Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Everything Women Should Know About Money to Have Financial Freedom

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

We have some news…We've been nominated for ITV Podcast Creator of the Year (!!!) 🏆If you've learnt something from the podcast this year, I'd be so grateful if you could take a minute to vote for us. It genuinely means the world: https://bit.ly/4ynqe45Select ‘Creator Shortlist’Scroll down to ‘Podcast bCreator of the Year - Her Discussions with Dr Faye Bate’THANK YOU 🤍____The reality is, most of us were never taught how to save, invest or build wealth, and women often pay the price for that.Today I'm joined by Abigail Foster, former chartered accountant and founder of Elent, who's on a mission to make financial education accessible for everyone.What you’ll learn:💷 the 3–6 month emergency fund rule📈 how to start investing as a beginner🛍️ 3 steps to break a shopping addiction🏦 when you actually need a financial advisor📱 why budgeting apps can hide your spending habits👵 why women can end up with much smaller pensions than menResources & links mentioned:Abigail’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/abigailrosefoster/?hl=enElent Financial Education - https://www.elent.com/🔔 Join the HERd* broadcast channel here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==📱 Find us on socials:Instagram & Tiktok - @drfayebatePodcast Instagram & Tiktok: @herdiscussionspod📩 Want to reach out?Email: [e-mail]🛑 Disclaimers:Opinions are my own. This content is for educational / entertainment purposes and not medical or financial advice.

Want to talk ETS with the people behind them? Join me, Etienne Jean-Cabouchard on the Upside Ticker Talk. We dive into what's moving markets with timely analysis, trends, and answers to ETF questions you've actually been thinking about. Hit play on the upside ticker talk and elevate your ETF investing IQ. A few years ago, men had 50% more in their pension pots than women, on average. 50? There is a world in which the state pension may not be there for you and I.

Abigail Foster grew up seeing money as a source of stress. decided to change that. If you own a home, you are successful. No. It is not rude to talk about money. If anything, it's dangerous not to. She was one of the first people to talk about finances online and is determined to teach young people the importance of understanding money. What are we doing about financial education? I don't personally think that the government are doing enough right now. If they wanted to, they could. I've had an accountant horror story. Accountants are like hairdressers. Go and find one that sues you. Not every hairdresser does every hairstyle. A lot of people think that property is the only way to build wealth and it's not.

If you've ever felt like money is a language, everyone else speaks, but you don't, then this episode is for you. And before we get into the conversation, if you could do me a favour that literally takes you two seconds, hit the subscribe button or leave a five-star review depending on what platform you're listening on. It really helps us to continue to grow the podcast

and bring you guests to help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Abby, we have had so many questions in for our community, all about money, bide houses, the gender pay gap, everything. And I'm so excited to cover that. But first of all, I want to go back to the beginning because you are a chartered accountant. And now you have committed your life to educating the masses on finances.

What motivated you to make that change? Yeah, I was a charter accountant. I started in industry. So as opposed to, you hear traditionally chart accounts, actually ACA, they usually work in practice. They work at like the big four or an accountancy practice. And I worked at Vogue to Conno Nass. And then I went to...

Oh my God, I didn't know that. That's so sick. Yeah. And then I went to Hearst, which is like Harper's Bazaar. They're both glossy magazine publishing houses. And it was because I just was never going to be a traditional accountant. I'm just not that way inclined. I like getting dressed up and I just had a different mentality for my career.

So I did it in industry, made it quite tricky because there's a lot of exams to be a child accountant. Well, not as much as medicine, but 40, I'm 15, sorry, and you do them whilst you work. And when you work in industry, you don't actually get time off. So for like four years of my life, three and a half, four years. I was just doing those of exams. But I, yeah, qualified in 2020 and then got to like 2022 and realized that I was sort of not living my, what I wanted to do. I, I didn't know if I was actually fulfilling my passion. And everyone kept saying to me when I was doing my exams, like, you just have to. qualify and then you can figure out who you are just qualify them figure it out

qualified i was like fine okay and then it got to that stage in 22 i was like well i've been qualified for a while now so what now and i kind of had conversations with people where i was like i don't know what i want to do and someone actually wisely said to me they're like what pisses you off like what makes you really angry and i said gender pay gap the inequalities that we face in society like all of these things and they were like that's that's it that's what you need to do like go and fix that. And I was like, you can't fix that. And they're like, yeah, you can figure that out.

And then go and do that. And sort of how it all started, I just thought, well, the way I would fix it would be to teach finance at schools. And therefore we would basically have a financially educated next generation. And we wouldn't end up with what we have, which is all these inequalities across gender and society and even like culturally. And yeah. And then the next thing I know I was running Ellen, which is my.

company that teaches finance in schools and all over now. And then social actually came after that, really. Like social media and that side of my life was just a marketing tool for my business that then went a bit viral and now is such a large part of my life. We need to come on to the gender pay gap because I know that you explain it in such a good way. But before that, just to give you a little bit of context, myself and Abby met about a year and a half ago. And Abby is one of the most hardest work people and also I think dedicated to the mission because when I met you you were waking up was it five in the morning to get the news like to get the finance headlines yeah so I wake up at 520 every morning and I read the I'm about to gurgitate what I say on my social media read the news so

that you don't have to um I read the finance news every morning and then I turn it into like three snippets of the things I think are important and then I post it on my stories I also do like a TikTok video where I read it out as well. And yeah, and then I crack on with my day. I don't know. Everyone's like, why 520? And I'm like, because 515 felt too early and 530 felt too late. I don't know.

Like it was just, I just do it. And yeah, I just really enjoy it. And then it sets me off, I suppose. But yeah, I won't like, I'm not like the biggest evening person. Like a lot of people can work late into the night. That's not who I am. I'm kind of an early gal. It's the dedication, I think, to the mission.

I could go into my financial mistakes to, you know, till for the whole of the entire podcast. Like, this is so embarrassing. I remember when I first started making money on YouTube and, you know, no 21-year-old should be trusted with YouTube money. It's absolutely just not, that should not happen. And I woke up one morning and I decided to buy a Ranger River. Ah.

I just went out and I bought a Ranger over in cash. Whoa. And that was decision. That is spicy. It was really, really stupid decision. Oh my God. That's amazing. It's not because I could have invested that money. I could have put that into my pension.

Akari's just probably the worst financial decisions to make. It's not the best, but do you know what? At 70 years old, you can turn around at the dinner table and be like, do you know what, guys, at 21, I bought a Ranger over in the cash. People are going to be like, why. Well, my question would be why. But also, that's so great. I think that's hilarious.

