This article is designed to make financial independence as simple as possible (not easy; simple) so that you know what to do next - which lever to pull and how to make progress. 

What should we do?  Sell before it crashes even further?  Put it all in cash under the mattress and wait for the world to return to normal?  PANIC: read the news to get insight and feel even worse afterwards? Engage with the doomsayers predicting the end of capitalism?

Here's how Katie and I have trained ourselves to react when the market drops and why doing the opposite of what everyone else does is the route to financial success.

My messages, email and other channels lit up with messages of doom and gloom.  The market is down! We need to stop investing!  The £ is at an all-time low against the $! Should we halt all investments until it goes back up?  Is it different this time?  It is all going to pieces!  PANIC!

Over the last 4 years of running Rebel Finance School, Katie and I have had the honour of helping people avoid and unwind some of these mistakes. We have seen up close and personal the damage that these things do to people's financial lives.  Some have happened to us and I am sure we will make mistakes in the future!  This article is designed to help you avoid making some of the biggest mistakes we see people  making in the world of finances!

After 3 years of talking about money, running the Rebel Finance School for thousands of people, and reflecting on our journey to financial independence, I can tell you that most people believe their only routes to wealth are:

1. Winning the lottery (slim chances but why not, it is only a few quid each month)
2. Inheritance  (maybe great Aunt Tilda will die and leave me money)
3. Building a business and selling it (but I can't do this as it takes money to make money)
4. The latest get rich quick scheme (of course they convince themselves that it's legit and it'll work for them!)

Is wealth really a game of chance or can anyone do it?

This got me thinking, "Am I a risk taker?"  What does the rest of the world see as risky that I see as the safe bet?

Do you think it is risky to start a business?  Do you think it is risky to invest in the stock market?  Do you think the safe thing to do is to get a job and stay there for the rest of your life?

Recently we were approaching investing and finance companies looking for sponsors for the Rebel Finance School to help us reach more people and do more good in the world.  One of the companies we found was Wealthify and they seemed to have a great mission to simplify investing and help people make the most of their investments and pensions.  On the surface it looked fabulous

We set up a call to speak to them and before we chatted we did a deep dive on their strategies and investment returns.  Katie and I were SHOCKED with what we found.  We wrote to Wealthify, cancelling the meeting. They asked for feedback, why did we cancel?  We sent the feedback and their response was "we are going to have to agree to disagree." 

Wealthify has 30,000 customers and they are out there actively marketing (in my opinion unethically) for new customers.   I decided to write an open letter to their CEO Andy Russell. 

If you have been thinking of investing with Wealthify read this first........

Sounds like a good idea but my biggest concern is that this leads to stock picking and therefore worse performance (profit for us) over time.  Katie and I wanted to dig into my preconceived notions and ideas to find out the truth behind ESG funds and all the hype that surrounds them!

These funds have huge promise and we wanted to dig in to find out what you are actually buying when you purchase a global index fund.