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ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
596 | Mistakes Were Made
01:08:14
Our most embarrassing money mistakes revealed (it's painful)
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, and welcome to Choose a Five. Today on the show, we have my great friends Katie and Alan Donegan. This is a roundtable. We're calling it Mistakes Were Made. I think what's fun about an episode like this is the three of us go around and we talk about a lot of the financial mistakes we've made in our lives, but also some life mistakes as well. I think what's so interesting about this is you might look at people who are fi and think that it was just this straight path of up and to the right and that everything was easy. That's very rarely the case. But yet people reach fi and they live these wonderful lives. That makes this even more interesting. And frankly, you can learn from our mistakes. The wisest thing you can do is to learn from these mistakes. And I promise we're going to keep on making these mistakes. We all are. And we can all learn together and move forward and enjoy our lives. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. And with that, welcome to choose that Fun. Before we get started, I keep this podcast entirely ad free for two reasons. First, this is a FI podcast, and I don't want to promote products that I don't want you to buy in the first place. And second, I really like the clean listening experience of a show where you don't have to fast forward ads to keep it ad free. All I ask of you as a listener is the next time you open a travel rewards credit card, go to choosefi.com cards and with that, onto the show. Alan and Katie, it is good to see you guys. We just spent three weeks together in Richmond and you're in Istanbul now, right?
- [01:36]
B
Yeah. And time apart feels like much more elongated after spending that concentrated time.
- [01:41]
C
Yeah. We miss you and we miss being in Richmond.
- [01:44]
A
Yeah. That was great. It really was. And it makes you realize why we're doing this. Right. Like, why are we pursuing thigh? It's to live lives that we want to live into. Right. To create lives that we want to live into. It was really wonderful to have you so close. Yeah. Future life goals, I think.
- [01:59]
C
Definitely. Yeah. And if there's one thing you want to do is buy back time to spend with people you love.
- [02:04]
A
Yep. Indeed. Indeed. I'm going to paraphrase Alan and his wisdom here. So we are talking about mistakes. Why are we doing this? Because we've made lots of mistakes. The three of us have. Everybody's made mistakes. It's so easy to sometimes to look at people who are on a podcast or somebody famous or whomever and say, oh, oh, their life is so charmed. It must have been easy or it must have been smooth sailing. And we are here to tell you, believe me, it is never smooth sailing. There are always issues. Honestly, that's part of the fun of life. I think that's part of the spice of life. And frankly, again, to paraphrase Alan, you can learn from our mistakes and really the wisest thing we can do in life is learn from other people's mistakes. Obviously the three of us and all of us out there are going to keep making mistakes and maybe, just maybe we can learn together. So yeah, we're going to have a smattering of money mistakes and a lot of life mistakes, et cetera. Alan, I think you want to kick off our little roundtable here.
- [03:03]
C
Well, I think want is a strong word.
- [03:05]
B
We had a little pre chat, didn't we? And I was like, I learned Alan
- [03:10]
A
drew the short straw.
- [03:11]
B
I've been with Alan 21 years, I've known this man over half of my life and yet I read two of the mistakes on his list and I was like, I didn't know this, this is kind of exciting. There's stuff that I didn't know about Alan and it's things that are mistakes. So this is exciting to hear.
- [03:26]
C
So for everyone listening, some of these mistakes, some of them were just mistakes, some of them cost us a lot of money, some of them like really impacted our lives and so we've learned these lessons. But to rinse the value out of the mistakes, well, it's a lot more valuable if we share them. So I would love you to get the value out of my mistake because I've already paid the price. So let's give it to you and share the value now. First mistake, we're going in with a relatively big one. I was 20ish, 20 years old. I'd saved up all my summer holiday money, my work money. I had about seven grand. It was my life savings at that time, quite a few years ago. Don't tell anyone. At that time it was enough for a house deposit. So it was a big chunk of cash. And my dad had the fancy advisor. The financial advisor came round, soft top car, fancy suit, came in, charmed us, talked about stocks and shares that have been going up ridiculously. And he persuaded me to invest my life savings in a high tech managed growth stock fund right before the dot com bubble. So the whole seven grand went all in tech stocks because those were what were going through the roof. So if they've gone through the Roof in the past. Obviously they're going to keep doing that. So I put my whole seven grand in. It crashed a month or two later, and my seven grand went down to less than 1,000. So I lost nearly 90% of my money overnight. And I held. But the interesting thing is, even if you hold, if it's actively managed, the fund manager isn't holding because they're trading, trying to get their way out of it. And five or six years later, it climbed back up to the heady heights, I think of £1,200 compared to my seven grand that I put in. And I sold it to go traveling and wrote it off. And I think my biggest failure was I didn't learn the lesson from the mistake. I was scared off investing in the stock market for 13 years. That was my biggest failure. It's not the fact that did it. It's the fact I didn't learn the lesson from it until much later.
- [05:42]
B
It's so easy to jump to that conclusion, though, isn't it? Because of all the stories that we hear of so and so losing their life savings in the stock market. And the stock market is so risky. And then you have that experience yourself, and it's easy to fall into the conclusion, oh, stock market is risky. This is not something I should ever touch ever again. Because it was so painful.
- [06:02]
A
Yeah, that's why. Thirteen years, Alan. So essentially all of your 20s and your mid-30s, you did not invest in stocks because of this one catastrophic thing?
- [06:12]
C
Yes, And I thought property was the way for a long time because I was scared of stocks. So what? It's like, what else is there? There's only property. And I understand that has bricks, can touch bricks, has tenants. I get that. Whereas stocks and shares. After that experience, I just wrote off all stocks and shares. And there was actually a book that happened much later that said there are different ways to invest in the stock market. And I was like, what different ways? I don't even understand that. And that's when I realized, oh, I invested with an actively managed and basically stock picked in technology. So sector picked. Stock picked. And I didn't understand that. If I'd have just bought an index fund and rode out the wave. Yeah, but you learn the lesson a lot later.
- [06:59]
B
Should we check what your seven grand would have been worth now if you just bought. I don't envy.
- [07:04]
A
We are not going down the opportunity cost scenario because I wonder how many millions of dollars extra I'd have if I didn't make the mistakes that I have. And I think about that sometimes. But yeah, jokes aside, that would be interesting to know now some of the
- [07:16]
B
mistakes that we've made that we'll talk about today. We have gone and worked out what they cost us in order to help other people to say, look, this can have an impact and to help other people learn from what we did. But we don't do it to beat ourselves up. We just, there is a little bit of pain in the belly when it happens and you look at the number of zeros, but you have to explain
- [07:39]
C
it to other people to help them understand. Like this is what it actually cost us in opportunity cost.
- [07:44]
A
Yeah, I totally agree. Obviously I was, I was getting there. But I think the important part, really one of the meta takeaways from this episode is the three of us have screwed up a whole lot and we, we are doing great, right? And all three of us are financially independent. We are living these incredible lives that I don't think, I don't want to speak for the two of you, but I know I could not have possibly dreamed that my life would be this great. And yeah, I think if I ran that opportunity, cause just based on my first mistake alone, I suspect I would have an extra, like I said, probably seven figures in net worth. But the beautiful thing is you can make mistakes and you can make catastrophic mistakes and, and you can pick yourself back up and you can move on with your life and you can save money and you can learn the lessons and you can invest in index funds in this case and you move on and you're stronger and you're wiser. And I think that's really, like I said, the meta lesson here.
