300 Episodes of Wealth: Celebrating the Journey & Shaping the Future

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00.13)

biggest result that I believe we can bring is going to be inheritance tax savings because inheritance tax is a very painful tax, the most hated tax in the country. Most people who hit retirement, let's say, for 20 years, average life expectancy is 85. So most people, if they get to this, let's say by 50, 55, 30 odd years of planning, you could probably deal with inheritance tax.

Speaker 2 (00:24.236)

Welcome to this week's episode of WealthTalk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for WealthBuilders, joined today by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan. Hi, Kevin.

Hello Chris, good to be with you again and a very special day it is too.

Episode 300, here we are.

Speaker 2 (00:42.446)

Well, thank you, thank you. shouldn't. No, honestly. No, well, we have to start off, Kevin, by saying a massive thank you to everyone who has been listening with us since day one. And can you believe that our first episode was released back in February the 19th, 2019? That's a big six years and seven months ago.

That's pre-COVID. That's pre-posterous. I think we should just announce the stop, right? Because I'm tired now. Just too tired to carry on.

Got a few more in us, surely.

Maybe we could change it up and I think we've had some thoughts about that anyway.

Yeah, yeah, we'll be, we'll be announcing just a few changes, nothing major, because we know for our diehard listeners, and we appreciate you so much, but we honestly do get great feedback every week, Kevin, don't we, from people that we're listening to, both members and non-members who always say, you know, tune into WealthTalk. And there's even a few crazy cats out there who've actually listened to all the episodes and then gone back to the beginning and started listening again.

Speaker 1 (01:47.566)

Crazy cats, well there's definitely a word for them, I don't know if it's there.

So just a few fun stats there before we kind of talk about where WealthTalk might be heading in 2026 and beyond. And I thought I'd share the top three most downloaded episodes, Kevin, so that people perhaps who've missed those can go back and check those out. And I'll put all of the links in the show notes today. But number one in the most downloaded podcasts was episode 122. And that is how to create a family trust fund. And we had our very own SAS director.

Paul Brooks on that episode.

Well, families is something that's been very important to us and I'll talk a little bit more about that as you highlight the top three episodes. So what was number two?

Number two was guess Heather Smale and title of that podcast was From Zero to 20,000 Pounds a Month and Heather talked about her journey in property. And we've had so many amazing guests over the last six years and you know, just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has given their time to share all of their wisdom and knowledge and experts across business, investments, property, you name it.

Speaker 1 (02:56.942)

Pretty much everything you could think of on the journey to building wealth, as opposed with WealthBuilders a bit like a financial GP. calling on experts from time to time who willingly give their expertise, they? Nobody asks for payment, nobody asks for anything in exchange other than the time to give them an airing, really, which is they all have done so with great skill and with great kindness.

Yeah. And it links to connection and community, which are two pillars of what we talk about at Wealthbuilders. It's always about reaching ahead to experts, people that have walked that path and reaching behind and helping those who are just starting their journey and still learning.

Just a Chris of that visual we like to give people.

The third most downloaded and listened to podcast episode was your book, Kevin, The Seven Pillars of Wealth, which of course wraps up all of the wonderful WealthBuilders IP into one place. Talks about the seven pillars, talks about all the aspects of building recurring income streams, moving from financial insecurity through to financial independence.

And I think that's due an update, I think, because the world has moved on since I wrote it. So I definitely think I'll do that. But I think the common themes there, family, recurring income, sharing, you know, they would be the three common themes. And I think as we look forward to 2026 and even beyond that, Chris, think we need to reflect. That's what people want. And I think very passionately about the world is such a

Speaker 1 (04:30.488)

trouble place right now. If you look back on what's happened since 2019, you say, right? So we've had COVID, we've had government changes, we've had clowns in the presidency, we've got tax dodgers in the cabinet, or were. We've had all sorts of different things that showed the world to be a very uncertain place. And my concern, because in that time period, I've become a granddad as well. I've got two grandkids and people will have heard me say that.

