Now here’s the crazy part: if he invested a chunk of that for the next 5 years and never touched his investments again, by the time he’s 58, he could be worth well over a million, all from 5 years of effort at 23.

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Profile

• Name: Jarno

• Age: 23

• Location: Netherlands

• Occupation: Graphic Designer

• Salary: €34,000

Jarno is 23, earning a decent salary for his age and still living with his parents. He owns his car outright, and he recently cleared all of his debt. He’s already got a lot of good stuff going for him financially and just to put the cherry on the cake, he’s got €16,000 in savings.

It’s safe to say that Jarno is in an incredible situation here to start building wealth, but he highlighted that he didn’t know how much he should be investing each month…

Bank Statement Breakdown

Jarno’s take-home each month is just over €3,000 and the remaining balance for the month is €1,264, meaning that Jarno isn’t spending all of his income, putting himself in a very good position.

With Jarno living with parents, he doesn’t pay any rent or bills so he has a huge advantage. When it comes to his essential spending:

• Health insurance at €180.

• Car insurance for €76.

• Taxes at €169.

And that’s pretty much it. A grand total of €425, which is just 14% of his take-home.

It goes without saying that in the future, when he decides to move out, he is going to see an increase in monthly overheads.

Next up, we have the “allow it” category, which is spending that isn’t essential to live, but things that we’re not going to scrutinise to harshly.

Now, I do want to make one thing very clear at this point: you might be looking at the monthly take-home and the salary and it doesn’t quite add up. But he explained that he gets his base salary and then he also claims travel expenses on top of that. So although we have included the travel expenses in the income, travel expenses are also included in the spending, so it does balance out.

• Vehicle costs (fuel, parking, etc): €336

• Groceries at €257.

• Subscriptions at €30 (Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Prime)

This totals up to €623 for the month, which is roughly around 21% of the take-home. So far we’ve seen around 35% being spent on things that are completely acceptable.

Lastly, we move on to the red category but in Jarno’s case, there really aren’t any worrying surprises here:

• He spent €97 on gym-related supplements.

• He spent €98 on gym clothing.

• €130 on gaming-related spend, which again is absolutely fine because I don’t see a lot of spend going on here when it comes to drinking, going to the bar, etc.

• We’ve got peer-to-peer spending at €116, which is transactions to his friends, which could be for food, drinks, etc.

• And then €251 going out for a holiday.

Total spend for the red category came to €692, approximately 23% of his take-home.

This means that the overall outflow for the month came to €1,740, which is just around 58% of the take-home. So for once, we don’t have to make crazy cutbacks and find people some budget to start investing. It makes quite a nice change actually!

We know everybody’s situation is different, and some people may be thinking that Jarno has got it really easy here. I’m sure he knows that he’s in quite a fortunate position but the key thing is that he knows that he wants to invest. He hasn’t blown all of that extra income every month, so we have to give credit where it’s due.

I made a 5-day investing blueprint that’s going to take from finding money to invest, all the way to retirement and financial freedom.

It’s 5 emails across 5 days with everything you need to know in super simple terms.

If you want to receive this blueprint in your inbox, feel free to check the link below and it’ll be sent over to you immediately.

Get your free 5-Day Investing Blueprint here.

What Could Jarno Be Worth?

So, how much should he be investing, and what could it be worth for his future?

The fact that Jarno is 23 years old and he’s already made the decision that he wants to be investing is half the battle won already. It sounds to me that he’s fully aware that he can afford to invest, and now he wants to take action. So for me, there are two options:

Option A is to be aggressive with his investing now.

This will take the pressure off later in life when he does have a mortgage or rent and utility bills to be paying each month. This would be taking a Coast FIRE lifestyle approach.

Option B is to start investing a steady amount now that he knows is more than achievable and should be sustainable for the next 30 to 40 years.

Let’s run the numbers on both of these scenarios.

Let’s say Jarno decides to take the aggressive approach and invests €1,000 each month for the next 5 years, taking him to the age of 28, which is when he plans to move out and buy his own home. If he’s consistent with this investing and puts it into the S&P 500 (which returns an average return of 10% per year, not adjusted for inflation) he would have a grand total of €78,000 by 28 years old.

Now here’s the interesting part: let’s say he never invested another penny ever again after that point and lets the €78,000 continue to compound. 30 years later, at the age of 58, he would have a pot approximately worth around €1.365 million. It’s crazy, because it basically means 5 years of hard work upfront right now makes you a millionaire later in life. And keep in mind that 58 is still classed as early retirement.

Or even better, Jarno gets to that €78k pot and continues to invest around 10% of that monthly take-home each month—around €300. Based on the same time frames and the same returns, he’s going to end up with around €2 million. To me, this just proves that if you do the hard work up front whilst you’re in a very fortunate position, then it pays dividends in the future.

And just as a comparison, Option B would look more like this: let’s say that he decides to take the steady and consistent route and invest €300 every month for the next 35 years at that average 10% return. Even going down this road, he’s going to end up with around €1 million at 58.

Roadmap

Jarno’s roadmap is very different to the usual roadmaps in bank statement breakdown videos. We don’t need to clear any debt, we don’t need to worry about bills, and we don’t even need to build an emergency fund. But here’s what I would do:

Step 1 doesn’t require any action, because it is to leave the savings alone.

Could he invest this money? Well, yes, but it really is a nice rainy day fund to leave for emergencies. And at this point, we don’t know if Jarno plans to buy a house, and of course this €16,000 is going to go a long way towards a house deposit if that is the case.

And then step number two is to take a softer, aggressive approach than the example that we just looked at.

Like we just said, we don’t know Jarno’s exact plans for the future, especially when it comes to a home. So I believe that investing €500 a month and then saving an extra €500 a month to add to that €16,000 already would be a happy medium.

Even if he invests €500 a month rather than the full €1,000, he’s still building a substantial high-six-figure nest egg by 58 whilst securing a roof over his head.

We acknowledge that there are so many variables that go into these situations, but hopefully it gives Jarno some good options to go away, take a look at, and figure out what’s right for him. The beauty of personal finance is that it’s very personal, and there is no one-size-fits-all.

Hope you enjoyed, hope it was helpful and thanks for reading!
Brandon.

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Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

Reason #1: It’s Too Risky

Many people often confuse investing with day trading or gambling, and others assume that you have to pick individual stocks that you know nothing about. But what if I told you that you could invest into something called an index fund?

As an example, if you were to invest into an S&P 500 index fund, this means that your money is being split across the 500 largest public companies in the US. This naturally creates a well-rounded and diverse portfolio without you needing to research and keep on top of all 500 companies.

This is the option that 90%+ of investors should be using because it doesn’t involve any time or energy researching all of these individual companies. The historical average annual return of the S&P is historically around 10% a year (not adjusted for inflation, which we will get on to very shortly).

Like any investment, there will be some volatility along the way, there will be ups and downs, but the beauty here is that you’re investing for the long term. Short term movements really don’t matter. The most successful investors simply automate their investments on a regular basis and completely forget about them.

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself this question: would owning a piece of a company like Apple or Microsoft feel risky to you?

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Reason #2: Inflation

We hear the word inflation being used all of the time, but what does it really mean?

Let’s use an example that we’re all going to understand: Freddos.

Yes, I mean the chocolate bar, because people in the UK are always talking about the price of a Freddo. Over the last 10 years, the price of a Freddo has increased by 10p, moving from 25p to 35p. That doesn’t sound like too much, but an increase of 40% is huge.

This is what inflation is all about: everyday essentials going up in cost across pretty much every aspect of our lives over a long enough period. This means that the cash in your bank is devaluing because you cannot buy today what you could have bought 10 years ago with that exact same amount of money.

Brits feel that cash is safe because it doesn’t feel risky, but the biggest risk is actually right in front of your eyes because of inflation. This is a trap that keeps people poor.

Let’s say you have an interest rate with your bank where your cash is sat at 2%. That’s better than nothing, but if inflation is at 3%, you’re technically losing money. Simply put, your money needs to be earning at least 3% per year just to keep up with inflation.

Let’s put this into a practical Freddo example again:

• £1,000 in 2016 = 4,000 Freddos.

• £1,000 in 2026 = 2,857 Freddos.

• £1,000 in the S&P 500 for those 10 years earning an average return of 10% a year, you would have roughly £2,500 today.

• In that case, you could buy 7,142 Freddos.

You didn’t just keep up with inflation, you beat it, by quite a lot!

The key takeaway here is that you don’t beat inflation by hiding from risk; you beat it by taking the right risk.

