The Basics Of Money Management | Chris Hutchins

Chris Hutchins is the CEO of HelloGrove.com, former Entrepreneur In Residence at Google Ventures and a serial money-optimiser. Effective money management is something which everyone should know but no one is taught. Chris has spent a large portion of his career trying to educate people to be skillful with their finances and today we get to learn many of his favourite tips. Extra Stuff Follow Chris On Twitter - https://twitter.com/hutchins Chris's Website - https://chrishutchins.com/ - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Chris Williamson?

  Hello there friends. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to give a big thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast over the last couple of weeks. Earlier this week, the episode with James Clear landed the show in the top 50 podcasts worldwide, which was a lovely thing to wake up to on Tuesday morning. So, thank you very much for sharing it. The feedback I've had over the last few episodes has been so fantastic. And yeah, I have to pinch myself every day to realise that I actually get to share oxygen or bandwidth sometimes with literally some of the cleverest people on the planet. With that in mind, I thought I would give you a quick rundown of some of the upcoming guests.

• 0:48Chris Williamson?

  So, on Monday, Professor David Sinclair from Harvard Medical School, one of Time Magazine's 50 most influential health professionals on the planet, talking about whether or not a human can live to be 1,000 years old. Rachel Kleinfeld, who advises the UK and US government on how to govern correctly. Tim Briggs from We Dominate Nutrition. Don McGregor, COO of Social Chain, is back again. Theo and Eve from the Social Minds podcast. George McGill, Innovation Lead at Media Chain. But today, we're talking all things money management with Chris Hutchins, who is the CEO and founder of Grove. He started a company called Milk, which got acquired by Google in 2012, and then he spent most of his time at Google

• 1:31Chris Williamson?

  as a partner, helping startups and investing in early-stage companies. So, this guy knows what he's talking about. I really enjoyed the conversation. I can't wait to have him back on as well. Please welcome Chris Hutchins.

• 1:59Chris Williamson?

  Mr. Chris Hutchins, how are you?

• 2:02Speaker 02

  I'm great. How are you?

• 2:03Chris Williamson?

  Welcome to the show, man.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:06Chris Williamson?

  Very, very happy.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Good to be here.

• 2:07Chris Williamson?

  Very, very happy to have you on. We're talking all things money today, right?

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, it's been like the obsession of my life.

• 2:16Chris Williamson?

  Well, I think it's the obsession of a lot of people's lives, right?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's something that causes more stress than anything else for most people.

• 2:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So for the listeners who don't know who you are, could you give us a bit of a background?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Sure. Where do I begin? You know, the whole, my whole life, I've been obsessed with money, but more professionally, I spent the last, you know, 10 years in startup land. I got my first job out of college, thinking I should go into investment banking and management consulting and ultimately got laid off, which gave me this opportunity to take what, you know, isn't very common in America, but effectively was like a gap year later in life, where I took seven months with my now wife and we traveled, came back in about 2011 and was like, this is the industry I'm going to work in and have been working in Silicon Valley for tech companies, starting tech companies, sold a company to Google, spent some time at Google, investing in startups and,

• 3:15Speaker 02

  you know, have basically lived my entire last decade in, immersed in Silicon Valley.

• 3:21Chris Williamson?

  That must be pretty crazy. It seems like such a fast-paced, very quickly moving environment.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  It is definitely that. It is a wild place to be, you know, companies are growing. You know, I look back to, you know, I tried to pick the hottest company to work at when I first got back from my trip and it was a company called Simple Geo. That ended up not working out and my wife took a job at a company that neither one of us were all that convinced at the time, you know, would be the biggest company, you know, possible. And, you know, now it's, it grew into Lyft and she's been at Lyft for nine years. And so it's one of those kind of crazy adventures where you never know what, what's going to happen. You know, it might be six people in a small room that, you know, now is a 5,000 person company.

• 4:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, totally. I was reading an article recently about the electric scooter, um, Bird and, uh, the, uh, was it Lime? Is it Lime scooters?

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Bird has them, Lime, Spin, Scoot, Lyft has some.

• 4:22Chris Williamson?

  Uber's getting into it as well, right? They're trying to buy someone and they've already, I think.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they bought a company called Jump that has bikes. And I don't know what their scooter plan is, but it's, yeah, it's crazy. You know, I was in LA this weekend and there were so many scooters everywhere. It was crazy.

• 4:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I went to LA last summer and I couldn't, I was like, what, is this a trend that no one's told me about? Like, why is everyone whizzing around on electric scooters? But I was reading, I think it was towards the back end of last year, that the valuation on those companies went like 500 million, 1 billion, 10 billion, like month on month on month. I think that was what happened with Bird or something like that.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  It's been really, really crazy. So, uh, Bird and Lime and yeah, it's, it's kind of wild. Um, I don't even know how to think about it.

• 5:15Chris Williamson?

  But this must be, maybe not to that kind of degree, but these crazy takeoffs must kind of be 10 a penny in, in Silicon Valley. There's always someone on the up and someone on the down and.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I spent about three years at Google Ventures investing in companies and, you know, we probably invested in 300 companies in the, the time I was there. And, you know, every week, month, it's, it's, you know, a different trend, you know, one month it's, you know, we've got to invest in all, there was four companies at one point in time that help you sell a used car. And it was like the hottest market. Everyone, everyone was investing in companies that help you sell a used car. And, you know, now I don't think any of those companies are around, or maybe one of them is, but, you know, it was such a frenzy for a very short period of time. It was pretty crazy.

• 6:00Chris Williamson?

  Where are those signals coming from?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  You know, this like weird hype cycle of fear of missing out and things happening at the same time and people getting scared and you know, people seeing big markets and opportunities and not knowing how it'll evolve and all that comes from everywhere. But yeah, it's pretty, pretty crazy.

