Title: Rebel Finance School 2026 — Week 1 Monday Transcript
Session: Design Your Monthly Finance Meeting: The Habit That Keeps You On Track | RFS 2026 Week 5
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9ZhnumE8g
Course: Rebel Finance School 2026
Creators: Alan Donegan and Katie Donegan, Rebel Donegans
Canonical page: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/week-5/
Course hub: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/
Website: https://rebeldonegans.com/
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Disclaimer:
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and one. Hello and welcome to Rebel Finance School week five.
0:05
Week five. Nearly at the halfway point. Well, after today will be halfway, won't it? We will be. We're very excited about
0:10
this. Monday was all about the vision. Starting with where you're going, not
0:16
with tracking and spreadsheets and the behavior and like you must do that and you shouldn't be doing this.
0:22
None of that works either for us or for the people that we care about in our lives. Exactly. And most people start at
0:27
behavior. You must track your spending. you spend too much. Stop spending on this. No more Lego. [laughter]
0:33
I've never said that before. And it causes problems. But actually, the real purpose of money, money is a
0:40
tool to create the life you want to lead. And that's where we always want to start is money is the tool to build the
0:45
life you want to lead. And we love Jenny is here. She's taking a break from wedding prep, getting married in 5 days
0:52
to tune in and watch uh Happy Wedding for 5 days time. We're super excited you're with us. Everyone's here. Uh, the
0:59
happy saver says, "Great t-shirt choices." Katie's back to the future. Uh,
1:05
I am on Toy Story brand new t-shirt. Reward for running the course for myself. It's like, you've done a good
1:11
job, Alan. Buy a TEFL t-shirt. Right, let's actually get going and get straight into the content because I
1:17
believe we've waited the 30 seconds for YouTube to catch up. So, you should be here now.
1:22
Hello, YouTubers. So based on Monday and starting with the vision this is actually the mechanics
1:28
and what we're going to talk about is the monthly finance meeting. Now when most people talk about money it's at a
1:36
stage where it has become a crisis. Yeah. And that's either because something external has happened a big
1:42
cost has come up or a divorce or a death in the family something outside or it
1:48
could even be something that's happened in your relationship and like uhoh something's happened. We need to talk about this. We want to stop it being a
1:55
crisis and start it being more of a regular rhythm. Exactly. You shouldn't have to wait until the surprise insurance bill
2:01
arrives and you're like, "Well, do we have enough money to pay this?" Let's make it a monthly rhythm where you're
2:07
actually talking about your finances with yourself with the people you love. And we're going to talk today about the
2:13
monthly finance meeting. It's Katie's favorite day of the month. I look forward to it all month, don't I?
2:19
And the the purpose of the monthly finance meeting is to have that regular space that's set aside. Let's talk about
2:26
what's going on. Let's talk about what happened in the last month. Let's see what's coming up. So that you have that regular thing where you're checking in
2:32
with yourself, with your money, with the people that you're working with. And there's some key reasons why this works. Number one is what gets measured
2:40
gets improved. If you're not focusing on those particular numbers, you don't even
2:45
know where you're heading. you don't know how much you're spending, where your money's going. So, this helps you
2:50
to track it and then to improve it. And when you you might have seen this already, this idea that just by looking
2:56
at something, you can't help but improve it. So, if you've looked at your spending from week one when we covered
3:03
that, you can't help but look and go like, "Oh, works. I don't really want to be spending that." Or you spot the
3:09
subscriptions that you don't use anymore and cancel those. You can't help but make changes just by looking at it. And
3:15
it leads to this concept and asking the question, are we happy with the direction we're heading in? Because if
3:23
you start to track these numbers for a while, you'll start to realize, oh, my spending is going up every month. I
3:28
should do something about it or actually my net worth is going down. What's happening there? How do I deal with it?
3:36
And it helps you to chart out your future and avoid future problems because
3:41
one of the big questions is always how do we make sure we don't run out of money in retirement? How do we make sure
3:47
our finances are going around in the right direction? And most people are careering through life heading to a
3:53
stage where they don't have enough for retirement. But this will tell you. And then when we
4:00
talk about charting out your future, people get a bit like, well, how do I create a chart? What happens? Well, just
4:05
imagine it this way. Let's imagine your April spending was this and your May spending was this and your June spending
4:13
was this. And you can start to see the direction which your spending is going.
4:19
And the answer to the question, are we happy with where this is heading? Well, if we keep inflating our spending like
4:25
this, well, we're going to be in trouble. And it just allows you to stay on top of your figures and to know
4:31
what's going to happen in the future. So, we've had this phrase throughout the course and one that we're famous for, which is don't compare your pineapples
4:38
with other people. But actually, this is about comparing your own pineapples over time and seeing what's happening. So,
4:45
your pineapples might be growing. You might actually go as you get older, wow, my pineapples are doing really well and
4:51
have you got to the stage where your pineapples are big enough to live off? And this is actually the question you
4:57
can answer. That was my favorite laugh from Wes and Kim ever. They actually enjoyed that one. when people laugh.
5:03
Um, so like just to sort of bring this to life and show the purpose of it, if you imagined your 2025 net worth was
5:10
here and the numbers are irrelevant. It's just the trend we're looking at and it goes up each year your net worth and
5:17
you can track out and go, well, in the future if it keeps going like this,
5:23
where will I end up? And you could have your retirement target and then you could see on my current course, my
5:29
current trajectory, my current uh path, when will I get to the stage that I can
5:36
stop working, that I've bought my freedom. And this is how you know when you've hit freedom. This is how you
5:43
know, it's also my favorite slide that Katie created of me hitting freedom. Um, but this is how you know when you've
5:49
reached freedom and you can stop working. Because a lot of people go for far too long sometimes because they didn't realize they already had enough. And
5:56
this is the meeting. This is the check-in to be able to know to be able to look and see what's happening over
6:01
time. So the concept is money is a tool to build the life you want. And the monthly
6:06
finance meeting puts you in the cockpit of your money life. It puts you in charge. You can see all the levers, all
6:14
the tools. You know how to fly. Obviously, don't fly like we are. You've got to face the way you're going. Uh AI
6:20
doesn't understand the fact you should probably face the way you're going. But you can ignore that. Perhaps it's on autopilot.
6:26
There's three ways to do that. Three ways to do this. You can do this with your partner or your family or your household. And the idea there is you're
6:33
building that shared direction together, working on this together. Perhaps you're solo and you do the meeting on your own.
6:40
And that's the idea is actually you're looking after current and future you and working as on your own to do that. Or
6:48
finally, some people have money buddies and that's the idea is to have this accountability and encouragement. And I
6:54
know producer Julie has been doing this with a group of people and really enjoying doing the homework together and
7:00
holding each other accountable. They've got a new person, Helga, this week who's caught up on the course and like binge
7:06
watched in three days, which is amazing. And I know a lot of you are just catching up having just found the course
7:11
when we've already started. So big welcome to you. We're excited to have you. Exactly. Now, a quick message from our
7:18
lawyer because we have to do this every week. This is not financial advice. We're not
7:23
trained financial advisers. We are not regulated. We will not sell you investments. You make your decisions. We're sharing our opinions and ideas
7:28
which may or may not continue to work for us or you. You are 100% responsible for your financial future.
7:34
There are no guarantees here except the money back guarantee. If you do not like the course, you can have 100% of
7:40
your money back. Please see Derek for your full refund. And if you've paid, something has gone very wrong. Now, if you're watching live
7:47
on Zoom and you want to ask a question, please use that Q&A button down the bottom. Stick the questions in there and
7:52
the beautiful ninjas will help. The beautiful ninjas. What about the the ugly ninjas? There are no such thing.
7:58
Thank you very much. Well said. and on catchup on Zoom. Please put your questions in the comments. We've been
8:05
replying to as many as we can and the ninjas are helping tonight. They're here to answer. Now, a message from our
8:11
sponsors. If you're on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. It makes the
8:16
algorithm happy. It makes us happy and it helps us to reach new people.
8:21
And then we had this map of your journey towards financial freedom that we introduced in the first weeks. And we
8:28
always like to come back to this. Where does this actually where does this week
8:34
interact with this? And well, you go, well, it affects everything cuz actually this week tells you where you are on the
8:39
journey. If you're not doing the monthly finance meeting, if you don't update your numbers every now and again, you
8:45
don't even know where you are on the journey. So this affects everything. So let's get into it. What is the
8:52
monthly money meeting or the monthly finance meeting? What do you do during the meeting? So the first thing that you
8:58
do is you come back to why you're doing this. Remember we told this that everyone starts at behavior level. We
9:04
want to make sure we really train in what is my vision? What is my goal? And by asking why. We make sure we do that.
