Nischa Shah: #1 Financial Mistake People Make in Their 20s & 30s (Fix It With This Simple System)

I'm Clayton Eckard, and 2020, too.

I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

“But here's the thing, Bachelor fans hated him.”

If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract.

Agreed to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to the love trapped on the eye-hot radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We often think that to reach financial freedom, you need to earn more.

Ernie Money doesn't actually make you better with money. It's about how you manage what you make. What does the top 1% understand about money that most of us don't? The single easiest way to get rich long time is by. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.

Today I'm sitting down with Nisha Shaw, former investment banker and accountant who left the traditional path to help millions rethink money, success, and freedom. Nisha breaks down how to stop letting money and anxiety run your life. Nisha is a dear friend, and I love welcoming friends to On Purpose.

Please welcome Nisha Shaw. Nisha, it's great to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. I was so excited. I want to talk to you about this transition you went through. We know a lot of the same people. For me, going to a good university, getting a good job, was like the pinnacle.

You did that, you achieved that.

“Why would you leave behind a great job with a great salary?”

There's so much more to life than following the traditional path, where you get a job, qualify, keep going, climbing up the corporate ladder. There was a point in my life where I felt like I had to really look inwards and ask myself, "What am I actually doing?" For a good part of that, I was really enjoying the banking lifestyle.

There was a glitz and glam to it. There was the business trips, there was the status. And for a while, I convinced myself that this is what I want. This is the life I want to live. And then, as I went on, I felt like there was a massive disconnect between what I wanted to do and what I was doing.

And I felt, as I kept going, that misalignment kept getting louder and louder and louder. I had to go through quite a dark phase to understand that this isn't what I wanted. And it was that that point where I had to look inwards and ask myself the difficult questions. Like, am I living a life that I actually want or won that everyone else expects me to live?

“Am I buying things that I want to buy for myself or what I want to show other people I have?”

The question that really changed everything for me was, "Would I still be happy if I was living the same life in five years or ten years time as I am today?" The fear of that was so much greater than the fear of anything that I had to do. And I gave me the confidence to say, "No, I'm walking away. I'm walking away from this job. I'm walking away from this life.

I'm walking from this identity because there's so much more out there for me." And I had a bigger why that overtook anything that that moment had installed for me. I feel like there's probably a lot of people listening right now with thinking the exact same thing. They've got the traditional degree that they're expected to do. They've got the job. Maybe they're five years in, ten years in and they're thinking, "I'm not in the right place."

But you've got all this sunk cost bias, this idea that I spent all those years studying for that. All my friends thought this is what I was going to do. Maybe I've even got a partner, maybe I've got children. This isn't the right time to rock the boat. Like, talk to me about the bias that we have of, I've invested so much time and money into this.

Everyone in my life understands this. How could I possibly dream about doing anything different? I mean, it's the hardest thing to do, living life because whatever analysis told you to do.

But if you don't have the courage to write your own story, someone else will always write it for you.

And I think what most people think of as brave, real courage or doing something new and leaving behind what you've created is actually just having a financial cushion in place and having the safety to be able to walk away from situations you might not like or environments that you might not enjoy. But we put a lot of pressure on ourselves today that we have to do all or nothing. We've got a quit our job and follow our passion. So for someone in that situation or that position,

I would say, "A, get your financial cushion in place." Because that gives you more peace of mind and sanity than anything else that you could possibly think of. And the second thing I would say is that when I ordered them banking, there was a lot of comfort that came from having a salary which let me have a lot of tiny experiments on the side. So as my evenings, my weekends, I just spent trying and testing and doing loads and loads of

different things. And when you do it that way, you actually look at your job and think, "I'm so grateful that I've got this salary coming in that lets me do all these things on the side without thinking, I've just got to somehow figure out a way to pay my bills and it makes everything

working my day job and then doing this on the evenings and weekends. I had the time making videos.

“And I don't think I would have been as creative if I had been financially crippled.”

Now I wasn't making that much money but I was making enough to pay my bills and take care of things. And I was having to edit my videos because I couldn't afford to outsource it to someone. I was having a friend do me a favor by shooting my videos because I couldn't afford one. But the idea was I wasn't creatively staffed because I wasn't scared that every video had to make money. Yeah. And I think people put themselves into these positions where you take this big leap

and now the dream has to pay the bills. Absolutely. And now the dream doesn't feel like a dream anymore. It feels like pressure. Absolutely. It turns into a chore when you don't have that money coming in.

And so I always like to think of different things that you're doing, that served different

purposes and sometimes your job just serves the purpose of paying your financial life. And then a passion project can be the purpose of your creativity or whatever without, like you said, feeling like, "Oh, how am I going to, or going into survival mode?" Is there a good way to calculate what a financial cushion should be for someone? Typically, you'd recommend three to six months of your living expenses.

So you calculate what it costs to for your basic living expenses in a month and you times up by three

“if you're feeling a bit comfortable with the low cushion or six if you want to be a bit more safe.”

I went all the way from the nine months because I'm super super calculated but it really comes

down to what makes you feel comfortable. What makes you feel like you can walk away from the

S and be like, "I've got a good financial one way ahead of me." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What was the cost? What were the things that were sacrificed in switching away from the life you thought you'd lead? I'd say the biggest thing that I sacrificed at that moment in time was this identity that I'd built around myself. And when you don't spend time to look inwards, you find a way to have external noises define who you are and what you do. And without knowing

for the good part of nine years, which is how long my banking career was, my identity was around what I did for a living, knowing that when I walk into this other path, all of that is going to be stripped away from me. All of what I thought defined my work had to vanish. So you find a way to get that fulfillment and that validation from within you or you find something that is so much bigger than what has defined you up until that moment in time. That's such a great point because that

is the biggest thing you're giving up is what you've defined your identity to be. I didn't get to the point where it was complete like breaking point. But I did see that the larger that I was climbing was leaning up against the wrong wall. And that's when I thought, "Okay, I could either keep walking, but it's just not a situation I want to be." So in that sense, it was great that it wasn't complete breaking point, but it was very near. I really want to understand that. I want

to not audience to really understand because I do think that the majority of people are in that position. And I love this few takeaways that we've already had, which is, you don't have to quit your job. You can build something on the side. You don't have to go all or nothing. And

“it is okay. You do deserve to ask the question, "Do I want more? Do I want to be more aligned?”

