0:00 We often think that to reach financial freedom, you need to earn more. Earning money doesn't actually make you better with money. It's about how you manage what you make. >> What does the top 1% understand about money that most of us don't? >> The single easiest way to get rich long-term is by >> Hey everyone, welcome back to on purpose. Today I'm sitting down with Nisha Sha, former investment banker and accountant who left the traditional path to help millions rethink money, success and freedom. Nisha breaks down how to stop letting money anxiety run your life. Nisha is a dear friend and I love welcoming friends to on purpose. Please welcome Nisha Sha. Nisha, it's great to have you here. >> Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
0:45 >> I want to talk to you about this transition you went through. We know a lot of the same people. For me, going to a good university, getting a good job was like the pinnacle. You did that. >> You achieved that. Why would you leave behind a great job with a great salary? >> There's so much more to life than following the traditional path where you get a job, qualify, keep going, climbing up the corporate ladder. And there was a point in my life where I felt like I had to really look inwards and ask myself, what am I actually doing? For a good part of it, I was really enjoying the banking lifestyle. There was glitz and glam to it. There was the business trips. There was the status. And for a while, I convinced myself that this is what I want. This is the life I I want to live. And then as I went on, I felt
1:31 like there was a massive disconnect between what I wanted to do and what I was doing. And I felt as I kept going, that misalignment kept getting louder and louder and louder. I had to go through quite a dark phase to understand that this isn't what I wanted. And it was at that point where I had to look inwards and ask myself the difficult questions like am I living a life that I actually want or one that everyone else expects me to live? >> Am I buying things that I want to buy for myself or what I want to show other people that I have? The question that really really changed everything for me was would I still be happy if I was living the same life in five years or 10 years time as I am today. The fear of that was so much greater than the fear of anything that I had to do. And it
2:17 gave me the confidence to say no, I'm walking away. I'm walking away from this job. I'm walking away from this lifestyle. I'm walking from this identity because there's so much more out there for me. And I had a bigger why that overtook anything that that moment had in store for me. I feel like there's probably a lot of people listening right now who are thinking the exact same thing. They've got the traditional degree that they were expected to do. They've got the job. Maybe they're 5 years in, 10 years in, and they're thinking, "I'm not in the right place." But you've got all this sunk cost bias, this idea that I spent all those years studying for that. All my friends thought this is what I was going to do. Maybe I've even got a partner. Maybe I've got children. This isn't the right time to rock the boat. Like talk to me about the bias that we have of I've invested so much time and money into
3:02 this. Everyone in my life understands this. How could I possibly dream about doing anything different? I mean, it's the hardest thing to do living life cuz what everyone else has told you to do? But if you don't have the courage to write your own story, someone else will always write it for you. And I think what most people think of as bravery or courage or doing something new and leaving behind what you've created is actually just having a financial cushion in place and having the safety to be able to walk away from situations you might not like or environments that you might not enjoy. But we put a lot of pressure on ourselves today that we have to do all or nothing. We've got to quit our job and follow our passion. So for someone in that situation or that position, I would say a get your financial cushion in place cuz that
3:49 gives you more peace of mind and sanity than anything else that you could possibly think of. And the second thing I would say is that when I was in banking, there was a lot of comfort that came from having a salary which let me have a lot of tiny experiments on the side. So it was my evenings, my weekends that I just spent triing and testing and doing loads and loads of different things. And when you do it that way, you actually look at your job and think, "Oh, I'm so grateful that I've got this salary coming in that lets me do all these things on the side without thinking, oh, I've just got to somehow figure out a way to pay my bills and it makes everything just a lot less enjoyable." >> I fully agree with you. I that was the same path for me. I was working my day job and then doing this on the evenings and weekends, i.e. at the time making videos. And I don't think I would have
4:34 been as creative if I had been financially crippled. Now, I wasn't making that much money, but I was making enough to pay my bills and take care of things. And I was having to edit my videos because I couldn't afford to outsource it to someone. I was having a friend do me a favor by shooting my videos because I could afford one. But the idea was I wasn't creatively starved because I wasn't scared that every video had to make money. And I think people put themselves into these positions where you take this big leap and now the dream has to pay the bills. Absolutely. And now the dream doesn't feel like a dream anymore. It feels like pressure. >> Absolutely. It turns into a chore when you don't have that money coming in. And so I always like to think of different things that you're doing that serve different purposes. And sometimes your job just serves a purpose of paying your
5:20 financial life and then a passion project can be the purpose of your creativity or whatever without like you said feeling like oh how am I going to or going into survival mode. >> Is there a good way to calculate what a financial cushion should be for someone? Typically, you'd recommend 3 to six months of your living expenses. So, you calculate what it costs to for your basic living expenses in a month, and you times it by three if you're feeling a bit comfortable with a lower cushion or six if you're if you want to be a bit more safe. I went all the way for the 9 months because I'm super super calculative. But it really comes down to what what makes you feel comfortable? What makes you feel like you can walk away from this and be like, I I've got a good financial runway ahead of me. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's smart. That makes a lot of sense. What was the cost? What were the things that were sacrificed in switching away from the life you thought
6:07 you'd lead? >> I'd say the biggest thing that I sacrificed at that moment in time was this identity that I'd built around myself. And when you don't spend time to look inwards, you find a way to have external noises define who you are and what you do. And without knowing for the good part of 9 years, which is how long my banking career was, my identity was around what I did for a living, knowing that when I walk into this other path, all of that is going to be stripped away from me. All of what I thought defined my worth had to vanish. So you find a way to get that fulfillment and that
