59 - Analysing Adviser Alpha

TRAP LIVE25 - 14TH MAY. PUT THE DATE IN YOUR DIARY! Click here to register your interest.

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

• Topical Titbits including TRAP Live25 date - 14th May, Tom Redmayne’s property piece, SJP Property, Blackbee débâcle, Warren Buffer Share Pledge letter, Lifestyling woes, Irish commission ban pending, cash management crashes, Declan King joins Métis Norway, UK crypto owners, the dangers of not understanding MPS rebalancing and CGT
• Meat and Potatoes: Analysing Adviser Alpha
• TRAPist question(s) from www.twitter.com/@jamie42874251 and www.twitter.com/@gavincasey1970 https://www.Linkedin.com/in/gavincasey
• Culture Corner

Show links: http://tiny.cc/traplinks

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:07

Music, welcome to the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. Please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast, where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the trap team to discuss. Also remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a six out of five star review on iTunes. Doing all this really, really helps us, which means we can do more to help you. Now, let's head over to the studio for the latest pile of trap you Nick

Nick Lincoln: 0:43

yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 59 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, Trapp. My name is officially lick nickenn, and joining me as ever in the digital studio of doom are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Carl della vocci, the voice widget and the ultra heart and Alan the storyteller. Smith, Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of app, absolutely nothing. So let's start packing it straight away with some more high energy review read or reads from my very good friend, the right honorable Mr. Andrew Hart,

Andy Hart: 1:21

thank you. Lick. One review today from Ben Hayward, entitled no frill, simple but reassuringly brilliant, advice, tips, insights and banter. Six stars. Having left a large, national, restricted advice firm to set up a new IFA business, I found this podcast a complete godsend. I've learned and implemented so much from what I've have heard on here, and the fact that our fledgling business survived the first 12 months and is now thriving is in no small part down to these four splendid chaps and Nick's awesome Google Group. Haven't got a Google group of you, Nick an absolute must for any advisor, no matter what stage of their career. I even got to meet Andy and Alan today at hum, disproving the adage of never meet your heroes. Back to you, Nick,

Nick Lincoln: 2:09

wow. What a lovely review. Thank you very much. Really appreciate that. I was going

Alan Smith: 2:13

to say we haven't caught up, have we, because that was from hum, hum 23

Andy Hart: 2:19

with that, with that popular.

Unknown: 2:21

Okay, great stuff. Great

Nick Lincoln: 2:22

stuff. Brilliant, brilliant. Please do keep the reviews coming in, then give us a real shot in the arm. Okay, Episode 59 somehow we've made it this far. Let's give this episode a timestamp with some topical tidbits, and we have some exciting news. Andrew, tell the TRAPPIST what's happening next year.

Andy Hart: 2:39

So following on from our first trap live in this year 2024 we are planning on doing it again in 2025 it's been a bit of a ordeal to try and get this sorted out. Long story short, today is an announcement of Save the date. We believe it's going to be on the 14th of May 2025 which is a Wednesday. It's the same day that Brett Davidson is running a conference. So the idea is to go to Brett's in the day. If you're part of that gang, come to our gang in the evening, and then the following down the 15th of May. It's Abraham's conference. 3.0 again, if you're part of that gang, you can kill three birds with one stone, as they say, central London. Six to nine more details to be revealed. That's it. So today, save the day. We're 99% sure it's going to be on that day. There's an outside chance it might move. That's going to be a bit annoying, but I think it won't. So that's it. 14th of May 2025, trap live in the evening, six till nine, slightly later than it was last year. That's about it, unless anyone else has anything to mention.

Nick Lincoln: 3:40

Great stuff. How exciting is that? And, and, and if you buy tickets to all three events, the trap Packer pleased to announce, you'll get no discount on ours. Okay, let's go down to the next topical tidbit. I read a great article from a young IFA who's on sub stack, Tom Redmayne on the agonies of property investing. And really, really nailed it for me. And I do feel the vital scene in the UK, especially with this stamp duty hike from the last budget. I think it's really over. And Tom is far more analytic on these things than me. I tend to go on gut feelings. But he broke down these different scenarios of, you know, basic rate taxpayer, high rate taxpayer, and using the current mortgage rates, and you don't, you cannot break even on any of the current scenarios based on a typical yield, on a typical property. I know they're all different, but really good piece, really well written. Obviously, there's a link to it in the so called show notes, but well done. Tom I think you got quite a bit of traction with that piece, because I I put it back out on Twitter and had quite a few comments and so forth. So I just kind of substantiated my gut feeling that I think it's over for property. I know the Irish experience from you know, the great financial crisis was worse, I think, than in the UK, but I still think there's a love affair a little bit, isn't there with property in Ireland? Car,

Carl Widger: 4:52

yeah, I think, though, that the difference these days is that it's not necessarily driven by outrageous amounts of debt. Leverage, whatever you want to call it, that,

Alan Smith: 5:03

you know,

Carl Widger: 5:03

I do think as a nation, we have learned our lesson, or mostly anyway, but the Irish still do like their property, and that's okay too. But, you know, I don't think family fortress portfolios are going to be blown up by debt to the same extent that they were back in 2008 910, 1112, you still read in the papers about some people still trying to get deals done 15 years later. You know, crazy stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. But imagine the mental turmoil of that. You know, apart from anything else, that's just not okay.

Andy Hart: 5:37

Yeah, it's a superb article. Tom has nailed it. It's very analytical, even though Tom, in real life, is not so he's quite a personal financial advisor. Works for a decent, decent firm, rock wealth, who were doing good things. But, yeah, it's a great article, definitely worth checking out.

Carl Widger: 5:54

Nice Guy, Tom, I met Thomas humans under management, I think, really, really, yeah, great work time.

Alan Smith: 6:00

Yeah, he is. And, you know, the other thing that his article highlights for me is we've talked about it often on this podcast in the past. Is, you know, when you create content, you write stuff, write a newsletter, write a blog, make a video, do something like that. You can really get traction. You know, that one did blow blow up from it. You know, it was really well written. It must have taken him ages to do all his research and what have you, but it was excellent. But his his his name and his ideas and his content and his thoughts are across probably 1000s of people now. So just shows you the the power of sharing, sharing your best ideas. Recommend any other younger advisors or any advisor you know does that a bit a bit more often?

Andy Hart: 6:39

Yeah, get your thoughts out there. Definitely, start shipping some content.

Carl Widger: 6:42

Definitely. And keep, keep, keep showing up. Keep, keep doing the content. Or not everything was going to go viral on you, but you've got to be very consistent over a long period of show up.

Nick Lincoln: 6:51

Show your work. The Austin clear work. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, Carlos, we've got you on the mic, and I know you're a bit under the weather with the some kind of grotty chest infections, but we're going to keep you talking because, and I'm going to tell you why, because you haven't printed off the show notes. But I'm giving you a pass because you're not well, black bee debacle continues to unwind.

Carl Widger: 7:09

Yeah, I've mentioned the black bee, I've mentioned solar 21 both, both have actually been in the papers over the last week or so. I think some of the stuff that was going on, there's the guard here involved now, certainly in the black bee thing, I think. And, yeah, look, it just goes to show, just, please, Nicholas, yeah, that's the police. And look on the one hand, good to see that, you know, if there, if there has been fraudulent activity, that at least it's being investigated and that the full force of the law will come down upon anyone who has acted fraudulently. They are the allegations. I'm not saying that there was fraudulent activity, but, uh, look it. This goes back to, you know, time and time again, we're talking about keep it simple. And if it seems too good to be true, well then it probably is. And you know, these two particular investment institutions in Ireland have gone remarkably pear shaped. I know the solar 21 they were talking about getting a percentage back, you know, if they kind of stayed the course and blah, blah, blah. And it seems that that's not going to be the case. That was always going to be something that was going to happen, you know, take whatever you can and get out and start again, would be my advice to anybody. Okay, great

Nick Lincoln: 8:36

stuff. Just so you know, Colin Mayan, certainly you've frozen on the video. I know it's still recording, but if you're giving us, giving me verbal clues with your visual clues, I can't see them because you're frozen. Okay,

Andy Hart: 8:46

it's all right, sorry for me. Yeah, yeah. Okay,

Unknown: 8:49

cool.

Nick Lincoln: 8:50

Okay. Sorry something. Yes, I missed out your item. I have one job, and I've managed to

Alan Smith: 8:54

cock it up with him. It's, it's just a quick one, and it actually just followed on from your offer. Top from Tom's article. You referenced Tom's article on in property. I just thought it was an interesting follow up in that our friends, the mighty St James's place, have now formally closed. You're looking for the draw. Underestimate the power of a dark side. Yeah. SJP have actually closed their, I think, all their property funds. So their the normal kind of unit trust property fund, their pension property fund, their like the bond Life Assurance type property fund. So there is, I think there's a couple of billion in there. So they've effectively closed it for new business. It is a gated fund anyway. You can't get your money out. There's a lot of from

Andy Hart: 9:45

your reading Alan, are they just saying we're not getting back into this too much hassle. We're just going to keep it traditional investing, which

Alan Smith: 9:51

is good move from from my reading, that's what they do. I find it remarkable, really, that they are just saying that property as it's just not something that we're. At all, at all anymore, good. There's always been an issue over this type of fund, which effectively, actually buys and owns bricks and mortar office blocks, shopping centers, all that in an open ended investment fund where people have got effectively immediate daily liquidity. So inevitably, what happens is markets crash. Everyone wants their money out. They've got to try and sell properties. They put this kind of gate up so you can't get your money out for a period of time, which I think they've got still, at the moment, we call it used to be market value adjustments on with profit funds, that sort of thing. If you want to get your money out, there might be an impact or penalty. There's certainly been quite a lot of comment on it. I've seen online in that they are still obviously taking their fees, which are all added in a couple of percent, about 1.8 or 2% a year, and you can't get your money out. And the fund has actually gone nowhere. I think it's given minus negative returns over the last couple of years. So it's this kind of story, state of affairs. It's just quite interesting. As the largest wealth management company in the UK, is that the direction of travel. I mean, obviously commercial property is quite different to the buy to list site. It's kind of

Nick Lincoln: 11:09

happened, isn't it, because I love it, the LNG, M and G, I think have all closed. Close are closing down. I've closed down there. They're bricks and mortar. Funds for these, these these things came up and again, back to great financial crisis. These issues came up with liquidity people wanted. But, you know, you just can't sell a retail park overnight. You know, it takes about a years to line up and and to get the cash in to pay investors. Are

Andy Hart: 11:32

you sorry? Nick Aviva, of close to new money, or they're slowly trying to sell all the assets as well, trying

Nick Lincoln: 11:40

to I might be Miss, I'm not sure that's true. M and G, M and G are closing their one down. Investors. Yeah. Cool, yeah.

