Title: Rebel Finance School 2026 — Week 1 Monday Transcript Session: Take Control of Your Money: Track Your Spending and Find Your Gap Course: Rebel Finance School 2026 Creators: Alan Donegan and Katie Donegan, Rebel Donegans Canonical page: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/week-1/ Course hub: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/ Website: https://rebeldonegans.com/ Copyright notice: Copyright © Rebel Donegans. All rights reserved. This transcript is provided for personal educational use as part of Rebel Finance School. You may read it, search it, download it for your own learning, and use it to help you understand the course. Please do not copy, republish, sell, scrape, or redistribute this transcript as your own content. Attribution: If quoting or referencing this transcript, please credit Rebel Finance School by Alan and Katie Donegan and link to: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/ Disclaimer: This is financial education, not financial advice. Rebel Donegans are not regulated financial advisers. You are responsible for your own financial decisions. RFS26 W1 Monday Take Control of your Money 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:17.000 .: Going live, it's spinning. We're live, and welcome to Rebel Finance School 2026. We're super excited to have you here. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:22.000 .: Before we even dive into numbers, money, things, all that fun stuff. 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:33.000 .: What's really important is to know why you are here, because as we go through this, there's going to be things that happen, there's going to be frustration, there's going to be overwhelm, there's going to be confusion at times. 00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:49.000 .: And the key thing to always come back to is why. If you have a big enough why, you can get through any of the hows. So we would love to know why are you here? Are you here to sort out your own finances? Are you here to learn to be able to help your kids? 00:30:49.000 --> 00:31:04.000 .: with their finances. Are you here because you don't want to be stressed about money anymore? Are you here because you have a vision for life that includes travel and giving and whether that's of your time or of your money? Why are you here? What are you no longer willing to put up with your life and what do you want in your life? 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:14.000 .: So that's what we would like to know. If you're live, type it in the chat box, type it in the comments. If you're watching on catch up, please put it in the comments. 00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:16.000 .: Why are you here? 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:36.000 .: This is the most important part of the night, because if you've got a big enough why, any how is possible. With a big enough why, any how is possible, and that's where we wanted to start tonight, because most people's strategy to their finances is what we like to call. 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:52.000 .: The head in the sand technique. Don't make me look. It's easier to not look. It's scary. It's overwhelming. I don't know what I might find. And if this is you, this is completely normal. This is what most people do when it comes to their money. The fact that you're here is very exciting because it means that you're ready. 00:31:52.000 --> 00:32:08.000 .: to get some clarity, because that clarity is what gives you control and enables you to start making changes in your life and in your finances. And if you know your numbers, you can work out where you're going and where you're heading. Because we have a challenge in the UK, and globally. 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:23.000 .: One in 5 Brits are at risk of retirement poverty. What does that mean? They're not saving enough to be able to afford to turn the heating on in their retirement. That's more than 15 million people heading towards poverty. That's not like. 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:34.000 .: having the basics to be able to survive, that's proper poverty in retirement, and we need to stop this. And that's just the UK, there's obviously similar results around the world which will show you, and. 00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:49.000 .: it comes back to this of how much you earn over your lifetime, and these are averages. Of course, it's not going to apply to any one particular person, but the average lifetime earnings is £1.8 million for the typical UK salary and the typical UK. 00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:59.000 .: career length for 45 years. 1.8 million pounds. Where does that money go? Some of you are earning more than that, some of you are earning less than that, and if you look around the world. 00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:16.000 .: Uh, the US, they earn $2.8 million in an average career time. In Canada, it's $2.6 million Canadian dollars. The Aussies earn nearly $4 million Australian dollars. And then in New Zealand, $3.2 million New Zealand dollars. Shout out to the Kiwis. We love you Kiwis. How is the future? 00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:33.000 .: And the question is always, what do you end up with? You've earned all this money in your lifetime. What have you invested? What have you saved? What have you got to show for it? Well, the average in the UK is £137,800. That's the average UK. 00:33:33.000 --> 00:33:40.000 .: private pension. That's what, on average, people have from all that money that they earned. You might be thinking, that's not bad. 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:55.000 .: most of that is actually employer contribution, tax relief, and growth. Very little of it is what we actually contribute. And some of you are thinking, $137,000 in my pension or my SIPP, that's not bad. 00:33:55.000 --> 00:34:10.000 .: But what does that actually afford you? What does that give you in retirement? Is that enough to live on? Well, that will give you £459 a month. And luckily, you'll see in that visual that there is they are releasing a £459 note so that. 00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:19.000 .: They can just give you one a month for the rest of your life. Could you live off four hundred and fifty nine pounds plus the state pension in your retirement? 00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:22.000 .: Could you afford to live on that? 00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:34.000 .: And the answer for most people is no. So we need to do something about it. And if you look around the world, the results are similar. So this table is in order from. 00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:46.000 .: least saved to most saved. Percentage-wise. Yes. So, New Zealand, propping up the table, you have 69,000 New Zealand dollars on average to show for that. 00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:59.000 .: $3 million that you earn over your lifetime, which is $230 New Zealand dollars a month to live on. To put that into context for the rest of us, that's about £100… £120 a month… a month. 00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:09.000 .: New Zealand, we need to fix this. Uh, Canada, they have a 100 grand retirement pot out of their 2.6 million earlings, which gives them 333 a month. 00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:26.000 .: In Australia, they get to keep 201,000 of their 4 million earnings, which gives them about 670 Aussie dollars a month. This is all in the local currency. The Americans, they keep a pot of 185 out of their 2.8 million. 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:37.000 .: which gives them six hundred and seventeen US dollars. And, actually, the UK, in terms of the percentage of what we earn versus what we keep, we're at the top of the table. Come on. 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:50.000 .: But we don't actually earn that much compared to the other nations, and we don't keep very much of it, and it's really not going to give us a good retirement. So you might be thinking, if we've earned all this money in our lifetimes. 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:52.000 .: Where's it gone? 00:35:52.000 --> 00:36:14.000 .: Can you tell us where all of the money disappeared to from your lifetime, from all the earnings? Some of you are thinking, well, I can't remember my first paycheck. Is that you? My first paycheck was £450 a month. I was so pleased. So maybe this is okay for you, £459. Well, I can tell you that I did spend most of it on pizza. 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:25.000 .: Oh, that's on brand, isn't it? So most of the money goes on bills. It goes on your mortgage, it goes on life, it goes on groceries, transport, and cars. 00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:44.000 .: So, the purpose of this whole Rebel Finance School course that you are here for is to keep more of what you earn, and then to get that money working for you. Because that is the trajectory that most people are headed for, that we just described, but the whole purpose of being here is to change that trajectory for you, and to have that positive financial future. 00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:54.000 .: And we've got simple steps to take you through to get you there. So by the end of the course, you will have improved your financial situation, no matter your starting point, no matter your age. 00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:59.000 .: Before we dive into how, we have a note from our lawyers. The disclaimer! 00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:13.000 .: This is not financial advice. We're not trained financial advisors. We are not regulated. We will not sell you investments. You make your own decisions. We're sharing our opinions and ideas. These ideas may or may not continue to work for us or you. You are 100% responsible for your financial future. There are no guarantees here. 00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:16.000 .: Except. 00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:25.000 .: the money-back guarantee. If you don't like the course, you can have a refund at any point. If you've paid for this course, something has gone terribly wrong. This is meant to be free and online and accessible for anyone. 00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:41.000 .: Now, if you're watching live on Zoom, there is a Q&A button. If you have questions, click the Q&A button and write your questions there. The Rebel Ninjas will answer them. If you're watching live on YouTube, please put your questions in the chat, and we have. 00:37:41.000 --> 00:38:02.000 .: wonderful ninjas monitoring that and answering your questions for you. If you're watching on catch up. Hello, the future also write your questions in the comments, and the rebel ninjas will answer, and so will we. What's a ninja, Alan? Who are these? Who are these ninjas you're talking about? A ninja is the name we've given to someone who's been on the course before and has volunteered their time. 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:20.000 .: so generously and graciously to support you with your questions. So they are not experts, they are just people who've been this before, seen the power, and want to give back and support. And some of them came on the very first course in 2020, and have been coming back every year since, which is incredible. 00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:22.000 .: Incredible. Hi, Dominic. 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:30.000 .: Now, purpose of the course, keep more of what you earn, make that money work for you. How do we keep more of what we earn? 00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:46.000 .: It's all about the gap. You're going to hear us say this a lot over the course. It all comes back to the gap. What is the gap? It's the difference between your income, what you have coming in, and your spending, what's going out. The difference between those is the gap, and that is fundamental to everything. 00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:50.000 .: Absolutely everything that we talk about on Rebel Finance School. 00:38:50.000 --> 00:39:00.000 .: It's an Allen graph. This is back by popular demand. This is one of Allen's sketch graphs, which he is famous for and we love. 00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:02.000 .: So imagine. 00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:04.000 .: Most people's earnings. 00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:18.000 .: are fairly level, i.e. they earn the same amount each month. That tends to be what happens. Self-employed people, this fluctuates a lot more, but for most people, they get paid the same amount each month. 00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:22.000 .: Then what they have is they have their. 00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:38.000 .: That completely blew my mind. Where did that go? Then what they have is their spending. And some months the spending is lower than what they earn, and some months it's higher than what they earn. And spending sort of oscillates between the two. 00:39:38.000 --> 00:39:43.000 .: Some months they have a positive gap where they have money left over. 00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:58.000 .: Some months, they spend more than what they earn, and they have to use that money to cover it. And it tends to go back and forwards through people's months over those different amounts. What we're looking to do with the gap. 00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:07.000 .: is to produce a positive gap with this. So what we want to do is to get our spending below. 00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:21.000 .: our income so that there is a gap every single month. And that gap is what we then use to pay off debt, create an emergency fund, and then invest to create your future. But the gap is… 00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:30.000 .: the only way to get ahead in life. Like, you could win the lottery, but let's not rely on that. Let's create a gap and invest your money. I don't think that's a reliable strategy, is it? 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:35.000 .: And ideally, what we'll do through this process is reduce expenses. 00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:48.000 .: and maybe even increase income. So if we can get our income up, then we can start to create a bigger gap between the two, and the bigger gap you have. 00:40:48.000 --> 00:41:04.000 .: the more progress you will make on your finances. What's a gap? That is gap. Oh, okay, got you. Thank you for picking up on my spelling. There we go. There's my very technical gap. What happens when most people get a gap. There you go. There is a gap. Yay, what? 00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:13.000 .: shall we spend it on? And there goes the gap. Goodbye gap, we don't have it anymore, and we have a bunch of drawings on the slides, that's fun. You keep talking, I'll get rid of. 00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:28.000 .: So most people go, yay, there's a gap, and then they go, woohoo, something that I can spend that money on. But that's the game. The game is to keep some of that money. The game is to keep that gap and to make progress, and that is the only reliable way to get ahead with your money. 