Ken & Mary Okoroafor: How The Humble Penny Became Financially Free by 34

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

[00:00] Sammie: So, Ken, welcome back. Thank you. Glad to be back. I looked this up, you were episode 11 of the Money Gains podcast. Wow. And I just find that fascinating, that we’ve come, had think how far we guys have come since then. That’s incredible.

[00:15] Mary: And for you too. You’ve been doing amazing.

[00:19] Ken: It’s changed since then. Lots gained. Lots gained.

[00:23] Sammie: We weren’t there early. But since we’ve spent two books you’ve had. Yes.

[00:30] Ken: Both Sunday Times bestsellers. Yes, yes. Congratulations.

[00:35] Sammie: Thank you. The Wealth Habit. Yes. It’s a central idea to that: wealth doesn’t just start with money. It starts with a habit. Yeah. Which I love because I’m obsessed with this stuff. But most of us kind of know that we should invest, we should compound our money, we should do something with it, but we don’t. So why aren’t we doing that, do you think?

[01:03] Ken: There’s many reasons, but I’d say, well, firstly, life happens to a lot of us. That’s where we had to start. So we’re constantly being bombarded by a lot. So whether that be things happening in our lives, circumstances happening, cost of living rising, situations happening, might have had children, or all kinds of circumstances happening. But the bigger, deeper reason is because we are spending and enriching everybody else before we think about ourselves, right? And that’s where the root problem begins. So we’ve not created a way for us to keep more of our own money, and a lot of us also don’t understand how habit formation works. Habit formation is built on, in the book we teach four steps basically, or four different stages. So usually it begins with a form of a trigger, so something that happens that you might then stack a habit onto. So it might be that in the morning I wake up and I have my breakfast, make my toast. That’s the trigger. And then I need to do something on top of that. And that something could be something that’s connected to my finances. So it might be that I check my bank balance, or I check how my investments are doing, or whatever, right? So that’s the action. But it also then needs to be some form of reinforcement, something that makes you feel like actually, this is worth my while doing all the time. Could be that you tick a habit tracker, could be that you fist bump, could be that you high-five your partner, or whatever, right? That’s a reinforcement that almost says, do you know what? I’m happy that I’m moving in the right direction. And the final piece is then an identity piece, which is to say, actually, my finances are going well, I feel like I’m a wealth builder. So you’re almost reinforcing that. So for a lot of us, we don’t have an understanding of how habits are created, how the right habits are formed, and how to keep the right habits and prevent the wrong habits coming in, or almost dominating our lives. Some of the trickiest habits are like impulse buying and so on. So we don’t have ways of getting rid of those and a way of attracting or keeping the right habits. So I think that’s where a lot of us actually go wrong.

[03:22] Sammie [?]: Yeah.

[03:23] Mary: And it’s one of the frameworks that is actually in our book, the habits loop of wealth, exactly. So it’s trigger, action, reinforcement, and identity. And you know, back to your question, I think that everything else is screaming for your attention. And if one is not intentional about it, life happens and life will spend your money for you. It’s just one of those things, isn’t it?

[03:50] Sammie [?]: Yeah.

[03:50] Mary: There’s just so many things happening. When you think about it, is it called the Eisenhower Matrix? It’s one of those things: investing is very important, but it’s not necessarily urgent. And so people just always, not most people, tend to just not do it if they don’t have a system in place that makes it automatic. And that’s the whole premise of our book: that building wealth should be in a way that is effortless, inevitable, and sustainable for life. It’s not something that you rely on willpower or motivation for, or when you’re feeling good, or when the stock market is looking okay at the moment. It’s basically creating a system so that no matter what’s going on in the world, crashes and all, you stay invested because you built a system, and you stay invested. It means that you’re consistent. And that way you’re actually building wealth sustainably, consistently over time.

[04:47] Sammie: So if we switch it about, if we think about this, right? Let’s take security as the first sort of financial stepping stone that someone might look to do. So an emergency fund, for example. And then a bad habit is potentially, within that willpower metric, is perhaps saving after spending, at the end of the month, what’s left. Whereas an automation piece and a good habit is building that into a payday routine where it’s formulated. Is that what we’re getting at? Yeah, yeah.

[05:16] Ken: So a good piece there would be actually: when I get paid, rather than paying everybody first, I pay myself first. Right. In fact, we call that the big domino habit that lets everything else happen. Because if you’ve managed to keep a proportion of your income, maybe 10%, 20%, however much you want to keep, you then need to tell that money where to go. Right. So that piece is actually quite important. Whereas a tricky, I don’t want to say bad, but a habit that people don’t like having is habits that end up almost self-sabotaging you, or making you feel like actually, I’m always going to be where I am. So things that speak to something much deeper, to your previous identity. I mentioned impulse buying before. I can relate to this: as someone who noticed that whenever I got super tired at night, usually around 11 p.m., I might find myself just browsing on Amazon. And Amazon, for example, just putting that, or all these other retailers, they make it super easy for you to just click, post. Oh yeah. Next thing you know, it’s in the basket before you’ve even sound cancelled, they’re like, it’s already been delivered, yeah, it’s on the way. And in some cases, it even arrives the same day. I know, man. I do know. It’s okay.

[06:36] Mary: Before 1 p.m.

[06:38] Ken: So the friction is removed to make it super easy for us to let go of our money. We need to use the same idea and work against that when it comes to keeping it, basically. Make it a lot harder for us to make decisions we end up regretting, and make it super easy for us to form the habits that will build a future we want. Make it easy for us to invest, make it easy for us to save money, or whatever.

[07:08] Sammie: And I think it’s more important than ever because of the way the digital age is now. It’s like Apple Pay tap, buy now, Amazon button, super fast next day delivery. You don’t necessarily feel it like you would back in the day, like we would have a 20-pound note, yeah, and we would pass it to someone and they would hand us something back. We don’t have that handing back anymore. It’s like: pay the amount, digital transaction, it’s gone. And you don’t feel that. I don’t feel as emotionally attached to money in that same way now.

[07:43] Ken: There is a phrase for this, psychologists call this a financial abstraction, where you feel like you are detached from the reality of money, so you can easily buy something for £500 online because you have access to credit or the money is in your bank account. Usually it’s the former, so people are usually borrowing a lot of the time. However, if I gave you £500 and said, go and spend this, I give it to you in like £20 notes or £10 notes, you’d feel this what’s called the pain of paying. The pain of paying is the pain you feel when you’re letting go of money, because it starts to remind you, and that comes from cash, you’re like, oh, I’m actually letting go of this money, and you feel that inner pain that’s connected to the effort that went into making that money. But you don’t have that pain of paying when it comes to digital expenses. You’re so detached from it that you can just buy something, click, click, click, your phone, your watch, your fingerprint, anything. They’ve given us multiple ways to easily pay and not experience that pain. So much so that people are detached from not knowing when they’ve spent what they have in the bank, when they’re now able to spend very easily into credit. And the mechanisms, as you know, are there to make us borrow and stay in debt.