Do I deserve a better life? Can I leave this behind?" Like, I think sometimes people don't feel worthy to ask that question. They feel like they don't deserve it. Talk to me about the biggest money mistakes people make in their 20s. Avoid looking at their finances. That is the number one thing that sets people back. It's very easy to do to just ignore it. And because it makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, sometimes looking at

your finances. I mean, there's a psychological bias called the ostrich effect, where we actively avoid information that makes us feel uncomfortable. In the hope that if you ignore it, it's sometimes disappears. And it's the right reason why you don't take your bank account after all we can are spending. Don't check your credit cost statement because you're scared of the damage and what I would do. But in your 20s, you are creating the habits that will either over time compound for you

or compound against you. The stakes aren't that high, so you want to be able to learn and learn the small habits early. Look at your finances, small or the small gaps that are happening. And solve them or improve them before it compounds against you. Why do people avoid looking at their bank account? Because it almost shows them sometimes what their priorities are and what their what their focus is. And that might be completely out of alignment of what their core values actually

are. And they might impulse purchase, so they might buy things that they didn't actually think about the time and then looking at it and seeing actually these are all the things that I bought. But all of the things I want to do for myself, for my future self, have taken the back seat. So I think that's the big part of that. Yeah, I even saw this study a years ago, which talked about how

purse or wallet and gave it to someone. So you actually had to count how many dollars, how many cents,

how many pounds, wherever you live, right? And you had to count. And you'd be like, oh my gosh, this is a lot of money. It's $100. It's $50, whatever it is. Then we had cards. And so now you can't see money anymore. And so it's so much easier to tap your card and put your card into a machine, then it is to actually count the dollars. And now you're just doing online transactions. So you don't have to give anything. You literally just type in a code or press buy and you click

or whatever it may be. And the next thing you know, it's already there. And so spending money has become so much more easier. And so I get why people are scared because it's like, you've gone from having to count, to having to give, to having to click. Absolutely. And now you don't even have to think about it. Yeah, you can literally buy a car from your phone out to aim in the morning.

And not speak to anyone in the process. And so it requires effort. It's friction. And so the

uncomfortable thing to do is create friction between you and a purchase. But that's the hard thing. That's it's hard to wait 48 hours before you make an impulse purchase. And then decide if you actually want that thing or not. Yeah. It's hard to say no to an Instagram ad that pops up multiple times and decide you don't want to buy that thing. This is the hard hard things to do. That more, more, this more important now than ever, like you said, because everything is so frictionless.

And would you argue that is it a well power issue? Or do you believe if we looked at our finances, we'd make better decisions automatically? I definitely think it's not combination of one of it comes down to well power and being able to say no to things at the time. The world at the moment

“is built in a way to take your money for you to spend. That's how the economy runs. So a lot of it”

is requires you to have the well power. But good way to stop that is actually looking at your finances, spending 20 minutes at the end of the month, looking through what you spent and saying, okay, do these purchases line up with what I wanted? Do they bring me happiness? Do they actually improve my life in any way shape or form? And then deciding, do you want to continue that habit in the next month and the next month? Or are you going to start making some changes?

If someone listens to this podcast and they go, okay, Nisha, I'm going to start looking at my finances for 20 minutes at the end of the month. Is that the right time to do it? What is the plan? Talk to me through a really simple 20 minute plan of what someone should look at when they're checking their finances? I would say there's probably two types of people and some one type is they absolutely do not want to look at their finances. The idea of budgeting or looking at the numbers just

makes this skin crawl. They've tried to romanticise it, they've tried to do it with a glass of wine, they've tried to do it with a gal friends and it just hasn't worked. For them, I would actually recommend taking a step back, zooming out and thinking about what's the objective of looking at your finances? Why do you want to budget or look at your finances? And the main objective is so that you save a portion every single month. I would recommend, if you fall into this packet, then back

of an app can approach. Take your take home pay, minus an amount that you want to save every single month. Start with whatever you feel comfortable with, whether it's $50 or in the States, $50 or $100 or whatever it is, that's your saving. Put that away, don't touch that. The rest

“you could spend. Important thing to do here is with that amount, as soon as your money comes in”

on payday, set up an automatic transfer. So as out of your bank account into a separate bank account that you cannot even touch. If you hate numbers, if you hate looking at your finances, if you don't want to look at your bank statement, do that and then as a month's go on, you could try and tweak that saving amount. If you are someone who's like, you know what? I want to look at my bank statements. I want to look at my numbers. I want to understand this a bit

better. Then I would recommend a less restrictive way of looking at your finances. That makes you feel like taking control is a way to say yes, rather than saying no to buying stuff. And so I recommend if you fall into the packet where you're like, okay, I want to optimize my finances. Looking at your take home pay. Once again, this is a number on your pay slip, not on your job description. And splitting that, take home pay into three buckets. These are three numbers that everyone should

know. The first would be your fundamentals. These are your must-haves in life. The things that

you need for day-to-day living, mortgage or rent, groceries, car payments. That's your first bucket. The second bucket is your fund bucket. So these are leisure, travel, manicure, pedicure, spa, massage, all of that. That falls into the fund bucket. And then the final bucket is the future you bucket. So this is anything for you tomorrow. Savings, investments, even extra debt payments. When it comes to your spending, allocate a percentage of your spending to each of those three buckets.

One that I recommend is around 65% for your fundamentals, 25% for your fund and then 10% for your future

“you. So that's what you want to look at when you look at your bank statements. The first thing is”

are you saving enough? That's the first category. And then you want to look for patterns in your other spending. What am I consistently spending on? What can I cut out? And if you're looking at your items line out of my line, line item, ask yourself a few questions. Do I need debt?

Say those three again? Do I need debt? Can I live with less of it? Or can I get the same thing for cheaper? Those are great questions. That's that perfect break between about to click and buy and actually crank some space in your mind. Because as soon as you say those three, I'm like, it makes you question whether you want to buy that thing or not. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I love your breakdown because one of my favorite quotes is from Warren Buffett where he said,

don't save what is left after spending, spend what is left after saving. I love it. And that's

“exactly what you just shared with us, which is you have to put aside your saving first. And I think”

most of us just spend and then see what we have left at the end of the month and then put it away.

And of course, that never grows up. I think one of the biggest things niches when it comes to

finances. And I know I was like this. Honestly, I used to feel like you had to wait for a big payday to make money and save money and invest money. And until you got that, it didn't really matter. Like, you're not really going to do, you're not really going to save that much and little amounts. What are they going to do anyway? What are the micro habits that actually make us rich? Because I think we think it's these big things that happen like getting a promotion,

somehow selling an amazing company or like, you know, all these things that you see online that you think are going to make you rich. But what are actually the micro habits that make people rich? A couple of weeks ago, I was in a hotel lobby and this lady came up to me. She was super

sweet. She said, I'll watch your videos and I've been wanting to invest. But I need to know a little

bit more. I just want you to learn more about it. And as you've got spoke speaking, I realize that she knew what she wanted to invest in. She was calling the recommendations that everyone says online, the S&P 500. She knew how much she wanted to invest. She even had the an investment app downloaded on her phone. And she hadn't turned that knowledge into action yet for whatever reason. And we were standing there. We were both waiting for our taxis. And so I just said, okay, one, why don't you just

do it right now? Why don't you just invest right now? You know what you want to do? We could do it together. So she did it. She got a phone out. She bought what she wanted to buy. And within three minutes, she had invested. And it was like this thing that she built up in her head for so long. This analysis paralysis, this fear, it just collapsed the moment she actually took action. And that is one of the microhabits that actually put people so far ahead, taking what you've learned and turning it into

action. Because so often we just learn for the sake of learning. And we don't actually do anything with it. So that is one of the main things. Every time you learn something new about personal finance, action at that day and then refine it as you're going, it might not be the thing that works for you,

