Sophia Jarvis: How £120 a Month Could Make Your Child a Millionaire

[0:00] Sammie: Sophia, welcome.

[0:01] Sophia: Thanks, Sammie. It’s great to be here.

[0:04] Sammie: I just want to start off by saying a massive thank you for being my founder buddy uh throughout the last like few months.

[0:11] Sophia: It was unconducted, wasn’t it? Because I was like, I’m also building it out for something we’re going through.

[0:17] Sammie: Yeah, and uh like I just yeah, honestly, thank you because I I think we both drive ourselves a little bit mad sometimes, but having someone to be like, no, it’s okay. Uh it’s alright, we’re gonna make it through.

[0:28] Sophia: I know, and I feel like we’ve been going through a few of the same challenges as well, and it just is nice to hear that we’re not alone.

[0:36] Sammie: We’re both as crazy as each other. Yes, yes, which we’ve come to to discuss off camera for sure. But Mia Wealth, congrats.

[0:44] Sophia: Thank you.

[0:45] Sammie: What’s the journey been like?

[0:46] Sophia: It’s been a long one, but very exciting to be in this position now because we have a live app in the market with real families using it, which has always been my dream. But to begin with, I I’ve been a financial services for over 15 years, I’m a charter financial analyst by background, and more recently I spent my career as that family wealth manager. And the same conversation just kept coming up with my clients time and time again, which was I wish we started investing sooner, you know, 20 or 30 years ago. And sadly, we can’t go back in time, but the conversation then naturally steered towards children because that’s where we can make a difference and we can start investing for them, you know, as soon as they’re born. So I became known in the industry for setting up junior investment accounts. The junior stops from chairs I said that children can access at 18, and the junior pension that people don’t know about, you know, that I’ve attested it.

[1:37] Sammie: Yeah, I’ve got a few questions for you on it.

[1:39] Sophia: And that’s for children to access when they’re at retirement. But I just became frustrated at how long it would take to set up these accounts as an advisor. A lot of paperwork was involved, you know, back and forth. And I just thought there must be an app that’s doing this really well. So I’ll help adults look after their own wealth, you know, their ISIS pensions, etc. But when it comes to their children, whether it’s their own children or grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and they want to start investing for them, I will refer them to a number of different apps. And I looked at the investment app market, and yes, there are some providers that offer junior investor products, but typically it’s a bolt-on offering to adult accounts.

[2:18] Sammie: Yeah.

[2:19] Sophia: And also they say they’re for retail customers. Many of them I don’t believe are suitable for retail customers. You do need to have some level of financial understanding to use them. You know, you have to select from over 3,000 funds, and even just the terminology used is really confusing. And so I thought this is really interesting. There’s a gap in the market here for an app that’s solely focused on junior investing to make it really easy for parents, but also grandparents, you know, uncles, aunties, godparents, to buy investments for children. And so the idea just kept getting louder and louder in my head to the point that I thought, I’m gonna have to leave my job and build this because it doesn’t exist. And I know the demand is there. But before I did, I did a survey and I surveyed 400 millennial months across the UK. And I asked them, Are you concerned about your children’s financial future? 93% said that they were, which is actually higher than what I thought. And not surprisingly, the biggest concern was how my children are going to afford their first home, because this is a challenge that you know we’ve we’ve all faced. And then I asked them would you use an app, like Me and Wealth, in order to do this, and 88% said they would. So I thought, okay, there’s the validation that I need. But what was really interesting is what came out of the survey was that although the intent is there, you know, parents, we all want to do the best thing for our children. What I found was actually that it’s really expensive to have children, especially in those early years, you’re paying for childcare. So although the intent is there, sometimes actually having money at the end of the month is a luxury.

[3:53] Sammie: It is.

[3:54] Sophia: And you know, I always used to say as a financial advisor, and I still stand by it, which is that we need to focus on building our own wealth first before we build the wealth of others.

[4:03] Sammie: Yes.

[4:03] Sophia: And having that emergency fund, you know, typically three to six times your monthly expenses. But when I was having this sort of debate with myself, thinking, okay, how can I solve this problem? I was going around to my friends’ houses that had children and family, and I noticed that in every home it’s just overflowing with stuff. The number of toys, you know, now I’ve got girls myself, it’s the same, like just plastic toys everywhere. And I thought this is really interesting. So I looked into it more and I found that collectively we’re spending billions of pounds on gifts every year for children. 8.5 million toys end up in landfill every single year.

[4:39] Sammie: What?

[4:39] Sophia: We’re completely drowning in plastic. Yeah. The average 10-year-old in 238 toys and plays with just 12. And so I thought, well, how can we redirect some of the money that’s being spent on toys for children into investments so that we’ve got a generation, you know, growing up able to afford their first home, and that was how Meal Wealth was born. So, yes, we are an investment app to help you invest with your children, but we’re also a gifting app to help family and friends by investments in children too.

[5:10] Sammie: I can’t that is blown my mind. So 238 and 12 toys is what gets paid. That that’s thousands of pounds.

[5:20] Sophia: It’s thousands of pounds. We actually have a calculator on our website where you can put in how many gifts your child got for their most recent birthday, how many they actually play with, and if you invested the rest, what would that be worth when they turn 18? And family and friends, you know, when you turn up to a birthday party, oh this the big table is huge, but you’re also it’s well meaning, you know. They want to, you know, they want to show their love in a way and it’s also a bit reasonable to turn up when they present.

[5:48] Sammie: But actually when they will compete.

[5:50] Sophia: Yeah, they compete when we’re going to family and friends, and we’ve said, you know, and I don’t know for my girls, but we say, Would you rather have an alternative, you know, gift that can grow with them, an investment to their future? A lot of them still, you know, they would they prefer that option.

[6:03] Sammie: Yeah, because like you can buy them a really nice gift or whatever, and then you could send a little link out as a like here, this is the thing, like when there’s no presence, but we’d love for you to contribute to I don’t know, Tobias’s future, or I picked a posh name, but um that was like it it I think that’d be lovely. Like I I I uh well, you know me, I’d be all over that. I’d be like, Yeah, 100% do do that. But I think it it it does make you think instead of the potential waste and space in your own home, like I I or my friends with kids, um, like you go in their living room and it’s boxes and boxes of Lego and stuff, and it’s like it’s cluttering as well.

[6:43] Sophia: It is, you know, most of us we have smaller homes now, and we can’t afford to have big mortgages, you know, interest rates have gone up. And I’ve got toddler twins, and we have a small home, and I just want to declutter all the time. You know, I don’t want to come in after a long day of work and just you know trip over plastic toys. But that is the reality that many, you know, many of us face. And so, yes, we’re solving that problem as well, where we’re helping parents declutter by giving family and friends a different way of gifting. And you mentioned the link, and that’s what on that’s exactly what we offer through Mia Wealth. So my girls had one recently, and I just sent their gift link to their Mia account to all of our family and friends. Oh nice, and 70% chose to invest. So they got an extra £350 invested for their future. Wow. One, which is gonna compound over time.

[7:35] Sammie: And that’s one birthday.

[7:36] Sophia: And that’s just one birthday. So I’m gonna do it for you know Christmas birthdays going forward.

[7:40] Sammie: Oh, yeah, sure, yeah.

[7:41] Sophia: So that that money can be put to go to work.

