This Is Exactly How You’re Going To Take Control Of Your Finances In 2026 (90 Day Plan)

The playbook to make 2026 your year. 

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In this episode of the Money Gains Podcast I'm breaking down a practical 12-week action plan covering everything from conducting a financial review to automating your money management. 

We talk about why personal finance is deeply personal and provide actionable steps for increasing income and capturing cashback opportunities that could save you over £1,000 a year.

This is the CHATGPT Prompt >> 

“Here are my last 3 months of bank transactions. Please analyse them and categorise every transaction into 3 categories:

1. Fixed expenses
2. Discretionary spending 
3. Debt payments

Then:

 – Calculate my average monthly spending in each category

 – Identify areas where I may be overspending compared to typical averages (e.g., transport, subscriptions, eating out)

- Highlight any merchants or transactions you’re not sure about so we can make a decision on these together

 – Estimate my potential savings rate (based on income vs spending) and explain it as if you are analysing a business’ profit vs loss”

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It's an AI-powered budgeting and cashback app designed to help you make more of your money.

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✅ Why reviewing three months of bank statements reveals the hidden spending leaks that keep you broke

✅ How the three-bank automation system removes willpower from money management 

✅ Why building an emergency fund before investing gives you the freedom to handle financial emergencies

✅ How the debt snowball method creates quick psychological wins

✅ Why asking for a pay rise has only three outcomes

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DISCLAIMER:
This episode is meant for educational purposes and should not be considered financial advice or UK tax advice. When you invest your capital is at risk. Past performance is not a guarantee of future success. 

This episode description contains affiliate links - if you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. This does not alter our suggestions and there is no charge for you.

