Why we need to talk about money, with Jessamy Walker

How do you feel about money? In this episode, we dive deep into the emotional aspects of money and financial literacy with Jess Walker, a financial advisor and the founder of Bare Naked Money.

Jess has been featured in The Times as one of the top 100 advisers to watch out for and is the author of Get Financially Fearless, a book that gives people the practical steps to harness their subconscious and grow their wealth.

But, what truly excites Jess isn’t all those awards or recognition—it’s seeing that "light bulb moment" when people realize they can take control of their finances and make money work for them. She says that if she can help one more person understand their finances every single day that she’s on this planet, then she’ll die a happy lady.

Jess joins us to discuss the importance of understanding your money personality, the impact of financial education (or the lack thereof), and how to develop a healthier relationship with money. She also shares her mission to help people get a better grasp on their finances and explains why financial literacy is so crucial, especially for business owners.

Tune in to hear Jess’s story, her insights, and practical advice on making money work for you.

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Transcript

Peta: 1:16

How do you feel about money? No. I mean, Really, obviously we don't like more of it and. Some of us seem to have a lot less of it at the end of the month. And we'd like, Everything seems to be costing more these days. And and money is a constant worry on a lot of people's minds. But. Do you feel like you understand it? Do you feel like it was in any way, part of your education at school? Did your parents talk to you about money? Do you see money as. A positive tool to do good things in the world, or do you see it? Something that you're constantly fighting against. There are so many emotions that pop up in our heads and in our lives around money. Especially as business owners. When you run your own business as a whole other level of questions and concerns and rules around money that you have to deal with. And that's where this week's guest comes in. Jess Walker. As a financial advisor. And she's the founder of Barenaked money. She's been featured in the times as one of the top on hundred advisers to watch out for. She's written a book called get financially fearless. Which gives people the practical steps to harness their subconscious and grow their wealth. But the thing that really gets her excited. Is is not all those awards and recognition of which she has money. It's seeing that light bulb go on for other people when they realize that they can actually get a handle on their money and make it work for them. Jessa as the, if she can help one more person to understand their finances every single day, she's on this planet. Then she'll die. A happy lady. Jess. And I talk about. All these emotions and feelings around money. That people have. We talk about the importance of understanding your own. Money, personality. And how that affects the way that you can stick to a budget or not. And how understanding your money personality can help you plan. For a healthier and happier. And ultimately more lucrative. Relationship with your money. We talk about how financial education is often missed in schools. And we talk about Jess's mission to open up that knowledge and that access to advice. To as many people as possible. I know that I know that I've said that everything is political. And I do firmly believe that. Money is. Oh, so political. Not only. Does it affect the amount of power that we have in the world for good or bad? It affects how empowered we feel, how confident we feel. It affects the amount of energy and time that we have available to us to spend on supporting and furthering the causes that we care about. If you are working two, three jobs and you are falling into bed completely exhausted every night because of them. Then you do not have any time to fight the patriarchy. You do not have any time to combat injustices. You do not have the The extra income or the space in your budget. Two. To buy. Organic food or to buy more sustainable clothes. You have less choice. And so understanding and grasping and getting a grasp on our money is important. But then. The lack of financial education also has a political element to it as well. Those in power. The rich don't necessarily want us to know more about money. They don't want us to know that things like investing can actually be quite simple to get your head around. If you have the right support. Because then that means they get to keep a lot of their money for themselves. And as Jess, as later in the podcast If we all knew how investing worked. If we were all growing up lots of money, then would we necessarily want to do some of the jobs that need doing. Anyway. I really I'm quite excited for you to hear my conversation with Jess. And then to go and follow her and and get more. Have a handle on how your money works for you. So. Grab a notebook because you're going to need one, grab a cup of coffee and sit back and listen to Jess. Get on her soap box. Jess, thank you so much for coming on the Soapbox podcast. I'm very excited to talk.

Jess: 6:07

Good morning or good? I not even, Michelle. Good day. Yeah, that sounds very American. Australian, but good day.

Peta: 6:13

It's all good. People will be listening to this at all kinds of times today. It's all okay. So, for people who don't know you I, so we met we met on BNI Networking and then I've been helping you with some of your marketing but for people who don't know you Can you tell them a little bit about who you are, where you come from, how you got to where you are now?

