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.
Whether you're skint, smashing it, or somewhere in between, we’re here to help you make smarter money moves.
The Money Gains Podcast
Money Expert Reveals: The Truth About the Top 1% (Less Than You Think) - Mr MoneyJar
Why does even a "good salary" not feel like enough anymore? 💸
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In this episode of the Money Gains Podcast we welcome financial advisor and content creator Rotimi Merriman-Johnson (Mr MoneyJar) back to the show.
We dive deep into the UK's current economic crisis and why even those earning in the global top 1% (£45,000+) are struggling to make ends meet in modern Britain.
This episode looks at some potentially controversial solutions from wealth taxes to regional economic restructuring, as well as practical ways to build both monetary and non-monetary wealth during these challenging times.
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Mr MoneyJar online https://www.mrmoneyjar.com/
Mr MoneyJar on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mrmoneyjar
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✅ How earning £45,000 puts you in the global top 1% but barely covers UK living costs
✅ Why you need to build non-monetary wealth through health, skills, and relationships
✅ How to develop skills now that AI can't replace
✅ Why the UK needs economic growth not just wealth redistribution
✅ How to use cashback apps to save £1000s every year
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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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In today's episode, we talk about taxation in this country, which is an all time high. Joining us as a guest who's been on the show many times, Timmy, welcome back to the Money Games podcast,
SPEAKER_01:man. It's been a while. Six months. Yeah. Yeah. Missed you.
SPEAKER_02:Missed you too. Yeah. Oh man, but a lot's been happening, right? For both of us. First off, a massive congratulations. Thank you. I think it's in order. Thank you. You know, you made an honest woman out of her.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, or she made an honest man out of me. That day was really, really fun. I staged a surprise engagement. She literally had no idea in Maida Vale, Little Venice. And then we had a nice little boat trip and a family dinner afterwards. And we talk about money a lot, but on days like that, I was reminded about what's actually important in life so it was really nice
SPEAKER_02:100% I think we were just talking off air I've been going through working out what is that you know we can all get caught up in this like internet life and we have a job where we show up on the internet and try and teach people about these things but actually we do need to remember to enjoy our own lives as well and you know I as well like you know I love talking about investing content and things like that as well but you know moving houses in a couple of weeks. It's pretty expensive, to say the least. I would be doing my audience a disservice if I kept saying I was investing this amount every single month when I'm not. So we are real people in the end of the other
SPEAKER_01:spectrum. Can I ask you a question on that? Sure. You talk about how much you have invested in your portfolio. You use actual numbers online and some creators do that and some creators don't. So I was just wondering, um, what it was like doing that for the first time for you and what prompted you sharing those numbers and maybe like a part three, like what effects do you think it's had?
SPEAKER_02:We're switching this. Oh, I know too. I love it. It's a good question. Actually, someone asked me this earlier, um, today and I struggle with it, uh, in all honesty, uh, because one is putting yourself out there in your own private situations it changes the conversations with friends and family and the way that they see and perceive you because you are you know technically wealthier than them even though what is money at the end of the day um so it changes the dynamics there it opens yourself up to you know potential security risks and all of those other aspects which come into play as well so you have to factor that in but also i just felt like it was important because people were asking me and they're saying well you went from 24 grand in debt to where you are today where is today and what does that journey look like so I can actually say well okay if he can do it in this amount of time so can I and I wanted to give people that realistic journey of what it's like because yes okay I'm investing a lot more now than I ever was back in the day but when I first started investing I was putting 50 pounds a month in so it's possible and if you have that growth mindset and you accumulate assets and side hustle incomes and businesses, et cetera, then these are the levels that you can get to.
SPEAKER_01:And if Donald Trump decides to tank the stock market every three months, he can rack more money in here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Which, you know, and so I felt like it also just made me, I'm not some 7 million pound on investor turning up on the internet. I'm an everyday person going through this stuff too, trying to get to the next step. and I just felt it grounded me in that where I wanted to be seen. So the pros did outweigh the cons and if you catch me on another day, the cons will outweigh the pros. So you'll probably see I do them in sporadic bracks. I'll do two or three of them and then I won't do them again for four months because I feel weird about it. But they work, so it's hard to not. Why did you ask?
