Midlife Finances - Getting Real and the Basics Right - interview with Brian Mitchell

The Restless Midlifer : Episode 70

In this episode, Dave shares a take on managing weight by not stressing the systems, and is joined by the Frugal Spender, Brian Mitchell. Brian, a former police officer shares his own midlife story and how he came to be a leading voice in getting real and practical with financial savvy. He shares some powerful tips and ideas on getting out of debt and shaping up your finances to follow your heart and your goals.

After going through many years living payday to payday and getting himself into credit card debt, Brian knew that something needed to change. He realised that his relationship with money was poor, which in turn was the root cause of his money troubles. Brian spent 2 years learning everything he could about personal finance whilst getting out of debt, getting better at managing money and eventually investing.

Brian knows first-hand how to get out of a financial rut, and it starts with changing your relationship with money. Only then can you take the practical steps to become debt free and build wealth.

Links:

Instagram – @frugal_spender

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPt7diXGH78N3Q2tlkf2MaQ

Podcast – The Frugal Spender

Brian offers a Money Coaching service, helping you with your specific situation 1 on 1. If you are interested in this service, contact Brian at https://www.frugalspender.co.uk/

Dave Algeo is a Restless Midlifer, searching for answers and adventure. His mission, should you choose to join him, is to seek out ways to get life back on his terms, heading in a more fulfilling direction and enhancing his health in the process. Dave is a writer, coach, and constantly curious person, striving to encourage others to live big - by identifying the small but significant things that can transform the life we are living. Join Dave as he explores how to regain the spirit of adventure and childlike curiosity whilst managing the "grown-up" responsibilities of life.

Dave's approach to making changes in life, health and direction, is rooted in his 'sprout sweater philosophy. Check out his 'Crackerjack' video here https://youtu.be/OZM4ObMSu6U to learn more about the basic metaphor. Check out episodes 30 and 31 to learn more about Dave's approach.

Visit https://www.midlifereshape.com/podcast or search for 'Restless Midlifer' in your favourite podcast feed. To find out more about the podcast, and episode show notes visit https://www.midlifereshape.com/podcast Drop Dave a line at dave@restlessmidlifer.com to ask questions, offer feedback or suggestions for future podcast content.

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Transcript (AI generated)

[00:03] Dave: The Restless Midlife of Podcast get health, weight and life back on your terms. Hi, welcome to episode 70 of The Restless Midlife a podcast and I have another interview for you today and it's with Brian Mitchell who I first heard on Pete Matthew, his podcast, The Meaningful Money podcast. And Brian is known as the Frugal Spender on Instagram, on YouTube and has a podcast out, a new podcast which is dealing with the topic of financials, financial freedom and happiness and health around that and Brian explains a bit more of that. But one of the things that captured my attention about Brian's work and story was the fact that he made a couple of those classic midlife decisions and choices that I think many of us can learn from. Brian is a former police officer and he talks a little bit about his early life and then moving into the police and how some of the decisions and the emotional challenges and the resistance I guess he felt around making some significant change, moving away from a secure job. The police is a secure role as a former police officer, spent a lot of time in the job and really struggled in terms of the shift of mindset from that secure, comfortable, but still really challenging and in so many ways obviously challenging job into that more flexible, free type of work, but less secure, less far more unpredictable, that kind of thing. So Brian talks about his experiences in it and I think that's a really useful experience for him to share with us, but then also talks about his current work, frugal Spender coaching, money coaching and that aspect. But particularly we dive into what do we need to get in place. What are the basics that we need to get right. What do we need to talk about in focus on in reality. If we do have some decisions to make around our career. Shifting. Changing. Moving out of this into that. What are the things that we need to get is the foundation of the basic and he has again some great advice and tips on that. So that's the interview coming up very shortly and I guess really the thought that I had this week really to share with you around health and particularly around getting our weight back under control, perhaps losing some weight, is, I heard a great explanation of how we might see that process. Now, if you imagine you have that basic sort of calculation of energy in versus energy out and the deficit between the two is whether we depend on the direction of that deficit is whether we put on weight or lose weight. Now that is the basic. Now obviously we're all individuals and different and what motivates us and moves us and what we need to factor in it is different. But that is the basic and maintaining a deficit that is sustainable for long enough to achieve the goal and then something we don't snap back from afterwards is a key part. How we do it there's a lot of different ways but that's the key factor. One lovely little explanation I heard and I can't remember where I picked this up on podcast somewhere was if you think about the systems that are involved one is to burn more calories. Eye movement. Exercise activity. The other is to take in less energy. Less calories. Which is through diet and there are a number of ways doing that and diet. I use that word hesitatingly but it is the word that remains what we eat and how much we eat. Now. If we imagine the approaches might be if you think of those as systems in an engineering sense. I guess even if you use one system to its extreme. To an extreme then you're putting a lot of strain on the system and the system is therefore at a greater risk of breaking which is what we often see if you embark on an all or nothing type plan. Very rigid. Very low carry. Whatever the approach is. Might work for a while. But we are taxing the system, the evolutionary human system that we are that needs to survive. There are counter forces and that system can be stressed and broken if we're not careful and the evidence suggests ensures quite strongly that if we are the diets of that nature just don't work in terms of sustainability. Or we could go the other way, exercise activity and we could stress the system that way so physically we could work hard and push our boundaries that way. But again, when we push the system that stress the system to that extreme what happens is the system can break, we can injure ourselves, burn ourselves out, get sick, just really sick and tired of doing things, start to pick up the long term niggling injuries and that kind of thing, the system gets stressed and can be broken. So instead of picking one. And this is the approach that I quite liked as a visual is instead of picking just one and stressing that why not utilize each of the systems to a lesser extent. Not putting the strain on the system. Putting a little bit as inevitably because any change. Any shifting of activities and things we do is going to tax the system but not put the strain on that leads to breakage. So we utilize them each to a small extent and achieve similar but more sustainable results in the long run by because we're not taxing the systems to breaking point we're using the systems in a less intense way for a longer period of time. Now, I really like that it's just a way of reframing and thinking about that in terms of our health. Less is poor but if we do it from the number of leavers we pull then perhaps we've got more options and we give ourselves a better chance of sustaining it. So anyway, just some food for thought for this week and on with the interview with Brian. Again, as I said, a great interview. Brian has some great thoughts around how we can get ourselves back into some good foundational habits, financial habits, to then give us the confidence and the ability to make some lasting decisions, whether that be to reduce hours, retire early, change a job, that kind of thing. So take care for now. Hey there, Brian, it's great to have you along. And as per my quick intro, I don't think I've done quite justice to yourself and your experience and your story. So do you want to tell the restless midlife of listeners out there about yourself, about your story, and then we'll dig in a bit because I think you've got a great story and experiences to share. But also what you're working in now is really, I think, relevant to a lot of midlife who might be thinking about changing career, changing jobs, moving to something, perhaps even starting a business, that kind of thing.

