Episode 87 – The Good Ancestor with Stephanie Brobbey

The Financial Wellbeing Podcast

A brilliant chat this episode with the lovely Stephanie Brobbey from the Good Ancestor Movement. Taking a look at motivations behind philanthropy for wellbeing and wealth distribution for a healthier economy. Along with the guys tackling Warren Buffett in No Shizzle Sherlock and some tongue-in-cheek #tightasstommo money saving tips. Come and have a listen now . . .

Welcomes & Introductions

• Link to purchase The Financial Wellbeing Book
• A very short beard
• An amazing round of golf

What is todays podcast all about?

A brilliant interview with Stephanie Brobbey a philanthropy advisor from the Good Ancestor Movement exploring the role of giving when it comes to wellbeing for ourselves and future generations.

The No Shizzle Sherlock Test

“The stock market is a device to transfer money from the inpatient to the patient”

Warren Buffett

Time is your friend when it comes to investing.

An explanation of compound interest

#tightasstommo

• Get paid for clinical trials
• Pick 29th Feb as your wedding day and only celebrate anniversaries every four years!
• If you have any tongue in cheek money saving ideas, get in touch – find us on Twitter @Finwell-being

Interview with Stephanie Brobbey

How Stephanie went from Human Rights Law to Philanthropy Advisor and setting up The Good Ancestor Movement

What Philanthropy and wealth distribution means to Stephanie

Philanthropy is not the silver bullet – we need to shine a light on how our economy functions to treat the underlying symptoms

What drives the motivation and choice behind philanthropy?

How can people make a difference with their own situation?

What do we mean by ‘Broad Economic Participation?’

Doughnut Economics – Kate Raworth

Examples of what people might change as a result of the reflection and deep listening process?

Regenerative investing

How to help identify their values and how to implement them with their wealth and investing.

Conclusions from the guys

• We need to start thinking about doing things differently to make sure money is spread more fairly

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If you would like to explore what Stephanie Brobbey is doing at The Good Ancestor Movement further, click here to head on over to the website.

Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners?

If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – [e-mail]

If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop

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Transcribe of the Podcast Script:

(scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode)

David
Well hello everybody on here we are once again for the would you believe it at seven times coming across the airwaves, talking to you with another one of our financial well being. My name is David Lloyd and I can tell I got to get down to doing this podcast in the first place. And I’m an actor. I’m a writer, I’m a broadcaster. And I’ve been hosting this podcast. I’m co hosting this podcast ever since it started, along with the guy that wrote the book on which podcast is based a financial wellbeing book and if you haven’t read it yet, where have you been all your life? By? It’s a brilliant book. It’s the bedrock of everything that we talked about. And that of course, is Chris Byrne. How are you today, Chris?

Chris
Good morning, David. Morning. I’m very good. I had a little accident yesterday. I’m currently writing the follow up to the financial well being book title as yet not decided. And so I had a full day that yesterday my head was just really really full. And I got my hair cut and then I thought I’d give a beard a little trim. So I took my beard trimmer outside and wasn’t really conflict. My head was sort of a thing and took off the gaffer just accidentally got a beard.

David
Well Being without the other very important member of top bar is how we use Tommo.

Producer Tommo
Very good, thank you. Although I would like you to refer to me as Tom just broke at school. 79% to golf course Morris.

Chris
Variable has been the last two days.

David
My top store ever is 83. That was a net 67 I’ll have your variable.

Chris
Normally people in the light ever get the bridge at 72.

David
So when you’re not being insufferably good at golf, what do you do tell us about

Producer Tommo
we’re so is this gonna go all the time? I’d be more happy doing it. What are we doing? So I should know already. I am the director and financial planner of reservation finance. So that’s been taken up, understandably the majority of my time. We’re off the back of initiatives and financial well being conference that we had in Bristol, back in May. So that was that was great fun meeting some old friends are new after a couple of years have been locked away and only been able to see see people virtually so that was really good fun. So yeah, busy.

David
Good. Let’s move on with the podcast otherwise. What’s on today’s podcast, Chris?

Chris
Today we’ve got an interview with an ex private lawyer turned philanthropy advisor Stephanie Brobby, she’s very interesting lady to lots of really interesting views and ideas about the role of charities and how we can get wellbeing for our kids. We’re going to have a second episode on this number 88 which is going to be giving lots of lots of tips about how to give to maximise well being so we thought we’d do a little two part series starting this off with this interview. It’s

David
very much before we come on to that that’s just the first of our two regular features out the way. Our first one is noches or Sherlock in which we listen to the words of wisdom from a financial or investment guru and wonder whether this is indeed insightful and meaningful advice or whether it’s as predictable as an England cricket team’s top or the collapse or that scripts a bit dated that creates

Producer Tommo
viva revolution.

David
Chris Budd – today’s question

Unknown Speaker
David, we are gonna take on the big one. We’re gonna tackle Warren Buffett.

David
Warren Buffett, basically the most famous and successful investor of all time,

Chris
I believe. I think that’s fair to say his investment company was in Barclay Hathaway as much as we think. Investment Vehicle has made a lot of people very rich over this time, is quoted all the time by people and is generally wise

David
or wise young stage of investing.

Producer Tommo
Or you could say the young bit and that’s

David
the time we put his wisdom to the ultimate test, what’s the quote we’re going to ask the viewer,

Chris
we’re going to use this following the stock market. stock market is a device to transfer money from the impatient

David
to my previous comment topic, which you first explain it to me, then tell me what you think of it.

Producer Tommo
I mean, this is dangerous territory me trying to explain the great Warren Buffett

Chris
like I’ve sent you a bit

Producer Tommo
so don’t want to disappoint. What he’s alluding to here is time is your friend when it comes to investing. It’s about having the patience to ride out all the peaks and the troughs and the noise and speculation that goes on with when certainly when it comes to share prices and actually buying into good solid businesses. See those profits come through because time is your friend when it comes to investing.

Chris
Sounds like you’re born with insight and you’re not gonna disagree with it. No,

Producer Tommo
no, who am I to disagree, Warren. Sorry, Chris. You’re not gonna find that for me.

Chris
Your point of having a lot of fans out there is very true. And of course he’s not only a very good investor but also is his advice usually is very sage and very calm and collected. There is one little caveat to the Warren Buffett story which isn’t making any judgement I just thought it was interesting. He has been a professional investor virtually all of his life. He is famous These are the stories even bought his first investment when he was at 11 and is now 91 years old. But what isn’t so well known is that his serious wealth only came later in life. In fact, 99.7% of his wealth was earned after his 52nd birthday, which kind of proves his point in a way you’ve got to be patient. It reminds me of another thing about money which is it takes money to make money. So Buffett half his investing life to make enough money which he would then use to make his vast wealth.

Producer Tommo
This bit highlights some people be aware of this. So apologies from teaching you suck eggs. The idea of compound interest. And this is I always try and use the analogy of a snowball you know when when it snows rarely here but you kind of roll up a board or snow and they’re trying to make a snowman and you roll it around the garden and it slowly picks up more and more snow. Well that’s what investments do when it comes to things like dividends, which is profits that are shared. You get you get to receive those. And if you go and invest those dividends, all of a sudden you’ve got more shares at something which then means you’ll get more dividends in the future. And this rolling up of wealth all of a sudden, somebody let’s use an example is imagine somebody’s got 100 pounds in an investment and they get a 5% return they get five pounds back. If somebody’s got 100,000 pounds in investments, they get 5000 pounds back. So all of a sudden you’re getting more of a percentage and I suppose on a 5% return not guaranteed just a crude example, but it’s this idea that the more wealth you have, the more potential investment growth you can have that you can then add on to your pot which can then get more investment growth and it just snowballs from there.