6:52 validation from within you or you find something that is so much bigger than what has defined you up until that moment in time. >> That's such a great point because that is the biggest thing you're giving up is what you've defined your identity to be. >> I didn't get to the point where it was complete like breaking point, but I did see that the ladder that I was climbing was leaning up against the wrong wall. And that's when I thought okay I could either keep walking but it's it's just not a situation I want to be. So in that sense it was yeah it was great that it wasn't complete breaking point but it was very n >> I really wanted to understand that and I wanted our audience to really understand because I do think that the majority of people are in that position and I love this few takeaways that we've already had which is you don't have to quit your job. You can build something on the side. You don't have to go all or
7:38 nothing >> and it is okay. You do deserve to ask the question, do I want more? Do I want to be more aligned? Do I deserve a better life? Can I leave this behind? Like, I think sometimes people don't feel worthy to ask that question. They feel like they don't deserve it. >> Talk to me about the biggest money mistakes people make in their 20ies. >> Avoiding looking at their finances. That is the number one thing that sets people back. It's very easy to do to just ignore it and because it makes you feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes looking at your finances. I mean, there's a psychological bias called the ostrich effect where we actively avoid information that makes us feel uncomfortable in the hope that if you ignore it, it sometimes disappears and it's what reason why you don't check
8:23 your bank account after a weekend of spending. Don't check your credit card statement because you're scared of the damage and what it will do. But in your 20s, you are creating the habits that will either over time compound for you or compound against you. The stakes aren't that high. So, you want to be able to learn and learn the small habits early. Look at your finances, small all the small gaps that happening and solve them or improve them before it compounds against you. >> Why do people avoid looking at their bank account? because it almost shows them sometimes what their priorities are and what their what their focus is >> and that might be completely out of alignment of what their core values actually are and they might impulse purchase or they might buy things that
9:09 they didn't actually think of at the time and then looking at it and seeing actually these are all the things that I've bought but all of the things I wanted to do for myself for my future self have taken the back seat. So I think that's a big part of it. >> Yeah. I even I saw this study years ago which talked about how money has changed. So for example before when you paid for something you took cash out of your personal wallet and gave it to someone. So you actually had to count how many dollars, how many cents, how many pounds wherever you live, right? And you had to count and you'd be like, "Oh my gosh, this is a lot of money. It's a $100, it's $50, whatever it is." Then we had cards. And so now you can't see money anymore. And so it's so much easier to tap your card and put your card into a machine than it is to actually count the dollars. And now you
9:55 just do an online transaction. So you don't have to give anything. You literally just type in a code or press buy and you click or whatever it may be. And the next thing you know it's already there. And so spending money has become so much more easier. And so I get why people are scared because it's like you've gone from having to count to having to give to having to click. >> Absolutely. >> And now you don't even have to think about it. >> Yeah. You can literally buy a car from your phone at 2:00 a.m. in the morning and not speak to anyone in the process. And so it requires effort. It's friction. And so the uncomfortable thing to do is create friction between you and a purchase. But that's that's the hard thing. That's it's hard to wait 48 hours before you make an impulse purchase and then decide if you actually want that thing or not. >> Yeah. >> It's hard to say no to an Instagram ad that pops up multiple times and decide
10:41 you don't want to buy that thing. This is the hard hard things to do that more more it's more important now than ever like you said because everything is so frictionless. >> And would you argue that is it a willpower issue or do you believe if we looked at our finances we'd make better decisions automatically? >> I definitely think it's a combination of both. One of it comes down to willpower and being able to say no to things at the time. The world at the moment it's built in a way to take your money for you to spend. That's how the economy runs. So, a lot of it is requires you to have the willpower. But a good way to stop that is actually looking at your finances, spending 20 minutes at the end of the month, looking through what you spent and saying, "Okay, do these purchases line up with what I wanted? Do they bring me happiness? Do they actually improve my life in any way, shape, or form?" And then deciding, do
11:27 you want to continue that habit in the next month and the next month or are you going to start making some changes? If someone listens to this podcast and they go, "Okay, Nisha, I'm going to start looking at my finances for 20 minutes at the end of the month. Is that the right time to do it?" What is the plan? Talk to me through a really simple 20-minute plan of what someone should look at when they're checking their finances. >> I would say there's probably two types of people >> and some one type is they absolutely do not want to look at their finances. The idea of budgeting or looking at the numbers just makes their skin crawl. They've tried to romanticize it. They tried to do it with a a glass of wine. they tried to do with their girlfriends and it just hasn't worked for them. I would actually recommend taking a step back, zooming out and thinking about what's the objective of looking at your finances. Why do you want to budget or look at your finances? And the main objective is so that you save a portion
12:14 every single month. I would recommend if you fall into this bracket, the back of a napkin approach, take your take-home pay minus an amount that you want to save every single month. Start with whatever you feel comfortable with. Whether it's $50, we're in the States, $50, $100, whatever it is, that's your saving. Put that away. Don't touch that. The rest you could spend. Important thing to do here is with that amount, as soon as your money comes in on payday, set up an automatic transfer, so it's out of the amount, out of your bank account into a separate bank account that you cannot even touch. If you hate numbers, if you hate looking at your finances, if you don't want to look at your bank statement, do that. And then as the months go on, you can try and tweak that saving amount. If you are someone who's like, you know what, I want to look at my bank statements. I want to look at my numbers. I want to I want to understand this a bit better. Then I would recommend a less
13:01 restrictive way of looking at your finances that makes you feel like taking control is a way to say yes rather than saying no to buying stuff. And so I would recommend if you fall into the bucket where you're like, okay, I want to optimize my finances. looking at your take-home pay. Once again, this is the number on your pay slip, not on your job description, and splitting that take-home pay into three buckets. These are three numbers that everyone should know. The first would be your fundamentals. These are your must haves in life. The things that you need for day-to-day living, mortgage or rent, groceries, car payments. That's your first bucket. The second bucket is your fun bucket. So, these are leisure, travel manicure pedicure spa massages, all of that falls into the fund bucket. And then the final bucket is the future you bucket. So this is
