The Vault with Financielle - “What Should I Do With My Bonus?” | The Vault Episode 62

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Send us a textIn Episode 62 of The Vault, we discuss this week’s controversial opinion, “There's no incentive to pay off your overdraft”. We then dive into our listener dilemmas:💸 "What should I do with my bonus?”💸 ”How do I get my husband to cover more on maternity leave?”We celebrate a listener’s amazing ‘non-scale victory’ - she confidently shared protection advice with a friend buying her first home thanks to what she learned from the Legacy Week episode! 🥹❤️ #CommunityWin #MoneyEducationIf you’d like to share your money win, head to the community in the Financielle app or email [e-mail] your (totally anonymous) money dilemmas to [e-mail] and we may feature yours on a future episode 💌🐝Thanks to our partner PensionBee. They’re a leading online pension provider on a mission to build pension confidence so that you can enjoy a happy retirement.Pension saving is made simple with PensionBee - you can combine, contribute and withdraw online or from the palm of your hand with their easy-to-use app. Their retirement planning tools - like their Pension Calculator - blogs, videos and podcast - all aim to help you take control of your pension and build a better financial future.When investing, your capital is at risk.Chapters:00:00 Introduction00:46 Welcome to The Vault03:08 Overdraft Dilemma Discussion09:06 Student Loans and Financial Education17:32 Bonus Dilemma and Financial Advice27:23 Maximising Pension Contributions27:39 Budgeting and Income Management28:04 Investment Strategies: Stocks, Shares, and ISAs28:16 Emergency Funds and Financial Security30:28 House Deposits and Financial Planning31:50 Balancing Emergency Funds and Investments36:49 Income Protection and Financial Layers39:47 Community Wins and Financial Knowledge Sharing45:16 Maternity Leave Financial Dilemmas55:33 FiThe 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

Oh hey, Laura here. I'm just starting off this episode of The Vault to tell you about the money playbook. I used to be terrible with money, designer shoes, fancy meals, all on credit, but everything changed when I realized I needed to take control of my money. That's why I created the money playbook, a step-by-step guide to help you take control of your money, ditch the overwhelm, and create a solid plan for your future self. With three stages, survive, build, and grow, the playbook walks you through everything from paying off debt to building wealth. Start your journey today by grabbing the money playbook for 25% off with the code VAULT.

Check out the link in the podcast description. I promise you won't look back. Now let's get to the episode. Welcome to the Vault with Finite Channel. This is a safe space where we talk all things life and money and no topics are off limits. Hello. Hello.

Can I just say, if you're not watching on YouTube, I'm loving Lucy's outfit. She's giving like yacht months, giving sailor. No, what's the grandma one? Oh, coastal grandma. Yeah, I see. That's my spirit animal, coastal grandma. I've got my.

She really is. Like, Hamptons though. Not like, the Blackpool. Not Blackpool, it's given Hamptons. Not Liverpool. Coastal grandma and Blackpool. Bit of a different aesthetic, I think. I reside in the Hamptons.

Shout out to our Blackpool grandmas. Absolutely, no shade there, but Lucy you are giving I have to say. Yeah, we get a lot of dilemmas or questions about Lucy's hair, which isn't really the theme of the pod, but if you have them, she's willing to respond on tools and products. I actually all hail ColorWow.

100%, we are not sponsored, but I would love to be. I actually got a dupe. Oh, and from TK Maxx, my hair's a bit frazzled from it. So do not recommend dupes. Sometimes it's worth paying more for the thing that was made famous in the first place. There's a reason a lot of the things. I was not going in my budget.

Oh, it has to. It can't because how thick and long my hair is and I've had it cut. You'll be buying it every month. You have to drench it. It says you have to drench it. I'm like, yeah, no shit. Of course she said.

You do have to drench it, but I, sometimes I will and sometimes I won't. Yeah. I would say give it a go. Sometimes I do like half leave-in conditioner. Yeah. Half drench. Yeah.

But. Might be worth it. Honestly, when they say what a great name, half trench. Yeah. But. Might be worth it. Honestly, when they say what a great name, because I was like, wow. I was like, I get it. Like it's a really good name. Because I would want, if I, Chris Appleton, kind of a sheens hair stylist, Kim, and JLo,

I would want it named after me. But actually it's very clever, because it's like, wow. And if you, any video people are like, wow, this is amazing, and I'm like, it's really good branding, but it's a really good product. It's really good, no phrase. I haven't used it today, I thought, actually.

You can probably tell. I know I'm writing about my hair, so. They might do, you know. We get a lot of non-finance stuff coming in. We do. Random stuff. No weird requests, but it's time. Controversial opinion time for today.

There is no incentive to pay off your overdraft. Oh, this is from someone the other day that wrote in. There's no incentive to pay off your overdraft. How many people are stumbling through life still living in their student overdraft? Yeah, original student overdraft. If it's free, is that like, if it's in like, sorry. There's no punishment.

Do you mean if there's no interest rate or fees, so an interest free overdraft has no incentive? You've not like gone out purposefully to go and get a loan or something that you have to like pay. Yeah, and it's not costing you to be in it. No, it's like money gifted to you. It's like end of the month, it's like, oh yeah, a couple of hundred pounds,

it's not that big of a deal because it's gonna get replenished. Oh, roll into my overdraft. I used to do that all the time. I lived in my overdraft. Not, we obviously get dilemmas where they're like, I live in my overdraft and I'm like at the end of it. But oh, for every month, me and Neil would go into our,

before doing financial, like a couple of hundred quid into our overdraft and we'd be like, it's fine because in two days time, I'm gonna get paid and it'll get us replenished and we'll begin the journey again. I would agree there's no incentive unless you're on some sort of money journey to not be in your overdraft.

