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Um I'm gonna get started. I'll let people trickle in. Um So this evening, I'm doing a talk on making the most of your money. And I will specifically be focusing on budgeting, saving and investing. And then I've talked about the NHS pension because I couldn't help myself because I love it so much. Um Just a brief intro. Medic Money is I'm doing this on behalf of Medi Money. I also work for, for them. Um So I have my fingers in a few pies if you know me. So I'm head of finance at mind the bleep. And I also work as one of the experts experts at Medic Money. I am a chartered accountant and a doctor. Hence the role Medic Money was founded by Tommy and Ed. Tommy and Ed are GPS. Ed used to be a chartered accountant just like me. And he's a chartered tax adviser and he's a qualified independent financial adviser. I know nuts. I've got enough letters after my name, but he's got plenty. Um So their aim when they started me, money was to help fellow doctors um improve their financial literacy. And so they have a fantastic podcast um they provide lots of free resources online and they also have a really, really good course, um which I will very briefly talk about at the end. Um, things you might want to check out in the meantime, is that not only do we have the main Medics money podcast? I hope you can see my cursor. Um We also have a special podcast just for medical students called. What Medical School doesn't teach us. It's aimed at medical students and uh people in the very early years of their medical careers. Um The podcast, it is a podcast. Um It's also got its own website. We've also got a guide. Uh it's worth following because the kind of talks we do, they tend to be more geared towards people in their early careers. So very much topics like I I'm doing today rather than ones about the NHS pension, for example, or things that are closer to retirement for those in their senior um years in, in their, in their consultant years. Um Also, uh medic money does a 12 week financial wellbeing course and that covers literally everything in detail from um budgeting, which we're going to do a brief bit of today, but it goes all the way through from to like investing to owning a limited company to your pensions. It's very detailed, very small cohort. Um It tends to be pretty much very senior registrars or consultants attending this course or GPS. Um But if, if you're sort of at the mid or tail end of your training or if you are, um, a GP trainee, especially, it's really worth coming to these because they help also with giving you an idea of what you're gonna do with your finances if you decide to go down the GP partnership route. So that's my little brief spiel on them. I am sorry, I am a chartered accountant and doctor. My parents still don't love me and they want me to do law as well, but I said no. Um, and I'm currently in F four. I'm loing in A&E, um, and I work with my next money, um, and do stuff like this on my Friday evenings. You're welcome. Before I started my stuff I wanted to talk about phenomics and that's all I'm gonna say, Laz and will, I'd love you to introduce yourselves, Laz. I'll let you go first and then, um, tell us a little bit about Omics. Sure. Hi. My name is LA. Um, I'm currently an a CS anesthetics trainee based in East London. Um, and Phonics is something that I've been working on with the Will over the last year or so. Um, I've got some slides to show you, but before I go on to that I'll let, uh, will introduce himself and tell you a little bit about his background as well. Hi, Ron, sir. Um, my name is Will, I'm an engineer by background. Um, sort of worked in informatics research before. Um but now working as an fy one at Chelsea and Westminster in London. Lovely. Share my slide side. I stopped sharing mine. So ideally be able to share your so it should be entire screen. So that's it. Yes. Yeah. Can you see that? I can see that? Lovely. Um So basically the idea for uh came from AAA place that I think all of you in the audience right now could probably relate to, given that you're attending a financial wellbeing themed uh webinar on a Friday evening. It's clearly something that, that matters to you as it should. Um So essentially the problem was, and again, I'm sure you'll agree with me. Uh is that there's quite a few issues with regards to uh the way in which we are paid and the way in which we are taught about pay or, or rather not taught about pay, which makes, um which causes quite a lot of stress amongst lots of healthcare workers. So, if I had to list these out first and foremost, I think pay slips um from the get go are a little bit confusing. Um It's hard to really make sense of all these various numbers that are floating around these uh different parts of the page and are written under various different codes as well. All of it seems to be in a completely different language and it's not something that I certainly was ever taught about whilst I was in medical school. And when I received my first pay slip, I didn't know how to access it. And even when I did, I didn't really know what any of them meant. So I'd say that's issue. Number one, the second issue is that we do change employers quite regularly compared to the general population will be changing jobs at least once every year in terms of changing trust. And it may be even more frequent than that if you have jobs in psychiatry or whatever, where the uh where the body that pays you may change quite, quite frequently. And that's not something that HMRC is particularly geared to uh deal with. Then on top of that, perhaps past F one, you might start picking up locum work every now and then to supplement your income. That often means that you get another assignment number or a separate payslip or it gets incorporated with your original payslip. Either way, it's essentially a recipe for disaster. And all of these issues means that quite often a lot of healthcare workers will be deducted inappropriately and they may not really realize that that's happening. And you can go about trying to understand these deductions and screening for errors manually, but this obviously takes quite a lot of time and effort. So to put it into context and I'm just gonna briefly tell you my story and how this idea came about. So in 2020 I started f one about six months in, I basically thought, you know, what enough is enough. I've got paid slightly different amounts every month. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Um, so I tried to basically learn as much as I can about pay and deductions and try to be a bit more financially literate. So the way that I went about it is that I spent weeks reading through all these money saving experts, expert, um, er, articles and HMRC um, blog posts and all sorts of things just to try and wrap my head around how things like pa ye um, national Insurance, et cetera works. I emailed the BMA several times just to get them to explain how my contract works and um, various other issues regarding how I should be paid in the first place. I created this awful spreadsheet which I had to manually input data from every single pale that I received. And it's something that I, that I was doing up until quite recently and then every now and then I'd think that maybe I was owed a bit of money. I wouldn't be particularly confident about it. But uh based on my calculations, I thought perhaps there's a chance that I might be owed a little bit of money. Maybe I was overtaxed throughout this time. So I'd spend about an hour on a hol to HMRC, stumble through some sort of spiel and hope that they take pity on me. And give me a rebate. Anyway, that was how I tried to deal with that issue. But then more recently, I've had the pleasure of working with Will and, and who's one of our other other developers to try and produce a more elegant solution to this issue, which I know does affect a lot of healthcare workers across the country. So how phonics works? We'll, we'll do a demo for, for you in a second. But the idea is that this entire process that I just described, which I was doing manually has been streamlined for you. And instead of taking well months to do it, you can do it in about five minutes. So you can upload all your payslips. You don't need to index it. You don't need to figure out when it was from. You can just upload it basically in a couple of clicks. It can uh interpret the data from the payslips and produce a dashboard where you can basically visualize your income uh in a way that makes sense. So you can say, see what your gross income was, what your net income was, how much the A ye you spent et cetera. Uh There's also ways in which you can actually interrogate it and figure out, OK, what were my tax codes? When did my tax codes change? Uh And figure out if there's any areas where there may have been any errors as well. And finally given that we're in this um age essentially where A I is becoming AAA bigger and bigger part of our lives. I mean, nowadays, people almost don't really use Google that much anymore because Chat GPT and Gemini have uh superseded it. Um We wanted to try and make the most of that newly available um uh technical capabilities as well and try and create some sort of almost human interface where you might put all your, all your, all your um payslips in, you might get some sort of uh data from it, but you may still have questions about what certain things mean. You may not know what your tax code means. You may not uh really understand uh how income tax and national insurance means uh works and you might wanna get a clearer breakdown of that. And that's where the A I advisor comes in. So it was basically trained in such a way that it is able to answer a lot of the questions that you may have about issues like income tax and that insurance and make those answers specific to you as well because this A R advisor has an understanding of your financial situation as well based on the payslips that you've uploaded. So essentially all of that together is designed to make this process as simple and effective as possible. All you you need to do is download your payslips, put it onto phonics and then interact with the A I advisor and basically develop A better understanding of how all of this stuff works. Uh So we are still very much in a relatively early stage in our development. We're still collecting a lot of feedback from our users and trying to figure out how we can make this product better and better and better so that it can basically address all the needs uh that NHS workers across the country have. Um So we've both introduced ourselves. The only person who's not here is an who's uh who was a doctor. He's now um working as a software developer and he's uh technically very gifted and has been um helping build this. Um And I'm gonna hand over to will to actually take you through phonics just so you can see how it works. Uh Shall I does that work? Stop sharing and will you back? Hi, everyone. I'm not sure if it's gonna let me share the right screen here cos I've got two up. Oh, there we go. It did. Oh, yeah, it's a quick entire screen. There we go. Can everyone see this again? Yep. It's working. Lovely. Brilliant. So, yeah, so this is phenomics. Um So you'll go to our go to our website sign in this is what the app looks like. I'll just run you through very fast. So these are all, like I said, I'm an fy one. I've been working for uh well, since August. Um So you just click on this, upload all your pay slips, it then reads all of them very fast and then you'll see your summary of your pay from here so far. So this is how much I've been paid in total. This is how much deductions I've had. This is the net income. So how much has actually gone into my bank? And then really, the rest of it all goes through our A I. So, um, it's just if anyone's used Chat GBT, it's basically exactly the same. The reason we did this is, you know, there's lots of different views that you can have to your data. There's lots of different questions you might have. We tried to make something very generic so that you could basically answer whichever question you have, um, whether it be about, you know. Yeah, tax codes, how much you paid all of that stuff. Um, I've sort of gone through and had a bit of a conversation with our A I here. So I first said, you know, how much, how much have I actually paid in tax this year? It sort of talks you through how much I was paid. This is part of your income tax. Um, a lot of thing that trips a lot of people up is understanding their tax code. So, um, I've asked here, you know, what does my tax code mean? And I think the difference, it kind of highlights the difference between, um, going on to something like Chat GBT versus using R one is that it actually accesses, you know, it, you've got all your pali data on there. So you don't ask questions about generically, what does a tax code mean? It's, you know, this is, I asked it, what does my tax code mean? And this is my tax code and I sort of break it down so I won't read through all of this stuff. Um, this is, er, Medis Money can, can do all of that. Um, but uh yeah, so, uh this is, uh, so I then asked it sort of have I received the correct amount and pay uplift? Um, and then it sort of walked through. So obviously we've changed, our contracts was able to do stuff like check whether you have paid the right amount, um, which I happened to be, it was correct to me. Um, and then sort of walked through the calculations, basically you're meant to be able to ask anything related to your pay. Um, and so if I ask you something, now, one of the questions that a lot of people were keen to know is, um, you know, uh, yeah, how do I claim work expenses? That seems to be quite a common question people have. So, let's see if our, let's see if our, a I can handle that and