00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:33.000 .: So there are three different types of gap. 00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:38.000 .: The first type is a negative gap where you spend more than you earn. 00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:53.000 .: then you could have a zero gap. You're spending everything that you earn. And then finally, a positive gap, which is where you spend less than you earn. That's the aim, because that is where the power comes from, that's where the choices come from. And the other two, the zero and the negative gap. 00:41:53.000 --> 00:42:01.000 .: Unfortunately, that is leading to poverty, because we need to keep some of what you've earned so that you can get that money working for you. 00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:16.000 .: And I would love to know, what is your gap? Do you have a zero, negative, or positive gap? We're going to launch a poll in Zoom. If you're watching on YouTube, there is the QR code. Please tell us, we'd love to know. And if you're watching on Catch Up. 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:27.000 .: hello the future, please tell us as well. There is a link on the YouTube description, and hopefully some wonderful Rebel Ninjas are putting the answer… the answers? The link. 00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:44.000 .: In the chat for you. Because we'd really like to know that. If you've got a positive gap, that is fantastic. If you've got a negative gap, it is good to know because then we can work to find that gap. And I want you to understand that it doesn't matter where you are in this process. 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:49.000 .: We just need to start from where you are and make progress. That's it. 00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:52.000 .: Okay, so. 00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:53.000 .: Roughly. 00:42:54.000 --> 00:43:10.000 .: Ten or twelve percent of people on Zoom have a negative gap, so they're currently spending more than they earn. That's something we need to tackle. The twenty ish percent have a zero gap. It's actually quite easy to know that because you can check your bank balance at the end of every month and go, I've got nothing left. 00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:29.000 .: Yep. That makes it a lot easier to know that. And then a whopping 70% of you have a positive gap, which is fantastic. What a great place to be starting from. That is awesome, and we're excited to help you figure out what to do with that money that you have left at the end of the month, so it doesn't just burn a hole in your pocket and you go, ooh, what should we spend that on? 00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:46.000 .: And if you are on catch-up watching this in the future, please still fill out the QR code. It helps us to have the data to understand how we best help people. Now, moving forwards. Quite often people say, well, I'd get ahead if only I earned more. 00:43:46.000 --> 00:44:02.000 .: Ah, this classic one, they say, yeah, the only way I could get ahead was just to earn more, and then I'll be fine. Have you heard of this thing called lifestyle inflation? What is lifestyle inflation, Alan? We have another very accurate graph. Yay, one of Alan's accurates. 00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:11.000 .: drawing graphs that we love. That we're going to draw right now, so the accurate drawing graph. Lifestyle inflation. You go along through your life. 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:21.000 .: I changed it to laser. So as you go along through your life, you tend to… Earn a certain amount. Yeah. And then at a certain point, you get a pay rise. 00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:27.000 .: When you get a pay rise, say in your mid twenties, what's the first thing you think? 00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:43.000 .: Your expenses have been roughly what you're earning. You get a pay rise in your mid twenties and you think, well, now's the time to buy the house, upgrade the car, spend the extra money. And spending tends to go up in line. 00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:55.000 .: with your income. And this happens throughout our career, where we get a pay rise, and that pay rise goes on an extension to the house. 00:44:55.000 --> 00:45:15.000 .: to buying this, to upgrading that, to buying a bigger house, a general upgrade to lifestyle. You get the bigger car or the fancier car, the slightly bigger home, the slightly fancier groceries, perhaps, and it's a natural thing that most people do. And look, we know that not everyone's earnings goes like that. But this is a very common thing that we see and that we know about. 00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:18.000 .: And as a general… 00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:26.000 .: direction people's expenses go up over time. The only way to become wealthy is to violate. 00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:44.000 .: the law of lifestyle inflation. I love this, the law. It's like one of Newton's laws. Keep your expenses similar. That then gives you, over time, with wage increases, a bigger and bigger gap that you are able to invest, and if you do that. 00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:47.000 .: Then that money starts to work for you. 00:45:47.000 --> 00:46:03.000 .: Love it. But what most people do is they kind of look out on the driveway and they say, well, my car isn't as new or cool as the neighbours, I need an upgrade. Goodbye, Gap. And that's what happens. And this is one of my favourite movies, very violent, but the quote from it I love, which is. 00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:15.000 .: We buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't even like. Let's stop the arms race, people, let's put our arms down, our arms, and… 00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:30.000 .: Stop that and get the gap. That's what this is all about. And then people say, yeah, I get that. Okay, I understand lifestyle inflation, but what if I earned the big money? What if I earned millions? Surely then that would answer all my problems. I'd have a massive gap and away we go. How does that work out, Alan? Tell us about your dad. 00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:39.000 .: I have the example of that. My dad was incredibly successful. This was the house we used to live in. That's my little brother. Shout out to Roy. 00:46:39.000 --> 00:46:54.000 .: My dad spent a lot of money on cars. We've inflation adjusted. So in today's money, in the eighties, he was earning sixty grand a month. Oof. That's nice. That's a lot of money. You can do a lot of things with that. He spent it all. 00:46:54.000 --> 00:47:06.000 .: And more. He bought cars, houses, took people out, he spent the money, he spent it all, and eventually he went bankrupt for $9.4 million in today's money. 00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:11.000 .: And I ended up in court fighting to keep a roof over my mum. 00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:18.000 .: And I have directly experienced that it doesn't matter how much you earn if you don't keep any of it. 00:47:18.000 --> 00:47:38.000 .: Another example for you, 50 Cent. Did you ever expect your dad and 50 Cent to be talked about in the same breath? They're very similar in their spending strategies. He sold a very successful album called Get Rich or Die Trying, 12 million copies. He sold a business, we don't know exactly how much, but for somewhere between 60 and 100 million. 00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:51.000 .: and at his peak net worth had $500 million. That is half a billion with a B. This guy was raking the money in. So where did all the money go? He bought a mansion. 00:47:51.000 --> 00:48:07.000 .: It was very nice. He bought a custom jet car, jewellery. Jet car? I want one. We'll get a picture. A koi fish pond. Fish are expensive. A Gucci themed room, a nightclub at home and cars. He spent everything and went bankrupt in twenty fifteen. 00:48:07.000 --> 00:48:13.000 .: Due to lifestyle inflation, status-driven spending, and poor investments. 00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:18.000 .: And what we really want you to hear here from these examples is income. 00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:24.000 .: does not equal wealth. Write that down. Income does not equal wealth. 00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:29.000 .: It doesn't matter how much you earn if you don't keep any of it. 00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:40.000 .: it's irrelevant. So how do you get ahead? Well, it's from the gap. The gap invested is what leads to financial freedom, and we're going to guide you through that. 00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:56.000 .: and how to get ahead of your with your money over the next ten weeks. Now, some of you will be going, so I shouldn't earn more, Alan? No, that's not what we're saying. It doesn't hurt to earn more. You just have to keep some of it. So we wrote an article. The QR code leads to an article on our website called. 00:48:56.000 --> 00:49:14.000 .: 10 ways to increase your income with our very best tools to help you increase your income. And the Ninjas will put the link in the chat. If you're on YouTube, the link is in the description and it will be in the course notes at the end of the night. We also did an entire workshop called The Salary Trap. 00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:21.000 .: about increasing your income. It doesn't hurt to earn more. Just make sure you please keep some. Keep some of it. 00:49:21.000 --> 00:49:23.000 .: Now. 00:49:24.000 --> 00:49:39.000 .: we get lots of comments back from this saying, I just wanted to let you know, I finally did it, I negotiated a pay rise. It is possible, you can do it too, and that's what we want to help you with. So your mission is to reduce spending. 00:49:39.000 --> 00:49:46.000 .: increase income to create a gap that you can invest in what you're doing. That's the plan. 00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:54.000 .: And why does the gap matter? What is it about the gap that is going to get your head? Well, it buys you freedom. 00:49:54.000 --> 00:50:03.000 .: This is a bit of a, abstract concept, and people are saying, what how how does that work? How does the gap buy me freedom? Well, most people don't actually want money. 00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:17.000 .: They want stuff. They want cars, houses, and things. And as soon as they get money, they spend it. But they don't realize you could buy something else with that money. And here's the thing. You get to choose what you spend your money on. 00:50:17.000 --> 00:50:20.000 .: We never wanted stuff. 00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:30.000 .: We wanted freedom, and we focused on buying our freedom first because every pound, dollar, euro that you earn. 00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:44.000 .: you can apply it to investments, pizza, housing, whatever it is, you get a choice of how you spend it. And we want to help you become conscious about how you're spending your money and your choices. 00:50:44.000 --> 00:50:51.000 .: So our idea for you and what we did was to buy our freedom first. 00:50:51.000 --> 00:51:07.000 .: That is what you do with your gap. And you're thinking, well, how do I buy freedom? Do I go down to the high street and there's the freedom store? Like, this is a very weird concept. Is it next to Greg's? Is it next to Paddy Power? Where do I find this freedom shop? And this is something we struggled with for years. 00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:09.000 .: Uh, thank you. 00:51:09.000 --> 00:51:26.000 .: the whole purpose is to get the gap and buy freedom. And we're going to show you how to do that. Now, this is a map. We have worked with our friend Laura to create a little visual map for the whole course. This is the entire route to financial freedom for the entire course. 00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:42.000 .: that we're going to show you through the ten week process. So you're not expected to know all of this before we start. We just want to show you the whole route. The map will be available in the notes afterwards. I will upload it tonight, and it will be ready for you. So the route. 00:51:42.000 --> 00:51:45.000 .: to financial freedom is one. 00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:58.000 .: Create that positive gap. That's the foundation of everything. Two, build a small emergency fund of a thousand pounds, euros, dollars. Then pay off expensive debt, and we're gonna got a whole session on that for you. 00:51:58.000 --> 00:52:07.000 .: Four, we build the full emergency fund, which protects us against illness, losing jobs, and life's ups and downs. 00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:15.000 .: Then you start building your freedom fund, and we're excited to show you what that is and how you do it. That's starting to get your money working for you and invested. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:17.000 .: 6. 00:52:17.000 --> 00:52:26.000 .: You'll start to hit your first milestone, you'll get your first pound invested, you'll get your first hundred invested, and we can see your progress towards your goals. 00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:42.000 .: Then we have how to stay consistent and the monthly check ins that keep you on course over this journey. This is not a get rich quick scheme. This is a get rich slowly and safely over time thing. And then finally, the final step. 00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:57.000 .: is freedom where work becomes optional. And it's not an age, it's a number. And that's what we're hoping to help you get towards is that optional point where you don't have to work if you don't want to. You can. 00:52:57.000 --> 00:53:05.000 .: Which, the traditional word for that is retirement. That's all that financial freedom means, that you don't have to work if you don't want to. 00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:20.000 .: Now, at this point, people are thinking, like, I can't… I want to be free. I understand that I need to invest my money. This is where I've come. Get me onto investing stuff, Donegans. What's this about the gap? I want about the sexy stuff. Get me invested now. Tell me how to do it. 00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:31.000 .: Now, we ran a session many years ago, and I jumped straight to investing, and I found out I put off more people than I did actually help people. So I've tried that. 00:53:31.000 --> 00:53:43.000 .: And what we really need to do is get the fundamentals straight, so that then we can jump to the investing in the sexy stuff. Because people say, yeah, well, that's great, but, like, I can't pay my rent. 00:53:43.000 --> 00:53:57.000 .: You know, I can't… I don't have money at the end of the month. How do you expect me to be able to invest and spend and use that money and buy my freedom, as you say? Well, investing doesn't fix that situation. That is the gap, and that's why we are so… 00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:16.000 .: always go back to the gap, because everyone wants the black belt, but nobody wants to do the white belt training. This course is the training, and the order matters, and we've designed the course specifically to build, and to build each week, and to get towards. 00:54:16.000 --> 00:54:17.000 .: That. 00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:26.000 .: investing part, which I know is why a lot of people come. Just trust us, and trust the order, and as we go. Do you remember the movie The Karate Kid? 00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:36.000 .: at the very start, Mr. Miyagi is getting Danielson to wash the cars in his yard, and he's going, wax on, wax off. 