It's not that like thing of like, I'm debt free. If you just like clear a little bit, clear the little bit of your overdraft that you're in. No, but the most powerful thing is to get rid of an overdraft. As in go, I don't require this, can you please take it from me? Yeah, I shut my student, I switched my student account,

which turned into like a graduate account and then just turned into a normal account, but it still had an overdraft on it. I was like, I'm scared. Yeah, you don't wanna rely on it. No. You don't need it, you shouldn't have to need it. I know a lot of people do and that's why

we've created Financial because we've created a methodology whereby you shouldn't require it. But I would say the majority of people rely on their overdraft to get to the end of the month. Yeah, it's just such a low barrier debt. Yeah, I feel like. Didn't ask for it, it's gifted to you by the bank. Stresses you out and like, I can't imagine,

I'm not great at mental maths. And so when you end up in your overdraft and then your salary goes in and it might tip you back up, hopefully, it's still, you don't know what you're working with. Cause like, say you were paid 2000 pounds net from your salary and that goes in and you're in an overdraft

and then you get up to like 130. Oh, like you don't know how much, how, cause you're not, you must have a budget. I don't know. I definitely, you're not, you mustn't have a budget. I don't know. I definitely, like you said, feel for people that, for some people it's an emergency lifeline and thankfully, you know, that there are low interest options. It's something that I always say

when you're looking at different bank accounts, if you are someone who does slip into overdraft and you're not in a place where you've got a good emergency fund yet, you can really navigate fees and you can look at some people offer small fee free overdrafts or, it might be an allowance to go in a little bit

if you're always hovering around the lower amounts, some people get paid little and often. But when people have just got this like bad smell of a student overdraft that's just been there and been there and been extended and been extended. And at any point that interest free status could be pulled. And it hangs over people like the carry, because everyone knows it's a debt.

Like I know it's a bit different because you don't get a bill, it's just there. That's why it feels different because you don't get the bill, you don't get a printed, you bought this and this. Whereas with a credit card, it might become a bit of guilt and a need to want to remove that monthly reminder that you're kind of overspending whereas overdraft,

it feels so different because it's in your current account. Yeah, it feels like it's yours, it feels like it's allowed. I love the idea, you know, if you're listening to this today and you have one, and it's because it's just in case, and like you'd be mad not to, and you know, everyone says that you should kind of have it

if it's interest free especially. I think you should think about doing what Holly said and ringing them up and saying, I want you to remove it. You know, you need, that's why we talk about a mini emergency fund and mini emergency fund is the equivalent of your overdraft. And if you have, if you're well into your overdraft, treat it like a debt.

So order it in your debt snowball, order it like a debt. So order it in your debt snowball, order it in terms of where does it sit in your debts. And so if you've got a credit card debt that's smaller, focus on that first, you know, leave the overdraft and just carry on as you are because you already are in that space. But it's so freeing to build up a mini emergency fund, pay off your overdraft and say, no, thank you.

Can you take it off, please? Can you just remove it? And I'm probably- How many people actually do that? They're like, why? The person at the end of the phone's probably like, are you sure? Why would you do that?

Well, you know, but it's, there's one thing, it being like a financial number, like a debt on your net worth, like it's a factual thing, but it's the silent feeling of you owe that. And at some point it's like, you know, that nag. And at some point, it's like, that nagging thing at some point, I have to pay that back at some point.

Like I need to get out of my overdraft. Oh, you get excited for payday, whoop, whoop, whoop. And it's like, oh, it's not as much as I thought because it's gone to my previous overspending straight away. There's no, like, I have to go and pay it off. Like, no, it's taken away from you. Whether you like it or not. I remember when I first got my student account

and it was like before the like loan even came in. And I remember I was in the Trafford center with my friend and I was in Zara home when there was Zara home in there. And I bought something from my, like my whole senior room that I didn't even have yet. And it was like, I was like, oh, I don't, I like, I've literally got no money. And I was like, I've got an overdraft.

And that was the first thing that put me into my student overdraft. Literally like a little vault. What was the thing of that? Have you still got it? From Zara Home. No, I think I've been to it like, halfway through uni.

But you saw it as free money. Yeah, it was like, oh, I've got an extra like, grand and a half. And then every year it like went up. But I think when I graduated, it was like, I think the limit was like 3,000 pounds. I was like, that's insane. As well as getting a student loan,

as well as getting whatever else you might have got. I had friends that were like constantly always at the bottom and then like, they'd be like, oh, let's find the student loan. I'm like, the student loan is gonna get you to zero. Yeah, and then you pay that back. Like, that's not free money either. It is a bit like a badge of honor at uni.

How much have you got? How much are- I think it was a bit of a badge of honor. People were like, oh, and then we overdraft already, like, thinking it was cool. There's so much financial education needed specifically when you get to uni, because that's where that chunk of money

is thrown at someone that has never managed money before. You can, you know, a lot of people in college might have had a part-time job, so they're used to getting bits of money here and there, but not a huge chunk of money that they're expected to budget. I still don't understand why it's not given to people monthly.

I just don't get it. I wanna go to Freshers Weeks, right, and be like, right, this is what's gonna happen, Freshers. You're gonna be given this, you're gonna be offered this. Listen to us old women. President company excluded, sorry, you're even with me. You're gonna listen to us, not gonna, like, do you think you could not do it? Would you be willing to not have your overdraft?

And just see, like I said, there's an element of privilege to what we're saying because some people, it's a lifeline. The majority, it is not a lifeline. Our biggest, and this is speaking from experience, it's not speaking from opinion. Our experience when we speak to our community about student loans and student overdrafts is they ran it, and credit cards actually, they ran it up like they were on 100 grand a year in the city when they were in student halls. They can't remember what they spent it on.

They're coming out, we're then on top of that with your additional student debt. And then years, decades later, they're still paying it off. Yeah. What we're really good is to get everyone off. Everyone wants us to go into uni's all the time, like please, and I'm like, they need to make money. They don't want us going in there going, don't get student loan, don't get this, don't go to uni, like we would be the worst advocates

for them, but I would love to get some of our community members that have been burned by student loans, by credit cards at 18, by all the stuff that's given to you, the education's not there, buy now, pay later, get them on a sofa and share their story with people. Yeah, but tell us actually, if you're listeners, you can on Spotify at least,

you can definitely even send us a text that you just respond to it. You can message through the platforms, you can email the bot at financial.com. Tell us about your student experience. Are you still in debt years later? Is it your biggest regret? Yeah, what would you say to a 21 year old now?

Yeah, I think that's a good thing to do. Look, we've got time before the new uni year, obviously, because we're still in spring, summer now. So we've got a while. What would you want to tell someone? Because we might be able to come up with, like I'm now, I know, we get carried away, don't we? I'm thinking like a pamphlet or like an ebook

or something with students. And it's not us, it's messages to students. Like a letter by a 21 year old. A collection of what you would have done differently, what to be aware of. I think we could do that. That could go around. We had a lady a few months ago, pay off,

finally finished paying off her credit card that she opened when she was 18 and she was 30. It's just the gateway. Like a constant line of credit that she's been building up, paying off, building up, paying off, building up. And finally, with the methodology and everything that we teach,

she literally was like, I'm done. That's a long time to constantly be spending money that's not yours. Sorry to break it to everyone. It's not your money, like you've got to pay it back. Just the student loan thing's just absolutely bonkers and it's becoming a bit of a crisis, I would say. There's loans, there's the overdrafts, there's the credit cards and there's, we've talked

about this before, but even the concept of university. So, you know, there could be also some other content that we do over summer as people are awaiting their early-level results. Helping parents and students, potential students understand that there's options, like you don't have to go to university or if you're going to go, be mindful of the course you're going to do. Yeah. What job are you wanting? Stopping people before they're going in because that's not happening.

