The Problem With Saving For Retirement: Damien Talks Money

It's the biggest form of robbery that we've seen in the western world of the last 20 to 30 years. It's taxation by stealth. If you're a high-rate taxpayer, that meant something. And if you were running a hundred grand a year, you were minted. What we would call working class jobs are now high-rate taxpayers and people are struggling because that hundred K a year should have risen with evinflation and it should be 160 K a year before you hit that tax bracket. Damien Jordan is a YouTuber and podcaster helping the world understand personal finance. James and Damien discuss why tax quietly kills wealth. If crypto is a Ponzi scheme and. The problem with invest. If you've got kids, I think it's two kids. You lose the credits and the childcare allowance, which means your marginal tax rate shoots up to thousands of percent. So actually, someone with a couple of kids with a hundred grand income is better staying at that point than getting a pay rise, which is mental. I just can't understand that. Yeah, no one can. The problem is that when these changes get brought in, they affect a very small amount of people. And then over time, more and more people get dragged into them because of the fiscal drag. And then the tax revenue becomes so significant that the politicians just can't get rid of it. One example I could give to you recently in the UK is this mansion tax. So. It's at this very moment here that I could have got thousands of pounds to sit here and promote a green spot or that doesn't do anything. But instead, I decided to pay for every aspect of this podcast myself and just ask you that if you're in the UK, USA, UAE, to please try and get a can of Nutonic. Australia, we're coming incredibly soon. We're in the manufacturing process. And for any of you that can, please do try our Nutonic Creasing sticks. They are the shit. Unitesinutonic.com, see what's available to you. And I will let you know, get back to the episode. David, what's the problem with money? I knew you were going to ask me this question and I've been trying to think about how to answer it for the last couple of days because there's quite a lot of problems with money. We could talk about inequality. We could talk about national debt. There's so many issues around this topic of money, but I think the thing that I specialise in and that I want to focus on is more around personal finance. And I don't want to start too negative. I do want to spread a bit of optimism and say that we can sort this out. But I think the biggest issue that I see is in little under a generation the way in which people approach personal finances has completely shifted. And what you have is households where at the top end of the demographic are people that went through the financial system in one way and now you have a need for a completely different way from the people who are, you know, their grandkids, their kids. If I could give you an example, the pension system. So globally they operate differently, but they all face a similar problem in the sense of in one generation we've moved the responsibility away from businesses to provide for people's retirements to the individual. And I don't think that people really understand what that means. If I give you an example in the UK, 90% of people don't log onto their pension. 60% of people in the UK think the state pension should be enough to live off, even though it's never been designed to be that. It gives you 20% of your income. But across the retirement landscape people aren't engaged, they're not paying attention, they're not saving enough. And this is an issue that applies across the Western world, maybe down under where you are, you've solved it a bit better, but I still think there's issues with the super from what I hear, but I don't know the system that well. It's crazy to say that because I've gone on this journey where when I was younger, I just didn't really care. You're in your 20s, and you think I'd do with this when I'm older, and then before you realize you're in your mid 30s, and just there and down the barrel of a completely different perspective, feel like when you look back on yourselves, when you're younger, how much you used to drink, when you're young, you're older, me would deal with that. And in my head, I think when I was growing up, I thought you go to work, you have a job, then when you've retired, you're just taking care of. As long as you do enough work before you retire, then your pension, but I never really thought of it state, business, investments would take care of it. But now all the discourse online seems to talk about investments, ETFs, index funds. And the last few years, I've been thinking to myself, oh, people or some people have signed to wake up to the fact that it's not just work, stop working, it's work, live within your means, have a surplus of money, and then put it in the right place, because another thing I've only really gone down the rabbit hole of the last few years is the devaluing of money. And the example of this that kind of messes with my head still, I wouldn't mind some clarity on it is, everyone celebrates their house going up in value. Everyone said, yeah, cool, my house went up 10% last year. And I'm like, yeah, cool, but so did all the houses that you want to move into. So any, and if you want to go up and keep up with the Joneses, you want to move into a house that's twice as expensive, that 10% you gained isn't going to cover the 10% increase that also gained in the other house. So there's these weird worlds we live in where people seem to use our homes and investment vehicle, but then it doesn't really equate if they want to move. There's just so much going on, where we're just not taught any of this at school, how we learn so much about, I remember learning medicine through time in history. I still remember that, but not once was I taught about interest rates, devaluing of money, the gold standard, all of these things. So, where do people begin? - So, I bet you could tell me who, and Henry VIII's wives as well, right? - I'm bleeding. - I'm glad he died, yeah, all these stuff. So, I think why do we invest? I think it's a really good question. My financial markets risk manager, lecturer at university used to define it as the sacrifice of consumption today for the hope of greater consumption tomorrow. But I think there's two compelling reasons that you just touched on now about why we invest. The first one, I kind of love thinking about it in this way. Every single person is born a millionaire, in a sense that within them, they have millions of pounds worth of labor to come across their lifetime. So, at 18, an 18-year-old is worth, potentially a few million quid through working through a normal job across a lifetime. If you were to do like a balance sheet or calculate their net worth, you would list them as a depreciating asset, essentially, this will have two million quid and every year they're gonna drain a bit of that down. And obviously, it varies per person that amount and we're a little bit uncertain about what that amount will be. But, their labor is finite. It will go to zero. At some point, they will not be able to work. And over that lifetime, they need to have built up a part of assets that can support them at the point they can't work. So, they need to convert their labor into assets. So, when their labor runs out, the assets will carry their ass, basically. That's one reason we invest. People call it retirement financial freedom. I just label it really as the point that you no longer need to rely on your labor, your work to support yourself. The second point is inflation, which you hit on. So, this is the, I mean, people call it all different things, but I would just say this, the destruction of purchasing power over time. If you look in 1209, I think it was, a pound then would buy you what 5,000 pounds does today. So, this is a persistent force that's eaten away at the value of money over time. And what people don't realize is, if they don't outrun that, they get poorer in real terms. So, some ways that we see that manifest themselves, like you said, with the housing stock. People go, "Oh, my house price has gone up 5%, but if inflation has been 5%, it's done nothing." And what people don't realize is in the UK, the median house, the average house, I can't speak for the whole housing market at once, but it's certainly London. They've had a massive housing crash, because house prices in London haven't moved, but inflation has averaged, say, 20% over the period in total. So, those house prices have gone backwards in real terms. If I put 100,000 pounds in a bank account, and it generated no interest, and inflation was 20% over the period, you've lost that value, that purchasing power, it's the exact same with the bricks. It's just not in a bank account, it's money in bricks. So, we have to outrun that inflation, and the stock market in particular has a long track record over 100 years of performing a producing real returns, which is just the way we describe a return minus the rate of inflation. So, when we talk about investing, people can say that the markets or different places you invest, you could get seven, eight, nine percent back. And that sounds great, but then I factor into that, okay, what amount of that is inflation? And then even if you were to say it was a third or a half, I'd then think, well, I've still got to pay tax on that. So, those people saying, "Oh, put it in an ETF for an index fund, "you're going to get nine percent back a year." Those numbers aren't quite accurate, or is that a misinterpretation? - No, I think you spot on. So, I think the people who sit there and say, the stock market's average 10% a year for 100 years are telling kind of like a half truth, and it can be a bit misleading. If you bang that number into a compound interest calculator, which will try and help you estimate what the value might be in the future, it's going to look very flattering. So, the gold standard of research on this is Dimpson Martian Staunton. They produce an annual book, almost hundreds of pages, on stock market returns across the globe. And TLDR is, it's around 5% after you strip out inflation for the last 100 years. But that doesn't, we've had a pretty good 100 years. The America's been on an absolute tear. So, you know, conservatively, a financial advisor would work out the return at 4%. So, what they know then is that the number that it spits out at the end is inflation protected. You'll probably have more money than that when you get to retirement. But it's not, it's not increases in purchase in power. It's like your Mars bar getting smaller kind of effect if you want like a visual representation of inflation. So, I would say work out on 4%, 5%. And then you know the number at the end is actual wealth, not just inflationary wealth. And then in terms of your tax point, most, most markets, Western markets have tax efficient accounts. In the UK, we have ISIS and pensions. In America, you have a rough IRAs. These, the most places have some form of