Grow Your Money: Mastering Investment & Finance with Sophie Foote

Lets Talk About Money! 

In today's episode, Athena is joined by the original OG, Sophie Foote, to discuss how to grow your money and make smart investments. Money is often a taboo subject, but it's time to break that silence and have an open conversation about it.

Sophie shares valuable insights on the essentials of investing, including how, when, and where to invest. She provides a step-by-step guide and even explains how you can start investing today with as little as £1.00.

The episode delves into understanding your current finances, creating budgets, and saving effectively. Sophie also covers investment strategies using Trading 212, index funds like the FTSE 100, and advanced trading techniques such as forex trading.

This episode is both fun and educational, offering a friendly catch-up between two friends while providing crucial financial knowledge. Tune in to get inspired and take control of your financial future!

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Transcript

0:01

Good morning everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Girls in Property podcast. How is everybody doing today? The sun is finally shining. I hope it is where you are. Literally, I don't know if everybody feels this way, but it has been a long, long winter and we're just about getting into summer now. So really, really exciting. So today I have somebody very, very special I'd love to introduce you to. She's absolutely fabulous. She is one of my best friends and original OG of Girls in Property. So if you can't guess it already, I'd love to introduce Sophie Foote. Hey, Soph. You're back. nice to be back! So weird we're not like on a sofa! I know, I know, I was like, yes, Sophie's back. And I love these episodes. It's literally just like me and you chatting, catching up, but actually giving some really good tips all about investing today. Well, as you know, I know nothing about investing. I always held my hands up. This is something I'd really love to get into. So as I said, I'm literally gonna be asking you so many questions. Treat me. Literally like a novice like I don't know anything and hopefully the listeners are gonna get some really jam -packed Information today, but also have fun listening to us and whatever they meet may be doing so before we begin So I'm sure many many people know who you are Know your story but for those who are new to the girls and property podcast and have literally just tuned in as if this was their first ever episode Can you please introduce yourself and tell everybody about welcome people. I'm Sophie. I spent most of my 20s in Asia scuba diving, working my way around the world, ended up buying a beach and opening my own dive resorts and then built that to a nice business, sold it after five years, moved back to the UK where my kids are now in school. And now I've got a couple of property businesses. And I just do a million other things as well, like a lot of business people. But yeah, what I'm really excited is to talk about investing today, because I think once you're in property, you really learn how you can leverage things and get multiple income streams and things like that. And I just think everyone should be doing it. Women don't talk about it enough, definitely. And it's just a great way of growing wealth for the future. So yeah, that's that. And I think that's perfect. And you've given such a great example of where you've taken time to build your businesses up to where they are now, and then use the profits from those businesses to then go on and further diversify your money and further develop your wealth. And I think that's just a classic example of what we should all be looking to do going forward. So yes, very, very excited. I want to learn. I want to learn myself. Perfect. So if you know the drill, you know how this works, what are you celebrating at the moment? goodness me, I'm celebrating, I mean yesterday we had a great time, I mean you and me and the beautiful Anastasia from ILA just had lunch on a Wednesday and a chat and just we're all in good places and we're all super ambitious and I just think that was an amazing thing that we could all do together, so friendship and support. But tonight we're recording this in July, I'm speaking at Brighton Pin. and their main, I was gonna be their first speaker and their second speaker is ill. So they're like, can you do the 45 minutes slot? And I was like, yes, I'll speak for longer. So I've just been doubling my slides basically and going into a lot more detail about the business and how I've built it up. So I'm really excited to do that tonight. Yay, I love that. And you're so right to celebrate yesterday because it was amazing. Like you said, it was a Wednesday, the sun was finally shining. Anastasia took us to this really cool new place called Harbour Heights in Poole near Sandbanks, which I've lived in Bournemouth for a long time. I went to uni here and I didn't even know this place was there. And it was just so fab. We sat in the sunshine and we caught up as friends, but then we also supported each other and gave each other business ideas. and was questioning, why don't you try this and this? And I think that when you're starting out, or not even starting out, because we're not starting out, but like when you're in the thick of it doing your own business, it's so important to surround yourself with people who are either doing what you're doing or are aspirational like yourself, because the conversations hit differently, don't they? Like there's no judgment. If anything, it's like, if you're going for a thousand, you're like, why aren't you going for 5 ,000? Why aren't you going for six? If you're going for 10, why aren't you going for 20? And it's... It's those types of conversations, isn't I think we need to be a bit less weird about money. Like even talking about it to a lot of my friends, I would feel uncomfortable saying, Oh, I want to sell this for 10 grand or I want to make seven figures next year. Or, you know, I'm, hoping to make a million or something like that. Like it's realistic and it can be done. Uh, but yeah, it's just, it's just different, isn't it? It, depending on which group of people you're with. and to have that group where they're like, yeah, of course you can. How are you going to do it? Yeah, we'll back you. It's amazing. You feel like you're going to fly. Absolutely. I had Rebecca Barr on the Girls and Property Community Group recently talking about this. We did a whole money mindset session and I wasn't expecting the conversations to happen that did happen that night because it was all about how do you see money and it actually stems from early childhood and how you're raised and how your parents see money, your friends. It was just such a fascinating conversation about the psychology around it the idea of, well, in certain groups of friends, I talk about money and certain groups I don't. And it's like, yeah, but why? And it's asking that question. So yeah, let's talk about money today, Sophie. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about growing money. I love that. And what I'm celebrating, which is really exciting, and you'll love this. You'll absolutely love this. So officially, the Girls in Property podcast has now reached 25 ,000 downloads. Yep. And you You are officially my 75th episode. Yay! So, I'm sorry but that's pretty cool. Like, really cool. like 25 ,000 downloads. I know people actually tune in to listen, which is quite fun. Um, and, it's fabulous. And I'll be going to these events and people like, Oh, I listened to your podcast girls in property. And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And it's just so wonderful. So here's to the next 30 ,000, 40 ,000, 50,000. Um, I'm really getting into other countries as well. Cause of course the UK is the predominant country, but I looked at the stats this morning. Someone's listening from St. Lucia. Someone's listening from the Bahamas. And I was like, Ooh, what are they doing? Yes! So yeah, it's really really getting itself out guests! like, what are you doing in property in the Bahamas? We want to know! Yeah! Yes! them first. I've got to stalk them. But yeah, it's fab. And obviously the community groups now got over 50 members and I'm just really trying to grow it from strength to strength. And yeah, it's so amazing to have you back on as well. And just really excited for the future. So I'm going to celebrate 25 ,000 downloads. you. I think what you've built is incredible. And it's so needed. Like I'm hearing more and more about really toxic behavior from men in the industry and allegations flying around. And it's like, can women just run it? Can we just put all the women in charge, Do you know what mean? Women aren't doing these things. I know. And it's really just about giving that voice and empowering women. of course, yeah, it's so fascinating what's happening. Actually, Anastasia made a beautiful point yesterday to us, which is also, it's about the energy around. So it's not necessarily to do with men and women, it's to do with, okay, well, what's the energy that's happening right now? And who is doing good, who is not doing good? And that could be both, that could be both sides as well. But yes, unfortunately, we have there has been some instances and we're just like, come on ladies, let's really just build an army, supercharge it and really push it forward. So yes, here's to the girls, queens supporting queens, which I love. So Sophie, talk to me, investing, where do we begin? I don't even know what questions to ask you. where do, talk to me about the beginning. So first of all, you of course were in property. And then you saw some bits to do with trading and you thought, I'll give it a go. I want to know how to get into it. So if someone like me was today thinking I'm ready to start investing, what should we do first? What are the first steps we should Okay, so what do you think investing means? What is investing to you? growing your pot of cash. And then, So it literally is it's saying we're starting with X and we want to grow the money and you can invest in so many different things. So property, like we're already doing it, you're already doing it, you you can buy a property for you put a 25 % deposit down, you get lent the rest that's leveraging already. And then you're adding value to it. So property investing is a great strategy. But there are some people out there who might not have, you know, 2030 grand for house deposit and they don't want to be looking after tenants and doing refurbs and stuff like that. So what else can we invest in? You could invest in gold. You could literally go buy some gold. You could invest in artwork. Lots of people do that. You can invest in whiskey. Like you can invest in handbags, like designer handbags apparently go up really well in value. So there's all these little things you can put your money in that you might be interested in or have a passion for that you can hopefully pull your money out at some point. Now what I am kind of teaching people, so I'm launching this Money Mastery Programme in September and we're going to go over the basics of money which all end up in investing. So to rewind a little bit, we can't invest if we're 50 grand in debt, we've barely got an income, we haven't got any savings, you know, you have to have a certain amount of health and financial literacy to do that fifth step which is investing. So when we launch in September, we're going to start with your money map. So what does it look like today? Go through things on money mindset and how we feel about money and valuing ourselves and things like that. We're going to cover savings because everybody needs a savings pot. And that should be between three and six months worth of income in a savings pot. So say it's 10 grand and you don't have any savings, then we need to do that before we invest. because at some point your car might break, your health might decline, someone might lose their job, like you need that little buffer. So the first thing we work on is doing that savings. And I think we should make it fun. Like I think we should all have a secret bank account, you know, that our partner has nothing to do with. And we're just, we're just squirreling away bits and pieces. And you know, there are apps, there are accounts where when you do a transaction, it can round it up to the nearest pound and save that money for you straight away. So you're doing it with every little transaction. It's not like, my God, I need an extra thousand pounds a month to save. You don't, you just need to be slowly scrolling away. So we're going to get savings sorted. We're also going to get income sorted. So if you've got a job, we're going to talk about how to get a pay rise because no one talks about it and no one talks about their salary enough. So go and do it. And if you've got a job or a business, what could we do as a side hustle? How could we earn money on the side? Like there's so many things you can do now in the digital age. that'll give you an extra few hundred quid a month. Brilliant. We also talk a bit about debt. You know, what is good debt and what is bad debt? If you're buying a property, you're going to be in debt, but it's good debt because you're leveraging it. If you've got several credit cards, that's bad debt. So we're to talk about how to sort them out. So let's say we've done all that and we've got a bit of a savings thing going. We've got our incomes nice and healthy. We haven't got any debt that's bad. Now you're ready to invest. Okay, so I'm talking to these people. So we're ready to invest. like you and me, for example, have our own businesses, right? And our businesses are profitable. And we're now making some money. We want that part of money to grow. So what I do in my investing part of the course is we talk about stocks and shares. Do you know anything about stocks and shares? Okay, so let's jump in. So say I want to invest in your business. Just make up a name of a business right Dance dance limited Okay so say I want to invest in Dance Limited I might give you ten grand for Dance Limited and I would then become a shareholder right so I've got shares in your business I've privately bought shares in a private business and if Dance Limited goes on to grow massively and you make two million next year I'm a shareholder so I would then receive more than I've put into because I own a certain amount of shares in your business So the stock market