Turning Pocket Money Into Financial Wisdom w/ Will Rainey

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01
The purpose of wealth talk is to educate, inform, and hopefully entertain you on the subject of building your wealth. Wealth builders recommends you should always take independent financial tax or legal advice before making any decisions around your finances.

Christian Rodwell 0:19
Welcome to Episode 214 of wealth talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for wealth builders joined today by our founder Mr. Kevin Whalen. Hi, Kevin.

Speaker 3 0:28
Oh, Chris, good to be with you again, and excited about the number of people who want to share our mission to be great money role models for the children, their teenagers and their young adults.

Christian Rodwell 0:41
Yeah, thanks to everyone who's been supporting us and attended the webinar, who's now joined the community. We're excited to work with you. And we're continuing today, actually, with someone who's going to be showing up very soon, actually, on one of those family sessions. And this is Wil Rainey, he's the founder of blue tree savings.com. And the author of grandpa's fortune, fables. And Kevin, you've spent some time speaking with, well, he's a fantastic guy. And he's got some fantastic lessons which he's sharing.

Speaker 3 1:09
Yeah, he's, he has a gift, and a rare gift and immediately gravitate towards it. And it's the ability to make what appear to be complex subjects like money, money is a complicated thing, isn't it? But he makes it really, really simple. And he's simplifying that starting with the idea that if you can make it easy for children to understand, and he's got younger children, and that's when they started really from age of four, if I recall, he's been able to distil those lessons and has a warm and engaging style and ability to an a determination to write good content. And he'll be working with us in the future, to share his content with us and making what he's doing. Now available to our membership. And we want to thank him for that we recognised for the first time in wealth builders, we're not about creating our own content. We're about curating content that's best in world and he's one of those people who's just brilliant at what he does. And we're delighted to have him as a partner.

Christian Rodwell 2:18
Yep, we sure are. And I think it's probably best that we head on over to our conversation, we will and we'll be back soon after that to go through and debrief some of his lessons. All right over to our conversation today. With will rainy Well, welcome to off talk today. How are you?

Unknown Speaker 2:34
I'm doing very well. Excited to be here.

Christian Rodwell 2:36
Yeah, it was so great to have you on because I know you've been speaking with Kevin for probably a good year or maybe two years, right, since we initially started looking around for wonderful people out there who are promoting financial literacy for children. And you were one of the first people that came onto our radar Well,

Speaker 4 2:53
oh, I know. It's great. And I remember when Kevin told me about this sort of family programme, and it's so aligned to what I'm doing at the moment. And so I think it's kudos to yourself and Kevin for pushing it forward. I'm excited to see the response that you get.

Christian Rodwell 3:06
Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm so excited to be working with you. And let's understand more about you then well, okay, because you've got an interesting background. And, obviously, you're the founder of blue tree savings.com, which is a brilliant website. You can tell us more about that in a moment. And the author of grandpa's fortune fables, which has got so many tremendous reviews on Amazon, I know you're in the process of writing a second book as well. So so we've got lots to talk about today. Well, so how did you first get into this kind of world of helping children and even adults understand more about money?