“but it might. But as long as you keep moving and keep implementing your own life, that's what makes”

someone who's sitting in the back seat and doing nothing from someone who's actually taking the driver seat and carving the way for their life. And another habit I would say is they create goals that have concrete plans to follow up with those goals. So how often do we say I want to save more or I want to invest more all the time? Or I want to reach one out to a pretty damn right? We say all the time, but one of the habits that people could get into the mindset of is

following that up with the really, really concrete steps. So instead of saying I want to save more, it'll be I want to save 5,000 over the next 12 months. That's just over 400 a month. And to do that, I'm going to do X, Y, Z. I'm going to cut my subscription stack. I'm going to negotiate this bill and I want to automate my savings. That's a completely different situation. Absolutely, that's huge. Huge. You've now got a clear goal and a path to get there. And the people who are

good with money and not good with money or bad with money is not about different goals. It's just the following three paths of those goals. I'm Clayton Nackard and in 2022, I was the lead

of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first

bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button

“and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines?”

It began as a one night stand and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agreed to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said she said and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I'm done nothing to get pregnant by the

**** Brassler. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're right. We do throw out these goals all the time. Like, I wish I had more money.

it could be a simple as the automatic savings, cutting your subscriptions. Talk to me about how much

does having a coffee every day? Yeah. Actually, negatively impact your bank account. If you're really, really, really feeling like you're living paycheck and you actually have cut everything out except for coffee, then maybe you want to look at the coffee bill. But actually, it's a lot more about alignment when it comes to spending and intentional spending. Because what you want to do is you want to look at the things that bring you joy or bring you happiness. And then deciding

for yourself, whether that's worth keeping or worth cutting out on. So I wouldn't say, I'll take out those coffees and instead invest that money. It's just looking at every single decision, or every single pound of dollar that comes into your life and ask me yourself, or what do I want the purpose of this pound of dollar to be? Because if you don't define its purpose, it will end up defining yours. So just be more conscious and more intentional

“with how you're spending rather than cutting things because that's what everyone else online is”

telling you to do. What happens to someone who says, I'm going to save up one month, three months for a bag. How do we improve our willpower towards the expensive things that make us happy? Yeah. So for someone who's like, I do want their parachutes, I do want that bag, I do whatever it may be for anyone. You can afford it. But can you really, like, is it really creating a better life for you? Are you more financially safe? How do you control your willpower when it feels so addictive?

It's a lot easier to spend on things when you know that the future you have been taking care of.

And when you know that, okay, the first thing I'm doing is saving a portion, and that money is

compounding for the future me, you feel a lot more happier to spend on whatever it is in that moment of time that will make you happy. And I do encourage everyone to have a look at their life their goals and decide, is this bringing me closer towards my life goals or taking me further away from them? Do you need a six-figure salary to achieve financial freedom? This is such a common

“misconception. We often think that to be better with money, to reach financial freedom, you need to”

earn more. Walsai is great, earning money doesn't actually make you better with money. And it's not actually about how much you make, it's about how you manage what you make. So someone on 100,000 who is spending 100,000 is actually worse off than someone who's on 50,000 and saving 10% of it. So if you want to reach financial freedom, you've got to be saving an investing a portion every single month. And then really what the market rewards is time and consistency. So even small contributions

today, leaving it for the future, leaving a potential 20 years, can massively compound over time. And it's such an unfair advantage that people don't make the most of. Using the money that you have right now and using leverage to let it multiply in a way that doesn't require you to keep working and trading your time for money. Yeah, I love what you said about the habit because it feels like that's what it really comes down to, where just because you earn more money doesn't mean you're

“better with money. And I think that's what happens is that you can go from making 50k. And even”

if you went to make 250k, if you're used to spending everything you had at 50, you do the same. Yeah. And that's so fascinating that we ultimately just have more to do the same thing with. And so we've got to sort these habits how early it feels like. Yeah. And it's hard, right, because I feel like money mindset's built from families. It's built through trauma. It's built through our relationship with money over the years. Like, it's not easy. Like, I grew up in a house

where we always had just enough. And so I grew up with zero in my bank balance often growing up.

And I started working when I was 14. I delivered newspapers, I then worked at Morrisons, which is a grocery store in the area. I then worked in retail. Like, I basically worked every year since I was 14 years old. But even when I was working, I was paying for my phone bill and I owned paying for my car insurance and all the rest of it. I would end up with zero in my bank balance a lot because that's what I was always trained to have. Yeah. And so it took me years of like changing my relationship

with money to actually understand what to do with it. And it was almost like an emotional relationship more than even it was definitely a tactical practical relationship. But there was also an emotional relationship I needed to work on. Do you touch on that in your work? Yeah, I do. And you know what, it's so much easy. You know, about where you are in your financial journey, it is actually so much easier to feel behind financially than it is to feel ahead financially. And a big part of that is

because we compare how we're doing, not based on how much we have, but how much we have compared to those around us. And there's research on this. There's research that shows up. Two people could earn the exact same income and report different levels of satisfaction, purely based on whether the people around them are earning more than them or less than them. So you could be on 50,000.

Or feel less happy about it if everyone around you is earning 55,000. That's what we measure our success based on with humans where social creatures we measure our success based on was happening around us. And previously, this wasn't such a bad thing when our social circle didn't extend beyond our local town or local neighbourhood. You could be a baller, blissfully unaware of the big fish down the road. But now with the internet, it exposes us to everyone and the most successful

outliers, the most successful anomalies are there for everyone to see. So yeah, it's really, it's the motions are a big part of my work, but I want people to understand that there are

things that drive their emotions outside of the control. And to always remember, like, the checkpoints

that matter and come back to the finance part of it on Sunday for doing better or you're doing okay financially. I'm really glad you raised that too because I also think that it shows a kind of flaw in human training in that you'd hope that if everyone around you is making more than you, you could study them and learn from them and also grow. Yeah. But we just end up end being them or being jealous or being upset ourselves, even if we're not jealous when we're still of others,

“we kind of become harsh on ourselves. I know you should be doing better and you're behind and”

everyone's ahead of you. And it's almost like if we could learn to study people instead of envy them, criticize them or be upset ourselves, then it would be healthy to be around people who are doing better than us because we also was here the famous quote of, you're the average of the five people who just spend the most time with. If you're trying to grow your finances and I'm not telling people to change their friends, but if you're trying to grow a certain area of your life,

you will have to be around people who are excelling in that area. Absolutely. And it just knowing, or people excelling in that area, sometimes you are at a certain level of your finances and you don't realize what's possible because everyone around you is also at that same area or same stage. And I remember the moment when I heard someone earning X amount per month, that's when it clicked from your death or oh, that's actually possible. And then when you get there, then you hear someone

else say oh, this is how much I earn per month. And it just changes your view on what normality is. And yeah, it's not about, like you said, it's not about changing your circle to try and find brands that make more money, but just understanding that this is the things that are possible. And none of that is out of your reach, none of it. It's like you could do whatever you set your mind to. It's trying to self-worth. What is the top 1% understand about money that most of us don't?

