Kevin Cahill: Alternative Investments Beyond Stocks

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

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: Hello and welcome to the Money Gains podcast. This is your host, Sammie Ellard-King, and today I’m going to be joined by Kevin Cahill, who runs KC Capital, which is a financial advisory service. Now, Kevin and me unpack a lot together about all different types of investing. There are some really niche ones in there as well. So it’s not just about the stock market in this conversation. We talk all about things like gold coins. There’s loads of little cool nuggets in there that you can invest your money into if it tickles your fancy. But I am going to say this week that if everybody could hit the subscribe button that you’ll find on the Up The Gains website and subscribe to our newsletter, you do get yourself a free net worth calculator for your troubles as well, which is worth 25 quid. But for now, if you are listening on YouTube, please do whack that subscribe button. And if you’re listening on Spotify or Apple, you know what to do. Leave us a review. And for now, let’s get started on the Money Gains Podcast.

[1:13] Sammie Ellard-King: Let’s make some 247 pass. So, Kevin, welcome to the Money Gains Podcast, man. How you doing? You well? Yeah, very good to be honest. And thanks for having me, and I appreciate it. It’s good to be here. Yeah, yeah. Nice. Good, man. I um we started following each other recently, and I was looking into some of your videos, and I just really like your no BS, no bullshit approach to personal finance. You know, you see a lot of these financial influencers banging a certain drum, and uh you are very different to them, which I like, man. So yeah. Um, would you mind giving the listeners a little 411 into you? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, to be honest, I do I do try and keep it at as little BS as possible. And yeah, actually, I weirdly enough, when you followed me, I actually I’d seen you doing that event with um Timmy and Catherine as well, who I’m like familiar with, so I was like kind of just seeing you around as well, just a little bit before that. But uh it’s good to link up. Um about me. So my general history is that basically I started working in uh Swiss investment bank straight out of university. So I did a four-year business, finance, and IT degree. And I’ll be honest, like as much as what I teach or help people with now, very little of that came from the university. Um, it was more the experience after that sort of working experience, most of which was spent in like a wealth management division, and also just applying a lot of the stuff I learned throughout the years to my own portfolios and then people I knew, just kind of realising that okay, like the stuff that I kind of know or have learned is not something that’s like super ready readily available, people don’t necessarily know it or and they need help with it. So kind of just transition to helping people with their finances, investing, wealth management via my own company then after leaving the bank basically. So yeah, that’s brief summary.

[3:25] Sammie Ellard-King: So when you were working at this Swiss bank, did you pick up is this where you sort of picked up most of what you you use in your business today? Uh well sort of, and it’s a good question, because like a lot of the theory, the finance theory, and just overall wealth management stuff would have come from from there, but it’s there’s also you know, it’s very specific information. Lots of it is like non-disclosure as well, so I couldn’t exactly just copy and paste, you know. Um but also the thing is like because it’s a high-level Swiss investment bank, like the clients in the wealth management division, they’re like your ultra, ultra high net worth individuals. And as I’ve obviously transferred into my own business, like you don’t necessarily just start working with the millionaires and billionaires like straight away, sort of thing. Um so a lot of what I learned is more from my personal experience and working with like client initial clients and friends and stuff over the years. Um, and like my aim then is to kind of hopefully get some of those clients or eventually all of them to a level where they they are similar to the people that are clients in the bank, you know. That’s what I kind of want to do.

[4:42] Sammie Ellard-King: That’s wicked. So you’ve got on your own now. Are you are you a one-man band or have you got a team on with you? Oh, honestly, this is one thing with business that like when you’re trying to one-man band it in in the beginning, like I thought my work-life balance was gonna be better than the banks. That that was just not the case at all. Like, um, yeah, the one-man band thing, I did it for probably the bulk of the year, the first year. Um, but just trying to do everything on your own is has a very limited like expiration date, really. Um, and although like I’m basically the I work with all the clients directly at the moment, I do have like a lot of partnerships, and now I’ve brought in people to help with like some of my content stuff, um, marketing, sales, things like that. So I kind of am building up a bit of a team at the moment. Um so yeah, that’s that’s all going quite well. It’s all still early stages of like leaving the one-man band, but thank god things are a little bit less stress stressful on my end, which is good.

[5:51] Sammie Ellard-King: Oh mate, I feel you um I did the same. Like I brought on a virtual assistant, and she does a full working week for me now. And without her, you know, we wouldn’t be doing things like this, or we wouldn’t, you know, basically the business wouldn’t run. What it does is free your time up to focus on the things which are high ROI for the business, right? And that’s like what we’re all here for at the end of the day. We all want to sort of make a make a bit of money out of what we do. Um, so let’s talk about like what it is that you know, from if someone was to come and say, Hey Kev, you know, today I’m you know, I really need help with finances. Um, I don’t know where to start. What’s the kind of steps that you take them through?

