My Dad and the advisor convinced me to invest my life savings into a high tech, high growth managed fund inside an ISA.  

Within months the dot com bubble burst and my life savings went from £7,000 to £1,200.  I lost 83% of my life's savings.  By 2005 it had recovered to £1,400 and I sold it all off to go and volunteer in Costa Rica.

This one incident scared me off investing for 15 years.  

Now, 21 years after that first bad investment, 79% of my net-worth is in stocks and shares and once we sell off our investment properties that number will rise to 95%.  What changed?  How did I go from petrified of investing, saying I would NEVER invest in stocks and shares again to being the biggest advocate for them?

This article is designed to help you have more confidence when starting to invest. 

10 or 12 years ago I started to do annual goal setting and reflection and have slowly developed my list of questions and process over that period.  I have run it with everyone on the Rebel team and shared with friends to great impact but not published it yet!  This is what I want to give to you for Christmas this year.  This is my Christmas present to you...............

My goal for 2022 is to write a book and I wondered if you would help me with a little mini-experiment to start with?

Consumerism is at fever pitch at this time of year with the holidays, Christmas and gift buying going CRAZY! 20% of ALL retail sales happen in November and December driven by Black Friday, Cyber Monday and then Christmas.  

The question is what are people actually buying?  What are you buying?  A bunch more liabilities for the house that you have to maintain?

So many people seem to be talking about it.  Millennial Revolution are mining it in their Airbnb's, the Escape Artist is writing about it and the highs and lows.  It seems to be in the press in different ways every single day. 

With all the hype I wanted to stand up and give a different opinion.  These are my reasons why I don't invest in crypto and won't tell anyone to do it either.

If you are looking to let go of the feeling of "I should invest in crypto" or you want some balance to the reasons for investing then this article is for you.  If you love crypto and don't like to be challenged you aren't going to like this one!

These 3 clear barriers are what we tackle first and this helps people make progress quickly.  The objective is to build a business making money doing what they love, but first we need to get past the barriers!

​My wife, Katie, and I have become fascinated by finances and since running our first finance course we have been trying to understand what stops people from getting their finances in order. 

At the beginning of that course we asked everyone that signed up "What stops you having your finances the way you want them?" What do you think they said? What do you think stops people from fixing their financial situation?

Almost every blog talks about cutting out streaming services, reducing expenditure and not going out to eat.   I have a slightly different take on it.  

​There is almost an air of resignation when I ask people about how much money they make.  It is as if they earn what they earn and that is it.  Well I am here to tell you that there maybe a floor to how much you can reduce expenditure but the is NO ceiling to the amount of money you can make!  You want to pull a lever that is going to supercharge your finances and your path to financial independence?  This is the one!

As you walk down the street there are messages on the bus signs, billboards and shop windows.  There are adverts on the TV, the radio stations we listen to and if you log onto social media there are endless targeted adverts directed at you. 

There is a war raging around you.  Some of the smartest, best trained and well funded people in the world are trying to crack the code to your purse/wallet.  Who is going to win?  The marketeers or you? 

This is a post about the Donegans and what they have been up to.  There will be ideas and inspiration but this post is mostly about us!  I always feel a little weird writing about us as most of my articles focus on giving value to you but I think you might still have fun........

I am wondering how the heck we got here.  Will we get the phone back?  Has it already been sold on the black market?  What will happen to the person I know stole it?  Is the building administrator in on the whole theft?  What is going to happen next?

For years I have felt as though companies are working against me. They try and sell me insurances I don't need, give me credit when I can afford to buy it without it and try every trick under the sun to squeeze a few more £££s out of me at every single turn. 

But who can blame them?  They are just trying to turn a profit aren't they?  Or are there teams of the smartest people in the world working for multinational companies scheming how to increase profits, make products addictive and get more money out of you?

I originally wrote this on the 26th of May 2020 and updated it this week for you on 15th of June 2021.   Has the advice changed following the pandemic? 
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So here are all your questions about the 4% rule, early retirement and financial independence answered!  Let's jump straight into "How much does it take to retire? The Q&A" with Alan...…..

I came across an incredibly simple formula for knowing when enough is enough. I will show you the straight forward maths behind calculating how much you need to invest to retire.

This was first written on the 26th of August 2019 and updated on the 15th June 2021.  I am now 42 years old now!  How time passes. We have reviewed and updated the article given everything that has happened since I wrote it in 2019!

This is a warning against unscrupulous companies that are going to try and take advantage of you during this time.  They are going to do it under the guise of helping you through the pandemic but in reality they are going to leave you far worse off in the long run than if they didn't help at all!

A year after I wrote this last paragraph I have now begun to realise that it is not just in moments of crisis that they will try and take advantage of you.  They are out their right now taking advantage of people; it just feels more shocking at the height of a pandemic.   There are teams of people currently working out the best way to get you to take on more debt. 
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Update 25/08/2020: This  was written just as lock down was starting on the 25th of March 2020 and this is still going on now and always will do.  Car dealerships make more money on the financing and insurance than they do the car itself.  Online catalogue companies offer you "anything you want" buy now, pay later at 39.9% APR. Companies that lend money make more, when you pay slower!  The debt warning isn't just for the height of a pandemic it is something you need to be wary of always! 

Update 18/05/2021: They are still after you.  Nothing has changed.  In fact they are getting smarter at putting you into debt.  This warning is needed now more than ever.  I get the feeling when I review this article in a year's time I will be writing that it is even more needed then.

This post is about lifestyle inflation, conscious spending and buying the future you really want!  We all earn money and then make decisions on what we spend that on.  My desire is to help you become conscious of your spending and make conscious decisions on future spending. 

If you do this you will either get comfortable with your current spending or change it to buy more happiness.  After all isn't happiness the goal?

How do you calculate your net-worth?  The first step to change is to take a good look at where you are right now.  If you don't know your starting point it is difficult to know if the change you are creating is moving you in the right direction or not.  If you can't clearly give a £ or $ figure for your net-worth then this article will help you figure it out.

Updated 27th April 2021

How can this be possible? How can we have more money than we earnt? Does that mean that we have lived for free for our entire life so far? Is this normal? Could you do the same? Do you have anything to show for your years of labour?

After recording a podcast together Katie and I decided that we needed to get some energy. So we headed out for a walk in the forest on a grey August day in England. As we walked and talked about the podcast we had just recorded, the conversation turned to the question “how quickly could we get back to financial independence if we started again?"

If we lost everything, but kept the skills, the knowledge, the attitude we have today, how long would it take us to get back to financial independence?

With the skills that we have and the opportunities that we have created over the last few years we felt that it would only take us about five years to get back to Financial Independence from scratch! So why do most people never get there?

How did you end up in Mexico? Aren't you worried about Covid? Isn't it illegal to leave the UK at the moment? Let's start from the begining..........

We were worried about Trump getting into office in November'16 because we thought the market would drop, we were worried about Brexit and potential currency risk.  We worried about investing and the market crashing immediately and loosing a fortune.  We worried about EVERYTHING!  This worry stopped us from investing.  The question we have only just asked ourselves is "What did this worry cost us?  What did we miss out on through our indecision?"

For an overview of which Index Fund to choose start here.  This article is to help you decide whether to invest in the Vanguard Developed World Ex. UK Fund or the Vanguard FTSE Global All-Cap Index Fund and what the differences are!

​We are going to break down the differences between the two funds and, given that nearly all of our money in invested in the Developed world fund, whether we are going to change that going forwards. 

I didn't notice the weight slowly piling on week by week. A year passed and I was obese!  I hadn't noticed the small change each week until it was too late. ​

Fees are very similar.  They are small enough that you don't really notice them at the time, they are hidden from you and they just gradually erode your wealth over time.  You wake up a decade or two later and you aren't worth what you thought you would be!  Fees are the hidden element in investing that makes everyone else wealthy apart from you! Let's tackle fees together

You panic, close the laptop and go back to watching Netflix! When Katie and I started to look at the Vanguard site to choose which fund we had several false starts and were nearly put off investing!  Open up the Vanguard site and let's go through it line by line together...... (this is the UK site but most of the terms are the same globally)

In fact all of us have access to this knowledge.  We have YouTube, the internet, podcasts and a wealth of knowledge that our ancestors could only have wished they could have access to.  So why aren't we all millionaires with Lamborghinis and philanthropic foundations that cure diseases?  Is more information the answer?