The experience of opening my banking app hasn’t always been positive.

What usually followed was surprise, dread and thinking that someone had stolen my card (they hadn’t, it was me, but to be honest maybe less would have been spent on that card if someone had stolen it).

This meant that later down the line in life I used to think the whole point of building wealth was to open my banking app, see a big(ish) number, and feel RUSH of joy. That the big(ish) number on the screen would not only take away the bad feelings but replace them with feelings of exuberance.

Turns out that numbers on a screen have never once given me that. Although I do have to admit it has given me other feelings - feelings of security and of empowerment, but what it doesn’t give me is a feeling of joy, excitement, connection... those true feelings of what it means to be an actual human being.

Here’s the scene I want you to picture, because I’d put money on the fact you’ve been in it too. You’re past the uni days of living in your overdraft and feel a little more flush in life. You open your banking app. The number’s decent (better than it used to be), you’ve been good, you’ve set up an ISA and you’ve got a bit sitting in savings. You should, by every metric we’re handed, feel something. Triumphant? Excited? Alive? And you feel... fine. Maybe a flicker of relief and security that you’re not the disaster you were at twenty-three. But excitement? Joy? That specific, giddy feeling of being alive? Nowhere to be found.

That’s because for the majority of us, especially women, those feelings don’t exist within numbers.

Those feelings are fostered, created, and triggered outside of our finances - outside of our numbers. That’s the way I want you to think about living a rich life: a rich life is both inside and outside your finances - it can be seen in the banking app and the numbers on a screen but it is felt and experienced in the actual world.

I used to think that it was a personal failing. Like I hadn’t saved enough yet to unlock the good feeling, and the number just needed to get BIGGER. So I got better at saving and investing; the numbers got bigger. And I felt exactly the same amount of nothing.

Because joy lives somewhere else entirely, and if you spend your whole life optimising for the number and nowhere else, you end up rich on a screen and starving yourself of a life you could enjoy. That’s the bit personal finance culture conveniently skips. We talk about saving and investing until we’re blue in the face and we barely say a word about spending well, about what it actually means to enjoy the money you’ve worked so hard to hold for, because a life spent white-knuckling every pound in the name of “financial discipline” isn’t a Rich Life. It’s a deprived one with numbers on a screen.

In this series of letters, I’m going to give my actual take on how to foster Rich Life Habits, to build wealth both inside and outside your finances - how you can plan your wealth but also enjoy your money

It will consist of 3 habits:

• one to build a wealth inside your finances

• one to build wealth outside your finances

• one small, doable action.

Habit 1: Align with your spending pillars (to build wealth outside your finances)

Spending pillars - what are they?

They are the specific things YOU value. Those things that don’t feel guilty for spending money on (even if someone else judges you for them) because they’re in alignment with who you are and your values. They are very specific to you as an individual. Of course, feel free to take inspiration from mine, but ultimately they will be something that you hold deep within yourself and your core values. (In the next letter I will help you workout yours).

Mine are Connection, Ease, Beauty and Expansion (yes, I know, it sounds like something off a wellness retreat brochure, bear with me).

Connection means I will never, not once, resent paying for a meal, drink, event (even a holiday) with a friend, family member, acquaintance (anyone I care about really), because that is where my JOY lives - it is in being connected to people.

My mum is a foodie. So for her 58th birthday, she decided that she wanted to go to Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck. For those that aren’t indoctrinated into the foodie world, Blumenthal’s restaurant has three Michelin stars. It’s a tasting menu with multiple courses that is incredibly experiential. It’s not just about the food. It’s about the theatre and drama (for example, they come to the table to create bacon and egg flavoured ice cream over dry ice in front of you…)

But of course, these things don’t come cheap. Overall, for that one meal, I think it cost £600 PER PESON. For obvious reasons, those that wanted to come or had to pay for themselves.

Now, do I think spending £600 on one meal is good value? In terms of monetary value, probably not. But in terms of experiential value, yes yes yes.

I still think about that day. Me and my mum still discuss that day. Photos of the meal pop up on my phone. I talk about it, share my experience with others and it’s a beautiful memory sat in my memory bank of a lovely occasion with my mum that I will never regret. She was also really grateful and thankful that I wanted to join her. Yes, it cost £600, and yes, I had to save up for it and budget for it months in advance, but the memory pays dividends.