Kids today are going to live a longer life, probably to a hundred. And we've got the greatest wealth transfer in history coming from trillions and trillions, you know, from baby boomers to the next generation. I think there's a lack of planning on behalf of the older peeps. And I think there's a lack of wisdom being transferred to the next generation. I think there's been too much of a focus on the past and not enough on the future. So think we should do something about that.

And so I've got some thoughts about that. Any comments from you, Chris, on, you know, I mean, you're going to get married as well, which is, which is, you know, an interesting one in 2026. Right. So.

no loss changing. And well, another change that I will just mention tied in very much to the impact of families is something we've been talking a lot about recently, which is the government making the change of including pensions into your estate. we've got a waitlist, which I will mention again, because we put together a waitlist because there are so many people who need to understand and want to understand, you know, what can they be doing now to start to mitigate some of that future liability. And the waitlist, you can add your name and download a

A free guide, which we're in the process of creating that will be finished in the next couple of weeks or so head to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash IHT. And perhaps just a reminder, Kevin, because this will be something we'll be focusing on a lot moving forward.

Speaker 1 (06:23.606)

have to, we've got April 2027 is when the new rules come in. Actually, I will sign posts and maybe I'll do it as a post separately. There is a petition out there. It's pushing 15,000 signatures now for people who are objecting to this. Maybe we can put a link in the show notes to get more people. I'll certainly do some posting about that to try and get it over the 15,000 mark and hopefully to push it forward to almost filling a football stadium.

which is ideally what we would like so that the government have to take notice of it. It doesn't look like they're for changing. So if governments aren't for changing, we need to be able to give good guidance to help people plan their way through these things. And there's more and more to come. So I think as probably we have done, Chris, we will touch on something very topical, perhaps just pick one thing that's very topical in the month, do that.

Definitely something on families do that. I we've got an increase in the demand for knowledge specifically around the women in wealth, the female perspective, and not least because in the baby boomer transition, women live longer than men. So there's going to be thousands and thousands, if not millions, of women who perhaps haven't been as focused and involved.

with finance and historically, not always the case and I'm not being too general here, but I think there's going to be a demand for that. we found somebody who's going to help us do that and give that female perspective. So I think if we do something on families, something on women, something topical and maybe, as you mentioned, case studies, if Heather's case study was second best download, I think people want to hear what's going on.

I think if we were planning it out again, that might be the cadence of what we do in some combination over a month. Also, to mix it up with different presenters and different people so that we can stay fresh. I 300 is a lot. Most people don't get to 300 episodes in their podcast, so nobody's thanking you, Chris. You do all the hard work, so let me do that on behalf of WealthBuilders and the audience.

Speaker 1 (08:50.67)

You do all the hard work, I just turn up and basically do a debrief, right? So thank you to you for all your hard work. And I think maybe at some point, you know, give you a little bit of a breather as well. Somewhere down the line, I don't know when, but sometime down the line. That would be neat. And like all good things, you know, we're going to continue, but sometimes the actors change and we'll probably need to do that over time just to freshen up and you can't do the female one, mate. You just can't do it.

So, what do think? Does that sound reasonable?

Yeah, I think so. hey, you know, another big change that we've definitely been introducing, I suppose, recently is this technological change that's happening in the world where, you know, AI has just taken over the last couple of years, obviously, chat GPT being probably the most known of those language models. And I guess we need to acknowledge that the way that people will build their wealth will change as well, to some degree. Certainly in business, you're going to see changes. We're seeing digital currencies, of course, crypto currencies continuing to hit new highs.

So, you know, we'll absolutely be, you know, acknowledging and bringing in experts who can talk about some of these areas as well, due course.

Well, only a couple of episodes ago, you did a dummy demo podcast, you, with nothing but AI delivering the podcast. We didn't say a word. And that was quite useful and interesting. Obviously there's some challenges still with that, with the kind of voices and so on, but crumbs. I didn't think that would pull it off, but you did a great job in kind of prepping AI to do that. So yeah, I think.