[6:38] Kevin Cahill: So firstly, like I have kind of two services and they’re generally intended for like a different type of person. So for starters, like the thing is a lot of the wealth management and the investing stuff, that kind of comes after the beginner level. So if someone comes to me and they’re only starting out and like they ask me exactly what you just said, generally I’ll I’ll kind of help them with any initial queries they have on maybe the free a free initial call. And if they’re at a point where you know they haven’t got an emergency fund, they haven’t got like a regular income, um, no savings or anything, that’s that those are the kind of things I’ll push them towards. Um whereas if someone has already kind of had a steady income for a while, they’re like earning quite well, they’re saving well, they just don’t really know what to do with their money, then those are the clients that I’ll generally work with like one-on-one. Um so depends which per was which sort of person it is, basically. If it’s in the lower band, I’ll probably recommend like my community, and that way they can kind of learn on their own in at least the initial stages. So, like in my Patreon membership, there’s a year’s worth of like weekly articles, podcasts, um, just tools and free stuff and like site host and information, all the stuff that can kind of just get that person, get someone to like a level where they have you know 10, 20k worth of savings and they’re able to take like the next stages. Um, yeah, go on.

[8:21] Sammie Ellard-King: I was just gonna say, so there’s like two individuals, you get them rolling, you get the ball rolling, you almost go through the sort of I put up a thing yesterday actually about level one, two, three, and four. Four is like, right, we’re ready to start making some money with our money now, and really you want to get them to that point until you sort of start to really work with them and about where you place their money and invest it, right? Yeah, so like that’s the people in that I put towards like my wealth program essentially. So they’re the ones that I’ll work with for like a set period of time, one-to-one, and go through everything, help them get all of investing foundations set up correctly, make sure that they’re but have a budget and they’re managing the money properly. Also make sure that they’re like, if they need insurance, that they’re covered, things like that. And then I’ll help them to kind of start investing and start to build out a longer-term investment portfolio and just like track their net worth and make sure that they’re actually like achieving short, medium, and long-term financial goals. Right. But yeah, it’s a whole process, really.

[9:26] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, no, no, absolutely. Lucky so you know, I I did it for myself, I you know, but it took a hell of a lot of learning and understanding to even get myself to those levels, and I made a ton of mistakes along the way. And I suppose that’s why there’s people like you out there to kind of hold their hands throughout this process and then and and and really just show them what’s possible. So talking, you talk about financial goals there, that’s a massive one, really, I believe, is especially in the investment world. Like, I personally, what I say to people is you should have a short-term goal, and that short-term goal really is like five years or five to ten years away. You might say this differently, but then you mention a medium one. I say your short one, and then your life goal, like what’s the big one. Um, so what what what how does that work for you with those kind of how do you set those parameters?

[10:19] Kevin Cahill: So it does depend. Like what I’ll say is like everyone’s situation obviously is a bit different. And the reason that I go short, medium, long term, and I totally I like that you mentioned like a five-year as a short term, because typically that that is the way it should be with investing in particular. But also, if if someone comes to me, you know, and they have a little bit of lingering like card debt, and they have you know half an emergency fund, or that’s that sort of situation, then I’ll have like short-term goals straight away. Let’s clear out this debt, let’s get this emergency emergency fund filled up, and that’ll be over the next year or six months, ideally, depending on the person’s earning. Um, so that would be like the short-term goals generally I mean in the next year or two. And then probably your short-term, as you mentioned there, would be my medium-term initial sort of investments. Um, and also, you know, to be fair, like someone can start investing in dollar cost averaging into like an index fund, and that can be a short-term goal accomplished to at least start with, you know.

[11:31] Sammie Ellard-King: So it could be like generate a habit as your short-term goal. Yeah, I think so, because like a lot of the time, if you have like if your short-term short-term goal is a five-year period, which I I do agree with, as I said, especially for an investment. Like, I think it’s just good to have proper short-term goals that the person can take off straight away and see, look, okay, my financial situation is improving like instantly, you know, it gives them that like intrinsic motivation to keep going and actually get stick around for those longer-term goals. Because you’ve probably experienced this or seen this yourself as well. Like, it’s hard to tell someone that like it’s they’re gonna have to have to invest or do this for 10 to 20 years. They want nowadays, they want that like instant gratification, you know. So it’s hard to do that. Exactly, to be fair. Like, that’s that’s one thing I always say about cryptocurrency. Like, there’s great potential returns, and I like I invest in it certain to a certain degree myself, but like it’s just distorted people’s uh expectations, I guess, for what’s like a realistic return from like an MS, you know.