It is funny now. It is, but it's also like, think of the learnings that you got from that. Like, you know, and actually, yeah, maybe. Maybe someone should have stepped in. Maybe we needed me, but that is wild. Not my finest hour, but the... You still have it? I actually am selling it at the moment,

and the loss I have made, obviously, because cars depreciate, the loss I have made on that car is, oh my God, it makes me feel violently ill now that I'm more financially educated. But I didn't get a financial education from my parents necessarily. I didn't get it at school. And that's why I think what you do, especially for women, is unbelievably important. I had meeting with some tax advisors the other day.

Very, very, very exciting. And she was really good. She was trying to get an idea of me as a person. And I said, look, I like to know the education. I might still make a silly decision. But as long as I know my options. So even if I knew, okay, this car's going to depreciate, you'd probably be better off putting it in this, that and the other.

And I still made that decision. I think that's okay as long as you're educated. But what would you say are the biggest financial issues facing women in general? Do you know, one of the biggest is not being aware that we need an emergency fund pot for more than just, you know, the car breaks down. We need an FU pot. Like it's been phrased in lots of different ways. We can call it what we want.

But it's effectively a pot that gives us more freedom and says, like, we can leave. Because we are still the first of our generation. Like, you know, my mum had certain freedoms. Her mom had certain freedoms, but financially we've been getting freer and freer. Like, I think, you know, my nan probably would never have thought of living on her own. My mum lived on her own only for a little bit. And I live on my own and probably will for a little bit longer. And it's all these little things that we're forgetting as women are very new to us.

And actually protecting ourselves and having an FU pot to secure yourself gives you the ability to say no, gives you the ability to walk away. if things aren't good for you. It's really important. Something I think comes up time and time again for the women I talk to is like they don't feel like they can leave a relationship or they can leave a job because they're not financially ready. And actually that breaks my heart

because I think if we were teaching this younger or just teaching it in general, women would be more aware of this and it would give them that power back that they deserve and that we have earned. That would probably be one of the main things, I would say. It's something I'm really passionate about

is like people understanding that money isn't just, about the boring tax codes and the boring, you know, ways that we can budget. It's about freedom and buying that time for ourselves and investing in ourselves as well, which is really, really, really important. If a woman is listening right now and she's thinking, I don't know if I have a FU pot. Yeah. Do you have a value in mind of what that FU pot should be?

So they say an emergency fund pot, which is slightly different, but very similar. It's like three to six months of your expenses sat in an account that you can get access to quickly. so it gives you the ability to have it there if you need it to stop you from going into like debt very quickly and an f u pot sits it's almost like the sister to that it should sit alongside it and you should once you've hit that number in your emergency fund pot maybe that's f u pot sits on the side it's always only ever in your name as well cannot make that clear enough like even if you are married even if you have been with your partner for x amount of years always in your name and your name only and no one can touch that because that is what true freedom is for it to be yours. And I would say a number that

makes you feel safe in a situation that you don't, you've got a niggle in your back of your mind about. Like, we all do. We all have a niggle in our head of something that doesn't quite sit right. And for someone that might be a relationship, for someone that might be their job or it might be, you know, the friendship group that they're in and having enough money in that account to be able to call cut on whatever that niggily is when you know it's the right time. That's what I would say. Because for someone, it might genuinely be they don't like their job and they want to be able to leave or maybe they're going to need to give themselves three months grace

to be able to find a new job. For someone else, it might be, I'm in a 10-year relationship that I need to leave. I'm going to need probably six months of expenses or even just two weeks. weeks of expenses so that I'm able to leave. Do you know what I mean? It looks different for everyone. Yeah, it is, it is unique. And like you said, you spoke to a tax advisor. And the one thing I always like to stress to people is I can provide you as much education as physically possible, and I will on social media and across whatever platform. But when it comes to specific circumstance, if you do need individual help, please go and ask for it. Because everyone is so different and

your unique circumstance will determine what the education is that you need. And I think, something that is really important as well is that you find someone that resonates with you. If you are sat across from an accountant that makes you feel worse about yourself, walk out the door. Accountants are like hairdressers. Go and find one that sues you. Not every hairdresser does every hairstyle. And therefore, you need to find the one that specialises in blondes. Do you know what I mean?

Like, it's fine. And that's okay. I think a lot of people meet accountants and have one bad experience and go, all accountants are awful. which is not true. So yeah, that would be something else I would say to people. It's like a lot of women, I think there's this bad stigma of, you know, they don't feel represented in the finance and the accountancy space,

so then they just disend, like, they're not interested in it anymore. I also think women have this tendency to try and take everything on themselves. And it was a man who recommended this tax advisor to me. And actually, I was like, oh God, if I'd, it was a fairly reasonable fee. And I was like, oh my God, if I'd done this a couple of years, years ago, that would have been great, especially as a woman as well. A lot of the time you're in spaces where there's not many women or you don't know other people who can give you that advice. And I'm sure there's a lot of people listening now. They want to know when they should maybe

speak to a financial advisor or look for a professional to give them services. Are there any hallmarks that you would say that's a sign that you should be getting a professional's help with your finances? I think the, large hallmarks are when you're owning over £100,000, you start to lose what's called your personal allowance. So every one in the UK gets £12,570 of income before they start paying tax. But when you earn over £100,000 a year, you start to lose that. You also lose other things. Like if you're a parent, you lose things like access to childcare hours and all sorts of fun stuff. In the 60 to 80 bracket, you lose child benefits. There's a lot going on.

So sometimes there could be justification that once you get over £100,000, it might be worth speaking to an accountant just to make sure that you're being really tax efficient with things like your pension, you know, child benefit, child car hours, if that's applicable to you. When your savings go beyond a number that you're, like maybe you're over, you're maxing out your ISO, you're maxing out all of your areas, maybe worth speaking to a financial advisor, maybe. But I won't lie to you.

do sit on the fence of you can do a lot of this yourself. The only reason to get people involved is if you are so strapped for time and actually paying them makes financial sense because for you to do it yourself would cost you more. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I think that's where I would put the metric.

If your time is good used on learning about it, educating yourself and doing it yourself, please do it. Because some financial advisors do charge quite high fees and it can really eat in to your investment portfolio over the future. But if it is cheaper to outsource, like, you know, with lots of things, then do that. Most accountants will give you, like, some of their time for free as well at the beginning just to check in with your own finances.

I'm very anti people at the very beginning having financial advisors. Because if you are just starting to learn and then you hand it over to someone else, you're going to give them too much control because they're not, like, they're never going to probably spend as much time as you need them to educating you because obviously it doesn't really financially benefit them for you to know too much. So I would say do a lot of the education first and then go over to someone because it actually makes sense. Don't hand over all of your power right at the beginning. I've had an accountant horror story.

