Title: Rebel Finance School 2026 — Week 11 Monday Transcript
Session: Your Crash Plan for Bad Days: Write Your Investor Policy Statement | RFS 2026
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOwSBPg22jU
Course: Rebel Finance School 2026
Creators: Alan Donegan and Katie Donegan, Rebel Donegans
Canonical page: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/ coming soon
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Website: https://rebeldonegans.com/
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Copyright © Rebel Donegans. All rights reserved.
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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.

YouTube Description:

Markets will crash. That's not a risk: it's a certainty. The question is whether you'll have a plan written down before it happens, or whether you'll be making decisions at 11pm while watching your portfolio drop 30%.

In this session, Alan and Katie Donegan are joined by Bob Haines to help you write your own Investor Policy Statement - a document that spells out exactly what you own, why you own it, and what you'll do (and won't do) when things get ugly. Think of it as a letter from your calm, rational self to your future panicking self.

By the end, you'll have written down:
• Your chosen investment strategy and why it suits you
• Your target asset split and when you'll rebalance
• Your rules for what you will and won't do during a downturn
• The specific actions you'll take instead of selling

This video is part of the free 10-week Rebel Finance School course. For the accompanying notes, spreadsheets, and materials, sign up here: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/

Join the Facebook group for friendly support from like-minded people:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebelfinance  

🔗 Links 
RFS Investor Policy Statement template: http://rebeldonegans.com/tools/ips 

Freedom calculator: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/fire/retirement-calculator/

Week 10 of RFS. How to make your money last: https://youtube.com/live/xVo3zW8ci40 

UK: RFS Drawdown demystified workshop:    • Drawdown Demystified: How to Make Your Mon...   

USA specific drawdown strategy...
Rob Berger. 7 rules of retirement withdrawal strategies:    • 7 Golden Rules of Retirement Withdrawal St...  
Vanguard guide to retirement withdrawal strategies: 
https://investor.vanguard.com/investo...

NZ specific: https://www.thehappysaver.com/blog/ho...

RFS content in Spanish run by Rebel Business School Colombia: https://rebelionfinanciera-apollo.the... 

RFS graduation survey and certificate link: https://forms.gle/ZWPKxQnpi4Gr2RfF9 

The Rebel family 
Rebel Business School: https://therebelschool.com/
Rebel Entrepreneur Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3YG3Wfn... 
Extraordinary life course: https://rebeldonegans.com/lifestyle-d... 

Ask us anything final 2026 session. Submit your questions https://rebeldonegans.com/ask-the-don... 

Disclaimer: We are not financial advisers 💼 This is not financial advice 💰. We are not regulated. We are not trained financial advisors 🎓 We are never going to try and sell you any investments🛍️ You make your decisions 💭 Sharing our opinions and ideas 💡 These ideas may not continue to work for us or for you. You are 100% responsible for your financial future 💸 There are no guarantees here. For our full disclaimer, please visit: https://rebeldonegans.com/about-us/di... 

#RFS26 #RebelFinanceSchoool #InvestmentStrategy #AssetAllocation #PortfolioRebalancing #RebelFinanceSchool #PersonalFinance #FinancialLiteracy


