The Financial Wellbeing Podcast

Episode 73 – Don’t Be A Creep As we earn more income, we spend more money. Is that inevitable? Maybe not . . the guys take a practical look at how we can all avoid lifestyle creep. Along with Bage’s Biases and #tightasstommo money saving tips, come and have a listen to find out how you can find financial wellbeing. Welcomes and Introductions Not celebrating a birthday, the experience of quarantine with a four month old baby and . . .David’s book, click on the image below for more information; What is todays podcast all about – Looking at the issue of Lifestyle Creep, why we never seem to have enough money left at the end of the month, and what we can do about it. Bage’s Biases Every episode, Behavioral Finance expert, Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip. Exploring and thinking a little bit about the behavioral traits we have towards money can inform us, so we can make better money decisions going forward. – Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk – Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability – Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Illusion of Control The ability to recognise that there are some things that you could control. But many things that you cant. David Lloyd *caveat, cash under the mattress just to hold is not financial advice! However, Ovation Finance are pension specialists, so do get in touch for brilliant advice on how your pension can bring you wellbeing. Click here for more information or call on 0117 942 4333 #TightAssTommo Featuring the benefits of lockdowns and getting old!Click here for more information on completesavings.co.ukUnfortunately Debenhams is no longer accepting vouchers in store or online. Do double check before heading out, but most stores will be open until the 15th May 2021 if you want to try and grab a bargin. Quick pause for Tommo to check on Lindsay and Bella! Todays topic – Lifestyle Creep, as we earn more money, we spend more money and never seem to have any money left at the end of the month. The technical name for this is Hedonic Adaption Set Point Theory – have another listen to episode 64 As we make more money, so our expectations and desires rise. Cash flow forecast, where we take a client’s expenditure, and current assets, pensions, etc. and their income. And we start to project it forwards over their lives. One very important piece of information, the level of income the client believes they will need for a happy retirement. And we talk the client through this process using many of the principles we talked about in these podcasts, help the client understand, what actually makes them happy. Why such a big difference in perceived income needs? Anchoring bias – have another listen to episode 69 As we earn more income, we spend more money. Is that inevitable? Is there anything wrong with that if is? Are we spending more money on things that genuinely increase our wellbeing? Are we setting money aside for things that might make us happy in the future? You are paying into a pension towards your resignation, not your retirement. So what can people do to stop this Lifestyle Creep? Oliver Berkman – have another listen to episode 27 Routine and automation. Giving stuff up can help you begin to reframe the way you look at things. The proceeds of the Financial Wellbeing Book, go to Penny Brohn UK Cancer Centre.A complimentary approach to cancer care, and later life care. Catherine Zolleman – have another listen to episode 40People with a life ending diagnosis, often come to report an increase in their wellbeing. They’ve gotten rid of the distractions in their lives, that aren’t adding to their wellbeing. And instead, they just focus on the things that make them truly happy. Hedonic Adaptation The Financial Wellbeing Junkie – have another listen to episode 64 always seeking short term fixes of wellbeing, to keep up to that set level. Wellbeing by Rath/Harter – click here for more information on this book A sense of belonging in our local community is a huge factor in overall wellbeing. Link to the chaotic parish council zoom meeting! (bonus link – kids are far better behaved on these Zoom calls!) Conclusions from the guys – Lifestyle Creep means that as we add more we spend more doesn’t always add to our wellbeing. And to combat that lifestyle creep, we should automate savingscreate routines around the things that bring us wellbeing positive reminders of what gives us wellbeing around us try to avoid distractions and comparisons This is what a good financial planner can do and Ovation Finance can help you. Ovation get to know you and find out your motives – so your money can help you spend time to maximise your wellbeing. Click here for more information. Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David Hello, everybody and welcome to yet another edition of our financial wellbeing podcast. We’ve just had a heated debate off air as to exactly which number in the series this is, we all know that it’s somewhere in the 70s. And that’s as much as I’m able to tell you. Joining me today, my two very good pals and partners in financial honesty, rather than crime, Chris Budd and Tom Morris. Say hello Chris. Chris Hello Chris David Hello Tom Producer Tommo Hello Tom David Good, and it’s like the two Ronnies and my, and my name is David Lloyd. For those of you that have listened before, we like to get together every so often. And we talk through issues concerning financial wellbeing. And today I’m a little bit concerned about the episode – it’s called “Don’t Be A Creep” I’m bit concerned that Chris has come up with this because he’s harbouring some long standing grudge against the two of us. And it’s all going to come tumbling out. Can you tell us more Chris? Chris Well, that is actually true. But that’s not what the episode is about. We’re going to look at the issue of lifestyle creep, why we never seem to have enough money left at the end of the month, and what we can do about it, because we do always like to try and be practical along with our theory . David Absolutely, that is very true. No matter how much money you got somehow, it never seems to be enough. Now, before we got the first of our features what’s happening in our lives, guys? Chris I was rather confused today. I was chatting to you before we came on air, I wished you a very Happy birthday, because Facebook told me it was your birthday. But I understand Facebook’s got it wrong? Chris Well, yes, I think it’s amazing that people put their dates of birth on social media, because it’s a the birth is the moment you phone up your bank one of the first things they say is can we check if it’s you, give us your date of birth. So I put a fake date of birth on social media actually use a different one for each social media. But the great thing is every once in a while in the middle of February, I get loads of lovely messages saying Happy Birthday. But it actually isn’t. That’s why it works quite well. David But then of course you have to go to great lengths to explain what you’ve done. It’s very sensible, by the way. So as I said to you earlier, I do wonder, maybe you should choose the 29th of February as your birthday, then you only have to do the explanation once every four years. . . Chris Or maybe Christmas day when nobody’s watching or something? David Tommo, happening with you? I can hear the sound of crying children in the background there. Producer Tommo Yeah, that’s my life working from home still. And that is my soundtrack. Bella is, what is she . . . four and a bit months old now? So yeah, crying is the thing. It’s all good. Producer Tommo so good. Chris I think we need to just ask Tommo what the experience is like having two weeks, unable to leave the house with a four year old and a four month old baby. Producer Tommo Yes, I did have, my phone pinged, due to do some contact tracing. Thankfully, we didn’t have Coronavirus. But we did have to stay in for, was it 10 days. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. It tested, tested the patience. So yeah, anyone who’s gone through it will know exactly what I’m talking about. Not being able to let off, I say a four year old boy, he’s like a Labrador, you need to go out for a walk. So yeah, it was interesting. We got through it. We’re alright. We’re still here. David It occurs to me that it now must be getting on for, it’s now early February when we record this. And I think it was what end of March last year when we when we went to virtual on our podcasts. So it’s been a long time actually, since we’ve even seen each other. But some people might say is good, but I don’t! David think Chris David, we should we always get the lovely question how are you, but we never ask it back, how are you? David Good, thank you. Looking forward to New Year, just come off the back of dry January, which was an interesting experience and largely enjoyable. Chris Hows the sales of your book most importantly? David It’s selling all right, as you know, Chris, you know self publishing, you’re not going to necessarily make a huge amount of money from it. But the sales have been pretty steady. And I’ve noticed that every so often, if you don’t do any publicity, you don’t sell any books. But if a little post on social media, something on Facebook, or Instagram or Twitter, I was in a little article in the local parish magazine recently, and that always leads to a few sales. So sticking on it, the most thing about my book is that I’m going to go into a studio in Chippenham and record the audio book version of it, which is very exciting. So I should have an audiobook version coming up hopefully in two weeks time. I’ve also been working on a TV adaptation of it. Now this is not anything anyone has commissioned. That’s what I do. You know, that’s why of course still. But I just finished now episode three of three, I’m turning it into a three parts TV series, which I have to say I’ve really enjoyed writing because all of the thinking about plot and character I’ve done years ago. So it’s really just a question of how I could take the story of character writing very well, and make it work in a visual way so enjoyable, and I should put it out there and we’ll see if anybody picks it up. But that has occupied my time for dry January because surprise surprise, I had nothing else to do and I had some spare energy. Before we move on to the subject of today’s podcast, Don’t Be A Creep. We’re gonna come to the first of our regular features, that is Bages Behavioural Biases. Where good friend of the podcast, behavioural finance expert, Neil Bage, gives us a one minute introduction to a different behavioural bias that affects how we make decisions about money. Now what is Neil telling us about this week? Chris I think we’ll let Neil answer that because he tells us the beginning of this clip, let’s have a listen to it . . . Chris There you go. I think it’s very interesting. I um, I used to work with a guy, used to work in central London – Oxford Circus. And this chap lived in Surrey. And he drove to work every day. Into Oxford Circus every day. When I asked him one day, he paid huge amounts of money for parking and, and I said, Why do you do this? You know, you just train’s, fantastic trains from where you live. And he said, I can’t I can’t bear to be on public transport. I want to be in my car, so I can be in control. And I would say what, so you’ll sit on Pall Mall for 45 minutes at five o’clock in rush hour? There’s no control there. But he wanted to feel that he was in control of his journey. And he had no control over it all. David Yeah, it’s that it’s that ability to recognise that there are some things that you could control. But many things that you cant. And there are so many factors around money that you can make the wise decision, I guess. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get the outcome that you hope for every time. Producer Tommo This is interesting. We’ve seen it in, in financial advice in the last, well, number of years with final salary pension transfers. This idea I want to control my pension. And I think Neil just summarised it, you can’t control your pension. What’s the point. You know, ultimately, it’s invested and lots of other factors are involved that impact it, yeah this idea of control. Yeah. Powerful one. Chris Another example Tom, there’s one chap, finanal pensions freedoms aswell when people were taking all their money out of their pension, paying tax on it, putting it back into their estate, and then a tax environment, which is absolutely crazy thing to do. And I remember one one friend of mine who did it and why did why are you doing this? And he said, I just want to get my hands on the money. I don’t want to be in a pension, I want to get my hands on the money. What are you going to do with it when you get your hands on it? I’m going to buy a flat and rent it out. Well you haven’t got your hands on the money then have you! David I think everybody should have a small amount of money in that pension pot,they can take out as cash and just like put it under their mattress and take it out every day just rub their hands on it and savour the feel and the crinkle of the money, but it shouldn’t be enough that it’s going to fundamentally affect their monies investment. Producer Tommo I must cavieat, that came from David, that is not financial advice from Tom Morris, the actual advisor here okay. David No, I know. It panders to that need of all of us to get their hands on the money. Let’s move on to the next of our features, our first is our #TightAssTommo feature where our Prince of Parsimmony, Tom Morris comes up with once again, another really, really good money saving tip. Before we move on to Tommo, I have a couple this week actually. Both of which I’ve realised have been as a result of recent events. Firstly, if you want to save money, I can strongly recommend being in lockdown during a pandemic. Because I was recently looking at my cash flow, but the amount of money But to my surprise, I have a little bit more money than you know than I thought I had. So I sat down and realised all the things I haven’t spend money on over the last year and those are holidays, going to restaurants, going to pubs, going to the theatre, to the cinema. And I’ve saved an absolute fortune. It’s been a bit miserable. But that’s one way of saving money. And then the other one. The other tip I’ve got is is be old! Because the other day, I’m, I’m 66 this year. In May I’m going to be 66. Chris No! David I know unbelievable isn’t it. And the other day a letter from the government inviting me to apply for my state pension. So as of May of this year, nine grand a year, thank you very much. Obviously I’m putting into it, I paid into it, I’m only getting money back I paid in over the years. But that’s a nice feeling. So, so my two recommendations are live in a pandemic and be old. Chris Very good. The thing about saving money is that, there’s some statistics about how much debt has been repaid over the last 11 months, because people haven’t been spending money so they’ve been putting it away and putting off credit cards or what have you so some good has come out of this pandemic. David Good. Okay, Tommo, give us your big one. Producer Tommo This one straight to it. Website called competesavings.co.uk. is one of these cashback sites, some terrific cashback when we’re here to encourage people to spend money willy nilly, but we do need to spend money from time to time and why not get some savings along the way. So complete savings.co.uk, sign up whenever you’re thinking about buying something, click on it. There’s some great cashback. eBay 10% cashback, Hermes 10% cashback, Debenhams 10% cashback. I’m not sure that’s going to be much use any longer is it? David That reminds me I have a Debenhams voucher. I need to spend that quickly! Producer Tommo Yeah, quite. There you go there’s a tip go spend your Debenhams voucer quickly folkes. I think you can even get a widget on your on your Google Chrome that makes sure that if you’re on site that you can get some cash back that you are directed towards it. So there you go elsewhere to CompleteSavings.co.uk. David Fantastic crying child sound effects. Producer Tommo We’re not even gonna bother editing that out, guys. This is working from home life, right? David It’s the reality of life, excellent. Okay, Chris, why don’t you introduce our subject for today? I will, but I would just saying about the crying child. One of the things I really liked about lockdown is the standards of what it is to be professional, have significantly reduced under the lockdown. Producer Tommo Tell you what though, as much as we could just carry on. That is quite a lot of crying. And I think it’s only appropriate that I go to lend a hand quickly to see if there is anything that needs to be sorted. So . . . Chris A quick pause David It’s gone quiet now. Chris So today, we’re going to talk about lifestyle, which is a term that describes how as we earn more money, we spend more money with the result, we never seem to actually have any money left at the end of the month. Now there is a technical name for this Hedonic Adaption, regular listeners to the podcast, hopefully remember Set Point Theory, which says that we oscillate around a set level of wellbeing, which is unique to each of us. 60% comes from DNA. And we do have a tendency to return back to that stable level of wellbeing despite what life throws at us. But and this is where the theory of like the Lifestyle Creep, it also means that as we make more money, so our expectations and desires rise. Producer Tommo A great illustration of this this year, one of the things we do for our clients is their cash flow forecast, which you’re familiar with David. This is where we take a client’s expenditure, and current assets, pensions, etc. and their income. And we start to project it forwards over their lives. We make a few assumptions such as job changes, retirement dates, and so forth, one off costs, such as weddings and gifts to the children to help them get on the property ladder. And we see what the client needs to save in order for them not to run out of money in retirement. You also need one other very important piece of information, the level of income the client believes they will need for a happy retirement. David Well, interesting you say that having just done very recently, this process once again with you Tommo, I can confirm that that does involve sometimes, a bit of guesswork from the client. Producer Tommo It does. And we talk the client through this process using many of the principles we talked about in these podcasts, help the client understand, you know, what actually makes them happy. And it just so happened to speak to two clients near to each other recently. They were in similar positions and starting to think about retirement. And we discussed their income needs and one client told me they reconed they needed around about 50k a year in retirement. The other client said they needed an income in retirement of 100k a year. It’s got me thinking, what was so different about the wellbeing needs of these two clients, with such a huge difference in their perceived income needs? Chris And what was their income before Tommo? Producer Tommo Good question, Chris. Well, that’s certainly had something to do with it. Because the client who said they needed a higher amount was earning a lot more than the other client. David Surprise, surprise. Now, Neil Bage talked about this didn’t he with his biases. Anchoring was a called? Producer Tommo He did indeed, David your memory amazes me! This is where, whereby how we estimate somethings value, it’s influenced by a previous thing. So if, you tell me you bought your watch for £500, I’m going to offer you a higher price to buy off you. And if you told me you bought for £50, I’m probably going to offer you something less. Chris So Anchoring is definitely part of the story. But can you also imagine that the client who was earning a lot more, is also therefore going to be spending a lot more. So when they consider what they need to be happy in retirement, they base it on what they’re currently spending, whether or not that is making them happy? David Well, that’s inevitable. Surely. As we earn more income, we spend more money. Is that inevitable? Is there anything wrong with that if is? Chris Not necessarily it depends, doesn’t it? Are we spending more money on things that genuinely increase our wellbeing. When we come to not have those things anymore, are we unable to let them go even though they aren’t bringing us joy. And this, to me is the biggie, by spending more, are we failing to save. To set money aside for things that might make us happy in the future? That’s where Lifestyle Creep can be a real problem. So if someone gets a pay rise from a job, they don’t enjoy, and they spend that money, they aren’t ready for the day that they don’t have to do that job anymore. There’s a great line on this that I’d like to quote from a South African financial advisor. Tommo and I are involved with the organisation, Next Gen Planners, and they did a global commute last summer. And, excuse me for getting this, attempt her first name, Kalonzo Masanga. I think it’s how you pronounce it. I have been asking. And she’s had this great, great line. She said, you are paying into a pension towards your resignation, not your retirement. Lovely way of looking at it. David Yeah, I like that. Okay, so what can people do to stop this Lifestyle Creep? Chris Okay, we’ve got a few suggestions. So firstly, you can construct permanent reminders of what makes you happy. In order to avoid being distracted and spending that extra money on things you don’t really need. And that don’t add to your wellbeing. We get positive emotions from positive life changes, but those positive emotions decline over time, as we revert back to our set points of wellbeing. So we can therefore remind ourselves of that change, what life would be like without it. Now, just to be a bit extreme, it’s silly here just to illustrate the point, a previous guest of the podcast one of our absolute best guests, although we do say that about everybody, every time we mention them. Oliver Berkman wrote a brilliant book called the antidote, which I recommend to anybody. It’s such an interesting book, it’s all about the antidote to positive thinking, really, really good. And he cites the Greek philosopher, Epictetus. And he suggested that every time you kiss your child, good night, imagine them dying the next day, in this way you will appreciate and get the wellbeing from the ones that you love by imagining them not there. And then appreciating them when they are, okay. rather extreme and not for everybody. But I hope it gets the point across. David Well it takes to gloss off bedtime doesn’t it! Maybe something like, you know, a nice painting on the wall might be a better way of doing it. But obviously I do, I do appreciate the point. Learning to value the people who are important to you. Producer Tommo Can I suggest a lesson free a way of maybe achieving this, maybe create, what you call an active plan for reminding ourselves by using some routine and automation. I recall being given some advice when we first had children, that my wife and I should set one night aside. Book a babysitter, you know, every couple of weeks, every month, whatever it might be, it might be that we only go for a walk, having that routine will ensure that we continue to appreciate our relationship. Now, lockdown is actually made that quite tricky. So there’s, there’s no doubt that when this is over, we really need to be making time for just the two of us. And there’s so many financial advisors, we use this very in their financial plans. At Ovation, we produce a financial well being report, which shows what the client has achieved and what makes them happy. We go over this at every meeting that we have for them, at least once a year, and we’ll go through it. And we’re talking about these things that make them happy, their objectives, what motivates them, so that they are reminded of the things that they should actually be thinking about in their lives. But just on the point of automation, and spending. This is where things like direct debit saving, could be your real helper here. Because if you just do it and it’s set aside, all of a sudden, you’ll realise Oh, Crikey, I haven’t got that money in my bank account anyway. So think about when you do get that pay rise, think about what makes you happy saving towards that future. And actually setting up automation, automatic direct debit savings is a great way as well. Chris David can I just ask you a question – there’s another way of doing this, it is positive effects wellbeing. You mentioned, you’ve just done a dry January. I know that did dry January because you were moaning about it on Twitter. I think I saw one very funny tweet where you said I feel better I’ve been sleeping so well and I’m bored. So how good besides glass of wine when you finally allowed to have it? David Well it was undeniably extremely enjoyable I have to say but talking about letting things go. It also made me realise that my, put this carefully, my dependence of regular glasses of wine is actually something that I could do without and you know, having a bit of a bit of a regular tipple not every night but you know, a regular tipple for most of my adult life, a glass or two a night, puts a nice day and gets you into the evening. To go a whole month not drinking at all isn’t something quite frankly, I’ve done dry January before but not something I often do. But what it did do was make me realise that I could do it, that I could manage without something that I thought was a very important part of my socialising and my circle of life, and actually much as I really did enjoy it and will continue to enjoy the class of wine that I drink. I also enjoy the nights when I don’t kick off the next day, because my head is clearer and more energy. So by giving stuff up, I think, particularly when you can begin to reframe the way you look at things. And I guess that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. You know, this Lifestyle Creep takes over. You think, well, I have to spend that amount of money every month, on wine. But when you can spend that you can then begin to appreciate the benefits of saving that money as opposed to just focusing on Oh my god, I can’t have a drink. Chris Very true, very true. I didn’t publicise it, but I actually also had a period of absence and I had a dry January the fourth. David Well done, Chris. Chris So I know we’ve mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating the the proceeds of the Financial Wellbeing Book, go to Penny Brohn UK Cancer Centre, where my wife works as an oncology nurse and she spends time there as well. To remind people, what Penny Brohn do is they have a complimentary approach to cancer care, and later life care. And it’s not instead of the chemo, but it’s supporting the chemo. And it’s things like mindfulness, wellbeing, nutrition, exercise, and the science behind them, it is fantastic place. And one of the things that Catherine Zolleman when she was on our podcast said and my wife repeats this I just find amazing is that people with a life ending diagnosis, often come to report an increase in their wellbeing. And we’ve talked about this and thought about this. And we think it’s basically because they’ve gotten rid of the distractions in their lives, that aren’t adding to their wellbeing. And instead, they just focus on the things that make them truly happy. Now, of course, this is not the way that we’d ideally like to have our attention focused, but maybe we can learn and get clarity on what brings us joy, our intrinsic motivations, and see anything else as distractions. Producer Tommo As, as you said at the beginning, Chris, what are the effects of this Hedonic Adaptation is the endlessly increasing aspiration. And we spoke in an earlier podcast about the idea of the financial wellbeing junkie, always seeking short term fixes of wellbeing, to keep up to that set level. The positive stimuli being short lived means that we keep increasing our aspirations to seek positive stimuli. I always think it’s like chasing the dragon. But if you are familiar with the concept of, of of not sure you would be but I’m not somebody who’ss going down as like just Google it,, you’ll see what I mean. A bit like lifestyle creep, where our lifestyle changes to reflect the increase in levels of our income, is we never quite feel that we have enough was enough left over at the end of a month, no matter how much we earn, is constantly creep towards trying to get that stimulus of, of, of wellbeing. If we could therefore find a way to continually remind ourselves of the things that has given us wellbeing, for things that are given us well being we can avoid these pitfalls of head hedonic, struggle with that, hedonic adaptation of chasing things that don’t add to our wellbeing. So it’s really crucial that we really do focus on on understanding what that is. David Yeah, and I would imagine that comparison is another factor of Lifestyle Creep. As you learn more, perhaps you moved to a bigger house, how you socialise with people, perhaps now all of a sudden, you get to socialise with people who take skiing holidays, they invite you to join them. So you’ve got to keep up. Chris Yeah, that kind of sense of belonging in our local community is a huge factor in overall wellbeing. For the folks that we always refer to Wellbeing by Rath and Harter, based on Gallup polls, has community as one of the five pillars of wellbeing. So, maybe sometimes you need to do the same expensive things in your local community in order to feel that you belong, that’s understandable, but maybe you could belong in other ways, rather than trying to keep up with material possessions. David Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I’ve offered in the past as do you Chris, you know, I do a lot of work in community. I’ve been kind of the government at the local school, like a long standing involvement with the local club. Now, parish Council, you know, none of those things make any money, but I do because I’m really involved in my community and it brings a sense of wellbeing. Chris And from now on Tommo, you will be referred to as Jackie Weaver Producer Tommo Jackie Weaver. That’s a real timestamp, isn’t it? If you don’t know that this being recorded – what is the council’s name? David Heartford perhaps I can’t remember? Producer Tommo Absolutely superb. David I have only seen a brief clip, I better watch the whole thing later on. Producer Tommo I should pop up a link in the show notes. This is absolutely fabulous David Definitely should, right. So one of my roles in the podcast is to sum up also to stop us getting too far off the point. Let’s try and recap what we’ve discussed. So this is how I see. Lifestyle Creep means that as we add more we spend more doesn’t always add to our wellbeing. And to combat that lifestyle creep, we should automate savings, create routines around the things that bring us wellbeing positive reminders of what gives us wellbeing around us. Try to avoid distractions and comparisons. Does that sum it up? Producer Tommo I would say perfect. David Excellent. Right then. That’s a good way to end the podcast. So on that basis. Thanks very much for joining us today. I hope you found it useful. Please join us next time we come together for another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.

Episode 72 – Financial Psychology with Anne Abbenes Why does talking about money cause such anxiety? Special guest Anne Abbenes takes a look at the psychology behind what is happening in our brains when we are dealing with our finances. With a great Bage’s Behavioural Bias and some questionable #tightasstommo money saving tips, we have plenty of takeaways to help you make better financial decisions in this episode. . . Welcomes & Introductions Click here for more information on Chris Budd’s booksLink to the Initiative of Financial Wellbeing website Click here for more information about Producer Tommo Link to David’s book What is today’s podcast all about? A chat with Anne Abbenes, a certified financial behaviour specialist and president of the Financial Psychology Institute of Europe. We will be looking at how our brains react when we start talking about money and how we can improve our financial decisions. Bage’s Biases Every episode , Behavioural Finance expert, Neil Bage, is going to be giving us his money behavioural tips. We are hardwired to make bad decisions about money because we have biases built into us from our experiences through life. We will keep hearing from Neil to help us recognise some of these behavioural biases and hopefully lead us to making better financial decisions. – Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability– Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Probability Neglect #TightAssTommo Featuring lazy charity shop shenanigans, questionable oysters and helping to avoid food waste. Click here for more information on Odd Box.co.uk Interview with Anne Abbnes What is Financial Psychology? What happens in your brain when you make a financial decision? reptilian/mammalian areas of the brainour inner Einsteintalking about finances with others leads to anxiety Why does our brain react to a financial question in fear? Money is still a taboo subjectevolution wise, money is still a relatively new concept for our brains to deal with An illustration on why continuing education about psychology and money is important Our brains are wired for survival, looking at what comes next, not long term thinking What can we do to make better financial decisions? Exploring our relationship with money Moneyscripts by Brad Klontz Is it possible to challenge yourself? Can awareness be enough? The Financial Psychology Institute of Europe Financial behavior is determined by subconscious money beliefs. Sound financial decision making is hampered by unhelpful and sometimes destructive money beliefs. The Institute is helping professionals to stimulate individuals & groups improve their financial health by providing insight in psychological aspects, emotional barriers and destructive financial behaviors that inhibit financial and emotional happiness. Click here for more information about Anne Abbenes and the institute Conclusions from the guys Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David Hello everybody and welcome to another one in our series of financial wellbeing podcasts. My name is David Lloyd, broadcaster, writer, actor, man about town and I am joined by Chris Budd, hello Chris . . . Chris Your not man about town at the moment! David I am stuck at home. Chris tell us a little bit about yourself. Chris I wrote a book called The Financial Wellbeing Book. A few other books – The Eternal Business about employee ownership. We’ve got the novels, got another novel coming out soon so we’ll come back to that in future podcasts and chairman and founder of The Initiative for Financial Wellbeing, so financial wellbeing, money and happiness is kind of one of the things I think about quite a lot in life. David Well fortunately because that’s what this podcast is all about! And Tom is what expertise, do you bring to the table? Producer Tommo Not a lot to be honest with you. No, I have many years as a financial planner, I am a Chartered Financial Planner and also a director over at Bristol based financial planning firm Ovation Finance, and like Chris, I am the director of The Initiative for Financial Wellbeing. So yeah, I’d like to think I have some expertise to bring to the table. I feel it’s quite hard to say that out loud, but I’d like to think that I know a fair bit about this topic. David Well, I’d like to think that too, given that you are my financial advisor. Chris David, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking recently based on a book called How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy, the main man for Americana group called Wilco, and he starts his book off by talking about the difference between who you want to be and what you want to do. And I think that’s just such a fascinating idea because Tommo is undoubtedly an expert in financial wellbeing, and one of the best Chartered Financial Planners in the UK etc etc. But that’s not who he wants to be, it’s what he does. And so we get to judge him because of what he does and we can therefore say who he is being, but he obviously doesnt like to say about himself. I think that’s such an interesting idea. Jeff Tweedy talks about how, when he was nine, he used to tell everybody that he was a songwriter because that’s what he wanted to be. And then by the age of 12 he thought ‘I better actually write some songs’ because he told everybody he was a songwriter but hadn’t actually written anything. So we did. So, what you do and what you want to be is such a fascinating concept, it talk about it for ages. David Well I think who Tommo wants to be is Joe Root actually! Producer Tommo Time stamp, and we are recording this over and over in India and, yeah, a big cricket fan and this is actually going to be one of my tips in the moment so I shan’t spoil it too much but Joe Root has just scored 100, not out, staggering readiness 300s in 3 tests. Thats . . . anyone who’s not into cricket, you wont know anything about it, I get it. But if you do like cricket, is an outstanding achievement. David As a point of information Tommo, you did just say we’re recording this over in India. I think there should have been a comma in there. We’re recording this, meanwhile over in India. Producer Tommo Right. Yes, thank you. David Let’s move on, then. Chris what’s happening in our podcast today? Chris Today, David, we are going to have an interview with Anne Abbenes, who I will tell you a little bit more about later, but she’s very much into financial psychology. David Before we move on to that let’s have the first of our two regular features. The first one being Bage’s Behavorial Biases. An old friend of the podcast behavioural finance expert Neil Bage give us a one minute introduction to a different behavioural bias that effects how we make decisions about money. Neil Bage Probability neglect. There is a simple truth that underpins this behavourial bias, and it’s that humans are really bad at assessing risks. We are generally so bad at this that we assume that common activities we engage in, like driving a car, are safer and unrisky than less common activities we engage in, like flying in a plane. Now one of the reasons that people brains get messed up like this is because we also have a tendancy to confuse probibility with possibility. So when it comes to financial decisions or investing money, is there a posiblity of me loosing money – of course there is. But that’s not the question you should be asking. You should seek to understand the chance, the probibility of loosing money and potentially how much. This conversation is part of a risk taking discussion that any good financial planner would explore with you in detail. David Excellent. Well I have nothing to add to that. The great thing, I think about Neil’s biases he expresses them, you know, within the one minute, so clearly and succinctly. I thought that was great. Okay, let’s move on then to the next of all regular features #tightasstommo. Before we get today’s tip, I’ve got one for you. We’re recording this early February. I’ve come off the back of dry January, I’ve saved myself, without going into the exact details of how much I spend on booze. Myself and my partner both gave up for a month, and I’ve saved myself an absolute fortune. So, if you want to, if you want to save a little bit of money, stop drinking for a month. Producer Tommo That would do it, that would do it. Probably bought yourself an extra couple of months, life as well so . . . David Yeah definitely, definitely. Yeah, Chris have you got anything for us today? Chris I do David, it’s not a serious suggestion. I hope it’s not a serious suggestion! It comes from an Australian website called The Cusp. and they suggest that if you need your clothes dry cleaning, then donate them to a charity shop, wait a week and then buy them back. I’m not actually sure if I would save you any money. I think it is possibly more of a lazy way, a very expensive way to get your clothes washed. David I like supporting charity aswell. Tommo, main man, what have you got? Producer Tommo I have a couple one that I thought was a bit of a giggle. I got this from a friend of mine Rich Ellis via the Viz comic, and he put this on Twitter – save money on expensive oysters by drinking seawater from an ashtray. Okay, why not. So that did make me chuckle. I do have a serious one, there is a website that is worth going to check out, and that’s called oddbox.co.uk. Concept and this is, something we talked about before, is that there are fruits and vegetables out there that don’t quite look as they should do as we’re used to seeing in a supermarket. And what they do is they get these throw aways is the wrong work. Where they haven’t cut the mustard because there might be a wonky carrot, or a wonky courgette, whatever it might be, but they put these, they package them into a box, and you can get them delivered to your home so it’s saving on food wastage. And a pretty good deal, along the way as well so that’s oddbox.co.uk. David Great one. In fact now most of the major supermarkets now will do that they’ll give you the option to buy wonky carrots, you know that might just take a little bit more peeling, but they remain essentially carrots. So I’m all for that, I think there’s a whole load of nonsense around having to present our food. We are wasting an awful lot of food. Producer Tommo Absolutely and that’s definitely what they’re trying to deal with. And I will caveat that at the moment it’s London in the southeast, but that’s an awful lot of your country to at least start looking at this so hopefully that will branch out, like, save the planet save money. Fantastic. David There’s a positive message to tuck into. Our interview, Chris who have you chatted to this time? Chris Right, we have a chat with Ann Abbenes, who is a certified financial behaviour specialist. She is also president of the Financial Psychology Institute in Europe. She’s not a for profit organisation, so just our kind of person. So let’s have a listen to my chat with Ann. Chris Ann, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. Anne Abbenes It’s a pleasure to be here Chris. Thank you. Chris I think it might be a good idea to just give us a brief introduction to all the things that you do around personal finance. Anne Abbenes I work with a combination of finance, psychology and law. And that just happens for me to work like that. And I’m educated as finnancial planner, a psychologist, and also in law but I just make a combination of it. Chris Thats a combination that we’re really interested in, how do those two things come together, it’s fascinating. The, the term that you use to put this together is Financial Psychology. So what is Financial Psychology? Anne Abbenes Financial Psychology is the integration of finance and the whole field of psychology. I assure you of course you’ve heard of behavioural finance, I read your book. And behavioural finance is based on cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is something which is developed in a lab environment. And just about our cognition, that’s part of our brain which is learning, and all those kinds of things. And there’s more psychology to us humans and clinical psychology is the whole field of psychology. So financial psychology is also part of behavioural finance and the rest of it is the whole field of psychology you apply to finance. Chris So one of the things that I know you’re, you’re an expert in is neuroscience. Before we start looking at neuroscience and money. What is neuroscience? Anne Abbenes Neuroscience here you have the whole definition of a part to keep it simple, it’s just a seeing in, what’s happening inside your brain. And I think neuroscience scientists will kill me if I put it this way, but I always as – it’s how your brain works that are kind of biology in your brain and how the neurons are reacting and acting. And that’s the base of our behaviour, so how the brain is wired. And you can apply that also into finance. Chris Okay. Okay, let’s do that then. So, so what is actually happening in your brain when you need to make a financial decision? Anne Abbenes It’s with every decision, and with finance, it’s just a little bit more complicated. When your financial advisor or a financial planner is talking to you, he’s talking to your prefrontal cortex. This is where your thinking takes place. If you look at the brain, we have our reptilian brain that’s the oldest part, and our limbic system that’s the reptilian brain, and our mammalian brain. And they are in charge, as well what’s happening, then we are anxious and money, just causes fear. And when we are anxious or when we are have to take a decision. You have to talk to the part of the brain which is in charge, and the part of the brain which is in charge are the mammalian and reptilian brain. And then we are anxious. When we make a financial decision, we just have to know how the brain works, a short explanation is a simplified model that’s the triune brain, the triune brain is our reptilian brain that’s the first part that comes alive. The second part is our animal brain. And the third part is our inner Einstein. That word a professor of me, my mentor told me that clause and I just thought everybody knows what an Einstein is. When we make decisions, and a financial adviser or planner you are for just recently, and with logic and explaining things but that’s the wrong part of the brain, you are approaching. The part which is in charge are the reptilian and mammalian brain, and our brain is just wired like that over a million years. And at the moment, we take the financial decision. A lot of people are anxious because finance is more intimate than other things and it’s real big taboo. So, when a person enters your office as a financial adviser then they are scared. They have a lot of high anxiety. For even talk about money. So, when the level of anxiety increases. Then just inner Einstein, is the captain but he has nothing to say, and the reptilian/mammalian brain takes over. So, you have to speak to that part of the brain and that’s where the emotions are and then our other reactions are. And that brain just doesn’t pick up information and that’s how you could survive as a species, because in the Stone Age, that you hadn’t have any time for is that rope or is that a snake. Is that, is that a bush or is that a tiger, you just have to do something. So you flee, you fight or you freeze. And if you don’t do that, yeah, then you won’t survive. So it’s very important. Just not only to talk to, talk to the Einstein but talk to the whole brain and that’s something which is often forgotten. Chris So I’d like to know how we do that in a moment, but first a couple of thoughts or questions. What is it about money that makes it a fearful thing to us, then why does the brain react to a financial question by fear? Anne Abbenes That’s a good question, Chris. Money is still a taboo. And what I found out I thought oh maybe it’s because of the heritage of money because I know in Holland a few hundred years ago if you were in debt you’d get literally scaffolded or you went to jail. But money is really a taboo subject. And we also learned from our parents that certain topic to talk about, when people are getting married they talk about everything, we see real life soaps, every day on television, we hear it on the radio, we talk about everything, about our sex life about our, our health, health problems, but not about money. So, it’s our heritage and money is for our brain, money is brand new. The stock market is from the 15 century, so and our brain is millions and millions of years old. So our brain has to get used to the idea of money. So it’s, it’s the only thing to think about, oh I have to go to the financial planner, that’s, that’s all. That alone is increasing our anxiety Chris And financial planning is a very new discipline isnt it? Were talking decades only really that financial planning is out in the public so to speak. Anne Abbenes Yeah that’s true and what’s also funny what I found out, which is funny. If you ask a financial planners. I had to explain for continuing education programme, I had to explain why emotions and why psychology is important. They said, Oh no, that’s not true and money isn’t a taboo, what are you talking about? And there are four gentlemen in front of me. And they, and I said okay, okay you don’t think it’s too important. Okay, let me do a quick test and they said yeah, that’s okay. And so okay write down the amount which is in your bank accounts, and they just, they did it. And after that, I said, Okay, please, one by one, tell out loud, what’s on the piece of paper in front of you and they just refused. And they said I was rude and how could I ask that. And I said, Okay, yeah, that’s my point. So it’s really a taboo and, yeah, we just have to take that into account when we are giving financial advice to other people, Chris Yeah that’s that’s a great illustration, did they accept the point, out of interest? Anne Abbenes Yeah, they accepted, than I could do the continuing education, they said it’s okay to make your point! Chris Yeah, so that’s a fascinating point that is the one thing you don’t talk to your friends about is your finances isn’t it. You talk about anything else, but not your finances. So, so that means that when you do need to talk about your finances, you’re finding it very difficult, very awkward and therefore, the, the animal part of your brain is the one that’s functioning, not the sensible, thinking part, have I summed that up well? Anne Abbenes When your brain is functioning. They are all working together. Without your animal and reptilian brain you just can’t make a decision. It’s not possible, you can’t make a decision with only the prefrontal cortex, so it’s really not possible but if they work together, then you get a sufficient decision. Chris So, how then do we get the three of them, two of them, three of them working together when it comes to a financial questions? Anne Abbenes Before I tell them about that, the ancient brain, let’s say the reptilian/mamillion brain there are responsible for 90% of the decisions. And working together, just letting the information of the financial plan of financial advisor land into the brain is just to reduce the anxiety of the, of your clients let them know that you’re on the same, same tribe, because our brain is wired like a tribal culture. And so let’s just make it real because saving and futuristic planning, that wasnt, that isn’t an advantage in our survival. That brain only thinks for the, for a short time, and what’s next, what’s tomorrow, what’s, what’s happening in a week. What’s happening in two weeks, and saving, that’s against how our brain is wired. Chris I can vouch for that my brain certainly isn’t wired for saving! Anne Abbenes And it’s logical because when you just, you had food and then you hide food for the others or just didn’t eat it, you were thrown out of the tribe. So it’s very important to let your clients experience that you are in the same tribe. So that’s very important to do that. Chris So, reduce anxiety, make it real, empathy so that you’re feeling, as you said you’re a part of the same tribe, where somebody doesn’t have a financial advisor, what can they do to help themselves to make better financial decisions? Anne Abbenes What you can do is just see, just explore your own relation with money and that’s what you can do yourself but also it’s also cool to do that with an advisor. And then you get what are my money beliefs, and you have money scripts and Brad Klontz discovered them, Brad Klontz. And I’ve worked with the money scripts, in the court. And that means I get a lot of divorce settlements and then distress is at the highest point and the money is just very important. And money scripts that are difficult unconscious beliefs, we have about money. They are developed in childhood and they drive all our adult financial behaviours. And they are subconscious beliefs, we have about money, but we don’t talk about that much, because we don’t talk about money, let alone, talking about our beliefs about money. Most of the time we don’t know we have them. And if you look at the word belief, a belief is something that is in your brain so it doesn’t have to be true. Most of the time, they aren’t accurate. And we are developing them when we are children. So when you are a child looking at the world from that perspective. Just an example, I just, was in a place somewhere and I went to the lake. I was walking there with a sister, oh let’s go to the lake we have been here before when we were five years old and in my memory the lake was so big, so big. And we were there and I thought, hmm, this isn’t a lake, just a small pond. So that’s also with money you have money scripts in your head or money beliefs, which are wired there when you are a child. So maybe you don’t need them anymore, but then you don’t know you have them and they drive your financial behaviour. Then is very important to explore this and to discover them and to addressing them and see if they are holding you back from making sufficient financial decisions so that’s very important. Chris Do you think it’s possible to challenge yourself? Anne Abbenes Challenge yourself? Chris If you have these beliefs. Is it possible for you to uncover the self limiting beliefs, yourself? Anne Abbenes Yeah it’s, Yeah, of course you can, and to also, the good news is, they can be changed. And some of these money scripts are formed at a deep primal level and become part of our real truth. So, they are developed for survival and protection in that unpredictable world, and they are resistant to change when there’s a strong emotion attached to them. But you can explore it yourself, and just say, what’s your first memory of money. What your parents taught you about money. And something coming from the psychotherapy is when you have a fear of something just go talk with it. So you put a chair in front of you say okay, money, sit down. And you just start a conversation with money, and then write down, what’s in the conversation and then ask the question- What with my mother say about this. What would my father say about this. And that’s a easy way just to find out that money beliefs. Chris So, supposedly does that exercise, other commands that’s a very powerful exercise talking to money and and bringing mom and dad into the conversation I’m doing it in my head right now and once you once you do that and you start to realise what your beliefs are around money, then what you do about that? Anne Abbenes Most of the time, when you get, awareness is enough. So, most people when they are aware of that. Of that money script they know. Okay, this was this was because this, because that. Sometimes they’re intergenerational. So sometimes the grandparents, in a war developed the money belief. And you know that you don’t need them anymore. So, it just kept aware of them is helpful. So when you know them and it’s also great for awareness. Then you just know, and it’s, it’s just become aware and then you can just make better decisions, you learn to know yourself so that’s a part also of wellbeing learning to know yourself and learning about your beliefs, about your past it’s a very important part. Chris And presumably you can then decide which of these beliefs you want to carry on with, it’s a choice isn’t it? Anne Abbenes Yeah, it’s a choice and they are, you can rewrite your script, so that’s that’s that’s the good part of it, you just can rewrite your script. Chris Ann, we could talk about this stuff for ages and ages I know we only just touched on the surface of this, but perhaps just to wrap up, could you tell us about the Financial Psychology Institute of Europe. Anne Abbenes Yes, we want to increase the understanding of how psychological aspects influence financial behaviour and financial decision making. So we’re just embrace all the people who are basically this with, we’re on a mission to get to improve the world’s financial health. And we establish evidence based interventions for it, and we educate financial professionals, mental health professionals and other professionals, so they can work in a better way with our clients. So, that’s our call. Chris I think it would seem to me the message that’s coming out of this is, if we understand how we make decisions around money. We will make better decisions around money. Anne Abbenes Yes, and if we understand ourselves better, then we just, having informed content there’s something in financial services are working with, just getting information, but getting the informtation of yourself about your own money beliefs. That’s something which is very important to do. So that’s a big part of our financial health and financial wellbeing, getting to know yourself and there’s a lot of attention of exterior finances and with a life planning, there’s also a lot of attention over the interior finances, about your, your present, about your propensity about your awareness, the future, of your dreams, your possibilities. But the past is also a very important part of it and that’s are your beliefs your money scripts, your emotions, your your your unconscious, beliefs, Chris Absolutely fascinating thank you so much for joining us really really appreciate it. Anne Abbenes Glad to be here. Thank you. David Well, fascinating stuff that. I have to say a lot of it, I want to say felt familiar. She gave us a new insight to certain things that we’ve discussed a lot on the podcast over the years. About financial wellbeing of Know thyself, self limiting beliefs that we often have about money. Chris I love some of the stuff she talked about that, how our brains havent been used to money within this period of evolution. So the way that we deal with decisions and make decisions around money, just doesn’t come naturally to us. It’s fascinating stuff. David Yeah. And also another thing she said that struck me as well, that money or thinking about money can cause fear and create anxiety, and that’s very true as well. If we can find a way of reframing that focusing on thinking, rather than making a scared about how we could make our money feel better is great. And also, her assertion that the self limiting beliefs that we talked about before, can of course be changed. They don’t have to be constant, but you do need to be aware of what it is that’s causing them before we go about trying to change. You know you can you can re-write your scripts as she says. Producer Tommo I’ve got nothing to add chaps, I think you’ve summarised it brilliantly. I think it was a terrific interview so thanks for that Chris. David We hope you’ve enjoyed that we always find we do something different, and we’ll do that next time we come back with another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts. For now, goodbye.

