Jason Butler: The Real Reason You Are Not Rich, After Advising 2,500 Millionaires

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

[00:00] Sammie: Jason, welcome.

[00:01] Jason: Well, I’m very pleased to be here, Sammie. Finally, um, I’ve done all my steps for the day, getting to the top of your studio. So I’m ready to go.

[00:08] Sammie: Third floor. Made you carry a few bags up as well. Do apologise. But you spent over 30 years in financial services and you’ve built a wealth management firm, you’ve advised many wealth families along the way, you’ve written books, you’ve educated millions of employees. After all of that, though, what does financial well-being actually mean? Because I think most people hearing that phrase think, oh, well, I just need more money.

[00:30] Jason: Yeah, it’s a good question, actually. And I think it means different things to different people, if I’m if I’m totally straight with you. To me, what financial well-being means is that money’s not a source of anxiety or worry, and that you have enough in however you define it, so that you’ve got choice, uh, freedom, and options in your life, and you can live a life on your own terms and with dignity and uh to be true to yourself. That’s it. Um, and in terms of, you know, if you’re always chasing money, uh, I think the research shows us that if you if you define yourself by your net worth or lack thereof, then you’re always gonna be unhappy. Okay. Now, the research also shows that having more as opposed to less, generally all other things being equal, is a good thing. But just more and more and more for the sake of it is not really the issue. So someone who has loads of debt and um uh gets out of debt is probably gonna have a bigger increase to their happiness than someone who goes from one million to two million. Okay. So it’s all about relative to where you are and what matters to you and what makes you have a what I call a flourishing life. Flourishing is a lot more than happiness, it’s being the best version of you and also those people around you.

[01:40] Sammie: So if you look at that from the outside perspective in, are you looking at from say it’s not just about the money, it’s what you’re doing with that money along the way that will give you that kind of overall feeling of financial well-being.

[01:53] Jason: Yeah, I mean, you know, take this from someone who grew up in a poor family, okay? So I don’t know any, I’m 57, I don’t know anyone else. I’ve never met anyone who, until the age of eight, had an outside toilet and a tin bath on a Sunday. Okay, there’s very few people in my generation who actually experienced that. That’s what I call real poverty and 10 Ps for the electric and the gas. We’ve loads of films we’d never seen the end of because we ran out of money on the electric and it just went out and we couldn’t find any money because our mum was at work. Um, I always say, you know, there’s loads of war films that I wish I’d knew the ending to. Um, and I can also remember the anxiety of growing up um of my mum never having enough, and my mum death split out when I was five. Uh, it was always a struggle paying the rent. We had debt collectors knocking on the door, we had a big glass door, and it was always a big fella. They used to send big fellas around and it all went dark like the sun had gone in, you know. And I can still remember that anxiety, my mum worrying that we’d never have enough. And so I think it’s, the whole thing about finance is it’s a mixture of what happened to you when you were growing up, and including as you became a teenager and a young person, what happened in this society? I was growing up in the 70s, and we had the three-day week, and you think things are bad now. Jesus, I mean, we lived in black and white in the 70s, everything was dirty and horrible. Um, and it also it’s also about the messages that you hear from other people, and that you more importantly, that you tell yourself. So everyone is different, but there are there are certain success leaves clues in terms of how you can have a good relationship with money so that it’s your it’s your servant and not your master.

[03:24] Sammie: Yeah, yeah. And it was that study done, I think it’s going back a few years, so obviously with inflation that’s increased, it’s like your material happiness doesn’t really increase drastically past uh wage. I think it was $73,000.

[03:37] Jason: Yeah, there’s been some more research done since then that said that actually that’s bollocks. Um, actually, it does keep going up, but it goes up a lot slower. Okay, in other words, the rate, you know, the people who’ve got 200 grand a year, all other things being equal, are happier than people who’ve got 40 grand a year, 50 grand a year. There is a massive increase, but it uh it doesn’t keep increasing at the same rate. So, in other words, beyond a certain level, you don’t get the same happiness bang for your pound or your buck or your euro. That’s the point. So uh yeah, that and I think it was just in blowers. I could be getting right. Bowers or blowers who did the study that said actually we can’t find any satiation point. We can’t, it does keep increasing, it just slows down the rate of increase. Yeah. Um, but you know what I mean? Um you can be earning £150,000 in this country and still feel hard done by it because you’ve got high rent or a high mortgage or your cost of, you know, we all know the cost of living, we’re all feeling poorer because, you know, we’re having to use our money um in lots of different ways. But I must share with you this relative story. They were interviewing some people, I think it was last week, and I don’t watch television, but I saw this on YouTube, and they were talking, you know, he interviewed a family coming out of costas about the cost of living crisis, and they all had what must have been like how much is a coffee now? 380, four quid in life.

[04:51] Sammie: Five or five quid, something like that.

[04:51] Jason: Or whatever, four or five quid. Now they’re all of them, the two kids and the parents, and they all had a cost of coffee, must have come to 20 quid. And they’re going on about how difficult things. Now, if things are difficult, and they are for many people, you wouldn’t be paying 20 quid for coffees, would you? You take a flask with you. Now, I know that sounds a bit sort of a bit uh austere, but I do think each generation resets its expectation of what poverty is or what difficulties are. And I said to you earlier, didn’t I, Sammie, when I first got here, it’s not how much you earn, it’s how much you keep. And for some people that’s hard. For some people, um uh it they’re not actually focusing on how much they keep because it’s not on their thing. And I will say wealthy people say how much, and poor people say how much a month.

[05:37] Sammie: I love that because uh it’s really interesting, it flagged that in my head. We did a video recently about the study into IQ and net worth essentially over time, and you would think that an increase in IQ would mean direct correlation to wealth, and actually it’s completely the opposite, it’s completely scattered, sorry. So there’s no like you’re not it just because you’re smarter or you earn more. Um, and um, being smarter does increase your um income quite drastically in a kind of a line and line, but net worth is all over the place. So you’re right, it’s about what you do what you keep because that’s someone earning that £100,000 versus someone on a 50 grand salary could be materially like the person on 50 grand could be much more wealthy because of what they’ve done with their money.

[06:19] Jason: Well, the other thing I notice is uh in um certain cultures in the UK, certain ethnic minority cultures and certain socioeconomic groups, so poorer people, will tend to have a disposition to spend their money on consumptive things that other people can see. So a friend of mine, oh well, sorry, friend, uh one of my founders that I’ve backed, uh, she comes, she’s got African descent, and in her community or people of her heritage, she said that there’s a lot of ostentatious spending, whether it’s on nails or dreadlocks or cars or whatever it is, because they because they’ve come from poverty or they have that seared into their mind, in their cultural um norm is to show uh conspicuous displays of wealth. But sadly, and it’s not just that ethnic group. I mean, it can be poor people, it can be people who are anxious or people who’ve got um neurodivergent issues, they use the spending on things that aren’t actually good for their financial well-being as a means of expression or a means of acceptance, and that’s a big thing. And I think uh Jimmy Carr said, didn’t he, you know, like people um it took ages to realise, you know, feel be comfortable in his own skin. And then when he got comfortable in his own skin, he realised that everyone else didn’t really care about him anyway.

[07:25] Sammie: Well, yeah, well, it uh when I saw that from Jimmy, because that, you were exactly right, that’s where I’ve come from, that’s why I do what I do. I went through that period, that’s why I got myself into 24 grand worth of debt in my 20s, because I was basically shooting.

[07:37] Jason: Look at his investment. Yeah, investment. Sharing on yourself, yeah. That’s it. That looks great.

[07:42] Sammie: Well, arguably, if you look back. Have you still got those clothes? Absolutely not. You would never see me walking around in that. I’ve heard a great one yesterday.

[07:49] Jason: I heard a great one yesterday.

[07:50] Jason: The guy said, You know you’ve got a problem, you’ve got someone who’s actually probably a uh a boomer or a generation next, because they’re they when you open up their wardrobe, it’s done by decade.

[07:58] Sammie: Yeah, yeah. I’ve kept, I to be fair, I’ve kept a lot of it. Just in case. Oh, yeah, it’s a whole wardrobe full of it. We my we cleared out of the house recently when we moved, and my miss is turning around and she’s like, Are you gonna get rid of that? I was like, I can’t bring myself to because it just shows me what of a wally I was.