9:10
Don't dive straight into numbers and behavior and tracking. Remind ourselves why am I doing this? What am I building
9:15
towards? Then we have a quick look about what are we proud of? What have we done so far? Then we get into the main meat
9:22
of the entire meeting which is gathering the numbers because we need to know the numbers and what to do. Once we got the
9:29
numbers then we have a little look at what are the numbers telling me and questions and the answer for this bit.
9:36
And the final is what action are we going to take based on the numbers because there's no point reviewing it
9:41
all unless we do something positive about it. And a quick reminder there's three ways of doing this meeting. Number one is
9:47
with your partner or your family. Number two is if you're single or solo, you might want to do this on your own. And
9:53
if you have buddies, you might want to team up with some buddies and do it with them and sort of alongside each other
9:59
help each other figure out where you're heading. Also, Annette says, "If I'm single, do I just have the monthly finance meeting
10:04
with myself?" Yes, you can. Sometimes it's easier to make decisions on your own. You could also find friends from
10:10
the Facebook group. You could ask someone to do it with you. There are lots of people in the same situation. We
10:16
have quite often done our monthly finance meeting with friends and it inspires them to get on top of their
10:22
numbers. Uh we did want to just highlight there are different levels
10:28
which you can do this. There are three ways. There's the tiny meeting. The tiny
10:33
meeting is I just want to spend a quick 15 minutes check-in. You just say why you're here. One sentence, one thing
10:40
you're proud of. Gather one number. Ask one question and do one tiny action. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Sometimes
10:47
you just don't have the time or energy or you just want to do a quick check-in. You can do a tiny version of the
10:52
meeting. Exactly. Also, I'm slightly concerned where our legs have gone on this slide. Uh
10:58
we're at that one of those like Japanese tables where you're sat on the floor. Now, the normal meeting, this is what
11:04
Katie and I do once a month. We have a normal meeting. We spend 90 minutes. So, we sit down together. We go through all
11:10
the figures and we have a chat about it. We pick and do it at a relaxed pace. We
11:16
tend to pick a beautiful location with a nice breakfast because it inspires us. And if you give Allan coffee and food,
11:23
he is very productive. Uh some of you will go, I want to do it with a wine in the evening or I'll make a curry to
11:30
bride my partner to come and do it with me. However you've got to do it, just make it a fun experience because doing
11:37
your finances doesn't have to be boring and dull. It can actually be a really fun experience.
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And then every now and again, you might want to do a deep dive, a deep dive. So we do this once a year at the end of
11:48
the year, we look back over the year and go deeper and look at the trends over time and spend a lot longer with it.
11:55
We also do it tend to do it once a year around the end of the tax year. Uh so in
12:00
the UK the tax year runs April to April. Obviously makes complete sense. Uh so around February we go into have we used
12:08
our allowances? what are we doing for the next year? And we actually put it in the diary and we call it the mega
12:13
pow-wow of finance joy. Uh and we sit together and do all our numbers and it's
12:19
really fun. Do you remember we talked about the juiciness of the language when we were talking about what's your vision and
12:24
what are you working towards? We talked about that in week three. This is an example of us doing that of like not we
12:31
already enjoy doing these meetings because we're planning for our future. We're building what we're doing. But by
12:36
calling it a mega power or financial joy, I'm just like, let me at it. The juiciness of how you approach these
12:41
things is going to affect how you show up and your energy. And give yourself time, have fun, and
12:48
just go deep with the numbers. This also might be triggered around a major life event such as your moving house,
12:55
a divorce. You check all the numbers and then you go through it all. So those are
13:01
the three levels, tiny, normal, or deep dive. Let's go into the actual monthly
13:06
finance meeting. So, these are the five steps and we'll start with why. So, this
13:12
is literally what we do at the start of our monthly finance meeting. Uh Katie,
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why do you do why do you want to do this monthly finance meeting? Well, there's a geeky answer which is I
13:23
love data. I love seeing what happens over time and also I want to see what's going on in our lives and also want to
13:30
make sure that what we how we have our finances set up is going to continue to support us in what we want to do and
13:36
where we want to go and the fun that we want to have and how we want to live our lives. And by saying it at the start of the
13:43
meeting, we remind ourselves why we're here and we get more excited about it. So, we'd like to know from you, why are
13:49
you doing this? What is your purpose? What is your big why? Why do you even
13:54
care about this stuff? Because if you can say that, then the gathering the
14:00
numbers becomes a lot easier because you've connected with your big goal. My big why is spend more time with my kids.
14:06
My big why is I want the freedom to travel. My big why is I'm going to settle down in a cottage with my
14:11
finances. Whatever. I don't care what it is. Your why is your why. And that is
14:17
what will drive you. And you'll notice we keep coming back to this because it really is super important to remind
14:23
yourself of what you're doing because there are frustrations that come up. There are complexities sometimes, but
14:30
coming back to remembering why you're doing doing it helps to fuel you through. You didn't say what your why
14:35
was. Emma, do you want to know? Yeah. Oh, okay. I'll stop sharing the screen. Uh, my why is because money is the tool
14:44
that gives us the freedom to do this. I get to spend my time doing whatever I
14:49
want to do. I don't have to have an alarm. I can get up. I can run random courses. I can help strangers with their
14:55
finances. I can buy new Toy Story t-shirts just cuz I want to. Uh and that
15:01
is the joy of the finances. It allows me the freedom to live life on my own
15:06
terms. And if that isn't a strong enough why, I don't know what is. But that keeps me motivated and going. And that's
15:12
my why. As you were speaking, it reminded me of another reason that is like this is a big part of all of our
15:19
lives and just to give it the respect it deserves almost to like I'm dedicating this time. This is important and it's
15:26
showing the universe, showing the world this is what I'm about. Yeah. And I absolutely love the wise coming through. People are saying I'm my
15:32
why is to get on top of my finances to go traveling at age 55. There's some great wise. Please keep sharing them
15:39
with us because this is the juice. But we're going to move on to the second part of this. Uh if you want to, you can
15:46
take a little picture of this slide so you can remember the five steps. We'll put it in the notes as well. But these
15:51
are the five steps. Number two is what are you proud of? And you might be
15:57
going, what are you talking about, Donigans? Why are you talking about what you're proud of? Katie, tell me, why do
16:03
we have that here? It's to put you in a good state and a positive state to remind yourself that
16:08
you're making progress. And it doesn't have to be anything to do with money necessarily. It's just to get you into
16:13
this positive state, remind you that you've been doing things that are worthy of pride and again gets you in that
16:21
great state of mind. And I know a lot of you might be thinking, well, I don't really have anything to be proud of.
16:28
First of all, I feel like giving you a really friendly slap of like, come on, there must be something in your life
16:33
that is going well. And even if you don't feel that way, just the fact you're showing up here on a random
16:39
Thursday night, if you're watching live or on catchup, you're devoting your time. I think that's something to be
16:44
really incredibly proud of. Exactly. So, when we do this, I quite often have I'm proud of showing up and
16:50
working on my finances. I'm proud of looking after and showing the universe that I care about my finances. Uh Ruth
16:58
is laughing away about the term friendly slap. Uh yeah, if you hang out with Katie long enough, that will happen to
17:03
you. I mean I do have a feeling if I get like an empty bottle sometimes I just like start
17:09
give Katie an empty bottle just get very excited Anna. So that's the second step is proud.
17:14
That's the key piece. So we're now going to move on to the third step which is actually where we get into the heart of
17:21
the monthly finance meeting. Oh can I just give one example that Leia said what Leia was proud of. She said I
17:27
was out of work for 18 months and kept doing the me monthly meeting. Some months were really hard because my
17:32
emergency fund was going down, but some months my net worth increased. I'm really proud of that discipline over
17:37
that period. That is a great thing to be aware of. Congratulations. So, we're going into step three, which
17:44
is gather. Now, the first question is what do you want to gather? What are the things? And we've broken it out into two
17:51
things. One is cash flow and two is the net worth. And cash flow just means
17:57
money in, money out. This is week one of the course. It's the spending. How much
18:02
did I spend? It's the gap. Was there a gap this month? And then this thing called freedom rates. [snorts]
18:09
We're going to come on to that because that's a new concept. But those of you eagle-eyed amongst you that have been
18:14
using the week one tracker, the spending and gap tracker might have spotted this freedom rate in there and wondered what
18:19
that was all about. We're going to explain that today. And the second part is what do you have, which is the net worth. That was week
18:26
two, the net worth tracker. How much do you have? Or it's how am I doing on my
18:32
progress out of debt which was week four. I would say and rather than or you're
18:37
doing net worth and you're doing the debt and how you exactly. Yeah. Uh if you're doing a tiny meeting the
18:43
one number to focus on is the net worth because actually in a way your cash flow
18:49
is baked into your net worth because if your net worth has gone down you'll be start asking well why did it go down?
