The Meaningful Money Personal Finance Podcast

Last week we covered a rough formula for working out what your Net Worth needs to be in order to be financially free one day. But there might be a lot of days from where you are now to where you want to be, so today I’m going to give you five things to track when growing net worth. Let's get practical!

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This podcast is brought to you with the help of Seven Investment Management, a firm of investment managers based in London. They specialise in multi-asset investing, bringing institutional investing techniques to ordinary people like you and me. 7IM put their name to my show and to my site because they believe in what I’m doing, trying to get decent, easy-to-understand financial information out to the world. I’m very grateful to them for their support. You can see what they’re up to at 7im.co.uk

So last week I took a deep dive into Net Worth, and tried to help you come up with a number to aim for. This cash figure, when converted into an income ought to be enough, when combined with other sources of income, to give you the life you want to lead.

Now we have a target, but if that target is 25 years away, there are plenty of opportunities to leave the straight path. Sticking to the plan requires discipline and effort of will. I can’t really help you with that, but I can help you with the other part of the equation, which is to give you an idea of the things you need to keep track of as you go along.

Next week, I'll be looking at what to do if you discover you are not on track

Course: Learn How To Budget on Udemy Podcast: Session 137 - Making More Money Website: Moneystepper Savings Challenge Podcast: Session 96 - How To Review An Investment Portfolio

And of course, there's the transcript of the show, which you can get by clicking the big blue button below:

I love to read and respond to your comments, so please do join in and share. Question: Do you track anything I haven't mentioned here? Let me know in the comments...

Hugs and kisses to MonopolySi and JeezItsHardToPickANickname-DM for their review this week - much appreciated!

If this show is of any use to you, it would help me massively if you would take the time to leave me a review on iTunes. This has a huge impact on keeping me near the top of the rankings, which in turns helps more people to find the show and to subscribe. Just click the button below:

This week I’m going to be looking at the subject of Net Worth, a subject I covered briefly back in Session 93. Back then I defined it and talked about how to increase it, but today’s session is a deeper dive into the subject, inspired by an email conversation I had with a listener called David.

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Scroll down for the cheatsheet for this session...

This podcast is brought to you with the help of Seven Investment Management, a firm of investment managers based in London. They specialise in multi-asset investing, bringing institutional investing techniques to ordinary people like you and me. 7IM put their name to my show and to my site because they believe in what I’m doing, trying to get decent, easy-to-understand financial information out to the world. I’m very grateful to them for their support. You can see what they’re up to at 7im.co.uk

Listener David from Glasgow is on the MeaningfulMoney mailing list, and I love for people to hit reply and ask questions and offer suggestions for topics they’d like me to cover.

David and I got into conversation about Net Worth. He wrote this to me:

Re net worth, I am just amazed how little this seems to be of interest and I read very little about the concept in the UK financial websites / papers.

Would be good to have a session on how various people 'run' their personal finance - for example I have a spreadsheet with various tabs and update my Fidelity S&S ISA and separate share tabs weekly with all sorts of info, then do a 'net worth'  and 'balance sheet' each month and save on a master tab. I also have tabs for pension, retirement planning, spend and savings targets. All fine as far as it goes, but is there a 'master class' podcast on the basics you should keep tabs on

So I took this as a prompt to explore the concept of Net Worth in a bit more detail.

Next week, I'll answer the second part of David's question and look at some things you should be tracking as you go along. Remember there's a cheatsheet for this session, which summarises the calculation and the rationale [Insert Cheatsheet Leadbox here]

Podcast: Session 93 - Net Worth: Define It, Build It, Protect It Website: Networth IQ Book: The Number Book: The Millionaire Next Door Video: Five sources of Inspiration and Motivation Podcast: Session 79 - Financial Forecasting with Andy Hart Calculator: Voyantist Financial Independence 

I love to read and respond to your comments, so please do join in and share. Question: Have you calculated what you need to achieve before you retire?

Hugs and kisses to Dcaaaz for their review this week - much appreciated!