0:000 seconds Wait for the uh investor policy statement live stream to start a few minutes. I think we're on. Are we live? Have we made it? Are we live?
0:088 seconds Alan has fixed it. Here we are. Thank you. Thank you for your patience, YouTubers. Thank you for your patience,
0:1515 seconds Zoomers. It was getting a little bit exciting here because we are 12 minutes late. We're so good at being prompt, aren't we? So good at being prompt,
0:2323 seconds starting on time. This is the first Rebel Finance School. We're 12 minutes late. I apologize and thank you for your patience. Should we get into it?
0:3030 seconds That's probably the 12 most stressful minutes of my life. Uh, working on that to make sure that the stream come up, but it worked. Everyone's here.
0:3838 seconds Well done. Good.
0:3939 seconds Put this man in charge of anything you need to do under pressure. He was amazing. Even my dancing didn't put him off. Well, I was very focused on YouTube.
0:4646 seconds Love you, YouTube. You're here now.
0:4848 seconds Everything's Thank you for waiting. We love you more than we did before. Should we start?
0:5353 seconds Stop wittering on. Go. Very ironically, our first slide says, "Everything goes smoothly." And I feel like this is the most ironic start to a YouTube video
1:021 minute, 2 seconds we've ever had in our life. Everything is going smoothly. Uh but imagine everything's going smoothly with your investments. You've invested your money.
1:101 minute, 10 seconds It's just going up. Everything's going smoothly. Your investments are growing and you're feeling happy.
1:161 minute, 16 seconds Uh you feel confident. You're feeling good. Actually, at the moment, I'm not feeling so confident. Uh, and then just like the start of tonight, the weather changes.
1:261 minute, 26 seconds Something happens that didn't come into the plan that you didn't quite want, but you didn't quite want to happen.
1:321 minute, 32 seconds Exactly. The market crashes, the market falls, and you start to doubt the plan.
1:381 minute, 38 seconds You're like, "What if these Donigans didn't say the right thing? What if it's not what like all this talk of pineapples? What if it doesn't work?
1:461 minute, 46 seconds What if this time's really different?
1:481 minute, 48 seconds Then the markets fall again. And you start to look for answers in the only place there is none, the Financial
1:561 minute, 56 seconds Times. You start to look for for answers in the media for why this is happening.
2:022 minutes, 2 seconds And the media shouts louder. They start shouting louder. This time is different.
2:072 minutes, 7 seconds And everyone seems to have an opinion about it. Your colleagues telling you to sell. Your friends saying buy more.
2:122 minutes, 12 seconds You're getting all these contradictory things. Social media says something else. and everybody's Uber driver is telling you buy gold. Someone everyone's got an opinion about what you should do.
2:222 minutes, 22 seconds So, how do you know what to do?
2:242 minutes, 24 seconds Then your family gets nervous and they break out the printed charts at dinner.
2:292 minutes, 29 secondsWe've all had that happen. Uh are you saving safe? Shouldn't we do something like what if it keeps falling? Are you
2:372 minutes, 37 secondsokay? Like seems like you've joined a cult online. What's wrong with you?
2:412 minutes, 41 secondsAnd then it's a club. Even your partner's not sure. One of you thinks, "Well, I thought we agreed we would sell if this happened."
2:502 minutes, 50 secondsAnd I'm thinking, you know, I thought we agreed that we would not do that and do complete opposite and just hold.
2:552 minutes, 55 secondsAnd your [clears throat] freedom fund keeps falling through all of this.
2:592 minutes, 59 secondsWhat would you do? And the interesting bit is would your family or your partners give the same answer to that question?
3:083 minutes, 8 secondsAnd this is the absolutely worst possible time to come up with a plan. Don't do it in the panic.
3:163 minutes, 16 secondsNo, the decision should have already been made before the crash, before the headlines, before the fear. And that's
3:223 minutes, 22 secondswhat tonight is all about. Calm you, which is not panicked after trying to work YouTube.
3:303 minutes, 30 secondsHow's your sweat levels? I'm definitely nervous, but it's okay.
3:343 minutes, 34 secondsI'm feeling good. Cla looks like she's okay. Tina's smiling. Everyone's good.
3:383 minutes, 38 secondsI mean, as long as Cla and Tina are happy, I'm happy.
3:413 minutes, 41 secondsOkay. So calm you writes instructions for emotional you from the future and that is the point of all of this is that
3:503 minutes, 50 secondsthe calm person takes control and the session tonight is all about writing an investor policy statement and really at
3:573 minutes, 57 secondsthe number of it is surviving the bad days in the market and we have a special guest here with us tonight which we are
4:054 minutes, 5 secondsvery excited to introduce to you. Uh we first met Bob at a financial independence event in the UK. We have then seen him all over the world.
4:154 minutes, 15 secondsKeeps following us around. It's lovely.
4:174 minutes, 17 secondsOr you could say we keep following him around. More likely.
4:204 minutes, 20 secondsUh and Bob retired uh quite some years ago and has now dedicated his time to volunteering and helping other people.
4:294 minutes, 29 secondsuh he does some volunteering work through third decade helping people with their finances to recover their finances and he has very gratefully uh said that
4:374 minutes, 37 secondshe will run the investor policy statement workshop with us. Uh please welcome Mr. Bob Haynes. Give him a round of applause please. Welcome Bob.
4:474 minutes, 47 secondsThank you. Well privilege.
4:484 minutes, 48 secondsThank you very much. [laughter] Great to be here. I can't believe that after the job that I did on the investing session you guys had me back but here I am. Thank you.
4:584 minutes, 58 secondsFor those of you thinking what investing session, Bob ran the US version of the UK investing session where he translated everything we said into American.
5:085 minutes, 8 secondsWe thought we'd better have someone with an appropriate accent to help us on that session. He's more than just an accent though.
5:145 minutes, 14 secondsThat that came out wrong. Much more than an accent, Bob. So, let's let's keep going with this.
5:205 minutes, 20 secondsToday, the plan is you'll leave with an investor policy statement. Woohoo. And you might be thinking, hang on, what is
5:275 minutes, 27 secondsan investor policy statement? Like, why do I need one? What is it? And we've kind of set the scene as to why you need one. But Bob, how did you come to this?
5:375 minutes, 37 secondsWhat's the purpose of this? Why do we do it? And why do we need it?
5:405 minutes, 40 secondsYeah, I came to it quite by accident. I happened to be talking to someone else in the personal finance community, Leaf Dalene. He's the physician on fire, runs
5:495 minutes, 49 secondsthe physician on fire blog. And I was asking him an investment question. And he said to me, "Well, Bob, just look that up. It's actually in your investor
5:565 minutes, 56 secondspolicy statement." And I said, "My investor what?" And he's like, "Your investor policy statement? You know, you have your written instructions to yourself on how you actually invest and
6:056 minutes, 5 secondsand hit your financial goals." So that just set me down this rabbit hole of doing research and figuring out that oh this act this investor policy statement
6:146 minutes, 14 secondsis a great idea for us to lay down our plans in advance of anything crazy happening in the market or just me
6:216 minutes, 21 secondswanting to tinker and do something like like I do um whenever u you know there's a market headline about like the AI
6:286 minutes, 28 secondsbubble let's say or you know it feels like this is another dot crash coming I might get the idea that I've got to do something with my portfolio. So, the
6:386 minutes, 38 secondsinvestor policy statement is just a roadmap for us to follow to make sure that I don't do something stupid or something dumb and uh just stick with my
6:466 minutes, 46 secondsplan that I've put down on paper with uh with my wife Amy.
6:506 minutes, 50 secondsHave you had those thoughts this time with all the media noise about the AI bubble? Oh, of course. Yeah, I constantly do.
6:586 minutes, 58 secondsRight. I mean, when you when you see some of the valuations for uh the these AI stocks, you say to yourself, man, you
7:067 minutes, 6 secondsknow, this seems awfully like 1999, right? And I could see this.com bubble, you know, coming. And you know, last time I wasn't able to avoid it, but
7:157 minutes, 15 secondsmaybe I could avoid it this time, which of course is a fool's xarand. And my wife Amy is the one when I take these ideas to her, she will tell me, well,
7:237 minutes, 23 secondslet's go look at the investor policy statement. And of course once I look at it it's like ah yeah no we shouldn't sell or we shouldn't make any changes
7:327 minutes, 32 secondsit's like uh instead of the the old adage you know don't stand there do something. It's the exact opposite with
7:397 minutes, 39 secondsinvesting. It's like don't do something just stand there. I love that. And I love Amy being the voice of reason and
7:467 minutes, 46 secondsholding you to the thing that you brought to her initially and saying, "We should have this investor policy statement." Said, "Yes, Bob, we should." And here it is in those times that we need it. I love that.
7:567 minutes, 56 secondsHe's the brains behind the operation.
7:587 minutes, 58 secondsKT, I love it. So, the whole purpose of this is to make the big decisions before the
8:068 minutes, 6 secondsbig emotions come. That's the whole purpose of this. And when we look at it, you're like, well, who needs to
8:138 minutes, 13 secondsunderstand the plan? Well, it's the people that are around you, the people that have influence over the plan. Maybe
8:218 minutes, 21 secondsit's you yourself need the plan so that you can always go back to it. Maybe it's your partner, the person you love, the parabies are on the couch together, you
8:298 minutes, 29 secondsknow, they look at each other. What if one of them makes a different decision to the other one? Or the family? What if the family say like, "Oh, you should do
8:378 minutes, 37 secondsthis, you should do that, this is this." and you always come back to the plan because quite often your finances impact
8:458 minutes, 45 secondsa lot of people around you and we need to be on the same page about that.
8:508 minutes, 50 secondsLL on YouTube has a great point that feels like we should have personal policy statements in many areas of our lives.
8:568 minutes, 56 secondsI think LL is right about that is like this is how we operate. This is how we live. This is how we're doing. And naturally this one session brings
9:049 minutes, 4 secondstogether so much of the Rebel Finance School course into one session. Uh but before we do that we have a message from our lawyers.
9:159 minutes, 15 secondsThis is not financial advice. We're not trained financial advisors. We're not regulated. We will not sell you investments. You make your own decisions sharing our opinions and ideas. These ideas may or may not continue to work
9:239 minutes, 23 secondsfor us or you. You are 100% responsible for your financial future. Yes, especially you, Mary. There are no guarantees here except the money back guarantee. If you
9:319 minutes, 31 secondsdo not enjoy today's session or you're offended that we started 12 minutes late, see please see Bob for a full refund. Exactly.
9:389 minutes, 38 secondsIf you paid for today's session, something's gone terribly wrong. Investments can and will go up and down. Bob, are you a financial adviser?
9:469 minutes, 46 secondsI am not a financial adviser. I am just a personal finance geek that loves to to nerd out on all this stuff.
9:539 minutes, 53 secondsFantastic. Uh if you're on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe and it makes up for our failure earlier. Might give you tingles.
9:599 minutes, 59 secondsUh so what's in an IPS? Uh and please be aware that's IPS is not IBS. We have to
10:0610 minutes, 6 secondsbe very careful with our acronyms around here. So in the IPS is goals. So what you're focused on, your philosophy about
10:1510 minutes, 15 secondsinvesting, which is what you come back to in the moments of craziness.
10:2010 minutes, 20 secondsuh your asset allocation, where is your money and like where have you applied it? Uh how you're going to draw down or
10:2710 minutes, 27 secondshow you're going to use the money and then rebalancing how you stay on track with your money in the future. Those are
10:3410 minutes, 34 secondsthe main elements of an IPS and we're going to go through and create them all with you tonight. And your answers to
10:4210 minutes, 42 secondsthese different questions will differ potentially depending on what stage you are with investing. So we remember we had the build it phase which is where
10:4910 minutes, 49 secondsyou're building your freedom fund. The bridge it phase where you're preparing to live from your freedom fund and then live from it when you are living from
10:5710 minutes, 57 secondsyour freedom fund and you might have different asset allocations, different goals in those things.