[06:40] Brian: Yeah, sure. Hi David, thanks for having me on. I have a bit of a weird story, I think, in comparison to most who are in the position that I'm currently in, which is currently, I mean, I worked backwards a little bit. I'm currently, I guess the best description is a money coach and a personal finance content creator and there's quite a few of us out there at the moment. But I think my story that led me to where I am now is a little bit different because most people kind of come from a financial background, either work in the finance industry or have previously, and then kind of merged into the kind of crazy world of social media and trying to help people that way. So I was born in the UK. I briefly did a six month stint at a young age in Texas, in Dallas. I think my dad had a job there. So we kind of moved out there for a bit, no memories of that whatsoever, and then spent the next 13 years of my life in Cape Town in South Africa. So up until that point, that's all I ever really knew was this beautiful country with nice beaches. I never really envisaged moving anywhere else. That's just kind of my life. And if you know anything about South Africa and the state of affairs in Africa in general, actually, politically, socio and economically, it's not a great place to live, really, unless you have a ton of money and can live in gated communities where you segregate yourself entirely from crime. The really bad effects of poverty and poor government is the only real way I can describe it. And I lived in South Africa post apartheid, so not that I'll go into that, but obviously the horrendous racism through seventy s and eighty s. I was born in 89s, so I was on the tail end of that. I think it only ended roundabout when I was born, just before, but I saw the back end of that. And the kind of society that I grew up in was so divided, racially class aspect of things. It was very much poor live here, rich live there. I guess that's kind of the same everywhere to a certain extent, but very much so in South Africa. My parents split when I was quite young, so I was five. My mum raised myself and my two siblings. I was the youngest of three, which, in a country where there isn't any benefit system, there's no real help from the government, is quite hard. More so for my mum than me, I'd imagine, but she had to work nonstop to provide for us. So I think that kind of was the beginning of the kind of resilience that I would say I have now started at a young age there, where I was kind of like I saw my mum probably quite little, really, when I was young, because my brother and my sister almost raised me as a result of that. We had a lot of freedom to do things, so that kind of molded me into who I am today. So that was me up until about 14. Moved to the UK on a whim, really. It's quite a funny story. Even though I was British, I had a British passport, is quite easy for me to come here. My granddad got quite ill with cancer and he lived in the UK and my mum moved us over here under the guise of a holiday, which is quite funny. It was going to be a three month holiday and three months in. She said, yeah, we're living here now. So that was my introduction to the UK. But different to however, people kind of emigrate, but in hindsight, obviously a very good move, because living in South Africa, who knows what position I'd be in now, if that was the case, then at age 18 started my working career, which was bartending. That's where I started. I worked in hospitality for the next six years. Kind of bartending, bar management. I was an account manager for a big side of company. In the background of this, I knew what I was doing wasn't meaningful. I wanted to do something that, cliche as it sounds, to help people to do something that kind of got me out of bed in the morning and a bit of purpose. So in the back of my mind, for whatever reason, I always wanted to be a police officer and there was no reason there was nobody in my family that was police, which is quite often the case. It was just kind of this dream, almost, I never really thought would come to fruition. And it probably took me three attempts to get in finally, but the first two I just kind of half asked. It the application process, as you know, is quite laborious and there's many stages to it and it sometimes takes a couple of years to even get in anyway. So I kind of did it possibly subconsciously, with the idea that I didn't want to try too hard, because if I was going to fail, I don't know how I would have felt about the kind of I'm definitely not getting in feeling. So after two attempts, I thought, okay, I'm going to do it now, finally, and this is at age 27 or late 26, I thought, complete career change from where I was at hospitality. I'm going to do it, I'm going to rest. My working life is going to be in the place. So I put everything into my application and I got in. So I got in early 2018 when I turned 28 and spent just over four years in the Force. And we'll get into probably more detail as to why I left the Force, but that's kind of my background as to where I got to that point, where I got to am now, was kind of like another shift, complete shift. I know we're talking your whole pocket about that midlife sort of we can call it a crisis because it kind of was, because I think people change when there is a crisis. That's normally the catalyst for somebody to realize there's an issue here and I need to change. And for me, it was financially that's where I create content about money now, is to almost fill the void of where I was in the police, is to try and help people. But essentially, I got myself into a lot of debt. Subjectively, a lot of debt may not be objectively, but I got into myself the nearly £6000 worth of debt on my own, without the knowledge of my partner, anyone in my family, and this is from gambling, something that I've never previously done. I just kind of went down this rabbit hole of betting a bit of money one, a fair bit of money, one, I think close to two grand, and thought, this is easy, I'm going to continue to do this. This is how I'm going to make my millions. Obviously, that is not how it works. And I've very quickly lost that £2000 and another nearly six. And that, for me, was rock bottom. This was coinciding with the stresses of being a police officer. And I thought, I really need to make a change here. And I genuinely I talk about this quite a bit, but I remember sitting on my sofa downstairs, I broke down into tears, I was by myself. I had absolutely nobody to talk to you about the fact that I got myself into this debt because I've done it myself. And I'm the kind of person, I'm quite introverted in many ways, and I quite like to keep things myself and sort it out myself and try and do it, which, in hindsight is probably not the best way to deal with anything like that, but for me, that's just who I am. And I spent probably thousands of hours of my time researching personal finance, watching YouTube videos, reading books, figuring out how this sort of weird world of personal finance works, because to me, it was mystical. Men in suits in London, bankers, these guys know how this works. Everybody else, we just do a nine to five job, get on with it, and if we can have a pension one day, fantastic. But the truth is, it's more accessible than we know. It's just putting the time into it. So I managed to get myself out of a lot of debt entirely within ten months, which on a police officer salary at the time, was about £23,000 a year. So not great salary, and did it all without my partner knowing. And then obviously, when I became debt free from that perspective, I told her what had happened, which was very liberating, and I decided, you know what, I can do it. I've learned how to do this. I'm not the smartest person in both rooms, so if I can do it, other people can do this. So I try and simplify what I did, things I've learned, and try and help other people. And that's where I'm at now. I create content across multiple platforms. Started on TikTok, which is quite funny, really, because my partner and I said this in the previous book, I said, you listened to she used to listen to TikTok and watch TikTok, rather, and it was genuinely just people dancing and funny cat videos and stuff like that. So I just thought, Why on earth would I do this? But she said, Just create a video, put on there, see what happens. And then two or three videos in, I've got a few hundred thousand views in one of my videos. And then I thought, actually, there's something to this. So continuously. Just every week or two. We just kind of put more videos up and people start asking me questions. Because once you start putting content out there. You become this expert. Even though you never feel like an expert in these sort of things. But people start asking you questions and realize there's a huge gap of knowledge within society as a whole. Especially young people. That people just don't know this stuff. And it's one or two clicks away on YouTube, but unless you go out there and search it, you're not going to find it. So my idea was to try and get information out there to people who potentially didn't know they needed it, but can just benefit their life. Then I started creating YouTube videos, Instagram, and most recently a podcast. Cool.

