Podcast: Tracking Expenses with Dan Jovevski from WeMoney

We stop into Perth again, where Dan Jovevski (CEO of WeMoney) joins us on the podcast to discuss all things expense tracking and financial wellbeing. Just as well this flight is going to Perth, because this is a long one!

wemoney review

Introduction

WeMoney is probably the best expense tracking application I have found. I recently did a WeMoney review of their software and my experience using it.

I was pretty suspicious of it at the start, but after getting to know Dan, I knew he was legit and was someone I wanted in my corner on my ‘Financial Independence Dream Team’. Plus, his software fitted in really well with my ‘Steps to Financial Independence’ with its awesome expense tracking and budgeting features.

WeMoney is not just about budgeting and tracking expenses though, Dan and I unpack some of the additional features and resources, as well as some of the exciting updates and new additions coming to WeMoney in 2021.

We chat all about Dan’s financial independence Journey, and his top tips for educating yourself and reaching FI.

Podcast – Dan from WeMoney

Show Notes

Dan Jovevski’s top financial tips

  • Track your spending (with a tool like WeMoney of course!)
  • Educate yourself: financial independence comes from amassing enough information to make smarter financial decisions. Regularly making smarter financial decisions allows you to chart the life that you want.
  • Nobody cares about your situation but you. No one will remember the clothes you wore at that 21st birthday party or how you looked, but the money you spent on that could have provided a lasting financial benefit for your entire lifetime if it was invested. Prioritise yourself – don’t think of spending money on anyone besides yourself on silly stuff like keeping up with the Joneses. Should I buy a $100 t-shirt or should I wear a $10 t-shirt and invest $90? What is the opportunity cost to your long-term financial future?

Dan Jovevski’s best reads

  • The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed and Happiness by Morgan Housal

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The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness
  • Ideal for Gifting
  • Ideal for a bookworm
  • Compact for travelling
  • Housel, Morgan (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)

  • Dollars and Sense: How we Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter by Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler

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Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter
  • Hardcover Book
  • Ariely, Dr. Dan (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 288 Pages - 11/07/2017 (Publication Date) - Harper (Publisher)

  • Principles by Ray Dalio

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Principles: Life and Work
  • It can be a gift option
  • Easy to read text
  • This product will be an excellent pick for you
  • Hardcover Book
  • Dalio, Ray (Author)

Transcript

Captain FI 0:07
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard Captain FI the Financial Independence Podcast.

Good day, welcome to an episode of Captain FI, the Financial Independence Podcast where I open the copy to some of the best and brightest in personal finance, as well as those who have reached or are on their way to financial independence. Before we get started today, remember anything on the show is provided for general information only, and should not be taken as constituting a professional advice. You should always do your own research when making any financial decision. So this morning, we’ve got Dan joining us from the west coast. Hey, john Dan,

Dan Jovevski 1:06
doing great. How about you?

Captain FI 1:07
Yeah, not too bad, man. It’s, uh, it’s pretty hot. over here to the middle of the day. I’m sheltering from the UV. And it’s nice to be back inside on a comfy seat

Dan Jovevski 1:17
after social.

Captain FI 1:18
Okay, so first up, I know, we’ve spoken before quite a bit, I even had a chat to you on your podcast for the benefit of everyone who’s hearing about you, and we money expense tracking for the first time, could you just give us a little bit of a background on yourself and the we money tool?

Dan Jovevski 1:42
Absolutely, Captain FI, I think I won’t go too far down memory lane. But for your audience, I spent the last 13 to 14 years in the finance, technology space, and your career within banking, both bank Western and OB, you would say sense of disillusionment after that short three year journey, and then really started the path of entrepreneurship with our first company, which was switch my loan to condrieu, where we help people achieve better rates on their mortgages, with the group buying products that we had. And then I deal with a lot of stuff, grew up and got married, had a child bought a home, spent a little bit of time in venture capital, helping a large family offices in Singapore, deploy capital all around the world and you interesting technologies, and the last year in my life has been focusing on the the solving the problem of money management, and helping more people get ahead financially with the money. We money in a nutshell is a financial wellness platform that helps people get the most out of their financial lives. And we do that in three ways. To begin with, number one, tracking your spending number two, managing your credit health. So you have the same information the banks to around understanding your credit profile. And thirdly is creating a community of really passionate people helping one another on the topic of money, where you can get hints and tips from real individuals that are navigating the same money challenges, and so many wins, that we all come across. So that’s my background away money in a nutshell.

Captain FI 3:18
It’s also men, I sort of had quite a bit of a plan with way money Initially, I was just reviewing it on the blog, because I saw quite a few people talking about it on social media, and I’ve quite enjoyed it. It’s quite fun. You know, I’m always getting shamed by your budget telling me that i’ve i’ve exposed budget. But it’s a it’s a good nudge, good nudge in the right direction. I looked into the social community side of things. And it’s quite an interesting little community you’re breeding that in it’s a, I’ve heard it referred to as the Instagram for finance.

Dan Jovevski 3:58
Yes, that? That’s correct. Yeah, we think look to go not to go too deep too early on on the show. We think there’s the reason the reason why we exist fundamentally is that we think that the conversation and the topic about money is often a hard, boring and confusing topic. And for people to get really engaged about the topics of money management, you know, we couldn’t go out there and sort of recreate what currently already exists, which is, you know, probably a slew of other expense tracking applications, the pain that people get from trying to do this manually via spreadsheets, and really injecting a lot of fun into that process of managing your budgets and making that really something that you want to engage with. And that’s that’s a challenge that we’re trying to overcome. I don’t think we’ve solved that just yet. The roadmap we manage is very big and fast that if you have a lot of artificial intelligence and machine learning and the latest in behavioral science techniques to help nudge you into some of these better financial outcomes, which really goes into the deeper areas of behavior, Do a psychology and behavioral economics. And we feel like our contribution in that space could could really unlock, you know, a better financial future by getting to the point where you’re really fighting yourself and your own brain and evolution when it comes to managing your money. And if we can help you illuminate some of those thought processes or biases into your relationship with money that could lead to better long term financial outcomes. And to the point of community, we really think that the next generation of conversation about money if we maybe even go back historically, and, you know, I want to point out these figures or what we call financial luminaries in the best possible why because I think they’ve helped the generation before us really understand that money. If the listeners to your show might be old enough to remember a gentleman by the name of Paul Clitheroe, who was the head of, or a financial commentator for money magazine was very, very popular in the 90s, he probably single handedly opened up that conversation about money and finances to all the people, followed by somebody that we might know now which was Kashi. These morning show program talking about money and the topic of financial services to a large group of people. I think a name which will be familiar to us all, you know, after Kashi, you would would argue that the Barefoot investor, Scott paper has taken that conversation. But what Scott paper effectively did with his, with his book, which has now been sold over 1.5 million copies, is born, a generation of disciples that look just like you and I, that have the conversation about money with complete strangers online on platforms like Reddit Instagram, where they’re really spreading the word about their own financial situations to people. And we think this is a really unique time in history where the topic of financial services is becoming more de stigmatized by the day. And people, especially millennials and Gen Z’s are really craving authenticity in their conversation about money. They’re not turning to what you would call trusted experts in this space via, you know, large financial institutions. They’re looking for, you know, people in IRL, like, in real life, who are talking about this topic with other people and really getting their first hand opinion about what it means to you know, save money on deals and discounts, select the right products, where do I invest my money to have the right superannuation balance? The topics are endless, but we think there’s a, there’s a real interesting, long term trend that we’re we’re leaning into, where we can bring that conversation about money in a really safe and trusted environment. so other people can consume that information, and get ahead financially. So that’s really the, the essence of avoiding money. And the problem we’re trying to solve here around this topic of money, which which may be high, boring, confusing for a lot of people. The barefoot was probably one of the big ones for me.

Captain FI 7:59
I mean, I’ve always been okay with money. But that was something that really helped bring it into the spotlight. The thing that continually comes up, when I asked pretty much experts in personal finance, and people that have reached financial independence, I asked them, what’s the most powerful thing you did towards fire? And most of them say tracky. spending it. It’s just like, this hidden secret, but it’s staring us right in the face. So Dan, why do you think tracking your spending is important?