18:55
How much did I spend? Where did the money go? So if you're doing a tiny meeting like you've only got 20 minutes
19:01
to do it, this is the number to track. Okay. So coming back to part A, the cash
19:08
flow, let's explain what freedom rate is. What the heck is this term the Donigans have concocted? [laughter]
19:15
And it actually comes from lots of people come to us and they say, "I'm good with money." And if you were to
19:21
translate that sentence, what it means is I'm good at traditionally saving.
19:27
Like, I have enough money to pay my bills. I'm good at saving. That's what it means. And that's a really great place to
19:33
start. We just want to shift the focus from freedom rather than saving. So, you will have heard a lot of people saying,
19:40
"What's your savings rate?" You'll see that a lot if you read anything in the financial independence world, different blogs and things. People always talk
19:46
about, "What's your saving rate? What's your saving rate?" We want to shift focus actually to freedom rate and uh
19:52
because saving is quite often saving for future spending. So I'm saving for a
19:58
holiday, I'm saving for Christmas, I'm saving for that which is fantastic and it will not set you up for the future.
20:05
So savings rate is saving to spend on future you. Freedom rate is how much are
20:11
you investing to look after yourself in the future. That's the key distinction.
20:16
And if we tie it back to week two, we started to ask you about your split of
20:22
your finances and you had your savings is this cash bit at the bottom and you
20:27
had your freedom fund which is this bit at the top. So if you've been a good saver, you can take your savings and you
20:35
can invest it minus the the emergency fund and all the other bits, but you can
20:41
actually invest it. And that's the bit is the savings are fantastic, but it won't provide for you in the future. And
20:48
we became so laser focused on our freedom fund that that's what happened
20:54
to us. My whole thing, obviously, don't compare your pineapples. Uh but we had a very good
20:59
freedom fund. And that's what we kind of trying to change and help people focus
21:05
is focus on their freedom fund, which looks after them. So why should we care
21:10
about freedom rate, Katie? Well, I'm going to do this by way of example with our good friends Ellie and Larry that we
21:16
remember from week four. So, I want to ask a question of you. Who reaches freedom first of Ellie and Larry? And
21:23
this is assuming that they are starting from zero. So, Ellie's slaying it. Ellie's earning half a million a year
21:30
and she's managing to invest 50 grand a year. She's doing really well. Don't compare your pineapples. These are
21:36
madeup figures. But Ellie's doing very well. Uh, and then you've got Larry.
21:41
Larry earns 25 grand a year and he's investing two and a half thousand. So,
21:47
he's investing that. That's his freedom. Who reaches freedom first? Please put it
21:53
in the chat, the comments on YouTube. E for Ellie, L for Larry,
22:00
N for no difference, or T for it's a trick question. It's impossible to ever
22:06
reach freedom and retire, you silly Donigans. Which one is it?
22:11
We're getting some Ellies. We're getting some N, some L's. Some real division in
22:16
the chat as to who is freedom first. Is Ellie going to do it? Um, it's a very
22:23
very interesting question this one because the answer is
22:29
at exactly the same point. M the reason being is their savings rate
22:35
or their freedom rate is exactly the same. So Ellie is investing 10% of what
22:41
she makes. Larry is investing 10% of what he makes. So they're actually
22:47
investing the same percentage which means they have the same length of time
22:52
to get to retirement. And people are always very confused by this. Like what do you mean Donigans? Ellie's earning so
22:58
much more. She's putting so much more away. Well, she's spending so much more. Well, if you think about her gap is
23:04
she's earning 500 grand and investing 50. There's 450 grand there that
23:10
presumably in this this example she's spending. So, she's got to work to get to be able to cover that spending from
23:17
her freedom fund. But it's just a proportions game and it's the same regardless of how much you're earning.
23:23
It's the percentage your freedom rate that determines how long it will take you to get to that freedom.
23:29
Exactly. And let's bring this to life. This is a chart uh of time to freedom.
23:36
So on the left it has number of years to retirement and on the bottom it has how
23:41
much you're putting towards your investments. So the first column if you had 2% of your money going towards
23:49
freedom i.e. investments you would work for 65 years. So if you started working
23:56
at 20, you'd work to 85 to be able to get to retirement. That's at a 2%
24:02
freedom rate. And the government forces companies to put a certain amount into a
24:09
pension or a SIP or a 401k or a Kiwi Saver for you. And so do you. If you
24:14
increase it to 4%, well, you've reduced your working life to 54 years and you
24:21
keep going down. In New Zealand, uh, the contributions to the funds, they have a
24:26
6% savings rate enforced by the government. So, well, they have to work 48 years to get to retirement or
24:33
freedom. If they start working at 20, that takes them to 68. We have a
24:39
slightly higher amount that uh is contributed to our SIPs and pensions in
24:45
the UK. So our average years to retirement if we just did the enforced amount is 44.
24:52
What I really want to get you you to get from this is how quickly the time to
24:57
freedom goes down by these small 2% increases in your freedom rate. So we're
25:02
at at 10% freedom rate. We're 20 25 years quicker to get to freedom versus a
25:09
2% freedom rate. So that's why we really want you to focus on this freedom rate. And I know a lot of you are not quite
25:15
there yet. You're paying off debt. You're working towards having a positive gap. But this is to inspire you of okay,
25:21
how could I get my gap positive to start with, pay off that debt, and then start working towards that freedom rate. And
25:27
it might take a while to get to that freedom rate. But this is what we want to inspire you with to understand the
25:32
power of it. And in America, they like the enforced
25:38
savings rate part into their 401ks. They have to work 38 years. And if you just
25:44
sort of watch the chart going down, if we get to this point with a 20% freedom rate, i.e. you take 20% of your earnings
25:51
and put it into investments, your working life is 30 years.
25:56
That's starting from scratch. So if you were starting at 20 years old and you took 20% of your salary and put it away
26:03
every month just automatically, you would have to work 30 years until you could retire. And the power of this is
26:11
unbelievable. And you can see how it goes down. At 30%, you've got to work 24
26:17
years. And it goes all the way down and down and down. And the higher your percentage savings rate, the less amount
26:25
of time you have to work. So if you were able to, and I know most people can't do this, but it's the extreme example, 50%
26:33
of your salary went into investments. You only have to work 15 years. And this
26:39
is the bit that Katie and I grasped that changed everything for us. We were like,
26:44
"Okay, well, we need to create a massive gap and we need to invest it all. So, let's get our spending down, work really
26:50
hard to get our income up, and then throw everything into investments." And this is this graph shows how we were
26:57
able to get the extreme results we got. So, that is an extreme example. The real
27:03
message here is increase freedom rate, decrease length of compulsory work, time to freedom, time to retirement if you
27:10
choose to stop working. That's it. If you have young people in your life, nieces, nephews, anyone you
27:15
like, maybe you don't like your kids, you like your nieces, that's fine. Share this chart with them and show them. And
27:22
we've also built a calculator, a freedom rate calculator. So you can put in a some couple of simple numbers on the
27:29
website and it will tell you the time to retirement. So it's a very simple calculator. Share that with the young
27:35
people in your life. Force it on them. Put matchixs in their eyes and make them look at the screen uh and help explain
27:43
it to them. I am intense sometimes. You are quite an intense chat. And I think the bit that people always find
27:49
interesting here, it's not actually about the total investments. It's about
27:54
the freedom rate. It's the percentage of your salary that you can put away and
28:02
you can then use to buy back time. Uh Amy in the chat has said, "I'm having
28:08
massive regrets right now." I can completely understand that. But the sentence Katie and I always have to say
28:15
is, "We are where we are. We made the best decisions we could and we just have
28:20
to start from where we are." And if you're sat there thinking, "Is it too late for me?" You should do the
28:27
breathing mirror test. Go to a mirror, uh, take out your phone, doesn't matter
28:34
what it is, and breathe on it. If it steams up,
28:40
you still have time to make a difference in your finances. If it doesn't steam up, please call a medical professional
28:47
immediately. We've got bigger problems than your finances. But it's never too late to make a difference. Yes, time has
28:54
passed. Regret doesn't help us. Let's just take action from now. And I think there's a a
29:02
switch you can make of how proud you could be of turning it around from whatever it is that you're regretting.