Hopefully I'm not with now, but that really resonates with me because I knew nothing. Yeah. Nothing. So then I didn't know when things were not being done correctly. Exactly. And I think AC20 rule, I think that you can get yourself up to a standard where you have a base. understand it and then you can't be taken for a right the benefits on top a minimal you know and have the confidence as well if they're saying something to you that you don't understand

it's not that you aren't intelligent it's they've not learned it well enough to be able to explain it to you and that's really important like they might just not be very good and I think sometimes we have these bad mentalities women are terrible for it I'm terrible for it sometimes is I just assume everyone knows more than me which is half the time not true and so I go oh no no no like the And when they start using really difficult language, I sit there and think, oh, I must Google that later. But now in the last few years, I've got really big girl pants about it and being like, what does that mean? And nine times out of 10 as well, the amount of uncomfortable, like, awkward shuffles in their chair where they can't quite explain it themselves. I quite enjoy it now.

Gives me a bit of a thrill. Because when people say things, even if when I'm on like a panel doing a talk and someone next to me says something, I'm like, can you explain that to the room? Because I don't think, like, everyone's going to understand that, like, jargon you've just. said. And I've had it before where someone's like snapped at me. I'm like, well, you explain it. I'm like, okay, it's this. And then explained the principle that people don't like being called out, but you should because, yeah, if you feel like someone is kind of baffling you with jargon, call it out because it's not fair. I think that's such an important point for the listeners, because the most intelligent doctor I've ever worked under, she was an internationally

recognized doctor in her specialty. We had consultants coming from all over the world to shadow under her, she would be the first person in a meeting to say, sorry, I don't understand that. Yeah. Because intelligent people are not afraid of looking stupid because they have confidence in their intelligence. Exactly. And if that gives someone listening the confidence to ask questions, because that's only going to make you more intelligent. I think that's such an important point. Yeah.

And I say it to friends. I even say it on social. Like, if you ever hear something that you don't understand, you're too embarrassed to ask at the time, always, dear me, I'm all right. Like, I'm not going to bite your head off. Like come and ask someone or go and ask someone after, like, because it's so important that you don't just sit back and think, I'm not intelligent enough because I don't understand it. Reverse it. Be like, they weren't clever enough to be able to make that make sense to me. Because so much of it is like really confusing language to explain something that's really very simple, which I don't like.

But that is finance. And I think it's why we've been kind of out of the loop financially for such a long time because even the language is very masculine. It's not being very inclusive and that needs to change. Well, that's a brilliant segue because we are coming on to the section of the podcast called Bye or Bye Bye where I'm going to show you something. I would love to know whether you'd buy this thing or say bye-bye, as in goodbye. Okay.

The only rule is we love nuance. Social media tends to not have enough of it. So if you're on the fence, then please feel free to share your thoughts. Okay, good. That's what I was about to ask. Can I be more specific? Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Starting off with budgeting apps. Okay. controversially, bye-bye, because I think people jump to these too early. I think people use them as a bit of a crutch, and actually you can do a lot of the heavy lifting yourself very early on and should do. So what these effectively do is go through your bank statements and tell you where you're spending your money and then will suggest ways you could split out your money.

But they're doing it based on like algorithms and percentages that don't necessarily know you in and out. And what I think you should do first is download your bank statement, go through it and do your own spreadsheet on it or just go through your bank statement on your phone and write notes of like where you are spending and where you're not spending. And start there because I think sometimes these sort of are like a pretty picture over your bank statements where they're not giving you the full intricate details. So yeah, I think once you're a bit more confident and you're aware of your spending habits,

then go here. I think these can mask spending habits, which I think is. bit dangerous. There's something uniquely humbling about going through your bank statement and you're like, has my card been stolen? I know. I know. And it happens to everyone.

We all have weird spending habits and also like different times of the year. Like spending is quite seasonal. I just think, yeah, I think you should, if you're going to look through your bank statements, do it intentionally. Don't let an app just tell you the highlights until you're more comfortable. Nice. I love that. I don't know what this is.

Cash stuffing. So I think what we're referring to here is like when people put cash in envelopes. So you can obviously budget your money out. I'm going to say bye-bye because it's bell to school. Fine. Yeah. Stocks and shares, ISA. Yeah, we can do that one very easy.

100% buy. So stocks and shares, ISO. So in the UK, we have four adult ICS. So ISA stands for individual savings account and you can have a cash, a stocks and shares, or you can have a lifetime or an innovative finance. The stocks and shares ISO refers to. It's basically an investment ICER where you can invest in the stock market in its entirety within a tax wrapper. So the ICER element, individual savings account refers to the fact that any money you make in there.

So with investments, it's like dividends or capital gains, is tax free. So dividends, sorry, this jargon that spreads out. Dividends are if you buy a stock or share, they mean the exact same thing basically, in a company. Let's imagine it's like Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola shares are not going to like skyrocket because they've been in what they are. They're just going to probably grow slowly over time, but they're not going to skyrocket like the likes of AI shares. So what Coca-Cola does often is it releases dividends out to its shareholders. It does this for two reasons.

One, it incentivized people to continue to buy dividends or buy stocks in Coca-Cola. But two, you may be a shareholder of Coca-Cola. You may own 10 pounds of it. but who else is a shareholder is its CEO C-suite. Dividend income is usually taxed at a lower rate than salaried income. So a lot of businesses release dividends because if they release it to their one shareholder, they have to release it to all. And so often it means, yes, the CEO of Coca-Cola is getting a slightly larger chunk

than you are probably as a 10-pound investor, but that's what happens. And so across the board, they're releasing dividends. So it's income that gets released from your ownership of a share. And then the other way to make money in stocks and shares is through selling the share for more than you've paid for it, which is called a capital gain. So you're making a gain on your investment. And any money, like I said, that's made, whether there's dividends or capital gains in a stock and shares iSA is tax free. You can only put up to 20K per person per tax year into a stocks and shares ISO, but it is something that I'm like a huge advocate of because it is a really great way to build

wealth over time. The barrier to entry now with stocks and shares is so low. And I'm I think a lot of people have this like bad misinterpretation that it's gambling if it's investing. And from the majority of the time, you can educate yourself in such a way that it doesn't have to be like that. If someone is very new to stocks and share, I said, what would be your first steps? Do you have any platforms you recommend or? So I work with Trading 212 purely because I have had Chained 212 shares for years and years because they're low fees and super easy to use.

But there are other platforms online. You just need to search for the one that suits you. I would say if you're just starting out as well, when you are finding them low fees, like I said, one that makes you feel comfortable as well because some of the platforms can be a bit confusing and make sure as well that you're not just taking the one that your dad used or your friend use, like you, do your own research. And yeah, like I said, you can start really small. It's kind of like buying clothes on ASOS nowadays. Like the platforms are so user-friendly. You put, you deposit money into the account and making it very oversimplified.