11:0111 minutes, 1 secondNow this is version one of your IPS. I'd love to know are there any perfectionists out there? Please put P in the chat if you are a perfectionist.
11:1111 minutes, 11 secondsDon't miss the key and press O button.
11:1311 minutes, 13 secondsDid you imagine? Well, because we got something else. If you're an overinker, can you put O in the chat? Bob, maybe you should put O in the chat. I know
11:2111 minutes, 21 secondsyou've told me in the past you're a bit of an overinker.
11:2311 minutes, 23 secondsUh but here's the bit or put both. If you are an overinker and a perfectionist, the holy I was going to say trinity, the holy duality. Uh please put OP in the chat.
11:3411 minutes, 34 secondsUh I also am an OP cuz we need to let go of those cuz what we want to say to you is precision is not required. Right? This
11:4311 minutes, 43 secondsis not about being perfectly accurate with everything we're doing. This is about having version one and getting version one done. Now, let's go straight
11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsinto this. Uh we're going to look at goals as the first element. Why goals?
11:5911 minutes, 59 secondsWhy do we have a picture of Bob Messi or Lenor Haynes uh on here? Well, the goals
12:0712 minutes, 7 secondsare what your investments are trying to achieve. And if you don't have what your investments are trying to achieve down, then you're not going to stay the course
12:1412 minutes, 14 secondswith what you're doing. And the whole purpose of this is in the storm, it keeps your eyes on the prize. It keeps you centered when the storm comes because the storm will always come.
12:2612 minutes, 26 secondsThere will always be a crash. There will always be ups and downs. The storm will always come. And we've kind of split these into different levels of goals.
12:3412 minutes, 34 secondsSo, we've got three to tell you about. One is just what's your next milestone?
12:4112 minutes, 41 secondsUh what's the next thing you're building? And we'll have example of these in a sec. Two, the freedom fund destination. Where's my end goal with my
12:4912 minutes, 49 secondsfreedom fund? And three, what does this all support or allow me to do?
12:5712 minutes, 57 secondsLife purpose is quite grand there, but it just means why am I doing this?
13:0013 minutesWhy am I doing this? So, what's the next milestone, Katie? Uh this could be various things and it depends where you're at on that map that we showed you
13:0713 minutes, 7 secondsof working towards financial freedom. So perhaps you're working on paying off your credit card debt and the first milestone is get rid of that top one that's got the highest interest rate.
13:1713 minutes, 17 secondsMaybe you're building your emergency fund. Maybe that first goal of having a thousand in your emergency fund. You're like actually that's too far of a
13:2413 minutes, 24 secondsmilestone. I'm going to start with a hundred depending on how you're doing and how your gap's going.
13:2813 minutes, 28 secondsMaybe it's your first thousand invested, your first 10,000 invested. Maybe you're further down the journey and you're like, "My target is to get the first
13:3513 minutes, 35 seconds100,000 invested or my target is 25% of my freedom fund or whatever your next
13:4113 minutes, 41 secondsmeaningful milestone is from where you are. That's the point." Uh, and then we've got your freedom fund destination
13:5013 minutes, 50 secondscuz you've got the next milestone which is the step on the journey to the bigger thing. So maybe actually you're saving X
13:5713 minutes, 57 secondsor X into a freedom fund. I'm going to have a freedom fund of whatever it is.
14:0214 minutes, 2 secondsAnd we helped you work out what that might be when we did the freedom calculator a couple of weeks ago.
14:0714 minutes, 7 secondsUh maybe it's this is the spending I want to have in retirement. I want 20 grand a year, 40 grand a year, 50 grand
14:1314 minutes, 13 secondsa year. Whatever it is in my freedom phase. Uh or maybe I'm having a thing. I want to get X% of my life funded. That's
14:2214 minutes, 22 secondsmy goal. Or maybe it is just I want to do full financial freedom. Whatever that means to you. So, we've got the milestone, the full financial goal, and
14:3114 minutes, 31 secondsthen the life that my freedom fund supports. Why am I here on the sofa, Alan?
14:3614 minutes, 36 secondsUh, cuz this is the life Katie wanted to be relaxed in a hoodie in New Zealand. Uh, it's very cold here in the mornings.
14:4314 minutes, 43 secondsUm, so you might, your goals might be work because I want to. It might be have adventures, spend time with people you love, contribute to something you
14:5214 minutes, 52 secondsmatters. Like the number is not the prize.
14:5714 minutes, 57 secondsThe number is what it gives you in life and your ability to do. And as you know, we've repeated many times. It's not about having a number in the bank. It's
15:0615 minutes, 6 secondsabout being able to live the life you want to lead. So the investor policy statement helps you stay focused around that. And then Bob, why have we got add
15:1515 minutes, 15 secondsa date here? What do you mean by add a date? Well, the date is actually what turns, you know, a wish into an actual
15:2315 minutes, 23 secondsgoal, right? Because what you need to do is to hem in, you know, each of these
15:3015 minutes, 30 secondssections with, you know, a reasonable date that you think that you can hit.
15:3515 minutes, 35 secondsAnd by breaking it down like this, it makes it good so that you can have a something that's more short-term and intermediate because the life to um
15:4315 minutes, 43 secondsdepending on where you are today, the life to full financial freedom may be a bit down the road, but you can set yourself the closer next milestones and then something that's further a field.
15:5315 minutes, 53 secondsAnd this is what makes it real.
15:5615 minutes, 56 secondsI love that. So it might be what my invest like I'm going to hit 100 grand in investments by 31st of December 2030.
16:0516 minutes, 5 secondsI think I can do that. Why? Because it helps me move to 4 days a week at work.
16:0916 minutes, 9 secondsAnd that's the goal. And the whole purpose is to keep you focused on where you're going. So the framework is these three
16:1816 minutes, 18 secondsitems. The next milestone, the freedom fund destination, and the purpose of it all. Why are you doing it? And we want to actually hand it over to you to write
16:2716 minutes, 27 secondsthese for a couple of minutes and just at least start because we know the hardest part of creating anything new is
16:3416 minutes, 34 secondsstarting it. And we've also made it a lot easier for you. So, as you write these, we're going to go through them
16:4216 minutes, 42 secondswith you and work on it with you. But we've got a template to make your life easier. Uh, so we've had a lot of fun
16:4916 minutes, 49 secondscreating a template for the investor policy statement. It's brand new, developed over the last few days, built
16:5616 minutes, 56 secondson everything we learned last year and Bob's help with this. Um, if you scan the QR code, uh, it will bring up a
17:0417 minutes, 4 secondsGoogle top template. If you are logged into Google, it will tell you, do you want to make a copy? If you are not
17:1117 minutes, 11 secondslogged into Google, it will fail. It gives you an unhelpful error message which could just Why didn't it just say please log in? They don't. It's like you
17:1917 minutes, 19 secondscan't access it and you just need to be logged in. Anyone should be able to access this link that has a internet connection anywhere in the world.
17:2617 minutes, 26 secondsExactly. And then you can just fill it in section by section. The ninjas are putting it in the chat. If you're on YouTube, it is in the YouTube description already. Katie has done that
17:3517 minutes, 35 secondsbefore. Katie, do you want to show us the document?
17:3917 minutes, 39 secondsYes. Let's have a look. Where is my thing?
17:4417 minutes, 44 secondsSo, here we go. Here is the document that uh Katie and I have been creating.
17:5017 minutes, 50 secondsUh it obviously has a pineapple at the top which if you don't like, you can delete any of it. It is customizable and it is yours.
17:5817 minutes, 58 secondsI won't do it now cuz this is the master, but you can change anything that you want on here. And I've put a note here saying this is a guide. Make it your own. Please feel free to delete
18:0618 minutes, 6 secondsthose and any kind of helping text that we have here. We want to give you this template as a guide. We want you to make it your own. Change things, adapt
18:1418 minutes, 14 secondsthings, add things, delete things. This is yours to use.
18:2018 minutes, 20 secondsYeah. So, thing you could do here is you could add your name. Maybe it's a household name. So, maybe if it's Alan and I, we put the Donigans and then today's date just you know when this
18:2918 minutes, 29 secondshappened. And then what we'd love you to do is we've just explained what the goals are to fill in. So go ahead and on
18:3718 minutes, 37 secondsyour version on your copy of this template write in what is the next milestone. You can just type over this.
18:4218 minutes, 42 secondsYou can this is all editable. Just type over this by what age or date. Back in the day we had a goal of getting to full
18:5018 minutes, 50 secondsfinancial freedom by Alan's 40th birthday. So we can put that in put that exact date in or the a his age and then so on. What's your freedom fund
18:5818 minutes, 58 secondsdestination by what point? And then this bit is really key. What life is it supporting? Why are you doing this? Now
19:0519 minutes, 5 secondsback if you can think all the way back to week one of the course, we got you to think about this. This is where you can really crystallize it and say this is why I am doing this.
19:1319 minutes, 13 secondsYeah, this is the whole purpose. This is where I am heading. Now, if we just have a look at the slides here for a split
19:2119 minutes, 21 secondssecond, uh goals evolve over time and you just need to write where you are and you'll have to update this. Uh Katie and
19:2919 minutes, 29 secondsI, our first goal was just to buy an asset. We didn't even know where the asset shop was. That was our goal. So, our goal would have been, I just want to
19:3719 minutes, 37 secondsbuy an asset. Uh cuz it took us a long time to be able to figure that out. Our second goal was to get £1,000 in an
19:4419 minutes, 44 secondsindex fund. That's all we wanted to do was start investing. And then our third goal was to get to full financial freedom. That was the plan.
19:5419 minutes, 54 secondsRidiculous selfies around the world.
19:5619 minutes, 56 secondsTake ridiculous selfies eating ridiculous breakfast. Uh Bob, however, had a completely different goal. Bob, why is there a picture of two weird
20:0420 minutes, 4 secondspeople with fish uh on the slide? Tell me about this. Why do we have people fish?
20:1020 minutes, 10 secondsYeah, that's that's a good one. So, you know, I had when we found this investor policy statement, Amy and I were in the
20:1820 minutes, 18 secondsunique position to have already become financially free and retired early. So, it was interesting to actually document,
20:2720 minutes, 27 secondsyou know, the in the goals section because we were already there, right? A lot of a lot of the people um that are on the CLA on the course today are
20:3520 minutes, 35 secondsworking their way towards financial freedom, but we found ourselves there.
20:3820 minutes, 38 secondsSo, it was interesting to be able to document, you know, what it was that Amy and I wanted to do. And, you know, the big picture is, you know, for Amy and I
20:4520 minutes, 45 secondsto um uh enjoy a a prosperous and fulfilling retirement and doing a lot of travel. We travel three to four months a
20:5220 minutes, 52 secondsyear. But then in addition to that, as I think about my retirement, one of the really cool things for me was that my dad actually retired three months before
21:0121 minutes, 1 secondI did. And my dad and I both love to fish. My dad has a boat. And one of my goals became, you know what, I want to
21:1021 minutes, 10 secondsmake sure that when my dad calls me and says, hey, the fish are biting. Do you want to go fishing tomorrow? That that
21:1621 minutes, 16 secondsanswer would always be yes. And uh so th that was a great slide that you have there with uh me and my dad with with
21:2321 minutes, 23 secondsfish because you know we get to do that a lot. And um yeah, I mean I I feel like I'm one of the the most blessed people
21:3121 minutes, 31 secondsblessed men that's ever walked the face of the earth. I don't know any other 52year-old. I just turned 52. I don't know any 52 year old that gets to fish two to three days a week with his dad.
21:4221 minutes, 42 secondsSo it's just, you know, I'm super fortunate. Yeah. And that's what we want to say to all of you is why are you
21:4921 minutes, 49 secondsdoing this? What's your version of fishing with uh I was going to say fishing with Bob's dad, but elderly gentle.
21:5821 minutes, 58 secondsWhat's your version of Bob's fishing with my dad? Uh who do you want to spend your time with? Maybe it's not fishing.