If this show is of any use to you, it would help me massively if you would take the time to leave me a review on iTunes. This has a huge impact on keeping me near the top of the rankings, which in turns helps more people to find the show and to subscribe. Just click the button below:

Every week I ask people to leave me voicemail questions so I can answer them on the show, and hardly anyone does so. But this week, I answer two voicemails that came in within a couple of days of each other. Voicemails, it seems, are like buses, you go for weeks without any , and then two show up together…

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download

This podcast is brought to you with the help of Seven Investment Management, a firm of investment managers based in London. They specialise in multi-asset investing, bringing institutional investing techniques to ordinary people like you and me. 7IM put their name to my show and to my site because they believe in what I’m doing, trying to get decent, easy-to-understand financial information out to the world. I’m very grateful to them for their support. You can see what they’re up to at 7im.co.uk

OK, two questions answered this week, the first is from George & Clare, who are getting married, and the other from Matt who has a questions on pensions tax relief.

Remember, you can have your question answered by clicking the green bar over on the right hand side of the page, or by going to the Ask Pete page!

I love to read and respond to your comments, so please do join in and share. Question: If you're in a couple, how have you organised your finances?

Hugs and kisses to dacgw and Elliot Gardner for their reviews this week - much appreciated folks!

If this show is of any use to you, it would help me massively if you would take the time to leave me a review on iTunes. This has a huge impact on keeping me near the top of the rankings, which in turns helps more people to find the show and to subscribe. Just click the button below:

In this encore episode, I revisit my chat with Andy Hart all about financial forecasting, a powerful process that divines the future of your finances, using mathematical software. 

Shownotes are at http://meaningfulmoney.tv/session79

So, up until a couple of weeks before this budget, we were expecting pretty swingeing changes to the pension system. George backed off from that, at least for now. But he had some other announcements up his sleeve and we’ll take a look at those today,

I’ll be sticking to the personal finance related stuff, rather than messing about with duty on fags and, at the other end of the scale, with the macroeconomic stuff.

Firstly, the ISA allowance will be increased to £20,000 from April 2017, while staying at £15,240 for the coming tax year (16/17)

The big new announcement was the new Lifetime ISA (presumably to be called ‘LISA’) which will be introduced form April 2017.

It will be available for those aged between 18 and 40 on April 6th 2017. These people can contribute up to £4,000 per year, and this will be topped up by 25% by a government bonus at the end of the tax year. This is similar to pension tax relief for BR payers, but a bit different.

One can contribute to a LISA up to age 50, so maximum of 32 years from age 18.

32 years x £4,000 = £128,000, plus £32,000 of bonus, plus the growth on both – a useful su of money.

The £4,000 limit will be included within the £20,000 overall ISA contribution limit, but you can transfer from other ISAs into a LISA to fund the £4k limit. Only one LISA per year is allowed per person.

Withdrawals can be made with no implications for:

The LISA will be accessible at other times, but government bonus plus the growth on it must be returned, and a 5% exit penalty too – pretty swingeing.

I can see the LISA being a forerunner of a new kind of pension, with limited tax relief and some limited access before retirement – we’ll see.

There’s a really good factsheet here, produced by the Government, all about LISA and how she’ll work.

Some good news for small business owners: Corporation tax is reducing to 17% by 2020 from the current 20% rate.

More importantly, Small Business Rate Relief is being overhauled from April 2017. Where the rateable value is less than £15,000 businesses will pay no business rates (the threshold is currently £6,000). The higher rate threshold is also rising from £18,000 to £51,000.

According to the Chancellor, this means that 600,000 businesses will pay no business rates, and 250,000 will pay less than they currently pay.

A small fillip for the self-employed too: Class 2 National Insurance contributions will be abolished (flat rate £2.80pw) from 2018

There will be new rates of Capital Gains Tax introduced from April 2016. these will be 10% is the taxable gain falls in the Basic Rate Tax band, and 20% if it falls within the Higher Rate Tax band.

BUT, George said that “The old rates will be kept in place for gains on residential property and carried interest. That’s an 8% surcharge for residential property, clearly designed to encourage investing in companies over property.

If you’re wondering, carried interest is a share in the profits of alternative investments e.g. Private equity and hedge funds.

Of course there were many other announcements, but these are the key things for those interested in personal finance I reckon

I love to read and respond to your comments, so please do join in and share. Question: What do you think of the Budget announcements? How do they affect you?

They say that money doesn’t make you happy. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. Today I’m talking to a good friend about financial wellbeing, what it is, and how we can get some!

