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
Financial Expert Reveals: 31 Money Lessons To Grow Your 1st 100k - Brian Mitchell (Frugal Spender)
How to make a budget, stick to it and grow wealth for the long term 💸
Get The FREE 10 Step Checklist That Grew My Portfolio To Over £160,000+ 👇
🔗 https://upthegains.co.uk/investing-checklist
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In this episode of the Money Gains Podcast we welcome Brian Mitchell from Frugal Spender to the show.
We chat about why your budget keeps failing, how car finance is silently destroying your wealth, and why the person you marry matters more than any investment strategy you'll ever learn.
We also expose the hidden taxation draining 70-90% of your income and share the uncomfortable truth about why being "obsessed" with paying off debt might be the only way out.
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Brian (Frugal Spender) on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/frugal_spender/
Brian (Frugal Spender) online https://www.frugalspender.co.uk/
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✅ Why your first budget will fail and how to accept it, learn from it and try again
✅ How to automate everything at the start of the month before you can sabotage yourself
✅ Why choosing your life partner is your single most important financial decision
✅ How you're actually paying 70-90% tax when you account for VAT, stamp duty, council tax, and others beyond income tax
✅ Why the £100,000 investment milestone is where compound interest accelerates dramatically
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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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Take the FREE Money Personality Quiz 👉🏼 https://upthegains.co.uk/quiz
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🔗 https://upthegains.co.uk/investing-checklist
Brian, welcome back to the Monagas Podcast, man. How are you?
SPEAKER_01:Sammy, it's good to see you in person. It's good to be here. I know. In rainy London.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We did it digitally last time, didn't we? Yes, we did. Times have changed.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Moving up in the world. Do you like my living room? Yes.
SPEAKER_01:It's where you eat. It's very fancy in here. Very fancy.
SPEAKER_00:But you've been killing it on uh on socials recently with something which I wanted to tuck into today. And it's kind of like your journey of where you've come from and where you are, which is wicked, and we're gonna unpack that. But you've you have 31 money lessons which you took people through from start to finish over a number of different reels. What was the kind of reason for that?
SPEAKER_01:Uh well I'm gonna be honest with you. The reason is because I was being super inconsistent with my posting.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Uh and my uh and my wife did it or started doing it, well, just before, and she was like, you need to do it as well. And I was like, Yeah, I do, because it all forced me to combine all the things that I've thought about for the last four or five years into a loose uh rule, but actually just kind of going deeper into certain subjects that I've learned about for the last five years.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because it's hard, like when you do content about Pascal Finance, you want to give them that whole 411 source, but it's just impossible.
SPEAKER_01:And I end up saying the same stuff, which I know you have to because there's only so much stuff you can talk about. Otherwise, I end up talking about politics and then you know I get a bit angry. But um, yeah, no, like I needed something like a subject, so I just kind of thought 31 things, think of a subject, and then go, right, okay, cool. How can I distill an idea based on that that hopefully people can learn something from?
SPEAKER_00:I love it. So let's start with number one. Budgeting is fucking boring, was the statement. Um, let's face it, it's true. Like I find it really difficult. I have had spreadsheets, I've had apps, I can't use any of them. Uh hence why we're doing our own one. No, not a plug. Uh I mean, it is sort of yeah, download gains. Um but it is a big thing, right? And I think that's why we're attacking this. Why do people struggle with budgeting so much, do you think?
SPEAKER_01:I think because the word itself just fucking makes people close in. It always did for me. Budgeting, I pictured middle-aged American couponing woman. That's that's what I picture. Like, that's the stereotype when you think of it. You think like YouTubers that are going around following you around the what they would call the grocery shop, going around picking stuff, and then like I'm not gonna buy this because this wasn't in my budget. And instantly everybody thinks it's restrictive, which I think is one of the hardest things to convince people because I create I've created content for the last five years, and even the people who are closest to me in my life, like I have a free budget spreadsheet that like I give to people all the time. None of them use it. Like, you can use, you can write it down. There's plenty of apps like YNAB, there's loads of things you can use, but nobody actually they know the importance of doing it, but it's one of these things that requires actually a little bit of practice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:First time you do it, it's gonna be wrong. 100%. There's no way you're ever gonna do your first budget and that month you're gonna stick to it. You're just not, it's trial and error. So it's gonna be maybe three months of like wildly underestimating how much money you're gonna spend on food, or you're gonna forget about that one bill or subscription and you're gonna go, oh, that's it. And then people just kind of like get their hands up and they're like, I can't budget, I suck at this, so they just stop doing it. So I guess it's it's a bit like a lot of things in personal finance, it requires actual effort. Um, it's not gonna happen for you. Like, and because you do it before it happens, you're predicting. And most people, unless they have their own business and they do forecasting, which most people don't, they don't know how to do that. So it does require actually doing it, failing a little bit, doing it again. And then after three, from my from my experience anyway, three or four months, you've pretty much got to dial it in, and then you can just make minimal tweaks that take two, three minutes a month.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think it's one of the big things that you touched on there, which I want to unpack a touch, is that bit of like failure because we go do that whole like, oh I messed up. And then you're like, I don't ever want to do this again. And that happens so much in so many different areas of life. Like, you know, it's like, oh, I failed at that thing, so I you know, I can't do that. Um, investing, you lose a bit of money, same thing. And it's all this mentality. How do people get over that? Do you think? Because like it is a big step for them.
SPEAKER_01:That's a big question. I think a lot of people, I mean, I would I'd hate to say this day and age, but people don't like failing. Um, and certainly not overtly failing. Like, I'm super open. Like, if I fuck up, I'm happy to like it's I mean, it's painful to do, but it's publicly, especially when it comes to money, I'm happy to be open about it. Like, my wife and I are super open about our money. If we make a mistake or if it's a good thing or and people are visibly taken aback by it. Like, if we have if we have like a dinner party or we go and see friends or whatever, we will be so open about. I mean, we won't go and go, this is our salary. I mean, if they ask, we'll tell them. But we're so open about money that it people are shocked by it. And in this culture, we're just not open with it. So I think when it comes to budgeting, maybe they see some unrealistic stuff on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. Um, like I keep seeing these things pop up, people pushing their budget spreadsheets. And like in their income section, it's like 20 grand for the month. Look, let's budget my 20 grand thing, which that's fantastic. Engineer in London. The average person's like, what? Yeah. That's like 10 of my salaries. How am I supposed to do this? So they just switch off. So I think for most people, it's like my salary's too average or too low to do this. So they just think I'm not like budgeting's not for me. I'm just gonna like pay all my bills, do all my stuff, and if I've got anything left, I'll do something with it. But it's trying to switch that post-thinking to pre-thinking. And for me, that's the hardest thing. And I don't, there's no silver bullet. I think people just need to understand that they will make better financial decisions if they if they budget.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's awareness.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like awareness allows you to make a better decision. You're gonna make bad decisions because adverts are so powerful. And like we literally come into the city, and today I can't even tell you. Like, I've just been bombarded since I've arrived.
SPEAKER_01:Like weirdly, I was thinking the exact same thing as I walked as as I came in on the train, literally like 10 billboards and digital billboards. Thinking this, like I now live in the sticks in Gloucestershire. There's no billboards out there, so like it hits me more. I'm recognising it more now, living out the way and then coming into London. It's no wonder consumerism's you know, through the roof and lifestyle inflation's killing people.
SPEAKER_00:100%, 100%. I mean, budgeting is obviously a big factor for both of us because we both had our debt stories, you know, yours, yours, and mine, very similar in a lot of ways, and were driven by quite similar things. I'm interested to hear yours just to kind of fall one on it and how you manage it now and what's different.
