S10 Ep1 What Matters and Why

Simon

:: 00:06

Welcome to 'Where Your Treasure Is...', the podcast where faith meets finance.

Bex

:: 00:09

I'm Bex Elder.

Simon

:: 00:11

And I'm Simon Glazier. Each episode, we're going to explore how biblical wisdom can guide our everyday money decisions.

Bex

:: 00:18

We'll be looking at how we can give generously, save wisely, and navigate the complex financial realities we face.

Simon

:: 00:25

But remember, investments can go up as well as down.

Bex

:: 00:29

This is 'Where Your Treasure Is...'

Simon

:: 00:30

Let's get started.

Bex

:: 00:33

Hello. You are listening to 'Where Your Treasure Is...', a podcast all about faith and finance. I am Bex Elder. I'm one of the co-hosts and I would say I'm neither an expert in faith or finance, but my co-host, Simon Glazier, is an expert in at least one of them. Simon, why don't you introduce yourself?

Simon

:: 00:55

I'm glad you said 'expert', Bex, because you could have said 'he's experienced; he's an old man who's been doing this for a very long time; he must know something by now!'

But, yeah, I'm a chartered financial planner, officially an expert in finance. And the two of us definitely have enough of a faith history to be able to hopefully connect those two topics together from time to time.

Bex

:: 01:13

And so you've joined us at an exciting moment. It is a brand new season. It's season 10, would you believe it? And this season we have titled it 'Money and Me'.

So, Simon, what was the thinking behind that, as a concept of a season?

Simon

:: 01:30

I suppose we've done lots of content, and most of our content relates to how we as individuals interact with money, how it interacts with us and our attitudes and our biases. And so for this season, we wanted to do a refresh - not only go over some of the same ground, but present it in a different way, but also use it as a springboard to expand how we deliver some of this content on our podcast. It's in the 10th season, which means we're actually gonna hit our hundredth episode sometime soon.

Bex

:: 02:01

Ooh.

Simon

:: 02:02

And maybe time for a bit of freshening up. So, we're gonna do a little bit more in terms of our social media content, a bit more interaction to give people a chance to engage with the podcast, and also potentially get some of this content to a wider audience.

Bex

:: 02:16

And so you will undoubtedly hear us mention it again at the end of multiple episodes, but if you're not following us on Instagram and if you'd like to sign up for the monthly email, which is gonna be full of great content and maybe some wee behind the scenes snippets, you can do that by going to the link in the show notes of this episode.

Now, Simon, I'm aware that we can all have complicated relationships with money. Sometimes it's good, sometimes less so, and it massively changes over time. And so if we are going to be delving into that, it feels only fair that you tell us a bit about your journey with money first.

And as you mentioned, like, you are an old man, so you do have a longer journey with money than say I do!

Simon

:: 03:01

Thanks, Bex - appreciate it!

Bex

:: 03:02

You're welcome. So where would you like to start? How far back in time are we going?

Simon

:: 03:08

I was born when I was nil is a bit too far to go, to be honest! I think it's worth saying to begin with, everybody has a story / history when it comes to money.

And for most people, that story does begin in childhood. It begins with our learned experience from how our parents managed money, or didn't manage money, as the case may be.

And we just pick up a whole set of norms.

Everybody thinks their childhood is normal until they meet somebody else and go, hey, either you're weird or I'm weird and it's not me, so it's probably you! So my story does go back to childhood.

The first real gripping memory I have with regards to money is a story that has really defined a lot of my trajectory and what got me into the career that I'm doing now. And it's a story that starts with a car. And the car was blue, lovely - it was a Peugeot and it was a Peugeot 204.

Bex

:: 04:08

Sounds great!

Simon

:: 04:09

And it wasn't our car and then it became our car.

And the situation was that my parents had become divorced and my mum needed to start a job that was a bit further from home to bring in the money to pay for the mortgage and look after myself and my sister. But she didn't have a car and someone gave us a car.