• 6:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it must be, it must have been a bit of a baptism of fire working in that particular department at Google.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was awesome. Like, you know, you just get to intimately see all of the crazy stuff that's happening. And, you know, I can't imagine anything better than, you know, getting that exposure, especially, I didn't know I wanted to start a company after that. But, you know, that was, you know, great exposure to all the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life before you leave to go, you know, take on that job again.

• 6:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. It's like a 1.6 bar pressure washer hose, straight to the face of like, high volume startups, right?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, where else do you get to learn about, you know, I must have seen a thousand pitches and, you know, we did a few hundred investments. It's just crazy. You know, you get to see it all.

• 7:13Chris Williamson?

  So if you were to pick out some of the elements of good pitches, is there any, any things that stood out that you thought, I need to, when I'm considering doing my own stuff, are there any principles from that that you thought were super good?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think something sometimes people overlook is that, you know, VCs aren't necessarily, like, the details of the numbers at the early stage are secondary to the person in the room. And so, you know, the whole thing starts with like, is this a person that can achieve this wild ambitious thing? And when that wild ambitious thing is so far away and so big, you know, it's less about you showing that here's how step by step the numbers work over the next 10 years. Because like, none of that is like, ever going to actually be true. It's more, is this the person that cares about this enough to deal with all the crap that comes with starting a company? Do they care about this industry enough?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  The problem they're solving enough? Can they hire the right people? Can they build the right team? And it's, it really comes down to the founders. And if you can buy into the founders, and they're not building something in a tiny marketplace, and you have either the reason to believe that they could build the product, or they've already demonstrated they can build it, like, You know, a lot of the other stuff is much less important at the early stage.

• 8:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so enough caffeine before you go in, like the right level of caffeine concentration in your blood.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've got to be excited. Like, if that doesn't shine through, you have bigger problems. Like, you have to be passionate. I always tell people, like, the number one skill of a founder is storytelling. It's not, you know, there's all these other things that matter. But if you can't walk in a room and tell a story that gets people excited, you know, you won't have the opportunity to talk about your management skills or your product skills or your marketing skills.

• 9:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you got to get yourself through the door first. Steve Bartlett, the CEO of Social Chain over here in the UK, which is a big social media agency, pretty much one of the main reasons why that company has been successful is because of Steve's personality, that they, the guys at Social Chain, and one of my buddies, Peter, was like one of the first 10 employees. And this, this company's massive now. They've got offices in New York and they're expanding all over the world. And they did Manchester United's, like, uh, marketing campaign and et cetera, et cetera. And, um, one of the main areas of their marketing strategy is get Steve in front of a big crowd of people and then someone spend a lot of time on his LinkedIn as soon as it finishes.

• 9:44Chris Williamson?

  Because, like, that's what happens. You put him in a room and he just, people just gravitate towards him. Um, and he seems to have that allure and, and that energy that sells people, especially when you think about a company like that. And, you know, a lot of the listeners may be working in digital marketing, social media marketing, or, you know, an, an easy side hustle at the moment, because I still don't think it's a saturated market for small businesses, is to start doing social media consulting. Like, if you're like a, a Gen Y-er and you've grown up on social media, you understand how it works. But there are, within a 20-mile radius of where you live right now, there's probably 100 coffee shops and cafes and sandwich bars

• 10:27Chris Williamson?

  and all the rest of it, who don't even have like a, a Google or Yelp listing, like, they, they won't exist online. And, you know, a common side hustle for those people is to, is to be able to get into this. And for Steve to set himself apart and to really convince the old guard of marketing that social is a way to go and they should strongly consider portioning off a lot of their income, a lot of their marketing budget towards that, is just him selling how excited he gets about social media. He's like, he's like, like a, like a young Gary Vaynerchuk from the UK. But less sweary.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  That's amazing, yeah.

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  He's a bit sweary.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Gary is like just such an intense personality. I owe a lot to him for, you know, pushing me. I've known him for easily over 10 years. But, uh, yeah, like some people just have that ability to captivate an audience at any point in time and can do a lot of good with it.

• 11:19Chris Williamson?

  That's fantastic. So we wanted to talk a little bit. We had a lot of requests for advice for people's personal finances. And I think that as exciting as it is, I do want to hear some more stories from Google. I think we'll come back to that in a bit. But, um, a lot of people, I certainly didn't learn basics of anything to do with how to manage my own finances. I didn't understand, before I went to uni, I didn't understand what an asset or a liability was. I didn't understand how a mortgage worked or anything like that. So do you have some principles that you stick to for your personal finances?

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And first off, like you're not alone, right? You know, it's whether it's the UK or the US or probably anywhere else, like we're not, it doesn't seem like anyone's getting taught these principles in school.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  And, you know, there was a world that, you know, my parents kind of grew up around, but maybe didn't grow up in, where, you know, you work for a company for 30 years and that company takes care of you for the rest of your life and, you know, they pay for everything later. And, um, that's great, but it doesn't happen for us now. And with so many people being, you know, freelancers and self-employed and, you know, the average time I think people I know change jobs is like, you know, three or four years, not 30 or 40 years. So, you know, we don't build up a pool of retirement assets or pensions tied to a company that's enough to sustain us. So we kind of really have to figure it out on our own. Education just hasn't caught up. So it's kind of frustrating for a lot of people.

• 12:51Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't agree more. The only reason that I'm in any way slightly capable with my finances is because I've got two business partners who are fantastic. And there's been like a trickle down effect. I've been kind of begging in the gutter, like just desperately trying to glean any last little second nuance of, of understanding about how to organize my money. And then, you know, the fact that I've managed to not bankrupt myself is probably a testament to their abilities.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Yep, that makes sense.

• 13:23Chris Williamson?

  So with regards to where people should start or how they should consider or look at their own personal finances, where do we begin?