tax efficient account that allows you to shelter your money from taxation. So, use those because arguably avoiding taxes, the main reason we invest, not the growth. Because in the UK, I can dodge 40%, 45% tax by putting money into a pension say. And the tax is on again. So, typically you can grow the investment value and you won't be taxed on that investment value until the point you liquidate it. So, you know, you invest in for your retirement down the line and you might be viewing the taxable position today thinking, "God, if I locked in those gains now, "I'd be getting rinsed." But you'd be thinking about this from a point where the only income you have is that income, that retirement income. And you're drawing down and taking advantage of any tax to allowances and bans and things that you've got. So, I would try to just think of the tax in the sense of use tax efficient accounts, but don't think about the tax too much because it's like Maniana, Maniana in that sense. - So then people would let's say, they've had a first year and they've got a bonus from their boss. The city on that money, let's say they get the money, they've paid off their bills, they might stick it in a savings account. Well, they might just put it into their bank account, hold onto it. Really, every day that they're not doing anything with it, there's an opportunity cost and actually a real cost to that because of the fact we're devaluing money. Now, I've gone on my own little tangents online, looking into the gold standard. So, I'm not right and believe in that previously, money was tied to a fixated amount of gold that was made. But now, we're in a world where banks can create money. And is it true that when banks give you a mortgage, it's not actually an allocation of funds, they're kind of just creating money out of thin air. And what's the truth with all this stuff we see online? And banks are printing the money. They're creating it at such a rate that if you leave it in your bank account, it's devaluing. What is the fact from fiction on this? Well, so I think there's almost two separate points, right? So the inflationary number was invented off on the cough by a guy an economist in New Zealand who basically just said, oh, yeah, 2% inflation should be pretty good. And we've all just latched onto it. And the core idea that they would argue is, you want to devalue people's money over time slowly so that they spend it. It kind of encourages people to spend into the economy. People will disagree with that, they won't agree. But this is the logic, right? The gold standard was this idea that we pinned the value of money to gold. And you can see it on the notes. There's the tradition of this belief that it was pinned to something real is on there. Now it's just a trust-based system. In the sense that we all money has value because we all believe it has value. But then when they remove the gold standard, so the UK removed it early in the century. And I think it was Nixon got rid of it in America. I mean, think of how big our economy is and how much gold we would need to have every bit of currency linked to the gold. It would be a bit ridiculous if every penny, or every pound in the dollar in the world was linked to real gold. There's probably not enough gold there. And what you see is they were whittling it down anyway, so they were edging us away from the gold standard. We do create money. We create it through the issuance of bonds, which are like government debt. And this is probably the inflation that people speak of. Yeah, the best example that we have of this and the best example I think of inflation is the recent period we had with the quantitative easing that we saw through the COVID period. Everybody stayed at home in the UK, in lockdowns. And the way we pay through that was the creation of money. That money was slushed into the system and the repercussions where we had massive spikes in inflation. Because what we essentially did was we created more of the same thing chasing the same amount of goods, which means everything becomes more expensive. It's a really convoluted and hard way to explain it, because it's not a simple system. But people are pretty spot on in the sense of governments have created shit loads of money in the last few years. And we see that through the debt balances that exist on countries now. And one of the core ways that people are, or people are getting taxed, is that through inflation, people's wages should rise. As things become more expensive, we should see an increase in wages. Also, am I right in thinking the wages need to rise in line with, so they need to, yeah, sorry, they need to rise with inflation. But then the tax brackets to go with those should also rise. Because if you're going to have a fair system of saying, OK, you guys are at 40%, you guys are at 45%. You guys are going to go this after a certain amount of money. If the purchasing power of that money has diminished and the property prices and the loaf of bread and the first-class stamp have all gone up, if wages do increase and money gets devalued and those tax rates stay the same, it's almost as if they're getting lowered over time. Yeah, so what you're hinting at there is something called fiscal drag. And it's the biggest form of robbery that we've seen in the Western world, I would say, of the last 20 to 30 years. So this freezing of the tax bans, and then telling the population of your country that you're not increasing taxation on them is just an outright lie. The Rucker-wise amendment was something in the 1970s in the UK government where they basically wrote into legislation that you couldn't do this because they called it dishonest. They basically said, you're lying to people, if you say to them, we're not taxing you more, but we're freezing your tax bans. If you only need to look at the amount of people that pay higher-rate tax bans in the UK now and the types of jobs that pay them, I mean, I don't want to show your age, mate, but I think when we were kids, if you were a higher-rate tax payer, that meant something, it meant you were doing well in life. And if you were only 100 grand a year, holy shit, you were minted. Now that's a lot of it. Might as well have a black remix. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas now, quite a large proportion of nurses, I think 10% of nurses are higher-rate tax payers, it's set to really ramp up teachers are, what we would call working class jobs are now higher-rate tax payers and people are struggling. And this is how you kind of get that perverse thing of people going, I own 100K a year and I'm struggling because that 100K a year should have risen with an inflation and it should be 160K a year before you hit that tax bracket. I think the higher-rate tax ban in the UK should be closer to 70-80K, depending on how you measure it. So by holding them there, they've raised billions extra, the freezes that really soon are in the UK announced. Again, I'm sorry, I know you've got an international audience, but this will apply across the Western world. But in our country, that was an extra 40 billion of tax rises without moving any bands. And we've just had an extension that are gonna bring in an extra 15 billion. So you're talking thousands of pounds per adult. I think it's about one and a half thousand pounds for every working adult off the top of my head. But obviously it's, if you're a higher-rate tax payer, it hits you harder. I worked out for me. It's about six grand a year. I'm down through fiscal drag. - So, I'm glad that you've got the complex terms for what the things are in my head. So in Australia, we've probably got 60% of this audiences in the UK. So Eric and the majority of listeners are there, so it's applicable. But in Australia, being here over the last few years, I always thought Australia was a crazy place for tax. Our top-rate of tax is about 47%. It's 45 plus you've got a 2% Medicare lever. But the healthcare is incredible, so absolutely fine. But then, on looking into it a little bit closer, I've realized the UK is much worse for tax. So for instance, in Australia, when I mentioned about inheritance tax, they're like what? You work your whole life, pay taxes and property to then have to pay tax when you sell it, but yeah, isn't that quite normal? Then I thought, oh, but in Australia, what's really evil is they have a luxury car tax. So after a certain amount of money that you wanna spend on a car, you then have to pay per dollar, cents on each dollar, as a tax just for buying a nice car. So last year, I went, - That hurts you, doesn't it? - I know you got that nice car, mate. - But then I got an Audi RS Q8 and I'm going through the maths and I then break you down. I'm like, hold on, this actually works out the exact same price as what it would cost in the UK. And I realized the dealership, the guy said to me, well, they pay VAT the whole way up, 20%, where you pay GST here, which is 10%. So it worked out the exact same because GST is our 10% equivalent. And when I go back to the UK now on a CVAT, 20% slaps on top of goods and purchases. I think to myself, that's abhorrent. 20% on top of something that you're gonna pay for. So then we have franking credits here. So when you pull dividends from a business, there's no double taxation. There's all these kind of incentives that are pretty in place for the high tax bracket. But when I look at the UK tax system and the amount of tax that people are paying, some of the policies seem abhorrent, so much, so crazy. Yeah, well, I think the issue is right. The politicians in the UK will hide behind the general public's naivety to what they're actually taxed in the sense that if I go out into the street and I ask someone what their tax rate is, they will quote their marginal tax ban. They'll say, oh, 20% 40%, 45%. They're not including national insurance in that. They then don't fact to win the fact that there's got VAT and every purchase on council tax and the layers of taxation. I mean, for me as a limited company director, I have corporation tax, which people would say is not me because it's the business, but I feel that when you leave my bank account, I'm gonna have to pull it out and I have to pay dividend tax and things on this. So the tax rate that I pay is pretty high before I then even start consuming. I wanna push on one point that you said there. You spoke about inheritance tax and how people think that it's kind of unjust that you work all your life, you pay all your tax and then you get taxed again on your inheritance. But show me a tax that isn't a double tax. Like, I don't know why people pull out inheritance tax and go, oh, we shouldn't be taxed twice. You're paying your council tax, your property tax is on taxed income already. So inheritance tax isn't special in that sense. And also, you're dead. Like, why do you care? Like, it's going to your kids and at the point in your kids receive it, is that not income? Is that not income at that point? - I'll tell you what, there's a property where they were I grew up, without giving away with my parents there. There was these beautiful