Chris
Just to save you the math when you didn’t get that 105 pounds, and you get 5% You can get five by 25. Yes, quite 25. So another 5% gives you an answer and that’s the compounding and exponential effect that you get from time.

David
So we’ve learned that there is one way of making more money which is basically by having a lot to start with.

Chris
Who was the EasyJet guy that I had once said about him is amazing $100 billion fortune and he only started off with 5 billion

Producer Tommo
sorry I missed that here. It does show the importance of the younger you can start with this the more powerful this sort of thing is starting

David
to wear I know that having having established that can be quite a useful thing. I know that in this podcast and in the next one. We’re going to talk about the best way that we can use that money in order to improve our financial wellbeing. Sorry, Chris, you wanted to say

Chris
Lauren Warren Buffett? I think we’ve probably given it away. We are actually fans of Warren Buffett so he definitely passes on those students. And one of the reasons we really love Warren Buffett is that he is committed that more than 99% of his wealth will go to philanthropy during his lifetime or on his death. So he’s not a guy that trying to make oodles of money and then keep it he’s willing to keep most of it.

David
Well, that’s fantastic. But presumably he’ll still be left with a reasonably large and we all right. You won’t struggle to get his round in the pub, right. Okay. Now, having talked about how we can give money away or start, how we give money away. Let’s move on to the next one of our regular features about how we can be as miserable and tight mean as possible, and not spend anything. And that of course is our regular feature Titus Tabo where Todd Morris will give us one of his legendary tips about how we can not spend money but before we move on to Chris, if you’ve got anything for us this week.

Chris
Well I do actually a bit silly. I think when all these days of the season Tommy’s got all the sensible ones. As my student days tried and tested, were making a few quid I would just think of this when I was just preparing for this. I looked it up

David
clinical trials

Chris
available to medical science. I just want you to know that

Unknown Speaker
there’s a popular one called flu. Unfortunately, what that does, they give you flu and you can get 100

Chris
and trials tend to last between 11 to 14 days now. I’m not gonna vote to go do this myself. But I think it’s an interesting thought. To make a few quid from doing something that isn’t too serious. I would suggest getting the flu. There was a much more serious ones but I’m not going to repeat what they were.

David
Right. So Tommo what’s yours?

Producer Tommo
I’m gonna be doing this an awful long time. And quite frankly, I was sent to them by our brilliant real producer Tammy who helps edit this podcast and she sent me some great tips. So I’m just gonna help David help initiate obviously what to do in these talks and then and then somehow appears really nicely in your airwaves. Crackers actually. I’m gonna say I’m gonna save them for future episodes. Here we go. planning on getting married. February the 29th There’s a date. You only have to celebrate every four years

David
inspirational Tommo, you lead the way as ever. Which reminds me we used to have a lot more as a podcast, suggestions coming in from our listeners. We don’t get so many these days. So don’t forget if you’ve got any suggestions, any thoughts actually, well being on Twitter, let us know your thoughts. And we’re always happy to include them in the podcast

Producer Tommo
and we know you’re out there because the numbers are still coming through and and as still really positive. So thanks for the listeners because we know you have to put up with us.

Chris
1000 downloads in the first week of

Producer Tommo
around that. Thanks for listening.

David
Right Okay, so now to our interview tell us a little bit more about

Chris
so let’s definitely Introduce yourself properly but she’s the founder of the good ancestor movement which has at its heart what it calls responsible wealth, stewardship, responsible wealth, stewardship. She’s got some really radical and interesting ideas about how we get wellbeing for giving and how philanthropy should fit into society. So let’s have a listen to my chat with Stephanie Brobbey

Chris
Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast.

Stephanie Brobbey
It is a great pleasure, Chris.

Chris
We had a really interesting chat a few weeks ago and it was about five minutes into the chat. I thought I’d really get stepped out of the financial marketing podcast because the stuff you’re doing is so expensive, so interesting. But why don’t we start maybe with you just give me a little introduction to yourself solicitor and how you ended up starting with a good ancestor.

