Demystifying Money & Finance with ‘That Money Guy’: Gabriel Nussbaum #100

Hello and welcome to the 100th episode of The Company Doctor. And what an incredible rollercoaster of a 5 years it's been. Now, as you can probably remember, a hell of a lot of pretty heavy stuff was going down in October 2020. The then Prime Minister Boris Johnson was about to announce a second national lockdown. The legalese of the Brexit deal was still being hotly debated and the UK recorded its wettest ever day. But amid all of that gloom and darkness, the first ever episode The company Doctor Podcast emerged like a brilliant beacon of lighthearted business banter. And since then, we've been lucky enough to be joined by a multitude of impressive and insightful guests from across different industries and from across the world. Now, I'm thrilled to say that we're carrying on that tradition for our 100th episode with none other than Gabriel Nussbaum, aka That Money Guy, a personal finance specialist, journalist, and content creator with a massive social media following and even bigger brain. Gabriel's here to help us demystify some of the more daunting topics relating to money and finance in his now famously charming and charismatic manner. So without further ado, Gary, Gabriel, over to you.

Hi Gabriel, thank you so much for joining. We're on episode 100, we've got the 3 Gs and we're really fortunate to have Gabriel. Welcome to The Company Doctor.

Very honored to be here, thank you for having me.

Oh, it's exciting. And I thought before we get into it, because the topic today is demystifying finance and money, so we're really Looking forward to it, and what a great episode to have for our 100th. But I thought maybe you could tell us what makes Gabriel Gabriel. Tell us, the audience, who you are.

Very, uh, interesting. I'll try and keep it brief. So I'm Gabriel, but you might, um, have heard of me under another name, which is That Money Guy, which pretty much gives away what I do. I try and teach people as much as I can about money. It's an undertaught, underserved, underspoken about subject in this country in particular, and I'm trying to use places like social media or any platform that you cannot shut me up on to essentially teach about the topic of money because it is fundamental whether you like it or not, you need to know about it. So a little bit about me. I actually qualified, well, I didn't qualify, but I studied mechanical engineering and then went on to work in finance, which is often referred to as the dark side when you're an engineer because they want you to change the world and then you go work in finance and they're like, oh great. So I went to work at Barclays for a couple of years and at the same time I became obsessed with the topic of personal finance. It was the first time really getting a consistent paycheck myself, so I was like, well, what do I do with this thing? And I was also naturally the guy that a lot of friends, family, colleagues used to ask about money because I was just interested in making sure that it was working the best way possible for myself. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to start creating some content around this topic. And so I did, at the same time as working at Barclays for about a year or so. I was experimenting, trialing different formats, platforms, etc., until this little platform— well, someone mentioned to me, you might want to test out this thing called TikTok, which I did. I created a few videos and it resonated very well. It was a platform known for entertainment, dancing, all that kind of stuff. And I thought, why not give a bit of financial education on this one as well? Exactly. Um, and I gave that a crack about 4 or 5 years ago. People resonated. It clearly showed a huge need and desire for the financial literacy and education. And So I ran with it until I was able to actually leave my job after the graduate scheme finished about 2 years in. And over the past 3 or so years now, I've been a full-time— you can call me a financial educator and content creator.

Wizard.

And wizard. I will accept wizard.

Yes.

And you know what, everyone should watch you because it's brilliant. I've really enjoyed it. And I was going to change my outfit so we could have a conversation. And I've got a question for you. You've answered a lot of my questions I was going to ask you at the beginning, but Did you just wake up one morning and go, you know what, I'm going to move from Barclays and I'm going to get into this helping? I know you were a maths teacher once, I believe, but how did you get into it? What made you switch?

