The Vault with Financielle - UNLOCKED: Why Investing Isn’t Scary—And Why You Need to Start Now

Episode Date: February 3, 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 tackling **investing**—and no, it’s not just for the wealthy or finance experts. Investing is for everyone, no matter where you’re starting from, and today, we’re showing you how simple it can be.Here’s what we’re unlocking in this episode:- What investing really is—and why it’s easier than you think- Why you’re probably already investing (without even knowing it!)- The top reasons why investing is crucial for your financial future- How to know when you’re ready to start and how much to invest- A breakdown of pre- and post-retirement investing strategies for building wealth- Practical tips on how to start investing in simple, actionable waysPlus, we’re sharing a community story from Tolu, who has been on an incredible money journey and loves supporting others through theirs too!This episode will empower you to stop overthinking investing and get started on your path to financial freedom.💬 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 today, I am talking about the most requested topic that we have in the financial community. And I'm so happy that it is so highly requested. And it's on investing. Now don't turn off if you think this isn't for you, I promise you it is. This isn't going to be some super in-depth technical explanation or assessment or just it won't be anything overwhelming, I promise you. You know us, you know how we do things. Investing isn't just for the wealthy, it's for all of us that want to grow our financial well-being, grow our assets

and kind of live a very fulfilling life. I'm glad that we're tackling investing now after having some basic foundation stuff. We've been through playbook, we've been through how to save, we've been through buy now pay later and talked about debt a little bit. We've talked about goals and life changes and so it makes sense to have come to this point now. I think last week's was obviously our chat about a net worth. Net worth was probably where we started to introduce you to the concept of assets and the concept of investing. And basically the concept that there's another stage, you know, don't forget the playbook stages are survive, build and grow. We want you to start at survive, make sure you build that mini emergency fund, make sure you

learn how to budget, you start your sinking funds and you pay start at Survive. Make sure you build that mini emergency fund. Make sure you learn how to budget. You start your sinking funds and you pay off that consumer debt. When you do that, you have more money. You have more money in your pocket to be able to put towards you and your financial future. And then we'll move on to build. And this is where we're kind of looking at building a bigger emergency fund. Again, typically held in cash. And then buying a property.

We want to buy a property. But we want to get you out of build as well. I want to get you to grow. That is my job and the team's job is to get you to grow. So I really want you to sit and have a think about that. Where are you on the playbook journey? And if you are, if it feels like grows a long way away, this is still super important because I want to incentivize you to speed up your survival journey, your debt payoff journey. I want to incentivize you to move through the stages and start to imagine what it will be like when you're in Grow. By the end of this episode, you will understand what investing actually is, why the hell we do it and how it actually works. I'm going to be totally honest. I get really frustrated when I see women feel the

need especially to buy courses on investing and to a point even books like I know they're helpful but like all of this is over complicating what you need to know at the start and quite frankly you should be able to get to a point where there's like two or three things that you should know and then you set it going and then you crack on you crack on with your life and you're not obsessed you're not obsessing over the investments and then when you get to a particular sophisticated point it's a perfect point for a financial advisor and you don't really need to know much in the middle it's kind of like only if you want this to be your hobby and if you are genuinely interested in some of the absolute intricacies, do you need to? If it's not for you, that's absolutely fine. You don't have to learn everything.

This episode is about taking an overwhelming topic and a topic that feels so far ahead of so many of us and making it absolutely simple and completely applicable to your life and how you could do it if you wanted to. We are going to come on to the concept of time and I just want to kind of give a shout out to our older financial community members who share repeatedly with us in community in messages that time flies, time flies very quickly and it is difficult to practice delayed gratification like we're all human and so the idea of putting money aside for it to grow and for you not to touch is difficult when you want to live your life and I think you know we've talked about it on them on the pod on on Thursday actually it was

talking about do you build your 20s aren't for building wealth and your 30s are and we all I was like absolutely not your 20s are for building wealth and your 30s are and we all I was like absolutely not your 20s are for building wealth because you can do both and time flies and so if we can give you a couple of things to think about whilst time is passing already then maybe you're going to be able to build an investment portfolio that suits your future needs but doesn't overwhelm you in the here and now. Okay it's one of my favourite lines but I'm going to say this and you're probably an investor already. I've tried this exercise a few times if we do like in-person stuff or on chats and calls with people and you say hands up if you're an investor and maybe a couple of people in the room will put their hands up and then I say okay hands up if you've got a

pension and then most of the room will put their hand up especially if you're in a workplace and I kind of go you're an investor then and there's this mindset that investing is bigger than it actually is, more complicated than it actually is, and further away from us than it actually is. If you have a pension, it is invested in typically the stock market, maybe bonds, maybe cash, but a lot of the stock market, you're an investor already. Just because you didn't physically pick stocks or physically pay money in, you know, it was taken out your salary maybe and it was just put in automatically. That's how simple investing can be. So if you have a pension and if you actively pay into a pension, you are investing, like you're actively doing it.