fields and they used for sport and I grew up there as a kid and I used to walk my dog there one time. I remember walking across these fields. First girl I ever asked out of my life was in these beautiful fields. I used to go there for a run every day of my dog. He was now dead and now he's still listening to Lincoln Park with me to your, it's my favorite place in the world. And I've gone back and since it's been converted to landfill because one of the owners had a sudden death and hadn't got inheritance tax. Sorry, I hadn't set up a family trust properly. So they were slapped with millions of pounds of inheritance tax and the only way they could pay it was to turn these beautiful fields into landfill. So for me, I feel it's not even my property. It's just where I used to walk dog. So for me, they're kind of sting that imagine someone knocking on your door, oh, sorry, your parents are dead, also cough up a few million. For obviously the people were very fortunate in this position. Obviously, there should have been things in place. But for me, it's almost like we do have this message out there, tax the rich, tax the rich or there's the wealth tax. I'm very interested to know what your ideas are. Some of these proposed plans coming forward in the UK. But like you just said, someone out there called Dave, let's say, he's paid corp tax, so that's 25%. And you have to win that money as a business to have it. It's not like he just magically appeared. So Damien has to win over a hundred pounds. They say of which not all of its profit, of which is profit corp tax is gone. So you've had the cost of operating a business, then you've got your corp tax, although you could say to duck that from it because it's profitability, then you've got a personal income tax then you've got VAT, then you've got all of those things in your life, like your coffee, your food, your electricity bills, your council tax, all of those things. To then have money left over as a surplus, to then invest it in assets. They go, oh, you want to buy a house, perfect, stamp duty, then you buy the house, then you've got the upkeep of the house, then you've got the rates and all of that on the asset that you bought. So I kind of feel like you've been dwindled so much of your money that, you know, if you were to die, for me it seems unjust to implement another tax. For instance, exactly what you say there, but in Australia, I believe they allow you to pass it down free of charge. You can sell it. And if you sell it, you don't pay any capital gains. However, if you hold the property for more than two years, then you sell it you do. So the government, I believe, give you two years to determine whether or not it's going to be something you sell, something you live in. But if you have it for more than two years, it becomes an asset. And then if you sell it, you're going to get capital gains. Would you say that's fairer or more ridiculous way of doing it? No, no, no, it's fine. I mean, these systems are complicated and they're hard to just come off the dome. And this is part of the problem with it all. Like, for example, I think only 4% of the states in the UK actually pay inheritance tax, but yeah, every man and his dog moans about it, even though they'll never pay it, because you get allowances in the UK as well, which can total up to a million quid if it's the home and things. So most normal people listening, this is not a tax that they pay. But over time, because of the fiscal drag point we talked about before, because they're not increasing these allowances with indexation and because they've included pensions now in the mix, more people will pay it. But yeah, it's it's the most hated tax after beer tax. But everybody pays beer tax, not everybody pays inheritance tax. I think it's just like an ideological standard. Like, that's my money, I should be able to give it to my kids. I'm not here arguing for inheritance tax. I'm I just want to create like the pushbacks for you so that the audience can think. And the one thing I'd say is let's say you bought a house in London in the 80s and you're just a teacher. And for I just pure luck, you bought a house in Mayfair or Central London for 40, 50 grand and it's worth 4 million quid today. Where the point you die, when has that game been taxed? You've made that all that money for what? And you've not made that money, you've not increased the price of the house. What's actually increased the price of the house is the productive output and the ingenuity of the population of the country you live in and the taxes they pay. And the security provided in ownership structures, in the rule of law, in just the miracle that is London, because you could have bought one in Zimbabwe and it might not have done the same thing right or, you know, wherever it was in the world. So should that gain not be taxed? That's sort of that's a brilliant answer. You raise a very good point. I didn't know it's 4% and you've put me in my place with that. I'm not accepted to that. I could be potentially wrong on this. Now, I want to get into Henry's high earners, not rich yet. But before that, I want to put my, I want permissions put my team full heart on. So there's housing prices of rocketing through the roof. There's not been an abundance of wealth, seeking, making, entrepreneurialism in the UK. So the majority of people use their homes as an investment vessel, let's say, maybe paid only mortgage over 30 years and you can go sell, downsize, have some capital that way. That's kind of the gold standard for a lot of people. Now, there's always been this issue. So many politicians come in this, they were going to build this many houses. Now, my, my team for hat comes on thinking the banks and the government are kind of in bed with each other. The government say we need to build 3 million houses and the banks are probably the end, by the way, I've got no evidence about this, what's in for hat. The banks say, oh, don't build more houses, why is that? Well, because if you build more supply, the cost of a house will go down. And of course, the house goes down. We can't lend people so much money to get on the property ladder in the first place. Now, only that they say to the government back, if you devalue properties, you might put someone in a negative equity balance or you might even, you know, if someone's house isn't going up, they'll be outraged. They'll be, you know, they'll be out in the street. They'll be prepared in signs round, you know, want the government out. Is there any collusion with it? Is it genuinely just a lack of labor? Or do you think that there is this commodity finite amount of demand? And there is people that benefit and make huge amounts of money out of there being not enough houses? Because why is it that the UK don't build enough houses? Why is it, it happens, or why is this happening everywhere? The biggest vote in block in any population tends to be the homeowners, the OAPs. They turn up on force. If you piss them off, you lose the election. So there's this conflict in desire to appease to the largest vote in base who are homeowners. I don't want to say wealthy, but tend to be the wealthiest within the economy versus the needs of the first time buyers who unfortunately don't vote, you know, they don't, they don't turn up to say they're not represented in that sense. And I also think there's like, so in the UK, the politician struggle to be honest with the public and say, "We struggle to build homes because all the Polish builders that were amazing left because you voted for Brexit." So I think there's like the supply side issues, there's the issues around building their homes, the cost. I know guys who buy houses in Wigan, which is a north-western town. And the price they buy them for is cheaper than what it is to build them. So you've got a real issue there. How are you meant to create supply in an area like that, where if you build the house, you've instantly got to take a hair cut basically in terms of, you know, it costs 200 grand to build it, 150 grand, it's worth on paper, who's going to build that? And then you've got issues with land in the sense of lots of these house builders are sat on large banks of land, because it suits them to drip feed it into the market, because why would they just dump a million homes on the market? And then you've also got ridiculous planning laws across the world. I don't know what they're like in Australia, but the Nimbis have a lot of power. One person can hold up a massive development. If you go to China, they'll just bulldoze your house, they don't give a crap. You know, they build these motorways in months, it seems. Whereas in the UK, we'll spend hundreds of millions fighting people who are talking about the conservation of a slug species or a bat. You know, like true story. So I think the Thames Valley crossing in the UK costs 138 million in planning, whereas the longest tunnel in the world, which is in Norway, I believe, which is not a cheap country, costs less than the planning application to build. So that's a problem. And it is to compete in factors. Yeah, that's so true. This is why so I knew it'd be so interesting to talk to you about these things. The housing one seems like a big one, interestingly, one of the next episodes on to release a guy on talking about birth rates and why we're not having enough kids. And I said, ah, housing, and he goes, well, there's loads of houses in Scotland, they're not having kids, I went on money. He goes, well, in third world countries, they're having loads of kids, everything I had to say to him about why we weren't having kids. He was like, no, it's just, it's not true. There's a common belief that there's the reality behind it. As you'll notice, I don't promote any other people's crap in this podcast, only Wayne stuff. But if you're out there running a small business and you want to use social media to make money online, it's what I've spent the last 10 years doing. And now teach other people how to do it. If you head to my website, Jamesmith.business, you can see what I've got an offer for you. Even this very podcast is a means of remarketing my businesses. This is what probably have the most expertise in. So one more time that's Jamesmith.business head to the website. See how I can help back to the episode. So if we go back to the, the demographics, the demographics issue. This is what I was talking about before with the retirement piece, sorry to interrupt you may. But we got an age in population where the population triangle is going like this. So you got all these people at the top that enter in retirement. And what that means is they want state pension and they want the NHS services and the block of people that pay for those services below them is getting thinner and thinner, which means it's called the dependency ratio. So this is how many people are worker supports in the past when these systems were designed. You had 10 workers for every one person retired. It's now getting to like three. So three workers for every person retired and the cost of maintaining these people. I'm being a