[09:07] Sammie: I have no problems with Klarna and Clearpay, law. I think I’ve gone for them on many videos. Oh yeah. I just have this thing: if you can’t pay for it, then we shouldn’t be purchasing it. But unfortunately, we live in that societal world, it’s a totally different world, and you can put deliveries and your groceries on it now, which I understand in genuine emergency circumstances, in certain cases, but for the large majority, please don’t do that. But what I wanted to ask you is: because when I read about the habits and the four ways of the system, something I wanted to ask you about was, could the trigger be turned from a negative into a positive? So, for example, this is Ken, or Mary, sitting there and you’re on Amazon. That’s technically your negative. Could you then have that trigger, but then the actual thing you stack on that is you do something positive, such as, if it’s above £50, you’re then waiting 24 hours to limit the impulse dopamine, or something along those lines?

[10:58] Ken: It could be, because think about it, like some people have a coffee addiction and they usually walk by their favourite coffee place on the way to work. That could be their negative trigger, because I am trying to detach myself from consuming too much coffee, and so the action could be actually, I’ll take a detour and follow a different route to work, so that normally that would trigger me seeing that, but my next action on top of that, to build the right habit instead, would be, I’ll follow this route instead, or I might make myself a herbal tea when I get to the office, or whatever.

[11:43] Sammie: Yeah, I could be like layering cashback in on the spending, check if there’s a discount available, or something along those lines, which can turn that negative to a positive.

[11:52] Mary: Yeah. And another thing that you could do is enforce the 24-hour pause button, which we mention in the book as well, before purchasing, just park it aside for 24 hours, because it could be that you actually added it to the cart because you had a bad day at work, you felt really low, or you’re trying to sort out a deeper problem, a deeper issue, and trying to solve it with purchasing, but actually that doesn’t solve the root cause. Sometimes it just takes sleeping on it and waking up, and you realise, oh, actually, I don’t even need that. Or it could be that you do genuinely need it, and it’s fine.

[12:27] Sammie: I just genuinely think it’s the most powerful thing you can do, first of all.

[12:31] Mary: It’s simple, isn’t it?

[12:32] Sammie: And I talk about my gold trainer escapade, and it was that day that I put that rule in place. So I bought myself some gold Nike Air Max 97s. Yeah, they were bold, they were gold, wow, gold. They looked sick on the ad, and I was like, do you know what, they are beautiful, but come on, like who am I? That’s out there even for me. And I kept them, because of the guilt of buying them, because I bought them in a moment of feeling low about myself, to make myself feel better by having the gold shiny shoes look at me, kind of thing, and I knew I was doing it. And I kept them for 29 days of a 30-day return, and I sent them back. Oh wow. Because I was just so guilty about it, couldn’t bring myself to wear them. Yeah, exactly. But that’s that self-sabotage piece, almost like self-chastising yourself because of the trainers, yeah. But it taught me a big lesson, and since then, the 24-hour rule, I’m not joking, it’s in the tens of thousands of pounds that it’s saved me. I remember, just because I’m so sucked into the new camera gear for the studio, the new X, Y, and Z, and sometimes these purchases are big money, and you’re just like, yeah, go, but then you’re like, no, wait, discount, do the checks, do the steps, and then if you need it, if you still want it and your dopamine is settled and you’re making a logical decision, it’s interesting.

[14:01] Ken: I think as creators we’re drawn into that actually quite a lot, like all the kit, camera gear, you see your friend there like, oh, I’ve got this new camera, and it’s the latest model. Oh man, that happened to me with the DJI.

[14:14] Sammie: The DJI ones. So I was like, yeah, I’ll just vlog, I’ll start vlogging. Yeah. Just sat there for weeks. I think we’ve all got something similar.

[14:23] Mary: We’re definitely guilty of that one.

[14:25] Sammie: But we all are, and I think this is what I’m saying, and I think it’s really important. We do this for a living, we talk about this all the time, but we are still making mistakes, yes, yes, and I think that’s really, really important. You can have all the habits in the world, you can be amazing at personal finance, but you can also still make mistakes just like everybody else. But what I like to say is: if you’re taking two steps forward and one step back, you’re still moving forward, so just allow yourself that. No one ever sticks to a budget perfectly, let’s be honest. But as long as you did it, you had the awareness around yourself, which is then bringing you, and making some good decisions along the way, more than bad, and you should be moving in the right direction. Absolutely. But the first book you had was Financial Joy, yes, which was also a Sunday Times bestseller. Come on, come on, come on. What happened after that? Did people actually follow the plan, or did you realise something was missing to write this book?

[15:18] Ken: So people did follow it. Financial Joy was a 10-week plan. The promise is to help you banish debt, grow your money, unlock financial freedom. So we think of that relative to the new book: Financial Joy is the reset. It helps you reset your relationship with money and gives you the foundations you need to begin that journey. And it’s almost like having two people who care about you go on the journey with you, basically. That book’s very, very intimate, very personal, lots of very intimate stories. And what did we notice with couples? What did couples start to do with the book?

[15:55] Mary: So couples were reading it together. It’s quite a practical book, and at the end of each chapter you’ve got some action steps, and they noticed some major breakthroughs. Sorry, a lot of the feedback that we get is that it’s helped them so much in their finances, coming together, doing things more jointly, as opposed to separately. And that for us has been amazing feedback, and generally, yeah, it’s been very positive.

[16:25] Ken [?]: Incredibly positive.

[16:26] Mary: It’s been incredible. And we do talk about mindset in Financial Joy, but we go into habits in much more detail in The Wealth Habit, because we’re focusing on the psychology, the neuroscience, the reasons why we form habits, and how to change those habits, and how your identity shapes your habits and your mindset. We just wanted to go deeper into it. I mean, what were some of the feedback that you got from the first book?

[16:56] Ken: I want to just mention as well that, of course, the book was very, very helpful to single people, a lot of single people who follow our work. I want to mention that because we talked about couples earlier. But the framing of the first book is that it’s the reset. The feedback we also got was that people would love to go into more detail on: yes, I have some knowledge of something, but how do I turn it into a system so I don’t have to think about it all the time, worry about it, so I can develop the right mindset and habits? I want to be able to make small little changes, not big, okay, financial freedom, that’s like a big thing, but what are some small things I can do that I can even do right now? And that’s what the new book’s about. So the new book, The Wealth Habit, we call it the system to make wealth building effortless, inevitable, and sustainable for life. Anyone can apply it, it’s got the frameworks in there, it’s very actionable. Every chapter has a framework, has a story from around the world, has small action steps, has pauses for reflection, has a chapter summary, has also a mantra. Each chapter has a mantra just to help with that mindset, that rewiring of your brain, how you think and how you operate. And so this book has, as Mary mentioned, all that global research. We wanted to make it more global as well, because we noticed that our first book was written from a UK lens, but for a global audience. This book, The Wealth Habit, now is written for a global audience, even though we’re from the UK. So it’s already been translated into Italian, into complex Chinese, and we’re expecting more translations. And this happened even before the book came out, they’d already signed those deals. So it’s a much more global book. So whether you are in the UK, whether you’re in Birmingham, Manchester, London, Los Angeles, Lagos, Kenya, wherever you are, The Wealth Habit is one that you can absolutely apply to your life, as well as Financial Joy, but given this is the latest book.