- [08:39]
C
Yeah, you've teased us with your first one. Brad, I feel like I want to know now. What is this? Tell us.
- [08:44]
A
I'm going to go to that in two seconds because I did have two others. It's funny. What's so amazing about an episode like this is, as you were saying, your first mistake. I literally jotted down two that I would not have remembered. I suspect my list is going to be dozens long by the time this hour is up. So as a. I think it was 19 year old. I had a summer internship at a investment firm. It was Solomon Smith Barney, which was a famous name back then. And I think they had their like top stock picks. This was like 1999. So right before the dot com implosion. And I'm gonna kick myself because I'll think of what the second one was. But I know WorldCom was one of the stocks and I didn't have a lot of money, needless to say, but I invested a little bit, maybe three to 500 in each of this WorldCom and this other stock because, oh, it's Smith Barney. These people know what they're talking about. It's one of their top 20 stock picks for the year. This has to be a slam dunk. And literally they both went bankrupt and they were gone within a year. So worth $0. There's a lesson there about a lot of people think there's some secret to investing. There's some like person behind the, the curtain who's pulling strings and who knows more that like once you become wealthy or once you get to a certain echelon of knowledge or friends or connections or whatever, that the magic unfolds to you. And I don't think that's true at all. Like now the three of us certainly, like we're fairly wealthy. We're certainly very comfortable. Have you guys come across any magic investment secret that isn't altogether obvious of just basically invest in index funds?
- [10:25]
C
There's nothing that's come to us other than the standard like here's a bunch of get rich quick schemes. Like you always get those. The top stock picks do this, do that. They're always there, but there's no magic. New doors open. And I think that bit of like the network and the friends, it sounds a bit like insider trading to me. Like you get to a certain level
- [10:46]
B
and then, well then someone like pulls you to one side and says, well now that you've hit this certain net worth, now like we're going to reveal the secrets to you.
- [10:55]
A
It's so ridiculous. And it's funny because even intelligent, well meaning people fall prey to this. I know. I was chatting with one of my friends from my mastermind group and he was saying he lives in a little enclave that's a fairly wealthy enclave. And he was talking about like, like meeting these guys, I guess he was saying these guys who, who used to be like quote unquote, high level in finance in New York City and it's like they have investment clubs and all this other stuff and I'm like, oh God, like my spidey sense is going off. I'm like, run as far and as fast as you possibly can. Like high level only means to me that they are high level salespeople. That's it. End of story. Because nobody can outperform the market over any appreciable period of time. Like it just means that they probably were their college fraternity, like rush chair or Something like they're the popular people and they're good salesmen and they're good at getting a lot of money for their firm. And that's what high level means. It doesn't mean they have some grand information because it simply doesn't exist.
- [11:54]
C
It also means they have more money to be able to lose. So quite often the people who don't have any money want to aspire to do that, but then they don't realize these people lose a lot of money as well. And it's like a gamble up, a gamble down, and you just don't need it. I am so excited by the lesson that boring index funds is the way to go.
- [12:16]
B
I'm curious, Brad. You said you'd even forgotten that that happened. So it didn't.
- [12:22]
C
Didn't scar you?
- [12:23]
B
No. How did it impact you in terms of your thoughts about the stock market and investing? And it didn't make you run away or what happened?
- [12:30]
A
It didn't. And it's funny because I had another lesson around the same time, which was I went in to another firm. It was like Chase bank or something. And I don't even know if it was Chase, to be honest. It was the bank in our. In the bottom of our office. And I had dutifully saved $2,000 to max out my Roth IRA. And I got sold a mutual fund that had this like horrible load. It was like a 5 or 8% load or something crazy like that, like ridiculous. Like it was just basically they saw me as prey. Here's like some 22 year old kid who walks in and it's just prey. I invested this money. I couldn't get it out. It was, you know, it was a nightmare. But I have to say, unlike Alan, I didn't get scared of investing. I think I just wanted to learn more. It did take me a long time to feel like I learned. It took me until I found J.L. collins and the stock series. So it was probably almost 10 years later that I felt comfortable. I don't think I ever felt comfortable investing until I found out about, really found out about index funds. That doesn't mean I wasn't investing along the way because I was trying to put money into my 401k. I almost have like a. I can't remember what I did in my 20s and 30s. I really can't, which is hilarious, but. And doesn't make for great podcasting. But yeah, I wasn't scared off from investing, but I just never felt comfortable. I really never did. Kitty, what about you? The Two of us have talked about our. And I will get back to my big money mistake. Obviously I still haven't, still haven't mentioned that. But where were you in terms of like the mentality of investing in your 20s?
- [14:00]
B
The thing that comes to mind that happened in my 20s was I just started working at Deloitte. I was training to be an actuary and I felt probably quite nervous in general as to like figuring out my place at work and what was going on. And I got a phone call whilst I was at work and this never happened. Like, I'm junior, the phone does not ring. There's no one trying to talk to me. And it was this guy and he said, katie, have you ever thought about investing? And the answer was yes, I had. Because Alan and I had started trying to figure out, we'd had this idea in our heads of buy an asset, you need to buy assets. And we were like, how do you buy an asset? Where is the asset shop? Where do you find these things? How does it work?
- [14:45]
C
It's not next to Walmart. There's no asset shop corner in Walmart. If there was, it'd be a lot easier.
- [14:51]
B
So this guy rang me and said, have you thought about investing? And I was like, yes, yes, I have. And he's like, okay, like this is going to sound weird. The way I say it was like, come to my office and let's chat about it. And he was a financial advisor. And looking back, I was just so naive that, you know, the first person that happened to ring me, I was like, okay, cool, let's go. Like, I didn't think about vetting him. I didn't look up who he worked for. I just was like, okay, I'll like come along to your offices. It's a 20 minute walk from where I work in London. Let me go and see what this guy's talking about. And I think I was so trusting and so like, okay, tell me what to do. And I do remember actually asking a couple of questions because Alan and I talked about investing in property. So I was like, oh, what about property? And of course he had his standard response to any of these sorts of objections of what he was going to suggest. And I also remember I had read somewhere this idea of active versus passive investing. And I remember raising that and being like, oh, what about the passive investing thing? But I had no real understanding or concept of what that actually meant. So it was very easy for him to convince me that his way of investing, which was in actively managed funds, was the way to Go. I didn't really know. And I was like, oh, what about this? And he's like, no, this is the way to go.
- [16:12]
C
You want the professionals, you want someone choosing. And the fees were outrageous. They were 2.71% plus 3% entry charge. So you lose 3% just putting the money in. Then it was like 2.71% ongoing through the advisor fee, the fund fee, the platform fee.