is not going to make me upset on a live demo. Mhm. Yep. So here we go. It'll, it'll sort of walk you through which bits you're able to claim back how to claim it all of this stuff. OK? With links out to, to the relevant resources. Um So, yeah, that, that's really it um it's designed to be very simple to use. Um And then yeah, we can answer any questions from there if anyone has any. Yeah, I'd just like to emphasize that we're at this stage, we're really looking for, for feedback from, from people who are interested. So I posted the link in the chat. Um You can create a free account, you can try it out tonight. Um And just feel free to get in touch with us, you know, through linkedin, uh email, whatever. We'd be really, really keen to get your opinion um on how you found it. And also if there's any other features or uh tools that you think would make it an even more valuable resource for you because fundamentally what we wanna do is try and take the um take the sort of frustration out of managing finances for healthcare workers and, and speaking to all of you is, is one way in which we can identify these problems and come up with solutions. Brilliant. Thank you so much Laz. And will I really, really appreciate you coming in joining us and giving us a demo? Um I will invite you to say for the rest of the talk. Um And if any questions pop in in the chat, then please feel free to come back on if you don't, then um Laz has very kindly popped the email address there to get in touch with them. So if anyone has any questions um or feedback, then please do get in touch with them. Um, as you can tell they are lovely and they won't bite. Um So thank you very much. I'm gonna continue with my talk if that's ok. Brilliant. Um So, um let's just jump straight into everything. Um What I wanted to sort of start with is that nothing I'm gonna say is gonna blow your minds. It's not going to change your life, it's not going to completely revolutionize the way you do things. What it's going to do is hopefully help you identify little things that you could start doing to try and improve your financial situation by making the most of the money you have and the most of the money you're receiving because there's two ways of improving your financial situation, either making more money or using the money that you already have better. Now, making more money is fraught with its own issues because tax in this country is progressive, which means the more money you make, the more you get taxed. And so actually the amount of effort you put in becomes disproportionately pointless. Um because of the amount that you get taxed every time you try and make some more money. And I'm not saying don't make more money, but I am saying optimize what you have already to try and make, making more money as uncomfortable as possible. And so budgeting is a big part of that. Budgeting is a dirty word. Sometimes it makes people recoil. You don't have to use the word budgeting. You could use the word personal financial plan if you like or you can use being smart with your money, whatever you want to call it. Don't worry, you don't have to call it budgeting if you don't want to. But the important thing about understanding your financial situation is steeped in knowledge about what your financial situation is and something I note a lot when I'm speaking to people is very frequently, they'll tell me, I don't even look at my bank statement or I have no idea how much I've got in my account. I look at my personal account like, maybe 34 times a day, maybe that's too much. But I'm an accountant. So that's my job. Um, but if you are completely living with your head under the sand of what your bank account has in it or what your finances are doing that in itself is something that needs to change. Hence, knowledge, knowing exactly what's coming in, what's going out. Even if you make no other changes apart from actually just making an effort to know what's going on can make a huge difference to you, being able to influence what's going on. Now, I keep, uh, I don't keep a spreadsheet. I used to keep a spreadsheet but um my spreadsheet is now part of my budgeting spreadsheet. So I don't need a separate one for just tracking things. Um I also have um a Monzo bank account which helps me track things really well because you get instant notifications of when there's been any transactions, which really helps and then you can actually toggle each one so that it has its own, you know, put it in its own topic and then you can analyze what you're spending on various things. So I find that really useful for me and in terms of knowledge of knowing what's going in and out, I have a very good idea of what's going in and out without really having to sit down and physically track it. It, it, because of the way my uh account works, I can actually look at things and have a constantly good idea of what's going on with it. So, knowledge is my, one of my biggest things, even if you do nothing else, but actually just find out what's going on with your finances that in itself is you've done your job for 2025 you can pat yourself on the back and then we can come back to this in 2026. Um paying yourself first is the next one and that is something Warren Buffett does. So when you, are you thinking about the way you spend your money, many people have told me, in fact, the majority of people have told me that they wait for the money to come in and then their bills go out and then they go by what they want and then whatever's left over, they put into savings. Now, that's not paying yourself first. Paying yourself first is the money should come in the money. Then you can afford to put into savings reliably. Every month goes into savings first. Then you pay your bills and then whatever you left left over in the end is for you to play with and buy the things that you want. And that is the order it should be in not the first one. And so paying yourself first is making sure that you automate your savings and your investments every month so that they come out as automatically as your bills do and then whatever you have left over, you know, is for you to play with and you can do, put it into sinking funds, you can go enjoy yourself. But the important thing is that your savings and your investments come before everything else. And I will show you in a moment how you can go about figuring out the right amount to put in those because all these formulas of like 50 30 20 based on bills versus savings versus um disposable income. They don't work when you've got a cost of living crisis. When that, when inflation it doesn't marry up with pay rises when the cost of housing and rent and energy and food doesn't marry up with the cost of living and how much you're actually receiving in terms of your pay, all those formulas go out the window. You need something that is yours that is purely tailored to your personal financial situation. And it