Biggest Rip-Offs You’ve Ever Paid For? Michael Taylor and Ryan King on Airport Charges, Subscriptions and Tax

[0:04] Sammie: I know, mate. I actually went a little bit mad to be honest. I took a uh I basically took enough space in the suitcase that one side was completely empty.

[0:13] Panel: I was like son it.

[0:15] Sammie: I was like never gonna go here again for well at least like a few years’ time. So I was like, let’s make the most of it. I’ll hit Supreme, I hit Foot Locker. I went nuts. I got hats for like every day of the week. Like we call them Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, five.

[0:29] Ryan King: Today’s a no-hat the hat, eh then?

[0:31] Sammie: Well, just for you guys, if I had it on here on a finance podcast, people might not take me seriously. But uh probably. You can’t even see the shoes to be fair. They can’t actually. I’ll do it. Lovely. Green like the mask. Yeah, they are pretty green, to be honest.

[0:44] Ryan King: But they match the little I was gonna say you’re matching with the green, yeah.

[0:48] Sammie: That’s the idea. That’s the idea. I’ve gone colour coordinated. I bought a wardrobe that you should rotate. So that’s what I’ve been banging on about in the content recently. A lot of people, like, because a lot of people they get the trends, they get wrapped up in a like Birkin bag, right? And then they like buy the Birkin bag six months later, everyone’s on a different hype. Like, what was it, the Mark Jacobs tote bag and all stuff like that, and the boots and especially with girls, like it it’s huge, right? But blokes get wrapped up in it as well, like we do it with the haircuts and we do X, Y, and Z. But I’ve bought stuff that I can like I can mix and match everything that I’ve bought, so it’s always just like a rotation for me. I just have that as a core wardrobe, and now I don’t need to buy anything, and I’m not gonna get wrapped up.

[1:29] Michael Taylor: Fashion influencer now, yeah, another income stream. Yeah, you made you made some money on the sneaks as well, eh? I did, yeah.

[1:36] Sammie: So the these in the UK were 180 quid, and then over there they were $110. So it’s about what, eight, it’s about 85, 80 odd quid? Yeah, 85 quid.

[1:46] Michael Taylor: What you should have done is took in another suitcase, filled them all up, and flogged them, arbitrage trade. So I was sending pics of the boys, and they were like, that one, that one, that one, that one.

[1:55] Sammie: And I was like, mate, I can’t go, I can’t carry, I can’t carry all of this. We were looking up postage and eventually, it was just like I’m I’m not doing it, boys. Sorry. Um, so I got my mate one pair, like, because I was like, he was desperate and he’s he loves um, I think it’s MX97s, is what they are. And then if you go into this footlocker, it’s another world, man. They’ve got like whole walls of just that type of trainer, and then you just go to the next one and the next one. I’m standing there because I’m a trainer geek. I used to resell trainers a lot, and I was like, oh my god. But hey ho, we are here. Welcome, lads. Like, we’re gonna try something a little bit different today. It’s gonna be um a bit of a like a game show, having a bit of laugh. People should learn some things. We’re basically gonna just see what you guys come up with. Hopefully, there’s some agreements and some disagreements, and we can have a right old good laugh. But I want to go into first, it’s called the big three. So the big three is basically where we’re gonna talk about essentially something that’s happened in the news and we’re gonna discuss it. Um, now a dating app got sold this week. Originally it was priced at $14 billion. Do you know which dating app that is and how much it’s sold for? Bumble.

[3:12] Michael Taylor: Bumble. It was bumble. I’m trying to think. Uh it I popped up on my FT this morning and I thought, man, how valued at $14. Yeah, valued.

[3:20] Ryan King: Sold at 20?

[3:21] Sammie: No, no, no. Oh, it was much lower than that. Yeah, way worse. So it was originally valued at $14 billion.

[3:27] Michael Taylor: Was this in 2021 when rates were low?

[3:30] Sammie: Yes, and also when they raised and they went through a period of it rapid growth. But like one bill? You’re not could not far away. So a multitude of 14 lower. So 1.3 billion sold in dollars, so about 980 million pounds.

[3:47] Ryan King: Still good pay, Dave. That’s like a 90% crash then from where it was valued.

[3:52] Michael Taylor: Depends where you’re in. So I mean, if you think free trade, IG bottom, the price on that was 75% lower than the peak.

[3:59] Ryan King: I was in that and I made like 50p.

[4:01] Michael Taylor: Oh, no.

[4:02] Ryan King: I invested twice in that years and years ago. Uh I think my average rate of return over the sort of like maybe like five or six years I was invested in was like 0.7%. So I should have just put it in the global ETF.

[4:14] Panel: Yeah.

[4:15] Ryan King: Yeah, always. But at one point I got an email being like, I’d made so much money on paper. It was only about a few hundred quid. So it was a bit of fun, really. But I’d made so much money on paper. Yeah. And so I had it in my investment spreadsheet, being like, oh, this is great. And then I got the email, we’ve been sold. This is what you’re gonna get for each like seeds we got in. And I worded it out, I was like, this is pointless. How did you do that then? Through Feet. It was through CrowdCube. Yeah, yeah. Um I really liked the app. It was like the best investing app back then, like in terms of the layout. It was really cheap before it became Fee Trade when they started increasing all their fees. Um, but yeah, it didn’t work out well.

[4:47] Panel: Yeah.

[4:47] Ryan King: Have you used Free Trade before? Nope. Yeah, yeah, I still use it, it’s still a good app, and I’ve actually now put stuff back no longer behind a paywall. Yeah. So it is free trade again now. Okay. But with so much competition, I feel like they’ve had they had no choice. Yeah.

[4:59] Sammie: Um As soon as they whacked the ISO behind us, it was a $3.99 paywall. I was like, come on. And $9.99 for the SIF. Yeah, yeah. Was it $9.99 for the SIF? Yeah. Oh my god. Why do you that in this day and age when everybody else is doing completely opposite?

[5:12] Michael Taylor: I think they just hope that enough people are done that they will put. Because like, why would you put it? There’s so many better options that are free.

[5:19] Sammie: Well, it’s like with Emma um and uh we obviously looking at them, and they’re a big competitor of Gains App, and they have like subscription models, you get like different interest rates and you get different things for it. But looking at some of theirs, and it’s like, wow, like a lot of this is free or available. Um, that’s what we’ve done. We’ve made a lot of it free, yeah, just to kind of like counteract that subscription blow that people get. And if people want to add more banks, then it costs us money, so it has to cost you money, and that’s like we’re open and honest about it. But with free trade, I thought it rug pooled everyone, it was it was pretty savage, man. Um number two, more directed at you, Rice, because we’re big gooners. Um, Arsenal are of course the Premier League champions, but they recorded record revenues. Um, and this week they did announce job cuts, which are pretty savage. Yeah. Do you know how much a year they’re looking to try and save?

[6:09] Ryan King: I know they sacked 60 people. Are they trying to save what? I don’t know, was it like a few million a year? Seven. Seven million. Yeah. I mean the thing is, I’m pretty sure we just made like hundreds of million for winning the league and um coming second in the Champions League. And obviously our Tet has got a massive pay rise for his new contract. So I don’t really think they should have made those people redundant. It’s a bit ridiculous. And do you know what? This actually reminds me, during COVID, didn’t we make Gunnosaurus redundant? Yeah. I think Urzil had to bail him out to like cover his wages or something. Um I mean, obviously, yeah, I love Arsenal and we’re doing well, but I don’t think we should be making people redundant. We should be hiring more people to grow the brand and the club even bigger, in my opinion.

[6:49] Sammie: A lot of it, they said, was down to the further 800 staff are at risk. Oh wow. Um Arsenal’s last account showed a record revenue of 691 million, yet they made a loss of 1.4 million, and wages alone of the players with 346 million.

[7:05] Ryan King: So, you know, every every player can take a 1k per week pay cut. Exactly. And it’ll probably cover the 7 million.

[7:11] Sammie: Well, this came up when um Jim Ratcliffe took over Man United and he said fired the do you remember he fired the dinner ladies? Oh yeah, that was shocking.

[7:18] Michael Taylor: What are you doing?

[7:19] Sammie: Yeah, brutal man. And then they were like, players are like, I will pay for her to stay.

[7:25] Ryan King: Support like Jill’s been here for 40 years.

[7:27] Sammie: Yeah, yeah, the receptionists as well. She’s like, Oh, I’ve been here 45 years, and they’ve just axed me, savage. But that’s the world we live in, I think. Like you know, we’re sort of seeing that across sectors as well. You’re seeing vast cuts from from meta. Really interestingly, there was loads of cuts. I I don’t know if you saw this, Michael, in the news, but there was loads of brands cutting, and then they’ve realised they’ve cut too far, so now they’re really re-hiring because they were all like AI’s here.

