How Inflation Really Works and How to Beat It, with Brian Mitchell (The Frugal Spender)

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: My name is Sammie Ellard-King, and welcome back to the Money Gains Podcast. We’re a show all about making, saving, and investing your money, interviewing the leading minds in the industry to uncover their knowledge and expertise. If you’re new here, be sure to hit that follow button as you won’t want to miss a show. And this week, my guest is Brian Mitchell, better known as the Frugal Spender on social media. And if you’ve not been following Brian, I’m just gonna say it right now. He’s one of my favourites out there. Honest, no BS approach to teaching personal finance and his views on the world, inflation, investing, how the government are just printing money at the moment to enforce us and enslave us into debt. Wow, this conversation was one of the best we’ve ever had on the podcast. I’m not just saying that. So tune in, strap in. We’re gonna go deep on this one. But for now, let’s get started on the Money Gains podcast. So, Brian, welcome to the Money Gains Podcast, man. How are you doing? You well?

[1:15] Brian Mitchell: Hi, mate. Yeah, really good, mate. Thank you very much for uh getting me on on this fine day. I’ve just we haven’t talked about this, but I can see, I don’t know if you see the cheese rolling before in the in the UK. The it’s like the famous Gloucester cheese rolling. So they roll a uh a big block of Gloucester cheese down a hill, like a very steep hill, and people chase it. And I can literally see the hill now. People are literally doing it as we speak. So uh if you’ve never if you’ve never seen it, jump onto YouTube and have a look. It is the most bizarre thing in the world. It’s just some tradition that’s been happening. I don’t know how long it’s been happening, but every single year, uh I’m assuming the same date, they literally just people fly in from America and they just they queue up at the top of this big hill, they roll some cheese down, and people just literally like cartwheel and forward flip. And I mean, people break bones and stuff all the time. Um, so yeah, that’s what I can currently see.

[2:02] Sammie Ellard-King: I’ve seen like things in um Spain where they’re like everyone’s just having a massive tomato fight, and the people try and run through it and they just knob like tons of rotten tomatoes.

[2:13] Brian Mitchell: That sounds like less bones get broken, but yeah, that sounds more fun. I’d rather do that.

[2:18] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, cool. Right, okay, so a big block lots of cheese is coming towards us as we’re talking about.

[2:22] Brian Mitchell: Yeah, as we speak. So I’m gonna I’m gonna try and look at you and not the people breaking bones.

[2:28] Sammie Ellard-King: Oh mate, love this. But I have been following you for a long time, man. I started in during COVID and I just loved your refreshing take on the way that personal finance is interpretated. Your take on things just very refreshing um a lot of the time when we’ve got a lot of people in the space now. Um, and it’s very unique to find someone that just sticks to their guns and the way that they think rather than being influenced by others in the space. So that’s my quick hats off to you, moment, mate, because uh I think you’re uh you’re you’re doing a fantastic job. Um, but yeah, bring us up to speed about you.