So many people overthink investing. So if you are one of these people, you're in great company. And it's interesting because the easiest thing to do in the world is to pick a tracker fund. It might track a particular market or country, but it basically is an investment in the whole of the market. So you're spreading your risk. These trackers almost always beat fund managers. And what a fund manager does is they would typically, I picture a man in a shiny office in, you know, Canary Wharf, picking companies, researching, oh, I've heard this is going to do well, heard this is going to do well. They bundle it all up into a fund. They whack their fees in there and it still never beats

the trackers. I tell you this at the beginning of the pod because I want you to know that the people that are meant to be really good at this and meant to know absolutely everything don't and there are ways that you can invest without having to read the FT every day, get stock tips from Reddit. You can passively do this, crack on with your life and be an investor. Why should you care about investing? Like is it just a buzzword that you see on Instagram and TikTok and you know you might see a picture of a guy sat on a flash car and talking about his investments and you know you maybe you know that the wealthy have investments like why should we care about investing? At its most, investing is just putting your money into something that grows in

value or that you would hope grows in value. So essentially you get a return on the money that you put in. I want you to picture the concept of buying a stock in a company. Now this would be a publicly traded company. What that means is their shares or its shares are available to buy and sell on the stock exchanges. It could be the New York one, could be the London one. You're buying a share in that company. So you become a shareholder, one of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands of shareholders. When you become a shareholder in a company, if that company does well, the value of the stock goes up. Also, when that company does well, it may also pay a dividend and in a nutshell what that means is the company made a profit and sometimes you might use profit to kind of reinvest back in the company

and you know grow that way but sometimes you distribute your dividend which is kind of like distributing a bonus to shareholders. So as a shareholder not only does the absolute value of your stock sometimes go up but you also may get a bonus or a dividend if the companies perform well that year. This is a little side point but I always like you to imagine the balance between consumption and investing. A common example always given is you bought an Apple iPhone but if you'd have bought Apple stocks you'd have been up by x and it's just kind of it's just this really interesting circular argument around some people are focused on buying, buying, buying, but the savvy may buy,

but may also benefit because if they had invested in Apple stocks, then they would have benefited from even their own consumption. You know, it's really circular. And actually a similar example is Spotify. You may be listening to this on Spotify. Spotify, you know, you probably pay for, if you're on the premium for, is it like 11, 12, 13 a month, something like that. They've had a really good year. In a year, their stock price has gone up over 138%, I believe. So you could be the consumer, the person that just pays and cracks on and and whatever or you could be the person that goes I like Spotify and my friends do and my family does and podcasts are really big and streaming is really big and actually I'm going to buy some Spotify stock and if you had using that

consumption knowledge that I think this is a good product and I think they've got a good place in the market you actually would have benefited obviously if you'd have bought the stock now this is solo stocks and we're not talking about that today but it just I really want you to get that in that front of your mind that some people are start benefiting from the what we choose to buy when we march to the high street or we march to the online stores and we put our money where our mouth is it's really interesting to see the impact that that has on the particular stock market and actually I've seen when they talk about consumer confidence being low and people spending a little less and the results come out of all the retailers the stock market struggles sometimes. So next time

actually you make the next consumer purchase have a little think about maybe the companies behind that purchase. We're not going to look at single stocks we don't have to I just want you to understand that the success of a company can cause its stock to go up and so that's why the value of our portfolios goes up and it's because the companies are doing well. Another reason that we should all care about investing is that it gives our money an opportunity to grow at faster than the rate of inflation and the trouble with cash is you need to be able to get rates on that cash that beats inflation because otherwise our money effectively stays the same and so the advantage with investing is on average it beats inflation so you're making sure that your money is growing ahead of that inflation rate so maybe now i've convinced you

that investing is for everyone and that maybe it's not as overwhelming as we initially thought it was when do we know that you're ready to invest and i think what i mean by that is over and above your pension contributions. So we need to be doing our default pension contributions or retirement contributions wherever you are in the world, making sure that you're automating the minimums into retirement. But when should we do that extra investing? As you know at Financial, it's our job to take you through, survive, build and grow. And so we definitely say have a good look at where you are on that journey and in a nutshell what we would expect is the following a solid emergency fund to be in place and we're talking a big emergency fund so not your mini one but one that's three six nine months worth of cash

that you can rely on you can access we want it growing we want it doing well in in a cash iso maybe but you need a solid emergency fund at financial we want you to we want it doing well in in a cash iso maybe but you need a solid emergency fund at financial we want you to be consumer debt free as well i definitely think playing around with credit whilst you're trying to actively invest is just one like overwhelm because you've got balancing two things and you're just not being very effective again you've been doing regular contributions to your pension if you're self-employed this might be a call out for you to go away and look at that and look at doing that because your friends who are employees will have been doing the auto-enrollment likely so if you're self-employed go have a look at this and actually if you're a stay-at-home mum or a part-time worker that falls underneath the threshold for

auto-enrollment just make sure that you look into this and see if you can start doing pension contributions that mirror the ones that the government set everyone. On top of all these practical stages, you need to have a strong enough mindset shift that you are going to be doing this for the long term. This is going to be a regular cadence of investing where you don't want to touch the money for quite some time. So there has to be a mindset shift there. This is not get rich quick. This is not going to be something that will turn into a million pounds overnight. You have to be very, very aware of that before deciding to commit to investing. And when it comes down to the amount that you should be investing on a regular basis, this comes down to two things. This comes down to