Reason #3: You Don’t Have Enough Money To Start

Let me kill that myth for you right now. Platforms like Trading 212 allow you to open an account with as little as £1, so in theory, you can never say that you can’t afford to invest!

Investing isn’t just for rich people or big companies; it’s for everyone. It’s such a shame that here in the UK, we’re led to believe from a young age that investing shouldn’t even be considered.

Let’s run some numbers to paint the picture of what just a £50 monthly contribution could do for your financial future. To some people £50 a month sounds like a lot, and to others it won’t, but at the end of the day, that is essentially a takeaway or a night out per month. People often believe they can’t afford to invest when it’s really more of a priority problem.

If you invested £50 a month consistently into the S&P 500 (averaging a 10% return):

• 10 Years: £10,000.

• 20 Years: £36,000.

• 30 Years: £104,000.

• 40 Years: £279,000.

Realistically, £50 a month isn’t going to make you a millionaire, but having something is always going to be better than nothing. That’s the beauty of investing: there is no right or wrong, it’s about doing what works for you.

Investing is not nearly as risky as you think. What you should really fear is leaving your cash sitting in the bank losing value every year to inflation. If you want to change that, you can start today with as little as £1.

Hope you enjoyed, hope it was helpful and thanks for reading!
Brandon.

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Today I will share why I made these mistakes and how I plan to fix them.

First of all, the reason why I’m sharing this is because there’s so many people in the finance space who only show the polished version. They only really show their portfolio when it’s looking really clean on a green day, but that isn’t always the reality.

Personally, I’d rather be transparent and show you what my portfolio looks like on the bad days as well as the good days, and document the whole journey.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

58% In Cash

Currently, I’ve got around 58% of this ISA in cash. Let me explain why.

Over the last eight years, I’ve predominantly been investing into crypto and property, and I actually only opened up a Stocks and Shares ISA earlier this year (big regret).

In March I rushed to max out the Stocks and Shares ISA allowance of £20,000, and then when the new financial year came in April, I put another £20,000 in, meaning £40,000 in total.

I know this isn’t a normal situation for a lot of people, but as I’ve mentioned in the past, I have a multi-six-figure portfolio, and the purpose of this Stocks and Shares ISA is mostly to diversify away from higher-risk assets like crypto.

The reason why so much is still in cash is because I didn’t want to rush and deploy all of the capital into the stock market at one time. I wanted to dollar-cost average over a 12-month period, and if there was any major corrections or crashes along the way, then I would deploy a lot more aggressively.

How much of your portfolio is sat in cash?

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I’m A Hypocrite

Here is where I sound like a hypocrite, because I preach for 90% of people to be putting their money into the S&P 500 or other low-cost index funds, yet VUAG is only 6% of my overall Stocks and Shares ISA.

I’ve got 58% cash, 6% VUAG, and then 36% in individual stocks, and I’ll show you exactly which ones very shortly. But why do I own these individual stocks if I preach about the S&P 500 every single day?

The truth is that most people are just not interested in the stock market.

The majority of people are better off investing into a diverse, safe, low-cost index fund and completely forgetting about it, automating their contributions and letting it slowly build in the background. To be clear, that’s a completely sound strategy and what’s best for most people, if we’re being realistic.

What’s different for me is I love investing. I love talking about investing (clearly). I love the stock market, I love researching companies, checking out balance sheets, and being more actively involved. When somebody is passionate about something and enjoys it, they usually, naturally get pretty good at it. Simply put, I’m doing what I feel is right for me, which isn’t always the same for everybody else.

The breakdown of my current portfolio looks like this:

• £17,302 in investments.

• £24,673 in cash.

The investments are not doing too bad, currently with an unrealised profit of just under £2,000. Although that’s not a bad return, the portfolio itself feels very messy, as we’re about to see.

My Portfolio Breakdown

• SOFI (£3,251) - Up 9% and a favourite stock of mine. Expecting an acquisition in the coming years.

• VUAG (£2,313) - Needs to be a way bigger allocation. Something I’m working on.

• AMZN & GOOGL (£1,854 & £1,767) - MAG7 exposure. My favourite current picks out of the seven.

• AMD (£1,621) - Up over 130% which is crazy. Another solid tech play of mine.

• CAT & AMEX (£1,568 & £1,390) - Portfolio diversification away from tech. Very solid companies to have in the mix.

• NOW (£1,378) - A decent short-mid term play for me with some really interesting AI products.

• MCD & NKE (£1,372 & £784) - More diversification into huge names. Nike is a little riskier right now but I’m confident they aren’t going anywhere.

How Am I Going To Fix This?

I don’t actually dislike the individual stocks that are in there; the problem is the allocations to each.

To be completely honest and transparent, the way I panicked and rushed to get the money into the ISA caused this to feel like a mess since day one with no real structure in place. But at this point, I feel like the foundations are now laid and it’s time to put an actual solid plan in place moving forward.

Simply put, the plan over the next six months is to balance this portfolio out to what I feel is right, which, as we mentioned earlier, includes increasing VUAG exposure.

I’ll also be sharing portfolio update videos on a regular basis as well as written versions here on Substack, so if you want to see how this journey pans out and how I fix this portfolio in real time, feel free to subscribe and come along.

I just have to remind myself that it’s not the end of the world. I still have a portfolio that’s worth ~£42,000. It’s a great position to be in, and it could be a lot worse.

Hope you enjoyed, hope it was helpful and thanks for reading!
Brandon.

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I started investing at 22 while earning very little so I know how tough it can be, especially right now with the broader cost of living pressure across the UK. But today’s breakdown is about taking a £30k salary, looking at where that money is currently going, and establishing where it realistically should be going instead.

The 3 Traps Keeping People From Investing

Before diving into the numbers, it is essential to address why most people aren’t investing already. Non-investors typically fall into one of three common traps:

1. Trap #1: Waiting to earn more money first.

   This is a widespread myth that usually boils down to lifestyle creep. When someone gets a pay rise or begins earning more, they rarely take that surplus and put it into investments. Instead, they upgrade their lifestyle by looking at newer cars, moving into larger homes, or booking an extra holiday every year. Before they realise it, the extra monthly cash flow has vanished entirely.

2. Trap #2: “I’ll fix my finances next month.”

   Treating personal finance like a New Year’s resolution rarely works. People start with high motivation and excitement, but within two to three weeks, it becomes an afterthought. They keep kicking the can down the road, waiting for a “better time” that never arrives.

3. Trap #3: Social media comparisons.

   This is by far the most dangerous trap. Humans are wired to compare themselves to others, and apps like Instagram show everyone on their absolute best days. You see people posting new luxury cars or trips to the Maldives, and you start feeling like you should be matching that lifestyle.

   What isn’t visible behind the screen is the real financial situation: you don’t know if that holiday was put on a maxed-out credit card they cannot afford to pay off, or if that new car is tied to an expensive PCP finance contract. Comparison is the thief of joy, and constant highlight reels make it easy to forget that.

The universal fix to escaping these traps is simple: start small.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

The Baseline Take-Home

For someone on a £30,000 salary in the UK, after standard deductions (income tax, National Insurance, Plan 2 student loan, and auto-enrolled workplace pension contributions), the net monthly take-home comes out to just over £2,000.

For clean numbers, we are going to use a flat £2,000 per month.

Monthly cash flow is split into three core categories plus dedicated savings.

Please do keep in mind that there is no one size fits all and this is based on UK average data. Someone living alone in London is going to look different to someone splitting bills with their partner in Sunderland!

Category 1: Essentials

• This covers non-negotiables: rent or mortgage payments, council tax, and core utility bills.

• While broad UK averages suggest 40%–60% goes to essentials, data specifically looking at the £30k salary band sits right around 45%–55%.

• Splitting down the middle at 50% (£1,000) provides a realistic, grounded baseline.

• Remaining balance: £1,000.

Category 2: The “Allow It” List

The “Allow It” category represents expenses that are not strictly essential to survive, but are completely reasonable recurring costs that support your daily life:

• Examples of Typical Monthly Expenses Include:

  • Phone contract: £40

  • Gym membership: £40

  • Groceries: £200

  • Streaming subscriptions: £25

  • Car insurance: £70

• The target benchmark for this category is 15% to 20% of net income (roughly £300 to £400). Using an average of 17.5% (£350) gives a sensible allowance.

Category 2.5: Dedicated Cash Savings

It’s important to note that savings and investing serve two fundamentally different purposes and must remain separate:

• Cash Savings: Set aside for short-to-medium-term spending such as emergency funds, holidays, Christmas and birthday gifts, or unexpected car repairs.

• If you do not maintain a separate cash savings buffer, you will be forced to sell off long-term investments early to cover unexpected short-term costs.