[7:54] Ryan King: AI can’t do everything, it still needs some human involvement. And also they are inevitably gonna, I think they already are, but increasing how much AI costs for the credits. So eventually you’re gonna need probably more humans when AI eventually becomes more expensive than the human.

[8:06] Sammie: One of the big things which winds me up a lot, and I went on holiday and we got dropped off. And um the drop-off costs at the airport. Do you not think that as like the biggest scam? Like Ubers and taxis. No, like by let’s say your mum drops you at the airport as a fame.

[8:20] Michael Taylor: Oh, this is that I’m looking at it now or something. Someone I’m sure I read someone’s looking at rip-off airport charges. Gatwick.

[8:27] Ryan King: This is a massive scam because when I was in Australia for years, I’ve been to loads of different airports over there. There’s no charge. I’m pretty sure when I’ve been to America, there’s normally no charge. But whenever you go in this country, it costs an absolute fortune. So Stanstead Airport, my parents live 10 minutes from there. Luckily, they’ve got this um like residence card, so when I get picked up, it’s only 50p. But without that, it’d be £7.50 for half an hour, I think. So you should drive. Because uh at Tea Side there is, you get no free period. The second you drive through, it’s like 200 meters, there’s like different pickup points, you jump in 30 seconds, 70. It’s crazy. I don’t know why they it’s the same with like when you have to pay to even though I was at the I had a uh hospital appointment in Hartford on Monday, and you have to pay like £3.60 for an hour. Because I remember back in COVID, they cut all the NA uh like NHS didn’t have to pay for parking, the staff, which they shouldn’t do anyway. Yeah, and then the second everyone went quiet, parking’s back up. I don’t know why they’re trying to just like constantly rinse people for things that should just be free. What is it? Airport parkings, hospital parking. That’s crazy. Do you know what I think it’s like everywhere you look right now? It’s like, oh yeah, they’ve walked through a door.

[9:31] Sammie: One pound. One pound. Yeah, fill up the jar.

[9:34] Michael Taylor: You swore. 20p to P the other day. You paid 20p. What for a for a toilet? Yeah, I was gonna say toilet. Which like a salt of get because 20p, man. Yeah, 20p is nothing, right? It’s like a tap of the card.

[9:49] Sammie: It’s these little things though, and so Gatwick was seven quid, it’s now a tenner. Oh my god.

[9:54] Ryan King: It’s crazy to drop someone off.

[9:55] Sammie: It’s absolutely mad, and that’s changed as well. So so um London City is £8 for five minutes, which works out about £1.60 a minute.

[10:04] Ryan King: It’s a good hourly rate of pay.

[10:06] Sammie: You can’t get out, it’s a good hourly rate of pay.

[10:09] Michael Taylor: The government is, however, looking at this, so and as they should because looking and doing are two different things.

[10:16] Sammie: Well, yeah, I think we’ve seen that quite a lot. Um but Mr. Burnham does love a quick win by the looks of things, doesn’t he? So I think that hopefully we’ll get something there. Um, but I don’t know if you saw this as well. Um, the Joshua Fury. It’s finally happening, guys, after like 10 years of batting.

[10:36] Ryan King: It should have happened years ago when they’re both undefeated. Yeah, it’s so I mean I know it’s sold out, but it’s just gonna be so anticlimatic compared to if it was like 10 years ago when those two Wilder everyone was undefeated. Doesn’t he retire and then come back? I’ve lost out count of how many times he’s retired. About 50 times. Yeah. But it’ll still be a good fight. And it’s in Cardiff, which is good. This isn’t like the Middle East.

[10:57] Sammie: It’ll still be 1 a.m. though, right? Yeah. Me, I’m asleep at night these days. So I’m like gonna have to just have a coffee at like four just to get through it. But have you seen the resale value of these tickets? No. I haven’t no. Take a guess at how much inner ringside tickets have got to on the resale market. What do they actually cost without? Ah, good question. Like a few hundred? £75 for standard seats. You’re looking inside ringside at around just under a thousand.

[11:26] Ryan King: Oh, and resale is gonna be it can’t, is it five figures? I’d be shocking if it is. It’s not yet, but it’s already four.

[11:32] Sammie: Oh, it is five, it’s five figures. Sorry, it is five figures. It’s like 15 grand, is it? Yeah, whoa, you’re way below. Way below.

[11:38] Ryan King: So it originally cost a K, now it’s like 30k? Mate. This way I’ve got to be investing my time to get these bots to buy these tickets.

[11:46] Sammie: Mate, it’s £73,643 in a ringside seats.

[11:51] Ryan King: I mean, the I just hate like because I was already chatting to my dad the other day, because even when he went to the Champions League final in 06 against Arsenal PSG, he had to go to the ticket office and get his ticket. So you know a real fan is actually gonna get it. It’s the same when I was at the World Cup in Mexico this year, all the resale tickets, even like Uzbekistan, Colombia at the Azteca, was like two, like a thousand plus USD. And it face value is so much cheaper than that. It’s so annoying how you’ve got all these people buying bots who aren’t even fans who are just gonna resell the ticket just to make money. I mean, I sort of get it, like you make money, fair enough. But they should somehow think it’s the rule for that. I probably would do that. But I mean that’s mental. One K to 73k. Yeah. It’s like who is gonna pay that?

[12:30] Sammie: One bed flat in the city.

[12:32] Ryan King: Have any of these sold at that price?

[12:34] Sammie: Oh, they’ve yeah.

[12:35] Michael Taylor: I mean, they’re going to be transacting.

[12:37] Sammie: Oh, yeah, they will. They will.

[12:38] Michael Taylor: No, but have they? Because someone can list something, but unless there’s a buyer.

[12:42] Sammie: Oh, I don’t that’s a good question. I don’t know, but I would imagine.

[12:45] Michael Taylor: It’s annoying when they do that though.

[12:46] Ryan King: I’d rather just watch it on TV.

[12:49] Sammie: I said to the boys, I was like, go out and buy the sickest Samsung OLED 6K thing for seven grand. You’ve got that for the rest of your life, you know, stock up, get get pay-for-the-pay-perview, get some sick snacks in, get a private chef, yeah, and you’re still less. Get some sushi master in the kitchen.

[13:07] Michael Taylor: Unreal. And it will be way better.

[13:09] Sammie: It would be cool.

[13:10] Michael Taylor: I mean, if you if you think like ringside, what you’re looking up like that, you can’t even see because of the the ropes and everything.

[13:15] Sammie: Like I went to Joshua Klitschko at Wembley. We were quite high up, and it was unreal, like the atmosphere.

[13:22] Michael Taylor: Yeah.

[13:23] Sammie: But still, I you couldn’t see it. I was watching it on the screen. Yeah. It was so small, like you couldn’t see things happening. You would just go, oh, you just didn’t react to that.

[13:33] Ryan King: Um, I do love going to sporting events for the atmosphere, even when you have a bad view. It’s just annoying that some of these retail tickets are mental. You almost now have to get the ticket through luck, through the ballot, or through like the just like the website loading and being lucky for you because you’ve got no chance of getting a resell. Same as festivals, same as gigs.

[13:49] Michael Taylor: Is it is in Wimbledon not you can’t resell them to a point unless the dementia tickets? So I think you can, yeah, you come out, don’t you? You get them off people, yeah.

[13:57] Ryan King: Yeah, it’s probably a fairer system. Yeah.

[14:00] Sammie: Tom Cruise’s digger film. Have you seen it?

[14:03] Ryan King: Yeah. Nope. Have you? It’s abysmal. Is it?

[14:05] Sammie: Is it bad?

[14:06] Ryan King: It’s abysmal. My brother loves films, so he like enjoyed it because he has this his good Tom Cruise. Is he does some unreal acting and there’s one like really good scene. But I’m not a massive film buff. I don’t really watch films or go to cinema much. But it wasn’t really much of a story. It was a bit weird. Like it was probably one of those films where it’ll win awards because it is just how it is. But I just would rather like an action film that’s like easy to follow, and there’s a lot of like random stuff going on. But I know it bombed at the box office. It made like eight million in the first year, in the first week, and it cost about 160 million.

[14:36] Sammie: 300. 300 with marketing. 300 million with marketing. How much is it projected to lose? Oh, it’s gonna be like, well, like 250 mil. You’re really.

[14:48] Ryan King: Yeah, I was thinking like it’s gonna be eight million. So I saw a tweet saying it made eight million in the first week.

[14:52] Sammie: Yeah, so it’s up to like 35 now.

