Pete Matthew: Do You Need a Financial Adviser? The Cash Flow Ladder Explained

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

[00:00] Sammie: Pete, welcome.

[00:00] Pete: Fab to be here, Sammie. Thanks, mate. Thanks for having me.

[00:03] Sammie: It’s been a long time coming, honestly. I was saying to you off camera, I’ve been literally binging your content for a decade.

[00:11] Pete: That’s very humbling. Thank you.

[00:13] Sammie: So it’s like a real sort of like full circle moment to have you in the chair opposite.

[00:16] Pete: So it’s very cool. Thank you, man. No, it’s great to be here. I’ve been watching your stuff as well. And uh, you know, production is great, but you’re doing great work, man. So it’s very cool to be here.

[00:26] Sammie: Thank you. Thank you very much. But I want to jump straight in. So the first human trial of reverse ageing started four months ago, gene therapy that literally resets your cells to make them younger. So this is backed by Bezos, Harvard, Sam Altman, and they’re pouring millions into it. So basically, essentially the nuts and bolts is that we’re gonna live a hell of a lot longer. And this is happening sort of now, which is quite mad. Um, you’ve written a book about retirement planning. Yep. I’ve just got to ask that, you know, if we’re 20 years short on our predictions, what does that really mean?

[00:58] Pete: Yeah, right. I’ll probably have to rewrite the book, at least I’m actually revising my first book now, so I’ll probably just have to do the same for the second book. Look, man, I feel like our whole understanding of retirement is continually changing. You know, we tend to talk in clichés about how you used to have one career for 40 years and then you got a handshake and a gold watch or a carriage clock, and that was it. And then you lived for like seven years and then died. Obviously, now we’ve got the healthiest generation ever retiring, you know, and the wealthiest generation retiring. So so much of what I do as a financial planner and the way the system is set up is to serve that generation. So it has been about working, tax relief into pensions, and then hopefully a long and healthy retirement. But still things like access age, the way the different products and wrappers work are still kind of geared towards a save for one period of time, spend for another. And already we’re seeing mini retirements like career breaks and stuff like that, taking breaks to retrain and then do a different career for the next 10 years. So I feel like the industry and financial services generally has got a long way to catch up. I mean, if we end up living to 150, that’s all right as long as we’re well, right? But there’s no way you’re gonna work for 40 years and then like spending. The maths just won’t stack up. I mean, compounding just doesn’t, it won’t carry that load. So we will need, I guess, not only a completely different way of thinking. I mean, retirement, I think, will probably disappear as a concept. It’ll certainly be unrecognisable from what it is now, but everything else will have to catch up. Tax system, the wrappers and access and all that sort of stuff. We’re nowhere near ready for a 150-year life.

[02:51] Sammie: Like Joe Russell. She’s 94, but she’s just amazing.

[02:57] Pete: But she’s running a 10k a lot of stuff. Awesome. Go away.

[03:02] Sammie: But yeah, I think AI is like shortening that time frame. You mentioned it there. I think it’s a really good point. Is that, you know, like you’re going into careers now, perhaps you were looking at that 20, 30 year, you’re coming out of university, or God knows, like that you’re having to retrain and move a lot faster, and I think AI is going to bring that time frame down.

[03:21] Pete: No doubt. I mean, AI is obviously the next revolution. You know, I kind of grew up on the sort of vanguard of the internet. If you think the internet became a thing for ordinary mortals in ’95 with the advent of Windows 95 and Internet Explorer, that’s when most non-nerds saw the internet for the first time, right? So in 1995, I was 20. So I kind of thought, okay, I had a computer fairly early, and you know, I was at university then. So it’s like, oh, right, okay. An early adopter, I always loved technology, and it was massive at the time, easily the biggest revolution since certainly the printing press, right? AI, I just think is the next one, and it’s so early days, yeah. But the pace, of course, the pace of change is like nothing we’ve ever seen. And what it potentially makes possible is well, only limited by our imagination, I think. But one has to wonder what it might make possible, but what it’ll mean for everything, the jobs we do, the way we live. I mean, I watched a video on YouTube recently. I’ll send you a link, and it was sort of like a utopian view of the next sort of 20… 75 years to 2100, what AI might make possible. I mean, some of it’s a little bit far-fetched, right? And obviously the whole thing’s generated by AI. But I choose to be optimistic about what it all makes possible, but it’s just going to change everything.

[04:44] Sammie: Yeah, there’s a lot of doom and gloom about it, and there was about the internet though.

[04:49] Pete: It was like right, definitely, and yet it’s changed our lives infinitely for the better. I mean, not exclusively for the better, I would say. There’s a lot of, you know, a lot of crap on the internet, and I think we’re only beginning to understand the damage that social media does to young minds, but, you know, overwhelmingly it’s been a positive development. I choose to be optimistic about the future under it all and not whine about what we might lose. I just feel like it’s a bit of an old person mentality that… yeah. I think if you’re adaptable and flexible and positive, then it’s a very interesting and brave new world, I think.

[05:24] Sammie: Totally. And that’s actually like my next question for you is literally around that. If you’re say 35 and we get practical about that individual, like you can’t plan ahead for 20, 30 years anymore. You have to sort of be in a bit more of a five to ten year mindset.

[05:39] Pete: Yeah.

[05:39] Sammie: So what does that person do with their finances? What would you talk to them about?

[05:44] Pete: Well, again, I guess it almost militates against stocking money away for the very long term. I think we’ll always need to do that. I think probably what it will do is maybe change the balance between, in simple terms, pensions and ISAs, right? So I get questions all the time about, well, if I want to retire at 50, say, quite optimistic for most people, but if I do, then obviously I can’t get my pension for say seven years or whatever. And so, you know, I obviously have to fund ISAs and other vehicles that I can access. And I think you’ll probably have to tilt more towards those kind of things in a less predictable world. You’ll need to keep money accessible. You still want it working, you still want to kind of think of it as long-term money, but the last thing you want is for it to be locked up. But I do think that the system will need to adjust, we’ll need to have, pretty sure one of the American accounts, whether it’s a 401k or an IRA, you can access at various points throughout life. I don’t know the rules around it or whatever, but I feel like we might need something like that.

[06:50] Sammie: Like a rebrand of the pension.

