The Vault with Financielle - UNLOCKED: The Financielle Method

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

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.In this kickoff episode, I’m sharing my story—the journey that led to the creation of Financielle.✨ What to expect in this episode:My early dream of wealth, inspired by lottery fantasies and a “Richie Rich” mindsetThe reality of living a Champagne lifestyle on a Prosecco budget: consumer debt, emotional spending, and the pressure to "look rich"The struggle with quick fixes, the trap of instant gratification, and the wake-up call that changed everythingMy lightbulb moment: shifting the focus from wealth to financial wellness and embracing small, impactful changesHow Financielle was born from a desire to help women take manageable steps toward financial security and stability✨ Takeaway: Financial wellness doesn’t require a lottery win—it starts with small, actionable steps.💬 Have a topic you’d love us to unlock next? Email us at [e-mail]👉 Subscribe to Financielle for honest conversations about money, and let’s rewrite your money story together.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 money topics that no one wants to talk about. Now, this is the first of a new series of The Vault, podcasts on top of our amazing Dilemma podcast that comes out every Thursday, you asked and we delivered. You said that you wanted to hear more in-depth information, educational stuff, explanatory stuff, stories. And whilst we will keep on with the vault and the backlog of dilemmas that we have to work through, we definitely wanted to answer your questions and to go deep on some of these topics. And so we've introduced the Vault

Unlocked. Definitely wasn't my name far too creative for me, but I think it really fits the vibe with what we want to do. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll know that it's me, Laura, and I'm on my sofa in my kitchen. So we really wanted to normalize finance content you know and not make it formal and not have it in a way that you feel like you're being preached to or or I want you I want you to feel like you are being educated without studying or without concentrating that it just goes in and so that's the vibe we're going for and obviously I miss my teammates that the other three um aren't aren't here with me but they've also helped to prep this and this is a you know a joint effort and we're going to be covering lots of different topics we want to hear topics that

you want to hear about um but I'm going to kick off the Vault Unlocked with my story and the story of Fan and Shell. Some of you may know it. Some of you have maybe followed us from the very, very beginning and kind of what we stand for. But I think the story helps to explain the Fan and Shell method. And the Fan and Shell method underpins everything that we will talk about on The Vault Unlocked and The Vault on the Dilemma Sofa as well. So buckle in. I'm going to share my story with you and again if you think you listen to this and there's someone in your life that you think would appreciate hearing this please do share please do rate the podcast because it helps us um as we get it to more people i feel like now's the time to grab a cup of tea um relax if you're in the car,

if you're out walking the dog, if you're out walking, getting your steps in. Let's settle in and we'll start at the very beginning. Well, not the very beginning, not like childhood and stuff, but when I was a teen, like 17, 18, 19, I need to like take you back to what it was like if you were a millennial. I'm 37 now and for those of you that are way too young to remember that time let me tell you it was Keeping Up With the Kardashians era it was Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie Real Housewives series and franchises like Beverly Hills and you know Bethany Frankel and york it was like that was my binge watch program with my flatmates and it was such a time of consumerism where not only was like this display of wealth wasn't just

from old money but it was from kind of new money but it was everywhere and then it cascaded down to shops and so we didn't really shop online then at all still, would you believe it? But the high streets were booming and you could go to Topshop and Debenhams and, you know, John Lewis and all these different places. Selfridges really had its first heyday where it was kind of everyone carried the yellow Selfridges bags like a badge of honor. And so it cascaded down. And so normal people started to spend an awful lot of money on things that they wore or carried or how

they looked and I as a teen just like everyone else was caught up in that I think when I was at university Facebook came out and it was just for few universities first the first social media platform where you used to go out on a night out and take pictures and do a photo dump which I think has come back in fashion which is quite scary but you would take a photo dump and your outfit you then got suddenly conscious of people seeing you in the same outfits and so you get a new outfit for every night out and you know this was even before fast fashion where you could pay not a lot like it was quite a lot of money to dress yourself nice and I yeah like I said was so caught up in that

