The Vault with Financielle - UNLOCKED: Life Admin, Net Worth and Credit Scores —Your Questions Answered

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

Send us a text💸 Welcome to The Vault Unlocked – a special bonus series of The Vault Podcast, where we deep dive into the big money topics no one wants to talk about.Today, we’re talking life admin, mortgage renewals, tracking your net worth and credit scores.💬 Have a question or a topic you’d love us to unlock next? Email us at [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])👉 Subscribe to Financielle for honest conversations about money, and let’s rewrite your money story together.Guess what! As a Vault listener, you can get 25% off our digital course, The Money Playbook. This is a step by step guide to being financially well. It has 101 lessons where you'll learn how to budget, ditch debt, build savings and grow wealth. Use this offer code at checkout: VAULTCheck out The Money Playbook course https://financielle.thinkific.com/courses/moneyplaybook  💸The Vault is an entertaining yet thought provoking podcast that answers our community’s dilemmas and confessions surrounding women and money.Visit https://www.financielle.com to download our app.Watch the podcast on YouTube.Follow Financielle for more:▶︎ TikTok▶︎ InstagramAbout Financielle:Financielle is a female focussed finance app helping women to take back control of their money, ditch debt, increase savings and invest in their future.Recorded and Produced by Liverpool Podcast Studios▶︎ Web ▶︎ Instagram▶︎ LinkedIn

Welcome to the vault unlocked by financial. I'm here with you on this wonderful Monday morning. You'll be listening to it straight away. And hopefully, especially if you're in the UK, you are still in, you know, the bank holiday glory of four days off. Now, not everyone gets all that time off. Lots of people are working very hard in retail and shift work and public services. So for those of you who have been busy this weekend working,

sorry, and I hope it went okay. But for the rest of you, what did you do? Did you spend more money than you wanted to spend? I always remember the Easter budget, the April or the March, depending on when it is. I would always blow it. I would never factor in how much money it actually costs to kind of really be super social. So I hope you're able to stay on budget where possible, but enjoy yourself where possible. I'm recording this Thursday, so I'm speaking to myself in the future. But what I plan to do, let's see if I actually stuck with it.

I might share this on Instagram Monday, but I am booking some extra gym classes. So I'm doing extra than I would normally do because there's a little bit of time, less kid activities. I do have to navigate husband's work. So we'll be tag teaming here and there, but I'm gonna do extra gym classes.

And my intention is not to drink actually. Sometimes in the nice weather, I'll definitely want for a rose or a nice cold beer, but I'm in my fitness here and I could really derail a lot of hard work. So I'm going to not drink. I'm gonna enjoy some chocolate eggs on Sunday. I'm gonna enjoy a really nice Easter egg hunt

that I'm doing Sunday with the family at Partridge Lakes, which is this awesome venue close to where we live. And so we're gonna enjoy that, go out for a nice meal with the family afterwards. I think it's really to celebrate mom's birthday. It already has been mom's birthday, but we celebrated it in a little way with my nephew. So anyway, lots of cool things going on this weekend.

So hopefully I am able to stay within budget when I listen to this Monday. But yeah, a lot's gone on and a lot's gone on since we spoke about the Trump tariffs on the last Vault podcast. I just wanna say thank you so much to your overwhelming reaction to that podcast. It's the, I don't know what we called it,

but be careful with your investing, or it's the one that was out last Monday, because we talked about why our investment portfolios have tanked over the past few days, well, the past two weeks now really it's been going on and what that means, why that could be happening and I have to admit, I was a little hesitant to do it but we kept getting asked the questions

and I wanted to link, you know, what is a global economic issue that's coming out of the States and how it's impacting us but just it's not dumbing it down but in a way that makes it relevant. Anyway, Mandy, if you listen to this, you are the star of this show,

but Holly went to go and get her hair done with our hairdresser and Mandy had said, or did you listen to the vault podcast where Laura talks about trumps and tariffs? And Holly hadn't, which showed her up as a fellow founder of financial, she's behind and so she hadn't listened to it. But the idea, and this is not no disrespect, Mandy, but I know you'll appreciate me saying this, the idea that my hairdresser, when someone sits in the chair, can say, how about this Trump thing? Like, how are your investments? What do you think about it?