[19:03] Sammie: So would you say do Financial Joy and then Wealth Habit, or it depends on the question?

[19:08] Ken: It depends. I’d say that if you are somebody who still feels like you’re struggling with your foundational relationship with money, you’re dealing with debt, you’re trying to begin to learn to invest, all those elements, begin with Financial Joy. If you’re someone who says, I have those foundations sorted, but do you know what, I’m still relying on my willpower, I’m still like, the bad news is making me sell my investments, I’m not automated, I don’t have a system, my mindset still needs work, I want to make it more effortless, I want to make wealth building inevitable, if you want all those elements, you want the system for wealth building, you need The Wealth Habit. So together, they’re like a layer on each other, basically. They give the full journey, is how we kind of look at it. Yeah.

[21:06] Sammie: So I’d love to ask you, because I think you’ve both sort of documented that you didn’t come from a silver spoon environment. You’ve worked for everything you have, and I think you worked extremely hard. I think you’re both extremely inspirational people. Thank you. So at what point did you go from survival mode to actually thinking, we can do this, we can build wealth, and what triggered that shift for you, or start with your marriage, do you think?

[21:31] Mary: Okay, so there wasn’t a particular point, per se. Just growing up and seeing, I’ll give you an example, my parents, right? My dad, he was, so a bit of background about us, I’m second generation immigrant. My parents migrated over in their late 70s. I was born four years after, in a council estate in Hackney, East London. And my parents were, say they were working class. I just remember my dad had a job in an office, and he had to go back to Nigeria to bury his dad. When he came back, he didn’t have a job, he’d lost it, was made redundant. There was no such thing as, you know, HR wasn’t really a big thing back then. And he struggled to get another office job. But we’d only just recently purchased the house.

[22:19] Sammie: Okay.

[22:19] Mary: And so I was like, okay, how’s he going to pay the mortgage? And so that caused a lot of tension, and stress, and him having to work overtime. And my mum wanted to retire, it was just difficult, she had to also go back into work.

[22:32] Sammie: Was that visible to you at the time? Like, did you know that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[22:35] Mary: I was in secondary school at the time, and I could just remember thinking, oh, this is not a good thing. And then I had my older sibling, I’ve got three older brothers that I lived with, and one of them was doing really well financially. He did the whole work hard, go to uni, get a good job. He had a nice apartment, nice car. And then the dot-com bust in 2000, I don’t know if you remember. Yeah. All the tech companies were affected. He lost his job, he had to move back home and sleep on the living room floor. And I was thinking, this isn’t right, you’re doing quite well, you had an apartment. What was it, okay, he was renting at the time, and this isn’t anything against renters, if that’s what you want to do, that’s fine. But at the time I knew that I wanted financial independence, and I didn’t know that’s what the term was at the time when I was young, I just knew that I wanted that security, and I wanted something that I owned outright. So I was quite good with money in terms of being frugal, being able to make money, but that was where my financial literacy ended. I didn’t know how to invest in a stock market, or property, basically put my money in an environment where it can grow. So yeah, what was your question again?

[23:45] Sammie: So, we kind of, because obviously we’re not taught this stuff. Yeah. But you two have gone on to what would be perceived as done well for yourselves.

[23:55] Mary: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[23:56] Sammie: Obviously, a lot of people from your environments and your situations don’t have that outcome. So what’s the difference? Where did that mindset change for you?

[24:07] Mary: Yeah. So I guess it was that there was a gap between where I was and where I wanted to get to, and I filled it through reading, research, courses. That’s how I met Ken, at a property investment seminar in 2009. And I guess we just had to learn. And when we both decided that we wanted to go on this journey together of financial independence, I guess you can say having two people that were on board helped to make that become a reality. We went away when Ken proposed to me, we got engaged, and then we were on holiday planning our wedding, but we also created a 10-year plan. Of course you did. I love this. Normal people just plan their wedding, who do we want to invite, plan the bridesmaids, but yeah, we came up with a 10-year plan, which honestly has been so instrumental, it’s just been such a positive thing. As part of the 10-year plan, we wanted to pay off our mortgage in seven years, and we were able to achieve that. You did that, yeah.

[25:12] Sammie: So it’s £380k, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a phenomenal achievement, guys.

[25:17] Ken: It’s huge for us. Yeah, it’s a very, very big deal.

[25:20] Sammie: Yeah, sorry, can I ask around that, because there’s the investors who say don’t pay off your mortgage, there’s the British, like, I need to overpay my mortgage, bring that down, there’s people who sit in the middle. You’ve obviously gone down that route. Do you still think that was the right decision, knowing what you know? Would you suggest people do that again?

[25:47] Mary: Yeah.

[25:48] Ken: For us, it was the right decision. So we didn’t just do one thing, we didn’t just pay off the mortgage. We’ve always invested in the stock market, began investing in 2010. But we’ve invested at different amounts and levels. At some stages we were just going, going, going on the property, and then dialled down on our stock market investments. At other stages, we’ve upped our stock market investments and dialled down on our overpayments. So our approach has always been to do both, because we saw that, firstly, we don’t want to miss out in some capacity. Of course you will always miss out, it’s always a trade-off. But for us, and I think this is a very individual thing, for everybody there will be a different pathway, there isn’t a right or wrong answer. Although people will always try to get you to believe that you’re wrong, you shouldn’t have done this, or that person’s right, they shouldn’t. And I always say, look, you have to ask yourself what’s most important to you. And for us, for our long-term goals and our personal circumstances, it mattered that we wanted to pay off our mortgage, it meant a lot to us. There’s a lot of backstory behind that, from a family perspective, from our parents getting on the property ladder so late, they were still paying their mortgage in their retirement. There’s so many things that are unique to our story and journey that aren’t unique to anybody else, right? In the same way, there’s so many things unique to other people that aren’t unique to us. So, in that sense, it’s whichever more. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[27:19] Sammie: You can’t even use an investment portfolio, which might be 50 grand higher. Yeah, yeah.

[27:23] Ken: And you can’t even really compare, there’s so many things you can’t measure. You can measure an investment portfolio, but you can’t measure the joy, you can’t measure the peace, you can’t measure that sense of safety in the household. There’s so many things you can’t measure, the utility of a home, and so many other things.

[27:40] Sammie: But the key word with that is “might” with your investment portfolio, versus a hundred percent certainty of still paying off the mortgage, and you’ve not even factored in the optionality created.

[27:51] Ken: Think about what we do today. What we did today wouldn’t be possible if Mary and I hadn’t paid off our mortgage. By that I mean it gave us optionality, dropped our living costs massively, meant we could take more risks, we could do more things, we could start our own platforms and do more business-y stuff, or invest in other areas. And it’s still an asset, and it’s still an asset on the money. It’s not stopped us doing anything, it’s not stopped us investing in the stock market, it’s not stopped us with the house, or if anything, it’s actually created more opportunity. We run, like I was saying to you earlier, the home actually is very productive, we run a studio at home, we have a gym at home, we do things from the house. It’s actually not just, you know, people say, oh, it’s a wasting asset, or it’s not an asset because it’s owned by the bank. Well, actually, no, the bank doesn’t own it, we own the house fully. On top of that, it actually creates lots of value for us, not just monetarily, but a much more intangible value as a family raising children, and so many other things.