[14:55] Ryan King: Okay. Um, which is Roxy Bishop Thoughtford to 12 pounds.

[14:59] Sammie: Yeah, yeah. Well done, mate. You contributed.

[15:03] Michael Taylor: I’ve seen it. It doesn’t really have the most appealing title, though, does it? No, digger, no. Yeah, I mean it makes me think of JCBs and stuff.

[15:12] Sammie: 100%. Do you know what Tom Cruise did, though, about in this contract with the studio, and that’s what it’s he probably had a clause where he gets paid out regardless of sales, right?

[15:22] Michael Taylor: You know it. Which is exactly what I would do.

[15:25] Sammie: So the studio is potentially losing hundreds of millions, but they still have to pay Tom Cruise.

[15:29] Michael Taylor: Well, why would he take the risk?

[15:31] Ryan King: Because he’s Tom Cruise, he can just say whatever he wants. He is really good in it, too fair. And I say there’s one little scene where he’s really good, and apparently he might win an Oscar because of it. So he is good, but the film itself just isn’t good.

[15:42] Sammie: How can you win an Oscar then?

[15:43] Ryan King: There is one really good scene where he’s like having a go at people and he’s like giving this massive speech. He’s obviously all done up in this like costume and yeah, but I wouldn’t.

[15:52] Sammie: How much is he gonna make off that? Uh I don’t actually know, but it’s it’s in the it’s chunky.

[15:58] Michael Taylor: Probably a lot of money.

[15:59] Sammie: 50 odd million, I would say.

[16:00] Michael Taylor: So I imagine many more millions of therapy. Yeah, exactly.

[16:06] Sammie: Lads, Netflix is going up.

[16:07] Michael Taylor: Is it again?

[16:08] Ryan King: No, it’s just be it’s just gone up. Yeah. It’s $12.99 right now, isn’t it? Yeah. What’s it going up to?

[16:13] Sammie: Well, it’s saying here on my claw sheet, no, no, no. It’s saying that the the ad like this tiny plan, the ads plan now has gone up from $5.99 to $7.99. So if you don’t want to have ads at all, you have to pay an extra set of it. It’s mental you can pay for a subscription service and still get ads.

[16:32] Michael Taylor: Yeah, that really winds me up.

[16:34] Ryan King: It’s just annoying, yeah. Like increase the price and also take away the perks.

[16:37] Sammie: It’s like is there any point ads things that you pay for that get to get rid of? Like I I I pay for YouTube Premium.

[16:44] Michael Taylor: Premium, YouTube Premium, Spotify. You pay for the what to get rid of the ads? Yeah.

[16:49] Ryan King: Yeah, I pay I’ve had Spotify Premium for years.

[16:51] Michael Taylor: Have you? It’s not really that much if you get a family planner.

[16:54] Sammie: I don’t know how people meeting, so I don’t know. I mean my family on $17.99. Have you?

[16:59] Michael Taylor: Yeah.

[16:59] Sammie: So what what what’s so you better YouTube premium, Spotify? Yeah. Um I’m trying to think wells. Any others?

[17:05] Michael Taylor: Um, so I got Amazon Prime. Yeah. But they worked all over that. You get like a three-minute ad. Yeah. You can’t skip. And then you can’t skip it, and then suddenly I’m like, well, I’m literally not going to watch this film because it’s a three-minute ad. Yeah.

[17:21] Sammie: Yeah. This I I don’t know who they’re savage on their subscriptions, Amazon, because I’ve got a History Channel, then Paramount Plus, and they’ve got that. They’ve even integrated Apple TV now. So you can just have this like this suite of different subscriptions. And for me as well, they come out different separate lines, and it’s like, oh my god. I actually went through this and I cut like all of the Amazon subscriptions that I had. I had Disney Plus, I hadn’t watched it in literally since like the last series of uh Welcome to Wrexham. And like it’s sitting there for like nine months. It was literally probably in the hundreds of pounds a year, I was finding bit out for all these little things because you did the seven-day one-click trial because you’re like, oh yeah, I’ll watch that, and it’s gone. Yeah. They’re not reminding you, are they?

[18:04] Ryan King: It’s just so normal with these subscription services how they always start like too good to be true. Yeah. And then they just either take away the perks or increase the price. So I feel like if you do come across something that’s just really good, just use it as much as you can. Yeah. You’re almost going to get rug pulled at some point and it’s going to cost you more, or you’ve got to watch ads, even though you’re paying for the premium thing. Yeah, it’s just a pain in the ass.

[18:23] Sammie: Right, let’s move on to guess the number. Um, so we have been doing a little bit of that now, but this is a little bit more uh quick-paced lines. So what you’re gonna be doing is I’m gonna be saying it, and you’re going to essentially just have a number in mind, and then you’re gonna say it at the same time. Okay, and then we’re gonna see how far apart you are, okay? So Forbes has said that Stephen Bartlett is now the third highest earning creator in the world. How much did he make last year in dollars?

[18:59] Michael Taylor: Three, two, one, three hundred and ninety million.

[19:08] Sammie: You’re you’re way off, guys. So actually, Mr. Beast was 300 million.

[19:12] Ryan King: Right.

[19:13] Sammie: That’s I thought you said and I don’t know this dude. Daha Daha Man? Do you know him? Nope. No, I’ve never heard of him. He’s clearly doing well though. If he’s on this, but he’s 65 million, so it’s quite a drop. And then Stephen Butler is 52 million.

[19:31] Ryan King: Oh wow, it’s way over.

[19:33] Sammie: Yes, um I think you could probably argue the case of Is that just from content or from content.

[19:38] Ryan King: Oh, okay.

[19:40] Sammie: It’s mad, isn’t it? It is actually mad.

[19:42] Ryan King: But is that just from his podcast? Because I don’t really follow his stuff. He does the podcast, which is sponsored by Huel, as everyone knows. Yeah, yeah. It’s like my mum’s just died. Huel, by the way. Yeah.

[19:51] Sammie: Yeah. Every other pod’s got better help on it.

[19:55] Michael Taylor: They just got bought out as well. Fires and none, didn’t they? Who? Huel. Huel, yeah. Like a billion euros or something. Oh, is that crazy? Yeah, well, it was a couple of months ago.

[20:04] Sammie: So he had a payday from that then.

[20:05] Michael Taylor: Uh yeah, because he was a shareholder, wasn’t he? Because uh, I remember on the ads, it was he’s got done pretending he was a customer when really he was a non-executive director and shareholder, which, yeah. Sometimes you wonder if people because he’s obviously a very clever guy, right? So is he doing it because he knows he can get further ahead, and if he does get caught, it’s gonna be a slap on the wrist, which you know, pretty sure the ASA just said, Don’t do this again, and something like that. So if you think about it, it’s actually a very good trade.

[20:32] Sammie: Well, he did that story where he was like, This is me saying I have to do it, so here’s the hashtag ad. And then he just puts it like really big and now you knew he was taking the mick back. Yeah, but I I think it’s fair. I think it’s fair. Like if you own the product, you’ve got to be honest that you own the product, and then you’re shelling it on your podcast because you know you’re gonna make some money out of it.

[20:54] Michael Taylor: Yeah, no one’s against ads, right? Um I’m just against ads where they’re not properly disclosed. I think that’s wrong. 100%, 100%.

[21:02] Sammie: Um, Mr. Harry Styles made the Sunday Times tax list. How much UK tax did he pay last year?

[21:12] Michael Taylor: I have absolutely zero idea. 702, one, 70.

[21:19] Sammie: Oh, okay. Michael’s way close. Oh, way too high, yeah. Um, 24.7 million pounds he paid to the UK government last year in tax.

[21:34] Ryan King: Well done. Do you reckon he operates as a sole trader or limited company? That’s the big question. It’s a good question. So he was a limited company, I guess. He could obviously time his tax better. I imagine you have to, but I think at that point you make so much money, you probably don’t really like, oh, I made 20 mil, 40 mil. Uh, who cares at that point, I guess.

[21:50] Michael Taylor: Honestly, you’d be surprised.

[21:52] Sammie: That’s not I’d be surprised that you’re saying that as an accountant, but yeah. Come on, like you’re supposed to be helping us, aren’t we, Ryan? How are you devoiding? I would be a limited company. Yeah.

[22:01] Michael Taylor: 60K in the SIP on day one, 20K in the ISIS.

[22:04] Sammie: What do you think, Michael?