How are you feeling? That is mission accomplished because it's the kind of conversation that wouldn't normally happen in that setting. It also wouldn't happen over coffee with your girlfriends. It wouldn't happen really in the workplace unless there was someone that was interested in this specific thing, especially because, you know, it's a lot of thing, especially because it's a lot of political stuff as well

and a lot of really macroeconomic stuff, which is that big picture economic stuff. It's not necessarily personal finance, but what's happening is impacting our money and our investments and just the idea that that conversation was happening. That is such a high level conversation and a high brow conversation.

Like I said, I mean this in the nicest way, like that's my goal and you've nailed it Mandate. So I'm so glad because you are on an investing journey and you're doing absolutely amazing and shame on Holly for not listening to the pod and if she's not listening to this one, she won't hear it. So who knows we can talk about that behind her back. But yeah, you know, and for those of us,

I did share last week about my portfolio, and especially, you know, my pension, my pension, for example, you'll be pleased to know I'm 5% up on last Monday, but I'm still 21% down from my peak in January this year. So I am very grateful not to be too close to retirement right now, but guess what, still made some investments in the meantime.

It's like, you know, slow and steady wins the race, don't overthink it. So I hope you're in a good place with your pension, if you've got any questions on it, DM us, drop it into the community, ask about it. It's a really healthy thing to ask, staying with your stocks and shares ices. And if you are in the States right now,

you know, I would love, I know we've got quite a lot of listeners there, let us know how you're feeling, you know, even on a non-political level, how are you feeling financially? Do you think there's gonna be a recession technically? How do you think it's gonna impact you? Do you have any worries? Because we'd love to hear them and we'd love to share them.

And on that basis, any dilemmas or questions from our international community, we absolutely love having them. We've had some great questions from our Aussie gang over there, DM for a shout out. If you're listening from somewhere that's more We absolutely love having them. We've had some great questions from our Aussie gang over there, DM for a shout out if you're listening from somewhere that's more adventurous than the UK, which is not hard to do.

So please tell us, where are you listening to this? What are you doing? And I would love to share that next week on the Vault Unlocked. I've got quite a bit of life admin to sort. I think the week coming up, a couple of things on my list are, we're gonna be having a life insurance and critical illness review.

So I have life insurance, I got it years ago and I got my first property, which is typically when lots of people tend to get it. I don't know if you're a homeowner, you'll remember that mortgage process and some really helpful mortgage advisor will hopefully have said to you, oh, you know, the bank require you to have life insurance

and typically that's usually when you're on a budget and don't really care about the insurance side of the thing, you would cap it at the mortgage value. Some people get reducing term one, which reduces as you pay the mortgage off as well. So some people keep it flat, but it's linked to the mortgage value. And then when we did Legacy Week a few years ago, probably three, four years ago now, we revisited it and kind of brought mine and my husband's together and reviewed them and we added more.

We kind of absolutely realized that it would be very foolish in today's day and age to just have life insurance that's limited to the value of your home. It's just there's so much more that you would need if the worst were to happen. Covering the mortgage is the least of your worries. Nowadays with bills as a proportion of our income and our budgets, just they're so high that you need a bigger amount. So we took out more, but again,

it was just a bit of a DIY online kind of thing. And we'd had a little look at critical illness cover. We need a full review. And so obviously, we shared this in legacy week and it was something that we had been reviewing up until then. And we've got our appointment this week with an amazing person with our partner at LifeSearch. But we are gonna sit down and look at it as a whole

because not only have our incomes changed, but we're getting older, we're still really healthy, so we're very, very lucky. We have more children than we had. And so we shouldn't be doing that, you know, on a whim and just kind of in a rush when we're buying a home, which it should be that well thought out. And, you know, one of the partners that we work with and LifeSearch, the partner that we chose,

they provide all the protection product for, you know, compare the market and money saving, money supermarket, like the big guys, we are very, very lucky to be partnered with them. They have an online journey and they have a phone journey. And I was starting to look online during legacy week and I was like, do you know what? I wanna talk to someone.

