Managing Your Personal Cashflow with Raymond Holt

00:00 In this episode of the Team Superdad podcast, Raymond Holt and I talk managing your personal cash flow, how money affects your relationship and why Starbucks could bankrupt you. Role theme. Welcome to Team Super Dad. Real dads creating their best lives ever. More time, more money, more fun. You are not alone. You're on Team Super Dad. Hey, it's Johnny. Good morning. Good afternoon, wherever you are. Team Superdad, friends, family members all around the world.

00:38 It's great to have you here on another, yes, another Team Superdad live. As you know, we are always bringing on people, experts, coaches, guests, to speak about the F5. And that is focus, fitness, finance, family, and fun. These are the core tenets of being a Super Dad. Not that you've got to be something extra special, better than everyone else. This is about the skills and abilities, your values, your love, your laughter inside of you, and the busy lives that dads lead. Here we are today on International Men's Day. So I'm really excited to be doing something positive and constructive for all men, for all families, and of course, Team Superdad members all around the world, as we like to say.

01:25 And this subject has been something, a bit of a personal challenge for me. I remember my mates at uni took the piss out of me one day because I said, I wangled having like multiple bank accounts, student overdrafts and all of them. And I remember one day saying, and saying, they always take the piss out of me because they're all scousers and northerners. And I went, I'm up to me limit in all my bloody accounts. And that became the phrase for when you had no money left, right? I'm up to the limit in all my bloody accounts, which basically meant I'd maxed out all the overdrafts on all my accounts.

02:01 And so clearly that was a day for other people buying me beers. And now, 46, so that's some kind of 25 years later, I'm just getting at the hang of mastering my finances. Part of the tears of freedom community. And also on LinkedIn, talking about Team Superdad, sharing the word, inviting coaches and experts to come inside of the Hero Academy and be coaches, provide modules and be coaches for you guys. Well, that's how I met Raymond. And in just a second, I'm going to bring Raymond on. He'll tell us all about what he does as a business coach and financial advisor, meshing those two skills together to work with men, to give them a real values-based approach to their family and their work.

02:48 And guess what? Creating the life of their dreams, which is exactly what we say at Team Superdad as well. So enjoy this. Without further ado, let's bring Raymond in. Raymond. Hi, Johnny. How are you doing, sir? All right. How are you? Good. I'm really good. Really, really good. It's International Wednesday. So we're hanging out. Amen. When you mention it, I was like, is he really? Cry cake. Yeah. You've got to shave your head, by the way, on International Wednesday. Yeah, well, there isn't much there anyway, so it's fine. We're both on that one involuntarily. Involuntarily, yeah, that's the word. Yeah, definitely.

03:34 It's also Movember. Have you ever done Movember? No, because being fairly light-haired to actually try and do it is really, really painful. You would be like week three and people would go, when are you starting, Raymond? Yes. Yeah, I grew one once. And I got called out on this the other day by a friend of mine and another awesome dad called Nick Barr. And he sat there with this stupid Mexican thing hanging down his face. Not that Mexican, if you're Mexican and you're watching this, no offense intended, but obviously for us West, other, you know, European, we're watching that and going like spaghetti western mustache, you know.

04:16 But he goes, it's for charity. You know, like, what? Just grow it again. And I said, I can't. I can't. It was so horrible. You can't stop touching it. You would ever know this thing, right? Horrible. I just, I could, I could wax lyrical about the downsides of having a moustache phages. It flows over as well into seeing people with beards because you know half the world's got a beard these days, right? Is it really? Imagine to be everywhere. Everywhere you go, people seem to have a beard. Yeah. I just think they look ridiculous. I just, I got friends who've got these big bushy things.

04:55 And I'm just like, what are you doing? You look awful. Anyway. we're not here to talk about facial hair, we're here to talk about money. So, how long have you been in the money business, Raymond? Well, introduce you to your CSL. Tell us about your business, tell us about your coaching practice, and I'll start. I'll dig into some questions for you. Yeah, well, my business, Agnes Partners, I've been doing for about five and a half years now, but I've been a finance director or involved with money for 25 years or so, primarily up until when I started my own business in industry,

05:32 managing money of lots of businesses, but with lots of interaction with senior individuals around their personal finances and how what they were earning and or not earning and how that was impacting on them professionally as well as personally. So, I came out and started my own business just over five years ago to look to work with business owners about connecting family and business together, primarily through understanding their finances and understanding the connectivity between the two, but more and more so to create sustainability. And as you talked about, in terms of living the life that people really want, I think that's money tends to be, if not the first, it's certainly one of the top two or three issues and real energy sappers for prevention of that kind of life that people want to lead.

06:24 Yeah. And totally, it's, you know, it's, it's not that money's, Jim Rowan says, money's not everything, but it's right up there with breathing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without it, it's a real about it. Life, without it, life's really hard and you need it. Yeah. And it's just, and it does make everything easier, you know. Relationships, that, you know, if you're in a, if you're in a loving relationship and then you hit financial hardship, the stress and strain, you start tapping into each other's values that perhaps you didn't know existed before, resilience, despair, flipping blame.