[08:13] Jason: Well, close, here’s the thing for some, for the listeners, is that um that sometimes your possessions um are actually um a good um demonstration of what you value or valued at a certain time.

[08:27] Sammie: Yeah.

[08:28] Jason: And sometimes, and hoarding, for instance, is a known psychological condition. So it’s not so much the spending as such, it’s the it’s the feeling of scarcity, the feeling of lack of control, the feeling of not being loved, whatever it is. So we use possessions, accumulating possessions that are of no use to us and that actually are weighing us down emotionally, financially, or whatever. And if you keep developing those negative habits, you will never be wealthy. And when I say wealthy, I mean relatively, you will never build wealth because you’re it’s a bit like a leaky bucket. You’ve got a hole in the bucket, you’re filling it with water, and it’s still, and you think, and here’s the interesting thing, I’ve met so many people who, despite earning uh, and you know, I’ve interviewed over two and a half thousand high earners and wealthy people when I was a financial advisor. I’ve met people who I thought, well, how could you be this poor when you earn this amount of money? You know, it’s because it’s you’re just pissing it up against the wall. And I’m not here to judge people. What I’m saying is that’s the diagnosis. You need to stop doing what you were doing, otherwise you’re going to keep getting the same results. And one of the things I think it’s very important for people to realise is that you are not defined by your net worth, okay? It’s just a measurement. And there’s many people who want to do vocational jobs or things that aren’t high earning. Okay, it just means you’ve got to be a better budgeter. Um, it just means you’ve got to be more conscious and uh intentional where you put your money. And that means even, you know, uh paying attention to it. Not obsessing, but paying attention to it. Just because you’re an artist doesn’t mean you don’t need to look at your bank account. Just because you’re a free spirit doesn’t mean you’ve got to put a limit on the fun money. I say have fun, but just not too much.

[09:58] Sammie: I love that you said that. But you’ve um educated something like four million employees on financial well-being.

[10:04] Jason: Well, yeah, I was uh head of financial education at Salary Finance, which is the biggest workplace um well-being provider in the UK. And I wouldn’t say I educated all four million, but there was four million employees across all those employees, and I used to do all the webinars and I answered hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of questions. And we always had a, well, I always had a saying there. I said there are no silly questions, okay? Um, because if you’re thinking it, the person’s next to you or someone else probably thinking it. And one of the ways that you can actually destigmatise talking about money is sharing either a war story or something that’s worked for you, or sharing a mistake that you made and how you overcame it. So, in other words, showing vulnerability, um, you know, no one had more debt than me when I was in my 20s. In fact, in 1994, I sold a flat. Bear in mind, you can’t go wrong in property, right? I bought a flat in 1989 for 62,000. And five years later, when I met my then wife, uh what became my wife, Jane, um, and she said, Well, you’re gonna have to move out of that flat. I mean, there’s no way we can live in that. And um, I sold it and I lost 16,000 pounds. Bear in mind I had a 90% mortgage, so I had to come up with more money just to move. So when people say they’ve got no deposits for flat or a house or high rent or whatever, I know I bought a house which ended up costing me far more than if I just rented somewhere, right? And I had to come up with more money to buy a house after that. So I know what it’s like, and on top of that, I had credit cards, overdrafts. I mean, I was out of control. Um, I had a brand new BMW and I was 20 24 and I had 60 grand of debt, and it was all on finance. And I why? Because I felt sorry for myself, you know. But the point there is that I understood what the drivers of that were, and I thought, well, hang on a minute, I can’t carry on like this. I’ve got to make some changes. Yeah, and so developing healthy or effective money habits that work for you, because not all things work for all people, you’ve got to find what works for you. So I don’t like using the word budget. I hate it. I feel like I don’t want to be an accountant. I’m good with numbers, but I don’t want to be an accountant. I’ve got nothing wrong with accountants, love them, but I don’t want to be an accountant, so I like spending plan. Spending plan is more liberating with what it is, forward thinking. Yeah, yeah. And what it is, it’s giving you permission to have the fun, but the fun you can afford. It’s being honest about what your utility bills are costing. It’s about being honest about the impact of having that car payment, or it’s being honest about living in that flat for £1,600 when really you can only afford a grand and you’re gonna have to move to a slightly edgy area because that’s what you can afford. So a spending plan liberates you. And it also it’s not a straitjacket, it’s just a checking in point, okay? Because you know you’re not going to follow it exactly. Um, and so it’s quite interesting because um uh my eldest daughter, um uh Daisy, she has her spending plan. And uh where every time she has a pay rise, she says, um she says to me, uh, and she’s a high earner, um, you know, she’s in um software, and she said, Um, oh yes, Daddy, I’m putting up my fun pot. I said, Oh, okay. So she’ll have a big pay rise. And she goes, I’m gonna put it up by £50 a month, right? Bear in mind she had, you know, she had decent pay. Get decent pay rises because she doesn’t think, oh, let’s just spend it, because this is what happens, it’s called lifestyle drift. When your money goes up, oh, because I’m worth it, L’Oreal. And what happens is, but she because from a young age, she came out of uni with more money than she went in with. And the point is she’s learned, obviously, I’ve taught her and her sister, but she’s learned, we did it with spreadsheets then, but she’s learned she can have fun and she goes on lots of trips, but she has a pot for that, and she has a pot for that, but she’s learnt that habit from a very young age. She can have anything she wants, but not necessarily all at the same time. And she does like trips and experiences and meeting her friends and travelling and stuff, but she has a budget for that. She puts the money aside and she socialises, but she doesn’t go beyond that. And if she has a bit of a heavy couple of weeks, she has an easy couple of weeks to ease back on. So it’s, and obviously, no debt, um, no credit cards, no overdrafts, no Klarna, no card payments. Because we just don’t do that. And we don’t do that because I know how dangerous it is. And when people say to you, Well, credit card, you need that for a credit score. My daughter got a mortgage, she got a prime mortgage on the lowest five-year fix rate, and she’s never had any credit, and she got that no problem because she had a big deposit to put down.

[14:17] Sammie: Okay.

[14:17] Jason: Or and also because she’s not had any miss payments. So it works against you if you end up with credit. It just says, just because you’ve got a high credit score, just says you’re good at taking out debt. Yeah. That’s not a that’s not a good score. And, it’s funny, I always say to my daughters, when you meet a man, you know, you’re if you’re dating a guy, don’t ask him how much he earns, ask him how much he keeps.

[14:36] Sammie: You meant to say that in the first day.

[14:38] Jason: No, no, obviously they wouldn’t, but you know. Date form, maybe hang on a minute. I just mean there’s no man alive who would meet the requirements that I’ve got with my daughters, but we have to make some compromises. They’ve both got good boyfriends.

[14:50] Sammie: Typical phrase from a father, though, right? Of course. Absolutely. Um, but I’ve like obviously with these conversations, you’re seeing patterns, right? Everywhere you’re looking, you’re seeing patterns. And I want to know like what you feel like is the one thing people get wrong most and how they how can they attack that. We kind of sp touched on it, I imagine, there within the spending and being flexible about the plan, moving with life as it happens.