[16:32] Dave: Yeah. And you do coaching now, don't you, around the financial aspect? There's loads I want to dig into, but I guess the two sides is to explore the emotions and feelings and thoughts around the changes that you made in life. But also the financial aspect I think is important for many people, I guess, who is like me, maybe as money or financially illiterate, hopefully a bit more than that, but that kind of thing. So what is the coach and all about? What do you do there just to sort of dig into that?

[17:04] Brian: So once I started becoming what felt like I kind of had a handle on what this money stuff was, whether it was from learning to invest and things that seemed quite alien to most people, there was two kind of paths I could have taken. It was either get the accreditation through financial bodies at the FCA and become a chartered whatever we want to call it. After that. There was a load of ways I could have done that, but then I felt like I would have been bound by what to say, who to say it to, which in some respects is a good thing because it protects people from bad financial advice. But on the other end, there was a kind of a bit more of a holistic approach, which is the one I took, which is more just kind of like helping people in the same situation as me. Speaking from a real personal experience, from a background where I struggled, I wanted to kind of impart my knowledge and experience to people as opposed to what I'd read from a book, which anybody could have done. Anybody can go get this information through a Google search and you essentially become a bit of a robot, a carbon copy. And this is not no disrespect to anybody who's in that sort of industry at all, but they all sound the same. They say the same things because they have to. They are bound by legislation, and I understand that. But I didn't want to be another robot. I wanted to try and look at things from a different angle and potentially make people think about things that they wouldn't have thought but still get to the end result of understanding what investing is and how to do it and best ways to budget and all these sort of financial principles, but just kind of do it in a roundabout way where it's a bit more relatable. So I took that approach and I had a few friends and distant friends through friends that heard what I was doing, saw my stuff on TikTok and asked for some help, really. So it was kind of zoom calls, meeting in person and just doing kind of a couple of hours of sitting down together, work through their financial situation. And I would just give them some pointers and some tips as to how they can improve what they're doing, break down maybe some myths or some confusion around what investing is. Say investing because it's the most confusing, I would say least understood aspect of personal finance. And when you have that kind of one to 1 hour with somebody where you can explain things at a very fundamental level. They go away from it much more informed than they would do by spending money for a meeting with a potential financial advisor who may or may not have nefarious ideas about nefarious is probably the wrong word because they are bound by legislation. But they want to make money. That's their goal. Whereas for me, yes, I do charge people to do money coaching, but at a genuine fraction of the price of what somebody in the industry would charge for potentially the same advice. So I thought I wanted to kind of. Like I said earlier. Is to try and take what I was doing as what I thought I was doing as a police officer helping people and do it in a real raw way where something so personal as money that people just don't talk about. I can hopefully influence that without the guys of a uniform. Without any kind of governing bodies behind me. It's just me and you. We're talking about money and I think this will improve your situation. You can go away and I'll help you do it. So that's kind of what led me to money coaching.

[20:44] Dave: Yeah, it's interesting. I know I introduced in the introduction how we came to connect, but we've had Pete Matthew, not from the Meaningful, he hosts the Meaningful Money podcast. As well as being a financial advisor and a couple of conversations that we've had very much around this. In his role, he is governed by a lot of this legislation guide. So there is only so much that he can sort of flex, if you like, within that. And that's absolutely necessary because they're there because of all the people have been taken advantage of and fraud and what have you. But one of the things he says is that it is actually largely about managing people, or people learning to manage themselves and their behavior. And actually what you do, where you put it and all that is probably you need an expert like that. But actually, if you get the behavior right, you're on a great foundation. And that to me, is where I see from what you're saying, is very much about your role. And I kind of liken it to some of the work that I do with midlife and reshape and health aspects. Somebody could and probably does go to a gym or they might have a fitness coach or they might follow a particular diet plan or something like that. And that's not where I sit. But what I said is that the sort of, I guess that bigger picture level of, well, let's get down to the basics. What's life like, how you sleep and what are the rituals, routines and what works for you. And then maybe you plug in a fitness thing or a gym here and that kind of thing. So you kind of help them at that foundational level which I think is really important. I'm always thinking in metaphors and analogies and connections. So that sounds like correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like that approach from that. Is that fair?