07:06 I'm just like back in the room type thing. But it's important to have these perspectives. I say inside of Team Super Dad, I'm not the expert in all these areas. I've experienced some of them. I'm on this journey with you. But I think, particularly on this International Men's Day, it's important to make everyone clear that this is a shared experience. This is not a unique problem. Yes. Yes, it is. And that's what taps into or starts to drain people's mental health a lot as well. Is I'm the only one. I can't tell anyone. Yeah. And those kind of things. So being part of a community as well, again, the Hero Academy and Team Super Dad, it's just to be able to have a safe space to say

07:53 what's going on. And if anyone's watching, we have the bi-weekly dad call, which is a free, or listening as well on the podcast, is a free session on Monday nights, 8 p.m. UK time, 2 p.m. Eastern time. And any dad can come on there and we have a laugh, but we also share problems as well when they come up. So we're going to try and piece this together a bit differently to some of the podcast episodes that people will be familiar with. Because we want to actually do a little bit of advising, a bit of coaching inside of this.

08:31 If you've seen the title and it says managing your personal cash flow, then that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. But on the way into this, probably good to talk about why people struggle with that and even like what the bloody hell is it? Because some business owners are going to be really clear about what a cash flow is. Other people, oh, Raymond's pulling her face. Some business owners have no idea what a cash flow is. So we're going to talk about what a cash flow is. And then, okay, then we'll ask why do people not know about it. So what is a cash flow, please, please, Raymond? Well, it is fundamentally a really simple way of tracking and controlling your cash, your money, so that you can actually see where you are today and record where you're going to, what you're going to spend moving forward.

09:20 So you can actually track what cash you're going to have at any point in time. It is as simple as an, well, I say simple. It is in the main, typically a simple Excel spreadsheet that enables you to record everything you spend. In fact, I'm going to bring up, I've got a Team Super Dad template. Team Super Dad template. Well, it's just. I think it's important to keep it. I think it is important when some of the things I'd say about a cash flow is it needs to work for the person who's using it. I think too often we get saying, here's a template. You must use it like this. It's a bit a bit like Lego. The first time you get anything like a cash flow, use it the way that it's intended, and then work out what works for you and how you want to manage how you think.

10:06 A lot you talk earlier about relationships, and a lot of it, a lot about cash is actually mental and emotional. It's money is money mainly emotional and mental as much as it is about the numbers. Yeah. And that comes from attitudes we adopt in our childhood. We pick them up of our family. Yeah. Yep. And I, and maybe I think the easiest way to do some of this conversation is actually to make it quite is to make it personal. So when I was, I was the, I was the kind of teenager who, when all his friends were buying chips and everything else outside the fish and chip shop, wasn't the one who was able to afford to buy fish and chips.

10:48 Right. So my background with money is not very much and always not having having just enough or maybe not enough, but never having more than enough. Yeah. So all the way, and those attitudes and beliefs about money do come with you into your, and it certainly did for me, come into my adult life with me. And it's then how they impact on my views of money as I've as I've grown up and the impact that's had on, as you can imagine, being a finance director and actually on my own personal finances. Yeah, because people, people, you know, particularly in coaching circles and stuff and personal development.

11:31 And we talk quite a lot about manifesting and law of attraction and things like that, which I'm always conscious to tell people that's not some weird woo-woo thing. It can be if you want to go on that side of it, but actually on the other end of it, it's practical, thought-based, goal-setting, you know, and really starting to create people, connections, activities around you, right? So, but a mindset of abundance versus a mindset of scarcity can really impact people's outlook. So, what are some of the things that could be a telltale sign of someone who's a bit stuck in scarcity or has got a glass ceiling on their finances? Well, the main ones which I'm typically notice is when it actually comes to

12:16 the way you spend your money and the decisions that you make around how you spend your money. So, for example, if you have a scarcity mindset and you've got £10,000 in the bank, how do you feel about the fact that, well, actually, I don't want it to be, I don't want it to be less than £10,000. And the way I always talk to business owners or even when there's an industry talking to partners, it was, is that fear-based or is it values-based? As in, do I want to have enough money in the bank that means I can cover all my expenses for X number of months without having to worry?

12:58 Like an emergency fund or a backup? Yep. And that's values-based. Or is it I had a bad experience in the past and therefore what I'm scared of is that I won't have, I won't be able to replace the money that I lose. And you, and the only and the way you, so when it comes to actually making decisions about money, this is kind of the question that you ask as much as about what you ask yourself, as much as what you ask. Am I looking at this and saying, I don't want to spend this because I'm worried I won't get it back. Or actually, I'd rather have the three months worth of the emergency fund. And that therefore becomes how I value based, value-based, how much cash I need at any point in time.

13:38 And might someone who was thinking about it as an emergency fund be quite satisfied that it's there and happily build on top of it. But someone who was scared in scarcity would kind of hold it tight and almost not go out and add to it. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's, and I think, and that's a real man thing as well. It's a real man thing as well. It really is. We, there, my experience has been that the fear of losing what we have can be even more powerful than building on it and building and actually adding value to it.

14:17 Right. Because they wouldn't invest a grand, let's say it was just a business and they're going to put some LinkedIn ads up and they wouldn't invest a grand in that. Or I guess coaching, investing some additional knowledge and a community, taking part in a mastermind. So put, you know, investing some money to put yourself in an environment to succeed as opposed to, okay, I'm not going to risk it. I'm going to stay here. But then you don't grow. And then you, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy where rather than expanding and moving forward, you sort of. contract and slide back. Yes, yes, that is that is exactly what it's like.

