The Money:Mindshift podcast

A lifequake is a massive burst of change.

I've been burning, I'm just fumes and motivation.

You can only rely on that for so long.

You count up your money and whoever has the most wins.

An involuntary lifequake is when your spouse cheats on you, but a voluntary lifequake is

when you cheat on your spouse.

And it just blew up my business in the best way.

Yeah.

An old board game called The Game of Life.

Welcome to the Money:Mindshift Podcast.

Your Life, Your Money, in that Order.

Welcome back to the Money:Mindshift Podcast, your Life, Your Money, in that order with me,

Dr. Tom.

A couple of months ago, a listener approached us.

She said, and I quote, you seem to assume that life is always going well.

I look at your titles, how to find a job you love, how to have cash in kids, how to

plan a sabbatical, how to retire abroad.

I'm still quoting, you don't seem to appreciate how many disruptions there are in real life.

Divorce, illness, loss, redundancy and all the rest of it.

Thank you so much for that feedback and keep it coming.

And fairness, I don't think we always assume that life is going well, but I take her point.

And so we decided that today we're doing the other side of it.

So we've got the best setbacks, transitions we didn't choose, the big disruptions in life,

that my first guest, Bruce Feiler, calls life quakes.

Bruce is a best selling author who studies life's transitions and how to deal with them.

And later I'm joined by Romany Youell, once Britain's youngest financial planner and how

she helps people through the hardest turns in their lives and how she recently came through

a big one of her own.

As always, I need to get myself into the right frame of mind, which means that I have

to jump down into that rabbit hole.

Give me a moment.

I'm ready to jump.

You know, I used to be reluctant, but over the time I've grown to like it down here,

the stark, crumbly little place, I've even started looking forward to it, which is perhaps

not the healthiest thing to say on a podcast about wellbeing.

After long with my thoughts, getting ready into the conversation with Bruce, I keep

coming back to an exhibition that I saw in London last November.

It was by the Wellcome Collection, an exhibition called The Coming of Age.

And it was about how we see and feel and move through getting older from being a teenager

right through to old age.

And there was an exhibit that I spent a bit of time on at the time, an old board game

called The Game of Life.

Do you know that one?

Anyway, struck me that this game might be the perfect little monument to the story we

tell ourselves about how a life is meant to go the linear life.

And this is how that board game works, right?

You start at a fork and you choose option A, college, which costs you, but might pay

off later.

Option B, straight into a career.

Then you spin the wheel and you move along the track and life happens to you at fixed

stops along the way.

You get married here, you add a couple of pegs to the car for the kids, you buy the

house, you collect your pay and you all finish in the same place.

At the end of the board, you have millionaire estates, if it went well, and more modest

means if it didn't.

And inevitably, you count up your money and whoever has the most wins.

Well, I think we all know the story this game is telling us.

One track, one direction, one way to win.

I get it.

But I also don't think I've ever met a person whose life actually looked like that.

You know what?

That's enough.

I'm prepared for the chat with Bruce.

Take me back up.

And back up, out of the rabbit hole and breathing in the good, clean, Scottish air.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast.

I'm now connected to New York, to Brooklyn, to Bruce Feiler.

Bruce is one of America's most thoughtful voices on contemporary life.

He uses original research into life transitions, life rituals and life stories to help navigate

change.

He's the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including Life is in the Transitions.

These three TED talks have been viewed more than five million times.

And he teaches the TED course, How to Master Life Transitions.

So you get it.

If there's anyone who can help us with how to bounce back, it's got to be him.

Bruce, welcome to the show.

My pleasure.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Bruce, you coined the term lifequake.

What's a lifequake?

So I, well, I'll start with the answer to your question.

A lifequake is a massive burst of change that can lead to times of pain and confusion.

But if handled effectively can lead to times of growth and renewal.

And I chuckled because I'll take a step back and sort of report.

What happened was that I ended up in a lifequake and I didn't have a word for it.

You know, and in a lot of ways, the reaction that people have to my work about, as you

say, navigating change is like you put language to things I didn't know there was language

for, right?

You know, my wife likes to say that I have hard knowledge about soft things.

So what happened was that I hit a very disruptive moment in my life kind of back to back.

I had financial troubles.

I got cancer when I was a dad of three year old twin daughters.

My dad who was never depressed a minute in his life suddenly got Parkinson's got depressed,

tried to take his own life six times in 12 weeks.

So suddenly I was a professional storyteller and I couldn't tell my life story.

When I did, it turned out that almost everybody I talked to had these moments when they also
couldn't tell their life story.

And I basically wanted to do something to help.

And so at this point, I spent the last 10 years collecting and analysing more than 500

life stories, looking for patterns.

And the biggest pattern was that the sort of the idea of a linear life where we kind

of have a one progression, like one job, one relationship, one home, one religious identity

or spiritual identity or even sexual identity.

Like that's dead.

We live much more nonlinear lives with twists and turns.

And a lot of the changes we handle pretty well, but like one in 10 of them is this life

quake.

And the reason that I chose the word lifequake and I think that it's resonated so much with

people is because it's neutral because about half of these are involuntary, right?

You know, we have a downsizing or a pandemic or a diagnosis, but about half of them are

voluntary.

Like we choose to disrupt our lives.

And you know, an involuntary lifequake is when your spouse cheats on you, but a voluntary

lifequake is when you cheat on your spouse, right?

So the term itself, I think needs to be neutral to allow for all of the kinds of disruptive

events that we experience.

And yeah, that is so good.

And can you just from the work you've done, just some numbers, you mentioned one in 10

disruptions, can we quantify the number of disruptions and lifequakes?

We can actually.

Yeah.

And that's a great show that we go through three dozen of what I call a disruptor.

And that could be as small as a thunderbender or a twisted ankle or as big as a cancer diagnosis

or a tornado that takes off the roof of your home.

And that's when every 12 to 18 months, but one in 10 of these becomes one of these lifequakes.

And here's the signature piece of data.

The signature piece of data is the average length of a lifequake is five years.

So if you think we have three, four, five in our lifetime, they take four, five, six

years, that's 25 years.

That means half of our adult lives we spend in these times of transition.

You or someone you know or live with or love is going through one right now.

And so I think that kind of what I've taken from this is that we have sort of normalised

the stable times and we've stigmatised the unstable times.

Yes.

But if we're spending half of our lives in unstable times, we have to flip that, right?

The whole idea that you're going to grit or grind or resilient your way through.

No, that's just wrong.

These are not times of suffering.

There often is pain and confusion, as I said earlier, but it's also opportunities for growth

and renewal.

And that leads to sort of the third lesson I have, which is that transitions are a skill

that we can and must master, right?

So the way to think about this is that the lifequake is the underlying destabilising

event.

The life transition is the human response to that.

It's the way that we get through the lifequake, which is why the most important thing

to do in a lifequake is to make the affirmative decision that you want to get through it.

And that's when you enter the transition, which is where all the skills come from.

Right.

Okay.

I want to come on to this, like how you do respond and make the affirmative response,

as you say, I want to pick up what you just said there with regards to the nonlinear life.

Yeah.

And that this sort of like one path life, you make this point that this is a blip in history

and not the norm.

So I'm wondering, are lifequakes something new there or have we just been telling ourselves

a story that was never true?

Yeah.

That's just such a perceptive and thoughtful question.

And I think that the short answer is this thought that is the latter.

Now, again, the way I have come to understand this, right, is that the way we look at the

world affects how we look at our lives.

So in the ancient world, there were no clocks.

There was no linear time.

They thought life was a cycle because that was an agricultural economy.

Things will kind of went in cycles.

It's actually the Hebrew Bible in the West that introduces the idea of the linear life.

But even in the Middle Ages, if you look at the depictions of life, they thought life

was a staircase up to middle age and then down, like a very linear up and then down, right?

So that's no second relationship.

That's no bouncing back after someone dies.

That's no moving to a retirement community and starting a B&B or an Airbnb, like it's

straight up and straight down.

And in the industrial area, how do they look at the world?

Like, of course, the industrial revolution began in the British Isles.

And what do we have?

Factories, assembly lines, conveyor belts.

These are all linear constructs in the 20th century, whether it's Piaget with children

or Freud with the psychosexual stages or the eight stages of moral development with Ericsson,

the five stages of grief, the hero's journey.

These are all linear constructs.

The problem is that's not how we live.

Like you might live a full abundant life and have your parents die in your 60s, right?

That's the norm.

But you might lose your parents before you're born or as a teenager.

So suddenly you have this massive disruption.

Think of the pandemic, right?

If you were between 39 and 44 and a half, the ages of the traditional midlife crisis,

then you were having a midlife crisis.

But if you were 72 to 79, you were also in crisis or in the case of my children, 14 and

a half, my twins were at the time, you're also in a crisis.

So we have these kind of whenever life crises.

And so I think that the difference is now we know, you're sitting in Scotland, I'm

sitting in Brooklyn, like we're using interwebs and things like that to connect.

We know that changes pandemics, economic disruptions, the butterfly effect, right?

Butterfly flaps and swings in Brazil, there's a tornado in Houston.

Change comes from all over and we just don't have a language to understand it when it happens

to us.

I mentioned at the start that we had a listener challenge us to dedicate an episode to setbacks.

And when we came up with the title, how to bounce back, I immediately knew I wanted to

speak to you because of that work on life transitions and lifequakes.

But the more I got into your approach or thinking style when preparing for this chat, I wondered

whether you actually speak to bouncing back.

Yes.

And I begin to wonder, like, are you suggesting that perhaps we don't need to bounce back

at all, but rather what happens is we come out the other side as a different person.

So bouncing back isn't even the right framing.

It's not even the right goals.

Am I seeing this right?

Yeah, again, bingo.

That's exactly right.

The idea of resilience, the idea of bouncing back, right?

I just did this discourse on the industrial revolution.

That's an industrial concept, right?

The idea of resilience comes from a spring, right?

You pull the spring out and the spring bounces back, right?

It kind of resumes its shape and the amount of bouncing back depends on what quantifies

the degree of resilience.

But that's not what happens, right?

If you look at a life transition, right?

There are three stages, as you've seen from my work, right?

There's what I call the long goodbye.

There's the messy middle.

There's the new beginning, okay?

And people are good at different phases of this.

And so everybody has kind of what I call a transition superpower and a transition Kryptonite,

right?

That idea of the long goodbye is very relevant here.

If you go back to the pandemic, right, which everybody listening to us experience, that

was what I call a crisis of the long goodbye.

Like we believe that we're going to go into hibernation, right?

We're going to get through the initial brunt of it.

And then we're going to bounce back to where we were before.

But that's not what happened.

Some people bounce back.

In fact, that's a perfectly reasonable, but that's not everybody.

Some people bounce sideways.

Some people bounce forward.

Now three, four, five, six years after, we know people are leaving relationships, getting

into relationships.

They are moving 60% of people move in a lifequake.

So this has all sorts of different shapes to it, which is why kind of a big question

of mind is what shape is your life.

So if you bounce back, God bless you.

But I would say most people bounce in a different direction.

And why do some people come out at the other end faster than others?

Yeah, well, that's also a really, really hard question that I get a lot, right?

Can you get through it more quickly?

I think let's just take a lifequake that everybody can understand, right?

The end of a relationship, okay?

Whether that's from a death or let's just take in this situation, a divorce or a breakup.

We all know that the range of emotions and outcomes takes a long time, right?

Put it through my framework.

There's a long goodbye where you have to accept that that relationship has come to

an end.

There's a messy middle where you shed certain habits and experiment with new ones.

And then there's a new beginning.

But we know somebody might be the involuntary recipient of this being their ending.

Okay.

So they've got to deal with a long goodbye, messy middle.

But some people might have started a new relationship even before the old relationship

ends.

So suddenly they're in the new beginning and they haven't even gone through the long goodbye,

right?

And if you have children, as you know, then you're constantly in the new life and you're

also got a foot in the old life.

So, and then you got to move, right?

There's now financial repercussions.

Okay.

There's challenges with the children and it might take the children some period of time

to manifest the.

So that's just one example that there's a wide variety of things.

And so I think what happens is in my experience in coding all these stories is that when

people get into a lifequake, they do one of two things.

The either make a 212 item to do list and say, I'm going to get through it in a weekend

and I'm going to get a blue ribbon and a gold medal.

And you know, I'm going to be the best ever.

Thank you very much.

Let's go.

Okay.

And then the other group of people, they lie under the covers in a fetal position with

a cat and say, woe, is me?

I'm never going to get through this and I'm the only person this ever happened to.

Well, both of them are wrong.

And again, you might be someone who's a to do list, which means you're good at the messy

middle, but it probably means you're not good at accepting that it's an emotional experience

and that there's going to be repercussions that you might have fear or sadness or shame.

And you might struggle to confront your emotions or you might be stuck in the emotions

and not turning the page and have to be nudged or pushed or comforted into experimenting

with new things.

So it's complicated.

That's why it takes a long time.

Yes.

Yes.

Absolutely.

And I think accepting that is probably one of the ingredients.

You're exactly right.

Yeah.

More recently, Bruce, you looked in much more depth at the role of rituals and specific

Now rituals, they have a bit of a mixed reputation, I suppose.

Often they sound like a drag, something we're being given by perhaps a conservative institution.

It's a bit outdated, perhaps even.

But you highlight rituals are really quite important and disruptive moments and during

life quakes and you develop a slightly different take on how to think about them.

Can you build briefly on the importance of rituals during life transitions?

Yeah.

So we've been talking about the work in my book, Life is in the Transitions.

I've just published a new book, A Time to Gather, How Ritual Created the World and

How It Can Save Us and sort of the core idea of this project that I stumbled into when

I had a lifequake and my kids went up to college and I felt homesick in my own home.

If the rituals are one of the few things that we know help bind us to a group, right?

Part of the challenge of being in a life transition is that you tend to feel alone and isolated.

And I remember when I had cancer as a 43 year old man, right?

You're not supposed to have a life threatening cancer.

I would look out my window and I would say, you know, you don't have to do that.

You don't have cancer in your leg.

And yeah, you might not die and not see your children grow up.

And I felt very alone.

Rituals are what we do in times of change, right?

When someone comes in the group, there's a wedding, right?

Or a new baby.

When someone leaves the group like a death or a coming of age.

And we know that they go up the rituals we've done for 300,000 years until this century

when we've turned our backs on them when traditional rituals, as you say, people are rejecting

them.

And one of it is because top down, institutionally mandated, prescribed rituals are very much

not where people are.

But we are seeing a renaissance of new rituals and new ways of gathering, you know, gender

reveals and NICU graduations and sober versaries and cancer versaries and daddy daughter dances

and mom problems and end of life doulas, but end of company doulas, like pet funerals

or a $3 billion business like new ways to gather in times of change.

And that's the story that I wanted to chronicle.

And I think it is a reminder, you know, one of the seven tools I have of how to navigate

a life transition is share it.

Don't go through it alone, right?

And find people to do it with.

And so whatever transition you are in right now, if you make part of it, gathering friends

and loved ones together and you don't need permission, you don't need a prescription, you

don't need your instance, you know, as one millennial ritual designer said to me, I don't

need my parents or my religion to tell me it.

I want it from my double mastectomy or my job loss or my move.

I'm just going to do it.

And it will make you and everyone around you sharing that experience together, which in

a world of loneliness and screens is exactly what we need.

We need new opportunities and invitations to connect.

Yeah.

You know this yourself, Bruce.

I mean, retirement is one of your lifequakes.

And it's a money moment too, which makes it a good test case for this podcast.

And something we discussed often on this show is that people spend 40 years becoming

savers then they retire and the plan asks them overnight to become spenders.

Yes.

And a lot of them just can't.

And many are fortunate, you know, and the maths say they're fine, but nothing gives

them a used word, a permission to actually enjoy it so that they can begin to live the

life they want.

Now, I wonder, could a ritual help here?

Would a ritual mark the day the saving stops and the spending is still out?

Well, this is a great question that, tease, slow burn tease.

A new book that I'm just starting is on this topic and it is on intergenerational families

and how we think about money and inheritance in general.

And I'll say a couple of things here.

The data on money and families, and there is a lot of it, does say one thing quite clearly

that you will get more satisfaction if you spend the money on experiences.

And in this case, I think experiences that are intergenerational is incredibly valuable.

All families are intergenerational families, even families where there is a strange, you

were carrying that estrangement and you were carrying that history and that trauma with

you.

So I would say kind of as a simple step here that a simple, easy way perhaps to give yourself

permission to spend money when you've been saving for a long time is to spend it on things

that bring extended families together.

Because that will deepen the family, that will deepen the connections.

Chances are that the generations that follow you are more economically strained than you

are because we know expenses are going up, housing is going up around the world.

And so they're busy with their children and their lives.

So if you can spend money to bring the children, the grandchildren together, and if you do it

in a way that has some intentionality, you know, rituals need a beginning and middle

and end, we're going to do something.

We're not just going to go off and gather at the beach house or we're not going to necessarily

take a trip to grandma's.

We're going to get together and do something that we can then repeat that can become part

of the family story of connection that we passed down intergenerational.

So I would say that's really the way I think about it, right?

The three pillars of meaning that we use in our lives are what I call the ABCs of meaning.

The A is agency.

That's what you do or make or create.

That's often your work.

The B is belonging, your family, your friends, your loved ones, the people you work with,

the people you march in, protest rallies with, the people that you golf with or whatever

it might be.

And the C is a cause, a calling, a purpose, something higher than yourselves.

And a simple experiment with all your listeners can do, give yourself a hundred points.

And how much of this do you a lot to your A, your B and your C, right?

I'm an ABC.

I'm a writer.

I'm very agentic.

I'm a super involved family member and dad.

Cause less important to me.

My wife works with entrepreneurs around the world.

She's a CAB, you know, very oriented toward helping others, very agentic outside of family

members, you know, friendships are not so important to her.

So I'm probably a 40, 40, 20.

She's probably a 40, 20, 40.

So where are you in the ABCs of meaning?

Let me just ask you, where are you in the ABCs of meaning?

Oh, gosh.

Well, I am in the ABC.

I think I'm probably similar to you at 40, 40, 20 on ABC.

Sounds, sounds about right on the hop, but I've got a, okay.

That's fine.

On the spot, that's good.

Yeah.

But here's the thing.

And here's the thing to remember, in a lifequake, in a life transition, you readjust your

priorities.

So maybe you've been 40, 40, 20 or 50, 30, 20 or whatever it might be because you're

working a lot.

Now, if you're retiring, less of you is going to go to agency more to belonging, perhaps

and more to cause, right?

So maybe you're going to be a 30, 50, 20, right?

Or maybe you're going to go all the way down to 20.

So in a lifequake, pick an A, pick a B, pick a C and start a new personal project

in each one.

And know that when you're going to the change, you're going to reevaluate your priorities.

And so start by reevaluating your priorities and then figure out how you can allot your

time, and in this case, some of your money, to each of the things that you want to advance.

So if your goal is to spend more time with your family, create a ritual, that's great.

If your goal is to give back more, then say, that's why I want to spend my time.

Maybe that's a volunteer situation.

So it doesn't even particularly cost a lot of money.

So decide your ABCs now and decide what you want them to be in this new life.

And then pick projects according to what you decide.

That is so tangible.

Something really to take away for our listeners.

Thank you so much for sharing.

And I will say this work you're doing there on, well, a new way, I suppose, to think about

intergenerational wealth.

That really sounds like something that I want to discuss with you one other point.

But for now, we've got to leave it there.

Bruce, if people wanted to get in touch with you or find out more about you, where

should they go?

I'm all over the Internet thing.

I'm Bruce Feiler, F-E-I-L-E-R.

So you can go to BruceFeiler.com.

I'm on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all of the various platforms.

I love hearing from people.

You can get these books, watch my TED Talks, and let's keep the conversation alive.

I mean, I just will say this.

We can get through it, but we can only get through it if we do it together.

Wonderful message.

Thank you so much, Bruce, for your time.

My pleasure.

Thank you for inviting me.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

Thank you for sticking with me.

Stay tuned until the end because I'll give you my main takeaways from that conversation

with Bruce.

Before that, though, I'm now connecting to Huddersfield in Yorkshire.

So you meet my second guest.

Some of you will know her as The Finance Woman.

Romany Youell, qualified as Britain's youngest financial planner at 18, she said of herself

that she's rewriting financial advice with a modern, approachable, and values-led approach.

And she's helped a lot of people through the hardest moments of their lives.

And more recently, she's come through a big change of her own.

Romany, welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm very excited for this conversation.

Romany, pensions, protection, investments, mortgages.

You were fascinated by financial planning at a very young age.

What got you into this subject that most of us, let's face it, find rather dull?

I feel like I've always been in the profession in a weird way.

I used to go along to my dad's client meetings and things like that.

I watched him grow up, I mocked advice, business from the ground up.

I think I was 11 when I first started going to meetings.

So very, very young.

But I saw the way that he changed people's lives, you know, the conversations that he used

to have with people in their own homes about things that people find really, really confusing

and the way that he just kind of demystified them, they're really simple.

And that's always what inspired me.

Went to college for a couple of months, did the whole usual thing and ended up dropping

out after a couple of months to join my dad's firm.

Did the job at 17 years old, advising on mortgages, which is sometimes crazy to think

about.

And I just realised that I loved it, straight away.

Yeah.

I mean, what you say there, I think is so important.

We are often seeing financial products as though that is something else, but actually

they underpin so much of a successful life.

And it isn't the case that the sort of financial products and the financial planning is totally

detached from life planning, as you say, like getting the finances right is so important

to living a good life.

We just spoke to Bruce, who calls life's big ruptures, lifequakes.

So that's sort of sudden upheavals, right, that remake us.

Can you tell us about a client of yours and how a plan you built carried them through

a lifequake?

Yeah, of course.

I think the kind of unique way that we do things, we do attract quite a few women who

are in difficult positions in their lives, who are going through really, really big changes

and just need someone who can just understand them and relate to them.

One particular example is a lady who had a financial adviser with her husband, always

kind of was in the meetings, but never really feel heard in the meeting.

She felt quite overlooked.

Often the questions were directed at her husband and she felt a little bit talked down to,

you know, they were her words.

But the thing is she never really had too much involvement in the finances.

And it took a divorce, unfortunately, for her to get in touch with us.

She wanted things said in a simple way, plain English, somebody to just really sit down

and just help her, make sense of her finances.

She's never had to do that before.

So we put together a plan for her.

We took the time to really make sure she understood it all.

And now she's independent.

She looks after her two daughters financially as well.

And she's feeling so empowered.

And I think it was the whole sitting down, understanding and just making things simple

for her.

Yeah.

And divorce definitely is a lifequake that is definitely one of those moments that take

a while to recover.

I want to quickly recap your own journey from what I've gathered in preparation for this

because you've had quite an impressive career yourself, but I know it wasn't always smooth

or this sort of like linear climb that perhaps you pictured.

So initially, if I got this right, you were finding it hard to establish yourself.

You were finding it hard to get a foot in an industry that is typically older, typically

male.

I mean, you mentioned it there, the stereotype in going on.

It's quite conservative.

There were perhaps identity and personal questions, lack of introducers on a business level.

And then you turned a corner and you became very successful when using your perceived

weaknesses as strength and then you underwent a branding exercise and you made who you are

part of your brand.

So Bruce Feiler, I think you would maybe call this, you told a new story about yourself.

But since we are interested in life events and setbacks, especially in this episode,

I'm especially interested in a more recent development that I heard you talk about, you

figured you don't want to keep running at that fast pace all the time.

And after a very busy and successful year, you figured that you want to be more intentional

with how you use your time.

Can you tell us how that came about?

What happened there?

Yeah, of course.

So when I first started in the industry, as you mentioned, I didn't have any clients,

didn't have any contacts.

It was a lot younger than the average financial adviser.

And all that meant was that I just had to start from scratch.

I wasn't very confident, I was 18 when I qualified.

And in many cases, I was advising 60 year old men and things like this on their retirement.

But what I sort of realised was that the more I am myself, in client meetings, the more

I show my personality when speaking to the introducers and the more that I kind of post

authentically on social media, the better it was getting.

So I decided to do exactly that.

And it just blew up my business in the best way.

We've got 50 accountants all of the UK trust us to look after the clients, all of them

have completely values that for our value, aligned as are the clients that we work with

now as well.

And I was kind of burning with momentum, if that makes sense.

I thought that if I was to slow down now, things would just stop.

So I almost burnt myself out to a point where I was literally working 12 hours a day, even

on the weekends and things like that, to grow this business.

Very glad that I did it at the time.

I think it was needed to kind of give me that momentum, but it did take me struggling with

a chronic health condition, which meant that I had to slow down.

I didn't have a choice but to slow down.

And the results from that really, really surprised me.

I thought that my business would stop, accountants wouldn't want to use me anymore.

I just wouldn't want to use me basically.

And I couldn't have been more wrong.

Actually, being more intentional with my time, choosing where I spend it and making decision

based on where I actually want to go was way more effective than just completely burning

myself to the ground.

And now I take opportunities that are genuinely aligned, even things like this.

I think first, is this where I want to go?

Is this how I want to be?

And then I make decisions based on that.

And I feel it's so much more energised from doing that.

And my business hasn't just stayed the same.

It's just excelled as well.

I mean, this is so interesting, isn't it?

I totally get the intuition that you've got to keep working these hours so as to grow

the business.

And it sounds counterintuitive that if you slow down, you would still be able to grow,

but so interesting that you say, actually, that happened nevertheless.

And sorry, did you say you were close to burnout or did you self-diagnose at a certain point

in the burnout journey?

So burnout journey for me, it was a self-diagnosis, but it was essentially just feeling really

dull around everything.

It was just because I'd been burning, I'm just fumes and motivation.

You can only rely on that for so long.

And I was doing everything I was doing in my own power upon it.

I was doing my own social media, everything in the business I was doing, not anymore.

It took me again having to spin all those plates to be able to employ the right people

to support me.

And that also helped as well.

But yeah, I think it was just the feeling of going so fast, so long and thinking that

that's what the success was coming from.

But it wasn't, it was genuine legend by just being authentic, being myself, putting myself

out there, even when it felt uncomfortable.

And that is exactly where the growth came from.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I mean, this totally speaks to disrupting and lifequake moment.

So that's a beautiful way to bring this to life.

Something that we thought about today is that this linear life of learn, earn and retire,

that this is dead.

And it was a relatively recent invention anyway.

So, fantasy, perhaps.

I wonder, do you see this conflict in your clients sometimes, that they think they ought

to live a linear life of education and then accumulating wealth, get established, grow

until they aim to sort of like slow down, then they slow down.

And do you refer to your own story, perhaps, sometimes to sort of give them permission

or like an example of that this isn't how it needs to be?

Definitely.

Yeah.

This is a conversation that I have all of the time.

I specialise in helping business owners as well.

So I feel that that's especially prevalent in the fact that they build the business, then

they try to build wealth outside of the business, which is really, really important.

And then at some point, they almost need a little bit of a permission slip to be able

to slow down.

And that's a lot of the conversation that I have of them.

Sometimes it is genuinely saying, look, you've built up this pension, you've got the

ISAs, you've got the support behind you to be able to do this.

Let's do it.

What we waiting for? And sometimes just giving them that permission slip is everything that

they need.

Often it isn't even the financial plan, it's just that permission to slow down, enjoy

everything that you've built, you know, you've done it.

Permission slip, I love that.

That is so good.

Thank you so much, Romany, for sharing your insights today.

If people wanted to find out more about you, where should they go?

I'm on LinkedIn, it's just Romany.

Youell, or on Instagram, thefinancewoman.co.uk.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much again for your time.

This was beautiful.

Thank you.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

Thank you for staying with me.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast, your life, your money in that order.

We've had two conversations and one question, how to bounce back.

So how?

Bruce's point was that we've got this backwards.

We spend as much as 25 years of our adult lives and transition and yet as he put it,

we've normalised the stable times and stigmatised the unstable ones.

So bouncing back was never the aim.

The aim is reinvention.

And here he's left us with something really practical.

A good life, he says, needs three things.

Agency, belonging and cause, your ABC.

Those of us are lopsided.

Bruce reckons he's a 40, 40, 20.

So when a lifequake hits, the move is to know your own numbers because that tells you

what got knocked out and what to rebuild and what proportions.

His most hopeful line was the simplest, though.

Transitions, he said, are a skill we can and must master.

And it starts with one decision that you want to come through it.

Now Romany's point was that money isn't the boring stuff.

Rather, it's what lets you live the life you want.

But what I really liked was what she said about her clients.

The hard part is rarely the maths.

It's giving yourself permission to move on, to close the old chapter, to stop being the

person who's still saving, still striving, I don't know, still braced for the worst,

and become the one who gets to enjoy it, who thought anew about how to use their time.

So she writes them permission slips.

I think Bruce would agree and see in that permission slip a way of marking the moment.

There was no such permission slip, of course, in The Game of Life and chances are no one's

going to hand you one.

So you've got to write it yourself.