[22:31] Brian: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, there's a few people in the financial space, including Pete Matthew, who was a very influential sort of person in my financial journey. It's difficult because he is in that financial space, but you wouldn't know it by the way he talks on YouTube and I think he separates the two really well. And that's what I really like about him. He's aspirational for me in that sense because he's managed to influence and connect to so many people, people that I didn't even know listen to him, that when I went on his podcast would say reached out to me like, oh, that's awesome and it's really good conversation, but I had no idea that they listened to him. So he's touched a lot of people and that's not a stroker's ego, but he really is a great guy and he is very good at breaking down money into those principles. So I'm just kind of doing along the same sort of lines. But like I said on his podcast, I'm trying to move in the direction of almost more in the direction of what you're doing, in the sense of a more well rounded picture of because I think they're all so interconnected. And that's something I only actually realized once I started learning about money. So once I sort of dived into that one aspect of life and how I realized I can improve myself in that situation, I realized actually by doing that, it could improve my health, it could give me the flexibility to be more free. So the three things I talked about on that podcast was health, wealth and freedom. And those are three things that I've spent a lot of time thinking and writing about recently, just taking notes of myself to try and absorb what is the connection between these three things and how can one thing improve another thing. So for me, on a daily basis now, I'm really trying to do something every single day for one of those three things. So health could be going to the gym, choosing a better option for lunch, going for a walk, not just physical, it could be mental, it could be spiritual. All these spiritual I'm not a religious person in the slightest, but the more I think about this kind of stuff and I think actually your kind of spiritual health is good because you got to think we're all connected in some way. So it's good to have close friendships, it's good to go and chat to somebody when you're struggling. All these things are all included in that health. So if you just do one thing every day that improves your health in some way, you're going to move in the right direction. And the whole compound effect that relates so well to money is in all aspects of life. And that is a great book, I don't know if you've read it, the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy and he breaks it down really well. Just small incremental progress day by day by day leads to such huge, big changes in life and it can be positive and it can be negative. So if you just do one tiny little thing every day, that's health. Very simple. Everybody can understand that. Everybody knows, try and have less sugar, try and move more, try and lift some heavy stuff at the gym every now and again. Everybody knows that's beneficial. But when it comes to, I think, with wealth, most people don't know, which is where I feel like I put the majority of my focus. And everybody knows that you probably shouldn't spend a load of money on credit card, but nobody really thinks about, should I budget something that's so alien to most people, it sounds like such negative connotations to budgeting. It's always like for people who have no money, they need to kind of scroll away tiny bits. That, to me was what budgeting was. And even to a certain extent, even when I say the word now, I can still feel that that's how I used to think and the people around me used to think what budgeting is. And you're in a decent salary, I don't need to budget, but realistically, everybody needs to budget. And unless you understand why living within your means, making sure you put a little bit away for the future and learning to invest all these little things, that if you don't go out there and learn it, you're never going to know. So you do something like that financially, whether it's even on a whim. Now, sometimes I just think if I've got an extra 20 pound something, I think ten of that I'm going to put into safe towards a holiday. And then the other ten I'm going to go and intentionally enjoy. I'm going to go and buy myself a nice today, probably a nice coffee, because it's absolutely boiling, but it's having that kind of intentionality with what you do. And so even if it doesn't have to be saving, it could be spending your money. And that falls within that kind of financial element of that sort of trifecta that I talk about. And then lastly, freedom. And for me, that couldn't be more relevant to my life than now, because having left the police, I did that with a large intention to spend time with my family and to ensure that I don't die young. And that sounds quite extreme, but I think doing a job where you work night shifts and you're surrounded by some tricky situations, a lot of negativity, I think your health declines rapidly. And I could feel it towards the end of being in the police. I was a frontline police officer for three of those. Four years and you only go on blue lights to a situation where things are rapidly deteriorating and somebody's in a crisis when you surround yourself with that day in and day out. Sometimes 600 in the morning after a night shift. And you're driving at very high speeds. Putting yourself and everyone else at risk to go to an incident that may not warrant those blue lights. But you have to do it because no one else is going and it's a situation that is. For that person. The biggest thing in their life and you have to go with fresh eyes every single time. It's not an easy thing to do. And anyone who's never really thought long and hard about what police officers, I really urge them to spend ten minutes thinking about what it must be like to be in that situation and how it affects a police officer mentally, physically, emotionally, all those things. And for me, it drained me so much diploma. I genuinely feel like I'm going to get to 60 and that'll be it for me, because I just felt like I could just see this curve of decline. So for me, the ability to step away from that was a huge decision, but it allowed me the freedom to make my own life to a certain extent. I went from being in a very air. Quotes. Stable job to being self employed. So I have the freedom to kind of fill my day with how I want and it means me picking my daughter up from school or taking her to school most days. That's what I now do and for me. That's freedom and I think that's kind of the last part of the kind of three for me.

[29:44] Dave: Yeah. And there's so much in each of those if we take the last one first. Because I think that's very powerful. Isn't it? Your experience, the way you've explained that this is one of the things I think about the challenge that sometimes many of us, in midlife mode, if you like, can get to we build a career largely perhaps on a whim or a feeling like, I want to be a police officer. I mean, I bimbled into the job, it was something that I kind of just didn't want else I wanted to do. But many of us join a professional or start something because we're driven to, and that could be because of influence of family, parents bringing lots of things, but it's often at a younger age, isn't it, these formative dreams. And I think perhaps it's changing now, but I know the generation that I was off was very much my parents were post war, it was very much get a degree, get a job and stay there, work hard and save your time out type of thing. So it's kind of influence that feeling of like what you pick is what you stick at. So I might have scratched the edge, I might have always wanted to be a police officer. I didn't, but if I did, I pretty much scratched that itch within the first few years of the job, what I did was I made a mistake and I just didn't know any better. That I was kind of thinking, well, people would say, get your two years under your belt and you'd be fine. You set for life, all of that. And you start getting the debt, the mortgage and the lifestyle handcuffs you into, use the police and phrase it traps you in a way. And I think this is a challenge in professions where we start to live a lifestyle according to the income. But we find that actually this profession isn't the thing it might have been or it might never have been. But at some point I want to change, I want to do something else. I feel like I don't have the freedom to spend the time I want with family, et cetera. So I think you're right. I think that's a very powerful thing. And the options are you just ignore that in a voice. Talk about the spiritual. For me, I'm not religious either, but I don't know, I tried to define spiritual as, I don't know, just that inner voice that I kind of put in another box. But that voice that's in there's got to be more life than this. Your options can be to just ignore it, to drown it out, to work harder, to drink whatever, or to do the scary thing, which I think is to pay attention to it and to make those changes. And I think that's the scary bit. If you've got a lot resting on it, responsibility, wise, ego, all of those things. And that's what I'm fascinated with because there's two sides of this. One is the decisions that you made. That's a brave decision, although it was driven by the strong emotions there. So it would be worth talking us through that. And then how can people start to look at their own lifestyle from their responsibilities, their financial commitments? And that just to start making some changes if they were to want to change. That's kind of the area that I'm really interested in. So when you made the decision, I guess we go there. While you're making that, you felt that talk us through how you sort of came to terms with it and how you broke the news. What was the influencers or the counter pressures you might have experienced in that?