SPEAKER_01:How long do you have? So debt, there's no secret, I hate debt. Um I am one of the only content creators that like constantly talks about debt. Like, I know we're all talking, like, we'll bring it up, but most people talk about good debt and bad debt. I'm very much all debt is bad, but some of it like we can accept it because we need it, like a mortgage. And that comes from having a super negative experience with debt. Um, one that trapped me in a corner. So if you don't know my my debt story, basically I joined the police in 2018 as a police officer, and I don't know if you know, but the salary for that is not great. Uh, 19,000 pounds a year, I started on. Um, combining that with a mortgage, a wife, a young daughter. That's not a lot of money as the breadwinner of the household. So rather than me actually going and doing the things and seeking the information that I now talk about, I thought it would be a good idea to start gambling. Never gambled before, um, never been good at gambling, always lost money at Cheltenham races every single time. Um, I don't even think I had a William Hill account. I didn't have anything. And I started, I think I must have put in about 200 pounds through the over the course of a few months. And I got up to about 2,000 pounds profit. And I was like, I've nailed this, like I know how to do this now. I've like, I can see the matrix. I know I know exactly what I have to do. And at the time I was betting in Filipino basketball games. Oh, wow. Mainly female ones as well. That's not a subject I know a lot about, Sammy. I'm not gonna lie to you. But like I was kind of just like picking one, oh, I nailed it. Like, I'd I'd win maybe 51% of the bets I put in, so that I know I was up. Um and then as everybody knows, uh, the house always wins, and they genuinely do. So I very quickly lost the 2000 and then it snowballed into minus 6,000. So over the space of about eight months, maxed out two credit cards. Um fucking insane, by the way, that pre-2020 you could fund a gambling account online with a credit card.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, mad, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:That's crazy. Like I'm I I take full ownership. I'm the idiot, I did it. But how crazy is it? That's even allowed to happen. So anyway, I I remember the day that my credit card got maxed out. Wife wasn't there, daughter wasn't there, and I literally just thinking, yeah, cool. Like I did that classic thing, like you lose you know 20 quid on a bet, so I'm gonna put 40 quid to try and recoup my gains. This is it. Every time I'm gonna regain my money and I'm gonna get it all back. Um, yeah, literally declined. I was like, oh, that's weird. Log onto my credit card, minus I think it was 4,000 on that credit card, minus 4,000. And I didn't have any money in my bank account, never had savings in my life. So uh it's quite a dark day because my wife didn't know I was doing it. She knew that I had made£2,000, didn't know I'd lost it.£6,000. Yeah. Um, so I had like for me, that was a turning point. It was I can either sit here and self-destruct, which could have easily happened. Yeah. Um, but luckily I took the approach of like desperation Google search. How the hell do I get out of debt? Um, I think the first video came up was Dave Ramsey, surprisingly. Um, shook me down the rabbit hole of American personal finance because this was 2019. So this was the pre-boom of the UK content creators talking about money. Yeah, there was nothing. There was a couple. There was like meaningful money, yeah, Pete Matthew, who's awesome. I still highly recommend. Yep, absolutely. Martin Lewis, yeah, but again, he's so mainstream. He's talking about like what's the best interest rate here, which is great. But even with somebody who had so little knowledge, he was talking about interest rates. I'm like, I don't really understand that. You know what I mean? Like, I I get it, I get I get money through industry, but it was so like mainstream. I needed to know like basics, fundamentals. What do I do? Like, I've got no money, what do I do? Uh, and from my saviour came in the form of Dave Ramsey, uh, and his entire philosophy, if you don't know him, is all about, and he's very anti-debt, obviously inspires my anti-debtness, but it's all about get rid of your debt because that's the thing that's holding you back. All your minimum payments, you can't redirect your money elsewhere because it's all going to people you owe money to. Um, and he's very much like, look, be super intentional and super obsessed. And I've got quite an obsessive personality, so that's actually worked quite well for me. So I was like, what side hustles can I do? Um, and for me, that was just like selling stuff on eBay. Uh, can I at the time, luckily, COVID was around the corner. I say luckily for me, it meant in my job I had loads of overtime to do. So I did every single shift I could, and within the space of eight months, managed to pay the six grand off.
SPEAKER_00:Oh man.
SPEAKER_01:Which for me, thanks, for me, was a crazy accomplishment. My wife didn't know I was doing at the time. How I managed to hide that, I don't know. Don't recommend to anybody, by the way. Don't hide this from your partner. Tell them. But for me, I needed to. Did you know now? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope so. She fucking follows me. She doesn't know she's living under a rock. Um, no, no. I like actually the day I paid it all off, I went to her and said, I think she kind of knew I was paying off my credit card. I don't, she just didn't know the extent of what was happening and what was going on. Yeah. She could tell I was, I mean, she could hear me listening to YouTube videos about money. So um, so I said to her, like, this is the full extent of what's happened. I didn't like she had the money. She, she, she's a saver, she's always been a saver up until we've now kind of swapped roles a little bit, but she's always been really good. Um, never been in debt, never never had a credit card in her life to this day. Um, so she had the money. I was just not gonna approach her for it. So yeah, I I I I paid it off and off the back of that was like, this is important stuff. Like, people need to know this stuff. I know there's people out there doing it, I get it. But on the rise of TikTok um and short from short form videos, can I package this in a way even with no content creation experience that can hopefully help somebody?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, again, my wife, she's a common theme, she'll push me to do things. One of those things was to create content. So I did. I created two videos in a week. One of them got 250,000 views, and the other one, I don't know, like a thousand. But it was on pensions, with like the most mundane, boring subject in the world. And for some some reason, too, I thought was a good idea to show 250,000 people. So I was like, yeah, this is a this is a good use of my time. I liked helping people in the police. That was why I joined, as cliche as that sounds. And I was like, yeah, let's try and help people with their money. And debt being the kind of like core of what I talk about.
SPEAKER_00:One of the things that you are very, very good at is it's just raw and honest. Like, because in this space it can be so like glow up and you know, like, how you're gonna be this person or make 10 grand by doing X, Y, and Z or Dubai even lifestyles and all of that jazz, which we know is just rife in our space. Um, but you just stick to your principles. It's like I'm gonna deliver this message, like exactly how it needs to be said and how I think it should be said, not like how someone tells me that I need to think it needs to be said.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally. But I think that's what's missing because and it's easy to get sucked into the content creation idea of what gets the most views. I get it. Like, I want to get the most views. I that's that's that's what pays the bills. I understand that. Um but I also think it's easy to just go along with trends and trend trends, as we've seen in the last four years, go up and down, and most of them just disappear. One thing that's not gonna disappear is the core concept of being debt-free. And look, there's some people who disagree with that. I get it. But for 99, I reckon that's a made-up number. But I'm gonna go with it. 99% of people shouldn't have any debt other than a mortgage. And even that, you should try and pay that off as quickly as possible. That's not financial advice. There might be situations where you shouldn't do that. Totally get it. But if you think that having a payment going out for something is better than not, I think you're wrong. Simple.
SPEAKER_00:You owe someone money, you're gonna have to pay it to them eventually. Yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And this idea of when it with debt is this idea of ownership. Like people talk about if you watch YouTube videos of people who were um super intentional, overpay their mortgage, and their house is theirs. Like the bank doesn't own that house anymore. They like it feels different. And I have, I mean, I'm not in the situation, but I can imagine it is, because like the first time I bought my own car and didn't have finance on it, it did feel different. I can't explain exactly why it felt different, but it was mine. And even if it's not the best car in the world, it's mine. If there's something about this ownership that I think we've lost, and Instagram, um, ironically, I know we're both on Instagram and you know, we're out here making videos for it, but like I think it's done a lot of bad in that sense. Of like, um, I'm not gonna name any names, but there's a lot of people who push debt in the mainly the property space, um, and they kind of glamorize having 10 houses, which again sounds great, but you don't own those 10 houses. The bank owns those 10 houses and you're just leveraging debt, which is great when everything's going well, 100%. Um, but they don't make videos about when it's not going well. And for the average person, it's not a great idea. So I think, yeah, I think the the core principle and the fundamentals of debt in particular is something that um I'm going to continue to talk about.
SPEAKER_00:You mentioned it briefly there, and you it kind of leads very nicely into my next question is this status. Like, why are we so obsessed with status? If you look back like 20 years ago, maybe a bit longer, you know, we didn't really have like obviously we all wanted things and we were going out there and getting them, but there's less of this like extreme fast-paced culture that we see today, driven by social media, of course. But we are now like planning our lives away just to show up in a certain space. And I mean, that's how I got myself into there, playing a status game which didn't exist, nobody cared other than me. Um, and it's just such a strange thing. Why do you feel like we do play these games with ourselves and and how do you think that impacts our money?
SPEAKER_01:I think I think it's innate in us. I think I think we we as humans want to status is part of a hierarchy, like um whether we like it or not, as humans there is a hierarchy, and from a from a male perspective, a lot of us try and reach the pinnacle of that, and a lot of that is showy. It's um thinking that signalling having a fancy car or um whatever it is, whatever it like whatever it is that you're trying to impress other people with, um that's become more accessible now than ever. Social media definitely drives the desire to want to do it, I think, more than ever. But then to go back to debt, and you mentioned Klana, but like how accessible is it now to have debt? Like pre used to what it used to be payday, payday loans, but everybody knew payday loans are super dangerous because like you miss your payment or whatever, and you've got like a 900% APR or whatever it is. Um, I feel like buying our pay later is just kind of like snuck in as that middle kind of like, uh, it's all fine because you know, we're completely fee-free. Well, how the fuck do you make money then? You know what I mean? Like you're making money because you're like you're being pushed by every single outlet, so you must be making money. Um, and it turns out they are making a lot. I mean, not so much now, thank God, but yeah, but but making a lot of money because they get a kickback from the outlets. Um, and then also people not paying on time, which people always say, yeah, same with credit cards. I always pay off my full balance every single month, like everyone says it, but then all the data that comes out shows they don't. So it's just made it really easy, a bit like me being able to gamble with credit card debt. Luckily that stopped.
