Should I Delete That? - Money = power: why financial freedom is a feminist issue

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Who here thinks they’re rubbish with money? We did, until we spoke to Alexia De Brogile. Alexia is the co-founder of YourJuno - the financial education app, by women, for women.In this episode, we find out how women’s attitudes to money are set from our childhood and how that lack of confidence follows us into adulthood - and stops us from growing our wealth…Alexia and her sister Margot created their platform to essentially be the Duolingo of financial education for women. They have helped thousands of women to learn about every aspect of personal finance. If you have any questions about personal finance - What’s investing? Is the stock market safe? What is an ISA? - this a judgment free zone and this episode is for you!You can download the YourJuno app for free hereFollow @yourjuno on InstagramFollow @alexiadebroglie on InstagramThis episode was recorded in November 2024If you would like to get in touch - you can email us on [e-mail] us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceStudio Manager: Dex RoyVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty FraserMusic: Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The wealth gap, so how much we own compared to men, is significantly bigger. It's 66% difference. So for every pound that a man has, a woman has 33P. Hello and welcome back to Should I Delete That? So, who here feels like they're not very good with money? I am in that boat too, absolutely. I've always found the world of finances' money really daunting and overwhelming and just quite confusing. Until, that is, we recorded this conversation with Alexia DeBroy.

Alexia is the co-founder of your Juno, which is a financial education app created by women for women. And in this episode, which is one of the most educational interviews I personally feel like I've ever done, we dove into how our attitudes towards money are shaped from childhood and they're often gendered and how a lack of confidence with money can follow us into adulthood and hold us back from building wealth. Alexei and her sister Margo set out to change that by creating your Juno, which is essentially the duolingo of financial education for women. Their platform has already helped thousands of women gain confidence in everything from budgeting to investing and it's just helped build knowledge about finances and money. So if you have questions about personal finance, if you're

wondering what investment is, if the stock market is safe, what even is the stock market, or maybe what does a nicer even do? Honestly, all questions I had too, and this is a completely judgment-free zone, but this episode is for you. Guys, I had zero voice on this episode. It was the day I was losing my voice and it was at the end of the day and I was, I had so many questions and I really struggled as you'll be able to hear and you can hear the M to have to take over as well. I even started writing questions out on my iPhone. It was a disaster, but it doesn't take away from how brilliant and informative this episode was. If you enjoy this episode, please leave us a review and follow us on Instagram at Should I Delete That, you know that we would be very, very grateful. You're going to love

this episode. Here is Alexia. Thank you so much for coming in. We have wanted to do an episode like this for so long. I have followed your Instagram account, your platform, for years now, and I've learned loads. And when we kind of mentioned on the pod a little while ago that we wanted to do an episode about like finance and investing and like we we laughed at how little we knew and then actually after it's it's like oh my god it's actually depressing how little we know and we thought we really needed a finance expert or finance yeah yeah we need some we need some financial knowledge to come on to podcast and have a chat with us and I mentioned your name and we had so many DMs saying you have

to get did you yeah because I think people women particularly are desperate for an accessible place to learn about making money. You are creating that with your Instagram page, your Juneau and your platform. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and how it came to be? Yes. I mean, I started it about four years ago with my sister and I had like a very traditional career path beforehand. So I studied finance and I was in consulting in financial services. But what I found is that even having a financial background and having been surrounded by people that are like finance nerds, there was a huge difference between the way women and men actually related to the topic of money. So what I saw is that like a lot of my guy friends

had WhatsApp group chats where they talk about crypto, they talk about investing, they talk about what's the next thing. And there's never a single woman in these group chats. And then even my girlfriends that studied finance, they were like, oh, yeah, I don't really invest. I'm not sure, etc. So when I started looking into this, especially when COVID hit and the market started crashing and like everyone on TikTok was talking about investing. It was like the big thing at the time. I was just looking into like, what are the investing rates between men and women? What are the differences?

And actually the behavioral differences are insane. Women are better at investing. Sorry, at saving than men are. But men invest so much more. And that means that over our lifetimes, the wealth gap just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so that's when with my sister, we were just like, we need to build a scalable way of distributing financial education that isn't something like a YouTube channel where you're not quite sure whether the information is relevant or not. And so we built the app, Juno, which has been live

now for I think two and a half years, something like that. And it's a bit like duolingo, but for money. So the lessons are bite-sized. You're able to learn about how to negotiate a raise, how to get out of debt, how to start investing, everything that falls under the umbrella of personal finances. And today we've helped about 150,000 women with the app. We've tried to calculate it with a few surveys and we estimate that we've created about 650 million extra pounds for women through the education. So yeah, super proud of ourselves, but also so happy that it's actually helpful for women in the UK and it's completely free. That is so cool. And I really want to talk to you about the practicalities and like what that looks like.

and what women can start doing to take steps in order to make themselves more money. But before we do, it would be really interesting to talk to you about what you've noticed with the gender gap here. And we were talking before we started recording about the stats surrounding how men are targeted in this space versus how women are, how we're spoken to, but also what you're saying there about how women save better, but men invest more. Can you talk us through some of these patterns? Because I find that so interesting.

