How To Build Wealth By Investing To Unlock Financial Freedom As An Entrepreneur With Hannah Mayfield

Scared of investing, but know it could be the key to you unlocking your own personal version of wealth and financial freedom? This episode of The Remote CEO Life Podcast will help you debunk and change your mindset on investing and identify if building wealth and financial freedom through an investment portfolio could be something for you.

To walk us through this hot topic, I’m joined by Hannah Mayfield - a qualified financial adviser and founder of What Is Wealth - to talk all things investing, financial freedom and building wealth, specifically when you’re self-employed.

Hannah shares her personal journey into finance, breaks down common money mindset blocks, and reveals practical steps for how to start investing - even if you're new, overwhelmed or afraid of taking risks.

Please note: This episode is for inspirational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always consult a qualified financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

What we cover in this episode:

- What true wealth really means (and why it’s more than just money)
- Why investing is the ultimate cheat code to freedom
- The mindset shift to help you stop seeing money as a risk
- How compound interest can change your future (even with small amounts)
- Simple ways to get started if you’re new to investing
- Why building wealth is an emotional and practical journey
- How your business income can support long-term freedom through smart investing

If you’ve been stuck in fear or waiting for the “right time” to start investing - this conversation is for you.

Learn how investing can be a powerful tool to build financial freedom and create a life where you can afford to take time off when it matters most.

Connect with Hannah Mayfield:

📸 Instagram: @hannahwhatiswealth

🎁 Freebie: 5-day email course on index investing basics:  www.whatiswealth.io/learn

#investing #financialfreedom #compoundinterest #buildingwealth #moneytips #entrepreneurmindset #femalefounders #remotelife

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Background
• 3:56 Journey into Finance and Self-Education
• 7:07 Understanding Risk and Investment Mindset
• 10:07 Defining True Wealth
• 12:52 Practical Steps to Financial Freedom
• 22:34 Starting Small: The Journey of Investing
• 25:18 Understanding Index Investing
• 27:42 Safeguarding Finances as a Business Owner
• 31:36 The Importance of Long-Term Planning
• 32:58 Optimizing Investments and Tax Efficiency
• 35:52 Navigating Market Fluctuations
• 39:29 Defining Freedom Through Financial Independence

Transcript

Sophie Biggerstaff (00:00)
Do you see investments as a risk or a massive opportunity? Today on the Remote ceo Life podcast, we're talking about all things investing, specifically focusing on how to invest if you are self-employed. Now I've learned a lot about investing in the past year, and I've been on my own journey to reprogram some of my limiting beliefs around money and building wealth through investments. But to share more on this subject today is my guest Hannah Mayfield. She's a qualified financial advisor and the founder of WhatisWealth.

financial education platform dedicated to the idea that true wealth is much more than the cash in your account. Through What Is Wealth, Hannah helps people demystify investing, build confidence around money, and align their financial choices with their values. Today we'll be talking about building wealth, money mindsets, retirement funds, and investing, and why understanding and taking action on these isn't just about numbers.

but about freedom, choice and creating a life that allows you the luxury to not need to work if you ever need some planned or unplanned time off. Now this conversation is a great place to start if you are on the fence about how to invest your money. So let's dig right into it.

Sophie Biggerstaff (01:02)
I'm excited to talk about this like finance is a really hot topic for me right now and I've been doing a lot of work on like managing my finances.

and getting them back to a place of where I'm making really smart decisions, smart investments. So I'm excited to have this conversation and hopefully validate all the things that I've been doing for myself. ⁓ But before we kick into that, do you want to give us a little bit more about your background and your journey into finance?

Hannah (01:20)
Thank

Yeah, so I come from like not a traditional finance background. It was very much like my life circumstances kind of like put me on this path. So I actually used to work in fashion buying was kind of like starting.

So I started my career in that and then when I was 22, my dad passed away and I inherited some money and I'd grown up with a single mom. So I had this kind of like one experience of money that was, it meant I was very good at saving and budgeting. Like, cause you know, it was like one experience, like that's how I could be able to do things. So I always had that kind of down really well. And then when I had this money from my dad, I was like, I don't know what people do with money. I've never had any conversations about investments.

