Answering All of Your Investing Questions

Today, I'm going to answer pretty much every personal finance question that you could ever think of and a whole load more. I asked the subscribers of my newsletter to ask me anything, and we got well over a thousand replies. I'm going to answer as many of those questions as humanly possible before I pass out from sitting under this very hot light that's just above my head here.

Now, I've broken this down into sections for you because this is going to be a very long video. I don't suspect that you'll sit through it all in one sitting. So, yeah, broken down in sections, group the questions together by category. so you can jump to the bits that are useful for you and I've also marked the questions within that. So hopefully that helps you navigate this absolute beast of a video.

I can't answer every question or 1,000 of them. Mainly because a lot of the questions were just straight up asking for financial advice. I'm not a financial adviser. I can't give you financial advice. Even if I was, I wouldn't be able to compliantly because I don't know your individual personal circumstances. If you're looking for tailored financial advice, seek out the help of a qualified financial adviser. So yeah, let's get on with it, shall we? Because we got a lot of work to do here.

Luke asks, "What is your view on diversifying away from S&P 500 heavy global trackers into developed world or country specific trackers? Are we in an AI bubble similar to the dot era? And have you personally reduced your exposure to the global equity trackers?"

Are we in an AI bubble? Probably yeah. I think human nature is just boom and bust. We we are constantly in bubble and bust cycles. It's just where are we along that cycle? Who knows? And you know people will say it's a bubble and the thing will run for years. And the the key thing is if you opt out 3 years ago and the market doubles or trebles over that time, you've gained so much over that period that even if it shaves 30% you're still up. So I prefer to just be in the market especially with my investing timelines. Now, if you ask me this question when I'm 55, I would probably have a different answer. And I would be saying, well, if I have enough money, I might be looking to derisk from the market because I'm concerned that maybe there might be a drop in the next 6, 12, whenever months and that would be devastating for me from a retirement perspective because it would impact my ability to spend that money. See Roman Nikisa at Pensioncraft who's recently made that decision. He's decided to dial back from the market basically because he's got enough money. So he knows that he doesn't need to continue to be risk on. I don't have enough money so it makes sense for me to be risk on in the market.

Moving away from other countries away from America, I mean that might make sense to you. You know, it's it's your investment decision. I personally wouldn't do that because you know how do you pick the market that's going to be the next one? I think with the benefit of hindsight, it can look easy. The UK market has done well fairly recently, but for for years, people have been saying the UK market is cheap. And if you sat in the UK market going, "Oh, it's cheap. It's coming any day now." Today, you might be able to go, "Oh, look, look how well I'm doing with the UK market." You missed out on so much in American gains. Yeah. So, I have not diversified away. I just buy the global index. I mean, pretty boring stuff really.

Anonymous asks, "How do you choose between thousands of global tracker funds and how important is the TER compared to factors like tracking difference, index choice, and fund brand?"

Two questions in, I'm already absolutely sweating. So, total expense ratio or fees are important. They're one of the only things that we can control, but they're not the only thing that matters. The first thing to say is many global index funds are commoditized products. They've all they're all very similar. If you plot the performance of lots of different global indexes on a chart over a period of say 20 years, you'll see that they almost all follow the exact same path and end up in pretty similar places. So I do think it's worth saying don't sweat it too much. Just pick a quality one from a reputable provider and and you know get on the ride. But yeah, TE fees important. Yeah, good thing to start with. But you might find actually that a more expensive fund costs you less because of tracking RSA. So you might have a a more expensive fund and a cheaper fund and you're inclined to go with the cheaper option, but then actually the more expensive fund tracks the market more efficiently and better. So you don't get that gap between how your fund performs and how the market performs. That is essentially a fee, that difference. So yeah, a higher fee fund might actually be cheaper overall because it tracks the market more effectively. All I'm really looking for is relatively low fees. It tracks the market well. It's from a reputable provider. And for me personally, I'm looking at how they sample the market or how they track the market. I want physical replication. So, I want them to be buying the actual stocks. I I personally don't touch synthetic funds.

Synthetic funds. Bit of a mouthful that one. You're going to get used to me tripping all over my words during this. I swear. Speaking of tripping, actually, I bet one question is why the hell's you got broken arms? I made a video on it. I'll link it in the end cards. A whole video. Essentially, traffic accident, motor vehicle accident. I did it on a scooter in Bali and it's why I'm wearing this hat because I can't do my hair because...

Okay, number three. Darren, given concerns that the S&P 500 is overpriced and may underperform, why should investors choose a global fund over an all US portfolio that has historically returned 10%?

I think the answer is in the question in a way. Um the reason that you would choose a global fund is to diversify or lean a little bit away from that overvalued American market. So the American market still makes up 65% of a global fund. Maybe you're hinting at the fact that you're still highly exposed, but you do have a little bit of diversification there, don't you? Into, you know, the rest of the world. Also, as well, if you look at the performance of the US versus the rest of the world, it tends to be cyclical. It goes like this. There are long periods or there are these periods where the US market underperforms versus the rest of the world and I would say that typically that comes after a period of the US market being quite expensive. So one example of that is is the dotcom bubble post 2000 when there was this big runup in tech stocks focused mainly in the American market. I mean it was everywhere but certainly in the American market you saw a large stretch of US underperformance referred to as a lost decade where actually global equities outperformed in that period. I accept that I will likely over a long period of time underperform potentially the US stock market, but I just want that overall exposure because buying the whole global stock market over 125 year period has produced an average rate of return of slightly above 5%. That is more than enough for me to hit my financial goals long term. So I'd rather just have it all and not doubt myself or potentially go through a period of say 10 years where my portfolio does nothing. It's not quite fair to say that it does nothing because if you reinvested dividends and continued to DCA through that last decade, you did generate some return.

Ben said, "What are the key differences, pros and cons between OEIC's and ETFs, specifically comparing the Vanguard Footsie Global All Cap Index Fund to ETFs like VWRP and VWRL? And how should one choose between them based on age and risk appetite?"

So, there's a few differences, but the one that matters, I think, is the way that you buy these things. So an ETF, an exchange traded fund, trades on the stock market like it's a stock essentially. So you'll see the price fluctuate throughout the day when the market is open. If you buy it when the market is open, your order will process typically instantly. So you have that ability to buy and sell the thing quite quickly. Whereas an OEIC, these trade or they they process their orders once a day. So when you submit an order to buy one, it'll just be pulled together and once a day the the manager of the fund will action all of those orders. Some people like that style for a bit more set it and forget it. They don't have that kind of live pricing component of of an ETF which might make certain people panic. But I think the whole age and risk profile thing, I don't I don't think it really I don't think it really matters. Many platforms in the UK are ETF only because really they're much of a muchness. You know, I buy ETFs in the main just because a lot of the platforms that I buy on, which are discount brokers, only offer ETFs.

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Okay, next section. Investing strategy and asset allocation. What is the best way to learn the basics of the stock market to manage investments effectively?

I don't love to self-promote, but I have a completely free index fund investing for beginners course. I think that's a good place to start. And it is totally free. And I mean totally free. There's no upsells. I'm not going to get you into a dark room or on a webinar and try and pressure sell you into buying a 15 grand course or anything like that. It is free forever for always for you.

Stuart asks, "In simple terms, what are the differences between an ETF, a mutual fund, and an index?"

An index is just a benchmark that tracks a particular market. Another way of saying that is it's a list of companies that looks to track a specific type of thing. So, you might track the top 500 companies in America. It's called the S&P 500. You might track just the top 100 companies in the UK, the Footsie 100. Or you might be an index that looks to track the whole global stock market. An index is like a list that tracks a particular thing. Mutual funds and ETFs, these are investment vehicles that you can invest your money into and a lot of those will track those indexes. So an index fund is a fund, an ETF or a mutual fund that buys into the companies listed on a specific index. So Vanguard's World Fund is a fund of money that tracks, you know, a global index. I hope that makes some form of sense. Separate the two. The index is the list. The mutual and the ETFs are the investments. And then when you look at the mutual funds and the ETFs, see the question that I answered before about the differences. But understand as well that ETFs and mutual funds can both be can be both active and passive. You know, they're not all passive investments. You can get actively traded ones that are trying to beat the stock market. You can get ETFs and mutual funds that look to track specific lists that are very niche or really broad ones like the global stock market.

Shane asks, "How does compound interest work in a stocks and shares ISA, specifically an accumulating fund like VWRP? How do fluctuations and losses affect the compounding process and how often does the compounding occur?"

All compounding really is is this snowballing effect of using the returns that you generate from your investments to buy more investments and over time this just builds and builds and builds within a bank account. It's quite a clean and simple process. Bank accounts offer quite low returns but the compounding you know if you plotted it it would be a straight line. I think the thing that confuses people with the stock market is the value of the assets fluctuate over time. You know they they jump up and down but over a long period of time they tend to all also you know trend upwards. But if you're buying uh an index fund that tracks the global stock market, say every 3 months I get dividends from from from all of the companies within that that global index fund within the fund and I reinvest those back into the fund buying more units of the same fund. So the next time that I get dividends, it's slightly higher because I've used the dividends to buy more bits of the company in increasing the dividends. That is the compounding in effect in in one way. So yeah, it's continuous essentially.

Jack asks, "What are the mechanics behind the criticism that passive index investing is a Ponzi scheme? How might this affect an index fund investor and should I change my investment strategy?"

The mechanics behind that, in my opinion, are active investors or people with an interest in making sure that people don't invest into index funds trying to kind of poo poo the strategy. Their argument would be that index funds blindly pour money into the biggest companies on the planet because they're market cap weighted typically. So the biggest companies get the biggest allocation and that this over time distorts the stock market and breaks it. Now this is all down to something called price discovery. So this is this idea that the index has become so big that no one is sensibly saying is this company actually worth this amount or not. The Ponzi thing to me is annoying because a Ponzi scheme behind a Ponzi scheme there's absolutely nothing of value. Even if these companies are overvalued and the index investor is buying into something that's expensive, right? They still are buying shares of companies. So there is still ownership of a tangible asset that produces cash flows and returns and things like this. It's not a Ponzi because you're not using the returns to pay out other people, which is a traditional Ponzi setup of, you know, I take money off Jeff to give it to Paul because and like, you know, I just hope that I can keep getting more people in at the front so that I can keep paying old people that are pecking my head for cash. So, it's not a Ponzi in that sense. Is it manipulating the market or is it impacting the market? I think if the market was 100% index funds, we would be in trouble because there wouldn't be any price discovery. there wouldn't be anyone going, "Hold on, that company's not worth that much." At the point that the stock market was 100% in index funds, you could imagine that the market would never change. It would just be locked at that point. Apple would be, you know, 5% of the global stock market and stay at that point forever and it would just, you know, that's how everyone would invest. That that is bad. I interviewed um an economist called Dimitri on on my podcast and he he looked at this and he basically said that price discovery is still happening that there's a large portion of the market that is still actively pricing companies and and trying to work out if they're if they're valuable or or not. U you know if they're worth what they say. And also he thinks that it would only take a very small portion of the market to be actively pricing these companies to continue that price discovery. Over half of the market is still you know active in that sense. We have individuals like me and you picking stocks and we have active fund managers and and professional institutions every day pouring over companies saying you know is this valuable? Is it not? You only need to look at the fact that there are certain companies that are massive that are in the index that drop in price sharply on bad earnings to know that the index funds aren't just blindly pumping these things to the moon forever. So, I think the Ponzi scheme thing is is lazy. I think what you should the conversation that should be had is is passive investing breaking price discovery and correct valuation of the markets and I personally think the answer to that is no at this point and we would need to get a lot further down the percentage line before that was the case. And what would actually happen is let's say the market did become too passive. The opportunity for stock pickers on the other side would be huge because there'd be all these companies that were massively overvalued that they could, you know, bet against and short and things. So it probably swing the other way and self-correct.