- [16:32]
B
No one knows this. When you start, it's just like, oh, okay, a couple of percent. Surely that's okay. How or why would you know what a reasonable fee is? So I was like, okay, like off we go. Let's start with like £300amonth and we'll see what happens.
- [16:47]
C
Well, he gave you a survey.
- [16:49]
B
Oh, yeah, the risk assessment questionnaire. Basically asked, how comfortable are you with losing money? And I said, no, thank you very much. So I believe I was like 24, 26, something like that. He put me in two different funds. One of them was 50% bonds and the other one, I can't even remember what it was, but I was heavily in bonds in my mid-20s because I'd said I didn't want to lose money. Which he takes to mean, okay, this person is not going to be able to cope with any volatility. Let me put her more in bonds. And we see that with people so, so often is that advisor asks, are you okay with losing money? They say no. They say, okay, the stock market isn't for this person. They don't understand volatility. They're going to panic and sell. So let me put them heavily in bonds. We see that time and time and time again and we just wish there was a way that I think that in their defense, they're trying to follow the regulations and they have to ask your risk tolerance and they have to do all this stuff. But is there an opportunity for them to educate their clients and say, okay, this is a feature of the stock market and if you want long term wealth over the decades, you need to understand that these things are volatile, but as long as you hold on for a good chunk of time, you'll be fine. That's what no one tells you because they just want to sell their funds. That's their objective.
- [18:16]
C
So what's the big reveal, Katie? How much would that mistake have been worked? Because we did the numbers, because we wanted to show actually what it would be.
- [18:24]
B
Well, if we had carried on investing with him in the amounts that we did when we discovered index investing and fully went in, accelerated on our way to Financial independence. It would have cost us 1 million pounds.
- [18:38]
A
Oh my God.
- [18:39]
C
Okay, $1.3 million. We would be worse off and we'd still be working because we would think this fi stuff doesn't work because it's not growing enough to be able to live off well.
- [18:49]
A
Right. At a 2 plus percent handicap each year, that's crazy.
- [18:54]
B
Which we were lucky enough that a couple of years after I started investing through him, we did a mini retirement and had a six month honeymoon. And we were looking at this thing like, well, it hasn't grown, let's just cash it in. So luckily we didn't continue investing with him and that was very fortunate.
- [19:13]
C
Yeah. And then by the time we got back, I read a book that talked about index investing and I was like, oh, okay, that's the way to do it. And then we changed direction. But if we'd have stayed with that guy. Yeah. We wouldn't be financially independent. We'd be a million pounds worse off.
- [19:28]
A
Isn't that amazing? One decision would literally make the difference between living the life that you want and making it impossible. So easy. Lesson is, this is why we talk about index funds. We are in the golden age of investing, all of us now. It is so cheap and it is so easy to invest in index funds. I personally like the exchange traded fund VTI from Vanguard. You can buy it anywhere, there should be no commissions or fees virtually anywhere you buy it. And that's where I put the vast majority of my net worth just in vti. And I sleep really easy at night now. So yeah, I think that's a hard fought lesson learned for all of us. So my big one, actually it's two, it's interesting, it's speculation ultimately is what it boils down to. So that's the umbrella. But the big one was in my mid-20s. A good friend of mine, my brother and I basically bought these, speculated in buying real estate. We thought we were, we were going to be real estate investors. I know now of course there are any number of ways to invest in real estate. But I think the way that I look at real estate investing now is think of it as a business. So I'm going to buy properties that I can rent that are cash flow positive, that are going to have net income and over time I'm going to grow my wealth. It's a get rich slowly thing. At that time there was this crazy boom in these golf course communities throughout the southeast of the United States. There were like these country club style golf course communities. They were popping up everywhere. In North Carolina, Virginia, down south into Georgia and such. And we wound up going down to North Carolina and buying a couple of these pieces of property in this community. I still remember I bought the one piece of land, it was like around $90,000. The other one was around 80. I got interest only loans, five year balloon payment interest only loans. It's like the worst case scenario. And in and of itself that would have been whatever $170,000 mistake which would have been fairly easy to deal with. But what actually happened was maybe the worst possible scenario was we actually sold one of these things because it was this speculative fervor. We wound up getting in early, just like the typical speculation. We got in early. We're so smart, we know something. And this is all dripping with sarcasm, of course, we're so smart. And then we were able to sell it. It's the greater fool theory, right? Just try to find some greater fool who's going to pay more for it. That's literally what speculation is. And sold it for like some crazy profit. I forget it was like 40, 50, $60,000, something like that in fairly short order. So what do we do? We buy more of these things? Of course. We're geniuses. I think we wound up selling two of them at that time. And I don't remember exactly how many we ultimately wound up owning between the three of us. And I owned one or two just myself. So it was like this was a compounding issue that, I mean, it wound up being probably six or seven of these properties that we owned. And again, interest only loans with a balloon payment after five years. So impending doom. And then there was a glut of these properties on the market. It was right around the 2008 crash. It was like literally everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. And I mean we deserved it, frankly. We just absolutely stupid speculators at the absolute wrong time. But I don't know if this is smart or not, but I never foreclosed on these things. I just kept dutifully paying them. I mean, for years and years and years, well over a decade, probably 15 years, we were making the payments on these things. We eventually refinanced and got, et cetera, et cetera, but I finally paid them off. I forget exactly. Sometime after Choose a VI existed, I mean this literally was like into like 2020 or beyond. And I lost a lot of sleep over this, guys. Like this was maybe the biggest stress in my life for a solid decade or more. It was horrible because I mean, frankly, I was saving money, obviously I was on the path to fi, et cetera, but this was looming over my head. And also it was, man, I made this really stupid mistake and I can't believe I did this. There were some positives. I'm like, I'm going to find a way out. I'm going to figure this out. I'm smart enough to figure it out. But this was something that stressed me out for a very long time.
- [23:43]
C
So what happened? Did you end up selling them? Like what happened to these places?
- [23:47]
A
Yeah, I wound up paying them all off. The stress at least was stopped. I think, frankly, we actually still own a couple of them. I sold the two that I owned from one of these kind of like again, to their credit, these like vulture companies who like send you a postcard in the mail like, hey, we'll buy this from you for X. And I hadn't been able to sell them for as long as I can remember and I just wanted to wipe my hands of it and just be done. And I think still to this day, those properties are still down like 70% off of what I bought them for. It's like the land that time forgot down there because this property, they sold a thousand of these lots in this middle of nowhere place in North Carolina and there are a couple hundred houses and they're beautiful and it's this nice golf course, but it's just this supply glut that I think will never, never clear, like in a hundred years probably. So it was about the worst case of speculation as you can imagine.
- [24:44]
C
So you spent 10, 12 years paying these things off to only get a 30% return plus the interest you paid.
- [24:52]
B
Well, you say return, that's not the same.
- [24:56]
A
Is very interesting.
- [24:58]
C
It's the wrong word.