space um you know if I asked for I think one year I got some Louboutins for Christmas where I'd put money towards them you know um mum and dad didn't didn't buy Louboutins but they put money towards them and I would have pictures of like the box and the shoe on the bottom like oh it gives me a nick now I'm so sorry we've done this but I have had the picture where you flick your heel up and you're like just checking you know it's a nick now. I'm so sorry we've done this, but I have had the picture where you flick your heel up and you're like, just checking, you know, it's the boots on. Like, I'm so embarrassed of, but I own it. That's who I was. And you know, the pictures of the boxes of the Chanel handbag that again, I had had saved up for or had contributions to or whatever, probably a credit card at some point once I was 18 but it was all about what it looked

like and I think that's an important thing to think about that's where this started so if you're sat here thinking that is like me or that was like me the the environment we were in really really um enabled that it totally did and so you ended up kind of spending any money you had to just buy things in shops and wear them and stuff like that and then then travel started to become bigger you know at uni I would travel and stuff and you just kind of use your bit of student loan for this if you could or you put stuff on credit card and basically by the time I became a training lawyer I was living a champagne lifestyle but on a prosecco budget you know I am talking city center apartment in Manchester sharing with a friend um nice dinners

out drinks out bougie gym around the corner you know I had I was in such a privileged position because I went straight from university to like a fairly good paying job that I never had the concept of budget and struggle it was just in you know living life to the to the full and spending spending that way and that carried on you know if I think back about the pictures it was like a look at the pictures of me with a bottle of verve clico like it was just all about how it looked because it was the first time that you were able to present a version of yourself out there and in the second year that I was a trainee solicitor because you do two years to become a solicitor and I fell pregnant at 22 which just feels so young now I know it's not the youngest but it did feel so young and suddenly life hit me and I was responsible for a human being, not myself. And I was this, I can't even say I

was a party girl. I really wasn't that fun, but I would have no money in my bank account and be desperate for payday. And so, you know, I had no savings. I had student loans. I had a financed car that looked good, you know, but I had credit cards and suddenly I was responsible for something else and I remember this day that I was in Sainsbury's and there wasn't enough money in the bank account for the shop and I had to put stuff back to get a couple of things and I was like I can't live like this like I actually earn too much money to be in that position I have no right to be in that struggle people are in that struggle all the time because of genuine circumstance and Laura you are absolute joke and it was the smack in the face that I needed to

really get my shit together um you know externally it would have looked like even though obviously suddenly I was becoming a mum and had that kind of new journey on the outside it would have looked like I was absolutely fine you know still had the nice car still had designer handbags you know nice new pram for the baby but deep down you know internally I was just worried about what life was going to be like and how I was ever going to you know I'd moved home to be with parents and again super super privileged that I was able to do that but I knew I wanted to move back out again I knew I wanted to buy a home for me and my my daughter I knew I wanted to be able to provide for her provide for child care fees everything and it just seemed super overwhelming to do with a situation where we're spending more than I made all the time and I had all this debt and so I I desperately looked around like how can

I be in a position where I've got more money and you start researching things on the internet and that's like get rich quick schemes or starting businesses or doing side hustles like you just get overwhelmed with all the potential information you get spoke about investing so I was trying to learn about investing but all the while I didn't have the basics taken care of I just didn't have all this stuff and so it was like trying to decide what to do in what order and um I think that's when the light bulb moment hit me that I am chasing wealth quickly and that was so far out my immediate reach that I was just becoming this person that's like, oh, that's just impossible. Like I'm never going to be able to do this. I'm never going to understand money. I'm never going to be able to build savings. I'm never,

never, never. And this light bulb moment in me switch where I said, I don't feel very well right now about money what if my goal was to feel more well what if my goal was not to save five thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds or do this or do that what if it was just to feel better about money because that was a much more accessible goal. That was something that I could really grow, you know, work towards and, and change quite quickly. Whereas, you know, the other, the other, the other goal is a maths problem. You know, that's a math situation where you need the right money to save up. I knew that I wanted control over my life. I wanted options. I wanted stability. You know, when you're responsible for someone else, you're just kind of worried that things will fall outside

of your control. And if you can have calm, everything else starts on that lower foundation. And security, if something was to go wrong, it was on me. And I definitely wasn't in a responsible position where I was able to be relied on and I wanted to change all that and so I took that those thoughts and feelings and thought okay where do I start and um there was this just realization that slow and steady is kind of what I was waiting for and what was going to be the right answer all along. And so these small changes that I started to make as a person who didn't understand money, didn't look after her finances, didn't understand all these concepts,