But there's a few steps to open the stocks and shares there. deposit money into the account and then just buy individual shares or you can buy ETS, which are like groups of shares. But I think we'd need like an entire other hour to go through like the intricacies of this. But yes, stocks and shares, I says I would, it's a definitely definite buy for me. And I would also plug your socials as well. If you want like more information then we will leave Abbey socials in the description. I've definitely got lots of investing education there. Bye now, pay later. Bye bye-bye. Bye-bye. Buy-bye. Buy now pay later. The way this works, if you're unclear, because a lot of people think that this is just like borrowing money for free,

but nothing is ever free. You see Buy Now Paylator often on like clothing websites. It's a very pink credit, pink debt, where this is a debt. You are borrowing money and it's been very pinkified in the last few years because it often gets put on things like clothing sites and places where it's like considered more feminine purchases, right? But I think it's become more and more dangerous nowadays that you can find this on like deliveroo and all the rest of it, like spreading the cost of like food across a few days.

It just can, I just feel like it incentivized people to spend money that they don't have and that worries me. So these companies like make money by going to the clothing provider, let's say that you're buying a dress online and saying this person wasn't going to buy the dress, but they did because they used buying our paylaces. So you owe us a fee. So that's how they make their money. They make their money through the merchants, which is okay.

But it's a slippery slope with. Yes. And if you use By Now Pay Later really wisely and you just pay off those throughput installments very quickly, it may be efficient for you to spread the cost over three months. But if you are at any risk of purchasing outside of your means, i.e. you're spending more than you earn and you miss a payment, it can very quickly spiral. Those fees can get very spicy very quickly. The interest can really ramp up. And for years, By Now Pay Later wasn't attached to your credit rating. Now it is. And so it can then have really. detrimental impacts on your credit rating, which can then impact your ability to lend in the future, which I think is one of the reasons I say bye-bye. Because unless you are really comfortable knowing that that money is there to pay that off, then don't use it. I didn't realize it wasn't as touch to your credit rating and now it is. Yeah, so it was a few years ago because it was such a new kind of concept, these credit rating agencies hadn't caught up yet. And now they have and it's now part of it. And it can therefore have impact on like the amount of money that you end up lending for your

mortgage, for instance, because the banks don't like that you have other debts, basically. It can impact, or you've, like, missed a payment, can then impact the percentage you get from your mortgage and all the spirals. Yeah. Okay. Getting a financial advisor in your 20s. Or, I think if you are earning less than 100,000, this isn't a set number. Yeah.

But bye-bye. If you are getting to a place. like I said in the earlier, where you've got enough money that actually it doesn't make sense for you to manage it yourself, then maybe. You know,

if you come into a windfall of money or you, you know, get a huge pay rise, maybe. But I do think it's so important that you do enough education in your 20s and take it on yourself. I think some financial advisors prey on vulnerable people

and say like, oh, start early because then we'll help you. But often all it means is for them, their interest is compounding as well as yours. but they can have then like huge percentages off of your pensions and your income for over a long period of time. And also if your financial riser isn't giving you education, they're just doing for you, that would also be a huge bye-bye for me. At IKEA, we make things just for college life like the Rosenmandel blackout curtains in grey.

They say you can't put a price on sleep, but we did for the low low price of $49.99. Why are you in my room? Shh, go back to sleep. You have a big exam tomorrow. Shop back to school at IKEA. Without going to in detail on the stocks and shares and ETS, I would just like to share another semi-bad financial mistake that I made, but actually I don't see it as a financial mistake.

In the end, I still ended up better off. But I just want to share this story as an evidence of, how far you can get doing it yourself, even if you don't always make the right decision. So maybe this was a little bit after I bought my Range Rover, by waking up and deciding I was going to buy a Rangerover. I think maybe I had a bad month on social media and I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh like, so this could go away at any moment. Fuck, shit. I need to sort myself out. I need to make sure that I'm looking after this money because it's not just this endless supply. So I started doing my research and I started learning about the stocks and shares, ICFs. So maybe would you mind explaining a little bit about what ECFs are?

And then I'll continue the story. Yeah, of course. So ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund. And effectively, it's a group of stocks and shares. So, oh, by the way, so stocks and shares, like I said, it does mean the exact same thing. It's like in the US, they use the word stock to refer to what we're talking about. Australia use the word share quite frequently. we in the UK use them interchangeably.

But effectively it means like a portion of a company that you own. And you can buy individual stocks and shares. So you could buy specific stock and share in like Coke Cola or Disney versus you can have ETS. So exchange traded funds where they're groups of funds. You can have like specific equities, which stocks and shares also known as equities. Equity ATFs, which like the S&P 500 is a very common one where it's the top 500 US companies listed on the US stock exchange.

You can also have like AI ETFs where they're tracking groups of just AI companies. You can also have like thematic ETFs, which are like ETFs in a certain theme. So particularly ESG funds. So like ones that really speak to the ESG. You can even have like motorsport ETFs that like follow specific motorsport companies. Like they that's what we're talking about here, that it's groups. So instead of just having one individual stock, you're having like a basket of. different stocks and shares, or there could be also assets and bonds in there as well,

but we won't go too deep because the reason you have often ETFs is that you're diversifying your risk. So spreading across multiple as opposed to just one. So that's why I went for ETFs because I thought, well, if the Coca-Cola shares go down, if the ETF has all these different companies, it's not rely. If one goes down, I still might keep going up if all the other companies are going up in value. So that was my thought process. So obviously it's a diverse group of them. I learned this.

This is valuable financial advice that I learn off my own back, no, you know, just from social media research. And then I set up my account. I had a Vanguard account and to buy my ECFs. And every month I just used to go down the list and go, oh, I'd buy £5 of this one, five pound of that one, five pound of this one.

And every month I used to go, oh, that looks like a fun name. I'll do that. And it was maybe four, three years later that my boyfriend was like, oh, so they're quite diverse anyway. Yeah. So you're better off just putting into two, you know, maybe three, one like global ETF and then maybe one country specific ETF. If, you know, I think I had like 40 different EFs or something ridiculous. That's absolutely fine though.

Like, do you know what I mean? At least you, at least you were doing something. Yeah, exactly. I think that's what's important. And I think, yeah, maybe for admin and simplicity, you didn't need 40. But also, you weren't to know. And also, you never know. You could have been in that one ECF that like went to the moon.

And then your boyfriend would be laughing at, well, you'd be laughing at your boyfriend being like, excuse you. My idea was great. But I get what you mean. Yes, you can go a bit wild. And also I think that is something I would warn people at the beginning is it could be very tempting to like use it a bit like monopoly money. and be like, oh, I want to buy that, I want to buy that with no real thought process behind it, if I'm honest. Yeah.

Having that baseline knowledge and maybe not making all the right decisions, but sometimes it's important to start. Oh, 100%. And also it's important to have a couple of things in there that are just for you. I invested in Ferrari, the stock, the individual stock, because I'm a big Formula One fan, and I just thought it was really funny.