I don't know what to do. I don't know who to speak to about this. So was this journey where I had to kind of learn. I tried to speak to finance professionals and just found them to be honest, really unhelpful. I don't know if I was unlucky. I tried to quite a few and I was like, I don't really trust you guys. None of you care about the ethical side of things. They're just kind of like, yeah, we've managed your money for you and charge you loads to do it. So anyway, I taught myself.

realised that actually investing can be kind of simple once you understand it. I used to believe it was like gambling and I could lose money and then kind of figured it out in a way. Started teaching my friends, they started making good money with their stock market kind of portfolio. And I was like, this is actually really unfair. Like if you don't happen to have me as your mate, you just might not ever know this stuff. so then I kind of, it also coincided with wanting to be remote.

trying to figure out what I could do remote. And I was like, actually, I've learned loads about money and investing. Like, that I'm helping my friends with it, like, kind of made sense to make that a career path. And then... ⁓

I trained as a financial, qualified as a financial advisor, did all my training. Don't do like regulated financial advice. It's like a different thing. So it's all financial education, which is like legally different. So I work with people one-to-one, have courses about investing, and I've started doing a lot more with corporates as well. So I'm like going in and doing workshops, lunch and learns, done some content creation for FinTech brands. It just kind of like has taken on a bit of a life of its own, which is cool. Cause I think there's aren't especially women speaking about money on the internet.

Sophie Biggerstaff (03:41)
Yeah, that's so cool. I actually love that story. That's so amazing that you've been able to take your own experiences with finance. Because it's not like you say, it's not the traditional route into finance. And it's amazing that you've got such a different perspective of it. Because like said, unfortunately, I'm so sorry that you had to go through that at such a young age with your dad. And you've got that experience then turned

Hannah (03:42)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (04:09)
completely on its head, the way you've been able to make something really positive from like obviously a negative experience. You've been able to take that money that you've had and you've got it unexpectedly and bring that into your future career path, which I think is a really positive thing. And I really resonate actually with what you said around like you got this money and you didn't know what to do with it. And I've actually had a couple of family members recently come into a lot of money unexpectedly.

And same situation, like they don't come from money, don't have, they've never had money from their whole life. Some of them are in their 40s and they've never had money throughout their whole life. And suddenly they've come into this like quite big sums of money and they don't know what to do with it. And they, as you said, they went to financial advisors and they were, yeah, the financial advisor is essentially making money off of you having money. So that doesn't feel that ethical. So I love what you've said there around like training people how to actually.

do that for themselves and talk to me a little bit about that process then that you kind of went through to teach yourself, like how did you do that?

Hannah (05:16)
Well, it was quite hard because I opened my first stock market investments ⁓ seven years ago now.

And we kind of forget, but the world has changed a lot in seven years. was not as much information available seven years ago as like, I'm going next week to the Finfluencer Awards, like financial influencer. That wasn't part of thing seven years ago. So I really had to patch lots of things together. So it was like, but I think it was mainly books, honestly. I don't even think I listened to podcasts at that time. It was just, you know, I feel like the information, that information has really changed. So yeah, it was books. I was reading a lot about.

the kind of investing methodology is called index investing. And sometimes with this, I also find with money investing, it's like learning a different language. And sometimes people think they're bad at money, but it's like, it's just a different language. It's just different words. You just don't know what they mean. It's not you. It's not a thing. It's a confusing industry. So I kind of found that I think mainly through books and then kind of like patch stuff together and probably made it bit more complicated than it needed to be, but it worked. I opened that investment account seven years ago and like my money has now doubled.

So it's like, and basically what happened was I was, I started with property investing and then I spoke to this guy who I was hoping could be a property mentor. And he was like, oh yeah, I'm selling all of my property and just putting it into my stock market investments because they were up 20 % last year and I didn't have to do anything for it. And I was like, oh, like 20%. I was like, that's quite a lot in a year. Maybe I should like get serious about looking into this. So that was when I taught myself. And that's why I also think is that unless people

Sometimes I try and say how much my money is growing because I used to never know that. I never used to know really what I was missing out on or what a normal amount of growth was or anything about it. And then when he told me that number, I was like, oh, I should be taking this seriously. And that kind of kicked off the stock market investing journey.

Sophie Biggerstaff (07:09)
Yeah, definitely. I think a lot is all around lack of education, right? Like a lot of people don't have access to education. Well, I mean, everyone can access it actually now, but like previously, like you mentioned seven years ago, no one would even know where to look for it. So it's really great that you may be able to find the resources, the books, the things that you needed to help you learn that.