When you look at money gaps, they happen throughout. your entire lifetime. And actually, if you look back at history, only 70 years ago, women weren't allowed to open a bank account without a men's signature. We couldn't go to the bank. Like literally 70 years ago, this is our grandmothers, right? And they couldn't open a bank account. So there's still a legacy of outdated gender norms that is very present today. And we're only slowly getting rid of them. But what we're seeing is, you know, if you look at children, little girls are being paid less pocket money than little boys. Little boys are being taught how to build wealth. Little girls are being taught how to save. And that also exists in

today's media. So that message is being reinforced even for adults. There's a really cool study that was done by Starling. That's called Make Money Equal. And they look at financial articles in the press. And they look at articles that target women and articles that target men. What they found is that the articles that were targeting women, 93% of those articles, so almost all of them are about spending less, getting that dress for less, budgeting, essentially how to cut expenses. But then they looked at articles that are targeted at men, and 73% of those articles are around investing and building wealth. And so I think what it creates in us is this idea that money for women is scarce. Money for women is, we have it, we need to protect it at all

cost. I don't want to lose it. It's scarce. It might not come again. Whereas for men, money is more this thing that flows and so they get it, they kind of rely that it's going to keep coming and then it's like, okay, where do I put it for it to grow in the best way possible? And I think that fundamental difference in behavior is what's making the gender wealth gap so big. So we know that women are paid less than men, 14% on average. Everyone knows about the pay gap. But actually what we don't know is that the wealth gap, so how much we own compared to men, is significantly bigger. It's 66% difference. So for every pound that a man has, a woman has 33P.

And that's because we see that the gender pay gap, one, it gets compounded over your lifetime. But also, we're not doing anything with our money except saving it. We're not making it grow. We're not taking any risks. And so it means that with inflation, when you have your money in your savings account, it just loses in value over time, whilst men are twice as likely to invest it. And so it actually grows over time. So really getting down into sort of what are our fears, what is holding us back from actually

using our money to make it grow is going to make the biggest difference for women nowadays. That is so interesting. And it's not surprising at all given, as you say, we are spoken to in such a different way. And there is this expectation that with men, money keeps coming. Whereas with women, it is. And I think, you know, we have. are coming to a point in our lives, we're like, maternity leave is a very big conversation and that sort of thing. And that does, this feels for the first time in my life, um, like a point

where I can see why the gender pay gap is as it is. Yeah. Because this is the first time that I'm confronted, you know, I think a lot of our generation feel like feminism's done a lot for us. And we're kind of like, we're okay. Like we're, we're, we're equal. We're pretty much as equal as we're ever going to be. But it's getting to this point where I'm watching, I'm watching changes and I'm having to change things within myself and I just and I recognize where the gender pay gap comes from and I can see too the scarcity idea we're always trying to save money and scrimp and like save pennies yeah whereas men feel like when when we see on tickets all this crypto shit yeah what point does the education come in for men what are we not getting because we haven't had that right like I have

how come they are getting this access and why are we not okay I mean it's a a really hard question to answer. It's not like there's some place that men all go on a Saturday where they're learning about money and we aren't. I think it's a lot more just embedded in society. So they did this really interesting study where they gave men and women a financial literacy quiz and they looked at how differently they scored. And women were scoring lower than men, basically in every single country, yes. But then what they did is they did the same exact exam, but they removed the answer, I don't know. So now women, they couldn't say I don't know,

they had to pick an answer. And actually one third of the gap was removed. And so what that means, it means that women think that they don't know. They lack confidence. But when you don't give them the option of saying, I'm not sure, they actually do know most of the time. And so I think that really illustrates that

it's not so much about financial literacy and financial expertise in a sense of like men are in a room and they have so much more subject matter knowledge that we don't have. I think it's more about the fact that women, because society keeps telling us that we're too loud, too skinny to this, to that we lack confidence. And when it comes to finances, one of the best, like one of the most important things you need is confidence because you're going to be taking risks. If you want your money to grow, you need to take some risks.

Risk and return is correlated necessarily. And if you're super scared and you're terrified and. you don't back yourself and you feel like you don't know what you're doing, you're just going to not do anything, which in the end puts you back way more than actually doing something. So I think financial confidence is something that we need to overcome, more so than financial knowledge. And actually, when women go on Juneau and they learn about investing,

oftentimes they're like, oh, wow, I actually knew a lot of stuff. You know, like I knew this stuff. And this has just given me permission to say, I know. This has given you permission to back myself and to actually follow what I think is best for me. it's interesting that you say all of this because we know this about women being told i mean women like uncertainty doubt is kind of bred within us yeah we're told we're not this enough not that enough i've never applied it to money and finances i've never realized that actually i mean

i don't have a clue about money and finances she really has no i really do not no yeah i guess I've never seen it as like another strand of, yeah, that it's something that comes from a patriarchal society. I mean, I think financial feminism is going to be, it's so necessary for all other aspects of feminism to fall into place because if women don't have money, we don't have power. We don't have a what to say. We don't have the freedom to leave a partner that's abusive. We don't have, we lose everything, right?