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Man, so, you know, I have a typical like, how do you think about this? Where do you begin concept, which is like, you know, step one is just like, start to take ownership of what you're thinking about. You know, learn the concept of assets and liabilities and, you know, summarize where you're at, you know? First, first thing I think everyone should start to do is just understand where they're starting from, you know? Make a list of all the accounts they have, make a list of, you know, the ones that have positive balances, whether that's brokerage or, you know, you know, a savings account or an investment retirement account. And then also look at, you know, anything that's, that's, you know, falls into the debt camp, you know, whether it's a credit card or a mortgage or a loan. You know, when you add up all the positives and subtract, you know, everything else, you

• 14:15Speaker 02

  end up with your net worth, which I think is something that a lot of people have never taken the time to look at, but is kind of like a core thing to start with when you're trying to figure, figure out where you're going.

• 14:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. What, what am I, what's my current worth at?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then so I, you know, in accounting terms, we'd say like, make your balance sheet an income statement, which scares people. So we'll avoid those for the rest of this conversation. But the other one is just to figure out like, how much are you spending and saving? You know, there's a lot of ways to do that. Some people are really diligent and they say, I put everything on one credit card. And so you could just go look and say, well, this is how much I spend. And some people aren't and they might need to use a, you know, software to track it or, you know, a spreadsheet. There's a great app called YNAB, you know, no affiliation to them, but Y N A B dot com stands for you need a budget. It's a great like tool that you can use to kind of forecast out, you know, your spending.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  And, you know, they take this idea that I think is really meaningful of, you know, allocating your spending in advance, which forces you to prioritize what you care about. An interesting thing I learned was, you know, I really value experiences and like, you know, trying new things and whether that's going to some kind of show or taking a class. But when I looked at my spending last year, I realized that it made up like less than 1% of all my spending. And so my wife and I were like, well, this doesn't make sense. Like, if this is a thing we care about a lot, why are we spending more money on all these other categories? So I tell people like, step one is really just figure out where you're at. What is your total, you know, sum of all of your assets minus your debt? And then what are you, what are you able to save or spend each month? So you can take what you

• 15:56Speaker 02

  earn, you can take what you spend and kind of look at the difference. And that kind of ultimately ends up being how much you can save each month.

• 16:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I've seen a number of adverts for online banking facilities that will break down your spending across multiple different areas. So it's like this much on leisure and this much on food and drink and this much on coffee or whatever it is that coffee probably actually makes up a fair proportion of a lot of people's yearly spending. I'm gonna guess in Silicon Valley, it'll be like 20%.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it depends. If you're working a startup, you probably get free coffee. But if you're a freelancer, you probably, coffee is your price of office space.

• 16:35Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's your lifeblood, isn't it? Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, that's the first step is just where are you at? Because to kind of think about anything down the road, you need to really figure out where you're at. You know, I always think like a good second step from figure out where you're at. But then it's like, let's build a kind of an initial foundation. So the first thing that I think everyone should probably do is put aside some type of emergency fund. You know, if you have a really, really stable job working for the government, maybe it doesn't have to be that big. Maybe it's, you know, two, three months of income. If you are freelancing and you never know where your next job's coming from, maybe it should be six or even 12 months.

• 17:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  But, you know, set aside some money that, you know, you can be ready to weather whatever unexpected expense or situation comes across because The last thing you want to have to do is have a situation arise and, you know, sell a retirement portfolio or, you know, borrow money. And, and I always tell people that, you know, I'd recommend putting it in a high yield savings account or something that earns some interest. You know, because if you leave it at a checking account at the bank, it probably won't earn enough interest.

• 17:42Chris Williamson?

  I agree. You, um, you started up a website, right? Just after 2008, that was, I guess, would have been similar to the nightmare scenario that we're talking about here, if you get laid off.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I started this thing called Laid Off Camp and we did events around the country, trying to help people figure out what to do after the 2008 financial crisis. And, you know, I was fortunate that I had saved up a little money. So when I needed to, you know, supplant my income with something, I had it. But, you know, one of the reasons a lot of people came to the event was they were like, I don't have any money, like, and so we had, can I learn how to freelance, how to start a company, how to get a job? Because, you know, they didn't set aside an emergency fund.

• 18:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Have any of the, any or many of the guys and girls who you met at those events, have they gone on to do any cool stuff? Or do you keep in contact with any of the people who you met then?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was really funny. We're, we're talking about at my current startup, you know, a bunch of different tactics for growth. And my co-founder handed me a book and he was like, you should read this book. It's amazing. And I looked at the author and I was like, man, that name's so familiar. And I was like, oh my God, this is this guy that got laid off. And he helped organize the Laid Off Camp in LA. And like, he went on to become a well-known person in the growth community and write a book and all this stuff. And I shot him a note and I was like, this is so wild. Congratulations, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, definitely. I keep randomly seeing people from, from that stage of my life go on to do amazing things.

• 19:09Chris Williamson?

  That's so cool. It's brilliant to turn around, stick a big middle finger up at people that laid you off by becoming ridiculously successful.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you know, I think about that all the time.

• 19:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, we um, me and the co-hosts on the show are all self-employed or to one degree or another. And um, there's, I think, making it on your own or going for it on your own is a really cool idea for a lot of people, but the reality can be, it can be quite cutthroat. I'm gonna guess in Silicon Valley, that's like the, the tip of the spear for, for people in cutthroat industries going off on their own.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's this thing that almost maybe has become too sexy, right? Like, everyone wants to go start a company. And sometimes I meet people that, you know, they just feel like it's the thing they have to do and they haven't even thought about it. They're just like, I gotta start a company. That's what everyone does. And I'm like, well, you don't have to start a company. Like, there are a lot of other options, but everyone's like, I just want to start a company. I want to start a company. So, um, it is kind of funny that, you know, I see that happening, you know, wildly all over the place.

