Wet Wipes And Wine
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Wet Wipes And Wine
Knowing Your Money and Financing Those Family Goals With Claire Sweet
When Claire Sweet, a financial whiz and friend, turned her life from single motherhood to one of financial stability among her alpacas. This episode is packed with Claire's wisdom as we delve into the importance of financial planning and the freedom it brings to parents and families. If you've ever felt like a passenger in your own financial journey, our heart-to-heart on shifting to a 'co-driver' role in relationships, embracing transparency, and advocating for personal financial independence will resonate with you.
Embarking on parenthood introduces a kaleidoscope of choices, and in this heart-to-heart, I share the impact of diverging from my upbringing to embrace both the structure and spontaneity in raising my children. We discuss the layered decisions of parenting styles, from routines to boarding school choices, reflecting on how these shape our children's independence and our familial bonds. For parents juggling career and family or pondering the significant moments in their children's upbringing, our conversation provides a heartfelt look into making these critical choices with financial and personal awareness.
As a parent, I know the importance of setting an example in financial responsibility, and Claire and I provide tangible strategies for teaching children the value of money through real-life scenarios. From budgeting for video games to grocery shopping, we share how we're guiding our kids to differentiate between needs and wants and the significance of saving for the future. For those seeking to empower their children with financial literacy or looking to connect further with Claire's expertise, this episode is an invaluable resource for nurturing financially savvy future generations.
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10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Quick, pass me the wipes. Hi and welcome to Wet Wipes and Wine, the podcast for parents who maybe want to live life a little bit differently from the norm. Maybe you want to travel more as a family or just explore new possibilities. The norm Maybe you want to travel more as a family or just explore new possibilities. Maybe you have family dreams you want to achieve, or maybe you just want to be surrounded by people who remind you that when life throws a load of parenting crap at you, that wet wipes or wine is usually the answer. I'm your host, nikki Collinson-Phoenix, and each week I'll be bringing you real life stories from my own parenting journey. I'll also be welcoming guests to share theirs, as well as introducing you to new ideas, thoughts, tips and tricks from my little black book of awesome people.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Wet Wipes and Wine Too early for wine today's episode is sponsored by the amazon number one best-selling book, wanderlust calling the ultimate guide to world schooling and full-time family travel, available in paperback and on the kindle. You can grab your copy at wwwlifeinacancom.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone and welcome to today's episode of Wet Wipes and Wine. I'm absolutely thrilled to have you here and I'm also thrilled to have a very, very good friend of mine and whole long story, but she is a fellow Wister the lovely Claire Sweet. Hello, my lovely Claire. How are you today?
Speaker 3:I am all right, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yes, lovely to chat to you again is that raindrops I'm seeing, or is that bubbles behind you?
Speaker 3:it is raindrops, but it's one of these fake backgrounds. You know when you're sat on your phone and those things pop up. It was one of those. I ended up buying a Christmas one that had a pink Christmas tree and loads of sparkles on, and it was one of these things that if you bought three, you got free postage or something. So, yeah, now I've got the. This is the springtime one, but, to be fair, the weather outside has been not far off this. We've got a bit of sunshine at the moment, but, yeah, it's been torrential last week or so here Horrendous.
Speaker 1:It's been awful, and I'm vouching for that because, as I'm recording this, I've been recording so many episodes from bulgaria and I'm recording this from the uk, from the biblical reigns of the uk, of which I'm really not appreciating. But anyway, let me tell you about our gorgeous claire. So she is a financial guru she has, she is literally. She's not here as my friend or as somebody that's extremely knowledgeable. She's also here as the person who helped me personally rejig my financial situation a few years ago, which, if I hadn't been able to rejig that, we would not have been living the life that we're leading.
Speaker 1:It would have. It would have literally ground us to a halt at the first hurdle. So claire is in as somebody that I literally can recommend from a financial perspective. As well as being a good friend of mine, she's also a mum of two, and one of the really cool things is she lives on this really beautiful place. She loves gin and she's got alpacas. She's like the financial lady with alpacas, and so I did wonder whether we were going to see an alpaca walk along the window behind you, but now I realise it's a beautiful spring scene.
Speaker 3:That's not going to happen. How many alpacas you got now? Six, we've got eight alpacas. And the great thing is, from where I sit in my office, we've got a cabin in the garden. If I look over my laptop that way, actually, I can see them sat there sort of sunbathing at the moment, which is great. So I don't ever get that feel cooped up in the office feeling. It's really nice. But having a cabin in the garden the downside does mean that when it is tipping down with rain you sit here with your legs crossed before nipping into the loo because you don't want to get soaked on your trip back into the house.