[06:52] Pete: Yeah, it’ll need to become like something that, it won’t be a pension as we know it now. It’ll need to be something that kind of moves with us throughout life. I once had a conversation with a guy who basically came up with the idea of the Lifetime ISA. Now, what he thought up and what we eventually got are two completely different things. He envisaged a cradle to grave account with access at different points, government bonuses, but we did get that, but in a slightly different form, if memory serves. It’s about five years since I spoke to him. But his whole point was we need something that incentivises saving, incentivises long-term investing and getting the power of compounding, but also is able to be accessed in certain circumstances and for particular life events, like retraining.

[07:44] Sammie: Okay.

[07:45] Pete: You know, it’s like, okay, my job is coming to an end because it’s been wiped out by AI. So, but actually, there’s something over here that I think I can do and want to do, but I’m gonna need to retrain for six months to do that. So let me take 10,000 quid out of my, you know, new pension pot or whatever it’s called, and use that money to retrain. And, you know, maybe the money goes straight to the training provider or to the AI-driven education company, which is what it’ll all be eventually, I guess.

[08:12] Sammie: So Claude or Anthropic.

[08:12] Pete: Exactly, yeah, yeah.

[08:15] Pete: Do you know what I mean? I’m not a futurist, so I’m sure people more bright than me have thought this stuff through, but ultimately we need a completely different way of getting at our money while still enjoying the benefits of what makes our money grow. You know, proper real asset investing, long-term compounding, all the good stuff.

[08:36] Sammie: Yeah, I think, like with the pension, a few people have talked about it, and I’m quite on board with it. It’s that obviously the housing market’s moved away from young people, there’s a larger gap there, but they’ve got 25 grand sitting in their workplace pension, yeah, and being able to access that money to get themselves on the housing ladder is a big step for a lot of people. I think that’d be a really good change that they could make.

[08:57] Pete: I think it would, it’d need careful thought, and obviously people will find a way to abuse it, right? Because that’s human nature. But I think, I think if we can come up with a mechanism whereby people can help themselves and use the tools that are available, then that can only be a good thing.

[09:17] Sammie: Yeah, like with the Help to Buy, for example, there was that structure where it was sort of like a semi-loan from the government, that money went in. Lifetime ISA is kind of the same in a way, it’s restricted until your sale’s going through. You could sort of wrap it around that potentially, and it could be a really good thing.

[09:33] Pete: Some sort of, yeah, incentive to save, disincentive to waste money, but incentive to use it on stuff which is going to improve.

[09:40] Sammie: Well, I think the main thing is that pensions are very difficult to get people engaged with, especially from a young age.

[09:47] Pete: Yeah, that’s right. Um, I mean, that’s always been the case, I think. You know, it’s funny, there’s a reason why most people approach somebody like me when they’re in their late 40s, early 50s, when they think, well, shit, it’s about time I did something like this. Really, I’ve wasted sort of 15 years, and it’s all right, people like you and me banging on about, you know, the money you put into your pension in your 20s will be more than half the total pot when you get to 65 or whatever. You know, it’s all cool and everything, but you know, we’ve got to balance that against the relentless media drive, which is you know, you only live once, it’s all about today, you might not get to tomorrow, so just blow it and enjoy it. It’s a tough nut, but it’s, you know, it’s a worthy cause. We’ve got to keep banging the drum.

[10:31] Sammie: Yeah, and I agree. And I play with the whole pension ISA contributions myself all the time. We all do. I think if you’re doing nothing, then doing one is better than none. And yeah, that’s the way I tend to look at these things.

[10:43] Pete: And I think we can kind of drive ourselves into inertia by trying to get it right in the moment. I say on the podcast all the time, um, you know, I don’t like the word should, I don’t like the word best, I don’t like the word right. What’s the best thing to do? What should I do? What’s the right thing to do here? There isn’t any. There’s a million possible variations of balance between ISA and pension contributions. Take a stab, own your decisions and keep it under review. Yeah. Right. Last thing you want to do is set something up and forget about it for 10 years, right? We’ve got to be intentional and positive about whatever we do. So if we start with a 50-50 split and then think, actually, I can see five years down the line I might need to access more money, I’m going to tilt towards ISAs because I’m not going to be 57 yet. And just sort of think it through, be intentional.

[11:31] Sammie: Yeah, yeah. I think Andy said it really well. Like he agrees with you completely. And you know, he’s a very smart man.

[11:37] Pete: Andy Hart, you’re talking about. Yeah, yeah. He’s a very smart man.

[11:40] Sammie: Very much enjoyed having him on because it was just complete, like, his, yeah, it’s no bullshit money advice. It was very much exactly like that. And what he said was like, I will pay you the 0.1% that you save on fees by moving from HL to another provider, for example. And just by you doing it is better than nothing at all. Because you’re spending three months deciding what’s the best fund, what’s the, you know, it’s 0.1% here over here, yeah, and suddenly your mind’s blown and you’re probably off doing something else.

[12:08] Pete: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Andy is a gift to this country and to the profession, honestly. I think he’s better than anybody else at putting things succinctly and powerfully. He’s learned a lot, obviously, from the people he looks up to, like Nick Murray and various others, but I think he’s a genius and a great mate.

[12:25] Sammie: Oh, that’s cool. That’s good to hear. Yeah, no, I, uh, you talk about the cash flow ladder concept.

[12:30] Pete: Yeah, I do.

[12:31] Sammie: Yeah, I’d love to sort of understand that from ground zero for someone listening.

[13:21] Pete: Okay, so I mean it’s not unique to me. Some people call it the bucketing approach. Really, it’s about accessing money at the right time. So we’re talking particularly for folks who are retiring, that’s when it generally comes into being. So yeah, I call it a cash flow ladder. We do this every day for clients at Jacksons. So it serves two purposes. There is something called sequence of returns risk. So if money is invested, obviously we all know it goes up and down. And the problem is over a 30 or 40 year retirement, if you take money out, like sell assets while they are distressed, while markets are down, you can do sort of undue damage to the portfolio. Because if it’s already down, you take that money out, even if you’re taking it out at a profit, it’s just worth less than it used to be, then that money can’t recover, right? And so you don’t get the benefit of that compounding going forward. So the starting point of the cash flow ladder is that you should keep the next one to three years of your spending needs in cash. Now it doesn’t have to be cash in the bank, it could be cash held within your pension on a platform or within your ISA. So the kind of order of operations for me is, right, first of all, what income sources have you got coming in? So you’ve got state pension, maybe you’re lucky enough to have a DB scheme, maybe you’ve got a rental property that you inherited from an aunt and you’ve got some rent coming in. So those are your income sources. But for most people, when they retire, their outgoings are more than that. They’re spending more than is actually coming in in income, and that’s why we have a pot from which to draw to make up the difference. And so the first couple of years of that gap, that difference, we need to keep in cash. We need to establish where we’re gonna draw it from. So are we gonna draw it from pensions? Are we gonna draw it from the bank, stocks and shares ISAs, or wherever. And that’s a tax question, primarily. If somebody’s got no other income and they’ve got a personal allowance going begging, arguably it makes sense to draw money out of a pension and use that personal allowance. It’s taxed, but at zero percent, right? So it’s a sort of tax question. So the first couple of years is held in cash, it puts a buffer between you and the market, and that’s the second purpose of it, is that it’s a bit of a behavioural tool. People worry a lot less about what markets are doing if they know the next couple of years they haven’t even got to think about it because they’ve got that money in cash.