[33:01] Brian: I always said so when I joined the job. Like I said, it was always something where I say always, from about 1920 was always something that I wanted to do. I put being a police officer on a pedestal. For me, that was that job. I always looked at police officers walk past me in the street. I had the utmost respect for them. They drive past me. How cool, Mr. Beat, to drive 100 miles an hour. That blue light on it must be so fun. So I put this like it was almost godlike, it's probably the best way I can describe it. It was almost like they were superhumans. They were marvel characters. So I kind of aspired to be that. So when I joined, especially during training, if anyone doesn't know, it's quite long training process of six months before you even go out and get shooted by somebody. But I always kind of overheard conversations with people who are in the job for a long time and people even not even a long time, maybe even four or five years, who would just whinjab by everything and they became this really run down, bogged down, because they had seen so much stuff and done so much stuff that the average person had never seen or done. They kind of became almost senile is probably the best way to describe it. They kind of just put themselves in a bubble and just kind of the phrase would be just turn up, do your best and go home. I don't know if you ever heard that in the police, but I heard that a lot. And I always said to myself, if I ever get to that stage, I need to leave. Whether I believe that would ever happen, probably not. But I always would say to people who are in my course and people in the same length of service as me, what is wrong with these people? Why are they doing this? What's wrong with them? So I had this real kind of like burning passion for the good for the first two years of the job. And I think that's quite common. I think it takes about two years when your probation ends, when you start seeing the reality of potentially the internal politics, even the external politics, and how you are a number. You are literally a number in the police, they give you a number and you are called by that number. You are a number. But in the beginning, I don't think anyone really fully believes it. You kind of think, I have a name, I'm a person. But you're very quickly replaced, not very well, because there's a long training process to get to a skilled level on the job. I think. I think once I realized that I was just a number and I could be replaced tomorrow, that for me was kind of the beginning of I can't really influence much around me other than the general public that I go to on a day to day basis, that I'm going to do my utmost to help. And I remember I think it was probably four years in, relatively highly trained in the job. I suppose I was carrying a taser. I was being able to drive high speeds on blue lights, all the things that I aspire to do in the job. And I remember going to a job that on the way there driving over 100 miles an hour to a job and I remember thinking to myself, why am I driving this fast to go to this?

[36:20] Dave: Don't forget, if you're finding that your health has taken a backseat whilst you work to achieve greatness in other areas of your life, the Reshape Academy, my coaching and programs are here to help you continue to achieve that success with, and not at the expense of your health. Find out more@midlifereeship.com.

[36:39] Brian: It was almost a penny drop moment where I thought to myself, I can't continue to do this job. Honestly, I can't. Because if I'm going into this, I can't remember what the job was now. But whatever that job was, I went into the preconceived idea of what it was and in my mind it wasn't worthy of me driving that fast. And I thought, that's it. I've hit the point now where I've become a police officer and I could feel it in everything I did. I got bogged down by paperwork. All of these things that I realized actually I've become what I didn't want to be. And it wasn't just me. I think this is anybody, if anyone is listening to this, who's in the job will 100% relate to it, but anybody who's potentially in a job that's related to government, I think it's probably quite anything that's very system based and paperwork based is everybody winges about it, but for the vast majority, nobody does anything about it. Everyone just goes here, find another four minutes to fill in. It's counterintuitive for me to do this, but I'm going to do it because that's what I've been told to do. And I would always question it, sometimes out loud, but a lot of the time internally. And I would always think to myself, this just doesn't make any sense, I'm just going along with this. The goal is as a police officer, is to go out there and help people, is to catch baddies, is to help people in the worst times. But 5% of my job or less was me doing that. And this coincided with me improving my financial situation. So I was in a position, luckily, where my partner, who is always part time through sort of raising a daughter, she went selfemployed just before the first lockdown, which was a poor timing, unfortunately, but actually it worked out really well because she set up a wedding planning business. So obviously massive dip down during knockdowns and nobody's getting married. But as we got off the tail end of it, business started doing really well and this coincided with me putting all of our financial foundations in place. So it was me getting out of debt, it was us as a family being in a good position. We had a mortgage already from prior to being in the place anyway. But I had a conversation with her and said, look, we need to align with our financial goals for the future. What do you want to do? What do I want to do? And we both wanted to retire reasonably young and have a comfortable life. We both agreed on a date and how much money we think we should have. And for me that was a huge step because it was very much me doing it by myself beforehand. But we squirreled money together and we said, look, we need an emergency fund. One of the biggest pillars of personal finance, you need to have a summer money set aside because if things go wrong, you don't want to rely on debt for that because it's only going to get you in a worse position. So I went from the complete opposite from somebody who was in debt, knew nothing about money. My partner, Georgia, she did all the personal finance in our house. She's the organized one, so she was always by default the one who would look at our bank accounts and make sure we had enough money in there for the mortgage and enough money for food. I took on all of those roles because I suddenly became really interested in it. And I found myself in a position where in the police, I was like, I don't want to retire. Police Officer now, this is certainly that's definitely not going to happen, but can I leave? Can I leave this job that during COVID for the last two years has kept me in employment? In fact, I financially benefited from it because I did so much over time because the police were police were everywhere during the lockdown, certainly in my county anyway, they bolstered the numbers up and crime went down. So I actually financially benefited from that. So I thought to myself, can I leave? And I remember having a conversation with Georgia and we sat down and she said, well, why don't you come and join the business and we can do this together? And actually I stopped and I thought, you know what, actually we have our finances in order, luckily, because I've got something about situation and managed to sort this out. I, on paper, could leave this job, but then instantly floods of doubt. But I'm a police officer. Police officers don't leave. What my family going to think? What are my friends going to think, what's my sergeant going to think? All of these things that everybody in the job, in particular the police like you're saying, is something that you join and you do for your life. That probably was the biggest concern for me, was me telling my superiors that I'm going to walk away from this job because they'd invested time and money into me. I had training that other people didn't, so I felt the sense of guilt for leaving. And then I was thinking, well, I'm going to lose my pension, I'm going to lose all these things. And I thought the only thing that allowed me to do that was having my finances in order. Because if this happened three years earlier, no way I would have been trapped. I would have liked the majority of people in most corporate jobs, most in the police, certainly. Like you said, you get accustomed to some sort of lifestyle whereby you lift your means not in a good way, but in the sense that you get a slight pay rise and you buy that slightly nicer car, you buy that slightly nicer house, you buy that nice watch, you always get to zero. I always did. And most people I talk to do. They're not intentional. They don't put money away. They just go for an extra five grand a year pay rise. Perfect. I can now afford a BMW. That's how we've been kind of marketed to. That's what we all think about. Unless you kind of step aside and go, no, it doesn't have to be that way. And I'm so grateful that I got myself into that bad situation because it was the catalyst for me to sort my life out financially, which then kind of spider webed out into sorting the rest of my life out. And it put me in a position where I could say, you know what, I can walk away from this. And I did. And I think anyone who's in that similar position whereby they're not happy in their job, it's okay to walk away. Like you can be the sort of maker of your own destiny. We don't have to just go by the social norms or what your neighbors are going to think or what your family is going to say if you don't feel happy and it's affecting you in many aspects of your life, but you will be, because if you're not happy with your job, you spend a lot of time at your job. And if you're not happy there, it's going to affect your physical and your mental health, and you have to prioritize those things. And that's not to say you just leave on a whim. Certainly don't quit your job if you haven't got a bit of money behind you to see you through a couple of months. If worst case scenario, you don't find another job. But you need to have options. And that's where that's what freedom element comes from, is I could have because we had an emergency fund, I could have potentially been out of a job with no income for three months, and for me that was enough because I know I can get a job down the road of the supermarket. Worst case scenario. And that for me was so liberating because I thought, you know what? I'm not trapped by system anymore. I'm not trapped by social norms. I know a lot of our friends actually pretty much all of our friends are employed nine to five, many in corporate jobs. And I think even still, a lot of them don't understand the sort of self employed life whereby because it's not normal, you've almost stepped away from social norms and everyone's like, okay, now what do you do? Who pays you? So I think it's understanding that there's a different way of living, there can be a different way of living. And for me, the only way you know that and can learn that is by reading books is by speaking to other people who've done it. And it's all about just drawing from other people's experience and understanding that as possible.