Speaker 4 3:40
Yeah, so it was never on my long term plans many years ago. So my background is I'm an actuary. So for listeners who don't know what that is, that's essentially an accountant who loves statistics. So I've worked with like retirement schemes and insurance companies, and even some governments looking at their long term kind of risks by worked in the investment field. So I did that in the UK. So working with some of the largest retirement schemes in the UK. And then in 2014, I moved to Hong Kong with the company I was with, to take on this kind of head of investment strategy roll across Asia, which is fantastic in the sense of getting to explore Asia, because I'd go and do business trips, here, there and everywhere. But it was actually around 2017, where I was just having a regular meeting with one of my clients. And we're just talking about personal stuff. And I was talking about my two young daughters. And he said to me, are enjoy this time with them. They only grow at once, which is a completely obvious statement, but it had a really big impact on me. I was like, yeah, they do only have this one period of time when they're young. Also, I know that you spent so much the amount of time you spend with your kids is predominantly when they're like less than 12 years old after that, so I thought well, I want to make the most of that. I want to spend more time with my kids. What's that? Yeah. And so I told my wife, I wish to leave the corporate world and spend more time with our kids. Clearly, she took a little bit of convincing. But in in 2019, we both left our corporate jobs moved from Hong Kong to a small town called Khoisan in Vietnam, which is one of the best places in the world. It's beautiful near the beach near the rice fields, amazing food, amazing people put the kids into international school. So we didn't go completely rogue and hippyish. We wanted to have that education. But apart from just having more time with my kids, I wanted to have a bit of a project whilst I wasn't there, I wanted to do something different. And I felt really lucky to be able to have this opportunity. And it's because I've kind of learned how to look after money. So we've had Savings Investments. When we moved from the UK to Hong Kong, we kept our properties in the UK, so earning money from those. And so I was like, I felt so lucky to be in that position that I want my kids to have that opportunity when they're growing up. So I've made that my mission, I was just going to teach my kids about money. And so when I was putting them to bed, I tell them a story, we'll make up a story we'd have a money theme to. And then I started to share some of those stories with friends and family. They really enjoyed them. So then I started to write my blog, which is the website blue tree savings that you mentioned. And that seemed to go really well and got kind of picked up by the Financial Times and other media outlets. And yeah, from there just kind of continue to write different stories and do loads more research around kids and money. It wasn't my passion. When I first I didn't set out long time ago, this is what I'm going to do. By now. It's just all consuming. It's saying I'm so passionate about this. There's so much we can do in that area to really empower kids are and then for parents as well.

Christian Rodwell 6:51
Fantastic. I mean so much there to dive into further. I'm glad you mentioned there at the end, you know your passion now because it doesn't feel like work, right? You get up every day. You don't have to clock in, you don't have to clock out, you've got the freedom to work as and when you want to. But when you enjoy what you do, you know you put the hours in, right? Because it just doesn't feel like work.

Speaker 4 7:10
Exactly. Yeah, no. And I love that. And so I like routines. So I still every sort of Saturday morning, that's when I write my weekly blog. But yeah, I really look forward to that time where I'm sitting down, go to the same place that I always go to a little coffee shop, right. And yeah, just having that passion to do it and getting the response as well. Like in the corporate world, you can do a good job, and you'll get a few Pat's on the back from your boss. But when you're getting emails from random people, you've never met, just saying thank you for the work that you're doing. It just drives you on for doing more and more.

Christian Rodwell 7:42
And that's led into another income stream for you now, which on top of you mentioned the property and investments, multiple income streams is what we advocate, wealth builders and more pillars, wherever those pillars are, whether it be your home, your pension, investments, properties, IP, in the form of books and products and courses, which you've created as well. Now, it means that you can kind of ride the wave, you know, whatever is happening out there in the world, whatever is happening in the economy, whatever, Evers happening in the property market or stock market, you've got different streams of income, which can make sure that you've got that reliability and security every month

Speaker 4 8:20
100%. And that's one of the bits I even talk to my kids, I like to talk to them about that kind of piece. So even though we invest for our kids, and just showing them they get a few quid in terms of dividends, or we show that to them, and so you didn't do any work for that. That's just us saving your pocket money. And that pocket money is now growing, and they're seeing, I think that could be game changing. If they see that from a young age and see it's starting to get slowly bigger and bigger. From a young age. So yeah, that's fantastic.

Christian Rodwell 8:47
Let's get into some of these lessons, then. Well, and firstly, tell us about your family and who are the members of your family? Yep, so

Speaker 4 8:53
it's my wife. So I've been married since 2009. And two young daughters. So they're now 11 and eight years old, moved from the UK, Hong Kong. And we're now actually in Thailand Chiang Mai. So that's often we've got lots of pets.

Christian Rodwell 9:10
Yeah, well, we talked about education system in the UK, not really including the topic of money, including the topic of finance, it's always been that way and probably going to be that way for some time. And many will say that's not the role of the school to be teaching the children. And we would agree, you know, it's more the role of the parent to be able to instil these lessons. And as a parent, and as an author of these best selling books, I guess you sort of tested some of these theories out on your own children. Did you well, and how did they how did that process start?