[22:06] Michael Taylor: Well, just on that, you’d be surprised, like people who have like 20, 30 million. I’ve heard from uh one of my friends so he had a friend who was thinking, I’m gonna go live abroad for a few years and it’s gonna save me 20, 30 million. And then he was like, Yeah, but you can afford to live here. You can literally afford to live here, and you’re gonna get more money in the bank, but uproot your entire life. And you already said you don’t actually want to go, so you’re gonna go so you can have an extra 20, 30 million, yeah, which is a lot of money, but if you’ve already got 20, 30, 40 million already, you you can afford to pay the tax, so you don’t have to uproot your life and do it.

[22:47] Sammie: When you see a lot of these billionaires like leaving, right? And then you’ve got do you think it’s harder, say, for like a Harry Stars or a David Beckham to like go, I’m moving to Monaco? Because they’re like national treasures, treasures, whereas these billionaires are kind of like in the back.

[23:01] Michael Taylor: Well, Rio Ferdinand did, didn’t he?

[23:03] Sammie: Has he just moved? Yeah, Dubai.

[23:05] Michael Taylor: Um, and then Mr. Joshua Hayes moved. Yeah. Um hasn’t Tyson Fury also done a switcheroo or something.

[23:13] Sammie: I’m not sure about Tyson Fury. I do know Rio and Joshua have. Didn’t they move to the Island Manor something? It’s a shame because like if you think about it, like we should be trying to incentivize these people to stay here because that is an enormous amount of money going into the economy. It’s literally tens of thousands of people earning 30 grand.

[23:31] Ryan King: Yeah, I think so. And the only thing about that as well is like they always, yeah, like those people have done well in this country. So I feel like if I’d done that well, I almost would like morally think I’ll just pay my tax to help fund public services or other things because growing up I had all that help. But I feel like they just make a bit of money and just bounce straight away.

[23:49] Sammie: What did you think of the uh Gary Lineker and the Open Hundreds Entrepreneurs letter that came out? Did you see that?

[23:54] Ryan King: But they all don’t they said they wanted to be taxed more.

[23:57] Sammie: They all said that they would be happily pay more. Yeah, none of them did. Well, really? Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, you can donate. There’s a donate button. Yeah.

[24:06] Michael Taylor: If you if you want to overpay tax, you can. Yeah. So if you want to do it, do it. And then say you’ve done it and be a be a leading example. Don’t just say, ooh, tax me more. You know, I can say, come on, HMRC, tax me more. I want to be taxed, but then still pay the exact same legal tax without overpaying. It’s uh it’s a bit silly, isn’t it? In reality.

[24:28] Sammie: We’re VIT registered and it’s horrible. It’s horrible. When you get that, and then we’ve just submitted accounts now, so I know what our corporation tax is going to be ballpark. Yeah. And then I’m paying tax on employees, national insurance, and pension contributions. Uh it’s nuts trying to run a business in this economy. Absolutely nuts. So I do get it from their standpoint because they’re probably looking at their earnings. Like for me, if I earn £100, I probably actually can profit for the business. Half of that, give or take, after everything comes out.

[24:56] Michael Taylor: I worked it out, right? And if you’re a B2C service, uh and you if you take out the money from your company and pay yourself and VAT, because this is the thing, if you’re B2C, you still got to collect the VAT, but you can’t really claim it back if you’re B2C and you’re a services business because there’s nothing really to claim it on. So once you go over that threshold, then yeah, technically the customer pays it, but the tech the customer doesn’t care if there’s VAT or not, they just see the end price. Yeah. And so if you go above, you have to add that onto your price, which affects the customer, or you can just wear it yourself, reduce your prices, and collect less, so there’s no change to the customer. Yeah. So one of my barbers actually, if he gets close to it, just stops working because it’s literally not worth the point in going over, because then you’ll have to give so much of it back and it’ll be worse off. So that is a handbrake. Yeah, it’s like a cliff, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah. So you’ve either got to absolutely smash the VAT threshold. And as someone in one of my reels said to me, there’s no smashing the VAT threshold in this economy. We’re just trying to get by. But yeah, if you think the VAT thing, so you after all of that, you’re gonna keep 58 pence in every pound is going to uh you know, in tax, so you’re keeping less. Yeah, you know, whatever’s after that. I can’t do maths in my head anymore. But if that’s assuming you’re running over 50k. So if you’re running over 50k through a limited company, B to C and that registered, 58 is going to tax and you’re getting the rest.

[26:35] Sammie: Yeah. So it’s savage. Yeah. It’s absolutely savage. Like I even put myself on a wage because working out the rest of it after that was just in like and more of an annoyance than yes, so I am paying even more tax, but it’s just became like absolute nightmare to work out what uh dividend tax work thresholds would be, where that would be.

[26:57] Michael Taylor: Um sliding skill isn’t it? Exactly. And it makes it all.

[27:01] Sammie: So I was like, I just want to get paid this much every month. I want to know how much it is, and I just want that stress off me. And I’ll revisit it soon.

[27:08] Ryan King: And it’s also similar to like just normal employees who work at like nine to five jobs with the 100k threshold. Because I think when I was first created, I think it was in 2010, maybe even before. It was a while ago, but it’s not moved. And it should, it was, it had a move the line of inflation be about 160k now. 160. And it’s still at 100. Oh my god. So it should be much higher. But also, you hear these stories of a lot of like doctors or lawyers who are now just working like two or three days a week because they’re at their peak of their career, they know more than ever, can help more people than ever, but there’s no point in them going above 100 because they lose the child-free perks or the the the child benefits and perks, um, and then also the personal allowance. Yeah. So like there’s no real point.

[27:45] Michael Taylor: Well, there was a study done, wasn’t there? If you’ve got two kids in London, you’ve got to earn about 149,000 to you know, you’re better off actually just earning 99,999 because you lose your tax-free child care, you lose your uh 30 hours or whatever it’s gonna be. Oh, what’s a pay for the the personal allowance, one pound in every two. Uh child benefit gets clawed back as well. But that’s over 60, isn’t it?

[28:09] Ryan King: Um But you lose, I think, because I’ve done a video on this a while ago, but I think if you go, you have two, yeah, if you have like two a couple both earning 99,000, you keep all of that. If one earns one and what 101,000 and everyone earns nothing, you lose all of that. And if you have two children, it could cost you about 15k a year, no child sort perks you just mentioned, and then plus the personal allowance goes as well. So just a disincentive to work. They should just ultimately increase all of these thresholds. They’ve been frozen for so long.

[28:35] Michael Taylor: Right? This is so Mr. Burnham is talking about once quick wins, just fix it because it doesn’t matter what political party you are. I think everyone could probably agree that that is fair, just fix it. So instead of having this cliff, like what is it, like 60%?

[28:53] Ryan King: Yeah, so if you’re a 60% marginal, if you’ve got a plan to student loan, like I do, my marginal, not that I’ve ever got to that point, hopefully one day, but my marginal tax rate is 71%. Sponsor this guy.

[29:04] Panel: Sponsor this guy. Yeah.

[29:07] Ryan King: My marginal tax rate, I’ll lose 71p of every pound I earn. Yeah if I ever went over the 100k threshold.

[29:13] Michael Taylor: But they could they could fix that and straight away it’s going to unlock all of these people who think, well, actually, now can earn money and not get they’ll actually earn more tax. They’ll have more taxes. They will earn more tax, they will dump less into a pension, pay more tax now. Not that pensions are bad, but you know, the a lot of people aren’t saving, but these people are actively not making money because of being punished so much. But you can just see it like, oh, we don’t want to fix things.

[29:39] Sammie: Because people turning down pay rises.

[29:41] Michael Taylor: Yeah. Which is nice. Yeah. Like what what what logic is that? I mean, in in theory, what we do is accept the pay rise and dump into the pension. Exactly. You know, a lot of people.

[29:49] Sammie: But then that gets taxed now as well.

[29:50] Michael Taylor: This well, yeah.

[29:52] Ryan King: So they’re kind of and they’re gonna be inheritance tax from April. Yeah. They’re trying to come at all angles so everyone’s fucked. Leave us alone, man.

[30:00] Sammie: Let us do cool shit about trying to take all of our money.

[30:03] Michael Taylor: The thing is, right, I actually think that people don’t mind paying more tax as they earn more, as long as it is genuinely progressive, and the people who earn in the most, you know, are paying a larger share of that. Because if you think 52% of people are net drainers, um well, is that right the word drainers, or they take take more from the state than they provide? So that is more than half the people. So yeah, if you lose someone who’s paying millions of tax, that’s that’s a huge thing. Whereas if people you know feel like they’re getting good value or whatever, and it’s fair, people do want to work hard, people do want to pay attack. I mean, I do, I can’t speak for everyone, but yeah, I just think fix it, make it fair, and people will just get on with their lives. But you see, like all these small businesses now getting absolutely rinsed through costs. So my local coffee shop got back from the US, gone within days. And I saw one of the guys in the gym, and he said that the the rent had gone up 20k, and the owners probably thought it’s just not it’s either not profitable enough or it’s just not worth even trying. So she’s closed the business that’s shut us her up.