13:48 anything for you tomorrow. Savings, investments, uh even extra debt payments. When it comes to your spending, allocate a percentage of your spending to each of those three buckets. One that I recommend is around 65% for your fundamentals, 25% for your fund, and then 10% for your future U. So that's what you want to look at when you look at your bank statements. The first thing is, are you saving enough? That's the first category. And then you want to look for patterns in your other spending. What am I consistently spending on? Uh what can I cut out? And if you're looking at your items line item by line item, ask yourself three questions. Do I need it? If I do need it, can I live with less of it? Or can I get the same thing for cheaper? >> Say those three again. >> Do I need it? Can I live with less of
14:34 it? Or can I get the same thing for cheaper? >> Those are great questions. That's that perfect break between about to click and buy and actually creating some space in your mind. Yeah. >> Because as soon as you say those three, I'm like, >> yeah, it makes you question whether you want to buy that thing or not. >> Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love your breakdown because one of my favorite quotes is from Warren Buffett where he said, "Don't save what is left after spending. Spend what is left after saving." >> I love it. >> And that's exactly what you've just shared with us, which is you have to put aside your saving first. And I think most of us just spend and then see what we have left at the end of the month and then put it away. And of course that never grows up. I think one of the biggest things Nisha is when it comes to finances and I know I was like this honestly I used to feel like you had to
15:21 wait for a big payday to make money and save money and invest money and until you got that it didn't really matter. >> Like you're not really going to do you're not really going to save that much and little amounts. What are they going to do anyway? What are the micro habits that actually make us rich? Because I think we think it's these big things that happen like getting a promotion, somehow selling an amazing company or like you know all these things that you see online that you think are going to make you rich. But what are actually the micro habits that make people rich? A couple of weeks ago I was at in a hotel lobby and this lady came up to me. She was super sweet. She said, "I watch your videos and I've been wanting to invest, but I need to know a little bit more. I have I just need to learn more about it. And as we got spoke speaking, I realized that she knew what
16:07 she wanted to invest in. She was following the recommendations that everyone says online, the S&P 500. She knew how much she wanted to invest. She even had the an investment app downloaded on her phone and she hadn't turned that knowledge into action yet for whatever reason. And we were standing there, we were both waiting for our taxis. And so I just said, "Okay, why don't why don't you just do it right now? Why don't you just invest right now? You know what you want. you know what you want to do, we could do it together. So she did it. She got her phone out. She she bought what she wanted to buy and within 3 minutes she had invested and it was like this thing that she built up in her head for so long. This analysis paralysis, this fear, it just collapsed the moment she actually took action. And that is one of the micro habits that actually put people so far ahead. Taking what you've
16:53 learned and turning it into action cuz so often we just learn for the sake of learning and we don't actually do anything with it. So that is one of the main things. Every time you learn something new about personal finance, action it that day and then refine it as you're going. It might not be the thing that works for you, but it might. But as long as you keep moving and keep implementing your own life, that's what makes someone who's sitting in the back seat and doing nothing from someone who's actually taking the driver's seat and carving the way for their life. And another habit I would say is they create goals but have concrete plans to follow up with those goals. So how often do we say I want to save more or I want to invest more >> all the time >> or I I want to reach financial freedom. Right? We say all the time. But one of the habits that people could get into the mindset of is following that up with
17:41 a really really concrete step. So instead of saying I want to save more, it'll be I want to save 5,000 over the next 12 months. That's just over 400 a month. And to do that I'm going to do X Y Z. I'm going to cut my subscription stack. I'm going to negotiate this bill and I'm going to automate my savings. That's a completely different situation now. >> Absolutely. Yeah. That's huge. >> Huge. You've now got a clear goal and a path to get there. The people who are good with money and not good with money or bad with money, it's not about different goals. It's just the follow through plan of those goals. >> Celebrate your unique story with Pandora jewelry crafted with meaning and exquisite artistry. I've learned that the most meaningful gifts aren't just beautiful, they carry a memory. When I think about gifting jewelry, I think
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19:13 chance to be love. Let Pandora Jewelry remind you that love starts with you. Shop in store or online at pandora.net. You're right. We do throw out these goals all the time like I wish I had more money. I want to save up for this D. But you haven't really broken down what it looks like. And like you said, it could be as simple as the automat automatic savings, cutting your subscriptions. Talk to me about how much does having a coffee every day, >> Yeah. actually negatively impact your bank account. >> If you're really really really feeling like you're living paycheck to paycheck and you actually have cut everything out except for coffee, then maybe you want to look at the coffee bill. But actually, it's a lot more about alignment when it comes to spending and
19:59 intentional spending. Because what you want to do is you want to look at the things that bring you joy or bring you happiness and then deciding for yourself whether that's worth keeping or worth cutting out on. So, I wouldn't say, "Oh, take out those coffees and instead invest that money." is just looking looking at every single decision or every single pound or dollar that comes into your life and asking yourself or what do I want the purpose of this pound or dollar to be cuz if you don't define its purpose it will end up defining yours. >> So just be more conscious and more intentional with how you're spending rather than cutting things because that's what everyone else online is telling you to do. >> What happens to someone who says I'm going to save up one month 3 months for a bag? How do we improve our willpower towards the expensive things that make