Speaker 4 9:41
Yeah, so one of the bits that I started with was getting my kids from the youngest age. So I think my youngest was about four years old when I started. And so we got them to think of money like seeds and satellite, you can take those seeds and you can spend them and that's just like spending money. But then straightaway, they got really curious. They were like what What happens then? If you try and plant the seeds, what is that? So for the longest time, we said, like, yep, you can plant those seeds, those seeds will grow. And they'll grow into these trees, which we call blue trees, and hence the name of the website. And those trees will produce seeds. So even though they didn't really understand what does it mean, when you plant, it just means you're not spending. But they got, if I don't spend this money can grow. And then as they got older, we started to introduce more of the what does it mean when you're planting. So talking about investing and talking about compound interest, where you take those seeds, and you plant them, and you get more trees, which produce more seeds, and, and soon enough, they have this forest. And so it's a really engaging way for them to think about money. And so they visualise this kind of financial forest kind of growing. And so I remember talking to one of my daughters a few years ago, and I said, when you get to 18 years old, and you're going to have this forest, are you just going to chop it all down by going on a big spending spree. And they're like, no, we want to look after this forest, because they're learning about like the environment or school. And I was like, fantastic. Clearly, they talked about like all take off some branches or take a few seats. I'm like, Yeah, that's 100%, if you can nurture that forest over time, and let them know that so many people out there don't have a single tree, let alone a whole whole forest. And so the younger that they start planting the seeds. So that's some of that was one of the first kind of lessons. And then I've kind of just extrapolated from there to try and talk about many different money topics using that analogy. So on the investment side, we know that people are scared about investing in the stock market because of stock market crashes. And so we use the analogy to say, Well, you've got these trees, which are investments, but every now and then there's some storms, and sometimes the storms come along and break off the top part of your tree. But what do we do in after a storm? Well, we just let the tree grow back bigger and stronger. And assume produce more seeds. And I think having that mindset of, okay, it's just a storm, storms come storms go. We'll just keep going. Rather than them sort of growing up being anxious about their investments. They're like, yeah, it's just a storm. We have storms all the time. And so yeah, so that's been one of the key lessons that I've kind of instilled and just built on over time. And yeah, the book that you mentioned, I've written grandpa's fortune fables has essentially lots of different chapters, all kind of building on that kind of analogy.

Christian Rodwell 12:20
I absolutely love that. And as you're talking now, well, I'm thinking, Why is this not taught in school? That would make sense, wouldn't it?

Speaker 4 12:28
Yeah. So it's a really interesting point around should it be in schools. And I think, ideally, it should be more in schools than it is at the moment. The key thing about money and as you all know, money is just not about knowledge, children, even if they went to school and learn all about the knowledge of money. So what is that? What is tax? What is in real estate, what is in your stock market, just having that knowledge doesn't always mean that they're going to be good with money. Because money is a lot about psychology, it's about putting good actions into place and having good habits. And it's really hard for schools to kind of help children implement good habits, especially if the parents aren't involved. So if we take the sort of link between wealth and health, if children go to school and learn all about donuts are really bad for your health. Be mindful how many doughnuts you have, but then they go home and their parents have just bought a box of 12 doughnuts. You can see how it's not, it's going to be confusing for the children. And I think the same thing with with money as well. And that's why I focused on not on helping parents teach their kids about money, such that the parents kind of feel empowered to teach their kids in a simple way. But also can role model good money behaviours themselves and learn about money in a very non threatening, easy, visual, fun way of saying most adults will never talk about money when they're growing up. So actually, they've probably got a similar level of financial IQ as many of the kids.

Christian Rodwell 13:59
Yeah. And that's the tagline in the book, isn't it for kids who want to turn piggy banks into cash cows and for adults to help them understand about money? So so how do you help the adults? Obviously, the books are there for the adults to read with their children? Are there particular lessons or additional content that you've created for adults as well?

Speaker 4 14:17
Yeah, so all my blogs that I've written are for adults, and it's for them to learn and money subject in such a way that they're understanding it. But then take this lesson that you've just been taught in this blog and take it to your kids. So for example, it could be about investing in the stock market. And so I sort of shared in that blog about my experience of teaching my daughter so we're actually sitting in a McDonald's in Hong Kong. And I remember saying to my daughters, did you know that you own a piece of this McDonald's because we invest in a global index funds, we pretty much every big company, we own a small piece of size and because we invest for our kids, we said you own a piece of this McDonald's, and they got so excited about owning that McDonald's, the tray, the bins, all the people queuing up to buy their burgers, some of that money was going to be their money. And it's not just that McDonald's but all of them. And so they got this really excitement about our investing is about ownership. And then we went out and we saw the Apple Store and said, Yep, you're in some of that. Because we're in Hong Kong, we saw Disneyland in the distance, and you can say, you're in someone else. So I was kind of sharing this story. And so many parents who read that blog about how I taught my kids about it. So that was just the most simple way of learning about it, not just for my kids, but for themselves, because it was putting it into kind of a real life example. And when we talked about risks, we talked about Blockbuster Video, which people can relate to. And that's essentially what I've, my passion is now to try and simplify a lot of money subjects to such a way that a child can understand it. And then parents can just kind of leverage off that. And so yeah, the best comments are parents reading the blogs or reading the book with a kid saying, I learned so much myself. And it's so I'm hopefully going for two generations in one.