what your excess is. So if we do the financial budget budget what's left over is your excess and if you're in grow you would sit and think okay where do I want my excess to go how much of it do I want to go to overpay my mortgage if I have one how much of it do I want to put into children's ISAs and how much of it ultimately do I want to start investing when it comes to the type of account that you should open to start investing there's really especially in the UK three main ones there is your post-retirement investing so pensions there are ISAs which are typically pre-retirement investing and there are general investment accounts which do not have tax wrappers do not have tax benefits it's just basically an account that you do your investing in there's kind of a priority in terms of the benefits of doing each of these different types of investments and typically retirement and pension investing is at the top. Yes this is locked

away to post-retirement which is why it's post-retirement investing but there are tax incentives to do so. Basically subject to certain parameters and exceptions you get your tax back on the investments that you make into your pension. It's an incentive by the government to get you to invest for retirement. As an example, if you're a higher rate taxpayer, you get a 40% benefit on your pension contributions. Just a little side note for our 40%ers, make sure that you are contacting HMRC or you put it through your tax return that you're doing that because your pension provider will go and claim the 20, but they won't claim the extra 20. So if you are not actively speaking to HMRC about your extra 20% then you're leaving it on the table. So another tip for our higher rate taxpayers is to look at the income that you pay 40% on or more and use

that as a guide for what to put into your pension because there's a trick that a lot of people use which is invest enough into your pension so that it brings you under the 40% tax rate threshold so that effectively you end up paying 20% tax. So we invest for it, so we get this incentive by governments in most countries to invest for retirement so that we can sustain ourselves in retirement and so this is where we look at what income we need when we're at retirement and we kind of work backwards. It may feel like you're a long way from retirement and I have to admit we've all been there when we kind of want to enjoy something in the here and now and it feels a long way away. I've also had

some really emotional conversations with people that lost loved ones young and so there's this sense of well I might not even be here by them. I think what I always say to those people is let's have a balance, let's make sure you have a budget that you are enjoying and that you are living and you're not squirreling everything away so that you don't feel like this sense of hopelessness that you know you've lost someone young or if your parents passed away young it must be very difficult to think what's the point. So I think our job is to get you to a point where there's financial wellness now and there's wealth now and there's wealth later. And ultimately a pension pot is something to leave to people, especially a defined contribution type of pension, a private pension.

It's an asset, it's an investment account, it's like a bank account. It gets left to your partner if you have one or it gets left to children if you have them or loved ones and so it's it's not going to disappear when you die it will live on and so I would love you to have as optimistic as you can outlook on retirement investments and our idea is that we get you a nice pot of money for after retirement but also a nice pot of money before as well. So the alternative to investing for retirement is investing for pre-retirement, which would typically be in a stocks and shares ISA. You get in the UK a £20,000 ISA limit every year that you can maximise and anything that's in that account can grow tax-free. We obviously know about cash ISAs, but also the stocks and shares ISA is a great way to invest, but have the benefit

of what we call that tax wrapper. Industry guidance for investing in a stocks and shares ISA is a great way to invest but have the benefit of what we call that tax wrapper. Industry guidance for investing in a stocks and shares ISA is that you really don't want to access those funds within five years. If you do there's a risk that they could go down. We don't know what the market's going to do. We don't know what cycles we're in. We don't know what's around the corner. That's why the industry says don't keep emergency fund in stocks and shares. You know keep the emergency fund in cash in an accessible account but if money can be kept away for five years plus a stocks and shares isa is a really good way of trying to get those higher you know eight nine ten percent average growth levels versus you know the four to five that you could be getting right now but typically we've seen

three to you know even two to three percent in ISAs. The dream for many is to have an investment portfolio that you can live off. This is the concept of FIRE, Financial Independence Retire Early. It's something that you can kind of research and look at, but what it essentially means is you build up a portfolio of assets that pay off income, that pay for you to live.

And I guess for lots of us, when we think about that, it's typically pre-retirement. The same applies post-retirement, but there's an ambition of lots of people to become financially independent. And that's exactly what that means. A stocks and shares ISA is a really good way of starting that process. You could build up a pot of money in your stocks and shares ISAs that you can ultimately live off pre-retirement. The fascinating thing about investments is they grow as a result of both the contribution that you made in, so the money that you paid into that investment, and then the growth in the value of that portfolio. And that fuels the compound. And so when we combine that with time and investments over time, that's where we see growth in our

portfolios, not just from money put in. Okay, we're going to take a tiny break from the investment chat because I had another amazing catch up with one of our community members, Tolu. Tolu, lots of you will know, has a money diary in our app. So if you haven't seen that, go to the blogs at the bottom of the homepage, search for Tolu and you will find her money diaries. She's also appeared on The Vault in the form of a beautiful voice note where she shared a win. I remember it being like a non-financial victory, a bit like a non-skill victory. And she is so inspiring. She's been on such a journey with financial, you know, a debt payoff journey, a job change journey. And she's so motivating for