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Welcome back to the Money Gains Podcast. Now, this is exactly how you're going to take control of your finances in 2026, people. I'm going to break this down. I'm going to give you a 90-day plan and I'm going to split it up into 12 weeks. Now, if you're joining us for the first time, then this right here is one of our solo episodes. And what we're going to be doing moving forward from now is doing two of these a month alongside two guest appearances as well. Now, the simple fact is that we are building Gains app at the moment. And actually, when we thought about this, more people seem to get value from the solo episodes than they necessarily do with all of the guests. So we're going to be hyper selective about who's coming on and also do solo episodes where we can do a bit more workshop style like this and give you guys something to take away for. So what I really want to do today is set you guys up for 2026 and put you in the best position possible for the next year ahead. Okay, so what we're going to be doing, splitting this up into 12 weeks. We're going to be running through what you can do each week and you can take away little bits from them and literally follow it like a full-on action plan. So by the time we get to the end of March or whenever you're listening to this, you will have put in place all of the foundational blocks for building out your wealth and also making sure all your finances are happening like clockwork. So let's jump into the first week. And this week is really a review of where you are at, guys. Okay. So what I want you to do is take a good, straight-up, hard look at how things are going for you financially. This isn't a comparison game. We're not looking to take someone on down the street or start looking at, well, there are our work colleagues who are doing better than us. And I want you guys to think about your life like it's a business, okay? Because every single business on the planet that's successful has more money that's coming in and going out. That's straight profit versus loss. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna take out three months of the recent bank statements. Now, if you've got banking apps, you can just download the PDFs of those. Or if you've got the physical ones, you can actually get those out and start looking at those. Now, soon you're gonna be able to do this in absolute seconds with the gains app that we're building at the moment. And but right now we can't. So what you can do is you can open up Chat GPT, and I'm gonna pop a prompt for you on screen. And for those who are actually listening as well, you can get that in the description below. Now drop this prompt into Chat GPT. And what it's gonna do is it's essentially gonna ask it to evaluate all of your spending, split it up into three different categories, and find little bits in your budget that can make a lot of sense for you moving forward. So where are you overspending? I want you to be looking at this. I want awareness of your money. I want you to go through them. I want to look at what you've done, okay? Look at where you're spending money. Because I guarantee you, nobody's perfect and nobody ever will be. Personal finance is personal, and you're all going to be spending money on things which don't actually always provide you value. More in that soon. So that's what I want you to do in week number one. It is really simple and it just sets us up for moving in ahead into the next weeks as well. Now, week number two. What are we doing in week number two? We are cutting out the fat. Now, what I mean by this is I want you to find the lowest hanging fruit so we can put some of your spending back into play for later on, and you'll see why that is so important. And what you're gonna do here is you can again use Chat GPT or you can do this on a pen and paper, it's totally up to you. List out your expenses from biggest to smallest. Now, the key thing is here is just to look at them all. So, what are you spending on? And then you can target the ones which are the biggest. Now, I want you to go through each and every single line. Where are the areas that you can save? What isn't providing you value and what is? And that is so important. And yes, okay, I totally get it right now. Some people might just be literally living from paycheck to paycheck and just like spending all money on everything is absolutely essential. But I guarantee you, within there, there is some savings in there. And of course, you will look at your rent or your mortgage as the biggest payment. Now, of course, that's gonna be highly unlikely for us to get that down and below where we, you know, uh, even if we can cut a couple hundred quid, 200 quid from that right now, it's gonna be almost impossible. But we could look at, say, car payments, we could look at some of our energy costs, we could look at some of our uber spending or takeaway spending. These are the things that we can dial in on. Are they providing you value? Are you doing them out of convenience, or are you being a touch lazy with some of your spending? I guarantee you there's some savings in there. And we do have to obviously try and put these things into place. What we're looking to do is create at least 10 to 20% within our budget for us to essentially allow us to start moving ahead into the next sections. That is so important. So can you cut between 10 and 20% of your spending down right now without cutting out the things which truly provide you value? And what I mean by that, guys, is essentially if coffee is, if you know, buying a morning coffee every single day is your highlight of your day, then don't cut the coffees out because they are providing you value. Now, could you, for example, cut it down to two or three days a week, make a bit more of a spectacle out of it, and maybe make some of those coffees at home? That's just a slight example. But for example, again, if you're taking Ubers when you could have taken the bus or, you know, got the train or car pulled even on Uber and got those costs down. Where are the things in there that are providing, you know, not providing you value and you're doing out of convenience? And perhaps you can move from Waitros to Audi or Tesco's to Audi or whatever that might all be. You get what I'm saying here. I'm, you know, as I said before, personal finance is personal. So I can't give you a blanket blueprint of that's what you must cut, but you can only look at your own spending and see what's not providing you value at the moment. Okay, so week number three, guys. So we're moving ahead quickly through this. I want you can come back anytime and go through these as and when you need. Now, week number three is all about automation. And the reason being behind this is we're all humans, right? If we leave it to ourselves to actually make decisions every single month, sometimes things come up and when we convince ourselves that it's way more important. Like, you know, I must get that new dress for the party, or, you know, I must go out and buy that new golf club when actually, really, you don't actually need it. And