SPEAKER_00:But cheap debt.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we're just shifting it. Like you've just you can just go and buy shit, junk. You can go buy, and we talked about the last time we spoke, but you can buy a pizza on Klana. Like that shouldn't be a thing. And all we're doing is that's the gambling credit card version of Klaner. You know, we do we're just shifting it, exactly. Groceries, something that you get, you know, a bit of mouth happiness for 10 seconds, and then uh three months, six months time, you've got to pay for it. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:There's only like a cup, but there's a one main thing I can say that I could actually ever see that being useful for, and that's like the mother, two little kids, single mum, for example, or single dad, whatever, you know, and we cannot physically feed the kids this month, but we are gonna have some money coming in in six weeks, then do the thing. Like that's where I get it. But like other than that, like you really shouldn't be pushing your debt down the road just to like look good. And you see it now, like, you know, we did a clear out of our wardrobes for uh charity shops and a few vintage things in it. Like, I was just like, wow, there is literally thousands of pounds here. Like, what are we doing? Like, that's why I barely buy anything these days. Uh, and if I do buy it, I'm really intentional about it, and it's just having those little things in place. Like, there's a certain things that I'm okay with buying, like I I like my Nike gear, and but even then I'm not like buying it every week or I'm not putting it on Klana, like I'll just get it every now and then because I'm like, I like it, you know. Um, and it's just kind of changed. And I think when you get it, when you accept that, you start, you uh you have won such a big battle in life, and like that for me, I would install that into every single person I possibly can. It's just like doesn't matter, man. Like if you see the guy in the Porsche, I probably think bit of a knob, you know. But cool car. I don't actually I look at the car, not him. I look at the watch, not the person.
SPEAKER_01:So it's like it's uh it's a hard thing to convince, but I it has to come within because it does. Yeah. I have I have a couple of mates that very recently have completely shifted their personality. They broke up from long-term relationships, and throughout that entire relationship, literally two people almost at the same time, very materialistic, um, really worried about what their house looks like, beautiful houses, like nice and while in the relationship. While in the relationship, really beautiful interior, like had to have the nicest BMW on the drive. I'm probably out on them if they're listening to this now, but um had the nice BMW, really concerned about watches, clothes every week, every like every time I go to the house, Amazon parcel, Amazon parcel constantly. Um and like you try and have frank conversations with people of that. Not to be like, come on, mate, like what's going on here? Because you don't want to patronize anybody. Um soon as they broke up with the with the with this person, they realized they were just trying to like fill a gap, fill an unhappiness void of like, I'm not happy in life. I'm not gonna admit it to anybody because that makes me, you know, not look great. Um, so I'm just gonna like get this dopamine hit of buying stuff and feeling fancy every time I walk out my nice house into the nice car and then go to my highly paid job that I hate. You know what I mean? Like that's that's it's just trying to like fill the unhappiness with dopamine. And I think that's what we do as um as Western culture, yeah in particular. It's not just England, it's America, it's everywhere that has this consumerism. Push, push, push, buy this, look at the billboards, buy this, buy this, buy this. It'll make you happy. And I just think as soon as that you're saying, like, you can't tell somebody that's not actually gonna make you happy, mate. You just can't convince somebody it has to come with like an epiphany within of not really caring. Because you can still look nice and not spend hundreds of pounds on shoes and clothes. Like, there's a way of doing it. Yeah, and it's weird that minimalism has kind of gone away again. Because I think during COVID, the you know, the documentary came out on Netflix, minimal the minimalists. Everybody was into it, and then that was the thing to talk about, and everyone was cool to be minimal, and now it's kind of gone again, and it's just kind of like that's the thing with like trends and and waves. I think if you can just take elements of that with your personal finances, but also just like anything that relates to it with car, house, and that sort of thing. Maybe you can care what people think. Maybe you can, but like try and be cool and minimal at the same time. How about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. Because you can have like a few key pieces. There's certain things that I'm like, I will spend money on that. Like I will spend money on a very, very good jacket and a very good pair of shoes. And uh, I've had my rucksack nearly 10 years because it's it's brilliant. And I don't want to get rid of it. Like, I'll probably fix it more than ever throw it away, right? And so there's certain things that you like then, but then the fast fashion elements can get so quick and easy, right? That's like literally, and you as you say in the Amazon packages, I have to like say to my missus, I'm like, what have you bought now? It's like, oh, I've got this for this thing, and you should buy that with their own money or your joint money. Uh no, not on their own money, 100%. Yeah, so she can do her thing, exactly. Yeah, no, no, it's I'm not blaming, it's just funny you said that because I blame her. It's literally like every day, and I'm like, seriously, what's going on?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's always some tiny little thing, and it's always a good excuse for it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I get it. Because if I order something which is rare on Amazon and it comes through, it's like, oh yeah, this is a bit of a thing.
SPEAKER_00:Like someone's coming knocking on the door just for me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and then I get to open it, I'm like, oh, this is cool. And then you're like 10 seconds later, you're like, what the fuck did I buy this for?
SPEAKER_00:This is the point. So, like, what I've been trying to do with my content a little bit recently is like trying to get them to think about the feeling. So, like, I could have gone and bought my dream car recently, and I was like, I was literally at the garage.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, what was it? It's a big run.
SPEAKER_00:It's a classic Porsche 911. Nice. I've always wanted one. And I I could afford it, right? It had the money there, it was in my investment accounts granted, but I could afford it. Um and I was like, yeah, you know, something in my head convinced me, even though I'd gone through this whole journey. So this is like this doesn't this never stops. And I I literally went to the garage, I took it on a test drive, and after about 25 minutes of driving it, I was like, okay, I've done it now. Really? And I was like, I'm thank God for that, because that's a you know, multi tens of thousands of pounds of like a um of a saving for me. But it's true, and it made me think about things as well. And then I was like, Yeah, it is true. You drive it off the four car, it would have been fun for days.
SPEAKER_01:You would have thought everybody was looking at you. You were the coolest guy in the world for 100%. A couple of days, I reckon.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, good couple of days.
SPEAKER_01:If you're anything like me, would it be in a bit of regret?
SPEAKER_00:It was weird. I was sitting at the lights and it just went, everything went a bit quiet and there was no one there. And then I was like, I'm such a loser. I was like, because I was like jacked up about it, and then I was like, Oh yeah, like nobody cares, yeah, no one cares. Like, uh and it it was really lucky it happened to me because obviously, you know, you would you you you would have spent a lot of money, but also just I would have been totally unfulfilled. Like, what am I doing? And I and then in that moment, it's like, is the value of that spending like, am I better off trying to improve my life, like investing into myself and investing into you know, my question's obviously about investing, of course, and see cheeky segue into it. But um that for me is much more important um because eventually I can buy five of them if I wanted to, if I've 10 years, 15 years time make the right decisions now. Um, and it's just that like I need it now, I've got to do it now, and I it just burns a hole in you. So going back to that kind of investing talk about things, if that money, like sitting at that moment when you're doing that in the shop, it could be the 100-pound bag, it could be the 100 grand Porsche, whatever that might well be, doesn't necessarily matter. But when you comes to it investing, why do you think it's so critical to think instead of the thing that you can buy today, what about the future, mate?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm learning, I'm trying to learn and trying to be cognizant of trying to do both. Because when money used to come into my bank account, whatever it was, whatever some of that, whatever the sum of money was, I struggled to keep it there. So like I would just spend it. I felt super uncomfortable with money. Um I I just I don't know what it was. I don't know whether it was the fear of not being able to handle it, which it probably is actually what it was in hindsight, um, not knowing what to do with it. Like the feeling of having money was almost uncomfortable. Like, what do I do? What do I do? Uh I have to spend it. I like I can't put in the savings account because I'm just gonna keep looking at it and what if I see something I like? Um so I now have I think so much about the opportunity cost of you know the Porsche 9-11 that I could buy. I can't, Sammy's richer than me.