SPEAKER_01:Because I've gone back and forth on it as well. Culturally in this country, we don't talk about money at all. And if we talk about money, it's to have a conversation about like, why don't we talk about money? That's how we talk about it. But yeah, I think if you were in any other, you know, you could argue that if you were any other type of creator, you'd almost see the fruits of your efforts. So if you're a PT, you'd look a certain way, I guess. If you're a chef, you so true you'd make food and stuff if you're a financial creator a big part of our job is teaching people about money but when I think about the financial people that I admire and have read up on Warren Buffett comes to mind a big part of that was actually knowing their financial journey as well like the numbers of it so I hear you it's a balance for sure
SPEAKER_02:yeah totally man and it comes with like it comes with lots of I suppose you're anxious about putting stuff out there, but if actually the goal is to help somebody with that and give them that possibility and that belief in themselves, then that's what it was meant to do. So yes, that's a good thing. And reminding myself of that, I think is important. But yeah, look, I totally get it. Like there are some creators that are like, yeah, I've got exactly this down to the last pence in my bank balance right now. And they show it and I'm like, wow, that's, that is invasive. I find personally, I'd never do that. I don't mind my investing account so much because it's literally in the markets. And it's not like I can press a button today. Obviously, I could probably get it back in a couple of days or whatever. But even then, if you want to keep me in a dark room for a couple of days, good luck to you at the end of the day. But that's just the way I feel about it. And it meant that I made certain steps to remove addresses or not post things and make sure that the next house we moved to is just off grid and things like that. Because then I was like, oh, my address is online. I need to be careful about that. And so, you know, it's had its pros and cons for sure. Yeah. But I'm loving your new style of content, dude. It's been brilliant to see. And it's nice to see you come back with like a real sort of fresh feel about how you're approaching talking about money. What was the inspiration behind that? And, you know, how are you feeling about it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So... I've been doing this for six years now. And what's been very interesting about creating content online is that every year, you kind of need to do things a bit differently to be able to continue to reach new audiences, reach and help new people. So for example, like year one in 2020, that's when TikTok took off. So everything went from images to videos. And then there was like 2022, 2023, People first started coming on lockdown. There was a lot of podcast content and stuff. And I've just always... We were talking about this prior to starting. I've... always wanted to speak to and about the Black British community. It's a community I'm from and understand very well. I understand the specific challenges we face. I understand the opportunities as well. But I've always been scared to talk about it. And I've never actually said this publicly before as well. I've always had a fear that by speaking along ethnicity and racial lines with regards to money, that I would would alienate people. The non-Black part of my audience, brands, anyone really, the Black followers I have who don't want to see things racially, But in May, I did a post on black British wealth, how much we have, how much we don't have, because wealth is split between physical wealth, financial assets, property wealth, and pension wealth. And it went viral. It went viral. It was picked up by loads of other Instagram pages. It was picked up by FT Advisor. It was shared on LinkedIn. And it was then I realized that the thing I'd been hiding from was actually part of my purpose and what I best equipped to help people with so I've been posting more of that stuff and it's been received with open arms and I'm really over the moon I leap out of bed in the morning to make content now because I'm able to make stuff that I'm like I know I know what I'm talking about I know who I'm trying to help it's helping it's not really been spoken about before and you get that positive feedback loop of you post you get the engagement you get questions so you want to post again because social media is addictive on the consumer side but it can be quite addictive on the creator side as well if you get you know if a post does really well and your phone's like buzzing all day so yeah it feels good I actually feel really good and I feel really happy genuinely you
SPEAKER_02:seem good man
SPEAKER_01:thank you and what I've realized as well is that Yes, sometimes speaking about ethnicity and race can be tricky. It needs to be dealt with sensitively. Money is all-encompassing, and therefore there are different financial outcomes for different people. There are different house prices in the different regions of the country. Your gender can affect your income. And there are different financial outcomes based on ethnicity as well. We shouldn't shy away from that. Specific problems require specific solutions.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Absolutely. I completely agree. Do you think you'll like perhaps talk about different ethnicities as well and sort of encompass that into the conversation?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Absolutely. All the data that I look at, whenever I look at ethnicity data, it will have all the different ethnicities in there, but I've handled the information very sensitively because the internet The internet can either run off of fear and anger or off of love and community. And I'm trying to stay in that latter camp. I'm not trying to post anything which would invite counterproductive comparisons to other ethnic communities. You could quite easily do that. That's not what I'm trying to do.
SPEAKER_02:And the UK is a sensitive time with certain aspects of that communities.