Jess: 6:36

Well, I'm Jess Walker. I'm a chartered financial planner. I used to be a stockbroker. I'm a little bit of a money nerd. But more than that, I'm, I'm a bit of a money, so box, I get a bit ranty about the fact that we don't get taught some of this stuff, you know, we should so background, I got into financial trouble with a credit card. In my twenties, and it took me another 12 years to get out of it because I didn't know what it was in the first place to use it properly. And I just think, so I have a soapbox that I get on that says, you know, we should be educated about the basics of how does a credit card work, how to use it properly, how yeah, how to set yourself up for a mortgage, right. Well, how to just have to look out for yourself financially relatively early on. So on the back of that, I set up a business called Bare Naked Money. Which obviously is the one that you've been helping me with, and yeah, and that's kind of me. How did I get into this? I did marine biology. I mean, you know, I'm a, I'm an outsidey wildlifey sort of a person. I did marine biology at uni. I had a fabulous time counting sea urchins for six or seven years. Research projects. And I'm the wrong sex and the wrong color for Africa, or I was at the time, and I hit a real grass, glass ceiling, grass, glass ceiling, both of those. And I came back to England to go temping for a year and my temp job, my first temp job was in the stockbroker's office. And I loved it. And I, and I stayed. I stayed there eight years. So, so that's kind of where it's come from. Bit of a convoluted story, but yeah.

Peta: 8:11

No, it's great. So for people who have not come across Jess before, she has an amazing book which I will put the link to in the show notes called Get Financially Fearless. And at the beginning, she talks about kind of her story and how she, yeah, how she came from Kenya all the way to all the way to stockbroking. Stockbroking? That's not a word.

Jess: 8:33

yeah, it's the word stopbroking.

Peta: 8:36

Stockbroking in London. So yeah, it's fascinating. And also really, really helpful. So you should all go and check that out.

Jess: 8:43

Thank you.

Peta: 8:44

is it that you think all this is so important? Because like people bang on about how you should be able to budget and manage your finances and things like that. But for you, it's a real passion. Why is that? Sure.

Jess: 9:02

It's probably a passion because I got into trouble so badly with it and it set me back 20 years. By the time I'd spent five or six years getting into trouble and then 12 or so getting back out again, it meant that at, you know, my mid 30s I hadn't started a pension, I hadn't, I had no, no way of making my own financial future secure, making, making me not reliant on the state in some form, making me Making me able to live life, you know, you only get one go at it. I don't, I don't wanna be, I don't wanna work until I'm 70, 80, whatever. I don't, I don't want to have to, I want to be able to choose. I don't need to be, that's a lie. I was gonna say, I don't need to be super successful. I do, but I don't measure it in material and measure it slightly differently. But I, but I wanna be, I want to know that I'm okay, that I'm safe, that my family are safe, that, that I will be okay. And it's one of those things that's way, way. easier to do if you start earlier because the power of time and the power of compounding over time is phenomenal. And I, I, I suppose I, I, I'm so passionate about it because I, because I didn't have it and I got into trouble and I don't want anyone else to get like that. It's horrible that continually wondering where the next penny's going or, and it, one of the big things is, you know, they always say knowledge is, knowledge is power. It is. If you know, I have 1, 000 coming in and I have 900 going out, hooray, that works. I have 1, 000 coming in and I have 1, 100 going out, that doesn't work. And it, and it's knowing that, and knowing how to do it stops the noise in your head. It, it stops all that kind of, oh my god, what about, how do I do this, what do I do, oh, yeah, that, that kind of thing. I don't know if that even answered your question,

Peta: 11:00

Of course it did. How have you seen that kind of knowledge or reframing make a difference in like the lives of the people that you've, that you've worked with or that you've helped?

Jess: 11:16

it's really interesting the way, it's more about the change in demeanour. You know, they come in a bit worried and a bit, I don't know what this is. I don't know. My classic example is actually in my main business and my financial advice business. Really lovely couple came in. He was a teacher, but you know, there were just ordinary people and he didn't think he could retire until he was 67 and he'd taken on a head of head of department role and it was taking him away from teaching and away from everything. We kind of looked through all the stuff that he'd gone and it was like, no, no, no, you're okay, you haven't read the small print here. This means you can stop at 60. And he went, but it doesn't say that, it says something else. It was like, but this. And they, so they came in for the first meeting with all the paperwork and looking really, really worried. He came in at second, he couldn't make eye contact because he was terrified I was going to tell him that he'd have to work till 67. And he was just like, I can't do it. It's going to destroy me, all of this. Anyway, so when I 10 minutes in, I went, no, no, you can stop. You could, you could have stopped at 60. It was 62. You could have I think I, I think I told him he could stop anytime he liked rather than no, you numpty, you could have done it two years ago. He couldn't then, he couldn't actually say anything. We, we wound the meeting up 15 minutes in because he was, are you sure? Are you sure? And he just kept flicking back and forth and going, I, I, I don't believe this. Are you sure? He came back in again 10 days later, so we rescheduled and then came back in. He came back in his jeans. He came back with a smile. He came in standing tall. He came in, he was just, he'd given up his job and gone on holiday in that 10 day period. He hadn't actually done it, but mentally for him, he'd gone to that. He'd gone past the disbelief. I, it's not going to, it's not, and, and gone to the acceptance and then gone to the possibility of what can I do now?