You might be sat here thinking, “Oh my god, what a colossal waste of money.” And that is completely valid because your spending pillars and values won’t be the same as mine. Neither are right or wrong - they’re just personal preference. And that’s the beautiful thing about spending pillars: you get to choose what they are for you (it’s your money, so spend it how you bloody want!)

On the other hand, I’m frugal with Ubers. I would rather get the bus or the tube, than spend £20 driving 30 minutes across London. For me, that doesn’t have value. But for you, it might. For you, that level of convenience might be something that you are willing to spend a lot of money on. That is why these pillars are so individual to each and every person.

In the next Rich Life Habits letter, I’m going to do a full deep dive on how you work out your own individual spending pillars, but for now just start to notice what you spend on with a flicker of guilt (that’s your first clue).

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Habit 2: Move money OUT of your current account (to build wealth inside your finances)

This one’s about inflation, and I want to explain it properly because “inflation is eating your savings” gets thrown around so much it’s stopped meaning anything to most people.

So. Say a your weekly shop, food, essentials, the lot, costs £100 today (I know it probably doesn’t. It probably cost more than that, but to keep the numbers simple, bear with me here).

Because of inflation, that same basket will likely cost around £105 next year. If your £100 is just sitting in your current account earning nothing, it still says £100 in a year’s time, but it you can no longer buy your weekly shop because your weekly shop now costs more.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, it’s only £5. I’ll make that up somewhere else. That doesn’t really matter.” This is a small example. What we’re talking about is your savings or larger pots of money on a bigger scale.

What’s happened is you’ve lost buying power, quietly, without a single notification telling you it’s happening. That’s what makes inflation such a silent killer of wealth, it doesn’t announce itself, it just erodes you while you’re not looking.

(Ironically, this can actually have a good impact on debt because essentially you’re inflating away your debt, but that’s a conversation for another letter.)

The fix isn’t complicated (and it can be automated) - MOVE YOUR MONEY SOMEWHERE ELSE - where it can at least try to keep pace with inflation; a high-interest savings account, a stocks and shares ISA, premium bonds, whatever suits your risk appetite and your timeline (I’m not going to tell you which one, because that depends entirely on you, but I will go into the positives and negatives of each over the series of these letters).

What I will tell you is that leaving a meaningful chunk of money in a current account earning nothing is one of the laziest ways to let your own wealth quietly disappear.

Habit three: Don’t check your investments too often (small, specific, doable action)

I know, I know. Counterintuitive - especially from someone telling you to actually pay attention to your money, but this one is a bit more nuanced.

I invest for the long term, mostly in ETFs (exchange-traded funds, basically a basket of lots of different companies bundled into one investment, rather than betting everything on a single stock) and I check my portfolio roughly once a fortnight. I am not perfect at this, if the news is full of market chaos I’ll have a peek, I’m still human, but my general approach is consistency over vigilance.

Switching in and out of investments costs money because there are fees associated with doing that. If you look at your portfolio and see it’s down or up and therefore want to switch out of an ETF or a stock, then that’s costing you a little bit of money. It might not seem like a lot, but studies have shown that over the long term it has a real impact on your finances.

The cool part is, because of this, women seem to have an edge over men.

Barber and Odean’s now-famous study on gender and investing, “Boys Will Be Boys,” found that men trade 45% more than women on average, and that overtrading costs men 2.65 percentage points a year in returns compared to 1.72 points for women.

Fidelity’s 2021 Women and Investing Study backed this up looking at 5.2 million accounts over a decade, women investors outperformed men by 0.4 percentage points a year, largely down to a buy-and-hold approach instead of constant tinkering (which you’re much more likely to do if you check in on your investments every day). Women, on the whole, check less and fiddle less, and it makes them better long-term investors for it!!

The trick to actually doing this yourself isn’t willpower (because willpower runs out the second the market has a wobbly week - speaking from experience here). It’s actually, much simpler: it’s to just not check it daily!