[15:14] Jason: But, well, I think what you, uh, obviously you’ve got mindset and you’ve got habits and you’ve got structures and you’ve got behaviours. But let’s just talk about the most important thing that a lot of your a lot of people listening to this will be either earlier in their journey, uh their life journey, or you know, they’ve got a fair bit to go. So I’m assuming lots of your people aren’t at or in retirement. I mean, if you are, I’ve got a few ideas for you as well, or you can share, you can understand uh where older people are coming. But your biggest, the most valuable thing that we all have, everyone out there is a multimillionaire already, okay? And what but do I mean by that? I mean your human capital. Even if you’re only earning, say, 30 grand a year, and I say only, I know, I know that’s the average wage is about 34,000, but say you’re earning 30,000 and you’ve got 30 years of earnings, that’s about a million quid with a bit of inflation and stuff, isn’t it? So think about your ability to earn money, your human capital, as a really valuable thing. So the key, the key to that is to maximise that in a way which is also in tune with your values and in tune with your skills and with what’s logistically possible. Some people got caring responsibilities, some people got uh physical or mental disabilities. I understand that. But work with what you’ve got, not what you haven’t got. And think about ways to maximise your human capital. So it’s not just about doing degrees. There’s loads of people who’ve got first class degrees in puppetry and all that stuff, you know, who, you know, uh I’ve got one in music, whatever. No use to anyone, right? But there’s lots of people who are doing degrees, and this is where you get a lot of people get um some of the younger generation are a little bit what I call angry because they’ve been sold a lie. They’ve gone and got themselves into debt or student financing, they’ve got a degree in whatever, you know, um origami, and no one’s interested because we were told we have to get now. Nevertheless, learning skills, developing good character traits, turning up, being reliable, being honest, getting on with people, learning communication skills, all that those are things, as I always say, being insanely good at something is rare. Okay, it doesn’t matter if you work in say a public sector job where everyone’s not bothered. I’m not saying they aren’t, there’s lots of good people in the public sector, but say you work in a government department or a public sector thing where you know there’s no consequence of bad doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be brilliant. You always do the best you possibly can. That trait of doing the best is then what helps you improve your human capital. You know, put yourself forward for stuff, take on more responsibility, get more training, go on courses, um, do extra learning, um, learn new skills, take off, be helpful to your boss or to your uh team leader. So focusing on your human capital, but not just keep taking silly courses on thousands of pounds of money you haven’t got. If you do need to get accreditation or get a course or some sort of training, do it with cash flow. Go and earn the money. Don’t take the easy route of borrowing it, okay? Because it’s got to be paid back. And here’s the thing: if you get used to using your own money, whether that’s buying a car or buying training or a course or education, if you can use your own cash, you will always be more thoughtful about what you spend money on. That’s why I use a credit uh debit card. I don’t have a credit card. Okay. You don’t have a credit card. I don’t have a credit card. Really interesting. Don’t have a credit card. Um, it’s a bit like, you know, I don’t have drugs, okay? Because I’m sure if I took them, I’d probably like them, and then it’d be a downhill spiral, right? I don’t, and I don’t carry alcohol with me, you know, because I probably would drink it. Um so what I’m saying is um I don’t have a credit card because it’s a trap. So, in other words, when you actually use your own money, so to give an example, I’ve just bought a new car and okay, it was quite a lot of money. Um, and I spent three months thinking about it, and I did all the research and I looked at and watched God knows how many review videos. A couple of my mates have got the bigger version, and I looked and I kept humming and hawing, and then you know, so I really thought it through. But when I was buying the car, I managed to get £5,000 off the list price because there was a failed order, someone went bankrupt or couldn’t buy it or whatever, and they desperately needed to get it registered before the end of February. And they got the exact spec I wanted, and the only thing it didn’t have was these side things and mud flaps. I said, we’ll put them on for you. It was about 400 quid. Yeah. And I got five grand off. But I because I was using my own money and it wasn’t payments, it doesn’t matter whether this is 500 quid or 50 grand or 500 grand, but because I’m using my own money, I’m thinking very carefully. But there’s not a day go by when I do not like driving that car. Okay. I love driving it. I for me, I enjoy it. My wife hates it, she needs a stepladder to get into it. But the point is, I like the car. Sounds like a Hummer. No, no, it’s a Defender, but I like it because it’s and I live in a country, right?

[20:28] Sammie: So I was gonna say, yeah, I live in a country.

[20:33] Jason: Yeah, amazing. But my point is being thoughtful about your spending and using your own money means you spend less of it generally. Um it doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out and you’ve only got 500 quid to your name, or you’ve got five million quid. Um you still have to I still run a spending plan, okay? Even to this day, I’m vigilant because the lunatic spending poor person who feels like you know it’s gonna disappear tomorrow is always wanting to come out to play. And I have to make sure he stays, and that little voice stays in a little compartment, uh, not locked up, but just kept out of harm’s way. You know, like a little toddler. Yeah, you know, you want them to play, but you want to make sure there’s nothing that can really hurt them.

[21:15] Sammie: It’s like the little goblin in Harry Potter, they just put him in the chest and lock that lock it up, you know.

[21:19] Jason: All of us have that, and it’s called self-sabotage. So, uh, one of the things, uh, as you know, I did volunteering at Citizens Advice, and I won’t go into individual details, but I used to meet quite a lot of um very vulnerable people who are in a pickle with the money. Quite a lot of them had either addiction or mental health issues or neurodivergent issues, or there was some trauma in their life. But one of the things I had to what I tried to do with him is I tried to teach them some guardrails that would work for them. Okay. So if you start learning things, like for instance, if you’re an impulsive spender, if that’s you and you get that object, just have the 24-hour rule. Everything I’m thinking about buying that’s not on my list, I can assort 24 hours because then you let the thing go. You let it’s a bit like biscuits. We move the biscuits away from where we make the cup of tea, because I used to have a biscuit at night. And now I can’t be bothered to go into the utility room to go and get the biscuit while I’m making the cup of tea. I just have the cup of tea now because I remove that temptation because I know I would eat it. Um, and it’s not that we’re failed individuals, it’s just learning what where you like a friend of mine, he’s notorious at having a smoke if he goes out for a meal. He loves coming out with me because I’m a non-smoker and I don’t keep running outside and I won’t go outside with him and have a cigarette, you know, or even stand with him. He’s on his own. So he likes coming out with me because he then doesn’t, he’s unlikely to smoke. And that’s the other thing. Choose your friends. And you can’t choose your family, but choose your friends carefully. Yeah, yeah. If you’re with people who spend money like lunacy, um, or who are going to drag you into their kind of um their way of living that’s not affordable to you, then don’t be surprised if you hang about with those people that you end up spending money you haven’t got.

[22:51] Sammie: Yeah. Yeah. I do love that you said that. Like those rules for me, because I’m just like you, I am the most impulse spender going. And I the 24-hour rule, I probably accredited to within the tens of thousands of pounds.

[23:03] Jason: It’s made you thousands, isn’t it?

[23:04] Sammie: A hundred percent. It’s the biggest saving I could ever have made in my entire life. Just because I know that you and it usually happens in your most vulnerable moments as well. You mentioned there, like your most vulnerable moment is you’ve made a cup of tea, your brain goes biscuit. And that’s your most vulnerable moment. But also it can be you’ve had a tough week, you come home, you’re flicking, Instagram ad comes up, oh that’ll make me look nice at work on a Monday, X, Y, and Z, and you’re in that cycle, right? And that pause moment. But that 24-hour rule is great because the second phase of that is that, um, I always put pop my details in, leave it, and then they send me uh 10, 20% off. So if I do want the thing, then you can get it cheaper.

[23:44] Jason: Can I tell you another great tip? Uh this is a great one. If you feel like you’re out of control in your spending, either close your bank account now and open another one even with the same bank with a new bank account number or um cancel your debit card that you’ve signed up for subscriptions. And do you know what? Once you cancel your debit card or credit card, they all come out of the woodwork. This is not working. That’s not working. I literally this has happened to me when I moved house recently I couldn’t find my debit card. Now I who uses debit cards anymore I mean it’s on your phone isn’t it so where is it? I said to my wife God knows what I’ve done with it. It’s somewhere but who knows we’ve got a million boxes she goes how can you lose a debit card? I said well I don’t use it. Yeah so I’ve had to cancel it and of course everyone and their dogs come in up you haven’t really needed this subscription this isn’t working. That’s that my daughter even said Dad why’s Spotify not working she doesn’t even live with me. I said I don’t know how did you get it oh you know some family pain she must have signed me up four years ago she goes it’s not working. I said oh what is that then? Oh it’s £18.99. I said well okay you’re welcome you can have it but the point I’m making is cancelling a closing a bank account or to less extreme cancelling a debit or credit card is a great way of flushing out all those little ankle biters that are built up.