22:0522 minutes, 5 secondsSomeone said in the chat, winter's in the sun. Maybe it's time with your family. Maybe it's doing jigsaws on the couch. It's whatever it means to you.
22:1322 minutes, 13 secondsAnd that's the key element. Maybe it's broad of, you know, having the freedom to spend how I want to spend a random Tuesday. Maybe it's hyper specific. It's
22:2022 minutes, 20 secondsall very personal, isn't it? Whatever it means to you. When you're talking about a random Tuesday that it's 7:34 on Tuesday in New Zealand right now and we've got up to run a live stream.
22:3122 minutes, 31 secondsUm, that's how I love spending my Tuesday.
22:3322 minutes, 33 secondsThat's how we spend our time. So, that's the goals. The first section, please write in there your goals, what you're
22:4022 minutes, 40 secondsdoing, the next milestone, the freedom fund destination, and then why you're actually doing that. Fishing with your family, time with your family, that's
22:4822 minutes, 48 secondswhat you need to do. That's the goals section. Okay. So, coming back to the
22:5522 minutes, 55 secondspresentation. So, we've done goals and then the next section that we want to look at is philosophy.
23:0123 minutes, 1 secondWhat do I believe about investing? I love this quote from JL Collins got it in his book Simple Path to Wealth.
23:0723 minutes, 7 secondsEverybody makes money when the market's rising, but what determines whether it will make you wealthy or leave you bleeding on the side of the road is what
23:1523 minutes, 15 secondsyou do during the times it is collapsing. And this is where the philosophy comes in. This is where I imagine all the times that Amy says,
23:2423 minutes, 24 secondsshould we go look at the investor policy statement to Bob? It's to remind yourselves of the philosophy of what are we about with this investing stuff?
23:3223 minutes, 32 secondsExactly. And philosophy is a very grand term. Uh this is one of my favorite AI photos of Katie being a philosopher.
23:4123 minutes, 41 secondsUh we couldn't afford the picture in Greece. I got AI to create it for us.
23:4623 minutes, 46 secondsBut philosophy is just means the set of beliefs you return to. It's what you believe about investing. It's what you remind yourself about when things get rocky. It's what you actually believe.
23:5723 minutes, 57 secondsNow this is the investing philosophy of Rebel Finance School. And you'll see in the tool that we've prepopulated it with
24:0524 minutes, 5 secondsthese statements. So what have we talked about in rebel finance school? Well, my investments exist to buy freedom and support the life I want. We're not just
24:1224 minutes, 12 secondsaccumulating money and investments for the sake of it.
24:1524 minutes, 15 secondsI invest in simple, lowcost, globally diversified index funds, which you've been on the course, you'll know what that means.
24:2324 minutes, 23 secondsI accept market returns rather than trying to pick winners or beat the market. I don't attempt to predict or
24:2924 minutes, 29 secondstime markets. Time in the market is more important than timing the market. And I think that's one of the most repeated
24:3724 minutes, 37 secondsphrases between Katie and I when it comes to we've got money to invest or shall we invest it now or like what's the market doing? And it's like stop
24:4624 minutes, 46 secondstalking about what's the market's doing and just invest it.
24:4924 minutes, 49 secondsAnd then the final one, yeah, very important one. I expect volatility as a normal part of long-term investing. So, head to that next section
24:5824 minutes, 58 secondsdown on the template. Or I did want to say as well, if you don't want to use the template, you can do it on your own uh document on your phone, on your
25:0625 minutes, 6 secondslaptop, whatever you want, with pen and paper if you don't like this new fangled technology stuff. It's yours. Do it however you want to.
25:1425 minutes, 14 secondsExactly. And a few people are saying that uh they haven't got a Google account, so they haven't been able to get it yet. That's okay. We will create a word version for you over the next day
25:2325 minutes, 23 secondsor so and put it up online so that you have that so that it's accessible to everyone we can do. Um but the whole point of this section is philosophy.
25:3125 minutes, 31 secondsBob, what's your investment philosophy?
25:3525 minutes, 35 secondsWhat kind of things do you have in this section on your investor policy statement? Yeah, so we have uh a very short list.
25:4325 minutes, 43 secondsWe have we invest in a diversified portfolio of lowcost index funds keeping
25:4925 minutes, 49 secondsexpenses low and we accept the market returns and time in the market beats timing the
25:5725 minutes, 57 secondsmarket. That's it. That's you know if I learned anything from Morgan how's excellent book the psychology of money it's that there is no perfect um
26:0726 minutes, 7 secondsstrategy. You just have to pick one and stick with it for the long term. So that's the biggest thing is not making changes, not monkeying around with it.
26:1626 minutes, 16 secondsSo we've kept our philosophy very simple and we I I try we try to stick with this philosophy.
26:2426 minutes, 24 secondsDo you have to remind yourself of it and do you have to go back to it daily?
26:2826 minutes, 28 secondsDaily daily. Allan, I mean, you know, this is like, you know, you I heard Katy say that like you you say to each other,
26:3626 minutes, 36 secondstime in the market beats timing the market. It's just so human nature to look if you have, you know, if you if you got a paycheck and you have some,
26:4426 minutes, 44 secondsyou know, quote unquote extra money that wasn't automatically invested and it's like, well, maybe I should put this in the market. Let's look at see what the Footsie Global All Cap Fund is. It's
26:5326 minutes, 53 secondslike, oh my goodness, it's just an all-time high today. Maybe I should just wait a few minutes. Maybe I should wait a day, a week, a month, and invest this money later. No, no, no, no, no. Get that money to work as soon as possible.
27:0427 minutes, 4 secondsBuy as much as you can and hold it forever.
27:0727 minutes, 7 secondsAnd I think I love this section because I'm a fairly simple man. [laughter] And that's what one of the things I love about you.
27:1527 minutes, 15 secondsI But I just have these phrases that we keep coming back to. And the phrase is that's the philosophy you can hold on to. That's the thing you can hold on to.
27:2327 minutes, 23 secondsThat's what keeps us going, well, okay, we've agreed this. This is what we always come back to. And I think it helps set the north star, doesn't it?
27:3227 minutes, 32 secondsExcuse me, of what we're about.
27:3427 minutes, 34 secondsExactly. So, please go ahead and edit, keep, change, delete, whatever you've got there in the investment philosophy
27:4127 minutes, 41 secondssection. It's been pre-populated with those ones that we had on the slide just now.
27:4527 minutes, 45 secondsYes. And when you edit and delete time in the market, uh, as opposed to um, timing the market, we will judge you for be bad decision.
27:5327 minutes, 53 secondsYou did say we shouldn't put that you can edit. This is this is the truth. This is the truth.
27:5927 minutes, 59 secondsBut write your philosophy in there. But we have highly suggested these are good ways to invest and what you should be doing. Okay. So there is the investment
28:0828 minutes, 8 secondsphilosophy section and all of the different philosophies we talk about on Rebel Finance School. That's philosophies. We're going to move on to
28:1628 minutes, 16 secondssection three which is asset allocation which uh we've going to talk about. This might change over time because the job of your freedom fund changes over time.
28:2828 minutes, 28 secondsWhen you're in the build it phase, the freedom fund's only job is to grow. It's that's it. It's designed to grow and you'll have 100% in a global index fund.
28:3928 minutes, 39 secondsAnd the idea is in this section is when you get specific which global index fund is your target and it might be the
28:4828 minutes, 48 secondsFootsie Global All Cap. Uh there's rumors of a new ETF version of this coming from Vanguard with very low fees, which will be exciting if that actually
28:5728 minutes, 57 secondshappens. But this is your target, what you're aiming to have, cuz you might have some legacy investments that you
29:0429 minutes, 4 secondschange over time to move towards your target. But the idea is this is the target what you're aiming for. And of course, always please do take free
29:1329 minutes, 13 secondsmoney. Never turn free money down. What do we mean by that? Well, if your employer offers you uh money into your retirement account, whether that's your
29:2129 minutes, 21 secondspension, your 401k, your Kiwi saver, please do you take it?
29:2529 minutes, 25 secondsYes. And I take the money by using tax efficient accounts. So, here's my asset allocation. Here's what accounts I'm putting them in. And you might have this
29:3329 minutes, 33 secondsbit of I need X amount to be accessible accounts. Like not all of it is in my um Kiwi Saver or SIT or 401k with a date on it.
29:4429 minutes, 44 secondsSome of it needs to be outside of that.
29:4629 minutes, 46 secondsHow do I know how much to have outside of it, Katie?
29:4929 minutes, 49 secondsUh, we have incorporated that into the freedom calculator that we went through in week nine of the course. That's one
29:5529 minutes, 55 secondsof those elements. Um, and just to build on what Alan said about the accessible bit, it's just saying if I want to be
30:0330 minutes, 3 secondsfully financially free before the point I can get to some of these accounts, you know, the pensions and the 401ks, I need to have someone outside of those in
30:1130 minutes, 11 secondsaccessible investments, accessible accounts to be able to pay for pizza and Lego.
30:1630 minutes, 16 secondsLove it. Thank you. Uh, the freedom fund job then changes to the Bridget phase and the live from it phase. You have a
30:2530 minutes, 25 secondsslightly different job. the growth engine doesn't disappear. You still have that index [clears throat] fund uh the
30:3230 minutes, 32 secondsETF, but you might add in a spending buffer and then as you start to live from it, you're using and managing the
30:3930 minutes, 39 secondsspending buffer. You're living off the cash and the growth engine doesn't disappear. You've just added in this extra thing which may be bonds or cash or different elements.
30:4930 minutes, 49 secondsIf you need more of a recap on this, we did this in week eight, I think, of the course. Week eight and nine.
30:5530 minutes, 55 secondsI think this Anyway, anyway, it's on the course.
30:5930 minutes, 59 secondsSomeone will know what week it is who's smarter than us. Stop trying to be specific, Katie. That's the lesson I took from there.
31:0531 minutes, 5 secondsOkay. And it's this balancing act of growth versus stability or the short-term spending of those items.
31:1531 minutes, 15 secondsIf you talk to a financial adviser, they will try and give you an asset allocation based on your risk tolerance.
31:2131 minutes, 21 secondsWhen they talk about risk, we all know what they actually mean is volatility.
31:2531 minutes, 25 secondsSo we look at this in terms of your volatility tolerance, meaning how tolerant, how much can you put up with the price of your investments changing in the short term.
31:3631 minutes, 36 secondsAnd traditionally, you have sort of different splits or different asset allocations. And if you have a high volatility tolerance, you'll have more
31:4531 minutes, 45 secondsin a global index fund. You might have a lot of your money in a global index fund. If you have a medium tolerance, it might be 80% index funds, 20% global
31:5431 minutes, 54 secondsbonds. Or if you have a low tolerance, which this is one of my favorite photos. This is my favorite photo of all time. Yeah. Pineapple chilling out in old age.
32:0332 minutes, 3 secondsUh you might have 60% in the index fund and 40% in bonds. And that's kind of the traditional split that investment
32:1232 minutes, 12 secondsadvisor talk about. Um yeah, Bob, what's your split? What's your version of this volatility tolerance and asset allocation? What's in your section here?
32:2332 minutes, 23 secondsWhat do you do?
32:2432 minutes, 24 secondsYeah. So, the way that Amy and I have structured this is we have a 8020 portfolio. So, we have 80% in equity index funds and 20% in bond index funds.
32:3932 minutes, 39 secondsAnd even though the picture that matches the 6040 portfolio, that's really me. I
32:4632 minutes, 46 secondsmean, I I love that. That also is the embodiment of me. Uh that that you have the shades. Yeah, that's Yeah, it's just fantastic.
32:5432 minutes, 54 secondsThat's the way I try to live my life is uh I uh I try to live like that pineapple on a daily basis.
33:0233 minutes, 2 secondsI remember you saying in the past that you what you're optimizing for. So, what are you optimizing for with that with that mix that split? Yeah, excellent question, Katy.
33:1233 minutes, 12 secondsSo Amy and I often talk about this whenever we're making decisions, especially big decisions, is what are we
33:1933 minutes, 19 secondsoptimizing for? And one of the things that we are often optimizing for is sleeping well at night. So, you know, we