What job do you want? Like really, if you've got a good idea of what job you want, is there an alternative avenue whereby you don't have to begin that job with hundreds of thousands of pounds? Because that's what it's going to be for a lot of people of debt hanging over your head. Is there an alternative route whereby you can get paid to learn the job that you're going to go into? And there is, I'm telling you now, there's a better way that has to be. And if not, studying more mainstream courses

rather than something quite niche, because I think we're seeing that lots as well. We've talked about before in the marketing world, where actually, if you're gonna go into marketing and PR, go join an agency and make tea, you will earn way more than. If that was me now, I'd be getting a part-time job to generate income, living with my parents,

if that's possible, and it might not be for a lot of people, and going to an internship somewhere. 100%. Would never, ever go and do a marketing degree anymore. But there's no messaging about that. There's nothing, there's no one, like it's like intervention. There's no intervention into that stage of life

because universities are all like, yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, come on. Everyone's incentivized. The colleges want you to go because it improves their ratings. Because you can still live the student life and not be a student. I was like, go and stay with your mates.

I stayed at Laura's all the time. I was in college or high school. I went and stayed to get a little bit. We'll all have a friend in the unit. And you know what? I think nowadays a lot of people do live a student life when they're a graduate, like an early worker. You can still live like that.

You can go, people do like weekends away with their friends more often. They do like trips. They travel. People getting like married later than not like tied down early with children. So people did that shooting mad stuff because they thought, oh, I'm gonna have to be an adult

when I leave here. It was like now people are getting married late 30s. We're kicking it way down the line. We don't wanna grow up. Kids late 30s, early 40s, marriage whenever you want, if you want it. Home ownership, not many people can afford to do that. It's a very different life now.

That's so true actually. There's no pressure to go and live the uni experience. No, definitely not. Oh my gosh. Don't wanna live the uni. Have you seen the bathrooms, toilets, living conditions? I defy any of you girlies that wanna go and be a uni student, go and look in the halls. want to go and be a uni student.

Go and look in the halls at uni students. You don't. I went for a walk and like walked past my old uni house the other day and I was like, did I really romanticize this or was it always like this trashed? I was like, definitely this trashed. And then Lucy and I went on a gales.

She would have been doing that as a student, well you would with your overdraft. And I said to my mom, I was like, God, it seems so much worse than it is. And she was like, Lucy, it was awful. Some parents must drop the kids outside and be like, Jesus Christ. We should have been like, mom, what are you doing?

Why did you drop me? I mean, I even did spray like, oh gosh, she was like dish running away with a spoon at the end of a street. Yeah, yeah. She just got coffee in a can. Yeah, I was in Fowlerfieldowfield halls, I was all right. This wasn't even a uni question, but this is what happens.

This was about a red dress. Don't ruin anything. And another thing we want to get on our soapbox about is. I do worry, we talk about it a lot. We've done a lot of student loan dilemmas because people are struggling. It's obviously like. There's going to be a big shift soon. And it's not going to be that they're going to pay off the student loan dilemmas because people are struggling. It's obviously like- There's gonna be a big shift soon.

And it's not gonna be that they're gonna pay off the student loan debt, sorry. That's what you're hoping for. No, they're definitely not. But for coming back to the original point here with the overdraft thing, just imagine shocking that person at the bank by going, hi, can I remove my overdraft?

I just get excited thinking about that. In fact, can we ring for you? Can we? Group call, speakerphone. Hi, we've decided that Shelley no longer requires this overdraft. Please remove it at your earliest convenience. You've even got telephone voice and everything. Okay, time for first dilemma of the day. I'm interrupting this fabulous podcast

to share this week's controversial money opinion from Pension B. I don't need to worry about my pension, it will just sort itself out. Ladies, what are we thinking? Agree? Disagree? Well I wholeheartedly disagree, although I'll be honest, I used to think that way before I realised how preparing for retirement would benefit my financial wellness today. I genuinely sleep much better at night knowing the work I put in now will ensure I have a healthy retirement when the time comes. That's so true.

Life is so unpredictable and it's important to plan for the future. But I know a question we get asked a lot is, how much should I save for retirement? Thankfully, our friends at Pension B created a pension calculator that helps to work out how much you should put away annually to create the retirement you deserve or expect. Just move the sliders up and down to find your sweet spot.

Although remember this is just an indication of what you could receive and it isn't a guarantee. Okay ladies, Finan Gel has spoken. Nobody has a crystal ball so it's time to take control of your future with the help of PensionBee. Download the app today to get started or head to pensionbee.com forward slash UK for more information. And remember when investing, your capital is at risk. Help, I'm torn. I just found out I'll be getting a bonus and rather than being stuck in the dilemma of what to buy,

I'm torn on how to save it. So do I A, take it all and put it into my savings pots. I'm building a big emergency fund and getting married this year. B, taking half towards my savings pots and put half into my savings pots? I'm building a big emergency fund and getting married this year. B, taking half towards my savings pots and put half into my pension, or C, do I put it all into my pension? Can we talk about, she starts the dollar with help.

I mean, pay us the money. I was thinking the same thing. Tell me someone who's got, yeah. Who's got stressed about a decision rather than stressed about planning. I quite like it though. Do you like people being stressed about? We get a lot of people actually stressed,

money coming to them, because we're not used to it. It's always the opposite. It's like, help, I've got a big bill that's just landed and I don't know how to navigate. It's like people get given like an inheritance or a bonus. Yeah, help overwhelming. So her first option was, she's getting married. So she's building up her big emergency fund and she's got this wedding pot. Her second option was she's getting married, so she's building up a big emergency fund

and she's got this wedding pot. Her second option was half in that, half in pension. And then the last bit was all in pension. And obviously the super helpful thing about putting money into our pension is it reduces our tax liability. It depends how your pension is set up. Is it a salary sacrifice as to how that impacts your tax?