And I remember somehow clocking this and I was probably 8 or 9 years old and, and thinking these two thoughts, maybe not as well versed as they are now, but thought number one was: 'Wow, there are people out there who are so rich they can afford two cars! I mean, that was my measure at the time. Two cars, wow!'

We didn't have one car.

And then, 'Wow, there are some people out there who are so generous that they would give one of their cars away! And somebody,' - I don't know who it was to this day - 'has given us one of their cars!'

And I kind of felt this idea sink into my being: one day, I want to be the kind of person who can give a car away.

And I think that started me on a journey that came back to fruition, years and years later, of 'How do I want to manage this thing called money in my life?'

Bex

:: 05:22

So you've had this moment as a relatively young child. What happens next? Are you suddenly at, you know, age 11, running a business empire where you're consistently giving away cars? What happened?

Simon

:: 05:35

No, not so much. Eventually, what happens in life - I'm living in a single parent family for a good number of years, my mum gets remarried, my stepdad runs his own business; I get involved in that, just labouring, earning a bit of pocket money, not really doing much sensible with it - although I do remember I was definitely the kind of person who would save and count my money and my sister was the kind of person who would spend her money. So I always seem to have more than her. But we're talking about maybe tens of pounds, not into the hundreds and certainly not the thousands of pounds.

My first real practical introduction to managing money was becoming a student, going to university.

I moved from the Wirral in Merseyside up to Aberdeen and got a student grant, took out a student loan and suddenly realised, oh, I have to somehow make this money last me all term or, for some of it, all year! And I have no idea who it was - probably my mum - suggested the idea of budgeting. And what that looked like for me is I bought a little red notebook and in that little red notebook I began a budget - literally, every penny I spent. And at that time it was probably mostly in cash, although I used cheques as well - wasn't quite in the age of debit cards and credit cards. I wrote it down and so I had a very good handle on how much I had at the start and how much I was spending and therefore what was left.

And, absolutely, that habit has kept me going - probably a little bit too much detail I've put into that from time to time - but it meant that I didn't get into trouble with money.

There wasn't always lots of it. Certainly, I had friends who would take out their student loan and they invested it - they didn't need it; they set it aside; they put it in a savings account to make a bit of profit on it. No, every penny that I got, I needed.

But I got to the end of my four years as a student. I didn't work much earning money during that time - I was kind of studying or doing stuff with the church - but I came out the end with, apart from a student loan, in a pretty rounded position. And I felt I had learned a good grounding, certainly of avoiding debt.

I had probably a couple of thousand pounds in a student loan account which was interest free. Fantastic! And then my student loan to be paid off in the future years.

Bex

:: 07:52

Now, that in itself is quite a remarkable story of money, or maybe I just feel like that because I wish I had managed my money like that at university!

But what I'm hearing so far is you've seen remarkable generosity and you have known from a young age the value of money and that those two things have shaped how you've spent your money so far in terms of realising the significance it can have to other people, but also just the reality of the costs of life.

So what happens next? You've graduated; you start earning money, presumably - what does that look like?

Simon

:: 08:27

Well, even before then, there was a wee test, I think, of managing money. I'm not quite sure when it was that I became aware of the concept of the biblical teaching around money - I've been at church all my childhood life, church with my mum and my stepdad - and then I'd picked a church as a student to go to, and there was some teaching on money. And it probably improved over time, but there was a moment my gran died and left some money to myself and my sister and my mum, obviously. And I inherited about £10,000. This is in the 90s, and it was a decent amount of money, but I had no real need for it.

And I remember making some decisions pretty quickly: I'm going to give at least 10% of that away - that feels like teaching the church would approve of. I've never really had much money, but going to do that.

The church was planning a mission trip - I'm going to pay for that mission trip. That was £1,000 plus, which otherwise would never have been an opportunity for me. And that was really formative to go on that one.

But then I thought to myself: hmm, if it was an opportunity for me to go on this mission trip, then maybe there's somebody else out there for whom it would also be an opportunity. And they haven't just inherited a few thousand pounds from a grandparent - so, I'm going to buy another place on that mission trip and then someone else can go.

