Brian Byrnes on the Lifetime ISA: How to Get £1,000 Free From the Government

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This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions (Buzzsprout has no transcript for this episode). Speaker labels are NOT available; all turns are unlabelled.

[0:00]

as soon as you say tax relief people are just gone but it’s free money from the government towards your retirement a lot better people who self-describe themselves as being financially confident typically had twice the net worth as people who describe themselves as less financially confident and that was across all income levels just do baby steps like really baby steps like today learn what a cash ISA is and don’t do anything else just understand that and what it does and feel comfortable with it and maybe tomorrow you can might come back and look at another topic get up to £1,000 free every year from the government towards your first home you can put in up to £4,000 a year and the government will give you a 25% free topup the important point is don’t be one of those one in 10 people that has over 10 grand in a pension somewhere that you’ve just completely lost track of because it’s

[0:47]

lifechanging we are not saving enough for our retirement and the number one most powerful thing that we can do is hello and welcome back to the Money Gains Podcast I am Sammie your host and this week we’ve got Brian Byrnes inside the house from Moneybox and oh my God it is a ramp packed conversation full of everything you need to know about ISAs saving and investing Brian is a financial adviser by trade himself and is now the head of personal finance at Moneybox you are going to love this one so stay tuned and let’s get started on the Money Gains Podcast the Money Gains Podcast Brian welcome back man how are you good good very good thank you thank you for having me back yeah I loved first chat I think I could talk to you for hours about personal finance I don’t think we would ever run out of topics

[1:34]

hopefully that sets us up pretty well for today yeah I think so obviously if people do want to go back and check out that episode please do it’s it’s available but I think we’re going to try and steer this conversation a little bit differently but for someone who doesn’t know you and perhaps is watching for the best time on YouTube because we’ve got a brand new sparkling YouTube channel um what do we need to know about you to understand where this conversation might go today so there’s probably a few things I think like we’ll talk about it a little bit in a minute in terms of uh Moneybox which is the company I work for head of personal finance there but probably for the context of this conversation uh I’m a qualified financial adviser uh so I advised individual customers for a decade before joining Moneybox so over that period I’ve had thousands of money conversations with people about saving and investing retirement paying down

[2:24]

debt buying houses all that sort of stuff um probably the second thing again just like for for this conversation I haven’t always been great with money myself um certainly not like in my 20s I think there’s always a perception that people who are financial advisers talk about money their like finances themselves are absolutely perfect and that can be quite intimidating definitely so I think it’s important to acknowledge that as well um and we can talk about that a little bit later as well um and the third thing is I’m genuinely incredibly passionate about all of this stuff so you mentioned about talking about this stuff for hours I can and do get the uh facility to do that with my job so I will relentlessly kind of chat about this stuff um my wife mocks me mocks me endlessly for when we’re on holidays and I’m reading like Finance books and keep keeping up with like papers and that sort of stuff but

[3:12]

yeah genuinely passionate about everything that we’re going to talk about today which is great sitting pools side with the psychology of money basically exactly yeah yeah yeah I’ve been there I’ve had exactly that same conversation like are you really doing this again like why are you sitting there reading this type of stuff like it do you not know it all by now like yeah but this is a different perspective and it’s really interesting yeah exactly yeah my wife will take it one step further and she’ll take photos and pop an Instagram and just be like oh he doesn’t switch off stff um yeah no I genuinely love all this stuff uh it’s great obviously head of personal finance is a pretty cool title yeah what does it mean though that’s the real question you tell me I’m going to ask you I I’ll start with I’ll start with Moneybox anyway so uh I don’t get killed when I go back to the office but Moneybox is a digital saving and investing app uh we back in 2016

[4:01]

under the kind of premise of rounding up your spare change so that’s a fairly familiar feature now you spend 150 and 50p goes towards your kind of saving or investing account so that’s how it all started uh We’ve grown significantly kind of since then uh we now have just over a million customers we’re looking after just over about 10 billion of assets on the platform um and that’s across saving accounts investing accounts kind of all kind of retirement do a lot of Pensions consolidation um and we also have the largest community of aspiring first-time buyers uh within the UK as well so we have a full home buying service where you can go from kind of putting your first deposit all the way up to your your first keys so that’s Moneybox my role is kind of split basically in three at the moment one part of it is financial education so we do a huge amount of Education work

[4:48]

with our customers so that can be things like Market updates so investing updates uh property updates we do a bit quite a bit on retirement as well we do webinars videos social media all the stuff that that you know kind of very well so do a lot of Education stuff second part is kind of going out and talking to anybody that will listen frankly about Moneybox personal finance doing this sort of stuff which is very good uh speaking to journalists kind of going to events um and then the third part kind of more recently is what we call kind of public affairs so advocating for our customers as much as we possibly can do with people like hmrc treasury politicians those people that have the kind of power to do kind of policy changes that would help people hit their financial goals so listening to our customers and then transmitting that up to the the powers that be so yeah my role is kind of split between three it’s a massive cliche but

[5:37]

there’s very much no uh kind of typical day which is is good for me well every time I see you talk about money I think it’s excellent and I think like cats off to you for like taking on that role and really championing it not just for Moneybox but for personal finance and US creators as well in general so I think you’re doing a brilliant job of it and I think it’s going to really set us up for the com ation today because you have your fingers in many piie sir um but I think you’ve got obviously as a brand you’ve got an enormous amount of data at your disposal you’re seeing things left right and Center you’re seeing Trends come before we’ve even spoken about them being Trends in other areas what are some of the key things you think you see around people managing their money right now there’s probably three main things

[6:26]

that come to mind one of them is a kind of than Moneybox kind of picture but we see the effects of it and you certainly will as well in terms of the appetite for everything to do with personal finance be that products be that providers be that content people absolutely want to learn about this stuff there is sometimes I feel a bit of a misconception about people certainly when they’re younger that they don’t care about this stuff like we see the exact opposite about it they really care about this stuff and they want to learn I mentioned kind of before we got started at the last uh kind of customer webinar that we did uh it was about pensions and again there’s a conception that people just like don’t care about their pensions or whatever it might be we got over a thousand questions in for that customer uh for that customer

[7:13]

webinar that that we did which is incredible because once you have that um first bit of Engagement obviously people are more likely to do things that will hit their financial goals afterwards so we’re seeing a huge amount of Engagement as I say with Moneybox as a whole but uh also with like any content or anything that we put out which is which is great the second thing that we’ve seen over the last like 3 to 5 years kind of through the pandemic and also the cost of living crisis is people are remarkably resilient uh with their financial goals so we regularly get asked by people did you see a drop off in people saving investing during the pandemic or more really with the cost of living crisis and we haven’t seen anything really like that obviously the cost of living crisis has been incredibly difficult for for a lot of people but what we have seen with our customers is that they fincial goals and their financial aspirations are one of

