um, helping the clients have an alignment to kind of who they want to be and how they want to spend their time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's sort of semi-holding them accountable to their own plans which they came up with. Because then we walk out of the thing and something else happens and shiny object syndrome over here and bit of status game over there and then suddenly we're off. We're all victims,
SPEAKER_00:including financial planners. I don't want to be here and be like, I'm not victim to it at all. I'm absolutely potentially victim to it. And it's the challenge that you can't be objective to your own decisions by definition.
SPEAKER_02:100%. I bang on about putting money into your investments every month. but I'm just about to move house. Suddenly realized, okay, it's going to be very expensive. One of the reasons being stamp duty, you know, like we're having to dump a bit of money extra in that we didn't foresee. And so what happens? Well, things have to like, you know, we have to adapt for a couple of months. Did I want to stop putting in to my ices and pensions for a couple of months? No, of course not. But you know, life. And so again, it's like, being adapted to those seasons and will I get straight back on the horse and carry on absolutely and
SPEAKER_00:yeah exactly and then that's the thing it's the habit isn't it and that's kind of the key thing which is it's that it's that where habits become identity and that I think is the I think that is the key thing I've seen in like all people who are financially successful it's that their kind of their ability to either manage or save or invest or whatever it's part of their identity and once it is that's that you're kind of okay you probably are going to be financially successful unless something really weird happens
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. We've mentioned it a couple of times, but it's been in the news a lot recently, which is the lovely, lovely state pension.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. No, I did a couple of videos on the state pension and they're like, you like awaken the trolls. Yes. They come to you. That's why
SPEAKER_02:I've saved it to the back end of the podcast so we didn't start with that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. George's expose on the state pension. I would have been all right with that, by the way. I would have respected the viral
SPEAKER_02:nature of it. The age. Big problem at the moment for the media, but obviously Triple Ock is coming under pressure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But you have a solution. I have a solution? When we spoke initially, we went over the fact that there could be a way around this for... to continue because if it carries on at this same rate with our ever increasing ageing population in the UK it's going to get very difficult to sustain it at its current levels
SPEAKER_00:yeah and that's the one politicians don't like to say it because they know that how difficult and suicidal it is politically that any erosion of the state pension is kind of like the NHS it's really inbuilt in our national identity so it really you know even we've seen that winter fuel it's just such a toxic area to try and improve the bottom line is mathematically is that It's not impossible for us to maintain the promise of the triple lock, but when you look at the maths of it, because we have an ageing population, so there's what's called the old age working dependency ratio, I think I've got that right, which basically means the people working compared to the people you have who are older is declining. We're also in a position where productivity is a real issue as a country, and the triple lock, because of the nature of it, it can increase at very high levels. So it's increased much higher than we were expecting. The IFS, I think it was, did a really good paper on it. And what they're basically saying is they're saying, okay, this is unsustainable in its current form. um now the question is is what's going to happen and i think most people are in agreement with that although admittedly it's very difficult politically to change it and because it's such a big part of the voting populace as far as older demographics any political party is just rushing to say keep it in place because no one wants to be the person who's more realistic with it however I think one of the things that has been a little bit, as you would expect from anything in the media, a little bit exaggerated is that people often go, well, actually that just means that there's going to be no state pension. It's going to be, you know, we're going to completely get rid of it. I really cannot see a world where that happens. And the reason why is that when you look at the maths, loads of people across different kind of spectrums of society still have a real need for the state pension as part of their retirement income. I don't have the particular stat to hand, but it's much, much higher than you'd think as far as proportion of their retirement income. So then that leads to, okay, what's going to happen? Well, ultimately, if they were to dilute it down to a double lock, so where they don't, for example... they look at, so instead of 2.5 inflation or earnings, they just change one of those metrics. So it's maybe just two levels of inflation protection. What the IFS basically kind of came out in their paper and said is that they want to make it so it tracks to earnings. And if it goes above, it freezes. And then if earnings keep up, it'll start again. And then the idea behind that is that ultimately you want a position where now that the state pension is higher than it was under previous governments, you want it to be a position that is not effectively much better than what people in work are getting. So that's one solution. Another is kick the age out. I think the problem about the age getting kicked out longer and longer and longer is the really uncomfortable part of the conversation is that there's massive regional and societal differences in how long people are going to live.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:So my late father was from a mining town, Ashington, or my kind of My dad's side is from like kind of minors, basically. Where