There's a 1% of financial success. And then there's a 1% of financial happiness. And the two different

“things, financial success is society's definition of happiness. Financial happiness is your intrinsic”

definition of happiness. And the people who are in the 1% of financial happiness, they get a really, really clear on what they want out life, what a good life means for them. And going back to my banking experience, this is a lot easier said than done. Because if you don't take your time to look inwards, then you're just going to follow what is outlined for you and the path ahead of you. So that's the first thing that people do who are in the 1% financial happiness. And the second thing

is they understand that every money decision they make, every pound or dollar that they spend, is either working for them to get closer towards that level of happiness or further away from that. And that's the thing. If you, if you don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it, you're going to be spending many carelessly, not realizing if it's bringing you closer to your life goals. But you can't have number two without having number one. You've got to get clear on your

wife first and then spend an alignment with that wife. I love that redefinition. I think that's so important because I think social media is also made us more focused on the top 1% and he's the

billionaire list and he's the millionaire list. And the reality is that living an aligned life and living

a life based on your values and what you care about is far more within your reaching grasp. And it's going to make you happier. And I love that reframe from financial success to financial

“happiness. Because I think that's what we're all actually looking for. And it comes back to”

your same point of just it's not just about making more. It's about knowing what you're doing with what you have. And then allowing that to expand. And I'm so glad that you're kind of pushing that conversation out there as as a money expert. Because I think it's easy to get excitable and just talk about like how to make like a hundred million dollars or a million dollars of time and whatever and it's like, well, they're made that may be a long road. And you know, this comes back to all the

get rich quick schemes. It comes back to like people promising you can make a million dollars in a

week. Like all that. What's your take on passive income? Is it even possible? There is no such thing as pass completely passive income. There are different forms of income. But none of them are completely 100% passive without requiring a lot of upfront work. So. So glad you said it. It's just

It is the easiest to get into. The easiest to understand and you can make extraordinary amount of wealth through small amounts of income. So passive income in the way that is marketed online or through what we see on the internet. It's take with the pinch of salt and understand who's saying it, why they're saying it and nothing is passive without a lot of work. The easiest way and the single easiest way to get rich long time is by investing in the stock market. Yeah, and that's and I feel like

that's again. If you were exposed to that as a kid and you knew about it, then you know, otherwise it feels like this wild road rest. Like if you're so scary and you're like, well, how do I know what that

means? Like where do people start to give them a 60-second miles to class on investing? Where do

people start? So we believe that to start investing, we need to pick individual stocks. We need to

“find the next Tesla, the next NVIDIA, the next Amazon. But the truth is that could work, but it's”

very, very hard to do and it requires a lot of time and a lot of energy to do it even semi-safely and you can still get it wrong. Even experts get it wrong. Actually, an example of the S. Great example of this is in the 2008 Lehman Brothers just before the financial crisis, just before they collapsed, which triggered the entire financial global crisis. Unless at one of the largest investment banks in the world gave Lehman a buy rating. A buy, a couple of months later, it collapsed.

These are some of the smartest people in finance and they have access to information to data.

They have experienced that. Most of us don't have and they still got it catastrophically wrong.

That's to say, it is very, very hard to do. It's almost impossible to consistently get it right. If they can't get it right, it's very hard for normal people with less information, less time to be able to do it consistently and reliably. So the way that I recommend for people to start when it comes to investing is through index funds. My index funds is just instead of buying individual companies, you're buying tens if not thousands of companies all at once. So for instance,

the S&P 500 is 500 the largest companies, you're buying a small slice of 500 the largest companies, Coca-Cola, Amazon Tesla, Johnson and Johnson, all among go and is the safest and most reliable way to build long term wealth. Even Buffett, he's instructed for 90% of his wife's inheritance to go towards low cost diversified funds. For the majority of people, that is the way to go. Once you have that foundation set up, once you've got that set up, then sure you can have your

fun money and play around with some stocks that you might think are high growth. But you can't do that without having a solid foundation in place. It's just not worth that level of rest that comes with individual stock picking. And he's done money that you're planning on leaving the, for like a decade,

“two decades. So this is money you're not touching and how much do you need to get started?”

Yeah, so I recommend not investing anything that you're going to need in the next five years. Because historically, the stock market has averaged 8 to 10% over the long run. That's the average annual return of the stock market. But that is over the long run. If you look at any given year, the stock market got that a percent, it could be down 40%. So if you need that money in the next five years, say you're saving for a home, you're saving for a car payment, you're saving for your

kids education. If you need that in the next five years, you don't want to put it in the stock market because the last thing you want is to save money and then need it in the next couple of years, and actually at that time the stock market's at dip and you have to pull out a loss. You want to avoid that. So any money that you want to invest, you want to make sure you don't need that money in the next five years. And you want to keep it there for 10 years, 20 years. The longer you keep it

there for, the closer you get to the average stock market returns. Great advice. You can start with a dollar. You can start with the price of a loaf of bread. The hurdles that we had to invest back in the day just don't exist anymore. You could do it within a second on your phone with

“as a deposit dollar. You just brought this up. Should people even plan on buying a home?”

You do not want to look at our home as an investment opportunity. There was a time when I thought buying a home was a really, really good decision. And when I bought my home, I thought that was a great financial decision and I gave me a lot of comfort and peace of mind knowing that no matter what happened,

I will always have this roof over my head. That psychological comfort is hard to put a number on.

Now I rent and that gives me a huge amount of psychological comfort because knowing that I could pick up and leave if an opportunity comes up that I'm not tired to a certain place. That gives me a lot of freedom. So this two ways to look about the environment situation first is actually when it comes to your home, it is a psychological part of it. That pays a big, big bowl. And the second part then comes the numbers. You want to figure out, okay, does it make sense to be for me to be putting

this money towards buying a home, also taking you to count the cost that most people forget, which is stamp duty, buying what the furnishing, legal fees, survey fees, all of that comes into the cost too. Maintenance, yeah, or does it make sense for me to rent and invest that difference?

what we used to think, which was just buying is the way to go and if you're paying some,

if you're paying rent, you're just paying someone else's mortgage. There's so much more that comes into the emotions and the psychology of making something like a house purchase, which is one of the biggest purchases you're going to make in your entire life. A few decades ago, it felt like

“that's what you had to do. Why is it suddenly become a debate over the last five to ten years, maybe?”