is exactly the same, but it's public. So say Dance Limited, say you've got, you teach dance online and it's massively popular and you want to go and open a studio in London. You now need to buy a studio in London. So you need to raise loads of money. So you're going to take your company public and that is called IPO. Have you heard of IPO before? So when a company goes public, they do an initial public offering. That's the IPO. So they talked to loads of bank managers and wealth people and experts and they put together what they think it's worth. So you might say, right, I think dance limited is now worth a million. So we're going to IPO. We're going to launch it on the stock market, which takes it from a private company to a public company publicly traded on the stock market. So we're going to sell shares on the stock market for, for a million total. and you launch it and you IPO it and there are massive events on Wall Street or in the city in London and people start buying shares and you're now publicly traded. So that's all the stock market is. It's companies going big, going public and they're basically fundraising money. And that big fundraise, say you raised a million pounds, you can then buy that studio. So companies would then use that fundraising to buy assets. to do research and development, to do massive marketing to get even bigger, or to pay back their original shareholders. So if you and I own shares in Dance Limited when it opened, and it's now worth a million, and we've sold, say, 30 % of the shares, we'd still own 70 % of the shares. So we can then sell a few of our shares and make loads of money. And Mark Zuckerberg did this with Facebook in... I think it was 2012, 2014, can't remember, but he made a billion. He basically made a billion when Facebook went public. Yeah. So let me just start. So let's take, let's take girls in property, for example. So let's say that one day I decide, right, I'm going to build up girls in property and then I'm going to put girls in property public to, was it IPO, public to everyone. Would I then, if you, if people were to buy shares, do they then get control over some of your decision -makings or is it simply just shares? They're just shareholders. Yeah. So in that case, when the business is really, really, really big, you'd have a board, you'd have a board of directors, you've had an advisory board. And when companies go public, they have to submit accounts, they have to submit financial reports every quarter so that shareholders can see what's going on. Is the company valuable? Is it going up? Is it going down? Right, and then what could happen, because I've seen this happen before, is if people have got shares in a company and the company, for example, goes bust overnight or something happens, do they just lose those shares? Yeah. Yeah. So do people get into it? I'm just trying to think why, why I'm trying to visualize this. So people would get into it. Let's say they put, I don't know, let's say a thousand pounds into shares of dance limited. And then those shares increase because the company appreciates them in its value as it were. And so therefore you go from making a thousand or putting in a thousand to now having 5 ,000. And then at some point you would then choose to pull out your 5 ,000. Yeah, you can then sell your shares. Yeah. somebody else who would want to buy your shares? What if, sorry, I'm asking a thousand questions. What if you were to buy shares and then you wanted to sell your shares, but at the time the reason you want to sell your shares is because the company is not doing very well. Why would another person want to buy those shares in that moment? Well, it's now on the public stock market. So nobody really knows if anything is going to go up or down. So often when stocks and shares go down, some people might think, they're on sale now, but they're cheap now. So for example, if you invested in Disney, say Disney went up and then it went down and went up and it, but Disney's a really well known company. It's probably not going to fold anytime now. So next time Disney falls, loads of people might buy Cause they're like, Disney's cheap right now. Do you see what I mean? So they're getting shares at a discount, but this is the next step. This is how I help people invest, right? It's a bit confusing thinking what the hell am I going to invest in? Like which company do I choose? I do not know. I kind of like Disney. think maybe Apple will do well. Tesla keeps growing. Who knows? So what we're going to do is we're going to invest in an index fund. Okay, what is an index fund? So an index fund is like a whole collection of shares of hundreds of different companies. And it means that if I want to invest 100 pounds into the stock market tomorrow, I can put my 100 pounds into an index fund. And instead of investing in one company, I'm investing in 100. So that it's diversifying my risk basically. So what we do with index funds is, you know, there are index funds for everything, but let me give you some examples. So the FTSE 100. The FTSE 100 is a collection of the hundred biggest companies in England that are traded on the UK stock market. And this list of a hundred companies, if a couple of companies don't do well, they're replaced by companies who do do So the FTSE 100 is a collection of the hundred best performing companies, right? So you'd think, okay, if I'm going to invest in the FTSE 100, my investment is split across a hundred companies. So if two of them go bankrupt, I've still got 98. But also they're going to be replaced. So it's going to, it's always going to be a high performing thing. And an index fund is just a fund that follows an index like the FTSE 100. So when I go into my trading software, I just type in FTSE 100 and it'll give me a couple of examples of index funds that completely mirror that list of companies. So I go, okay, I pick that one, put a hundred quid in and the FTSE 100 has grown 8 % a year for the last 40 years. So we can never know what's going to happen in the future. No one will ever know. There's always going to be rises and falls. So all we can look at is historic data. So index funds. On average, they tend to increase eight to 10 % a year, which is good. Another example is the S &P 500, which is an index fund that tracks the index standard and poor 500, which is the same but in America. So it's the 500 top performing companies in America. So again, take 100 quid, go to your trading platform, put 100 quid a month into the S &P 500. And again, I've got historical data on this. You can Google it. What's the historical data for the S &P 500? And it will tell you again, it's between like seven and 10 % for the last 90 years. Amazing. And I guess with this type of investing, this is your compound effect, isn't it? It's sort of a very, very slow burner. I remember listening to one podcast I ever listened to about investing and they were talking about, it's like putting a turkey in the oven and just letting it, let it just cook. You don't need to watch it. You don't do anything. Cause if you're to put a hundred pounds in, let's face it, like with a FTSE 100, it's not going to be mega mega risk and therefore it's not going to be mega returns. So if you were going to put in like a hundred