The pre-course questionnaire for the Rebel Finance School asks you what you believe about money.  Over 1,000 sign-ups for our 2022 course filled it in and one of the top beliefs they held was "Realistically, chances are I will never be wealthy!"

​I find this fascinating.  Why are you signing up to a finance course if you believe you can never be wealthy?  Maybe looking for a glimmer of hope?  Maybe looking for confirmation that it is all too complex and you were right and can give up on that dream?

Katie and I were sat Buenos Aires last year wearing hats, gloves and all the warm clothes we owned.  We were outside drinking hot drinks, eating alfajores and working on the Rebel Finance School course.  We didn't care how cold it was as we had purpose.  We had figured out that we needed to re-write the debt week of the course. 

​With only 5 days until we ran debt week we had decided to re-write the entire week into 2 sections, the first "how you get into debt" and the second "how to get out of debt".  We were inspired, driven and it could have been any temperature.  We had a mission to help people with their finances.

Financial independence (FI) seems like a far off lofty goal at times.  Especially if you are struggling to make ends meet, bring in money or just survive.  However, the fundamentals of financial independence are super simple.  There are three main levers for you to pull.  All the experts out there debate endlessly about how to pull them, when to pull them and why to pull them!

You've seen the headlines.  The market has crashed.  Stock market plunges.  Pensions in crisis! Get out now before it is too late!

The temptation to sell when you see the value of your stocks and shares wiped out is huge! In the stock market crash during Covid in April 2020, Katie and I had £184,000 (or $244,000) wiped off the value of our portfolio.   

Things have gone crazy in the UK. Things have gone crazy in the world markets! Our new Prime Minister decided to give tax breaks to high income earners and borrow £50bn to do it. The pound crashed against the dollar making imports and foreign travel massively more expensive and further fuelling inflation.

It is tough to manage your money and get it working for you. There are financial advisors telling you they know best, there are modern finance companies trying to persuade you to give them your money, there is pressure to get into cryptocurrency and endless opportunities to invest/spend/waste your precious hard-earned money. It takes a HUGE amount of time and energy to earn money, build businesses and get ahead, and then you have to make it work for you!

People think I am a huge risk taker.  I remember being sat in a Rebel Business School event talking about starting businesses and one of the participants said to me, "It's alright for you, Alan; you are a risk taker!"  I was shocked as this is not how I see myself.  I see myself as quite risk averse; I don't like big risks with my money, with my business or with my life.  I like to play it safe in so many ways.

When Katie and I ran the second Rebel Finance School we had over 450 people attending and one of the questions we got asked the most was about ESG funds.  Should we invest in them?  What are they?  Do you recommend them?  

Let's start with what ESG means; it stands for Environmental, Social, Governance.  The idea is that the fund is made up of companies that are more ethical, more sustainable, better for the environment and better run than other companies.

The hope is that by investing only in the ethical companies we can make the world a better place whilst creating a profit. 

How global is your global index fund?  How much of the world are you actually investing in when you buy a global index fund? 

After digging into what goes into an index fund as part of writing our guide to ESG indexes article, we were inspired to find out how much of the world the Vanguard "global" fund actually covers.

​A global index fund makes it easy for you to invest your money around the world (huge diversification) and partake in the global economy.