[7:44] Sammie: Well, yeah, it’s absolutely mental when you look at these numbers because you know, we’ve spoken about investing on this podcast many, many, many, many, many, many times. And I’ll bang on the compounding drum to like my my I have no no no nothing left in me. Um, but when you extend that that amount, because a lot of people say look at this from the age of 30, when usually they kind of get into it a little bit and they’re like, oh, I should maybe look at this or 35 or whatever. So the the calculation is usually done over sort of 30, potentially even less if you’re in your 40s, right? But when you start putting it in 65 years, the growth is nuts. So, like potentially, of course, because past performance is not a future indicator of success. Um, but £100 into a stocks and junior stocks and shares ICE um invested in a global fund could be way over a million pounds by the time that they hit uh retirement age from 20 from 21,600 pounds in actual contributions, which is like when you first saw those numbers as a wealth manager looking at that with kids, like what went through your head?

[8:45] Sophia: Yeah, well, I’ll tell you a story of what happened to me and how this idea initially got sparked. So, you know, I was fortunate enough to be born into a family where my dad worked in pensions, you know, that is a very small percentage of the population. And so we spoke about pensions around the kitchen table, which again is really unusual. So you can already tell why I’m so assessed for pensions now. But on my 18th birthday, my dad gave me a piece of paper and it was a pension statement. And on the pension statement it said £70,000. Now I was completely blown away. I thought, you know, my dad’s just given me £70,000 this pension, like where has he found this money from? So I said to him, you know, thank you so much. This is incredibly generous. Where have you found £70,000 from? It’s a huge amount. And he said, I haven’t. What I’ve been doing is I’ve been investing £120 a month into a junior pension for you, which yes does exist. You can get pensions for children, and the government tops it up by 25% every month. And again, all contributions into a junior pension benefit from this £25 uplift from the government, which again people don’t know about, is because you get your basic rate income tax relief. So my dad was putting £120 a month in, the government was putting £30 a month in for free, and based on an 8% average annual return, it was in a global equity index portfolio, it was now worth £70,000 by the time that I was 18. And this just completely blew my mind. And what he said next was just this light bulb moment in my head, and he said, Look, you can’t access this now until likely 60. But this is a really good thing because of the power of compound interest, assuming you don’t even put anything else into your pension now for the rest of your life, it’s likely to be well over a million pounds, assuming the same investment return.

[10:35] Sammie: If you didn’t touch it, if you didn’t touch it and you got the same return.

[10:38] Sophia: So he given me one of the best gifts that he could have ever given me. Now it’s taken me a while to appreciate it, you know, as you get older and you start thinking about your own retirement, but it’s not a worry that I have because I know that there’s this pot here that started from when I was born and it’s compounding over time and likely to be worth over a million. And it’s also meant that during my adult life, I’m able to make financial decisions, not thinking about okay, do I spend on that or do I put money into my pension? Because I know and I still do contribute to my pension, but I know that I don’t have to put you know a large percentage of my salary each month into a pension.

[11:11] Sammie: Oh, I see, it’s made life more flexible for you in the day-to-day.

[11:15] Sophia: Exactly, because I know that that money has been compounding and it still continues to. And also it’s the best way we can teach our children about investing and the power of investing is for them to experience it themselves. So me inheriting this part which I couldn’t access, I still can’t until I reach retirement age, but seeing it go up and down in value from such a young age and understanding that that’s what it’s like to be an investor in the market, that’s the best gift that I’ve been given.

[11:41] Sammie: Yeah, and you’ve just had the best 10 years of of of uh of a like growth rate going through it as well. So, you know, it must be it must have grown quite significantly since then as well. So that’s really set you up. But I’m like the numbers around junior ISIS are are growing fast. So it’s an industry which is on the up, and I think largely education in this fat area has improved. Um, openings were up 52% this last year, up to 1.54 million. Why do you think now parents are suddenly waking up to this? Do you think?

[12:14] Sophia: We’re seeing this cultural shift, aren’t we? Where, you know, if we take parents being millennial generation, most of us because we’ve now started investing for ourselves, or we’re more aware of our pensions if we’re employed, you know, or you know, if we’re not employed and we’re setting up our own pensions, we’re just more aware of the power of investing, although there’s still a long way to go. Because in this country, you know, we both know financial literacy is so low because we’ve just not taught these things.

[12:38] Sammie: Yeah.

[12:39] Sophia: But we do have this generation, you know, millennials really waking up to it, and that’s being now passed down to younger generations. And so we are seeing this cultural shift. And even if we look at the number of new GISO subscriptions, it used to be there was a high weighting towards cash, but now actually there’s a high weighting towards stocks and shares GISE.

[13:00] Sammie: Yes, because there’s two versions, isn’t there, for someone listening. There’s a cash ISO savings version and a stocks and shares ISA version.

[13:07] Sophia: Exactly.

[13:07] Sammie: Just confusing as well.

[13:16] Sophia: You know, normally when parents have to outball and it is not from birth, they can afford to take on more risk, and therefore it’s likely that a genius stocks and phase would be more suitable for them. So we’re seeing parents understand this as well and set up the genius stocks and pairs liter. However, this is still such a long way to go. So although we are seeing a percentage growth increase year on year, it is estimated that 90% of children, if we take the 14 million children in the UK, still don’t have an investment in their name.

[13:46] Sammie: And if we put 90%, 90%. Wow.

[13:49] Sophia: So if we put that into context of if you think of a class at school, so let’s say there’s 30 people in the class, only two children in that class actually have an investment in their name. And it’s not because the product isn’t around, the junior ISER has been around for a long time. But I really believe it’s how we access it. Yes. And that’s what we’re able to change through mere wealth, which is just making it so much easier for people to access and in a way that’s easy for them to understand as well. Because, as I’ve said, at the moment you can open these accounts at you know, an incumbent, but it’s sort of lost in a sea of so many other things that it gets quite confusing for people.

[15:17] Sammie: Oh, I agree with you. And like we’ve got a long way to go with education on this space, and those numbers are staggering, like two out of the 30 kids in the class, like if you were to increase that to five, 10, like think of the material wealth which will go back around for those children as they grow up, like it’s gonna have a much wider effect, as we know, with investing. Um if you’re building wealth for you and your family, eventually you’re going to spend it in the UK economy, which is going to then make everyone more materially richer over a period of time, potentially, of course, depending on where that money goes. But the average 18, 16 to 18-year-old scores 2.3 out of 10 on basic financial literacy tests. So we’re potentially building wealth for our kids, but we’re not teaching them what to do with it, which is quite dangerous in my opinion.

[16:06] Sophia: It is, and it’s a worry that a lot of parents have, which is you know, we we want to be doing this, we want to be investing for our children. But what happens at 18 with the genius box and chairvisor, for example, when they I get this all of the time.

[16:19] Sammie: I do the post, yeah.

[16:21] Sophia: And it’s it’s a really valid fear because you just it’s almost like lottery day, isn’t it? For a child.

[16:27] Sammie: Yeah, you go, you’re 18, 50 grand or whatever.

[16:30] Sophia: Like they could just go blow it in Thailand or whatever they want to go.

[16:34] Sammie: I I would have definitely have done that 18 and just being period.

[16:38] Sophia: But the actually the way that you need to reframe it is that you it’s about engaging the child way before them turning 18. You know, this isn’t a surprise on the 18th birthday, like you know, the rel the story that I shared with my dad with the junior pension, it’s different because I couldn’t access it until I was 60.