SPEAKER_00:But if if if I it was a second act in classic, it was vastly cheaper than what you're about to make.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, whatever, Sammy. If if um if I could have done that, if I was in the same position as you, I think I would have been constantly thinking, like you just said, what can I spend this money in the future? But I think there's a there's a fine line. Like, yeah, of course, you should be thinking about the opportunity cost of the money that you have after all your essentials are paid for and you know, have whatever disposable income is that you have. But then I also like, if you have enough money for the Porsche, get the Porsche. You know, I mean, I'm I think I'm learning that now. It might not be the answer that you were expecting. But my my my wife really pushes me. We're like really good at balancing each other out now. She used to be the like forcing me to save. Like I used to get coffees, um, like even as like 99p McDonald's coffees back in the day on the way to work every day, because uh that was my dopamine hit if like I've got no money, but I at least enjoy my 99p McDonald's coffee every day. And she would be like, just stop doing that, stop doing that. And I'd be like, Yeah, but this is the only thing that makes me happy for not she made me happy too, but like this is the only thing that on on the way to that's the thing, on the way to work, it just makes me feel happy. So like just let me have it, stop like get off my back. Yeah, um, whereas now it's like kind of the other way around. I don't tell her what to do with her money, but I'm like, whoa, that you know, that one pound, not one pound, but like that 50 pounds we're spending over there, you know, we could that could turn into 10,000 pounds in 20 years' time if we invested or whatever. Um so now we're I'm open with myself, but also with her about like, okay, cool, what's our goal? Because our goal needs to be at 55, I want to have enough money to say no to work if I really want to. I want to be able to have the ability to retire, but not stop working. That's a goal that we've come with come to together. So as long as we have enough money for that, what are we doing the rest of it? And we've established together that that's traveling. So we we haven't done that before, and that sounds so cliche. Oh, is you know, experiences are better than memories are better than the material things. But it is so true. And we allocate more money now than I could have ever imagined each month to a holiday that we're gonna do in the future. And that was painful for me because I was like, that money there, I know could make us really rich in 30 years' time. So I need to be like, okay, cool, but as long as that goal there in the future of when I'm 55, as long as we're on track to that, let's let's have a conversation about this money. And I think that is the biggest thing. If somebody's in a relationship, um that will change your entire life if you actually have that conversation. Because I, if I live by myself and earn as much money as I do now, I'd invest all of it. That's not cool, that's not good. Like if I die next week, oh, no one cares. You know what I mean? Like, what you need to live, you need to live now, you need to live and think about and live in the next couple of years.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, most people don't think about their future very much. They need to do that. But I need to think, I need to almost stop thinking so far. As long as I have. That covered, let's think about now.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I'm so glad you said that. I am so glad you said that. I think because that's what that decision was for me. I'd swayed way too far over that line, and where it was like hurting that future me as well as like today as well. So like there was a balance which was way down the tip, the scales tipped too far. I'm a Libra and I have to have the balance. So the um, but you know, you're right. If you got you you could go out and afford it, great. Just make a plan for it. Like that this was me like convincing myself over a matter of days that it was the right decision, you know, deep in auto trader, doing that type of thing, and then like uh spinning around in my head. Talk to your wife about it. No. No, she has no idea. She's probably gonna listen to this. It's totally cool. Look, uh I'll be honest with her about it as well, because you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't have uh put the money down without done the thing, but it would have been like she'd been like, What the f doing?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And uh but I don't I knew that, you know? And it's not because we would have damaged that, it was because we probably would have damaged the like amount of holiday we could have gone on or the experiences that we had or the and the future us and stuff like that too. And we're moving house in a couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_01:Purchase, like you know, swap the Porsche for anything else, even a smaller purchase, you know what I mean? Like a few hundred pounds. Like how many people in relationships just make those decisions themselves and think it's my money, I'll do whatever the hell I want with it, not realizing the micro like damage they're doing to their relationship throughout the years. Um, and as an go back to the example of my friends um who broke up, leading up to that, they were they lived such separate lives financially, but that bled into everything else. And I really think if they were aligned in financially, but maybe they'd still be together because like we just forget how intertwined this stuff is. I know we talk about it for a living, but like this is so intertwined in every decision you make with like when you're together and you go to Costa Coffee to go and get something, that's still a decision that you two should make together. If you have this, like, this is my money, I'm gonna go and spend whether I want, or I'll pay for Costa today, you get it next time. You know, what the fuck? We're in a relationship. Like the fact that we're not discussing this together and coming, making like you don't have to text your wife every time you go and buy a coffee. That's not what I'm saying. But like not allocating money for like going out or drinks or whatever, that's a shared part of money that, like, I mean, unless you use your own money, that you've both pre-agreed, cool, we're happy spending this. And then there's there's there can't be an argument because you've you've both agreed.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, let's let's talk about that because you put out a post 62% of couples argue about their money, which is high. And yeah, I imagine I don't I wonder how like those are the ones that admit it. There's a exact yeah. I was gonna say, like, I wonder how many of that is like over what period of time, you know, because some people are every day and some people once a year. So we don't interest about money. No, they don't. And uh and it's that's why you do things very differently with your wife. Um, and I really enjoyed the post you put out because we do things slightly differently in my house as well. Um, and not to say there's a wrong and a right way, but it's just good to hear other people's perspective. So, what do you do when the money comes in as a couple and how do you manage that?
SPEAKER_01:So we we were quite lucky being pretty broke when we were together. Um, half of our relationship, we've had not a lot of money, uh probably average, maybe below average for a household. Um, we were lucky enough to be on the property ladder when we're really young, so like that super helped. But we've never had enough money to be frivolous, really. So we kind of just agreed early on. I was always the breadwinner up until three years ago, where we kind of really are just like we own a business together, so it's literally our money. Um But we had a discussion maybe 12, 13 years ago, where we're like, is there any point in us having our own money? In the sense of we weren't married at this point, but like, what's the point in me getting paid most of the money, then putting most of my money into the joint account, and then me thinking of it as my money because I put the most of it in, but she feels shit because she's not put enough money, enough in air quotes, into the account. So she feels inadequate financially. And then like we're gonna have a discussion about whether you can use my money that I earn. Like, it's it got so like we I don't remember having many arguments about it, but it just felt obvious to us that like this is why don't we just call this our money? Like we're to spend all day outside of work together. Let's just call this our money. So we just I got paid the majority of the money, she got whatever money, and we just put it all into the joint account at that point years ago. Um, we didn't have a lot of fun money, so we kind of just kind of like used the joint account. We decided back then we weren't budgeting. She was better with money, so she was actually doing the day-to-day stuff. Um and then I would you should tell me off for buying a coffee because I would we weren't budgeting, but if we did, I'd be going over it. Um but then fast forward to when I started learning about money in 2019, 2020, and I started budgeting and realizing the power of budgeting. And we both, I well, I it she took a bit of convincing, really, because I was like, let's do a budget together. And she's like, again, had that same preconceived notion of budgeting's boring, it's like it's restrictive. She's literally was like, Well, you know, we're gonna have money for holidays. And like, yeah, no, we can put that in the budget. And then once we sat down together, she's like, Oh, actually, she quite liked it. She was like, Oh, I can say now for the next year, we're gonna put X min away just to go on holiday. I was like, Yeah, let's just agree on it. Um, so logistically, day to day, what happens is even if we weren't in the business together, we both get paid separately into our into our personal accounts. We then put, we decide together what amount we're gonna have each to have as our own money. It's the same amount. I don't have more, she doesn't have more. Even if we we actually earn the same income because we're both directors of business. But if we had different income, it would be irrelevant. If I earn 200 grand a year and she earned 20, she would have X amount each month, I'd have an X amount. And the rest of it, we decide absolutely everything to the penny, what's happening. And we've had that allocates to mortgage bills, um day-to-day pots. In we use Monzo. There are other banks available, but Monzo is better. Um I'm a big Monzo fan. Yeah, absolutely. To put away for holidays, put away for Christmas, all of those things. Pots are great, aren't they? Yeah, and then investing comes out of that amount. So basically, we just give ourselves a certain amount, same amount, everything else we decide together. As I've come to learn, it's quite an unusual way of doing things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's interesting because when I had first heard the first part of that, I must have switched off the last part of that video.
SPEAKER_01:I promise you that is what we do.
SPEAKER_00:Because we do really similar. Yeah, but we just agree up until a certain point. Like we have basically our entire lives covered from the joint.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then that amount, which is pretty agreed, because obviously, like you don't want to feel odd about it from the other person's perspective, because I'm a director of my business, but she gets paid more than me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because you know, she's not a director, and so her salary can keep going up when you're a director. You want to be kind of tax efficient. Hold on a minute. I'm not saying nothing. Don't come for me. Um, the but no, you you know, we I pay myself tax efficiently for my business. So like, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And I think you morally should with research.
