Aug 12, 2019
Introducing Pete Matthew Today's guest joining us on the show is a man who needs no introduction. Not if you are in the world of saving money, investing wisely and making the most of you cash. In fact he was first on the show back a couple of years ago, beaming in from his mansion in Cornwall. He is a Financial Planner, Podcaster, Video Blogger, Social Media Trainer. Managing Director of Jacksons Wealth Management. Best of all can teach us how to take control of our cash in ways that simply are life changing. As he says “I am a Certified Financial Planner and Chartered Financial Planner providing fee-based holistic financial planning advice in Penzance, West Cornwall. I am also an award-winning podcaster, and video blogger. My passion is to spread the word that anyone can take control of their personal finances. I am fulfilling this passion via my financial education website and podcast, Meaningful Money. Through video, podcasting and social media I am reaching thousands of people every week with my simple financial planning message. How The Dots Joined Up For Pete I set out to provide simple, accessible financial planning information to the masses, and decided that video might be a good way to do this, and through trial and error, built a site full of basic instructional video. Through my work with this site, I was awarded IFALife’s Social Media Financial Adviser of the Year award 2010. I also won the Professional Adviser Financial Education award in both 2011 and 2012. I also received the Scottish Widows award for Industry Innovation in 2014, and was named UK Podcast of the Year in 2015. And now he is bringing all that information into one place, to make it easier than ever to get out of debt and increase their personal wealth with the Meaningful Academy. Split into three parts Financial Foundations being built first, then Building Worth, and Enjoying Your Money coming soon. So are there quick and painless things we can do to get our finances in control? And with the effort it takes to build a platform like he has, does he ever come close to burnout and content indecision? Well let's find out with the one and only money messiah, the financial freedom fighter, the debt destroyer the one and only Pete Matthew. Show Highlights During the show we discussed such weighty subjects with Pete Matthew such as: Why Financial Independence is a choice, and something that should be learnt from a very early age. How the haters can always get through to you, but you have to realise that its a badge of honour for them to contact you. How the damage to our mental health referenced in the book "Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology" is something that we have to bring into family life. And lastly...... Pete talks openly about the assistance he gets to make firm decisions to Meaningful Money, which perhaps he wouldn't be able to see otherwise How To Connect With Pete Matthew Website Facebook Linkedin Twitter Return To The Top Of Pete Matthew If you enjoyed this episode with Pete Matthew, why not check out other inspirational chat with Clayton Morris, Dorie Clark, and the amazing Niall Doherty You can also check our extensive podcast archive by clicking here – enjoy Audio Transcription Of The Pete Matthew Interview Intro 0:00 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK, David Ralph. David Ralph 0:24 Yes. Good morning, my young friends. Thank you so much for being here on another episode of Join Up Dots. Yeah, do you need another episode? Of course you do. And today's one is one I actually woke up in a little bit excited because this man is is he's a mentor to me and he should be a mentor to every one of us out there from the UK to America to Bora Bora to anywhere that has money issues. Now he is a guest joining us on the show and we literally he needs no introduction. Not if you're in the world of saving money investing wisely and making the most of your cash. fact he was on the show back a couple of years ago, beaming in from his mansion in Cornwall now. He's a financial planner, a podcast or a video blogger, social media trainer, and managing director of Jackson's wealth management and best of all, he can teach us how to take control of our cash in ways that simplify and are quite simply life changing. As he says I'm a certified financial planner and Chartered Financial Planner providing fee based holistic financial planning advice in Penzance West combo. I'm also I don't like this bit, an award winning podcast. I've never won anything. I've never even won a bloody swimming badge, but he's got an award and he's a video blogger to now his passion is to spread the word that anyone can take control of their personal finances. I'm fulfilling this passion by my Financial Education website and podcast meaningful money through video podcasting and social media and reaching thousands of people every week with my simple financial planning message. I set out to provide simple accessible financial planning information to the masses, and decided that video might be a good way to do this and through trial and error, built a site or a basic instructional video. Now through my work with this site, I was also awarded IFA is a life social media financial advisor of the Year award in 2010. I also wonder professional advisor financial education ward in both 2011 and 2012. And if that's not enough, he also received the Scottish widows award for industry innovation in 2014. And was also named UK podcast of the Year in 2013. Right and now he's bringing all that information into one place and make it easier than ever to get out of debt and increase their personal wealth with the meaningful Academy split into three parts financial foundations being built first, when building worth and enjoying your money coming soon. So quick and painless things we can do to get our finances control. And with the effort it takes