- Hey guys, I am with Chelsea from The Financial Diet.
If you don't know The Financial Diet
you have to check out their You Tube channel.
It's actually my favourite channel at the moment.
It's one of those ones that you see
there's an upload and before you even do anything
it's the first one I click on.
- That's the nicest thing I've ever heard, thank you.
Got a true fan here.
This is extremely exciting.
- Tell us a bit about what you do on The Financial Diet.
- The Financial Diet is, as Hannah mentioned,
a You Tube channel, we also have a website
where we're just young women mostly talking about money.
We are not financial advisors
so we definitely come from it from the perspective
that probably you guys would,
which is we don't feel that we understand money
as well as we'd like to and we just want to
get better and ask the questions and
talk about the things that help us get better with money.
And, I have to say for a financial channel
I feel like it's pretty watchable
because of a lot of finance content is very boring
and I think ours is not.
- I would agree.
Speaking of the fact that Chelsea is not
a financial advisor and obviously neither am I,
we're going to answer your money questions
and try and give you some advice.
But more just generally I think
breaking down the taboos of talking about money
because it's something I love talking about in real life.
- Me too.
- I asked for questions on Twitter and Instagram.
Just going to see what comes up.
Jessica Sammler asks how should I balance
risk and growth at various stages of my life?
- I assume she means financial and
not driving a car down a highway with your lights off.
- Maybe don't do that any stage in your life.
- As far as risk when you're young,
there are a lot of people who will say that
being young is a time to take a lot of financial risk.
I personally think it's more about personality type
and what is important to you.
I think that there are many many people for whom
the idea of risk is very attractive when their young
but I think they don't necessarily understand
what that implies.
For example, on The Financial Diet one of the
first things that we encourage people to do
is to get a retirement account,
like a 401K or an IRA.
- I still haven't yet.
It's like next on my list.
- Yeah, well it should be the first on your list.
Retirement accounts are one of the least risky
things you can do in terms of a financial investment.
Which a lot of people feel like it's boring
and why should I care and I'm never going to be old,
I'm going to be 28 years old forever
but you won't and so these risky things
that you might be attracted to are probably not
what you want to be doing in the long term.
- Also, not in terms of financial risk taking
but career stuff.
When you are young that maybe is more of the time
to take those risks potentially
if you don't have a lot of other responsibilities.
When I graduated from UNI I was like,
"Well, I have no mortgage,
"I've got no kids, I luckily have parents
"who will still support me if I need them,"
so I was like, "I'm going to move to London
"and try and be a You Tuber."
- Clearly you're not going to do that when you're older.
But I do think I hate when people talk in terms of
living like you're going to die tomorrow
because you're most likely not going to die tomorrow
and you will have to live with every choice that you made.
But I'm just, I think you can tell from this conversation,
I'm just not a risk taker.
- She asked for five but let's just go with one,
finance, money, work
advice you'd wish you'd heard earlier.
Retirement fund.
- Retirement fund.
I think the number one thing is just
automate everything you don't like doing.
For me savings is a big one,
make sure that that money is automatically
deducted when a check hits because
it is nigh impossible to see that
money go into your account,
experience it emotionally and then have to
go into your account take that money away
from yourself and be like,
"Well I'm not going to do anything fun with this,
"it goes into the sad account I can't touch."
- When I was still registered as self employed
anytime I would get a paycheck,
because if you're self employed you're not
already paying tax you have to pay if after,
so I'd get a paycheck and then I would do the math
and I'd then have to actively like,
"20% of that goodbye," you are for me to pay tax
and then I've had friends of mine who just
didn't do that and then they hit by this tax bill
and they thought all of that money was theirs.
- I think the biggest thing that you have to do,
whether it's saving money or paying back debt
or whatever it is you just have to learn
to mentally not even acknowledge that money.
- Like, it's not mine, it's not my money.
- Never think of it.
Even when you're doing how much I earn.
Only say the number after you've taken that out
because even just thinking of it in terms of like,
"I should have this much money,"
will make you feel devastated when you
can't spend it on things that you want to buy.
Savings is all you.
No one's going to make you save.
- Someone just said I just need to stop
spending money on food.
- Same, I've got no answer. - How do you do that?
- In New York in particular I've never been
in a city before in my life where the idea
of going out and spending money on food
and drink is so normalised and
everyone does it.
To put it in perspective,
if you go a bar in New York and martinis
$11 your like, "This is a banging happy hour."
