The Vault with Financielle - UNLOCKED: Should I Still Be Investing?! (After This Week’s Madness)

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Send us a text💸 Welcome to The Vault Unlocked – the bonus series of The Vault where we deep dive into the big money topics no one wants to talk about.This week, we’re digging into the chaos Trump caused in the markets with his sudden tariff U-turn — and what it means for your investments, your retirement, and your next move. We’re answering:What actually is a tariff and why do they cause so much chaos?Is now the time to invest or just ride it out?Why dollar cost averaging wins in the long runIf you’re near retirement, what should you be doing now?Plus your AMA questions: S&S ISA worries, pots vs spreadsheets, mortgage rates, and the BBC Morning Live dress!💬 Your challenge: Chat with someone this week about investing — what’s holding you back, or what’s keeping you going?Need support from people who get it? Join our community in the app. No shame, no judgement—just real talk.Got a topic you’d love us to unlock next? Email us at [e-mail]👉 Subscribe to Financielle for honest, practical conversations about money. Let’s make your money work for you.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 where I take a deep dive into many topics that no one wants to talk about. You liar Laura Pamphlet, everyone is talking about this right now. What is the date today? So just, I am going gonna check because who knows the date of any days. It is Thursday the 10th of April, 2025. So I am recording this Thursday, this will go live Monday.

And I am fully aware that a lot may change financially between now and then, because between now and last week, so much has changed. I am a massive American politics geek. So for those of you listening globally, for those of you listening in the States, I do have for years taken an interest in American politics. Definitely, there's been a lot going on the past few years. I started my

obsession with American politics from the West Wing, my mum used to work in the States quite a lot and so we visited, we went around the White House when you're able to go around the White House. I have been just an avid follower of all things American politics. Have to be honest over the past few months there has been a little bit of watching through your fingers and if you're in the stage right now, I definitely feel for what you're kind of navigating, but what's happened in the past few weeks has rocked the world financially.

And lots of you have been asking us about it. And do you know what? This is like a proud moment, mother of the financial community. I'm really proud that people are interested and are asking and actually I'm not afraid to say I don't really understand what's happening and it's annoying me and I'm fed up of it.

Apart from the fact that I do care about how it could impact me. And so the team and I chatted and thought actually what would be a good use of the vault unlocked this week? I do want to try and get it timely. I don't wanna record things too far ahead of time so that we can talk about these kind of issues just like we do in our team meetings

or my husband and I might do over dinner. I want to bring you into that conversation, but to be able to have this tariff and stocks and shares market conversation in a safe space. So that's part of what we're gonna dive into today. We're gonna look at what's happened in the last few days and how that may impact us globally, nevermind if you're just in the States.

And on that basis, we're gonna answer some of your questions that you asked me on Instagram around investing. I've got a couple of extra ones in there as well because I did say, ask me absolutely anything and we will cover it. So I want you to be open-minded when you listen to this. I am going to use explainers so for some people who are super super into this you may feel like this is extra simplified but actually this is for all of us. This is meant to be accessible and so if you would not normally listen

to a podcast around tariffs and stocks and shares stay with me and by the end tell me if you would not normally listen to a podcast around tariffs and stocks and shares, stay with me. And by the end, tell me if you now know more than you did at the beginning. This is not about dumbing it down, but it's about making it relevant. And I do think you should be listening to the conversation. I do think how you should understand what's happening. Because ultimately, I wouldn't want people to be put off investing generally by what's happening because ultimately I wouldn't want people to be put off investing

generally by what's happening. You kind of hear the doom and gloom and you don't understand the fundamentals and so it can put you off even more and it's our role to kind of champion investing and growing your money and understanding the risks and the practicalities that do come with it. So for those of you watching on YouTube, really, really helps us if you like this video because it can send it to more people. Again, if you're listening on podcast or if you are watching on YouTube,

comment, subscribe, send us stuff. This is definitely a two-way interaction and let us know if you want more like this because I'm just very conscious that we wanna be, we wanna cover all things for all people and sometimes that means going back to basics and starting at the beginning. Sometimes it means talking about non-financial stuff.

Last week we were talking about ADHD and the experiences of our community, managing money when it comes to their different character traits and different diagnosis if people have them. But also we can do the more technical stuff and the more you invest a focus stuff in a safe space. So settle in, get a brew if you want one and let's talk about what has happened in the past week.

