Adulting - #53 When Should We Start Saving? With Emilie Bellet

Episode Date: March 1, 2020

Hey podulters, in this episode I speak to Emilie Bellet, she is the founder and CEO of Vestpod, the digital platform and community that empowers women financially through education, workshops and events. Emilie is an ex-private equity analyst for Lehman Brothers. We discuss getting to grips with your finances, when to start saving and discussing your money situation with your partner, plus loads more. I’ve been to a few of Emilie’s events and loved them, I would highly recommend looking into them if you also live in London. Please do rate, review and subscribe. Oenone x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hey, poddlters, I hope you're well. This week, I speak to the wonderful Emily Bele about when we should start saving. And I know this is a topic on a lot of people's lips. It can be really hard when you're in this weird limbo stage where you've just started earning money and you want to kind of enjoy it and see the fruits of your work come to life in clothes and holidays and dinners but we also kind of know that we need to be starting to set some money aside so I speak to Emily about when is a good time to start saving why money is so gendered in the media and the way that we approach it as men and women, and also about her fantastic book, You're Not Broke, You're Just Pre-

Rich. I hope you enjoy it. And as always, please do rate, review and subscribe. Bye. Hi, guys, and welcome to Adulting. Today I'm joined by Emily Belay. Hello. Hello, thank you so much for coming on. No, thanks for having me. She smells amazing by the way, I know you guys can't smell her but it's really great. So for people who don't know who you are, please can you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do, who you are? Yeah, of course. So my name is Emily Belay and I'm the founder of a startup called Vestpod.

And what we do, I mean, our big mission is to educate mostly women financially. So to give women and also, I mean, men come to events and stuff, but to give people like the tools to start managing their own money, build confidence around their personal finances, get maybe not richer, but get like financially independent. I think that's really our goal. So we send a weekly newsletter, we organize events, workshops. You've been to a few of these. And I published my book in May last year called You're Not Broke, You're Pre-Rich. And same, always the same philosophy, you know, trying to be more comfortable with the topic of money. Yeah, it's amazing.

I have been to a few of your events. And I think one of the greatest things that you do is you kind of break down the language of money so that it's accessible to more people. And you'll often have a group of panelists who have different experiences with money. And it's so fascinating when you're in that space, how safe it feels to talk about finances. But very often, I mean, now I feel a bit more comfortable. But five years ago, I would have been so alienated from a conversation with finance. So I think it's really important what you're doing, especially for women and men. But I do feel like men may be a bit more scared to admit when they don't know something. Yeah, I agree with you.

I mean, my background is finance, actually. So I started working. I moved to London from Paris maybe 11, 12 years ago. And I worked for a big bank called Lehman Brothers. So you've heard, you know heard about the bankruptcy and everything. And then I worked in finance, in private equity for another eight years. And I was one of the only women in my team.

And I realized, yeah, I'm not doing anything for my own finances. So maybe, okay, you work in finance, you're super privileged, but still like you should be saving, you should be investing your money and you don't do it. If I don't do it when I work in finance what about like everyone who actually doesn't know about about finance about money we never learn about money so I think it

was really hard to um to get started and that's why with Vespa I tried to like take a completely different view totally ignore what banks financial institutions are doing and create sort of a new space where you can have like yeah very open safe like candid conversation about money getting people from like all backgrounds to share about like their personal experiences managing money or actually not managing money which is totally fine saving or not saving repaying debt, investing money. And that should give you ideas that should empower you to get started at your own level. What was it that made you want to study, go into that industry? If you're saying you're the only woman, when you're at school, when you were studying, what kind of pushed you to go

towards that? So at school, I used to like, like math quite a lot, science and stuff. And I think I went to business school, so I studied economics and finance and management. And I don't know, some of my friends really pushed me, I mean, especially the guys, and they were like, you should go into banking, you know, it's really well paid, you'll have a good life in London. So that sounds pretty sexy.

Yeah. So I applied, I got a job. Before me finishing my studies, actually I did like a summer internship for Lehman Brothers. Yeah, paid well. Worked very hard. That was a good summer. Got an offer to come back the year after.

So I finished my studies in London and in Paris. And here I am in the center of, you know, the financial center. I was working in Canary Wharf. And that was a year before the bankruptcy. So I think the job was really exciting. What I was doing was looking at companies. I was working for private equity funds, so we had money from Lehman Brothers, money from other investors,

looking at businesses, deciding should we buy these businesses or not, working with the management team, improving the performance, the financial and selling these businesses. So returning a lot of money for my investors, not necessarily for myself. So that was fascinating. I mean, it's quite,

yeah, it's a great, it's a great career. It's a great job. And I think even for women, I will really push women to consider working in finance. You learn a lot. You get really good exposure.