[15:49] Sammie: It’s kind of like an emergency fund. Yeah, on steroids. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[15:53] Pete: So it’s just like, well, I know my spending. If you’ve got a nervous client, we might keep three years in cash.

[15:59] Sammie: Okay.

[15:59] Pete: Now, plenty of people listening to this are now thinking, well, that’s a drag on performance, holding all that cash. It’s not really about performance, it’s not really about opportunity costs, it’s about the psychological benefit of not freaking out when the markets are tanking because of, you know, COVID or Trump or whatever, right? So if you’ve got a more risk-tolerant client, you might keep less in cash. You should always keep something, I think.

[16:25] Sammie: I suppose that depends on age as well and health and all the multitude of different things.

[16:30] Pete: Yeah, my job as a financial planner is to kind of hold all those things in tension and come up with what I think is a broadly optimal approach, but keep it under review, right? Because there’s no best. You can only know the best path through life in the rearview mirror. Yeah. You know, right? You can’t know it ahead of time, unfortunately. So the latter bit is that we move up from the cash then and we think about the next few years after that, three to six or seven or eight years, maybe. Um, that should be invested broadly along people’s natural risk profile. So if you’re generally a balanced investor, say, you know, you might have that in like a 60-40 or a 65-35 equity bond split or whatever, right? It doesn’t really matter, but broadly a balanced-ish portfolio along with somebody’s normal risk profile. But money then at the top of the ladder, money they’re not gonna use for eight, 10, 15 years, you should push that hard, right? 30 years of retirement is a long time.

[17:26] Sammie: Yeah, yeah.

[17:26] Pete: And so you want that growing fast and growing hard. Yes, it’ll be volatile, but it doesn’t matter because you’re not spending that money for eight years at least. And then when you review every year, you essentially move money down. So, I mean, if you happen to do your review when markets are down, you might not actually make any changes. You might wait for them to recover. That’s why it’s generally better to have a couple of years in cash, I think. It’s rare that markets haven’t sort of fully, it’s rare that, say, a 60-40 or a 70-30 portfolio hasn’t fully recovered within two years, right? So normally then you can start to drop money down, even if you do it in bits, but we just say, right, okay, we’ve used a year of our cash now, but we’ve made a ton of profit up here or in the middle. So why don’t we just drop it down? We kind of rebuild it from the ground up. So now we’ve got another two years left in cash so we can get on with our day. It’s sometimes a bit of a faff. We’re getting better and better at it. We’ve been working this way for four or five years now, but it’s a buffer against sequence of returns risk, and it’s a really good behavioural tool because it just means people can forget about it. We set it up and they don’t worry about it, and they just get on with it. I teach people how to do it in the academy and online, podcasts and stuff.

[18:38] Sammie: Would you attribute it in an earlier phase as well? Say you’re coming up to retirement, would you start looking at it then?

[18:44] Pete: Yeah, I get asked that a lot as well. Um, yes, but not too far ahead. Well, what we’d quite often do is, if, you know, often somebody’s three or four years away from retirement and they’re like salary sacrificing to the max, they’re maxing their pensions, using all their carry forward, you know, dumping as much as they can in because they know they’re on borrowed time. They’ve got three or four years until they’re gonna call it a day. Well, what they can do then is direct some of those contributions into cash, right? As opposed to selling down, whatever, and we can start to sort of think ahead and maybe get the direct contributions into the right rungs of the ladder. It’s dead easy with an advised platform because we can have sub accounts and we can just sort of, you know, fill them up as needed, move money around. It’s a little bit more difficult if you’re a DIY investor because a lot of the platforms don’t cope with that very well. But you can achieve a seamless thing with different funds. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. So it’s, I mean, it ain’t rocket science, man. I’m not a, you know, there’s not a Nobel Prize waiting for me or anything. No, no, no. It’s just, the longer I do my job, which is coming up on it’s like 28 years now, um, the more I realise it’s not about the money, it’s about people. Yeah. And what people tell us is that it takes them maybe an hour or two a year to think about and just restructure. But once they get used to it, that’s it. And then the rest of the year they just know, they know what they’re spending, they know where they’re drawing it from, and it’s dead easy. So it’s been a powerful tool for us for sure.

[20:08] Sammie: When that person’s coming up to that retirement, they’re always looking at sort of moving slightly away from equities into bonds as well and rebalancing potentially as well. That’s another word, right?

[20:18] Pete: I would challenge that if they do, yeah.

[20:20] Sammie: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That, that for me is, we get that a lot. Like, when do I need to start being more defensive? And it’s a very difficult question to answer.

[20:29] Pete: Yeah, it is. It’s when you have to, it’s where I see Andy Hart’s good because he would just say, don’t be so bloody stupid. But it comes down to understanding retirement as a very short transition as opposed to like a cliff edge. I’m working, and now I’m not, right? That’s the historical view of it. But from an investment point of view, it’s just a little kind of signpost. And so you actually don’t need to change how you invest very much. I disagree entirely with the concept of de-risking. All you need is the first couple of years in cash, right? The rest still needs to be working for you, otherwise, inflation will just decimate your retirement pot, and you’ll end up in later life scrimping and saving, which would be catastrophic. So, yes, that is the conventional view. I think that’s been encouraged by lifestyling, which is an automatic thing in a lot of pensions where you get gradually moved out of risky assets into safer ones. That in itself is a carryover from when everybody bought annuities. So you had a fixed pot when you got to retirement and you handed it over in a one-off irreversible transaction, and in return for your pension pot, you got an income for life. Of course, if markets had tanked six months before you did that and your pot’s worth 20% less, then you’ve got 20% less income for the rest of your life, which is crap. So obviously, people de-risked then, but really far fewer people buy annuities now thanks to the pensions flexibilities, pensions freedoms. So I think you can live a better retirement with careful, intelligent investing and careful, intelligent cash flow planning than you can just by sort of de-risking and handing it on to an annuity. An annuity is still right for some people, of course. Caveat. Yes, yeah.