lots of other people in the community so let's have a little listen to my chat with Tolu. So I'm so excited to be joined by our guest today which is Tolu it's so great to have you on. Thanks Laura it's so great to be here it's like such a star struck moment for me because I love financial I love what you all do so really pleased to be here. Well I said this back to you because you're our Money Diary girlie so we've been learning about your journey and obviously great member of the community sharing your story but for people who may not have seen you on the community, may not have read the blogs and they're brand new to the vault and they're listening to

you today, tell me a little bit about you and your life, where are you at, what are you doing? Yes gosh what a big question so I would say I've been a financial girl for just over a year now since 2023 but I probably wouldn't say that I cared much about money and wealth and all the things that we talk about probably until very recently um so growing up I you know single parent household money was one of those things that we would talk about but just because we didn't have it so it's like if you were talking about money it wasn't usually positive so um yeah you know grown up had a great job as a teacher absolutely loved it still teaching but not full-time And teachers do make good money. And I would say at the point

of my life where I was before financial, definitely, you know, it was earning a good bit of money, but I had no idea what to do with it. And so that money left as quickly as it went. And now I'm here, not really as far along as I would like, but still making great strides with all the knowledge that I have now so it's definitely been up and down but yes I am a teacher and a mother and a wife so I have all those family things coming into play and yeah just really enjoying life at the moment I must say. Enjoying the juggle I know it's a it's a healthy juggle and obviously thank you for all the work that you do as a teacher because it's not for the faint hearted and for particularly talented few like yourself and so you were you were at this point

where you like like you said earning a good salary for where you are in life like didn't really think much of it but just kind of never anything left and kind of no massive direction so what what were you looking for when you stumbled across financial and like the community what was kind of missing or what did you not realize was missing? What wasn't missing for me was a plan. And I realized that there was a lot of information that I didn't have. So the big turning point for me was when I joined financial, I had a fair bit of consumer debt. And I remember just being really frustrated about it because

the interest was so high. I'd gone past my 0% at this point, so, or whatever offer that they had. And again, I'd just grown up not knowing anything about credit except, you know, don't get into debt. And that was really all of the knowledge that I had, but I had gotten into debt. So I'm trying to pay off this credit card and it's just not shifting and I remember in financials earlier days when we had a whatsapp group um I was like you know what let me just join it let me see what this is about and I remember I just watched for a long time I didn't think there were so many people I was like I am not qualified to open my mouth in this group but um eventually I was like you know what just put a question out

there and I think I remember hearing about zero percent balance transfers I was like okay this is interesting and I got to learn about you know how I can pay off my debt a bit quicker and I thought oh okay this this might help me because it's the interest I'm struggling with so yeah that was really where I started to pay attention. And once I got that momentum going, I thought, okay, there's really a lot to learn here. And that's when I really consumer debt and kind of people tread water a bit because you get the deals. And then suddenly the interest starts to lay on and you go, OK, and you start to think, is this always going to be here? Like what? And then and then you realize, too, there's one thing to kind of move them and get them to lower percents and kind of make the payments manageable. But I think you all get the bug of no actually it needs to go now what will life be like if I didn't have those and you went you went all in

and you went consumer debt free um some point last year didn't you I did yeah and that was really exciting because like you said I've never really thought about life on the other side and I think that's what was missing prior to joining the community. There was just no long term plan. It was very much, you know, living payday to payday. And I just didn't, you know, money was just something you want as much of it as you can get. And that was really kind of where it stopped for me. So to think, okay, there's more that I can be doing with this money, and it can give me options and choices. And it was reading the playbook that really opened my eyes to to just how bad debt is as well and I just thought yeah I don't I don't need this don't need this in my life it's not good vibes so yeah I was able to pay off that credit

card and I haven't been in debt since which is amazing still got the odd loan here and there but it's you know courses and education for career so nothing frivolous yeah so that's still there my postgrad loan you know it's less than a brand I can get that paid off really quickly so I'm looking forward to being completely debt free but I'm really happy with the start that I've made and I do know that had I not read the playbook had I not come across the community I can't say with confidence that I would have been so determined to get it done I think I think that makes complete sense because it's so intense and so you have to you do have to have that confidence before jumping in because there's no point doing

something half-hearted and then like it not working out and because another fascinating thing about you Tola is the decision to change how you work was that made easier by the money decisions you were making and the control that you had over your money definitely I think one thing about and I know I keep going on about financial and it's not just because it's you honestly like all my friends like they should pay you like yeah it's fine like honestly I'd do it for free but it was um for me it was having a plan that really changed it because you know doing financial and going through the methodology it doesn't mean that suddenly you have hundreds and hundreds of extra pounds all the time it's not that you wake up the next month and oh my gosh I've got all this money

it's not so much that but having a plan and having confidence in that plan knowing that as long as I have even a little bit of money coming in I can stretch that I know what to do with that I know how to grow it I know how to maximize it that made the decision to leave a lot easier because even though I wasn't in the best place in terms of savings, I have to admit I did the cardinal financial sin. I'm confessing here. This is my confession moment. I did not follow the rules exactly. I cleared off my debt before having an emergency fund.

