Shadowing Practice: How to Get Rich (without the ick) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Now, money can't buy happiness, but it can make creating a life that you love much more accessible, because two things that money can buy are choices and freedom.
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And yet most of us were never actually taught how money works.
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We were taught algebra, photosynthesis, about how mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, maybe a bit of Henry VIII, but not how to spend consciously,
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invest consistently, or actually earn money in a way that actually creates freedom.
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When I was a medical student, I used to budget my meal prep so tightly that my dinners would cost around 30p, So that's about 10 pounds per week of grocery spend.
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And now I'm in a very different financial position, running multiple businesses as part of our venture portfolio.
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And along this journey, I've had to learn, unlearn, and relearn so much about money.
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If you're new here, I'm Izzy, a mum, tech co-founder, and Cambridge Dream doctor.
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And on this channel, we talk about the mindsets and strategies to help you create a life that you love.
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So in this video, I want to walk you through the money lessons that I wish that I had learned earlier.
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How to stop leaking money through comparison and dopamine spending why saving a loan often isn't enough, how to think about investing,
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and why building wealth eventually becomes less about penny pinching and more about creating value.
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I've also put together a totally free guide with money mindset journaling prompts.
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If you like, check that out.
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I'll leave a link in the description below.
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Now let's get into it.
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And so broadly, this video will be divided into three sections, spending, investing, and earning.
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So let's dive in.
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So firstly, spending.
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Firstly, there was keeping up with the Joneses, and now there's keeping up with the Kardashians.
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Before Before we talk about the Kardashians though, let's go back to the OG basics.
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Keeping up with the Joneses is a phrase we often hear
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being thrown around to refer to the pressure we feel to keep up with the lifestyles of the people around us.
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And it's easy to dismiss this as just anecdotal or like, oh, that won't really affect me.
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That can't really be a thing.
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But there's actually research to back it up.
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The Philadelphia Federal Reserve did a study back in 2018 looking at the impact of lottery winners on their neighborhood.
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And they found that the bigger the lottery reward that a winner collects, the more likely their neighbours are to file for bankruptcy in the following years.
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And they concluded that basically, in order to keep up with the lottery winner who was now spending lavishly on upgrading their home
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and their car and everything else, the neighbours around them not only took on higher levels of
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debt in order to be able to keep up with this lifestyle, but they also invested more riskily, trying to go for things that were more high risk, high reward.
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This all ties in with social comparison theory, which was first introduced in 1954 by a psychologist called Leon Festinger.
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He suggested that as humans, we have this innate tendency to compare ourselves to all the people around us that we consider as peers.
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For example, we look at people who appear to be in the same financial bracket as us, who we view as peers or friends,
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who can seemingly easily afford another new designer bag or a summer vacation in Europe or a brand new car.
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And we end up asking ourselves, surely we should be able to afford these things too.
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Surely we should also be able to access this lifestyle.
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And so we want to keep up and be at the same level as people around us.
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But the cognitive flaw here is that we never quite know what they've sacrificed
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or are going through to actually pay for those luxuries.
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Then as an evolution to the keeping up with the Joneses, which is looking at people in your surrounding peer group or your neighbors, there is now also keeping up with their Kardashians mentality,
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where we're driven by the excessive flaunting on social media to
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chase a way of living that's levels up from where we are right now.
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For example, Kim Kardashian's Instagram profile is filled with clothes, bags, and yachts that most people will never be able to afford.
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But that doesn't stop people from idolizing this way of life
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and putting it on a pedestal and wanting to live that way.
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And some people even choose to go into debt to be able to show off and have that kind of lifestyle.
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And so one powerful razor of a question that I find helps with this is asking yourself the desert island question.
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This question comes from The Psychology of Money, which is the bestselling book by Morgan Housel.
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And it's his suggestion of a way to make sure that we're not spending to impress other people.
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And this is the question, if you were stranded on a desert island with just you and your family, and you had unlimited amounts of money, would you still want that thing?
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Would you still be buying that thing?
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And this question helps us strip a lot of the comparison away to focus on what we actually want
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and what actually will bring joy and meaning into our lives.
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And one of the reasons this social comparison often attaches onto material things
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that we buy is that it's a lot easier to measure someone's value about how much material stuff they have, but it's much, much harder to actually measure the value of maybe being a good mum
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or a good husband or a good friend.
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And so this desert island question strips away a lot of the materialism
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and the need for comparison to focus on actually what we want
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and what will actually improve our lives in an actual real way.
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It removes a lot of the trying to perform for other people and focuses on, okay, what do you actually want?
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Another thing to do to combat the pressure of capitalism on spending more money is to actually cut the triggers
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and do a cleanse.
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So I will regularly go through my email and unsubscribe from marketing emails, which encouraging me to make purchases that I just don't need.
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I'll unfollow accounts on Instagram that show luxury goods, that show buying loads of stuff and clothing hauls,
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because these cues actually drive that craving and create more of this keeping up with the Joneses and Kardashians kind of loop.
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And so by cutting out these triggers, this actually clears up your head space because you're not thinking about all these material things that you could be buying.
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And you're just trying to opt out a little bit of this capitalist cycle that is very easy to get sucked into.
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One example of my life is I used to follow some other creators who would talk about personal development
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and that kind of thing, because I love that topic.
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But then when some of them start to get more successful and have more money, they start to want to spend on luxury goods and start showing off about this on Instagram or their socials.
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And one of them I saw bought a fancy, was it a Birkin bag or some very expensive designer bag.
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And I was like, this isn't actually the good mental nutrition that I want to be putting into my brain.
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This isn't actually the kind of content that is helping me to actually live a life that I love.
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And instead it's creating comparison, it's putting luxury expensive goods on a pedestal and showing off about this lifestyle.
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And so I actually just chose to unfollow them or like mute them because this just wasn't what I needed.
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And one thing that I found fascinating here was that there was almost this like viral replication of this like mimetic desire.
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Mimetic desire can be defined as wanting something because someone else either wants it, has it, or makes it seem desirable.
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And this is a very well studied psychological phenomenon
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because often we don't just want things because we independently decided that they're valuable.
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We actually want them because other people's desire teaches us what to want.
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And so we internalize what other people want.
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And so seeing, okay, these people want this or they value this or they're showing off about this.
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So maybe I should want that too because that's clearly what people value.
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And this is a very natural human thing because when we're born into the world, we have to figure out our social environment
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and understand what the human beings around us value
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and how to fit into that social structure to be a functioning part of a tribe, of a village.
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But that also means if we continually see a friend, a colleague, or even a creator or celebrity showing off a certain lifestyle with designer bags, a specific body type, or like plastic surgery,
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a luxury flat, a rich girl routine, it's easy to start internalizing those desires, even though that might not necessarily have been what you actually wanted before you saw all of that content.
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And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with all of these things intrinsically.
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It's more about deciding for you what you actually want because there's so many voices out there on the internet.
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It's so easy to get sucked into seeing all this content online, which is encouraging us to buy more things, to buy that luxury bag,
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to treat yourself, to like have a very expensive maintenance wellness routine.
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And maybe you genuinely on a desert island would want to do these things yourself.
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And if so, go for it, live your best life.
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The main question is, which is why I love the desert island question because if on a desert island, you would still want a Birkin bag,
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even if nobody could see it and you could just only use it on the beach on this desert island, then maybe actually that has been internalized so deeply into you
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that it is important to you and you would feel good anyway, even if nobody else could see it.
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But I suspect for a lot of people wanting a Birkin bag is
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because then they can actually use it and show other people about it.
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So for example, this particular content creator, I found it so interesting that probably from a young age, she had internalized this desire, this mimetic desire for these luxury items.
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And now that she has the financial means to access them, she has bought them and is showing off about them, which in turn is creating mimetic desire for those items in other people.
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And it's so interesting because the capitalist society that we live in and the way that marketing happens for these luxury brands,
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the bag itself costs nowhere near the price tag that they put on it.
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The markup is crazy.
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It's like 10 times or more on the actual cost of the materials for making the bag.
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And the way that they maintain their business model is almost solely around manipulating this mimetic desire
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and creating mimetic desire in as many people as possible.
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Something I'd also like to say while I'm on my rant about mimetic desire is
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that there's nothing inherently wrong about mimetic desire.
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It's actually just the mark of us being social creatures.
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The main problem that I sometimes see arise from mimetic desire is
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when it pushes us to make financial choices
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that are actually detrimental to our financial freedom and overall happiness and creating a life that we actually love.
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Because having a fancy handbag doesn't actually make you happy.
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It becomes part of what's known as a hedonic treadmill, where as soon as you acquire the thing, that becomes your new baseline and your body and mind adapt to think,
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okay, this is the new normal.
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And so you might feel the spark of happiness when you initially acquire the item.
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But as soon as you have it, your baseline level of happiness doesn't actually permanently increase.
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It kind of just goes back to your baseline, which is also why you can see people surrounded by luxury,
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expensive things and still feeling miserable because those luxury goods don't actually give you happiness.
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We're just told the story that they will make us feel important, like we're high status and that we will be happy with ourselves once we have it.
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But that's ultimately an illusion and social media basically adds fuel to this cycle of mimetic desire.
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Next, let's talk about the shopper's high and dopamine, because buying things, especially when they're on sale, makes our brains release the same neurochemicals as addictive drugs,
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which is why it's called a shopper's high.
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When I was little, I read a series called Confessions of a Shopaholic, and I think it later got turned into a TV show, but basically it encapsulates this frenzied desire to buy things,
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especially when there's a sale.
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And this might sound a little bit familiar.
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I can definitely relate.
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Where you're in the shops, you think you've gotten the one thing that you needed, maybe you just needed some like sunscreen.
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And then you're on the way to the till
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and you come across a sale aisle or a sale rack and there's some enticing discounts there.
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And so by the time you actually get to the checkout counter, you've picked up a couple of new items
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that you didn't actually need at all and didn't expect and you're met with a bigger bill.
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But experts like Angela Wurzel, who's a therapist who works with compulsive shoppers,
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actually suggest that it's more the process of buying rather than actually owning the item that gives shopping this addictive quality,
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which lines up with this hedonic treadmill cycle It's the process of actually buying stuff rather than actually having it
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and using it that feels exciting.
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And I remember this scene from Confessions of a Shopaholic where essentially she was doing a clear out of her home.
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And she would love buying loads of clothes every time there was a sale and would buy a ton of stuff.
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And she opened up her cupboard
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and it was just filled with all these like vacuum sealed containers of all the clothes
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that she had bought but never really worn.
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And so many of them were brand new, never worn, never used
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and yet she was so excited when she was buying them imagining all the ways
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that would make her happy and improve her life
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and yet they never even got used in places like korea
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things like dopamine sites have been popping off lately essentially they're websites where you can order things online
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but nothing is actually ordered so nothing arrives
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and you don't actually spend the money
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and apparently the whole point is you get some of
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that dopamine hit without your wallet actually paying the price now this sounds a little bit silly
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but it seems to actually be working for some people to satisfy this shopping craving
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and so this is how i've been approaching this shopping urge instead.
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The first thing is just avoiding the bargain entirely if you can.
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Things like sales are designed to tempt us and make us think like we're getting a better deal, so the simplest way is to just not actually even go there.
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The only exception is maybe
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if there's an item that's been on your wish list for maybe a set period of time
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and then it happens to go on sale.
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That's actually a considered purchase, not an impulse one.
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Another tip from a consumer psychologist called Kit Yarrow, who authored the book Decoding the New Consumer Mind, is to decide whether you actually want the item before you even look at the price tag.
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So the discount isn't what's driving the decision, it's actually the item itself.
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And another mindset that helps me is to remember that shops
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and websites are actually deliberately engineering the environment to make you buy.
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It's literally their job, like that's literally the whole point of a marketing department.
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And you start to see through this illusion of the mimetic desire and all the marketing signals that you've been fed, it feels kind of easier to defiantly say no and defy the corporate giants behind it all.
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And the final thing that helps me is that whether something's on sale or not, think about the price to your life in a few different dimensions.
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Money is only one of them because actually owning any item takes up some space and resources in your life.
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For example, this lip gloss that I have.
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Because I own it, I need to think about where to store it.
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So it takes up space.
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So right now it's on my desk.
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And so it's actually creating some visual clutter on my desk.
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It takes time and energy to think about managing, okay, where do I actually wanna store this lip gloss?
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Do I wanna keep it with all my other ones?
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Do I want to like keep it out here to use every now and then?
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And so actually every single item you buy adds some kind of weight and clutter into your life.
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And so a price tag only tells you the monetary costs.
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And so before buying, I'll also ask myself, what does this actually cost me?
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Does owning it create any new tasks, maintenance or mental load?
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One book that I was so inspired by during my student years was Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
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And she talks about how everything in our life has this weight, that it has this cost to keeping it.
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And so actually letting it go is an act of freeing up your own life and creating more space, time, energy, freedom.
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One other thing I like to do is run a potential big purchase Just pass someone
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that I know will give me a completely honest opinion.
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That person for me is my husband, Ali, and I found that the most efficient
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and effective way to get my message across whenever we're a part is actually by using Whisperflow, who are kindly sponsoring today's video.
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Whisperflow is a voice to text tool that turns whatever I say into a clean, ready to send message right inside whatever app I'm already in.
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Here, I'll show you how I message Ali without typing a single word.
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I simply start by pressing the FN key on my laptop.
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Hey Ali, I'd like your opinion on this.
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I am about to sign up for this mindset coaching course.
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It's 440, no wait, 490 US dollars.
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My reasoning is that firstly, the lead coach Marielle is incredibly experienced.
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Number two, it will be keeping me accountable.
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And three, it's on sale till tonight.
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But can you be honest with me?
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Is this actually a want or a need?
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And should I actually buy it?
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So Whisperflow managed to catch me changing my mind mid-sentence and even swap the price without me touching the keyboard.
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It spelled Ali and Marielle right the first time
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because it picks up names straight from the conversation and it turned my rambling into an actual list of things.
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Whereas native voice notes would have probably handed me one long jumbled mess.
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If you want to try out Whisperflow, I've popped the link in my description down below.
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That'll give you a whole month of Whisperflow Pro for free.
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Now let's get back into the video.
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Okay, we're back.
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Just had to deal with an emergency at the office.
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Let's get back into things.
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My mom used to tell me this Cantonese phrase, which translates as, you can't take money to your coffin when you die.
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And that's exactly the hot take in Die With Zero, which is a book that I read
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and why dying with money still left unallocated
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or unspent in the bank is a sign that you've actually messed up your financial planning a bit.
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And this blew my mind when I read it.
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In the book, Bill Perkins' core take is that if you die with money still left in the bank, you've probably over-optimized for saving and under-optimized for actually spending or using money.
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In the book, the author talks about how if you end up dying with money still left in the bank, which has been unallocated, it's quite likely that you've over-optimized for saving money
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and under-optimized for actually living and actually using that money.
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And the crux of it is that financial freedom isn't just about accumulating as much money as possible.
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It's about actually using that money and mobilizing it to create a life that you love.
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And this is the key shift that this book inspired in my own thinking, which is that money is not an axiomatic good.
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An axiomatic good is a philosophical term for something that we treat as obviously good in itself, something that doesn't need further justification and is an axiom,
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it's just obviously true.
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Accumulating more and more money isn't just a good thing actually, because money is potential energy.
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And this new framing of money as potential energy means that if you don't spend it or use it for anything, money is just sitting there as unused potential.
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And it only actually becomes something in the real world
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and becomes kinetic when you actually spend it or apply it to something.
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The origins of money were literally like credit notes where people said, oh you gave me maybe some eggs or some flour
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and I'm gonna write you a credit note saying that I owe you this amount of stuff.
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And so it only genuinely creates a change in your life if you let it flow, if you let it move.
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And so this totally changed my perspective from money being an axiomatic good, where as a student I used to think, okay obviously saving money is good, spending as little as possible is just obviously a good thing
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to actually having the perspective of oh saving is useful to a point
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but then actually the point of money is to be spent to turn from potential into kinetic energy
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if it helps you to create memories buy back time create
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a secure future for your children reduce stress build the life you want contribute to causes
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that you really care about then it's actually working for you
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and the author bill perkins talks about a story where he
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had just started working in wall street in one of his first big proper jobs he was really ambitious
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and had big plans to make a lot lot of money in the future.
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And when he was talking to one of his mentors at the firm, he was talking how proudly about even though his salary is quite low right now, he manages to save money and to save money aside
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and invest it through a combination of saving on his accommodation
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and his food and trying to spend as little as possible so that he could save a little bit every single month.
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He initially thought, oh, I'm doing such a good job.
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I should be so proud of myself for saving.
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But his mentor turned around and said, oh my God, what are you doing?
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Like, why are you bothering to save?
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Like that's so silly because you expect to make much more money in the future.
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And so right now you expect that you're at your lowest earning potential ever.
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And also where a few extra dollars spent on food or accommodation actually make a big difference.
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And so if you're literally jumping through hoops to save a few pennies or a couple of dollars here and there, when you're also investing in yourself and expecting your earning power to increase over time,
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that might not actually be the best use of life energy.
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And so I know we've been talking a little bit about spending
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and how to avoid the capitalist draw to spend impulsively on things that we see other people buying.
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But there's equally an argument that spending is not an axiomatic bad, just as saving is not an axiomatic good.
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And so, like many things, it's actually about the middle way, where it's about spending consciously, spending intentionally rather than recklessly, but also not scrimping and saving into misery.
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And I think a lot of us, myself included, have at some point in our lives internalised that saving money is an axiomatic good.
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More saved is more good.
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But this book, Die With Zero, made this opposite argument, that money is only valuable because of what it can do.
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So now let's talk about saving versus investing.
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Let me lay this out for you.
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If you have a $100 bill and you just keep it safe in your drawer, tucked away for a year, by the end of that year, it will have lost about 3-4% of its value.
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This is because of inflation, our favourite, which describes how the price of goods usually increases by a few percentage points each year.
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So the same $100 bill buys you less and less stuff over time because its purchasing power gets weaker each year.
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This isn't because the $100 bill actually turns into like $97 instead.
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It's still a $100 bill, but that just buys you less stuff.
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And let's lay this out as an example.
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Let's say one year, the price of a sourdough loaf of bread costs maybe $5 dollars,
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the next year the very same loaf of bread might cost maybe five dollars and ten cents.
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And let's say you have your cash sitting in a savings account that pays you two percent interest each year, but if the inflation rate for that year is three or four percent,
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your money is still losing value over time
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because the interest rate being paid to you by the bank is not keeping up with how much inflation is.
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Back in 2019, I created a mini financial educational personal curriculum for myself and when I found out about this,
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it was a shock to me because I thought that my money was growing in my savings account and seeing, oh, each year it's gotten a bit more and more and more, and I can see that over time.
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But in reality, its purchasing power was actually slowly shrinking before my very eyes, and I didn't even know it.
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And that's also the time where I really studied the concept of investing in debt.
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Investing is essentially putting your money somewhere where you believe it will grow and create a larger return for you.
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So instead of it just sitting there and depreciating in a bank account a little bit, you're using it to buy something like shares and a company, an ETF, a property, or even buy skills
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and an education for yourself with the hope that this becomes more valuable in the future.
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Warren Buffett's favourite book on investing in the stock market
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and also the best one that I've ever read is The Intelligent Investor.
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In the book, the author talks about how there's basically no real quick, easy and ethical way to guarantee that you're going to make money.
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Because if there was, we'd all be making it rain.
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What actually makes a lot of sense in the long run is actually boring, consistent and safe investments where you let the money compound over time
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and you don't touch it for as long as humanly possible.
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So after I read this book and a couple of others, like Your Money or Your Life and a few more investing books, I started investing in ETFs, also known as exchange traded funds.
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There are a bunch of other videos on the internet diving deep into this, so I won't go into too much detail in this video, but essentially what I set up is an automatic payment.
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And so then when my salary would land in my bank account each month, automatically a segment of it would have been transferred into my stocks and shares account.
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And then automatically that would be invested into a basket of ETFs.
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And this basket included things like the S&P 500, Vanguard, All World, FTSE 100, these kinds of things.
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And I set it up to invest some of the money once a week.
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And so this helps with dollar cost averaging.
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And there were two key reasons that I set up this automation.
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The first one was to save my brain space.
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My brain space is rammed with a billion different things and a bunch of open loops, and I don't need one more.
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And so if I can close one of those loops, set something up and automate it, that has basically removed it from having to take up space in my brain, which is very valuable.
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The second reason why is that with a long-term investing strategy, actually not looking at it is kind of a helpful thing
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because the market's going to go up and down and up and down.
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And so watching that and watching the value fluctuate kind of adds in another like psychological element,
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which is not particularly helpful because while ETFs like the S&P 500 have generally pretty consistently grown every year on average, they do go through ups and downs.
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And so if you're opening up your trading account every single week and seeing, oh my gosh, it's gone down a lot, that may trigger some feelings in you that are actually not particularly useful.
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Unless you're going to invest a lot of time and energy in learning how to become a day trader, and that's quite a risky strategy and needs a lot of attention,
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it probably actually just makes the most sense to set and forget it, and maybe just check in a couple of times a year to make sure it's all looking reasonable.
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And again, when I was doing this little personal curriculum for my financial education, one key area that I made sure that I invested in was investing in myself.
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I strongly, strongly believe that investing in yourself is one of the best things you can do, one of the best investments with the highest return.
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And so when I'm planning what I'm spending money on each year, I actually set a target for spending on investing in myself.
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And so this can be a whole bunch of things.
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This could be skills, so investing maybe in buying courses, it could be around mental health or physical health, so investing in a personal trainer or a therapist,
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or maybe in a mindset coach who can actually help you to break through some limiting beliefs, or a tutor or a mentor, or even investing in your style, in your skincare, in the way that you take care of yourself
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and actively investing in your personal and professional development as a human being.
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And if you have your own business or you're thinking of starting one, this links in so naturally.
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So for me, when I was investing and starting up my creator business, and then also all the other businesses we started since then, so including software and programs,
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I've continually invested and reinvested money into that and also time and effort.
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And so students in our Lifestyle Business Academy who are building their own businesses
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and starting them from zero and growing them to 100k
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and beyond are investing their own time and money into starting this business
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so that they get an outsized return of many times what they put in initially.
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I remember when I started on YouTube I actually invested in buying a nice microphone
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which is actually the very one that I'm using right now
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and it was a scary amount of money for me at the time.
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I was like oh my gosh this is a notable investment
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because I was also a student at the time but this investment
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and also many of the others that I've made in the course of starting
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and running my own businesses have paid off many times over.
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And a lot of this is because you're actually just betting on yourself
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when you make an investment you're making a bet of okay
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this money invested here is going to create more value i
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believe it's going to create more value over time compared to
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if it was sitting in a bank account or just somewhere else
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and so for me spending a few hundred pounds on this microphone at the time
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that meant that my audio could level up and i was committing and investing in my creative business was actually
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a bet on myself.
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I was betting on myself that you know what Izzy, I think you have a chance at doing this
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and doing this well
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so I'm going to set you up for success by putting a little bit of money in
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and with the belief that this is going to return many fold which it did.
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And so especially if you're thinking of starting your own business or side hustle, investing in yourself is so valuable.
336
Also
337
if you're interested in checking out our Lifestyle Business Academy where we help total beginners start their own lifestyle business
338
and scale it from zero to financial freedom, then I'll I'll leave a link down below if you'd like to check out more details.
339
And this brings us very nicely on to the third part of the video, which is earning.
340
Because ultimately trying to scrimp and save to riches just doesn't really work.
341
Saving money works to build a nest egg.
342
But if you really want to get really, really wealthy, just saving won't actually get you there.
343
Very few people have saved their way into becoming multi-millionaires.
344
Usually what they do is they actually figure out how they can spend some money
345
and apply some effort to create outsized value, which is worth so much more than what they put in.
346
It's sort of an extension of this concept of investing.
347
Naval Ravikant has a concept called the aspirational hourly rate.
348
He said, set a very high aspirational hourly rate for yourself and stick to it.
349
It should seem and feel absurdly high.
350
If it doesn't, it's not high enough.
351
And so even before he had any real money, he set an aspirational rate of $5,000 an hour for himself.
352
And in this case, the Lulu is actually kind of the Salulu.
353
So let me explain.
354
The idea that he was getting to underneath this is that
355
if you can outsource something for less than your aspirational hourly rate, or avoid spending an hour of your time on a lower value task,
356
then you should, because your highest value time needs to be protected for the work
357
that can actually create wealth and move the needle for you.
358
And so then instead of only asking, how can I spend less, how can I invest better?
359
You also start asking, what is an hour of my time actually worth?
360
And what do I want it to be worth?
361
Because if you're trying to build wealth beyond a comfortable nest egg, at some point in the game can't just be about cutting costs, because there is a ceiling to how much you can save.
362
You can only save as much as you have actually earned, but there is not the same ceiling on how much value you can create.
363
So for me, this is where actually investing in yourself and earning more actually connect.
364
If I spend money on a cleaner, on childcare, software, education, coaching, or team support, the question isn't just, can I afford this?
365
It's actually, does this free up my highest value time to do work that creates more value than it costs?
366
And there's an interesting connection with all the like dopamine mimetic desire spending, which is that a lot of people feel comfortable dropping thousands on a watch or a fancy bag,
367
but they feel hesitant in hiring a cook or a cleaner to help them out with daily tasks around the house.
368
And one thing that I've noticed is
369
that this tendency to be more willing to spend on material things than on actually like household support
370
and household help asymmetrically affects women.
371
Because even in this day and age where we have more options for equality than ever,
372
women statistically still take on the large majority of the household work and mental load that goes on.
373
And honestly, I kind of want to see that change.
374
And obviously this is mostly a thing in heterosexual couples.
375
And so often if a woman is in a relationship with a man, then at home, she will be just doing more of the household stuff.
376
And this has been shown repeatedly in multiple studies.
377
Even if both of them work the same hours, are both working full time, even if they have kids, usually the mental load and often the execution as well falls to the woman,
378
which unfortunately leads to a situation where it's
379
so easy for women to feel burned out and depleted because they are doing so much.
380
They are carrying so much.
381
And if you are depleted and burned out and exhausted, you can't do your best work.
382
You can't thrive and love your life if you're feeling like you're always running on empty.
383
So I personally want to see us claim more space in this way
384
and be willing to actually delegate and outsource more of our household work where possible, where it's financially accessible.
385
And another conversation that is really important and needs to be had is around equality in the household.
386
We increasingly have some semblance of more and more equality in the workplace, but this isn't necessarily transferring to be represented in the household and in the home.
387
One book that I love on this is called Fair Play, and I'd highly recommend it to anybody who finds themselves in
388
the situation where they are taking on most of the mental load of the household.
389
It opens up some really good and worthwhile conversations with a partner around the division of household labour.
390
And so whether you are running a business where you need to invest time, money and resources into creating this value, which you then sell in exchange for money, because that's literally how business works, or also
391
if you have a job by investing in buying back your
392
time outside of work to be able to invest in yourself and take care of yourself.
393
Maybe spending money on actually getting some household help, getting some child care so that you have that time for yourself.
394
Or if you have a job this also applies because it means
395
that you can think about investing
396
and buying back your time outside of work to actually be able to pour into your own cup and level yourself up.
397
I know that not everybody has the financial privilege of being able to delegate
398
and actually hire help but there are often some moves that you can make to try to actually buy back your time.
399
One thing that I did when I was starting up my creative business was I was initially editing my own videos.
400
This was a problem for a few reasons.
401
Firstly, I was pretty crap at editing my own videos.
402
They weren't very good.
403
If you look at them on my channel, they're not great.
404
Secondly, it was taking absolutely ages.
405
It took me days to edit a video.
406
I was slow because it was not my usual workflow and it was just taking a while.
407
And it was a skill that I knew that I would have to practice in order to get quicker at.
408
And thirdly, I wasn't enjoying editing.
409
I didn't enjoy the edit.
410
There were a couple of things I found kind of fun, but broadly I wasn't loving it.
411
And so given it was taking me maybe like 12 hours to complete an edit from start to finish, and I wasn't enjoying it, I thought, you know what, maybe let me see if I can outsource this.
412
So I went on to, was it Upwork or Fiverr or People Power, one of these sites where you can actually post a job asking for freelancers to help you with stuff.
413
And I found
414
that I could actually hire an editor to edit my videos
415
for about 50 to 100 pounds depending on the video an exchange
416
that would buy me back my 12 hours of time
417
but at the time i was like you know what i can't afford this
418
because i'm a student and
419
so what i did instead is i spent a few hours tutoring
420
and i could charge a much higher price for tutoring where
421
that meant that if i spent about three hours tutoring
422
that would be able to pay for a video to be edited
423
which would have taken 12 hours of my time and
424
so then by doing three hours of tutoring i've basically bought back nine hours of my time basically for free
425
because my value as a tutor was higher than my value as an editor.
426
And this net meant that I didn't have to spend any money of my own
427
because I was earning the money and then immediately allocating it to editing.
428
And so there are some creative moves
429
that you can come up with to be able to buy back some of your time.