[3:07] Brian Mitchell: Well, it’s probably, I mean, to get to the why I am like that, I think it’s probably good to know my my money story. Um the way I got into this is probably a little bit different. Well, it’s definitely a bit different to a lot of people, certainly in the UK. I think America is a bit more common, kind of the entry into the space. But essentially, I I grew up in a single parent household, single income. Um, my mum didn’t earn a lot of money. I had a brother and a sister. We didn’t grow up in the UK, we grew up in South Africa. Um, so a corrupt, very corrupt, um, generally pretty poor country. So I had um when I look back now the privilege actually of seeing what actual poverty looked like, um, which I struggled when I came to the UK for when people said they were poor. I used to think you have absolutely no idea what poverty is unless you go and experience third world countries. Um, but essentially, my entire life until I was 13, 14, when I came to the UK, I knew nothing other than South Africa. So there was no such thing as the NHS, um, you had to pay for schooling. Uh, it was very much, if you didn’t have money, you were screwed. And the fact that we didn’t have a lot of money put me, like a lot of other people, in a scarcity mindset. And to this day, I still struggle with that. But it’s very much like because you don’t have a lot of money, when you get it, you feel this need to get rid of it quickly. It’s a it’s a weird kind of um paradox because you you would think you’d want to hoard the money from somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money. But actually, what it means is I don’t know when money’s gonna come next. If I need to enjoy this money now, and it’s almost it’s a kind of a different way of looking at a YOLO lifestyle. I luckily didn’t earn enough money to have a YOLO lifestyle, like I couldn’t afford nice watches, I’ve never had a financed nice car. Um, so on a plus side, I never earned enough with that mindset to you know kind of piss all down the drain, really. So, in that sense, when I came to the UK, we had a lot more opportunity. So I wasn’t an immigrant in that sense. I was born in the UK, so I had the luxury of a British passport, so which I’d never even thought of being a good thing until opportunity arose to actually come to this country. And thank God my mum realised there was opportunity on the other side of the world and took me back here. But throughout my entire working life, up until eight years ago, I’ve worked in hospitality. So I took a low-paying job as soon as I turned 18. I became a bartender. Um, I was always aspirational on what I did, so I always kind of wanted to be the best at what I did. And at that time I was bartending, so I used to do competitions and all, but still earned bugger-all money. Like I was like, you know, great at what I did, but like, what’s the point? Because I’m getting paid nothing. So that kind of happened for a good two or five um to eight years. And then I always, for some reason, had this niggling dream of wanting to join the police. Um, I don’t know where that came from. Nobody in my, you know, in my family’s been a police officer. I don’t know why I had this need for justice. I mean, maybe maybe I liked Batman when I was younger, I don’t know. Um so I joined the police at 27. Um, so this was in like 2017. And obviously, pre-COVID, I don’t know if anybody knows who’s listening to this. The public sector don’t get paid much money. Um certainly the police. So I started on like 18,000 pounds um, which is the training salary, which is absolutely bonkers when you think about what that job entails. Um, this coincided with, so I took a pay cut, um, a pay cut from bartending is pretty crazy thing to do to join the police, by the way. Um that coincided with me kind of having this mindset, scarcity mindset kind of uh culminating with me wanting to earn more money. And the way I thought was a good idea to do that, a good way to do that, was to start gambling. And I’ve never been a gambler in my life, I’ve never um yeah, I’ve like I’ve I’ve never paid poker, I never played, I never did online gambling. For some reason, I don’t know what it was, and I still to this day try and figure out what it was, but I don’t know. And I started um like I opened a William Hill account and started betting on basketball. Now I’m five foot eight, I know jack shit about basketball. I’m like, I can’t, I’m alright at throwing, but basketball’s not my sport. I know nothing about basketball. Um, so anyway, I did this thing that a lot of like addicts I’ll call myself an addict for this moment. Like a lot of addicts, they especially with gambling, is you get a you get a big ish win early on and you think you’ve cracked some sort of code. Like you’re almost like, well, what these people are losing their money. Like, yeah, you hear the house always wins, but you’re like, nah. I’m I think I got up like three grand at one point. And for me at that point was like 20, nearly 20% of my annual income. So I was like, I’ve I’ve I’ve got this, I’ve nailed this, which obviously didn’t end well for me because I lost all of that, and then essentially maxed out all of my credit cards. I had three credit cards with a balance of six thousand pounds, which is the most, the highest credit limit I could get at the time. Um, and I essentially off the back of that hit absolute rock bottom financially. Um, my wife or my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, knew nothing about this. I did it all by myself, which I don’t recommend to anybody listening. If you find yourself all, you know, recognise those things that I’ve just said within you, talk to the other people in your life because that’s the dumbest thing you could possibly do. But essentially, I remember the point where I was I was sat in this house, sat downstairs, and I tried to like I don’t know, put 20 quid into my whatever the betting um app was, and it was declined. And I was like, oh, that’s weird. Logged onto my credit card apps, and I’d maxed out all three of the credit cards, and I hadn’t consciously thought of that as about it was going to happen. Um and when you have a young child, a mortgage to pay, and your wife or your girlfriend doesn’t understand, you know, know what’s going on, that’s a pretty shit time to be in. And I could have gone two ways, really. Like I could have self-destructed, um, or I did luckily what I did do was find myself backed into a corner, and I just basically just came out swinging. Like I thought to myself, right, I can do this. I believe in myself that I can get out of this. So I spent the next year to year and a half diving into anything financial, um, YouTube videos, books, podcasts. And this is from somebody who never took an interest in money. I’ve never had a job in finance, I’ve never cared about finance. If you asked me to explain you a pension at this point, I would have, I don’t know how I would have responded. Um, so I went into such a deep dive and I kind of did this Excel spreadsheet. I was like, I’m six grand debt. How am I gonna get out of it? Boom, boom, it’s gonna take me two years. Um, and I went from projected taking two years to getting out in about six to seven months. And that was me just literally like over time, over time, look around, sell things, all those kind of like you know, things that people tell you to do when you’re when you’re in a place of of real desperation. I did all of them, and you know what, it worked. And I it every single day consumed about two or three hours worth of content. Um, and I I I am proof that it does work if you if you’re intense for a short period of time. So I never ever thought I was gonna create content, just like I never thought I’d care about money. I also never ever thought I would be somebody who creates content. Um, my wife started her own business just pre-COVID. Um, so this kind of all kind of overlapped at the same time. And she started, uh well, she downloaded TikTok. Um, and that at the time was just filled with people dancing, young, young children dancing. And I would say be like, What are you doing on TikTok? What are you doing on TikTok? That’s just such a you’re wasting your time. He has me like knee deep in a Dave Ramsey book, and she’s like on TikTok, I’m like, Come on, there’s better things you can be doing. Um, and then she she said to me, like, she I I I revealed the fact that I was in debt to her and how I got out of debt. And um, I see obviously she would hear podcasts in the background, so she knew I had this interest. And she was like, Why don’t you just create a video? And I was like, absolutely not. Like, I don’t think I’d ever recorded myself um and critiqued it enough to be like, it would just be you know, like what everyone hates hearing their own voice if they’ve never recorded an audio before, they absolutely hate it. So I was like, absolutely no way. And then about a month later, she kept banging on, she convinced me to do it. The first one was a terrible video. I don’t know what I think it got, like maybe 500 views. I was like, what’s the point? Should just do one more, just keep going, keep going. So I did another one. I can’t remember, I think it was about ISAs, I can’t remember exactly what it was about. But anyway, it it went to like 250,000 people. Oh wow, and it wasn’t a good video. Like you can go back on my TikTok and look at it, it’s it’s not a good, it’s not a good video. Um, but it realised it made me realise that I had a channel to um put out my experiences and my thoughts on this thing called money, and you know, you know, like the best teachers are the ones that have just gone through something. So, like if you I I just learned how to get out of debt and learned about investing. So I was very excited about it. So I was like, I’m probably the best person to talk to people who have never experienced this before, rather than that, you know, 50-year-old bloke in a suit that is talking a bunch of jargon that nobody understands. So I I kind of thought, yeah, there’s something in it. Never thought of monetizing it, never thought of um turning it into any sort of business. But um, I’ve pretty much every single week put out content of some description for the last three, well, four years nearly. Um, and that’s a long-winded way of saying that I’ve I’ve gone from a bartender to a police officer to um a podcaster and content creator. So I’ve had a bit of a diverse working history.

[12:38] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, but the thing is your journeys, everyone’s journeys are unique in wherever you end up landing. If you’d have asked me, and I’m no, you you’ve just said exactly the same thing 10 years ago, Brian, you’re gonna be making money content in the UK. You’d be like piss off. Yeah, like no chance, right? And so, and I and and the same for me, and I love your story because a lot of it resonates really hard with me, man. Like I did the whole debt thing, uh, you know, talked about this many times, 24 grand worth of credit card and personal loan debt, and then was gambling, like on the football, doing a bit of roulette here and there, just like totally no idea about how to what even money was and how it was like a form of uh you know, how it can become a form of abundance essentially, rather than just like this thing that just came and went straight away. And I think that scarcity mindset is ingrained in me from my parents because they are very much like that. It they they got paid, they did things, and there was never any chat about oh, you need to save, you know, 20 pence of your pound or whatever that might well be. Um, and so yeah, I feel like you everyone’s journey is so unique, and I I loved hearing that story, it’s a wicked story, man. Um, so based on what you said there, I think it’s important. We’ve got a lot of people in the space at the moment, there’s a lot of mixed messaging happening, and um, you know, I know from watching your content that you have your views, and I’d love to know what you feel like are some of the misconceptions around managing money that you think is getting banded around a little bit too often for your liking at the moment.