33:2733 minutes, 27 secondswe could likely have a more uh aggressive portfolio in terms of asset allocation, but since we feel like we've
33:3633 minutes, 36 secondsalready won the game, we have accumulated our freedom fund and we've been living on it now. Seven years for me, eight years for Amy. We just feel
33:4533 minutes, 45 secondsgood at night having that 20% in bonds just to kind of give us some stability
33:5333 minutes, 53 secondsand not have quite as much volatility as say a 100% equity portfolio would give us. Lou says uh what percent what does
34:0234 minutes, 2 secondsit mean about growth engine? The word growth engine we have used to mean the thing that's growing to provide money for you in the future and that's the
34:1034 minutes, 10 secondsindex fund or the index investing or the ETF. That's your growth engine in the stocks and shares.
34:1534 minutes, 15 secondsYes. In the stocks and shares. So when we talk about the mix of stocks and shares versus bonds bonds don't particularly grow. They have a little
34:2434 minutes, 24 secondsbit of growth through the interest that comes on them but they don't grow very fast. So you kind of have that mix of I need the stocks and shares, the index
34:3334 minutes, 33 secondsfunds, the ETF to grow over the long term and the bonds create the balance.
34:4034 minutes, 40 secondsThey create the steadiness so that if the market does fall, you have that to be able to rely on and to be able to
34:4734 minutes, 47 secondssell. And this is the bit in the IPS where you put what your ideal split is.
34:5334 minutes, 53 secondsSo everything we worked on week 10 of the course is what you place in this section.
34:5934 minutes, 59 secondsAnd you might see the word equities and we talk about equities or stocks and shares. It's the same thing. It means buying all those businesses that exist
35:0635 minutes, 6 secondson the stock market in a simple global index fund.
35:1035 minutes, 10 secondsExactly. Now in the different phases you will probably have different things. Um you in this particular bit you've got
35:1935 minutes, 19 secondsyour freedom fund like what actually is it in? what's the split? What's the specific funds you're actually
35:2535 minutes, 25 secondsinvesting? What do we actually do? Uh and then like what are my strategies if I enter in this sequence of returns risk
35:3435 minutes, 34 secondsthing? If the market crashes just as I retire or just before or just after, what am I going to do? And we covered all of that in week 10 of the course.
35:4435 minutes, 44 secondsThis is where you would enter some of that. So this is where it get real gets real.
35:4835 minutes, 48 secondsThis is over to you to write your asset allocation into your investor policy statement. If you're using the template, it's got those templates in there for
35:5635 minutes, 56 secondsyou. If you're not using the template, you can use this as prompts. So, a few people asking what does growth engine percentage means or how much will be in
36:0336 minutes, 3 secondsthe growth engine. We suggest for build it that will be 100%.
36:0636 minutes, 6 secondsSo, I'm going to be 100% in whatever fund it is. So, I'm going to be 100% in the Footsie Global All Cap. I'm going to
36:1336 minutes, 13 secondsbe 100% in VWRP, 100% in VT. like you would name the exact fund. This is the target fund that I want to have.
36:2236 minutes, 22 secondsAnd then the regular contributions. What's this bit?
36:2436 minutes, 24 secondsHow much are you adding? What are you putting in there? Cuz in the build it phase, you were aiming to put in so much a month, so much a year. What am I adding?
36:3336 minutes, 33 secondsAnd then a few people asking just clarification what this accessible percentage means. That's the amount that you are aiming to have outside of things that you can't get to at a certain age.
36:4336 minutes, 43 secondsThose things are are not accessible potentially yet because of an age restriction. You know, the pension accounts, the 401ks, the Kiwi savers.
36:5136 minutes, 51 secondsSo, how much do you need to have accessible that you can get now? And what's that percentage split? So, if you
36:5836 minutes, 58 secondscan't get to your 401k or your SIP or that sort of thing until you're 58, but you want to retire at 55, well, you need
37:0537 minutes, 5 secondssome money outside. Otherwise, you're going to be retiring and living in a cardboard box for a few years, which is not good. So you need money that's accessible so you can buy pizzas. That's it. Uh always comes back to pizza.
37:1637 minutes, 16 secondsMaybe the cardboard box was from the pizza that you made.
37:1937 minutes, 19 secondsMaybe now in the later phases of Bridget and live from it, you still need that money in an index fund. So what
37:2737 minutes, 27 secondspercentage of your money your freedom fund is going to be in the growth engine and what percentage is going to be in the spending buffer? And the spending
37:3437 minutes, 34 secondsbuffer will be made up of primarily two things. one, you might have bonds.
37:4137 minutes, 41 secondsSo, you're going to have no bonds, permanent bonds, the tent, uh the bond tent, like which bonds are you going to have, which we talked about this on week 10, didn't we? If you need a refresher.
37:5037 minutes, 50 secondsYep. And then how much cash do you have as well? So, you might have those different elements. So, we've added both, but it's like which ones are you
37:5937 minutes, 59 secondsgoing to have? What is the mix inside your spending buffer?
38:0338 minutes, 3 secondsSo, people wouldn't necessarily it's what's relevant to them, right? You wouldn't necessarily need to fill in everything of this. It's what we're giving you the prompts of what might be relevant to your situation.
38:1238 minutes, 12 secondsExactly. It's very hard to write a document that fits everyone in the world.
38:1738 minutes, 17 secondsA few tens of thousands of people that we need to cover this for. What are you talking about, Alan?
38:2138 minutes, 21 secondsVery hard. So, you can always just delete our bit and write what you want in there. The whole point is asset allocation. So, please fill that out.
38:2838 minutes, 28 secondsNow, um Bob, what did you write in asset allocation? How do you think about this?
38:3338 minutes, 33 secondsWhat did you actually write down in your section?
38:3638 minutes, 36 secondsYeah, so I think I'm looking at my asset allocation section right now. We have we put a high level 80% in US stocks and
38:4638 minutes, 46 seconds20% in bonds and then we actually got more specific.
38:5238 minutes, 52 secondsI from the US. I have a US home country bias and uh we have 80% in the Vanguard
39:0139 minutes, 1 secondTotal Stock Market Index ETF which is the ticker symbol VTI and then the 20% we actually have in the
39:1039 minutes, 10 secondsVanguard Total Bond Market Fund ETF which the ticker symbol is BND. So it's 80% VTI,
39:1939 minutes, 19 seconds20% BND. And then I have a little thing here. This may or may not be applicable to those in the audience, but we hold
39:2639 minutes, 26 secondsour bond allocation in our tax advantaged accounts because we try to uh control our income since we're retired.
39:3439 minutes, 34 secondsSo, we want to minimize our income so we don't pay as much in taxes and therefore we hold our fixed income bonds inside
39:4239 minutes, 42 secondsour tax advant advantaged accounts so they're not spitting off um extra income that we don't want to show at, you know, on our taxes at the end of the year.
39:5239 minutes, 52 secondsSo, what I want you to get from what Bob just said is how specific he's being about, you know, the fund and the percentage. This is where we're getting
39:5939 minutes, 59 secondsthe specifics into what you want to have.
40:0240 minutes, 2 secondsYes. And if you're in the UK, New Zealand, or any other country, there is no point searching for VTI or BND. They
40:1040 minutes, 10 secondswon't exist in the same way. Those are US funds, and we need to find the versions that are available in your country. Um, so yeah, just wanted to warn you before you go off Googling.
40:2240 minutes, 22 secondsDon't just blindly copy Bob either. This is just an example. Exactly. It's a great example.
40:2740 minutes, 27 secondsI've got Sorry, I underplayed the example then. That's okay. It's Bob's example. Sorry Bob, you know I love you.
40:3240 minutes, 32 secondsIt's all good. It's all good. I I say it is uh it is descriptive for the audience. It is not prescriptive for the
40:3940 minutes, 39 secondsaudience. So you do what makes sense for you in your situation, in your country.
40:4540 minutes, 45 secondsYeah. And uh it's really interesting when you're running a really big course trying to like share these different messages. It is different in different
40:5440 minutes, 54 secondsplaces and there are slight differences between how people will do these different things. Um but there are a lot
41:0141 minutes, 1 secondof similarities. Okay. So this is the section on asset allocation. This is to
41:0841 minutes, 8 secondskeep you uh straight certain when the markets go crazy and you don't do
41:1441 minutes, 14 secondssomething you will later regret. That's the plan.
41:1841 minutes, 18 secondsSo we have done goals, we've done philosophy, we've done asset allocation and now we're on to draw down. How am I actually going to use this money? which
41:2741 minutes, 27 secondsdraw down is a fascinating bit. Uh some of you do not need to think about draw down yet because you are super young. We have some 12y olds on the call. Uh you
41:3641 minutes, 36 secondsdo not need to think about draw down yet because you have 40 years left. Uh really you only really need to think about this 2 to 3 years before
41:4441 minutes, 44 secondsretirement. Max 5 years out. Why am I saying that? Is to help you relax. You don't need to have everything figured
41:5141 minutes, 51 secondsout on the journey. You can figure out some of this as you get closer. That's why we're saying it. There is one
41:5841 minutes, 58 secondselement though that you do want to figure out beforehand, which is your starting burn rate. Meaning, how much of your portfolio?
42:0742 minutes, 7 secondsWhat's that starting percentage that you're going to live off in the first year when you get to freedom?
42:1242 minutes, 12 secondsWhy do you want to figure that out before? It's because it helps you set your target. It helps you know, I want this invested in my index fund. This is
42:2042 minutes, 20 secondsmy target I'm heading towards. So, this bit actually helps. and we spoke about three different burn rates when we were doing this on the course which I think
42:2942 minutes, 29 secondswas week nine. Uh everything's blurring into one now we've moved to New Zealand.
42:3342 minutes, 33 secondsI don't know where I am but I know I'm in the future.
42:3542 minutes, 35 secondsUh we spoke about the 4% burn rate being a very robust secure one. We spoke about 4 12% balanced or 5% flexible burn rate.
42:4642 minutes, 46 secondsAnd the reason for adding this in here is the each burn rate comes with promises. I.e. The higher your burn rate is, the more flexible you have to be.
42:5842 minutes, 58 secondsSo, if you choose one of the higher ones, well, you need to review the plan more regularly and make sure you're staying on top of it and you monitor it.
43:0643 minutes, 6 secondsUh, you'll use flexibility if the market crashes and you respond rather than blindly continuing to spend 5% forever.
43:1643 minutes, 16 secondsYou respond.
43:1843 minutes, 18 secondsAnd those burn rates, as [snorts] we explained, actually they change over time because your spending and the freedom fund, the value of your freedom
43:2643 minutes, 26 secondsfund changes. So you have your starting burn rate, that's the original withdrawal, the amount you're going to withdraw in the first year. And then the
43:3343 minutes, 33 secondsburn rate will change over time as you spend, as your freedom fund fluctuates due to volatility. So it's that current burn rate that tells you if your plan is
43:4243 minutes, 42 secondsunder pressure. So if the market has crashed and inflation goes up, you're spending more and your freedom fund has gone down. That means you're spending
43:5043 minutes, 50 secondsmore out of your freedom fund and you have a higher burn rate. And the way to think about that is the burn rate is like the flashing light on your
44:0044 minutesfinancial dashboard. If it goes too high for too long, it is a warning. It is a be careful. and it tells you when to
44:0844 minutes, 8 secondsopen your freedom fund defense plan and to look after your money and to try different things. That's what it tells you. And we did all of this in week 10.
44:1744 minutes, 17 secondsWe had the different ways to protect your freedom fund against uh sequence of returns risk. And this
44:2544 minutes, 25 secondswas for very big crashes. This is not if it goes down 5%. This is not if it goes down 10%. This is for an actual crash.
44:3344 minutes, 33 secondsUm, draw down itself is a very big subject and we're not covering it all today, but this is where it would go in your plan.
44:4444 minutes, 44 secondsOn Thursday, we have a very special session, how to live off your investments, where we're going to talk a lot more about how do you actually turn
44:5044 minutes, 50 secondsan index fund into breakfast on a Tuesday morning.