Speaker 1:But yeah, eight alpacas what do alpacas think of the rain? Because they were like furry coats.
Speaker 3:They don't seem to mind it too much. It's daft because we've got a field shelter for them to go in which is like a barn with open sides that they can go in 24-7. And yet sometimes they will just literally sit out in the rain. Other times the rain will come down and they'll all leg it towards the shelter, but there's no rhyme or reason. But there's sort of sunbathing at the moment. It's reasonably sunny and I think they're looking forward to a bit of respite from the rain yeah, I bet, I bet.
Speaker 1:So this lady's also won loads of awards and she is just amazing.
Speaker 1:So, away from here, go and check her out and I will give you some links at the end. But the reason why I wanted her to come on is one because she's amazing, but two is because there's something really important with Claire's own personal story that I think is an important one for anyone to hear, regardless of our situation, but also for it to just resonate, and there may well be that somebody listening to this, wherever you are in the world, needs to hear this today. And this is all about being in control of your own finances. And so, claire, do you mind, before we kind of get to that, can you give us your own story, because you're a mum of two, but there was a time when you were a single mum and there was there's a whole journey and story that had financial implications, that kind of was surrounded that. Can you tell us a little bit about, kind of where we're going with this today? Because we talked about what we thought would be really important. What's your story?
Speaker 3:So the key thing is that when I went off to university age 18, I met a guy there who was a few years older than me and I moved in with him quite quickly as a sort of a couple relationship, and it was my first serious grown-up relationship, if you like. And actually it was quite a controlling relationship, which I didn't really realize at the time, because I just thought this is what grown-up relationships are like it's not all hearts and flowers and holding hands in the playground and stuff and I just sort of accepted it. And it was a relationship I was in for about three years and I should have left sooner than I did. And part of the reason I didn't was that financially I couldn't afford to leave. And one of the things that's changed over the last few years is now that financial abuse as such is recognized for what it is, which is where one person particularly is in control of the finances and the spending, which means that the other person isn't able to have the freedom that they want because they just can't afford to.
Speaker 3:And at the point where I decided that enough was enough, I had a tenancy that was in my name. If he'd moved out, I couldn't afford to pay it. I couldn't move out because it was in my name and I just didn't have the knowledge to know what I was doing. Now, when I came out of university, I got my own place to live, which was brilliant, and I had a job and a way of paying for it, and I sort of took that as my first step of thinking. I need to understand more about money, I need to know how it works and what my choices are, and I'm not going to let someone else be responsible for that Again. I'm going to have a handle on it and be able to make my own choices. And further down the line, that came in useful when I ended up getting divorced from my first husband, because I was in a position where I was then a single person with a small child looking after my money and I needed to know what I was doing.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, everything sort of went from there really, so back then at the time, like, obviously, when people are being financially controlled, it is that feeling of being trapped, isn't it of like it is, I can't I mean, I've been very fortunate to not be, not have found myself in a financial, financially controlled relationship. But when there are kids in the mix as well, as you know, because obviously most of our audience are our parents when you are in that situation where you're feeling that you are being financially controlled you have got these children it's just, I mean, it can affect you on so many levels, isn't it? It's emotionally, physically, quality of life, just everything is just suffocatingly trapping for you as an individual, isn't it? I just it kind of strips you of every facet of you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think the thing about it was that because I'd gone off to university, I didn't know a lot about money. I'd had a Saturday job before I went and this was back in the day where you got sort of a grant and a student loan when you went off to university and you pay for your accommodation, you paid for your food, bought some books, but you didn't really have to think about a lot. But the fact I was effectively running a house at 18, 19 years old meant that, you know, I did end up with gas bills to pay and council tax and all of the things that we now do as adults. It was sort of fostered on me much earlier to deal with that. But then it becomes more overwhelming because you then realize you've got all these things to manage and if you've only got one income to do it on, it becomes that much more difficult. Now. I mean, when I was married to my first husband I was the main wage earner. I earned probably about twice what he did at the time, which meant that planning for maternity leave was tricky. We had to save up some money so I could take off the time I wanted to do, and there was a lot of planning and organizing that went into that.
Speaker 3:But I think what it really taught me and one of the things I always speak to my clients about is, even in the happiest relationships, both people should have an awareness of how much money comes into the household and what money gets spent on.