[28:51] Sammie: I think you’ve just hit the nail on the head there, there’s now the 100% of the property, which you can then pass down to your kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it just has an inherent value as well, which you can’t put a price on. And that’s what we all essentially are striving to do if you have young families, you want to make sure the kids are secure. A large part of most people’s wealth-building assets is their property.

[29:13] Ken: Yeah, and you know what’s interesting, when we ask people to complete this sentence, “I’m wealthy when I ___,” a lot of people who replied to us said, I’m wealthy when I have paid off my mortgage. Yeah. A lot of people, they might not say it to you face to face, but deep within, this is a burden for people. Think about what’s happening now in the world, we have the crisis, global crisis is happening, and of course, with that comes inflation, inflation rises, what happens, interest rates become higher, what does that do, that takes away money from people’s pockets because they have to give more money to the bank. So this is a real pain for people. So I don’t know why people front when they’re talking about paying off a mortgage. Of course you don’t want the pain, if you don’t want the pain anymore, you can’t pay anything off, because the pain will always be there with a mortgage, because the bank owns the property, their name is under the deeds until you’ve paid them their money back. And there’s also the compounding element that we don’t talk about, because that aspect is one that’s outside of our control, right? The compounding element of debt. A lot of people don’t understand the maths of how their mortgage debt is compounding, it’s compounding daily. Every day you look at a mortgage statement, every day the banks are like rubbing their hands like this, they’re happy, because your property is an asset on their balance sheet, and every day it creates money for them. They just know it’s guaranteed to come in. So the question is, how do you stop that compounding happening? Well, one way of doing it is to consider overpaying a little bit. Break the cycle, exactly. Yeah, it comes back to what we’re talking about with The Wealth Habit. This is what we did. I’ll never forget the day we made a phone call to the bank, and on that one day, making a call to remortgage down our rate, and overpaying by, for us, £500 a month, by adjusting our lifestyle to make it simpler, we wiped nine years off the term. Nine years, right? Just think about it, it might not sound like a lot to a lot of people, but think about nine years, it’s been six years since Covid, that’s not even up to nine years yet, right? Imagine nine whole years without a mortgage, without a payment, without anything. So when I see all these debates online, I’m just like, you guys can argue all you want, but I actually understand, you’re not in my shoes, I know what it’s like to be mortgage free, and it’s amazing, right? And that’s a good thing, I’m not saying it’s for everybody, we know some people, it’s not for them, they can do both. Yeah, that’s what we do.

[31:47] Sammie: And I really like what you said there, you moved it up and down. Did you move it up and down based on how you felt, or how the market was performing?

[31:56] Mary: It was both. Well, especially the market, so whenever there were dips, it was like the stock market’s on sale.

[32:03] Ken: Dips went up, yes, yeah. Smart. That’s exactly it. So we were buying things where they’re on sale, when we felt there was a greater compounding related to our property, more guaranteed return, overpay more, you know.

[32:16] Mary [?]: Yeah.

[32:16] Ken: But every time we had both going, and that worked for us. For some people, they don’t like that, they’re like, actually, I just want to invest in a stock market, and that’s fine. For other people, they go to the other extreme, which we don’t recommend, only just focusing on the property, because that’s just locking everything into one part. Whereas we’re like, actually, we want to take up our ISA allowances, want to do as best we can. And there’s no perfect formula, Sammie.

[32:36] Sammie: I think there is, there’s never one in personal finance.

[32:41] Mary: Exactly, exactly. If you’re young, you’re single, you have no kids, you can benefit from geo-arbitrage, maybe earning in pounds or dollars and living somewhere else where it’s really dirt cheap, and why not, go and do that thing for you if that’s the season in your life that you’re in and it works for you. I think for us, something definitely changes as well when you have children, you definitely want that stability, that security, that base, and that peace of mind.

[33:05] Sammie: I completely agree. Can I ask on the overpayments, when you overpay, does that come off the principal rather than the interest? And how could you explain that for someone, because we will always get questions around this. Yeah.

[33:20] Ken: Yeah. So you can nominate where it comes off, but when we were overpaying, we were getting it to come off the main principal, because the principal is what creates your interest, basically. So if you can get that coming off the principal amount, then you have a lower principal amount that then compounds daily, because your debt’s compounding daily. And if you can hit that principal as early as you can to bring it down, even if it’s by £20, £50, £100, £500, whatever you can afford, it makes a real big difference, because you have a smaller amount that’s generating interest over time. You’ll notice the interest amount comes down, or the term can come down, depending on how you look at it, but ultimately they’re doing the same thing, which is really that the amount you’re owing has come down, it’s leading to less interest over time, and it’s also mathematically reducing the term of your mortgage over time. So that’s really it.

[34:11] Sammie: What I’m doing at the moment is I have roundups on my spending. Okay. So I use my roundups, it goes into the pot, and then I pay it down through there. And that’s just a little way of me, it’s that old “throw the change in the jar” mentality. And that just allows me to be a little bit more, and then sometimes I turn it off, because recently our dog got sick and we rinsed our emergency fund, and it got pulled right down, and we also had a load of things. Life happens, right? Yeah, life happens. When it rains it pours, and it was one of those seasons at the back end of last year, I think everybody was the same.

[34:48] Ken: Oh, we had that last year, our boiler broke down, had to replace it.

[34:52] Sammie: Literally, we moved house, the previous people had cats, but they hadn’t looked after them, so there was a flea infestation. The dog got sick, went to hospital, we lost family members, and it all happened. And you’re just like, wow, and in the end you start laughing because you’re like, it surely can’t get worse. Water came cascading through the ceiling, had to get an emergency plumber out on Christmas Day, it was like that. So we rinsed the emergency fund, and I think this is what we were talking about earlier, there’s seasons of life where things are happening, and that’s it, in this season it just means that I’m in “restack mode,” getting the emergency fund back up to security levels, and then I can start overpaying the mortgage or adding more into the investments again. And I think you have to have that flexibility with finances.

[35:47] Ken: I know seasons when it goes the other way, you might have a tax refund, or a work bonus, or your business might just do better than you expected, or your side hustle has just suddenly brought in an extra thousand pounds. So I just think the trick is having some way of making sure that you are always keeping a portion of what you’re making, I think that’s the trick, because a lot of us are fighting fires a lot of the time, and it’s very poverty-driven, by that I mean, I just want to pay that bill, I just want to pay that thing, when in actual fact we should be asking ourselves, well, how is my wealth builder identity being reinforced? Where’s the evidence in my life that I’m moving towards where I want to get to? Am I investing? I’ll never forget one thing my mum said to me, she said, even when you’re a business owner, I know you have a responsibility to pay your staff, your team, your tech, always make sure you pay yourself, she said. Because even if you pay yourself £100, you still maintain the identity that actually I’m in control here, and I’m not just working for other people, I’m actually paying myself, I’m actually progressing. So you might pay yourself a little bit this month, but next time it might be way more than that. But the key thing is that it’s that consistency in making sure that a portion of what you’re making is being kept, and then that thing you’re keeping has a role, has a place it’s going.