SPEAKER_02:is Ashington? Ashington Northeast. Northeast. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So if you could speak to, you know, my wife's side, you know, from Glasgow, you know, that's kind of like the one that people talk about. But if you look at males, especially in certain areas of the country, all over the country in different places, and you go, you're not going to get your state pension until 70%. Just statistically, they're looking at that and going, hold on, I'm going to get this for five years. You know what I mean? And the truth of the matter is that a move of the age has a disproportionate impact by a mile for someone in Glasgow compared to someone in Surrey. And that's the uncomfortable part of the conversation, which is that, okay, so if they kick that age out, that's going to have a massive impact on those areas of the population. Yeah. I think it's likely for our generation that we are going to see increases. I hope desperately that it doesn't go up too much because I think you do get to a position where it's really unkind on people who don't live a long retirement, who by definition haven't had a great deal anyway because they've not had a long retirement. One of the things that's bandied around is they're going to means test it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's hard. I don't know how you can do that without creating... So remember, the fundamental idea of what all politicians are trying to do right now, and people like myself and you, is we're trying to encourage long-term thinking and long-term saving. The minute you come out and say, oh, by the way, if you earn this... if your pot is worth this, you're not going to get a state pension. What you're going to do, not a million miles to similar to what happens if you're in over 100,000 in the UK, is you create this kind of weird scenario where people are just desperately trying to like kind of take advantage so that they get the state pension they'd maybe spend down the money let's say you know they say 500,000 you don't get a state pension you know but you just spend it down wouldn't you you know or you do it so you go I'm going to retire and spend it down people
SPEAKER_02:are doing that now with childcare they're earning£99,999 I've known it you
SPEAKER_00:know what I mean I'm in the position where that's you know that's that's the scenario I'm in which is that basically if you earn a certain amount it just it goes it's just absolutely insane
SPEAKER_02:there's that study that that that earnings growth at that point it's falling off a cliff because it's so valuable like a state pension it's value it's value created more than childcare in a
SPEAKER_00:lot of ways I think the ability it's changed quite a lot because the annuity rates have changed the interest rates going up but I think the cost of a state pension is somewhere between£250,000 to£300,000 if you were to buy it on the market maybe even more because most providers wouldn't have anything as good as the triple lock but It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. So I think people point to Australia because I think they have implemented some sort of means testing. I think... Is it impossible for them to link state pension to some form of earnings? Potentially, but what we used to have is we used to have different elements of the state pension before we moved on to the single-tier state pension. We used to have SERPs, which is state earnings-related pension. We used to have state second pension. We had this mess hybrid thing where it was related to wages. If they're desperate, they could start bringing that in. But things like that, you've got to do it over such an enormous timeframe. Yeah, exactly. You can't say to someone who's 50, oh, by the way, you're not getting a state pension. You know what I mean? You need to give people a huge amount of time. Yeah. You know, I'm a huge advocate for... 10 years
SPEAKER_02:or more or something along those lines. Yeah. Because then it's fair, right? But, you know, if you land your dream job at 62... You turn it down.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. That's bad. We don't want that. We've already kind of seen. So one of the reasons for the lifetime allowance, which just for the listeners, if you don't know, is when your pension pot was over$1,073,100, you could get extra pension tax charges. It was basically a lifetime allowance. It's like a ceiling for how much you can put in your pension before getting hit for tax. They eventually abolished it. And the key reason why they did it is because... they looked at doing loads of tweaks but it was actually having a massive massive impact on the NHS because what the NHS scheme without I used to work with NHS professionals and basically without going too much into the detail they have a really complicated defined benefit scheme really valuable but they can build up benefits and get hit for two taxes at the same time what's called the annual allowance how much you can put in and the lifetime allowance which is the ceiling So what you were finding is there was a massive brain drain in the NHS because people were just going, I'm going to go to work and lose either 90% maybe more. Sometimes people are going into work and losing money. And we as a country have to look at our tax system. And I know Dan Needle, someone who I follow, a guy who's on Tax Policy Associates, he does some great work with us. We've got to look at our taxes and go, okay, is this creating the outcome that we want as a society? Or is this creating this horrible mixture of weird kind of planning scenarios? So yeah, that's my take on the state pension. Feel free to cut it up. No, no, it's just
SPEAKER_02:super interesting because it is a problem and I don't think anyone's got a real solution to it. And any political party, left, right, up, down, you know, roly-poly party, whatever is going to do with it is not going to attack it because it requires... You know, they want to stay in power, right? And so there's a power element to it as well. But in the end, it becomes too big of an issue to, you know, to ignore. And it is getting closer. We do have this issue of like... the younger generation not being as incentivized to vote on these types of topics, which is technically why perhaps Keir Starmer has lowered the voting age to bring a younger populace into these things as well, which might make these kind of conversations a touch easier.