Speaker 1 (10:27.286)

more and more things we need to acknowledge and of course we'll need to get those people who have got the greatest to share in that area to do so. It definitely won't be me, but some people who've got that skill, that capacity and we can see our young kids now, they're really embracing it and it's always the older generation who kind of skipped the technology at some point. So yeah, we've got to bring that in.

course, we would love to hear from you as well to tell us what you would like us to bring to your ears every week. We release every Wednesday morning and we've been doing that for the last six years, seven months, over 2000 days consistently. So make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and make sure that you've shared this with all of your friends who you think might be interested in learning how to build their wealth. It's not just about building wealth, Kevin. Of course, at WealthBuilders, we create, we build,

and we protect. So it's important to think of all of those three areas at all times as well.

Yeah, undoubtedly. I think, as I mentioned, sort of confluence of all those different ideas has led me to reshape what we're doing as far as family's concerned. And I look back, you know, I suppose traditionally when I was giving, you know, the old traditional advice way back, 2006 is when I became officially an IFA and kind of changed my mentality around about 2009.

after the credit crunch, but I was doing some thinking recently, Chris, and made me think an awful lot about challenging the current paradigm. Might be useful to share some of those things if you're up for that. Yeah. I've identified a few areas. Normally I look for seven, don't I? But don't always, but usually there are some things that I try and get myself a framework and maybe we'll just ask people to listen to this framework and see if they've got any observations. I mean, I think why.

Speaker 2 (12:08.11)

That'll be good.

Speaker 1 (12:26.924)

I'd like to be a bit more focused on the whole family because if you create, build and protect, you've got to go up generation, down generation and often side generation. You've to look at friends, you've got to look at family, executives of wills, all of these things will play an integral role in somebody's life. And so to almost shed light on something, so instead of just usually when you go to a

traditional financial planner as I was back then, the spotlight is very sharply on you. You know, it's like an individual. So you think about what's an ISA, individual savings plan, what's the pension, a personal pension plan is for one person. When in fact, as we know now with so many people commented on, on SAS, for example, it's a collective scheme. It's a collective scheme for many members. And often that incorporates up generation.

down generation and sometimes even side generation or side connections. So I think moving away from being an individual based is a paradigm that I think I'd like to encourage so that the wealth of a whole family should be part of common thinking. I mean, in the world of finance, for example, I won't do too many, Chris, but in the world of finance, do you know that if you've got cash as the, let's say an older guy like me got cash and

you've got cash and other banks and other members of your family, you can combine the value of that to get a better interest rate. If you've got money in the stock market, you can combine the value of that to secure lower costs. And just as AI brings the ease of management to the table, unfortunately, the financial service industry has not brought that to bear. They want to keep the costs as high as possible because that...

recurring income flows out to them as assets under management. And I want to do something about that. So that's number one. I think the whole family is critical. The second is I think too much of guidance, however you would get it, advice, however you would get it, is an asilo. In other words, it's one track. So you talk to an accountant, it's about tax. You talk to a lawyer, it's about

Speaker 1 (14:52.142)

You will, let's say. You talk to a financial planner, it's about your financial life, your financial products, if you see what I mean. Talk to insurance brokers and talk to a mortgage broker. You get the idea. Everybody's delivering guidance in asylum, which means there's always going to be areas of overlap that just don't get taken into consideration. So I want to focus much more on WealthBuilders being not just family oriented, but holistic.

holistic and completely aimed at the wealth of an entire family. And what I want to bring as part of that is a change around in fee structures. apart from most advisors work on a percentage, I think that's an outdated mode because you do the same amount of work whether someone's got a million or a hundred grand. I think it makes sense to focus on where people can get fixed fees and low fees and even better,

to get fees based on a result. So instead of just doing work, can we do something about bills that gets a result for people? And I think the biggest result that I believe we can bring is going to be inheritance tax savings. Because inheritance tax is a very painful tax, the most hated tax in the country. And most people who get retirement, let's say, for 20 years, and average life expectancy is 85.