[37:15] Sammie: So you talk a lot about identity-based wealth, like, I am an investor, I’m a wealth builder, which kind of speaks to that abundance mindset, kind of manifestation in a way, which is really interesting, because we’ve been speaking quite a lot about the data points and the automation and the systems, but then there’s also this kind of, some people might call it a little bit woo-woo, but I am obsessed with this stuff too, because I think with this type of thinking, everyone has that in their power, whether they are rich or flat broke or deeply in debt, you have the ability to use your mind to tell yourself something, and that you can be that person. So why wouldn’t you use it?

[38:02] Mary: Absolutely, absolutely. There was a stat that 30% of our day we’re running on autopilot, and a lot of what we don’t realise is that we’re playing out some poor money scripts that can be causing self-sabotage, you’re repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And so for somebody who may have a scarcity mindset, they’re not going to spot opportunities, where someone with an abundance mindset might see an opportunity, they’ll see a problem, where they see different opportunities to build wealth, they see problems. And so it’s important to really work on that mindset, like you were saying, to create a new identity, because without that, they say that you can build wealth, or you can call yourself a wealth builder even before it shows up in your bank account, but it starts as reinforcing that identity through small actions. And this is why it’s accessible to anybody, because anyone can form a habit, you don’t have to be a millionaire to be able to start a habit. And then they say it takes about 66 days for it to become a habit. 66 days.

[39:15] Sammie: Yeah. Yeah.

[39:17] Mary: Some say 30, some say 66.

[39:18] Sammie: Yeah, I’ve heard 90 as well. That’s really interesting. 66.

[39:22] Mary: Yeah.

[39:23] Sammie: That feels about right. We say roughly two to three pay cycles in a lot of our content, and I feel like that’s it, it’s different per person, right? It could take slightly longer. Yes. Oh, interesting. So then that gets you into the mix. But you’re right, this could be 10p, and you might value 10p, that 10p could be to you what someone else might see £100 as. Again, it’s that personal thing, where your beginning, your starting point, is completely, utterly personal to you, and you use that power to start the habit, right? Yeah. Okay.

[39:56] Ken: I’d say one thing about words: words can either build, or words can destroy. Words are really powerful. So look at where we are in this podcast studio, everything in this room began in someone’s mind, and then that thing in their mind had to be vocalised, had to be spoken, had to be envisioned. They had to speak it into life, they had to get team members, they had to get contractors, they had to contact suppliers, they had to use their words. Right. So words are very powerful things, words can build things, the city of London began by people envisioning, speaking things into being, and then constructing and building, right? So when you think about it at that level, words build or destroy, right? And there’s no bigger asset than yourself, right? So what you begin to say to yourself matters so much. So if you begin to say things like, people like me don’t get rich, or money doesn’t grow on trees, or money’s the root of all evil, right? See, all these things are designed to keep you in the mental frame of a particular type of person. You will always think that there’s only one pie in the world, if you take one of those pies, you’re taking it from me, and vice versa. That’s a very scarcity-driven mindset, because you’ve been conditioned to think in a particular way, you think that somebody else’s success is your misfortune, when in actual fact, somebody else thinks, actually, do you know what, I can create opportunity. The future is nobody’s, least of all the future, the future is open to everybody. What’s going to happen tomorrow? Nobody knows, but we can make decisions today that place us at a particular place of advantage tomorrow, right? So that’s us thinking abundantly, that’s us saying more pies can be created, we’re not all fighting over one thing, we can tap into our inbuilt creativity, we can use the right words, we can speak positively into who we are, we can use words to build our new identity, right? I could sit here and go, do you know what, I’m a wealth builder, even though I might not have all the pieces yet, I might not see the evidence yet, but I’m working towards it, I’m taking small steps, I’m building the right habits to help me get there, I’m shifting my mindset, I’m in the right environments. Like this morning, I was at a networking event, I’m in the spaces where the right people are saying what I want to be saying, where they’re making certain moves, and not just going, oh, the economy is rubbish, so I’m not going to do anything, I’m just going to sit and complain in the comment section. When in actual fact, I could be out there building, I could be out there using technology, trying things out, I could be out there experimenting with a mindset that I’m not going to fail, but I’m going to learn, right? I’m going to build and see what happens. So this is where words come in, because words are so powerful. What we say to ourselves in the morning, what we say to ourselves throughout the day, what we say to our partners, what we say to our children if we have any, what we say to anybody, if we have team members, all matters, all helps to almost determine what will be happening next, how people will react to you. It’s like walking on the street, saying to your neighbour, good morning, do you know what that does? I love this. Yeah. You just say good morning to your neighbour, you fill up. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, whoa.

[43:35] Mary [?]: Like people have not heard that in a while.

[43:36] Sammie: No one’s where you are. They say it where I live. Oh, that’s good. Well, I used to live in London.

[43:41] Ken: If I walked near the city, people would just be like, what you doing, why are you talking to me, man? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you see, already the words are building that, it’s building a relationship, it’s building a bridge between two people. Yeah, 100%. Because then you’re having a conversation, right? Same thing applies to everything, because everything’s connected. Sometimes they’re like, oh, lovely day, isn’t it?

[44:03] Sammie: And you’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you stop. Yeah. And that moment’s really interesting. But I also do it, I find that people get really shocked, and you can see that they don’t get treated like that for most of the day. Like when you go into the coffee shop, sorry, coffee addiction, so I’m in the coffee shop and they’re like, how can I help? And I go, first up, hey, how are you? And they go, I’m all right, how are you? And you’re like, you don’t get asked that, do you? And I just think that’s a nice moment, I always do that. I think treat other people how you would want to be treated, absolutely, different girls, but that connection piece, and because you walk away from that transaction going, I reckon I’ve just lit up her next 10 minutes, she’ll probably forget about that, but that makes you feel good, and you take that into your next interaction, and it’s sort of spreading joy.

[45:02] Mary: Absolutely, absolutely. I love that point about spreading joy, and to the point you’re making as well, these different mindsets, we talk in the book as well about the employee mindset, where you feel like you can only trade time for money, and that’s the only way, and you’re relying on your employer for your bonus or pay rise. Whereas if you say you’re a wealth builder, even though you’re still an employee, you’re a wealth builder, actually, you still have some agency. Yes. You actually have some control to do with your net income, to put it into stocks and shares ISA, for example, or put a portion into your future self fund pot, or your pension pot, but you have agency because you don’t just see yourself as an employee, but as a wealth builder.

[45:45] Ken: Or create more income even.

[45:47] Mary: Yeah, exactly, without necessary permission. Yes, hundred percent.

[45:52] Sammie: I’m a big fan of this, because I’m sort of playing with the idea that income is rented at the moment, so you have a subscription service from your landlord, and your landlord is your boss, and to be able to buy that… and when people hear that they’re like, what are you talking about? But then I’m like, listen to it, and tell me I’m wrong, because it’s not, because your landlord could cancel the subscription service, and then what do you have? Exactly. So then if you’re just relying on that one source and you haven’t created choice and freedom for yourself through even a tiny portion of your wealth security, which is why that first three months of living expenses, X, Y, and Z, gives you that choice, that freedom, that ability, the weight off your shoulders comes down, and then you can build from that point on. So you always start from that point on. Would you agree with that? Absolutely, 100%. Yeah.