• 20:23Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that that's a byproduct of people being kind of disenchanted or disenfranchised with their current work? Like, if you have a normal job where you don't feel like you have a lot of meaning, I was listening to Johann Hari's book, Lost Connections, which is about the causes of depression. And in that, he cites a statistic that says 20% of Americans are actively unhappy at their job, actively unengaged. A further 60% are indifferent, and only 20% are actively engaged. And when you think that you're spending, you know, between 35 and maybe 50, 60 hours a week, doing this particular thing, and it forms the basis for who you are, right? Like, when you

• 21:08Chris Williamson?

  meet someone, the questions you ask is like, what's your name? Where are you, where are you from? And what do you do? It's like, your name and what you do are, like, they might as well be the same thing, right? And it's, hi, my name's Chris, I'm a club promoter, blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. And I think that people being so unhappy with that leads them to kind of maybe knee jerk in the opposite direction and go, right, well, what's the exact opposite of what I'm doing now? Because if I'm unhappy doing this, then the right thing must be complete opposite, i.e. start a company.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's funny. It's kind of been this weird shift where I'm not convinced that 30 years ago, people thought about it like that, right? Like, You know, it seemed like everyone I've talked to, you know, that's been in the workforce for 20, 30 years, the idea is like, you work to live. And, you know, now there's this mind shift of like, no, no, no, I have a lot of freedom and responsibility over what I do. I'm going to live to work and, you know, I want to be fulfilled every day of my life. And, you know, that sometimes has a problem with personal finance because, you know, if you're like, oh, I don't love this job, so I shouldn't do it. It's like, okay, that might be true, but like, you also need to be able to provide for your family. You need

• 22:19Speaker 02

  to save for the future. I meet people in their 30s and sometimes I'm like, hey, you know, how, how long do you want to live? You know, how long do you think you're going to live? And they're like, I don't know, 100. And I'm like, okay, well, you know that if you're, you know, 30 right now, and you're going to work till you're 65 and then live to 100, like, in the next 35 years, you have to save enough money to live for 35 more years. Like, so, you know, like, it's crazy that, you know, you end up needing to save, like, you know, almost as many years as you work, you need to save for. And a lot of people are like, well, when I retire, that's when I'm going to travel. I'm like, okay, well, your expenses are going to go up, so you need to save even more. So it's just,

• 23:00Speaker 02

  uh, you know, I think people need to find a balance of like, you know, working to, everyone should try to be fulfilled in their work and do something they're excited about, but not lose sight of the fact that they also probably have some responsibilities to themselves, to their family, that, you know, sometimes I think might come in the way of, of, you know, trying to find the dream job, which, you know, I worry that there isn't really ever the dream job.

• 23:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the analogy of the, uh, it being too sexy of an idea, like, it is the hot new girl at school that like, everybody, everybody wants to, wants to be going out with. You are, you are totally right. Um, so we've talked about, uh, understanding our current sort of capital worth. Um, we've spoken about, um, trying to forecast as well, look at where we're at now, and then also forecast that forwards. How much money have we got coming in? How much money have we got going out? What would you advise for people who were thinking, right, okay, I've, I've got myself to that stage? What goes, what comes next?

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the two big things I think that come next are like, make sure you don't have any high interest debt. It's amazing how often I find people that have the means to pay off high interest debt, but just haven't for reasons that, you know, they never did the math, right? People don't think about math, you know, finances like spreadsheets or like I would. And, you know, so I went in and, you know, looked at the situation. I was like, you have credit card debt. It's at 22% interest. Like, you have the money to pay it off. Why aren't you paying it off? And the answer sometimes is like, well, I didn't want to dip into my savings. And I'd say, well, is your savings earning 22%? And they're like, no, no, no, it's earning 1%. I'm like, well, then you should definitely, definitely like pay off

• 24:42Speaker 02

  your 22% debt to with your interest savings. It's only earning 1%, but you know, it's not something that people always think about. So like a big, so set aside some money in case something happens. Pay off high interest debt, whether that's credit cards, personal loans, that kind of stuff. And then the other is like, make sure you kind of dial up retirement contributions. You know, you can't wait till you're retired to, you know, get the tax benefits of a lot of different retirement contributions. And so, you know, whether that's pensions in the UK, 401ks in the US, you know, you know, I think in Australia, you get superannuation and your company does it all for you, which is great. But, uh, you know, here, if you don't put money in, in one year, you can't get that credit for the next year. Like you're

• 25:24Speaker 02

  capped each year at how much money you can set aside for retirement tax free. So, you know, I encourage people to sure that they do that early because you can't, you can't play catch up like, like you might wish you could later.

• 25:36Chris Williamson?

  Like overpayments or whatever. Can you briefly, because I, the only time that I've heard 401k mentioned is in Die Hard 4.0. Like that's, that's like the only time I've ever heard it mentioned. Can you, for the Brits that are listening, can you briefly explain what it is or how it works?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, 401ks, right? I just lost audio for one second. I was like, when you said that one word. Yeah, so in the US, we have this system where you can put aside a certain amount of money each year. You can choose whether you want to pay the taxes now and never again, or not now and when you retire. So, you know, in the US, you're allowed to contribute personally tax-free up to, it keeps changing every year, but about $19,000 a year. And so you have, they're employer-sponsored plans, so that, you know, if you're self-employed, there's a whole different system. And if you work in a government entity, there's yet another different system. If you work for an educational company, like a teacher, there's a different system.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  But the most common one for working at private companies is a 401k, and it's just an account that you can put money in, invest those funds in mutual funds, you know, whatever, whether it's stocks or bonds or real estate. And, you know, at the end, the most common one is you put your money in tax-free while you're working, and then you earn all the, you know, capital gains and interest over time. And then when you retire, you only pay taxes when you take the money out. And presumably, the idea would be that, you know, when you're working, you're in a higher tax bracket than when you're not working. So you get both the benefits of being able to invest your money, you know, before you pay the taxes and not, you know, paying hopefully lower taxes when you take it out.

• 27:20Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah. Awesome. That's a really, really good setup. I don't, I don't fully understand how the UK pension scheme works. It's not a million miles away from that, but I, I don't know about the caps, I don't know about the 19,000. What's mad, though, like, you think, like, if you, even if you take 19,000, if that's the maximum that you can save, if you, if you don't have surplus income on top of what you're earning per year, except for that, for a retirement fund, and we roll forward the 35 years to earn 70 years of living analogy that you used earlier on, like, $19,000 a year, like, you're gonna have to really get up towards that, right?