So I was always a little bit obsessed with digital education. I was a big consumer of learning these skills that you get, let's say, outside of the classroom through platforms such as YouTube. It's an unbelievable resource of just free content to teach you pretty much anything you want in the world. And at some point I was like, I would love to kind of just share my own thoughts and lessons and things that I'm learning on this platform as well. But at the same time, studying engineering is a little bit too full-on. I was finishing like my degree during that period. Like I was finishing work at 11 PM every night. I did not have the energy nor the time to pick up a camera and start talking to it. And then luckily or unluckily, depending on which way you look at it, when I started my job, it was at the same time as COVID. Now COVID plus a graduate scheme where they're trying to look after your mental wellbeing and telling you to shut your laptop at 5:30 to go and look after yourself. But looking after yourself meant staying within your four walls because you couldn't go outside anywhere. I essentially realised I had no more excuses putting off trying to create some content on the internet. So pretty much as I started my work at Barclays, I started creating content. I was testing out different topics. The reason why I did it, like I said, I was obsessed with consuming it. I thought I should become a producer of it. And then also I'm just a little bit weird. Like you have to be a little bit strange to post stuff on the internet. But you know what, for me, I just saw it as a massive opportunity to gain dozens and dozens of new skills. And for me, that was exciting.

Well, I'm really pleased that you did. And I thought if I go into this, I'll give you kind of a soft landing with the first question because we need to get into your head and people need to get into your head because it's so— it's— you've got so much knowledge. Your finance can often feel a bit overwhelming, Gary, really. For a lot of people. What's the single biggest myth about money that you'd like to shatter once and for all for people?

That it is complicated. Understanding money is really complicated. But the reason why that's become the norm for people to think, oh, I don't— I'll never get this, I'll never be able to figure it out because it's just so complicated, is because it's kind of been made that way. There's jargon, there's terms, there's acronyms. Everywhere you look, there's a different opinion, you know. On a subject that has 2 opinions, you'll find 3 opinions on it. It's just that is how the world of money and financial education works. And also because it's just not naturally taught, there's no formal education system. I remember maybe one PSHE class, if anyone remembers those, and if you live in the UK, I think I had one topic lesson on the topic of money. But aside from that, everything I know is self-taught. But over the years and years of me studying, teaching, then studying more, teaching more, and just to to put out there, I'm not an FA, I'm not qualified financial advisor. Everything I teach is opinion-based, education-based, self-taught. I've realised it's just such a simple topic. There are maybe 2 to 3 core concepts in finance that once you understand those, everything else is kind of extra, nice to know the detail, but the 2, 3 core things is what is missing from everyone's brain.

Right, and we're going to get into what they are because you said it's complicated but it's simple. So what are those 3 things?

Yeah, like I said, it's, it's simple but it's not easy because those are different things. Simple and anyone should be able to understand it. To actually do it takes repetitive action over a long period of time, which isn't easy, right? So the 2 to 3 things— in fact, I'll give you the one thing that basically is personal finance summarised. If you earn X, spend less than X.

Can you tell my family this, please?

That is personal finance to a tee.

101.

Yeah, if you earn £1,000, spend less than £1,000. If you spend more, you're going into something called debt, and that's a negative spiral that has massively impacted millions of people around the world. If you spend at parity, you are doing something called living paycheck to paycheck, where you feel like you can never catch a break and you can never get ahead.. And if you spend less than what you earn, voilà, you start to see some opportunity. Maybe I can afford that thing that I've had my eye on for a while. Maybe it is, you know, I am able to save towards a home, car, holiday, et cetera, et cetera, and achieve financial goals that you might have in the future.

That's great. Great advice. Talking of advice, and this is a difficult question to ask, but have you ever failed to take your own advice on finance? What did you learn from it?