Or is it a regular one where you contribute after you've been paid, so it comes from your net pay? And so then your pension company will kind of claim the first 20%, but then you will also, you might be able to claim more of your higher rate taxpayer. So definitely there's a big incentive there for pension, but not a lot of people would sit there and go,

should I put my bonus into our pension? So like massive, massive financial points. And it sounds like everything else is kind of in order. The big thing with pension, because she doesn't say how old she is, but she could be an older bride and closer to that retirement. And that sometimes is an indication of actually,

if you're a bit behind and you can do, I really should advise everyone to do this actually. We should all be rechecking in with our pensions. So what kind of lifestyle do we want in retirement? Money Helper, the government website, it's a really good website to be looking at pension calculators. So how much do you think you might need?

Like what size of pot? And kind of work backwards from that. You gotta do a little bit of Googling but it is really simple and the websites do help you and you can see if there's a gap. And we should all know that. But obviously the more time you have, the further away from retirement you are,

the less pressured that is. And how many of us as well, I think people forget. We compare to our parents and grandparents, a lot of them are mortgage free, and like, all were mortgage free in like their mid to late 50s. So you could have had a lower pot really, because your expenses might not have included, for example, mortgage.

Whereas now, with mortgage rates, people buying homes later in life, people having- Cost of living generally is just higher. It's just not comparable. So you can't be like, mom, what was yours? Dad, what was yours?

Like, no, no, no. Go and have a look. And based on your expectancy to have paid off your mortgage and all these things, like don't just assume that you're gonna be mortgage free in your mid fifties as our parents were. Yeah, you have to, there's a lot of good rules of thumb. You can find that online about how to calculate that figure,

but everyone should really know it. I have to confess, I probably haven't done it for a couple of years. I haven't done it ever. Well, we'll do it. We might do it on an unlocked maybe and walk someone through how they might do that. Financial planners also do this obviously much better and much more accurate. And if you do have a particular lifestyle or a particular earning capacity, it's a really good thing to go and speak to a financial planner and they will plan.

This is literally what they do. They work backwards from the kind of lifestyle that you want in retirement. So that's important to know that you get a return on your money because it's tax free sometimes, that's insurance free if it's a salary sacrifice. So you get an uplift on your bonus or you get to keep more of your bonus, however you kind of look at it

and you are going to be investing that, it's going to be great, it's a really good option, but you have other goals. And so if you are doing your, what I call business as usual investing, then it could be a really good opportunity to fill up the parts that are kind of sooner goals and hit those quicker.

Because when we've hit those goals, it's kind of full circle. You might then turn to put more into investing. I do like halfway one. Do you know what? Do you know what? It's not 50-50 necessarily, but one thing you could do is if you've decided that you wanna put away, for example,

5% of your, a 5% pension contribution or a 10%, she could even look at the bonus and do that. So replicate, you know, for every thousand pounds she's earning, if she's putting 100 into a pension, do the same with the bonus and carry on the percentages. So she's done both, but not necessarily like 50-50. Those goals are happening. She will want to get married, you know,

and she does want to save. So yeah, I'm tempted to, I like that one, but that's kind of a D because she kind of said split. She said 50-50, but you know what I mean? Like why not mirror? And a lot of people do this, and this is exactly, by the way, what self-employed people should do. Mirror the auto-enrollment percentages as a minimum,

have a little look at that, and just always have it in your mind. For every thousand pounds that I make, I'll always put X percent in pension. It's just a really good discipline. Yeah, rather than just 50-50, because that's like doing the 50-30-20 rule, like it's not as clean.

There's no method to the madness. Yes, it's a nice round number, but it's not doing the 50, 30, 20 rule. Like it's not as clean. There's no method to the madness. Yes, it's a nice round number. It's nice and clean. It's not personal to you. And financial means everything is personal to you. Like the methodology is personal to your income and to your outgoing. Yeah, I agree.

I was like 50, 50 is the one that feels more comfortable with me, but it's just because she's thinking about lots of things rather than just one particular thing. I don't feel like you sound worried about the wedding that's coming up because otherwise the dilemma wouldn't have been sent in. You'd be like, well, obviously we've not saved enough

for the wedding and I think we're gonna go over budget. So logically the bonus is gonna go towards that. I like that you think in short term and long term and that's exactly from an investing point of view, how we should be thinking. Pensions can be a great investment to me because you get the tax relief and you get the top ups and it's just, I don't know,

I'm very passionate about pensions even though I would never have said that to her the whole of 10 years ago. I'm passionate about pensions. I like free money and investing. Like, oh my God, why would you not? It's funny because I think without me introducing Dee, we would have both breached our playbook rules really,

because she talks about it's an emergency fund. She said, I'm getting this is the bigger one. Yeah. Because she doesn't sound like someone who- No, no, she doesn't need a thousand pounds one. Yeah, she says building my big emergency fund. Yeah. Yeah, so strictly if we were following the flow, actually.

Should go there. But it should both were going. You can quite financially well. If money comes into my lap, do I want it to go towards something that will grow? Well, that's why I think I like the percentage idea because in the playbook, what we want is, from the offset, you should be contributing

to your pension. I personally never believe you should delay retirement investing to pay off consumer debt. I think that, same with if you're self-employed, I don't think there's ever an excuse to not put money into your pension. You just do it on a percentage basis. If you mentally decide I'm like an employee,

it's auto enrollment, I'll put this in, you put that in there. It's not a bonus or a nice to have, it's like a hygiene factor. It's taken off, it's like it's a tax. And I just think it's because I come at it from the danger of not doing is there's never enough money. There's never enough money.

In a family budgeting sense, it will always come to the bottom of the list. If you're self-employed, there's always something else. You'd always rather put something else through the business, you know, like expenses. All the family that we need to pay for the holiday. I'm like, bugger off. So I think mentally saying that I always default,

do X percent is a really good way. If you're not having to pick a number, you're just having to pick a percent and then whatever you make, that would fall in with Playbook because it's continued investing on a percentage of your income in accordance with typical auto enrollments, then you fill out your emergency fund. But it is interesting, like for everyone listening at home, you know, if you don't know what the Playbook method is, there's an unlocked episode on it way, way, way back.

It's probably unlocked number one actually, I think it is. And there's a playbooking app. And so you can have a little look and see where you are. If you're like an OG or you followed us for a while, you'll know where you're at. If I said to you, everyone, I'm gonna give you a 10,000 pound bonus today. It's gonna come into your account today.

You should always know what that would be for. So, and this is where the playbook stages help you because if you have, you know, you've got your mini emergency fund, but you've got 25,000 pounds worth of debt, you really shouldn't be saying, right, I'm going to put five in a holiday pot and then five off the debt.

If you were planning to budget for a holiday and that was five, then the part of it that's like, you should just be saving that up on a sinking fund basis. You shouldn't be moving all that to the sinking fund part and going, yes, I saved my holiday. I'm so bad, I always think, I go, holiday, but whenever there's money, I just go, holiday. But no, you don't need to. You strictly shouldn't go, holiday. But no, I don't need to.