A decade ago, even for our parents' generation, it was a lot easier to get onto the property ladder. And if you compare the way house prices have gone up since then, the way, everything has gone up since then, and compare that to wages. It's not the same anymore. And for the majority of people, it's not as easy to do as it was for previous generations. And actually, with the way the stock market is going, it might make a lot more sense, saving that money, but you have to be

disciplined enough to save the money that you would have otherwise put in towards a mortgage or the difference between a rent and a mortgage and saving that money and then putting towards the stock market. So it's a very, very different economy that we're in. And whilst having or buying a home, if that's your goal, that's a great goal to have. But I don't think it's the be all an end all. If you don't get onto the property ladder, there's other ways to make a lot of wealth that doesn't

“require you to buy a home. I think you've acknowledged something really important there. Like the”

reality is, it feels like the cost of everything is growing up. Like the cost of fuel, the cost of rent, the cost of a mortgage, the cost of living like everything's on the rise. No wonder everyone's stressed. Everyone is so stressed. And so no wonder we're getting more scared or insecure about our finances and we don't want to look at them because everything's just fear-based. So it's like the cost of living is going up, the cost of raising kids is going up. You're not getting paid

more necessarily to catch up with that rate. So then of course we're like, what do I do? And I can empathize and understand that it just leads to this like freeze, right? It's like that fight or fly and we're just like, we're kind of stuck in freeze because we're like, well, nothing I do makes a difference. If someone wants to completely transform their finances in the next six months, what's the plan? There's a specific order of steps that I'd recommend people take. And especially

the first bit, I think there's a lot of that fear comes from the first thing which is not having an emergency cushion in place. So saving your expenses, the first one that I recommend or the first step that I recommend anyone saving is $2,000. And thank god we such shows that just by saving that $2,000, that increases your financial well-being by up to 21%. Wow. From saving $2,000. And then if you up that amount to three to six months, that's a further 13% on financial well-being. We don't

realize the extent of having that cushion has to not offer it from a place of scarcity. Just 2,000

to start, that's amazing. Just 1,000 to start. Yeah. After that, you want to make sure that your

high interest debt has been paid off. And by high interest, I mean anything above 8%. This is credit card debt. This is consumer debt. And I say 8% because historically the average stock market return has been 8% to 10%. So if you have debt that is more than 8% you will actually worse off financially by keeping that debt than my paying off. So that's the first thing that you want to do. And then for interest or for debt that is less than 8%. Again, this is where the

mathematically smart choice is to invest instead of paying off the debt below 8%. But again, we're not robots, we're not AI, we're humans, we're the motions. And one of my, we have a WhatsApp chat with some of the girls I've known for like 13 years. And in that WhatsApp chat, we talk about our investments and what we've been investing. Give me to other ideas. And one of the girls, she has invested far a far little amount. She's just dipped a toes into it. But she spent her

whole time paying off a student loan and is nearly paid off her mortgage. For her, sure, the mathematically right choice would have been to invest her money. And we look at finances in terms of optimizing revenue, expected value, expected rate of return. But peace of mind has value too. Yeah. And if you've got debt that keeps you up at night and that stresses you out and that adds to the way you're feeling,

“then who's to say that you should be investing first? Absolutely. You want to be doing the things”

and making sure that your finances are set up in the way that helps you sleep at night. And then once you're comfortable on that debt position, then you want to start investing and going on towards your long-term wealth journey. But that's why I recommend. I love that plan. That's such a great plan. It feels so achievable in the beginning. It gives you a step by step process. Because I think

sometimes people are debating, do I save money first to do I pay for my debt first? And you're like,

well, actually, you'll feel much better if you just have that cushion. Yeah. That's important. You need that. Next thing start paying off that debt. And now once you've done that, now further down the line, we can start thinking about investing in everything else. And I think you're so right that often we do the opposite way. We think, I find best first. And hopefully, one of these things will make me a bit of money. Obviously it doesn't or it takes five to 10 years or even

right either. Exactly. So I really like that reframe because I'm really hoping everyone is listening

“and watching right now. Like, niches just laid out an absolute masterclass of what to do with”

your money right now. If you're in that type position. And I can agree with you more. Swaring out

your financial wellbeing and your peace first is a much stronger foundation to build from. Sure,

people need to get better with the finances. But I want them to use their finances to build a life that's more aligned for them, more bigger, more bolder. And that comes with deciding what peace of mind means for you. And then doing what works for that. Yeah. What are the three things we should stop wasting money on? That most of us don't even realise. The first thing people need to stop wasting money on is anything that they think increases their value by showcasing

to others what they have. Oh, good answer. I mean, there's one of the quickest ways to save money by saying, I'm not going to buy this thing to show other people that I've got it. And actually with every purchase that you buy ask yourself, am I buying this for me or am I buying it because I want

other people to know that I have it. So that's the first overall thing that I'd save. I'm remembering

a purchase I made early days. Like it was just like this early days watched that I bought that I thought everyone would notice and everyone hated it. Like first of all, no one noticed it. Yeah. And so then I try and like be like, you know, like just try and I like just hope that didn't fit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then when people saw it, they just they weren't impressed by it, whatsoever. And I was like, wow, like, and that was like, it wasn't even that expensive, you know,

even at the time it wasn't. And I was just like, oh, wow, like that did nothing for me. Yeah. Because I didn't even like it myself. I bought it because everyone think it would be cool. And now it's, you know, I don't even know where it is anymore. And it's like, no, let me buy things that I

“think of cool. And I know the value of. And yeah. I think that's the difference. If you do it,”

if you buy it for yourself and it makes you feel good or makes you enjoy it, then go for it. But if you're purely doing it, thinking it's going to bring you happiness based on other people's expectations or opinions, don't bother. It's not. And I made a similar mistake. My first three months on my paycheck when I started at the first investment bank my work out when straight on a new car. And it was the most ridiculous purchase I could make. But I didn't have that introspection at the time to know

whether this is what I wanted or if I was in line with my goals or not. Yeah. The second thing that people shouldn't waste their money on is upgrades. I actually believe that when you buy something for the first time, your level of happiness increases massively. But then for every marginal upgrade that you have after that, there's this diminishing law of return where the amount that you spend in proportion just doesn't match up to the extra happiness that you get. So actually rather than

spending that money on a new thing every single time, spending it on experiences or memories has a way bigger impact on your happiness and overall life satisfaction than buying, spending it on the next big bank. Yeah, absolutely. The new iPhone. For example, it's going to be the same for the next four years anyway. Yeah, and every time you bought that upgrade, you really barely tell the difference between the first one.