shouldn't be about you comparing yourself with others. It's exactly what works for you and I'll show you in a moment how you can do that. Then the next thing is reducing your outgoings. If you can reduce your outgoings even a little bit, then you're starting to make the most of the money you have rather than trying to make more money and having the same outgoings living under your means can be a very powerful way of building those savings to then blow on something fantastic later on. Um I'll tell you what we did. So my husband and I um we agreed that we will never ever buy coffees um out and about, you know, those coffees to go. We never buy them. If we're meeting a friend in a cafe, fine, we'll have a coffee. Um, but we won't make a habit of going into Costco or, or whatever and buying a coffee or in the hospital. We never buy a coffee. We have a really nice coffee machine that we've invested in and we take our own mugs and our own travel mugs and we have nice coffee that we take from home. Um, we do not buy coffee and that saves us a lot of money because if you think each coffee is between three and 4 lbs, which is insane. Um, and you do that every day that really mounts up. So that was something my partner and I decided we weren't going to do. And the second thing is we don't buy lunch when we're at work. We take packed lunches where possible, we take packed lunches and that significantly reduces our outgoings because food is really expensive. Now. Um, so if you were to just buy something simple, like a sandwich and a drink and perhaps a snack that can come to 10 lbs very, very easily. Um, without even thinking that's a lot of money than to be spending every day. That's if you're working five days a week, 50 lb a week, if you're, and then if you're doing that for a month, that's 200 lb a month. That's insane. You could, by doing a packed lunch, you can bring that down to less than three quid a meal and even less than that. So at the moment, the way we've managed to do it, we've got it down to less than 1 lb 50 a meal. Um, in taking our packed lunch, there is absolutely no need for us to spend that kind of money on lunches. We make healthier packed lunches from home that are convenient and we're saving money as we do it. So little things like that, finding little ways to reduce your outgoings. You don't have to do anything huge. You don't have to, you know, if, if, if there's something you really enjoy, like a gym membership that's a little bit more expensive than normal, as long as you enjoy it and you're using it properly, there's absolutely no need for you to then go without, but there are certain things you can look at and go. Am I just, is that just senseless spending? And that's what you want to look at. Um and then reviewing this regularly. So I used to when I first started doing this, did it every three months because I wanted to understand what the impact of what I was doing was on my finances as I started to get into those habits and it takes between six and eight weeks of doing something for it to become a habit. I then started reviewing our budget every six months and we include fun things in our budget. So we have an eating out budget. We have a budget for holidays. We have a budget for this is embarrassing, spending money on our dogs because we buy them a lot of jumpers don't ask. Um they're cold and small. Um So yeah, we have, we have those things built into our budget. We're not not having fun. We're just really aware of what we're spending. And as a result, we're really comfortable with where, where our money is going. And that brings me to something called mindset, which don't roll your eyes at me. I know easy, easy peasy. But abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset are one of the biggest things I had to get my head round. When I started doing this, I didn't become good at money because I was an accountant. I became good at money because I started to understand more about what a scarcity mindset was and what an abundance mindset was. A scarcity mindset is when you've got all this capitalism programming telling you that you don't have enough that you need the next new thing that you're not good enough without XYZ um that your lifestyle needs to keep up with your pay in some way. That's a scarcity mindset. It's your brain telling you that you need, need, need an abundance mindset is your reprogramming yourself to be satisfied with what you have and actually value what you have. But also invest in a way that you continue to value what you gain. So for example, the man, there's, there's that story about a poor man who has to buy a new pair of boots every year because he can't afford to pair. So he buys like a, you know, a cheap pair of boots every year. And then there's a man who has enough money to buy a very nice pair of boots and that boosts last him 50 years and by the time you get to those same 50 years for the poor man that poor man has spent probably double triple what the rich man spent in the first place to buy those nice pair of boots. And that's what I mean by abundance mindset. So by saying, I'm going to invest in something good that something lasts long. That is going to give me that payback and it's going to make my money work for me, even though you're probably going to spend more in that moment than someone with a scarcity mindset. You're actually investing in yourself and you're making your future financial sort of situation better as a result. And that's, that's the scarcity versus abundance mindset. So now, um, I really put it into practice actually, especially when you've got all this advertising around you saying this is you need this, you need that. I like buying dresses. I like buying dresses with pockets. I'm really obsessed with them and now I practice something called the 48 hour rule, which is I will look at something and if after 48 hours, I'm still thinking about it going, I would actually really like that. I go ahead and get it or I decide not to, but more often than not after 48 hours, I kind of realized I can live without it. It's not that special. It was just a bit of an impulsive thing and I was just caught up in the moment. And that 48 hour rule has been so good for pretty much most things that I come across because I'm one of those Aldi middle aisle impulse people and it definitely works for me. So, um, the 48 hour rule is something I really like for myself, um, for making sure that I'm not impulse spending and I'm actually spending mindfully. So mindset has a huge thing to do with this. So budgeting um is hard because you have to find a way that works for you and sometimes that takes a lot of trial and error. Now you can go for the simple spreadsheet. Um I love a good spreadsheet personally. Um So II am going to see if I can share my um share screen and go here, shower and to screen. There we go, there we go. So hopefully you should be able to see my spreadsheet. Um