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know, there's some interesting things about compound interest. You know, the best example I have is, you know, if you had two friends and one of them was saving $3,000 a year from 25 to 35 and then stopped, they just saved $3,000 a year for 10 years.

• 28:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  And you've got another friend that saved $3,000 a year, starting when they were 35, all the way till 70. And so they're saving for 35 years and the other person's saving for 10 years. You know, the first person's ended up contributing $30,000 to their savings, the next person contributed 105. But if those accounts grew at 7% a year, the friend that put in the 30,000 in for only 10 years would have more money than the person who put in $3,000 a year for 35 years.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  So the, I mean, the math, you know, it ends up that that 10, that money can grow so much more because the interest is growing for longer and you started it earlier. So I would say, you know, if you put in $19,000 a year for 30 years, you're going to end up with a lot more than, you know, 30 times 19,000. But if you wait till you're, you know, five years from retirement to start savings, you don't have, to start saving, you don't have the time to benefit from all that compound interest.

• 29:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that completely. So would you recommend, or how much do you tend to recommend to people to try and have multiple revenues of multiple income streams?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know, I think I might deviate from like the zeitgeist of like internet money hackers that are like, find your side hustle, find your multiple streams of income, buy rental properties, like, you know, I have two income streams, right? I have a job and I have an investment portfolio. And in that investment portfolio, I might invest in stocks, I might invest in REIT funds, which are, you know, kind of effectively investing in a fund that holds a bunch of pieces of a bunch of companies that own property and they all rent them out. So, you know, I've chosen to say, instead of me managing a rental property, instead of me managing owning a small piece of 10 different startups,

• 30:12Speaker 02

  I'm going to invest in a diverse portfolio with a bunch of index funds that invest in all of those things. So sure, you could say I have, you know, a Thousands of income streams because I'm invested in thousands of companies. But you know, effectively, I have an investment portfolio and a job. I'm not personally, you know, trying to do anything else. Running a company is enough work for me that I'm not trying to, you know, have seven side hustles.

• 30:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mean.

• 30:44Chris Williamson?

  It's a, it's a balance, I suppose, between the time that you have available.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:48Chris Williamson?

  And also how much money you want. Like if money's not.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:51Chris Williamson?

  Money's not a big deal to you, then like, just do your minimum effective dose to live. And then spend the rest of your time like chilling out.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I always say like, step one is figure out where you're at. Step two is kind of build your foundation, but then step three is like, actually make a plan. Right? So what are your goals? If your goal is to own a Ferrari, well, you might need to save more money. But if your goal is just to like, live a comfortable life with your family. And you know, the extra money that you could save might prevent you from spending time with them. Like, you might not actually want to go get that side hustle.

• 31:26Chris Williamson?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  So I always say like, what do you want? How, do you want to retire really early? Do you want to buy a home? Like, you know, do you want to start a company? Do you want to pay for your kids to go to a private university? Like, what's the most important thing to you? And when you prioritize those things and kind of figure out what they involve. Like, that's when you can make real decisions. But if you've never really thought of it, you know, sometimes I see people spending money when they haven't realized that they care about things more than spending, right? You mentioned coffee. Let's say you go buy your $5 latte every morning. Sum that up over the year and you're like, wow, you know, that's actually, you know, could have been, you know, a couple thousand dollars, maybe.

• 32:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  But if you ask the someone, say, hey, you know, do you, is that coffee? Does that get you through the day enough that it's worth? You know, you know, over a decade or so, being able to save up your part of your kid's education. And someone might say, oh, my gosh, when I think about it like that, no. But before I hadn't made any plans. And so I wasn't thinking about it in any way. And I think that's where it gets really tough is if people aren't thinking through all of these things in advance.

• 32:33Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't agree more. So my business partner, Darren, and the guys in the office that are listening right now will know what I'm going to say. But Darren's ethos is always that if you times any number by 52, it becomes fucking massive. And it's like, when we're looking at our set of company accounts, and we're like, oh, well, we could, we could chip this off here, or we could knock a couple of hours off there. And at the time, it doesn't really feel like that big of a deal. But like, if we can save five quid across four shifts on one particular club night, it's a thousand pounds a year. But at the end of the year, there is 1,000 pounds more because we, we knocked four by five pounds off a couple of shifts once a week. And you're like, holy fucking shit. Like, that's so much money.

• 33:16Chris Williamson?

  I know that that's literally the most basic of maths. It's 20 times 50. But it's just so much money.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:24Chris Williamson?

  Like.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's really easy to think, you know, we, we think about that, you know, how much money do we want to spend? We, we provide lunches at the office. And we were like, well, you know, when we were small, it didn't really matter whether we went to a place and it was, you know, 10 bucks or 12 bucks, like, or eight bucks, it didn't matter. But we're like, wow, when you multiply five lunches a day by 20 employees by, you know, 50, you know, five days a week times, you know, 52 weeks, like, all of a sudden, you're like, wow, if we can cut a dollar per lunch off, we save a lot of money.

• 33:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you're giving my business partner an aneurysm now at the moment with him hearing hearing those figures. So in terms of, we've spoken about the fact that generating extra streams of revenue might not be something that's for everyone. But I'm going to guess that dialing down your spending, or at least not having frivolous spending is a principle that most people probably should and could stick to. Have you got any sort of hacks or principles that you like to use when it comes to tightening the, the sort of belt buckle, so to speak?

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I would say it's not necessarily all of the spending, right? It's not, I wouldn't say frivolous spending. Well frivolous by nature, probably, you know, that word might imply that it's not necessary. But there are some people that if you look at, you know, if you've already figured out what you need to save and you're already on track for it, you know, what you might be able to do by saving another $1,000 a year might not be worth it, right? Like, you might say, for me, you know, for me to cut another $3,000 out might mean I can't take another vacation. And what would I get from saving 3,000 more dollars a year? Maybe what that gets me is like, you know, slightly better lifestyle in retirement.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  But if I've already saved enough to live the lifestyle I want in retirement, maybe the best thing is to keep spending the money on travel.