[46:43] Ken: Yeah, no, I totally agree. I know for a fact that one of the biggest problems we all face is just this sense that I only have one option, and that one option is waiting for my paycheck to come in.

[46:58] Mary: Yeah.

[46:59] Ken: One of the most powerful things that I personally realised was, and I realised this actually when I left my corporate job, was how much I was giving up for that one source of income. Totally. Literally putting everything into this one basket. So your identity, right? You’re giving up every other possibility. I don’t think even people watching or listening right now might still even understand it when I say that there’s so much possibility out there, right? But it requires a particular mindset to think that way, to go, actually, I can use my skills, my ability, my network, my connections, my relationships, I can use those to create value for other people, to create opportunity, right? Whereas in a job, and nothing wrong with jobs, but I just want people to understand, in a job, everything is capped. You have to wait until you get the pay rise, that’s all you’re going to get, you only get what’s in the contract, and everything’s capped. So it wasn’t until I had that epiphany, it’s almost like scales fell off my eyes, it’s like, whoa, I’ve been awakened to a different way of thinking, actually, because why would I put everything into one basket? That makes no sense for me today. Totally. But it’s a journey we all go on, right? Of creating, buying back your time, right?

[48:21] Sammie: Yeah, buying back some of your own time, buying back some of your own security with the mortgage, and it’s all about buying back choice and freedom at the end of the day. Yeah, and that reliance piece. And the reason why I’m talking about this quite a lot in the content at the moment is because I feel like it’s the cycle of job security, where that promise to us from before, when we were younger, it was go to uni, or get a good job and work hard, get the family, the mortgage, the kids, that kind of pathway was laid out for us as millennials, right? And then all of a sudden now it’s like AI that’s being ripped about. Absolutely. That security and that journey, and because of the cost of living, that promise to us is a bit broken. So that reliance piece on the salary is becoming even more of an emergency in my eyes.

[49:13] Mary: Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely critical right now, more than ever before. People’s jobs are not really promised. And you were asking what made us want to also achieve financial independence, I think that was another thing that I noticed. My first graduate job, I got made redundant after about one year. Same as you, we got made redundant at the same time, in 2008, financial crisis. Got another job, and within, I was there for about five years, in that time there were three waves of redundancies, I wasn’t affected, but I saw my colleagues, and how it caused stress, even for me, it wasn’t a nice environment to be in. So from an early age I realised that I’m not going to rely on my employer ever, I’m here to learn, but ultimately I need to create income for myself.

[50:00] Ken [?]: Absolutely.

[50:01] Mary: Diversify, have multiple streams of income. And to the point of AI, now more than ever, people should look at how they can diversify and create different income streams where they’re not just relying on their employer.

[50:15] Ken: I think at the moment, a lot of people are in a place where they’re experiencing inaction. They know that the world’s changing, the floor we’re standing on is beginning to shift, there’s stuff happening, jobs are disappearing in many ways, opportunities have been created, but jobs are disappearing, people are out of work for longer, people know that, they’re seeing evidence of that, it’s all over our feeds, you can look at the news cycles, if you pay attention. See, Oracle today, 30,000 people. There you go. And then you think, well, 30,000 is not just people, it’s families, it’s households, right? And some of those people could even be couples working in the same company, so they’ve lost total household income in one go, right? So here’s the piece I find, people are experiencing right now, they just don’t know what to do next, that’s where things are at. It’s like, I feel paralysed, I’m in my job, I’m bound by a contract, and some of them are quite punitive actually, because they say you can’t do anything else. And this is where I start to say, well, actually, will you actually not do anything, will you actually not figure out a way? Because otherwise, the way I’m looking at it is people just end up waiting until they get pushed, and then it’s like, well, I have no income now. Is it conveyable to the cliffs? Yes, yes, and then exactly that. Oh, what’s happening? Yeah, you could see it coming. It’s like, okay, so now I’ve lost my job, what do I do now? So I’ve seen people lose their job, because they’re still in the mindset of the employee mindset, the wiring, they’re still waiting for permission to start to do something else.

[52:06] Mary: Do you know what it is, I think also it’s dangerous when your identity is so tied into your career, what you studied at university, because a lot of people have worked their way up for years, and they’ve formed this professional role, and they’re confident in it. It’s quite hard to take yourself out of that identity and create a new one, it is quite a difficult thing to do.

[52:30] Sammie: It’s a reinvention almost, it has to be.

[52:33] Mary: You had to do that. I noticed you, and even though you had The Humble Penny on the side, I saw how much of a, not conflict, but it wasn’t easy.

[52:41] Ken: Because I’d worked for 14 years, built up, become chief financial officer, big title on LinkedIn, big salary, big bonus, big pension, all those things you have from having worked your way up your career for 14 years, and a nice lifestyle that comes with it. You can go on holiday every year, all those elements. And then suddenly letting all of that go, there’s an identity that’s lost in that. But I think for me, it was a gradual shift, because it was liberating. Well, it was tough. It was. I think the best word I have for it is I was anxious.

[53:17] Mary: Yeah.

[53:17] Ken: Because I’d gotten so used to, every month I knew what was coming in from that particular job. Even though I had other streams that we’d been building, that little thing that came from the corporate job was actually quite nice to have. Because every month, same amount, the perks, your pension contributions, the free fruit in the office, all the things you get. So I’d gotten so used to getting all those things. But the good news was that three years before I took that leap, we’d started doing other things. Years before, what Mary and I had been building, our own financial journey as a family. But outside of our family stuff, we were doing other things. I started blogging, I started doing others. So all these other activities, although they initially weren’t really doing anything, making money, even though we were just creating traffic and opportunity potentially, they had basically reduced that need for permission. Do you get my point? 100%. So this is the thing, I feel like a lot of people right now are waiting for someone to say, oh, you can now go and try and make some money, you’re allowed to go and do that, because we’re so entrenched in those jobs by those employment contracts, or just the sense that we’ve never really done it before, we’ve never really hunted. Like, back in the day, you had to go and hunt and get your own food, if you couldn’t hunt, you couldn’t get any food, that was it, way, way, way back, right? But today, the way we earn is different, you show up, you do your thing on your laptop, you can even keep, buy something that shows that you’re still online or whatever, and you still get paid. This is a new way of earning. But I feel like we need to redefine our new way of earning now, it needs to be, and this is why I like this idea of a portfolio career, I know it’s not for everyone, but my idea has always been, I don’t ever want to put all my eggs in one basket, why would I want to do that? I’ll do this, I’ll do that, and I’ll do that, four different streams or whatever, different ways that I will earn. If that goes down, those three are still earning, in the same way, it’s this investor thinking, remember, it’s this wealth builder identity, I’m thinking as an investor, I’m thinking as a business owner, as a wealth builder, I’m thinking more broadly, so that my household will always be provided for, I’m not stressing all the time. You pick up different caps, different things. And a lot of these things I’m mentioning can be done by anybody, if you think about it. Totally. One could be you’re doing a part-time job, another could be, do you know what, I stay doing an NED role, like a non-executive director role, another could be that you invest, or you earn certain assets that you invest and manage those things gradually, could be something like stock market investments, could be maybe a property asset over time, could be whatever, another could be something else, could be you run a membership community online where you never have to meet people, but you’re serving them on the internet and you’re making some income from that. There’s so many different things people can do, but I think it all begins with the first pillar, which we talk about in The Wealth Habit, to build the mindset. Because if you don’t build a mindset, nothing happens. Everybody wants, we talk about four pillars, right? Build a mindset, build a habit, build a system, build a life. People want to build a life, but they don’t want to do the steps before it. You can’t have a steady house, metaphorically speaking, let’s say the house is building wealth without a solid foundation, the foundation is the mindset. If that’s not built, if that’s not developed, nothing anyone tells you will work. Even if they hand it to you, and say, here’s the blueprint, you would still not do it, because your mindset hasn’t shifted, you’re still the same person. There needs to be a shift that happens for you to then go, I get it, I get it, and I’m willing to experiment, I’m willing to take the steps to create the change and become somebody else. And I’m not hating on people, because a lot of people, in the UK there’s a lot of this negative energy.