• The average UK saver aims for 10% of monthly income. On a £2,000 take-home, that equals £200/month (£2,400/year) put directly into cash reserves.

Running Total So Far:

• Essentials: £1,000 (50%)

• Allow It: £350 (17.5%)

• Savings: £200 (10%)

• Total Committed: £1,550 (77.5%)

• Remaining Pot: £450/month

Category 3: The “Red Category”

The remaining £450 is where most people let their money leak away without ever considering investing.

• The Red Category: Dining out, takeaways, pubs and bars, retail spending, and luxury impulse purchases.

• The goal is not to eliminate this category entirely. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and an unsustainable budget will fail. The solution is creating a defined, guilt-free budget.

• Dave Ramsey advocates investing 15% (£300) of take-home pay, but during a cost-of-living crunch, that can feel restrictive.

• Instead, cut that target in half to 7.5% (£150/month):

  • Investing: £150 per month (7.5%)

  • Red Category (Guilt-Free Spending): £300 per month (~£75 per week)

• Allocating £75 every week for socialising and personal enjoyment offers a sustainable balance alongside investing.

Comment and let me know if these numbers feel realistic to you!

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The Compounding Math of £150 a Month

Assuming an average annual return of 10% (the historical unadjusted average of broad index funds like the S&P 500), investing £150 every month compounds to:

• 10 Years: ~£30,000

• 20 Years: ~£108,000 (clearing six figures)

• 30 Years: ~£312,000

• 40 Years: ~£839,000 (approaching seven figures)

This portfolio builds entirely on top of your workplace pension.

Building a six-figure pot from £150 a month provides long-term financial security.

The takeaway from this article is not about hitting an exact target or investing a fixed amount every month.

It is about establishing the habit of consistent investing.

Starting with £150 (or even less) overcomes the biggest obstacle: taking that first step.

• If you want to get started today:

  1. Print your recent statements and highlight your spending categories to find where you are leaking money that could be invested.

  2. Set up an automated direct debit on payday to remove emotion and instantly put yourself ahead of roughly 90% of the population.

Hope you enjoyed, hope it was helpful and thanks for reading!
Brandon.

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I’ve been investing for over 8 years, so I know firsthand how these milestones can change the way that you think and behave. For many people, £1,000 is the first major milestone in their investment journey and today I’m going to share the reasons why.

It Proves You’ve Actually Started

The first £1,000 proves that you’ve actually started investing. You’ve finally moved beyond reading investing articles like this, comparing different platforms, and saying that you’re going to start soon.

When you have £1,000 invested, you finally have what is considered a meaningful amount in the market. Because of this, investing starts to feel real and tangible. Most importantly, you finally have evidence that you can put money into the market on a consistent basis if you really want to take this investing thing seriously.

You might have put £200 per month into the market over the last five months or you might have done £100 over the last 10 months. There really is no right or wrong here. Even if you’ve put in random amounts at the end of the month (what you’ve got left before the next payday) that is still okay because it proves that you’ve started.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

It Changes How You Think About Spending

Old you would spend £50 on a takeaway without thinking twice. But now, you think differently about it. Your brain instinctively starts to run the compound calculator: that single £50 spent invested over 30 years at a 10% return would have been £872.47, and you start asking yourself, “Do I genuinely want this, or am I just spending out of habit?”

However, you shouldn’t feel guilty about every single takeaway and you can still be having fun. You should still be enjoying yourself. You should still be spending money on things that you value. But simply put, you should understand what you can and cannot afford.

A little bonus tip here: if you are considering going to a social event or buying that takeaway on a credit card, that probably means that you can’t afford it!

The key thing here is that investing now becomes an active consideration rather than a secondary thought. The real change here is not being extremely frugal, it’s about spending with intention.

You Catch the Investor’s Bug

Next up, the most exciting reason. When you start to see your first real returns from your investments, and you catch the investor’s bug.

The returns may still only be modest, but you have noticed that they are now getting bigger as your portfolio grows. At this point, you’re putting two and two together and starting to see the connection between patience and progress. You realise that investing more money over a longer period of time results in portfolio growth.

The moment that I caught the investor’s bug was when I stopped gambling and started investing. When I was 22, I was gambling pretty much every day (£5 here, £10 there), but it was all adding up. Eventually I realised that it couldn’t carry on like this, so I made the switch from gambling to investing.

When you gamble on the football, you know that as soon as the full-time whistle blows, that’s it. Your bet is finished and the result is usually zero. Whereas with investing, there is no final whistle. This ends when you decide that it ends.

So instead of getting my dopamine hit from my gambling account, I started to get it from my investment portfolio growth. And although investing doesn’t guarantee profit or returns, it is a much better risk-reward than gambling.

Going back to the original point, everyone has their own journey and I’m sure you’ll find your own way to catching the investor’s bug.

Comment and let me know when investing started to feel real for you.

What amount was that, if you are already there?

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Big Numbers Stop Feeling Abstract

A 10% move in your portfolio used to mean a £10 or £20 change. You would look at it and just think, “Whatever.” But as the portfolio grows, that same percentage move starts to be £100, £200, and beyond. You just start to feel it that little bit more and to be honest, it can feel quite exciting at times, but also uncomfortable at other times. It’s something that you’ll learn to get used to over time.

This is something that reading articles or watching YT videos cannot prepare you for. You have to have firsthand experience with your own portfolio to really feel this.

I really don’t feel any swings at this point in my portfolio. I think being in crypto from such a young age definitely helped with this because the volatility is insane. But at the beginning, there were some sleepless nights and some overthinking which is normal, that’s part of the process. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything wrong, you’re just learning from this new experience.

At the end of the day, you have to remind yourself that if you are in this position, you are ultimately winning because it means your portfolio is big enough to really feel it.

As your portfolio continues to grow, those swings are only going to get bigger, especially when someone like Trump is in charge!

You Stop Checking It Every Single Day

I know that 99% of people reading this are guilty! They checked their portfolio every single day when they started investing (or still do) because it was a new, exciting thing, it was a novelty. But again, over time, with experience in the market, you start to realise that it doesn’t matter what price is doing in the short term because investing is a long-term game.

Daily price movements are less important than:

• Your regular contributions.

• Time invested in the market.

• Diversification of your portfolio.

• Continuing to invest, even during scary red days.

Also, keep in mind that you should see the scary red days as an opportunity. When the market pulls back, corrects, or crashes, that is an opportunity for you to get a discount on your long term positions, emphasising the words long term.

Summary

To clarify what the £1,000 portfolio does and does not change.

❌ It DOES NOT give you financial independence.

❌ It DOES NOT give you the opportunity to become a millionaire overnight.

✅ It DOES give you proof that you’ve started.

✅ It DOES give you a stronger spending filter.

✅ It DOES give you exposure to real market movement.

Ultimately, everything that we’ve discussed gives you a reason to continue contributing to your portfolio on a regular basis.

The key thing here is that the £1,000 portfolio has laid some solid foundations for you to continue moving forward with your investment journey. You’ve done the hard part, you’ve got started and now you’re a very serious investor looking to keep growing.

When you’re at this point, the only things that you really need to focus on from here on out are consistency, discipline, and patience.

Hope you enjoyed, hope it was helpful and thanks for reading!
Brandon.

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Today I’m showing you the five biggest and most common money leaks that I’ve seen across all 13 of these financial audits. I’ll also run the numbers and show you what these spending habits are costing people in the long run.

Money Leak #1: Eating Out and Takeaways

This for me, is why reviewing real bank statements is better than budgeting apps. Somebody may think they are going to budget £80 for takeaways next month when in fact I found that the average, based on the evidence, is closer to £162. This ranges from £60 a month (which is completely okay) to £422 a month (not okay!). It’s the most universal money leak, applying to 11 of the 13 bank statements.

I want to make it very clear that I’m not telling you that you can never eat out or have a takeaway. That’s not the point here! But it’s worth considering that if you were to cook just once or twice more each month, it could make a difference to your financial future.

When running the calculations, we’re going to use realistic numbers on what we can save and cut back on from each of these five different money leaks.

For this I think cutting back by just 20% each month from the average of £162 is realistic, which means the first amount that we can add to this pot is £32.

Money Leak #2: Pubs, Bars, and Social Drinking

Moving on to money leak number two, and it’s probably not a big surprise for many people. Pubs, bars, and social drinking. Again, I am not saying cut this out completely to £0 each month, that’s not realistic and it is good to have a social life. Especially in today’s world where everybody’s glued to their phones, it’s good to get out and to connect with real people face to face.