For now, thank you, Bruce Feiler, and thank you, Romany Youell, for coming on the show,

and thank you, of course, for listening.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast, your life, your money, in that order.

I'm your host, Dr. Tom, and I see you around.

Thanks for listening to the Money:Mindshift podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like and follow, leave a review, or share it with

someone who's on their own money and lifestyle journey.
A lifequake is a massive burst of change.

I've been burning, I'm just fumes and motivation.

You can only rely on that for so long.

You count up your money and whoever has the most wins.

An involuntary lifequake is when your spouse cheats on you, but a voluntary lifequake is

when you cheat on your spouse.

And it just blew up my business in the best way.

Yeah.

An old board game called The Game of Life.

Welcome to the Money:Mindshift Podcast.

Your Life, Your Money, in that Order.

Welcome back to the Money:Mindshift Podcast, your Life, Your Money, in that order with me,

Dr. Tom.

A couple of months ago, a listener approached us.

She said, and I quote, you seem to assume that life is always going well.

I look at your titles, how to find a job you love, how to have cash in kids, how to

plan a sabbatical, how to retire abroad.

I'm still quoting, you don't seem to appreciate how many disruptions there are in real life.

Divorce, illness, loss, redundancy and all the rest of it.

Thank you so much for that feedback and keep it coming.

And fairness, I don't think we always assume that life is going well, but I take her point.

And so we decided that today we're doing the other side of it.

So we've got the best setbacks, transitions we didn't choose, the big disruptions in life,

that my first guest, Bruce Feiler, calls life quakes.

Bruce is a best selling author who studies life's transitions and how to deal with them.

And later I'm joined by Romany Youell, once Britain's youngest financial planner and how

she helps people through the hardest turns in their lives and how she recently came through

a big one of her own.

As always, I need to get myself into the right frame of mind, which means that I have

to jump down into that rabbit hole.

Give me a moment.

I'm ready to jump.

You know, I used to be reluctant, but over the time I've grown to like it down here,

the stark, crumbly little place, I've even started looking forward to it, which is perhaps

not the healthiest thing to say on a podcast about wellbeing.

After long with my thoughts, getting ready into the conversation with Bruce, I keep

coming back to an exhibition that I saw in London last November.

It was by the Wellcome Collection, an exhibition called The Coming of Age.

And it was about how we see and feel and move through getting older from being a teenager

right through to old age.

And there was an exhibit that I spent a bit of time on at the time, an old board game

called The Game of Life.

Do you know that one?

Anyway, struck me that this game might be the perfect little monument to the story we

tell ourselves about how a life is meant to go the linear life.

And this is how that board game works, right?

You start at a fork and you choose option A, college, which costs you, but might pay

off later.

Option B, straight into a career.

Then you spin the wheel and you move along the track and life happens to you at fixed

stops along the way.

You get married here, you add a couple of pegs to the car for the kids, you buy the

house, you collect your pay and you all finish in the same place.

At the end of the board, you have millionaire estates, if it went well, and more modest

means if it didn't.

And inevitably, you count up your money and whoever has the most wins.

Well, I think we all know the story this game is telling us.

One track, one direction, one way to win.

I get it.

But I also don't think I've ever met a person whose life actually looked like that.

You know what?

That's enough.

I'm prepared for the chat with Bruce.

Take me back up.

And back up, out of the rabbit hole and breathing in the good, clean, Scottish air.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast.

I'm now connected to New York, to Brooklyn, to Bruce Feiler.

Bruce is one of America's most thoughtful voices on contemporary life.

He uses original research into life transitions, life rituals and life stories to help navigate

change.

He's the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including Life is in the Transitions.

These three TED talks have been viewed more than five million times.

And he teaches the TED course, How to Master Life Transitions.

So you get it.

If there's anyone who can help us with how to bounce back, it's got to be him.

Bruce, welcome to the show.

My pleasure.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Bruce, you coined the term lifequake.

What's a lifequake?

So I, well, I'll start with the answer to your question.

A lifequake is a massive burst of change that can lead to times of pain and confusion.

But if handled effectively can lead to times of growth and renewal.

And I chuckled because I'll take a step back and sort of report.

What happened was that I ended up in a lifequake and I didn't have a word for it.

You know, and in a lot of ways, the reaction that people have to my work about, as you

say, navigating change is like you put language to things I didn't know there was language

for, right?

You know, my wife likes to say that I have hard knowledge about soft things.

So what happened was that I hit a very disruptive moment in my life kind of back to back.

I had financial troubles.

I got cancer when I was a dad of three year old twin daughters.

My dad who was never depressed a minute in his life suddenly got Parkinson's got depressed,

tried to take his own life six times in 12 weeks.

So suddenly I was a professional storyteller and I couldn't tell my life story.

When I did, it turned out that almost everybody I talked to had these moments when they also
couldn't tell their life story.

And I basically wanted to do something to help.

And so at this point, I spent the last 10 years collecting and analysing more than 500

life stories, looking for patterns.

And the biggest pattern was that the sort of the idea of a linear life where we kind

of have a one progression, like one job, one relationship, one home, one religious identity

or spiritual identity or even sexual identity.

Like that's dead.

We live much more nonlinear lives with twists and turns.

And a lot of the changes we handle pretty well, but like one in 10 of them is this life

quake.

And the reason that I chose the word lifequake and I think that it's resonated so much with

people is because it's neutral because about half of these are involuntary, right?

You know, we have a downsizing or a pandemic or a diagnosis, but about half of them are

voluntary.

Like we choose to disrupt our lives.

And you know, an involuntary lifequake is when your spouse cheats on you, but a voluntary

lifequake is when you cheat on your spouse, right?

So the term itself, I think needs to be neutral to allow for all of the kinds of disruptive

events that we experience.

And yeah, that is so good.

And can you just from the work you've done, just some numbers, you mentioned one in 10

disruptions, can we quantify the number of disruptions and lifequakes?

We can actually.

Yeah.

And that's a great show that we go through three dozen of what I call a disruptor.

And that could be as small as a thunderbender or a twisted ankle or as big as a cancer diagnosis

or a tornado that takes off the roof of your home.

And that's when every 12 to 18 months, but one in 10 of these becomes one of these lifequakes.

And here's the signature piece of data.

The signature piece of data is the average length of a lifequake is five years.

So if you think we have three, four, five in our lifetime, they take four, five, six

years, that's 25 years.

That means half of our adult lives we spend in these times of transition.

You or someone you know or live with or love is going through one right now.

And so I think that kind of what I've taken from this is that we have sort of normalised

the stable times and we've stigmatised the unstable times.

Yes.

But if we're spending half of our lives in unstable times, we have to flip that, right?

The whole idea that you're going to grit or grind or resilient your way through.

No, that's just wrong.

These are not times of suffering.

There often is pain and confusion, as I said earlier, but it's also opportunities for growth

and renewal.

And that leads to sort of the third lesson I have, which is that transitions are a skill

that we can and must master, right?

So the way to think about this is that the lifequake is the underlying destabilising

event.

The life transition is the human response to that.

It's the way that we get through the lifequake, which is why the most important thing

to do in a lifequake is to make the affirmative decision that you want to get through it.

And that's when you enter the transition, which is where all the skills come from.

Right.

Okay.

I want to come on to this, like how you do respond and make the affirmative response,

as you say, I want to pick up what you just said there with regards to the nonlinear life.

Yeah.

And that this sort of like one path life, you make this point that this is a blip in history

and not the norm.

So I'm wondering, are lifequakes something new there or have we just been telling ourselves

a story that was never true?

Yeah.

That's just such a perceptive and thoughtful question.

And I think that the short answer is this thought that is the latter.

Now, again, the way I have come to understand this, right, is that the way we look at the

world affects how we look at our lives.

So in the ancient world, there were no clocks.

There was no linear time.

They thought life was a cycle because that was an agricultural economy.

Things will kind of went in cycles.

It's actually the Hebrew Bible in the West that introduces the idea of the linear life.

But even in the Middle Ages, if you look at the depictions of life, they thought life

was a staircase up to middle age and then down, like a very linear up and then down, right?

So that's no second relationship.

That's no bouncing back after someone dies.

That's no moving to a retirement community and starting a B&B or an Airbnb, like it's

straight up and straight down.

And in the industrial area, how do they look at the world?

Like, of course, the industrial revolution began in the British Isles.

And what do we have?

Factories, assembly lines, conveyor belts.

These are all linear constructs in the 20th century, whether it's Piaget with children

or Freud with the psychosexual stages or the eight stages of moral development with Ericsson,

the five stages of grief, the hero's journey.

These are all linear constructs.

The problem is that's not how we live.

Like you might live a full abundant life and have your parents die in your 60s, right?

That's the norm.

But you might lose your parents before you're born or as a teenager.

So suddenly you have this massive disruption.

Think of the pandemic, right?

If you were between 39 and 44 and a half, the ages of the traditional midlife crisis,

then you were having a midlife crisis.

But if you were 72 to 79, you were also in crisis or in the case of my children, 14 and

a half, my twins were at the time, you're also in a crisis.

So we have these kind of whenever life crises.

And so I think that the difference is now we know, you're sitting in Scotland, I'm

sitting in Brooklyn, like we're using interwebs and things like that to connect.

We know that changes pandemics, economic disruptions, the butterfly effect, right?

Butterfly flaps and swings in Brazil, there's a tornado in Houston.

Change comes from all over and we just don't have a language to understand it when it happens

to us.

I mentioned at the start that we had a listener challenge us to dedicate an episode to setbacks.

And when we came up with the title, how to bounce back, I immediately knew I wanted to

speak to you because of that work on life transitions and lifequakes.

But the more I got into your approach or thinking style when preparing for this chat, I wondered

whether you actually speak to bouncing back.

Yes.

And I begin to wonder, like, are you suggesting that perhaps we don't need to bounce back

at all, but rather what happens is we come out the other side as a different person.

So bouncing back isn't even the right framing.

It's not even the right goals.

Am I seeing this right?

Yeah, again, bingo.

That's exactly right.

The idea of resilience, the idea of bouncing back, right?

I just did this discourse on the industrial revolution.

That's an industrial concept, right?

The idea of resilience comes from a spring, right?

You pull the spring out and the spring bounces back, right?

It kind of resumes its shape and the amount of bouncing back depends on what quantifies

the degree of resilience.

But that's not what happens, right?

If you look at a life transition, right?

There are three stages, as you've seen from my work, right?

There's what I call the long goodbye.

There's the messy middle.

There's the new beginning, okay?

And people are good at different phases of this.

And so everybody has kind of what I call a transition superpower and a transition Kryptonite,

right?

That idea of the long goodbye is very relevant here.

If you go back to the pandemic, right, which everybody listening to us experience, that

was what I call a crisis of the long goodbye.

Like we believe that we're going to go into hibernation, right?

We're going to get through the initial brunt of it.

And then we're going to bounce back to where we were before.

But that's not what happened.

Some people bounce back.

In fact, that's a perfectly reasonable, but that's not everybody.

Some people bounce sideways.

Some people bounce forward.

Now three, four, five, six years after, we know people are leaving relationships, getting

into relationships.

They are moving 60% of people move in a lifequake.

So this has all sorts of different shapes to it, which is why kind of a big question

of mind is what shape is your life.

So if you bounce back, God bless you.

But I would say most people bounce in a different direction.

And why do some people come out at the other end faster than others?

Yeah, well, that's also a really, really hard question that I get a lot, right?

Can you get through it more quickly?

I think let's just take a lifequake that everybody can understand, right?

The end of a relationship, okay?

Whether that's from a death or let's just take in this situation, a divorce or a breakup.

We all know that the range of emotions and outcomes takes a long time, right?

Put it through my framework.

There's a long goodbye where you have to accept that that relationship has come to

an end.

There's a messy middle where you shed certain habits and experiment with new ones.

And then there's a new beginning.

But we know somebody might be the involuntary recipient of this being their ending.

Okay.

So they've got to deal with a long goodbye, messy middle.

But some people might have started a new relationship even before the old relationship

ends.

So suddenly they're in the new beginning and they haven't even gone through the long goodbye,

right?

And if you have children, as you know, then you're constantly in the new life and you're

also got a foot in the old life.

So, and then you got to move, right?

There's now financial repercussions.

Okay.

There's challenges with the children and it might take the children some period of time

to manifest the.

So that's just one example that there's a wide variety of things.

And so I think what happens is in my experience in coding all these stories is that when

people get into a lifequake, they do one of two things.

The either make a 212 item to do list and say, I'm going to get through it in a weekend

and I'm going to get a blue ribbon and a gold medal.

And you know, I'm going to be the best ever.

Thank you very much.

Let's go.

Okay.

And then the other group of people, they lie under the covers in a fetal position with

a cat and say, woe, is me?

I'm never going to get through this and I'm the only person this ever happened to.

Well, both of them are wrong.

And again, you might be someone who's a to do list, which means you're good at the messy

middle, but it probably means you're not good at accepting that it's an emotional experience

and that there's going to be repercussions that you might have fear or sadness or shame.

And you might struggle to confront your emotions or you might be stuck in the emotions

and not turning the page and have to be nudged or pushed or comforted into experimenting

with new things.

So it's complicated.

That's why it takes a long time.

Yes.

Yes.

Absolutely.

And I think accepting that is probably one of the ingredients.

You're exactly right.

Yeah.

More recently, Bruce, you looked in much more depth at the role of rituals and specific

Now rituals, they have a bit of a mixed reputation, I suppose.

Often they sound like a drag, something we're being given by perhaps a conservative institution.

It's a bit outdated, perhaps even.

But you highlight rituals are really quite important and disruptive moments and during

life quakes and you develop a slightly different take on how to think about them.

Can you build briefly on the importance of rituals during life transitions?

Yeah.

So we've been talking about the work in my book, Life is in the Transitions.

I've just published a new book, A Time to Gather, How Ritual Created the World and

How It Can Save Us and sort of the core idea of this project that I stumbled into when

I had a lifequake and my kids went up to college and I felt homesick in my own home.

If the rituals are one of the few things that we know help bind us to a group, right?

Part of the challenge of being in a life transition is that you tend to feel alone and isolated.

And I remember when I had cancer as a 43 year old man, right?

You're not supposed to have a life threatening cancer.

I would look out my window and I would say, you know, you don't have to do that.

You don't have cancer in your leg.

And yeah, you might not die and not see your children grow up.

And I felt very alone.

Rituals are what we do in times of change, right?

When someone comes in the group, there's a wedding, right?

Or a new baby.

When someone leaves the group like a death or a coming of age.

And we know that they go up the rituals we've done for 300,000 years until this century

when we've turned our backs on them when traditional rituals, as you say, people are rejecting

them.

And one of it is because top down, institutionally mandated, prescribed rituals are very much

not where people are.

But we are seeing a renaissance of new rituals and new ways of gathering, you know, gender

reveals and NICU graduations and sober versaries and cancer versaries and daddy daughter dances

and mom problems and end of life doulas, but end of company doulas, like pet funerals

or a $3 billion business like new ways to gather in times of change.

And that's the story that I wanted to chronicle.

And I think it is a reminder, you know, one of the seven tools I have of how to navigate

a life transition is share it.

Don't go through it alone, right?

And find people to do it with.

And so whatever transition you are in right now, if you make part of it, gathering friends

and loved ones together and you don't need permission, you don't need a prescription, you

don't need your instance, you know, as one millennial ritual designer said to me, I don't

need my parents or my religion to tell me it.

I want it from my double mastectomy or my job loss or my move.

I'm just going to do it.

And it will make you and everyone around you sharing that experience together, which in

a world of loneliness and screens is exactly what we need.

We need new opportunities and invitations to connect.

Yeah.

You know this yourself, Bruce.

I mean, retirement is one of your lifequakes.

And it's a money moment too, which makes it a good test case for this podcast.

And something we discussed often on this show is that people spend 40 years becoming

savers then they retire and the plan asks them overnight to become spenders.

Yes.

And a lot of them just can't.

And many are fortunate, you know, and the maths say they're fine, but nothing gives

them a used word, a permission to actually enjoy it so that they can begin to live the

life they want.

Now, I wonder, could a ritual help here?

Would a ritual mark the day the saving stops and the spending is still out?

Well, this is a great question that, tease, slow burn tease.

A new book that I'm just starting is on this topic and it is on intergenerational families

and how we think about money and inheritance in general.

And I'll say a couple of things here.

The data on money and families, and there is a lot of it, does say one thing quite clearly

that you will get more satisfaction if you spend the money on experiences.

And in this case, I think experiences that are intergenerational is incredibly valuable.

All families are intergenerational families, even families where there is a strange, you

were carrying that estrangement and you were carrying that history and that trauma with

you.

So I would say kind of as a simple step here that a simple, easy way perhaps to give yourself

permission to spend money when you've been saving for a long time is to spend it on things

that bring extended families together.

Because that will deepen the family, that will deepen the connections.

Chances are that the generations that follow you are more economically strained than you

are because we know expenses are going up, housing is going up around the world.

And so they're busy with their children and their lives.

So if you can spend money to bring the children, the grandchildren together, and if you do it

in a way that has some intentionality, you know, rituals need a beginning and middle

and end, we're going to do something.

We're not just going to go off and gather at the beach house or we're not going to necessarily

take a trip to grandma's.

We're going to get together and do something that we can then repeat that can become part

of the family story of connection that we passed down intergenerational.

So I would say that's really the way I think about it, right?

The three pillars of meaning that we use in our lives are what I call the ABCs of meaning.

The A is agency.

That's what you do or make or create.

That's often your work.

The B is belonging, your family, your friends, your loved ones, the people you work with,

the people you march in, protest rallies with, the people that you golf with or whatever

it might be.

And the C is a cause, a calling, a purpose, something higher than yourselves.

And a simple experiment with all your listeners can do, give yourself a hundred points.

And how much of this do you a lot to your A, your B and your C, right?

I'm an ABC.

I'm a writer.

I'm very agentic.

I'm a super involved family member and dad.

Cause less important to me.

My wife works with entrepreneurs around the world.

She's a CAB, you know, very oriented toward helping others, very agentic outside of family

members, you know, friendships are not so important to her.

So I'm probably a 40, 40, 20.

She's probably a 40, 20, 40.

So where are you in the ABCs of meaning?

Let me just ask you, where are you in the ABCs of meaning?

Oh, gosh.

Well, I am in the ABC.

I think I'm probably similar to you at 40, 40, 20 on ABC.

Sounds, sounds about right on the hop, but I've got a, okay.

That's fine.

On the spot, that's good.

Yeah.

But here's the thing.

And here's the thing to remember, in a lifequake, in a life transition, you readjust your

priorities.

So maybe you've been 40, 40, 20 or 50, 30, 20 or whatever it might be because you're

working a lot.

Now, if you're retiring, less of you is going to go to agency more to belonging, perhaps

and more to cause, right?

So maybe you're going to be a 30, 50, 20, right?

Or maybe you're going to go all the way down to 20.

So in a lifequake, pick an A, pick a B, pick a C and start a new personal project

in each one.

And know that when you're going to the change, you're going to reevaluate your priorities.

And so start by reevaluating your priorities and then figure out how you can allot your

time, and in this case, some of your money, to each of the things that you want to advance.

So if your goal is to spend more time with your family, create a ritual, that's great.

If your goal is to give back more, then say, that's why I want to spend my time.

Maybe that's a volunteer situation.

So it doesn't even particularly cost a lot of money.

So decide your ABCs now and decide what you want them to be in this new life.

And then pick projects according to what you decide.

That is so tangible.

Something really to take away for our listeners.

Thank you so much for sharing.

And I will say this work you're doing there on, well, a new way, I suppose, to think about

intergenerational wealth.

That really sounds like something that I want to discuss with you one other point.

But for now, we've got to leave it there.

Bruce, if people wanted to get in touch with you or find out more about you, where

should they go?

I'm all over the Internet thing.

I'm Bruce Feiler, F-E-I-L-E-R.

So you can go to BruceFeiler.com.

I'm on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all of the various platforms.

I love hearing from people.

You can get these books, watch my TED Talks, and let's keep the conversation alive.

I mean, I just will say this.

We can get through it, but we can only get through it if we do it together.

Wonderful message.

Thank you so much, Bruce, for your time.

My pleasure.

Thank you for inviting me.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

Thank you for sticking with me.

Stay tuned until the end because I'll give you my main takeaways from that conversation

with Bruce.

Before that, though, I'm now connecting to Huddersfield in Yorkshire.

So you meet my second guest.

Some of you will know her as The Finance Woman.

Romany Youell, qualified as Britain's youngest financial planner at 18, she said of herself

that she's rewriting financial advice with a modern, approachable, and values-led approach.

And she's helped a lot of people through the hardest moments of their lives.

And more recently, she's come through a big change of her own.

Romany, welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm very excited for this conversation.

Romany, pensions, protection, investments, mortgages.

You were fascinated by financial planning at a very young age.

What got you into this subject that most of us, let's face it, find rather dull?

I feel like I've always been in the profession in a weird way.

I used to go along to my dad's client meetings and things like that.

I watched him grow up, I mocked advice, business from the ground up.

I think I was 11 when I first started going to meetings.

So very, very young.

But I saw the way that he changed people's lives, you know, the conversations that he used

to have with people in their own homes about things that people find really, really confusing

and the way that he just kind of demystified them, they're really simple.

And that's always what inspired me.

Went to college for a couple of months, did the whole usual thing and ended up dropping

out after a couple of months to join my dad's firm.

Did the job at 17 years old, advising on mortgages, which is sometimes crazy to think

about.

And I just realised that I loved it, straight away.

Yeah.

I mean, what you say there, I think is so important.

We are often seeing financial products as though that is something else, but actually

they underpin so much of a successful life.

And it isn't the case that the sort of financial products and the financial planning is totally

detached from life planning, as you say, like getting the finances right is so important

to living a good life.

We just spoke to Bruce, who calls life's big ruptures, lifequakes.

So that's sort of sudden upheavals, right, that remake us.

Can you tell us about a client of yours and how a plan you built carried them through

a lifequake?

Yeah, of course.

I think the kind of unique way that we do things, we do attract quite a few women who

are in difficult positions in their lives, who are going through really, really big changes

and just need someone who can just understand them and relate to them.

One particular example is a lady who had a financial adviser with her husband, always

kind of was in the meetings, but never really feel heard in the meeting.

She felt quite overlooked.

Often the questions were directed at her husband and she felt a little bit talked down to,

you know, they were her words.

But the thing is she never really had too much involvement in the finances.

And it took a divorce, unfortunately, for her to get in touch with us.

She wanted things said in a simple way, plain English, somebody to just really sit down

and just help her, make sense of her finances.

She's never had to do that before.

So we put together a plan for her.

We took the time to really make sure she understood it all.

And now she's independent.

She looks after her two daughters financially as well.

And she's feeling so empowered.

And I think it was the whole sitting down, understanding and just making things simple

for her.

Yeah.

And divorce definitely is a lifequake that is definitely one of those moments that take

a while to recover.

I want to quickly recap your own journey from what I've gathered in preparation for this

because you've had quite an impressive career yourself, but I know it wasn't always smooth

or this sort of like linear climb that perhaps you pictured.

So initially, if I got this right, you were finding it hard to establish yourself.

You were finding it hard to get a foot in an industry that is typically older, typically male.

I mean, you mentioned it there, the stereotype in going on.

It's quite conservative.

There were perhaps identity and personal questions, lack of introducers on a business level.

And then you turned a corner and you became very successful when using your perceived

weaknesses as strength and then you underwent a branding exercise and you made who you are part of your brand.

So Bruce Feiler, I think you would maybe call this, you told a new story about yourself.

But since we are interested in life events and setbacks, especially in this episode,

I'm especially interested in a more recent development that I heard you talk about, you figured you don't want to keep running at that fast pace all the time.

And after a very busy and successful year, you figured that you want to be more intentional with how you use your time.

Can you tell us how that came about?

What happened there?

Yeah, of course.

So when I first started in the industry, as you mentioned, I didn't have any clients, didn't have any contacts.

It was a lot younger than the average financial adviser.

And all that meant was that I just had to start from scratch.

I wasn't very confident, I was 18 when I qualified.

And in many cases, I was advising 60 year old men and things like this on their retirement.

But what I sort of realised was that the more I am myself, in client meetings, the more

I show my personality when speaking to the introducers and the more that I kind of post authentically on social media, the better it was getting.

So I decided to do exactly that.

And it just blew up my business in the best way.

We've got 50 accountants all of the UK trust us to look after the clients, all of them

have completely values that for our value, aligned as are the clients that we work with now as well.

And I was kind of burning with momentum, if that makes sense.

I thought that if I was to slow down now, things would just stop.

So I almost burnt myself out to a point where I was literally working 12 hours a day, even on the weekends and things like that, to grow this business.

Very glad that I did it at the time.

I think it was needed to kind of give me that momentum, but it did take me struggling with a chronic health condition, which meant that I had to slow down.

I didn't have a choice but to slow down.

And the results from that really, really surprised me.

I thought that my business would stop, accountants wouldn't want to use me anymore.

I just wouldn't want to use me basically.

And I couldn't have been more wrong.

Actually, being more intentional with my time, choosing where I spend it and making decision

based on where I actually want to go was way more effective than just completely burning myself to the ground.

And now I take opportunities that are genuinely aligned, even things like this.

I think first, is this where I want to go?

Is this how I want to be?

And then I make decisions based on that.

And I feel it's so much more energised from doing that.

And my business hasn't just stayed the same.

It's just excelled as well.

I mean, this is so interesting, isn't it?

I totally get the intuition that you've got to keep working these hours so as to grow the business.

And it sounds counterintuitive that if you slow down, you would still be able to grow, but so interesting that you say, actually, that happened nevertheless.

And sorry, did you say you were close to burnout or did you self-diagnose at a certain point in the burnout journey?

So burnout journey for me, it was a self-diagnosis, but it was essentially just feeling really dull around everything.

It was just because I'd been burning, I'm just fumes and motivation.

You can only rely on that for so long.

And I was doing everything I was doing in my own power upon it.

I was doing my own social media, everything in the business I was doing, not anymore.

It took me again having to spin all those plates to be able to employ the right people to support me.

And that also helped as well.

But yeah, I think it was just the feeling of going so fast, so long and thinking that that's what the success was coming from.

But it wasn't, it was genuine legend by just being authentic, being myself, putting myself out there, even when it felt uncomfortable.

And that is exactly where the growth came from.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I mean, this totally speaks to disrupting and lifequake moment.

So that's a beautiful way to bring this to life.

Something that we thought about today is that this linear life of learn, earn and retire, that this is dead.

And it was a relatively recent invention anyway.

So, fantasy, perhaps.

I wonder, do you see this conflict in your clients sometimes, that they think they ought

to live a linear life of education and then accumulating wealth, get established, grow until they aim to sort of like slow down, then they slow down.

And do you refer to your own story, perhaps, sometimes to sort of give them permission or like an example of that this isn't how it needs to be?

Definitely.

Yeah.

This is a conversation that I have all of the time.

I specialise in helping business owners as well.

So I feel that that's especially prevalent in the fact that they build the business, then they try to build wealth outside of the business, which is really, really important.

And then at some point, they almost need a little bit of a permission slip to be able to slow down.

And that's a lot of the conversation that I have of them.

Sometimes it is genuinely saying, look, you've built up this pension, you've got the

ISAs, you've got the support behind you to be able to do this.

Let's do it.

What we waiting for? And sometimes just giving them that permission slip is everything that they need.

Often it isn't even the financial plan, it's just that permission to slow down, enjoy everything that you've built, you know, you've done it.

Permission slip, I love that.

That is so good.

Thank you so much, Romany, for sharing your insights today.

If people wanted to find out more about you, where should they go?

I'm on LinkedIn, it's just Romany.

Youell, or on Instagram, thefinancewoman.co.uk.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much again for your time.

This was beautiful.

Thank you.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

Thank you for staying with me.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast, your life, your money in that order.

We've had two conversations and one question, how to bounce back.

So how?

Bruce's point was that we've got this backwards.

We spend as much as 25 years of our adult lives and transition and yet as he put it, we've normalised the stable times and stigmatised the unstable ones.

So bouncing back was never the aim.

The aim is reinvention.

And here he's left us with something really practical.

A good life, he says, needs three things.

Agency, belonging and cause, your ABC.

Those of us are lopsided.

Bruce reckons he's a 40, 40, 20.

So when a lifequake hits, the move is to know your own numbers because that tells you what got knocked out and what to rebuild and what proportions.

His most hopeful line was the simplest, though.

Transitions, he said, are a skill we can and must master.

And it starts with one decision that you want to come through it.

Now Romany's point was that money isn't the boring stuff.

Rather, it's what lets you live the life you want.

But what I really liked was what she said about her clients.

The hard part is rarely the maths.

It's giving yourself permission to move on, to close the old chapter, to stop being the person who's still saving, still striving, I don't know, still braced for the worst, and become the one who gets to enjoy it, who thought anew about how to use their time.

So she writes them permission slips.

I think Bruce would agree and see in that permission slip a way of marking the moment.