Alan Smith: 11:52

Okay, yeah. Some of the big, some of the big ones are still operating. It is another thing. I mean, there is, there is research which says that, you know, commercial property is a diversifier. You know, via a REIT type investment structure. I hear, see you shaking your head, Andrew, there's a lot of research that says it does provide some diversification qualities. If you look in, in in the great financial crisis, global property did not fall as far as fast as traditional global equities. It's not needed

Andy Hart: 12:19

for a long term portfolio. It's not needed. It's just overcomplicated for no reason, global equities, bonds, that's my opinion. Obviously, everyone has

Alan Smith: 12:26

their own opinion. Yeah, fair enough. But yeah, quite interesting, isn't it that they have gone and on top of Tom's comment, I mean, you could argue that, if you were a contrarian investor, this now is exactly the time to invest in property whilst everyone else is leaving it property prices, if everyone's selling, then prices are depressed. So good. So if you're a long term investor, if that's what your badge is, just,

Andy Hart: 12:47

just back to the point you've raised. Alan, I don't know where I sit on this in terms of asset managers, wealth managers, whilst they close down a fund and deal with all the admin charging their fee, that's already agreed. So what's the counter argument? They should not charge fees now to existing clients. I'm just trying to struggle to work out what I think anything to do here,

Alan Smith: 13:07

my view would be they should offer a discounted fee. They're still managing it. There's still activities going on, but to charge sort of full fat fees, it's probably managed fund. Well, you can't get your money out your lock. Your performance is pretty poor. There's nothing you can do about it. It just,

Andy Hart: 13:24

I mean, yeah, I think it's obviously they're perfectly

Alan Smith: 13:27

within the rights to do what they're doing. But it's not a great PR exercise, is it? It's not a they've certainly picked up a lot of bad publicity. I've seen just reading a few comments online and then blogs and what have you. But there we go. Is it the demise of property as an asset class? We shall see.

Nick Lincoln: 13:46

Okay, interesting. Thank you. So let's see if I can get this one right. We've done modules out of order. Ultra Warren Buffett letter,

Andy Hart: 13:54

yeah, Warren Buffett, excuse me, published a letter last week that some of you may have read. It's all around the sort of gifting pledge and him giving away the bulk of his wealth to society, rather than to his children. It's quite a profound letter. I think it's worth reading. Just I mean, the numbers are staggering. I mean, this guy, when he decided to start giving away his wealth, he owned 508,000 shares of Berkshire Hathaway, if he kept them in its original state, it would be worth $368 billion today. He'd be the richest man in the world by an absolute mile. This is the magic of compounding, and compounding in a productive asset class that provides a rising income, rising capital value, you know, over multi decades, which is businesses. It's a really good read. He talks about how important it is to discuss how you plan to pass on your wealth with your children. He recommends every wealthy people, a wealthy person or not so wealthy people, write the will run it past the children, get everyone to discuss it. He said he's seen families been ripped apart after the death. I mean, imagine building your family and having. You know, generations of children, grandchildren, you know, extended family, and then on your passing, everyone's just, you know, at each other, and it just

Nick Lincoln: 15:08

rips the whole family. That's how it works, isn't it? We know about this mega, mega wealthy families that within a few generations, it's just, it's gone on, yeah, I mean, gone and, you know, on scams and drugs and, yeah, well, and obviously, whatever else, obviously

Andy Hart: 15:22

Warren Buffett. Charlie Munger has spoke about this at length when Charlie was alive, and they've seen it done well, and they've seen it done badly. And he does mention, again, the thing in the letter, which is the sort of famous Warren Buffett quote which some wealthy people may have quoted back to you. You know you should leave your children enough so that they can do anything, but not enough that they can do nothing. So again, his children are financially independent, and fortunately, all three of them are very much into philanthropy. But, yeah, it's a it's a great letter. It's a class. It's class. You know, Warren. Warren Buffett is a class act, and as I say, it's well worth three pages of PDF to just check it out. But it's almost like he's seeing the demise, he's thinking, you know, I may have months here again. I don't know that. You just me. You know, reading between the lines, but it's, it's a decent what

Alan Smith: 16:08

is the end 94 something like that. Something like

Andy Hart: 16:12

that. Yes, his birthday is on the 31st of August. I can't remember exactly how he was, but yeah, I remember the day, not his not the age at the moment, I show him my age. Yeah, send him a card. He's an old boy. But, yeah, it's decent. It's worth, worth checking out. No,

Alan Smith: 16:27

I think, I think that makes a lot of sense, that probably there's some it relates somewhat to our meat and potatoes later on. The kind of value of where an advisor can provide this kind of family council and sort of join the dots, get the right people in the room together discuss all these things in a coherent and independent manner. But, yeah, I'll check that out. Sounds good. Sounds worth reading. I mean,

Andy Hart: 16:48

the phrase that sticks into my head when people are discussing these things is fair is not equal. Sometimes families and you know, the wealthy father or mother, they're trying to always do things equally. Yeah, it's like, no, no, you've got to do it fairly. And that may or may not be equally. Once they hear that, it releases a lot of pressure for them, usually, because they're just trying to just divvy up as they would expect it to be as an equally. But it's like, no that, you know, fair is not equal. But yeah, there's there's the books and books and coaches and consultants. There's so many people in this space, so it's a tricky,

Nick Lincoln: 17:21

okay, okay, cool, right? I'm just Googling whether, whether is good idea to refresh a browser when recording using Riverside. So, sorry, a bit distracted. Jokey. So lifestyle, lifestyle fund, work, yeah,

Alan Smith: 17:35

this, this, this comes up periodically on this discussion, on this podcast. It was just, it was just, it was in the papers again at the weekend, front page of the money section in the Telegraph lady who was in a company pension scheme. She had about 700,000 pounds in her fund approaching retirement. It was inevitably, in one of these horrific lifestyleing funds got significantly moved into long, dated government bonds just around the time. You know, it was just the perfect storm of bad timing, a lot of bad luck involved in her case, I think she's 6061, planning retirement. And it was kind of, what I found was very poignant in the story, was the knock on effects for her family. Because the idea was she was going to retire, she was going to spend time whilst her, I think it was her daughter and son in law were out to work. Look, you know, looking after the grandchildren while, the while the others, while the parents were out at work. And now she literally can't afford to do that. She's carried she's back at work. She's a receptionist in the company. She's going to keep on going, because she's kind of, because 300,000 pounds has been, has been lost from the value of her pension fund just at the precise time she was going to retire. Now, we know why these things are and in terms of her purchasing power, if she was buying an annuity, her income probably would have been roughly the same as what she'd have otherwise, but I suspect she wasn't. Didn't want to buy an annuity. She wanted the flexibility of of a sort of drawdown type product. It does, I mean, it names all the people involved the company, the advisors that are involved. And the advisor, and she's obviously been to ombudsman, everyone left, right and center, and she hasn't got a leg to stand on, because she declined the advice. She the apparently, advisor, who I think are called origin, who I think are a national firm. Apparently they offered, they offered everyone, but including her, do you want to pay for some individual advice? And she declined. So she sat in the default lifestyle fund 300,000 the fund has gone from 700,000 to 400,000 and the impact of that means she's got to carry on working for several years. She can't look after the grandchildren, a big impact in her life, her lifestyle, and what she was hoping to do for that family. So

Andy Hart: 19:48

this is one of 1000s of people, maybe even 10s of 1000s, maybe even hundreds of 1000s. It's an absolute travesty. It's asset misallocation in all of its glory. But again. Compliant and legal lifestyle, and was set up by investing in literacy just obliterated, you know, real people's life savings. It's an absolute freaking travesty.

Alan Smith: 20:09

Carl, do you have these, this type of investment structure in pensions? And it's workplace pensions, company pensions, mainly, but not in Ireland,

Carl Widger: 20:18

yep. Yeah. So I suppose they were traditionally set up when people, when they when they came to their retirement date, they had to buy annuities, and they kind of did make sense. But when we had the ARFs introduced over, well over 20 years ago at this stage, and it became much less of something that was important or that should be used, it still is there. They are, I know, making some changes to these lifestyle funds, they're like, they're target date funds. That's just another word for them, isn't it? You know that when you're kind of 510, years out, you're you start reducing your your equity exposure, and you go into bonds, and we saw how that worked for people over the last couple of years. So it's still a thing. I think it's much less of a thing now, and certainly in the market that we would be operating in for the kind of higher net worth folks with the, you know, Max pension fund bonds, I don't think any of them would be in these types of of for these types of investment portfolios. But yeah, they still do exist, and they're still there. And look, I have said, and I will say, that there are some times when I do think they might be appropriate, but certainly in the general scheme of things, I don't think they're fit for purpose at all.

Alan Smith: 21:33

I think that's the challenge for all these you're giving kind of generic, not advice, but just guidance, yeah, and it is a fact. I think when this came up last time, I had a look and try to find out the amount of people who actually annuitize at retirement age. And it's a reasonable number. It's not no one. I think it's about 10% 15% just automatically will bind annuity. Obviously, rates have gone up significantly in the last couple of years, and for those people, it's kind of okay. So on the basis that if people are getting no advice, there's no one at the workplace giving an advice, they haven't paid for workplace advice. They haven't paid for an independent, individual advisor, they might just they might get an option. Might get a letter saying, which of these do you want to have? And one of them, of course, this is back to another conversation that comes up periodically. Is. Words are important. Do you want a guaranteed income for the rest of your life? Take here, or do you want to invest the fund and carry on the stock market? Yeah, to gamble your fund in the stock

Nick Lincoln: 22:33

market,

Andy Hart: 22:34

which is terrible, yeah, yeah.

Alan Smith: 22:36

So you know, for a number of people, okay, yeah.