But I know full well because I watch the Formula One. The Grand Prix every week. Ferrari, not doing it. in bits and also they've just released an EV vehicle oh it was embarrassing for everyone involved um and so the Ferrari stock went down and I know that and I'm okay with it I have like I think I at this point I probably have barely any investment left but like I put a very small amount in there but it is in there for me to have a little giggle when I look at and that's what's important to me and so therefore investing doesn't always have to be super serious all the time like there can be

parts of it that can be just for you just like everything in life so there's lots of things I invest in that technically might not bring a immediate return and it's not going to look like the SEP 500 and return 25% in a two minute period. Yeah. But some things can just be for you and they can just be okay because that's what they teach you something

and that's okay. Would you say that feeds into you enjoying the process of putting attention towards your finances? Because I think when we take all the fun out of something, all it can sometimes do is lead us to avoid it. Yeah, 100%. And that's been finance for such a long time. You know, I think there's a lot of people in power

that have really profited off of us being fearful, not talking about money. Like, and actually I really resonated with Sophie, obviously, with the 93% club where she was saying, when that girl said to her, like, don't, you shouldn't, didn't someone tell you it was, like, rude to talk about money? I hate that. It is not rude to talk about money. If anything, it's dangerous not to. And I think there is this, like, old school mindset or old money mindset of, like, don't talk about it. I'm like, well, yeah, we don't have to.

if we've all got it. Like if I was sat on millions, I wouldn't have to be constantly. But we don't all have that privilege and therefore we should be talking about money and also holding people accountable to make sure that the system becomes easier and not harder for us.

Also, 100% they are talking about money with their kids. Of course, yeah. The whole, we're not, don't talk about money, don't talk about money. But you're all having those conversations around the dinner table. So actually. My company teach finance in schools.

And we're having a little bit of an issue over the last year because we love all our school. but we used to have this situation where we, because we teach in all schools, so private and state. And a lot of our private schools will then bring in their local state schools. However,

because of the VAT reduction, like obviously removal of the VAT, oh well, the increase basically of the VAT on school fees because they used to be charities and now they're not, they're run as businesses. It's meant that we're seeing a real drop in like our private schools, basically bringing in their local state schools

and actually we're seeing a bit of a change with our state schools. as well. It's really frustrating. Did bring it up with the Chancellor as well. And I did say to her, like, what are we doing about financial education? I say we, as if I'm like sat next to in the Treasury. But like I said, what's going on? And unfortunately, the answer is just like nothing.

And, you know, we have like Martin Lewis or Rishy Sunaq and all these people like come to the forefront and say like finance should be in the education system. I'm like, yeah, we've been saying that for years. What are you going to do about it? Go on. Like, off you go. No one does anything.

Everyone just like talks about it. We all say it's a lovely idea and we just don't do it, which is another reason I just set up Ellen because I was like, right, let's just go and do it then. Let's go, let's go teach. Like, I'm going tomorrow to teach. I won't lie to you. It's not great use financially of my time

because we charge our schools very little, but we have to charge them something for lots of reasons. One, if you don't charge anything, the schools don't value it as much. And so we've had it, at the very beginning, I didn't charge a lot, and we had a lot of schools, like, forget that we were coming or, like, you know, not, like, not prioritise it as much as they should.

So we do charge, but because we have to also pay for, I have other teachers that come as well because I can't, unfortunately, go to every single school all over the UK. And I have to pay for their time. But also understanding, yeah, it's like we want qualified professionals and we want really good lessons and things like that. So that's why we charge. But anyway, we're going off a tangent. I think it is just important that someone's doing something. And I don't personally think that the government are doing enough right now.

Because if they wanted to, they could. But they don't really. And it doesn't make sense to me, having come from healthcare, where we're all going to get old. We're all going to need looking after and not necessarily having a pension that looks after us, you know? And then the government pays the cost of that.

But we do, the taxpayer. Yeah, exactly. The taxpayer pays the cost. And there is a world in which the state pension may not be there for you and I. Like, that's a really uncomfortable conversation, but it's one that we're all kind of hoping that never happens.

But, like, the state pension is an extortion amount of money and it comes out of the taxpayers of today. Like, the older generation will say things like, oh well I paid into the pension, I paid into the state pension, therefore I am entitled to it. That's not how it works at all. The state pension is a benefit.

It's the same as like the universal credit. It's paid for out of the taxpayers of today. And the problem is, is we have an ageing population that are all retiring earlier and we don't have a growing population of taxpayers because we're not producing offspring and all the rest of it,

which, you know, is all right? Yeah. But the problem is is that when the state pension was brought in, on average I think I can't remember the stats completely but I think we were living like maybe three or four years past state pension age so the government were having to pay for three or four years maybe

now some people are living 40 years past state pension age well state pension age is 66 and rising so some people are getting to their hundreds and they've been on that state pension and it's not a load of money but it's about 12 and a half thousand a year and the government have to find that for all of these state pensioners

and don't get me wrong I'm not saying they don't deserve it and I don't want any state pensioner to ever be in poverty. That is not what we want. But for instance, it doesn't matter who you are. If you're a UK resident and you hit that state pension age, you can take it regardless of whether you're sat in a 10 million pound house with multiple like sources of income or you are literally just relying on the state pension. Both are entitled to it. And I think there's a conversation that needs to happen before it gets to a point where we just cannot afford it. But to be honest, like something, obviously I'm very big effort of financial education in

schools, but to be honest, I'm also an advocate for complete education reform. I think, obviously, mental health and physical health, I wish there was more like, like, kind of, well, just more like medical support at school ages. Like understanding what was going on with ourselves and like understanding our bodies more would have been great. But, you know, the same way we weren't allowed to talk about. finances, we also weren't allowed to talk about our periods, which I thought was ridiculous. There just needs to be reformed.

The education system is not set up to create the next generation of workers right now. And we need more people in employment. As I'm sure you're aware, like with the news, like, we have youth unemployment at like 16%. In London alone, it's 25%. And that's staggering. And they're the next generation of workers that aren't working and therefore not putting it into the tax system. And they're, yeah, sorry, I can go on and on. I'm going to close myself off before I've gone an absolute tangent.

You've done a lot of working government. Like that's extremely admirable, but I'd imagine quite disheartening. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it can be. Yeah, I've worked with the previous government when it was headed up by Rishi Sunak and then I've worked with the current Labour government. I say worked with. I have been invited to, basically, events that they run.