What gets you out of bed in the mornings? Join the guys as they discuss how we can structure our finances to create and keep the balance between pleasure and purpose for long term wellbeing and fulfilment. With another Bage’s Behavioural Bias and #tightasstommo’s money saving tips we have a pleasurable podcast for you . . . Welcomes & Introductions Click here for more information about the Initiative of Financial WellbeingClick here for more information about Ovation FinanceDavid’s new book, click on the image below for more information; (Editor Tammy – as requested by David, details on how to buy a copy of the book! ) What is todays podcast all about? – A chat about the balance between pleasure and purpose from the book, Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan. Bage’s Biases Every episode, Behavioral Finance expert, Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip. Exploring and thinking a little bit about the behavioral traits we have towards money can inform us, so we can make better money decisions going forward. – Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk – Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability – Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Loss Aversion TightAssTommo Featuring a thrifty way to get a free umbrella!Click here for more information about the Olio app Todays topic – The balance between pleasure and purpose Age Concern study – those who reported the greatest wellbeing are those who were living a life with meaning The meaning of life . . . is? What is the difference between how we spend our time and the things that we think will make us happy? A client example – We focus on a snapshot moment when we should look at the continuing narrative How do you actually find purpose in your life? Teaching kids to ride bikes Purpose and pleasure when it comes to parenting! Using football to illustrate the difference between pleasure and purpose Finding the right balance for wellbeing A financial plan should be reflecting and aiming towards that thing that gets you out of bed in the morning. “goals and objectives are what we do during the day, but purpose is what gets us out of bed to do them” Do annual meetings with your financial advisor just look at a snapshot in time? It should be about coaching, to equip you to know what is important and remind yourself of that on a regular basis And for those without a financial advisor? Get a financial plan in place and make time each day to remind ourselves why we made that plan Episode 55 – overcoming Anxiety with Nick Elston The highs and lows of social media Focus on the objectives not the money Click for more details on the book Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan Conclusions from the guys Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David 0:10 Hello, everybody and welcome to another one in our long running series of financial wellbeing podcasts. My name is David Lloyd, writer, broadcaster actor. I’m here to act as referee and the common man while I field comments and questions from two brilliant financial brains, the first of which is going to introduce himself now Chris Budd. Chris 0:34 Good lord David that that was, what have you had for breakfast this morning. My name is Chris Budd. I authored the book called The financial wellbeing book and I do lots of other stuff like play guitar and lots of that go on a lockdown. Bought a couple of new guitars during lockdown. So I’m not sure it’s been very good, very good financial wellbeing thing for me this lockdown. David 0:53 And the other genius financial brain is Tom Morris. Tell us about yourself Tommo? Producer Tommo 0:58 Well, I’m not sure about genius. But you know what I’ll take it. I have. I am a Chartered Financial Planner and director at Ovation Finance, which is a financial planning business in Bristol, and I’m also a director over the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing which is an organisation that had its roots in in this podcast, I would suggest and now is formed into a 200 plus member led organisation all trying to focus on the area of financial wellbeing and delivering it to their clients, which is is fantastic. I know about you, Chris. But it’s just been so exciting seeing people engage with this and and it’s just amazing. Chris 1:41 It’s been quite a summer, isn’t it? Yeah. Because we only launched it back in January, and that we’ve already got 230 members, and we’ve got a conference coming up in May. Regional meetings. Oh so much stuff going on. I’m supposed to be spending a day we can spend two or three days a week on it. And if there’s any financial advisors listening who haven’t come and joined us yet, please do. David 2:00 Brilliant well done, guys. And, Tom, I understand there’s been an addition to the Morris family. Producer Tommo 2:05 There has I am a father of two children now. Yes, young Bella, she on this recording since. I should really know this is six, almost seven weeks old now. Yeah, it’s a whirlwind. But it’s quite, people have been asking me what how does it feel going from one to two. And it’s far easier than going from naught to one I would say, going from naught to one, you go from not having to be responsible for anything really other than yourself to having to be responsible for this little, little thing. And then all of a sudden, you’re already used to that. So going to two, it’s been absolutely fine. Apart from that. The lowered sleep. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, I’m really happy. I couldn’t tell you. It’s a cliche, but I’m incredibly proud and happy dad. David 2:51 Brilliant. Well done. Chris, you’ve been up to anything exciting had any more children? Chris 2:56 Not that I know of. Actually, given the luck that I can be absolutely certain of the fact that I haven’t. I haven’t left this house for like nine months. There’s a friend of ours, mutual friend of ours, David Hannah, who does the illustrations for my novels. And she texted me the other day about novel three, which I’m, I’m just finishing up just to say how are you? Isn’t life dull? I thought that’s a very good way of putting it. But David, we shouldn’t go by talking about novels. We shouldn’t let this go by without mentioned of a certain other addition to your family, your new novel? David 3:28 Indeed, yes, I went after after many, many years of writing for TV and saying I must write a novel one day and having spent five years on and off writing it, I finally got a novelr out. And it’s selling very well. It’s getting great reviews. I’m really pleased with it. It’s called ‘A Most Unwelcome Connection.’ I’m sure Tammy will stick something in the show notes at the end to tell you how you can buy it. If she doesn’t. I’m never doing another podcast. Yeah, no, it’s gone really well. And you all know, Chris, more than certainly more than I do. I mean, the the excitement of you know, I knew that novel really well. I was very familiar with the characters I knew the words on on a screen. But there was nothing that quite prepared me for that rather magical moment of holding a book in my hands, that I had written. I had, you know, my name on it. And it was all encapsulated in this lovely book smelling book. Yeah, so yeah, so that’s, that’s been great. And I’m already now working on the sequel. Chris 4:23 Brilliant, brilliant. I remember when I had my first box of books arrive at the doorstep and I ordered 50 copies I think to sell and give away to friends what have you. And then when the second book came along, I ordered 20 copies because I still got a few the first one and having just done the order. I’ve ordered three. David 4:42 You got a little bit more reasonable. I’ve got a few knocking around but not many, actually. Not many. Anyway, enough about us. We need to move on now to the purpose of today’s conversation. Chris, you better tell us what that is. Chris 4:56 So we’re gonna have a chat about the balance between pleasure and purpose. And it comes from a book called happiness by design by Paul Dolan. So we’re going to talk about some of the ideas that he shares in his book. David 5:10 Brilliant look forward to that. But before we do that, we need to move on to the first of our regular features, and that is Bage’s Behavioural Biases. Were all friend of the podcast, behavioural finance expert, Neil Bage, gives us his one minute introduction to a different behavioural bias that affects how we make decisions about money. And that Chris, what is Neil telling us about this week? Chris 5:36 Today, Neil talks about loss aversion Neil Bage 5:41 Loss aversion. loss aversion is our tendency, our natural desire to prefer avoiding a loss when compared with acquiring and equivalent gain. What this basically means is that we would feel losing £10 more than we would feel gaining £10. So if you’re walking down the street and find a £10 note on the floor, brilliant, of course, you’d feel happy and chuffed that you’ve just found money. But equally, if you put your hand in your pocket, and realise that you’ve lost £10, that feeling the sinking feeling you get in your stomach, that loss aversion being played out. And it is really powerful if we don’t keep it in check, or slow down to consider its effects when making decisions. And we could end up very quickly in a place where we’re doing something to try and avoid a loss, but actually end up losing something else. So don’t let loss aversion take control, making you miss out on new opportunities or new experiences simply based on a fear of losing. We risk things all the time. Just getting out of bed today, and getting dressed carries a degree of risk. So don’t let your aversion to loss become too dominant in your life. Don’t ignore it. But don’t let it control you either. Producer Tommo 6:57 Yeah, once again, Neal is nailed it hasn’t he absolutely nailed it. Yeah, loss aversion is a big one. I find with conversations with, with clients as there’s no doubt we do feel loss considerably more than we feel any gains. And it’s something we have to be really aware of that when somebody is trying to manage their finances or life in general, that we try and provide some buffers to these losses to make them feel a bit more comfortable, because we will feel them. But some people will feel that more than others. So it’s something we definitely need to be aware of that. Yeah, loss losses, or the perception of them can be quite tricky. So yeah. Well, well put, Neil. David 7:42 So now let’s move on to another one of our regular features. I say another one it is the prime feature. It is the reason that people tune in to this podcast. Yes, I witter away. Yes, Chris gives us his, his brilliant financial analysis and knowledge. But in the end, what this is all about is our next feature, Tightasstommo. It’s when Tom Morris gives us the benefit of his meanness. When he explains to us how in the financial world or in any world, you can save yourself some money. But before we come on to the master himself, Chris, have you’ve got anything for us, Chris 8:20 I’ve got one today, David, which is how to get free umbrellas. Never spend any money on an umbrella ever again. What you do is you go to the last department section of your local railway station, and you say excuse me, I’ve lost an umbrella. It’s small and black, and it’s extendable. They’re bound to have one there and they’ll give you a free one. Producer Tommo 8:41 I like that. Yeah, that’s brilliant. I’m going to struggle to Trump that David 8:46 Do your best, Tommo you can do it. The world is waiting. Producer Tommo 8:49 Oh, goodness, me. So I came about this only this morning, actually, somebody had put it out there that there was this organisation called Olio. That’s O L, I O. And it’s olio x, ex.com. in the show notes. What they do is they link neighbours and the local community up together and you’re able to sell or give away food that’s close to its used by day or food, that surplus, maybe you’re even able to sell some some cakes that you’ve made that are no longer required. The whole idea is is that reducing food waste, which has been shown to be a huge, has a huge impact on on the environment, but also enabling people to get access to food at a lower cost. I don’t know if it’s free or not. But like I said, I only saw it this morning. I’m going to go and investigate it more. But it seems like right up our street is saving money but but also reducing the impact on the environment. David 9:55 Excellent, particularly in these times of you know people having to take recourse to a foodbank. Some things like that, that sounds like a really positive thing. Producer Tommo 10:03 Yeah, absolutely. So Olio. Yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna really check it out, get get involved. David 10:10 Thanks for that. All right, let’s move on then to the main event. Chris, why don’t you tell us again? About our subject for today? Chris 10:19 Okay, David, thank you. So there’s a recent Age Concern study of wellbeing among retired people. And it showed or concluded that those who reported the greatest wellbeing would those were living a life with meaning. David 10:32 Now, that’s great expression. But what does a life with meaning actually mean? If you pardon the expression? How to find meaning in life is a pretty big question. Monty Python tried to make a film about it, but not fully, fully addressed it? Chris 10:47 Well, like most conversations about meaning of life if they raise more questions than answers, didn’t they? But they did it in a very good way. So So what is meaning or let’s use another word for it purpose, and let’s explore the balance of purpose and pleasure. Crucially, then, of course, how we structure our finances to create and keep that balance between purpose and pleasure. And so to do this, I’ve been rereading a really good book by a guy called Paul Dolan. It’s called happiness by design. So if anybody’s interested in the ideas in this podcast, I strongly recommend that you check out that book. So let’s start off with talking about pleasure. There’s a difference between what makes us happy and what we pay attention to. There’s a difference between how we spend our time and the things that we think will make us happy. And in many ways the gap between these two things defines our wellbeing David 11:40 Right, hold your horses, Christoph, I need to get my head around that statement. So as I understand it, you’re talking about the gap between what actually makes us happy, presumably, this is the ‘Know Thyself’ principle that you’ve talked about for many years, and how we spend our time which is taking our immediate attention. Chris 12:00 Yeah, exactly. And there’s an analogy Paul gives in the early on in his book, which I really like, which is, it’s like the difference between a movie a film, and a photograph. A film is the continuing narrative, where a photograph is just one snapshot in time. And we tend to focus on the snapshot the moment of happiness or wellbeing or unhappiness or whatever. So to give an example, it’s, it’s possible to be unhappy in a job, while quite happy at that particular moment, the thing that you’re doing, which can thereby stop us from taking action. David 12:35 Can you give me an example to illustrate this, Producer Tommo 12:37 I’ll jump in here, if you don’t mind. Because I can think about a few clients, actually, this fits. I’m not going to use a real name here, this is pseudonym for obvious reasons. But a client called Aill and Bill worked for a company that he didn’t like, but he was well paid. He liked his colleagues, and he enjoyed the particular job, he was doing well enough. So you can see there was this snapshot of enjoying what he does in the day, but wasn’t necessarily enjoying the company he worked for, you know, he didn’t like his line manager. What the company did, he just didn’t really believe in. So every day, Bill will go into work focused on what he’s doing now, and actually be happy doing his role. So was wasn’t unhappy. However, whenever he went on holiday, it was felt a little bit, wan’t exactly excited to go back and do the job. He wasn’t fulfilled by it. So I guess what I’m trying to say is his job, in in the moment was giving him happiness, but actually wasn’t given a huge amount of purpose. Because the wider aspects of what it involved wasn’t making him particularly happy. Chris 13:51 I suspect, you guys know, certainly I can, I’m sure a lot of listeners can think of times of their lives when they’ve been in that situation. I can think of a lot of financial advisors, for example, who loved the idea of financial wellbeing but are in jobs, which give them targets to sell products, etc. And they probably enjoy the time with the client, but overall, it’s not giving them the fulfilment. So Paul Dolan’s first suggestion is that we stopped focusing on the snapshots of life, those moments of pleasure, and instead look at how these add together over time. So now let’s look at purpose. We talk of financial wellbeing in terms of living a meaningful life. We use the word purpose a lot, I do anyway. But that word purpose is a big word. It can feel a little overpowering. Yeah, how you actually find purpose in your life? It’s a big issue. David 14:36 Yeah, I think for me, it’s about I mean, I guess I would separate it out. One purpose in my life is to is to earn enough money to live you know, and that’s clearly there as a whether you’d call it a purpose or a function, but for me, I have a wider purpose and nice to feel that I’m making a positive contribution. And Chris, you and I have over a long period of time, you know, volunteer for our local cricket club, done a lot of work there. I just joined the local parish Council, I’ve been a, I’ve been a school governor. And for me, it’s about the purpose in my life is about making a wider contribution to my own community. And I guess those are things that I can feel that I’m doing something useful, when I’m doing it but also retrospectively as I can with a cricket, which I’ve stepped away from now. I can look back on that and think, yeah, you know, I made a difference. It’s something I can look back on with pride. Chris 15:29 Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a longer term thing. And I often say to people of all the things I’ve done in life, that cricket section that you and I got going is probably one of the things I’m most proud of, of all the things that I’ve done. And you’ve got things like your Bafta award, for the award winning show Maid Marion and her Merry Men. We don’t mention that enough, actually. Because there will be some of our listeners that, that will remember that show and not realise that you were Graham, the guard. David 15:54 So it was indeed and it was it was the best job, apart from this one, that I ever had. Certainly paid better than this one. But yeah, it was a great Kids TV series, late 80s, early 90s. For those that haven’t got a clue what we’re talking about, yeah. Chris 16:09 Still available on DVD. David 16:11 It is indeed Yes, on blu-ray DVD. And indeed, you can stream it on Amazon Prime. Chris 16:17 There you go. There you go. So you got to go and see what Producer Tommo 16:19 That does mean, born in the in 1987, I very much enjoyed it, David, at the age it was meant to be enjoyed. So thank you, it was it was an excellent show. Chris 16:29 So there you go, you’ve got you’ve got the longer term purpose of something like that, or there could be just a moment when you show the kid to bowl leg spin. And in that moment, you’ve got pleasure as well. So it’s a balance between these two things. Producer Tommo 16:40 I’ve got, I think I’ve got an example of this. And it only happened this weekend, I have shown Toby how to ride a bike, and he actually got it, you know, it was just amazing. I think I actually showed you the video, I’ve sent you the video, Chris, you you’ve seen it, you know, he actually does have an extended period of time where I’m not holding on, it was amazing. And you get, I got that great sense of, of, of pride and, you know, happiness with that, but also a sense of purpose that my role as a father is or as a parent is to teach my child these things. So some of my purpose is to teach my children how to do things so that they are, they’re able to live a life where they could cycle a bike to school, or whatever it might be. Chris 17:31 I just share a quick story about my daughter, Ella and her bike. Because, because it’s a big moment to teach your kid to ride a bike. And so I had it all set up that we were gonna go to a certain, to Wells actually, to ride a bike and she kept saying, It’s okay, because I can already ride a bike and you can’t, I can’t that I can’t Ella. Look, it’s not you don’t just get on it. You know, you need to learn I need to teach you is it? No, but I can do that. Ella I know you think you can, I sound like Nemo’s dad here, I know you think you can. But you can’t you know. So we get down to Wells. And then we put on the bike, bam, off she goes. And she comes around in a big circle, skids in front of me says what about that then aye? And I said, but, but, I’ll be learning at school. I just haven’t told you. Grrr David 18:19 Well, there’s a lesson for us all there, obviously, our instinct as parents is we want to inform and educate and guide and lead our children. But sometimes they’re best left to their own devices to get on with it themselves. Chris 18:32 So this, this parenting actually gets a specific mention in this book, Happy Happiness by Design, because I’m not sure you’re gonna like this. But there are studies that show that being a parent doesn’t actually add to your overall wellbeing over time. But what it does do is it changes the balance, I think Tommo’s gonna be able to relate to that. It changes the balance between doing things that are purposeful, and things that are pleasurable. I think you could probably vouch for that at the moment. Producer Tommo 18:58 Yeah. Are we saying that I’m definitely in the purposful zone rather than pleasurable? Yeah, I could get I could get that. Yeah, you know, your purpose at the moment is to get up and change a nappy at three in the morning. I mean, that’s, that’s my purpose in life right now. Is it pleasurable? I think we all know the answer to that. David 19:19 Yeah, but Tommo the pleasure will come later in life when, when one of your children or both of them will say, Dad, come on, we’re going down the pub, and I’m gonna buy you a pint. And that’s when the pleasure comes. I mean, my son who I still remember, I could remember teaching him to ride his bike. I could remember changing his nappy and all of those things, but you know, he’s 32 now he’s a man and yet still, my boy. Producer Tommo 19:42 Yeah, there you go. David 19:43 I get, I get certainly you know, a lot of pleasure now from seeing him having turned up into a well rounded and independent young man. Chris 19:52 So let’s let’s look a bit deeper into the no lifestyle stuff that we always go on about in these podcasts and have them for years. Let’s look at that pleasure and principal balance. And let’s try and illustrate this difference between pleasure and purpose. So, David, what would you say are your favourite type of TV programmes or movies? David 20:13 Well, obviously, I’m tempted to say the ones I’ve been in, but but that’s, but actually I’ve, you know, I love a nice documentary. And, you know, I’ll take as an example, you look at some of the great documentaries David Attenborough has made over recent years, you know, the Blue Planet, and all of those things that educate, inform, but also really make you think about, you know, the state of the planet. So probably something like that is going to give me a huge amount of satisfaction at every level. Chris 20:41 Okay, Tommo me what about you? Producer Tommo 20:43 Sport. Sport for me, if I’ve got an opportunity in some spare time, certainly over the weekends, I just watch whatever live sport there is, you know, particularly rugby and cricket, I can’t get enough of it. Chris 20:55 So this illustrates and that obviously, there’s no right or wrong answer to it, because it’s whatever is unique to you. But it demonstrates the difference between whether you do things for pleasure or for purpose. I watched recently, a really good film recommended Triak of the Chicago Seven on Netflix. And I suggest that’s a fairly purposeful type film. It’s a true story. I also love going to see Bristol Rovers, I get great purpose from the fact that I go with my son, even if there isn’t always a pleasure to be here for the actual football. David 21:25 Right? Well, I mean, I can share that with you as well, Chris, because I, obviously, football, I remember picking, picking my son see Bristol City, the other Bristol team when when he was a kid and getting huge amounts of purpose from that. And although, you know, I would argue that the general standard of football over the years made it slightly. The same principle applies is that you’re they’re doing something with your boy. And whatever it is, whoever you’re watching, whatever your opinion might be of the relative merits of the teams that we support, that that essential thing that you do is the great thing. Producer Tommo 22:01 Can I ask a question here? Those examples of you going to sports events with your with your boys? Is that purpose or pleasure? Chris 22:12 It’s it’s a purposeful thing to do. No doubt about it whatsoever. That of course, yeah, it’s still good for purpose, I guess. Would you disagree? You asked the question. Producer Tommo 22:25 A little bit. Yeah, I’d say that there’s that that’s a pleasure pursuit. David 22:30 I think it’s both. I think it’s I think you go there with a purpose. Your purpose is to go to the football, you get pleasure from doing something with your with your child. And you get extra pleasure if your team wins, which clearly is something that Chris will be less familiar with. Chris 22:46 I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. David 22:48 I tried to be fair, I tried to be nice, Chris. And I just couldn’t stop myself. Producer Tommo 22:55 As a neutral, he’s got a point, Chris i’m afraid. Chris 22:58 The silly thing is if you look at the number of games won and lost over the last 10 years between Bristol Rovers and Bristol City, I suspect it’s about the same. It’s just a different divisions. David 23:09 Well, I’m going to come back at you in the next podcast with that stat. We’ll see. But presumably, this challenge that we’re talking about between pleasure is a key to long term well being. And I would imagine that, that living a life, which is all pleasure, and no purpose wouldn’t be especially fulfilling. But then I can also imagine that a life which is all purpose, and no pleasure, wouldn’t be much fun after a while. So surely, it’s about finding the right balance for each of us. Producer Tommo 23:39 Yeah, absolutely. It was going to be over the long term, not just at that snapshot in time we talked about. So when we look at structuring our finances, when we work, you know, work out our financial plans, we need to work on that Know Thyself part, so that we understand our own balance between purpose and ultimately, what the thing the thing that gets us out of bed in the morning, and pleasure, you know, considering how these series of moments will add up to, to provide us long term well being, you know, that’s what our financial plan should be reflecting and aiming towards. Chris 24:14 I had a really good definition of purpose actually, a little while ago, somebody said, ‘goals and objectives are what we do during the day, but purpose is what gets us out of bed to do them’ as a really nice weapon money. Let’s give the last word on this to Paul Dolan then from the book. Now a direct quote from the book. ‘The value of our lives comes from the experiences of pleasure and purpose over our lifetime, not from a judgement we might make in an arbitrarily chosen moment in time.’ David 24:41 Oh, that’s great. Now given that, I’ve got a challenge for your two brilliant financial planning brains. So this podcast is all about how we can use money to make us happier, and not just wealthier as our strap line right now, you’re saying that we shouldn’t judge happiness by a snapshot in time, yet you call the client in for a meeting just once a year as you did with me last week tamo for an annual review? Producer Tommo 25:05 Well, I’m put on the spot here now arn’t I? I better come up with a good answer! And I think we have to realise that it is very difficult for somebody to be next to you, throughout the whole of the year or this whole long snapshot in time. What my job as a financial planner is, is that when we sit down for that once a year, it may be more regular than that, for some clients, certainly those that are going through a big transition, is to equip you with the skills to be able to understand these things for yourself. So this is where coaching comes in. So I’d like to think that a lot of our conversations, we have David at all around really trying to understand what’s important to you, looking at all these snapshots added together, so we can, you know, get this theme about what is important to you, What’s your purpose, and ultimately, what makes you happy. And then enabling you to take that away, and implement it for between when we see each other and the next time we see each other because unfortunately, I can’t be there with you at all times. So I need to equip you with the skills to know right, what is important to me, and then make sure that you are reminding yourself of that on a regular basis, David 26:23 Which is exactly what you did at our last meeting, you came up with some great solutions and suggestions about, you know, I’m at a stage in my life where I’m moving from working into a more retirement based life. And certainly the advice you gave me was very, very useful. Chris 26:39 I think it’s also fair to say that not everybody will want to or you can get afford to see their advisor every quarter or every month. So So seeing an advisor who’s going to equip you, I think, you know, make sure you’ve got one of them. Producer Tommo 26:51 It’s also the case, and I hope, David, you’ll agree with this is that we are open to having conversations between our our more organised meetings. So we may well have a telephone call along the way that you want to sense checks and things with me, emails, you know, as long as an advisor is open, to having these conversations between meetings, it does enable you to make sure that it’s not just the snapshots that being talked about, and the wider things are being discussed. And yeah, it’s important that we do provide the support. But ultimately, having those big meetings a little too often they can start to become a bit stale if we’re not careful. David 27:31 Yeah, I think that’s fair comment. And I think, obviously, you and I have a slightly different relationship given that we come together for these podcasts quite often, it gives us an opportunity to catch up on small things, when we’re chatting. But certainly those, those big meetings are very important because they tend to be a bit more focused, you go right, these are the issues, we need to sit down and address them. But what I valued about the relationship I have with you and indeed previous advisors that I’ve had at Ovation is the fact that I do know that you’re always there that I can pick up the phone or send you an email and that for me is an ideal advisor client relationship. Producer Tommo 28:07 We better make sure we continue that then hadn’t we! David 28:11 What about those people who don’t have a financial advisor? And we know that a lot of people who read the financial well being booked to turn to that, if you like, is their financial advice? How should they remind themselves of their relationship to their money on a regular basis and keep in touch with their financial wellbeing? Chris 28:28 Thats a good challenge David had to make financial well being something that you attend to every day, not just at certain moments, and then forget it again. So let’s just remember, this is all about the balance between pleasure and purpose. We need to make sure we take time, I would suggest each day to remind ourselves of our plan. So we need to create that financial plan in the first place. And actually thank you for mentioning it, the financial wellbeing book will help you to do that. But then just remind yourself every, not necessarily every day about your plan. But remind yourself every day about you. There’s an old friend of the podcast, Nick Elston, who can be heard, I think, I don’t wish to be rude to the other guests we’ve had. But I think it was the best one, best episode we produced, number 55. He was absolutely fantastic. And he showed a great tip recently to a group of financial advisors that Tommo and I are a part of called the Next Gen Planners. I’m a bit too old for them, but they still let me in. I suspect you might be getting a bit old from at some point, but Producer Tommo 29:23 Im told it’s a mindset, not an age thing. So I hope, I hope . . . Chris 29:27 Yes, yes, definitely. So So Nick said on that on that pod on that little commute that we do every morning with a group of people. He said, just make sure that a little bit of each day is allocated for you. Now I just that really hit me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds that I spend so much time every day providing things for the people whether paid or not paid whatever. And I just don’t get to put aside time for myself. So after hearing that step I actually wrote which bit of you, sorry, which bits of today is for you on a postcard and I’ve pinned it behind my workstation, so I see it every morning, which bit of today is for you. David 30:07 Excellent. So and if I understand Mr. Dolan correctly, a major source of unhappiness is the way we focus our attention on the wrong things. So this could be I guess, what social media is a big thing now, isn’t it? You know, we’re all very easily subsumed by what we see on social media. And we can very quickly get trolled and bullied if we dare to mention something that’s not you know, in the current zeitgeist and, and that can take us away from the thing that we believe is really, really important. Chris 30:39 I think, I get a bit frustrated, if I’m honest with you, I love my Twitter. And I get a bit frustrated when I hear people say I don’t do Twitter, because I don’t like what I see. People being negative, you literally choose your own feed on Twitter, you choose your followers. So if somebody is putting something in that you don’t like, don’t follow them. mute them. David 31:01 Exactly. Right, Chris. And I’ve done that I’ve I mean, Twitter is, let’s face it, it’s not, it’s not the lovely fluffy place it was 10 years or so ago when we both joined it. But it still is, for me a source of great amusement and entertainment because anybody that goes on my timeline with any degree and never to negativity or degree, I just sling them off. I’m not interested in engaging with the wider world. I just want to engage with people that make me feel good. Chris 31:26 Yeah. And it’s not only getting people that agree with me, I’ve got lots of people don’t agree with, it’s that negativity and unwillingness to to engage in a conversation. So yeah, you literally choose your own timeline. Producer Tommo 31:39 Do you mind if I come in with some practical stuff chaps as, I think some listeners do like to think well, how can I actually implement this within my financial plan? Chris 31:47 You mean, they don’t want to listen to me and David moaning about the world. Producer Tommo 31:50 If they want to hear you moan about Twitter, etc, they go watch Social Dilemma on Netflix, an excellent documentary that will give you all the insight you need onto this. So if you remember the two grumpy old men on on the Muppets, this is what I’m looking at right now. David 32:05 Less of the old! Producer Tommo 32:08 Okay, so let the point of a financial plan should be to create a clear path to identifiable objectives. I.e, you know, the purpose, the pleasure, what’s it all for? So we need to create that clear path. These objectives, which we could call intrinsic motivations, which we’ve discussed before, on this balance between pleasure and purpose, and are unique to each individual. So once you’ve identified your objectives, why not keep an overview of this to hand? Maybe pin it on the wall, next to Nick Elston’s tip of have you taken some time for yourself each day? Why don’t you pin it on the water? What are your motivations and objectives? What’s important to you? It’s the reason why so many of us keep a picture of our family close at times. And we want to be reminded about the things that are important to us. So that if you’ve got something that you’re specifically aiming for, and oh, such as a holiday, why not pin that up on the wall. Now make your money real to you. You know, without focusing on the amounts, just what your money can actually achieve for you, you know, these objectives that are so important. That being said, when it comes to the actual nitty gritty management of your money, you know, I recommend that you look at it less often than that, you know, it’s important to look at these objects of everyday but looking at your money should be done a little less often, otherwwise, you can get really wrapped up and it’s not going to be great for your your well being. You know, a good example is to look at your investments every day, watching whether the stock market’s gone, up or down, it’s no good for your wellbeing. And, you know, it’s gonna give you false feelings anyway. Remember, investments is a long term thing. Also, automation is your friend. So set up direct debit savings towards these things that are important to you. It enables you to have mental space to focus on the things that are important to you. And also, you know, that action has being taken. Also, if you’re in retirement, make sure your income is automated, so you’re not constantly worrying about action being taken. And finally, if we actually think about our spending, do you review it every couple of months to make sure it’s aligned to that purpose and pleasure that we discussed? And this can be straightforward these days. There are many apps now where you can link your bank account, and you’re able to get a good breakdown of where your money’s going. I know, for example, clients at Ovation, we provide them with a portal and they can link their bank account in there. And they’re able to do budgeting very easily a click of a button. You know, every couple of months they can see, okay, that’s what’s coming in. That’s what’s going out. Is it actually being spent on things that provide pleasure. Is it being spent on things that provide purpose if the answer is no. Then we need to reassess it. If the answer is yes, tick that box and carry on enjoying your life. David 35:01 Great advice. Tom, I thought you mentioned that portlet our meeting last week and you still have to send me the link to set it up, so I’m just reminding you about that. Producer Tommo 35:09 What a terrific advisor I really am. All the truth is coming out now, isn’t it? David 35:15 You’ve had other things on your mind Tommo, so that’s fine. So what’s the name of that book again, Chris? Chris 35:21 It’s called Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan. I stress that the points about the pleasure and purpose balance that we’ve been talking about. That’s just the first chapter. There’s loads of great stuff in the rest of the book. So it’s definitely one that we recommend. David 35:33 Well, I shall go away and read it. So thanks very much for that guy’s a really interesting chat today I thought, I hope you’ve all enjoyed it listening at home or in the car or wherever you’ve been listening to us waffling away, and I hope that you will join us again very soon. Next time we come together for another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.

Episode 70 – Finding Purpose in Later Life with Tony Watts OBE A special guest interview with Tony Watts OBE, director at EngAgeNet and author of The Midlife Review Book. Tony is an advocate for the elderly from producing many publications to directly informing the government on their issues. In this episode the guys chat about what retirement can mean, finding purpose in later life and how employers can work with employees for a smooth transition. As ever we have a brilliant Bages Behavioural Bias and a terrific #tightasstommo money saving tip for you in this practically perfect podcast! Welcomes & Introductions What is today’s podcast all about? A chat with Tony Watts OBE exploring how we can find purpose and wellbeing in our later years.Link to Tony’s book: The Midlife Review Bage’s Biases Every episode , Behavioural Finance expert, Neil Bage, is going to be giving us his money behavioural tips. We are hardwired to make bad decisions about money because we have biases built into us from our experiences through life. We will keep hearing from Neil to help us recognise some of these behavioural biases and hopefully lead us to making better financial decisions. – Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability– Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – The endowment effect. Chris and Producer Tommo share examples of the endowment effect they see through their work. #TightAssTommo Featuring ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’, discounts on fancy groceries and the less said about Producer Tommo’s dating tips the better In a bold move #tightasstommo shares a story about spending money for your wellbeing. Interview with Tony Watts, OBE Tony is a director at EngAgeNet Tony talks about the work he has been doing for elder people over the years, that has resulted in a certain award. How a cat in Clifton led to editing a newspaper for older people in Bristol?! Editing lead to campaigning and trying to work out how to make later life better.This lead to talking directly to the government to feed ideas into how to make policy more effective. How Tony’s OBE has enabled him with his work. Tony defines what a better later life means. There’s no one size fits all Why it is no good waiting until the day you start picking up your state pension or your company pension before you start planning retirement or later life How priorities in life start to change How to think making the most of the last 20/30 years of your life. Working together with your financesyour relationshipsyour healthyour purpose in life. The retirement clock of doom The last thing you should think about doing when you retire is putting your feet up. Tony Watts, OBE Later Life Agenda – Gives you a digest of all the news affecting older people every day. It brings together news stories and features from all around the world about later life living. And that that’s the thing that gets Tony out of bed in the morning and also keeps him current. Life is long, if you know how to use it.Seneca Say yes to everything and see what happens. Having a young brain v having an old brain  Second Bite of the Cherry – Tim Drake If you’re going to be equipped to deal with life – you have to be equipped to adapt. Learning to play a new musical instrument A deeper look at what Tony’s book, The Midlife Review, is all about How intergenerational workforces was the inspiration behind the book How do you keep retraining for the changes that are ahead? The Financial Audit – If you could afford to retire When could afford to retire When you could afford to start phasing your work commitments down And then put in a financial plan that fits around your life ambitions and your personal ambitionsAlongside a health audit A Clear Path to Achieve Identifiable Objectives – as you’re thinking about retirement and/or moving into your next phase of life, you still need a clear path to identifiable objectives A regular review of your objectives and why they need to be mapped out – What’s your health objective? What’s your your financial objective? What’s your personal relationship objective? Success in getting other companies to look at helping their older employees look at this? Could the younger generation be moving job every couple of years, because there’s a disconnect between what owners are giving their employees and what the younger employees want? Trying to find a job that will align with what you want out of life. It absolutely is a big change that employers could learn from. The intergenerational workforce – looking at the motivations for each generation What financial planning is all about – It’s not a one size fits all. Know thyself. Work out what works for you. Conclusions from the guys Retirement doesn’t mean ‘retirement’ anymore. When working you have lots of social relationships through your work, social contact. When you retire, a lot of that will stop. So how are you going to replace it? The key thing –  purpose Just because you might switch off the income producing career doesn’t necessarily mean that career stops. Davids hitchhiking story Click here for more information on the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David  Hello, everybody and welcome to another one in our long running series of financial wellbeing podcasts where three of us get together and waffle on about how money can increase your wellbeing. My waffling name is David Lloyd, I’m an actor, a broadcaster, and a writer, and I’m here to act as mediator, while the two people around me talk with more knowledge and purpose that I have about financial matters. And one of those is Chris Budd. Chris, tell us about you. Chris  Good morning. So I wrote the financial wellbeing book, I’m chair of the initiative for financial well being but my day job I help companies to succession, through something called an employee ownership trust, having done the same thing myself with Ovation Finance. And it’s been really quiet over the summer, because not many business owners have been thinking about that. But it’s got really busy over the last few months. So yeah, that’s actually taking up a lot of my time again, I’m pleased to say, David  Great, another part of our terrific triumvirate is Tom Morris, Tommo, tell us about you. Producer Tommo  I’m just waiting to hear the baby crying stop. Chris  Well no, its alright David  My dogs barking now. So let me just go . . . Chris  This is this is not supposed to be highly professional. Is it? Producer Tommo  I mean, this is part of the charm, isn’t it? Chris  Yeah. David  Right, so Tommo . . . Producer Tommo  You’re such a wordsmith, David. Never ceases to amaze me – triumvirate. It’s such a wonderful word. I’m. Yes. Far too rubbish with words to come up with, trio. Yes, I am a Chartered Financial Planner and director at Ovation Finance, who kindly sponsor this podcast. I’m not sure if you can pick up on my microphone. I have a relatively newborn child. So you may hear in the background. I am a father of two now, which is all very exciting. So if you do hear a few wails in the background, don’t don’t be too alarmed. It’s just what newborns do. Right. But yeah, I’m, I’m very good. I’m very good. still recording this during about what are we locked down mark two about to go into tier three is we’re all based in Bristol. But all considering I feel very blessed to be here today. And I’m really looking forward to this pod. David  Excellent. So am I so Chris, we’re all looking forward to it. What are we going to be talking about today? Chris  We’re going to be hearing from a chap called Tony Watts, OBE, and Tony has been for many years, activist if you like for older the people, so you David. David  I do indeed have some comments on that, but I’ll save those for later. Chris  Good idea. Sorry, that was a bit rude. I didn’t mean it though. We love you really. David  Before we do that, let’s look at the first of all regular features. Bages Behavioural Biases. Were an old friend of the podcast, behavioural finance expert, Neil Bage, gives us his one minute introduction to a different behavioural bias that affects how we make decisions about money. What’s this bias about, Chris? Chris   This week, we’re hearing from Neil about the endowment effect. Neil Bage  The endowment effect. Have you ever gone to sell something that you own only to have the person who is the potential buyer offering you way less than you want, you go to other people, and even they offer you less than you think the item is worth. If this sounds remotely like something you’ve experienced, you’ve fallen for the endowment effect. In short, the endowment effect is where we overvalue something we own, regardless of its real market value, which of course is objective. And people will tend to believe through this feeling of ownership that what we have, what they have, what they own is better than anybody else’s, or my car, my house, are all better than everybody else’s. And it’s this biassed view of the world that can lead us to making decisions that may not end up being the best decisions that we’ve ever made. So the next time you’re on eBay, trying to sell a pair of headphones that you’ve never used. Remember that the attachment that you have to them, everyone else will value at zero. In that situation, take a step back and ask yourself, if I didn’t own this, what would I be willing to pay for it? Even that one simple step can potentially knock you out of the grasp of the endowment effect. And the sooner you recognise this, the sooner you will feel liberated. Chris  So there’s a very important relevance here with with what I was mentioning, if you’d like my day job, the fact that I help business owners to exit and sell their businesses, because business owners will very often overvalue their own business, they think it’s worth more than what somebody else wants to pay for it. And so the question I always ask business owner is how much do you need to sell your business for? And they always give me an amount is worth this or that. But that’s not the question. The question is what do you need. So the first step for anybody who’s thinking of selling their business is to get financial planning. Find out how much you actually need for the business. And then that will hopefully get rid of that counteracts the endowment effect, and give you a much more realistic figure that you can then work from good financial well being link there. Producer Tommo  Yeah, I think that’s a terrific example, and naturally come across this a fair amount as we’re in similar, well we’re in the same field. Chris, we work work work at Ovation, or you certainly had more of an involvement in that since you moved on to your employee ownership side of things. So you definitely see a lot of that. I think another example of where I see it, is inherited assets, it’s there is almost this extra connection with something because somebody who they loved hold on to something. So it must be really good to have it, even though it is really the wrong thing for them to keep in their lives, whether it be a house they’ve inherited, which is miles away, but for some reason they want to keep it, rent it or just leave it dormant because it was their loved ones and everyone has investments, they inherit an investment portfolio that is completely wrong for their needs, but find it very difficult to make any changes to it. Because of this endowment effect. It’s it’s very powerful. David  The ability to be objective, of course, it’s something that’s very difficult. We talk about, we’ve talked many times on these podcasts about knowing ourselves, or being aware of who you really are. And certainly, my experience of that, as a writer of 35 years now is that when I first started writing, every word of every script, or whatever that I’d written, as far as I was concerned was was the best thing that could ever have been written by anybody. And sometimes that may have been true, but often it wasn’t. And, and therefore the thing that I have learned over a long career is the ability to step back and be objective and say, Yep, that’s good. I think that’s gonna work. But actually, you know what, I don’t think that is as good as it could be. And I could work on it. And that’s very difficult when you have an emotional attachment to the work that you’re doing. Chris  And I think it’s worth also just zooming out a little bit here, to just remind us of why we get Neil to tell us about all of these individual behavioural biases, because we are hardwired to make bad decisions about money because we have all of these biases built into us from our experiences through life. And so recognising some of these behavioural biases will hopefully lead to us making better financial decisions. So that’s why we keep hearing from Neil and we will get more from him very grateful to him. And his company B IQ for what they’re doing that we should probably mention his app. Because you can do this for free, you can use his app called Beam – B E A M, it’s currently on iPhone only. But very soon, it will be on all formats. And you can play some games. And those games will then reveal your own behavioural biases. And so whether you have strong endowment effect or whether you are very susceptible to anchoring or what have you, Ovation has been using it quite a few years now. We’ve become trialling it it’s now available for everybody and you can use it for free and it’s a fascinating, it’s good fun to do. But the outcome is absolutely fascinating and will hopefully lead to you making better financial decisions. David  Excellent. Thanks for that, Chris. Right. Let’s move on then to the next in our regular features, which is Tight Ass Tommo. And regular listeners, the podcast will know that this feature started or many, many episodes ago where our producer Tommo took Chris and another colleague out to lunch, persuaded them to have a particular chicken dinner. And it turned out that this was one that he had a voucher for that he was able to get very, very cheaply. Thus the legend Tight Ass Tommo was born. Chris  And of course the expression Winner winner chicken dinner. David  Fantastic. So before we come on to Tommo’s tip, Chris, if you’ve got anything for us today, Chris  Just a real quickie actually a little name check for a local shop. And I’m sure David you use called Broccoli Stores on A370 just outside Backwell, where my son works and because he works there, we get 20% off. That’s my tip. Get your son to go and work at Broccoli Stores get 20% off lovely food. David  That’s great advice, Chris. So Tommo, come on. Give us your big tip for the day. We’re itching to hear it. Producer Tommo  Well. Hard one to follow that one. Just on Chris’s topic. I do do have some clients who work at a private school. No, not the only reason they work there but then get something like 50% discount on their child’s tuition fees. So yeah, get that out there. I once dated lady who worked for House of Fraser and got myself a 50% discount. So there you go. Chris  You stopped going out with her shortly afterwards? Producer Tommo  As soon as I got the discount, I mean, this was a long time ago. This is this is school aged Tom who couldn’t afford a pair of jeans so you know . . . Chris  The legend of Tight Ass Tommo really is going to live on, he actually went out with a girl just to get a discount at House of Fraser. Producer Tommo  Quite, less said about that, the better. And so my tip is one that I’ve mentioned before. And it’s just to reiterate the importance of this. And it was an experience that I had very recently. So two good friends of mine, fellow financial planners, imagine how riveting the conversations are, Rohan Sivajoti and Rich Ellis. We like whiskey. And we thought you know what, we’ve not had a catch up in a while. Why don’t we jump on a Zoom call, grab a glass of whiskey at the end of the day and just have a chip like Yeah, sure. Why not? We turn up Rohan had this glass tea cup for his whiskey. And I said, What are you doing, man? You’re a respectable business owner. What on earth? Are you doing not drinking out of a proper whiskey glass? He said, why is this all I’ve got? Okay, okay. Well, a couple of days later, he gets a delivery. And he sends his picture and Rich had decided, I’m going to buy Rohan a really nice set of whiskey glasses. It arrived Rohan was over the moon. I’m sure it gave Rich a great boost of wellbeing knowing that he was helping someone. I mean, I’m kicking myself that I wasn’t quick enough on the draw, I mean, how tight does that make me look? But the point is Rich, I’m sure is getting a huge amount of well being on spending money on others, the person who receives the gift gets a real boost knowing somebody’s thinking of them. And the person paying for the gift has a boost to their own well being. So there’s my tip, spend money on others. Heck, it could be time as well. David  That’s a great tip and and chatting as I am with two good old friends here, I just like to point out that my car is a bit decrepit now, won’t last much longer. Producer Tommo  There’s limits to this, this story, I’m sure, this example. Chris  Well, did you hear the George Clooney story? So George Clooney was, he he got paid to do a film ridiculous amount of money like $14 million, obviously, and he took it out in cash. And he then got a driver, I think they took like a postal delivery van or something instead make it look inconspicuous, and took bundles of cash, a million dollar bundles and went round a load of his friends that had helped him along the way and gave them a million dollars in cash each. And obviously he’s gonna get used wellbeing for that they’re gonna get there is a little bit of me that thinks that’s a little bit gauche. Just give him a check or give it to them in cash. But what a great moment that must have been to walk in and say ‘There you go, mate’. Bam, there’s a million dollars in cash. Thanks for all your help. Producer Tommo  Yeah David  That is the stuff of dreams. And I can imagine that obviously, it would be great for somebody to just walk in and give you that, but I’m sure that gave him a huge amount, he comes across as being a pretty decent guy anyway, and I’m sure that gave him a huge amount of pleasure to be able to repay those people that he thought had supported him. And clearly he’s working in an industry where you can get paid, you know, ludicrous amounts of money, so why not give a little bit of it back? Well done George. Lets move on. Thank you for that Tommo. Chris, what’s the interview about today? And who’s it with? Chris  So today we are going to hear from Tony Watts OBE. Tony is a director at a place called Engage Net, also a chair of the Southwest Alliance on Ageing director of Retire Easy as a copywriter, he ran a newspaper, what he called a newspaper called the Mature Times for many, many years. He’s been active in elderly issues for a long, long, long, long time. He’s also really nice guy and into his blues. So let’s have a listen to my chat with Tony Watts. Chris  Tony, thanks for joining us in the podcast. Tony Watts  Welcome. Chris  Do you want to start off by just, you and I have known each other a little while now we. . . Tony Watts  Too long some might say. Chris  You or me, yes. And occasionally we bump into each other at blues gigs. So we might talk about the blues but we should probably talk about money and happiness because it is the point of this. Tell us about the work that you’ve been doing for elder people over the years, it has resulted in a certain award. Tony Watts  Okay, well, it’s all started by accident. I won’t give you the long version, which begins with me accidentally running over a cat in Clifton. But it led on for me to the person knocked on the door ended up doing a big marketing campaign for the Isle of Wight. And that was aimed at older people and the only publication that back in the mid 80s. And the only publication I could find at that time to to address older people and connect with them was a publication that was based in Bristol called Golden Age, and is based in Victoria Street in Albert House, curiously, and I ended up in another series of accidents being asked to edit it. The publishers asked had I ever edited a newspaper before and I lied. I’ve got the gig basically. So I . . . Chris  Always say yes, and work out the detail later. Yeah. I like it. Tony Watts  . . . the truth of it. So I ended up publishing what was then the very first publication for older people. And it’s a newspaper, monthly newspaper. And that went fairly well. And that sort of morphed over the years into the first publication, I had a direct involvement financially in setting up this publication called Mature Times. And that was back in the early 90s. And I’d been out doing a group of local papers by then for somebody and I got together with a bunch of people over in Wales. And we set up what was then a fairly adventurous programme of getting a paper together which went out nationally and with regional versions, we looked at all the big issues around retirement. And we were aiming really at the retired person, and we got about 400,000 circulation is a big beast in those days. So I was editing that and really got very involved with the campaign side for later life and trying to work out how you make later life better. And there’s obviously a very interconnected area. And I think people look at how serious single issues and think that’s the solution was not you need to look at finance, housing, health care, or what you do with life. So we tried to focus on all those things that make for a better retirement. And my involvement with that paper sort of ebbs and flows over the years, and I sold my stake in 2010/11. And sort of got pounced upon by people who are representing older people in the government. And they say, well, you know, with your knowledge, would you actually act as a chair for the Southwest forum on ageing, I’ve been doing that ever since. So that acts as, I do that about one, sometimes two days a week, and for quite a few years, we were talking directly to government. We were advising them on new strategies or new bills that were coming forward, giving input from all these feeder groups, a lot of people into how to make legislation and how to make policy more effective. And it wasn’t just about spending more money, it was actually starting from the premise of this fixed pot of money. How do you make that work more effectively. And I got very involved because of my background in doing the comms. So I ended up leading the comms and all that. And then we set up something called the Age Action Alliance. And that brought together lots of people from all around the country, working together on projects to try and, again, make life better for older people. But the most important piece of work probably was I acted as a conduit and deliver the information into the House of Lords on a big report, which came out in 2012, which was called Ready For Ageing, question mark. And the whole report was looking at the way society and government in particular is gearing itself up to the challenges and the opportunities of later life living. And I’ll emphasise that because not just about challenges, people do worry about the downsides of an ageing society. But there are some upsides as well to that. So I ended up saying, given the input, I think that had an influence into the way housing and social care, the health may have been more coordinated, especially health social care. So that ended up unbeknownst to me, obviously, somebody noticed somewhere high up. And I was nominated for an OBE back in 2014, which came as a bit of a surprise, but it’s been a very helpful thing because it enables me to go out, with a few initials after name, sometimes speak at conferences, write articles, and give me a bit more clout when I’m trying to do what I’m trying to do. Chris  A bit of a door opener? Tony Watts  It is a door opener. Yeah, it is a door opener that people take slightly more seriously. Not everyone’s bad. I understand that and it’s been cynically used the honour systems over the years since Lloyd George was around so it’s not just theres minus sides as well. But I think it does allow me to speak with slightly more authority on the key issues that matter to me and to older people. Chris  Yeah, I think it’s fair to say just on that there’s been a big move over the last I don’t know whatever decade couple of decades to make the honour system, at least a large part of it to reward people that deserve rewarding and there’s no doubt you will be one of them. I don’t think we have any, any danger of that. So, there’s a few things in that that were quite interesting. A lot that was interesting. But I just wanted to ask you to define how you would explain what a better later life is. Chris  So thats really quite a big one that everyone’s coming from a different place and it’s got different ambitions and different life situations, so there’s no one size fits all here. I think it’s about looking at each individual and working out what works best for them what can work best for them. But the key point in all this is there’s no good waiting until the day you start picking up your state pension or your company pension before we start planning retirement or later life if you have to really go start much earlier than that. And that’s the the one of the things I talked about in the book in a minute but it later life for many people starts I guess in their 50s, often their careers either start to plateau out, or they start to really get to the very top levels. And the priorities in life start to change as well. I mean, you won’t necessarily just bring up young family or just trying to strive to get onto the housing ladder, you’re, you’re looking hopefully at the bigger picture. I’m not sure how you feel about the case, obviously, you’re a bit younger than me, but you start looking at life slightly differently. But you do need to think about how you make the most of the last 20/30 years of your life, and it is I hate to use ‘the last bit’ it is I mean, I’m 67, I’m starting to really focused now on how to make the most of my next 15 years, I guess, if I’m, if I’m lucky. And it’s a matter of working, working together with your finances, your relationships, and your health, and what you how you purpose your life. And I think that’s something that’s really, really significant, and most people drop out of work into some sort of chasm. You see this all the time. I would say with men who’ve been in senior positions, they’ve had fairly high status, they’ve, you know, had authority, they’ve had a purpose in getting up every morning, and suddenly, you know, they’ve got nothing to really hang their life on apart from, you know, the personal relationships. And I think there’s an awful lot of work that can be done between employers and employees, but also, obviously, individuals themselves looking at how they map out those last, those last 15/20/30 years to work out what’s best for them and those around them. Chris  I think that’s spot on. We see that a lot with Ovation with with clients, elderly clients, elderly, like clients moving into retirement. And we so often you ask somebody see, what’s your plan, and they haven’t really thought about it? Tony Watts  Yeah Chris  I just tell one slightly depressing story. But there was one chap who worked for the same company for 45 years. And he had no plans about what he was going to do in retirement. He had a lovely, lovely defined benefit pension scheme, and then spent most of his time looking after the grandkids. And he died after six months of his retirement of a heart attack. Tony Watts  And well, this used to happen years ago, I remember when back in the Golden Age years I mean, people used to sort of get their clock in those days, I’m not sure when people get clocks these days, it’s bit of a morbid reminder of time ticking, but . . . Chris  I never thought of that that is quite insensitive. Tony Watts  Look at that on the on the shelf there, minutes of his grandfather’s clock. But people used to basically come out of retirement having worked really physically hard as well. And the last thing you should think about doing necessarily when you retire is putting your feet up. And I think also there’s the concept of a phased retirement now, which wasn’t there before. And I think you can taper, taper the word work into the word of word of retirement. As I say, I’m 67, I’ve got the luxury of not having to work every day of the week. And I consciously put my most into every day that I might be working on, in the gym, on with my grandchildren, I do my volunteer work, but every day is purposed. And I think you do need to have that, you know, thing functioning in your life when you get up to something every day. I mean, every morning at about seven, eight o’clock, putting a daily newspaper together, which I give a plug to it’s called Later Life Agenda. And it gives you a digest of all the news affecting all the people every day. Chris  I follow you on Twitter and see it on Twitter quite often. Tony Watts  It is really important because it basically brings together all the news stories and features from all around the world as well, around later life living. And that that’s the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning and also keeps me current. And that’s the other thing about retirement is that you see some people whose lives are so wrapped up in in things that are personal to them, they lose their currency, they lose an understanding of the wider world and that’s why I think still working as I do is great because, you know, as long as I’m able to because I still stay current in terms of understanding how the world is working, especially the world of work. Chris  Yeah, there’s a comment you made earlier about making the most of the hours and and I carry with me quite a lot the time a little book by the philosopher Seneca called On The Shortness of Life. And then the the line on the front of the page, which just does stay at my thoughts quite a lot as I get older it is ‘life is long, if you know how to use it’. Yeah, which is a great line and I find myself you know, I’m in a position now having sold my business and I’m doing other things I get to choose most of the time, choose what I do. And I’ve had a little principle for a little while of I’ll just say yes to everything and see what happens. And that’s great. It’s actually not about you know that a lot of the time advice is that you know, you’ve got to say no to more things, I think say yes to more things. Yeah, it’s taken me in some very interesting directions, I’m saying no to a few things because it’s getting a bit silly. But it’s not a bad philosophy that says it. Tony Watts  I agree. And this is half full/half empty life approach, I’d also bring in the concept which comes in to the book of mine that’s having a young brain and an old brain, which is something that that I hadn’t heard of before. But a guy called Tim Drake, who’s written a very good book called Second Bite of the Cherry. I recommend that to anybody who’s thinking about having an encore career or thinking about reinventing themselves after they finish their job, which may not happen at time of their choosing. That’s the other thing people sometimes find themselves out of the role they had voluntarily. But those of us when we were younger, we, we adapt to change, because we have to adapt to change, like life changing on a daily basis. And so many people’s brains start to age 18. And we find it harder and harder to adapt to new situations, and they won’t welcome change 10% of people carry on through life having a young brain. So they actually welcome change, or seek to adapt. And it works well for them. And if you look at where Darwin started, it wasn’t about survival of the fittest, it was survival of those who could adapt to their environment, and were living in a fast moving world. I mean, in my years, I’ve seen so much change, and it’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen next. And if you’re going to be equipped to deal with life, you have to be equipped to adapt. I mean, Chris  How do you do that, though Tony, how do you get a young brain not an old brain? Tony Watts  I think you have to sort of do what you said. And that is say yes to more things. And don’t shut the door. Because your frightened of something happening that you might not, you know, be comfortable for you move out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. Try things you haven’t tried before. And I, I’m sat here next to your guitar, by the way. And all through my life, I’ve always wanted to play music, and I guess I couldn’t, not the opportunity as a child and funnel that into my children. I’ve got two children who make a living out of music. And I was I was at a conference recently talking. And it was in the evening. And this lady said to me, what you talk today about adapting and staying young and keep you know et cetera, et cetera. What are you doing? I said, Well, and it’s about what, what new, new thing have you done lately? And I said, well I haven’t done anything new lately if I’m really honest about it? Well, she said, I’m 60 something, about the same age as me, I’ve just taken up the clarinet, why don’t you take up the clarinet. And I said, Okay, then. So back into the last year, I started taking clarinet lessons. And it’s, I’ve suddenly discovers whole new world. And it’s just opened up my mind and my life. And I’m feeling much more fulfilled, it’s rewiring my brain, I think as well which, and is that willingness to actually try something new. Go out of your comfort zone, and be prepared to embarrass yourself even but, but don’t shut them shut the barriers down because it’s not something you’ve done before. Chris  I having played guitar all my life, taking the guitar to dinner parties and what have you lots and lots of times over the years, people have said, God, I wish I could play the guitar. I wish I could play an instrument. Of course, I’d say well, why don’t you then? Yeah, say, Well, why don’t you? I don’t have the time. And all you need is 10 minutes a day. That’s it. You just don’t watch the telly for 10 minutes. Watch 10 minutes less television and use that 10 minutes, just practising your piece. And if you do that everyday, you’d be amazed how quickly you progress at an instrument. And nobody’s trying to say you’re not gonna be a concert pianist or anything. It’s just fun. Music is fun. So yes, that’s great stuff. Tony Watts  Yeah, yeah, I’m not being immodest here, but it turns out, I can actually play reasonably well. And I am working towards my ambition of playing Chattanooga Choo Choo. I really want to play jazz in a band now. That’s what I really, I think I’m a couple of years away from that. I’m aiming for that anyway. Chris  Fantastic. So you’ve mentioned your book, tell us what your books all about. Okay, well, this project started a while ago. I’m sure you’ve heard of a company called Punter Southall by their CEO, a very, very interesting man called Steve Butler. He got in contact as he was writing a book around intergenerational workforces. I gave some input into that, and that books come out and I would recommend that to anybody, any employer out there who is struggling, with the fact that there mix employees is not quite as cohesive as it might be. Because nowadays you have older people staying in work longer, younger people churn through the system quicker, how’d you get a better sort of more cohesive mix inside a business of the generations? How do you make the most of those different talents? So that book came out end of the last year that’s done very well. And, and thats called Manage The Gap. I, commend it highly. But we’ve found that with several is one element in the book, which is the midlife review, which we mentioned what he meant. He mentioned well, but but it’s something I’ve felt very passionate about, and asked him to mention it in the book. And he’s done that. But he said, well, let’s do something more detailed around this. And the midlife review is something that a guy called Steven McNair, started off at least 10, maybe 10 years ago now. And I got involved with it. I work, working to government, basically. So we were asked for input on this. And the idea is that all employees once they reach a certain age and defined age was certainly 50/50 onwards, should we having a sensible conversation with their employer to work out where they go from here? And were they, okay, because what you have at the moment, you’ve got an ageing society, a demographic within the workforce? How do you make the most of those times. How do you keep retraining them for the changes that are ahead? How do you make the most of their talents, when perhaps, they need to be skilling at any one point, because all the skills that we used 20 years ago aren’t necessarily the ones we use now and extrapolate onward. But also, more importantly, companies like Aviva since got involved and a very big way. And they got involved when they thought it’d be nice to do. Have these midlife review projects and watch your employees, our old employees want from their later years. And they suddenly looked at their, their business plan going forward and realised there was a big chunk of them, their workers would be disappearing soon, many of them have got comfortable DB pensions they could leave at time of their choosing. And if they all left because they could leave, they will suddenly have this skills gap, which will be quite frankly, sort of very serious for the business. So they’ve implement, they’re starting to implement this on a regular basis, inviting people in on a no commitment basis, you haven’t got to do it. But they look at their work ambitions and their work restrictions and also their caring responsibilities. Would they prefer to work flexibly would they prefer to actually work two or three days a week or four days a week, because they have caring responsibilities coming up. Would they like to change role into the future. Because sometimes people get locked into a job. And they don’t want to say anything, because they’ll appeared to be unambitious or not be part of the team. But it’s not what they enjoy doing anymore, or they’re finding it too onerous. The starting, starting point of all of this is the financial audit. And you do this on a regular basis Chris with your guys. And you look at individual and say, Well, here you are, you’re actually is when do you want to retire, how much you want to retire on? And what would be comfortable? How do you reach that point? And so doing a financial audit on each individual would tell them if they could afford to retire, when they could afford to retire, when they could afford to start phasing their work commitments down and put in a financial plan that fitted around their life ambitions and their personal ambitions. And alongside that, there’s a there’s a health audit as well. And people should go to either health doctor and check out your health. Chris  One of the five planks of financial well being is a clear path to achieve identifiable objectives. Yeah, and you know what, I think I’ve probably been a little bit guilty. And if any of our listeners have been as well of thinking a clear path of identifiable objectives tends to be in the wealth creation phase, and the early part of life. But what you’re basically saying, is it mid/later life as you’re thinking about maybe within 10 years of retirement and or moving into your next phase of life, you still need a clear path to identifiable objectives, don’t you? That’s what your talking about. Tony Watts  Where the interesting thing where this has moved on from is it was in the beginning, it seems like a one off hit, you know, you sat down with your employer and did it and there was your mapped out next 10/15 years? No, this should be a regular review. But there’s just personal circumstances, constantly changing. The company’s circumstances are constantly changing. And it does need to have an honest conversation. And sometimes, maybe you have a buffer between a broker who actually conducts these conversations. And that’s another possibility. But, But health is one of them. Because people often disregard their health in their middle ears. It’s up, you know, you’re working all the hours, you’re running around, looking after the kids. And so you have this gap. I see this, I’m in the gym quite a lot now because I’ve got time to do it and got younger people in there. And you’ve got people my age and beyond. Very few people are in there and those middle years and they really should be focusing on making sure you’ve got your body sorted out for the next 10/20/30 years as well. And its mental well being as well as mental health issue. Some of you understand, I know that. But your objectives, I think, look at your objectives again, what’s your health objective? What’s your, you know, your financial objective? What’s your personal relationship objective? All these things need to be mapped out, I think. Chris  And actually, if you’ll forgive me for going slightly on a tangent, this is the work that I do on employee ownership. One of the things that we talk about there is owners or business owners, small business owners should do with their key employees have a combined career and financial plan. Yeah, you sit down together, and you say, right, what do you want your future to look like? Let’s see how, what the business needs from you put the two together, see what you could get paid, see what you could afford, and come up with a combined career and financial plan. I’ve always thought of that as like a, you know, an owner with his senior management team, that that kind of thing. But the idea of doing that in a big corporate, I mean, that’s fantastic. That’s wonderful that the likes of Aviva are doing this. Have you had success in getting other companies to, to look at this? Tony Watts  It’s, it’s obviously this is very much pilot stage. Business in the Community, the organisation that sort of piloted this and have been promoting it, and they, they’ve got a lot of influence out there. What has happened since then, is that the government itself, thinks this is a great idea, because they want people to be working for longer and being economically active for longer. And they also want people to be less dependent, in terms of health. So they think this is a great idea, but they’re leaving it to the system to work its way out. And other people are looking at it and Legal & General for instance did a pilot on it and people like Mercer have been looking at it as well. But it hasn’t really, really taken off. He I think it sounds like you’re doing a large part of this work, you’re not doing it in quite the same way Chris. Chris  Well, I’m now thinking that people who have business in the community that could be part of our financial well being the initiative of financial wellbeing, we can we can spread the word on this, I think this is a lovely idea. And this is, you know, obviously, your book is part of this as well, which is going to be out . . Chris  Its called Midlife Review Wealth, Working Wellbeing. Myself and Steve Butler, are co-authors. But what we do in there is map out why employers should look at this quite seriously, why employee, you should look at it quite seriously. And then look at the mechanisms for making it happen. And we picked on the ways that, different ways people try to exit and the conclusion we came to again is no one size fits all. If you’re a small company, it’s not the same as Aviva looking at this issue, because you’ve got different structures and different and different barriers sometimes to to making this work. And but it I think there’s huge advantages to any employer to look more holistically at their workforce and think well, okay, I’m, I’m chugging along quite nicely in there. But where will I be in five years time? Where will my workforce be? What, what will constitute, what ages will there be? Chris  Yeah, it’s just good business planning Tony isn’t it, sensible business planning. Tony Watts  It is, an essential business plan, I’m not sure where it’s a part of every business plan, you look at your, your markets, you look at your products or services, you aren’t necessarily looking at the workforce, they’re gonna service that and how you need to train these people up to to perform those new roles, and where they’re going to come from. As I mentioned before, younger people aren’t necessarily going to be as easy to recruit as perhaps you might think, because these guys don’t hang around these days, that one two years is often the most, some people will stay in the job. They’re looking for the next career move, and you need to either incentivize them as you’re talking about, or be prepared to provide lots more incentives for older people to stay in the workforce. Chris  What you’ve just said there Tony totally fits right into a bit of a bee in my bonnet, if I may, just for a second. The idea of, of the younger generation moving job every couple of years, I’ve got a really strong belief that the reason for that isn’t because they’re somehow flightier, than our generation. I think it’s because there’s a disconnect between what owners are giving their employees and what the younger employees want. Because we’re Thatcher’s children, we grew up in Thatcher years, and we see success in financial terms. And a lot of the bosses and owners and the senior management of corporates, they are all also Thatcher’s children and see success in financial terms. But millennials and the younger generation, they don’t tend to they’re far more interested in purpose, all the climate change stuff going on, they don’t even know if there’s gonna be a life on the planet in 30/40 years time. So they’re much more interested in purpose. So I just think that they’re moving around so often not because they want career moves necessarily, but because they’re trying to find a job that will align with what they want out of life. It absolutely is a big change that employers could learn from. Tony Watts  Well I think back to the book I mentioned earlier on the intergenerational workforce, that explores that in detail, it looks at the motivations for each generation, you can’t be too bored, obviously, Millennials don’t think the same way as we do. They’re looking for work for somebody they can really believe in was years ago, you’d happily work for a tobacco company or an oil company was these guys will look askance at working for someone who’s Corporate values may not align with their own. I think also looking at the workplace, and one of the things I write about is property, business property. And the places that people work are having to change because people don’t want to work in the same sort of workplaces, they want to work in more collaborative situations. They don’t want to sit at desks on their own, where there’s no connection between them and the outside world. They want to work from home more often, so they can have a better work/life balance. And employers need to understand that’s what will drive that generation of people and keep/retain them. Whereas it may be slightly different for people of you know, the people in the 40s and 50s, and possibly 60s who will look at work in quite a different sort of way, neither wrong or right, you simply need to look at it as motivation. So employee benefits, employee motivation, needs to be geared towards the individual, rather than having a one size fits all. Chris Budd Yeah, well there’s a perfect summary of what financial wellbeing and what financial planning is all about. It’s not a one size fits all. Know thyself. Work out what works for you. Tony thank you for that. Thank you for joining us on the Podcast. We will put lots of information about your book and other resources in the shownotes. Thanks very much for you time, really appreciate it. Tony Watts Nice to chat with you, we must meet up sometime. David  Well fascinating interview that was. I found Tony a really interesting character and I have to say Chris I’m just going to give you a little plug I thought that was a really good interview as well I thought knew your team some really interesting stuff out the way. Now I can obviously identify I think with a lot of what Tony says I’m just a couple of years younger than him. You know, and I’m at a similar stage in my life when I’m talking about, as he identified the challenges and opportunities of later life living and the one thing that he said that really resonated to me. You know it’s time now to think about how you make the most of the last 15/20 years of your life, and putting it bluntly, you know, that’s probably where I’m at now in my life. I still think of myself as being, like everybody has a locked in age, mines 28, I still think I am. But I’m not, I’m 65 and statistically, I actually look this up the other day, I typed in my age my demographics and all of that to find out when I was likely to die, and it’s probably 83. I’ve got 18 years to go. So, life for me now is less about an endless series of possibilities and ambitions and goals that I want to achieve. It’s how can I make the most of my life. While I’ve still got my health, where I’ve got, you know, relatively good amount of money, in which to enjoy myself and a partner who I’m very happy with. How can I get through the rest of my life. Hopefully avoiding getting ill and, and enjoying myself as much as I could. I love the story about, about the fact that, you know, people used to get a retired clock. And he always found that a morbid reminder of time ticking away, and that’s certainly something that I’ve never been interested in. He talked as well about the, the last thing to think about on retirement is putting your feet up. And certainly that’s always been my attitude to life anyway, you know, although I am now on the cusp, I’m still very much working, writing for doctors, writing another novel. But I’m doing it less now because I have to I’m doing it now because I want to. And in between those times when I’m sitting down working, I’m looking at how I can actually get out there and enjoy myself. So, I’m doing more gardening I got. I run 4k three times a week. So, as he says we should be looking, people of our age to welcome change, and seek to adapt and that’s always been my philosophy in life anyway. And it was great to hear somebody else voicing that in such a clear way. Chris Budd I think his take on retirement, retirement doesn’t mean retirement anymore. It’s, you don’t just stop work. There’s an Aegon survey that I’ve heard recently where something like 85% of people continue to do some form of work in retirement. Well, then they’re not retired are they, you know because they’re still working. They’re just doing a different type of work, maybe something they want to do or maybe it’s charity or voluntary. So, taking time with your financial planner to say, not just my retirement age is a certain age but what are you actually going to do? What will life look like? I heard a really good tip on this recently. And I’m really annoyed I can’t remember the financial planner who said it, so my apologies if he’s listening, but it was what he says to his clients is, at the moment you have lots of social relationships through your work, social contact, when you retire, a lot of that will stop. So how are you going to replace it? I think that’s a really good tip to ask. Producer Tommo  Are you sure it wasn’t me? Chris  Sorry, Tom Morris, the other day said . . . Producer Tommo  This is exactly the conversation that, that I have with, with people if I think about that transition. I just will mention those that I find, from my experience, those that are at your stage of life David that it’s so tangible for them I feel as though they are so focused on wanting to get this right, which does make the coaching conversations that much richer and we can get a lot deeper because of that, from my personal experience. But yeah, there are, there is a key thing here. That purpose we talked about in the last episode that thing that gets us up out of bed is often linked to our, the thing that pays you know pays the bills or careers, you know if you if you’ve got a career for the purpose, then great. But just because you might switch off the income producing career doesn’t necessarily mean that career stops. A career could mean an all manner of things. I think the traditional mindset of what work is, is changing, and how we fill our time. And then the social interactions is just so important, how we are getting those. And I would argue that people are feeling that importance right now. During 2020, where a lot of those interactions are being turned off for them. David  There’s a story, and I may well have told this on a previous podcast, in which case, I apologize, I think it’s is right for this moment. I remember when I was a young man. I was hitchhiking from up north where my parents lived down to London and I got given a lift though a guy, his name was Bill. And he was 80. And he was from the West Midlands and we were driving down and he was a really interesting engaging guy. And he worked for, at the age of 80, as a volunteer for Age Concern. I remember him saying to me he said, the thing is he said, I love to work with the old people, because I like to look after the old people, this is an 80 year old man telling me this story. And I remember he said when I retired one of the last things I wanted to do was sit on a wall in me slippers, watching the world go by, I wanted to get out there and make a difference. And that’s always stuck with me. And that’s always been my ambition for my retirement, which is, as Chris says, is only going to be semi-retirement anyway. The last thing I want to do is sit on a wall and watch the world go by. And I thought Tony summed that up very well, he said there are so many people often, men but for women as well, whose whole life is channelled into their work. And then all of a sudden they find that’s not there anymore. They’re spending time at home with a partner that they perhaps don’t know very well because they have always been out of work and may not actually like that much either. And therefore, I think it’s pretty important to have good sense of purpose in you into that later part of your life. Okay, so that’s a very interesting chat we’ve had there. Thanks as ever to Chris, and to Tom for their contributions, and I hope you’ll join us again next time we do another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.