[24:52] Sammie: It doesn’t matter I mean I found out I was on four streaming services on extra storage for cloud or whatever all these things I thought these people it’s like having a it’s like having a part-time employee that’s about 200 quid yeah but just like that again another wave of that is then you say, oh no, I’m, you press go to leave and then guess what you get three months off here’s 50% off stick around so test that as well, yeah, and if you do want to leave, leave, please leave, like don’t get suckered in with the extra 50% off because you’ve already said you were going to leave like remember that I always say just remember what you pressed before you then see the next thing um but then it happens to me all the time with subscriptions like I go to leave like I just did it with Monday.com because we pay it for the team and so it’s how we run all our content and teams everywhere and I went I’m gonna leave just to test it and they go oh have the next six months off of 50% I was like absolutely lovely just save about 700 quid so it can be a really good way of doing it if you’re meticulous and you’re strong about it.

[25:51] Jason: Another way to look at your money because a lot of people are in denial about money okay so we don’t want you to be fixated and spend all the waking hour right worrying about money or dealing with money or pouring over spreadsheets. But work out what your hourly rate is. So say you’re earning national minimum wage what’s that about 13 quid now isn’t it 12, 12, 13 quid? Or you’re earning 20 pounds or 30 pounds, whatever your hourly rate is, and say to yourself, okay, well if I spend an hour a week dealing with my finances so it doesn’t matter whether that’s a renewal on your insurance or cutting subscriptions or just you know whatever it is reviewing your spending plan or you know upping your fund budget or finding a call whatever it is it’s not just your money it’s also your human capital look at that as just a job that’s very well paid. Yeah. Because you probably earn if you’re earning let’s say you’re earning 20 pound an hour if you can’t earn a hundred pounds from that one hour a week somewhere whether that’s extra investment return or better in interest or avoiding interest on debt or cutting out spending that’s not necessary or reducing costs. Give you an example my car insurance is on a multi-policy okay so I’ve got two cars and my house insurance I won’t say the name of the company, um, but they’re generally very efficient. It came through for renewal and it was something like um 1600 pounds a year. I always pay yearly by the way another thing with insurance generally speaking if you pay annually you save about 10%. Yeah okay most people don’t realise when you pay monthly that is debt okay because you they’re financing it but they love you to have it monthly but they don’t always it’s not always clear they default to month uh monthly when annual is better. Now you can’t always do this when you’re starting out but eventually build up your sinking fund and buy things annually if you can anyway so this comes up and, it’s a particularly busy week for me. I’ve got loads of things on and I thought I’ll get to that later, so what I tend to do is these things when I’m doing something else I might be listening to music or podcast or something and I thought okay well I’ll just go on the one of the price comparison websites just out of interest. So I put in everything, you know, accident cover, you know, the gold star, which is gold star everything on it, you know, except for a courtesy car um, and you know, the best, lowest excess, anyway comes in at something like the same company that I’m with individually comes in at something like when you add it up about 300 quid a year cheaper than the renewal premium. So when you go online and you can’t do any of this online business how you’ve got to call us okay so I have to call them and I speak to, that it’s on a Sunday so I speak to this lady a very helpful lady she goes yeah that’s a bit strange and she goes actually your current policy on one of your cars is not the gold standard policy that we quoted online for you and it’s not as good as the one on your other car. We need to upgrade that, there’s a, it’s put your car down as a van when it actually is an SUV, the Defender and anyway long short of it she goes I can get it even cheaper than that 300 pounds. She ended up saving me 350 pounds it took 50 minutes of her on the call going through things and all that I was doing something else where I was I don’t know I was downloading some statements from my accountant or getting my stuff ready for my tax return or whatever it was I said to my wife God I’ve just I’ve just saved 350 quid yeah I said and I’ve got all my tax information ready for my accountant a boring job that no one wants to do. I said well why didn’t they just offer you it the first place the cheapest thing I said who knows but I’ve just 350 pounds an hour. Now I don’t know what kind of business you’re in, but 350 quid an hour is a good, no, it doesn’t matter if it’s 35 quid, it’s a saving and they all add up.

[29:18] Sammie: I absolutely would the previous episode to this was an entire episode about each money saving thing and if you work it out by time per hour. Yeah because it’s nuts. Like some of them are up in the thousands of pounds per hour for what it would actually bring you back in.

[29:33] Jason: And so I always do that because the other thing I also say it’s not just a saving what it is it tells you more about you. I’m not the kind of person who wastes money doesn’t mean I didn’t buy my mates a round of drinks last night that was probably horrendously expensive in a hotel in London, but I chose to do that, and because I’ve saved money, I don’t waste money knowingly and also I don’t want to leak money, but it’s not just for the sake of saving money it’s so I can do other things with it.

[30:01] Sammie: Yeah but totally but you’ve put yourself in that position for accumulation that’s allowed you to be able to make more decisions like that are off the car.

[30:08] Jason: And another thing to it’s really worth um sharing with your younger uh viewers and listeners when you’re young the contribution you can make to your pension or to an ISA or to um uh paying off your mortgage or whatever it is it’s always going to be bigger than the return you get from it. So when you’re my age and you’ve accumulated assets, I can’t really add, the investment returns are now dwarfing what I can contribute. When I was younger chipping in that 50 quid a month that was always going, made my wealth go up quicker than the investment returns because it’s compounding, when you start with a small amount of money you make a small amount of money, when you’ve got a bigger amount of money you’re making a bigger amount of money, and so it’s just doing the boring simple things not crypto, none of this get rich schemes, none of this junk, just do the boring stuff, you know, I’m an angel investor as you know I invest in higher risk startup businesses but that’s part of my wealth and it requires a lot of skill and oversight okay it’s not for the faint hearted but my boring Vanguard portfolio which is as boring as anything just the basic little you know it’s very simple, my daughters have the same thing. We don’t have anything complicated I don’t need investment managers, I don’t need a private banker, I don’t need any of that, that’s just boring, it should be boring. Markets go up markets go down but they generally speaking reflect capitalism improves over time. And if you keep doing that over a long period of time you will eventually build wealth yeah as I you want to get rich slowly that’s the bottom 100% and I think everybody’s got to go on that journey and they’ll find that out about themselves.

[31:41] Sammie: When I first started I was picking individual stocks doing all these things and thinking I was Warren Buffett and had a great few and then got absolutely slapped on another and then you’re like right then hang on there’s a different approach and that comes through knowledge yeah but you listen speculating is not the same as investing no and investing is not saving.

[31:59] Jason: Absolutely not but here’s the point I don’t have a problem with people speculating with their money just like I don’t mind people buying a house when you’re ready to do so. You know so you could argue my angel investing is speculative but I tend to invest in like FinTech businesses because I understand financial services I understand regulation I understand technology I also understand founders because I was one and so I’m leaning in and plus I’ve got a lot of contacts I’m not my age you know if I hadn’t made contacts I can I can put my people in touch with major PLCs or big buyers of stuff and also I do thought leadership. So I’m leaning into I’m not just investing in my best mate’s business because I feel sorry for him and you know invest it until it’s all gone. And yes some of those businesses don’t go uh don’t get off the ground or the hypothesis was wrong, but I’m leaning into my human capital. You with me? And when I stopped doing all the time yeah when I stopped doing financial wellbeing I lent into what I’d been doing for 10 years which is not angel investing because I didn’t really want to spend all my time you know I’ve been doing that for a long time teaching people about money. I wanted to lean into the angel investing so I started sharing what I what I’d learned from investing not as a rah-rah but as my insights and also where I see things going. And you know what? I get C-suite people approach me on LinkedIn saying, Jason, I love your thinking process, can I have an hour of your time, just so I get through, and before you know it I’m looking down my list of all my companies I’m an investor in, and I said, well, actually I think that company will be able to help you with that thing. It’s almost like I’m helping them out. But that comes from become an introducer well they’re my businesses aren’t they they’re asking me because they’re thinking you but the point I’m saying, I reinvented myself when I was 50. Okay so you’re constantly reinventing your human capital and I’m still thoughtful with my spending and I’m still investing and I’m still you what I’m trying to say is you never stop working on your human capital, building your wealth being thoughtful about your spending and trying to develop the good habits and avoid the bad ones. Yeah it doesn’t stop is what I’m trying to say.

[35:00] Sammie: Yeah because you we said this outside you’re still learning now and you will never stop evolving.