And again, if stuff has changed over the weekend, I'm sure President Trump will be golfing this weekend so hopefully he will not change too many things but you never know in fact it's Thursday's probably golfing already today we might be, we might be fine until Monday but over the past month President Donald Trump has implemented a series of significant tariff measures that have affected global trade and financial markets around the globe as well.

These tariffs have ranged from between 10% and 125% on imports dependent on the country. And quite frankly, whether you as a country gave retaliatory tariffs back to the states, let's be clear, this is because the states put tariffs in place. And if you decide to retaliate with a tariff, then sometimes it was even pushed higher. And so we had a lot of tariffs,

a lot of different percentages. He had the big board, you might have seen the memes of him holding up the board. I know I saw a lot of grand national memes which I found really funny actually because you've got to laugh at some of this stuff sometimes even though the reality of it is actually quite scary but you may be listening to this and thinking what the hell is a tariff? Super simple, a tariff is a tax on imported goods into a country. So for example if the US said

we're going to put a 25% tariff on cars being imported from Japan to the States. That means for every $10,000 car that is shipped from Japan to the US, a $2,500 tax is applied. Now, why does this matter? Well, firstly, it impacts the importer. Now, that is the person or company importing that good. So it's not the person sending it from Japan, it's the person that is importing it,

bringing it in to the states, buying it to be brought into the states. And so let's presume this importer is a US company, we have just increased the cost to import that good into the country and therefore to make or to sell the good by adding on that tariff. So the importer has to decide, do I absorb the cost or do I put the price up by let's say $2,500

and pass it on to the consumer? But ultimately the underlying cost of the item has increased because of that tariff. The US company in this circumstance could lose sales because they've had to put the price up. And then as I've just said, there's an impact for people like you and I, the consumer at the shop, because more often than not, it does increase prices. And so we pay more, not because the company that has imported that product

has made more, but because they've got to pass that on to the government. It can also cause inflation, which has a whole different set of ramifications, but essentially it's because all the costs are going up for us as consumers, especially if tariffs are widespread as well, they're not just you know in a particular automobiles or you know a specific sector if they're across the sector. And ultimately if the consumer choice could be reduced because less people may import goods or you know resell goods if it becomes too expensive so choice gets narrowed. The bigger picture with tariffs is they are intended to protect local industries

where possible. Where a country does manufacture and produce goods, it is always preferable to sell yours and support local businesses than to promote overseas goods. And so if you can kind of increase the cost of overseas goods, you may help to improve the business of the local producer. We've seen it before in the UK, what comes to mind is like buy British, buy British beef, the flags all over the product,

but it is intended to be really good, not only for sustainability to buy local, but really good to help local businesses. But this can backfire. You could have a local company for example that does not manufacture all parts in country and relies on some overseas companies producing parts to make the vehicle that they then sell and they may then still say oh we're you know buy British, we're a British car but it may have had some overseas elements and you don't want as that local company, those parts to become more expensive.

Another way that tariffs can backfire is this retaliatory stuff. So if we put a tax on imports from the EU, the EU may put a reciprocal one in place. And so companies from the UK that want to sell into Europe have suddenly made their goods more expensive as well. This is all about trade dynamics and there's constant conversations going on around trade. Lots of very, very experienced economists talk about it all the

time, which was why it was quite a shock. It shouldn't have been a shock really, if you think about some of the things that have been put in place, but to have suddenly been quite dramatic in the way that the US has decided to impose tariffs and by the way a whole load of really interesting legal consequences of how the president did it, how Congress may or may not try to pull some of the actions back anyway and may have done that and if it had been if it had gone any further and if it continues to go further because there's a whole load of debate around whether one person should be able to do this kind of thing or whether this should be the right checks and balances. Again, I'm gonna rein in from the politics

and rein in from the dynamics of the US system. But essentially, this messing around with tariffs and this, and there were dramatic tariffs, we're talking about 125% on top of goods, massively impacted global markets. For those people that, for example, like odd muse, you've got the amazing Amy Smale of odd muse. She's been sharing on TikTok the realities of she,

her products are made in China. She's very proud of that. She's got an amazing relationship, it seems, with her providers. They produce top quality. They massively, massively popular dresses and outfits. And the consumer likes them. They are sustainable.