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:44.000 .: Wax on, wax off, and Daniel Sun throws a bit of a fit. There's a painting one, isn't there? Paint on, paint off. 00:54:44.000 --> 00:54:51.000 .: And Daniel's son's like, why are you getting me to do this? I want to be doing, like, ninja moves and all the advanced stuff. 00:54:51.000 --> 00:55:05.000 .: And that's what… this is what we're doing with the gap and focusing on that. You don't quite see why yet, but without the gap, without that foundation, you're going to go into the fight and you're going to be floundering everywhere. So please trust us, stick with us, wax on, wax off. 00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:07.000 .: And hold your horses. 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:30.000 .: Hold your horses means we're not going to be investing yet. We will get there and just hold your horses until we get there and we will go through this step by step from the start. So it all comes back to the gap and you'll be like, yeah, I need to know, I need a positive gap. And we've had a few comments on YouTube chat saying, well, what if my gap is zero or negative? What do I do? 00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:36.000 .: Well, that's what this week is all about, is to be able to find the spots where we can get that gap. 00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:49.000 .: go from negative to zero, and then to positive, and that's what this week is all about, so we're guiding you through it. People say, what do I do with the positive gap once I have it? That's the map, and we'll show you how to do it. 00:55:49.000 --> 00:56:04.000 .: How do I manage variable messy income? We'll show you how to track it so that you can understand your numbers. And will the course flex to my situation? Yes. No matter your starting point, whether you're in debt or investing, we have where you need to make progress to do. 00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:20.000 .: But we have to start at the beginning to be able to help everyone. So in order to know if you have a gap, you need to track it and just come back to the fundamentals of what is your gap? How big is your gap? Well, you just need to know two numbers. You need to know your income. 00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:32.000 .: and you need to know your spending. And you use those two numbers to work out your gap. And we normally do this at a monthly level, so you look at how much you earned in the last month. 00:56:32.000 --> 00:56:48.000 .: And we're recording this in early June. So the last complete month was May. So how much did you earn in May? How much did you spend in May? If you're watching this on catch up, just look at whatever the last complete month was. So maybe you earned a thousand in May. 00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:49.000 .: That was your income. 00:56:49.000 --> 00:56:53.000 .: And perhaps you spent 850. 00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:57.000 .: So your gap would be 150. 00:56:57.000 --> 00:57:08.000 .: So that's a positive gap. Maybe you earned $1,000 and you spent $1,100. You spent more than you earned that month. Well, your gap is minus $100. 00:57:08.000 --> 00:57:25.000 .: And to answer people's questions that said, well, what do I do if I'm spending more than I earn? We've got ideas for you to decrease your spending without it affecting your happiness, because this is not getting ahead with your money at the expense of your happiness or your joy or your life force. 00:57:25.000 --> 00:57:42.000 .: This is about making little tweaks as we go to be able to start working towards that positive gap. And it might take a while. There's no, there's not necessarily quick fixes. Sometimes there are. It might take a while. It's going to take a bit of effort and we'll guide you through it as we go. And if you are watching this and you're thinking, I'm in debt. 00:57:42.000 --> 00:58:00.000 .: What do I do? This is the route out of debt is to create a gap so that we can use that money to pay down the debts and get you moving positively. We've got you. We have a whole week on the mathematically quickest way to get out of debt. And regardless of your starting situation, this. 00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:16.000 .: is the fundamentals. And this is the first step is to look at your spending and look at your income and understand the relationship between the two and to work forwards. That is the gap. So stick with it. We've got you. We have that whole session on debt coming up as well. Your gap will vary month by month. 00:58:16.000 --> 00:58:28.000 .: If you're self-employed, it will be lumpy, and we'll need to work that out, but we can. So let's come on to why track your spending, because if you don't know your spending, you don't know where you're going. Well… 00:58:28.000 --> 00:58:35.000 .: the spending is to know your gap, but there's a bunch of other benefits as well. The first one is, the number of times people turn to us and say. 00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:41.000 .: Alan, I just don't know where the money goes. And what do you love to say to them? Shall we look? 00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:58.000 .: Looking at your spending, that's when you're going to know and have that knowledge of where your money goes. And that is so powerful. We were chatting to this guy. He's asked us to help him with his money because he'd seen what the results that we've had with being able to retire super young. 00:58:58.000 --> 00:59:08.000 .: He wanted to talk about investing, that's all he cared about. Yeah, tell me how to get ahead, and we said, okay, before we do any of that, let's look at your gap. Okay, how much do you spend a month? 00:59:08.000 --> 00:59:11.000 .: He said, "I spend about $1,800 a month. 00:59:11.000 --> 00:59:13.000 .: And I earn 9,000. 00:59:13.000 --> 00:59:30.000 .: To which we scratched our heads going, well, how do you not get ahead? Is that really what you're spending? Let's look at your expenses. Is there anything you've forgotten? And he said, well, I do have a second storage unit. I've not included that in my calculations. Oh, and I have I have the normal amount of debt. 00:59:30.000 --> 00:59:45.000 .: That pricked our ears, and we're like, okay. What's the normal amount? Turned out he had fifty thousand pounds of credit card debt, and He hadn't included those repayments in his monthly amounts. And he was really, really struggling. 00:59:45.000 --> 01:00:00.000 .: with his finances, and he just told us his fixed costs. Yeah. He didn't realize where all of his money was going. And this is what everyone does. This is what we see people do all the time. Ask someone what their spending is. 01:00:00.000 --> 01:00:08.000 .: And they will add up 3 main costs that come to their minds, which would normally be their housing, so their mortgage or their rent. 01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:19.000 .: their groceries, their food, how much they think they spend on food and their car or their transport. They'll add those 3 numbers up in their head and report that number back. 01:00:19.000 --> 01:00:26.000 .: they'll think, that's way less than I earn, how on earth is it that I am not having any money left at the end of the month? 01:00:26.000 --> 01:00:40.000 .: And it's because they don't remember all these other things, they just think that that's their spending, and think, how do I not get ahead? So, unless you can tell me a pound and penny, a dollar and cent, a euro and euro cent amount that you're spending. 01:00:40.000 --> 01:00:57.000 .: You don't know. And everyone fails under cross examination when we talk to them, don't we? Everyone fails under cross examination. We actually found when we started doing this, Katie would track the spending and have a look at what was happening. And then every single month she would say, this month was high because we bought new glasses. 01:00:58.000 --> 01:01:10.000 .: Then the next month, you say, this month was high because we had to pay for car insurance. Then the next month, it was this month was high because we had to pay for whatever it was, a car service, or this, or that, or a holiday. 01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:21.000 .: What we actually realized was every month was high. That was our spending. We had to come to terms with that, didn't we? It's not that this month was high. It's that this is our spending. 01:01:21.000 --> 01:01:25.000 .: And that's probably what you're going to find as well when you start to look at this stuff. 01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:36.000 .: Surprise bills, Alan. Surprise bills. You wouldn't believe the number of people who come to me and go, well, I had a surprise bill this month, the car insurance. 01:01:36.000 --> 01:01:40.000 .: And do you know what I'm thinking when people tell me that car insurance was a surprise bill? 01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:45.000 .: But doesn't it happen at the same time every year? 01:01:46.000 --> 01:02:06.000 .: Surely the car insurance happens at the same time every year, and then one of my friends came to me and went, well, my tax bill was a lot higher than I was expecting. The tax bill happens at the same time every year, and you can project what it is if you track the figures. Surprise bills are quite often things that we just know are coming, and if it's a truly surprise bill. 01:02:06.000 --> 01:02:17.000 .: well, then we need an emergency fund to cover it. More on that in week two. This is why people say, I just can't seem to get ahead. They just don't know where the money's going. 01:02:17.000 --> 01:02:20.000 .: And what we really wanted to say to you was. 01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:28.000 .: You either really know or you don't. So if you're telling us, well, I think I'm spending this much, you don't know. 01:02:28.000 --> 01:02:36.000 .: You either know exactly, or you don't know, is what we've discovered, because most of us have stories about our spending. 01:02:36.000 --> 01:02:48.000 .: we believe we spend this, we believe we spend that, but we've never looked at the cold, hard data. Yay, data! If you don't know me yet, you'll come to learn I love data, I love spreadsheets, and I love graphs. 01:02:48.000 --> 01:03:06.000 .: We had this wonderful couple come on the course a couple of years ago. We were helping with their money, and their story was we are Lidl shoppers. I think most people know Lidl is kind of a lower lower cost supermarket. It's like an Aldi, a Lidl. Yeah. It's a lower cost supermarket. They believed they were those shoppers. 01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:12.000 .: When they looked at the data, they discovered they were actually Tesco Express shoppers. 01:03:12.000 --> 01:03:27.000 .: Yes, they were doing their weekly shop at Lidl, but then every night they would go to Tesco Express and buy some little extras, which were hugely expensive, and they actually spent more at the local corner shop, which was a lot more expensive than they did. 01:03:27.000 --> 01:03:44.000 .: at the big weekly shop. And they didn't know that until they looked at the data and understood what actually was happening. And then you can start to make choices about it, can't you? You're like, oh, okay, I didn't realize I was doing that. That's just sort of slipped in over time, and then you can course correct if you choose to. 01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:50.000 .: As we go through this, please remember, challenge is not an attack. 01:03:50.000 --> 01:04:02.000 .: Challenging spending is a sign of love. We're doing this course because we want to help you. It's our gift to you. So if you feel challenged, take a breath. Remember. 01:04:02.000 --> 01:04:20.000 .: We're on your side. And please be on your own side as well. As you're going through this and you're looking at your spending, some feelings might come up. Please be kind to yourself. You're doing the best you could at the time. You might feel now like that was a mistake. We all make mistakes. Let's just make a different choice now, again, if you choose to. You don't have to. 01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:25.000 .: So reason one to track your spending is you'll know where the money goes. 01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:30.000 .: Reason two is what gets measured gets improved. 01:04:30.000 --> 01:04:40.000 .: Just the act of looking at the numbers will change how you respond in a day-to-day spending way. It is incredibly powerful. 01:04:40.000 --> 01:04:49.000 .: Know your target is the next reason, Alan. Tell us more about that. What does that mean? Why does tracking my spending, knowing my target, what sort of target are you talking about? 01:04:49.000 --> 01:04:56.000 .: You cannot know how much you need to retire unless you know how much you're spending. 01:04:57.000 --> 01:05:12.000 .: So if your aim is to eventually finish work and spend your time with your grandkids in the garden, reading a book, whatever it is you want to do, the first question we are going to ask you is, well, how much do you spend and how much do you want to spend in retirement? 01:05:12.000 --> 01:05:25.000 .: And if we know that, then we have a target financially that you can get to. But most people haven't got a clue how much they spend, so they can't work out their target for getting to that state where work is optional. 01:05:25.000 --> 01:05:41.000 .: And they'll never know. So without knowing your spending, that's the first step. So when people are like, can we jump to the advanced stuff? I'm like, well, do you know how much you spend? If not, come back here and let's work that out. So that's what we really wanted to tell you, but this is a cornerstone. 01:05:41.000 --> 01:05:49.000 .: peace to everything that comes after this. Absolutely. Reason number four, stay on track. 01:05:49.000 --> 01:06:01.000 .: it's… by keep looking at your spending and at your gap, that's how you stay on course. That's how you get towards that why that you wrote down at the beginning of the call… of this night… of tonight's session. 01:06:01.000 --> 01:06:05.000 .: And you can ask yourself, well, if I keep going like this. 01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:23.000 .: am I happy with where I'm heading? Am I happy with what's going on with my finances? Am I happy that my spending is like that, or do I want to make a change? Because most people don't look, and that's how they end up heading towards an unfavourable, to put it mildly, situation in retirement, where 15 million Brits. 01:06:23.000 --> 01:06:31.000 .: More than one in five are headed for not being able to live a life that they deserve, having worked so hard for their whole lives. 01:06:31.000 --> 01:06:35.000 .: Now it's at this point people quite often go, well, it's too late for me. 01:06:35.000 --> 01:06:48.000 .: I'm too old, I'll never be able to turn this around, it's too late for me. And the funny thing is, as we've done this course, we quite often get the 40-year-olds who say, it's too late for me. 01:06:48.000 --> 01:07:00.000 .: Then the 50-year-olds laugh and go, it's not too late for you, you're 40. But the 50-year-olds say, it's too late for me, you can't save me, save the others. To which the 60-year-olds laugh. 