[15:05] Brian Mitchell: There’s a couple of things. What one that I’ve noticed even before I was learning about money, um, and it’s this very British idea of just saving. Like the word investing is not in most people’s lexicon. I think it is just is one of these things that rich people do. Um, and I know you know I’m not alone in this. We all talk about it as finance content creators. Like, you have to invest, you have to invest. But that literally goes over most people’s heads, like unless you can capture them at the right time um to give them a reason why they need to do it. All they’ve ever been taught is to invest, and it it’s still to this day just piss uh to save, sorry, not invest, it it still to this day just pisses me off because people look at as investing as uh saving is safe and investing as risky, but people never ever ever focus on for me, which is the biggest problem probably worldwide, but certainly in the UK and more so in the US, is this idea of inflation and the fact that when people talk about inflation, they talk about oh yeah, 2%, you know, 2% is a good thing. We all want this two. Why the hell would you if you’re in a room and 2% of the oxygen leaves the room every hour, are you gonna view that as a good thing? No, you’re not. You’re gonna view that as a bad thing. There’s no that is just monetary, that that’s just air inflation. Nothing’s happening, that’s the exact same thing that’s happening with your money. And people, for some reason, have been told this lie that inflation’s a good thing, it stimulates the economy. But all it is is debt. All that all it’s doing is printing money to create debt, so then people go and use money they haven’t got. And all that does is yes, it puts this false GDP, that GDP is growing, but all GDP is every single transaction in the country put together into a number. But that money didn’t exist in the first place. So what we’ve done is created money to create this fake thing to keep you it’s it is the ultimate kick in the can down the road. It’s that’s what it is. It is literally inflation, is we’re not gonna face the real problem, so we’re gonna print our way out of it. And of course, there’s there’s different ways that money enters the the the um into circulation, whether banks creating money, central banks creating money, or the banks creating bonds, which is essentially just creating money out of thin air that people buy. So essentially, I don’t know enough about the monetary policy to be able to deep any divers to M0, M1, M2, all these fancy words that politicians and economists will use to confuse absolutely everybody. But if you have never thought about this before, think about it as money entering uh circulation. More money chasing the same amount of goods and services means things cost more money. So back to the thing that I think is the worst problem is that if you can get 5% in a savings account right now, and you’re being told the inf uh you know the in the the current inflation rate is 3% or 2% or 4%, you’re thinking, well, if I put money into a savings account, I’m making money. It’s okay. That’s just not true because the the the actual way that they measure it, which is CPI, the consumer price index, is an absolute made-up metric. Like you can, yes, they they they can go, yes, housing, energy, put all these things in it, but your CPI is different to my CPI. Yeah, exactly. So you can you can just say, oh yeah, no, you know, my money’s only losing 3% of its value every year. That’s absolutely bullshit. What it depends on what you’re buying. Like if you’re just watching Netflix and you’re just buying junk food and you know, you don’t have a lot of, you’re not you’re not trying to buy things like houses and that sort of thing. Yeah, sure, that might be it, but that’s not what they’re buying. If you’re not in the category, exactly. If you and you split the categories exactly as the percentages as they as they lay them out, and if you don’t think that there’s any kind of gerrymandering going on whereby that they change that the the metric to get CPI lower to benefit themselves, then you’ve not thought about this long enough. Because if if they if if somebody in the government and they will go, ah yeah, but the Bank of England um and the government are two separate entities, which is probably the biggest lie I’ve ever heard in my life. If you don’t think if you get to that level and that power that you don’t influence each other, stop reading the Financial Times. Like, honestly. So the fact that people are told that this is the number and that if you put your money in a savings account, you’re still winning. It’s absolute bullshit. The actual inflation rate’s always gonna be higher. So the goal then is to always try and get the highest return on your money as possible. And the only way to do that is to buy assets. And for most people, that’s investing your money. So, like explaining that to somebody who’s never thought about this before scares them, and they just go, I don’t know what to do, so I’m just not gonna do it, which is the problem that we face the most. So, my the which again is another convoluted way of saying, things like Martin Lewis, who’s and I talk about him quite a lot, I think he’s absolutely great. Like, I genuinely think he’s brilliant. But the fact that he purposely doesn’t talk about investing for me is a problem. Yeah, I completely agree with you. Like, like I get why he doesn’t, because he has this huge influence. He’s got millions of people that see him as you know the financial figurehead in the UK. He’s the man who tells us what to do. Totally understand that. Because if he starts talking about, you know, open a stocks and shares ISA, people, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Is he being like, is this some sort of ad that he’s doing? Like people would get freaked out by it. But I really think he has a responsibility to, you know, explain what investing is to people and why they need to do it. Because at the moment, it’s a big lie for me. I think it’s it’s a huge lie that it’s just the elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about. And the reason why we exist content creators is because we’ve gone, hold on a minute, nobody’s talking about investing. So we start talking about investing.

[20:24] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, I completely agree with you, man. Look, I I think Martin’s amazing and what he’s done for the for the people of this country, unrivaled when it comes to personal finance, right? And very difficult for any of us to top, but he doesn’t solve the problem of people losing money through putting their money into savings accounts, which he actively tells people to do, yeah, which I have a big problem with. Um, and that’s where there’s a big gap at the moment. And I feel like where we come in is we give people what is a possible reality if they just take these very simple steps. So let’s talk about this. If someone’s listening to this going, cool, Brian, like that. That sounds great. Like, totally see where you’re coming from with inflation then. And let’s say, you know, it’s it’s skew-whiff and my inflation is higher. I want to invest, but I don’t have a clue where to start. Like, where do you even begin?