You earn money, which is good, especially if you live in London and then you have to I mean I think finance is changing it's becoming more diverse but it wasn't necessarily like that 10 years ago. Now that you've transitioned out of it now and you're kind of doing your own thing and you're freelance do you find that was there ever a position when you're working finance and you're saying a lot of the time like you aren't really working for yourself you're working for these big companies even though you were bringing in

a lot of money do you feel happier where you are now with a bit more autonomy do you think much happier so I would never go back but I think it was such a big step for me to leave the corporate world after eight years of you know getting a salary even if you're not happy every day that's like such a good like financial security you know at the end of the month you're getting your money and I actually left banking to set up a first startup that was maybe like five six years ago a project that actually didn't work so I left in one day we raised some money we hired a team and it's so hard I mean as you know like building your own business working for yourself not having this this secure income every month.

But I don't regret it. I mean, now I have two very young children. I'm expecting a third one. The flexibility I have now, I think that there's no price tag on that, basically. So what was the moment when you kind of realized that actually I have all of this knowledge and all of these tools

and I haven't put myself in the best position? Yeah. So I think I had to actually educate myself because I was working on corporate finance, which is more looking at the companies. And now with Vespod, I'm looking more at personal finances. So actually over my years in banking, I started to realize, okay, I should be putting more in my pension.

I should be saving, but where do I start? So I wanted to meet a financial advisor because usually when you're ill, you go see a doctor. They give you a prescription, and that's pretty straightforward. Actually, seeing an advisor is not that easy. You need to find someone you're comfortable talking about money with. And this guy actually asked me, where is your husband? So I was like, ah, no, that's really awful. And I was working in finance.

So it's super cliche. I don't really like this story, but it's a real story. There's not enough financial advisors who happen to be female. So I started looking at the space and really educating myself because I was like, okay, how can I give my money to someone? I don't know if I can trust them. I need to build up this relationship with them, but I need to have some knowledge. So I went online. I think today we can educate yourself on so many topics. YouTube, reading all these US

books about money, how to save, how to invest, what are the best ways to do it. There's some really good platforms also in uk money advice service money saving experts so i'm spending my days like looking at this um but it can be quite full of jargon it can be super overwhelming so before i even looked into my own finances i looked at like the main concepts finance financial markets and stuff and i started writing about it just for my friends as a newsletter like three years ago and people are like oh wow that's interesting but you know it's really awkward to talk about money like why are you doing that and my parents were always like

you know it's impolite you shouldn't talk about money so trying to just bring a new conversation about money and the newsletter that's how Vespod basically started so I didn't necessarily have the knowledge before before starting the company. So one of the things you mentioned there was you weren't sure about who to go to with your money because you're like I don't know who I'm going to trust and one of the most interesting things that I've heard you speak about is women's risk aversion and the way that we sometimes feel fearful of putting money aside not only because we don't know who to trust but also because and I want to speak about this, but the way that women view money is very different from how men view money. So women tend to view money as theirs, but also maybe their mom's in case she

gets ill or their children. Could you go into a bit more about the way that gendered attitude towards finances might impact how we spend? Yeah. So I came to realize that just very practically. So working in finance and seeing how I was managing my money versus men. So first of all, I think they were talking a lot more about investing money. They were talking about buying stocks and stuff. I mean, this can be very risky,

but at least they were talking about it. They are trying things. Maybe they were losing money, but I guess they were learning. And most of my female friends, we were just, you know, trying to find, OK, what's the best way to get started

we should know about this and that and this so trying to educate ourselves the most we can and trying to be in the perfect position to get started and I think very often not just about money but women we tend to be a bit more perfectionist so we want you know to know all these things before we get started I think that's already a barrier. And then the topic of money is like very loaded. It's associated to your self-worth. It can make you feel like very anxious, very stressful because you never feel you have enough money

and you always try to compare yourself to others, but actually you don't talk about it. So you compare, you know, what you think about someone else, what you think they're earning, how much money you think they have compared to yourself and, you know, you know, you know, your life. So I think that's really hard to actually start this conversation about money. It's hard to start it with your

family, hard to start it with your friends. I mean, you never want to tell them, you know, I can't go out tonight because I don't have enough money this month. So where do you actually get started? And you're right about thinking that there's going to be kind of a perfect time and that never really is. And I think especially with saving, people think, or anything to do with finances, we often think, well, it's not applicable to me until I'm earning X amount. So I'm not going to start thinking about saving until I'm earning 30, 40k or whatever it is. But actually, what you bring up and what I think is so fascinating is it doesn't really matter how much you're earning, it's learning to take control of your money.

So even if you're just covering everything you have, being very aware of what you're spending is an amazing tool and skill. Yeah, you're right. So we always think about money that it's like, you know, you need to be rich to achieve all these things and I'll be rich one day, so I'll start saving one day. And that's why the title of the book is You Are Not Broke, You're Pre-Rich. Because I don't think being rich should be the goal.

I mean, for some people, maybe it is. But actually, what are your financial goals? Where do you want to be in life? So what do you want to do over the next year, next two years, next five years, next 10 years? And retirement, you need to somehow have some goals. And it can be going on holidays, buying a house, starting a family, retiring early or not early, but having enough money. So these are like financial goals.