[8:02]

the last things to to go we did some research and basically people cut things like uh spending on takeaways they cut that by half in 2023 I think it was and things like night out for for example but they’re saving an investing goals that is something that they will absolutely stick with it may take them a little bit longer to hit their financial goals um but it’s absolutely not something that they’re willing to give up on despite the enormous kind of cost pressures elsewhere so that’s the second thing and the third third one is kind of like just a macro thing but I find interesting we see a lot of Trends around people being really good at saving and investing around payday um so we have a feature within our app which is called kind of payday boost and you can basically put in whatever day that you get paid and then it boosts it puts 50 Quid 100 quid whatever it might be into your saving or investing account on your payday and that’s uh been very very

[8:51]

popular because people do get the idea okay I want to pay myself first before I go off and then spend for the rest of the month so yeah few bits from from our data I’m really pleased that you say that people are like actively doubling down on education cuz like we had um Ashley on from go Henry earlier and he was saying also that that’s what they’re seeing as well like active partic participation in young people learning as well and then also people like Millennials and genen z and you know I forget them all of the Gen whatever they are these days but people of all ages now are actively pursuing it because it’s readily available to them in the form an app like Moneybox where you present the information to them in an easy to understand way like it’s very visual it’s very easy to understand is that a contrast thing for the brand to

[9:38]

deliver education like that through the app yeah absolutely um we try and do it without getting too kind of jargony but like multi- Channel and basically meeting people where they are exactly so some people consume uh Financial education best by reading it so we send out kind of Market updates on a monthly basis some people like to do it on socials so you obviously know that kind of uh better than anyone we we put out a lot of uh video content as well as I say we host kind of webinars that people can turn up to or they can watch it in their kind of spare time uh afterwards so yeah we really lean lean into it and as I say not just in one medium because people consume things in in very different ways 100% that is literally was the thing that I wrote down on day one of Up The Gains was people like to learn by reading listening and watching so we have to operate in all spheres so how do we do that and what’s the best ways of

[10:25]

doing that it just so happens that we sort of hit socials the quickest but the podcast is a big factor of that I think we’re like 84 episodes in people just like to walk the dog and learn that’s how I learn I listen to two three hour podcasts about all different types of things you know from economics to to business to Comedy you know it doesn’t necessarily uh matter it’s how you consume are you there as a brand and can people relate to you when you’re there and if you’re doing the job in those in that way you can have quite a big impact and so you know I think it’s encouraging to hear a brand taking on that because a lot of them will just s of do Instagram yeah and that’s it for example or throw up through Tik toks and wonder why they’re not getting the traction yeah and even across those kind of social

[11:13]

media platforms we’ve got Alice here who does a incredible uh job on our forms but you got to tell the content to each of those because again what works on Instagram what works on X what works on Tik Tok as I say is all kind of slightly different um and as I say people are on kind of different platforms different times and consume things differently so you really do have to lean in and meet people where they are what are you seeing that’s a trend that perhaps you want to see change and that you’re not as happy with so I think this won’t be a surprise to anyone but the UK as a nation we are a nation of Savers um and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing like it’s great that we are able to save and people are able to put money aside and there’s a huge amount of competition in the savings Market which is absolutely great um especially given the way interest rates have gone over

[12:00]

the last kind of three four five years you can get a def decent return on your your savings rate and as I say we do see people shopping around and we see people being really active with their savings which is great we are not a country of investors and that in my view like has to change over the next 5 to 10 years people are missing out enormously individually in terms of hitting their financial goals by not investing when they might be able to and we’re also uh missing out as a country as well in terms of that money going going into what can be like productive assets for example and investing into UK stock market or Global stock market whatever that might be so um we do need to change that from a culture of savings towards a more balanced towards kind of investing there are so many reasons behind that from my view as say from my kind of financial adviser kind of background

[12:49]

we’ve made Financial advice incredibly inaccessible to people people saving and investing small regular amounts there’s really no reasonable way of getting Financial advice these days of somebody telling you okay this is what you need to do you need to open up a stocks and shares is and this is what you need to put in it you need to have significant amounts for a financial adviser to tell you that we’ve also made investing look far riskier than it actually is certainly over the long term we’re all very familiar with the risk disclaimers that we quite rightly have to put out in terms of value of your investment can go up and down Capital risk all that sort of stuff but the general perception from the public is that investing is a lot riskier uh than it actually is over the long term and we’ve also made it completely unnecessarily complicated like a good investing plan as you well know can be very very simple it’s very

[13:37]

quick and easy to open up a stocks and shares uh Isa and put in five minutes five minutes put in an index fund and put in a couple hundred pounds a month it really is no more complex than that but as an industry we’ve made it look like it’s only something you can do if you have hours to dedicate to research or you’ve got huge amount of money or whatever it might be looking at the charts exactly yeah so there’s a huge amount of reasons behind it but over the next 5 to 10 years we just have to change that balance from saving to investing in your opinion then if we’re looking at that because I completely agree with you like it’s something that I think that’s why at the moment that’s all my content is focused on is really trying to just break that taboo and break that kind of subject in or limiting belief that someone might have around that how do we challenge how do we tag

[14:26]

that how do we change this I think it will take time and there’s not one foul swoop that we can do one policy thing that the government or the FC do all this sort of stuff I think it is going to be on all of us as kind of providers people that work in the space just championing investing relentlessly and making it not seem making it as it is of this is not something that is particularly complex and this is something that almost everybody should be doing yes there are things you need to do before you start investing so you need to pay off off your kind of credit card debt or whatever it might be build up an emergency fund but after that it’s just day after day week after week just championing investing because it does help people hit their financial goals far quicker than they would be able to with with just savings yeah I completely

[15:13]

agree and first time we spoke Moneybox had just really started to bring this into the strategy that’s developed quite a lot since then what’s kind of the new things that you’re doing in the investing stocks and shares ISAs the world in terms of the offering so I think there’s there’s quite a bit that we are doing we over the course of the last year for example this is more on the savings side but we have had a very competitive cash Isa over the course of the last and we have attracted a huge number of uh new customers from that which is absolutely great but what we’re taking that opportunity then to do is educate them about other things and it’s not just investing it’s also retirement as well so talking to them about things like pensions consolidation for example but what trying to do is make that

[16:00]

Journey where it’s appropriate for somebody make the journey between a cash ISA and a stocks and shares ISA seem not scary and seem like a complete kind of natural step and make sure we were just talking about this this morning in the office we had a meeting of how do we make sure people feel reassured and comforted and supported on the investing Journey because that flip from cash to investing can be very very scary and financial advisors do an absolutely brilliant job of a recommending what you should be doing with investing so recommending a product and an investment strategy whatever that might be I think they also do a really really good job of coaching people along the way so when I was a financial adviser I would say to somebody look after we’ve set up this investment plan for you I’m going to email you after a month 3 months 6 months and 12 months and I’ll give you