So I think like really looking at economic equality is going to be, for me, in my, in my, In my view, it's one of the most important things we can do as women is like fight for our financial rights and for financial education and financial freedom. But I think what you said with, oh, I really don't have a clue about money. I hear women say this so much. And every time it hurts my heart because it's like, of course you don't know anything because no one's ever taught us. When it comes to money, it's, I feel as though everyone gets a car when they turn 18 and no one has a driver's license. And it's just like, yeah, kind of go and figure out how to do it on your own. money is in a quiet skill

money is like a new language that you need to learn and if no one's ever taught you you're not going to know but I think people believe of themselves that they're bad with money they think that it's like a personality trait it's not a personality trait it's just a skill that you need to develop just like if you've never been to the gym

you're probably not going to be particularly fit and that's okay because you've actually never been to the gym and I think it's just like yeah it's in a quiet skill we just need to learn about money that's it it's just a lack of education exactly and it's not your fault and i think we need to like take the responsibility away from ourselves because it is not our fault that we don't know about this no one's ever taught us neither the government takes care of this nor employers take care of this it's like up to podcasts like this to do the role of like educating people on how to handle money so it's not our fault that we don't know um but i think the lack of

knowledge is step number one and like the awareness of that to then be like okay let me go and educate myself. I can be really good with money. I don't need to be a math with it to be able to do it. Actually, the foundations are really easy. Yeah. I think that's the other thing, even thinking about the podcast and the fact that we're talking about this now, I think it's something we would always have historically been hesitant to do because there is this idea with money that women shouldn't flex it or show off about it or with wealth, actually, and that women should be modest. And obviously that will be stemming from this page patriarchal thing that we need to be humble and we need to basically not know our own worth.

But I guess that does mean that the conversation is much more accessible for men because the rewards are much more likely to be conversation. Do you find that that women, even within their friends, don't want to talk about it in the same way? Yeah. Yeah. Money is one of those topics where there's so much shame, so much secrecy. And there's a stat that says that women would prefer talking about sex or death with a stranger then they moved talking about money with their friends.

So, like, there's a huge barrier. But again, leading with vulnerability on this topic has been what's worked best for me and for my friends. If you tell someone, I'm struggling financially, can we talk about how you are able to get a raise at your job? Can you help me practice? Typically, people are like, yeah, of course, let me try, you know. Like, they want to help out and they want to.

But it's, there's such a, I think we attach our self-worth to our net worth a lot in society. And so actually saying, hey, my net worth is not that good. Or I'm struggling financially is like saying, I am not a good person. I'm not deserving of love. I'm not competent enough. And for me, it's just like one of them is a number. And the other person, the other thing is like a person. We need to like decouple those things.

But there's a long way to go before we get there. Shall we get into questions? I can talk about this. I've got so many of my own, but we've also been inundated. Yes. With questions from our audience when we asked for these. A very, very, very common question. Actually, the most common is where to start.

How do I start with investing money? Let's start with the very fundamentals. Investing is not for everyone. It's very easily accessible, but not everyone should start investing. investing. And I think that's one of the things that, unfortunately, financial advice on TikTok doesn't teach us. There's three steps that every single person needs to do before they start investing. The first one is you need to have an emergency fund. That's typically three to six months of living expenses that you set aside in a separate account and that you just touch in

case you want to quit your job, in case you want to leave your partner, in case your laptop dies, et cetera. Then step number two, you need to not have any high interest debt. High interest is typically anything more than like 7%. And that's because high interest debt debt is growing. Literally month by month, it grows quicker and quicker and quicker. So if you invest, basically your deficit is still growing. It's like a bucket with water that you're trying to fill, but there's holes in the bucket. Obviously, it's smarter to first close the holes before you start filling the bucket.

So paying off any high interest debt. And then the third one, if you're a UK resident, just making sure that you max out your employee pension contributions. So what that means is if I currently give 3% to my pension and my employer gives 5%, oftentimes what you can say is, hey, I'm going to increase from 3% to 5%. So I'm going to actually give some extra salary. into my pension. And the employer is going to match that. So also increase the pension contribution

on your behalf. And that's one of the only ways you can have free money in the UK, basically, because your employer is putting more money into your pension. It's not coming out of your salary. So making sure you max that out. If you have those three things in place, then you are ready to consider investing. And so when it comes to investing, there's two things you want. First, you need to understand the basics of the sort of theoretical knowledge. Like how does it work? What is investing? And then two comes the practical side. And here you need to open an account with a broker, which is step number one. And then step number two is you need to actually purchase investments. I can give a very quick explanation on like what is the theory behind investing. How does it work?

Yes, absolutely. We know nothing. So the foundation of investing is saying, rather than keeping my money in cash, I'm going to buy something and I'm going to hope that something is going to increase in value over time. That's the foundation. And when people talk about investing nowadays, they oftentimes refer to investing in stocks and shares. Stocks and shares is the same thing. It's just two words, same thing. Stocks and shares, what it is, is it's like a little piece of a company. So I'm going to buy one billionth of Apple. I'm going to buy one hundredth of I'm going to buy a little bit of Pratt. Essentially, you can just go and buy tiny little pieces of companies on what's called the stock market. And obviously, with those companies, what happens

over time with economic growth, what we're seeing is that they go up in value, which means your money is also growing. And the key thing that you need to know when it comes to investing is that the economy, at least in the past, tends to grow. What that means is that you don't need to pick the winning company. You don't need to pick the one that's going to do better than everyone else. You essentially just want your money to be invested in the economy. On average, over the last 50 years, the economy has grown by like 8%. Now, compare that to your savings account, which might be at like 3%.