01:07:00.000 --> 01:07:03.000 .: Then say, it's not too late for you. 01:07:03.000 --> 01:07:19.000 .: But the 60 year olds then say, well, it's too late for me. Save the others. It's too late for me, at which point the 70 year olds laugh and say, it's not too late for you. You've still got time to turn it round, and this is how it worked, which, however, I want to say to you, however old you are. 01:07:19.000 --> 01:07:35.000 .: In ten years time, you're going to think you now is super young, spring chicken. So you are young. You're the youngest you're ever going to be for the rest of your life. So you're super young. So we have a test to know whether you are too old to make a difference. Here's the test. Take your phone or go to a mirror. 01:07:35.000 --> 01:07:37.000 .: And breathe on it. 01:07:38.000 --> 01:07:45.000 .: If it fogs up, you're alive, you still have time to change your finances. 01:07:45.000 --> 01:07:48.000 .: If it doesn't fog up, we've got bigger problems. 01:07:48.000 --> 01:07:51.000 .: Please call the doctor immediately. 01:07:52.000 --> 01:08:07.000 .: Okay. So that's it. Please do that at your leisure if you if you think it's too late for you. Yes. It's not too late for you. There is always a way to improve your finances. Always. You might never get to multimillionaire, but you can improve your situation. 01:08:08.000 --> 01:08:23.000 .: Which brings us on to number five. One of the main reasons for tracking is to spot mistakes. It's really interesting. People will double charge you, subscription creep, all these things just appear in your spending. If you're not checking. 01:08:23.000 --> 01:08:39.000 .: You'll never know. I'm seeing lots of people cheering themselves in the chat for saying that they're alive. Yes, you are alive. You are in the right place. And I'm so excited for you for this 10 weeks of what's coming up. We also, someone eagle-eyed spotted that we are in Boise, Idaho. They saw the poster in the background. 01:08:39.000 --> 01:08:46.000 .: BuffyDrew at 9628, we see you, you're also in Boise. We've loved Boise so far, we have to hang out for. 01:08:46.000 --> 01:09:05.000 .: Uh, moving on to number 6. This stuff can actually be fun. Tracking your spending, working out where the money is. We had lots of games to save money. Uh, we were kind of, um, bin divers in Sainsbury's, weren't we? Sainsbury's is, for international listeners, is a UK supermarket. They used to have this system where they would print out these vouchers. 01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:23.000 .: which many people would just put in the trash. They'd put it in the bin, and we'd go up to the checkout and be like, what's that in there? Pull it out. It was a Nexa voucher, a points voucher, for £5 off our spending. Just beat that. We basically found £5 notes in the bin, and we were so excited to play this game. And look, I know that this is… 01:09:23.000 --> 01:09:39.000 .: this dates us a little bit because they'd have digital vouchers. Now you can't do this anymore, but just give you the vibe of what we were doing of so focused and making it a fun game. We used to see if we could get our whole December spending covered by the points that we just found in the bin. All I had to do was go. 01:09:39.000 --> 01:09:45.000 .: Oh, look, here's some money, and you'll be surprised. When you start looking for it, you will find these sorts of things everywhere. 01:09:46.000 --> 01:10:06.000 .: Number seven, subscription creep. The modern world is designed to give you a free offer that you automatically sign up to a subscription afterwards, and then you end up paying for it for the next decade. Streaming services, Amazon, Netflix, Disney Plus, all of those. 01:10:06.000 --> 01:10:25.000 .: gym memberships, Amazon Prime memberships, they all sneak into your expenses and then live there for a long time. We call this death by a thousand cuts. These tiny expenses that are just bleeding away your money, your life force. 01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:37.000 .: from your life. And they just seem like little things, don't they? But it's accumulation, it's all of them added together that has the impact. And going back to the person that we were helping with his finances. 01:10:37.000 --> 01:10:54.000 .: who didn't know how he was getting ahead, he had not one, but two gym memberships. What are you doing? Do you train one arm in each gym? He does upper body in one gym and lower body in another. No, he'd moved. One was from when he lived at his last place, and he just hadn't canceled it. 01:10:54.000 --> 01:11:01.000 .: But to him, he's like, oh, well, it's… It's only £18.99 a month. Yeah, it's less than £20 a month. 01:11:01.000 --> 01:11:19.000 .: But if he'd have canceled his subscription and applied it to his credit card debt, which, remember, he had £50,000 credit card debt, he would have saved £514 of interest paying that off over time, and done it 10 months quicker. So this is about plugging those leaks that don't seem like. 01:11:19.000 --> 01:11:30.000 .: They are meaningful, because, oh, it's only a small amount, but those add up, and you'll be amazed at how much difference it can make over time. 01:11:30.000 --> 01:11:43.000 .: No one understands the impact of it, which that brings us nicely onto understanding the true cost of spending. So we want to give you two very simple formulas or equations for understanding the true cost of your spending. 01:11:43.000 --> 01:11:49.000 .: If you have a weekly expense, say you're spending money weekly on a coffee. 01:11:49.000 --> 01:11:57.000 .: a newspaper subscription, something like that. If you times that weekly expense by 840. 01:11:57.000 --> 01:12:04.000 .: you will know the true cost of it. If you… basically, that equation gives you the amount. 01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:21.000 .: that if you'd have saved and invested that money instead, what it would be worth after ten years. And we have an equation for the monthly expense. So let's say you had a car repayment, subscription, and Amazon Prime. If you times that by one hundred and ninety four. 01:12:21.000 --> 01:12:24.000 .: You will know the true cost. 01:12:24.000 --> 01:12:41.000 .: of that expense. Feel free to take a picture of the slide. This is also in the course notes if you need it. So everything is on Mission Control, so you can always refer back to it. But this teaches you the true costs of your expenses. Thank you for the thumbs up, Nicola. I'm glad. It makes me feel like you're with us. 01:12:41.000 --> 01:12:58.000 .: So we have a few examples. And this is a buffet situation. We don't expect you to eat everything from the buffet. I've tried that. It doesn't feel very nice. So as we go through these examples, please think about what your version is, because they won't necessarily be directly relevant for you. 01:12:58.000 --> 01:13:04.000 .: perhaps think, what is it that I'm spending monthly or weekly that I'm not getting value from? 01:13:04.000 --> 01:13:21.000 .: So first example, our friends, they've got two young kids. They love sitting on the sofa, watching TV with their kids, snuggling up with a movie, and they have the full Sky package, or they did. And they looked at it and they looked that they were spending £80 a month. 01:13:21.000 --> 01:13:36.000 .: And they're like, oh, that seems quite expensive. They looked down at what channels their package included and realised they weren't actually interested in a bunch of those channels. So they rang Sky up and said, can we change our package? And they said, yeah, you certainly can. 01:13:36.000 --> 01:13:51.000 .: And they managed to change it down to £27 a month, which is a saving of £53 a month. And what I really want you to get from this story is they had no change whatsoever to their lives because they were cancelling channels that they were not watching. 01:13:51.000 --> 01:13:57.000 .: This had no impact on their lives whatsoever, so that one change of saving £53 a month. 01:13:57.000 --> 01:14:06.000 .: That monthly expense, times it by 194, they're £10,000 better off over 10 years if they invest that money instead. 01:14:06.000 --> 01:14:23.000 .: from something they weren't using, from something that they didn't get value from. And that's what I really want you to get from this, that this is not about, I need to go through my spending and cut out all my joy and my fun, and I can't spend any money ever again. No, choose the thing, keep the things that you love. 01:14:23.000 --> 01:14:32.000 .: Caveat, if you're not in debt, and we're going to come on to the debt, and that really is something that you need to look very closely at your spending and cut a bunch of stuff out, potentially. 01:14:32.000 --> 01:14:40.000 .: If you get value from it, please keep it. Just don't spend money on that stuff that you don't get value from. Plug those leaks. 01:14:40.000 --> 01:14:56.000 .: So what's your version of Sky? We had a second version that came when we did the tour of the UK a year or so ago. We met a guy in Bristol. He's a fantastic guy called Rick, and he used to go to Gregg's. For the international audience, Gregg's is a baker. 01:14:56.000 --> 01:15:10.000 .: So they bake products and make coffee, and Greg took his kids to the baker sorry, Rick took his kids to the baker Greg's, and he was spending £12 a day on sausage rolls and coffee. 01:15:10.000 --> 01:15:16.000 .: £12 a day, and he was thinking to himself, well, £12 a day, that's not a lot. 01:15:16.000 --> 01:15:23.000 .: Then you times it by five days a week because he used to go in the working week, not on weekends. So that's sixty pounds a week. 01:15:23.000 --> 01:15:38.000 .: Well then, you times that by the weeks of the year, and he's spending £3,120 at Gregg's a year. No wonder Greggs are doing well. They're everywhere in the UK, aren't they? Uh, there was, like, 5 in Basingstoke. Now, the true cost… 01:15:38.000 --> 01:15:52.000 .: if you take £60 and times it by £840, if he'd have invested that money instead, he would have had £50,400 by the end of it. And that shocked him when he did the maths. 01:15:52.000 --> 01:16:07.000 .: How do we work that out? Well, seeing how this adds up. So we saw then there's the annual cost of 3, just over 3,000 pounds over 10 years. That cost is 31,000 pounds. You see that starting to add up, but that 10 year cost invested. 01:16:07.000 --> 01:16:27.000 .: there's an extra investment growth of nearly £20,000, and that's where this money can come from. This magic money that appears is when you start to have that money invested, and we're going to talk you through how that happens. We just want to inspire you to start to free some of that money up so that it can be working for you, for things that you don't. 01:16:27.000 --> 01:16:37.000 .: actually necessarily want or value. So Rick worked out he would be 50 grand better off and healthier if he didn't go to Greg's. What do you think he did? 01:16:37.000 --> 01:16:53.000 .: He stopped going to Greg's immediately, and he swapped for something else. So the question is, what's your version of this? What's your weekly spend that you're not getting value out of? What's your thing that's affecting you that you don't really enjoy, but you just did it out of habit? 01:16:53.000 --> 01:16:54.000 .: habit. 01:16:54.000 --> 01:17:11.000 .: Now, these sums only work if you invest the money instead. You will not get this unless you invest the money. This equation is based on 10% growth over that period, and it's all baked into the equation. We can show you how it works later if you want us to. 01:17:12.000 --> 01:17:30.000 .: One thing that you could do to notice this progress is to keep a separate account. So every time that you make that change, every time Rick didn't spend that £12 in Greg's that he used to, put that somewhere else. Put it into your quote unquote investment account for later to say, look, this is money that I have. 01:17:32.000 --> 01:17:50.000 .: found, made it appear, and then you can see that progress, and that's so rewarding, isn't it? When you can see that money start to build up. And for those of you that have told us that you're in debt, this is one way you can start to steer that ship in a different direction, to go through that spending, and to say, I'm really not getting the value that I want. 01:17:50.000 --> 01:18:10.000 .: from that, let me steer the ship, let me put that towards the debt, and we've got a systematic way for… to work through paying off debt as well as we go through. So those are the true cost formulas. 840 for a weekly cost, and 194 for a monthly cost. And the comments are coming in that your versions of Greg's and Sky. 01:18:10.000 --> 01:18:22.000 .: Is a canteen at work instead of Greg's? Or Prosecco in the evening is a few comments coming in, which does make us smile. What's your version of this? Then on the true cost. 01:18:22.000 --> 01:18:37.000 .: It's not just money that is the true cost of a purchase. We had a friend, Brandon, who was working out some finances, for some friends, and he worked out if they got rid of one of their expensive cars. 01:18:37.000 --> 01:18:41.000 .: They could retire five years earlier. 01:18:42.000 --> 01:18:51.000 .: Now, they don't really sell BMWs like this. When you go into the dealership, they don't look at you and go, it's £459 a month, or 5 years of extra work. 01:18:51.000 --> 01:19:06.000 .: If they did, they wouldn't sell very many of them, but people don't know the real cost of these things, that it's your working life, your energy, your years working to be able to afford this stuff. 01:19:06.000 --> 01:19:13.000 .: So if we looked at you and said, would you like a BMW or five years off your retirement date, the choice is yours. 01:19:13.000 --> 01:19:18.000 .: And actually, what we're really saying is neither choice is bad. 01:19:18.000 --> 01:19:22.000 .: If you choose the car, just know the cost. 01:19:22.000 --> 01:19:26.000 .: If you choose the time, just know the cost. 01:19:26.000 --> 01:19:41.000 .: The problem is, is when people make these choices without knowing the cost and then wonder why they have nothing left. That's the problem. And all of this, none of this is about deprivation. It's about making that conscious choice. 01:19:41.000 --> 01:19:58.000 .: If you choose the BMW, great, just knowing the impact. If you choose to go to Greg's every day, great, just know the impact. Don't just kind of stumble towards retirement and go, oops, where did the money go? Just consciously knowing what you're doing, and that's what this whole week is about. 01:19:59.000 --> 01:20:15.000 .: Recently, we were featured in the iPaper for retiring earlier, and there were some mean comments, as you would expect. One of them, which did make me smile, was, if I was a millionaire, I would dress better. So they looked at me and went. 01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:23.000 .: If I was a millionaire, I would dress way better than Alan, to which my thought was, well, that's the reason you're not a millionaire. 01:20:23.000 --> 01:20:38.000 .: Because you've spent your money on looking wealthy rather than investing it and being wealthy. And that's the true distinction we wanted to share with you about buying your freedom first. And choosing to prioritise that over those. 01:20:38.000 --> 01:20:42.000 .: The trappings, the things that make you look wealthy. 01:20:42.000 --> 01:20:57.000 .: Tracking your spending is not about judgment, it's not about deprivation, it's not about controlling the person next to you on the couch and going, oi, stop spending on whatever it is they're spending on. You mean I can't use this to control you? You've tried. 01:20:57.000 --> 01:21:00.000 .: A little bit of control. This is sad. Oh. 01:21:01.000 --> 01:21:16.000 .: What is it about? It's about knowledge and power. So this is just information. Okay, I'm going to look, I'm going to see my spending. Oh, I didn't realise I was spending that much on Greggs. Oh, I didn't realise I was spending that much at the canteen at work on Prosecco, whatever it is. 01:21:16.000 --> 01:21:27.000 .: and a chance to change course if you choose to. If you choose to, this is all about choice. This is not us saying no, no, no, naughty, naughty, no spending. 