Dan Jovevski 8:35
tracking your spending is really the kernel of good money management. We all work pretty hard. You know, some of us who work incredibly long hours, some of us are probably working two or three jobs, you know, side hustling, anything, that little bit of income. And we often have expenses that we run into every single day, you know, going to the petrol station to buy ourselves a cup of coffee, do we buy a snack bar? Do we have subscriptions that are coming out, or things that we totally have got to care, it’s all still in our savings sort of day on day. There’s a great saying called you cannot. You cannot manage what you don’t measure. And I think expense tracking is really the root of good financial management, and getting to an understanding where you can really understand where your money is going. Understanding the split of where your money is hitting attempts of different categories, is a way that a lot of people can really understand to get much more closer to how much they’re spending. But more importantly, answering or that age old question or nag that you probably have heard from your parents time In Memoriam which is you need to not spend as much as you weren’t. Because if you do that, and that’s obviously a path to ruin, a path to excessive debt, and really not a fulfilled life. If you constantly get into a position where you’re always, you know, hitting bank accounts zero from your next payday. So tracking your expenses is the first thing that anybody should should do to really get a grasp of where they’re where their money is going.

Captain FI 10:16
Unless you’re a state or a government, right, in which case you can consistently spend into deficit and then just print more money.

Dan Jovevski 10:23
Correct, correct. And then pass that over for future generations to pay that to pay that often. Yeah, we think that you should live your best life, or should be able to live your best life as you can in this life, because you probably won’t, there’s no life to think if I remember these quotes, I think it was either a Confucian quote, where they say that man has two lives, the one, the one that is living, and then when he realizes that he’s only got one life, and I think it’s until that point where you kind of realize that, you know, life is finite. And the decisions that you make today, in terms of your spending can have massive long term implications to your, you know, longer term prosperity. So yeah, it’s a, it’s a great question. And it’s one of the one of the really the foundational bedrocks of good financial management,

Captain FI 11:17
tracking my spending has, has really allowed me to take my journey to financial independence to the next level. It’s certainly something I probably overdid. Initially, I was getting quite obsessive at one point, entering expenses into spreadsheets, tracking every bit of food that I purchased. It’s interesting that you mentioned you know, about the Confucius men living the life, and then when he realizes he only has one life, you then then begin your second, I’m hoping that I’m on that second. Now. I’m starting to rein in some of those behaviors, basically trying to enjoy life more and have more time. And so increasingly, I’m starting to outsource and use really awesome tools. So when I first excuse me, when I first looked at expense tracking, there are a few subscription based software’s that I looked into which some of them were pretty good. Some of them less good. And then since discovering way money, which has been free, in fact, I’m pretty sure you guys gave me money to sign up, right? It was like $5, signup bonus, I found the app really useful, mainly because it’s giving me a little bit more time. How, how do you think people can use we money the best to get the most value out of that app?

Dan Jovevski 12:42
Great question. Look, it’s the first thing that people see when they saw toy money is that you head to the dashboard page, you get a good sort of summarize view, around all your income or expenses and your budget and all your accounts. And then when you get to the second tab, which is that track page, that’s where you get a good breakdown of how much how much money you got coming in, how much money you got coming out, but more importantly, how it’s changed over the months, for a full year. And then you can deep dive into some of these categories that give you an understanding, well, how much am I spending on groceries? How much am I spending on fuel on transport? How much am I spending on subscriptions, and you can get a good sense of, you know, where you’re currently at in terms of your current financial picture. And the feedback that we get is that people are surprised and shocked. On the first instance of where they say, oh, my goodness, I had no idea that 15% of my overall income actually goes to paying subscriptions. And this would be things like your classic Netflix’s your hulu’s, your foxtails your your your gym memberships, and maybe you know, gym membership, the avenues for sort of three or four months, or they said it was cancelled with the stored activity in your account? And it’s a good first pass order to see, you know, am I really, ever really optimize my financial life in the way that benefits me to right now? And where are some of the areas where I probably spending a lot too much too much money on where I could probably cut back in order to, you know, save more money that allows me to achieve other things in life, like either paying down debt, you know, saving more money or even investing into other areas where, you know, perhaps I didn’t quite have the tools to do so beforehand. And I think a lot of people in that initial surprise, are just shocked about how much they could probably save initially, that can help them you know, achieve, you know, better things in life. So I think, yeah, that’s how that’s how we, we currently go about our expense tracking at the moment, but I want to underscore Captain FI is that this is the the first sort of iteration of where we see the future going. And we see the future of where many were at the moment. Yeah, it’s nice to sort of see that a glance, but you know, some of the quirks Things that we’ve got planned for 2021 and beyond, will be, you know, much more machine learning driven AI insights that give you a pinpoint analysis of where you might be able to spending money based on your own individual profile. And that’s something we’re very excited about, because that we’ll get into the more of the deeper nuances about you, the individual, and then help you even save more money than you thought was possible. You know, a sneak peek into that would be things like, you know, giving you an understanding of what other people might be spending their money on. And then you compare yourself and say, Well, if I’m, you know, age 25, and I’m in a certain occupation class, or a certain affinity group of people, you know, why am I spending 150% more than people that look like me, and that could also give people a better understanding about, yeah, where they might be able to cut back on and spend less, and more importantly, you know, save more, so they can achieve, you know, better things in

Captain FI 15:56
life. That’s awesome. I was literally just going to suggest that I was gonna say, it would be cool to see how my spinning compares to other people. But it sounds like you’re all over it.

Dan Jovevski 16:10
Yes, and that’s, that’s something that’s really important. Because if you think about it, you know, you’re walking down the street, you’re seeing all these people, and you don’t say, you know, whether or not, you know, they’re in good financial health, but you we don’t even know some of our mates in terms of until they often sort of get in trouble. whether or not they’re in sort of good financial health or not, not financial health, and we think they’re added transparency just adds to a much better outcome where people get a good understanding, though other people are doing so they don’t have to feel alone and trapped in their own sort of four walls in mind about their own situations, that just gives them more empowerment to you know, take control their own, you know, financial destinies, when they understand where they currently sit. And if they’re really on the leading edge of that, then that’s great. But if there’s a chance to improve, and we can make it really easy for people to improve the situations, and that’s something that’s, that’s, that’s going to be we think, you know, game changing in the way that you know, people can manage their, their own financial lives.

Captain FI 17:08
It’s pretty awesome. You’re kind of sticking it to the keeping up with the Joneses issue right there.

Dan Jovevski 17:15
Yes, and that is, that’s the sort of essence of where a lot of bad financial habits get picked up is in the early 20s. I don’t want to pick on any people, but I want to pick on a report that came out a few weeks ago, which was the esic report with the pineapple letter sector. And the report basically detailed that one fifth of people that use buying Apple products end up getting into financial difficulty. And I just don’t want to talk about buying a pallet because I think it affects other product categories. But the most interesting statistic that came out of that report was that almost 50%, so 49% of people aged between 18 and 29. Were the people or that that one fifth of folks, they got themselves into that bad, bad spot. In your 20s What are you doing, right? You’re either you know, going getting an apprenticeship, you’re going to uni, you’re going and having a good time, socially, you’re meeting a lot of cool, interesting people, things like you know, status might be important to you. You’re getting heaps of external stimulus and influence, you just have to go through your feed right now on Instagram, where you’re seeing countless pictures of, you know, happy faces and lives of people living awesome. You know, awesome. lifestyles, but you know, if you peek under the hood, at a lot of those lifestyles, what you’ll often see is that, yes, you might have a great vehicle, yes, you might have the latest wash, yes, you might have the perfect backdrop of a holiday. But what a lot of young people don’t realize is that a lot of those, and not all the time, but more often than not, those are fueled by debt, and people getting to, you know, really bad spots on spending money in the early 20s where that can catch up to them in a really bad way in their 30s and I think you have all all people will know this capital finance is that your 20s is what sets you up for your 30s and your 40s and beyond. And if you can start really early and avoid some of those bad traps in your 20s then you’ll be the one that in your 30s you know, having a you know big life where you can, you know, afford to do things that you that you couldn’t do if you spent your time and your money and resources, just focusing on things that you know, quite often don’t really matter. I can tell this from firsthand experience, I’m you know, 33 to 34. And I could just look back in my 20s and look back at some of the you know, the photos I had where I spent too much time you know, thinking about what what, what type of shirt that I was going to wear and a certain outing or a You know, all that type of stuff. And when you look back in your 30s, and you just reflect on life you got you know what, it didn’t really matter. So I 100% agree with that point around keeping up with the Joneses, it’s a big effect that a lot of young people have to navigate through. And you often hear the stories of people waking up in the 30s, and saying, I don’t really matter. So the more that we can infuse into the conversation authentically, then yeah, I think that should should help people avoid some of these traps.