All right. Ben asks, "Is it possible to be over diversified or is more diversification always better?"

It is possible to be too diversified. Peter Lynch called it diversification. I think one way that I see people doing this is they'll buy a global fund and then they'll buy an American fund and then they'll buy a tech fund and they think, "Oh, I own more funds so I am diversified." What they don't realize is there's lots of overlap between those funds and they actually end up more concentrated. So through an attempt to be more diversified, they end up more in more concentrated and less diversified. Check your asset allocation on your portfolio. Okay? And then just too diversified, right? If you knew what the best performing stock would be on any given day, you wouldn't buy anything else. You would just buy that stock. You just buy that one company, right? We diversify because normal mortals, us human beings don't have that ability. So, we just diversify broadly so that we can capture the broad return of the stock market because luckily for us, by some miracle, that tends to have been a good thing to do for the last 100 plus years. But for someone like you know Warren Buffett or that they would b at the idea of diversification into hundreds of companies because they think that they're an expert right they think that they can beat the market and in his example he has but he will actively sit there and say you know don't try and be me don't try and be someone who tries to beat the stock market and only holds a few investments broadly diversify. So if you think that you can beat the stock market diversification is probably not a good thing for you. You want to you want that concentration.

John asks, "What mainstream UK financial advice do you consider rubbish?"

I could sit here and say loads of things, you know, like the whole your property is your biggest investment and all that stuff, but I'm going to focus on something slightly different. And I'm going to take mainstream as in it applies to a lot of people rather than mainstream as in it's, you know, spoken about a lot. The UK pension industry, the workplace pension industry has a horrible habit of de-risking people and their retirement portfolios early on. So when they're just getting started, they're they have a high presence of bonds and then this lifestyling impact of, you know, really tailing off the amount of equity exposure, the amount of stock market exposure in a portfolio over time, meaning that many people in the UK inside a default funds, the mainstream are basically out of the stock market in a meaningful way for a large portion of their life. I think this is terrible. I think it's disastrous. I think the justification from Nest who are one of the big providers that do this that oh we don't want to scare people in the first five years so we we we kind of tap the brakes on their portfolio so that they don't run away from from the investments is you know hokey because most of the people that invest through Nest 90% don't even log on so they don't even know what they're invested in. I think that's a mainstream practice amongst the financial services industry that is disastrous for people's retirement outcomes potentially. I hate it.

Anonymous asked, "What is the strongest argument for believing the future will mirror the past with investing? And what is the strongest argument that it might not?"

This is a good question. The biggest argument for, first of all, is with nothing but progress behind us, what makes you think that the future won't be the same? The stock market has shaken off some pretty terrible events while it's been around and and still we sit here today at basically all-time highs. So, you know, why do people think that that will change? also human nature. I think the stock market is a vehicle for us to capture the efforts of the human race and the efforts of the human race are to build upon what others have built to look for efficiencies to to drive change to invent to tinker. It's like this is what we do and the stock market is the vehicle that normal people have access to kind of bet on that that human endeavor and that human capital. So that's the biggest argument for why because it always has. So why would that change? The biggest argument against maybe we're about to enter kind of an economic and global climate that we haven't really seen before where debt levels for countries are absolutely massive and populations in key centers that have driven the stock market aka the west might be in decline. Whether global populations decline, I don't know. But what seems clear is that the the population growth is going to come from potentially third world countries and there's going to be a declining population in the west. Maybe we resolve that through immigration. But the stock market's rise has coincided with a growth or a boom in population over the same time. So maybe you know massive debt levels, changing demographics, aging populations, these things could all change the outlook. They could also produce opportunity though. You know, aging populations require a lot of medical care. So, you might see biotech and these kind of sectors rise. Who knows? The one thing I will say is what else are you going to do? You know, where are where are you going to put your money? I would rather bet on the businesses of the world figuring out our problems than I would just stuffing it under my mattress.

Tony asked, "What are the pros and cons of choosing income distributing variants of ETFs over accumulation counterparts beyond the need for manual reinvestment and potential benefits for rebalancing?"

So, broadly, the income pays out the dividends as income. It lands in your brokerage account and the accumulation reinvests that automatically for you. If you're looking to live off the income from your investments, the income is obviously attractive. If you're looking to just continually reinvest over time, the accumulation version is obviously attractive because it does it for you. But there are some other considerations. Tax complexity. So income producing funds may be simpler from um a tax kind of perspective. I recently learned or you know I'm going through the process with my own company investments and realizing that because of some great people in the comments that income producing funds uh through a limited company structure might be more efficient because those dividends are tax-free at the point that you receive them and then when you reinvest them you it's kind of cleaner from an accountancy perspective. So there is that as well. I like getting the income notifications though as well. You know, as an investor inside of an ISA, I don't need to worry about tax implications in in that format. I like getting this notification going. You just got a dividend. Just feels great. There's probably more if I thought about it, but we got 174 questions here.

How do currency fluctuations impact returns on global investment funds? Can market gains be offset by currency movements? And does purchasing funds denominated in Great British Pounds mitigate this risk?

So currency fluctuations can indeed impact you? And by buying a fund listed in Great British Pounds, you don't get rid of this risk because behind the scenes, you're buying into countries and currencies all over the world. So there's there's currency fluctuation risk all over the portfolio. I made a whole big video, like a deep dive on this, and I'll link that for you down below. um because I think it's better that you just watch that video than me sit here and go into it for hours.

Julia asked, "What are your top tips for deciding when to sell a stock or a fund? Do you need the money?"

If you need the money, sell it. Do you think with a stock specifically that it is has reached a price where it no longer makes sense to hold this thing? So if you're buying into an individual company, you should be saying really, okay, I like it at this price, but at this price over here, I think it becomes overvalued or I think it's time to sell. When you're entering into that position, you should have an eye on the back door and on the exit essentially. Number three as well is, have you made a mistake? You know, have you bought into something that you didn't understand or that you didn't want? It's also acceptable to sell it then. So, if you need the money, if you think that it's hit your price target, and if you've made a mistake initially and you probably shouldn't have bought it in the first place, any others? No.

Miles asks, "How should a basic rate taxpayer in their 20s with an emergency fund and no high-interest debt prioritize surplus income between pension contributions, stocks and shares investing, mortgage overpayments, cash savings, life experiences, and career development?"

This is a hard question. So, first of all, career development is likely going to produce the overall best returns because increases in your income over time will compound massively. So if you realistically think that you can, you know, add a big chunk to your income, this is going to be the best thing for your portfolio over over your lifetime. When it comes to pensions, the very first thing that you should be doing is maximizing your workplace scheme, getting the most out of that, understanding it, really getting to grips with it, and just yeah, getting the getting all the juice out of that thing. And then when it comes to everything else, I can't tell you what to prioritize. What I would say is start with the end in mind and have an idea of like what do I need and where do I want to get and work backwards from that and then fill in the gaps from there because you know how much to contribute towards life experiences. God knows what I would say is make sure that your ducks are in a row and you're going to hit your plans in terms of retirement and all of the other savings that you want to do and then there should be a pot left there for you to enjoy yourself hopefully. Yeah, I'm sorry that's a bit of a fluffy answer, but I would say, you know, jump all over the workplace pension and career development is massively underrated. Skilling up is going to produce the best long-term returns for your portfolio overall. So, yeah, market timing, crashes, and lumpsums.

Anonymous. There's a lot of these anonymouses, isn't there? How should I invest 100K lumpsum in the current market? Invest it immediately, drip feed it over a specific time frame, or follow the time in the market principle.

So this is like many things in finance a question over your heart and your head. So the head tells us that the stock market tends to go up long-term more than it goes down. You know 60 to 70% of the days in the stock market are up days. So if you've got a pot of cash, it makes sense for you to get that money in the market as quick as possible because you know statistically it's more likely to go up than it is to go down. But Sod's law is that you put your money into the stock market and then the very next day that thing crashes. So the question to you is if you feel like you would put that 100k or whatever the number was into the stock market and if it dropped the next day, you would find it hard to live with yourself, well then you might want to just break that up into chunks because that's going to alleviate that concern for you. If you're the kind of person like me, like honestly, I would chuck 100k in the stock market and if it dropped 20% the next day, I'd be like, "Oh well, you know, is what it is." Typical. Um, then that's my answer. I think you kind of need to understand the headpoint of the stock market tends to go up, so lumpsuming tends to outperform drip feeding, but then you need to really think about who you are as an individual and if you can stomach the reality of it going wrong, cuz it might. What I would say as well is if you're going to drip feed into the market, don't be spreading this thing out over years because what you need to consider is the lost potential returns of you sitting on the sidelines. Where is your money? What is that pot of cash doing? And what return is it generating? And what return are you giving up on the other side with the stock market by not having it deployed?

How can I protect my ISA against a potential market crash? Or should I simply ride it out to avoid day trader behavior?

Depending on where you are in your investing timeline and how old you are and your tolerance to risk the right answer is so for someone my age say is to completely just ride it out and to not try and time the market to not try and dip in and out and protect your portfolio you know more damage is done in the anticipation of a crash than from an actual crash itself you're likely to get it wrong you're likely to get the timing wrong and and and do more damage to your portfolio so it's all about riding it out and understanding that the the fluctuations of the stock market are part of the process. That is the ride that you have to ride to get the outcome that you want. You can't just opt for all of the upside and none of the downside. You need to really internalize that. How do I protect my stock market, you know, my ISA from a crash? I think the question is how do you protect the ISA from yourself if the stock market crashes so you don't do something that ultimately hurts your portfolio long term?

Jonathan asks, "Would an investment strategy of buying a small amount every time the market drops by 1% outperform the market compared to standard buy and hold investments?"

In short, no. So, this waiting to buy the dip mentality, you know, whenever it drops 1%, I I put some money in consistently underperforms just being in the market. There will be times where it has outperformed, but broadly it underperforms. And the reason for that is because your money is sat on the sidelines generating a very small return and you're missing out on the compounding effects of the stock market. You're just you've got a pot of cash here that you're just waiting to deploy that's essentially rotting because of the impacts of inflation.

Andrew said, "I'm retired and hold a large cash sum in money market funds given my concerns about current high market valuations and the risk of a long-term downturn. Should I deploy this capital into the market? And if so, is a drip feed approach advisable?"

Hi Andrew, thanks for the question. So, do you need the money? Do you need to generate a return or have you got enough is is a place I would start with this. You know, what are you looking to achieve by investing that money? If the answer is simply, I just want more because it would feel good. But if it goes wrong, it might impact my ability to retire, I'd really, you know, flesh that that out. What I would say is that sequence of returns risk. So, you deploying all of your money into the stock market at one point and then it dropping suddenly could be disastrous on your ability to retire. So in your case, you might consider it more sensible to drip feed to really just reduce the risk of a short-term or medium to long-term decline in stock market performance. There's a reason that you've amassed those funds in money market funds. And now there's a reason that you're asking, should I put it into the stock market? I would just really want to understand that before I made a decision. You know, again, if you've got enough, you've got enough bonds, guilts, and money market funds.

