Ste’s story

Ste had been lucky to work for a large organisation abroad that had set its staff up with a private pension – still a relatively rare perk in ELT. But once he went back to the UK, he wanted to explore his options there too and generally become more financially savvy. 

The problem was, like most people, he didn’t know where to start with the sheer volume of information there is online. Whenever he tried, he always ended up abandoning the task because the information was too difficult to understand and he didn’t have enough time to fully research it and understand it.

But also, like most people, his idea of what investing meant could have led him down the wrong path into high-risk types of investing that are really more like gambling. 

I’d heard about investing, but wasn’t sure what it really entailed; my impressions were that it was about trading, making and losing money large amounts of money, and crypto.  

Lucky, then, that he heard about The No-Stress Money Plan in time because I don’t teach any of that. I want you to know what to do instead so you only invest in safe things where losses over the long term are unlikely. 

Ste didn’t hesitate, signed up straight away and got stuck in from day one to all the mindset and practical elements of the course. Like a lot of people who do the course, Ste found that opening the topic of money and starting that internal conversation with himsef led to more changes than just learning how investing works. He found himelf thinking long and hard about his relationship with money, extending the emergency fund lesson in his own time so that he categorised all his transactions over the previous 12 months to get a realistic picture of where his money was going. 

It was quite the shock as I’d been pretty frivolous! I put together a budget to help me create an emergency fund and became more aware of my spending habits. 

Practically speaking, he found the same love of online compound interest calculators as me. Once you see just how much money can grow from money if you give it long enough, it realy incentivises saving. And, although the course is as jargon-lite as possible, there’s no doubt you gain a whole new vocabulary that opens up another world.

I can now read my yearly reviews from my private pensions, as well as other investment portfolios, with ease and feel confident about what they mean and if they suit my financial views.

What did Ste do after the course?

Since the course finished, I found the confidence and motivation to really take hold my finances. As part of the final lesson of the course, we created our own investing strategy and I researched that in more depth. As I’m based in the UK now, I’ve taken advantage of a stocks and shares ISA account to help me build my wealth using the tax-free limit, bearing in mind the importance of fees. 

I’ve also changed the risk in my pension portfolio, as I now understand what it’s invested in and what’s happening in them. There are still more things I’d like to do with my finances, but I know I now have the knowledge and tools to research what’s out there and make an informed decision rather than just gambling my money away.