Episode 69 – Finding Financial Planners with Kate Holmes How do you go about finding a financial advisor to help you with financial wellbeing? We have a great chat with Kate Holmes for you in this episode. Kate is a big advocate of financial planning and helps advisors in America to deliver financial planning rather than just financial advice. Lots of really good tips to help people find the right adviser for them, especially those who help people spend their money on increasing their wellbeing. Along with Bage’s Biases and #tightasstommo’s money saving ideas . . . Welcomes & Introductions What is today’s podcast all about? A chat with Kate Holmes all about explaining what financial Wellbeing really is to both Adviors and Clients.Link to Kate’s Innovating Advice podcast Bages Biases Every episode, Behavioral Finance expert, Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip. Exploring and thinking a little bit about the behavioral traits we have towards money can inform us, so we can make better money decisions going forward.– Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability– Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Anchoring #TightAssTommo Featuring . . . Cut price hot tubs (just don’t ask where the bubbles come from ), choosing an executor for your will and finding out if your pension is being underpaid – click here to visit the LCP.uk.com website for more details Interview with Kate Holmes Kate currently lives in Las Vegas – and explains it is not all about the gambling Kate has been in the industry or profession for over 15 years, and has seen over and over again – it’s not about the investments. It’s not about products. At the heart of it all, it’s actually helping people figure out what they want from life Kate wants to change the conversations and show people what financial planning really is – that inner search first and then using money as a tool second What are the typical things clients want to use money for? Dreams that people don’t always allow themselves to think about. Is payment a form of validation? What are the main blockages that stop people using wealth to be happier? People don’t know what actually being happier looks like Financial Planners need to first do this work themselves before they work with clients The trouble is knowing what you actually want Taking the time to stop and do nothing for a while, in order to work out what you do want A global financial crisis will have devastating conversations, but there are also a lot of bright points at the same time. The crisis becomes a catalyst for saying ‘So that’s gone, what do you want?’ Different attitudes to money around the world People really are ready to work with advisors who arn’t just trying to sell a product or manage investments. They want someone to help really figure our what they want their life to look like and creating a plan with their money to do that. Chris and his experience trying to find financial advice with no assets to invest. Financial Planner, Financial Coach, what name do we apply? What should we be looking for when we want to engage an advisor who understands wellbeing, finding purpose and not just talking about investments? talk to at least three diverse advisorsGoogle search then take some time reading through websites, do they talk about wellbeing and life-0style planning?are they transparent with pricing?listen out for the first questions they ask, how quickly do they ask how much you have to invest What has living in Las Vegas taught Kate about people’s relationship with money? Conclusions from the guys Click here for more information on the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David Hello everybody and welcome to another one in our long running series of Financial Wellbeing Podcasts. As ever in recent weeks, and indeed months, we’ve been doing these in a socially distanced way so instead of in a room together, we all gather on our laptops in our own different houses. My name is David Lloyd, and joining me today is Chris Budd. Chris Good morning. David And Tom Morris Producer Tommo Good morning. Producer Tommo Is that our intro’s done? David Yeah. No, no no . . . Chris I thought we might try and up the professionalism a little bit Tommo, what do you think? Producer Tommo I think that that long went! David We’ve done that, we’ve done the professionalism. Now let’s have the meaningless chat Chris, what’s bothering you? Chris Well, you know what David, this week, I did something that is going to be the last time in my entire life that I do it, I reckon. I bought a new cricket bat. I only play 20 over games, three or four times a year. I can’t imagine I’m ever gonna need another one but it is a bit of a beaut to have to say. I played with it on Wednesday, and the first ball that was delivered to me, sent for four David Nice one Producer Tommo This is really important that you have a good bat, because you’re not doing the running like you used to do, so you need to make sure it reaches the boundry. David I have my cricket bat which I’ve now had for 10 years, it doesn’t get a lot of things I have to say. It was given to me by a professional cricketer who’s been given a whole selection of bats by his sponsor, and this was one that he just didn’t take to. It’s the best I’ve ever had he’s far too good for me. It’s got a lot more runs in it that I’m never going to score, but yeah but I still going. But I know exactly what you mean Chris. How you doing, Tommo? Producer Tommo Do you know, I’m all right. Actually, yeah, on the sports theme, and we’re recording this in this, in the summer. So, this is probably going to be going out in the middle of the winter so you know this is the way we try and get ahead of time, and I had my best round of golf yesterday. All summer. I was delighted, I scored, those you know golf, I scored 39 on Stapleford. Yeah, Chris Yeah. Chris Thats got your handicap cut that is. Producer Tommo It is. It got I’ve got one of these electronic ones because I’m not member at courses, I play wherever I can get around in, and it cut me last night, so I’m quite chuffed, yeah, yeah. Beat the old man four and three as well. So yeah, Chris That’s what really matters. Let’s be honet Producer Tommo Loser buys the round so . . . David Right so what’s on today’s podcast Chris. Chris Today we have an interview with a lovely American lady called Kate Holmes, who has been a financial advisor, but now trains financial advisors and how to give our type of advice, financial wellbeing and financial planning advice. So she’s got loads of really good tips for people about their money. David Great, looking forward to her insight, but before we do, it’s time for our two regular features. I will start with the first of those two which is Bage’s Behavioural Biases. So, this is where an old friend of the podcast, behavioural finance expert Neil Bage, gives us his one minute introduction with different behavioural bias that affects how we make decisions about money. This week, Neil is going to tell us about Anchoring. Neil Bage When people are trying to make a decision, they often use an anchor, or a focal point as a good place to start. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information they see, that anchor, which can have a big impact on the decisions they end up taking. There was a great experiment from New York that proves the power of anchoring, with a bit of framing thrown in for good measure. So New York cabs, that carried a traditional tip option where riders would enter their tip amount found that on average their tip level was 9%. Now they knew they wanted to increase this level. So, in experimental cabs, they added in a new machine that anchored people to a different set of numbers. They pre-programmed tip amounts in, starting with the highest going down to the lowest. So, 30% 25% 20%, and then other. So what did they find? Well, they found a big difference in the outcome. A 13% difference to be exact. Tips jumped to an average of 22%. Now just to put that into context on a $20 cab ride that tip went for $1.80 to $4.40. Now on those numbers and assuming 30 cab customers a day. It meant that drivers tips, increased by around $78, a day, just by changing the way that the information was presented, which can have a significant impact on the outcome. Anchoring is really powerful. And we should be aware of how anchored we are to the information we absorb as we go through our daily lives. David Wow that’s quite significant, isn’t it about how if you if you let people choose themselves they may not necessarily be as generous as if you just leave them in a certain direction. Chris Yeah, this is used all the time and advertising and marketing to get you to spend more money than you might like to. I mean, there’s two for one offers, and I’m not suggesting this happens all the time, but I suspect on occasion – what you do is you increase the price by 50% and then say, third one free. Three is the price of two sort of stuff. So there’s loads of different ways that this is used to get us to spend more money than we need, and being aware of it and particularly being aware of how susceptible you personally are to it, can make a big difference to how you spend money on your happiness. Producer Tommo Just think about a financial planning example, a couple that come to mind. The business owner has once been told his business is worth x. It might not be reality but they anchor themselves to that, that price, that they sre told the value the business might be, it’s very difficult for them to get away from that. The other one is an estate agent overinflated the house, the value of your house because they want your business. And again you then get very wedded to that’s what the house is worth, and I’m not willing to shift on it. Just two examples that I can think of where anchoring a position yourself particular value means that you’re unable to really shift yourself. Chris There’s another example as well which is about comparison. I’m going to quote Roosevelt again, because I think it’s such a great quote that “comparison is the thief of joy”. And there’s one study which offered people, a choice of two salaries salary – one was 50,000, by the way everybody else you know is earning 200,000. Or you can have a salary of 30,000, oh by the way everybody else should know is earning 20,000. And the vast majority of people choose the lower salaries, because it was anchored against a lower figure. So it’s a fascinating subject to anchoring and it’s used all the time in money. Producer Tommo We have said in previous podcasts we’re working closely with Neil, he’s got a, an app out there called the BEAM, you can get it on Apple I believe at the moment. David Can you just spell that for us Tommo? Producer Tommo B-E-A-M, So you go on your Apple store and I believe is coming through Android, type in BEAM, and you will get this BEAM, Self-Aawareness is the one. And you go in there and you just do all these tests, gamified quite fun. Don’t even realise what areas they’re trying to test and it will come out and it will look at something by anchoring how much you receptive to anchoring. And then we use use this data and it links through with something we’ve got at Ovation, we talk to clients about this, and we let them understand where the’re positioned are, and it can be really eye opening and help them with some of the decisions they’ve made in the past. And the way that they make decisions. So, I thought I’d mention that that is going on, and and check out that app. David Right, thank you very much, but don’t go Tommo, because we’re going to come back to you in a minute because it’s time for our next feature #tightasstommo. But I’m going to kick off this time with a way to save yourself a substantial amount of money, indeed, several thousand pounds. For some time now, it’s always been my dream to have a hot tub. I’ve always thought that would be nice. Be nice to be out in the garden you know in the sunny weather or perhaps even when it’s a bit cold. Looking at the stars, sitting in a hot tub. You know, a decent, hot tub is going to cost you £5000 – £6000, and at the moment I didn’t really feel justified spending that amount of money. So guess what listeners, I built my own! You can go on my Twitter, @dave_backwell and see a photograph of it. I’m rather proud of it and my partner Gale and I used it once and it was absolutly marvelous. Now it’s not a hot tub with disco music and bells and all of that it’s basically an outdoor bath, that you fill from a hose pipe that comes out of the kitchen window, and then you sit in it. But because of the insulation, it stayed warm for about three hours. In fact, it was so warm we had to get out at one point and put a little cold water into it, because it wouldn’t go cold. That cost me, the plastic drinking trough that was free. The polystyrene was given to me. I use some old bits of fence panelling, I had to go buy some odd bits of woods and timber framing, a little bit of decking at the top. I reckon it cost me about £150 tops. Chris I’m rather nervous about asking this question David, but where did the bubbles come from? David There are no bubbles unless you make your own. Producer Tommo Why did I know you’re gonna go there! Sorry listeners. David Basically you fill it up and then you drain it away. Now you may say well that’s a hell of a waste water, which, if that was all you did with it, it would be. I am in the process of getting myself a submersible pump, so that I can put that into the hot tub, pump the water out into a big tub, and then use that to water the garden Producer Tommo I love that David So ther you are, save yourself a load of money by building your own hot tub Producer Tommo Or employ you to do it? David Actually, that wouldn’t be a bad idea because I could do with the money at the moment! Chris what have you got for us? Chris Mine far more serious than that brilliant one David. If anybody’s writing a will, they will have to make a decision about an executor. The executor of the will is the person who enacts the will when the time comes, and my tip is get a friend or family member to be the executor. Do not let the solicitor, or particularly the bank, appoint themselves as executor, which quite often happens. The bank, some banks charge up to 3% of an estate value for acting as an executor, this is a hugely expensive and I mean literally 10 times more than you would otherwise need to pay. So if you get a friend to do it, then they can of course appoint a solicitor to give them the advice later to give him the legal advice, but your cost will be massively low and when when somebody is dealing with somebodies estate, the last thing they want to be doing is having arguments about who’s executors because it’s obviously a difficult time. So, yeah, when you appoint your executor make sure it’s a trusted family or friend, Chris Having been executor or both my parents world, it’s actually not that difficult a process. Producer Tommo So I’ve had similar experience recently unfortunately where some clients of Ovation passed away, and the family executor is employing as alongside a really well qualified probate solicitor to help and guide them has worked really well and this is the combination of experts on our side, on the probate side and the executor in the middle. And ultimately, a lot of the things that somebody can do at a lower cost, they can do, but when you need the expertise, bring them in and it means that you are paying for exactly what you need so it’s worked. I’ve seen it work, and I completely agree with you and Chris on that one. So yeah, I’m with you all the way. Anyway, you want to know my tip don’t you? David Okay, so never let it be said that we don’t cover lots of interesting different topics on this podcast. So we’ve had build your own hot tub. We’ve had appoint a decent and cheap executor, but now let’s go back to the Titan of Tightness himself for this week’s Tightass Tommo tip. Producer Tommo Well, this one is a little bit niche and might be one that, for our listeners, or it might be one for you to speak to somebody who is in this bracket – so it’s going to be for those who are quite, of the older generation, 70 plus. I don’t know if, you probably won’t remember him but I do, Steve Webb was the pensions minister in the Tory/Lib Dem coalition from 2010 to 2015. And he was actually really quite a competent one, in my humble opinion, compared to what has gone before and after, but we’ll leave it there. But, but when he left when he left office in 2015 he moved into the pension industry, and he’s been giving great insight since, to his credit. And he’s noticed that there is this gap for a lot of married women and their state pensions, so there are a lot of married women about 70 plus, who are not necessarily receiving the amount they should due to some computer glitches not properly recording what they should be entitled to. Now I’m not going to go into the detail here because it is a bit, bit in depth but he is working for a company that’s got a fantastic, particular calculator on this and all the details so, it’s going to be in the show notes. So here goes quite long web address, it is lcp.uk.com/isyourstatepensionbeingunderpaid. And some great stuff there, a calculator to see whether you should be getting some more. And also how to claim it if you should be. So it will be in the show notes, but for some people this could be a, you know, quite a bit of extra pension income that they’re entitled to that for whatever reason has not been given to them so far. So there you go, well done Steve Webb. David Thank you for that. Chris, why don’t you bring us on to today’s main event. Chris We’re gonna have a listen to my chat with Kate Holmes. Kate has her own podcast called the Innovating Advice Podcast, as we’ll here she lives in Las Vegas, which is pretty cool. And she’s an advocate for financial planning and helps advisors in America to deliver financial planning rather than financial advice. In other words, talk about our and stuff, rather than just talk about products. So let’s have a listen to my chat with Kate Holmes. Chris Kate thank you so much for joining us. Kate Holmes Chris, it is awesome to be here. Thank you for having me Chris Where do we find you in America? Kate Holmes I am in Las Vegas, Nevada, Sin City. Chris Are you really? You live in Las Vegas? Kate Holmes I do yes! Chris Wow, do you have lots of clients to talk financial advice to there? Kate Holmes It’s actually a really wonderful place to live. It’s great because, for a lot of reasons, but one of them is – everyone comes to Vegas from all over the world. So, we lived in Denver, for five years, and we hardly saw anybody there. It’s a great city, I love Denver, but being in Vegas peopole come either for holidays or for confrences or on a world tour just to checki it off the list. So, it’s fun to get to see people, but when most people think of Vegas, they just think of The Strip. But in reality that is honestly one single street in what is actually a massive city. We’ve got about 2.3 million people here and surrounded by mountains, its a super athletic city, tons of hiking, biking, its great. Chris So Las Vegas isn’t just about the gambling then? Kate Holmes It’s not just about the gambling. The Strip is pretty much about the gambling, but that also makes it fun to do a little, feel like you are on a mini getaway, even being at home. The Strip is about 15 minutes from us, so all the great shows that come to town, and we’ve got sports here now, all the great concerts and theatre, so, it’s a good variaty. Chris So, I’m going to come back to that in a second, but we should actually introduce you first of all! Kate Holmes Certainly. So I am a professional but I am no longer practicing. I’ve been in the industry or profession, and I do intentionally use two different terms for that, for 15 years now. I spent the first 10 years in an investment advisory firm. I was sort of like a chief operating officer, I saw every single aspect of it. And I knew exactly what we charged clients for it. I knew exactly the service we provided. And a lot of what I specailsed in, just because I loved doing it, was going into companies and talking with employees. And it would be from your rank and file employees to your executives, so you get the entire depth and breadth of people and experiences, and I saw over and over again that it really wasn’t about the investments. It’s not about what interest rates are doing. It’s not about what products people might or might not need. The real heart of it all was actually helping people figure out what they wanted in their life. And I’ve had thousands of these conversations and I pretty quickly realised, that with a lot of people, again, in every socio-economic status, that were hitting their late 50s and early 60s and knew that they wanted to retire but they wern’t retiring to anything. They just knew that they didn’t like their job. Potentially with their grown kids, they no longer liked their spouse. Maybe they didn’t like where they live. So it just became this whole like everyone was quote unquote doing everything right. They checked all the boxes, they had the job for 30 some odd years but they just didn’t seem fulfilled. And that kind of made me realise, like, the industry is so focused on investments and managing your investments. But you talk to all these people who’ve been doing it right for these decades, and they weren’t happy so I just kept seeing this disconnect here, and I realised it really is about first having those conversations around what do people want in their life, and Chris, you know, most people don’t know. Most financial advisors and financial planners don’t know, like it doesn’t matter what your career is, we rarely stop to actually ask ourselves, what makes us happy or to try different things, because you’re not going to know if you don’t try. So that just kind of made me realise it was about those conversations and so to emphasise that I didn’t want to manage assets, and I’ve never sold a financial product. And I really wanted to change the conversation and show people that what financial planning really is and what you know financial wellbeing really is, is about that inner search, first, and then using money as a tool second. Chris Love it. So in those conversations that you have with clients, what, what were the typical things that they concluded that they wanted to use the money for. What was, what sort of examples of the things that you’ve come across. Kate Holmes Yeah, a lot of it was just really interesting conversations with people around things that they haven’t even thought about in a really long time, or, you know, dreams that people have in the back of their heads that they don’t always allow themselves to think. And again, this happens with people whether they were sort of in an hourly position or in an executive role, and sometimes it would be things like, I talked to a woman I was out in rural Iowa at this like manufacturing place, doing these employee meetings, and this woman just made a comment about how she used to really love painting. So we just kind of started talking about that and she said that, you know, she would really love to get back to painting and sell some of her paintings, and I went back and met with her again a year later, and she had done it. And she said it was just from that conversation that she hadn’t even allowed herself in such a long time to acknowledge her love of painting and she had been out at farmer’s markets and art fairs actually selling her paintings, and it was so rewarding to see and that’s not something that you know you need a lot of money for. It’s just tapping into what are those desires that people have. Chris So, if I may pick up on that. That intrigues me because there’s this lady’s saying I always love painting, but there was that extra step to stay and I therefore need to sell them. I wonder you’re, just just got interested, whether that perhaps shows that we are automatically always thinking that there needs to be some validation for it? Kate Holmes I don’t think that’s where she was initially, and that’s why so we kind of, when I met with her again and we talked through the whole journey of the last year when we had that first conversation, it was really just that she hadn’t even acknowledged that she missed painting. And so just saying that out loud. Then she did get back to painting and then I think she started to realise you know there’s a, there’s a sense of validation. I think when you produce anything, you know, especially kind of in an arts world that you can actually sell, and then seeing that as a way of, you know, taking what you love and having some extra income from it. But then, if nothing else we can just pay for the additional painting supplies, you know, even if it’s a break even. It’s that revenue stream that allows you to maybe explore more or use it to go to, you know, a conference to learn more or take another class. Chris Yeah, forgive me, this is a bit of a digression that I find really really interesting because my brother’s photographer, I’ve got several friends who are artists, and I write books, novels, etc. And so the idea that you’ve got to have an audience to validate what you do is one thing, but the idea of having to be able to sell it for money as a second level of validation. I certainly don’t make any money out of my novels, thats for sure, but I know that 500 people read them, and I believe that’s enough actually. You don’t wroite novels for money you know. I just find that subject quite interesting, the relationship between money and creativity you see. Kate Holmes Yeah, well I think it can go both ways I mean I actually got my degree in photography. So I’ve got that artistic background and I realised I didn’t even want to do it commercially or for money and I always explain I kind of broke up with photography and, you know, I think the emotional connection that I had to it was like a relationship and once I graduated I realised we were just not meant to be together anymore so I stopped doing it but I just think about continuing it just, you know, for pleasure and I love travel photography and I’ve always loved travelling around the world but for me I realised that doing travel photography actually detracted from my experience in being present, where I was. Chris Yeah, I think, we’ve seen that all over the world. So, so look, in your view and your experience, what are the main blockages that you’ve seen in people to using wealth to be happier? Kate Holmes I’d say the number one blockage is don’t know what actually being happier looks like. They spend so much time, sort of chasing a lot of the things. I thought about, probably ten years ago, writing a book called ‘Don’t Buy That Car!’ And not for it to be a commercial success, but I just had this interesting like few months, where I kept having all these conversations with people and clients and potential clients, and they had these dreams when we would dive into what did they really want their life to look like. And for a couple of them, they also wanted to buy a brand new car, and I kept trying to figure out how to navigate this conversation because they had these things that they knew would make them happy and great life goals, but they were somehow tied to this idea that they had to buy a brand new car, which, if they went that way meant that they couldn’t actually accomplish their life’s goals. And so I wanted to kind of dive in and do that research. I didn’t end up doing it but whether it’s a car or a house or whatever it is. I was sort of fascinated with the psychology behind it. You know actually looking down and knowing, hey, these are the things that make me happy. But it’s almost like this societal pressure of, but you know I have to own this brand new fancy car because that’s the image I’m trying to give off or that’s the, you know, profession that I’m in or the people that I’m surrounded by and sort of watching that behaviour of, you know, seeing people be pulled that way. Chris Yeah, yeah. So you now spend your time advising financial advice firms on how to give this type of financial planning and advice, what are the main tips you would give to those firms and obviously our audience is the public but, I’m interested in how they would recognise a firm that will help them with their purpose, as opposed to just talk investments to. . . Kate Holmes Well the biggest thing that I do and that I’m passionate about is and the reason actually why I decided to work with other advisors and financial planners instead of going back to working with clients, is because in order to actually have these conversations, financial advisors and financial planners need to first do that work themselves. And you know a lot of people that have worked with an advisor or you know maybe no one in their family know that all over the world, it is still very much about products and investments. And I’ve talked with lots of people to, you know, come into the industry and realise oh, actually, I was gonna be helping people but I have this quota to meet of selling financial products they try to you know fit the problem into this predefined solution of a financial product. And so in order for them to have these more meaningful conversations with clients, advisors need to take a step back and say you know am I on the career path is really making me happy? Am I living the life that makes me happy you know? And I’ve gone through this myself and that’s, you know, I’m not doing it from my hey I’m just speaking it, you know I was living what many people would consider, you know, very ideal American life, my ex and I lived in a beautiful home in suburban Seattle and his two kids lived with us and I was a principal in an investment advisory firm, and none of it felt right to me. And I grappled with that for years because I was like, you know, we’re taught gratitude and be thankful for what you have and I kept doing these practices and it’s like, but there’s something missing in that, you know, it is good to be thankful for what you have, but it’s also really important to acknowledge if what you have is not what you actually want. Kate Holmes The trouble is knowing what you actually want. Kate Holmes Yes, that is the trouble. And sometimes, you know, so for me in that situation and, again, it’s not the first time I’ve been on this rollercoaster a few times, where I haven’t known exactly what I did want. But I knew that what my life was in that time was what I didn’t want. Chris Were the characteristics of that that you could identify and apply, therefore to other things don’t go off into something else that you don’t want? Kate Holmes I think it’s, you know, I did this again just last year, I worked for a global organisation and in many ways it was the absolute perfect job for me I got to travel all over the world and work with amazing people and you know I kept telling myself when I was in these amazing situations like, how lucky am I like, this is absolutely amazing. But ultimately, I wasn’t doing the exact work that I was most passionate about. And again I kept going back to that gratitude thing be thankful for what I have, but it just kept gnawing at me and I spent like a year trying to say, well, what do I want? What does that look like? And I knew that for me and I know you know, not everyone has this ability and, you know, I think it’s from being a financial planner, from my very first job at Target I have always been, you know, so big on spending so much less than I make you know. I’ve never let lifestyle creep come in as I earn more money, so I’ve always been a big saver, which allows me these opportunities of, you know, last year I was like I don’t know what it is, that’s next and so I quit that job with no idea what was next. And I knew that, you know, as long as I stayed there I wasn’t going to have the, you know, mental or emotional capacity to figure it out. If I decided like, I’m taking, at least the rest of 2019 off. And I focused on eating well and exercising and, you know, reading books and just getting back to what’s most important in life, and that that’s the only way that I could have paused and retake in stock of what matters because we all just spend so much time, go go go. And sometimes the very best thing you can do is actually stop and do nothing for a while. Chris Do know what a pertenint time it is to be saying that right at the moment as we’re talking, I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but we’re just emerging over here out of lockdown from COVID and a lot of conversations I have with friends and through work, because I do like to ask you personal questions of people, you know the old ‘How are you’ is taking much deeper resonance over the last few months. And a lot of people are saying, actually, you know what, I quite enjoyed this moment to stop and reflect. Kate Holmes Yeah. Chris And I hope that few people will you know, make some life decisions from that about, what actually does make you happy, etc. So I’ve made proof of your poin, that taking time out and just slowing down, is, every once in a while is good for you. Kate Holmes Well it is and that’s, you know, being a financial adviser during the global financial crisis, you know, and I was on the phone for 14 to 16 hours a day you know with devastating conversations, people losing their house losing our job, you know, lots of really tough stuff. But there were also a lot of really bright lights during that time, and I just love the conversations I had with people that did lose their job, and it was really tough, but then we got into those conversations of, okay, that actually becomes a catalyst for saying, so that’s gone. So now, what do you want? And it’s that forced time of reflection. And I was just reading an article, I sort of a week or two ago, around all of the businesses that were started during the Great Recession, and you know, how great of a time it actually is to start a business, during a recession and that it does force people to take stock. And, you know, again it’s sad, the sort of devastating things that happen, but it really is a lot of opportunity that comes out of it and once everyone can slow down and pause and you know a lot of people have those ideas inside of them, whether it’s a hobby they want to take up or meditation or if it’s a business they want to start or career change, you know, to kind of go, alright, well, now’s the time to redirect and try something new. Chris I’m interested in one aspect of, of what you’re doing and you run this podcast, Innovationg Advice podcast, and it makes a real feature of it being global. So I’m just wondering, as you’ve spoken to different people around the world and many different countries you covered. Have you noticed any different attitudes to money around different parts of the world? Kate Holmes There are yeah and that’s part of what has always made me fascinated by it. I had a woman on recently, who has a very mixed racial background and you know a lot of Asian influence from both of her parents, and we’re talking a lot about being culturally intelligent. And, you know, a lot of it was sort of around at very high level differences between sort of Western and Eastern culture and the conversations that you have and how you approach things and what you talk about. And that’s something that’s always fascinated me because when I did start my business and the fact that I, you know, not managing assets not selling products everybody kept telling me that it would fail. And, you know, I kept explaining that it was so much more important to have these conversations and people kept saying you know nobody’s ready for that, and it’s like but yes they are. I think so many people are they just don’t have the opportunity for that. Yes. And now we’re, you know, seven years later and there are 1000s of advisors, all over the world with nearly identical businesses. And so as I keep going to, you know, talk with people in all these countries. It’s the same conversation over and over again those, you know love advisors saying, hey, I’d like to start a business like that, but I don’t think I would get any clients, I don’t think you know my country or my culture is ready for that. And I think they are, you know I think your listeners might hopefully be listening kind of saying, I could use that conversation, you know, and working with advisor that isn’t just trying to sell a product or just manage my investments, like help me really figure out what do I want my life to look like, and then diving into the money and creating a plan to get there. Chris Amen to that. A very quick story if I may share with you – a few years ago I posted, well actually I asked a friend of mine who has about five and a half thousand followers on Twitter, well known in financial services. I was looking for financial advice but I didn’t have any money to invest. So I said to him, could you post a tweet and say, I’ve got a client he’s willing to pay a fee for financial planning, but he has no assets to invest. He got two people respond! That was all. One of them is the guy who is now my financial advisor and the other one was one of my employees at Ovation Finance the financial planning company, but that was it, nobody’s interested. So actually in the UK, I would say we are still a long way, a long way away from people being able to find somebody who doesn’t need assets to invest. But there is a particular strand, in the UK, which is coming up and I’d be interested, is this happening in the US, of what goes under a number different names, but financial coach is probably the best. Well, money coach, where they help people to work on things like self-limiting beliefs, to understand their relationship with money, fascinating area is that is that big in the US? Kate Holmes Yeah, it is and it’s something that I admit I have gone back and forth with, and I, you know, have some thoughts around, when I did start my business and I started explaining to people what I did, you know, you do your elevator pitch everywhere you go just to practice it. And I kept saying I am a certified financial planner, and the instant reaction was always ‘Oh I already have a planner’, or ‘what stock should I invest in’. So I was like, okay, thats not working. And so I kept trying different ways of explaining it and everyone kept saying back to me, they were like ‘Oh, your like a financial coach?’ And I was like, okay, that makes sense becuase that is a lot of what I was doing and then especially being in the US, theres this organisation called FinCon and its sort of where money and media meet and so in the US there are many massive bloggers and a lot of them call themselves Money Coaches or Financial Coaches. And my challenge with that, a lot of them are, you know, good people and doing good things, but, one, they are not regulated or licensed in any way. And so that was always a challenge for me, because I’ve gone through, i’ve got licenses, I’m a certified financial planner, I’m fully regulated, you know I’ve got all this compliance stuff that I have to follow and you’ve got people over here that don’t have any of that. And that’s alwasy kind of bothered me. And then the other thing that sort of bothers me, I see this conversation regularly on social media, is financial adviser saying ‘oh yeah, I am happy to partner with a financial coach because once clients get to me we dont talk about budgeting or any of that stuff, I assume they’ve already got that sorted. And that’s just missing a huge piece of the pie because everything that financial coaches or money coaches do I absolutly believe financial advisors and financial planners should do. Chris Yeah, yeah, I am just completely agreeing with everything you are saying! And actually, if you if you want advice about the law, you go see a lawyer. Right. Kate Holmes Yep. Chris If you want advice about your business account, you go to an accountant. If you want advice about your personal finance, you can go to a wealth manager, financial advisor, financial planner, financial coach, money coach, etc investment manager, stockbrokers. We don’t have one name to cover it all and I think that’s a real problem for the public. So, let me ask you this question then perhaps we just finished with this thought. If somebody is listening to this podcast they wanted to engage the sort of financial advisor that we’re talking about, who understands wellbeing, you understand, money and purpose and it’s not just about investments. What should they be looking for? Kate Holmes Well, I’ve always recommended and even when I had prospects I would always recommend that they talk to at least three people. And ideally, or three, diverse people, because money is an incredibly intimate thing to be talking about, and you need to make sure that you know in the deepest part of your gut that you really feel good about who you are working with. So, you know a lot of people will ask their friends or family but that can be a good place to start, or it might not be a good place to start because they might be the more traditional product sales people or I call them asset gatherers, people just collecting assets under management. So, you know, Google really is a good place to start and looking for people that talk about either life-centred financial planning or lifestyle planning, and you can see, you can learn a lot from people by what’s on their website. You can see Do they really talk about how they truly care about clients what is their fee model, and I’m always wary and this was one thing I always look at with financial services, no matter what business it is, if it’s – I’m in a clothing store if it’s a website – if you don’t say what your prices are, and I know there are a lot of thoughts aroud this and in financial services, but my mom always taught me if you can’t see the price is too much. And so I’m just a fan of being transparent with what is your pricing What does it look like, even if it’s in a range that way you just understand, and then most advisors will do a free intro call. And like a lot of first impressions you’ll know pretty quickly, whether that’s going to be somebody that might be the right fit so are the first questions around. How much money do you make, how much do you have to invest, how much is currently invested. That’s going to tell you that this isn’t someone doing you know this kind of coaching style well being conversation, versus if you get on a call and somebody genuinely asks you, sort of, deeper open ended questions. A lot of advisors will just blanketly say, what are your goals, you know, and you’re going to say I’m going to retire at 65 and yada yada. Those are the more generic things that people are taught in sales and training so just listen to your gut, that’s the big thing, have those conversations know that you’re going to talk to a few people. So you also don’t feel any pressure to you know give into a sales pitch or sign something now and take your time. Chris That’s a really good, really good tip there, a really good tell if I can bring us back to Las Vegas. Stretching an analogy, a really good tell, how quickly the advisor, you speak to for the first time, how quickly do they ask you how much you have to invest. That’s a real giveaway isn’t it. So I would just like to add, this is by the unfair on you Kate and you are welcome to duck the question, but I’m really curious to know what living in Las Vegas is told you about people’s relationship with money. I mean it is the capital of wasting money in the world isn’t. Kate Holmes Oh it’s endlessly fascinating. So I have thought for years about taking a camera and a microphone, because you get people from all over the world that come here, and I would love to go down on the strip and find people and, you know, ask them how much credit card debt do you have, you know how much money did you come here to spend? And if there’s any way I can find them on both a Thursday, and a Sunday, you know, how much did you come to spend, and then how much did you actually spend? I want to know if people work with a financial advisor or financial planner, what their experience has been like? I am, endlessly fascinated with sort of the intersection of money and happiness of people that come on the strip. And . . . Chris That’s so interesting! Kate Holmes Isn’t it! And like I’ve known people that come, that I know personally are you know in massive amounts of debt, and they come and they go to the most expensive restaurants on the strip and I’m just looking like it’s, it’s so interesting. Chris Did they set themselves a budget. On the first day and on the Sunday did they stick to it? Kate Holmes Absolutely not! Chris Okay, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Kate Holmes Thank you, Chris. David Great stuff and I thought she made a very interesting point there, about how you can find a financial advisor who will talk to you about your financial wellbeing and not just try and sell your products. Chris Yeah, absolutely. I think there is a real shift in financial advice in the UK, away from just talking about investments, because let’s be honest when you go to a financial advisor, what you’re doing is you’re saying, look, here’s my investments. Here’s my money. It scares me a bit, I don’t really understand it, could you look after it for me please? And I’ll be over there having fun with my kids and my family or what have you. And what financial advice traditionally does is it brings the client back in again, so that we can show off on technical knowledge and talk about investments and pensions and facts. In The one thing the client doesn’t want to know about! So, if you want to go to a financial advisor who will talk about your life and how your money can make you happier – most advisors will give you a free initial meeting to get to know each other, might be a telephone call or Zoom, what have you, but usually you get it under half an hour or so just to get them to a little bit. In that time, does the advisor the financial planner do they talk about how much money you’ve got to invest, or do they talk about what you’re likely to pay now pretty quickly tell you which sort of advisor, you’re going to be talking to. Producer Tommo Yeah. I listened to that interview and it was, it was so a Neil Bage bias, it was confirmation bias all over the place! So her approach is what we’re all about at Ovation so naturally I’m going to agree with what she said but it’s true. I truly believe that how on earth, can we make a decision about our money, unless we truly know about ourselves and where we’re trying to head. And it’s the cart before the horse otherwise, and it really is; really understand yourself. Make some plans around it, and then start actually moving money around if need be. You know that that’s the point. David I just like to move away from that particular interview because I just thought of a question based on what we’re what we’re hearing from increasingly now with interviews you do Chris. I know you don’t claim that you invented the phrase financial wellbeing, Chris I do. David Alright, you might claim it but we know you didn’t! Chris I claim that I did, but I’m quite happy to admit that I didn’t. David But you certainly wrote a very good book about it. We’ve now done 69 podcasts on the theme, and having listened to that interview there, do you feel that the message that, your message in the book that other people are eccoing is now moving more and more into the financial advisory world? Chris I would say, slowly but surely David. So the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing that I set up the new Institute. That was founded, beginning of this year that Tommo is involved with, we’ve also got loads of other people. It’s got just over 200 members now. And that’s absolutely amazing that’s from a standing start during a global pandemic. And they’re all really good people who are interested in helping their clients be happier. But there’s, what, 28,000 financial advisors in the UK. So yes Producer Tommo Someting in the 20,000’s. Yeah. Yep. Chris So, it is getting through. What you’re also finding that there are some companies who are going ‘this is the future we’ve got to get behind it’ so for example our first, what we call partner member for the IFW is Aegon. And Aegon over the last three months of this year have done a whole host of financial wellbeing stuff they want to promote to their to their customers, and its proper financial wellbeing, they’re getting a lot of content from us we’re working with them, and they’re really genuinely behind it. However, there are also quite a lot of companies that I go for that your well being is a cool thing that’s a slap that on our marketing and carry on doing the same old crap we’ve been doing for years. That’s what we want to call out. That’s where that how do you know that a financial advisor is genuinely delivering financial well being and not just putting on their marketing. That’s why that question was such a key question, David Excellent, well thanks for that and it’s also worth saying that I can’t remember the exact figure, but I know that this podcast is listened to by an awful lot of people, your book I believe has sold an awful lot of copies. It’s also worth mentioning that every, all the proceeds from the sale of The Financial Wellbeing, will go to the Penny Brohn Cancer Research. So, let’s keep up the good work, and we look forward to you joining us again next time when we come up with another one of our podcasts, just the whole notion of financial wellbeing.