This is such a good price which is just utterly psychotic.
- But to stop spending money on food
I think the biggest piece of advice is just
cook at home if you can,
that saves so much money.
- We cover that a tonne on TFD.
I've made us more irresponsible than we are.
I would say a solid 20% of what we talk about
on the site is just how to cook and be in your home
much more intelligently because that saves
a huge amount of money.
- Soulcatch asks what's the better investment,
stocks, bonds, 401K,
sugar daddy, crypto currency, lottery ticket?
The 401K is retirement.
- 401K is one kind of retirement account, wow.
- I would say definitely not lottery ticket.
- It's definitely not lottery tickets.
Lottery's are a tax on the poor almost literally
and should never ever be participated in.
- It's gambling.
- It's gambling, and not even fun gambling.
When you actually go to Las Vegas you get
free drinks the whole time you're at the table,
you can just hang out all night,
have some wings, play cards all night, it's fun.
- Meet interesting people.
- And some ones you wouldn't want to meet.
Lottery is definitely at the bottom.
Crypto currency, we've done several videos on crypto
and every time we just get screamed at.
People who are into crypto,
you could literally find out
that holding crypto currency causes cancer
and they would still be so so into the concept.
Too volatile though, not for the average person,
not something people should consider.
- Do they mean a literal sugar daddy
or is sugar daddy a thing?
- Dating a wealthy older man usually.
- Or woman, sugar mama.
- I can't say that's a bad investment
but then on the other side he has such a
power dynamic over her.
- I feel like in society we judge a lot of people,
or we judge women who will date someone
who has a lot of money.
But she's just looking out for herself, maybe.
- Listen my actual opinion on all that stuff
is that all of life is a power exchange
and an exchange of someone giving something
they have for something they want and
I personally I don't feel that it isn't in any,
we are in any place to judge the
consensual relationships that people form.
So if you're in a sugar daddy relationship
and every party is happy is with it
and getting what they want, have at it.
Oh and to answer the actual ones,
I think a lot of people don't understand
what retirement accounts actually are.
Basically retirement accounts are investments.
They're just a basket of different investments
that move really slow with the market
and they're sure and steady.
Retirement accounts have the added benefit
of being pre-tax.
The government is essentially subsidising
these investments so that people can
build their retirement.
You don't need to think of it as different
from stocks and bonds,
those are included in retirement accounts.
I think when people think of stocks and bonds,
they're thinking of buying individual stocks,
like thinking, "Wow Google is doing really well lately,
"I'm going to get some Google."
But that is actually one of the most
risky ways to invest and it's not necessary to investing.
There are other things like mutual funds,
ETF's, index funds, etc.,
that allow you to invest in a
more diversified and safe way.
So the safest of all of those investments
would be the retirement account and
I just want people to remember always
that when you hear the word investment
that does not necessarily mean
picking individual stocks.
- What are the best ways for millennials,
or just anyone I guess,
to save money and be eco-friendly?
- Definitely number one is working down your waste.
It's not just the trash that you throw away
it's also lights that are on in rooms your not in,
heating and cooling that's excessive.
Everything that is a nice to have but not a
need to have, working on cutting that back.
Even like the amount of groceries that you buy.
I personally end up throwing away a lot of groceries.
- And then you're saving money as well.
- Yeah, then you're saving a tonne a money.
- I'm a student and afraid of being self employed.
In your opinion what's the most important
trait for working for yourself.
I feel like the most important trait is self motivation.
No one else is holding you accountable
for getting the work done.
- I would say opportunist too
because if you're self employed you
essentially have to become a sales person
and as well as your own manager.
I'm not going to say that you need a
slippery relationship with ethics
but you at least need to be out
for yourself at all costs.
One perfect example is that free lancers
have a very very difficult time getting paid
a lot of the time and paid on time.
You have to be okay with really going after people
and many times I've lied to the
accounting department of the place
and I was like, "I was referred to you by this person."
I wasn't, I Googled the email because
I wasn't getting anyone who could
respond to me about when my check was coming in.
I think just knowing that you have to be a true
advocate for yourself and not fearing that
real stand up attitude is huge.
- That is one of the biggest problems I've seen
with a lot of my friends.
On the one hand wanting to go full bull doze,
on the other hand not wanting to
ruin that relationship with that client.
But I'm like if they're constantly giving you
late payments do you want to work with them?
- Do you even want it, yeah.
- But then it's a case of you don't have
anything else coming in right now
so actually you need that.