Captain FI 20:27
Dan, how does the way money app work? How do you actually find out what you’re spending on and link your accounts,

Dan Jovevski 20:36
we use a third party data provider. And that third party data provider is called Yardley. And they allow us to securely access your banking information, and then give you the ability to provide the information in one location. So yeardley is a large multinational company, based in the states that powers large, other institutions like zero here in Australia, that provide us that information, so we can present it to you in one easy to manage location.

Captain FI 21:11
Now, look, I this was a bit of a sticking point for me initially, and I know a lot of people are, you know, not sure about it. It took me a while to even, you know, link my account with where many? Because I just Yeah, I just wasn’t sure. You know, I’ve been using it now for since October, early early in that. And, you know, it’s been, it’s been working fine. I’ve seen some interesting reports, you know, for and against third party services like yodlee, in basic. And I’ve talked a little bit a bit more about that in my review of Wayne money. But, you know, what, what’s, what would be your response to, you know, people with sort of security and privacy concerns regarding those services?

Dan Jovevski 22:05
Great question. We’re, the thick is a deeper sort of explainer on how the process works. So when you come onto platforms, like when you’re another symbol platform like ours, you have to go through a process of identification of your accounts. Once you enter in your details, one really important thing to note, and this is what we we try to stress a lot is that way, money never holds your internet banking in logon passwords, that’s particularly to say providers like Yardley, who then provide us tokenized access to your information back onto the platform. What’s also really important to know is that it’s a read only service. So you only cannot make any changes to any banking information. Amelie takes your data that already exists on your internet banking, portal, and then provides it in a summarized view that we can consume to provide you that area to view and understanding. Yeah, Italy’s been around for the last 20 odd years. And I believe in Australia operated for the last 10 or so years, and trusted by a whole heap of other institutions that are quite large, which gives us a degree of comfort that, you know, we partner with the right, the right partner. But I think over time, Captain fire, where we think the sort of future is going is that we’re moving away from you know, tools that do what we call screen scraping, which sort of take your data from a screen and then present it back to you in an easy to understand format, where a lot of the industry is moving to now is is moving into the open banking space. And I really wanted on the school for you listeners, that it’s not quite here yet. But it’s something that we many years, certainly exploring where you can overcome a lot of these issues where you don’t have to get to the point of entering your credentials, and logging into seeing all your accounts, that will take some time before that becomes active. And if the examples of United Kingdom or anything to go by you, what you see is screen scraping and open banking, living side by side for quite a long period of time before people end up getting to a point of having what you call password lists access in order to your information. So the world is changing. I would also encourage your listeners to you know, go check out some of the conversation that’s happened between the sick and the HPLC that have opined on the topic of screen scraping before. I don’t want to make reference to any of that information from the government regulator. But what you can see right now is that there’s a clear view from the regulator that is looking to support this this industry in its process of transitioning to sort of open banking. So you know, we we think it’s the most highly secure process to currently offer a service like you know, we many other people within our category, but over time, we’re very excited about what they do. is going to make that a lot more easier for people to to access.

Captain FI 25:04
Okay. No, that does that makes sense. And moving towards the open banking is a good step. Now, this sort of leads me into my next sort of pointed question here that I’ve got asked in. Now, the banks, they love having our purchasing information. And, you know, that’s why we see a number of banks, you know, like, IMG, up bank, other two that I’m using at the moment. But pretty much all banks offer, this is a a savings account that’s linked to a transaction account. And when you make at least five transactions, you know, whatever the criteria is, you’ll get some bonus interest on your savings. And when I did some more reading into this, it turns out that they want you to make the transactions, not only because so you’re actively using their products, but also so they get a glimpse into your spending history. When I when I said when I did some more reading into this, it turns out that banks love your spending history, and are actually able to sell it. Big investing firms want to know what, what’s happening in the market, where consumers are putting their money, which products are going well. And that helps big investing firms figure out where to, you know, best, best move their money. We also know that with a lot of products, say in the social media space, when you when you are not paying for a product, you usually are the product, or more permanently your information is the product. So with those two things being said, or what is firstly, what is the money doing with your data? And secondly, what are your partners doing with our data?

Dan Jovevski 26:52
Quick question on the topic of way money for so so maybe even just go to the philosophical level around how we think about data as well, because I think that’s very important is if we think about where the world has gone to in the last sort of 10 years to your point, Captain FI, there’s been a lot of misuse and misappropriation of data, including mine, including yours. And we think the literacy around data sovereignty and data custodianship where you are the owner of your own data, and then you can use that in a way that actually benefits you, and not some other third party, we think that compensation is exploding. Before we sit out, you know, to create a money, we often we haven’t thought about or up where if we were to align ourselves into, you know, a brand that we really love, and aspire to replicate in terms of some of the values you know, who those brands be. And if I give this example of the mobile phone era is like, you’ve got Android devices, which are free and open. And you’ve got Apple, which is much more close a robust ecosystem, which is a very permission driven disclosure of data. And so from a money perspective, is that we will never do anything with your data, unless we have your explicit consent to do so. We don’t sell you down to third parties. To your point, we think there’s something deeply disturbing around the way that people use data from individuals in order to promote business practices, which don’t necessarily benefit the end user, then they benefit, you know, the company in a in a much more broader context. And, you know, some of those business models are involved in things like, you know, getting data to allow hedge funds to predict, you know, where they might be able to place bets in the market. And that’s something that we we don’t think is right. So that’s Firstly, and for mostly we Manny’s approach to data is that, number one, it’s safe and secure, it’s used in a way that only benefits you in a way that can help you achieve a better financial outcome in the future. We may drive insights on an aggregated level to, you know, help our members and help drive our products. But we will never sell anybody’s individual data to a third party that helps that third party, you know, do something with that data that’s you’re not not aligned to you know, our core beliefs and also, we consume I think the data is going I think on how the data is used by the third parties. I think from from around understanding, you know, that data isn’t to be used in a way that that specifically you know, says that or Hey Dan, we know what type of things that you’re buying at Kohl’s or we’re going to start pushing you more offers on Facebook. I don’t think that happens here in here in Australia with with with partners like Italy or others, but also want to be very careful that I don’t want to misspeak on what the partners you know, do with that sort of data. That would be something that, yeah, we wouldn’t be comfortable with and to understanding the knowledge that doesn’t happen here in Australia. And if it did, it’s something that I think we would take a lot of concern to.

Captain FI 30:11
So Dan, you mentioned earlier, a couple of really exciting things in the pipeline with Wayne money. I’m kind of excited to learn more. Is there any more teasers? Or can you can you let any other cats out of the bag?