[16:49]

an update of kind of how we’re doing and you can pick up the phone and speak to me anytime if you’ve got any concerns because if you’re Investing For the First Time and the market Falls that’s a really scary thing and all your fears investing are stting to come in terms of oh I knew I could lose money all this of but we know once you’re invested over the longer term there’s plenty of these ups and downs kind of along the way so we’re really trying to make that Journey from cash to investing as not scary as possible and just make sure people feel supported if they do then decide to to start investing as they should be doing so it’s very much on an education pie one of my favourite things to do at the moment is listen to podcast while I’m out walking the dog and as you can imagine especially those about money one of my favourites right now is coming from PensionBee one of the UK’s leading pension providers the Pension Confident podcast is a monthly show hosted by the

[17:37]

wonderful Philip Alam who is joined on each Episode by a panel of expert guests they cover topics from pensions to mortgages right through to ISAs the Pension Confident podcast is available wherever you listen to your podcast or you can check out the show notes below for a direct link when it comes to the show it’s important to remind you that everything discussed should not be considered as Financial advice and when you invest your capital is at risk tune in to the Pension Confident podcast right now so I think it leads me very nicely into your new research piece which I was reading I loved it it was brilliant like really cool to see and very interesting to see like Liverpool and Manchester areas being perhaps less confident with money and certainly less confident around investing what were some of the sort of key things that you sort of found in that investment piece

[18:25]

and and what is it essentially for the people listening to this yes so this is our financial confidence index and basically earlier this year we went out to 4,000 people and we asked them all sorts of questions about their their finances so about how they manage debt how they start saving if they invest what they do with uh their pensions and if they own a house how did they save up for all that sort of stuff we also ask them questions like how confident do you feel about your finances how much time per week do you spend on your finances one of the interesting things that did come out of it was the geograph IAL splits which you mentioned which was really really interesting um if you go on to the Moneybox to learn Hub there’s actually an interactive map of the UK and you can click on the different areas and see how confident do people feel about their finan yeah it’s really quite it’s quite addictive and interesting I

[19:14]

think behind the geographical stuff there’s some very interesting things about financial confidence uh and also about people’s kind of incomes as well when we kind of cross referenced uh people’s net worth and wealth over time Time Financial confidence was far far more important than their income so people who self-described themselves as being Financial financially confident typically had twice the net worth as people who describe themselves as less financially confident and that was across all income levels so it wasn’t a case of people who earn loads were more financially confident across all income levels if you described yourself as being financially confident you were twice as well off as people who are less financially confident from saving from a saving investing perspective so as I say income less important confidence really

[20:03]

important when you dig into it a little bit deeper then what makes people financially confident how much time they spend on their finances again kind of controlling for everything else in terms of their income or whatever it might be the more time you actually spend on your finances the more confident you kind of become over time and then that feeds into your wealth over time as well so you could really map out those things as something as basic as spending half an hour on your on your finances week really adds up over time uh to how financially secure and resilient you are would like reading books and things like that match into your financial confidence as yeah absolutely it’s you can completely understand for people it’s kind of this self-fulfilling thing if you’re not confident about your finances the easiest and most understandable thing in the world to do is just to bury your head about it yeah and we do see it generally speaking

[20:52]

about pensions and retirement for example yeah the easiest thing to do with pensions because people feel that they’re more complex than they actually are are easiest thing to do with retirement is just to forget about it and not think about it and bury your head in the sand about it and that translates to wider kind of personal finance as well it’s it’s it’s quite difficult to break that cycle but it is doable if you’re able to dedicate half an hour a week to whatever it might be listening to this podcast going onto the Moneybox uh learn Hub and just reading about what a ice it is what a pension is all that sort of stuff it all adds up uh over time and it makes a massive difference to how you feel about your money and how how much money you have at the end of the day 100% man like one of the big things I’m sort of saying to people at the moment is like just do baby steps like really baby steps like today learn what a cash ISA is and don’t do anything else just understand

[21:40]

that and what it does and feel comfortable with it and maybe tomorrow you can might come back and look at another topic or you know how do I invest how do I set a savings plan up what does compound interest look like and just attacking these small things in say over a 10 week period by the end of that 10 weeks you’re gonna feel a lot better about it rather than just being like I need to learn all of this and then going I’m not going to do any of it and that’s what most people do so I think breaking it down into ways that people can easily understand it you know Moneybox learn Hub channels like ours videos YouTube videos that are just solely attached to that one single topic and they could even just be one minute long the Mad thing is what I will say to people is that it’s not actually that

[22:27]

complicated um once you just understand it it’s just basically a pathway that’s laid out and you just need to sort of pick it up and learn it and then everybody can be all right and kind of make their decisions from there um but that’s so interesting what a cool bit of data to do though I think what do you think feel like came out of that for you as a brand did you action anything from that like we need to perhaps go and Target these areas or these things I think two things came out of it we talk about financial confidence a lot internally now so when we’re designing uh products or we’re designing product Journeys we will always talk about optimizing or maximizing customers confidence throughout that Journey how do we make people feel really confident that they’ve made the right Financial uh

[23:16]

decision I also take that into the work that I do kind of from a policy perspective so when I’m going talking with FCA or treasury or whoever it might be I highlight the importance of kind of financial confidence and just look people need to feel confident in these Financial products that we’ve got out there that is what will maximize their financial uh resilience and security kind of over time so that um piece of research has just really struck home for us in terms of internally how we design uh products and Journeys and also how we talk externally and advocate for our customers as well yeah and I know you all you as a brand and many other struggle including myself about giving proper financial advice to people because there is a a a line that not many people understand where it is and there’s obviously compliance issues on

[24:05]

one side from a financial institution or financial brand perspective I know the FCA are actually looking at this right now you’re actively having these types of conversations too to be able to be able to give decent amounts of financial education well the financial education that we would want to see from Brands like yourselves how are you getting on there and what do we need to know about that do you think yeah there’s there’s quite a big difference between kind of financial advice and that’s sitting down with the financial advisor and they will learn everything there is about your financial situation and then they will make a recommendation on what you should Doh what we need to do as Financial Educators or people who are not advisors we can tell people about this is what an ISA is this is what a pension is but

[24:53]

we’re not allowed quite rightly tell people this is what you should do because we don’t know enough about your kind of financial situation so there’s that line between kind of advice and and guidance people think because I work for Moneybox and we’re not a financial advice firm that I have a negative view on financial advice which is not the case at all I worked in that industry for a decade I have seen how powerful Financial advice is for helping people hit their financial goals for making them feel confident about their finances it teas you up to be successful in all areas of your life the problem is nowhere near enough people are getting finan advice today or can AFF it we have made it so inaccessible for the vast majority of people only about 8% of the population get financial advice today so that means 92% of people are either