And then how do you then start saving for these goals? And I think saving, it's a decision I also postponed. And I was like, you know, I'm earning, I'm working hard. I just want to spend this money, which is fine. And I'll start saving when I earn more. So when I earn, yeah, maybe, you know, 40k or 50k. But actually, the earlier you start, the better. So if you can start with like a saving habit, even very young, even when you're a student,

and it can be like £5 a month, £10 a month. But I think understanding like how saving works and understanding that you can actually do it, then you have a starting point and you can increase on this starting point and hopefully you can save a lot more. But I think understanding why you save money and that you can start very small, it's actually really good and it's really liberating. Yeah, talking about saving earlier and talking about money in general is really important because I noticed that with friends of mine whose parents have evidently instilled very important financial conversations with them, they're really adept.

But I think if no one's ever spoken to you about money and you're a student and you suddenly start earning money and you have this money, your natural inclination is to order at Domino's whenever you can or buy everyone drinks because money just is seen as kind of credit rather than a long-term thing that you have and even talking about like some people have different purposes and someone might say oh but I'm not worried about being rich I just want to have a family but having a family is extortionate so no matter which option you choose you kind of have to be prepared financially what's your advice for someone who's never saved and if

we started with like a really basic salary in London so like if someone was on twenty thousand pounds how could you tackle that in a way that you could start thinking about managing your money in a better way yeah so I mean obviously it's really hard to save especially in London because your rent is gonna you know take a lot of your of. But for me, it's all about getting organized and taking a step back from your day-to-day expenses. So I think it's really useful to use maybe an online bank, such as Monzo or Starling, to just track your finances. And I think the first thing I would do is looking back

at maybe three months of bank account and expenses and try to see how you're spending your money. And I'd like to do like maybe three different categories when you look at your money. The first one is fixed expenses. How much are you spending on rent, on transportation, on utility bills, phone bill, internet? So that's going to be the first part. And the second part is like lifestyle expenses, restaurants, you know, clothes, shopping, whatever you want. And the third part is saving. So maybe saving is zero and maybe you spend 50-50.

But I think what would be good is once you know how you're spending your money, going forward, how do you want to spend your money? Do you think there's a possibility for any savings in what you do? So if you think, no, there's not because I'm overspending every month and I have to use my credit card, then maybe you can start looking at your expenses. So maybe first the fixed expenses, the rent is going to be hard to negotiate.

But what about the bills? Can you negotiate your utility bills? Can you negotiate your phone bills? This can be like instant wins. And that can save you maybe a few hundred pounds a month. Then on your lifestyle expenses, do you need to put a cap on that? I think one way, I mean, I prefer to just go with like my salary and decide at the beginning of the month. Okay, based on, you know, reducing my fixed expenses and stuff i think i can save

x percent of my salary maybe it's one percent maybe it's what five percent maybe it's 20 but at least you start somewhere and the americans call it pay yourself first so as soon as soon as you get your salary you transfer one percent whatever then you pay all your fixed expenses and then the balance that's on your account is called your lifestyle fund. And you can just spend that freely. So ideally, you don't have a credit card or you don't overspend on your credit card. So you don't, you know, you just spend within your budget, but you spend your money freely. So if, you know, the last week of the month, you don't have any more money on your bank account, maybe that's the time when, you you should tell your friends you know I can't really afford it can you come home for dinner or can I come to yours

and then you don't overspend and you made sure that you've saved some money at the beginning of the month. This has been so transformative for me because when I had because my salary is really lumpy and I get different amounts every month I would if I didn't transfer money over for my savings and my tax I would might have one month where I had nothing and then another month where I earned a lot so I would just spend it all because it was there and it's taken me so long to do that thing of the minute it drops into my account because I have to do set my own tax aside pay my own pension and then I can look at the money and that's changed my life because it's I then just work whatever I'm really good at spending whatever I have whether that's a hundred pounds or a thousand

pounds I can make it work it's so easy but it doesn't seem to matter like but if I had the expectation that I can spend a thousand pounds I will whereas I've had the expectation I can spend a hundred I can make that stretch for the lifestyle stuff for a month I don't know how I do it but that I think is one of the most important things because it's kind of like out of sight out of mind and in terms of like where we should be putting savings so at the minute this is something I need to figure out but what's the next step then if you're starting to save a bit more than maybe I know that with like my NatWest account I think if you put in 50 pounds a month it adds an extra something where you get

a good not well I'll ask about APR in a minute but where else can we think about like i don't really know too much about ices i don't know about investing is there a certain threshold that you need to be reaching before you think about where you're putting your savings yeah so i think just to to on the saving part i mean i don't know for you but for me i find it extremely rewarding to actually save money and to resist this impulse spending i mean of course we can you know all go out of the studio there's Zara at the corner buy something but if you think about this like 50 pound jacket and you're like okay I'm not gonna spend this 50 pound they will go in like a saving account or whatever

you feel really good about it so you can transfer it on the spot you don't buy this jacket you put this 50 pound there and then wow that's part of your of your savings so for me i think it feels really good um and it's not a sacrifice to to actually save money uh so yeah it's quite quite rewarding yeah that was just um no so now on on where where to actually save money and how to save money so once you manage to start saving money i think the first bit first bit is to save into like an emergency fund. So you may have heard about the term. So an emergency fund is like a little pocket of savings you have somewhere. It can be a saving account.