I really appreciate that you're thinking about this advice because the quality of insight you're giving is allowing us all to reflect. It would be so easy for you to just say cancel your subscription, cut out the coffee like, and those are basic things that sure people can look at. But the question you're making us ask are actually the drivers of how and why we spend money. And I feel like that's so much more at the root of it. And the third thing I would say is actually when you're buying

something, understand, are you buying it for the name or are you buying it for the purpose that it holds the utility of it? So are you buying a designer purse because of the designer

“of it? Or is it because you like the person it could actually help you carry your money around?”

Yeah. Having that way of thinking actually can shave off a lot of the says spending that you're unnecessarily doing in your day to day? Yeah, absolutely. I've had so many friends that

I remember we've bought sunglasses or while it's that they thought look cool, but then they never

wear them or use them because they don't actually like it the way it looks in their face. But you made the purchase that day you exchanged and now you can't give it back and all the rest of it and you're stuck with it. No, those are absolutely great and I feel like it's so true that so much of the money we spend is either things that we're unaware of or because we're doing it based on some subconscious need that we're trying to figure out. And even if you do that,

it's good to just know. So even if you're spending based on some subconscious need, it's like it's good to just be aware of it and accept that that's what it is. What I want to do with

You could only cut so many coupon codes. You could only find so many offers. After a while,

you realize that you cannot cut your costs beyond a certain level whereas the other side, the earning income side, that side is infinite and there was unlimited potential. I actually feel like a lot of people miss the earning income side and that has far more scope to change your finances than saving money does. What you just think about when you're saving, if you think about saving literally, what is it? If you think about it more broadly is the difference between your income

and your spending. And one way to increase your saving is sure by cutting your spending. The other way is by increasing the amount you're making. The easiest way to increase your income is by creating more value. Money is just an exchange of value. And the amount of value you could create as a buy product

money will come from that. So with that in mind, how can you increase your income? Firstly,

how can you think about increasing your value? If you work in a day job, what can you do to make you more indispensable to your corporation if you work for a company? Can you take on projects that no one else wants to take on? Can you increase the revenue for your team? Can you cut the stress for your boss? What are these things that can warrant a pay rise or a promotion? And if you're working in a place or a situation or an organization where you're almost capped with your increases

in your income and you can't get pay rise as a promotion as you can in other industries, then the same still applies is how can you increase your value? But you want to look for ways to do this outside of your day job. Look at your friends, your families, your colleagues and ask yourself,

“what do they need? And what do I have that can solve what they need? What skills can I charge for?”

If you think of your saving as the difference between your earning and your spending, if over time you keep earning more, you get those pay rises, you get those promotions, and your earnings increasing, and you keep your spending somewhat the same. Sure, enjoy upgrades. If you get a small bonus, spend a little bit to make yourself happy. I don't believe in the notion of just completely cutting out and just making your life consistent. But if

the gap and the difference between your earning and your spending keeps increasing and getting wider and you keep banking at that difference and saving away, that is rocket fuel for your finances. That is going to make a way bigger difference than just focusing on cutting back and finding ways

to save because you could only save as much as you earn, but you could always earn more.

Yeah, I'm glad you did that read for him and I'm glad you went there after talking about the habits for saving because like you said the habits will expand into wherever we are,

“but I could agree with you more. I remember in my family it was always about making sure”

we saved every penny that we could and that was really important to us. But what I found was that the amount of time dedicated to saving. So for example, if you bought something from the supermarket, whatever in it, you had to return it or it wasn't perfect or there was some, it was passed itself by day or whatever. And I remember like, sometimes my family would sit on the phone for like an hour or two hours trying to save like 30 pence a pound, whatever it was.

Yeah. And as a girl, I said, really, as well, if you put that two hours towards making money, it would just, and I'm not saying this is easy. I'm not saying that you're stupid if you're doing the opposite. That's not the point. The point is time is money with her that for years. And you can either put two out once you've done everything niches said, you're either spending two hours trying to save an extra X amount, which like you said is limited or you have the ability

to use that two hours, to use your creativity, to use your passion, to use your energy, to use your skills, to use your whatever it may be, to actually create value in the world, which has no limit. And I loved the way you put that, that saving has a limit, earning has no limit. But I think that's where it comes back to what we talked about earlier. It's like, if you don't believe that you can make more, you listen to this conversation right now and you go, yeah, easy for you to say, you know,

“and it's like, and I remember being that person. And that's why I'm raising it in a vulnerable way”

is I grew up in a town where the most, the wealthiest person I knew made a hundred thousand a year. And I believe that if you were anywhere close to that, then you had made it in life. And that was the pinnacle. And I know that that's for some places that's a high amount, for some places that's a very low amount. But that was the amount where I grew up. Yeah. And I knew one person that made that. Everyone else was making 50k or thereabouts.

I knew one person who made 100k and everyone just thought he'd made it. And then it's time when on I met people who made a hundredk, not in a year, but in a month. And I was like, what? Like, I even knew someone could do that. I didn't even know an entrepreneur growing up. Like, everyone I knew pretty much worked their companies. So I was like, oh, you can be an entrepreneur.

k in a week. Yeah. And then I met someone who made a hundredk a day and then an hour and whatever

else it was. And I was like, oh, my gosh, my I had been living on this tiny little island, even though it wasn't, not knowing what was possible. And I say that with empathy and love and compassion to tell you that no one who's making that with money is that much smarter than you or better than you or knows more than you. They have just found a skill and figured out a way to use that skill to add value to other people. And school didn't teach us that chances are parents didn't

teach us that not as a dig just as they didn't have the skills either and they weren't given that training. And so don't limit yourself by that voice in your head that just goes, you can't do that. You don't deserve it, right? Yeah. And sometimes you have this voice is that telling you, if you want more money, you're a bad person or that you're looking for to earn more, you're dissoning about you. That's not right. That is also completely wrong. That quote that is money is a real of all evil,

which is not money is a real of all evil. It's the love for money is a real of all evil. But trying to earn more isn't actually about the money necessarily is just about even it just for a lot of people having more money just exasperates who you are at your core. And if you could do more with the money that you have, then actually there's no harm in also wanting more for yourself. And a lot of people say, I don't know if I can earn more, I don't know if this is for me. I would recommend even

setting yourself an hourly rate in your head, putting an hourly rate for yourself. And anything that you can outsource for less than that hourly rate outsource it. So even for instance, if you're spending three hours trying to save $10, what is your hourly rate? Because you just spent three hours trying to save $10. Whereas if you spend that three hours trying to earn more, that will change your finances. That would have a way bigger impact. That's a great way of thinking about it.