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:What's your thoughts on the lower voting age as well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I quite, I think it's right. You know, what it's worth, I think the problem is necessarily not the age, but I think it's engagement. So it's not necessarily the 16 year olds are doing this, it's our 16, 17 year olds going to vote. But, you know, if you think about a four year electoral cycle, you've got a 17 year old, they're not able to, you know, vote till 21. That feels wrong, doesn't it? You know, if your 16 year old can get married and I would say die for the country, I don't think you can go into combat at 16, but you can join the army. It feels really wrong to say, but you're not able to, vote on the politics of our country and because of the electoral cycle being so long you know it does feel like those people are not given the say they should be given for the future of the country which they might be very passionate about you know I think nothing would be better for this country than younger people getting really engaged in in what the future politics and so forth looks like. I think we do have a problem with apathy across the board. No, we do, we do, don't we? Because people, and politicians have got a lot to blame for this, is the honest truth, because it's their behavior that's caused a lot of apathy, you know, and people thinking that they can't make a difference. So, yeah, I think ultimately, I think, more engagement across the board, whether it's finances or politics, is only a good thing. And we do, not just us, but America's a great example of this as well. The problem that a lot of Western societies have is that we have an older demographic, an older and older demographic with less people working, but where a lot of the political power, and by that I mean votes, is held by the older cohort. And we need to try and find a way of reversing that. Because ultimately, if we're going to have an older cohort, then we shouldn't be shocked that we're going to see more and more politics which favour more complex tax systems which benefit people with assets who are older, you know, typically. And things that are going to give a large weight to, for example, retirement benefits as opposed to things that are necessarily going to help people who are younger.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, China have recognised this problem and they're throwing$500,000 I think it is for new births.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, yeah. Trying to reverse the one child policy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. They had a problem the other way and now realise it's there. You know, there may have to be some incentives brought in to try and increase that birth rate because it will end up being an issue especially when productivity in this country is slowing and at quite an alarming rate with an ageing population and declining birth rate and things are getting more expensive so it's less enticing to have the child in the first place.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, we, we having a child is, is we make it really hard in this country. It's the truth. You know what I mean? And it's like, I know there are exceptions. People get great mat policies with their work, but assuming you don't and you're on the standard kind of like mat leave, SSP, you know, statutory maternity pay, I should say. And
SPEAKER_02:paternity too. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. You know, the, the, the policies are not great.
UNKNOWN:Um,
SPEAKER_00:30 hours free childcare was a big difference and I can say that as someone who's going to be a beneficiary of that. But still, you know, it's really difficult and people are looking at that scenario and going, okay, how do I afford that? And the answer is some people can't and it has a massive impact. And we as a society, of course, are going to be poorer for that because the bottom line is whatever you think of kids, we need them because they're future taxpayers. Yeah, really
SPEAKER_02:are, really are. What's your view on financial education in schools? And are you a proponent of this?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I've done some sessions. So the Personal Finance Society, which is one of the professional bodies I'm part of, we do kind of education in schools. So I've done a couple of sessions there. I think it's crazy that we have so... And it's difficult because our teachers are already really stretched in a really challenging job. But I think it is... logical that this is such a foundational thing to know the impact of how ruinous credit card debt can be and I know you've got your own story on that and you know basically we sell people off into the world but we kind of don't tell them the fundamental skills that you need to know why I had 18 before I got into finance you know I just basically had a council tax bill that I just forgot to pay and I basically kind of ignored it because I was 18 and I just didn't think and then before you know it it's accumulating it racks up they're chasing you. These little things, we need to give our youth an ability to not just kind of have it all as assumed knowledge because unfortunately, financial education is something that doesn't get taught by a lot of parents because they don't have the skills themselves. So yeah, I'm a massive proponent of it. I don't, from what I've heard, I don't think there's been a great deal of success in the educational, because it is apparently on the curriculum now, I think. I don't think there's been a lot of success in the classrooms. I wouldn't consider myself an expert to say why that is the case. If I was to take a stab at it, I would say it's probably because it's like many things. If the teachers don't have the knowledge, then they're only doing it for a short bit of time. Or they're reading from a textbook. Yeah, exactly. Do you ever have to do general studies? Oh, yeah. So you want a situation where they're not just wheeling in a telly or whatever, and that's not being disparaging on teachers. I'm just saying that you kind of need to get it engaged. I also think, hopefully, again, channels like yourself and all the great creators out there, I hope we can in time make being financially secure more aspirational. So being something that people are like, and I think that is kind of starting to happen.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So it's really interesting around that kind of, um, 14 to 18 mark at the moment. My other half's sister's kids are very engaged and they're asking the questions which baffle me. How do you even know what that is? I didn't even know what a savings account was back then. It's that kind of thing. So it is... The internet and social media has certainly sort of changed that a touch. But you're totally right. When it comes to the teachers themselves, they don't understand this. And I think when the government actually look at this as a problem, they see the enormous amount of teachers that are out there. The struggles those teachers face themselves, but bringing them up to speed is incredible. hundreds of millions of pounds in terms of investment into training for their, who's doing the training, what type of things are being taught to the kids, what's censored, what's not. Are they learning about investments or is it savings, et cetera? Because these are all things that are just going to play into the way that, you know, we're a nation of savers right now and we're trying to get people investing. Yeah, there's a problem
SPEAKER_00:there. All you need to do is cut the ISA.