[35:05] Jason: Yeah, and you know what, I’m, yeah, I still listen to three or four personal finance podcasts a week okay I’ve got two fellowships in personal finance I’ve written five books on the subject but I never stop learning because I always find either another insight or someone reminds me of something you know this someone reminds me of something I knew 10 years ago that I stopped doing or forgot about. I thought yeah that’s a really great simple concept or a story that really strikes a chord with me. So being curious learning from others um being honest about your mistakes and also um working out what’s important to you, and I suppose that’s something we should discuss is what I always say to clients what’s important about money to you know and once you actually think about that it actually uncovers, if you really, really dig deep, you’ll find what really motivates you and what really matters to you.

[35:54] Sammie: I mean if you if you if you really work out what your values are you won’t be wasting money on rubbish. No, no, but I did an exercise recently because when you first start an out you sort of just pick an arbitrary number you know say a million quid for argument’s sake and you go oh yeah I’m just gonna strive until I hit a million and when you hit the million you extend that number out right you don’t really ever sit down and ask yourself I don’t, it’s treading water, exactly, yeah, yeah, it is right, and you shift the goal, yeah, you shift the goal you get the goal you hit the goal and it goes round and round and round um but I actually sat down and asked myself what do I want to what do I actually want and how much does it actually cost and that exercise for me was so powerful. Not, one, because the actual number that I was aiming for it costs about a fifth of what I actually thought it would. So to actually build the life that would actually really fulfil me at the time I’m sure that could change over the next 10 years but that’s what I’m up for now was way less, and I think it’s a really nice exercise like you mentioned values is important there but I also think like having a really clear idea about what it is you’re trying to do this for because we all go to work to bring in capital we want to deploy that capital or some of that capital to essentially get something but what is it? What is that something? Do you do that with your, um, with your old, do you, with your old clients did you sort of make them map this out and think about what they’re moving towards as a financial advisor obviously they used to come in they come obviously they might have read my books or see me in the FT or whatever.

[37:21] Jason: So there was always a bit of a relationship I didn’t have to do a lot of selling of, like, my credentials so it was more about helping work out whether they were the right kind of client for our firm, and we were charging, you know, minimum fixed fees of 10,000 quid, sometimes it was 25, sometimes 5,000 pounds, whatever it was, that was the fee, right, um, bit like a sort of, um, like a private member’s club. Um, and so I would say to people, look, is it okay if I just, I just want to understand your journey, your story about how you’ve built your wealth or your career or how you’ve ended up today is that okay and they and I said because I just need to understand you as a person before we can go forward I need to understand the history. Is that okay? And they’d say, well, yeah. So tell me, you know, how did you get into your business you’re in or how did you get into your career or you know how did you get to where you are and they tell you the story um and it’s really interesting because you obviously what you do as an experienced person, it’s a bit like AI, you spot patterns because one I’ve seen other people similar or I’ve seen those traits before or I recognise them in um uh from you know other situations or from research or from just you know the more people you meet and then you don’t put people in buckets but what you do is you start to understand ah, okay, I can see now this person’s a striver, or this person is in denial about money, or there’s some trauma or some issue that’s getting in the way or these couple are not on the same page. And I would have a married couple sometimes come in and it wasn’t really a money issue. They had a marriage issue. There would be a marriage issue because they weren’t communicating properly. I had one, uh, so what’s important about money to you, and they would say, oh, we, you know, we just want to have enough okay and what’s important about having enough well you know we don’t ever want to run out of money okay and so what’s important about not running out of money well you know it goes right back to well when I grew up we had nothing and the like me I could give you my story I don’t want to be rich I just want to avoid being poor. Yeah and poor to me that’s not a judgment on anyone who’s got nothing what I mean is I don’t want to ever have anyone knocking on the door telling me that I can’t live my life the way I want to live it or take something off from me. And that is very motivating. So rich in that sense is having choice. And once you understand your true values and that’s why my wife and I we don’t live very extravagant lifestyles okay so it doesn’t matter if I never made any more money or all my fintech investments went to zero, obviously I would be upset, I would be in mourning for a while. Yeah, but slight ego bash, yeah, well, it probably would be more the ego than the money actually because it’s like, oh, I’ve made a mistake, yeah, um, but as long as you’ve made enough non-mistakes as it were it’s okay. But my point is I don’t have a high octane lifestyle, and I’m not judging anyone who does, but I don’t have boats and loads of a big thing of motors or motorbikes or three homes around the world. I’m not judging anyone but my life is really simple and everything I do now as I get older is all about simplicity. Everything’s about simplicity and so that’s you know I had a big property company got rid of that it’s complicated don’t want it gone. I had another structure got rid of that um so everything about my life is about simplicity and I would avoid I would suggest anyone listening the more simple you can make your life your finances your relationships the easier and more harmonious you’re going to have a life I’m not saying how you should be of your life I’m just saying simplicity is actually your friend whether it’s whether it’s your spending plan whether it’s your investments whether it’s business issues don’t make it too complicated. It’s a KISS, keep it simple, stupid. I love it, love it. What are you seeing then with these people they obviously some of them have come in that pattern you mentioned these patterns I want to know like what separates these high-end net worth individuals from perhaps people that you, you know, you would meet in the Citizens Advice Bureau, for example, yeah, um, well, let’s be honest, some people just have some bad luck, of course, yeah, right, so if you have a major car accident that stops you from working and you’ve been off work for three years and then you suffer depression which can happen right um and then your partner leaves you and then you find out your child’s got learning difficulties there are some people who just life throws everything at them. Absolutely right but it’s not so much what happens to you and I do understand when you’ve got lots of things going on it’s just bad luck. But it’s how you react to them. So what I notice with people who thrive in life whether it’s their relationships whether it’s their health whether it’s their money is that it’s how they react to what happens to them. So I think it was Stephen Hawking, wasn’t it, you know, he was one of the geniuses of the 20th century really and he was the famous uh physics uh physicist who um he wrote a theory of time or something didn’t he um, and he basically had that uh neurological problem um from about 20 and he ended up in a paraplegic didn’t he in a wheelchair and had to speak through a machine and everyone said well you know like God you’ve had a real bad rub of it and he actually said no actually he said um I’m the happiest I’ve ever been I think it was about 65 at the time he said I’m the happiest I’ve ever been because I do work I love I make a massive difference in the world and I really enjoy it and they said, yeah, but you’re stuck in this wheelchair and you can’t speak other than through a machine they said yeah but from 20 at the age of 20 when I was putting ended up in this chair um everything else was a bonus and so the point I’m making is whatever your situation whatever your upbringing whatever your financial scenario at the moment whatever your relationship status whatever your housing situation whatever your debt situation it’s how you um how you internally speak about it and we’ve all got that voice in our head telling us we’re not good enough or we’re a failure or shame or whatever it is those negative emotions but also what you’ve got to try and do is say hang on a minute someone else somewhere has had this problem someone else somewhere has got over this problem it could be worse this might be teaching me something I know it’s easy for me to say when you’re down in the hole particularly if you are some people I know are naturally like half a glass half empty, I understand that, and I’m not, so it’s easier for me, I understand that but just get yourself around people or somehow get messaging into you that’s going to help you put more in your glass as opposed to half empty be half full and so one of the thick techniques you can do if you are actually overwhelmed with your money is to not say oh God I’m Jason what shall I do? Say oh hang on a minute Jason’s deep in debt he’s got a car on finance he’s got this he’s can’t he’s got negative equity on his mortgage he’s life’s a nightmare he’s earning 60 grand at 24 but he’s all over the place, he’s got no money, you know, which was true when I was 24, um, an easier way to say, okay, not what should I do I’m Jason I’m deep in debt and I mean the dude who what do I do with my money it’s what should Jason do? So you look at yourself as a third party interested in you, and you take yourself out of yourself and say, what should Jason do? Truman-Show yourself, and, yeah, you look into yourself and say, okay, what would other people, what are the options available? Even when you think oh there’s no chance I’ve got no money I’m ah what’s the first thing you need to do then and don’t you know what do they say how to eat an elephant one chunk at a time. So uh don’t do that by the way but the point here is, look at it from outside so you are not overwhelmed by it and look at it objectively because there’s someone somewhere has had that problem. They’ve had it worse they’ve had more of it and you can get through it don’t let the shame stop you from moving forward. Yes acknowledge if you’ve been stupid with money uh but you’re going to change that it won’t happen overnight and you may well drop off the wagon it’s a bit like alcoholics anonymous, friend of mine, he said, I’m an alcoholic the rest of my life, he said, he said I mean I have to have my sponsor he said I’ve got my chips these all these things accountability group um and he said I’ve come close a couple of times to falling off the wagon uh he said but it will be with me forever um he said and I’m okay with that he said because the alternative is just um you know it’s a very dark place for him and so it’s the same with your money um you know uh, if you’ve got addictions causing you problems, whether that’s impulsive spending or buying drugs or gambling or uh spread betting or whatever try and get some help with the cause of the problem um and there is light at the end of the tunnel um, and money should be a force for good, not bad, you know, and here’s the thing even if you don’t want to do it for yourself do it for other people so that you can you know help a friend or give a nice tip when you go out or um whatever it is be generous that’s another thing, I remember my wife and I didn’t have much money when we bought our house um about 30 years ago and we were really tight, and I remember thinking, oh, do you know what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna put 50 pounds a month into my charity account and I had no real money and I started this £50 a month into the what was the CAF account, Charities Aid Foundation account. And I honestly, within two months of doing that, my fortune started turning around. Even though when I did it, it was a very dark place. And it’s because I sort of went beyond myself. I don’t mean being reckless and spending money if you’ve got to pay your rent and stuff, but I mean I started thinking beyond myself. There was a bigger picture here. In other words, the prize for me, if I could get a handle on my money and build wealth and get ahead and build margin and some scope, I could actually be generous to other people as well. In other words, I could help others in a way which I’m not getting accolade for, but I feel good about it. In other words, it helps your purpose. And that’s why I still like building wealth and backing businesses. And if I have a payout, it’s nice. Because we always give money to our charitable causes because it makes me feel good and it’s sort of another validation of using my human capital.