Shock, horror. I know. You were aggressive and you wanted to leave. You're forgiven. You're forgiven on this occasion. Thank you. Thank you. But I have since been telling people, because quite a few people comment on the group oh what

should I do first and I'm like for the love of god do you say like please don't be me do as I say and not as I do honestly I'm just like it's working for me but please do what the book says but um yeah it was the confidence that you know things might be a bit tight but actually I'm good with money now like I know how to to curb my impulse spending I know where to put my money to get you know the best interest I know how to make a damn good budget I must say so yeah when I was leaving work I was like it's okay and I think one of the joys of being a teacher is you've got a job for life like if I really needed to to get back into work and get a solid income I could do it pretty easily so yeah it definitely helped and I don't think I would have been able to make that decision

so likely had I not been so confident with money but like I am now. No it makes sense people and I look like there's some amazing financial wins people are buying homes people are investing people are doing you know paying off debt but um I really like it when life can change decisions can be made with full confidence and sometimes that's a step backwards in for like income in terms of the maths but as long as you work out the maths down the bottom as you said that the feeling that comes from being in control the feeling that comes from that's my budget it's my plan my project I'm in charge of it like if Carl and I have done the budget today and obviously we're quicker and quicker at it but it's every single time I enjoy it because it's so refreshing because when there's a last month

was tighter for us this month was a bit better so like we just that flexibility a last month was tighter for us, this month was a bit better. So like we just that flexibility that last month we brought in such a chunk less, but we'd still like you wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known. He wouldn't have known. Like the children didn't know, like nothing changed. It was all because when you have options, it's very calming, isn't it? It is. And it's just been so nice to not have to be constantly worrying about money,

which is something that I did do quite a lot. But I'm in quite a privileged position in that, like I said, I've got a job that allows me to get money quite easily. I've got quite a lot of opportunities. I have a husband that works and, you know, it's not the same for everybody. So I wouldn't always encourage people to just leave without a plan. The same way I did. I can be quite impulsive not with spending anymore but just with big things but I feel like that's us as women like we see something it's like right we're changing the whole layout of the living room right now yeah 100% you are not alone and and I yeah but you but you played it as you saw it you played

your situation you know someone in a higher risk, it's still the ability to play it differently. What does your husband think about financial? Oh, do you know what? I finally got him to listen to a podcast. Years in the making, not years, months in the making.

I'm like, right, I need to get him to listen to, it was the Money Date Night one. I was like, oh, so what did you think of it? He's like, it was pretty decent to be fair. I was like oh so what did you think of it it's like

it was pretty decent to be fair so it's all you've got to say this is Laura forget this but he did really enjoy the content actually and he has been very supportive in terms of you know because I am pretty much the the admin woman I think yeah I'm one of the pods actually that it's the women that typically do all the organising. So that's my house. And yeah, he's very on board because it's not just me saying, right, we need to cut back on this.

We need to do this. He understands the why. And I think that's where financials really help because it's one thing to say, right, I want to cut down my subscriptions. I want to get rid of my debt. But if you don't know why, you don't know what it's one thing to say right I want to cut down my subscriptions I want to get rid of my debt but if you don't know why you don't know what it's going to do for you it's harder to get people on board so when I'm explaining that it's because I want us to be debt free so we can

save faster so we can do x y and z he's he's fine with it so yeah not many arguments with money in my house thankfully good we're all here for the financial husbands we are gonna i think there's so many date night one i was thinking of one i think i've done a tiktok on it with um with lucy but one where we say um like if your partner's crazy because they found financial sorry this is why you know this kind of like it's our fault but don't worry it's okay and i think you nailed it then when you when you said it's so that we can like all of this stuff is all all to be able to do something else it's not like just because just because it's finance it's mathematically the best thing to do or anything it's just because we can and then you kind of go on to talk about life so let's go there like you are obviously on a debt-free journey so you've

got some of your student loans to clear um financially like what and life-wise like what's next for you and what what's next for your money journey? Yeah so just a little bit of debt to pay off which God willing will be done by the end of the year is the plan but we would love to be able to move out of our tiny little flat especially as our family is growing this year so you know it's fine for now we're not in a hurry to move we're not being kicked out or anything but we would love a bigger space so our whole plan is to get rid of the debt which I think is mainly me he might have a little but once that's done build up our large emergency savings because I was very naughty and did it the wrong way. But we move, you know, we move forward.