[12:43] Sammie Ellard-King: Hey guys, Sammie here. Just a quick one. If you wouldn’t mind heading over to upthegains.co.uk, hitting the subscribe button in the top right hand corner, and entering your email into the box for your troubles. You will receive a free net worth calculator worth £25. Now, this net worth calculator, if you enter your assets and your liabilities, will tell you exactly how much you are worth today. Now, what you can also do is set yourself some financial goals and track your net worth along the way using this tool. It’s totally free. So head on over to upthegains.co.uk, hit the subscribe button, pop your email in, and you’ll be sent straight to your inbox in a matter of minutes. Now, back to the podcast. Completely agree with you, man. Like it the way people’s mentality is now, and I think it’s kind of been boosted by this kind of digital age that we live in and how instant things are now in the palm of our hand. We know we take out our pocket and we have access to pretty much anything we can think of. And that instantaneous kind of uh dopamine hit you all that people chase in an everyday life, and that could be a a click or a rise in a stock or a like on my photo that I put out with my mate. These are what people are chasing these days. So it’s understandable that these things are happening. So you have to like train yourself to kind of not be in that mentality when you invest, which is which is hard at first, it really is. You know, I did it when I first started. I picked a few stocks and a few of them flew up, and I thought I was Warren Buffett. I was like, yeah, come on, let’s go. And then I got smacked hard in the face in 2018, and then it was like, well, okay, actually, this is the reality. And then I really went into diversification and understanding a little bit more about company fundamentals and and you know, went went a little bit deeper down the road. But um, you know, I was like 100% individual stocks back then, and I’ve since pivoted that into um an you know, an index fund um mainly model with uh with 20% of wealth in in individual stocks because I enjoy it. You know, a lot of people are 100% index funds, and that’s because they just want to crack on with their life. And uh I totally get it. What what’s kind of some of the things that you talk to people about and and get them into? Like obviously, you know, let’s say I’ve cleared my emergency funds, I’ve got no credit card there, I’ve got 10 grand, I’m ready to go. What’s the what’s in it? What’s the steps you take with people?

[15:05] Kevin Cahill: So just one point there, actually, you mentioned you know, you got those initial returns and it felt like wow bought it. Like there’s a there’s something that people don’t realise is that like this man was investing for like eight decades, you know. Like he actually teaches, if anything, the long term is the key as well, you know. But to answer your question, what I’ll usually do, like I it’s annoying because I’m gonna kind of almost not answer it in a way again. But like I’ll always do like a risk assessment for everyone to kind of see like where to start, first of all, but also um it I do somewhat tie it back into their goals. So we’ve been through their financial goals and what they want to achieve. Like, if you want to buy a house with your spouse and that’s like your main goal for the next two years, um I’m not just gonna go through a rigid process where I start telling you to invest in stocks or index funds or whatever, because like you probably are just better off with like a lifetime, I say, you know. So I do I do factor in the person’s actual wants or goals and their risk, but for the most part, I will start with like the what I consider to be the lower risk uh investments right for everyone, really, even if your risk tolerance is like super high. Because and I I’ve used this analogy recently in like uh Reel or whatever, but like I just kind of think of like it in terms of like a pyramid. So like if you’re if you’re starting out with the highest riskiest investment and you’re trying to like build up from there, you’re on you’re gonna keep like falling down and not actually getting anywhere, basically. And it happened to me like when I first started investing, it was cryptocurrency typically, and like made a load of gains, lost it all in probably half the time, and then was just starting from scratch again, you know. Like, whereas if you can if you can actually build up a nice solid foundation of investments that you’re gonna have like for a long time, most likely, and they’re not like necessarily gonna they’re they’re unlikely to actually like disappear on you, and you have to start again, at least then like you have a bit of a base, you’ve something to fall back on no matter what. Um and you can kind of start to dabble in the little bit more risky stuff. Um, so I’ll usually go into what I consider to be the the less risky stuff initially. I’ll explain the investment in full to whoever potential clients and see like how they feel about it, and we’ll start to like build up a portfolio. But so you’re probably gonna ask me like what do I consider to be those like less risky investments?