[21:18] Brian Mitchell: So step one is understanding there’s a problem. Because as we were just talking about then, most people don’t think there’s a problem. Um, so once you wrap your head around, and unfortunately, it actually because the system is so complex and confusing and overwhelming, you do have to do a little bit of research. Like me just saying this might click something in your brain to hopefully go and make you go and understand true inflation and what causes inflation and the fact that the government never talk about them being the reason for inflation existing, they always blame China, Russia. And don’t look, look, I’m sure that plays a role in it to a degree. But as soon as you internalize that the more money put into circulation, which the government and the central bank can do, things are gonna increase in price. So that’s understanding that that is step one. Step two is understand that you need to buy things that other people are gonna want in the future. That’s what assets are. So why people buy property because in the future it’s gonna go up in value. And side note, the reason property goes up in value isn’t because that property is worth more money, it’s because the money is worth less. So this uh this is a four-bedroom house, it’s in an okay area. It’s not any more valuable than it was when I bought it six years ago, but it costs more money. Like it’s it’s the same floor space, it’s the same number of rooms, it’s in the same location, but it costs more money. Ask yourself why that is. That’s because the money is worth less. So you need to basically buy things that are gonna go up because of inflation, i.e. Assets, property, stocks, anything that is going to be fine art, um, you know, things that are gonna be worth gold, things that people are gonna in the future uh want, you know they’re gonna want, and you know it’s gonna be worth more because they’re gonna continue to print money. So essentially internalized, you need to buy assets for most people. An asset is just a stock. So the simplest form of a stock that I think, and this is not financial advice, that most people should be putting their money into, which is what most people are gonna be doing anyway, through workplace pensions and any sort of um personal pensions they may have, is investing in funds. And funds are just collections of stocks. Again, I’ve probably lost somebody if they’ve never really thought about this before, but hopefully people listen to this do. All you want to do is buy assets. Stocks are an asset, so essentially having equity in a company. So if you can buy one pound’s worth of stock now, an Apple, fantastic. You own a bit of Apple, this is great. But you don’t just want to buy Apple because what if Apple goes bust? You’ve lost your money. So distribute that one pound across, you know, 500, 1,000 companies, and then go, oh, I’m not just gonna put it in America or the UK, I’m gonna put it across the entire world. You could do that within a fund, very low-cost fund that essentially spreads your money out and diversifies, uh diversifies the risk. For most people, I think that’s the that’s the first step. And the majority of people’s money, mine included, over 80% of my net worth is in index funds or funds. Um, the most popular one would be the S&P 500 in America, the top 500 uh stocks. You would argue that it’s not actually 500, they’re controlled by you know seven of the biggest ones, the Magnificent Seven tech companies. So you could forget about the other the other sort of 493 essentially, but the fund holds you know all of those things. Just in case one of those seven go bust, you know, you’ve got another 499 to fall back on. But if you if you can internalize that idea of putting your money to something that is less risky, unfortunately it’s going to give you less return. Everybody knows that saying, the more risk you take, you know, the more rewards you could potentially get. So that’s not to say you should go out there and take risks. For some people, you might want to do that. Buying property is risky. You know, if you if you if you if you’re a property investor or thinking of being a property investor, you it’s not something you want to do unless you understand property or know how to actually do it. So you need to understand, and that’s my biggest message that I try and put across to people and especially talking about investing, is you need to understand what you’re doing, otherwise you’re gonna do silly things. Like if you if you if you go, oh okay, that sounds great, right? I’m gonna go and put 10,000 pounds of my life savings into the S&P 500, um, and then it drops by 20% tomorrow, you’re gonna panic and you’re gonna sell it.

[25:27] Sammie Ellard-King: Because you don’t know.

[25:28] Brian Mitchell: Because you’ve not done the research, you’ve not realised that markets recover and all that sort of thing. So um the the big kind of theme that runs through a lot of what I’m talking about is is you have to take the time to learn this stuff. So as far as actually getting started, it’s really simple. Like you can download an app on your phone now, it’s take you two minutes, you sign up, open a stocks and shares ISA, which allows you to invest tax-free, and you can invest, you know, 10 quid in something, or you can use a Trading 212 app and put one pound in there.

[25:54] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah.

[25:54] Brian Mitchell: So that’s how easy it is to get investing. The problem is that barrier to entry being kind of easier to get into means that more people do it and more people get scared when things go wrong. Because you see that you know, as I said, you just did a good visualization of volatility. And what that happens is people get into them. I luckily got into starting investing in 2020 when it was a huge, huge boom. Like I put in, I can’t remember, you know, my first hundred pounds or whatever, and it kind of like was up to 160 pounds within a couple of days. So I had this kind of really um for me, which is actually I’m Warren Buffett. Yeah, yeah, I’ve nailed it just like I was when I was gambling. I’ve nailed it, I’ve figured it out. I’ve the one fund I picked was the perfect one. And then which was a bad thing because it made me realise, oh, maybe maybe I can’t lose money. But you need to kind of spend a bit of time in it, even if you put five pounds in and you realise yes, it goes up, but then yes, it goes down, and you have to learn to stomach both of those things because when it goes up, you know, it’s a bit like when you buy a lottery ticket. And I was talking to my friend about this the other day, he does the lottery every week, and he he doesn’t do it because it’s saying I don’t even think he wants to potentially win 50 million because I think he probably thinks it would ruin his life. It’s the thought of what you’re gonna do with that money on you know Tuesday or Friday when the Euro millions is on. It’s you spend the entire day with the anticipation of like, oh, what am I gonna spend that money on? What do I want to spend that money on? And for a lot of people, that’s the emotion you get when the stock market, you know, you you know, you put a couple of grinded Bitcoin and just before it explodes and you go, yes, what am I gonna buy? I’m gonna buy a Lamborghini. So it’s it’s that thought of oh, and then that’s potentially gonna cause you to sell in the future or wait for further returns and their drops. But it’s the same the other way around. Like you think everything is going to shit when you know it drops by 10%. You you log into your portfolio and you go, oh my god, that’s it. I’ve lost all my money, I can’t retire anymore. So you have to go through. For me, it took probably a couple of years. Luckily, I’ve never sold or I’ve never kind of used my emotion to do it. But you need that bit of time. Starts with their knowledge, and then you need that little bit of time that gives you experience to go, uh, I know what it feels like to go up, and I know what it feels like to go down. I think that’s for a lot of people is the biggest barrier to investing.