Christian Rodwell 16:10
And it comes back to the point really about it being taught in schools and the theory that it's the experience, isn't it? It's the keeping it fun. You've researched so much into this topic as well. And the formative years as well, seven years of age is that is that a key? A key number?

Speaker 4 16:27
Yeah, so this is similar research from Cambridge University that they found was by the age of seven, many of the kids have learned many of them many adult many behaviours by that time, which kind of blew my mind is like trying to think back to when I was a kid and thinking about what I was doing at seven years old. But it's more about what children are kind of picking up in their daily lives, just as we know, children just absorbed. And if from a young age, or children see money as being money, suspending monies for spending money, that gets kind of hardwired. And at some point, when they're older, they've got to try and unwind that they've got, say our money's not just for, for spending, but it's been kind of ingrained into them. All right, so money's for saving as well forgiving for investing. Oh, I need to do some of that as well. But after the age of seven, they've got to try and unwind that what's already been hardwired. So the more that we can talk to kids from a young age about the different uses of money, it's going to be a lot easier to start with good habits. And that's not to say if you've got a 14 year old who's never been taught about money that destined for her for doom and gloom, it just means the younger, the better. But yes, it's about seven years old, it's what they say. A habit starts to get ingrained.

Christian Rodwell 17:39
Yeah, that's interesting. And of course, technology now is allowing younger children to understand. And again, make it fun, make it playful. You talked about teaching your daughters there about the concept of investing of compound interest. Have you started introducing any financial products into their lives in terms of savings accounts or debit cards for children?

Speaker 4 18:01
Not yet, mostly because we're here and there's not as much financial products? If we were in the UK, then I think still in the UK, we'd probably would. But it's interesting about that use of technology in those products, because a lot of questions I get asked is, should I be giving my kids cash, or should I just set them up with one of these new apps or products, you know, this pre funded debit cards that you can get for children. And I've always said, if possible, start with cash. Whilst these new technologies are fantastic and engaging, we miss out on so many natural lessons about money from using cash flow, even to the very basic level of when we go into a shop, when we were growing up, we would get some money would hand that money over. And we'll get on a loaf of bread. And we can see that there's a transaction going on, we've given money over we get the bread. Whereas today, children go into a shop, parent gets a loaf of bread puts it on the table, and they hear this magical beat from the watch or the phone or the card and suddenly, the parent just walks away of the bread, they don't actually see that a transaction has gone on unless someone's proactively telling them Did you know when we tap that moment that we're giving money to the shop money has come out from a bank account. And so we need to really spend more time sort of making sure kids learn about some of these lessons that we would have picked up naturally. And so the analogy that I use about technology is if you give a child a calculator, they're not just going to be great at maps. If you teach them how to do maps, and then give them a calculator, then the world start oyster. And the same thing with this technology. I'm not worried but potentially some concerns that some parents will give their kids this technology and assume that that is this technology is going to teach their kids all about money, and their kids are going to be fine. Whereas in fact it without that education. These kids can be doing right and tapping their cards all over the place without really understanding what's going on. especially with games now, like computer games, which had money in them, and so kids don't really they just see numbers on a screen with a some kind of money symbol. And some of them just don't know, which is real money and which is game money. And there's lots of horror stories of parents saying my kids spent 1000s of pounds on Roblox or Minecraft or wherever cover games, because they didn't realise that they were spending real money. They just thought it was like, in game money. So there's so much that we need to be cautious of with technology, with the education, the technology is super powerful.