Peta: 13:12

Yeah.

Jess: 13:13

And so he still teaches. He does, he does math tutoring and things. So he still does that, but he does it from a place of passion and fun rather than because I have to pay the bills.

Peta: 13:24

Yeah.

Jess: 13:25

So, so that, that transformation from I'm scared. I'm unsure. I I should, I hear it from business owners a lot. I should know how to do this. I run my own business. But should you, why should you? So that, that change in demeanor rather than yeah, makes you feel safe, secure, if you've got a handle on that kind of stuff,

Peta: 13:46

Yeah. And you, so you talk a lot about mindset in in when, like in your business and in your branding and your messaging and in your book. What, when it comes to business owners, what are those, what are the big hangups that you see in like those big kind of mindset issues that people are dealing with?

Jess: 14:06

one of the biggest things I hear is I hate money. I hate talking about money. I hate it. I hate it. I hate And it's like, well, do you know what? It's just a thing. And it, you know, it's one of those, the more you talk about it, the easier it becomes to talk about it and the less terrifying it becomes. And it often becomes it's an, I hate money because I don't want to face up to what I don't know. And the mistakes that I might make. So therefore, if I avoid it totally, it'll go away. What doesn't it, it either gets worse or, you know, it, but it, but it takes up a lot of headspace. We talk about mindset and we talk about money dates. Yeah, I mean, a once a month money date, you know, it sounds really dull. But what you often see is particularly, particularly in couples where, where, where they have different, have different backgrounds, you know, talking to a guy this morning whose father was a banker and taught him the basics. His wife's father wasn't a banker and didn't teach her anything. And they're 30 something and they have, he said, we have quite difficult conversations about money because she doesn't want to talk about it because she doesn't know anything and she feels stupid. And he's like, can I just talk about it? And it's, yeah, it's that getting past that, what you were taught younger, or, you know, we all hear things like, I know money doesn't grow on trees, or it's almost as bad as the bogeyman's under the bed, or, you know, it's that kind of education that it's, you don't talk about it, it's terribly vulgar, don't talk about that, you know, and all that happens is that, that it just makes you feel more and more stupid. Yeah,

Peta: 15:42

Yeah, I grew up in a family where debt was all kinds of debt was bad, including like student loans for university or, and like verging on mortgages. Like it was not like you just didn't do it because you shouldn't own anybody any money. And so, yeah, getting over that and working out what was best in terms of our own finances. And then I never even heard the term compounding interest until about like 10 years ago when I was 30. And then not really done anything about it, even when I knew what it was until about three or four years ago. And I often, I do kind of look back and I go, if I'd have, if I'd have had more knowledge, but also a slightly different mindset nothing really complicated, just like quite basic, just like reframings of things, then I would be in a completely different position now than I am.

Jess: 16:40

yeah, and I think the the interesting one is that, you know, We don't our subconscious is designed to keep us safe and alive, basically. That, that, you know, and all of our decisions are run on that. And it's keep me safe and alive today. So when you do compounding interest or something like that, that's time, that's the future, and it becomes, it's like if today's a, a six foot round, balloon. That's really, really important. And 10 years time is only a two foot round balloon. You can tell I'm as old as I am that everything's in feet and inches rather. And, you know, and then really in the future, as in retirement in the future, it's this tiny little speck of a golf ball in the distance somewhere. And it's not important. And I still have ages. Therefore, even if you know about the power of compounding and time, you still don't necessarily do anything about it until you become a bit more grown up. And it, and it is, it's a change in mindset rather than, you know, it says you suddenly become responsible either for other people or for a mortgage or for something that you think, oh, I've got to do something about this now suddenly.

Peta: 17:46

Do you think it is particularly hard for business owners to deal with this kind of thing? Because the thing that I hear a lot when I'm talking to other business owners is that they started their businesses because they liked doing the thing that their business is about, whether that is Being a florist or whether that's being a copywriter or whether that's designing websites or printing brochures, like that's the thing that they loved doing and they were like, I'm good at this. So I'll start a business. And then they start the business and all of a sudden they're lumped with accounts and finances and insurance and like all this other stuff and marketing, like all this other stuff that they didn't think that they were going to have to do, and they didn't check that they were good at before they started their business.