I don't work with or for them at all. I'm there of my own free will. I do not get paid. which is something sometimes I get a bit frustrated about because they expect a lot, like they invite us to things, which is very nice, but we can be there for like a full day, and that's a full day of my time. And actually, yeah, I don't know anyway,

I won't go down that right at the whole. Because I do know that like it's a privilege to be in these rooms as well because we get to ask questions to the prime minister and the chancellor that other people don't. And I make sure to use my voice to ask the questions that people like in my community want answered. and I'm usually very straight. But I do, yeah, do I think reform has happened

or any change has happened? Sorry, I don't want to keep using that word. Yeah, it's been being bastardized. Well, exactly, which is fine. Do I think change has happened fast enough? No. But I do sometimes, I would say this, that I think it must be really difficult

to be in those jobs. Like, I get asked a lot, like, if I would be the chancellor. And I'm like, no, because I don't think I could have enough as much impact on things being in that position, if I'm honest, and it looks really hard. And I don't know if it's as rewarding as it would need to be for me to want to do that. I think it's really difficult. I think the current Chancellor has to battle not only with being the Chancellor of the UK

in a party where just automatically people don't like you just because you're associated with a certain party, but also battling the fact that she is a woman. And there was that situation where she cried in Parliament and that caused uproar because it would, Would she have done it if she was a man? And my thought to that was like, why wasn't there enough support that she didn't end up in that position? Like, what's going on?

She's the Chancellor of the UK. Yeah. So it is a privilege to be in those rooms and I never take it for granted that I'm lucky to be there. But I do say no a lot because sometimes it can feel like you just are relentlessly going to different events where they're telling you things that you already really know. Let's talk about the gender pay gap. Yeah. What is the gender pay gap? because you've made some excellent videos explaining what it is and what it isn't.

There's a couple of misconceptions about it. Yes. So what it isn't, the gender pay gap is not where men are paid more than women for the exact same role. Because that is illegal. That should always be called out. If it's happening, it's illegal, stamp it out. What the gender pay gap is, is where effectively, if you look at a company, let's say a company with a bad gender pay gap would have a lot more women in junior roles,

and then a lot more men in senior roles. And what happens is that as people go through their career, you suddenly start to see this shift where, like, basically women drop out and don't get to those senior leadership roles. Like, you see it quite often in even female-based companies where you have a lot of younger women in the junior roles of, like, admin, PAs, and, like, assistants, etc.

When I first started in at Condé NAS, like, there's a lot of girls in, even, like, I was a management accountant assistant or something. But at that time, the entire C-suite, like the CEO, the CEO, the CFO, or maybe the CFO was a woman, but like the CEO, the editor-in-chief, all were men. And that's the gender pay gap. It's not even necessarily a condone-nass problem. It's a UK problem. Like, why are we not seeing women end up in these leadership positions?

Like, one of the biggest, obvious points is motherhood penalty, where women fall out around their, like, 30s, go down to part-time work, etc. And I would point out here, because I've done a lot of videos, so I've had a lot of comments. I'm in no way saying that women shouldn't do this. Women are entitled to do whatever they want. However, if you are asking why the gender pay gap exists, it's often because of things like the motherhood penalty and just the fact that the C-suite positions are not set up with women in mind. Yeah, it's a really big problem.

And unfortunately, it's getting worse, not better. It makes me really sad. And actually, I think the next generation of girls see us. And it's why I'm very vocal about it, because I want them, if they are watching us, to know that we're doing something about it and actually taking action because, yeah, they deserve that. And my concern is that, yeah, with a lot of stuff on the internet right now, it's almost going a little bit backwards and I don't love that. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this.

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And I think that we need to recognise how interlink those two things are. If we want women to have more babies, we need to reassure them that it's not going to have this huge impact on their careers, which it often does. There's this story that really, I think, epitomises the issue for me because the NHS is awful for it. There was a doctor that I worked with. She was coming back from maternity leave, quite senior, almost finished, becoming a consultant. She was coming back from maternity leave

and she was breast pumping. So I was working in a big London hospital and she emailed before she started and says, is there any areas where I can breast pump? And they said to us breast pumping the toilet. Oh, that's gross. Yeah. They told us breast pump in the toilet.

That was the safe space. And I think it's one of the wealthiest NHS trusts in the country and in a big city where I'd imagine where people tend to be a bit more liberal. And I just think, oh my gosh, you poor doctors up and down the country who may be, that's a minor issue. But it is it though? Because it's a major issue in that woman's life. And she's not the first and she won't be the last.

And I think the problem is sometimes is we as women can internalize these things and go, well, it's only me. It's not only you. And sometimes like I felt when I started Ellen, I kept looking around. And I was like, who's doing, are we not doing finance education yet? What's going on? And I was like, I will regret it if I get. like 10 years down the line and this still hasn't happened. And I look back and I've expected someone else to do it.

And I think with her, sometimes it's so important that she doesn't just stand up for herself, but she stands up for every woman that comes behind her and makes it unacceptable for them to say things like that to someone else. And I say that to even the other girls in my finance space on social media. Hilaracy. I've only been doing this for three years, but someone called me a legacy the other day. No, not a legacy. They called me old school the other day and I almost cried.

Because they were like, well, you're not one of the. new ones and I was like, I'm only 32. Social media is, the turnover is wild. It's absolutely savage. But I was talking to one of the new girls and I said to her, I was like, this isn't always the safest space for women in the finance, like, teaching finance on social media as a woman, but it's really important that you call things out as and when you see them. And I always try and do it from my place where I'd been here for a little bit longer so that

other girls don't get hit by that. But yeah, sorry, back to your woman. Did she find a space? Because she was saying, you know, you could lock off a clinic room for a couple, you know, and that's got blinds on, whatever, and I could just sit there. We're a hospital. We know how unhygienic toilets are. That friction and also the issues with childcare, etc., etc. Can sometimes make women go, do you know what? Why am I putting my heart and soul into the career that does not give a shit about me? It's one thing women's taking a step back for their career to get pregnant, maybe for the first few years of their child's life. I think those real issues become apparent actually afterwards when we don't make it accommodating enough for women's

come back to work. They're like microaggressions, aren't they? And they add up and they and they solidify in our backs of our mind and they go and they make decisions for us that we don't realize. Like, you know, maybe she'll think, I don't want a second because I don't want to have to go through that again or whatever. And, you know, as a single girl in her 30s, I'm very aware of like, like this situation and I'm very aware of like that I love my career but my and I get up at 520 and I go to the gym and then I come home and I again do what I like in my girls only flat like it's a it's a part of my life that I'm very happy with but I do think if things were to change would I would I would be okay with it because everything would change like you can't and I love my like I have

so many wonderful girlfriends with babies but they can't just get up a 520 and leave the house like I do know that. I am not naive enough to know that that wouldn't be a possibility. So I think, yeah, there's a lot that this system has to answer for. There's a lot of the government have to answer for in the sense of like, are they making it a safe space for us to want to have children? Because are we safe enough with like our careers? Are we safe enough to feel protected? You know, and also we, not everyone has a child because they want to bring that child up in the sense of like we should also be looking after the education system and the nursery system because those are people that want to look after babies and want to look after children

that we're not financially in reimbursing well enough and so therefore they fall out the system as well and then all of these things become more expensive and then you have people that were the brightest minds in I don't know physics now caring for their child because actually they cut financially it makes more sense but they're not being fulfilled in their career as well. Do you know what I mean? I think, yeah, there's a lot that needs to change. Fab, okay, right. Real or not real? So I'm going to show you a cliff on social media. And I would love to know whether you think it is real or not real. Okay. And as always, nuances. Love. Yeah, welcome. Should people even plan on buying a home? You do not want to look at a home as an investment

opportunity. There was a time when I thought buying a home was a really, really good decision. It gave me a lot of comfort and peace of mind, knowing that no matter what happened, and I will always have this roof over my head. That psychological comfort is hard to put a number on. Now I rent, and that gives me a huge amount of psychological comfort, because knowing that I could pick up and leave if an opportunity comes up, that I'm not tied to a certain place, that gives me a lot of freedom. There's two ways to look up at the buying rent situation.