20:45 us happy? >> Yeah. >> So for someone who's like, I do want that pair of shoes. I do want that bag. I do whatever it may be for anyone. You can afford it, but can you really like is it really creating a better life for you? Are you more financially safe? How do you control your willpower when it feels so addictive? It's a lot easier to spend on things when you know that the future you is being taken care of. >> And when you know that, okay, the first thing I'm doing is saving a portion and that money is compounding for the future me. You feel a lot more happier to spend on whatever it is in that moment in time that will make you happy. And I do encourage everyone to have a look at their life, their goals, and decide, is this bringing me closer towards my life goals or taking me further away from
21:30 them? Do you need a six-figure salary to achieve financial freedom? >> This is such a common misconception. We often think that to be better with money, to reach financial freedom, you need to earn more. Whilst that is great, earning money doesn't actually make you better with money. And it's not actually about how much you make, it's about how you manage what you make. So someone on 100,000 who is spending 100,000 is actually worse off than someone who's on 50,000 and saving 10% of it. So if you want to reach financial freedom, you got to be saving and investing a portion every single month. And then really what the market rewards is time and consistency. So even small contributions today, leaving it for the future, leaving it for 10, 20 years massively compound over time. And it's such an
22:15 unfair advantage that people don't make the most of. um using the money that you have right now and using leverage to let it multiply in a way that doesn't require you to keep working and trading your time for money. >> Yeah, I love what you said about the habits because it feels like that's what it really comes down to where just because you earn more money doesn't mean you're better with money. And I think that's what happens is that you can go from making 50k and even if you went to make 250k, if you are used to spending everything you had at 50, you do the same. And that's so fascinating that we ultimately just sort these habits out early. It feels like and it's hard, right? Because I feel like money mindset's built from families. It's built through trauma. It's built through our relationship with
23:02 money over the years. Like it's not easy. Like I grew up in a house where we always had just enough. >> And so I grew up with zero in my bank balance often growing up. And I started working when I was 14. I delivered newspapers. is I then worked at Morrison's which is a grocery store in the area. I then worked in retail. Like I I basically worked every year since I was 14 years old. But even when I was working, I was paying for my phone bill and I remember paying for my car insurance and all the rest of it. I would end up with zero in my bank balance a lot because that's what I was always trained to have. >> And so it took me years of like changing my relationship with money to actually understand what to do with it. And it was almost like an emotional relationship more than even a it was definitely a tactical practical relationship but there was also an
23:47 emotional relationship I needed to work on. Do do you touch on that in your work? >> Yeah, I do. And you know what? It's so much easy no matter where you are in your financial journey. It is actually so much easier to feel behind financially than it is to feel ahead financially. And a big part of that is because we compare how we're doing not based on how much we have, but how much we have compared to those around us. And there's research on this. There's research that shows that two people could earn the exact same income and report different levels of satisfaction purely based on whether the people around them are earning more than them or less than them. So you could be on 50,000 and you would feel and could feel happy about your finances if everyone around you is earning 45,000 or feel
24:33 less happy about it if everyone around you is earning 55,000. >> That's wild. Yeah. >> We measure our success based on we're humans. We're social creatures. We measure our success based on what's happening around us. And previously this wasn't such a bad thing when our social circle didn't extend beyond our local town or our local neighborhood. You could be a baller blissfully unaware of the bigger fish down the road, right? But now with the internet, it exposes us to everyone and the most successful outliers, the most successful anom anomalies are there for everyone to see. So yeah, it's really it's the emotions are a big part of my work. But I want people to understand that there are things that drive their emotions that are outside of their control and to always remember like the checkpoints that matter and come back to the finance
25:18 part of it to understand if you're doing better or um you're doing okay financially. Yeah, I'm really glad you raised that too because I also think that it shows a kind of flaw in human training in that you'd hope that if everyone around you was making more than you, you could study them and learn from them and also grow. >> But we just end up envying them or being jealous or being upset at ourselves. Even if we're not jealous or envious of of others, we kind of become harsh on ourselves. Oh, you should be doing better and you're behind and everyone's ahead of you. And it's almost like if we could learn to study people instead of envy them, criticize them, or >> be upset at ourselves, >> then it would be healthy to be around people who are doing better than us. Because we also always hear the famous quote of you're the average of the five
26:04 people you spend the most time with. >> If if you're trying to grow your finances, and I'm not telling people to change their friends, but if you're trying to grow a certain area of your life, you will have to be around people who are excelling in that area. >> Absolutely. And it it just knowing or people excelling in that area. Sometimes you are at a certain level of your finances and you don't realize what's possible because everyone around you is also at that same area or same stage. And I remember the moment when I heard uh someone earning X amount uh per month. That's when it clicked for me that I thought oh that's actually possible. And then when you get there then you hear someone else say oh this is how much I earn per month. And you it just changes your view on what normality is. And yeah, like it's not about like you said, it's not about changing your circle to try and find friends that make
26:49 more money, but just understanding that this is the things that are possible and none of that is out of your reach. None of it is like you could do whatever you set your mind to and surround yourself with. >> What what does the top 1% understand about money that most of us don't? >> There's the 1% of financial success and then there's the 1% of financial happiness. >> And they're two different things. Financial success is society's definition of happiness. Financial happiness is your intrinsic definition of happiness. And the people who are in the 1% of financial happiness, they get a really really clear on what they want out of life, what a good life means for them. And going back to my banking experience, this is a lot easier said than done because if you don't take your time to look inwards, then you're just