So this is money that's held in cash in a bank and you can withdraw this money at any point in time. So any emergency, you break the screen of your iPhone that costs like 200 pounds. Where do you take the money? You take it from your emergency fund. And you hopefully don't take it from your credit card because your credit card, if then you overspend on your credit card, it's going to be quite hard to repay.

And it can be quite expensive. So I think building up this little fund of savings, it can be 500 pounds, 1,000 pounds. Financial advisors will tell you you need three to six months of living expenses. That's a lot of money. That's too much. But can you actually start somewhere? If you lose your job tomorrow,

I mean, how long is it going to take you to find another job? If you have a problem at home, you break your boiler or have like a medical emergency so having some cash on the side is extremely useful when they say three to six months that three to six months salary living expenses so oh right but yes basically what you what you're going to be spending um so i guess you can reduce your lifestyle expenses but your fixed expenses so more than 50 of your salary actually you will need you will need to to survive in london um for like a few months that's a lot of money but start somewhere it doesn't matter

even if you have like 500 pound on the side that's going to be like super useful um and then how do you build up savings so uh let's take another step back and look at more like financial goals so before we talked about what you want to achieve in your life. So maybe the very first thing is to build up this emergency fund. Then you need to start saving for your short-term goals. So within one to two years, what do you want to do? Do you want to travel? Do you want to buy a home?

Then the next five years to 10 years, do you want to start a family and then retirement? And it's very useful to write numbers next to these goals. This is really hard actually to do. But if you can have like for each of these goals, maybe like two, three different items, know how much they will cost you because you said that before,

but all our goals, they will cost us some money, unfortunately. So we need to know more or less how much it will cost us. So trying to understand how much your life is priced and then try to understand, OK, when I save money, I actually need to save for all of these things at the same time. Because it's very easy to save for your next holiday or for the next birthday party or Christmas. And then at Christmas, you spend everything. So you're back to actually zero and you haven't next birthday party or Christmas and then at Christmas you spend everything so you're back to actually zero and you haven't saved for the medium term

and the long term so just imagine you had like little jars of money and yeah you save five pounds but well maybe there's a pound in each of them say 500 pounds maybe there's 100 pounds in each of them you can decide where where is your money going basically you broke this down really well at one of the uh your bestpa events I went to, and you were talking about buying a house, which for me right now, if I think about it, I'm like, I can never buy a house. I have no savings.

And I think we get to that point where I'm like, well, I'm never going to have that lump sum. And for some reason, we think we focus too much on getting from zero to 50K or whatever it is. Whereas actually, if you incrementally, and we can talk about compound interest, because my boyfriend explained to me once, and I still think it's the best thing in the world. But it's about kind of working backwards from that number, as you say,

and filling in the gaps rather than thinking, getting scared. Because I think we just get scared. I think we think about something in the future. And as you say, it's really easy to think, I need to save £600 to go to Spain with my girlfriends, because you've got six months to do it. It's not too big of a number. But £600 in six months is not too dissimilar to however many grand in five years. It kind of works out to be the same thing.

If you can train yourself to recognize that that 50 quid is going to be better in your bank account than it will be in that Zara jacket. Yeah, no, exactly. Like breaking down these goals and looking at smaller amounts. So looking at, you know, how much each month or maybe how much each week and starts and start saving and you talked about compound interest so it's a little bit of jargon but einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world so that's something that works really well so um how to explain it so if you have money um under

your master's it's there it's sitting there and it's not making any money. Now, if you put your money into a saving account, the bank will pay you some interest. At the moment, interests are very low. So they are like more or less 1%, maximum 1%. But you still get 1% on your money every year. So the first year, you get 1%. The second year, you get 1% on the money you had initially, plus the money you put in,

plus the 1% you get the previous year. So your money is slowly growing. And then for the long term, actually, you want to potentially put your money in a place where it's going to grow a bit faster. So investing money is an option for the long term. So hopefully you should make more money from your money because this interest compounding will work faster

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do I want to save money or do I want to invest money? So saving money means keeping money in cash in a bank that's accessible anytime. The interest is going to be maybe 1%, maybe 3%. If you're very lucky, you find a fixed interest account. And then if you want your money to grow a bit faster and if it's for the long term only then you can look at investing so investing in yeah property or the financial markets where you know the returns are going to be you know much longer your money is going to be

locked somewhere but that's why potentially you can also grow a bit faster yeah i remember with the compound interesting i looked at that know, they have a chess board with rice on it and it shows you, so there's like an old proverb where two men are playing chess and one man says,

if I win, I want this much money. And the other man says, I want a grain of rice on the first one and then double it every single time you go.

And by the end, it's like a billion grains of rice, which would have been exorbitant. And the way you can think about it, because it takes me so long

to remember, but say you have £100, if you earn 1% on that, you have £101. The next year you earn one percent on that you have 101 the next year and one percent on that and if you left that for 10 years or there's loads of really fun stats about like if you put away a ground now in 70 years it's loads of money so that's what's a really great thing to think about because your money will increase in value but talking about investment and I kind of want to come back to what I was saying about women again. And you speak about this. But with investing, I think why we find it scary is not only because, again, as you say, it's not like your emergency fund, which you can dip into if there's an emergency. If you put money away from investing, you need to leave it for longer because otherwise it undulates, doesn't it, when you invest?

So the market changes and increases and crashes a lot more. But with women, I feel like we have um we're given a lot more and it's a really old-fashioned gender thing but it is true we're given a lot more responsibility with our money to do caring things with it so it doesn't feel as much as though it's our money even if it's your own money I even feel that way like I think I've got to keep emergency money more my emergency money than emergency money for my mum or whatever but so when when is it viable for people to start investing like what's the minimum amount you can invest and do you really need to feel like you could potentially if you invest it do you have to imagine that you don't have that money anymore sort of thing yeah so when you look at men versus

women um women tend to invest slightly less than men. I mean, it's not like most people actually, I mean, are not going to invest money. Now with the auto enrollment and the pensions, most people, you know, have an employer, will have a pension. So they will have money actually invested in the stock market. So that's a really good place to start. But yeah, women tend not to do it because maybe they want to have access to cash. I mean, when you look at the life of men versus women, we both start working in our 20s. We start at the same salary. Then the gender pay gap starts hitting.

So we start earning actually less than our male peers. So that means also less money to be saved. And then we potentially have children or family or we take care of our you know, our parents because we're still the primary carers. So we take some years out of work and I took some breaks to have my children. And then you return potentially at the same salary. So you didn't get the salary increases. You may want to take a longer break. A lot of women will in the end take like 10 years to stay with their children.

So your salary is like it's not really growing as much as men. So they save a lot more. And then the last thing is we don't take as much risk as men. So their investment portfolio tend to grow faster than ours. So when we reach retirement, we have a pension pot that's like 20%

versus what men have in their pension. So that's huge. So there's like all these different things but that's why it's really it's really important to keep keep up with saving and also keep up with investing actually for the long for the long term yeah and also we live longer as well and these years are not going to be really nice I guess and with the gender pay gap I mean I'm finding it really fascinating because I'm freelance and actually I'm in quite a different position. But do you think that's something that's changing?

And I mean, it does seem so shocking to think about the fact that a woman will go away to have a baby and then, as you say, like come back on that same salary. I don't think we ever really think about that. You might think about the time that you're not in work. Yeah. But actually you could go back in at 36 and be on the same salary as you were at 26. Yeah, exactly. So this is really hard. I think the gender pay gap, I mean, hopefully we'll see some improvement, but it's so slow.

It's going to take like years. So I think it's trying to understand at our own level, what can we do for ourselves? Like, you know, reading the news is always like super depressing. So what can you do for yourself? So, for example, when I took some years of work, my husband actually paid into my pension. So he can pay a minimum amount. It's like slightly below £3,000 a year. But if you can afford it, I mean, you're going to have these babies together.

So that should be both your responsibility. And I feel women, they feel like, oh, you know, I'm not working. You know, I'm not saving and it's fine. My husband is earning. Actually, it's not fine because he's, you know, he's earning and he's saving for himself. So can you also, you know, try to share the, you know, the financial responsibility of having children? And I think it's the same for childcare. So many women look at the cost of childcare. It's exorbitant on nurseries and nannies and you tend to look at that

with your own salary but actually you're having this I mean if you have a partner and you're having your children together I mean look at this you know look at your combined income and see can you actually afford it and then maybe you can return to work if you want to return to work and be able to pay for childcare. Obviously, we're talking now about like heteronormative relationships with children. But even as you're saying that, it's making me think

there's been a lot of talk about this at the minute about how younger couples living together really should, you should kind of look at your salaries. And I know this is awkward. Luckily, my boyfriend, because he works in financing and fintech, he loves talking about money.

He's actually taught me loads about money and it's empowered me more than anything else. And do love as you say I love savings I get so excited I'm like look at my account I've like paid into my pension I've increased my pension it's so exciting it's so exciting you feel really proud and you feel really I feel really safe and as a woman I feel very much like in financial independence something I always wanted my mum's generation was so different she doesn't she didn't have the autonomy I have and I'm constantly reminded of the way that my life is as much we talk about feminism things that aren't working out it's come so far that I can see how much privilege I have compared to my mum as a woman so that's amazing and so to

be able to take heed of that and say it's great but at the same time couples a lot of couples don't talk about money and that I think is something that can be quite stressful I think you've spoken about this before as well, like the importance of actually sitting down with your partner, man or woman, and being like, this is how much I earn and maybe we need to tackle this. Yeah, and it's really difficult, like first conversation to have.