SPEAKER_01:What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to talk about us to us and make it actionable. just show people stuff that they might not have heard before. Because what a lot of people don't realize is that everyone is communicating ethnically. You, your voice, your accent, the way you look, your name, you are communicating your ethnicity to people. It just happens to be in a country that's full of other white people. And also when you make up the ethnic majority of a country, stuff that relates to you, is more likely to correlate more closely with the average right because you make up most of the people but if you're 4% of the population there's a lot of stuff that might go over your head so that's part of why I think what I'm saying is being received so well it's like it's actually relevant to the people I'm saying it to but to go back to your original question will I talk about other ethnic groups absolutely there's loads of interesting insights there
SPEAKER_02:yeah for sure and a very wide breadth of conversation to be had which nobody's really having as you said which is lovely so yeah mate I'm buzzing for you man I know how hard it is from speaking from personal experience I've been now this is the third year of like putting out videos online coming up to the fourth which is and you go through waves of like I am in and you have so much content and you're just in the zone ready to go and then last you know things yeah I I was in a sport for a bit. I had an operation. Oh. You good? Yeah, I'm fine now. All good. It was minor, but it was just an annoyance. I was out of the game for a couple of weeks and away.
SPEAKER_01:They don't tell you that. When you go into your 30s, there's like one weird health thing per year.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you're just like, okay, this is happening to me
SPEAKER_02:now. And then it goes every six months and you're like, oh God. Okay, here we go. It's like being pushed off the road.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. In 2022, I woke up. So I was asleep. and I woke up and I couldn't hear anything. Really? Yeah. Fully deaf? Yeah, so I was asleep on the right hand side of my face and I woke up and I was like, I couldn't hear anything.
SPEAKER_02:Both ears?
SPEAKER_01:And then I lifted my head off the bed and then I could hear stuff and I put my head down on the bed and I couldn't hear anything. Long story short, it turned out that like my ear was blocked and I had to go to like this ear thing and they used a hoover and they were just like, yeah, you're just, you're 34 now so you get to it just gets to happen to you that's also the loudest noise I've ever heard in my
SPEAKER_02:life it's also the weirdest experience
SPEAKER_01:oh you've had it though oh yeah all right cool I've
SPEAKER_02:had that done since I was a kid I just have small ear canals but the moment everything comes out you can hear the
SPEAKER_01:oh my goodness yeah yeah okay oh I see and then as men we don't really talk about the health stuff I let because I went to the ear clinic on like Union Street yeah yeah and I left and I heard the sound of a bike you know like when you leave the chain and it goes I was like crying I was like I haven't heard this I haven't heard this in weeks
SPEAKER_02:literally I remember the first time it came out and there was like these lovely birds up in the tree and they were like singing away and I just stood there
SPEAKER_01:like snow white just
SPEAKER_02:but
SPEAKER_01:that's life we've both been through that that's cool
SPEAKER_02:man yeah no it is weird and when these things happen life happens and also some moments moments can happen as well and you start to think and re-evaluate things about how you're going to come back and re-approach things in a different light because you know you've got to stay relevant to yourself and what you put out for it to stay relevant to them as well if you don't believe what you're actually saying just regurgitating information
SPEAKER_01:it comes across they can tell
SPEAKER_02:it comes across exactly and I felt like I was at that point so we're coming back with a new angle and a new way of looking at things and hopefully it comes off and if it doesn't we'll revisit it so hey But one of the posts you did do recently was really cool. I really enjoyed it. It was, how much do you actually earn to need to be in the top 1% globally? And I just found this fascinating. Can you talk to us about that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so credit to Jordan... Peterson and Patrick Bette Davis, because that's the podcast episode that I saw that on. So I went into YouTube one day and they were discussing it. And yeah, the amount that you need to earn to be in the top 1% of earners globally is around$60,000 or 45 grand, which is$2,865 per month. Yeah, 45 grand. And that's after 5% pension contribution and student loan. So, there's quite a few implications around this, right? Which is... If you earn that much, because inflation and earnings tend to march up year on year, you not only are earning the most globally, you're earning the most historically, just in the history of salaries, right? But then you look at how much it costs to live in the UK, in particular in places like London, and that 2,800 or whatever, after the cost of living, emphasis on living after mortgage or rent bills and then groceries you're left with a few hundred pounds to live your life off like discretionary spending um and there's a lot of reasons for this right like if you read um paul johnson's um what's his book called um Not read it. Is it On the Money?
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I don't remember what the title is, but the previous head of the IFS. Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And he talks about how we had to take out half a trillion pounds during COVID to put people through the pandemic. And now we're paying it back in the form of increased taxation. It's just difficult at the minute. And something that I'm conscious of as a creator is not gaslighting people. And expecting them to have more money when there's like... how are you supposed to do compete to be the top one percent of the top one percent like only one percent can be in the top one percent of earnings so if you are earning that much but you still can't live it's because the the uk is too expensive to live in like the developed world is too expensive to live in It's a really tricky problem to have as well because all of these amounts we're talking about are nominal amounts. If we go back 30 years, the prices of things would be about half what they are now and wages would be about half what they are now if you compound 2% per year backwards. But it's not because people were eating half as many groceries. It was just that was a nominal amount of that stuff back then. And you can ask your employer to pay you more which you should do on a micro level you should try and earn as much as you can but then your employer is running a business and they can just increase prices and then you end up with a wage price spiral upwards where things are just going up and up and up but like you're still eating the same amount of stuff you know you're still putting the same amount of petrol in your car I also don't believe anyone has any answers to these questions problems. This isn't just happening in the UK, this is happening across the world at the moment. And if anyone had a quick fix for it, I'm sure they would have instituted it. But the way that I think about it is that we want to control for the cost of essentials we want to protect the cost of essentials so that people when it comes to things like rent and bills and food and stuff people can definitely afford that and then if we want to have the discretionary stuff be as expensive as possible then fine so I don't know what you call that, socializing the cost of living. I don't know. We did it with healthcare and education. So maybe that's something that we'll have to do. Otherwise, it will just keep going up in price.
SPEAKER_02:It will. And the amount of wages is not meeting up with real inflation, with core inflation.
SPEAKER_01:And the main implication of the top 1% point is that... as a group, there is no more money to be made. Yes, there are people in the UK who make more than 45 grand, but they're in the 1% of the 1%, and not everyone can be in the 1%. The system has to work for the average person, and then the government can step in for the people who are at the bottom end of the scale, and then the people at the top can obviously afford things.
SPEAKER_02:The mad thing is, if you take that salary, let's say you were in this finite example, you're not governed by location so you could pick it up and move it and you kept on that same salary that£2,865 and you took that to the Philippines your life looks immeasurably different because the cost of living is lower so you've got that kind of disparity between yes it's 1% globally but it's drastically affected by how much you earn in a particular location that you earn that you live in and in the UK in particular like we are being squeezed there's no doubt about it I think everyone can feel it
SPEAKER_01:everyone is being squeezed everyone is being
SPEAKER_02:squeezed from top to bottom
SPEAKER_01:because we have the you can always sorry to jump in you can always tell what the general sentiment around the concept is by how by looking at like social media comments so the Times ran a piece the video the other week on Henry's so high earners not rich yet and it was people on the 100k saying that they're struggling particularly with families and actually there were people in the comments saying I get it I can understand why after costs you wouldn't have that much left after 100k and I remember when 100k used to be like the pinnacle yeah
SPEAKER_02:it's wild isn't it like probably 20 years ago that's like you'd look up and then go
SPEAKER_01:wow he's smashing it yeah yeah six figure salary
SPEAKER_02:yeah the connotation of a six figure salary has kind of gone down as what it was before you know the 100k in London example when you factor in average rent and a three bedroom house and if that person man or woman was earning a hundred thousand pounds and there's children involved with one of the parents not being able to attend work the numbers go out of control extremely quickly on an average rental basis they're on the property market they may have some leeway in terms of their mortgage and the size of the amount of equity in the house but it is quite eye-opening um when you look at that so yeah i'm not surprised i'm not surprised in the comments of that because you know we are continuing to see a trend of it sort of deteriorates since really ramped up since 2020 i think people could feel it was like an undertone before then um but everything sort of still felt semi-okay and i can sort of deal with it but now it's kind of there's vast amounts of uh you know the the the I hate using class systems but working class are really really struggling middle class are moving into what the old section of middle class are now moving down in terms of you know wealth and what they have available to them each month and whereas there's probably a medium to high they're sort of also moving down and the higher just vastly increasing
SPEAKER_00:and so
SPEAKER_02:it's a really strange time what are you feeling about this time at the moment and your opinion on it overall do you think
SPEAKER_01:I think the next five years are critical we need to protect um people's expenses when it comes to the cost of things that you need to survive. We need to almost have a people-first approach of the minimum you can expect to have in a country like the UK is security of where you live, like heating, electricity, groceries. You need to be able to afford that comfortably and then everything else can cost whatever it costs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Is that kind of socialist... viewpoint on it though
SPEAKER_01:I think there are some people who would call it that but we you know we have a similar approach to the health service and to education
SPEAKER_02:which technically is costing us a lot and there's a lot of mismanagement there that would be my only worry with that aspect of
SPEAKER_01:it I'm not sure people want to go to state sponsored supermarkets
SPEAKER_02:exactly what the hell is in that food would be my initial thinking yeah
SPEAKER_01:but I'm speaking more about the approach rather than a specific solution because clearly the cost of living can't just keep going up and up and up. And interest rates can't just keep on going up and up and up. It's not sustainable. When you do the back of the napkin calculation for where we end up in, in like 10 years' time, it's not fun.