- [25:00]
A
Yes. Had I invested that money again, I've never run the numbers because I fear it would compound it, especially over those years. Right. We're talking about like a 15 year bull run. So I suspect at minimum it would have been over a million dollars, that my net worth would have been positive when it basically was neutral or negative on that particular item. So, yeah, I mean it's. That is about as catastrophic of a mistake as you could possibly make. And yet I still reach Phi in my late 30s, so it's not all doom and gloom, but it's pretty interesting.
- [25:32]
C
I love that because I really would love everyone listening to this to hear how many mistakes we've all made and how much we struggled with this stuff. And then you can still come out on top. If your savings rate is good, if you just Learn a few simple lessons, you can still come out on top.
- [25:50]
A
Yeah, indeed. So that was a very long winded one. But yeah, that, without question, is my biggest mistake of all time.
- [25:57]
C
Unbelievable. I love it. I'm gonna go for a life one next because we can all laugh at Alan for a little bit.
- [26:05]
B
Is that how we treat people when they make mistakes?
- [26:07]
C
No, we should be kind to them. But I think I'm. I don't think I've really told that many people. So I was working for a firm, didn't like the boss. The boss was a bit unscrupulous, did things that I think were wrong, and I couldn't really tell anyone or do anything with it. So I decided to write a book called how not to Run a Business. And I decided to write that book about him and my dad and like a bunch of other people I'd worked for, with all the things that I thought they did. Daft running a business. And can you guess what laptop I used to write?
- [26:44]
A
Oh, no. The company laptop.
- [26:46]
C
I used the company laptop. Like, what an idiot. I used the company laptop. They found it, they fired me. Obviously they realized that they couldn't fire me for having an opinion because I hadn't done anything with it. So actually then they had to unwind the firing and I got paid to leave and, like, paid some go away silence money.
- [27:11]
A
Oh, wow.
- [27:12]
C
So I wrote a book called how not to Run a Business on the work laptop and based it on my boss.
- [27:19]
A
Oh, my God. What happened to the book?
- [27:20]
B
Yeah, where's the book?
- [27:21]
C
I don't know. I probably could dig around in my old file somewhere. I don't even know whether I had it or whether it was just on the computer laptop, on the work laptop and then got deleted.
- [27:33]
B
We gotta find it. Do you feel embarrassed about this? Saying it? Yes.
- [27:37]
C
I am perspiring. I've gone red. I am uncomfortable. I feel like an idiot.
- [27:43]
B
Because of doing it on the laptop? Not the fact that you wrote it?
- [27:46]
C
No, kind of the fact that I wrote it. My plan was to anonymize it and then publish it and no one would ever find out who it was. But I was sharing the lessons I'd learned. And I do think that the things that he was doing was daft. But I think my embarrassment is around. Yeah. Maybe I should have spoken up more at work and told him maybe I shouldn't have done it on the work laptop. There's a whole bunch of stuff that I probably haven't really unpacked over the years because I haven't talked about it.
- [28:18]
B
So feeling that you should have been just said directly to him what you thought that he was doing was wrong
- [28:24]
C
or probably should have stood up a bit more and spoken directly to him. Because I'd know if that was me, I would want someone to tell me, like, you're making mistakes. And I might not agree with them, but at least they've given me a chance to learn.
- [28:38]
A
I mean, that is one of the hardest things in the world is to speak truth to power. And I mean, we see that in the real world nowadays, certainly, like, there are people who should know better, and yet they sit in meek silence. And it doesn't make it better that it's hard, but I think we have to all know that it's like one of these, like, quirks in the human operating system that, like, we're real bad at that. It's really hard. And not for nothing, but that's another benefit of FI is like we say, FU money. It's not to literally go out in a blaze of glory screaming and cursing at people. It's to be able to stand up when you see something. I've used this in theory so many times, and I've said this in theory so many times, but this is a perfect example of it, is you actually had an unscrupulous boss. You had someone who probably asked things of you that you didn't want to do. And it's pretty darn hard to stand up and speak truth to power when they're paying your paycheck. You need to pay whatever it is, the rent, the car bill, the mortgage, whatever, and your life's going to fall apart. I think this is why we pursue FI is to have FU money in this exact instance. So, I mean, Alan, I don't know exactly how old you were, but I don't know that you would have necessarily had some other option or recourse. I don't know that you could beat yourself up. But it's like, hey, would the Allen of today do that and sit meekly by? No. You would stand up. Exactly.
- [30:06]
C
Yes. I would stand up 100%. I would stand up. I would communicate. I would say, I don't think this is acceptable. But then that's from a position. If they fire me, I don't care.
- [30:16]
B
That's almost like you have the power, isn't it? To what Brad was saying, speaking truth to power is like, well, I have power now, so you are more free. Like, what's the consequences now they fire me.
- [30:29]
C
Oh, well, never mind. I'll do Something else. Whereas I think I was 26, something
- [30:35]
B
like that, which you've got the power financially, you've got the power in terms of you and your confidence.
- [30:41]
C
And confidence makes the biggest difference you could imagine. The confidence that comes from age, from experience, from having worked things out. The confidence is unbelievably powerful.
- [30:55]
B
And the ironic thing is that actually when you speak up to people, they probably respect you more. You actually get more power by doing that because, well, you can do it
- [31:05]
C
in a nice way.
- [31:07]
A
It depends who it is for sure. But I think you said the most important thing in there, Katie, which is you are more free. And maybe, maybe, just maybe, that is exactly what we're doing on the path to FI is like every day we get a little more freedom, we get some more options, we get more power, and you're a little more free. And hopefully the takeaway or people aren't listening to this and saying, oh, they're just talking about mistakes they made in their 20s. Like, and you just learned. I think what's beautiful is this can help a whole bunch of people not make mistakes. And it's not just about your 20s. I think these are human mistakes. These are very human mistakes. And yeah, I think having that power helps. And I think also not getting yourself into financial situations where you're dependent on somebody else. I think that's one of the many benefits of FI is we have financial space. And if you cannot build up a life that just. It's a house of cards. Like, you don't want a fragile life. You want an anti fragile life. You want a life where if one bad thing happened, there isn't a cascade. It's not fragile. You want to be able to persevere through, hey, just the normal ups and downs of life which happen. Right. Sometimes you lose a job, sometimes you want to leave a job, sometimes there's a shock. Sometimes you need to spend more money in a given month or a given year than you would have anticipated. Sometimes life just throws you a curveball and. And that's normal. I think we're all kidding ourselves if it's just going to be like unicorns and rainbows all the time. The world doesn't work that way.
- [32:36]
C
It really doesn't. And just to be clear for everyone listening, this podcast idea was my idea. So we'd love to know if it worked or not. Tell us, did you enjoy us sharing all the mistakes we made? Did you get value out of this? Tell us, if it didn't work for you, then it's my fault.
- [32:51]
A
Not Brad's, I don't care. Blame it on me, that's fine. This is a great episode as far as I'm concerned. Katie, you're up next.
- [32:58]
B
When I was making my list of mistakes in preparation for Chatting to youo, there was one that made me think about the path not travelled or the choice not taken. And when I was a kid, I was very focused on my studies, I was very academic, I was very school. And getting good grades is the only important thing.
