I made the right mess of this channel. It hasn't
turned out the way I planned. Well, when I say
planned, I mean the quick thoughts I had on what
I was going to talk about. Not a proper plan,
of course. Because, as you can probably tell,
this channel, it's more, that's something I find
interesting. So, where's my phone? And ten minutes
later, I've recorded it and it's up on YouTube.
I'm not really a planner. Anyway, back to my
big mistake. Now, YouTube is part of Google.
So I went to Google and I said, give me a report
on the subjects that I cover on this channel.
I was hoping to see something like 33 % on health
and retirement, 33 % on relationships and retirement,
and 33 % on finance and retirement. Now, as a
watcher of the channel, you've probably guessed
that this is not what Google told me. So of the
258 videos I've published on the channel, here's
the breakdown. Three quarters of my content is
about one thing. Money. Bats, sips, ices, tax
drawdowns, the three bucket strategy, cash buffers.
75%. Now don't get me wrong. Sorting out the
financial. It's critical. If the numbers don't
work, your plane is never going to leave the
ground. But by focusing so heavily on the adding
up, I've accidentally created... A massive bias.
I would treat retirement a bit like an Excel
spreadsheet. But the lessons I've learned personally,
both through my retirement and talking to hundreds
of you guys, you can have a perfectly optimized,
tax -efficient, bulletproof portfolio and still
have an absolute nightmare of a retirement. Because
retirement isn't a financial event. It's a human
event. And what I'm going to talk about today.
is the other 25 health and relationships and
why getting the sums right means absolutely nothing
if you get them too wrong but why are we hooked
on this finance bias and why do most of us fall
into this trap when we're planning to hand in
our notice well it's because money's measurable
it's comforting you can Log on to your investment
platform, look at a number, run a spreadsheet
through a 4 % rule calculator and get a neat,
definitive answer. It gives us a sense of control
over the inherently scary transition, which is
retirement. But fixing your finances only solves
one problem. It buys you freedom. It doesn't
tell you what to do without freedom. Now, money
is just a fuel in a way. If you don't know where
you're driving, where your car's falling apart,
the bull tank petrol's gone useless. So, the
first pillar of neglect, then, for my channel
is health. In my video library, health accounts
for about 15 % of the content. When I do talk
about it, it's usually of the psychological side,
overcoming the fear of spending, or... dealing
with the identity loss of leaving a corporate
job. But we need to talk about the physical reality.
Your health is the ultimate currency in retirement.
It's the one thing you cannot buy back with a
well -managed SIP. Well, think about it this
way. What is the point of engineering the perfect
bridge to get you, sorry, from 55 to state retirement
age, if by the time you get there, You don't
have any physical mobility to actually enjoy
it. And when we're working, we put off health.
We say, I'll get fit when I retire. I'll eat
better when I've got more time. Then retirement
hits, the structure of the 95 disappears. And
if you're not careful, then sedentary habits
take over. Your health isn't a retirement hobby.
It's an absolute must. If your health fails,
your retirement shrinks. until it's the size
of your living room now no amount of compound
interest fixes that okay then there's the other
category the smallest category on my channel
relationships less than 10 of the video is covered
and honestly that's a massive oversight because
this is where the wheels usually fall off when
you retire your social landscape changes overnight
you lose the casual water cooler or kettle interactions
the professional respect the daily structure
but the biggest change actually happens here
at home now if you're married or have a partner
you go from seeing each other in the mornings
and evenings to 24 7. now that's a massive shift
for any relationship i've joked about it before
but Going through this sudden domestic proximity
change requires some serious negotiation. You
have to reinvent how you live together without
kind of stifling each other. And it's not just
partners, it's family. How many of us build every
time a plan early to find our time and finances
completely hijacked by the emotional guilt of
oversupporting adult children or becoming a full
-time unpaid childcare for your grandchildren.