bit blunt here and I don't, I don't want to use words I maintain and sustain when I'm talking about your grandma, right? But keeping your grandma alive is expensive because she'll sit in a hospice for 10 years or a care home or whatever. So this is the big challenge that Western economies face. Look at France, they spend 12% of their total GDP on their state pension allocation. And anytime they try and tweak it, the 20 year olds riot because they're like, I want to retire at 60. They don't realize that that system will collapse if they, if they don't change it. They're saying, well, one of the other people I spoke to said that we're going to have to raise the pension age. They're similar to the tax brackets you spoke about as the world changes and the economy changes. We're also going to have to people are living longer. So maybe when the first pension was introduced 100 years ago, may not be 100 years, people might have been dying at 70. Now they're living to 85. So you've not only got a larger cohort of people, they're now living for longer. And as technology improves and increases the average lifespan, that's got to be considered. I like the Jimmy car the other day said, no taxes in your 20s, no taxes after in your 60s, which to me sounded great because it might get people going back to work when they're slightly older. And it might incentivize people to work more. But like you say, that cohort of retired people on state pensions is going to be a bit of an issue now, before I ask you what you think about Jimmy car sentiment of that. I remember hearing it sounded morbid at the time, but it was a tribe. It might have been in Papua New Guinea or somewhere in the world that was still living in old and ways. And they said in the tribe, the old people would always fall behind a little bit when they were moving around. And the youngsters would eventually come behind them and put an axe in the back of their head. And it was when they couldn't keep up with the tribe. And the old people wouldn't flinch because they once had to put the axe and someone's head when they were younger. And it was just a right a passage. It was just, okay, if you can't keep up with the tribe, that's it. We're going to take care of you. But it wasn't seen as like a sad thing. It was just seen as the right a passage of how you go through it. I'm not saying that we kill pensioners. I'm not. Sounds like you aren't mate. Back in the day, back in the head, back in the day, they had a system. Now, I'm just saying maybe we relax some youth in Asian laws. You know, maybe we are looking at that, aren't we? And I spoke to someone an economist who said he thinks in 20 to 30 years, it'll be seen as morally apparent to live past like 80 because you're such a drain. Now, one thing that like one thing I want to talk about in terms of life expectancy, just while we're on it, people throw out this kind of longevity staff, or we're all living longer. But let's look at two things. Let's look at what is the quality of that life like. So if you raise the state pension age, and the average American has 9.9 year, golden years. So they retire and they have about 10 years of like golf courses and, you know, Malibu and all that before they can't, they don't want to leave the house and they can't move. So that retirement is quite short. Then they have about 10 to 15 years of just basically being kept alive by drugs and being agrofobic and not wanting to leave the house. When we say longevity, what we need to look at is like quality of life in retirement. Because if we keep shifting the state pension age or the retirement age up, what you do in people to do is work their whole life and then just sit in their house on medical care. In the same way, right now in the UK, 14% of people never hit state pension age. They die before it. The average life expectancy doesn't capture the reality that nearly one in 10 people die before it. Every year you crank the state pension age, thousands more people die before they ever get to retirement. And that's the thing that's the issue with averages. They describe a middle and people think, oh, well, the average person is 85 now. So let's crank the state pension age. Average is the middle. Plenty of people never get there. So I have kind of like a moral dilemma there of if we crank that state pension age, we commit thousands, millions of people in the long term to never get in there at all. And is that fair? And it tends to be the poorest people in society that don't get there. Yeah, the socio-economic status. Even the amount of status you have, the quality of job, income, all of these things. That again is a very fair point. I've always had this weird inclination against retirement. Because I think when you're young and you're in your 20s, you're like, I don't want to retire. For me, sitting around and doing nothing is one way to make myself depressed. Even now, I went to training today because this might not go out for a couple of weeks. And training at 11 a.m. on a Monday is packed. I'm like, what's going on? They go, it's Christmas James. People are winding down. I go, what's that? It's been 12 years since I've been employed where we used to clock off for Christmas and don't get me wrong. I love those days of where, when I left the office on the 18th of December, I didn't care what happened for two weeks. And yes, so for now, in my life, I've always said to myself, like, I like to live each life. A boy, each year through my life, as if I'm not saving it all for the end. Because between 30 and 36, 30, I still love going out drinking. 36, I hate it. 30, I could sneeze without breathing while I'm back. 36, I've got to put two hands on my knees. Life deteriorates so quickly. And people that kind of maybe are from our generation thinking, oh, I can't wait 20 years, maybe 30 years going over time. I'm like, that's a bet in itself. So people say, and this is kind of my anti-investment angle. So I bought a Porsche this year, one of the financially worst decisions ever. Because I could have bought an asset and with the repayments on it, I could have kept a loss going. Could have had generational wealth potentially. And instead, I was like, no, because the average 9/11 driver is 52. And I struggled to get in and out of it some days at 36. I think to myself, although it's amazing to bank these assets and to save money and build wealth for the future and set up your retirement. At the same time, like you just said, you might not make it there. And although it's very risky not to invest, there is an element of risk of saving everything for that moment. You know, the sentiment that you should definitely set up some of your finances as if you're going to live for another 40, 50 years. But there should be a part of you don't you think that should spend your finances like you're only going to live another 50 days? A hundred percent. And this is where I need a bit of you in my life, mate, because I'm terrible at this. I'm not going to sit here and say I've got money figured out, I am too far the other way. I was mental in my 20s, ended up in low to debt, like to party, like yourself, you can tell by the lines in my face. That I spent a lot of time in kitchens talking to people about business ideas that never came off. And I now song the other way and I'm like obsessed with saving and that's those are my own issues. So I'm not saying be like that, but I think the balance is right and I envy anyone who can strike that balance. And yeah, living for today because if you are just chucking it all away for a time when you think you're going to need it. Actually, what my experience with financial advisors is is that people get to 70 and they don't want to leave the house anymore. And these people kind of put off retirement to say, oh, I'll get a bit more money because I want to fly business class all the time. And if I work for an extra two years, I can fly business class around the world. They put it all off. They retire and then they they're mindset shifts. They get scared of themselves and hurting themselves and leaving the house. What I would say to young people, I think we can hit on two points you mentioned there is look at the people in front of you. And don't think that you're a different species to them. When I was in my 20s, I thought I knew it all and, you know, I looked at people in their 30s, like, you know, like, why are you not going out? I'm an appartive for the rest of my life blah, blah, blah. I get to take six now. I literally will not go to social events because the idea of beer scares me. You know, so I look at my mom who retired when she was 55. She hated work a whole life wanted to retire. She retired within 12 months. She was back in work. What that tells me is I might one day get to that point and go, I want to keep working. I want to be useful. They're all the people that I meet that are in their 80s that continue to work at the sharpest people ever. The people who stop they deteriorate quite quickly unless they they find something that keeps them active. So I think this retirement problem, one big solution to that is people keep active, people keep working. I think people like me and you, mate, might be slightly different to some of the people in the sense of I'm only happy if I'm working. But yeah, yeah, I've definitely got that. I need to be solving problems all the time. But then on the flip side of that, to counter argue my point, people that squander money, there's a look in their eye. People that had it, I remember like I'd watch national geographic documentaries of like people that I don't crack cocaine. I remember there was one guy and he was like, I used to be a millionaire and I had the choice between my wife, my kids, my family, my boat, my cars or crack and he's like, and I chose crack and he was the only person that I've ever seen. Squander as well, he's actually smart about it, but other people, they're like, oh man, if I was just smart with my money, I could have done this, I could have done that. There's definitely a part in the back of my brain that never wants to be that person, never wants to be mid to late 40s thinking, oh, if I'd only just done this. So I think sometimes it is better to be a little bit too conservative with things and then sit there and go, okay, I'm going to buy something. But the crazy thing is my dad won't let me say in this. My dad in my eyes was always incredibly financially literate and then I found out he wasn't. And it was only when I took over the mortgage for the house. I said, okay, I'll take over the mortgage and I can't be much left. And then I looked and I go, how can the mortgage outstanding be more than what you paid for it? I said, that's not how this works. And he goes, oh, yeah, sorry, son, we've been using it a bit like a cash machine for the last few years. And he made a lifestyle decision then, which I'm grateful for because that lifestyle decision was my childhood. So I think that in my head, I thought my parents were better off than they were, but really as the house price was appreciating, they were just remorgaging and we were