[46:43] Sammie: Because you’ve gone from looking internally and thinking, hey, what does Jason want today? to going, no, how can I help the world, and in turn that’ll help me?

[46:52] Jason: Yeah, and also that’s how I can do voluntary work. You know, the reason I can do voluntary work and even be here is because I don’t need the money. You know, I don’t need money. Uh what I mean is I don’t need to go and earn money because I’ve now got a situation where I can give my time and my knowledge and my wisdom, and I can help many, many more people in lots of different ways. We definitely do need the money. So like and subscribe.

[47:13] Sammie: Yeah, we’re all on a journey. Yeah, yeah. No, I’m only playing. But I want to obviously a lot of people listening to this are doing the right things, they’re bringing in money, they’re doing a better budgeting, they’re trying to keep a handle on their spending. Obviously, cost of living’s paying pressure on that, right? Now, as we know, but they’re doing all the right things. They generally want to be in a better financial position in 15 odd years. If you had that person walk in and sit down with you today, what would you tell them?

[47:39] Jason: Um, it’s I would say your financial life is like, you know, when you um, I don’t know if you ever see in your car, you know, when you’re driving along in your car, there’s only four or five things you really look at, aren’t there?

[47:49] Sammie: Yeah, yeah.

[47:50] Jason: There’s loads of different things you can look at on your car, isn’t it? There’s big display things and heads up this and that.

[47:55] Sammie: I’ll find stuff all the time. I’m like, I didn’t.

[47:57] Jason: I still don’t even know how to turn the rear windscreen wiper on my car. Jeez, if anyone knows how it works in a Defender, let me know. Because my wife’s car’s got the gear stick on the thing. So every time I get in the different car, I’m doing that for the gears, and it’s the windscreen wipers. Anyway, going back to the point, is that work out what the key metrics are that you need to look at. And I would say normally it’s your savings rate, how much of your money are you saving? It’s your salary increase rate, how much is your salary increasing? It’s your uh percentage of your housing costs as a relationship relative to your earnings. So if you’re spending more than about a third of your money on rent or mortgage, that’s gonna be tight. And it may be that you can’t change that, so therefore you might need to change your job. And one of the simplest ways of getting a pay rise is to change jobs. Sad, once you’ve given your employer as many opportunities as possible, it’s, you know, you’ve got to be insanely good, you’ve got to warrant it. You can’t just, oh, I want a pay rise because I need it. It’s I’ve added the value here, I’ve delivered this, I’ve done this, I’ve got that, you know what I mean? And the market rate is X. I think I should have asked ask, but make it but make it justified. So what I’m trying to say is so the rate at which your salary is going up, the percentage of your money that’s going on housing, your savings rate, how much of your money are you saving, the amount of debt you’ve got relative to your overall net worth, uh, how much unsecured debt you get. So uh without sort of sounding too glib, find out the key metrics that work for you that are most important to you wherever you are. Um, and I think the first thing I would say to most people is most people, if you sit down and look at your spending plan, most people haven’t got a spending plan. I don’t use the word budget as you know, we don’t use the we B word. It most people haven’t got a spending plan. Or if they have, it’s kind of a loose, it’s kind of it’s an intention. There’s no relation to reality because they never follow it. That’s why they’ve got no margin, okay? Because that they are spending a grand on fund or 500 quid on fund, or they are having too many deliverous or too many coffees or whatever it is. I’m not saying you can’t have any of that. I’m just saying you get the reality. Spend 30 days really understanding where your money is going. Then you can work out what needs to change. Do I need to change what I’m spending? Do I need to cut out what I’m spending? Do I need to increase my earnings? Probably all three. And I always say to people, can you afford your job? Not can you afford your lifestyle? Because when I say to people, can you afford that job? They say, What do you mean? I said, Well, can you afford that job? Can you afford to give your time for what they’re prepared to give you because of the lifestyle you either want to live or that you are living? And once you start thinking about can I afford that job, it’s a it’s much more empowering than keep thinking about the spending side. I know spending’s very important, but I’m talking now about the human capital side.

[50:41] Sammie: Totally.

[50:41] Jason: And I always said, Listen, I, you know, I told you, didn’t I? I couldn’t afford to keep doing my um my part-time job as a well-being uh thing. It wasn’t the money as such, they paid me quite well. I just couldn’t afford the time. Um and the time was more important to me than keep, you know, and I love the people, I love the mission, and I love the work. But I could no longer, after six and a half years, I couldn’t, I couldn’t afford that time because other things I needed to do. And one of the things that my money, um, one of my values is freedom of choice and options. And that’s what enabled me to do. So I then said, listen, I can’t afford the time anymore, but I’ll give you six months to sort of so we can plan getting me out of this. And then we ended up having to take on three people and God knows what to do all the work. But great people, lovely company. But that was me being honest. I couldn’t afford that job anymore.

[51:28] Sammie: Yeah.

[51:28] Jason: And it doesn’t matter how much money they were going to pay to pay me. Well, I might have thought about it if they paid me two million quid, but the point I’m making is I needed the time for other things that mattered to me, and it wasn’t just the money.

[51:39] Sammie: So I really like that because it breaks it right down because when people look at personal finance or they start getting into it, or perhaps they’re just, you know, starting that journey, they look at everything and they go, My God, I need to learn this, I need to learn that, I need to do all of these things. And actually, it just comes down to those really key metrics. And if you can get those in line or moving in the right direction.

[51:57] Jason: It’s called the five dials approach. It’s like on a jumbo jet. There’s only five rekey dials, you know, altitude, speed, whatever. So find your dials. Uh, I think I might put it in one of my books. I can’t remember. It’s been so long.

[52:08] Sammie: So um if everything disappeared tomorrow, what would what would you do?