- [33:23]
C
I wonder where that came from.
- [33:25]
B
That might have come from my family, we're not quite sure yet. But I was also sporty and I was also musical. So I played the piano and the clarinet and later the saxophone. And I played just about every sport under the sun that you could ever imagine. Every lunchtime at school I was in some different sports club and after school. And there is a sport played in the UK called netball that most American listeners probably will never have heard of, but shout out to the Kiwis and the Aussies and the South Africans and the other countries where netball is played.
- [34:02]
C
It's basically basketball, but you can't run with the ball.
- [34:06]
B
I mean, I'm going to offend a bunch of people here. It's like a boring version of basketball where you are confined to certain areas of the court depending on your position. You can't run with the ball, you can only be three feet away from your opponents when they have the ball.
- [34:19]
A
I think you told me it's take all the fun aspects of basketball away and you have netball.
- [34:25]
B
That doesn't sound like something I would say. I need to get out of this now. When I was a kid, this is the sport, I mean, it's very like gender stereotype and I don't know if this has changed now, but girls played netball, boys played football now or soccer. So I played football as well, like outside of school. And because I played in a really good football team, I thought I was no good at football. Whereas in netball I felt like I was actually quite good because my method of knowing how good I am and my self worth was comparing myself to everyone else. In netball I came out on top. In football, I didn't for a good while, netball actually preferred to football. And I played at school and I played for like the grades above. I knew that I was good. And one time there was a guest coach at our school. She was amazing. She played netball for England and rugby for Wales. She was a powerhouse, she was amazing. And she said to me, katie, promise me that you will continue to play Netball, like, you really got some talent here, you could really go far. And I remember so clearly without missing a beat saying, no, I can't promise you that I have to focus on my studies. I didn't even think, I didn't even go, oh, okay, that's an interesting idea. Or how might that work? That, you know, I think studies are important but you know, there's an opportunity for both. Like it's not binary, which is now one of my famous sayings. But at the time I had not discovered that. It just got me thinking about different paths that you can take in your life. If I had thought, okay, let me pursue this netball idea, I mean, there's no money in netball, I wouldn't have made money. But I could have had, you know, an athletic career alongside working, you know, like that different path that I could have taken. So you look back and I was thinking, well, was that a mistake? Things have turned out pretty well. You know, I did focus on my studies. It did lead to me getting a well paying job. That meant that we could accelerate our path to fi. I'm just really curious on both of your thoughts of. You know, there's obviously no, you can't look back and have regrets, but.
- [36:43]
C
Well, you can.
- [36:44]
B
Well, you can. Many people do.
- [36:47]
C
It's very easy to look back and go, I regret that.
- [36:49]
B
Help me make sense of this. Brad and Alan.
- [36:51]
A
Yeah, it's like the counterfactual thinking. It's like, what would have happened in that alternate scenario? Or I know we're all fans of movies like the Sliding Doors aspect of like, hey, what would have happened had I chosen that other path? And I think it's hard not to go down that because interestingly, you wound up actually being a professional footballer. I don't know, professional is the word. But you played for Chelsea, right?
- [37:15]
B
Yeah, it was before there was professional women's football. So I was never, I was a little bit too early for that.
- [37:22]
A
Okay, okay. But nevertheless, you played for Chelsea Football Club, which is not nothing.
- [37:26]
C
Yeah. Which if I jumped in there, Katie's being modest. She played for Chelsea, she played at the top of the game. She's an incredible footballer. She's broken world records in football. Like, she is phenomenal. So she went on to have an incredible football career even though she didn't follow that route.
- [37:43]
A
Right.
- [37:44]
C
I think the more interesting bit is the confidence and the comparison that to me. Because even if you had that career,
- [37:53]
B
well, there's no guarantee that that would have actually come to anything. Right. Like I could have been like okay, great. And then the main thing that has held me back in my sporting career has been my confidence and the comparison. And, you know, I was a good player in my school. If I'd have been thrown into netballers from other schools and the areas. And then suddenly I'm like, oh, actually I'm not any good and would have crumbled confidence wise, like. It was quite an interesting thought experiment. But that is another one of my mistakes that I jotted down was about my confidence and how I didn't have it as a, as an athlete, as a footballer, as a, I was about to say as a netballer, but I did because I came out on top in my comparison in my head and how fragile that is, because then I did that in my studies as well. It's like, oh, I'm on top of my class, I feel good about myself. Then I went to university, suddenly I'm not top of the class. You know, you go, and it's a cliche, but I went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big sea. I thought, I'll mix my metaphors there.
- [39:04]
A
Now that sounds about me and small fish in a big pond.
- [39:08]
B
That has definitely been a recurring mistake that I'm still working on, is comparison. We have a famous phrase at Rebel Finance School, don't compare your pineapples. I still do and that's something I'm definitely working on and it's a massive mistake because there's no good that can come.
- [39:27]
C
There is always someone better than you. There is always someone worse than you.
- [39:31]
B
Yeah.
- [39:31]
C
And if your confidence comes from comparison, you're constantly looking outside yourself to see your value as a human, whereas if your confidence comes from inside, well, then it can't be shaken and you just feel good about yourself.
- [39:44]
A
There's so much here I just jotted down like five different things. So first, forgive me for the next four minutes of talking non stop, but my therapist, Brad, okay, we humans are relative animals. We're not absolute animals. Everything is about comparison. So interestingly, Katie, right, like, you were great at netball amongst people who, and I know this from also conversations that we've had, not just from the last five minutes, but on a relative basis, you were head and shoulders above the people you played in netball, whereas with football, so soccer, but we're going to call it football, you were playing with the best teams. So on a relative basis, you didn't feel like you were spectacular, even though on an absolute basis you probably were one of the better or best players. In England. And it's interesting because I saw this with my daughters and their swimming, which was they both went to swam year round when they were younger for one of the best swim clubs in America. They were never one of the top even five or so girls in their age group at this swim club, Nova. So on a relative basis, they were always looking at somebody better, but on an absolute basis, they both were at 1point Top 50 or 100 in the country in certain events. So, like, again, they looked over their shoulder at the next lane and saw this girl who was always beating them, but on an absolute basis they were pretty darn good. So that is tough to get over. I think we need to, again, it's just arming ourselves with knowledge, right? Like, we have to understand sometimes you need to take a step back. This is like keeping up with the Joneses also, right? Like, it's easy to look next door. Like Alan was saying, you need to be sufficient inside. It's easier said than done, right? But another thing, Katie also is like, fixed mindset versus growth mindset, right? Like, you definitely were stuck in the fixed mindset of I am X. Like, as soon as this amazing netballer who played for England and rugby for Wales, I think you said so, I mean, absolute incredible athlete said this to you. I mean, she was saying something from a point of view of real knowledge and. And you just immediately dismissed it. I'm into my studies. Like, that is what I am. I'm not. Even though you were sporty, as you would say, like, you cared about your studies and, like, I think that to me is the big takeaway is like, you didn't even open your aperture to say, like, oh, maybe I just got let in on a little secret here. Maybe I should think about this. It was just, okay, I am X. And like, anytime we have any kind of aspect of I am X, like, I am smart, I am whatever. Like, you get locked in on that and you can't see out of it. And I think a lot of us, I mean, Katie, I'm going to use you as an example. And me also is like, I know one of your mistakes, I think is similar to this in university. I know you went to one of the best universities in the world, Oxford, at first. And I think it's easy to build your mindset around I am smart. I fell prey to this too. I got accepted into Duke and Cornell and two of the top 15 schools in America. And I wound up going to the University of Richmond, which was fantastic school, still an amazing school, but Like, I had this mindset of, I am intelligent and man, life smacks you upside the head real quick when you realize, like, how deep the intelligence pool is. And if you ever build your worldview around, I'm the smartest person. I promise you. You're not. You're not even close. And that's okay. Like, it's just okay.