SPEAKER_02:It's not fun at all. No, you're right. We had a rate cut this week, which was semi-positive news for mortgages, less so for savers. It's interesting because that savings rate is coming back down to levels that we saw sort of pre-COVID and people are sort of thinking, wow, that doesn't sound as good anymore, right? How are you managing your own finances with that and do you think about these things when it comes to sort of how you manage your money in terms of the back end?
SPEAKER_01:In terms of savings rates, yeah, I just always try and keep my money where it will earn the most interest. I say to people that when you're saving, sometimes I'll speak someone they'll just have like a whole wad of cash in a bank account that they probably opened at uni that's paying them like negative 1% interest so I just say divvy it up You have your emergency fund pot, that's to be accessed straight away, easy access savings account, highest interest rate you can. If you're saving up for anything that you want to do in the next couple of years, then have different accounts for that. And then if you have any surplus money, then you can invest that for the long term. And that's the approach that I've taken to the money that I'm holding on to, that I'm saving.
SPEAKER_02:Obviously, we're going through this time. What do you feel like is still in our control? Because it feels like they're controlling the dials up here and it's making stuff tough for us down here but what can we roll the dial on do you think
SPEAKER_01:yeah um I mean, I can speak from the perspective of content I've shared that's resonated with people. As financial creators, we rightly focus on monetary sources of wealth, but I think non-monetary wealth is also very important. And this is a model that I've sort of formulated, although these are also things that are measured by the UK government. So your health is a form of wealth. Human capital, education, skills, experience is a form of wealth. social capital, relationships, your reputation, who you know, and the way that you use your time. Time is also, it's like the one non-renewable asset. Time is money, they say. Yeah. And when you don't have as much monetary wealth, actually the way that you budget your time becomes really important. Like every hour of your day becomes super important because the opportunity cost of, I'm not demonizing gaming or watching with Netflix or anything like that the opportunity cost of like not reading books not learning stuff um means that you're not learning skills that you could use to increase your income over time and um yeah i'll focus on the non-monetary aspects so to make it practical uh what can you control you can try and get your seven to eight hours of sleep each night um that is something that's going to set you up for for the days ahead you can exercise you can if you're so low you can run or go to the gym if you're more of a social person you can take classes in terms of your education and your skills you can learn things which will increase your earning potential over time and with AI on the horizon I'm looking at things that are technology resistant so public speaking anything that you can do with your hands be that plus being an electrician, even like nails and hair.