[27:59] Sammie Ellard-King: I mean, 100%. Something you said there like really resonated with me. Like I jumped on, um, I was already doing a little bit of investing with Hargreaves Lansdown, building up a little bit here and there. And I was actually doing really stable stuff like funds, like Apple, Microsoft, uh, my single stocks at the time. Like this was like 2017, 2018. And then 2020 came around, it’s like at home, woohoo, eToro, let’s go. And it was like crazy. I was just like, oh my god, I’m I I am the king of this. I know what I’m doing. And then all of a sudden, absolutely slapped. And when that happens, you find out a lot about yourself, and you really know whether or not you can stomach that kind of risk. What I know now is that I don’t want to have that feeling again because I liken that feeling to a roulette world going down, and suddenly your number number doesn’t drop, and all of your things are on that thing, and you go, oh shit. And that’s when it’s like suddenly that stock which you bought, which was a big speculative, you know, the amount of crappy companies that people were buying just because some person on YouTube was telling them that it was a hot stock, and actually the realistic value of it was probably about 75% less than what it was actually being sold for, even when you bought it. That’s what’s happening all over the place in 2020 and 2021. And suddenly you cut snap back to reality, and that’s when I completely re-portioned my portfolio. I do very similar to you. I’m 8020, heavy 8020, and I will never deviate from that. 20% speculative, 80% index funds, and that’s it. And um, when people go, and that’s just from putting in the reps, and that’s making personal mistakes with my own money for me to go out and do that. Now, when people hear about that, they do kind of get a little bit scared because they’re like, Well, what happens to me? And I was like, Well, as don’t jump in there with all of your savings or all of your money straight away. Start small, build up, and learn over a smaller period of time. And once you feel like you’ve ridden out a year in the market, you understand it a little bit more while you’ve been doing research and you’ve been getting into it and you’ve been watching, you know, Up The Gains and uh and Prime Richel, frugal spending channels. Like, that’s when you can then go, all right, cool. Now I’m ready and I’m gonna go and do a little bit more. I’m gonna change my allocations. I’m not gonna save as much, I’m gonna invest a bit more because I understand it now and I know how it feels, and that’s something that people just lack. So I really love what you said there. Now, I wanted to just slightly pivot from this because I feel like we’ve touched on inflation as a topic, but something that we haven’t touched upon, which stops people investing and saving in the first place, which is a massive problem, which is kind of the actual fundamentals of personal finance is lifestyle inflation. And due to whatever reasons, social media, marketing, you know, they say that you see 10,000 ads now in a day if you go into London. What are your views on this? And and how can people coach themselves out of that kind of mentality of keeping up with the Joneses?

[32:03] Brian Mitchell: Yeah, I mean, ironically, we are to blame as social media content creators, I think. Um I don’t put flashy stuff on social media, so I suppose that makes me differ. But people, people who have influence definitely um using things like Instagram and and you know keeping up with the Kardashians seems like an easy thing to blame, but that creates a culture of people who aspire to be a certain way. And look, I I’ve never earned enough money uh previously when I had a really poor mindset to to do that. I probably would have. If I if I if I earned you know 50, 60 grand a year in my 20s, I would have got a BMW, 100%. Um, I would have financed as as high as I could, I would have got a flashy watch, and I would have tried to signal to everybody I was successful, despite the fact that I wasn’t. I would have. I know I would have. So the biggest thing really is that mindset. Oh, I’ve done it too, by the way. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, 100%. Like I that’s and I don’t think that’s why I think it’s a it’s it’s a human um desire to to want to aspire to status, and it is that that you you can’t deny that. That it’s a human trait that we have to want to signal success, whether that’s to try and you know get a girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. I mean, mainly it’s a masculine thing because they want to uh they they want to try and signal to a woman that you know you can give them a good life, as sexist as that sounds. That is generally historically the way um the way we are wired as human beings, and that’s not big of my sword kind of thing, and that’s not disappeared, that’s not that’s not left our brains. Yes, we’ve moved on massively with technology and we’re more civilized and all of those great things, but we still as human beings feel this need to project our success. Now, when I was a police officer, I spent a lot of time in council estates. And I don’t know if you’ve driven through you know some council estates in the last couple of years. There’s a lot of BMWs on the drive of council estates. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you’re there, you’re there. Um there are a lot of fancy cars in very poor neighborhoods. Now ask yourself how has that happened? Maybe it’s drug dealing. That as a police officer, I definitely saw a lot of that, you know, they’ve entrepreneurial mindset in the wrong direction, got them some monetary success, sure. But what what really has happened is that finance companies have made it a hell of a lot easier for people to finance things they can’t afford. Like that you can buy you can buy a pizza on Klarna. I know, man. Delivery. You can literally buy junk food with debt.

[34:52] Sammie Ellard-King: Mad.

[34:53] Brian Mitchell: That that is the epitome of a society that is, you know, we’re talking we’re talking about how money is created through debt. That like that it that is probably it. I don’t understand how we can devolve anymore into a society that does not understand financial literacy more than that. And people justify it, they go, Well, I can invest that extra £10. No, bollocks, you’re not investing that £10. Like, that’s the the I I have this argument on TikTok daily in my comment section. When I talk about debt and they’re like, Well, I might as well finance my car because I’m gonna you know, I could invest that extra £400 a month, but are you investing? And the answer, I mean, they’re never gonna admit it, but you know, the stats don’t lie. Over 90% of cars on the road are financed, and only 7% in the UK have a stocks and shares ISA. You know, so there’s 83%. I mean, they’re not gonna be bang on numbers, but you based on those two figures alone, there’s 83% of people that are financing cars that aren’t investing, or certainly aren’t investing in something that should be, i.e., stocks and shares ISA. So the people who use that as an excuse heard it in a YouTube video that sounded really cool, like, oh yeah, I can leverage debt and then I can use that money for cash flow and buying assets. Like, you’re not, you’re just getting rid of all of all of your income, all of your income is going out to finance companies so that you can feel so you can drive in a car. I mean, I you I demonize car finance a lot, but that for me, I think it it it’s what puts people into this mindset of um I can afford it because I can afford monthly payments. Therefore, you know, I have this, I say this all the time. Like I looked at I looked the other day, you know, to finance a Ferrari, like that’s a couple grand, that’s a couple grand a month. If I screw if I scrimped and saved and stopped investing, I could afford a Ferrari. Nice. Can I afford a can I afford so can I afford a Ferrari then? No, of course I bloody can’t. Like, like, like I know I look wildly successful on social media, but I I can I can assure you I cannot I cannot afford to drive a Ferrari. The day that you know, the day I’ve got multi-million pound net worth and plenty of cash um ready to pull out of an ISA and buy a Ferrari, I can afford the Ferrari. I can’t, just because I can afford the monthly payments, afford the monthly payments by neglecting something else financially, that doesn’t mean I can afford it. And that’s the mindset a lot of people have. They go, oh yeah, but I like cars. You go, yeah, you like cars because you like impressing other people. It’s as simple as that. Like you can, we can distill it down to you you can say you like cars, and I get it, there’s people that like cars. But the reason you’re driving that BMW, that nice financed 2023, 2024-plate BMW, is simply because you want everyone else to think you’re successful. Like, and as soon as you as soon as you admit that, the sooner you can get past it. And I’m not saying you have to drive a 20-year-old crappy car. That’s I and I don’t encourage it. And if you can afford that BMW, and I’m a big fan of buying things outright, buy it by all means. Like have the nicest thing you can afford. But this idea of afford becomes the problem. Um, and it very much is the keeping up with the Joneses thing. And sadly, if you live in a nice area or you go to, you know, your kids go to a nice school, or you feel that social pressure to um to buy the things potentially or using debt to get it, but which the problem with with the kind of lifestyle inflation is it it certainly creeps up on people as their income increases. But I think the worst part is is the accessibility of debt. Um, so like kind of as you progress through time, your credit card balance, your credit card limit increases, and therefore this kind of the gap between what you can really afford and what um you know what your payments are gonna be increases. So you essentially go, oh, I’ve got a 10 grand limit on my credit card now. So in your head, you know, you you have this buffer of 10 grand that’s not real money. So you end up just like you go, oh, I see that. Oh, that Rolex looks really nice. You know, oh, look at that Rolex. I haven’t got the money, but bang, ah, it’s only you know, it’s only gonna be 200 pounds a month for my minimum payment. And then before you know it, you get a slippery slope. And it’s all all good when interest rates are low and you’ve got a great paying job and you know your relationship’s healthy and all those things. But if 2008 and 2020 hasn’t taught us anything, it’s that things crumble because it’s a house of cards.