And I actually bought a motorbike as well.

And then the rest of it kind of got frittered away, so I didn't save it. I wasn't really wise - 'Here's my deposit on a house. Here's a car I'm going to buy one day.' No, it got used.

But it felt like in that moment, generosity, the idea of giving something away, was early in my 'You've got money, what are you going to do with it?' journey. And I'm glad that happened because I never wanted to be controlled by money. I'd grown up with there not being always too much money; there was probably always just about enough - we certainly weren't poor, but most people around us were better off than us, is the kind of way I thought about it.

And so I got to that stage as a student: bit of money, be generous, but it felt good - never looked back, never regretted it.

And then, yeah, the first job comes along. And actually for me, my first job coincided pretty much with getting married. And so I'm having this conversation with my fiancee, she was by then, about what money might be like for us as a couple. And I'm getting my first job. and I think her parents were very relieved that she was marrying somebody who actually had some chance of income. And, yeah, we had those conversations: 'How are we going to approach this?' 'What's your attitude towards money?' 'What's your belief?' 'What are your values?' 'What's your understanding of the biblical teaching?'

And I think the one thing that I remember we agreed on was - well, let's start by giving 10% to the local church. If we want to give above and beyond that, great, we'll find causes we want to give to, but let's start there. And as it's likely that our income is going to increase, let's try and give a bit more away every year. Let's try and increase our generosity.

I think it was the fact that she agreed to that that made us quite compatible as a couple. We had similar approaches towards money and towards generosity.

Bex

:: 11:28

And I think actually that similarity in money and generosity and your compatibility there probably speaks to a wider compatibility, doesn't it, in terms of the whole name of our podcast comes from the piece of scripture that talks about 'Where your treasure is, your heart also lies'. And so actually, in having those conversations with your now wonderful wife, you were also discussing, actually, 'What are our values in this moment? Where do we want to put our trust? Do we want to put it in what we make, or do we want to put it in what we believe God teaches and what we see him doing?'

And the other thing I really enjoyed about that section was I didn't know about the mission trip or the motorcycle. One of them surprised me; one of them did not at all. Spoiler - it was the motorbike that surprised me!

Simon

:: 12:17

Well, my mum learned to ride a motorbike when she was 50; my stepdad had ridden motorcycles in the past - it was a midlife crisis for a student, if you put it that way!

Now, I had the motorbike for a number of years and eventually managed to give it away to somebody. The giving it away coincided with marrying a doctor and the doctor's opinion was motorbikes aren't terribly safe! And my comeback was, 'Yes, but there are fewer motorbike accidents than there are car accidents.'

Absolutely true... but a motorbike accident is a whole lot more serious than a car accident, generally!

So, I've had that season and I'm not going back to it!

Bex

:: 12:56

And there again, we see another example of your compatibility with your wife's wisdom!

Simon

:: 13:00

I listen, yes... sometimes!

Bex

:: 13:04

And so you're in this really significant part of your life where you have a lot of changes all at once. You've got a new job, you're getting married, you're moving in together, you're combining your finances - what did that look like? And what happened next?

Simon

:: 13:19

Really formative time. Absolutely. So getting married, we made a call very early on - we're going to put together a joint bank account and all the money that's going to be for our wedding is going to go into that joint bank account. And really the intention was that once we were married, it would just be our joint bank account - we wouldn't keep separate accounts.

So I think, being young and naive and not having any money, that felt absolutely fine - I'm not losing any control because I've got nothing to lose control of.

Also, I was marrying a doctor, so I had a pretty strong sense that she's going to be earning money pretty quickly - almost a guaranteed job out of university, progressive income, strong pension provision; whereas I had fallen into this industry, as it was back then, of financial advice. It was a very sales driven, commission paying job. I enjoyed it, but there were certain culture clashes and I've spoken about that other times in the podcast. But there were times when there was good money coming in, you know - that volatility of income, being self employed.

When you sell enough, you earn a lot. If you don't, you don't. And so we had a good degree of stable income and then we had some volatile income on top of that.