[31:17] Sammie: I’ve got one for you your favourite uh company on the planet, Starbucks. Yeah. Have you seen what they’re doing in the car parks?

[31:24] Ryan King: No, they’re not charging people for car parking on that. No, they’re not. That would be shocking.

[31:30] Michael Taylor: You have to buy Starbucks. That’s one policy I would agree with, though, right?

[31:35] Sammie: But free coffee for Starbucks if you get in the car park, the airport car park, get coffee on the way out. No, they’ve they’ve like come up with these um to basically space for them is hard because they’ve got one on every single high street and every service station going. So they’re like, well, where do we open new ones?

[31:51] Michael Taylor: Yeah.

[31:51] Sammie: The answer is massive car parks. So these units they can spin them up, and it says in there under a week operational from get the space to finish. And they’re small, they’re like the size of this room, and they have everything they need, and they’re operational, ready to go and do like two branding on top, two-person operation exactly.

[32:09] Michael Taylor: Super cheap. In like retail parks. Retail parks. Does it run out of like a cabin or a bottle cabin or something?

[32:15] Sammie: Yeah, like a little like hut. Hole in the wall. Like hole in the wall, yeah, pretty much like one of them, but a little bit more secure. It’s kind of looks like on one of them metal sheds.

[32:22] Panel: Yeah.

[32:22] Sammie: And so they’re they’re actively rolling them out because they can like literally do that. But then how did how does a coffee van that’s parked in the same car pile that’s been there and it does the 6 a.m. mornings in a freezing little hut um compete with that? You can’t. You can’t, it’s nuts. Last one on this section. Um, have you been to Glastonbury before?

[32:43] Ryan King: I tried to get tickets this year and failed. It’s just so hard to get tickets. Yeah, I’ve tried before.

[32:47] Michael Taylor: That been 2013, I think. Back in your heyday. Yeah, when I was uh young. Is that pre-the wife beater or no, no? I’m pretty sure I bought those wife beaters in 2013. But they’re only like fiber from ASOS as well. So like the cost per wear must be in like the pennies or something now. Do you know how much the tickets are this year? I have no idea. Is it like I don’t even know what I’ve got?

[33:12] Ryan King: I think it depends what package you get, but is it around 500 quid?

[33:15] Sammie: First time over 400 pounds. Um so it’s 408 pounds for a Glastonbury ticket this year. Five days.

[33:21] Michael Taylor: I don’t I don’t really think that’s bad though. I I actually don’t. A lot of people were kicking off because obviously not, but all of these acts from you know, all of that costs money, right? And it’s a huge 80 quid a day. Yeah. I think that’s nothing.

[33:36] Ryan King: But then you obviously have you’ve got to get there, get back. I guess food and drink over. You probably spend more on the food and drink for the and the other stuff when you’re there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ve never been. I would love to go.

[33:48] Sammie: I would I would love to go once. I think as I’ve got older as well, I don’t know if this is anybody else in this room or glam.

[33:55] Ryan King: Mate. Yeah, I’ll do the glam. Stick me in a tent.

[33:58] Sammie: There’s no there’s no way I’m staying in a tent with no shower for five days.

[34:05] Ryan King: Probably it is proper grim doing that, yeah.

[34:07] Sammie: Did you did you camp?

[34:09] Michael Taylor: Yeah, mate.

[34:10] Sammie: Sod that. Like I want the five grand glamping.

[34:14] Michael Taylor: I didn’t have five grand back then.

[34:17] Sammie: I just don’t know how to do it. They’ve done these off-site camping things and they look pretty good, but even they’re like 2k. And I’m like, oh, just it’s yeah, that’s what it’s like. That’s really expensive. I’ll go for a day. You know, like if you’re invited like by like BBC Radio One and you get their little cool like pyramid safe to stand at the side, like, yeah, that’d be fucking cool. But there’s no way I’m doing it otherwise. I just I don’t know, maybe I’ve just got old. Right. This next segment is called Agree to Disagree. Now, the name of the game here, lads, is we do you have you have you I suppose first off, have you seen Gladiator?

[34:52] Panel: The film? Yes, yeah.

[34:53] Sammie: Yeah, yeah. Do you know the part where they’re like deciding whether or not the person lives or dies? No way you do the thumb, yeah. You shake the thumb and then you go down or down, yeah. Get rid of him. Yeah. So the idea is that you will shake your thumb, yeah, and you will then um decide agree is obviously thumbs up, and disagree is thumbs down. Um, we will explain it for those who are on audio what they have picked, guys. So don’t panic. Um, but if you are on Spotify or Apple, tune into YouTube if you want to watch us play this live. Um, but the idea is you’re gonna give that those answers. So I’m gonna go three, two, one, and then thumbs, and then we’re rocking and rolling. You ready? Yeah, right. First one, tax avoidance. Okay, Michael, last time you were here, you sat down and told us how Starbucks legally avoids paying UK tax. So statement tax avoidance is morally wrong. Three, two, one agree.

[35:58] Panel: Disagree.

[35:59] Sammie: Disagree. Okay, you let’s start with disagree.

[36:03] Michael Taylor: Well, personally, I think that you have a right to avoid tax. And it’s quite simple. If you think let’s think about the average hardworking person, right? They’re not doing very well. We know that because the median salary is 39k, and that is median, so in reality, you’ve got some high earners pushing the the average down. So we know that people aren’t doing very well in the UK. Why should they not use legal measures to avoid tax and keep more for themselves? So, yeah, I’m gonna have to disagree on that. And also, if you think, right, Starbucks are not doing anything illegal, now that doesn’t mean I like it, but they actually have a fiduciary duty to shareholders and investors to maximize corporate earnings, which you know, if I’m a shareholder in a business, that is exactly what I want them to be doing.

[37:04] Sammie: Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. I get that, I totally see it.

[37:06] Michael Taylor: However, as a consumer now, I want my country to be fairer and better. I want it to be better for my kids, for your kids, uh, just in general. And the the best way to do that is to keep as much tax in this UK as possible. Yeah. And you have a choice. Politicians are not going to do anything about Starbucks, right? We know they’re not, because let’s say Burnham comes in and says, right, Starbucks, we’re gonna tax you all of this money, Donald Trump might not like it. Then suddenly we have you know tariffs and all sorts. So I get it, the reluctance to back British, but actually, we can make a choice ourselves. So you can either go to Starbucks, where the CEO has bragged on an investor call before that the UK is so profitable, it’s funded expansion elsewhere. They haven’t paid a penny in tax, but you’re still bragging to investors. So you can go to Starbucks where they think you’re a schmuck because you’re just actively giving them money for them to funnel it out of the economy, or you can go to your local coffee shop, local restaurant, they’re gonna keep that money, pay some tax, pay local people, might spend that money in the local pub or wherever. It’s it’s probably gonna stay in your local economy and make your local economy better and more vibrant. Definitely. So it really is your choice, but yeah. I personally think it is morally right for the average person to legally avoid tax. Tax evasion, no, because that is obviously illegal. Very different. That is if you know that’s a man city sort of thing. Yeah, no, no, no. You gotta pay it. Only 114. Oh, sorry. They got off one.

[38:48] Sammie: They got one. Yeah, no, they you are right.

[38:51] Michael Taylor: Avoidance, yes, evasion. Don’t do that because you’ll go to jail. No, I agree.

[38:54] Sammie: Like, I read Taxtopia recently. That’s a great book. Yeah, it’s great. It’s about playing the book. It’s literally written there. If you can play the book in the right way, and obviously there are some very interesting ways to play that book, and people use it, but it’s rules in set in place, and if you move around the rule with a different rule that helps you do that, then why not?

[39:15] Ryan King: Um, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t, but yeah, we have uh So I sort of think from a personal perspective, yeah, there’s good ways to avoid tax, and you should do them because they actually benefit your future self. So obviously the main ones that come to mind are the pension allowance, you’re giving up some money today, avoiding some tax, although you have to pay tax on the future when you withdraw, or an ICE, which works the exact opposite. So I think from a personal perspective, avoiding tax is fine. But I feel like from the corporation perspective, like a good example of Starbucks with funding the rest of their operations, funding the CEO, probably earning $300 million or whatever. But they should be. I know it’s hard to actually do it in reality, and that’s the problem with tax. Even like the wealth tax, would it work? Would it not? It’s gonna be hard to actually implement it. But I think those sorts of companies, corporations, shouldn’t really be able to legally avoid tax so easily.