living the good life. Fortunately, I'm in a position now that I can help with that. But I suppose the question is some people, the lifestyle choices they make are going to be so heavily dependent on when they finish work from retirement and the life they want to have after it. But no one, I suppose it boils back down to education. I don't think anyone ever sat down with dad. I think I've had reached that poor dad. And I said to my dad, your house technically is a liability. He goes, no, it's an asset. I went, not if you live in it. I think that's the quote from reached that poor dad, isn't it? Yeah, especially if you've got it a mortgage, it's more than it. You're just definitely not an asset then, you know, I think it was it was mortgage. So he bought it for X, the mortgage outstanding is now about five times X. They're still within a good buffer for the house value, but because they bought it 20, 30 years ago, I expected. Well, back then, it must have only been worth 70,000 pounds. So it can't have much left on it. So, yeah, sorry, Kerrm. No, I think this point around lifestyle, I think is a really important one, because I think we're all surrounded by these triggers that make us feel crap about ourselves constantly. I drive a beat up Mercedes A class that I bought in a when I got dumped by a girl, and she dumped me because I didn't have a car. So I bought the car and I like, I've owned it ever since. And I'm going to ride that thing into the ground, basically, it's like, you know, and I pull up to my gym where I live in, in the north west of England. And there's like people in like Lamborghini, Euros and stuff like this. And I, and I feel crap about myself, I honestly feel crap about myself, but then I just realized that all that tells me about that person is they spend a lot of money on a car. It doesn't tell me about their financial situation at all. And if anything, if they're spending a lot of money on a car, it probably means they got less money in other areas of their life. What we know is about people is that we collecting groups that are similar to us. If you're at work, and there's five people on your team, and one of those people on your team is driving this ridiculous car, he's probably just spending way more of his salary on that car than you would, you know, we don't, most people don't tend to have exposure to billionaires in their day-to-day life. And when you get circles of billionaires, they collect together. So if there's someone in your life that you look at and you think, wow, he's so financially sound because he's got a massive house, a really nice car, and he works where I do, chances are they're earning a similar amount, they're just blowing it all on on those stings, and they're not building assets behind it. Yes. So for me, like without turning this into, give me advice for free, Damien. One thing I've been doing the last few years very aggressively is paying down my mortgage, but in Australia, we have offset accounts where, if you were to give me a dollar right now, and I put it into my home loan, it deducts my repayment in real time. So we're incentivized to save. So it's not that I'm giving the money back to the bank, is that I'm hoarding my savings to reduce my repayments in real time, but now I'm at a conundrum where I paid down, I paid down about 50,000 US dollars of my home loan the other day, and it reduced my repayments by about 30 quid a week, and I was thinking, this isn't good anymore, this is terrible use of capital, this is, if anything, it now gave me anxiety that I'm at the beginning of the mortgage, pay it down a bit, reduce your repayments because if the interest rates are about five, six percent, I'm an essence saving or getting a weird return on five, six percent by not paying the interest, but now I'm seeing diminishing gains from that, and now I'm getting itchy to determine where I need to go from this point onwards, because I should stop repaying the house because I'm pretty much paid off. Well, let me ask you a question then. So what matters to you, is it this idea of generating the best return you possibly can, or is it this idea of security that you get from your from having to pay off house? I hate debt, and so I never had a credit card to last about 29, and I only got one because I tried to rent a car, and I wanted to show off from front of a girl, they said, you've got a credit card, and I was like, no, I was like, I've got money though. I said, no, we need a credit card. I was like, oh, I was at the airport, I was like, okay, come then. So we've got my first annex, so yeah, like 29, but I've just never liked debt, because I lived out an overdraft throughout most of my 20s. So there's that component of it, but now I'm getting the idea that it's not really debt, or it's not what do we have the terms good debt and bad debt, right? So can we do that? Come back to the inflation point that we're talking about before, if the interest on your mortgage is 5%, but inflation is 3.8%, 4%, the actual cost to you long term is only 1%, because you deduct the rate of inflation off the debt. So that's a very cheap loan, and what most people don't realize is in a high inflationary environment, having debt is good, because the balance of the debt gets eaten away by the inflation over time, it's the reverse effect of you having money in a bank account. You got someone else's money in your bank account, and they're getting hammered by inflation. So actually having debt in periods of high inflation is pretty good. The thing is right, there's like the numbers answer, and then there's the psychological answer here, and I think everyone has this dilemma and debate. I'm a numbers guy, so I'm going to look at it and go, there's a guaranteed 5% return that I can get by paying down my mortgage early, but there's a potential on average 9% to 10% nominal return through the stock market. And if I look over the last 5-6 years, you know, they're this being closer to 16%. I would rather myself put the money into the stock market, generate a return, and know that I've still got access to that capital to pay down my mortgage if I want at some other point, but there are other people out there who just can't sleep at night knowing there's a debt balance hanging over them, and it's personal finance, it's personal to you. So just clear the debt, you know, get rid of it in the same way you want the car mate, get the car, as long as you're ticking all the other boxes and you're saving for your retirement, I hate it when people call people idiots that overpay their mortgages or vice versa. It's what works for you. So yeah, I would I would push it back on you and just say, do you want a debt free house more than you want a potentially better return elsewhere. Because this is the issue right because the second that debt's paid off, then bigger houses are looking nice. That's the problem I get caught up in. You think and then you think they go, can you afford it? You go, I don't have a mortgage on my house, I can afford it. So because I did this once, one thing to any business owners listening, I'm sure you might have done this as well, is when you physically actually write down your goals, I have a desk at home, I have a little whiteboard in front of it. And I write down financial goals as far as revenue, you know, I've got there to pay down the cars, pay off the house, they're just goals that are there. But when they're there, they kind of come to life a little bit and about two years ago, I wrote down, once I pay off the house, I'm going to go buy my dream car. And then I've had a lot of wins in my life and they've all felt the same, is that it? And I actually know that we've appeared on the house the day I do it, I'm just going to go, cool. So I went and bought the dream car, which was an Audi RS6 at the time. And it's just one of those things where we sometimes can put up these massive walls around us, like that debt safety net, where I'm going to pay down the house completely all the way to get there and go, oh, I feel no security. I feel no happiness. If anything, I just feel an urge that I need to now live in a bigger house because I can afford this one. I've got no doubt on it. So I'm now changing in that, but then I have other insecurities that I feel like I'm going to be the guy that arrives at the stock market puts in loads of cash and crashes or invest in ETFs as someone goes wrong time. Or, you know, invest in property and then someone comes down the corner and goes, oh, you didn't invest in property there in the 2035, did you? There's all these bubbles collapse is these rational fears that people have. Oh, yeah, like these are these are the great fears, the ones around timing, but I mean, it matters me if you need the money next year, but with your kinds of timelines, I would say that you kind of need to step away from that. There are ways to manage it though. So let's say you've got 100 grand now and you're going to invest in the stock market. The biggest fear of individuals is that they put that in the stock market and then it drops 20% the next day. So you could if you wanted to just drip that money into the market over a six to 12 month period say to mitigate against that lump some investing, which is throughout all of the money into the market tends to perform better than drip feeding because the market tends to go up more than it goes down 66% of days. So it makes more sense to get your money in the stock market as quickly as possible, but yeah, these corrections in valuation are normal. The problem with the stock market is Warren Buffett tells this great story. It's like if you own the farm and there was a guy that every day stood outside your farm and just shouted the price at you, you might feel compelled to sell your farm some days because one day he goes, I'll give you a million quid. The next day goes, I'll give you a half a million quid and you're like, holy shit, like it's just lost half a minute of its value in a day like I need to sell this thing, but we don't have that with assets like property. We don't have these life prices, whereas with the stock market, you have this minute by minute price in and because we have that data, people feel compelled to act on it, but they should really treat it like it's a house. I mean, what you're actually buying when you buy the global stock market is you're buying into the share of the greatest businesses on the planet, the labor, that labor point before the output of all humans on the planet. And I think that's so much safer bet than buying a three bed semi in Wigan. I mean, I would feel much more confident in people delivering value over time than than that house. We do get something I'll show you called negative gearing. So if I buy a property for, let's say it's two million dollars to a million pounds and the rental yield on it is only $1,000 a week and the repayment is $1,700. I just deduct that from my tax. So that's that 100 loss just goes against it. So there are financial incentives to almost make your taxable income go further. So to speak. So there's that shrouding my mind with