• 35:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. It comes back to making a plan, right?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Exactly. If you haven't figured that out, you know, for most people, they haven't figured that out. For most people, they're probably not saving as much as they should. And so, you know, broadly speaking, yes, it's like very common that I talk to people and a good thing for them to do is to spend less money. I just don't want to make the blanket statement because for some people, you know, keeping their current level of spending or potentially even increasing it. You know, I'm so frugal with money that I have friends that are like, you realize like if you just, you know, die and have all this money, but you've never spent it, you wouldn't have lived a good life. Like, why don't you live a little? Like, you know, why don't you, you know, get the nice entree instead of like, you know, split it with your wife because you don't want to spend the extra 20 bucks. You know?

• 36:08Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't agree more.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  So I'm just this crazy optimizer that, you know, probably could afford to not optimize as much and, you know, optimize for convenience. And so even though we can bring dogs to work, I finally buckled down and hired someone to come walk our dog during the day. Because, you know, I could just get so much more done when I'm not thinking about having to leave and take the dog out and schedule meetings around it. So it's just hard when, you know, my brain is just wired so much differently to save every dollar.

• 36:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that. And also having your dog in the office is going to be like, yeah, it might be distracting, but it's fun. Like, it's nice, it's nice to have dogs around, right? Their morale, good little furry bells of morale.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Though at some point, you're like, oh, wow, we have so many people that work here. Maybe the problem is like, we can't have a dog in the office every day because, you know, people are allergic, like all these things when you're a small company that you don't think about. Now you become a big company and you're like, well, we have 30 people. Like, maybe someone's actually allergic to dogs. So we can't have a dog in the office.

• 37:11Chris Williamson?

  Oh, man. Don't hire them. If someone, if just, they're not, they're not allowed. They have to sit in their own cubicle over the far side and everyone else can play with the dog. That's how, that's how I think it would work. But yeah, I totally get what you mean. I think I'm wired a similar way to yourself. I remember a couple of years ago in As, at like 2:00 in the morning after I'd finished work at one of our club nights. It's 2:00 a.m. and I'm looking at the difference between like the value yogurt and like the finest yogurt. And I'm like, having an existential crisis about which of these yogurt, do I, do I get the value? Oh, well, I mean, it's 20, 25 pence more to get, you know, I'm stopped and kind of checked myself. And I was like, what on earth are you doing? Like, just, just

• 37:54Chris Williamson?

  pay 25 pence. Like, you work so much. Just put the 25 pence yogurt into your basket and get out. It's 2, 2:00 a.m. But yeah, people tend to be wired in one of two ways, I think. And you've got the ones who are maybe on our side fighting about the yogurt. And then you've got some people who maybe, maybe could do with tightening up a little bit.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  I'm the same way. And it's my, people are, think I'm crazy. But, you know, I've got like 15 different credit cards and I decide which one and, you know, to use based on whether it earns more points on certain things.

• 38:29Chris Williamson?

  Wow. That is, okay. Yeah, that's, that's another level. So I wanted to, I wanted to move on to the company that you're at now. I wanted you to give us a little bit of background about that and, and tell us what's going on.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I just dropped the microphone.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so right now I left Google about two years ago to start a company called Grove. And you know, what we realized was no matter how much I wanted people to build cash flow models for themselves and forecast out all of their spending, you know, the reality is many people, you know, are get enough overwhelmed with personal finance that they're not going to do their own financial planning without some help. And the industry has evolved to a place where the only support is for people who already have a million dollars. You know, like that's the industry is like, we'll manage your money, but only if you have a lot. And if you don't have a lot, maybe we'll work with you, but we're going to charge you, you know, a few thousand dollars a year. And everyone doing this is, you know, old school and, you know, prints out 100 page documents.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  And so the vision was how do you build a company that uses enough technology to make financial planners efficient enough that when someone says, you know, I want help, I want to figure out what I should be doing with my money. I want to organize things. I want to, you know, talk to someone about my goals so that we can put together a plan and make sure I'm on track. Like, we can offer that to you for less, you know, less than half the cost of the, the rest of the industry because, you know, they're still doing in-person meetings and having you write things on pieces of paper and, you know, scanning them in. And, you know, so we built our own technology stack that lets our team of financial planners work with people at much less, much less the cost than a traditional financial planner.

• 40:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it blows my mind that that isn't more common. Like, it's absolutely blows my mind. Like, everyone, you've already said, most people don't have a natural ability, unless you are my business partner, but he's a freak of nature. And he was, he was born like with a laptop, building spreadsheets. If you're not, if you're not wired like him or yourself, like, where do you learn this stuff from? Like, you have to be deep down in the Medium archives or living on Reddit or like, God knows where to be able to get this. So the fact that you can't, and you are right as well, like, you think financial planner, you're like, oh, my God, velour curtains and a Montblanc pen and a Chesterfield red

• 40:53Chris Williamson?

  sofa and a smoking jacket and oak everywhere in this huge, big building. You do, you think like, oh, it's, it's built for millionaires.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yep. And so I always say like, if you don't have a million dollars, or you don't want to spend thousands of dollars a year, and you don't want to learn it yourself, you're kind of out of luck. Like, there isn't really a good alternative. So that was why we started the company. We thought that there should be an alternative. There should be a company out there built from the ground up with, you know, the responsibilities of putting a customer's interest in first. I don't know how this is in the UK, but in the US, there's this rule called the fiduciary rule. And, you know, it doesn't, it's not a mandate, which, so the fiduciary responsibility means you're required to act in your customer's best interest.

• 41:38Chris Williamson?

  I've heard, I've heard of that on movies before.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is not required that financial advisors in the US be fiduciaries. So nine out of 10 financial advisors in the US are not required, or do not hold themselves to a standard of acting in their customers' best interests at all times.

• 41:53Chris Williamson?

  Whose best interest are they acting in?