didn't earn the most in the world. I absolutely had a graduate salary, but then I went on maternity leave, but I just realized these small changes were going to add up. So I started to focus on budgeting. I felt like when I looked at all the research online, everything came from having spare cash to do good things with money wise. And I didn't have any of that. So I ignored all the investing like kind of jargon. I ignored schemes. I ignored setting up a business. I just stopped and I

focused on the budget. And what that did was it made me give me things I had control over and the ability to change them. So by creating that budget and making sure there was something left over, even if it meant that it was a struggle, even if it meant that there was sacrifice, do you know what happened? I felt better. I just felt better. I couldn't even tell you how much extra I had. It probably wasn't a lot, but the fact that I could manage a budget with a little bit left over gave me a sense of calm and control because the month previous, there wasn't anything left over. I was going in my overdraft more I was spending more than was coming in and so because I started there I got a win dopamine hit already like I just felt better immediately and so budgeting became the focus

for me intensely I you know looked at how I could bring extra income in, whether it was selling things on Facebook, whether it was selling things on, on eBay as you did at the time, it was the only platform you could sell stuff on. But I was bringing in extra income because I knew that would increase the excess cash in my budget. But I was also cutting things, you know, I stopped the expensive gym memberships. I stopped eating out. I stopped buying from the shop every day and kind of doing a meal plan and buying things in bulk. I cancelled subscriptions. I was the friend that said, I'm not coming out. And I did it. And that also increased the excess cash. And I used that to build my first ever emergency fund. And let tell you I had never saved for just saving I'd always saved

for something I'd save for a holiday I'd save a deposit on a car like I'd like patting myself on the back and going oh you've you're doing so well you're saving I'm saving I'm saving but I didn't have any emergency savings I was saving to buy something which isn't really saving it's building up money in a pot it's not saving. And so when I pulled together that first, I think, 500 pounds, I just felt amazing. I was so proud of myself. And, you know, that 500 pounds would have got me out of a lot of pickles. It would have helped me out in a lot of situations. But I'd just learned a skill. I'd learned to budget and then the money that I had grown as a result of budgeting, I'd put into the emergency fund. And I just felt better. So I'd already felt better because I knew my numbers in my budget and I was more in control. I'd create an excess of cash which made me feel even better and then I'd use that to

build a pot of savings just to be there to help me out now that moment was just amazing and I have never been even though it might have gone up and down you know 10 15 years on I've never been without an emergency fund since I just don't understand how people can, if they have the means to save and the means to do the financial method, how they can't not have an emergency fund. It makes me sleep better at night. And it was just such a gift back then for my self-esteem for my confidence my thoughts about the future I felt like I could take on more of the world having some emergency savings I then what happens when you do the financial methods when you budget in the way we budget

and you want to grow the excess you start to realize you run out of options to cut because you can't cut your expenses indefinitely. There has to be a stopping point, you know, and you do want to in the future introduce some expenses back in. But I did have debt payments and I just kept looking at them going out, my car finance payment, my sofa payment, my credit card payment. I was just like annoyed because we're talking probably around 400 pounds a month minimum payments just just for me but as a portion of my salary that was a lot and I was like I'm paying for a car that's going down in value I can't remember what I bought on credit I'm annoyed if I didn't have these payments my excess would be higher and it kind of sent me on a journey to discovering this like debt-free community this

debt-free world where funnily enough there are people that don't use credit and they're fine and in fact they're more than fine they're doing way better than me. And I just decided then and then there, and then even I decided I was going to pay off my debt and I was never, ever going to use consumer credit again. I didn't care what people said about credit scores. I didn't care what people said about it's savvy. It's not a percent I'd switches. I just honest to God, I didn't care because I'd got into that mess this like switcheroo mess that money saving expert used to push early in the day about not percents and this card and that card and you know now knowing that they would have made a lot of money off the back of a lot of my switches back in the day um I was like no I've had enough and so I built a plan and I researched and I decided

to follow the snowball method. This is the method where you list your debts, smallest to largest, and you pay off the smallest one. In terms of overpayments, you pay them all minimum payments, but you put overpayments. So your excess cash that you have in your budget