I think a lot of people have this mindset of, well, that's not possible for me. Like even if I did have any money, which a lot of people are struggling for money, because cost of living crisis and all of that and central recessions on the pipeline. Like actually, like when you learn how to manage your money, invest properly and eliminate a lot of fear around it, you can have really big rewards. But I don't think people realize that they see it as such a big risk. Like whenever

I talk to my parents, for example, about investing my money in the stock market or anything that's outside of the norms, like not a premium bond, not an ISA kind of thing, or a savings account with a certain interest rate. They're like, ⁓ well, that's a bit risky. it's like, people are fearful of investing and it's really a mindset that you have to shift out of and look at it as a,

there is risk associated with it, but there's also so much opportunity and it's about educating yourself to the point of understanding what that opportunity is and where the risk is and trying to find your happy medium, I guess, in between that and your certain risk level. Was there an element of mindset work that you had to do to be able to invest that money and feel like comfortable that you were and trusting that you were gonna get a return on it at some point or being able to also acknowledge the risk associated with investment as well?

Hannah (08:53)
Yeah, I think there's a few factors to it. I think it's, I think like you said, identifying the risk is really important. And then there's a quote that's like, risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. So I think a lot of it was that, like you said, the education part. So understanding, okay, this index investment strategy, I understand it. It makes sense to me. I understand how it works. So like, that's the kind of method I'm going to go down. So that really helped like finding that strategy. And then I did have to kind of rerun a big thing that made it click for me was I

I realized that pensions are just investments in the stock market as well. And when we say stock market, sounds like this weird thing, but it's just buying bits of companies. companies are all designed to make profits. So if you own a little bit of that company, you are therefore entitled to a bit of their profits. And that's literally how everything works. It's like, kind of when you start thinking to it, you're like, oh, that's how the whole world is set up right now. Under capitalism, it's like companies make profit, shareholders make, you know, get some of that profits back.

That's how it works. It's designed to grow.

So, and when I realized that, oh, like my pension is invested in these companies too, and that you're really encouraged to invest in your pension, that's seen as a very sensible thing to do. The government really incentivize people to put money into a pension with like tax top-ups and stuff. So was like, oh, okay then, maybe it isn't that risky. So I think that's like the first mindset shift is like actually doing nothing is quite risky. You know, you wouldn't, if you kept, if you didn't put your money into a pension account that was invested, you would never be able to retire.

And like another big click for me was understanding about inflation and how like keeping your money in cash savings just means you can buy less and less and less with it over time. And we can kind of see this in 1975, I think the average house in the UK was like 50,000 pounds. So you can imagine if someone 50 years ago kept that 50K in the bank.

And then like today, was like, I'm gonna buy a house with it. They would have a big shock at the average house price now I think is at 270. So you can see like, okay, cash doesn't work in the long run. So actually the flip for me was like, oh, cash is risky over decades. So then it kind of like forced my hand into the investing. I am inherently quite risk averse, but that kind of made me be like, actually doing nothing is kind of a risk as well.

Sophie Biggerstaff (11:11)
Yeah, there's risk in both sides, but I think because cash is something that we can physically see and control, it feels safer, right? Like because we're more in control of it. And I think when we're in control of something, we naturally associate that with a bit more, having more safety around it. But I guess also there is an element of control with where you invest in. But again, it comes from having ⁓ that understanding, that education. And I spoke to someone recently that was like,

⁓ competence is confidence, right? So if you understand what you're doing, you're gonna feel way less, way more less fearful around actually doing that element of investing and putting your money in somewhere because you're gonna know how to control it and you're gonna know how to make it less risky for yourself. So I guess, yeah, like there's so much risk associated with having money and cash. There's also risk in having an investment. So it's like, just choose your risk and choose.

what is going to be best for you. And in the most cases, probably investing is going to be the better option. And for me personally, like I always looked at myself sickly when I was in the box came from the same background as you in buying. And when I was in that buying career, I was on very good money and I always had a decent amount of money in my bank account, but I really regret now not doing anything with that. Like I did for a long time have a stocks and shares ISA, but I always

thought that I couldn't invest because I didn't know anything about it and I would invest when I understood it. But I never taught myself, I never took the action to actually educate myself on how to invest that money. So I just made that assumption about myself of, well, I can't invest because I don't understand the investment. But it's only more recently, probably in the past like nine, 10 months, actually, that I've started to shift that mindset of like, well, it's...