SPEAKER_00:I completely agree. But technically, she earns more money than me, right? You know, but the business is doing okay, so we have staff and stuff like that, but it doesn't even matter, right? Yeah. So like money comes in, pre-agreed amount goes in the joint, and then we have whatever's left is ours as ours. Um and that just generally pays for her Amazon addiction. And my like gym and you know, uh light supplements. I like doing wellness stuff. Uh you know, I do it, uh uh spend the occasional bit and here and there. I don't drink as much these days, although that's what we were talking about before.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely light.
SPEAKER_00:I mean the last 10 days have just been ridiculous. I'm on a drinking van now. Um, yeah, it's too much celebrations, man. What is it? But it's your money, and you can do everything. Exactly. And that that that gets to the like crux of the point, is that like that's okay because we've communicated absolutely everything down to the T, and then what's left is what left. But you do, you it's rigid, right? Super rigid. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If you went and bought a coffee now, does that matter?
SPEAKER_01:Not from my own account. No, no, no, no, no. Because again, we've we've agreed. Like, she's got no idea why I have no idea what she spends her money on. I mean, I've got an idea, but I don't know what she to the penny. She doesn't have access to my personal account. She, I mean, I'm again, we're super open. Have a look at it. I don't care. I'm not buying anything that's is gonna make her uncomfortable, and hopefully she's not doing the same. But like the American version of this, the American Dave Ramsey version of this, um, comes from a very Christian perspective of like we are together. Which look, I get it. Um I'm probably 90% that. Um, because I still think it's good to know what your partner does. And like, would I have got into gambling debt if my wife knew? No. Like, I in an ironic kind of way, um, us having separate finances there is the plays a role in how much debt I got into. Because she would have been like, she would have seen three things come out and William Hill one day be like, what are you doing? Stop. Like, so I get it. I like from a we're a we're a couple, we're we're married, therefore we are one thing. We don't think like that in this country, but I get why that could work from a couple's perspective. Because think how close you're gonna be. Think of the decisions you if you know that every decision you make is gonna be tracked, and this sounds like almost creepy in a way that your partner can know everything that you're doing, but I think you'll make better decisions. I really do. I really do.
SPEAKER_00:Well, literally, like it depends on who you choose as a partner, right?
SPEAKER_01:And that's probably the biggest thing. Like, I I can't remember who said it, and I'm sure there's been a few people that said it, but that's probably one of the most important financial decisions that you can make. It is the most important financial decision. Is who you is who you choose to marry or be with for you know the long term, hopefully.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It's the second highest cause of divorce in the whole world.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, other than infidelity, of course, but that is it it will play the biggest. It'll be more impactful than investing and anything you can ever do. Totally. Will be who the the the woman or the man that you you choose to spend your life with.
SPEAKER_01:I couldn't agree more. Because if everything's as a couple, everything's cheaper, right? Like you're not when there's two people, it's not twice as expensive to do everything. Um, like to run a household, it's like considerably cheaper if you've got two incomes. So if you've got two people pulling in the wrong direction or separate directions, that's actually gonna make it worse. And whenever I do a video like about this subject, people, um, it's obviously people who've been hurt. Oh, I get it. Um, they're like, no, it's my money. Like, I'm not sharing my money because if we get divorced, in like, but you'll think you're going into a relationship. Imagine how toxic that could be for a relationship. Exactly. If, like, you know what, we might divorce one day. Actually, we probably will because I'm thinking about it. We probably are gonna get divorced. So I don't want you to have any of my money, so I'm gonna make all these decisions over here, you're gonna make all those decisions over there, and then like we'll kind of like share mortgage, maybe, and we'll share. I'll pay this bill, which is the fucking craziest thing in the world. Like, I have mates that do this. One pays the electric bill, one plays the TV license, one plays.
SPEAKER_00:Like, what are you doing? Yeah, what game are we playing here?
SPEAKER_01:We're not roommates, like literally, and these people are married. I know it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:I know, yeah. I think for me, it's that early stage relationship stuff. I can get it. Yeah, but once you move in with each other, and I know that happens a lot earlier than people would like these days, obviously, because things are more expensive, but once you move in with each other, that's kind of when you should start looking at being a bit more of a team around these things, in my opinion. And I get it, you're right. Preconceived notions once you're jumping into a relationship is going to end in tears. And so somehow you've got to let the past be the past. But aligning values when you're looking at these things is the most important thing. If she's a spender and you're a saver, or vice versa, then if you know, having a conversation around that and just making sure that the outcomes are going to be consistent with each other. And if someone's got a little bit of an issue with certain aspects of their finances, but they're willing to change, well, that's great. But if they're looking like, nah, nah, this is me, mate. I'll just do this, you know, I'll do what I want to do on a Friday night, I'll go out in my powers, uh alarm bell should be ringing because eventually that's gonna bite you in the ass. It's own, it's an accident waiting to happen.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but just confronting it, and like if anyone's listening to this and thinking like they don't communicate very much or at all with their partner about money, just having a conversation will make you feel better. It might make feel worse to start with because some un, you know, some truths that you don't like might come out. Like your partner might say, You're spending a lot of money every Friday night. You know that's true, but you just don't want to admit it. So you're just gonna quietly go and do it and say, Oh, it's my fucking money. But actually, if your wife can if you had an actual conversation about it, and I know that's hard to do because people don't like being told they're wrong or doing the wrong stuff, but yeah, if you just have that conversation, just confront it, whatever it is financially, but importantly, just the way you spend money, it's gonna get better.
SPEAKER_00:Totally, man. And I was even mentioned this like there, you know, I think people are coupling up earlier, they are getting into relationships, we are feeling the pinch, a touch, and like things are more expensive. I'm sure if you're budgeting down to the last penny, you're seeing that yourself. Like costs have gone up. We were talking about your office costs before this, like literally 500%. Um yeah, right now it feels like number one that we're being stolen from, that's what it feels like. We're being squeezed, and everywhere we turn, there's a tax and a rising one. What are your opinions on this? I know you're quite vocal about this online. How are you feeling like we can look after ourselves when it's in this kind of situation?
SPEAKER_01:I listened back to our first episode they were doing, and I talked quite a lot about inflation. Um, I must have been going down a down a rabbit hole at the time.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it was high at the time. Still is it was pretty high.
SPEAKER_01:Um, they're gonna say it's lower, but it doesn't feel like it, does it?
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_01:I think um media have such a big part to play in this because everybody's heard of inflation, everybody kind of knows what it is, it's just the cost of things going up. Um and you said a word that I totally agree with, whether you used it to rage bit me, I don't know, but you said the word stolen. Um and it's it's true. It's like we are the more I learn about tax and money in general, and politics, and governments, and central banks, and all these things, the more you learn that tax really like it's when you've when you boil it down, it's theft. Like you need you need some tax to run a society. I totally, totally agree with that. But try not to pay your taxes and see what happens. You know what I mean? Like you're you're gonna go to prison. Like that sounds like you have to do it, or else we're gonna use force against you. That sounds a bit like I mean, I know I was an ex-police officer, but that sounds a bit like robbery. Like you're gonna do it, or I'm gonna make you do it, and I'm gonna use force to do it. Sounds like a super extreme uh view to have of tax. But if once you understand that, which is why you said when you said about tax earlier and being tax efficient, I think it's actually the moral thing to do is to not pay any more tax than you need to. Like, whenever I make a video about tax, people are like, well, how do you think a civil and like who's gonna pay for the NHS? Yeah, we should all pay for the NHS. Of course we should, because we've all agreed as a society that we want to have this element of social, you know, this social benefit for everybody. I'm not saying don't tax anybody because we can't do anything. But if you think back when tax was created to fund war. That was the original theme of tax. Armies.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We don't have enough money as a country. We know we're gonna this person's attacking us. We need to buy all these things, guns, whatever. We need to pay these soldiers. We need money. You're all gonna do we all agree? We all agree. Cool, let's go and do that. Um no, it's otherwise you will die. Well, yeah, it is, but like, but as a nation, generally, people, when like the threat of your democracy in the West or the threat of your entire nation is under attack from uh an enemy, we kind of all like it's pretty hard to disagree with the fact that like we should all kind of help towards that. I mean, tax went up to like 90% in World War II. Like, nobody would have liked doing that, totally. But you understood. But we got it. Yeah. And it we could almost see where that money was going. Like we were fighting, you know, the Nazis, for example. We were fighting these people. That's one of the times when taxes, so what used to happen is that you people get taxed for war and then it would slowly taper off and people get taxed less. That's just not happened. We now just go, tax is part of life, 60% tax. When actually most people's, you know, if you're a basic rate taxpayer, you're probably paying 70% of all your money towards tax. And if you're a high-rate taxpayer, it's probably closer to 90. There's there's some equations, people have done some videos about this before. Not because you're getting taxed on your income.
SPEAKER_00:You're gonna get blowback on that. Well, why?