It's sustainable wear because it's sustainable basics. It's elevated and luxury basics, but you can rinse and repeat and you can keep wearing them. So Amy Smail has just signed a six month lease for a shop in New York. And she's moving out there to take the brand there. And we as the Brits should be so proud of this.

We should champion female entrepreneurs like Amy, like Grace Beverly, going out there and flying the flag for UK companies. But if some of that product or all of your product is produced in China, if one of Amy's dresses costs 100 pounds to make and they have just been whacked with 125% tariff on imported goods.

That dress costs 225 pounds to make now. And just one last point, lots of people could have placed orders for these goods months ago, three, four, five, six months ago, because these products are being ordered, made, and then shipped, literally shipped on a ship, and then the tax is still gonna be applied as it's coming in.

So you will have not necessarily forecast to pay these extra tariffs, because again, the importer, the US company or the company in the country that's buying them will pay the tariff. And so if you are Amy's mail and you happen to have paid 100 pounds for these dresses and now they're gonna cost you 225 before you've even sold them onto a customer,

what do you do? A whole lot of chaos. So you can imagine why global markets, but especially the US market is rocked by this news and has been rocked. The 3rd of April, so just over a week ago, we saw massive declines in the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ.

I'm just gonna give you super quick explain what those are. So S&P 500 is basically the biggest 500 companies in the US. So people like Apple, Amazon, Coca Cola, those kind of brands, that's what the S&P 500 is. It fell 4.88% in one day and actually fell about 10% over the period of a few days. That one day drop, that 4.88% in one day and actually fell about 10% over the period of a few days.

That one day drop, that 4.88%, was its second biggest in its history. The NASDAQ is an index like the S&P 500, but it's focused on tech companies mainly. So again, your Apples, Microsoft's Meta, God forbid Tesla are in there as well. The NASDAQ dropped by 5.97% and then the Dow Jones is a collection of around 30

more traditional but large companies in the US. So like E-Disneys, Boeing, Goldman Sachs. For those of us that are invested in global trackers, so these could be named global trackers, it could be that some of your retirement funds, your pensions, your ICES, your 401ks are invested in places that mimic these global trackers, it could be that some of your retirement funds, your pensions, your ICES, your 401ks are invested in places that mimic these global trackers. So even if it doesn't say global tracker when you log into your investment portfolio, typically for diversification a lot of the platforms

will pick funds that are global. Well because the US is the biggest market it accounts for around 60% of the value of lots of global trackers and global funds. Basically a lot of people's stocks and shares choices. So if you see obviously the US markets dropping by 10% over, you know, two to three days, it's unsurprising that our portfolios are going to be impacted. But it's not just the US stocks and shares elements being brought down. All the other countries with all their big companies are sat there working out how these tariffs will impact them. They could have different trade deals

with some of these countries that have massive, massive tariffs applied to them. They don't know how they're gonna be able to deal with the US. They don't know if the US economy is gonna enter a recession. And so the value of stocks and shares is determined by confidence, and confidence is connected to what is happening in the market,

what are people forecasting? And so that's why we've seen a drop. So if you, over the past few days, I know my husband has, I keep saying, put it down, put it down. If you are looking at your portfolios going, what the hell, this is why, this is what is happening. It's been similar at different points you know when the 2008 crash happened for those people that

happened to have portfolios then I didn't have a portfolio then I think I was how old would I have been maybe maybe 15, 16. I probably don't do my maths right but I'm big incidents by big big financial institutions or governments as we've seen this time can massively impact stocks and shares. They can massively impact our portfolios, our funds. We saw it as well with COVID, that COVID was this like world event that wasn't political and wasn't financial,

but there was so much unknown around it. We, you know, industry stopped, flying stopped, trade stopped, and everyone just didn't know what was gonna happen. Incidentally, what we did actually see, especially with the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ, but we saw a big bounce back and stocks and shares absolutely rallied and tech had a massive boom

because suddenly we were all working remotely and suddenly people needed tech, so tech solutions, Amazon delivery, delivery kind of things, being able to use technology to carry on, go more digital in your work, all these things helped innovation and helped tech companies become particularly valuable.