Yes. Because I guess I'm so in the weeds of the topic of finance and I say it's simple, I do try to practice some more complicated things. So I will, you know, play around with having multiple bank accounts to test out what's the best one and interest rate and user friendliness, UI, all that kind of stuff. I will test multiple investing platforms, I will test multiple saving accounts, but a lot of that is because I'm experimenting so I can then share that information with an audience. But also what that means is that sometimes I've got my money in like 15 different places. Exactly. I need to have a spreadsheet to keep it all together. But I'm— that's— I would never preach someone else to do that. Of course you can if you start to understand it and you'd like to be a little bit more technical and you keep track of all those things. But for the average person, yeah, I wouldn't advise that in the slightest.

That's fair. And I've been reading up on you and I know your aim is to teach people a quick lesson before they carry on scrolling. That's part of your platform, which is lovely. I really like that. Can you share 3 top tips for people so they don't keep scrolling?

Can I just repeat the one that I said earlier? The one about spend less than you make?

Because yeah, you can, but you gotta give me some more.

I need more.

Okay, fine. More tips.

I can absolutely do that. So yeah, like you said, my, my whole goal— social media is not a platform where people like to be taught, so I just try to like— I like to trick people into teaching. That's kind of my whole goal on social media. But if I was to give you 3 very, very quick financial takeaways, it would be number 1, teach yourself something every month, let's say. And whether it's a book that you can pick up right now, I can tell you, read The Psychology of Money, single greatest book you'll ever read on the topic of money, in my opinion. Or listen to a podcast episode, or I don't even care, watch someone like me on TikTok or YouTube, watch a 10-minute lesson. Just do something to improve your financial literacy every single month, because those little lessons compound over a long period of time until you won't need to listen to those lessons anymore. Lesson number 2 is build yourself a rainy day fund, an emergency fund. A lot of people ignore this and try to go straight to the, let's call it, more glamorous side of finance when they have a bit of money. Oh, I want to start investing. What about buying property? Oh, crypto, that sounds fun. I'm not going to say that any of those individual things are bad ideas. Of course, with the right research and, you know, investigation, please take your own, you know, route with money and finance. But what I will say is if you don't start with a backup plan at the very beginning, things can go horribly wrong. You know that day where you get out of bed and you go downstairs and the car just won't start and you're like, I've got to put that on the credit card because I've got nowhere to put the fine. I've got no backup plan. You just need to have something somewhere put away for those unexpected but guaranteed expenses in life, I would say. And then number 3, because you asked for 3. Oh, this would be a good one if you could do this straight after this episode. I call it rip the Band-Aid off. You just need to look at what's going on behind the scenes. You need to look at your bank account, you need to look at your credit cards, you need to look at your saving accounts, you need to look at where your money is going. So many people think that they can figure things out just moving forward, looking forward to the future, but actually your history is a great kind of mirror to show you everything you need to know about yourself when it comes to money. And often what will happen is most people just do not look at their last month of spending. And if you go and do that you will immediately spot 3 to 5 things that you go to yourself, wow, maybe I do have a problem. Maybe Deliveroo and me need to be divorced because there's been 17 orders last month and that is just not acceptable.

George, he knows you, right?

Sorry, sorry, George. I'm picking on you specifically, but that's a really important lesson. Just look. It's the first step. It's painful, but it's worth it.

That's really good advice, Gabriel. Do you think people are a little bit nervous of looking into, you know, like lifting the covers? Do that stop them doing it in case they find nasties in there?

Absolutely, because I, I went through that period. I went through the period where I just didn't know where my money was going. I started working at Barclays, I was earning a brilliant salary, more money than I'd ever earned in my life, and yet I wasn't able to save. And I was like, that something's going wrong here. And it was quite interesting that the moment that I looked under the bonnet and I, you know, saw a few subscript— it wasn't even crazy, I saw a few subscriptions on there, let's say, for example, I was able to cancel immediately. Okay. Great, an extra 50 quid into my bank account every single month. But you know what it did do moving forward? The month after, my spending dropped by a couple of hundred pounds, and I didn't feel like I was changing my habits or anything like that. But really what I was doing was I was just— I just now knew that me in a month was going to check that month's spending. I knew someone was going to be doing some, you know, some due diligence on my spending, and maybe that made me think twice before making a silly purchase.