01:21:27.000 --> 01:21:32.000 .: choose and know what that choice, the implications that that choice have. 01:21:32.000 --> 01:21:48.000 .: So let's actually start. Let's get going with this. What we want to introduce for this year is the Rebel Finance School great leak hunt of twenty twenty six. Careful how you say that. This is what we're going to do. 01:21:48.000 --> 01:21:57.000 .: Now, what we want you to do is take out your phone, your banking app, whatever it is, and have a look at what descriptions you have. 01:21:57.000 --> 01:22:16.000 .: What have you subscribed to? What are you spending money on monthly? What are you not getting value out of? Because I know we have forgotten subscriptions we even had, and we're like, why are we spending that every month? And it might be a subscription, that's not an easy word to say, is it? Subscription. Subscription. It might be something that. 01:22:16.000 --> 01:22:33.000 .: You spot in your spending of like, oops, I'm buying a coffee out every day and I didn't realise I was quite doing that. Or something, a spending habit that maybe you're thinking you might change. Spotting those leaks and either plugging them now, cancel that subscription if you choose to. 01:22:33.000 --> 01:22:38.000 .: or making a commitment, okay, well, I'm not going to do that daily, weekly, monthly habit. 01:22:39.000 --> 01:22:45.000 .: Uh, Alan, you did… I've got in my notes here, no looking at the person next to you on the couch and trying to plug them. 01:22:45.000 --> 01:23:00.000 .: Sometimes the lead is sat next to you, but don't judge them. You've just got to help them and see if they're getting value from it. We've actually created a little form or Katie created a little form. If you scan the QR code or the ninjas will share the link in the chat. 01:23:01.000 --> 01:23:16.000 .: That form enables you to put in any subscriptions you have cancelled and we'll work out how much as a group we have saved by a simple tidying up of subscriptions and what we've got. 01:23:16.000 --> 01:23:32.000 .: So please fill out the form and tell us what you've canceled. And we're genuinely serious about this. Pick up your phone, have a look at what subscriptions you've got. You can even check if you've got an Apple phone. They have subscriptions in your account. Fill out the form and tell us. 01:23:32.000 --> 01:23:38.000 .: what you're cancelling. Is it sky? Is it this? Is it that? Is it the other? Anything you don't get value out of. 01:23:38.000 --> 01:23:44.000 .: if you look at it and you go, I really love Disney+, because I love Marvel movies. 01:23:44.000 --> 01:23:45.000 .: Keep it. 01:23:45.000 --> 01:24:04.000 .: That's the key bit. But we want to know if you actually get value from this stuff. That's what we really, really want to know. I'm watching these figures go up as we go. We've got a running total from what you're filling in on that form, and we're already at nearly 4… jumping up, 4,400, 4,500 pounds. 01:24:04.000 --> 01:24:20.000 .: A month, which is having an impact of 1 million pounds if you times that by 194. Look at these numbers going up. This is so exciting to see. And please, if you find multiple leaks, fill the form in twice or as many times as you find a leak. 01:24:21.000 --> 01:24:38.000 .: Can you see the impact this has been collected? One and a half million pounds. Someone just put a big one in. Three and a half million pounds. Wow. I'd love to know. Please fill in this form and tell us what leaks you have found. Because plugging the leaks will make a huge impact on your future. 01:24:38.000 --> 01:24:49.000 .: It's unbelievable the impact it has, and we wanted you to see this and feel it in real time, so did we wanted to see this and feel it in real time. This is really exciting. 01:24:49.000 --> 01:25:05.000 .: That's the game. Plug the leaks and then use that money to pay off expensive debt, invest and get ahead. This is the plugging the leaks. Just one example. Lauren said, I just found two habit tracker apps I used once and never used. 01:25:05.000 --> 01:25:21.000 .: forgot about them, and I'm still paying for them. The irony. Finally. She didn't… she got something to change her habits, and then forgot. Uh, Andrea said, I've just done the maths on the new car I bought 2 years ago, depreciation of £420 a month, and servicing costs. I could have leased a new car. 01:25:21.000 --> 01:25:38.000 .: for less than that. Which is insane. Yeah. And I see that we've had a few questions, people querying, how does the 840 and the 194 rule kind of work? And understanding how we got to those figures we can. We can go into that. Basically, what we did was we worked out. 01:25:38.000 --> 01:25:53.000 .: If you have that weekly or monthly expense, invest that instead, and then you can work out with our spreadsheet, it's very geeky, to work out how you, how much you would have after the 10 years instead. And we kind of summarise that all into just a simple way of multiplying it up. 01:25:53.000 --> 01:26:12.000 .: Um, yeah, I think people were getting confused about the growth element and how we work that out. That split that we showed for Rick and his Greg's Habit was just to show the amount that he was spending, and then to split out the investment growth. Using the rules of those 840 and the 194 wouldn't be able to get you there, it was just to split that out. 01:26:12.000 --> 01:26:29.000 .: Am I making any sense? You're making sense to me, but you shouldn't ask me, we should ask you. Ask the people, the people are speaking. Look at this number going up, we're at 32 million right now. It's insane, so if you actually take the money from the leaks that you've plugged and invest it instead. 01:26:29.000 --> 01:26:46.000 .: That would be the combined impact of what we've done already tonight. Yeah. So looking at those two numbers, so just the monthly amount, forget about what if you'd invested it instead. Hundred and six odds just jumped up again. I can't even I need to keep updating my mouth as I speak. Hundred and seventy six thousand pounds. 01:26:46.000 --> 01:27:03.000 .: Which, and put that into context for our international listeners, what's that? Someone's just put a big number. Someone put the wrong number in. Potentially wrong order. Edit that number in a bit, but it's about a hundred and seventy six at the moment. So please keep filling that number in and tell us what you've saved in investors. 01:27:03.000 --> 01:27:26.000 .: YouTube can reassure you. These forms are anonymous. We are not tracking you or knowing your money. This is just yeah. I have no way of knowing who's filled in the form. We don't keep your data other than what you tell us in the form. Yes, I actually would rather not know. Yeah, please don't give us personal banking information or anything like that. We don't need or want that. Just tell us what you've managed to save, and please. 01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:42.000 .: Please don't put any sensitive personal information in the form. Exactly. So what we wanted to say to you all is congratulations. If you've been doing with this with us, you have just increased your gap, which is phenomenal. And what was that? We'd spent. 01:27:42.000 --> 01:27:49.000 .: four or five minutes doing that, imagine what you can do as you start to go into this in even more detail. 01:27:49.000 --> 01:27:58.000 .: Let's move on to the next Kate. Katie, to the next section, Katie. You'll remember my name one day. It's only been 20 years together. Who are you? 01:27:58.000 --> 01:28:15.000 .: What should we do this weekend? What should we do this weekend? That's a question we ask lots of the times, and you have options. Every weekend, you have a bunch of options of things you could do. You could go for a picnic in the park. You could go skydiving. You could go for a walk in the woods. 01:28:15.000 --> 01:28:32.000 .: You could have a fancy dinner out. Or friends round for dinner instead. Theme park adventure, football match, football game, or read a book. These all have a certain cost associated with them, and a certain amount of pleasure, a certain amount of joy that come from them. We wanted to introduce you to the term. 01:28:32.000 --> 01:28:34.000 .: The pleasure swap. 01:28:34.000 --> 01:28:44.000 .: Sounds a bit weird, but bear with us. We're going to ask you to do a pleasure swap. If you've got two options that bring you equal joy. 01:28:44.000 --> 01:28:50.000 .: Such as, if you're going out, you're seeing friends at the weekend, you could go out to a restaurant, or you could cook at home. 01:28:50.000 --> 01:28:56.000 .: If both of them give you equal joy, pick the one that's cheaper. 01:28:56.000 --> 01:29:16.000 .: If you get outsized joy from spending the money, then pick that one. That's fine. But if they both give you equal joy, pick the one that gives you the saving and then save that money. And actually for us quite often, I prefer the dinner at home because it's quieter and I can hear the people I want to actually hang out with. 01:29:16.000 --> 01:29:24.000 .: And our cooking is pretty good. I'd say it's very good, Alan. You're being very modest there. Thank you. Well, I am British. 01:29:24.000 --> 01:29:25.000 .: Uh, right. 01:29:25.000 --> 01:29:42.000 .: Week one of Rebel Finance School so far, we have shared a lot with you. It started with how much do you actually keep from what you've earned in your lifetime? And then the idea of the whole course is keeping more of that and getting that money work for you, and we're gonna cover that in this ten weeks. 01:29:42.000 --> 01:29:49.000 .: Then, create a gap which is between your income and your spending. 01:29:49.000 --> 01:30:01.000 .: Unfortunately, most people use the gap as they increase their income, their spending rises up to meet it, that's lifestyle inflation, and that's something that we need to work against the law of lifestyle inflation. 01:30:01.000 --> 01:30:18.000 .: The theory that you can only spend every pound, dollar or euro once. So choose carefully what you're spending on it. Don't let it just leave your life on things you don't even value. And what we put to you is to use that money to buy your freedom first. 01:30:18.000 --> 01:30:28.000 .: We introduced the map to financial freedom, which we will send to you so you can study it later, and we will guide you through it, through the process of the course. 01:30:28.000 --> 01:30:44.000 .: Then we came on to why even track your spending, not only to understand your gap, but to have a bunch of other benefits as well. We then had the true cost formulas of 840 for a weekly expense, 194 for a monthly expense. Then we did the great leak. 01:30:44.000 --> 01:31:03.000 .: hunt of 2026. Careful saying that words quickly, Taylor. And then finally introduced the pleasure swap. So, choosing the thing that gives you the most pleasure for the least amount of money. Now, stay closed for the… stay tuned for the closing message, which is coming very shortly. 01:31:03.000 --> 01:31:13.000 .: In the meantime, we want to give you your mission. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a mahoosive gap. Like this big. 01:31:14.000 --> 01:31:29.000 .: That's the mission. As big, as big as possible. And to do that, we're going to put you to work. We, in previous years, we called this homework. Last year, it got rebranded as freedom work. This is the work to do to get the progress, to get the change. We're going to give you work to do. 01:31:29.000 --> 01:31:46.000 .: That's what you need to do to make changes and to make progress. Nothing changes until you change something. That's it. No one's coming to save you. We had an interesting course that someone started to sell in New Zealand, as I think, as an antithesis to our course. 01:31:46.000 --> 01:32:01.000 .: And it was like, there's no ten week course and there's no homework, and this course will make you wealthier. I'm like, well, if there's no if people aren't gonna do anything, how does it even work? There's some kind of get rich quick scheme. That's not this. This is a slow help you do it steadily. 01:32:01.000 --> 01:32:20.000 .: over time. Now, the freedom work. Number one, write down why you're doing this. I'm doing Rebel Finance School because with a big enough why, you will find the motivation to tackle all of this. And we've left a little gap, little gap, it all comes back to a gap, little space on that freedom map that we're going to send you that. 01:32:20.000 --> 01:32:36.000 .: is a space for you to write that in, so that you can see that front and center. Print it out, put it on your fridge, put it somewhere front and center, so that you can always come back to that. And please share it as well, if you'd like to. Email us. We read every email. We can't reply to every email, because we get a lot, especially when the course is on. 01:32:36.000 --> 01:32:50.000 .: Tell us in the Facebook group or an email. We'd love to know because this is what gets us excited about helping as well. Number two, work out last month's gap. So whatever your last calendar month is, how much did you spend? 01:32:50.000 --> 01:32:57.000 .: How much did you bring in and what was the gap? That is a key number. 01:32:57.000 --> 01:33:06.000 .: Track your spending for one month. Remember, this isn't judgment, this is just information. Okay, now I know, and I can choose to make a change if I want to. 01:33:06.000 --> 01:33:10.000 .: If you can, find one leak and plug it. 01:33:10.000 --> 01:33:18.000 .: Love it. Cancel the subscription, do the thing. We've just been doing that. If you can, fill out the form so that we know you've done it, but find the leak and plug it. 01:33:19.000 --> 01:33:35.000 .: And come along on Thursday, we're going to help you choose a tracking system. More about Thursday shortly. Now, little Keen Bean warning. I may be guilty of this, and I know some other people have told me that this has happened to them or to their partner when they start doing this. 01:33:35.000 --> 01:33:46.000 .: is please just do one month to start. When we started tracking our spending, I was like, I'm going to go back to the dawn of time, I'm going to track every single penny I've ever spent, and we're going to categorise it, it's going to be beautiful, it'. 01:33:46.000 --> 01:33:57.000 .: I have a lot of energy for spreadsheets, me, like, I've got one of the biggest energies for spreadsheets of anyone in the world, and I got overwhelmed, confused, and wanted to stop and tear my hair out. 01:33:57.000 --> 01:34:00.000 .: Please just do one month to start with. 01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:13.000 .: And then you can always go back. Once you've got your systems in place, you can always go back and do more if you choose to. Actually, the more interesting thing is to start doing it going forwards, and we don't want you to lose that energy and momentum by using it on the pass when it's more… 01:34:13.000 --> 01:34:16.000 .: Useful and informative to know the future. 01:34:16.000 --> 01:34:34.000 .: Now, for those of you who have done the course before, or are true keen beans, we do have some ideas for the keen bean freedom work for the week. Number 6, categorise last month's spending, so that you know how much went on your accommodation, how much went on transport, how much went on groceries. 01:34:34.000 --> 01:34:42.000 .: How much went on chocolate? Were you going to say pizza, Alan? Come on. Going to keep the branding. I just. 01:34:42.000 --> 01:34:57.000 .: I spent money on chocolate recently. I love Tony. I am not sponsored by Tony's Chocolate, Tony, but if you want to send me free chocolate, Tony's, I'm here. Number seven, find your three biggest categories so you can actually understand where most of your money goes. 01:35:09.000 --> 01:35:13.000 .: Number nine, do one pleasure swap. 01:35:13.000 --> 01:35:28.000 .: So find something that you were spending a lot on and then find something that's less expensive but gives you equally as much pleasure and do a pleasure swap. And put any money saved somewhere separate just so that you can start to see that money building. 