And we have conversation about everything, but not money. So it's how can you get started on a very small scale? So maybe you don't want to tell your partner how much debt you have, and you should. But if it's really hard to reveal these numbers and you're really ashamed of your credit card balance, and it can be the same thing. Maybe your partner has a lot of debt and you're not aware of it because maybe they're pretending they have a lifestyle and they can't really afford it. So I think it's maybe starting with a conversation around day-to-day expenses and budgeting.

That should be much easier. Or maybe you're going on a trip together, you're going on holidays. Can you prepare a budget together? Say, okay, this is how much money we're going to spend. And then slowly you bring some bigger piece of information about your finances. That will open up the conversation about money and you'll understand how the other is behaving with money. I mean, do they want to spend a lot of money on hotels and restaurants or actually are they quite

frugal? So you will learn a lot and then about their habits, their money habits and stuff. So slowly you can open up and then, yeah, get to know. I mean, I think understanding how much your partner is earning is really important. And then how much debt they have how much savings they have because if you want to you know stay together and start you know taking bigger financial decisions such as maybe buying a home or having a family you need to understand what you're getting yourself into and i've heard like many stories of women who you know didn't know their partners had some debts or took a mortgage together. One of them left. They had to pay for the whole mortgage on their own.

So you can, you know, become financially very fragile actually as a woman. Yeah, exactly. And I think that can be something really scary. And even like before you start buying a house, if you're renting together, I do think there's something to be said for if one of you is on 25,000, and the other is on 75,000, I don't think there's anything wrong with kind of saying maybe we should stagger the way that we pay on rent yeah and what I'm finding is a lot of my friends are starting to think about buying houses with their partners but the issue is we'll have it where one partner might have

loads of family money loads of savings and then the other one might earn a bit more but the other one so that's that's something which I find really tricky so I do think you have to just to speak about it um but what I don't know if this is too confusing to talk about but in terms of like buying houses together is that something that's like do I obviously need to take a lot more care about it with mortgages and things is getting a joint mortgage like a really scary thing to do or is it like it's it's quite scary I mean it's a very big uh financial decision and I think if you do that I mean once you go through the mortgage process that will force you to actually talk about your money because you'll have to check your credit

cards uh you'll have to tell you know how much debt you have and stuff so you're going to be both of you in front of a banker so you're going to look at a mortgage broker and you're going to look at your own finances but that's that's a big decision because once you're both your names are on the mortgage well basically you have to repay this mortgage together and you're going to be responsible for the others for the other so if the other country paid doesn't want to repay leaves or whatever you'll have to pay you'll have to pay the whole the whole thing so really important to have these decisions and before you take this big decision of buying a house together i mean i know we run a we actually run an event on yeah buying a property and we had some questions where people were like yeah i'm just gonna buy with a friend i'm gonna help with a friend or help with my brother and we're going to be on a mortgage together because he can't afford it and I can with my salary and I'm

like just be careful right because once you're you know financially dependent with someone that can have a lot of I mean a lot of bad consequences actually. Yeah you you've spoken a bit about here about credit cards and I actually don't have a credit card and I wanted to know what is the best because some of my friends who have American Express get really excited about it and want to use it everywhere and go on about their BA points, whatever. But because I'm quite scared,

because I used to be very bad with money and very scared of it, I then, now I'm good, but I'm still so scared, too scared to get a credit card, even though I know I could pay it off. Is it something that people should think about doing? Or is it something if you can put it off like me,

then you should? I don't know. So credit card in itself is not a bad thing and I think there's very healthy way to to use a credit card I've been using a credit card since day one I was really surprised actually in this country where you just start working you open up a bank account and the first thing they give you is actually a credit card and I was like okay well I'm gonna use it but I've always been using it with like a direct debit setup at the end of the month to repay in full.

So I never paid like any interest on my credit card. So I use my credit card account as basically my account and my allowance for the month and I make sure I will always have the money to pay it back. And that's been quite good in terms of building up my credit score because creditors have seen that, yeah, she's always like repaying on time and she's repaying good in terms of building up my credit score because creditors have seen that, yeah, she's always like repaying on time

and she's repaying in full and stuff. Because once you start not being able to repay your credit card, it can be really expensive. You can be charged 18, 20%. That's ridiculous. It's not like an interest rate you're going to make on the stock market unless you're really, really, really lucky. So really important if you use a credit card, you use it wisely.

I find it great because I mean, I have everything on one statement. It helped me build my credit score and you can get points. But I think you shouldn't really focus on that. I've had like the British Airways American Express for years. I could never use my points. I found it extremely, extremely frustrating. But you can have also cash back cards. Some cards you pay sometimes like a nominal amount for the year.

And depending on how much you spend, you actually get a percentage of your expenses back onto your account. So for me, that's maybe one of the best ways. I personally get points for like Amazon or Marks and Spencer and stuff that will help me reduce my other expenses. And you've touched on debt a bit. And I have my student loan, obviously, I'm paying off, which is kind of my only debt.