14:55 Wow. And what a cash flow should do is it really good cash flows will give you enough sight moving forward so you can actually, with confidence, know that based on what how your cash at the end of the whole it's cash flows, yeah, it's how your cash, how your money flows. Let's bring up a little picture here because the important distinction is because people might have been given an income and expenditure from their bank. Oh, yes. And income and expenditure is just tracking like what's happened this month. Literally, it's a check on what's happened this month. It's semantics, really, but there is a distinction in cash flow.

15:35 You actually projecting and looking forward. So let's bring up the screen here. I'm going to share a little. People won't be able to see. And this is not personal data, by the way, this is just a template for Team Superdad. But on here is the summary. And you can see along the top, it runs all the way along into March. And then on this tab, I've got income. Yep. Different businesses. And it'll toss up your monthly income. If it was a family, it could be your wife's income, your income. And then payment details. Up here on this template, I've got some outgoings which are about managing debt, building an emergency fund, and investment.

16:15 Yes. And underneath, it's broken down into home expenses, supermarket, and living, car, social life, and holidays, all of which provides a total. You've got a total on the income and a total on the payments. And that goes back into the summary and updates here. So as you can see along the bottom, closing cash flow at the moment, because there's only this £700 coming in each month, it's just going up. But if there was stuff coming in and out, that would be going up and down. And with some level of accuracy, you could see how much money you're going to have in March through the actions that you're taking. Through the actions that you're taking, and that is the key. It's about

16:59 the decisions that the cash flow is ultimately a decision that is the outcome of the decisions that you make. So it's not, it's like it's really, it's good, is what it is, but ultimately it comes down to what you decide to do. So the way you've shown that in terms of how it's broken down, the first rule of good cash management is where your money goes. Okay, let's bring that back up. Yeah. Document exactly where be really clear about where every penny of your money goes. And that's payment details. So that's where money is going out. Yeah. Yeah. The money going out. Yeah.

17:39 Before, before you even think about the money that you've got coming in, ensure that you are really clear on where your money is going. And to then, what I encourage people to do is then go through that and identify what value they get for that money that they spend. Now, value has multiple ways of looking at it motorway, right? Paying your mortgage is one thing. For example, paying for a Netflix subscription, you might go, well, I don't know. But if your children are watching that Netflix on a consistent basis and you are getting good family value from that money, look at it through the lens of what do we get in the, what is the return for the money that we spend?

18:23 If we're not getting the return or it's not the return that we need, stop it. That then gives you good foundations as to where you actually are. What you can then do is then bring in the income that you're receiving, the cash inflows that are coming in, and you can, because you'll be able to prioritize, if you've got, let's say, you've got 5,000 coming in and 6,000 going out, once you've got yourself into a place where you know, where you've basically taken the wheat from the chaff on the on your expenses, you can then prioritize what you're spending because you know the return you're going to get on that on that money you're spending. And I think too often we don't start with the basics.

19:07 It's almost most you talk about business owners and cash flow. And the reason why I laugh is so many business owners manage their businesses to the money in the bank. So have I got enough money to pay my salaries this month? They don't necessarily project it forward. They just look at the where am I today. And a lot of, and that's the same with household planning. Yeah, a lot of it is, have I got the money in the bank today to be able to pay all the bills that I need rather than taking a short, even just a short view forwards just to see how it is actually going to play out. Yeah. Well, with it with the with this cash flow, because I've got my own ones. it's full up rather than that being empty.

19:47 You can start to see how things um how things tot up, how things increase over time. And in particular, if you're going to put Christmas in there and it's suddenly your monthly expenditure is not two grand, it's suddenly three grand. You're like, Oh, okay. So, so I would, if it wasn't for Christmas, I would have enough money in March. But as things stand, because of Christmas, I'm not going to have enough money in March. Okay, something's got to go in October so that I'm going to be okay in March. And that cash flow will see, you'll be able to see, ah, I've took out Netflix and we're now okay. Uh, do you ever watch that? I don't, it's not great TV, but it is occasionally enjoyable.

20:32 The one where they go into people's houses and change what they eat. Uh, yes, yes, I have well, I know I know the program that you mean, so yes, it's like change what change what it's called, change what you eat or something like that. But the other week, the couple were in the supermarket, and it was classic. She hated cooking, and so had basically given up. He did the cooking, but didn't really enjoy it, so they were always eating the same thing. Um, so there was a degree of unhappiness and unhealthiness around what they were eating, yeah. But uh, worse than that, she was buying lunch at Prep a Manger and a coffee, and he was doing the same.

21:14 So, he said to them, So, average family spend per week is 130 pounds, you're spending 165 pounds. He said, So they're both like, oh, cool, not too bad. He said, Yeah, but then we put on all the other stuff you eat and buy on the on the fly, and you're spending 340 pounds a week on food. Wow, and they both, and this is the interesting thing. This is why this point is relevant to this conversation. Neither of them had any idea, yeah, because we don't pay our credit cards every month, we we use our debit cards, it's easy, it's we don't take the time to actually sit back and look at what we actually spend. How many of us actually reconcile our bank accounts anymore, or do we just go, Well, I've got that much in the bank, we don't look back at what we've spent, yeah, well, and a lot of companies will rely on people not doing that, I'm sure.