27:35 going to follow what is outlined for you and the path ahead of you. So that's the first thing that people do who are in the 1% financial happiness. And the second thing is they understand that every money decision they make, every pound or dollar that they spend is either working for them to get closer towards that level of happiness or further away from that. And that's the thing. If you if you don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it, you're going to be spending money carelessly not realizing if it's bringing you closer to your life goals. But you can't have number two without having number one. You've got to get clear on your why first and then spend in alignment with that why. I love that redefinition. I think that's so important because I think social media's also made us more focused on the top 1% and here's the billionaire list and here's the millionaire list and and the reality is that living an aligned life
28:21 and living a life based on your values and what you care about is far more within your reach and grasp and is going to make you happier. And I love that reframe from financial success to financial happiness because I think that's what we're all actually looking for. And it comes back to your same point of just it's not just about making more. It's about knowing what you're doing with what you have and then allowing that to expand. And I I'm so glad that you're kind of pushing that conversation out there as as a money expert because I think it's easy to get excitable and just talk about like how to make like $100 million or a million dollars or 10 million or whatever. And it's like well a there may that may be a long road. And you know this comes back to all the get-rich quick schemes. It comes back to like people promising you
29:06 you can make a million dollars in a week like all that kind. What's your take on passive income? Is it even possible? >> There is no such thing as pass completely passive income. There are different forms of income, but none of them are completely 100% passive without requiring a lot of upfront work. So, >> so glad you said it. >> It's just not. And the most passive way of actually making money with the least amount of work is investing. It is the easiest to get into, the easiest to understand and you can make extraordinary amount of wealth through small amounts of income. So passive income in the way that it's marketed online or through what we see on the internet, it's take it with a pinch of salt and understand who's saying it, why
29:53 they're saying it. And nothing is passive without a lot of work. The easiest way and the single easiest way to get rich long term is by investing in the stock market. >> Yeah. And that's and I feel like that's again if you were exposed to that as a kid. Yeah. And you knew about it then you know otherwise it feels like this wild wild west like it feels so scary and you're like how do I know what that means? Like where where do people start to give them a 60-cond masterclass on investing? Where do people start? >> So we believe that to start investing we need to pick individual stocks. We need to find the next Tesla, the next Nvidia, the next Amazon. But the truth is that could work but it's very very hard to do and it requires a lot of time and a lot of energy to do it even semi-safely and you could still get it wrong even experts get it wrong actually an example
30:38 of this a great example of this is in the 2008 Leman brothers just before the financial crisis just before they collapsed which triggered the entire financial global crisis analysts at one of the largest investment banks in the world gave Lehman a buy rating a buy a couple of months later it collaped aped. These are some of the smartest people in finance and they have access to information to data. They have experience that most of us don't have and they still got it catastrophically wrong. That's to say it is very very hard to do. It's almost impossible to consistently get it right if they can't get it right. It's very hard for normal people with less information, less time to be able to do it consistently and reliably. So the way that I recommend for people to start when it comes to investing is through index funds. Index funds is just instead of buying
31:24 individual companies, you're buying tens if not thousands of companies all at once. So for instance, an S&P 500, it's 500 of the largest companies. You're buying a small slice of 500 of the largest companies, Coca-Cola, Amazon, Tesla, Johnson and Johnson, all in one go. And is the safest and most reliable way to build long-term wealth. Even Buffett, he Warren Buffett, he's he's instructed for 90% of his wife's inheritance to go towards lowcost diversified funds. For the majority of people, that is the way to go. Once you have that foundation set up, once you've got that set up, then sure, you could have your fund money and play around with some stocks that you might think are high growth, but you can't do that without having a solid foundation in place. It's just not worth that level of
32:10 risk that comes with individual stock picking. And is that money that you're planning on leaving there for like a decade, two decades? Like this is money you're not touching. And how much do you need to get started? >> Yeah. So I recommend not investing anything that you're going to need in the next 5 years because historically the stock market has averaged 8 to 10% over the long run. That's the average annual return of the stock market. But that is over the long run. If you look at any given year the stock market could go up 30%, it could be down 40%. So if you need that money in the next five years, say you're saving for a home, you're saving for a car payment, you're saving for your kids' education, if you need that in the next five years, you don't want to put it in the stock market because the last thing you want is to save money and then need it in the next couple of years. And actually, at that time, the stock market is at a dip and
32:56 you have to pull out at a loss. You want to avoid that. So any money that you want to invest, you want to make sure you don't need that money in the next 5 years, and you want to keep it there for 10 years, 20 years. The longer you keep it, therefore, the closer you get to the average stock market returns. >> Yeah, great advice. >> You could start with a dollar. You could start with the price of a loaf of bread. The hurdles that we had to invest back in the day just don't exist anymore. You could do it within a second on your phone with as little as a dollar. >> You just brought this up. Should people even plan on buying a home? >> You do not want to look at a home as an investment opportunity. There was a time when I thought buying a home was a really, really good decision. And when I bought my home, I thought that was a great financial decision and it gave me a lot of comfort and peace of mind knowing that no matter what happened, I
33:42 will always have this roof over my head. That psychological comfort, it's hard to put a number on. Now I rent and that gives me a huge amount of psychological comfort because knowing that I could pick up and leave if an opportunity comes up, that I'm not tied to a certain place, that gives me a lot of freedom. So there's two ways to look about the buyer rent situation. First is actually when it comes to your home, it is a psychological part of it that plays a big big role. And then the second part then comes the numbers. You want to figure out okay does it make sense to be for me to be putting this money towards buying a home? Also taking into account the cost that most people forget which is stamp duty, buying all the furnishing, legal fees, surveyor fees, all of that comes into maintenance. Yeah. Or does it make sense for me to
