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    • About Alan
    • About Katie
  • Extraordinary
  • Start Here
  • Podcast
    • Podcast Season 1
    • Podcast Season 2
    • Coaching Series: Christina
    • Coaching Series: Jaymie
    • Coaching Series: Andrew
    • Coaching Series: Keith
    • Stats and Feedback
  • Rebel Finance School
    • FIRE
    • Investing
    • Millionaire
    • Retirement calculator
    • Fees
    • RFS Financial Forecasting
    • Deciphering a Fund Fact Sheet
    • Return on Equity Calculator
    • VTSAX
    • Debt Petition
    • Financial Independence YouTube Series 1
    • Disclaimer
  • Blogs
  • Contact
    • FAQ
    • Press
  • The Extraordinary
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1 Extraordinary
    • Chapter 2 We are where we are!
    • Chapter 3: If you want different results do different things
DONEGANS
  • Home
    • About Alan
    • About Katie
  • Extraordinary
  • Start Here
  • Podcast
    • Podcast Season 1
    • Podcast Season 2
    • Coaching Series: Christina
    • Coaching Series: Jaymie
    • Coaching Series: Andrew
    • Coaching Series: Keith
    • Stats and Feedback
  • Rebel Finance School
    • FIRE
    • Investing
    • Millionaire
    • Retirement calculator
    • Fees
    • RFS Financial Forecasting
    • Deciphering a Fund Fact Sheet
    • Return on Equity Calculator
    • VTSAX
    • Debt Petition
    • Financial Independence YouTube Series 1
    • Disclaimer
  • Blogs
  • Contact
    • FAQ
    • Press
  • The Extraordinary
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1 Extraordinary
    • Chapter 2 We are where we are!
    • Chapter 3: If you want different results do different things

Blog

Welcome to the Donegans' blog.  Start reading for help investing, financial independence, life style design and many mini-experiments!
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The 3 Levers of Financial Independence

9/1/2023

 
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!
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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. 

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PANIC: the market has crashed

10/10/2022

 
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.   
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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.

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Should I stop investing?

2/10/2022

 
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.
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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!

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The 10 biggest mistakes you can make with your money

31/7/2022

 
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!
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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!

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Wealth: Luck or Process?

15/7/2022

 
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?
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Is wealth luck or a process? Do you need to win the Lottery? Can anyone copy what Katie Donegan did to get to financial independence?
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?

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Is it risky to invest in the stock market?

15/6/2022

 
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.
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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?

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Wealthify review

25/5/2022

 
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
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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........

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Guide to ESG Index funds

19/3/2022

 
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. 
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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!

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How global is your global fund?

20/2/2022

 
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.
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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.

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