- [43:23]
C
Like, you don't have to be.
- [43:24]
A
You don't have to be. Like, to me, it's what's your unique value? And this is where I think the imposter syndrome is something that a lot of us fall prey to. And I've actually really come to peace with that imposter syndrome, which is like, who the heck am I to talk to literally millions of people on this podcast that's been around for nine years? Like, why do all these people look to me and I'm not a world class expert on personal finance? Or, you know, I have all these negative limit, or I had all these limiting beliefs. And. And I think I've really come around to I have a unique value add in terms of I can simplify and synthesize information better than just about anybody in the world of personal finance, literally in the world. And I don't say that lightly. I. I have a very hard time, as you both know, talking nicely about myself. So when I say that out loud, I just know this is like a long time coming. Like, that is what I do. I simplify things, I make it easy, and I embolden people to take action. And that is a unique value add. And you don't need to be the most knowledgeable person in the world. And I think that, to me, is one of the big takeaways. So again, Katie, like, that's a whole lot of like, random little lessons that I gleaned from just your one mistake. But this is what we're doing here, right? We're trying to like, just really talk through this and how do other people move forward from that? So that's my little I don't know if we'll go therapy session. But any thoughts?
- [44:46]
B
One overriding thought I had as you were talking was like, oh, I've completely hijacked this and got Brad to like, help me with my demons. But there is definitely, like the fixed and the growth mindset something that I'm still working on because whilst talking to all the people listening about my mistakes, I really hate making mistakes. And part of the reason I hate it is because I beat myself up when I do it. And this is small mistakes, medium sized mistakes. I just get really embarrassed and then find it really hard to learn from it because I'll go into like cover up mode and not wanting anyone to know that I made a mistake and perfectionism and all the fun stuff. So it's actually quite cathartic talking about this stuff.
- [45:36]
C
I think I learned many years ago that your success in life is directly related to how many mistakes you can make as quickly as possible and learn from them. It's not making the mistake and stopping, it's making the mistake and learning from them. And if you do that at speed through your 20s and 30s and 40s, make a ton of mistakes and learn, the speed and growth you will go through is phenomenal. Now, one better than that is if you don't make the mistakes yourself, you learn from other people's mistakes, which was the whole point of the episode, because then you save all that time, all that energy, all that money. That's one better than that. But if you can just make the mistakes, apologize, say you were trying your best, learn and keep moving, your success is virtually guaranteed.
- [46:23]
A
Totally agreed. And I think that's in every aspect of life. I know I've seen it in the small businesses that I've created and failed over and over and over and over and over again for almost a decade, but just small failures. But I learned every single time. Like, I don't look at those as failures. Those were the building blocks to help me create something successful. And I just very simply would not have been ready had I not made those mistakes. So, I mean, it's. It's almost cliche. It's like the Thomas Edison. Like, you know, I tried a thousand times and I learned something every time. But like, it's cliche for a reason because that's actually how life works. If you think you're going to get it right the first time. That's not it. It really isn't. I love that, Alan. It's like, make as many as you can as quickly as you can because. And I think Katie and I both might have been embarrassed about our mistakes and such. But like, I know I picked up and I moved on, I kept going. And I don't know where that internal fortitude came from, frankly. But like, man, am I happy that that Brad, that version of Brad just kept moving forward.
- [47:23]
C
Kind of don't have an option either. You just. Well, you either pick yourself up and get on with it or you give up.
- [47:30]
A
Yeah, that's the option. It is. But that's not a very good option. Obviously, looking at your stare
- [47:38]
C
it's not exciting.
- [47:39]
B
The Alan Stair doesn't come across on podcast.
- [47:41]
C
It really doesn't work on podcasts.
- [47:43]
B
Tell us one of your other mistakes.
- [47:45]
C
I think there's minor ones along the way. Like, I remember there was someone who wanted to talk to me and I dodged what they were doing, told them that I was out and couldn't talk, and then they turned up at my house to drop something off and saw me in the window. And it was the most embarrassing thing ever because I'd lied to them and it was a white lie to protect my time. But the embarrassment and the pain, it damaged the friendship. And then the other person thinks, well, how can I trust that person when they lied to me with that stuff? And I obviously can still feel it to this day. If you're listening to this, Paul, I apologize. I was young and I didn't know how to say the honest stuff. But now I think the biggest lesson I've had out of that is if you don't want to go, you have to say, I don't want to go. And you just have to own it. You just have to be straightforwards. You have to do it. And it's the best thing you can do is the honesty of saying, I really don't fancy it tonight. Thank you for the offer. I'm not coming.
- [48:47]
B
And it's actually rarely as bad as you think. Right. He'd have probably gone, okay, yeah, he
- [48:52]
C
would have accepted it. Like, what an idiot. Why did I make up a lie?
- [48:56]
B
It's just that trying to avoid conflict, that just comes back to bite you in lovely, wonderful, different ways and create more conflict. It's tough, though, isn't it? That's a hard lesson to learn, to just be direct because it's scary. Like, oh, how are they going to react? What are they going to say? Even yesterday, I spent an hour composing a text message to someone of something that I wanted to talk to them about. And Alan's like, why are you not just ringing them? I was like, oh. And then I felt really embarrassed, like I'd spend an hour wasting my time. I messaged like, are you around to chat? And he said, yes. And then my heart was thumping. I was like, it was scary. And then I chatted to him and he was really nice about it. And we resolved what it was that I wanted to talk about. And I was like, oh, why did I torture myself for an hour beautifully crafting this message when the right call all along was just ring them, talk them. Actually, that was an opportunity to feel courageous. And actually, the thing that I got from it was I was scared. I did mess around a little bit and avoid doing it, but then I did do it, and I was scared, but I did it. So there's always a chance to redeem yourself. As I was saying that, I was like, that's not actually true, but I
- [50:14]
A
took that one and another one along the lines of just being honest, that I think when someone asks you to do something that sometimes the easy answer instead of no is maybe it's just about, like, people usually, almost always. And I know I. I had a conversation with my daughters about this recently because I think one of them. I don't think it was about me. I think they were saying about some other adult in their life was like, oh, anytime you say maybe, it really means no. And it's like, why can't you just be direct and say no? Because you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. Because whatever. There's always that easy answer. But you have to become okay with that because oftentimes the answer just simply is no. And it's also about your own boundaries and honoring your time and your energy. And, like, that's important, too. You don't owe anything to anybody. I think that's another thing a lot of us people pleasers fall prey to is, oh, I owe it to them. You don't owe anybody anything. You owe the world basically, like, to show up the way that you want to show up. And I don't think you owe anything to any particular person. And if it means you need to not say yes to that plan, 99 times out of 100, you got to do you. And actually, it reminds me of a book. A member of our community, a really wonderful woman named Elizabeth Andrews, wrote a book. It's a really short book, but it's really impactful. It's called 50 Ways to say no. Go to phrases to honor your boundaries and why they work. And you could probably read this book in under an hour. But it's. It's fantastic. It's like 50 of these phrases and situational things of just how to kindly but forcefully say no. And I know I needed it. I flipped through it, and I love the book. It's almost like having an investor policy statement for when things go terrible. It's like in good times, when you're not faced right there with that moment of Katie, the heart pounding and whatever, like, oh, my God, what am I going to do? Like, you have to have a couple of phrases that work for you set in your Mind, it just makes it easier. I would highly recommend that book.