SPEAKER_02:It's AI proofing yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Because no one knows where the world is going to go or even learning a language. You know, if you learn a language, then all of a sudden, there's a whole different bunch of countries you can work in and things you can do. So that's not the same as invest this much money every month. You could join Toastmasters. It's like a global public speaking group. And I think it's like 100 or 200 quid for like a year. It's a program and then you can come out of that and just be a really skilled communicator
SPEAKER_02:yes that's one of the biggest skills so we had a doctor Eliza Philby on one of the biggest skills that the younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha is it Gen Alpha the one below I can never remember that struggle with this communication because of technology devices mobile phones basically and iPads that get shoved into the kids hands but keeps them quiet right and parents can actually survive which I understand but I also have you know that causes problems later but one of the biggest skills is communication
SPEAKER_01:it's possibly the most important skill in the 21st century when you think about the impact Put it this way, with what we do, if you could guarantee that every time you turn the camera on yourself and recorded yourself, you'd get a million views, how much would that business pay you? It would be insane. So communication is huge. And I don't think it's something that robots are going to... It's going to be famous last words. Maybe if I'm
SPEAKER_02:listening
SPEAKER_01:to the AI versions of ourselves on the Future Money Games podcast, I'll eat my hat. But I don't think that's something that technology is necessarily going to take away from us. I think technology is going to replace routine and like rote type tasks, but then I think it's just going to leave all the human stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. And it's still going to be a room for like expression and art and all of those spaces. It just will be mixed in with some things that are created by AI. It's just the way things will
SPEAKER_01:be. Similarly, the trades, the doing stuff with your hands, when I was at school, those were looked down upon versus the academic subjects all the subjects that you can now kind of get chat GPT to do for you but until we get robot electricians yeah the people I know that do that earn really good money because you need that stuff
SPEAKER_02:yeah yeah we I agree I think you know the way I'm looking at it especially from like a content perspective and their work the delivery is so that people will find it difficult to replicate their like raw nature of like a huge human to human like me walking outside delivering something straight to camera very off cuff nuances pauses like i'm sure it can get close but it's not gonna happen like they're never gonna get that final two percent i don't think and even then they're gonna want you because you've been showing up for them for three four years
SPEAKER_01:yeah having having said that though you've seen i've seen your
SPEAKER_02:thing it's mad you're one that you did
SPEAKER_01:oh oh the deep the deep fake so that was a year ago so it's the tech is like way better now have you seen google's flow
SPEAKER_02:and i've seen little bits online a couple of little shorts
SPEAKER_01:yeah you should search up google's flow it uses um uses veo and imagine to do text to video and it's just it's just indistinguishable from from real life
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:um so it is getting scarily good to be fair
SPEAKER_02:yeah no hundred percent hundred percent i think um i say and it's listening to Hormozy talk about this as well the other day and he was saying that yeah that's cool but AI has never made a business or has never done the actual thing before sure some guy might be able to type the words out but has he actually done the thing and I think he said it will move much more into the person behind it have they actually completed something that's of value to that human individual so he thinks education will be less effective but entertainment will be grossly affected because it's easy to create the films and do the moments and the, you know, the CGI and all of those aspects of it is massively affected very, like almost overnight, but education is harder to replicate because people actually have to go out and do the things still. So we, we're in a very interesting time as well. Labour government come under quite a lot of slack, say at least recently. Poor old Rachel, she's not having any easier of 10 years, so we say the least. But we do have some of the highest taxes on record at the moment since World War II. And there was something that came out the other day in the news, Labour now claiming a near£50 billion black hole, which started at£22 billion. Now, this poses the argument in that FT article about the higher taxation that may be required to cover that. What are your thoughts on this here? And I know you want to sort of have a debate about this for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So the Paul Johnson book that I mentioned before, it's called Follow the Money. It's a must read if you're a financial creator. It's a must read because it basically explains the P&L of the UK and where all our tax money goes. And The fact of the matter is that the UK is a big country. It's one of the top four populations in Europe, along with Italy, France and Germany. We need a trillion pounds every year. just to run the country. And just over$800 million of that comes from the big four taxes, income tax, national insurance, VAT, and corporation tax. So we need that money,$200 billion. It goes to the NHS, another$200 billion goes on pension aid benefits, another$200-ish goes on working aid benefits, and then education. Defense. Yeah. Repaying government debt as well. And a lot of the conversation, so that fact remains the same. A lot of the conversation is just around how we raise that money. The thing is, because there's 70 million of us that money, whichever way you slice it, has to come from us. It comes from us directly, or if you raise taxes on businesses, like with the employer and I, then the price of things go up. Because those businesses have to pay, the biggest expense will be their staff, so they need to increase their costs to be able to pay their people. And I can understand a lot of the anger around the situation that we're in, but I just think we're living through a difficult time at the moment what i do think the government needs to work on is actually being real with people about how difficult stuff is and not trying to promise any silver bullets so that stuff is just going to magically get better overnight so there's a huge communications challenge there i'd also like to see better communication around the phrasing of things like black hole because I come at this as someone who likes to, you know, look at the numbers and stuff and like 50 billion is a lot of money, but 50 billion out of a trillion is 5% of government spend. And, you know, they could decrease spend in one area to increase it in that 50 billion area. It's almost changed overnight. Yeah, or raise it from us. So, yeah, but then they have to say black hole because then the papers won't run it. The papers won't write
SPEAKER_02:it. Well, the media write that. They don't turn up and a black hole I know they have initially they did with the 22 billion pound mark but yeah that's good news headline right
SPEAKER_01:our prosperity as a country is just comes from economic growth at the end of the day. It's like when you look at the parts of the world where the economy is still growing, like the US has got the biggest economy, it's got the biggest stock market, but like our phones are American, our laptops are American, Google's American, the platform, you know, Instagram's American. They've got all these products and then they've seeded them all over the world. And so their stock market is huge. And a big part of the reason why the S&P 500 is like a premier index to invest in is because half of the profits that flow into the US are global profits so it's kind of a proxy for a global index fund there are opportunities ahead for the UK to be a global player when it comes to things like AI or clean energy or like anything to do with climate change that's going to be like a big issue going forwards biotech as well so we have two of
SPEAKER_02:the best universities
SPEAKER_01:in the world? Two of the best unis in the world. English being the language of media, English being a language of business and stuff. So there's definitely opportunities. So the conversation around tax is around how we redistribute the money internally, but like we need to grow the pie ultimately. 100%.