I really like that advice. I did it recently and I found things I didn't realize I'd done so many years ago, just forgotten about them. So it's great. And if we're kind of going in the other direction, so if someone's listening right now and they've never budgeted, invested, or even thought seriously about their money, what's the first small step they could take from an investment point of view rather than savings point of view?

So investing, the one simple thing I'll say to you right now, is open a platform, put a quid in, something you're happy to lose, and just learn that way. Like, there is no other— I haven't found a better method to start learning how to invest than putting— literally, there are platforms that let you start with a pound. You can go on there, put a pound in, buy a share, buy a company, just play around with the platform, get used to that £1 dropping down to 97p one day and then going up to £1.02 one day. Because you get used to the feeling, you understand how it is. You can watch 100 videos on the topic of investing, which is great, and also would be probably another second best method. But without doing it, getting skin in the game a little bit, I don't think people understand investing. I mean, if you look at the news these days, there are so many— the UK economy, the Chancellor is trying to get people to start investing after all these years of risk warnings and no, it's so scary and don't invest. And there are— don't get me wrong, there's plenty of risks that come and are associated with investing, but it's been made to basically be this incredibly unsafe, scary product. And now there's a switch in it. And I remember, I mean, if you take your mind back to a couple of months ago, one of the methods that was being discussed was, shall we cut Cash ISAs, which is the UK saving product, to try and push people into the Stocks and Shares ISA, which is the equivalent product but for investing? And it was like, let's kind of like force people into investing. People aren't going to invest that way. You can't force someone to do something that they have no education on. And like I said, the best way to get that education is put some skin in the game.

I like that.

Well, listen, Gabriel, you've made it this far, and Gary's obviously asked some pretty keen questions of you, but this is the segment where I fire some, some killer questions at you. It's called the George Cloate Grill or Cloate Corner. We're not— we're still not entirely sure. There haven't been enough of them for it to warrant its own name yet, but we'll get there. And, uh, yeah, before I, before I order yet another sort of delivery lunch, which I'll obviously be checking back through my bank statements about. Question number 1, uh, one thing we haven't touched upon is pensions. You in the past have been sort of radically transparent about your own pension balance. Why do you think that so many people feel shame and secrecy around their own money and their own financial situations? And what can we do to start breaking that cycle?

I would say it's twofold. Number one is that they probably think they don't have enough put away. So if you think that you're not doing well, you're going to not feel very happy to talk about it or learn more about it, and you'll just kind of avoid it and push it to the side. But sadly, the averages are so low in this country when it comes to pension pots, saving pots, investing pots, anything when it comes to positive financial things, that you are probably doing better than you think. So I would say that's probably one of the main reasons. And then the number 2 is just, it's a culture that we've got here in the UK. We do not like being open, talking about the topic of— I mean, there was a recent study that said that people would rather talk about an affair to their partner than to talk about their financial position to their partner. Wow. And I think that, that speaks volumes. We just are not comfortable talking about it in the slightest. And I think that if it's not taught formally in schools, the next best way to teach each other about money is through conversation, which is what I'm doing online.

Nice. And what are you doing right now? And with that in mind, have you ever had a moment where you've thought to yourself, you know, I'm supposed to be that money guy, I'm supposed to be good with money, but I've really made a mistake here? And if so, if you're comfortable talking about it in the spirit of financial conversations, what was it?