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Uh, often the companies. So it's totally legal in the US to be a financial advisor and recommend products that cost twice as much as other products. And you make the money that's the difference. Totally fine. And that's how the industry's evolved. So when we started the company, we're like, well, we're not going to do that. So we decided we're going to be fiduciaries. We're going to always act in our customers' best interests. We're not going to make money selling other products like most of the people in the industry do. And that's rare, unfortunately, but it's kind of what we believe in.

• 42:26Chris Williamson?

  That is so, I'd love to find out, anyone who knows whether or not this is the same in the UK, please do drop me a message and let me know. Because if it's, if that is the same in the UK, that is such a stupid loophole. Like...

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, they tried to pass a law in the US last year, or the year before, and it didn't get anywhere. And it was going to require that anyone that helps people with their retirement plans is required to act in their client's best interests. The problem is, there's like 20 giant institutions in the US that would just go out of business instantly, because their entire business is selling people things that don't meet that level of responsibility.

• 43:05Chris Williamson?

  This is like

• 43:05Speaker 02

  And big, big companies, big, big financial institutions, like ones, you know, like the entire business is built on selling life insurance policies that aren't good for you.

• 43:15Chris Williamson?

  This is blowing my mind. Like, uh, it, it sounds to me like the financial services equivalent of, uh, medical and pharma companies advertising on TV. Like that, that, like, you do not necessarily need this particular thing, but we're going to force it down your neck in any case. Like, uh, uh, it, that's how it seems to me. We don't have that in the UK. We don't have the, the big pharma advertising stuff on there. And I'm really, really hoping that we don't have financial advisors that are able to give advice. That's like just stiffing people.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  And get paid for it. It's totally legal for me to say, pay me and I will give you advice, but I'll turn around and sell you something that you might not need. Uh, it has to be, what, I forgot what the, the exact term is. It has to be like directionally right. So if you tell me that you want to invest in the stock market, I can't sell you a bond.

• 44:08Chris Williamson?

  Right, yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Right? But if you say you want to take a long-term risk and that's aligned with stock market, I can say, my company offers a fund that is not very different from the fund that has no fees. And our one, our fund takes 2% of your money every year. That's totally fine. As long as it's directionally, you know, it can't be the wrong type of investment. So it's crazy. Um, one, you know, they, I keep hearing that states might start trying to pass these laws themselves because they can't get it passed at the federal level.

• 44:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, it's unfortunate.

• 44:40Chris Williamson?

  It's just a byproduct of being a huge, big, new country, I suppose, isn't it? And, uh, this, there's, there's a lot of, uh, a lot of problems for, for trying to get that sort of stuff passed. But my, I, you know, that, that is, um, that's scary. Like, when you think that that could be, it's not going to be mine because my mom and dad are both British, but that could be someone's mom and dad. Like, that could be their retirement fund. That could have been them working their whole lives.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  It usually is.

• 45:06Chris Williamson?

  And they think, I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna go in with my paycheck and I'm gonna speak to this guy and he's gonna be charming and then he's gonna give me this information that's gonna completely screw me over. So, I mean, was there not, was, did no one tighten up after 2008 with stuff like that?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  They tightened, the company's tightened up to make sure the banks didn't lose more money. But yeah, no, I just, I pulled up an article, says currently advisors in the UK are bound by the FCA's conduct of business rules, but have no formal legal duty to act in the best interest of their clients at all times.

• 45:39Chris Williamson?

  Oh, God.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  So, that doesn't, you know, that was my, you know, quick 10 second research, so I could be...

• 45:47Chris Williamson?

  Well, man, it's, hey, if it's happening in the US, it makes me, it makes me think it very well might be happening here. So if you're using a financial advisor, for the love of God, please double check what they're suggesting that you do. Is there any, I'm gonna guess that you will be an anomaly in the industry with having this fiduciary kind of commitment?

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so still, the good news is like 1 in 10 advisors in the US do take on a fiduciary responsibility to their clients at all times. You know, in the US, it's often called a fee only advisor, meaning we only, we only make money from the fees our clients pay us. It's actually pretty easy. In the US, if you just ask any of your financial advisors, say, are you a fiduciary? You get one of two answers, yes, or you get this weird answer that's like, we really care about our customers. But there's a, there's a John Oliver who does a show on HBO skit, all about, you know, finance and retirement plans and the fiduciary responsibility that's quite funny, digging into how crazy it is and how possible it is for people to

• 46:52Speaker 02

  say they're acting in your best interest, but not. So I would say if you're ever going to hire someone to help you with money, just dig into this and like really understand the the legal, you know, obligations they're taking on. And, you know, I would encourage people that if your financial advisor is not taking on a responsibility to legally act in your best interest, and I don't mean like I care about you, I mean legally, if you ever determine that I sold you something that wasn't in your best interest, like there is a legal responsibility I have and you can, you know, fight that.

• 47:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, that's the first thing you gotta ask, surely. Like, are you, are you gonna be the guy who takes my money? Or are you gonna be the guy that makes me money? Like, that's...

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you would be surprised at how good a salesman can answer the question of are you acting in my best interest?

• 47:40Chris Williamson?

  Slippery and snaky answer.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's unfortunate. I wish there was just like a like a health score. You know, you walk into a restaurant and you're like, oh, you have a D? I don't want to eat here. But like, you know, there's no, imagine if every financial advisor just had to like, put a red X on their forehead if they didn't act in your best interest. It'd be great.

• 47:58Chris Williamson?

  That would be much easier. There's a, speaking of the hygiene ratings, there is a Subway right in the middle of Newcastle, which scored a zero stars out of five food hygiene rating. For anyone, for anyone who's eaten at this Subway on the bottom of Collingwood Street, it is my belief, I don't want to get sued here, but it is my belief that upon one of their most recent food hygiene checks, they got zero stars out of five. I mean, I don't even know how that's possible.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 48:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but that's the, that's the food equivalent of the financial service manager who's just taking your money. So one thing that I did notice very briefly before we go on your medium, you were talking about hacking a Peloton bike thing.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 48:42Chris Williamson?