But the problem here is that 9 of the 13 people who featured in my videos spent an average of £240 each month on this alone. This ranged from £110 all the way up to £560 but when we break it down, a £240 average is just £60 a week, which really, when you think about it, is very easily done.

When you realise that three pints in a packet of crisps is around £20 these days, and you get three rounds in per week, it disappears just like that. This small, harmless spending is quietly adding up without you even noticing it.

I’m going to be very generous here because I am pro-socialising; we’re going to cut back on just 10%, so just £24 a month. This brings the total pot to £56 so far.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

Money Leak #3: Car Finance and PCP Deals

Number three, the big one. The most expensive leak that we are going to see cover. Car finance and PCP deals. I have a strong personal view on this. I recently put a video together calling car finance the biggest wealth killer of this generation. For some people, it’s the second biggest expense coming out of their bank account every single month after rent or their mortgage.

My personal rule here is that people shouldn’t be leasing a car with over 10% of their monthly income. But in today’s world, too many people are renting a depreciating asset that they simply cannot afford, and the data backs this up. The average monthly car payment across 5 of the 13 people featured so far came to £414. And I can guarantee you that this was not 10% of these people’s income, because they were not earning £4,100 per month.

But again, I am a realist with these numbers and situations. I understand that people do need a car to drive, so for me, there are two simple solutions to this:

1. Finance or lease a car that you can actually afford based on the 10% figure.

2. Buy a secondhand car. Something that you can afford.

The average car lease or finance deal in the UK is around £350 in monthly payments. In my opinion, this is still too high and many people are breaking the 10% rule, but we will use this as a guide to make our decision here. Our average was £414. If we subtract £350, we’re left with £64, and that’s what we’re going to throw into the pot.

The total pot has now doubled, we’ve reached £120. Two money leaks to go.

Money Leak #4: Gambling

Leak number four, definitely not as common, only applying to 4 of the 13 people, and is very male-orientated, but it is gambling. To be honest, a very deadly money leak. It causes a lot of problems, but it is one of the easiest ones to cut back on once you have finally cut the ties.

The average amount here is pretty shocking, coming in at around £303 each month. That’s because one of the four people was gambling £700 per month, and you don’t need me to tell you that that’s a big, big problem. The words I would use to explain gambling is destructive and addictive and although for the average gambler it won’t feel like much when you deposit £10 here or £20 there, it does silently start to add up.

When people are gambling, they are expecting a return, a dopamine hit, or both.

What they don’t realise is there is a very obvious alternative, which is called investing. I guarantee you that if these gamblers were to redirect that money into investing and they could see their portfolio growing month on month, they would get the same dopamine hit. I personally made this transition, swapping sports betting for the stock market, and I promise you that positive-EV compounding feels much better than negative-EV losses.

This is a huge jump for the total pot here because we are going to add the whole £303 based on the data. It does sound like a lot and it probably doesn’t apply to most of you, but there is zero tolerance here for gambling.

Total pot now at £423.

Money Leak #5: Unused Subscriptions

Lastly, leak number five is a very common one, a very easy one to fix, and it is unused subscriptions. This includes a range of things:

• The gym membership that you signed up to in the new year, but you quit in Feb.

• The five different streaming services that you’re currently signed up for, but you’re currently only watching one series on one streaming service.

• The Instagram photo editing app that you paid for three years ago and completely forgot about.

8 of the 13 people had some sort of unused subscriptions going on, which totalled up to an average of £62.

£62 per month on average, basically going out for no reason. There’s a very simple solution to fixing this, and it takes around 10 minutes: all you have to do is go into your bank account, have a look at your direct debits and make sure that you’re actually using each one. And if you’re not, cancel them and stop giving money away for free!

For the last addition to the pot, I’m going to be pretty fair here and redirect 50% of the average. We’re going to be put an extra £31 in, taking the grand total to £454.

The Calculations

Before we run the numbers and we see exactly what this could be worth if it was being invested for the long term, I want to make it very clear that I’m aware that not all of these money leaks are going to apply to everyone.

The purpose is just to paint a solid picture of what you tidying up your finances could be worth, and we’ll also run a couple of different examples with different numbers so you can relate to the one that’s closest to you.

Let’s take that £454 each month and invest it into the S&P 500, which historically returns an average of 10% a year. What is this going to be worth in the future?

• 10 years: £91,000

• 20 years: £329,000

• 30 years: £945,000

• 40 years: £2.5 million

We know that investing £454 each month isn’t realistic for most people so let’s change the numbers here and split this in half, using 50% (£227).

• 10 years: £45,000

• 20 years: £164,000

• 30 years: £472,000

• 40 years: £1.27 million

I want to finish by reminding you that I am not saying that you shouldn’t enjoy your life and you need to invest every single spare penny that you’ve got.

What I am saying is go through your bank statement and look for a few things that you can change so you can start investing for your future, even if it’s just a small amount, it is worth doing!

Don’t finish this article and feel bad about every single takeaway that you get. You can still enjoy a takeaway, but you can also check out that bank statement and see what you can do :)

Have a great week! Brandon.

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28% of Brits know that this is the top habit of wealthy people, but most still prioritise other habits such as budgeting and tracking their spending. Today we’re talking about the one habit that puts you ahead of almost everyone financially and the three simple steps that you can take to be part of the 11% as soon as today.

The Data

All of this data comes from JP Morgan Personal Investing:

• Only 11% of adults say they are investing regularly.

• 28% recognise that it’s a top habit of financially successful people.

• Meaning 17% of people who know they should be doing this, but they’re not.

I believe there are three main reasons why people choose not to invest regularly (we’ll get into that shortly).

• 56% said they were investing up to £250 a month.

• But only 23% had automated these investments monthly.

That for me is the key here. Automation is so, so important. It prevents emotions getting involved and stops a lack of consistency with your investing.

• 17% of these investors admitted to investing irregularly.

• 22% said they invest lump sums occasionally.

Now I’m going to show you how effective being consistent is when building wealth rather than putting one big lump in and forgetting about it.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

Consistency Vs Lump Sum

Person A - Jacob.

Jacob is going to invest £5,000 in a lump sum at the age of 20 years old. He’s going to leave this investment account alone for the next 40 years, taking him to the age of 60. He’s going to get an average return of 10% a year (which is the average historically for the S&P 500).

It’s very important to note that Jacob is never going to invest another penny again. Jacob walks away with around £225,000, which isn’t bad. It’s a huge, huge return on what he initially invested, but it could be better…

Person B - Chloe.

Chloe doesn’t have a lump sum to invest, but she is going to consistently contribute £100 a month for the next 40 years. She’s the same age as Jacob, so this will also take her to the age of 60 and she’s investing in the same thing (10% per year return).

At the end of the 40 years, she walks away with around £559,000. This means she’s over £300,000 better off than Jacob and his initial lump sum.

This is exactly why starting as early as possible and being consistent is a massive advantage when it comes to investing.

Why Are The 89% Not Consistent?

Let’s talk about the 89% and why they don’t invest on a regular basis. It usually comes down to three main categories:

1. The most common reason, you cannot afford to invest.

   This is exactly why I put out my bank statement breakdown videos where I take real bank statements from real people and see how they can change their spending to start contributing to their financial future. It doesn’t matter how little the amount may be, starting small is better than not starting at all.

2. Reason number two is that it is too complicated.

   But it really doesn’t have to be and this is exactly where automation comes in because you don’t need to be watching your portfolio every day, you don’t need to be managing your individual stocks. It can be way, way easier than this.

3. Reason number three, I’ll start investing later when I’m earning more money.

   The one I find the most irritating. Even if you’re starting small, the key is to start now, stop putting it off!

We’ve just seen how monthly investing beats a lump sum, but reason number three is so common and so costly, that it deserves its own direct comparison.

Waiting Vs Getting Started NOW

Person A - David.

David’s 28 years old and he isn’t going to invest yet because he’s going to wait until he’s earning that little bit more, he’s going to wait for that promotion at work. However, children come along, he gets married and there isn’t a perfect time.

By the time he handles these life events and actually gets started, he’s now 38 years old. David’s now got 22 years until he reaches the age of 60, so he decides that he’s going to start contributing £200 every month.

Based on that average return of 10% a year, he’s going to have an investment portfolio of around £180,000 at the age of 60.

Person B - Jess.

Jess gets started investing at 28, she doesn’t wait but she isn’t investing quite as much. She decides to do around 50% of David: £100 a month, but over 32 years rather than 22.

Despite investing half the amount on a monthly basis, she gets to the age of 60 and has a pot of around £250,000.

Yes, she was investing for 10 years longer, but she was investing half the amount and still walked away with around £70,000 more than David.

So What Are the 11% Doing Exactly?