I've made dozens of bad purchases. Financial mistakes are just part and parcel. You should be allowed to make bad money choices and learn from them. But I'll say one which is a little bit more technical, but it's a product called the, um, the Lifetime ISA, which is a product that supports young people, or was actually for anyone between the ages of 18 and 39, save towards a first-time property in the UK. And it's a brilliant, brilliant product if it's right for you. And why I say if it's right for you is because one of the terms and conditions is you can only use it on a property, and I think it's under £450,000 your property has to be worth that. Otherwise, if you withdraw the money, you face a penalty. Now, when I started investing into my Lifetime ISA, I didn't ever perceive I'd be buying a property under £450,000. But given the way that life has gone in London in particular, to actually buy a property under £450,000 isn't so simple anymore. Don't get me wrong, of course there's plenty of one beds or two beds that you might be able to, but on average, I think the average property is well over £500,000 now in in London. So when I did actually go to buy my first-time property, I couldn't use my Lifetime ISA. I'd gone over the limit. And I guess, like you say, a regret or a mistake, but essentially what that meant is I had to pay over £2,000, around £2,000 of my own money in terms of giving that back to the government, which is obviously massively impactful when you're trying to save towards a deposit or put money down for a deposit because you need every penny that you can spare. And it was just a lesson I had to learn the hard way. I don't think it's a bad product. I just think it's a product that requires more education because people see the glossy side of it but don't know the penalties if you don't fulfil the terms and conditions.

Great answer. Thanks for that. Just sort of not to make this too negative and talking about mistakes all the time, but you do have quite a large social following. And I think it'd be interesting to know, you know, you do a lot of sort of the Ask Me Anything situations. And I wondered whether you would be happy to share what the most you know, the most common mistake or the most common question that your, your followers are most interested in and the things that they most sort of want to talk about and hear you talk about?

I think investing has become a really, um, intriguing topic, especially to the younger generation. It's become more democratized. There are more platforms, you can do it on cheaper. So a lot of people are very intrigued about it, but the education is still so low. And obviously I talk about it quite a lot on my channel because it's a really important topic.. And then I'll often get this question, which is, cool, what do I invest in? And of course, as a— well, even if I was a qualified financial advisor, I probably couldn't answer that question on social media, and I very rarely ever can. And what that question often means is, I will not start investing until someone tells me exactly what to do. That's never going to happen. And I think if we just get over that kind of hump of just like you need to put in a little bit of proactive, you know, action. Do a little bit of research yourself, learn a little bit through trial and error, understand that you just need to open up a platform and get— like I said before, get your skin in the game. That would kind of answer that question for 9 out of 10 people. But for those of you listening that do keep asking me what to invest in, I cannot tell you legally, nor would I want to, because investing is a personal thing and you should make those decisions on your own.

That's absolutely fair enough. Right, a couple more. You're doing great. And this is one which I'm not sure I fully understand myself, but I wrote it down and thought it might be an interesting one to discuss. If you had to choose between giving someone— and this is sort of fairly broad— but if you had to choose between giving someone a £1,000 pay rise or teaching them how to manage the money that they have better, which would you choose? And which would you have— which do you think would have better sort of long-term impact?

I feel like you've set me up for this answer when you're asking about long-term impact, but I reckon that on the average salary in the UK, I could get you £1,000 in less than a year if you allow me to manage your money. So not only would you get that £1,000 regardless, if not more, but you'd also get a lifetime of knowledge. So it's an easy win.

Great. Well, listen, let's hang on after this call and maybe I have a few follow-up questions for you.

George, hit me up. 20% commission.

That's right. And then finally from me, Paul, possibly. When you picture yourself at 65 years old, you're still a young man despite your incredible wisdom on a lot of these topics. When you picture yourself at 65, what does financial freedom actually mean for you and what does it look like?

Very deep question, that is, George. You're really asking me. For me, financial freedom is choice. That's always what money to me has been about. The optionality to be able to say at 65, do I want to keep working or do I not?— that's ultimately what a pension is for, right? To give you choice. I'm not really after, you know, having 5 houses around the world and 6 yachts and 5 Lamborghini. Like, it doesn't really interest me. Of course, if you ever see me driving one of those cars, then something's gone very right for me and I've got enough disposable income to make those silly decisions. But for me, it would be, you know, the ability to essentially do whatever I want. Whether that be go on a nice trip, go on holiday, spend time with family, support, you know, hopefully children and grandchildren by that point. That's what 65-year-old me wants for financial freedom. And just to kind of like, yeah, to be content, to not need to earn another penny in my life, to be happy, safe.