And then start saving for that house deposit. That's really important to us because I am a very homely person in that I love staying in my house. But I also love having people in my house. So I'd love to have the space to just host people and, you know, just really feel comfortable at home. My husband makes guitars, so there's just stuff everywhere. Yeah, he's one of those. He's going to need a guitar room that keeps it out of your eyes. That's it. He's got about seven projects on the go. There's always something. We've got a lot of instruments in our house. I mean, we're both musicians, so it's expected. But yeah, we'd love a bigger space. So over the next few years that's really our our driving motivation to just get our money in order

and really go for that goal and pursue it with with all the energy that we have so yeah that's so exciting like for us in a community we just can't wait to watch you do that I think like dividing these big goals up into stages and having that end goal of this is why the hell we're doing all this and honestly what will be exciting is there'll be a day where you know you you get the keys to the house that you've dreamed for you and your family and you'll have to thank yourself you know from the times that you had to change habits that have been built up over years we've all built these habits over a long time and and the times where you slow down a little bit like sometimes it's not linear isn't it and so you know earnings will like go up and down and we move we still go and um you'll just do it you'll be sat there one day with like a cup of tea and you'll go wow look what we did in my new house with my kitchen island

yes and like with like food like i'm already thinking about the food like I feel like you're a feeder probably like if you're a homebody like you and you'll be getting your money's worth of your mortgage I do feel like the 2020s are for that like I'm staying home getting my money's worth of my rent same with the same with the house and like I said I think what's lovely is these are it's like the life goals that money just is the thing that sorts sorts it out for you you know it'll pay off that debt it'll bring you extra peace of mind with a lovely big emergency fund which will be in accounts making that that extra interest if I know you well and then like I said get it they're getting that the right house for you they're all

money goals that lead to these like life moments and and having fun along the way like your family will watch you do this like they will remember this journey um for you know throughout their childhood yes well I'm now the budget girl so I've had my sister come to me like Talu this is what my plan is can you help me with my budget I'm like honey bring it let's let's do it my brother's like Talu I've sold my car he's got rid of his car finance I'm so honey bring it let's let's do it my brother's like tell you I've sold my car he's got rid of his car finance I'm so excited oh my god sold it and it's gone and he's just got like his excess is insane because he's still staying at home and I'm like right here's what you're like can I come home

that's really exciting because they live with their mum they're my half siblings but it's so encouraging to see them starting this journey a lot earlier than I did because I can only imagine if I had started when I was their age and I see some people in the community you know I'm 19 I'm 21 and I'm just like I love that for you so much because you've got so many years to get this right and yeah that's really exciting so I love that we're got so many years to get this right. And yeah, that's really exciting. So I love that we're reaching so many people and the younger we get them, the better. We've got to grab them. And like I said, the children are watching.

Our children watch. Even if they're not taught this in mainstream curriculum because there's a hell of a lot of stuff to teach and there's a lot to do. If they're going to see it at home, they're going to get a real leg up. And when, like, this is a bit bit philosophical but when we started the fine shell we used to have um we used to have a kpi that we called which was number of people helped which was really hard to

track but what we felt was like if we if we helped you and you nailed it and it's like a methodology it's like like a fitness thing or a health thing that people would watch you and go how do you how do you do that like why are you doing that why are you paying off this debt why would you do that just switch it and then you answer them and then they crack on and you look good and you feel good and you talk well and you're in a good place and it's like osmosis they kind of go oh I want to be like that and then when they do it you know your brothers brother and sisters friends and family will ask them why are you paying off your car why would you do that and they're like well because because xyz and it's

this like weird butterfly effect of if just by helping the one you help the many and I think there's you are one of the biggest people for that in the community for helping and passing on and you know in in not a don't do what I did way just in an encouraging and I love that and I can only thank you for all you've done to help spread spread the word of financial but but you've walked the walk as well I've taught the talk which is harder said than done definitely it's but I mean there's quite a few people actually that I've had these money meetings with and I see why you do what you do. Like, there is such joy in it. It's like the feels.

Yes, seeing people win and just, because it's like we say, like money to some degree is just numbers, and so much of it is personal. So if you can get that right, you just see how people can just breathe. You see their shoulders come down. You see everything just release and it's it's

really nice to be part of that in some way so yeah I I cannot thank you guys enough and just continue to champion what you are doing because you've you started a movement here I will say so well continue it's the people that make the movement so we're honestly I've loved having you on totally obviously we've had we've loved having you on tolly obviously we've had we've had your money diaries and we did have a voice note you were our first ever voice note on um which went down very well on the vault and so i was just so chuffed that i've been able to share you with them the wider community and then i'll say people want to keep updated with tolly's plans she'll share them in the community according to the app and um if you don't post for a while just put do we have a tolo update we'll see if she jumps in i just love to

yap i'm such a yapper like professional japanese speaker if anybody wants to talk to me i'm always up for a chat this is why you're perfect for a podcast this is a professional professional yapping tolly thank you so much um have a wonderful rest of day and thank you for sharing your story with us you're so welcome and wishing everybody the best on their finance journeys as well okay so we're back into investing and now we're ramping it up and we're going to talk about practically doing something after this podcast especially if you take the criteria that i spoke about earlier okay so if you feel that you are approaching investing or you want to dip your toe in and you want to try and you're getting ready for it,

this is like we're in Grow. So as you know, in Grow, you can invest in the market, you can invest in property and you can overpay a mortgage. As with everything in finance, diversification is key. So that's why we have those different options. It's also about how you feel. And so some people may feel more comfortable overpaying their mortgage, even though they may be mathematically better getting returns in the market, because it all comes down to how debt