percent, two percent. It's significantly more. And so people are always paralyzed by this idea of like, how do I start investing? How do I know what company to put my money in? But the truth is you don't need to do any of that. You just need to invest in the economy. And so the best way to invest in the economy is simply to invest in the 500 biggest companies in the UK, for example, the 500 biggest companies in the US. How do you do that? You can do that through a fund. which is, basically, instead of going and selecting all the 500 companies that will take you ages, you can buy something that's called an index fund. And an index fund is a basket where the 500 biggest companies are inside,

or the 1,000 biggest companies, whatever it is that you decide by buying. And then you just buy the fund, and that means you're basically exposed to that country's economy, more or less. these funds they trade on the stock market and the stock market you can access it through what's called a broker a broker is just like the place where you're going to be able to find that fund and be able to buy it so people might be familiar with something called the SNP 500 which or the footsie 100 I don't know if those words ring bells yes but basically they are the names of what's called called like tracker funds. So basically S&P 500 is the 500 biggest companies that are traded

on the American stock market. Futsi 100 is the 100 biggest companies that are traded on the UK stock market. So it's basically just taking like the class average. And so if you want to purchase something that's going to open you up to a lot of the biggest American companies, you can buy a fund that tracks the S&P 500. I'm just going to say an example. If I buy an index fund that tracks the S&P 500, what does that mean for me compared to you? You buy shares in Apple, just that. We're going to have two different investment strategies.

For me, I buy one fund, so it is one transaction. For you, you only buy shares in Apple. That's also just one transaction. That's the same. Both you and I are going to go onto our brokerage platform, and we're going to buy something. Again, same thing. We're doing the exact same thing. But I will have a portfolio of 500 companies, the 500 biggest US companies.

You will have a portfolio of Apple. Now, if one of the big American companies doesn't do very well, I'm probably not even going to notice it because I've got 500 of them. Whereas if Apple has some form of scandal, you're really going to notice it. money is going to go down very quickly. And so by buying a fund, I have essentially done something that's called diversification, which means not putting all of your eggs in one basket. And it means that I'm basically just relying my thesis with my investments is, I think overall, out of those 500 biggest US companies, they're probably going to create more profit and grow over the next 10 years.

that's a very reasonable assumption at least what we've seen historically whereas your assumption is Apple's going to do really well maybe yes maybe you know we don't really know that and so by just purchasing essentially one thing I've now got a really well diversified portfolio that's pretty risk mitigated so that's the way to look at it

it's like you don't need to pick the winning company you just want to expose yourself to lots of different companies which you do through funds that's so interesting so many questions I thought there was so many risks associated with investing I didn't know that you could actually do it

in a way that was pretty risk-free I've got so many questions I don't know if I'm like jumping around here but the first criteria you mentioned for being able to invest was you have to have three months of saving

yeah do you recommend everything that you have surplus to that everything else is invested. Absolutely every penny. No. So it's a really good question. There's different frameworks that you can look at for how much you should invest. The first thing you need to know is because when you invest, you're buying an asset and you're hoping the value is going to go up over time. The keyword here is overtime. So you can't invest for money that you will need in six months or that you'll need in a year because the market might go down during that

time. So you want to make sure that the money that you invest is at least for I would say minimum five years, typically more like five to seven. And that's because as you would have seen it in all of the headlines, the economy moves in periods of like boom, bust, boom, bust. It's like everything is going well, everything is going to shits. Everything's going to shit. Everything's going to well. Everything's going to shit. And typically, if you keep it in the market for more than like five to seven years, it tends to go upwards. So even if there has been like a crash and it goes down, it bounces back. If it's two years, you're not sure that that's going to go back up. And if you need to take the money out and you've lost, it's actually gone down, then obviously you've lost money.

So not a good situation. Then when it comes to how much to invest, there's so many different frameworks that you could use. But one of the most famous ones is the 50, 30, 20 budgeting method. I'm sure you've heard of that before. Maybe not. No. So 50, 30, 20 is basically, if you look at how much money you're making every single month, that's like your overall pie, you're going to divide it into different parts. One of them is going to be 50% and that's how much you're spending on all of your essentials. So rent, food, medical bills, that kind of stuff, 50% of your income. 30% is going to be what you spend on the fun. 30% is going out with friends, shopping, like everything that is more discretionary spending. And then 20% is what's called the future me bucket.

And that's the money that you're going to use to build your future self. This is saving for a mortgage. This is paying off student debt. This is money that goes towards investing. And so you might have different financial priorities. Your future self has different financial priorities. So you need to make sure that, you know, you allocate out of those 20% what is going to go towards what? If you want to buy a house in five years, obviously you're going to have to have a lot of money saved up for a deposit.

it. But if your financial goal is retirement, then most of it can go towards investing. So it really depends what are your financial goals and how are you going to allocate it? The idea is, let's say you have three months of emergency fund in your savings account and you have no other financial goal. Don't keep money in savings that's going to sit there for like seven years. That is the biggest mistake that women do so good at saving. We're genuinely so good at saving better than men. Statistically, it's been proven again and again. But then we just keep it in our savings account. The problem is, I don't know, your savings account might be giving you 3% interest rate, but actually inflation is 6%. So what that means is that you're losing money every single

year and your savings are just getting eroded by inflation more and more and more. So everything you save is essentially becoming smaller and smaller. So you need to invest money that is going to be only used in like 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, all of that needs to be invested. It's the only way you can combat inflation essentially. Listening to it, obviously, this is such a personal thing. Because already, you know, the 50, 30, 20 model, I suppose only work for people who do end up with 20% which a lot of people don't and particularly at the moment at cost of living like most

people are finding that they're kind of living to their means or like they're pushed to their limits basically every month yeah so this is obviously hypothetical for anyone listening this is they're hypothetical in this situation where we've got the 50 30 20 going if you've got a student loan for example and a mortgage and an investment hope like you know you've got those three things would the priority be paying off the student loan before looking to start saving for a mortgage or doing an investment? Student loans are interesting.