Carl Widger: 22:39

But for that reason, you know, that's where, you know it might actually be a reasonable solution for those types of folks. And you know, I think as financial planners, we tend to deal with the people who can afford to pay for financial advice, after all. And so it's highly unlikely that it would be appropriate for the vast, vast, vast majority of our clients, our individual client families, however. You know, just generalizing and saying they're no good at all, I think we just need to be you just need to caveat it a small bit and just say, look, there are some scenarios where it actually may be appropriate. I

Andy Hart: 23:17

think

Alan Smith: 23:17

this should be the one thing that should come out of this is that employers should really encourage people to attend workshops or meetings. You know, anyone within five years of retirement, you know, come along with we and they will pay for somebody to advise, and all these various options

Nick Lincoln: 23:34

aren't interested, mate. They're not interested. This

Alan Smith: 23:37

is the problem. And for all we know, to go, yeah, for all we know this lady was invited three times and turned it down and then got off, got a statement you never, yeah, you're on. You're onto. Hiding to nothing here. But ultimately, again, it's another, another suggestion that people should seek advice, particularly at probably one of the most important times in their entire life, is just this pre, post retirement.

Andy Hart: 23:58

I mean, this lady has taken 700 grand in a workplace pension scheme, and you're saying she went back to do a job as a receptionist. Now you're just sort of again, trying to recollect the story. Yeah, but she's got a few quid. You know? She could, she could easily sit down with an advisor and get some decent advice. But okay, sometimes

Carl Widger: 24:17

though, Andy, you'll find people with 700 grand are, are more are, are a little bit afraid to sit down with an advisor.

Andy Hart: 24:26

They don't understand the same challenge that everyone needs to approach us. Yeah, it's unfortunate that she couldn't find an advisor that she, you know, knew, liked and trusted is I've turned this off for all of the clients that ongoing clients are mine, and they've saved six figures. In hindsight, some of them have actually just given me a call around the out of interest, so they just sent me a letter saying about its lifestyle and things. Is it worth I speak to you about this? And I'm like, Yeah, of course, it's fucking freaking worth. You speak to me about it. It's really important. And then we move forward and fill in a incredibly long winded attitude to risk questionnaire. We turn it off, don't we? I think, I think there's an

Alan Smith: 24:59

opportunity here for. Advisors, if you are dealing with clients who are, let's say, in their 40s, to offer it as a kind of free or impartial second opinion. If your mom or dad are heading into retirement, or older relatives, maybe older siblings or whatever, obviously, if they've engaged with you and the you know, the value your services your client, and say, happy to have a chat with anyone who's, you know, pre retirement, and just, you know, for free. Just say, I don't think you should do this, or I think you should do that again. You use a fine line again for us, because it's not advice, but it's tricky, but there we go. So sad, sad story, and unfortunately, it will keep happening. There is

Andy Hart: 25:35

free information on the internet all about this. I did a whole podcast on it, you know, lifestyle your way to poverty. That, again, is free advice on the internet, and I'm obviously not pro it. So if people look, you know, search hard enough they can find these things.

Nick Lincoln: 25:47

Okay, okay, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and lifestyleing Falls definitely into that category, okay, for me, Next, another pension story gone wrong. This one is not about lifestyleing, and sort of not knowing what you're doing and just letting things ride. This is about someone making an active decision, an American guy. There's a link to it in the Wall Street Journal. This poor sap in 2023 transferred his entire 401, K, the equivalent of a personal pension, I guess, into a fund offering a 15% guaranteed return. 15, one, 5% guaranteed return. Of course, it's a con. It's run by a con man who was known to the SEC to be a con man, and this, this poor guy is probably gonna lose all of his money. It's all it's gone. 50 million US dollars have gone into this particular fund. I say funding quotes. Whether Ashley ever existed. I don't know, 340 individual investors, but again, just this, there's this greed thing. I mean, 50, I know. I know this thing of ours is the world that we absolutely live and breathe in, and we were immersed in it all the time. But surely even city street has to understand that 15% a 5% guaranteed return, would be raising my eyebrows. A 15% guaranteed return. It just smacks of, do not go anywhere near it. But yet again, people just saying, the guy says he beat his wife. He kept him talking to his wife about this, I want to do it. And then she said, just throw her hands up. Crack on and do it. It's your pension pot. Because he thought this would be our financial salvation. He'd just been diagnosed with colon cancer. Started 2023, and he thought, yeah, this is manna from heaven. 15% guaranteed return on my 700k within a few years, we'll have enough. Of course, it's gone horribly wrong. So, you know, human, human nature in many ways,

Alan Smith: 27:34

yeah, and you can't, you can't, it's a shame. Beat him up for him, and he's got, he's got enough troubles. But this is, it's this human it's the human condition that this. I mean, he's got both their fear and greed, fear of not having enough worried about his health situation, not having enough money to keep getting through and and greed. And they're just natural human emotions. They drive a lot of decisions that we take and you, with the benefit of hindsight, you say, how crazy were you, but at the time, and he's he's not the first. He won't be the first, it won't be the

Nick Lincoln: 28:02

last, unfortunately. And of course, it wasn't through an advisor. It was through a friend who told him about this, you know. So that friend probably feels terrible now, because no doubt the friend was invested in this as well, and the misery just cascades out. Okay, human nature, baby, right? Watch, I'm gonna tear you up in in your neck of the woods, the Commission ban is gaining traction.

Carl Widger: 28:23

Yes, Catherine Gallaher, who I've mentioned before, is a relatively new journalist writing for the business post here, and I think she's doing some really great stuff, because she's challenging what's going on in our world. And she wrote about the potential commission ban, right? So an RDR here in Ireland, and Vanguard were quoted in the article as to say that they support such a, such a, an RDR in Ireland, and there are a number of other firms quoted saying that they would support it. And the funny thing about that is, subsequently, subsequent to the article, one of the other firms came out and said, I know we didn't say that at all. We think commission is okay, or whatever. So it's interesting. There's still, if you see all the LinkedIn comments on the various articles that are posted about this particular commentary. You know, we're still miles away from the financial advisor community deciding on what's the best thing to do. For me, the best thing to do is clear. I've been straight about this. I've been consistent. Just do already are, and let the clients decide who they want to deal with, and let everyone be absolutely open and upfront about what they're actually charging. I think we need it. I think it will professionalize everything here in Ireland, but we're a good bit away from it still, however, to see it in the. Mainstream is good. And I think if we can keep it in the mainstream and keep that discussion going, that debate going, I think it can only be good. So fair play to Kathleen Gallagher. I think she's upsetting the apple carts a little bit. And so it should be, and so it should be, yes,

Nick Lincoln: 30:19

yes. We all need to share our share. The weight of, um, just open the apple cart can't live to one or two people in our home can. Okay, but, but

Alan Smith: 30:27

I think, I think this, this is great. There's, I mean, obviously we went through this in UK all those years ago, and there's a lot of, for those who are in the business and you operate in a commission basis, there's a lot of fear and trepidation, you know, how the hell are we going to survive? And people wouldn't possibly pay the commission the rate or pay in a normal fee. And the reality is that all our experiences that people do, all right, our advisors have to up their game in terms of creating a value proposition, yeah, creating something that's worth paying for. But what it does over time is it just creates a higher level of trust amongst potential clients. You know, for those, those people who are fighting against it, I suspect once they go through the pain getting the other side, they'll win more clients. There'll be there'll be less people kind of wary or avoiding and, oh yeah, you guys are getting commission. This very conditional type thing. If I sell you a product, you get a commission. Yeah, it's the direct it's the director, it's right direction of travel. But I know there's a lot rid of

Andy Hart: 31:23

the bottom 20% or whatever, okay, the people, the people that don't have a value product chunk, yeah, Will, yeah.

Carl Widger: 31:29

Industry, the article started quoting, you know, kind of miss selling and, and the fact that someone's pension pot was going to be put into structure products and there was a some intermediary going to get between 10 and 20% commission and all that. I actually think that's not the issue here, that you're always going to have bad actors. Okay, so, yeah, that's on the one, you know, we just got to accept that, and we just got to call the call bad behavior out when it's when it's there. This is a much bigger issue. This is, this is that, you know, a complete ban on commissions on investments and pensions. I think we should continue to have commissions on life cover and that kind of stuff, because I think that has to be sold. Yeah, that's sold, but it's, I've read a lot of the comments on LinkedIn from various advisors, and you know, people who disagree with me are making good points. So it's not cut and dried, right? It's not something that, you know, there's, this is the only way forward and but we need the central bank to, you know, kind of sit up and say, Okay, well, there's European legislation coming in now, and do we adopt that European legislation? I think that's probably where we'll go, but I think we're some years away from it, just just, just now. But it was interesting that some of the firms are one of the firms that was quoted in the article then come out and said, No, I don't we were miser in the article. We are not for a ban on commission. So look, this has a way to run, and it's interesting. And I would just urge everybody, all of the financial advisor community, just be respectful to each other with your views, and make your your views. It's totally okay to have opposing views, but make them respectfully, because it's just not a good look when people are just having pops off each other back

Andy Hart: 33:18

in the real world call, if you had to hazard a guess. How far off do you think a commission being banned or banned or pensions and investments is gonna it will happen within five

Carl Widger: 33:29

years as my firm? Do

Andy Hart: 33:30

you think so? You think, yeah, because legislation is brewing in the background at the moment. Yeah, I

Carl Widger: 33:36

don't think we're gonna. I ultimately, I think we will be forced into it, because, obviously, we're part of the EU, and I think there'll be EU legislation that

Alan Smith: 33:45

I don't get that much these

Unknown: 33:47

years away.

Alan Smith: 33:50

Europe, it's a complete commission dominated by banks, as if layering commissions and fees. Speak to anyone who operates in Italy, Spain, Germany, okay? It's different markets, so

Andy Hart: 34:00

it's interesting, all right? Five years Interesting.

Carl Widger: 34:03

Yeah, yeah, no, no interest. I backed this horse back in 2014 when we set up. That was Ireland. So

Andy Hart: 34:10

five years, if you keep saying five years, if you keep saying exactly, bang on mate,

Carl Widger: 34:16

yeah, like the guy calling, yeah, crash, yeah, eventually you'll be right. No, I do. I do think I look, it's just very encouraging to see it in the mainstream financial media, because look, apart from anything else, our clients are reading this stuff. So our clients are going to now be talking about this. And I have seen this for absolute sure over the last couple of years. Clients are more okay with what's okay and what's value and what's not

Alan Smith: 34:44

sorry. Do you have just, do you have a quick question? Do you have or commission is the dominant model? But is that disclosed? Is it? Yeah, the amount of commission question

Andy Hart: 34:54

I was gonna say if I set up 100,000 pound investment for Mr. And Mrs. Miggins in Ireland? And okay, the initial document wouldn't say, I'm going to get paid five grand. Keep it simple. But then when I have to send them letter and say, just to let you know, you know, page seven, I'm getting

Carl Widger: 35:08

paid five grand. Oh, there's a there's well, the in your Statement of suitability, your reasons why, letter, you have to clearly out outline what your you know, the effect of what your fees are, what your commissions are, and the effect on, you know, your you have to outline your management charts and all that. But then there's a, what they call a kid document, yeah, and it's, again, the slows there. The problem with some of the kid documents is they're generic, so they show the maximum commission that can be paid, and that has caused us all sorts of issues with clients. What the hell I just read now?