to build a platform like yours. Does he ever come close to burn out and content indecision? Well, let's find out with the one and only the money Messiah, the financial freedom fighter, but debt destroyer, the one and only Martin Lewis no I mean, Pete Matthew Pete Matthew 3:23 What an intro. Nobody does intros lucky, my friend. Nobody does intros like you. Great to be here. David. You're David Ralph 3:29 right. It is lovely. It's lovely. And can I ask Pete Matthew, can I ask you you saw my nipples earlier? And I'm worth it looking good for a man of my age. Pete Matthew 3:40 Yeah, I saw him for a brief second because my retinas dissolved. And now they were looking good. My friend for a man, you're, I do David Ralph 3:48 apologise. It's very hot in the United Kingdom at the moment. And as podcasters we can't afford things like air conditioning and fans, we have to just go through the pain barrier to bring it to you don't. Pete Matthew 4:00 Yeah, we showed there. It's boiling in here is all I'm in the shorts and a T shirt very seriously thinking about taking the T shirt off. So it's good job. It's audio only. This is not a mansion, by the way. I'm talking to you from a cupboard. But you know, David Ralph 4:12 Yeah, I know. But I've seen I've seen where you live. I've been I've been going into sort of financial advisors net worth and your your album. Now the thing I remember you being on the show last time, and it is stuck with me. And it's funny, every podcast episode doesn't stay with me. Unless every now and again, something hits home. And for some reason, and I remember you saying that you went to a financial conference. And as she was pulling up, you saw all these financial advisors with their BMW, Mercedes. And you were thinking, well, that's not very good. You're taking a loan out perfect. How are you providing good financial advice? And that was kind of the starting point to it. Oh, do you look back at those days and think, you know, well, things have moved on. And people are really reclaiming their financial control over people still making the same bizarre things by getting out car loans and stuff where quite simply they can't afford it. Pete Matthew 5:07 A lot of people are still doing that, I do think there is a beginning of a ground swell to taking control of finances, just as there has been an increasing sort of focus on taking better care of our health through eating and exercise and things like that. And if you compare it to where we were in, you know, like 1985, or 1990, or something, you know, you see the kids these days coming out of college, and they're all ripped, right? Because all boys are spending time in the gym stuff. And the girls, you know, they're all looking a lot better than I did when I was 1617. And so I think there is a bit removed towards that. And I think that is now beginning to happen with the with the area of financial sense, financial management as well, which I'm very encouraged by a large part of that is due to what's often called the fire movement, financial independence movement, which is massive in the US really starting to ignite over here too. So I'm excited by it's extremely positive, I think for the future. David Ralph 6:06 Because I had a guy on the show recently, choose f5 choose financial independence, and he was a lovely guest. And at the beginning, I said to him, yeah, I'm financially independent. He said, Well, that's brilliant, good on you. And as we started talking, I thought, Oh, I'm not financially independent at all. Because I actually still have to work for a living, I have to do things. Is that something that we should be aware of? But literally, we do have that opportunity to be purely financially independent by buying pieces of land or renting out properties? Or is it all about as we talk about passive income online businesses, training courses and stuff? Pete Matthew 6:44 Well, I think is probably a bit of all sorts, it's certainly more complex than it than it most people might think it would be. I'm actually, as it happens about four hours from now interviewing Brad and Johnson from choose f5. Myself, David Ralph 6:58 how are you connected? That Pete Matthew 7:02 that's because you introduced me to them for which I'm very grateful, sir. So I'm looking forward to that those guys are prime movers over there, along with like, Mr. Money moustache, in that whole area, essentially, financial dependence is really about choice, you work out of choice rather than necessity. So passive income, the whole Smart Passive income, Pat Flynn, all that sort of stuff that I mean, certainly Pat Flynn would never suggest that it isn't still work, you know, even passive income requires some upkeep. Yeah. But really, for me, the definition of financial independence is not having to work because either you have other income streams, or you have sufficient capital from which to draw to sustain your day to day lifestyle. So there's a whole load of nuance to it. And there's a million ways you can provide either that passive income or you can amass the capital that you need. So as ever these things as a detail underneath the headlines right? David Ralph 7:56 Now, I am not a financial guy, I kind of control I've got to two for now, really. But for the wider sense. I wasn't an opportunity monkey picking the day I used to go to work. And then they'd give me the money. I didn't even query that I would sorting out the right tax. It was just what I got and away away. Since I've become entrepreneurial, it's a different ballgame. And you know, I'm always got a spreadsheet where I'm moving 20% here and 20% there, and I'm keeping base and I'm keeping but do you think that literally people should be trained how to manage their money before they go to work? It should be a prime part, because I think Martin lewis is very big on getting kids to understand that they've got the financial control