You strictly shouldn't be doing it because- Well, I don't need to because I've got sinking funds set up that will facilitate holidays that we've got planned this year, because that's the rule of thumb. Because if you do, what happens then is, you move the money to holiday part, you go, yay, and then you go-

Spend it on shit. Well, in your next budget, you don't have to do your holiday fund because you've done it. It'll go to spending. It won't go to the excess at the end. And so if you come into 10,000 pounds today, where is it gonna go?

The playbook should tell you where it should go. I'm opening a Lysa. That's what you would do. Yeah. So you're gonna do a Lysa. And you'd probably do it, what, for you and Neil? Yes, both of us. You'll do one each?

Yeah, yeah, cause we need to. I think it's four, I think you put four in and they put one. Yeah, five total. I think anyway, but it's, you'll then, that's eight. So then you've got two more. What would you do with the extra two? Pension, because I am behind on my pension

because of the maternity leave that took. So I'm constantly, every time there's an opportunity to top my pension up, I put the, more than we would recommend in terms of percentage cause I'm top my pension up, I put the more than we would recommend in terms of percentage, I'm trying to catch up and I follow the methodology and my access is in a good place. Pension is where I need to focus my effort. So importantly, you are in Grow.

You've ticked off everything else. And so your, any money that comes in this month would technically go in your budget. What you meant to do is your income might be predicted to be, let's say five for our numbers. Oh, I put it all in at the top. And then you go, oh, I've got an extra 10. So we've actually got 15. It flows through your budget.

It goes in the income. It's not a bonus effectively. So when she's doing her budget, it would all go in the top. It wouldn't be, and you wouldn't just add it to your excess at the bottom. It would be like, oh, this month. So you would be putting it towards two lifetime ices,

possibly could be stocks and shares, could be cash and then pension. Lucy, what would you do? I would split between pension and stocks and shares. So you're in Grow also, you've redone your emergency fund. I don't want a house. Yes, exactly. Well, that's why you skipped over. I'm skipping out for now. You have your emergency fund, You don't have consumer debt. You're not saving for a home.

So you've flown down. Your big life goals, part of the playbook, are kind of your sinking funds. And so you're able to travel, you're doing nice things. So it would go down to grow. I'm obviously gonna ask you now, Lydia. I would have said put on my holiday, but now I know that's wrong.

Just emergency fund then, fine. Yeah. Lydia's emergency fund is gonna be the biggest emergency fund then. Yeah. Lydia's emergency fund is going to be the biggest emergency fund ever. When are we going to get you in grow Lydia? And what you expected to happen, like Lydia's like. She's going to be bailing out the government soon when they're struggling.

I know where to go if I need money. That's all I'm going to say. Someone in this room that's got disposable cash. Who will never believe she's got a big enough emergency fund. By the way, we don't know the specifics of Lydia's emergency fund. It's an in joke. I'm just guarding the claim. We know that she never, she can't stop putting money in her emergency fund.

It's just pure anxiety. I hope. Lydia, it's a high yield savings account. Yeah, it is. No, okay. I'm going to change it then. Stocks and shares, ICER. But there's a big dip at the moment, isn't there?

So that's been stressing me out. Everything's on sale. I put more in. There she does. More in. Wall Street over here is like. Bye bye bye bye. I've got Alex finance bro boyfriend going,

what is the saying? Bye love. Be greedy when others are fearful. She's going, no. Say it again. Be greedy when other people are fearful and be fearful when other people are greedy. I've heard that before.

Noted. We're all gonna walk out of here. Oh my God. I've got my suit on, my three piece suit. We're giving masculine energy in here today. Boom. Boom. Boom.

I better go and speak to my son. What is he up to? If he's sat looking at his investments at the moment, we're all in trouble or not, we should be following. Should we? But Lydia, you do have to find the right limit for you and it might be higher percentage wise or amount wise or like number of months expenses.

Have you got a share obviously? I'm just gonna get some therapy here, like some financial therapy. Come on, second to our office. I saved a house deposit, but I'm not using that now. I'm gonna save it. Should that just be my emergency fund?

And then I do the other, oh, should I still keep? Do you intend on buying a house? In the next? In the next like five years. You do? So. Yeah. You intend on buying a house in the next five years

and you've got a house deposit sat there. Yeah. Okay. I don't think it should be your emergency fund. I think that, and so if we're looking to use a cash lump sum in the next five years, and I know you know this, but I'm just reinforcing it, it doesn't go into stocks and shares

because they can go up and down and we could have a five year blip and then a five year boom. And at the time that you want to use that money, you've got like a figure in your head and the problem with stocks and shares is obviously goes up and down. And so it's right to keep anything that's ring fenced for potentially buying a home away from stocks and shares for that reason. If it's a five year timeline, that's about the limit that we say for leaving it in. It's not like you're buying it next year. So some people may be tempted, like if you can afford to lose a little bit, for example, personally, I might invest it because it's five years time, but if you suddenly wanted it in one or two years,

so it's right to not put that in stocks and shares. I think that it's a really hard one because what you have to do is scenario plan and think what would happen if. So if you have a house deposit, if you decided that was your emergency fund, at any time that you suddenly wanted to buy that home, you've not got an emergency fund or it reduces the deposit amount.

The full circle moment though, if you bear with me is, let's say you decided to have a lower emergency fund because you've got a house deposit. So when we're talking about emergencies, you've got access to cash. You could, this is for emergencies. And so if you needed to delay that house purchase because of a particular emergency in your life,

where let's say you wanted to be off work for a few years and that was your protection for it, or you decided to go paint for a year, whatever this emergency is, I'm making it up. But all you would do is just delay the house purchase. And interest rates are okay now, but the poll we're gonna at some point come a bit down and you're not gonna make as much in in high yields and typically it would make more in

the market. If you drew a line under it and said, I've got a house deposit, I've got an emergency fund, I'm going to kind of lump them together and have this really big pot of money that's a mixture of both, you then move on to grow and you start investing. Even though investments go up and down. If it's in a balanced portfolio, it's still like, it's like cash, it's a number. So if you decided to put, let's say like, you know, over a thousand pounds a month, let's say you wanted to hit 20 grand a year in your stocks and shares, ISA, you can liquidate that if you wanted to help buy a house with it. It might go up and down, but hopefully it's gone up.