[17:53] Sammie Ellard-King: You read my mind. So you might have seen on my profile I talk about gold coins a lot. It’s just it’s I won’t even get into like the details of it because I’ve done other podcasts where I just focus solely on that, but they have several several reasons why they’re valuable. I’ve never had anyone like actually take any bit of a loss, even if they end up like selling in a short time frame, and it’s supposed to be like a three to five year investment. Um because if they don’t just take value from the gold, like gold is is arguably one of the more risk-averse investments, anyway. But because they have other reasons as to why they’re valuable, they generally like do well even if gold is doing poorly. It’s conservative enough, so like over the last two or three years, I’ve probably average like a 1% return per month, which is actually decent for gold, but 12%, yeah. Yeah, they’re thereabouts. So like the thing is it does it does vary because the like different coins will have different returns, so like that’s probably the on average, whereas like I’ve had I’ve had one or two coins that have done 12% in six months, you know. Um but that’s one of the ones that I consider like a good starting point. It’s a physic, especially for older people as well, like it’s a physical object, they can see it, they understand like why it actually has value, and they know they can just go to their to the company and sell it back at any point. Whereas like sometimes are they physical?

[19:31] Sammie Ellard-King: Do they come out, do they get sent out to you? Yeah, so that’s one thing is it is a physical coin. Like you have the option of either storing it in a in a uh Brinks vault in London or you can uh get it sent to your home, basically. The downside with the vault obviously is that like you’re paying a monthly fee and it’s eating away a little bit of the returns. So unless you have like a big portfolio, it doesn’t make as much sense. So they don’t sign up at your door with a big sack, do they? Or is it like to be fair? It’s it’d be insured post, but like keep in mind now that like a coin of about this size could be worth like 10 grand on its own. Okay. Okay, so they’re not not a big bag then. Yeah, no, no. It’s not like a Santa Claus situation.

[20:19] Sammie Ellard-King: It’s your bag of gold, like leprechaun stuff. I love that shit. To be fair, someone someone did reference it back to me being Irish and like leprechaun for a moment. I hadn’t actually thought of it, I did find funny to be fair. But no, that’s that’s one of the starting points, usually. It’s not for everyone, but most people see the sense once I talk them through all of the um all of the reasons why I do it. And then usually I’ll start people off again, as you mentioned, with the likes of index funds, because uh, you know, again, simple enough to understand, you you genuinely can get wealthy over a long period of time having no clue about investing and just regularly uh investing in index fund, you know. Like that’s the that’s the beauty of it. It can literally it’s the same as it can be the same as in putting your money into a savings account if you want it to be, you know, you don’t have to overcomplicate it. Um so that’s like I find a good starting point as well, usually.

[21:21] Sammie Ellard-King: What I like talking to people about with index funds is that you know, if I turn around to you and say, Do you have a nine to five job? and they say yes, and I say, Um, do you have a workplace pension? You know, 95% of people say yes. And I and I say, Do you know where it’s invested? And they say, Oh, you know, no. Most of the people, no, uh, they don’t know where it’s invested. 90% of those are in some sort of index fund or an equivalent fund of that of that ilk, um, and you’re just automatically Doing that. So you’re doing that without even thinking about it. So as soon as you have to think about it, it becomes a like a risky thing. I don’t see how that matches up. It’s still your money at the end of the day that’s being invested by these pension funds, but you’re just kind of, oh yeah, I’ve got a pension. And you think about it like that. Whereas, you know, if you actually believe it, all right, okay, well, we could go out there and change our life now. Let’s put that money to work today. And do exactly what your pension is doing by investing in an index fund. It and if you think about it like that, a lot of the times it breaks down these barriers that people have up of like, oh, I can’t do that. I can’t invest. I can’t, I can’t get myself, you know, financially free. I can’t retire early. And you know, these are all hoodos that we tell ourselves, and they’re all all they are is mental blockers, but you’re already investing. So, you know, just replicate that in the stocks and shares lifestyle.

[22:57] Kevin Cahill: Honestly, there’s that’s just a mindset thing that I don’t know where it came from, but like I see that all the time, especially with like someone who’s on the fence, they they know what they should be investing, they understand like the basics of inflation, but they just don’t know, they just don’t think they can or they don’t know what to do. You know, it’s like you can really start simple, and there is like investments for everyone. And like what you said there about the pension. Well, yeah, firstly, like most people won’t have a clue where it actually is invested, and they’ll also like will lose them. Like, there’s a crazy stat about the amount of money that’s like lost and just forgotten about pensions. Oh, it’s nuts, yeah. Well, even even like someone paid for my uh program recently enough, and like two session two or three sessions in, we started going through the workplace pension stuff, and he he just thought that they were all that they all merged kind of on their own, sort of thing, and like slips up there, yeah. It’s like exactly. So then we went through it, and you know, he went to track them down, and like the money that he’d found in one that would like he probably would have never ended up finding was like six times the cost of like my program then, you know. So I was like small things can really like factor in. But what you said about like you’re already in vet you’re already probably investing, like I I even consider investing in cash or in the bank as an as you investing as well. You’re just like guaranteed to lose money basically, because like especially with inflation at the moment, so you’re losing eight to ten percent over the last year just by putting your money in the bank. Like that’s an investment, but you’re just guaranteed to lose. Like you may as well start looking at stuff where you have a potential to at least win or make something or grow your money in some way, you know. I think that change is good.