29:08
Turning it around and being an inspiration to the people around you as well of saying, "Oh, wow. Amy's made
29:13
some real changes here and she's making progress." And just those little changes over time. But it is very natural when a
29:20
lot of people when they discover this information are like, "Oh man, like I've made some mistakes in the past. Do we
29:25
all make mistakes? Oh man, I wish I'd known this younger." We all wish we'd had the information and acted on it
29:30
younger, but it's just a case of we are where we are. You're in the right place and we're going to help you make
29:36
progress. And there's been a lot of comments on YouTube, hello YouTubers, we love you,
29:41
who are saying, doesn't it depend on how much you want to spend in retirement. The answer is yes. For this model, the
29:49
model has assumed that you spend the same in your working life and you spend the same in retirement. So, that's how
29:55
you can do the maths to come up with these charts. Um, if you want to spend
30:00
less in retirement or more in retirement, it would change the maths, but just to make it easy and to show the
30:06
point, we've kept those the same. That's how those charts were created. Yeah. And we're going to go into this in
30:12
detail in week nine. We've got retirement calculator figuring how much you're going to need. And it does allow
30:18
for the fact that or maybe you want to spend more or less in retirement than you're currently spending. So there is a
30:23
lot more nuance to this. As Alan said, the point is to show you the power of it. Exactly. And there's a comment came in
30:29
from F saying many people weren't able to retire when they lost their pensions to a market crash. There's all sorts of
30:36
things happening and we understand the past has happened. We can only go from here. And we're very excited to get on
30:42
to investing with you this next week coming. We've got sexy stuff starting Monday. Although Katie would go, "What
30:48
are you talking about, Alan? charts and monthly finance meeting is the sexy stuff and it is.
30:54
It's all sexy, Alan. We do not distinguish on sexiness levels. No. Um, yeah, because a few people are
30:59
saying, "What about market variation and investments and it's not a linear progress." You're absolutely right.
31:05
There is more nuance to this. We're going to go into all of that in the investing stuff. Exactly. But as a very simple concept,
31:12
the more you increase your freedom rate, the quicker you get to retirement and freedom. That's it. that maths will not
31:20
change. There are obviously many new I've just compared my first spreadsheet with last month's and I'm proud of the
31:27
gains. See, and if you've just arrived this year, this is kind of what we want for you is
31:32
you've got the before shot and then in a year you've got the aftershot or in two years or three years we've got where
31:39
you've got to. And that's actually the charts you see a lot in the group is people going, I started this three years
31:44
ago and here's my chart. This workshop today is how to create that because by checking in and knowing your
31:52
before shot and your shot, your snapshots along the way, that's how you're able to that's how people are
31:57
able to tell us in the group, isn't it? And this one concept was what really inspired us to focus on our freedom rate
32:04
and helped us to buy 25 years of our life back. Katie was able to retire at 35. I was able to retire at 40. Uh lots
32:12
of people then go, "Oh, you do it by making money out of YouTube." No. level finance school there's a loss making
32:17
thing we do it because we want to help people but we brought our freedom back and it's all based on this concept of
32:25
freedom rate that is the thing that really helped us so how do you actually
32:30
work it out oh it's time for an Allen graph I got a lot of love in the chat for Katy graphs but Allan sketch graphs are very
32:37
powerful as well show us show us this concept thank you uh so let's imagine
32:43
you have your spending at this level. And obviously it sort of
32:49
goes up and down each month. We get that. But that's your spending level. And the idea has always been to create a
32:55
gap between the spending and the income, whatever that is. This gap,
33:04
if you save it to buy a car in the future, that's not buying freedom. If
33:10
you take that and you invest it. What does that say? That says invest. Shut up. Uh Craig, I
33:19
don't like that you laughed at that. Uh Gail's laughing as well. I love it. I know. But this says invest. Okay. Uh
33:25
if you take the gap down here and you invest it, that is buying your freedom. And that's the number we want to find
33:32
out. So that's how it works. The actual numbers.
33:38
If you earned 4,000 a month and you spent 3,000 a month and you took the gap
33:45
which is a th00and as you can see and you invested it all you have a freedom
33:50
rate of 25%. Which is a phenomenal freedom rate and that actually tells you the number of
33:56
years you have to work from starting at zero. So you should celebrate that because that would be an incredible
34:03
number. So the idea is that you are comparing how much you invested. So in
34:08
this example it was a th00and with how much you earn which in this example was 4,000. You're just comparing those two
34:16
numbers which is what gives the 25%. 1,000 divided by 4,000. I know
34:22
percentages get some people confused. You can just use your calculator. It will work it out for you. 1,000 divided
34:27
by 4,000 tells you how much you're putting towards that freedom. And we do have that freedom rate calculator and
34:34
it's actually in the spending and gap tracker which we'll come on to as well. Exactly. And this is the kind of maths
34:40
that leads to knowing when you can retire which week nine is all about the
34:46
maths behind early retirement, normal retirement, any type of retirement, it
34:52
doesn't matter. The maths is the same. So week nine, watch out for all of this.
34:58
We'll go deeper on it. We're just introducing the concept of freedom rate this week uh because it actually fits in
35:04
really nicely to the monthly meeting. Now, if you do ever get to the stage that you don't have to compulsory work
35:11
anymore, uh we have a secret for you. Sh.
35:17
You're actually going to still want to do things, but you'll want to do your own things at your own rate that are
35:24
important to you without being told what to do. Because work is this dirty word. sometimes, isn't it? It's a four-letter
35:30
word. We don't want to work. We want to get away from work. Don't make me work. Work can be joyful and fulfilling and
35:36
fun if you do it on your own terms. And that's what we want for you. And actually, it might still be in the job
35:41
that you do, but you're able to negotiate because you have the power to say, "Well, I don't actually need this job. I want to do these parts of the job
35:47
and these bits that I like. Going to work two days a week and have it on your own terms." And we did a special session
35:54
last year with Doc G which is still available for you all about purpose and
36:00
finding purpose after compulsory work. It's a fabulous session and it's a very
36:06
important one because lots of people get to the stage where they don't have to work and then they go well is this it?
36:12
I'm bored. You need to find a reason and purpose afterwards. Now bringing it all
36:18
back to the monthly finance meeting and the cash flow section. Uh we had the
36:24
spending and gap tracker in week one that you tracked your spending and showed you your gap. And actually within
36:31
that it also shows you your your freedom rate. It's auto calculated for you. So,
36:36
if you've chosen to use the Google sheet that Martin, the Rebel Ninjas, and Katie
36:43
have created, it does it for you. Uh, this is the spending and gap tracker. We
36:49
actually will have a new version of it this week, an updated version for you that fixes some of the bugs that you've
36:56
been telling us about. So, we've been working on it. we will have a brand new version coming out for you this week,
37:03
which we're super excited about releasing. Uh, now Katie is going to
37:08
show you the tab that has that in it. Uh, and all of
37:15
these numbers, if you've been putting your spending in the transaction tab, all of it is autoc calculated for you so
37:22
that you can see what those numbers are. So, as Katie just finds that page and
37:27
brings it up, uh, this is what you will be working with. We got a brand new version of this with a lot of new
37:33
enhancements. So, here's the spending and gap tracker that Katie has bought up. Uh, this is the tab at the bottom.
37:41
Uh, I don't know if you can see the tab at the bottom. The one she's hovering over is called GAP. Uh,
37:48
it's not easy to do this share thing, is it? I've got more respect for you now. Thank you. I have to work quite hard at
37:53
that stuff each week to do the sharing. So you can see I see my cursor here. I'm hovering over this tab that's called
37:58
GAP. And this is summarizes. It pulls all the data through from where you've been putting your transactions, your
38:04
spending, your income, your investments. And we just wanted to show you where all these numbers come through to of the
38:10
three elements we were talking about, which was spending. That's this number here. So that's 3600.
38:17
the gap 400 which because your income was 4,000 and then scroll down slightly here your
38:24
freedom rate for the month. So it's compared the 400 that you were investing. So you've put here that you
38:30
had 400 of investments. So it said okay you did 400 of investments. Your income
38:37
was 4,000. Compares the two numbers and said okay great 10% of what you earned
38:43
you put towards your freedom. That is your freedom rate. We just wanted to show you. We're not going to go into all the technical bits of the spreadsheet
38:49
because we did the demo in week one of that. So, go back and watch that if you'd like to, just to show you that it
38:55
does pull all these numbers together for you. And then as you over time have more and more monthly finance meetings,
39:01
you'll start to see the trend. So, you fill it again at the end of July, you fill it in again in August, and you can
39:06
see that progress over time. Uh, and there is a new line in the new version that's coming out this week, which is
39:12
this line, income minus spending minus investing. Uh you can see it's set to zero. Basically, you want to get this to
39:20
zero. It means your income minus your spending minus your investing. Uh do you
39:26
have any money left over this month? And if you have money left over, well, that
39:31
could have been invested. So, it's a way to check, have I invested everything I can this month from the money coming in?
39:38
Which actually, you might not always want that to be zero if you're topping up your emergency fund or there's some
39:43
planned spending that you're saving for, but it's just that check, isn't it? It's like, okay, great. I've got the gap. Am
39:49
I actually putting it to work? Exactly. Exactly. So, that is the gap
39:54
section. That's where you find all those major numbers. You can stop sharing.