So what we're talking about here is not stopping, once you've filled up that emergency fund and house deposit part kind of thing, stopping it and spending everything, you move on to the next stage, which is still saving in a way. It's just putting it into the market. So if you decided to stop saving your emergency fund, accept that you've got this pot of money that could also act as your emergency fund,

and then started to invest, it all ends up in one big pile anyway. Do you understand? Like with what you would invest in, I mean, your capital's always at risk with investing. We're super big on that here. We never say invest, you'll make loads of money. But history has shown us that it will go up over time.

And even if it went backwards a little bit, if you put it in a balanced pot, in a balanced pie, in a balanced portfolio, a balanced fund, it won't go down so much that you'd be so disadvantaged. That makes sense. Does it? Because I just sort of tripped myself up. I like I've technically finished my emergency fund,

but like I just picked a number. Yeah. So it's like, I don't know how much it should be. I would model a number. I won't just pick a number as in like, I would go, okay, what do I feel comfortable with? So it might be six months expenses. Yeah.

And once that's done, it's done. Yeah, I do that. Goodbye, done. Pick an amount. Pick, it's done. Goodbye, done, move on to the next. Pick an amount. See, because of your risk profile, I would say you want the higher months. So let's say, it'll make you feel better. Well, even in a year.

No, six is high, I think she's all right. I'm not at six. Do you want to be at six, or are you happy with where you're at? There I go. Maybe I'm happy, I don't know. How many months are you? It's like almost three months. Okay, I would probably do a bit more.

Only if you're a person that- Is that not including your house friend or not? That's not including her. Yeah, she's fine. No, you are fine, but if you sleep at night, would be a six month one. Then once you're at six month, it's shut shop, put it in a high yield savings account.

Don't worry about it. Don't touch it and then move on to the next thing. And have a bit of fun with the investing part. There is then possibility for it to grow and invest in things that you're passionate about or not. Like you don't want your funds to be invested. I don't like thinking about it. I like all the things he wants.

I do like that idea of like, it's your war chest and all you have to think is, I might not, if an emergency came, it could not delay my house purchase. That's the worst that could happen, they say. And your money, the excess money will be being diverted into your investments. So it's yours anyway.

Like I said, you're not then using that to travel with. You're not going, I'm done, I'm never saving anything else. You're still saving the same amount you just deploy and get into funds. And I think that'd be a really interesting journey for us to track with you. Do you know like absolute newbie to it, feeling a bit nervous, where do I start? How do I ease myself into it? How do I get comfortable? How do I get comfortable with the drops? Like it has dropped this past few months, this quarter since earlier in the year, since January and since kind of what happened in the States. A lot of us have had unease around pensions

going up and down. It is a bit stressful, but for us we're a long way from that. So it can kind of just stay there. And on an individual basis, if you've got children, you might want a different emergency fund, size fund, or if you're in a couple, whereby you pay for a mortgage together, your emergency funds look different.

It's different to every individual. And I would also, if I were you, I'd look at income protection, maybe. Tiny amount. It's peace of mind. So like your emergency fund is all built, it's your how to make you feel good. There's a stack of cash.

There's making sure that you have a profession that's like transferable skills and lots of different jobs. It's not so niche. Yeah. If you hated us one day and were like, I'm done with this. That would never happen. The ability for you to be able to go, I can go and get another job and this isn't the

niches thing in the entire world. That helps. Being in a relationship helps. This is how you build having having that house deposit helps. Income protection, the thing you're worried about is if I suddenly, you know, had a mental health issue and I can't work because I've picked that one because you don't have a manual job,

like if you broke your leg you can still. You're not gonna slice your finger off right in a blog I hope. Yeah. But you know, do you have for, you know, 10 pounds a month, some cover that could cover a proportion of your salary to help pay your bills for two years? Yeah.

For that tiny amount of money, you don't have to have this hiring emergency fund. So when we build up this armory, I call it, of all these like- Loads of layers of different things. Defense, layers of defense, you then can afford to step into investing. Step into investing in ISA and also step into investing more in pension. Pension one's scarier because it's for later. Yeah, it's locked away.

That is stresses people out, because I'm like, would I ever need it? And I think you're there, I think until you have bought a property and been in that space, and you are investing in your pension, having it accessible, but everyone should know, if you're getting 10 grand, where is it going? If you want to explore the income protection thing, it accessible, but if you want to know, if you're getting 10 grand, where's it going?

If you want to explore the income protection thing, by the way, if you go to financial.com and head to the protection page, we partner with an amazing company that can go and explore that for you. We're not going to tell you what you should get, how much, or you certainly don't know your circumstances, but you can speak to people

and they will try and connect you with a female provider if that's something that you want, you can ask them for that, but you can go and find out more because that's the only one where Laura goes, why don't you consider income protection or could you look at critical illness cover or whatever the thing is? And I'm like, oh my God, it just creates such a cushion. Makes you feel better. In your brain that I never, because it used to give me the it, we talked about insurances

before where it's a lack of understanding and it's the people that have ever sold to you before and it's always when you're getting a mortgage or no, no, no, like that's a perfect example whereby a small contribution each month could just give so much peace of mind for someone that's in a, maybe in like a freelancer role or a creative industry. Yeah. Looking after money on your own or if you've got dependents. There's loads of different examples. And I think that's what we talk about, like find what feels good. For some people it's low, low emergency phone, lean into going quite aggressive. For the people it's convincing them to you're okay. Be happy with that number and move on to the next.

Yeah. Was that a dilemma? That was two dilemmas. That was Lydia's dilemma. Live Lydia's dilemma. It was a good one. Well done Lydia. Yeah it was.

Okay. Time for our community win. Speaking of Legacy Week. This is whatever the financial equivalent of a non-scale victory is. One of my friends was in the process of finalizing buying her first house and she was saying she has to choose protection and insurance for the mortgage. I was able to suggest a couple of things to look into and even sent her the Legacy Week podcast episode.

It felt so nice to even just have a little bit of knowledge to share. And I know the podcast episode will be super helpful for her. Before finding Finite Child, I wouldn't have had the slightest idea about any of this stuff and would have just replied with something like,

it's all so complicated. Yeah, I love that. There's a library of knowledge, yeah, these podcasts. Remember, we said that, we said to refer back to and share with someone. Especially the unlocked ones, we said, we wanted someone to be able to say, oh my God, my friend could need that send.

Yeah. Just listen to it. Even the very fact that her friend mentioned income protection or like protection and life insurance because she's getting a mortgage, that she went, ding, I know something about this. What do I know about this? This is what I know.

Versus before it might have been, well, like she said, I would have responded with that years ago. I'm like, it's so difficult. Like, oh, look at me, I'm so female. But even giving someone some pointers, because when you're speaking with your mortgage advisor, they can help you with what to choose. But they're also the salesperson.