[40:01] Sammie: Yeah, tax at source.

[40:02] Ryan King: Doing these like weird, yeah, like pricing arrangements, moving money around subsidiaries. Yeah. And ultimately, yeah, as you say, we spend loads of money on Starbucks. That money could have gone back into local areas to pay in for things in this country. And it’s always been drained out.

[40:15] Sammie: It’s Nando’s, it’s there’s there’s loads. There’s actually loads.

[40:19] Ryan King: So it’s not a mixed opinion, but for a course, I think companies should pay more. Companies should or at least the government should have to track it more so they actually get the money and doesn’t just go and they pay zero pence, which is crazy.

[40:28] Sammie: I mean, I I can’t pay any more tax. So please don’t. I don’t know if it’s I would really like to see some differences for British small UK businesses with like ways that they can utilize some of their money to grow. And once you hit a certain threshold within your business, i.e., from a profit standpoint, then yes, like start to put those restrictions in place. But what we’re doing at the moment is curtailing growth of small businesses, and then we’re uh actively like helping these other mash multinational corporations grow and funnel money out of the economy.

[40:59] Michael Taylor: And it should be the other way around. Yeah. And then what happens when a small business goes bust? That’s a unit empty. So one of these big chains with the balance sheets, leverage death facilities can just swoop in, take it, and that’s another one gone. And they don’t shut, do they? No. Can can you think for Starbucks that has ever closed down? I mean, they have. They have, yeah. They’ll have run outside, though.

[41:21] Ryan King: Doing them in car parks. Yeah, they’re doing them in car parks. Yeah, yeah.

[41:24] Michael Taylor: I mean that’s you know, once they’re there, they’re gonna be there for for quite a while. Oh, yeah, exactly.

[41:29] Sammie: Because they can run it at a loss and still make money off marketing and call it brand awareness. So there’s a lot there. All right, lads, number two. The average UK wedding costs over £20,000 before the ring and the honeymoon. Spending £20,000 on a wedding is mad when it could be a house deposit. Three, two, one. Oh, okay. I always start with disagree.

[41:58] Ryan King: You’re not married. But I would say it’s a tough one, okay? Because people do spend too much on their weddings, I think, in general. But if it’s not for show, and you genuinely think like for me personally, when I get married, I hope I only have one marriage. I’ll have all my best mates there, I’ll have all my family there, the my partner will as well. I’m on a great night of a live band, a Guinness all night, everything free. So I’d personally rather. Yeah, you can come, mate. All right. You’ve invited me here, so I’ll invite you there. But I would rather personally. I guess the difficulty is most marriages end in divorce now, or 50% do. So if you keep doing it over and over again, then that’s bad. But I feel like one massive, unreal night, just even you can afford it, and you’re not going into a sort of credit card debt to finance it, then I’d personally say that’s fine. And I think like I’m not married yet, but I think if I can, me and my whoever who I get married to can like afford some of it. If we can get help from family, if we then even ask guests to maybe don’t give us pointless presents, just any cash, whether it’s 20 quid, 200 quid, whatever you can afford. And then I don’t know if you can almost recoup most of the cost of the wedding through those means. Um, I mean, I think when it gets like too much money, it’s crazy. Yeah, yeah. But I think, yeah, it’s your wedding. Hopefully we only have one. So I’d rather have a sick night, yeah. All your best mates are there, and yeah.

[43:05] Sammie: Well, my my friend recently got married and he spent 8k and had and it was awesome.

[43:10] Ryan King: You don’t need spend 20 grand to have a good wedding to be fair.

[43:12] Sammie: It’s actually awesome.

[43:12] Ryan King: And I think a lot of it’s for show. When like like even you have all these extravagant stuff. I don’t want any of that. Just like a down to earth wedding, everyone’s theming.

[43:19] Sammie: Yeah, me too. Big field, street food fans, have a laugh, that type of thing. Um, the other side of that is um my friend’s a wedding planner, and the larger the budget, the less time they stay together.

[43:32] Ryan King: Oh wow.

[43:32] Michael Taylor: That’s interesting.

[43:33] Ryan King: So I heard a hundred K wedding on a podcast. Apparently, if you get married for less than a thousand dollars, that’s on a Canadian podcast, there’s like a 90% chance of them staying together. Yeah. So there must be a correlation between the lower the price that you’re staying, and the more you spend. So I feel like if you spend like 50 grand on a wedding or whatever, is like expensive for you. It’s probably for show. Yeah. You’re trying to show off to friends and family, so there’s less chance it’s actually going to work. Yeah. Because you don’t actually probably want to be together. Yeah. You’re just showing off.

[43:58] Sammie: Yeah, yeah. I’ve been to some mad ones. Like I went to my friends one. And it was beautifully done. Like it was incredible. And I I actually don’t see how they’re going to split up because they’re like super, super tight. So I think it does vary per couple. Like you can still spend 100 grand and then still be together in 30 years. There’s not it’s not a big thing.

[44:13] Ryan King: But I don’t think you’re going into debt to fund it all. Yeah. You’ve got like you’ve got like a massive mortgage, you’ve got student loans, you’re sending your kids to like a really expensive school and you’ve got 100k mortgage debt, you’re just crippled for decades. 100%, 100%.

[44:23] Michael Taylor: Michael. Yeah, to be honest, I sort of agree what Ryan’s just said. Like if you were going into debt on a lot of it and you’re going to financially hurt yourself to pay for a wedding, which a lot of it, yeah, is just for sure. Now if like if you’re spending 50 grand on a wedding, you don’t need to spend. I actually think 20k is probably cheap these days when you’ve added everything up. But yeah, if you’re spending 50 grand, that is a lot of money. And uh yeah, that start about the podcast is great because uh me and my wife, we just went to Exuma. It was literally right where they did the the fire festival um in Sandall’s Emerald Bay Exuma. Uh so we just did that and it was great, and then I piled all the money into my trading account because essentially like I just started I just started trading. Sorry, Love, you can’t have the wedding of the trade. One second.

[45:16] Sammie: You can’t have the wedding in your dreams, it’s all on a UK stock that I’m sure is gonna triple.

[45:22] Michael Taylor: It was like uh it was a decision because I’ve just left left employment. I get it, I just started out. Yeah. So I was like, do we want to have a big fancy wedding? Yeah, which like would have been fun, but massively hit my earnings and depleted my capital, which wasn’t really that much when I first started out. It depends on where you are in life. I was gonna say that, yeah.

[45:42] Ryan King: In your early 20s, you just started working and you have a massive wedding, you’re just gonna be financially crippled for you. You maybe in your like you’re much older, got much higher salaries, you can afford more. Yeah, like 50k to some people might be a drop in the ocean. Like, just go for it.

[45:53] Sammie: But so my opinion on this is um, and I’ll I’ll give an example because I think it’s like a really uh sensible way of doing things, is valuing what is more important to you in the moment. So, for example, my sister has they they got engaged last year, um, and they aren’t actually they’re moving to near me in Ramsgate, which I’m buzzing about, by the way. But they’ve prioritised the house deposit first um to give them that level of security, and then they want to get married in three, four, five years’ time. And then once they’re in the house, they can then rebalance things out, they’ve got this the security of the of the house there in place, and then they can work out how much they can save towards a wedding because they’d be no longer saving towards a house deposit. So they’ve kind of done it in a structured way, that’s quite a bit. Which I think is really, really cool. But they could have gone vice versa and fair play if they had, right? But I think they wanted to get out of rented accommodation in London, which was going one way. So it’s it is weighing up the things, uh, whatever is important to you. And also it’s your life, man. Do what you want. But you know, I always find these things interesting. All right. You’re ready for round three. All right, so this one is investing. All right, small investing. One in five adults say they’d start investing 10 to 50 quid a month. Now, Ryan, you wrote a whole book on this. If you can only start investing a tenner a month, don’t bother. Three, two, one.

[47:19] Michael Taylor: I feel like I can’t form an opinion on this because it really depends. It’s such a such a hard statement that is dependent on everyone’s priorities. But I’m probably gonna go with uh agree. You’re gonna go with agree.

[47:33] Sammie: Yeah. And you’re gonna go disagree. Yeah. Okay, interesting. It’s gonna be a yeah.