Andy Hart: 35:45

You guys, very

Carl Widger: 35:47

few people actually read this stuff, but the few that do something you said, and it's like, no, no, they have to disclose that's the max. That's one of my issues is,

Alan Smith: 35:58

does it say impact? So we will earn 5000 pounds. 10,000 pounds actually say that in monetary terms, or is it a kind of combination of you,

Carl Widger: 36:08

okay, mirrors, I think it would say the amount. Yeah, like we, we specify the amount in our in our statement suitability. But yeah, it's because

Alan Smith: 36:19

I remember before. RDR, you guys, Andrew may just remember this. No, it was when human commission disclosure was brought in. Still a commission, but you actually had to disclose the 1993 slash four. Is that when it was, yeah, born, then it wasn't born then. And the 13 hours working at Standard Life thing, and the advisors I was speaking to, oh my god. It was like, the end of the world. Gonna have to actually tell their clients. It was still

Andy Hart: 36:47

amazing, wasn't it? Alan,

Alan Smith: 36:49

there's loads of stories about ripping off, yeah, I

Nick Lincoln: 36:51

had advisers when I was a broken consultant. They just, let's just tear the last page off the quote with

Unknown: 36:58

the Commission, I won't mention,

Alan Smith: 37:00

and they were just famous for they had two had two page twelves. And what, one quoted four pounds and pence and everything, and the other just said, Your advisor will let you know how much you get paid. Yeah. And interestingly, this is ridiculous how things have moved on. Like page one to 11 was stapled, but the 12 pages had a paper clip, which often just fell out in the envelope somewhere, but we've moved on a bit since then, I think, yeah,

Carl Widger: 37:26

and we are definitely miles ahead of there, right? Yeah, we are way, way, way better than we used to be. But I think we've, we've, we've a bit to go just yet. But it's,

Alan Smith: 37:38

yeah, it's progress. Progress. Yeah. If you get the press on your side, get some people writing about it in the papers that, as you say, your clients read, you think, yeah, this is, this is quite a good idea. This is the direction of travel we should be heading in. So good. We'll check in again in five years. Carl, but

Andy Hart: 37:53

you need a bit more of them. You know, someone who's in a position of power, who's a bit more of a maverick in the investment and pension space that was going to really, really drive this. So, Carl widger,

Nick Lincoln: 38:03

I call which, so, yeah,

Carl Widger: 38:06

well, I have been, and it's been falling under

Andy Hart: 38:10

the regulator that makes it their life's mission to get the to get this implemented,

Carl Widger: 38:15

yeah, but I honestly think, right. I yeah, there might, there might be a few people you know, will struggle, but ultimately it will make this a more professional business for us all to operate in. I think it will elevate the work that we're doing. And I think that if we go down this direction, it's something that can only help the clients, but I think the advisors will, you know, will reap the rewards of it as well. I really, really do believe that completely,

Alan Smith: 38:45

there's no profession, the charges commissions, there's industries and sales industries, profession in terms of lawyers, doctors, medical

Carl Widger: 38:54

people. So the providers, the providers need to help here, because the providers, I've said this before, right? So there are a lot of smaller operators who are just moving their chunks of business around, right? Yeah, and they're getting, they're getting 5% commission, and then there's eggs, and then in five years, you they move it again, they find a reason to move it around, right? So I've always argued that in pension funds, right? Well, this is really easy. Why don't we? Why don't we take the bull to put, take the bull by the horns ourselves, and say, and get the providers to say, no, if you're moving a pension fund, if it's not introducing new business, there's no, there's no commissions or fees allowable. Right now, here you go. Because what I've heard is, you know, insurance, pension provider, a saying, Oh, be careful of that firm over there, you know, because their persistency rate is terrible. And I'm like, Yeah, but when you took the money in, they that provider over there were, like, you are that that intermediate over there was your best friend and your buddy. So you can talk out of both sides your mouth here and and then with. Prsas are, you know, there's an awful lot of them launching new prsas, and you have like, 34 different charging structures. Yeah, I Come on, guys, this is not, this is not professionally this.

Alan Smith: 40:11

This is exactly you believe what we had, yeah, whenever you said it was all those years ago, and exactly that, it was always a reason to move it. Someone else, some other, some other company had, like, point zero, 1% lower fees. So get back to the client. Move it's just all the pension providers just borrowing the money. It's your turn. Now you can have all these funds for five years, and then we'll move them off, off again to someone else. Yes, yeah, we're taking that to

Nick Lincoln: 40:33

the nth degree. When stakeholders were introduced back in 2000 2001 stakeholder pensions, you know, 100% allocation, no bid offer spread, no exit penalties. But the insurance companies, who are driven by sales targets, that's all they look at. Money coming in. They don't seem to focus on money going out. They would like paying five 6% commission on stakeholders. So you'd invest 100 a pension transfer into a stakeholder, 100 grand, say, you get your five grand commission, and the very next day, you can switch that to another provider and get another 5% and that went on for about 18 months, till the life insurance companies just started closing age. Some of these cowboy IFA just taking it. But what they do each time, and they say to the club, well, we're going to rebate back a little bit the commissioners, yeah. So each time, they're fractionally getting a slightly reduced annual management charge in the contract, still earning 1000s of pounds, just leaving a carnage of switches

Alan Smith: 41:20

firms you could actually, before get outlawed, you could actually share commission with a client. She said, we're going to move this particularly last, the last company pension schemes. You know, there's a lot of money involved. We'll move it around. Speak to the directors. We'll move it from, you know, company A to Company B. We'll earn another 100 grand, and we'll give you 20 grand of it for your trouble.

Andy Hart: 41:39

Are you free for lunch

Carl Widger: 41:42

next Thursday. Final point, you know, like, I, if, if I, if you're in business and you're looking maybe to sell your business down the line, right? First question any buyer is going to ask you is, can I have your persistency rate? And I don't want it from you, I want it from your providers. Yeah, now they're straight off, you're going to see, okay, there's a problem here. Just to

Nick Lincoln: 42:04

close the band, just record that point. Really, I don't enough. I saw Andy shake his head when you said I wouldn't rely on the providers to drive this going forward, because they want advisors as distributors of product. Yes, you know when RDR came in this country, yeah, it was at the same time that the same time that the platforms really took off. Now, that might be much conflating. It might be a coincidence, but I don't think it is. I think, I think,

Andy Hart: 42:28

yeah, and then they start needing to buy platforms where the distribution ends up, you know, 100%

Carl Widger: 42:33

I'm not naive enough to think that that is going to happen, but what I'm saying is that the providers pointing the finger at the intermediaries all the time is that's not okay either. They are definitely. They are definitely part and parcel of this problem. Yeah.

Nick Lincoln: 42:47

Okay, okay, well, that's a really interesting little discussion there. Um, okay, so storyteller, us cash management

Alan Smith: 42:56

shop, you seem to be having a lot of kind of doom and gloom stories, but there are a few out there, to be fair, but the just we're just observing what's going on in the world around us. This was something I picked up from the other side of the pond, over in the US, and the heading is, I have no money. 1000s of Americans see their savings vanish in synapse FinTech crisis. So reading this article, which I've popped a link to in the notes, it looks like this. This company is one of these FinTech aggregators for other banks and deposit holders. So these are all cash deposit these were not sort of crazy investments, as people, you know, and savers putting the money into, effectively, bank accounts. Let me see, 1000s of Americans will receive little or nothing from savings accounts that were locked, that were locked during the collapse of FinTech middleman, synapse, or synapse, customers believe the accounts were backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Blah, blah, blah. People have lost sums raining for $7,000 to well over $200,000 and on it goes on. It goes millions. Millions are lost. It's just another one of these things we talked about it before. I'm sure all the ones that operate in the UK are fair and reasonable, but it just gives you pause for thought when you've got these kind of tech, middle men, middle companies, an extra layer of complexity and risk. Is only when things blow up or go wrong do you find out what the problems are when everything's moving in the right direction, but there's millions, millions, millions of dollars have been lost, and these people have got no recourse. It has gone vanished. So again, I'm still standing by my view. Cash accounts are national savings, possibly someone like transact, for example, with all their kind of security measures in place, but I would not be going too close to some of these kind of new startup FinTech, kind of cash aggregators. I'm sure others will disagree, but that's my

Andy Hart: 44:49

view. Well, you coined it. Well, Alan, the upside is minimal. The downside is catastrophe. Taking all that risk for a minimal upside is insane. Yeah. Talking of transact we went. The transact annual connect, yeah, last week and Nicholas did a little pitch on stage. How did it go? Nicholas, it was a great very well, very well. I

Nick Lincoln: 45:09

delivered. I got some laughs. That's all the matters. No, it's good. That's good. I think, I don't think transact are quite expecting the responses I gave to but we could send the questions by me before I got on stage.

Alan Smith: 45:21

You put in our message group. You said, I don't think you'd be invited back.

Andy Hart: 45:25

What did he say? Well, I'm not going to go into the detail that would be fair. He's not here to defend himself, but he was nice to say he won't be invited back. He was on stage with another gentleman who's meant to be sort of a fireside chat, but the guy spoke for the first seven or eight minutes, Nick didn't really get a word in. And then Nick just did a bit of a, you know, sort of long, rambling Nick

Nick Lincoln: 45:50

stage with Jonathan Gumby. I was on stage with the CEO, yeah, it must be a round table, just two of us. And then Glenn sweet there that, yeah, there's some ops manager, um, sort of facilitating it. But it was

Andy Hart: 46:01

good. He did well. It was humorous, but I don't think he said what the people in the room expected him to say. But he's fine. He's working true to form. He's working progress. He lifted the mood and the spirit in the room. It was very light hearted. And then we all went for lunch. But I'd hazard a guess. I don't think he's gonna be invited back to speak about that subject. He might be invited back for another subject, but not that subject.