There was no such permission slip, of course, in The Game of Life and chances are no one's going to hand you one.

So you've got to write it yourself.

For now, thank you, Bruce Feiler, and thank you, Romany Youell, for coming on the show, and thank you, of course, for listening.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast, your life, your money, in that order.

I'm your host, Dr. Tom, and I see you around.

Thanks for listening to the Money:Mindshift podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like and follow, leave a review, or share it with someone who's on their own money and lifestyle journey. 

This helps make it emotionally safe.

And I'd call that a successful experiment.

I know we like to say that the sun will come up tomorrow, and very likely it will, but who knows what else is going to happen.

Back in 2013, I attended a start-you-in-chillato business.

Maybe go right for a while, maybe go left for a while.

Something else came up, and then something else after that, and 16 years later we're still here.

Welcome to the Money Mind Shift Podcast.

Your life, your money, in that order.

Welcome back to the Money Mind Shift Podcast.

Your life, your money, in that order with me, Dr. Tom, and really glad to have you back.

Remember, we finished last season with an episode on planning.

How to build a financial plan.

And if you quote that one, you'll know that planning done well is actually quite a liberating thing.

It gives you structure, direction, a sense of where you're going.

But here's the thing, a plan assumes you already know what you want, and sometimes, quite often actually, you don't.

Sometimes you're standing at a fork on the road, and the question isn't, how do I plan?

It's something more difficult.

What do I actually do here?

It could be career stuff, like, you know, what to study, whether to study at all, what to do with your working life, whether to go self-employed, when to stop.

It could be relationship stuff, whether to commit, whether to have kids, whether to stay in that relationship, perhaps.

Home stuff, buy your rent, stay or go.

Here, somewhere completely different.

These are all big decisions, and they are hard.

So today, we're looking at how you make them.

And we have two brilliant guests.

MeghaancLurtzs is a global expert on the psychology of financial planning.

She spent her career thinking about how people actually make decisions, and Marguerite Spina.

She's a former colleague of mine from Egon, who, at some point, faced one of those folks in the road herself, and she did something about it.

She's not at Egon any longer.

She's making ice cream.

Before that, she made a big decision, and she tells us how.

Before we get started, though, I still have that place where I can mentally prepare for the show.

Yes, the rabbit hole dropped me in.

Oh, nice to be back here, the rabbit hole.

Mentally preparing for this episode.

You know what?

I kept coming back to this decision that I took myself, and that was 8th of January 2010.

Many people in Britain actually remember that day, because the entire country was under snow.

It was a satellite image of Britain blanketed in white, and that made the front page of pretty much every newspaper the following morning.

Perhaps you remember that still.

That was the day that Josie and I arrived in Edinburgh.

We had two suitcases, and we just sold most of our belongings in Berlin, got on a plane to see if here in Edinburgh we may start a career.

We both just graduated.

There was a window, and we just took it.

Perhaps you should know, we knew Edinburgh only from four hours on a train stopover, so it wasn't exactly a sort of well-informed decision, but we liked Edinburgh well enough to just do it.

We didn't know if we'd find jobs where we'd end up living any of those things, but a month later we both had work,

but some of those contracts had ended, and we wondered, is this it?

But something else came up, and then something else after that.

And 16 years later we're still here.

Same home for 13 years now, two kids, and I'd call that a successful experiment.

But then I also wonder, success or failure?

Is that even the right frame for an experiment?

Okay, I'm ready. Get me out of here.

Okay, dust me off. This is the Money Mind Shift podcast, your life, your money, in that order.

Meghaan Lurtz, I followed her work for a while now, and I think it's genuinely excellent.

She's a professor of practice at Kansas State University, and also teaches financial psychology at Columbia.

She's got a sub-stack, less lonely money, where she speaks to the general public, always with lots of tangible recommendations.

Meghaan, thank you so much for joining the Money Mind Shift podcast. Great to have you.

Yeah, happy to be here.

Meghaan, many people know they should have a financial plan, and we've actually talked on the show on how to build a plan.

But I was really keen to speak to you because you're pointing something that might sound like the opposite of a plan.

You say, experiment.

And I want you to elaborate on this a little bit in this context.

How can experimenting actually help when we are facing a big decision?

So I should probably clarify. It's not experiment or plan.

It's kind of let's experiment our way to a better plan.

That's kind of how I think about it.

And the reason I feel that way is because planning for me assumes that you already kind of know yourself, and perhaps you would know the terrain.

And there's a lot of psychological research that says you don't actually know yourself very well.

And more than that, you probably really don't know your future self.

And I think all of us would probably agree that terrain being just what lies ahead in the future, none of us know. I know we like to say that the sun will come up tomorrow and very likely it will, but who knows what else is going to happen.

So if we plan is sort of assuming that we're going to be able to control these things or think about these things that we make sense to ourselves, that will make sense to our future self, but that isn't actually very true.

And so this idea of experimenting, it assumes that you don't, you know, like you don't have to know.

And I think that that's closer to the truth.

So, you know, most of us don't fail at whatever we're trying to do, save money, for example, because we don't know what to do.

You know, we do know we're supposed to save more.

We fail because we don't know how that fits into the texture of our own lives.

You know, we have a full budget, where in the heck is this extra $200 or $500 going to come from?

And so that how piece question is not a straight line.

It's more like a landscape that you kind of have to walk and test and revise, maybe go right for a while, maybe go left for a while.

And this idea then of the experiment, you know, this is small, it's time bound, it's reversible.

And I think a question that I'm sure you're going to ask me later, it's really important to this idea of debrief.

And I think that this helps make it emotionally safe.

And so, when you're not committing to this new life where you have no idea what's going to happen, you're kind of able to gather some data.

And that mindset shift, you know, in my work with clients, it really helps them when they're stuck.

It kind of pulls or loosens this idea of the need to be certain, which like as a human, get it.

Like we really like that feeling.

But taking this experiment or mindset, it allows us to just be open, trying to plan your way, you know, through really complex systems.

This is incredibly hard to do.

And so this experiment or mindset allows us to be more open, allows us to be more forgiving.

And I think ultimately leads to better plans.

Yeah, I really like this contrast.

So it's not planning or experimenting.

It's both.

And I like the metaphors you used.

Can I pull on this a little bit?

So it's almost as though planning is like you see yourself surrounded by mountains.

And then you see the summit and you say, this is where I want to go.

And then this is the plan of how I get there.

Am I seeing this right?

So experimenting is more like the world is not mountains, but it's like a wonder world.

And you're kind of like wanting to see like where you are and be mindful of your resources and who you're with.

And then try an error.

Am I seeing this right?

Absolutely.

And I distinguish between three things, whether this is important or not, not sure, but I distinguish between vision.

I want to climb a mountain.

The plan.

Okay.

I have a mountain in mind and I intend to reach the summit and the experimenting.

Well, I'm going to start going down this path.

And then once I discover that, you know, that it's iced over or I don't know, the bridge fell down.

Well, you know, then I'm going to have to like experiment my way to, you know, what ever I'm going to attempt to do next.

And so it is the relationship between these three things and to recognize that they are indeed different and that they can help each other out.

You know, and so for your listeners that have a financial planner or that want a financial planner or that are thinking about getting a financial plan, you know, a plan.

Yes, we want them.

We want you to have them having one certainly helps the probability of you getting to that summit, you know, wherever you want to go.

But there can also be these moments when we make some of these big decisions, especially ones where we sort of feel like we just get one shot at it, you know, like, hopefully, we can hire ones.

Hopefully we just get married once.

Hopefully, we're not trying to like try all these things on.

So there's this idea that there could be some experimentation that could be done along the way that if we want to be married, we want to have a happy marriage, we want to have a great house.

We want some of these things.

That is the plan.

But how we get there and how we can get there better and feel more fulfilled when we get to that summit, I think that that relates to this idea of experimenting.

Yeah, perfect.

So let's make this concrete, then, and you mentioned some of those big life decisions.

So when you think about some of those, right, getting married, retiring, buying a home, perhaps going self employed after years of salary, we're actually after this speaking to someone who's done exactly this.

So what does it look like in practice for decisions that feels that significant?

Yeah, so experimenting in practice is relatively simple.

You're going to try X for Y period of time, and then you're going to debrief about it.

Like, we'll keep coming back to that structure.

The structure of experimentation is very, very simple.

And so think about retirement.

Well, what about semi retirement?

I work with people all the time that tell me things like, I want to spend three months in Paris.

And I'll be like, okay, cool.

Like, have you ever been to France?

They're like, no.

Okay.

Do you speak French?

No.

Okay.

Well, how about instead of having this goal that we are having this plan, you know, that you're going to spend three months in France, how about this year you take a month off and you go to France, or you take a week off and you go to France, or, you know, semi retirement, you know, just take time off.

Take a long period of time off, not a week, a long period, you know, a month, three months, take a sabbatical, six months, and actually see, like, how do you spend your time?

You know, what do you like?

What do you not like?

You know, but this is essentially experimenting with time, money, attention, relationships, and what that really looks like before going full bore.

Okay.

Maybe you think, right, moving on a move and buy a new house, you know, pay rent in the city.

Where you want to live, you know, for six months.

Think about maybe being able to even just vacation to that city and see if you like it.

Like, there are many things that could be done there.

Yeah.

Considering employment, you know, take a freelance client, you know, before you actually fully jump.

I think actually in marriage, we do this a lot.

We will live together, we'll travel together.

Maybe we merge, you know, one of our accounts, you know, before we merge everything, you know, people are, you know, like, you know, we're going to be able to do that.

You know, people are creeping into marriage.

And I think that that's a good thing.

And not because we want to be one foot in, one foot out.

A key aspect of good experimentation is to have full participation.

You know, we want to be hopeful that this is going to work.

And we're going to try to make that feel as real as possible.

We're not trying to hedge, essentially, through experimentation.

You want to actually feel something.

You know, when you come out the other side of it, you know, what was good, what was bad, what was bad.

What was worth it.

What was actually valuable.

Yeah.

And if you, I don't know, go on vacation with someone that you thought, maybe, okay, maybe this is the person and you're like, that was a horrible experience.

Well, now, you know, and you know, it's not a success or failure.

Yeah.

This is just, you know, I would much rather have a bad vacation and never get married and end up with a bad marriage, you know, then to get married, hope it's all going to be okay and never take a good vacation for the rest of my life.

Like that sounds quite bad.

Yeah.

You know, I think that there is a lot actually to be done with many of the big ones, you know, that we talk about all the time.

Yeah.

Different ways to think about it.

Two quick follow up questions.

One, just on what you said there, there's no success or failure when you do an experiment.

Can you build on this?

Yeah, that it's just an experiment.

You know, like I am a researcher.

I think of stuff to try all the time.

And when it doesn't work, you still learn something.

It's not necessarily a problem in the experiment or mindset that it doesn't go to plan.

And in fact, sometimes when it doesn't go to plan, this can be almost more informational, more insightful, more compelling and interesting, you know, then something actually going to plan.

Yeah.

And so I think that's what I would definitely think for some of these big, very emotional moments that we have in life, retirement, buying your first house, buying a new house, selling your house that your kids grew up in, getting married, becoming self and like, these are huge emotional moments, you know, as much as they are huge financial moments and kind of feeling our way forward.

How do we feel about this particular success or this particular failure as a piece of data?

I quote my dear friend, Dr. Joy Leary, you know, she reminds us that just because something feels different, that doesn't mean that it's wrong.

You know, it means that it's different.

Yeah.

And then what can be understood for who you are today and for wherever it is that you're trying to go.

What does that different mean?

What data does this provide?

And so, yeah, let's not success and failure and more about just what can be learned.

Perfect.

No, that's really good.

I really like this framing.

And then also very quick.

So you mentioned that when you do experiments, then you hinted at that there is some sort of investment, sometimes a financial investment, emotional investment, certainly time investment and so on.

Am I seeing this right?

You're saying be intentional about that investment.

Be certain like what you're willing to risk when you do this experiment.

Is that part of it?

Yeah, I think so.

And that goes back to that structure.

You know, I'm going to try X for Y, you know, and then I'm in debrief, but you may be thinking, okay, yeah, I mean, even my own husband, who is now my husband, I remember when we were dating, and he had asked me to marry him a couple of times.

I was kind of like, yeah, I don't know, you know, like, I had never really thought that marriage was for me.

And I said to him, look, I'm never going to marry you until we actually go on vacation.

And within two weeks, I had plane tickets to San Francisco.

And so we went to San Francisco and we had just the most amazing time.

You know, it was so much fun.

I was with what felt like my best friend the entire time.

So I'm glad that the data showed, you know, success.

But again, like had it shown failure, you know, I was still going to be excited.

I still knew that I loved this person.

I also know that I really loved to travel and that that's a big part of my life.

And I think travel sometimes illuminates like, what do people do when things go wrong?

What do people do in stressful situations?

What do people do in places that are not familiar to them?

You know, this kind of gives insight, I think, into just people's psyche in a way that living life perhaps doesn't.

And so it was interesting for me to go through that experience.

But at that time in my life, I mean, this was when for me experimenting really took hold.

And so I actively was thinking about that when I went on this vacation with this person who at the time was my boyfriend,

you know, like, what is this going to tell me?

You know, what am I helping to learn?

And can I be all in and vulnerable or open or, you know, whatever was called from my side to really fully partake in the experiment?

You mentioned that keyword a couple of times debriefing and you gave a hint here at the importance of assessing the data that you've gathered as part of the experiment.

And you mentioned previously financial planners.

So I suppose if you have a financial planner, it is that financial planner you should be sitting down with and debriefing.

But if you don't have a financial planner, if perhaps you're just on your own or with a partner or whatever sort of social convoy you're moving in, what's the right way to approach the interpretation of the data that you've gathered?

Yeah, I do want to just say that like the debrief is the hinge.

That's like the one part of the experimenting that you really can't go without because if not, you're just like trying stuff.

Yeah.

And then not really thinking about, you know, how does this matter to what I'm ultimately trying to do?

That how does this matter to what I'm ultimately trying to do is really the important part.

That's where the learning happens. That's where the adaptation happens. That's where the adjustments happen, you know, to still be back or, you know, reorient you to whatever the plan is to achieve this ultimate vision.

So journaling is a great way to do this.

I know that people like upload their journals, everyone's small, like into chat.

I'm not saying that you should do that, but it's a very interesting idea that like, what are the patterns?

You know, what am I trying to figure out?

I think it's a great way.

But even just rereading. I mean, I've kept journals throughout my life.

I'm a writer, sometimes looking back at stuff that I wrote like forever ago.

You know, it's just kind of a window into where I was, you know, emotionally.

And so this would be wonderful.

You know, so take note, you know, if you go live in that other city, if you go on vacation and go to Spain, if you go on holiday with your loved one, like take note of like what that time is like, and wait a month or a week, you know, and then read it again.

You know, and still like what comes up for you.

I love the idea of talking with a friend, talking with a partner.

You can talk with an advisor, especially if it's a friend or your partner.

And you say like, Oh, yeah, it was fine.

You know, a good friend will be like, well, that didn't really sound fine.

You know, like, probably like, you happen in half out, you know, tell me a little bit more about that.

And they're going to try to encourage you to go deeper.

They're going to be like, well, what surprised you?

You know, what felt worth it?

You know, and these questions about discomfort, about values, about what was new, about, you know, what signal is coming through.

Is this novelty?

Is this, you know, what is this thing?

That is so much easier understood in communion with others, especially with somebody that knows us well.

So be it your friend, be it your partner, call your brother, your mom, you know, whatever.

Call somebody that loves you, that cares about you, that is interested in your perspective and share with them what you were thinking about, what you did and what's coming up.

You know, and what you intend to learn about that as it relates to your broader plan.

Yeah, I guess that's important to share in advance, right?

So to say, well, I'm going into this experiment.

This is what I'm trying to achieve or this is what I'm hoping to achieve, et cetera.

But let's have a conversation afterwards.

So you kind of like frame it, you kind of like mentally prepare them and commit to having that conversation later on.

And I want to push on one thing, and this is buying a home.

So you can't really try to run a mortgage.

And I wonder if this experiment idea still holds for something like that, or if there are decisions where you need a different approach.

So I'm going to push back on this a little bit.

I think that there's still plenty that you could experiment with, even when it comes to this idea of a house.

So you probably can't experiment with the closing, you know, like that.

That's going to, that one's kind of set in stone.

But decisions, you know, that are not irreversible.

Inputs that are not irreversible.

So live on the mortgage payment, calculate it, know what it is, and then try to do that for three to six months, you know, sustain it.

And then set up, you know, some sort of automatic transfer for yourself, you know, for the difference between what your rent maybe is and the projected payment plus taxes and then live that way for three to six months and see how it feels.

You know, is it too tight?

Is it okay?

You know, like make sure that the money situation feels good.

Another thing that you could do, as we mentioned earlier, you could experiment with the location, you know, spend weekends in the neighborhood where you intend to go.

Do the actual commute, drive over there, you know, on like a rainy Tuesday, get in your car and you drive to wherever you're supposed to be going.

Rent a house, you know, if you're between houses, maybe you've sold your house, rent the house, which I know many financial planners would be like, oh, don't say that.

But like, it's okay.

We're going to do a short term rental for six months.

We're going to make sure we really like the place that we're in, because the more murderous situation is you get there, you hate it.

You hate every day.

You hate your neighbors.

And you can't wait until just like two years go by so that you can sell this house.

And in fact, you end up selling it at a loss because you're just like, I have to get out of here.

You know, like this is not what we want, you know, so look for things that are reversible, you know, instead experimenting with the decision, you know, are there little.

Experiments that you could run before, you know, the ultimate leap of faith, if you will, that you could test out different components, you know, and so then by the time you sign for the house, you know, we know that we can afford the rent.

We know that we really like the neighbors.

We know that we really like the neighborhood.

You know, we enjoy spending time there.

You already know.

Yeah.

Instead of it just being like one huge financial and emotional guess.

Yeah.

No, that's beautiful and so practical.

And again, I can see how the financial planner or the objectively planning person would say, no, don't do this, you know, the rent.

But actually, you know, it's part of a budget and experiment budget.

So that again is beautiful.

Meghaan, you have a sub stack called less lonely money, which can highly recommend.

It's really good.

And there's an article that you published earlier in January called skip the resolution and start the test where you say off yourself that when you.

Face big decision, you oftentimes wanting to get it right and then you do the research, you list the pros and cons and you do all the imaginations of what possible futures are, et cetera.

How has your own approach to making big decisions changed as a result of, you know, what you've learned about experiments?

Yeah.

Well, I think for anybody that's stuck or anybody that's like a ruminator like myself, where I like to have like 50 million scenarios, you know, before I'm able to actually put one foot in front of the house.

You know, we sort of mentioned it earlier that there's something that just gives a little bit of wiggle room.

You know, when we move from, should I do this really big thing to what is one small time bound thing that I could try that's related to this thing in like the next 30 days.

And so maybe you even write that sentence down, you know, again, if you're going to journal or if you're not going to journal, but you have a partner, you're going to say, look, we're facing this big thing.

I know that I'm spiraling.

And so what I'm going to do, you know, is I'm going to do X for Y amount of time.

And then I want to talk about it on this date.

I want to talk about what I learned and how it matters to this particular thing.

You know, that's it.

And so that move then from should I to, you know, what could be learned for me has really helped to release that pattern of scrambling and spiraling and just allowed me to lean into what is such a wonderful, wonderful thing.

And that is of curiosity, you know, like curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also really helps make, you know, a lot better decisions, you know, and so put your debrief on the calendar today.

You know, I'm facing a huge life change right now.

I've been living in Europe pretty much consistently for the past eight years.

My husband is in the military and we are not only moving back to the United States where I haven't lived in quite some time, but we are moving back with children, which we did not necessarily have when we lived in the United States.

And so we have when we left so that'll be different.

And my husband is retiring from the military like everything is going to explode.

That's how it feels.

So we constantly do this, like whether it's about kids, whether it's about experimenting with what our kids will like or what we might like. And you know, coming up with plans for that.

And this really helped us to have more confidence and feel more comfortable, you know, leaning into that aspect of curiosity and allowing things to bend and flex as needed for the ultimate plan of, you know, getting back to the US being near our family and building a life.

And from everything you've taught me and from everything I've learned at this conversation, I'm pretty confident that you're very well placed to deal with the uncertainty that is now to you.

Meghaan, this is a fantastic conversation.

Absolutely wonderful in terms of the insights really learned a lot.

If people wanted to find out more about you, where should they go?

Well, you mentioned sub stack.

That's where I do most of my writing and I talk about, you know, my personal life, but also this intersection of money and psychology and emotions and relationships and, you know, kind of how it all fits together.

So certainly if you enjoy the Money Mind Shift podcast, you'll probably very much enjoy some of the things that are written there.

And then I'm also very active on LinkedIn.

Okay.

I'm pretty easy to check down.

My name is spelled pretty funny.

And I'm all the time posting research or something about what I've written or just ideas for financial conversations and, you know, how to have them better there.

Okay, perfect.

We make sure the links to LinkedIn sub stack, including the right spelling of your name is in the show notes office pop.

Thank you so much, Meghaan, for joining us.

This was a fantastic conversation.

Thank you.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

That was such a good conversation.

And this contrast between planning and experimenting is something I want to come back to at the end.

Hold that thought right now, though.

I'm really glad to get to speak with Marguerite Spina.

Marguerite was a colleague of mine at Aegon until about five years ago when she made a big decision.

She left the corporate job to set up Villagio Gelato.

Handmade Italian ice cream built from scratch.

Really curious to hear how that happened.

Marguerite, it's great to see you.

It's lovely to be here.

Thank you so much for joining.

You've obviously been with us at Aegon until was it three and a half years ago?

Three and a half years ago, yes.

Time flies and at Aegon, we are, of course, in an industry that spends a lot of energy helping people plan for the future.

And then you made a big decision that probably didn't come from a spreadsheet.

Can you tell us about that idea?

Yes, certainly. It definitely didn't come from a spreadsheet.

I talk a lot about things coming from feelings with my business and it's very driven.

And I know my why is because of my family.

So it's definitely came from one, my Italian heritage, of both my side and my husband's side.

Back in 2013, I attended a Start Your Angelato business course and it was a little bit of fun.

It was just pipe dream at that point.

Fast forward to COVID times.

We had a young family.

The business world was changing a little bit.

And actually, we knew that things had to change maybe for our home life in terms of our personal time and our time with our family and what we're investing in our family.

And that's where we kind of thought, actually, we could pull out the stuff.

Pull out the certificate and see if our pipe dreams got any legs to stand on.

And would it still work in terms of flexibility for creating a home life that we wanted to create?

So, yeah.

And did I hear this right?

That you sort of faced into this?

Yeah.

Because we just spoke to Meghaan Lurtz around experimenting, like going to markets, perhaps selling something to friends, starting as a side hustler.

Is that what you did as you sort of faced into this?

Yeah, that's exactly what I did.

So, you know, I'm very risk adverse.

And I thought of just jumping in and starting my own gelatria was too daunting for me.

And as I've mentioned before, having time at home and having a flexibility with my family is paramount.

It's of utmost importance to me.

So, actually, it did start with me just selling to my neighbours and then my friends.

But actually, I quickly soved out and was invited to long-term local farmers market in our village, which then I sold out of that as well.

So, I kept on having these proof of concepts, I suppose, which forced me to then go to the next stage and scale up.

So, after the farmers market, I was doing that maybe for about a year, a year and a half.

I thought, actually, it's got a bit of grit now.

It's sticking.

And we could maybe go to the next stage of, you know, a premises.

Wow.

I mean, this really sounds like a fantastic case study following that discussion we just had with Meghaan.

And just to bring in some of the subjects that we discussed, what I see in your story, so she would have spoken about needing to take calculated risks or calculated losses so that you sort of like, okay, well, if I tried this, I may lose eggs, but at least I've tried something and learned something and then I move on.

Was that the mindset that you had as well then?

Absolutely.

You know, as I've mentioned, I started off small.

I am risk averse and I would wait until I have fulfilled one area such as, you know, my sales to neighbors and friends before I even considered a farmers market.

And I know it sounds small to most people, but to me, that was like a big jump.

And then from the farmers market, I would wait until I was sailing out and customers were needing more from me until I thought, actually, you know, I'm pushing my boundaries here, let's say and scale up.

So I would always satisfy that proof of concept first.

And I suppose as well, my uncle would always talk to me about costs, so the risk of, you know, money we're investing into these projects.

So, you know, you go to a farmers market, you buy a gazebo or a table and some marketing materials, and that can be a bit scary when it's your money.

You know, you're not going to a cost center and asking for a code of someone else's money.

It's your money, but my uncle would always say, okay, what is it the cost of?

Is it a cost of, is it a holiday?

Could you not go on holiday next year if it didn't work?

And that kind of stuck with me, you know, it began to like materialize these costs that I was investing of my own money and thinking, would I be comfortable not having that?

You know, am I comfortable not going on holiday next year if this doesn't work?

Of course, a flip side, is it?

It could work.

And your holiday as well and surely paid for next year.

So yeah, I do that quite a lot.

And the other thing that Meghaan spoke to was the need to assess success or failure, we spoke a little bit about whether that's the right term within an experiment, but success or failure of the experiment and that you need to take some time or time to reflect, like whether or not something has worked to determine what next.

And is that also something that you'd say you've done somewhat methodologically or systematically?

Like how did you approach this?

I suppose I was saying I was kind of forced into that part and it should be the part that I'm quite good at.

However, when you're doing the doing and starting up your own business, and for me, I was busy making product and updating my website and building a website that sometimes out reflection piece,

you genuinely don't have time for it because you're wearing a million hats.

So I was forced into it.

I worked really closely with Business Gateway.

They've been great at helping with business advice.

And they ran a course called Women in Entrepreneurship,

and I was in this first cohort.

They had a business coach and we were forced to do this assessment piece.

So it was almost like traffic lights.

What is working?

What's not working?

What are we posing?

What are we going to really put a lot of effort behind?

And that was a whole week's work as part of this course.

So I was forced into it.

Although I should have done it way beforehand, I was forced into doing that.

And now I do it not as often as I should probably, again, the many hats that I need to wear.

It's hard to fit that in during the summer, but I certainly do it near enough every winter when I have a bit more time on my hands.

You know, what's went well this year, what hasn't went well, and it really has helped steer me in the right direction or be a little bit more confident in the choices that I make.

So yeah, it is hard and I don't want to take all the credit for doing that by myself.

Business gateway, we should say very quick.

That's a government run scheme to help entrepreneurs who want to set up their business with exactly that startup phase, right?

Exactly.

Can I come back a little bit to that decision when you made the jump, when you left Egon and decided to invest in this gelato-making business?

How were you financially prepared for this?

Did you have some money put aside in, I don't know, did you tap into emergency savings?

What did you do?

So I think the important thing to note here was where I was in the stage of my life.

So I had just finished maternity leave.

So our family were actually, we were really used to actually living off a reduced wage or 1.5 of a wage.

I don't know how to calculate it.

But it certainly wasn't a double income home going down to a single.

We're already reduced slightly.

So that part didn't scare us as much.

In terms of being financially prepared for it, I did have savings.

And again, we go back to that risk thing of out of my savings, what was I prepared to lose without it feeling too risky?

I did invest machinery that was the bulk of my money in savings.

But I know that it had some sort of resale value as well.

So yeah, I think the financial impact was that we were slightly prepared through savings and investments.

But our day-to-day spending wasn't impacted as much as we thought it was going to be because of where we were in our life, you know, with children.

And if I'm being brutally honest as well, it's not as if we were going out to fancy restaurants every weekend, you know, to young children.

It was a lot of early nights, swimming lessons, clubs, and not that exciting that I had a high expenditure day-to-day.

However, it's worth noting that my husband and I, we did have a pretty frank discussion.

You know, we sat down together and we said, what would make this work?

I know we're not spending the same amount as we used to.

However, some things might need to change day-to-day.

It did take a very, very frank conversation between the two of us of what we could do.

Yeah, there's so much in this. I mean, this is exactly a question I ask myself.

What may I regret more if I did this or not this?

And so I see that in there.

Obviously, there's a bit of a joke in this discussion because we spoke about experimenting at the need to experiment along the way.

And obviously you are making gelato.

So I bet you've done a lot of experiments along the way with the gelato.

And the point that Meghan made was that there's no such thing as failure and success.

There's only data that has been gathered along the way.

In that sense, I wondered, is there a gelato flavor that gave you some very useful data?

Sure. I mean, I think the core flavor, so it's if you're a gelato, that's your base flavor.

And I spent a long time being very pernickety getting at exactly how I wanted.

I have a nice crew mentor, which sounds ridiculous when I say that you have someone in your life called a nice crew mentor, but I do.

And I think he was a wits end with me with this Fjordalati.

But that's your base.

And when you've got that right, really, realistically, anything shoots work after there.

So if you're adding chocolate, you should have a really great chocolate.

And if you're adding strawberries into your Fjordalati or a raspberry ripple, technically it should work.

So that is the core piece of data that I use for me.