First is actually, when it comes to your home, it is a psychological part of it. And the second part, then comes the numbers. You want to figure out, does it make sense for me to be putting this money towards buying, a home, also taking into account the cost that most people forget, which is stamp duty, buying all the furnishing, legal fees, surveyor fees, all of that comes into the cost. Or does it make sense for me to rent and invest that difference? It's not what we used to think, which was just buying is the way to go. And if you're paying rent, you're just paying someone else's mortgage. There's so much more that comes into the emotions and the psychology of making something

like a house purchase, which is one of the biggest purchases you're going to make in your entire life. thoughts. So would caveat, Nisha is a very good friend of mine. So I am, but solely agree with her. So real. Like I used to because and even my parents were very big advocates of like, you must own, you must own, you must buy. I did buy with someone and financially I'm also, I don't own that place anymore. They still do. I don't. It didn't make a ton of sense. Like, because I was only, I only, I only owned. for a few years. And I would say really be careful when you're jumping into something because I think a lot of people think that property is the only way to build wealth. And it's not. It also ties you to one place for a very long time. If you are someone that knows you're going to be somewhere for a

long time and you like the stability, yes, it could make financial sense and it is an asset. And yes, in the UK, it does tend to grow over time. It does. Like, you know, the property prices in the UK are going up. But if you are someone that wants a slightly different life yourself, so for as myself, like I'm single. I like the flexibility. I like the fact that I can just change if I want to and leave somewhere else. That works for me.

And that makes sense. And I don't have any of the like fees of owning a home because then I get to keep my own. I basically just get to keep my own house deposit and do with it what I want. So, yeah, for me, I actually do agree with Nisha. I think it is a tendency of, yeah, our parents' generation,

but also if you don't come from a family where there isn't an in-depth knowledge of finances, I think there is a tendency for that to be heralded as the peak of financial independence. We have got completely lost on what success looks like. The UK, we have this measure of success and that it is, if you own a home, you are successful. No, that is not the only measure of success. Like, I don't own a home and I think people would say I've done okay. I think our parents' generation, they were the era of like they could buy homes for like, you know, I think someone told me the other the day their parents what their first home for like 30,000 pounds like what in what world it just

wouldn't work and nowadays it's good it you know what was it I think years ago it was like three times your salary it's now like 10 times your salary like most homes it's just it's not feasible for everyone and it shouldn't be used as this like markup success if you own it because also for most people even when they do get on the housing ladder the bank own your home you don't own your home like you have a percentage stake in your home but if you default on your payments the bank aren't going to go, oh, okay, well, it's yours, so don't worry. They take their property back because they own the majority of it. And actually, there's a very controversial thing to say, which is like most of the UK is owned by banks.

Like, they're taking risk and owning part of your home. Like, their biggest real estate owners of the world, I think. So, yeah, I would say not, don't think of it as the only measure of success. There are lots of measures of success. But also, I'm not to dis, I'm not saying, like, if you own a home, you're not, like, it's a waste. Because it's not for lots of people who are making. complete financial sense, but not everyone. I've lost, I think, 20 grand based on the most recent valuation of my flat.

I got a pretty decent deal. Oh, gosh. The person who bought my flat before me bought it for 400K. Okay. I bought it for 340 because prices has already gone down, but then they have gone down further. And so I looked at my mortgage repayments and I was like, wait, I've been paying my mortgage for two years. and I now have less equity than I started. Sorry, what?

That is a con. And I'm not looking to sell it. I'm looking to hold on to it if you want to. It's got to be a long-term thing. But looking at that, thinking about how much money I've, because you pay most of your interest as well in the first year. Yeah, I love how candid you are with that. No one ever talks about that.

I would have loved to have said that to honest, but most people are like, you can't say that. Like, that's very candid of you and very honest because a lot of people never talk about that side of it. And yes, you're right. It can go down. Like the valuations, like, yes, we always see, like, how, like, in general, house prices will eventually start to go up again.

But it's not always the case. You know, the house price has been really rocky over the last few years. We've had obviously an influx of flats as well where the renter's right bill came in and lots of people don't feel like owning, like being a landlord is that incentivized anymore. So we had like a huge supply of flats on the market, which did impact the flat market. Like, there are lots of reasons why. why it doesn't make complete sense. And like you said, you pay a lot of the interests up front,

the equity in the home. Gosh, yeah, that is, yeah, great case and point there. You know, it's not always a win. And like on my position, I owned with someone. And when, you know, effectively I broke up with that person or we broke up, like, it meant that I had to find a quick way out. And it wasn't like that simple and it created a lot of issues. And financially, I don't think I came out much better.

I just kind of got back what I put in and that was frustrating. Yeah. And I think when you look at say ETFs or stocks and shares, it's so much simpler to take that money out a lot of the time. It's much more liquid. You don't have to get a mortgage advice. You don't have to get an estate agent involved. You don't have to get anyone really involved.

You just sell. So yeah, much more liquid. And when people say, oh, you can just sell it, you can just sell it. Guys, some houses flats are on the market for years and they don't get any interest. I think the idea that your house is worth X amount of money and you can just cash that in at any time. Yeah. I just say, I use that as an example because I remember someone commented on one of my YouTube videos, maybe like five years ago and they said, I think I went to LA or something on holiday with one of my friends and they commented on a YouTube video being like, she's out here

traveling and she hasn't even bought a home yet. She's so irresponsible. It gave me this real complex when I saw this comment like, oh, like I actually, I'm being really irresponsible. I should be buying. No, you're not. But then I did. And actually, I love that flat. Really, really love that flat. It's, um, but I think those negatives aren't spoken about enough. No, they're really not. And also you, you are the only person that knows you in and out. Yeah. What makes sense for you? Like, I love my flat right now. It's the safest place on the planet. Like, I love it. Would I want to own it? No. Because I, it doesn't have any real personality. But that's okay with me right now. Like all it needs is like locked doors. I've got underground car park, all that

kind of stuff. And that's what matters to me right now. But I know it's not something I'd want to own. And that's okay. But you will get people in the comments that will be like, owning a home makes sense. I met and you're like, all right, fine. If it makes it for you great. Yeah. Doesn't mean that makes sense for everyone. Yeah. And it's like what we said before, injecting some joy and phone into finances. When we give people a prescriptive one size fits all, we take the fun away, we make it a chore. And then a lot of people just avoid their finances completely. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the nuance on that one.