[25:41]

figuring it out for themselves they are dialing into things like this listening to kind of podcasts educating themselves or listening to people kind of like Moneybox and getting that kind of education what the FCA is looking at now and this could be one of the biggest changes to our industry in in a decade is allowing people like Moneybox and other providers to be able to be more helpful and more forceful in what we help people with in terms of uh say product suggestions or whatever it might be you might be a Moneybox customer Sammie and I might know exactly what the next best step for you is on your kind of financial plan or your financial goals the way the the regulations are written right now I can’t tell you what that is even if I’m very sure that say for example you want to buy a house so you should be looking at a lifetime Isa

[26:28]

yeah basic you can’t say it and what this regulation is basically looking at doing is just freeing providers up to be able to be more helpful and give people more uh financial support without being fully-fledged kind of financial advisers which makes sense as long as you’re towing the line right absolutely you know there’s you’re not going to be like go and buy the S&P 500 tomorrow John you’re going to be like hey John you’ve done all of these things and perhaps maybe start to look at Cash Isa for your emergency fund or something along those lines um you could be getting much much better rates over here if you did this and those types of decisions are just very like black and white for most people just seems obvious but obviously there’s restrictions and regulations in place I’m so glad they’re looking at it because I feel like if Brands like you and others like you do it right then

[27:18]

that’s just going to help an enormous amount of people practically overnight yeah and and without getting too kind of Technical and compliancy about it there’s something out there now called consumer Duty and everything the financial services firms have to do now everything is measured on customer outcomes so are enough of your customers getting good outcomes from using your products so if we’re able to be more helpful and talk to people a bit more this is what you should be doing with various different products we will still have to measure that to within an inch of its life and make sure that the customers that are using our products are getting good Financial outcomes from what we uh put in front of them so if we can be freed up as I say to help people earlier on in their Journeys because as we talked about financial advice is so difficult to get somebody that’s 23 or

[28:06]

24 just starting on their first job they’re lucky enough to have a couple of hundred quid left at the end of the month maybe they just want to be helped in terms of like where do I need to put this should I put it into a stocks and shares Isa I’ve kind of heard about that I might want to buy a house should I be thinking about a lifetime Isa no Financial advice firm is going to be able to help them today so what we’re saying to the regulator is let people like Moneybox and companies like us just help those people kind of at those very early stages in their financial Journey yeah love that man love that I think yeah when do you think that’s going to be something that they look at uh over the course of the next year I’d be hopeful of being able to have something in customers hands making them feel more supportive more confident towards the back end of next year hopefully yeah yeah I think you know there’s um anab brings having like very good chats with them about us as well and how much we can actually talk to

[28:55]

these people I I don’t really want to be crossing over into the terms of advice or telling people what to do with their money but how much can we educate and how how helpful can we be because at the moment there is very much Gray Line and many people in this industry do cross it I try to stick right behind it um but we don’t know where that is and so I think it’s a bit of clarity for that on how much we can help as well because we’ve built platforms now and podcasts like this to be able to have conversations with brilliant people like yourselves and Brands like you and I think it’s just a shame if we don’t know where we stand um yeah so yeah long hopefully they sort us both out and then we’ll just be sorting people out there yeah they’ve done a really good job so far engaging with the industry and listening to the research that we’ve done as I say

[29:44]

advocating for our customers and this so yeah fingers crossed for for next year it would beely agree major change and customers would see a very in my eyes very very positive kind of impact on how they’re supported by the financial services companies that they use yes Wicked well listen out for that people I’m sure Moneybox will be telling you what to do when that happens so um for someone listening to this obviously we’ve been speaking about financial confidence a lot and it’s like seems like it is a bit of a buzzword sometimes it’s used in a lot of phrases a lot of PR and you know a lot of brands use it what does it actually mean and for you and if someone’s not financially confident or perhaps feels like there’s some gaps in their resume as such when it comes to learning about this what can they do to kind of boost their confidence so we talked about it a

[30:33]

little bit earlier but because of my role I will often get asked for like money hacks or tips or whatever it might be what I’m looking for and like I get the feeling when people are like asking me about that stuff they’re looking for stock tips or like a crypto coin or whatever whatever it might be in order to kind of get rich kind of quickly unfortunately or fortunately whichever way you look at it my tip is a bit more boring but a lot more practical than that and that’s just dedicating 30 minutes a week we talked about it like dedicating 30 minutes a week to your finances and that can be as we say listening to this podcast it can be understanding what an ISA is it can be understanding what a pension is it can be making sure you’re getting the best savings rate uh on on on your savings half an hour a week adds up so quickly like if you get into that habit of it I

[31:22]

still do it today I will carve out 30 minutes of the weekend it doesn’t have to be something that’s kind of stressful you can make it it enjoyable for yourself by saying right I’m carving out this 30 minutes I’m going to sit down with the coffee and this is what I’m going to do this week I’m going to listen to Sammie’s podcast I’m going to go have a look and see what the best savings rate on the market is I’m going to track down that old pension that I have no idea kind of where it is as up to 26 errors over the course of a year and if you do if you do that uh religiously relentlessly you will become much more financially confident very very quickly I’m pretty sure you could POS I know you still do it to this day but for the average person that’s probably enough yeah more more than enough and the hard part about it is just getting started because as we’ve talked about everything to do with personal finances can feel very complicated and overwhelming but as soon

[32:11]

as you scratch beneath the surface you’re like this actually isn’t that difficult I just need to do a little bit of Education a little bit of research and over the course as I say a year you’ll feel much more financially confident and you just like my whole ambition and how I got into like Financial advice is for as many people as possible trying to get rid of that nagging doubt about money that we all have that thing that keeps people awake at night of should I be doing more with my savings like should I be paying off that credit card should that be my primary thing that I’m doing I don’t have enough save for retirement and as I say you can kind of do that for yourself a little bit by just dedicating the time uh the time to do it Clarity is key awareness and that really is like a lot of people even when they say doing a budget they’re like oh I don’t want to do that because it’s going to restrict me it’s not it’s actually just about the

[32:58]

awareness piece so you can consciously spend extravagantly on the things that actually matter to you and perhaps also proportion a bit to your savings Investments of course but like it’s a big difference when you do have that mentality rather than like oh I don’t want to cut back on my Ubers or my takeaways well you know when you look at it you spent 350 quid on them last month you should probably half that and look at what happens as well when you put that1 150 into your investment look at the difference that makes over a number of years and when people go through that I feel like that’s where things change for them a touch and it’s just kind of getting their head slightly out of the sound even slightly out of the sound would just make an enormous difference to their lives I think just quickly on that people are better with money than

[33:45]

they think they are they just don’t quite do it as consciously as you would hope that that they would so a lot of people will just kind of spend throughout the month and then see what’s left over at the end of the month if you reverse that do that thing pay yourself first as you say put a either pay down debt put money into a saving or investing account what’s then left in your account is yours to spend consciously on exactly what you mentioned so as you say every single budget should have room for treats and fun and things that that you enjoy and if you do things that way around in terms of paying yourself first you can do all of that stuff guilt-free whereas if you’re just kind of hoping you’ll have money left to do that stuff at the end of the month you always have that nagging doubt of okay should I be more planned kind of about my finances so just making sure that you’re get doing things the right way around 100% like I have a system the three bank system and

[34:34]

it works really well for me just allows me to proportion every single pound when it comes in it goes into the right accounts and they will have their own jobs do you have something like that for your own finances as well do you not necessarily a kind of three Bank thing but I’ll just get everything out of my account on payday um so I’ll make sure that all of my bills are set up to go as close to Payday as as possible uh so just make sure everything is is paid off we’ve got say small kind of credit card that I spend on make sure that that goes uh anything kind of mortgage rent everything like that so then couple of days after payday whatever’s left there is is is for for me to spend so as I say that’s the way that I do a put individual to to everyone you just need to figure out the method that works best for you do you separate your savings and Investments as well yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely keep them as I say kind of completely separate so there’s limited temptation to to dip into them having

[35:22]

said that like I have a emergency fund which I had to dip into yesterday cuz our boiler broke down that classic thing there you go that’s 500 quid 500 kind of down the drain but that’s exactly what was there for um so I’ve dipped into that therefore my emergency fund isn’t quite where it needs to be so over the course of the next couple of months I need to kind of build that back allocate exactly brilliant you when we first spoke you have a really cool goal system and that you regularly review I think you said that you have a is it one year it threee for you wasn’t it one year in a three year I have a five and yours was a three is that is that right yeah so kind of one to one to three years basically um at the end of every year I will sit down in that kind of um Gap time between kind of Christmas and New Year perfect timing and just work out how much we’ve spent over the year in kind of different

[36:10]

areas and again that’s not the idea of that is not to be restrictive it’s more a review it’s more to be aware of where your money is going um again in terms of that kind of money tip probably number two on that list after dedicating the money to your finances just be aware of where your your money is is going so that might be you’re not actually spending as much on coffees as as you might think like again that’s something that we’ve made feel people feel really guilty about of going out buying a coffee and buying a tree I think it’s A5 pound question rather than a high five grand question exactly so you might be kicking yourself because you like to treat yourself to a coffee kind of once a week or a couple of times a month and then you might be spending I don’t know 4 or500 a month on something that you’re just not aware of or whatever that might be so it’s just being very kind of conscious about your spending and just

[36:57]

knowing where it’s going and making sure that you’re spending your money on things that are advancing you towards your financial goals and you’re not just spending on stuff that is not important to you what’s important to you right now so probably a couple of things um Financial Security and kind of Financial Freedom I absolutely love what I do and we’ll talk about this kind of all day long but that kind of retirement word that we throw about and people are understandably sometimes a bit kind of scared of we have the whole industry has marked that as this is a point in time at some point you’re going to pack in your job and all of the marketing material for retirement is people with gray hair sitting on a beach or a boat or whatever that might be my hair is starting to turn a bit

[37:46]

great I’ve still got quite a long way to go for for retirement but what I would like to do is free myself up to have options in the future and that might be working forward a week for example or it might be um spending more time with with family or whatever it might be so the thing that I’m kind of working towards is just that Financial Freedom part of just giving yourself kind of options in the future that’s really interesting and then I imagine shortterm you’re doing the standard holidays and Christmas and yeah so building back up the emergency fund um and yeah just holidays is something that is important uh to us as a as a family so making sure that we youw Rec where did you go was uh we were very fortunate uh so I got to go to to Spain uh you wouldn’t be able to tell I’m from

[38:33]

Ireland so T tanning is just just not an option but we go back to it like hopefully every budget should have room for these things that you are interested in and passionate about and you also need to obviously have some downtime as well I’m on track to have over 5.5 million in retirement and I’m not saying this to brag guys I’m saying this because I am an everyday person just like you so what does that actually mean well it means that it’s actually possible for you to build life-changing wealth too no matter where you’re at on your journey your age your knowledge or even your Current financial situation so Sammie how do I sort that out well I’ve created something super cool which literally takes one minute of your time I’ve left a link in the show notes to a free money personality quiz which will provide you guys with a free tailored content plan based exactly where you’re at on your financial Journey once you

[39:20]

filled it out you sent the steps to start getting you results from day one and then once you’re ready you can then move up to the next step very easily too it’s it’s not judgy in any way it’s totally free to do and it’s actually really good fun too simply head down to the show notes and click the link there where it says to do the quiz and get your free money action plan right now now back to the show 100% I like my 15% personal funds for fun does there’s nothing will change that yeah like if my savings Investments unfortunately have to take a little bit of a hit like Life’s For Living you work hard we’ve been squeezed left right and Center over the last few years you know wage growth versus cost of living has been astronomically different and so you know what used to be 50 30 20 roll isn’t now and it’s more like 65 or 70% on the

[40:09]

actual fixed costs in your life but nothing should alter the fact that you should definitely be still looking after yourself and enjoying life as well and so I feel like that’s for me Isn’t like absolutely Untouchable I suppose if you don’t if you don’t have that room you just want to stick with the budget exactly the saving investing stuff will will just go and as you say you need to build that in because you’ll stick with it for a couple of months and it will just be too restrictive 100% like I I’m actively talking about something called The Gap at the moment and it’s sort of a thing that I’m trying to work into a little basically a little sort of plan for people but in you know we see outside at the moment like increase your income increase your income increase your income what does that actually look like for people and it’s like well making the plan essentially okay this is my goal I want to have X amount for a

[40:58]

retirement or for Financial Freedom and such working that Gap out so I’m paid £2,500 a month and I can contribute £250 a month to my savings in Investments but for me to reach that goal I need to be investing £ 4400 so my Gap is £150 so instead of looking at all these gurus going oh you need to make 10 grand a month from your side hustle business or you know copyrighting or trading or all these dangerous things as well get rich quick schemes and that type of thing actually creating uh a frame of mind where I only need to go and find an extra 150 suddenly becomes a very different thing and then not changing anything in your life when you get that 150 and popping it straight into your funds and actually when you do that

[41:45]

you’ll probably find that you end up making quite a lot more because you’ve set your goals a lot smaller and it’s just something I’m really actively thinking about at the moment because accounts Like Moneybox are fantastic to help you sort of be able to facilitate this and the important thing about that model is that you’re getting started as well you’re not waiting until okay I’ve worked out I need to save 400 pound a month so therefore I’m not going to start saving or investing until I get 400 pounds a month exactly if you at least kind of get started and I always say this to to people it doesn’t matter how small it might be and this is kind of specifically to do with investing it’s a great idea to start small even if it’s only10 a month because then you’re taking that fear away of taking that first step of investing and by the time you start investing more substantial amounts you’re going to be really experienced about investing you’re going to realise it’s not that scary and