39:59
I do. I do have me more respect for you of Alan's always like feeling around like I got load the slides blah blah
40:05
blah. So, uh respect for you. So, that's where you can find the numbers. Now, what Katie and I do is we have a little notebook that each month
40:11
we just write down the key numbers because it makes us feel good. We can pull them out and we can see them
40:18
clearly and we have a little digital notebook. We use one note, but you can use whatever you want. It doesn't really
40:24
matter. And we have a notebook where we have little boxes at the top where we
40:29
put the key numbers and we write down I spent this much. This was my gap. This
40:34
was my freedom rate. The freedom rate we were very focused on on our way to
40:40
retirement. Now we're in retirement. We don't really
40:45
care about freedom rate because we've already bought our freedom. Does that make sense?
40:51
Please nod if it makes sense so I get a rough Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Some people are nodding. That means life's good. Thank you for being interactive. Um, so
41:00
when you're on your way and earning your way, you're earning money. Freedom rate is critical. When you've hit retirement,
41:06
freedom rate is less critical because you should actually be living off your portfolio. Uh, the other thing I wanted to say is
41:13
for this gather stage, so this is where you're pulling all your numbers together, getting your spending, downloading the transactions, choosing
41:19
whatever method you want to summarize your spending and work out what your gap is. Some people prefer to do this before
41:25
the main meeting where they're sitting down with other people. They want to gather the stuff earlier to then be able
41:32
to focus more on the like looking at it, asking questions and deciding the action. So, it's up to you whether you
41:38
decide to kind of do this in two parts or have a little prep stage to make sure you've got all the numbers together. Um,
41:43
that's an option for you. Uh, choose what you want to do. Exactly. And as you go through this,
41:50
quite often we go, "Oh, I should do this. I should cancel this subscription.
41:55
I should move this. I should Oh, I should top up my pension." Capture the actions that come to you through this
42:02
process. And these small actions that you collect are the things that are going to help you on your way to
42:08
financial freedom. And FS in the chat said, "I always believe that people that got rich knew a secret that I didn't."
42:16
Well, now you know the secret. It's your freedom rate and collecting the actions and that's it. It's not actually that
42:22
big a secret, but no one teaches you this stuff at school. So, that's part A,
42:28
the cash flow stuff. Part B is this little what do I have? So, what's my net
42:34
worth, my monthly snapshot, and how am I doing paying off my debt? So, if I'm in
42:41
debt, is it going down hopefully, or is it going up? not so good. We need to
42:46
tackle it. Uh we have the net worth tracker and the debt attack calculator
42:51
that we've introduced in the other week. So week two, we introduced the net worth tracker and then we introduced the debt
42:57
attack calculator to help people out of debt. So those are the two spreadsheets you would check for the numbers. So
43:06
Katie is just about to bring up the net worth tracker and we're just going to show you roughly what we do. Um, so
43:12
basically we sit at breakfast uh whilst I'm waiting for my ex benedict to
43:17
arrive. Yes, I am a fancy person at breakfast. That's really relatable.
43:22
Not really. But sometimes I like to have a breakfast burrito if I'm in California. The best thing ever. But we
43:27
just fill out the network tracker. Make sure you put the date at the top. If you don't put the date in it, nothing works.
43:34
And then we literally go down and I will pull out my phone and my banking app and go, "How much do I have in my Barkclay's
43:40
account? How much do I have in my Halifax ISA?" And we take the numbers and we type it into the spreadsheet. And
43:47
that gives us a um snapshot of our
43:53
finances for the month. And we do this, we do it on the last working day of the month every month. You could do it three
44:00
days into the month, you could do it at the end of the month. Doesn't really matter. Just pick a day that works for you. And
44:07
you would go down and fill out all the different figures. And then at the bottom, it will show you your net worth
44:14
summary and things you owe versus things you own. And it will give you that
44:20
summary of your net worth. And it'll also show you the change over time and all that different stuff. So that's what
44:27
we do each month is to be able to see where we are. And we just literally take
44:34
the number from the banking app, type it into the spreadsheet, and that's how we
44:39
work out our net month. That's it. Our net worth. Uh, our net worth. Yes, I got
44:45
distracted. So, there's a few people who are asking, "If we're using previous versions of the spreadsheets, please
44:51
explain what people might do." There is no need to update if you don't want to.
44:56
If the spreadsheet you're using is from Rebel Finance School 2020 and it works
45:02
for you, use it. The new ones have a few more funky features, a few more graphs.
45:09
The new version coming out this week will have autocategorization of your
45:14
expenses. Martin is a wizard with this stuff. We are very excited to be releasing that.
45:19
So, look out for the email. Um, there is also a migrator tool. So, if you do want
45:26
to use the new versions, we've created a migrator tool that allows you to take the figures from the old ones and put it
45:32
into the new ones if you want to. That's for the spending and gap tracker in particular.
45:37
Yes, the net worth one, you could literally just download the new version and copy and paste your numbers over if
45:43
you want to. Um, Katie and I have been using the same spreadsheet for our net
45:48
worth for the last 10 years and we have like it's a bit of a Frankenstein
45:53
spreadsheet. is because uh I kind of want to move to our actual nice spreadsheet version that we share with
45:59
the world. Maybe we do that at some stage. Um but yeah, if it works for you, just
46:04
use the version you're on. If you want to try the new ones, please feel free. The whole point of this is to do what
46:11
works for you. So if you want to do it on pen and paper, do it on pen and paper. It doesn't matter how you do it.
46:18
It just matters that you do it. That's it.
46:24
Uh there's a question on YouTube saying, "And for the folk who think it's impossible, I think I'd need a bit more
46:30
context to know which bit is impossible." Um using a spreadsheet, some people feel that way. That's why
46:37
Katie did the free spreadsheet course. The finances, a lot of people feel like
46:42
it's impossible to get on your top of your finances, but that's why we've designed this course as a stepby-step
46:48
system to build up to show you what to do. And you basically just need to follow the course, do what's in it, and
46:55
your finances will improve over the next year slowly and then the next year and the next year because this is not a
47:02
get-richqu scheme. It is a very simple slow process.
47:07
We got a comment in particular from Sun Trespasser on YouTube saying, "What am I missing here? Even if I invest 25% of my
47:14
income, which I don't think I can afford to do, I can't retire until I'm 68. So
47:20
with a lower freedom rate, I'm working into my 70s and 80s. Well, a few
47:25
thoughts for you, Sun Trespasser. Number one, and everyone and everyone, not just with Sun
47:30
Trespasser. Most people aren't starting from zero. So that freedom rate calculator assumes you're starting from
47:37
zero. A lot of people have workplace pensions. Also, in the UK and other countries,
47:43
there's well, in the UK, it's called the state pension. So you have money coming in from there. Also, we had this lovely
47:49
guy, Jack, come on on the first course that we ever did back in 2020. We showed them a retirement calculator, which
47:55
we'll come on to in week nine. It said he couldn't retire until he was like 109 or something. It was such a high number.
48:02
And he's like, "Oh, that means I'll be working forever." Because he didn't think he would live to 109. Then he's
48:07
come back on the course every year since, and he's slowly been working to get that down. and I can't remember what
48:14
the latest update was, but it was something like in his 60s or something. It was low 60s. So, he's conver he's got his retirement
48:21
date down by 40 years just by making little improvements along the way. Um,
48:27
so please take heart that there are things that you can do to improve your situation. Exactly. There is always a way. And even
48:35
if you can't ever retire because we haven't got the maths right, you will always be in a better financial
48:41
position. So, it's a bit like when people say, "Oh, I cracked my screen." Well, I might as well just destroy the
48:48
phone. No, like we can still make it better. We can still make small improvements and improve things over
48:54
time. Okay, let's keep going with where we were. So we've just been talking
49:00
about net worth and those elements. So we are working on gathering. We're on the gather phase. So we've got those two
49:07
parts. Remember we had the cash flow related bit meaning money in money out spending gap freedom rate. And now we've
49:12
looked at how much you have. So in this example, the person slot on the net worth and it just helps to see all those
49:19
numbers in one place. And this is kind of like your dashboard, your cockpit, the where you can see how
49:25
your finance is going. And this is actually what we would ask you if you sat down with us. We would say, "How
49:32
much do you spend? What's your net worth? What's your freedom rate?" These are all the questions he'd ask you. And
49:38
after we've got the numbers, we can move on to the next step, which is let's
49:44
interrogate the numbers. What are they telling me? And we ask questions to find out what they're telling me.