Nick Lincoln: 46:32

Okay, right? Let me get now this one watch. I'm a bit confused here. Do you want to mention that the new meta, silos, CIO, or do you not?

Carl Widger: 46:43

I do? I do, of course, yeah. So I mentioned, I mentioned, back at trap live, that it was something I consider, or was considering, which was appointing a chief investment officer. And we have done just that. We've delighted to get our guy. He starts this week, actually, and like the idea of appointing a CIO is not to we're going we're going all active. We're going to have crypto. We're going to have this. It's just to try and deliver our message, our story, in a more, I suppose, strategic kind of way. And for someone who's got all the qualifications, who has come from, you know, has seen how it's done before, and has been no, I think that the metas Ireland investment philosophy, which is keep it simple, well, close track. Yeah. I think it's, it's for, for somebody kind of, really well qualified, who has a lot of experience to be able to say that to our clients and and, you know, our challenge, our Declan challenge, is going to be to, I suppose, tell clients who are used to being sold complexity that actually Simplicity is the way forward, because complexity is sexier and it sells probably easier. So yeah, we're really delighted to have him on board. It's got a little bit of media traction here, which is, which is good, because it puts the metazard and name out there. And yeah, very excited to we've had a good year, and we're looking to drive things on now over the next couple of years, and declining King is going to be front and center of all of those ambitious goals that we have.

Andy Hart: 48:33

That's excellent. Congratulations.

Alan Smith: 48:35

He's got to be, he's going to be like the guy the, what you call the manager of the Nevada State Pension Fund. Yeah, he's got nothing to do all day in terms of managing, but I imagine he'd be a great you

Andy Hart: 48:47

know, everything's working really well at the moment. We want you to just sort of confirm that, yeah, is that exactly?

Alan Smith: 48:53

Just don't touch anything,

Unknown: 48:55

yeah. But he'd be great for 12 years,

Carl Widger: 49:01

but he'll be great at that. Tweaks around the edges that we can

Alan Smith: 49:05

Oh, here we go. Spice things up. But I think, I think it's a really killer move, because for those clients you've got, and we've talked about this again, many times in the past. They're just saying yes, but the fun the company I'm with now, or wherever, this sort of fancy DFM discretionary manager, they say this. They say someone like Declan, from what I gather, can come in and say, Look, I've operated in that way, in that sort of company for years. And here's, here's my truth, here's, here's what I really, truly believe. It really coming from him. He's got more credibility with him, with all respect, than coming from

Andy Hart: 49:44

you or anybody employed an adult. He's an adult, isn't he in track record.

Alan Smith: 49:48

He's got history, and He's liking around. He's seen the light. He says, I think there's a better way of doing things I've been involved in. There's two

Carl Widger: 49:54

main reasons that, that I thought that this was something, this was an appointment we had to make. And. Number one, our client advisory panel kept saying to us, you're very evangelic about this financial planning. We all get it, but we want more around the investment. And I've been consistent saying that here on this podcast all the time. So this will fix that. So, you know, we will bring Declan into, you know, the annual planning meetings, and say, here's what you're in. Here's why we think it's still a good idea. And here's blah, blah, blah. But also, as our our case, size has got bigger over the last couple of years. You know, we are talking to people with significant net worth, and they are used to buying into the whole idea that complexity is where they should be at. So it's, it's kind of twofold, really, but the tweaks around the edges, you know, I in over there, you guys have got, like, I know you've mentioned transact, and they have their various deposit returns or whatever. We don't have any of that. So, you know, maybe there's tweaks around those edges, right? So at the, at the liquidity side of things. Are there some things that we can introduce for our clients there that they may or may not like, but at least we can, you know, say, Okay, we have a solution for you and to be, you know, really pioneering in, you know, in stuff that's probably just too hard to go at yourself. So now we've got a guy who kind of knows how this stuff is done. And I am genuinely, really, really, really excited as to you know where this can bring us

Alan Smith: 51:32

now. Congrats. Great move. Well done. Okay,

Nick Lincoln: 51:34

good stuff. Just conscious of time. We're 51 minutes in Ultra. You mentioned crypto a few minutes ago, your next

Andy Hart: 51:42

was an article this weekend. So now 7 million Britons own crypto assets as Bitcoin surges to 95,000 on the current article, but it's pretty much tipped 100 or whatever. So 7 million adults in Britain now own crypto assets

Carl Widger: 51:59

are worried about Sterling or

Andy Hart: 52:02

multitude of reasons. So it's 5 million Brits owned crypto in 2022 now 7 million owned crypto in 2024 the average holdings, just to give you an idea of this, is 18 142 pounds, so just under 2000 pounds. So minimal in the grand scheme of scheme of things, but from a marketing point of view, crypto investing has definitely worked, considering that 7 million people have pulled the trigger on it. Obviously, this story has only a few chapters in this far, thus far, and it's going to be interesting how this plays out. But yeah, the FCA are getting a bit more involved now to start looking at directly regulating it. We don't know what that impacts going to have. We don't know again, what the FCA are going to come out with, but it's, it's messy, is it? I mean, is

Alan Smith: 52:52

it fair to say that you still cannot even, obviously, it's not a regulated asset, because asset class at all. But could anyone just go and buy an ETF, or I know they exist in the US, but I don't think you've got access potentially.

Andy Hart: 53:08

I think you do UK regulate funds buy something on a crypto talking at

Nick Lincoln: 53:16

different times, it might be easier for the listener.

Andy Hart: 53:18

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, obviously you can go directly onto crypto exchanges in terms of traditional investment platforms, Alan, there are, there are routes to access this type of asset, but you have to go by Exchange Traded notes, fill in the sophisticated investor questionnaire, blah, blah, if you're that motivated, you, you'd do it. But yeah, who knows what the regulator's going to come out with? So, yeah. So

Alan Smith: 53:39

keep an eye crow strategy.

Andy Hart: 53:41

So all I'm going to say, yeah, the micro strategy story is incredibly interesting, but maybe not one for this. But yeah, that Michael Saylor, or whatever his name is, has got some we'll get Nick to talk about it on the next episode. We'll bring it up maybe, maybe, maybe next week. Okay, it is interesting. All right, Nick, final point, just

Nick Lincoln: 54:00

a bit of a just know your providers really know their foibles. So the IFA forum, a member of the IFA forum, tiny.cc/ifa forum, 640 people just say, do you run that? Good guy? You run up guy. He posted into the forum about so it's in the public domain. I'm gonna give him away his name here, but he had a he model portfolio services. I'm never too sure exactly what problem they're trying to solve. When this particular advisor had one, for outlier reasons, had one client in one model portfolio service, the only one the advisor has on his on his um, with his business. And before the budget, they did the CGT, and they thought, well, rates are going to go up. We'll sell now at the existing rates, we know what they are, 10 and 18% and all is good. But of course, within the 30 days that you have to be out of those funds for the bed and referencing to what to wash through the model portfolio service, as many of them do, triggered an automatic rebalance of the GIA didn't tell the advisor. Don't really have a duty to tell the advisor they're going to do is just part of their team. And sees and bought back into those funds within the 30 days, thereby negating the whole bed and breakfasting process. And this advisor didn't know about it, and now the it's gonna, yeah, basically it's gonna cut. It's not as horrendous as he first thought. It's gonna cost him about a few 100 quid to put the client back to where he would have been had the repurchase all through.

Andy Hart: 55:18

Is that all? Okay? Yeah, 1000s. Hang

Alan Smith: 55:20

on, talk me through that. So the but they sold the fund. So

Nick Lincoln: 55:25

the advisor put through a sale. Yeah, they went to cash, but the advice didn't unlink the model portfolio service from the GIA. So when that so X number of days later, say, 10 days later. It must have been that time of the month where the MPs rebalance. They thought, crikey. This. The computer thinks, oh, this client's 100% in cash. There. Percent in cash. Their linked portfolio is x, fund, X, fund, X. Fund bought them back again by negation. Interesting. Yeah, get it. And it is interesting, isn't it? Because you just just know your MPs is because apparently EBI, which is a big part, they they will tell you if GIS are being rebalanced ahead of the event, so you can do something about it. I think timeline let you opt out. If you've got clients with certain GIs that you don't want rebalance, you can tell them in advance, the fact that some of them don't, they will just rebalance. And so this is one advice for my burgeoning empire that I'm building. But, you know, there are loads. It

Alan Smith: 56:14

just shows the Japanese involved in this game, honestly, something that's that's like a sort of mini black swan. You couldn't have predicted that. You've just done everything right, you've sold a fund, you're sitting in cash, waiting for the appropriate thing and then something that no one really knew about. I

Nick Lincoln: 56:30

mean, then the poor adviser put this out to the forum. I think it was on Sunday, so he must have, must have, suddenly, Twig got an email. So that's his son. That's his weekend written off, isn't it? He could have

Alan Smith: 56:39

been. I mean, if suddenly, a few 100 quid, he's got off lightly, because it could have been 1000s, 10s of 1000s more.

Nick Lincoln: 56:47

So low, I put out that there is a maybe, I don't know, maybe this is very small GIA, I imagine probably is. But out there, there will be a horror story later today, and it probably will be 1000s of capital gains just trying to do the right thing, but not quite thinking the process through. Yeah, all right, 57 this is a long topical tip, a long one. Let's, let's draw it to an end and move on to the next part of the show, what we call the meat and potatoes. And the meat and potatoes for this one is the advisor Alpha thing, which Vanguard, I think they did. I think they will give them credit for I didn't. I hadn't heard of advisor Alpha before they started launching their reports into this a good few years ago. Now they've got a website dedicated to advisor alpha, and it's this concept of just how much value does an advisor add to an advised client's wealth, and where are the components of that value add. And the Vanguard research into this is really, really interesting. I mean, it helps our course, let's be honest about this. So maybe coming this from a bias point of view, because, well, I'll let Ultra lead off onto exactly what it is and what the numbers are. Well,

Andy Hart: 57:58

yeah, you've pretty much covered off the start. Nick, so yeah, there's a few studies that come out for various different providers. Various different providers every year. Some of them, others are sort of periodically. They try to quantify the value of receiving advice. We know this is a very subjective matter. One such study is a famous study by Vanguard called advisor Alpha. I think they've sort of coined this name, coined this term, and in their study, I think the latest one that they've come out with is in 2020, in terms of the PDF that they've issued. But they've got various materials online that sort of, sort of reconfirm advisor alpha, sort of points anyway. So they've got seven different modules that they've Yeah, because we all know financial advice costs. Keep it simple. It costs 2% a year, or whatever number you want to pick. Let's just go with that for this example. So if it costs that, then you need to be adding value of more than that to make it worthwhile to pay ongoing advice to a financial advisor. We know there's a lot of un you know, harder to quantify benefits of financial advice that you know, strategic thinking partners with your clients. You know, sleep well at night. You know, discuss all points. You know, avoiding mistakes, scam avoidance, you know, endless, but they've tried to quantify in more of a sort of grown up way. So that's it. Anyone else have any points? Or should we just go through each one of these sort of modules that they've referenced.