[42:32]

therefore it’s not that big a step if you suddenly decide okay I’m just going to only start when I get a substantial amount of money that’s a really big and scary step to start investing in the stock market at that time so starting small as you say really builds up your experience very quickly oh 100% I tell I say that to all of my family and friends like they’re like oh I’ve got 500 quid I can put in I’m like don’t do that open it with 50 Quid have a play around next month pop some money in there and like let’s do this for sort of five six months and then if you slowly build up your confidence over that time frame I think my my partner started with 50 she’s now at 250 and she’s like actively telling I’m ready to put it up I’m like great like yeah she’s now asking me I’m not saying this is probably a good thing for you you know so and I love that Journey because it is important you and people

[43:22]

still you have to go out and it’s that same thing that you can tell people a million times but until they make that same step themselves or that mistake you know you tell the kid don’t go and put your hands on the thing and they put their hands on the thing because the we’re human beings like we have to experience stuff for ourselves so you know dipping our toe in rather than taking you know doing a full bungee cartwheel into the pool is probably a good thing because if you if you did unfortunately time the market as we spoke about earlier and your portfolio drops tomorrow by 5% which we’ve seen a million times over these are reality things happening for you then you’re going to be like oh my God like this doesn’t work you’re going to sell you’re going to pull your money out and then

[44:08]

you’re going to tell everybody it doesn’t work whereas if you’ve just put 50 Quid in and you’re like okay it’s gone down a little bit but that’s really not the end of the world for you at that point so I just think your great advice completely agree with you starts small and that’s the point about experience because even with all the risk warnings that we know about investing it’s really only the first time that you are invested and the stock market does fall which we can’t emphasize enough is a perfectly normal part of investing over the short and medium term it’s really only the first time that you experience that that you can say oh okay this is what I’ve been kind of told about and I’ve been told I like it I don’t like it exactly and you can then either up your contributions or whatever whatever it might be it’s really only after you gain that first bit of experience and that’s why it is a good idea to kind of start small so you can see how you react to

[44:55]

those Market kind of UPS there exactly exactly yeah that’s why is there because you know go and learn that you know the G7 meeting and they come out and say something about this goes and affects this in this way go and learn that when Trump gets elected that x y and Zed happens right um not advocating for that at all in any way again but this is this happens right and these these things affect markets or you know reishi or Boris says something and look it’s down 2% because of literally that speech yeah um so that will allow you to just kind of feel a lot more comfortable and ride out those waves it’s a really interesting balance that we try and hit with our content is informing people about what’s going on and the reason that markets are going up and down and

[45:43]

also telling them look you can ignore this if you want to yeah exactly you should be investing for a minimum of five years to be able to ride out those those ups and downs right if you do that you can ignore the news over that period on the other hand some people really like to know okay my my account is a bit up this month like why is that and it might be it’s usually due to short-term factors or it’s a bit down I want to understand why that is it’s a really delicate balance to like informing people and especially if markets are down like not scaring people as well so yeah it’s usually a lot harder to attribute why it’s up than why it’s down you know usually there’s a lot more articles on why it’s down because why they get clicks yeah and then they’re telling you that something bad’s going to happen probably every sing single day of the year and actually from a mentality perspective like how I think about my investments this is going to

[46:32]

sound quite weird but I’m positive about my investments whether they are up or down so if they’re up right I log in and they’re up I’m like oh this is this is great um if they’re down I’m like oh this is good too because my monthly contribution next month is going to buy me a lot more stocks and shares than it did kind of last month so as you say you can keep some cash on the side for opportunity or do you just not necessarily no I try and reduce the amount of what I would call kind of active decisions that that I need to make about my own finances so I’ll have my emergency fund and my cash saving set aside and then I will have my investments uh on the other side I tend to be fully invested because as I say it’s all time in the market versus I don’t believe that you can successfully time the market so I just stay 100% invested and write out the ups and downs I’ll get it I’ll get it I only keep a very small

[47:20]

amount back for my like favourites and I’m like oh if you go down I know you’re a great business and so I’m going to double down in into it and that’s the way I’d sort of set it out and that from my perspective is like perfectly valid kind of thing to do a Moneybox for example we have what we call starting options so that’s your cautious balanced and adventurous portfolios we’ve got funds that you can invest in and we also have individual shares like we are not saying to people that there is one right way to go about it and some people like to and are interested in individual shares and that’s that’s absolutely fine it’s just about being balanced and diversified and making sure that you’re not taking on kind of too much risk or trying to make too many decisions yourself that are going to have a detrimental impact to your long-term finances yeah find what works for you exactly you know if it’s like if it’s the cautious thing and like so be it and personal finance is personal it’s Unique

[48:09]

to you so how me and Brian do things versus how everybody else in this room right now does things is every single person is going to be different and you line up a million people and say do a budget you’re all paid 40 Grand you’re all going to have different ones right down to the last pen so like we can’t treat Finance like this highway or no way no and so I think it’s really cool that you have that ability for someone perhaps that’s like I need Moneybox to hold my hand a little bit more in this decision I’m going to go with a balanced or adventurous or cautious option or no I feel like I understand a little bit more perhaps you’ve been on the Up The Gains Money YouTube channel not saying anything but you’ve been learning a little bit more about what index funds are or um S&P 500 tracker fund is for example and I’m going to go and do that instead because I’ve learned a bit more

[48:57]

financial education we come back to that Financial confidence thing so we being able to make those steps but they what I feel like is good with Moneybox is that you kind of can be able to hold your hand throughout that Journey so for someone who is a little bit more nervous on the nervous side doesn’t mean you don’t have to do it you can just kind of follow more of a like set out portfolio for you yeah and we we will actively say we are not a trading platform we have funds and we have shares on there but we say look if you want to buy a share today and sell it tomorrow we are not the platform for you everything that we do is based on long-term investing so when we added the individual shares uh to to our platform we did it in a way that massively advocated for buying or and holding kind of over the long term regularly topping up via kind of weekly deposits benefiting from pound cost

[49:44]

averaging giving a Payday boost whatever that might be yeah so everything that we do on the on the platform is designed for long-term uh investing because that’s what’s been shown time and time again um to be more successful than trying to buy and trade on a on a short ter basis yeah yeah why why bother yeah it doesn’t you know if you want to go and do that you need to go and learn that and probably I personally think you need to go and learn it like you would a degree before you even get into it yeah and so yeah I think it’s a completely different world but people think that that’s the only world that exists so it’s great that we’re both championing this I know Moneybox is extremely passionate about helping first-time buyers and recently you’ve obviously done your first-time buyer uh bit of research there was quite a considerable widening Gap in home ownership timelines between those with and without Family

[50:34]

Support um talk to us a little bit about that it’s very interesting yeah so we went out did another piece of research as say we believe we have the largest community of aspiring first-time buyers uh in the UK we have a huge number of people saving up for their house deposit with us so we have gone out and asked them about everything that impacts that journey of moving from kind of being in the rental market Market to saving up your deposit and getting onto the the property ladder it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that there is a big discrepancy between people who are fortunate enough to be able to benefit from family support during that process and those people uh that that that don’t um you can pop onto the Moneybox website and download the whole report by the way but one of the good things that kind of comes out of it is there is a product there that is extremely

[51:23]

demographically diverse and helps people to say towards uh their their first deposit so I’m talking about the lifetime Isa most people in your channel are most people are probably familiar but basically lifetime Isa is a government incentivized product where you can put in up to £4,000 a year and the government will give you a 25% free topup bonus basically so you can get £1,000 free from the government every year towards your first home you can also use it for retirement purposes but most people that we see at the moment are using it to purchase their their first home there’s a couple of caveats on it that’s important to mention one the maximum property price that you can use the lifetime Isa for is £450,000 and the other one is if your plans change there is a withdrawal penalty from the lifetime Isa which is 25% of the money that’s in there which is actually you

[52:12]

lose some of your own money as well if you’ve got an emergency as well as the government kind of bonus and this is something that we’ve been heavily kind of campaigning for those two things only actually impact a small number of people and the lifetime Isa as we see is an absolutely brilliant product and has helped hundreds of thousands of people save up for their uh deposit going back to your question it’s a very demographically diverse product as well so the benefits of the lifetime Isa are spread massively across uh the country um two-thirds of people who use the lifetime Isa are on under £335,000 of of income um so is not a product that only benefits uh the the wealthy um and also the gender split on the lifetime Isa is pretty close to to to 50/50 which you generally don’t see on Financial

[53:01]

Services prodct as well so despite the fact in The Wider first-time buyer Market yes there are kind of discrepancies between people who get support and not thankfully there is a product out there that helps people kind of regardless of your starting point in life helps you uh save up your deposit to your your first home which is still the number one goal every time we ask customers why are you with Moneybox what are you saving for I want to get on to the property letter yeah and there two types of lifetime ISAs as well so there’s a cash Isa and a and a stocks and shares uh Isa um typically uh the stocks and shares is people get so confused about this because it’s like double whing yeah typically the stocks and shares Isa is good lifetime Isa is good uh for the retirement purpose so if you’re going to be uh saving into it for for a very long time I would typically say there’s a kind of fiveyear cut off

[53:48]

as with anything or cash and investing if you need the money and you’re going to be hopefully buying a property within the next 5 years you should probably look at the cash version of the lifetime Isa if you think it’s going to be five years or longer or you think you’re going to be using it to supplement your retirement income you can look at the stocks and shares ver version either of those you get the £1,000 free from the government uh up to £1,000 if you put away £4,000 yourself plus the interest plus interest plus whatever stock market gains you might have as well yeah if you use the stocks and shares brilliant account isn’t it it is a brilliant account and as I say the things like the house price cap do tend to get a lot of media coverage and traction we have seen with our cust given how it is geographically spread across the country the price cap actually only impacts about 1% of our customers 99% of the people that are saving into a lifetime

[54:35]

Isa don’t have an issue with the property cap that is not to say it’s not something that we have not been campaigning on to Future proof the product kind of going forward we do think some something should be done with the price cap um but it is an absolutely brilliant product and also it gets people into really good saving and investing habits early in life typically people come to us for a lifetime I about the age of 26 they’ll save for 3 to 5 years and then they’ll successfully withdraw and they’ll have purchased their house which is great they will very quickly move on to their other financial goals then because they have been successful in their first major Financial goal in life and they will do things like okay I need to sort out an emergency fund I need to sort out my pensions whatever it might be so the lifetime ISA is absolutely brilliant for setting people up for financial resilience for for life and the great thing about it is you can combine it

[55:22]

with a partner absolutely yeah so like that’s a game changer for a lot of people or friends as well uh you can both use the lifetime ISA in the Moneybox app you can hook the two of them up you can both get the £1,000 free from the government and then when you come to purchase the house together you can both use your your lifetime ISAs it’s absolutely brilliant yeah yeah game changer for sure I mean you know I did helped to buy and that was like a big deal that got us onto the property Market at the time but you know I think Martin says Martin Lewis says it all the time he’s like just open open it up put a pound in yeah because you don’t have to actively start contributing to it but you know you just want to make sure that you’ve got it the clock rolling right exactly and there’s two reasons that you would do that one is you need to open the lifetime Isa before the age of 40 so that’s a cut off where you you can’t open it anymore and the second one is your money needs to be in the account

[56:10]

for 12 months before you can use it to purchase a home so putting the pound in that starts the clock on on both of those yeah so cool like a grand for four grand it’s just what a tradeoff like where are you going to get that type of money from anywhere else and average for us for people who withdraw from the lifetime Isa successfully to purchase their house they’ve got just under two and a half Grand of of government bonus over the course of their their saving on on the lifetime ISA so that’s two and a half Grand that you wouldn’t get anywhere else yeah um so it’s incredible helping hand to be able to get onto the property that which we know is just so important for people yeah and extremely difficult in this country let’s face um I want to move on to sort of you obviously actively talking about later years now as well and

[56:59]

people I think people even in this room I won’t name names but um are struggle with getting on board with their pension at all um and I get it because it’s like doesn’t exist you know it’s it’s that thing but really interesting stat I came across was one in 10 have over £10,000 not accounted for um from previous workplace pensions and that money can actually go upwards from that point on there could be a lot more um I will my mom did this the other day found £65,000 wow from a next pension which just blew my mind and it and changed her life overnight but she hadn’t done the work and did the work and found out that bit consolidating

[57:48]

everything now and moving forward from that point on with a little bit of a plan she has about five six years before she’ll retire changed her life overnight and I I feel like people just don’t like they will actively save and they’ll perhaps actively start investing but then just forget about this other pool of money that they have as well how important do you feel like it is to just sort of think about this early yeah it’s a it’s another area of kind of personal finance that we have made look a lot more complex than it it actually is pensions are very very simple they are an account that will help you retire with massive tax advantages so we talked about the lifetime Isa of the government bonus for most people the topup that you get on your pensions for money that you pay in is even better than that kind of 25% bonus so if you’re paid 100 qub from

[58:38]

your job for example to get that money into your bank account you need to pay tax on it at the moment those tax rates are 20% 40% or 45% so to get the money into your bank account that 100 quid is reduced to 80 quid if you’re a basic rate taxpayer or 60 quid or 55 quid if you’re uh a high rate or additional rate if you decide to put that money into your pension you don’t pay any of that tax at all the full 100 quig goes into your pension and it can then grow there taxfree for the next 20 or 30 years it is an incredible product that we have just made look completely uh far far more complex uh than it is on your point these lost pensions are a major major problem there’s something like estimated 3 million loss pensions out there totaling somewhere between 25 billion and 50 billion completely nuts there is

[59:28]

no way that anyone in this room or anyone listening would lose track of a bank account with more than 10 grand in it but for some reason we do it with pensions all the time so going back to that thing of like what can you do to be more confident about your finances one of the things you can do with that 30 minutes a week is just go back through your CV and map across and just say did I have a pension with that job did I have a pension with that job did I have a pension with that job cuz the good thing in the last 10 years most people are automatically enrolled into a pension so for every job that you’ve had over the last 10 years you probably do have a pension associated with it now there’s something called pensions dashboards coming which will help and people will be able to log in and see their pensions uh and be reunited with all those old pensions still a couple of years away yeah I’m

[60:16]

hoping for this it will happen it’s probably a kind of 2026 thing but the good thing is you don’t need to wait for that now there’s lots of providers out there like Moneybox that will will help you be reunited uh with your pensions a friend of mine couple of months ago bumped into him on the train he was like oh you’re you’re at Moneybox now see your content all the time been really meaning to um do something about my my pensions so I said to him look just log on to the app and all you need to do we have a pension detective service just tell us where you worked you don’t even need to say pension detective basically their job is to go find those old pensions for you and within the space of a couple of weeks they had find found I think it was between 10 and 15 grand across three or four old pensions and they had told him look this is where your old pensions are what do you want to do with them you can either keep them where they are absolutely fine or you

[61:04]

can consolidate them the important point is don’t be one of those one in 10 people that has over 10 grand in a pension somewhere that you’ve just completely lost track of because like you said with your mom it is lifechanging we are not saving enough for our retirement and the number one most powerful thing that we can do is reunite people with pension savings that they’ve already made that is not something that needs to come from your pocket during a cost of living crisis just reuniting you with pension savings that you’ve made over the last 10 years yeah like my mom’s in a 60 and this is what she did from when she was 20 till like 37 and then it’s just sat in a fund growing and then like payday Happy Days like but I feel like it’s still important if it’s 400 quid yeah like or 200 quid it doesn’t necessarily matter the amount like just getting awareness of it

[61:52]

because it’s still going to be money that’s useful for you at some point in your life and just affects how you like develop your own personal finance strategy across your savings and Investments I I kind of feel like it should be a not intimidating thing to do like I’m tracking down money that is is mine again if it was bank accounts it just it just wouldn’t happen um do you feel like it works pensions I think it it does I think we are not saving enough for retirement in this country that is in all hon let’s let’s be honest like a lot of people don’t care about them until they should yeah which just screams to me like oh we probably need to do something about that to get them a little bit more actively participating

[62:40]

in them absolutely um and I think like I go out and I do uh personal finance uh seminars for companies do lunch and learns and all that sort of stuff some of those will be particularly focused on pensions and as soon as you show them that tax relief thing that I mentioned there in terms of how much money you are saving in tax by putting into your pension everybody’s like oh my God I didn’t because as soon as you say tax relief people are just gone but it’s free money from the government towards your towards your retirement sound a lot better it it does so I I think pensions are great maybe it’s a kind of Rebrand exercise that’s that’s necessary cuz again with the the lifetime I say people are really attracted by that government bonus because it’s pitched as a bonus and people are like this is incredible but tax relief is the same if not better it just people glaze over as soon as you

[63:28]

say anything to do with pensions or or tax relief yeah yeah hopefully we’ll sort it out I mean I I I did it and I had like nine grand sitting from old workplace pensions and I just Consolidated it all over into one I put it into a self-invested personal pension SHP and I manage it myself now because you know I actively like doing that and I’ve got a long period of Time ahead of me so can have a bit more fun with it for now and then you know move it into lower risk stuff later on um but I just actively treat it now as part of my like Investment Portfolio so is all of the allocations remain quite similar across the across the two um yeah I just think it’s something that people should be a little bit more on on it with but I love that pensions detectives pensions

[64:15]

detectives they big long jackets and like have the caps and little monacal sadly not maybe I should suggest that I’m not sure that would be particularly popular but the two places that we get incredible feedback from customers is one the pensions detectives cuz they’re helping people track down thousands and thousands of pounds worth of money yeah and the other is our mortgage brokers and our our case workers um so I don’t know anyone that’s been through the process of of buying a house knows how difficult it is how confusing it can be how many different people are involved the jargon we have case workers that basically their entire job is to explain to you the entire time what’s going on who’s the ball is with whose court it’s in uh shift people along from solicitors conveyancing all that sort of stuff and customers just absolutely love them I’m

[65:03]

not surprised because they just make the whole process there’s somebody there on your side telling you what’s happening so them and the pensions detectors customers just absolutely love them do you think that’s a big Focus for the business moving forwards or is there anything on the in the pipeline there that we can sort of know about coming up from you guys I think from from our perspective it’s just going to be leaning heavily into to the financial confidence thing our entire mission is helping people build wealth with confidence and wealth means different things to to different people for some people that will be uh purchasing a house getting their getting onto a property ladder for other people that will be making sure they’re saving enough for a comfortable retirement other people will be building up an emergency fund so basically all we are trying to do across those areas is just trying to help and support people build those areas with confidence as much as

[65:51]

we possibly can do yeah be there for when they need it and we’ve got a product for that exactly yeah exactly love this Brian um it’s been a wicked chat today I’ve just loved talking to you I by yeah it always does it always does I think when we me and you and a lot of other people in our communities are so passionate about each one of these topics I mean it just rolls off the tongue we just want to see people do the best that they possibly can that zero to one is the most important thing anyone can take in this country and just as Brian said you know that extra 30 minutes a week even if it’s a month like it’s still going to compound and and help you along the way so um yeah man where can people find you at the moment yeah so uh if you download

[66:39]

the Moneybox app unfortunately you can’t avoid me uh my face is in there an incredible uh amount from a financial uh education perspective and then on LinkedIn X all that sort of stuff Wicked man I’ve L this thanks so much thank you for having me we’ll see you soon cheers thanks Sammie wow what a conversation that was with Brian what I love most is that he said learn in baby steps you don’t need to have it all figured out when it comes to personal finance life happens in different seasons and so does your learning too but if you aren’t subscribed on YouTube or you’re not following us on Spotify or apple podcast then make sure you do that right now and also we’ve just launched a new Instagram Channel called the Money Gains Podcast go at Money Gains Podcast and you will find us there and guys we’ll see you on the next one it’s been a pleasure peace