[44:52] Dave: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's stepping out of the bubble, sort of getting yourself out of the bubbles that we're all because we're all in circles of whether it's a work circle, friendship circle, whatever, and seeing it from different because you do sort of get out without stepping out of it. You don't see that there's another way. You'll see that the faulty thinking sometimes in that. And I know that that was one thing that I found when I started to see outside, see all the possibilities. I started to think about, well, maybe I don't have to do this job. What I did was the opposite. I jumped without sorting out my finances. I had a business, but I didn't really have a business because I didn't have clients, I didn't know what I was doing. So my first time of leaving was very much the impulsive way. So what I often do is talk and you sort of talk through it loud and clear. There is really if you've got that feeling, don't ignore it, but at the same time, don't do the knee jerk, let's do some sums, let's do something and let's talk to different people. Let's get your perspective changed and you talk about getting your finances sorted first. And I think that's so important. It's not rocket science, it can be difficult, it can be scary, it can be uncomfortable, but it's certainly something that gives you that ground and that knowledge, that information. And one thing that I think is really important, it does tie into health as well. Because if you're talking about pension, working towards pension, that may be the right thing for you because you're in your job, you enjoy it, whatever, but if it's grinding you down and making you ill, then what value is that worth? If we try still to put money value on health, isn't it? But if you think about it, you could see all sorts of consequences. I know, I mean, I mentioned just off air, but I hit a landmark in March 23 this year, 2022, where I would have retired at 30 years in the place if I hadn't left in 2014. And it was a funny mark because that would have been the time that I would have achieved the pension, et cetera. But I was clearly thinking that as I made my decisions and on March 23 and since that, what would my health have been like? What would my life be? Where would I be? And I'm quite confident that the cost wouldn't have been worth it. And I think that's the key thing. It's wearing these things up, but at the same time getting real about the sums and the relationship impact the duties and responsibilities you have. So when you talk about the get your finances right, what is a good starting place from your experience for somebody? If they are sort of thinking, there is something I would like, I don't know what it is I want to do, I don't know where to start, but I can't see myself doing this job for the next four, five years, ten years, whatever.