Alan Smith: 59:23

Well, just give us this. Skim through the highlights of them. I've got a few points, but I'll let you finish off. You're focusing on Vanguard, advisor, alpha, yeah, and they've got all their kind of headlines only arrive at a total,

Andy Hart: 59:34

yeah. They try to quantify each benefit, let's say seven categories. Yeah, seven categories, each benefit as a basis point. So does it add half percent? Does it add point 1% you know? Okay, people understand basis points. So the first thing they're talking about is suitable asset allocation using broadly diversified funds. So does an advisor add any value via asset allocation, picking the right. Funds according to them, and their first category, they're saying zero basis points, which

Nick Lincoln: 1:00:04

I disagree with,

Andy Hart: 1:00:05

which I disagree with. So that's the first one to discuss. So does an advisor add value through asset allocation? Most clients end up in asset misallocation, and there's low returns, huge impact to their, you know, future family's life savings, etc, etc. So that's the first point. So advisor alpha point one, does the advisor and the firm add any value pond, suitable asset allocation via funds over to you? The perfect example

Carl Widger: 1:00:29

of that is filling in a risk profiling questionnaire and you come out as low low risk. You're in a 80% bond and 20% equity portfolio advisor. Can, can I have very, very seldom in over a decade of doing this, very seldom come across cases where you failed to bring that person on the journey with you, and then the people who you have failed to bring on the journey with you probably shouldn't be investing at all. So, so I don't agree that there's zero alpha, as we call it, there. Can I just go back to one thing you said, Andy, just at the start? Yeah, how does Where are you going to financial advice cost 2% per annum. Is that just a,

Andy Hart: 1:01:18

oh, just throwing it out. There's a starter, if you had to gun to the head, what is financial advice cost per year, say, 1.6

Alan Smith: 1:01:25

whatever. But it's, it's,

Andy Hart: 1:01:27

I'm sorry I was saying, Oh, just to say, Yeah, but it's for everybody.

Carl Widger: 1:01:32

Think it's really important to segregate out here. What the actual you know? Because if you don't have financial advice, just you're gonna pay

Andy Hart: 1:01:40

the other, oh, you're going to be paying those fees

Carl Widger: 1:01:41

anyway. Okay, so I think that's called that. That's actually important too. Okay,

Andy Hart: 1:01:45

so the advisor fee, the advisor fee is between point seven, five and one. Yeah, I'll go with that. Okay, so point eight, five, just to give it one definitive number, the rest, as you say, Carl, you'd be paying platform custody fees, and you'd be paying fund manager fees. So just advice fee. Yeah, we'll go with point eight five for this conversation. For suitable asset allocation via picking the right funds, I'm gonna for me personally, I put at least 1% on that, probably more every client I take on who's naturally ended up in their portfolio. I enhanced their returns by putting them into a higher returning portfolio. I've not yet come across clients perfectly set up, and then I've taken them on. So what's your thoughts if you had to give a number again?

Carl Widger: 1:02:31

I think one, yeah, 100% I think it's also very surprising that they're saying zero there. But anyway, a bit weird.

Andy Hart: 1:02:38

Maybe we might not, maybe we might not interpreted it correctly. Alan Nick, I'm

Alan Smith: 1:02:43

gonna wait till you've gone through it. Okay, each one, one by one.

Andy Hart: 1:02:48

I thought we're gonna go through each one. That was what was on the docket. As they say, Okay,

Nick Lincoln: 1:02:51

let's move when you got thing to say on and speak up and then. But if you haven't got things to say on a particular one, that's fine. Just, just, just, if

Andy Hart: 1:02:58

Alan says he wants to be quiet for a few minutes, let's just leave it as that. All right. The next point. The next subject point is rebalancing, and they've put a value on this of between zero and 43 basis points. Yeah, such a race is an odd one. Now, yeah, no, just rebalancing. I think does work, and it forces you to sell high and buy low, as a general rule, but yeah, I'm going with about 20 basis points on that. I'm happy that I know there's studies, you know, you know, falling out the trees in relation to this. But I'm not really going to quote any. Then we'll go down that route. But I say adds 20 basis points. Anyone else,

Carl Widger: 1:03:35

none. Because if you're in the if you're in the right fund at the start, the fund has been rebalanced within the fund. So there's

Andy Hart: 1:03:42

but there's still a value to that car, even the one fund, DFA, it's rebalanced internally, but the returns are

Carl Widger: 1:03:47

better point number one, being in the right asset allocation and being in the right types of funds. So I mean,

Alan Smith: 1:03:52

if you're in the one fund solution, you guys advocate, then it rebalances the back end. Alan, it rebalance around the back end. It's

Andy Hart: 1:03:59

done automatically, but his advisor isn't adding any value, but it's still adding to the returns. The trouble with all these,

Alan Smith: 1:04:06

and I am going to play devil's advocate throughout this, the trouble with these, and don't get me wrong, there's a load of value that advisors add. The trouble with these is it depends on the club. What if you, the client comes to you and he's got and he's 100% Vanguard life strategy, Vanguard 100 or something. Yep. So rebalanced done automatically. He's the right asset allocation. So so far you've had a zero, and depending on where he ends up, there might be negative alpha if he moves into one of these discretionary fund managers, because he wants to have a, you know, someone with a double barreled name, giving, giving advice. But the point, the point being that these are very broad and generic. And yes, I get it, but I'm not, I'm not buying the rebalancing. Get it. Get it as a significant value. Add the Yeah, asset allocation generally is. But you know, we get clients coming to us who, you know. Buy into the equity thing that generally they just need a bit of help. I think you carry on. Because I think the bigger, yeah, I'll carry a bigger value. Isn't all the other things, yeah, but

Andy Hart: 1:05:08

there is one that we're all going to agree on. It's coming up. Wait for it, it's coming up. The suspense is killing me. But this one now cost effective implementation. Oh no, quite in the old days, I think maybe if there was a higher barrier to entry, I think some advisors obviously detract because they correct charge high fees to implement. But anyway,

Nick Lincoln: 1:05:30

let's just go with this one. I don't even know that means, really, that's kind of

Alan Smith: 1:05:33

mean, yeah, I mean so advisors are charging again, look at whatever the data is, between one and 3% of investment portfolios,

Andy Hart: 1:05:41

I think typically, I actually don't get Alan. It's about sort of 2.4%

Alan Smith: 1:05:44

right? I can go, I can go on most platforms directly now for free,

Andy Hart: 1:05:49

right? So let's move on to one that we potentially agree on, behavioral coaching. Behavioral coaching, according to Vanguard, they haven't even got a range. I said this adds at least 1.5% a year. Yeah, I'm in massively in agreeance with that you're getting the clients to do the to get the clients to avoid doing the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, you know, continually promoting great financial behavior, removing financial anxiety, and getting them to do the right things, to stick with the plan. So behavioral coaching, I'm a massive yes to at least one and a half percent

Carl Widger: 1:06:23

a year. Under no circumstances call it that. Nobody wants to hear that. Oh, you're going to behave. My behavior coach me, you know, so I get I'm

Andy Hart: 1:06:34

okay with coaching. I'm okay with coaching. Use the word coach, like, if you know the world,

Alan Smith: 1:06:40

yeah, I mean, and this obviously, is based on, and there is plenty of data, although it is also questioned. What do you call that survey? DALBAR Dao, by that has certainly been questioned by some experts. Yeah, man, again, that but, but it is true. There is a lot of correlation. You can see data with fund flows after this great. You know, market sell offs. People sell their equities, having said that, so do a lot of professional advisors and investors. A lot of this, this money that's leaving portfolios, is advised. So this is back to my point about it depends on the advisor. Depends on the advisory firm. We're all aware of firms, IFA, firms who encourage their clients to

Nick Lincoln: 1:07:22

sell in Yeah, but this report is always not based on those advisors. This is, this report is based on the advisors who are doing these things and the value they add.

Carl Widger: 1:07:31

Okay, I think the best way of illustrating that particular point is the Carl Richards sketch between you and the big mistake. I think yes, that's yes, yes. That actually illustrates, I

Alan Smith: 1:07:42

think that covers a whole another huge thing we put that on behavioral coaching, okay, because we've talked in this conversation just today about, you know, half a dozen different behavior or just mistakes, whether it's trying to buy a fund that can, so called, guarantee 15% a year, or any number of other things that you're likely to blow yourself up financially. And just, I remember one of our earlier episodes, and all these crazy funds that we've all seen over the years that people are piling into. So I've got to assume that, for the purpose of this, that these are sort of advisors. We're talking about, the people that will steer their clients clear of them. Well, yeah, I

Andy Hart: 1:08:19

suppose avoidance. I say I can scam avoidance. So, so a benefit working me is scam avoidance. Anything that comes company lands on your desk, see on the Yeah, immediately. Call me. You don't get you involved in anything that's going to blow up. Okay, the next one we're moving on to is tax allowances and asset location. They're only given between zero and 23 basis points. So there's tax allowances and asset locate. Asset location. Where's the best place to allocate your capital? I again, think I had more per year than that. I

Nick Lincoln: 1:08:47

think so now this was, this was written 2020 when the the allowances were far more generous terms of capital gains tax. We've also got these changes to pensions now. So, yeah, you'll need to do properly advise in depth financial planning for clients, working out when's the best time to take money from a pension pot, if at all, and how much do you take out? Sorry, Nick, the

Andy Hart: 1:09:07

next one that's called spending strategies. So this one is to do with tax well, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. You're right. You're right. Yeah,

Nick Lincoln: 1:09:12

they overlapped your degree. I think they're both, yes, they're both more important than Vanguard gave them credit for on june 2020 just because all the allowances have been either frozen or massively, you know, capital gains tax and houses down by, what, 75%

Alan Smith: 1:09:24

yeah, there's a lot of benefit in doing slightly more.