let's say to do this each month what do you likely take away from a hundred traditionally? So I have got some examples for you. I've got a little chart that I include in my webinar, but I'm going to share it with you and the listeners today. So you are totally right. So this is all about compound interest. it's not just, so let's compare it to a savings account. So let's say we start with a thousand pounds. Okay. We start with a thousand pounds and then every month we put a hundred quid away. So in our savings account, we're just putting in a hundred quid a month and nothing's happening to it. But in our investing account, we're putting a hundred quid a month in that's going in and that's making 10 % a year. And at the start of year two, we've got a thousand in our savings account, but we've got 1 ,100 in our investing account. So the 1 ,100 gets invested and it compounds and compounds and we get interest on top of interest on top of interest. So as an example, We're starting with a thousand pounds at the end of five years in a normal savings account, we're going to have 7 ,000 pounds. And in our investing account, we're going to have 8 ,800 pounds. It's pretty good, right? After 10 years, right? We've started with a thousand pounds and I've put 8 % interest in, which is conservative. In your savings account, you're going to have 13 ,000 pounds. and in your investing account you're going to have £20 ,000. And that's purely just by putting a thousand pounds You're that starting with a thousand pounds and that's adding a hundred quid a month. Yeah. So would you rather have 13 grand or 20 grand? So this is a really good strategy because it's, it's lazy investing. It's let's just chuck some money in each month and we call that dollar cost averaging because people try and time the market. And there's a very famous phrase that says time in the market is better than timing the market. So timing the market is going, I think there's a dip I'm going to buy. it's high I'm going to sell. And just trying to make all these decisions. And again, historical data has shown people who just automate their investments and leave it in there and check your account once a year do better than people trying to play and choose stocks and shares and buy and sell. So it is a very lazy method. You put your money in, you automate it. and it's a long term thing. It's also... different to today trading, isn't Yes, so that's more of an advanced strategy. So what is really important for listeners to work out is you need to figure out your risk strategy and your risk profile. And this is important because say you've got 10 grand, you need to think about a 20 year old, a 40 year old and a 60 year old. And they're all starting with 10 grand and they all want to retire at 65. So the 60 year old says, right, I've got 10 grand. Do I want to put it in a super high risk investment like crypto, which could go up and down and up and down. I could lose everything, but if I leave it in, it might build again. Or do I just want to put it in like bonds, which are like the safest bet ever. Or do I put it in index funds, which is a kind of medium. So I think the 60 year old would probably want quite a low risk strategy. They just want to put their money in, grow it a bit, take it out when they're 65. the 40 year old has got a bit of time. So the 40 year old might say, okay, I'm going to put 80 % of my money into index funds. And then I'm to put 20 % of my money into a higher risk strategy like crypto, or for example, newly IPO companies, because we don't know how they're going to act. So that's quite a high risk strategy. So dance limited might go on to build three studios, it might go worldwide. And our initial investment is going just propel or it might flop and it might just fail in the first year. So newly IPO companies are a high risk. So they might diversify a bit. But then the 20 year old is like, I've got 45 years here. I might, you know, I might spend 50 % of my money on the index fund. I might do 10 % in really safe things like government bonds. And then I might play around with the rest of it in crypto or in IPOs or other high risk strategies because they've got time for their investment to go up, down, up, down, up, down and as you get older you can reduce the risk profile of your investments. So it's really important to think about that when you're about to invest because nothing is guaranteed ever. You might lose everything but there are certain things you can do to reduce your risk. This is really fascinating. For people like us, for example, who don't have the usual job, where you get a usual, let's say, pay slip, as it were, because what used to happen in my old job is, of course, some of the money used to go towards a pension at the end of, and then when you retire, you take the pension. How would you explain this one, Sophie? In terms of pensions or investing, I could either put my money into a private pension, let's say 100 pounds a month, Yeah. it there nice and safe and then when I decide to stop doing the businesses, I've got my pot or should I be taking that hundred pounds and actually investing it in a compounding index fund way? What would you say with that definitely benefits to pensions and you can speak to pension advisors, financial advisors who know a lot more than me about pensions. But I had a private pension for a couple of years and they were just sticking my money into index funds and bonds and you know, they were diversifying it quite nicely. But I was also paying them a percentage of my investment and that is a lot of money you're spending on, you know, that I was spending on a private pension advisor. because they take like 0. something percent, but of your total investment over the total years, they're making loads of money. So I think let's empower ourselves to learn about it. Let's just do it ourselves. You know, this isn't rocket science. It's fairly straightforward and you can manage your risk really well. And it's so exciting, you know, get online, get to a compound interest calculator. and figure out like, okay, I've got 500 quid to start with, or I've got five grand to start with. And this is how much I think I can put in per month, put in 8 % a year as a conservative estimate, and see what it looks like in 10, 20, 30 years time. And it's just a no brainer. Like everyone should start now. yeah no I love that you're always telling me you're like Athena you need to start um what what would you say in terms of you know sometimes I see you you're like right every morning or or often you're like right 30 minutes I'm gonna sit on my computer and I'm gonna do some trading so if if they are in an index fund and they're just doing their thing what are you doing in that half an hour Ooh, that's a good question. So I'm Forex trading. So we're going to go advanced now. So basically Forex trading is we're trading financial markets, we're trading financial pairs. So what I've done is I've met a lovely, lovely man called Lewis Crompton, shout out to Lewis and Star Trading. And I basically met him on a podcast. We were both on a property podcast two years ago. as a guest and we ended up having lunch together and I kind of, was like, for it? Nah, that sounds a bit techy, sounds a bit scammy, sounds a bit dodgy, sounds very complicated and IT based. But I kept my eye on him and he kept banging on about, it's 30 minutes a day, anyone can do it and you could make between five and 10 % a month. I was like, sorry, what? Because I'm here with my index funds making 10 % a year thinking that's good. Some people are making 10 % a month. 