If you can't, then just um unmute and say something. Um And so this is a free spreadsheet that's available on that QR code. I'll come back to it in a moment. It's um I've made it, but it's, and it's been, um, it's on mind the Bleeps website. Basically, it gives you an opportunity to put in all your earnings and you can split your earnings weekly, monthly, yearly. You can use your payslips to do this. Um It's, it's fairly straightforward. There'll be stuff that you won't be putting in here and that's absolutely fine and there's lots of room to put stuff that you might not have included in here. For example, then there will be breakdown of spending. And again, this is a really good thing to do. Um, because it helps you identify exactly what's going out. I've put here stuff like bills and then a lot more space to do other stuff if you want insurance, food and drink, which you might actually start when you start doing the food and drink bit, you might be surprised what you're spending, including those vending machine cokes because they are expensive. Um, your travel and your car, credit cards and loans, savings and pensions. Um, even, even things like laundry and dry cleaning. I've included in here pocket money for your kids pet food, you know, which has gone up for us. Um, and, and, you know, I've included quite a lot in here. I think there's, if you find something that's not in here that you're going to add, then send it to me because that'll be, I'm, I'm willing to bet you, I probably thought about it. So lots in there. Um, so this, what this does is it helps you break down all of your spend. So what I suggest doing is going back, um, three months. So using a three month period, um, that is fairly typical for you and putting all of that in here so that, you know what's going on, what you can then do is that will be in this column will be monthly total and that will be calculated from all of this. But in the desired column, you can actually put what you'd like to spend ie if you wanted to cut down on something that can go in there and you can be, you know, be realistic, but also you can be adventurous and, and ambitious as well. This is literally just something for you. It's not a test, you're not gonna get in trouble if it doesn't happen. But it's helpful to have something you can visualize and something that you can actually physically see um to, to act as a goal. And then all of that gets put into the spending summary here. And so your total monthly that's actually been calculated goes there and then your desired is here. So it gives you a bit of a breakdown of the goals that you're trying to reach. And then the results here are based on your actuals and it's just based on total income versus total spend. If it's a positive number, it means you're spending less than you earn, which is brilliant. If it's a negative number, it means that you're outspending and you're going to, you're at risk of building up debt. It's quite a just a good way of staying on top of things. But the biggest thing I think will be helpful will be this tab here because it will help you set goals which is very important. So I am going to go back and there we go. Um So that's the free mind, the bleak budgeting spreadsheet. That's what I use. Um So that is actually my genuine spreadsheet that you just saw there without any numbers in it. I've just shared my own spreadsheet that I use. Um, if spreadsheets aren't for you and I know they're not for everybody. I myself love a good spreadsheet but if they make your brain hurt and your eyes water, then don't worry, there are other things you can do. Um, I haven't tried any of these. These are just from my research. Hence the big fat, not endorsed by me money thing in the title. This is purely to give you an idea of actually go away and have a look, see if there's something you like. Most of these have free versions. So you can give them a, go see what you think. And if they work for you then absolutely brilliant. If they don't, you've tried it and you can move on. Um, so it's absolutely, these, these are the top ones that I came across. There are plenty more, um, and see what comes across. If there are ones that you really, really like and think it would be really good idea for me to have a look at them, just drop me an email. Um, and I'll be more than happy to have a look and maybe even talk about it a bit more if it is really that good. Um And so between my spreadsheet, um it's my banking apps that really make a big difference. So I have Monzo and Monzo and revolute. Um I don't have starting and chase, but I've heard very good things about them. Um and what I love about them is that they give me instant transaction notifications. So as long as soon as there's something I see it immediately and I know whether that was supposed to come out or not. Um So you're not then looking at your bank statement as an abstract concept at the end of the month, having no idea whether where that was when it happened by having that instant notification, it almost gives me a sort of like a time stamp of what when it happened, I recall it immediately. I can picture it and that helps me keep track of things really, really well. Um So that's what I really like about them and then the savings pots. Um So Monzo savings pots, I don't know about the rest. Um give you interest, they're not much three point something but they give you interest. Um And they're so easily accessible. Um They are literally like having little pots, they're really nice. And um so we actually have different little pots with names and that makes a big difference for us because naming your savings and naming your thinking funds can be a really, really good way of motivating you. Um, so we've got one for our holiday. We've got one for our dog's hydrotherapy because sadly, she suffered a spinal cord injury. Um, we've got one for, um, what have we got one for emergency fund. So we've got a fair, you know, we've got a few and each of them have names and it just, it shows up in the same app. So it helps us see what's happening all at once. Um So using apps that are user friendly and using a way of tracking your spending that works for you um can really help you with your budgeting. There's no one size fits all just because something doesn't work for you doesn't mean there's something wrong wrong with you. It is literally just about finding the option that works for you. And once you find that it almost slots into place and you start finding it much, much easier to track what you're doing. But all of this can only happen if you have the right mindset. And so you have to be ready and you have to be in the right place mentally to start doing these things, to then be able to make sense of them and find the right one for you. It doesn't work the other way around where some apps gonna magically make you really, really good with money. So that's, that's my biggest takeaway when