Martin asks, "What are the benefits of including bonds in a portfolio compared to growth assets like global ETFs given their low performance relative to cash ISA rates?"

So the first thing to understand is that cash is rates are highly volatile. They might look really attractive today, but they tend to track the Bank of England base rate really closely. So if we enter a time of recession, say, those cash is rates might come down if the Bank of England drags the base rate down. Whereas bonds that you've already purchased within your portfolio act as like a shock absorber because the rate of the bond, what it's going to pay you is fixed. So in a period where all other cash-like instruments suddenly lose return because they track the base rate, these bonds that have a higher return on them become more attractive. They become more valuable, don't they? So they're like a shock absorber within your portfolio for that reason. you then have say an an allocation of bonds in your portfolio that have become more valuable that you can sell to buy more equities to rebalance into the stock market as it's crashing. So try not to compare them on the day like for like because they're not like for like products in that sense.

In what situations is it better to use a money market fund instead of a high interest savings account?

I think you use money market funds when you want to earn a competitive rate on cash that you have sat inside of like SIPs and ISAs or even a general investment account where there's funds that you don't want to withdraw from those wrappers but you still want to get that competitive rate.

Peter asks, "How do money market funds work and can they offer a better return for a 10K rainy day fund compared to easy access bank accounts?"

Money market funds pull together funds and buy very safe, very secure short-term debt, government bonds, corporate bonds, commercial paper, and this helps him achieve a rate similar or or that's really close to the Bank of England base rate. The trade-off is that basically they're not as liquid as typical savings accounts. You might have an high interest savings account with a debit card that you can access the money instantly. With a money market fund, you've got to sell your position in the fund and wait for that money to clear. In some of the platforms that I hold money market funds on, it would take days for me to actually get the money in a place where I could spend it. They are still very liquid. The same would apply if I wanted to take money out of a stock market ETF on those platforms. Just not as easily accessible. And I think for Joe public, there's a level of a lack of understanding around these products, which means they just feel safer in the high interest savings accounts. What they don't realize is that many of the high interest savings account providers are putting their money into, you know, money market funds and scraping the difference between what the money market fund offers the bank and what they're offering the individual to plunk the money in the savings account. They make that difference.

Gold, crypto, and alternative assets. John asks, "Why do you avoid discussing Bitcoin despite owning it? And would you consider discussing it once a quarter?"

Thanks for the question, John. First of all, I would counter by saying I clearly have spoken about Bitcoin if you know that I own some Bitcoin, right? But I think Bitcoin takes up as much time on the channel and on the platforms that I own as it does in my portfolio. I have a tiny holding of Bitcoin. It is probably less than 1% now of my overall asset allocation. And it's kind of like a schmuck insurance. It's a bit of fun. I get to participate and and see, you know, what the hell is going on. If it does the thing that everyone thinks it will do or the people who believe in it, I win. If it goes to zero, I don't lose. I don't talk about it much because it still remains unregulated and largely unproven. And I know people will sit there and go, "Oh, well, you know, over the last 15 or so years or whatever, it's been the best performing asset class on the planet." But the stock market has a track record well over a hundred years, 10 times that of crypto. And I can stick my stock market investments inside of tax efficient accounts. And there's all sorts of regulatory protection, reporting requirements, and all these other things that mean if anything goes wrong with the stock market investments, fraud and stuff, I have levels of protection and layers of protection. The financial services compensation scheme being one of those. You just don't have that with crypto. And I can't sit here with good confidence, you know, in good confidence and promote something to my audience that carries those levels of risk. I just don't think it's a responsible thing to do. There are plenty of people out there that talk about Bitcoin all of the time and crypto. So, if people want to engage with content that does that, they they can go and do that.

How can I invest in gold in the UK and what are the pros and cons of physical gold versus gold index funds?

So, physical gold like gold coins versus a gold ETF or ETC, exchange traded commodity. The purchase of certain physical gold items like sovereigns and things in the UK are very tax efficient. You don't pay capital gains tax on them because they are legal tender. You could technically go and pay for stuff with them. The problem is you've got to store them yourself. You know, you've got to look after them. You've got to keep them. I I imagine like, you know, having a little sack of gold coins feels absolutely gangster, but it might keep you up at night that if someone was to rob your house or to find out, they, you know, they'd be after your gold. The other option, so the exchange traded fund or exchange traded commodity option is a way to access gold that's much cheaper, you know, in terms of you can buy just a little bit of it, the fund if if there's fractional ownership. You don't have to buy a whole coin, say, and you don't have the same storage concerns and and things around it. It's called paper gold uh because you don't physically have the gold there. And certain gold bugs will say the main benefit of owning gold is literally owning the gold. So if you know the hits the fan and the world collapses, they've got their gold coins that they can start using in in some way or shape or form. I honestly think if the world goes to hell, a shotgun and some cat food would be more useful than a sack of gold coins, but here we go. And then um with the gold funds, the if it's outside of an ISA, you do incur capital gains tax on those though. So that's the the trade-off there, but you can, you know, get around that by holding those investments inside of a tax efficient account.

Barnaby asked, "For someone with a stocks and shares ISA and individual shares, would you recommend adding gold or silver bullion coins to your portfolio?"

I'm personally not a fan. I've made a video on gold before where I basically said that a lot of the attention that it's getting at the minute is because it's done well recency. I think there's a lot of recency bias tied up in, you know, people loving gold and a lot of the questions that I get about gold. It has long periods of declines or or being really flat and if you adjust for inflation over certain periods, it's had disastrous returns. But I do think, you know, there's potential for a small allocation within a portfolio as part of the defensive component because gold and certain precious metals have a tendency of kind of moving the other way to the stock market. So when bad things happen, they tend to do good. So maybe you want that characteristic within your portfolio. I made some notes on this actually just to make sure I cover them. So, I'm just going to check. Oh, yeah. The other thing I would say is you need to recognize that gold generates no returns. It doesn't produce anything. It's essentially just a shiny yellow rock. And you're hoping over time more and more people want to pay more and more for that yellow rock. There's a there's a similarity to Bitcoin in a way, which people are going to, you know, lynch me for. This greater fool theory. I don't think it's quite as pronounced with gold because there are some commercial uses for gold and gold has a really really long track yet record as the use of money. People will say I don't understand it and you know that's fine. It's not in my portfolio. If you want it in your portfolio you crack on. What I would say is again similar to crypto I would if it was in my portfolio it wouldn't be a massive chunk of it. I prefer to invest in income producing assets that generate returns. you know, businesses that are going out there into the world and doing stuff. Constantly hit my broken arm off that desk.

Arman asks, "What are your thoughts on having exposure to Bitcoin, specifically regarding a portfolio split of 50/50 between the S&P 500 and BTC?"

I mean, a 50/50 split between the S&P 500 and Bitcoin is just absolute dialed in risk, isn't it? You would be all over the place, your portfolio. I personally wouldn't like that portfolio makeup myself. I think it's far too concentrated in, you know, the Bitcoin side of things. Like I said, I I have a less than 1% allocation to Bitcoin in my portfolio. So, you know, it's a tiny part of my portfolio. To have 50% half of it, I just I don't see the justification for that. I think you can achieve a lot of the upside potential with Bitcoin with a far smaller position. I don't know why you need to be so into it when really it remains uncertain the future of Bitcoin. It does. IES lices in the 2027 rule changes.

Tom asks, "What are the changes to cash and stocks and shares ISAs taking effect in April? Specifically regarding the reported 22% tax on stocks and shares ISAs."

So the important thing to say is your investments inside of an ISA in the main remain completely tax-free. Capital gains dividends tax still 100% exempt. This 22% applies specifically to cash held inside of a stocks and shares ISA. And the rule is being designed to stop people from backdooring the fact that they're going to reduce the amount that you can put into a cash ISA down from £20,000 to £12,000. Now, the ways they're looking at doing that are convoluted and messy and don't make much sense and there's like real holes in it. This whole thing of, you know, money market funds and 100% in a stocks and shares ISA or not. So, okay, I'll just put 1%. There's other questions that look at that.

in a bit more detail. So, I don't want to go into it here. We'll go into it there.

But yeah, it's really important that you don't look at your stocks and shares ISA and think, "Oh, they're going to tax it 22%." It's all to do with cash held inside of a stocks and shares ISA. They're still really valuable products, these stocks and shares ISAs.

Ian has asked, "Regarding the rumored 22% tax on cash held in stocks and shares ISAs, is tax only applied if interest exceeds the personal savings allowance? Can this be avoided by using QMMFs, qualifying money market funds? And what are the practical implications of using QMFs as a workaround?"

So this is all about cash held inside of a stocks and shares ISA. Again, and the government has confirmed that MMFs, money market funds will be exempt as long as you're not holding 100% of your stocks and shares ISA in an MMF, which means there might be a position whereby you could have 99% of your funds in MMF, which is cash-like, and then only 1% in something else and and you're fine. The finer details need to come out on this. You know, it's not clear at all.

But my take on it is like for my style of investing and how I invest, if I wanted to hold MMFs and money market funds still within a stocks and shares ISA, I would be okay as a large portion of my investments within my stocks and shares ISA are still inside of, you know, typical investments, stock market investments.

Phillip asks, "Will withdrawing funds from a stocks and shares ISA in two to four years be subject to a 22% tax?"

As I said before, no, mate. So, this applies specifically to holding cash inside of an ISA. This is the worst thing about these rule changes. You can already see how they're confusing people and making what is one of the best investment/savings products on the planet, more confusing, less attractive, and people will use them less because of this stupid rule. But no, they are still protecting your investments from tax. They are still tax-free in the investment sense. It's just this cash held inside of it thing.

Fraser, "What are the pros and cons of holding uninvested cash within a stocks and shares ISA?"

The pro really is it gives you this flexibility because you've got this quickly deployable pot of cash sat there. You might be tracking an investment and you think, "Oh, if it hits this price, I'm really interested in it." So, you know, you've got the money sat there waiting. Or if you believe I personally, you know, don't follow this approach, but if you believe the stock market is going to crash and you want some kind of dry powder on the sidelines, that's again, you know, you've got like a a crash fund, if you will, sat there waiting.

The negative is that it tends to lose money versus inflation over the long run. If you've got cash sat there for a long period of time, it's it's not generating a meaningful return, you know, above the rate of inflation. It might be going backwards. And from 2027, as we've been discussing, there might be potential rule changes that look to tax cash held with inside a stocks and shares ISA. But again, the rules aren't fleshed out properly. We are yet to see how that will land fully. I will of course make a video on it when it's like absolutely nailed on because at the minute it's super woolly.

"Given potential tax changes on money market funds in a stocks and shares ISA, should I continue using a money market fund for short-term savings under 5 years or look elsewhere?"

I would 100% continue to use money market funds. The current rules as we see them is that you can use money market funds as long as they don't make up 100% of the stocks and shares ISA. And this is obviously from April 2027. A lot can change before then.

Sam asks, "When my annual ISA allowance resets in a new financial year, does the money invested in the previous year remain tax-free?"

Yes, it does. Any money that you've invested from the previous year, as long as you've adhered by all of the rules, will remain tax-free no matter how big it grows. The reset only applies to how much money you can pay in, like fresh money, into the ISA.

"If I withdraw money from a flexible ISA that I haven't contributed to this tax year, can this be paid back in later without affecting this year's ISA allowance?"