[24:50] Sammie Ellard-King: In a way, you’ve got to look at it like if you lose eight percent this year on the money that you would have lost eight percent on, then you’ve lost eight percent. Isn’t really in a way. Obviously, yes, you’re you know, factoring that uh extra bit on top, your money is devalued, but it’s a risk that you could take to then try and subsidize some of that inflation inflationary environment that we find ourselves in. It’s true, to be fair. Uh that that that’s a good point, actually. And I do think like this is why, and at least initially, like sometimes I’ve come under criticism for telling people that they should be risk averse because like not everyone, you know, not everyone has the same situation, and younger people can afford to take more risks, which I agree with. But like when you’re starting out and you’re just trying to like get into investing and you want to make some small bit of money and you don’t want to lose money, that’s when like you can invest in this these less risky things and just get used to investing. Um and like that way you get comfortable with the idea, you kind of see how it all works. Even you you’ll understand a bit more about just like unrealised gains from like an index fund where you’re not planning on selling for twenty years, you know. It all kind of just has to make more sense once you actually start. Whereas people just get bogged down in the potential losses or the potential not understanding of it, and they just never really start, you know.

[26:17] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, 100%, man. That’s why podcasts like this, channels like yours, that’s why we exist, right? We’re trying to break these barriers and if needs be, smash through them so we can try and get more people invested and and and build a better life, man. The opportunity is there for us these days. Digital age can literally be signed up with the stocks and shares ISA and be investing in under five minutes these days, if you really want to be. Um, so the power is in your hands as the individual. And um, you know, hopefully that, you know, hopefully people will take confidence from conversations like this in the future um and really go forward and and make a difference. Uh I really hope, really do hope that happens. So let’s talk a little bit about your own personal stuff. Um, I’m always interested in people’s portfolios and how they’re made up. How do you like to invest?

[27:11] Kevin Cahill: So, like honestly, like with my personal setup, like it’s not necessarily what I like a lot of it is stuff I would put clients onto, but some of it is like my own kind of thing as well. And that’s something that like I recommend a lot of people to do, is like what I call like passion investing. So, like, for example, like you don’t necessarily have to invest in a stock, you could just be investing in uh a business or um some area of something that you’re familiar with. Like for some people, it’s art, wine, whiskey, you know, anything like that. If you if you’re really passionate about it, you’ll understand it more and you’re more likely to make returns off it. Um, so like a quick overview of my probable portfolio at the moment, and you can just ask me anything that’s spikes your interest, then. So big allocation of index funds, as mentioned, um, in the stocks and shares, obviously. Quite a large gold coin portfolio is kind of covered, you probably could have assumed. Um that’s only ever really let it’s never more than 10%, usually more about six percent. Um and that’s kind of like what I would almost recommend as like a good holding of that. Um then I do quite over the last two years, just given like stock market conditions and things, um, and cryptocurrency as well. I’ve had I’ve done quite a lot of peer-to-peer lending. Right. So I loan out to property investors and um developers like large sums of money for fixed interest rates over set periods of time. Kind of like kind of the way the bank works, but you’re doing it like person to person, basically.