on that first debt. And I think it was my phone. I think I'd always been this kind of like upgrade queen. You know, when O2 tell me I'm upgrading time it's like yeah yeah of course I'll upgrade and I did that um repeatedly but then I suddenly paid it off and kept my phone and that was a novel thing like who did that and every debt I paid off I loved it like I just cannot describe the feeling when you pay off a debt. It's kind of like you're sticking two fingers up at the credit businesses and finance companies. And so I went on

this journey to kind of keep using my access to overpay credit to the point where it would get paid off. Eventually, I think, you know, I'd had £25,000 worth of debt across you know a car loan finance and um different credit cards and overdrafts and so there's I can't remember maybe two three years I wish I'd have documented it to be fair but two three years to kind of clear that and the moment I paid off my car which was the biggest debt was one of the most impactful moments of my life because I was kind of just driving I remember picking my daughter up from nursery and we're driving and I'm just it was a nice car I'm thinking this is mine I don't think many other people on my street own their car I think everyone finances and it was I

was just so proud of myself and think about where I was that then with my financial well-being I was in complete control of my payments now they were just going to regular bills they weren't going to finance companies now it was going to my back pocket instead of 400 going to all these other companies it was 400 going to me and this is where wellness over wealth kind of has trumped you know trumped everything for me it's just like a health and fitness journey actually if you think about it what we don't want is crash diets or crash fitness routines they're not good for our health they're not good for our mental well-being and actually we usually fall off the wagon and so what I found really valuable is to treat this like a health and

fitness journey which is a lifestyle journey small habit changes that you rinse and repeat and that you know you're consistent and you do, you know, you're consistent and you do it with confidence and you feel better when you do it. And there's this kind of cycle of positivity that happens. And it just was like that journey for me. You know, I really learned the importance of not living beyond my means. I think I definitely gave less of a shit of what people thought of me. I think when I was younger, I was so bothered that I wanted to look like, especially because I became a mum young, that I was okay, that I had it all handled. And I only actually felt that way once I started my money journey. I just felt invincible. I felt so much better mentally than I did prior to that. And I didn't care what

I looked like. I didn't care what outfits I wore. You know, I still took pride in that. I don't want to, I don't want to confuse this with the, that I didn't care about what I looked like. What I mean is about how wealthy I looked. And I think that's an important distinction. I wanted to look nice and I wanted to create a nice environment for for my daughter and I but I didn't care if people knew I had money or not and quite frankly people should know like you know if you've got if you're a graduate you're not gonna have you're gonna have student loans and presumably you're gonna have a lot of credit like you're not gonna be wealthy so why why was I bothered about taking a picture with a Chanel handbag because surely people knew I was just like a working class girl from Wigan, didn't have loads of money, hadn't won the lottery.

Easier said than with hindsight. But I think that, you know, to skip forward a few years, what then happened was I used the same method to build a house deposit and I bought a beautiful little house for me and my daughter. And I then built up emergency savings that were bigger um you know I definitely wanted more than just my smaller pot it was more than 500 at the time but I wanted more emergency savings and it was at this point I really leaned into investing because I'd always been overwhelmed with investing and I always was worried about it going up and down but when you have budget in order tick emergency fund tick no consumer debt tick and you're kind of starting to relax that budget a

little bit and you're traveling and you're buying some nicer things that you've been without for a few years you know you're kind of getting used to the child care and then you get some free child care hours you know that that was my experience it was my experience that led on to what happened next in Fan and Shell. So I guess that was my story up until Fan and Shell starting and where Fan and Shell came from. Maybe in the future we'll do a deep dive into life now. Maybe we'll get my husband, maybe my eldest chatting it through as well. It'll be really interesting to get their views on where we where we are as a family and what financial means to them but I guess on my journey I started to kind of get people's attention in my life and what I mean by that is when it came

to money conversations I was not faced I was calm I'd be relaxed I'd be interested I might provoke and prompt and ask questions and so but people would look at me and ask me how I manage money now I asked my sister about this and Holly said that this was because I just seemed chill and everyone else seemed stressed about it and so it was like an intrigue a little bit like if someone you know looks stronger and you kind of go oh what weights are you doing you know what's your gym routine what's your fitness if someone's skin looks amazing and you ask questions she says it was a little bit like that where I just had this kind of calm about me when talking about money when everyone else was super stressed and everyone

like literally most people in our lives kind of stressed when it comes to money and so I when I was on maternity leave with my second um child I had I was kind of I was a lawyer at the time and I was in a quite a busy job we were doing quite a big corporate transaction it It was very, very busy and I loved it. It kind of distracted me the whole pregnancy. I'm not a very good pregnant person. And the minute, like I literally was working straight up to the day before my maternity leave started.