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None of these three habits are about restriction, and none of them are about staring at a spreadsheet until your eyes bleed either (personally, I’m not the biggest fan of spreadsheets - although I do think they have a time and a place). They’re about building a relationship with your money that actually matches who you are, so you feel rich in your real life, not just in the version of it that lives inside your banking app.

I want that for you. I want you looking at your bank balance and feeling proud AND booking the dinner that means something to you without a flicker of guilt, because you’ve worked out that both things can be true at once.

If you want Rich Life Habits, Letter #2 landing in your inbox, hit subscribe - it’s free and I’ll see you in the next one.

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She had a few thousand pounds saved, a good salary, and what she thought was a solid emergency fund.

But still, none of it was enough to leave.

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The shape of Stacy’s story is unfortunately universal, and it’s the reason I get genuinely frustrated every time I see the same recycled advice: save 3 to 6 months of living expenses and you’ll be fine. This doesn’t account for the intricacies and nuances of people’s lives. It also doesn’t account for being a woman.

Stacy was in her late twenties, earning above average, when she got into a relationship that had red flags from the start.

I could talk for days about the reasons why accomplished and impressive women end up in these situations: a lack of self-esteem and self-worth or a traumatic event in their past - but that doesn’t change the reality.

As these situations always do, it started as exciting. Stacy felt the rush of adrenaline when he turned up to the first date and actually was above 6ft as he’d said on his Hinge profile. He was charming; asking the waiter how his day had been, tipping generously, and waiting until Stacy got into an Uber to wave her off at the end of the date.

We’ve all had that feeling, the butterflies in your stomach, that you can feel fluttering, as you realise your feelings are about to run away from you and actually you’re powerless to stop it, but somehow it feels exciting and, almost freeing?

Stacy and he had been together eight months when Stacy saw the two lines on a pregnancy test. Things had moved quickly; they’d moved in at month six to his place, but that was pretty normal - he was a bit older, 35, and so it made sense to take this relationship seriously and take it to the next level. Although this wasn’t planned they were both overjoyed. But Stacy had that niggling feeling in the back of her mind and that drop in the pit of her stomach.

Niggles rarely stay niggles.

Of course nobody is perfect. He’s not perfect, he has flaws. A hot temper for one (but wasn’t that just because he felt so strongly about her?), controlling behaviour (again, surely just because he cared so deeply and wanted to keep her safe?) and a dislike for her social circle (just because he didn’t think they were ‘good enough’ for her, and would lead her astray?). But the relationship was wrapped in enough warmth and grand gestures - like an all-paid-for extravagant holiday to the Maldives - that in the round, it didn’t seem so bad.

Stacy would have considered herself ‘average-ly’ financially literate. She had a modest pension, had opened the stocks and shares ISA, and had even calculated what she thought would be a good emergency fund. The standard advice is three to six months of living expenses; so Stacy had totted up that she needed roughly £1.5K a month to live off just the absolute bare necessities. She times that by three and so had stashed a little pot of £4.5K in a high yield savings account, should anything happen. Simple right?

But the 3–6 months rule is lazy, and I mean that specifically: it’s a number designed for someone whose life doesn’t change. It doesn’t account for being women. It assumes your expenses today are roughly your expenses tomorrow, despite many in their 20s and 30s standing on the precipice of starting a family (a fundamentally world-alternating journey that has huge impacts on finances).

It doesn’t ask whether your income might drop to statutory maternity pay while your hours are cut. And it definitely doesn’t ask whether you might, at some point, need enough money to leave a relationship you don’t think is right.

As her pregnancy progressed, so did his controlling behaviour. Stacy’s predicament looked like this: maternity leave; her company offering enhanced pay for 3 months, but then only statutory maternity pay (which is currently £194.32 per week if you’re wondering), reduced hours, exorbitant childcare costs, and a newborn, all while the relationship kept getting tougher. Stacy had also given up the lease on her flat to move in with him.

What once were niggles, were now loud alarms, telling her to leave and this isn’t where she should be.

And the £4.5k Stacy has wisely stashed away? It does not solve this predicament; it doesn’t even come close.

What’s rarely talked about is that women need a bigger financial buffer than men, structurally, because of what pregnancy and early motherhood do to earning potential and our bodies. It’s another unfair reality of bearing children - it’s no one’s fault; it’s just the way things are.