Dan Jovevski 30:25
caption file, what I can say is that 2021 is going to shape up to be a really exciting year for we money members. I’m not sure if you know, I’ve shared this data with you before. But at present, we’re kind of growing at around sort of 30% per week. And what we’re seeing right now is the conversation about money, and financial health. And the D stigmatization of talking about money sort of quite openly, is really resonating, particularly with a lot of younger people these days. And that’s probably evidence by 70% of our membership base being under 30, or less 35 or less sorry. And so we’re clearly skewing towards a younger demographic. And some of the things that we see that are really broken within the Australian Financial System, we’re looking to probably address in a more completely in the product in the coming 12 months. You know, one of the more shocking indictments that we’ve seen more recently here in Australia is that people often refer refer this is this little lazy tax, where you may have a financial product, like a personal loan, or a car loan, or a mortgage. And the credit space will be that a savings account, where you’ve had it for like three to four years, and you look at this product that you haven’t, you know, laid an eye on for that period of time, and you realize, that you are paying, which say, for a mortgage, so the typical mortgage rate of the loan is around sort of, you know, two, if you’re doing a live to an opposite, you’re probably doing okay. But we’ve seen some shocking insights where people are paying, say, three and a half 4%. And we’ve even got a handful of people that we’ve seen so far that are paying up to 5% on the current mortgages. And what that tells us is that a really, like deep and fundamental level, is that there is a lot of inefficiency within the financial ecosystem, where people don’t really have the most optimized financial lives, because the current products, they’re sort of taking with them, and carrying around it every single day, like, you know, credit cards and personal loans and, and home loans are completely inefficient. And we estimate that probably around 70% of the total outstanding debt in Australia is what we call inefficient, where people aren’t really paying the lowest rate, they potentially could be given their own degree of credit risk. And one of the things we’re really going to focus on in 2021, is how do we make that process and illuminate that journey for people where if they are paying too much when say certain career products, they can get a better outcome, and do that in a very, very frictionless way than going through the very painful process, which currently exists at the moment. And that’s something that we’re really going to focus on. In the first couple of months here away money is giving you a better understanding about where you currently sit in terms of your current financial life and give you an order to that. More importantly, letting you know how you might be able to optimize your finances in a much more better sustainable way. And that that will form part of the business model conversation, which is in how we make ourselves more sustainable. We think we think one of those initial approaches is actually partnering with, you know, the best of breed providers that can help Australians navigate the money and provide them the best possible products at the right stage of their journey. The second thing that we’re really looking to expand on the product is really infusing some of those AI machine learning driven insights into, you know, optimizing your financial life where you can literally set and forget your own financial journey and what we call this new era of you know, autonomous finance, where, think about it, you’re driving your car, you notice, you’ve got Google Maps on, you know, as a blockage, say on the freeway, and what Google Maps is telling you to do is telling you a different route where you can, you know, go to get you in destination. Wouldn’t it be cool to do that with your money? Where if you spend, say, if you spend a lot during you know, the month of December, which is probably normal that for a lot of people, how can the system learn and understand where you might be able to save in other areas of your life, and really optimize your money while you sleep. And that’s something that we’re very excited about in 2021. I would say more practically speaking without being as cryptic is that we’ve had a lot of demand for what we call a desktop version of way money where you You can see the mobile experience he currently currently get right now. But you could also say that for what we call a power user segment to give you, you know, the full breadth of real estate on a desktop view to really get into the nitty gritty of your money. And that’s something that’s that we find exciting and something personally that I can’t wait for, as well, myself. So there’s some of the things that we’ve got coming down the pike.

Captain FI 35:22
Okay, well, you heard it here. First guys come awesome stuff in the pipeline for way money, Ai, hits, potential partnerships, and desktop variants. I’m pretty keen to see how it all pans out. Now, I do want to just pick up what you mentioned there then about making the platform sustainable. So at the moment, while I haven’t been charged anything from way money in, and actually you guys gave me a signup bonus. Now, obviously, that money’s gonna run out. So how do you guys plan long term to make this business sustainable? Do you ever see yourself charging a subscription, or like a premium type, subscription

Dan Jovevski 36:10
service? In the future, we will all firstly focus on whatever’s going to give our membership, the most amount of value, and then, you know, either charge an appropriate price for that service or look at other ways that we can make our business more sustainable. And I think there’s really sort of two sort of key avenues for that. One, which is what you touched on there, which is the membership base model. We think that’s something that we will certainly explore. But we really want to highlight that the membership base model will be for more advanced features that are really used by people who want to get much more deeper and granular information, are there many advanced features that we’re developing right there, which, if I can give you another hint about what that would look like, would be things like, you know, solving the pain point of view, collecting all your man collecting all your receipts, and come tax time, that painful experience that you got with your tax agent, around, you know, submitting all your details, your tax file number together, and that, that that obviously costs us a lot of money to develop, but we think there’s something there, which is really fear for people to pay in terms of a membership, that would certainly help us become much more sustainable. And so that’s, that’s an area we’re going to focus on. But I really wanted to underscore that, in order to live out our mission, to help as many people as we can live their best financial laws, we do have to make things you know, as open as possible for a lot of people to participate and have much more financial inclusion. So helping other people who may be curious about understanding and learning more about their, their money and finances, without having, you know, to go through a paywall together, we think there’s other additional advanced features, it’s something that, you know, can solve a lot of pain points can actually save you a lot more money. So, you know, the cost that we get are between two that is actually immaterial in the long run. And the other part is, again, going back that point of, you know, a completely inefficient financial system is that, you know, we see, you know, this is this some shocking stats, there is $1.9 billion spent on advertising for financial products and services. Captain finance, I’m going to ask you a question. What do you think, is the economic value add of that money that’s spent in terms of say, a conversion value? So all that money spent? versus people actually consuming the products that are advertised for?

Captain FI 38:49
No, it’s a it’s a waste, isn’t it? And it’s To be honest, it annoys me, I hate seeing adverts.

Dan Jovevski 38:55
Yeah, correct. And that’s, that’s one of the biggest challenges that a lot of these products providers have is that it costs so much to obtain customers from all these various sources, because it’s very inefficient to say, Hey, Kevin, finance wants to get a bit of interest rate, or at least temp deposit. But he has to go through a few gatekeepers yesterday that go through Google and pay, you know, or companies that pay the Google tax in order to get you know, your eyeballs to you know, go for their product, which which obviously adds the bottom line cost. And so our mission is actually to go at a much more deeper level, and partner with institutions and turn them to align where you are at in your stage of life and the goals that you want to achieve and then present you the right option at the right time, by doing that in a much more significantly lower cost to those financial services providers, and therefore, if we charge them less than they charge us and ultimately that actually drives the efficiency of the financial markets to a much more lower level. So Not to be controversial or anything, but you know, I’m gonna pick on the big banks, because it’s a national sport, it’s a great example. They, they do a lot of good things. But you know, I want our listeners to start thinking about things in terms of, from an economics perspective, when you go down your main street and your CBD area, or your main strip in your country town, if you go and have a look at where all the big banks and financial institutions are located, they’re located in big fancy buildings, when big, you know, towers with nice addresses. When you walk into those branches, you know, you’re paying for every single last bit of that building the glass, ATM machines, and things like that. And that cost ultimately, is a cost worn by you, the consumer. And if you think about all those costs, if you summarize all those operating costs that a bank has to do, and the board and the core essence of what you receive at the end of the day, as a consumer, you know, end of the day, if you’re borrowing money, you’re receiving money. If you’re investing money, you’re getting money back. And the real, the real problem that we want to solve with our business model, is to actually drive the cost lower, where they’re not spending as much money in advertising. People who have got lower operating costs can afford to provide the lowest rates in terms of say, mortgages or personal loans. And those who’ve got the lowest cost structure, in terms of depositing, can offer the highest yield to consumers. And we men is part of that ecosystem is making that market way more efficient for those people to find each other. And if we can do that, then we can really significantly lower the cost for the whole financial system, where the cost is driven towards lowest possible point where you the consumer, and they are reaping much more of those benefits than say, you know, banks and financial institutions are and that, and that really is where the future is going. Right now. It’s an unstoppable phenomena that is occurring where low cost providers entering the market with better and more superior products. And that’s giving consumers more choice, more flexibility, and better outcomes. And if we can Herald in this, this era, of where that happens in a much more frequent African basis, then you know, more and more consumers are going to be much better off. And so our business model is going to touch on those marketplace dynamics where we find, you know, people better, better products, and then by finding the better products, they get those, you know, access to those deals and discounts a lot more easier, easier and cheaper and faster and better. And, you know, by creating that, that sort of platform, then that we think that, you know, there’s a little bit there for us, for we managed to become more sustainable. So we can offer that to more and more people.

Captain FI 42:53
I can’t help but think about, you know, sort of 20 years ago, in investing conventional wisdom was, you know, to use these sort of old school listed investment companies and managed funds. And we’ve seen the likes of Vanguard beta share BlackRock, sweep into the market with exchange traded funds operating, you’ve heard an incredibly low management ratios. And that’s sort of revolutionized investing, you know, I personally use a broker, you know, mortgage broker for my investment property. And I will continue to do so. And that is a perfect example of how the lending landscape is able to be a little bit more efficient than the direct sort of marketing sense. So it’s awesome to hear about, you know, the future of of way money. And if you guys can save me money, I am more than happy to be paying for a premium subscription in the future. If people do want to read up a little bit more about we money and where it’s at, at the moment, I did do a bit of a deep dive a couple of months ago into where the where the platform is sitting. I’m going to try and keep my finger on the pulse and keep that updated. So Dan, bear with me, mate. And if you do have any great updates, please let me know. So I can update the post. But yeah, it’s definitely worth having a look at I reckon, read the posts, see what you think. And and then go and check it out for yourself. So Dan, it’s been awesome chatting about expense tracking, and where you money and some of the exciting places it’s gonna be hitting 2021 and beyond. I want to kind of shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit more about you and your personal journey. With money. That’s okay.

Dan Jovevski 44:52
Absolutely.

Captain FI 44:53
So you mentioned at the start of the episode when you introduce yourself now you’ve got a pretty awesome pedigree. When it comes to finance, you’re clearly a very successful entrepreneur, you’re, you know, you’re highly skilled and motivated when it comes to money. How did you how did you get on this pathway? You know, like, how did you? How did you jump on the pathway to financial independence?

Dan Jovevski 45:20
That’s a really good question. And I think, I think the more of the older I get, the more I reflect on this. And I think I think it’s true of everything right, everything that happens in your very early childhood formative years, you know, often often is what shapes you in, you know, as a teenager, young adulthood, and then becoming an adult and NASA having kids of my own, you can reflect on, on that journey. And I think, I think for me, Captain finance, it really kind of started off. You know, when I was young, up to the age of seven, you know, my parents came from really, you know, a hard yakka, blue collar working background, you know, they struggled for absolutely everything they you know, achieve in their own life. And that, that led to a really deep impression on me at a very, very young age. As you know, I saw, I just remember going down to the shops, with my mom, and there was a little shop called action in spewed here in Perth WI, and the first place my mom went to, she didn’t go to the aisles, and actually pick out you know, the, the bread from the bread life rack or anything like that, she went straight to the discount tray that had the 70% off stickers, for everything to get a deal at a discount on, you know, things that were still, you know, useful to eat and whatever else. And I just remember that we sort of grew up, my mom didn’t do that, because she was, you know, stingy, she did that, because you never choice. And I think that early, early sort of process, and you know, what my early relationship with sort of money really formed at that very, very early part of my life, sort of continued, you know, throughout life. To be honest. You know, one thing, when you mentioned things like, you know, becoming successful sort of entrepreneur, I, I take that with, you know, a pinch of truth, because I still think there’s sort of a lot to be done in this space. And, you know, we will only consider myself really successful if we got to help out sort of more and more people on their journey of financial wellness. And that is, you know, going back to that sort of story of, you know, the, the anxiety that I saw my parents feel around money in a very sort of early years, you know, had all took away a lot of brainpower that they could have spent on other things they could have, you know, spent that on enjoying us on our sporting activities, or spending more time with us, but that will focus more on, you know, making ends meet. And I think that had a very, very formative impact on the way I view about money, but, but that’s, that’s really, I would say, the point of interest or that, to be honest, it really became apparent to me, even after I started a career in finance, that didn’t hit me in the face until, you know, I had my own child and sort of reflecting on, you know, some of those journeys that I saw in my childhood, but the more I think about it, that is really the sort of kernel of, of where my interest around the topic of financial services comes from.

Captain FI 48:33
It’s pretty powerful stuff. And I, you know, I must say, um, sort of, yeah, sort of hearing that story about your parents, it’s kind of really hit a chord with me. You know, my, my mom raised big family on her own. And similarly, she had a lot of struggles, you know, she just didn’t have choices. And that, you know, that meant going to the discount rack, that meant powdered milk, you know, making our own bread, that kind of stuff. And you’re 100% right, then it’s so important. When people get the finance right means the rest of the life can actually happen without all that stress and headache. It’s awesome to hear you know, about you being a dad now, that’s kind of one of my motivations for reaching financial independence. So that’s awesome to hear. Yeah, it’s

Dan Jovevski 49:24
the best thing ever. Honestly, I when, when my wife had our first child, we often have a feeling or to the right time, what impact is going to have no money and whatnot, but honestly, it’s, it’s the best thing that ever happened to, to me and my wife. Yeah, kids are expensive. let’s not let’s not read the point. But I think the joy and the value that you get on an intrinsic level is just, yeah, we’re dating that. So I really love your journey and your pursuit of starting your identity mate. That’s, that’s something that anybody that’s either willing or inclined to do. So it’s It’s amazing. So good. I know,

Captain FI 50:03
I’m gonna be suggesting on the way money feedback tab to have a child rearing expense. Um, how do your wife and you manage your finances?

Dan Jovevski 50:22
Yeah, so I think over the years, Captain FI, I’ve got, I would say, probably my early 20s, or we’re gonna have a lot of rough patches there with, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, and doing all that type of stuff, you know, spending their money on credit cards, you know, became, you know, almost unmanageable, and, you know, paying all that stuff off. But, you know, the way that could connect my financial life right now is that we have got, you know, fairly straightforward affairs, we know how much our mortgage expenses, we know how much our monthly commitments are all their bills, and our outgoings. So we track that pretty pretty well, when Yes, I use the way my yet but also, we, we do that ourselves, we have our own, you know, date nights where we talk about money, where we got a lot of inspiration, of course, from Scott Pape, when he discusses in his book, and that’s really strengthened our sort of conversation about, you know, money in financial services, where we can sort of talk about that openly and honestly, and that allows us to be a lot more sort of fluid when we make decisions around, you know, key financial outcomes. Number one, two, we send their child to, you know, a private school, or we send them to a public school. Well, where we are at the moment in our life, and it’s going to have to be a public school, because that’s what we can afford at this point. And that’s where we are at the moment in our sort of financial journey.

Captain FI 51:46
Hey, I’m a I’m a public school boy mate and I turned out alright

Dan Jovevski 51:49
Yes, yeah, I went to both. But yeah, I can safely say that my my public school education was was pretty was pretty good. So those types of those type of conversations really happen quite regularly. For us, I would say that we’re talking about money, at least two to three times a month. And I would say that their conversation typically goes for about an hour, an hour and a half. My wife is in the medical services field, and her situation sort of changes quite rapidly. And so we’re often adjusting our own sort of lives based on new information. And I think the best way to do that is by having a conversation. I’m probably because I obsess over over money, Captain finance, I’m probably not a good case study here. But I found that biggest unlock, was to be really open to the conversation about money. Because once you know, once that anxiety level, about having that awkward conversation about money with your loved one is had you develop a deeper level of trust. And you develop a deeper, deeper level understanding about how you tackle your finances together. And that only creates something for you know, a better longer lasting financial relationship you have with, you know, your spouse and your family. So if there was any recommendation that I’ve got around that space, is talk often talk frequently and talk openly about money with your loved one. And, and that can really help you get on top of things that, you know, maybe, maybe you’re too shy about talking to your partner with. And especially for blokes whose blogs are often the, you know, the staunch ones that, you know, don’t like to talk about their money and like to be the provider and all that type of stuff. But yeah, I think I think that having the conversation really helps you address your your own financial lives in a much better way.

Captain FI 53:37
That’s awesome. I think that’s great advice. Keep it simple, open and honest, and and talk regularly with your partner about it. So um, what about investing? What’s your opinion on investing? And what are some of the ways that you, you and your partner invest your money?

Dan Jovevski 53:58
That is a quick question. I think we’re in that stage of life at the moment, you know, we’ve got a mortgage. So that’s where the sort of priorities on is actually on becoming debt free ourselves. And that’s really where our ultimate focus is present. I’ll tell you that investing is that you know, the, the two types of investments that we have at the moment is our superannuation accounts. And then I also have a raised account, which I do some micro investing, which keeps me involved in the investing game. I’ve also got a special account for my superannuation where I allocate a portion of money every single week to that. And that’s probably optimized for where I’m at the moment, Captain FI, I’m not really big in exotic into, you know, ETFs and sort of daily share trading, you know, keeping we really sort of going is my number one priority, so that if I had more time, I probably like to do some of that stuff, but right now I’m really optimizing my time and attention to my family and also wait Money. So I’d like to keep things pretty low find that space. But one thing that has really captivated my interest over the last four to five years is crypto. And I am in partial to a topic, my crypto cat every so often. And keeping it super vanilla and just adding to Bitcoin. That’s, that’s where that’s where I’m at, in terms of my exotic strategies is really focusing on alternative asset classes, which, hey, if it goes off, you know, awesome if it doesn’t go off, I still have a fundamental belief in a world of decentralized finance. And yeah, I’m putting a lot of my discretionary dollars into into crypto at the moment.