And as the bigger companies in the world at the moment and the best performing companies, shall I say, are tech, the performance of the market was up but it was indexing towards tech. And so that's an example of it going up. So you can see how big political events, big disasters or health issues, as we've seen with COVID. And lastly, financial issues like the financial crash,

big, big scale stuff impacts the markets. And so when you see an SMP 500 tracker graph over decades, you can see these ups and downs. an SMP 500 tracker graph over decades, you can see these ups and downs. And if you zoom in to the actual time that things go up and down, it seems massive. It seems like Everest, like a big drop off the end, cliff, cliff drops. But when you do look at it over time,

it's a very, very slow and steady and these huge, huge jumps up and down cliff, cliff drops. But when you do look at it over time, it's a very, very slow and steady and these huge, huge jumps up and down actually look really small. I'm certainly not playing down what has happened the past week. But for those of you that did see a big drop in your portfolio,

that's the context that we saw the drop. Now, no one will ever be able to say for sure that don't worry, it'll come back and don't worry, it'll goes up. That's why there's this heavy, heavy investing is heavily caveated and lots of risk warnings. We talk about the fact that capital, you might not get back the capital you put in,

it can go up as well as down. And history is not an indicator of future performance, but when you're looking at risk, you do have to try and take a view and that's on a personal level what I tend to do. And so there was a moment, you know, where a few days ago you go, oh my God, how far can it slip?

And then Mr. Trump changed his mind. Not on everyone, poor China's still got a bit of a job to do, but he put a pause on them. He put a 90 day pause on some of these tariffs. And so he caused absolute chaos, especially for our friends in the finance industry. It was really, really crazy stuff. He then changed his mind, put a pause on it

and what did we see? The S&P 500 soared 10% in a day. Biggest one day rally since the crash in 2008 so it had taken two to three days to drop 10%, stress was all out, and then it came back up again. Now my final political comment on this, because I do think it's interesting, and I do want you to have a little think about this,

there's been a lot of positioning from the White House about the art of the deal, which gives me the massive ick, because Mr. Trump does have a book called The Art of the Deal, and so they keep talking about, this is the art of the deal, this was intended. And people do keep pointing to his business acumen and his business expertise and his business credentials.

This is a guy without going into his convictions and multiple allegations of sexual assault, he's been bankrupt six times. He inherited between $400 million and a billion dollars. The exact amount is unknown, but it's been reported that that's how much he inherited from his father. So he's not a self-made billionaire.

He did not create this wealth from nothing. And in fact, there have been a couple of studies, one in Forbes, who was he the one with? It might have been the New York Times. They showed that if Trump had just invested his inheritance in a stock market index fund without starting any business, he would be worth way more than he is now. He literally could have laid on a beach,

he could have taken his inheritance, put it in the bank, and he still would have been in this position. And actually a lot of his customers and colleagues and partners and suppliers would have been in a much better position than he left them in, especially post the bankruptcies. So when you hear people say this was all a plan to negotiate with people and to get them to back down,

like literally he created this storm against all advice of global economists. In reality, his billionaire friends, people like Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, probably got on the phone and said, what the hell are you doing? We also saw that US bonds were being sold off massively. I think Japan are the biggest holder of US bonds and they sold them off. The TLDR on that is people don't trust the US government.

They don't think it's as stable as it once was. Like their US bond is just held on a pedestal of how secure an asset can you invest in, we'll invest in a US bond. Well, they were be sold off. And lots of people I suspect might have been in his ear. And actually I'm gonna jump ahead to one question that was asked on my Ask Me Anything, particularly on Trump. She said, controversial opinion,

Trump manipulated the markets for the rich to get richer. I know this comment won't make the page, but I firmly believe it. You have made the first comment on the pod. You are absolutely entitled to get richer. I know this comment won't make the page, but I firmly believe it. You have made the first comment on the pod. You are absolutely entitled to your opinion. And whilst I couldn't confirm or deny, who will know? We will never know whether he intended to do it. I think on one level, I think it's giving him

far too much credit that he was clever enough to do this. Some might say that on, I don't know if it was on Truth Social or whether it was on Twitter, that he publicly tipped off his wealthy friends ahead of pausing the tariffs, who if they'd have bought low, so if they'd have bought at the point

that Trump put this tweet out, as we call it, they were set to make billions. He behind the scenes had caused this massive massive crash in the markets. All the stocks and shares are 10% cheaper than they were a week ago. He decides behind the scenes to do a 90 day pause on tariffs, knowing that that would have had a positive impact on the economy. Stocks and shares would go up after that announcement. He puts a tweet out essentially to say,

it's a great time to buy. And then after that tweet, he announces the pause on the tariffs and the market goes up. And so if you happen to have bought more shares at his suggestion, you would be 10% up. And it's fine for like those of us that might have bought a hundred and might have bought 1000 pounds,

if we're feeling lucky. People have billions to play with, and this is where billions are made. Okay, no more Trump, we're not doing anymore Trump, we're not doing anymore tariff stuff, but let's talk about the markets. So the markets have seen this massive, massive drop. More recently, they've seen a rebound

and a bit more confidence, because finally it feels like he's back down and I'm sorry, only kidding, we're not, oh God, I said I wasn't gonna talk about him and I still talked about him. But let's talk about what happens if you see a stock market crash and how you should feel about that.

So this depends on where you are at in your life journey really. If you are approaching retirement, let's say within the next five years, you'll soon be withdrawing from your portfolio to live off. You have less time to wait for the markets to bounce back. Ideally by this point, you will have had your portfolio shifted by these platforms into less risky assets.

So not stocks and shares as much, but maybe bonds and cash. So it's less volatile so typically it's less likely to go up and down but if you are still heavily in the stock market and there's a crash like with Trump's tariffs you effectively lock in those losses if you feel you have to sell because if you sell you've crystallized that loss effectively and that's what you've sold for you can't go back in when it goes back up and the shares will you know you sell at a

certain price you sell at a lower price and if they go up you can't go back in when it goes back up and the shares, you sell at a certain price, you sell at a lower price, and if they go up, you can't buy as many shares because they've gone up. This is the unfortunate thing about market timing and when you're due to draw. Think about this, if you had a retirement portfolio of 200,000 pounds, and the market drops 10% and you are ready to take out your 25% tax-free lump sum, which is something in the UK that we can do.

Your portfolio's just dropped to 180. So you've got 25% of 180 instead of 25% of 200. And that's the very real impact on the today's the day kind of conversation. I know that if you were a financial advisor listening to this, you would have had so many calls and queries from your clients, especially those in retirement or coming up to retirement,

when should I take this money out? You know, I wanna take it out at its best, at its peak. And the truth is we never know, but you know, I'm sure lots of people were saying, let's just hold on a minute, let's just see what happens. This is, we would hope it doesn't drop any lower, but quite frankly, why would you, you know, crystallize that loss, let's leave it be.

And so for those people in retirement are about to retire, really stressful time to see market crashes like that. They don't have the luxury of time for it to come back. For those people with at least 10 years to go until retirement, it's basically, hopefully, just one of those events. They're painful, but you can wait them out. We've seen them, we've come through the other side of them. Historically, markets recover,

and ultimately, volatility over time can be your friend. When shares go down, we capitalize when they go up. This is also another reason why at Financial, we're extremely passionate about people investing over and above their emergency funds. So having that emergency cash that is fixed at a value whilst we wanna make sure we're optimizing that and we're making interest on it,

it's not gonna go down in value. It's only gonna technically go down in value because of inflation. So we have cash and that's why emergency cash is really important and diversification is important so that when things like this happen and you see big, big drops in your portfolio, you just go, oh, you know, anyway,

what we're having for dinner, like that kind of laissez-faire attitude is a privilege for sure, but it's something that we want you all to work towards, which is why we want extremely solid foundations before extra investing. So some of you may be sat here going, oh my gosh, well, you know, it's now a good time to buy because the market is low, having, like I said,

it was lower a few days ago, it's come up again, it might go back down again, depending on the timing of this podcast. But ultimately that's trading, not investing. I do think that it's easier to think of that as trading and timing the market is something that none of us have a crystal ball. So what I want you to remember when it comes to investing

is something called dollar cost averaging. Obviously in the UK we call it pound cost averaging, but it got its term from dollar cost averaging. And this means that you invest a regular amount at regular fixed intervals, no matter what the market is doing. Let's say you invested 500 pounds every month into an index fund. Some months the price is high so you get less shares for your money. Other months the price is low and you get more shares for your money. Over time you end up averaging out the price you pay per share. This works because it removes the emotion from investing. You do not have to be emotionally invested in the

decision to invest or not to invest. You've already made the decision about where it's going and then you just automate it. You're not trying to guess the right time to buy, you're just trying to consistently invest. It helps to protect you from buying too much when prices are kind of too high and also from holding back and missing out when prices are low. You might have heard someone say, I'll wait for the market to drop and I'll buy at the bottom.

But there's loads of examples where you can look online and it shows you the different SMP rises and falls and you think a drop is a drop and then the bottom's further. And it's dropped more. And so it wasn't the furthest. And then you might say, and I'm gonna sell at the peak. And we've seen it before. We've seen people cash out and sell shares

at what they thought was the peak. And the peak was way past there. It was much, much higher. It is impossible to get it right consistently. It's akin to gambling. You've no idea what the right combination of timing of buy is. You don't know what's going to happen. And that's what a lot of traders try to do.

And some people are successful about it. I'm sure you hear more about when they're successful or when they're not successful. But ultimately, we've got so much evidence to show that if we just invested consistently as much as we can over and above our disposable income and enjoying ourselves and having a good time and having emergency funds and taking out our kind of our basic needs, we do well. I saw a famous quote actually this week on Insta about this

which said, if you missed the 10 best days in the market over a 20 year period, your total return could cut in half. Which just goes to show that it's easier to just be in the market and investing consistently as often as you can and remove the thinking from it. This concept of dollar cost averaging or pound cost averaging is about discipline over prediction, it's about being consistent, keeps you investing through all these ups and downs which really is key to long-term success. This is especially powerful if you are investing in broad diversified

funds and making sure that just in the true compound way you keep reinvesting. What that means is not taking out your returns, kind of keeping them in and keep reinvesting. So guys, we've talked through Trump and his tariff palaver, we've talked through why timing the market is not good idea and this concept of dollar or pound cost averaging. Let's jump to some of the questions that you asked me. I've shared one of them, which was the controversial opinion about Trump, which I'm not gonna say whether I agree or disagree,

but I feel like we liked talking about that one. What else do we have? So it's connected to the investment kind of up and down at the moment. Someone asked, do we buy now? Everyone is saying how bad it is, but for starters, is this the best time? This is a great question to answer straight after doing the dollar cost averaging debate. But the short answer is anytime is a good time.

Just starting, not worrying about whether it's low, it's high, just starting and coming up with your investing routine and your investing cadence, your investing high, just starting and coming up with your investing routine and your investing cadence, your investing amount, how much you can afford is exactly how you should be doing it. So as we've talked about with the financial playbook, you should be having a really good emergency fund, you should be consumer debt free, you should be in a place where you're already doing the automated pension investing. So for anyone looking to invest over and above that, ideally you want these different things in place. And this is why, this is exactly why,

because as you see the big fluctuations, you kind of go, hmm, this is a long-term game. I'm not bothered, I'm not taking it out right away. It's not kind of my house deposit. It's not needed if the roof is leaking. It's just not needed. It's fine, it's for the longer term. And so in answer to your question, do we buy now?

Well, just invest if you were gonna invest now and don't overthink it. Don't connect it to a point in time, don't connect it to an event, just get into your investing groove and try not to think about the prices of things and the state of things at the moment. Another one, is it worth contributing

to a stocks and shares ISA? I've been losing more money than I've been putting in. I hear you because I have been investing in a stocks and shares ISA. We're obviously in the new tax year now, so it's probably worth a little bit of a mention of that in a minute, but my ISA has gone down past what I've put in it.

So I'm definitely at a loss at the moment. In fact, let's get a couple up with my phone. Okay, I've got my phone. In my trading two on two, stocks and shares ISA, I am 7.3% down and I only started putting into this one less than a month ago. So less than a month ago and it's already down 7.3%. So yeah, I've got less than I put in.

In fact, let's have a look at, so this is a good example though. I'm gonna open up my Pensionbee app and talk you through my Pensionbee pension. Ooh, they've got a really helpful pop-up actually saying, why is my balance going up and down? You may have noticed bigger fluctuations. What is it?

You may have noticed bigger fluctuations in your balance due to geopolitical tensions and the introduction of tariffs impacting global markets. Pensions are designed for long-term growth. Learn more about how it may impact your balance in the short term. I love that. Because actually lots of people, as I said,

would be stressed about their investment amounts. They would be stressed about their pensions. But if I go to analytics and performance. So how long have I been a Pension B customer for? I don't know if it's all time. I opened it in, when is that? June 21. I have been a customer since June, 2021. So since June, 2021, my fund value has at its highest

been up 40%, which is absolutely massive. And there's just no way I would have made that if it was like in savings. It's a pension, it's obviously not gonna be in savings, but it was all in savings. at its highest been up 40%, which is absolutely massive. And there's just no way I would have made that if it was like in savings. It's a pension, it's obviously not gonna be in savings, but it was up 40%. It is currently only up 17.87%. So I'm still up, I'm still up from four years ago now,

but you can see how I'm like, from my peak, I'm 20% down. So that is a lot of thousands of pounds. Like this is not a few hundred. I mean, I saw Dave Portnoy talking about, I'm seven million down. I'm sure he's more than that down at the moment. Even if it has come back again, but you know, the more money you have in investments,

the harder it feels or the bigger the hits when you see these crashes. But ultimately, you know, again, when I do go onto my Pension B app and I show all time, these huge big drops are actually tiny, tiny little ups and downs. And I just roll with it. And so I'm still 17.87% up across the three, four years, I think we said then, but I, at one point, was 40% up.

And so that's about being in the market and that's how I've benefited from investing regularly often not trying to time the market and not getting stressed because you just have to believe in the bigger picture and it's diversified and I have other assets and I have money in cash and it's all part of the playbook this is why we do the playbook and so if you had no emergency savings, high amount of debt and you had crashes like that, I could imagine that that would feel incredibly stressful, especially for example, it was really disposable cash.

Like you put all your cash into stocks and shares ISA and you had no other savings and it goes backwards. That makes you feel a bit sick. And that's the question that you've asked. I've been losing more money than I've been putting in. Typically, it evens it out. And so what I would like to think is that you will see months where it goes up

and so that you net the same and then it'll go up even more and your net impact is that it's actually increased in value. That's what history tells us will happen. Again, it's not a predictor of future performance, but hats off to PensionB for your reassurance, actually, and warnings in the app. You know I love the app, but it definitely helps.

I imagine lots of people are worried right now. As I said before, financial advisors will be getting calls at the writing center, so we'll see. So another question is, are we in a recession, and how will this impact people? How should we prepare? That is such a great question and I have heard the R word quite a lot

on the American commentators and news websites that I follow because it's very acute in America right now. And globally, recession is a word that's kind of used to describe the technical decline of an economy. Now in the UK, a recession is described as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. So effectively, two quarters, one after each other, where the economy is shrinking.

So if the Office of National Statistics reports on this, then it's generally accepted that there's a technical recession. The different things that you can see in a recession is sometimes rising unemployment, sometimes businesses reduce their numbers, they sometimes close, sometimes house prices fall. And generally there's a lot of consumer confidence

and so there's a slowed consumer spending which doesn't really help because it's kind of a negative cycle of it going down. But essentially that's what a recession is. We won't know, the big thing here is going to be about tracking it over a longer period other than these short, sharp measures, but we'll see. We've got a couple of questions that are not investment related ones, but I wanted to answer them before the end of the pod.

How did you get your partner dialed in to have a better future? I'm on it, but she may not be. Thank you so much for asking for this. And what I always say with relationships and money is that firstly, you have to consider the fact that you may be different money personalities. So someone may be super into the numbers, super excited, super motivated,

and the other person might not really care about numbers and not really care about money. And it's like forcing someone to be into Game of Thrones if it's not your thing. It really is about understanding that we're different. So I think firstly, that's a super healthy place And it's like forcing someone to be into Game of Thrones if it's not your thing. It really is about understanding that we're different. So I think firstly, that's a super healthy place to start. And it's common in life that, you know,

we're not always exactly aligned and it takes time to kind of come together around certain goals. And the other thing is with financial, if you have been listening to this type of content for a little while, whether it's from us or other people, and you are motivated and you're excited, all this has been in your head. Like you've been listening to this type of content for a little while, whether it's from us or other people, and you are motivated and you're excited. All this has been in your head. Like you've been listening to it.

You've been watching on Instagram. You've been consuming this content over a period of time. And then you've got it all figured out in your head. You've been making plans. You've been applying it to you. Whereas in actual fact, often your partner isn't there yet. They've not been consuming all the things you've been consuming. They've not been thinking about it as much as you have.