And yeah, great, great answer to a tough question. You survived the George Clooney grill, Gabriel. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I will hand you back to Gary.

Talking about education, I know you are keen to demystify, you know, money for people and help younger people. If you could design a school curriculum on money and finance, what would be the essential lessons every student should leave with?

Ooh, that's, that's brilliant. Number one, it would start at the age of 7. In fact, even younger. I would start it at 5 or 7. There was a study that came out recently that said that your financial attitude and habits are set from the age of 7 years old, or as young as 7 years old. The things you hear from your parents, you know, you're walking through Tesco with them doing some shopping, you pick up a magazine that you wanted to buy or talk about, they go, 'Put that back.' These little things like slip into your psychology. For me, the best financial lesson I got from before 7 was anytime my grandma gave me a little birthday present or something like that, she looked at me, she went, save half, spend half. And that was basically like— it, it like dissolved into my psyche that whenever I got something, I put away half, because that's just what I was told from a young age. So I would start this financial education lessons— I would start it in primary school, fundamentally. And then what it would teach you isn't just how to earn money, but it's what to do with the money once it ends up in your pocket. Because that's what school is right now— it teaches you what— how to get the paycheck, how to get a skill so you can be paid, but not what to do with it. So we would be doing all of the boring things that everyone would roll their eyes at. We would be talking budgeting, we would be talking saving, we'd be talking tax, income tax, you know, what your payslip says and how to understand and to read it. We will be talking negotiating and, you know, having open conversations about money with your family, with your friends. We would learn how— what debt is, how to avoid it. Different types of debt, good debt, bad debt. So it would be a really, really, really boring itinerary, but we bring so many sweets and chocolates into those classes that kids would love them, and it would be the best class they ever go to. You've got to bribe people into this stuff because it's not— it's not glamorous, right? I'm not saying anything at school is glamorous. I don't think any kid is running to Pythagoras either. I quite liked it. It was for you, but apparently I'm a bit of a math nerd. But listen, it's— it's just as important as any of those— those topics. That you do normally learn in, in schools. And I'm sure, listen, if I've managed to trick people into learning on social media, then when they're forced to be in a classroom to learn about it, I'm sure we can come up with a few methods that are quite entertaining.

I love that. But we, I think you should do this. I mean, we've got to get this into the school curriculum. I think it's an amazing idea.

I'd love it if my kids— I believe many people have been trying for many, many years, and it's not an easy one.

But you've got to be the Jamie Oliver of finance. I think you can do this. That'd be great. And with that in mind, looking back, knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently? Because it's easy, you know, advice to your younger self maybe. Would you have done anything differently, Gabriel?

It's, I like to, I like to not really like regret much because I'm very happy with where I am now. I mean, if I could have started all of these financial lessons that I now know today and I implement 10 years ago, so literally the moment that I turned 18 or even 16, if I was, you know, investing, putting money towards my pension, more money towards my pension than I currently could, and just doing kind of more of everything. Because I was only about 22, 23 when I started to learn these skills. And you might think to yourself, just 5 years earlier, like, why do you need to start 18 if you were starting at 23? That's already pretty young. And it is pretty young, but with a lot of things in finance, time is your best friend. The earlier you can start investing, saving, gaining financial literacy, putting money towards your pension, the quicker these things start to compound down the line. So I know that I don't regret starting when I did, but even those extra 5 years could have made a huge difference to the end number that will be in my bank account.

That's good. And, you know, talking about time, when you invest, should you just leave it? You should play around with it. Well, touch it, just leave it alone.