I am a millennial, I'm happy not to talk to people. I do like DIYing, I don't know about you guys, but this was one occasion where I was like, do you know what? I wanna talk to someone. I am a millennial, I'm happy not to talk to people. I do like DIYing, I don't know about you guys, but this was one occasion where I was like, actually, you know, this is adulting. And it's once I've done it, I've nailed it. And so I've got an appointment, we're gonna have a phone call during our lunch, both of us on the same call,

we'll have all the information that they need, and we can really talk through what's gonna give us the right level of peace of mind. Again, especially as I really don't think we're in the right place when it comes to critical illness, I want to be in a much better place and we are gonna look at the income protection as well. And it's just a healthy conversation to have. So that's my life admin.

So next week I will tell you how we got on. But if you need any guidance or support, if you've got any questions on protection in particular we're really passionate about helping especially women but families, millennial families with it who are you know we're not the best we've got a lot on our plate we've got a lot to do haven't we so head to financial.com forward slash protection and just look at the articles there and if there's anything that we don't cover come to us and we need to write that because I want you guys to be as confident as I hopefully will be,

especially by the end of the week when that's nailed. So I need to do that. The other thing I'm gonna do on my life admin list is I'm gonna check in with my bank, right? Because my mortgage is in two parts because we ported a mortgage. So when we bought the house five, six years ago, we brought my mortgage from my first home

and then we topped it up. So they're kind of on two different tracks and one's kind of recently been remortgaged and got a lower rate actually because we were one of the high fives that we had to deal with when the rates went up. But the second part is up in June and you may not know this, but with mortgage companies,

especially if you're staying with the same provider, which I was happy to when I had a quick look online and I was really happy with the terms and we're not planning to move. And it was pretty much market rate. I decided to just kind of pick a new rate and stay with them. And I've got a particular rate and it's up in June. So it was three months before

so usually with your, I tend to recommend speaking to a mortgage advisor or your mortgage provider six months before looking to remortgage because you've got time to live your head up and have a little look around and know what you need to do, correct anything in your budget that you think you need to correct and just explore options.

And so I looked and got a rate which was lower than my high one, so happy days. But it's in the press at the moment, obviously we've got a few mortgage rates dropping, in fact, some getting under the four or getting close to the 4%. And so I need to speak to my bank because even though I've locked in the rate for June,

you can go back as long as it's not started yet and not what people know this. You can go back to them and go, okay, I banked that rate, but your rates have come down. Can I have the lower one? And because it's not, you know, usually I'm going to caveat this, but this is the case with my bank and this is the case with them, with others that I've looked at before. You can grab the lower rate as well, as long as it hasn't started. So I've got until the first of June to do that. So I'm going to do that this week. But again, I'll keep an eye on it. So I'll let you know how I get on. Aside from tariff sagas, in the UK especially, I think if we're going like, you know, a bit financial times vibe,

there's not much going on when it comes to finances. I think obviously we had the ONS figures for inflation came out in March and inflation had slowed to 2.6%, it was 2.8% in February. It's still higher than the government's target of 2% inflation which is what they tend to like but honestly it's probably not going to make much impact on the Bank of England's decisions around base rates where they decide whether to put the base rate up and down. You know and on BBC Morning, I've been speaking quite a lot about the bill hikes that have been happening in April for a lot of people in the UK. It's council tax rises, it's water bill rises,

it's energy bill rises, it's things that are linked to the RPI index. So things like mobile phone contracts and stuff, lots of things were kicking up in April. This is likely to have an impact on inflation. And so we may find that it increases, the rate of inflation increases going forward. So nothing too important there that you need to know that should be on on your radar.

And the thing I did see actually in the press is that there is a record number of low deposit mortgages available to choose from. More, more low deposit mortgages are available now than any other time since the 2008 financial crisis. Five to 10% low deposit deals have risen. There's 442 apparently on the market at the moment and only a couple of months ago there was like 200. So we're really seeing, it's good for first time buyers.

We're seeing these deals come through but we still have to remember that mortgage rates are still high and much higher than they have been for years and stamp duty changes happened in April. And so I'm kind of not surprised. I feel like a lots of lenders will want to hit lending targets and they'll want to be able to lend to people. That's how they make money.