49:49
Because the numbers are not kind of a a sentence. They're not judge, jury, and execution. I thinking going back to Sun
49:54
Trespasser's comment that you know there is things you can always do to improve
50:00
your situation and that's what the asking the questions is designed to do to pull out those things that you can
50:06
those levers you can pull those things in your cockpit you can move that help you to make progress. So the point is
50:11
not to judge the numbers the point is to investigate the numbers and see what we can do to improve them. That is the
50:18
whole point. And the way you do this is questions. Cuz if we were sat with you
50:24
looking at your spreadsheets now, we would ask a lot of questions. So tell me about it. Your spending is this. What's
50:30
that made up of? Oh, is there anything else you could do to reduce it? Is there anything else you can do to do this? Or
50:36
we looked at your net worth and we're like, "Oh, that's interesting. Why have you got so much cash?
50:42
Maybe we should invest that." And we'll start. Yeah, exactly, Craig. I would definitely lean in at that point if I
50:48
saw a big green box on your net worth split. Um, but we start to ask questions
50:54
and that then helps us to understand what to do and what to change. So, all of this starts with questions. That's
51:01
the key. And we've got some suggested questions that you might want to use. Feel free to use ours. Feel free to come
51:07
up with your own. But to start with, let's have some overview questions. So, what can we celebrate? What's what any
51:14
little achievements has one of our debts been uh paid off? Have I managed to get
51:20
my gap up even just a tiny amount? Is my freedom rate up a little bit? Some months there won't you won't feel like
51:26
there is anything to celebrate. Perhaps it was a particularly tough month. But maybe this the celebration is well I'm
51:32
still here. I'm still looking at this stuff and I'm excited to keep going. And so many of us look for what's wrong
51:39
first. This is to train you to look for what's right because you do. You're
51:44
breathing. You have a net worth. You're here. You're working on it. Then we move into, well, what didn't go well? What
51:51
could we improve? What could we change? Then one of my favorite questions is, if
51:58
we keep heading in this direction, are we happy with the destination we'll get to? It's one of the most powerful
52:05
questions you can ever ask about your finances. If we keep doing what we're doing now,
52:11
will we end in a good place? If the answer is no, you can do something about it. Which leads you on to the final
52:17
overview question. What needs my attention? What do I need to look at
52:22
this month? And that's like a very overview element. And you can dig down from there if you want to.
52:28
So then leading on from that question, what needs attention? Pick the area from
52:33
your dashboard that you think needs the most attention. So, is it your spending, your gap, the freedom rate, net worth,
52:40
or debt? And then you could ask a question like the following in each of those areas. So, the spending might be,
52:45
well, how could I spend more intentionally next month? And look where my money's going
52:51
in the gap. How might I increase my gap next month? By 1%, by one small little
52:56
bit. What could improve my freedom rate by 1% next month? and small changes compounded
53:03
over time create an unbelievable future. Net worth. Which elements of my net
53:09
worth needs the most attention? Thinking back to week two, you've got your valuable liabilities, freedom fund,
53:16
cash and plan spending and debt. Which of those areas do I need to focus on
53:21
based on where I am exactly? And then the final one, debt. Which debt should I prioritize first?
53:28
which debt should I prioritize first? And that's just an idea of a question that you could use in that area. We
53:34
actually developed a full menu of questions for you. If you scan this QR
53:40
code, the link will be in the chat and the link is in the YouTube description. It gives you for each of the different
53:46
areas that you can think about on your dashboard, four or five questions to kind of go into that area in particular.
53:53
I want you to really hear this. Now, this is a menu. This is not I have to answer all of these questions because
53:59
there's loads on there because it's which area do you want to pick? So, pick the area and then you could just ask one
54:05
of those questions. You don't have to answer all of the questions. It's a menu. It's a bit like when we go to all
54:12
you can eat buffet, which is a bit rare now because we know that we can't trust ourselves. Problem. Uh the idea is not to complete the
54:20
buffet. I've tried in the past. It's quite painful. The idea is to pick the bit that calls to you at the moment.
54:26
linger with it, answer the question, and then move on. And if you were to answer ask one
54:32
question, it would be knowing what we know now, what's one tiny action I could
54:37
take to improve my finances this month? Because if you just did one thing this month, it would make such a difference.
54:44
What's one tiny action that you could do this month to improve your finances?
54:50
No one's laughing at my animation. Well, Katie's laughed at her own animations. She enjoyed making me small.
54:56
That's to represent tiny action. It says to be one tiny action. Okay. I have also created an AI prompt
55:03
that will coach you through this. So on the AI prompt page, there are some new prompts for the monthly finance meeting
55:10
and it will ask you one question at a time and interview you about your
55:15
finances and then make suggestions based on the Rebel Finance School methodology of what you could do next. So, if you
55:21
want help, you can use AI to coach yourself using the prompts we've created
55:28
there. And I just want to pause there for one second. We had a comment coming
55:34
in uh from uh Mr. Claw who says I had CCJS which is a county court judgment
55:42
maxed overdrafts from uni and was terrible with money but now we run a
55:47
pretty tight budget for 10 years plus and knowing the gap gives confidence to
55:53
invest and they're now hoping to retire in 3 years. Wow. So he wanted to say it is not
56:00
impossible. You can come from deeply in debt and having trouble and turn it all
56:05
around. So give him a round of applause and thank you also for sharing the message because
56:11
that like people look at us and go oh Donigan is all right for you but you have to realize there are lots of other
56:18
real people who have made massive change and you can do it too and that's the whole purpose of this is helping you to
56:25
make change in your life. I love it. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Okay. Uh
56:31
next little bit. So we've done the main five main four bits. Yeah. So this is coming back to those
56:37
parts of the meeting. So we've just done the ask, what are these numbers telling me after I've gathered them all
56:42
together? What are these numbers telling me and now what am I going to do about this? It's all very well having
56:48
collected these numbers, having some lovely insights, but what are you actually going to do about it? This is actually my favorite slide from
56:54
the week. It's all about action. And you can see the action figures coming in. Not tiny action.
56:59
It's nothing changes unless you take action. So, it's great that you're on the course, but you got to do something
57:05
about it. So, as you go through your monthly finance meeting, something might have occurred to you.
57:12
It's like, I should do this. I should do that. Do it. Just take action. And
57:19
actually, this session could relate to your monthly finance meeting, could relate to tonight. As we were going
57:24
through these things, perhaps you were thinking about your own numbers. Do what came to you. This is like where the
57:30
power comes from from actually making taking action. And those small actions
57:36
create your financial destiny. Lots of people in the chat were saying, "Is there a secret to finance?" No, it's
57:42
small actions compounded over time. And in the chat, Great Water says, "Since
57:48
discovering six months ago the course and doing some of the last course, I've increased my gap and now I'm putting
57:55
a,000 a month into my SIP." Amazing. which is just incredible. And that's not possible for everyone, but
58:02
everyone can create action. And if you don't know what to do, here's the
58:07
secret. Ask for help. Ask for help. That's why we have a
58:12
community. That's why there's an entire Facebook group. That's why all of those different things exist. And there was a
58:19
recent post in the group. And I started reading it and it started with a lot of
58:25
people in this Facebook group earned a lot of money. And I thought to myself, "Oh no, it's another post telling
58:31
everyone off for earning lots of money." But it wasn't. And I was so proud. The
58:37
lady then said, "Can you teach me to do what you've done?"
58:42
And that's just such a wonderful attitude. And there was a huge number of people who wrote, "I did this. I did
58:48
this. This is how I earned more." And if you just ask, it is unbelievable. And
58:54
sometimes people say to us, Donigans, can we have a Facebook group just for the people in debt? We can absolutely do
59:00
that. And you will get value by chatting to the people who are out of debt, telling
59:07
you how they got out of debt and helping you with it. So please just ask, ask
59:12
people, collect answers. What would you do in my position if you were in char?
59:18
One of my favorite questions to ask people is once I've got to know them a bit, I lean in and go, "If we put you in
59:24
charge of the Donigans, what would you do?" And it's really interesting. People will tell you like, "If you doing that,
59:31
Alan, and what would I do with this?" And I learn so much from that process.
59:36
There's such a generous community in the Facebook group, in the comments. You'll see people in the chat helping each
59:42
other in the comments on the YouTube. So please learn from each other because there's such a wealth of knowledge. Like
59:48
we have one way of doing it. We have what we've shared and what work for us and there's so many more ideas of what
59:54
people have done as well. So please use each other in the nicest possible way. So we're going to move on to Katie
1:00:00
playing the piano. I've got a picture for you, but let's do the story first and then we'll bring up the picture.