[22:24] Sammie: I am a regular individual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get you’re saying we don’t need to send it all, yeah. Um, but I think what I really liked when I first came across you is, um, you’re a financial adviser, but for a lot of people you were just being like, you don’t need one.

[22:39] Pete: Yeah.

[22:40] Sammie: Which I quite liked.

[22:41] Pete: Yeah, good.

[22:42] Sammie: Because it was like, it was a financial adviser telling people that, look, a lot of this is simple. Um, and it’s kind of like the dentist saying you don’t need to come see me because your teeth are all right and a lot fine.

[22:53] Pete: Yeah, yeah, it is, and honestly, I’ve built a career on that, man, and it served me very well. But one thing I loathe about the financial services industry and about advisers, not all, clearly, most advisers are good people, right? But so many advisers still think that we have some kind of magic secret sauce that is uniquely ours, and you know, they take us into a dark room and make us swear an oath, like, this is how you must handle your money. Of course, it’s just bollocks. Managing money is not rocket science. In fact, it’s as simple as anything. The thing that gets in the way is people, it’s ourselves, it’s our behaviours, it’s our kind of preconditioning and programming that comes from our childhood and all the million factors involved. And that’s really hard to get over. But the mechanics of money management are not difficult. Now, we don’t teach them in school, so they’re not difficult, but you know, it’s like driving a car is not difficult once you’ve been taught.

[23:48] Sammie: No, exactly. Right. Yeah. So Andrew Craig says that it’s no more difficult than driving a car, but you just need to learn how to drive a car.

[23:55] Pete: You need to learn how to do it. We’re not born with the innate knowledge, knowing how to do it. So if we didn’t have a good guide or mentor, you know, parent or somebody else that taught us that stuff, I don’t know how we’re supposed to know it. So for me, it’s just been like, you know, when I started Meaningful Money, it was 2010, right? I started thinking about it in 2009. And that was about three years after the original RDR consultation paper, which for those that don’t know was the Retail Distribution Review, abolished commission and elevated the minimum level of qualification for advisers. So it was unreservedly a good thing. But any idiot could see that it would disenfranchise a huge swathe of the population from getting decent advice. Because those ordinary working people used to go into their bank, they didn’t pay anything for the service, they’d come out with life assurance or a PEP and ISA back in those days or whatever, and that outcome was better than not doing anything at all. But they didn’t pay anything because the adviser got commission. Now, commission on the flip side is the root of many ills, right? Endowment misselling, you know, so many things I could think of through my career that have been bad outcomes driven by commission. But the RDR abolished all that, which was a good thing, but you could see that it would leave a lot of people lacking advice. And so it hadn’t come in yet, but all the signs were saying that it was going to. And so I thought we need to teach people this stuff. And I love messing around with cameras and microphones and stuff. So um, it was like the perfect thing for me to do. And I just basically set a camera up one day and said, I’m gonna teach you how money works because it’s not difficult. But you need to do a few simple things, do them consistently and regularly, and you’ll be all right. Follow these steps and you are guaranteed financial success. I am more than happy to say that. If you misstep on any of them, you can derail yourself. So I think if we give people the tools, where an adviser can really add value, of course, is in helping clients overcome those behavioural issues, keeping them in their seats when the media is screaming at them that the markets are going to tank further. Um, you know, all those sorts of things, basically guarding them against themselves. And of course, plenty of people are too busy and don’t have the interest or inclination, and that’s why advisers have a job. So, you know, I’ve built a career on telling people not to come and see me, and yet we’re busier than ever. It’s just how the internet works, I think, and the universe works. You put good stuff out there and it’ll come back to you. Um, and I’ve proven that many, many times.

[26:30] Sammie: It’s gonna help a million people, you helping them like that. I just firmly believe that. And I like that because it just means that, and you’re totally right, a lot of advisers, it’s 10,000, even 100,000 minimum. And for the average person, it’s like, well, you just need to know the basics to get you to that point. Yeah, and actually the time best spent is getting that person to that point because that material difference from zero to 10k is enormous, and then 10k to 100k for that individual.

[27:02] Pete: Exactly. And then some complexity might creep in because by then you’ve got kind of into it and you’re starting to understand it, and then you’re thinking, oh, you know, I’m starting to look at funds, and before you know it, you end up with an ISA with 15 funds in it, and you’re now not keeping track of it, and then you either need to reset and simplify, or you need to basically hand it over to somebody who can do it for you because it’s got beyond your time and inclination or energy to deal with, and that’s why there’ll always be advisers, I’m certain of it. I mean, I’m sure an incredibly powerful financial AI will rise, which will be a good thing fundamentally, because it will help more people do this stuff. You know, I’ll be redundant before too long. Um, but yeah, I do think that making big and complex and difficult decisions with multiple kind of factors at play, balancing different needs and wants, hopes and dreams and fears, that will always be, at least for as long as I’m alive, God willing, that will be the preserve of human interaction.

[28:01] Sammie: Yeah, because people need a coach every now and then, like and also just need an accountability partner. That’s why I’ve done Gains with two co-founders, which some people were like, well, then why have you done that? And I’m like, well, because I don’t want to do it on my own. Yeah, and I need something to keep me sane, you know, otherwise, and I think it’s the same with finances. Um, but I think as well, one of the core things is that when you come into money, or you’re coming up to it, it’s the bigger life moments where advice can really be so beneficial. Because Aunt Julie lives in New York, has passed away and left a mansion to you and the kids and whatever, and suddenly you’re like, whoa, that’s more money than I’ve ever handled in one transaction. I really don’t want to mess it up. That’s the good time.

[28:46] Pete: I mean that all the time. And yes, most people seek out advice for the first time at some major life transition. So it’s either new family, new or breaking relationship, a death of a loved one, and maybe an inheritance, of course, maybe a lottery win. These are sort of, but the big one, of course, is retirement, the ultimate financial transition, pretty much, apart from dying, right? Retirement’s the ultimate transition, I think. And so it tends to be at these big life events that most people seek out advice for the first time. Yeah. Most people don’t just kind of wake up one day and think, you know, I think I’ll go and have a chat with the financial adviser whose window I saw on the high street. You know, most people just don’t do that, they’ve got other far more interesting things to do with their time. And so, yes, it’s driven usually by the big life transitions, and those are usually the things that sort of make us sit up and think, you know, I really need to get a handle on this.