And there were times when we had more than enough. And the question was, 'Well, what do you do with the surplus? Is it something that you just set aside for the future? Is it something you just spend or something you just give?'

And so our developing conversation as a couple around money had to deal with these issues of, 'When do we give? When do we spend? When do we save - how much, to whom, on what?'

And we didn't get it right to begin with. When we had plenty, I think we probably spent more than we needed to. We never didn't have enough, I don't think. But what we realised many, many years later was the different skills we brought to the table. I was learning to be a good manager of money - I always had been; I counted the pennies; I counted the pounds; I'd saved. We had enough... but I wasn't very free with money. I could give it away far easier than spend it on ourselves.

And I think that frustrated her to some extent. I was a pretty scruffy student. Clothes didn't really matter to me - just wear what you've got; you don't need anything new. There were times when she wisely said, 'Actually, no - we should buy some more nice clothes.' Like, for example, on the first day of our honeymoon when we rock up to this nice hotel and they have a dress code for dinner and nothing that I have meets that dress code! And it's a Sunday and all the shops in the local town were closed!

Bex

:: 15:41

Nice!

Simon

:: 15:42

Yeah, so we journey through that! Eventually, we realise I'm good at managing money, but she is very good at using money. She has a much better sense of the value of money.

In fact, using it as a tool - what we now say - is really important. Money is a tool - I learned that probably from her without realising it. It's got to be used. It isn't just there to accumulate and save up. It has a purpose!

One of the goals we set ourselves really early on - I suggested it to her and she probably nodded, saying, 'Sure, sounds okay,' - was to aim to pay off our mortgage by the time we were 50.

And I think I did that because I'd seen people who I was beginning to advise in their 60s, approaching retirement, still having mortgage debt; or those who were younger who every time they got a pay rise, tried to buy a bigger house, and they were never satisfied. They wanted more because they had more money - let's have a bigger car and a bigger car loan, a bigger holiday, bigger credit card bill, bigger house, bigger mortgage. They never got ahead of the curve.

But for us, one day we moved from a two bedroom flat into a four bedroom house because we anticipated having family, wanting to have space, to be hospitable - let's not buy the biggest house we can afford; let's buy a house we think could be a forever house that we can actually get paid off.

And let's not try keeping up with the Joneses once we're there. Let's get our debts paid down; let's enjoy the space we have.

It's not a way to measure success - look how big my house is; look how big my salary is!

It's a tool! And what was the tool for our house? It was to raise a family and to be generous with hospitality, and that's how we've used it.

And we're on track, Bex. I can say confidently, we're on track.

Bex

:: 17:23

Come on!

Simon

:: 17:24

By 50! And that's amazing for some people and really easy for others. But that's been a goal of ours - we've been married over 25 years now and we're going to tick it off one day and say, 'Yeah, we chose that as young adults; we have done it!' And I'm going to consider that, yes, it's a financial success - it is! But, actually, it's a success of relationship and communication!

Bex

:: 17:43

And I'm so glad you gave us an update because I was just about to check in on that and see how it was going.

And what that also speaks to, perhaps unsurprisingly, is your ability to plan ahead and to not just plan ahead with your time, but also your resources and particularly your money, which, as a financial adviser, you might expect you've been good at. But what has that planning ahead looked like in other areas of your life?

Simon

:: 18:10

As a financial adviser and then eventually becoming what I would now call a financial planner, you don't start off knowing this stuff - you actually have to learn it and then apply it and then experience it with other people.

And what I think became clear to me eventually was those who have planned and end up with too much, one might say, in later life - they've been very good at saving, very good at investing for the long term. And the point comes where they've got more than enough and they've kind of missed the sweet spot of when it could be spent.

Then there are plenty who are the opposite. They spend it when they get it. They don't plan for the future. They realise too late, they haven't been putting money aside for their pensions. They've got nothing in the bank, they've got no savings, they've got no investments, they have enjoyed life and they're going to pay the price in the future.