Christian Rodwell 20:33
That's it, it's a double edged sword, isn't it, there are multiple risks, which potentially lie, but also multiple opportunities, and children now who have that creative, that curious mindset can really run with it. And they can do some amazing things. And in the last four or five years, since you've been obviously writing your blogs, and, you know, really, I guess, you know, immersed in this topic, well, how quickly Have you seen all of this advanced because just in a short space of time that I know, I've been looking at it, and just new things coming out almost every week,

Speaker 4 21:05
ya know. So it's really is advancing, again, that's can be very, very powerful, if it's in the right piece. So yeah, so when I go back to the UK, which has not been that frequent, because of COVID. And every time I go back, and just seeing the sort of technology and getting a chance to look at the nephews, what they're using to manage their money, and it's good, they are starting to now embed education into some of those tools. But again, we just need to make sure that kids are using that technology in there. But the fact that it's so much easier now for families to help kids look after their money and also invest for their kids and open up an investment account or open up a savings account is so much easier now. Because with online technology, there's not that whole, I would set up an investment account or a bank account for my kids. But I haven't been to the town centre. And I've got haven't taken my passport with me to open the accounts and all that horrible admin that used to go on when trying to open up financial products and services in the past, whereas now it's the same fantastic, really, within sort of a short amount of time, small amounts of money can be put in to just get started. And I think that's the key pieces. When it comes to money. A lot of it is just getting started. And now that that barrier has been taken, which is fantastic.

Christian Rodwell 22:22
Absolutely. That's true. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the principles around money. I know that in your book, there's many principles there. Of course, we've recorded the seven family wealth principles. And going back to some of those classic books, I can think Richest Man in Babylon, right, just spend less than you earn is a simple rule that still works today and will always work. What are some of the other principles and foundational lessons that are included in your book? Well,

Speaker 4 22:49
so the interesting one, the one that you just mentioned there around spend less than you earn. And I kind of talked about that in the book that we've gotten there. But I've also put in a story to help kids understand why people don't do it. Because it's such a simple thing to say, just spend less than you earn. And but yeah, whatever crazy percentage people just don't do that. I think it's like 60% of the UK are in are in debt, excluding mortgages, which shows like 60% of people are not following that that first rule. And so talking about kids wild people doing that, and it's all about the fact that companies are spending millions, collectively billions on great marketing. And they know us more than we know ourselves, especially with all the data from social media. And so it's all about helping the kids get into habits. And so right, you have to, whenever you get some money, get into the habit of pulling at least one out of every 10 away, so it can't be touched. Because if you don't do that, it's gonna get swallowed up. And I've got a tonne of fun stories to help kind of kids learn about that. So I used that forest that I mentioned earlier. So the first one is make sure you save one out of every 10 seeds that you receive. And if you want to grow a forest, so that's the first thing. The second principle is your seeds are never going to grow. If they're just put under the bed, or in a jar, you have to plant those. And so we're talking to them about trying to make that money grow, whether that's investing in the stock market, whether that's in a high savings, interest account, or whatever that's trying to think of a little business and buying some lemons to try and make lemonade and try and make that money grow. But the third one that I talk a lot about and principles, and I don't think it gets spoken about enough is just patients. All of the people I know who are financially secure, have patients. And with patients it means that they're not going to use gambling, they're less likely bad, they're less likely to get scammed. They're going to be more patient when investing. They're not going to just look at the newspaper every every day going where's the where's the stock price, they're going to be that much more patient and they're also not going to spend spontaneously and previously if they've got that patient so I talked a lot about in my blogs and then in the chapter in the book about patients. And when I do some workshops of some companies, I talked about how parents should really look to try and teach their kids to be patient. And so it could even be saying, kind of get them to save just one little piece of that chocolate bar and put it in the fridge for the next day or the next weekend, or whatever it is, just so they can see that there's the next the following day, they go to the fridge, and they've got that extra little bit. Because if they have eaten the whole chocolate bar, the first day, they would have probably been happy. But if they get to eat 90% of that chocolate bar, they're probably going to be just as happy. But that extra 10% that they delayed, they'll be really happy they did the next day. And so it's just getting children to learn that patience is rewarded. Patience doesn't mean you can't have any of the chocolate bar, you have to can't eat any of it. It's all about having most of it just save a little bit. And so yes, there the free what I call the free rules of wealth in the book, which kind of leverage off I say, of richest man in Babylon, Rich Dad, Poor Dad and psychology of money. So yeah, keep one out of every 10 seeds, plant the seeds, the key, and then be patient and let those trees grow. And then if they follow those three rules and make them into their kind of habits with all the money they receive, then I'm sure they'll have a nice big financial forest when they're when they're older.