And so it can feel overwhelming and it can make some people go, oh no, no, no, no. And like they back away, they back away from the process because they're not ready for it yet. And so there's a couple of ways that you can kind of navigate that. I think I would definitely recommend money date nights where you carve the time and the space

where if you have kids, they're not in the way, if you've kind of got the dog sorted, you've not got work mobiles going off, you can't, you're not watching TV and watching like the latest episode of whatever, you are all in and you talk about long-term goals and that's where you should always start. It shouldn't be like, what we're spending on this,

should we do this budget? You start with the end in mind, like what are our long-term goals? If you are a family that relies on debt quite a bit, do we wanna be doing this forever, babe? Like is this what we wanna be doing, like constantly moving credit card to credit card? Or if another emergency hits and there's no money,

there's no emergency savings again, but you have had the money to kind of get some takeaways and go on little holidays, you might have this conversation going, I'm getting stressed and I feel like we're making this hard and this is hard and I don't feel good and it's impacting my mental health, it's impacting my stress.

It may be that you've got dreams of retiring early or buying that dream home or going on those amazing trips, all which need money to do them. And so if you start with the end in mind and you start with the goal, you then work your way backwards and money is at the center of that. Most of these things can't happen

unless we focus on our money. But more importantly, they can happen so much more quickly when two of you are focused on that money. So I would definitely recommend starting there. I think get your partner having a look at the playbook, the playbooks in the app and you can actually buy the digital course for the videos in the more intense workbooks. The link's usually in the podcast description.

So have a look. In fact, sometimes there's a cheeky discount. So have a look there. But start on this process, which is we've got these goals. Why don't we start to build a plan to hit those goals? And it needs to be judgment-free. It needs to not be blaming, you know, if she's got a spending problem for example and you want her to get better with spending because I hear it a lot that's not

gonna be the right way to go in that's not gonna be the right pitch it's gonna be about actually could we build a budget that suits both of us both of our needs both of our interests but that has an excess left over in it every month to put towards these goals that are really important to us. I do find the playbook, like the playbook method really helps because it's a plan. And it's, you tailor it to you, but it's still a step-by-step plan.

It's not someone's idea, it's financials idea. So you can kind of point to this third party that says, oh look, this plan has worked for thousands to thousands of people. We have seen millions of pounds of debt paid off, millions of pounds in savings made, and we've seen the net worth. I mean, I think last year it went up by 23 million or something,

the net worth of the premium community that actually track their net worth. Absolutely insane numbers. So this stuff works. So use a proven plan, but tailor it to how you are and what your lives are like and baby steps. And I think if you can nail one thing at a time, she's gonna feel good, she's gonna feel like a win,

you'll feel like a win. And eventually you'll just go closer and closer together in the way that you think about money and like how on it you are. I have to say, some of our men are amazing. They are so intentional all over it. And I love that. I love the dedication to the numbers

and the dedication to the planning. And sometimes it's the opposite and you've got a really into it female. You just have to be mindful of where the other person is in their journey and in their mindset. And hopefully, you can absolutely smash it and hit those goals and build that life together that you wanna build.

Good luck, tell us how you get on, please do. Last question, paying off 25K debt but also worried about saving for kids uni, kids currently a year nine, help. I have a year nine myself and I completely empathize with the pressure of impending uni, what that could look like cost wise. I mean, we've talked about it so many times,

the tens of thousands of pounds of debt that so many of our amazing workers are in because of university. And so I think irrespective of that, I would still point to the playbook. If I was in your position, I would do the same thing. University or not, you need to prioritize you, your gas mask on first, you have that amount of debt,

do you have emergency savings? I would go to the playbook. And what you do is if you get the emergency savings, if you clear the debt, if you build up bigger emergency savings, you're gonna be in a much better place. So one, cashflow university if you have to, because you're gonna have room in that budget

because you won't have all those debt payments. But two, you're gonna be able to probably have the time to then save up for university then. So don't try and do everything at once because we're just moving much more slowly and so less intentional. Work the playbook and then treat the university money as big life goals.

Like it's after emergency fund, it's in build. So let us know how you do, let us know what you think. But that's what I would do. Right, I'm gonna wrap that up. Thank you so much for listening. As ever, if you wanna send us anything, do it to the vault at financial.com, head into the community, send us fan mail.

We listen and read everything. And sometimes it does appear on here. And just a disclaimer, the vault unlocked is a lighthearted chat. And we're life and money. We are not giving out advice. Bye bye.