Informed Choice Radio Personal Finance Podcast

My guest today believes it's time to acknowledge that not all working women are interested in climbing the corporate ladder or securing the corner office. In fact, most women want and need flexible, less life-consuming work to accommodate their real lives. And it's not weak, lacking ambition or letting down the sisterhood to pursue professional fulfillment and financial security through less lofty, or headline-making ways. Kathryn Sollmann has created and led hundreds of conferences and workshops that help women sustain and advance careers as they blend work and life. She's a regular feature in the press, talking and writing about women's work vs. family issues, challenging the status quo, debunking work-life myths, and helping women work around corporate obstacles. Recognized as a thought leader in the women and work space, her book—Ambition Redefined: Why the Corner Office Doesn’t Work for Every Woman & What to Do Instead—is the everyday woman’s guide to developing her own brand of ambition and success and finding many lucrative ways to lean “in-between” alongside caregiving for children and aging parents. In the book, Kathryn calls it like it is; everyday women want and need flexible work that allows them to unapologetically pursue their own brand of ambition and success. She shows them how without sacrificing themselves, their careers or their families.

In this episode of the podcast, I'm sharing seven tips for sticking with your money goals in 2019. What good are New Year's Resolutions if you give them up by the third week in January?! The tips I'm sharing are just are relevant for health and fitness resolutions are they are for money resolutions, so listen on if you're one of the six in ten people out there who have made resolutions at the start of this year. I'm going to help you stick with them. Also in this episode, there's a roundup of the latest personal finance news, details our new question of the week and how to share your answer, and the after show where I say a fond farewell to my time as a Run Director at parkrun. I'll explain why later in this episode.

Today on the show, I take you to Lisbon in Portugal for a conversation with Jose Supico. Jose is CEO and co-founder of Advicefront, a fintech firm designed from the ground up with the new reality of personalised advice and digital lifestyles in mind. It’s everything advisers, paraplanners and clients need in one place, from onboarding to advice, to seamless execution. I was introduced to Jose by our mutual friend Michael Taggart, who agency Foco Global are doing incredible work with fintech companies here in the UK and worldwide. So thank you to Michael for making this conversation happen. In my conversation with Jose, we discuss how fintech can transform the advice and client relationship, what financial planning can learn from tech giants, and whether AI could ultimately replace the role of the financial planner one day. Here’s my conversation with Jose Supico, CEO and co-founder of AdviceFront, in episode 385 of Informed Choice Radio.

In this episode, I've picked 12 of my favourite guest interviews from 2018 and selected the best lessons from those conversations. It was hard work to whittle this down to just 12 guests. During the course of 2018, I've interviewed around 60 different personal finance experts for this show and I've genuinely enjoyed every conversation. The 12 I've picked for you in this episode, our 2018 rewind edition, are those I feel have made the biggest impact on me personally, but also for you, our listener. At the end of this episode, there's the usual aftershow segment, where I'm going to share a few things we'll be doing on Informed Choice in 2019, as well as revealing our brand new theme music for the show. Do stay tuned for that.

My guest on the show today is Jonathan Clements, founder of HumbleDollar.com and prolific author of personal finance books. His new book is From Here to Financial Happiness: Enrich Your Life in Just 77 Days. Why 77 days you ask? Well I wanted to know that too, so I ask Jonathan during this conversation. From Here to Financial Happiness is described as a day-by-day guide for anyone dreaming of a better life. Whether you’re dealing with debt, uncertain about retirement or simply want to get a grip on your finances, this book can put you on the road to happiness with a simple 11-week journey. Just 5-10 minutes a day to think about money, your habits, your goals, and your dreams. What steps can you take today to get your finances on track? What bad habits, bad investments, and misconceptions should you let go of? Jonathan Clements sits on the advisory board and investment committee of Creative Planning, one of the largest independent financial advisors in the US. He spent almost 20 years at The Wall Street Journal and worked for six years at Citigroup, where he was Director of Financial Education for Citi Personal Wealth Management. Here’s my conversation with Jonathan Clements, author of From Here to Financial Happiness, in episode 383 of Informed Choice Radio.

In this episode, it's the Informed Choice Christmas letter. I take a look back at 2018, with personal finance highlights and news from here at Informed Choice throughout the year. It's like that letter you get in the Christmas card from your grandmother each year, but hopefully slightly more interesting. No offence intended to your grandmother!

If there's a personal finance topic I'm happy to come back to again and again, it's budgeting. Budgeting is the foundation, the very cornerstone of a great financial plan. Like many things in the world of finances, it's simple, but rarely easy. My guest today is Michele Cagan, a Certified Public Accountant on a mission to help other moms find secure financial footing. Michele spent years working for one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, putting on a suit every day and trekking down to their Wall Street office, helping some of America's biggest and most successful companies grow their revenues and protect their assets. When her son was born, she left the corporate world, and her life changed. She got divorced and there were times she couldn't make ends meet, and long periods where she lived paycheck to paycheck, desperately hoping no unexpected expenses would crop up… but they almost always did. That's when Michele started Single Mom CPA, writing accessible financial books and articles for other single moms hoping to secure their financial freedom. Her new book is Budgeting 101: From Getting Out of Debt and Tracking Expenses to Setting Financial Goals and Building Your Savings, Your Essential Guide to Budgeting. And in today's episode, we take a deep dive into budgeting - the dos and don'ts, and practical tips to get you on the right course with your money. Here’s my conversation with Michele Cagan, author of Budgeting 101, in episode 381 of Informed Choice Radio.

Oh Theresa, what have you been doing?! Brexit is all anyone is talking about at the moment, with the Brexit induced uncertainty prompting another bout of investment and currency market volatility. It's only likely to get worse before it gets better. So in this episode, how to navigate volatile investment markets - I'm talking about our approach to investing money when things get rough. Listen to this one if you're a nervous investor, or you need a bit of reassurance around what's been happening, and what could happen next, to your investment portfolio. Is she still Prime Minister? Yes. Good, let's keep going then.

Regular listeners to this podcast will know I'm particularly interested in the field of behavioural finance. So I'm pleased to welcome back to the show today Dr Daniel Crosby. Daniel has written a new book, it's called The Behavioural Investor, and it's an applied look at how psychology ought to inform the art and science of investment management. In the book, he examines the sociological, neurological and psychological factors that influence our investment decisions and sets forth practical solutions for improving both returns and behavior. In this conversation, we chat about some of the sociological impacts on investor behaviour, the influence of ego on the investment decisions we make, whether growing awareness of the various issues is enough to result in change, and the latest thinking on loss aversion. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too. Please let me know what you think on Twitter, where you can find me @martinbamford. Please say thank you to Daniel as well, @danielcrosby. You can find the show notes for this episode, along with some useful links, at icradio.co.uk. Here’s my conversation with Dr Daniel Crosby, author of The Behavioural Investor, in episode 379 of Informed Choice Radio.

In this episode, I bring you shocking news of an inverted yield curve in the United States, heralding the onset of an economic recession. But when? How much? What is an inverted yield curve? I've got some of the answers at least. Listen on. There's also a roundup of the latest personal finance news and an update from the world of Informed Choice this week.