Jess: 18:38

I literally did a social media post about that last night. Literally, I haven't posted it because my dog ran away barking in the middle of it. And I was like, shall I post that, shan't I? So I will. But it is exactly that, you know, I, I started doing this job. You know, I signed up to be a financial advisor because I like, I like planning. I like strategy. I like numbers, you know, I have a logical science brain and I, and I like helping people. So all of those things lead me down this path. I've then had to learn to run a business and I naturally do numbers. But nobody tells you, Oh, by the way, your tax bill works like this and this. And if you do this, then it causes a director's loan in your limited company. And you pay tax over here and you do, and it's, it's mind blowing. It's seven years later. I'm finally starting to understand what some of it is. Marketing, there's a whole dark art. I don't know enough about, you know,

Peta: 19:38

why you have me.

Jess: 19:41

it's really interesting because it's kind of like you sit there and you think, well, well, I'm doing this thing, but it, it hasn't. It hasn't generated millions of pounds overnight, why not? You know, it's like, well, because nothing does, really, you know, really. But it, but there is, there's this, I don't know, however many heads that we have to put on and if you're a of a friend who, who organizes, she's a wedding and events planner, and she has a franchise business, and she, so she it's weddings in a box, and you buy the franchise from her. And she turns over nearly a million pounds and she has this super successful business on the outside. The conversation that we have regularly is I hate money. I don't know what it is. My bookkeeper and accountant don't do that. I don't do any of it. How do you run a business that big without not even having an idea? Should I have no idea what's even in my bank account? I don't, I don't know. I don't want to know. I don't like it. It's horrible. I'm like, how do you do that? But she says, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm really creative. I talk to people, I can sell things. So therefore I think it'll be okay. And it one of the one of the best books I ever read when I first started out this business was it was actually for marketing, I read it. It's called Surrounded by Idiots and it's about the red, blue, yellow, green colour types and how those different personality types work. And how, if you're trying to sell or whatever to them, you talk, you talk results in action to a red, you talk feelings and involve me and come on the journey with me to a yellow and, and you, you talk, you know, care and support and lovely to a green and you give them all the details to a blue. And it was basically about how do you how do you script your, your sales pages to cover all of those four types. And, and what's really interesting is when you read that and you then look out in the world and go, oh, yeah, you're a red. I give financial advice very differently to each of those four people. And a lot of business owners are the red, yellow, risk taker, quick, decisive people. They're also the ones that have no attention to detail. Obviously not me. And They have very little attention to detail, should I say, and, and, you know, I mean, that, that's a real generalization and but it, but they're then the people that are, they're the risk takers and they don't, and they don't need the detail. So actually they're just kind of winging a prayer and hope it's okay.

Peta: 22:06

Yeah.

Jess: 22:07

And, and a lot of entrepreneurs fall into that. Well, I, you know, if I haven't got the money in the account, I'll just go out and hustle and sell something else. Make it work, somehow.

Peta: 22:19

That feels, especially when you're dealing with a lot of women, that feels, not only does it feel unsafe, it feels particularly disempowering. I think that this idea that you're kind of just letting someone else. I'm all for, like, I have an accountant, like, because I know that the time that it would take me to deal with the things that I need to do, I could better, I could better spend that time elsewhere on things that would kind of build my business more. So I outsource the things that I know that actually there's no point in me doing, but I still have a, Like, I, I have an understanding of what's going on because, because it's my money and like, I want to know what's happening with it. But kind of outsourcing your power and your decision making like that feels I don't know. Yes.

Jess: 23:19

horrifying. She's an extreme, to be fair. She is an extreme, but it does, it does come up as a thing, as a the number of people that go, Oh, yeah, I'm self employed. Oh, yeah, I don't even have a pension. Almost like a badge of honour. And it's kind of like, that's great, and I'm, you know. You know, and whether that's because they instantly expect me as a financial advisor to try and sell them one, because that, I think that's probably a historic thing. You know, the man from the Peru came around in his pinstripe suit and tried to sell you something and that. And, and so there probably is that, but there's also a I know my, my business is my pension. So, but that's great if you're going to sell it for a lot of money at some point. Yeah, it's a, it's a funny one. Business owners are notoriously bad at looking after themselves. I did a talk last year and my first three questions were, you know, made the room stand up and you can only sit down if you can answer do you know what you would be paid if you did your job for someone else? So if you were in a corporate world doing your job, do you know what the pay packet would look like, you know, benefits and all secondly, do you pay yourself that? That was where the room sat down big time. And then the last one was, if you do pay yourself like that, do you ever pay back to the business because you've, you've taken out, you know, whatever it is, 5, 000 pounds for me, 4, 000 pounds, whatever it is at the month. And that's fantastic. I've taken that out. And then you go, I haven't paid the rent. I just put that back in because I need to cover that direct debit or that thing that suddenly shows up in your bank account as You know, go cardless, we'll be paying tomorrow, and you think, oh God, and you put it