But I also know that at this age, especially when you're starting to learn about money, as you say, like credit cards go wrong, or you don't really know. And people do from this age start to get into debt, which if you don't tackle it, can really spiral and people do from this age start to get into debt which if you don't tackle it can really spiral and affect you and I think one thing that is really important to talk about money is that I don't think it's drilled into us enough how important it is and how much it's going to impact kind of like the rest of your life so what happens when this is why you shouldn't be

embarrassed if you get into a bit of debt and you really should take action on it so what are the first steps for someone who maybe feels like, oh, it's okay. I remember going really overdrawn at uni and then I kept getting overdraft charges on my overdraft and then getting an overdraft charge on that, and that stressed me out for ages. But I was at uni and it was only like £50 each time or something. But you have to catch it straight away. What are tips for people who feel like they're losing control with their money and are maybe starting to get into debt yeah I had the same actually when I was at uni I was

working on the side I was always on overdraft but at the time I thought yeah it's fine you know because you're talking about it you think it's quite cool actually you don't have money you're sort of broke but it's not really cool for a long time because you start becoming actually super anxious about it so when you start feeling like you're losing grip with your finances, so you start not being able to pay some bills, not being able to pay your mortgage, or seeing like your credit card balance actually increasing, that's the time where you really need to sit down

and start with just a piece of paper and look at maybe your credit card, maybe your overdraft, any debt you have, and start writing down all these numbers and next to it how much interest you're paying on them. And try for yourself to make a plan and see, okay, this is how much debt I have, 10k, 20k, 30k. Is there a way I can start repaying this? So you can break down this big number into like smaller numbers and maybe it's going to take you a year, two years, three years to repay it. But you need to sort of build up your own plan. Call the credit card companies, tell them, you know, I'm struggling

to repay. Can you give me a bit more time? Can you give me an interest? Maybe you could transfer your balance to like a zero interest card. That's not a solution, but it's like a temporary solution that will help you repay your balance without paying too much in interest. And if you're really struggling because you're doing that on your own, I know it's really hard to open up to your friends and ask them for like advice on that. If you have a partner,

you should definitely talk to your partner. There are some really good Instagram accounts. There's one called My Frugal Year and it's a woman and she's opening up about like repairing her credit card debt so she gives like tips

and you see her progress like day by day, month by month so that's really encouraging and I think a really good place to go is like debt charities so like there's

Step Change, there's a few of them, National Debt Line I think and you call them, it's anonymous, they take your call and they will help you put in place this life, national deadline, I think. And you call them, it's anonymous. They take your call and they will help you put in place this life repayment plan. So I think it's really important to have some support, mental support somewhere and to also start to be accountable and start working on it very quickly.

You're so right as well about bringing the banks and things because this is what happened to me. So I was getting so nervous because I kept getting these charges and I kept not going on the account because I used a different account and at one point it was like £250 and I couldn't afford to pay that I had no money but I didn't want to tell anyone I didn't want to tell my parents I need they'd tell me off and I actually did ring the bank and they are so nice I think we have it in our head because you're told about like tax men and people come to take money away that people who work in banks and obviously they do

they are can be quite shifty but if you ring them and you're like I'm really in trouble I can't pay it they're actually generally really helpful and they might put a freeze on your account they stopped my charges for me and were like just pay it off whenever you can put in what you want and I think sometimes if you feel like you can't speak to your parents your friends because it can be embarrassing and obviously your parents my parents still tell me off if I'm not good with my money even though that they taught me how to be bad with money um then you can actually don't be afraid to ring your bank and explain what's going on because they will actually help you because because they know that we haven't been taught this in school there are so many people that

struggle with money and silence and it and as you say it does really impact your mental health as well yeah and and you know pick up your phone have this first conversation it's quite liberating actually it's maybe like the first time you ever talk about money and anxiety around money and someone listening to you who has the experience of advising people in debt I mean this is super valuable so one last thing that I think we haven't touched on that I really want to get into quickly because I'm obviously freelance and this is a growing thing I think like within millennials I feel like a lot of people are actually doing lots of side hustles and jobs together it's taken me a really long time to understand and I felt really proud that when I went to your talk that was aimed at freelancers you asked like does anyone do these

things I was like oh my god I actually do but that's only because I've been doing it for two years and every three months or so I'd find something out that I was supposed to be doing and start doing it but as a freelancer I kind of wish there'd been and I'm sure you talk about this in the book I wish there'd been like these are the things you really need to do so before you even start you need to set up a pension you need to be putting your tax aside my first tax year I hadn't saved it and I just had to like whip it out of the air and this year was so excited when I got there and I had it all saved more than I needed to that's like the best feeling in the world what are your top tips for people who are thinking about going to freelancing and how can you safeguard yourself against coming up against these barriers

which you may not have realized yeah so i think before going freelance it's having a little bit of cash on the side because i mean as you say your earnings are going to be very lumpy especially at the beginning you need to find clients you need to find recurring clients so making sure you have enough money for yourself for a few months to just survive. That's what I had before launching Vespod and also because you didn't make money for like a month and almost years. So I had to just, you know, use some savings. Pension is a really important one. I know we didn't talk a lot about investing,