We know what 89% of people don’t do. So just to clarify, this is what the 11% are doing.

To be clear, they’re not waiting until they earn more money, they are not picking individual stocks, they are not trying to time the market.

They are automating their investments on a regular monthly basis.

They simply set up their direct debit to ensure they put the same amount of money into their Stocks and Shares ISA every single month.

You don’t need to be an investing expert, you just need to be consistent, because this game is all about behaviour. It’s behaviour-driven; not knowledge-driven.

How To Join The 11% In 3 Simple Steps

1. Pick a platform.

   I personally use Trading 212 because I find it a very user-friendly and easy-to-navigate app. Please do your own research and find a platform that you feel comfortable with.

2. Pick an index fund.

   Find what you are going to invest in consistently every single month. Like we mentioned, we are not picking individual stocks here. We don’t need to be paying attention to the markets every single day. I personally invest into the VUAG, which is Vanguard’s index fund of the S&P 500.

3. Set up a direct debit.

   You are going to treat this like an essential outgoing every single month. At the beginning of the month, you’re going to pay your rent, your utility bills, and now your investments. Pick an amount that you’re comfortable with, something that you know is achievable every single month, and stick to it.

The best bit is you can do this today and all of a sudden you’re in that top 11%.

Being in the top 11% doesn’t mean that you’re rich; it simply means that you have started to invest with an automated system.

Hope you enjoyed, hope it was helpful and thanks for reading!
Brandon.

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• In your 20s that number is ~£22,500.

• In your 30s, ~£60,000.

• In your 40s, you’re looking at ~£150,000.

I’m Brandon. I’ve been investing for over eight years, building a multi-6-figure portfolio in the process, and today we’re finding your crossover point. The exact moment when investing becomes optional because you did the hard work up front.

The Millionaire Math

First we’re going to run the numbers. I know that everyone’s situation is different, but the idea here is to paint a solid picture for you, and then you can go away and tweak it yourself. For these projections, we are going to use a 10% annual return, which is the historic average for the S&P 500.

For people in their 20s, we are going to use 25 as the average age here as an example. And because of that age, it means that you have 40 years of investing before you reach the age of 65. That means based on the average return of 10% a year, if you have £22,500 in your investment portfolio, you will retire at 65 as a millionaire without depositing another penny.

However, for people in their 30s (average age 35) investors in this bracket only have 30 years of investing until you reach the same age. This means that you’re going to need around £60,000 in that investment account to reach the same milestone.

Lastly for people in their 40s, using 45 as an average age, you only have 20 years of investing, which means you’re going to need a lot more in that account, unfortunately. You would need £150,000 to reach seven-figure territory by 65.

Now there is an argument for both sides here. Some people would say that it’s easier when you’re younger because you have time on your side, which is clearly evident from the numbers. But on the other hand, people who are at an older age generally have more money, they’ve had more pay rises, more salary increases, and this means that they’ve got a little bit more to invest with.

My take on this is that these examples perfectly illustrate how time in the market is so, so important, and starting as early as possible is such a huge advantage.

I think it’s also worth reminding you guys that if you are in the UK and you are doing this, you should be utilising a Stocks and Shares ISA to ensure that it is completely tax-free when you get to your milestone.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

Continue To Invest, Or Don’t?

So if you were to reach a number that you’re happy with (and by the way, it doesn’t need to be £1M), you then have a choice to make:

Do you keep investing or not?

Let’s take the person in their 30s as an example here. You reach 35, you’ve hit that £60K milestone, which is great but then you decide to continue investing £200 every month, every payday. The compound calculator shows us that with this top-up, that £1 million investment portfolio is estimated to now reach £1.45 million. Is the extra £450,000 worth it or not? Well, that’s your choice.

You also have option two: the Coast FIRE lifestyle. This means that you start pulling back on the risk, pulling back on the investments, and start upgrading your lifestyle. You’re basically recognising that the years of hard work are now done, the retirement portfolio is locked in, and it’s time to start enjoying life that little bit more. There really is no right or wrong answer here; it’s all personal preference and what that individual wants for their life.

Continue investing or enjoy life, what will you do?

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How Do I Actually Make This Work For Me?

So at this point, you might be reading along thinking, “All of these numbers are great, it gives me a goal to work towards, all these hypothetical situations are also very clear at painting the picture, but how do we actually hit these numbers in real life?”

I know that these numbers may be scary for a lot of people and we have to be realistic here. If you’re reading this at 33 years old and you don’t have anything in your investment portfolio, it’s very, very unlikely that you’re going to be able to get £60K together in the next two years. But this is exactly why there is no right or wrong, you have to make the numbers work for you. You have to be ambitious yet realistic.

You might be 33 and decide that your goal is to reach a £55,000 (or dollar) portfolio by the age of 45. And then, because you haven’t reached the £150K mark, you decide to continue investing for the next 20 years at £200 per month. And although this recipe isn’t likely to land you at the 1 million pound mark, it is estimated to get you close to around half a million. In this case, you made it work for you, and you ended up with around half a million. Not a bad situation to be in!

You might be reading and still thinking, “How am I going to reach 55K by 45? How is this possible?” And this is why the big numbers can sound scary. You’ve got to break them down because it basically comes down to approximately £4,600 per year and £385 per month.

I’m going to be brutally honest and real with you all for a minute here: that £385 a month is still not going to be easy for everyone. But the truth is that if it was easy, everyone would be doing it and everyone would be a millionaire. This is exactly why the same goalposts don’t work for everybody. You have to make it specific for you, and you have to make it realistic.

Ultimately, it takes three key factors for people to reach these types of goals:

• Consistency.

• Patience.

• Sacrifice.

This is exactly why I put out my bank statement breakdown videos over on YouTube. There’s a full playlist of them where I basically go through people’s bank statements and show them what small changes they can be making to start investing for their future. A lot of people believe that they can’t afford to invest, when in fact they just have to make sacrifices and change their priorities.

If you want to check them out feel free to click here.

Hope you enjoyed, hope it was helpful, thanks for reading!
Brandon.

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When it came to my own investment portfolio I found myself making a few tweaks and pulling back on risk because I felt like that was in the best interest of my family. I’m Brandon, a 30-year-old dad who has been investing for over 8 years building a multi-6-figure portfolio in the process. Today I’ll tell you exactly what I’m doing right now for my son’s future and how my own investing has changed as well.

Junior Cash ISA Vs Junior Stocks & Shares ISA

Before I started investing for my son I knew that there was one thing that I wasn’t going to do and that was putting his money into a cash ISA or a savings account.

Based on a monthly contribution of £100 over 18 years at a 3% average annual return (which could be considered generous for a cash ISA), he would start his adult life with roughly around £28,600. Now at first that amount may not sound too bad, and it’s definitely not, but when you think about it further, it’s barely beating inflation and it’s almost certainly not going to be a house deposit for when he wants to move out.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

Instead I set up a junior S&S ISA for him, using it as a child’s version of the Stocks & Shares ISA. The main difference here is that the annual contribution is limited to £9,000 rather than £20,000 like it is for the adult version, but with my £100 per month contribution that isn’t something that I need to worry about.

I do believe that this is the best option out there right now when it comes to starting a fund or saving for your child’s future. When he turns 18 the ownership of this ISA will be transferred over to him, and at that point I’ll probably strongly advise him on what he should and shouldn’t be spending that money on (let’s just hope that he listens!).

My Sons Current ISA

My son’s junior ISA is currently worth around £1,800.
£1,600 of that has been my monthly contributions, plus a £200 gain give or take.

When it comes to what I’m buying for him on a monthly basis, I have a 70/30 split.

• 70% is going into a simple S&P index fund.

• 30% is going into a slightly higher risk tech index fund.

I’ll be honest, for most people it’s probably best to put 100% of that allocation into an S&P index fund or similar, but I’m a little bit of a tech nerd and I’m constantly checking stocks and the markets every day so I enjoy diversifying a little bit and having a bit of fun (whilst still being sensible).

However, if you don’t care about stocks, if you don’t care about the markets, if you’ve got no interest in paying attention to these investments, then it’s definitely worth sticking with the S&P or any broad and established index. Historically the average return for the S&P 500 is around 10% per year (not adjusted for inflation) and that is what I aim for despite that little bit of diversification. Anything more than that 10% is a bonus and anything less is my mistake and I take ownership for that.

Based on a 10% annual return over those 18 years with a £100 contribution, he’s going to come away with around £58,000 by the time he turns 18. If we compare that to what we mentioned earlier with the cash ISA’s approximate return of £28,600, he’s going to end up almost £30,000 better off.

But Isn’t This Risky?