- Basically when you're free lancing
you have to make the case for yourself
with every new person.
And I think you have to get used to the idea,
with projects, biting off more than you can chew.
Accepting to do things even if you don't know
that you can deliver them on time and then
forcing yourself to have to do it.
It's not like a regular nine to five job
where your tasks are super well defined and
the same thing every time.
When I sold my first book I agreed to a timeline
that I was 90% sure I couldn't keep
but I was like, "I'm getting this contract,"
and then I forced myself to do it.
So, opportunism is would say.
- How did you make the transition from working
a nine to five to being fully self employed?
You work for yourself but you own a company
so you have given yourself a nine to five.
- But it wasn't always that way.
When we first stared TFD my partner Lauren and I,
who co-founded it, we started part time.
We had full time jobs.
We were just doing nights and weekends
for the first six months
and then when we went full time
it was just the two of us for the
first little while there and I was
full time free lance before
several years prior so I've definitely
done it and I would just say,
as I just mentioned,
making the transition a very slow one.
You have to save up the money necessary,
you have to make sure you have enough
of a cushion financially when you're,
like you have enough clients for example,
or you have enough work waiting for you.
Even three months or so of nights and weekends
on this project is worth it.
Quit your job and follow your dreams
is just such bad advice.
- You need that foundation.
- You should dissolve into the new job.
- I'm curious, what's it like the other way around.
Then going free lance to?
- Full time job? - Yeah.
- I just work in a rather atomized way.
Even when I was at the office at my old job
I had my headphones on all day and
I'm very much in my little zone and
I just feel like that is also one of the qualities
that if you want to go free lance
that's a good indicator.
Do you like being alone?
A lot of people think that they do
but when you're like year two into free lancing,
you're like, "I haven't worn real clothes is days."
- I haven't spoken to a real person.
- Spoken to a person and you have to be okay with that
and I genuinely am so even when I was
at a nine to five I almost acted as if
I were free lance.
- We'll do one more question.
Did you have a lot of side hustles
while you were building your brand slash
how many sources of revenue did you have?
Also, if you had a day job besides
You Tube slash authoring at one point
how did you schedule time for the You Tube side?
See you were saying that you did TFD on
evenings and weekends,
I was doing You Tube on the side
of doing a degree.
Even though I did history so it's
six hours of contact time.
I was in the library ten to six everyday.
- Not me.
- So then I would do You Tube in
the evenings and weekends 'cause that was my hobby,
that's how I scheduled it
which is like some of how you started.
- When I first got into writing as a career path
which was back in 2011 I had four jobs at the time.
I was an au pair which is like a nanny,
I was a tutor and I tutored two different things,
it was paying a lot more than writing was.
I was also writing articles free lance
and then I would pick up odd jobs as well
on the internet.
People were like I need someone to help me move
and stuff like that.
Honestly a bit of a miracle I didn't get murdered
when I was doing this.
- I'm really tempted to sign up to
to Task Rabbit and just be like,
"Pay me to build your Ikea furniture for you."
- You like doing that?
- I love doing that. - Not me.
I'll hire you.
You can come and assemble tonnes of stuff.
- I love it.
For me after UNI I got a job in catering
when I moved to London whilst trying to do You Tube
and then I got a part time job working for
a youth charity making You Tube videos for that
and that was two days a week.
So it was great because it was like
what I was doing as my part time job
really fed into what I was trying to do
and then it got to a point where I
dissolved into it.
- Similarly I would do a lot of copy writing jobs.
Fun fact, they pay 5 to 10 times as much
as regular articles and granted they're often
just mind numbingly boring.
You have to write 2000 words about an AC unit
but money is money buddy.
I would write for prestigious magazines
that would pay literally zero dollars an article
and I would write for Frigidaire and
get my whole rent paid that month.
- Corporations are where the money is at.
Not an art, don't be an artist.
- You know a lot of people are really snotty about that,
about like it's not art.
I'm like, "Fine, I can't eat art, buddy."
- Well thank you so much for being on my channel.
- Thank you for having me.
- Thanks for sending in your questions.
I love talking about this stuff
so let me know guys if you want more
money, career-y kind of content.
Thanks for watching please give this video
a thumbs up if you enjoyed it.
I've also done a video over on The Financial Diet's channel
so you can go and check that out.
- Come see her.
- So don't forget to subscribe and hit that
notification button and I'll see you soon.
Bye! - Bye.