but saving for the long term with a pension is very powerful because how pensions work is basically a little pot of money. If you work for a corporate, you will have this pension called the workplace pension. Every month, you're going to be sacrificing a part of your salary. Your employer will also top up your pension and you're going to get the tax back on this. So that's all going into your pot and that's invested in the stock market. Now, if you are a self-employed, it's really hard because it's your own responsibility to actually open a personal pension. So you can go online,

these pensions are called personal pensions or SIP, self-invested personal pension. You open an account and you decide, okay, every month I want to put a certain amount or a certain percentage of my salary into this pension. And what you're going to get is you don't have an employer, so you're not going to get any money from, you know, an employer, but you're actually getting your taxes back on this amount of money. So this amount of money you put is going to be grossed by the taxes. And the same, this money will be invested in the stock market. You won't be able to access it until you reach 55,

which is a good thing in a way, because then, you know, you're not going to spend it until you reach 55, which is a good thing in a way because then, you know, you're not going to spend it for something else. And it will benefit, hopefully, from compound interest. So really important to have a pension. The other thing for me was to separate personal accounts from business accounts. It's very easy to issue invoices under your name and get paid on your account. But then it can get very messy

especially if you have a few side hustles if you are a freelancer and you run your personal expenses so I tend to separate and have a separate account I have used like Starling it's really good you have everything on your phone you can track also in terms of invoicing make sure you research how to prepare like a good invoice you put all the details on it it happens to me all the time we don't get paid we get paid like very late so it can be two months three months so can you actually charge people when they pay you late and can you actually survive for this like three months or four months where you actually don't get paid like big invoice this is really really frustrating but you have to pay maybe other

freelancers who are helping you on you know design or like podcasting and stuff so making sure you have enough money it's that's one of the biggest things that hit me was I would plan how much I was going to be earning and be like right that's when I first moved to London it was literally I paid my my rent and then it was just about affording food then it got a bit better and I was like okay but the thing is I didn't get paid on time so some would take three months six months and at one point I was like crying I was like I'm gonna have to stop this even though the money was coming in people don't pay on time so now I've learned that as well where I will have to you can't just imagine in your head that they're going to pay you when they say they will so I would do a job

and be like right well next month that'll be my income but it would never work like that and you have to get very good. It does make you very acutely aware of how to manage your money and keep bits aside because I'm so aware that they just might not pay that. So like making sure I have my rent for like two months in advance sometimes. Yeah. It can be really, really tricky. That's super important.

And the last thing you mentioned is taxes. So again, when you're freelancing or you have your own business, you'll have to pay your own taxes at the end of the year so make sure you save um you know whatever you think it's going to be you know your tax bill i think saving 20 is a is a good start but make sure you save that you know as as soon as you either you get paid any like an invoice or income or at the end at the beginning of the month actually when there's when there money in the account, and put that on a saving account somewhere. And for me, the last thing is tracking my expenses. This is something I didn't do early on,

like the first year of Vespod, and then I work with an accountant. I think it's really important to work with an accountant to do these things, and maybe a bookkeeper, or you can do it with yourself. There's a lot of really good apps. But it's tracking where your money is going what are you spending money for um that will help you in your budgeting so

it's good like for personal reasons but it's also when you do your self-assessment at the end of the year you're like oh god um so you need to be able to justify you know where where the money is going yeah that is such a massive thing i honestly it's so and it's funny because I bet you're the same as me but with your expenses you have like some expenses which you could like disallowable expenses but they're not disallowable if you're in our industry so you can like I tap that part of my office is my flat so expense part of my flat and then part of my phone bill and it gets so you're like what can I do and you have to it's very stressful so basically I advise anyone going freelance start from the beginning because otherwise you do just I was in an absolute panic last year I was like oh my god I don't know what I'm doing yeah I didn't even really

expect to end up expensing anything so I was too scared I didn't know how it worked and I was like oh god yeah there's quite a few things you can expense but I think I mean meeting an accountant you don't need to work with them even if I think it's really good to actually have one try to understand what are the rules and stuff from day one because that will be much cleaner than you know trying to look at accounts that are a year back and trying to repair like whatever you've done this has been amazing I feel like I've learned loads um if people want to find you come along to Vestpod if they want to find your book, you're online, where are you?

So the best place is maybe our platform, vestpod.com. And you can register to receive our free weekly newsletter where we talk about money. You'll have all the events, the talks. You can watch the YouTube videos of previous events. Instagram, at Vestpod. And yeah, you'll find me there. And then you can also

find Emily's book I'm not you're not broke you're pretty rich I assume just in all good bookstores bookstores and Amazon if you're

and it has it's really amazing it's quite interactive the book it's got lots of bits not just like you don't just read it kind of gives you

things to do and it's kind of all the things we've been talking about it's a practical application yeah very practical it's quite thick

so you can just read one chapter come back to it write down your own numbers it's really like a you know workbook for yourself for your own money and it's not scary at all it really breaks it down this has been so helpful i hope you guys enjoyed listening and thank you so much emily thank you for having me thank you bye We'll be right back. feeling saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11pm every day.