1:00:06
So I uh played the piano for many years. I wanted to be just like my brothers. My
1:00:11
brothers were playing the piano. There was this weird arbitrary rule in our household. You start playing the piano when you're eight. That's when you start
1:00:17
going for lessons. I was six. I was the youngest. I was like, I want to do whatever they're doing. So, I've been
1:00:22
playing the piano since I was six. My parents have a piano. Whenever I go and visit, I'm playing away. My niece was
1:00:29
there one day and she's like, "Oh, that looks cool. That looks fun. I would like to also play the piano." So, she started
1:00:35
learning and she got discouraged because she's like, "Oh, I'm nothing like Auntie
1:00:41
Katie." like how is how is this possible? I don't I can't play like she plays. And of course, she didn't realize
1:00:49
I've been practicing for 30 years plus. So, the message we want to get you to
1:00:55
get from this is what gets repeated gets easier. The first time that I sat down and played the piano, I had no clue what
1:01:02
I was doing. But having repeated, having practiced over time, you get better.
1:01:08
That's the monthly finance meeting. That's gathering your numbers. that surrounding yourself with these ideas.
1:01:13
If you do it repeatedly over time, it gets easier. The other thing we had as well of, you know, there's a new
1:01:19
language to learn with this stuff of freedom rate and gap and all these things. You don't expect to be fluent
1:01:24
from day one. You expect to have to keep learning and making mistakes and correcting and course correcting. So,
1:01:32
uh, where am I going this? What gets repeated gets easier. So the first time you do the monthly meeting,
1:01:38
it might be a bit tougher, but by the time you've been through it a few times, you're like, "Well, I just do this in my
1:01:43
sleep now, and it feels good." So there are the five parts. Why do it? Uh, we had this comment last
1:01:51
week. My husband and I have been doing monthly finance meetings for about 3 years now since coming on the course and
1:01:57
has completely changed our finances for the better. And we get so many comments about this. So just have a go. If you
1:02:04
want coaching through it, I created an AI prompt that will coach you step by step through this process and will
1:02:12
support you doing it. Um, we had a comment in from Becky said, "Started
1:02:18
managing our gap about a year ago after doing a course. Totally gobsmacked at the changes. We'll change our end of
1:02:25
life enjoyment. Kick myself we didn't know about it earlier, but she's doing it now." And that's why you bother.
1:02:33
Okay. Deep breath. We're doing well. Who is that deep breath for? Is that for
1:02:39
us or for all our friends out there? I think it's for everyone. Uh, we now have a tools update. A tools update. And
1:02:46
you might be thinking, what are you going to sell us a spade, Alan? No, we're not. We have an update on what is
1:02:51
happening with the tools. And it's very it's very exciting. So, you spoke, we listened with the help
1:02:57
of the wonderful ninjas. We have some new features coming on the various tools that we have for you. We're talking
1:03:03
about the spending and gap tracker. We're talking about the data converter. They all have got, well, they both got
1:03:10
new features. So, there's going to be some auto categorization of your spending in the data converter tool,
1:03:16
which will save you so much time. So, it'll automatically class, I don't know, coffee as eating out or whatever it is,
1:03:23
whatever you've set it up to do, it will auto do it for you. So, it should save you a lot of time. uh we've hidden some
1:03:30
of the mechanics of the spreadsheet so it's harder to make mistakes. There were some tabs and pages where there was some
1:03:35
calculations in there that accidentally got overwritten sometimes when you're putting your data in. We've made it um
1:03:41
bit more robust and harder for you to kind of overwrite those things. Uh we fixed a couple of bugs and very cool as
1:03:48
well. We've got a troubleshooting guide. Meaning, if you're putting your data in trying to figure things out, and
1:03:54
something isn't looking right, you're getting an error, or things aren't being pulled through correctly, we've got a little checklist for you to be able to
1:04:00
say for the common things that we've seen people do that mean that it doesn't quite work through. So, you just got a
1:04:06
checklist that you can go through and figure that out. And also, we have a new
1:04:11
feedback form that we're going to release in the next couple of days that's going to be able to ask us for
1:04:17
help or like troubleshoot your spreadsheet and be like, "Oh, I can't get it to work. What's going on?" to
1:04:22
report things that you've spotted, little errors and things and to also give us suggestions for improvements of,
1:04:29
"Oh, it' be really cool to have this feature or to work that way." So, we're listening. We're working to improve the
1:04:36
tools even more. Uh, so look out for that in the next few days. If you're watching this on catchup in months time,
1:04:42
then like it's already out there. Download it now. We had a question, Katie. Does this mean we have to start again with the new
1:04:47
tools? Uh, no. There's some extra functions and things. And actually, it's quite easy to
1:04:53
No, the question is, do we have to just start again? No. Move your data over. Is that the question?
1:04:58
Yeah. Okay. You teamed me up for something. I'm not quite sure what you want me to say. So, please answer.
1:05:04
No, you don't have to start again from the new one. You can just literally copy the data out of the old one, put it in
1:05:09
the new one, and it will work. So, it's really easy. You don't have to start again. You can just upgrade the
1:05:15
spreadsheet, and it'll work perfectly. So, we've worked to make it a little bit easier for you. Sorry. I thought I was
1:05:21
teeing you up perfectly, but I messed it up. You teed me up great. I just didn't know what you wanted me to say.
1:05:26
We'll work on our smoothness next time. Sorry about that, everyone. Okay, final bit. Let's decide on your monthly
1:05:34
finance meeting. So let's decide how will I do this? When is the first
1:05:39
meeting? Where will it happen? Bedroom, coffee shop, where? How long will it be?
1:05:46
And what do I need to prepare? That's what we need to decide. I mean, there's a key one there as well,
1:05:51
which was uh who am I going to do it with as well? And we had this through a
1:05:56
couple of years ago from a lady who said, "I felt like I was alone on the financial journey. So I messaged my
1:06:03
other half with this." And this is the exact message she sent. Agent 99,
1:06:09
mission possible. Should you choose to take this assignment for life, you have
1:06:15
60 seconds, all right, 60 minutes before this life-changing message
1:06:20
self-destructs. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, partner with me to delve into the foreign turbulent lands
1:06:27
of holding a joint monthly finance meeting on the 30th of June, home by the fire with a glass of wine at
1:06:32
approximately 7:30 p.m. Doesn't sound that dangerous at this point. Um, it's lovely. I want to go.
1:06:39
Following on with your attendance at all monthly finance meetings through to eternity and to be diared at our
1:06:44
inaugural meeting, the clock has started. Tick tock, tick tock. Uh it's a
1:06:51
genius invite. The reply she got back was uh I'm totally in and will attend
1:06:57
above meeting and subs meetings thereafter. Tick tock tick tock was the
1:07:02
reply she got back. Um so the question is your mission should you choose to
1:07:08
accept it like have fun with this. Invite someone along create an amazing
1:07:14
experience and have fun. What I want you to get from this is the juiciness of the invite. and she knew
1:07:20
that her partner was really into the Mission Impossible films, so she tied it into his interest and she made it really
1:07:26
easy and exciting for him to say yes. So, just before you do that, uh, we had a
1:07:31
message in from New Zealand that said, "I started doing the monthly meeting a year ago. My partner was not
1:07:38
interested," which, let's be honest, does happen sometimes. Uh, so I started
1:07:43
emailing her the tracker summary. Now she asks me if I'm late emailing the
1:07:49
summary. So they're now requesting the summary [laughter] that they get. So maybe your partner's not interested and
1:07:54
you just send it to them and you say here's the numbers of our finances and you know it slowly slowly you work to
1:08:02
get them on board or your family or whoever it is. So this is now time for
1:08:08
you to start designing your meeting. Who are you going to do it with? Are you solo? Are you doing this on your own? Do
1:08:14
you have money buddies? Do you have a little circle of friends you could do it with? Are you going to do it with your
1:08:20
partner, your kids, the whole family? Who are you going to do it with? Put it in the chat.
1:08:25
Then the second question is when are you going to do it? Are you going to do it last day of the month? Are you going to
1:08:31
do it last Saturday of the month, the Friday night, first week of the month?
1:08:37
Doesn't really matter when. The key is just having a consistent I'm doing it on
1:08:43
this day. I'm doing it then. And I would encourage like planning the first one, the date and the time as well
1:08:49
as that regularity of which day of the month you're going to do it. When's the first one? Is it tomorrow night? Is it
1:08:55
tonight? Is it now? Are you watching on catchup and you can just go on and do it now? When you going to do it? Ruth has
1:09:01
just said, "I've just set up my finance meeting in my phone calendar and discovered I can repeat an event on the
1:09:07
first Monday of every month. A new function discovered as well as the meeting in place. She is chuffed." Uh,
1:09:13
so you can set up a recurring reminder if you use a electronic calendar. You
1:09:19
can put it in your physical calendar. Uh, in the UK we call it diary. I know people are like, "Why are you writing in
1:09:25
your diary about this?" But it's your your schedule if you're American or your calendar.