Christian Rodwell 26:17
And I'm sure everyone who's listening now would 100% agree with that. But how many were actually told that when they were younger, very few, unfortunately, you know, certainly wasn't a conversation I was having with my parents. But another thing I'm interested to hear your opinion on, well, is learning styles and personality types. We use a tool in the wealth builders community with our members called wealth dynamics, which is aimed at the adults and there is a version for for young, young adults and children. But we understand that people learn differently some, you know, learn through creativity and the big picture thinkers, others connection others about doing and experiencing, and others are very detailed, and they need to have all the details and the information fully make any decision. How does that reflect in some of the work and research that you've done in terms of being able to teach people effectively?

Speaker 4 27:07
Yeah, and so same thing with children that they will, will learn and engage in different ways. And I think it's for the parents too, just trial and error around this. And it's even with the same child, sometimes just with my daughters, I've said the same lesson many times to them, because I know it's never going to be a case of I tell them once and it's gone into their brains, and they're now forever, never going to use bad debt or to kind of save all their money. It's about constant sort of reinforcing and very kind of micro lessons. And so with my daughters, I kind of tried to mix it up in terms of how I give those lessons, whether it's bedtime stories, whether that's getting some Monopoly money and sort of saying, so one game we did the other day was got some Monopoly money, I said, pretend this is income, mommy and daddy have, how much of this do you think we get to key? And then we kind of just took, started taking some of the notes. So this is how much we pay for the house. This is how much we pay for electricity, Internet, and they could start to see this big pile of cash that was there just sort of dwindling down. And it's much more engaging for them because it's visual. But other times, so even playing games, sometimes it's listening to some songs and asking some questions. All right, why do you think because there are quite a lot of popular songs that mentioned money, and sort of having those kind of mini micro lessons such that some of them they'll engage with and some they might not, but you're kind of just reinforcing and trying to go from different angles. And I don't think I've got a formula to say, if your child is like this, then do that. If your child is like this, do that. At the moment, it's more, I just know that different days. And as they grow up, the different methods will change, and be more. So it's more about just try lots of different methods. It will keep engaging for kids, but also the parents as well as they they're not just sitting there lecturing their kids, but trying to be interactive.

Christian Rodwell 28:55
Now, I mentioned earlier on your writing your second book. Well, can you give us any any sneak preview of what to expect in there? Yeah, so

Speaker 4 29:02
essentially, so the first book came out a couple of years ago, and now my eldest daughter's a bit older. So I'm kind of seeing what books are interesting for her. So she's 11 years old. And she's now in sort of like, mystery books and books with clues in there. So yeah, so this next books, all about a character who's kind of gone missing. And so the kids in the book, have to try and uncover what has happened to this, their grandmother in this next book. But as they sort of try and uncover where she's gone, or what's happened to her, they kind of learn about her money history about how she started off with not much money, but then she gets some money and how she earns money and looks after it but all in little mini stories that have different clues in there and different characters in so, so trying to hopefully by the time my kids are 18 They'll have a series of books, which will then target different age groups. So the first one's probably I've sort of said six to 12 For years old, this next books will probably be from nine to 13. And then, as my kids come teenagers, I have another book for them. So it's trying to develop them. But a lot of the same principles are the same. So even with the book, there's some new topics in there. But there's also a few topics that are from the previous book, and again, but written in a completely different story. So again, try and reinforce some of the key principles, because as you mentioned earlier, the key principles don't change. And there's always that tendency of I'll have to talk about something completely new. And sometimes it's not, it's about saying the key principles, but in a different way. And just hoping that the more times you rephrase them that the more it'll stick.

Christian Rodwell 30:41
Yeah, we absolutely love your work well, and you can't wait for that second book, and also can't wait to work with you closer with our members as we start to develop and evolve the wealth builds families programme and be inviting you in there to do some guest sessions I very much hope. And when the new book is out to share that with our members. And just for people listening right now, well, so much content already that's freely available on your blog, across socials, where's the best place for them to go to begin that search?