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download

This podcast is brought to you with the help of Seven Investment Management, a firm of investment managers based in London. They specialise in multi-asset investing, bringing institutional investing techniques to ordinary people like you and me. 7IM put their name to my show and to my site because they believe in what I’m doing, trying to get decent, easy-to-understand financial information out to the world. I’m very grateful to them for their support. You can see what they’re up to at 7im.co.uk

I’ve said before that money is not an inert force. It has incredible power to inspire the best and worst in people. It can be used to build up or to tear down, for good purposes or evil. It has the power to affect how we feel, and our financial wealth, or the lack thereof, can lead to great anxiety.

Today I chat to my good buddy Chris Budd, who is a financial planner of many years’ experience. He’s also a qualified life and business coach and is well placed to get into the nitty gritty of how money works and how we interact with it. I’ll let him do the talking.

There is so much to be gained from adopting the principles Chris has talked about, and digs deeper into in the book. Having a healthy relationship with money has so many knock-ons to the rest of our lives, that financial wellbeing must surely be a priority for all of us.

Book: Financial Wellbeing (Released 31st May 2016 - pre-order on Amazon now)

Podcast: Financial Wellbeing - Coming soon

Website: Financial Wellbeing - some great blog posts on here

Charity: Penny Brohn UK - helping people live well with cancer

Financial Planner: Chris' firm Ovation Finance in Bristol

Now the EU referendum has been announced, there is one question which I am starting to hear over and over again: How will Brexit affect my investments? Today I’m speaking to friend of the show, Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management, he of the red braces fame, and ask his opinion. He also tells us how he is going to vote and why…

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download

This podcast is brought to you with the help of Seven Investment Management, a firm of investment managers based in London. They specialise in multi-asset investing, bringing institutional investing techniques to ordinary people like you and me. 7IM put their name to my show and to my site because they believe in what I’m doing, trying to get decent, easy-to-understand financial information out to the world. I’m very grateful to them for their support. You can see what they’re up to at 7im.co.uk

Since 1973 the UK has been a member of the European Economic Community, and we voted in a referendum to stay within it in 1975. Well, I didn’t, as I was born that year!

Since then, the EEC has changed beyond all recognition and now, on June 23rd we’re going to be given the chance to vote again on whether we should stay or leave what is now called the EU.

As you can imagine, my clients have been asking the question - what will the British Exit, or Brexit mean for investments? So I have been reading, listening and watching what I can to try and get on top of the pros and cons of each camp. The first person I called was Justin Urquhart Stewart, who returns to the MeaningfulMoney podcast for the fifth time!

I think there are so many facets to this debate and it will depend very much on your point of view. And it was ever thus, right? We’ll make the decision based on what it means for us, perhaps at the expense of the greater good. Ah well, we’ll see, sometime on June 24th probably, what the outcome will be

Transcript: As always, there is a full transcript of this show available by clicking the big blue button below:

I love to read and respond to your comments, so please do join in and share. Question: How are you planning to vote, and why? Please keep any comments respectful, or I'll just delete them and block you ;-)

Hugs and kisses to Sparky Lu, and O-J P for their reviews this week - much appreciated folks!

If this show is of any use to you, it would help me massively if you would take the time to leave me a review on iTunes. This has a huge impact on keeping me near the top of the rankings, which in turns helps more people to find the show and to subscribe. Just click the button below:

Over the past six years I have built up quite a body of work here on MeaningfulMoney. And that’s especially true when it comes to how to invest. In today’s show I am going to bring together some of the best investing resources on the site and try to fit them into a path to take you from zero to elite investment skills.

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download

This podcast is brought to you with the help of Seven Investment Management, a firm of investment managers based in London. They specialise in multi-asset investing, bringing institutional investing techniques to ordinary people like you and me. 7IM put their name to my show and to my site because they believe in what I’m doing, trying to get decent, easy-to-understand financial information out to the world. I’m very grateful to them for their support. You can see what they’re up to at 7im.co.uk

With 303 videos and 149 podcasts here on MM it can be hard to find what you need, though there is a very efficient search system. I am in the process of designing and building a new home page which will hopefully help new visitors find their way round, but until that is done, this post should help you navigate the best stuff when it comes to investing.

Of the resources listed, more are podcasts than videos. Many of the videos are somewhat out of date now, and while I am redoing some of them, the podcast is generally where the meat is.