44:5444 minutes, 54 secondsOh, I'm hungry now. And uh we did a special session with the fabulous John Bustin last year, how to live off your
45:0245 minutes, 2 secondsmoney in retirement. Uh which we ran last year and we will write some bits to go with it at some stage.
45:0945 minutes, 9 secondsThat was a UK specific session. Uh we also have some US resources to point you to when it comes to thinking about how
45:1745 minutes, 17 secondsdo I do this draw down thing? What should my strategy be?
45:2045 minutes, 20 secondsBob, what are these two here? Yeah. So, these are my two favorite drawdown strategy resources. On the right, we
45:2845 minutes, 28 secondshave the guide to retirement withdrawal strategies from Vanguard. That's a very good highlevel article on how to think about, you know, documenting your draw
45:3645 minutes, 36 secondsdown strategy. And then if you kind of want to get into the weeds a bit, one of my favorite personal finance creators beyond Allen and Katy is a na man by the
45:4645 minutes, 46 secondsname of Rob Burgerer. He's got my favorite investment newsletter and he has this very good 30inut YouTube video that goes over the seven rules of
45:5445 minutes, 54 secondsretirement withdrawal strategies and it's very meta. So again, it's descriptive, not prescriptive. He tells you all of the things that you should be
46:0246 minutes, 2 secondsthinking about and documenting in your draw down strategy. Love that. Thank you, Bob.
46:0846 minutes, 8 secondsAnd thank you for stroking my ego a little bit there, Bob, because I was thinking when you said one of the favorites, I was like, where were we in the rankings?
46:1446 minutes, 14 secondsThere are no rankings. We do not compare pineapples on Rebel Finance School.
46:1946 minutes, 19 secondsThe reason we always talk about not comparing your pineapples is because it's a reminder to me all the time as well as uh to you fine people in there.
46:2746 minutes, 27 secondsAnd if you want some New Zealand specific resources, Ruth wrote uh an article about that uh and how much money
46:3546 minutes, 35 secondsdo I have to have invested at 65 and is developing more resources around that.
46:4046 minutes, 40 secondsBut the whole point of this is to fill out this section of the document. So, here's an idea of what you would put in the document. Number one, what's the
46:4946 minutes, 49 secondsburn rate you're starting at? Are you aiming for four, four and a half? Where are you aiming for? And then the
46:5646 minutes, 56 secondspromises that you will keep if the market crashes in the first few years, reviewing the plan, monitoring the burn
47:0547 minutes, 5 secondsrate, using the flexibility, opening your defense plan if the warning light activates and you're spending too much.
47:1247 minutes, 12 secondsUh, and it's the responsive actions that you might have here. If it really crashed, what would you actually be
47:2147 minutes, 21 secondswilling to do? That's what you put in that.
47:2347 minutes, 23 secondsYeah. Which is the things like, oh, maybe I need to go and work part-time or full-time or whatever it is. Maybe I need to spend less temporarily. All
47:3147 minutes, 31 secondsthose things that we talked about in the defense plan. So, please fill that section out now.
47:3647 minutes, 36 secondsAnd Bob, what's in that section for you about draw down and surviving sequence of returns risk? I guess in a way your
47:4347 minutes, 43 secondspast sequence of returns risk having been at this for seven years.
47:4847 minutes, 48 secondsYeah. So, well, one of the things that um you know Amy and I have done is actually we pulled our cash allocation
47:5747 minutes, 57 secondsinto our investor policy statement. uh so that you know instead of thinking of
48:0448 minutes, 4 secondsthis as like a withdrawal plan we think of it as an asset reallocation plan. So we have 3% in cash and we will plus up
48:1248 minutes, 12 secondsthat cash once it gets below a half a percentage point down. So basically it allows us to after many years of just
48:2148 minutes, 21 secondsbuying the Vanguard total stock market index and feeling very comfortable with that. You know it's psychologically difficult to start going hitting hitting
48:2948 minutes, 29 secondsthe sell button. So this will allow us to uh on about a quarterly basis to just plus up that cash position. And why 3%?
48:3748 minutes, 37 seconds3% just helps us sleep well at night.
48:3948 minutes, 39 secondsThere's no defining reason why it has to be 3%. We could have picked a dollar value. Um, we could have said 100 grand, let's say, that we keep in cash, but we just say 3% to make it easy.
48:5048 minutes, 50 secondsAnd that's nothing to do with your burn rate, Bob, the 3%. That's just the amount that you decide to have in cash.
48:5648 minutes, 56 secondsYeah, that's a great question, Katy. And it's a good distinction because oftentimes people will say, "Oh, so you're spending 3% per year." And but that's not really it. It's just how much
49:0449 minutes, 4 secondswe decided we would like to have in cash. And you know, one of the things that we think about is, you know, not to
49:1249 minutes, 12 secondscomplicate this for the audience, but we think about our spending in two different main buckets. We have kind of our needs-based spending and then we have our wants based spending. And we're
49:2149 minutes, 21 secondsvery fortunate that our needs-based spending is effectively half of our total spending. So, we have lots of
49:2949 minutes, 29 secondsflexibility that we can lean in on if and when there's a major market crash because we can say, you know what, we're not taking, you know, our big month-long
49:3749 minutes, 37 secondstrip to Europe this year or, you know, we're we're going to put off buying Amy a new car this year and we'll buy it next year or the year after that or
49:4649 minutes, 46 secondssomething like that where um there's a lot of flexibility there. And ironically enough, I mean, this isn't in my plan, but I just went to my old company's 20th
49:5449 minutes, 54 secondsbirthday party. After 7 years, they invited me, which was kind of cool, and they offered me some part-time consulting work. Not that I'm planning on doing it, but I guess that's one of
50:0350 minutes, 3 secondsthe other things that I could have in there that like, hey, this is a possibility. If there's the crash is bad enough, I can always go back and do some consulting.
50:1050 minutes, 10 secondsExactly. And the thing I'd love you to hear from this is Bob knows how much of his spending is essential and how much
50:1850 minutes, 18 secondsof his spending is the fun stuff on top of that. and he's willing to flex it if things don't go the way he wants to,
50:2650 minutes, 26 secondswhich is part of that defense plan, isn't it? That's a really good example of that.
50:3050 minutes, 30 secondsExactly. So, this is where you write it in. This is the section. So, please add those things in now. Uh, and that is the
50:3950 minutes, 39 secondsdraw down section. So, let's move on to the next bit.
50:4250 minutes, 42 secondsJust one little thing on that before we do that. So on the draw down section you'll see in the template for the build it phase um it says that it's something
50:5150 minutes, 51 secondsthat you perhaps don't need to think about yet but when you will start to think about it you put your current planned starting burn rate in and then
51:0051 minutessay well my my detailed draw down plan I'm a ways off that I'll think about it as I approach Bridget or I'll think about it by a certain milestone just to
51:0851 minutes, 8 secondsput a little um a trigger for you to then come back to and say okay now it's starting to become time that I think about this. It's not necessarily something you need to completely define now if it's a long way off.
51:1851 minutes, 18 secondsExactly. Now, we will move on to the rebalancing section of the IPS.
51:2451 minutes, 24 secondsRebalancing. We haven't spoken that much about what it is yet. We will have a lots more concrete examples on Thursday
51:3251 minutes, 32 secondsas well. But for now, like why do we even need to rebalance Katie?
51:3651 minutes, 36 secondsWell, you have your target asset allocation. So let's say as an example you got 80% equities, stocks and shares,
51:4351 minutes, 43 seconds20% bonds and then things happen over time. So the market might go up, the
51:5051 minutes, 50 secondsmarket might go down. You spend some stuff on pizza and Lego and jigsaws.
51:5651 minutes, 56 secondsSo your actual allocation has changed or it could change. So maybe now because of things that have happened, your actual current allocation has moved from that.
52:0652 minutes, 6 secondsMaybe it's now 85% equities and 15% bonds. You're like, well, that's not what I chose to have as my split. So,
52:1552 minutes, 15 secondsrebalancing is what you do to restore yourself back to the target. That's what rebalancing means. It means, okay, I've
52:2252 minutes, 22 secondsdrifted away from my asset allocation, which is completely normal. That's why it's a known thing. It's completely normal for that to happen based on the
52:3152 minutes, 31 secondsthings that you have growing at different rates, based on spending stuff. So rebalancing just means let's get back to where we were.
52:4052 minutes, 40 secondsAnd you might sell off some of the stocks and shares and then you that tops up your cash buffer. But that's how you rebalance is you sell one thing and you balance the percentages again.
52:5152 minutes, 51 secondsWe're doing all the mechanics of that on or some not all of the mechanics. We're doing some of the mechanics of that on Thursday. And what goes in the
53:0053 minutesindividual policy statement, the investor policy statement, is how often are you going to rebalance? Is it annually or quarterly? Cuz you need some
53:0853 minutes, 8 secondsrules to make sure you don't do it in a panic at the wrong moment. And how often and when are you going to pick a date?
53:1753 minutes, 17 secondsIs it a meaningful date? Is it just a random date? What date are you actually going to pick to do it? In the build it
53:2653 minutes, 26 secondsphase, you don't really need it because you're all in equities.
53:3153 minutes, 31 secondsSo, you can say, I'm going to create my rebalancing rules later. Uh, but when you're in the bridge it and live from it
53:3853 minutes, 38 secondsphase, you do need some rebalancing rules. I will rebalance annually, quarterly, or on a certain date. And how are you actually going to do it?
53:4853 minutes, 48 secondsAnd after a lifetime of building your freedom fund, some people freak out the idea of selling, which Bob alluded to
53:5653 minutes, 56 secondsthis. Bob has his own mental trick to get over the weirdness of selling. Um,
54:0354 minutes, 3 secondsso Bob, what is your mental trick? How does it work? Tell us what you have in this section about rebalancing.
54:1354 minutes, 13 secondsYeah. So, in in this section for rebalancing, we have our big picture rebalancing, right? And our big picture is to kind of as KT alluded to, you
54:2254 minutes, 22 secondsknow, stocks have been running like crazy and uh bonds have just been kind of staying still. We'll find that we need to sell some of our highly
54:3154 minutes, 31 secondsappreciated stock and buy some of our uh bonds just to keep in line with say that 8020 uh portfolio that we want to have.
54:4154 minutes, 41 secondsWe've decided to do that annually. I talked to JL Collins about this and he rebalances annually on Jane's birthday.
54:4954 minutes, 49 secondsSo, I figured if that was good enough for for JL to do it on his wife's birthday, we decided on Amy's birthday to do our big picture rebalancing. So,
54:5854 minutes, 58 secondswe do that once a year. Um, outside of that, we do have this kind of mental trick that's a mental accounting thing
55:0555 minutes, 5 secondswhere I thought it would be very difficult for us to spend down and sell Vanguard total stock market shares after
55:1255 minutes, 12 secondsbuying it for many years. So we just brought our cash allocation that 3% into our investor policy statement and we set
55:2055 minutes, 20 secondsa threshold that you know we want to keep 3% as a target but if it goes below 2.5% so we have like a half a percentage
55:2855 minutes, 28 secondspoint as our as our trigger that we will plus up to cash. So effectively in my mind what I'm saying is I'm not selling
55:3655 minutes, 36 secondsthe Vanguard total stock market index fund. What I'm doing is I'm reallocating to our cash bucket and keeping that 80%
55:4355 minutes, 43 secondsequities, 17% bonds, and 3% cash. And we do that on demand. We have a monthly
55:5155 minutes, 51 secondsmeeting where we kind of I update my spreadsheet and I review everything with Amy. And at that point in time, we look to see, have I gotten below that 2.5%?
56:0056 minutesAnd if so, I will go ahead and plus up and reallocate to cash. Not sell, but reallocate to cash.
56:0856 minutes, 8 secondsI love that. That is so helpful because I know a lot of people do, [clears throat] excuse me, get freaked out by this idea. You know, oh, you mean
56:1656 minutes, 16 secondsI have to sell? We were taught to buy and hold forever until expiration. And I love the way that you've come up with that of figuring out a way to get
56:2356 minutes, 23 secondscomfortable with it. And I think for everyone listening to this, I want you to hear what Bob said of when it goes down by half a percent. So if it