Like you said, there's risk on both sides and I sold a property last year and before that all my money was invested in that property more or less and I had some cash but not a lot, it was mainly in the property. When I sold the property and I got quite a lot of equity back from that property, I was like, well, what do I do with it? And there's an element of like, I'm actually scared of like what to do with this money now. Like how do I put it somewhere that feels less risky? So I chose.

the least risky option and then it's only more recently that I've been like, well, I'm not getting anything from this, this money. Like it's literally sitting in premium bonds and I'm getting absolutely nothing from these premium bonds. So now I'm like shifting where I'm investing and it's been such a hot topic for me over the past four or five months to like move all my money around and make sure it is invested in the right places. So yeah, I fully, I fully resonate with everything that you've said there and I agree that there's risk.

from both sides and it is just a mindset shift of like really understanding that you can get way more reward if you do take one risk over the other. And I love what you said around the pensions because yeah, it's true. Like, because we're not, again, we're not really educated on what we know what pension is when we get the pension, we don't really educate on what actually is happening with our pension until the point of us receiving it. So I fully resonate and get everything you said that makes a lot of sense. And.

Something that stood out to me in the form that you filled in to help me understand about yourself was that you mentioned that true wealth is more than just the cash in your account. I would love to hear your kind of interpretation of that and how you kind of came to that realization.

Hannah (14:35)
Yeah, so I did, about a year ago, I'd been doing this financial education stuff just under my name and then I rebranded it to What Is Wealth because I thought it's just a good question and obviously there isn't one definite, I think you can kind of define it how you want to but I think sometimes it's money is very emotional, it's not just about the numbers, it's obviously about what that can do for you in your life and I think for me,

Especially like all the experience I have with my dad. It's like time is the thing that we can never get back and we are most of us are swapping our time for money and that there is this like real relationship between the two and for me I'm like if you have savings ideally if you can like start building up investments

Like for me, that just gives you freedom and optionality. And one of the best things I ever did was I took a bit of a step back from my career kind of a long time ago when my nan was really sick and was able to spend time with her. I'm like, that's the best thing I've ever been able to do. And like most people, if you're not like that is a privilege and it's because I had savings. So I'm like very passionate about.

And we're often kind of influenced to maybe put our money into other places and we're not so influenced to be like, no, like keep that for you and like send it forward to your future self and put it in the right place. So I think wealth is very individual for people of what it can be. But for me, I think one definition is definitely kind of how long can you go without working?

Because at some point in your life, someone will get ill or you might get ill or something might happen where you just need to take a step back. Especially, I work a lot with women. Motherhood is a huge thing for many women that is financially very punitive. it's like you kind of, if you can send money forward, if you're in the position to, then yeah, it's really powerful of what you could do for yourself.

Sophie Biggerstaff (16:26)
Yeah, I really resonate with that more than ever at the moment because my dad has just been quite sick and I am still working and it's meant that I've had to stay in the UK and I don't live in the UK, I live in Thailand. So I've had to stay in the UK for an extended period of time and having the flexibility of the fact that I do have now some investments working for me. I also have my business that works for me and that freedom around that wealth creates.

level of freedom that allows you to be there and take time as and when you need to take the time and I think that that is like that's literally the biggest level of freedom that you can achieve I think and obviously having investments is a cheat code for freedom that's something else that you mentioned before for them so talk us through something like some practical steps for somebody that is listening to this and being like wow I would I really need that level of freedom in my life because I've got

XYZ thing that I need to be more present for and be able to take some time off work and really be there for people in my life. How can somebody start using their savings or investments as that tool to allow them that time off work? So specifically for people that are running their businesses or working remotely, I'd say.

Hannah (17:43)
Yeah, I think it's kind of having a plan, I guess of, how much will I ideally love to be putting into either like paying off any expensive debt? You kind of want to get rid of that first because you're just going to be getting charged a lot for it. It's the same, like you're still growing your net worth. It's still the same thing. Then it's the kind of focus on having savings. So maybe like three to six months worth of savings ideally, just giving you that buffer.

And then it's kind of like, okay, maybe if I have extra cash or income I don't need for five years at least, then that's the kind of long-term pot that I could use for investing. So it's kind of, think just setting goals around it as well and having that as an intention and something I always find and like, I'm sure someone will listen to this, like, there's this thing of being like, I'll invest when I have more money.

And or I don't have enough to invest and I'm always like, if you kind of like, you know, if you are someone who can go on holidays or you have some disposable income that you can do 25 pounds a month, I even put five pounds a month into a junior ISA for my godchildren because I'm like, they've got a long time, five pounds a month, like over 20 years, at about the time they're, well, 18 years, maybe by the time they're 18, that will add up, especially when you kind of factor in the investments income they make. So I think also that might be a mindset shift is that actually small amounts are worth it as well. And I know we've got, I've kind of,

experience was having this bigger chunk, but actually lots of people who work with me have these small amounts and they're like, well, I just need to get on with it and do it. And it's easy to kind of.