Yes. So, if your broker offers a flexible ISA product, you can withdraw money and pay that same amount of money back in within the same tax year.

Oliver, "Are investment returns included in the LISA withdrawal penalty? And what are the implications of keeping a LISA for a retirement if the property prices exceed the £450K threshold?"

Yeah. So the 25% applies to the whole amount. So you will typically end up worse off because of that penalty. So you'll get back less money than you paid in. It really is a nasty penalty for that reason. So if you're stuck inside of a LISA now because the properties you want to buy are above £450,000, I would hope for a rule change to, you know, index these things to property prices to reflect the fact that many people are stuck. But you can just switch it into a retirement account and access it when you're 60. This is the the next best option. You just continue to invest into that thing. You probably might want to look at moving it over to a stocks and shares Lifetime ISA if you've got it in a cash one already, just so that you can generate, you know, the returns long-term that you would expect from a retirement account.

Pensions versus ISA, where should the money go?

Michael asks, "Is it more tax efficient in the long run to invest in a pension receiving tax relief but paying income tax on withdrawals or an ISA, no tax relief but tax-free withdrawals when using the same fund?"

For most people, the pension is the superior product overall. A large part of that is the 25% tax-free lump sum that you get that really shifts it in the pension's favor. The pension is a better retirement product because it is a retirement product. The ISA is a flexible savings product that many people use for retirement planning.

Et asks, "When is it better to open a SIPP versus contributing to a workplace pension? And is there a specific employer match threshold that should dictate this decision?"

The thing for me is, are you maximizing that employer match if you can? I understand that not all people can go up to the maximum matches because some employers are very generous and offer really high matches. But I wouldn't be opening a SIPP personally anywhere else and contributing into that if I had unused match on the sidelines because that's essentially doubling your money, which is, you know, an amazing return. So for me, I'm not opening a SIPP until I've got all of the benefits out of that workplace scheme.

Sam asks, "Given the uncertainty of future government changes and the need for flexibility, should I prioritize investing in a pension with an employer salary sacrifice or an ISA?"

You should prioritize the salary sacrifice because it gets round both income tax and also employer and employee's NI and maybe your employer's NI and gives you the employer NI benefit as well. And the uncertainty around pensions over the long run, I understand that that's a concern, but still the pensions are much better products, especially with salary sacrifice, and that for retirement planning, you're likely to end up richer through the pension option than you are through the ISA. You might get to a point though where you go, okay, I think I'm going to have enough in my pension doing what I'm doing. And what the ISA allows you to do is bridge the the gap between when you want to retire and when the government says you can access your pension.

George, "Should I apply more risk to my SIPP pension or my stocks and shares ISA given the time horizons and financial goals for each?"

It completely depends on you, your risk profile, your age, where you're at in life, all of that stuff. I can't give you specific advice, but what I would say for my own portfolio is that the longer the time horizon, the more risk I'm looking to take on. So, for my pension, that is, you know, where the most risk potentially is. But if I'm being honest, I have the same kind of allocation of almost 100% equities across pretty much everywhere in my portfolio, apart from in my business where I hold money market funds for short-term liquidity, emergency funds, things like this. But yeah, if you were looking at it from a timeline perspective, if you want to access your ISA in the next 10 years, that might mean that you dial down some of the risk in that product versus you might go, I'm not going to touch my pension for 30 years, so I'm more comfortable being more exposed to the stock market in that one.

John asks, "How can I determine if I'm overcontributing to my pension versus keeping money as taxable income for better liquidity?"

I think you're overcontributing to your pension if your life feels like a struggle financially. If you're tucking away so much money and you just can't live day-to-day and you're really struggling, I think in terms of like short-term liquidity and all of that stuff, once you've got to the point of an emergency fund and you've got, you know, the basics covered, I would really question why you're squirreling away more cash today and not just deploying it into tax-efficient accounts for long-term growth.

Workplace pensions, SIPPs, and consolidation.

"How can I locate all pensions if they don't appear on the government pension tracking website? And is it better to consolidate multiple pensions into one or keep them separate?"

Contact your old HR department, ask them who the pension provider was, contact that pension provider and go through that process to reclaim and, you know, find that pension. Consolidating them into one. So, it can be a good thing to reduce any fixed fees or just having pots of money spread all over the place at different rates that you're not in control of and you don't know how it's invested. You get to consolidate it into one hopefully low-cost place where you control the outcome. I think this is a good thing to do potentially, but you want to be checking, especially with older pensions. The older the pension, the more you want to check this. If there are any special benefits, rules or features that you're giving up by leaving that pension. The ultimate one would be, is this a defined benefit scheme and you're sacrificing, you know, guaranteed income for life just to move the money over? But there are there are other things as well, guaranteed annuity rates, tax-free lump sum rates that are higher. There are a plethora of benefits that might be part of schemes. And like I said, the older the scheme, the more likely they are to have those kinds of benefits. You might want to consider, well, I don't want to lose that benefit by transferring out of it.

I might need to just hold this phone in my hand because I keep picking it up and putting it down and like it's hurting this arm. I don't know if you can see that scar on there. Look at that. Look at that beauty. It's developing nicely. Has anyone got any advice on scar treatment on how to reduce that thing?

Colin asks, "Aside from fee differences, are there any other benefits to consolidating three separate pension pots into one?"

It just simplifies your life. It puts everything in one place that's easy to track and you can control the investments and things like that. Pots all over the place, you don't really know what the investment approaches like I said in the previous one.

Basically, anonymous. "I am 50 years old with a Scottish Widows pension. Should I stick with the adventurous volatile investment option for long-term growth or revert to a balanced option or request to switch to a global index fund?"

I can't give you investment advice. You know, it's completely up to you. What I would say for me is at 50, I would be going, I still have decades ahead of me where, you know, I'm going to be needing to be invested in order to generate a return so that my retirement pot can keep up with my spending. The question for me is not based on age, it's based on enough. You know, have you got enough money to achieve your goals? If you haven't got enough money to retire and achieve your goals yet, well then you need to stay invested and you should be going, how much do I actually need and what kind of return do I need to achieve that? Okay, that informs how adventurous I need to be. If you turn around and go, well, I actually only need like a 4% return to hit my goal and then I would be enough, you might not want to take the risk. So, try not to frame it in, you know, like I am 50, what do I do? Frame it in terms of when do I need the money and how much money do I need and what do I need to do to get to that place.

Steve, "How can I conduct a logical comparative analysis to choose a new pension investment pot when there are thousands of options available?"

Don't get overwhelmed. And what I would say is filter out all of the nonsense. So most pension providers will provide filters and you'll be able to say I want, you know, to get rid of all of the active stuff. I only want indexed approach. I want global or America, whatever investment choice you're going for. And that will whittle it right down to just a handful of funds and you'll probably find they all achieve similar things. I would then get, you know, the best of those funds, the best 10, and I would be looking at how they've performed recently, how well they've tracked their index, what are the fees, and just go through that process. You can cut that thousand right down if you just with a few filters basically.

Ben, "Why are pension provider growth rate projections significantly lower than the typical historical market returns of 9 to 12%? And does this include 2% inflation?"

So, the FCA makes pension providers be fairly conservative with their forecasts because it's better to be, you know, conservative than promise everyone they're going to do really well and then underdeliver, right? But most of those forecasts as well, I suspect are building in inflation. So when they're forecasting at 4 to 5%, this is quite close to the inflation-adjusted return of the global stock market over the last 100 or so years. The 9 to 12% that you quote is the nominal return. And then the 2% inflation figure that you stated is more the target of central banks, it's not what they actually achieve. Inflation over the last 100 or so years has been higher than 2%. So yeah, I benchmark on 5% and you would be like, why are you doing that when it's 9 to 12? Well, 5% is the average return adjusted for inflation over the last 100 or so years.

Kelvin, "What question should I ask my current pension provider, Scottish Widows, before transferring an old workplace pension to Trading 212 SIPP to ensure I don't lose valuable benefits or guarantees?"

You basically answered the question yourself. Just ask them. Say, "What are the benefits that I'll be missing out on if I transfer away from this pension into my own SIPP?" Ask them as well about exit fees or penalties if there's anything like that, just in case. And you know, if they're like, "What kind of benefits do you mean?" Maybe you would ask about like guaranteed annuity rates or or something like that. But just make it really clear. I want to know what the benefits of your service are and why I should stick with you and the things that I'll be missing out on if I transfer away. If they don't give you a good enough answer, well, that is your answer, right?

Anonymous. "Does triggering the money purchase annual allowance by taking benefits from one SIPP apply to all other SIPPs held by the same individual, thereby reducing the total or annual contribution limit across all accounts?"

Yes, the money purchase annual allowance, which reduces the amount that you can pay into a defined contribution scheme from £60,000 all the way down to £10,000, applies across all of your pensions. So if you trigger it on one pension, you trigger it on all of them.

Pensions, DB, NHS, LGPS, and the state pension.

"In what circumstance is it advisable to transfer from a defined benefit scheme to a defined contribution scheme?"

You literally can't do this, I don't think, without seeking out financial advice from a qualified professional. I'm not even going to touch this because defined benefit schemes are so valuable and fairly complex that in most cases I don't think it makes sense making that transfer. But you would need to speak with a qualified financial adviser who would provide you with a breakdown [clears throat] of, you know, the income that you're giving up for life versus the pot of cash that's going to land in your bank account. Go and have that conversation and and be all ears.

David, "If the pension triple lock is changed or abandoned, will it apply only to future claimants or to the current claimants as well?"

Historically speaking, any major changes made to the state pension apply to absolutely everyone and they phase them in typically. So one change I'm thinking about is like changes in age, they tend to phase those in. But with something like the triple lock, I imagine if it was abandoned, it would be from the next tax year and apply to everyone.

Daniel, "How concerned should I be about the potential removal of the state pension and what adjustments should I make to my retirement plan now in case it disappears?"

I think the state pension is highly unlikely to be removed completely because it would be political suicide for anyone that did it and it's such an important part of the overall retirement mix for everyone, including the wealthiest retirees in the UK. The top 20% of richest retirees in the UK, about a fifth of their income is still state pension. So this is meaningful income for people. If you think a couple, right, it's £24k a year, that's a lot of money. So I think there will be some form of state pension. What might happen is it might be diluted away the benefit. You know, they might raise the age so much that we can't count on it to actually be there when we want to retire. It's more kicks in at later life or they don't inflation adjust it like they are at the minute or index it as generously. So the actual total value is diminished. I think the age thing is the most likely. And what I think you should be planning for is, you know, I want to build a retirement portfolio that allows me to retire when I want to retire, not when the state pension age says I can retire. And I think the key to that is flexibility around other types of pensions like SIPP and your ISA to bridge gaps and things like that.

Anonymous. "Is it a valid approach to treat a DB pension as a bond allocation and adjust the equity bond split of one's liquid investment portfolio such as your SIPP and ISA accordingly to maintain total asset allocation?"

Yeah, I really like this. So, the defined benefit scheme is bond-like in that you have a promise of income over time, right? So, it it doesn't it's not susceptible to stock market performance risk and things like this. Maybe there's a risk that you don't get paid that DB scheme in the event that the scheme collapses. I don't know. And I don't know how often that happens. I don't think it happens very often at all in in the modern world. But yeah, it's almost like an annuity, isn't it? The DB scheme, it's like a guaranteed income for life. And you might see that as de-risking your overall portfolio. So you live off that money and then you're more risk-on with the the stuff like your SIPP and your ISA because you're knowing that you're going to get that fixed income.

Retirement planning and drawdown.

Anonymous asked, "At age 60, should an investor move away from a 100% equity global tracker strategy? And what is the best approach to managing DIY investments when nearing the end of an accumulation phase?"

I don't think there's any need to panic and on the day you want to retire, you go, "Bloody hell, get me out of the stock market and all into cash." I think it's a gradual process of preparation. And I think one of the key ways that I will look to prepare is to build up cash-like assets that can support me so that at the point I retire, if the stock market collapses, I at least have this buffer that I can draw on so that I'm not kicking my portfolio when it's down. I think really you plan for retirement as you're approaching it in the 5 to 10 years, not on the day. I will still remain heavily invested throughout retirement so that my portfolio has a great chance of producing returns. I'll just have more cash flow in about so that I can weather the storms.

"Is the 4.7% safe withdrawal rate reliable for retirement planning?"

I think it's a benchmark. I think it's a rule of thumb. I think the most reliable thing that you can do to ensure that your retirement goes smoothly is have a flexible approach where in bad times you tighten your belt and in good times you spend a little bit more. I think if you rigidly stick to a fixed withdrawal rate, you're likely to come a cropper if if the markets don't perform the way that you want. So build a budget that allows you to go, okay, if things go badly for a year or two, we can, you know, just cut back on a holiday or or things like this. A flexible withdrawal rate, I think, is the way to approach retirement.

Gavin, "When planning for retirement, is it better to draw down from an ISA first, a pension pot first, or a combination of both? And what are the benefits of each approach?"

It depends on your circumstances, of course, but a combination approach is often advised by financial advisers because then you get to maximize the tax-efficient benefits of both. You might draw down on your pension up to the tax-free allowance and then draw a load of money from your ISA if you have enough funds in it so that you can draw really big tax-free income. Or if your ISA isn't that big, you might draw up to the higher rate tax band from your pension and then instead of crossing into the 40% tax band, you draw, you know, from from your ISA at that point. So it really depends on your makeup and your portfolio. But flexibility is, I think, is key.

And Phillip, "How does the UK pension drawdown process work in practice, specifically regarding crystallizing funds, tax implications, provider requirements, and asset allocation?"

I made a whole video on this. It's quite complicated. I did it using JAM and all this kind of stuff. Thought it was a pretty good video. I'll link that below for you. Watch that because I think it's going to give you all of the detail you need.

Robert, "How does emergency tax on initial pension withdrawals work and how are overpayments reclaimed?"

So, HMRC systems will treat any withdrawal from a pension as if that's going to be regular income, which could lead to you being overtaxed on it. I believe you claim that back through a P-55, a P-50, or a P-53. So, you can you can claim it back through those kind of forms, but yeah, you can get taxed on it incorrectly because they might assume that you're going to draw that every single month going forwards.

Andrew asks, "How does sequencing risk manifest in the real world?"

Sequencing risk, it's getting hot now. Sorry if I look a bit sweaty. So sequencing risk is the risk that at the point that you start drawing off your portfolio, the stock market has a bad run of returns and you're essentially kicking your portfolio as it as it falls. You're taking money lumps out of your portfolio as it's dropping in value. And how that manifests itself would be that your portfolio value would diminish really quickly in those earlier years and really then struggle to recover because there's less units invested in the market. So you might have this pot of money and you go, "Oh, my forecasts say that this is going to last 40 years easily." You have this period of two to three bad years of returns and you draw from it and then suddenly it's only going to last 10 years. You can use things like cash buffers and flexible withdrawal rates to manage that risk. Um, but yeah, it would just look like a portfolio that looks like it's big enough to last in current market conditions all of a sudden having years, potentially decades shaved off how long it's going to last.

"If a cash buffer for retirement is considered a placebo strategy, what are the recommended alternatives?"

This is a quite a complex topic and it could do with its own video to be honest. Mosha Mleski, who I interviewed on the podcast, I talked to him about using a cash buffer and he said, oh, he thought there were better strategies. So, some strategies might include buying an annuity just to guarantee your basic living expenses. So, you kind of sacrifice some of your pot just to guarantee that base level um expenditure, which means if if things go really bad, you can cover the bills. You can have like this reverse glide path where you start with a lot of bonds so that you're completely almost out of the market and then you buy equities as you go through retirement, which feels kind of counterintuitive, doesn't it? There's also Mosha Malefki discussed specific products that are popular within the US that they're investment products that cap the upside but limit the downside. So they're funds that might say you will only ever achieve up to 10% return but we will only ever let you go minus five. So if the stock market does 25% in a specific year, you'll only ever see 10%. But if it does minus 20, you'll only go down five. He was he liked those products but capping upside to me feels a bit I would need to look into it more. I write some others down if I got them here. Yeah, dynamic spending is another one. The other thing is called a rising equity glide path. So this is where you start retirement with more bonds and slowly buy back into the stock market over time. That way you reduce the exposure to the stock market and potential for, you know, sequencing risk.

Dan, "How should individuals save for future care home costs considering that standard pension withdrawal strategies often fail to account for high and rising care expenses?"

Standard calculators fail to accommodate for this because they're typically a shock cost. Not everybody goes into care and I think I can't remember the stats, but I don't think it's as high as as you think in terms of the percentage of people that end up in care homes. You know, for me, if it comes down to it, I would just sell my house to fund the care costs potentially, but how long that lasts, who knows? Um, and and see that as the pot. Or you can allocate within your investments. If you started early enough, you might build up sufficient investments. Or you might just go, you know what, the government care is is sufficient. I'm going to whittle down my assets. But it's one of those things that you might prepare for it, save up loads of money, and then never need it. And you've kind of wasted all that potential spending power. Whereas you might go, you know what, at 80, I don't care. I'm just going to be sat in a chair anyway. I'm not that bothered. I I'll just go into a government care home. So yeah, sorry that's not a very good answer for you.

Gary asks, "What tools can I use to accurately stress test my retirement plan to ensure I have enough capital to retire at 58?"

I think this is the kind of conversation you can have with a financial advisor. You can pay a one-off fee of like $500 and they can look at things with you and and go through it and use complex um cash flow modeling tools, but you could also use something like portfolio visualizer to do Monte Carlo simulations. So, those are two options. But if it comes to, you know, have I got enough to retire? It's a big decision. Maybe it's a conversation for a financial advisor.

FIRE and retirement early.

"What are your thoughts on Coast FIRE both in terms of financial viability and psychological impact? And are their typical formulas reliable?"

Coast FIRE is this idea that you get to a certain position in in savings and then you can just leave the money alone and and let it run? I'm not Coast FIRE-ing. I wouldn't call it that, but I'm certainly at a point where I look at my SIPP and think I probably don't need to pay much more into that. Um, and I should focus on other areas. I think it, you know, it sounds great in practice, but I think people's lives tend to get more expensive over time. And I do worry that people are going to take these big long breaks out of saving and then realize in like 10, 15 years, oh crap, my life is way more expensive now than I thought it would be. A lot of the rules of thumbs and calculations, 4% rules and things like this are rules of thumb as I suggested. These are not like, you know, laws of physics. Um, and I think they should be viewed with a big pinch of salt. Coast FIRE is very risky because you're effectively stopping contributing at a key time. You're giving up on potential years of of compounding growth and contributions, and it might be harder to catch up later if you if you didn't land it. What I think I'm going to do is go, okay, I don't think I need to pay that much more into my SIPP, but I'll just pay a small amount, a smaller amount each year so that I'm going to overshoot where I think my goal needs to be.

Mark asks, "What are the biggest non-spreadsheet risks and mistakes to avoid in the final five to seven years before early retirement after one has technically reached their financial goal?"

The paralyzing fear of actually leaving your job. So, you know, taking too long and not planning what you're actually going to do in retirement so that when you end up retired, you you don't end up bored. I think those are two key things that people don't think about enough.

"Do people who retire early at 50 to 55 often return to work due to boredom?"

I can't speak for all of them. I don't know if they do all return to work, but the ones that do maybe just, you know, have a change of heart at 55, between 55 and 75, like 20 years, this is the same difference as between the ages 0 and 20, right? Or 20 to 40. How much I change over those time periods is mental. So, it's probably sensible to think that I might change if I retire at 50. By the time I'm 60, I might go, you know what, I fancy another go at this. So, I think people probably return to work because of boredom and they feel that they still want to be productive or that retirement hasn't lived up to their expectations. I also think there's probably a big cohort who return because they think, "Oh crap, I'm going to run out of money here."

Income tax, capital gains tax, IHT, and self-assessment.

"How can one document gifting from regular income to satisfy HMRC requirements and avoid future tax issues for beneficiaries?"

Keep a record of your normal living expenses. So your incomings and outgoings and then label those transactions as regular gifting on your bank statement or whatever and keep a note of them to show that that giving is not part of your, you know, regular day-to-day expenditure.

Richard, "Can I use the £3,000 capital gains tax allowance to sell small portions of a GIA portfolio each year to draw down tax efficiently in retirement?"

Absolutely. Yes. That is what the allowance is there for if it lasts forever, of course. But if you've got a GIA and you're thinking, oh, I want to take £30 grand a year in income, you've got 10% of it right there, tax-free potentially because of that allowance. Great way of using it.

Tom, "What resources can help me understand the requirements for reporting capital gains and dividends for a general investment account?"

Your broker should offer something called a consolidated tax certificate. That's the best place to start as it's going to detail all of the things that you would probably need. Most brokers do wider reporting than this as well, but I would start with that CTC. For step-by-step calculations, HMRC's official online tools offer excellent guidance, and I will link those below.

Holly asked, "Given ongoing fiscal drag, are you concerned that future tax bands may not shift enough to prevent retirees from paying higher rate tax on pension withdrawals, negating the current tax efficiency benefit?"

So, while tax bands might not shift, and that could negate the benefit, the 25% lump sum remains a huge benefit that still swings it in the favor of the pension. I would invest inside of a pension solely for that 25% lump sum benefit alone. Not to mention, you know, employer matches and all the other bits that are peripheral as well, not just the tax band thing. And you can also by using a pension and an ISA and other products, you can structure your income so that you draw tax efficiently. It doesn't all have to come from the pension. So once you're approaching that tax band, you might go, okay, well, I'm actually going to start drawing from an ISA instead.

Anonymous. "Would a circular gifting scheme where 100 people exchange £250 in gifts to avoid inheritance tax be legal, viable, or are there HMRC anti-avoidance rules?"

I know why you want to be anonymous [laughter] now. Yeah, you can't do that. There's there's rules against this. HMRC would not allow that at all. There's strict guidelines on the gifting and and that kind of like circular scheme. Yeah. No, they wouldn't like that. Nice try.

Housing, mortgages, and property investing.

"Is the theory that renting forever is as financially viable as home ownership realistic for most people? Or is it a flawed model that ignores the difficulty of aggressive long-term investing? Do you know real-world examples of people successfully using this strategy? And are we doing a disservice by promoting it as a standard alternative to home ownership?"

I do know people that are doing this strategy, but if I'm being honest, they're absolutely loaded. And these are the kind of people that are renting properties where they don't want the hassle of if the pool breaks, they have like a 50 grand bill. So they rent and a lot of them own property anyway because they own investment property. So they still have that exposure. So I don't think that they're a great example. I do think there's a little bit of like, you know, oh renting's okay, don't worry, because it proves a massive burden upon your retirement assets, the required retirement assets. Take whatever the monthly rent is, times it by 12, and times that figure by 25, just as a broad rough rule of thumb of how much you would need to support that rent for for retirement. It's going to be hundreds of thousands of pounds on top of your already retirement. Not to mention, rent isn't magically cheaper than mortgages, is it? So, how are people who can't buy a house, who are stuck in expensive rentals, meant to acquire those extra assets to continue to rent forever? What I will say is my view on this is it's okay to rent right now and buying a house doesn't need to be the first thing that you do. People's incomes tend to trend up over time and as people, you know, meet a partner, getting a couple, their disposable incomes improve, kids move out, things like this. The ability to buy a house becomes easier over time from that perspective. And I would say that maybe that's the shift that we need. Not, oh, it's okay to rent forever, more it's okay to rent for a longer period than you might have hoped initially, as long as you're building up other assets in the background, like your pension.

Nathan, "As a first-time buyer with a large deposit and an emergency fund, is it better to put down the full deposit to reduce the monthly mortgage payment or put down the minimum and invest the remainder?"

I would just encourage you, I'm not going to answer the question. I'm going to be annoying, but I would encourage you to go on a mortgage calculator and look at how much does putting that extra amount down actually reduce the payment. I'm often surprised by the fact that you can put quite large amounts down and it doesn't reduce it by that much. Now, the key difference there is if you get access to better interest rates that significantly reduce the payment, but if you sit down with a mortgage advisor, it shouldn't cost you money to do this, and have a conversation of if I put X, Y, or Z down, what are my monthly payments? You might go, you know what, for plunking an extra 50 grand into the property, I'm only saving like 2030 a month or whatever. Not really worth it to me. Not realistic examples, but I think that should help you shape your, you know, thoughts on this.

Anonymous asked, "What percentage of income should be allocated to a mortgage payment in London and the wider UK?"

The official stats would be like 30 to 35% in the wider UK. In expensive inner city areas like London, maybe 40 to 45%. I think rules of thumb like this are, you know, they're kind of pointless. I think you should do whatever feels right for you and you should look at the number and go, can that amount of money come out of my bank account every single month and I support this house comfortably and still live the life that I want to live and it's important that you ask what life you want to live because you know you might be happy never going on holiday again as long as you can have your house whereas someone else might be like I need two holidays a year so that house payment is going to be too high for me. Also as well consider the house mortgage payment is not the only payment. You've got all of the maintenance costs, 1 to 2% of the property price on an annual basis. All of that stuff that you also need to factor in on top, council tax bills. It doesn't just stop with the mortgage payment.

Ian asks, "What is your opinion on the property investment model promoted by YouTubers like Samuel Leeds involving using rental income to finance multiple mortgage properties and scaling through refinancing?"

I think people like Samuel Leeds take what are fairly well-known obvious property strategies and dress them up as the jazzy new thing and then sell really expensive courses to people on how to do those things. You know, £15,000 for a course or whatever. All of the information inside of those seminars you can find online for free. If you want to take one of his seminars and you're into it though, you know, that's up to you. I'm not here to to badmouth the guy or or slag him off, but what I would say is if he had a way of making insane amounts of money out of property that was, you know, so valuable that people would pay £15,000 for it and it would deliver for them. He wouldn't be selling that information. He would just be out there doing it. And if he watches this video, he will comment going, "I am doing it. I own hundreds of properties." And to that I say, Samuel, you've bought those properties through the money that you generated through selling courses, not the other way round.

Debt and student loans.

Tyrese asks, "Should I pay for my student loan as quickly as possible or make only minimum payments until they're written off after 30 years?"

I would only repay my student loan personally if I was a very high earner and I knew that I was going to pay it off over, you know, my working career because then essentially you're saving on interest and it's potentially a high interest rate. For someone who has absolutely no chance of paying this off and it's going to be wiped in 30 years or or whatever the rules are for your specific plan, it's essentially just a graduate tax and overpaying it is just throwing more money into the pile and you're never going to clear it anyway. So yeah, I think there's calculators online that will help you with this, but I think for high earners who are going to clear it anyway, then it might make sense to overpay.

Anonymous again, "How should I approach paying off a £15K in credit card debt while building savings and preparing to move house in 2 years? And how do I stop relying on credit cards for spending?"

Cut that thing up. Cut it up. Cut it up. Burn it. Make it a ceremony, you know, like shock bait. Dance around it in the garden and all that kind of stuff as a Finding Nemo [laughter] section for you if you It's getting hot under these lights. I am flagging. So anyway, yeah, cut that thing up and get rid of it and then you know you've got a lot going on there. You want to move house in 2 years and all this stuff and I I don't know like how much of that you have to do and what the circumstances are around it but that's a big old credit card debt that's going to weigh around your neck and I would just ask can you slow down in areas of your life and cut back until you clear that debt off you just got to prioritize it and pay it off you just got to do the thing you know how do you pay off the credit card debt you just pay it off so at the point that that becomes a priority to you will you will make the sacrifices in your life in order to to do what you need to do. You could consider 0% balance transfers and all of that stuff, but just watch you don't get stuck in a cycle of rolling it to another place, spending on another card, and the debt multiplying. I really wish you well. If you need pre-debt advice, you can speak to Step Change. It's a debt charity. They can help you, but just be careful they don't push you into products that you don't want or need, like insolvency products. Sometimes you can call these debt charities and they can be like, "Oh, you know, let's make you bankrupt." You might not need that, right? But yeah, just just cut that thing up, mate.

Savings, cash, emergency funds, and insurance.

"How do you determine the appropriate size of an emergency fund? And is it advisable to keep a large fund, 6 to 12 months of expenses, entirely in cash, regular savers, or high-interest easy access accounts?"

You can keep that money wherever you want. The whole point is that you can access it easily. 6 to 12 months. 12 months might be a lot. I would say 12 months of basic costs, you know, like the keeping the lights on in the house is is maybe sufficient, but it all comes down to your risk appetite. You might go instead, well, I'll have 3 to 6 months and then I'll have a credit card with a fairly large balance that I can spend on if I need it and then I'll pay that down or whatever. You know, it's like a risk thing, right? Some people feel more confident with with with 12 months. I personally have like say 3 to 6 months. I've had to use it recently, so I've not got much in there at the minute. I also have credit cards in case like a really big emergency comes along and, you know, they're like 0% purchase credit cards or whatever, so I can kind of do that, but I don't use them and I don't I don't really like credit cards. Personally, for me, they're I don't think I'm the right kind of person to use credit cards. And yeah, the whole point is that you need to be able to access it in an emergency. So, it's not about generating a return on this thing. If you can get it in a place where it's generating like a return at least around the rate of inflation, amazing. But don't look at it as like, how do I make money out of my emergency fund? Look at it for what it is, an emergency fund that you need to be able to access in an emergency.

"How do you evaluate which insurance policies are good or bad? And how should one choose the right coverage?"

Mind if I get back to you on that one? Use a broker potentially comparison sites as well. You know, I'm going through that process. I'm going to do a lot of research on this. I'll come back to you, mate.

Platforms, brokers, and fees.

Rob asked, "Does FSCS protection apply to investments like stocks and bonds, and what are the risks regarding the loss of holdings if a brokerage platform becomes insolvent?"

Yes, FSCS protects up to £85,000 with investments, so slightly

smaller than cash. It doesn't protect against investment risk. So, if you lose money on an investment because it goes down, they're not going to cover you. But if your broker was to go under and you know there was fraud there, then they they would pay out.

I think you should be more reassured by the CAS rules though, which insists that brokers segregate client assets from their own. So if a broker was to go broke and like collapse, it should be that all of the client assets are sat in a separate bank account in a separate part, and those can just be sorted through and distributed. That process might take a little while though. It might not be the next day. It might be six months before you get your money back potentially, but they should be separated quite clearly.

It would the FSCS is like a a protection of last resort. They only step in when there's been fraud. So, your broker would have been like really naughty if if an FSCS protection was paying out. It doesn't really happen with brokers. The main reason they pay out is for financial advisers that are giving bad advice.

So, Dominic asks, "What are the advantages of holding Vanguard funds on the Vanguard platform for a 0.15% annual fee compared to using a free platform like Trading 212?" The Vanguard brand, you know, you like the brand and you want to hold them on there. Other than that, like you're buying the exact same things for cheaper on other platforms. The money ultimately ends up with Vanguard as well, by the looks of it. So, yeah, there aren't many.

Dylan asks, "If Vanguard were to close or merge an index fund like VWRP, what would happen to existing investor holdings?" They would either migrate you into a similar fund or liquidate all the assets and just deposit the cash back into your brokerage account. This is really unlikely. VWRP or VWRL is one of their flagship products. This is like a huge fund. So yeah, I I I don't have that concern myself.

Ben asks, "Are UK citizens at risk of losses similar to the Yotter Bank collapse when using UK fintexs like Monzo, Revolute, Trading 212, and how do they compare to traditional banks?" No, there aren't similar risks to Yotter, which was kind of like a premium bond thing. I think Graeme Stefen promoted it or owned a slice of it for a while, and then it shifted into like a more gambly kind of thing, and then it ultimately collapsed. The Financial Conduct Authority has strict regulations around how these neo banks in the UK hold and protect your money. And again, it's these rules of client segregation. So even if they go down, all of the money should still be sat there on the side. The UK has really good consumer protections around how your money is handled by financial institutions here that are regulated by the FCA.

John, how often should you audit your investment platform and funds to ensure fees are low and returns meet expectations? I think an annual audit is more than sufficient just to check that the fund is doing what you think it should, that there aren't any cheaper competitors doing the exact same thing. And I would say the same things for the brokers, that you're still happy with them, that they're doing what they say they should, the fees haven't changed, there's no one else out there that you fancy giving a try.

Richard, how do the investment options offered by banking apps like Monzo compare in quality? They're highly convenient and good for beginners and often get a lot of people in because they're using the app and they're like, "Oh." But I think the fees are typically quite high, especially for larger portfolios. And the portfolios are, you know, normally quite simple, uh, like a global fund, and people could probably do it cheaper themselves elsewhere. I think it's kind of like, you know, go to a specialist broker for investments so that you get the best deals and the best access to investments. I think a lot of these, you know, neo banks and just general banks in across the board like Barclays and all of that, we rank all of the stocks and shares providers in the UK that we can find on financial interest.com and banks like consistently rank in the lower lower half on the table. They're often the worst performers in terms of fees and quality of investment choice and all of that stuff.

Financial advisers. When should someone hire a financial adviser and are asset under management fees worth it? A financial adviser is worth it if you think that you need the support that they can offer. They can offer two types of support really. They can offer like the we will pick the investments for you and manage that process and help you through the accumulation phase. I personally would not want that support. I think it's expensive to pay them to like pick broadly diversified funds for me and and like kind of uh, you know, pay them a percentage to do that over a long run. The other kind of end of the spectrum where I think a financial advisor could be really useful and there's lots of ways they can be useful, right? But for me is around the retirement planning piece. At the point I'm approaching retirement, I want to know, have I got enough? How much can I spend? And you know, what can what's the most tax-efficient way to take money out of my investments? That's the point that I start to think, yeah, okay, a financial advisor could be worth it. Also, as well, to help me manage things like cognitive decline and my desire to just not give an F in older life, 60, 70 years old, I might just be willing to pay someone a percentage of of my my investments to just take care of it and know that someone who's sharper, brighter, and more dialed in on it all than me is is all over it. So I can just enjoy being on a Turkish golf course or or whatever it is I'm up to at that that point in my life. For my mom, a financial adviser got her investing in the 80s and 90s and and that him being there and doing that meant that she retired early. Very much worth it for her. But I would have said to her, you know, right now or you're probably overpaying for for that service. So you know, is it worth it to you? Is is completely up to you. I dare say a lot of the people who are watching my channel on a regular basis would say hiring a financial adviser to assist them in the accumulation phase is is probably a bit doesn't look like good value for money but maybe near the retirement phase with cash flow modeling and all of that stuff they might be like yeah okay I would be willing I would much rather a fixed fee model though because I will have a large portfolio where a financial adviser goes give me a couple of grand a year rather than a percent or 2% or 3% or whatever it is of your portfolio. um to sit down with you and just make sure that everything's going well and pay for that meeting rather than pay like a percentage. Fixed fee models seem like a cool thing. They only really work though if you've got large portfolios because a fixed fee model on a smaller portfolio could work out to be a massive percentage. So you want to trade off the percentage fee versus the fixed fee model, right? I'm planning to have loads of money in retirement if I can. Fingers crossed. So yeah, give me the fixed fee.

Emma, should I consolidate my £100,000 St. James's Place portfolio with a 1.87% fee into my existing Vanguard Holdings to save on fees, or is there merit to my advisor's claim that the Vanguard Allworld ETF is overly weighted in technology and North America? There is merit in his claim that it's overly weighted, especially if the market drops. But I would ask them, is there merit in me paying you a 2% fee for for the alternative? I would also look at the performance and go well that overweighting has meant that there's by being in that I've done very well because of the American market and the tech sector has done very well. So if SJP have had you out of that over the time period well have they underperformed. So if they charged you a 2% fee plus produced an underperformance versus the market let's say that's six 7% that that's effectively your fee and that is massive. So, I can concede that what he's saying might be right on paper, but that's only going to be true if the American stock market does have a bad period of time. I suspect that no matter what period of time over any, you know, we could pick any day going back for 50 years and you speak to an SJP adviser and say, "I want to transfer out." And they would give you a credible sounding reason as why you need to stick with them. I think it's more sales tactics than it is like, oh, I'm genuinely concerned about you personally.

Anonymous, given my financial literacy as a childhood accountant and access to online resources, is it worth paying for a financial advisor 1% annually for ongoing portfolio management as I approach retirement with a £1 million pound portfolio? That's a lot of money. And I I would just say, what are they going to give you for for that service? And is that justified to you? Is it the peace of mind? Is it the fact that you're going to get to talk to someone and they're going to, you know, take the burden off your shoulders? They're going to be charging you a lot of money each year. So again, like what are they giving you for that money? And do you think that's worth it? I'm sorry to ask you a question for the question you've answered me, but I can't answer that without knowing what what's the value proposition from their side.

Kids, family, and inheritance. Daniel asks, "What are the investment options for children under seven for their long-term future? And what is the difference between a LISA and a junior stocks and shares ISA?" So the Lifetime ISA is a product that's designed to help people either get on the property ladder or save for retirement. The junior ISA is like a junior stocks and shares ISA, which is a more flexible savings product. You could use a junior ISA. You could also use a junior SIPP. The benefit of the junior SIPP product is that they can't access it until retirement age. And what that means is you get to kind of lock in their retirement a little bit for them. um which I think is a great gift. So, Junior ISA, Junior SIPP are the two like main ones that you'll encounter on the high street. We've got uh a ranking of the best providers that I I'll leave below for you. I personally have a junior ISA and a junior SIPP for my son.

Could you provide more details on junior SIPPs, including why you chose your specific platform, whether is a minimum investment to amount to justify the fees, and any other considerations before setting up? I'm with Fidelity at the minute because I think the best on the market to be honest is just not that many options and I think overall they provide a fairly good option. You know, the fees aren't nothing, but they're not they're not massive. They're like percentage based fees. um so yeah, again, we rank them and have a look on there, but I pick Fidelity as it's the top one on our rankings.

Grace, how can I accurately estimate the long-term financial impact of raising a child, including lost income, university fees, and long-term support? And is a £20k annual cost estimate realistic? I think £20k might be quite a lot. I mean, it seems like quite a lot to me. When they're a baby, they they hardly cost anything. You just, you know, feed them and just don't buy all the brand new stuff. Go on Facebook Marketplace and get it all secondhand. You know what I'm going to say, right? um try not to make having a kid a cost-based decision. Have a kid because you want to have a kid. And I know that that's like a copout because they are a cost-based decision. And for many people in the UK, they're not having kids because they're scared of the cost. But there's plenty of people having kids um in all kinds of economic and financial positions. And having a child can be as expensive or as cheap as you want it to be within reason. I do think £20k a year is is quite a lot. I heard a stat once that it costs about £180k to raise a kid from zero to 18, but that that that might be grossly low. I'm sure if you Google it, you'll find a better answer. But yeah, a bit of a sad state of affairs really, isn't it? When we're doing like cost-based analysis and bloody all of that stuff on having a kid in the modern world. I understand why it's like that and I'm sorry that like you're sat there trying to weigh up if you can afford a kid, but yeah. Yeah. I don't know your life and I don't know your circumstances. I don't know where you're at in the world. If you're living in inner city London or like in a posh bit of London, £20k might not be much at all. That could be school fees a year in your community. Where I live in the UK, I think for £20k, I'd have a football team worth of kids. Get the economies of scale on them.

Joshua, what general financial adjustments should be made when entering a committed relationship or getting married, accounting for various employment scenarios between partners? I think you just got to lay it all out on the line day one and be like, what are your expectations financially? Where are we going as a couple? Are we doing it together? Are we doing it alone? Here is what I've got. Here is what you've got. What are we sharing? What are we not? Just be radically transparent uh um and open. And you know, if they've got kids, uh you need to consider things like loss of benefits and things like that around it and and what's going to happen there. And if you're going to have kids together, you need to have a conversation where you go, right, if you if you're out of work or whichever one of us is out of work, is the other one going to pay into the other person's pension? I just think that is like one of those kind of like we're a team. We're going to do this together. How we're going to do it and how are we going to operate our finances and you know, what anyone else tells you and what how your mates do it and all of that. It's your house. It's your relationship. It's your finances. You do them however you want. If you want to be completely separate and not know what each other earns, fine. If you want it so that everything's in one bank account and you know, it's all like shared and all of that also fine. However you want to do it, just do it together.

Money, psychology, and behavior. How do you overcome the guilt of spending money on non-essentials when you are already meeting your savings goals? Have set rules. So have rules that go as long as I hit my savings goals, any money above this. 50% I blow 50% I save or whatever. Adhere to the rules. And whenever you adhere to the rules, you remind yourself that you set the rule because you're a melt that can't spend any money on yourself and enjoy your life. I speaking to myself there. I'm not calling you a melt. I'm sure you're not a melt, Joe. Great name. Solid solid name. Non-melty name.

Edwin asks, "How can a retired person with over £700K in savings shift their mindset from saving and investing into spending?" Slowly, slowly um have a conversation with a financial adviser. Maybe sit down with them and just give them £500 for an hour and just let them tell you over and over again that you've got enough and that it's going to be okay. um and then go from there. And yeah, you don't need to turn from like saving to all the way. Just like little by little, you know, take a year to to kind of dial it over and see how you go from there. I can't really give you a better answer than that, Edwin, because I I'm not in that position yet. So, I don't really have all of the psychological answers, and I imagine I'll struggle with it when I get there. So, if you figure it out, mate, please let me know. Don, I'm sorry if I said that wrong.

How can I avoid panic selling during a market downturn? Log off all your investment apps. Turn off the news. Turn off anyone in your feed that's making you panic and not making you feel good. Come and watch a DTM video where I'll be sat there saying, "Drops in the stock market are perfectly normal. They have happened multiple times before. They will happen multiple times again. They are a feature, not a bug. They are the ride that you have to ride to get the outcome that you want."

Patrick asks, "What are the pros and cons of the die with zero financial model?" The pro is it gets you to really enjoy your life and view it from the perspective of time is more valuable than money. um and I think we should all kind of internalize that. It makes me want to spend more money. it kind of formed opinions around leaving my son an inheritance and things like this and I think yeah it's good in that sense. The downsides of it are the guy is very rich. So what is his version of die with zero? He might consider oh I started with 100 million and I ended up with 100 grand so I basically died with zero. Whereas a lot of people 100 grand might be their starting place and dying with zero might mean that they run out of money before they actually die and they go oh god now what I don't know how grounded it is in in reality of the fact that many people are going to struggle to have enough to to live at all let alone this kind of like frivolous well spend it all and let's burn it. But yeah it reminds you to live for today and it reminds you to enjoy your money and spend it because that's what it's there for. And it also reminds you not to overwork. But I do think that maybe it's born from the privilege of the author who is exceedingly wealthy.

Nathan, how do you encourage friends and family to invest and secure their financial future when faced with skepticism and common pushbacks? My job is to sit here and help normal people who really want to try and start to learn to invest to learn to invest. So, you know, I'm pretty busy doing that. If I encounter someone in my family and I say to them, "Oh, you should probably invest." They're like, "Oh, yeah, it's not for I just don't even try." I don't I don't even try. There's so many people that I can help that want the help that I'll just fulfill my time there. If you're sat there and you're asking the question about you specifically and you have loved ones in your life that you're desperate to, you know, convince to start because you know it's powerful, why don't you show them the results that you've had and how you've achieved it. Why don't you sit down and go look that this is what it's done for me and this is how much money I've made. I think you show them the results over time and that is the best way to convince them. And if they're not convinced on day one, come back 12 months later and go look again. And then a year later after that, look again. You know that when the stock market crashes, they'll rear their head and go, "Oh yeah, the stock market crashed. How do you feel about that?" And you go, "Oh yeah, I'm still up over the period." So, you know, sit down.

Andrew, regarding Charlie Munger's advice on reaching the first £100K, does this amount need to be in any one location or does it count if it spreads across all savings and investments including accounts like a SIPP? It. Yeah, it counts if this whole thing from Charlie Munger and the £100K I think has been taken and like run with by YouTubers and everyone is like why everything changes after £100K because it gets a lot of clicks. Everything changes after you got one grand in your bank account. Like that is that is a level of freedom um financially that I think is more meaningful than having £100K because it just means you're you're a little bit more antifragile. I felt richer when I had £1K than I did £100K. But anyway, it's, you know, from his perspective, it doesn't it doesn't all need to be in one account, mate. It can be spread around. He's just talking about the fact that the compounding really starts to get noticeable once you cross that £100K mark. I mean, at £99K, it's still noticeable.

Ben asks, "What is a piece of lesser-known financial advice for young people who are already somewhat financially literate?" Focus on growing your main income over anything else. That will produce a far better return long-term than anything you can get in the stock market. Do what you need to do to skill up so that you can increase your earnings.

Nick, what should I do with my UK ISAs, pensions, and stock accounts when moving to another country? You can generally leave the accounts open. What you can't do is continue to contribute to them. The important thing is to look at the place you're moving and see how they would treat them from a tax perspective, and it's case by case.