I like to tell people this is for your money that you don't know what to do with it. Like you genuinely like, you don't even know like when it would be taken out. I mean, general practice states that you want to be looking to invest over periods of at least 5 years. So that money you do not want to be touching in 5 years. I like to stretch out even more to say 10 years because it's that long-term growth money that you're not quite, you don't have the specific goal. It's not like you want to buy a car at a specific price in 2 to 3 years. That's not investing money, that's saving money because there's a hard goal that you want to hit.. But anything out further than 5 years, you shouldn't really have a specific idea of the price you're going to be paying and for the specific item you're going to be buying. And that's normally the realms where money should be— you should start thinking about money from an investing perspective because it can outperform savings, inflation. I say can, there are periods in time where it hasn't, and this is the risk that's associated with investing. But on average, it does outpace all of these things over long periods of time. You'll often hear people say that the average return of the stock market is somewhere between 7 to 10%. That doesn't mean that last year it was, you know, 8.5%, and the year after that it was 8.5%, and the year after that was 8.5%. No, some years it's 20%, some years it drops 10, then the next year it can go up 18%, the next year it can go up 4%. It's just an average thing. But normally what happens is if you stretch out these, these numbers over long periods of time you start to see a general positive curve. One statistic that's one of my favourite statistics in the world of investing is the S&P 500, which is the US stock market, top 500 companies in the US. Over any 30-year period, which is take, you know, 1990 to 2020 or 1950 to 1980, whatever you want, in any 30-year period— and I need to completely fact-check, but I'm fairly certain that the worst ever 30-year period was a 7.8% positive return year on year. Now this will be fact-checked, and feel free to absolutely slate me in the comments, but what I'm trying to come across is it was a pretty decent average return over the worst ever 30-year period, essentially meaning— so when I say 5, 10 years, if you can stretch that to 30, 40 years of investing, you're starting to look into a slightly lower risk profile.

So how would that—

if I was an aspiring investor and I decided to wheel and deal a little bit in some shares on a couple of platforms, so should I just be— pretend to be a mogul? And look at the market and move things around, or should you just like buy some AI shares and stick with them?

Um, my favourite word when it comes to investing is diversification. For sure, you can, if you like to put in the research and find trends or companies that maybe you're affiliated with or you have strong knowledge on or an emotional tie to and you think they're going to do strongly, that's great. But I always say if you're a beginner investor, you want to be looking to buy large funds of multiple companies. I dropped you the S&P 500 before. You can buy that. It's 500 of the US's top companies that you can buy with a click of one button. Now, that's— I'm not telling you to pick that one in particular, but what that does do is, let's say, you know, God forbid Apple just disappears off the face of the earth, there'll be bigger problems than this, but you will have 499 other companies in your investment portfolio that are backing you up. And if all of those go down to zero, then the world is probably facing a much larger problem than your investing portfolio. So all that is to say is I, I like this idea of spreading risk across multiple different companies. If you want to handpick a few, that's up to you. If you want to buy a fund that already contains hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of companies, that's one of the most common practices that beginner investors are taking these days.

Brilliant advice. And I've got one last question before George gets your musical taste. Finally, what's your personal philosophy on money, Gabriel? Not just making it, but using it to live a meaningful, fulfilling life. What would be your personal philosophy on money? It's a deep question to finish.

I'll give you the one-word answer, and if you want, I can explain it, or we can just leave it there, but it is balance.

Oh, definitely explain it, or you'll leave me hanging.