I had the baby on day one of maternity leave. All through choice, by the way, not to say I was forced to, I was repeatedly told to go home by the CEO and boss at the time, but I was repeatedly told to go home by the CEO and boss at the time but I just loved my job and I was very relaxed and very healthy and very calm and then the next day had a baby number two at home which is a whole another story about ambulance men and biscuits and um surprising half the the street but you know if if you have had a

newborn and or just kind of gone on that maternity leave journey you go from like a million miles an hour to stop and for weeks my brain started to need something to do at heart I'm quite a creative person for someone who was a lawyer I was quite creative and I decided at a time Instagram was gaining momentum with creating communities around whether it be, you know, fitness or food or whatever your thing was, you know, mum influences, whatever your space was, there's a community for you. Hashtags really helped to drive that. And I stumbled across like a money community and I was like oh my god these are my people the people that actually think and talk like me um and I created an Instagram account called financial

it was always meant to be like financial but a play on it with l at the end financial um I say it that way I love it when people say it different way Jeremy Vine once said financial and I was like oh my god we should be French I need to re-re-repronounce my brand um but it started off as an Instagram page and if you today could be asked scrolling to the very very first post on the Instagram page you will see a quote from me um where my boss got it up on on youtube actually where it says today baby girl we're gonna change the world and it was me talking i remember distantly lying on the bed in um the rental house we had at the time with my um daughter baby she was like eight weeks old maybe it was around september she was born in the may so maybe she was a little bit older and I got excited because I discovered

this community I'd come up with the name financial I knew I wanted to share what I'd learned with people anonymously like it was not meant to be a business it was not meant to be public my face wasn't on it for possibly over a year but just kind of this like direct opinionated position on money not gently I'm like the big sister saying you know I think some of them were quite harsh it was like your spending is the problem real harsh stuff like that you know and I think at the time it got people's attention and so I've got this Instagram page and I wanted to help people especially in the money community who are already interested but I I just had this realization that so many women were being aggressively targeted to spend money on shit they didn't need and we were so caught up in how we looked and how we felt and that had been

me like you know quite a few years prior that I really gathered momentum around how women manage money and how screwed over we've been for years whether it's you know the gender finance gaps and gender pay gaps and um you know whether it's been the role we play at home at the expense of other you know financial benefits just the whole system is flawed and skewed against women and I think a lot of men actually that also followed the page didn't like this either like a lot of us just hadn't realized it it's been quite a new thing to discover these inequalities which made me really feminize the financial brand you know to bring out the pink to embrace being feminine and money and that it's not just pink washing

as some people may may feel it is it was just I was so desperate to help people that I was like I need to be the brand that they can't see right now well brand I say brand it wasn't a brand it was just an Instagram page but I need to be the content that they need right now and then you know this was for a couple of years I then went back to work as a lawyer carried on you know my life at and with a with a normal job and I think then COVID hit and there's a lot of business stories that start with COVID hit but I think it was a real moment for people where you sat back and reflected on what you wanted in life but also like what you were really driven to do like what kept you up at night and people lost jobs overnight.

They were made redundant. There were, you know, no one knew what was going to happen with furlough. And the inbox of financial, which was just my little private separate account that I think my face had still not been on, was overwhelmed. Like hundreds and hundreds of DMs

from worried men and women, not sure how to manage their money. They kind of weren't set up for, well, none of us were set up their money they kind of weren't set up for uh well none of us were set up for covid but they weren't set up for something dramatically to hit their life like an emergency like this incident like no one was prepared there was no emergency savings expenses were really high people had super expensive cars sat on the drive and it was just it was a moment for me to sit there and and work out how to help all these people so Holly said like at the time I was doing a lot of hours and managing the kids at home a lot of hours in my job and because that was a travel industry it