And so- They're getting a kickback. Well, they are. And listen, they should for that advice and that support. But it means you've got that one-on-one intense offer. And if you're not educated- It's awkward. It's like walking into a boutique.

Oh my God, like pretty women. Like pretty women. There's one worker behind the desk. And you walk in and you're like, shit. And there's not one other customer in there. And you're in that awkward thing where you feel like you have to buy it. So I bet so many people, you're right,

feeling the pressure with that mortgage advisor. Cause like, so now you need, you're like, you're just going on the journey. You have to be dragged along. It's like the difference between a confidence. Like let's say you're going into a designer handbag store. And if you are blindly going in and you don't know a lot about that brand, that could be really overwhelming.

You don't know what you want, you don't know what the hardware is like, you don't know what the trend is, you don't know what the different prices are, you're going completely blind. Versus, if you know a little bit, you can steer the conversation. And so what I love with what she said is not only did she know what it was, she gave her a couple of things to ask. And so that leads to with your mortgage advisor, financial advisor, or with, you know, if you go direct online, you can, or if you're ringing someone, you can ask the right questions so that you get the right product for you. And

if you don't get an answer you don't like, you don't like, at least you're kind of mindful of that. Where you're just going, show show me what to sign, what should I get? What do you think? I mean, God, most of us would say, what do you think I should do? Because we've gone there to get a house. I'm not really bothered about the insurances around it. You're blindsided when you buy your house.

You're like, give me the keys. What am I buying now? Yeah, yeah, I'll sign anything. I wanted to buy like the vase. I wanna buy the fresh cut flowers. I love chatting to them. I do love chatting to mortgage advisors because they're in such a, like a gatekeeper position

where so many people are worried about getting accepted for a mortgage. Will I get a mortgage? Like, will this credit impact my bills to get a mortgage? It's because it's the thing you need to get the home of your dreams, your first home, your dream home, your family home, whatever it is. Didn't realize how powerful mortgage advisors were like. So powerful, they're the gatekeeper. Approved.

Yeah. Don't let your top decline. But so basically people will do anything to just be approved for your mortgage. Imagine us being mortgage advisors now, like we won't let loads of people have a mortgage with us. We'd be rubbish. We'd make no money.

Not really. You've got two cars on finance in your household. You've got- I'm sorry, you use Klarna. This is really irresponsible. Sofas on finance. You don't own that sofa that you sat on. Deliveroo.

Delete that app. I wouldn't. We wouldn't let people get a mortgage. Cause I'd be like, you are not adding another thousand pounds liability to your income every single month cause you can't manage. But we would give mortgages to people that were really good with their money. That didn't have loads of credit.

Yeah. We would be that bank. Okay. If anyone's listening and they want to set up a bank with us, what we're thinking is only giving it to people that are financially responsible. Yeah. Show financial wellness traits. Yeah. Instead of just email to thevault.financial.com if you want to set up a bank with us and we'll make it pink. On Wednesdays we wear pink. We need to change out to Thursdays. Although none of us wear pink.

Ever. But I like that win. Thank you very much. And if, again, like if you have a conversation with a friend and you just think, oh, I kind of know something about that. Or I might be able to help them with that. That's what they're there for.

Share them, say, saw this and thought of you, listened to this and thought of you. They won't be offended, I promise. Okay, time for our second dilemma. Just a quick one, Laura here. If you're wanting to take back control of your money, ditch debt, make better decisions and build wealth for the future, the Financial app is for you. With Financial, you can track your spending on the go, hit your money goals faster, and create a realistic budget that you can actually stick to. Not to mention, you'll be part of

an exclusive money community who share tips, offer support, and celebrate your successes along the way. Click the link in the description to download Financial and start your free trial now. This is your sign to take control of your money today. Okay, I'm done. Let's go back to the vault. How do I get my husband to cover more on maternity leave? When I was on maternity leave with my first child, I didn't pay into my pension and missed out on a lot of contributions. This time round, my husband and I have agreed to use our maternity sinking fund to keep my pension going so I don't

fall behind again. But the other day we were talking about our student loans and I realised his loan was much lower than mine. We were on similar salaries and had similar loans. But because I wasn't making repayments during my last maternity leave, mine has grown way more than his. It feels unfair and now I'm wondering if we should also be using some of the sinking fund to cover my student loan payments whilst I'm off. For context, my loan is around £60,000 so it feels like such a big number. The problem is that this would take another chunk out of our maternity savings and with only two months until the baby arrives I don't know if it's the right move. I feel like there's so much to pay for

and I don't want to stress about money whilst on leave. How do I bring this up to him? Should I push for both pension and student loan contributions or just accept that maternity leave means sacrifices? Ooh, another gender pay gap for people. It's not a gender pay gap, is it? A gender, like, financial gap that we did not spot

when this dilemma came through. I was like, I put it into the Slack chat, did never even consider this. Like, obviously we've talked a lot about the not paying T-pension when you're on maternity leave and I fell foul to that twice because mine and my husband's financial knowledge around that wasn't apparent at the time.

And only later did we learn that that would have been a really financially astute thing to do. We wouldn't have had enough anyway to do that. We didn't prepare, we didn't know what sinking funds were. So that wasn't a reality for us at the time, but did not realize that this was a thing. And I genuinely don't know what you're gonna say about this because I haven't got an opinion on it

cause I just didn't consider it. I'm really torn. I am a massive proponent of the pension one. So you would typically still get paid the right, your employer would still put the right contribution in and you should check that by the way. But your employer will continue to put the right contribution in, but you don't have to.

And cause it's all relative to kind of the maternity pay. And so voluntarily, and sometimes it's cleaner to not put it into the work one and just kind of open a stick which is self-invested personal pension and do it separately. So that's a good thing to do anyway, by the way, I'm a big advocate with pensions of not just having your work one. I have a work one that if the tech's good,

if you can get an app or if you can pay into it easily from your phone, that you shouldn't be logging into it once every five years. You should have it. When the pay drops on your annual statement, you're like, who is this? No, you need to be engaged with it. You need to make it feel like a bank account.

If you think about when we're excited about checking our bank balance and how our savings are doing, it's the same thing. That's why I do encourage sometimes a self-invested personal pension as well, because one, people don't realize that you can't have more than one. But two, you're just more connected with it.