If you start with the smaller amount, you can build it up. you've got, think having the pot and having the infrastructure and having like the actual account set up is the huge step. And then actually just funneling more into it you can do later, but like getting that first hundred pounds put in or whatever, even if you're not contributing any more to it, like just knowing you have it there ready to fill up, I think is also quite powerful because then you have switch from to become an investor.

And then also there's different when you got skin in the game and you got your money in it, like you're just gonna be checking it and you're gonna have a different level of tangibility by seeing it go up and down and stuff. So yeah, I think setting goals around either you can kind of do it working forwards, been like, okay, I have, I could put aside 50 pounds a month, 500 pounds a month at whatever position you're in, I could do that. And then other ways to kind of set the goal of being like, actually, it would be really great to have like 10 grand in savings. So how, if I would like, how much can I?

Sophie Biggerstaff (19:37)
Yeah, both.

Hannah (19:57)
kind of if I would love that in a year's time, what's that work hours month? If I gave myself two years, what's that work hour month? And just like looking at the numbers basically and like, yeah, spending some time with it.

Sophie Biggerstaff (20:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I think that's a really good point that you made about the mindset around like, don't have enough to invest. I definitely had that mindset for a long time and I did have enough like this is this was the even more stupid thing is I did have money to invest. But for some reason, I've had this massive scarcity belief around money. Leaving like money going like spending money and that's that's stupid because I will happily go out and spend money.

on a gym class, like a performing pilates class, which is 25 pounds, you know, like I'll happily go out and spend five pounds on my matcha latte every day, but then I won't put five pounds a month into investments. That doesn't make sense when that money could make me back another five pounds next month to go and pay for my matcha, do you know? Like it's all, it's just, it's a massive cycle with money, I think. Like we spend and then we receive, we receive and then we spend. Like it's just a massive cycle. And I think shifting through money mindset blogs.

is the only way really to be able to feel comfortable enough to invest but on top of that you have to take the action and I agree with you sometimes setting up that account is the hardest part because you have to part with money to be able to set up like I recently set up a Vanguard account and I literally just put 500 pounds in just to test the waters like initially before I then

I'm like feeling really, really confident and being like, right, I'm going to put the rest of my savings in there or like a percentage of my savings in there. So that I can start small exactly what you said, start small, see how it operates, understand it a little bit better. And then I'm going to feel more comfortable to put more money into it. So I think exactly what you said, like even if you just have £25, £100, whatever it is, put it in there because it's definitely going to be something that then you can learn more about. like you said earlier, like competence is...

confidence so the more confident you feel with with passing with that money put it in the investments and seeing what happens with it you're gonna feel way more confident to put more money in there and then see the bigger bigger returns but what kind of things then do you recommend when you're working with clients that they start with investing in?

Hannah (22:19)
I think it's index investing is a really good strategy for most people. think you can do it from like lots of different amounts. it's, yeah, I mean, maybe I won't go to the whole explanation, but I think that's giving you enough like a breadcrumb to kind of go away and Google. And it's basically a method of stock market investing, I think helps.

It kind of helps spread your money across lots of different companies, basically, because if you imagined imagine that however many years ago I put all my money in Blockbuster, at one point that would have seemed like a really good decision. Like they were everywhere until they're not. So if I had put all of my money into one company and tried to pick the best one, that's not really a smart strategy. Whereas actually, if I spread my money across 500, 1,200, 2,000 companies across the whole world potentially, then it's really hard for my money to go to zero. So a lot of the way

that I like to invest, how can I make this really hard to lose money? Because actually making it with investments, that's like the whole system is set up to do that. Like it seems hard, that's actually not the hard part. The hard part is how can you do it in a way where it minimizes losses? So then that's what think index investing is really good for. So I kind of would say for as a starting point, like learn about that.

Sophie Biggerstaff (23:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah and is there a specific platform that you recommend people to start looking at? Is there like specific resources? I know you obviously have your own resources on this subject as well but is there a starting point that's like really breaks it down super big enough for somebody that is like feeling super overwhelmed by this?