You know, the thousands of thousands of thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds in interest that our banking friends make on mortgages. If we are not buying homes, if people aren't getting on the property ladder, they're not making money. So it doesn't surprise me that they're starting to stretch a little bit and see if they can reduce

those deposit requirements. I think my financial take on this is that if you are a first time buyer, it is good to be able to get on the property ladder with a house that you can afford. So a 5% deposit is, you know, whilst it's definitely not ideal because it's hard to predict

that you'll definitely not go into negative equity, that house prices, you know, if house prices drop to 5%, you technically just don't have any equity in your property. If house prices fell more than 5%, you're in negative equity and you actually owe the bank more money than the house is actually worth

or the property is actually worth. So 5% definitely makes me feel super nervous. But if you're buying a house that you can afford and it's not too much of a stretch, it is interesting to see the percentages for the deposits come down to that five. But 10% really is a really good starting point for a first time buyer if you are remortgaging, if this is not your first property.

The temptation to go with the 10% is so high. I do think where you are remortgaging or when you're moving up in home because you're selling and you're buying, trying to avoid dropping down to that 10% level is super important. It will be hard if you're moving up in home, if you're getting a more expensive home, but we wanna pay these things off and to just default to a 10% and take cash out

if you get extra cash and you say you're gonna use it for a renovation or I don't know, it's each to their own. This is completely personal, but I would be really reluctant to have a 10% deal as a remortgage yet, but's each to their own. This is completely personal, but I would be really reluctant to have a 10% deal as a remortgage yet, but that's a personal opinion. There is no judgment here.

So yeah, that's the kind of stuff going on in the UK finance space at the moment. Before we do a couple of dilemmas, I wanna do a quick shout out to an amazing TikToker called Alice, who has been sharing her financial journey on TikTok. It's, I mean, it's just such an amazing page. It's at life with Alice.

Alice is A-L-Y-C-E, and she is talking about her debt journey. She started her debt payoff journey in December 24. Her debt was 9,302 pounds and 57 pence. Her current debt is now 4,377 pounds and 39 pence. I am in absolute awe that this amazing individual has paid off almost half, well she's gone past halfway now, half her debt in what like three months, four months,

depending on when she started. She is tracking this journey. She is sharing it. She's not gatekeeping. She is screenshotting her different debts, the different amounts, the different people. She's sharing the ones that she has, how the progress she's made, how she's paid it off.

And she's helping people. And so first I'd say, if you're on TikTok, you need to follow Life With Alice, Alice With a Y. And secondly, take inspiration from what she's doing. There's something that's quite public and I don't know how vulnerable about sharing your finances. Like lots of us wouldn't be prepared to put those numbers out there.

What she is doing is inspiring thousands of people to pay off debt and it must be thousands because some of her views are like 240,000, 435,000, 500 and half a million views. Like she is absolutely killing it. So all those people are watching and that just makes, I can't even tell you the joy it's bringing me because she is seeing people,

sorry, people are seeing her hit these amazing goals. So just a shout out to Alice. People go follow her, take inspiration from her. Super, super aesthetic account, like the one that, I'm just looking at her with these strawberries. Like I need to know where you're in fields and you've got strawberries, Alice. And it's just like, keep us informed. We'll keep an eye on your account

and we'll keep the community updated. So yeah, go follow Life With Alice and just think about that. There are people that share, even if it's to your friends, it doesn't have to be on TikTok or on Instagram. Sharing is like a problem half, I think. I think it's quite a relief. And you've got that accountability,

like Alice has got a lot of people cheering her on and she suddenly decided to go buy a dress on Klarna. Like, she's got this invisible accountability that means she can't, she can't because she's like made a stance and she's doing the work and people congratulating her. So yeah, take that and be inspired by this. The other thing that,

the other few things I wanted to look at today is stuff in the community where we've had some really interesting things, both dilemmas, but also some more inspiration. One of them is from this amazing person who says, I've been using financials since December, but I was too scared to do this part because I didn't want to acknowledge my 14,000 pounds worth of debt against my assets. When she says this part, she means the net worth graph, but look at that little bit of growth in