Captain FI 55:42
Interesting, I’d it’s funny, you said ETFs. Big sort of exotic techniques. It’s dead simple, man. I can walk you through all we can do a step by step by as possible. And I I’ve, I’ve been using micro investing platform called stake for us share trading. And both raise and spaceship are on my really high on my to do list. I know of them. I’ve heard a lot about them a lot of positive things. But yeah, I need to actually get an account and see how it all works. I think those those platforms, mic reversing platforms are bloody fantastic at getting people some skin in the game. And of course, once you’ve got some skin in the game, and some money invested, oh, boy, doesn’t it change how interested you are in the markets?

Dan Jovevski 56:38
Definitely, definitely. And when you see your portfolio going up or down, that creates a cue to view to check what’s going on? What are these platforms invested in? And it gets you like I’ve seen conversations, and I’m not sure if you’ve seen this as well, Captain FI is that people that have no idea about stocks or investing, have got themselves interested via one of these micro investing platforms. But now they’re doing is it asking deeper questions. They’re asking, well, what’s the composition of the portfolio? How much he weighted towards, say, tech stocks. And that spawned off a deeper interest into this conversation that would have happened before. Like, if you roll the clock 10 years ago, and you say, Hey, I’m gonna teach you about stock investing, I’m going to walk you through stocks, you would have had people, you know, whipping out their sleeping bags and sort of go to sleep in the class. But these days, it’s become a phenomena that I think a lot of people are getting super interested in. And I couldn’t agree more. I think with micro investing apps are really spearheading all of this financial education that didn’t occur 13 or so years ago.

Captain FI 57:45
And, you know, solid strategy as well paying down the family home. Obviously, that’s, that’s a great, that’s a great strategy, getting the debt down to manageable levels. I mean, it’s it’s been like a remarkable, we sort of unprecedented times with interest rates as low as they are, it’s a fantastic opportunity to sort of smash off as much as the line as possible. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen? I mean, interest rates could go back up. I mean, they could go negative, who knows? Certainly, me and my philosophy with property, you know, if interest rates did suddenly go up, I might find myself in a bit of hot water with my investment properties. So yeah, paying down the debt on the mortgage is always a really solid, solid strategy. But Dan, I would encourage you to dip a toe into some exchange traded funds in a conventional brokerage account. I’ll show you how to do it. If you taught me as long as you have to teach me how to do crypto because I haven’t done crypto.

Dan Jovevski 58:50
Oh, but yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a good one. I think. I think if anybody’s listening, you know how to do your research. But you know, there’s plenty of platforms that are, you know, the razors, or the spaceships of the crypto market. And I think the, the one that I personally found, probably the best is Coinbase. It’s a US based one, probably the most popular that allows you to get into crypto and a very easy sort of affordable way. You don’t have to do all these, you know, fancy things like having hardware keys and buying crypto and storing, you know, encryption codes everywhere. It’s a pretty sort of straightforward way to sort of dip your toe in into the into the crypto market. Yeah, I think I’ve got a long term belief that is really the the future of money, and that’s where I want to be stacking budgets.

Captain FI 59:43
I’ve heard it been referred to as virtual gold before.

Dan Jovevski 59:47
Yes, Yes, that’s correct. There’s probably another podcast topic on this sort of an entirely but you know, if you think about all the people that have been involved in the crypto space. You know, we’re talking sort of MIT, Stanford, you know, PhDs and scientists where people are devoting, you know, large portions of their life to help this sort of nascent sector become much more mainstream. If you’ve seen what the Chinese have done now with their own approaches to digital currency. And so a lot of these conversations about crypto often happen. You know, they call them crazy, they call them the bubble, which arguably, you know, might be it might be the case, but you just can’t help but see the competition, the intensity, around the topic of crypto just taking off. More recently, PayPal, PayPal, which will recall a very sort of normal, you know, financial services company has now delved into allow you to buy crypto currencies, so it’s becoming more mainstream by the day.

Captain FI 1:00:55
Definitely a topic for researching, definitely a topic for some further research. And I’d love to track down an expert, and have them explain it all to me, in the future on the podcast. So you touched on earlier, Dan superannuation you mentioned you regularly invest through your spaceship super account, talk me through a little bit about your attitude on Super and whether you like it or not,

Dan Jovevski 1:01:28
like super, I love super. And the reason for that is pretty simple. Like, you know, God bless the Australian government that invented superannuation, because it created a huge asset class where Australia’s prosperity is tied to the concept of forced savings. And when you’ve ever had any difficulty with saving money, there’s nothing like the superannuation program to sort of touch on the you know, areas of where you can squirrel away money, so you can use it in later parts of your life. So, you know, from from a fundamental level, I really like it, not only for myself, but just for the benefits of promotes a lot of other people that I end up going to retirement with, you know, more and more dollars. I think superannuation is something you know, at the age of 33, you probably wouldn’t spend too much time thinking about that, when you think about, you know, 65, you know, it’s really around the corner, like it’s worse than 50% of the way there, if not just slightly over aware that, you know, their potential compensation, resident retirement, my cover bouts, and the way I think about it, capital fires, the more I contributors ever say incrementally to that to their portfolio, the more likely I’m going to, you know, probably live, you know, much more comfortable return or, or fingers Fingers crossed and touch on what to do. But I think the reason why platforms and again, there’s plenty of different other platform providers, I’m just giving you one illustration, for example, the reason why I like spaceships so much is because I really loved their focus on technology. And I’ve got a big fundamental thesis that everything that can become software will become software. Marc Andreessen, who’s one of the world’s most preeminent venture capitalist who runs a company called Andreessen Horowitz, or the call a cool, shortened term, or a16z, had this quote, which was really simple, but very powerful, called software is eating the world. And I really want to put my money behind the future of where backing companies and investing into companies that are going to create this future where we’re going to become much more software driven. And platform like spaceship allows me to do that, because that’s where a majority of the allocation of the portfolio, or the fund managers are allocating their money towards. So that’s probably the simplest reason of why I’ve chosen that fund over anything else, and how I see my future sort of shape shaping out over the course of the next, you know, 1020 years. And yeah, I really want exposure to their sector. So that’s the reason why I chose that.

Captain FI 1:04:14
That’s awesome. And you’ve really touched on one of the most powerful wealth creation strategies, and it’s something that took me quite a while to learn and I’m still perfecting it. And that is regular investing. If you can regularly set aside money and invest it, it’s so powerful. And previously, I used to always wire think about how I’m going to save up and invest when I have a large chunk of money. And, you know, I’m going to save a bit on brokerage and I certainly found that the psychological benefits of regular investing Trump, you know, any savings you’re gonna make of the brokerage out when we’re talking about serious investment quantities. So that’s, that’s awesome ay ay ay. Also like super, you know, you know me, I’m big into fire, trying to achieve financial independence. So my strategy has backed off the gas a little bit when it comes to Super. But I still do have, you know, a pretty healthy super balance thanks to contributing from a very young age. You also sort of mentioned, as we get older, we start to become more interested in Super. And I think that’s a natural progression. I guess the irony is, even small amounts of money invested in Super, from a very young age will have such a powerful impact later on. Just due to that compound interest. So yeah, it’s um, it’s definitely something to be on on the radar is superannuation. Now, um, then it’s been awesome. Have we’ve been chatting for a while now. And I know we need to wrap up cuz you’re busy man. Now I just want to finish off with asking, I guess the two main questions which I love to ask everybody who comes on the show, the first one comes down to education. And I know you’re very passionate about education, it might be cruel to ask you, what are your favorite three. So I’m going to I’m going to go open slather. And if you want to maybe just touch on some of the most powerful personal finance, investing or self development books, blogs, or podcasts that you’ve come across that have had the most impact on you? What would they do?

Dan Jovevski 1:06:32
Great question Kevin finance our classroom to which are the topic of money. And then I’ll touch on one, which I think is not about money specifically. But I think it gives you the foundations to think about your life more broadly, which actually includes encompasses money. The one of the big things that I think you’ll probably get from having having long conversations with me is that when we think about the topic of money and valuable services, what we’re often ignoring, and where we’re everybody seems to be focused on the dollars in the sense and the mechanics of money is not really getting down to the core root fundamentals of what we call the psychology of money. And that is actually the title of the book that I really recommend to people to, to read, and if they can over this, you know, period of the latter part of 2020 or 2021. Because it will really go down to the core fundamental relationship that we have with money from a deep psychological level. And that deep psychological level is where you will get the biggest unlocks to understand from a first principles level of people’s relationship with money. So the title is the psychology of money, timely lessons on wealth, and greed and happiness. The author is Morgan housel. And I think you can pick it up on all your usual spots on Amazon. But it’s just an amazing book that I think, has given me a better appreciation about some of the more deeper fundamental levels of managing money. The other book is called dollars and cents and golden cents and sensors spelled s e n s e, how are we missing money? And how do we spend smarter. It’s written by Dan Ariely and Jeff crazier. And this book very similar to the psychology of money, but we’re I think, Dan Ariely, who’s a world renowned behavioral psychologist and an economist delves into this topic is it goes into some of the more practical reasons why we make decisions about money, that often a cognitive traps, don’t want to spoil the book in any great detail. But one perfect example, is what we call the opportunity cost of money. And the opportunity cost of money is simply that you spent it all today to forego spending that dollar or something else in the future. And it makes you think about your money in a completely different way with every single interaction you have with money has a longer term cumulative effect on your overall financial well being. And that’s an awesome book. It’s a very short read. And the way that Dan actually goes through that book, and if you’re lucky enough to pick up the audio edition, it actually makes you laugh, and it’s really engaging, right. So highly recommend that. The third book, which I think, again, goes into the topic of money, but in a light level, but talks about your life more in general. His principles by Ray Dalio, and the principles book really delves into what are some of the principles that you have got in your life that you can refer to on how you make decisions. They also talk about the decision making process in a much more deeper and profound way that allows you to get a better understanding about If I’m listening to somebody, and there may be a so called expert, how believable is that particular individual or group of individuals around this particular topic, and allows you to make the best possible decisions by having a principles driven life. And I think this can help out a lot of people and really understanding that real wisdom, you know, maybe clean from things that are more, you know, contemporaneous things that are more sort of present and, you know, general knowledge, but really some of the tried and tested methods of gathering wisdom, have, you know, been around for centuries, it goes back to, you know, Aristotle were the principles that have been sort of driven and have lasted since since we’ve known human existence and human human writing. And I think that book perfectly capsule encapsulates how you can chart and write down your own principles, and how do you want to live your life?

Captain FI 1:11:00
Three new books for me? I’ve heard of Ray Dalio. And I think I might have thumbed through that book, but it’s not firing off any neurons. And I did recognize it, was it Dan Ariely or Dan Riley?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:14
Really?

Captain FI 1:11:15
A really he had a great book predictably irrational as well. Yeah. So awesome. Thank you for those tips. They’re going on the list. Awesome, Dan. Now, last question. What are your top tips for anyone on the path to financial independence?

Dan Jovevski 1:11:31
I think number one we’ve discussed at the top of the show, which is track your spending, this is literally the first elementary level that people can get a lot of understanding about where their money is going. So you know with us, you know, platforms like Weebly, or there’s countless others out there that they can also, you know, solve this problem for you. Where even if it’s simple as extracting all your transactions from your bank, and just understanding where all your money is going, and one merchants is going to, that would be the the very, very first step. This is probably a very trite thing to say. But it’s often the most of the powerful is that by educating yourself. And really understanding that the pathway to financial independence comes from you amassing information that allows you to make better decisions, is, is a principle that I have, that I think I could impart with your listeners to say that by by virtue of you listening to this podcast, and even getting to the end of this podcast at this level, it clearly means that you’re very, very interested in making your own financial life better. So you’re already on the right track. So so keep that up. But for those who might be this might be the very, very first Captain finance podcast where there was the very first time that keep continuing this trend of empowering yourself with as much education as possible. Bought, the more knowledge you have, the better decisions that you make, and the more likely you are a chart, you know, the life and the future that you want. Number three. And my last point is, and I’m speaking to the people here that are in their 20s or early 30s, that are just awakened to this point right now. Nobody cares about your situation besides you. People are not going to remember the clothes that you wore at the 21st birthday party, or how could you vote, right? If they made you feel good for a couple of hours during that time, but in the long arc of history, that can have really big impacts on your financial life. So don’t think of anybody besides yourself. And don’t get into a trap of spending money that you don’t need to for, you know, reasons around sort of status or keeping up with the Joneses. Trust me as somebody that’s become a daggy dad will well into their 30s that is not going to matter in the long run. So So when you think about Should I buy $100 t shirt? Or should I invest $90 of that into say, an ETF that Kevin finance is going to tell you how to set up or putting that money towards paying down debt or savings? That tells you think about every financial decision is what is your opportunity cost of spinning this dollar today and what impact that’s going to have on your longer term financial futures. And that’s it.

Captain FI 1:14:27
Long term. That’s awesome. I It reminds me that famous quote, you know, we’re borrowing money, we don’t have to buy things we don’t want to impress people we don’t know. I think I’ve pinched that from maybe Scott wrekin’s playing with fire. Or perhaps it’s from someone more famous. But you know, it’s a great saying it encapsulates some of the issues. Dan, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. Before we wrap wrap up. I also just want to put a little plug there, you totally forgot to mention When I asked you about personal finance, investing in self development books, blogs and podcasts, you missed the money bytes podcast mate.

Dan Jovevski 1:15:11
Yes, well, I didn’t want to, you know, talk about talk about our own sort of game here. But yeah, we’re also pursuing the path of having the top conversation about money with my co host, Blaze. Weekly, we kind of delve into the topics of money on we’ve actually changed the name, by the way, Captain FI, it’s called we talk since a podcast, by the way money. And we changed that because we probably didn’t do a search to uncover that many bytes is actually belongs to somebody else here in Australia. So we profusely apologize to the owner of, of money bots. But we’ve worked together and we changed our name. To that we have, we have topics about everything. We have guests, we’ve had you on the show, we’ve had other other financial commentators on the show as well. And it’s just a little part of helping people’s navigation of the topic of money or financial services that little bit easier. And I really wanted to thank you, Captain FI, I think, had you had you said that 10 years ago, you would have seen an explosion of people talking about money in financial services on the podcast, to complete strangers and seeing sort of community unfold. You would you would have just not believed that individual. But, you know, thanks to the good work that you’re doing and, and others, you know, this sort of groundswell of community support is there helping other people access and understand money in a deeper level than didn’t exist 10 years ago, right. So from From me to you, thanks so much for the good fight that you’re contributing to. And we look forward to supporting you in that journey.

Captain FI 1:16:52
Oh, thanks, man. And I definitely feel like I’m standing on the shoulders of giants here. Of course, you know, you’ve mentioned a couple of really amazing people in the field like the Barefoot investor, but also people internationally like mister money mustache, the mad scientist, jL Collins, and even closer to home. Some of my favorite bloggers and podcasters, like the Ozzie Firebug. Pat the Schaeffler and Dave from strong money Australia, these guys have you know, they’ve been fighting the good fight for quite a long time. And I’ve learned Hebrew awesome stuff from from those guys. So you know, I appreciate appreciate you saying that, Dan. But yeah, definitely standing on the on the shoulders of giants here. Before we wrap up, now, we were having a really interesting chat before we started recording. Now I have got some feedback on my podcast about going off topic. So just say this, I want to keep talking about space stuff with you. And if anyone wants to keep listening to that, keep listening to the end of the podcast. So I’m gonna wrap the official podcast up here. But I’m gonna then I want to keep talking to you about space stuff, because he had some really cool stuff to say. So for the benefit of everyone that wants to to wrap up here. Was there anything else you wanted to bring up today in? And where can people find out more about way money, get in touch with yourself,

Dan Jovevski 1:18:23
I strongly suggest that for those people that can with a non duelist anon, because it will go to a deeper explanation around this. But the only thing that I thought I’d cover off is that, you know, our mission here away money is only supported by other people out there coming together and creating a sense of community where we’re really working together as a collective to help transform a really stale industry where the perverse incentives driving really bad outcomes. And your contribution to a platform like we money can not only help you and your life and help you live in a state of financial freedom, but also can help other people throughout their journey as well. And the one thing that we’re absolutely blessed by which is the thank you to everybody is that the overwhelming support of regular, everyday Australians that are jumping around to our community and make a contribution around this topic of money, because it’s inspiring another group of generation of other Australians that are learning more information they didn’t know before. So a massive thank you to everybody that has joined the way money journey two days, and if you haven’t already, and if you want to find in learn more than simply here two way money.com today, you and you can learn more information about how you can join as a member and get involved as well on our mission together. That was it. Captain FI if we haven’t been too much else to discuss.