Peta: 25:01

idea what that is. Bloody

Jess: 25:02

put it back again. And out of a room of 310, 320 people, there were five left standing at the end. That could say that they did all of those three things, that they didn't do all of those three things. You know, that they were, they knew what they were, and they paid themselves correctly, and they didn't borrow back from their business.

Peta: 25:20

That's crazy.

Jess: 25:21

And they were the the, you know, the million pound million and a half pound, 10 members in the team type people, you know, even when I would call an ordinary sized business with like five or six people in it, even those owners were going, yep, we have boom and bust months, just like everybody else.

Peta: 25:41

Yeah.

Jess: 25:41

So, so it's about just kind of, you know, learning that boom and bust is normal and then putting in the process. So I'm a big fan of automating everything, get out of your own way and try and automate everything. So that it, it happens in spite of you.

Peta: 26:03

Before we press record we were talking a little bit about the kind of like the reasoning, I guess, behind why we don't have brilliant financial education. generally in society. And it was, it was, it was really interesting because I like that kind of stuff. But this idea that like, if you

Jess: 26:27

conspiracy theory.

Peta: 26:29

what does, if you well, yeah, if you are like if you have parents who, who understand money, And they teach you about that, you are immediately at an advantage from somebody else whose parents don't, and there isn't really, whereas with things like maths and English and history and like, you know, how to play the recorder, there's, schools try and, and kind of cover that so everybody has at least a vague chance of knowing all the same stuff. Whereas when it comes to money that doesn't, and finances, that never happens. Mm hmm.

Jess: 27:06

a, so we carry quite a lot of generational belief. So the same kind of thing, you know, what your, what your grandparents taught your parents taught you, you'll teach your children. And I, and I don't, I, I genuinely don't understand why they don't teach the basics of money and budgeting in sixth form or something at least. You know what I thought? You've, you've learnt maths, you've done all of that, and now, I don't mean balancing books and being, you know, full on accountant. I mean, literally, how much comes in, how much goes out is one more than the other. Good. And, if there's a little bit left, what do I do with it? Or, you know, or how to set yourself up to get a mortgage, or that kind of thing. But, I, I have a little bit of a, of a theory in my own head, that if we were all educated like that, who would do the rubbish jobs? If we all became financially independent at 50, because we'd all, you know, put 20 a month into an ISA or bought stocks and shares at, you know, with that spare 100 you have from budgeting, if we'd all done that from 18, you know, and you get to 40 something, there'd be a, again, because of the power of compound, there'd be this great pot of money that then says, actually, do you know what? I'm now going to work because I choose to. And and I think, you know, the, the way, I mean, the way we work's changed, the way that, the way that people come to me for advice has changed. So 50 and 60 year olds have built up big pensions and they come along because they've done it through work and they've done that, but, you know, The next generation, the 20, 30 somethings, the millennials are far more likely to have a very mixed career and do two or three things for a shorter period of time. And it's much more about life experience on the way back rather than I'm going to work and save up lots of money and then experience life. And it just makes for a little bit of a difference in the way that we, we behave around money and what we do. And I think. I mean the internet's helped massively with education and I, but I, but I do, yeah, if you don't have that, if you don't have that, that grounding to it because of your parents or your peers or, or where you work or what you do, then where do you get that stuff from? Where, where do you learn it? But equally somebody has to do the rubbish jobs. So where do you teach it? Yeah.

Peta: 29:43

But then there are people for whom jobs like that they quite enjoy. But yeah, but not

Jess: 29:48

down to those, comes down to those different colour personality types and You know, I sometimes, I had this conversation with a, a business owner friend the other day, actually. I really wish I could be happy stacking shells at Tesco's. I really wish that that would be, well not, not even that, but you know, doing that repetitive something like that would be fulfilling enough that I don't have this compulsion to go and do, Ooh, what can I do next? How can I make that better? How can I, I sometimes think it's quite tiring, and it would be quite nice to just be very accepting.