the space of a month. So she starts obviously with a net worth of 15,264.92. So she has tracked this in the app. She's made a pretty graph and that's her starting net worth. So she would have put in all her assets and put her liabilities and that's the figure she's got. And in one month, she has increased her net worth by 6%. This beautiful pink graph goes up. And so to someone that feels like they're in

quite a lot of debt and they're on this journey and they've got a big, you know, 14 grand, that's a five figure total, that is quite overwhelming for so many people to have made that go down and therefore make your net worth goes up is game changing. I can't tell you what it does for your self esteem. If you are someone at the moment who is not tracking their net worth,

whether it's in the app or whether it's on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper, do it in your notes app. I will not judge you, you're not in financial jail, but the pretty pink graph is worth it. But just seeing that goes up, I want you to feel good. I want you to be proud of yourself. And it can be really hard to be proud of yourself when you just look at the debt figure.

When you look at the net worth figure, you have influenced a figure to go up and that is the start of this. And I promise you, because I have been there when you are a minus net worth and then you get to zero and then you're doing a slow slogs. And I have been doing this a long time, like this is a long game, this isn't a quick fix.

I've talked about my portfolio and its ups and downs more recently because of what's going on in the market. Let me tell you, when your net worth is driven by investments or property values and there's a swing in the market in a positive way for that particular asset. It can go up tens of thousands in a month.

There are times if the market's good, if savings rates are good, if investments are going up, there's a times when you see like a five figure swing and it goes up by that much. And yes, it can go down by that much. So we've talked about that, but that is the product, especially the slow and steady growth over time. When you look back of grinding out, working hard, paying off that debt, that is in your future, Katie.

If you keep doing what you're doing, if you keep grinding out these debt payments off here and saying no to things there and not selling things on Vinted and taking the parcels to the shop and skipping the dessert and the starter and just paying for a main or deciding to drive and not get the taxi, all these different things,

they feel like little sacrifices, but they add up. That's the work. That's you doing the work. And so I'm so proud of you, Katie. But that's amazing. That's a post in the community. Go find that everyone and have a look at that amazing graph. So yeah, key takeaway.

Do your net worth. Pick the same day every month. I tend to do it about the third or fourth. So some people do it on the first and stick with that. I tend to do it about the third or fourth. So some people do it on the first and stick with that. I tend to do it on the third, mainly because I've done the budget the week before, our payments to things like investments, our mortgage and stuff happen on like the first.

And so it's a couple of days has passed and then it's kind of settled. But basically, if you just pick the same day every month or the same time of the month, then it should be pretty consistent over time. So have a go, let me know how you find it. We had another amazing dilemma from Chloe. Chloe is new to the app and she was saying,

I have a total of 22,500 pounds available credit over four credit cards. Two are zero balance and with the others, total £11,125 spread across two 0% cards. So she's got four cards, two have nothing on, two have 11 grand roughly spread across them and they're interest free. I'm paying the above minimum repayments for both the cards. I can see this reducing,

but not totally before the 0% deal ends. Is it best to leave the total amount of credit so high or should I be trying to reduce this each month? Bearing in mind, I don't want my total outstanding to be more than 50% of my available limit. I'd love to reduce the amount quicker, but I think I'd only be able to do this if I lumped it all together into a loan repayment

where I would be paying fixed interest. Confused about the best option to reduce this as quickly as possible. Chloe, great question. And I don't think we've covered this thing in a long time. So I thought it was a great thing to cover on the fault unlocked. So firstly, and I think I asked you this

and you confirmed it wasn't really about credit score, but loads of people are nervous around credit utilization is what it's called, around knowing how much you, what your credit limits are and how much you're using of it. Because there's a worry that it can impact your credit score up and down. You know, the credit score up and down. The credit score myth is that none of us actually know. There's hypotheses around what does

and doesn't impact your credit score. It's pretty obvious, I'm going backwards a bit, but credit scores are fake. So there are lots of companies that produce scores, but it's their score. There are three credit reference agencies in the UK. There's Equifax, there's Experian, and there's TransUnion. And they essentially collect and store all the information

to enable themselves and companies and banks to create credit reports on individuals, which then lenders will use to assess credit worthiness. That is literally what a credit report is. Credit score is a pretend number that commercial companies come up with. They put technology that sits on top of these credit reports. So it takes all the different data points and gives a score.