SPEAKER_01:Why? So your income tax. So you get income tax. So let's say you pay 20% income tax. Um what do you do with that money? Well, you have to you have to you have to pay for a mortgage. Within that mortgage, there's insurance. You have to have house insurance, you have to have council tax. All of these things have tax attached to them. Everything you buy has VAT. You gotta go buy fuel. VAT. Um, you buy a house. I recently bought a house. It's the most expensive thing in the world. Stamp duty. Stamp duty. Look, every if if you actually worked out the average of what you know, what you earn versus what's paid, not directly. And have you ever thought have you ever thought why stamp duty doesn't say house tax?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Why?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's wild, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Why? It is a house tax. Why, or it's not, it's a house buying tax. Why is it not called that? Because everyone will be like, what the fuck? I've I've been taxed on this money already. I've paid income tax on this. And I paid VAT and I put it in my bank to save to buy the house. Uh, and actually, I had to pay tax on the interest on that as well. So I'm so every step of the way I'm being taxed. And most people don't do the mental math because it's so difficult because I can't even break it down for you now. There is out there, and I'll try and find out, I'll even do a video about it in the future about where to find this stuff. But we can all agree it's more than 20%.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's more than 40%, it's more than 50%, it's all it's more than whatever you're getting taxed. But you think in your head, income tax is my tax bracket. This is what I get taxed. But actually, you're not. You're getting taxed the whole way. And I think that's immoral. And I think it should all be under one thing and much lower. And we can fund all these social things that we need. And we'll all agree, police, fire, NHS, we need all these things. But it just takes, you just got to take one look at, you know, the government and what we're all talking about now. And, you know, Rachel Reeves not paying us like taxes in the sort of zeitgeist right now. All of this money is being mismanaged. And I think we can all agree that amount that they get, you know, 100 1.1 trillion in tax receipts that they get and spend. 1.3 they spend. There we go. Even more. 1.3 trillion that's just being spent on like I've watched a video yesterday, and I was saying the actual true interest on the government debt is more than we spend on the NHS.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So it used to be, I used to say it's more than education, but it turns out it's actually more than the NHS. Yeah. It's clear. It's because there's more, there's more hidden. It's not that, so they release a figure of, I think it was 200 billion or something. I can't remember the exact amount, so don't quote me on that. But there was there was the amount, but there was actual all the money that they were paying for NHS pensions were linked to the they were paying interest behind here, but they weren't putting it in the so when you add that all up together, they're actually paying more on the debt than they are on the thing that we think we're spending the most money on.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Wild.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. It's more than education, it's more than the military. It's absolutely insane. And it's going up. Yeah. By the day.
SPEAKER_01:And as we're filming this, next month is going to be the autumn budget. So there's going to be I don't want to make this so doom and gloom, but like it's this they have to get more money because they can't control their spending.
SPEAKER_00:No, because that they've now created a 50 billion pound black hole from the 20.
SPEAKER_01:And we're not going to have the discussion, not going to have an honest discussion about yet, actually, let's like if I'm doing a house, a budget for my house, and I'm like, the only solution here is I can earn more money. Well, no, it's not actually. I can not spend here. But everybody goes, well, what are you going to do? Not fund the NHS. You're like, well, no, that's not what I'm saying. But but I do need to cut back a bit. But like, can we try and be efficient? Like, I'm not saying America and Doge is the way forward. I'm not saying that's like the pinnacle of what you need to do. But we shut that conversation straight down.
SPEAKER_00:There's certainly some efficiency.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah. But everybody goes to what are you going to do? Cut public services. Who are you going to take money from? Is it going to be the pensioners? And that's the political fight. The politicians are never going to do that. They're just going to go.
SPEAKER_00:We don't want to stay in power and it's just the fundamental problem with our political system because it's they're they're thinking about like how my you know ratings are going to be next year for the general election or whatever that might well be, right? So and that's the massive issue that we have right now is that they have to spend to keep themselves in power, and then they will continue to do that until uh they're basically the pound reverts to being worth zero and it's going that way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's absolutely wild. So what can we do? Like what can we do?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we can only control what we can control. And I think that's the message and undertone that I try to put in as many messages as I possibly a lot of the stuff sounds doom and gloom, and you talk about tax and it's all theft, and it sounds all like, you know, there's nothing I can do about it. But you can control what you can control. And try not to be engrossed in what's happening in politics too much, because I feel myself getting pulled into it more than I ever have. More because I have to kind of know about what politicians are doing and budgets and that sort of stuff. And then I find myself being like, what Rachel Reeves does today, how much is it really going to have an effect? Unless she like crazily increased tax, like double the tax rate. Other than the cost of living squeeze, if I was living like right on the edge of like, this is I can only afford the absolute basics. I totally understand that from that perspective. But for so many people, you can control your own family units, your own, you know, if you're single, your your income more than anyone else can. Rachel Reeves can't get you a pay rise. You know what I mean? Like you, you can give yourself a pay rise by learning the skills to do that, learning, arming yourself with um ways to get out of debt, why you need to get out of debt, learning how to invest, learning how to budget, all of these like simple fundamentals with personal finance that are gonna pay more dividends, pardon the pun, than anything else, including investing. That's gonna have the biggest impact. A bit like the person you choose to be a partner is gonna have such a huge impact. What you choose to do and think about on a daily basis, the controllables, yes, let's be concerned about what Rachel Reeves is gonna say in her autumn budget. Absolutely, because that is gonna have an effect on us. But I think more people worry about like the whole Rachel Reeves, uh, Angela Rayner stamp duty thing. Yes. Like, I mean, I created a video about that because it's kind of my job, but which got me a lot of like, yeah. It was funny. It was quite funny. Um but people shouldn't focus so much on that, they should focus so much on what they can do because yes, she should have paid her tax, but like going around and spending most of your day whinging about that to other people isn't gonna help you. So I think trying to just focus on the fundamentals, and which is why I try and bring back as many videos as I can to fundamentals, yeah. That's the thing that you can control. So, like, even if like you can try and block out the social media stuff, you know. I mean, ironically, we do this, but if you can try and or at least select the kind of people that you listen to on YouTube recently, going through like to try and just cull the people, I just I just it's so negative, it's so negative biased all the time. It's not healthy. And it makes you make decisions based on the stuff you and you think it's the most important thing. Like Nigel Farage, oh my god, if you just constantly consume that content, you're gonna think everybody's like so worried about border crossings and that if that's all you're thinking about, you're like, well, when I come home to my wife or you know, or husband or partner, whatever, like this isn't affecting me. Let's focus on this. How can we make this better? If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:100%. I get it now. Like, say, for example, when I put out content about like opening stocks and shares ISA, you get it, like probably 15, 20 comments will be like, oh, they're just gonna rage or a thing anyway. And I'm like, well, until they do, why are you not making use of it? Because it's probably one of the best accounts available to you. And like literally people from all around the world look at the ISA system and go, that's class. So until they do tax it, make use of it, because then we can make a decision about what to do. And I I, you know, I um you do cover the news and you're really, really good at it. I don't on purpose because I I would I would literally like end up going insane about it. And I can feel that about myself. And so I'm like, no, I'm just gonna say what needs to be said now, and then if a year's time, the lifetime ISO needs to change, or the stocks and shares ISO limit, or they tax the cash ISO, or whatever they do, then cool. Then we'll just change all the content to fit that for now. But I just I find it really difficult when people are have that mentality. It's like you have got an opportunity in front of yourselves and you're not gonna get it from anywhere else. So no one else is coming to save you. Take that upon yourself and make something of yourself and you know, sort your family life out, try and get a pay rise, try and invest some of that money because they're the tools available to you. Shouting online about immigration, uh, which we can all agree is probably a problem, but you're not gonna do anything about it. And you know, that's why I've turned off from the you know, the Israel Gaza conversations and all of these things. I'm not saying they're not atrocities, they are, they absolutely are, but I have 24 hours in a day.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't know about your videos, but I mean I'll I'll create a video about let's use Rachel Reeves as an example. She's the she's the Chancellor of the Sheikh, so like that's quite an important like person to talk about when it comes to money. Totally. And you go in the comment section of there, and there's like, you know, Gaza, why is why are we not talking about and you're like, uh most of them are probably bots, but you're like, that's consuming so many people's headspace. And I get why, like you're saying, like it's things that are happening around the world that are awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Like, yeah, but if that's the thing that consumes your brain more than your own personal finances, like, what do you think the outcome is gonna be? You're gonna be angry online saying those things, and your finances are gonna be falling apart behind the scenes. Exactly. And then in the future, are you gonna have anything? Probably not, because you've not focused on it, because you're gonna get better at the things you focus on. And if you're focusing on just negative things, you're just gonna get really good online at chalking, talking shit in the comment section of any video, which isn't gonna help anyone, especially you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 100%. So you've absolutely recently hit a milestone. Um congrats on hitting six figures. Oh thanks. It's part of the money lessons. Yeah, it is. Um saved and invested, which is wicked, man. Um it really does change things, so and why do you think it is once you reach 100k that things really start to kick on?