Some people may be worried thinking that that could be risky or volatile. When it comes to the risk, I really don’t see much risk here; you are investing in the 500 largest public companies in the US. It is historically proven to return that average of 10% per year based on data.

When it comes to the volatility, sure, you’re not wrong. There can be good years and there can be bad years. You really can’t be overly emotional about it, you can’t be refreshing the portfolio every single day because it’s just going to drive you crazy. The idea here is that you simply decide how much you want to contribute each month and then you automate that every payday. In theory you don’t even need to look at this until your child turns 18!

What Actually Changed For Me?

In a nutshell that’s what I’m doing for my son and his future, but how has this changed things for me?

I very quickly learned that investing for one person (i.e. myself in my 20s), looks very different to investing for a family. For those of you who are not aware, I recently did a video on YouTube talking about my investment journey, specifically taking risk in my 20s when I had a lot of exposure to crypto.

That has definitely changed recently, like changed a lot. I’ve recently been very aggressive with my contributions into my Stocks & Shares ISA and I’ve also dabbled a little bit in the property market as well. The bottom line is to make sure that I’m diversifying my risk so I’m not reliant on a volatile market like crypto.

Ultimately I’m looking to diversify my wealth into safer assets to protect my family, but I want to make it very, very clear that this doesn’t mean going all-in on cash because that is not a good idea, that’s opportunity cost. Being completely honest, I am still going to be taking a smaller amounts of risk with a smaller allocation of my portfolio, but it looks very different compared to how it was 5 years ago.

To wrap things up, I’m doing two things differently these days:

1. Building a fund for my son so he can start his adult life with a little advantage that so many kids may need in the future due to inflation and rising costs.

2. Being way more protective over mine and my family’s wealth to ensure a better quality of life in the future.

If you need help starting a JISA for your children, feel free to drop a comment down below and I’ll be more than happy to help out where I can!

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I’m Brandon. I’ve been investing for over 8 years building a multi-6-figure portfolio in the process and today I’m going to show you exactly how I built this AI side hustle and the numbers behind it. I’ll also show you how it’s mostly passive for me at this point and most importantly, how you can do the exact same.

What is this AI side hustle?

Simply put I am providing a service to real estate agents. I take their high-quality images and turn them into in-depth videos. Creating home walkthroughs and virtual tours. To do this I use an online tool, a website called Reel-E, and all you have to do is drag and drop the images into the website, tweak a few settings here and there, add a little bit of music and generate the video. It’s really straightforward and easy to do.

At this point you might be thinking that it doesn’t sound too complicated, and to be completely honest, it’s not. A lot of real estate agents are not aware of these AI tools yet and don’t have the time to be doing tedious video editing themselves. Plus the price is a huge selling point of this service because if a real estate agent was to hire a real videographer to put together some content for a property, it’s going to cost them anywhere between £250 and £400 on average, whereas this service is much quicker, much easier, and only costs them £89.

But don’t get me wrong here, videographers are still going to have plenty of work because when it comes to the high-end properties and drone shots. That is something that will not be replicated. But this service does serve a purpose when it comes to cheaper properties where the price tag of a videographer just doesn’t make sense. So many of these agents across the country are still sleeping on social media which is a huge opportunity. They’re not posting content and not getting their properties out there on different platforms.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Check it out on YouTube HERE.

The Backstory

So now that you know how the business model generally works, I’m going to give you a little bit of the backstory. We’re going to rewind the clock, going back to February when I thought of the idea to start working on this. From that point onwards the timeline looks like this:

• March - Research and setting up the business.

• April - First month of outreach (Grand total of £0).

• May - First paying customer (£178 across two videos).

• June - Ramping up scaling (£801 across nine videos).

Scalability & Passive Income

When it comes to the scalability of this business model, I am currently working with four different real estate agents. And to put it into perspective, there are over 20,000 up and down the UK. Being realistic, I know that I’m not going to work with every real estate agent. I’m going to get a lot of rejections and I’m already pretty used to that. But if I’m able to just keep reaching out, keep being consistent, giving out free trials, I’m sure that things will continue to grow.

The reason why this business model is so passive for me right now is because I’ve got my younger brother working alongside me. He has just finished at college and was looking for something to go alongside his current part-time job, so he’s using his current free time to handle the day-to-day tasks. The outreach, the social media posts, the creation of videos and he’s quite happy doing this because he understands that there really is no ceiling here. If he puts the work in, it’s going to pay off. Meanwhile, I’m handling the overall operations, the structure of the company, and managing the existing clients to make sure that we keep them happy.

Investing the profits

The huge bonus of a side hustle for me is investing the money that is coming in. The way I see things is; I lived without this money before, so there’s no reason to start spending excessively now. I need to avoid that lifestyle creep coming in. So after any overheads for things such as the software, paying taxes and now splitting 50/50 with my brother, for the month of June as an example, I would walk away with around £300 of profit.

As I mentioned earlier, I would like to think that we can continue to grow the income of this business model, but even if we was to stay stagnant, if that £300 a month profit was to be invested every month at a 10% return over the next 30 years, taking me to the age of 60, I would have a retirement fund top-up of around £625,000.

And the crazy part here is that because my brother’s only 19 years old, he could do this over the next 41 years, and rather than having £625K it would look a lot closer to £1.8 million for him. And that, my friends, is the power of compounding.

How can you do this too?

At this point you might be thinking,
why are you sharing this information if it’s such a recipe for success?

Well, there are two reasons for this:

1. There is plenty of business out there. Like I said, I’m not looking to take every single real estate agent in the UK or in the world.

2. Being brutally honest, most people will read this and won’t take action. That’s just how the world works, and that’s why everybody isn’t a millionaire.

But I do totally understand that this side hustle isn’t going to be for everyone. So if they don’t take action because of that, that’s fair enough, they might have something else in the pipeline.

Ultimately there are so many businesses out there that are looking for content, especially for their social media. You could replicate this exact model when it comes to car sales pitches, yacht brokers, the list is really endless.

The key is to provide someone or a business with value because of AI, and they don’t even need to know that it’s AI doing the job behind the scenes. They just want to feel the benefit of a valuable service at a good price.

If you have any questions or want any help getting started, feel free to drop a comment down below and I’ll be more than happy to help out where I can!

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Even if you’re reading this and haven’t invested a penny yet, now is the perfect time to read because we are going to make sure you do exactly what I didn’t and avoid that mistake.

Entering Crypto & Navigating Risk in Your 20s

I started investing when I was 22 years old. The reason I started was because I finally saw the light of day to stop gambling. It got so bad at one point that I was sat in the office on a Tuesday morning looking at what bets I could place. We’re talking about the Korean divisions, the Chinese divisions, just any football games that were going on. One day I realised it couldn’t carry on like this, I needed to make a change, and that’s when I looked into the stock market.

Want to watch the video format of this?
Click here and head to YouTube

However, I ended up stumbling across crypto and some of you will think I basically swapped gambling for crypto and it’s pretty much the same thing, but here’s why it wasn’t. Back in 2018 when I got started, it wasn’t about memecoins and big hype plays to get rich quick. In fact, a lot of people in the space at that time really cared about the technology and what Bitcoin was all about. We would call Bitcoin the future of finance and read the Bitcoin white paper to understand everything (although most of that extremely long white paper went straight over my head and I had no idea what it was about).

Was it still risky investing in crypto? Absolutely. But I believe taking risk in your 20s is the best time to do it for most people before they have other responsibilities like a mortgage, paying rent, children, or other dependencies.

Surprisingly to some people, investing in crypto wasn’t the mistake here. I actually did fairly well. When it came to 2021 and the bull market, and I managed to cash out a pretty decent amount.

The Mistake: The Cost of Leaving Cash Idle

So when I cashed out, I paid my taxes (unfortunately) and had a decent lump of cash sat in my bank account. I thought I was winning but here comes the mistake. From cashing out back in 2021 to the current day, I could have maxed out my stocks and shares allowance each year for the last five years. During that time, the average return of the S&P 500 has been 13.7% each year, despite having a pretty red year during 2022.

When we run the numbers, if I had invested £20,000 a year over the last five years at that 13.7% return, I would have built up a stock market portfolio of around £131,000. That’s over a £30,000 gain in just 5 years. That doesn’t sound like a bad return to me.

Instead, I left that money sat in my bank account earning 4% a year (if I’m being generous), which basically gave me a gain of £8,000. This means I’m technically £23,000 or $30,000 worse off over the last 5 years just from that one simple mistake. And it’s not even just about the money I’ve missed out on so far, it’s about having more time in the market. That money would have been only going to compound higher and higher over the coming years.

My Lessons Learned & Current Portfolio

I want to clarify that at 30 years old, I’m not panicking about this. It’s not the end of the world and I still have plenty of time to put this right. But the whole point of this article is the biggest mistake I made in my 20’s. If I would have started my stocks and shares ISA at 25, I would have been in a much better position right now.

To be honest, at that point of my life, I think I was quite naive in my little crypto bubble. I didn’t really consider diversifying or anything else outside of crypto back then, and that is a big lesson I’ve learned from this whole process over these eight years of investing.

Technically speaking, I could be sat on a six-figure stock market portfolio right now, but because I started late and only jumped in earlier this year, my stocks and shares ISA is currently sat at £41,961. I have managed to max out last year’s allowance and now this year’s, but even so, it could have been way better. The worst bit is I did actually have some stock market exposure just sat in a general account which I will now have to pay tax on, which feels absolutely ridiculous and again, naive to say the least!

The 70/30 Or 80/20 Rule

What I’ve learned from this is that diversifying is key. Being all in on crypto was fine in my 20s; if I made a mistake and went to zero, it would have been okay because I had time on my side to get back on track. But things look very different for me now. I’m 30 years old, I have a family, I have a son, and I need to make sure I’m a lot more sensible.

I know my investment journey has been a little unusual, but if there’s anybody watching this in their 20s, this is what I’d say:

Use the 70/30 or the 80/20 rule.

What do I mean by this?

• Be sensible with around 70 to 80% of your capital allocation. I basically mean index funds (S&P500).

• With the remaining 20 to 30%, you can take a little more risk.

That 70 to 80% is your safe bet, your insurance play, and something that builds the foundations for your future wealth. On top of that, putting it into a stocks and shares ISA is going to ensure that when you one day take that money out and cash in, you pay zero in taxes, which is completely legal by the way!

If you’re sat watching this thinking “But I don’t have any capital to invest,” I recently did a video where I talked about investing £20 per month, which can easily be found if people make some small changes to their monthly spending habits. £20 a month isn’t going to make you a millionaire overnight, but it is going to put solid foundations in place so you start to understand the habits of investing. If you want to check out the video for this, I’ll leave the link right here!

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Meet the 42-year-old who has £0 invested

Mark has never invested a penny and he’s running out of time if he wants to reach his goal of retiring at 60. The problem is his monthly car payments alone are costing him over £350,000 in the long run. And if he carries on the way that he’s going, he is not going to have the retired life that he hoped for. However, with the right plan in place, Mark could have an investment portfolio of £750,000 to contribute towards his retirement, but only if he makes these changes right now.

Mark’s a 42-year-old working as a mid-level manager and he’s earning £52,000 a year. He is married and his wife is bringing in £14,500 working part-time. Between the two of them, they’ve got a pretty decent take-home which we’re going to see very shortly on the bank statement. The pair of them are homeowners with two children and they both contribute to a pretty standard workplace pension, also with £5,800 in a savings account.

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Before we run the numbers to figure out how Mark is going to reach his goal we need to check out the bank statement and see what’s going on. This part is absolutely crucial because we need to see exactly where the money is currently going and what changes we can make so that Mark can start investing.

Mark’s Bank Statement (May 2026)

We’ve got Mark’s monthly statement here and as you can see at the top, his balance for the month is +£215, and it will become clear at the end of the statement too why he has this exact amount.

The first line is the salary. This is the joint take-home of the pair of them, of course, with his wife working part-time as well. This comes to £4,430 for the month. Now I think this is a pretty decent take-home to be working with here. So let’s see exactly where the money is going.

Essential spend

We have the mortgage going out, which is £1,260 each month, which isn’t a bad size mortgage given the take-home. It works out around 28% of that take-home each month. And given the UK’s average is around 32 to 40% going towards rent or mortgage, this is below average, which is a great starting point.

UTILITY BILLS - £520
GROCERIES - £580
LIFE INSURANCE - £45
SCHOOL MEALS - £95
CAR (X2) RUNNING COSTS - £340

These costs so far total up to £2,840, which is already 64% of that take-home. But collectively, these are what I see as the essential spends. So I don’t think there’s really any problem there, and I don’t think we need to cut anything down in this category.

Allow it spend

Next we have the kids’ activities at £110 a month, followed by clothing at £80. We’ve got subscriptions at £55 which isn’t too bad, and then we’ve got the present funds. We’re talking about money being put aside each month for Christmas presents, for birthday presents and I think this is a pretty sensible thing to be doing. And then we have the weekly takeouts totalling up to £150.

These items that we’ve just discussed go into the next category which for me is the allow it category. Basically, I see these things as not quite essential to live, but not something that we should be penalising people on too heavily. Now some people may argue that the weekly takeout should be in the next category, which is the red category, but I feel like that is a little bit harsh in this situation.

Mark told me that this weekly takeout is a family ritual where the four of them get together and have that takeout every Friday night. Talking from my own experience of being a teenager once, I know that this isn’t going to last forever. So I do believe that they should be taking full advantage of spending this time with their children whilst they still want to (brutally honest lol). So yeah, that one’s definitely up for debate. But this whole category for me comes to around £495, which is a relatively small amount given that it’s just 11% of that take-home.

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Come on mate spend

So far we have seen ~75% of that income disappear and we haven’t got to the red category yet, which is the come on mate category. The reason we call it this is because come on mate, do you really need to be spending your money on that?

PUB (FOOD AND DRINKS) - £120
GAMBLING - £60
UNUSED SUBSCRIPTIONS - £30
CONVENIENCE STORE - £60

We’ve then got a big, big spend in the red category, a big game-changer for what could be Mark’s future retirement, and as we mentioned earlier, the car finance payments. Those two cars, the SUV and the hatchback, are coming together at £610 each month, which as we mentioned earlier is a £350,000 lost opportunity for his future retirement.

So the red category, the come on mate spending, comes to a total of £880 for the month, which is roughly around 20% of that take-home. Total outflow for the month comes to £4,215. Now as we mentioned at the beginning, the balance for the account is £215, which is great. We’ve not spent more than we’re earning, which is always a good start. But for me, I do think that this is a healthy amount because they still need to put money into savings, they still need to fund those family vacations or whatever else it may be.

What could he be worth at 60, if investing?

Now it’s time to run the numbers. If I’m being completely brutal, time is not on Mark’s side. If he wants to retire in 18 years’ time, then he’s got to make some drastic changes and some changes that he might not really be too comfortable with. If Mark was younger and he had 30 or 40 years to get this retirement fund in place, then this would look very, very different. But he doesn’t. So this is what I would do.

The first thing that I would do, and the biggest impact on this list, is cutting off the car finance. This is a huge decision to make, but the way I see it is if they used the savings that they have, the £5,800, and they went and bought a second-hand car or two, if they really need two cars, that is going to free up so much money to be investing every month. Of course if they are older cars, they may run into some problems. They may need some more maintenance doing, but I guarantee that it’s not going to total up to more than £600 every single month.

I mean if they really don’t want to do this, then maybe they just cut off one of the car finance plans, and that is an option but it’s not going to get them to the exact same goal that we’re going to see now.

I’d also cut out the gambling. It’s only £60, but that’s going to be a decent contribution to the amount being invested. Once people switch from gambling to investing, they are still going to get that dopamine hit when they see that account continuing to increase every single month.

I’ve cancelled the unused subscriptions because that’s just £30 for nothing basically. And I think with a little bit of forward thinking, we could probably cut down the convenience store spending by around 50%. I know sometimes you want to treat yourself or forget something when you order that weekly food shop, but I think cutting it down from £60 to £30 is achievable.

If these changes were made, that would free up around £730 each month. If Mark was to take that £730 and put it into an S&P index fund (that is historically returning around 10% a year) and let it compound over the next 18 years, taking Mark to his goal of 60 years old, he’s going to have a tax-free (because of the Stocks & Shares ISA) retirement fund of around £420,000. On top of that he’s going to have his pension as well, so it starts to look a pretty healthy amount.

What if he retired at 65 instead?

An extra 400 grand for that retirement is going to go a long way, but I just want to show you something here because it really does illustrate the power of compounding. If we were to let that roll over for another five years, taking Mark to 65 with the exact same amount over 23 years rather than 18 is going to be £735,000 roughly. So for the sake of five extra years, Mark’s going to come away with an extra ~£300,000.

The earlier you can start to let this money compound, the bigger it is going to grow. And I think a lot of the time people really don’t expect the growth to be that big, they don’t expect the numbers to escalate that quickly.