56:3356 minutes, 33 secondsgoes down a certain amount by half a percent, then Bob goes, "Okay, I need to reallocate my resources." And he has a
56:3956 minutes, 39 secondsfixed trigger that makes it very easy to work out when to do it. And what you're trying to do is remove the thinking in
56:4856 minutes, 48 secondsthe moment. So you've decided the plan up front and then you just follow the plan.
56:5356 minutes, 53 secondsWell, also you're not doing it day by day as well, right? Like you're not looking at your accounts daily. You're out fishing with your dad having fun and
57:0057 minutesliving your life. Yeah, you don't need to go like, can I afford breakfast this morning? Do I have enough cash in the account? You always got the cash sat there that you need to be able to live
57:0957 minutes, 9 secondslife. And then when the percentages change, that's when you reallocate to make sure you still have that money for the bit. And I think that's an
57:1857 minutes, 18 secondsincredibly useful trick for those elements. Um, so how would we describe that? Well, one of my favorite bits is
57:2857 minutes, 28 secondsthis is Bob here with a giant fish. Uh, and Bob's saying, "I'm not selling. I'm just restoring my cash allocation." And
57:3657 minutes, 36 secondsthat's all Bob does, so it doesn't feel like selling. And there are different ways of doing it. Bob has this 80%
57:4257 minutes, 42 secondsstocks and shares, 17% bonds, and 3% cash. That's Bob's example. Uh, if you were all stocks and shares, you might
57:5157 minutes, 51 secondspick a split between stocks and cash. So you might have 97% stocks and 3% cash.
57:5857 minutes, 58 secondsAnd this we're not talking build it here. We're talking about the live from it phase.
58:0258 minutes, 2 secondsExactly. Uh or you might have an actual monetary amount. Uh this is one of the weirdest AI photos of a lady sleeping
58:1058 minutes, 10 secondswith cash. But how much cash do you want about? And it might be a monetary amount. I always want to have at least 10,000 in my current account or I always
58:1958 minutes, 19 secondswant to have X that will support me in our life.
58:2358 minutes, 23 seconds[gasps]
58:2458 minutes, 24 secondsum the whole allocation can move.
58:2858 minutes, 28 secondsYeah, your freedom fund can get out of whack for the reasons we talked about.
58:3158 minutes, 31 secondsSo your equities could have grown more than your bonds and now your allocation has strayed a little bit from what you
58:3858 minutes, 38 secondswanted to have it as a target. Now if you're 100% in equities, if you're in the build it phase, this is not relevant
58:4658 minutes, 46 secondsto you yet. Something that will come if you choose to have those different assets. But when you get out of whack, you rebalance. [clears throat] And remember, precision is not required.
58:5758 minutes, 57 secondsThis is like we just these are what we're aiming for. So, we want to hand it over to you to write this section. If
59:0659 minutes, 6 secondsyou're in the build it phase, you're you don't really need this section yet. You might just say, I'm creating my rules
59:1359 minutes, 13 secondsfor rebalancing when if you're in the bridg phase or the live from it phase.
59:1859 minutes, 18 secondsWell, you do need something here which is I will rebalance and then choose annually, quarterly, a specific date,
59:2659 minutes, 26 secondsyour husband's birthday, your kids' birthday, whenever it is uh whenever you would want to reward yourself with that
59:3259 minutes, 32 secondsfun activity. Uh, and then I would keep a percentage or an amount in cash in my
59:4159 minutes, 41 secondsspending account and I'll refill it, refill it monthly or quarterly when it falls below. And so Bob's version was I
59:5059 minutes, 50 secondshave 3% cash. When it falls below 2 and a half, I top it up. So that's the piece that allows you to know when you've got
59:5859 minutes, 58 secondsvery specific rules over how do I make sure I have the cash to be able to live on. So go ahead and fill in that section
1:00:081 hour, 8 secondsof the investor policy statement. We are talking about the rebalancing section and uh if you're watching on catchup
1:00:151 hour, 15 secondsmaybe you've been pausing and following along as we've gone and we will be doing lots more on rebalancing on Thursday. So, please have
1:00:221 hour, 22 secondsa go at working through that. Now, how did you come up with this, Bob? The the 3%, the mental trick, the moving the
1:00:301 hour, 30 secondsmoney around. How did you come up on that?
1:00:331 hour, 33 secondsIt's a it's a great question. I'm I'm trying to think back how how we came up with that. I think we I think it actually came out of just working
1:00:421 hour, 42 secondsbackwards, right? Um, it's interesting, you know, kind of being in the financial independence space and talking to people
1:00:501 hour, 50 secondsabout how much they like to have in cash that there's a wildly different number for for different people, right? Some
1:00:581 hour, 58 secondsfolks will hear that I keep 3% in cash and will tell me like my friend Carl, he's like, "I like to have a thousand dollars in cash." Like, you have way too
1:01:061 hour, 1 minute, 6 secondsmuch cash. Why would you ever need to have 3% in cash, man? that's just money that you're foregoing in the market, right? So, he would be on one side and
1:01:151 hour, 1 minute, 15 secondsthen, you know, there's even financial planners in this community that would tell me, "Oh, you don't have enough cash. You need to have two, three, five,
1:01:221 hour, 1 minute, 22 secondsseven, 10 years of cash, depending on who you talk to." Which said to me just sounds crazy, right? Yeah. Never have
1:01:301 hour, 1 minute, 30 secondsthat much cash. So, I think Amy and I kind of worked backwards. I always liked Amy and I always liked to have a lot of
1:01:381 hour, 1 minute, 38 secondscash just sitting in our checking accounts. Even in the build it phase, just once again going back to what are we optimizing for? We slept well at
1:01:461 hour, 1 minute, 46 secondsnight knowing that we had regardless of you know if if there was a a problem with the car or if um you know some
1:01:541 hour, 1 minute, 54 secondsunexpected you know problem with the house came up, we needed a new heater and air conditioning unit which has happened. we needed a new roof that it
1:02:001 hour, 2 minuteswas absolutely no problem for us to fund these types of emergencies that might come along and it just made us feel good. So, I think we just worked
1:02:091 hour, 2 minutes, 9 secondsbackwards from that in our retirement and said, you know what, this feels like the right number to have so let's put a
1:02:171 hour, 2 minutes, 17 secondspin in it. It looks like it's about 3% right now. Let's just keep it at 3%. Um, and it's been operationalized now over
1:02:251 hour, 2 minutes, 25 secondsthe last seven years. It's working really well. What did you guys decide to do? Because I know we've had discussions about how much cash. What have you
1:02:321 hour, 2 minutes, 32 secondsdecided to do and and how often would you plus it up? Well, we've been in different phases.
1:02:381 hour, 2 minutes, 38 secondsUm, we went through a rather silly phase where we were optimizing for having money in premium bonds and managing our
1:02:471 hour, 2 minutes, 47 secondscash very low. Uh, and that's actually what inspired our premium bond article of don't do that because it cost you a
1:02:541 hour, 2 minutes, 54 secondslot of money uh, not having your money properly invested, missed opportunity.
1:02:591 hour, 2 minutes, 59 secondsYeah. And that phase was a very silly phase. Um, but we kind of like this premium bonds are this British thing
1:03:071 hour, 3 minutes, 7 secondswhere if you have your money invested there, it's like a lottery. Not invested.
1:03:111 hour, 3 minutes, 11 secondsIt's not invested. It's like a lottery where uh all your money is safe and you will get the entire amount back, but they make a lottery of the interest and
1:03:201 hour, 3 minutes, 20 secondsthe interest you could win up to a million pounds on the interest. So, it's very exciting. Um but let's be honest, you never actually do that well cuz no
1:03:291 hour, 3 minutes, 29 secondsone like your chances of winning it is just like the lottery and it's kind of pointless. So, we had that phase that
1:03:351 hour, 3 minutes, 35 secondswas stupid. Then we moved on to having a phase of well we need to have a bit more cash about because we have uh a more
1:03:441 hour, 3 minutes, 44 secondsexpensive lifestyle nowadays. When we first started and retired we had a lot less expensive lifestyle. We were
1:03:521 hour, 3 minutes, 52 secondssticking to our 40 grand a year. We were not spending very much but our lifestyle has inflated because our investments have gone up and we're feeling a lot
1:04:001 hour, 4 minutesmore comfortable. Um, so now we have actually just recently rebalanced and we have about 3.2% cash.
1:04:091 hour, 4 minutes, 9 secondsI can't remember the precise number, Alan.
1:04:101 hour, 4 minutes, 10 secondsI believe it's 3.2% cash. Actually, inspired by you, Bob. I was like, 3% cash makes me feel a lot happier and
1:04:181 hour, 4 minutes, 18 secondsthat gives me a runway of 6 months or so to be able to spend it down. We don't
1:04:251 hour, 4 minutes, 25 secondstop it up as often as you. Um but definitely I have become more comfortable like having some cash about and I think it changes with age as well.
1:04:361 hour, 4 minutes, 36 secondsI always remember when I was young if I had £100 in my bank account I was excited. Uh and then you get to mid20s and you're like well if it goes under
1:04:451 hour, 4 minutes, 45 seconds2,000 I feel a bit bad like I because my life costs more. Then you get to your 30s and you're like I don't feel comfortable if it's under 10. I'm worried.
1:04:541 hour, 4 minutes, 54 secondsWhich that was including your emergency fund in there wasn't it? That was to think about having that stability and you were self-employed as well so your income was very variable.
1:05:021 hour, 5 minutes, 2 secondsExactly. And then it's sort of gone up over time. So actually we have modeled ourselves on you Bob. Thank you for teaching us about the 3% thing and
1:05:101 hour, 5 minutes, 10 secondsthat's the plan is to have that 3% cash around. Uh a few people are saying what's that account in where it is? We
1:05:181 hour, 5 minutes, 18 secondsjust choose a high interest rate account and it has to be accessible. So for us, we can't get to our 401k SIP or Kiwi
1:05:271 hour, 5 minutes, 27 secondsSaver yet. We're too young. So there's no point having cash in there cuz can't get it out. So all of that is invested in index funds and then our cash sits outside in accessible areas.
1:05:401 hour, 5 minutes, 40 secondsGood question, Bob, and thank you for putting us on the spot and revealing some of our stupid mistakes earlier on.
1:05:461 hour, 5 minutes, 46 secondsUm, but we all do these things where you get into a game and you start to play it and then you realize later on like what was I doing? Why was
1:05:541 hour, 5 minutes, 54 secondsHang on, Alan. Hang on. Are you saying you're actually human?
1:06:001 hour, 6 minutesYes, I have made mistakes. Many, many mistakes. Cannot be.
1:06:051 hour, 6 minutes, 5 secondsSo, that rebalancing section is the final element of the investor policy statement. So, if you've been following
1:06:121 hour, 6 minutes, 12 secondsalong, uh you now have your very own investor policy statement. Woo! This is very cool. This is a very unusual thing that not most people do in the world.
1:06:231 hour, 6 minutes, 23 secondsSo, you are in the special few that have done this. Now, it's important that we agree how you actually going to use it.
1:06:301 hour, 6 minutes, 30 secondsWhen are you going to use it? How are you doing use it? Are you going to like pull it out when the markets crash or the market's sore? when you receive a
1:06:381 hour, 6 minutes, 38 secondslump sum that you've got to invest, when something new comes along, there's a SpaceX IPO, pull out your investor policy statement and see if it's on
1:06:461 hour, 6 minutes, 46 secondsthere. Uh when you or your partner want to change direction, um or maybe when the experts say this time is different.
1:06:551 hour, 6 minutes, 55 secondsThe key here is there are legitimate reasons why you might change your investor policy statement. If your goals
1:07:031 hour, 7 minutes, 3 secondschange or you've achieved them, major life changes, something happens in your life that would legitimately mean that your way of investing would change or
1:07:111 hour, 7 minutes, 11 secondsyou change investing phase. So you move from bridg build it to bridge it and live from it. Those are reasons why to change it when your life changes and
1:07:201 hour, 7 minutes, 20 secondsthen you follow it when the crashes or the booms happen. You do not change it in that period. You follow it when
1:07:271 hour, 7 minutes, 27 secondsthere's headlines or panic. Just go back to the investor policy statement. when there's fads or fear or excitement and everyone's telling you to invest in
1:07:351 hour, 7 minutes, 35 secondscrypto or I IPX's uh SpaceX IPOs or whatever it is, just go back to the investor policy statement
1:07:431 hour, 7 minutes, 43 secondsand check whether it says it. And then when everyone's talking about something on social media, go back and read your IPS and check it. That's the bit.
1:07:511 hour, 7 minutes, 51 secondsWe had a little Yeah, we've prepopulated some of these commitments in the investor policy statement, but this is a solemn vow. I
1:07:591 hour, 7 minutes, 59 secondswill refer to my investor policy statement before making a major investment change.
1:08:041 hour, 8 minutes, 4 secondsI will change it when my life changes. I will follow it when the markets change.
1:08:111 hour, 8 minutes, 11 secondsI will not invent a new strategy when panicking. That's the whole purpose of this is to keep you safe. And this whole
1:08:191 hour, 8 minutes, 19 secondsthing, it's only useful if you don't stick it in a drawer. if you actually use it like review it at your annual finance meeting and go are we actually
1:08:271 hour, 8 minutes, 27 secondsfollowing this consult it before the major investment decisions and keep it somewhere that both of you or your
1:08:341 hour, 8 minutes, 34 secondsfamily can find so you actually have it to use it. The whole point of this is calm you writes the plan and then
1:08:431 hour, 8 minutes, 43 secondsemotional you has the instructions of what to do later. So your freedom work and we have a very special announcement
1:08:511 hour, 8 minutes, 51 secondsafter this but your freedom work is number one if you're on the live from it or the brid phase well start to develop
1:08:591 hour, 8 minutes, 59 secondsyour draw down strategy how you think about this and we've had some examples of that tonight review your investor policy statement in your annual or your
1:09:071 hour, 9 minutes, 7 secondsmonthly finance meeting. You know if things change or if you feel you need to use it please do use it and then stick it somewhere that you'll
1:09:141 hour, 9 minutes, 14 secondssee it and actually look at it. maybe the fridge, the wardrobe, your home screen, your bathroom mirror. Have that investor policy statement where you'll
1:09:221 hour, 9 minutes, 22 secondsactually look at it. Please stay tuned for a very special thank you in a moment. Before that, uh we have a big
1:09:301 hour, 9 minutes, 30 secondsannouncement that the Rebel Finance School content is being run in Spanish.
1:09:341 hour, 9 minutes, 34 secondsSo, if you know any people that speak Spanish and not English, this is their first time they'll be able to get it.
1:09:401 hour, 9 minutes, 40 secondsThe link is there. The link is in the chat on sorry, in the description on YouTube. So you can always find it. Uh
1:09:471 hour, 9 minutes, 47 secondsbut please send this to your Spanish speaking friends.
1:09:501 hour, 9 minutes, 50 secondsUh we are coming up to graduation on Finance School and we have a graduation survey for you to complete. Uh please
1:09:581 hour, 9 minutes, 58 secondscomplete the survey so we know what you thought of the course and how you can reflect on what you've learned and how far you've come over the last 10 11
1:10:051 hour, 10 minutes, 5 secondsweeks. And once you fill in the survey you will receive your certificate. Yes, this is mild bribery.
1:10:131 hour, 10 minutes, 13 secondsYou will get the certificate afterwards which we've had a lot of fun creating over the last week. So, we have a brand
1:10:191 hour, 10 minutes, 19 secondsnew certificate for this year. Please fill in the survey because we can't
1:10:261 hour, 10 minutes, 26 secondsimprove the course without your feedback and we work really hard on making it better every year and using what you have told us to do it. So, please
1:10:361 hour, 10 minutes, 36 secondstake the time to tell us how the course was for you. No matter what it is, just write and tell us.
1:10:441 hour, 10 minutes, 44 secondsThe good, the bad, the ugly, tell us.
1:10:461 hour, 10 minutes, 46 secondsYes, every element. We really, really do appreciate that. Now, there are a few other things. Uh, we've never really
1:10:541 hour, 10 minutes, 54 secondstalked about it. There is Rebel Business School, which is the first one that I ever created. Uh, and that is a course about how to build a business with no
1:11:011 hour, 11 minutes, 1 secondmoney. So, if you are in the phase where you want to earn more, that is a good course to go on. How much does it cost? It's free.
1:11:091 hour, 11 minutes, 9 secondsYay. Uh, I also did a podcast called The Rebel Entrepreneur, which has all of those elements in it. So, if you ever
1:11:171 hour, 11 minutes, 17 secondswant to learn about building businesses or making money, have a listen to the Rebel Entrepreneur. As we know, the purpose of money is not to just accumulate money and sit on your pot of
1:11:261 hour, 11 minutes, 26 secondsgold. The purpose is to live the life you want to live. And we have the extraordinary life course, a free YouTube online course for you to follow if you wish.
1:11:341 hour, 11 minutes, 34 secondsYes. And we will do a new version of that at some stage. But don't hold your breath. it was coming eventually. We've said that for a few years now.
1:11:411 hour, 11 minutes, 41 secondsWe will. Uh and we're always taking requests because you inspire us. So in the feedback form, please write what you actually want us to do cuz it does
1:11:491 hour, 11 minutes, 49 secondsinspire us. Uh all notes for the course as always and all videos are on mission control. That's where you can find
1:11:561 hour, 11 minutes, 56 secondseverything. And then the final two sessions are number one, how to live off
1:12:041 hour, 12 minutes, 4 secondsyour investments on Thursday. And then the big celebration session with us on Monday is the ask us anything. And we've
1:12:131 hour, 12 minutes, 13 secondscreated a place where you can write your questions. If you want to ask us a question, you go to this link uh and the ninjas will put the link in the chat.
1:12:221 hour, 12 minutes, 22 secondsIt's in the YouTube description and ask us your questions. You can also update lots uh sorry, you can upvote other
1:12:311 hour, 12 minutes, 31 secondspeople's questions. So if you're like, "Yes, this question Katie and Allan need to answer it." you can upvote it in there. So, you can ask, yeah, what's
1:12:391 hour, 12 minutes, 39 secondsKatie's world record in? You can ask why Allan does these weird things. You can ask anything you want. Um, but your
1:12:461 hour, 12 minutes, 46 secondsquestions will make that session. So, please give us your questions. It will actually make the session. Now, before
1:12:541 hour, 12 minutes, 54 secondsthis next little bit, uh, we want to say a big thank you to Bob. Uh, Bob volunteers his time to help us create
1:13:011 hour, 13 minutes, 1 secondthis session. He taught us about this and he gives his time to help people with their finances. Please give Bob a
1:13:081 hour, 13 minutes, 8 secondshuge round of applause. Uh we are so lucky to have Bob with us. He's amazing.
1:13:141 hour, 13 minutes, 14 secondsThank you very much Alan and Katie. It's a pleasure working with you guys. I really appreciate the invite. I had a lot of fun today. And congratulations to
1:13:231 hour, 13 minutes, 23 secondseveryone in in the audience that went through the template and filled out your investor policy statement. you're one of the top few percentage points of folks
1:13:311 hour, 13 minutes, 31 secondsout there that even have one. So, congratulations on doing it and uh follow it to the best of your ability. Thanks again. Thanks, Bob.
1:13:391 hour, 13 minutes, 39 secondsI love that. Thank you, Bob. Uh and now we do have a special message at the end which is about the Rebel Ninjas. The
1:13:481 hour, 13 minutes, 48 secondsRebel Ninjas have tirelessly helped answer questions and support you throughout the course. Now, there's things that you see.
1:13:561 hour, 13 minutes, 56 secondsThere's visible things that the ninjas do which is to have in the YouTube chat answering your questions in the Zoom
1:14:021 hour, 14 minutes, 2 secondschat moderating and there's a bunch of things that you don't see behind the scenes. There's ninjas that help us make the website all it can be. There's a
1:14:111 hour, 14 minutes, 11 secondswhole wonderful group of moderators and admins in the Facebook keeping us safe from spam. Uh there's incredible people who've given feedback on the tools, the
1:14:201 hour, 14 minutes, 20 secondscalculators to make them better before we launch them and the testing that goes into them. There's a bunch of prep that goes on with the questions and coming up
1:14:281 hour, 14 minutes, 28 secondswith FAQs. Like, there's so much that goes on behind the scenes, including writing articles, helping us get on top of the notes, doing the research, data.
1:14:361 hour, 14 minutes, 36 secondsLike, there's so much that they do to support us and you during this thing.
1:14:411 hour, 14 minutes, 41 secondsThey are a wonderful group of people who volunteer their time uh to support Real Finance School.
1:14:481 hour, 14 minutes, 48 secondsThey are incredible. So, if they've helped you, please tell them because they volunteer. We don't pay them. They just show up.
1:14:561 hour, 14 minutes, 56 secondsThey just show up. They seem to [laughter] be coming week after week. They're still here after 11 weeks.
1:14:591 hour, 14 minutes, 59 secondsThey are phenomenal. So, we're going to do a little ceremony for the ninjas. Uh ninjas, if you're able to uh please kneel or just place your hand on
1:15:081 hour, 15 minutes, 8 secondswherever your spiritual location of your pineapple is. To all who present, know ye that
1:15:151 hour, 15 minutes, 15 secondsin recognition of your long and honorable service to the Rebel Finance School community, you are hereby admitted as rebel ninjas
1:15:241 hour, 15 minutes, 24 secondsto the sacred order of the rebel pineapple. You sure this isn't a cult?
1:15:301 hour, 15 minutes, 30 secondsShh, no one knows. Uh, please rise to receive your pineapple status. Thank you to the Rebel Ninjas. They are
1:15:391 hour, 15 minutes, 39 secondsincredible. The course and the community is massively richer because of your effort. Please give a huge round of
1:15:461 hour, 15 minutes, 46 secondsapplause to the Rebel Ninjas. They are phenomenal. We are so lucky to have them to help us and I don't know how many
1:15:551 hour, 15 minutes, 55 secondsthousands of questions they've answered over the last month, but it is a lot.
1:16:001 hour, 16 minutesIt is many, many, many. Yeah. We love them. We love you. Thank you for supporting the course and helping people with their money.
1:16:071 hour, 16 minutes, 7 secondsYes. And if after you've done the course, you want to help and become a rebel ninja for the future, you are welcome to join us on this crazy mission
1:16:141 hour, 16 minutes, 14 secondsof teaching people personal finances and helping as many people as we can to get on top of their finances. We're always looking for people to test tools,
1:16:231 hour, 16 minutes, 23 secondssupport us. Uh I saw a couple of people replied about Vibe coding a map of where the communities are. Uh so we're going to work on that for the website and
1:16:311 hour, 16 minutes, 31 secondstogether we can actually build all the resources that we want. And all of this comes from let's build the things we
1:16:391 hour, 16 minutes, 39 secondswant to have available for us in our life. So, thank you to the Rebel Ninjas. You are incredible.
1:16:461 hour, 16 minutes, 46 secondsWe need our own kind of salute, like a ninja salute.
1:16:491 hour, 16 minutes, 49 secondsWe need a ninja salute. If someone can come up with a ninja salute, that would be fantastic. Cuz we had the mustache salute last week. Uh but we don't have
1:16:571 hour, 16 minutes, 57 secondsthe ninja salute. So, we definitely need a ninja salute. Someone could invent that. That would be fantastic. Uh and that's it. we have done. A lot of people are asking for Tula to come back.
1:17:071 hour, 17 minutes, 7 secondsTula, are you gonna make an appearance?
1:17:091 hour, 17 minutes, 9 secondsTula is on the call, but as her alter ego. So, who knows whether Tula will actually come back in the future. Uh, I
1:17:161 hour, 17 minutes, 16 secondsthink it's possibly time to say YouTubers, thank you for coming along.
1:17:201 hour, 17 minutes, 20 secondsWe absolutely love you. Apologies about the 12minute delay
1:17:241 hour, 17 minutes, 24 seconds[laughter]
1:17:241 hour, 17 minutes, 24 secondsuh the start of this evening. That definitely placed us under a little bit of pressure at the start of the workshop. We we started it out though,
1:17:331 hour, 17 minutes, 33 secondsdidn't we? A little bit of singing, a little bit of dancing.
1:17:361 hour, 17 minutes, 36 secondsI've now learned the reset button doesn't break things. Whereas on the BBC one, there we go. Uh it is wonderful having
1:17:441 hour, 17 minutes, 44 secondsyou all here. YouTubers, please hit like and subscribe on your way out. Have a wonderful evening and we'll see you for the next two sessions. Please come along
1:17:531 hour, 17 minutes, 53 secondscuz we have the big graduation ceremony coming up for you. You have worked so hard on the course this year. You have
1:18:001 hour, 18 minutesdone so much and we want to reward you with a huge graduation ceremony towards the end. YouTubers,
1:18:071 hour, 18 minutes, 7 secondsgood night. We love you. Adios stream. It probably says a 12minute ago.

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/