[52:13] Jason: Oh, what would I do? That’s a good one. Um, I did actually think about this recently because someone said, What would you do if you had nothing? Um, well, first and foremost, and this is this is really important. Um, I will answer the question, but I just want to give the point is that if you lose your job because you sacked, or your company goes bang, or they’ve had downsizing or whatever, you haven’t lost your integrity. You haven’t lost your reputation, you haven’t lost your character, you haven’t lost your experience, you haven’t lost your skills, you haven’t lost your motivation, your vigour, your um your get up and go, your um ability to talk to people, um build relationships, you haven’t lost all your contacts, right? So you are always building these things as long as you are being the best version of you. You are reliable, you are turning up, you are getting out of bed, you are doing what you say you’re gonna do. So if I lost my money, um, okay, that is inconvenient. And obviously it’s a lot harder when you’re older because you’ve got less time to build up the money again. So I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be ecstatic, I wouldn’t be pumping the air, but I know that I know lots of people. And if I needed to get a job, you know, and go and work for someone for money, I know I could do that tomorrow. Okay. I could pick up non-executive directorships, I could, I could be a consultant to people, I could go and work for an MA firm, I can work for VCs, I could, there’s so many things I could do that I just I just repackage myself and say, what are all my skills? What are the things I really like doing? Who are the people I know, and how can I put that together and develop value? And where can I get that value? Whether that’s my own business, whether that’s working for someone. And here’s another thing people confuse having a business, right? Um, uh um and working for themselves, um, and they think that’s control. Sometimes the best thing you can do is work for someone else who pays you a wage, pension, salary, options, bonuses, whatever, because that’s right for you as a person or for you at your stage in life. Okay. But other people, that won’t be enough for them because even if they earn a bit less money, they want more control. In other words, their personality type is that, you know, I always said I was unemployable. You know, I only got an employee job when I was 50. I’d never ever worked for anyone since I was a student, you know. So the point I’m saying is that I was unemployable in a way because no one would have me, or I couldn’t find a firm that I wanted to work for. You know, what’s it, Groucho Marx said, he wouldn’t join a club that would have him. Uh so I think the point there is that if it all went tomorrow, I would repackage myself about the value that I can deliver in the world. And that might mean a paid job, or it might mean a small business, or it might mean I join one of the businesses that I’m an investor in, or it may be um, you know, I find a way of monetising, I put more content out. I create um, I don’t know, create content business like yours. I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.

[54:48] Sammie: Yeah.

[54:49] Jason: But the point I’m making is that you’re always accumulating human capital, which is not just money or your ability to earn, it’s all the things that go to make you as a person.

[54:56] Sammie: Yeah.

[54:57] Jason: So whether you lose your job or you lose your income or your business goes bang, you haven’t lost all those things that you’ve accumulated. And I would have to find what value can I deliver in the world that pays me enough for what and how do I use those skills to deliver that value.

[55:12] Sammie: Yeah, I love that you said that. Because you’re right, like you know the road can get blocked off, but you can just turn back around and go a different path.

[55:19] Jason: Yeah, or bulldoze your way through.

[55:21] Sammie: Or bulldoze the way through. You invested in Finimize early. I did, yes. Um, and it got acquired by I can never pronounce this. Aberdeen.

[55:29] Jason: Oh, it’s Aberdeen? Aberdeen or something. It was Aberdeen and they took all the vowels out. Oh, okay. Then they were three years later, they said, What stupid idea was that? And they got rid of it when the new CEO came in.

[55:38] Jason: We’ll go back to Aberdeen. Yeah, and it cost them millions.

[55:41] Sammie: Yeah.

[55:42] Sammie: Mad, and it’s like that Jaguar revamp. Um what did you see in that company that told you regular people were being failed by the financial information that was being delivered at the time?

[55:53] Jason: Yeah, that’s interesting. So that is like uh serendipitous. Um, I met Max the founder because he read one of my articles in the FT. Because I used to write for eight years, I wrote a regular finance column in the FT. And um, I wrote about young people before they could take the young people need an MOT or driving test for money. That’s what I said, really tongue-in-cheek. Um, you can’t drive a car unsupervised unless you’ve done theory and practice, okay? But you can go and get a loan or a credit card or an overdraft or even a mortgage with no financial acumen at all. And I said, really, there should be you shouldn’t be allowed to take anything out until you’ve done a basic theory and practical test. Right? I know that the banks would be up in arms, but I think that’s important. He read this and he thought, yeah, I think you’re onto something, Jason. So he said, um, he contacted me and said, Can I meet you for a coffee? Now, this is this is let me think now, this is 10 years ago. Can I meet you for coffee? And I just happened to be round the corner, there’s a coffee bar, literally round the corner from where we are now. This is funny you should say this. And I didn’t really, I thought I vaguely knew what he looked like from his website, and he vaguely knew what I looked like, and he had this backpack on and a battered old laptop, and he came over to me and said, You Jason. And I said, Yeah, you, Max. He said, He sat down, showed me his little thing. And he said, Listen, young people, they’re not, they don’t know, there’s not a trusted source of information. There’s loads of information, they don’t know if they can trust it. And this is well before AI and you know, large language models and stuff. And he said, and this is what I’ve done. He said, I’ve got this newsletter of 30,000 people on it, and this is what we do. We tell them the news in three minutes, what they need to do and why they should care and what why it matters to them. And I said, Listen, I love it because it’s what we call the iceberg concept. We’re giving people stuff above the iceberg. If they want to know more, they can go a bit below. And if they’re the geeky engineering types, they can go right deep in the bows of the ship and see what’s going on. And that idea, that principle was quite ahead of its time at the time. Um, signposting.

[57:44] Sammie: I was one of the early uh But it was a brilliant idea, wasn’t it? Fantastic.

[57:48] Jason: So here’s what I said I said, listen.

[57:49] Sammie: Especially for me at that time, because I was so new into this, but I was so interested. But yeah, and so just having a lot of people.

[57:54] Jason: And they had the right mix of what I call noise and sizzle, right? Totally. Um, because you have to have a little bit of you know what’s going on here, and there was stuff about crypto and things like that. But it was never it was never salacious.

[58:03] Sammie: But finger on pulse in a really short amount of time. And then as you say, some of them I’d be like, oh my, but what’s that? And I’d be like, Well, what’s all in it?

[58:10] Jason: What’s all in it? If you can get, and this is the other thing in business or anything of this, if you can get people’s attention and deliver real meaningful value if for the attention you’re getting, that’s a value exchange, okay? So what did I see in it? I saw, first of all, he was insanely intelligent, but not in a geeky way. Uh, and this is important for anyone who’s trying to raise money. Um, so he was insanely intelligent and very, but very humble, low ego. I thought, I love this guy. I could just stroll straight away. He was, and he’d had a business before, uh, an e-commerce business, and he showed me what he’d done in Germany and showed you how it works. I thought, well, this guy, he’s got some track record, and he said, I’ve got 30,000 people, I get 85% open, I can’t remember the numbers, but something like 85% open rate, whatever it was, very few unsubscribes. It’s growing at so much. And I thought, hang on, you’ve got people’s attention. I don’t know quite how this is going to develop, how you’re going to monetise it, but this is something I can get behind because it’s a very noble cause. It was very, very good engagement, and he was delivering value, and it was free.

[59:06] Sammie: Yeah.

[59:07] Jason: So we’d figure out the monetisation later. So um he said how much he wanted, and I said, Yeah, okay, well, we’ll do that. And he had a VC. So he needed me as the subject matter expert, just for a bit of credibility, in the VC. So we were the first investors. Then we had another round. Anyway, the thing ended up, um, when it got bought, it had a million 1.1 million people subscribing. And by then, we tried lots of different things, different pivots and stuff, but we ended up with um uh or rather, they ended up with an app. So you if you wanted if you wanted more and narration and deeper dives and all this, you could pay, yeah, you could pay for this upgrade, this app. Yeah, subscription model. You could subscription model. And they had, I can’t remember the numbers, it was like 50,000 people were paying whatever it was a month. Whatever it was, it was peanuts money for the person, but very meaningful to for the business. And it was growing at a rate of knots. And then what happened was the CEO of Aberdeen downloaded the app, loved it, and he bought Interactive Investor, a big investment platform. I thought, oh, this is this is great. What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna this is the engagement piece, and we’ve got this platform over here with all these investors. These two make sense. And on paper, it does make sense. Yeah, um, and obviously they uh they paid a very nice price for it because it would have taken them years to build that capability. Sadly, all the wheels fall off fell off of Aberdeen. Yeah, um, and Finimize is still going and is now owned by the management team who brought it back.

[1:00:25] Sammie: They brought it back, yeah.

