Juggling Mind and Money

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is back with Jess, the podcast's resident psychologist, to look at the beliefs about money most of us picked up before we were even old enough to open a bank account and why those beliefs, quietly repeated for decades, do more to shape our finances than any spreadsheet ever will. Jess's argument, running through the episode, is that we don't l...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Ellie Pemberton, chartered financial planner at Lucent (and, at 25, one of the youngest chartered advisers in the profession) while Jess is off on holiday. It's the second in a semi-planned series where Steve turns the microphone on the people at Lucent that clients may or may not have met the ones actually doing the work. Ellie fell into f...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined for the first time by his business partner and Chief Operating Officer, Hannah Knight Niblett the person who runs everything that clients don't see, and the reason Steve gets to be the swan gliding across the lake while she does the paddling underneath. Hannah has spent 25 years in financial services, starting in a bank at 18 and qualifying as...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined again by Jess, the podcast's resident psychologist, to look at the strange irony at the heart of a lot of financial planning: the very habits that get people wealthy in the first place frugality, self-denial, careful choices are exactly the habits that stop them enjoying the life those savings were meant to buy. Jess has a name for it: FEDS -...

Send us Fan Mail In this solo episode — the first time Steve has recorded without Jess — he opens with three impressions (Martin Luther King, JFK and Steve Jobs) before making a case he's been making his whole career: that financial planning isn't really about money. Money matters, of course. But investments, pensions, ISAs and tax aren't the destination. They're the vehicle. T...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Jess, the podcast's resident psychologist, to look at why so many of us secretly suspect our success is a fluke, why the term "imposter syndrome" is more medically specific than the way most people use it, and how that quiet inner voice can be one of the most damaging forces sitting between people and their own money. The tribal w...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Rhiannon Goff, founder of SENDA (Special Educational Needs and Disability Advisors) and a financial adviser with 26 years of experience, the last 10 of which she has spent working exclusively with families who have a child or relative with special needs. The traditional financial planning playbook assumes a future of independence: get money into...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Sonya Lutter, a researcher and money psychologist based at Texas Tech and the founder of the Institute for Systemic Financial Professionals. Sonya has spent years studying what actually happens inside couples and households when money turns up — and turns up the temperature. Most fights about money aren't really about money. They're ab...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve and Jess talk about why our brains chase certainty, why money can't really deliver it, and how to build a financial and psychological life that bends with whatever comes. Certainty is one of those things almost everyone wants and almost no one can have. Our brains are wired to chase it, our spreadsheets pretend to deliver it, and politicians, advertiser...

Send us Fan Mail Steve sits down with Dan Sanders, optician and founder of Perspective Opticians, for a candid look at what it really takes to run an independent business for 21 years. Dan opened his first practice in February 2005, aged 26, after deciding he didn't want to spend his career running people through the machine in a high street chain. What followed was a steep learning curve nob...

Send us Fan Mail The news is loud, the headlines are heavy, and our phones make sure we never miss a thing. Steve and Jess sit down to talk about what all of that does to your head and your money, and what you can actually do about it. Steve opens with a particularly committed Diagnose Steve performance (lying awake at 3am, watching markets fall, wondering whether to sell everything) and Jess walk...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve sits down with George Kinder, known to most as the father of life planning. George has spent the last thirty years teaching advisers a very simple idea: that a financial plan is only useful if it delivers the client into the life they actually want to live. His famous three questions are designed to surface exactly that, and Steve and George walk through all...

Send us Fan Mail Steve sits down with Greg Davies, Head of Behavioural Finance at Oxford Risk, for one of the most practically useful conversations the show has had.  Greg has spent 25 years studying how people actually make financial decisions, and the gap between that and how economists assume they do. They get into what financial wellbeing really means, why someone can be objectively wealthy an...

Send us Fan Mail You might be sabotaging your finances and have no idea why. Steve sits down with Vicky Reynal, money psychotherapist and Sunday Times columnist, to explore the emotional forces underneath our financial habits: the childhood money lessons that follow us into adulthood, the fear of spending even when we can afford it, and what happens when two people with very different money histor...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Ian Archbold – chartered management accountant, global reward director at Haleon, and (as it turns out) a quietly devoted listener of the show. Despite knowing his way around a pension spreadsheet better than most, Ian still made the decision to work with a financial advisor. In this episode, he explains why. What we get into: - Ian's unexp...

Send us Fan Mail We like to believe we make rational financial decisions. In reality, our choices are shaped by shortcuts, emotions, and invisible mental biases we rarely notice. In this episode, behavioural scientist Richard Shotton joins us to explore how the mind really works when money is involved — and why understanding these patterns may be more valuable than any investment tip. We discuss w...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Juggling Mind and Money , Steve and Jess explore Executive Burnout — how it develops, why high performers are particularly vulnerable, and the often-overlooked connection between pressure, identity and financial expectations. They unpack the subtle progression from being productively “stretched” to chronically “stressed”, and what happens when that line is cross...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Juggling Mind and Money, Steve sits down with Laurentius van den Worm, Head of Investment Strategy at Timeline Portfolios, for a candid conversation about how sensible portfolios are built, why markets test people’s patience, and what to do when your instincts start shouting louder than your plan.   Rather than chasing predictions, they focus on process: why a r...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Sam Hart, a tax specialist at Rosegate Tax with nearly 30 years in the game, to cut through the noise around inheritance tax and long-term planning. They explore: Why tax planning works best when it starts with your life goals, not the tax bill The moving abroad question, and where people often get caught out The difference between “leaving the...

Send us Fan Mail New Year’s Day 2026. The motivation is high, the To-Do list is long, and reality is quietly waiting round the corner. In this episode Steve  and Jess explore why New Year’s resolutions so often start strong and fade fast, and how to approach goals in a way that feels more realistic, more sustainable, and far less punishing. They touch on the psychology behind “fresh starts”, the d...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 28, Steve is joined by Michael Kothakota, co-founder of Wolf Bridge Wealth, for a grounded conversation on the real value of financial advice beyond returns. Mike shares how he and his wife launched the firm in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, and how years of work with clients navigating major life events shaped his view of what good advice actually does for people da...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Juggling Mind and Money , Steve is joined by Chartered Financial Planner Luke James for a clear and grounded conversation about the recently released Budget. With Jess away, Luke steps in to help unpack the announcements that matter most to listeners and clients. They cut through the pre-Budget rumours, explore the psychology behind fear-driven financial decisio...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode Steve and Jess unpack a question many of us think about but rarely admit out loud: When is it smart risk-taking… and when is it simply gambling? The conversation begins with confessions, before diving into the psychology behind risk, excitement and the chase for dopamine.  From thrill-seeking behaviour to escapism and social pressure, they explore why gambling can...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve i s joined by Neil Bage , Co-Founder of Shaping Wealth , for a powerful conversation about understanding people as the core of great financial planning. Steve and Neil explore the psychology behind money and the emotional challenges that both clients and advisers face. Neil explains how our brains, designed for survival thousands of years ago, struggle to na...

Send us Fan Mail In this thought-provoking episode of Juggling Mind and Money , Steve and Jess unpack one of the most overlooked forces shaping our financial lives — time . Why do we put off things we know are important — from car services to pension contributions? Why do some people rush decisions, while others delay them endlessly? Drawing from behavioural science and financial psychology, Steve...