it comes to budgeting. Feel free to stick any comments or questions in, in the chat and I'm more than happy to come to them. Um, but I'm going to move on from budgeting and talk about saving. So savings are really important and it's, and, and the most important thing about savings is not blindly saving, blindly saving is when you're saying I'm just gonna put this random stuff in here. I don't know why I've got it in here. I don't know what it's doing. I don't know how much interest it's got and I have no idea how to access it and you will probably not be surprised by the amount of people who do that. Actually. Weirdly, I've got a few people who are friends with me, so not even acquaintances, actual friends who don't have savings accounts and that just shocks me. It's shocking and appalling and I'm very unhappy about it. They hear about it. Don't worry. Um, if you don't have a savings account, please get a savings account. I'm not going to be mean to you, but I'm thinking mean thoughts. Um, so there's different savings. Um, emergency funds are the biggest one. Emergency funds. There's lots of different rules that float around. I say at least six months worth of your usual outgoings, but 12 months is um, probably the best if you have a mortgage and you have dependent. So it should be based on your actual, your own lifestyle. It should also be incorporating your, if you have any. Um, income protection or critical illness cover. If for example, you live with your parents and you don't actually have as much in terms of outgoings. All of those things vary. And so I like six months worth of usual outgoings that are easily accessible. And so the biggest thing with emergency funds is depending on what your life looks like. Your emergency fund might actually be really big. And I'm talking like 10,000 lbs plus. And if that's the case, it can be feel really eye watering to have that kind of money just sitting in a sh low interest savings account, that's not doing anything. And it can feel really tempting to lock it away for a higher interest rate or to try and invest it. But that's not what the purpose, that's not the purpose of an emergency fund, an emergency fund is there in case you suddenly have a need for this money and it needs to be right there. It's a way of not getting into debt, not using credit cards as a safety net, but actually having a physical emergency fund there for you. So keeping it liquid and accessible is really important for your emergency fund. And the beauty of the emergency fund is once you have your emergency fund, you don't have to make other savings liquid. You can have your savings locked away and that can mean you can get more back for it. So the emergency fund is almost giving you permission to say I have got the right amount of money that is liquid that I need right now, in case something happens, everything else that I'm able to put away, I can put away for a higher return. And that's what's so im important about the emergency fund. Now, next I will talk about is tax efficient savings. So, um, tax efficient savings in the UK, if you are not saving tax efficiently, you're in any uh dividends from investments, any interest and any capital gains from investments that aren't in a tax wrapper are taxable. So tax efficient savings come under is a, um, is a, is an individual savings account. Um, you're allowed as many is a as you want. Now, the rules have really changed now. So you can, you can have as many is a, as you want, they come as cash or stocks and shares and then there's a special kind of isa called a lifetime isa in a lifetime isa you can come as it comes as cash or stocks and shares and you can have both or either you are allowed to save up to 4000 lbs a year. Um, the government will top it up by 25%. So that becomes 5000 lbs, but you are only allowed to use it for three reasons. The first is to buy your first home. However, there are limits on how much that home can be worth. So if you're buying near London, for example, the lifetime ISA might actually tie your hands, so be careful and actually look into it. Um, when you're retiring or when you have less than 12 months to live, those are the three reasons you're allowed to withdraw from your ISA if you withdraw for any other reason, you suffer a 25% penalty. So that's not 25% of as in what, what the government bonus was, it's 25% of the entire balance, which means it's actually, it's also including some of the balance that you put in. So, but it's, it's, it's 4000 lbs a year. So it's not like all your savings but um lifetime I SAS are excellent because of that 25% government bonus. So it's really worth looking into even if you're not ready to buy a house yet, if you think you're going to buy a house. Um, and you're a first time buyer and you are pretty sure that the house you're going to buy is going to be under the limit um, for the value of the house that you're allowed to buy with a lifetime isa it's definitely worth getting then the rest of your 20,000 lb limit. So I a have a 20,000 lb limit um, of how much of how much you can deposit per tax year, the rest of that can go in your cash or stocks and shares isas in a cash isa, the interest you make is tax free in a stocks and shares. Isa the interest dividends, capital gains you make are tax free. Um And that's, that's tax, that's tax efficient savings. Um The 11 thing I haven't included in that tax efficient saving actually is premium bonds. I put it in the emergency fund bit, but premium bonds are, you can save up to 50,000 in premium bonds. They're easily liquid. So it means you can cash them in pretty much straight away. They are very easily accessible. So they're a good liquid place to store your emergency fund. And because you don't get interest, what you get instead is entered into a prize draw that um is then done every month and then you win between 25 to a million. Um And all those winnings are tax free and they can get reinvested so you can save up to 50,000 in them. Any winnings are tax free. Um over an average return for most people. The majority of people with premium bonds is about 4.5% using that winnings method. Um And so premium bonds is another tax efficient place to look if you have run out of places to put your savings. Um So long term savings using investing. So the reason I talk about emergency funds um is because I like you to be able to invest investing is more likely to be inflation, inflation erodes cash because the interest that you make on cash is far less usually than inflation. So instead I prefer investing, I use a stocks and shares isa and another stack tax efficient way of investing is a CIP so a self invested per personal pension. Um The this is tax efficient because it grosses up what you put in by 20%. If you're a higher rate tax payer, then you have to reclaim the other 20%. But it, let's, it basically grosses up what you've put in and then you can take that out later