Hannah (23:50)
Yeah, think there's actually so many platforms now, it's a bit overwhelming and it does depend on how much you want to invest because some platform fees are better than others for like, if you're doing a small amount monthly or if you have a big lump sum or like it's kind of very, so I don't really have one that I would say. But I do think if you want the simplest way, like robo-advisors are a really great way to start because they'll kind of give you a little quiz to kind of like assess your risk tolerance.

based on whatever they define risk as and like their kind of criteria. But yeah, robo-visors are the easiest way to start. Sometimes they can be a bit more expensive fees-wise and like ideally you don't want to be paying a lot in fees. And when I say a lot, I mean like...

less than 1 % ideally 1 % if I was going for dinner I wouldn't really care if I was going I wouldn't pick a restaurant based on which one was 1 % cheaper but if I have an investment platform that's going to be 1 % cheaper that is actually mega so that is like something that I would say have on your radar as well when you're looking at these platforms is that fees actually are really important.

Sophie Biggerstaff (24:52)
Yeah, definitely. That's advice that I've also been given from someone that I was speaking to about my personal investments. And she mentioned that if it's like 0.3 % would be quite a good investment And that was something that I looked for specifically when I was assessing where I should start with this. Because I think it's like when you

Hannah (24:55)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (25:22)
Especially if you're self-employed and you're a business owner, I think there is an element of like, okay, we don't always know that our income is going to be fully consistent. Like anything can kind of happen. We're not, I mean, it can in a job as well. We could be married under any moment in time, but it feels more risky. Obviously when you are a business owner, when you have, you're more in control of your own money because you're like, well, what if I make a mistake? Like how, what's going to happen? What will happen to my business? What will happen to my lifestyle?

all of these things. So I guess like, is there any way that we can, how do we, I guess, safeguard ourselves from those risks as business owners? Is this the solution to put it into investments and that safeguarding ourselves? Like what kind of advice would you give someone that specifically is self-employed?

Hannah (26:14)
I think it is having a good cash savings buffer so that like you said if you have a lower month or couple months or whatever you can fund your lifestyle and I also think when you're self-employed or business owner you have to take full responsibility you're taking like 100 % responsibility of your money in every single way so it's kind of a sick pay, pension, cash flow like paying yourself you're taking 100 % responsibility of money so I think learning about money and spending time on it is obviously really important

I would say a lot of self-employed people probably aren't putting enough into their pensions. I know that's really boring, it is going to be scary one day and it's really hard to catch up if you don't start doing it because the way it works, it does grow exponentially over time and the longer you can give your money to grow, better. Ideally, it should be...

If your money's making 8 % for you a year, which is the average, it means it's doubling every nine years. So the aim of the game is really to try and get as many nine-year chunks in as possible with your money. And one pound that I put in today, therefore, is doing the job of two pounds that I'd have to put in in nine years' time. So think that's also, people get really dismissive. Oh, it's not a lot that I could put in right now. But it's like, yeah, but you're to have to put double as much in if you leave it another nine years. So I'd like to put the one pound in now and let it do its thing. Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (27:20)
Yeah.

yeah no it's very true again

it all just comes down to like

fear. think the biggest part is fear and that's the biggest thing that you have to overcome when you're putting it in there because you think, oh I need it right now and there is an element of like, know, live your life and you never know if tomorrow is guaranteed kind of thing so just do what you need to do in that moment in time but then there is also an element of like, if I do get to, at the moment the retirement age is just about to go up, I think it's to 68 in the UK, like what happens when by the time that I'm 68 it's probably going to be 72 let's say, like the retirement age.

So

what happens when I'm 72 and the state pension if I live I don't even live in the UK so God knows what would happen with my state pension but the state pension is not gonna be probably enough to live off of the cost of living that we're seeing at the moment and then if I don't have anything on top of that like really like what do you do and I've got a woman I've got friends that she's about she's about to turn 50 and she's never invested her money she's never looked

really looked after her money and she's panicking, honestly. She's really panicking and she's also self-employed and has been for a long time and she had other backup options at some stage in her life that she thought was going to work out but didn't work out because it wasn't actually hers to work out. So I think it really is about like advocating for yourself and thinking about like the future you as hard as that is to imagine right now at the age of 33, me thinking about myself in 30 years time when I want to potentially retire.

It's like, okay, well, how am I going to be able to do that? And like you say, it's that really forward thinking everyone that I speak to that understands investments and is into investments is like, I wish I'd done this sooner. Like I haven't met one person that's like, I did this at the right stage of my life. There's no right time. We just have to, we just have to do it. And I think it's, it's just taking like baby steps maybe to start off with, to make yourself feel more comfortable. And then

going all in with it as and when you feel like it's the right time. But I love what you said, the reference that you mentioned about putting money into an ISA for your good children and starting literally with five pounds a month. There's so much to be said about that. Like that's gonna be worth a lot of money at some point down the line. And now we've got AI to do all of the forecasts for us as well. So I've been actually mapping out some of my own investments using.