Hindsight is of course 20/20, and granted that the use of AI to workout more accurate emergency fund number has only recently been available, but be that as it may, if I’d had the opportunity to speak to Stacy before, here’s how I’d tell her to workout her emergency fund, and the AI prompt I’d have given her.

(If anyone feels they are in this sort of situation and can’t afford to subscribe, message me directly and I’ll send you the AI prompt for free).

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So one of my best friends absolutely loves his job. Yes, it annoys him in all the menial ways that jobs sometimes do, but generally he finds it fascinating and it gives him a sense of purpose. When I ask him when he would want to retire, his response is: “I don’t think I’d want to, I think I’d get bored”. He eventually gave me the age of 70 as a potential.

Not everyone finds that level of satisfaction in their paid job. Lots of us are multi-passionate; we have side quests and hustles, but don’t necessarily want to stay at the main 9-5 which pays the bills.

I know this because my DMs are flooded with followers asking me about CoastFI, what is it, how do they reach it, how can they get to it faster… so I’ll tell you.

For those not yet in the know, Coast FI is an off-shoot of the ‘FIRE’ movement (Financial Independence Retire Early). Coast FI is less extreme and (in my view) a more enjoyable life path.

FIRE is about spending as minimally as possible, earning as much as you can, investing the difference for decades until one day you can finally say ‘DONE’, and never have to work again (although you’ll probably also have to live a pretty minimal lifestyle in your new so-called retirement, because compound growth hasn’t been afforded it’s key ingredient - TIME.)

I’ll be honest with you, to me this doesn’t sound like that much fun. Surely there’s a middle ground, where you have money to enjoy your life along the way, but also still prioritise retirement and having some time for your side quests and hustles?

Enter Coast FI.

Coast FI is where you have invested enough, that even if you stopped investing, your investments would keep compounding until retirement age (lets say 65), at which point you can retire fully and live off those investments.

Meaning that if you reached Coast FI at 45, and wanted to retire at 65, you would be able to indulge those side quests and hustles form 45 onwards, as long as they paid you enough to live the everyday (and not any further investing in retirement).

Everyone’s Coast FI number is different - I’ve created an AI prompt so you can work yours out. You can tweak the numbers so it fits with your life goals. For me, it’s one of the most motivating things I’ve ever done.

Here’s the Coast FI AI prompt…

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Ciara: “I’m just a girl” is a phrase I used to use. It was a fun, offhand comment. Often a bit of a cop out. I now feel a bit embarrassed that I did.

On the surface this might not seem like a big deal, but it infantilises women and falls squarely into the trope of women being less capable, especially with money.

We are capable women… yet I would still sometimes defer to off hand comments when I found something hard.

Women often shrug off this tricky topic and coyly make statements about finances being too hard (or boring) for them to understand, or that their boyfriends / husbands will do it for them.

And I sympathise, because this used to be me too.

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—

Sophie: “I don’t care about money” is a phrase I used to use.

Five years ago I was on a date and I proudly admitted this hoping I wouldn’t seem tacky or materialistic. For context, this guy was a self made millionaire, and I didn’t want him to think I was going to get in the way of his success.

You might not be surprised to hear that it didn’t work out between us. However we later became friends, and he told me my attitude towards money was a giant red flag.

He said “relationships are like being in a small business” (classic entrepreneur). And at the time I didn’t realise why me abdicating from finances was a turn off? Especially when he appeared to be so good at it? I thought - why would two of us need to be.

I assumed men liked being in control of the money. We are taught that not caring about money, or opting out is the cute thing to do. And yet your partner is the biggest financial decision you’ll ever make.

I know that one of the main reasons I opted out of money conversations for such a long time was because I self-identified as a ‘creative’.

I worked as an Executive Producer for some of the world’s biggest entertainment shows, and for so long it felt uncool to pay attention to what was coming in (or more often going out) of my accounts.

Before starting The Curve (a financial podcast educating women on all things money + investing) I had great jobs, was well respected, and not paid terribly - but I was a financial disaster.

And I was kind of proud of that. I flaunted it, thinking it made me more desirable. More palpable.