What are personal values and how do they effect our behaviour? When do these values conflict with each other? What does any of this have to do with financial wellbeing?! Come and have a listen to the guys as they take a deep dive into, previous podcast guest, Tim Kasser’s principle ” the idea that a person who holds financial success as one of their primary values will be less happy than they might otherwise be.” With Bage’s Biases and the money saving staple #tightasstommo, the guys have an interesting episode for you . . . Welcomes & Introductions What is todays podcast all about? – Why a person will be less happy when they see success in financial terms, than they might otherwise be. Bage’s Biases Every episode, Behavioral Finance expert, Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip. Exploring and thinking a little bit about the behavioral traits we have towards money can inform us, so we can make better money decisions going forward. – Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk – Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability – Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Herding Bias TightAssTommo Featuring anti-financial wellbeing tips, watching the cricket when you are working and how to save a little money when working from home. Link to HMRC website for the P87 form Todays topic – The Schwartz Circumplex Catch up with the podcast episodes featuring Professor Tim Kasser: Episode 42 – Hyper CapitalismEpisode 46 – The Sharing EconomyBook – Hyper Capitalism Founding principle from Kasser’s book – the idea that a person who holds financial success as one of their primary values will be less happy than they might otherwise be. What is value as opposed to a belief of a goal? Can we have more that one value? Our values are ordered into a certain priority, which then directly influences our behaviour Challenging our behaviours example – Honesty vs politeness Can our values change? What are the values in the Schwartz Circumplex? Values in conflict Values and our personal goals How are Self-acceptance and Financial Success correlated? Intrinsic Motivation = we do it because we want to do it / creates wellbeingExtrinsic Motivation = we do it for someone else, such as to please or impress someone / has no effect on our wellbeing Although the value of Financial Success is an extrinsic motivation, it is also a grey area Know Thyself The importance of self-awereness, reflect to see whether our actions are aligned to our values Conclusions from the guys Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David 0:09 Hello everybody and welcome to another one in our long running series now on financial wellbeing podcasts. In recent times we’re all spread out in separate places. My name is David Lloyd I’m here at to Lloyd Towers. Joining me is Chris Budd over a Budd Mansions, and Tom Morris is also joining us from a shed somewhere on the A370. So welcome guys how are you, Chris? Chris 0:36 I’m very well thank you David I’m in my cabin in the garden, with the rain drumming on the roof. So it’s not that, that’s the background noise we have today. Other than that, very good thank you. David 0:44 Yeah, Tommo, and yourself? Producer Tommo 0:46 Yeah, I’m doing okay, actually. It’s almost six months of working in my study which doesn’t have a window. So, I think I’m slowly going a little bit, a little bit mad but yeah yes okay I’m all good. David 1:01 I had a realisation a couple of days ago that essentially I’ve been on holiday for eight months. It’s just essentially felt like one long holiday and I suddenly realised that I needed to break that state of mind if thinking, that’s alright, I’ll do some more gardening. So, I’ve been yeah, I’ve been trying to reengage myself with work. But anyway, good to catch up with you guys. Now what’s on today’s podcast Chris? Chris 1:26 Well today David, we are going to look at why a person who sees success in financial terms, they will be less happy than they might otherwise be. David 1:34 Ah, well now given the whole basis of these podcasts is financial wellbeing, as explained in the excellent book of the same name by the excellent Chris Budd, that’s a very interesting notion. So, are you linking happiness with wellbeing, or is that perhaps a slightly separate thing? Chris 1:50 No, the same thing. I mean that’s an interesting question in itself, is there a difference between happiness and being happy and wellbeing? And I would say the difference in the two is that well being is more state of mind and long term thing, whereas happiness is a kind of moment in time. But, so yeah it is wellbeing really, although the two words are interchangeable, but yeah we are we are going to go as far as to say that if you are somebody who see success in money, if you if you chase money then you will be less happy than you would otherwise be and that’s what we’re going to try and prove today. David 2:18 Excellent, well I look forward that should be very interesting conversation. Well, we’ll let our our listeners decide how interesting it is, but I’ll enjoy it anyway. But before we do that, it’s time for the first of our regular features, and we’re going to kick off with Bage’s Behavioural Biases. So this is where old friend of the podcast behavioural finance expert Neil Bage intoduces one minute introduction with different behavioural bias the effects how we make decisions about money, and this week Neil is going to tell us about Herding. Unknown Speaker 2:50 Herding Bias is the inclination for people to mimic the crowd, without taking into consideration their own judgments, and therefore making independent decisions. To explain what this means, we at Be-IQ created an online investment club game. Users had to invest certain amounts of money on a monthly basi,s which was a free choice, no influence at all. However, before their chosen investment amount was invested, they got got to see not only how other people in the club predicted the market would perform, but also how much money the other people were investing. Now, at this point, the users were offered a choice. Stick with your own decisions or instead, follow the crowd, based on their prediction, and the amount of money, the crowd, on average, we’re investing. Now the game offered people seven distinct chances to change their mind, or stick with their own choice. And it turns out that 12% of people do indeed stick with thier initial choice. They weren’t swayed at all throughout the entire game by what the crowd were doing. 4% of people change their mind every single time. So even though they made their mind up initially the power of the crowd was just too much. And each time they opted to run with the masses, rather than stand alone and go with their own choice. When you explore the broad findings, 84%, of people change their mind at least once. With most people, 37% of people, changing their mind, at least four times out of seven. Now this is a staggering amount of change based on nothing more than what other people are doing. And even though we know that this was just a game. It is a perfect mimic of what happens in real life investing. Chris 4:57 There we go. Isn’t that interesting. David 4:58 That’s really interesting stuff and actually it mirrors human behaviour in so many other ways, doesn’t it? How often have you been to a meeting where somebody gives a keynote speech and at the end they will say right who wants to ask the first question? And everybody sits there and nobody says anything. But eventually, somebody puts their hand up. And that somehow gives permission for everybody else and you could then end up with what’s quite an interesting conversation. So yeah that’s that’s a very interesting tip from Neil. Chris 5:38 In investment terms we do tend to, you know, we tend to follow everybody else is doing. It’s a truism of investment that you should get in at the bottom, and out at the top. But if you look at the statistics of money going in and out of the market it actually is the opposite way around. Most people get in at the top, because they’re feeling nice and confident, because that’s what everybody else is doing. And they get to the bottom when they have a bit of a panic. So, Herding is a really important bias for investment but also just financial wellbeing and happiness. In general, there’s Theodore Roosevelt said “comparison is the thief of joy.” So I think Herding is fascinating. Anyway that’s that. Tommo, we’ve been we’ve been using Neil’s tools for quite a while, haven’t we? The Beam App and you must have done this game with lots of clients? Producer Tommo 6:22 I have, and it’s something you can get online it’s the Beam App. And we have a, we have a back office system that sees these results. And it’s really telling that you go through this or gamified approach in different areas different biases some of these that that Neil has already talked about in previous podcasts, and the Hearding one is strong. It’s strong, and when you talk about it, they go oh yeah. And I look at where we see this in in real life I think marketing. All of this marketers really tap into this sort of thing they sort of get this groundswell of momentum and then everyone goes oh yeah let’s do that. But I look at Sunday supplements financial wise, they’re always latching on to the latest craze that just perpetuates all of this. So it’s really important to, what we, the way we approach things at Ovation is yes we need to understand these biases that we have. But really important to what’s the plan? Why are you investing? And stick to it and try your best to ignore the fads that come along. And that’s really important. Producer Tommo 6:22 Excellent, thanks for that. So let’s move on then to our next regular feature one that’s very important listeners. And if you want to contribute to this, it’s Tight Ass Tommo obviously it’s what I’m talking about, where cheapness Tom Morris comes up with a money saving tip. And if you want to contribute anything and your own Twitter #tightasstommo, and let us have your suggestions. But in the meantime, Chris if you’ve got one for us today? Chris 7:58 Well I’ve kind of got a reverse tip this time because I was looking for, I’ve got to be honest, I went on the internet to see if I could find any tips. I’ve asked me mum, I’ve asked my wife, I’ve asked the kids. Now I’m on the internet and there’s a lot of blogging, these days now. Internet influencers they call it that. And there’s a lot of wellbeing and money sites cropping up, and some of them have got some really good things in there, some of them, not so good. And I saw one, which had 50 tips how to save money, and quite a few of them were almost anti financial wellbeing. For example, one said, don’t go to parties and weddings with people that you don’t know very well, or more distant family members, such as cousins. They won’t really miss you, and you can save money. What an awful tip. How depressing is that. Of course you should go to because you meet new people and you have fun and social wellbeing is the most important part a wellbeing. Setting themselves up as a money expert and telling you not to go to the weddings of cousins. David 8:52 Well said, Chris well said indeed. Right what’s our Master of Meaness got for us today then Tommo? David 8:58 Master of Meaness, I like that. So, a lot of us at the moment are working from home. And what a lot of people don’t know is that when you work from home, you’re able to get some tax relief, based on some of the things that we have to use more on a daily basis so a lot of us are using more electricity, using in broadband, etc more of that at home than we would do if we were in the office and paid for by our employer So, and unless your employer gives you an allowance to cover some of this, what you’re actually able to do is get some tax relief on it. And that works out that you can claim up to about six pounds a week. As this electricity utility bill usage, and then get tax relief on that particular amount. So, quickly gets the calculator out because I can’t do the math that quickly in my head, and make sure it’s right. So that works out about 300 quid that you can put towards your tax bill as a write off, which would save you somewhere in the region of 60 odd quid a year. David 10:05 Having worked from home myself pretty much all my working life that’s what I’ve always done use a home as an office is what they categorise it. I know my account deals with it all. But yeah, no, it’s very good and you do at least get some money back as there are more costs, but particularly in the winter, you’ve got heating your lighting and on the sports on TV that you have to watch . . . Producer Tommo 10:26 Yeah well quite, quite. As we’re recording this, the second test, Pakistan v England is going to be on in about half an hour’s time so that. But But seriously, a lot of people who are self employed or do these tax returns, it’s naturally second nature because accountants have them a lot of people are paid by PAYE are either payslip painful they’re tapped. So there is a form for you to fill in to claim this. So, if you type in HMRC P87 you’ll be able to see the form, very simple, fill that in send it off. And you know, it’s not a huge amounts of money, but it’s tax relief tht’s for the people who are working from home who wouldn’t, usually. Chris 11:08 Tommo saving small amounts of money, is what you do best. Producer Tommo 11:12 You know it! David 11:13 There’s no one better at it in the world. Right. And let’s move on, Chris, why don’t you introduce our subject for today. The Schwartz Circumplex. Which I think was running the 2:30 at Chepstow yesterday. Could you tell us a little bit more about it? Chris 11:33 Yes. So, the Schwarz Circumplex, which really needs to be said slowly, regular listeners will remember that the podcast we did with Professor Tim Kassar of Knoxville University David 11:44 They were numbers, 42, and 46, I believe from memory, as uf if I don’t have a script Chris 11:50 My script now says thank you Tommo, but . . . David 11:53 I just jumped in, he was supposed Producer Tommo 11:55 Sorry, sorry, can you do that again. Sorry I was daydreaming. Chris 12:01 I’m keeing that in! Thank you Tommo. Professor Kassar has written a great book called Hyper Capitalism. And if you’re interested in an alternative look at economics, it’s absolutely fantastic. If you’re not, it still contains a lot of insight into our relationship to money and the pressure’s on us to spend money and accumulate stuff. Producer Tommo 12:23 And it’s in comic form, it has pictures of it so it’s really a really easy and fun read and those who know me know that I’m not an avid reader I’m an audiobook kind of guy but I have read this front to back, and it is a good and fun read. Chris 12:36 Now, one of the founding principles that Professor Kasser introduces is the idea that a person who holds financial success as one of their primary values will be less happy than they might otherwise be. David 12:50 That’s pretty strong statement. Chris 12:52 So it comes from that Schwartz Circumplex model so I thought we might spend 10 minutes looking at this fascinating bit. Producer Tommo 12:59 Well, if you don’t mind me just jump, jumping in here I think it’s worth just mentioning that Tim Kassers book does have some political bias to it so it might not be for everyone, I’m just warning you that there is a slight bias there but I think some of the stuff that you’re saying does ring true. David 13:17 But if you read anything and you understand the bias you’re at least then able to frame it in your own terms of reference, I guess we all have biases. Anyway we’re turning into a Neil bage. Back to the circumplex model. Before we go on and look at this theory Chris. You talked earlier about how one of somebody’s holding financial success as a primary value. What do you mean by the word value in this context what is a value as opposed to say a belief or a goal? Chris 13:47 So that’s a really good starting point because a value, according to Schwartz, is I think of it as like our own individual standards, and he uses the word cherished a lot when he talks about values and I think that’s a really revealing word. So for example, he says that values is something that we’re not necessarily aware of, but we do become aware of them, when we are being forced to take an action which conflicts with our cherished values. So we’re not always aware of our values but we are aware of our beliefs. So in some ways you could say that beliefs are values that are put into practice. David 14:24 Okay could can you give an example of that? Producer Tommo 14:27 Shall I jump in here Chris? I think, as I see, quite often, with the conversations I have with with clients that Ovation, talk quite a lot in depth about their values and I can think of a client who significantly strong Christian values. And this turn, this in turn leads to a belief that they should be helping others. You know as a result, an important part of their financial plan was philanthropy, or is philanthropy. So we follow the principles of philanthropy that we’ve talked about on the podcast before. Regular plan giving to causes that means something to you, rather than you know that instant gratification to try and assuage guilt. So planned regular giving to causes that, that means something, you know, you also allowed to see the impact of that giving. In, in this way they’re able to fulfil their beliefs, which are based on their values. Now if we suggested the client invest into a fund, for example, that was invested in arms manufacturing, that’s going to counter their values as well. So not only are we looking at the financial plan. How are they spending their money but also how are they investing their money is another thing, another action that is aligned to their values. David 15:45 Great, but presumably we have more than one value because we talk about a set of values, don’t we? Chris 15:50 Yeah, and that’s a very important part of the story, we order our values to assistant priorities. So when we need to take an action, it’s going to affect more than one value, and it is the trade off that we choose between the values that forms, our attitudes, and our behaviours. David 16:07 Gotcha. So we have lots of values, we don’t know them there. but they lead to our beliefs, and the values are ordered into a certain priority, which then directly influences our behaviour. Chris 16:20 Yeah, exactly. I’ll give you an example just to illustrate how this works in practice. I am a trained business coach and I was trained by a chap called Jan Bowen Nielsen, who many of our listeners who are in the financial services world will know, he trains a lot of advisors on coaching skills, and I was talking about this with Jan and he gave me an example of honesty, versus politeness. Now most people will say that they are honest that they hold the value of honesty as being really really important, but they will also hold the value of politeness. So how we order those two values will determine our behaviours. So if somebody asks you something personal perhaps when a new hairstyle suits them or do you like my shirt, the value of politeness to not offend very often will override the value of honesty and that therefore leads to our behaviour. David 17:08 So you’re suggesting that is something we don’t necessarily know about until they’re challenged and, and if so, does this mean that values are set and constant or can they change over time? Chris 17:18 Yeah, they can change for sure that I think as we go through life some values remain remain constant but others are bound to be affected by our experiences. The Kolb’s Cycle of Learning that we described the financial wellbeing book is all about how experiences affect behaviours and values. Producer Tommo 17:34 Yeah, I can give an example as to what I’m sure quite a few people can relate to. My values have definitely changed since becoming a parent. I look at things very differently. My wife may argue with this but I’m certainly some of my values are less self absorbed. And so yeah there’s definitely a shift and and I think moments and events in your life, do, do shift it. David 18:01 I think that is very true and I’m just sticking with the parenting example, I always got on well with my dad as a kid, but we weren’t particularly close. But when I became a dad myself, I began to understand the sacrifices that he’d made in order to bring up me and my three brothers in terms of his own life. And the values that he held dear in order to be the best dad that he possibly could be, and therefore I think there’s a result of that insight, a personal insight that I opened myself up to my values and began to change. As a result, Producer Tommo 18:34 I just gonna check in, for example, if I may, and I’ve actually gone through the last month or so. About certainly a Kolb’s Cycle of Learning. I’m watching a really lovely show on Amazon Prime. Yes, I’ve got Amazon Prime what that says about my values, I don’t know, but it’s a show called This Is Us. And there is a character on there, the father and his name’s Jack and, you know, he’s a complex character like an awful lot of us are but a lot of what he does as a father. And as a man I look up to go Wow, what a great example. And so maybe there’s, you know my beliefs in there that I see that it’s a great example but some of the things you see him do. Oh, well maybe I should be thinking about being a little bit better and, and you see that you see that example and maybe that affects my values and the way I should do things I don’t know, just something that I’ve been watching and seeing and maybe that is that fair reflection of what Kolb’s Cycle of Learning Chris 19:30 Absolutely, experiences affecting your actions which create new experiences which affect your actions and so we form values. Absolutely and therefore values can change. How our values relate to each other, and how they match with our behaviours, the matching of values and behaviours is a really important key to happiness and wellbeing. There’s so much pressure on us to live in a certain way from employers, partners, from society, from TV shows, that often our behaviours and our values do not match. And when that happens, it can cause real issues including mental health problems addiction and bad money behaviours David 20:07 Are there common values that we all share. I think Tommo mentioned one caring for others which I hope is something that we do. But what other the values are there? Chris 20:16 So under the Schwartz model, you’re caring for others is called Benevolence, and there are nine others so 10 in total. I won’t go through them all but to give you some examples, you’ve got Conformity, where you restrain your own actions to not accept others, upset others. Power, all about social status and prestige and control. Heddenism, which is obviously pleasure for yourself. Universalism, tolerance and protection for everybody in for nature. And Security, harmony and stability of society of relationships and of yourself. David 20:49 Okay, so they’re all quite clear values I think I understand those things as you explained them but some of them sound like they could easily be conflict with each other. So, for example, someone who’s got a strong Power value like to be in control his surely unlikely to have a strong Conformity value? Chris 21:05 Yeah, exactly. And that’s where this whole subject starts to get really interesting I think because some of these values are very closely, closely correlated conformity and security for example, where people will go along with society’s expectations in order to preserve harmony and Schwartz puts all of these 10 into a neat circle the Circumplex referred to in the title of this podcast, which puts values that are closely aligned, next to each other, and values which conflict with each other on opposite sides of the circle. Producer Tommo 21:36 And we put a copy of this diagram in the show notes if any listeners want to want to have a look, go on the website, www.financialwell-being.co.uk and click on the podcast tab, you’ll see in full show notes probably not, going up in in the apple podcast that’s my producer bit by the way guys, it’s about the only producer bit, that I’ve done today so. But yeah the diagrams there. David 21:57 So, just looking at it now and it’s rather a splendid thing. Chris 22:02 So, another good example of conflict can be Universalism, tolerance for all people, which is directly opposite Power on the circle as they are conflicting values. David 22:12 Okay, so this is all beginning to make sense so we have 10 basic values some conflict with each other some complement each other, but bringing it back to the purpose of these podcasts, what does this have to do with how we spend our money? Chris 22:25 Well this is where Professor Kasser’s work comes back in. He created a link between these values and our personal goals. He surveyed some 1800 people asking them for a rating of various statements such as ‘I will be financially successful,’ and ‘I will have many good friends.’ And He therefore kind of refined the Schwartz model, more aligned to personal goals. Now some of his findings might not be a huge surprise for example Heddenism and Spirituality, were in conflict on opposite sides, whereas Self-acceptance and Community were very closely related. David 23:03 Okay, I could see where you’re leading with all of this Chris, I think anyway. So Professor Kasser has come up with a bunch of values which into Self-acceptance and Financial Success, surely the punchline here is going to be the extent to which these two are correlated? Chris 23:19 Exactly right, you’re way ahead of me. So what he found was that the values of Financial Success and Self-acceptance were opposite each other. In other words, someone who holds Financial Success as one of their important values is unlikely to have high Self-acceptance. And also on the other side from Financial Success and therefore in conflict, are things like Physical Health, Community and Safety. Producer Tommo 23:43 We can also bring an intrinsic and extrinsic motivation into this argument which is something Tim Kasser talks about at length. David 23:50 Yeah, our old friends, yes remind us what they are Tommo . . . Producer Tommo 23:54 Wow, here we go, I’ll give it a go. Okay, so extrinsic, extrinsic motivation is one that we do for other people. That results in a reward for someone, perhaps financial or praise or admiration. And intrinsic motivation is one we do, just for ourselves for the inner satisfaction. So there’s no external factor we do it or ourselves. The research shows that achieving an intrinsic motivation increases wellbeing. Whereas achieving and extrinsic motivation, does not. David 24:27 Absolutely. And let me get the value of Financial Success is an extrinsic motivation. Chris 24:34 Correct, Producer Tommo 24:35 Correct. Although there’s a little bit of a grey area, certainly what you’ve given a good example there David but when he’s doing it for other people that can have, it can be like an extrinsic but it’s intrinsic. We think of family, you’re doing something for your family. It could be seen as extrinsic, you’re actually doing it because you’re intrinsically motivated to help those close around you so there’s a little bit of a grey area that I just wanted to clarify that Chris 25:02 Yeah and you know that there is a line between that there’s that it’s not you are either extrinsic or intrinsic and you know there’s a line where you’re a little bit but that for the purposes of this argument the logic is the evidence if you like that a person who sees money as a measure of success who holds the extrinsic value of Financial Success highly are placing it above the intrinsic value such as Self-acceptance and will therefore be less happy than they could otherwise have been. Drumroll please . . . David 25:32 Which would suggest that reviewing those values and understanding where they’ve come from, is going to be a pathway to increasing our wellbeing? Chris 25:41 That would seem logical. Producer Tommo 25:43 Now what are the parts of the financial planning process is to really understand ours or a client’s motivations. It’s that Know Thyself process that runs through the financial wellbeing book and throughout all of these podcasts. So at the beginning of the financial planning process that we need to take time to make sure that really understand two things. Our relationship to money. And our values around money. So for example, if a client tells us that they are worried about the planet and want to use their money to look after their family, using social good. But they’re spending their money on expensive cars and spending all their time to work to win approval of others. Then we can see that their values and their behaviours are in conflict. So you might have worked with this client to help them understand themselves better and to reach their own conclusions about whether they are using their money to increase their well being and put simply, the way to do this and this is where it’s quite challenging to do ourselves. We just need to ask, good open questions. And just allow somebody to answer. Then push again. So we can start to get what’s deep seated about what’s important to someone and be brave enough that if we spot these conflicts that we raise it with them, because there might be a moment of self awareness, that they didn’t realise that these conflicts were going on. We’re busy aren’t we, our lives are busy and we don’t get time to reflect on what’s truly important whether our actions are aligned to that. David 27:17 And ultimately, as ever, it’s all about our financial wellbeing. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this little delve into the world of the Schwartz Circumplex I’ve certainly found it quite fascinating. And I hope that you will be fascinated yourself enough to join us next time as we revisit, another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.

Episode 67 – Exploring Paths to Happiness with Dr Elia Gourgouris What is your personal brand? If you are the “something” person, what is that “something?” How has this brand shaped your life and wellbeing? Chris, David and Producer Tommo have a chat with the happiness doctor Elia Gourgouris about the positives and negatives of personal brands and their connections to money. With Bage’s Biases, Tight Ass Tommo’s money saving tips and the thought of Chris practicing Yoga, the guys have a fascinating episode for you . . . Welcomes and Introductions Link to episode 66 – The Biology of Happiness What is this podcast all about – A chat with Dr Elia Gourgouris – the happiness doctor.Link to his book – 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness Bage’s Biases Every episode, Behavioral Finance expert Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip.– Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability– Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – The Dunning Kruger Effect Tight Ass Tommo Featuring direct debit life admin, cheap clothing and expensive books!Link to everything5pounds.comLink to the Penny Brohn shop Dr Elia Gourgouris Interview Where is Colorado? Who is Dr Elia Gourgouris? Personal branding – the story of how Dr Elia was branded the day he was born! Nature vs nurture Negative brands Challenge your negative brand – Like 70 year old Princess Leia Chris’ personal branding The importance of mindfulness when talking to others, even in jest We are all guilty of comparisons, so how can we make them positive? Comparisons and money Money equals freedom, the freedom to live our lives with purpose Creating the best year of your life The link between personal brands and changing to be a brand that helps others Hmm, Chris and Yoga ( no comment!) Mindful meditation and gratitude journals. Link to Episode 55 – Overcoming Anxiety with Nick Elston Looking at how your spending your money, not just the focus on earning more and more and more Stuff may make life more convenient, but experiences and memories are really what it’s all about. Conclusions from the guys Click here for more information about Dr Elia Gourgouris and his bestselling book Seven Paths to Happiness Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David 0:10 Hello, everybody and welcome to another one in our series of financial wellbeing podcasts. Tommo. You’re probably the most important person here today. Tell us all about yourself. Producer Tommo 0:20 Thank you, David. Thank you. That’s put a real smile on my face. Yeah. So, director and Chartered Financial Planner, ovation finance, and director at the initiative of financial well being, and still in lockdown, still with a toddler, still working our way through the new world. But yeah, that’s me. David 0:44 How exciting for you, Chris. Tell us about yourself. Chris 0:48 Chris bud. From reporting from my cabin, in the garden where it feels like I’ve been for about 15 years. I wrote the financial well being book, I founded and am still chairman of innovation, finance. And I also run a business consultancy helping companies to do what I did with ovation, which is to sell that to an employee ownership trust, so succession planning and that kind of stuff. David 1:12 My name is David Lloyd. And I kind of waffle on and ask all the stupid questions to which these two highly intelligent people are able to give good answers. So, Chris, any news for us today have you got anything you want to share with us about your life? either of you, actually, Chris 1:28 I think you’re being a bit disingenuous by yourself, David, actually, your insights and wisdom are what makes this podcast so fascinating? And your experiences with heavy drugs? That kind of stuff, I think is what makes it also interesting. David 1:39 Yes, that’s for anybody that listened to the previous podcast 66 where I fessed up to LSD usage. 46 years ago, I’ve never probably actually said that. At the time. It was extremely illegal. So I hope the statute of limitations has expired on that onw now. Producer Tommo 1:57 Can you imagine somebody somebody downloading this podcast for the first time. It’s just discovered. You were talking about what in the last episode, there was a link, it’s all relevant. Go and check it out. David 2:11 Excellent. All right, then let’s move swiftly o.n Chris. What what what have you got for us today? Chris 2:16 Today, we have an interview with a really fascinating guy, Dr. Elliot grigoris. He wrote the book, the seven paths to happiness, a best selling book. I’m not gonna give anything away for the interview. But I personally found it to be deeply affecting actually. It’s got me thinking a great deal and I find it quite an emotional discussion. So I’m looking forward to you guys hearing it. David 2:36 I’m looking forward to it too. But before we do that, let’s go to what is now becoming a fast established and very popular, regular feature here on the financial wellbeing podcast. One of Bages behavioral biases. Chris, tell us more. Chris 2:51 So today, David Neil’s going to tell us all about the Dunning Kruger effect. Neil Bage 2:57 Linked to overconfidence, there is another bias, which is not only fascinating, but can actually be quite influential in the way people navigate the world around them. The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias. And in essence, it means that people will believe they are smarter, and more able than they actually are. Essentially, people who have a low ability in something or have no competence, don’t possess the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence. And this combination, and lack of self awareness and the inability to recognize their incompetence, leads people to overestimate their ability. It can be summed up I guess, in that famous phrase, a little information is a bad thing. Now, let me explain quickly how this works. And you’ll see that it is notoriously difficult for humans to avoid this kind of overconfident driven bias. So let’s say you are new to investing, and you decide that you want to invest in stocks and shares based investment. You don’t know anything about it. So you decide to do your research. You go online, read a few articles, watch a few YouTube videos, maybe speak to a few friends. But all the time you are slowly slowly building up and embryonic knowledge based on investing in stocks and shares. The problem comes when you have a little bit of acquired knowledge, we typically tend to over inflate our ability at that point, especially when we are trying to apply that knowledge. So we get to a place quite quick, where we think we are better at something than we actually are. And only when you go on a journey and you learn and you learn and you learn and you become an expert in a subject Do you recognize or more to the point, you have the skills to recognize the stuff that you know and the stuff that you don’t know. And this leads to a heightened state of self awareness that is truly beneficial when we are making important decisions. Chris 5:10 So I really find the Dunning Kruger effect fascinating. Neil describes it brilliantly there. But I’ve actually experienced this firsthand over the last couple of years. Let me just explain. So having sold majority of ovation into an employee ownership trust, which is a very new concept, I have written a book about it all – the eternal business, and I go out and advise and do consultancy with business owners. And I’ve spoken literally to hundreds and hundreds of business owners, 4-500 business owners about this, whether it’s just a sentence at a conference, or they phoned me up for a chat, I’m always happy to have a chat with people. And what I’ve discovered is so many of these people have said, thanks very much, Chris. I’ll now go ahead and do all the two years worth of cultural changes needed in my business on my own, because I read your book. And I try and say to them well its actually an awful lot deeper than that. But the Dunning Kruger effect is writ large in business owners who, yeah, who think that they’ve got enough information based upon just a very scant bit of knowledge. And yet, it’s such a deep and fascinating subject. So I’ve had this, frustratingly over the last couple of years big time myself. David 6:18 Interesting, very interesting, right, let’s come on then to the next in our regular features, Tight Ass Tommo. Now I’ve actually got a tip this week about how you can save a bit of money. Now listen, this is not an original one. And indeed, I’m pretty sure that we’ve touched upon it in previous podcasts. But it’s worth reiterating it because I’ve just had a personal experience of it this week. And that is just check your direct debits, I had a letter from EE, who I have my phone with. recently. It said the contract on your tablet has run out and it was. And I remembered what I didn’t remember that I’ve got a tablet because I’ve got one. But I’d forgotten that actually, when I got it two years ago, I took out like a phone contract on it so that I could be connected when I wasn’t connected to Wi Fi. You know what, I reckon I’ve used the phone on that probably two or three times in the two years that I’ve had it. So they said, Well, look, you know, you can carry on, or you don’t need to do anything. It’ll just carry on. It’s £16.70 a month. And I thought well actually, do I still need to be doing that? No, I don’t. So I rang them up. Interesting. You always have to ring them up, don’t you? You could never just go online and cancel stuff. You’ve always got to speak to somebody so they can try and talk you out of it or sell you something else. However, I did speak to, actually to be fair, a very friendly person, who canceled canceled it for me No problem. And therefore I saved myself £16.70 a month just by keeping an eye on my outgoings. Producer Tommo 7:37 Man I love that. Love that. David 7:40 Thought you’d appreciate that time Producer Tommo 7:42 I do. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time to do a bit of life admin and hey, presto, David 7:47 And do you know what the thing was, I saw the letter. I’d had the letter for about a week and I thought well I must, I must do something with that. I must do something with that now I know me well and in the past I would have thought I must do something with that and never actually done it. So the difference is, have an idea and then act on it. Producer Tommo 8:03 Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. David 8:06 What’s yours then Tommo? Producer Tommo 8:07 Right. What am I got for you today? So I’m not sure you, I’m not sure you two are going to be too happy with this because I know your views on the throwaway fashion industry. It’s not particularly sustainable is it. But you know what people need to wear clothes and for some people they’re going through some real hard times with, with locked down with incomes potential have dropped if you’re furloughed or be made redundant and we don’t quite know what the world may look like. And I remain optimistic, but I came across a site called everything five pounds.com now it reads as everything’s five pounds.com very clever instead of the s at the end they used a five. Well done them, but, but on. . . on there is literally everything is £5 you can buy yourself some you know a jumper, t-shirts – £5. Chris 9:00 I’ll have a car! Producer Tommo 9:02 It’s clothing, sorry I should have started with that. But you know I think a really good one if people are trying to tighten the belt and need some need some clothes, you know go and have a look. I five quid for an item clothing and I don’t know where it’s been made or what the ethics behind it are. So you know do that. Do that due diligence yourself, but go check it out. Chris 9:24 I’ve got some homework for you then Tommo. Because a really really good money saving tip obviously is charity shops. Producer Tommo 9:31 Yeah. Chris 9:31 Can we do charity shop buying online? Producer Tommo 9:35 Whoo. There’s a bit of homework for me. Right charity shop buying online. Chris 9:41 You did me worried a little bit there Tommo actually because David and I. David I’m going to use the sobriquet – David I are authors. You’ve just finished your novel. So I think we can call you, you know, an author. And I thought you were gonna say a really good tip is buy secondhand books. I don’t agree with that at all. That’s a terrible, terrible idea. Producer Tommo 10:00 I’ll tell you what, if you want a really good tip, and you want to spend some money on something it’s going to give you a great deal back is when David launches his book. Buy that. And Chris, you’ve got about 400 available. So buy one of those. Chris 10:14 I’ve got some in the garage you can have for cheap! Producer Tommo 10:17 Hey look, in particular the financial wellbeing book you can pick up directly at Penny Brohn. Chris 10:24 You can’t at the minute because they’re shut. But Producer Tommo 10:26 Oh yeah, Chris 10:26 Nice idea. So let’s leave that one there. Producer Tommo 10:29 All right. Okay. David 10:30 However, do get the financial wellbeing book though, because obviously that is the foundation on which things podcasts are built. Producer Tommo 10:35 You never know, people might be listening to this when lockdown is over. So check it out. Otherwise, hold off, because we want as much of the proceeds to go to that wonderful charity as possible. David 10:47 Excellent. Thank you for that, Tommo. Chris, why don’t you introduce your interview for today? Chris 10:52 Thanks, David. So we have Dr. Elia Gourgouris. I hope I’m pronouncing that okay. He is the fascinating psychologist, an expert in the field of positive psychology. He’s the president of the Happiness Center. And he’s also author of a number one best selling book, it’s Seven Paths to Lasting Happiness. And this starts off with his own personal story, which I think you’ll all agree will be absolutely fascinating and really sets the brain going about your own life. So let’s have a little listen to my chat with Dr. Elia Gourgouris. Chris 11:26 Elia, thank you so much for joining on our podcast. Dr Elia Gourgouris 11:30 You’re welcome. It’s my pleasure. Chris 11:32 Where are we speaking to you from today? Dr Elia Gourgouris 11:34 From Colorado, Chris 11:36 Colorado. Okay. I don’t know my America very well, I’m afraid, but what’s what’s Colorado home to? Dr Elia Gourgouris 11:43 Colorado is more of the Rocky Mountains. If you’ve heard of the mountains of Colorado were the western part of the United States. We border Utah, I guess, and to the West the Wyoming, the wilderness? Chris 11:58 Well, if you’ve got Rocky’s it must be a very beautiful area. I’m sure Dr Elia Gourgouris 12:02 It is beautiful. Yes. Chris 12:04 So perhaps you could just explain to us how you came into this idea of happiness and how you became a happiness expert. Dr Elia Gourgouris 12:13 Well, you know, that’s actually a very funny and interesting story. You know, my background, my professional background, I have a PhD in psychology. I had a clinical practice for many, many years. And then I transitioned over to the corporate side and do executive coaching and leadership training and development. But the happiness expertise began. And this is a true story, on the very first day I was born. So I was born a long time ago in Athens, Greece. And as the story was told, growing up, you know, my Dad, kind of a tough Greek guy, you know, shows up at the hospital, and, and, and asks the nurse, you know, where’s my son. And I guess I was behind this little window, me and four other little babies were all wrapped up in the same generic white blankets back in the day. And I guess at that moment, I had a big smile on my face. So the nurse turns to my Dad and says, your son, he’s the happy one. And I was branded the day I was born. So that story was told to me growing up, you know, well, you came out of the womb happy, you’ve always been a happy kid. And people that have known me for decades, my friends and family. So you know, for the most part, in spite of life’s tragic events, from time to time, or to the ups and downs that I tend to see life as a glass half full, or I have maybe the glass overwhelming, and that’s for 25 years now I’m in graduate school. And the professor is talking to us about the debate between nature versus nurture. Chris 13:44 Just what I was going to ask you yes, Dr Elia Gourgouris 13:46 No, no, no, but this is the beauty of it. In basically, is it a genetic predisposition that makes us who we are? Or is it our environment in it’s impact on us? And of course, the reality is that they both contribute, but I had this terrible thought, in the middle of that class. It was if it was yesterday. And I’m like, Well, wait a minute. What if my Dad gets stuck in traffic shows up like 15 minutes late, come up to the same little window asks the same nurse the same question, which one’s my son, and at the very moment, I have this, you know, horrible gas pains and I’m screaming my head off and my face is all red. And the nurse turns to my Dad, your son, he’s the cranky one. Chris 14:23 Cranky expert! Dr Elia Gourgouris 14:25 Exactly. And therefore, you’re, you’re like all that personal branding. You know, I’m branded from the get go, who you came out of the womb crying, you were a miserable little beep, you know. So when I share this story, not just in this country, but also you know, I spoke in London last year and then Paris and Rome and Athens. When I shared this story about personal branding. I say this, that we’ve all been branded to some degree. In some brands are positive, like being that happiness, you know, brand, is a brand that I’ve actually embraced in my lifetime. There are other great brands like the smart one. You know, obviously creative one, the intelligent one, the artistic one, the princess, you know, there are a whole bunch of other brands that are positive. And if you have been branded that way, count your blessings. My experience, however, in working with people is this, that a lot of people, certainly my clients that I work with, and many people that I’ve talked to actually, throughout the country in the world have had negative brands. And I will tell you, the worst three, or the most common I should say, the ugly one, the fat one in the stupid one. You would be amazed how many people have grown up with those brands. Chris 15:36 