Speaker 3:So whether that is being spent on bills and costs or whether that is being spent on things, like you know, discretionary spending so days out and trips and that type of thing I think it's really important that both people are aware of what that money looks like. Because when I've seen things go wrong with clients over the years and you know I've been doing this professionally wrong with clients over the years, and I've been doing this professionally now for just over 15 years actually the biggest thing that we find to be a problem is that somebody had no idea it was happening. So people come to me and they'll say I'm thinking about splitting up with my partner, but I didn't know we had all this debt, or I didn't know how big the mortgage was, or I don't know how I will pay bills and costs, and actually that can make it really difficult when you're trying to make that type of decision.
Speaker 1:What do you think for somebody you know, because obviously you have an awareness now that that was going on. And I want to talk obviously about positive steps in a minute. Positive steps we can do, but I want to obviously, before we get to positive steps, I want to sort of just touch on recognising whether you are in this situation, because sometimes you can be in a situation that's not healthy, but not necessarily recognise it yet or not necessarily realise it yet. What would you say are some of the signs for somebody to look out for the thing? Actually, am I in a financially controlling relationship? What? What are some of the things that you can remember?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean, often it starts with or it's something that feels like you're being taken care of. So it's a bit like now people talk about sort of love bombing in controlling relationships and that type of thing. But it's when you know somebody's saying to you oh you know, don't worry about that, I'll sort out the bills. Or, yeah, you don't need to worry about that, you've got other things, let me take that off your plate. Or you know, especially, you're busy enough with the kids so I'll pay the bills and everything. You know, if you earn some money, that's great, but actually I can cover the costs. You know, concentrate on being a parent, being a wife or whatever. And I think often it starts from a place of oh, I'm so glad I don't have to worry about that, my other half does all of that stuff. And people will sometimes say to me you know, oh, I don't know much about my money, my other half does all that.
Speaker 1:And you know, I hear that a lot from people. They do say I don't get involved in that and as somebody that's quite a driven female, that's always surprised me how many people actually you can look at it in a thing of oh well, that's lovely, I'm being taken care of. But there is another side to it that says but when things maybe do go a little bit wrong, you are in a slightly more challenging situation then because you don't know any of the financial situation.
Speaker 3:I mean, I had this situation a couple of years ago with a client that I'd always worked with. I dealt with his pensions and investments and things and then unexpectedly he died during COVID it wasn't COVID, it just happened at that time that he did and his widow you know she's a lady who is now in her early 70s hasn't really worked, always been at home with the children. He paid the bills, he did all the stuff and, yeah, financially she's protected because of the work that we did. But she didn't know about how to log on to internet banking. She didn't know how to arrange to pay bills online or anything like that, because he'd always done it and there was nothing malicious in it. It was a very loving, supportive relationship and she's an amazing client and over the last couple of years she's come on leaps and bounds. But you know, she just didn't know how to do it because he did all that stuff and she didn't need to.
Speaker 3:So you know, my biggest tip is about being aware of the money that comes in and out of your household and you know it doesn't matter if one person takes the reins on it. You know, in my house, if you spoke to my husband, he wouldn't really have an idea because I do all of it, which is really funny because effectively, this is almost like the complete opposite of what I said. You know he doesn't really have a handle on our financial stuff, but then he doesn't need to because I do it. He's happy that I do, but equally, there's not the secrecy there. So if he wanted to come and have a look at what's going on with bills and what we're paying, it's there.
Speaker 3:You know, I think the biggest red flag to people really is if you've got a partner who is in control of the money, that then won't let you have the access to it, or you don't have a joint account, or you're, you know, getting the feelings that they're squirreling money away behind the scenes and that doesn't leave you anything. They're squirreling money away behind the scenes and that doesn't leave you anything, you know. I think everybody should have some money in their own name which is theirs, to spend as they want. Even in a family where bills might be quite tight, even if it's just £20 a month that you each have in an account, you can spend on what you want. You should have some money of your own. But I think it's the conversation to have about money and it's quite hard for a lot of people. They don't like talking about money.
Speaker 1:I heard a phrase today. I met with a friend of mine and we were just talking about relationships and things like that and she used a phrase that I'd not heard before but I found it like I was like my God, that's an amazing phrase and it's just kind of come in and thought it's just when you talked about, when you feel like you're part of the relationship but someone's taking you know, doing all the management and stuff, and she said she called it being a passenger, being a passenger in the relationship, as opposed to being a co-driver. You're a passenger and I was like that's a really interesting analogy. She wasn't talking about mine, we were just talking in general, but the whole concept of being a passenger in a relationship was really interesting.