the property side of things, but what you said there about the farm, that is a very good point about it. One thing I think either I've got a common sense here or I'm a fucking idiot. There's no in between when it comes to crypto. I hate it. Now this could be rational could not be and it just happens to be the people that try and well, first of all, when someone tries to sell me something straight away, it doesn't scream sensible when someone's not going to do or buy a theorem, buy this by that. And I'm like, okay, so if I buy this, your, your portfolio goes up as well. Right. Yeah. So I had this videographer and he would always just talk about crypto. And for about the year we worked together, he would just go on about it. I'll make with filming. Can you just camera's equipment, your job, can we can we do that. And I said, okay, cool. I'm going to give you $1,000, put it into anything you want. And I had to get like a fountain wallet and then we bought some Salana, some junior parents, that means nothing to me. There's some days it got 10% other days, it'd be down 30 after about a month, I sold the position, I just said to him, this isn't good for my mental health. Like this, the volatility of this market that I don't even know is real money was a net negative. I don't even care about the $1,000. I care about this volatility market. I'm checking some curious. I'm curious because it's crypto. Where do you stand on cryptocurrencies, their involvement? Is it the future? Is it a Ponzi? Where are we at? So I hold a bit of Bitcoin. So just for transparency sake in cases, there's a bit bias there. It's a small portion of my portfolio. And the issue I have with with the crypto space is, I think first of all, you separate Bitcoin and then there's everything else. And some people will argue about the everything else. I think there's a prevalence of scams and pump and dumps and it basically looks like the stock market pre-regulation in the early 1900s. It's just everyone's doing the same crap they did back then. And I think that's really messed with the space. I think that, you know, I don't understand why people are so passionate that they think if you're not all in you're an idiot and that is a big red flag to me, because if I hold a 1% allocation to Bitcoin in my portfolio, and it does really well, like they think I win. If it goes terminal and goes to zero, it doesn't end me. So I see that as a more balanced, sensible position. And actually that's done well. You know, Bitcoin has performed very well since its inception, but you can't compare Bitcoin to say the stock market, because the stock market is an income producing asset. People go out and they do things and they make stuff and they sell it and they generate real-world value. Arguably the value of Bitcoin is an inflation hedge in the sense of that it's a fixed supply. And it's not that the bitcoins becoming more valuable. It's the dollars that we price it in and get printed away to nothing. So really that's how I see it in my portfolio. Schmuck insurance, if it goes well, I've got I've got a bit and as an inflation hedge long, long term, potentially. But yeah, isn't it funny how all these guys who've got absolutely no money us are a hundred percent certain that all your money should be in these things. Because your camera guy, right, I'm guessing he's not driving around in the Lambo. And this is the thing, although he went on about XRP all the time, and then I think four years after a flatline, he made like a few thousand. But I said to him, I was a bit of a dickhead, actually, I screen shot my Stripe account. I said, great mate, your XRP's gone up. I set up and running a business for two years and I've 50 next everything you made. And some and I said, I got to enjoy every day. I said, every day I was building, every day I was putting in every day I was allocating and I could influence. And this is the next point I want to get into. Business owners are in a position that they can influence their own income. So a question for you would be. And for myself, another people, potential business owners say tomorrow you wake up and your counter goes, hey mate, there's 20,000 pounds here. What do you want to do with it? And I know you've done this at some point already, you could invest it in assets and things that could go up. But then there's also the flip to invest it in yourself. You could say, right, I'm going to upgrade because you've got studio that you film out of, which has been great for your YouTube channel, I've been watching some of your. Met fours and visual props and the depth of field. I can see the effort you've gone to. I can see that you've scripted and you're filming on a high resolution camera and all of those things. And do you have a video for as well, right? Yeah, yeah, I got I got stuff. Yeah. So I believe in investing in in people. And I would probably hire someone with that 20 grand. Yeah, rather than slapping the market. So like when when also I know there's a there's a demon on my shoulders say, by property, do this. Then the other half of me thinks I could instead allocate all that money. They've got 100,000 pounds. I could go to the headquarters in Newton, I can say, I'm going to buy 100,000 pounds worth of stock. I'm going to create a stall on Oxford street. I'm going to hire three people and we're going to give out cans and I could inflate the share price of my ownership of that business or I could hire some members of staff. So there's this other dichotomy that people are in where if they're entrepreneurial, they want to do something with that money. The potential losses are great, but the potential returns are greater. And we see this other area of risk where do I invest into socks, shares, ETFs, etc. Or do I potentially look to invest in my next five years, a business, something I want to do. How do people navigate that? So one of the biggest issues for the self-employed is a lack of saving impensions. There are more self-employed people today in the UK than have ever been, but the savings rate is the lowest amongst those individuals. And the problem is that the self-employed are optimists. They are people who believe that they can drive value because why would they do it any other way. The statistics tell us that most of them fail and most of them earn very little money. Your average self-employed person earns less than minimum wage when you factor in all the hours. So you talk about a new tonic going, you talk about like scaling that business and driving the value, but unless you exit it at some point or you get some valuation rounds or some kind of liquidity event. That money is trapped in there and we know that not many businesses exit in the grand scheme of things, it's a fraction. And the risk that your self-employed people have is they arrive at retirement and they've they've had all these good intentions and all these plans and they've rolled the dice a million times it hasn't paid off and now what, you know, your your destitute because most businesses are the individual. In the same sense of I might sit here and call myself an entrepreneur, right, but Damien talks money is going to die in an instant if Damien isn't talking. So in what have I built really I built a high paid job with a bit of a with a good cash flows. I've also got like the news letter and things which we're trying to scale and we're trying to do that. But what I say to the self employed is what is the point of your business why are you growing your business is it not to support a lifestyle and yourself and should it should a priority of your business not be to set you up in retirement. If the greatest thing your business could ever do is you're on the golf course in your 50s and 60s and you go, you know what I pay for this by being self employed. So I would I say there should be a priority to pension savings, especially amongst the self employed. But I do I do agree with you that the risks that people should take should be on themselves. I buy the global stock market because I have absolutely no idea what the stock market is going to do long term. I don't know if America is going to do well. I don't know if the UK is going to do well. I don't know what individual companies will I just buy it all and I see that as quite a safe thing to do. I'm essentially betting that the world will keep turning and if it stops turning while we're all fucked anyway, like you know get your fuel and you cat food and a stabby stick because that's the kind of well we're going to be in right. So like I'm I'm okay with that. Then what I do is I take outside risks in my sphere of confidence, which means I put money into making finance content because I for some reason seem to be pretty good at that thing right. You know, you're pretty good at making adverts for new tonic mate. My favorite piece of content all year was your little whisper tiny dick thing. That was well class advert you made. But yeah, like people talk about risk all the time and taking risks is probably better for an individual to risk trying to get a pay rise than it is done risking buying Tesla or Bitcoin because they know nothing about those markets really. But what they do know a lot about is what they do eight hours a day every day. So my investment strategy is really boring really safe by the whole global stock market inside of a tax efficient account and then get busy taking risks on the thing that I appear to have an advantage over which is making YouTube finance content. I have that answers your question mate. Sorry. And it's great because there's so much nuance to this and you say don't know how the UK is going to do which brings me back to the Henry's. So I'm fascinated by this cohort of people the high on is not rich yet because like we said before, the hundred thousand pounds a year was once the gold standard of earning, you know, the whispers in the school playground. Yeah, this guy's dad he owns a hundred thousand pounds. Wow, you know, this crazy and there's some. So you've got childcare allowance. There's pretty much a tax rate after a hundred K you're worse off until you reach 140 is that right. I mean, you're worse off anyway, but there's a there's a cliff edge. So that cliff edge is 60% because you lose your tax reband. But if you've got kids, I think it's two kids, you lose the credits and the child care allowance. Which means your marginal tax rate shoots up to thousands of percent. So actually someone with a couple of kids with a hundred grand income is better stay in at that point, don't get in a pay rise, which is mental because that's money that doesn't get spent in the economy. Yeah, so for me to have people that does someone would have sat there in front of them, you know, designed all of that and gone, yeah, perfect. Someone would have gone off. Soundie, if you're not seeing that people might not want a pay rise for like two years, then it's perfect. You know, how can these policymakers and people that make these decisions have such poor. What's the thought behind this is that to incentivize people to go to 140 is it to, you know, I just can't