1:09:30
Uh Sarah's doing it on her own and she's going to take herself out to a new venue each month for brunch. A treat and take
1:09:37
the laptop. I love that genius. Okay, so then we've got the where will it happen? Is it home with a
1:09:43
glass of wine? Is it out for coffee? Like whatever it is. How long? So you're
1:09:48
going to do a little one to start with, a tiny meeting, a normal one. uh every now and again you would do the deep
1:09:55
dive. We did have a question come in saying can you go into more detail about the deep dive? Maybe we'll do that at
1:10:01
another stage. We'll tell you a bit more about that. But it's just a fuller version of what we're talking about.
1:10:06
I think we have an article about it. Oh, we do? Yeah. I'll scurry away and find that whilst you chat.
1:10:12
Yes. Uh and also if you look up we did a a 10-year meeting about our finances at
1:10:18
the end of 2025 was 10 years since we started tracking our finances and you can find that article on our website and
1:10:26
it guides you through everything we did in that meeting and how we look at our finances over time
1:10:31
personal finance review and your personal finance review. Uh, so we will put that in the chat as well,
1:10:37
the annual personal finance and it's got a lot more details about how you can run it and how you can do it.
1:10:44
Ninjas, please can you put in the chat on YouTube and if you're watching on catch up, by the time you watch this, it will be in the description.
1:10:50
Exactly. Now, the key to all of this is if you don't put it in the diary
1:10:57
calendar, then it [laughter] won't happen. Unless
1:11:02
it's scheduled, it isn't happening. So, always commit to the next one before leaving the last one. That's the key. We
1:11:09
have a few watch outs. How do we know these, Alan? Because we've failed at all of this. Be careful of noisy environments. Uh Katie
1:11:17
is softly spoken and if it's too noisy, I can't hear her. And I spend my time going, I can't hear you. And she spends
1:11:23
her time going, I'm trying really hard. And then we just fall out and it's not our fault. It's a loud grinder.
1:11:31
You mean a coffee grinder? Yes. Okay, good. just so we could. And then uh not taking breaks. Don't try and do a
1:11:39
2-hour meeting without a break. Have a break. Go for a walk. Look after yourself. Not eating. If I'm not fed, I
1:11:46
get grumpy. This is not good. Um just remember to look after yourself as you're doing this. And take breaks.
1:11:54
Okay. So stay tuned for the closing message. We have a important closing message coming up for you.
1:12:00
I'd love you to guess what you think your freedom work's going to be. Yeah. Do you know what your freedom work for the week is?
1:12:06
Craig's smiling. He's like, "Maybe I do." Yes, it is. Do a monthly finance meeting. Do it. Do a monthly finance
1:12:13
meeting. Work out who, when, where, gather the tools, and just do it. That's
1:12:18
the bit Sarah says. They have theirs tomorrow. They've scheduled it for the last Friday of the month. We record the
1:12:24
meeting and AI transcribes it and then we save it into a Google Drive and AI
1:12:30
creates actions from the transcripts. Nice. Wow. Love they're doing that. I'm now
1:12:35
going to start recording our our monthly finance meetings. Well, maybe not all of it. Uh, okay. The prompts for this
1:12:43
[snorts] week to help you use AI to do this stuff are in the AI prompt library.
1:12:48
And you might be better at using AI than I am. So, feel free to send me your ones
1:12:54
and I can start to share them with the community and we can get better together. As always, everything is on mission
1:13:02
control. So all the links to the course notes, the links for everything we do tonight is on mission control.
1:13:09
Also for the tools as well. Shall I share this? Yes, Katie is going to share mission control to show you where it is cuz we
1:13:16
tried to build one page to rule all pages. So this page has links to
1:13:22
everything you could possibly need. This is the mission control page. So, based on how we've been what we've been
1:13:27
talking about tonight, the find a tool bit is going to be really handy for you because you can just click on this and it jumps down the page and there you've
1:13:34
got your spending tracker, how to do a monthly finance meeting, debt calculator, net worth tracker, and we've
1:13:40
tried to put them all just in one place for you to be able to gather the tools. So, when we said make sure you've got
1:13:46
the tools, there's the one place to download them. You might already have downloaded them, so you've got them in
1:13:51
your own drive. So maybe the task is to gather those bits. Um but just to show you, we have tried to make it really
1:13:57
simple and easy and straightforward for you to find those bits. Yes. Uh some of the ninjas are dragging us into the modern universe and making
1:14:04
us actually organized which is wonderful. Thank you ninjas. I know they are amazing. Uh so mission
1:14:10
control is where all of those things are. If you're on YouTube, uh we would
1:14:16
absolutely love it, please, if you hit like and subscribe. The algorithm loves it. It gives us a little thrill and it
1:14:22
helps us reach more people. So, that would be amazing. Uh, question for you.
1:14:28
Are you already an investor? Craig's nodding. Some people are looking
1:14:34
a little bit scared. Uh, Allison's saying, "No." Are you already an
1:14:39
investor? Well, here's the actual bit. If you said no, you're probably wrong because you probably have a workplace
1:14:45
pension. You probably have some kind of like 401k, Kiwi saver, something your
1:14:51
employer pays into and that money is invested. You've just never chosen where
1:14:57
it's invested. It's left in the default fund. And that's actually the whole subject of next week is learning about
1:15:04
investing so that you can become an investor and take control of your investing. So, this is where it really
1:15:11
starts to get uh interesting. This is the sexy stuff. This is where we get
1:15:16
into making your money work for you. So, putting it out into the field so that
1:15:21
your little pounds and dollars can work and create more pounds and dollars. And if you genuinely don't have any
1:15:28
investments, this is really exciting for you because you can start from scratch with a full understanding and go for it
1:15:35
from scratch, which is very cool. If you have questions about it, please
1:15:40
use this page. I created a little uh question board on the website to collect
1:15:46
all of your questions about investing and we're using that to guide the content that we're delivering. Uh we've
1:15:52
had thousands of votes and hundreds of questions and it's really helpful for us
1:15:58
to understand what you want and how we can deliver what you need.
1:16:04
Thank you as always to the tireless, tenacious, terrific Rebel Ninjas. They
1:16:10
are volunteers who help us to deliver this course, help you answer your questions. So, thank you ninjas.
1:16:15
Yeah, we give them nothing and they keep turning up. They are amazing and we love them. Uh, and then the final closing
1:16:22
message starts with we tell you a lot to not compare pineapples with other
1:16:27
people, but actually the key to a lot of this is comparing your own pineapples
1:16:32
over time. So, how are you doing? Are your investments growing? Is your net
1:16:38
worth growing? Is your spending going up? Is it going down? And how is your financing going over time? Because what
1:16:46
gets measured gets improved. Because the idea is not to beat yourself up about this, right? Are we doing this
1:16:52
so that we can be down on ourselves about what we did in the past or we're using it as a tool for the future?
1:16:58
We are using it as a tool for the future to help ourselves set ourselves up so
1:17:04
that the future is brighter financially. And if you just monitor this stuff every
1:17:10
month, take one small action, it's unbelievable the difference it will make
1:17:16
in your finances. And that's what we've been doing for 10 years now. And if you
1:17:22
haven't done it in the past, we can't change that, but we can start now.
1:17:27
So the whole purpose of this is let's start from where we are, make the most of what we've got, and set ourselves up
1:17:33
for a bright financial future. And that is what we wish for you.
1:17:39
So, thank you for tuning in tonight. It has been an honor working with you on this stuff. Uh this was a very practical
1:17:46
session guiding you through all of it. You should have all the tools you need. And if you don't know what you're doing still, that's okay because we can just
1:17:53
ask in the Facebook group and chat about it and help you because this is not over. It is not over until we have
1:18:00
helped you make progress. So if it has to be a 52- week course, we are here to
1:18:05
help you make progress. And we do it once a year. So that 52 threat as well. It was a little bit, wasn't it? We're
1:18:11
going to come to detention and doing extra classes. It's a pleasure to spend time with us.
1:18:17
Quite enjoy it. Oh, Barbara says, "Amazing. Yes, please do a 52- week course. I'm not sure I could take it, but it would be a lot of
1:18:24
fun." Uh, so yeah, love you all. YouTubers, thank you for choosing. Uh
1:18:29
Ruth from New Zealand, Fireman, Carol, all the characters to the future. We record this on a
1:18:36
Thursday night, UK time. The Kiwis are up early on a Friday morning, which is why we always say hello to the future.
1:18:42
We love having you here. We love our international gang. It's so cool to have people from all over the world. Thank you for tuning in.
1:18:47
Exactly. Thank you for tuning in, YouTubers. We absolutely love you. See you all next week. See you for Monday
1:18:54
for the investing stuff. Goodbye, YouTube. Bye bye. Are you going to wear your leather trousers?
1:19:00
Uh, that was last year's joke.


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