AI to say, well, how could this look like? Give me different scenarios because I think when you can see it in front of you, you're more likely to be like, oh, okay, I can see the opportunity. A lot of people don't know how to work out the opportunity, but we could, we've got so many more tools now to help us see it, figure it out.

Hannah (30:08)
I think it's a point because it's such an intangible thing. And I think it's lots of should, people are like, oh, I should really invest. But like I said, until I had that conversation with that guy who was like, it's up 20%, I was like, okay. Now my brain has something really tangible to understand what this means. I can actually get on with it.

⁓ And I would say as well, if you're using AI or forecasting, whatever, is a good idea. Just there's all you can Google at compound interest calculator and you can put in like, if I put in this amount every month and it grows, I normally put in 8 % because that's been on average, like how much the whole companies have gone up on average over the past 30 years. So like maybe use 8 % as a starting point. ⁓

Yeah, then you can see how much it will grow over the different time periods while it will work out. And 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. And then when you see the real tangible numbers, I think that's when it starts to click. So I'll be like, oh, OK. I want to do this.

Sophie Biggerstaff (31:01)
Yeah,

definitely. You need to see that something was tangible for you to make sense to you, right? We've also spoken a little bit about like, ISA accounts and savings accounts and cash and things like that. is there an ideal split from your personal experiences or things that you speak to with your clients about how you're splitting your money between the investments, between the ISAs, between the savings accounts? Like how do you recommend people work that out for themselves?

Hannah (31:30)
Yeah, I think it obviously depends on you and your needs and if you have dependents and stuff like that. But I think the main place to start is paying off the expensive debt. And then with terms of savings, think think of it in terms of time. Instead of being like, have I got three months living expenses? Have I got six months living expenses? Like maybe if you have kids and an unstable income, you would love to have 12 months living expenses in the savings account and then anything over that that you think you won't need.

for five years plus you put in investment accounts. And pensions are really normally the best tax, they're quite tax efficient because if you put your money in a pension you'll get top ups from the government and maybe if you have a company you can also pay less tax. it's a good thing to talk to your accountant about I would say, is be like, how should I be optimizing my pension and using my company to do that?

The ISA account, I think sometimes also people get confused and think an ISA is a type of investment, but an ISA just means that anything you make in this account is tax free. So you have cash ISAs, stocks and shares ISAs, but it's basically saying like, if you're in the UK and you're a UK tax resident, like anything you put in here, anything you make on it, you have to pay tax on. And then you pick what you put in it.

So they're a massive perk, like most countries don't let you have loads of tax free investment income. Like being able to put 20,000 pounds in a stocks and shares ISA every single year is kind of crazy perk to be honest. So yeah, you definitely want to take advantage of all the tax stuff. And actually when I did my financial advisor qualification thing, I was quite shocked about was how much of it was about tax. I thought a lot of it was going to be about like where to put your money and how to make it grow. And actually so much of it is about how to optimize to pay less tax and not in a kind of

weird tax of 80 way, but it's like, the system is very complicated and there's all these different kind of like products and types of accounts. And if you, again, if you don't know about them, but I love having a good accountant to kind of ask those questions to.

Sophie Biggerstaff (33:28)
Yeah,

it helped.

Hannah (33:29)
So yeah, I think if

you have an accountant that does your company accounts or whatever, they file stuff for you, be like, what's the most tax efficient way I should be planning for my future in terms of like pension savings investments. And they can also, they won't be able to like tell you where to put it, but they can tell you from the tax perspective, like what they would suggest. And that can be really helpful as well. use these finance professionals. Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (33:50)
Mm-hmm, yeah,

that makes a lot of sense. It's definitely good to sound board it off of somebody else and get validation sometimes for even if you think you know the answer, just asking the question to somebody that definitely does know the answer is very validating and can help you make some good decisions, which is amazing. Is there anything else that we haven't spoken about about investing?

that you would like to share today? Because I don't know enough about it to pull out any other topics from it. But is there anything that we haven't already covered that you think somebody would need to know if they're about to start investing?

Hannah (34:24)
I think that's it. think like have your strategy, know that it's gonna go up and down a lot. So you also have to be prepared for that. Like that's, I of call that the price of admission. It's like, okay, great. Maybe my money is gonna grow for me. But the kind of like flip side of that is it's not gonna grow in like a steady predictable way, like an interest on a cash savings account. It's gonna go up and down. So you have to be prepared for that and have to know like, what am I gonna do if, yeah, like we haven't had a recession for ages. At some point you're gonna open your stocks and shares account.

and it's going to be a lower number. And depending on when you put your money in, might even be lower than what you put in in the first place, which is going to be, you know, like, so you have to be able to manage yourself through that because that is the process. So I think having that education, understanding, like proper plan for the future, knowing how it's all going to play out, be confident in your investing strategy is like really helpful. ⁓

Sophie Biggerstaff (35:17)
Yeah.