[38:56] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, oh mate, yeah, a hundred percent. Thing is with the BMW thing, I don’t know about you, but like if I see a flash car, I’m not actually looking at the driver, I’m looking at the car, and then if I manage to peek the driver, most of the time my immediate reaction is whoever they are is what a dickhead. Yeah, like that’s I just I just genuinely think that.

[39:18] Brian Mitchell: So people don’t know if if So people hearing you say that might go, oh, but that’s because Sammie’s jealous. Uh and it’s not, it’s it’s not. So so like I I’ve had this on, I’ve had this argument. I really need to stop reading comments on TikTok, but me too, mate. But people are like, I the last video I did on car finance, somebody commented, oh, somebody’s jealous because they can’t afford it. And I said, You you you that’s why I’m angry, is because I can’t afford a 200 pound, 300 pound a month car payment. No, it’s genuinely I want to help people who feel the need to do that. Morgan Housel has a good story about this in his book, The Psychology of Money, when he talks about how he was he was a valet at some really fancy place in I think it was an LA or Hollywood. And he re had this epitome moment when he saw these flash Ferraris and nice cars coming in, and not once did he go, Oh, that guy looks cool. You just go, No, that Ferrari’s cool, or that really, oh, that’d be really cool if I had that car. So people see you driving around in a nice car, they don’t look at you and go, oh, Sammie’s successful, what a cool guy. What like he’s they go, they go, oh, that’s a nice car, I’d like that car. And then they think when they get that car, that everyone’s gonna look at them and not do the thing that they were doing. So it people just can’t wrap that, but then people will justify with I like cars. And look, don’t get me wrong, there’s a percentage of the population. I I quite like cars, like I want a Ferrari, I would love to have a Ferrari, but I want the Ferrari because yeah, I think everyone’s gonna look at me and go, mate, you’re successful, well done. I I can admit that there’s a lot of people that can’t.

[40:49] Sammie Ellard-King: Okay, I completely agree, and that’s that’s how I feel like and I’ve been in this argument many times with people as well. And and it is the thing, it’s like, well, you just want to be that guy. And I said, No, I don’t. I think when I look at it like this, and when you actually see, well, half the nation have financed their cars, and then because of that, you’re not bloody investing your money and you own a depreciating asset paying way over the value of the car because you put it on interest because you could afford the payment, yeah. Suddenly, do you not think we’ve got a problem there? So that’s why I think that person’s a dickhead because he’s driving around with his fancy sunglasses on and the top down. But actually, when he gets home, if we were to pull the you know, the the the blinds down on his finances, he’d add a bugger all. And that’s why I think there’s a problem. And so if you when you see it like that, next time you see someone driving in a Ferrari, just have a think about that. They’ve probably got it on lease and they probably have absolutely nothing to show for it.

[41:46] Brian Mitchell: Oh, 100%. But look, I think it’s uh I demonize debt and car finance quite a lot. But I think look, life life’s about balance. Like when I when I have this discussion and I say, look, the opportunity costs of that monthly payment, Dave Ramsey talks about it all the time when he says how like your your biggest wealth bidding towards your income. And and the more money that goes towards finance companies and debt and your mortgage and all those things, is less money that you can um you know use to go on holiday or money to invest for your future. The most for me, the most important thing would be to invest for your future. But then the biggest argument that I get kind of back at that is well, I’ll you know, I don’t know if I’m gonna be alive when I’m 65, because you know, 65 is the number that we always quote for, and you know, you can retire if you save if you invest X amount, which is which look, I totally, I totally agree. But um, the podcast I did uh last week, um it’s not been released on my podcast, but really it actually it hit me. She said to me, If if that is your view, go and meet a skint 65-year-old. Like I had a nan who was a skint 65-year-old, she she was it was alone and relied on the state pension. If you if you think um A that you’re not gonna reach that age, statistically, you’re gonna reach that age. And if you think that you’re just gonna kind of like model your way through life and B, yeah, and have a comfortable um retirement without consciously thinking about it now, whatever your age is, even if you’re 50 or 55, it’s not too late. If you’re not consciously making those decisions now, you’re gonna be in for a real shit last quarter of your life.

[43:22] Sammie Ellard-King: 77 is the current age. I think it’s in the UK is 81. So that’s 16 years. Average lifetime savings for retirement is just over 50 grand. It’s less than 500 pounds a month when you factor in state pension.

[43:37] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah.

[43:38] Sammie Ellard-King: So you tell me what you can buy right now with the cost going through the bloody roof for 500 quid a month, you like you’re gonna be right up shit’s creek without a paddle. That’s not even you covering your bills, let alone food, let alone doing anything for what, 17 years?