[47:46] Brian: The first thing, the most important thing, it is knowledge. It doesn't have to be vast knowledge. It doesn't have to be knowing multiple finance books from cover to cover. It doesn't have to be that. Like you said, the majority of personal finance is really simple. But the only way that you can absorb that simplicity is by constantly surrounding yourself with that knowledge. Because if somebody said to me five, six years ago, it's really simple, Brian, just do a budget, spend less than you earn, put your money away in some investments and put some money in your pension and see you later, that would have gone in one ear and out the other, because I wasn't ready to absorb that information. So, like I said, you need to have a catalyst. And for me it was being in debt and it was being in a job that potentially didn't feel like it was right for me anymore. Without those things, I would have just bumbled along. I would have continued. There has to be something. And if it's you and you're in a situation whereby you're not happy in your job, the first thing you need to do is going to seek this information. That's the most important thing. Knowledge and mindset. With the knowledge will come change of mindset. Because the more you learn about something or the more does it have to necessarily be an echo chamber. But maybe to a certain extent it does. For me, I go all in on stuff when I get interested in something or I decide I'm going to I don't know. For me, I mean, I do Brazil internship too. So when I started doing that, all I did was learn about Brazilian. Every single day I think about it until I got to my blue belt. It took me three years to get it's not an easy martial art to kind of progress through the ranks. So I became so obsessed with it until I got there and then I thought finally and then my mind kind of took me to other places again. But that's who I am. I'm a very obsessive person. So with personal finance, I surrounded myself with every free minute where I wasn't talking to somebody, I had earphones in or in the car, and I was listening to podcasts about money I was listening to YouTube videos about money. I was listening to audio books, I was reading books. And that, for me, made me understand that it was possible to sort my own money out, because beforehand, I didn't think I was capable of doing it. So the first thing you need to do is change your mindset. And for you, if you're listening and you're in a similar situation, you don't have to go all in. That's just who I am. So I got there potentially a bit quicker because I just surrounded myself with it. But that's how I changed my mindset. I went from thinking, actually, in all honesty, thinking that rich people were bad people. That's a really unhealthy mindset to have, but I really did think that. And there was an element of jealousy, I'd imagine there was probably an element of otherness, because I didn't think it was achievable for me to have some money in the bank will be comfortable, or to go into Tesco and not have to worry about how much it costs. For me, that was so alien. I just thought you've privileged in some aspect of your life. So, for me, my mindset shift was very much actually, anybody can do this. So that was number one, mindset 100%, and that comes from knowledge. And then secondly, you need to obviously start implementing those things. So, like I said earlier, you need to have an emergency fund. And that is the buffer between you and bad things happening, because bad things are going to happen whether you like it or not. And you have to accept that you can't just live on the wire at all times. You can't get your bank balance to zero every month because something's going to go wrong. The board is going to break, your car is going to break down, these things are going to happen. You don't know when it's going to happen, but it's going to happen. You need this little barrier between bad things happening and your life imploding. And it doesn't have to be a huge sum of money. It could just be £1000. For me, that's how it started. It was £1000. And Dave Ramsey, who is American personal finance guru it's a terrible word, guru, but it's essentially what he knows. He talks about the baby steps and he talks about the kind of very systematic approach to sorting your finances out. And I think for most people, that's probably the best way to approach it, because it applies to everybody. So having £1000 just sitting in the bank account for me, every time I had £1000 from whatever, I was instantly calculating my brain, what I'm going to spend £1000 on. Like, I'd spent it before I got it, I'd spent it. Honestly, I was thinking, okay, not how can I turn that into more money? Which is how my brain now works. Maybe I should get a bike just because it was burning a hole in my pocket. So as soon as you have £1000 sitting in a bank account and it's not allocated to anything, that, for me was possibly the biggest financial change because I realized money can sit there and almost self insure you. I didn't have to have mobile phone insurance anymore, really, because if I crack my screen, I could pay £150 out of that money and get a new screen. So that's actually saving me 1520 quid a month on my mobile phone insurance. That's a very specific example. But once you start understanding that you can take ownership and responsibility of your own finances, you start realizing you can do that for everything. And that's where the whole health and freedom comes in as well. But for me, that £1000 was a huge benefit. And if you've never had £1000 sitting in your bank account, I urge you to do your best to go and sell some stuff in your house, because I guarantee you have enough stuff in your house to earn £1000, sell it, put the money in a bank account out of sight and just leave it there and realize that it's emergencies for emergencies only. And that's actually your ahead of, I would say the majority of people in the UK probably, well, definitely the world, but the UK if you have that, because most people can't get through a month if they were to lose their job. That's the sad truth of the financial situation, and more now than ever during the cost of living crisis. And it might seem like a really privileged position for me to see, oh, just sell stuff and get £1000, because there's a lot of people out there who are really financially struggling, because I'm feeling the cost of living crisis, and I would say I feel reasonably comfortable for people who are living on the wire. Now more than ever is when you need to get yourself into the position and you could be easily trapped by a job that you hate because you think, how on earth petrol through the absolute roof? How on earth can I leave my job now? Then what? How can I afford fuel? And it's a very real situation for a lot of people, you and I, probably through your career, my career, the majority of people I spent time with were people who either had no income or very low income. That is the majority of the society that the police deal with, sadly. So I got an insight into the real truths of people who are struggling, not just financially, mainly financially, because that kind of causes a lot of other things to collapse around you, but that's kind of if you can sort the financial bit out, your life will really improve. And that's from personal experience, that really is the case. So get your emergency fund in place, and then next you need to get yourself out of bad debt. You need to get rid of. Credit cards overdrafts anything other than a mortgage, essentially, or a business loan. Something that is a liability as opposed to an asset. So an asset is something that's going to make you money or will give you an income in the future. So that could be a stock that provides you dividends or a stock that potentially in Apple. Apple, over time, historically has grown in value. So if you buy an Apple stock if you bought an Apple stock 15 years ago, it's going to be worth a heck of a lot more now. So that is an asset. If you buy a property and rent it out to somebody, it's going to gain value and you're going to get yourself an income that's an asset. If you buy a TV on a credit card, that's a liability. It costs you money. It's going to go down in value. So you need to get rid of all those things that are costing you money or causing your overall net worth to go down. So anything that you pay interest on, things like overdraft, especially overdrafts people who buy things on. I made a video recently about Klana or buying our pay later. This is all debt. This is all debt that people should really be avoiding. In a time where the economy is in a very uncertain position, you put yourself in a safe position. When you get out of debt, you have options. You can say no to things. The ultimate goal for me is being mortgage free. And I'm going to do that as quickly as I can because then I own nobody anything. I cannot work if I choose to. Not that I'll ever be the case, I don't think. But you have options. And the reason why I was able to leave the police was because I had options. So my goal is to have more and more options. Having no debt is a huge contributor to that. So focus on getting out of debt. And then once you're there, you need to start investing. You need to start growing your money. You need to buy things that go up in value. And I think and the thing I talk about the most is for the majority of people, the easiest, simplest, and most effective way is to buy index funds, which is basically just a collection of stocks. It's a safer way than just buying an Apple stock. Essentially buying an entire stock market. And you just automate your payments. You put it into your account, you set up for £50, £100 a month. Let it go into this investment account. And you don't ever have to look at it ever again if you don't want to. You don't have to know the ins and outs. You don't have to read the Financial Times. You don't have to be an expert. All you need to know is the basics of what a stock is. The fact that it's likely to go up in value over time just like everybody's pension. Because most people don't even think about pensions as that everybody's an investor. They're all unintentional investors, even police officers. The money that you put into a pension, that money is getting invested not by you, but by somebody else. As soon as you realize that and you go actually, I can do that for myself and have more control and actually potentially pay less fees. Which means at the end when I go to retirement, I will have a bigger pot of money. Happy days. But you don't have to be an expert to do that. It can be simple. And then after that, I think everything else kind of financially falls into a place because once you've learned that you can build up a sum of money and keep it there, not touch it and you get out of debt. All your financial habits have been formed because it doesn't happen overnight. Normally it takes a few months or maybe even years and then once you've done all those things, you're in a great financial position whereby you can splash a bit of your money on a nice car if you want because you have the option to do it. But you also know that your foundations of your finances are in place. So that's the long winded way of saying there is a systematic approach to this. And if you do in that order, I think it applies to 99% of people.

[59:16] Dave: Yeah, it makes total sense and I think a lot of the way put it into keeping it as simple as possible because it is easy to feel overwhelmed. And I echo the 1000 pound emergency fund because that was a key step in me getting out of quite significant debt. Wasn't overnight, but that was one of the things because before that I was in denial, I was in let's deal with this, try. And I would go all or nothing, get overwhelmed and then forget about it and then get back to impulsive habits. But you're right, if we can just start with foundation and that's the same for everything. I talk about it in health, whether it's weight management, whether it's looking to develop any kind of new aspect of your life. It is about the foundational stuff. And you mentioned about giving yourself options. I think you're absolutely right. If you can put that money away, you not only give yourself options, but give yourself a psychological breakdown of your sense of I can do this and you can start to talk yourself like I am the kind of person who does that rather than the negative self talk that comes along with a lot of this. But you're right, I think for the benefit of listen, that's probably a brilliant place to sort of bring it to a clause. We'll ask you about anything you've got going on at the moment there. But I think to focus on what is the feeling telling you? Is there a voice that starts in as this is and what can you do with that? Can you start to listen? What questions can you ask? Not necessarily jumping ship without doing the homework, but also not necessarily just silencing that voice. There are other ways. There's a big world out there. It is a scary time at the moment, but when is it not scary? There's never a perfect time to do these things and you could be waiting forever for that. Couldn't you put lights on? So I think that's a good place to look at your finances and get some foundation in there. And if you're already along that journey, great, you can build upon that. So that's brilliant. Thank you very much for your time. Obviously you're working on coaches, so you started the podcast. You want to tell us a little bit more about the podcast in particular? Because I think that just the way you've come across and I think that those because they're short, representative, I think they can make bite size.