was the devastated devastatingly affected um having to repatriate people give refunds it was just very very chaotic but then the inbox was being overwhelmed and i was dming people and and holly was kind of saying you need to codify this like you've got it all written down in posts you've got posts and posts and posts and posts of the way you manage money i think you need to take some time to write it down in a book or a list or a dissertation if you will and you've got it then and once you've got that you're saying the same thing to everyone like you're not saying something different because what you've come up with is a methodology to do this and people can apply their own situation and their own perspective and their own thoughts to that and so that's what I did and so I spent Easter weekend 2020 locked in the study amidst you know children coming in um every couple of couple of hours

um husband obviously being super supportive and letting me get this down and I did and I had a wonderful designer friend that then designed it up I actually um true story I sold a um Celine handbag that I'd bought um that as a mum of two was just a complete waste of my time like it was just it was really heavy it was rubbish it was a phantom that luggage or whatever they were called but Kim Kardashian had it once I bought it with a bonus um in cash to be fair um a few years before and it was just not being used it was my laptop bag a very heavy one I sold it and I took the um I think a couple of thousand pounds max that I made from that to pay for a website and to pay for a designer who designed up this like workbook called

the playbook and we put it for sale and we sold hundreds, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these PDFs. And the feedback that we got from these PDFs was, oh, my God, this is life changing. No one has ever helped me out by giving me a step by step plan. No one has explained about how bad debt is. No one has explained how to budget properly. It was just, you know, all these kind of light bulb moments for people that I'd had earlier and it was just yeah it was so validating but also quite confusing if you think about it I'm kind of doing this on the side suddenly I've like sold you know and made a chunk of money not a load of money but got some money there and then I've got this job and I've always wanted to I knew financial could help more

people and I think that's where truly the business was born I think the decision to leave my job and to start this business firstly on my own but then also to kind of drag my sister along with me was was twofold one was I would knew I was ready for a change at work I am a corporate girl I can't believe I run my own business I don't think I'm very good at it I'm very good at looking after my customers and I'm very good at certain things but there's some stuff that I just you know I think every business or founder business owner or founder says like I'm out my depth and I'm okay with that because I get better and better. I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to use experts to help me out, but I didn't think I was ever going to be a business owner. But I knew I was

ready for a change. And this was the, this was my baby. No one else was doing it. No one else was helping people the way that I believed the financial method was helping people. So I had validation. I'd kind of put my minimum viable product out there got feedback on it it was working um and so I thought yes I can lean into this and I could have just stayed doing content which is obviously what I love to do because I love taking something quite technical breaking it down making it accessible making it relevant to people but I just kept that this is, this needs to be scalable. The PDFs aren't scalable because I can't see people doing it. I hear them tell me this is amazing. I want to see their budgets and what the financial method does is when you do your budget,

you also once a month track your net worth, which is your assets minus your liabilities. So things like your home and your savings and your investments and your pensions minus your debts and I wanted to see that number going up and I couldn't because people had taken a spreadsheet and taken a book home and not shared that with me and I wanted to see this financial community figure going up these debts being paid off these savings being built these houses being bought and so I chatted to Holly about it and I said look I don't know how I'm gonna make money um but I know I've got a really good product and I know you believe in the product because you use this method you have become financially well through doing this I think if I build it you could sell it do you fancy coming

together and building a business that's gonna um you know change people's lives and she said yes and actually she left our jobs before I did and so there was a danger that I could have backed out and she'd have been um left holding the baby literally but we did it and the you know the company was formed in in November of 2020 and we left our jobs in the spring 21 so it was still you know a slow and steady journey and we took the money that we had made on the playbooks and built the very first version of the financial app so some of you OGs will remember what it looked like and um the design and the clunkiness, but it worked. And it's the app we have today is built on the same basis,

the concepts, the budgeting tool, the net worth tracker. You know, we've now got community in there. We've now got a much more aesthetic design. We've got, you know, a more stable platform because there's, you know, we've had over a quarter of a million downloads on it and lots of people use it. But the essence of