[47:36] Ryan King: I disagree because I think with investing, it’s better to start small to get used to it. Yeah. If you start young, even £10, it’s not much month to month, it’s gonna compound for decades. I think it’s just building the habit of actually putting a bit of money away each month. The reality is if you compound £10 a month, I don’t know what, 7% for 40 years, you’re not gonna have a huge amount of money, but you’re gonna have much more money than had you saved it or spent it. I do think the only counterpoint to, I guess, my answer would be if you can spend that in spend that money in upskilling yourself in some way, right? It’s probably better. Because you look at your human capital over the next 30, 40 years, if you can take a course, do a qualification that’s gonna massively increase your income, then I would say it’s better to do that. But if you were just gonna save it in a bank or spend it on just something you probably don’t need, definitely invest it. Yeah, no, I agree. One pound, ten pounds, hundred pounds. And I think starting small is good. So you can actually dip your toes in and get used to it, invest them.

[48:28] Sammie: Yeah, I think a tenor is tough to say is, but what you value a tenor and each one of us in this room would be very different, right? Versus somebody else that might, it might be their entire like savings pot that they have available to them. So I think building the skill and getting used to market fluctuations is probably one of the most important steps.

[48:45] Ryan King: It’s like the skill and the habit, really. Exactly. The money amount is actually uh irrelevant at the start, it’s just actually doing it because most people want to start and never do start. Exactly. So I say to people just put even like the price of a couple of things.

[48:55] Sammie: Because you kind of don’t get scared at that point. When you’ve got when you’ve gone through it for a few years, I’m just like, oh, this is just part of the game. Like I barely check it at the moment. Like, oh, I look at it every now and then and it moves some things around. Mainly my strategy is a bit more long, so I’m like, okay, whatever, there’s some fluctuations. And if it really drops, then I’ll look at it. But like, other than that, I’m not I’m like, okay, yeah, just in the world.

[49:17] Ryan King: Vanguard on this recent bit of research well, it’s called like the British mindset survey or something, and it’s a really high percentage of people, probably like the 60-70%, were really nervous about investing. But then once people were investing, I think about 80% of people found it less daunting than it actually was. It’s more just you work up. That’s very interesting. It’s more just like you work up in your head, like, oh my god, it’s so risky, I’m gonna lose money. Then you invest 50 quid, you’re like, oh, nothing’s actually it’s gone down two quid, it’s gone up a fiver. Then then it’s when you start building up over years and years, then you see the real power. But I think it’s just actually getting started, then you realise it’s actually quite simple. You don’t pay many fees, you don’t pay much in tax, you do it for an ICE or use a pension, I’ll do more.

[49:56] Sammie: Yeah. Handy Hart came on here and he said, Oh, for the 1% fee that you’ll save by picking X, Y, and Z provider over X, Y, and Z provider, he’s like, I will pay you the 1% fee just to get started, because it doesn’t matter at the beginning as long as you start getting going with the habit and that builds everything. Michael, you you agreed. What did what do you think?

[50:16] Michael Taylor: I feel like Mr King needs to stop going first because it’s pretty much said what I was saying. So all right, next one.

[50:24] Sammie: That’s how it works.

[50:25] Michael Taylor: So if you’re early on in your career, right, the eight to ten percent Kagar you might get, and I’ll give you an example. So I paid a few hundred quid to do a lifeguard course, and I was previously working at McDonald’s. So I did the course, I made the course fee back within like one or two months, and I’d pretty much doubled my hourly rate. So the ROI on that course is far higher than any eight to ten percent I might get in. That’s a great example. So now I’m not saying that you can always do that, but you know, if there’s some sort of skilled course that you can pay maybe like two grand to go on, but it boosts your salary by two or three grand a year, that is a huge obviously you’ve got to factor in tax and everything, but the returns on your earnings power on that is just massively skyrocketed. So as long as you can keep picking the low-hanging fruit and investing and getting a faster payback and rate of return, do that. Um, also when you were young, yeah, I could make a tenner go a long way. And I had a lot of fun on £10 back, you know, this was like, you know, 2009, 2014. One pound points. Yeah, all sorts. And uh, you know, me, me and a friend, we went to Prague for four nights, uh, everything included, and it literally cost us 200 quid. Yeah. Now we did stay in probably the grottiest place ever. I was just about to say, where were you staying? Don’t don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t good. Yeah, um, and we really just out having a laugh, right? Yeah, no, it was great. And that that whole holiday, including everything included, cost us less than 200 quid. Like we were the 200 quid club. Um, and he got a vodka in the main square, and it cost him like a tenner. And he was like, oh man, that’s like 20% of a budget on the reason. Luckily, we found like an all-you can drink bar call for I think it was like 20 euros or something. So we were sorted.

[52:19] Ryan King: I mean, one good cat on this one. If you work for an employer, they might actually pay for you to take a training course or to go on something. So if you do work for a company and upskill into whatever it is, you actually might be able to not even use your own money and get your employer to do it, and they might be a fan of that because then you’re upskilling and can add more value to their company. Totally, man.

[52:37] Sammie: Totally. Right. I’m gonna move on to the next segment. This is uh called the Hall of Shame. Um so this is where we find things uh on Reddit and Twitter.

[52:47] Michael Taylor: Yeah.

[52:47] Sammie: Um, or X now, I should say. Sorry.

[52:50] Michael Taylor: Formally known as Twitter. Formally known as Twitter. I still call it Twitter. I saw it Twitter.

[52:54] Sammie: I still call it Tweet. It is Twitter, yeah. It is Twitter. X is a stupid name. It’s so stupid. What a whopper. Yeah. Um all right. So this one. First up, a bride paid.

[53:08] Michael Taylor: Got a feeling I’m not gonna like this one. Yeah, yeah.

[53:12] Sammie: A bride paid about £1,500 to fly her friend of 10 years out to her wedding in Bali. That friend and her brand new husband used it as a free honeymoon and ended up skipping the ceremony because he didn’t feel like going. The bride sent her an invoice for around about £1,790.

[53:37] Ryan King: Plus VAT.

[53:38] Panel: Yeah.

[53:39] Sammie: The twist on this the friend sent back a three-page bill for her whole friendship. Lunches and petrol including, and saying that the bride actually owed her £18.

[53:53] Ryan King: That’s ridiculous. The the friend’s in the wrong. The bride’s in the right. Like this is gonna be fake. Yeah, this sounds like ChatGPT. No. Because the bride has paid for her to fly over, which she probably shouldn’t have done. If they can’t afford it, then no problem. We can celebrate when we get back home. She obviously wanted us to be there. So she’s paid for her.

[54:09] Sammie: This is uh this is on Reddit and it with the the actual thing. We’ll put it up here. It is mental. I mean, that’s mental.

[54:17] Michael Taylor: Does anyone actually agree? Surely nobody agrees.

[54:19] Sammie: So the is the bride in the wrong for invoicing her for the flights?

[54:24] Michael Taylor: Yeah, the bride is not in the wrong. So is everyone?

[54:26] Sammie: No, I don’t think the bride is in uh wrong for invoicing her in the flights.

[54:29] Michael Taylor: No, I agree. I think yeah, if you’re paying for someone to come to your wedding and they just completely disrespect you, use it as their honeymoon. Yeah, yeah. Cheeky. She’s not a good friend.

[54:39] Sammie: Yeah, cheeky. Yeah, it’s savage, isn’t it? Like, I just couldn’t even imagine doing that to someone knowing that they paid for it. Like, it’s the moral thing.

[54:47] Michael Taylor: Like, it’s weird that these people walk and breathe around us, isn’t it? Like, where do you find these people on Reddit? On Reddit. Oh, yeah, but I just can’t I can’t imagine someone actually doing that.

[55:01] Sammie: I know, because you I genuinely like when I was looking for these, is you some of these stories you think that’s that’s a lie. Yeah. So it’s a lie, it must be a lie. Yeah. But I know this is actually real, um, and these things happen. But I think I suppose it begs the question like back to the weddings, like flying your friends out halfway around the world, like if you want them to be there, like they have made that effort, and then you’re then don’t even turn up. Like with your husband, you just treat it as your honeymoon.

[55:29] Ryan King: Yeah, that’s that’s awful. Man, I do think as well in the UK we probably need to get better at saying like no to things that you just can’t really afford. Because I mean, you get invited to weddings, birthdays, trips away of like uni mates or schoolmates or football mates or workmates, and you can’t do it all. So you sort of have got to pick and choose a bit. So if I was that friend I couldn’t afford it, I was like, You’re a legend, you’re my best mates, I’m really sorry I can’t afford it right now. We’ll go for a pint when you get back to TK after the wedding. And equal. Rather than rinse.

[55:56] Michael Taylor: If someone can’t afford to come to your wedding, then they just can’t afford to come. So that’s it. If you’re gonna pick somewhere abroad, then that’s fine, but I accept that a lot of people might not come.