Peta: 30:20

Yes. Yeah, I get that. I did try having a very boring admin job for a while because I thought that it would be, I could just leave it at work and go home and then I could do interesting things. And, but yeah, my brain was not satisfied and it just ended up being deathly bored and, and like,

Jess: 30:40

much time and work for that as well, don't you? Yeah?

Peta: 30:42

Also that, that's interesting. This is a random question that I didn't tell you that I was going to ask you, but it's just suddenly come to me. What do you think about universal basic income?

Jess: 30:54

well, I think about it, I it's one of those things that I think is, it's like so many things political, the theory and the idea of them is really good, and the idea that, that we live in a world that that will be possible and or, lovely and doable and equal but there will always be somebody that abuses it somewhere, and there will always be the neighbour watching them going, hmm, they shouldn't be doing that, you know, and, and, and the noisy angry one becomes the, the rhetoric that you hear about it not being a good thing or not being a bad thing or, you know, whichever way, he who shouts loudest gets heard, and it, so it doesn't really answer your question as to what I think about it,

Peta: 31:40

No, that's

Jess: 31:40

but it, because I don't really know what I think about it, You know, it's like so many of those things. I think they're a great idea, but it's how do you make it work?

Peta: 31:53

Yeah. I was reading I was reading something about it earlier and there's there's a book called Utopia for Realists, which is by Rutger Brandmann who wrote Humankind, which is also another fabulous book. And yeah, he talks about all the different experiments where it was done in different places around the world. And it, yeah, really interesting. So just, yeah, the idea of, the idea of, of being satisfied in something that's a little bit more. monotonous and, and being able to find other spaces in your life where you can be creative. So when you don't have to combine, when work wasn't, your job doesn't have to fulfill every single part of your personality and, and brain, then sometimes it makes things a little bit easier. I think,

Jess: 32:37

I think the trouble is you spend too much time at work You know an eight hour day out of your 24 hours of which the other, you know, eight are spent asleep I think it takes up quite a lot of time and space and in the active headspace It's the time that you're awake and alert and and doing so. Yeah, I think it's got to be fulfilling

Peta: 32:57

I think so.

Jess: 32:58

I can't imagine not doing this now

Peta: 33:01

No, I mean, well, that's a great place to be in. Yeah. To kind of think this is, this is your thing. Tell me about Bear, well, don't not tell me cause I know, tell people listening. About Bare Naked Money and kind of what your, what your hopes are for it and, and what it is that you're that you're offering people with it.

Jess: 33:19

So what are my hopes for it? My, my, my reason for doing something about it was I don't know, the starfish, the parable of the starfish, you know, I have a little bit of, can I help one more person make a better financial decision every day? And, and so that's where it came from because people that come to me in my normal, my normal, my main, in the main financial planning business are already wealthy. They just need to understand how to do things. properly, better, right, not to lose what they've already got. And it came about because it was kind of the, these people come to me at 50, but I'd like to speak to them at 30 and, and just do this tiny thing at 30 and you won't need me at 50 because you'll have done 20 years of the right thing. The conversation we then have at 50 is actually, yeah, avoid tax by doing this or this. It's a far simpler. So it started very selfishly as an introducing, if I could get all of the younger people. When they come to me in 20 years time, it'll be great. And then the brain went, you're not going to be here in 20 years time, doing this job that it doesn't work like that, but there's still a, there's still a compulsion that goes, do you know what, what just to help one more person to avoid that financial shame, whatever, to just do it a little bit better every single day. So that's, that's kind of where it came from. And it, comes from a point of, there are things put in place like workplace pensions and auto enrollment and that kind of stuff where actually we, we're given the tools to do the thing with through a corporate job. But there's no point in being given the tools to do something with if no one tells you how to make them work. You know, here, here's a wood plane or here's a screwdriver and you just look at it and go, I haven't As you can see, I'm not good at DIY. But you know, what, what, what is it? How do you make it work? What do you do with it? How do you, how do you make it work for you? And so it's that, that education piece that, that comes into, into play there. So that, that's where it came from. That's where I started. It was to it was purely selfish to start with, but it's actually evolved into something just far more fun and far more soapboxy passionate. I didn't realize quite how driven by it I was.

Peta: 35:43

Yeah. And you talk a lot about the advice of like financial advice gap,

Jess: 35:48

Mm.

Peta: 35:49

that you can, you can access financial advice, but only if you, if you earn, or if you have invested like a certain amount of money. And sometimes in order to get to that point, you need that financial advice. Yeah.