on. So when you retire, you can't actually access this until you retire, you then pay income tax on what you take out then and that's why it's tax efficient. Um If you are, have maximized your stocks and shares isa and in terms of personal allowance, there's a few issues there. Um I won't go into them unless you really, really want me to. Um, then a general investment account is where you can do more investing. Unfortunately, general investment accounts aren't tax efficient. So any dividends and capital gains will be taxable there. We don't recommend investing short term because you're more likely to suffer losses. That way we suggest that the, uh, the stock market has sort of a five year cycle where it kind of goes up and then down and then up, but further up than it was last time and then down and then up every five years. So overall, it's growing like this but it has these volatile moments over a five year period. And so trying to invest short term is more likely to cause you to suffer a loss than it is to cause a gain. Um Don't ask me about crypto. I have no idea about it. Medic money isn't a big fan of it. So we don't really mention it apart from, don't ask us about it and savings pots and sinking funds. That's what I talked about with my Monzo account that um I have savings pots in there because it's money that I want easily accessible. It's still making a little bit of interest, but it's got a name. So it's keeping me motivated. How is that for everybody? Is there any questions or anything anyone wanted to ask before I move on? Nope. Um I'm keeping an eye on the chat so um do pop in there now investing. Um I'm not going to give you a big lesson on investing apart from you can do it. It's not rocket science, it's not impossible and you're not too late, you can do it. The important thing about investing is just getting the hold of the basics. Uh You don't need to be an expert, even people who manage massive investment funds and investment banks aren't experts. They are, they do not have a crystal ball. They are using trends to try and figure out what the future might hold and no one could have predicted li trust. So honestly, you know, you're doing just fine. Um I have put these, these ones here, Dodo Hargreaves Landow. Trading 212 money saving expert at investopedia. All have really, really good guides. I have put not endorsed by Medics money because it's not, but I have looked at their guides and I am very, very impressed with them. Um, I think trading 212 and money saving expert have the most easy to um kind of digest guides. And then um the rest sort of build on that knowledge. You don't have to study, you don't have to become an expert. Like I said, you just have to learn what is investing. Um What are the different types of investment options? How much do fees cost that those are really the only things you need to start to figure out before you start investing. Um And then I've broken them into really easy steps which have a lot of decision making behind them. And that's what makes them really hard. The steps themselves are really easy. It's how you decide that makes it really hard. But the decision is very personal and there's no 100% right decision. This is, this is a difficulty, especially with us medics. We always feel like there is 100% right decision. There is an MCQ of what platform to choose and there is a right answer and that is not true. There is basically a platform that is right for you and doing a little bit of research and, and just choosing a platform and just getting started and learning as you go along is absolutely fine. Um So first of all, you want to decide whether you want your investments managed for you or what you want to do them yourself when they're managed for you, what you do is you get given a questionnaire and it helps you identify what your risk appetite is and based on your risk appetite, it recommends different packages. And so it really getting down to the basics, it will be something like a low risk, a medium risk and a high risk package. Then there's all sorts of other ones, but that's kind of just really simplifying it and then you just pay in your money either monthly or as lump sums whenever you want to and someone else decides what stocks and shares to buy on your behalf. They manage your funds for you. They charge you a fee to do so and you don't really do anything apart from put the money in the, um, other one where you manage it yourself is, um, you sorry, I've just, something just popped up and it's got me really confused, never mind. Um, so when you manage it yourself, you're buying the stocks and shares yourself, you're buying into the funds yourself. Um, you're seeing the performances, you can see the performances of the ones, they bought you for you, but it's very different when you do it yourself. Um, there are fees. So if you went with free trade, for example, there is a flat rate that they charge everybody and then you don't have any, uh, you only have the fees for each fund, um, and the stamp duty if you're buying, um, in Etfs, for example, but they have this flat fee. So regardless of how much you've invested, they have the same fee for everybody. Dodo, for example, has a fee based on your, the amount you've got invested. So, you know, it, it, it really is based on what you're investing, how much you're investing, how often you're investing, it will a different um platform will be right for you at different times of your investing journey. And so there's obviously never more than like all just one right answer. So once you've decided whether you want to do it for yourself or you want for it to be done for you, you choose a relevant platform because not all platforms have both options. Um So you do a little bit of research um and you find out which platform is more appropriate for what you'd like to do. Nutmeg, for example, you can't do self managed ones, they are managed for you um trading 212. And do you do yourself? Um so, but they do have funds. So, you know, it's, it's not all sort of just left on you. Um So based on that you decide which platform you want to go for. Um And then you make your investments tax efficient by using a stocks and shares isa and or a lifetime ISA and or a sip. And that way it's tax efficient and then you buy some low risk shares. So we say that in exchange traded funds, which is ETFS or real estate investment trusts, these are less volatile and less risky because they are basically funds that have been pre diversified for you. Um So rather than it being in one company or one organization, what's happened is someone has already purchased shares in various different organizations across and it could be across various different sectors. It could be in the same sector but across small, medium and large enterprises. But basically, it's a pre diversified fund in which you are now buying a share and that is slightly less risky than just buying