22:08 You know, like a couple of weeks ago, I got a parking ticket, it's actually in the bin now because I it's quite funny, I appealed it because it was outside my house, and it's like I've got a permit, right? So, I appealed it, but then I freaked out that they were going to cause such a fuss it was going to take ages, and I was going to go over the date, and there's going to be another double price, so I just paid it. I was like, oh, fine, pay, and then uh, and then the appeal came back and said, Oh, we agree, and so you don't have to pay it. And I said, Oh, I've paid it, but it wasn't till I looked at my bank statement a month later that I'd realized they hadn't refunded it. Then I contacted them, and then this week I got the email back saying they'd refunded it, so it was 25 quid or whatever.

22:51 But that again is another level of just paying attention and being really clear about where money's going. Uh, kids, if your kids ever bought something on their Xbox, this is so funny. This happened to me a couple of Christmases ago. So, uh, my boy got a Google Play voucher from Grandpa for 25 quid. He then went on and built himself a team on his tablet on Dream Team, £125 on players. And bless him, he was like seven. He goes, I just didn't think it had run out. He goes, I just thought it was magic. I thought it was just never ending.

23:34 Your dream team team almost as much as your tablet. The funny thing is, I give him a pound of gold if he scores a goal in this football. So he scored 75 goals that season. So he was cool. So, what about why do people have reservations about cash flow? Like, I've struggled with this, right? I'm only just doing this in the last six months. It's part of my team super dad journey. It's part of the conversations with you, conversations with the tears of freedom, other coaches.

24:10 So, I'm like, okay, shit. You look at success, models of success, people who are being successful, and they say, Oh, yeah, well, we talk, we manage our money, we keep fit. Like, I get up early, I have a morning routine. All the things that most of us struggle with. Why do people get so angsty about managing their finances and doing something as simple as the cash flow? You said something at the beginning about relationships, yeah? Yeah, and an expression I use. when I'm coaching is relationships go the way money flows. Oh, so a twist on the where energy goes. No, where energy goes, where attention goes, energy flows. That's the twist on that, wouldn't you say?

24:54 Yes. And I think, I think that my experience around money has been when it's we don't want, sometimes we don't want to know. Right. Can you say where relationships go, money flows? Relationships go the way money flows. Yeah. Relationships go the way money flows. Okay, cool. So if your money's running down the drain, guess what? Your relationship's going to follow it pretty soon after. Because how many of us don't talk about the fact that when we're challenged financially? And I mean, talk amongst ourselves, forget about whether we talk with our partners or not, right? Just talking amongst ourselves. We don't. We don't do that. But also our relationship with ourselves with money, the moment we see that money, that it's not working.

25:40 So there is a, do we view money as success? Many of us do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So not seeing the right amount of financial return is deemed to be is, and it's not, it's not success. It is deemed to be failure. So our relationship with ourselves when we look at funds, so in some ways, it's easier not to think about it than actually shine a light on it. Yeah. When actually what you want to do is shine a light and then get the assistance you need with the challenge, with with the position wherever you are. And actually, we might actually be in a good position.

26:21 And it's, but it's actually sometimes just easier not to know. Well, I think people that are cash rich probably struggle with that, where they've, their business is going well and they've got a load of money flowing in, but they just don't know where they spend it. No? No, I think there's a real, so you're talking about energy. And there's a real, I think there's certain, there's a couple of principles which I think sort of stay the same, irrespective of the amount of money you have. I think it's just, it just changes the baseline. And something I talked about with another coach who I work with is about standards and extras. So actually, the more money you have, maybe just the standard amount of money you spend on a monthly basis changes.

27:06 Now, if you are able to meet your standard expenditure every month, it kind of is kind of like a very neutral, emotionally quite neutral. Yeah, I did what I'm supposed to do this month, big tick, right? If you actually add more in than what you're expected to, so the standard bills was 5,000 and I managed to bring in 6,000, you feel pretty good about it, yeah? Yeah. But when you're not able to meet the standards, the baseline, when you're not able to beat the baseline, what happens to the energy level? How do you feel? You actually take, you regress, right? Mentally and emotionally and energetically, you take a step backwards.

27:46 Yes. Yeah, I can see that. Is that going back to our fight or flight type, prime evil type stuff? Yeah. Yeah. It's not going well. I can't take any risks. I've got a hunker down. This is bad. This is no good. Woe is me. And we've been, and in many ways, experienced quite a lot of that in this current period, haven't we? Whereas you're actually, it's about not, I always say to, well, not just business owners, the owners themselves around their personal money is not don't spend anything. It's take a view of what you've got and spend it and invest it appropriately. So you might only have a Fiverr or you might have £5,000. It's not the amount of money that's that's relevant. It's how you spend it, where you spend it.

28:31 What return are you looking for from the money? And that's where the cash flow is helpful in the sense that if you only have an amount of money, how do you deploy that to give you your best return? And that then comes back to what are my core standard expenditures that I need to meet on a monthly, daily, weekly basis first. And actually that's confidence building on the basis that you're able to do, if you're going, oh my God, I don't know. And you actually sit down and you can actually come to a conclusion where the amount of money you have does actually meet your standards. At least that's a fairly neutral position to be. It's okay. Yeah.