10 % a month is doubling your account every year. Like, can you imagine the compound effect of that? It's unbelievable. Sounds like, all right, Lewis, I'll listen to what you have to say. And basically, he went to a trading webinar a long, long time ago, became a trader, and he taught for Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote Rich Dad for Poor Dad. He was part of that kind of group. And five or six years ago, he started his own company, Star Trading, because he'd been living the lifestyle, like he'd been trading in the morning, making his whole income, like he'd switched his income from retail to trading. It took him about a year to get from full-time working to full -time trading. And he would travel the world and he was living his best life. And then suddenly he was like, what am I doing? Like, what am I even doing? What is my purpose? Because he comes from a kind of church counselling background. where he had helped people and counseled people and he has this great sense of purpose and mission. So he was like, why am I just going through to another airport and not even appreciating it and traveling the world? And you should get him on the podcast actually. So he started this star trading to teach people his method, what he knows, how to do it. And it's built into this amazing community of people where he's got incredible teachers that explain it. just this hugely diverse group as well. was like, Lewis, isn't all men. He was like, no, actually it's pretty much 50 -50. And it is, just regular people learning Forex trading. And like we had a social last weekend and we all went to his house for a barbecue and we're all going to Morocco together in October for a trading social trip. So he's great. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna listen to what you have to say, Lewis. And he does these Forex in five events pretty much every month. It's 30 quid. you go for five nights in a week and he just introduces him, his team, his method. He's like, right, let's get some charts out. Let's look at some charts and I'll show you what we do. And you kind of get a bit sucked in and you're like, I, I understand what a candle is now. I can see what its bias is. And he just explains it so simply and beautifully. And you're like, okay, yeah, I'm going to have a little play with this. By the end of the week, you could potentially put a live trade on. But that's his introduction into him because it is dealing with money, it is investment and you don't want to be giving it to a dodgy scammer type person, but you soon find out how lovely they all are. And so I signed up for their training last July and it's a few months of training. It's like an hour a day of learning and then loads of homework, looking at these charts and figuring them out. And what we're looking at is currency pairs. So for example, the pound to the dollar is a currency pair. So when you exchange your money in an airport, you you always get different values that fluctuates all the time. And we look at those charts of the price fluctuating and we see where we can sell it and where we can buy it. And we make money on that transaction basically. I don't know how to explain it easier than that. what Forex trading is, okay. so Forex means foreign exchange, so it's Forex trading. But these strategies that he teaches you can apply to other markets as well. So we trade like a gold market, a silver market, a copper market, the FTSE 100 market. So what he teaches you, you can apply to pretty much any chart you can look at. So he teaches you these three strategies. He gives you a whole list of markets that the community has as their master list. And then basically you trade in the morning or in the evening when all the markets have stopped doing their thing. Cause during the day everyone's trading blah, blah, blah. It's quiet in the morning and evening. So I'm not a morning person. So before I go to bed, I have my 20 minutes at the laptop, nice calm time. And you just look through each market. You see if it's making that specific pattern and you've got like a checklist of things it needs to be doing. And if it is, you put a trade on and then you leave and then a few days later it will win or lose. And you just do that every day. You just do that every single day. You go through your markets and it's basically going, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Woo, yeah, maybe this one. Do a bit of investigation. Put a trade on. That sounds fab actually. So let me think about this for the listeners. So first question is, what are the risks involved with this? Because it is money, right? It is, and people need to understand this is risk and you are going to be investing money that, and it could go well and it could go wrong. So if you were to say to the listeners, what's the greatest risk that could happen with Forex trading, index funding, what could go wrong? Yeah, so in terms of index funds, the stock market can, like anything can happen with it. It can rise, it can fall. If you've got all your money tied up in it, yes, you could lose everything tomorrow. You could, you really could. But we have to look at the historical data and say, all right, in 80 years, if it's on average gone up 10%, I need to make a decision of, am I happy with that risk ratio? Yes or no? For me, index funds, yes. That doesn't mean that, you know, a few years ago it might've dipped 20 % and that's scary. But you have to figure out, am I happy with that or not? So this is why it's about risk. It's also about the psychology. With Forex trading, Lewis has so many risk rules. Like you could never ever lose your entire account on Forex ever. Because with each trade, the maximum we're allowed to put on it is 1%. That's it. So if I've got a thousand pounds in my account, I'm only allowed to risk 1 % of that on each trade. So 10 quid. And I'm only allowed to do up to 5 % at a time of my account. So I only ever have five live trades on. So if all the markets go to shit and if all my live trades fail, I've lost 5 % of my account. That's it. think, I don't know if it's similar to this, but I remember that somebody once said to me, don't ever invest or gamble what you're not prepared to lose. That was the advice that I was always given. So I think that if you literally, as you've said beautifully, Sophie, if you look at your finances, look at your savings, get everything where it's meant to be, and then you almost have, almost like a pot to play with that has nothing to do. with you running your business, paying your bills. It's literally like rather than buying a nice pair of shoes, I'm gonna go and invest it instead. That's the way to look at it almost. And what would you say, cause you're doing really well with it now, what would you say have been your biggest lessons from when you first started to what you're doing now that would really, like even if the lessons were for me, Soph, like you're