[16:56] Sammie: Yes.

[16:56] Sophia: But with the junior stops and chairs license, children can access it at 18. So actually engaging with them earlier and to say, you know, this is an investment account that we have been building in your name, give them an oversight of it and also an opportunity to teach them what it means. And at Mia Wealth, what we’ve done is because we don’t want the ownership to be on just parents investing, because as we spoke about, you know, it’s really expensive having children, not so parents, you know, we don’t have money left over at the end of the month. But by involving the family and friend network through gifting, what we’ve done is that when a family friendly member gives a gift, so buys an investment for that child, which is deposited in the genius docs and chairs ICER, we encourage them to send a message along with that gift. So it could be a voice message, a video message, a text message.

[17:41] Sammie: Okay.

[17:42] Sophia: So at 18, that child is aware of the investment account because we engage with them before they suddenly access it. And they then inherit this plot of money, but they also inherit and unlock all of the messages from all of the family and friends that have been supporting their journey and their story over potentially 18 years.

[18:02] Sammie: And we hope that means that they are more responsible with that money because they know yeah, and you if you get that and you go through it in one go, it would be really quite like I I’d be like choking up. You’d be like, wow, like thank you so much. Especially as well, because there is a large potential, like some of those people might not even be with us anymore, etc. So you you get that message, and yeah, I think that that’s true. I think a a combination of education and what you’ve done there would be a really nice way of grounding it. And of course, like you’re gonna get a black sheep in the in the crowd every now and then and someone’s gonna go off and wax it, like they have control at that point. But I think if you can teach them, it’s then what potentially happens at that point. Because what I like to say to someone is like, well, at 18, if they do decide that yes, I want to go and do a gap year and I want to go and travel around Thailand and I want to have a great time, well, okay, how do we facilitate making that happen for you? How much do you need out of that pot? Here’s what happens if you take five grand out of that pot to the potential growth of it, if you keep the rest of it invested. So they understand, like, okay, well, yeah, there’s also like a contributing factor to the growth as well, um, as well as having fun, like there’s always a balance and a trade-off uh which comes with those things, which I think is really important. And I think if someone had done that with me at 18, I’d have been a lot more conscious about the decisions. I still I still would have made some bad ones because I’m young and I think it’s important you do, but it would have given me the ability to sort of see into the future a little bit and understand what could potentially happen if I made those decisions.

[19:46] Sophia: Yeah, and it’s a really good point, and it’s you know all about thinking about money in terms of your goals and like your short, medium, long-term goals, and we’re building an app for 18-year-olds so that when they graduate off Mia Wealth, they are onto Nina, which is our app for 18-year-olds. And as part of that, we help them not only have the financial education around you know what this money means and where it’s uh being held, it converts from a junior um ICER and junior pension into an adult ICER and adult pension. But then we ask them these questions around what’s your goals for this money, because money is also there to be enjoyed.

[20:22] Sammie: Totally, 100%.

[20:23] Sophia: We want to encourage them to continue investing, of course. But as you say, if they want to take some money out and use it, you know, why not? Like it’s also there to for them to have fun.

[20:33] Sammie: Um that’s like your life at that point, you are literally never going to be 18 again, and like you’ve got that opportunity. But you know, a a friend of mine did it, and uh I was gonna talk to you today about this, and uh I’ve saved it for you because I didn’t tell you about it on our little pre-chat. But a friend of mine did this, and their parents gave him the money, but he used it to buy the house at university that we then rented off him. So then he was actually making money back off his own house, which he then had um the mortgage on. At that young age, obviously there was help from parents involved, uh uh I’m not gonna say there wasn’t, but like it became an asset for him, and then he was away post-university. He didn’t have those big debts that you you know us we would have had by taking out large student loans, etc. So I think that there’s so many opportunities with that money for someone at that age, and it doesn’t always have to be like uh used at all, it can be used partially towards something, it can be experiences, it can be so many different things. But what it does do is it gives them choice.

[21:34] Sophia: Yeah, and and opportunities that they might not have had, and that’s you know why that’s in the morning to be honest, because it’s it’s knowing that all those children are going to grow up with those opportunities and that choice that they wouldn’t have had otherwise, potentially. Um, and also it takes the pressure of Bank of Mum and Dad. You know, Bank of Mum and Dad, I mean we’ve seen the stats, but I think they handed out like 10 billion pounds last year or two years ago to help first-time buyers onto the property ladder. Yeah, you know, that’s a huge amount that’s going out. And so, you know, as a parent, you could say to your child, well, we’ve been investing for you over 18 years, this is your money now, but you’re you know, also now financially independent, and you’ve got to be sensible with that money too. And the education, that’s why the education piece is so important.

[22:19] Sammie: I think it’s fundamental.

[22:20] Sophia: It’s it’s everything, and that’s you know, it’s on it’s on us as a business to help support the child and the parent through that journey, but also why you know the great initiatives that are going on outside of that with just helping people understand Yeah, but like I always say this as well to the parents, and they’re like, Well, I don’t know what to teach them.

[22:37] Sammie: And I’m like, Well, learn and then teach them because then it will put it in your own brain as well. And so there’s a double edged sword to that, is it you’re To get better with your own money and investments off the back of teaching your kids here because it they say that’s the best way to learn something is teach it to somebody else, explain it to somebody else. Um, so I think it just has this kind of like whole theory. But I just want to go through like the parameters around a junior ISA so someone is super clear about it, so we can break it down. So, what essentially is a junior stocks and shares ISA and how and how does it work?

[23:12] Sophia: So a junior ISA is a junior investment or savings account for a child, and it has to be set up by a parent or legal guardian of the child initially. Once it’s set up, then family and friends can contribute, anyone can contribute. You have an allowance each taxier that you can put money into the DICER that includes both the stocks and shares DICER, which is an investment DISER, and the cash DISER, which is held in cash, and that’s a £9,000 annual allowance that both parents, legal guardians, family and friends can put money into. If you keep money in the Junior Cash ICER, it is essentially the same as putting money in the bank, you get an interest rate. But what’s different is that the growth in the account is tax-free because it’s within that ad ISA wrapper. And if you put money into the Junior Stocks and Shares ICER, you don’t get an interest rate, but you have that money invested into the stock market, and that can go into funds or direct equities, it’s up to you. Um that money will go up and down, obviously, with the performance of the fund. But when we look at sort of the feasibility of those different accounts, we’ve chosen at Mia Wealth to only offer the junior stocks and shares ISA. So we don’t offer a junior cash ISA. And that’s because typically over a five-year or longer holding period, it’s likely that the returns in a junior stocks and shares ISA will be higher based on historical market performance than it would be in a junior cash ISO because children have typically a longer time horizon. That’s why we’re choosing to offer that on the junior cash ISA. And what’s important to realise with the junior ISA is that any money you put into it is legally that child’s money. So once you put money in, you cannot withdraw it. Only the child can withdraw it at 18.

[25:00] Sammie: I wish we had these when I was like growing up, or they were more of a thing. Because I like my mum will hate me saying for saying this, but like I had the post office account and then I she used to borrow money off me and then like put it back in. And you know, back in the day things would be tight or whatever, or she, you know, and she’d be like, Oh, can I borrow 50 quid out of your account? I’m gonna give it back to you and pay that and stuff. And that that that came into my head. I was like, if it was in a junior Icer, you would have never been able to touch it, and I would have got better interest over the course of those years. But another factor with junior ICES then is that um that that £9,000 allowance sits outside of your own allowance?