I've also even went as far as pushing it, which it should have been a failure, but I don't think it was.

So it was a pizza ice cream.

So I made a sweet tomato gelato base, which, again, the foundations was the Fjordalati.

And then I grated some Parmesan cheese through this sweet tomato gelato.

Now, on paper, that would be horrendous.

And I got a few messages going, you have got to be kidding us, not April Fools.

This is not going to work.

Everyone came out to try it and it worked.

And I'm convinced it's because I had a date to that my Fjordalati recipe worked.

Of course, there are going to be awful flavors, I'm sure of it.

But I feel proud of myself that what should have been a failure because of good data became a success.

Yeah, amazing.

I mean, wonderful insight in there.

Get the foundations right.

Then the rest follows.

Marguerite, thank you so much for sharing your story.

If people wanted to get in touch, find out more about your ice cream and all this where they go.

So you can find me on Instagram.

So it's just Fjordalati or Facebook, the exact same, or my website.

So for Lajuagilato.shop, being a one woman band, it's me who'll speak to.

So if you send a message or anything like that, it'll be me you speak to.

So yes, you can get me on any of those channels.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Congratulations for that big risk that you took and the courage you had along the way.

And I'm really glad to hear of the success that you've had.

Delight to speak into you again.

It was really lovely.

Thank you so much.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

This is the Money Rine Shift podcast, your life, your money in that order.

I think we have a pretty good answer to the question we started with today.

How do you make a big decision and the answer is experiment?

Or more precisely experiment your way to a better plan when Meghaan said it's not either or it's both.

And I've been thinking about this a lot since this conversation.

It makes real sense.

As Meghaan said, we are often not very good at knowing what we want.

So experimenting before you commit is actually a real rational move.

And I love the mortgage example.

I said, you can't try to run the mortgage.

And she said, well, the mortgage itself is a final decision.

Yes, but before you get there, you can move to the neighborhood you're thinking about.

If you've never lived in a house, rent one first, learn what it's like to put the bins out on a Wednesday to deal with a garden to actually live that life before you sign for it.

It might sound like a lot of effort, but it might also save you from a decision you regret.

And Marguerite, she showed us what that looks like in practice.

Before she left Aegon, she was already testing the idea.

Farmers markets on weekends delivering to people's homes, asking herself, is there something here? Is there demand?

So she didn't leave blindly. She experimented first.

And I think that's actually a real useful frame for the moment we're in.

There's a lot of uncertainty right now, political, economic, technological.

And it can make planning feel almost impossible, but maybe uncertainty becomes more manageable if you approach it experimentally.

Staying close to what you have, being clear about what you can afford to lose, staying open to what might become possible from here.

For now, thank you so much to Meghan and to Marguerite for their time and their thinking.

Thank you for joining. Great to have you back.

This is the Money Mind Shift Podcast, your life, your money in that order.

I'm Dr. Tom and I see you around.

Thanks for listening to the Money Mind Shift Podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like and follow, leave a review, or share it with someone who's on their own money and lifestyle journey.

Thank you.

This helps make it emotionally safe.

And I'd call that a successful experiment.

I know we like to say that the sun will come up tomorrow, and very likely it will, but who knows what else is going to happen.

Back in 2013, I attended a start-you-in-chillato business.

Maybe go right for a while, maybe go left for a while.

Something else came up, and then something else after that, and 16 years later we're still here.

Welcome to the Money Mind Shift Podcast.

Your life, your money, in that order.

Welcome back to the Money Mind Shift Podcast.

Your life, your money, in that order with me, Dr. Tom, and really glad to have you back.

Remember, we finished last season with an episode on planning.

How to build a financial plan.

And if you quote that one, you'll know that planning done well is actually quite a liberating thing.

It gives you structure, direction, a sense of where you're going.

But here's the thing, a plan assumes you already know what you want, and sometimes, quite often actually, you don't.

Sometimes you're standing at a fork on the road, and the question isn't, how do I plan?

It's something more difficult.

What do I actually do here?

It could be career stuff, like, you know, what to study, whether to study at all, what to do with your working life, whether to go self-employed, when to stop.

It could be relationship stuff, whether to commit, whether to have kids, whether to stay in that relationship, perhaps.

Home stuff, buy your rent, stay or go.

Here, somewhere completely different.

These are all big decisions, and they are hard.

So today, we're looking at how you make them.

And we have two brilliant guests.

Megan Lerts is a global expert on the psychology of financial planning.

She spent her career thinking about how people actually make decisions, and Marguerite Spina.

She's a former colleague of mine from Egon, who, at some point, faced one of those folks in the road herself, and she did something about it.

She's not at Egon any longer.

She's making ice cream.

Before that, she made a big decision, and she tells us how.

Before we get started, though, I still have that place where I can mentally prepare for the show.

Yes, the rabbit hole dropped me in.

Oh, nice to be back here, the rabbit hole.

Mentally preparing for this episode.

You know what?

I kept coming back to this decision that I took myself, and that was 8th of January 2010.

Many people in Britain actually remember that day, because the entire country was under snow.

It was a satellite image of Britain blanketed in white, and that made the front page of pretty much every newspaper the following morning.

Perhaps you remember that still.

That was the day that Josie and I arrived in Edinburgh.

We had two suitcases, and we just sold most of our belongings in Berlin, got on a plane to see if here in Edinburgh we may start a career.

We both just graduated.

There was a window, and we just took it.

Perhaps you should know, we knew Edinburgh only from four hours on a train stopover, so it wasn't exactly a sort of well-informed decision, but we liked Edinburgh well enough to just do it.

We didn't know if we'd find jobs where we'd end up living any of those things, but a month later we both had work, but some of those contracts had ended, and we wondered, is this it?

But something else came up, and then something else after that.

And 16 years later we're still here.

Same home for 13 years now, two kids, and I'd call that a successful experiment.

But then I also wonder, success or failure?

Is that even the right frame for an experiment?

Okay, I'm ready. Get me out of here.

Okay, dust me off. This is the Money Mind Shift podcast, your life, your money, in that order.

Megan Lertz, I followed her work for a while now, and I think it's genuinely excellent.

She's a professor of practice at Kansas State University, and also teaches financial psychology at Columbia.

She's got a sub-stack, less lonely money, where she speaks to the general public, always with lots of tangible recommendations.

Megan, thank you so much for joining the Money Mind Shift podcast. Great to have you.

Yeah, happy to be here.

Megan, many people know they should have a financial plan, and we've actually talked on the show on how to build a plan.

But I was really keen to speak to you because you're pointing something that might sound like the opposite of a plan.

You say, experiment.

And I want you to elaborate on this a little bit in this context.

How can experimenting actually help when we are facing a big decision?

So I should probably clarify. It's not experiment or plan.

It's kind of let's experiment our way to a better plan.

That's kind of how I think about it.

And the reason I feel that way is because planning for me assumes that you already kind of know yourself, and perhaps you would know the terrain.

And there's a lot of psychological research that says you don't actually know yourself very well.

And more than that, you probably really don't know your future self.

And I think all of us would probably agree that terrain being just what lies ahead in the future, none of us know. I know we like to say that the sun will come up tomorrow and very likely it will, but who knows what else is going to happen.

So if we plan is sort of assuming that we're going to be able to control these things or think about these things that we make sense to ourselves, that will make sense to our future self, but that isn't actually very true.

And so this idea of experimenting, it assumes that you don't, you know, like you don't have to know.

And I think that that's closer to the truth.

So, you know, most of us don't fail at whatever we're trying to do, save money, for example, because we don't know what to do.

You know, we do know we're supposed to save more.

We fail because we don't know how that fits into the texture of our own lives.

You know, we have a full budget, where in the heck is this extra $200 or $500 going to come from?

And so that how piece question is not a straight line.

It's more like a landscape that you kind of have to walk and test and revise, maybe go right for a while, maybe go left for a while.

And this idea then of the experiment, you know, this is small, it's time bound, it's reversible.

And I think a question that I'm sure you're going to ask me later, it's really important to this idea of debrief.

And I think that this helps make it emotionally safe.

And so, when you're not committing to this new life where you have no idea what's going to happen, you're kind of able to gather some data.

And that mindset shift, you know, in my work with clients, it really helps them when they're stuck.

It kind of pulls or loosens this idea of the need to be certain, which like as a human, get it.

Like we really like that feeling.

But taking this experiment or mindset, it allows us to just be open, trying to plan your way, you know, through really complex systems.

This is incredibly hard to do.

And so this experiment or mindset allows us to be more open, allows us to be more forgiving.

And I think ultimately leads to better plans.

Yeah, I really like this contrast.

So it's not planning or experimenting.

It's both.

And I like the metaphors you used.

Can I pull on this a little bit?

So it's almost as though planning is like you see yourself surrounded by mountains.

And then you see the summit and you say, this is where I want to go.

And then this is the plan of how I get there.

Am I seeing this right?

So experimenting is more like the world is not mountains, but it's like a wonder world.

And you're kind of like wanting to see like where you are and be mindful of your resources and who you're with.

And then try an error.

Am I seeing this right?

Absolutely.

And I distinguish between three things, whether this is important or not, not sure, but I distinguish between vision.

I want to climb a mountain.

The plan.

Okay.

I have a mountain in mind and I intend to reach the summit and the experimenting.

Well, I'm going to start going down this path.

And then once I discover that, you know, that it's iced over or I don't know, the bridge fell down.

Well, you know, then I'm going to have to like experiment my way to, you know, what ever I'm going to attempt to do next.

And so it is the relationship between these three things and to recognize that they are indeed different and that they can help each other out.

You know, and so for your listeners that have a financial planner or that want a financial planner or that are thinking about getting a financial plan, you know, a plan.

Yes, we want them.

We want you to have them having one certainly helps the probability of you getting to that summit, you know, wherever you want to go.

But there can also be these moments when we make some of these big decisions, especially ones where we sort of feel like we just get one shot at it, you know, like, hopefully, we can hire ones.

Hopefully we just get married once.

Hopefully, we're not trying to like try all these things on.

So there's this idea that there could be some experimentation that could be done along the way that if we want to be married, we want to have a happy marriage, we want to have a great house.

We want some of these things.

That is the plan.

But how we get there and how we can get there better and feel more fulfilled when we get to that summit, I think that that relates to this idea of experimenting.

Yeah, perfect.

So let's make this concrete, then, and you mentioned some of those big life decisions.

So when you think about some of those, right, getting married, retiring, buying a home, perhaps going self employed after years of salary, we're actually after this speaking to someone who's done exactly this.

So what does it look like in practice for decisions that feels that significant?

Yeah, so experimenting in practice is relatively simple.

You're going to try X for Y period of time, and then you're going to debrief about it.

Like, we'll keep coming back to that structure.

The structure of experimentation is very, very simple.

And so think about retirement.

Well, what about semi retirement?

I work with people all the time that tell me things like, I want to spend three months in Paris.

And I'll be like, okay, cool.

Like, have you ever been to France?

They're like, no.

Okay.

Do you speak French?

No.

Okay.

Well, how about instead of having this goal that we are having this plan, you know, that you're going to spend three months in France, how about this year you take a month off and you go to France, or you take a week off and you go to France, or, you know, semi retirement, you know, just take time off.

Take a long period of time off, not a week, a long period, you know, a month, three months, take a sabbatical, six months, and actually see, like, how do you spend your time?

You know, what do you like?

What do you not like?

You know, but this is essentially experimenting with time, money, attention, relationships, and what that really looks like before going full bore.

Okay.

Maybe you think, right, moving on a move and buy a new house, you know, pay rent in the city.

Where you want to live, you know, for six months.

Think about maybe being able to even just vacation to that city and see if you like it.

Like, there are many things that could be done there.

Yeah.

Considering employment, you know, take a freelance client, you know, before you actually fully jump.

I think actually in marriage, we do this a lot.

We will live together, we'll travel together.

Maybe we merge, you know, one of our accounts, you know, before we merge everything, you know, people are, you know, like, you know, we're going to be able to do that.

You know, people are creeping into marriage.

And I think that that's a good thing.

And not because we want to be one foot in, one foot out.

A key aspect of good experimentation is to have full participation.

You know, we want to be hopeful that this is going to work.

And we're going to try to make that feel as real as possible.

We're not trying to hedge, essentially, through experimentation.

You want to actually feel something.

You know, when you come out the other side of it, you know, what was good, what was bad, what was bad.

What was worth it.

What was actually valuable.

Yeah.

And if you, I don't know, go on vacation with someone that you thought, maybe, okay, maybe this is the person and you're like, that was a horrible experience.

Well, now, you know, and you know, it's not a success or failure.

Yeah.

This is just, you know, I would much rather have a bad vacation and never get married and end up with a bad marriage, you know, then to get married, hope it's all going to be okay and never take a good vacation for the rest of my life.

Like that sounds quite bad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I think that there is a lot actually to be done with many of the big ones, you know, that we talk about all the time.

Yeah.

Different ways to think about it.

Two quick follow up questions.

One, just on what you said there, there's no success or failure when you do an experiment.

Can you build on this?

Yeah, that it's just an experiment.

You know, like I am a researcher.

I think of stuff to try all the time.

And when it doesn't work, you still learn something.

It's not necessarily a problem in the experiment or mindset that it doesn't go to plan.

And in fact, sometimes when it doesn't go to plan, this can be almost more informational, more insightful, more compelling and interesting, you know, then something actually going to plan.

Yeah.

And so I think that's what I would definitely think for some of these big, very emotional moments that we have in life, retirement, buying your first house, buying a new house, selling your house that your kids grew up in, getting married, becoming self and like, these are huge emotional moments, you know, as much as they are huge financial moments and kind of feeling our way forward.

How do we feel about this particular success or this particular failure as a piece of data?

I quote my dear friend, Dr. Joy Leary, you know, she reminds us that just because something feels different, that doesn't mean that it's wrong.

You know, it means that it's different.

Yeah.

And then what can be understood for who you are today and for wherever it is that you're trying to go.

What does that different mean?

What data does this provide?

And so, yeah, let's not success and failure and more about just what can be learned.

Perfect.

No, that's really good.

I really like this framing.

And then also very quick.

So you mentioned that when you do experiments, then you hinted at that there is some sort of investment, sometimes a financial investment, emotional investment, certainly time investment and so on.

Am I seeing this right?

You're saying be intentional about that investment.

Be certain like what you're willing to risk when you do this experiment.

Is that part of it?

Yeah, I think so.

And that goes back to that structure.

You know, I'm going to try X for Y, you know, and then I'm in debrief, but you may be thinking, okay, yeah, I mean, even my own husband, who is now my husband, I remember when we were dating, and he had asked me to marry him a couple of times.

I was kind of like, yeah, I don't know, you know, like, I had never really thought that marriage was for me.

And I said to him, look, I'm never going to marry you until we actually go on vacation.

And within two weeks, I had plane tickets to San Francisco.

And so we went to San Francisco and we had just the most amazing time.

You know, it was so much fun.

I was with what felt like my best friend the entire time.

So I'm glad that the data showed, you know, success.

But again, like had it shown failure, you know, I was still going to be excited.

I still knew that I loved this person.

I also know that I really loved to travel and that that's a big part of my life.

And I think travel sometimes illuminates like, what do people do when things go wrong?

What do people do in stressful situations?

What do people do in places that are not familiar to them?

You know, this kind of gives insight, I think, into just people's psyche in a way that living life perhaps doesn't.

And so it was interesting for me to go through that experience.

But at that time in my life, I mean, this was when for me experimenting really took hold.

And so I actively was thinking about that when I went on this vacation with this person who at the time was my boyfriend, you know, like, what is this going to tell me?

You know, what am I helping to learn?

And can I be all in and vulnerable or open or, you know, whatever was called from my side to really fully partake in the experiment?

You mentioned that keyword a couple of times debriefing and you gave a hint here at the importance of assessing the data that you've gathered as part of the experiment.

And you mentioned previously financial planners.

So I suppose if you have a financial planner, it is that financial planner you should be sitting down with and debriefing.

But if you don't have a financial planner, if perhaps you're just on your own or with a partner or whatever sort of social convoy you're moving in, what's the right way to approach the interpretation of the data that you've gathered?

Yeah, I do want to just say that like the debrief is the hinge.

That's like the one part of the experimenting that you really can't go without because if not, you're just like trying stuff.

Yeah.

And then not really thinking about, you know, how does this matter to what I'm ultimately trying to do?

That how does this matter to what I'm ultimately trying to do is really the important part.

That's where the learning happens. That's where the adaptation happens. That's where the adjustments happen, you know, to still be back or, you know, reorient you to whatever the plan is to achieve this ultimate vision.

So journaling is a great way to do this.

I know that people like upload their journals, everyone's small, like into chat.

I'm not saying that you should do that, but it's a very interesting idea that like, what are the patterns?

You know, what am I trying to figure out?

I think it's a great way.

But even just rereading. I mean, I've kept journals throughout my life.

I'm a writer, sometimes looking back at stuff that I wrote like forever ago.

You know, it's just kind of a window into where I was, you know, emotionally.

And so this would be wonderful.

You know, so take note, you know, if you go live in that other city, if you go on vacation and go to Spain, if you go on holiday with your loved one, like take note of like what that time is like, and wait a month or a week, you know, and then read it again.

You know, and still like what comes up for you.

I love the idea of talking with a friend, talking with a partner.

You can talk with an advisor, especially if it's a friend or your partner.

And you say like, Oh, yeah, it was fine.

You know, a good friend will be like, well, that didn't really sound fine.

You know, like, probably like, you happen in half out, you know, tell me a little bit more about that.

And they're going to try to encourage you to go deeper.

They're going to be like, well, what surprised you?

You know, what felt worth it?

You know, and these questions about discomfort, about values, about what was new, about, you know, what signal is coming through.

Is this novelty?

Is this, you know, what is this thing?

That is so much easier understood in communion with others, especially with somebody that knows us well.

So be it your friend, be it your partner, call your brother, your mom, you know, whatever.

Call somebody that loves you, that cares about you, that is interested in your perspective and share with them what you were thinking about, what you did and what's coming up.

You know, and what you intend to learn about that as it relates to your broader plan.

Yeah, I guess that's important to share in advance, right?

So to say, well, I'm going into this experiment.

This is what I'm trying to achieve or this is what I'm hoping to achieve, et cetera.

But let's have a conversation afterwards.

So you kind of like frame it, you kind of like mentally prepare them and commit to having that conversation later on.

And I want to push on one thing, and this is buying a home.

So you can't really try to run a mortgage.

And I wonder if this experiment idea still holds for something like that, or if there are decisions where you need a different approach.

So I'm going to push back on this a little bit.

I think that there's still plenty that you could experiment with, even when it comes to this idea of a house.

So you probably can't experiment with the closing, you know, like that.

That's going to, that one's kind of set in stone.

But decisions, you know, that are not irreversible.

Inputs that are not irreversible.

So live on the mortgage payment, calculate it, know what it is, and then try to do that for three to six months, you know, sustain it.

And then set up, you know, some sort of automatic transfer for yourself, you know, for the difference between what your rent maybe is and the projected payment plus taxes and then live that way for three to six months and see how it feels.

You know, is it too tight?

Is it okay?

You know, like make sure that the money situation feels good.

Another thing that you could do, as we mentioned earlier, you could experiment with the location, you know, spend weekends in the neighborhood where you intend to go.

Do the actual commute, drive over there, you know, on like a rainy Tuesday, get in your car and you drive to wherever you're supposed to be going.

Rent a house, you know, if you're between houses, maybe you've sold your house, rent the house, which I know many financial planners would be like, oh, don't say that.

But like, it's okay.

We're going to do a short term rental for six months.

We're going to make sure we really like the place that we're in, because the more murderous situation is you get there, you hate it.

You hate every day.

You hate your neighbors.

And you can't wait until just like two years go by so that you can sell this house.

And in fact, you end up selling it at a loss because you're just like, I have to get out of here.

You know, like this is not what we want, you know, so look for things that are reversible, you know, instead experimenting with the decision, you know, are there little.

Experiments that you could run before, you know, the ultimate leap of faith, if you will, that you could test out different components, you know, and so then by the time you sign for the house, you know, we know that we can afford the rent.

We know that we really like the neighbors.

We know that we really like the neighborhood.

You know, we enjoy spending time there.

You already know.

Yeah.

Instead of it just being like one huge financial and emotional guess.

Yeah.

No, that's beautiful and so practical.

And again, I can see how the financial planner or the objectively planning person would say, no, don't do this, you know, the rent.

But actually, you know, it's part of a budget and experiment budget.

So that again is beautiful.

Megan, you have a sub stack called less lonely money, which can highly recommend.

It's really good.

And there's an article that you published earlier in January called skip the resolution and start the test where you say off yourself that when you.

Face big decision, you oftentimes wanting to get it right and then you do the research, you list the pros and cons and you do all the imaginations of what possible futures are, et cetera.

How has your own approach to making big decisions changed as a result of, you know, what you've learned about experiments?

Yeah.

Well, I think for anybody that's stuck or anybody that's like a ruminator like myself, where I like to have like 50 million scenarios, you know, before I'm able to actually put one foot in front of the house.

You know, we sort of mentioned it earlier that there's something that just gives a little bit of wiggle room.

You know, when we move from, should I do this really big thing to what is one small time bound thing that I could try that's related to this thing in like the next 30 days.

And so maybe you even write that sentence down, you know, again, if you're going to journal or if you're not going to journal, but you have a partner, you're going to say, look, we're facing this big thing.

I know that I'm spiraling.

And so what I'm going to do, you know, is I'm going to do X for Y amount of time.

And then I want to talk about it on this date.

I want to talk about what I learned and how it matters to this particular thing.

You know, that's it.

And so that move then from should I to, you know, what could be learned for me has really helped to release that pattern of scrambling and spiraling and just allowed me to lean into what is such a wonderful, wonderful thing.

And that is of curiosity, you know, like curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also really helps make, you know, a lot better decisions, you know, and so put your debrief on the calendar today.

You know, I'm facing a huge life change right now.

I've been living in Europe pretty much consistently for the past eight years.

My husband is in the military and we are not only moving back to the United States where I haven't lived in quite some time, but we are moving back with children, which we did not necessarily have when we lived in the United States.

And so we have when we left so that'll be different.

And my husband is retiring from the military like everything is going to explode.

That's how it feels.

So we constantly do this, like whether it's about kids, whether it's about experimenting with what our kids will like or what we might like. And you know, coming up with plans for that.

And this really helped us to have more confidence and feel more comfortable, you know, leaning into that aspect of curiosity and allowing things to bend and flex as needed for the ultimate plan of, you know, getting back to the US being near our family and building a life.

And from everything you've taught me and from everything I've learned at this conversation, I'm pretty confident that you're very well placed to deal with the uncertainty that is now to you.

Megan, this is a fantastic conversation.

Absolutely wonderful in terms of the insights really learned a lot.

If people wanted to find out more about you, where should they go?

Well, you mentioned sub stack.

That's where I do most of my writing and I talk about, you know, my personal life, but also this intersection of money and psychology and emotions and relationships and, you know, kind of how it all fits together.

So certainly if you enjoy the Money Mind Shift podcast, you'll probably very much enjoy some of the things that are written there.

And then I'm also very active on LinkedIn.

Okay.

I'm pretty easy to check down.

My name is spelled pretty funny.

And I'm all the time posting research or something about what I've written or just ideas for financial conversations and, you know, how to have them better there.

Okay, perfect.

We make sure the links to LinkedIn sub stack, including the right spelling of your name is in the show notes office pop.

Thank you so much, Megan, for joining us.

This was a fantastic conversation.

Thank you.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

That was such a good conversation.

And this contrast between planning and experimenting is something I want to come back to at the end.

Hold that thought right now, though.

I'm really glad to get to speak with Marguerite Spina.

Marguerite was a colleague of mine at Aegon until about five years ago when she made a big decision.

She left the corporate job to set up Villagio Gelato.

Handmade Italian ice cream built from scratch.

Really curious to hear how that happened.

Marguerite, it's great to see you.

It's lovely to be here.

Thank you so much for joining.

You've obviously been with us at Aegon until was it three and a half years ago?

Three and a half years ago, yes.

Time flies and at Aegon, we are, of course, in an industry that spends a lot of energy helping people plan for the future.

And then you made a big decision that probably didn't come from a spreadsheet.

Can you tell us about that idea?

Yes, certainly.

It definitely didn't come from a spreadsheet.

I talk a lot about things coming from feelings with my business and it's very driven.

And I know my why is because of my family.

So it's definitely came from one, my Italian heritage, of both my side and my husband's side.

Back in 2013, I attended a Start Your Angelato business course and it was a little bit of fun.

It was just pipe dream at that point.

Fast forward to COVID times.

We had a young family.

The business world was changing a little bit.

And actually, we knew that things had to change maybe for our home life in terms of our personal time and our time with our family and what we're investing in our family.

And that's where we kind of thought, actually, we could pull out the stuff.

Pull out the certificate and see if our pipe dreams got any legs to stand on.

And would it still work in terms of flexibility for creating a home life that we wanted to create?

So, yeah.

And did I hear this right?

That you sort of faced into this?

Yeah.

Because we just spoke to Megan Lourdes around experimenting, like going to markets, perhaps selling something to friends, starting as a side hustler.

Is that what you did as you sort of faced into this?

Yeah, that's exactly what I did.

So, you know, I'm very risk adverse.

And I thought of just jumping in and starting my own gelatria was too daunting for me.

And as I've mentioned before, having time at home and having a flexibility with my family is paramount.

It's of utmost importance to me.

So, actually, it did start with me just selling to my neighbours and then my friends.

But actually, I quickly soved out and was invited to long-term local farmers market in our village, which then I sold out of that as well.

So, I kept on having these proof of concepts, I suppose, which forced me to then go to the next stage and scale up.

So, after the farmers market, I was doing that maybe for about a year, a year and a half.

I thought, actually, it's got a bit of grit now.

It's sticking.

And we could maybe go to the next stage of, you know, a premises.

Wow.

I mean, this really sounds like a fantastic case study following that discussion we just had with Megan.

And just to bring in some of the subjects that we discussed, what I see in your story, so she would have spoken about needing to take calculated risks or calculated losses so that you sort of like, okay, well, if I tried this, I may lose eggs, but at least I've tried something and learned something and then I move on.

Was that the mindset that you had as well then?

Absolutely.

You know, as I've mentioned, I started off small.

I am risk averse and I would wait until I have fulfilled one area such as, you know, my sales to neighbors and friends before I even considered a farmers market.

And I know it sounds small to most people, but to me, that was like a big jump.

And then from the farmers market, I would wait until I was sailing out and customers were needing more from me until I thought, actually, you know, I'm pushing my boundaries here, let's say and scale up.

So I would always satisfy that proof of concept first.

And I suppose as well, my uncle would always talk to me about costs, so the risk of, you know, money we're investing into these projects.

So, you know, you go to a farmers market, you buy a gazebo or a table and some marketing materials, and that can be a bit scary when it's your money.

You know, you're not going to a cost center and asking for a code of someone else's money.

It's your money, but my uncle would always say, okay, what is it the cost of?

Is it a cost of, is it a holiday?

Could you not go on holiday next year if it didn't work?

And that kind of stuck with me, you know, it began to like materialize these costs that I was investing of my own money and thinking, would I be comfortable not having that?

You know, am I comfortable not going on holiday next year if this doesn't work?

Of course, a flip side, is it?

It could work.

And your holiday as well and surely paid for next year.

So yeah, I do that quite a lot.

And the other thing that Megan spoke to was the need to assess success or failure, we spoke a little bit about whether that's the right term within an experiment, but success or failure of the experiment and that you need to take some time or time to reflect, like whether or not something has worked to determine what next.

And is that also something that you'd say you've done somewhat methodologically or systematically?

Like how did you approach this?

I suppose I was saying I was kind of forced into that part and it should be the part that I'm quite good at.

However, when you're doing the doing and starting up your own business, and for me, I was busy making product and updating my website and building a website that sometimes out reflection piece, you genuinely don't have time for it because you're wearing a million hats.

So I was forced into it.

I worked really closely with Business Gateway.

They've been great at helping with business advice.

And they ran a course called Women in Entrepreneurship, and I was in this first cohort.

They had a business coach and we were forced to do this assessment piece.

So it was almost like traffic lights.

What is working?

What's not working?

What are we posing?

What are we going to really put a lot of effort behind?

And that was a whole week's work as part of this course.

So I was forced into it.

Although I should have done it way beforehand, I was forced into doing that.

And now I do it not as often as I should probably, again, the many hats that I need to wear.

It's hard to fit that in during the summer, but I certainly do it near enough every winter when I have a bit more time on my hands.

You know, what's went well this year, what hasn't went well, and it really has helped steer me in the right direction or be a little bit more confident in the choices that I make.

So yeah, it is hard and I don't want to take all the credit for doing that by myself.

Hmm.

Business gateway, we should say very quick.

That's a government run scheme to help entrepreneurs who want to set up their business with exactly that startup phase, right?

Exactly.

Can I come back a little bit to that decision when you made the jump, when you left Egon and decided to invest in this gelato-making business?