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, it does feel big. Um not just because I think it's like a a lot of money. I mean, it relatively is, but in the sense of it felt unachievable. Uh four or five years ago, I would have told you it probably wasn't possible. Even though I knew the maths and I was creating videos about compound interest. And if you do this, this is the likely ink uh outcome because I'm using a compound interest calculator and I'm showing it. But I think for me it hits home of like, oh shit, this this actually works. Like this isn't just like this isn't just a mathematical thing that I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00:Damn that video I did five years ago, man.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but like, but like, oh, it actually, and so not to say that I didn't think it was gonna work, but no, but it's just a little lesson in like yeah, it's just a little uh small incremental decisions over five years. This is what it leads to. And um the only reason I created that video really was every c every six months when I was doing YouTube, which I don't anymore, but when I was doing YouTube, I was like really transparent with my portfolio. And I listened to something that you did there, but actually you're saying that you don't, you you you would whether you would felt comfortable doing that. And I and and and I didn't. I mean, but that's actually why I did it because I don't and I still don't. I felt I was squirming screenshotting my my my stuff. Yeah, um, but I thought it was important to do because I when I started this journey, I was on a low salary and debt. And I've done nothing spectacular, like I haven't even got a degree. I've just learnt this stuff and done it. And even like when you say about why is that an important milestone, it's an important milestone for me, but it's also an important milestone objectively, mathematically, when it comes to investing, because that's the point at which 10% of that is 10 grand. Well, I'm not saying you're gonna get 10% every year, but which is half pretty it's pretty achievable. Half your police salary. Exactly. Considering the S P 500 since the 70s has averaged about 11%. Um, not to say I'm I mean I'm not investing all my money in the SP 500, but if I did, that's likely to be around about the 10,000 pound a year figure for. For just what I've done the last five years. And then of course that, you know, next year's 110. And then that kind of snowballs and snowballs and snowballs. So mathematically, it's a big milestone because this is where compound interest, like if you look at that graph of compounding, it's this is on the upslope. Um, but it's more for me of a personal achievement of like, oh shit, yeah, I I can do this. And I wanted to share it because everybody else can do it too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they can. It just time frames are different based on how much you can put into it. Totally. And you know, your finances now are different to when you were in the police and you know when you're first uh getting married and things like that. Life changes. You're you've your your life's gone like this, but you've made the correct decisions along the way to allow your savings and investments to grow at the same time. And that's what I'm like trying to drill into people. I'm like, we are everyday dudes, man. Literally, like I used to run nightclubs and bars and restaurants, and like I used to do marketing and try and get people to buy booze. Like that was what I did. And like then I just started now. I just now I just consume the booze. Um the um no, uh, but seriously, like we can you can go and change your life. Like uh and I I always say to people like everything you actually need to know is about three or four hours of your time, yeah. And then from there it's a little bit of top-ups and a bit of consistency here and there, and just keeping your finger on the pulse if Rachel does decide to rug pull the nation, um, then cool. Like, you know, then just be ready for those things. But if you understand them all, yeah, then you you can make really logical decisions. And so one of the key factors of this has to have been some level of automation, right? And uh, you talk about this a lot. Why is automating all of this so important?
SPEAKER_01:Well, so I I spend you saying about four or five hours of knowledge. I totally think that's true. Um, but I probably spent about that every single day thinking about this stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Um yeah, I went we we we went deeper than needed to go deeper to learn that actually component.
SPEAKER_01:Um but hey, we wouldn't be sat here, would we? Well we love it though, it's the difference, right?
SPEAKER_00:You don't have to love it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and that's the I think the hardest thing to convince somebody of like you you don't need a lot of time, and it is that just initial doing it. Um I think the knowledge takes a bit of time, but I think there has to be regular reviews, and my mind's changed on this a little bit recently. Like, automation is the key for anything in your life, whether it's when you go to the gym or eat healthy, whatever it is, like you prep food for a reason because you've done it. You've done it once for the week and it's done, and then you just could eat for the rest of the week and not think about it. The exact same things with your money. Like I review it probably every month, but I don't change anything because I just like to review it and I'm interested in it. For the average person, automation takes away that um that feeling of like, oh, I'm a bit tired. Should I just get a takeaway? Or like, I'm not gonna invest this month because last uh like yesterday, my tie blew out my car and that's gonna cost 100 quid. Um, but my investing is a hundred quid, so I'm just not gonna invest this month. But if you've automated it and done it at the beginning of the month, you have no choice. It's done. So you're completely removing that regular thought process. It makes us great as humans, but it also makes us awful at humans at doing things over the long term. Like you're just saying about time frame. We're not good at thinking in years, certainly not a multiple of years, anyway. We like to think about next month and what's happening today, you know, at the bare minimum, maybe six months for the average person. It's rare to think financially that further and further ahead. Um, so to automate something and do that choice once, that takes 10 minutes, 20 minutes, do it. Whether it's saving, investing, paying off debt, whatever it is, do it. But my only con to that is you may be more likely to make a rash decision if you've not invested a bit of time in learning this stuff. Like if you've only spent two hours listening to this podcast, you've probably learned a whole load of things and made you think about some things, hopefully. If it if it sparks action, that's that's the goal. That for me, that's the goal of all of this stuff, is to go and do it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But if you stop there, you might forget what I've said or what Sammy said in six months' time, and the stock market crashes, inevitably, I mean, I don't know when it's gonna crash, but it's gonna crash. And when it does crash, are you gonna think about the things that we're saying here or that one YouTube video that said, actually, a stock crash is okay because everything's cheaper. Like, are you gonna remember that or are you gonna go, oh shit, I've lost a load of money. Do I should I should I sell? Should I sell? And then you sell. You know what I mean? Like, so I think the automation is probably the most important thing. But then combined with that is you need to know what you're doing. There has to be an elephant, like a foundation knowledge of what you're doing, otherwise you're just gonna make shit decisions.
SPEAKER_00:Totally, man. Totally. Yeah, like, oh no, just get the trainers, and then you haven't saved or you've dipped in. And it's that plan. It's going back to that plan. It's like, yeah, okay, I can logically afford a hundred. I say I do this trick a lot with people actually, and it works. They say to me, Oh, how much, you know, I could save 500 pounds a month from my budget and get them to do the budget. Uh 500 pound a month. I'm like, cool. Put 50 quid in, automate that, do that for three months. Then when you've done that, whack it up to 150, 250, 300. And if you get to the 500 quid, which I'll be very shocked if you do, because everybody else, everyone goes into it with their like, I'm gonna save and invest, man, and I'm gonna be Warren Buffett, and I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna get to 100k in two months. And I'm like, you're not like let's be honest. And so, like, take that expectation of yourself down a touch. So when you do just keep notching it up, you probably find if you were doing the 500 quid that you get to 350 and you're that's your comfortable level. Um, and brilliant from that decision, and then you can move on and set those things up. Um, but it's just understanding about that about yourself, like you have to have a plan. And to touch back on this, please, please, please. I know it's very difficult if you are on the breadline and cost of living, etc., and you're struggling right now, but please put in 10 to 15 percent to enjoy yourself. Like I would rather sacrifice a couple of percent going into my stocks and shares ISA to enjoy my life because you're working half of your money, put it to work, right?
SPEAKER_01:I I totally agree. My my only counterpoint to that would be um would be if you if you're paying off debt. And that's that's for me where I where I take a different approach. When it comes to like normal life, if you if you have if you've got a five grand credit card debt, and this is definitely Dave Ramsey's influence on me, but I really do believe it because I've done it and it works, being like obsessed with not being in that debt is is for me the only way I was gonna get out of it. And I'm not like some unique unicorn, you know what I mean? Like there's most people, if they just get comfortable with that debt and they think like I deserve to go, you know, on that holiday or that what whatever that trip is, or I deserve to go eat out because I've had a really long week and I totally accept and agree with everything you said about you work hard for your money, but you deserve to enjoy your money. Once you pay it off. Yeah, because you're just gonna get like you get comfortable. You made a really good point then about like getting used to an amount, it becomes normal, like 100 50 is uncomfortable, I don't like it. Then you get used to it, and you're like, ah, it's 50 quid. I've still you know I've still got other money. Then it's 100 quid and then it's 150, but you get used to that new norm. For me, it's the same with debt. People just get used to whatever their debt level is. As long as for me, it took to get absolutely crippled to do something about it. And that's what happens to most people. They just go through life with like car finance or uh or whatever their debt is. They get they just like this is this is normal now. And changing that would almost feel weird. So the only way you're gonna remove all of that debt is by being laser-focused, crazy, like almost demented, like intentional with it. And you're like, right, I'm gonna sell things, I'm gonna do all this. For me, that was the only way I could do it. Otherwise, I would still have debt now. So I think for me, that my counterpoint to what you're saying, my only stipulation would be debt. Once you've got rid of that, 100%. Like you need to allocate even more, I'd say even more than 10-15%. I struggle to do that, but there's a lot of people that want to enjoy their money more. I as a percentage of my income, probably probably allocate two or three percent of fun. Two or three? Really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Why we just do you do free things and things that enjoy around the house that like not intentionally, right?