[25:39] Sophia: Yeah, so children actually have a really generous allowance because adults, as you know, we have £20,000, so it’s separate to that. So each child gets their own £9,000 allowance. Now, if we take £14 million children in the UK and we times that by £9,000 each, that’s essentially £126 billion annual allowance that the government are saying that you can put money in for a child tax-free to have. Now, we actually are only using 98%, sorry, 2% of that. So 98% of that allowance is not being used at the moment, even though the government has said, you know, you do have this allowance collectively to put money into a tax-free account.

[26:22] Sammie: And we’ve got like 1.6 trillion sitting in cash at the moment as well, and large, large amounts of those individuals have children, which is just is wild, right? So there is a shift that we need to make there. Um, but we’ve mentioned investing and what to do with it. You know, that’s the next question we’re gonna get. And this all sounds great, but you’ve mentioned funds, you mentioned some of obviously others uh offer stocks as well. I know that’s not something you’re looking at, but like what do we do? Like I I’ve got the app, like, oh my god, like no, no, I need to put the this is what people do. And I and I get it, right? Because it’s one, it’s your kids’ money and you’re thinking about the future and you you know you it’s gonna give you anxiety, especially if you don’t know what to do in the next step. How do you approach that bit?

[27:04] Sophia: Yeah, and this is the most important part because as I said, you know, the junior ISER, for example, has been around for a long time, as does the junior pension, but we’re not seeing people use it, and I think it is because it is really confusing. And so a parent might start the journey but then drop off along the way because there’s been something that’s you know might have disseminated them, or they just got fed up to be honest.

[27:26] Sammie: They see a fun names or and they’re like, what the hell does that even mean?

[27:30] Sophia: It’s got like 12 words in it and none of it makes sense, and just weird acronyms and it’s just language that doesn’t really need to be used and doesn’t mean anything to most people. So the way that we design the onboarding experience at MIR is our goal is to help help you set up a junior investment account in less than five minutes.

[27:48] Sammie: Oh, cool.

[27:48] Sophia: So you onboard it’s fully digital and it’s when and I say this almost being like obviously, but actually that’s not the case in so many um providers. There’s you know, some at some point along the journey, there’s a paper form involved, but if you ask the most busy parents, but just people these basically even have a printer.

[28:04] Sammie: Two weeks later, the Aletta comes through, your kind of like drive to get that done is gone. Yeah, is that you’re in the moment when it’s digital.

[28:12] Sophia: You know, we’ve had when we were first on boarding husbands, we were doing live onboarding calls, you know, we had women breastfeeding whilst also setting up their cunning restaurant account for their child. So you can do it in a very short space of time also that you’ll do it in that sense. Also mosting to the max. Um so you can set up your account list in five minutes, but most importantly, when it comes to the investment selection, we have offered you only two funds. And I say only two funds for a very good reason, because actually, because children do have a long time horizon, it’s likely that you know we default depending on their age. So if your child is 13 or under, they therefore have a five-year or longer time horizon before they reach 18. This is what genius docs and chairs ISA. And if your child is 13 or over, they have a time horizon of less than five years before they reach 18. If you have the longer time horizon, we default to a higher risk fund. And if they have the shorter time horizon, we default to a medium risk fund.

[29:07] Sammie: Okay.

[29:08] Sophia: Because of the relationship between the longer the time that you’re invested, the more risk that you can take on. Now, the parent can switch between the two, but we found actually by just offering two and defaulting to a particular fund, it helps them with that decision. And we’ve also got supportive videos along the way. Now, those videos are of me, unfortunately. So you have to see my face through the through the journey. But actually, we found that that has been really helpful because you know if they do want to have a bit of extra explanation as to what is a fund or what does high risk mean versus medium risk, you can just take a pause and actually watch one of the videos.

[29:41] Sammie: So although oh, so you’ve put education with it as well. Oh yeah, smart.

[29:45] Sophia: It’s so important. I’ve essentially what we’ve created is almost replaced how I was as an advisor and put it in a digital format.

[29:51] Sammie: So people don’t need an advisor to I thought of that question. Well, here it is. And so don’t worry because everything’s covered here.

[31:06] Sophia: Exactly. And then the the default fund offerings that we have. So the higher risk is a low-cost global equity index fund, and the medium risk option is a low-cost multi-asset fund managed by you know some of the best investment managers in the world. You know, you have to pay them a small fee, obviously, to do that, but it’s their responsibility to manage that portfolio in line with what’s going on in the market. It’s not something that you need to worry about.

[31:30] Sammie: It’s and and I know it’s higher risk, and yes, we have to have to caveat that, but a lot of people would argue that a 100% global equities fund is actually not that risky. It’s certainly not as risky as like putting it all on Apple or buying some crypto or something like that. It’s it’s it’s a very well diversified investment.

[31:52] Sophia: Although it’s a global equity index fund, within the portfolio, there’s hundreds of companies that you’re exposed to, and therefore it’s really well diversified, and it’s being managed by, you know, an expert investor manager that’s looking at it for you every single day.

[32:06] Sammie: So here’s here’s obviously the the big debate, which I’m gonna be honest, right? And I just I really I know you’ve given the example about your your dad, and that it made me feel like this question like, but I just can’t get my head around Junior Sips. I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to do it. Because the thing is for me, where the my reasoning is, and you may disagree, and I’m sure you do in a lot of ways, but I find that where the world’s gone so like fast-paced right now, um, and we’re seeing like change happen in like rapid because of technology, it’s just sort of a sort of it seems to be like a hockey stick curve, and I feel like we’re only just sort of on the start of that curve up. Um like looking if if I was to have a child and um I started putting into a junior pension, like 57 years from now feels like a wild decision in my head. Um, whereas a junior ISA at least is semi-flexible. So the reasoning behind that is because uh like I still contribute to my own pension because I have a limited company and it’s tax efficient to do so. But I all of my net income pay, it’s not going in a pension, it’s going in as I said, because I’m well, I want to be way more flexible. I know there’s a downside to that, as financial advisor, you probably tell me off for not doing the tax relief, but that’s how I think. I’m I want flexible pounds, and I call them flexible and slow pounds, and that’s how I judge judge that. So, how how are you approaching this conversation and how and what what are you? I can see you’re itching to sort of fly.

[33:48] Sophia: I’m smiling because it’s a really valid point, and it’s a completely fair view, and it’s one that many people share, and I get it, you know, I do, because we don’t know what the wealth’s gonna be like in 57 years or however, you know, whenever the retirement age and what that’s gonna be. But my answer is always these different products, whether it’s the junior stocks and chairs I the junior pension, you know, even junior premium ones, which you know we haven’t touched on yet, they there’s not one’s better than the other, or one’s good and one’s bad. They just offer different advantages and disadvantages. And so when I was an advisor, I used to say to the families I was working with, just do a little bit of all of them because they all have, you know, if we look at the advantages, they all have different advantages. So you’re right, the junior stocks in terms of myself is more flexibility. You know, the child will access that sooner at 18 instead of waiting until 60 for the junior pension. But the biggest benefit of the junior pension is the compound growth and the fact that you get this money from the government, you get this 25% uplift. So, what I used to say to my clients is just put £100 in a junior pension. You know, it doesn’t have to be your own £100, it can be grandparents. Grandparents love the junior pension, it’s a way to leave their legacy. And just put £100 in because even just putting that £100 in, you get the uplift of that £25 extra from the government. And then even if that child did nothing more and didn’t put anything more to that pension, by the time that child turns 60, assuming an 8% investment return each year, based on historical market performances, it’s likely to be worth over £10,000.