34:28 rent and invest that difference? So those are the ways you want to look about the buy and the rent situation. It's not a what we used to think which was just buying is the way to go and if you're paying someone if you're paying rent you're just paying someone else's mortgage. There's so much more that comes into the emotions and the psychology of making something like a house purchase which is one of the biggest purchases you're going to make in your entire life. >> A few decades ago it felt like that's what you had to do. Why has it suddenly become a debate over the last 5 to 10 years? Maybe >> a decade ago, even for our pre for our parents generation, it was a lot easier to get onto the property ladder. And if you compare the way house prices have gone up since then, the way >> insane >> everything has gone up since then. And compare that to wages, it's not the same anymore. And for the majority of people,
35:15 it's not as easy to do as it was for previous generations. And actually with the way the stock market is going, it might make a lot more sense saving that money, but you have to be disciplined enough to save the money that you would have otherwise put in towards a mortgage or the difference between a rent and a mortgage and saving that money and then putting towards the stock market. So it's a very very different economy that we're in. And whilst having or buying a home, if you if that's your goal, that's a great goal to have, but I don't think it's the be all and end all if you don't get onto the property ladder. other ways to make a lot of wealth that doesn't require you to buy a home. >> I think you've acknowledged something really important there. Like the reality is it feels like the cost of everything is going up. Like the cost of fuel, the cost of rent, the cost of a mortgage, the cost of living, like everything's on
36:02 the rise. No wonder everyone's stressed. Like everyone is so stressed. And so no wonder we're getting more scared or insecure about our finances and we don't want to look at them because everything's just fear-based, right? So it's like the cost of living is going up, the cost of raising kids is going up. Uh you're not getting paid more necessarily to catch up with that rate. Exactly. >> So then of course we're like what do I do? And I can empathize and I understand that it just leads to this like uh freeze, right? It's like that fight or flight and we're just like we're we're kind of stuck in freeze cuz we're like well nothing I do makes a difference. If someone wants to completely transform their finances in the next 6 months, what's the plan? There's a specific order of steps that I'd recommend people take and especially the first bit. I think a lot of that fear comes from the
36:49 first thing which is not having an emergency cushion in place. So saving your expenses. The first one that I recommend or the first step that I recommend anyone saving is $2,000. And Vanguard research shows that just by saving that $2,000 that increases your financial well-being by up to 21%. >> Wow. >> From saving $2,000. And then if you up that amount to 3 to 6 months, that's a further 13% on financial well-being. We don't realize the extent of having that cushion has to not operate from a place of scarcity. >> Just 2,000 to start. >> Just 2,000 to start. Yeah. After that, you want to make sure that your high interest debt has been paid off. And by high interest, I mean anything above 8%. This is credit card debt. This is consumer debt. And I say 8% because
37:35 historically the average stock market return has been 8 to 10%. So if you have debt that is more than 8% you're actually worse off financially by keeping that debt than by paying it off. So that's the first thing that you want to do. And then for interest or for debt that is less than 8% again this is where the mathematically smart choice is to invest instead of paying off the debt below 8%. But again, we're not robots. We're not AI. We're humans with emotions. And one of my we have a a WhatsApp chat with some of the girls I've known for like 13 years. And in that in that WhatsApp chat, we talk about our investments and what we've been investing, giving each other ideas. And one of the girls, she has invested far a far little amount. She's just
38:20 dipped her toes into it. But she spent her whole time paying off her student loan and has nearly paid off her mortgage. For her, sure, the mathematically right choice would have been to invest her money. And we look at finances in terms of optimizing revenue, expected value, expected rate of return. But peace of mind has value, too. >> Yeah. >> And if you've got debt, that keeps you up at night and that stresses you out and that adds to the way you're feeling, then who's to say that you should be investing first? >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> You want to be doing the things and making sure that your finances set up in a way that helps you sleep at night. And then once you're comfortable on that debt position, then you want to start investing and going on towards your long-term wealth journey. But that's what I recommend. >> I love that plan. That's such a great plan. It feels so achievable in the
39:05 beginning. >> It gives you a step-by-step process because I think sometimes people are debating, do I save money first or do I pay for my debt first? And you're like, well, actually, you'll feel much better if you just have that cushion. >> That's important. You need that. Next thing, start paying off that debt. And now once you've done that, now further down the line, we can start thinking about investing and everything else. And I think you're so right that often we do it the opposite way. We think, oh, if I invest first and hopefully one of these things will make me a bit of money. Obviously, it doesn't or it takes 5 to 10 years or even longer. >> And so the fear doesn't go away. The insecurity doesn't go away and now you're not saving right either. So, I really like that reframe because I'm really hoping everyone who's listening and watching right now, like Nisha has just laid out an absolute masterass of what to do with your money right now if you're in that type position. And I
39:51 couldn't agree with you more. Sorting out your financial well-being and your peace first is a much stronger foundation to build from. >> Sure, people need to get better with their finances, but I want them to use their finances to build a life that's more aligned for them, more bigger, more bolder. And that comes with deciding what peace of mind means for you and then doing what works for that. >> Yeah. What are the three things we should stop wasting money on that most of us don't even realize? >> The first thing people need to stop wasting money on is anything that they think increases their value by showcasing to others what they have. >> Oh, good answer. >> I mean, it's one of the quickest ways to save money by saying, "I'm not going to buy this thing to show other people that I've got it." And actually with every purchase that you buy, ask yourself, am I buying this for me or am I buying it
40:37 because I want other people to know that I have it. So that's the first overall thing that I'd say for people to do. >> I'm remembering a purchase I made early days. Like it was just like this early days um watch that I bought that I thought everyone would notice and everyone hated it. Like people first of all, no one noticed it. >> Yeah. >> And so then I' I' I'd try and like be like, you know, like just trying to like just hope that it would Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And and then when people saw it, they just they weren't impressed by it whatsoever. >> And I was like, "Wow." Like, and that was like it wasn't even that expensive. Um, you know, even at the time it wasn't. And I was just like, "Oh, wow." Like, that did nothing for me. >> Yeah. >> Because I didn't even like it myself. I bought it cuz everyone thought it would be cool and now it's, you know, I don't even know where it is anymore. And it's like, no, like, let me buy things that I