Career, business, and self-employment. How can a limited company invest its surplus cash beyond personal director SIPP contributions? So, we made a video on financial interest that explores this all in detail for you. I'll link that below, but essentially I have um an investment company attached to my limited company through a holding company and I put the profits over there and I invest those in like a brokerage account, a business brokerage account into a global index fund, money market funds, and things like this. I'll link the video below for you.

Sophie asks, "Are maternity and paternity leave policies in the UK generally standard, or are there significant variations in the quality between employers, and how do these policies typically affect pension savings and insurance?" As far as I'm aware, the requirement is that they maintain payments into your pension, but the the types of maternity cover vary from a statutory requirement all the way up to really generous ones. It varies so much across the board. So, you you know what you're going to be entitled to will very much depend on your employer.

Sadi asks, "How can one minimize the financial consequences of taking a one-year career break?" First answer is you could not take the break. But seriously, prepare financially for the break. Ask how much money am I going to need to survive over this 12 months and save up that money. And then maybe if you want to limit the long-term financial impact, go how much am I going to need so that I can continue to save at the rate I was so that I can continue to pay into my pension and ISAs and things. So then you don't feel like, you know, you're having a year off completely from from that. That's probably what I would do.

Policy, the economy, and industry. We're nearly at the end now, guys. um I have no idea how long this has been. I'm just sat here dripping in sweat under these hot lights. You know, as I said in my broken arm video the other day, um I'm going to make some videos that are easier to make because I can't type and script. So I was like, "Oh, I'll do a Q&A." And my idea of making an easy Q&A is just sitting here for like 17 hours filming. [laughter] It's like, yeah, I'm not sure this is easier, but you know, I I feel really responsible. Like all these lovely people submit these questions. I want to answer as many as I possibly can. So, you know, anyway, Hen, what is your perspective on Gary Stevenson's views on inequality and are people without assets facing inevitable financial hardship? I think inequality probably is a problem. And when it comes to taxing the rich, I am all for broad tax reform. I think the tax system in the UK is a joke. It's one of the most complicated on the planet. 12 times the size of the complete works of Shakespeare. I think it should be simpler and I think it should be fairer in the sense of it shouldn't be that, you know, you earn £120 grand a year and you're paying 50% in in tax, but you earn a billion a year and you pay 2%. Everyone should pay their fair share. So, I'm all for tax reform and people paying their fair share of tax. Now, do I think a brand new wealth tax is the best way to achieve that? I think it's probably going to be quite complicated to get it off the ground. I think it will be hard to value all of the assets. I think people can flee the tax and it will take years to come into place before it raises any money. I would much rather reform existing wealth taxes like council tax or change it to a land value tax, inheritance tax, make them more effective at targeting the wealth and and make them, you know, fairer and more progressive. That's probably how I would see it. The one criticism I have of maybe Gary Stevenson's message or framing is it feels a little bit I don't know if nihilistic is the word. I'm not going to say fancy words. I've lost about a stone of sweat here. So, I'm probably not my at my sharpest. But it's a little bit kind of like you're doomed, you're screwed, and there's nothing you can do. And maybe that's true. But my personal belief is that anyone, no matter their financial position, apart from a subsection of people who literally don't have enough money to live on on a monthly basis, but anyone who's got enough money to live on a monthly basis, can improve their financial position long term through the purchase of assets through a pension and an ISA and things like this. And I think that that positive message and uplifting people and making people feel good about their financial outcomes and where their life is heading is a powerful thing. And that's that's where I approach this from. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I got rose-tinted glasses on, but I would rather my legacy be when I when I die that hundreds of thousands of people go, you know what? My life was easier financially because Damian showed me how to do things. He showed me how to buy assets. I don't think like the purchase of assets is exclusively for the rich. I think anyone can do it and we should encourage people to participate in the purchase of stock markets and things like this. Hope that answers your question.

Jason asked, "What are your thoughts on the proposed replacement of stamp duty land tax with a land value tax, particularly regarding concerns about long-term tax increases, method of land valuation, and potential for greater lifetime costs for property owners?" I think stamp duty land tax is a silly tax because it stops people from moving. If you tax something, you get less of it. So, if you tax movement, you get less of it. If you tax work, you get less of it. Whereas land is unique because if you tax the land, it doesn't fall into the sea. I think a land value tax is like an option and it's like what else are we going to do right also if you look at the UK the landed gentry is still massively a thing people who inher got given land in like 1066 are still sat on it today I think it would encourage people to develop land um and you know there are land value style taxes in other countries that that do seem to work I think you know in America they have like property taxes right that are are a similar kind of vibe. At this point, I'm up for trying it. I'm up for seeing it and and and like fleshing it out properly and seeing if it would work. It feels better to me than a regressive council tax system and a stamp duty land tax that that stops people from being able to move or downsize.

Matt, how should the average investor respond to changes in ISA allowances and taxation? And is this indicative of a long-term trend towards more punitive policies for investors? My approach in my personal finances and on this channel is to only deal with the rules that are in front of me when they're in front of me when they're confirmed. Because I think far too much speculation happens around pensions and ISAs from creators and from the broader media and facilitated by politicians who are basically floating the ideas out there to see if people like them or not. And it causes people to chop and change and do things that is damaging to their retirement and then we often find out it doesn't happen anyway. So how do you deal with them? you just deal with the rules that are in front of you. You're going to need to save for retirement and even if pensions were made significantly worse, they would still be pretty good retirement products. I do think that it's an easy target for the government to target ISAs and pensions long term because they can just kind of like be like, "Oh, these rich people with money, you know, in their pensions, oh, let's tax them." Like, and it lands with people, doesn't it? You know, you say, "Oh, someone's got more than £100,000 in an ISA." and everyone's like, "Oh, they're loaded." When those people don't realize that they need that level, they need more than that probably to retire. I don't like it, but what, you know, and I hope they don't. I I want more encouragement to use these products. I want them to be simpler, easier, more attractive to people because I think a solution to a lot of our problems is to get people to build these assets so they're more financially stable, so they're not reliant on the state. um, but how do you deal with them? I don't deal in speculation. I deal in hard and fast rules and then I plan accordingly from there.

Bailey, given the high cost of living and housing for young people, should they redefine their goals of home ownership and starting a family or are these still achievable through financial discipline? Great question, Bailey. I think we should shift the housing thing a little bit and just not make it the primary goal and instead make it a goal at some point during your life and understand that it gets easier over time once you grow into your job position in your 40s and stuff and you meet a partner and maybe once the kids leave home if you have kids or before the kids or whenever understand that this kind of thing of like oh you need to buy a house in your 20s and this and this and this that that was a generation ago and and it doesn't always work in today's landscape because we don't have things like 100% mortgages like people did in you know 2006 2005. I think it's okay to say I will buy a house but it's not going to be right now. It's going to be in the future. But what I am going to do is going to make sure that my pension is absolutely dialed in. I'm investing into an ISA and all this stuff because your mate might be scrapping around and go look at my home. It cost me £400 grand and I've got absolutely no money elsewhere. And then you'll go well that's nice. Well, I've got £100 grand in an ISA, so you know, I'm I feel more flexible and free than you do. I think we can shift things around a little bit. I think the as long as you're building assets in some form, you're doing okay.

Mark asked, "Why does the government charge stamp duty on the purchase of British stocks if they want to encourage investment in British companies over cash?" If you tax something, you get less of it. If you tax the purchase of British shares, less people will buy them. I have absolutely no idea why they do this. They make money from it now. and they probably can't afford to get rid of it. It's silly. It's silly.

Okay, personal and random questions. We're nearly there. What's your biggest investing regret? Not simplifying stuff sooner. Buying individual companies, blah blah blah. Just, you know, getting out of my own, not getting out of my own way soon enough and just going submitting to the index. Take me index. You know that. [laughter] um, anonymous for another question you greedy get. What personal finance topic keeps you up at night? What is enough? What is enough? I'll leave it at that.

Ian, have you considered writing a book about your investing journey and advice for beginners? I have considered writing a book and I've met many offers in my inbox to write a book, but just because I make pretty good finance videos doesn't mean I think I know how to write a pretty good book. And I look at books like Morgan Housel's Psychology of Money and stuff. And I have a an arrogance or a kind of like an ego that would be like I want to be that good. If I was writing a book, I would want it to be that good and if I'm if it's not going to be that good, I'm not going to bother. Maybe I've got a book in me one day, but maybe I'm still on my journey and I need to take a few more steps before I start writing about it. Got some interesting chapters though, right? You know, why do you need an emergency fund? Well, in barley this time.

Tasine asked, "Would you consider performing financial audits for fans in the UK, similar to Caleb Hammer's content?" No. I get asked this a lot. um, that's his gig. That's his stick. That's his thing. I don't want to imitate him. I don't want to copy him. Someone else wants to do it, go for it. I'd probably watch it. But, you know, I want to be original. I want to be unique. I want people to go like, "Oh, that's Damian and Damian does what Damian does." Not, "Oh, yeah. Damian ripped off Caleb Hammer who ripped off Jerry Springer." I said it. I said it.

Ross, what is the current status of the Wes sponsorship money? So, Wes is the guy who punched me the last time I had a calamitous medical event. Uh, he randomly punched me on a night out, sucker punched me, knocked me out, made a bit of a mess on my face, and was ordered to pay £13,000 to me. I think he's paid £300 so far in total. Absolutely no progress there. Every time I email the court system, they go, "We've got it in hand and we're taking measures to collect the money." Clearly. Yeah. Moving on.

Dan, if you were to rob a bank, which three people, dead or alive, would you choose as accomplices, and how would you execute the robbery? Messi, Ronaldo, and Tain, my co-host from the podcast. Messi and Ronaldo would walk in through the front door, stand in the lobby, and everyone's eyes would be locked on them. Me and Tain would walk around the back and walk out with the money and no one would even know we were there.

Tom, can you throw a baguette further than a piece of naan bread? A piece of naan bread? The whole naan bread and you frisbee it. You might you might get do it like a discus that techers, you know, flicking it around. um a baguette, you could spear it like a javelin. Depends how crusty these things are as well because the the naan bread could just fall apart as you as you spin. I'm going baguette.

Ivan, between a Twix and a lime bar, which offers the best flavor per calorie? Well, I need to look at the calories. How many How many calories in a Twix bar? 502 in a Twix. How many calories in a Lion bar? 241. It's not even close. Lion bar. Wait, lime bar. [laughter] White lime bar. Yeah, lime bar every day of the week.

What is the ultimate biscuit? I don't know. I don't eat many biscuits, but the ones I like are like deeply coated in chocolate. There's like these little rings that you get or these like square ones with like a little fancy boy on the front and they're like dipped in chocolate. It's like a cracker in chocolate. I'm I'm about those kind of biscuits or the circles that like a shortbread and it's like really chunky chocolate. I'm more for the chocolate than the biscuit itself.

Mark asks, "Have you upgraded your internet connection?" Yes, we are on full fat fiber in this house. I got it installed and it still didn't work. [laughter] I had to call out the engineers. I was like, "Oh, it didn't work again." So, yeah. But no, we we are here. No more beach trips. No more Tesco's car park for the dog in all of that stuff. Pretty sad about that. No more meal deals. But yeah, we have fast internet which means that I can upload absolutely huge files like four hours or whatever this is of me answering questions to the point where I get delirious. If you made it through all the way, you are a legend. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. I'll link the video here about how I got these for the people that are interested if you want to hear me talk even more for some strange reason. But other than that, yeah, thanks for your time. I hope that was useful and interesting and I will see you shortly. A weird way of saying saying it see you soon.