How were you financially prepared for this?

Did you have some money put aside in, I don't know, did you tap into emergency savings?

What did you do?

So I think the important thing to note here was where I was in the stage of my life.

So I had just finished maternity leave.

So our family were actually, we were really used to actually living off a reduced wage or 1.5 of a wage.

I don't know how to calculate it.

But it certainly wasn't a double income home going down to a single.

We're already reduced slightly.

So that part didn't scare us as much.

In terms of being financially prepared for it, I did have savings.

And again, we go back to that risk thing of out of my savings, what was I prepared to lose without it feeling too risky?

I did invest machinery that was the bulk of my money in savings.

But I know that it had some sort of resale value as well.

So yeah, I think the financial impact was that we were slightly prepared through savings and investments.

But our day-to-day spending wasn't impacted as much as we thought it was going to be because of where we were in our life, you know, with children.

And if I'm being brutally honest as well, it's not as if we were going out to fancy restaurants every weekend, you know, to young children.

It was a lot of early nights, swimming lessons, clubs, and not that exciting that I had a high expenditure day-to-day.

However, it's worth noting that my husband and I, we did have a pretty frank discussion.

You know, we sat down together and we said, what would make this work?

I know we're not spending the same amount as we used to.

However, some things might need to change day-to-day.

It did take a very, very frank conversation between the two of us of what we could do.

Yeah, there's so much in this. I mean, this is exactly a question I ask myself.

What may I regret more if I did this or not this?

And so I see that in there.

Obviously, there's a bit of a joke in this discussion because we spoke about experimenting at the need to experiment along the way.

And obviously you are making gelato.

So I bet you've done a lot of experiments along the way with the gelato.

And the point that Meghan made was that there's no such thing as failure and success.

There's only data that has been gathered along the way.

In that sense, I wondered, is there a gelato flavor that gave you some very useful data?

Sure. I mean, I think the core flavor, so it's if you're a gelato, that's your base flavor.

And I spent a long time being very pernickety getting at exactly how I wanted.

I have a nice crew mentor, which sounds ridiculous when I say that you have someone in your life called a nice crew mentor, but I do.

And I think he was a wits end with me with this Fjordalati.

But that's your base.

And when you've got that right, really, realistically, anything shoots work after there.

So if you're adding chocolate, you should have a really great chocolate.

And if you're adding strawberries into your Fjordalati or a raspberry ripple, technically it should work.

So that is the core piece of data that I use for me.

I've also even went as far as pushing it, which it should have been a failure, but I don't think it was.

So it was a pizza ice cream.

So I made a sweet tomato gelato base, which, again, the foundations was the Fjordalati.

And then I grated some Parmesan cheese through this sweet tomato gelato.

Now, on paper, that would be horrendous.

And I got a few messages going, you have got to be kidding us, not April Fools.

This is not going to work.

Everyone came out to try it and it worked.

And I'm convinced it's because I had a date to that my Fjordalati recipe worked.

Of course, there are going to be awful flavors, I'm sure of it.

But I feel proud of myself that what should have been a failure because of good data became a success.

Yeah, amazing.

I mean, wonderful insight in there.

Get the foundations right.

Then the rest follows.

Marguerite, thank you so much for sharing your story.

If people wanted to get in touch, find out more about your ice cream and all this where they go.

So you can find me on Instagram.

So it's just Fjordalati or Facebook, the exact same, or my website.

So for Lajuagilato.shop, being a one woman band, it's me who'll speak to.

So if you send a message or anything like that, it'll be me you speak to.

So yes, you can get me on any of those channels.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Congratulations for that big risk that you took and the courage you had along the way.

And I'm really glad to hear of the success that you've had.

Delight to speak into you again.

It was really lovely.

Thank you so much.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

This is the Money Rine Shift podcast, your life, your money in that order.

I think we have a pretty good answer to the question we started with today.

How do you make a big decision and the answer is experiment?

Or more precisely experiment your way to a better plan when Megan said it's not either or it's both.

And I've been thinking about this a lot since this conversation.

It makes real sense.

As Megan said, we are often not very good at knowing what we want.

So experimenting before you commit is actually a real rational move.

And I love the mortgage example.

I said, you can't try to run the mortgage.

And she said, well, the mortgage itself is a final decision.

Yes, but before you get there, you can move to the neighborhood you're thinking about.

If you've never lived in a house, rent one first, learn what it's like to put the bins out on a Wednesday to deal with a garden to actually live that life before you sign for it.

It might sound like a lot of effort, but it might also save you from a decision you regret.

And Marguerite, she showed us what that looks like in practice.

Before she left Aegon, she was already testing the idea.

Farmers markets on weekends delivering to people's homes, asking herself, is there something here? Is there demand?

So she didn't leave blindly. She experimented first.

And I think that's actually a real useful frame for the moment we're in.

There's a lot of uncertainty right now, political, economic, technological.

And it can make planning feel almost impossible, but maybe uncertainty becomes more manageable if you approach it experimentally.

Staying close to what you have, being clear about what you can afford to lose, staying open to what might become possible from here.

For now, thank you so much to Meghan and to Marguerite for their time and their thinking.

Thank you for joining. Great to have you back.

This is the Money Mind Shift Podcast, your life, your money in that order.

I'm Dr. Tom and I see you around.

Thanks for listening to the Money Mind Shift Podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like and follow, leave a review, or share it with someone who's on their own money and lifestyle journey.

Thank you.

Step 1. Take something that matters.

Did you know that you're going to die someday?

You're not going to use that. I'm taking it all.

Step 2. Work out how often it happens each year.

There will be a last time your kid sits on your lap.

People are tired of subscriptions and not owning anything and not having anything to call theirs.

Step 3. Multiply that by how many years you've realistically got left.

Welcome to the Money:Mindshift Podcast.

Your life, your money, in that order.

Hey everybody, thanks for joining the Money:Mindshift Podcast.

Your life, your money in that order, I'm your host, Dr. Tom.

We download productivity apps, track our habits, optimise our mornings, all in the hope that if we can just shave a few minutes, here and there, we'll somehow create more life.

And we tell ourselves we'll do the big things later.

When work comes down, when the kids are older, when we've saved enough, and today we're going to challenge all of that.

Today we look at how we should really be thinking about time, how we can make the most out of the time we have, and how we should be thinking about buying time.

We have two great guests on the show.

Derek Hagen is a financial planner over in Minneapolis, who has spent years thinking deeply about time, money, and meaning.

And why not every year of your life is created equal?

And we speak to Jessica Roberts, who's the owner of Lounge 33 here in Edinburgh.

That's a listening lounge, a kissa bar, a place where you can sit, slow down, and enjoy good music, played on a record player, over coffee and tea.

Regular listeners will know that before we start, the show script requires me to go into the rabbit hole.

I will pretend I can buy myself a few seconds of wisdom before the experts arrive.

OK, you know what? Today in the rabbit hole,

I thought I'd tell you about one of my favourite novels, and that's The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

It's a story from over 100 years ago about a young man called Hans Castorp, who travels to a sanatorium in Davos in the Swiss Alps to treat a breathing condition.

He plans to stay three weeks.

He ends up staying seven years, not because of his breathing condition, but because he loses all sense of time.

And Thomas Mann, he tells the story in such a way that you, as the reader, you lose your sense of time as well.

You keep asking yourself, where are we on the timeline here?

How long has this guy actually been up there?

And that's partly because in the mountains,

you can have all four seasons in a single day, and that's driving how you experience time differently.

But what I love is that Thomas Mann, he's suggesting also that time isn't only linear.

You can think about it cyclically, just noticing what keeps recurring over and over.

And we do this sometimes, or there's Christmas again, or Easter, or summer holidays, or whatever, same as ever.

Or you can think about it from the end, like backwards, right?

And again, we do this sometimes in everyday life without noticing.

When we're buying a second-hand car, for example, we ask, how much life has this thing got left in it?

How much am I willing to pay for the thing, considering it might not last until, whatever?

And in a strange way, that's setting me up okay for my first conversation.

We're asking today, how to buy time?

I think I should ask Derek first how we should be thinking about time.

Get me out of here.

Out of the rabbit hole, this is the Money:Mindshift podcast, Your Life, Your Money, in that order.

We're now connected to Derek Hagen, who joins us from suburban Minneapolis.

For a long time, Derek has worked at the intersection of money and human behaviour, first on the technical side of investment management, now increasingly on the psychological side.

And today he works as a financial life planner at Root Financial, and he's also an author and runs a beautiful blog at meaning.blog.

Two articles these recently published we're going to look into.

Today, Derek, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

I think this is going to be fun.

As we are approaching this big question, how to buy time?

I want to start with a simple question.

How should we think about time?

Well, that's a start off of the big philosophical question.

Time is fascinating.

Everybody seems to know, if you ask somebody, do you have unlimited time, they're going to say no.

If you tell them, did you know that you're going to die someday?

They're going to say, of course I know that.

But people don't act like that.

They tend to put things off.

They tend to think there's always going to be more time until there is.

And so one of my main soapbox moments is to help wake people up and say,

you don't have unlimited time.

And so it's easy for me to think philosophically, I'm going to die someday.

It's more meaningful.

It's more action oriented to say, I've got 40 years left.

I've got 38 years left.

Life expectancy, depending on where you're looking, 83, 85.

So now this is just simple math.

85 minus 46, or however old you are, that's what you have left.

So that can be super powerful to think about what do I want to do?

Can this be a procrastination killer?

And if you add on top of that, okay, I might have 40 years left.

But if I value time with my mom, I don't have 40 years left.

I have 10 or six or 12.

And so everybody's got their own timeline and they don't add up or they don't match up rather.

Yeah.

So there's a lot to unpack.

But the first obvious follow up question here is that you don't know your own end point.

Exactly.

So assuming all else goes well, I've got 40 years.

That has 100% right.

And I've often talk about life like an hourglass.

If you're just listening to this, I actually keep an hourglass in my office.

And it's kind of like life.

So we've got this top chamber that represents the same that hasn't fallen yet.

That's the life that we have left.

And then in the bottom, those are our memories.

That's where the same is falling to.

That's the past.

That's the life that we've already lived.

And then where it passes from the top chamber to the bottom chamber.

That's the present moment.

So future turns into the past via the present moment.

Now, what's cool about that is it shows you that there's limited time.

But I call this the uncertainty curtain covers up the top chamber.

So they're saying falling through it, but I don't get to see what's in the top chamber.

And it could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be 40 years from now.

One thing you highlight, which I find fascinating is that we're used to thinking about time as a sort of linear and numerical thing.

So like 60 seconds, make a minute, 60 minutes, make an hour, 12 months, make a year and so on.

But you also say that a year now isn't the same as a year in 10 years time.

Why is that?

That's a good thing to point out because not only there's this kind of weird effect as I've aged, I've noticed time kind of slows down a little better.

It feels like I just moved to Minnesota to the Twin Cities just not that long ago, except it was 20 years ago, but it doesn't feel like that.

So there's got this aspect of a year when I was 10 is 10% of my life.

A year now is a 46th of my life.

So it's just a small fraction of my whole life.

But then another interesting point is I used to say this as a hypothetical, but now I know a guy who had clients.

They wanted to go to Egypt and see the pyramids.

This was on their bucket list.

As soon as I retire, as soon as I save up more money, then we'll go.

We'll go there eventually.

At some point, we'll get to the pyramids.

They finally did.

And they got there and realised that it's really small and you need to climb a lot of stairs and their bodies just couldn't do it.

So I used to have a story that said at some point, your body's not going to be able to go on the trip.

This is even worse.

They went on the trip and then found out that they couldn't do it.

So I played squash this morning and I injured myself playing squash and I can play for two hours and I'm feeling kind of rickety for the rest of the day and tomorrow.

I'm going to be sore.

But ten years ago, I could play two hours, no problem, and then play two hours tomorrow.

And in ten years' time, I might be able to just get one hour.

And then in 20 years, maybe I'm not even playing at all.

So a year today isn't worth the same as a year in 20 years because of my health, because of what I can actually do.

So if I want to prioritise activities, if I want to prioritise experiences, today is better than tomorrow.

And tomorrow is better than a year from now in terms of what your health is like.

Yes.

And then, and you said this in reply to my first question, you hinted at, it is not just your time that matters, but also the time of your partner.

You mentioned your mom did you or your parents.

Yeah.

Your children.

You talk about your dog at one point.

So like, it's not just your time, but it's significant others that you're surrounded by times as well.

Can you build on that a little?

Yeah, exactly.

So if I know that a year is not the same today as it is tomorrow, and I've got a finite number of years, and I don't even know that that's given.

I just think I have more time and I can never actually know that I have the next minute until that minute passes, at which point it became the past.

So that's also a weird tricky thing about time.

But experiences with people, that's the number one thing that no matter where you look, what brings meaning to life, almost everywhere you look, socialisation, social connections.

Other people remember though that my mom doesn't have 45 years left, probably.

I mean, that would be really impressive if she had 45 years left.

So if I value experiences with my mom, then I have to consider her timeline too.

I have to consider her math.

And then if we loop what you said earlier about not all years being equal together, not all years are equal for me.

I can't play as much squash in 20 years as I can today.

But my mom can't do the same things in five years or two years that she can do today.

So if there are experiences that I want to have with my mom, then I should really think about doing those today or tomorrow or within the next year.

And it works the other way too.

If you've got kids, they're not going to be kids forever.

And there's going to be enough time or there's going to be a point where they don't want to go on vacation with you anymore.

There's going to be a point where they are going to avoid wanting to hang out with you.

So if you have kids and you like them being kids, that's not going to last forever.

And then they're 18 and then they move out.

And I think there's a study or an image somewhere that 95% of your time with your children happens before they're 18 because then they come back for holidays and they come back for a summer break or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, what immediately comes to mind as you said, this is that I've got twins, right?

They're 10 years old and they have this at the moment that after dinner, they want to have desserts sitting on my lap.

I'm like, oh, really?

Like, why?

Why sit on my lap?

But then your perspective encourages me to think, well, you know, they're now 10 years old, right?

Now they want to do this.

They won't be doing this forever.

So what's in this?

So like, enjoy the moment.

Enjoy them wanting to sit on your lap at the moment.

That's a very practical way to think about it.

Yeah, 100%.

And there's this idea.

It's not my idea, but it's the last time meditation.

Everything that you do will be done for a last time.

There will be a last time your kid sits on your lap.

There will be a last time you pick up your child.

There will be a last time that you change a diaper.

There will be a last time they have dinner with your parents.

Yes.

No, when that time is.

So cherish them because it could be the last time.

Yes.

So to be mindful of that, that what you're doing now, there's only a finite number of times that this experience is going to occur.

Be mindful of that.

And then that encourages you to be more intentional and more mindful of that being the case.

Derek, I want to talk about Bingo, your dog.

What was the situation where Bingo taught you something at a hiking trip?

Can you talk about that?

So we talked about parents.

We talked about kids, dogs and cats too.

We have finite time with our animals together.

And sometimes it's helpful, I think, to have a goal, have a destination in mind, but also be willing to let the experience take you.

So if I'm hiking up Jackson Peak in Wyoming with my dog, Bingo and my wife and our goal is to get to the peak.

We want to get to the summit.

And there was like a cool little lake where we were going to have lunch on the way there.

And then there was another dog walker with the dog coming down and we didn't see the other dog at first.

We keep our dog off a leash, but we do pretty good at calling her back and putting her on a leash if we see other dogs because you just never know.

But she was off at the other dog.

The other dog was off.

They loved each other.

They were just chasing each other all around.

There was snow up there in June.

It was like at elevation.

And it was just fun.

I mean, there's a time in my life when I would have put a stop to this, get back here.

We got a place to go.

But in that moment, we just kind of let it happen and watching her joy, watching her play and experience joy gave us joy.

And so we rolled with that.

We didn't get to the peak that day, but we still call that a win.

Yes.

And later on in this particular article where you speak about this anecdote, it leads you on to think about experiences like chips, poker chips.

Can you talk about that evolution of thinking?

Yeah.

So when we think about time is finite, time with other people is finite.

There's not unlimited time.

And I can ask how many dinners will I have with my mom?

Well, I don't know.

Let's do some math.

I see her five times a year.

And she's got 12 years left because this is 60 times 60 dinners I get with my mom.

I see an assuming all goes well.

So if I mentally or actually get 60 chips, poker chips, then each time I have dinner

with her, I toss a chip into a box and I see that pile dwindling over time.

That is a procrastination killer.

That is a mindfulness inducer.

It can sound.

I will say this has the potential to be morbid or scary, but that's not the point.

The point is to bring intention into your experiences.

Exactly.

So the same with my dog with Bingo on these hikes, if I go on eight long hikes with her

per year and she's got two years left because she's 12 and a half, you know, that's 16 hikes.

I got 16 hikes left with Bingo.

So we already went on one this year into the box.

It goes seven left.

And that's a way to really visualise the fact that time is limited.

You've got how many times are you going to go on a road trip with your children while they're children?

Probably at 16, they're going to want to go off and do their own thing.

So 15 minus their age times two road trips a year.

So now you've got this number of chips that you've got and you can see it either in real life physically or mentally, you've got these chips that you're exchanging for the experience.

And it really focuses you in the moment.

If you realise I can hold the number of experiences I have in my hands, it can help bring you into the present.

And it perhaps also hints at an opportunity to buy more of those chips.

Does it?

Can you buy more chips?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

If I value time with my mom and I don't like the math, I don't like 60, that seems like not a lot of time, I can change the equation.

So how much time is left?

I don't have any control over that.

How many times do I see her per year?

I have a lot of control over that.

So I can make a more conscious effort to go see her more often.

Flipside is if she values time with me, she can change the number of times we see each other as well.

But she can maybe do things to improve for longevity.

Same with me.

If I want to have more hikes or years playing squash, I play once a week or whatever for 30 more years.

I can change the number of years by eating healthy, getting to bed on time, going on walks, and I can also decide to play more.

If it's all in my control, I can change both of those variables.

If it's not all in my control, I can at least change one of the variables.

But once you see the math and you don't like the answer, you can do what you can and what's in your control that changed the math.

Yes.

And what does this, obviously, we're speaking about this all in the context of financial life planning.

And what are the, like, boiled down, what are the practical implications of all this for financial life planning?

The purpose of life isn't to get safely to the grave with the most money that you can.

That's not the point of life.

The point of accumulating money isn't to be the person that dies with the most jellybeans or the most toys.

The point is to kind of paraphrase George Carlin is to come sliding in sideways, beaten up, saying, oh, my God, what a ride.

So using your money.

What is the money for?

That's what financial life planning is about is to say, what do you want?

What brings you joy?

What brings you value?

What brings you meaning?

What gives you a sense of purpose, a sense of identity?

And then how can we get the money to fit that?

It's a little bit of a shift from, I'm giving you money so you can beat the market.

I'm giving you money so that I can hit some number, a millionaire, five million, whatever.

It turns it around and says, why are we doing this in the first place?

What's this money for?

What's your life for?

And let's marry those two things together so that I can help you figure out how to do that math and how to make the money work to go visit your mom more often or to go on more hikes with your dog more often.

Yeah.

And that speaks so much to the vision of this podcast, what we say, your life, your money in that order.

So that is very much on message.

You know, Derek, one question I had as you were speaking because we spoke a lot now about experiences and that is a message that you hear so often that really you ought to be thinking about experiences and by experiences because the compound over time in a different way.

And does this apply to things as well?

Would you say there's an argument in favour of buying things and can you buy time by buying certain things as well rather than just experiences?

This is the kind of thing where on the surface, everybody, you see this everywhere.

By experiences, not things, by experiences, not stuff.

I've certainly written about that.

Everybody seems to have their version of that.

But once you actually get under the hood, it's not so easy.

I like to think of this through three lenses.

There's the experience itself.

There's the anticipation leading up to it.

And then there's the memory after.

So when you think about the anticipation, this is the piece that many people overlook.

The anticipation of a trip often is better than the trip itself or at least it's pretty close.

And you can also have anticipation of a new TV or a thing, a new car.

You can still have anticipation of the experience of doing cliff jumping or having to walk with your child or whatever.

That's the experience.

The experience of buying the TV, that's just a transaction.

And some people get some joy out of doing that.

But then there's the memory.

I've got the memory of the experience, which often gets better over time because of something called euphoric recall, which is I don't remember the bad times or I remember the bad times in kind of like, hey, do you remember when we couldn't find a place to eat?

And now we laugh about it.

So that's the experience.

The stuff.

I get no memory of the stuff because I look at the TV and I look that it's outdated and it's falling apart or my car now needs repairs.

But what about skiing?

Skis, is that an experience or is that a thing?

Well, I mean, it's kind of a thing.

But also I need it for the experience of skiing.

So it's not so clear.

Which is the experience of what is the thing?

So I think when it comes time to think about how do I want to use my money, experiences

tend to give you the better benefit, the better payoff memory dividend as they talk about and die with zero.

But you need things to get the experience.

So one way to think about it is you could rent.

But if you want to use it over time or use it more often, there's a break even point

where it makes more sense to buy the thing as a way to get the experience.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great way to see this.

I like this for the break even point.

Derek, as we finish up, is there an experience you've chosen to spend more chips on recently?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm outdoors a lot and just this week we're going on a camping trip with my family.

So every year we kind of bring the family together.

My wife and I go camping a lot.

My family relative means not, you don't get to go camping as much.

So once a year we like to bring the family together and that's coming up.

So outside hiking family, those are the things that I'm thinking through with my experiences.

Beautiful.

And I can see how it all comes together, how you think about your time, how you think about your children's time, how you think about your folks' time and so on.

So that's amazing.

Yeah.

If people wanted to find out more about you, Derek, this is wonderful.

Where should they go?

So I write weekly at Meaningful Money.

That's Meaning.blog is that website.

And I work with clients at Root Financial, that's Root Financial dot com.

But the place, if you like this, I do a lot of writing and I do little pictures and sketches over at Meaning.blog.

I can highly recommend those and we make sure to drop the link to the particular two blog posts that we talked about here today into the show notes.

Thank you so much, Derek, for joining us today.

Thank you.

This was fun.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

So much good stuff there.

There's been both a bit of maths and philosophy in this.

I want to pick this up in the end.

Stay tuned.

Now onto my second guest, though, and we stay very local.

When I cycle down to the studio to record this podcast, I pass Lounge 33 on Leith Walk, which is a listening lounge.

And I'd heard of listening bars before and I was intrigued.

So today I've brought along the owner, Jessica Roberts, to tell us why she set one up in was at the autumn of 2025.

Welcome to the show, Jessica.

Hi.

Thank you, Thomas.

Thank you very much for having me.

We actually opened in the June of 25.

I'm not sure where that's gone, to be honest.

So, Jessica, what is a listening lounge, then?

Well, Thomas, for us, a listening lounge is a hybrid space where we're able to serve drinks and food, but we also sell records so you can come in and buy a record.

But most importantly, it is about you being able to come in and actually listen to the records.

So we play records all day on our vinyl player.

We also have regular DJs that come in and we do host a lot of live music.

So it's about people being able to come in and enjoy the art of listening to music.

And tell us what got you there.

So I know you were corporate, but then you set this up now, as you say, in June.

How did you get there?

I mean, I've always worked in the hospitality industry, pretty much throughout the whole

of my career, whether it be, you know, the side of actually working in hospitality or the side of working in corporate supplying into hospitality.

And the last 13 years was the other side of that.

It was working for a big alcohol distributor that still was kind of supplying all of the, you know, beers, wine spirits to the wider Scottish hospitality network.

Throughout the period of working for them, which, you know, definitely had its ups and downs, there was a lot of consolidation within the alcohol market, which meant that there was a lot of shrinkage.

And subsequently, there was a lot of rounds of redundancy.

And it just so happened that in the August of 24, after 13 years of being with them,

I decided to take the leap and take the redundancy.

Right.

And that's kind of how I got to the point of not working for anyone else and deciding to do it myself.

So there was the redundancy money, I suppose, perhaps served a little bit as the kickoff funding for Lounge 33.

Is that right?

So that's that enabled you to do this.

And then so this concept of listening bar.

So I know this is inspired by Japanese jazz kissa bars.

I've pronounced this correctly.

What's the idea there?

And why did it speak to you?

I've always had a great love for music.

It's something that my whole family have had.

And my parents collected vinyl.

And when they stopped listening to their vinyl, I subsequently took it to my house.

I was like, you're not going to use it.

I'm taking it all.

And then when it came to me thinking about what I wanted to do, I knew that I wanted to go into hospitality and I knew I wanted to work for myself.

But I also knew because of the way that Edinburgh is and how competitive and how good the standard of hospitality is.

What was I going to do that was going to be different, that was going to make myself stand out and that was going to become a bit of a destination for people to be able to come and enjoy.

And for me, pairing the two, pairing my love of music and also I suppose my love for that identity, I put the two together and it just made sense.

And for me then I just started looking and researching about other vinyl bars across the world.

And Japan really is the home of that.

Japan is where it originated from.

And it's a big cultural thing in Japan where you've got lots of these bars and people come and they sit down and they enjoy the experience of listening to jazz and it maybe is run by just a single man that has an extensive catalogue that will put the record on and that will tell people all about the record while you're sat drinking an amazing whiskey.

And I really loved that idea of being able to do that in one venue.

So yeah, just sounded like a nice thing to do, didn't it?

Listen to my vinyl, make some coffee, talk to some people.

I mean, yeah, lovely idea.

Yes.

Yeah, amazing.

And I have to say it is such a wonderful place really.

So I went recently, of course, there was a gig as part of the Leith Jazz Festival and

I really enjoyed it.

And it's also, you can actually buy vinyl there as well, right?

So it's not just the cafe, it's the combination.

And in this episode, we're thinking about how to buy time.

And I'm wondering this concept of kissa and listening to jazz.

I mean, this could sound as though you're just like wasting time really because you're not doing much, right?

You're just like coming into the place, you're just listening to music.

But what does it tell us about how to think about time and what we make of the time we have when you do this, when you enter a kissa bar, when you just enjoy the music?

I think, especially over the last few years, which is maybe a little bit of kismet on my part that I kind of landed upon this idea at the same time as I've watched a lot of the world start to look at how to slow down in general.

And there's been a lot of, you know, looking back at times where connection was more about being with people than it was about being online.

And I really liked that idea of having people be able to come in and hospitality now for me is more of an experience.

People want an experience.

People want to be able to come in and enjoy their environment and enjoy being present in the moment, slowing down and enjoying an experience.

And this is what I felt the concept would do for people.

It would allow people to switch off and to kind of go back to more of the analog ways that I think a lot of people are really missing at the moment.

So that for me was the biggest thing.

And it's really resonated with all generations of people that I've had people from all ages who come to me and say, I had my own set of vinyls and now I'm kind of coming back and buying them all again.

Or I've got younger generations saying that they want to start it again.

But having something physical and having something as a medium where you have to physically sit down and listen to it, I think is such a wonderful idea.

And I think it is allowing us to slow down and to buy time that is more of an experience and an enjoyment.

Yeah, wonderful.

So this is a place that operates during the day.

So not like the listening bars in Japan, which is, I suppose, being mentioned whiskey.

I mean, this sounds more like an evening thing.

So I suppose when you come to Lounge 33, it's coffee, tea, perhaps much as that you're consuming.

But what would you say it is that you're actually consuming that when you're buying these beverages?

Well, I mean, we are now kind of moving the business forward and we have started looking at opening later and being able to offer beer and wine so that you are getting a bit more of the traditional jazz kisser experience.

But I think in general, regardless of what people are coming into buy or to drink, it's about the opportunity for them to be able to come in and to sit down and to have a little look around and to pick up the vinyl and to bring it to their table and to have a discussion with the person that they're with.

And you know, just that is more about what the listening lounge is about for us.

It's about people being able to come up and say, would you stick this vinyl on?

You would love to listen to it in a group setting to listen to it with other people.

That's what we're trying to offer when people come in and have a drink of any kind, really.

Yes, wonderful.

You mentioned that it is really popular across all generations.

But I heard you say also that it is now especially popular with young people.

Or you said that young people are especially good at buying into this concept.

Is that right?

Absolutely.

So interestingly enough, when I was researching the business, record stores got a lot of people and sold stores come in the top five popular stores for Gen Zs.

So Gen Zs are naturally coming towards stores where it is a physical medium that you can buy, whether it's CDs, whether it's tapes, whether it's vinyl or whether they're looking to do things like crafting stuff that is more physical and there in front of them.

This is what a lot of the Gen Zs are now kind of moving towards.

And like I say, we've seen a huge influx of the younger generation come in and be really excited about the vinyl and start picking through things.

They're not buying the stuff necessarily that I would buy.

And if I look at the team that I've got, I've got a team that's a lot younger than I am and some of the stuff that the team will ask me to bring in versus what I would bring in is very different musically.

Probably they've got better taste than I have.

But there is still that interest.

People I think are tired of subscriptions and not owning anything and not having anything to call theirs.