[29:00] Sammie Ellard-King: Um I was gonna ask you about peer-to-peer lending, but go on, finish your way you were going, and we’ll get into that. Okay, um, so quite a big chunk on that. Um I’d have to even check now to be honest. Um so then there’s more of the passionate stuff. So I do have like last year I actually purchased a horse with my with my dad, and that’s like purely based off the fact that his family are like have been like breeding horses for like 30 years. So they really just know like when you can buy a horse like the first the first year of its like life, and then depending on how it looks, just in terms of its walking and its family history and stuff, like there’s a high likelihood then that you can sell it again um two years down the line before it even goes into like training for like racing, and so it’s kind of almost like appreciation, the same as anything else, you know. Interesting. That’s a really that’s a really unusual one for the most part. Um, I do have some investments in various businesses, small bit of angel investing. Um I’ve I’ve recently actually started with um a friend who he runs a kind of like a hedge fund, like an equity firm. Um but it’s like he has like a a software that trades trades on a forex market, basically. Uh and it I’ve tried quite a few of those previously and not really had like a lot of I had a mixed bag of results, like I never really risk very much with it because it’s always a bit unsure uncertain. But um this one looks really good. He’s been using it for like two years now, and the returns monthly on average are like 18%. Um wow. And he also is he’s a very like safe person, so like he has um two multiple like ex-hedge fund uh traders like that just monitor the software and the results and the drawdown. So and I don’t think they’ve had a negative month for the past two years, so that’s that’s one something I’m quite excited about. But I generally will test things like that for months before I even begin discussing it with clients. And I think a small bit of crypto, not huge amount at the moment, will probably be getting more over the coming months. And I did have a chunk of like dividend producing bonds as well, but that just recently paid out and came to an end. So it might look at something again similar, but um maybe not. We’ll see how that goes.

[32:36] Sammie Ellard-King: Oh, interesting. Okay, so very diverse is what I take from that. You know, you definitely not got your eggs in one basket in any way, shape, or form, have you? You really are testing things out. Yeah, so that’s one thing everyone uh like I can’t even like I have to admit that that’s quite diverse in terms of portfolio. Like it’s very diverse, yeah. Very, very diverse, yeah. And like sometimes you could argue like over diversification, but the thing is that like I don’t necessarily think that that really exists. Like it’s not as if I’m like spreading myself so thin that I don’t I’m not building up an allocation of everything, like everything is is like spread out into an amount that I think is very suited to like my risk. Like I give everything a risk assessment of a s or a risk score based on my own system, and then I’ll build up a portfolio based around that on my own risk level or risk tolerance, and then I’ll like the allocation of my portfolio, I’ll change top it and change it a little bit uh to kind of suit like market condition and things like that. Um, but also yeah, as I said, like I do have like significant chunks of each or like amounts that I’m happy with at each, and it’s all kind of constantly growing rather than just like getting nowhere with anything, and just like I don’t recommend recommend you diversify it that heavily, like at the beginning, essentially.

[34:00] Sammie Ellard-King: No, no, no, not at the start. Definitely not. I mean, otherwise you’d have a like 10 quid in a whiskey bottle in Scotland, it’s not really gonna make much difference, is it? Yeah, to be honest, at that point, you’re probably better off like focusing on even just like income, uh creating a stronger income or saving up your initial funds, sort of thing. Um how about you? Like, what’s what’s your current kind of portfolio setup? Yeah, good question, man. No one’s asked me that yet. Really? Um no, no, no. I always just say, look, I’m 8020, um, but I am focusing heavily on um building businesses at the moment, uh, Up The Gains being one of them. Um I’ve got a couple others as well, which are which are young and fresh, but huge, huge potential uh for growth in those areas. Um, and then well, once they grow to the point, what the plan is with the capital that we get back out of those businesses will be to reinvest and purchase other businesses, either to grow the actual footprint of that individual business or sell and move the money into property. So um that’s the plan, really. At the moment, I’m sort of got a really clear five to sort of six year goal uh in place, little steps that we need, and milestones that we need to hear. Um really, it’s about increasing income like exponentially at the moment, so it provides us choice. Um personal portfolio size. Um, you know, I I’m 80-20, as I said, uh the 20% being very focused on fintech. Um I absolutely love my um my my financial payments and anything related to to like upcoming challenger banks, really. I love that kind of stuff. Um I just find it really interesting what it’s all doing, and it sort of feeds well into Up The Gains. So um I’ve got a heavy amount of uh of uh uh of um my individual weightings um in there, but then I also hold Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, and they’ll be the staples of that port of that individual portfolio and they’ll never never come out. Um just simply because they just grow. They just get bigger every time I’m like, oh, I might pick another individual stock. Like actually, probably better off just banging it in those three. Um but uh yeah, I’m I hold about 18 to 25, depending on the time and where we are within a cycle. So at the moment I’m maxed out of the 25, um, just simply because some of those have taken a bit of a hit uh over the past sort of 24 months, which is as we all know, like the stock market’s been extremely volatile, and you know, some of those names were up sky high, and now they’re you know they’re 20-30% down, but they have been creeping back up over the last six months. Um, so I can’t, you know, rule number one Warren Buffett, don’t sell for a loss, um, don’t lose money. And so, you know, I hold those businesses because they’re growing, their earnings are growing, their their fundamentals are growing, and um that just means that as soon as the stock market wakes up a little bit, that they’ll be back on another bull run, and I’m I’m happy to hold them for the long term, not not really planning on selling them. So yeah, that’s that’s me.