And the interesting thing is that, that those those terms are given to us by our peers in order to make it to put us down and be lower than them, haven’t they? Dr Elia Gourgouris 15:44 Yes, in the unfortunate thing, Chris, is that sometimes that happens early on in our life, sometimes it happens even in our own homes. So a few years ago, I’m giving this talk to a women’s conference. And I challenged the audience, basically, I said, Look, if you don’t like your brand, this is an empowerment, you know, this is the time in your life. If you don’t like your, your negative brand, choose a different brand that represents who you want to be, and who you want to become. So out of the corner of my eye, there’s this older lady in her 70s, gray hair, stands up and starts waving her arms, you know, at me. So it kind of interrupted my flow in my talk. But obviously, she wanted to say something. And I said, “Yes, ma’am.” You know, and she goes, “You know what, after listening to you, I grew up for 70 years, I’ve had the brand and I haven’t had one, I had all three of them. I was called stupid, fat and ugly my entire life”” And you could hear a pin drop in the audience, Chris. I mean, it was, like we it was, it was stunning, actually, that she acknowledged that. And I thought quite vulnerable, honestly, in front of an audiencek, 500 people, I don’t know if I would have shared something so personal in front of, you know, a whole bunch of people. Anyway. So I said, you know, it caught me off guard a little bit. I’m like, it’s because but after listening to you, I’m gonna change my brand. And I’m like, Okay, well, what would you like your new brand to be? And her name was Leia, by the way. She goes well, from now one, I want to be known as Princess Leia. And I’ve been the, you know, I’m up in the podium and I bowed I said, Yes, Your Majesty, Yes. Chris 17:13 That must have got a great laugh from the audience. Love it Dr Elia Gourgouris 17:16 No, that the audience laughs they came, you know, from a very serious, moment, to a very light hearted moment. But why do I share this story with you and with your audience? The reason is this. If a woman in her 70s, after seven decades, has, makes the decision to change her brand from this negative that has haunted her basically for seven decades and change it, then that means any one of us can change our brand if we don’t like it. And I applaud her, I think was a remarkable thing to do it in public in front of 500 other people. I like using her for as an example, because that’s remarkable. Chris 17:48 Can I, I don’t wish to try and get some free consultation with you! But let’s share something that you’ve awoken to me and saying this, that I’ve been thinking about my son. So my father used to make a joke. And it was a joke. And he only meant it in jest. But it’s one of those things that you say within a family that he always used to say to me, you got to work hard at school, because you got to pay for my nursing fees. You’ve got to pay for my care home fees. And I believed him. And I thought he was serious, you know, I thought he actually meant it. And so when I started work, and I only realized this years later, I went to university, I did a degree that I hated – economics. When I really I wanted to be a writer. And I my whole career is full of doing things. And I realized in a way I have realized for a while because I’m careful not to say the same thing to my son. But I have realized for a while that my branding was the guy that had to pay for my dad’s care home fees. Dr Elia Gourgouris 18:47 Yeah, you were the responsible one. Actually. I mean it. I mean, that’s not necessarily a negative brand, because being responsible has certain positive connotation. Chris 18:55 Yeah, but I think drove me to do things . . . Chris 18:57 Burden upon you by your Dad Chris 18:59 Yeah, exactly. Burdens a very, yes, it drove me to do things that I may not have chosen for myself. Dr Elia Gourgouris 19:04 Exactly Chris 19:04 And he didn’t mean it to be selfish. He would, you know, no way that he mean it like that it really was only a joke, but it did affect me. And it did drive and in many ways, a few offhand comments like that from somebody else did set a course for my life. Dr Elia Gourgouris 19:18 Absolutely. So I think that’s why it’s very important for us, especially in our families, in our homes and with our children, to be very mindful of what comes out of our mouths and what we see even if we do it in jest, you don’t know what life long or long term impact those words are going to have, even though we don’t really mean it in a negative light. Chris 19:37 Yeah, one of the things that we talk about a lot and I’m pretty sure you’ll be you’ll be more than familiar with this is the self-limiting beliefs that we have. And I assume that a lot of these come from that kind of branding. Dr Elia Gourgouris 19:48 So absolutely. You know, I wrote a book called Seven Paths Lasting Happiness. It became a number one bestseller in the United States. In the first path of course is love yourself in the first part of that is the personal brand, because the way we view ourselves if it has it, if the glasses we wear are negative, and we have self-defeating thoughts, typically those leads to self-destructive behaviors, which basically only reinforce the fact that we’re losers in esscence, you know. So we have to change the way we view ourselves and change the way that we think about ourselves. So personal brand is one thing, there are a couple of other things that have a direct impact on whether we love ourselves or not. One of them has to do with comparisons. And we’re all guilty, we all make comparisons, and all of us do it, we probably do it on a daily basis. And really, if you think about it, if we, when we make comparisons to somebody else, there are only two possible outcomes. Either I’m better than you, Chris, or you’re better than me. And if I go around thinking, I’m always better than other people, that’s a very arrogant and prideful statement. And nobody wants to be around people like that. And really, if you think about it, arrogant people on the outside, they’re insecure little boys on the inside. That’s why they’re arrogant, and why they put other people down, if you feel secure within yourself, you never have to put anybody else down. So that’s one side of the comparison doesn’t work. However, the majority of people, you know, and I’ve had a lot of, you know, my class have been women in and those are my kind of informal statistics. When comparisons are made, it’s always like I don’t measure up basically compared to somebody else. Because oftentimes, we compare our own human frailties, and, you know, weaknesses. And, you know, just, you know, we’re not perfect human beings, to other people’s perceived strengths. So when we don’t feel like we measure up with somebody else, then that makes us depressed actually, it erodes our self worth and our self esteem. There’s only one way to get away from this comparison conundrum. And that is to, the only comparison that really counts is the one within ourselves. And in practicality how does that work? So let’s take an easy example our physical health. And I take people through, I have a program, you know, work life happiness program that I take people through, and specifically as – now go back and compare yourself physically, your physical health, like 10 years ago, five years ago, last year now. And let’s say like, 10 years ago, I was in terrible shape. In five years, I started doing better. In last year, I hired a nutritionist, I’m eating healthier, and I’m exercising five days a week, and I’m in the best shape of my life. That’s not an arrogant statement to say, I’m doing better now than I used to do. That’s a factual statement. I’m actually factually in better shape than I was before. So that’s the one side of the comparison. But let’s reverse that example. Let’s say the 10 years I was in tip top up shape. And then five years ago, and I started having family, have kids don’t have time to exercise. And now I just eat fast food. And I’m all stressed out, and my physical health has deteriorated. I’m not as in good shape as I used to be. The question then is, this is not meant to beat myself up. Really, it’s more about to inspire me to move to action. In other words, remember, Chris, how good you felt 10 years ago, when you’re in the best shape of your life? What are you willing to do about it? Now to get back to that place? That’s all, you’re not comparing yourself to anybody else other than against your best self? If we could do that, then we avoid, you know, feeling down, we avoid feeling depressed. Or on the plus side, we don’t feel arrogant. We’re just saying, Yeah, I’m on a good path, pat yourself on the back from time to time as they keep doing it. So comparisons are deadly. And we all do them. Chris 23:28 Presumably, but when we compare ourselves with other people, I presume we only ever compare ourselves against the best of other people? Dr Elia Gourgouris 23:35 Exactly. But they’re you know, there’s some people that compare themselves and put them, so I got more money, I got the faster car, the bigger house this I mean, there’s also the comparison of the you know, the prideful, arrogant side. But typically, for most people, it’s the other comparison where I don’t quite measure up. You know, we look at other people’s like, we always feel like they have a better life. And social media has exacerbated this, of course, you know. Everything on Instagram, or Facebook or whatever. It’s like people living this perfect lives, quote, unquote, that you look at your own life, and you’ll commiserate it, like, Oh, my life sucks, basically. So. Chris 24:07 So there is a lot in this about about money isn’t there about how we view money, and about how we compare ourselves with others financially thinking that we’ve got to have a certain amount. I was just doing a talk for somebody else. And there was a survey where, I think it was in Canada, where they offered a group of people choice between $100,000 a year salary where everybody else was earning $200,000 a year, or a $50,000 a year salary where everybody else was earning $20,000. Dr Elia Gourgouris 24:41 So they chose the 50? Chris 24:42 And they chose the 50. Yeah, Dr Elia Gourgouris 24:43 Right. Right. Chris 24:45 So we’re actually doing ourselves down by making those comparisons, aren’t we we’re not getting the best for ourselves by making our comparisons. Dr Elia Gourgouris 24:52 Indeed we are. And there have been studies that have been validated repeatedly. So it’s not like a one off study that, at least in the United States, anyway. If you make $70,000 a year, that is the optimum in terms of your happiness. In other words, if you make more than that, if you make 100, or $200,000, that doesn’t increase your happiness anymore. So for whatever reason, you know, $70,000 basically says, I have all my needs met, and maybe I have a little bit extra to, you know, take your some of my wants. Chris 25:22 There’s a chap isn’t there who put all of his employees on $70,000 a year I was reading about it recently. Dr Elia Gourgouris 25:27 Exactly. And there was an article that came out actually, just recently that talked about what impact that has had as his employees and how happy they truly are. So he’s a, he was a visionary CEO, honestly. Chris 25:37 Mm hmm. What chance do you think that might be of that catching on? Dr Elia Gourgouris 25:44 I don’t know. I mean, I hope that other people, like emulate what he has to do, I don’t know much about the kind of company that he has, or you know, how he was able to do that. I haven’t read the specifics. But it is true that he has had a very positive impact on all his employees. Love it as a CEO. Chris 26:00 I’m just I’m just thinking that, you know, $70,000 a year? I mean, I was gonna say it’s not that much. Of course it is. If you don’t have it, of course, it’s a lot. But when you’re thinking of the seriously wealthy people that there are in the world, and, you know, some of the Silicon Valley billionaires. Dr Elia Gourgouris 26:15 Right. Chris 26:15 How can we get to those people? I’m just musing here, but how can we get to those people and make them realize, hey, this isn’t making you any happier all this money? Why did you keep it? I mean, can you go do some work with them? Dr Elia Gourgouris 26:27 Yeah, if you think about it, Chris. Really, money equals freedom. I mean, that’s how I see it. You know, do I like nice things? Of course, I do. Do I like to have a nice house, a nice car, of course, and go on vacation? Yeah, of course. But that doesn’t necessarily make me happier. What makes me happy is the relationships that I have with people around me, you know, living life with a purpose, which is one of the seven paths lasting happiness. I, you know, my purpose in life is to leave this world a better place than I found it and to make a difference in other people’s lives. Yes, the money is good. But really, it’s making a difference. This is what drives me, that’s what I’m passionate about. The other thing about a happy people are people who are of service to others, who, you know, who perform acts of kindness, if you will, to others that it improves, that makes people happier, though the billionaires of the world, if they’re in the process of distributing some of their wealth in contributing, I should say, to causes that they they believe in I’m sure that brings them a certain level of satisfaction. Chris 27:29 Yeah. Dr Elia Gourgouris 27:29 If they’re all about, you know, making the next billion dollars or whatever, I don’t think that’s, you know, that necessarily makes them any happier. I know. It doesn’t. Chris 27:38 Yeah, yeah. So this is a very interesting one I just like to pick up on if I may one of your seven steps being about purpose. It’s something that we’ve talked a lot about, on a podcast about financial planning, it should be about helping you to achieve purpose, rather than goals, that kind of stuff. But one of the things I’m very aware of is it’s very easy to say that, but it’s actually not very easy to find purpose. How would you suggest people go about finding their purpose? Dr Elia Gourgouris 28:08 You know what, I asked them, I have a process that I take people to call the best year yet. So I help them to create their best year of their life. So for 2020, for example, in, in and that also happens for companies, not just for individuals, it can happen for a team, we can happen for a for a division, or for the entire company. And, but let’s do it on an individual basis, because it’s easier to explain this. If you’re to go back and think about it times in your life, what are you most passionate about? When he used to daydream? And I say this, if you had unlimited money, and unlimited time and a magic wand, what would you want to be doing? And another so it’s kind of like a fight. It’s a funny exercise, because people kind of, and I’m like, no limitations, just go crazy. What would you like, you know, to be doing in your life. But basically, you will do it if you even if you’re not getting paid. I mean, for me, you know, I’ve done pro bono work where I help people in times of need, because I do this because I love it. I love helping people. That’s my passion. That’s what I’m passionate about, in whatever form that comes. Whether it’s writing books, or lecturing, or one on one or in group settings, or in corporate, you know, retreats, or whatever, but the theme is the same. I love seeing teams come together. I love seeing people, you know, transform their lives for the better. That’s a huge reward. And I’ve been fortunate enough, honestly, because I’ve known that since I was pretty young in my life, long before I knew psychology or anything like that. It’s something that I’ve always been driven towards. So find something that you would say, Man, I would do this, even if I didn’t get paid because I love it so much. It fulfills me basically, Chris 29:45 Could you link that with the personal brand idea you know if you’re going to change yourself from being ugly, fat and stupid to be – I’m the one that helps other people. Dr Elia Gourgouris 29:55 Sure. I mean, I hadn’t thought about that. I mean, I’m glad you brought that up. That’s it. I think that actually makes sense, right? If your personal brand and your purpose are aligned, then you would be happier. Of course. Chris 30:09 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, gratitude is a word I seen that you use often in your articles and blogs and books. How can gratitude help increase our well being? Dr Elia Gourgouris 30:19 That’s a great question. But number one, it through that path number two, after love yourself, gratitude is number two. And we’ve always heard the phrase having an attitude of gratitude. So there’s no way we can be grateful in be down or depressed. At the same time, those two things cannot coexist. When I live in gratitude, my life, my heart is full. Now, it’s easy to be grateful when things are going well. As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you, I’m the most grateful guy when everything is working out. Well, that’s easy. The tough part is, how can we be grateful. And I say that we’re all graduate from the same university in this world, we’re all graduate from the University of adversity. Because we all face adversity in life, that’s a given. As a matter of fact, the older we get, the more adversity we faced in our lifetime. Meaning that we’re going to have relationships that are not going to work out, you know, perhaps divorce, health issues, financial issues, unemployment, underemployment, you know, strike, financial stress, all these things happen to most of us, potentially cancer, or heart disease, or diabetes, or, you know, we’re going to lose loved ones, or individually, our grandparents, and then our parents, and then we, you know, God forbid, our spouse, or a child or a cousin or an aunt and uncle, that’s part of human life, right? These things are going to happen. So we’re all part of this university of adversity. The key, of course, is how can we be grateful in the midst of that, and that’s not easy, by the way. Chris 31:49 I just started yoga, and, which is a bit late at 53, but there we go! Never too late to try these things. And one of the things that has really struck me is this very, very simple line that our yoga instructor says, which is just be grateful, or well done for making it to the mat tonight. Dr Elia Gourgouris 32:13 Yes, Chris 32:14 It’s such a simple line, but it’s really got under my skin. It’s just a way of saying, you’ve made the effort to take an hour for yourself, well done. I walk away thinking about that line every single time a little bit of gratitude, that I’ve got that spare hour in my day that I can just sit on the mat and do a bit of yoga. Dr Elia Gourgouris 32:35 Whether you do yoga, or you do mindful meditation, or I mean, I ask people to create a gratitude journal and I say, look, write three things. Just bullet point, nothing long. Every morning when you wake up when you’re grateful for. If you do that for two or three weeks, it will become a habit, it’ll become second nature. And I promise you, when you have down days, you can open up your gratitude journal and start reading all the things that you’re grateful for. And that’s the quickest way to go from being down to being up again. Chris 33:02 Yeah, yeah, that’s a that’s a great tip. We had, we had a chap on the podcast, Nick Alston, who’s an anxiety expert. I just put these two things together, if you’ll forgive me for a moment, because he gave it a tip when he was suffering from anxiety, where he one Monday morning wrote down a list of everything that he was worrying about, kind of the opposite. Dr Elia Gourgouris 33:25 Right. Chris 33:25 And he wrote down 127 things that he was worrying about. Dr Elia Gourgouris 33:29 Holy cow! Chris 33:31 And what was so fascinating was, he said a week later, he went back over that list and have a guess how many of those things that actually happened? Dr Elia Gourgouris 33:41 Not that many I bet? Chris 33:42 Not a single one of them. So he was carrying 127 things around, and he was worrying about none of which have happened. Now, if that’s a great first step, maybe a second step is then your gratitude journal. Those two things together, I wonder they could be quite powerful, couldn’t they? Dr Elia Gourgouris 33:58 You know, he, your friend that made that list, Mark Twain, who is the you know, the famous, you know, American satirist, and author and so on, had this thing and I’m kind of paraphrasing a little bit, but basically, he said, I have suffered a great many things in my life. Most of them never happened. Meaning that they were in his head, just like your friend, he had 127 things that he was anxious or worried about, and none of them happened. Chris 34:26 Yeah, exactly. Dr Elia Gourgouris 34:27 So basically, what I see don’t borrow trouble from the future. Because that’s what anxiety really is. Anxiety is always when we’re thinking ahead, right? It’s a future based feeling, or depression. A lot of times it’s more in the past. And that’s what we you know, through yoga, or through mindfulness, and meditation. You know, I suggest that we try to live in the present as much as we can, because when you’re in the present, number one, you’re much more alive. Number two, you don’t struggle from depression or anxiety. Your friend had 127 things that never happened. But he was in his own mind. It’s almost as if they were real. Right. Chris 35:06 Yeah, so being in the present to stop the depression from the past or the anxiety of the future. That’s, that’s a lovely tip. Thank you. Dr Elia Gourgouris 35:12 It’s not easy to be in the present? Don’t get me wrong. That’s where I’m, I am glad to hear you’re doing yoga, because that does bring you back into your body in the present. Chris 35:19 Yeah, you know, what I found? Excuse me with it. But balancing. Balancing has been revolutionary, because suddenly I have to concentrate so hard on not falling over, that I forget to think about the past or the future. Dr Elia Gourgouris 35:34 Yes, yes. That’s the whole point, though. Yeah. Can you do that consistently? You know, can you do yoga three or four or five times a week? Where you’re centered? Yeah, do that your life will be really happier. There’s no doubt. Chris 35:49 Yeah, absolutely. So look, before we finish, I wonder, what are, the strapline from our podcast is that financial planning is really very simple. You just work out what you want from life and spend your money on that. Which is a kind of slightly tongue in cheek thing to say, because of course, working out what you want for life isn’t very easy at all. Do you have any thoughts on our, on that? Dr Elia Gourgouris 36:11 I think when we struggle financially in, if we’re really living paycheck to paycheck, basically, in trying to make ends meet, that does take away from our personal happiness, I think there’s, I think that’s where the 70,000 a year comes in, basically, because if you’re, if you’re just making enough or you have credit card debt, or if you’re not able to pay your bills, it’s very difficult to be happy in the midst of that, honestly. Chris 36:37 Mm hmm. Dr Elia Gourgouris 36:38 There’s no way that financial stress doesn’t impact your overall sense of happiness. Chris 36:43 Yeah. So one of our five areas of financial well being is to gain control of your daily finances. So that you could almost then you’re seems to be suggesting that’s like a precursor. That’s the first thing to get sorted, and then you can start working on the other stuff. Dr Elia Gourgouris 36:59 In of course, you know, I mean, I used to do when, in my, in my oldest when I was a psychologist did a lot of premarital coaching, right. And we used to talk about all kinds of things. And one of them was, of course, you know, finances, because finances along with sex, you know, their communication typically have to be some of the biggest stressors in their in their relationship, especially if the couple is not in alignment, you know, and it’s twofold. One is, people always focus – Well, I need to make more money. Well, you know, what, that’s only half the story. The other half the story is that you need to watch your expenses, just like a company. You know, I consulted with a with a with a company, and they were growing by leaps and bounds in a and I coach, their, their CEO. And he was all revenue based, you know, made a 50 million this year. And next year, I want to make 100 million I got it. He was all about making more and more and more and more. And I asked him, I said, who’s looking after where you’re spending your money? Because it seemed like the more they made, they were still like breaking even basically, it goes on, nobody’s doing that. And I’m like, What are you talking about? How can you run it? Like, how can you run a company, you know, you’re not looking at your expenses. Just because you made more money than last year, you’re spending more money, you’re back to square one. That’s like economics one oh one. I’m not an economics major. But I mean, seriously, if I make $10 in this is the definition I will say to you. If I make $10 and I spend $11, that’s misery. If I make $10 and I spend $9 that equals happiness, right? Simple. Chris 38:32 So So and also, when we bring that back to the financial well being is how you’re spending the money, as well on things that will make you happier. So experiences rather than buying stuff. And, and all that kind of thing. Dr Elia Gourgouris 38:43 Yes, great point. Stuff never makes anybody happy. It might make our life a little bit more convenient. But really, and I probably about 10 years ago, I told my family, I don’t want any presants for my birthday or whatever. Or Christmas. Experiences, togetherness, you know, so we have those memories, create those memories. That’s really what it’s about. Chris 39:04 Yeah, yeah. That’s a fantastic place to stop. I really, really appreciate your time today. It’s been absolutely fascinating. We’ll make sure that we put your book out there on the show notes. And I really appreciate your time today, thank you. Dr Elia Gourgouris 39:18 Thank you so much, Chris. And keep doing the yoga man. David 39:23 Oh, I did enjoy that. That’s another one of your great interviews. Chris. You’re getting very good at this interview stuff, aren’t you? I love the questions that you ask. And you you get you elicit really good answers from people as well. He was fascinating. Chris 39:35 Yeah, that’s very kind of you David. I’m finding myself drawn into these conversations, I think because they’re all so interesting you can’t help but go but but. Me, it’s Gonzo interviewing, isn’t it? It’s all about me. But I thought that his stuff about personal brand that you are what you say is just absolutely so fascinating. And it makes me wonder, but obviously you could hear in the interview and it made me wonder it makes me wonder why is my personal brand. And now I don’t know if you guys feel like sharing this having a guess at this, but what would you say would be your personal brand what sort of, you know, if you’re the something guy, what guy would you be?

Episode 66 – The Biology of Happiness Can we increase our wellbeing through a biology lesson? In this episode Chris, David and Producer Tommo explore the science behind the chemicals in our brains responsible for happiness. With plenty of takeaways on sensible ways to increase our wellbeing, a Bage’s Bias and a special little guest in the #tightasstommo segment, it is easier than ever to find a little happiness with The Financial Wellbeing Podcast! Welcomes and Introductions David shares some great news about his novel, Producer Tommo adds to his introduction list and Chris thinks he has bagged a Guinness World Record! Click on this link for more information on the IFW – the Institute for financial advisors and others to help make the world a happier place through financial wellbeing. What is this podcast all about Can we increase our financial wellbeing through biology? The guys take a look at four chemicals in our brain that are the most responsible for happiness and explore some ideas on how we can increase their effectiveness. Bage’s Biases Every episode, Behavioral Finance expert, Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip. Exploring and thinking a little bit about the behavioral traits we have towards money can inform us, so we can make better money decisions going forward.– Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability– Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Confidence TightAssTommo Has #tightasstommo taken over Producer Tommo’s life? How to save rocket (but do we mean the salad kind or the explosive kind?!) A special little guest joins the podcast Click on this link to visit the Nimber.com website Today’s Topic – The Biology of Happiness Catherine Morgan – a financial coach and friend of the podcast, inspired this episode. She is a board member on the IFW, a real innovator in helping people to understand their relationship to money. Click here for a link to the Bananatreelog website and here for a link to the Twitter profile We are looking for a more permanent solution to happiness than a few #lockdownlibations! Endorphin – from exercise. Can relieve stress and pain (can be addictive in excess)Dopamine – from getting what you desire. Can help motivate youSerotonin – from when we are admired or respectedOxytocin – from physical and social contact. Can help build and sustain relationships Word of warning – Framing Bias (have a listen to Episode 65, at 3.36 Neil Bage explains what Framing Bias is) We need to be careful when it comes to language around these chemicals. Be clear about what makes us happy – is is different for each person and we have individual needs. Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivations (have a listen to Episode 42 with Tim Kasser for more details) Intrinsic = we do it because we want to do it / creates wellbeingExtrinsic = we do it for someone else, such as to please or impress someone / has no effect on our wellbeing Some ideas on what can we do to get these chemicals flowing The five parts to overall wellbeing; Career WellbeingSocial WellbeingFinancial WellbeingPhysical WellbeingCommunity Wellbeing Money is a tool to bring about happiness, focusing on money in itself will actually reduce our wellbeing.Producer Tommo What do these chemicals mean from a financial point of view? Serotonin and hallucinogenic drugs – don’t do drugs kids! The importance of finding sensible ways to increase overall wellbeing. The five areas of wellbeing need to be balanded with each other. Conclusions from the guys Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David 0:14 Hello, everybody, and welcome to another one in our series of financial wellbeing podcasts. My name is David Lloyd, I’m a writer and actor and podcaster. General bon vivant, man about town. Well man about village actually, Backwell where I live, where also lives, the kind of prime creator of this podcast, Chris Budd, Chris hello Chris 0:36 How are we doing David? Currently I am the man about my front room, with lockdown, that’s about as far as I can take it I reckon. So yeah, we’ve got the Financial Wellbeing Book, which I wrote a few years ago now. And the Initiative of Financial Wellbeing, the Institute for financial advisors and others to help make the world a happier place. So come and check that out everybody because it is doing very interesting things at the moment during this lockdown period. David 1:00 And Tommo, who the hell are you? Producer Tommo 1:03 Every week. All right, let’s see, see how long my list is doing. As you two have put a great few together. So primarily, I am a director and Chartered Financial Planner at Ovation Finance. I’m also a director at the Initiative of Financial Wellbeing and also a very busy father, who is enjoying lockdown with a toddler. Thank goodness for the sunshine at the moment. David 1:35 Fantastic. And you’re also my financial advisor Tom, and a very good one you are too and a very, very lovely man you are too, I just want to put that out there. Producer Tommo 1:43 Bless you. I’ll tell you what, it’s another check in the post. I, this is’nt very good money saving tips from me I’ll tell you. This is costing me a fortune. David 1:52 Excellent. Right, what’s on today’s podcast, Chris? Chris 1:55 Today we are going to look at the four chemicals in our brain that are most responsible for happiness. We are going to have a little chat about what they are and how we might be able to increase their effectiveness. David 2:10 Interesting, now before we come on to that actually I’ve got a bit of news. I know sometimes we like to come up with a bit of personal news. As, as you know, you certainly know Chris, and I think I’ve made reference to it over the years in the podcast. I have been writing the novel. I’m nowhere near as prolific as you, Chris, but I’ve been doing other writing stuff as well. But yesterday, I managed to type those two marvelous words, The End, which was absolutely fantastic,. It’s only the 1st draft, I’m going to have to go back and look at it again and rework bits of it. But I finally got to almost three years from when I first started it. So I have to confess I shed a little tear. Chris 2:47 Yeah, big moment, fantastic well done. And now the fun bit begins, I think, which is the editing and getting it all down first time around is one thing, but I really like going back over the words and into the sentences. As Neil Gaiman put it – getting down amongst the words. Unknown Speaker 3:02 Exactly, no, I enjoy that. And I have to say I’ve been doing some of that has been going along. It’s been so long since I started it, you know, I need to go back now and look at the thing. When I started it, I didn’t even know how it’s gonna finish. So. Chris 3:15 Do you now? David 3:16 I do now yes! I need to, so I need to go back and just make sure that it all makes sense. Anyway, that’s my little bit of news. Chris 3:23 I have some some similar views in a way, that I also have finished the third draft of my of my novel that we’re working on for a few years. And I think I broke a new record. I think I’m the proud owner of the Guinness Book of Records, I sent off my draft to some literary agents last Wednesday. And about 6:30 in the evening, and I got my first rejection at 8:30 The next morning. David 3:47 That’s quick work. Chris 3:50 I reckon I deserve some sort of reward for that. I’m not quite sure what? Producer Tommo 3:53 I love the way you’re finding the positives in such a quick rejection. Chris 3:58 I’ve had a lot of rejections David 3:59 Well, this is part and parcel of being a writer and it comes back to this. I’m sure I’ve used this expression in the podcast in other context before. A no, is just a deferred yes. You always need to remember that. So in order to get the yes, you have to keep asking the question. Chris 4:18 Yeah, quite. There is a genuine wellbeing bit here, because I was talking about this with Susie. I have two novels, published, self published. And so I’ve got an awful lot of rejection slips. But they don’t actually make a difference to me anymore. Because I’m not writing to be heard. Particularly. I’m not writing to make money. I know that I’ll have, I don’t know 50, 60, 100, 200 people will read a book. Well 200 will be fantastic. But even if it just 10 that’s made it worthwhile. It’s the fun of writing it I write because I can’t not write. And that’s why I do it. So actually, the rejection slips are not genuinely that big a deal. Having said that a five movie deal would be nice. I’m not going to turn it down. David 4:57 Well, anyway, well good luck with yours, and we’ll see what happens with mine and I will keep you all informed. Right then, let’s move on. Let’s have the first of our regular features. Well I say a regular feature, it’s a relatively new feature. It’s where we get Neil Bage, an old friend of the podcast to come up with one of the Bages Behavioral Biases, what have you got fo us this week Chris? Chris 5:22 This week, Neil’s going to talk about confidence. Here we go. Neil Bage 5:26 Now, the first bias I’d like to talk about today is over confidence or more to the point confidence. Now, I’m pretty confident that everybody listening to this podcast knows what confidence is. That sometimes it’s easy to spot. But most of the time, it’s really well hidden, disguised in just who we are. We aren’t really equipped with the ability to just look at someone without any degree of interaction and gauge how confident or not they are. We often confuse bravado, the extrovert with confidence and the quiet person, the introverts with under confidence, and that simply isn’t a true reflection of people and their abilities. An extrovert at a party, you know, the person dancing and joking around with everyon,e may appear very confident. But that doesn’t necessarily map across to that person’s confidence when it comes to making financial decisions. Just like risk taking, which is domain specific. Confidence could also be domain specific. But how do we measure confidence? Well, we measure it by looking at the difference between a person’s subjective knowledge, what they think they know, and a person’s objective knowledge, which is what they really do know. And understanding the difference between the two is absolutely crucial in understanding whether a person is under confident, or whether a person is overconfident. Now we often hear over confidence being talked about a lot in relation to investment decision making. But under confidence can be just as problematic when people are trying to make important decisions. People who are exhibiting under competence have low subjective knowledge. In other words, they think they know a little, but actually they have high objective knowledge. In other words, they know a lot. And this means that when they are being asked to use that underlying knowledge, they will feel as if it’s not good enough, or in the best case scenario, they seek the help of an advisor. In the worst case, they put off making a decision altogether, purely based on the fact that they believe they haven’t got the right skills to make the decision. And when we talk about this in relation to overconfidence, people who have high subjective knowledge, they think they know a lot, but they have low objective knowledge, they actually know very little, it’s easy to see how, in certain instances, we can come unstuck pretty quick. So accepting what you know, accepting, don’t know, means that we can make decisions with the right level of confidence, which should hopefully lead to the right outcome for you. David 8:12 So if I can sum that up. We’ve got to be wary about being overconfident because the danger is that we will attempt to do things actually, we’re not able to do but also we’ve got to be careful about being under confident because we won’t atempt to do things which we are well capable of achieving. Chris 8:29 Yeah , that’s really good. And in money terms, you might get people who say I’m not very good with money. You know, you hear that quite a lot. Well, what does it actually mean? It’s worth exploring that a little bit by thinking about how you actually make money decisions. So Neil and I are doing some, a series of webinars together or course really its x3 90 minute webinars. And listening to some of the stuff that he comes up with on this is just absolutely fascinating. They’re probably already done by the time this podcast comes out. But if anybody wants to have a listen to them, and download them later, they can do , just get in touch with us. Producer Tommo 9:02 If you don’t mind me jumping in, David, but you’re going to experience this, we’re actually, we’ve actually teamed up with Neil. And he’s put together a fantastic app, and background back office system for us to link in with clients. And it all goes into some of these behavioral traits that we have. And confidence is one of them. So it actually tests whether you are somebody who tends to be quite overconfident or under confident. Now and see with that information, we as advisors talking to talking to our clients such as you, David, can really understand where you’re coming from when you make decisions, and ensure that you know, ultimately, the information we’re talking about is pitched at the right level. So yeah, fascinating stuff. It’s just a whole deep world you can go into but I think it’s going to be massive for really understanding ourselves. David 9:48 Well, I’ve got some big financial decisions coming up Tommo. So I look forward very much to go through those with you. Right, okay, let’s move on now to our next feature. Tight Ass Tommo. Sometimes I just let this pass as to where it came from sometimes I feel its important that we just remind ourselves how this feature came about. Tommo was taking Chris and another colleague out for lunch. He said, Don’t worry my treat, I’ll pay. He steared them towards a particular meal on the menu. And it turned out this was the meal, for which he had a free voucher. And therefore the legend of TightAssTommo was born. Before we come on to the master himself. Chris, have you got one for us this week? Chris 10:25 I do David. Tommo has this rather taken over your life? Producer Tommo 10:30 It’s remarkable. I mean, Chris will know this, in our circles we do a morning, its call the morning commute and it’s donew through at group called NextGen Planners, great group, if you’re a planner listening to this, check them out, get involved. I do a slot a couple of days a week. Tight Ass Tommo, so the way it’s taken over my life as I’ve had to re-listen to all, every single episode we’ve ever done every single tip have ever done and regurgitate them. That means that nobody knows me as Tom anymore and they just know me as Tight Ass. Im not sure about that. Chris 11:05 It has the happy coincedence of being entirely true. So this works out quite well in the end. So look I’ve go one this week from Mrs B actually, from the lovely Susie, my wife. She asked me to put this one on, she is an Oncology nurse also works at the penny brohn Cancer Center, to which all the proceeds fromt he Financial Wellbeing book go. And she has a great little tip to prolong the life of your rocket. So I’m talking to saldly type rocket. Not the thing that goes whoosh up into the air rocket. So salad leaves and all this kind of stuff is great for our bodies. And that’s one of the things that, nutrition is one of the things they talk about it the Penny Brohn Centre. But the problem is that their sold in those plastic bags and it gets all sweaty and goes off pretty quickly. So what she does, she puts she puts it in a tub plastic tub with a sheet of kitchen roll underneath and on top. And it stops the rocket from going off and makes it last many times longer. David 11:58 Well, that’s a good tip. And I will do that one. Nothing more annoying when your salad in a bag going a bit sort of sticky and smelly and off in that way. So I will take her up on that one. Tommo what’s yours? Producer Tommo 12:09 Well, as you guys won’t know, as we were setting this all up today, and having a chinwag. I reminded myself that I didn’t have one, so I just furiously did some googling. No, I know where to look! Now I, reminded me actually that I just forgotton to note it down. I came across a website called nimber.com. Thats N I M, for Mike, B E R dot com, show notes, etc. And I thought this really fed into some of the stuff we’ve talked about before and what they try and do, is you have people who basically. It’s a delivery service, but the people who are doing the deliveries are doing it because they’re going in that direction already. So it might be that they’re on their commute. And they happen to be going . . . Producer Tommo 13:05 Hang on a second this. This is exciting. I got a cup of tea coming in here. Chris 13:13 And a biscuit? Producer Tommo 13:14 Scones Chris 13:15 Scones! David 13:18 Where’s mine? Producer Tommo 13:20 Come and say hello Toby. You going to come and say hello to all of our listeners? Toby 13:23 Hello, my name’s Toby Chris 13:28 Hello, Toby. David 13:29 Hello Toby, good to see you. Chris 13:32 How are you Toby? Toby 13:34 Good Chris 13:35 What did you have for breakfast? Toby 13:38 Wheetabix Chris 13:39 Yum David 13:40 One or two? Chris 13:44 Two David 13:44 Woah, your a growing lad arnt you! Producer Tommo 13:47 And what are you doing now? Toby 13:49 It’s just time for snacks David 13:53 Fantastic Producer Tommo 13:54 You’re gonna go and have your snack. Toby 13:55 Bye David 13:55 Bye Toby Chris 14:02 We have a new section of the podcast, we have a new star. Toby’s breakfast tips Producer Tommo 14:09 Far more interesting than his dad. Genuinly I got a cup of tea and some scones, homemade by the two of them. Chris 14:17 That’s staying in, thats gold dust that is! Producer Tommo 14:20 Absolutely. So I am completely off my train of thought. Producer Tommo 14:23 You were telling us about this app where people are going out to deliver Producer Tommo 14:30 If you want to send something you go on the website, and you put such and such a location and those that are deliverers on the service, pick that up, you know and try and go in that direction. I think the whole aim is to just try and cut down on travel costs and emissions and all that sort of thing because ultimately if your going in that direction, why not deliver as well. So I thought it was a very interesting service. So go check it out. I’ll let you go check it out. Yeah, nimber.com David 15:00 Excellent. What a good idea. I’m intregued by that, I shall check that out after we’re finished doing this recording. Right, let’s move on to the main event. Chris, why don’t you introduce our subject today? Chris 15:11 Okay, David, thank you. So there’s a couple of friends of the podcast, there’s one very good friend of the podcast called Catherine Morgan, who is a financial coach. She’s also a fellow board member on the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing. She’s a real innovator in the field of helping people to better understand their relationship to money, and get better financial wellbeing outcomes. So Catherine sent me a really interesting and funky looking infographic from a website called banana tree log.com, thats banana tree log.com. And I had a little look at it, it turns out, it’s just a small blogging website from a gentleman called Anthony Khow, Khow in Canada, who suffers from anxiety, and has set up this little website just for his own interest. So he’s not a well known person, he doesn’t have a big business or anything like that. He’s just the guy who set up a website. But he does possess fantastic infographic and communication skills. On Twitter, he is at banana tree log. And as I say, that website is banana tree log.com. And I was so inspired by what he put together, that I thought we have a chat about some of his stuff, which is all around the biology of happiness, what chemicals in our body create feelings of well being and what we can do to increase those chemicals? David 16:28 Well, I always find alcohol works for me! I’m not sure if that’s a chemical or not. Chris 16:33 I think we’re looking for a more permanent solution. David 16:37 Certainly in lockdown I am doing my best to increase the amount of that I’ve got in my body Chris 16:43 So, let’s go through these four chemicals. There are four chemicals in the brain, which are known as the happy chemicals. I thought we might introduce one or two each. So David, did you want to go first with endorphin? David 16:55 Yeah, now I know a bit about endorphin, it’s the chemical you get from exercise. It relieves stress and pain and you can get a mild high but of course, this also makes it a bit dangerous to have in excess because it can be addictive. Producer Tommo 17:10 I’ve got back into running at the start of the year. It’s actually quite dangerous for me now. I’m still going out, but my knee is not doing particularly well. But I can’t help but going out and getting those endorphin kicks . . . David 17:23 Well I’m the same, I started taking it running again. And I’m a bit like you I never look forward to doing it. Particularly I never particularly enjoy