SPEAKER_02:Taxation is a big problem because they, and also mismanagement of spending about where that's going. You know, there's, when you look at how some of how high certain areas of that spending is and what's being spent. that money's being spent on when you go even into those areas, even from a top line level, it's absolutely mind blowing. Management consultancy fees for the NHS were in the hundreds of millions. So like that, there's a problem there. And so, you know, we need to cut spending and drive innovation in this country and raising taxes on entrepreneurs or even the group, the population is not helpful to sustain business growth. So I think what they're, they have it their own way. way around they feel like they can come grab more to put money back in and fill that hole up that we need to spend but then it has a drastic effect on the economy and working conditions and living conditions and all of the other aspects which makes the UK a hard place to kind of live in at the moment so I think she has a big problem because she lowers taxes technically it lowers tax take but then when you look at she raised capital gains tax and the capital gains tax went
SPEAKER_00:down
SPEAKER_02:so it It's basic economics at the end of the day. I remember back in the day, you used to play Civilization and the Total War strategy games, and it was obvious. You kept the taxes low so the population increased, were happier, had a better aspect of life, which then eventually meant you'd have to wait and defend your kingdom and ward off a few other people. But eventually, you had way more money than everybody else, which means you could make bigger armies and eventually conquer the world. Right? don't want to do that but it's the same mentality when it comes to this it's lower taxation drives happiness and prosperity within a nation so I find it difficult when I read these things and so I wanted to see your opinion on that
SPEAKER_01:I also wonder if So you talk about, we talk about how big the UK is and how difficult it is to manage and spend a trillion pounds. But I also wonder if the way the UK is currently structured makes it easy to spend that money. So Northern Ireland has 2 million, a population of 2 million. Scotland has a population of 5 million. Wales has a population of 3
SPEAKER_02:million. And
SPEAKER_01:then like England's got like the other 55 million or something. So how are you supposed to manage a population that big? I'm just brainstorming here, but what if we took a regional approach? If Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland all get a first minister... then surely the other regions could all warrant a first minister that kind of represents them and gets funding and then tackles each region's biggest three problems region by region rather than population size yeah rather than okay we're going to solve education for England but it's like this huge but that's
SPEAKER_02:and as you and me know I won't name a percentage but I'm pretty sure a large amount of that money stays within West minister the city of Westminster so it's very it doesn't really span out from London there's London and the UK right as we know we've spoken about this many times two different sort of states in a way
SPEAKER_01:yeah London's a country at this point London's got more people in it than most of the Scandinavian countries do but then it also does like a quarter of the country's GDP so we also have this huge London bias whereby because everything's sort happening here everyone wants to live here but when you have approaching 10 million people in your city then that city is going to become very expensive to live in because the public services need to be able to cater to those 10 million people
SPEAKER_02:yeah 100% it's a tricky situation and it's not one I feel that they can win but you know they're borrowing more they're printing more and for me that's just gonna cause more problems not solve them semi lighter topic yeah is obviously you have just got engaged
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_02:and weddings are pretty expensive the average wedding cost which because I looked it up because you were coming on and I just wanted to know is now 27,000 pounds for the average wedding which is nearly a year's salary
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_02:it's quite crazy when you think about it
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_02:so when it comes to planning for important things like a wedding or big life moments you've obviously got one coming up yourself like what are you what key steps are you taking and putting in place to sort of bring that to