I don't call student loans, student loans. I call them student tax because they actually behave a lot more like tax than they do like a loan. In the UK, you have a very, very good system in place where your student loans, the way that you pay them off is based on how much you earn,

not based on how much you have in debt. So what does that mean? Someone who has a student loan of 50,000 pounds, compared to someone who has a student loan of 500,000 pounds, if you earn the same amount, you're going to pay the same amount. And so actually, paying off your student loan early is eight times out of 10 a bad idea. I think it's 85% of student loans in the UK never get paid off in full because they cancel them after 30 years. So after 30 years, they just get canceled. I think it's 30 or 35. And 85% never get paid in full.

So like, you know, don't overpay your student loans because in the end, they're not, they might be growing with inflation, but they're not growing more than that. And so that's a huge mistake that people make is paying off their student loans in advance. Then when it comes to, you know, if you want to save for a house deposit, if you think that you might be able to get the house within the next three years, years, then I wouldn't invest. But if you think that it's going to take you another 10 years to save for the house deposit, then totally consider investing. Because for 10 years, that cash is going to sit in a savings account and it's going to get eroded by inflation. So it really

depends on the time frame. The closer you get to your house purchase, I'm, for example, buying a property in the next maybe like 18 months, I'm not investing in that money. But I was investing it up until a few years ago because I knew that it was going to have to sit there for ages. So it's just depending on like how far away that goal is for you. But I think the number one priority for anyone listening is, is there a way for you to make more money? A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about saving. And actually the best thing you can do is spend more time thinking about making more money. If you think about just salary negotiation, the stats around men and women are so scary.

I think it's 57% of men that negotiate raises versus 7% of, of women. We just don't ask for more. And I hate being this like neoliberal feminist of like, oh, women just have to be louder and ask for more. Like that shouldn't be our role. A hundred percent agree that company should have systems in place. That means that it's not up to us to ask. But the truth is today that's not the case. And so we need to learn and get comfortable with regularly asking for more from our employers. If you get a new job, almost every single company when they advertise a salary, except if you're in like banded government jobs, then there's not much to do. But if you're in a private company, they expect you to ask for more than what is advertised.

They have that in the budget. They can get, they can go a bit higher. And if you don't ask for it, that's just money that's being left on the table. So making sure to ask for raises regularly because even if you just get a raise of like a thousand pounds or two thousand pounds, imagine how long it would take you to actually save that money if you're like counting pennies. it would take ages. So making sure always, always, always ask for more.

And if your boss says no, that's a perfect opportunity to like ask your boss, hey, I understand it's a no today. But what are the KPIs I need to meet in the next six months to turn this into a yes? And can we agree on them today? Have that conversation, write it down. What are the things you need to do? And then in six months time, you go back and you're like, I've done everything you wanted me to do.

Now is it a yes? If he still says no, she says no. you can like really push for that conversation every six months and eventually they have to say yes you know or you found another job um but just being super proactive about this one more thing sorry just on before people start investing yeah if they've got credit card debt oh okay that falls into the you know when i was saying there's three things you need to do number two was high interest debt credit card debt falls into high interest debt okay um i think it can go up to like 29% or something like that the interest rate meaning that it's literally growing by one third

bud. It's crazy. It's insane. So if you have credit card debt, that means that that debt is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And not to scare you at all, but that is the biggest financial priority paying off that credit card debt. And I think maybe there's a bit of solace to be found in how many people in the UK actually have debt. This is what I wanted to ask. And how many lie about it? I think it's one in three couples. There's hidden debt that people don't share with their partner and I think shame thrives in secrecy. We all know this. And we need to just be more open about the debt that we have, not take it as a judgment on who we are as a person. There's a huge cost of living crisis. That is oftentimes just how people

survive nowadays. It doesn't mean that you're not as good of a person as someone who earns a lot of money. Like there is no attachment to your value depending on how much money you have in your bank account. And so being able to open to your loved ones about it and really just talk about what that situation is, I think that will already remove a huge burden. And then trying to create a supportive environment towards paying off that debt. So paying off the credit card debt should be priority number one. And oftentimes what we found is that psychologically, it helps to just be like, I'm going to pay this all off within six months or a year. It's going to be like my debt year. I'm just going to focus on this. Nothing else.

And actually having, like, more of a time-bound thing of, like, this is going to be, like, my fitness challenge, you know, like, it's going to be my debt challenge. And I'm going to, every penny that I make, I'm going to put it towards this, there's something that's really motivating rather than thinking, like, oh, I'm going to slowly pay it off over the next, like, five years, and I'm going to keep taking it out a little bit here and there. It's like, no, I'm going to crush this debt. I'm going to commit myself to that fully. Tell all your friends, this is what I'm doing for the year. We need to do activities that are going to be cheaper or free. I need to like box some dogs, find ways to make extra cash and just like get rid of that and then cut up the credit cards and just don't touch them again.