[56:07] Ryan King: Yeah, and I think the invoice at the end of all the things she owes her is terrible. That’s a bit of a mate. Like, I might get a couple of extra rounds in one night and then he pays for dinner a few weeks later. Like, it just it nets off. Yeah, the lifetime net off. Like doing that is just like awful.

[56:21] Sammie: You know, there’s one in the group that generally always pops to the toilet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You there’s always one that doesn’t, there’s not always bands, but also like within my friendship group, there’s an extremely um, especially with my homeboys, right? There’s an extremely vast difference in worth and income.

[56:43] Ryan King: Um, and like it probably gets harder as you get older, to be fair.

[56:46] Sammie: It does, but also uh when I come together with those lads, I I don’t see I see them three, four times a year. I want to have the best time possible. And if that means that you know, one of them’s like, oh, I’ve got to go home at 10 um because I can’t afford to stay out, I’d rather contribute and make their time better for them. Um and and some of the other lads in my group would do that too. And so I just think it’s like you know, you have to balance these things out, and it is tough. But on the stuff of paying for your mates, um you see that transition there, guys. I’m getting great segue. So a lad orders a pasta and some tap water in an Italian restaurant, but his mates order steaks, starters, and cocktails, but they split the bill evenly every single time he goes out. So he actually pays £45 for about 19 quids worth of food. Do you agree that this is wrong if he then starts asking to pay for what he’s eaten?

[57:48] Ryan King: No, you shouldn’t. I think it’s fair. Yeah. I’m sort of like quite conscious and self-aware of that though. So if I was like the one ordering all the stars and stuff, and I know someone’s literally got had like paid for nothing, I would actually be like, mate, you should pay less or really nothing, because you’ve spent 10 quid, we’ve all spent 50 quid. We’re gonna split it equally, it’s just unfair.

[58:06] Michael Taylor: Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of the times if if I go out, I don’t really look at it and just assume we’ve split it. But if I know someone, yeah, someone has ordered a lot less, then it makes sense to to try and exclude them because it’s just not right, is it? I mean, you you don’t know someone’s financial situation, right? So and also I don’t think it’s fair that someone should be paying for other people’s stuff.

[58:30] Sammie: Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I think it comes out like if it’s super close and you’ve like ordered a five 19 pound pasta, and then your mine’s 21 quid and your cocktail’s 13 and mine’s 14, like, and we’re in a bit of a rush to like get to the next destination, and you wanna then you wanna go like that though it’s when it’s panickety for the sake of being panicety for like two quid, then I’m like, bro, come like let’s just spin it 50-50, like we’ve got to go.

[58:57] Michael Taylor: When this this actually happened to me, so back when I’d started trading, um my wife and I we went out with some of her friends and some friends who were her friends. We went to this like really fancy restaurant where it was like crazy prices, and we got and we’d ordered like the bare minimum, like no drinks or anything, and then they were ordering all of these like fancy wines, and I think the bill was in like the thousands or something. Um, and like they obviously everyone wanted to split it, and and like we were like, nah, I don’t want to split it because we’ve paid like a fraction of what you guys have paid, or didn’t drink any of that fancy wine or anything. Yeah, and you could see they weren’t happy with it, yeah, yeah. And I was thinking, I’ll just pay it this time and learn. Like, I think it’s probably not gonna see these people.

[59:49] Sammie: Like that that’s a prime example for me. Yeah, don’t pay, like for the two gram wine, right? But like if I’m away with six mates on holiday and we’re all just ordering and doing it, and then one of them’s like, uh well, I paid £22.40, unless it’s like super obvious, but if we’re all having it, like again, it depends on the situation, what’s happening at the meal. If it’s obvious that we should just all just like, oh who knows? So let’s just split it because working out’s gonna be a ball egg, right? Then I get it.

[1:00:17] Ryan King: Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to like drinking really, because often one or two people might not drink out of ten. So if you’re all hammering hammering beers like four hours and yeah, they’ve had like a water and a meal, then I think you’ve got to be, even though even if you’re a bit drunk, you’ve got to be self-aware to be like, you two haven’t had a drink, you’ve barely spent a penny, you pay for your meals first, yeah, and then we’ll go and split the rest between the other eight of us.

[1:00:37] Michael Taylor: I th I think most people are genuinely fair though, right? Like most people. Most people are good people, so if they know they’ve absolutely hammered the pints, they’ll stick more in the back. And you’ve got someone who’s been nursing again for all three hours, you know, you can never tell, right? Yeah, 100%. So I think most people are generally good people.

[1:00:53] Sammie: Alright, I’m gonna do some very quick fire around questions, right? Basically, pick the answer which suits you. Would you rather win Love Island and split the 50k prize or get dumped on day one but leave with a million followers?

[1:01:08] Michael Taylor: Oh. Well, this again, it depends. Like, I’m married, so I wouldn’t go on. Probably dumped okay.

[1:01:14] Ryan King: Hypothetically, I think from the income was a million followers, you’d probably make a lot of income, like continuous income from that. So I’d probably say the second one in this day and age. I bet. So what was it? Win and get the 50k.

[1:01:25] Sammie: Winly spit 50k or get dumped on day one but leave with a million K.

[1:01:27] Ryan King: Because against a million followers, very few people have the amount of probably money you can make off of that, assuming the following is engaged, just one. Even then that’s it.

[1:01:33] Michael Taylor: This is again though, if if you get dumped on day one but you’ve got a million followers, how engaged are they gonna be? Whereas if you win it, you’ll probably get a decent following, you’ll have more engagement. 100%.

[1:01:44] Sammie: So you may see your salary, or you mate see your Uber Eats history. That’ll explain that best part. Uh Uber Eats History. Uber Eats History for me, yeah. Yeah. Um, eat bugs on I’m a Celebrity for a reported £1.5 million, or stay totally anonymous on 60k a year for your rest of your life.

[1:02:07] Ryan King: Oh, first one.

[1:02:08] Sammie: Give me the bugs when I’m gonna be. Yeah.

[1:02:18] Michael Taylor: And you can eat these bugs, right? They’re not gonna kill you or anything.

[1:02:21] Sammie: Let’s say, for example, you’re earning 60k, Michael, and you’re working in an office, both of you guys, right? Yeah. Um, you can stay on a four-day week and you can get the same pay, or 5k pay rise and you have to work the extra day. What are you doing?

[1:02:34] Ryan King: Four-day week for me.

[1:02:35] Sammie: Four-day week.

[1:02:36] Michael Taylor: Well, the positive EV trade is to do with a four-day week, because if you get 5k, you’re probably gonna get taxed a lot. And it’s not gonna be worth the extra 25% time. So yeah. Yeah. More free time is priceless. Totally, totally. Just on that, I would love to know anyone who would pick the extra 5k because it just doesn’t work out mathematically.

[1:02:58] Sammie: Okay, I’ll caveat it then and we’ll end on there. Is that I would do the extra 5k if I really enjoyed the job.

[1:03:05] Ryan King: Yeah. Because where I I think or you need the money, you’re setting up for a wedding, you want more money, it’s powerful leaf resistance. 100%.

[1:03:11] Sammie: What unless you’re gonna treat that day, that extra day was like caveats to it on both sides. You’ve got young kids, you want to spend more time with them, get do the four days. You have a hobby or something that you’re going to fill that day with, something that’s gonna bring you joy, play golf or whatever that might all be. Yes, do the four days.

[1:03:27] Ryan King: But if you really put the time into that and try and grow that. Start that business. That’s all why. Yeah, more on the evenings and weekends. Quite a spare day. Years ago, oh, I would have been got so much more done.

[1:03:39] Sammie: 20 25, having an extra day, lovely. I’m well up for that. Yeah, but obviously you’re paid quite well. So 5k pay rise, like going from 30 to 35k, you’re gonna see quite a significant difference. So again, it just depends on the situation, right? Guys, I’ve loved this. Um, this has been fun. If anybody has any stories that they were listening to this or watching this that they want to send in, people that they know that don’t exist on Twitter or on Reddit, um, that we can read out, we will do them anonymously, send them into the show, and we’d love to hear from you. Um, hope you’ve liked this new style. It’s a little bit more of a chin wag, playing some fun games, having a little bit of a laugh. Um, so if you do as well, let us know how you you’re feeling about this show. If there’s tons of now like one star reviews coming up on Spotify, I’ll know it didn’t work, and we’ll go back to interviewing people every week. But hey ho, I’ve had a laugh, lads. And thanks for coming on. And uh yeah, we will pop all of your details as always in the show notes below if anybody wants to connect with Ryan or Michael, uh, please do. And we’ll catch you next week.

[1:04:36] Michael Taylor: Legend. Thanks, everyone. Speak soon.