I erred on the side of the first. I was going to save, save, save, and then have too much in later life. And with the help of my wife and education with other people, learning to get the balance.

And we talk a bit about borrowing from your future self - when you take out a mortgage, for example, you get the money now, but your future self has to earn that money to pay the mortgage off. So, you're borrowing from your future self and at the same time you're saving for your future self.

You put money into pension, you put money into savings or maybe investments so that your future self can have that money available to spend on what they want. Then, it could be education for your children, it could be a bigger house, or it could be a holiday or retirement.

And there's a constant tension between spending now, borrowing from your future self, or saving for your future self.

And I didn't have the language and the knowledge about it just then, but over time I've realised you learn, you experience, you gather together the knowledge of, 'Ah, this seems to be a good way of doing it.' And I'm now more passionate with people about saying, 'Look, you do need to prepare for the future. There is a future you that's going to need some resource. You can't work forever. The state won't provide everything that you need, let alone what you want. But don't only live for the future, you must also live for today. Life is not a rehearsal. It can end, oh, too quickly. And so we have to create memories, we have to create experiences.'

And in the middle of that, the tension is, 'Well, I'm going to save a bit for the short term, save a bit for the long term, plan for the future, live for today... with a finite budget!'

And so it often comes down to understanding who you are, what are your values, your beliefs, your priorities, those of the person that you're living with? And as your children grow up, if you have them, can you instil some of that into them as well? Money is a lifelong journey!

We never get it perfectly right, but we can do, let's say, 'better than the average', as Yogi Bear might once have said!

Bex

:: 20:50

And those are some of the topics and conversations we are going to be diving into over this season, which I'm really looking forward to. But, Simon, maybe you could just bring this episode to an end by explaining why 'Where Your Treasure Is...' exists.

Simon

:: 21:05

So it came clear to me eventually that I had knowledge and skills and experience that were valuable. People would pay me to give them financial planning and advice. But there were plenty of people who needed that advice who couldn't afford to pay me. It's expensive to engage a financial planner to do what I do, but I'd have conversations with friends and with family and begin to impart some of this knowledge, and it was good for them - it was useful.

So, 'Where Your Treasure Is...' was born out of a desire to share some of that knowledge, not within the highly regulated financial services structure / regulation, but as knowledge, as guidance and as information.

And over the past three years or so, we've been doing this, almost 100 episodes, we have been able to share that knowledge and build almost a library, a back catalogue of information that others can tap into. And part of it is, yes, to give information that is financial - you can get loads of that - but to deliver it to an audience who maybe have a faith background, and they're trying to balance what their understanding of the Bible is, their teaching through church with their personal circumstances of finance, what their parents taught them, what society as a whole says to us about money.

And we've loved doing this and we'll keep doing this, but it feels like there's also a moment of 'We can do more - we've proven a point, but can we get this information out to more people?' We don't need people to listen to this podcast. I'm not doing it to generate more clients for the business. (Don't need that.) It is to share knowledge and information and, hopefully, some godly wisdom.

So, by expanding what we put onto our Instagram page, by putting out a monthly newsletter, if we can get more people hear some of the stuff we talk about, then maybe it's going to influence some more lives. And that, in turn, could have a positive influence on them, their families, their communities, their church, the kingdom as a whole.

Let's share the godly wisdom that He has given to us to as many people as possible.

Bex

:: 23:08

And, so, that's what we have been doing and are going to continue to do over this season and beyond.

And we would love you to join us in that journey, whether that's by listening along, whether that's by leaving a review, whether that's sending us an email and telling us some topics you would like us to discuss - whatever that looks like, we would love to hear from you!. And until then, we'll see you next time.

Simon

:: 23:32

See you next time for some more money and me, but actually less of me and more of everybody else!

Bex

:: 23:37

Sounds good! I'm certainly up for more of me! See you next week.

That's it for this episode of 'Where Your Treasure Is...'.

Simon

:: 23:46

Thanks for listening. Let's keep learning to be good stewards of all we've been given.

Bex

:: 23:50

See you next time!