like, right, Athena, here's what I did wrong, here's what I did right. You know, I'm gonna start today, what should I do? someone's just interrupting me there. What should you do? So do you want to know how you can start investing today? Right now? So I use, like other platforms are available, but I use trading two one two. It's an app. It's called trade trading two one two. and you can open accounts right now. So literally anyone can open trading two one two, and open an account and they'll say to you what kind of account you want to open, just a normal investing account. Yes, but they've also got ICER accounts, which you can earn a certain amount of money, I think it's 20 grand tax free. So there's no tax on what you would earn. So it depends if people have already got ICERs or not. So this all depends on people's individual circumstances. But yeah, open training, two one two, open the right amount of account and an investing account is fine. And then it would ask for your passport details and stuff to identify that you are in fact a UK resident, et cetera. And then you would just go, right, here's a hundred quid and you can start investing. And it says, right, what do you want to invest in? Do you want stocks? Do you want shares? Do you want bonds? And what would you say? I would like to invest in. Yay. And what are your index funds called? Yeah, exactly. And the S &P 500. Yeah. And please, please go away and do your research into this because it's just, it's really exciting. But I don't want to tell anyone what to do. I want everyone to learn and figure out, because you can get ethical index funds. You can get global index funds. Like ethical ones would not contain a tobacco company or an oil company. You can get like tech index funds. So you can really go into what's important to you, which is really exciting. And that's how you'd start today. So just go for it. So have you got a calculator there or have you got something there that you could help me with this? So let's say that I do this today and I put in a hundred pounds a month going forward into the index fund and let's go for the FTSE 100 just to make it easy. So if I was to put that in a savings account, a hundred pounds a month from today, how much would I have at the end? And if I was to invest it with historic data, what would I have for a hundred pounds a month by the end of the are we going to put in an initial lump sum of like 500 quid? Okay, so we're going to start with nil. We're going to do 80%. How many years should we go for? Well yeah, it is £100 a month, so I'm putting in £100 to start with. Yeah. We're gonna go for 12 months. 100 pounds Yeah, I love this, we're doing this live guys. Okay, so if you put in 100 quid a month, you'd end up with 1200 pounds after a year in your savings account or 1244 in the in the index fund. So you've made 40 quid. 40 quid. it needs to be, you need to see this as the long game effectively. A year's not long enough. carry on for 10 years, you're going to have £12 ,000 in your savings account or£18 ,000 in your investment fund. like that person said on the podcast, it's literally like put it in the oven and walk away. That's literally what this is. This isn't for a year. This is for 10 years. and time goes quickly. It really does. And this is where people should start young. Like if you have kids, like I have kids, I'm putting money in investment funds for them now. Can you imagine what it's going to be like for them? Yeah. Well, if you know any kids, if you're an auntie or an uncle, like just do it. Just do it for a kid you know. Yeah. how, what was the sort of the, what was the moment if you had a moment where you were doing it, obviously starting out, you know, doing dabbling in it, let's say, and then suddenly you're like, wow, that was really great. Or wow, I've really got this now. I feel really confident in this. Did you have like a moment that one of your particular deals just went really I think it was literally when I started with 100 quid in trading 212 and I forgot for a bit that I'd done that and then a few months later I came back to it and I was like, oh, that's just grown. Like, if you have money in a savings account right now, you might get four or 5% growth over the year and we've also got inflation to think about as well, which is like 8 to 10 % at the moment, which is not good for anyone. But the savings account, it's just gonna stagnate. And what are the banks doing with your money in the savings account? They're taking it and investing it and making more money. So yeah, just go and do it. Just go and do it yourself and smash it. And then yeah, the Forex trading is like this, but on acid because yeah, like I won 40 quid yesterday, but I won a trade. just pinged up. 40 quid. Thank you very much. Amazing. And have you also seen it the other way where your phone's pinged and it's like minus 40 quid or whatever it is. but with trading, your risk to reward ratio is always better than your kind of loss amount. So we always win more than we lose. So even if we win and lose 50 -50, we're up. It's a really, really good strategy to do. That's brilliant. And it's definitely something that I'm interested in because I always speak about diversifying your wealth, always. And I think that it's so important to be educated, get knowledge, understand it, and then also just give it a go. You if you have, say, for example, 100 pounds a month to be able to invest, I think that'd be a really important thing to do. So I'm certainly going to be having a chat with you after this podcast. because you've been speaking about it for so long in a wonderful way. And I'm like, okay, I think now is the time to start diversifying in stocks and shares. Yeah. More girls need to do it, like girls are actually better investors than guys because we think about it, we consider it, we do our research and we're methodical about it. Guys tend to be a bit more high risk but we need to get more girls into I love that. just finally, when we're talking about stocks and shares, so I understand shares and I understand how shares work, is stocks completely different or is that similar to shares? pretty much similar. So when you say I've got a share in Apple, you're referring to a specific share. So I've got shares in these businesses, or you might just say, yeah, I've got stocks, I've got stocks, general stocks, but it's pretty much interchangeable. Good question. yeah, stocks, because I always hear stocks and shares and I'm like, is that the same thing? So for our knowledge, they are similar. Yeah, we basically call it the stock market, which consists of buying individual shares in companies. So stocks and shares are quite Perfect. And then finally, my last question for you before we go on to our property disasters is, and if you're happy to share this amazing, if you're not, you don't have to, what would you say from what you've been seeing at the moment would be good companies to invest in or what are you investing in at this moment yourself? Index funds. Do you know what, in my trading 212, I have like 95 % of my money in index funds and then literally a few quid in just businesses that I like. So that could be Disney, could be like, Nvidia was quite a hot one recently, but yeah, it's definitely index funds. It's just a no brainer. Okay. And is there, I sometimes hear about people who are really into investing and so they sit and they literally watch all these companies and they'll say things to me such as, did you see X tech AI company just went up by this or did you see that this company just dropped by this? And I'm like, so is there a way you can watch the market as well on the two one two trading? Yeah, yeah, it's full of data. It's literally full of charts that are showing you daily movement. so there are like, if you wanted to, you could give your money to a fund manager, like put it in a hedge fund, put it in a mutual fund. And these fund managers, all their day job is, is to look at right, what's the best investment right now? I've got all these wealthy people giving me money. How can I best outperform the stock market by my incredible knowledge? And again, if you compare them, to index funds, index funds perform better. Like no one can, I mean, Warren Buffett's done really well. There are certain investors who have done really well, but even Warren Buffett says, yeah, put everything in an index fund. and just watch it grow? And do you literally leave it as soon as it goes into an index fund? I presume that you don't need to be looking at it 30 minutes every day. literally get a direct, I presume you schedule it, direct debit, £100 a month, and you literally just maybe check it every year to watch how it grows. Is it as simple as that? dip in every few months basically. Keep a little eye on it. Buy some interesting shit. Yeah, yeah. And could you take out, let's say that you've put in 10 ,000 but you only want to take out 5 ,000, could you take that 5,000 out at any time? Wow. Okay, I'm excited. I'm gonna do it. But it's also like it is also fun to play a bit like, okay, index funds. Yes. But let's go for dance limited. Let's go for girls and property. Like, let's support businesses that we that we love. Like, why not risk a few quids? I can't wait to have this further conversation with you. This is gonna be so much fun. I'm be like, right, let's do it. Let's invest. Can I also plug? can I plug some stuff? So September, I'm launching the Money Mastery course, which is the five, it's going to be five Mondays. I'm going to go live. We're going to talk about those five pillars, which finish in investing. I've got an investing webinar right now, which covers everything we talked about. It's 79 quid. You can have lifetime access. But I also, I've got this idea in my head of a health and wealth event. which I think we're gonna do next spring summer. And I'm collabing with you and lots of other interesting people. We're doing it. But you know what guys, what I would say about Sophie as well, and for those who know Sophie will know this already, like sometimes investing could be such a dry conversation with a bunch of stuff, the old men literally sitting there with their ties and their Lamborghinis and everything. Sophie makes everything fun. You just do. You're really, you're just, you're just fun and you do it in, and you probably, you just shown it on the podcast. You do it in a really concise, fun, educational way. So if you want to learn about investing, then Sophie is the perfect person to learn it from. So please get involved with the Money Mastery. The webinar is out right now, isn't it? Yeah, you can sign up for Money Mastering right now. We're launching it. Just get on it. Yeah. Yeah. so that's fab. And obviously at the end of the podcast, I'll come on to where people can find you and we'll pop it in the show notes and stuff like that. But before we do, so what is happening at the moment in the property world? What property disaster do you have for me today? God! Do you know what? I've got a tenant who doesn't want to leave. Who? Which what? Southampton? Or Bournemouth? Southampton. In a way in which he loves living there? No, in a way that everyone doesn't love him living there. So yeah, we've got an HMO in Southampton and we've just got constant complaints about this guy. Smoking weed, like really unclean everywhere, leaves the front door open, know, kind of like health risks, security risks, annoying everyone else. And two other people are like, we just want to move out because this guy. So we were like, okay, his tenancy is finishing soon. We'll just say we're not, we're not. extending your tenancy, know, terminating it. And he replied and he was like, yeah, the council have told me just stay, just stay and maybe get evicted through the courts and that'll give them more time to try and maybe find me somewhere. And it's like, what? Like, sorry, you've gone to the council to say you might be homeless and they've said, Don't worry about it, just wait till you're evicted. Like, that isn't that terrible advice to give to someone. So that, yeah, but did that actually happen? Was that the advice he was given by the council? Well, that's what he's telling us. Because I just replied to him and I was like, hang on. If you go on spare room right now, you can find another room and you're gone. Fine. And I'll help you find that and I'll help you move out. But if you refuse to leave, we're going to have to go through the courts. Like you're going to have bailiffs, you're going to get a CCJ. Like this is terrible advice you've been given. So this is what I'm dealing with right now. But I just... you know, I can't, I can't do that to this guy. Like we need to be human and compassionate and I just need to go and speak to him and be like, look, this is going to affect a lot of things in your future. So that's nice to deal with. Yeah. So is he trying to stay and not pay rent as well? Or is he paying rent? just doesn't want to leave. He's living his best life, but not in a way that is conducive to a house share. And then I had someone on the weekend. I woke up and I'd had some missed calls at midnight. She called me again in the morning. She was like, Hey, I got home and I've lost my keys, but I managed to sleep on the sofa. And I was like, okay, I'm not around today. Like I was in Norfolk. So was like, you need to call a locksmith and she was like okay well I was out last night so I might try and find my keys I was like okay I'm around tomorrow if you need me to let you in and then she messaged me later saying I mean I've climbed through a window but I would like some new keys she's upstairs as well like goodness. Honestly, it's just crazy isn't it? It's people. It's not the property, it's people. That's what it is and it's house sharing and everything like that and I presume that if this person stays in your property the other two are gonna want to move out and then you're gonna have two empty rooms that you're gonna have to deal with as Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, I need to go around there. I should need to go have some stern words and be like, come on, let's find you a more suitable place. If anybody can do it, you can, definitely. That's hilarious though. Any disasters? Well, well, one of my disasters actually, now that you mention it, and I spoke to you briefly about this yesterday as well. This wasn't something recent that's happened. It's happened about a month, a month and a bit ago, but I do need to talk about this on social media because it's so important. Do you I mentioned to you that a broker who we may not name, who I no longer work with, lost me four, well, cost me, I should say, 4 ,000 pounds. And basically the story goes like this, which is, and again, we can only learn from lessons, okay? And I hold my hands up. It should have been on a buy -to -let a really simple product transfer. The easiest thing to do in the whole world, a product transfer. But when a broker who you've been working with says, don't worry, I'll sort it for you are naturally going to believe that that person will sort it for you. I don't understand why you wouldn't think that that wouldn't happen. And so they said to me, I'll sort it for you. I was like, great, thanks. And then I get this, and by the way, this was on a Thursday. So I was like, cool, done. I get a message from them on the Saturday, naively again, me thinking it had been sorted. I appreciate that was naive of me. On the Saturday going, hi, just to let you know that offer is no longer available and it's going to cost you X amount more. which was just shy of 4 ,000 pounds because there was an arrangement fee that had now been introduced. The lender had pulled the previous offer, et cetera. And I was like, excuse me? I was like, what do you mean? And they're like, oh, we didn't do the product transfer in the time. was like, and anyway, they came up with a bunch of excuses as to why they didn't do the product transfer in the time, et cetera. So I called the lender who's TMW and I said, look, here's my situation. Like literally please. Can you, can you backdate it? Please, can you give me this offer? Here's the offer, here's the illustration. This is what I need specifically. And they said to me, they came back and said to me, and here's a note for everybody. They said the offer had never gone through. So it's an illustration. It's not a mortgage offer. They said, if you, if the broker had put a mortgage offer in, then we would have been able to backdate it up to three weeks, which I think is a really important point just to make. I spoke to really, really high up people. I tried to take it as high as I could possibly go going, please, please, please. This is going to cost me 3 ,997 pounds. Like, please, is there something you can do about it? And effectively the end result was no. And that should be taking this person to, you know, basically outing them and taking them to court and that type of thing. But in the end, I didn't do that because we hang around in similar circles in this area. And I was like, I'm not going to have bad blood. It's not, it's not my vibe. But. What basically happened was I then did the product transfer and I timed myself doing it to prove a point and it took me 45 seconds to do. 45 seconds to do a product transfer. And I was like, are you kidding me? That I asked this person to do something, they gave me excuses as to why they didn't do it and it took 45 seconds to do. which cost me just shy of £4 ,000. So that is, that's a prototype. And like, it's really funny because the people on the end of the phone at TMW say the most funniest things. say, oh, don't worry. You can just add it to the end of your mortgage. And then when you go to sell it, you know, just do this. And I'm like, yeah, but it's still £4 ,000 that I then have to deal with later down the line. Yeah, just add it to the end. I'm like, yeah, great advice. Thanks. So that, happened about a month and a half ago I'm kind of over it now but that was a really big property disaster so my lessons to you are is just do a product transfer yourself it is the easiest thing in the world to do and if you are gonna get a broker to ever do something for you instead of just getting them sent a mortgage illustration always get them to send a mortgage offer because the offer can be backdated so I thought that was really good lesson so yeah that wasn't fun That's insane. of course I said to this broker, please never speak to me again. I'll be civil to you, but don't talk to me. So yeah, that was fun. I enjoyed these experiences just show you, don't they? Oh, yeah, but that's what being a business owner and property investor is all about. We know that. There'll be good days, there'll be bad days, but quite frankly, us being able to go for lunch together yesterday and being able to choose how we spend our time, we spend our lives, I think is well worth it all. I just wish I could have bought us a £4,000 lunch and spent my money a bit more wisely. So Sophie, if people wanted to get in touch with you, learn about Money Mastery, learn about your webinar. or just get in touch with you just for a friendly chat, where can people find Yes, I'm on Instagram, Sophie Invests, and I've got a new website, which is the happyinvestor .co .uk. That's got all my stuff on it, so come and check it out. I'm gonna check that out, the happy investor. I love that. And is that .co .uk? Yes. Yes, you'll love it. It's all my colours, like I've branded it. It's so fun. love that. I can already picture what it's gonna look like. It's gonna be pastel colors. Definitely. I love that. And of course, if you wanna get in touch with me, I'm Athena Dobson underscore official. We are Girls in Property on Instagram. If you wanna email me at all, it's girlsinpropertypodatgmail .com. A couple of things just while I'm here. So the first thing is please don't forget that we have the Girls in Property community group. We are over 50 members now. Sophie, you are a member of that community. So we meet up monthly online with guest experts to talk about something to do with your business. So we had money mindset last month. And we also have the Christmas Gala coming up on Saturday, the 7th of December. So DM me the word community for details about the community or DM me the word gala for details about the Christmas Gala. And then the last thing just to let everybody know of is when you're starting out in investing or you're starting out in property or anything, or even if you're, let's say a year into your journey. There is no point learning about investing or learning about anything without the right mindset. Mindset is genuinely where it all starts. And I have recently decided to give away as part of my property lifestyle accelerator program, the first module all around mindset. And I want to gift that to you completely free. Cause I think it's important that everybody deserves to have that. So if you want to get my free module, which is literally me speaking to you, it's got workbooks, it's got training exercises. and it's all about developing this growth mindset before you invest in either stocks and shares or property, then please just DM me the word mindset and I will happily send that to you and gift that to you as well. Sophie, thank you so much for coming on. You know I miss you. I love you so much. And thank you for all your knowledge as well. Like I feel like I've really learned something today. Yes. And get investing and DM me when you've started because I'm very proud. and we will be getting you back on. We're have to think of a new topic and I'll see you soon. We're gonna have some puppy dog walks, aren't we, next week to meet your new puppy Shanti, which I'm so jealous about. You're welcome. Have a great week, everyone. Speak to you soon. Bye.