- [52:14]
C
The classic version of that is always try. When you say, oh, let's go out to friends and they say, oh, I'll try and make it, you know they're not coming. Try is just a polite way of saying no, and we have to actually get used to saying no. But also on the other side, if you see someone say, I'll try, that actually is a code word or a point for you to say. Sounds like it doesn't work. Would it be better to do it another time? And you can actually hear that and do something about it yourself? So I don't think the responsibility is 100% on the person saying it. I think we can live with that and say, oh, maybe. You said maybe. Sounds like maybe it doesn't work. Is there something I can do to help you? Would it work better at a different time? You can hear those trigger words and do something about it, and then you
- [53:06]
B
can actually uncover what the reason is rather than just guessing of like, oh, they don't want to hang out with me and making it about yourself or making up a bunch of stories about what the reason is.
- [53:18]
C
Yeah, you can even make it easy for them. Like, I know things are busy, or I know this is happening, like, just tell me, and I'm happy with it because I've got plenty to do. Or I can do this. So you can make it easy for them to say no. And I think sometimes it is a benefit to make it easy for the other person to say no.
- [53:35]
A
I like it. All right, let's keep going down. So I've got another speculation one. This is mortifying, and I've never said this out loud before to literally anybody. I invested in that horrible Cathie Wood Ark Investing mutual fund. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was not insignificant. I forget exactly what it was. 10 or $20,000, maybe even a little more. But it was everything I counsel against. And this was in the choose of our year. So let's be clear, like, anybody can fall prey to this stuff. And not like I'm, you know, some infallible person by any means. But it's easy to get wrapped up in things, to get wrapped up in narratives and stories and genius and blah, blah, blah. And I know better, and I still got wrapped up in it. So luckily, this was not a catastrophic mistake. But, yeah, hopefully that's a lesson of like, okay, look, we can get caught up in speculation. We just can. And we just have to know better. It's happened to me now multiple times. I've said it just in the. In the last hour with the investing in North Carolina. And this. It's just. It really is easy. So there's no secret, there's virtually no genius. I mean, there's maybe Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and maybe a few other people over the last hundred years, but you're not going to just happen upon them. And frankly, if you've already found out that the person is wildly successful, like quote unquote, you're probably a little bit too late. So don't get caught up in wild speculative behavior is my takeaway.
- [54:55]
C
It's definitely that thing of as soon as everyone's talking about it, it's too late. So if you hear it from everyone, recently until the drop, it was gold everywhere. Everyone was talking about gold. And I just knew as soon as that happened. It's like you hear it from the people that you're just next door. You hear it from people all over the place and they're like, oh, you should invest in gold. It's doing really well. As soon as you hear that, just do the opposite. Sell all your gold.
- [55:25]
B
Do it.
- [55:26]
C
You shouldn't have any gold anyway. But that's a whole different discussion. But it's the excitement and the fervor of the general population should be a sign that you shouldn't get involved, not that you should do it.
- [55:40]
A
Yeah, agreed. All right, Alan, what's up next on your list?
- [55:43]
B
Bear your soul.
- [55:44]
C
Bear my soul. Thinking about which ones are most valuable for you who are listening. I think I created a fairly successful business. One of the mistakes I made was never building an email list. And I did years of work. I never captured people's email addresses. I never had a way to go back to the marketing. I'd never started a newsletter. I never did anything, any of that stuff. And I regret not building a mailing list from the very start of my business. And I'd love everyone to avoid that. If you're launching a business, if you're building a business, build a list. It's the most valuable thing you can build.
- [56:25]
B
I think, actually even more so nowadays when people have their followers on YouTube or their whatever. The other thing is Instagram, TikTok, I
- [56:38]
A
mean, even something as old school as our Facebook group, but keep going. Katie, I wanna. I wanna talk about that in a minute.
- [56:44]
B
Well, yeah, just that you're so fragile, aren't you? You talked about fragility earlier, Brad. You're so fragile to that platform saying, nope. And then You've got no way of contacting all those people that want to hear from you. So especially nowadays if your whole thing is on social media, to get the email addresses outside of that.
- [57:03]
A
Yeah, I would agree. I think to me, the lesson is control your business and don't outsource it to some other platform because you never know what that platform is going to be. I mean, frankly, a lot of people who built their livelihood around Twitter and then it got bought by Elon Musk, you know, who ran it into a cesspool. I mean, I know people who, yeah, had hundreds of thousands of followers there. They spent years and years and years and now they're part of a cesspool. You never know. Sadly, we're seeing a lot of these social media platforms just become run by malevolent actors. And Facebook is where we built all of our local groups. We have a choose of I Facebook group with 120,000 plus people and we have no control over that. And that was just a strategic mistake. If I put a post in, quote, unquote, my Facebook group, I'm lucky if 1% of people see it because it's an algorithm. That's not a partner. That's an antagonistic relationship. Right. Like, that's, that's crazy. So, like, why would I ever want to enrich Mark Zuckerberg of all people again? I want to stay away from malevolent actors. I don't want to enrich them. You have to build your own platform. Sadly, even today, 2026, email is the one reliable way to get in touch with people. So, Alan, I totally agree. Even in this age, you have to have a way to directly contact your customers. There are plenty of people who sell on Amazon. It's the same thing. It's like you're just looking for all these malevolent actors. Like they do everything they can, Amazon to raise fees constantly to make it impossible for you to contact your customers, quote, unquote. Because they're not your customers, they're Amazon's customers. Right. Like, let's be clear, you've built a business on the most fragile of fragile sands. It's ridiculous, but yet this is what people do. So power, right? It goes back to that. It's like try to get as much on your side of the court as you possibly can.