I understand if you’re watching this thinking, I don’t have £710 to invest every month. Most people don’t, especially those who are younger. But if you are younger, let this sink in: if you want to reach a similar amount and you’ve got 35 years to play with, you only need to be investing £220 each month. You need to be investing less than a third of what Mark needs to invest because you have time on your side.

Mark’s roadmap

Let’s put a roadmap in place for Mark to follow so he can reach his retirement goal. Now the first step is pretty straightforward. What he needs to do is cut back on his spend and he needs to ditch the car payment plans. They need to go, because they are going to make such a difference on what he can afford to invest every month. And step number two, the final step, is to then start investing. Open that Stocks & Shares ISA and get the money flowing in.

To be honest, it really is that simple. He doesn’t need to clear any credit cards, he’s got no other financial issues going on, so this is just what he needs to focus on. And a lot of the time, it’s never a complex roadmap. It isn’t something that’s actually difficult, it’s just a lot of people quite frankly don’t want to do it. Ultimately, when it comes down to it, they are just not willing to make the sacrifices required to get those financial goals met.

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Meet the 18-year-old saving £400 per month

Most 18-year-olds don’t have £400 to their name, let alone putting £400 into savings every single month. Alfie is absolutely smashing the savings game, but there is a huge problem that’s preventing him from getting rich. There is a massive trap in the UK right now that hits the most disciplined savers the hardest.

You see, we are taught from a young age to put our money into a traditional savings account, and Alfie is doing exactly that. He’s 18, he lives at home with his parents, and he works a part-time job in retail, but he doesn’t waste his cash. When he gets paid, he actually puts 50% into savings. His goal is to reach a £100,000 portfolio by 25, and although this is ambitious, it is achievable if done the right way. But at the moment, the way Alfie is doing things, he won’t even get halfway there.

And this isn’t just a problem for Alfie; it could be a huge issue for you as well. Today, you’re going to see how this teenager is out-saving most adults, yet his lack of financial education is actually costing him millions in the long run. However, Alfie still has plenty of time to put this right, and it starts now. I’m going to show you exactly how we’re going to do this, and we’re going to run the numbers to show the evidence.

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So to paint the picture, here we have an 18-year-old working part-time in retail bringing in around £810 per month. Not a bad little part-time wage considering he is still living with his parents and he’s only paying £50 in rent. He has absolutely no debt, which is great, and he has £3,700 in savings already. As we mentioned, his goal is to reach £100,000 by 25, but how is he really going to get there?

How much is he getting from saving rather than investing?

Before we break this lad’s bank statement down, we need to quickly run some numbers to show what is currently going on. We know that the interest rates are always moving, but currently at the time of recording, we’re looking at roughly around a 4% return on a bonus saver account. So what have we got to work with here? Well, as we mentioned, he’s got £3,700 in savings already. On top of that, he’s got £400 per month going into savings, which as we mentioned, is half of his monthly wage.

To give us a general idea, that 4% return over the next 7 years, taking Alfie to 25 years old, is roughly going to end up at around £43,000. Now don’t get me wrong here, that is absolutely brilliant for a 25-year-old. You can clearly see that this guy has the right mindset when it comes to money. The problem being that he’s not even halfway to that £100,000 target, so we need to look at some different options to get him closer to that number.

Alfie’s bank statement (May 2026)

Now it’s time to run through the bank statement, and as you would expect for the average 18-year-old living at home with his parents, there isn’t an awful lot going on here, so it really won’t take long.

His balance is -£5 for the month, which is interesting because he seems to be doing pretty well, so we’ll see exactly what is going on there and why this is the case towards the end of the statement. But as we break it down, the top line shows that salary going in every month for around £810. Then we’ve got his rent coming out for £50 a month, and I can imagine this is completely his parents’ decision, and when they see their son putting away £400 a month, I’m pretty sure they’re happy to keep that rent fairly low to give the lad an opportunity to thrive.

But despite the low rent, he does actually pay for his own car insurance and his car fuel and it is coming in at £175 a month for the insurance and £100 a month for the fuel. His most recent statement give us the idea that he’s spending around £50 a month on golf, which for me is absolutely fine because he’s still a young lad, he’s still going to have hobbies, he still needs to enjoy himself. We then have around £40 a month on fast food, we’re looking at around £10 a week, it’s basically a McDonald’s or a KFC every week. Like we just said, he’s a young lad, let him have a bit of fun, let him eat a bit of junk food, there’s no problem there.

And then finally, we have around 50%, that £400 going into savings every single month. Total outflow for the month is £815, which means he spent £5 more than what is coming in, but based on 50% give or take going into savings, I think we can let that one slide. This is a little bit different to the usual bank statement breakdowns because usually we’re trying to find loose money, money that is being wasted so that people can start investing, but this isn’t the case here. We’ve got an 18-year-old living at home with his parents who seems very, very sensible with his money.

I mean, the average person is usually looking to put away 10, 15, maybe 20% of their money into savings or investments, whereas Alfie, of course, is living at home with his parents, which gives him a better opportunity to put more away, and he’s taking full advantage of that. So I don’t need to try and cut down Alfie’s spending here; what he is saving is absolutely brilliant, we can keep working with that number, absolutely no problem.

Would you be stricter with his golf and junk food spend?

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Of course, we do know that Alfie’s situation is going to change as he gets older. He may change job, he may go full-time, he may also move out of his mum and dad’s house, but the purpose here is to really just paint the picture of where Alfie could end up if he carries on these good habits. I mean, the lad’s not even spending £100 a month on his food and his golf; the rest of it is going into savings, going towards his car, or paying rent, so there isn’t an awful lot that can be really changed. And considering we’ve got this decent amount to work with, it’s now time to crunch some numbers and figure out what we can be doing better.

What could he be worth if he was investing?

We’re going to pull out the compound calculator, and we’re just going to do a straight swap here. We’re going to move that £400 per month from that savings account into a basic index fund of the S&P 500. The average return is approximately 10% a year, not adjusted for inflation, so if we was to compare this to the numbers we ran earlier and run it over a seven-year time frame taking Alfie to 25 years old, we’re looking at around just under £55,000 tax-free, of course, because he would be able to utilise a stocks and shares ISA.

This still is not the £100K target that Alfie is looking for, but we’re making progress. We’re now at least over the halfway mark. The truth of the matter here is that if Alfie does want to reach that target, he needs to be investing more like £800 rather than £400 to get there by the age of 25. As it stands right now, this is completely unrealistic because it is all of that monthly wage, it’s just not going to happen. So we need to put a new plan in place here, something for Alfie to follow to reach this target, and I’ve got a few ideas of how he can do it.

Why £100k? Why by 25? Why do we need to have these fixed parameters? Don’t get me wrong, I do think it is great to have goals, it definitely motivates a lot of people, but when they are so fixated, they can start to cause a lot of stress, they can contribute to bad decisions being made, and that’s the last thing that we want here.

Just to put this into perspective, if Alfie was to continue investing this £400 a month but he changed the deadline from 25 to 30, he’d be much closer to £118,000, which of course clears that £100k target. And six figures by 30 is still a great achievement. It may feel like a lifetime away right now, but that really doesn’t matter when you are saving for your future. And if we was to zoom out even more, look at the bigger, bigger picture (we’re talking about Alfie at 60 years old) the numbers get absolutely crazy.

That £400 a month, nothing more, nothing less, just consistently on line with where he is right now, by the age of 60 is going to be around the £3 million mark. We know he’s not going to be able to buy what he can buy today with three million pound, but I can guarantee you that it is still going to be a very healthy amount towards that retirement.

Alfie’s roadmap

So when it comes to the actual roadmap that I would follow if I was Alfie, the first step for me would be to start investing now. He’s already got the right money mindset, he’s already putting that money away every single month, but I would simply stop putting it into a savings account and start putting it into a stocks and shares ISA. And I think a lot of people underestimate how much of a huge W it is to already have that mindset at 18 years old. That is one of the biggest steps that anybody can make.

Step number two is to increase the income. This might not be completely possible right now at his age, but it is something that he should be looking at in the future. The alternative to increasing the income to invest more would be to be taking more risk such as individual stock picking or diversifying into other markets, but I don’t really think that’s necessary here based on the fact that he’s already putting away so much. I think if he was to increase that income, he would naturally want to be saving or investing more because we can clearly see that this is the way that the lad is wired up.

And the beauty of it here is that at his age, he’s got options. He can work overtime, he can get a second job, he can start a side hustle, he can decide whatever works for him, and if he gets it wrong at first, he can try again. Time is on his side.

And then the third and final step following on from that is to simply start investing more. Like we just said, we don’t want to take more risk, the index funds are proven to historically return that 10% a year, we don’t need to get greedy, we just need to let compounding do its thing.

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