So the thought of being able to come in and sit down and slowly look through a collection of records and enjoy yourself and listen to something and then buy it at the end.

I think people are really liking.

Wonderful.

There's so many implications here on how to buy time.

Jessica, if people wanted to get in touch with you, where should they go?

Oh, thank you.

So we're based at 373-375 Leithwalk.

You can find us on Instagram at lounge33leith.

I'd say the best way to get hold of us is just to pop in because we're definitely better in person than we are online.

We usually find me and the staff behind the bar arguing about what record we're going to put on.

So yeah, come in and see us.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Jessica, for joining.

Thank you, Thomas.

If you just wait a couple of minutes, I just wrap this up and then we can go up to yours and listen to some music.

Perfect.

See you soon.

Bye.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast, Your Life, Your Money in that order.

Today, we looked at how to buy time.

We got a bit philosophical at times, not in an overwhelming way, I hope.

And to balance that out, there was a bit of maths as well.

I loved Derek's calculation for how to buy time.

Step one, take something that matters.

Dinners with your parents.

Holidays with your kids.

Walks with your dogs.

Step two, work out how often it happens each year.

Step three, multiply that by how many years you've realistically got left.

And what comes out is a number, 12 dinners, 10 holidays, 15 walks.

And suddenly, it's not sometime soon anymore.

And here's the Money:Mindshift moment.

You don't buy time by becoming more productive or squeezing more stuff in the time you have.

You buy it by increasing the number of moments that matter.

It's also Oliver Burkeman's point in his book, 4,000 Weeks, subtitle, Time Management for Mortals.

Oliver Burkeman talks about the joy of missing out, not the fear of missing out the joy of it, because you will miss almost everything in life anyway.

Once you accept that, the question changes.

It's not, how do I fit it all in?

It's, what do I actually choose?

Be intentional with what you choose.

Time is finite, and not all of it is equal quality.

The goal isn't fitting more in, it's choosing what matters.

And that's exactly why I love Lounge 33, the listening bar Jessica set up on the walk.

When you go there, you're not just buying a coffee or tea or a matcha, you're buying yourself permission to slow down to spend one of those finite chips properly.

Thank you, Derek, for joining us from Minneapolis.

And thank you, Jessica, for walking down the road to join us here in the studio.

And thank you, of course, for listening.

This is the Money:Mindshift Podcast, your life, your money.

In that order, I'm your host, Dr. Tom, and I'll see you around.

Thanks for listening to the Money:Mindshift Podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like and follow, leave a review, or share it with someone who's on their own money and lifestyle journey.

I've got a five-star itinerary for July and a vague vibe for the rest of my life.

Learn, then. This is your future.

So it's not about depriving yourself of the nice things.

It's not difficult. I swear Tom what I do it's not rocket science. If it was, I won't be able to do it.

The overall goal is to live the happiest, best life possible.

The problem is if you're doing it on your own, is that you can lie to yourself.

Welcome to the Money:Mindshift Podcast.

Your life, your money, in that order.

Hey, welcome back to the Money:Mindshift Podcast. Your life, your money, in that order.

Still with me as your host, I'm Dr. Tom.

And we're at the end of season three.

We've covered a lot of ground this season. We talked about getting unstuck with money,

about how and how not to talk about money.

We did an episode on doing nothing, which was perhaps the most unusual one.

We looked at living well and sustainably, which was close to my heart.

And we asked how to retire abroad.

And a lot of what we talked about was non-technical.

And that speaks to a belief that shines through in this show, which is financial life planning.

Isn't just technical. It is a lot to do with figuring out what's important to you.

Your values, your goals, your mindset, the contexts you are in, and so on.

But all this isn't to say that money is not important.

There is a technical side to financial life planning.

The financial products that we have, be they ISAs, pensions, bank accounts, insurance products, and so on,

they are all our tools that we need to get on top of.

And that's why we need to understand them a little bit as well, because they are tools that help us fund the life that we want to live.

So in that spirit, we wanted to do a bit more of a technical episode and think about a financial plan and how to build one.

So that's what we're doing today.

How to build a financial plan.

My first guest is Pete Matthew.

Pete is a chartered financial planner and the creator of Meaningful Money, one of the UK's most respected personal finance podcasts,

running now well over a decade with over 10 million views on YouTube.

And I'm then going to speak to Oliver Noelting, who's based in Hannover in Germany.

And for several years, he was probably the most prominent public face of what's called the FIRE movement in Germany.

In the German-speaking world, FIRE that stands for financial independence, retire early.

So that was his plan, retire early, and then something happened.

We get into this.

But first, let me mentally prepare for the show one last time this season, The Rabbit Hole.

Okay, here in The Rabbit Hole, the obvious thing to talk about would be my own plan.

Now, I don't want to bore you with my holiday plans.

They're pretty concrete, though.

I know where I'm going, how long for, how much I paid.

I've probably packed already in my head.

My plan for my long-term future isn't quite that detailed.

I've got to confess.

I have something in my head.

I know how much I've saved, roughly, how much is in my portfolio, if you will, where I'll be, how long for with whom.

All this is a bit fuzzier.

So basically, I've got a five-star itinerary for July and a vague vibe for the rest of my life.

Is that a problem?

Should I have something written out?

Is knowing your portfolio size enough?

Now, the obvious question that comes up as I contemplate this is whether there are some blind spots, something really important I'm overlooking.

Almost certainly.

I just don't know what it is yet, which is, if you think about it, perhaps, a slightly worrying way to run a financial plan.

Oh dear.

Well, good thing the show exists.

And that Pete Matthew agreed to come on.

Let's find out what's missing.

Oof, that was the last time I was in the rabbit hole this season.

This is still the Money:Mindshift Podcast, your life, your money, in that order.

And now I'm so glad we managed to get Pete Matthew on the show.

Pete is a chartered financial planner.

He's director of Jackson's Wealth Management, down in Cornwall.

He's the author of two books, the Meaningful Money Handbook, Everything You Need to Know, and Everything You Need to Do to Secure Your Financial Future.

And more recently, the Meaningful Money Retirement Guide.

He also founded the Meaningful Academy, and his Meaningful Money Podcast has had more than 9 million downloads and 10 million views on YouTube.

Pete, wonderful to have you.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's great to be here.

I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Yes.

Very much so.

I wanted to start with something you said.

You've found that people often confuse having a portfolio with having a plan.

Why are these different things, and why does it matter?

Yeah, they're entirely different things.

I mean, I would define a portfolio by the sort of collection and organization of the investments.

Maybe the accounts that they're in, pensions and Ices and stuff like that.

That's the kind of portfolio.

But without a plan, it's like getting in a car and just sort of setting off, but without any idea about where you're trying to get to.

And so you kind of have the requisite bits that you need.

You know, you have a car, the ability to drive it and fuel in the tank, but you don't know where you're going.

It seems to be a, I mean, unless you're in like, you know, a 1960s Alfa Romeo Spider where, you know, you can drive for its own sake.

That's really not generally where most of us are trying to get to with our finances.

So the plan gives the portfolio a reason for existing.

And to kind of complete the circular argument, a portfolio is properly built in light of a good plan.

Otherwise, it's just investing for its own sake.

So I think you've got to have something to aim at because otherwise you could be taking more risk than you have to.

You could not be putting enough aside or you could be putting too much away and not fully living in the present.

The plan helps you to understand all those things, put some numbers on them and get your head around them,

so that then you can invest with purpose.

So the plan is everything and the portfolio is the easy bit.

I say this to clients all the time.

I mean, I've basically built a career on helping people not have to see somebody like me.

I'm trying to put as much information out as possible so that people can do their own financial planning.

And I remain convinced that most people can.

It's just that a lot of people don't have the time.

They don't have the understanding and don't want to learn.

They don't have the energy.

And so that's why I have a job.

But honestly, these days we are in a world where it's easier than ever to build a portfolio.

But planning requires holding intention, lots of different numbers and time scales and things like that.

But more than anything else, it requires knowing ourselves.

So a good financial plan, it gets to know you really well.

And the problem is if you're doing it on your own, is that you can lie to yourself quite easily.

So it's hard to know ourselves.

We need to get into this absolutely.

I think one other reason for why people may not be planning that well is because they don't know where to start.

I mean, even in preparation of the show, when I spoke to other people and said,

you know, I'm going on a show to explore how to plan.

And then people say something like, oh, yeah, I really ought to plan, but I really never get round to doing it.

But as a hint of sort of where to even like start with this, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I think that all planning, all financial planning comes down to understanding your inflows and your outflows.

Okay. So that could be now.

So, you know, what is my income now? What is its trajectory?

Is it likely to increase? Like, is it likely to increase significantly?

Am I going to get a promotion?

And then also, what am I spending?

What am I spending now? Am I throwing away money unnecessarily, either in sort of costs that I've forgotten about or in tax or whatever?

Because only then, I mean, ultimately, if you're distill financial success, it comes down to spending less than you earn and putting the extra to work, really.

And so unless you understand your inflows and your outflows, you can't really kind of put a number on that and identify it properly.

And of course, when you're thinking about the future, we might then be thinking about, well, what does retirement look like?

What would be my ideal life? What is that going to cost me?

Then you've got the difficulty of, well, if that's in 20 years time, how am I supposed to put numbers on that?

So we're always thinking today's terms, what would that cost be now?

If I had no mortgage and I had enough money to live as I wanted, not stupidly rich, but if I had what I needed, what would life look like?

And how much would that cost me?

Am I going to have two? All it is a year or three? All one.

Am I going to go long haul? Am I going to stay in the UK?

And start to put some numbers on this. I think that's where it starts.

And most people don't know that. They don't spend the time to get to know their numbers.

Thereafter. I think it's easier than people think because for most people, all we need is a pension and a Stocks and Shares ISA.

Plus a little bit savings behind us as an emergency fund, short term money.

So a pension and ISA, most of us have got a pension. If we're working for somebody else, most of us have one.

It's kind of given to us and we joined automatically.

And so a pension and ISA is worth understanding just those two accounts and how they work.

And then it's not difficult. I swear to them, what I do is not rocket science. If it was, I won't be able to do it.

So I think if you understand my job, I think my sort of mission in life is to simplify this stuff so that people go,

I get it. Now I can get my head around it. And so it's like, understand your expenses, understand the difference between a pension and ISA.

The rest is easy. I mean, that's it, really.

Yeah. Yeah.

Can we? Yeah, no. I mean, the way you say it absolutely sounds so easy.

But I guess, can we go into this a little bit? It was when you say, understand your expenses. At what level?

I bring up my banking account and I see like there's like tons of expenses. That's not what you mean.

Is it? Or like at what level?

It is really. Right. Okay.

Honestly, it is. Yeah, because if we're wasting money, that's money that we can't spend.

And the problem is that money is more difficult to see than it's ever been.

I mean, in some ways, it's easier because it's on an app, whereas we used to have to wait until we get a statement once a month.

But because spending is so easy, you know, Apple pay or Android pay on your phone.

It's hard to keep track. The fact is you have to be deliberate and intentional about understanding your expenses and your incomes.

I think it is down to that kind of granular level. I mean, look, and nobody wants to carry a notebook and write down every pound that they spend.

Although sometimes that's not a bad idea if you really don't have handle on your spending.

But I think it's worth sitting down for an hour and going through your statements and say,

what am I actually spending? Put me into a few broad categories and say, does this reflect what's really important to me right now?

Or am I still paying for, you know, like a Sky Sports subscription that I haven't watched in six months because I'm too busy or because I'm actually out, you know, having a life or whatever.

Yeah. So, you know, I think it's easy to lose track, even in a very visible world, I suppose.

Yeah. So to summarise then, so you should know your expenses, you should know your income.

Are there some headline figures that one should know? So, like, how much I spend per month, how much I earn per month, perhaps at a household level, how much I have in emergency savings, how much I have in an ice.

What are some sort of headline? Very good. All those things. Did I mention them? Yeah. All those things.

Yeah, pretty much. It's like, those are the things because they're a sense then. And obviously, if you have a, like, a big outstanding debt, like a mortgage, I would be tracking that down as well.

And saying, you know, how quickly am I paying this off? And then I'll be saying, okay, what would be the difference if I paid, let's say I can find an extra 200 per month because I choose to go out one less time.

And, you know, I cancel a couple of subscriptions that I'm no longer using. What do I do with that? One of the reasons why it's good to have a handle on your costs is because it makes lifestyle creep much less likely to happen.

And that is where, you know, as we earn a little bit more, our expenses go off because, you know, we can spend a little more. And we should enjoy the extra as it comes in.

But maybe just not all of it because it's really easy to expand your lifestyle and increase your spending. It's really hard to give up stuff that you've got used to having.

It's really hard. And so understanding your expenses prevents that creep. I found 200 quid a month. Do I pay off my mortgage?

Do I put it into my ISA or my pension? Do I split it across both? What might be the implications of those things? Once you've got a handle on your numbers, you can start to think about how to strategise.

Yeah. And now you mentioned it as well. Again, ISA and pension understand the difference. Can you just once explain it, you're such a good communicator. What's different?

Yeah. So they're both just accounts. Ultimately, they're just places in which you hold money. The difference between them is tax and access.

So an ISA, you don't get any tax breaks for putting money in because you pay into it out of money. You've already paid tax on. But it grows tax free.

And when you take money out, it's tax free. So no breaks going in, but thereafter, we're off to the races. It's all tax free.

With pensions, you get significant tax breaks going in. Essentially, instead of paying tax on that money, it goes into your pot for the future.

And it's tax free when it grows. What's the flip side? Well, you pay some tax on the way out, but it's still pretty tax efficient.

And so the difference between the two is tax and access. You can't access your pension until you're 55 currently. Another couple of years, it'll be 57.

So clearly, you're not going to put money in a pension that you want to use to go on your big holiday when you're 40. Right? Yeah.

Because you're not going to be able to get out. Yes. And so understanding access means you can start to use the right tool for the right job, ultimately.

But nobody needs six different ISAs and 10 different pensions. Right. We must simplify. Simplifying is a superpower.

Yeah. Yeah. I really like this. It's such a good way to see it. I saw taxed on the way in pension, taxed on the way out. And from that, essentially.

They're after it's all tax free. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And from that, you draw some conclusions on what to use for what purpose.

Yes. Yes. You talk about a cycle, track, plan, do, review. And I guess the do bit that sounds obvious, but I suspect that's where most people fall down.

So what gets in the way and does the system itself help with that? Or do you need something else? Yeah, most people kind of fall to them.

For the reasons you said, either feels too complicated or it's like, well, you know, there's probably six things I can do.

Which one do I choose? Or maybe just as too much to do? I'm busy. I don't want to be spending a night a week tracking my finances.

And so I think there's real merit in putting things to a great or lesser extent on autopilot. Try to automate some stuff.

So for instance, one of the golden rules, I think personal finances to pay yourself first. So it's an easy automation.

I use a two account system and have done since I've been married. So we get paid into one account. And that is our bills account.

So simply money comes in. We know how much our bills are. These are our sort of regular direct debits for the month.

We leave that much in there and then we shift the rest into an entirely separate account. And we spend off that one.

I don't need to budge every month for electric. It's the same every month. Right. So we just leave that much in there.

But as part of paying yourself first, as part of leaving enough to pay all your bills, the first bill you pay should be your future savings.

You should pay yourself before you pay your mortgage, I believe. Right. Because otherwise, the alternative is that people say, well, I'll save what's left at the end of the month.

Well, spoiler alert. Right. There's rarely much left at the end of the month. And everybody knows this in transit.

Whereas if when you get paid, you've done your spending plan, your budget, and you've said, right, I can save 250 quid this month or 50 pounds this month.

Do that first, then pay all your bills and then budget the rest. Because then you know it will happen, particularly if you do it the day after you've been paid.

And then things like payments into ISAs, you know, you might start, if you just get into anything, okay, I can put 25 quid a month into an ISA or 50 quid a month or something.

That's fine. But if in 10 years time, you're still paying 50 quid a month in, something's amiss.

And so you don't need to be thinking about it every month. But what I would do is put in my calendar, well, in three months time, I'm going to put it up from 50 to 55 or 50 to 60 pounds a month.

Small increases. But those little increments, if done regularly, massively compound, before you know it, you're putting 200 quid a month into your ISA or you're still not really feeling it because you've got used to it.

Your pay has gone up a little bit. But you have to be intentional at least once to set those things up.

Thereafter, you can largely kind of unburden yourself of the mental load because you've set things on autopilot.

So I generally said to people, look, if you're setting things up right, you really only need to review things once a year for about an hour.

That's not a massive burden of time when your future is at stake, right?

So I think sometimes we need to sort of grow up a little bit and say, oh, I just don't know what to do. Is that what? Learn then. This is your future.

Nobody cares about your future except for you. And maybe your mum, right? So take it by the scruff of the neck and get on with it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, I think we can help ourselves, perhaps more than we say sometimes.

I'll try to be less preachy going forward.

No, you're very good. It's super helpful. And I really like this two account system.

So I think that's a real works well. Yeah, that's a real tangible takeaway there.

How do you like you must hear this as well? The cost of living challenge that because of cost of living, it's really hard to trade off present self needs versus future self needs.

How do you respond to that?

Yeah, it is. I would never belittle, you know, the challenge that costs rising ahead of incomes presents. There's no doubt about that.

So I don't want to sort of just say it's just easy to get on with it. You don't see me for me. I own my own company and we're growing, right?

And I'm aware that the universe deals a very different hands to a lot of other people. So I know it's difficult.

And that said, the second we take the stance of I've been dealt a bad hand.

I don't have the capacity to understand this stuff. I'm always going to be poor.

That's a self fulfilling sort of prophecy, really. So we need to start small. We need to start with really, it's sort of easy chunks.

I bet anybody could kind of go into their loft and find something they could self, for example.

So maybe if they're struggling with a bit of debt or whatever, if they really are struggling to make ends meet,

maybe we find some stuff that we can sell. Obviously, you can only sell something once, right?

But we also live in a world where it's easier than ever to make money online, honestly.

And you don't have to be a content creator. There are ways you can be paid to do surveys.

You know, there's like market research type stuff. You can be paid to be like a mystery shopper or whatever.

There's a million ways you can make money now. Obviously, you know, don't get involved in sort of scams or anything like that.

But I just think nothing happens by accident. Right? So we need to be proactive.

But I think there are more opportunities now than ever before.

If we talk about spending less than we earn, sorry, just to wrap that up.

There's two parts to spending less than you earn. You can either spend less or earn more.

And I think you can just nudge your earnings up a bit and you're spending down a bit.

And suddenly you've got a bit of breathing room. And it's what you do with that then.

So it's not easy for a lot of people, man, I get it.

But there's the second you give up agency and say, that's not a chance for me here.

That's when it really becomes a problem. Yeah, I really like this. And you're of course right.

I mean, we all have various resources that we can use.

I mean, perhaps you have certain skills. I don't know.

Language skills or so that you can use or I don't know.

Perhaps you have a spare room that you can rent out or I don't know.

Something like that. So that makes a lot of sense. Absolutely great. Yeah.

Can I ask just coming back to when you mentioned you automate for your future self as it were?

So you put some money aside for your future self. You also said in the beginning, you've got to know the why.

Can I just pull on this a little bit because I'm wondering when you do this, you save for your future self.

You kind of do it automatically, but you do not necessarily know the deeper why, do you?

I mean, in the sense that you don't know where you will be, who you'll be spending time with, what you'll be doing day in and day out, all those things.

Exactly. That would perhaps inform the why. So how do you marry this up?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think the thing about the future is that it's unknowable as you write.

They say, and it's easy. I mean, when I went to like financial adviser school nearly 30 years ago now, it was all like, well, you need to ask your clients, you know, what do they want to spend in retirement?

If you say that to a 30 year old, did look as if you had gone mad because how can you possibly answer that question?

So I mean, this question, the thing about goals is that they are by definition, unclear the further away they are.

They come into focus as they approach. And because of that, it doesn't make any sense for a 30 year old to kind of do all their numbers based on their retirement when they're 60 and kind of do the maths backwards to decide what they can save now.

I mean, you can do that if you want. But I think what's more important is the direction of travel.

I think it's the journey then rather than the destination. Are we saving? Are we investing? So we're really trying to make our money grow ahead of the damaging effects of inflation?

Are we being intentional about those regular increments? Are we being mindful of spending, even if we're earning a fortune?

You know, there's plenty of bankrupt premiership footballers, you know, that had incredible wages, but still go bust. Yeah.

So you don't have much you've got, it's how much you keep. Yeah. So is the general trajectory right? Are we updating and reviewing things regularly?

If we are, then as things come more into focus, that's when you can get more tightly defined.

The reason why most people come to me in their 50s is because retirement's getting pretty close.

I mean, not only because most 30 year olds might not have the means whereby an adviser can add value, but I mean, plenty of 30 year olds do.

Yeah. But it's mostly about the clarity of the goal. And it's like, okay, now I see it coming.

I've got a limited period of time now to fix what I need to fix before I get there. What do I need to do?

And so that's why I have a job really. So, yeah, goals come into focus the nearer you get.

And that's when you get very focused with what your actions are.

Yes. Quick follow-up, Pete, you mentioned regularly updating and reviewing.

Yes. Is a plan a good financial plan? Is that something you've written down?

Or is it good enough if you have it in your head? Yeah. I mean, I would write it down. I think particularly if you're in a partnership, if you're in a couple, I think it's, you know, because it might be in your head.

It might be less so in your partner's head. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe they're just not wired that way. So you can have it written down.

I think you should hold all plans lightly. You know, life is weird, man. The universe throws things out as that we're the least expecting.

You know, I've worked with couples who have planned for 40 years to retire and then one partner dies in the first six months.

And it's like, jeez, what was the point of that? But of course, they've got all the means they need.

But did they fully enjoy the journey? So I think the plan can be the end goal, but we need to enjoy the present very much.

We need to enjoy the journey of getting there. But I think all plans should be held lightly just because we don't know what's around the corner.

If we fixate on them, I think we're in danger of potentially losing what it's all about, which the only day we've got is today.

You know, I might not wake up tomorrow. We probably will. So we should plan, right? But just, I guess, the older I get, I'm a little bit more sort of philosophical about, man.

You've got to enjoy. You've got to enjoy now. If you have to choose, there's a binary choice about spending money now versus spending it in the future.

If it was binary, you'd spend it now. If you don't know, you'll get the future.

Really, though, it's much more nuanced than that. It's less binary. And so we need to kind of find a balance.

You have given a hint here at what your answer to my last question may be, which is, has your own relationship with planning changed all the time, either personally or in the work you do with clients?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. So I sat at the CFP, certified financial planner, I was back in 2006, and it was a light bulb moment, because finally it was the drawing together of all the technical information that had absorbed as I'd done my other exams.

And I could finally see how that is actually applicable to real humans. And I delighted in the technical nature of it at first.

As I've moved through my career, and as I've realised, you know, just by having dealt with probably, I don't know, 1500 client families over 28 years, you realise that what matters is exactly that. It's the client family.

It's all the things that make being a human great, right? It's relationships. It's love. It's health. It's joy. It's travel. All that good stuff. Money is only there to serve those.

And so for me, now my job is to get money out of the way to simplify it, to take it out of people's heads so that they're not worried about it because that robs you of joy in the present.

So I've learned that simple is better than complex, right? All kinds of reasons for that. It's usually cheaper. But also you get better engagement with your goals and your finances if there's less kind of friction, right?

And also that it's so simple is best, but that people are everything that this was all about. And so the point of money is to serve life.

The second it becomes an ending itself, we've completely lost track of what's good and right in the world.

So that's where I can get excited now. And a client comes with properly complicated technical affairs and shares and RS use and millions of different pensions and stuff.

And I'm like, fantastic. Let's get our hands on this so that you can quit work and do the travel you want to do. And they light up. I love that.

You know what? That so much speaks to our mission. We say, you know, it's about your life, your money in that order.

And that's exactly what you're speaking to here, which is beautiful. Pete, if people wanted to get in touch and find out more about you, where should they go?

Well, probably easiest ways to just search Meaningful Money. That's kind of the brand that I've become a monster. What started out as a hobby has become a monster.

But yeah, search meaningful money. You'll find me everywhere or Pete Matthew on LinkedIn. Hit me up on LinkedIn. Happy to chat always.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your insight. That has been wonderful.

Thank you for having me, Tom.

Have something to say? Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

Wow, such a good conversation. As I said at the beginning, it was a bit more technical than usual, but great to see how this in the end was still clearly about your life, your money in that order.

I'm sharing a couple of takeaways in the end. So stay tuned. I'm really glad to have a second guest on the show. Oliver Noelting he's from Hannover in Germany.

Germany is actually our second largest listener market on the Money:Mindshift podcast.

So I'm really glad to have an opportunity to get in more German voices.

Oliver is a software engineer by training, but he's more known for a blog that he started in 2015, Frügalisten.de

This is German for the Frugalists, where he wrote about his financial plan and his long-term ambition to be financially independent by 40.

I'm keen to get into this story today because between 2015 and today, his plan changed and I'm keen to understand what happened.

Oliver, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

Oliver, as I said, back in 2015, you launched Frügalisten.de. We put this link in the show notes.

With a very clear plan, you said, save around 70% of your income, invest it and retire at age 40.

For someone who has never heard of this concept, how would you describe the core strategy and perhaps also the philosophy behind that plan?

Maybe I should give a little bit of context. Back in the day, 2015, I was 27.

I just started my first job after university back in the UK.

By the way, I've lived there 40 years. A couple years earlier, I had stumbled upon the FIRE movement that claimed you could retire early

at the age of 30 or 40. If you save enough of your income and accumulate it and invest it,

and at some point, after a handful of years, you can live off your savings and the investment returns.

FIRE, I should clarify this. Financial independence retire early, right?

Exactly. Financial independence retire early. The key point here is to keep your expenses as low as possible,

so you can save more and you need less money invested in order to sustain your living expenses from your investments.

That's the mechanics behind it. Back then, I just started my first job. I saved 70% of my first salary.

What I did was I simply pulled out an Excel spreadsheet and extrapolated it a little bit from there.

Even under some fairly conservative assumptions, I figured I could very likely be financial independence and retire from my job by the age of 40.

That seems realistic at least. Then I made the headline of my blog and my long-term goal. That was how it all started.

Behind the maths and behind the technicalities of it, there's also that philosophy, isn't there?

Because Frugal lifestyle, you picture someone who's perhaps living in his parents' attic and sitting on a three-legged stool staring at a white wall.

That's not actually it. Frugal lifestyle means you're very intentional in terms of what you actually spend money on.

You're not just cutting back, but you're also really focused on what is important. Am I seeing this right?

Exactly. It's not about depriving yourself of the nice things. As quite the opposite, the overall goal is to live the happiest, best life possible.

Then using money and spending as efficiently as possible to achieve that goal.

I'm convinced that it's possible to live a good life, but at the same time trying to spend as little as possible

by focusing on what is truly important to me, which is things like social relationships, having something meaningful to do.

I try to be efficient, for example, living in a small flat, renting the cheapest place possible while still feeling comfortable, driving an old car, buying used things, stuff that really doesn't make me feel unhappy, but saves a lot of money.

I try to find this balance or these common points.

Perfect. Such was the plan and the philosophy underlying it, and then what happened?

The first event where I started deviating from the plan came after two years. My original plan assumed that I would work full-time until 40.

But only after two years on the job, I moved back to Germany after two years in the UK, and I decided to permanently reduce my job, my working hours to part-time, which came in handy because one year later, my first daughter was born.

By working part-time, I could spend more time with my family, more flexibility, time-wise to support my wife and to spend time with my daughter.

Three years later, my second daughter was born, and there I took a whole year off together with my wife, took a whole year of paternity leave.

And even here in Germany, that's something really uncommon that hardly any family does because it costs so much of income, but we could easily afford it because our expenses were so low.

So now I've been working only part-time for eight years, and of course I didn't manage to accumulate as much money as my plan intended in the first place.

But still, I'm kind of on the way, and I would say I will still be pretty likely to retire somewhere between my 40th and 50th birthday.

Because right now, I've invested about 250,000 euros, and now the interest is already higher.

The compounded interest is already higher than what I can save every year.

And so the money started accumulating by itself, just like compound interest.

Yes.

And so I will be able to reach my target net worth even just by itself by waiting.

Okay, great. So there's a component that is still close to what you originally set out to do.

But can I just go back to the point where you decided to reduce the hours, spend more time with the family and so on?

Is my interpretation of this is why I thought was quite interested in this story?

Was it the case that you shifted perspectives from a long-term goal that you had,

or the decisions that you took in the present?

They were kind of in favour of a future self-of-yours.

But when your daughters were born, did you flip it around and see, actually, you know, the present self has a voice here at the table as well?

Is that kind of what I see correctly here in this decision?

Yes. So I have to admit that even in my original plan, 10 years ago, I published a blog post about this plan in 2016.

And in that blog post, I wrote something like, if I will truly stick to this plan, I don't really know.

Life is like a box of chocolates.

And I might change the plan once I become a family father.

Right.

Because I already had this possibility in mind that I would deviate from the plan and to get more freedom in the presence.