—

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Ciara: Similarly, a few years ago I thought it was cooler to do “girl math” on how I could convince myself to buy an overpriced jacket, than to open a Stocks & Shares ISA.

Ok, maybe that doesn’t sound cool - but do you know what is cool? Having true agency over your life.

Being able to call the shots when you want to, being able to take the risks because you have a financial buffer to afford it, being able to help out a family member in a time of need. Those things are cool - really cool.

And to not have that, or to outsource it, is to outsource your agency. In relationships, similar to what Soph talked about, women are much more likely to defer to their male partners when it comes to finances (58% in fact, as found in a study by UBS Global Wealth Management).

But why?

Financial agency is something that most, if not all, of my female ancestors never had. Women in the UK couldn’t open a bank account, take out a credit card or get a mortgage without their husband’s or father’s signature until 1975 (even if they earned more than them)…

1975 - that’s 51 years ago.

My mum was born in the 1960s, so when she was born, it was still years before women could have financial agency.

It makes “I’m just a girl” trope more understandable. We are essentially the first generation of financially agentic women. Ever.

But it was not built for us. It was not taught to us.

—

Sophie: The problem with phrases like “I don’t care about money”, or “those conversations aren’t for me” is that it can get a lot of us into sticky situations.

I had to stay in jobs I felt uncomfortable in and I never felt in control or as though I had agency over my life. I was crippled with anxiety around this thing I knew nothing about.

Learning how to get out of debt, to manage what comes into my account, and invest to give my future self options has changed the way I show up in all parts of my life. I’m able to be picky about who I date because I don’t actually need someone to support me.

The assets I have now that I’ve learnt about money, have given me confidence that I never imagined possible. I think a lot of us lean out of financial conversations because it’s scary.

It’s terrifying to learn new things, or to realise you spent 10 years of your working life essentially pouring your pay down the toilet.

On the one hand I feel so deeply frustrated at myself for not paying attention sooner, and for trying to be brave and admit that I need help, but on the other I know there is a reason so many of us feel intimidated and overwhelmed with money conversations.

They weren’t built for us - and that’s why I’m so proud to have now created The Curve, and to be able to collaborate with other amazing women like Ciara.

—---

Ciara: Being part of the conversation and helping educate people about finance for me runs deep - I’ve seen women close to me have to withstand and endure circumstances they shouldn’t have to, because they didn’t have a financial agency to leave.

Financial literacy and stability is of course important for both women and men - but for women especially; we have to spend extra effort and energy fighting for a seat at the table, having to overcome assumptions (which are often not ill-intentioned, but have undertones of misogyny) and unlearning tropes about OURSELVES that we have internalised.

Often because it’s internalised, not only do we think of ourselves as less financially savvy than our male counterparts, but then we can (unintentionally) project that on to other women.

The outcome?

Women using phrases like “I’m just a girl” about themselves and other women. It’s a stereotyping that we have ingested so much that we throw it back on ourselves. Ironic.

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Jealousy. Commonly felt but rarely acknowledged.

I’ve felt jealousy before - the painful intense type that makes you question yourself, your ability, your choices.

The most visceral example plagued me for about two years. It was of a content creator called Mia McGrath (I’m sure you’ve heard of her!). She was young, articulate and so educated on personal finance. Her TikTok and Instagram accounts were doing incredible, she was working with amazing brands and by all accounts seemed like an absolute stellar human being.

I probably had that thought multiple times a week for several years, with additional pangs of jealousy triggered when I saw her brand deal figures or cool campaigns she was doing.

I felt embarrassed, and maybe even a little ashamed of the jealousy I felt towards someone who was just trying to educate people - and was doing great job of it too.

Sitting with that feeling isn’t fun.

One of the ways people deal with jealousy is to tear down the subject of their jealousy - call them ‘cringe’, make snide comments about them to their friends, belittle or not acknowledge their achievements, or perhaps even leave a nasty and unwarranted comment on their content. Because let’s be honest, in that moment, they feel better about it. They’ve put down that person, and momentarily, feel on top, relieved perhaps.

Of course, I’m glad to say this wasn’t and isn’t the route I took. Rather, I saw a quote which said something along the lines of (and I’m paraphrasing)

“Follow your jealousy, it shows you want you want”.