Carl Widger: 1:09:28

There's untold benefit in this. Because, for example, the standard fund threshold for pension funds here has just been increased to 2.8 million by 2029 and yet, some advisors this was coming because we were told it was coming, as some people were told, Oh, get out. Your pension fund is now over 2 million like this is hundreds of 1000s of euros of a difference here, you know, just by telling someone who didn't need the money, just sit tight, because the foot, the, you know, the the SFT. Is going to increase dramatically over the coming years. So I think this is, this is the one that every DIY investor can say that they can do all of the other stuff we spoke about, unless you're in this all day, every day, and you know the rules inside and out, and you're clued in and you know what's coming, you cannot, cannot say that you're going to be able to structure this yourself. Sorry,

Andy Hart: 1:10:26

Carl, are you specifically talking about tax allowances and asset location and spending strategies, or a bit, a bit of everything we just mentioned, kind of a bit of, I

Carl Widger: 1:10:33

suppose these are these could go under tax strategy,

Andy Hart: 1:10:38

yeah, tax optimization, correct. But

Carl Widger: 1:10:41

also, but also does cross into the spending strategies as well. Andy, because when you might draw, you know, yeah, where do you what parts do you draw your money out of it? Yeah, when

Andy Hart: 1:10:49

you take money out first, yeah, but you

Alan Smith: 1:10:50

know, there's, there's a huge one for me, which is related to this, under the title spending strategy. And yeah, you get all the technical bits and tax optimization right, but simply encouraging clients, giving them a confidence to spend, which kind of goes under the behavioral bit as well. Yeah, we've all got examples of clients that are, you know, wary of spending too much money and worried about running out of money. You can demonstrate. You can model it, do all these things. And you say, I mean, we could probably all share examples of clients that have just then gone either gone on like the most incredible life journey experiences, adventures, travel and or help their kids, grandkids and all that sort of beautiful experience that happens by, you know, helping other people or enjoying, you know, amazing life changing experiences of yourself. In my experience, a lot of people just won't do that because they've just got so much fear of running out of money, and therefore this is a kind of behavior and a mental thing put a price on, you know, I've just had a an incredible trip to a bucket list type place that I'll never forget, and I've got all the

Nick Lincoln: 1:11:51

photographs, and you can't, can you? You can't, yeah, and the

Alan Smith: 1:11:55

challenge this is, what I've got with all this stuff, is they've tried to quantify, and it's fair enough. No, yeah, we understand. I've done it, but we understand the limitations of this type of stuff. Yeah.

Nick Lincoln: 1:12:05

Okay, right. So what are we on spending strategy? Are we have We nailed that one? Yeah. And

Andy Hart: 1:12:10

then the final one is total return investing versus income investing. They put zero basis points on that, but I think they put it in zero. I think that's an educational that's an educational piece with clients, because they do now,

Alan Smith: 1:12:25

I think you're right. I think income delivers yield on actual yield of investment fund for

Andy Hart: 1:12:29

us. I know it doesn't quite work like that. You've got all your money invested, and take out a small amount there stays invested as a tiny year. So that, again, is on the education around proper setup of investments from from day one. Yeah, and

Nick Lincoln: 1:12:41

I don't know how you put a value on that. It's, I mean, yeah, it's, again, it's the hassle factor, isn't it? You're saving clients from relying on natural yield, which is a pain and a bum, and it's a one way street to migraine Central, if you're the advisor, because when that dividend doesn't come in at quite the amount they've expected, it's you falls

Andy Hart: 1:12:58

under the education client education, specifically around investments. And obviously it's impossible to put a value on financial peace of mind. But again, I understand what they're trying to do with this survey. Can

Nick Lincoln: 1:13:07

I suggest that we just pick our top three from those ones and just allocate? I mean, I'm happy to go. I think the main three ones are suitable asset allocation. Ie getting the clients as much into equities as can be done with the context of a meaningful, bespoke financial plan, that'd be number one. I'd say that's probably a percent, at least behavioral coaching. Yeah, I'll go with 150 bits. I'm fine with that. And then I would say tax allowances and asset allocation. Another half, depending on the client. Obviously they've got where they've got it, but at least half percent on that in the stage environment where where everyone is being taxed just for breaking wind, the more you can help people, the better. Yeah,

Carl Widger: 1:13:44

so I'd agree. So that all adds up to about 10% so.

Alan Smith: 1:13:49

But it does just, it does to some people this. This is the point. And again, the challenge with this is I was looking up earlier on. You know, any you guys ever been to Le Man, war or Catra says, On out in oxygen, like oxygen, oh, standing place, right? It's 1000 pounds for dinner for two all right? And yet, people, and you can't get it, you can't book a table for that. Now, it is waiting list only because there's a perception of value, because they're going to have an extraordinary experience. And this, you know, this is the thing again, for some people, this is worth far more than that you've just said. And for some it's not worth it at all. There are some people, and the thing is, they will never become our clients. So some sort of retired accountants that loves getting into the weeds on their spreadsheets and so on. But by and large, I so I agree entirely what you said. It is getting them to the right asset allocation, but then keeping them there, which is the kind of behavioral stuff. Overlay that with some tax planning, income strategies, etc, and wrap all that up in just having this, and you mentioned that minute ago as a phrase we use just strategic thinking partner, bounce your thoughts off I'm on the end of a phone, or what's that? Wherever you wanna have a quick chat. So that all distills. Down to this magical thing called peace of mind. I've just got somebody taken care of, someone's looking out for me, and that, for some people, is just worth anything you want to talk that's priceless. Yeah, priceless, exactly, right.

Andy Hart: 1:15:13

And the permission thing is very important. I mean, they can have 10 friends, family members, tell them they're blue in the face. You can go away. You can spend all the money until they sit down with a pro. They're, you know, still full of, full of anxiety around spending too much so yeah, only someone like us and our firms can answer those types of questions.

Alan Smith: 1:15:30

That's good stuff. Huge value.

Nick Lincoln: 1:15:32

Yeah, yeah. And just looking at the advisor Alpha website, the Vanguard, who set up a whole, whole dedicated site on this, on this subject. So if you're, if you're again, if you're a new a younger advisor, new advisor, and perhaps sometimes you're struggling to articulate your value proposition, I would immerse yourself in this because we some of it. We just just discussed there's a bit nebulous, the rebalancing that's a bit nebulous. Natural income over withdrawal income that's a bit nebulous. But there's three things in there. You know, get the asset allocation right, and you're going to just make client you're going to give clients such a better life. I know it sounds based and based around money, but you're going to, after 30 years of being in the right asset allocation, it will be transformational for your clients be on their shoulder with the behavioral coaching when the clients want to ditch the plan, because Beth Rigby said the world is ending on Sky News, and make sure that you manage their tax arrangements properly in the spending strategy. Is aligned with their allowances and with their lifestyle needs. Just do those three things and you've got that'll cover whatever your fee is. My most reasonable people will be open minded to it. Some won't be, and that's fine, because, as storyteller said, there'll be DIYs, and some people probably can do it by themselves, but it's a tiny sliver of the population. Are we happy to say we've nailed that one? Friends,

Alan Smith: 1:16:43

yeah, I think so. What just one last thing the Michael Kitz did a big breakdown of all these ones. The Vanguard, the Morning Star, got one called, what's it? Called the gap, or, sorry, something like that. And then some US phone called invest net or something, done one as well. And in typical Kitsis and his, he's got one of his team as a PhD and all this stuff, but they've just unpacked it all. And it's a, you can imagine, it's a huge kind of detailed analysis, and they arrive at the same thing, yeah, they question some of it, and the clearly value other parts of it. But it's very individual. Because the other thing is, does depend on the advisory firm. There are some firms it's probably not worth paying anything for their net factors. We know that we talked about in terms of their factor. They do no planning. There's very little tax planning, and their fees and costs are outrageous. So very specific to the right advisory firm. Otherwise, I think we've covered off quite well. Thank you, Chairman. Okay,

Nick Lincoln: 1:17:41

good stuff, great stuff. Okay, so I think it's time for us to move on to the TRAPPIST questions. And I can, I can say I think it's the time, because I can see post is at my front door. She's just hauled the bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions up my drive. If you want to submit a question, there's a link in the pinned tweet on our at advisor, podcast, X channel, Twitter channel, whenever you want to call it, there's always a link in the so called Show Notes where you can submit your questions. Questions. Now we're up to June from this year, so we are getting through them, but we're a few months behind because we've had so many questions. And these, in fact, the two questions today are our 100 and 14th and 100 and 15th questions respectively, that we have answered over the 59 episodes of trap to date. The first question, I don't know quite what's it reads like a hostage message. I'm trying to make sense of it. It's from a guy called Jamie, 42874251, on Twitter, it's a real account. I checked it out. Three words, send advice, SJP, send money now, or whatever. I don't know quite what. Anyway, Jamie, thanks for that really excellent added value. Gavin Casey, who is a real person as a real advisor. He's on Twitter as at Gavin Casey, 1970s also on LinkedIn, and again, his links will be in the so called show notes. Gavin asks, whilst agreeing furiously, about the benefits of global equity exposure through passive investments. Do you all follow the same portfolio construction process, and do you use the same components? For that matter? Who wants to go first with this one?

Andy Hart: 1:19:04

I think the very quick answer is no. Fundamentally, our portfolios are very similar. So let's just take our 100% global equity portfolios. I think you and Carl use the same one fund via DFA, and me and Alan don't my 100% global equity fund has three funds in it. Fund managers, you know Well, the breaking the ethos. So, yes, Alan, how many funds do you have in your 100% global equity portfolio? Don't know. It doesn't even know. He doesn't even we plumb in

Alan Smith: 1:19:35

detail, detail. We've got, we've got a few not. It's not one fund, yeah. I mean, ours is talked about this before, is sort of fundamentally built from the from the ground up, aim to optimize. And you know, by modern standards, you might say it's a little bit more complex, little bit more sophisticated, you might argue, but again, you could argue not as well than a one fun than a one fun solution. But there's i. For sure, the four of us share an identical philosophy. There's just some you know, tweaks around the edges in terms of certain aspects of it, but you couldn't put a you know, piece of paper between between them, I would have thought Agreed, agreed,

Andy Hart: 1:20:14

and they'd do exactly what we expect them to do. The last year has been superb. Obviously, we don't leave lead with the performance, but, but,

Alan Smith: 1:20:21

you know, you know what is interesting? Yeah, but reflecting on that, we'd all built our own investment portfolios before we knew each other all those years ago. So you arrive at the same place independently, and that's kind of reassuring to think there's other people that have got the same beliefs and values as

Andy Hart: 1:20:37

you've got. I've known Nicholas for 16 years, believe it or not, yeah,

Alan Smith: 1:20:43

yeah, that's all right, yeah, counting every day.