[43:55] Brian Mitchell: Yeah, like come on. But just because it’s not today, you know, you think you think I’ll can deal with that tomorrow. But very quickly, just go and talk to a 65-year-old and say to them, how quickly is the last 20 years of your life gone? You know, you just you just you just do what you’ve always done, you go to work, you do these things before you know it, it’s gonna creep up and you’re gonna be retired. And if you really think you’re gonna have to, if you think the state, the you know, the government are the people who are gonna um go, oh, but you’ve worked really hard, so you know, we’re gonna increase your state pension for you. Oh, hold on, what’s what’s what’s your mortgage? Oh, we’ll give you a little bit more. Are they bollocks? Like they are gonna give you as little as possible because they’ve they are so poor at managing money, they’re gonna, they are literally like it’s the they they kind of the value of it’s going up, and so they have to increase it. Well, yeah, but they but they frame it as in like, oh, so your tax-free allowance is like 12 and a half grand. So we’ll keep it below that so you don’t get pushed into the into to start paying tax. What kind of a logic is that? What this is the biggest argument for me, and this is why I love stocks and shares ISA so much, is this uh and any form of investing, is you need to take a shotgun approach of like putting money into stocks and shares ISA, putting money into your into your workplace pension and a you know, a personal pension of your self-employed. And when you get to that age when you know retirement age hits, and what if state pension doesn’t exist anymore? Like that’s a real like that’s this isn’t even me trying to scare monger. Like, what if by the time you you rely your entire life on um hopefully having your mortgage paid off and the state pension, which sadly is what most people rely on for their retirement, is I’m not gonna have a health payment and I’ll have a guaranteed you know 10 grand a year coming in. Ask yourself what’s gonna happen if that’s not there anymore and you don’t have a stocks and shares ISA and you’ve opted out of your pension through the majority of your life until 2012 when you were pretty much forced to do it. What kind of a life are you gonna live?

[45:46] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, I know, man. I know. It’s and and that’s why we’ve got to have these conversations. That’s why these people. Podcast is why these channels exist because not enough people with the responsibility of educating this country do a good enough job. And I was at a Labour um Say for Britain SME thing the other night, got invited. I have no affiliation with the party, but I just wanted to see what was going to happen if they got into power, what was their views on things? And there are it’s so archaic. It’s insane. They want to put money hubs into high streets, taking over banks, which essentially are centred financial advisors giving people further information. Yes, that’s gonna help the Judas and Dory Dorises that still go to the High Street where you know meeting up for a Caffè Nero. But like people like me and you who want to learn about personal finance, where are we gonna go? We’re gonna go online and we’re gonna deal with this digitally and we’re gonna slowly learn about these things. And they want to put things into schools. Two in five secondary schools don’t realise in the UK that personal finance is part of the curriculum, and over 90% of teachers don’t feel trained to deliver what they’re supposed to train uh deliver in the curriculum. So we’ve got this massive problem, and I like that they’re talking about it, but it that’s gonna solve things for a very small portion of the nation. And I felt like if they did something where they galvanized what is already a massive creator community online, spent a ton of money digitally creating a digital solution for this, they’d they’d do a you know, in conjunction with helping kids and uh and more of the older generation, then we perhaps might solve some of these problems that we we’ve been discussing today.

[47:35] Brian Mitchell: Yeah, I mean, again, it’s it’s important to realise and understand that the government’s incentives are misaligned. They they they want to get into power. So, like Labour are gonna start talking about things like that, and that’s the you know, the quickest thing they can muster up is let’s put you know, let’s let’s next to a bank that nobody goes into, let’s put something for financial information. Who the hell’s going to that? Even if even if Doris walks past it, is she gonna go, I want to learn about money today? No, you need to change the entire culture of the country. Now, I don’t know how to do that. So I’m not I’m not here to say, here’s the answer, this is how you make everybody understand money. But the biggest thing that they need to do, the government in particular, is stop lying. And that brings me back to what I was saying in the first place about inflation is you need to admit and tell the country what why they’re in economic turmoil. Like it isn’t because of Russia, it isn’t because of China. Let’s just go, okay, the reason why we’re printing a load of money is because COVID was really shit time and we had to pay people to not go to work. Like these are just one compounding of bad decision after bad decision and trying to patch up a bad decision and then they look you you you’re self-employed. If you had a money printer in your garden, would you would you print money? Yeah, so so where where’s your incentive? Where’s your incentive to give value and compete with everybody else doing the same thing as you if you can print your own money? There is no there is no incentive. So the incentives are misaligned. They they’re not actually trying to give the most value to um to you and I as citizens of the United Kingdom. That’s that that is not their goal. Their goal is to stay in power. The goal is to stay in power, get as much money as they can through um the political career, and the they’re closer to the money printer, therefore they get the money first. That’s how it works. It’s the Cantillon effect. The closest to the money source gets the money. The furthest away, i.e., you know, the average person in the UK who never thinks about money, you know, and is on an average wage, is so far removed from where the money source is. They are the people that the government are aiming all these things to. Oh, but if you just go into the high street, mate, there’s a little hub there, we’ll give you a leaflet about what an ice is. Like, how has that helped anybody? That’s not helped anybody. So, like, I think we’re all doing our part in the sense of like creating content about this stuff. And it’s the reason why I love talking to other content creators about this kind of stuff is because we all have different approaches, we all have different um backgrounds, we all have different views on things. But the more people that do it, the more people it’s gonna reach. Like, if I I could do a video about the same subject as you and my video flops, but luckily yours does really well and reaches all the people that my video didn’t do. So, like we all gonna we all have different audiences, probably roughly the same age, but we might have completely different people that just scroll and hit one of our videos and it makes them spark an idea of oh, and then they tag their, you know, quite often the best thing I like seeing on my TikToks and and on Instagram is when a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband and wife at their other partner. Yeah, 100%. I like I that that for me brings me so much satisfaction because I’m like, ah, something in that video, you know, whatever it was, sparked something and now they’re sharing it. And that for me was what is what it’s all about. And then hopefully those two people go away and even if they never follow me, I don’t care. As long as they go away and have a conversation about what it is that the topic I discussed, and that may hopefully snowballs their knowledge of uh of finance. Because the problem is finance in general is so confusing. It’s the reason why you have to become a financial advisor for you know nine months worth of you know, a couple of days a week or whatever to get you all to be qualified to go and tell people what to do. I’ve spent four years, probably five or six hours a day doing this. I can assure you I’m more qualified than a financial advisor who’s just qualified about how to talk about that stuff. I’m not gonna say the same stuff as them because they’re gonna, they’re gonna they’re gonna tell you exactly what the textbook told them to do. I’m not gonna do that. So I’m gonna take a different approach to it. So I’m gonna hit people, you know, the people who look for financial advisors generally are people that have just come into money or earn a lot of money or got some inheritance or have a big decision to make. We’re not trying to hit those people. Yes, those people maybe they can get some value from what we do. I just want to help the everyday person. And then sadly, it requires a lot of information. And then that’s not to say that you need to, you know, be balls deep in this information to know how to invest, because you don’t. Like most people are investors anyway through their workplace pension. You might not know it, but your money is being invested in the stock market. Ooh, really scary. But because you can’t touch it until you know you’re in your 50s and 60s, you don’t think about it. So if if you don’t want to be hands-on like you know, you and I are, then learn enough to get started, automate your payment, automate you know, how much you can afford or feel like you can afford to lose if things all go wrong and it goes to zero, which it won’t if you invest in index funds. But let’s just say it did. You you invest what you can afford to lose, and don’t think about it. Because once it’s automated, it’s done. And then you can just go into a compound and just calculate and go, oh, if I keep doing this, I change nothing, never increase it. This is how much money I may potentially have in 20, 30 years. Bam! And if you’re happy with that, I I like revising, learning more. If that’s not you, start it, automate it, walk away.