[37:17] Kevin Cahill: That’s good, and that’s uh one thing I said there is like again, like you find you find those individual stocks that you invest in interesting, and that’s like why it’s a good investment for you, you know. Like uh someone who doesn’t understand the concept of of fintech or like those companies, like it doesn’t make sense for you, regardless of whether they’re gonna do well or not, you know. It’s always good to like loop in your own interests, I think, and make it actually something that you 100% care about, you know. But you can agree more, man. Like for me, I’d tell people at the start, like, walk around your house, what do you like? You know, what what have you been buying recently? What do you search on the internet? You know, like what are these things that you’re like so emotionally invested in? Is it you know, could be you know, buy Manchester United stock if you’re a Man United fan. God forbid, if you are, bless your hearts. But um United man. I’ll kill him, man. You got me, you got me. I mean I’m an Arsenal fan, so I just thought I’d throw the knife in there.

[38:16] Kevin Cahill: Um it’s been it’s been harder being a United fan than uh has been like trying to beat the stock market this last two years. Well, their stock shot up 25% the other day on the rumors, so um you know it would have been a good time to have bought some. But um stinking, yeah. But it’s it’s one of those things, man, isn’t it? It’s just like you know, if you love it and you’re gonna do it and you’re actually putting money into that company on a regular basis, i.e. you’re buying the latest iPhone, buy the buy Apple stock because you’re emotionally and physically invested in it. Umless you have some weird kink or like that is not necessarily the common thing. You know, there’s there’s exceptions to every rule as well.

[39:02] Sammie Ellard-King: Oh, for sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s yeah, well, you never know that you know, any kind of you well, then you go into retail, maybe for someone who sells some some of those crazier products. Well, you actually you made a good point there, actually, about um, you know, obviously you’re investing in your businesses and stuff initially. Like, I think that’s important as well because like firstly, cash flow is is huge. Like, you if you can invest you can invest when you’re young as well, but like sometimes if you’re just gonna end up running out of money and you can’t fund your investments anymore, and then you’re gonna have to take them out potentially, or like abort your investment plan because you need those funds, like you probably would have been better off investing that initial money into a business or something that produces produces you money back. Um, yeah. And I think that’s people go wrong there a little bit, and that’s why some like I mentioned, you know, like sometimes I’ll if someone isn’t necessarily ready or uh in a good place to start like my wealth program, I’m not gonna just take your like the the funds that you’ve built up over the last two years and you don’t have anything left to work with, you know. That that doesn’t make sense for me, doesn’t make sense for you. Like that’s why I’ll always like only really take someone on if I think they’re it’s a good fit for them as well, you know. Like it’s there’s a lot of the time someone’s better off investing. Yeah, sometimes you’re better off investing in yourself a little bit, you know, and then come coming back to actual investing in a few years, you know.

[41:46] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%, man. You know, I’m just focusing on, you know, that could be for somebody less you know, you’ve got a nine to five job that might be starting side house in income, and then that’s your investment money that you put to work. Like there’s different ways of looking at it and creating cash flow that doesn’t massively affect your life. One thing you mentioned earlier that I wanted to touch on and we we digressed slightly um was the peer-to-peer lending. Um something that I’ve been writing about a little bit recently, but haven’t got into much um myself. I’d really keen to understand the nuts and bolts. Yeah, so to be honest, wasn’t anything that I’d ever really planned. I’d read a bit about it as well. Um, but a few years ago I just made like some good connections, um, genuinely just through like I find like most of my good partnerships came through like conversations or just friendships basically. Um, but a few people that I know were kind of just starting out in like property investments, they kind of maybe flipped one or two houses and were looking to like invest in a different scale. And I could also I knew that they were also getting mentorship from like some really high-level property guys. Um, and generally when you’re at like that phase of like a property investment or development journey, you’re looking for like extra extra funds or finances because you you can’t take out like 10 mortgages, you know, but you’re trying to buy 10 properties in two years, you know, you need money. So they’ll they’ll generally raise um investor finance at like with decent returns. So over the last few years, I’ve just kind of been doing these loans where specific partnerships, and I only really recommend it like so long as you know it’s someone that you can trust and who is is like you know, uh definitely has evidence and ideally collateral to put against the loan.

