The Meaningful Money Personal Finance Podcast

It's time to draw Season 15 to a close by answering some of the questions you have asked along the way.

Over the past couple of weeks we've taken a look at how income tax and National insurance work. For those of us who are building wealth, the logical next step is how to save money on those taxes using some useful reliefs.

What a season this has been! We've covered a lot of ground, from setting goals, to establishing daily actions. From robust reviews to using leverage. We've covered more ground on behavioural finance and last week we had the inimitable Escape Artist offering his take on the long journey to FI. Today I want to summarise things really, with an emphasis on staying the course

Last week we covered income Tax, and this week we need to finish that off by talking about the other income tax, which masquerades as something else - National Insurance

Today I'm speaking, for the second time, to Barney Whiter, AKA The Escape Artist. Barney is a leading voice in the FIRE movement in the UK, and I wanted to get his take on working towards Financial Independence, the challenges along the way and the practicalities of it all.

Income Tax is a part of all our lives, but how does it really work? It's important to know how income tax works, so that we can understand ways to pay a bit less of it...

In the long journey towards financial independence, life sometimes happens. When it does, you're going to need to adjust, deal with the challenges and refocus. Today I want to help you do just that.

The conversations we have with ourselves around money are vital to our successful wealth-building. Today I'm bringing back repeat guest Neil Bage to go into this vital area of our financial journey.

How we behave around our money has far greater impact on our wealth-building than our investment decisions, or level of diversification and whether or not we use leverage. Today I welcome back my good friend Neil Bage, founder of Be-IQ (a behavioural insights company), to talk us through how we cope with the various influences over our behaviour.

We all know that diversification is a good thing when it comes to investing and wealth-building, but is there a limit to how useful it can be? Can you be TOO diversified? Today I'm talking about next-level diversification.

Experienced investors need to understand leverage in all its forms, and today we're going to be talking about what it means to apply leverage to your own wealth-building.

We've covered a ton of ground in the season so far, and we're only now approaching the half-way point. We've spent time looking at goals and actions and reviews, but the journey to financial independence is a long one, and just like on a long drive when you come to an open road, it feels good to put your foot down, it feels good to accelerate your financial plans too.

Listener Chris called me out on a comment I made in a recent episode of the podcast, talking about long term returns of stock markets. Turns out that income reinvestment REALLY matters, and that it's important to take a long term view.

Over the past few weeks we've looked at setting goals and building plans to achieve those goals. But working towards financial independence can take a while, and you need to know whether or not you're on track as you go along . And you do that by having a robust review process in place.

The Maven Adviser calls J L Collins' 'The Simple Path To Wealth' the greatest personal finance book ever, and I'm inclined to agree. Here's my review of the book.

Over the past few weeks, we've looked how to set some goals and how to move from goals to actions. Today I'd like to help you distil all that down so that you end up with a one-page financial plan.

Last week we considered our goals and our actions from a 40,000 foot perspective and talked about things you can do from that vantage point. Today we need to drop down to the runway level, and get a little bit more granular…

The recent scandal over the Woodford funds included concern over why, when the fund was struggling, it was still on various platform buy lists. Here's why those lists have no relevance to your investing needs.

In the past couple of weeks we have looked at financial planning and introduced the timeline paradigm. Last week we looked at how to arrive at and work back from some goals to get a sense of what you need to do now to move towards those goals. Today, we need to move from goals to actions.

Last week we covered the basic premise of financial planning, introducing the concept of the timeline of your life. Today I want to build on that, and use that model to help us think about some goals.

Listener John asks what I would do with a major windfall - I mean REALLY major. That's an opportunity for some thinking...

This season of the MeaningfulMoney podcast is called Planning with Purpose and is designed for those well-established on their journey towards financial independence. But if we're talking about planning, then we'd better define what we mean by that…

I've had several guests on the show recently who all have different views on how you should invest your money. So am I sending mixed messages, or what? Let me explain...

Woohoo! It's another new season here on MeaningfulMoney after a summer of Inbetweenisodes. I hope you have enjoyed the conversations I've had over the past few weeks. I've had loads of great feedback, so it seems like you have. It's been a great few weeks, but I'm excited to get cracking on what is easily going to be the best season ever of MeaningfulMoney, called Planning with Purpose.

A point of clarification after some feedback received about this point. I believe that anyone can build wealth effectively on their own. But you'll make fewer mistakes, save money and build wealth faster if you do work with a professional financial planner...