If you don't design your relationships with the
same deliberate plan and you give your asset
allocation, then the emotional friction will
drain your energy faster than a stock market
crash any day. So how do we fix this bias? Well,
we have to view retirement as a three -legged
stool. Finance is leg one, health is the second
leg, and relationship is the third. Now, if the
finance leg is 10 foot long because you've obsessed
over it for a decade, but your health and relationship
legs are only two inches long, then the still
is completely useless. It's going to topple over.
A truly wealthy retirement requires all three
legs to be balanced. Now, moving forward on this
channel, I'm making a commitment to fix the bias.
We're still going to talk about the sums because...
I know we all love numbers, and I know you all
as much as I do, but I am going to dive much
deeper into the lifestyle design. Now, whenever
anyone sees fancy graphics animations or edited
charts on YouTube, they usually assume the creator's
running a massive, highly profitable media operation.
Believe me, I'm not doing that. So let's talk
numbers. Do you want to know how much I actually
earn from this channel? It's about £10 a month.
Yep, £10. That's just about enough to cover the
subscription for this video editing software
I use to put the videos together. Now, when I
set out with Time to Try, they didn't expect
to me any kind of money at all. And I'm completely
fine with that. It's never part of the plan.
But the interesting part isn't the £10 I make
today. It's the money I turned down when I realised
the channel had really gone off track. If we
go back about 18 months, things just look very
different. The channel was actually pulling in
around £300 every single month. By YouTube standards
for a small niche channel like this, that wasn't
bad going really. But I had a massive problem
with how that money was being made. I took a
look at the video content I was putting out at
the time. I was making videos reacting to the
government's latest white papers, shifting policies
and kind of chaotic plans for pensions. First
things first, the state pension is a benefit,
not an entitlement. Now this is controversial,
but it's also a fact. And you know what happened?
The algorithm loved it. Of course it blew up.
But when I looked at the comments section, I
realized I'd accidentally built the wrong channel.
The audience wasn't full of people looking for
some constructive, useful retirement lifestyle
info. It was filled with doom scrollers. People
who are actively looking for bad news, looking
to get angry, and looking to confirm their worst
fears about the future. Now, I realised I was
feeding an anxiety machine. It's easily done
on YouTube to chase the algorithm down a rabbit
hole of outrage and anger clicks. Fear pays the
bills, but that is not why I started this channel.
I didn't retire, just become a compliance officer
for government scaremongering. I wanted to help
people and help myself build a practical, balanced
life after work. So, I nipped it in the bud.
A stock -making... those doom and gloom policy
videos overnight so unsurprisingly my video views
dropped through the floor the algorithm walked
away ignored me and their revenue plummeted from
300 pound back down to a tenner a month but that's
absolutely fine they don't regress it for a second
it would never pass the plan because it allowed
me then a clean slate and to focus entirely on
what i enjoy talking about which is the actual
Plan for a successful retirement. And that brings
us right back to the mistake I've been talking
about. My bias towards finance. Now, when I cut
out the government doom -mongering, I pivoted
quite hard into tactical personal finance. You
know, SIPs, ISAs, cash buffers. That was a massive
step up because it gave... Some useful tools
instead of just anxiety. But as I admitted earlier,
I still leaned too far into the adding up. I
left the health and relationship bit behind.
Now the reason I'm sharing this income story
with you today is to show you that this channel
is still work in progress. I'm still learning.
Just like we're all learning about retirement
planning really. And I'm willing to do that pivot.
As long as we're having the right conversations.
I'm not here to help you doom scroll your way
into retirement anxiety and I don't just want
to give you a spreadsheet. But I want to help
us together build a stable three -legged still
where our money, our health and our relationships
are all protected. So to the core community who
stuck around after that pivot 18 months ago.
And to everyone who watches these videos, thank
you so much for helping me to fund my £10 a month
software description. Anyway, let's keep building
and retiring together. One that's worth living.
And I'll see you on the next one.