- Hey guys, I am with Chelsea
from The Financial Diet. If you don't know The Financial Diet you have to check out
their You Tube channel. It's actually my favourite
channel at the moment. It's one of those ones that you see there's an upload and
before you even do anything it's the first one I click on. - That's the nicest thing
I've ever heard, thank you. Got a true fan here. This is extremely exciting. - Tell us a bit about what
you do on The Financial Diet. - The Financial Diet
is, as Hannah mentioned, a You Tube channel, we also have a website where we're just young women
mostly talking about money. We are not financial advisors so we definitely come from
it from the perspective that probably you guys would, which is we don't feel
that we understand money as well as we'd like
to and we just want to get better and ask the questions and talk about the things that
help us get better with money. And, I have to say for a financial channel I feel like it's pretty watchable because of a lot of finance
content is very boring and I think ours is not. - I would agree. Speaking of the fact that Chelsea is not a financial advisor and
obviously neither am I, we're going to answer your money questions and try and give you some advice. But more just generally I think breaking down the taboos
of talking about money because it's something I love
talking about in real life. - Me too. - I asked for questions
on Twitter and Instagram. Just going to see what comes up. Jessica Sammler asks how should I balance risk and growth at
various stages of my life? - I assume she means financial and not driving a car down a
highway with your lights off. - Maybe don't do that
any stage in your life. - As far as risk when you're young, there are a lot of
people who will say that being young is a time to
take a lot of financial risk. I personally think it's
more about personality type and what is important to you. I think that there are
many many people for whom the idea of risk is very
attractive when their young but I think they don't
necessarily understand what that implies. For example, on The
Financial Diet one of the first things that we
encourage people to do is to get a retirement account, like a 401K or an IRA. - I still haven't yet. It's like next on my list. - Yeah, well it should be
the first on your list. Retirement accounts are
one of the least risky things you can do in terms
of a financial investment. Which a lot of people
feel like it's boring and why should I care and
I'm never going to be old, I'm going to be 28 years old forever but you won't and so these risky things that you might be attracted
to are probably not what you want to be
doing in the long term. - Also, not in terms of
financial risk taking but career stuff. When you are young that
maybe is more of the time to take those risks potentially if you don't have a lot
of other responsibilities. When I graduated from UNI I was like, "Well, I have no mortgage, "I've got no kids, I luckily have parents "who will still support
me if I need them," so I was like, "I'm
going to move to London "and try and be a You Tuber." - Clearly you're not going
to do that when you're older. But I do think I hate when
people talk in terms of living like you're going to die tomorrow because you're most likely
not going to die tomorrow and you will have to live with
every choice that you made. But I'm just, I think you can
tell from this conversation, I'm just not a risk taker. - She asked for five but
let's just go with one, finance, money, work advice you'd wish you'd heard earlier. Retirement fund. - Retirement fund. I think the number one thing is just automate everything you don't like doing. For me savings is a big one, make sure that that money is automatically deducted when a check hits because it is nigh impossible to see that money go into your account, experience it emotionally and then have to go into your account take that money away from yourself and be like, "Well I'm not going to do
anything fun with this, "it goes into the sad
account I can't touch." - When I was still
registered as self employed anytime I would get a paycheck, because if you're self employed you're not already paying tax you
have to pay if after, so I'd get a paycheck and
then I would do the math and I'd then have to actively like, "20% of that goodbye,"
you are for me to pay tax and then I've had friends of mine who just didn't do that and then
they hit by this tax bill and they thought all of
that money was theirs. - I think the biggest
thing that you have to do, whether it's saving
money or paying back debt or whatever it is you just have to learn to mentally not even
acknowledge that money. - Like, it's not mine, it's not my money. - Never think of it. Even when you're doing how much I earn. Only say the number after
you've taken that out because even just thinking
of it in terms of like, "I should have this much money," will make you feel devastated when you can't spend it on things
that you want to buy. Savings is all you. No one's going to make you save. - Someone just said I just need to stop spending money on food. - Same, I've got no answer.
- How do you do that? - In New York in
particular I've never been in a city before in my life where the idea of going out and spending money on food and drink is so normalised and everyone does it. To put it in perspective, if you go a bar in New York and martinis $11 your like, "This is
a banging happy hour." This is such a good price which
is just utterly psychotic. - But to stop spending money on food I think the biggest
piece of advice is just cook at home if you can, that saves so much money. - We cover that a tonne on TFD. I've made us more
irresponsible than we are. I would say a solid 20%
of what we talk about on the site is just how to
cook and be in your home much more intelligently because that saves a huge amount of money. - Soulcatch asks what's
the better investment, stocks, bonds, 401K, sugar daddy, crypto
currency, lottery ticket? The 401K is retirement. - 401K is one kind of
retirement account, wow. - I would say definitely
not lottery ticket. - It's definitely not lottery tickets. Lottery's are a tax on
the poor almost literally and should never ever be participated in. - It's gambling. - It's gambling, and
not even fun gambling. When you actually go to Las Vegas you get free drinks the whole
time you're at the table, you can just hang out all night, have some wings, play
cards all night, it's fun. - Meet interesting people. - And some ones you wouldn't want to meet. Lottery is definitely at the bottom. Crypto currency, we've done
several videos on crypto and every time we just get screamed at. People who are into crypto, you could literally find out that holding crypto currency causes cancer and they would still be
so so into the concept. Too volatile though, not
for the average person, not something people should consider. - Do they mean a literal sugar daddy or is sugar daddy a thing? - Dating a wealthy older man usually. - Or woman, sugar mama. - I can't say that's a bad investment but then on the other side he has such a power dynamic over her. - I feel like in society
we judge a lot of people, or we judge women who will date someone who has a lot of money. But she's just looking
out for herself, maybe. - Listen my actual
opinion on all that stuff is that all of life is a power exchange and an exchange of
someone giving something they have for something they want and I personally I don't feel
that it isn't in any, we are in any place to judge the consensual relationships that people form. So if you're in a sugar daddy relationship and every party is happy is with it and getting what they want, have at it. Oh and to answer the actual ones, I think a lot of people don't understand what retirement accounts actually are. Basically retirement
accounts are investments. They're just a basket
of different investments that move really slow with the market and they're sure and steady. Retirement accounts have the added benefit of being pre-tax. The government is essentially subsidising these investments so that people can build their retirement. You don't need to think of it as different from stocks and bonds, those are included in retirement accounts. I think when people think
of stocks and bonds, they're thinking of
buying individual stocks, like thinking, "Wow Google
is doing really well lately, "I'm going to get some Google." But that is actually one of the most risky ways to invest and it's
not necessary to investing. There are other things like mutual funds, ETF's, index funds, etc., that allow you to invest in a more diversified and safe way. So the safest of all of those investments would be the retirement account and I just want people to remember always that when you hear the word investment that does not necessarily mean picking individual stocks. - What are the best ways for millennials, or just anyone I guess, to save money and be eco-friendly? - Definitely number one is
working down your waste. It's not just the trash
that you throw away it's also lights that are
on in rooms your not in, heating and cooling that's excessive. Everything that is a
nice to have but not a need to have, working
on cutting that back. Even like the amount of
groceries that you buy. I personally end up throwing
away a lot of groceries. - And then you're saving money as well. - Yeah, then you're
saving a tonne a money. - I'm a student and afraid
of being self employed. In your opinion what's the most important trait for working for yourself. I feel like the most important
trait is self motivation. No one else is holding you accountable for getting the work done. - I would say opportunist too because if you're self employed you essentially have to become a sales person and as well as your own manager. I'm not going to say that you need a slippery relationship with ethics but you at least need to be out for yourself at all costs. One perfect example is that free lancers have a very very difficult
time getting paid a lot of the time and paid on time. You have to be okay with
really going after people and many times I've lied to the accounting department of the place and I was like, "I was referred
to you by this person." I wasn't, I Googled the email because I wasn't getting anyone who could respond to me about when
my check was coming in. I think just knowing that
you have to be a true advocate for yourself and not fearing that real stand up attitude is huge. - That is one of the
biggest problems I've seen with a lot of my friends. On the one hand wanting
to go full bull doze, on the other hand not wanting to ruin that relationship with that client. But I'm like if they're
constantly giving you late payments do you
want to work with them? - Do you even want it, yeah. - But then it's a case of you don't have anything else coming in right now so actually you need that. - Basically when you're free lancing you have to make the case for yourself with every new person. And I think you have to
get used to the idea, with projects, biting off
more than you can chew. Accepting to do things
even if you don't know that you can deliver them on time and then forcing yourself to have to do it. It's not like a regular nine to five job where your tasks are
super well defined and the same thing every time. When I sold my first book
I agreed to a timeline that I was 90% sure I couldn't keep but I was like, "I'm
getting this contract," and then I forced myself to do it. So, opportunism is would say. - How did you make the
transition from working a nine to five to being
fully self employed? You work for yourself
but you own a company so you have given yourself a nine to five. - But it wasn't always that way. When we first stared TFD
my partner Lauren and I, who co-founded it, we started part time. We had full time jobs. We were just doing nights and weekends for the first six months and then when we went full time it was just the two of us for the first little while there and I was full time free lance before several years prior so I've definitely done it and I would just say, as I just mentioned, making the transition a very slow one. You have to save up the money necessary, you have to make sure you have enough of a cushion financially when you're, like you have enough clients for example, or you have enough work waiting for you. Even three months or so
of nights and weekends on this project is worth it. Quit your job and follow your dreams is just such bad advice. - You need that foundation. - You should dissolve into the new job. - I'm curious, what's it
like the other way around. Then going free lance to? - Full time job?
- Yeah. - I just work in a rather atomized way. Even when I was at the
office at my old job I had my headphones on all day and I'm very much in my little zone and I just feel like that is
also one of the qualities that if you want to go free lance that's a good indicator. Do you like being alone? A lot of people think that they do but when you're like year
two into free lancing, you're like, "I haven't
worn real clothes is days." - I haven't spoken to a real person. - Spoken to a person and you
have to be okay with that and I genuinely am so even when I was at a nine to five I almost acted as if I were free lance. - We'll do one more question. Did you have a lot of side hustles while you were building your brand slash how many sources of revenue did you have? Also, if you had a day job besides You Tube slash authoring at one point how did you schedule time
for the You Tube side? See you were saying that you did TFD on evenings and weekends, I was doing You Tube on the side of doing a degree. Even though I did history so it's six hours of contact time. I was in the library ten to six everyday. - Not me. - So then I would do You Tube in the evenings and weekends
'cause that was my hobby, that's how I scheduled it which is like some of how you started. - When I first got into
writing as a career path which was back in 2011 I
had four jobs at the time. I was an au pair which is like a nanny, I was a tutor and I tutored
two different things, it was paying a lot more than writing was. I was also writing articles free lance and then I would pick up odd jobs as well on the internet. People were like I need
someone to help me move and stuff like that. Honestly a bit of a miracle
I didn't get murdered when I was doing this. - I'm really tempted to sign up to to Task Rabbit and just be like, "Pay me to build your
Ikea furniture for you." - You like doing that? - I love doing that.
- Not me. I'll hire you. You can come and assemble tonnes of stuff. - I love it. For me after UNI I got a job in catering when I moved to London
whilst trying to do You Tube and then I got a part time job working for a youth charity making
You Tube videos for that and that was two days a week. So it was great because it was like what I was doing as my part time job really fed into what I was trying to do and then it got to a point where I dissolved into it. - Similarly I would do a
lot of copy writing jobs. Fun fact, they pay 5 to 10 times as much as regular articles and
granted they're often just mind numbingly boring. You have to write 2000
words about an AC unit but money is money buddy. I would write for prestigious magazines that would pay literally
zero dollars an article and I would write for Frigidaire and get my whole rent paid that month. - Corporations are where the money is at. Not an art, don't be an artist. - You know a lot of people
are really snotty about that, about like it's not art. I'm like, "Fine, I can't eat art, buddy." - Well thank you so much
for being on my channel. - Thank you for having me. - Thanks for sending in your questions. I love talking about this stuff so let me know guys if you want more money, career-y kind of content. Thanks for watching please give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it. I've also done a video over on
The Financial Diet's channel so you can go and check that out. - Come see her. - So don't forget to
subscribe and hit that notification button and I'll see you soon. Bye!
- Bye.