[57:17] Sammie: Oh my god, that was one of my questions for you today. You’ve written that for a global audience, but it seems like this conversation, this belief that we need this abundance, this wealth builder mindset, is really bloody hard here. It is. But then, I’ve spent a bit of time in LA and actually all over the US, and everyone that I’ve met, even the people that are just trying to get up, have this like madly weird delusion that they are going to do the thing. Yes. And even if they don’t, they still maintain it, and it passes on, and it’s quite infectious. I’m not saying everyone’s like that in the US, that’d be a gross generalisation. But I think here you’d be lucky to find one in ten that’s got that delusion, yeah, which is just such an odd way. Why do you think this is? Have you looked into this yourself?

[58:16] Mary: Such a good question.

[58:17] Ken: So there’s this culture we have in the UK of crabs in a bucket.

[58:22] Mary: Yeah, I was going to say that.

[58:25] Ken: Yeah, the idea that you are in a place of comfort when you can see other people at the same level as you, and if they try to level up or leave that bucket, the culture is to find a way of pulling them back down, because you want them back to where you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rather than stretching to come out of the bucket with them, right? And this is an inbuilt culture, you see it everywhere, you see it in the media, you see it on social media, you see it in the news, pay attention to the language, pay attention to how people describe other people, read people’s comments when they think they’re not being watched online, and they’re in their little dark room commenting. This is inbuilt, right? It’s wired into the fabric of the nation, and it shouldn’t be like that. And it’s not that everyone’s like this, by the way, but it’s just the culture, and you see this also in Australia, Australia is another place that’s quite similar, there’s tall poppy syndrome, I think they call it, over there, and there’s other places like that. When we began our journey, we used to read a lot of American blogs, I just loved reading these American income reports and financial sites and all these sites, like, yeah, man, these guys are different, I get lit up, I’m like, whoa, I’m like, these guys are doing some sick things.

[59:41] Sammie: On occasion, it’s kind of annoying. Yeah, yeah. Like when you speak to them and they’re like, hey man, have a great day.

[59:47] Ken: You’re like, yo, chill out. But do you know the attitude, the audacity, right? You’re like…

[59:55] Sammie: I think because we have, us three here, we have that growth mindset, right? So we’re attracted to that because we’re quite delusional, because we push things like writing a book, yes, that’s a monumental attribute, literally, right? To do, let alone two, yes, two Sunday Times bestsellers. Yeah, that’s a big delusion, to go and think that you two got the audacity to write a book. Do you know what I mean?

[60:23] Ken: Mary’s friend, a really good friend of ours, Gloria, asked us this same question when she phoned us to congratulate us for the Sunday Times bestseller. She’s like, how do you have the audacity? She said, you need to write a blog post or make a video, how is it you have the audacity to believe that you can be, particularly as black authors, very rare, very rare, like Mary and I, from the research we’ve done, the only first couple to become Sunday Times bestsellers back to back, as a couple, in the UK. Really? From the research we’ve seen, especially as a black couple, right? So that first couple, first couple, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go on, have a look. We’ve asked the questions, asked AI to look, we haven’t seen it. Sick. So that’s a lot. So then she’s like, where do you get that audacity from, to think that you could be the person?

[61:12] Sammie: But that’s what we need to instil into the rest of everybody, have the audacity to believe.

[61:18] Ken: You know what, there’s so much to unpack there, but one thing I’ve always believed, and this is a core value I have, I have this value system around taking your place, I’ve always believed in taking my place, taking our place. Because, like I said to you at the start of this conversation, nobody has a monopoly on the future. The future is empty land, a lot of London’s taken up, or a lot of the UK, or wherever people are listening from, it’s all taken up. People are like, oh, that’s my land, that’s my land, I have the freehold, I have the lease sold. Nobody has a monopoly on the future, the future is just empty land. So I’ve always believed that if that’s the case, why wouldn’t I try? I have nothing to lose. I’m happy to get myself utterly embarrassed, asking people, begging people, I’m like, please buy the book, I beg you, I’ll put a nice smiley face, I’ll do whatever. Please buy the book, because it will help us, yeah, and it will help the people reading the book, obviously, and help our communities. But I think it’s this difference, in that people don’t want to put themselves in uncomfortable situations, things that might make them feel like they’re losing reputation, or that they’re being embarrassed, or that they might be looked at in a negative way, or, oh, my friend, my sister, or my mum, my cousin, my colleagues. I’m like, I don’t care about that, I want this thing to become like, why is it these sorts of people are always on this Sunday Times thing, why can it not be us, right? What do we need to do it? How can we reverse engineer it? How can we come up with an exciting, community-built approach to doing it? We’ve been sowing into our communities for like eight years, pouring out to strangers, millions of people have been consuming our content for years, since 2017.

[63:09] Sammie: Yeah, 99.9% of them for free.

[63:11] Ken: Yeah, and then we’re like, well, now we haven’t written this book for us, we’ve written it to help people even more. Why wouldn’t they buy the book, right? And so we had to approach it with a mission. And we’re like, if we become Sunday Times bestsellers, it elevates all of us, it makes it even more possible, people can look and go, wait, those two did it, I can do it too, it’s the belief, yeah. And that’s important, because a lot of the time people can’t find anyone that they can point to and go, oh, I think I can do it because he or she’s done it, usually it’s celebrities, A-listers, Hollywood, or whoever, you’re like, yeah, those people live on Mars or Jupiter, I can’t relate to them. But if it’s someone you can go, like, I saw him at the local shop, or I can go to his or her meetup and I can chat to them, and they did this, they achieved this, so for us it was bigger than us, it was more like, wow, imagine what it does for other people, how it pulls them along, because they go, wow, these guys did it, I can do it too. Totally, man.