Ready? Here are eight steps to become and investing ninja:

Video number 246 talks about getting into the savings mindset. You need to start form a good place, as the changes you will make need to be deep-seated to last for a lifetime. This involves being future focused, getting mad at the financial services industry, and committing to taking control of your own future.

For those who are right at the very start of their personal finance journey, and are looking to pay off debt and begin saving for an emergency fund, I have a dedicated index page just for you. If you have done those things, and you're looking at how to invest, what's next? Podcast session 6 was a chat with the erstwhile Justin Urquhart Stewart of my sponsors, Seven Investment Management. In that show we agreed that investing should be dull, above all. You should understand your risk tolerance (more in a minute) and understand what makes a core investment portfolio. Then in Podcast session 10 we looked at Asset classes, or things you can investing, and a little bit about how they interact. And we followed this up with Podcast session 11, where we covered the platforms, wrappers and funds that these assets are held inside. this is the basic architecture for investing success.

It has been proven beyond doubt that risk and reward are related. Risk is a multi-layered subject, as I discussed with my friend Richard Allum in Podcast session 16. Much later, I chatted to Paul Resnik of risk measurement firm Finametrica in Podcast session 119, and looked into the science of risk tolerance, and whether or not it changes in response to external factors. Finally, video number 300 covers the three main ways in which investment risk can be managed by ordinary folks, such as you and me.

We're better at most things if we learn something about them in advance of diving in. The same is true for investing, which is why this site exists, and why you're here. You need to learn how to invest, before you start to invest. Podcast session 76 was a chat with journalist Robin Powell who created a documentary called How To Win The Loser's Game. Listen to the show and watch the film; it'll set the scene. Then I embarked on a four-part investment masterclass covering:

Those four podcast sessions will give you a superb grounding of education and equip you to make good choices.

Armed with all that good information, it is time to get your hands dirty with some practical investing. Back in Podcast session 41, I took listeners through how to build a portfolio from scratch, exactly how I would do it. I then chatted subsequently with Mark Polson of platform consultancy the lang cat, in Podcast session 75. If you're going to go it alone and not seek professional advice, there are plenty of online systems to help you invest in various ways, and Mark's guide helps you decide which is best for you. Once a portfolio is built, it should be reviewed. In Podcast session 96 I cover what to do when you sit down each year to look at the year just gone and the one coming up. What should you be looking for? What should you ignore?

We are so often our own worst enemies. While investing is a science, as humans we are driven by emotion, and as such we can make some very bad decisions. Half the battle with learning how to invest is understanding why we make mistakes and putting in place a framework to minimise these. Back in Podcast session 43 I covered nine classic investing mistakes that I see people make over and over again. Then, in one of my favourite conversations I have had for the podcast, I chatted to Greg Davies from Barclays Wealth over two shows, session 108 and session 109. Greg is the UK's foremost authority on behavioural finance and gives us some very practical tips on how to make good investing decisions. Finally, I make my own attempt to give some practical tips for making smart decisions in Podcast session 118.

As I often say here on MeaningfulMoney, money is never an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is there to serve your life goals, and to enable them, never to be a goal in itself. It is therefore vital to invest with this context in mind. In Podcast session 48 I asked some important questions, crafted by the father of financial life planning George Kinder. These three questions will help put money in its proper place. I then interviewed my good friend Tina Weeks in Podcast session 85, and she shared her approach for putting money into perspective.

Finally, for those plucky few who make it this far, there is the opportunity to level up, and take your investing to the next level. In Podcast session 81, I cover some advanced investing techniques, and in Podcast session 24, I talked about some lessons we can learn from how the super-rich manage their wealth. I chatted to financial guru Todd Tresidder in Podcast session 123, and asked the question: How much do I need to retire. Todd himself retired at 35 or something incredible, so he's a good man to learn from. And then in Podcast session 113, I covered ways to put your finances on autopilot, so you can grow your wealth while you sleep.

Phew! I think that is plenty for most people to be going along with. If you can apply the information about how to invest contained in these podcasts and videos, your financial success is pretty much assured.

I love to read and respond to your comments, so please do join in and share. Question: Which of these resources has benefitted you most, and why?

If this show is of any use to you, it would help me massively if you would take the time to leave me a review on iTunes. This has a huge impact on keeping me near the top of the rankings, which in turns helps more people to find the show and to subscribe. Just click the button below: