CNX Podcast
The Chiang Mai Community Podcast, where businesses, brands and interesting people get heard. Hosted by Ash Pemberton.
CNX Podcast
The Art of Financial Education: Lessons from Will Rainey S01/E10
Join Ash as he embarks on a conversation filled with financial insights and strategies with Will Rainey, a visionary in financial literacy.
We explore real-world money stories, from the California Gold Rush to global brands like McDonald's and Starbucks, each offering lessons in growth.
Discover three essential money rules from Will's book 'Grandpa's Fortune Fables', guiding young finance enthusiasts toward financial wisdom.
As the sun sets over Chiang Mai, our conversation ends, leaving behind echoes of financial insight—a beacon illuminating the path to financial freedom.
https://linktr.ee/cnxpodcast
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show, it's Mr. Will Rainey! Nice
Will:Nice to be here.
Ash:massive welcome. we've been talking about doing this for a while, so thank you very much for coming and doing it, and You were definitely on my hit list because you've made just a real impression on me with your book and like I wasn't going to just dive straight in on that because I've actually written quite a nice intro for you. Yeah but your book really, struck me as a really useful tool that parents and children should know about and that's really why I was like you absolutely have to come on this podcast because you're here in Chiang Mai and the local community should know about you.
Will:Oh, thanks. for having me. I'm
Ash:Let me introduce you formally, I've written quite a lot 'cause I know quite a lot about you now. You are the founder of Blue Tree Savings, which is all about helping adults teach kids about money. It has a really cool website that really helps people understand how to invest and how to achieve financial independence. I also subscribed to your newsletter, which is full of ideas and actually won, here we go, won best family finance blog in the UK money bloggers awards. Congratulations. When did you win that?
Will:very much. Two thousand 2022.
Ash:2022. And since you've won it, has it got better or you just contained it, it was good then?
Will:No, I've, I personally think it's got better since then.'cause like I was never a writer before. And so the more I write, the more comfortable I feel writing and the more creative I feel I've become, try new things. I was just glad to get that early recognition of the block.
Ash:I think that is recognition as well. That's a pretty good award. I, when I read that, I was like, Oh, well done. You have epic real world money stories. And I've read a couple of them. The McDonald's real estate, the BMW finance. It's like, how does McDonald's make money?
Will:yeah,
Ash:It's not selling burgers, right?
Will:no real estate one was really one that was really popular. It's about Starbucks.
Ash:got that on my list. I would love to dive into that with you and really go into some of these stories. Cause I think they're going to be really good for the listeners to just get a snippet about who you are and why they should go and find out more on your blog. But let's continue. You are the author. Of Grandpa's Fortune Fables, which is a best selling money book for kids, age 6 to 12. And what I love about it is it's so easy to read. It's easy to I was pretending that I was teaching my son, but really I was learning the principles of personal finance and investing. And it's just such a good reminder, but it's fun. This is the thing. And you help them learn the three rules of money. sometimes billions of that's my day job.
Will:was my day job. Not anymore.
Ash:you're a family man. I've written you're a great husband, cause I met your wife first, and she told me how great you are. And you're a father to two really beautiful girls that are at Lana School here in Chiang Mai. Cool? You lived in Hong Kong, and then you moved to Hoi An in Vietnam. Which you said is the best place in the world.
Will:I thought it was really nice. I love Chiang Hoi An, Chiang Mai, different. I was doing different things when I was in Hoi what I was doing there is different and therefore my kind of perception of it's different. But I'm so happy here in Chiang Mai and I loved it there as well. Just the pace of life in both places is relatively Relaxed and food's amazing and relatively cheap cost of living. It's great weather. What's to complain about in either
Ash:the cost of living affects your decision of where you live.
Will:Yeah, I wouldn't be able to do as much as I'm doing if I lived in the UK or the US for example So but more in a sense of being able to do it as young as I am to be able to do that Yeah, it'd be harder elsewhere
Ash:you're a footballer and I've written You're a pacey wing
Will:is still off
Ash:Winger is a bit more
Will:PC wingback.
Ash:and you are so Pacey wing back was like the, was it. Yeah. And you play with the Fran Tanks.
Will:I play with the Fraut Tank sometimes and at All Mag on the Monday, Wednesday, first Friday group.
Ash:I've played with you there. let's talk about football first,
Will:yeah. Sounds good.
Ash:Just to break ourselves in. What's the Fragatangs? Because people will be like, what's that? It's a funny name. What is it?
Will:Yeah, no. So it's just a group of expats who get together they play training on a Wednesday night at Dream Star Academy, I think. I dunno exactly the location name.
Ash:Is that near the
Will:No, it's not. It's Eastwoods. So towards Central Festival over that way. And yeah, so you get together and they play little tournament games, et cetera. I don't play in the tournament games. I just play the sort of games they play amongst themselves, but yeah, like 21 to 25. XPATS, Get Together, Seven Aside, Great Fun, Great Way to Meet New People.
Ash:up here, the first thing I've always done is just found the football team, the greatest way to meet new people. Got a little bit old, my knee started to hurt, so I gave up. But that group has then just evolved and merged with a couple of other groups. What's it like playing football with those guys?
Will:Oh, it's really good. In the sense of it's fun, it's good activity, but no one takes it too seriously. So it's all for fun. The standard's pretty good. There's no exceptional players there, as long as you can play football, you don't want anyone who just wants to kick a football and never kicked a football before. But in terms of meeting people, having a laugh, getting fit. It's great. It's actually quite hard to get a game now because there's so many people want to play that they have to cut off people. So if you're not quick enough on the signing up process, you have to sit there waiting.
Ash:I went out with you on a Friday night and you'd set an alarm. So just explain what you have to do to get a game with these guys.
Will:Yeah. So they have a Facebook group and two days before the game. they generally release the signup. So you have to put your name in and say. Like first 21 players gets the play. And if you're not you're putting a reserve lift so you're sitting there waiting for people to get told by the missus, they're not allowed to play. So you get this game you have to be really quick on that So they generally do it about 9 p. m on a friday night for the monday game So i've set my alarm just to try and get in there, but I don't always still get there quick enough for that. Yeah,
Ash:make sure that you're in the first 21 players. Yeah. Cause it's three teams of seven, right?
Will:three teams of seven.
Ash:Yeah. Cool. So when I played, I, you signed me up, so I managed to get a game. I was really impressed, but struck by variety of nationalities, it's just a complete mix of people, isn't it?
Will:Now you've got pretty much all around the world. You've got, Yeah. people from the US, loads of places in Europe. We've got some Thais, which is great. And you've got some Burmese coming across coming over playing. So yeah, no, it's fantastic. It's really good Brazilians playing as well. So get a bit of people to show off a bit of skills.
Ash:and one or two girls?
Will:Only one, generally. Bri.
Ash:Hi Brie, if you're listening. Pretty good football though. Plays with the boys. Cool. Thank you for that. let's jump back to blue tree savings. people talk about trees when they're saving and the growth and the flourishing of the investment, is the comparison, but what's blue tree?
Will:bit of a lame story. I was trying to think of a website but I had This initial idea of helping parents invest for their kids. And I call it like gif vestment, it was a rubbish name, but I had to always website for it and it was all blue. And then I was like I'm going to ditch that. And then I started writing the stories about money being like trees. I was like, I want to do something about trees. My website was already blue. So I just suddenly just merged the two. I've got this website. So then I just changed my website, changed the name to be. BlueTreeSavings.
Ash:It's uniquely yours, right? BlueTree, you are the BlueTree savings website. And if people want to find that, because we're talking about it, will they find you by just typing in BlueTree
Will:uh, if they put BlueTreeWill or BlueTreeWillRainey or BlueTreeInvestments or BlueTreeMoney, then,
Ash:then they'll, you'll rank and they'll find you good, you also do the blog, which I think just links to the website. and highlights the stories and it's really the epic real world stories that I think people are going to really want to listen to. we highlighted three. which one do you want to talk about?
Will:One of them, which actually is in the book as well as the real world one, which I think is Samuel Brannan during the 1800s in America. So during the American gold rush. Samuel Brannan first heard there might be a little glimmer of gold being found in California. So he. Instead of just going out getting a shovel and going to find gold for himself, he was like not too sure how much gold there was. He's only ever seen a small bit. So what he did is he went out and bought all the shovels or spades from almost a thousand miles radius around California. and then went out and did a massive marketing strategy and just told everyone there's so much gold to be found. not find gold in California. So all these people came rushing into California, quit their jobs going, I'm going to be rich. And clearly if they want to go and find gold, they need a shovel. So they go to Samuel, buy a shovel off him. And out of everyone during the American gold rush. He became the most wealthy person because he just sold shovels to all these wannabe rich quick People who quit their jobs But he was essentially scamming people because he knew there wasn't that much gold it works out alright in the end because he doesn't know how to manage his money and he loses it all by the end, but it was just a fascinating story about people's desire to get rich quick, not really understand, doing their research, they're just hearing this one guy saying, you can get rich quick and they were like, yes, let's go, and he was like he was the one getting rich, and it's like such a powerful story. So if someone tells you can get rich quickly, I'm guessing the person telling you is using you to get rich and I thought that's a powerful story. It's one of the stories that I converted into a kid's story and I put it in the book.
Ash:I remember that from your book that story is infamous. People always talk about that as a, like an example of, Oh no, you're the ones that sell in the shovels. What's the modern day equivalent
Will:So you get a lot of people talking about cryptocurrency people now who are going out and saying you can make 10 percent per day returns on some trading platforms. So it's more about the transactions rather than taking a view. they're sending out these emails saying you can get rich really quickly. Just sign up for this and start sending the money and you'll be rich. You'll get these huge returns. great and this person clearly has made loads of money because they'll play up how much money they've made in the past. there's so much about modern day scams and people still desire to get rich quick because they do hear some stories on the news about people getting really wealthy through Cryptocurrency so like then they hear someone's reaching out to them to help them and they're like, oh fantastic And so yeah, but clearly they're just taking these people's money. They're not even investing in cryptocurrency. They're just using Cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is debate to get the money off them,
Ash:so avoid all get rich quick schemes. Again, that's a bit of a cliche, isn't it? That, get rich quick. You should just watch out from that, but you really tackle that in your book, don't you? So what would be your advice to people who want to get rich quick?
Will:getting rich quick, I just don't believe in it. if you want to get rich quick, you have to find ways of earning money in a different way to everyone else. There's no shortcuts as such. There's ways people do get rich quickly, doing something creative. different. They're not just copying what everyone else is doing. If you copy what everyone else is doing, then you're, got no advantage. Why is there a way of you making money? in the book, I talk about earning money, but if you want to get wealthy over time, You have to be patient. You can make money easily over the long term. It's just this whole desire that everyone wants to get rich quickly. I just worry that people are falling for that. And it's so much, especially with the internet now and social media, it's so much easier for people to get take shortcuts I say in the book, we try and educate kids by fun stories about hopefully they don't get enticed by these like scammers or people offering gambling or using debt as a way of
Ash:of showing getting rich. Being wealthy and being rich. Tell me about that. Yeah,
Will:definition of rich from my mind is you have money and you spend money, you don't have much in terms of savings and we see rich everywhere. So it's on social media, you just see these people with their nice cars and their nice houses and they're on wearing these fancy clothes and they're on these holidays and you're like, wow, they've got everything. But in so many cases, those people are borrowing money. It started off with MTV Cribs. They'd go into these famous people's Hollywood mansions, and they'd have 17 bathrooms, and swimming pools, and loads of cars. And then it wasn't until much, much later I realized that many of them had rented the houses just for the show. or they'd borrowed cars, just to make them look More successful than they actually were and I thought these are like the people everyone's looking up to going I want to be a superstar just like them But essentially they've earned a million dollars but spent a million dollars So they had no money and so if they wanted to do anything else They had to go and find new money. And so that's rich wealthy on the other hand is these people who? have earned money, but they're looking after their money. They're still spending, but they're looking after it. They've got savings, they've got investments, they go to sleep, they wake up and their money's actually grown because they've looked after it. But we don't get to see many of these people. They're not out there trying to show off how much they've got. They're very content with their lives. They're like, I don't need to work as much because I've got all this income that's coming in. I don't have to worry about if there's an emergency because I've got some savings. And you just don't see many of these people on social media because they're just not that way inclined to show off that their riches. And so for children, it's so important because you say to them who do you want to be like, they don't ever get to compare the two people, because they only see the rich people on social media or their friends, etc. They don't get to hear or see about these wealth. So that's why it's so important in my blogs and in the book to have these two characters. One's Richie Raccoon, who's the rich, got nice clothes, goes over. And then you've got Grandpa, the sort of main protagonist in the book. Who's just a happy go lucky kind of guy, he's got this big kind of forest that he grows in the book and he can relax and he's any food that he wants, anything that he wants he can have. But he's not showing off and eventually, Ritchie Raccoon wants to be like Grandpa. He's as soon as he can't find gold anymore, he wants to go, it's too stressful, I just want to have that savings. And so just giving children these two characters. And then you say to them at the end, which one do you want to be like? Do you want to be the rich one or the wealthy one? And they all go, I want to be wealthy. it's so important that we shine a light on that there's two different types of people with money. They both can earn quite a lot, but if one's spending it all and the other one's like looking after which one do you want to be? I think that's the difference between rich and wealthy. And I want as many children as possible to grow up building wealth. And that's why I used the money like seeds analogy. And I say to my daughters, I know some of my children are still going to be like most other children. Oh, my friends have got this and my friends parents have got that. And I'm like that's good. But we just don't know, have they got any forest, as we call it? So savings, because you don't get to see it. I don't know how many, savings you've got. You don't know how much savings I've got. But, I'm always like we can't compare ourselves. they might have the nicest car in the biggest house, but they might have no savings. We're quite content. We've got some savings. We've got a nice house. And I'd rather be in that position. And if I can buy a bigger house or fancier cars, I wouldn't have that savings and I don't want to be in that position. And then I say to my kids, what do you reckon we should do? And they were like, yes, keep our forest. And that's exactly the kind of mindset that I want them. Because money is so much about mindset as it is about the actions that you take. If you have that, I want to build my wealth, you'll take the right actions. And now the happiness and the security that you get with that follows. And that's, we can drive that into as many kids as possible because the default is they'll just want to spend their money on trying to keep up with all the friends and whatever they see on social.
Ash:You talked about seeds and you talked about forests Just give us like a bit of an overview of how you are teaching the principles of money and investment and wealth for children
Will:So I've always loved this analogy of money being like seeds. my youngest was four years old when I started talking to her about this kind of concept. And so I said, Oh, here's some pocket money, but just think of it like seeds. And then straight away, she was like, Okay, you can give those seeds away and spend it. So I explained that. But straight away, she was very curious. She was like, what does it mean if I don't spend them? I'm like, are they going to grow? And I'm like if you plant them, yes, they will. she didn't know what that meant. And I didn't explain it to her, but She started to visualize this kind of her pocket money growing and then as they cut my daughter's got older I then could start to elaborate on that analogy So we started talking about how you can make the money grow by putting in a bank account, but even better Investing that money in the stock market and so over time We capture how much they're saving and we call them blue trees So every time they put some money away, we say that's going towards planting a blue tree And so they're like, oh, how many blue trees do I have dad or how many blue trees my sister have? And can I put some of my money towards my blue trees? And so they're building up their own little forest and they love it and it works so well because I sometimes say to them like when you get to 18 are you just gonna go and chop down all of your blue trees and go on a big spending spree and they're like no, because they're into the planet and environment. They're like, no, we want to look after our trees. We might take off a few branches to go and build something, buy something, but they're in that mindset of wanting to grow this kind of financial forest. And it just works so well. And the book, I use the analogy in lots of different ways and talking how, even talking about how investing works, you can this tree and say, yeah, they just become very want to look after their forest and their money. And I just love it. And they can see it into the future as well. And I think this is such a powerful thing as well, because they know that a tree doesn't, you don't plant it and next day a tree's such a, going back to the rich quick thing. It's about nurturing a tree and making sure you've got these strong trees that are going to last for a long time. So yeah, no, it just works really well. Powerful, engaging for kids as well. So I say, I didn't start getting into lecturing my kids about money. Here's some seeds. Do you want to grow some or do you want to give them away? And they're to do a bit of both. And I think that's fantastic.
Ash:Were you inspired by any other particular authors?' Tell us who's inspired you to in your writing style, where you have chapters with stories And, then you have quizzes.
Will:So it's two different sort inspirations for the book. there's the kind of content side of it. So some of the Best planet personal finance books out there. So you've got like the likes of rich dad, poor dad, which is fantastic. You've got the psychology of money. You've got the richest man in Babylon. these are the books I've read and had a big impact on my own money as over the years. And I always thought, Oh, I wish I'd have read them when I was younger. And so that's why I I was like, can I take some of those lessons and make them into a book for kids? So that's one side. And then in terms of trying to make the book engaging for kids, my kids are really into David Walliams.
Ash:I knew you were going to say that. I didn't want to say that, but that's who it reminded
Will:yeah, that kind of style of the fonts and the kind of some of the characters and how descriptions and stuff like that. Then I was just talking to creative people around me at the time saying, want to make this book a bit different. What can I do? And I just got lots of ideas from people. So hence, yeah, one of the bits of the book is mystery code. So every chapter, the kids have to answer a question and then they get a letter and by the end of the book, they get this code, which allows them to go onto the website and get some games, et cetera. And they came from one of the person, one of my friend who helped design the book. His wife came up with the idea and I thought, this is fantastic. And kids love it. they just want to get to the next chapter so they can get to the next clue and solve the book. So yeah, it's a fantastic little addition, which wasn't my idea. It was just seeking creative ideas from others.
Ash:That There was fun at the end of every chapter because we read one chapter a night There was a little quiz. There's a little recap. engage your children they know that they've got questions. So they're gonna take more attention to it But I thought it was really smart the way that when we reached the end of the book It wasn't over, because we wanted more and it links to your website, doesn't it? How did you do that? Have you seen other books that do that?
Will:I don't think I have, no. I just wanted another way of using the book to drive families, so both the parents and the kids, to the website. and find other ways of making money from the book, if they, Get the quiz right. They get a free game and a free worksheet. And if they enjoy that, then they can sign up to do a few more, which has a small fee for it. So it's another way of me trying to find different revenue sources from the work that I'm doing. Cause I want to try and reach as many families as possible, and hence I want to try and find different ways to make money in a small, but. high quantity kind of way. So I don't want to do very expensive offerings or products for parents because I just want to make it accessible. I'm writing another book and at the end it will link to the same kind of principles.
Ash:that you weren't that comfortable kind of like selling your book, but I think you've done a pretty good job describing it to everyone. So let's just recap, it's called Grandpa's Fortune Fables, it's by you, the author, Will Rainey, R A I N E Y, so that people can find it. If you buy it online, how much would it cost
Will:it's available on Amazon that's, so 9. 99 I've got lots of copies here in Chiang Mai. And so anyone listening to this, who wants a copy for 250 baht then yeah, we'll So my email address is will at bluetreesavings. com. Let me know.
Ash:That is awesome. That's going to be my first ever podcast giveaway. So it was 9. 99. We're offering it in Thailand so that you don't have to do the international post. All you need to do is contact Will and you'll sign in for him too.
Will:into what I thought spend
Ash:Good. very much, Will. That's awesome. Let's just take five. Thanks. What I'd like to do now is dive into is epic real world money stories. Let me just ask it as simple as this. How does McDonald's make so much money?
Will:I'm a big fan of McDonald's. I used to work for McDonald's for many years when I was doing my GCSEs and my A levels and every holiday part time. So I was really intrigued by McDonald's and how they make money. And I remember I found out about this. It might have been after watching, there's a movie called The Founder, which is all about the start of McDonald's and I was like, oh, it's interesting. But yeah, no, it turns out that McDonald's clearly makes a lot of money through selling hamburgers, but actually the company of McDonald's franchises most of their, the restaurants around the world. So They actually get people to sell their burgers for them through this franchise, and they just take a large fee from all these franchisees. So it's a nice, typical franchise model, but what's really interesting about McDonald's and the way they do their franchise is that they own the actual restaurant buildings. So say, I want to open a McDonald's restaurant, you have to open it up in one of their places, their buildings. You can't just say, I'm going to go and build my own McDonald's. They say, okay, you can have a McDonald's restaurant, but you have to have this building that we own. And so you have to pay us rent as well as this. Franchise fee and clearly the buildings that they're building or buying are in the best locations in the world So you think about any of the big cities? They've got multiple restaurants in prime real estate fifth avenue, new york Middle of london, etc. So really prime real estate And they own those buildings and essentially the franchisee has to pay them a rent and they've got all the control about how much rent they have to pay and so mcdonald's is essentially a real estate company That has a little side business of doing selling some burgers and I thought that was blew my mind in terms of the business structure
Ash:I Know that McDonald's have this criteria that they run all potential locations through, and does it have the traffic, the footfall, does it have the accessibility? And they're very precise, and now that makes sense to me. Because they're actually purchasing that building and they're renting it back to the franchisee.
Will:Majority of the buildings that you see as in McDonald's constructed buildings are owned by McDonald's Corporation.
Ash:Yeah, I think I'd learned about that in my business studies degree. And again, like you said about the shovels and now McDonald's, I think these are pretty famous ones, but one I really didn't know anything about was the Starbucks card. everyone kind of talks about Starbucks and it's all about their location. the convenience. They've got really nice, comfortable places sit and hang out. And yeah, their coffees cost two times more than you would pay if you were buying it on the street, but that's not it, is
Will:they make a lot of money through coffees and that's how they make majority of their money. But yeah, the bit that I thought was really clever and it's just still huge is the Starbucks membership. So it's either if you get download the app or if you get the Starbucks cards that you can preload your money onto. and they incentivize that they say if you use your app or your Starbucks card to pay. Thank you. Which cost the same price the coffee, but if you spend so many of them, you get a free coffee or whatever it may be. But what's really interesting is that they make so much money from that, even though it doesn't cost you anything to start with, you're not paying a fee or anything like that. because most people don't spend all of the money that they put onto their cards. So what happens is you might say you put a thousand baths on. They're gonna invest it or put it into a bank. So they're going to make interest on your money And remember they've got millions upon millions of customers. So even small amounts add up So if they have over a billion u. s Dollars at all times on these cards and that's growing at five percent or something a year How much money has been just left on these cards? Then they have they just assume that 10 of that money on those cards is just never going to be spent So this is just people like, so for example, we're in Hong Kong, we left Hong Kong, we didn't go and Finish off and go right. We want our money back or we gotta go make sure we spent We just forgot about it and it's only when we got to vietnam We're like, oh, we still got this card in hong kong We could probably go back and use it if we found it, but like we're never gonna do that And so it's just lost money to us. It's getting it's only a few dollars But it's the fact that they've got so much scale that those few dollars ends up in, millions. So they make hundreds of millions of dollars per year just from assuming that people aren't going to spend that money. and so the amount of money that they've got on these prepaid cards is bigger than so many banks, except for the really big sort of American banks and some of the biggest banks out there. But any kind of small bank, they've got more money, like a billion us dollars assets essentially on these cards and they're using that to make money for themselves. And again, it's not doing any detriment to the end customer. In fact, the customer can say we're getting free coffees out of this. Good for you. But I thought it was just such a clever way of the companies making different money in different ways. And I like sharing that with my kids to say. You've got to try and be creative and come up with new things. This is how you make money, being creative, doing something different. And yeah, any examples I can show I'd like to share. That's
Ash:That's a lovely example. It makes me think now that's why they call themselves Bucks. It's I just see that name differently now. Because, a bit like in Roblox, there's Robux. It is, it's Starbucks. It's their currency, and you're buying it. They're holding your cash. You're spending that money slowly over time so they get the interest on that. And, like you said, so many people will just leave, the small denomination of change. It's oh, that card's gone. It hasn't. It's still got a small amount of money on it, but it's written off.
Will:And it's a couple of extra bits I put into that blog which I know people fed back saying, that's really interesting. So Starbucks doesn't put the currency on their menus. And it would just say 140 for a coffee in Thailand. Yeah. So we know it's BART because we're in Thailand. We will never have the BART symbol or say THB. Because they don't want you to look at the number and think of money, even though you know it's the price. But they did this huge research, and they did like menus with and without the currency symbols on, and they found that people spend so much more money when it doesn't have the currency symbol on there, which I thought was weird. Quite intriguing and interesting because they're just finding ways of making money. But the other one is the whole, they write your name on the cup. say Ash, but sometimes, make mistakes on the card, or write your name wrong, or they'll say, they'll call you Ash P, or whatever it be. Or saying, just spell your name. So classic one was someone said, Oh, my name's Mark with a C. So they spelled it C A R K, which is silly. But then what people do is they take photos of the names that are spelled incorrectly and put it onto social media, going, Oh, I just got my Starbucks card, my Starbucks. And they spelt my name like this. Oh, I don't know how to spell or joking, but that's just free advertising for. Starbucks, They're just using these little bits to try and how can we get free branding? How can we make more money and I thought I just like creative things like that. clever and I like sharing those with my kids to Get them thinking about different creative ways of doing stuff. I thought
Ash:I understand that. I just can't believe that's like a policy.
Will:I don't know if it is a policy I think it's more of an encouragement or it's this work sometimes I definitely don't think they say you have to write names incorrectly, but they do encourage and like people doing stuff like that and they don't definitely don't discourage people from misspelling names.
Ash:Real life case studies that were like big brands and interesting stories that people just don't know about.
Will:in terms of brands, the other one I think is really impressive is Red Bull. most people think they sponsor Red Bull. All of these sporting events, so you'll see him on doing all these extreme sports, so high diving, the aeroplanes and all that. sometimes they do sponsor but in a lot of cases, they actually own the events. So they actually own the sport. They get all that ticket money. All of the other sponsors that are there are actually paying Red Bull. So it's not Red Bull paying someone who organizes this event. They're actually putting the event on. Making it out as if they're sponsoring it just to get their name out there, but they're actually making money through the ticket sales from merchandise from other sponsors in there. And the same thing with all of the sports teams. Formula One, they actually own two teams. They don't just sponsor. CrossFitdeck combined. And it's really fun to see competition Geoff I was able to meet such a great community Hellman was the clinical tests. Oh the company, we also have Israel Policy Poetry to produce the field. It's a sponsor and that's dead money. It's not dead money Like hopefully get a return on it, but they're saying we can still advertise look like we're sponsoring but make money in other ways And I thought amazing. Really clever
Ash:like we're sponsoring, but make money in other words. It's amazing, really clever. Yeah, a
Will:Yeah, the huge marketing company, yeah, they've now got Offshoots of yeah marketing and they're now doing movies and yeah loads of different stuff. They're really clever
Ash:I'm just going to throw some quick questions
Will:Okay.
Ash:What do most people get wrong with personal finance?
Will:They care too much about what other people think.
Ash:Managing your own money, if you'd just give me one golden rule.
Will:Save before you spend. put away one out of every ten that you receive and put it away before anyone can get to it.
Ash:10 percent but you call it one out of every 10 because I know you're picturing seeds. What's your, personally, biggest financial failure or mistake?
Will:probably not taking my own advice one time. Cause I worked in the investment field. And there was a smart guy came from an investment background, seemed to know everything about investing. He worked for huge investment firms and he kept going on about one of these big banks and how it's going to make loads of money. okay. He's a smart guy. He knows what he's doing. He's obviously thought about this a lot I went against my normal principles, which is not to invest in individual companies I've always invested in lots of companies very broadly. Yeah put some money just in one Company one bank and yeah, it didn't do very well and I regretted it straight away and I went yep. I'm never gonna do that again. I'm just gonna stick to You Investing in many companies rather than any individual one.
Ash:okay, let's just cover that again. you're saying don't in individual stock. So don't invest in Apple, but invest in the 10 tech.
Will:Yeah, no, a hundred percent I've worked in investment for many years, spoken to some of the best investors in the world and they get it wrong so much because there's just too many moving factors, which company is going to do best in the future. You just don't know people have educated guests and the people who get it right. Then go and claim that they that all the time. Yeah. But I've seen so many companies fail and people losing so much money because they've invested in one company and it's more important about trying to find the right companies as it is about the worst. So We, no one knew before, like when Apple was small, no one really knew it was going to come this mammoth. That is today And you want to make sure that you're investing in so many companies and that's why I say I invest in what's called a An investment fund which invests in thousands upon thousands of companies All I have to do is just transfer some money every month it goes into this fund and it invests in essentially the big three and a half thousand companies in the world without any effort really low fees and Hopefully one of those companies are going to be the next big Apple, the next big Facebook, the next big Microsoft. And as it does, I'll get some of that success. I won't get as much if I just put my money into that one, but I don't know which one that's going to be. And even if I guess right for what's the best company next year, am I going to get it right for the year after and year after? And it's just too many moving parts. I always just say Invest very broadly. And then that's the most sustainable way of making money over the long term most people don't want you to do that. So if you go to some financial advisors and stuff, they'll say oh, no Give me all your money. I'll look after it and i'll find these best companies for you and i'll you have to pay me a fee for doing that and oh just do it simply Invest in lots of companies and over the long term. That's been the most sustainable way
Ash:spreading risk? the expense of really amazing returns.
Will:in the short term, you're always going to get average because you're investing in essentially the average of all companies, So you're never going to get the highest return in one year or the lowest And so some people, I don't want a high return, that's fine, but over time, And average, over one year, two years, three years, four, five, is actually better than if you get fantastic, rubbish, fantastic, rubbish, fantastic, rubbish. Especially as it's really hard to get fantastic. So what's actually going to happen is you'll go fantastic rubbish, fantastic rubbish. that's the bit you have to be comfortable with. And that's why it's a long term investment. You're essentially saying, okay, I know every year there's going to be people getting a higher return than me, my return is more sustainable. Over many years it's all about getting a sustainable return And I think so there's a guy called morgan housel who's written the book the psychology of money and he explains this really well, so your listeners might there's a guy called warren buffett who's the one of the richest people in the world and he's been investing for like 80 years And he's worth like over 100 billion us dollars. And so morgan did some Explain this really well. He said before he was like 65 years old. No one would have heard of Warren Buffett. he's had a lot of money, but he wasn't anything special. It's just the fact that since he's 65 and he's been investing for that long he's been able to find this way of just every year finding this sustainable returns And now he's money's just keep growing and growing. So it's not so much about he had the best returns over his lifetime He's not Blown the lights out in any particular year He's just every year got a good return and he's done it for 80 years and now he's you know, Money just grows and grows. So it's all about Getting a good return every year as opposed to trying to find the best return because the best return is too
Ash:good return every year as opposed to trying to find the best return.
Will:I admire him in the sense of what he's done in terms of investing and building his wealth. I don't, not so much in, I wouldn't want to ever be Warren Buffett, just outside of him investment stuff.
Ash:If you, Will Rainey, were to be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
Will:Yeah I get a lot of satisfaction when I get messages from parents saying, So they and their kids have taken action To change what they do with their money based on reading my books or my blogs And I get such a thrill out of hearing that people are doing something different Hopefully having again, hopefully in 20 years time. I'll get nice email saying I read your book 20 years ago and this had the impact so yeah No, just having an positive impact on what how people think about money and hopefully it's going to have a long lasting impact on their lives
Ash:Good man.
Will:What, how does that compare to what you thought
Ash:I thought you would want to be known for making a difference and helping children understand how to be financially free. Thank you. but actually you do quite like the recognition when people come to you and say, you've made a difference, which is, I think what I said to you when I read your book, it really did make a difference to me and Harper. We enjoyed it and we learned from it. Have we changed? I'm not sure.
Will:the bit that I wanted. Because I do hear people say they like the book and they like the story. And I'm like, yeah, but have you done anything with that? Because it's about the actions that is more important so many people know about money. But don't actually put it into action. I worked in the investment field and some people were earning crazy amount of money, much more than I was ever earning doing my bits. they're still living paycheck to this is crazy you literally tell other people how to manage their money, but you're not managing yourselves I earn so much money. I can spend it. I'll just earn more tomorrow what happens if you get fired? What happens then your whole life going to be? upside down and that's why I want to try and Encourage people to take actions as opposed to just learning
Ash:would you say to someone who said, I just don't earn enough to be able to invest.
Will:to one of my other epic stories. So there's a guy in US called, Ronald Reed. And so he used to fill up a petrol station, And then he became a part time janitor at one of the schools in America. So he never earned much money. when he died, when he was, I think he was like 91 years old went through all of his assets and he had over 8 million US dollars in savings and investments over that period of time. And people were like shocked, like what, how has he got this much money? And he just learned how to follow the principles of money and just spent more than he earned. So even though he earned such a small amount, He managed to maintain his lifestyle to eat basic foods such that he could save a little bit and then over time as he kind of wealth grew and grew, he as he invested that money. And become, yeah, one of the top 1 percent wealthiest people in the world. that's a fantastic, inspirational story.
Ash:The thing that made me think about from that story that you just told, was why would you want to die? With all that wealth and have not enjoyed it or not benefited from it or put it to some good sure you can leave it for your children, but Is that right?
Will:if you'd asked me, would I want to have been Ronald Reed? No, you have to get this balance saving and spending. I think this is what a lot of people feel money is very binary. They're like, I'm a spender or I'm a saver. as I say in the book, it's, you've gotta be both. You've gotta enjoy spending, Just make sure you don't spend it all. That's the whole principle. as I say in the book, it's 10% or one out of every 10 you save. You've still got 90 that you can go and spend.
Ash:So if I was earning 30, 000 Thai baht a month and my expenditure was about that, that I managed to be frugal and put 3, 000 baht a month away. And let's just use Thailand as an example. And that, ratio, where would I invest 3000 a month? That's actually going to make any difference to me.
Will:when you're starting with that smaller bits, you have to just put that money into. a bank just accumulate those three thousands over time. But once that those three thousands do get into, 30, but you can then start investing that through sort of financial institutions in Thailand and just get that money invested and starting to grow that money it takes patience. And but getting into that habit of saving that little bit of money Once you wait for a few years, it does build up and then you're like, okay, I can use a bit more of that money. I can save a bit more of that money. you do get excited about savings and you see your money growing and That's hugely motivating to go. All right, this works I want spend just 10 percent less, is that really going to change your lifestyle? And in most cases, it's not. But if you think about, if I had to save 10 percent of all the money I've ever earned, how much money would I have now, especially if I had invested that money? Most adults today go, okay, that'd be quite a decent chunk more than I've got today.
Ash:I think the people that I talk about money with, we all have this new goal, which is passive income. Which just is a dream. It's like money. While you do nothing? Is that what passive income means?
Will:it's not quite Nothing, but it means you're not having to put in Hours upon hours of work. It's not like you're just getting paid for your time. You're getting paid for the risk that you've taken so for example most passive version is that you put your money into a bank account and you get some interest if you have a good chunk of money in the bank and you go four or five percent return You're going to get that nice little chunk of money Which is good when interest rates are high and it's nice and easy, there's other ways to get passive income. So if you had a second property and you're renting it out, you're getting an income from that and Yeah, you've already paid for the house. So it's not as if you've got too much extra work. It's not Zero work because as you know as a landlord, you still got to look after your tenants and fix up maintenance and stuff So it's not exactly zero, but it's clearly a lot less work than doing a nine to five five days a week And same thing with investing in the stock market. So companies, when you invest in them, they'll give you a little bit of their profits known as a dividend, bit like an interest. So again, we're fortunate we've got some investments and every month we get given some money from these companies that we've invested in which we can then choose to spend or. Invest it more and our investment pot gets bigger and bigger. So it's trying to find different ways of Earning money, which means you're not what using your time So even if I've written a book and it's quite nice now I have another form of passive income because People buy the book and I've spent all that time and effort building up the book, but now it's given me a nice passive income
Ash:Talking to you reminds me of how my father did his wealth management and he's an accountant and a CFO. very much a money minded person. And when there was like a shift in almost like new world order and cryptocurrency came out and banks said they were going to fold, I threw away all those old principles. But it seems like you're sticking to them. So do you invest in crypto?
Will:I do not invest in crypto, no.
Ash:The argument that I would put to that and it sounds like I am the get rich quick guy But I'm not fully that guy but I'm very attracted to that. Bank interest rates when I was young would be as high as eight or ten percent, but now they're naught point two five and one percent, I don't think it's worth it. And cryptos can move ten percent overnight. you could make all that money quickly. I'm falling into the trap, aren't I? But you don't touch any of that.
Will:I'm not saying that people shouldn't invest in cryptocurrency and but I just don't do it myself. And I definitely don't recommend. I go back to a purist of where does the money come from? So if I take the stock market for example, which I do invest in that makes a lot of logical sense for me because when people spend money at shops or at the Petrol station or wherever they're spending their money majority of that money goes to the big companies Those companies are owned by people, which are the investors, and therefore money is flowing from the spenders to the investors. And I want to be at the receiving end of that flow. So that makes a lot of sense to me. So as long as people keep spending, those companies are going to keep growing and I'm going to get wealthier over time. Bitcoin and other pieces don't have that same logic to me. They don't have that flow. So the only way that people make money through crypto is to say I've bought it today at this price in the future I'm gonna sell it to someone else who thinks it's gonna go even higher than I think it's gonna go and so it becomes what's quite known as the greater fool theorem. Essentially. I've got this asset and I'm going to sell it to someone else because I don't think it's worth as much in the future. So essentially I'm going to pass it on to what's known as the greater fool than me. why would you sell it if you think it was going to go even higher and higher? But eventually that can work and work until gets to a point where there's no other fools out there to buy for that higher price. and it's going to come crashing down at some point. And it'll keep, it can go up and down those flows. And we don't know where the greater fool is or the greatest fool is, but essentially that's the only way it can make money is if you can sell it to someone else. And they're going to be the one left holding the button because essentially there's no flow of money from Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. I know there's some financial engineering to try and get cash flows from there. But if people are willing to take that risk and say, I believe they, it's got potential upsides and I'm going to try and capitalize on that in the short term.
Ash:school. Thanks. Good, you explained that really well. I'm going to go back to the quick part
Will:well.
Ash:about halfway through. What's the best compliment you've ever received?
Will:I can make. Complex subjects sound simple.
Ash:Good. Have you ever had an insult that you've received that you're actually really proud of?
Will:I'm going to change that slide. One of the reasons I wrote the book, so one of the insults I generally got when I was, okay, it's not even an insult, but it used to be I'm only good with numbers. And I hated that. I was like, I don't want to be known just as good as numbers. And so now, because I never used to be able to spell and I never used to read when I was younger. So it inspired me to start writing so it used an insult to, to change my future.
Ash:If you were starting out in business today, what would you do?
Will:don't think I'd do too much differently from what I'm doing now. I'd want to do something that I think is purposeful, I'd probably do more with schools than I do now, so trying to help schools, teach their kids about money, because I know whilst I'm focusing on parents, I'm excited about doing some more stuff with schools to help them teach their kids about money.
Ash:That is well worth diving into because I imagine quite a few teachers and parents are going to be listening to this. What do you offer for schools? Have you got a package for schools?
Will:I'm just gonna release one. So I'm doing some work with a very prestigious international school in Singapore. so it's a week after Chinese New Year, their students are going back and so 600 of their students are going to be taking a program that I put together, which the teacher is going to be presenting to their kids.
Ash:What's that program called
Will:BlueTree money management program
Ash:what does it actually teach them?
Will:So it teaches them the three rules of
Ash:Oh, we didn't even get to that. Let's conclude with that. Will Rainey, what are the three rules of wealth?
Will:the first rule is to spend less than you earn. Second rule is to make that savings grow. And the third rule is be patient. All sound simple, but incredibly difficult to actually And hence, I use the analogy of seeds. So it's growing this forest. So save one out of every 10 seeds you get. Make sure you plant the seeds so they're not going to grow. wait for those trees to grow. And about only 5 percent of people probably follow all three of those simple So that's one.
Ash:Absolutely awesome, Will. I've loved this conversation. You've given us loads of insight, loads to think about. Thank you very much for your time, sir.
Will:No worries, my pleasure
Ash:Cool. All the best.