29:09 But it takes a lot of courage to actually look at something and actually break it down, knowing as we do, that some of the things we are spending are nice to haves rather than need to haves. Some of the things we are spending are nice to haves rather than need to have, which is what, like the coffee, like the Starbucks coffees. that's the example I'm gonna use. You go into Starbucks and it's like, well, this is my third Starbucks of the day, and that's just because it's easy to pick it up on the station on the way home. Four quid a go at four quid a go. Your example of the um, what the family, the husband and wife who were spending on food, yeah, in your mind going, you're watching it, you're going, you how do two people spend more in Starbucks and sandwich shops than they spend in the

30:03 supermarket? And then you realize, actually, that's not that many. If the blooming coffee's four quid, like the grande with the cream and the sprinkles and all that sort of stuff, if it's four quid a go, you've done 10 in a week, which is only two a day, one in the morning, one in the evening. I mean, that's the cake or whatever that came with it. Then you bought a sandwich at lunch and you didn't go to boots and get a meal deal or something. You just went to Pret and bought the salad and the soup and the boom, 12 quid. But it's a bit like one of the things that you were one of your other videos I was watching the other day, which is around like cooking. Yeah. It's a mindset thing. Yeah. It's easy to, it's easy to go and buy a ready-made meal, but actually you want to change the habits.

30:48 And by changing and by changing the habits, one, it's healthier. One, it's more financially beneficial. Secondly, if you're cooking for your kids, it's amazing. Right. And that's the same thing with, do I get up in the morning and make a sandwich of something I would enjoy and buy it from the supermarket, buy the stuff from the supermarket and probably cost me about 30p a sandwich, given that you can you can make with a loaf of bread and the contents. Or do I go and spend six or seven quid in prep just getting and because because you're in working and then when you're working, the urgency to get eating or if you're busy and it's it's a mindset thing of how do I set myself up to be successful with my money.

31:30 Yeah. And we're talking about little things here, right? So someone's going, oh, that's not me. It could be just the same if they've gone out and updated their mobile phone to the latest one and it's cost 600 quid or they've been and updated their car and it's cost them what 60 grand or something like it's the higher the income the bigger the price tag but the same problem the same challenge the same risk i guess exists yes and that's one that you talk about so it's also then about how you teach your children yeah the same because they watch us and how we spend money and that's how so for example um what we do with our children is if this if they've got birthday money or whatever they literally write it down it's in an envelope every time they spend something they write it down what they spent on it why they spent it until you get to the end of it and when they go oh i want to spend something for 20

32:25 well you've only got a fiver well no no no you had the choice every way through spending your birthday money you have made the choice on what you wanted to spend it on yeah yeah put some of it away and you can have the rest of it for the disposable income for you right but i've spent it all well i've got i've got one son who's um if i've got a fiver i'd like to spend 20 and i've got one son who's like i've got 20 quid i'm not spending any of it yeah oh my well especially if they've got an xbox or something like that yes well they blast it on the on the points my rooster um link because i've got the letter here but we my kids have got rooster accounts which having done the research i like rooster a lot cheaper than go henry and um okay and i love the the app and how easy it is to manage everything and the kids the kids can do it as well and so they're on their

33:21 on their rooster account they can keep track of what money's been spent on a retailer or an online thing it says but if i've if they're out with me and they've asked for uh a picture in the range i can pay it off their rooster and they say what why did you debit this it was for that bloody great big post of this show and that's great and that is and that's when you go back to what you were saying at the beginning it does come back to our initial experiences with money it everything it does come back to what how we as children were exposed to money or not and how when we were in that period and during that period of our life how how we felt

34:01 about the money that we had or not and how we've bring brought those emotions and experiences into our adult life yeah and tricky it's getting increasingly tricky because we're not playing with cash anymore so kids are not going to feel their money um yeah but i do like the idea that you know write it down in a book because any anytime you take a pen out and you actually do something you there's a different connection in your brain with writing something down and going back to that book and being able to see it I quite like the idea of that to be able to see it at the end of the year. I bet some couples are listening to this and going, I want you to do that. And well, what here's okay. So, okay, great. So, we've talked about cash flow.

34:45 If people want the cash flow template that I've got, you can simply comment template in the video here. If you're watching this on the replay, then great. I'll definitely pay attention to that. If you're watching this or listening to this in a few months' time, feel free to come over to the Team Superdad page or the group and just message me directly so you make sure that we actually saw that. Inside of the Hero Academy, we've got a whole module on cash flow, managing it, setting it up, some skills and tricks on spotting where the holes are and the opportunities in there. So, Hero Academy, you can check that out at teamsuperdad.com.

35:26 Let's move on now to like managing our money so that it so that we so that we have more of it. So, we've talked about like observing where we're wasting our money. What about financial goals and how important they are? Because I'm well aware in my own situation, not in a relationship at the moment, but thinking of myself in the family, I guess. Now, we want a bigger house. We want to go on a holiday. We want to make sure we've got money for Christmas. How does someone who's not financially plan for that if they're not that confident about finances?

36:09 Well, I guess I'm asking. Say again, I guess where does it start? Where does planning our financial future start? Well, it starts without the finances, which is you first and foremost identify what it actually is that you want to do. So, for you, when you've just said about want a bigger house, that's the primary driver. Right. And it's important then, what you then do is you bring the finances to the goal that you want to achieve because having the new house can look multiple different ways, can't it? You can have a mansion, you can have a three, four-bedroom house, a three-bedroom house, whatever it is that you want.

36:50 There's generally an upgrade, isn't it? You know, it's generally an upgrade of where we're at, right? Yeah, and then when you establish what the gap is in the finances between what you actually need and what you actually have, then you can plan. I think too often we get caught up in the oh, it's going to cost half a million pounds or it's going to cost £100,000 or whatever it is. It's no, first of all, what is it? What is the objective and why? And then bring the financial planning to aim to an object to achieve an objective. And then, what you do is it's baby steps. Yeah. Okay, just hold that thought a second. I want to show you. I made this post the other day. Let's see if I can find it.