[64:12] Sammie: You know, and I really want to just say, it’s that piece of uncomfortability, you have to feel uncomfortable at all times, obviously it’s important to feel comfortable at home in certain environments, I get that, but if your life feels comfortable, something is wrong, because you are not pushing yourself. I’m addicted to discomfort.

[64:33] Mary: Oh wow, I love it, absolutely addicted to it.

[64:36] Sammie: So the content business, I did it for three and a half years, it got quite samey, I was like, what’s next? Let’s do an app. I have no idea how to code, but I’m going to learn. And I think if you have that constant ability to feel uncomfortable, it might fail, but it might go mad, and then what happens then, abundance, but then also I’ve learned and I’ve grown as a person, so then there’s never a failure in that either. So I seek discomfort, if I think, oh, I can afford to invest £250 this month, £300, slightly uncomfortable.

[65:16] Ken: Yes, so it’s just pushing me a touch every single time. You know what, this afternoon I was saying that too, we were on a call, we were reading, actually, what book were we reading? Diary of a CEO’s book, yeah, Stephen Bartlett’s book, reading it as a community, and we were talking about, “pressure is a privilege,” there’s a chapter in the book called Pressure Is A Privilege, right? And this speaks to this particular topic, because I was saying to people on the call, I know this is going to sound really crazy, but imagine, one pressure to try to create, or discomfort to have, is: how could I fill up my ISA this year, next year? Yeah, yeah. I know it’s a lot, and I know you’re going, no one does that, no one earns enough to do it, but I’m like, hang on, hang on, hang on. And I know you’re inbuilt, you want to go back into your duvet and feel comfortable, but I’m saying, hang on, pull off the duvet for a minute, let’s just get uncomfortable for a second, let’s just think, imagine, just imagine for a minute, how would that feel if you could do it? £1,666 per month. How could we, what could we do, what else could we do? Because all you’re doing right now is giving you this result, this much, what if you did this other thing, and this other thing, and that other thing? What if you collaborated with somebody else? What this is doing is making you think, what if? It’s opening your imagination, and you’re like, whoa, it kind of scares me a little bit, but it kind of excites me, because it could potentially happen. And even if I don’t do it, I might get 80% there. And what if you get half of the way there?

[66:58] Mary: Exactly, because half is better than what they would have had, at least it’s not a failure, it’s positive, right?

[67:05] Sammie: And I think that’s so important.

[67:07] Ken: Because for me, it’s the gamification, it’s the gamification of that.

[67:12] Sammie: I do this with everything, investments, business goals, I’ve got vision boards, I’ve got it all locked around me, I play games with absolutely everything, because I win them, and I feel good about it. And then guess what, I create a new game, because I need to feel like, that’s the way my mind works. And I’m very much, and that’s what we’ve built into games. And I think this is really important to say, is that every single person, whether they tell you or not, likes a pat on the back.

[67:45] Ken [?]: Yeah, they like reinforcement.

[67:47] Sammie: I thought that when I went to the gym, I thought I would respond really well to being shouted at, and sworn at, and told that I need to work harder, when I was losing weight, but actually I didn’t, it was like, well done, Sammie, keep going, Sammie, you’re doing great. So that’s what really put it into play for me. And now I think it’s exactly the same with your finances, reward-based solutions can help you formulate the habits, and you can then put the triggers in place that can then bring you to the next step. Where can people buy the book?

[68:23] Ken: Yes.

[68:24] Sammie: Where do you want them to buy it?

[68:26] Mary: Oh, so you can find it on all major online retailers, like Amazon, Waterstones as well, they’ve got Waterstones and all bookstores basically.

[68:35] Ken: Yeah, yeah.

[68:36] Mary: Go into your local bookshop, support your local bookshop.

[68:39] Ken: Go in physically if you can, it’s always nice, you can chat to people. Totally. And get a discount card.

[68:45] Sammie: Yeah, for the bookshops as well, that’s what I can definitely…

[68:49] Ken: I really want to talk about Waterstones actually, because they’ve been very supportive of The Wealth Habit, they’ve really looked after us, we had our launch at Trafalgar Square Waterstones, which was really nice, the staff members there were fantastic. Our previous book was also launched at Waterstones, they’ve just been great. I mean, all the others are great, of course, but go into your local shops. It’s available globally, I should mention.

[69:13] Sammie: So we do get quite a few different parts of the world.

[69:17] Ken: We’ll be doing an audiobook, do you think?

[69:19] Sammie: We have already.

[69:20] Ken: Yes, yeah, it’s got an audiobook on Audible.

[69:23] Mary: And Kindle as well, it’s available.

[69:25] Ken: And it’s in our voices as well. Yeah, that’s wicked, man.

[69:29] Sammie: Yeah, but a lot of people are on that these days, because they’re on the move, on the bus, driving, such a great way to consume.

[69:37] Ken: And if I may, I was going to say two things. So if you’re going to buy a copy, if your budget allows it, gift one to somebody else. Oh, nice. You know how there’s a saying, you’re the average of the five people you hang around with, right? We always say, imagine if you could raise that average financially, there’s no point being the only rich person in your circle. Exactly. Imagine if you could get your friends along, get your family members or whoever, bring them along with you, right? So that’s how you create generational wealth, right, it’s created that way.

[70:03] Sammie: That’s how the game started. Yeah, man.

[70:06] Ken: We’re like, you should do this. Yeah, actually, that’s a good idea, take other people along. Yeah, let’s do it. And the second thing is, if you love the work, and we’ve poured our heart and soul into this book, please write us a review, reviews on Goodreads, Audible, Amazon, Waterstones, these reviews are worth so much to us. Take a picture of the book, do a selfie, do a shelfie, do whatever you want to do. Shelfie, yeah, shelfie.

[70:32] Sammie: Yeah, but that’s a new one for me. Shelfie, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. I’ll do a shelfie for you. Let’s get you out there, man, because you guys are awesome. Thank you, man. I mean, you guys were like one of the first people I came across when I first came to Up The Gains. And I just absolutely loved your whole journey, all the way, I’ve been watching since the very start of the video. Thank you, as a class, that means a lot.

[70:54] Mary: Thank you.

[70:55] Sammie: And I honestly hope people read this, because I think it’s going to help, I’m massive on habit, so I was very excited to have this conversation. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on, guys. Oh, thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. Feel free to round through the next thing.

[71:10] Sammie [?]: Just going to save it for you. Just chill for a bit.

[71:15] Ken: Um, yeah, people can find us, you know, at The Humble Penny, obviously, on our socials, Instagram, YouTube, where else, Financial Joy Academy, it’s our sister brand as well. The YouTube is great, by the way.

[71:26] Sammie: So thank you for that. It’s very hard. Oh, YouTube’s hard. Yes, yes. This is going on YouTube, so like and subscribe, subscribe, come on, come on, come on, do it, do it, do a collab, do a collab post. Oh, yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do it.

[71:41] Ken: So we can cross, you know.

[71:43] Sammie: Okay, here you had it first.

[71:44] Ken: Yeah.

[71:45] Sammie: Appreciate it, guys. Thank you so much.

[71:47] Mary: Thank you. Appreciate it.