if we're to put in place these automation systems, then actually we know what's left with our money. And if we have the money to spend it, then fantastic, we can do that. Now, there is a couple of ways of doing this. And the first thing is I will really want to drum this home. And you've probably heard me say this before, but if you haven't, the most important factor here is that you pay yourself first. And what that simply means is that you work hard for your money. So we will need to make our money work hard for us. And so we put ourselves first before we put in place the people that we pay money to that we owe for bills and subscriptions and rent and mortgage and all those types of things. And it doesn't mean that we don't pay those people because we still have to pay those people. It's just a psychological switch that you make by doing your savings and equally your investments later first, right? So this happens first. And the reason we do this when we set this process up is that we want to make sure that we are covered, that our goals are being met as most importantly before our bills, but we still cover our bills too. Okay. So I do get slack on social media about that every now and then because some people don't realize that I'm not saying don't not pay your bills. Please do pay your bills, guys. But we definitely want to be putting in place this pay yourself first aspect. Now, there is a really great way of doing this. Now, I'm a massive fan of automation when it comes to your money. So we just don't leave anything to chance and we know exactly what's going to be happening, and we set ourselves up in a really good way every time we get paid. So that is called a three-bank system. Now, really simply, you have a different bank account with a different provider that does different jobs. Now, people are like, oh my God, that's so much effort. It's really not, guys, in today's day and age, right? Because you've got apps on your phone. You can switch between them in literally seconds. You're all doing it all the time. You jump in between WhatsApp and phone calls and messages back on Instagram, back over here. You can do it with your banks. It's really, really simple, okay? So let's say, for example, bank number one is Monzo. I'm just gonna pick that. And this is where you get you're paid into, right? So this is the first bank, this is where you get paid into. Now, the second bank is another bank account, and let's say it's with Lloyd's or Halifax. I'm just choosing examples here that you all know. I'm not affiliated with any of these brands. I'm just using them as an example. So that's Halifax in this example, because I I bank with Halifax, let's just keep it simple. Um, and that bank number two, I'll come back to that in a second. Now, bank number three, we set up a high interest savings account. So we have a little look online and we find a provider that's providing a decent amount of interest between four and six percent right now is available, depending on who you pick. Sometimes there's some fantastic sign-up offers on there as well. And what we really want to do is we want to hone in and getting ourselves as much value out of that as possible. So the highest interest rate we can are called a high interest savings account. And then what we do is we set up from our bank number one where we get paid into, in the Monzo in this example, we set up an amount that we can actually cover. Now, going back to week number two, within that prompt that I give you on Chat GPT, it's gonna give you a savings rate. And let's say we manage to try and find that 10% gap in our spending. And I'm gonna keep it really simple. Let's say we're paid £2,000 a month. So 10% would be £200. We would set up that £200 to come out in a direct debit or a standing order or whatever that might well be on the day you get paid, exactly when you get paid, on the day, right? And then when that happens, that money gets moved over straight away to your savings account, which is paying yourself first. So that's moving ahead. Now, if you've struggled with savings and you do tuck into that every single month, that happens to a lot of people. You know, we think we can save 200 quid and just like clockwork on the third week, we run out of money and we're tucking into our savings account. Well, what I would do in that example is I would save 10, you know, 50% less. So if it's 200 pounds in this case, I would start by saving 100 pounds a month just to build up that habit because you know you've been tucking in and nicking 50 quid out of it here and there. Well, guess what? Doing 100 pounds is just gonna make sure that happens. You're gonna feel good about it because you're just doing it and it's gonna start happening. Now, payday um habits form over 90 days. So that's three payday cycles. If we can get that right, 100 pounds, we can start moving it up to 125, 150. And as long as we check those boxes and we're not dipping back into it, we've done the job. Okay, now bank number two, this is very important. This is where all of your bills and subscriptions come out of. Now, some people will have variable bills in there. What I tend to do is try and work out what the average of those variables are, and I put a little touch more in just to make sure that uh that account doesn't get drawn down or doesn't get overdrawn, for example. So let's say, for example, out of our 2,000 pounds, our expenses are £1,000. Now, you know, I'm pulling numbers clean out on my proverbial here, but we're just using this as an example. So 200 pounds has gone into our savings account, and £1,000 has gone into our cover all of our bills and subscriptions. Okay. Now, this is where it gets interesting, right? Because now what's left in bank number one? 800 pounds. So that's our spending money for the month. We know exactly what's happening. We've paid ourselves first, the money's moved over, and now guess what? 800 pounds. That's what we've got to live off. So let's say four weeks in the month, we've got 200 pounds a week. That's for money for us to use, enjoy as long as we can make that happen. So we've broken it right down and we've not left anything to chance. We've made our savings happen, we've made our bills and subscriptions, they're all paid. And now what's left is ours to actually start to live throughout the month, pay for our food, travel costs, or whatever that might well be. And we're moving now. So everything's been automated, right? So the same day money's being saved, same day money's going out to bills, but we've just done that psychological switch of paying ourselves first. Okay, now you can also later on use the four-bank system. So once you're getting up and running a little bit with this, and you'll see as we move through the weeks, there is a fourth bank. And that can be your investment account. Now, I would treat this account exactly the same. I would pay myself first into this account. And as you'll see as we grow, savings and investments are equally important. So we would move some money over into our investment account and our savings account, paying ourselves first. Now, that is week number three of