[52:35] Sammie Ellard-King: Crack on. Yeah, exactly. 100%. Like, I liken it to like just setting it like you would a savings account that you’re gonna put money into. You pick your funds, you set it up, and you let it do its thing and go back to doing whatever you need to do. That’s increasing your income so you can invest more or go on more holidays or whatever you want to do with it. Great. Like, just get started. Um, I love this because we both used to take money out of people’s pockets and fill them up with booze, and now we’re putting money back into people’s pockets. Like, how weird is that? There’s kind of gone full circle. I think so. For me, I I I’ve really enjoyed this. What do you think? One thing you want to leave this conversation with today, because we’ve covered a lot of ground, and I just feel like there’s perhaps one sort of wrapping up moment that we can kind of give people to take away from all of this that we’ve been chatting about.

[53:32] Brian Mitchell: For me, I mean the biggest message that I talk about, and it kind of influences every decision I make in life, and it influences pretty much all the content I create is have a real hard conversation with yourself about debt. I’ve been on both sides of debt. I’ve I’ve I’ve felt what it feels like to be in debt, and I’ve felt what it feels like to not be in debt. For the last four years of my life, I’ve avoided debt at all costs, and I can assure you I sleep much better at night. Not that’s not just having credit card debt. That’s thinking if you’re somebody who’s okay with debt, cool. But make that decision. Actually go away and think about a what debt is. You know, it for me, I have a real moral problem with debt now. Seems like a really weird way of putting it. Like I’m not religious or anything like that, but I I almost feel like now I am putting um so my myself, my family, everything I believe in at risk. Like if I I could go and finance a car today, hopefully the person who sold me that car had never seen my my content online because then I would get absolutely abused. Um I could I could do that, but I I the thing that stops me isn’t even so much the feeling of what it’s like to be a day, because I’ve almost forgotten because it was you know five years ago. It’s almost as that’s it’s become who I am now to to rely solely on myself to be sovereign is a weird word to use. But I I I like the idea of ownership, and I think we’ve lost that in the UK. I think in the US there’s still this kind of like um, you know, life, liberty, property. It’s it’s ingrained in their in their culture there that like I I am gonna carry a gun because I’m gonna protect my property now. And in the UK we have a real problem with that because we look at oh, you idiots, that’s why there’s mass shootings. I bet you didn’t expect this conversation to go that way. But the idea, the the idea of owning a gun is to protect yourself for a start, but then it’s also your property. The vast majority, when I was a police officer, when I had to learn about law, word for word, learn the definition of certain things, most of it revolves around property. So theft and fraud and all those things that so the so it is ingrained in the actual law, but we as people don’t seem to take a lot of ownership. We don’t we don’t go, oh, you know, I’m proud to own this house. We go, yeah, yeah, I own this house, but I’ve got a like 300 grand mortgage on it. Well, you don’t own the house, do you? Because if you miss a couple of payments, guess who owns the house? It’s not you, which is why I like this idea of being debt-free. Like if you buy a car outright and it’s only you know a thousand pound, two thousand pound car, it feels a little bit different when you drive that car because you know it’s yours. Like, and I know the argument of leasing and and and you know, it’s um if things go wrong, you can send it back. And I totally accept and respect people for making that decision. But as long as you have acknowledged what you’ve done, I am renting this car, I am pouring money down the drain, and I am using my income for something for pure convenience. Like I’m going to McDonald’s, I know it’s bad for me, I know it’s not going to give me the nutrition I need, but I’m gonna go and waste my money anyway because I feel like I’ve acknowledged it. If I whenever I go and get McDonald’s, I acknowledge I am not going to McDonald’s and going, I’m eating a nutritious meal. I’m not lying to myself. Like the people who go and finance a car going, yeah, but it’s better financially. No, it’s not. Accept that you’re this is the expensive option and you’re wasting your income that could potentially be used for something else. So for me, that’s the biggest one. Have a conversation with yourself and your partner or anyone who’s financially related to you in any way, shape, or form, and figure out where you sit with debt. And um, I would I would really ask you to imagine what life would be like if you if you didn’t have it and you and you know strived to keep your income and use that money to save for nice things like holidays and invest for you and your children’s future. And that all for me stems from keeping as much money that comes in from your pay pack as possible.

[57:25] Sammie Ellard-King: Brian, I’ve loved this, man. What a great closing statement. Um, totally agree with you on uh everything you said today, 10 times over. So, mate, thank you very much for your time. And uh yeah, we’re gonna have to do this again, man, because I feel like we could have gone two or three hours deep here and just like chewed the fat. Um, so yeah, we’re doing in person soon as well. It’s coming soon. So um, we’ll get you on for that, man, and we’ll we’ll go deep into a certain topic. But but thanks for your time. Awesome, mate. No worries. I’ve uh yeah, I’ve enjoyed it.

[57:52] Brian Mitchell: It’s my favourite thing to talk about. So yeah, thanks, mate.