doing it while I’m doing it. But I always feel great afterwards. Producer Tommo 17:34 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I’ve got another quite addictive one of these – dopamine. And in very simple terms, this is known as the pleasure chemical. Things that we can do to get it include things, achieving things. You know, getting what you desire, no matter how small. So yeah, the pleasure chemical. Chris 17:57 And there is serotonin, which is sometimes called leadership chemical, because we get seratonin when we are admired or respected. David 18:05 And then there’s good old oxytocin, the chemical of love. So cool because it’s released during physical and social contact. Chris 18:14 I really didn’t like the way you did that. David 18:18 Well, listen, I am a man who is in lockdown and separated from his partner. Chris 18:23 No, no, no more information. We’ll get into each of these chemicals one at a time. But a little word of warning before we do, we know from some of the stuff that Neil Bage was talking about, like framing, that is easy to frame language in a certain way to get a certain outcome. So, when doing some reading around the subject I quickly realized we are going to have to be careful with our language. David 18:47 In what way? Chris 18:48 Well, let’s take dopamine, for example. We’re coming at this chemical in terms of happiness. So we might describe dopamine is a chemical that enables learning and pleasure. We might say that too much can lead to addiction, and not enough can lead to low self esteem and procrastination. But when I was reading about this, I read other articles calling dopamine, the goal achieving chemical. That it’s the chemical that creates great leaders. And that feels a little presumptuous to me. Like it sets up being a great thing for someone to achieve and that might make a person think that they need to chase dopamine. Producer Tommo 19:24 That means, I suggest that we need to make sure we are clear about what makes us happy. Each person, you know, it’s very different, and will have their own their own needs. Which comes back to the cornerstone of financial planning and the achievable intrinsic motivation. David 19:40 I know we’ve covered that before havn’t we. Remind us what that means Tommo. Producer Tommo 19:44 We heard first from Professor Tim Kasser all the way back in Episode 42. There are two types of motivations or purpose. Intrinsic and extrinsic. And intrinsic motivation is one that has no real reason, we just do it because we want to. An extrinsic motivation is one we do for someone else, such as, such to impress someone or please someone. And professor Kassers research shows that if we achieve an extrinsic motivation, this has no effect on our wellbeing. If we achieve intrinsic motivation, however, this really does create wellbeing. David 20:25 And the biological explanation of that, then is that achieving an intrinsic motivation will release dopamine. Chris 20:31 Exactly, whereas achieving an external motivation will not. So it’s not just as simple to see dopamine as, for example, a way of creating great leaders. David 20:39 So could be viewed as being perhaps the other way around, find personal success, but achieve purpose, and dopamine will follow? Producer Tommo 20:50 Exactly, David. So we come back to the importance of having a clear financial plan, which aims towards those achievable, and intrinsic motivations. David 21:00 And that’ll increase our dopamine levels, which will increase our wellbeing Chris 21:04 Exactly that’s the theory. Yes. David 21:06 So is there anything else we can do? Chris 21:09 Yeah, having a daily list, a to do list and crossing things off when you get them done is a good thing to do for dopamine. Getting regular exercise. Actually, regular exercise is good for all four of the happy chemicals. It creates dopamine, its also really good for endorphins as we said. David 21:24 I thought endorphins were all about exercise? Chris 21:27 They are but it’s not just exercise. They also minimize discomfort and pain, alleviate depression, reduce stress and anxiety and boost self esteem. Producer Tommo 21:36 Oh, right, get me more of them there endorphin’s then please, sign I up! Chris 21:41 Mrs B has been doing, what’s the guy’s name? Nine o’clock every morning, Joe? What’s his name? Producer Tommo 21:45 Joe Wicks. Is she doing it for the excersise or is she doing it for Joe? Chris 21:49 Oh, controversial! No, I think he’s great. You know what I love about him actually, as I sit on the sofa and watch Mrs B doing her excersise with Luna and Ella, we all will think it’s great. But he suffers with you. I think he’s fabulous. Because he doesn’t say come on, this is easy, come on. You can tell this is actually really easy for him, but he pretends it’s hard to empathize with everybody. I think. So, yeah, chasing endorphins is a bad thing. The fitness addict for example, is, I think we all know people who can’t stop running, triathlons, etc. Producer Tommo 22:23 Yeah, we just touched on a moment ago that there is a slight addiction of desperately trying to get out there and get that hit, but not necessarily good if you run through injuries, etc. But yeah, there’s extreme addicts that I know that fitness is just consumes their life. David 22:39 Apart from physical exercise and creativity, which we’ve also touched on, is there anything else that we can do to keep our endorphin levels up? Chris 22:46 Yeah, laughter and crying produces endorphins. So emotional reaction. The really good news is eating chocolates and having sex are also very good for producing endorphines. David 22:57 As I just said, I am separated from my partner in lockdown, but I do have to say I have been eating a lot of chocolate. Chris 23:09 I’ll leave that one there I think David 23:13 OK, lets move swiftly on then! Oxcytocin, the chemical of love. Chris 23:17 Is this moving on?! This is a different type of love. This is, because oxytocin is also sometimes called the cuddle hormone, as it’s produced through physical or social contact. But it does have a negative side. For example, it can explain why people mistrust outsiders. Producer Tommo 23:36 It’s worth reminding ourselves of the five parts of overall wellbeing at this point. We’re always trying to stress on this podcast that money is just a tool to bring about happiness. Focusing on money in itself will actually reduce our wellbeing. The main area of this is social relationships, It’s a key area of wellbeing. Perhaps oxytocin explains why this why this is the case? You know being engaged with the community, which is another area wellbeing has also been shown to majorly impact our wellbeing in a positive way. So from a well being standpoint, I think we quite like oxytocin very much. David 24:14 And how can we ensure then that we have strong levels of oxytocin? Chris 24:20 We measure in physical contact, the fact that it’s linked with being in a community. Having a pet, like the one that’s currently barking outside my cabin! Giving it lots of love and cuddles, that’s been shown to lower blood pressure and increase oxcytocin. David 24:33 Yeah, I got my little dog Ruby and she’s been a great comfort for me and she is, you know, sometimes she’ll climb up on my lap and sit there and that’s certainly, I can identfy with that. Producer Tommo 24:41 Shall we bring it back to finances? David 24:44 We probably should. You don’t like it when we go all cuddly do you Tommo? You don’t like the cuddly stuff. Producer Tommo 24:50 I can kid of see the theory of it, but I do like to bring you back, to the financial element of this. David 24:57 Go on then! Producer Tommo 25:01 From a financial point of view, we need to remind ourselves, what our moeny is for. I found some really interesting ideas on a website called psycology today. Which said that ther ways to increase oxcytocin, include telling people around you that you love them. And to combine dopamine and oxcytocin, achieving things with other people. So now go back to our intrinsic motivation points. We also know that helping others is a big contributor to wellbeing. So donating either money or maybe just time to something that you can get involved with. That you can see achieving something that you believe in. And it means its something to you that is going to have a significant boost to your levels of wellbeing. It’s not just the case of giving money through the feelings of guilt. I had that experience, certainly in the winter when I actually went into work. I would walk past quite a few homeless people, and it’s terrible, a terrible situation that a lot of people find themselves in. You might give them a bit of money. But thats an assuagon guilt a lot of the time, if we can actually use our money, involving other people, involving causes that we see, you know, something being achieved that can give us a real boost, in creating a shared achievement. David 26:24 That’s very well put Tommo. So that leaves us with serotonin Chris 26:28 Yeah this is a complex one. We’re not medical experts. We’re not gonna pretend we are. But it does seem clear from, from the research that amongst other functions, serotonin helps to regulate mood, anxiety and happiness. If you take drugs like ecstasy and LSD, they cause a significant rise in serotonin levels. So this is a good chance in the podcast, I’d suggest chaps, for you to share your ecstasy and LSD stories if you like. David 26:51 Well, I don’t have an ecstasy story. But I’m quite prepared to come out and say that 46 years ago, when I was a very young man, I did dabble with LSD. I think four times. The first three times, it was absolutely fantastic. I went on a journey of the mind unlike any I’ve ever gone on before when I thought this is the most liberating thing I’ve ever done. And the fourth time I took it, it was absolutely horrible. It was the archetypal bad trip. I won’t go into the details of what it was, but it was absolutely psychologically scarring and damaging. It was, I think, probably, and I’ve had some bad things happen during my time, just about the worst experience of my life. And the one thing I would say about LSD and probably about any of those hallucinogenic drugs is that, is that any number of good trips is not worth the band trip that I had. So that’s my personal experience for LSD. Chris 27:51 Thank you for sharing that. David, I think there’s a very strong message. I mean, if it was your fourth and last . . . David 27:57 Yeah, as I say, I was nine I was 19. I’m 65 now, and I’ve never been remotely tempted to take it again. Producer Tommo 28:09 So, don’t do drugs kids Producer Tommo 28:14 It’s interesting, so those drugs are designed to tap into those particular chemicals, I’m assuming, but clearly have a huge downside. So I think this really shows the importance of thinking about sensible things that you can do, that can use these chemicals that aren’t going to be a hinderence to your health. Because that’s another area of wellbeing is the physical and mental wellbeing and we cannot lose sight of that. So . . . Chris 28:41 How the things are balanced Tommo, that’s a fantastic point. Yeah. The five areas of wellbeing overall need to be balanced with each other. It’s not one over the others and having a balanced level of serotonin is important not having massive boosts of it through, through artificial drugs. There’s a chap called Simon Young writes in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, and he talks about how to increase your serotonin or keep it well balanced is sunlight, aerobic exercise, and as ever, good diet -foods high in tryptophan, tryptophan, such as chicken eggs, cheese, peanuts, pumpkin, sesame seeds and again, chocolate. David 28:51 Horah. So presumably if our levels are constant, social relationships are easier, which all round leads to increase wellbeing. Chris 29:29 Exactly and as research confirms that positive emotions and agreeableness foster continued relationships with others. David 29:39 Now it seems to have fallen to me in recent podcasts to summarize what we’ve learnt, but on this occasion, because he’s been absolutely on fire today, I think we should let Tommo have a go. Producer Tommo 29:49 Okay, so there four chemicals in our brains, which are thought to directly affect our wellbeing. Endorphins, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin. Keeping these at a good level and in balance with each other, will go a long way to improving our wellbeing. Things, particularly how this or perhaps unsurprisingly, eating well and exercising regularly. So that’s our physical wellbeing. Being involved with the community, and the community wellbeing. Sharing time with loved ones, that’s the social wellbeing. And there was also this idea around achieving something and having purpose that’s career wellbeing. So you can see that financial wellbeing, I see as the sort of hub that can help give us the structure to be able to focus on these other areas in our lives, that are obviously really going to give us an increased wellbeing, because we’re getting these chemicals into our system and on a good balance. David 30:52 Brilliant. So that’s all the things that we’ve been discussing over 66 podcasts that will no doubt, continue to discuss. But that’s all for now. A big thank you to Anthony Khow at banana tree log for all of the very, very interesting information that’s prompted this discussion. Thanks very much for joining us today. And we look forward to the pleasure of your company at some point in the future, for another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.

Episode 65 – Amy Florian on Grief, Loss & Transitions We all struggle with grief, loss and moments of transition in our lives. Grief can come from many areas, whether that be from the death of a loved one or a change in life that leads to something being left behind. Chris talks to a grief specialist Amy Florian about how we can deal with grief and be supportive to someone else dealing with loss. With another Bage’s Biases, #tightasstommo money saving tips and an update from the fast approaching IFW Conference, the guys have a longer than usual, but uplifting and informative episode for you . . . Welcomes and Introductions The Financial Wellbeing BookThe Eternal BusinessInitiative for Financial Wellbeing The first IFW Conference – 21st to 25th September 2020, click here for more details and to purchase tickets What is this podcast all about – A chat with Amy Florian, who is an expert in grief. It may sound a slightly morbid topic, but it is actually a fascinating interview.Link to Corgenius Bage’s Biases Every episode, Behavioral Finance expert Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip.– Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability– Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Framing Bias Tight Ass Tommo Featuring courgettes,how to spend money, woodpeckers and some intensive financial admin! Link to JJJ Vinyl Amy Florian Interview Why is Chicago called the Windy City? Who is Amy? What is Thanatology? Grief is a much broader subject than just death. How did Amy come to advise people on how to deal with grief? Grief takes time – often a lot more time than people realise. People can be hurtful without meaning to be when it comes to comforting the bereaved. How do we approach a conversation with someone experiencing loss? Do not talk about you, you cannot fix it, it’s not your job to cheer them up Your job is to companion them wherever they are. It’s about making it about them Link to video – It’s not about the nail Why is it bad to burst into tears? Every grieving person wants to know that their loved one’s life made a difference Grief in a wider context, it is not just when somebody has died. It occurs whenever there is a break in an attachment. Every life transition triggers grief, its a period of adjustment How do you help somebody who doesn’t want to be helped? The greatest memorial we can ever build to somebody we love who dies, is to live our lives now as fully as possible enriched by their memoryRabbi Earl Grollman How do you talk to someone when you can see what the outcome might be, but do not feel close enough to reach out? Samaritans – Call 116 123 A Friend Indeed – Amy Florian How to action Clarity and Security for those we leave behind? We should all have our affairs in order as we go along, all our lives. We know that the survivors of a loved one’s death grieve with more peace and less guilt and less second guessing, if they are not required to make medical decisions for their loved ones without knowing what their loved ones want. Clarity for those we leave behind includes, if I died tomorrow, would they know I loved them? Conclusions from the guys Click here for more information about Amy Florian and Corgenius Take a look at the Corgenius You Tube channel Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David 0:29 Hello everybody and welcome to another one in our series of Financial Wellbeing podcasts. My name is David Lloyd, actor, writer, broadcaster. Once again we are in lockdown when we are doing this so we are not altogether in a room like we normally are, we were in our separate houses, having a conversation on Zoom. And I would like to introduce to the other two people who contribute to this podcast. Firstly Chris: Chris 0:54 Hello everybody. Chris Budd, I wrote the Financial Wellbeing book. I also help companies who want to sell their businesses to an Employee Ownership Trust – or I used to! Hopefully will do again when we are out of the lockdown period. I do a lot of writing about money and happiness too. David 1:10 And Tommo: Producer Tommo 1:11 Chartered Financial Planner and Director at Ovation Finance and director at the Initiative of Financial Wellbeing. Who have a conference coming up in September, so, due to Covid and lockdown, we have moved it to a virtual conference. But because of that we are actually able to increase the program and it’s going to be across a whole week. From the 21st of September to the 25th of September. Primarily geared at financial services professionals, financial planners, advisers, coaches. To enable them to get some skills to help their clients become happier not just wealthier. But the program looks absolutely brilliant, there is tonnes in there. And with it being virtual you can dip in and out, fit it around your diary, but yeah, tonnes of content. You can find out some information on this at www.initiativeforfinancialwellbeing.org.uk and there is a link to the conference in the shownotes that also includes the schedule and you are also able to buy tickets aswell. Which I feel are an absolute billy bargin for whats on offer. So yeah, go have a look, yeah really excited. David 2:12 And it will be an opportunity for you to see the faces behind this podcast as well, because we will all be there. Right. Okay, so let’s move on now. Before we do, Chris, tell us what we’re doing in the podcast today? Chris 2:25 Today, David, we have an interview that I did with a lady named Amy Florian. And Amy is a specialist on grief. Now that might sound a slightly morbid topic but I hope you’ll agree that actually she is fascinating. And I found talking to her truly uplifting and I just got so much from it, I really did so yeah really interesting interview and chat coming up. David 2:49 I’m really looking forward to that Chris really looking forward to that very interesting subject as you say. But before we do, let’s have the first of our two regular features, I say regular the first one is a relatively new one this is only the second time that we’ve done it. Bages Biases. So every episode, behavioral finance expert Neil Bage age is going to give us his money behaviour tip. Neil’s an old friend of the podcast he did episodes 36 and 21. His company Be-IQ has just launched a new app called Beam on iTunes at the moment. You can get it on Android later in the year. And Beam will help you uncover your own behavioral biases the things that often stop us from making good decisions about money. So, lets have a listen to what bias Neil has for us this episode: Neil Bage 3:36 The second bias that we’re gonna look at today is Framing Bias. So, what is Framing Bias? Framing Bias is where we make a decision based on how information is presented to us, as opposed to the facts themselves. For example, assume we were having a conversation about retirement planning. And I said, Can you retire on 70% of your current income? Now you will listen to that question you will compute the question, and you will respond based on what you’ve heard. Now I can ask that question, the other way around. And I could say to you. Do you think you could retire on a 30% reduction of your current income? And that will more likely elicit a completely different response. Why? Well, because the second question is framed in a negative way. The first question, can you retire on 70% of your current income is framed in a positive way. And as humans we have a tendency to focus our attention on negative frames, more than we do positive frames. And like Confirmation Bias, this is all about looking deeper. When it comes to processing information that we need to process in order to reach a decision. If someone tells you that a yogurt is 80% fat free, then pause and realize that it also contains 20% fat. Chris 5:05 I think framing is used in advertising, all the time. Obviously. But it’s usually used in more subtle ways in financial services to. And I think when we’re looking at money, it’s really, really important to recognize how the message is being said to you and the last point made was brilliant. If we said, Would you like yoghurts thats got 20% fat, you know, you would process that differently so when somebody is giving you a message about money, just make sure you’re hearing the reality of the whole message. That framing is is used nefariously a lot, but it can also be used accidently a lot as well. I love that tip. David 5:42 Yeah. That’s a very good one. Well now, talking about money. One of the things that we like to help you with on this podcast is to obviously increase your financial wellbeing. Primarily that’s what this is all about but also do that sometimes by spending as little money as possible and there’s one person, our Prince of Parsimony, who is the expert on this subject is Tight Ass Tommo, the other one of our regular features. But before we come on to that, I got one for you this week, actually. In the last podcast we did, I talked about the fact that I discovered that I quite enjoyed gardening. And one of the things I’ve been doing is sowing and planting my own vegetables from seed. So instead of going out and buying, I’m starting to grow things. They are only just starting to come up now and it’s really exciting. Watching little onions, cauliflowers, green beans starting to sprout. Obviously, in the fullness of time, that means that I’m not going to be spending money on buyging vegetables. Assuming that they don’t all get eaten up by caterpillars of course! Yeah, take up gardening, grow your own veg. Chris have you got anything? Chris 6:48 I do, I’m actually going to be slightly naughty because I’m going to suggest how we can spend money to be happy. Tommo forgive me for this, but there is a record shop, I don’t know what city they’re in – Loughton in Essex, called JJJ Vinyl, you can look them up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – JJJ Vinyl is the name for each of those. They have this thing ging where, if you give them an amount of money, they’ll send you records, simple! But, it’s their tips, their suggestions for records. Chris 7:18 Im just pausing this slightly, sorry, because I just think there’s a woodpecker on my bird feeder. How exciting is that? Sorry! Producer Tommo 7:25 Yeah, great for our listeners! David 7:29 Is it a wooden bird feeder? Is it pecking it? Chris 7:33 No it’s not! It’s getting the peanuts. How exciting! A lot of wellbeing from my bird feeders by the way. Producer Tommo 7:39 I love the fact – timestamp – when this goes out we may no longer be lockdown. We are in lockdown and you can imagine, exciting, the bar that needs to be hit for that is far lower than it was previously. David 7:53 It reminds me of it reminds me of a cartoon I saw the other day, where there’s a woman sitting on the sofa with a dog looking out the window, she turns and says to the dog. You know, it’s only recently that I’ve realized why you got so excited by somebody walked past. Chris 8:10 Sorry, my sighting of the woodpecker was a little over the top! Chris 8:16 So, JJJ Vinyl. I’m sending them a tenner every two weeks, and they send me an album, a 12″ and a 7″ because I do like my vinyl. And so they just arrived today, and I’ve never heard of this before, I’ve heard of the band, but The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Visions of the Emerald Beyond David 8:36 I actually have the album, because I got it when it first came out. John McLaughlin, incredible jazz guitarist, you’re going to absolutely love, I think. Knowing your musical tastes. I think you’ll really really like that. Some of it’s a bit out there but there’s some really really good stuff. I look forward to hear your views on it. Chris 8:55 So, i’ll let you know next podcast! JJJ Vinyl, get in touch with him, if you’re into your vinyl, send them some money and based upon your own existing collection and tastes they will send you some things that they think you’ll like. It is a very exciting thing every couple of weeks. David 9:11 I know you’re spending money Chris but actually it is for your wellbeing, and actually for a tenner if you’re getting an album, a12″ and a 7″, thats a pretty good deal. Chris 9:20 I was very happy. I’m very happy. David 9:22 Tommo what have you got for us? Producer Tommo 9:26 A little admin intensive. But I think worthwhile for many listeners out there who are employed and have workplace benefits. So, certainly during lockdown. As I said, I hope, are are out of lockdown when this comes out. But a bit more time on your hands to start thinking about the various things that you’ve got going on in your financial life. But it’s worthwhile just double checking what you, what benefits you have from your employer. And this is important from several points. Firstly, it will open your eyes up that some employers are very generous with their extra benefits that they offer to the salary, etc. It just gives you far more better understanding of what your package is worth, which could be useful if you’re a little bit disgruntled. But also, it’s a reflection, sometimes on, on, you know, an employer who actually does care about their staffs overall, personal life. And what I mean by that is firstly is having a pension plan. There will be minimums that you need to contribute and minimums that your employer will contribute. But there are often opportunities to increase that what you put in, and the employer will match it. So that’s the first one, because ultimately that could be “free money” from your employer. Quite commonly now there are life insurance schemes attached to employment so know what that is and I think quite relevant having been in a pandemic that we’re all very much aware of our own mortality. So having a look at that and seeing what your employer offers, so you might not have to buy that extra life insurance that you thought you did. There is also things like income protection that is sometimes offered. Critical illness again, quite, quite important things to focus on focuses the mind when we just come out of a pandemic. But little things as well. At Ovation we offer a health cashback scheme where if somebody goes to the dentist they are able to reclaim some cash back so little things like that. And I told you that it was a little admin intensive, but add that all up, you can get some real savings going into a pension. There’s a possibility that you could save some money on on the kind of insurance that you need. And also if there’s some cash back deals offered through your employer. Great, you can make sure that you’re, you’re making the most of those. David 11:56 Good advice Tommo and one of the things you touched on there leads us quite nicely into our interview where we are talking about, now might be a time for us to contemplate our own mortality. Chris, this interview with Amy Florian. Chris 12:10 So Amy is an American lady. She’s the CEO of Corgenius. And she is an expert amd advises on grief. She’ll tell you the story of how she got into this in the first place. She combines the best of neuroscience and psychology, and has a lively sense of humour as well. Trains professionals on how to deal with clients when they’re going through a transition in life, it’s not just about death it’s about transition in life so fascinating lady I really enjoyed this chat with Amy Florian. Chris 12:42 Amy thanks so much for joining us on this podcast. Amy Florian 12:45 Your quite welcome. Chris 12:47 Tell me, I’m always interested to know, what’s your view at the moment, where are you sitting? Amy Florian 12:51 I am sitting in my office in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. In the United States Chris 12:58 Chicago, now is it Chicago that’s the Windy City, is that right? Amy Florian 13:02 That’s right. For, it’s actually for two reasons. Number one, there’s, it’s right on Lake Michigan a huge lake. And when the wind comes in off Lake Michigan it gets funneled between the skyscrapers, and you can walk around the skyscraper and almost get blown off your feet on a windy day so yes it is very windy in downtown Chicago on windy days. And the other way the reputation came is from Chicago politics a bunch of wind bags. Most people think of the Windy City is simply the, the weather phenomenon. But when it originally began I understand that it was the political situation causing it to be called the Windy City. Chris 13:49 That’s great fun. Thank you. Amy, I’m gonna give it a quick name check because I heard you do an interview on Martin Bamfords podcast, absolutely fascinating and I’ve been dying to get you on our podcast ever since. So, do you want to give us a brief introduction to yourself and in particular what Thanatology is. Amy Florian 14:15 Thanatology you had it very very close to it’s correct pronunciation, it’s really just the way it looks. Thanatos is a Greek word, and it means death. So ology means study of in the narrowest definition, it would be study of death. It’s actually broader than that, my field is death, loss, grief, aging and transition. So it’s a, it’s a broader field than just death, but grief is a broader subject than just death. So many things trigger grief, besides just death. So it really is life. Life studies. It’s a subset of psychology, most people have not heard about it. It’s a growing field. That’s what I do Chris 15:05 I appreciate a lot of your time is advising people on how to help people with grief. Will it be okay to ask you it’s an odd thing to choose to do in life. Amy Florian 15:17 It does seem an odd thing to do in fact many times when I’m out and about, you know, you get to know people in a social setting and the first thing they say is, what’s your name, where do you live, then they say what do you do I tell them what I do. The reaction can be quite interesting, because it’s unusual. And we feel that it’s awkward and frightening, because we don’t know anything about it. So that’s really what I do is to try to help it not be frightening and not be awkward and instead become life giving when you really do know what to do. But how did I get into it in the first place. I was 25 with a seven month old son. When my husband was killed in a car accident. I was living in a small town in the rural part of the state of Iowa, in the United States. There was nobody who knew what to say to a 25 year old widow with a baby boy. There were no support groups there was, it was very difficult to find the resources that I needed to get through this. I did the best I could. I kind of attacked my grief, my son didn’t have a dad he darn well better have a mom. So I went to places we used to go and went there by myself. I did things we used to do together and did the by myself. I really forced myself to face this reality and work my way through it, more or less, on my own. About five years after John died, I went to a seminar on grief and loss, that was put on by a man who’d never been widowed. When I was talking to him afterwards. He said, Oh, I need your voice would you would you do a seminar with me on grief and loss so that, so that you can contribute from your experience. When I did, then someone else wanted me, somebody else wanted me, somebody else wanted me. Then they started asking me my credentials, and I didn’t have any except my own personal experience. So I went back to graduate school. I have a master’s degree, and I’m a fellow in Thanatology which is the highest level of certification you can get in that field. I founded a support group for widowed people. I taught graduate classes at Loyola University in Chicago for almost 10 years and undergraduate classes at three other universities. I started speaking and teaching all over the country, publishing articles writing books, it just kept going and going and going and there was such a need. It’s for me it was just so gratifying to turn around and help people have what I didn’t have when john died. It was so gratifying to equip people to truly help each other and offer comfort in ways that we’re just not taught in our Western society. Chris 18:27 So there is, I can’t imagine that anybody on this planet, is more qualified to discuss this topic than you. As a way of getting into the subject, can I ask, if you were to meet yourself now at 25, what advice would you give yourself? Amy Florian 18:45 That’s an interesting question. I would first of all say, this takes time. Do what you can, but be patient with yourself, because this takes time and a lot more time than people realize. I would also say, there’s people they don’t mean to be cruel. They are very well meaning they want to bring comfort, but expect that the vast majority of the people are going to say things that are hurtful, things that are objectionable or, at best, things that are neutral, and just try to take it with a grain of salt, saying they mean well. It will save you from a lot of stress and a lot of anger. If you just realize, okay. All right, take a breath, they mean Well, thank you very much for your concern I appreciate it, and then move on. Chris 19:49 Thats a fascinating one, that people would actually be hurtful without meaning to be. Can you give an example of how that might happen? Amy Florian 19:55 I’ve worked with a number of people who have had a child die or have had a miscarriage, or stillbirth. And people will say, Oh, don’t worry, you’re young you can have another one. Even though when John died, people so many people said to me oh you’re young you can get married again Don’t worry. So that’s just one example, people say the most outrageous things in an attempt to be helpful. You know, some of them aren’t quite so blatant, but even things like, oh she’s in a better place. Well excuse me right now I can’t imagine a better place than right here beside me. Besides, which the, you’re assuming someone else’s belief about the afterlife, which at the time of the crisis, the foundations of people’s beliefs get knocked out from under them and they need to be able to put them back together themselves, it is not helpful for people to tell them what they’re supposed to believe about their faith about religion about the afterlife about their loved ones present location. That’s just not comforting it’s not helpful. Chris 21:09 Presumably some of those are things that we’ve lets be honest, I’m sure we’ve all said something like that, without realizing it, and it’s come from feeling awkward about having to say something. So you say some daft thing that comes into your head. So, lets be positive, how should one approach such a conversation? Amy Florian 21:29 The overall principle is that it is not important for you to tell them something about you. It is not important for you to fix it. You can’t. It is not your job to cheer them up. That’s, that’s not why you’re there. Your job is to companion them wherever they are. And in order to do that. What you need to do is be present. And listen, and ask good questions. Asking good questions is so much more important than telling them something about you or saying something to cheer them up. Even the standard things we’re all taught to say, like, Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss. Well, what, I don’t even know how to answer that. Chris 22:24 What do I do with that information? Amy Florian 22:26 Thank you? What am I supposed to do with the collective sympathy of 357 people who come to the services. It tells me something about you but it really doesn’t offer anything to me. Chris 22:39 So that would suggest then, that it’s about making it about them not about you isn’t it? Amy Florian 22:41 Exactly. It’s about making it about them. And it’s in two ways. There’s, there’s two ways to go with this if you’re going to say something, then offer a memory or a story about their loved one. You know, I, we are going to miss Karen so much she knew how to make people happy. She would walk into a room she’d start smiling she’d reach out to everybody. I mean, pretty soon the entire mood of the, of the room would lift because Karen was in it. We are really going to miss her ability to make people smile to make them happy to make them feel loved. Wow, we’re really gonna miss that. But tell me you knew Karen so much better than me. What is something you hope people remember about Karen? Tell me something you’d loved about her. Wow, now you’re doing something comforting. Asking, is just asking really good questions like, my favorite question; What do you wish people knew about what you’re going through right now? What do you wish people knew, they’ll tell you what they wish you knew. What do you wish people knew about what you’re going through? What do you wish people knew about what it’s like now to face the first anniversary of your mom’s death? What do you wish people knew about what it’s like to see the soccer parents, now that your child isn’t playing soccer anymore? What do you wish people knew about what it’s like to have so many people here for the services and then have everybody disappear? What do you wish people knew about what it’s like to face the fact that your child took his own life? What do you wish people knew powerful questions, they’ll tell you what they wish you knew. And it doesn’t feel intrusive because it’s not like, tell me how you feel. It’s what do you wish people knew, if you could get into their imaginations. Oh my gosh, the stories come pouring out sometimes. What do you wish people knew about what it’s like, you know, to have everybody go home? It feels lonely. It feels so isolating. I thought that my married friends were going to be with me through all of this and now it’s, it’s like I’m a threat to them, because I’m single or they don’t know what to do. I’m a third wheel I’m a fifth wheel I don’t fit into my own social circle anymore. It’s just really hard. If you invite the story they can tell you that. Chris 22:56 Are you familiar with a video called ‘It’s not about the nail’? If you just type into YouTube ‘it’s not about the nail’ and I think that will be quite revolutionary, Neil Bage, friend of the Podcast, he told me about it quite a while ago, and it’s it just perfectly summarizes about how to listen and make it about the other person, not about you. Amy Florian 25:44 Yeah. Chris 25:46 So, are you dealing with this all day every day. I find this a hard conversation, because it’s an emotional conversation. You know what you’re describing is stuff that is real and it happens. If I’m finding it hard just to have a conversation with you about this. It kind of illustrates how hard it is to have a conversation with somebody who’s currently grieving. So, how about we get to just approaching, somebody you know has had somebody die, I want to pick the phone up because I want to help them but I’m scared to, because I don’t want to burst into tears, you know, how do you approach that? Amy Florian 26:27 Why is it bad to burst into tears? That’s another problem in our Western society everybody feels, well I just have to be strong. I have to be strong and strong means you can’t cry. Well, what that means is you stuffing down the grief, you’re stuffing down the emotions. And when you stuff it down, it doesn’t go away. It stays there and it will find a way to come back out and bite you. Chris 26:51 So to answer that question, why, because it’s a very fair challenge of course, I guess it’s because that makes it feel like I am making it about me if there is somebody I know that has had a recent berevement, especially as a husband or child. I can’t empathize with that. And if I phone up say Hi, how’s your day going, and burst into tears, and that’s making the conversation about me and I don’t feel it’ll be helpful. So I guess that’s why. Amy Florian 27:17 Yes, yes. I can understand that reticence at the same time it has to be balanced with the fact that every grieving person wants to know that their loved one’s life made a difference. That someone remembers, besides them. That, that there’s a void in the world besides just in their own life. And it’s actually very comforting for people to know that other people miss them too. So if you feel that by saying, Hi, how’s it going for you today, that you’re going to burst into tears then don’t start that way Start by saying, you know, I was thinking about Karen today, and I just, I just miss her so much that I, you know, the tears are right here, I just miss her so much. But she was even closer to you and a bigger part of your life. What is your day like today? I just wanted to let you know I miss her too. And I wanted to check in and see what it’s like for you today. Maybe we can cry together? Or maybe if this isn’t a good day for you, if you don’t want to, this is an emotional day for me if that’s too much for you today then I’ll hang up, I’ll ring back tomorrow. Just really missing her today. Chris 28:38 Yeah, I can see how that would work. Amy Florian 28:41 What we need to do is be authentic with each other. If we’re having a hard day on either side of the equation. Why are we so reluctant to admit that? If someone’s having a hard day and I’m not having a hard day that’s okay. It still is helpful. In fact, sometimes for grieving people, it’s helpful to be able to help someone else. So to be in it together to say well I’m having a better day today but wow it does sound like you’re having a hard day today. Let’s, let’s maybe get together and a couple of days we can have coffee and see where we are then. Maybe I’ll be down and you’ll be up, maybe we’ll both be having an up morning, maybe we’ll both be having a down day, this, you know grief is all over the place. It’s up and down and back and forth, all the time for everybody. Chris 29:32 Let’s just just talk about grief in a wider context, because grief isn’t just when sombody has died is it? Amy Florian 29:38 No, it’s not. Grief actually occurs whenever there’s a break in an attachment. Whenever you have to leave behind, someone certainly or something, or a way of life, a job title, a dream, a function or an ability to do something, your belief in a certain institution. Whenever you have to leave behind something that you like about your life, your familiar with it, you’re attached to it and you have to go forward and learn how to live without it, that triggers grief. So yes death triggers grief. So does divorce. So does having a child born with disabilities or acquiring a disability yourself. So does being downsized. So does retirment. Yes even, even positive transitions trigger grief because we have to leave something behind. Everybody wants to throw a retirement party. Look at what they have to leave, they’re leaving behind their title and status, their prestige, their daily routine, their reason for getting out of bed in the morning, the colleagues they associated with on a daily basis. They’re leaving behind an entire way of life that has been defining for them, for years. And they have to move to something different that’s still new and unknown and uncertain and what is this going to be like? And it’s it’s a very difficult time as well as a relief and a happy time, every transaction positive and negative. Somebody has a baby, don’t you just wish you could sleep through the night just once? Don’t you wish you could go to the grocery store without carrying a minor U-Haul behind you? You just, there’s things in every transition. No matter what it is, no matter if it’s a negative transition or a positive transition, there’s things that you’re grateful for or believed about, and at the exact same time, there’s things you miss and things you long for. So, every life transition triggers grief. Chris 31:48 You talked the beginning, it’s all bout time. You said things like, you can’t fix it, you can’t cheer them up, it’s about being present and listening. Is the word that one might use to encapusulate this, it’s a period of adjustment. And is this really about just being a support for somebody, whilst they adjust. Amy Florian 32:07 Yeah, that’s an interesting way of putting it. It is definitely an adjustment. And in different cases it’s more or less of an adjustment, they have, certainly if a spouse dies. Every breath you take all through today is different, everything is different. If you’re an adult, and your parent dies, your daily life is not really affected. You could essentially try to block it out and go about your daily life and your daily life is not affected, but then you want to pick up the phone and call her dad. And there’s no answer on the other side or you know there’s not going to be. And it’s different types of adjustments in each type of loss, but definitely yes, supporting and being there while they let go of what has to be let go of, while at the same time that they’re building something new that didn’t exist before. And as long as that takes and as much, as much time and effort is involved to be able to support and be there for them. During that process is really crucial. Chris 33:23 How do you help somebody who doesn’t want to be helped? Amy Florian 33:27 Yeah. You can’t. You can’t control another person. You can offer, you can provide resources, you can do everything possible, but you can’t make them do it. There is an element of healing that is a choice. And some people consistently make the choice not to heal. I’ve worked sometimes with people, with a, I’m thinking of a particular widow right now, who sort of built her identity around being a poor little widow. That’s how she got attention. That’s how she got empathy, that’s how she was able to go on with her life, is to get everybody to pay attention to her, to give her things, because she is a poor widow, and she couldn’t let go of that. Other times, it’s more like people are afraid to let go of the pain. Because the pain is their closest connection to the person who died, and they’re afraid if they let go of the pain, then they’re really letting go of that person or they’re being disloyal to that person by going on, and finding joy, and being happy and living again, that somehow that’s disloyal to the person who died. It’s, I love, Rabbi Earl Grollman said that “the greatest memorial we can ever build to somebody we love who dies, is to live our lives now as fully as possible enriched by their memory”. I love that. It means you take the best of who they were, of who you became because they loved you. To have their impact in your life, their gifts. You take the best of them and then you bring it with you into the future, to allow you to live in their memory, fully and joyfully and putting all the pieces back together again. I love that. Chris 35:27 A lot of our listeners are advisors, and we don’t always have the mandate to speak to somebody who’s grieving, and yet we also have a mandate to be helping them, whether its financial advisors or any other type. How do you help somebody, who doesn’t want to be helped? When you know what the end might be. Amy Florian 35:56 In a professional capacity as a financial