makes you feel, how reliable income is in your life, lots of things. If you want to invest in the market and you want to do it either in a pension or a stocks and shares ISA, like we talked about before the break, there are a few easy ways that you can do this. Firstly, I suspect in your own banking app you could open it up and by the end of this podcast you could have started a stocks and shares ISA. There'll be some risk questionnaires that you'll work through and you have to fully understand what it is you are opening but that's how simple a provider you could use. There are also lots of robo-investing platforms and lots of people in the community use them which are like bank accounts but they're solely for the purpose of investing. We know that

pensions typically are the most tax efficient vehicle to invest in but we can't get access to it until we're a lot older. So stocks and shares ISA sometimes is the way that people go if they want the money before retirement and if they're already doing some retirement investing as well. There is a little concept I want to bring you into, which is the concept of an ISA millionaire. So it is possible with consistent investing and maxing out of ISAs that you could grow a million pounds worth of an ISA portfolio. And actually, this is a really good example of comparing

stocks and shares ISAs with cash ISAs. So if we took a stocks and shares ISA and took a 10% year-on on year growth rate, if you maxed it out with £20,000 a year, putting in money every single month and hitting that 20k target, it would only take you 19 years to hit a million pounds in that. And that's only actually putting in £380,000 of your own money. And the rest, you know, almost £700,000 of it will come from the growth of that portfolio. In comparison, if you had a cash ISA of, you know, 4.5%, 5%, which again is high for more recent years, it's been a lot lower than that. It would take you 26 years to hit the same goal. And again, that's at that like higher interest rate, which I just don't think is

realistic for a long time. So maybe that's a bit of a lofty goal for some of you. Do you think you could be an ISA millionaire? Do you think you could commit to putting that in an ISA every year? Again, it all depends on the things we've talked about, but you can build a portfolio, a million pound portfolio, just from these tax-free vehicles that the government provide. Typically, if you invest in a stocks and shares ISA through your bank or one of the regular robo-investment platforms, you won't be picking individual stocks and shares ISA through your bank or one of the regular robo investment platforms, you won't be picking individual stocks and stuff. You'll be investing into funds. And so what should happen is that you should be guided by that provider according to your risk for the type of fund that you're investing in. This is where people will slow down. This is where,

and you should do, you should be very aware of it, but don't overthink this because it might feel uncertain. It might feel risky, but this is all part of it do you should be very aware of it but don't overthink this because it it might feel uncertain it might feel risky but this is all part of it and let's not forget we have emergency funds we are consumer debt free we're holding money in cash we are in control of our budget we're doing investing already so you're already investing in your pension and you don't sit there and go oh like i'm just not going to do it like you do it and so don't overthink this bit and just put your trust in the regulated provider that you ultimately choose to walk you through what might be the right fund for you there are some platforms where you can actually choose individual stocks and those are quite interesting as well you know I have one of those platforms and I still pick more of like a fund or a portfolio investing strategy I do not

pick individual stocks I have no interest in doing because I don't want to be mentally connected to the decision as I said I'm happy to follow the market and I'm likely to come out on top if I do that but it doesn't mean to say that those platforms aren't good either you can go into those platforms and follow like a portfolio approach rather than picking individual stocks yourself ultimately when you're picking where your investments go and what the fund is it will depend on your age it will depend on your appetite to risk and it'll also depend on your preferences you know there may be some ESG focused

funds that you want to lean towards you might not want fossil fuels you might not want arms you do have some influence with your investments and it's a again it might be something that you do next you might just like invest first and start it and then later as you get more comfortable do the research i don't want people to get like stifled by research that they don't do the do but it's an interesting element of kind of voting with your investments there are a few investing misconceptions i mean people debate about how much you should or shouldn't be investing i think that's why in the playbook it is down and grow we want you doing automated investing early on as part of your regular paycheck, you know, into your pension because you get sometimes a company match if it's through an employer

and ultimately you obviously get the government contribution as well, that tax back. But over and above that, we want you to be in a, like a really financially well place when you start leaning into your investing journey. And when you get to that stage, the percentage of your income that you invest will depend on your budget. But really, the percentage of your income that you invest will

depend on your budget. But really, once you, you know, you'd be, you'd be doing pension, but there should be like, you should have an excess by then of 20%, 15, 20%. Again, it's a personal budget too, but if you have no consumer debt and you have bought your home and you've got your cash savings, you should have a nice, healthy excess, even with a nice budget where you're traveling and where you, you know, buying things, you still should have a good excess. And so if that's like 15, 20, 25%, you choose where to put the excess. And it might be that you decide to pay down a mortgage with some, but it might be that you decide to put the rest into extra pension and or extra stocks and shares as you're investing. So it's completely personal to

you. On the flip side, I just don't think you should do it with tiny amounts. If you want to do it and you're in like survive and you want play money and you want to put like 10, 20, 30 quid a month here and there into investments, do. No judgment. It might be a bit of muscle memory for some people. They like the idea of testing it out

and dipping the foot in the water, but that's not going to change your life. You know, you can put the math, you can do that calculation what does 10 20 pound a month in investment calculator get you it doesn't get you very far we want to get you to a point where you're putting hundreds maybe some of you a four figure amount every month into extra investing whether it's pensions whether it's ices wherever it's meant to be we want to get you there and that's the game-changing money. I'm really torn having this debate

because I do want people to know that you can put small amounts and see it grow. And God, it's better doing it than not doing it. But I think sometimes people don't follow the maths and think that you put 10, 20 quid in and you're gonna come out with a grand. And it just doesn't work like that. You have to put a good amount in little and often.