430
And so now we've gone through the full money cycle from spending to investing and earning.
431
And so ultimately financial freedom was never really about how much you earn
432
or how much you have in your bank account
433
and whether the bank has called to let you know that you have enough now.
434
And equally the goal isn't to be someone who never spends money.
435
What it's actually about is being someone who spends intentionally, invests intelligently, and uses money as a tool to create more freedom,
436
more ease, more joy, and more of the life that you actually want.
437
If you've seen any of my videos before, you'll know I always ask you to choose two action points
438
at the end of the video to actually make this a reality in your own life.
439
So I'd like you to pick just two things from this video that resonated the most.
440
So maybe it's about asking yourself the desert island question, or pricing something in all dimensions of money, time, energy, and space, or thinking about ways
441
that you can invest in the stock market or even in yourself to actually create a life that you love.
442
Write it down somewhere, maybe on a journal, a post-it note down below in the comments or send a message to a friend
443
and take that first small step this week.
444
And if you enjoyed this video, I think you might like this one over here, which is about the eight game-changing habits of the top performing women that I know.
445
And if you've made it this far, drop a flying money emoji down below and hit subscribe so you don't miss my next video.
446
Thanks so much for watching.
447
Take care of yourself and remember that the journey is the destination.
448
I'll see you in the next video.
449
Bye!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Get Rich”. This video has 449 sentences and 7304 words to shadow. The speech runs for 31:08. The speaker talks fast, about 235 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| mimetic adjective | /mɪˈmɛtɪk/ | Exhibiting mimesis. |
| axiomatic adjective | /ˌæk.si.əˈmæt.ɪk/ | Self-evident or unquestionable. |
| tutor noun | /ˈtjuːtəː/ | One who teaches another (usually called a student, learner, or tutee) in a one-on-one or small-group interaction. |
| dopamine noun | /ˈdoʊ.pəˌmin/ | A monoamine C₈H₁₁NO₂ that is a decarboxylated form of dopa, present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances including adrenalin. |
| aspirational adjective | /ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃənəl/ | Being ambitious. |
| optimize verb | /ˈɑptɪmaɪz/ | To act optimistically or as an optimist. |
| firstly adverb | /ˈfɜɹstli/ | In the first place; before anything else; first. |
| mindset noun | /ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/ | A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one. |
| outsource verb | /ˈaʊtˌsɔːs/ | To transfer the management or day-to-day execution of a business function to a third-party service provider. |
| baseline noun | /ˈbeɪslaɪn/ | A line that is a base for measurement or for construction. |
| hourly adjective | /ˈaʊ̯ɚli/ | Occurring every hour. |
| capitalist noun | /ˈkæp.ɪ.tə.lɪst/ | The owner of a considerable amount of capital; a wealthy person. |
| lottery noun | /ˈlɑtɚi/ | A scheme for the distribution of prizes by lot or chance, especially a gaming scheme in which one or more tickets bearing particular numbers draw prizes, the… |
| inflation noun | /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/ | An act, instance of, or state of expansion or increase in size, especially by injection of a gas or liquid. |
| accumulate verb | /əˈkjuːmjʊˌleɪt/ | To heap up in a mass; to pile up; to collect or bring together (either literally or figuratively), often gradually and without active intent. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| keep up with verb | To manage to remain beside or just behind someone or something that is moving away from one. |
| buy back verb | To purchase (something already sold, misplaced, destroyed, or given away). |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| open up verb | To open. |
| burn out verb | To destroy by fire. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I'll leave a link in the description below.
- Would you still be buying that thing?
- Do I wanna keep it with all my other ones?
- Let's get back into things.
- I didn't enjoy the edit.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to budget · used to follow · used to tell |
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been popping · i've been approaching · we've been talking |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if on a desert island, you would still · if there was, we'd all |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've also put · they've sacrificed · have been |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 128 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, isn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: aspirational /ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃənəl/, inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, gosh /ɡɑːʃ/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: axiomatic /ˌæk.si.əˈmæt.ɪk/, aspirational /ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃənəl/, capitalist /ˈkæp.ɪ.tə.lɪst/, accumulate /əˈkjuːmjʊˌleɪt/, internalize /ɪnˈtɝnəlaɪz/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like mimetic, axiomatic, tutor.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.