SPEAKER_02:Please don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my primary tool. Other than my pension. But, you know, I think that's a problem that we have to look at and tell.
SPEAKER_00:It's a massive problem. I think part of this is cultural. And that's not going to be an easy chip to... to turn around. I think there are genuine signs of a lot more positive. So if I was to say what about the UK culture is not great, we probably don't celebrate success as much as we should. There's still a thing where I think there's a lot of angst around if someone's successful in a UK audience, a larger proportion compared to a US audience are going to want to be negative as opposed to be positive.
SPEAKER_01:It's true. We've
SPEAKER_00:all seen the comments. Not of us, but whatever, but of other people. It's like, you know, there is that issue culturally another issue is is that and in fairness the FCA Financial Content Authority has come out and they have really changed the mood music so when I started content kind of like four years ago especially as a regulated individual I was terrified about the fact that I would like put stuff out and then the regulator would you know be like£10,000 fine exactly because the minute you start talking about investing being a good thing um you know you you feel like the world's going to come down because the regulation was written in a very strict way you know you'll seem to be doing financial promotions if you're seen to and the problem is with all this kind of capital at risk capital at risk stuff is that we're missing the main point which is yes of course if you're going to invest your money there's going to be a degree of risk and that risk can be very large depending on what you invest in but actually diversified low-cost investing has been proven over time to be the best place for long-term money and is going to have a massive impact. We really needed to frame that position because there is no such thing as no risk. There's only what risk and when to take it. That's a quote from a guy called Nick Murray. And that's so true. Somebody who leaves cash in either a building society and then they just leave it for 20 years, they haven't experienced any volatility yet. but you're damn right they've experienced a lot of risk because they probably had it eroded by inflation. Or if we compare that to the opportunity cost of what they could have got to invest, they don't see, there are no receipts that will show you if you had invested this money, you would have got this. But that difference is massive. And for people who believe that investing is gambling, which is a lot of what our regulatory regulations environment has done and Martin Lewis who is amazing is probably kind of seen as the UK's financial advisor in an offhand way but he doesn't talk much about investing because he can't and the problem with that is that the person who the UK kind of trusts the most about those decisions is kind of like shies away from it
SPEAKER_02:he has broken out recently
SPEAKER_00:has he i haven't seen and it's
SPEAKER_02:it's music to my ears because the man is in power he's in a power hot seat and he can invoke more change than anybody else with one video uh or one appearance on this morning so like that it's he did come out and talk about it being like low-cost index funds and stocks and shares isis and pinterest like sorted out go and do it I was like thank god there's like been waiting for you to get off PPI claims please go get into it because it's so important but you know the conversations like this are massively important too and you know I think that's why you know someone like yourself having that on and I just love your approach mate because it's like you have that like innate ability to be like, yes, this may work for you, but it's not going to work over here. And, uh, you know, that's kind of mantra hits sort of close to me because I'm I realize that, you know, personal finance, we have to just be personal with it all the time. And it's very, very hard to find people that actually get that. So, um, yeah, hats off to you and the way that you approach things, mate. Um, I've loved this. It's been really good fun. Where do you want to send people?
SPEAKER_00:Um, might as well have a look at my main channel. Um, so if you go to YouTube and put in principles, personal finance, principles, personal finance, um, you'll, you'll find my channel. Uh, and you can have a look through all the videos. Um, I'm always sort of linked in as George Egan That's Alpha Golf Alpha November in my name.
SPEAKER_02:Nice one. We'll link up to that in the show notes. But yeah, look forward to chatting with you again
SPEAKER_00:soon, mate. Thanks so much for having me on. Cheers. Cheers,
SPEAKER_02:George.