[1:00:26] Jason: Yeah, and there’s still a core who’s still there, and they’re doing a cracking job.

[1:00:29] Sammie: I was talking to them yesterday. They’re great guys, yeah. They really are.

[1:00:33] Jason: The point I’m the point I’m saying with that is the cause hasn’t changed. But there was an interlude where someone else changed the ownership, and things were a little bit kind of, um, like they do, it didn’t actually work out with the corporate owner, but I think that’s because their whole focus was all over the place. Um, I think they did, it made sense when they bought it, and we were all very happy when they did. Um, and I’m even happier that the team now have got the business back because I still speak to them and I still um you know it’s you see that a lot though in business, don’t you?

[1:00:59] Sammie: They go back in because the big VC firm or private equity firm buys it, and then it’s like, well, they don’t know how to run it. Yeah, they don’t get the nuts and bolts until they go back.

[1:01:10] Jason: Yeah, it’s, but I think really what I’m saying is that building a business is hard work. Don’t what anyone tells you think it’s easy. You know that, Sammie, because you run a content business and you’ve got your app business.

[1:01:22] Sammie: Yeah, I look 46 and I’m 36.

[1:01:24] Jason: So that’s just, uh, but the point is anyone who says it’s easy, you hear the stories oh it doubled overnight and it was hundreds million ARR and this and that and blah blah blah and they have millions of subscribers. And listen, it’s all about pivoting, working, stopping, starting, sprints back, recalibrating, re-grouping. Perhaps you need more money, perhaps you need different people, you’ve got to change the team. It’s just constant. It’s like Rubik’s Cube. Eventually you’ll get the colours, but there’ll always be a red on the green and uh a white on the yellow. But the point is you’ve got to enjoy, I know it sounds a bit hackney the journey, but you’ve got to enjoy the experience of building business. And that’s why selling a business and thinking, you know, it’s the it’s not always the right thing. One of the one of the problems we have, uh one of the challenges I have as an angel is that I can see the potential in a business. But if someone comes to offer the founder who might own 30, 40, 50% of the business, they offer him a life-changing amount of money. And I think, well, hang on, you know, I might own three, four, five, six percent of the business, and I can see it, you know, I could see it being worth 100 million or 200 million or 300 million, whatever it is, whatever the number. I want them to stay as long as possible. So I don’t need the money, but I’d like the better return and I can see the potential. But I have to respect that when you have an opportunity to take money off the table and secure your family, whether that’s 100 grand, a million, whatever the number is, whether that’s a five grand bonus that helps you clear your credit card, take the money if you can, take a breath, secure that, then move forward. No one ever went skim by banking a profit.

[1:02:51] Sammie: No, no, exactly. I love that you said that because someone asked me the other day, like, if you did ever sell gains, like what’s the number that would take it off the table? And I had to really think long and hard about it. But there is a number. Like I know what the number is in my head, but good job.

[1:03:04] Jason: I didn’t bring a chequebook then.

[1:03:07] Sammie: But I think it’s enough to make it attached by the time I got to that point, it would be an enormous business. And I’m, because I know that’s a trajectory if we get it right.

[1:03:18] Jason: And also the other thing is some businesses get to a level where they need different people leading them, not necessarily the founders. I mean, look at Microsoft. I was looking at a chart the other day, and um uh there was a massive growth, and then from 2004 to 2014 with Stephen Ballmer ran it, the share price was flat. Yeah, and from 2014 to 2025, it sort of quadrupled. Yeah, Satya. Or something like that. When the um uh it’s an Indian guy.

[1:03:44] Sammie: Satya Nadella.

[1:03:45] Jason: Satya Nadella, sorry, yeah. And um, you know, the first thing he did when he took over that business, he gave everyone a copy of Nonviolent Communication, which if you haven’t read it, you should get that book because it’s all about how you communicate with people. And that’s another thing I would say. When it comes to money, if one of the biggest causes of money fights and problems, um it’s obviously in relationships. That’s money is a big cause of relationship breakdown or disharmony.

[1:04:11] Sammie: And that’s the highest cause other than infidelity.

[1:04:15] Jason: One of the things you’ve got to do is get on the same page. So my wife and I, we have very similar values, we’re not flashy people, uh, we talk about big decisions. Uh, I she doesn’t, my wife doesn’t like her and manage the money. You know, we also have what to do if Jason dies or gets ill document, which my eldest daughter says, Dad, I, you know, I never want to really look at that. So you do need to look at it. You need to be aware of everything it is and what’s it all about. But you need to be on the same page, you need to agree. Um, so for instance, you know, we’ve always had this thing about fun. You know, I can spend what I want on my fun, you know, within reasons. It’s in the budget, I have X amount of money. My wife has X amount of money, just within the spending plan. And I’m always spending mine, and my wife is never spending hers. And I would say, can we have a strategic transfer of yours to mine? And she goes, No, she has run away money. She goes if you annoy me. But the point is that you don’t want to make this too laboured, and it doesn’t want to be about controlling anyone, what it is about being on the same page and having a framework, and that way you won’t have fights about, oh, you bought new shoes or you’ve gone off with your mates on that golfing thing or what because what you do is you get it out in the open. It’s okay, and it’s what you can afford or you want to afford. And as long as you get that, and again, if you’re in a long-term relationship, I’m not talking about boyfriend, girlfriend, all your money should be in the same pot, right? And, yeah, but it doesn’t matter if you earn two-thirds away or one-third, it’s our money if you’re in a long-term relationship or married. Um, but if you’re just boyfriend, girlfriend, uh obviously that’s different. You don’t mingle your money and don’t play house. You know, what I’m saying is you have to be respectful of the boundaries.

[1:05:45] Sammie: Well it comes with time. Yeah, of course it does. I mean when we first started, I was you know, we were both just paying our this bill over here, I’ll pay that, you pay that. Now it’s 95%.

[1:05:53] Jason: You were Monzo-ing each other the money and all that literally, yeah.

[1:05:56] Sammie: Yeah. And now it’s like she knows everything. Yeah. And that’s how it should be. But we’re eight years in.

[1:06:01] Jason: So, well, I’ll quickly tell you a quick story. When my wife and I just got married and we had to buy the first house, I ran out, I went out and did loads of seminars, right? Got paid for doing them. That’s all it was all estate planning and stuff. I had to do them around the country to earn the money to get a deposit to buy this house. But I had a tax bill as well of about 10,000 quid. And we just got married. My wife had the money from selling her flat. She paid my tax bill and I got the money together for the deposit on the house. But she’s never stopped telling everyone that she paid my tax bill in 1995. I made him. My daughter said, Dad has more than repaid your mum.

[1:06:35] Jason: Stop carrying that one around. I said it was an investment.

[1:06:39] Sammie: Yeah, that butler, I started him out. Yeah, yeah. Without me, it’d be nothing. I love it. But look, I’ve absolutely loved this. Um, I knew I would. You’re an absolute wealth of knowledge. Um, I know you’re definitely not as public as you were before. You’re a lot more of a private man these days, but if you wanted to send someone somewhere within the everything that you’ve done, where do they start?

[1:07:02] Jason: The best stuff to read now, or any insights, is if you go to my LinkedIn um profile, which obviously you can put in the show notes. Um but yeah.

[1:07:09] Sammie: It’s great, by the way. I love doing you. It’s good fun.

[1:07:11] Jason: Yeah, and I share, I generally share two posts a week where I write mainly about stuff to do with fintech or business or sometimes, uh, sometimes an adjacent thing, but that’s where you’ll find most of my thought leadership now. Um, and I always welcome people sending me fundraising decks. Um, you won’t always get a yes straight away, and you won’t always get a yes. I only invest in one percent of the businesses that I get sent, but I will try and give you honest feedback. Um and nothing.

[1:07:38] Sammie: You were very kind to us when we first started out. You were our first ever uh pitch, which is hilarious. Now thinking back the amount I learned in that hour. Core. That was that was incredible.

[1:07:47] Jason: You’re welcome, of course. You know, if I give you a pound, you give me a pound, we’re not any richer. But if I share with you my insight and you share with me something, then we’re both richer.

[1:07:54] Sammie: Yeah, absolutely. Jason, you’ve been a real gem, thank you very much. Pleasure.