Speaker 4 31:10
So my website is the best place blue tree savings.com. On there, you can find all of the information about all the different blogs, I've pretty much covered most money topics from there. But also it has details about my current book, which is Grandpa's fortune fables, which is also available on Amazon, in terms of social, spent most of my time doing tips on LinkedIn. So yeah, look for well, Rainey on LinkedIn. And I generally try and post a few times a week with some helpful tips for parents.

Christian Rodwell 31:42
Yeah, absolutely recommend you hit there right now. And it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Well, so much more we could have talked about, but I have no doubt that we'll be talking again on a future episode, not too distant future. Perfect.

Unknown Speaker 31:54
Thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed that. All right, thanks. Well,

Christian Rodwell 31:56
thanks to well there, I just love some of the concepts. So we'll get into those in a second. Before we do that we've had more reviews this week coming in on our Trustpilot page, thank you, to everyone who takes the time to leave reviews for us, it's so important to help us grow and to help us spread the word to more people. And this week, John has left some words he says having spent over two years going around in circles, and getting nowhere with others, wealth builders support to not only move my SAS pension scheme to another cheaper and more proactive provider, but to also help both me and my wife move our final salary defined benefit pension funds to the SAS, when others couldn't, was a breath of fresh air. And Paul Brooks in particular, was extremely supportive and proactive throughout the process, which included helping us to find the right IFA, and SAS fund. And everything was concluded, and with funds transferred with around eight months, and they are now available for us to invest. I'd thoroughly recommend wealth builders if you need help and support with anything relating to SAS pensions.

Speaker 3 33:04
Well, thanks, John, for that. And I think you could tell from John's review that he planted some seeds in, it took him some months to be able to get that result done and some and some connections. So let's say some, you know, some interaction with that. So everything needs nurturing in order to do it well. And while I'm wanting to make a comment that wealth builders doesn't give advice, it's not a place of advice. It's a place of guidance and connection. So Paul Brooks, nor me or anybody else in wealth builders gives advice, but we know people who do and they're responsible. But thanks to John for that, but also thanks to will, because one of the key messages that we'll get is really a reflection of one of our own principles, a metaphor for life. And I think he's embedded it more than anybody else, which is the concept of planting seeds.

Christian Rodwell 33:53
Definitely, yeah. And seeds grow into blue forests,

Speaker 3 33:57
whatever the simple concept to get children to understand that money needs to be treated in a very, very visual way, not just in the tactile nature of touching money, which you mentioned, particularly in the buying and selling of things and the transactions, but also in the concept of the future. And some really, really interesting analogies that flow from that, including the storms, you know, that that could damage for us, but they don't blow them away. And that you can weather the storms and you've got flexibility within that. And and also the idea that the trees themselves, generate seeds and those seeds then plant themselves and then you creating a forest and you want to keep your forest growing. And I think that's very elegant in how he does that. A really great take on again, how we're approaching that. I'm just pleased that he's managed to do such a good job and sharing them.

Christian Rodwell 34:56
Absolutely. And we talk generally and Have builders with our members, we have a roadmap, we teach the nine steps of the roadmap to move from financial insecurity to financial independence, the only way to generate asset income is from one of the seven pillars, and will was able to relocate because he'd already put the time in himself. So building his own assets, through property, through investments through recurring income streams that allowed him to say, You know what, we want to spend time with our children, we've got income, and we don't have to stay here. And that gave him that freedom of location to go and travel, live in Vietnam. Initially, he's now in Thailand, put children into international schools. But that's all because of that asset income that he'd built up himself. And without that he wouldn't have been able to do it.