Jess: 36:03

regulation, if I turn around to you and say, you should put 5, 000 pounds into a standard life pension in a balanced managed fund, that becomes what the regulator thinks of as financial advice that generates the equivalent of about two days admin and processing and stuff. So that 32nd sentence, and you say, yes, Jess, I'm going to go and do that. And I say, here, here's the form that then creates that much, Resource and effort to tick box, you know, I have to prove that you, you can afford it. That your, it fits with your risk profile. It gets you to your end goal. It, you know, tick box, tick box, tick box, checklist, checklist, checklist. And it means that conventional financial advice doesn't really work for people with less than quarter of a million pounds because it's not commercially viable to get to quarter of a million pounds. You, you need to know what to do to get there in the first place. And, you know, there, there are people that ring up and say, I've inherited some money. And I don't know what to do with it. Can I talk to you about it? I say, yes, of course. And they say, I've got 30, 000 pounds. And I go, okay, that's going to cost you. It's going to cost you nearly 14 percent of your money. Mad, mad. So, you know, there's an education piece that says, okay, so you've got a lump sum, you know, have, and the conversation we can then have is, have you thought about an ISA? Provided I don't tell you which one. Or go and buy it from life of either and not make wealth whoever provided We have a conversation about what can you do with it as in? You could look at putting some money into stocks and shares isa If you're a higher earner, you could put look at putting some money into a pension you could If you want to help your children with it, you could put it into gysers But there's this restriction or that as soon as it just becomes education and information like that. It's unregulated We can have that conversation, I can record it with a piece of AI, I can send you the summary notes and off you go. And that then becomes affordable, because it's, you know, here's my hourly rate, here's my time, here's, we've taken 45 minutes, it's cost you 150, off you go. And so that, you know, they're always talking about closing the advice gap, but not with any meaningful way of how to do it.

Peta: 38:30

But you can.

Jess: 38:32

I'm on a one woman crusade to close the advice gap. I

Peta: 38:37

Man Crusades. They're my favorite.

Jess: 38:38

think there's two or three of them out there as well, but you know, there's a few more than just me. But it is, it's just a, yeah, I mean I had a conversation with a really lovely lady the other day, all about her. She works for Microsoft, they've given her stock options. I said, well, how have you bought them? Did you have them as this or this? She went, I don't know. They just appear in this account over there. I don't know what they are. I'm like, let's screen share. She wants to buy a flat. We've sold a whole load of them. We've put a lump of money. You know, we had a conversation. I said, if you do this, there'll be this tax bill. You can offset this tax bill by doing this over here. But she's gone and done it and she's chosen where she does it and how she does it. And it's then, it's completely unregulated. And for me, that, that's actually advice. That's. What, what should you do? So it's, yeah,

Peta: 39:27

Okay.

Jess: 39:28

quite exciting that part. I get, yeah, sidetracked, carried away.

Peta: 39:31

No, it's great. That is, yeah. And honestly, that's, yeah, that would be the kind of person that I would want helping me or giving me advice on my money. Somebody who is actually invested. Didn't mean that to be a pun, but it's like somebody who cares. Somebody who isn't just going, well, like this is what I would normally do. So I'm just going to tick a box, but somebody who kind of looks at who you are and what you want and, and helps you work that out and then goes, yeah, this is what you should be thinking about.

Jess: 40:04

And, and then says invested, good word, go investing, super good, because it's where you get to make passive income. And we're all, funnily enough, women are really good at it. We're really we defer making the decision because it's, complicated and we want to understand and we want to know, but once we've decided, we're much better at sticking to a plan and running with it and making it work. And I, I don't know if it's because of the way that we've spoken to, you know, if you read, sorry, I'm on another tangent here, but if you read if you read men's magazines, they talk about when you start investing and when you, how you save money and how you build and provide later that that's where they go. You read the women's magazines, they're about spending money. Buy a handbag, buy diamonds, you're worth it. You're, and, and the two one of them becomes very scary to us. And so we, we just don't do it. The number of women I know that have cash ices all over the place, because they know they need to save and they're doing it, but you can lose money investing, so I'm not doing it. And it's just that education piece about, about it. Yeah.