The financial freedom that people find when they pay off debt and like how proud they are about themselves is just so, so powerful. I think it's really one of those moments that should be celebrated like a baby shower, like a debt payoff shower. That would be so cool, you know. If you're listening to this and you are in debt, credit card debt, and that's something that you want to do. There's a really amazing friend I have called Tabby

who on Instagram is called Take Heart UK and she did that and she shared it all. And so just for anyone who's on that journey and looking for someone who is also on it, she shared the whole journey and she's really open about like that side of things, which I feel like no one is on Instagram. Yeah.

She's well worth a follow basically. Just on that, sorry. I am desperate to know. You've invested your money. You've found, you've bought a, fund or you've invested directly when on earth you take your money out that's a really good question never um obviously when you invest um the biggest superpower that you have is time there's this sentence time in the market beats timing the market is someone that is like oh this company's gone

down i'm going to buy it now and i'm going to sell it when it goes back up that's called trading basically it's like when you're very active, you do not want to be doing this. Every single stat in the world shows that traders don't do well. You want to be someone that invests for the long term, meaning that you are hoping to get your money in as early as possible, basically just keeping it invested as long as possible. Because over time, historically, it has always gone out. And so you want to take your money out. Basically, when you, I mean, it depends where you're, investing for, if you're investing for a house that you're going to buy 10 years, then obviously take it out when you're going to need it for the deposit. But otherwise, investing is something

that you're oftentimes doing for like retirement or for, you know, maybe your children's future and don't take it out when you need more money for groceries. Don't take it out when you need when you want to go in a holiday. Like that's not the idea with investing. It's just like really trying to keep it in for as long as possible. And the beauty of it is like, at least historically, it's grown by let's say 8% per year and so oftentimes you get to a stage where like your portfolio might be big enough that you only take like a 2% out and that means that overall it's still growing about like 6% that year so it's still growing more than your savings account um so you kind of just like dip in a little bit if you need it but otherwise you keep it in so when you say

about the 2% you'd be taking that as like an investment so like you'd be taking it you could take out without losing the initial pot, is that right? So if you had 10,000 pounds in there, you could take out like 2% on top of that without ever touching the initial 10,000 that you put in there, for example. Is that right? So if you look at, if you if, oh God, it's so hard to talk about this without any graphs. I like, I like to have like a little bit of like visual support. If you had invested, uh, 10,000 pounds and you'd invested 50 years ago in the stock market and you'd never contributed anything ever again. So 10,000 pounds once and then nothing more. Today, you would have about $336,000 or pounds. Just because over 50 years, it has grown

on average 8% every year and that makes it turn from 10,000 to like 330K. This is adjusted for inflation. So the true number is like way, way higher, but they've already reduced it by inflation. So this is in like true terms. Today you would have 300k. And so that means if you need 5K because you want to go on a holiday, you can take the 5K out, but it's like not making that much of a dent on the on the overall pot. But when it comes to investing, what you need to know is like it's very, it's quite liquid nowadays. What it means by liquid is that you can buy and sell it within seconds and you can buy like 100 pounds as much as you can sell a hundred pounds. Like it's very, you don't need to be rich to start investing. You don't need to have a lot of money to start

investing you don't need to wait and like sell 10,000 pounds at once of investments it's like literally I could go onto my investment app right now and sell like 30 pounds worth of investments and then I would just have 30 pounds in my cash in like in cash in my bank account that's a question that a lot of people asked how little do you need or how much do you need nothing like literally you can start with 10 pounds five pounds whatever it is that you want to start with and one of the most important sentences here is you do not start going to the gym once you're fit. You do not start investing once you're rich. That's not how it works. You become rich through investing in the same way that you become fit through going to the gym.

They go hand in hand. And a lot of people are like, oh, I'm not going to start investing now. I don't have enough. But actually, what I would really recommend is everyone can start with like 10 pounds. Okay. And those 10 pounds, the second that they're invested, what's going to happen? You're actually going to be interested in knowing what happens to it. So you're going to open your app every now and then. You're going to have a look. Has it gone up? Has it gone down? And bit by bit, you're going to start building investment knowledge and investment confidence. We talked about this early on.

We need to build our confidence. The hardest step is that first one of just opening an account and buying a share. That is 90% of the work. Once you've done this, you know how to do that. You're going to be able to check back time and time again, see, oh, wow, it's going up. Oh, it's going down. It's going back up. Okay, cool.