The gender pension gap. Okay. So basically, the gender pension gap comes from the gender pay gap, where effectively, obviously, men are out earning women on average in their careers. And so therefore, they're contributing more to their pensions earlier. Men tend to opt into their pensions earlier. So it's a really terrible step, but it's true. Women are therefore contributing less,

because especially workplace pensions, they're done on an percentage of your income. So if you're earning more, on average, you're going to be putting more into your pension. They also tend to have longer careers in total. And so then they've got longer period of time to put into their pension. There's a whole host of problems that come from that. At one point a few years ago, men had 50% more in their pension pots than women, on average. 50?

Mm-hmm. At one point, it dropped down to, like, somewhere near 30%. But, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if it goes back up again. You know, it is really bad. Men tend to have more in their pension pots than women. Yeah. Women outlive men, obviously. Yeah.

You're like, you know, from a biological point of view, we're outliving men. Another thing that's not talked about enough, maybe it's a time for a conversation for another time, but women tend to go through the inheritance tax process twice as well. They go through it often with their parents and they go through it with their husbands and women get this like double in windfall of tax. Oh, the income, don't know what to do with it. And I hear a lot of women, I go through a lot of conversations with women that get this huge windfall of tax. Then their financial advisor that was their husbands or the accountant that was their parents comes to them and goes, well, I'll just sort it out for you. and they're like, oh, okay. Or the even worse is they panic, take all of that money out,

put it in their current account and just leave it. That's even more stressful because they don't realize the negative implications of just leaving what can sometimes be hundreds of thousands in their current account. So yeah, really important to understand all of this stuff before it happens to you. Want to talk ETS with the people behind them? Join me, it's Jean-Jacqueshaw on the Upside Ticker Talk. We dive into what's moving markets with timely analysis, trends,

and answers to ETF questions you've actually been thinking about. Hit play on the upside ticker talk and elevate your ETF investing IQ. The way that this played into my conversations in my relationship, when I heard about this, I explained it. And we did say, well, whoever takes time off regardless of who that is, because it depends on what both of our careers are doing. Whoever takes time off for child, children, then the other one will pay into their pension.

It's very tax efficient as well. You can do that for your partner and you can use the tax allowances that go with that. So it's like it's not a bad decision. You know, is that, did you ever read that Reddit article where that woman basically said to her husband, like, you need to pay me for my having a baby.

And I was like, all right. I'm not against it completely. I think, you know, like you said, if you're whoever's doing the caregiving, there needs to be some sort of conversation about what does the finances look like because we don't live in a normal world anymore. life is getting very expensive when we need to prioritize and be aware of what's going on around that.

One of my controversial opinions is one of my friends said that she split her engagement ring with her fiancé, split the cost. And I was like, guys, this is not what feminism wanted from us. There's huge inequalities, the gender pay gap, the gender pension gap. This man expects she's birthed his children. Do you understand the unpaid labour that goes into birthing someone's child, nine months carrying his spawn? and you've split your engagement ring. I just cannot get behind that at all. I think there's equity and there's equality.

Yeah. And that's equity, that's not equality. Yeah. We have to acknowledge the inequalities that do exist. Yeah. And not present that 50-50 is equal because it's not. I will be, for any future husband, I will be a terrible pregnant woman.

I mean, all of my girlfriends that are pregnant and there is a lot of them right now. They're like, my girlfriend face time the other day, she was like, I'm just having a very bad day. I was like, you are growing a human. Where is your husband? And she's like, oh, you know, he's gone to the gym. I was like, call him right back. He needs to be massaging your feet and buying you things.

Like, that's the bare minimum that we're at. If you're growing, oh, God, the distress it looks like just a birth. Nah, I'm going to be a nightmare. I'm going to be like, no, you will wait on me hand and foot. And I'm here for equality. I literally spread financial education because I'm like, no more gender pay gap. And I want every woman to do whatever she wants. But I just know I will be terrible.

But this is the brand of first. feminism that I subscribe to. The brand of feminism that says actually taking the bins out is is the man's job because I don't actually... When you live on your own though, it's really sad. I get really upset that I have to do the bins. I just... Yeah.

It's a really first world problem. I am fine with... I literally can put them down in the bits. But yeah, I do it. Like, I subscribe to it, but unfortunately I don't always have the ticket to go to the show because I don't have a man to do the blue jobs. I am giving so much of my independence to exist. exist in this relationship, there are suits and tariffs that come up and one of them is taking

the bins out. And yeah, that is my brand of feminism, controversial. Yeah, we're going to come on to the last question. But first, this is something I know a lot of girlies listening will want to know, but how do you recover from a shopping, spending addiction? Okay. Um, recovering, so you're basically saying that you're finished, like you're not having them anymore to remove temptation. That would be the first thing. Remove all temptation. Unsubscribed. from every single clothing, every single subscription email you're getting that could tempt you back in. Paying yourself first very quickly at the beginning, when you've been paid in the month, moving money out so it's not easily accessible is a really important thing.

And if you are someone that relies on any sort of debt like credit cards, i.e., you fall into that kind of comfort zone when you go to spend. Do you know what? In terms of building your credit rating and your credit score, having a credit card is. can be helpful. But if you are someone that's going to fall into the trap where it's going to be unhelpful, get rid of them. Cut them up, get rid of them. Like, close them if you need to.

But remove temptation. That is the only way you're going to get out of that spending issue. I'm so glad you said that because I think a lot of financial advice says, get a credit card, build your credit school. Only if you can trust yourself to use that responsibly. And that's okay. Like, lots of people, like finance is individual. Finance, it's only what it makes sense to you.

Like, not everyone should. invest. Not everyone should have a credit card. Not everyone should have a home. That's okay. But there are lots of people where it will make complete sense for them and there are lots of people where it won't. And knowing yourself is the most important part of all of that. Yeah. You have been absolutely phenomenal. Thank you. And just in awe of you all the time of everything that you do. That brings us to the final question. Abby, what do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25? By the time she was 25, I wish she knew that she needed a N-FU fund. So she had freedom. Yeah. Yeah, no. So she had the freedom to just fuck the hell off.

I had to use mine at 20, no, 30 years old. And the freedom it brought me and was just unparalleled. And I, if I'd started a bit earlier, maybe I would have left earlier. I think when we talk about finances and it can revolve so strongly around numbers, but actually what finances bring a feeling. It brings empowerment. It brings empowerment. It brings safety. It brings security. So I think that's a really wonderful note to end on. Thank you. We will leave all the information for book.

West finds you, everything in the description. Thank you so, so so much. Thank you, my darling.