And I never really saw this plan as so fixed and so strict.

And also, over time, I started to understand financial independence less as a black or white concept,

where you work full-time to accumulate as much money in as little time as possible,

and then you retire, you quit your job.

But more of a spectrum where you become more and more free, and you introduce more and more freedom into your life,

the more wealth you accumulate.

So this could be like reducing your working hours, taking sabbaticals, or switching to a job that is paid less,

but then it's more fulfilling to you, maybe starting a self-employment because now you have the wealth to not worry about money as much.

Yeah.

So gradually, over time, you become more and more financially independent, and that is something that I try to pursue right now.

And the day where I just quit and retire might never come in that way because it's more of a gradual thing.

Yeah.

Trading out the full-time work or how you like it.

Rather than a cliff edge.

Yeah.

And I really like this notion of financial independence being something on a continuum because we're oftentimes thinking it as though it's like binary, right?

Either you're dependent or you're independent, but actually there's like many shades of grey in between.

Exactly.

And I think this suits life and how people live lives and much better.

Yes.

It's also much more flexible than the binary approach.

On the note of flexibility, so obviously, this episode is called How to Build a Plan.

And looking back, you had a plan, then life happened, you adapted a little bit, you still have a plan though.

So what lessons have you learned about how to build a life and money plan that survives reality?

Yeah, it's crazy because sometimes it's really surprising to me that my plan is already 10 years old.

What?

That's 10 years ago.

Crazy.

Because time flew by so quickly.

And I think the most important thing why my plan survived these 10 years was that I had in mind that the plan will fail or wait.

I will deviate from the plan right at the beginning.

Yeah.

So if you make a plan, maybe you should have in mind that you don't truly follow it.

And as I said, I never thought as an exact blueprint for my life.

Yeah.

But it served me more as a motivation.

And that was the most important part as a clear picture of what was possible and where I wanted to go, what I wanted to aim for.

And that was more important to me than following the exact numbers.

And secondly, I think the plan was some sort of, I couldn't fail it really.

Because even if I fell short of my target net worth, my target savings, I would very likely have accumulated, as I did, substantial savings.

And these savings would still give me a lot of options, a lot of freedom, even if it's not retiring by 40.

So yeah, the plan was really something I couldn't fail in the way like you would define failure maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I really like this.

There's a lot in this.

So thank you so much, Oliver, for sharing your story.

It was wonderful to have you.

If people wanted to find out more about you, where should they go?

Yeah.

You will find my blog on Frügalisten.de. It's German, but nowadays it's pretty simple.

I guess Google translate or AI tools will serve you well to get an English translation, I guess.

Fantastic.

We put that in the show notes.

Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story.

That was wonderful.

Thank you very much for listening.

Have something to say?

Check out the show notes and join the conversation.

Thank you for staying tuned.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast, your life, your money in that order.

Right.

How to build a financial plan then?

A couple of things really stuck with me from that chat with Pete.

First, his two account system.

One account for bills, one for everything else.

And he said he's applying this for himself.

He set it up once and largely left it alone since.

Right?

It's really quite simple and it works.

And second, more for our UK listeners, the difference between an ISA and a pension.

ISA, tax going in, free coming out, pension, tax relief going in, tax coming out.

Same money, different tools.

Use the ISA for flexibility, the pension for discipline, you can't easily break.

I think that's a really good takeaway.

I will say, by the way, for our listeners in the UK, I love these products.

They are simple.

They're brilliant vehicles for funding a long and happy life.

I do think we're a bit spoiled here.

Make sure you use them wisely.

From Oliver, two things stayed with me.

First, he builds deviation into his plan from day one.

So he expected to drift from it.

And then he never treated the plan as a blueprint, more as a direction.

Something to aim at rather than something to obey.

Given how his story actually unfolded, that turned out to be exactly the right way to hold it.

Two more things before you go.

We've put a link in the show notes to a financial plan template that you can use yourself.

I recently joined our friends at the Pension Geeks for a session called How to Build a Financial Plan in 30 Minutes.

That's where I talked about that template.

Take a look.

And second, this is the end of season three.

And, well, we plan to be back.

Season four launches in a few weeks.

Subscribe now so you don't miss it.

Our plan is concrete enough that I can even give you the title we'll be back with.

How to make a big decision.

For now, thank you, Pete Matthew and Oliver Noelting for joining us.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for everyone working behind the scenes on production and distribution to make this happen.

This is the Money:Mindshift podcast, Your Life, Your Money.

In that order, I'm your host, Dr. Tom.

And I'll see you around.

Thanks for listening to the Money:Mindshift podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like and follow, leave a review,

or share it with someone who's on their own money and lifestyle journey.

Hello everyone, thank you for joining.

This is the Money Mind Shift podcast with me, Tom or Dr. Tom.

This is the place where it's not just your bank balance that matters, but the balance in your life.

Now, balance is of course a keyword that we use a lot in the context of work, life, balance.

And that brings me right to the subject of this episode, sabbaticals.

Sabbaticals are of course extended career breaks where you purposefully take time out of work.

To do, well, what exactly sabbatical actually is, we will find out with Lyndall Farley, who is a sabbatical coach.

And I'm also looking forward to an interview with Sarah, who has done a sabbatical and where we can learn firsthand what that was like.

But before we get into all this, as always, I've got to be dropped into that rabbit hole.

Well, here I am again down in the rabbit hole.

To fill the time, I will go through some pictures, some holiday pictures and see what feelings and questions they provoke.

Picture number one, or I remember this place, this was an amazing place.

This is Spitz, just two hours to the west of Vienna.

This beautiful Danube Valley right by the river.

Here I can see the vineyards, I can see the river down there, I can see a boat passing by.

There was an apricot festival with local dances and stuff with all the trumpets and the march music and everything.

So the urbanite in me couldn't help but smile a little bit, but we had a really good time.

If it had been a sabbatical holiday, I think perhaps something that I would have done slightly less off, actually, is I would have done fewer activities and just more pondering and leaning back and just doing nothing.

Just sit there, watch the birds, perhaps.

Right, so this is now a picture from Stockholm and it's one of the lakes, people jumping into the lake.

I think this was at about 10 o'clock in the night, I thought it was just an amazing lifestyle.

It was something that I really liked and just got me into such a great energy.

I think this is perhaps something that I would like more of in my everyday life.

I think this just go out for ice cream, jump into the lake, just get you into such a good mood that I hardly get in Edinburgh, not only because we don't have that warm in summer.

Also, because of course, everyday life here is different, it's a different energy, that I sometimes wish we had more of, that Stockholm lifestyle I really loved.

Perhaps that's something you can do as well as you go through past holidays of yours.

When looking at those photographs, don't think so much how did I look, I think how did I feel?

There are some thoughts that don't have the chance really to creep up in our busy everyday lives.

A lot of reflections here made this stay here in the rabbit hole much more fun.

Times over, as all holidays, they are all by one point, so let me go out of the rabbit hole into the shore.

Have you ever thought about taking a sabbatical or taking a break from work to go travelling or to enjoy not having work?

So, I did when I was 23, I went to live in New York for about three and a half months.

I lived in the richest part of the US by square foot, I used to drive past 50 cents every day, travelling to New York, it's just a different way of living.

I will say though that when I did do that, I missed kind of home, I missed the weirdest things.

Like, I missed the path I used to walk all the time, believe it or not, I used to miss the weather in

Scotland.

That would be my dream.

I think it would be good for anyone, I mean seeing like some things that people see and have like friends that have done the travelling thing, like it's just amazing.

I was just going on the next flight to Magalith, one day ticket and have the time of my life over the summer.

I'm starting to think of like, saving a side port specifically for that purpose, so that maybe when I hit the 40 or something I can to a clap break.

So, it's not really a sabbatical that also like periods of unemployment in a way, so it's made me really value being employed and having a stable job.

And I can understand why people need a little bit of time to reset and realise what's actually important in life. You know, people kind of see it as full time or nothing and I think that it is quite nice to think that you could move down to like working a few days a week, working on part-time visas. Work can be challenging, it takes a lot out.

If you mentally get to the point of a bit of burnout.

Lyndall Farley is a sabbatical coach at Beyond the Break. She's taken 11 sabbaticals herself and not least because of that knows exactly how to plan this, beyond the logistics.

So, thank you so much for being on the show.

It's really lovely to be here.

It's great to have you.

Lyndall, I want to start with a simple question. What is a sabbatical?

And I am so glad that you started there because it's one of those things that should be simple, but actually gets a bit confused when people talk about it.

So, the simplest way that I can define the words sabbatical for people is that it is an extended rate from work and the purpose of that is to recharge and pursue other interests.

So, it has to be an extended rate and it's really an intentional break for rest and recharge and pursuing other interests. They're the kind of the key things that mark out a sabbatical.

Now, the very quick next question that usually comes is, what's the difference between a career break and a sabbatical? And from a sabbatical perspective, it can be sponsored by a company, so it can be part of a company program or it can be self-sponsored, self-supported.

So, somebody leaving their job and deciding to take this intentional break.

Whereas a career break is kind of like a much broader definition. You can take a career break because you're on maternity leave and then you decide to extend it or it could be for caring for parents. So, the career break, the really sort of encompasses a lot more.

It can also be intentional and self-supported, but sometimes it includes other things as well.

If you look at a Venn diagram, there's definitely a lot of overlap between these terms.

I mean, there are some unique differences as well.

And the key difference, if I'm getting at that right, is purpose, so that you have a clearly identified purpose for what you want to use that career break for in the case of a sabbatical.

Yeah, so I think all sabbaticals really are purposeful, self-directed and for recharging and pursuing other interests. That's right.

And for listeners who are new to this, why should they consider taking one?

I think you really have to kind of step back and look at our relationship with work here.

So, we've sort of already shifted from the paradigm of the baby boomers, which is basically study, work, retire, right? But the mindsets haven't necessarily shifted as quickly around it.

So, we know now that there is no such thing as study, work, retire. The job for life is gone.

And the truth is that we know now people are going to have five to seven different careers, not just jobs, different careers in their life, where they retrain, pursue other things, they decide to go into entrepreneurship, whatever it might be.

And so, the fundamental relationship with work and how it fits into our life has shifted.

At the same time, the pace of life and the complexity of life is just like going through the roof.

It's insane. Burnout is rife everywhere. Everyone's overloaded. Everyone's working 24-7.

And with email and our phones, we're constantly connected.

And so, the way that we're working these days just doesn't work in terms of working solidly for 40 years without a break. And so, that's where the sabbatical comes in.

It's become, because of the way that our society and work culture has shifted, it's become an imperative, to be honest, just to be able to make it, to be honest and mine.

Yes.

Yeah. I think there is also more opportunity, too, because there's lots of people who want to just take a sabbatical, they leave their job and they take the break, then they find work, or they go back to their job, whatever it is. But there are so many opportunities now, because of the shifting nature of employment.

So, for instance, particularly when you get to the higher levels, middle management leadership levels, you leave one job. There can be a gap while you find the next one. But also, you can negotiate. If you do get one job before leaving another, before handing in your notice, you should negotiate three, six months break before you start that other job.

So, it's really just taking advantage or using the opportunities that the shift in workforce has presented to us, but also just recognizing that working 40 years straight with a couple of weeks off per year, I mean, you know me, I've taken a lot of sabbaticals, but I mean, I just couldn't survive that. And I just don't think very many people can these days. And so, we have the rise of the sabbatical.

The sort of lifestyle that has been normalized and institutionalized. First, we have education, then we have work, and then we have retirement. I wonder how would you explain that there are still a large number of people who would like to take a sabbatical, but who do not actually take one.

And we've done a bit of research, and we found that in the UK population, we asked 2,000 people, more than twice as many people dream of taking a sabbatical than have actually taken one. And in the Gen X especially, 10% who have taken one, 40% would like to take one. So, that's like a fourfold difference. And I wonder what is stopping people?

Yeah. So, I think it's really great that you've looked at this from a generational perspective, because if we think through the different generations that we have in the workforce, it's very different attitudes towards work, but also very different pressures that they are currently facing.

So, Gen X is, they're just starting, right? And they've got a different mindset towards life and work. They're like, job for life, what the hell? That is a ridiculous concept, right? To a Gen X, right?

Millennials are, you know, they've had a bit of a rough time, you know, they're coming out of college through multiple different recessions, and they don't believe in job security because they've never experienced it. And they're also much more likely to be taking their life in their own hands and going, this is the life I want to live, right? 

That's why they're sort of more on board. Also, millennials, you know, they're having children now, but they're still in the early years. But the Gen Z, they're probably in the teen years of kids and kids in the teen years with all the sports and the clubs and everything. That'sexpensive.

They're also thinking about the college tuition. They're thinking about, oh, actually, like, oh, I'm a bit behind on like where I should be with my pension or like, how am I going to look forward? So there, Gen X right now are at the crunch, right?

Can I ask very quick on the retirement in specific, because I think this is really interesting, right? So they're thinking, well, I don't have the funds to sustain a life and retirement. What is the mindset here? I'm so glad we're thinking here, right?

So I would argue that Gen X are the people that need it the most, right? But they're the least likely to take it because of these perceived financial pressures. And it's also the mindset of how they perceive work and their relationship with money. So a job is security, right? That's the way they see jobs, it's security.

Whereas millennials and Gen X, I don't see it like that so much anymore. And money, money is security. Whereas millennials and Gen Z, they're not so attached to money as security, right? But Gen X are really attached to that. So it's shifting, you know, that perception, that mindset around what is security actually, you know? And what makes me feel safe, like backing myself and starting a business for the next chapter of this life or being in stable, if that exists anymore, employment, right?

And so I think that from the mindset perspective, it's a harder shift for Gen X to make, which is why they perceive that they can't do it, right?

But again, I would argue they're the ones that need it the most and many more of them can than the perception of what is possible. And what it takes is careful planning, forward planning, and recognizing that if they take a break, perhaps they take six months off.

And so then it's really more about priority. So I would ask Gen X's to consider if given enough forward planning, and when you're actually considering what a sabbatical could do for your life, in terms of not just finally stepping off the treadmill, but spending quality time with family, making memories with your kids while they still want to be with you, there's only going to be a couple years left and forward planning from a financial perspective to allow that to occur, maybe putting the sabbatical as a gap between two jobs so that you understand what you're returning to or negotiating a sabbatical, whether it's paid or unpaid with the company that you're with.

I mean, it's much more possible than people give it credit for.

Yeah. And we talked about the money being equilized with security or stability. And one of the things you encourage people to consider is the costs of not taking a sabbatical.

I've taken 12 sabbaticals, and I know that that sounds crazy to people. But it's because I prioritise it, and it really has just become a way of life for me. I've been in the workforce for 20 plus years already. These sabbaticals that I've taken have ranged from just a month, like a mini sabbatical through to a year. Most of them have been under six months, but they're these strategic breaks to rest, recharge, and figure out what's next for me.

The truth is, I didn't even have the word sabbatical to describe what it was that I was doing until about sabbatical seven. And then I discovered the word sabbatical. I was like, oh, that's what I've been doing. I push myself. I'm like very, very hard on myself. And so push hard towards gold, whether that was study or the next promotion in my corporate career or whatever it was.

And then I would achieve that thing. And then I'd need to step back and get some perspective and go, okay, what's next? But at the same time, I also had some big life dreams. You know, I have now, because of all of these wonderful sabbaticals I've taken, I've traveled to 65 countries across all seven continents, including Antarctica. And they're some of the best memories of my life.

And this, I think, is where it comes to the important sort of point around taking sabbaticals is, what I've done with those sabbaticals is because I've been consistently taking them.

They've been designed appropriately for the life stage and interests that I had at that moment.

So for instance, in my 20s, I backpacked around Europe. And I was staying in hostels and we were out partying and we were living on the cheap and catching the cheap overnight buses and, you know, the stuff that you do when you're a 20-year-old backpacker, loved the experience of having no money and making it work.

And I mean, I probably wouldn't have said that at the time, but it's like, that was quintessential to the experience, right? And so if I now look at my life now and married,

I have a child, you know, I have a business, you know, I mean, a fundamentally completely different stage of life. The idea of backpacking around Europe and staying in hostels is like, so if I had like saved up that experience until retirement or until later in life, I would have completely missed that experience.

And the same goes now for when we have our family sabbaticals. So all of my early sabbaticals were solo sabbaticals. And now they're family sabbaticals. And it's golden time with my daughter. I only get these years once. So let's make them count.

So that's the cost is that those experiences that you had as a student. Now it's the cost would have been the lost weeks and months with the child when the child was young, etc. Those were the costs. What is it that you want to do right now that you can only do in this life stage? What is most important for you right now?

And sometimes the answer to that question is, I'm losing time with my children.I've got to get my health back on track. Or it could be, I have always had this big dream to sail around the world or climb Kilimanjaro. And I've just always wanted to do it.

I cannot do that in retirement. I'll be too old. Yeah. Right. Retired people are going to kill me for saying that. But I mean, 20 years earlier, you do have a different body, right? So what are you missing out on by not taking a break? That's the real question.

Yeah. And that's a great money mind shift moment. That's exactly what we are wanting to encourage thinking about, you know, to think about your life and its entirety and, you know, how you may want to use the different sort of productive and recreational faces that you have.

One question I had was some listeners, they may go, is this just for wealthy people? Or is this for everybody?

It's, look, I'm not going to pretend that absolutely everyone in the world can take a sabbatical. There's unfortunately a large portion of the population that are living paycheck to paycheck. But I think the point is here that a sabbatical, even for a few months, is so much more within the realm of possibility than people give it credit for.

If I told you, Thomas, in two years time, you have to take a three month sabbatical, right? You have to. Your life depends on it. You have to. And so you're going to have to somehow work out the finances. And the only requirement is that you just take a break. You can just do lovely things at home with your family.

But in two years time, you have to take a break. What would you do? You'd make it happen, right? I would adapt. You would adapt. Yeah. And so then it really becomes more of a question of prioritization. Are you going to put the priority on giving yourself this break rather than just keeping on working, keeping on the grind?

And so that's really the mindset shift is like, well, how much do you value this? Because you can make this happen. But as with anything, you have to put the priority on it. It happened a lot.

Of course, during COVID, when many were put on furlough, and then all of a sudden they had the time and they needed to use it. And that's exactly what happened. People adapted and they began to realize oftentimes a few things about themselves and then that resulted in moving houses, changing jobs, et cetera.

One very clear message to people is just taking a sabbatical isn't all unicorns and rainbows. There's some messy, nasty, ugly, big questions that are going to come at you to answer the questions of, did I just happen to be in this life by default? Or am I really intentionally planning this? Intentionally planning is so important, right? And you use this metaphor of the sabbatical house.

Can you talk about this?

Before you go in sabbatical or even if you're on sabbatical, get your sabbatical house in order.

And so what's that made up of? First of all, we have to start with the roof of the house, right? And that is the purpose of your sabbatical. Why do you need this time? So come up with, you know, what is the real purpose?

That can be a real anchoring statement, like a purpose statement that you can keep coming back to, even if you do feel a little bit lost in existential dread.

But then, so the roof covers it all in and keeps you kind of sheltered from the storm.

And then we come into the house and we've got rooms, right? And these are places that you'll spend time in during your sabbatical. And each room has a theme. The themes of a sabbatical might be physical health. Another theme might be family, but then another theme might be fun and adventure, right?

And another theme could be planning my next career move. And so then you've got these themes of what was really important for you to be spending time in.

And so you need to be spending time in each of these rooms during your sabbatical. And then the most important aspect, I would say, is like the base of the house. So this is the foundations.

And the foundation of the sabbatical house is mindset. An example of a good healthy mindset might be openness to new experiences or curiosity or exploration. We want people to be in that mindset, begin that open sort of serendipitous energy, right? We don't want somebody to approach the sabbatical with the same kind of anxious energy with which they live their life.

And then just apply the anxiety, the perfectionism, the judgment, the guilt, and just carry that over into the sabbatical. We need people to be free from the guilt of taking the time off. They need to be really allowing themselves, giving themselves permission to fully embrace the time where your head's at is so much going to determine the experience that you have.

You can see why that would be such a crucial component on the mindset side. I get it why this is so important, but there will be a logistical side. What's the time I need money plays a role as well? So how do you reconcile that mechanic side with the mindset side?

I think of it in dials, right? We get to dial things up and dial things down. And there's three main dials, time, money, and activities.

If you dial up the amount of time you're going to go into sabbatical, you have to dial up your available money.

If you dial up the number of activities that has an implication on the budget. And so if you desperately need a break, but there's not a lot of available budget, you're dialing down the budget, then you can either dial back on the time frame, right?

So maybe a shorter sabbatical or you dial back on the activities, a sabbatical at home can be fantastic and really restorative if done in the right way. And so, you know, it doesn't have to be this really expensive thing, right? It doesn't have to be for a really long time. I mean, the research says that three months is really about the magic point.

Companies provide sabbatical programs that are a month or two months, and people are still getting lots of benefit from the shortest radicals as well. So three months is kind of the magic point. Nine months, you can achieve all the benefits, but it's like, yeah, so play with those dials. And it's really just the mix of what works for you practically in your life to make it happen.

Perfect. Now, Lyndall, for someone who is now convinced they've got to do this, what is the thing Where should they get started? Is it the mindset? Is the logistical side? What should they be thinking about?

Start with why? Why do you need this break? What would be so important about it for you? And what will happen if you don't take this break? What will you miss out on? So start there, and that will build the prioritization of it for you. Do not start with activities. The bucket list. This is perhaps what most people do. So I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to go to Paris. It's great to know that you want to do those things. But really making it happen is going to be if you really think about the imperative of it.

And what happens if you don't take the break?

Taking a sabbatical is ultimately a decision for somebody wanting to live a bigger life. You need time to do that.

And the sabbatical is just the vehicle to allow you to live a big life full of experiences.

Amazing. If people want to learn more about you and the work you do, your community, whereshould they go?

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm so, so, so about supporting people to take breaks. It's my absolute mission in life. And then if you want some support, come and join our community so people can get more information at gobreakspace.com.

Thank you so much, Lyndall Farley, for that conversation. That was fantastic. Really. Thank you for your time. You're very welcome.

Let's take a short break after the break, an interview with Sarah, who has done the sabbatical.

Have you ever taken a sabbatical or a longer break from work? No. Do you think you'd ever like to take one? I enjoy my work. So I get a lot from it. And I like being off work. But I think that's the story. You've got a year off. I think I would probably get bored after a while as well.

People often talk about work and life in this idea of work and life balance.

I think I've always been able to blind both of them working different locations.

It actually means that I've had no real need to think of it. Maybe we got to our point, we were thinking about getting scared in different directions now. Maybe that's the time to take time out. I think we'd miss it a little bit.

I think that could be incredible for mental health benefits and getting out of the kind of treadmill or cycle of living to work, which I think a lot of people are in and actually experiencing something different or traveling or seeing the world and just doing something different and breaking it up.

Back then, it was very much about work, work, work. Now I'm a lot more in the mindset of a value time more. I take the value from the stuff I produce outside of work, as well as the difference that I make inside the work as well to those lives. I could have done that, I could have done that, but at the same time, I'm kind of glad that I'm in our job. I've got to be a bit of financial security.

Taking a sabbatical was the best thing to ever happen to me. I've really travelled in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and I swear I would recommend it to absolutely anyone who feels like they can't spend the money now to travel.

Ultimately, I came back refreshed, I came back re-energized. I think people leave things and put things off until it's too late.

Thank you so much for joining Sarah. We're speaking because you took a sabbatical and I'm wondering what was it that led you to decide to take a sabbatical?

Sure. Well, you can probably tell from my accent that I'm from the Southern hemisphere. I'm Aussie. My partner Cooper and I were living in London. We found ourselves on the corporate or the work hamster wheel. We had great jobs and everything, but we wanted to take some time out and do the things that we'd intended to do.

I was inspired by my workplace had a sabbatical policy that I'd had my arm for a little while. It just became the right time to put my hand up and have a chat to them about what that looked like. Importantly, what would we do with that valuable time if we managed to secure it? We decided to apply for about eight months leave.

The work site, I suppose they wouldn't have covered for this financially. So how did you approach that side? How to fund the thing? I think we gave ourselves around six months to plan and save. So we changed some of our spending habits, which are really hard in London.

It's nice and expensive. We didn't want to do it hard. We're too old to do that. We wanted to stay in nicer places and have experiences. But the key thing for us actually was we got into a house and pet sitting. It was an excellent way for us to not just sort of dictate where we might go on our next adventure. Obviously, we didn't have incomes coming in.

And we needed to supplement that rental accommodation somehow. And so how some pet sitting was the perfect way to go. So what we did as part of our preparations before we left our jobs was we applied for house sits in London to get our experience up, to get our reviews importantly.

So that was part of our planning and preparation. I see how this would help with the financial side of planning for sabbatical. Absolutely. Now, you mentioned earlier that you also considered quite deeply what you're actually wanting to get out of the sabbatical.

So we all know time is a huge gift, right? And so having that space away from work to reassess what you want in life, that's a beautiful thing. And we took it seriously. So people tend to take sabbaticals for various reasons, learning a language, maybe building a business. We already had a YouTube channel and blog called Travel Live Learn. But work took precedence and we didn't get much time to focus on it. We really just wanted to play in those creative waters.

So we thought, what better way to do that? If we take time out, go traveling, do something new, new people, meet new dogs and cats and see navelicles that we would never have seen, you know, they were nice stories to be able to tell. So that's what we wanted to do with the time.

From the way you're describing it, it sounds a bit akin to a broad movie. Wondering, is there a sort of like typical day that you experienced?

There wasn't necessarily a typical day. So, you know, we might be looking after horses in Bedfordshire. When I say we, I mean my partner and he got stuck out in the winter cold dealing with the mess that they made.

We were looking after nine dogs, nine rescue dogs in Malta. So all of those little routines, they ended up looking different. I guess we discovered if we were trying to build our business and create content on the side, we needed to figure out how to build that into the routine.

We did find ourselves in holiday mode pretty quickly and we needed to adjust if we wanted to get anything done. So this is, so I'm interested in this tension.

It sounds as though you were actually quite productive. I mean, not only as far as your YouTube channel, but also in terms of, you know, what you did when you pet sat, help me understand this tension between holiday mode and on the one on the other side being productive to when you've got that freedom and flexibility and you've broken freer than nine to five, you do have to be disciplined, but traveling around seeing new places being in, you know, new situations. It feels like travel.

It feels like fun, probably because for the most part, it was. But because we weren't on a holiday, you know, any freelancer or anyone you talk to who's traveling and working, they'll say there is a difference between a holiday and, you know, working really.

So we'd taken this time to see life the way we wanted to see it. But we wanted to build some stuff to build our content and create things. So we had to be a bit disciplined around making sure we set a set aside time to do that because you're very easily falling to, you know, playing with the dogs, going on long walks, going and having a look at something that you wanted to see in Malta or wherever you are. And then you don't slip away.

We wanted to achieve something and get something done as well. So we had to find that balance between living our best, most fun life and being a little bit disciplined about it.

When was the first moment where you felt like this is it? This is why we did this.

So there were many moments, I'd say, you know, France, Malta, Ireland. One crazy one that made us really look at what we were doing and have a bit of a laugh, I guess, was when we were taking our nine rescue dogs that we were house sitting, taking them to a big field to get there you were dragged through what we call cat alley.

So there were like seven cats taunting all of these dogs were dragged through this alley. We're taken down into this field, but then you let the dogs off and run around and they're having just a beautiful time and we're walking around and looking around the beautiful landscape and going, how did we do this? How did we get here?

You know, if we hadn't have taken the time out, then we would never have had experiences like that that we talk about and remember to this day, you fall into that that that love of it pretty quickly, because life becomes an adventure.

Can you tell us about your life now?

I think if COVID hadn't happened, we would have just continued on our path and maybe ended up living and working in South America or somewhere that we talked about. We actually came back to the UK about a couple of years ago and we love our work. You know, Cooper's a teacher and I work in communications. We still have our our travel blog called Travel Live Learn. COVID and the times, I guess, interrupted what we thought was our plan.

The things that we took away from that time out from that sabbatical was the knowledge and the understanding that you can take time out. You're not missing out because work will always be there.

Your friends are always going to be there if you have the opportunity, like go and talk to your workplace or and find out if there's a policy like the one that I had the opportunity to take advantage of.

I guess the sabbatical piece is that safety net, which enables you to take an extended period but know your job is safe. Not everyone has that luxury but sometimes there are ways around it. So we've taken that understanding and that appreciation with us and still have it and you know, we'll implement it in the future when the opportunity arises.

And I was wondering on that particular point, I was wondering like what sort of habits and mindset, you know, had crept in after you've done the sabbatical, that sort of like lasted. The habits that we've taken away are to try and at least if you're not doing it, be aware and conscious that your time out for yourself is important, whether that's five minutes meditating in the morning or going to the gym or planning for your next triple way.

You know, those are the habits that we've taken with us, just that knowledge that these things are good for us and it's okay to it's okay to indulge in a bit of joy and adventure.