before anybody is making money, do what you want with it. Pete Matthew 8:48 I for sure. And I think the sweet spot for doing that is sort of tertiary education. So after GCSE, you know, with we have to stay in some kind of full time education now whether it's sort of a you know, college vocational stuff or a levels or whatever. And I think there ought to be a mandatory element of basic money management at that point, because even then, you could argue that the banks have already got the got their claws into us. I don't know about you, David. But I was a Gryphon saver, right. So I was a Midland Bank, customer, Dean, I had the blue binder, and all the sort of the action file, it was called all the cool stuff that you wanted to have as a kid. And of course, I still bank with first direct, which is a subsidiary of HSBC, which bought middle and bank so I've been with that bank now for 30 years, because they nabbed me when I was a teenager. And we need to help kids understand that this is a market and they need to shop around, and not just sort of drift into whatever financial arrangements they end up in. But ultimately, managing money isn't difficult. It's it's about understanding a few basics well enough, so that you can avoid the pitfalls, things like, you know, easy day. We need to understand basic day to day money management, we call it budgeting now, word that anybody likes to talk about. But it's really, really important. And it doesn't need to be involved. It doesn't need to be challenging and difficult. It just needs to be put in early enough. So I mean, I have zero financial education from either school, college, all my parents, but I've made sure I've made the difference with my own kids. But of course, a lot of kids don't get that at home. So I would love to see some kind of mandatory, even if it's like one half term focused weekly lessons that every 16 to 18 year old goes through. I just think that would potentially transform the country Transform, transform the economy, because it would reduce our dependence on debt, and just put us in better financial shape as as a country. David Ralph 10:46 Now I remember back in the day, my first bank was not West and I actually worked for NatWest birth for 10 years, and fixed Well, it was the pigs Yeah, it was Woody, Annabel Maxwell, Lady Hillary and send the fan your Yeah, they came up. David of pigs. And I think woody was the hard one to get. He was the one with the bow tie at the end. But it used to encourage kids to save to get this set. But as soon as I left my employment with NatWest, I said, why I'm leaving much thank you my bank account. I don't want people to know how much I'm earning. Of course, I didn't care anyway. And so I think I've been with every single bank. And one of the things that I reference him again, because he is very prevalent in the United Kingdom. But Martin Lewis, who was the financial guy over here, always says, ditch and switch, you know, move around. I'm interested why you've stayed for 30 years with the same bank then? Pete Matthew 11:37 Because they've Well, they served me very well, for the most part up until about three or four years ago, I had basically everything with them. I do have, you know, my mortgage is now with centre there now. And you know, but prior to that my mortgage, so first, all right. And the reason I ditched them in the end was exactly what you're talking about. They have no loyalty to me, ultimately. Because I rang them because we were moving house, and I needed to borrow less money than I already had on my mortgage over a shorter term, right. So less risk, one would argue for first year at the bank, I spent a half an hour on the phone with them. And I think I needed to borrow some, like 200 grand. And at the end of the thing, this girl said, Well, I'm pleased to tell you, Mr. Matthew, that we're prepared to lend you 115 or something. And I'm like, What? So is that on top of what I already said, No, no, that's the total. So I said, that's the less than I need, despite the fact that you know, I've been born or borrow with you for years. And you can see what I earn. It's plenty, you know, and but the reason this they gave for it was, well, you have all these existing commitments, I said, they are savings and insurance, right. So I'm increasing my, you know, my wealth, my net worth, and my security by paying those monthly commitments is, but they're a commitment, like, No, I'm not. I've just turned them off. No, no, no, no, that didn't work like that. Then it was just a classic computer says no moment. And so that annoyed me. So I went to see a broker, which I should have done way before that and got much better deal in half the time for Santander, I think. So. You know, inertia is always the main reason. For me, a bank is just a commodity, I just don't care about it. As long as it does what I need to do, it's fine. I don't have any issues with what they know about me. I just figured that's that's the way it is. But when it comes to investments and stuff like that, then I'm far more likely to shop around because then it comes down to charges and things like that. David Ralph 13:29 So let's take it into the reason why we've got you on here. Because if you've been over to Pete Matthew site over the last few years, and you can sort of track it back. And I like to do that being a Do you ever use wayback machine? Yes, Gary in it. It's scary. Yes. And I was I was teaching somebody the other day how to build a business. And he was saying, Yeah, but my website looks a bit crap. I say you think you're as good as crap ever look at this. And I was showing him the very first evidence of Join Up Dots. Now I like to go back and I was looking at yours and yours was as it any of them. Now you've had a new one bill. It's really sexy. And what I like about it, and this is why I want people to jump over to your site is there's a sensible