There are so many people on the internet shouting at people to do the extreme thing with money. And by the extreme thing, let's take this example. There's a thing called the FIRE movement, Financial Independence Retire Early, which is just save as hard as you can in your 20s and 30s. And there's a good chance if you live a frugal life that you could actually retire by the age of 40. And then I'm sure if you remember 5, 6, 7, 10 years ago, there was a term that came out called YOLO, which isn't said anymore, but it's like, you only live once. Like, oh, you're 20, you're in your 20s, like, you're, you're never going to get that time back. Spend your money. Yeah, exactly. Live those experiences, buy the things you want to buy. But my philosophy has always been balanced. Like, both of those are for the 1% of extreme people, but there's a way to live life down the middle where you can go out and buy that cappuccino on the way to work if it makes you happy, but you should also be saving. Like, you can do both. You can spend and you can save. There's a middle ground for everything, and that applies to every element of my life. There's like extremes of all sides when it comes to every niche financial topic. I'll give you another one as an example: debt. How to pay off debt. There's huge arguments as to whether you should use the snowball method or the avalanche method— pay off the highest interest debt first or the highest actual debt first. If you're paying off debt, you're paying off debt. Like, yes, you can use one of those two tactics, but surely it's better to just start somewhere. If that's what gets you started, then overcomplicating it, analysis paralysis, thinking I don't know which method to choose, I just— I'm gonna leave it this month, I'll just— I'll pick a method next month and start paying off debt then. It's this whole idea of just like balance, just, just do the simple thing, do a bit of both, and that way you can live life great in the present and also great in the future.

You're a super smart man and also very inspirational. So I'm just about to hand you on to George to talk about your musical taste, but Gabriel, thanks so much for coming on. You nailed it. So useful and insightful. So thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it on our 100th episode.

Thank you very much for having me.

George, over to you.

Yeah, I'll chime in here and say thanks as well. And I feel quite smug actually, because listen, not to take credit for the success, the inevitable success of this episode, but I was solely responsible for getting Gabriel in. So if I can ride his coattails all the way to podcasting success, then I'll be pleased. But no, that was absolutely fascinating. Just as I expected it would be. I still say YOLO, by the way, so I'm not sure how I feel about that.

You and me both, George.

Okay, great. Yeah, as Gary mentioned, we do ask our guests to submit a tune or two onto our playlist. We've got a Company Doctor podcast playlist, which is full of all sorts of, you know, we've had some amazing submissions, and I fully appreciate that we didn't make you aware of this, and we landed it on your door right at the beginning of this recording session. So If it's just the one, that's absolutely fine. If you want to think about it, that's also fine. Okay. But if you did have just one tune, what would it be?

I've got a very unique sense of music taste, and by unique I mean I have— it scatters all over the world. I could drop you a Busted song, Unbelievable, Thunderbirds Are Go. That could be it. I love a musical as well.

Oh yeah.

But what I'm gonna go with, and I don't think you're gonna see this coming after the Busted reference, is Adele, Hometown Glory. Oh, it feels pleasurable listening to Adele. My wife's gonna kill me for being like, did you admit that in public to someone?

But you told everybody, he's out there now.

She's unbelievable. Any song, to be honest. But that one, yeah, if you want to hit the feels, that, that will be it.

I don't think we've got any Adele as well, so that is our— amazingly, in 4 years or whatever it is, that's our first Adele treat. So it's the 5 years. So thank you for that. I'm actually going to see McFly vs. Busted. So that's my guilty pleasure.

And the first was Adele.

So I would have been happy with either of those. Uh, but yes. Okay. Adele, it's in there. Thank you so much, Gabriel. We really appreciate you coming on the show and joining us for such a wonderful 100th episode. Check Gabriel out. He, you'll be able to find him, That Money Guy. You'll find him easily. Uh, he's got a massive following deservedly. And, um, yeah, Gabriel, thanks again.

Thank you very much.

We hope you enjoyed our 100th episode. I'd like to say a personal thanks to Gabriel for joining us today and for making it an extra special discussion despite his rather hectic schedule, and to extend a heartfelt thanks from me and Gary to you, our listeners, for your continued support over these past 5 years. We have some exciting things in the works, including the recording of another live on-location episode, more YouTube Shorts, and of course more of our increasingly popular Walk and Talks. Thanks so much again. Here's to another 100 episodes, and we'll see you next time.