Speaker 3 35:45
Well, also the catalysts, you know, I often talk, Chris, don't talk about a the catalyst that reason to overcome inertia as an ROI. And he mentioned that, I think, a casual conversation with someone who says kids only grew up once, you know, as I, oh, yeah, I want to be there for that, I want to see that I want to participate in that, that ability to do that. And certainly, that's a calling for many people who want to go into business or get into some way of being able to be flexible with their time, so that they can spend quality time with their children growing up. And I think that's a very laudable thing, and good for him that he's been able to not just place himself and his wife and family in that position. But he's also been able to reinforce the messages, not just to his family, but to other families as well. And I love that idea. He mentioned about the leverage of a couple of generations, you know, you're, you're teaching the parents out of fish, you're not just giving them a fish. And I think there's an important point about schools also. And I've made this point. And we'll make the same point, although slightly different language. He talked about schools teach. And that's sort of almost the I think, he said, You can't learn wealth in books. You can't, because you've got to have habits, you've got to have perseverance, you've got to do the nurturing. You can't just read a book about seeds, and then not do anything that's just, you can deductively be taught. And you can understand, but without practical application, it doesn't do anything. And I think he makes that point well, too. And we see so many people don't Equus, buy a book, buy a course. listen to a podcast. Could be you, Mr. listener, Mrs. Listener? Are you taking action? Are you doing something to plant your own seeds, or nurture your own family, and these are good things to be considering and we hope we can become a catalyst for someone to go, it's time, it's time to make that change is time to be great money role model for your children take the quiz to find out what type of money role models for you. And maybe that might give you a shock or a job because we want to do that because we believe we've got an obligation to make responsible children into responsible adults. And I'm not going to shy away from that one, Chris. And I thought he was well, now,

Christian Rodwell 38:17
in our launch webinar. Last week, we talked about the seven family wealth principles, and that's embedded in the wealth builders for families programme. And we'll be bringing in experts, authors, speakers, to talk about different aspects of that. And one of those principles, you've talked about planting seeds. And other one is products. And I like the way that will said starting with cash, you know, keep it tangible. And that's a question he gets often because you miss valuable lessons when everything is just tap and touch.

Speaker 3 38:49
I think we've said this many many times already in different podcast, Chris about that. You makes a great point about making money tactile at the very beginning. So that there's a there's that sensory relationship with it, whether it's very young children just playing with money and virtual shops to coin rubbing to playing with Monopoly money to going shopping and physically seeing money and using money instead of cards in order to let children see that there is a process of exchange that's going on. Because in the end, these are life lessons that can't be just absorbed by there's a tap here's a tap, here's a tap because then they just think money's on tap and an owner is not so the lessons need to come from there. So yeah, but of course we'll be bringing products and concepts of the latest developments in in products from time to time for our UK audience. We can't speak for Thailand. But we can speak about the various products that are designed to introduce children in a positive way or introduce parents or grandparents in a way to help that savings mentality that planting seeds mentality And the tax efficiency that sometimes goes with that with junior ices, Junior sips, and so on. And we'll constantly keep a vigil on that to make sure that you're getting the latest. So we'll deliver the principles of these other things you could look at. But we'll be getting case studies from parents who discover a new product, a new app, a new service. And we'll do our best to test those things out, to bring them to more families so that they can use whatever the best of technology is to help those lessons come across.

Christian Rodwell 40:32
Absolutely. And one final parting word from well was that importance of exercising patience, which again, ties into planting seeds, but saving that piece of chocolate for tomorrow might seem like a small message, but one that demonstrates the benefit of delayed gratification. And when it comes to wealth that it takes time. And it's not everything today.

Speaker 3 40:54
Yeah, well, it's also nice that we'll share the love of coffee mom was in, in a coffee shop, sitting down and doing something and it seems to write these blogs, they're so good to know that he's got that location freedom, one of the great freedoms of wealth, isn't it to live where you want on your terms. So to sit in a coffee shop, to write a blog and know that you're going to influence and something that I was touched by actually, then make a big deal of it. But I thought it was very, very powerful. That traditionally, you know, when you're in a job or you're in a business, you might get a pat on the back from a boss, you won't get a pat on the back from employees, your if you're running a business, the pat on the back is the bank balance. But when he said random people, strangers you've never met, send you an email and say thank you for the work you're doing. And we get that too, don't we in our reviews, and I'm always humbled by that, that somehow somebody we don't know, is touched by our work. And it's making a difference in their lives. And Will's doing the same thing. So well, you and I, sir, are kindred spirits. And I'm delighted you're part of our partnership. And we're looking forward to working with you not just now but for a long time in the future

Christian Rodwell 42:10
here. So I hope you enjoyed listening to today's episode with will don't forget to go and check out his blogs. And we'll be having we'll talk to our members inside the families community in the coming weeks. So we're looking forward to that as well. And we will be back Same time, same place with more fun and frolics next week. Kevin

Unknown Speaker 42:32
is looking forward to that. No, tell them a friend see you.

Speaker 1 42:38
We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside a wealth builders membership site to help you create build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealth builders.co.uk/membership right now for free access. That's wealth builders.co.uk/membership