[35:28] Sammie: Wow. Just that £100.

[35:30] Sophia: Yeah, because of something.

[35:31] Sammie: Oh, so that’s gonna make a yeah, of course, of course. So it’s I didn’t look at it like that before, and that that definitely changes the way I would see it. Yeah, get it open.

[35:43] Sophia: Just get it open, um, and also it opens that conversation to then talk to your child about a pension. With my twins, you know, they’ve got a junior pension, they’ve got a junior stocks and chairs license, and they’ve got junior premium bonds. Now, the way that I allocate it is I put they’ve got both got £100 in their junior pension at the moment. Actually, that was from grandparents for their first birthday. They’ve got £100 in their junior premium bonds, just in case we win a win a million pounds. I know it’s very unlikely.

[36:11] Sammie: Be nice, you never know.

[36:13] Sophia: You’ve got to be in it to win it.

[36:14] Sammie: Yeah, absolutely.

[36:15] Sophia: And then the junior stopped in chairs nicer is what my husband and I regularly contribute to. So that’s where we set up an automatic direct debit.

[36:21] Sammie: Okay.

[36:22] Sophia: And that’s the one that we’re focused on because they’re gonna access that sooner. But also, if we think about you know the wider macroeconomic picture in terms of retirement in the UK, we do have a retirement crisis on our lives.

[36:35] Sammie: We do, we do, and we’re gonna be living way longer, like some of the uh gene therapy stuff now, where it’s like reverse aging. So they’re saying we’re gonna be living into the hundreds, and you’re that’s scary, right?

[36:46] Sophia: It’s so scary, and you know, the world is evolving so quickly, as you said, but we’re gonna need to fund the long life.

[36:54] Sammie: Yeah.

[36:55] Sophia: And the average man is currently retiring with I think it’s £156,000, that’s the average pension.

[37:02] Sophia: And for a woman it’s $81,000. And that part seems like a lot of money, you know, today, because you think, wow, that’s that’s a big amount of money.

[37:13] Sophia: But actually, when that has to last you over 30, 40, 50, 100 years, it’s you know, it starts to look quite scary. But at least you just you can see it’s sort of hedging your best.

[37:40] Sammie: Yeah, Andrew Craig has a brilliant idea around this. It’s like put five grand in there for a child, or it’s Donald Trump did it in the US with the thousand dollars in for the child children’s account. But Andrew Craig’s like to boost the UK stock market, it’s like £5,000 of it and must be invested in like UK medium small to medium cap companies. So it’s like liquidity goes into the UK economy, um, which and if you look at the results of them, I think up to like 2024 that it’s very decent solid returns uh if you look at the market as a whole. And that would compound quite nicely over the course of that 50 odd years. That would be an interesting way of looking at it. I think that’s where I sort of would perk up about it. Um do you want to see something like that from the government to sort of help get kids and equally as well, you know, we have a declining birth rate, would that help increase the potential birth rate in this country? Like what’s what’s your view on that?

[38:38] Sophia: Yeah, I mean I think you know, the idea of investing for children from the moment they’re born as a way to boost the economy makes so much sense because you know, if we take the junior pension, for example, if you invested for every child when they were born and put money into a junior pension, it would take huge pressure off the state. You know, would we even need the state pension because everything exactly to replacement, you know, bigger private pensions, and at the same time, we’ve got that financial education piece going on because we’ve got this whole generation of children growing up with pensions, understanding what it’s like to be an investor in the market. And the government did uh do something similar with the child trust fund. So between I think it was 2002 to 2011, yeah, you had a child um that was born within those years, the government and you were claiming child benefit. The government invested um or gave you 250 pound voucher that you could put in a child trust fund. Now that could have been invested or it could have been kept in cash. So they that was a great initiative, it didn’t necessarily come to fruition in the way that they had expected because the fees were quite high on the investment account. And I think there wasn’t the education around on whether you should keep it in cash versus investments, and obviously, you know, over that period there would have been quite a big difference in return depending whether you kept it on cash or investments. There’s also 1.5 billion still unclaimed in child trust.

[39:59] Sammie: I know it’s wild, isn’t it?

[40:00] Sophia: So if anyone’s listening, yeah, a child being born in between the ages of the years of 2002 and 2011. You can go on the government website and just check. Um, you just Google Child Trust Fund and you can see. But that was a great initiative in theory, and I would love to see the government do something like that to support.

[40:19] Sammie: I agree. I think it’d be awesome. It just makes so much sense. The problem with that is that they’re just thinking about the next two, three years of can we stay elected? But I actually think it would do completely the opposite. By the time, you know, it um Andrew sort of made the point that with market growth, it’s kind of like this UK sovereign wealth fund, but for its like younger generation where it’s just going to carry on compounding and all of this money is gonna be circling around the UK economy into businesses which need the capital. Um, and it should sort of really kick start the economy. And he reckons as as as as quick as like three to five years.

[40:58] Sophia: Yeah, I agree. And also it’s the if you think about mental health, you know, there’s such a strong link between your financial situation and your mental health. Whereas if we’ve got a generation growing up with investments in their name, you know, whether they act as at 18 or whether it’s, you know, at 60, you’re gonna feel better as well because you know that you’ve got this pot of money that’s you know could be growing alongside you. Whereas, you know, most of us we enter the workplace, you know, if we get employed uh at 22, that’s when we normally get enrolled in a pension.

[41:32] Sammie: We have no idea what it is.

[41:34] Sophia: No idea what it is. And then suddenly you get to uh, you know, later on your 40s, 50s, and you start thinking about your retirement, and then you have this almost panic of thinking, I haven’t, you know, I haven’t done enough. And it would get rid of all of that. Yeah, it really would. And that’s why, you know, the original idea for me as well was when my clients kept saying to me, I wish we had done this 20 or 30 years ago.

[41:53] Sammie: Totally.

[41:54] Sophia: And that’s what you know this would sell for children because it would have been done for them from the moment that they’re born.

[41:59] Sammie: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I I’d love to quickly touch on um junior junior premium bonds, because this is something I haven’t gone into either. But I I also have my own gripes of premium bonds too. But I that I’ve come to terms with a way that I think it works. Um, but I’d love to know how you would factor it in for kids because with adult premium bonds, I’m like, once you’ve got your emergency fund together, keep a touch of like a month’s worth of liquid cash, and then the rest of the three to you know, three to four months that you add on on top, that’s a really good place for it, because then you can potentially you know win win the big bing the big bucks, although you know we’ve seen the rates, but you again you’ve got to be in it to win it. So how does it work with kids?

[42:42] Sophia: Yeah, Geneva’s onto a really funny account, aren’t they? And so if you talk to anyone outside of the UK, yeah, what this exists, yeah. But if you look at the advantages of them, you know, they are it is 100% backed by the government. So you’ve got £50,000 that you can put in, same for kids, um, and that money is safe with the government, you get this benefit of being entered into a prize draw every month. So one pound essentially is one bond, and that’s one ticket into the prize draw. So the more money you have in premium bonds, i.e., the more pounds you have, the more entries you get into the prize draw, and the more likely um chance that you have of winning. You can win anywhere from £25 all the way up to a million pounds. I have heard if you win a million pounds, they call you the day before and then they knock on your door. So I’m always waiting.

[43:31] Sammie: Hello? Is it the day?

[43:32] Sophia: Knock on the door, but yeah, I mean I haven’t won in months, so it is it is one of those things where most people don’t win, and most people don’t win, obviously, the million.

[43:42] Sammie: I’m 25 quid is my max. I’m like, damn it. And then I’ve got friends that have like a couple hundred quid in and have done like thousands. I’m like, how, wow.

[43:52] Sophia: It’s just it is a complete lottery. Yeah, the they say the probability of winning is equivalent to 3.8% now. Yeah. And we have to look at that in line with inflation because although it is a safe place to keep your cash, and I love that idea around your emergency fund, there is the risk that your winnings the premium bonds don’t keep up with inflation. So inflation’s currently at 3.3%. So yes, it’s a little bit ahead of that, depending on how you’re looking at inflation. But it means that really you need to think about it is whatever you’re putting in there, you’re going to get the same out. You know, you actually don’t see the money go down in value. But if it’s just keeping pace with inflation, you’re not seeing any growth in that money. And in the worst case, is if the average price draw probability was actually lower than inflation, then the real value of that money that you’re that you’ve been putting in holding a premium bond will have actually gone down.

[44:42] Sammie: Yeah.

[44:43] Sophia: And that’s just something we need to be aware of. So with junior premium bonds, it’s typically uh something that grandparents actually give for grandchildren.

[44:52] Sammie: It’s a great gift.

[44:54] Sophia: It’s a lovely gift because it’s, you know, they’re wanting to support.

[44:56] Sammie: It’s a chance, isn’t it?

[44:58] Sophia: It’s fun. Yeah. Especially as children get older, you know, they can actually um have oversight and access their account from 16 and they can see what it’s like to be in that prize draw.

[45:07] Sammie: Uh that was my question. So if they win, what happens? Like if they won 100 grand or 25 quid or whatever their prize was, like, can they not touch it? And is it in their name as well? Like an ISA. Right.

[45:19] Sophia: But prior to that, it’s the parents. So the parents can still withdraw the money on behalf of that child, and then from 16, it’s it’s the child. And as I said, you know, I’ve got it for my twin girls just because it is a bit of fun, you never know, they could win a million. But in terms of long term growth and long term savings, that’s where you know we look at actually what could you get investing that money in a junior stocks and chairs like a junior pension versus junior premium bonds. And although you know you don’t get that prize draw from investing in a junior stocks and chairs like a junior pension, it’s like That the investment return over a long time is going to be higher than the prices that you win in junior premium bonds. So when I was at financial advisor, I just used to say that to my clients, you know, keep a bit of money in there because it is fun. But actually, if you’re thinking about building up that child’s wealth or even your own wealth, you know, potentially look at investment over premium bonds.

[46:11] Sammie: So you’re playing the field is what I’m getting with here, right? So you’re yeah, a little bit here, a little bit there. And it’s got all got potential, and that’s the way you’re looking at it.

[46:21] Sophia: Yeah, and as I said, also it’s an opportunity for me to speak to my daughters about it when they get to an age where they understand.

[46:29] Sammie: That’s actually my next question. So I’m I’d love I because I know you’ve got the twins and are they identical? They are, yeah. I’ve got identical twin cousins, Thomas and James. They’ll be listening to this. So um yeah, hello lads. But it it’s so funny, like you go to parties, and my mum now, and she’s she’s like, right, get it out of the way, who’s who? I can tell, um, but they are extremely alike. Like my Charlotte can’t tell, like, and so they’re in their early 30s now.

[46:59] Sophia: Okay, and they’re and they’re really identical.

[47:01] Sammie: Oh yeah, well yeah, yeah. One they’ve just got slightly different shaped heads, and like that’s how you know, and they’ll have different haircuts these days. But back in the day, they’d have the same outfits, same haircuts, like it was difficult. Um, but yeah, having spent a lot of time with them, like and they’ve got different mannerisms, they’re different people.

[47:19] Sophia: They’ve got different personalities, very much so, yeah.

[47:21] Sammie: Um which I find so interesting.

[47:23] Sophia: Oh, it’s amazing.

[47:24] Sammie: But I’ve got twin sisters as well. Yeah, and twins, but they’re they’re polar opposites, so one looks like the dad, and one’s the spitting image of the mum. So yeah.

[47:32] Sammie: Lots of twins then and in your family.

[47:34] Sammie: I know, I’m screwed. Yeah, like I know, I’m gonna just picture my mum like with a double pram, like so. I know, I yeah.

[47:43] Sophia: It’s I mean, yeah, that’s sort of you know, parents of triplets and more, because even with having twins, that was it’s been a well-wind. I’m the same as you have got lots of twins um in my family. So I did always have a feeling that I’d have twins. So we went for an early scan at about six weeks when I found out I was pregnant, and I did pre-warn my husband, I said, I think that’ll be two heartbeats. He was like, Yeah, whatever. The doctor’s like, Congratulations, yeah, I mean and I’ve never seen anyone drive home so quickly to open up an Excel spreadsheet to be like how financially managed because I’ve just left my job to start real wealth at the same time, so yeah, it’s overwhelming, but they are identical, they have very different personalities, uh similar to your cousins, and they have different head shapes as well. It’s quite common with identical twins. There’s a peach in a pear theory, so one will have more of a peach face and one will have more of a pear face.

[48:38] Sammie: When they grow up, get them to like pretend that they’re telepathy, because my they they do it now in Christmas, and even now, like everybody knows it’s not a thing, and they know that they’re they’re getting fooled, but everyone’s like, Wow, like uh at the Christmas. It’s just they ever sort of pretend to be the other because they’ve uh they did growing up all the time. Yeah, it’s funny. It’s like para chat. Oh yeah, yeah. It’s so funny you say that. Like I’ve I literally love that film, Lindsay Lohan banger movie. It’s so good. It’s my like I’m really hungover and I’m feeling really sorry for myself, and then like once a year I’ll whack it on and just relive it.

[49:14] Sophia: And it is one of those films you can keep watching, yeah. And it’s aged so well.

[49:18] Sammie: It has, it’s a great movie.

[49:19] Sophia: Just done, yeah.

[49:20] Sophia: I love it.

[49:20] Sammie: I’m gonna watch that tonight. I might have to join you. Um but you’re they’re how old are they the girls, sorry? Okay, so right, because it’s an we’re not we’re not talking about stocks and shares ISAs yet.

[49:34] Sophia: No, but they say you know, your your money mindset is formed by age seven. Yeah, and that’s really the way that they’re they observe everything.

[49:42] Sammie: They’re spongers at that point.

[49:44] Sophia: So much more than we realise. And just even the way we talk about money at home and you know, with you know, your partner and you know, in front of them, that is having an influence. And so as soon as they are gonna be a bit more aware, I do want to start talking to them about investments, but most importantly, show them as well.

[50:04] Sammie: Totally.

[50:04] Sophia: This is your portfolio, you know, this is what we’re investing into for you, but so is you know, granny, grandpa, aunties, uncles, like everyone is here to support you and just have those open conversations so that by the time they turn 18 and they reach the point that they can start investing for themselves or withdraw part of it or all of it, um, they’re making an informed decision. Yeah, it’s really important.

[50:26] Sammie: Probably helps having a mum in financial services.

[50:29] Sophia: Yeah, and my husband is as well, so it’s really sad. Oh, okay, right. It’s really sad. So you guys are gonna talk about something.

[50:35] Sammie: I remember when I first said about investments. Were you?

[50:39] Sammie: So weird, it’s so sad.

[50:40] Sammie: Yeah, but kind of cool at the same time. For me anyway, I think I’d find that cool. My other half, like, just tell me what I need to do and like automate it, and then I’m gonna go. She goes, but um the um what I wanted to know from you could we had the lovely Will Rainey on. I don’t know if you’ve um know him, but he has a book called Um Grandpa’s Fortune’s Fables. Um, if anybody’s listening with young kids, it’s excellent. So it’s all like gamified, you learn um credit, investments, mortgages, etc. Um, really, really interesting, and it’s a great book. And everyone I’ve sent it to has messaged me back and been like, amazing, uh, this is brilliant, thank you so much. Um, but when do you think you would start to approach these types of topics and games and things with them and getting them to understand that this is a pound and because it’s harder in today’s day and age. When we grew up, we had notes and pound coins to do it with, and it was a lot more tangible.

[51:34] Sophia: Yeah, we had piggy banks, didn’t we? And it was sort of, you know, and you would well, I would do do a house tour and then I’d get a bit of money.

[51:41] Sammie: Yeah, 50p for uh wearing the lawn. Yeah. It was amazing. Yeah. And 50p would literally get you so much. Yeah.

[51:49] Sophia: Like what Freddie’s, they used to be five PC.

[51:52] Sammie: Five P where you get like a whole bag of like penny suites, and it’s like so good. Coca-Cola bottles for days.

[51:57] Sophia: But now it’s you know this digital age, and I think that’s why, you know, like for example, us at Mia Wealth, we we’re building an a proposition whereby we don’t know what age yet, but whereby children can have a view-only oversight of their investment accounts. Oh nice that they can actually engage through the app itself and do it that way. Because I think you know, with growing up in this digital era, they’ve got to be able to understand it from that perspective.

[52:23] Sammie: Totally.

[52:24] Sophia: And just the way you you know you talk about money at payments I mentioned, you know, even just sayings, you know, we’ve all been brought up with various sayings depending on the family that you’re brought up in, whether it’s you know, money doesn’t grow on trees and things like that. And it can be we just say it because it’s just that’s what we’ve been taught as well, but it can be unhelpful some of the stuff that we say around our children, and it’s really just you know, I know that the UK in general is on this mission to get more people investing, and that really starts at home and and with our kids, that’s how we change things.

[52:57] Sammie: Yeah, no, I completely agree. Yeah, I think we’re we’re we’re at millennial generation, we’re sort of like we’ve definitely woken up to that, and I think that’s gonna pay off massively. I think that we, as you’re right, we’re seeing this cultural shift, it’s gonna keep going. Um, and you know, large parts of millennials we we might not might not be able to save, but we can definitely help Gen Z, we can help the younger generations. I get I I get lost in what they end up calling being called now, Gen A, Gen Z, Gen, Gen 97. Um, but I just want to say, like, I think you’re one of the most aspiring people that I’ve met, and I genuinely mean that because to do what you have done with two young girls, um, I think is absolutely incredible. And um I think what like you’re on such a mission and drive, and I imagine it’s probably driven by the girls as well. Um, but yeah, I just wanted to say that because I I I think what you’ve come from, what you’ve done, like anyone at that point could have gone and put it on the back burner for a couple of years. Like, why what why did you just go, right? Sod it, I’m just gonna keep going.

[54:02] Sophia: Yeah, well, thank you so much for saying that. I really appreciate it. And you know, I won’t sugarcoat it. It’s been a really hard journey. Leaving my job and finding out I was pregnant at pretty much at the same time, it was actually the next day.

[54:14] Sammie: No, God. Like, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna do an app. No, I’m not. Okay, you know, we will.

[54:23] Sophia: So going through that journey, I mean, there’s so many days that I just think, even now, you know, I just think this is really hard.

[54:31] Sammie: Yeah.

[54:31] Sophia: Um, you know, I I had a security of uh nine to five.

[54:35] Sammie: Were you wealth manager of the year, aren’t you as well? Like wealth manager of the year.

[54:40] Sophia: I was and I was loving it, you know. I really enjoyed being a financial advisor. I got a lot of powers from it, but the idea that had for Mia Wealth, it just got so loud in my head that I had no choice. I was like, I have to build this because if I’m not gonna build it, who is?

[54:56] Sammie: Yeah.

[54:57] Sophia: And then throughout the journey of now becoming a mum myself, it’s just amplified that even more because this mission is so deeply personal to me now as a mum. The first users of Mia Wealth were my daughters, and it was this incredible first, like full circle moment, and my teams have got an incredible co-founder, she’s got two girls as well. So we we all had our children on the app, testing it with our own children before we went and expanded to other families, and so all of us are driven by that mission, and you know, we spoke about it before we started recording. As a founder, you often have to have an unhealthy obsession with something, that’s what drives you, and this mission is so much bigger than me. Yeah, I have an unhealthy obsession with getting access to compound interest for children. You know, my mission is to improve the lives of millions of children across the UK by changing that stat that 90% of kids don’t have an investment in their name. You know, even if we just increase that a little bit, it’s gonna have a huge impact on so many lives. And that’s why I keep doing what I’m doing.

[56:04] Sammie: 100%. I think like yeah, I I always said, Oh, I wanted to do an app and it would be like the the next phase, but every time I sort of looked at it, I was like, it’s getting harder. Um and then it was just our community just being like, this doesn’t exist, this doesn’t exist, this doesn’t exist. And I was like, oh my god, this is getting and you’re right, it’s the voice, it gets louder and louder and louder. And then when the cost of living really started kicking in, then I was like, oh yeah, and I I am not accepting this. Like I have I have the I don’t know if I have a I think I have a responsibility to myself, even though I feel like I have a responsibility to the community as well, but to do it, because if I’m like, well, if no one else is gonna do it, like I’m gonna do it. Um and I’m just one of those people, like if if you could it with this, you’re gonna help so many families change their kids’ lives. And with Gaines app, it’s the same. It’s like, well, the more I can help them, it’s gonna help me, it’s gonna help my family as well. And so I think if you have if you go into something like that with that kind of mission, like it’s very difficult for those bad days, those hard days, the issues that you get, as we know, building FinTechs, it’s just not easy. Um, it’s sort of you you can back them off easier because you’re like, well, it’s bigger than me.

[57:21] Sophia: Yeah, exactly. And you know, same same back at you as well, Sammie. You know, I’m really inspired by your journey, and that’s why I initially reached out to you because you didn’t have to go and build an app alongside everything else that you’re doing, but you just felt like the community were asking for it, and you were the right person to turn that into reality and to actually take it delusional enough.

[57:43] Sammie: Yeah, delusional enough.

[57:45] Sophia: Take it from that idea into an actual physical app. It’s a huge amount of work that goes into it, but also what an incredible.