Speaker 3:But it's really easy done especially for women, because when I was growing up, most people's dads went to work and mums stayed home and sometimes if mums did work, it was a bit of part-time work around the kids. But the expectation, I think back in sort of the 70s and 80s, was still that husbands supported their families. In fact, there was quite a lot of negativity in households towards women who were working, because it was almost seen like he wasn't doing his job and looking after the family. Now, obviously, life has moved on on. We have lots of different family dynamics now, but I think that it's sort of now can sometimes go the other way, where the expectation is that women are often looking after a family, looking after a home and holding down a job, and in that time I can see why people could end up being a passenger in a relationship, because actually you're juggling so many balls that when someone says do you know what? Let me take this off your plate, I'll deal with that.
Speaker 3:It's easy to do. It's like someone saying that they will clean your house or do your grocery shopping. If someone says, right, give me the money and I'll go to the shop for you If you're busy, it's something that I can understand why it can happen, and often these things don't happen straight away. Or they do happen, but it's bit by bit and you don't notice it. So I was speaking to somebody not that long ago who's in a marriage, quite happy, and all the rest of it. She says look, when we go out, I pay for my account, but if my husband takes the kids out, he pays out the joint account. And I'm like so effectively you're paying for three quarters then, because either you both pay out the joint account when you go out or if you take the kids out, you pay for your account. If he takes the kids out, he pays from his account, because otherwise you're paying a lot more than he is.
Speaker 1:let me ask you, claire, what's your thought, just just your. I know there's no right or wrong, I'm sure people have their own things, but I would love to know what's your opinion on joint accounts? I've never had one, can't even bear the thought of a joint account, but I know I've got friends and family and perhaps who swear. You know they're like well, of course we have a joint account. I've never had one, never.
Speaker 3:Well, it depends on the circumstances, obviously. I think as a household you should regard the bulk of the money as joint money, whether you physically put that in separate accounts or whether one of you pays the bills and the other one pays for the fun stuff, or however you do, it is up to you. Joint account. If you're a family that had a joint account, I would expect you to each have your own account with a small amount of money in each month. Now, some people they get paid into their own bank accounts and then they both put money into a joint account for bills and costs. And if one earns more than the other, it might be that someone puts more money into the account than somebody else.
Speaker 3:But I think if you're running this journey together and you are, you know, co-pilots and you've got the same goals. It really doesn't matter if we go out for a meal, if he pays or if I pay. It's all out of one pot of money. You know, ultimately, if we end up in a situation where there's too much in one account and not enough another account, we can move the money from one account to the other. You know, interestingly, I don't have a joint account. Yeah, I have had a joint account, but I haven't had a joint account for many, many years. But equally, I regard probably both accounts as our accounts. It's just one is in my name and one is in his name.
Speaker 1:I think I think that's how we look at it, that's very much how we look at it that you know collectively, it's all is our family money. I just don't have a joint account. So, finances aside, let's talk about your parenting journey. So what? Before you were a parent, did you have a particular expectation of what life as a parent would be like, and has it been like that? Or was it polar opposite what you thought so like? I obviously thought my children were going to fit us, particularly learning. My first child was clearly going to just fit the profile of all the books and manuals I read, and then very much didn't fit any of them, and so the books and preparation I did went out the window about five minutes after she was born. What about you?
Speaker 3:Well, I always planned back in the day when I was a teenager or so, I always imagined I would get get married, have four kids and I would stay at home and live on a farm and make bread and do things a bit sort of like the Larkins and stuff in Darling Buds and May I don't know if you remember watching that that was sort of what I imagined. Now I've sort of ended up with the house and the animals, but, yeah, not quite, not quite the family, I don't know. I suppose when I wanted to have children, you know, I it was that they were both sort of quite strategically planned. Effectively I wanted to be able to bring them up differently than I was brought up, because I was brought up in quite a rigid household and there were a lot of things I thought actually I want to do differently with my children. But I didn't really have that many preconceived ideas. I think the nearest thing was that at the time when I had my daughter, I was working full-time as a pharmacist. So I used to be a pharmacist for Boots before I retrained to become a financial advisor and I was all into all of the latest thinking and all of the modern parenting and all of these things.
Speaker 3:And I remember being bought this book that had really good reviews, which was the Contented Baby Book by Gina Ford, and I remember reading this book and thinking this is all very old fashioned, it's not going to do any of this stuff and put the book to one side. And then when I'd been at home with my daughter for four days and had literally no sleep at all and felt incredibly rough and just had no idea what I was doing, I decided I was going to follow the book and I was going to put her in a routine. And we never looked back and it really worked for me because I was able to have her going to bed at a regular time, I was able to manage sort of feeding and sleeping and stuff and even all the way through to weaning and that type of thing, and it's quite a traditional upbringing, very routine focus. But it worked for me because I like that structure and I like the fact I have my sleep and I'd always planned, you know, to have a couple of kids two or three years apart and then the relationship broke down and I ended up as a single parent.