37:32 I've got it. That wasn't good TV, was it? Or podcast? Have we come to the pause? So, I made a post the other. I've got lots of empowerment things around the house, right? So, this is my what's at stake. I need a bigger house, right? Uh, so what's at stake is a bedroom for Rosie, a bigger garden for Jago, me finding love and having more fun with our cousins. That's what's at stake for me in terms of increasing the income, making the Hero Academy the success that I know it's going to be. Um, so they're the things that are at stake. That can be part of my motivation, but having, oh, the house is going to be 400 grand or something, that could be so daunting that people just get stopped in their tracks.

38:16 But what you're saying, the way to bridge that gap is to start with baby steps. Yeah, you break it down into simple into sensible milestones based on where you are. So, if you know, let's say you earn, you need to have a disposable income of £3,000 a month and you've only got two and a half thousand pounds a month to be able to get a mortgage. The best way to do this is to actually, first and foremost, set the first step as in actually get as actually to work how you get to the £3,000 a month that you need, which is I've reduced, I've looked at my expenditure, I've looked at what I've cut out what I don't need to do. I've then reduced the gap from £500 down to £300.

39:02 To get from the extra £500, what do I need to do? I need to do a review of what I spend. Have I done that? Yes, tick. What have I taken out that I don't need to spend? I've done that tick. How much has that saved me that I wasn't to bridge that £500 gap? It saved £150. Great. So therefore, the gap is £350. What can I do to bridge? bring more money in to get to bridge out that £350 down to maybe £200? So actually, the gap you have is actually £200, not £500. And actually, from an emotional perspective, you actually feel like you're making progress steps forwards.

39:43 Well, then the human brain is a beautiful machine that when you give it a problem to solve, it's more inclined to come up with a solution. So worrying about I haven't got enough money is quite a negative sort of based on worry. Like, I'm never going to afford that. It's 500 grand. How am I going to get a mortgage? It's impossible. No, so the baby step is cash flow is in this. We now got an idea of what we're spending. And now we've brought it down to there's a 200 pound gap. So the question we start asking ourselves is now, where do I find 200 pounds from? How can I become 200 pounds worth of more value to the world per week, per month, whatever it might be?

40:23 And you're right. The brain, you give the brain the problem you want it to solve because ultimately that's what the brain will solve. And I think that's a far more positive way of dealing, looking at it and approaching it rather than, well, that's a really big gap and I don't know how I'm going to bridge it. It's very rare that you eat an elephant in one mouthful, is it? You eat it one little bit at a time and you plan to that place. I'm a celebrity. An elephant's testicle. Now that's an you've got to make sure that you set the benchmarks along the way sensibly so that you actually don't, there's one thing to stretch yourself.

41:02 It's another thing to set yourself something that's completely unattainable. And I think we try to do too, we almost try to do Superman looking at the picture of the ad in the back, but bound these tall buildings in one leap. It doesn't work like that. You do it very small, very slowly, one step at a time, and set yourself a sensible timeframe, but you work towards it positively rather than, oh, well, I can't do it. Yeah, yeah. And what about people who are carrying debt at the, you know, part of this process, a couple of credit cards or something, money's going out to those debts.

41:47 What are your thoughts on people who've got that sort of, what do they call it, consumer debt that's hanging around them? Should they be attacking that first? If that's costing you more than what's coming in, yes, because actually it's saving you money. So actually to pay off your credit, if your credit cards are on high interest, you consolidate them as much as you can into one interest rate at a low rate. And then what you do, if you're spending, if hundreds of pounds are going out on interest that is unnecessary, that's why good financial planning is built on where your money goes first. So you reduce the amount that's outflowing because it's like a leaky boat, isn't it?

42:30 If you don't plug the leaky boat, it doesn't matter how much you put in it. It still leaks. So you've got to plug the leaks first. You've got to stop going at things, the money going out that you don't need it to go out. So consolidate as much as you can and get it to as low a number as you possibly can. Because I consolidated my credit cards and when the first one came through, it wasn't enough to put the thing online said it was, right? Then when it came through, it was like two grand short. So then I put all, so I put the amount on there and then had to go and get another one to put the final two grand on. So now I've got two, which is not your interest rate. Is it cheaper than what you were paying previously?

43:13 Yes, it was. All those run out now. So now I need to get another reduced rate type holiday type situation. Yeah. And one thing I would say is that, and we're talking maybe more about partnerships here rather than, is that especially if one of you is good with money and the other one isn't, let the one who is good with money do it and look after it. Yeah. Yeah, because I think sometimes, and I've seen plenty of times where business owners with their partners have gone, well, I'm the one who looks after the money. And I'm looking at their partner going, but they're the one who's actually got the financial now sell of the pair of you.