hierarchy of information. And there's so much information in there. But it's easy to find. Was that difficult to get set up? Were you sort of looking at it thinking, Oh, my God, I've got so much here six years, seven years of material, how to be sensible for people. Pete Matthew 14:27 Yeah, nearly 20 years. Well, I did it I did an exercise about three years ago. So up until this last iteration, I've always done my website myself, I'm a bit of a nerd. I like to mess around with software and tools and things like that. And I just built it with WordPress picked a theme spent time tweaking it relaunched occasionally. But when I did that, three years ago, I went through every single piece of content, there's now over 750 posts on the website, went through every single one and re categorise them. And I re categorise them into one of four categories. I've now I've seen split them just into three, which are getting started building wealth and enjoying your money, really the main three life stages, financial life stages, if you like. So having done that work, believe me, my web designer, this time that goes at Jeremy digital, they were very grateful that I done that because it made life a lot easier for them to build what we call the Learning Centre. And so it's front and centre there at the top in the in the menu, you can either go straight to podcast, video or articles, but then you go straight, go straight into the Learning Centre, the search thing works like lightning, but you can easily go to whatever your life stages and there's some sort of initial places to start if you're in that live stage. So I kind of did the heartbreak three years ago, but I'm not continually building on it. But if those three main life stages are the core of what I do, people should be able to find what they need fairly quickly. David Ralph 15:49 Well, they do. And I think it's one of the nicest sites I've seen. And I'm not just saying that because you're here. But it's, it's friendly money. And certainly lot of the financial organisations out there, I would say it's boring money, I look at it, and I can't be bothered, just shoot me, you know, but I go over there. And it's like, it's like uncle P is smiling at me. He just seems friendly. There's a picture of him sitting in the betting shop. He's making the next on there, and everything he's happy in his world. Pete Matthew 16:23 Yeah, well, I've got to give credit to to Martin and Lindsey at Jeremy digital, they hope you don't mind me giving them some No, you go for it. They they are experts, I think in building sites with calls to action, where it's really clear what you would want a site visitor to do. And that's either to In my case, I either want them to help themselves, right. That's the whole point. I mean, for money to equip people to make decisions. I frequently say the most people don't need to see a financial advisor until they are in the run into retirement, everybody can benefit from seeing an advisor. But not you don't need to really, if it's about building wealth, there's just a few things you need to do consistently. But when you get to that transitional point into financial independence, there is a whole load of choices facing you there. And it's an unbelievably complex world, a professional advisor can help you there. So I wanted to give people the information they needed to be able to do it themselves, or to get in touch with me to work with my regulated financial planning practice, which as you kind of said earlier on is Jackson's wealth management. meaningful monies become this beast, it started very much as a hobby, a little bit of a gift to the world. I just love messing around with video cameras and editing software and stuff. And it's become an incredible marketing engine. Turns out I was doing something called content marketing week before that phrase was even coined it. And so it's been a real journey. I I feel supremely blessed and bemused by old, but really, it comes down to consistency. Just I mean, you wrote the book on this there. And you know, it's just doing it week after week, after week, day after day after day. And you know, the better. It's come in, both to me, professionally and personally. And financially, of course, but, you know, I get emails every day from people telling me how they've changed their own financial situation. And that's ultimately why I do it. David Ralph 18:11 Well, you will get an email from me because I'm going to say this to you. But I've never said this to you personally. And we talked quite a lot. But I actually, I'm very competitive against you, I look at you, and I look you in the charts. And I think, right, okay, I've got to get higher than him, okay, I use you as the benchmark of what can be done. Because what I love about you, and so many people come across to me, and they will hear me say this. And I say, David, David, you do a podcast? Should I do a podcast? And more often than not, I say, No, don't do a podcast, unless you've got a business. If you've got a business, Ben put a podcast on it. Because it's great way for keeping people on your website longer. Building your personal brand, building the loyalty. Now, where I struggled at the beginning was mine was a podcast. And so I had to kind of grow the audience and Ben growth percent of it so that it started to become a sort of money making machine. And it literally killed me. Now with yourself. You're juggling two things. You This is you but you've also you know, like Batman and Bruce Wayne, you got you got two identities? Which one is taking control? Which one is actually the more the one that you want to be known as? Is it Batman or Bruce Wayne? Pete Matthew 19:27 We're going to assign let's do, let's say Batman has meaning for money, right? Well, that's definitely you mean for money as well as partners to do I'm convinced to that. But I love my day job. I'm very fortunate that I am in business with my due to best mates in the world. So we have a blast working together. We challenge each other. And it's great. So I'm very aware how lucky I am from that school. And I love seeing clients, right, we've got clients that we look after three or four generations of a family. And we Jackson's been around since 1974. So you know, we've got very long relationships, I don't want to just say, you know, Thanks for the memories and go off into the sunset and do me for money, permanently full time. So I am working to get Jackson's to the place where in the not too distant future. I am literally just seeing clients for maybe a day and a half a week and the rest of my time is spot on to meaningful money. Now I am Fridays where we're talking right now we're talking on Friday is meaningful money day for me. So I shut the door, turn the phone off, don't answer Jackson's emails, the staff Don't disturb me all sorts shoot them. And I just record I write, create stuff. And it's been a godsend. And actually, it's my colleague chairs, my co director who became aware that I my focus wasn't really on point, I was neither here nor there. Yeah, I'd be so distracted with me for money stuff while I needed and getting behind on Jackson stuff and vice versa. So he said a lot for God's sake, just do a day a week a demarcate the lines. So my job now is to try and, you know, make the balance between the two a little bit more balance. So this three days Jackson's to dating for money, and then maybe the reverse. So David Ralph 21:00 how do you come up with your your content, because we've Join Up Dots quite? It sounds like I'm making it up as I go along. And quite frankly, I do. I wrote up here, I have one line of an idea. And I turn on the microphone, I start talking and he just comes out to me. And then 30 minutes later I edit it and he's done boom on there. But I still had that. What should I talk about? What should I talk about today, you know, you are actually having to research and make it sensible, because you know, it's not just being flippant and throw away and hope inspiring and motivating your match. You know, you're an adult Pete Matthew, as I say, I'm poopy, you gotta trust uncle Pete Matthew, Pete Matthew 21:40 I got to be careful as well, because I'm in a regulated world. So I could potentially get in trouble. If I say the wrong thing. Now, it's not difficult to stay the right side of those lines, if you know where the lines are. But I do have to be careful. And I'm in all of the fact that you can have basically a one line idea and then achieve what you achieve consistent suddenly, every time you record because I script mine is just the way I think. And it's important, I think, for people to understand that either works, you know, so I do zero editing, essentially, because I've pre scripted. I read my podcasts, but I've taught myself to do so in a way that it didn't sound like it. And, you know, that's just the way I construct my thoughts. It helps me to be concise. But I mean, you asked, How do you think of stuff to talk about? Or how do you sort of flesh it out? One of the benefits of maintaining my day to day Client Access? You know, the work that I do one on one with clients is that they're asking me questions all the time, and I'm forever writing them down. Right? Okay, I can answer that on the podcast that will be added into the next season. And for me, shifting to a seasons format has been transformational actually. So I'm in between, I've just finished season 14, I'm doing a few weeks of in between episodes now. And I'm starting to plan and write season 15. And that's worked really well. But it means that right, I'm going to deal with this subject at length over maybe nine or 10 weeks even. And sit down and write it and I mean, I can really, you know, get into some detail. And the audience just loving it the least that's what they're telling me. So it's working well for me, you just got to find out what works for you. And you? David Ralph 23:11 Well, it does. And you know, I scroll up and down your ratings and reviews on iTunes. And if no one's listened to the meaningful money podcast, jump over there and leave him a rating and review not that he needs them. He's got 16 in the United Kingdom. But this is one of the ones that I I'm going to reference and I hope you don't mind me referencing this bear in mind that you were saying, you've got to be careful what you say. And this was, it said offensive content of a really meaningful money offensive. And I found a recent episode genuinely offensive when Pete Matthew stated he wanted to take a baseball bat. And Steve some heads in after referring to some financial advisors as alpha males and dicks. Mr. Pete Matthew, is it did you do look back on that episode and go actually that was me being my natural self and you'd stepped over? Or do you look at that and go No, actually, I mean that and you can't please everyone all the time. I was mad, Pete Matthew 24:10 and not crazy mad. But I was really hacked off. And two colleagues of mine, I wasn't able to go this particular conference, but it was right in the middle of probably the biggest scandal in my world for a very long time were some lifelong steel workers in October and South Wales had basically been appallingly advised. And robbed of a lifetime pension savings. Essentially, they don't they were advised to transfer out of the perfectly good final salary scheme, move into personal pensions with massive numbers, in some cases, seven figure funds, which sounds great. But with horrendous fees being taken by the advisors, terrible commissions, just I mean, just appalling. And I could not believe that in 2017, that could still happen. You know, that's the sort of stuff that happened in the end, right in the shiny suited white, light coloured shoe wearing advisors world were a lot more professional. Now the regu