I like the hourly rate breakdown because you basically just said, you're, you're hours worth three

dollars each. Yeah. And you know that you could go out there and add more value and make a lot more. I feel like there's a lot of talk about in our generation right now and the generation that's

“growing up around the value of money. And that's why I love your reframe of financial happiness. I”

think you're spot on to talk about financial happiness over financial success. What are the keys to people who are financially happy, not just financially successful? I'm just going to be talking from my experience here. Where I've almost thought like I've lived two lives in a way where I worked for a corporate corporation for nine years or that. And part of that, I loved what I did. I found it really intellectually stimulating. I enjoyed the work. I enjoyed the environment.

And this is not to say that working in a corporation is not the thing to do at all. If you're an employee own that and you enjoy it, that is totally for you. If you're an entrepreneur, you enjoy that, totally that's for you. But for me, I found that my version of financial happiness was to be able to work on things that genuinely made me happy, to be able to take on projects that I wanted to take on and that I knew I can do really well at. And also just being able to have more

control, freedom, options and dependence with my life. And whilst I don't necessarily think

“you can, you have to get that from outside of, as an entrepreneur or doing your own thing,”

I do think that a lot of people do look for the same things. And that comes from getting your finances and check and setting it up in a way where, like we said before, you can carve a life that's more aligned to what you want. I also think there's so much of an idealization around being an entrepreneur today, like we're living in that era where it's like, quit your job, do what you love and whatever us it is. And I think about this two ways. One is, I worked inside organizations with people who are

really smart and sharp. And I still have those organizations doing really well for themselves. And I have an amazing team that I couldn't do what I do without. And they're incredible and I'm very lucky to work with them every day. And I look at that and I go, this pressure that's on people today for everyone to figure out what their own path looks like. I'm like, I don't think it's fair to put that on everyone. I don't think everyone's meant for it. And I don't think it's better than

someone who succeeds inside an organization. Like Steve Volmer was inside Microsoft, he didn't invent Microsoft. It's one of the wealthiest people on the planet. And Bill Gates invented Microsoft. And he's one of the wealthiest people on the planet. I'm like, who's done it better? Who's done it worse? It's like, well, no, maybe they were just playing to their strengths. Yeah, exactly.

And survivorship bias is real. We always see the wins and the people who have made it online and

the people who have made entrepreneurship a thing. But you don't hear about all the losses and the failures that happen. And even if you look at content creation, like the amount of people that actually make money through creating content, which is what we usually see on social media, as such a small, small percent. And even that, most of them don't earn more than paycheck to paycheck.

“So I think there's a lot of, a lot to say by having that regular paycheck coming in, that's”

security coming in, that knowing that you don't have to put a huge amount of capital at risk.

whole message about doing your own thing and being an entrepreneur is a way to go at all at all. What's the best investment you ever made? The best investment I've ever made is in myself. And when I had to change what I do, what I did from banking to what I do now, I mean, I spent my days on spreadsheets and doing presentations and speaking to clients, I didn't know how to use the camera. I didn't know how to edit. I didn't know how to

do any of the things that comes with content creation. And I spent a lot of money behind it. I spent a lot of money learning it. I spent money on how to edit because the first five months I was editing myself. I spent money on like everything you could think of, a new camera, a new mic and that's and that was all to fulfill this creativity for me. And so it was even though I didn't know if I was going to make money from it. It took me 11 months for me to actually start making money for

social media. I didn't care because for me, it was such an escape from my day to day job. I would go to work and I'd be doing my job and I'll be crushing it there. But I know deep inside that part of me wanted more. And for me, going home in the evening and spending my weekends working on this creative passion project. Just gave me life. It was kind of like this escape from my day to day. And actually, I spent money on this project, not knowing if it was going to bring me anything returned.

But it increased my happiness massively. And the no overtime is, yes, completely changed my life. But that investment was in myself and just to keep improving in my skills and knowledge. And we really are so afraid to spend on our skills and knowledge. And we really sometimes we we look at courses and online programs as like the scam, but really, someone's just condensing so much of their information into a short space. And I bought so many. And if I didn't, my trajectory and where

I would have got to would have been a lot slower. I'm just learning other people's knowledge. And so that's one thing investing in your skills and your knowledge. That's one thing that no one can take away from you. You could go bankrupt, you could lose everything. But as long as you have those two, you can start a build yourself up. But everything else, it can be taken away, it could be stolen,

“it could be robbed. But you own those things for life. And I think that is hands down the best”

investment I've made. Yeah, great. And so I feel like it's that's like a critical pattern in all

high performers is that they'd also say the best investment they've made is investing in themselves, like it's not a tech investment or something that made them a billion dollars or a million dollars, whatever. It's always this investment they made in themselves because they know that that's all they have. Yeah. And everything came from that. And I think we're so quick to, again, this isn't a criticism. It's a reflection point of it's really easy to spend a lot of money on a vacation.

Vacation is important, rest is important. Yeah. I'm completely a proponent of avoiding burnout. But at the same time, there may be a period of your life with that investment in yourself, may pay off for better future vacations. And I think there's this challenge we have today of this short-term long-term thinking. Like, I think maybe for our parents and those generations, they thought too long-term. And they didn't have any fun in the short-term. And they didn't really

“create those memories. And then for our generation, I think the pressure is the opposite. So I have”

fun now. Do everything now because you're not going to be around forever. And the reality is,

chances are you probably have a few more decades left. Yeah. And that's going to be really stressful. So I feel like we've got to find this middle ground as always is the balance. And I don't mean work-life balance. But I mean the balance of like short-term and long-term thinking. Like, I know I want to be happy today. Yeah. But I want to be happy tomorrow. And in 10 years time. Yeah. And you can't take your money to the grave with you. Like, you've got to be spending it in your lifetime

at some point. And there's that funny where who's written that book, the top five regrets of the dying. And for those who, anyone listening that doesn't know, she wrote this book, the top five regrets of the dying, where she based on her experience, where she was a nurse. And spent time with people who owned the last weeks of their life. And what she found was that the main regret for people was that they didn't have the courage to live a life true to them. No one spoke about earning

more, or making more money, or wishing they beat their S&B 500 or any of that. It was just living a

life true to them. And so always using money in a way to live a life that's true to you. What's the

worst thing you've ever spent money on? Or the worst money you've ever spent? The worst money I've ever spent was on a, on a, my first, a couple of months of paycheck going towards the new car.

“Okay. I mean, at the time it was the best thing ever. I mean, and I think there is a time in a”

place where you can do that. But at that point in my life, it wasn't necessary. And I could have spent in so many other ways. But sometimes I look back and I say to myself, oh, I wish I took some risks earlier on in my life. But I wasn't able to, because I didn't have my finances set up in a way that enabled me to do it. And if I was a bit more conscious earlier on, I might have been able to

raised this earlier, but I'm just going back to it like there's this feeling of like, I wish I started saving when I was 25. Yeah. I wish I started saving when I was 25. What would you say to

“that person who's saying, I'm listening to Nisha, I wish I wish you were in my life 20 years ago?”