43:57 Why are you doing it? It doesn't make any sense. Let the person who's got the confidence and the ability and the skills to look after the money look after the money. Yeah, so it really is teamwork in yes, absolutely. And yes, absolutely. And I say that to business owners in to business owners about their businesses. If you don't look after the money at home, whatever you do, don't look after the. money in your business because those same challenges you have about looking after money at home yeah manifest themselves in in in your business and all the behaviors that happen in business come from your personal life yeah and i can see in business i know this from my brother very

44:39 successful business like 15 years old now he he looked after the finance side of it and uh and then one day he got a uh an interim fd in to do stuff to support him and within a week he goes oh i can see that the bit basically the business had outgrown his his capabilities and it was only when this guy came in and did did the the first week he was like wow okay so it was it was again about realizing that the time had come to evolve and and be and and in doing so grew the business

45:17 exponentially um and so holding on to something that you've historically been good at be prepared at some point to realize that someone else can do a better job and that could be at home couldn't it yes i run my business successfully um and actually my wife can probably handle this better at home than than i could yeah and that and the bit about teamwork is really is really key it's really key and but then that comes back to the relationship bit that if it's not great and it's challenging as painful as it is it is better to be on the same page because ultimately

45:56 if you're on the same page you can actually move forward you can actually move forwards together yeah yep totally um i've got a question here which we're going to bring in let me just make sure it's not full of swear words and stuff as has been the case um okay right so someone says by the way if anyone's watching and if you're listening on the podcast then you can participate simply by catching the team super dad lives and um if you go to streamyard.com forward slash facebook it will pull your name through so this person says isn't there a risk of cutting out everyday luxuries that make us feel uninspired some cutting is probably important but what if we can't cut are there other clever ways we can use our money smarter e.g school fees we pay tax on the money and the business pay tax on the money

46:43 consolidation you mentioned is kind of what i'm asking about here how can we be more clever with what we have yeah so if you're out of there raymond well i was gonna i was gonna say one of the things which a really good accountant should really do more of is actually when you bring your personal and business finances together what that does is that does enable you to look at your money in its totality and work out what is the best way to do things yeah right and be and be tax efficient with it and actually because i think what because otherwise what you end if you look at them as two separate uh two separate um buckets you end up effectively overpaying on one area so what you put you can what you can put through your business that you didn't think didn't know you can and actually explain that for people who haven't got a business basically that someone who's running a business

47:36 you you could pay you could get the button the business could receive money and you pay tax on that money and then if you pay yourself a salary that you then get taxed on you've basically been taxed twice on that same yeah of on that same piece of money so it's not avoiding tax it's just being conscious of have i already paid tax on this money and so in and then do in order for me to be able to spend it how can i spend it without paying tax for the second time the most tax efficient way yes yes um and some of your expenses like a mobile phone could be something could be something like that

48:15 plenty of ways which you can look at what you actually have going through your house especially if you work from home especially if you work from home there are ways to attribute certain household expenses to um to the business to the business and going back to the point of cutting out luxuries just on the other piece that's why i say when you look at what you spend be clear about the value that you receive from it because it's luxuries that you want to cut out as in where you where they are kind of nice to haves where they give you a kind of an adrenaline boost rather than add value to what to what you're doing so

48:54 there's nothing wrong with spending there's nothing wrong with going to the cinema right yeah because the value you hold to that is that's time for us as a family to spend time together and actually is in the as an investment in think about your five f's i think that's perfect if you if it fits within the five f's F's, why would you not spend it? Do it the most efficient, effective way you can. But they're the guiding principles. Find them out. Go on, get a five, three for five price on group on or get clever in that respect. And you also said about rewarding yourself. So

49:35 if you're casually just eating out five times a month because you can't be asked to cook, then shift the perspective to we're going to save 200 quid and then reward ourselves with a 50 pound dinner. So, yeah, we haven't saved 250 quid, but we have saved 200 quid and we really enjoyed that dinner out where we celebrated the fact and laughed and giggled together. And then you say, and actually the learning to cook and actually the different engagement that brings as well. So you not only do you save the money, you actually enhance your lifestyle by doing by, but it's principle based. And that's why I always say about money, money comes to you in a principled way.

50:18 So don't get, don't only get hooked, don't get too hooked up on, oh, well, the number says it's the decision making, the way you bring things together that has driven that financial outcome. Yeah. Yeah. If you overspend and you go into debt significantly into debt, it's the behaviors that have driven you there. The fact that you have overspent is on the back of some things that you have decided to do. And if you, and it's tapping into where did it go? Why did it go there? What value did I see? Did I really get that value that actually will drive the cash, that the cash, the actual way your cash flows. Yeah. And I know just the risk of kind of covering points we've already covered.

51:03 I know from tracking what I eat that the very fact that each day I'm aware of the fact that that was a day when I ate 2,000 calories or that was a day when I ate two and three and a half thousand calories. I can see like, oh, okay, wow, that was that was a good, that was the eye. That was on, that was the on target day and that was the off-target day. And that's why the expression where attention goes, energy flows, actually, actually can work because you suddenly start to become conscious of things and start to find different pages, creating a pleasure out of not being going into our overdraft this month versus the pleasure of going out and out and having having dinner.

51:44 About overdrafts, if you're in an overdraft, don't try to, depending on the size of the bag, don't try to come out of the overdraft all in one go. Come out of its steps, because one of the things I think a lot of people forget, and I know business owners forget this, and it's a real problem, it can be a real challenge with partners, is they go from, well, I'm going to take home three grand this month and then I'm going to take five next month and they go back to four and then they go to three and then the next thing you know it's up to six and then it's down to three again and it's down to two whereas when you're talking to your partner what they're looking for is it's three consistently three and a half consistently four consistently four and a half consistently because you can manage knowing that over a period of time it's going to be the same amount we can adjust to that but when it's doing that

52:34 it's it emotionally that's what you do with what you try to be like this with it but you go like this with it and that's why with overdraft exactly the same thing so you're saying about credit cards almost slice and dice yeah if you can clear it off great but if you can't keep taking a small chunk out of it consistently because your confidence comes from i am improving the situation where i am yeah yeah very much in this whole conversation it's it's it's easy to get um blinded by this is basic stuff i already know this it's not going to help but it is it is about taking those baby steps and about controlling the different areas of of our of our life effectively managing the basics i

53:21 talked to so many different coaches and experts and people that have been successful and and they do these little things consistently over time and that's where the results come from yes and at the end of that person's question they ask how can we be cleverer with what we have um we're kind of answering it in in these different ways and just to touch back on that point importantly their accountant should be able to help them work that out basically in terms of how can we be we we we be cleverer if it's personal income and personal finance and you're not a business owner and it's about managing that income at home and possibly looking to grow your income in different ways and

54:00 if it's about being a business owner then it's being really clear with a good accountant that you're being tax efficient yes and to be really clear with the accountant what it is you're trying to achieve because accounting accountants typically look at it as well, you've got to file your taxes. Now, actually, you want to be clear: this is what I'm trying to achieve. Help me, yeah, because if you want to get a mortgage, you might want to show a high uh income. If you've already got a mortgage and you're now looking to um put more money aside to invest, then perhaps you want to take a lower income but take money from the business in other ways that you can invest it maybe in property or yes, into someone else's business or into a new venture or something like that.

54:42 Yeah, and what you say about the family piece in terms of the personal piece about group on and things like that is it's about don't know what you want to do and do it and look to find the most financially efficient way to do it. Don't cut back on what it is you're trying to do in that context, yeah. Yeah, little versus Sainsbury's. How about that? Perfect example. That is a lot of money saved. Yeah, I mean, it's things you go to the big to Tesco's or Sainsbury's for because whether it's a branded item or whether it's whatever it is, but but when you're buying meat and milk and butter, and

55:27 one's twice the price of the other, that is uh that that's that's a quick way to transform your finances, blind me. Yes, it is, and it just it's the discipline that that's the bit. So, when you talk about focus, it's the discipline, yeah, it's having the mindset that says that's what, but the outcome is if I save 50 pounds or a hundred pounds a month on my shopping, what do I do in return to say that was really good? And I think we're and it's not, and I think sometimes we think of it's it's big goals, it's not, it's little things, it's the little goals that it's those little goals on a regular basis that make the difference because it's the little goals on a regular basis that hit the big numbers, get the big goals, yep, totally.

56:16 Well, Raymond, this has been awesome. Uh, like I said, to anybody who's managed to uh listen to this part of it, thank you so much. The juicy bits are at the end. If you comment, um, uh, template or cash flow, I'll send you the team super dad one. You can search on Google as well, just you know, there'll be PDFs. Or if you search, what's the end of what's the XL dot XS? XLS, yeah, dot XLS, yeah. So if you search Google for cashflow.xlx, you'll find it will come up with one. Um, we've had the guy who asked the comments came back and said, brilliant, and thank you. And that is okay, that is good.

56:54 Um, but yeah, we can get you our template overall. You can use another template. The Hero Academy is launching in January, and there's a whole area on managing your finances, getting out of debt, and then making more money, increasing your income. Um, Raymond and I are talking about that together, so you'll likely see Raymond in there. And Raymond, if people have enjoyed the idea of some of the stuff you do and want to work with you, where can they find you? Um, they can probably best is maybe via my email, it's uh Raymond.holt at agnentis, agnetis.com in the comments for us. Um, and you're on LinkedIn as well. Say again, you're on LinkedIn, of course.

57:37 Yes, I am on LinkedIn. Yes, I am on LinkedIn, and I am more than happy to have a conversation with anyone in Superdad around in any way that just naturally, any way that any questions they have, anything, and just ask. It's absolutely fine. Absolutely brilliant. Perhaps what we should do is on one of the upcoming dad calls, we'll do a finance special and then because the dad call is it's not recorded, it's not streamed, it's a completely like it's a it's a closed room basically. Um, so we'll have a QA in there on on finances or any of these elements and uh and members of the team super dad community can can come and get on board.

58:21 There's Raymond's uh email address. If you're if you're watching, you'll see that in the comments below. If you're listening on the podcast, then it's raymond.holt at agnentis, agn e n t i s.com or search up Raymond Holt on LinkedIn. Yes, you'll see me there. Awesome. Raymond, such a lovely phone call. I wish you enjoyed it. Who's turned up? My wife has just come back from shopping. You better get the receipt out. And I'm like, not supposed to be home yet. Let's get that receipt out. Make sure we didn't. We were on budget. If my youngest son was in here, he'd go.

59:05 Do we need that? Do we need that? It's like, okay. Brilliant. Right, Raymond. I'll see you on the other side of me saying goodbye. Team Super Dad members, family, friends, all around the world. We'll see you on the next live stream. Remember to come and subscribe to the Team Super Dad podcast. If you go to teamsuperdad.com forward slash start hyphen here or forward slash podcast, you'll be straight into subscribing to the podcast. I look forward to having you on the next episode. Team Super Dad out. Bye. This has been Team Super Dad. Find us at teamsuperdad.com.