On New Years Eve 2024-2025 I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow account of how great or how shit this last year has been (which I usually only do for me so I can read them to the kids every year to reflect on the ups and downs of life). In truth, this year has been awful – after going from strength to strength rebuilding life post the frankly traumatic 2020, 2023-2024 have both been awful! So instead, I want to share the single best thing that has happened to us this year, that I believe could help you too! This may seem a bit self-indulgent at first, but if you bear with me to the end, I promise it will be worth your while and could even completely change your life. The recommendation is: Rebel Finance School!
Context?
I left home very young at 16 – I bounced cheques to pass my driving test, I worked 2 “actual” jobs and had 2-3 side hustles. I slept in my car and on friends’ sofas - and while my life could have very easily (and nearly did!) go the other way, I quickly learned the art of cash flow forecasting, sticking to a budget, having a substantial rainy-day fund and never buying anything I couldn’t afford up front. In the 20 or so years since, I have become well known for being “great with money” - I’ve never been in any debt, I have ZERO subscriptions/Netflix/memberships etc, I pinch every penny, only buy second hand, upcycling etc. and I do get quite offended when people think I earn loads to afford the nice things like the trips we take – I don’t. Until June this year I earned WAY less than the average Berkshire salary of £59,000 – my salary was just £34,000 a year – I am just VERY careful with my budget and financial planning to afford the things that others perceive are a result of being "wealthy".
So why do a financial planning course?
I have known for some time that I needed more financial training if I ever wanted to retire – I went to uni for TEN YEARS so I am a decade behind on pension contributions compared to a lot of my peers. BUT no one has ever taught me ANYTHING on this subject. The education system has failed generations of people by leaving us all to fend for ourselves on this topic, and God knows those of us born to Boomers probably haven’t been sat down and told what a “Global All Cap Equity Accumulation Fund” is!!
I had my head in the sand never looking at my existing pensions – a few short months ago I couldn’t even tell you how many I had. I also have some pretty weird/troubled beliefs about money – thinking I couldn’t ever retire, I didn’t deserve to be wealthy or perhaps it was impossible for “people like me” (who work for love, not a big salary!) – and don’t even get Andrew started on how messed up some of my views on how financial independence should work in a marriage (my parents divorced over money – ‘nuff said!).
Outside of just “retirement(?)” musing over recent years, this year my family fell on extremely hard times – we had literally just emptied our life savings into the rebuild of our house at the end of 2023, (which cost much more than budgeted for) when the cost of living more than doubled (mortgage from £1,400 to £3000 incoming!), childcare now £2,000 a month, dog died and left us in intolerable £7,500 vet-debt, we were then scammed out of thousands this summer (long story), and then our car died (AFTER we already spent £2k!) and despite everyone who knows me thinking I am great with money, I wasn’t prepared for this horrible year of not sleeping, not making ends meet and feeling like I could never spent money ever again – feeling like a failure who works all the time but can’t afford anything. The brutal reality is if I’m so good with money, why did I not plan to have enough cash to cover clearly inevitable death of the dog and the car?
In a nutshell, I wanted to do the course because I realised that while I’ve been ok in some respects, I could and should do better. Most importantly, it is clear that absolutely no one was coming to save us – knowledge is power, and I felt TOTALLY powerless this year.
What did I learn?
After some research I found the @Rebel Finance School. Led by two MBE award winning millionaires who retired in their 30s, never having to work again, the course is completely free and structured over 10x 2-hour sessions. It had additional content/workshops if required, set homework and opportunities to attend question and answer sessions as well. They used amazingly clear language, beautiful slide decks and examples which were relevant – talking about people earning £30-40k (not £100k like some of the other podcasts I’d sampled. The course included:
Spending tracking & gap analysis between income and spending – I had been BUDGETTING most of my life but not TRACKING. I thought I was spending £400 a month on food and £200 on petrol – turned out it was £550 on food and £50 on petrol – this helped set priorities for cutbacks, truly understand the size of emergency fund we need to cope in hard times, as well as provide a retirement budget. The course provides some EXCELLENT templates to input your bank statement .csv files and spit out the gap between income and spending, before it moves on to “what to do with your gap” later.
Net-worth tracking – assets? What? I have a house which I’m pretty sure I’ll never pay off, and even if I did that won’t feed me in retirement. What are investments anyway? Turns out I’m already an investor, and structured homework showing how to track down and transfer pensions was amazing so early on.
Money beliefs – a really good survey on how money makes you feel. I wrote a “letter to money” which went something like “Money, when you’re around you’re one of my best friends and we have so much fun together, but why have you abandoned me when I need you most? I hate you!”
Debt – something I never thought I would need but a great template sheet was provided which can be used to see whether your student loan is costing more than it should, whether you’ll ever pay it off or whether you should just treat it as a tax you pay on education.
Communicating about money – how to talk to others about money. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t mind talking numbers – but what if you’ve got a child/parent/niece/friend who needs help? How can you engage your partner in financial independence? I’ve already used this so much and its part of why I’m writing this #essay today!
Investing – I never thought I’d understand this stuff! Isn’t investing bad? Don’t you sometimes lose money? Isn’t it only for people with lots of money? What’s a risk profile? What is a gilt, a bond a unit of stock? Not only do I now understand it, but I’ve now got a really strong global portfolio which has shot up enormously over the last six months AND I’m qualified to talk to others about it too.
Retirement planning – how much do we need to retire? How long will it take us to get there? Is it even possible? The course provided a handy calculator which provided us these two key numbers.
Why this changed my life (and could change yours too)?
There is SO MUCH I could write here. I knew nothing when this began and now, I’m confident that we could actually retire one day – maybe even comfortably. Some practical examples of what has changed:
We had been saving £20 a month each per child since 20 weeks pregnant. In Max’s savings we had amassed £4,560 in a cash ISA and it earned an enormous £99 in interest in NINE years. Since we opened and moved to stock and shares 4 months ago it has grown by £800 and is now projected to be £10,000 when he turns 18.
I had a £4k pension from 2019 that has increased by £100 a year. I opened a SIPP and moved all my old pensions (totalling a miserable £14k) and it’s already increased to £20k since – that’s around a years’ worth of retirement expenses in just a few months using the knowledge I’ve gained. I have worked out how much I need to retire and when that could likely happen.
The spending tracking exercises totally changed my penny-pinching efforts. I did manage to track every single penny spent through our household and personal bank accounts for 2024 which revealed some interesting facts and more importantly, put into stark reality that I really couldn’t reduce my spending by much more because we’re already so frugal. Therefore it tipped the other way – how to increase our earnings. I decided to leave a job I loved for increased salary, and I set up two new side hustles that have earnt me £700 in the last month – 10% of the way towards the new car.
In summary:
I found this course to be the best learning journey I’ve ever been on. It was fantastic – all their template spreadsheets were easy to understand and took a lot of the work out of trying to understand the subject myself.
I have taken a deep-dive into my values around money, changed my perspective on a lot of the fundamentals and managed to communicate my new knowledge of finance to those who I think could benefit in a compassionate way.
If you, like me, are worried that you’ll never retire, don’t understand the lingo around these things, perhaps you have some mistaken beliefs and strange values around money or have embarrassing little knowledge of investments, pensions or retirement - then this course is for you – and comes at the perfect price point being completely free. If the course seems too much for now, do reach out and let me know if I can help, I’m really keen to share the love with this one.
Wishing you a happy, healthy and (of course) prosperous 2025.
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