Welcome to Good Money Vibes, the podcast where millennial women in the UK transform from being bad with money to becoming financial rockstars. Are you tired of feeling lost in the world of personal finance? Do you ever think, “I’m just not good with money?” Well, fear not. You’re in the right place.
Every Thursday, we dive into the heart of money matters tailored just for you. Good Money Vibes isn’t your typical finance podcast. It’s a friendly and conversational journey into the world of money mindset, intentional spending, behavioral finance, and all things money education. I believe that being smart with money doesn’t have to be dull. It’s about understanding your financial behaviors, making purposeful decisions, and most importantly, feeling good about where your money is going. The episodes are packed with practical tips, expert insights, and relatable stories, all designed to empower you to take charge of your financial life with confidence and joy. Whether you’re sorting out your savings, tackling debt, or just curious about how to make your money work for you, Good Money Vibes is your go-to guide.
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Hello, hello lovely people. Welcome back to another episode of Good Money Vibes. I hope you’re doing well. I hope you are enjoying the summer sun if you’re listening to this in summer. Although 2024 has not been much of a summer yet, I remember this time actually was two years ago. I was going to say last year and now I realize it’s incredibly irrelevant. But two years ago it was like the heat waves. I remember vividly because at the time I was very, very pregnant and kind of like we don’t have that. But at the same time, it would be nice to maybe have more than one week of summer. Who knows?
Anyway, now that the small talk about weather is done, let’s get into it. This episode I wanted to talk to you about financial freedom. Financial freedom, I think, is again one of those buzzwords in the finance space. And also I think it feels really unachievable. What I want this episode to do is I want it to help you realize your version of financial freedom and notice that maybe it’s not that far away. Maybe it’s closer than you thought.
Typically, financial freedom, you’ll see this everywhere on the internet probably, but this thing of like financial freedom is a number or retirement isn’t an age, it’s a number. And yes, look, there is some logic in that. And I can help you work out the number. We can talk about the number. But I don’t agree. I think that’s my style of all things finance is hey, here’s this like really recognized financial principle. And then I come along with like what? I don’t agree with that. So let’s talk about what that number is and why I don’t agree that that is what financial freedom is.
Now, it’s not that I don’t agree that that is what financial freedom is. It’s that I don’t think that should be the only definition of financial freedom. The idea of financial freedom, the number, the actual principle is that you have an amount of money in your investment account that is growing at an average rate of return, let’s say 8%, and the growth, so the difference between the actual capital of what is currently invested and the growth, is enough to sustain you year on year without touching the capital. You might have heard of something called the 4% rule. Now, this is some maths. It’s based on the idea of retiring early, but it’s still based on kind of like retirement. It’s still based on this idea that your money needs to last like around 30 years nervously. Some of us might want it to last longer than that. So take everything I say with a pinch of salt. Again, I’m just trying to get into what that number actually is, and I’m not actually going to give you an exact number. Sorry, because this can be different for everyone.
But how do you work out what that number is? Essentially, you need to work out how much you want to live on per year. Now, this is one of those things where when we are retirement planning, and I do this with clients, we account for things such as what inflation is going to be like in 20, 30 years, what medical fees there might be, if you have a family history of something, if you have a condition that might require care when you get older, if you want to support family, and so on. There are so many things like are you still going to have a mortgage? Are you going to be renting? Looking at what your annual expenses need to be, not just expenses, but like how much money you want per year. For some people, it might be on the lower side of 20K and for other people, it might be on the higher side of like going up to 100K. I don’t know. And again, if you are a single person, you probably are going to want to have not more than a couple. But let’s say you’re a couple together. You might say, “Okay, I want 40K,” but a single person wouldn’t want 20K; they’d want 30K because when you’re a couple, you obviously have the ability to split and share some expenses. There’s a whole other episode that I can do on the cost of being single and all of that.
So that’s our first step, figuring out how much we actually need per year to do all the things we want to do, to go on the holidays we want to go on, to cover all our bills and expenses, to still be able to save here and there, to still maybe top up our investment accounts. Like who knows whatever that number is, that’s the first step of working that out. Then you need to work out how much, trying to work out how to explain the maths. Basically, that number needs to be 4% of your total investments. That’s really the easiest way of explaining it. Again, I’m not going to do numbers because I don’t want to confuse anyone. Your yearly expenses want to be roughly 4% of what you’ve got in an investment account.