The best time to planetary was 10 years ago. The second best time is today. You can't turn back time. But if you're sitting there watching this in like 30s and 40s, you have so many other things that are going for you. You probably have a higher income than when you did when you were in your 20s or 30s, so you could might be able to afford a bigger portion of your paycheck. And secondly, you have likely a more clearer definition of what you're aiming for and what you're

aiming towards. And that can be very, very powerful in the long run, because a lot of saving

comes down to having something that you're saving towards and knowing why you're doing it. And when you have a very strong reason why you're doing it, you're a lot more likely to keep it up. Go keep with it. So if anyone listening, listening who says, I wish I just started this 20 years ago, you're in a in a place where you can, you have a lot of unfair advantages with the place of the life of your own right at the moment and use that to help yourself with where you are.

All right. We're going to play a game that, in the team, came up with called this or that

“money edition. So we're going to give you a choice and you have to decide. So Nisha, this or”

that money edition, financial discipline or financial flexibility. Financial flexibility. It's a plan. You've got to live life in seasons. There are different parts of your life where spending on different things will have outside benefits and spending on it later on in your life. And when you're so stuck in discipline and structure, you forget the whole serendipity of life. You sometimes aren't so spontaneous. You miss things. You don't take on opportunities.

When you're flexible with your spending, your flexible financially, you want to take a board of you want life. You want to zoom out and at times in your life when it's times to save, you say, when times in life when it's times to spend and make the most of life, you make the most of that. Well said, you get a $500 bonus, invest it or use it to pay off debt. Me personally. No, anyone depends. I mean, this is the boring answer, but it depends what

debt you have. If you have debt over 8% pay that debt off. If it's less than 8% I mean, I'm a mathematical

person. I always go for the financially optimal decision when it comes to debt and invest investing so

invest it. Expensive wedding or save for the future. Save for the future. Talk to us about that. I do love the idea. I do. I'm not against weddings at all. I love the idea of having everyone in your life on both sides together in one room and it's probably the only time where both of your partners will have you and your partner will have all your friends at family one room. And that

“doesn't come around again, but I don't think you need to spend a lot of money to be able to do that.”

And there is a lot more that comes from a return on a relationship when you spend towards the life that you're trying to create with someone than just hosting a big wedding. I think about all the time. Let's just how much it's spent on weddings and even compared to how much we had the time we me and Rathie had at the time when we got married and how much you spent on our wedding. I'm like, I look back and I go, that was so irresponsible. And I look back and I think,

oh my gosh, I can't believe no one just talks and sent into that. And we didn't even spend that much, but we spent a lot for what we had is what I'm saying. Yeah, no, and same here. And it's because that's what everyone around you is doing. Totally. And so when you're not doing it, you feel like

you're behind or suddenly something's not going right. But yeah, it's something that you always

reflect on looking back. Yeah. Credit cards only or debit only. If you know how to use credit cards in a way that can stack up for you, credit cards. Only if you are paying them off in time. Because if you use credit cards correctly, the bonus is the advantages that you get from it is way bigger than what you get from debit card, not to mention also the insurance and the protection you get from credit card spending as well. But if you are someone who thinks that with a credit card,

you're just going to spend unnecessarily with money that you don't actually have, then debit card. Seeing a high balance in your bank account or knowing your money is working by investing it. I mean, it's this so rewarding looking at your bank account and seeing that go up in value. But it's a very almost irresponsible way to look at your finances. And when you invest your money, you can still think of that money as yours. It's just in different forms rather than in cash,

it's growing for you in assets. So 100% anything over your emergency fund and money that you don't need to the next five years invest it. Let that money be working for you. $1,000 online shopping for a dress or $1,000 invested. $1,000 invested hands down. Unless you're going to a place where the way you look might generate more than $1,000 for you. Good answer. Good answer. I love it.

on purpose with the final five. These questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence, maximum. Nice to share. These are your final five. Question number one, what is the best financial advice you've ever heard or received? Best financial advice I've ever heard received is you can't

take money to the grave with you. You've got to spend it in your lifetime. Second question,

what is the worst financial advice you've ever heard or received? The worst financial advice I've ever received is save your way for retirement. You cannot save your way to retirement and this day and age is just not possible. With the way things are going, with the way cost living is going,

“you have to be investing your money. Question number three, what would you do differently now looking”

back on your financial journey? I mean, there was a period of my life where I spent a lot of money on material items and design items and looking at the part. Since then, I've made a quite

lot of good money decisions I'd like to say and I use it in a way that really, really does bring

me happiness today, but if I could go back in time, I would have spent more money on things that drive me in transit happiness, which I didn't at the time and it would have changed those years for me. Question number four, if you could give you a young yourself a piece of advice, what would you say? Lil Nisha? Lil Nisha, if I could give you a piece of advice, I would say, and it's that quote, which is leap and the net will appear. There have been so many times where I feel like I'm

standing at the edge of a cliff and I don't know if I can take the leap and have it in me to do whatever the thing is. And as I've got older, I've just found that as long as you're in motion, you'll find a way to make a work. You'll find a way in motion to make that net for yourself. A fifth and final question we ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? I'm going to make this

a financial one. Yeah, please. And I'm going to say not to treat other people with the amount of

“money that you, they show that they have or that you think that they have. I think so often we”

assign a value to someone based on the dollar number in front of them, but actually there's so much more that comes with a person, so much more characteristics that define a person. And I also think it also of so many issues about not having to spend money for external validation that would probably be a law that I would love to create. Well said, yeah. It's a shout. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm being an on purpose. Everyone who's listening and watching,

make sure you subscribe to niches. YouTube channel can follow across social media. And of course, check out her programs all about financial training, financial seminars and creating a better future for yourself. Nisha, thank you so much for being so open, thoughtful, insightful. I felt like I learned so much. And I'm so grateful we've got to spend this time together. Thank you so much. And here for you, Jay, you're exactly the same person as you are online

and offline. Like you could tell that your whole why online is trying to serve as many people as possible and to give back as much as you can. And even offline, you do that in your day to day. And everything you do is about helping other people. And I'm so grateful to be to see both sides of you. So thank you. Well, I appreciate that. And congratulations, dear. I can't wait for so much more to come. So excited for you, Nisha. Amazing. If you're ready to take control of

your finances, create freedom on your own terms, you want to hear my conversation with Cody Sanchez.

“If you want to be successful today, is that there's really, there's two type of people.”

One type of person will be really successful and one type of person will never be successful

until they change their mentality. And we call these fixtures versus free loaders. This isn't I Heart Pat guest, Guarantee Human.