[01:01:25] Brian: Yeah, they tend to be between ten and 15 minutes. That's intentional because I spend a lot of and have done even before I was learning about money, I would consume a lot of content via podcast. That audio kind of reresonates with me and I think it's just easier. You can basically do anything in life whilst with headphones in and listening to a conversation. And this conversational style is something that I'm introducing more into my podcast. And next week and the week after there will be some guests, we have a conversation like this. I think this is the best way to dig down into the subject and I like that format. So the podcast for me is quite a new aspect of the content that I create because it was very short form videos. Obviously TikTok is very short for 30 seconds, to a minute generally and that is kind of distilling down ideas that I've worked through. And then YouTube is a bit longer normally about ten minutes or so where she can dive a bit deeper and give more examples. And then Instagram is obviously just images. That again is quite a good way of portraying information. But for me. Kind of taking all that thinking for the last couple of years and putting it into some bullet point podcast format where it's just completely informative. There's a ten to 15 minutes. Right. We'll talk about budgeting and then I'll kind of brain dump everything in a script because I don't want to go too off script in the sense that I want it to be somebody can listen to it for 15 minutes and hopefully get quite a lot to think about and practical ways to go and apply it. So the podcast episodes I do myself are very informative short and then the ones that have conversational style will be very much like this, going down a path that seems quite interesting at the time, but also sticking on the subject of personal finance and health and freedom as well. But I really enjoy podcasts because I think I love them myself and I know that is the biggest emerging sort of form that people are absorbing information. So I thought it's actually, for me, it's the most enjoyable one because it's relatively simple to create. You just need to speak and then make sure you edit it slightly. But the other ones are very time consuming, especially YouTube. It can take an entire day to create a ten minute video. That's a reasonable quality. If anybody likes listening audio, like I do, obviously do, because listening to this. But if you want to dig deeper into the personal finance stuff, then come listen to my podcast. But certainly if you haven't, and I'm sure you've recommended a few times, but Pete, Matthew meaningful money is one that you absolutely need to be listening to.

[01:04:09] Dave: Yeah, brilliant. So what's the name of the podcast? So it will be in the show notes and the links will be there, but just to shout out the podcast.

[01:04:16] Brian: Name, it's just the Frugal Spender podcast and that can be anywhere. Pretty sure it's on every platform now. Just search here and then you'll find it.

[01:04:27] Dave: Great. Yeah, so I think that company with Pete's because listening to this podcast was really a turning point for me financially as well. So I think you're right, there is a need for these kinds of Downworth approachable, relatable information that you can take in sort of bite size and act upon. I think that's really important. That's the spirit of the sprouts wedding approach, which is what I talk about, the restless midlife. But how we do it is we take the challenge, the cabbage, slice it down, chunk it into sprouts and actions and habits and routines and that's pretty much what we've talked about today. It's amazing how when you come back to change in any aspect of life, it comes back to there's lots of massive action you could take, but actually get the foundations in place and a lot of the other stuff takes care of itself. Absolutely nice to hear again with the financial side, that it's so true there as well.

[01:05:13] Brian: Yes. And also podcasts selfishly, it's a good way of distilling your ideas, I don't know if you found that, but just creating content in general forces you to think about stuff. So for anybody who is listening or is learning, whether it's about health or well being or money, anything, I urge you to just kind of write stuff down and it seems a really alien thing to do. For me, it was very alien the first time I sat down with a kind of a Word document and sort of just spewing out my thoughts onto paper, digital paper, and then looking at it again, it's a really alien thing to do. But I promise you will improve your thinking and also you're speaking because anything that you want to learn about or want to know a bit more about yourself about. By writing it down. It forces you to get your thoughts on paper and then you can kind of delete stuff and add stuff and delete stuff and before you know it you've got this real solid oh. That's what I believe. Yes. And then you can kind of talk to other people about it. So selfishly. The podcast does that for me because it makes you think, yes, that is actually what I think. As opposed to, oh, I don't know, there's so many ideas you can go to, that's what I think. And that applies genuinely to everything. If you don't, have you've never done that before? Try it.

[01:06:31] Dave: Yeah, absolutely. And to be fair, that's one of the key reasons why I developed the podcast. Hopefully listeners get something out of it but it's for me to have the ideas and work through my thinking and sometimes they're not as well formed as others, but by the end of it I've either got a better idea or I've dismissed something as a result of it. I mean, journaling, reflective practice, all of that kind of thing, I think getting it out of your head and being able to scrutinize it on paper or on screen can be so powerful. Well, it's been a fantastic conversation Brian, thank you for your time. I've loved it and I've loved exploring. There's so much more we can talk about to be fair, but I think in terms of for today, there are some real key takeaways there and the fact is you can, if you feel like you want to make change, you can. But let's do the groundwork and the homework sometimes what might be uncomfortable, but then start putting some practical action in place. So I love that as well. So thank you very much. No worries. And as I said, listeners show notes and will contain all links etc, etc. I do recommend checking out Brian's podcast, The Frugal Spender and we will catch you on the next episode. Take care for now, thank you for listening. You'll find all show notes, links and resources mentioned at midlifereshaped. Compodcast and it means so much if you could spread the word to your fellow restless midlifers, share the show and links and if you aren't already subscribe to the show and your podcast feed of choice. And one more thing, if you enjoy the show, it would be great if you could read it by visiting midliferehape. Comreview. It would mean so much and I may even give you a shout out in return. And a quick final thanks to production assistant Karen North of North BA and for the music which is called Silver Star by the awesome Logan Nicholson of Music for Makers@musicformakers.com. Take care for now and don't forget you re really can reshape your midlife health and rekindle that spirit of adventure.

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