Peta: 41:14

And I think there have been, I remember like a slew of films where you'd see people investing and then losing loads and loads of money. Because it makes for a good, it makes for a good story, but actually, like, generally speaking, like, whenever I hear you talk about investing, you talk about kind of riding the market, like saying, not worrying about the big rises and falls or the little rises and falls. Because essentially, for want of a better phrase, it all comes out in the wash. Like, if you, if you leave it there, like, you're gonna, it's gonna go up. By the time you need it,

Jess: 41:48

And you're basically buying a tiny, tiny chunk of the big companies in the world and the guys that run the big companies in the world know what they're doing, right? So they make a profit and they pay a dividend and they give you a passive income and you just buy a small chunk of the big companies in the world and off you go. And provided you don't go and buy a single startup company. The trouble is that we all think of investing as buying the one stock that's going to make a million. Well, that's not investing, that's gambling. That's different. You know, people that bought Tesla because it was going up so frantically were actually buying Bitcoin without realizing it. And, and guess what? It came back down again. So it's, but if you go and buy, you know, an index tracker of, The big American companies in the world or the big UK companies, you know, you, you, you buy the Footsie 100 or something like that. You've got a hundred of the biggest companies. You've got Coca-Cola and Blacko. SmithKline and Tescos and Sainsbury's, and, you know, the, we all need that stuff so they

Peta: 42:46

fail, then we have bigger problems as a society than what's in your investment account,

Jess: 42:50

if they're all gone, then quite frankly, the fact that you've lost that money is really not important

Peta: 42:54

because we're all living in caves anyway at that point. Yeah. And I, yeah, I think there is, there's this assumption amongst women that, You not only is investing scary, but also you can you can only do it if you have a lot of money, like it's that you have to have almost like there's this entry kind of requirement that you have to have 10, to invest something. But actually, that's not true at all.

Jess: 43:22

there are apps out there. You can start with two pounds. I mean, you're not going to make an awful lot of money if you're only putting in two pounds a week or whatever it is, but, but you can start that small. I mean, there's the classic story, I wheel it out all the time, my four step son. I made him start his pension at 18 with 20 pounds a month. Ooh, what am I going to do that for? Ooh. I mean, honestly, teenage boy grumbling. What can I say? And then I showed him the quote and I went, cause it'll be 1. 2 million when you're 65 and he just went, I could buy a Lamborghini. I'm like, okay, that's not why we're doing this quite,

Peta: 43:54

was not the plan. Yeah.

Jess: 43:56

And it, and that's that whole buy something sensible, mainstream and hold it forever and ignore the, you know, ignore the falls. Everybody gets terrified and I want to sell because my money's going down. It's like. No, go, go put more in. At that point, you know, stare down the absolute fear. And I say that like, it's very easy. I did it over, I did it, but I didn't do, I had chunk of money in a savings account and I watched the market fall. It was like, I need to go and buy this because I know what's going to happen. Well, it took me four days to decide to do it. And I then only did it with a quarter of the money that was in my savings account. So even knowing what I know, it was like, Ooh, face the fear. And ever since then, I've moaned at myself for not having done the whole lot, but, you know, I think that's perfect.

Peta: 44:47

Other than nothing? I think that's the general rule. Cool. Okay. So before I let you go firstly, where can people come and find you and find out about Bare Naked Money jump on board with all that and then I want you to tell people about the Bare Naked Investing course that is coming out pretty soon.

Jess: 45:07

Okay, so, follow me, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram Jessamy Walker, J E S S A M Y. There's only, I think there's two of me out there, definitely. Um, there, and then Bare Naked Money on Instagram. Follow all of those there's a link to join email list, join our email list for really good marketing tips. Peter Wright says really good. And just stop. And then yes, end of September. I said that to someone this morning, I went, it's the end of September and he went, it is now when I was like, okay, I know it is de mystifying investing, come and get started really simple, straightforward, bite sized video, workbooks a bit of work about mindset and what you're going to experience and feel through the journey. Tax wrappers, how to shelter, whatever it is you're doing from the tax man, the best way. And then actually how to get started investing, what to look for, what to do. And then a whole roundup of how all of those bits fit together. New course,

Peta: 46:07

going to be great. Very exciting. Cool. I will pop all those links in the show notes. But yes, come and join the email list because I do write them, but I write them based on amazing things that Jess has said that's really useful and really helpful advice. So, you're getting advice from her. It's just wrapped up in, you know, words from me. Um, Thank you so much.

Jess: 46:27

taken out of it.

Peta: 46:29

Maybe not all of them. It was really, really lovely to chat to you as always. And yeah, everybody needs to go and find you and and follow you and tackle yeah, tackle our slightly wonky financial mindsets together. Excellent.

Jess: 46:44

good fun. And yeah, yeah. Wonky financial mindsets. Let's go sort them out like that.