What They Don't Teach You About Money: The Instant Top Ten Bestseller

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How do we . . . you know? Because you’re involved with the Financial Times’ FLIC campaign, financial literacy and inclusion. Can you tell us a little bit about how that fits in?

Well, Deborah, the FT’s motto is: without fear, without favour. But I will confess to feeling slightly scared sitting across the table from a dragon. (Laughter) Yes. So definitely in the UK, and in fact you mentioned entrepreneurship as well, I mean in the UK since the financial crisis, the last one in 2008, there’s been a huge increase in the proportion of people who are self-employed, and that ranges from people being Uber drivers or riding for Deliveroo to people setting up their own kind of independent, one-person consultancies. There’s been a real kind of mixture of people that have decided to become self-employed. But yeah, I feel like the other structures in our economy haven’t necessarily caught up with the fact this is becoming a much more common way of working. So yes, things like getting a mortgage are much, much harder than they need to be, probably. I think the yeah, a lot of our kind of financial institutions are still kind of wedded to the notion of most people having a sort of traditional 9-to-5 job. But actually the world of work hasn’t been like that for quite a long time. Yeah, So it’s about it’s about work and technology. My working title is ‘Human Robots’. So it’s exploring both the kind of dystopian and hopefully more utopian possibilities about what’s coming towards us. They really think, oh I don’t really want to do all of that. So sometimes that’s the reason it doesn’t work. But I don’t really judge them as long as I’m happy with the investments that I’ve got, not just financially, you know. Are they, have they got the right impact? Are they doing things in the right way? Are they ethical and are they making money? You know, you can invest more, you can support your public services. And when the economy isn’t growing, all of that just becomes harder, particularly if the population is ageing. And so some of the kind of the things that you need to spend money on are becoming ever greater, it becomes difficult if you don’t have more kind of tax revenue coming in from the fact that there are growing companies that are making more money and more people working and that sort of thing.

FT Commenter Iano: First, teach them the value of money. Make them understand what it takes to earn a pound. Stop giving them things for no effort! Make them understand what profit is, and what it takes to make a profit. Make them understand that what goes up can all ways go down, and save for the down times. So I think that the funding of the upfront costs is very, very important because where do people get that cash from? Money is, particularly at the moment, really expensive. So I think there’s definitely a piece to be done there. But I also say that if you can afford it, then you have almost a responsibility to drive the market because electric vehicles are, the price will come down. The more that are bought, the more that are made, the price will come down, the more charging points there will be. And sometimes certain sectors of society are really important in the driving of that market so that it becomes available to everybody. No, I think that’s a great point, actually. Something we learn in journalism is that don’t be afraid to ask the stupid question. Because people, there was an element of shame of not knowing in the first place, but there really shouldn’t be. And now we’ve sort of moved on to investing. And I wanted to talk a little bit. You’ve mentioned the magic of Isas, All of these things suggest lots of ways in the book that people could, you know, just take those, put them on their financial to-do list and get going. Just try and do one thing with your money if you can every week. Don’t feel like you’ve got to sort it all out in one go because that’s just totally overwhelming. Just be realistic and say, “OK, this week I’m gonna look at that. Next week, I might have a look at what credit card I could apply for.” Don’t try and do it all at once. Yes, the next one was dividend. So, quality shares outperformed the index by 388 per cent. Dividends outperformed index by 267 per cent.

Thank you so much for enlightening us, actually. I think . . . I just think keep doing what you’re doing and keep enlightening the younger generation with whatever knowledge that you have on the Financial Times. Thank you.

Yeah. And when it comes to goals, how do you set them? I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about, you know, setting intentions and things like that. So in the webinar, we delved into the ways that your financial personality, as you call it, can affect the ways you handle money. OK, so the quality strategy, what are the pros and cons? ‘Cause I can imagine these kinds of companies might be as expensive as the goods they sell.

This one has touched me. How do you handle when your partner’s spiralling into debt and he/she is not ready for a debt advice or counselling? Even if you’re resisting paying off the debts, you have no clue about what’s happening. Actually, this is a question about housing. So you were just all talking about your mortgages. And all I was thinking is that we are encouraged to own our homes still in Britain. It’s a big thing. And I rent. I can’t even, I wouldn’t even begin to think about owning because I’m freelance. So forget it. You know, they just, they won’t even look at me. But in Europe, renting is quite a big thing. Is it so bad to rent?

So it was worth it in the end. So keeping on that sort of credit theme, we’ve already got some questions from viewers about credit cards. This is an audio transcript of the Money Clinic podcast episode: ‘ What they don’t teach you about money ’ What are the tried and trusted investment strategies that have rewarded investors handsomely over the years? And could they still pay off in the future? I suppose some people in the cost of living crisis might be tempted to downgrade to a cheaper house spirit. But lots of people set a lot of store in having a recognisable brand in their hand.