Speaker 3:So so, in effect, you know, I then had time for, you know, back in the dating scene, meeting somebody else, getting married, moving on. So I ended up with eight years between my children, so effectively it's like having two only children. They don't want to do anything together. It's a bit different now. My daughter's off at university and so coming home is a bit of a novelty, and she will do things with her brother, but prior to that, you know, a 16 year old does not want to do anything with their eight year old brother.
Speaker 1:It's not cool at all. I was in reverse. There's eight years between me and my brother. He's eight years older and I, if you. Yes, he's my brother. But when I look back at my childhood, I was an only child because he was. He was gone. You know, even from like, say like. When I look back at my childhood, I was an only child because he was gone, even from say, when I was four. That was probably the earliest I could remember he was already gone and out with his mates by 16, he'd moved out with a group of lads into a big house share and then he was gone. I genuinely really have very little recollection of him being being around. So I can totally resonate with that, because that was me, I was your son.
Speaker 3:I mean that's part of the reason that. I mean we made the decision for his schooling that we did. So he goes to a boarding school which is only 20 minutes down the road from where we live. It's a military school. He's been army mad since he could like walk. You know we never had toy guns or knives or whatever, but he's the one that would make a rifle out of. You know loo roll tubes and sellotape and you know create stuff or lego and be hiding around the gardens shooting the bad guys and and all of that. And he absolutely loves it and it works really well for us because he has now a group of friends and peers and he gets the siblings effectively that he hasn't got at home, which is really really great. And we also get some longer school holidays, which is quite nice, so we can go away not quite in the school holiday time and it's a little bit cheaper when we do go away, but that obviously offset against the fact that we're paying for school. So we've got less money to spend on holidays anyway.
Speaker 1:Does he come home at the weekends? I was going to ask you about how that was working out. Does it when? When does he pop back? Being 20 minutes away, is it tempting for him to pop back or actually is he loving it so much he's like I know you're just down the road, but I don't need to come back yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it's a full boarding school so there aren't any pupils that are daytime only, so typically it's half terms. So he goes and he's gone for five or six weeks at a time. There is often an XCAP weekend halfway through where they can come home. He tends not to.
Speaker 3:I mean the next one that's coming up, we're going to go meet him, take him out for lunch on the Saturday, but he doesn't actually want to come home because that evening, because there aren't a whole load of like school activities they'll have pizza nights and movies and they'll be playing on the xbox and getting takeaways and actually he doesn't want to come home and sit and watch junk on the telly with us. He wants to stay there and hang around with his friends. So yeah, I mean in year seven he came home a couple of them, but this year he's been. I don't mind coming home for lunch, but I don't want to come home for the weekend. I'd rather be here and I thought, okay, fair enough, it's just. You know, I think as teenagers they want to do less with us anyway was it?
Speaker 1:is it strange having because Ian went to boarding school in South Africa? He went to boarding school but he did, he, he could come home at the weekends, but actually he did the same thing. He was like I never went home at the weekends. He said there was quite a lot of kids that went home at the weekends and I would go to their houses for the weekend. He said you know so, but is is it strange having a child at boarding school? Because obviously my life now is that my kids are literally limpeted to me all the time like they don't even they, you know, even even schooling is in my peripheral vision now. Yeah, so we're like polar extremes now, but is it, was it strange to adapt? I know, ultimately his happiness is the most important in all of this, but was it a weird thing at the beginning?
Speaker 3:it was in a way, but it wasn't actually as bad as I think it could have been. I think the thing is because I'm not with his dad, so my current husband is actually my third husband and I'm not with Andrew's dad anymore either. He used to spend quite a lot of time at his dad's anyway, so we were pretty much 50-50 on a lot of the care. So it meant that there were periods of time where for a week or 10 days I didn't see him anyway, and this obviously when he was much smaller. It wasn't like he had a mobile phone so he would go and then come back and because his dad just lived up the road he would do all the school runs and drop off. So it wasn't just holidays. So sometimes he might be gone for two weeks and then back for a few days and then he would be off for another bit and back again. And I think I worked out one year, you know he'd been around there literally half the year and it's only like four miles up the road, it's not like miles away.