So if you're a 60 year old, you've got 25 years, you're 65, you've got 20 years. So most people, if they get to this in their, let's say by 50, 55, 30 odd years of planning, you could probably deal with an error in stacks. But the problem is nobody's talking about it. So this idea of creating.

building, protecting. But more importantly now, Chris, I'm to add another one, which is passing on. In other words, creating wisdom to pass on to the next generation so that as the great wealth transfer occurs, it doesn't just happen and money gets consumed by the next generation and therefore doesn't last at all. I want to try and create a culture and actually put things into play.

Speaker 1 (17:10.872)

that families can create their own family values, what we call a family charter and create a real genuine involved legacy plan that the grownups and the kids talk about. It's silent death pass, it's involvement. And I think Paul's number one podcast, Paul Brooks with the Family Trust probably just rang a bell again and told us that's...

It's the resonance with the whole family that we've always known about, but we haven't really paid attention to in the same way as perhaps we might do in the future. So I hope that gives a feeling for family, not individual, holistic, not silo, low fees, not percentage fees, and helping the next generation receive the money with wisdom so that they can not consume it, but they can be custodians of it.

very nicely put and I think that should resonate with a lot of people listening. And if it does, please comment on if you're listening to Spotify, you can literally leave a comment and reviews and comments. Let us know if that's something that you also would like us to dive further into. And of course, don't forget to join the waitlist at wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash IHT so that you can receive that guide. That'll be emailed to you. And again, that will have lots more information about

what Kevin has just touched on there. Yeah.

And if anybody thinks we've missed something, Chris, you know, we're always open to receiving feedback. Feedback is the only real way to really understand what you're doing right and what you could improve upon. You know, we get great feedback on our TrustPilot reviews. So if it's 300, you've listened to a few, please do us a favor. Just give us a little bit of feedback yourself. Let us know that we're on track. Let us know that six years of hard work we put into this.

Speaker 1 (19:07.982)

It's meant a little something to you and little is 30 seconds, right? Takes 30 seconds to do a review. Just, you know, how will people do that, Chris? What's the best way to do that?

best places to head to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash reviews. And there's a link there off to Google reviews or to TrustPilot, whichever is your preferred platform or iTunes as well.

So we'd be grateful for that and gives us an incentive to carry on and who knows, we might get to 400 or 500. I'm not sure we'll get to 600, Chris. Certainly I won't. But anyway, we hope that we'll find new actors to take new roles in the whole process and keep this alive, keep it fresh and keep it current for people to be able to take action because there's too much confusion out there.

And confused minds are really the very fuel for a financial industry that tries to keep people in the dark because confused people don't do anything. I think it's people like us who want to bring clarity. By the way, clarity just gives you the opportunity to think clearly and then make good decisions, know, whatever decision that is for you. We're not trying to influence the decision you make, but if you've got clarity, you can make a good one. Or at least you make the best one with the current level of knowledge and then.

keep updating yourself. anyway, it's been Chris, it's been a thrill. It's been a pleasure. It's been an honor to work with you over these episodes. And I wish I could remember when we talked about let's do a podcast, let's call it something. And then let's do the first one and you know, just go from there. And it was, it's been an interesting journey. And I'm so glad that we took the first step.

Speaker 1 (20:51.458)

and I'm so glad we've continued to this point. And thanks again, my friend. I genuinely enjoyed the journey with you.

Likewise, no, it's been a blast and thank you for listening, whether this is your first episode, your hundredth episode, or maybe even your 300th episode. We look forward to you joining us again and that next time will be same time, same place next week, Owen.

Well, I hope so. Until then, friend, see you. No champagne, just a cup of tea.

Speaker 1 (21:21.934)

We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the WealthBuilders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership right now for free access. That's wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership.