The Meaningful Money Personal Finance Podcast

Will Rainey of Blue Tree Savings is an interesting guy with a fascinating story. He's gone from advising global insurance companies and governments on how to invest billions, to helping parents teach their kids about money. He now has a blog and company dedicating to reaching as many people on this vital subject as possible.

This season is called One Big Thing, and the idea is that I have a guest on each week and we discuss something that they're passionate about, annoyed about, or that is their specialism. I have some great guests lined up for you, starting this week with my good buddy Andy Hart from the Maven Money podcast. Andy and I are going to talk about risk. It's an important subject to say the least and it's fair to say that Andy has some strong views on the subject, as do I.

Today I want to look at where Meaningful Money has come, what's going on right now and where I want to take it. Call it a state of the nation speech for your favourite financial education channel.

Today's show is from February last year, 2020 - back when there were only rumours of something big about to go down. It was part of the Home Straight season, Season 16. The thinking is to get your ducks in a row as you approach retirement, but to be honest, it's ALWAYS good to have your ducks in a row, so even if you're in your 30s and retirement seems like miles away, there'll be something here for you.

Today's show is from May 2019 and was part of the New Accumulators season, Season 14. It's a plea to take planning seriously before diving into an investment regime which, without planning, would be just done in the abstract. Investing without purpose is crazy, aimless and will never succeed because there are no goals to measure its success against.

This week's encore episode is from September 2017 and comes from Season 7 - Life Stages. This episode focuses on the Empty Nest, a stage I'm heading towards in the next few years! This stage very often coincides with our peak earning years, so it's important both to enjoy the extra cash in the present and also to store up some serious wealth for the future.

This week's oldie-but-a-goodie is from way back in 2016 where I covered some tips on how folks who are coming to the party somewhat late can still make a big difference to their eventual retirement outcomes.

The podcast is currently on hiatus while I plan for Season 20 and also get things in place for the final launch of Meaningful Academy Retirement Planning. More on that in just a sec, but for the next few weeks I will be reviving some older episodes on various topics. This week's old show is about simplifying pensions. The episode should stand alone, but the shownotes have been updated to meaningfulmoney.tv/session425

The podcast is currently on hiatus so for the next few weeks I will be reviving some older episodes on various topics. This week's old show is about securing an income in retirement, something which has fallen out of favour a little bit since the pension freedoms of 2015. The episode should stand alone, but the shownotes have been updated to meaningfulmoney.tv/session424

Young families have lots of things to deal with. Even though my kids are 18 and 21, I still remember juggling childcare with work, making ends meet, wondering whether to move house and take on the extra mortgage. My guest today is an expert in this field, Joe Okaly of New Horizons Wealth Management in New Jersey. If you have a young family yourself or if you're a grandparent to a young family today's session will be both interesting and instructive.

In my 20-odd year career as a financial planner, I have worked with many bereaved clients who have lost spouses, partners, parents and other loved ones. Obviously, the emotional impact is profound, but this is often compounded by the additional pressure of having to go through someone's financial and other affairs to get things straight. This process is always made so much easier if the person who has died was organised beforehand. And essentially, that is what the company Once I've Gone are helping people to prepare, but I'll let Ian Dibb, Founder and CEO of the company explain more.

When I wrote the MeaningfulMoney Handbook in 2018, I wanted it to be the one book that most people would need to go from zero to hero with their personal finances. It was designed for anyone to be able to work through and to begin taking control. Today's checklist aims to condense the message of the book into less than 30 minutes - wish me luck!

Today I want to give you a framework for decision-making. Obviously the context will be financial decisions, but today's checklist will also serve in pretty much any area of life where you have big decisions to make.

As you know, I'm a big proponent of equipping people to make their own financial decisions, believing that anyone, with a bit of encouragement and know-how, can do most of their own financial planning. But there are occasions when seeking professional advice makes sense. Today, I'm going to give you a checklist for what to do BEFORE you seek advice, so that you're prepared.

We don't teach kids how money works, so when you're thinking of getting started with investing, how do you know where to start? Today I want to give you a beginner investment checklist to do just that.

Your investments, if left unchecked, can quickly get out of step with your original intentions for them, so they need to be reviewed regularly. But what does an investment review really entail? Let's find out!

Easily the number one question I get asked here at MeaningfulMoney is about finding balance in finances. It's a BIG question, but hopefully this week's checklist will help us to find that elusive financial balance.

Over the past couple of weeks we've looked at organising your paperwork and your financial life in general. That's all well and good, but now we're in good shape, we need to keep it that way and for that, we'll need an annual review checklist.

Staying on top of your personal finances can seem like a really hard work - there's just so much to do! There is always a new piece of paper or email coming in, insurance to renew, utilities to switch - it never ends! As ever though, it helps to work systematically and get things set up so that they are easy to stay on top of. Today we're going to talk about organising your financial life!

Paperwork is the bane of most of our lives, but for now it is a necessary evil. Today's checklist will help you work through your mountain of paper to make managing your finances infinitely easier.

Sometimes I just want someone to tell me exactly what steps to take to get a job done. You know - do these few steps and the outcome is a given; all the thinking taken away. The checklist is the perfect embodiment of this, and today we're talking about the pension checklist - everything you need to know and everything you need to do to get your pensions in order.

Lasting Powers of Attorney are misunderstood and most often ignored by too many of us. Often that's due to ignorance; sometimes concerns are about cost. Today I want to clear some of that up, and I've enlisted the help of just the right person…

Spending is one of the biggest levers in our control. When we're building wealth, well….we won't build wealth unless we control our spending. When we approach retirement, it's really important to understand what our likely spending patterns might be so we can plan accordingly. Today I bring back repeat guest, the ever-popular Abraham Okusanya of Timeline, who has literally written the book on retirement spending and investing called Beyond the 4% Rule (link below), and continues to do great work in this field.

There's a lot of crap online, and there seems to be an increasing number of financial charlatans offering stock tips and 'advice' with no regulatory oversight, of course. George Agan and I talk about that, and more, in our conversation today - hope you enjoy it.

It's a joy to welcome back long-time friend of the show Justin Urquhart Stewart to the podcast to talk about the outlook of the world economy coming off the back of COVID and also his latest venture, called Regionally.

Today I bring back repeat guest and protection industry legend Tom Baigrie of Lifesearch to discuss the impact of Coronavirus on insurers and whether things might return to normal. We cover whether it's arguably more important than ever for folks in their middle age to get life insurance given the disproportionate impact that Covid has had on older people.

This is the Ultimate Guide to Money & Life, which sounds very much up itself, let's face it, but is intended as a distillation of everything you need to know and do to win at money and life.

For most of us, the ideal end game is passing away peacefully in our sleep at the age of 100, having enjoyed excellent physical and mental health, never needing long-term care and with all our financial ducks in a row. Many of us would like to spend our last penny the day before we die, but many of us would also like to give some money to our family or to the causes we care about. Today I want to try and cover the vast area of estate planning, or at least the parts of it that most of us need to know and do, so that at least we're armed with some good information.

When you get to the point of retirement, there are a bewildering array of options available to you, particularly regarding pensions. In today's episode, I'll be giving you everything you need to KNOW and everything you need to DO to make good choices at retirement.

Investing in retirement is a subject of much scholarly research, strong opinions and a whole boatload of crap information. My job today is to cut through all of that and give you the stuff you really need to know and do to invest successfully in retirement.

Money is inextricably linked with our sense of wellbeing. That link is the reason for more and more research and initiatives into how to improve that relationship. Today I'm speaking with a real-life brain scientist to dig into this subject.

Risk is a constant presence in our lives and in our wealth-building efforts. But what is risk, really? How can we be aware of it? Should we avoid risk or harness it? Lots to talk about in today's Ultimate Guide to RISK.

Over the past couple of weeks, we've covered the ultimate guide to investing. We need to finish that off and talk about some of the important mechanisms of investing, the accounts we use: pensions, ISAs and all the rest!

We covered a LOT of ground last week in Part One of this Ultimate Guide. As we get practical today, I'm going to try and make this the Ultimate Guide to Investing for the masses, not the few.

Having dealt with the basics of financial management and building a sure foundation, we now need to turn our attention to the task of building wealth for the future, with the Ultimate Guide to Investing.

Hardly anyone talks about building a foundation which supports building wealth for the future. Maybe it's because talking about life insurance, critical illness cover, income protection and emergency funds isn't all that sexy? But these things are SO important, that without them, everything else we talk about can be wiped away in no time at all, so why would you leave that to chance? Today folks, it's the Ultimate Guide to Wealth Protection.

Financial Freedom comes from building wealth for the future so that one day, work is optional. But for many of us, we're not starting from zero, but from a minus figure. We have day-to-day debt on credit cards, personal loans and the like, and we need to clear that before we can start to build. This is the ultimate guide showing you how to pay off debt.

Budgeting is a fundamental skill that underpins everything else when it comes to personal finance success. In this ultimate guide, I'll teach you everything you need to know and everything you need to DO to learn how to budget effectively.

This is an important episode of the podcast, I reckon. Today I'm chatting with Ken Okorafor of The Humble Penny, one of my favourite UK Personal Finance YouTube channels and blogs. I reached out to Ken for input after the murder of George Floyd by police officers in the US, and the global outcry following it. I knew that I'd get honest and articulate responses from Ken, and that also follows for my conversation with him today.

There are an increasing number of solid content producers here in the UK talking about personal finance. This week I'm talking to one of the prime movers, Andy Webb of Be Clever With Your Cash and the Cash Chats podcast

The FIRE movement is an increasingly big deal in the UK, and I've chatted a couple of times with one of its biggest UK proponents, Barney Whiter AKA the Escape Artist, a couple of times here on the show. Today I chat with a chap who is building an app specifically to appeal to that community - Logan Leckie of Topia.

Budgeting, that is, managing day-to-day cashflow is a fundamental skill for anyone looking to improve their financial situation. Before you understand investing, leverage, and all the rest, you need to be able to spend less than you earn. Today's guest has built an international company based on his own method of budgeting, and I'm looking forward to bringing you my conversation with Jesse Mecham of You Need A Budget. Stay tuned till after the interview where I'll be announcing a competition to win one of five annual subscriptions to YNAB.

Today I have my friend Lynn Beattie AKA Mrs Mummypenny on the show to talk about rolling with life's punches, beating debt and her new book The Money Guide To Transform Your Life.

Today's show marks the end of 18 months of podcast seasons dealing with the major financial life stages. We've gone from millennial finance all the way through to retirement planning and in that time lots of common themes have come through. Today I want to tie everything together with some golden rules for personal finance.

None of us likes to think of the prospect of not being able to look after ourselves. It honestly does feel like we come full-circle, from being dependent on our parents, to being fully independent as adults, only to become dependent on others again as our health fails. Not a cheery subject for today's show! But many of you listening to this will be thinking about this already, and many more will be approaching this stage for your parents, and as much as we'd like not to think about it, we do need to be prepared for action if the time comes.

Last week we covered the basics of legacy planning, including a very high-level overview of how wills work and inheritance tax etc. The main point though was that estate planning starts with you and what you want to happen. Only once we've established that can we talk about how to navigate the system to make it happen - and we're going to cover that today…

After a life spent first building and then enjoying wealth, if there's anything left we will probably end up thinking about how best to pass that on to the next generation, or to the causes we care about. We're talking now about leaving a legacy when we're gone and the choice we make can have massive repercussions for our families - this is important!

It a sad fact of getting older that we become increasingly aware of our own mortality. And eventually, for those of us who are in a long-term relationship, we have to face the spectre of losing our partner, or of them losing us. Obviously, if we're old enough to be in retirement, then this is even more of a factor in our minds, and like everything else, we should plan for it.

Eventually, life in retirement settles into a nice rhythm. Most folks get to a point where they have everything they need - they've taken the big holidays, bought the camper van - and they find a level of balance in their daily routine. That's exactly as it should be but presents some challenges and also some opportunities…

In retirement, any mistakes you make with your finances are likely to be more costly simply because you may not have the time to undo them. I want to try and help you side-step them before they become an issue for you, and as always, that starts with awareness.