And it's literally a pretend score. It just doesn't, it doesn't impact you for mortgages. It doesn't that the underlying data does, but there's like, you know, a bank doesn't care what company A says your score is, they take your data from the credit reference agency, put it through their own assessment, and they might give you a score, but again, it's their score. And they will not disclose what directly impacts your credit score or your credit worthiness.

It is kind of universally accepted that things like missing payments, declaring bankruptcy, or going into individual voluntary arrangements, being connected to a financially irresponsible person, not having consistent addresses, not being on the electoral, there's quite a few things that can impact

your credit worthiness with some banks, but it's kind of more that it's universally accepted, not that they publish a list and say, hi guys, we're from NatWest, and if you do these three things, you're gonna definitely be accepted for a mortgage. It doesn't work like that, and so I've obviously gone a bit of a rant,

but the credit score industry absolutely drives me nuts because I have firsthand experience with thousands of individuals paying off debt who tell me, not all of them obviously, but a lot of them got into credit and play around with credit to this day because they believe that it will help them at some point possibly get a mortgage.

I have zero credit cards. I have zero. I don't have any overdraft facilities. I don't have any loans. I have mortgages on one, I've got mortgage on my house and mortgage on my rental property. Okay, so I, when I go on these websites

and try to work out how I could improve my score, don't have the highest score. I have quite a good score according to the different companies, and it's their scores. Do you know what they say I should do? Guess. Go on, guess. What do you think they say that I should do to improve my pretend score with them?

They say, you should think about taking out a credit card because that would increase your score. Shock horror, when I click through this advertisement, you should think about taking out a credit card because that would increase your score. Shock horror, when I click through this advertisement, they will get a commission if I take out that card. And so I know that, I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Like I'm obviously mid-rant and I'm like,

can't get my words out, but obviously they want you to gamify the score. They want you to play around with the score because they wanna sell you credit. These entire businesses are funded either from like a premium subscription because they do give you an enhanced service, fair enough, or because they get a commission

because you have taken out a card with them. So just eyes wide open when you're looking at these things. Coming back to Chloe, she didn't ask about credit score. And I did check that with her. I was like, oh, can I just check, is it because you're worried? Because lots of people have some hocus pocus mentality around utilization and what you should and shouldn't do. And no one definitely knows.

But what I definitely know is that when people have credit that they don't need, it is very likely that they're gonna use it at some point, cuz it's too tempting, it really is there. And so what I think Chloe should do is immediately close the two cards that she doesn't need. They're not, no pounds on them, no balance, get rid, get them gone, get them out of your life, cut them up, close the account, done.

Then you need to focus on the next two. Now it sounds like the split quite evenly. We obviously at Fanshell talk about the debt snowball method after you have built up a mini emergency fund of one month's expenses. And so you kind of pick, you do minimum payments and you pick one to absolutely go all in on. When you have this level of focus versus like paying them

both off at the same time in equal amounts, you are galvanized. You become obsessed. I'm not gonna, let's pretend it's the pink card. There's a pink card and you want to pay it off. You become so obsessed with this card that I'm telling you money appears from everywhere. You will get a refund from ASOS and you're like,

there we go, put it on that card. You will decide not to get the cab, you'll get the bus or you'll get a friend to pick you up and you'll move that money, you'll go, I was gonna spend that on an Uber, I'm gonna move it there. You will not get delivery. You will sell some stuff on the floor

that you're not wearing anymore that's in the pile for the charity shop and you will use that money and you'll take it off, you put it off your card. You will get birthday money from your auntie through the post. Who does that anymore? But let's pretend she does not. Let's pretend she wire transfers you because she's tech savvy.

You are going to put that straight on the credit card. You get a tax refund. Hopefully you will put that on the card. When you're so obsessed with that one card, your life becomes about paying off that card. And that's why the snowball method works. And so I think you will do absolutely fine, I'm sure. And you're gonna clear both of these off and you're very, very determined.