understand that. Yeah, no one can. So the problem is that when these changes get brought in, they affect a very small amount of people. And then over time, more and more people get dragged into them because of the fiscal drag or some other point. So in the UK, I think we have one of the most complicated tax systems on the planet. Our tax code is is is more than the complete works of Shakespeare combined. So 10 million words. There's more. There's more written about tax than any other form of policy or law in the UK. So it's just this mess of addons and layers. One one one example that I could give to recently in the UK is this mansion tax. So if you, if you've got a house more than two million quid, you're going to pay this mansion tax. And most people will be like, Oh, yeah, well, two million quid house, pretty big house. I'm not bothered by that. It's going to raise 400 million a year. But you can bet that they will never increase that band. And in 20 years, your average house will probably be worth near that because of inflation and what it does to the price of things over time. And then you'll be living in a two up two down, getting a mansion tax going, how the hell is this a mansion? You know, and this is what happens. They they put on a little slither. It doesn't really mean much. And then over time, it becomes such a big revenue take that they can't afford to cut it. And then people will be sat there going, you voted for this just like Brexit. It's what we've got no houses. You set the Polish home. Yeah, it's the immigrants fault or the transsexuals or it's let's tax the rich. And we get the populism coming with the simple answers. When in reality, what we need is complete reform of the tax code, we need to simplify it, you know, these things. Which is, which is crazy. Yes, it's an interesting world with this is so much going on. It's such a hot debate. And let you say people at the moment can't ever imagine their houses being worth two million pounds. So the mansion tax is crazy. The fact they call it a mansion as well, where some people in the I think, Rory Sutherland said this on a podcast recently. He goes, oh, you know, if you live in Fulham in a two bed apartment, you'd be considered successful because that's worth a million pounds. He goes 100 years ago, a postman would have lived in that house. And he would have had upstairs and downstairs. He says, you know, like how times have changed that what would have been a postman's house 100 years ago is now pretty much the epitome of wealth in central London. And yeah, the, to the mansion tax, there's also a proposed wealth tax. Yes, yeah. I think the problem with the wealth taxes, the administration of it, why introduce a new tax when we have wealth taxes that exist. So if you want a tax wealth, like if that's your point, reform council tax properly, like so with on the mansion tax right. So what they've done is they've created a taxation point between two million and five million where it tapers from five grand to seven and a half grand. So what that means is if you've got a 20 million pound gap, you pay less percentage wise than the person with two million. And I know people are really going to disagree with this, but there is a world where semi normal people that you would think are live on the same planet you do. Have just bought a house in the right area prioritized that over going on holiday or buying a Porsche and they've now ended up in a position where the house is worth two million quid because they bought like a five hundred grand house in London, you know, a few decades ago or a decade ago. Someone who's got a hundred million pound house in May fair, you don't just stumble into that by not drinking lattes, right. And the person who's got a hundred million pound house in May fair has ten of other of them all over the world, they got one in Sydney, one in New York, one in Hong Kong, and what they're doing is parking cash in economies because they're probably a shady fucker. They're worried that like there's going to be a military coup or something wherever and they need money elsewhere, we should be rinsing those people because they're in that house five days a year and, you know, they spend millions a year just on their lifestyle. And if you said to them, you need to pay 200 grand a year council tax, which is basically the fee for you to store that money in our economy, they would pay it. I don't know why we're hammering this two to five million band and making it regressive in the sense of if you own a hundred million pound house is percentage points cheaper than known in a two million pound house. But yeah, coming back to the wealth tax, I think this broad tax anything above 10 million two percent is just an administrative nightmare. How do you value people's wealth are we going to go around to people's houses and have a look and go, well, you've got a piece of art there and how much is this ass tray worth and, you know, what we should do is reform council tax because that's a wealth tax that works in the sense of you can't pick up your house and move it to Dubai. And if it's worth 100 million, we all know it's there. So it doesn't matter if a shell company owns it, you pay the council tax on the house otherwise we take it off you. So I would do that. Yeah. I think that that sounds a lot more realistic. I know people that are happy to pay extortion amounts of taxes, but they openly say if the wealth tax comes in, I'm gone. I'm going to buy it. And actually, I don't even think it's like financial decision for them. I think it's principal if that is the case. It's almost as if they look at these policies and just go, this is stupid. I don't want to be involved in this stupid policy for that reason I'm going to leave. What's your kind of thoughts around people that get to this position, maybe have built companies in the UK, grew lots of wealth, spent money, put money into the economy. But then they get to a point where the tax system gets to, yeah, they go, I'm done. I'm out. I'm moving to Dubai. What are your thoughts about this stuff? Okay, let's have some kind of balance on these points and like the all I'm trying to do here is pay devil's Africa and argue both sides sometimes I don't want people to think I'm like, you know, Gary Stevenson's like fanboy or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, doesn't even know how much the debt is but wants to report the debt system. So it's like, anyway, the I live in the UK, I am a UK national, I run a successful business where if I moved it to Dubai, it would be life changing for me. I'm talking like it would I'm not rich. I'm a Henry and that move would would change my life and I could set this studio up in a way that no one would ever know, but I feel this sense of obligation to live in the UK because I don't know I talk about it and it kind of annoys me when I see people in Dubai going all the UK's crap is like, well, you don't even you're not even here. I am a product of the place I was born in and that means that being in the fortunate position, I am I have benefited from the UK and its tax base and its education system. If I then become successful and go, I'm out, that's kind of like, well, no, you kind of got to repay the position you were in and, you know, to the guy who's founded monzo or whatever is now moved to Dubai or whatever I would say, if I met, if I took you and plonked you in Sub-Saharan Africa, would you have grown that business? Or is your business a product of the fact the country that you lived in? So is it not a bit of a, is it not a bit cheeky in a sense to go, I've won from the system and now I'm, I'm cashing out. That's one argument. I think the other point is that it's not necessarily the amount of tax, it's the value for money point. And I think the UK feels like bad value for money now. I don't mind paying tax if the system works, but, you know, you live in a lovely part of the world, man, you can probably speak on it better than me. I go to places in the world where when I was a kid, they felt like they were worse than the UK. Now they feel better, they work better. You go to Barcelona, and your phone is safer than it is on Oxford Bridge. Yeah, yeah, I used to go to places in Europe and be like, ooh, it's a bit, you know, Spain, you'd be like, we love going Spain because there's a nice beach, but it feels a bit crap. Like it's a bit like, it's a bit, it nothing really works that well. The payments like Nacod and the grass looks crap. Now I go and I'm like, Jesus Christ, what's going on? How can I get a train in Italy that's like 50p to go across the country, but it's 300 quid in the UK. So the value for money point seems off, and I can understand why if someone has got 100 million quid and they've got mobility over where they want to live in the world, how they would go, well, the products of the UK is just not that appealing to me. And that's the choice that they can make and they have every right to make that choice. Yeah, and I think that's what the UK needs to work on the value for money point. Yeah, like we had the atrocities this week in Bondi, which obviously crazy, but ultimately Australia is incredibly safe. And our public transport is great. The trains on the way into work, like when I used to work in fitness first, they were too cold from the air conditioning, we 32 degrees, you get on the train, you could of course freeze in on here. I've never seen anyone stand on a train forcefully, and I think the most expensive a train ticket can get on a day is six pounds, and then on a weekend, it's half price. So there are other things that are cooked, though, whereas when you have to fly, you have to fly for six hours to leave Australia. So there's that component where you like just going on a little trip to Bali, nearest country, yeah, just six and a half hours or whatever. So there are some parts to it, but where you pay your taxes, I think it was Scott Galloway said it would be great if when you paid your taxes, even if it wasn't true. Thank you, you've paid for a primary school. Thank you, your money, this instrument has just repaved a child's playground. Thank you. We've just bought 7,000 assault rifles for the British Army, you know, some things where at least you get something from it, like you don't even get a thank you email also responder when you pay a tax bill. There are some low hanging fruit that they could definitely do there, but you're completely right because everything I am is a product of my parents who were brought up in the UK worked in the UK. My childhood was brought up by my parents, education system, tax system, a legal system, law system, and I was just fortunate enough to leave the UK before it was trendy. But for me, Australia feels like a very adjacent community kind of country, you know, similar values or whatever, but the Dubai thing is it's an interesting one because some people. I think they kind of just say, like you said, you're letting down your side of the deal. So I'm off and I think actually a lot of people that move to Dubai are just waiting for the UK to improve. I joke around