SPEAKER_01:so when it comes to the wedding communication has been really important with that so we agreed that we would get married that we would have the wedding in two years time so summer 2027 that gives us a year to be engaged and then a year of planning because if it was next year then we'd have to start planning now and we wanted to enjoy being engaged That's the first thing. The second thing is we have money that we're investing. We're investing it for the long term in our relationship. And we actually look at our investments together. So that 27,000, what we say to each other is that if we spend that much money on a wedding, that's going to come out of this number that we look at every single day. Is that what we think is the best use for our money? And we both agree that at this particular point in time, it's not. Because if the time value of money and compound if you leave it for a little bit then you can actually take out of your investments to pay for something like that yeah once you get to higher levels of wealth and then the third thing I'll say is um I actually think things like weddings are really important. I think engagements are really important as well. If you'd spoken to me about this stuff when I was in my 20s and stuff, I'd be like, I'm not getting married. I'm not into that and stuff. I actually think... I'm
SPEAKER_02:like that now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I actually think it's very, very important to tell the people you love that you love them, to spend time with family for the two sides of family to come together and stuff. But you kind of want to... Make it as big as it needs to be, but no bigger than that. And there's a lot of social inflation that gets heaped upon stuff like weddings and stuff. They don't actually need to be that big or that fancy. They just need to do what you need them to do. And new traditions pop up all the time. I was speaking to my fiance the other day about gender reveal parties. Do you know when the first gender reveal party was?
SPEAKER_03:No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01:2008. Really? So the first gender reveal party coincided with the launch of Instagram which makes sense because you're in the social media age and so this new tradition emerges as a result of the technology that's available and if you go back to the start of the 20th century it's the same with like diamond engagement rings like new traditions pop up all the time and then they get locked in and then before you know it you know you're walking down the street with a camel and then you're giving a birthday cake and you're like why am I doing all these random yeah so just decide
SPEAKER_02:like engagement drinks and then like they have engagement drinks and start the girls can get
SPEAKER_01:together we're gonna yeah yeah and then the stag do and the hen do and the pre-stag and the pre like it's infinite amount of things can be added on so you just need to look is that when you're buying an engagement ring as well there's an amount that you spend where you're like this ring is perfect it's beautiful it's gonna make her really happy and then there's an amount above that which is just capitalism so you get to decide whether to draw the line of capitalism in the important stuff and you just draw that line and then you keep that line there
SPEAKER_02:yeah that's crazy man it's crazy yeah I've got all that to come no doubt but I agree with you I'm like well I think when I was growing up I was like yeah the big wedding would be great and actually it was just me feeling into the status game and then I was like well who's that for is it for them or for me or is it actually for the Instagram photo What was that?
SPEAKER_01:But you've been with your lady a long time. You love her. You want to make her happy?
SPEAKER_02:Always, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Then you got to propose. She will be so happy.
SPEAKER_02:Cut this bit, Daniel. She cannot
SPEAKER_01:hear this. She will be so happy. People say that men are the visual ones. Women are the visual ones. At least a few times a week, my fiance will look at her ring and she'll be like, you love me so much, don't you? She'll look at it and she'll be reminded of that day and she'll... be really happy all over again. And... It's going to cost me a lot of money, Timmy. And it's worth it. It's worth it. For the right person, it's absolutely worth it. No,
SPEAKER_02:no. It is. It's just, you know, life, I think, sometimes. And also, it's not been a massive priority for both of us, but as the longer thing goes on, I think it's important to think that. And I've always wanted to. So, yeah, it's just finding a... Just take some of the gains and... Yeah. Don't go build a finance app. It's not a good idea. Yeah. alright well mate I've loved this as usual I could have literally sit and talk to you about this stuff for hours yeah it's always a pleasure to have you on I think you're now up there with like our most ever I think you're six no this will be seven times now so we appreciate that because you always bring the vibes and flavour and yeah I really appreciate it mate and keep up with the new style of content as well as class but for those who I can't be across you for the first time where do want to send them?
SPEAKER_01:At MrMoneyJar. That's like a jar of money across social media. So do come say hi.
SPEAKER_02:Nice one, man.
SPEAKER_01:See you soon.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you.