Andy Hart: 1:20:50

He knows about investment construction

Carl Widger: 1:20:53

anyway. That's why he copied me. Was it?

Unknown: 1:20:58

Andy, the old secretary, and Andy, he knows about everything, and he can't be told anything. His name is Andrew Hart.

Nick Lincoln: 1:21:15

Have we answered that question for Mr. Casey? Do we think

Alan Smith: 1:21:19

Yeah? I think so. It's not to say, really is, though, yeah,

Andy Hart: 1:21:21

we're all recurring questions, isn't it? I get the global equity thing, but, but, but, but, but, yeah, yeah. I get you invest in global equities, but I've got further questions. No, no, I know we shouldn't be asking any more questions. I get global equities, but just gavid, choose the best portfolio that you're comfortable with and just stick with it. And, you know, put as much, yeah,

Alan Smith: 1:21:41

95% of the way there, or even more, the rest is kind of just detail. There's different, yeah, there's different reasons that you might want to have one fund or build your own portfolios or outsource someone use an MPS that's on an individual basis. But you you know, the philosophy remains identical.

Andy Hart: 1:21:59

Nick choose, stick with it and get planning. You know, at the end of the

Nick Lincoln: 1:22:02

day, if you were to analyze all of our portfolios, Gavin, you probably see that we're all pretty much invested in the same great companies of the world. And that's pretty that's, that's the bottom line. That's, that's, it's not the fund, it's what's the fund holding. And I think we're all holding pretty much the same, the same basket of the great companies, just just doing it to accessing those companies in slightly different ways. But that's just window dressing. Okay? So we're at 82 minutes in. Shoot me. Let's move on to culture corner. Now. Watch is dying of man flu, chest infection, whatever. So I'm gonna tee you up. Watch. I won't leave you hanging, as I normally do, on culture corner, not as iconic as the IKEA culture corner, but yeah, she's

Andy Hart: 1:22:46

a cracker. She's another, she's another. I'm furnishing expensive,

Nick Lincoln: 1:22:51

but good. This

Carl Widger: 1:22:53

is a cracker. So we all have loads of photos on our phones, and we don't point them out anymore, and we don't put them up in our walls. Go on to mixtiles.com and you can get loads of your favorite photos from your phone. Do it on your phone, and they arrive like this, and they have a great little sticky thing that you can stick in your wall. So if you're as useless as I am with DIY, that you literally tear off a sticker. I

Andy Hart: 1:23:21

was gonna say, if you have to tear off the thing on the back, yeah,

Carl Widger: 1:23:24

just about. But I did. I did. I did

Nick Lincoln: 1:23:28

take off the paint. When you take it off again, this is always

Alan Smith: 1:23:31

magic. He hasn't tried that bit yet. He's gonna take them off first,

Carl Widger: 1:23:38

take the paint off. And if you if this sticky bit then won't stick back on, you can email mixtiles, and they'll send you a few more of the sticky things. And you can create really cool walls of like, loads and loads of these pictures. That's me and my dad. So it Yeah, you boys have been in my house. You've seen the wall that I created. So I just actually bought a bunch more because obviously that they're probably done three four years ago. So I'm updating the wall and adding to it. But it's really brilliant, because everybody comments on it when they walk in and go, oh yeah, that's actually really cool, because we all have so many pictures, and I've actually printed some out for my office as well, and

Alan Smith: 1:24:20

other different frames, yeah? For those who are listening to this, not viewing it, there's all right, doesn't

Carl Widger: 1:24:32

have a that's kind of a canvas, kind of a job as a frame. So you can be serious, yeah, no, it's bloody brilliant.

Alan Smith: 1:24:42

So I think we're, we're building homes now we've got IKEA, some other nonsense that Hart came up with. IKEA bloody

Nick Lincoln: 1:24:53

wardrobe. If you hang any

Andy Hart: 1:24:55

pictures in your house in it, they're called picture hanging strips by strips by 3m Brilliant. We've

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:02

used those, but they do sometimes. Just the things just drop down. Pain comes

Carl Widger: 1:25:06

off the wall with those ones as well. Yeah, these ones are the absolute better. Okay, yeah, yeah, if you want it for Christmas, you're gonna have to go out the minute you hear this go out, and

Alan Smith: 1:25:21

it's a good point you make in that we've all got literally 1000s of photographs on our phones, yeah? What? We're gonna just print it off and do that, take it to a place and get it framed and all that. So just send it, yeah,

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:33

Penny. We do this Google photo books, where you can actually get up, you can just pick, pick like 80 photographs, and then Google will send you a book, just you chosen, which is quite nice. It's just tactile, and you can actually look at them, you know? And we could get a book of our

Andy Hart: 1:25:47

trip to Paris last year, we went for the

Alan Smith: 1:25:50

rugby, yeah, some pictures are unprintable.

Unknown: 1:25:53

Do not go.

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:01

Do not go. Do not talk

Alan Smith: 1:26:03

about stays in Paris.

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:05

Okay, come on, guys. So my country corner is episode 76 of the bobbleheads podcast. They had the guy on called Mayor Statman, another one of these behavioral economists, behavioral finance guys from the sort of Kahneman, Tversky, Kahneman, each other, guy, Thaler school, but he's just really engaging. Those guys could be other quite dry sometimes, and some of them very egotistical. But he is not. He's just a joy to listen to. I think he's 77 he's he's just an interesting, good guy to interview, nice podcast and interesting. He talks about the fire movement. He's not. He's done all these nutty academics. And he says the thing about the fire thing. About the fire thing is, I don't get it. I don't want to retire. I love what I do. I want to be doing this rest of my life. It gives me purpose. So that's just, you know, obviously the fire thing is, bam, this door comes down. You've got six decades to do whatever you want. Yes, it is. It's

Unknown: 1:26:58

embarrassing when people say

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:59

that, like YouTube. What does fire stand for? Become

Andy Hart: 1:27:05

financially independent. You decide to carry retire,

Alan Smith: 1:27:10

really, retire early from anyway, it's, yeah, I've got, um, golf accounts. I agree with what's next. Andy,

Andy Hart: 1:27:20

it's me. It's a film recommendation, nothing to do with financial services. It's called Joy. It's on Netflix. Joy, the birth of IVF. A couple of points to this. This is one of those success stories entrepreneurs, you know, perseverance in the face of adversity. Everyone was against these scientists who are basically trying to do their audacious goal was to cure childlessness. A lot of you know, mothers in the 60s couldn't have babies for various reasons. Everyone was against them, the church or religious groups, the state media calling them Frankenstein. How dare they get involved? You know, intervene with Mother Nature. Intervene with Mother Nature. All these scientists were sort of ostracized. They were doing amazing work, but but the thing that was quite interesting, obviously, the ones that the people that were against them, obviously the religious groups, church, state media, the people were for them were childless mothers. And if you were a betting person, you'd put, you know, the weight on the childless mothers just absolutely supporting this cause. It's an amazing film. I'm very close to this. I've had children via IVF three rounds. It was brutal, but also a magical that we could have babies. It's a great film. It's called Joy, the birth of IVF on Netflix,

Alan Smith: 1:28:39

right? Very good. Welcome. Just quickly. Final one, we can hang your pictures on the wall and get some IVF treatment, but interesting. But just thinking about that, that just reminded me of something. Do it. Any of you guys remember that company still going now, 23andme a few other versions.

Andy Hart: 1:28:58

I've done it. Yeah, so

Alan Smith: 1:28:59

you've done it the spirit you noticed. I mean, they were another one of the kind of darlings of the stock market, and they launched and think on the NASDAQ billions, share prices fall in 98% they're just going to go out of business, going to be taking private and there was, again, there's an article in the paper about a journalist who'd done all that, given all their DNA, all this stuff. They said, Well, who now owns this? The company's now out of business. This stuff still exists. Where can this end up? It's a bit of a concern for some. This shows you, hey,

Andy Hart: 1:29:25

yeah. Anyway, my DNA included, indeed,

Alan Smith: 1:29:31

right? Sorry to bring it back to, you know, financial advice and financial advisors and, you know, we can talk about IVF and DNA all day long. But I wanted to, as you know, I moved office a couple of months ago, and all the stuff that I've kept to my office, which has been there for 10 years, I was unpacking and looking at books and things like that that I had in the shelves over there, and I found this book, and it's, I mean, the best book, I think, certainly in the top three books I've ever read. On entrepreneurship and having a business, and particularly for those that want to grow a company and recruit and hire people and build a proper business. Very well known book called The E Myth. The E Myth by Michael Gerber, E stands for entrepreneur in that most people never really start a business. Most people start a business and carry on doing the exact job they were doing before, and they have now got the worst job in the world because they're working for a lunatic, ie themselves. Yeah, they own the job. Yeah, they own the job. And so anyway, the E Myth is a great book, and if anyone who's listening to this is on that journey, is how they sort of started a business plans to grow it. Definitely get yourself a copy. It's been out for 2030, years, at least. But there is, as a lot often is the case with some of these classic books, there's a few kind of specific to different industries. So there's a E Myth for doctors, an E Myth, and there's an E Myth for financial advisors. And so it's very specific to, you know, obviously it's American, but same kind of rules and regulations apply. And as I say, I dug it out and had to flick through it. Flick through it again the other day, having read it in great detail many years ago. And it's well worth for those who on that journey business building, trying to create something little bit scaled, not necessarily for the solo advisors, well worth getting the E Myth for financial advisors by Michael Gerber, thank you.

Nick Lincoln: 1:31:22

Okay, cool. Cool. So that's 91 minutes. We won't get back. Okay. Well, I think trap pack, that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you, dear trappers, for your precious time and input on the show. Please do leave a review for us. Six out of five stars will be lovely. Do like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're now over the 1000 subscribers mark, which still amazes me, until the next time trap pack is adios from me and the rest of the trap pack, take care out there, and we'll see you on the other side in Episode 60. Trap live next year may the 14th, put it in your diaries of choice. Goodbye. You.