[29:41] Sammie: Really important. What do you think is the most dangerous piece of money advice out there then? That’s from your years of doing this.

[29:51] Pete: That’s a good question. Um, you know, I suppose I could sum that up in get rich quick. Right, it’s not advice, it’s a promise, but of course it’s an empty one. And actually getting rich quick is dangerous. There’s plenty of bankrupt footballers and lottery winners that are testament to that. Fast money is dangerous. So I guess that would probably be my answer to that. The rest will be different shades of grey. So honestly, it doesn’t matter what fund you pick, ultimately, for the most part, occasionally it might do. Um, you know, it doesn’t matter whether you tilt your contribution 60-40 into pensions or into ISAs, or whether you have a five or an eight percent allocation to emerging markets, none of that makes a fuck all difference. But what will, the flip side, when I say that financial success is guaranteed if you do these things regularly and consistently, the flip side to that is if you don’t, or if you try and kind of hack the system and accelerate it, it will probably bite you because you won’t be equipped to deal with the money. Money is a deeply psychologically intertwined thing, it can really fuck up your mind if you allow it to.

[31:06] Sammie: And so it becomes like desperation in a lot of ways, doesn’t it, to get to that next step.

[31:11] Pete: Um, I mean, there’s just endless things weighing it down. It can be, you know, if you inherit money, it can come with guilt. Um, you know, I can’t sell those shares because dad held them and he’d always talked about them. Nonsense, your dad’s gone. But I mean, you can’t say that to somebody, you know. Well, you can a bit more gently, perhaps. But, you know, it’s like, well, actually, that money could transform your family’s life if you actually sold those shares and used it, moved house, you know, or whatever, fixed what needs fixing, changed the car so that it’s safer. But you know, money is laden with baggage, and we are as individuals, and I mean, I’m 28 years in, man. I’m only just kind of scratching the surface of what that really means for real people, and a good adviser can help people sort of tiptoe through that. Um, but yeah, man, money is a powerful thing, but it can really mess with your mind if you let it, and so those are the times to seek help.

[33:19] Sammie: So when you’re sitting down with someone as a client, right? You’re kind of reading them as the individual and understanding their situation and where they’ve come from and where they’re trying to get to before it’s even like, let’s build you a model.

[33:32] Pete: Oh yeah, because to what end are we building a model? You know somebody comes and says, I’ve got some money to invest. Yeah, like cool, why? And they’re like, what’s a, why do you want to invest it? So, well, that’s what you’re doing, it’s like, oh, that’s not reason enough. You know, what’s this for? Money’s for using. There are only three uses of money, right? Spending now, investing so you can spend it later, and giving it away, right? Building it for its own sake is a terrible use of money. It’s for using, and really it’s like spend now, or give it away, or spend it later. So people get wrapped up in money in and of itself, but it’s what it enables you to do, the life it enables you to live. So the first thing I say to a new enquiry is, look, if you’ve, because most of them come from Meaningful Money, and if you’ve consumed any of my content, you know I don’t give a shit about money, but I love people deeply. And the reason I love my job is because I get to try and work out what makes you tick and then sort the money out to really enable that. And so, no, it’s not about building a plan first. More often than not, on a new enquiry call, we don’t even talk about the money, and it’s like, what lights you up, yeah, yeah. Or if you’ve got a couple, you know, and one partner’s like, will say something and you see the other person react, they’ve got really good at doing this on Teams video calls, because you watch them react, and even if it’s just a little sort of check in how they sit, or a sort of just a little slight shuffle, yeah, and I’m like, you know, so you, you know, they said that, but you reacted in this way.

[35:03] Sammie: What he said three kids and you went, yeah, you went, exactly.

[35:07] Pete: It’s like, okay, interesting. So tell me about that. Or you know, they’ll just say sometimes, you know, um, the subject is, you know, a little bit of a source of tension between us. I’m like, okay, well, let’s unpack that. Okay. I’m not a psychologist, I’m not even a trained coach, but I’ve done my job long enough to understand that if you don’t get to the root of those things, the finances will probably only exacerbate them. Um, and so it’s not my job to fix that, but it’s my job to understand them so that the money doesn’t become a contributing factor, I think. To try and get it out of the way so that they can work on that stuff. It’s not usually conflict, it’s mostly just they don’t dream big enough or they hold themselves back due to fear. Um, and so sometimes a bit of education, a bit of encouragement can overcome those things, and then they’re off, just giving them the space to dream and think and ideate. And then my job is to help them fix the money so they can get on with it.

[36:01] Sammie: Yeah, and I think like a lot of content online is like, because it’s like how long to get to the million quid or five million quid or whatever that number is, right? And they see that and they think, right, that’s what I’m going for. Yeah, they don’t ever really sit down and ask yourself, like, what is your dream? Like, where do you actually need to be? And how much does that actually cost? Because when I did it, I was shocked. Like, because in my head I was like, I’m going for this big, arbitrary five million quid goal. And when I did my dream life, I was like, well, it’s about a fifth of that.

[36:30] Pete: Yeah, right. Like, it’s always less than people think. And if you aim for a number, that number will never be enough. You know, because by the time you get there, you think, well, it’s a bit more expensive now, so I’m gonna need to make it seven million, not five, or seven hundred grand, not five hundred grand. Um, yeah, a number is a terrible thing to aim for. We’re wired with round numbers anyway. But of course, a decent financial planner or anybody with a reasonable head for numbers and an Excel spreadsheet and a bit of training could probably work out what life will cost them, even factoring in things like growth rates and inflation. Yeah. So many tools to be able to do that now for free. You know, you put that stuff into any one of the AIs and it’ll spit out a number.

[37:09] Sammie: Yeah.

[37:10] Pete: Right? Yeah. And so it’ll be a lot less than you think for sure.

[37:12] Sammie: It was just a really interesting exercise because it made me shine the light on myself. And then, because I’m just looking at my thinking, going, my man, what are you doing? Why are you pushing that hard? It’s encouraging, right?

[37:23] Pete: Because it’s small, within reach. So you think, okay, I either get there quicker or I don’t have to kill myself to get there. You know, because I can take five more years or ten more years to get there and enjoy the journey.

[37:34] Sammie: Well, it’s the thing that lights you up. That’s the key thing, right? It’s like, oh, that lights me up. How much does it cost for me to do that, like, all of the time? Yeah, and that’s all I want to do. So how do I do that? I’m basically becoming like Dr. Green Thumb. I’m outside in my little vegetable patch. I just want to like, I just want to do that all the time. Fantastic. Um, but I know to do that, I’m gonna need some cash.

[37:56] Pete: I cannot identify with that in any way, man. I like being in the garden, but I don’t like touching stuff. I really, I get the grass to the extent of my green thumbs. But you know, I get it, whereas my wife absolutely loves it, it’s a happy place.

[38:08] Sammie: Mate, it was COVID, it did it to me. I wouldn’t see me outside, I’d kill every house plant, and then all of a sudden you give me loads of time. But I put a hammer in my hand, I was like, oh, I’m just gonna teach myself carpentry, built a little vegetable patch, and I’ve just found it, yeah, and I was like, well, this is it now, and I’m obsessed with it. But then now I’m like, all I want is half an acre of land, a little mini quad bike tractor. I’ve worked out exactly how much it costs, and then I just want to drive that thing around every day. Yeah, yeah, it’d be cool.

[38:34] Pete: Yeah, that sounds good, man.

[38:35] Sammie: I say that now, I’ll probably change in five years.

[38:37] Pete: Well, it’d be five acres, wouldn’t it?

[38:38] Sammie: Yeah, it’d be a small holding. Yeah, it was funny as it is. We should do weddings and stuff like that. I was like, uh, we’re gonna need a bit more land. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[38:49] Pete: Yeah, great though.

[38:51] Sammie: So obviously, when you do that with someone though, this is a good point, because what I’m thinking now wasn’t the same as five years ago, and that’s probably gonna change. Is it about regularly checking in to check that these things are still on track for that individual?

[39:07] Pete: Yeah, man, life happens, it just does. Uh, you know, the best laid plans and all that. You know, obviously we need to have plans, we need to have structure and something we’re aiming at. But I mean, how many times has life got in the way? Unexpected child, unexpected diagnosis, job loss, or an incredible opportunity in a career, but it requires a move, you know, location move or whatever. We just can’t see this stuff coming, you know, and so, I think in all things in life, we need to keep our plans, hold them lightly. Um, and yes, review, of course. Honestly, I sometimes think my job is like sometimes years of relative inaction because, you know, everything’s fine, we’re on plan, we’re investing, we’re doing that, and then suddenly bang, something happens, and the client rings and says, I’ve got cancer. So right, we need to rethink everything then. Or, you know, yes, great auntie Mabel, who lived in New York, left us a hundred-acre plot out there, and we’re gonna be millionaires. And so it’s like, right, well, we need to rethink. You know, I’ve seen both, in slightly different forms. But you know, in building relationships with clients, you’re the first person they ring. You know, it’s like, this has happened, what do we do now? One of my favourites was a client rang me and he said, um, Pete, you know, I said I would never move unless a certain house came on the market. And I said, yes, and I named the house, I won’t name it here, and he told me what it had come on the market for. So I said, right, I’ll call you in the morning. And I ran the numbers, and actually, there was no way in God’s earth he could afford it. Because of where it was, it was not only ridiculous, I mean it’s a beautiful property, but it was right up on some cliffs, so he would have had to put half a million quid in a bond for cliff erosion and all sorts of stuff, like an actual bond with the council, you know, have to hold that aside to contribute to all that sort of stuff. And it was just, I said, well, you can do it if you sell your other three houses, right? And you’ll have to move out in 10 years to downsize because you won’t be able to run it. And he was like, that’s all I needed to know. This was totally a heart thing, but actually, I said you’ll be miserable because you’ll be on borrowed time the whole time you’re there, you’ll be watching your spending, whereas now you can spend what you want. But it was one of those things that, you know, a life event, an opportunity, and I was the first person he contacted. I just think that’s really cool.

[41:30] Sammie: Yeah, you’re holding him accountable to his own decision.

[41:34] Pete: Yeah, actually you can do it, but I think you shouldn’t. Yeah. Yeah, and it’s like, you know, almost at first.

[41:39] Sammie: You might literally fall off a cliff.

[41:41] Pete: Well, yeah, exactly. Your finances will, but yes, you may actually literally, yeah.

[41:46] Sammie: Oh, I love it. But look, you didn’t start doing this, did you? You kind of came from very different beginnings to what a financial adviser would potentially come out of university with, or any of those things. You did an electronics degree.

[41:59] Pete: I failed an electronics degree.

[42:01] Sammie: You failed an electronics degree, yeah, yeah. And then you ran a McDonald’s.

[42:07] Pete: Yeah, so I mean, dude, my age 16 careers advisory conversation went like this, right? She says to me, what are you good at? I said, I’m really good at English, English literature. I love to read, I love to write, and all that. Oh, she said, you could be a teacher. I said, my sister-in-law’s a teacher, I see how hard she works, I don’t want to do that, don’t want to be a teacher. So, all right, okay, what else are you interested in? So, well, I love computers and technology and software and all that sort of stuff. She said, oh, you should do electronics. I went, all right. So I went to Cardiff Met, I scraped my A levels, went to what is now Cardiff Met, the polytechnic at the time, and did an electronics design degree. They passed everybody in the first year because it was the first year, and I think they wanted the funding to continue. Uh, but I failed my second year. I just hated every moment of it. Then I wanted to be a rock, rock star, I wanted to play music, right?

[42:58] Sammie: So my student loan seeing the musician.

[43:02] Pete: Well, my student loan, I blew on some beautiful keyboards, you know. That’s basically what I brought to my eventual marriage. All I had was a load of debt and two really nice keyboards, which I had to sell very quickly. Um, but you know, that’s all I wanted to do. So, you know, I just never went to uni. So I dropped, I failed, didn’t want to move back home. But I’d been flipping burgers part-time at Maccies for years, and so I went into the management track with them, originally hourly paid and then salaried. Um, rose to the dizzy heights of first assistant, which is second in command of a store, but my store manager was seconded away, so I ran a store in Cardiff, co-ran with another first assistant. It was a big store. Did that for, yeah, what, I don’t know, probably about two years. But my wife had a proper job, she was a paediatric intensive care nurse, right? So I came home about six months after I got married to a little note on the bottom step, right? So it’s five in the morning, right? So I’d done a long shift at Maccies, came home with a little note: Pete, we have spent the evening together ten times in the last 48 days. Something’s got to change. So, she’d been home six months after we got married, right? Um, she’d been going through a diary, steaming about the fact that we were never seeing each other, not a great start to a marriage. So given that she was the one with a good job and I was a dropout, something had to give. So um, I was the one that had to make a change. And I had a mate whose dad worked for the Co-op Insurance. So that was my entry into financial services, and that was in what used to be called the industrial branch. So we used to collect premiums, life insurance premiums on the door in cash from people. I used to walk around estates in Newport with 1500 quid in cash in my pocket, collecting people’s annual car insurance premiums in cash and stuff. And so you had an area that you looked after, and of course, the job was to sell new policies and all that sort of stuff. And I had a sales manager, hated it at the time. I’d love it now because it was just chatting to people. And um, yeah, you know, I kind of got the basic exams, did another tied advice position, and then became independent and sort of moved to Cornwall then. My wife is from Land’s End, so my fate was sealed. I moved to Cornwall in 2002. Um, once the kids came along, she wanted to be home. So, but I was only chatting to a mate of mine who used to be a McDonald’s franchisee. I was only chatting to him about how much I learned there. It’s an incredible business model, you know, the repeatable processes and systems. I managed 95 staff when I was 23 years old. And, you know, I learned so many things that I still apply now. And um, you know, I was just chatting to him and he said exactly right. He said it’s a brilliant training ground for young adults to learn how the world works and learn some skills about business and life and stuff. And he was telling me a story of somebody he had mentored who’s now got this incredible, incredible multi-six figure job, and who had written to him and said, this is because of what you taught me. I was a school dropout, a school leaver, essentially, hardly any qualifications to my name, but you taught me about life and work and business and all that, and this guy’s flying now. And that’s, I think that’s really cool. So, yeah, inauspicious beginnings, man. But I had a very patient wife.

[46:12] Sammie: Well, mate, I, the reason I say this, I don’t know. Yeah, well, haven’t we all? Yeah, right. Yeah. As blokes. Um, the, what I always say to people, work in hospitality and learn to sell in like a really tough environment.

[46:29] Pete: Yeah, my youngest daughter, my both my daughters say everybody should be made to do a six-month run in hospitality.

[46:39] Sammie: Yeah, exactly. Because you learn so much about yourself. But as you said, like the systems, it’s dealing with people, it’s dealing with pretty high intensity people as well in hospitality.

[46:50] Pete: Yeah.

[46:51] Sammie: And then selling is like learning rejection on the other side of it.

[46:56] Pete: Totally right. And being able to show up and mirror and learn these things. If you can get those things in place as a young person, you’re pretty set.

[47:01] Pete: I feel like it’s like a new kind of national service. Yeah, work behind a bar, be a waitress or something, and then, yeah, do a bit of sales. It would do more good. Well, it’s good for all the reasons you said, yeah, definitely.

[47:16] Sammie: So talk to us about that journey then of becoming the planner and then now and what you’re doing now, because the journey is, you know, you’ve gone a long way.

[47:25] Pete: Yes, because I’m old. Yeah, I’m 51 now. So yeah, look, I mean, it was a fairly classic entry into the profession. So two tied positions, what we would now call restricted, so I could only sell the products of my employers. Then I became an independent adviser, moved to Cornwall and got a job with a firm of solicitors who had a financial adviser arm. It was just me in there. Um, so I learned a lot about estate planning and all that. My last job in Cardiff, I worked with a girl and she had the Advanced FPC, the equivalent of chartered now, but very few people had it then. Because basically it was a sales profession. Then you got your minimum standard and you went out and made money, right? But she continued getting exams and she said to me, keep going, keep studying. So I was very early to chartered. Um, I was one of, at one point, only about a hundred people who had both chartered and certified designations. So I carried on studying while I was young and had the mental elasticity to learn stuff, and I feel unbelievably blessed because I had a succession of very good bosses and also just, you know, tied through to pure sales to independence, still very salesy, but with a really strong line of leads, loads of enquiries, it was a brilliant business. So I got to deal with a lot of people, so volume, you learn quickly. Then working for a firm of solicitors I learned all about estate planning and the sort of emotion around money, particularly then in 2006 was the ultimate light bulb moment for me, which was the CFP. So getting the Certified Financial Planner, learning really what financial planning truly is. But also, I was part of a group of about 50 of us who adopted Twitter in 2008, and so 50 of us in the industry. So I got to know some really cool people, leading lights in the industry, even though I was tucked all the way down in Penzance. People started knowing who I am, and I knew them, which was great, because I had the ear of some quite influential people, which was cool. And then I just thought I’d start messing around with a video camera in 2009 and early 2010, and realised that I loved it and had some good friends that said, you’re on to something, keep going. Shout out to Ed.

[49:38] Sammie: I remember you saying, um, is it Crush It?

[49:41] Pete: Crush It, yeah, Gary Vaynerchuk, his first book. Yeah, that was a key thing for me. The premise of that book, I think it’s 2008 that book came out, which is astonishing.

[49:51] Sammie: It’s mad, isn’t it? It is. But I mean the premise of that book, Gary’s an OG of the space, absolutely, he gets it more than a lot of people.

[49:59] Pete: Um, the premise of that book is, and bear in mind it’s 2008, I think, when that came out, so very early days of social media. If you think YouTube was born in 2004, I think. Yeah, it was like Facebook, YouTube, yeah, yeah. You know, so very much the first five years of social media, really. But his kind of thesis was, look, there’s no gatekeepers now, there’s no director or casting director telling you that you’re too fat or your voice isn’t right, or whatever. It’s like if you’ve got a message and if it’s any good and if you’re consistent, the platforms are there to just get it out there, and people will listen, all right, because there’s an audience for everybody. And so I thought that’s cool, I’ll have a go. And you know, now I’m sort of nine million podcast downloads and got more than 10 million video views later, and, um, 16 years down the line, two books and a practice which has sort of quintupled in size as a result. So I mean, I still sometimes feel like I’m clinging on by my fingertips, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m just having a hell of a lot of fun on the ride. Um, so it’s been very cool, man. I feel very lucky.

[51:11] Sammie: I want to ask you, you’ve obviously had, what you’ve just summed up, a glittering career online and the financial practice as well. You know, you’ve inspired me to do this, this comes off the back of staring at your face on the internet for many, many years.

[51:27] Pete: But I think worse things you could have done, looking at me online.