what we built with you know a few thousand pounds at the very beginning is still there and i think i'm quite proud of that and um but it's more what it's become for people because this methodology you know and if you're listening to this now and you want to take back control of your money you're fed up of not having money left at the end of the month you want to understand how to invest but you don't you're scared about jumping all that way and you've got a bit to go that's what that app's for that's what this podcast is for that's what our insta platform's for because once you nail the methodology it's every payday every payday you do your budget you get excess cash you put it towards the goal that you're working towards at the moment and the and the playbook that I'll kind of now summarize

are the steps that you go through and they mirror the steps that I did and the kind of you know well known throughout the personal finance world it's kind of not something new I came up with I think I came up with the concept of you know let's remove the overwhelm and break it down and let's nail you know one thing at a time and let's gain confidence and um and kind of you can still personalize it like it's still your view is important and your perspective on stuff's important and so in a nutshell let's go through the playbook so the financial method the financial playbook is firstly you know your numbers so you do a budget and you do a budget the way we do it with sinking funds in it and if you've any questions on any things that i'm going to quickly highlight at the moment we are going to do a deep dive um on all these topics so don't worry so you will do

a budget um you know your numbers and you also look at your net worth as well you're then going to save a minimum of one month's expenses in an emergency fund. You are then going to pay off your debt. That is survive. Once you're out of survive, you move to build. And in build, we have, say, for a bigger emergency fund of a minimum of three to six months expenses. You incorporate your big life goals into your budget, which is kind of stretching your budget a little bit more, traveling a bit more, saving for the things that you'd like because you're not in survive and then you save for a home or a house deposit if that's what you want to do you then graduate to grow and grow is where we want everyone want everyone to be in grow and

this is your time to grow your wealth because your financial well-being well-being has been nailed okay so this is where you will invest in retirement. You will invest in the market, in tax-efficient accounts like ISIS if you're in the UK. You might overpay your mortgage here because you've got excess cash and that will increase your net worth if you're overpaying your mortgage. You may have rental properties that you'll overpay. And you may invest in other things. This is kind of this time where you have space and capacity and cash to be able to grow your wealth so that you make

money when you sleep and this is absolutely possible it's if it was possible for me it's possible for anyone and we've seen the stories we've seen the stories in the financial app we've seen the stories in the community anyone can do this this is not rocket science but it does require a change of habit a change of you know lifestyle and a commitment and you know do it with others do it with your partner get accountability from people in the app in the community but i promise you if you are struggling right now and if you apply this method that we have created to your money life, you will change the trajectory of your life. And not just that, but people around you will watch. So if you have a partner, they're going to be inspired. They're going to enjoy kind of what

you're doing with your money and how you're managing it if you have children they will watch what you're doing if you have friends that are struggling or that might poke fun at first when you're on a budget and you're not coming out all the time or you're making changes it's just because they're kind of jealous and if they're good friends they'll be proud of you and they'll be influenced and there's just this knock-on effect that you will have more money to do more things and there is you know sally kroalczyk of Ellevest says good things. I'm going to mess up her quote here, but she says something like bad things never happen when women have more money. And I think that's so true.

And I want you to have the confidence that you can live a life where you can have money for today. Enjoy your beauty. Enjoy your fashion. Enjoy your nights out. Enjoy your food. But you can have money for tomorrow in case something happens. And you have money for the future so that you never have to depend on anyone for money. You are your own emergency fund. You are your own financial independence. And I promise you, we'll be with you every step of the way. So that's it for the first ever episode of the vault unlocked if you have any questions

on that story i am an open book you can message in hello at the vault.com you can ask for more topics that you want us to cover because it was a bit weird a bit niche that one i know it was like the financial story in my story um but actually there are lots of topics we have planned we're going to be covering money and relationships and preparing for like getting married preparing for getting divorced we're going to be leaning into money and children money and parents we are going to be uncovering the dangers of buying our pay later we're going to be doing loads of different stuff but please do if you've got any question no question is stupid send them in we're a safe space to talk about life and money just as we are on the vault sofa so um we will look into them if

you want to email in um and also share this podcast with someone that you think deserves you know a money glow up or a level up in life or they're already smashing it and you think that they would really appreciate this kind of way of talking about money because for us, you know, we just want to help more people. So that's it. I am locking the vault for the very first time. Just a disclaimer, the vault unlocked is a lighthearted chat around money. It is not financial advice.