And so again, when we get these, we've just had a big chat about that. If you come into a bit of money, where should it go, tracking how it is. And so that can be a really good way of not messing with, like sometimes you're not logging into your work pension when you're on maternity, you're not access into your work pension when you're on maternity, you're not access to your work account,

lots of really weird things. It might be easier to just set up a really simple one with your bank or with another provider and make those contributions like it's a bill, because as we've talked about, why should a woman's pension go backwards when she's on maternity leave? It just isn't fair, she's already on less money.

You're making enough sacrifices already. You're not sacrificing your future. It sounds like your partner is well on board and I love this. This is such a good example of how you can work together when it comes to maternity leave. The student loan one is the hardest one. So I'm definitely a proponent of, as I said,

not extra, but maintaining that pension investment so that you can stay on the investment trajectory for when you're older, because you shouldn't be behind. The loan one, if you think about loans separately to this situation, the student loans in this country where they are taken out of pay, they're taken in proportion to your pay. So it's not like a typical loan where it's a fixed payment and you've got to pay it regardless. You only pay if you earn a certain amount and then it's a percentage. And lots of people do these calculations to kind of see if they'll ever pay it off. And eventually, you know, they kind of, you won't need to pay it off. So you have to have that

analysis of your loan anyway, I think, which is, am I likely to get close to paying this off? Because otherwise it's like a tax. So in that scenario, I'm kind of reluctantly saying this, but unless you have a lot of excess money and you are intending to work and pay that loan off, because you might not mathematically be bound to pay, be destined to pay it off, but you might want to. You might say, I'm getting rid of that loan,

that's gonna be going. So therefore, yes, why should my, as a couple, why should my loan grow and grow and grow more because she's, she won't be earning enough to pay anything off, so that should be increasing. They might say, no, we're gonna carry on making those payments because it's my goal to pay it off. And therefore, I shouldn't be behind.

If though, it's unlikely that she'll ever pay it off because of earning and earning capacity and stuff, then it is technically throwing good money after bad. I wanna throw a red herring in here though, right? You're expecting a baby, you're not gonna split up. Let's pretend you decide that you're gonna divorce him later. So let's say you didn't do the extra into the pension and you didn't do extra into the student loan.

When you are looking at separating your finances, you will start to look at things like, you know, pensions, savings, assets, and most things typically are split equitably. So if he has a higher pension than you, if you're advised right and if he's playing ball, then that's kind of taken into account usually. And you can come to it,

especially you can use mediation for this, but you can get to a point where hopefully you agree on how it's split. But I can imagine that student loan is handled differently. I would love to know more actually. I might be really up for speaking to, I've got a couple of divorce lawyer friends and ask this question.

Because let's say you didn't overpay yours and it grew and grew and grew, but as a household, he's carried on being paid down. Out of the salary. So it might be that student loans are not really included. I don't know, I'm being very transparent about this, I really don't know, but you could have not been paying yours down

and gone, oh, there's no, it's fine. His is being played down. Cleared. Cleared. Yeah. And then you part ways and the conversation and it might be a fair negotiation. It might be, well, that's yours. Like that's not a norm because debts are taken into consideration. But I don't know. That was a, it's a bit of a red herring one or a left field thought. But you could be making decisions

which disadvantages future you. Yeah, but I like- And not treating each other equally. I like that if it's not a goal, why bother? I love the analogy, like it needs- Holly needs everything to be fair and just, so she struggles with that. I know, I can't sleep at night if it's not fair,

like it will play on my mind, but I kind of like the, no, no, is this a goal that we've discussed together? Have we ever really passionately talked about having clear student debts or is it just too far out there that we're just gonna treat it as a tax and not worry about it? And then focus more on the pension because that's investing.

That is yours. That is an asset. And it's your asset. And listen, the husband- The totally is tight anyway. And the husband has to pay off what the legally has to pay off. He's not like overpaying a student loan over here and then you're not.

The government takes the student loan company and takes the cut from his earnings. So it's not like that's an intentional thing. You're already like five steps in front of many other people that wouldn't even consider sorting out that pension contribution with your partner because technically it doesn't have to do that either. Like that's a someone coming to the table,

seeing your side, like that's a massive win. Not that it was ever like a something to win, but a win as a couple to be able to say like, oh, when your mom went on maternity, when you're younger, we decided to make sure that she didn't go behind. Like that's like a massive step forward for like being a feminist.

I just love that and you can't be a feminist by doing that. Loan thing's massive though, isn't it? Because it's earnings connected, whether it's maternity, whether it's working part-time, whether it's taking a lower paid job to help with childcare, all the things that drive the gender pay gap will also result in a lower rate of paying off loan and could be leading to an increase in loan capital

because it's not been paid off. And so the interest is kind of going up and up. That's fascinating. It was fascinating when this one came in, I was like, I never thought about that. And my husband was like, oh good, something else for you to be pissed off about. I think I read it aloud and I was like,

did you realize because we've talked, so I think it would be Laura and I have been in the national press for talking about the gender pension gap and being on maternity leave and Laura paying into it with her second and third and me not paying into it with both of mine because it was before the time and just not realizing and stuff.

And we've been very forthcoming and transparent about it with our community so they don't kind of make the same mistakes that I did. But this one, I was like, oh God, another one, sorry. It's a great dilemma. I've never had anyone ask that before. I think, like we said, ultimately, it needs to link to your personal goals.

And if that is gonna be something that you can do, and you've got the spare money to do it, and that loan payment, that loan, sorry, total is within reach, then why not? But we say that to everyone. This is regardless of whether you are like on maternity or not. You should be knowing whether you are

wanting to pay it off or not because this is where people say, should we overpay? Some people apply for refund of student loan overpayments. And you might have seen that in the press before, people going, oh, I got 300 quid back. I've seen people in the community talk about it. Again, you should only really be doing that if your full intention is not to pay it off,

because why would you hand good money over after bad? It's the same thing. If you are intending to pay it off, just go back, leave the money in there, send it back. It's like bad money thatance you don't need. Great dilemma. Great dilemma. Any final words today?

I think it's a good reminder for people to check in with that, to acknowledge that when pay drops or when work part-time, this is the gender investment gap, it's the gender pension gap. And obviously, she and I won't get, and obviously. She's a lone gap. Yeah, add it to this. It just impacts it and just being aware of it helps. Like, you know, it's another thing to sort out, but it's definitely a pragmatic conversation

to have with your partner, if you're planning on adoption leave or planning on maternity or paternity leave, have a look at your different packages and make some plans ahead of time because you will find places to spend that money. So treating a pension like a bill is one of the best things you can do.

It really is just like a bill. It's so simple. Yeah. That's all for this episode. The vault is now closed and just a quick disclaimer, the vault is just a chat or online for many topics. We are not giving financial advice.