- [58:58]
C
Yes. And to highlight, I didn't even build on one of these platforms. I just didn't even build a list. So that's how bad my mistake was. I didn't even make that mistake. So I wanted to share that one because I think it will help people. And if I could build a second one on that. I was so scared of sales, cold calling, putting myself out there, rejection that I did not put myself out there to scale. I did not go all out when I started my business. I let fear, embarrassment, and being a scaredy cat stop me from putting myself out there. And coming back to the conversation you had with Katie about comparison and different things. If I could give everyone a sentence, the sentence I would give you is spend as much time building your confidence as you do your net worth because it is so powerful in everything you do going forwards. So just spend time building your confidence and your happiness and it will create magic in your life.
- [60:03]
A
And yeah, I think with confidence, I actually had one, which is not negotiating my salary. And I think a lot of us, a lot of us do this. We just think we should accept whatever it is because again, it's like we're getting some gift of this job. And even if you're in a position of power, if you don't know it, then you're not. And if you're not confident in yourself, then you're not. So I know when I left the big public accounting firm and went to work for one of my clients, I did wind up getting a raise from my public accounting salary. But I knew that really, in my particular case, when you work for a big public accounting firm, if you stay and become a senior manager or certainly a partner, the carrot of doing that is a massive salary. Now, at my client, I was moving for essentially a lifestyle play and I knew the top salary was capped and the only time I would get a big bump was when I moved because then otherwise I would just be getting the normal 2, 3, 4% raises. And I did get a bump, but I knew in my heart of hearts I should have asked for more and I didn't. I was just too scared and I didn't have the words for it. I think that's another thing I've picked up just from doing this podcast. For nine years. We had two incredible women on the show. Tori Dunlap was on episode 147 and financial mechanic, who was on a couple times most recently in episode 454. And they gave like very specific scripts for salary negotiation and making it a win win. And had I listened to both of them before that I would have done better. I didn't know better and I was scared. And I think practicing having these skills, having this knowledge and knowing that I should be doing this, I think I Would have made a better decision. So, yeah, that's a lot of lessons all wrapped up into one. But that was a pretty good one,
- [62:03]
C
is a fantastic one. I think what we're all saying is work on your confidence because it will have a force multiplier effect in every area of your life, whether that is playing the sport you play, asking for a raise, turning up at work happier. One of the interesting things I learned a long time ago was they did an incredible study about why people choose suppliers. And you would think people choose suppliers because of the quality of the product, because of the price of the product, all of those different things. Is it quality, is it price, is it the thing, is it timing? What do you think the number one reason was people chose a specific supplier of a product?
- [62:49]
A
I don't know, probably they liked the person they were dealing with or something.
- [62:52]
C
Yeah, the person they were dealing with was more fun. The word that came up specifically was fun. It's like, I like working with this human. They are fun to be around. And I just couldn't believe it when I heard that. But I've experienced it. People like to have calls with us because we're uplifting, because we're inspiring. They enjoy being around us. And if you could just have more fun, if you were just happier in life, people would gravitate towards you more. And it is amazing how you almost can't imagine this. Like the universe said, if you're happier and have more fun, you'll be wealthier and more successful. It's like, where's the downside?
- [63:31]
A
Yeah, really?
- [63:32]
C
Do I really have to do this? It's like, no, you can stay grumpy if you want to. You're welcome to be grumpy all you want to, but you're not going to attract all the fun and happiness around you. And when I saw that study, it just shocked me. Why am I competing on price? Why am I competing on quality? Yes, I have to have a good price. Yes, I have to have good quality. If those things are equal, they're going to choose the person that's more fun to be around.
- [64:00]
B
I was just imagining a universe where everyone in a particular industry had read that report and then they're all trying
- [64:08]
A
to outcome competing on fun.
- [64:10]
B
Showing up in a clown suit and like a. I don't know, trying to fit as many people as they can in a mini.
- [64:17]
C
It's not happened in the counting yet.
- [64:21]
A
Probably not going to.
- [64:25]
C
I had this theory that one of the most valuable gifts we could give to you was by sharing our mistakes so that you don't have to make the same mistakes that we've made over the years. That was my theory. But I want to know, I genuinely want to know. Did you enjoy the episode? Did you get value out of it? What did you think? Do you have mistakes that you're like, I want to tell the whole world about my mistakes now so I can save everyone else pain. Yeah, tell us.
- [64:52]
A
Yeah, I love that. And this is super fun. It's great when we just randomly brainstorm an idea and bring it to fruition. Right? What's fun now is in our community platform, we now have the ability to comment on these podcasts. You can always get there by just going to choose.com and then the episode number. Actually, when we're recording this, I'm getting ready to go to Japan for a couple weeks. So I'm not 100% sure which episode number this is, but it'll be something like 594, 595, etc, choose.com 594 for instance, and it'll take you right there. If you're not a member of the platform, sign up. It takes 30 seconds. You can actually join your local group. So you'll get email notifications of all the local group events, which is again going back to the getting away from Facebook and malevolent actors. You're not subject to their ridiculous algorithm. You now just get the email and it just shows up and it's really simple and you don't have to do anything else. Even if you just want to sign up 30 seconds for your local group, do it, but otherwise go to that and then leave a comment. Also leave your biggest mistake or a couple of them and we can do a follow up episode to this. I know we all have a bunch more, I suspect, and we could probably brainstorm for hours. Again, that's the fun part of making this the ultimate crowdsource personal function finance show. This is a living document. Now we have the ability to really discuss it. I know the two of you will be in there. I'll be in there. We'll be commenting on everyone's comments. That'll be a lot of fun.
- [66:20]
C
It'll be a lot of fun and I'm really excited that we can share this with everyone because it is the most valuable gift you can give helping someone to learn from your mistakes wholeheartedly.
- [66:30]
A
Agreed. All right, friends, where can people find you? I know there's multiple places, but where would you like to send people?
- [66:36]
C
If you want to read about our content and what we do, then it's rebeldonigans.com and you can see all about Rebel Finance School, the blog, and all the different things we're doing on the blog. That's kind of where we share most of what we do. We do have a mailing list as well, because I learned my lesson. And you have to build a list because you actually want to be able to communicate with people. Here's what we're doing and here's what
- [66:59]
B
the plans are and we're gearing up to run Rebel Finance School 2026. So get yourself on the mailing list and you'll be first to know when we launch.
- [67:07]
C
Sign up for that and if you're good with your finances, then tell your kids about it, because if we can save them whilst they're young, we will create an incredible impact.
- [67:17]
A
Totally agreed. And also you can get on the email list for our extraordinary events, which is great. We are probably 99% going to have one February of 2027 again here in Richmond. Yeah. If you get on that email list, you'll be the first to know when tickets go on sale.
- [67:34]
C
Yeah, we will be back to Richmond. We absolutely loved hanging out with you. It was fantastic.
- [67:39]
A
Indeed. Indeed. All right, everybody, well, hope you had fun hanging out with the three of us today and really lean into this. We really can all learn from others mistakes. We can learn from our own mistakes. And it's never catastrophic. I mean, take it from me, I've obviously passed along some catastrophic ones and I'm doing great. So that's the fun part about life, that's the fun part about the patifi, is we can pick ourselves up, we can learn from our mistakes and we can move on and we can live wonderful lives. Thanks for being part of the community and thanks for listening to the podcast.