Now, like I said, there are so many ways in which this won’t work for everyone. There’s lots of different versions of financial independence, but the idea is that once your investment account reaches that amount, if you’re withdrawing 4%, you’re only ever withdrawing the growth. You’re not touching the capital. Therefore, your investments will still grow, and they shouldn’t run out for at least 30 years. That is the idea behind the 4% rule and financial freedom, financial independence in the mathematical regard.
Now, like I said, there are different versions of financial freedom, financial independence, or FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early). There is something called barista FIRE. That’s the idea that you have enough money to support you, but you also have a part-time job. Essentially, you have a part-time job to top up that money. It means that you maybe have less than 4% being withdrawn at the moment. And there’s coast FIRE, which is if you stopped investing now and just let your investments grow until the age where you want to retire, it will have gotten to that point by the time you want to retire. So the idea is that you get a coast to your way there. I can’t think of any others off the top of my head, but they all kind of revolve around the same principle of working out the maths and the numbers.
I don’t necessarily agree with this because while I think this is a fantastic system for working out maybe my retirement plans, I don’t think financial freedom needs to be retirement. This, I think, comes up time and time again. One activity or question I like to ask my clients is: imagine 95-year-old you. What are they proud of? What can they look back on and go like, “I’m glad that was my life. I’m glad I lived like this.” What does that look like? What would you be happy and grateful to have? And that gratitude is the key.
Okay, I want you to think of this idea of enough. I have so many clients. When I ask them, “What is the fear? What are you afraid of in terms of your finances?” Nearly every single person will say, “Not having enough, running out of money.” That’s obviously what they don’t want to happen. So then I ask, “What is enough? What does enough look like?” Nine times out of ten, in fact, always, there’s never a number. There’s never a number tied to how I want my life to look like in order to feel grateful, in order to feel like I have enough. Usually, it just comes down to this idea of having some form of financial security.
And that is what I work with my clients to create through a breathing fund. Other clients like to go bigger. They like to have a “fuck off fund,” so they know that if they wanted to quit a job or leave a relationship, they have a substantial amount of money, probably around 10K, whereas for others, a 1 to 5K breathing fund would feel comfortable. I think what happens is because we’re so used to not having savings, we’re so used to maybe paying off our debt, maybe we have had savings, but then life happens and we’ve not been able to build them back up, this idea of actually running out of money becomes the biggest fear when actually that’s something really simple to fix.
And that is what I do in my coaching program Renew. We talk about healing your relationship with money. The number one thing we focus on in that program is building financial and emotional resilience around money. I want you to not think of financial freedom as a number. I want you to think of financial freedom as a feeling, as an experience. Let’s say you’ve got 5 to 10K sat in a savings account. That is your security. You have that. You now feel comfortable. You’re not worried that you’re going to run out of money any second. And you’ve built the financial resiliency, emotional resilience, so that if anything happens, you know how to prioritize, you know how to make that money last, and you know how to build that money back up. You’re not really worried about money in the sense of, “I’m not worried I can cover my bills. I’m not worried we’re going to run out of money.” You’re in a good standpoint from that point of view.
What now does financial freedom look like? Because I tell you, almost every single person that I talk to, while not every single person, a lot of people that I talk to will tell me, “Well, it’s not about retiring. It’s not about retiring early. It’s not about not working. I want to work, but I want to work on my terms. I want to work doing what I want to do. Maybe I want to work part-time. Maybe I want to work just like school hours and work around my children.”
Why don’t you bring it down to this? It seems so much closer. That’s what I want you to think of in terms of what is your version of financial freedom? Is it that actually, at age 50, I want to retire. I want to no longer work, and I want the next 10, 20 years to be filled with holidays to worldwide destinations every year. I want to know that my assets are protected. I want to know that my wealth is growing even though I’m taking these holidays. Is it that big aspirational thing? And it might be. That is completely valid. I know people live in that life and I’m aspiring to it. But also, I know that I’m a massive workaholic and I love what I do. So I’m definitely going to be one of those people where I still work.
Even the people I know that are living that lifestyle, they still have really part-time freelancer gigs that they do because they still have hobbies, right? It’s like, “Well, why not earn a little bit of money from the hobbies?” That little bit of money maybe pays for us to go to restaurants everywhere. It affords us this little bit extra.