my partner and say, you know, if I want my son to play good rugby union, he's going to have to come back to the UK, but we've got 12, 12, 15 years before that could be the case, you can go play for Northampton Saints. But up until that point, everyone's thinking we're just we're just leave you guys figure it all out. But by leaving, they're going to make it more difficult and we spoke about how potentially there could be a little bit of a lagging on conversation between the UK and Australia. But the pain that we're feeling or you're feeling mostly in the UK at the moment is a product of probably everything that's happened the two years before. And all the millionaires and billionaires leaving now means less money, less taxes to finance things like policing and all of those things and that pain, I don't think it's going to be felt for another two years. And I'm just worried as to where that that finished position is, is there a rock bottom, is there a bounce back, is there a revolution, what does it look like and how financially because I suppose the point I want to go into is the UK's got a lot of debt. And I'm not sure there's quite the game plan to get out of it. No, so I did a video where I looked at what the UK spends its money on because if you survey people, most people in the UK think that we spend more money on asylum and immigration than we do on the state pension. So people have a really misconstrued perception of of where their tax money is spent, which I think is you talk about value for money and send into people like congratulations, you just bought us a hospital like these kind of nice messages. Another one would be real clear communication on where the money goes because the truth of it is 60% of what we spend as a nation goes on welfare, so this is state pension and benefits, it goes on health care and then it goes on debt interest. So the reality is and then the fourth one is schools. So for a 3040 year old healthy couple with a kid in a school who like the answer is your tax money goes on your nan and on your kid and because your nan is on state pension and she's using the NHS and it goes on your kid's education. And the reason things feel so crap to you is because the only interaction you have with the tax bend is the transport system and that's had cuts for five years, so you're just going through life going I pay more tax and ever yet my commute is miserable. And this is because all the money goes on the health care, the kids and the debt interest now the debt interest is really quite interesting, sorry for the pun, because we spend about 10% of what everything on debt interest, it's about 112 billion a year, 112, 125. It was 40 billion a year a few years ago and we still continue to borrow an alarming rate like hundreds of billions a year, so this is kind of. It's comparable to a house in the sense of what we spent in the past affects how much we spend today that James 20 year old James knows when he run that credit card up in one night, he had a great night, but then he's paying for that for the next five years. We ran that balance up through 2008, we ran it up through the COVID period when everyone was at home drinking bottles of wine playing quizzes with their families, thinking this is great, we're paying for that now. This is where we land, so yeah, the debt interest is this is why they chase growth so much, but it's very elusive, but yeah, that problem is big and when people one thing I hate hearing is people go, the UK government is 45% of of GDP, which is the largest it's ever been, why do people think a bigger government is is good. I don't think a bigger government is good, but what they're missing there is that a large chunk of that spending is on debt interest, it's not that the government are just throwing that money out of the door on other things, right. You know, Dan Priestley's a big proponent of cutting waste, I look at the 60% that we spend on healthcare, on state pension, on education and debt interest and go, okay, make way you're cutting in that, because you're either killing people, you're making the schools worse, or you're you're you're like not paying about the debt, which means we default on the debt. So easy, just kill people. Yeah, yes, back to this and it just acts the back of the head, I'd rather like someone do me with something nice a bit more for you know something, not not an axe to the head. We can we can have it arranged that that could be my next business that I move into, but no, like you say, and for for people even such as myself is very easy to get caught up in that I remember I was in the UK a few months ago, and I thought to myself. Getting an Uber into London from Windsor, just seems like a waste, you know, it's expensive. I'm not a banker, I'm going to get the train. So I go to Slile train station, usually impeccable trains from there, and I get on the train, and I sit on, I've got, you know, like it's not too busy. Actually, no, I think I decided to stand and I was like, I'll be in London in 20 minutes, new Elizabeth line, then the next station so many people get on. And it was so crammed on this train that I couldn't even get my phone out to complain. I couldn't even message someone who was stuck by my side, and this guy turns me and he goes, my wife's read your book, and I said, no, is it, I said, is it always like this? And he's like, oh, not usually on a Tuesday. And I was sweating to the point that I had to get off the train early, because I was so sweaty that I had to get another Rubar, and I got stuck in traffic, it would have been cheaper for me to just do by originally in the beginning. And then I tapped on and off when I looked afterwards, I couldn't believe how much a train ticket was, and I'm type of person that that would send me over the edge to move overseas. Not forget all the beautiful times, forget how amazing the UK is, forget Clarkson's farm, forget the Cotswolds, forget what it was like watching top gear after last of the summer wine when you're a kid or listening to the theme of heartbeat and knowing you have to run to bed. Your mum and dad are going to try to keep you awake and you've got to now try and pretend you're not feeling too well, so you could tell them so far. All of that goes out the window in an instance when you've got too crowded on a train, you're like, that's it, I'm moving to Dubai, pack the bags, tell the family we're off. We're just very emotional creatures. Well, that's your life mate, that is your life. People talk about the grand things, but what your day is, is your commute and your work. And if the commute, which is a miserable experience, is made more miserable by crap public services, you're going to get really angry at the country, because like I said, that is your experience of I spend money on tax and the thing that I interact with is crap. But then if you go and visit your nan and she's dying in hospital and there's a wonderful nurse like taking care of her, you then go, actually, this is where some of the money's going, but most people don't have that day today. I think like why the government didn't come in and just try and deliver some quick wins in those areas, put internet on the train. You can go on the Jubilee line in London and get a great 5G internet connection, like 100 meters below ground, but if you're on the advancing off west coastline, going from Manchester to London, it's a Faraday cage mate. You can't get an internet connection, like, how is that possible? I can drive 80 miles an hour down the motorway with my phone, and the phone is fine. So if people got on the train, all those people that day and they're squashed and they're like, I've got an internet connection, they would feel good, because it's improving, and you would improve productivity because all those people can start checking emails and stuff. So these little wins in those areas I would improve. Also, why don't we have like, what, why do we have these trains? We're half of its first class. I'm going to sound like a right snobby here. I have to pay first class on UK trains, just to guarantee that I get a seat, which means I pay an extra 100 pounds each way, just so I can sit down on a ticket that's already 100 quid. But half the, half the train is first class. So why don't we just make less of the train first class so people can sit down. You know, it's cheaper to fly to Dubai. Yeah, and some people I think wanted to go, someone I know wants to go from Bristol to Liverpool, and if they went by Spain and spent a night in the hotel, it was cheaper. But I think I think it's basic economics, right? They know the trains going to be full. So why there's a bit like British Airways with their business class where they just keep moving it back, depending on how many people don't want to queue to get on the plane. There is no real business class in British Airways. It's just having, you don't have your leg touching someone else's. Yeah, but yeah, this chat has been great. I know already that you're going to be someone that I'm messaging every few months, like let's get back on, I want to talk about more. Just for a wrap up, I want you to tell people where they can find you anything you're working on, anything you want to promote and plug. Go for it. Okay, so I make finance content online and my core belief is that people can improve their situation with simple habits and steps. I don't sell any courses. I don't charge you for the information. You can have it for free. Damien talks money is the main channel. I make a podcast called the making money podcast if you if that's your format. I also have a completely free index investing for beginners course. Two hours of content that takes you from how like not knowing anything to making your first investment. And maybe I could link that for you, mate, because that I think is the most impactful thing that someone could do with two hours. And that that outlines my whole world view on investing and how to do it. Not only will put the link in the description, I think I'm going to do it myself because I'm out of position now where for me zero to one. You know, it's actually just put in the first 10 pound in that account that would be the hardest yard. Once it's in there, you go, that was actually quite fun. How crazy is it that you will set up a drinks company with Chris Williams, but you won't put 10 quid in the stock market? I mean, you go, oh, what I'll do is I'll try and take on the most competitive industry in the world. Because that seems like doable, but I won't invest 10 quid in a global fund because what happens if it loses money? You know, that that's mental, mate. Yeah, like I said, I'm not, I'm not all sound there in the head, but I've enjoyed being challenged. I've enjoyed the nuance. I've enjoyed the conversation. I know everyone else listening will as well. And yeah, we'll have to catch up and do one of these in person when I next see you in the UK. I would love to do it in person so that I've got a 4k camera feed. And I'm sorry to people that it's 1080p, but my capture card broke, so yeah. Thank you very much. No worries.