Captain FI 1:19:42
Awesome Wallah, everyone is still with us. We’ll be a link in the show notes as well. So there’ll be links to where you can get in touch with Dan. Links to the talking sent. We talk sense podcasts as well as their social media platforms. And I’d encourage you to just use Check it out and have a go. And you know, if it’s give it a go, if it’s if you get some value out of it, that’s awesome. And you know if it’s not a few or you haven’t lost anything by by giving it a shot. Awesome. All right, well, so Dan, I just want to pick up where we left off, because we were having a great chat. And then we sort of realized, Oh, shit, we probably actually should do the podcast recording. So, a while ago, back, we were talking about space and space programs. And we got, we got talking about ethical investing, and ethically missing is somewhere, something that I don’t really know a lot about, and I want to learn more about, and the topic came up of going to space and spending three, you know, quarter of a million dollars at Virgin Galactic,

Dan Jovevski 1:20:47
you know, most people will think that, you know, spending, you know, a quarter million bucks to go into space might be new indulgence. And it may be, you know, something that’s only reserved for curvy, wealthy people. But you know, for those people that are fortunate enough to be in that position, you know, what you’re effectively doing is you’re helping, you know, Virgin or other companies in the space, develop a business model, where they can then drive the cost lower to make access to space much more easier and cheaper for a lot of people. And if we want to go right out there and talk about the, you know, the benefits for humanity? Well, it’s, it’s us promoting what we call panspermia, or the ability for our species to propagate to other planets around, you know, our solar system and beyond. And it sounds like a pretty, you know, out there and, you know, try to talk about, but in reality, that’s what we’re doing. If you think about it wasn’t until the 1910s. So over 100 years ago, that the two Wright Brothers got into a plane, and, you know, flew that for, you know, matter of, you know, minutes in the sky, then heralding the era of global jet travel with the advent of the 707 jet. You know, and to see who that was reserved for, you know, wealthy business people and whatever else, but they then created a consumer class of jets and airliners that allowed people to travel around the world, now we can all pick up, you know, a ticket and travel around the world with a low cost carrier fairly cheaply. So our sort of contributions into the space here are, you know, start with, you know, hopefully people like you Captain FI, jumping on a plane or jumping on a rocket ship, and helping Harold, that era of transported a much in a much more beneficial way for for society. And, yeah, that’s something that I’m a really big supporter of, I think, you know, if you’re going to spend your dollars, you can spend your dollars on anything and investment in certain places, why not put your dollars to something that’s actually going to make the world a better place? You know, I don’t have to convince you of that, I think you just have to look at Tesla’s share price, to give you an indication of the immense love and profound agreement that people have the mission that Tesla is on, which is creating an electrified class of vehicles that are helping reduce co2 emissions to make our planet more sustainable and allow the way that we go from point A to point B, much more efficient. And that’s only going to explode now as more and more people especially young people become a lot more conscious about where the dollars go to and what companies and brands they support.

Captain FI 1:23:31
You talked a little bit about one of your I’m gonna say idol. I think the word you used was man crush.

Dan Jovevski 1:23:37
Yes, he was

Captain FI 1:23:39
in Virgin Galactic. Yes. And all that was pretty. That was pretty cool, man. Can you do you want to share more about that? Absolutely.

Dan Jovevski 1:23:47
So the gentleman’s name is chamath Palihapitiya. The name is a bit of a mouthful, but I trust you Google will know who you’re trying to find. and present it chamath had a really interesting background, and I won’t spoil it, because I think his backstory is really cool. So I suggest that you look at all of these Stanford addresses to MBA students where he talks about his philosophy in life. But, you know, I think he got to a personal point and a brief, a brief background about him as he started off into this with banking, realize it wasn’t for him that started off with working in startups ended up at Facebook, where he became the sort of head of growth. And then I think he became a billionaire by the age of I think, was 34 or 35, or somewhere around there. He then developed a fund that invested into all sorts of companies and then I think, you know, this sort of awakening that what he was doing was creating a degree of financialization returns for other investors. But what he wasn’t doing is having, you know, real sort of meaningful conversations about advancing society forward and that was really one of his core missions. It mandates and if I’m not mistaken, I think he fired his whole team, and just left a few group of core people to work on the core mission of social capital. And that was really going to focus on transformative ways that social capital could help the next generation of entrepreneurs Herald in the future around health care, education, transport and clean energy. And I don’t know why. But I just had such a profound resonance of that conversation that you may have had. And I sort of caught up to math about sort of three, four years ago, before it became incredibly popular. He had a famous CNBC interview, where he basically said, Who cares about the poor people, and I’m going to paraphrase here, but he said something like, so what they can’t buy another holiday house in the Hamptons. And I think that was said, on a platform like CNBC, where a lot of investors probably did have holiday homes in the Hamptons, and it wasn’t the everyday person there got to participate in the conversation. And I think there’s something profoundly changing in the way that people think about how they progress through their lives, and what their contribution is, into investing and using the time and effort and resources to, you know, helping more people become more better off. And I think chamath is, is the poster child of that conversation that I think is only accelerating now, with more and more people are really resonating with that topic, making money from money sake, I think we can all say that, right? When we’re not going to become more fulfilled by adding each incremental dollar earning, you know, a multiple of $100,000 on our incomes, there’s going to be a natural sort of plateau of that. But then where does other happiness come from, or happiness comes from comes from, you know, helping your fellow man and humanity at large, you know, inch closer to making our lives much more better off. And I think that’s where a lot of young people see their career shaping up is creating that impact in society where their contribution can be filled with a much more broader group of people. And so yeah, for those who are really interested, just just type in chamath, Palihapitiya. Give yourself some time, because I tell you what, my YouTube when I first found out about your math, I think ended up probably being about eight hours, back to back of just going through videos and content that is, that’s been put up on YouTube for the last three to four years. It’s pretty, pretty profound stuff. So yeah, highly encourage it. For those people were thinking about, you know, where they may want to put their own dollars and cents to work is they really want to put it into some, you know, boring and stale industry, which pay, I guess, probably there isn’t anything wrong with that. But it could be a big word powerful way that you can use your dollars to actually promote, you know, better longer term outcomes for humanity. And yeah, that’s like that really interests me. Well,

Captain FI 1:27:57
I think I know exactly what my afternoon is gonna entail. And I’m probably going to jump straight onto YouTube and check out that and have a look at that CNBC article. Look, I think it’s an awesome topic. And I’m, I’m sort of delving in a little bit more into the learning about ethical investments. There is a particular ethical ETF that I’m really interested in, I won’t say the name, because I haven’t really done any research into it yet. I’ve got a couple of mates that are, you know, fairly heavily invested in it to win hundreds of 1000s of dollars, and they reckon it’s going quite well for them very similar to a standard broad index ETF, but they just have some requirements, you know, no, I think there’s no weapons, no, no tobacco, no alcohol. And there’s some other sort of social parameters that those companies need to obtain to get in the index. I’m learning a bit more about it. And I’ll share on the blog. Once I have that information. Hey, Dan, we should probably wrap it up. Because I know, I know you’re a busy man. It’s awesome to chat a little bit more about space and investing. had an absolute blast recording with you. And next time I’m back in your neck of the woods. I’ll let you know and may we go and hit up. Hit up scabbard or something?

Dan Jovevski 1:29:13
Oh, that’d be amazing. Great to be on today’s show. Kevin finance really enjoyed it.

Captain FI 1:29:19
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Captain FI Financial Independence Podcast. To read the transcripts or check out the show notes. Head over to www dot Captain fi.com for all the details. If you have a question for the captain, make sure to get in touch. You might even make it on the airwaves. You can reach me online through the Captain FI contact form or get in touch through the socials. I’m active on Facebook and Instagram as well as a number of online finance and investing forums. And finally, remember the information presented on the show and the links provided for you general information purposes only. They should not be taken as constituting professional financial advice. You should always do your own research when making any financial decisions and make sure it’s appropriate for your personal circumstance.

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