Or does your version of financial freedom look like, “Well, okay, I want to work part-time or maybe not quite full-time, maybe 20-30 hours a week in this industry. I want to be able to spend my money on X, Y, Z.” Actually working out what that is, what is your ideal lifestyle? Because you might find that you’re so much closer. And it might not feel like it right now because you might be in that stage of, “I’ve got there. I keep overspending. I’m not in control of my money.” Maybe it does feel really unattainable, but it’s still a lot closer than thinking, “Oh my God, I need millions in an investment account.” That feels really out of reach, therefore, I’m not even going to try. It’s so much closer.
Okay, now I hope that if you’re listening to this, you have a pension. Because if you don’t, we need to talk. If you have a pension, you’re already investing. I want you to just have that knowledge that you’re already investing. Your money is already working for you. I don’t want you to worry too much. Yes, there are other things that we can do, and I would love to work with you to help you figure out how much money you actually need and build a plan to get there. But I want you to not worry too much about the long, long term right this very second. I want you to think about what financial safety and security look like for you. That’s your first goal.
Now, if you’ve already gotten there and you’re feeling a bit lost, like what’s the next goal? That’s when I want you to think about, “What is my ideal lifestyle and what do I want my life to look like?” The next stage after that is retirement. Let’s say we’re living my ideal lifestyle. It’s pretty comfortable. I’m good here. The next stage would then be looking at retirement, whether that’s retiring early or retiring in your 60s, whatever that is.
I will say one thing on the numbers thing and retiring early. I want you to get rid of this notion that the state pension age is the age at which you retire. This is one of those things I definitely grew up thinking that whatever the state pension age is, that is the age you can retire. Now for some people in my family, that is true. In fact, for some people in my family, I don’t actually think they’ll be able to retire because of how they manage their money. But if you do learn to manage your money, there’s nothing to say that you can’t retire earlier than that because the age you get your state pension is literally just the state pension. When you’re doing your retirement calculations, do not include the state pension. We want the state pension to be a nice little extra if it’s still around when we get there and not a guarantee because there’s just no point. It would be much better off being an extra than it being a guarantee.
Here, pensions obviously have all sorts of rules around them about when and how you can access them. That’s a whole other episode. Whatever the state pension age is, currently I think it’s 65 at the moment, due to go up to 67 within the next few years, 65 at the moment minus ten years, that’s when you can access your workplace and your private pensions. Even just knowing that changes the ballgame from, “Oh my God, I have to be 65,” to, “Actually, I could be 55 and I can access that pension.” I want you to take away the notion that state pension age is the age you have to retire because that is absolutely not and should not be the benchmark.
I hope this has been useful. I would love to talk to you just briefly about how you can work with me at each stage of that journey because I have a very exciting announcement about a new program that is coming out. Let’s say you’re in that first stage of, “I don’t feel like I’m in control of my money. I feel like I have a bad relationship with money. I’m bad with money. I struggle to build savings. Maybe I have debts. I’m earning good money, but it’s just not happening. I just don’t know what to do. I feel so lost. I’m just going in these cycles of debt and this, that, and the other, and I just want that financial security you were talking about.” That is where my Renew coaching program comes in.
Renew is what I like to call my money healing journey. It’s three months of 1-to-1, but it often goes on longer. It’s a call every other week with support via an app called Voxer, which is a bit like WhatsApp, in between that time. What tends to happen is people do the program for a month and a half or two months and it kind of clicks. We’ve maybe even started building some savings. We’ve stopped using debt. We’re out of those negative cycles. Then people like to go, “Well, I don’t need a call every week; I need a call every month.” That’s what I mean by it takes longer. It’s not that it takes people longer to actually achieve that goal. They actually achieve it way faster. But they just want that extra support when things come up. And I think that’s really important because I do have an intensive offering, and that is really good for if you feel like you’re okay-ish with money but you just need someone to come in and be like, “Okay, how do I actually do the thing? How do I actually work this out to get it to work?” It’s more like mentorship with building your money systems and a little bit around money mindset. Renew is definitely more focused on your relationship with money.
If you’re a business owner, I have a different program called Cashflow Confident, which essentially does the same thing but we’re working with your business finances and your personal finances. But what I wanted to talk to you about is, let’s say you’ve got to that point where maybe you have paid off your debt or you are paying off your debt and you’re going to be debt-free very soon. Maybe you’ve got a breathing fund set up and you’re feeling like your relationship with money is in a relatively okay space. I don’t think it’s ever going to be perfect. I don’t think anyone has a perfect relationship with money. But let’s say you’re at that point. This is where my new program, Bloom Your Wealth, comes in.