shares in one particular company because you're not putting all your eggs in one basket. Hence, we sort of suggest having look looking into these etfs and rates when you're starting out because they are pre diversified for you. Um You might have heard of ones that are like the S and P 500 the FTSE or World Index. These are all funds and these are all diversified and pre diversified for you. So they're worth just looking into a few, there's no perfect one don't feel like just because I've gone in one, I should have gone in another one. It's, they all, they all have their own ups and downs, they all have their own. You, you know, because they, they, they're made up of different companies that have different outcomes at different times. You can't beat yourself up thinking there's one right answer because there isn't. And I think that's the biggest part of investing once you can get your head round, that it isn't an exact science that there isn't 100% right answer that there is just doing smart things and then not doing stupid things. Investing becomes a lot less scary. I don't think investing is hard. I think investing is scary and actually doing things to make sure that you are reducing your risk as much as possible. You're diversifying what you're investing in those can then make it slightly less scary. Then understanding your own risk appetite can make it even less scarier because you're aligning, aligning your investments to how you personally feel inside yourself about risk. And when you start doing that, it becomes a lot more palatable if you're trying to do massive risky things, but you as an individual are at risk of, it's always going to be uncomfortable and yucky and scary and there is absolutely no need to put yourself through that. Understand yourself, understand your risk appetite and then align your investing to you because it's completely personal. It's completely tailored and it doesn't have 100% right answer. But then going back to what I said about budgeting knowledge is power. Don't need to be an expert. Just learn the basics. Have a look at these places, have a read of the guides. They're really good. If you want a recommendation of where to start, start with the money saving expert. One because at least it's completely independent. Um do done and trading 212 are platforms. So there will be, you know, um some sort of sway towards their platforms, whereas money saving expert is completely independent. So it's actually, you know, if you wanted to start somewhere, that's where I'd start. And lastly, I wanted to touch on the NHS pension. And the reason I wanted to touch on this is because a lot of my junior colleagues are opting out of the NHS pension and I do not recommend that the NHS pension. It is really hard and eye watering when you see like 200 quid going out of on your, on your um pay slip and you could really do with it. Um And it feels like, well, what use is this to me, but actually the NHS pension is still a good pension. It's a defined benefit pension. So there are two types of pensions, defined benefit, which is that it tells you exactly what you're going to get for the rest of your life and defined contribution. That is there is a finite pot and when that pot runs out, it runs out, you might be 50 you might be 90 doesn't matter that pot has run out. Most if not all of the private sector runs on defined contribution. Now, they are not very good pensions. The NHS amongst others in the public sector are one of the last of the defined benefit pensions and they remain very good. The NHS pension pays out until death. So, you know what you're going to make every single month for the rest of your life until you die. Unfortunately, it's now linked to state pension age. It wasn't before in the previous NHS pension chapters in 2008 and 2000. Um I think it's 2 1995. Um it used to be 5055 but now it's linked to state pension age, which is annoying. So you need to have a plan B but it's still an, an excellent one to have when you hit state pension age, doesn't mean you can't retire before then. It just means that either you have to go for a reduced pay out if you want to retire early, which you can, you have the option or you just make some plans to cover the time between when you retire and when you hit state pension age, that's all um death in service benefit. So this is basically it pays out a lump sum to your dependents that you've nominated if you die before you take out your pension, um dependence benefits. This is if you've, oh, sorry, I've got a typo there, I need to sort that out. Um dependence benefits. So this is if you still have dependence um at the time that you're receiving your pension, you nominate those dependents and they still continue to receive a reduced pension out of your pension until they reach adult age. Um So dependence benefits are really, really crucial. Um And the most important thing is that your, your um pension is not gambled on the stock market. That is the other issue with defined contribution pensions in the private sector. You're putting in this money every month from your pay. Some fund manager or pension fund manager is then gambling it on the stock market which it can go up or down and then whatever they manage to make out of your, their gamble is what your pension is worth. So it's not even like there's a certainty as to what it might be worth. You have no idea what it's going to be worth until you draw it down. Unlike that, the NHS pension is government backed. It's inflation beating and it's not gambled on the stock market. So if you're thinking, should I opt out of the P NHS pension? Because I could really do with that money that's currently going out in, in my um bank on my, on my payslip. We, we really recommend that you don't. It's, it's a good pension. It is still one of the better pensions out there. Um, and, and it would be, um, you'd, you really should be talking to an independent financial advisor and crunching some numbers before you make a decision like that. It's not a light decision to make. Um, if you have any questions, um, I'm just, uh, I'm Sara at Medic money.co.uk, um, or finance at mind the bleak.com um LAZ and will I've just put their um emails there as well for you. And Matthew is the brains behind Medics money. He handles all of our um stuff at Medics money. So if you have any questions or feedback, then you can send that to him as well. Um Would uh I can hang around probably for a few minutes if there are any questions. Um But otherwise I think I'm gonna close it there guys. Thank you, Sarah. It's all right. Ok. I'm gonna assume there are no questions. However, if you think of something, then just email me, I'm easily reachable. Um And thank you so much for coming and watching. Thank you so much, Will and Las for giving us a demo of phonics and thanks brother for organizing. Thanks, Hermione. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Bye bye.