advisor, you talk to people about their finances, but in order to do that, well, you have to talk to them about their lives, what their goals are, what they want to do with their money, you have to get into their personal lives in order to manage their money well. Chris 36:18 Of course, but if they don’t want to have that conversation with you. Amy Florian 36:24 If they don’t want to have that conversation with you as a professional, as a financial professional? Chris 36:31 I’m just using that as an example. It could be that it’s a particularly close friend, it could be somebody you know in the tennis club. There’s also situations where you’re not in the inner circle of somebody. And you know, as I say, in this particular example, the end result was tragic. When you know that that could be the end result, how do you, how would you help somebody to grieve, in a positive way than what the outcome might be? Or can’t you? Amy Florian 37:00 If you are in a position to or, or are close enough to reach out to that person, and just say this is really tough isn’t it? Where are you finding your support? What are the hardest things for you, what are what is easier than you thought, what has surprised you about this? Just to open up the channel that they can talk about things with you. If they totally shut it down. Then they totally shut it down, you can’t reach through a closed door. You can open as many doors as possible. If they close the doors, unfortunately we, we are not in control of other people and sometimes we have to let go of thinking that we are, because we aren’t. What we can do is everything possible, we can reach out, we can ask those questions. We can even, there are there are a number of hotlines that people can call if they’re feeling suicidal. If we have a little laminated wallet size card with hotlines on it and just say, you know sometimes people in a situation like yours, feel that they really need to talk to somebody, they don’t know who to talk to, they don’t want to go to family and friends. But they’d like to be able to talk to somebody objective who doesn’t have the baggage of family. And who might be able to help them a little bit. If you ever find yourself in that situation and you just stick this in your wallet or throw it on your coffee table. Maybe you’ll need it someday, maybe somebody in your family will, maybe a friend could find it useful. I just give these to everybody that I know who’s going through anything tough in their life, because it just provides a resource that people can have. If you don’t want it, throw it in the garbage, but here, somebody else who you know might want it. Chris 39:05 Yeah, you take the heat out of the conversation in a way. Amy Florian 39:06 Yeah. In those situations you want to be able to ask questions and open the door. And you want to be able to offer resources without making it seem too directed at them only, or too intrusive. Just say I give this to everybody. This is what I find with a lot of people I work with, you know, I’ve known others who’ve been in situations similar to yours, it’s not exact, I don’t know what you’re going through. But sometimes what I find is this. Chris 39:06 That’s actually a really nice way of using your professional capacity, isn’t it? Amy Florian 39:06 Yeah it is. Chris 39:46 To your advantage, where you’re able to say actually I’ve seen this happened before. Yeah. Okay. That’s. Thank you. Amy Florian 39:57 I recommend the book that I wrote about grief. It’s titled, A Friend In Deed, help those who love when they grieve. Because of that, because instead of saying to somebody, you know, here’s a good book about your grief I think you could use this. To say to somebody, you’re not the only one who’s grieving here you know your your parents are grieving, your kids are grieving, your family’s grieving, your friends are grieving, your, your place of worship is grieving. So many people are grieving. Here’s a book that has some good information about grief that might help you be able to support each other a little bit better, maybe help you get through this with a little less pain, a little more understanding, a little more compassion. So, here, take the book. Just take it home. Give it to anybody you think might be able to use it or just keep it someplace at your house, somebody might want to pick it up and just read a chapter, whatever. Whoever it’s helpful for. I give this out all the time. Here you go. Because it’s not intrusive. Chris So one last question if I may Amy, I could talk about this for ages so fascinating but. Clarity and security for those we leave behind is one of five parts of financial wellbeing. Let’s just have a little talk about money and particularly people who have perhaps a life ending illness. Or people maybe dealing with the immediate aftermath. But I am particularly thinking of people who have a life ending illness about getting their affairs in order. Have you seen anything you could recommend, good ideas or tips about that area. Amy Florian Absolutely. Actually, it becomes more imperative when you get that diagnosis. All of this is things we should be doing all along. Because you don’t always get the diagnosis. You may get the car accident, you might get the sudden heart attack. You might get a diagnosis and two days later, you die, you might not have time to get your affairs in order, we’ve all ought to have our affairs in order all our lives. Families, after a loved one dies I’ve seen them spend months, searching under mattresses, through drawers, in file cabinets, trying to put things together. I’ve seen cases where people have not visited their beneficiaries, in years. Then they die unexpectedly, and their beneficiaries are all wrong. Recently, a young 36 year old mother, wife and mother, died in a scuba diving accident very unexpected. Her life insurance still listed her parents as the beneficiary, not her husband, not her daughter. There’s so many things that we need to get in ahead of time. Having a last will and testament, having insurance. Insurance is not about you dying, it’s about your family living. It’s about if you died last night what would your family be worried about today? Would they be worried whether they could keep the house they just bought, would they be worried whether the kids or the grandkids could go to college? Life insurance is a way to help your family live whether you’re there in person to do it or not. And not just financial things healthcare things too. We know that the survivors of a loved one’s death grieve with more peace and less guilt and less second guessing, if they are not required to make medical decisions for their loved ones without knowing what their loved ones want. When they know what their loved ones want, that takes away the family fights. Mom would want to be hooked up to that machine, no she never wanted to be hooked up to a machine now how do you know. What do you want, what do you want for your medical treatment? What do you want your life to look like? Do you want some doctor in the ER who never met you to make your decisions or do you want to have them written down ahead of time? We also need to live as if we could die tonight, because we could. So when’s the last time you said I love you to the people that you love? Where’s the balance in your life, when’s, how, how much time do you spend yelling out or complaining to or complaining to someone else about the people you love versus the amount of time you say thank you? I am so proud, I am so happy to be your daughter, your wife, your sister, your friend. Thank you for the gift you are to my life. I appreciate you. I love you. Where’s the balance? We need to be keeping that in mind all the time. When we’re angry with somebody what is it worth? Is it something that’s worth sticking your stake in the sand and being angry and holding a grudge about, or is it something that in the big picture really isn’t that important and maybe you can just let it go? Living so that if we die tonight we have as few regrets as possible. If we die tonight the people we love know we’d love them. If we die tonight we know we have lived well. And we’ve made a difference. That’s, that’s the real underlying message that I wish people would get across, love the people you love and love them fiercely, live as fully as you can, every day that you have makes the world a better place. Chris I’ve never thought of it before that way, that clarity for those we leave behind includes, if I died tomorrow, would they know I loved them? I’ve never thought of that clarity in that way so that’s absolutely fantastic. Amy I can listen to you for weeks. It was so fascinating I really, really do appreciate you coming to talk to us. We will be doing lots of show notes lots of information about your, your work in your books, etc. And I would recommend anybody go and have a look at your website corgenius.com. I’ve just been reading when grief becomes depression, so many great tips and ideas on there for people. But I guess if there was one thing that I would take away from this, it’s engage, don’t avoid. Would that be a reasonable summation of your message? Amy Florian Engage don’t avoid, support the present. Chris Amy thank you so much for your time. Amy Florian You’re welcome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. David That was absolutely brilliant. Now Chris, I don’t often compliment you because you get to swollen headed, but I just thought that was a really sensitive interview really really well done for that. And I could tell, obviously, it affected you quite deeply as well, and it affected me perhaps in a different way. And I’ve been fairly open about the fact that my wife died, seven years ago, seven years. And a lot of the things that Amy talks about I’ve experienced them myself. You know that thing of nothing will ever take away the memory of somebody who you love dying in your arms. The grief of that is palpable and real. However, the way which you deal with it, and most importantly, the way in which people around you help you deal with it, is absolutely vital. And a lot of the things that she talked about there were things that in the early years after Dinah’s death, you know, I experienced as well. And I think the thing that I took away from that most is when she says, What do you wish people knew? You know, it’s a great question. I think the way in which she frames that question. I’ve also recently actually just, Chris this is somebody you will know as well, mourned the death of a very close friend. And it is how you deal with that. When I was talking to her husband about it, it was very close friend of mine, was able to pass on some of my feelings. The thing that I was able to say to him was not, Oh, you must really miss her, I was able to say, you know what, I really really miss her. I really miss her. And, you know, you must miss her too. And it’s just a different way of framing it and so I thought that was great, really, really interesting stuff to say that. Chris Yeah, so I thought you, David, would find that quite effecting yourself. The line that, well one of the many lines that I liked was, every grieving person wants to know that their loved ones made a difference. And that’s completely changed how I would speak to somebody who’s greiveing. Completely changed it. Just to share a story with them, to suggest an anecdote. Remember when… Someone is sharing that grief and then sharing it obviously is easing the load one hopes. Did you find David things that particularly worked or particularly didnt work? David I think I think certainly the sharing is really important, it’s that it’s, it’s, you know, when people are tiptoeing around, you know, when people don’t want to say that it might upset him. Listen, if you’re wife’s died, you’re going to be upset. And clearly you’re going to have feelings about it. So I think the important thing for me was when people were just honest. And if they said yeah I’m upset, you know, you must be upset too. Yeah, we could sometimes have a cry together. And I think that was great what Amy said, you know, I am I’m prone to tears anyway. But it’s a time when I’m feeling sad about things, particularly the death of a loved one. If you need to have a cry, have a cry. And if you need to have a cry with somebody else, have a cry with somebody else, but also remember the good times as well, because a lot of the things and this applies. Particularly as well to the friend I just lost, at the funeral and at the wake as I did with my wife when she died. We spent a lot of time laughing and remembering the good times we had together. And I think another thing that Amy said we should live our lives as fully as possible enriched by the memory of that person. And not to get bogged down by it, some people really never get over the death of a loved one or a parent of a sibling. And who am I to say that they shouldn’t always carry that sadness with them. But I think after a while that’s not good. So, you need to crack on with your life and also the other crucial thing, and this goes back to what Tight Ass Tommo was saying earlier, let’s plan for our death, make sure you, as Amy said, make sure we’ve all got a will. Make sure we’ve got the appropriate, life insurance. Because in the end, when that person is dead, you’re the person, you and your family and your siblings or whoever it might be are the people who are going to have to deal with that. So, the biggest gift I think that we can all give to those who are going to mourn us when were gone is to make sure that we plan for it as best as we can. Producer Tommo Yeah, I think that is a lovely link. Grieving is hard enough without having to worry about finances. David Yeah I have, sorry to inturpt, I have in the light of this recent pandemic revisited my will, as well. It’s interesting to hear what Amy said. And I realized that actually, my will hadn’t been updated, you know, for years and actually I left everything to my wife, who was dead. So, you know, you need to sort of update that, it’s very easy to just let that slip by. So, I think, planning and doing the right thing very very important. I speak as a non financial person who has learnt that absolutely. Producer Tommo I think, from my point of view, this is probably more reaching out to those who are practicing advisors who listen to this podcast. The key message from it well firstly plattitudes are not particularly helpful, I think we can all slip into that because there’s a comfort zone, which it shouldnt be about us being comfortable. But it was simply, she said ask questions. And that was a big thing I took away from it and I will take into my professional life in particular is that when we do. I am confronted by by death in, in what I do for a living. Unfortunately. And we want to be there to support those who are left behind and just ignore the platitudes, ask questions and sharing those experiences. I felt it really, that listenening to that interview, I found really helpful and I will take that onboard. David Just one thing as well, I remember somebody saying to me. Not long after Dinah died. It was well meant. And they said, well, don’t worry because she will be an angel in heaven now. And I wanted to punch them in the face. Because because anybody that knew Dianah would have known that she would not have subscribed to that principle of heaven and hell the angels, all of that. Also I knew that the person that said that was not even themselves, a religious person. And it was, it was the glibbest most platitudinous that anybody could have said, but they said it for the right reasons because they didn’t know what else to say. So I think that is spot on Tom, avoid platitudes, speak from the heart. Because people could cope with that ,speak from the heart. Chris I know this has been a very long podcast. I just want to finish with one thought because there’s also the fact that grief doesn’t just come from death grief, grief comes from change. I think Amy’s line was – positive transitions trigger grief. And that could be retirement, not being properly prepared for retirement, for example, having something else to do, can be a huge wrench for people. And the world is going through an almighty change in the moment and we are all suffering, a little bit of grief at the changes we see around us. So I think it’s important to respect that grief and to help each other, by asking each other. How are you feeling today, which is a key question. Producer Tommo Questions, it comes back to those questions and I think the point about retirement, it’s very important one. I will just finish on the personal experiences as we are in a sharing mood. I didn’t realize it at the time. But I realized that when, and I love him to bits, but when my son Toby was born. And I’d gone through that first real struggle as a parent. I was grieving for my former life. Not that I was unhappy with my life that that, I had, it’s what we wanted and are very fortunate. But I agree for the freedom of being an adult without children, and it didn’t dawn on me that actually it was just the transition I was getting used to. And it was really helpful to know that that was quite normal. And just came from speaking to other people in similar position. So, yeah, very, very insightful from from from that interview. That’s great. David Indeed. Well, listen, I hope you at home are taking something from that podcast. I think we all found it very profound, very interesting, and I hope you’ll join us again at some point in the not too distant future for another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.

Episode 64 – The Financial Wellbeing Junkie The guys are back and may have found the secret meaning of life in this episode! They take a look at two key theories of wellbeing – Set Point Happiness and the Hedonic Treadmill – what really makes us happy and can we increase our wellbeing? There is the classic #TightAssTommo and the NEW Bages’ Biases, for a great episode well worth your time. (scroll to the very bottom of this post to listen to the episode) Welcomes & Introductions Click on this link for more information on the IFW Born out of a lot of the work that we’ve been doing on this podcast around Financial Wellbeing and the conference that we put on last year, and we got a huge amount of interest from people within the financial services world, and they wanted to get involved in Financial Wellbeing. Follow David on Twitter – @Dave_Backwell for #lockdownlibations What is this podcast episode all about? The Hedonic TreadmillSet Point theory of Happiness Could we have found the secret meaning of life? BRAND NEW FEATURE Bages BiasesEvery episode, Behavioral Finance expert Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip. – Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability – Link to BeIQ | Beam App This episode – Confirmation Bias TightAssTommo Featuring Spring Onions, Loo Roll and the real power behind the podcast “Hi guys” – Editor Tammy Today’s Topic – the Financial Wellbeing Junkie The guys reflect on their lockdown online spending sprees! Click on this link for more information about NextGen Planners Two theroies for Financial Wellbeing: Set Point TheoryWe reach adult life with a level of happiness that is static for the rest of our lives. It is unlikely to change. Link to Episode 39 – Theories of Happiness Hedonic TreadmillIf something reduces our wellbeing, we deviate away from our set pint – so we do something to give us a short term burst of wellbeing. From Chris’ retail therapy he came up with the expression ‘Financial Wellbeing Junkie’ – a short term fix for wellbeing. The new normal and the signinficant effect of lockdown on our wellbeing Everybody’s had to make some adjustments Research into life changing events and the effects on happiness If something has happened to significantly reduce our wellbeing. We indulge in reckless habits and in the search of wellbeing to try and bring us back to our Set Point Is it actually possible to deviate from our set level of happiness? Catastrophic events can reduce our wellbeingincreases in our wellbeing are more etheral Maybe our current level of well being is right for us? Complications in life have been removed temporarily due to world events – with distractions removed has wellbeing increased? No choice but to focus on the things that really make you happy. The importance of Time What might increase to our longtime well being? Or at least give longer lasting wellbeing, giving us greater protection against the things that knock us off our Set Point? Acceptance is important The importance of maintaining meaningful engagement with the world around you in later life, whether this is through social creative or physical activity, work or belonging to some form of community group.Age Concern Financial Wellbeing is one of five parts of wellbeing: Career WellbeingSocial WellbeingFinancial WellbeingPhysical WellbeingCommunity Wellbeing Financial Wellbeing, itself is really all about how you use your money to support and increase the other areas. Conclusions from the guys – It’s not so much about how we spend our money, but how we spend our time. The Financial Wellbeing Podcast This is what a good financial planner can do and Ovation Finance can help you. Ovation get to know you and find out your motives – so your money can help you spend time to maximise your wellbeing. Click here for more information. Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners? If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – contact@financialwell-being.co.uk If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop Transcribe of the Podcast Script: (scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode) David 0:57 Welcome everybody to another one in our lockdown additions of the Financial Wellbeing Podcast. My name is David Lloyd, I’m at home in my, in my home office, and I am involved at the moment in a Zoom conversation with my two esteemed colleagues who would like to introduce themselves to you now. Chris 1:16 Tommo – after you mate. Producer Tommo 1:18 Oh wow. Oh wow, we usually have a bit of a battle over this. Yes. Tom Morris Chartered Financial Planner and director at Ovation Finance. Chris 1:30 So I’m Chris Budd, I wrote the Financial Wellbeing book. I’m also chairman of the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing. And am chairman of Ovation. I’ve got a few things actually, yeah, so there you go. And I’m currently standing in my cabin in the garden which is where I’ve been for few years actually, I mean, not just in the cabin obviously I am allowed out every once in a while. So if you hear little noise in the background, it’s the rain pattering on the roof because it does get a bit noisy when it rains hard in here. Producer Tommo 1:54 With a desire to add to my back catalogue. As Chris has mentioned it. I’m also on the executive board of the IFW, so just needed to put that in there because I’m always conscious of re-listening to these, how many interests, you two have got. David 2:10 What is the IFW? Producer Tommo 2:12 Good, I’m glad you got I’m glad you got that cue. The IFW is the Initiative of Financial Wellbeing, which is an organization that was very much born out of a lot of the work that we’ve been doing on this podcast around Financial Wellbeing and the conference that we put on last year, and we got a huge amount of interest from people within the financial services world, and they wanted to get involved and it’s manifested from there and we are how many members strong now Chris? Chris 2:44 160, I think it is, individual members. We’ve got lots of partner members or sponsors as they’re also known. So if there’s anybody working for a company that thinks ‘do you know what financial well being we would quite like to get involved in that’ then get in touch with us, because we are looking for partner member companies to help support our work. David 3:02 Brilliant. And before we go on with the main body of the podcast today. As I said in the introduction, we still at the moment that this is being recorded still in lockdown we’re still confined largely to our homes, just want to briefly ask the two of you, how are you coping with all? T ommo your at home, you’ve got a toddler and another one on the way, how are you dealing with all of that? Producer Tommo 3:21 I do that’s hot off the press isn’t it? I, my, my darling wife Lindsay is expecting our second. So that’s all very exciting. And, yeah, I am doing far better than I was, a few weeks back actually. It’s just routine, getting used to the new way of doing things and it’s I find it’s amazing how human beings can get used to a new norm in a fairly short space of time. I have my moments but I’m, yeah, it’s gonna be strange actually going outside again now I think. David 3:52 Chris, what about yourself? Chris 3:53 Well that phrase “the new normal” is gonna come up again later tonight so I’m glad you used that. I’m al right. Yeah, I think, I think it’s fair to say that I am watching a lot of films in the evenings, Im quite enjoying that. Getting to watch some stuff with my son who’s really into his films, so we watched Pale Rider last night, Clint Eastwood, and I have watched a few interesting films recently. So yeah it’s okay, it’s okay. I wouldn’t want this to last forever David but we’re doing all right. David 4:18 Yeah I find going back to something Tommo said I think routine, I’m finding that really really helpful. I just finished watching actually, with my 16 year old nephew who’s in lockdown with me, the entire series of Game of Thrones. Which we’ve watched two a night for the past five weeks, and I really enjoyed. I’ve seen it before he hadn’t, so we’ve really enjoyed that. So we’re gonna have to break new ground tonight, watch something else. But I think those routines really help as well I’ve had a little, little hash tag going on Twitter called #lockdownlibation – where I feature a different drink, every night, and I’m enjoying that I mean it just started off with me you know with a photograph of a glass of cider and it’s kind of just grown into me now trying to come up with something, perhaps witty, never anything that profound. Anyway, Chris 5:02 I think it’s worth saying actually David, you’re a good follow on Twitter so @dave_backwell. I’ve enjoyed your libations as well. I have to say, you know, it’s not that difficult to find a picture of you with a pint of cider is it, lets be honest? David 5:16 It’s true. All right, thank you for that little plug. Okay, so let’s let’s crack on with today’s podcast, what are we talking about today, Chris? Chris 5:25 Well today David we’re going to talk about a concept called the ‘Hedonic Treadmill’ and Spot Theory of Happiness,’ and when I was doing the research and writing some of the stuff for this, I thought I found the secret of life! The secret of the meaning of life. It’s not 42, after all, it’s all to do with the Hedonic Treadmill so anyway well that’s what we’re going to talk about. David 5:47 Okay. Well, Now, I look forward to that very much. indeed, I’ve never come across the word hedonic before but no doubt you’ll tell us more of that. Before that we have a couple of features that we need to bring to you. So I’m very excited to announce that we’ve got a brand new feature on the podcast – Bages’ Biases. Now every episode, Behavioral Finance expert Neil Bage is going to be giving us his money behavioral tip. He’s been on the podcast before in Episode 36 and 21. But his company BeIQ has just launched a new app called Beam. Now it’s currently only available on iTunes, but it’s coming to Android devices later in the year I’m told. And Beam will help you to uncover your own behavioral biases, the things that often stop us from making good decisions about money. So let’s have a listen to what bias Neil has for us in this episode. Neil Bage 6:38 Today we start with Confirmation Bias. So, what is Confirmation Bias. Confirmation Bias sees us searching for, or interpreting information that is consistent with our existing opinions or beliefs, whilst at the same time, ignoring any evidence that could prove that we’re wrong. It’s a very powerful Behavioral Bias and is what psychologists call the mother of all Behavioral Biases. Let me give you an example, assume you hold the view, the opinion, that people who have blue eyes are more intelligent than those who don’t have blue eyes. You want to prove your point. So you go online and you search for are blue eyed people the most intelligent? I’ve done this, and the first response up is from a well known British newspaper, we’ve carried out the research of looking into this and have concluded in inverted commas, that A; a series of very bright historical characters had blue eyes, Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie for example, and B; blue eyed people are more studious and outperform brown eyed individuals in exams. Well, that’s all fine and dandy right but it blatantly leaves out some crucial information, such as examples of historically brilliant people weren’t blue eyed, or how people with different eye colors perform in exams. In seeking evidence for my hypothesis, this goes a long way to confirming my beliefs, I could just stop there and tell people that I have evidence that supports my view. Now, what happens if instead you search for eye color and intelligence. Well, this gives us a completely different set of results, much more grounded, much more fact based, but it also gives me access to evidence on all eye colour, and IQ scores, so I can see information that will help me reach a conclusion. Now, I can continue to search for fact based evidence and update my mental model of the world, or I keep searching for information that only confirms my view. And at the same time, ignore any of the evidence that proves that my hypothesis is wrong. Therefore, a great tip for this bias is not to accept your view or opinion as fact. And if you’re looking for information to support your view, start by looking at evidence that doesn’t support your view, see the other side of the story first, and it may just help you keep your Confirmation Bias at bay. David 9:26 Interesting stuff there. Good to hear from Neil again. It goes back to the assertion by my follower on Twitter yesterday that Boris Johnson the best Prime Minister we ever had, it just goes to show that just because you believe Brexit was a good thing, doesn’t necessarily follow that the man who brought it to us, is the best Prime Minister, capable of doing the job. So very interesting point now from Neil I thought. Producer Tommo 9:48 I would imagine there’s a little bit of Confirmation Bias going on with you aswell Dave? David 9:55 Possibly Producer Tommo 9:55 I’m gonna give you an example. I’m acutely aware of some of this stuff as you would hope, David as your financial planner! And you’re going to get introduced to the Beam app, and what we’re using it ovation is the back office system for that so we can really get some terrific insight into our clients behaviors and talk about that with them so watch this space on that one we’re gonna have an exciting meeting next time we see each other. David 10:22 Looking forward to it. Producer Tommo 10:23 But actually I had this experience myself. So, I’m, a man who likes a spreadsheet. I’m a man who likes data, and I have been tracking the COVID-19 death figures. It sounds terribly morbid, but just trying to get some sense of what the patterns all mean. For me, it was an odd sense of control at least knowing what was going on. And I noticed that it was definitely an outlier that is Germany in Western Europe anyway. And I allowed my suspicions, which are completely unfounded at this point, I think there’s something going on with that numbers. I have no proof of that. So, but I could see it triggering in my mind, hang on a second you’re making assumptions based on no facts at all. So I sent a simple Twitter message out there and just said look could somebody explaine to me how Germany have got the same amount of cases that are positive as the UK but have far fewer death rates numbers. And I got back, some really informed opinions and decision based on quite a lot of good evidence that enabled me to have the counter arguments to my initial grounding and belief. I just completely switched my view on it, I think that we haven’t got the evidence yet to be quite frank, but it just pulled me away from just searching for information that suited my initial thoughts. Does that make sense. David 11:48 Yes it does. No, absolutely. And I think we look forward very much to hearing more of Neil’s Biases in future episodes. Now is the time to move on though to another one of our features which has proved incredibly popular in all the podcasts that we’ve done. When we get our champion of cheapness TightAssTommo to come up with another one of his great money saving ideas. Before he does Chris have you’ve got anything for us today? Unknown Speaker 12:14 I do David. It’s a work in progress, but I saw a Tweet from somebody talking about how to regrow spring onions. Now I do love a good spring onion. You know when you chop the end off with all the little roots on it. The idea is that you put that into some water. The roots regrow and then you can then plant it in your garden, and you can get new spring onions. And I assume you can just keep doing this round and round forever and never have to buy a spring and you’re never again. David 12:42 So I am growing spring onions at the moment so when when I harvest the first one I will do exactly that. Chris 12:49 I’ve got a little ball in the kitchen with with 10 ends of spring onions currently in it with some water. So we’ll see whether it works or not. David 12:59 Brilliant. Okay, Tommo, what have you got for us? Producer Tommo 13:01 Today, I’ve got a silly practical one for you, and it was actually shared with me by Tammy, the real producer behind this podcast. . . Chris 13:11 Hi Tammy! Producer Tommo 13:12 As the editor would definitely be listening to this. And it was quite a funny one and seems. . . Can you remember when toilet paper was you know more. . . Well, it seems to be available again, but I can remember it was, it was more expensive than gold at one point. And ironically, one loo roll was more expensive in a barrel of oil, you know at some point during this. . . Chris 13:38 Bit worried, is this going to be an alternative to toilet roll I’m really worried where this is going! Producer Tommo 13:44 No, just a bit of context, when we listen back to this in a years time on how how crazy these times have been that loo roll was the currency of choice! But it did make me laugh because the advice was all around making it go a little bit further, and that was to squash the loo roll, before you put it on the loo roll holder, so that when you pulled it to use it. You didn’t actually pull more than you need it because it wasn’t a perfect circle. So, you know, perfect for children who don’t really get the concept of, you know, making sure it lasts, and a lot of adults too. See as I was a terrific tip David 14:23 Brilliant, brilliant, so Tommo says, wipe your bum with oil. Right. So, Chris, enough of this levity, why don’t you introduce our subject for today. Chris 14:36 Okay, so I want to talk about a boxset of Fellini films that I recently bought. But you may remember David that little Twitter chat about, David 14:46 We did indeed yes you were, you were looking for recommendations between Fellini or Truffaut and I recommended Fellini mainly based on the fact I haven’t seen any Truffaut films. Chris 14:56 Confirmation Bias at work! David 14:59 How are you finding them? Chris 15:01 Oh, I really enjoyed it. I’ve watched two so far, I’ve really enjoyed them. But the thing is, when they arrived, I completely forgotten that I bought them, it took me by surprise. I’ve only a few days, and yet I forgotten that I had ordered a boxset of the Fellini films which was a crazy thing to do really and it made me just reflect upon my amazon shopping, and I’d been doing a bit of an online buying spree. So, at about the same time I was doing a bit of research on theories of happiness for a NextGen thing, which is if you’re if your financial advisor hopefully will know NextGen, they do a morning commute, and I’ve been doing a daily tip. So, I kind of came up with this phrase the Financial Wellbeing Junkie. So I’d like to explain what I mean by this which gives me the chance to go through some Financial Wellbeing theory, starting off with how much more I’ve buying online. David 15:48 Well yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of that as well. You can’t get out to the shops apart for buying food. So I’ve been buying all sorts of things. I had some bamboo canes turn up the other day that I’d forgotten that I’d orderd. Support for my French beans. Producer Tommo 16:03 I, it’s fair to say we’re getting a few parcels arrived. I’m not ordering them because I’m TightAssTommo. However, Lindsay is is ordering quite a few, and she says it’s the thing that keeps her going because she’s got something to look forward to each day. I I’m like wow, times are bleak when you’ve got locked down with a toddler. But yeah similar, similar things happening this end. Chris 16:26 Okay, so listen this is, this is the theory right, this is this is, follow me with this logic. First of all I need to tell you about two bits of theory for Financial Wellbeing. The first is Set Point Theory, now we have looked at set point theory before back in Podcast 39. Basically the idea of Set Point Theory is that we reach adult life with a level of happiness which is then static for the rest of our lives. They reckon it’s between 50% to 80% determined by genetics and the rest is from our childhood. And that when we reach adult life then that level of wellbeing, stays the same for the rest of our lives, it’s unlikely to change greatly. And there’s lots of studies and research I could describe to you the backs that up. So what happens as we go through life is there’s something called the Hedonic Treadmill. Fantastic expression. The Hedonic Treadmill is a way of saying that, when we deviate away from that Set Point of wellbeing, maybe, something happens that reduces our wellbeing – we do something to give us a short term burst of wellbeing, that takes us back up to our Set Point level. So, when we are put off our stride, if you like, like a lockdown, you go and you do things to give yourself wellbeing to bring you back up to your set level. So, like for example, you go online and you buy stuff to get a bit of short term retail therapy, the short term fixes of wellbeing. Which is why I came up with this expression, bit tongue in cheek, a bit of fun the Financial Wellbeing Junkie, because I realized when that Fellini boxset that landed on my doormat, I’d become a Financial Wellbeing Junkie. Buying things to get short term fixes of wellbeing, to bring me back to my set level. Tommo you mentioned earlier on, about this phrase, the new normal. Producer Tommo 18:13 Yeah, I wonder whether that’s fitting into what you’re saying, you know we were looking for these short term fixes. You know as we try and adjust to this new normal, you know, lockdown has a significant effect on our wellbeing. There is no doubt about that. And I think there’s an element of us just trying to get back to where we were before. Chris 18:35 Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true. I’ve been speaking to a lot of people that always say to us, as David did at the start of this ‘How are you feeling at the moment?’ Nobody is saying, ‘I’m brilliant!’ Everybody’s had to make some adjustments. And actually that’s what we do, we make two different changes, we might adjust to the new normal. Or we get short term fixes of well being to keep us up to that level. Let me give you another example – there’s a really interesting, very famous, bit of research where they took two groups of people who’d had massive life changing events. One of them were lottery winners. Like a significant lottery winner. And the other one were people who had an accident, which led to loss of limb. And they asked these people were you happy before this life changing event. And were you happy after the life changing event. So what do you think guys what was the conclusion from that survey? David 19:53 Well I think they do say money cannot buy you happiness so, I wouldn’t assume that people would necessarily be any happier because they had the money. Okay, Tommo? Producer Tommo 20:04 I know the answer. Chris 20:07 So the answer is, whatever they said, from either group before the event was the same after the event. So if somebody was happy before they won the lottery, or had that loss of limb they were happy afterwards. And if they were unhappy before they were unhappy. In other words, the life changing event didn’t actually affect their long term level of wellbeing. So, this has a really interesting application in clinical psychology. If someone is depressed, then it could be because they’re a long way from their Set Point, and as a clinical psychologist can help trace the events or points of change that led to the move from the Set Point, they can help the patient recover from the depressive spell. And it also explains why, if something has happened to significantly reduce our wellbeing. We indulge in reckless habits and in the search of wellbeing to try and bring us back to our Set Point, such as playing a Fellini boxset! David 20:58 So understand the theory we have a set level of wellbeing and our actions and experiences only have a finite effect before we return back to that level. I also get the point that the way we spend money tends to have only short term effect. But that does leave a couple of key questions I think. how can we spend money in ways that will have a longer term impact on our Set Point of wellbeing? And is it actually possible to deviate from our set level of happiness? Unknown Speaker 21:25 I think, I think this is the heart of what the, the podcast has been all about and will be all about. It’s the interesting question so let’s, let’s look at the second one first. Is it possible to increase our long term level of wellbeing? Well there are some things that are accepted will affect long term wellbeing, can be pretty catastrophic, such as the death of a child. The sorts of things that might increase our Set Point are much more etheral things like mindfulness and acceptance. Producer Tommo 21:52 Well, maybe our current level of well being is right for us. Maybe if we didn’t spend so much time trying to be happier and accepting what we have, wouldn’t that in itself just make us happier? You know I’m thinking right now, if you’re quite naturally grumpy, and you’re thinking you’re likely to have a higher point of happiness or well being, actually, that you’re happy being grumpy? Chris 22:15 Are you speaking from personal experience there Tommo? David 22:18 Only happy when you’re miserable? Chris 22:21 I found during lockdown, some of the complications of my life has been removed. Organizing social events which I do a lot of, promoting the Employee Ownership Trust the Eternal Business Consultancy, a lot of that is stopped. So, I’ve been, or at least reduced temporarily so I’ve been able to focus on the things that make me happy. My stress has been removed and I actually think my wellbeing has increased up a little bit, perhaps, never to my set level, because some of the distractions have been removed. Producer Tommo 22:50 Yeah, I can, if you’ve got no choice but to focus on the things that really make you happy and maybe that’s, yeah falls into why we’re maybe trying to also catch that. Maybe there’s an element, some people lose their purpose during this period, those that are on furlough. David 23:07 Yeah, I’m not doing any writing, well I’m doing bits of writing for myself, my TV writing has stopped. But I think one thing I’ve discovered that I am really enjoying, not today as it’s absolutely hosing it down with rain, is I’ve discovered that I like gardening. But one of my Confirmation Biases, if you like, is why I don’t like gardening, I’m no good at gardening. I think the truth was I never, I never really had time for it. I never made time, I was busy doing other things. But the things with which I occupied my time which follow my work, and also heavily involved in cricket which is another thing which isn’t happening this time again. I’ve now actually got more time, and because my gardener isn’t calling either, I thought I need to get to grips with this massive garden I’ve got. And actually, I’ve been spending some really enjoyable time out there. And I realized that it wasn’t the fact that didn’t like gardening, it was the fact that I didn’t have time to do it properly. Producer Tommo 23:59 That’s interesting – time. Time. I think we talked about this in a previous podcast, time is so important to us because we can fill it with the things that we really enjoy doing and then maybe from what you’re saying, Chris about you’re actually focusing on the things that make you happy and David you’re able to focus on the things that make you now you have the time. My comment about your current level of wellbeing being right for you or just accepting it maybe isn’t true if if there is an opportunity to just go and search to see if there are other things that we can explore. I don’t know? David 24:35 I think that’s very true. And I think the one thing that most of us do have plenty of at the moment is time. Time that we’re not used to having and it’s, I guess how we use that. But I’d come back to the other question, if I may, Chris. What might increase to our longtime well being, or at least give longer lasting wellbeing? So giving us greater protection against the things that knock us off our Set Point. Unknown Speaker 24:58 I think I would answer that, firstly by just saying, have you ever seen an unhappy Buddhist? You know, Tommo’s point about acceptance I think is really, really important. And this this lockdown time is for some of us is giving us a chance to say well what’s actually important get rid of the noise and accept our level of wellbeing. And stopping the fight, if you like, the rat race. I know there’s a lot in that. Age Concerned did an interesting survey recently about wellbeing in the over 60s. The key sentence from that report, which surveyed some 15,000 people, was the following – The importance of maintaining meaningful engagement with the world around you in later life, whether this is through social creative or physical activity, work or belonging to some form of community group. Producer Tommo 25:47 That’s, I mean that rings true. A big part of where Financial Wellbeing comes from is, it is just one of five parts of wellbeing. And actually, it can help support these other areas of wellbeing that are arguably more important. Think of community wellbeing, we’ve talked about that in previous podcasts. Social wellbeing, it all comes out in that, in that sentence right there. And I think, focusing on that not just our finances is incredibly important. But if we can, if we can get our finances to be secure enough to support those areas I mean great, imagine that combination. Unknown Speaker 26:26 So that age concern report cites engagement in creative and cultural activities as being a major part of contributing to overall wellbeing so Financial Wellbeing, itself is really all about how you use your money to increase the other areas of cultural, creative, community, social etc. So if we want to have one thing to do a lockdown time – that’s what we should be doing using this time to make sure we work on the other areas of our wellbeing and direct our money in that direction as well. David 26:58 So in some ways we may perhaps have been looking in the wrong place when we were running our more active ‘helter skelter’ lives it’s perhaps not so much about how we spend our money, but how we spend our time. Chris 27:10 David, you have a brilliant way of summarizing these things. I could have just ask you to say that at the beginning, and we could have saved everybody that time. David 27:23 It’s been a it’s been a varied conversation today, which I’ve really really enjoyed. And I hope at home that you have to, and that you’ll join us again very soon for another one of our Financial Wellbeing Podcasts.