I’m so excited for Bloom. I honestly think it’s going to be amazing. It is a six-month hybrid program. What that means is there’s going to be a curriculum for you to follow so you can actually learn what you need to do in order to grow wealth. This is all about getting you to that next stage. This is all about helping you build the ideal lifestyle and actually work out the maths to get you there and the systems to get you there. And then also looking into the future, how can we build up a resilient retirement plan and make sure that our investments are working hard in a sustainable way?
The six months of curriculum include a call every other week. You do not need to attend this call live. It’s all recorded and it will all go on a portal. So if you kind of want to just do that in your own time or if you can’t attend the calls because they will be on a Monday morning, absolutely no stress at all. That’s the first step – the curriculum.
You’ll also get monthly 1-to-1 coaching. So have a call every month to talk about the stuff that has been in the curriculum that month and also work out your financial systems, make sure that’s all working for you. Any mindset wobbles that are going on because this is going to be a big thing. If you have recently gotten in control of your finances and you’ve never been around wealth, your nervous system, your brain, isn’t going to know what to do with wealth. It’s probably going to self-sabotage. It’s probably going to want to push away the notion of wealth because that feels unsafe. That’s why I’ve included 1-to-1 coaching because I want you to build that safety around your relationship with money and your mindset around money.
It’s also monthly group coaching, so just more chance to come and talk to me, talk to the group, what you’re struggling with, your wins. I really want it to be a community vibe, which is why I call it curriculum, coaching, and community. The fourth aspect is there’s going to be an online community where we can share our wins, chat about what’s going on with the curriculum, and so on.
The idea of it being six months is because I want you to take incredible action during that time. I don’t want this to be like a masterclass or a book or a short course that you take on how to start investing, how to work out your retirement, how to do XYZ with your money, and then not actually take action on it. The reason why it’s six months is because I want you, at the end of that program, to have a diversified investment portfolio and understand what that actually means. You have a retirement plan that you are actively working towards, and your next big financial goal isn’t just on the vision board, it is on your calendar. Those are the three things that I want you to have at the end of those six months. Therefore, in that time together, and the reason why it’s not just curriculum, the coaching as well, is because I want you to take action every single week towards your goals. You’re going to have my support throughout that entire six months to help you get there. I can help you make your first investment. I can help you work out what your retirement goal needs to be. I can help you work out all these plans. I can help you work through the mindset shift.
If this sounds like something you’re going to be interested in, then I will put it in the show notes on wherever you listen to this, Spotify, Apple. In the description, I’ll put a link to the program. It is currently in waitlist mode, so doors are going to open on the 1st of August, and the program actually starts on the 2nd of September. Like I said, I don’t want you to look at the dates of the curriculum and think, “I can’t attend any of them. Therefore, I’m not going to go.” Honestly, the fact that I’m recording it live is just a bonus. As long as you can catch up maybe in the week, I really do want it to be fully flexible and fit around your lifestyle.
The calls are subject to change based on what more people can make. I’ve put at the moment that the monthly group coaching call will be on the first Monday of the month in the evening. But if, let’s say, five people join and five people can’t make that, I will absolutely look to change that. So if that’s something you’re worried about, please do just pop me a message. The link is going to be in the description, or you can head to emilynutley.co.uk. Bloom does open on the first, but if you join the waitlist today and you get on the waitlist, you will have a cheeky little backdoor entry on the 25th of July. And what you also get with that is the super early bird price. The full price of this program is going to be £2,447, but if you join the Super Early Bird, it’s £1,871. I just pulled that number out of thin air. There was maths involved when I was pricing, but basically, if you join the waitlist and you join between the 25th of July and the 1st of August, you will save over £500 on the program. So if this is something that you’re like, “I need to do this,” and you want to be one of the first people in, one of the first people to ever do this program, then make sure you’re on the waitlist.
This has been lovely. I definitely need to do more around financial freedom and all of those fun things. Like I say at the end of every episode, if there is anything you want me to talk about on the podcast, any topics you want me to cover, please do pop me an email or a DM. Just let me know because any chance to talk about money, I’m here for it basically. Hopefully, I will see you inside of Bloom Your Wealth. Or if you want to get in touch about one of my other programs, please do. All the information is on my website, emilynutley.co.uk. I hope you have a fantastic week, month, and life, and I will speak to you soon. Bye!
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