41:23 think are cool and I know the value of. And yeah, >> I think that's the difference. If you do it, if you buy it for yourself and it makes you feel good or makes you enjoy it, then go for it. But if you're purely doing it thinking it's going to bring you happiness based on other people's expectations or opinions, don't bother. It's not. And I I made a similar mistake my first 3 months of my paycheck when I started at the first investment bank that I worked at went straight on a new car. And it was the most ridiculous purchase I could make, but I didn't have that introspection at the time to know whether this is what I wanted or if it was in line with my goals or not. >> Yeah. The second thing that people shouldn't waste their money on is upgrades. I actually believe that when you buy something for the first time, your level of happiness increases massively. But then for every marginal upgrade that you have after that, there's this diminishing law of return
42:09 where the amount that you spend in proportion just doesn't match up to the extra happiness that you get. So actually rather than spending that money on a new thing every single time, spending it on experiences or memories has a way bigger impact on your happiness and overall life satisfaction than buying spending it on the next big thing. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. The new iPhone for example, like it's going to be the same for the next four years anyway. >> Yeah. And every time you bought the upgrade, you really can barely tell the difference between the first one. >> Totally. I really appreciate that you're thinking about this advice because the quality of insight you're giving is allowing us all to reflect. It would be so easy for you to just say cancel your subscriptions, cut out the coffee, like and those are basic things that sure people can look at, but the questions
42:55 you're making us ask are actually the drivers of how and why we spend money. And I feel like that's so much more at the root of it. And the third thing I would say is actually when you're buying something understand are you buying it for the name or are you buying it for the purpose that it holds the utility of it. So are you buying a designer purse because of the designer of it or is it because you like the purse and it can actually help you carry your money around. Having that way of thinking actually can shave off a lot of the spending that you're unnecessarily doing in your dayto-day. >> Yeah, absolutely. I've had so many friends I remember who bought sunglasses or wallets that they thought look cool, but then they never wear them or use them. Yeah. >> Because they don't actually like the way it looks on their face, but you made the purchase that day, you you exchanged and now you can't give it back and all the rest of it and you you're stuck with it.
43:40 No, those those are absolutely great. And I feel like it's so true that so much of the money we spend is either things that we're unaware of or because we're doing it based on some subconscious need that we're trying to figure out. And and even if you do that, it's good to just know. So even if you're spending based on some subconscious need, it's like it's good to just be aware of it and and accept that that's what it is. What I want to do with you, Nisha, is I want to talk about saving that actually works. And so this is a little bit of a quickfire session on saving specifically because I feel like so much of your work is based on helping us save better. Okay. What habit do successful savers do? >> Hold on, hold on. But I also want to say that that you'd only save so much in
44:27 your life. >> Okay, go on. Go on. You're flipping the script. I like this. >> Yeah, you say that you and I I one thing I want people to understand and to know is that saving is only going to get you so far. You could only cut so many coupon codes. You could only find so many offers. After a while, you realize that you cannot cut your costs beyond a certain level. Whereas the other side, the earning income side, that side is infinite. And there is unlimited potential. And I actually feel like a lot of people miss the earning income side. And that has far more scope to change your finances than saving money does. We could just think about it. When you're saving, if you think about saving literally, what what is it? If you think about it more broadly, is the difference between your income and your spending. And one way to increase your saving is
45:13 sure by cutting your spending. The other way is by increasing the amount you're making. >> Mhm. The easiest way to increase your income is by creating more value. Money is just an exchange of value >> and the amount of value you can create as a byproduct money will come from that. So with that in mind, how can you increase your income? Firstly, how can you think about increasing your value? If you work in a day job, what can you do to make you more indispensable to your corporation? If you work for a company, can you take on projects that no one else wants to take on? Can you increase the revenue for your team? Can you cut the stress for your boss? What are these things that can warrant a pay
45:59 rise or a promotion? And if you're working in a place or a situation or an organization where you're almost capped with your increases in your income and you can't get pay rises or promotions um as you can in other industries, then the same still applies how can you increase your value? But you want to look for ways to do this outside of your day job. >> Mhm. >> Look at your friends, your families, your colleagues, and ask yourself, what do they need and what do I have that can solve what they need? What skills can I charge for? If you think of your saving as the difference between your earning and your spending, if over time you keep earning more, you get those pay rises, you get those promotions, and your earnings increasing, and you keep your spending somewhat the same, sure, enjoy, upgrade, if you get a a small bonus,
46:44 spend a little bit to make yourself happy. I I don't believe in the notion of just completely cutting out and just making your life consistent. But if the gap and the difference between your earning and your spending keeps increasing and getting wider and you keep banking that difference and saving it away, that is rocket fuel for your finances. >> That is going to wait make a way bigger difference than just focusing on cutting back and finding ways to save because you could only save as much as you earn, but you could always earn more. Yeah, I'm I'm glad you did that reframe and I'm glad you went there after talking about the habits for saving because like you said the habits will expand into wherever we are. But I couldn't agree with you more. I I remember in my family it was always about like making sure we saved every penny that we could and that
47:31 was really important to us. >> But what I found was that the amount of time dedicated to saving. So, for example, if if you'd bought something from the supermarket or whatever and it you had to return it or it wasn't perfect or there was some it was past it sell by date or whatever. And I remember like sometimes my family would like sit on the phone for like an hour or 2 hours trying to save like 30 p a pound, whatever it was. >> And as I grew older, I started to realize, well, if you put that 2 hours towards making money, >> Yeah. >> it would just And I I'm I'm not saying this is easy. I'm not saying that you're stupid if you're doing the opposite. That's not the point. The point is time is money. We've heard that for years. And you can either put two once you've done everything Nish has said. You're either spending 2 hours trying to save an extra x amount which like you said is