[51:30] Sammie: But I’d love to know, if you were to take all of that away and just look at this and speak to someone who’s thinking about getting started doing something, what would you do? What’s your first step, if you’re going back knowing what you know now?

[51:42] Pete: That last bit’s important. Knowing what I know now. I mean, because there was no kind of blueprint really. Gary V was a blueprint, but there wasn’t. I just kind of, no particular genius, just a stubborn streak, and really enjoyed what I was doing, which is why I kept going. If I was starting now, the advice is kind of always the same. Don’t get bogged down in technology, what camera are you using, format particularly, or anything like that. Firstly, think of 50 things you want to say. So that might be titles for blog posts, probably less blog posts these days, probably more videos, podcasts, or Instagram posts or whatever. But these are 50 questions that you think your audience wants answering. Brilliant book called They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.

[52:31] Sammie: Oh, okay, I’ve not heard of that one.

[52:32] Pete: Yeah, it’s a fantastic book. He bought a swimming pool company in 2008 when the property market was tanking in America. Okay. It’s not like nobody was buying swimming pools, they were just trying to make their mortgage payments, right? Um, but he basically would write a blog every week for his website, literally just answering questions. Like, is a concrete pool better than a fibreglass pool? The sort of questions that people would ask, right? What are the pros and cons of an overground pool as opposed to one that’s in the ground or whatever? And he honestly, I mean, swimming pool businesses were going out of business left, right, and centre, and he grew his and became a multimillionaire and sold it and became a content genius. So, yeah, They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. He identifies basically a top five kind of questions that everybody wants to know the answer to, no matter what industry it’s in. So that was sort of useful. But I honestly think you don’t even need to read the book. You just think, if you know your audience, you know what they’re asking. Advisers, financial planners, get asked the same questions broadly all the time. Yeah. Now, even though I’ve probably answered them and you’ve probably answered them, and many other finance creators have answered them, nobody will answer it like you will. So I just say I don’t do it for a quick win, right? It’s a slow burn. Even now, you’ve got to commit to a couple of years, really. You’re what, 160 episodes in?

[53:57] Sammie: Yeah, this will be 186. Oh, right, okay.

[54:00] Pete: I mean, that’s like way ahead of most. Most podcasts still don’t make it past episode three. Um, I don’t know the stats, but certainly over episode 10 is a fraction.

[54:08] Sammie: So it’s top 1% at 20. So if you get to 21, you’re in the top 1%.

[54:13] Pete: Amazing. Yeah. Well, if you’re on 186, I’m on 624 at the time of recording. So, you know, we’ve made it way past that.

[54:21] Sammie: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[54:22] Pete: But don’t think you’re gonna make money overnight. I honestly think intention matters. I think, you know, do it to get your message out if you’re passionate about it, do it to help people. The rest will broadly look after itself, but you need then to give people a way to get in touch, give them a call to action. You know, it’s like, I’ve just explained everything you need to know about pension tax relief. It’s fucking brilliant, you’re right, you get money from the government, you get money from your employer, it’s just amazing. Now, if you want some help with it, give me a shout.

[54:50] Sammie: Yeah, yeah.

[54:51] Pete: Do you know what I mean? Don’t just sort of leave it at that. There’s got to be a call to action. And yeah, you know, that’s ultimately it. Determine what questions your audience are asking and answer them. That’s how I started. But do 50.

[55:06] Sammie: Literally how I started. We had a WhatsApp group and it grew too much, and people started asking the questions, and I was like, well, I know this, so I’ll write the blog post for it. And it went up online, we started getting traffic, and I was like, all right, shit, we’ve got a business. Yeah, right. I was like, that was it. And then now we’re sitting here today.

[55:20] Pete: So I think that’s still the case. And even though people obviously are asking AI more and more of these questions, where is AI scraping the data from? People like us, yeah. So I think that remains as true now. I literally did that myself sitting in a really boring taxation seminar. Um, I’d totally zoned out from the content and just grabbed my notebook and wrote the first 75 episode titles. And it was just, if I was to teach somebody who knows nothing about money from the basics of mindset through budgeting, debt elimination, protection, the fundamentals of investing, asset classes, all that sort of stuff, all the way to phased retirement and offshore bonds or whatever, everything. And it took me 75 episodes, and then I basically started again. And that’s all I’ve been doing now for 16 years is saying the same shit, just slightly different ways. Because there isn’t a lot to it for most of us. I mean, I still come back to the three basic steps: spend less than you earn, insure against the stuff you can’t control, disaster, you know, life events, illness, all that sort of stuff, and then invest the rest. That’s basically it.

[56:32] Sammie: The rest is detail. Yeah, yeah. The rest is personal to that person, yeah, right. So yeah, you’ve got four kids or three kids, it’s gonna look very different for you. Yeah, of course it is, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I just absolutely love this. I knew having a chat with you was gonna be a lot of fun, but um, you know, I think if we’re rounding that back off, those three parts that you said there that someone needs to take away from this episode, it is that gap, it’s creating that gap, which is harder than ever in today’s day and age. It is, absolutely, but it is about creating that gap in your spending and then trying to flip it into something.

[57:05] Pete: Yes, it is. It is harder than ever. It’s also easier than ever to make money, I would argue. I mean, it takes work, don’t get me wrong, but I mean there are more opportunities, shall we say, let’s put it that way, than I think there’s ever been. You know, everybody has got a side hustle, it seems, or everybody could have. And you get a choice then, you know, if there’s a little bonus or you get a pay rise, or you make money from a side hustle, you’ve got a choice as to what you do with it, and that’s the crux of it. You either elevate your lifestyle and spend it, lifestyle creep, we know about, you know, the more you get in, the more you spend, because the more you can spend, but if you can just control that gap that you talked about, then you’re off to the races. But that’s the thing.

[57:51] Sammie: The worst thing you can do is lifestyle creep, because you never downgrade.

[57:54] Pete: No, it’s hard to get it back.

[57:56] Sammie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I’ve absolutely loved this. Where are we sending people today, mate?

[58:02] Pete: Uh, meaningfulmoney.tv. I mean, just search Meaningful Money, search Pete Matthew, you’ll find me. I’m a bit of a tart, you know. I’m everywhere online, you know. No, mate, I’ve loved this too. Thank you so much for having me. We’ve been trying to do it for ages, I think. So it’s been very cool to make it work.

[58:15] Sammie: It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

[58:16] Pete: You’re very welcome, thank you.