But maybe picking one to go ham on and absolutely sending it and absolutely like getting rid of it will then leave just one. And then the same thing will happen. You'll be obsessed over that one. Tips on how to do that faster is the typical squeeze the budget method. So finding ways to bring more money into the house.

Can we get pay rises? Can we do extra work? Can we do selling things around the garden, around the house? Can we, if we've got too much money in savings, like have you got more than one month's expenses and can you be tempted to use some extra cash and get rid of the debt that way?

Find ways to bring more money in and at the same time, have a look in the app and do the Money MOT, which is one of the free eBooks that we've got at the bottom of the homepage because it takes you through your budget line by line and honestly, we should all do this once a year. We should refresh our memory of what our expenses are. In fact, I've had some WhatsApps this morning

that as you all know, my sister and husband pay for mine and his brother's Spotify and the cutting is off. Been told if I want it, I have to pay for it myself. Now the irony is I pay for it for our teenage daughter, but I don't pay for it for me. So they've done it. they've gone through that budget, they're cutting Spotify. I have to, and I do like Spotify,

and so I'm gonna have to have it. I don't want adverts. And so yeah, go through the budget, cut the things that you don't desperately need, even if it's temporary, by the way, you might be like, I'll go for the adverts until I'm debt free, and then I'm gonna go if it's temporary, by the way, you might be like, I'll go for the adverts until I'm debt free and then I'm going to go back to Spotify premium, whatever it is, do the money.

I'm a T it's a great thing to do once a year as a minimum, because you can just refresh yourself with maybe where expenses have creeped up a little bit. What that'll do is if you increase your income and decrease your expenses, you increase your excess and the excess cash is the thing that you put towards your goals and your goal at the moment is to overpay debt. So I would absolutely look at when those 0% periods end. And again, the 0% by the way is just to don't be too distracted by it. Don't be too worried.

Don't be tempted to unless there's like a big, big balance at the end. I wouldn't even mess around with switching it. Your goal should be get it gone before the 0%. So work backwards, work out what the monthly payments kind of need to be to be able to clear them before the 0% ends and go all in. And I just think you're gonna do amazing and I'm really excited to hear how you get on.

So let us know Chloe and I will share with our fellow friends here in the financial world. We have got in the community an amazing picture of one of the financial world. We have got in the community an amazing picture of one of our financial babies. So Vicky is an absolute OG member of financial. Very, very early days, I suspect she probably had the PDF. You'll have to confirm Vicky, but I feel like before it was even the app,

I feel like you might've had the PDF. She's got an adorable daughter, Rose, little baby, and she is watching me on the BBC. There's this picture and she's sent me a message saying, teaching them financial from young and she's in this gorgeous pink baby grow. So I love seeing that. So please do share evidence of your children budgeting,

investing, wolf of Wall Streeting. We're here for it. It might be that your dogs on getting all the bills out with you and looking through your pensions. Show us your family pics. We wanna see you on your journeys with your dogs and cats and children and partners if you have them, if you fancy sharing it.

We wanna see more of you. So please don't be afraid to drop us posts or send them in the community and we can share them. I feel like that's it for today. There's loads more I could do. There is so much content. I might start sharing more and more on different platforms as well

so that you can see more of this content, but get yourself into the community if you're not, because it really is so inspiring and there's lots of dilemmas like that all the time and people helping each other. But I will try on a podcast level to share them with you guys, inspire you, maybe answer a question

that you've got front of mind. And obviously don't forget on Thursdays you can catch me with the girls on the couch doing the more in-depth dilemmas that you are sending in and seeing us unpick some of those. So I hope you've had a wonderful weekend wherever you are in the world and whether you've had time off or not.

And good luck for the rest of this week. Look ahead, be beyond that budget, make sure you're enjoying yourself, and just keep going. Get that net worth going in the right direction. P.S. if you enjoyed it, would you do me a favour? Leave a review, screenshot it, send it to us. We would love to see that as well. That's it for today.

And just a disclaimer, The Vault Unlocked is a lighthearted chat around life and money. We are not giving financial advice.