And obviously the rule of compound comes in here. So if you're starting earlier, if you are teen, early twenties, and it just doesn't work like that you have to put a good amount in little and often and obviously the rule of compound comes in here so if you're starting earlier if you are teen early 20s you can put that small amount in consistently and over time and it compounds massively because you've got time whereas if we're starting at my age you know we're coming into our 40s coming into our 50s the returns that you're going to get is massively impacted by the number of years that you have for this thing to grow so your investment calculators online are your best friend have a play around with the possible outcomes that you could get if you consistently and at a good cadence not a good amount invested into these different types of investment accounts people said to me before

i've tried investing i put a bit in and it went down and i was just annoyed i'm like again it's probably because firstly you invested money when you weren't at a stage you should be investing like it needs to be money that literally doesn't change your life like you're just ignoring it and everything else operates and you've kind of deposited it like you would a bill or something like you you're just paying a bill and you do get the ups and downs and it does go down and it is really hard when it goes down it is but if it doesn't change your life and if it's a pension you can't get access to it anyway you just crack on but I think I've shared this before like there have been months where my investments have gone up more than my salary

like in a month just by not like not just by going to sleep every night like literally at night by not doing anything other than than being in the market and so even though you get some downs you get some ups but you've got to take the rough with the smooth when you commit to doing it and be in a place where you don't feel panicked that you want to pull money out i think the downside of for example stocks and shares ices is that's what people do they go oh it's not my investments are down like sometimes my husband will tell me that about our ices stocks and shares ices and i'm like why are you looking other than fund performance to be absolutely sure that it isn't invested in the wrong thing, or it's just really poorly performed, or to make sure that fees aren't too high, which is something that you do have to

look at. We're not going to cover now, but it's just like a price comparison website. They've all got different fees. They've all got different benefits and you want to try and keep your fees low. But other than that, you're not meant to look. we look once a month when we do our net worth you know it is about that passive investing that I am in the market I am doing it once a month on budget day I'm moving my excess it's going to the investments and then I'm living my life and that is where we want to be that is where we want to get to and coming full circle to what I talked about at the beginning of this video my frustration is decision paralysis where there's too much to think about so we don't do anything or we feel like there's too much to learn so then we don't learn and so this little

podcast was meant to remove the overwhelm make you understand that this is something for you this is not something for the rich white men this is something for you there's a time to do it there's an amount that you should be looking to do and you've got to be safe and secure about the platforms you use but really once you have done this shit once once you've done it once you just automate the payment and then once a month when you do your net worth you see how much is grown might have gone backwards talked about that but you're fine because you've done this at a point where you have all your ducks in a row and ups and downs are fine

because it doesn't change my life. And I want to get to a place where we are normalizing talking about our portfolios and normalizing talking about investing, but we're not stressed about it. And if you can go away and you can make a plan to start investing at the right time for you, you might just influence some family members

or some friends or even your children to think this is for them as well. So if you think you're in a position where you're ready to invest, we've got some homework for you. You need to go explore the possible platforms that you could use to start your either, you know, retirement or your ISA investing journey and play around with an investment calculator with different amounts. Look at your excess. What could I put in? What could we commit? We're not going to take this money out. We don't need it in the next five years. We've got emergency savings. Take off all the requirements and go, what could we, what would that look like? And

just have a little look at that. And if all that works out and you've done all the checks and balances that you need to check, press the button and just do it and don't overthink it. Separate to that, and this is for everyone, homework is to really have a think about what you want your life to be like in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Put it in those longer term blocks because time's going to pass. It's going to pass anyway. And money is an enabler to lots of the things that you want to do in that time.

And time is one of the most important components of compound interest and growth. So the longer that you put off building that emergency savings pot, the longer that you mess around with consumer debt or car finance, the longer you mess around with upgrading homes and buying another one and moving up and we want to do this and we want to do that, the you do all those things time is passing and time is one of the biggest contributors to this compound growth that we see it is possible but still really difficult at 60 to decide to do stocks and shares ice or investing if you don't already have a nest egg it doesn't mean you can't do it and we've got tons of you that are at that age but don't put this off until later do the dreaming do the thinking what

do I want my life to be like and then mathematically how could I build a pot of money to support that life for me for my loved ones there we have it I hope for those of you that wanted this episode this kicked it off for you if I missed anything on investing or if there's another topic that you would love me to dive into on the vault Unlocked, then please send an email to thevaultatfinancial.com. And just a disclaimer, The Vault Unlocked is a lighthearted chat around money. It is not giving financial advice.