Absolutely. And one last question for you, Sarah, what can go wrong that you can tell other people to avoid?

Well, don't pack too much because we had to shed a lot of things along the way and make sure you've got the right insurance, like digital nomad insurance. So I think if you were traveling around, you are almost that nomadic. So finding insurance that will cover you wherever you land, it is a bit harder than getting normal travel insurance, but do check into it.

If you've got an intention to do something, whether it is volunteer work, learner language, set your time aside to do those things in amongst all the fun bits, you have to work and save money somehow to do these things. But you can also make a choice, no matter how old you are to take a career break to go traveling or to do the things that, you know, you regret not doing.

Sarah, thank you so much for your time. I'm so grateful for having had the opportunity to bring a sabbatical to life. So thank you so much.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Lovely to talk to you. Have a great day.

You too. Thank you.

You know what the point that stuck with me was not what does a sabbatical cost, but what would the costs be of not doing a sabbatical? I thought that was that was a real powerful point and brought to life by Sarah, because she really showed how, in her case, you know, the career break completely changed her life. And she became someone else and became much more productive in a complete new realm afterwards.

You may hear sabbatical and you may think, Oh, this is just an extended time off. And this is where I just travel. And this was just a fun, et cetera. It's sabbatical is there to become in a way more productive long term. I just want to think briefly about why this may be even more relevant and important than ever before. And I think about this in the context of AI.

This is, of course, something everyone is talking about angst about AI replacing humans. But you know, what my take is that what's going to happen is that humans that use AI will replace humans that don't use AI.

Yes, many jobs, they will become redundant, but new jobs will occur. A new niche will occur.

Yeah, this is this is always how technological change happened in the past. But what I do think is really important in this context of technological change is that you are aware of what your niche Is. And in this context, I think sabbaticals are a real powerful way to explore what it is you want to do, take the time out to let the mind wander to not be dictated by the nine to five routine or by the work routine or by your inbox or by teams, explore what your talents are, what your skills are, what your interests are, and how you can work with these in an age of AI.

I think this is what sabbaticals may be really powerful for.

Thank you for listening. I'm Dr. Tom. See you around.

We are our own worst enemy.

The emotion that you feel here is envy.

You should always find somebody more superficially successful.

No one's really doing as well as we'd hoped.

My life is my life.

Guys, if you're not careful, you wish your life away.

I don't want to have an argument with you.

And that's a real money mind shift moment.

Bad things happened and it depends on how you bounce back.

What do I want my life to be?

It is actually true that the grass is always greener on the other side because of the physics of grass.

You look often when you look up at grass.

Is there anyone you compare yourself with?

I believe that being well off isn't the same as living well.

That's the money mind shift.

With Dr. Tom Marthar.

Hi and thank you so much for joining episode four.

Thank you so much, especially if you've already listened to the three episodes before that.

I'm Tom Marthar.

People in the office, they call me Dr. Tom.

And thank you for staying with us on this bus.

If you're only joining us here at this bus stop, then welcome and I hope you are.

Looking forward to the subjects that we are discussing and exploring here.

This is what money mind shift is about helping you make better trade-offs between present self and your future self, both in terms of financial security, but also in terms of living a happy life, whatever that may mean for you.

Now what we're doing in this episode, perhaps the thorniest subject yet, we have another great guest, Neil Beige.

Why do we do an episode on how to compare yourself?

Remember Daniel Crosby.

For those who didn't join this one, Daniel said something there.

He said that there are two components that make up financial well-being.

The first one is the amount of wealth you have.

You know what you have in the bank account, the investments, the value of the house, etc.

All those things.

Then he said the other thing that matters is all you're comparing to.

You know, that makes a lot of sense.

The one question is how much you have, the other is how much you think you have in comparison to others.

And you really see why this matters.

Imagine you get a pay rise, I don't know, a thousand pounds more per year, and you may immediately feel great about the pay rise.

But then you learn that someone who has the same track record, perhaps is in the same job, same employer, all things being equal.

But he or she gets two thousand pounds more.

And all of a sudden, the one thousand pounds, you know, the same amount doesn't feel that good anymore.

So here we have it, right?

So comparisons that can really have negative effect on your overall financial well-being, and how you believe you are situated financially.

So this is why I think comparing yourself wisely, comparing yourself constructively, comparing yourself insightfully is really important.

And that's what I want to explore today.

Before we get there, as ever, I've got to go down the rabbit hole.

Right, here I am in the rabbit hole.

It's dark here, it's crumbly.

But you know what?

I am having a good time because my producer gave me his phone, and he also loaded up his social media feed.

And I think this is a good example of what happens when you compare yourself.

When we scroll through those feedings, when we see these things, here I can look at the posts of a friend of his.

And let's look at what this friend posts.

Here's another busy day he's had.

He says here for those asking, I've had another, I didn't ask.

He says, I'm on the top of a mountain.

There's a picture where there's somewhere in the Highlands perhaps, and he's got his hands raised high.

So this here, it was so great to be here.69

He was at a restaurant, there's pictures of his family.

And all right, okay, so I get it, I get it, I get it.

This is a really successful guy.

We all get the picture, successful guy who is always happy, who has an amazing family, who's got great success in business, etc.

Perhaps this is what he wants us to make believe about himself, or it's the side of himself that he wants to show.

And of course, what's happening, there are reference points being created.

I mean, it's almost inevitable that we go, oh, right, okay, well, look at this.

This is how he or she spent her Friday night.

Oh, look at what they did. 

Oh, look at where they go to holiday.

And you get the, you kind of get the impression that others are happier, more successful, have the more attractive partners,

have the happier children or well-behaved children, or whatever it is, right?

So you get all those reference points.

And for sure, there's something here to bear in mind of what happens when you compare.

I'm sure this is something that I pick up in the conversation with Neil.

What we're made to think and how we ought to be thinking when we're going through social media feeds.

Before I go into that conversation, we just find a way out of this rabbit hole.

For this subject of how to compare yourself, Neil beige,

Neil has spent almost two decades researching human behavior.

He's a co-founder of Shaping Wealth, which is a learning technology platform.

So he's a real expert on the subject of financial psychology and behavioral science.

Neil, thank you so much for joining.

It's great to have you.

Tom, it is always a pleasure to be able to chat to you.

So thank you for asking me to join you today.

Neil, when I asked you just a few days ago, whether you would want to join a show on how to compare yourself,

I think it took perhaps like five minutes and you replied, yes, I'm on, or you were really enthusiastic.

Why was that?

Because I think sometimes, Thomas, as we go through life, we are our own worst enemy.

The stories we tell ourselves, the memories we carry, the way we perceive the world around us to create the story that is the story of us.

I have a deep fascination with that part of humanity.

So any conversation about comparing ourselves with others, whether that's ourself or ourself in a future state or others in our current state, it's an amazing conversation to have.

And actually, I think a really important one because it has such a fundamental impact on how we go through the rest of our life.

You know, the typical advice that we hear when it comes to comparison is something like, just don't compare yourself, just be yourself.

Is that right?

No, it's completely wrong.

No, let me retract.

The advice is good advice, almost impossible to do, right?

You know, from an evolutionary perspective, you know, five and a half million years in the making.

You know, from when we first climbed out of trees up until today, we have been tribal creatures.

We seek out our tribes.

And one of the things that we have evolved to do is look for the cues from within the tribe.

So if someone is doing something behaving in a particular way, you know, we observe that behavior.

And if we see that behavior playing out well, then we tend to kind of mimic that or learn from that.

But, you know, we are always looking to others for cues about what good looks like, or maybe what good behavior is, or conversely, what I should avoid and what maybe I don't want to do.

We don't go through life in isolation. That's just not how we work as a species.

So great.

The advice, you know, don't look at others, just make them forge your own path.

But the reality is our evolutionary brain is kind of silently screaming, look for others for guidance or wisdom or little tips or tricks that you can use to make your journey through life just a little bit easier.

So some great advice, notoriously difficult to put into effect.

So when you say it is great advice, what do you mean by that?

The great piece is that we should be forging our own paths.

I could spend my life every day, my working life with you, right, for example.

And then we could be best friends and we could spend weekends together too.

Some days a week together all the time.

We'll learn from each other and we will take cues from each other and we will develop a kind of a little inner tribe if you like.

And we will start to think similar and do the same things and all of that kind of thing.

But the reality is your life is your life.

My life is my life.

You know, my life with Sandy, you know, a little dog Archie, that's my life.

And I should do everything I possibly can to make sure that that life is full of meaning and purpose and is as fulfilling as it can possibly be.

You should be doing exactly the same thing.

It doesn't mean that we can't have similarities and we can tread a kind of remarkably similar path.

But why I say the advice is good advice is because yes, it's difficult and yes, we are social creatures.

But this is a unique journey for me.

Yeah, there is a dark side to comparisons though, isn't there?

Because, you know, there's all this research that, you know, people who are exposed to Ferraris and Pors, you know, they have less happy in their lives.

And, you know, you're more likely to feel for bankruptcy if your neighbours want the lottery.

Like all this.

So there's tons of evidence that comparison can bog you down.

I mean, the evidence is your rights.

The evidence is there.

It's pretty clear that kind of keeping up with the Joneses, if you like, you know, it's known as the Hidonic treadmill, you know, getting on that treadmill.

And just constantly striving for the next best thing, especially if that treadmill is facing your neighbours, you know, and they are pulling up in the brand new Porsche and, oh, you know, they've just moved from a two bedroom house to our five bedroom detached house and all of the things that you observe in other people can lead you down the wrong path.

Because, you know, ultimately we are, we're social creatures, but we're also we're kind of drawn to the things that others have.

And we kind of go, I wouldn't mind a little bit of that.

That looks really good because you're looking at them, but you're not looking at them knowing all the facts. You're just seeing what they want you to see.

We live this world in what I call in a cropped existence.

People only show you their highlight reels.

We are we never get to see the real picture of what's really going on.

So there might have the nice car and the might might have the nice house and looked like the perfect family. But when they close that front door, you have no idea what's going on in their world. Looking at those people and going, I want to be like them without knowing all of the data can lead you down the wrong path. And once you go down that pathway, it's tough to kind of hit the reverse gear and get back out.

What you're describing there, that sounds, it applies especially to social media as well. 

Social media is amazing in one way, but it is utterly devastatingly bad in another.

Look how amazing my life is. Look at me on this amazing vacation in the Cayman Islands.

Or look at me in my brand new car or whatever the story is that people want you to consume.

Social media has become such a light friction way to kind of push your stories out.

Right. So I was speaking at a conference recently. And one of the screen images I use is it's the picture of a baby crawling along the floor playing with toys. And it's purposely framed, right, with a lovely colorful frame. And I say, you know, this is a classic Instagram post,

you know, and I made up a little caption and when, you know, little George playing with his toys, life's amazing, whatever. I made it up. And I talk about this cropped existence. And as I'm doing this, I click my button. And what happens is the frame starts to open up. Right. What it does is it shows you the full picture in the corner is a mother sat on the floor with her head in her hands.

And the floor and the house is a mess. But only when you see the full picture, do you get to really understand the life the people are living? Social media for me, great. But man, in the wrong hands, it's not really a force for good.

When you spoke and you gave those examples of, you know, the neighbors and the amazing holidays, etc, then you look at those and you're thinking, I want this, right?

The emotion that you feel here is envy. What other emotions may be instilled, you know, in as far as may there be a good intent, even in things like envy. The easiest way to talk about emotions is that emotions are data.

The brain takes in data right through our senses, slight touch, taste, smell, sound.

And all that data is, it's electrical impulses. People are listening to this right now. They're not hearing anything really. It's a sound wave. It goes into people's auditory cortex. The brain reassembles all of the sound waves into meaning. You know, all of these things are just electrical impulses that the brain has to process and make sense of the world. And when it takes in that data, it creates on the fly an emotional response. And the emotional response is another data point.

That is a reaction to the first bit of data that went into the engine. And sometimes we kind of categorize emotions as bad or good or negative or positive. You know, like anger is a bad thing.

Well, actually anger can be a good thing too. It depends on the context. And so all of these emotions are just data points, information that we can pause, think, Oh, why do I feel like this?

Yeah. And then do something about it. So to your point, I see my neighbor getting rich over the over the road and maybe envy kicks in. Not many people take the time to actually sit down and think, what do I want my life to be? And I could go, you know what, I tell you what I want to do. I want to spend it with my wife and my dog and my closest friends. And I want to do,

I only got the beach and I want to do barbecues. And I want to just do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And people don't have that honest, brutal conversation with themselves about what life do I want, actually? Because you know what, John and Mary over the road might be pulling up in the flashy car. Do you know what? I don't care. Congratulations, John and Mary. Amazing.

That's your life. That's the life you choose. It's not the life I choose.

Again, that's a real money mind shift moment as well. You know, you see an indicator of wealth and then instead of feeling envy or jealousy, you're saying, well, what is it actually, you know, that I want?

And you know, it's that important for me. Are these really the things that matter to me, etc? You know, researchers who have interviewed people on their deathbeds, when you read the research, not one person said, I wish I'd have had a better car than John and Mary.

Yeah. Not one person says anything like that. They say, I wish I'd spent more time with my family.

I wish I'd done more things that made me happy. And it takes these people to their deathbed to figure out that it's not about anybody else. It's you. It's one life. It ain't a dress rehearsal.

This is it. So you should be doing everything that delivers the the deepest source of contentment that you can possibly find. Great observer, the people. But don't use them as your benchmark.

Be your own benchmark. Speaking up to that notion of every emotion has a positive intent, then perhaps there's also something to gain from envy or to learn from envy.

Why am I envious? What is it about my life and my story, my money story, my life story, that in this moment is making me envious. And if you are willing to go there, it sets you free.

These are the sentences within our story that often hold us back. And the second you can and realize that you were told a particular thing and that's become a like a self-limiting belief, the more you can then kind of go back and rub that line out and rewrite it again.

Our stories aren't written in pen. They're written in pencil. And you can go back and you can edit the stories when you realize that actually that that was written in a not in a beneficial way to my current self. And I'm going to erase it. I'm going to rewrite that because I need to give myself permission almost to accept that I was wrong. And actually, I'm going to update my mindset to one that is more updated and more relevant to the world I'm trying to navigate today.

I like that phrase, give yourself permission to update the past stories. There's a lot in that.

You know what? We come back to social comparisons and how to compare after the break. Thank you so much.

Do you find that you ever compare yourselves to anybody? I would be lying if I said no, because I am an age now where I remember the 30s and I feel like a lot of my friends have been really careful with money and I'm seeing that, you know, there may be one to their second home now to compare yourself to people that have maybe had either a leg up or have just been better at saving. It's really hard not to do that. I think we meet comparisons with everyone.

They say, you know, we always get this, the world of social media means that you have our kind of play of literally everyone you can compare yourself to. So I think also, consciously, they always need comparisons, but it's about also, you know, looking at yourself and taking your wins yourself.

At that point, you know, I've done well in this instance and, you know, looking at even just comparing old me to new me, the fact that I've now before handled so responsible and now a lot more responsible than was. So I think with those comparisons, obviously a lot more healthy.

I would say with a lot of the people, like my close friends, the whole like career sort of trajectory has probably not gone the way anyone's really hoped has come to be honest, it's just a bit of a shame. Just the way that the job market is and, you know, multitude of different reasons, cost of living going up.

I do feel it's bad that I find, sort of, find camaraderie and the fact that no one's really doing as well as we'd hoped in a way. It sounds really horrible, but, you know, we can all kind of relate to one another.

But naturally, when you see someone being really successful at all, I wish I could have that much money, which I was blaring about money the way that I am. Yeah, no, I totally get, and I guess also I'm quite similar. I like to find comfort in other people being in the same position with me.

And this really loves company. Exactly. So I know genuinely, I think that that's actually, it's quite nice to kind of, if you're feeling that you're not maybe doing as well as you maybe dreams or envisioned, it's nice to take that comfort in going, oh, actually, all this, this group of people around me is doing the same. Here we are back in the studio with a panel.

Thank you so much for joining. I think we can't discuss comparison and how to compare without discussing social media. What do you think is the impact of social media in terms of how we compare ourselves? I think it can be helpful, but also can be incredibly harmful.

So it can be helpful if you find a role model who you want to aspire to be like, for example, who can help you motivate you to get ahead, whatever is we want in your life, whatever motivates you. It can be harmful if it's totally unrealistic, not even real, not real, you know, it's all less pretend.

There's always people out there who are showing off in a completely artificial way.

And it's about making sure that you remain grounded. I think as long as you don't just focus on what you do and have, and that you also remember, if you're comparing yourself, remember to remember the things you do have and the grass isn't always greener.

This is a funny insight. I came across actually that it is actually true that the grass is always greener on the other side because of the physics of grass. When you look off, but you look at grass. So this is interesting, isn't it?

Because you know, sometimes, so the point here being you've got to go on the other side to look from top down on the grass from the other side, like to see that actually, yeah, exactly. To also see, you know, there, you know, now you look back to your grass and you see, well, perhaps, you know, it's so you see what I mean. There's a constructive side in this.

What's important here is, if whether it's social media or somewhere else, if you lock yourself into a mindset that finds people more successful than you are on the surface, however you choose to define that, if you're constantly chasing other people's lives, you'll never be happy. You'll never be happy because you always find somebody more superficially successful than you are.

So I think, I think what's really important is, you know, again, to kind of stay grounded, stay true to yourself to really try and work it what's important to you and then anchor your ambitions for life against what's important to you not chasing the Joneses or else, you know, I think social media almost amplifies the harm that having those kind of inappropriate comparisons can create for us psychologically.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we've talked previously, Tom, about what can about your working life and when you might want to retire. Again, within a working environment, you can compare yourself with others and think, oh, success means I've moved to the next level up the the grading structure or whatever.

But again, I think that equally it's about making sure that what you're working at works for you, that you get fulfillment out of it. And that doesn't always come from having more people reporting to you or having a higher grade or whatever.

I think as humans, we're almost conditioned to constantly chase them when you're young, you know, you're chasing maybe having children, seeing the children grow up, you know, as you get older, you might be chasing retirement, whatever that means.

And as we spoke about in previous episodes, you know, if you if you're retiring, we don't have a plan of what you're doing next, that can be quite destructive.

So the risk is that you go through your whole life chasing the next thing, having aspiration towards a day where you have more money, have more time, have more whatever.

But actually, if you're not careful, you wish your life away.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just being in the present and trying to work out, you know, how you set the right goals for yourself in terms of what gives you joy and purpose in your life, in the moment, trying to really focus on what helps you have a life well lived.

And do you mean that part of that is, you know, home plans, but also not having rigid plans?

Yeah.

Because if you have rigid plans and you fail on something, that might make you feel really bad unless you can come back from that and hopefully you can.

Is there anyone you compare yourself with?

It's supposed to probably compare myself and my sisters and how our lives are similar, but also dissimilar. And it's a very different experience. So I compare,

I would say I would hope more in a positive way than a negative, but there's definitely different feelings going on there. But obviously that's a little bit about the sibling rivalry that we all have.

Two groups of close friends that my wife and I are friendly with. And it's always quite easy to we hear about what they're all doing and whatever. And we've all got things that we do that. You may say, oh my goodness, they're doing that. But then you could think, but we'll hang in a minute.

We are doing this. So I think it's really good to have a mixture of of of friends that are in similar positions to you, but all of different interests all have different preferences. One of my friends, she wanted to go off and do a check and call it in in Africa with a backpack and nothing else. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting, but there's no way

I'd want to do that. But you know, so it's really good to hear what others are doing and seeing that people are taking their own choices. So comparing, I'm not sure if that's right, freeze, but you're always interested to compare what you're doing with what others are doing.

But not necessarily in a judgment level, you know, they're better or worse or whatever, but it's just different. You know, when I was young, I'm the eldest of three boys and I was very competitive when I was young. It was important to me to be the best and be seen to be the best.

And I think as I've got older, you could have, you know, I've got a medal to be realized that's not actually what it's all about. And what I find now is, I wouldn't say I compare myself necessarily, but

I love kind of looking around work and colleagues and just seeing people do things better than I do and just think, Oh, that's really good. I'm going to, I'm going to nick that way.

You're kind of dealing with this and just the things you can learn off the people around you, things really valuable as you, you could have start to become a bit more confident in your own skin.

So it's less about winning and be seem to winning and more inward in terms of trying to be the best version of yourself you can be and how do you how do you learn off others to allow you to do that?

Definitely a constructive side to comparisons. Not all bad. Because as you said, you're less sort of like sidetracked by comparisons as you as you get older. And that appears to be a really good thing to say in favor of aging.

Well, let's wrap up here. Our panel is of course, totally without comparison. So thank you so much for joining again. And I'm looking forward to having you again in the next episode. Thank you.

Here we are back. We have Neil Beige. Do you compare yourself to anyone?

What a great question. I don't think I do. I don't think I do explicitly. Let me let me rephrase that.

I look, I do look to other people and think, Oh, that's a great thing they've done or a great thing they've achieved. Or, Oh, I think I might want to do something similar to that. But I've learned over the years through hard work.

And I mean, hard work on myself, you know, not to look at other people and think I wish I was like them. Because I've learned that behind the facade, behind what they want me to see is a deep well of other information that I don't have access to.

And therefore, I don't really know them. And that goes for my closest friends, I would argue, these are people I spend my life with. There is a side to them that they don't let people in.

They don't want to let people in. That is like the stuff that they hold, you know, almost like a fortress around that information that belongs to them and nobody else but them.

I think when I was younger, I would have looked at the world and people around me and think,

Oh, look at him or her. I want to be like them when I grow up, you know, but the more I've studied human behavior and applied neuroscience and the more I have spent time working on myself and my own self awareness and I take in the data and I get the emotional prod and I feel like this.

But now I put a pause in place, especially if it's a kind of strong visceral emotion. And I ask myself, Okay, why am I feeling this? Why do I believe what I currently believe? Where does that come from?

I've only gotten to that place, Tom, through hard work on me. It's not easy. There is no pill you can take. It's not like a, you know, it's like a matrix, take the blue pill and everything is sorted. This is hard work on constantly asking yourself, why do I feel like this? Or what made me feel like this? There's so do the work and you know, you do the work on yourself and it sets you free.

Yeah, something that came up when we had Anne Karpf on this podcast, I asked Anne how people can develop healthier attitude towards aging. And she said something to the effect of seek role models.

Essentially, what you're doing is you're being intentional with who you compare to, right? That's right. And you know, it's a role model. It's a, as the Italians would say, a conciliary, you know, someone who you can turn to for counsel and wisdom, it could be a mentor.

A role model for me isn't looking at someone and saying, I want to be them. It's saying there are elements of what they've achieved or the way they live their life or how they engage with the world that I think I would like to be more like that.

It's saying I want to, I want to, I would like to replicate elements of what I see because I believe that that will advance my story. I have role models. You know, I look at people who've written book after book after book.

I'll give an example, David Eagleman, an amazing neuroscientist, Stanford University professor, one of the best brains on the brain, Drins, a series of amazing books.

Now, I look at him and I don't think I want to be like him. I look at him and think, my God, he's achieved the most amazing putting all of that work into the world and having it be best selling, best selling, best selling.

There's clearly a recipe there that he kind of has already, that he's found that he uses all the time. And so I look at him and I go, I want to learn how to do that. I don't want to be him, but I want to take that one element of his existence. And I want to see how can I use that to advance my story.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So is that how you would recommend you to do it? So our listeners who are now asking perhaps themselves, like, you know, how do I choose a role model?

Everything to do with human behavior, right? Anything to do with us should always start with us.

So if we talk about the realms of emotional intelligence, the first pillar of emotional intelligence is self awareness. It's about recognizing who I am and how I respond to the world.

Before you start pointing your finger at other people for making you upset, you've got to ask yourself, why does this upset me? Everything is about self awareness. So for me, it starts with you and you figuring out what is a life of meaning and purpose? What life do I want to live? And who do I want to live it with? And what do I want to achieve? And what do I want to do? What do I want to spend my days doing?

All of those questions are super important for you to figure out, actually, that's the path I need to take when you're on that path and you know where you're heading.

You can then kind of open your eyes and look around and go, oh, I wonder if other people have done this too? And you can start to look to them for tips and tricks, bits about advice, and it doesn't need to be anyone you know.

I could do research on David Eagleman because he's a public figure and I can read about him and I can do searches online for how he's achieved, what he's achieved, who is published with all of those things. I could do the work and I can go, oh,

I can see he has a process. Oh my God, that's amazing. I'm going to see if I can use that process for me. Yes. You know what, my neighbor who is kind and thoughtful and I can look to him and go,

I should be more like him actually the way he engages with people. I can see that when people are talking to him, he pauses and he's quiet and he's calm and he's curious and he's thoughtful.

Actually, I could do more of that. So it's about kind of looking at the journey you want to take in life and finding all of the other sources of data that you can bring into here that will allow you to go on that journey with ease and enjoyment and feel fulfilled. So role models for me are in front of us, could be our closest friend, or they could be some distant, untouchable figure.

Now this is of course, Money Mind Shift is of course a, it's a type of personal finance podcast.

So is the answer different if I asked you for how to choose a financial role model?

Yes, it probably is. If I looked at someone like an author or a TV presenter, someone who I look to and think, oh, actually, there's elements of that that I want to do, but I observe them constantly failing and getting into debt and just, you know, there's elements of that story that don't stack up.

There's two things to play here, Tom, right? There's your story. And underpinning that is your money story, all the stories that we've told ourselves, all the things we've learned from our caregivers, our parents, all of the elements of that story that influence the way we engage with borrowing, spending, saving, earning, investing, giving, protecting.

And so you can look to the people who are amazing with money, who, and this isn't about being rich, by the way, as in this, not about looking at people who've got tons of money, it can be your neighbor who lives a relatively good life, go on vacations, spend time with their family, aren't working themselves into the ground and not working seven days a week, people who we look to, and we go, oh my god, they've just got this right.

I grew up five children. My mum and dad didn't have a lot. We, as a family, were always taught that money causes arguments. That was a money story that was embedded in me as a child.

And I carried that all the way through my life. So anytime anybody said to me, let's have a conversation about money, I would immediately go into a place of, oh no, because I don't want to have an argument with you. The data came in and my emotions instantly went to, don't do this.

Then I met Sandy, my wife. She was taught that money is a tool to live a life of meaning and purpose.

And you should save, but you should also live your life. So when Sandy and I came together, we had two conflicting money stories. Well, who's right? Let me step back and let me observe here.

And what I realized was actually, Sandy became my financial role model. I looked at how she engaged with money in the world. And I thought, that's what I want to be like. My money story or the way I engage with money completely transformed. And now pretty much mirrors hers.

And I've written a new money story. We can look to celebrity or big names or rich neighbors as the place you want to look to. But sometimes looking to the person who is going on this journey and is by your side can actually be a really good place to look.

I totally see that. Thank you for sharing that.

This has been really, really insightful. If people want to learn more about you and want to get in touch, where should they go? I've got my own website, NeilBage.com. As much as I hate social media,

I want social media. I'm on all the usual places. And it's Neil Bage. It's an unusual name to a degree. So if you find somebody else who is selling kitchens, that's not me. I'm the other Neil Bage.

The other Neil Bage. Thank you so much for your time. It was a real pleasure to have you.

Tom, thank you so much. You appreciate it. Do you think that you compare yourself to anyone?

Yeah. I mean, I think I find cars and things very practical, but doesn't stop me looking at somebody else's on the same. How did they get that? Or why have I not got a car like that?

Do you have anything that you tell yourself when you find yourself comparing?

This probably depends what mood I'm in. I think sometimes you just got to accept that everyone's got their own kind of journey. And I think when I have a reality check that I realise that I'm really in a really privileged position actually. And I've got like a happy house and a good relations relationships and family and everything in my life.

But actually, I have done well and I might not have done quite as well as them. But yeah, I mean, just because there's definitely people that I've worked with and think about how they're successful and I might try and achieve that.

I think we've learned really quite a lot. So what I take away is number one, we cannot compare. It is human to compare. And that is very much at odds with this advice that we're often getting to stop comparing yourself, just be yourself, etc. And this conversation with Neil, we looked at why this advice comes from a good place, but really is a bit pointless.

Because, as he says, we cannot not compare comparisons. They give us emotions. And Neil spoke about how emotions are really types of data that we've got to learn to interpret. And I thought that was so useful, how even in envy or jealousy or how there could be data in that that we can learn from, that we can grab and that we can actually do something with.

Now, I asked Neil this question, who do you compare to? This is a question you can very much ask yourself, who is it you compare yourself to? And how does that make you feel? And what could you learn from that feeling?

And how could you use that feeling so as to make better decisions for yourself,

both financially and emotionally in terms of the life you want to live? Thank you so much again for joining. We hope you will subscribe. Thank you to our contributors. In the show notes,you'll find how to get in touch with us. In the meantime, I'm Dr. Tom. See you around.

I believe that being well off isn't the same as living well. That's the Money Mind Shift. With Dr. Tom Mathar.