[57:54] Sammie: I think it’s like with anything you know this, and thank you, thank you, by the way. That’s very kind of you. You just kind of think, well, if you can do it, so can I. And like I that’s the way I look at it. I’m look I I looked at a lot of the like co-f the founders in FinTech, and I’m like, wow, they worked at these massive like Goldman Sachs, ex-directors and stuff. And I’m like, yeah, but like you had to learn and get there yourself. And I’m like, and I I’ve always been the same because I’m not a financial advisor, um and but I’ve lived life and I’ve made every money mistake going, and so that’s why I do what I do. Um, and so but when it comes to fintech, I’m like, well, I can learn this, I know I can. Um, and that’s why I’ve not done it alone. Similar to you with like a co-founder. I think if I’d have done it alone, I would have probably have quit. But having having co-founders has has definitely made it a lot easier because just having a sort of a shoulder to cry on when you need it, and you you would pull each other up and back and down. And yeah, we’re out now and it’s out, and so we’ll see. Thank you. Oh, cheers. You you didn’t get anything that broke, so I was like, oh yeah. Basic. Yeah. No, I’ve yeah, well, it’s the beginning, right, as well. I think probably the first iteration of what you put out to what it will be in a year’s time is gonna be tenfold. I’m sure you have multitude of things in the pipeline that you’re like, um, it’s gonna get 20 times better as well.

[59:17] Sophia: I mean, we launched our beta on Lucky Friday the 13th in February.

[59:21] Sammie: Love that.

[59:22] Sophia: And we’re already on version 158.

[59:26] Sammie: Oh yeah, yeah. Per day.

[59:30] Sophia: Yeah, I’m I always test it. I want to test it myself. So sometimes the new app releases until 3 a.m. Our tech team just working through the night, they’re incredible. And so I’m waiting. And no, there we are at 3 a.m. testing this app.

[59:44] Sammie: I get the thing now. Oh yeah, yeah. I’m going on in the thing, and I’m like, this hasn’t changed. He’s like, close the app, open the app. I’m like, oh yeah, it’s all changed. And he’s like, Yeah, I know, because I’ve I’ve I’ve literally before by the time you ask me to do the thing, I’ve already pushed two live versions. I’m like, I love you, Daniel. My my CTO, he’s the best man. I think it it makes such a massive difference having him because I can’t write a line of code. I’m hyper ADHD. So I if I look at lists or walls of text, my brain goes, no, instantly, I have to visualize it or have a conversation. Um, it’s great for ideas and it’s great for like driving certain things through. But like if you uh writing a line of code, it uh it hurts my brain. So I just can’t do that. Um, but anyway, look, I I don’t want to uh talk too much about fintech apps, so it will turn everybody off. But look, I think if there is a parent listening to this now, they’ve got a child that’s one, two, three, five, seven, whatever that might all be, and they haven’t started anything yet. Um, and then perhaps they’re going, oh God, listening to this, they’re feeling a little bit guilty about it. I want them to go away with something and go, okay, well, what’s the first little action step that I can take today to perhaps get myself started?

[1:00:57] Sophia: Well, first you don’t feel guilty, you know, as a parent of any age children, but especially in these really early years, we’re time poor. And it’s one of those things that you probably come back to, you know, every now and then you think, oh, I should, I should do that, I should get that started for my child. And then you probably tried to research it or maybe even start it with a provider, and at some point along the journey just thought this is too complicated or run out of time or got distracted. You know, that happens all the time. So my biggest piece of advice is just get started. So take this as your sign to get started and make it automatic, make it really easy for you. We encourage monthly contributions at Mia Wealth. So when you’ve opened the account and less than five minutes, we make it really easy for you to just set up an automatic direct debit.

[1:01:43] Sammie: And what’s the lowest contribution that you can get in there?

[1:01:45] Sophia: £20.

[1:01:46] Sammie: Oh wow. Oh, so £20.

[1:01:49] Sophia: You can get started with either £20 one off or £20 a month. Amazing. It’s pretty flexible, you know, life happens. Sometimes we need to force our monthly contributions or amend them, and you can do that in app. And it just means that it’s one thing off your mentor audior to-do list. And you can also then feel really proud of yourself because you know that you have set that up for your child, you’ve got started, and you know, when it’s their next birthday, you can then send a gift link out to family and friends and say, you know, if you want to give something a bit different this year, give that and grow with them. This is an alternative way to support that child’s future.

[1:02:26] Sammie: 100%. And there’s some really cool calculators on your site as well. And I think like go and mess around with those and and have a play around, put put some numbers, go Google calculator site, compound interest, and pop eight, you know, 7-8%, whatever you want to put in there, and put 20 quid in there and then press 18 years or whatever, or how however ages, and see understand that level of growth that could come back from those contributions. Because someone will say, Oh, well, 20 quid is not going to do anything. Honestly, go and do that and then come back and look at how big that can potentially grow because it it will shock you.

[1:02:59] Sophia: Um we we offer that in the app as well. So as you are on boarding, you can put in what you can afford each month or what you think family and friends might give, and you’ll get a projective value of what that could be worth when your child turns 18 straight away.

[1:03:12] Sammie: Okay, don’t go on there, then go on me at wealth and do it there.

[1:03:15] Sophia: Start that journey.

[1:03:20] Sophia: Definitely, £20 a month, you know, from birth to 18, assuming that 8% investment return could be worth over £10,000 by the time that child turns 18. So £20 a month, it’s it still makes a big difference.

[1:03:32] Sammie: It does, it’s massive, right? But I think when you do that though, that’s the thing that I uh it drove me was like, oh, I can afford £50 quid, for example, let’s say. And then I did that and I was like, I could do 70.

[1:03:44] Sophia: Yeah. Well, exactly, it it sort of makes you think, okay, you know, I always think about my loving coffee. So £20 a month is a coffee a week. So if I just reduce one coffee a week and put that towards whether it’s my own investments or my child’s investments, and I know the impact that that’s gonna have because the compound grows over time, it just makes you think about you know how we spend our money, really, doesn’t it? And I’m not saying no to a coffee, I need my coffee. But I mean that can just reduce it to you know three a week instead of four.

[1:04:16] Sammie: Being a bit more savvy, yeah, you know, sending one referral code to a friend and they you get £20 for signing up to whatever app and you put that in there. Like there’s so many ways that you can get that 20 quid in there at least or more if you can afford it, of course. But if you can’t, like there’s so many little things you could do, like one thing, a few surveys a month while you’re on the training to work and you’re getting 20 quid in there for your kids and stuff. So you know, think think of it like that as well. I think it’s a like a good way of like uh if you are on like everything’s coming in and everything’s going out, like there are other ways that you can do this too. Um loved this. I knew I would. It’s one of my favourite topics. And I don’t think we’ve ever really done like a full deep dive into this because the power of it’s so so incredible for kids.

[1:05:00] Sophia: Um, but yeah, is it is it mealwealth.com or .co.uk?co.uk and you can search for Mia Wealth on the App Store, Apple and Google and download it and get started.

[1:05:11] Sammie: We will link all of that below um in case anyone’s on the move and can’t can’t see that. We’d also pop it in the email as well when it goes out. Um but yeah, I really hope uh it goes well. Uh you deserve it, you’re a trooper. Um and yeah, thank you very much for coming on.

[1:05:26] Sammie: Thanks, Sammie. Thanks so much for having me and I’ve really enjoyed it.