[43:40] Sammie Ellard-King: Um I wouldn’t just go loaning money to any any next person that’s it’s 20 grand, right? Yeah exactly. But I mean if you look at the S&P and the average returns over a year, like this is if you trust the person, you know what they’re they don’t they know what they’re doing, then you can you can look at it and say, okay, look, I can make almost a guaranteed 10% over the six months on X amount of money. It’s it’s not a bad option to be honest. You’re almost like beating the average of the S&P there. And also completely passive, you’re doing nothing once once you’ve signed over your money and the contracts are and everything are drawn up, like that’s you hands off, you know. Um and it’s also like for me, I do see myself eventually going more into the property route, and but almost maybe as like a more full-time thing. So like I do, I don’t I’m not too fussed about just but purchasing a pop uh one investment property kind of right now, and then you know, not putting like building on that in terms of a property portfolio and just kind of having be taken away. It’s like obviously there’s a capital appreciation, it’s good long-term investment for pretty much anyone, but I want to kind of do it more as like uh uh almost like an income and a regular thing that I’ll put a lot of time and effort into. Um yeah, you want to go in and hit two or three year one, four or five years. Exactly, exactly. And I’ve obviously done my research, so I kind of have the plans and stuff in place there, but if for the time being, I’m working on my own business, I don’t really have time for that. So this is just kind of a nice way of like compounding your money and earning decent interest on it for the next couple of years. Um, and it’s also like it becomes available to me again in large chunks every six months from a contract start. So it’s kind of like if I decide I need money for some for another investment or anything like that, then it’s it’s coming back to me in a couple of months, so I’ll have it there kind of thing, you know. Um so yeah. It’s an interesting one. I I’ve I’ve had a zero percent capital loss from it and own only returns.

[45:59] Sammie Ellard-King: Um so but you trust the individual, I think that’s really key, isn’t it? But there are some programs out there like Funding Circle and people like that. They do do it on a smaller scale. Yeah, so I’ve tried those as well quite after quite a bit initially. So that’s kind of how I initially got into the whole concept. Um sort of the program that I use is CrowdProperty. Um they also have add a 0% um like 100% payback history, basically. But um I think that’s also because they you reuse a lot of the same like developers or the people that are actually loaning the money, so they’re kind of built on like a network of trusted people. Um but the way that that one works, and it is quite interesting, it’s it’s a bit slower all around, but like what it does is you can kind of put again, it can be completely passive if you want it to be. You can you can select like specific projects, or you can create like a wallet that auto-invests. So the way that I work then is every day or every every usually every two to three days, there’s a new project that comes up or funding. Um obviously they’ve done their like vetting of the or whatever. If you’re if you’re someone who is like really caught up in the details and doesn’t like putting their money somewhere that they’re not sure about, then you might be better off like picking and choosing the projects that you fund. Right. But because with with the with the auto invest, I like it because it’s just like I have a set amount of money there, it just filters in small amounts, so like £50, £20, £30 regularly into these projects, and then when the interest and the and the initial capital comes back out, it just reinvests it again. Um so you’re not really doing it great, yeah.

[47:47] Sammie Ellard-King: And also it’s another diversified piece of income, right? You know, you’re not doing that with 80% or even you know, I imagine it’s probably like 10% of your entire portfolio or less. So you’re like you’re not like risking the the whole shebang on this property investment for some geyser you’ve never met, kind of thing. Exactly. And also, like in terms of diversity, with the auto-reinvest one, you’re putting small chunks into various different projects. So even if you one of the projects goes absolutely tits up, then like more than likely you’re just gonna make that interest back in interest, that money back in interest from other projects, you know. So yeah, you’re never gonna lose a large amount because it’s always it’s all split up. Um but oh, there was one other thing I was gonna say on that. Ah, it’s it’s gone. Never mind.

[48:41] Sammie Ellard-King: Okay, but wicked man, it’s been a really good chat today. I think there’s so many nuggets in there for people to take away from. You know, one of the things that I am gonna certainly take away from today is is about, you know, there are other investment channels out there, passion projects, different things that you you know you you enjoy doing can be a great investment vehicle for you. It just really depends on who you are as an individual. Um so don’t feel like you’re conformed to doing one way or um that everybody says you can you can’t take other channels with your money. Definitely. Um that’s what I’m gonna take from today, I think, mate. But um, if you could uh let everybody know how to get in touch with you if they’re interested in chatting. Yeah, for sure. So um pretty much on all social medias at this point. Um, probably the best place to reach out would be my Instagram at Kev Cahill Capital. I’m sure you can put a link or something, something in there as well.

[49:38] Sammie Ellard-King: Oh yeah, don’t worry. We’ll do all of the bad boys in the uh in the show notes below. If anybody wants to get uh in touch with Kev, then then please do. But mate, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this one. Yeah, no, that was really enjoyable as well. Uh thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Anytime, man. Take care. Right, speak soon.