And over the months, and then you're going to feel more comfortable to just every month add 50 pounds every month add whatever it is that you're in the capacity of saving and those small amounts regularly really do add up a lot someone's asking and this echoes the sentiment across a few questions I feel like I can't trust the stock market are they safe for alternatives for investing yes totally but I would like to challenge the sentence I don't trust the stock market so yes there is safe alternatives there's something that's called bonds. We can talk about that. The stock market is a place where you can buy every public company in the world. So saying, I don't trust the stock market means you don't trust

any company, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, you can, there's moments where the economy crashes. And I think we've all witnessed them. And we've all witnessed how heartbreaking the consequences are for individuals. But if you take the emotional, out of it and you just look at a graph, economically, it has always grown. So, yes, it might crash, but it usually bounces back and it bounces back to higher than it was before. So saying I don't trust the stock market is, you know,

saying that you don't trust a human because that human has bad days, but overall they're a good person. Then when it comes to, like, safer investments, we've talked a lot about buying shares in companies. That's one way that you can invest, but another way is investing by buying what's, called bonds. And bonds are essentially when you lend the government or you lend a company's money and they're going to pay it back to you. It's a little bit, you know,

if I said, okay, the UK government, I'm going to lend you 10,000 pounds. The UK government is probably not going to default. They're probably going to pay that back. And usually you can take a bond out for like six months. So they say, hey, you get all your money back in six months or you can take a bond out for like five years, ten years and you know it's going to give it back to you in five or ten years. But the key thing here is that they give you some interest with that. It's like a thank you for lending them the money. And so that interest is typically higher than what you can get in a savings account. You'll have bonds with like a 5% interest rate, which is still higher than maybe like the 3.5 or 4% that you can get at the bank.

someone's asked if you're looking at an investment would it make more sense to invest in the housing market or would it make more sense to invest in the stock market both of them are investing so if we go back to the early definition of buying an asset in the hopes that it's going to increase in value when you buy a house or when you buy shares it's the same but they are quite different when it comes to how it will impact your personal life investing in the housing market is very illiquid meaning that if you purchase a house that money is in the house and you will not be able to take it out it's basically locked and yes you might make rental income from that because you're renting it out someone else or you're making undirect income because you're not paying rent so you're paying of your mortgage

but there's no flexibility in that and you also don't really know are you in an area that's going to boom? Are you buying a house that has good potential? Unless you're quite confident with that choice of property that you're buying, you're not well diversified. You know, we talked about diversification. You just own one flat. And that could go well as much as it could also be quite costly to maintain. When you invest in the stock market, you have access to that money anytime you want. You can sell it within two minutes, right? And you can start with £100,000, £200,000, £4,000, whatever it is that you have, you can get started. Historically, the rate of return has been somewhat similar. I think the stock market slightly outperforms investments in houses, so you make slightly

more. But I think for people at our age, where the dream of owning a house is basically impossible, there's a strong case to be made to at least invest your savings, you know, because it's better than keeping them in cash. A lot of people are asking about ISIS. Yes, Issa is so cool. Oh my God, I'm a big, big fan girl of ISIS because I'm not English. And when I moved to this country, I was like, what the fuck? Why do you guys have this? It's insane.

You basically have accounts that allow you to never pay taxes. Everyone dreams of this. Everyone dreams of this in other countries. And in the UK, up to £20,000 a year, you can invest, and then you'll never pay taxes. So as a French person, if I invest in France, let's say I make $100K out of investing. the moment that I want to cash in, I have to pay like 30%, 45% tax on it. Basically, at least a third of it is going to be gone. Whereas in the UK, if you open a stocks and shares ISA and you invest through that,

it's just a type of account. So you buy a fund, but you buy it through your stocks and shares, ISA, you are going to be able to keep the 100K. You're never going to pay tax on dividends. You're never going to pay tax on how much it's grown. You're never going to pay tax on anything. Okay, I'm so confused. So that's £20,000 per year.

That you can contribute. So if I put, if one put £20,000 a year in the same account, the same ICER account. Yeah. So just, like, just, just say just. But they put £20,000 a year, they would never, that account would never be taxed if you took the money out. So if I put it in for five years and then took out the $100,000 in five years time,

with whatever it must have gained 8%, I would never have to pay tax on that. Exactly. So if anybody's in a position where they're saving any money, surely the first place you'd put it would be an ISA. So the ISA is just an account.

So if you just put it in an ICA and nothing's going to happen, right? But you need to, it's kind of like when you invest and you go onto a brokerage platform, I'll give a name like Vanguard. I do not endorse Vanguard at all. It's just a famous brokerage platform.

You go on there. The number one thing they're going to ask, you is do you want to open a normal investment account or do you want to open a stocks and shares ISA it's just two different types of accounts if you open a normal investment account you go put your name and then you can say okay I want to buy this fund okay when you sell that fund you're gonna have to pay tax if you open a stocks and shares I sir and you then contribute 10,000 pounds and buy a fund with it it means that you never pay tax on it so it's just the account

through which you then end up investing. So if you go on Vanguard and you open a stocks and shares, ISA, and then you never do anything with that money, you just put it in the ISA, but you have never purchased a fund with it. You've never actually made an investment. That money is just going to sit there. You're not going to pay tax,

but you're not going to make any money because it's like having it in a savings account. But if you invest it, if you buy the fund just through that account, it means that you're going to be safe from taxes. Is Vanguard like the same as Not Meg? Similar. No, all of those are brokerage platforms. It's just like a place where you can buy the shares.

The reason you didn't endorse them is because you're not allowed to endorse it. Exactly. Not because they're particularly because. No. Yeah, okay, that's fine. Yeah, I opened a nutmeg account this year and then it asks and then it asks like high or medium or low risk. Yes. What do you do?

Yes. Everyone is a really good question. The number one mistake that people do when it comes to investing is thinking that they can follow their friends advice. Basically, we're all very different. And we all have what's called an investor profile, which is essentially how much risk you should take as an individual. And when you're going to have your money invested for a long time, you want to take more risk because you can allow yourself to take more risk. Because if it goes down in a given year, but you have like 30 years for it to go back up, you want to make as much money as possible. So you want to take more risk.