And that hit. I’m jealous because I want it and I think I could do it. I’m jealous because I know I have the capability. I’m jealous because I feel passionately about financial literacy and want to help others learn by teaching what I know. And if I follow that, it shows me what I should be doing.

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And so I did…

I’ve been creating content for around 6 months and have around 90k followers across platforms, which is still a little surreal.

But I’ll tell you what, the jealousy is gone. It’s instead replaced by a sense of understanding and appreciation of the work that goes into it, and the feeling of pride that I actually did something myself about the feeling.

Starting is cringe. Cringe is painful (like I physically feel it in my body), but it’s only cringe until it works - and then it’s an income generator.

Amongst content creators it’s called climbing cringe mountain. And we all having coping tactics to do it and start (mine was blocking everyone I knew until I had 20k followers - but I actually wouldn’t recommend that because people find it anyway - and that causes hurt).

These might all seem like negative emotions - jealousy and cringe etc. - but you move through them to the other side where you actually start feeling determined and proud. I can promise you that feels much better than being stuck in jealousy-land.

Not everyone wants to be a content creator and feels pangs of jealousy seeing personal finance content, but you do experience jealousy for the things that YOU want more specifically.

We shun jealousy because we are embarrassed by it. But what if you embraced it as a barometer for what you want in your life and what you think you’re capable of?

Follow your jealousy and own it, instead of letting it own you.

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I’d heard about investing years before, but if I’m being honest I’d roll my eyes at the finance bros quoting me figures about compound interest or pensions (the deep irony, considering what I do now, is not lost on me).

I now have 85k+ followers across Instagram and TikTok where I talk about how I’m curating a richer life in, in every sense, and of course, investing is a part of that journey.

Back then, I knew investing was one of those things I knew I should pay attention to, but it seemed more fun and, even a bit cool, to shrug it off as ‘boring’. It also meant I didn’t have to face the negative feelings I had around it - feelings of inadequacy of not understanding it, feelings of confusion (what even is an ETF?). That probably will have cost me hundreds of thousands in compound growth in later life - but hey, we can’t all be perfect and ours 20s are for mistakes.

Fast forward to now, I have become one of those finance bros, trying to preach the message of investing, how incredibly impactful it can be starting young (even if starting small!) and have hundreds of thousands invested and am starting to see the compound growth do some of the lifting in my portfolio.

That’s where I want you to be. It’s the reason for me starting this Substack and my other content creation.

People misunderstand personal finance content as ‘preaching’. I’ve also had people reactive negatively, considering it as gloating. It triggers feeling of inadequacy.

I get that, I felt that too!

So, somewhat understandably, instead of engaging and trying to understand what this could do for them - they write it off as something that makes them feel bad and is therefore not something they want to listen to.

And I can’t blame them… I get it, I was that person. But if you’ve made it this far, I have a feeling you aren’t that person.

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The thing about investing (and compound growth) is you only really see the benefit (or lack thereof) later. It will be in your 40s and 50s when it will become ABUNDANTLY clear who was investing in their 20s and 30s, and who was shunning the notion of investing as ‘boring’.

Both paths are hard:

• Hard Path A: It’s hard to try and educate yourself on personal finance; something you’ve never done before, never understood and never been taught. Learning jargon and understanding K.I.D.s. It’s hard taking some risk with your hard-earned money. It’s hard being patient and trusting the process in making that money grow, rather than spending it on a bag you want, or perhaps a more fancy hotel on holiday.

• Hard Path B: It’s hard getting to your 50s and not having a solid financial cushion. It’s hard getting made redundant and panicking because you have £0 emergency fund. It’s hard having to work until later in life than you wanted to, because you can’t afford to retire.

And then on top of that, do you know what I think is harder? Being on Hard Path B and looking at those around you who took Hard Path A.

Some of them have taken up passion projects because they can fund their lifestyle from passive income. Some of them are spending lavishly on things that they love - and they can afford to with financially burdening themselves. Some of them are reducing the amount of time they work to spend more time with their children.

Both are hard and I get that, but I’m happy to be on Hard Path A - and I hope you’re joining me on it. This Substack is where I can be more in depth and more chatty about my journey of curating a richer life, I’d love for you to join and curate yours too!

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