Speaker 3:So in some ways I was used to not and I think because I ended up going back to work when my daughter was quite small and I always worked when Andrew was small as well and my husband did sort sort of the childcare and that type of thing. I've been used to sort of compartmentalizing my life and actually when I go to work I go to work and I don't necessarily think about the children a great deal, because when Laura was little I went back to work when she was sort of nine, 10 months old and people would come in and say, oh I don't know how you could leave her all day, and I'm like I haven't actually got an option and if I sat there missing her all day I wouldn't get anything done. I had to trust that the childminder who had her was looking after and she was safe and educated and cared for and all of that and I had to just let it go. So I've always been able to do that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we've just taken a little break from today's show so that I can tell you a little bit about Global Trailblazing, our ultimate online youth club for young and intrepid global trailblazers aged 5 to 14. A place for them to learn, grow, connect, give back and have fun with fellow trailblazers from all around the world. They can complete fun learning quests and earn badges from any of our six core learning banners, which are life skills, kindness and compassion, purpose, travel and adventure, innovation and the world around us. They can make new global friends, hang out online, maybe hop on a video call or work together on quests through our bespoke social network. They can get access to amazing live workshops and support disadvantaged children around the world through our Global Trailblazing Foundation. This is truly the global club your child needs to be in, so let us help you nurture their path in life to find it in their own unique and wonderful way. Why not try us out for a month and see for yourself? For more information, just visit wwwglobaltrailblazingcom.
Speaker 3:I suppose I love it now because I see the little whatsapp messages, although you know, like most teenagers, you send them something amazingly well drafted and all you get is like kk lol on the bottom of it as a response, because that's what they do words.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. It is in every other sentence that starts this bloke on youtube, which seems to be how the teenager vocabulary starts. There's always a bloke on youtube. Who can do anything, I suppose. Yeah, I do miss him when he's not here, but I've just sort of accepted that that's how it is. And the flip side is, because they have the saturday morning lessons, it means that they actually have longer school holidays. So they get four weeks at christmas and three weeks at easter and eight weeks in the summer. So he's there for condensed periods of time, but then when he's home I get more of him then that's nice.
Speaker 1:That's nice, glad he's doing well. I was going to ask you about that, how he was getting on, just because.
Speaker 1:I was fascinated, so that's absolutely amazing. Um, so, back to the whole financial thing. So I know one of the things that you're really particularly interested in in in your work as well, is enabling people to create financially to hit the the dreams and goals and things that they they want to achieve. And I know, like one of when we talked about some of your tips, and one of your tips is smile and have fun. Life is too short to be boring and about like trying to make it happen for people listening right now if they're sitting there, because obviously some of the people that are listening to this are living a similar life to us. We're traveling and things like that. Some people are listening to this and they may have goals and aspirations that may involve travel or something completely different, and they're not quite there yet. On finance, even for people who are looking at wanting to do what we're doing or have aspirations to do something else that's extraordinary or whatever, the how can we afford it question.
Speaker 3:Okay. So there's a few things with this. I mean, the first step I always say to people is you need to be sure that you've got more money coming in each month and going out. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't spend out on the things that you want to spend out on, but just that you should be conscious of where your money's going, because you can only spend it once.
Speaker 3:We were all taught various things about money as a child, some more than others, but I'm sure most people's parents said to them at some point with their pocket money or their holiday money or the five pound from grandma or whatever it was think about what you're going to buy, because you can only spend it once. And the same is as an adult. Unfortunately, we do get into a bit of a habit of spending the money more than once, because we buy things on a credit card and then we spend the money and then the bill comes in and we're like, oops, we've still got to pay the credit card. So as an adult it's a bit more tricky. But the key thing is getting really clear on what you want to do. So if you are looking to travel around Europe in a van and do that type of thing, then there's two ways of funding that. One is that you need money up front as a lump that you can live off to pay your costs like you would on a holiday. The other is that you need to earn money as you go, and for some people there's a bit of a combination. They need some money in savings. They're going to work as they go, but they want something to fall back on. So if they get a month where they can't get a job or their business doesn't perform as they like, they can still feed themselves and still live that life that they need. And of course, we all need money for those unexpected things in life and whether that's repairs to a vehicle or whether that's paying for hotel costs because your tent's blown away or whatever that is, you need to have a bit of money back in reserve. But I think the key thing is having a clear picture of what you want and why and then working out what the little tiny steps are that need to happen to get that to happen, because none of it happens overnight. To get that to happen, because none of it happens overnight.
Speaker 3:People look at us here in this house, in the countryside, with alpacas in the garden, and it didn't just happen. We had to sell our home. We lived in a town. We had to buy a house with the right amount of garden and paddocks and things. We had to have fencing put up, we had to have aencing put up, we had to have a shelter created. We had to do the trainings that we knew what to do to look after the animals. Then the animals came and it's been a learning curve that's gone steep up from there, because there are things you don't expect to happen and it's easy to look in from the outside. You know we can look in at the lovely photos that you put up on instagram or wherever yeah, isn't that.
Speaker 3:But I'm sure you've got some exciting and probably hair-raising stories of things that have happened where life hasn't gone to plan, and actually just being aware of some of that stuff is good, but I think the thing is it's just doing the things in life that are important to you. I mean, even when you look at how you'll spend your money each month, there are some people who might spend £80 a month on Sky TV Now, if they're watching international sport and they like to watch the movies and it's a big part of their life. Brilliant If their kids are watching cartoons or Netflix. Maybe that £80 could be spent on something else, whether that's money into your travel pot, or money into your dream house pot, or money into because you can go my gin with it, go do something with it, but don't just spend it on stuff. So I suppose it's about intentional spending stuff, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, meaningful stuff that actually brings you something like joy, happiness, contemplation, experience, anything like that, yeah, rather than just, like you say, watching cartoons. It's like it's like a, a dead, dead money waste, really, isn't it? Because we can all just go and pick up some cartoons for free online, but we don't necessarily need to spend x amount of money on a sky package to to watch cartoons. No, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3:it's fine if you're using it. It's like anything. I know of people that make a phenomenal amount of money in their business that still drive around in a battered old car because they'd rather spend the money on holidays, or they'd rather spend the money on private school fees. Or actually I know of one lady who actually sold her house and downsized to a mobile home so that she had no mortgage, very low bills, because she wanted to work really, really part time while her children were little and not have to worry about costs. You know, the flip side of that is she's got to live in a very small place and obviously you can relate to that. But you know you have to decide what you want to do and you make choices.
Speaker 1:And it is a bit smart. It's like I have conversations with blarney sometimes about, like when we're going shopping. An intro, a typical one, would be around buying branded I know, let's just say branded baked beans right over a supermarket. Baked beans now, we all generally know they come from the same shops. But it's just the concept of saying to her right, well, I buy this tin of beans for £1.50 or this tin of beans for a pound, for example, and go why on earth would I spend? Would I give the supermarket that other 50p, like it doesn't make sense for the same end. Result is a tin of baked beans and and saying you know, when you've worked hard for your money, you want to buy what you need to buy, but I don't want to give them any extra unnecessarily for no other gain except for the fact that the packaging might look nicer.
Speaker 3:I mean, I suppose where I would be on that is, I would be positioning that very slightly differently in the fact that the choice you've got is either pay £1.50 for these beans or we pay £1 for these beans and we've got 50p to spend on sweets. Yeah, and actually see what is more important, and I think, doing that with certainly with children. We have to teach our children lessons about money and about finances, because they're not taught it in the school system, even if you're in a mainstream school system, but actually making choices and saying, right, okay, we've got £10 to spend on this, whatever it is we're going to go and buy, and then actually have a look to say, what can I get from that? You know, I mean I've had this conversation with my son a fair bit, because when he goes to his dads they have a lot of takeaways, and now he's got to be, you know, 13. He's now aware of how much these things cost, whereas as a youngster it was just, oh, isn't it cool? We go to dad's and we get lots of takeaways and it's like, yeah, but if you look at what he's spending, you know if he had one or two takeaways a month rather than the number he had, actually there would be money there for him to buy a new car or take you on a holiday or buy whatever it is, because actually you have to. Just you know it is either or it's not both.
Speaker 3:And I think this is the thing you know, when we've had occasions where, like you know, we phoned out for pizza. Now, living in the countryside where we do, we've got Domino's pizza and we've got one curry house that deliver to us. There's no Deliveroo, there's no Just Eat, there's none of these other things. If you want something, you have to get in the car and go out to the shop. And I think Andrew was quite astounded when he saw you know we'd ordered this pizza up and whatever.
Speaker 3:And you know it is like you get two big pizzas on your sides and your other bits. So before you know it it's 45 quid's worth. And I said to him look, this is lovely, but but the Sainsbury's shopping that's coming tomorrow morning is £60 worth. And I think he really put that into context when he looked at it and said so this is nearly like a whole week's worth of shopping on one meal. And I was like, yeah, and that was really quite thought provoking for him to realise that actually, you know things cost different amounts of money and you know it's. It's real life examples. I think, certainly when we're raising children, that we need to give them those things yeah, because otherwise they just don't have the concept.
Speaker 1:I've certainly got the kids doing some budgeting and like shopping for staff and looking at meal planning and how much is this going to cost? And getting them involved a little bit more and learning the value of money. I know ray fits up, I know he's only six, so you know he's got a long time to go. But like he's got one of these little cards, little kids cards, so he can go into the supermarket and buy on a visa card and stuff. But you know, because the family will put some pocket money in. He he just thinks he's got like his own little money tree going on and we're having to sort of still navigate the fact of like no, there's not just this unlimited card of stuff, but I think it is good just financially. Educating the kids as young as possible is is really valuable for them as well, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 3:I mean, I've done the same with mine. You know when we go out, you know if we end up somewhere like you know, poundland or home bargains or whatever, and if we've gone into town. Typically, what I've said is I don't want them to keep asking me every time we go can we go to McDonald's, can we go to Costa, can we get a cake, can we get some sweets? What I say to them is right, we're going to go into town, I'm going to give you three pounds and you can spend that on what you want to spend it and actually getting them to think about. Well, if I go and buy this piece of random plastic toy from Home Bargains, actually, then I won't have money for sweets or a magazine. And if I go into Asda, I can actually get a book with three pounds, and it just causes them to stop and think actually. So it's this or that and it takes time. You know it's not going to be straight away, is it?
Speaker 1:No, and I have this thing with them that I say to them that I will buy you what you need and you can buy what you want, and and that's kind of how we're doing it, because they've got their own little card and I'm saying you know, of course the Christmas is and birthday's, that, but on a general day today, if you need a new pair of shoes, I'm going to buy you that pair of shoes.
Speaker 1:But if you have sufficient pairs of shoes and you just fancy that new pair of trainers, then you're going to buy that, but you're going to buy that pair of trainers. Right now we're in a thing where they want to upgrade their switches and of course we can. We can get that. We get them really good price here in the UK second hand, because they don't need brand new ones, which we couldn't get in Bulgaria. They're really struggling with it at the moment because they want to buy little stuff, but they also know they need to save 150 quid and so it's quite interesting. You can see them going I really want that and you're like how badly do you want that in comparison to how badly?
Speaker 3:but that is the adult thing, and one of the things that I do with clients is when we are saving for that thing. But is that something special is to actually think what is this thing I want and how much do I want it? Because that then spurs you on to put the money towards the thing that you actually want. If you are thinking you want to save up a deposit because you want to buy your first home, if you're living at home with your parents and you hate living at home with your your parents, you are going to be a lot more inspired to think I'm not going on holiday, I'm putting the money in my house fund. I'm not going to get a brand new car or a new phone, I'm going to put the money in my house fund. And it's something you really, really want, you're typically more inspired to take action to do it, whereas if it's something that you quite fancy doing but you're not overly bothered, it's really hard to get motivated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the drive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Claire, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us today. I really really appreciate it. And if people want to connect with you away from here and just be in your world and kind of learn a bit more from you because I know that this stuff is really your jam and kind of learn a bit more from you because I know that this stuff is really your jam and, like we were talking before, you are really passionate about just helping everyday people achieve some amazing stuff, get their finances in order, achieve the goals and aspirations, all the things just to live their best life for the time that they're on this earth, and help financially with that, where can they connect with you? You, what's the first one place that they should come to?
Speaker 3:and the first place to head to is facebook, because I spend most of my life on there. I mean, if you ask my husband, I'm pretty much on it all the time. So, yeah, friend, request me, find me on facebook. Most of my best content goes there. And then I've got a website. So if you go to clairesweetonlinecom you'll find me there. And, yeah, typically that's where I hang out.
Speaker 1:Well, I will be putting the links below here as well, so you'll look at the show notes now and you will find them on here. So do go and get involved with Claire. She's absolutely amazing. She's been instrumental in my life and subsequently, as a result of that, other people in my world I've sent to her as well. She's absolutely amazing, claire. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. I hope that the weather gets better for all of us here in the UK, um and uh, and I hope to catch up with you in person at some point, claire, too, for it's been long overdue. Yeah, sounds like a great idea. Yeah, and to you guys, wherever you are in the world, thank you for joining us on today's episode of wet wipes and wine. It's been a pleasure to hang out with you. I hope you found this episode interesting. I hope it's resonated with some of you and, as a result, you might go and make a few more changes. I will catch up with you on the next episode. Take care now, bye.