automation. Now, week number four is trying to tackle your debt. Now, I have been here, guys. I know this better than anyone. If you don't know my story, I came from 24,000 pounds in debt, didn't know anything about money, and then managed to dive into it, get rid of it in 18 months, or a combination of hard work using some of the techniques which I'll run through in a second, and some side hustles where I managed to boost that up and get rid of it in 18 months. I literally went for it. But one of the first things I had to do was accept that I owe money to other people. When it comes to debt, a lot of us might say on the surface, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, I'm just paid it off, just paid it off. But actually, you haven't truly accepted that you are getting yourself into debt and that you need to pay that money back. We want to try and clear that down and get ourselves back to zero. So awareness around our debt is key. So, what I want you to do is go for all your credit cards, all your loan providers, anyone you owe money to. And this is only credit cards and debt. I'm not talking about big mortgages here or anything like that, or student loans at this point. That is what I call good debt because it's trying to you're trying to move your life forward in those examples. So, credit cards, payday loans, and loans. They're the ones that we're trying to attack here so we can move forward because debt will always hold you back if you have it. So we have to have a plan in place for it to get it paid off. Now, a really great way, which is what I use, was something called debt snowball. Because generally, if you're in debt, you don't have good money habits, and that can be put in place quite quickly. And we want to give ourselves a quick pat on the back that we are doing well with our money. Now, debt snowball works like this: you list your debts from smallest to biggest and you attack the smallest first. So you give yourself that quick win and then you move up the chain. Now, there are some other techniques as well. Some people list it from the biggest interest to the smallest and they attack the biggest first. But I like to think that when we are doing our debt repayments, that we do need that quick pat on the back. Well done, you've done it. Now, a little hack for you is you can phone up your other debt providers and see if they can reduce those payments down to the minimum payments while you clear the smaller ones. And then you can start moving up and it's that snowball effect, right? We're pushing that snowball off the hill with our debt and we're paying it off and we're getting ourselves back to zero. But we have to clear our debt up in 2026, guys. That is very, very important. Now, week number five. We've spoken about awareness, debt, and automation. I want to put some money back in your pocket in 2026. So, week number five, I want you to consider because you're setting up your three bank system, is a current account switch, right? A current account switch is honestly free money for you guys today. Put it in place. It is the most easiest, easiest way of making a couple hundred pounds. You'll see right now there's some about 175 to 200 pounds. A quick Google on Martin Lewis's website will bring a load up. He has a fantastic page where he keeps up to it. He's uh got a bigger team than me. And so he is honestly the best place to look for this. Go on moneysavingexpert.com and have a quick look around. Now, current account switches, they take care of everything for you. Your direct debits, your standing orders, all your subscriptions, everything that you thought might actually take you bloody ages, doesn't. And it they take care of everything for you. And it takes some seven working days. So you want to get that put put into place, open your account with your new provider, and then once you've ticked off all the T's and C's, it's important to look at the terms and conditions because some will have different things where you have to say pay money in over a certain period of time or a certain amount, but you can get free money at the end of it once you've ticked all those boxes. And honestly, guys, it can really be boost for whatever we're about to discuss next, or it can be going towards your debt payments or whatever that might well be. It can be a couple hundred quid. Now, I actually had a talk at Calm, the charity, a few months ago now, and a girl in the audience had done this five times in a year, earning over 800 quid in the process. So it can be done if you're regimented with it. Obviously, you have to tick those boxes. Another person I had on the podcast as well, he and his wife challenged himself to do it and they pay for their entire tennis club subscriptions. I know, I know. But, you know, it whatever floats your boat, right? This is free money. And especially when you've got a partner and you both do it. Well, now you're doubling up, could pay for a holiday, right? So put this in place, a current account switch in week number five. Now, week number six, this is where I want you to start thinking about your emergency fund. Now, the reason behind this is an emergency fund is the most important part of your personal finance. It is there for emergencies. There's 22.3 million Brits right now without a thousand pounds. So if one financial emergency strikes, well, they're going into debt to clear that up, or they're if they lose their job, they're on universal credit, they can't pay for these things themselves. Now, this is what why we have to set up an emergency fund, because it's about empowerment to you financially. And the reason being is, is you could have an arsehole boss, and if you build yourself up an emergency fund, well, you might say, well, hey, you know what? Actually, I'm gonna take the, you know, three, four week or even six weeks off uh to find a new job because I can't handle it anymore. And you can do that when you have an emergency fund in place. Or if someone, you know, we had a boiler breakdown the other day and also our washing machine decided to blow up and put water all over the thing. So we also had our sink blow up, too. Yes, I live in an old house and we've just moved in and everything's bloody broken. But we have the money in our emergency fund to pay for it. So it's not the end of the world, right? We can then rebuild it back up. So the what I want you to do in week number six is start to think about getting £1,000 into your emergency fund. Now, if you're looking up at that £1,000 and thinking it's gonna take me ages, well, we've just put 175 to 200 quid back in your pocket with the current account switch service. And actually, when you break that down, if you have your 10% in play with the current account switch, let's say you paid £2,000 in this instance, that £200, so that's gonna give you £600 plus the current account switch and some other things which I'm gonna teach you about in a bit, you're gonna be at that £1,000 by the end of this 90 days. And if you've already got that 1,000 pounds in place, I want you to try and think about moving up to three months of living expenses. Now, a lot of financial creators and people online will say three months of your wages. And I just disagree entirely because when you actually scale back and you don't need to go, you know, to the gym and expensive things because you can go for a run and you cut all the things out and you just look at what you could actually live off. What could you and your family or you as a single person actually live off? And that's the number. So whatever that number is a month times that by three, that's your three months, and that's what you go for because you can live off that. Your old rent's paid, your bills are paid, you can feed yourself, you can do all the things that you want to do up to a certain degree. Now, could you cut out a few of those things as well? And what could you really just get by with for three months? Okay, that's the number you go for first. And if you want to feel more secure, some people do say edge it up to four, five, six months. You can do that later, but we are going with this 90 days three month plan. So, got that emergency fund, put it in place. And actually, I'll tell you a story very quickly. One uh lady in my community, Tracy, uh, we hopped on one of our community calls the other day and it was amazing. She turned around to me and she said, Tammy, I've got my emergency fund together. And I just said to her, How do you feel? And she goes, Oh my god, it is. The most liberating thing that any like that's ever happened to me. Like I literally can batted off. And do you know what she did actually as well? She left her job because she didn't like her boss and what she was doing. And she went and got another job. It only took her three weeks, but she went and did it. And she wouldn't have done that if she didn't have an emergency fund. So that's the power of it, guys. Batting off financial experiences which happen to you and gives you choice and it gives you more freedom than you could ever, ever imagine. So never underestimate the power of emergency fund. And it actually has a second reason, which I'll get into in a second as well. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it's week number seven, and it is the big one, and that is investing. So I just want to start by saying we are not just solely investing. We do need to still take care of the shorter term savings. We need to make sure our debt is being cleared off, and we need to make sure we have an emergency fund in place before we start thinking about investing. Making sure we've got good habits in place, our emergency funds ticking over, we have those short-term savings goals being hit, and then we can start thinking about putting money to investing. And there's a really simple rule I use, and that's the five-year rule to ascertain whether or not money should be going into investments or it should be kept. And there's a simple reason for that is that any money that we're happy to contribute to future us, so five years or more, um, this money gets invested. And any money that we are not happy with that we may need in that five-year period, this money doesn't get invested, and that money gets saved. And when we look at it like that, it can be a lot easier to ascertain what amount we need to put towards savings and how much we can actually contribute towards our investment. And a simple fact around that is risk, right? So when you invest, there is certainly risk in play. And I'm going to be discussing that in a little bit more detail for you. But investing really is the only way you can beat inflation over the long term for us mere mortals. Now, a really quick example: compounding is nuts, right? This is using £100 a month with an 8% return, which is pretty fairly average. Over 30 years, if you invested 100 pounds a month for 30 years, you would get, if you got an 8% return, just over £150,000 in your bank account when you came to withdraw it, right? And with inflation adjusted back in, that's 90,000 pounds in today's money, which is 20,000 pounds more than the average retirement pot in the UK, okay? So now you can see how powerful this is. It doesn't have to be a big amount going into your investments to actually get quite a lot out of it at the end. Should you get the returns over the long term. Now, of course, let's discuss risk because there is risk when you invest, but you can lower your risk. So if you put all of your money into, say, some cryptocurrency or individual growth stock, then there is a lot more risk than say there is in things like funds, or perhaps in things which are like bonds, or perhaps a combination of a fund with some stocks and bonds inside of it. So this is how you can lower your risk. It depends what you're investing in, and also it also depends on the amount of time you give your investments. Now, a typical basic level of index fund, there was a study done by Schroeder's which said the longer you invest for, the lower your risk becomes. Because in the short term, the stock market is extremely volatile, but over the long term, it's tended to go up. However, it's important to say that past performance is not a future indicator of success, but history is all we have to go on. And history has been very favorable to investors in the past, especially with things like index funds. Now, there are two main places you can use to invest. You can use your pension. So your pension will actively invest into a fund, and that may well be an index fund similar to it. It could be a default fund, which could be a little bit safer. It's important to go and check these things. Your pension company works for you. So spend 15 minutes this week. Speak to your pension company, find out where that's invested, what kind of risk is that taking, get them to send you some details around it, maybe some educational resources, and work out whether or not the growth of that pension is good enough for you. Okay, we want to try and be aiming between 5 to 7% from our pension if we possibly can, especially during our younger years. As you get older, you want to take a little bit more defensive approach to it because you want to keep more of your money. Now, I'm gonna discuss more about this in a second. The second place you can use to invest is your stocks and shares ISA. Now, your pension is locked up until you're 57, but it does have tax benefits, something called tax relief. And a stocks and shares Icer is much more flexible, but it doesn't have tax relief, but you can withdraw it whenever you like tax-free. Now, I personally like to combine the both of them because I'm gonna want some of the money before I'm 57, and some of the money I'm happy to contribute to FutureMe and get the tax relief on that money. It's worth speaking to a financial advisor if you don't understand this, but there is a lot of educational resources online where you can learn this stuff for free and work out a little plan which you you know can suit you. Now, where can you invest? Okay, so the difference between stocks and funds really simply is imagine a chocolate bar. A Mars bar is Apple stock in this example, and then a box of celebrations is our fund. Now, within a box of celebrations, we've got Mars, we've got Twix, we've got Bounty. Yes, I do love a bounty. And then so we've got lots of different chocolates with inside of it. And if we only own Mars bar, well, if Mars bar goes down or up in price, then we are only exposed. So all of our eggs are in that one basket, right? Whereas in a fund, if Marsbar doesn't do well, but Twix and Bounty has a fantastic gear, well, it's usually balanced out and can actually go up still if the other companies within it have risen. So there's less risk involved when you invest in the fund, usually, okay, depending on what the fund is invested in. Now, something called an index fund is simply a list of companies from all around the world. So there are country-specific ones, there are region-specific ones, and there are global ones. Now, I love the global one because it's essentially the world's economy wrapped up in one single box of celebrations for us to buy. We go to the uh use our stocks and shares ISO, we go to the supermarket, we buy one single fund for one price, and we own all of the companies within it. And that's why I like funds. So index funds, so you've got famous ones like the SP 500, you've got the FTSE in the UK, the FTSE 100, which is the top 100 companies in the UK, or the FTSE 250, which is the next 250 uh top companies in the UK. But I like a global index fund personally, um, just simply because, as I said before, it's thousands of companies from all over the world, and I feel like I'm investing in the world's economy. I'm not, you know, uh exposed to say one single country and the performance of the companies within that. So index funds are a brilliant place to start. Um, I would definitely go and pick a provider and Google what the best providers are, you know, but the best funds are for you in that environment, right? You can use Chat GPT to help you do that. A lot of these providers will have some fantastic educational resources. We actually have a video about the best stocks and shares ISIS available as well, which I'll leave in the show notes below. So investing is super important, but we do have to make sure we have our emergency fund in place. We do have to make sure our short-term savings goals are being met. And then any future money, which we're happy to try and grow our wealth with and put towards our future life, you know, five, 10 years or more, that money can become invested. So I'm keeping it really, really simple this week to not overwhelm you because I could go into investing for hours and hours on end, but we're not going to do that today. Keep it really basic and really simple, but get this set up this week and let's move into the next week now. Okay, so week number eight. We want to look at leveling up our income. Now, it's very interesting. There was a study done, it was only a handful of people, so I'm talking a few thousand here, but 67% of those people had never asked for a pay rise at work. So over half of the UK, right now, we can safely say, has never asked for a pay rise. That is crazy, guys, because there is three outcomes when you ask for a pay rise. Number one is they say yes, happy days, you got the money, well done. All right. Somebody don't go and spend all of it straight away and not trying to improve your life. That is important. I'll touch on that in a second. But number two is they say, no, not right now, but if you hit these three KPIs over the course of three or six months or whatever that might well be, well, then we'll review it and we'll give you what you want. Number three is they say no. And if they say no, well, then you know where you stand. And perhaps you can come back and have another meeting about it and say, look, you know, people in the industry averagely are paid at my level, this amount, and you bring some evidence. Guys, it's 10 minutes of pain going through that. I get it. Look, it's awkward asking for more money. Of course it is, but it's 10 minutes of pain for potentially an exponential outcome in your life. So just go and ask your boss, at least try and, you know, work towards it at least, because it's going to make a big, big difference. That's something which you can do in January when you get back, or what are we, week eight. So middle of Feb, you can go and ask for a pay rise, and you're gonna see where where you know the cards fall for you. Now, another way we can look at leveling up our income is obviously side hustles. Now, two in five Brits now have a side hustle along the go, and that's because the cost of living is paying a big difference there. And also people just like making a bit of extra cash. Now, a side hustle can be as simple as a referral code in a WhatsApp group and you all your mates sign up to a new app, for example, and you earn a few bob for doing that, right? That can be a really simple way of bringing in a few bits of extra cash. Now, what I want you to do is if you I want you to do a time evaluation first, right? Now, really simply, a time evaluation is how much extra time in the week do I have which I can actually put towards doing something which could essentially bring in me in some extra cash? Now, some of you are gonna have young kids and it's gonna be really bloody difficult for you to find extra time within the week. But for example, if you get the training to work, could you use your half hour, 45-minute commute? Could you, for example, use your lunch break every now and then? Maybe you go out, you get your sandwich, you lock in for half an hour. This could be some little bits of time. And look, if you stack that over the course of a week, that's gonna really start to add up. And when you do that, you can start to look at actually side hustles, which would make sense for the amount of time you have. Some of you guys may have lots and lots of time. So maybe you want to start yourself a little second business along the go that you try and bring in some money and you're gonna grow that over time. That's exactly what I did with Up the Gains. It was a side hustle, started growing. I started enjoying it more. I started putting more effort in, more time, and it grew and it grew and it grew, and then I went full time with it. Okay, so it can be done. Now you can use things like online surveys, website testing, online focus groups if you're shorter on time. Yes, they pay slightly less, but actually they can bring you guys in some extra cash. I made a video uh on Up the Gains Money, the main channel, about this and how you can bring in 500 pounds before Christmas when we did this before. And this was so possible, guys. So, so possible. There is money out there from side hustles right now. Go and do it. And if you really need to try and pay off some debt and move yourself up to that thousand pounds, go and have a look in your loft, go and have a look in your wardrobe, stick some stuff on vintage, get some stuff on eBay, get rid of the stuff you don't need because some your crap is somebody else's treasure. I guarantee you there. Now, the reason behind this is if we think about investing, right, we want to try and bring in some extra money. Now, I have a theory called the gap, right? And if you actually look at what you want to get to, so let's say you want to save or invest 100,000 pounds, but I can only put 200 pounds a month into that. And with growth, it's gonna take me X amount of time. And then you look at that and think, well, if I could increase that to 300 pounds and I'm gonna get there a lot faster, right? So the gap right now is 100 pounds. Now, I guarantee you, if you actually look at that, think with a side hustle. You don't have to be making thousands of pounds, a couple hundred pounds here or there, or a hundred pounds a month here or there, in this case with the gap, because the gap is a hundred pounds, that's gonna make a massive difference to you if you can save or invest that money. Uh, so when you're bringing in these money from the side hustles, you're moving it towards things which are gonna change your life. And it could just be you want to try and get yourself a better holiday at the end of the year, and that's gonna make a massive difference for your life. It will make a big difference if you can bring in some extra cash. So I want you to think about your time. What do you have available? And then put it to work with a few little side hustles here and there. And they don't have to be complicated. So don't put yourself under too much stress with this. Okay, so we've got to this point now. We're saving, we're investing, we're automating our money. And week number nine, I want you to start thinking about some goals. Like, where are we heading with all of this, right? We're doing all of this work. We need to know what we're working towards. And a great way of doing that is having a number. And look, the first up, I want to discuss the rule of 25, and it does scare people, so I'm just gonna put that in there as a caveat, okay? But don't get scared by this. We'll run through some examples about how you can do it. So let's say, for example, right now you are spending 20,000 pounds a year. The rule of 25 simply means you take that 20,000 pounds and you times it by 25. In this case, half a million pounds, 500,000 pounds. If we then get that 500,000 pounds, when we get to retirement, we can safely withdraw down 4% of that. It's called the 4% drawdown rule. And we can essentially live off, and guess what 4% is? It's £20,000. So 4% will allow us to draw down £20,000 a year out of that £500,000, and we can live for 25 years, right? Comfortably on that £20,000. But for example, if you're saving, if that money's in a savings account earning 4%, that money's not dwindling. We can still draw it down. Or if we even earn 5%, well, it's still growing. Okay, so then we might be able to start living a tiny bit of a better life at certain parts of our retirement and these types of things, right? Now, a lot of people look up at that 500,000 pounds, or if you're spending 30,000 pounds at 750 grand, for example, that's a lot of money. And I totally get that. So don't let this bit derail you at all. It is scary looking up at that number. Now, life expectancy is growing, so we are living for longer. Retirements are getting longer. Can't necessarily, I'm not going to say it out loud, but you can't always rely on a state pension being there. So we have to take things into our own hands. Now, the average retirement pot in the UK is currently just over £70,000. That is not enough money, as you can see from the rule of £25, to allow us to live a decent lifestyle, a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. We want to be able to do that. That's why we're doing this, right? So, rule of 25, if we get, we look up at that £500,000 number and we're like, Jesus Christ, that's really, really difficult for us to hit. I get it, okay? Break it right down. What can you achieve this year? What can you achieve next year? What can you achieve with growth from your investments? A great way of doing this. Open a compound interest calculator on the internet, Google it, it comes up. First number one calculator site, best one out there. Pop in some numbers, put in your 6% or 7% growth rate, whatever that might well be, and you're going to want to see, okay, if I'm saving 200 pounds a month and I'm getting six or seven percent, how long is it gonna take me to get to that 500,000 pounds? And then what can we do this year? What can we do next year? We want those small goals, those checklists that we can hit along the way up. And interestingly, once you start getting past a certain point, your money is going to grow at bigger rates each year if you're getting back those returns. So that's a massive factor here. It can feel like really heavy, hardgoing at the beginning because you're putting all of your money in and you're seeing it grow by a few pounds here and there. And that can be disheartening. But that is the most important bit. It's where we're manually turning the compound interest wheel, like really trying to grind it out. And this is really where it's so important. But as you get older and as you do this for longer, things start moving not faster, but you start getting bigger returns if you do get, say, average returns or you have a really good year, for example. Some years you are going to have years, especially when you're investing, where you do lose money and it's all part of the game, especially if you just got to stay invested and keep to the plan. So that's what we're gonna do in year number week number nine is our rule of 25. Now, week number 10 is credit cards. Okay. We are perhaps going to be putting them back into play. And the reason being for that is now credit cards actually have benefits to them. You can build up points, you can get cash back, you can get rewards from them. I flew to Australia recently and I only paid 200 pounds because I was using my Amex card. Now, this is not an advert for Amex in any way, shape, or form. I just simply use them because I like to build up points and I like to then supplement some of my travel costs with those. I pay 200 pounds to return flights for me and my partner, right? It is totally doable, but it you does require some control with your spending, yeah? You have to use credit cards responsibly. You have to be paying them off with a balance. Now, a great way of getting around this is if you suck with credit cards, is just have one open and put a really simple bill or subscription on it. And then with your bank number two back from our automation week, you just pay that off each month. That's going to start building you up at least some rewards and some points. And then perhaps you can edge it up to two subscriptions or three bills by the end of it. But control is massively important. If you're someone which just tends to whack loads of things on the credit card, then this is really important to get right and try and control yourselves. Because look, guys, that's what I did. I started getting so totally out of control when it came to credit cards. So if you suck with it, try and put at least one subscription on one and build it up and start getting some rewards and points. I now run my entire life every single month because I'm in control of my money. I know exactly what I have left to spend each month. And that's only what gets used on the credit cards. I keep an eye on it, and it's just really important for me to do that because I can get out of control and just go, oh, yeah, you know, I'll start it. I'll whack it on the credit, right? It's not healthy. But if you can use them and control them, it is really an amazing way of adding in some extra things into your finances, some extra cashback, some extra rewards and points. Simple Google around, depending on your life and what you want out of your credit cards, you can put them into place. There are so many different out uh examples out there that offer different things. But credit cards can be a really powerful way to help supplement some of your life and earn some money back from your spending. Okay, talking about earning money back from your spending, week number 11. I want you to put in place cashback apps. Now, cashback apps are an absolute hack, guys. Free money for you. And it is actually something that I'm attacking as well. I'm building my own app which has cashback as a part of it. There are different types of cashback. Number one is affiliate cashback, and you'll see the likes of top cashback. You've got QuidCo, for example. You create an account, it's free to create an account, you log in, and then when you buy something from an online retailer, you simply type them in on top cashback. So Nike in this example, because I'm gonna buy myself some new running shoes next week because mine are falling apart. I'm gonna go on Nike on top cashback, click the Nike, the Nike link on top cashback, and then when I make that purchase, it's gonna give me a percentage back. And you can see all the percentages which are listed on top cashback and Quidco, for example. Now, the only reason the only thing with this is that depending on the retailer, it can take some time to get the money back. And I'm talking sometimes in 24 hours, sometimes a matter of weeks. Some of my purchases, which I made in January of last year, only paid me a few months ago, right? So it can happen where it takes a long time, but most of them are actually pretty quick. And this is just a simple way of getting some money back into your pocket, right? From what you're already spending. Why not get the 8 or 10% off? Why not get the 5% back off? Like it it's money. It's money, it's your money. Keep more of it, please. Okay. Another great way is through instant gift cards. And this is actually what we're building into Gains app as well. Gains app, we will have the The ability for you guys to essentially type in a retailer and you can buy an instant gift card, and that can offer you between four and fifteen, sometimes twenty-twenty-five percent off that retailer. And this is from groceries. And it is an amazing hack. And we actually predict we can save the average UK salary over a thousand pounds a year just by putting this into place. If you think about every time you go into Tesco's and you go to the self-checkout, instead of just tapping Apple Pay, it quickly, and this is instant, by the way, this happens in less than 30 seconds. You purchase that gift card for the amount, or you pre-plan your shop. For example, you say, I'm going to spend £100 in Tesco's this week, and you keep using the same gift card and you pay that balance down. That can be the difference, right? You're putting your four to five percent back from groceries because that's roughly what they are. Every single shop, you get money back, and that balance can build up, and you can then take that money out at the end of the month and put it in your savings account and earn some interest from it, or you can build up that balance off and pay for Christmas with it, or whatever you decide, or a holiday or flights. This is hundreds and hundreds of pounds available to you guys. So either use online shopping, for example, Top Cashback through affiliate link clicking. Really is simple. Just click on the link on Top Cashback site, go to that retailer and make the purchases normal and they handle everything for you. Or if you're then wanting to spend in-store, for example, you can use instant gift cards, or you can also use instant gift cards online through apps like Gains App as well, which we are building. Okay, this is hundreds of pounds. Please, please do it, guys. That's week number 11. Just familiarize yourself with it. I'll leave a link exactly how to do it in the show notes below as well. So you can read that article and get a bit more familiar with it if it sounds a bit alien to you. Now, week number 12. I want you guys to start having a look back at what you've been spending over the weeks two to 10. How have you got on now? You put this bid in place. Uh uh, you're you should be more aware, you should have have things automated. You're hopefully paying off some of your debt or paid it off or moving towards paying uh money into your emergency fund. You perhaps set up your investment account as well, and you're putting money into that now as well. How is it doing? What's going on? You know, have you managed to curb your spending in certain areas a little bit? Have you managed to stick to your savings habits? Have you dipped into it? This bit is really important to not like if you have got it wrong, don't worry. You can go back to week number one, you can start again. Okay? This is not a like, oh, this is it now. I've just messed up this 90 days. Like, it doesn't work like that, guys. This happens, this needs to happen constantly. Now, I personally review my money every three months, and that's just because of the type of lifestyle that I live. I don't necessarily need to review it every single month. But if you are someone that likes doing that and you need to review things a little bit more regularly, then that's not going to hurt, okay? But once every couple of months at least is a really great place to start with this. What's been going on? How have you got on? And also let me know how you've got on at the end of it. Either drop me a message or pop a comment in here. How have you got on? And this is so, so important because now if we've managed to pass the test and we've gone through this period and we're doing really well, then brilliant. Perhaps we can start to edge up our savings, perhaps we can add a little another side hustle here or there. These are just the things and the challenges that we're all going to have to go through for the rest of our days on this earth, right? So you might as well get it right. So you might as well take the stress out of it with automation, getting all that stuff done so we can make decisions about where we can, you know, improve our income and the side hustles that we want to do uh over time, guys. Okay. So look, well done. Well done for getting this far. I hope you've enjoyed this solo episode and it's giving you a nice little plan for 2026. I've absolutely loved this. Let me know how you think about these solo episodes and whether or not you want me to do more of them. Either drop a comment over on YouTube or Spotify, wherever you're listening to this. Um, I've absolutely loved this, and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and new year, and I will catch you on the next one, guys. Take care.