  For the listeners who don't know, Peloton's kind of like a live guided cycle workout that you do at home and there's a screen and there's like a trainer. It's kind of like spinning class, but you don't actually have the person there in front of you, right?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's like doing SoulCycle or something like that in your living room.

• 49:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  And, you know, I don't, being an entrepreneur, you don't have a lot of time, I'm working all the time. So I didn't have, you know, I wasn't taking, taking the time to go to a fitness class and everyone, you know, was talking about Peloton, these bikes are beautiful, but you can actually get all their classes on the app for, you know, way less expensively than buying this $2,000 bike.

• 49:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  And so I went on the adventure of buying a spin bike and, you know, attaching a couple different Bluetooth trackers to it and mounting an iPhone to it and, you know, connecting it with AirPlay so I could watch the course of classes on my TV and. The irony behind this whole thing, which I feel guilty about, is that a friend of mine who had a Peloton moved and sold me it used, and I gotta say, as much as I wanna be like the man of the people and say, you know, build it yourself, the real thing is so good.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  And so I'm not sure I can tell you to pay full price because it's so expensive, but, you know, it's like, you could find 10 smartphones that tell you they do every single feature the same as another one.

• 50:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  But at the end of the day, I still have an iPhone.

• 50:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's one of those things.

• 50:16Chris Williamson?

  It's, it's, when you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the thing is as well, the degree of satisfaction that you will get from being so frugal, like the, the inherent joy of like blasting the system and being like, no, no, fuck you, like mine cost $175 and yours was $2,000, is gonna be worth, is gonna be worth a lot, but you think like, ah, the real thing's just nice and it's there and it's ready.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think I realized, so what I would say is if I hadn't realized how driven I am by competition, the one thing building your own Peloton won't let you do is it won't log your, you know, your workouts in the app because the bike is not actually connected to Peloton.

• 51:04Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  So, one time I was staying at a hotel that had a Peloton and I got on a ride and I saw real time, like my friend's stats versus mine, and I was like, man, in that one bike ride, he was like a little bit better, and I was like, I'm gonna do the same thing tomorrow morning, I'm gonna destroy him, like I am just going to like outcycle him, and that moment I was like, oh my gosh, I think I burned 20% more calories in a workout, knowing that I was trying to beat my friend than I did before, and I was like, I will pay for something that allows me to get 20% more workout in the same time.

• 51:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  But I have friends that like, they have a real Peloton and they're like, oh, I don't like riding with friends. I don't like the competition. I'm like, oh, you should definitely make a fake one.

• 51:49Chris Williamson?

  Exactly. I've got this fake one at home. I've got this one that I've already built. It's like got all Bluetooth and there's AirPlay and all this sort of stuff. So I think what to a nice concluding note there is that we can say, save money, but save money in the right place and not in the.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, make plan. Make sure that the places you're saving money are driven by what you care about. And so, you know, there are people that might have spent a lot of money on fitness, but it's really important to them. And like, that's fine. You know, like the reality is if fitness is more important to you than where that money could go, that might not be a bad use of it. But if you haven't figured out whether, you know, if, you know, you need that money to do something more important, three years, five years, 10 years, whether it's buy a home or start a family. Like, it's really hard to make those decisions. And, you know, the unfortunate thing is the best way to do it is to build a cash flow model for the future of your life and, you know, run a bunch of simulations, which effectively is the software we've built for our advisors.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  But, um, you know, so there's a basic way to like, at least evaluate your goals and think about them. And if you want to take it to the next step, think about working with someone who can help do it for you. If, if you're not going to go build the models yourself.

• 53:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. I mean, building financial forecasting models does sound like, for me, the least fun afternoon in the world, but obviously.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  For me, it sounds like an adventure.

• 53:08Chris Williamson?

  That's you. That's heaven for you. You're just bathing in financial forecast models and expert Excel sheets fall from the sky. So finally, one thing I wanted to finish on, Chris, are there any resources or blogs or websites that are accessible to the avatar of the layperson that you think would be good for people to check on? Or have you got any resources that you guys offer?

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you know, we have a service that you're welcome to check out if you're based in the US at hello grove.com. You know, there's a bunch of good books, you know, that just talk about the basics and honestly, you know, your personality, you know, the style you're interested in, it almost doesn't matter. Find the book that speaks to you the most. Find the blog that speaks to you the most. You know, if you're really into retiring early, it might be Mr. Money Mustache. You know, there's a movie coming out later this year called Playing with Fire that kind of really dives into the movement of people trying to retire early and seek financial independence. You know, ultimately, what

• 54:14Speaker 02

  matters is that you're excited and motivated by it. So instead of picking a resource that I think is really good, I'll say, pick whatever resource speaks to you.

• 54:22Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  But I will say, take a look at the book Happy Money, which is kind of like a psychological evaluation of ways to spend money that actually increase your happiness. And it's shocking how much just reading this quick, like, you know, it seems like a hundred page book might change your perspective on spending and focus you on like, how can you make sure that you're using money to fulfill your life and not just to perpetuate things that you're doing for no reason?

• 54:50Chris Williamson?

  That's an awesome idea. I love that. I'm going to guess that that will have been one of the spurring on moments for yourself when it came to looking at the experiences in life and then realizing that it was like 1% of your annual spending.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, you identify these things that can actually bring fulfillment to life, which, as you mentioned earlier, is what we're all seeking. And so if someone's going to go do, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours of research on how you can apply your money towards, you know, fulfilling your life, like, yeah, I'd rather read the book than go do the research myself.

• 55:22Chris Williamson?

  Couldn't agree more. So Chris, before you go, can you tell the listeners where they can find you online, where they can learn out more about yourself?

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm Chris Hutchins.com is my, my personal site. Hutchins on Twitter and, and then Grove is just hello grove.com.

• 55:36Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. Man, it's been an absolute blast. Thank you very much.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks so much.