01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:47.000 .: maybe put the money in a different account, or keep a track somewhere, have a little spreadsheet, or a little pen and paper, and just jot down so you can see that progress. A few people are asking, can they see the first homework? Again, there it is. Please take a photo if you want to, or it will be in the course notes. So, anything you miss from tonight. 01:35:47.000 --> 01:36:04.000 .: I'm going to write the course notes this afternoon and I will have it ready for you and you will be able to get anything that you missed. So take a photo of this one. That's the first five. This was the Keen Bean homework, which you're welcome to take a photo of as well, or it will be in the course notes. 01:36:04.000 --> 01:36:14.000 .: The course notes are on the mission control page. And that that might seem a lot. There's ten actions there, five for the for the main stuff and another five here. But. 01:36:14.000 --> 01:36:17.000 .: This all comes back to if you just do one thing. 01:36:17.000 --> 01:36:26.000 .: One thing, what was last month's gap? And that is going to start you making real progress. That is your one thing to do. What was last month's gap? 01:36:26.000 --> 01:36:42.000 .: Because you can see how much your spending was. And if you choose to, you can start to dig down into that. But the key is, what was the gap? Was it positive? Was it negative? Was it zero? This is just information. And then you can start to make changes from there. So if you get overwhelmed, if you're like, oh, there's too much. 01:36:42.000 --> 01:36:53.000 .: Just work out last month's gap, report back, tell us what it was, put it in the Facebook group, reply to the email that we send you. We'd love to know what progress you made. Now, I have a warning for you. 01:36:53.000 --> 01:37:08.000 .: Warning. Warning. This has happened to us. You go on a course, you get very excited. Your partner, friends, family, others have not been on the course with you. I can see George is watching it on his own. Maybe his partner, friend, family is not with him. 01:37:08.000 --> 01:37:22.000 .: He then goes to them after the course and goes, I'm so excited. Me too. We have to track our spending. Oh my goodness, please don't shake me over. And you go for the other person and say, you must track your spending. And it is a surefire way. 01:37:22.000 --> 01:37:30.000 .: to put them off doing it with you. Yes. So, do you remember how we started out this whole session tonight? 01:37:30.000 --> 01:37:45.000 .: we asked what your why was, why are you doing this? And they're not doing the course. Obviously, don't ask them, why are you doing the course? But you can ask them, what life do you feel like you'd like to work towards and starting with their vision and what they want out of life. 01:37:45.000 --> 01:38:02.000 .: Don't please dive into the spreadsheets and say, I've been on a leak hunt, and I found this, and it's done this much, and did you know… the worst is, did you know how much your weekly habit is costing you over 10 years? Don't judge them, don't do that. I know you're trying to help, and I know, because I've done it, and I've gone like. 01:38:02.000 --> 01:38:18.000 .: Please don't do that. Please. I still have to remember that. So we've, Alan's written a whole article about how to talk about money with the people around you. This doesn't necessarily mean a partner. It could be friends. It could be people you're so excited about. Hopefully you've got a lot of value out of tonight and maybe you're telling your friends about it. 01:38:19.000 --> 01:38:36.000 .: Please don't do what I did and go into preachy mode. Yes. We wrote a whole article about how to talk to people about money, and week five of the course is about communicating with others with money. The reason this warning is here is lots of people told us last year, I really wish I'd got week five. 01:38:36.000 --> 01:38:45.000 .: five earlier so that I could talk to my partner about it. So this is our effort to help you communicate with the people you love about money. 01:38:45.000 --> 01:38:46.000 .: Now. 01:38:46.000 --> 01:39:03.000 .: Moving on, Thursday's session, we're gonna show you all the different ways to be able to track your spending to try and make it easy for you. We'll break out the spreadsheets, the apps, the tools, and we'll go through everything for you. One of the feedback pieces from last year was. 01:39:03.000 --> 01:39:06.000 .: How do we practically apply? 01:39:06.000 --> 01:39:12.000 .: the lessons from the course, and that's why we've now got Thursday to show you how to do it. 01:39:12.000 --> 01:39:28.000 .: Mission Control. Yeah, we've been working on this. This is your hub. If you're ever like, where's the Zoom link? Where's the YouTube link? How do I know what the next session is? What's the resources? How do I find that tracker template they told me about? Mission Control is your place to go. Bookmark it. 01:39:28.000 --> 01:39:35.000 .: Always come back to that. And on Mission Control, there is a. 01:39:35.000 --> 01:39:54.000 .: I'm seeing people scanning the QR code, so I'm pausing for Lisa. Yeah, she's got it, awesome. There is a virtual Alan and Katie. So we have trained an AI bot on all of the course transcripts from last year, so if you ever get lost, ask virtual Alan and Katie a question, and they should be able to help. 01:39:54.000 --> 01:40:10.000 .: If not, there is the Facebook group where you can put your questions, you can talk to people, you can ask. Please search to see if there is a thread already started about that subject, before posting a new one, and there's lots of incredible resources. 01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:28.000 .: incredible people in there who are way further forwards than a lot of us are, that will be able to help with these things. And in the Facebook group, you will find, under events, there's lots of local groups of people meeting up, doing Rebel Finance School meetups. Perhaps there's one in your area. Meet a fellow Rebel. 01:40:28.000 --> 01:40:43.000 .: Yes. And if there's not, feel free to start one. If you've snuck into YouTube without telling us and you want the without telling us, like, they have to report in. We didn't take a register, did we? We didn't take a register. George, are you here? Yeah. Darren. Got you. 01:40:43.000 --> 01:40:45.000 .: Yep. 01:40:45.000 --> 01:41:03.000 .: Darren waved, he's good, he's checked in. Um, if you've snuck in and want to get the course emails, uh, you can sign up on this QR code, you will get the course notes, the follow-up emails, and all the tools emailed to you as we're doing the course. We always forget to say this, please like, comment, subscribe if you're watching on YouTube, it really. 01:41:03.000 --> 01:41:13.000 .: helps us to be able to reach more people, and that's what we're all about. We want this education to be free and accessible to everyone. Please help us do that by hitting like. 01:41:13.000 --> 01:41:14.000 .: And remember. 01:41:14.000 --> 01:41:17.000 .: Katie is Mr. Miyagi. 01:41:18.000 --> 01:41:32.000 .: That's not actually true. This is your wax on, wax off training to improve your finances, and it's all part of an adventure and a journey that starts with week one, take control of your finances. Next week, we're going to look at how much you have. What is your net worth? 01:41:32.000 --> 01:41:48.000 .: Number three is your beliefs about money. Then we're going to come on to compounding and how that is magic for you and talk about how to get out of debt as quickly as possible. And we've got some clear steps to help you do that. Yeah, the Thursday session is the debt attack strategy. 01:41:48.000 --> 01:42:04.000 .: And it will show you clearly the quickest way to get out of debt. Number five is about how to communicate with the people around you about money. Then we come on to the sexy stuff in week six, seven and eight. It's all about investing, getting your money working for you. Because remember, this course is about keeping more of what you earn. 01:42:04.000 --> 01:42:20.000 .: And then getting that money working for you. That's the working for you part is what we'll cover in those weeks. Nine is the simple equations to know whether you have enough to be able to retire. And we've got a brand new retirement calculator. We're releasing a new version for you for this year. 01:42:20.000 --> 01:42:22.000 .: 10. 01:42:22.000 --> 01:42:40.000 .: is how do you make your money last in retirement, and we've been updating that a lot for this year. Uh, just, I've seen on the chat, uh, that lots of people have joined the Facebook group, which we love, welcome, we love having you. Please make sure you agree to the rules and fill in the questions when you join, because otherwise. 01:42:40.000 --> 01:42:50.000 .: our little AI assist thing will reject you, and we don't want that. We want you to come in, so please agree to the rules and fill in the answers to the questions. 01:42:50.000 --> 01:43:07.000 .: The general flow of the course, Monday is the lesson and the theory, and Thursday is how you can practically apply it. Specifically, this Thursday is how to track your spending. It's at eight PM UK time, seven AM New Zealand time, and other times around the world. 01:43:07.000 --> 01:43:24.000 .: 1 PM Boise, Idaho time. That's the important one. And then Monday is net worth, and this is a critical foundation which shows what is an asset, what is a valuable liability, and how you look at what you've got. So there's a lot coming up. If you would like to be reminded. 01:43:24.000 --> 01:43:43.000 .: 30 minutes before each live session with the links, and come on, we're about to log on, come on live, please scan this little QR code, fill in your name and email address. We used to send that reminder email to everyone, and then we thought, do people want or need that? So we made it an optional thing that you can opt in to receive those reminders. 01:43:43.000 --> 01:43:58.000 .: Exactly. Now the closing message Can we check in on the leak hunt? Someone put a wrong figure. Oh, they did. And I think the numbers I think we need to clean that a little bit. It wasn't like millions a month. Okay. We'll come back to that. We'll come back to that. We will report back. 01:43:58.000 --> 01:44:03.000 .: Now, here's the closing message. This is what I want you to take away from this. 01:44:03.000 --> 01:44:09.000 .: Most people in their life spend first. 01:44:09.000 --> 01:44:17.000 .: So they buy the thing, they buy the house, the car, the upgrades, the subscriptions, the holidays, the convenience, the stuff. 01:44:17.000 --> 01:44:20.000 .: And then if there is anything left over. 01:44:20.000 --> 01:44:24.000 .: They invest or save what's left over. 01:44:24.000 --> 01:44:45.000 .: We are inviting you to flip the order, flip the priority and think, okay, let's use this money to buy my freedom. And then perhaps whatever's left over I can use. And we're, you know, we're not saying, don't buy the nice things. We're saying, start thinking about changing what your priorities might be and changing the order that you think about those things. Exactly. 01:44:45.000 --> 01:44:51.000 .: Because one of the most freeing ideas in money is you can have anything. 01:44:51.000 --> 01:44:54.000 .: You can have anything you want, but… 01:44:54.000 --> 01:44:56.000 .: You can't have everything. 01:44:56.000 --> 01:45:12.000 .: So you have to choose what you want. And you get to choose with every single pound, dollar, euro you have, you get in, you can choose what to do with it, which is incredibly empowering. You get to choose. 01:45:12.000 --> 01:45:20.000 .: car, or 5 years off your retirement. And you can make that choice. You can choose expensive convenient habit, or bigger gap. 01:45:21.000 --> 01:45:38.000 .: I just want you to be aware of the choices and the costs, and if you choose it, go for it. I thought you were going to get pineapple cash out of your wallet then. I've got the pineapple cash in the other room. Okay. And you know, Alan just spoke about those choices. So the BMW or the five years. 01:45:38.000 --> 01:45:54.000 .: Neither of those is wrong or bad or good. There's no judgement about any of this. It's just choosing and not unconsciously stumbling towards a future where you wake up and go, oh, what happened? Where is all that money that I earned? It's just making that choice. 01:45:54.000 --> 01:46:07.000 .: And that's what this is all about. And we, personally, chose freedom. I love adventure, I love stuff, I love Lego, I love all these things. Pizza. But we chose freedom first. 01:46:07.000 --> 01:46:12.000 .: And that actually meant we could buy more of those things later. 01:46:12.000 --> 01:46:26.000 .: and we prioritized in a different way to most people, which created vastly different financial results in our life, which is why we're free. It's why we don't have a job, and we can spend our time delivering this course and making stuff for you. 01:46:26.000 --> 01:46:32.000 .: So the question as you go through and you're looking at your spending is not what shall I cut? It's not. 01:46:32.000 --> 01:46:48.000 .: It's not coming from that angle of deprivation, but it's coming from, why am I doing this? And that's coming back to your why that we had at the very beginning of this session of like, why are you here? Why are you doing this? What is it that you're no longer willing to stand for in your life? 01:46:48.000 --> 01:47:03.000 .: from that place of feeling of empowerment, of what you're getting rather than what you're giving up. Because you can look at any of these things as a deprivation, or you can choose to see it as making a new choice and doing something different and buying your freedom. 01:47:03.000 --> 01:47:09.000 .: And now comes one of the expressions that we have become famous for on the course, which is… 01:47:09.000 --> 01:47:23.000 .: don't compare your pineapples. And lots of people are going, pineapples? What are you talking about, Donegans? Like, what is this pineapple stuff? And the very first course we ran, I was looking for a picture that showed comparison. 01:47:23.000 --> 01:47:41.000 .: And just typing into one of the free image search places on the Internet, I found a picture of someone holding a very small pineapple and someone holding a very big pineapple. And the message from the slide was, don't compare. We are all starting from different places. 01:47:41.000 --> 01:47:56.000 .: Some of you here are starting in debt, some of you are later in life and you're organising pensions and thinking, when can I retire? Some of you are in the middle of your life, earning lots, earning little, some of you are single, some of you are not. We don't need to compare. 01:47:56.000 --> 01:48:00.000 .: You are starting where you are starting from. 01:48:00.000 --> 01:48:05.000 .: And the only thing we need to do is make improvements from where you are. 01:48:05.000 --> 01:48:11.000 .: Now, someone else sharing, I've got this pension of this. What do I do? 01:48:11.000 --> 01:48:13.000 .: It's not forcing you to compare. 01:48:13.000 --> 01:48:30.000 .: They are just saying what's their situation. It's your job to not compare to the other person. It's your job just to let that go and go, I want to learn and I want to make progress on my journey because that's all you can do. 01:48:30.000 --> 01:48:39.000 .: is make progress on your journey. And if someone else has been successful, the best thing to do is not to feel jealous, it's to learn from them. 01:48:39.000 --> 01:48:51.000 .: Ask them how they did it, ask them what happened, learn from them, because that is the biggest gift someone can give you, is their experience, their knowledge, and their learning. That's the biggest gift you can give. 01:48:51.000 --> 01:49:02.000 .: And as we go through all this, and we're working towards that feeling of financial security, and perhaps even working towards financial freedom and even abundance. 