Typically, what that means is if you're young, take more risk. If you have a lot of money, again, you can take more risk. You can kind of like know that it can go back down and it's okay. The people that really should not take any risk are people that are like about to retire and people that don't have a lot of money at all. So if you don't have a lot of money but you're young, it's fine. But if you're old and you don't have a lot of money and you're about to retire, obviously don't take a lot of risk.

So then you would go not meg and you would select the low risk portfolio. But looking at both of you, we're pretty young. there's a long time before we retire we're probably going to have our money invested for what at least 15 20 probably 30 years that's fine we can take risk that you would typically select more of a higher risk account so it really depends on like what you're at in life and what your financial situation is okay sorry I think there's like with one thing we haven't addressed and I am speaking a lot but you guys have heard why why Alex isn't saying much um this person's just ask, overpaying your mortgage versus saving in an ICER, which, because we haven't talked about

mortgages. Yes. God, I mean, all of those things really depend. I hate being that person, it depends. But if your mortgage is like 8% per year and it's like a very high interest rate, you're better off overpaying it because it's growing, right? Whereas if you've got like a quite a cheap mortgage and you manage like to fix the rate whilst it was still lower a couple years ago, then it might be a better idea to take that

money and invest it because you could be making seven, eight percent return. And so you're going to make more money they need to pay off for your mortgage. But it depends on how high your mortgage is. It depends on how long you can keep the money invested. So put simply, not that you can't put any of this simply, but just for my understanding, because I am quite stupid with this, but I think I've got it. If we're looking at 8% being the current kind of, the current expected interest rate just in general, like 8%. If you, if anyone listening puts that percentage to other things in their lives to look at whether their credit card or their mortgage or their student loan anything smaller than eight you're kind of making the like what

what is it on the 8% like what is it versus the yeah yeah yeah it is it is one way you're looking at it absolutely you got that right I think it's like just you never know how much you're going to make investing no so I for example someone passed away in my family and I received like a small inheritance maybe like six months ago I've invested most of that And that was, actually, it wasn't even six months ago. It was like five months ago and I've already made like 14%. That is not by picking a winning company. That was literally just by putting it in the big funds.

So sometimes you make a lot more. The stock market at the moment is growing super quickly. Sometimes you make a lot less. So you take that 8% just as like the historical average, essentially. This is what it's been over the last 50 years. Anything that's more than that, like if your debt is growing quicker than that, you know you're not going to make more money in the stock market. market or at least historically you wouldn't have and so if you're not paying that off first you're

just basically like running at a loss okay if you think you might make more then like sure why not invest and you know you'll make extra and then you can use that to pay off if you've made 14% on it would it make sense now to pull it out and put it somewhere safer lower risk or just hold onto it for yourself and take your take your win yeah well I guess it just depends what your philosophy is for me, the economy is going to keep growing. It might go down, of course, there might be a crisis for like two or three years, but overall population is growing. Technological advances are booming.

Like, if you look at AI and how much that might increase productivity, I think over the next 10, 15 years it's going to grow so much more. And so, like, yes, I could take it out now that I've made 15%, or I could leave it in and probably make like 250% of the next 10 years, you know. um yeah it just if i if i needed the money today desperately then obviously i would take some of it out but that money is my future savings so i'm leaving it invested and i suppose you're not gambling like that's not the point you know it's like it's i think we do have you have like quite a short term or we have one has human has quite a short humans have quite a short term reactionary

thought process when it comes to money we think of it quite transactionally but actually you're not playing this isn't put you're not doing it to make to make it a me It's not supposed to be quick. It's supposed to be long. Yeah. Well, it's just like, what are you saving for? You know, I could take that money out and then what do I do with it? I have the money that I'm earning and that I'm spending in day-to-day life.

And this is my savings for the future. And then I guess when I'm talking about future savings, I need to make a bet. Like, where is it going to grow the most? It definitely is not in a savings account that I know. So I'm taking the bet on the stock market. But some other people might take a bet on like a Hermes bag, you know, they've done really well, and then you can sell that in the future. Some people might bet on gold.

Golden isn't really well as well. The idea is just that for a lot of women specifically, we think that keeping money in cash is not an investment, that that is the safe thing. But what you're saying is I'm betting on currency, I'm betting on the pound going up over time, which like we all know it doesn't. But that's what you're doing when you're keeping it in cash.

And so actually investing is just saying, I don't know so much about the pound. I think I'm going to bet it on something else that has a higher likelihood of going up. And that could look like stocks and shares, bonds, gold, a Hermes bag, whatever it is that you want to invest in. But just saying, I'm not going to keep it in cash. This has been amazing. Alex is giving me an OK signal.

We have fully lost her. Thank you so, so, so much. This has been incredible. We're going to leave the links to your Instagram and to your platform below. Is there anything else anyone should know before you leave us? No, I mean, the Juno app is. entirely free will forever be free that's the whole point of it we make money in a completely different way we also don't sell your data or anything like that we

work with banks and I'm downloading it on the way home so yeah you can learn everything about investing salary negotiation debt you know there's I think there's about 350 lessons on there yeah it's called you're Juneau in the app store so yeah thank you so much it's been amazing thank you for having should I delete that is part of the ACAS creator network Thank you.