SPEAKER_01:So we we allocate I've seen you like go you you smashed out on the Taylor Swift for the Yeah, so we so we have like we have we will set aside money, um, like a monthly amount into like um future fun stuff. So that's so Taylor Swift and Coldplay and all those things, concerts and experience and stuff like that. That's set aside. But for like monthly fun stuff, yeah, it's a very, very small amount. And and even though I'm a huge fan of the 50, 30, 20 budgeting method, 30% to once is crazy. Like I and I know I talk about it, and I I would also say like that's a great framework to get started in and even to tweak as you move along. But 30% of your income to once is insane. Yeah, yeah. Really, when you think when you actually think about what that is, like if you're paying off debt and 30% of your income is going towards once, there's a misalignment here of of of of your priorities because it should be 50% of that for a while on paying off debt, and then yeah, if you want to spend 30%, cool. But for me, um yeah, we we just I I I I'm quite minimal with my fun.
SPEAKER_00:I I definitely have got to that point now, like I invest with my health and doing all of these things now, um which I would never have done before, ever. And so it just becomes priorities. Like you go through different seasons of life, and things become important to you, you know, like and uh that's what's important. Like I I use the 751015. Um, so it's literally everything that I need to spend doesn't matter if it's spending money, it's in the 75.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And then you would put health and wellness stuff in that? Absolutely everything.
SPEAKER_00:Cool. Everything. Um, so and then 10 cents for saving, short term holidays, car insurance, yearly emergency fund, once a pots. And investing is investing, and that's it. And like and it just doesn't need to be more complicated than that. Because then if you're like working out, like, do I is it a one or is it a need? And like, do I need this thing? It's like, no, well, you're spending the money, you're spending the money. If it's going out of your account for something else which is not for you, or it could be for you, whatever that is, you are purchasing something with your money. It's called spending. So just put it in a spending part, it doesn't need to be much more complicated than that.
SPEAKER_01:I think I think what we're touching on is if it works for you, it works. Exactly. At the end of the end of the day, you're saving 10% and you're investing investing 15%. That's the goal, right? Like that's the thing that everybody struggles with. So whatever's left, yeah. I can spend on whatever the hell you want. Like it's your money.
SPEAKER_00:And if you get that 75 down and they uh and bits up and your life's still great, like great. Yeah. Like, and then a lot of people look at that and they look at these frameworks and they go, well, I'm shh, you know, more like 90% of that one. And then that's where they turn off from it. And it's like, well, no, it's just a framework to work towards. Like if you get there in five years, well done, then that's a good journey. Like, that's a kind of a noble journey to go on to try and do that and sort that out. It doesn't have to be heading the sand, mate.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know. It reminded me of a video I did maybe two years ago saying if I earned the average salary, this is this is how I'd budget it. And it was very much the 50-30-20 thing. And like so many people are like, it's more like 80%. Like, okay, maybe for you, but I I can promise you, if that was my salary, where I lived wouldn't be 90%, like I just wouldn't do that because I couldn't have been able to afford it. I would go and share a flat with somebody. I'm telling you, like, people don't believe me. I 100% would. I would completely lower my lifestyle to whatever matched my salary because that's my salary. And if you don't do that, that's what happens when you end up matching out credit cards on or going on to Klana. My focus would be to increase my income, but that's 100% how I budget my money. Totally, man. Totally.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and yeah, and then that's something that goes back to the status thing, isn't it? Like, oh, I have well, I grew up here, so I have to live here. You don't have to.
SPEAKER_01:Or you push them and say, okay, so in that needs, how much is a how much is that as a car payment? And they're like, well, the average car payment's like 500 quid now. So you're like, oh, okay, cool.
SPEAKER_00:That makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Just to clarify.
SPEAKER_00:I haven't touched on car finance today. Just because I know you love it. And uh we talked a lot about it last time, but you know, it is a big deal. You know, it's huge. 91% now is new cars on the road. It's an extra 1% from last time. It's gone up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and the average new car payment is now£357. There you go. Um, so it's it's creeping up. And obviously that, you know, inflation plays a part in that, of course, but still, like a third of your monthly budget going on a car or even a quarter is just mad for something you probably use for 15-20 minutes going down the road, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I I get it. I I get why people finance cars. I understand the logic of it, and it I can see how people convince themselves to do it. Like my my my wife had a finance car up until I started learning about stuff, and I had to convince her to get rid of it. And she'll tell you now, it was a great decision. At the time, she was like using all the you know, it's it's insurance because like if something goes wrong, then the dealer deals with it. It's it's reliable, it's not gonna break down. It's like, yeah, because we're constantly driving past broken down cars all the time, aren't we? Like, I can't remember the last time I went on a motorway and didn't see 50 cars pulled over that were more than two years old. Like, it's just not a thing anymore. Cars are built better. Like to get it, get a second hand car three or four years old. Like it's gonna be fine. Yeah, it's gonna be absolutely fine. Yeah. And you can pick one up for like the sum you can get for a grand. You know what I mean? Like it's not gonna be the best car in the world, but like you can do that. That's two or three from the average monthly payments. That's three monthly payments. Trying to convince somebody that that's the way forward, I get it. Like, I understand the kind of like it feels it's like a little safety blanket. I feel good because the guy, car salesman, said to me, I have, you know, this gap insurance and this insurance, and I'll everything's okay, but it's gonna cost you a load of money. But it's a like I haven't if I don't think about what this money actually goes on, I'll be fine. Um, so I understand it. I think status plays a huge role in it massively. Like people want to look fancy. That 350 pound average car payment, that's not gonna get you BMW, is it? You know what I mean? Like so the people that get the nicer cars are spending some significantly more than that. Yeah, uh. And I just I I just want to clarify, like, I do understand why people do it. I just think if you want to be better off financially, regardless of your situation, unless you're a multimillionaire and you can afford to buy a car outright, like if you can buy the BM, the hundred grand BMW outright, who am I to say you can't you can afford it? It's not even gonna remotely affect your life. No, go and buy it. Do whatever you want. It's gonna depreciate. Feel nice when you pull up with a red light. Do whatever you want. That's cool. It's your money. It's like you're setting fire to half of it as soon as you drive it. Okay, cool. But as long as you know you can you're doing that, you can afford it, do it. But there's people who are on like just above average salaries driving hundred grand cars. You're like, what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, I live quite close to a council estate and you drive around that, it's Audi, Audi, BM, Audi, BMG, Range Rover. I'm like, wow. Doing the mental math. Like, how does this work? How do we get here? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it it it is it is such a damaging thing on finance. I've been there, I've done it myself, you know. I know, I know how that is. Um the moment we got out of it, it just feels so much better on the sensors. Like you're just like, well, I own this now, and I'm literally gonna drive that car until it dies. Yeah, and I can't I don't care.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm getting my car serviced next week. Um just to clarify service, not finance. Um I'm getting so I'm getting a service and it's like a big 60,000 mile service, and it's gonna cost 500 quid. Oh, they're brutal, man. And I and service eggs. And I looked and I thought, oh, so shit. But then I thought, if I was financing a car, I'd still have to do that. Yeah. So like people think the financing is like it's this cheaper. No, I would pay the 350 and the 500 that month.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So when people think that this is like some good deal, it blows my mind.
SPEAKER_00:No, 100%. 100%. Mate, I've loved this. Thank you so much. No, um, I feel like I can literally just yam about this stuff with you all day long. We could turn the world to rights. But um, where do you want to send people today, man?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, just anywhere. TikTok, Instagram, not YouTube anymore. I mean, I've got videos there, you can go back historically, but just search Frugal Spender anywhere and you'll find me if you've got any questions.
unknown:Jump.
SPEAKER_01:Send me DM and let me know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, legend. Thanks for coming on, man.
SPEAKER_01:Always, man. Good to see you. Appreciate it.