Hannah (35:18)
And yeah, I think it is just like, if you're stressing about it, whatever money you have as well, even if you have a lot of money, start small. Because sometimes people just get paralysed because they're like, oh my God, I'm gonna have to so much in. But like you said, I actually just started with an amount that felt safe enough to put in, just so you've got it set up and then you'll start to look at it in a different way. Because sometimes our brain is so, we're so loss averse, it is really scary. We don't know, it is unpredictable.

So yeah, you kind of have to figure out ways around it to make yourself do it and not put it off as well.

Sophie Biggerstaff (35:48)
And no, definitely, think the longer we put it off, the longer we're actually losing, right?

Hannah (35:54)
Yeah, because nothing's

good bad is going to happen if you put it off, really. That's the issue that they're kind of, and I find this when I'm working and trying to do marketing, I'm like, oh, how can I make this slightly more urgent for people? Because you could just put this off forever, and then like you said, one day you might get to like 50 and be like, oh, I wish I'd have done this in my 30s. But in the moment, there's no harm in pushing it next week. Nothing bad is really happening. So it's really hard to kind of force yourself to have the urgency around it as well.

Sophie Biggerstaff (36:22)
I think it's, I think you just sometimes have to just do it right, like you have to go for it and I also think sometimes it takes people to have a bit of a shake-up with their finances or something like that to understand the value in those things, that's definitely what happened to me, like I had a bit of a blip, let's say, with my finances last year and I was suddenly like...

reality check Sophie come on wake up like I thought my whole life I was good with good with money quote unquote like and I wasn't bad with money but I also over the past couple of years particularly since I became self-employed became very avoidant with money and any issues that I was having or any stupid things that I was doing and then I had a bit of a reality check and was like ⁓

okay I need to sort this out like I have to sort this out right now because otherwise it's gonna leave me in quite a difficult situation so I think sometimes you have to unfortunately hit those reality checkpoints whether you've been very redundant for example or you know your you're changing circumstances big life changes are happening you suddenly get woken up a little bit to the fact that you need to you need to do something with it otherwise you could leave yourself in a very vulnerable position so

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing all of that wisdom and advice and all of your own experiences today. I really appreciate that. And obviously the whole point of us creating wealth for ourselves is to create a little bit more freedom in our lives. Like we mentioned in beginning, freedom, whether that's to go and spend time off of work when you need to take it or freedom to live in the certain way that you want to live. So I'd love to hear about what freedom actually means for you.

Hannah (38:01)
To be honest, the main thing for me has been location independent because I live in Lisbon. ⁓ That's been the biggest kind of driver of me reshaping my career is that I just wanted to be able to be where I wanted to be. And that's meant, it's quite uncomfortable as well. think keeping money and growing it in investments is very different to earning money by yourself, on your own name. It's been a huge journey of kind of putting yourself out there.

pitching yourself constantly, marketing. You just have such a different relationship with money because you have to constantly be bringing it in. Well, unless maybe you're on a really long-term retainer or something and you're slightly more employee-esque, even if you work for yourself. But yeah, for me, it's really been location independence is my main driver. I just always want to be wherever I want to be. also, freedom for me is being able to do things I want to do.

writing a book at the minute, so I'm spending about an hour a day and to have that flexibility in my day and that capacity to do that is just amazing. And if you can kind of use money to help you do those important things in life, yeah, that's like, I'm very, I think freedom is something I really value in terms of, I guess for myself and in terms of like looking at it in my personal goals, it's a big driver, yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (39:17)
Yeah,

I feel you. I feel you with the location. Obviously, I've been nomadic for the past few years. So definitely, definitely location freedom is a big one up there for me. So I feel you with that. That's great. And thank you so much for sharing everything. How can anyone find you if they want to connect?

Hannah (39:34)
Yeah, I am on Instagram, Hannah Whatiswealth, LinkedIn, and I'm Hannah Mayfield. And if you want to kind of learn a bit more about index investing, I have a five day free email course that will kind of like take you through the basics that you need to know in five days.

Sophie Biggerstaff (39:52)
thank you so much for sharing all of that. I really appreciate you sharing all your wisdom.