01:49:02.000 --> 01:49:08.000 .: None of that is normal. That is abnormal. Most people are in a pickle with their money. 01:49:08.000 --> 01:49:18.000 .: But the way to get ahead is to do something different from what everyone else is doing, and that's what we talk about here, is doing those things differently, because. 01:49:18.000 --> 01:49:33.000 .: Copying everyone else and doing what everyone else is doing is going to get you the same results as them. So super excited that you're here because you're going to start doing something differently. So please do that freedom work, find the gap, protect the gap, grow the gap. It all just comes back to that gap. 01:49:33.000 --> 01:49:41.000 .: Those of you that told us that you're deeply in debt is the same starting point for you as it's for someone that. 01:49:41.000 --> 01:49:57.000 .: has some money, has some savings, has some investments, is to look at that gap. We're all in the same boat, we're all looking at that gap, so just please have that courage to look at where the money is going, and that courage is gonna… that bravery to take that first step, take that look, I know that it's… 01:49:57.000 --> 01:50:13.000 .: It can feel overwhelming, and especially if you've got some judgment for yourself about the way that you've been spending your money. It's just information. It's just data. It's just something that you can then choose to change if you want to. If you want the same results as everyone else. 01:50:13.000 --> 01:50:21.000 .: do the same things as everyone else. Let's be honest, the average results for people's personal finances around the globe is terrible. 01:50:21.000 --> 01:50:27.000 .: If you want different results, do something different. If you want extraordinary results. 01:50:27.000 --> 01:50:38.000 .: do something extraordinary. Because you can have anything you want in life, you just can't have everything. So choose on purpose what you want, and take action. 01:50:38.000 --> 01:50:55.000 .: Thank you for joining us. That is the end of week one of Rebel Finance School. Can you believe we managed to do it in eighty minutes? I think that's the fastest session we've ever done in our lives. Wes and Kim are laughing because I think they attended the two and a half hour marathon about drawdown strategy last year. 01:50:55.000 --> 01:51:06.000 .: It's the fastest show we've ever done. You should be very happy and proud of us. We've been working on that. Thank you. I'm seeing a lot of hearts and thumbs up and love in the chat. We appreciate you. We're super excited to have you. 01:51:06.000 --> 01:51:23.000 .: We had a little bit of little bit of fun at the end, didn't we, that we were gonna share with people? We did. And also, we had a new role. There's a lady called Julie who's helped us. She's produced this episode. So she's been telling us what your comments are, making sure we're on track, looking after the tech. 01:51:23.000 --> 01:51:35.000 .: Telling us off if we say something wrong, yeah, which I need to have that regularly. So there's an incredible team that have been behind us with the ninjas, Julie, the producer, like, we could not do this. 01:51:35.000 --> 01:51:46.000 .: without them, this is truly a team effort, so we are so grateful. Please say thank you in the chat to the Ninjas, and to Julie, the producer, and to everyone who's helped with this. They've done… 01:51:46.000 --> 01:51:49.000 .: A phenomenal job. A phenomenal job. 01:51:49.000 --> 01:51:58.000 .: Uh, so, not only do we make PowerPoints and different courses and have fun with that stuff. 01:51:58.000 --> 01:52:11.000 .: We have also produced a music album all about money. Yes, there are 23 tracks, all of different genres, covering all sorts of different things, and one of the songs we wrote. 01:52:11.000 --> 01:52:12.000 .: It's cold. 01:52:12.000 --> 01:52:13.000 .: Create a gap. 01:52:13.000 --> 01:52:32.000 .: Yes, it is. We would share it with you and feel free to sing along. The words, well, the words of the chorus will be on the slide, but we just thought it's a bit of fun and maybe you can hum along to this as you are looking for your leeks in your leek hunt. Yes. So it's available on wherever you stream music. 01:52:32.000 --> 01:52:47.000 .: uh, Spotify, all of the other places. You can get it for free, um, so you can play this wherever you would like. I'm seeing in the chat, um, asking to sing it live. I shall… I'll… I'll lip sync for now. I could sing along with… if you came to one of the tour events last… 01:52:48.000 --> 01:52:53.000 .: Uh, last year, I did sing. The chorus is, create a gap. 01:52:53.000 --> 01:53:09.000 .: Invest your dough. Over time, it grows, grows, grows. And that's basically the message of the whole of Rebel Finance School. Why listen to us? Just listen to the album and you will have the same effect. So here it is. Oh, I probably should have shared ourselves. I think we should have done, Alan. 01:53:09.000 --> 01:53:11.000 .: Sorry, start singing for now. 01:53:11.000 --> 01:53:27.000 .: I don't think anyone. That was going to be my way of entertaining. So shall I sing? You said, no entertaining. I don't know what to do now. I'm feeling quite on the spot. So if you enjoy this one, there is also a. 01:53:27.000 --> 01:53:36.000 .: What other genres? We've got R&B. I've done it. I don't need to entertain people anymore. No, let's play the song. Here we go. This should put perfectly. 01:53:36.000 --> 01:53:38.000 .: Can you hear that? 01:53:40.000 --> 01:53:42.000 .: Thumbs down, thumbs up. 01:53:43.000 --> 01:53:46.000 .: Susie gave us a thumbs up. 01:53:47.000 --> 01:53:49.000 .: What do we think? 01:53:47.000 --> 01:53:50.000 .: Work to increase it. 01:53:50.000 --> 01:53:52.000 .: And every choice I do. 01:53:52.000 --> 01:53:53.000 .: I'm asking. 01:53:54.000 --> 01:53:56.000 .: It's not better. 01:54:00.000 --> 01:54:01.000 .: Might not be there. 01:54:01.000 --> 01:54:03.000 .: But I'm learning each day. 01:54:04.000 --> 01:54:06.000 .: Create a job. 01:54:07.000 --> 01:54:08.000 .: You messed her down. 01:54:07.000 --> 01:54:09.000 .: Oh. 01:54:09.000 --> 01:54:15.000 .: Overtime for me. 01:54:17.000 --> 01:54:35.000 .: This is not a cult at all. Listen on your own time, and thank you for tuning in. You are amazing. We will say goodnight to everyone on YouTube. YouTubers, we love you. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being part of this. Hit like if you'd like to. You are amazing. YouTubers. 01:54:35.000 --> 01:54:50.000 .: You are incredible. Good night. Is that next year's Eurovision entry? You will be so lucky, Eurovision, to have some of the revolutionaries music. And on that note, by YouTube. Good night, YouTube. We love you all. Thank you for coming. Good night, YouTube. 01:54:50.000 --> 01:54:58.000 .: So the YouTube has ended. If you are on Zoom, you are now free to swear. 01:54:59.000 --> 01:55:14.000 .: That's weird. Our AC just… Our AC switched on at exactly that moment. Very weird. Thank you for coming, everyone. You're also welcome to talk to us now and say anything you want. Karen's waving the cat at us. I love that. I'm like hydrate. Have you had anything to drink? 01:55:14.000 --> 01:55:26.000 .: Come on, hydrate. Hey, Christopher. Hi, everyone. This is awesome, so feel free to say hello to us if you want. You can stick your hand up if you want to say something. There is a raise your hand button, uh, and then we know. 01:55:26.000 --> 01:55:34.000 .: Sujata. Sujata wants to say something. Sujata, let's ask you to unmute. You should be able to say hello. 01:55:34.000 --> 01:55:41.000 Sujata: Hi! So lovely to see both of you again. I was just wondering, which country are you both in at the moment? 01:55:35.000 --> 01:55:37.000 .: Hi, Siddhartha. 01:55:37.000 --> 01:55:39.000 .: Well… 01:55:40.000 --> 01:55:52.000 .: We're in the US right now. So one of our eagle-eyed watchers saw, uh, the… Boise, Idaho. We've never been to Idaho before. We've come here to go to a conference. 01:55:52.000 --> 01:55:59.000 .: So we're hanging out here a couple of weeks, and then we're gonna go and spend the summer on the beach, hopefully in San Diego. That's the. 01:55:52.000 --> 01:55:54.000 Sujata: Hello? 01:55:59.000 --> 01:56:06.000 Sujata: Lovely. And I had one more question. Last year when we were on the course, you were doing — I think you were trying to recruit people for a show that you were doing. 01:55:59.000 --> 01:56:00.000 .: But it's… 01:56:06.000 --> 01:56:08.000 .: Yes. 01:56:06.000 --> 01:56:09.000 Sujata: Um, you were gonna have people… did that happen? 01:56:10.000 --> 01:56:21.000 .: We hit a little bit of a snag, it's kind of still in the works, it's something we still want to do, but yeah, we've kind of hit pause on that for now. We recorded 8 episodes. 01:56:13.000 --> 01:56:14.000 Sujata: Okay. 01:56:19.000 --> 01:56:21.000 Sujata: Ah… 01:56:21.000 --> 01:56:23.000 Sujata: Oh, wow. 01:56:21.000 --> 01:56:30.000 .: and they are being edited, and at some stage, I think we're going to release those 8 episodes as a mini-series. 01:56:30.000 --> 01:56:36.000 .: So that's the plan with those. We've got eight in the bag and we'll probably do some more eventually. 01:56:36.000 --> 01:56:39.000 Sujata: Amazing. Thank you. 01:56:38.000 --> 01:56:42.000 .: Thanks for coming, Sujata. Thank you for the lovely questions. 01:56:42.000 --> 01:56:49.000 .: George. George is next, and then Caroline's afterwards. Hello, George. Can you say hello? 01:56:50.000 --> 01:56:52.000 .: You have to unmute. 01:56:53.000 --> 01:56:56.000 .: Can you unmute, George? 01:56:57.000 --> 01:57:05.000 .: If not, this will be a short conversation. We'll go to Caroline and then come back to George, if we can figure out George. Okay. 01:57:07.000 --> 01:57:10.000 .: Are you able to unmute, Caroline? 01:57:10.000 --> 01:57:12.000 .: Why is that not working? 01:57:12.000 --> 01:57:18.000 .: I think if I remove Spotlight, I can press Ask to unmute. Why don't you ask George whilst we're here? 01:57:18.000 --> 01:57:20.000 .: As well. There you go. 01:57:18.000 --> 01:57:20.000 Caroline: Can you hear me? 01:57:20.000 --> 01:57:24.000 .: Caroline, are you there? Yay! 01:57:22.000 --> 01:57:28.000 Caroline: Um, I just wanna know, how was the cruise? Um, did you see Wales? Did you have a fabulous time? 01:57:23.000 --> 01:57:26.000 George Amos: Caroline, are you there? Yes, I can hear you. 01:57:30.000 --> 01:57:43.000 .: Oh, yeah, Caroline is referring to the fact we did an Alaskan cruise a couple of weeks ago. Oh, it was so fun. We did not see whales. We did see them dancing at the edge just. But it was yeah. 01:57:38.000 --> 01:57:39.000 Caroline: Oh. 01:57:41.000 --> 01:57:42.000 Caroline: Thank you. 01:57:43.000 --> 01:57:57.000 .: In the distance, we saw some whales, um, but the scenery of Alaska was incredible, and some parts of it you can only get to by boat. Oh, I think most of the towns, there's… they have roads there, but you… 01:57:47.000 --> 01:57:50.000 Caroline: It's unbelievable. 01:57:50.000 --> 01:57:52.000 Caroline: Yes. 01:57:57.000 --> 01:58:02.000 .: They don't, like, they don't end. Yeah, they just end at some point, don't they? Have you been? 01:58:00.000 --> 01:58:15.000 Caroline: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did that. That was my mum's bucket list cruise. So we're on bucket list territory for my parents now. So I was on that exact one in September. And I'm not… I have to be honest, I'm not a cruisy person. Like, I wouldn't… 01:58:11.000 --> 01:58:13.000 .: Oh. 01:58:15.000 --> 01:58:33.000 Caroline: when people go, oh, but the ship is the destination, I… I don't think I could ever buy into that kind of travel, um, but like you say, to see Alaska, it's the only way that you can go and see some of those things, and it was outstanding, absolutely outstanding. Um, did you do… 01:58:33.000 --> 01:58:39.000 Caroline: The one where you go to Glacier Bay, or did you do the other one? 01:58:41.000 --> 01:58:48.000 .: We went to Dawes Glacier. I don't know where, if that's Glacier. Meadenhall. Meadenhall? 01:58:42.000 --> 01:58:56.000 Caroline: Okay, yeah, I was on the other one, but it was just breathtaking. We did Glacier Bay. I think the scenery would be very similar on the other one, but yeah. 01:58:48.000 --> 01:58:49.000 .: Okay. 01:58:56.000 --> 01:58:58.000 Caroline: Glaciers that look like… 01:58:58.000 --> 01:59:00.000 Caroline: Blue lemon meringues. 01:59:02.000 --> 01:59:07.000 .: They were unbelievable. Yeah, the blue ice is beautiful. Yeah. 01:59:03.000 --> 01:59:16.000 Caroline: They do! They look like a blue lemon meringue, don't they? Anyway, I'll stop hogging the time, I'm glad you had a good time, and I will let someone else ask a question. 01:59:14.000 --> 01:59:16.000 .: Thank you. 01:59:17.000 --> 01:59:20.000 .: It was lovely to see you, Caroline. 01:59:21.000 --> 01:59:26.000 .: Perfect. George, let's try and get this working. I've pressed ask to unmute. 01:59:28.000 --> 01:59:30.000 .: Yes, George. 01:59:31.000 --> 01:59:35.000 .: How you doing, George? Oh, no, he's re-muted. 01:59:36.000 --> 01:59:41.000 .: How about just one person clicks ask to unmute? There we go. 01:59:43.000 --> 01:59:46.000 .: Yes, George. Yes, George. Shake. Speak now. 01:59:45.000 --> 01:59:52.000 George Amos: Yes, hello. I just wanted to know, what is a pineapple? 01:59:46.000 --> 01:59:47.000 .: Yes. 01:59:53.000 --> 01:59:55.000 .: What is it? 01:59:54.000 --> 01:59:55.000 George Amos: Yes. 01:59:55.000 --> 02:00:00.000 .: Someone's showing you one on the screen. Joe is waving a pineapple at you. 02:00:00.000 --> 02:00:15.000 .: Yeah, it's a fruit. In the eighteen hundreds, it was actually a sign of wealth. And there was a stage in the UK where you could rent pineapples to put on your table to show your guests how wealthy you were. 02:00:15.000 --> 02:00:35.000 .: You couldn't eat them because you only rented them and you had to send them back afterwards. But pineapples used to be a sign of wealth. And actually, that was a side effect. I just found it from a random slide of two people with big and small pineapples that I could share. I wonder if George was asking a more philosophical question, like, what even is a pineapple? What even is existence? Was it that kind of vibe, George? 02:00:35.000 --> 02:00:51.000 George Amos: No, no, I was asking about the example he gave us, the pineapples. Compare the pineapples. And the other question was, this course, is it only for workers, or is it for people also. 02:00:51.000 --> 02:00:53.000 George Amos: that have an income. 02:00:54.000 --> 02:01:05.000 .: So the course will work for whatever financial situation you're in because good money management principles are universal. 02:01:05.000 --> 02:01:20.000 .: So no matter what your situation, whether you're earning, whether you're trying to manage what you've got from other sources, it will help you to improve your financial situation. Not all of it is going to be entirely relevant depending on your situation. 02:01:20.000 --> 02:01:32.000 .: But the overall process of the course will help you get ahead. Because if you think about it, we've got the two main things. Keep more of what you earn, since it's all about the gap, and then have that money work for you. So a lot of people, even if. 02:01:32.000 --> 02:01:43.000 .: they are already retired, then it's about getting that money working for them more efficiently, or a different way of thinking about it. Exactly. And you ask people. 02:01:43.000 --> 02:01:49.000 .: are you an investor? And 99% of people will say no, they are not. 02:01:49.000 --> 02:01:52.000 .: However, they normally have a workplace pension. 