48:19 limited or you have the ability to use that two hours to use your creativity to use your passion, to use your energy, to use your skills, to use your whatever it may be to actually create value in the world which has no limit. And I love the way you put that that saving has a limit, earning has no limit. But I think that's where it comes back to what we talked about earlier where it's like if you don't believe >> that you can make more, you listen to this conversation right now and you go, "Yeah, easy for you to say." You know, and it's like and and I remember being that person and that's why I'm raising it in a vulnerable way is I grew up in a town where the most the wealthiest person I knew made 100,000 a year and I believe that if you were anywhere close to that then you had made it in life and that was the pinnacle. And I know that that's for some places that's a high
49:06 amount, for some places that's a very low amount, but that was the amount where I grew up. And I knew one person that made that. Everyone else was making 50K or or thereabouts. I knew one person who made 100K. And and everyone just thought he'd made it. And then as time went on, I met people who made 100K, not in a year, but in a month. >> And I was like, what? Like I never knew someone could do that. I didn't even know an entrepreneur growing up. Like everyone I knew pretty much worked at companies. So I was like, oh, you can be an entrepreneur. Oh, you can run your own business. Like, fascinating. Then I met someone who can make 100k in a week. >> Yeah. >> And then I met someone who made 100k in a day and then an hour and whatever else it was. And I was like, oh my gosh, my I have been living on this tiny little island, even though it wasn't, not knowing what was possible. And I say that with empathy and love and
49:51 compassion >> to tell you that no one who's making that much money is that much smarter than you or better than you or knows more than you. They have just found a skill and figured out a way to use that skill to add value to other people. And school didn't teach us that. Chances are our parents didn't teach us that. Not as a dig, just as they didn't have the skills either and they weren't given that training. And so don't limit yourself by that voice in your head that just goes, you can't do that. You don't deserve it. Right. >> Yeah. And sometimes you have this voices that telling you if you want more money, you're a bad person. Or that you're looking for to earn more. You're there's something about you that's not right. That is also completely wrong. That quote that is money is the root of all evil, which is not money is the root of all evil. It's the love for money is the root of all evil. But trying to earn
50:38 more isn't actually about the money necessarily. It's just about even it just for a lot of people having more money just exasperates who you are at your core. And if you could do more with the money that you have, then actually there's no harm in also wanting more for yourself. And a lot of people say, "Oh, I don't know if I can earn more or I don't know if this is for me." I would recommend even setting yourself an hourly rate in your head, putting an hourly rate for yourself. And anything that you can outsource for less than that hourly rate, outsource it. So even, for instance, if you're spending three hours trying to save $10, what is your hourly rate? Cuz you just spent 3 hours trying to save $10. Whereas if you spent that 3 hours trying to earn more, that would change your finances. that would
51:24 have a way bigger impact. >> That's a great way of thinking about it. I like the hourly rate breakdown because you basically just said your your hours are worth $3 each and you know that you could go out there and add more value and and make a lot more. I feel like there's a lot of talk about in our generation right now and and the generation that's growing up around the value of money. And that's why I love your reframe of financial happiness. I think you're spot on uh to talk about financial happiness over financial success. What are the keys to people who are financially happy, not just financially successful? >> I'm just going to be talking from my experience here where I've almost feel like I've lived two lives in a way where I worked for um a corporation for 9 years years of it. And part of that I loved what I did. I found it really intellectually stimulating. I enjoyed
52:10 the work. I enjoyed the environment. And this is not to say that working in a corporation is not the thing to do at all. If you're an employee, own that and you enjoy it. that is totally for you. If you're an entrepreneur and you enjoy that, totally that's for you. But for me, I found that my version of financial happiness was to be able to work on things that genuinely made me happy. To be able to take on projects that I wanted to take on and that I knew I can do really well at. And also just being able to have more control, freedom, options, independence with my life. And whilst I don't necessarily think you could you have to get that from outside of as an entrepreneur or doing your own thing, I do think that a lot of people do look for the same things. >> Yeah. >> And that comes from getting your finances in check and setting it up in a
52:57 way where like we said before can you can carve a life that's more aligned to what you want. >> I also think there's so so much of an idealization around being an entrepreneur today. Yeah, we're living in that era where it's like quit your job, do what you love and whatever else it is. And I think about this two ways. One is I worked inside organizations with people who are really smart and sharp and are still at those organizations doing really well for themselves. >> And I have an amazing team that I couldn't do what I do without. And they're incredible and I'm very lucky to work with them every day. >> Exactly. And I look at that and I go, this pressure that's on people today for everyone to figure out what their own path looks like. I'm like, I don't think it's fair to put that on everyone. I don't think everyone's meant for it. And I don't think it's better than someone
53:42 who succeeds inside an organization. Like, you know, uh, Steve Balmer was inside Microsoft. He didn't invent Microsoft. He's one of the wealthiest people on the planet. And Bill Gates invented Microsoft and he's one of the wealthiest people on the planet. I'm like, who's done it better? Who's done it worse? It's just like, well, no, maybe they were just playing to their strengths. >> Exactly. And survivorship bias is real. We always see the wins and the people who have made it online and the people who have made entrepreneurship a thing, but you don't hear about all the losses and the failures that happened. And even if you look at content creation, like the amount of people that actually make money through creating content, which is what we usually see on social media, it's such a small small percent. And even that, most of them don't earn more than paycheck to paycheck. So I think there there's a lot of a lot to say by having that regular paycheck coming in,
54:29 that security coming in that knowing that you don't have to put a huge amount of capital at risk and that there is
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