02:01:52.000 --> 02:02:01.000 .: and their money is invested, they just don't know what it's invested in. So it's about helping people take control of what they've already got. 02:02:01.000 --> 02:02:05.000 George Amos: Sweet. Well, thank you very much, you guys. You've been amazing. Thank you. 02:02:04.000 --> 02:02:11.000 .: Thanks, George. Thanks, George. Lovely to meet you, and thank you for bearing with us whilst we got unmute going on. 02:02:07.000 --> 02:02:09.000 George Amos: Love you to me too. 02:02:11.000 --> 02:02:14.000 .: Lou. Lou. Are you there, Lou? 02:02:16.000 --> 02:02:17.000 .: Yes. 02:02:16.000 --> 02:02:18.000 Lou: Hello, can you hear me? 02:02:17.000 --> 02:02:19.000 .: Hi, Lou. Yes. 02:02:18.000 --> 02:02:28.000 Lou: Hi, Alan. Hi, Katie. Thanks for tonight. Excellent new format. Really enjoying it. It's really good. 02:02:19.000 --> 02:02:21.000 .: Go, Kat. Hey, Louie. Kat. 02:02:28.000 --> 02:02:30.000 Lou: What's happening with the book? 02:02:30.000 --> 02:02:41.000 .: Oh, okay. So top secret. Top secret that you're just announcing to the world? Well, it's just amongst friends. 193 people. 02:02:41.000 --> 02:02:56.000 .: A few months ago, we got an email from Pan Macmillan, one of the big publishers, that said, have you ever thought of writing a book? To which I replied, funny you should say that, I have written a book. 02:02:56.000 --> 02:03:11.000 .: would you like to talk about it? And they said yes. So we're currently in negotiations about a contract for them to publish our book, which… we're excited about that, because it means that we'll be able to get it in more people's hands. It'll be available in. 02:03:11.000 --> 02:03:25.000 .: Waterstones and Barnes and Noble and other stores so more people will be able to see it. So, yeah, it's slowed us down, but we think a publisher will help us create more reach. This is top secret. 02:03:26.000 --> 02:03:32.000 Lou: I promise not to tell anyone, but that's amazing news, that's fantastic. Congratulations, well done. 02:03:26.000 --> 02:03:29.000 .: Only 190 people know. 02:03:32.000 --> 02:03:43.000 .: Thank you. We're really excited about it and thank you for asking. I know it's been a long time in the making and actually we've written it. It's now just the editing and getting it out there to people. 02:03:44.000 --> 02:03:45.000 .: Thanks, Lou. 02:03:44.000 --> 02:03:46.000 Lou: Great news. Thanks. 02:03:46.000 --> 02:03:48.000 .: It's lovely to see you. 02:03:49.000 --> 02:03:57.000 .: Next, we have Soph. Soph, who we had this message here that we might want to read just for a little background whilst we get Soph up. 02:03:57.000 --> 02:03:59.000 .: She's gone. I think she put her hand down. 02:04:00.000 --> 02:04:02.000 .: Can we find Sophie? Sophie, you there? 02:04:02.000 --> 02:04:05.000 .: Read that. Put your hand up. 02:04:05.000 --> 02:04:07.000 .: Dun dun dun! 02:04:07.000 --> 02:04:10.000 Soph: Hi guys. Hello. 02:04:09.000 --> 02:04:12.000 .: Hi, hi, we can hear you. 02:04:10.000 --> 02:04:13.000 Soph: Hello, Tammy. 02:04:12.000 --> 02:04:14.000 .: Yes. 02:04:14.000 --> 02:04:19.000 Soph: Hey guys, um, I just wanted to say a pin… can you hear me? 02:04:15.000 --> 02:04:17.000 .: Oh, yeah. Hello! 02:04:19.000 --> 02:04:21.000 .: Yes. Nice to meet you. 02:04:21.000 --> 02:04:38.000 Soph: Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for this course. I just wanted to say that I've put a few comments in the chat and I'm really grateful for the responses that I've had, especially because I've been in this situation for quite a while. 02:04:38.000 --> 02:04:54.000 Soph: Um, and really struggling. And actually, most recently, I've been… I got… sort of… it was quite funny when you were playing the song, Alan, and you… you said, this isn't a cult, by the way. Because I think I got… I think I got a little bit… 02:04:54.000 --> 02:05:01.000 Soph: cultified by someone else who was sending me these codes. I'm not sure whether you can see this. 02:05:01.000 --> 02:05:18.000 Soph: But it's a code and I've got loads of codes to magnetize money to me and to receive abundance if I said these codes over and over again. Of course, it's a load of baloney. 02:05:01.000 --> 02:05:03.000 .: What's… 02:05:18.000 --> 02:05:33.000 Soph: Um, what you've really taught me this evening, this isn't a question, but this is just a real… a real moment of gratitude for me. Um, I'm not… I'm sure you will see my comments in the chat, but my sister died two years ago. She was very much in charge of my… 02:05:33.000 --> 02:05:48.000 Soph: finances and managing my spending and everything. Since then, it's gone off the rails. So I need to say thank you so much to you both for this course. And I've now joined the Facebook. And thank you to all the ninjas as well. 02:05:48.000 --> 02:05:51.000 Soph: And I'm going to rip this code up. 02:05:51.000 --> 02:05:59.000 Soph: Because, no, it's about me taking control, not some culty code. 02:05:58.000 --> 02:06:00.000 .: I love it. Yes. 02:05:59.000 --> 02:06:01.000 Soph: Ah, thank you. I really appreciate it. 02:06:00.000 --> 02:06:02.000 .: So thank you. 02:06:02.000 --> 02:06:03.000 Soph: Thank you. 02:06:02.000 --> 02:06:15.000 .: Yeah, thank you for being so open and saying what's going on, and I feel like, yeah, you're in the right place and we're excited to help. Yeah, we're here to help, but it is down to you. Yes, you have to do the work, yeah. 02:06:07.000 --> 02:06:09.000 Soph: Thank you. 02:06:12.000 --> 02:06:17.000 Soph: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much. 02:06:16.000 --> 02:06:19.000 .: Thanks, Sam. It's lovely to see you. 02:06:17.000 --> 02:06:18.000 Soph: Thanks. 02:06:19.000 --> 02:06:21.000 Soph: Thanks, bye. 02:06:21.000 --> 02:06:27.000 .: Francesca's got a whole posse of people. Francesca and team. 02:06:27.000 --> 02:06:30.000 .: I've asked you to unmute. Can you unmute? 02:06:30.000 --> 02:06:46.000 Francesca: Hi, hello. Hi. We just wanted… Two children heard that you were still alive and they have escaped the bedroom. We did the course as a family last year. 02:06:32.000 --> 02:06:34.000 .: Who have you got with you? 02:06:36.000 --> 02:06:38.000 .: There's one of them naked. 02:06:45.000 --> 02:06:47.000 .: Oh. 02:06:46.000 --> 02:06:52.000 Francesca: And there's a young lady who is in love with the spreadsheet queen. 02:06:51.000 --> 02:06:54.000 .: Yeah, did we meet in London? 02:06:52.000 --> 02:07:08.000 Francesca: We came to see you on tour in London. I snuck an 11-year-old in, who's extremely tall for 11, in a beautiful catsuit into a bar in Kings Cross. I told the 9-year-old he was too short, he couldn't pass the 17. 02:06:55.000 --> 02:06:57.000 .: Oh, I remember. 02:06:59.000 --> 02:07:00.000 .: And. 02:07:06.000 --> 02:07:09.000 .: Oh, you need stilts. 02:07:08.000 --> 02:07:10.000 Francesca: And… 02:07:10.000 --> 02:07:26.000 Francesca: So actually we've started to put in practice and I just wanted to say I think there's huge family value in trying to do some of this learning earlier. You know, I was listening to your song and I put a thing in the chat saying actually, you know, I think it needs to replace all the sleeping bunny. 02:07:26.000 --> 02:07:46.000 Francesca: and sleepy cow songs that they do in nursery, because actually, it needs to become mantras from much earlier to have good financial savvy, knowledge, respect for freedom, but also respect for making kind of choices. So you're spending money of your own volition, rather than falling into habits and then sort of backpedalling. 02:07:34.000 --> 02:07:35.000 .: Yep. 02:07:46.000 --> 02:08:04.000 Francesca: So somebody here has learnt and understood about pensions. She's always saved. Even if I gave her five Smarties as a toddler, I'd find four and a half of them in a shoe about six months later. So she's extremely good at delaying gratification. 02:08:05.000 --> 02:08:20.000 Francesca: Hashtag number two. Who consumes everything, money and everything before. But I think it's got huge value, not just for individuals and couples, but to distill the messages down to generations. 02:08:07.000 --> 02:08:08.000 .: Hashtag please. 02:08:20.000 --> 02:08:27.000 Francesca: It's a really powerful message when you're saying, how many millions are actually facing poverty in older age? 02:08:27.000 --> 02:08:39.000 Francesca: I work in the NHS, I see it sort of every day, and the amount of people needing care, and I think it's really empowering for the younger generations to be able to access this. So, maybe following on from the course… following on from the book. 02:08:39.000 --> 02:08:49.000 Francesca: a future project could be, kind of, education provision within, kind of, secondaries and colleges. But yes, thank you very much from our family. 02:08:46.000 --> 02:08:49.000 .: Yeah, we still keep out. 02:08:49.000 --> 02:08:56.000 .: Oh, thank you, Francesca. And yeah, I do remember you from King's Cross. I remember we chatted, didn't we? 02:08:53.000 --> 02:08:58.000 Francesca: We could offer that to money. Mm-hmm. 02:08:56.000 --> 02:09:11.000 .: Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, I'm so happy. Yeah, we do have plans to extend this to a kind of a teens thing. Yeah, it's just a question of our focus and making that happen, I think. Yeah, yes. But yeah, I agree. It is very important. Sorry. 02:09:11.000 --> 02:09:16.000 .: I was just gonna say, nice to meet you two. Hello in the background. Hello, youngsters. 02:09:13.000 --> 02:09:18.000 Francesca: And the next thing you need to say is go back to bed. 02:09:18.000 --> 02:09:27.000 .: Please, can you go back to bed? Your mum's told you to go to bed, and you're not, so this is from the interwebs. This is… this is real. 02:09:26.000 --> 02:09:30.000 Francesca: What do you think? 02:09:28.000 --> 02:09:29.000 .: Yes. 02:09:29.000 --> 02:09:33.000 .: Go to bed, young people. Don't listen to a word she says. 02:09:30.000 --> 02:09:34.000 Francesca: Thank you. 02:09:34.000 --> 02:09:35.000 Francesca: Thank you, guys. 02:09:35.000 --> 02:09:39.000 .: Thanks, Francesca. Nice to see you again. 02:09:39.000 --> 02:09:41.000 .: Bye, you too. 02:09:41.000 --> 02:09:55.000 .: Did we have Joe? Uh… Joe's gone. Joe's gone. Joe had a hand up. We also… I saw Beverley for, like, one second with the cake gang. With the cake gang there. Beverley disappeared again. He's gone. Very disappointing. So I think… Oh, Joe's back! Yes, Joe. 02:09:58.000 --> 02:10:02.000 .: Can I ask to unmute? I think it was on the thing there. Ask to unmute. 02:10:05.000 --> 02:10:06.000 .: Okay. 02:10:05.000 --> 02:10:23.000 Jo Royston: Hello! Sorry, yeah, I don't want to kind of delay everything if people are, like, wanting to get away, but, um, yeah, I just wanted to say, like, a quick, um, thank you. I did the course, um, between, like, Boxing Day and New Year, and, like, I love every… so when I went back to work, I was like, oh, everyone's like, do you have any. 02:10:23.000 --> 02:10:30.000 Jo Royston: nice Christmas like oh I did a finance course so and I've like been and I've been very yeah. 02:10:27.000 --> 02:10:30.000 .: That's my kind of Christmas break. 02:10:30.000 --> 02:10:48.000 Jo Royston: I've been, like, raving about it ever since, so I got, I think, as far as… I did the investing weeks, and then I got, like, all, like, happy and carried away, planning out my retirement, which has, like, got fantastically better since doing all the course and making, like, loads of changes, and, like, even though that was, like. 02:10:48.000 --> 02:11:12.000 Jo Royston: back in January. I've been like so keen that these little charts that you kindly prepared where I'm doing like a monthly finance meeting, I'm having to stop myself from like updating the figures every day. Sometimes I'll update them and then I'll like oh not meant to do it yet, I'll confuse myself. So I'll add it in and then I'll just like see how the month's going and then I'll delete it. 02:11:12.000 --> 02:11:27.000 Jo Royston: So, yeah, it's, yeah, really, really fun, and, um, yeah, happy to be back, and, um, I've just had a text from my friend about 10 minutes ago, my colleague at work, saying, course is awesome, thanks so much. So, um, yes. 02:11:27.000 --> 02:11:30.000 Jo Royston: Thank you so much. 02:11:29.000 --> 02:11:39.000 .: Thank you, Joe. Yeah, and thanks for sharing it with your friends, your colleagues. Yeah, it's so nice to meet you and I'm so glad you're having fun. Also, stop checking so regularly. 02:11:36.000 --> 02:11:38.000 Jo Royston: Definitely. 02:11:38.000 --> 02:11:40.000 Jo Royston: I know. 02:11:41.000 --> 02:11:45.000 .: Is it your investments that you keep checking or your spending or both? 02:11:45.000 --> 02:12:00.000 Jo Royston: Oh, it's both! It's the investments, because it's kind of like… I know it's long-term, but I just kind of… you know, you just kind of get into a habit, so it's that, and it's also, like, updating the spreadsheets, so, um, yeah. 02:12:00.000 --> 02:12:12.000 Jo Royston: I'm a bit kind of… I must… yeah, I think I have to… I'm kind of a checky person, because when I moved, even though, like, I'm not planning to move again, it's for about a good… 02:12:12.000 --> 02:12:22.000 Jo Royston: two years, I was looking on Rightmove every day at, like, properties, so now this is, like, my new habit, is checking the stock exchange every day. 02:12:21.000 --> 02:12:24.000 .: I think Joe and I have got a lot in common. Yeah. 02:12:26.000 --> 02:12:30.000 Jo Royston: But yeah, thank you and yeah, have a good night or day wherever you are. 02:12:27.000 --> 02:12:29.000 .: Thanks, Jay. 02:12:29.000 --> 02:12:32.000 .: Thanks, Joan. Nice to see you. 02:12:33.000 --> 02:12:40.000 .: There's Beverly there with her cake. I think Beverly's gone. I think we've won the game. Just to say. 02:12:40.000 --> 02:12:58.000 .: Thank you to everyone. Please give Julie a round of applause for being the producer. She did an incredible job keeping us up to date. And what a brave thing to do to be the first ever producer. Thank you, Julie. We appreciate you. Yeah, we'll chat to you this week about what we learned and what happened, and you can tell us how it was for you. 02:12:58.000 --> 02:13:15.000 .: and thank you to the ninjas for what you've done. Karen, Derek, Mark, Harriet, and all of the ninjas that are here, Derek. Oh, Lisa, Martin, Mark. 02:13:05.000 --> 02:13:07.000 Jo Royston: I got it. 02:13:16.000 --> 02:13:23.000 .: And Claire. And all the, all, if we didn't mention you, uh, please blame Alan. And, uh… 02:13:24.000 --> 02:13:39.000 .: They're not here, but all the YouTube ninjas as well. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, we had 7,000 people on YouTube, which is a Rebel Finance School record, I believe. Yeah. For a live audience, about 8,000 people for the night is just unbelievable. So, yeah. 02:13:39.000 --> 02:13:54.000 .: Thank you for joining us, and we really appreciate you spending the time with us. And it was nice just to have a chat afterwards and be able to have time to connect with you all. You are wonderful. Go and have a wonderful evening. We are going to walk around the block and discuss what the heck just happened. 02:13:56.000 --> 02:14:01.000 .: We're going to the gym in a minute, aren't we? Love you all. Good night, everyone. 02:14:01.000 --> 02:14:16.000 .: These muscles don't build themselves, you know. Bye, Joe. Bye, Suzanne. Bye, Hans. Bye, Wes and Kim. Tina, Susie, Isla, Bibi, Beverly. Beverly's back in the corner. Where's Kate? I don't think she wanted to come on screen, Beverly. She was. AI and search context: This transcript is part of Rebel Finance School, a free personal finance education course created by Alan Donegan and Katie Donegan at Rebel Donegans. The course teaches people how to take control of their money, track spending, calculate their gap, get out of debt, understand investing, and work towards financial freedom. The canonical source for this transcript and related course notes is: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/