Stephanie Brobbey
Wow. So start at the very beginning. I am when I was 16. I wanted to come a human rights lawyer. I subsequently studied law at university and ended up applying for training contracts and got a job training as a trainee solicitor in the city and I ended up qualifying into private title or private wealth, as it’s commonly known now.

Chris
Human Rights Law

Stephanie Brobbey
is a very long way from human rights and quite comical in a way because I grown up in a very working class community. My parents were born a migrant was I didn’t really overlap with I didn’t really come into contact with a lot of private wealth. So I didn’t realise it this whole world ecosystem around you know, that’s dedicated to preserving accumulating wealth even existed. So it was it was quite fascinating, but I was really captivated by the complexity of human relationships relate and people’s relationships to wealth and to their families and their relationship with themselves and and that was the thing that really captivated me. And it’s a hugely intellectually stimulating area of the law.

Chris
So you’re dealing with some pretty wealthy people, by any standards.

Stephanie Brobbey
I mean, it’s it’s an interesting starting point and interesting question, what do we think is wealthy what do we regard as well? To be honest, that question will differ I suspect, depending on where which geography are in.

Chris
Yeah, I was just wondering if I mean, in this context, 20 million of assets are mostly really a really stark you know, wondering what you learned about the relationship between healthy people the relationship between their happiness and their money for really wealthy people.

Stephanie Brobbey
This is also interesting, as my former boss has to say, where he would say, I worked the given day, which was established by Lord Goodman, and he had quite a variety of different clients from the arts and families and you know, a real mixture of people, lots of entrepreneurs. So when I ended up working with lots of different clients, sometimes the lower level would be a couple of millions to upwards of 20 million and onwards, but I suppose it just ended on the day and you know what I was doing? The one I did take away and I remember pretty early on post qualification as Solicitor realising that money doesn’t, in and of itself make you happy. And that was results with my experiences as a practitioner and beginning to see some of the problems actually money caused for people and the emotional distress and discomfort and money being a source of tension particularly among families. By the great anxiety that I saw people when contemplating preparing wills or estate planning and debating leaving their loved ones behind, so it was quite fascinating.

Chris
George Michael, once said that having more money doesn’t win.

Stephanie Brobby
You know, I think that’s, I think that’s what I think. Of course, there’s a certain level of money where you’re able to meet all your needs and expenses and you know, put food on the table and make sure that you’ve got shelter and security and then maybe a couple of holidays a year. But there is a I think is a statistic, something around 60,000 pounds or 60,000

Chris Budd
US dollars. $100,000 Yeah.

Stephanie Brobbey
Yeah, that once you earn above that in terms of income, that insistence a plateau effects and not necessarily any happier. I always find that quite interesting.

Chris
So you went from there and you started looking at the areas of philanthropy and wealth distribution. So tell us about your views on that area because this is the bit I’m really interested in.

Stephanie Brobbey
So philanthropy was very much my Yeah, the the gateway into this broader work that I’m doing now with the good ancestor movement. Basically, when I qualified as a solicitor, I was looking for ways to I guess, retrospectively, I can say that I was looking to scratch my social justice. Having originally started out as a human rights lawyer and you know, I grew up in a sort of household where my mom booted me down to the soup kitchen when I was about eight. So I was she made sure that I was exposed to suffering and the idea that, you know, even though we were struggling ourselves, that there was always someone worse off than we were. So I was always looking for ways to kind of support philanthropy support different organisations that needed funding. And from from my experience, of course, I can say that topic funding philanthropic activity has the potential to do great good in the world and has funded some phenomenal things you know, I love going to the galleries in London. There’s so many things that have been so many wonderful things about the UK and the capital in particular, and many of our cities that have been supported by philanthropy, but as I could have spent more time as a private wealth lawyer and that I went through this period of becoming more and more politicised around wealth inequality, I started to realise that actually isn’t the silver bullet. It’s not going to save us. I started to see that many of the problems that philanthropy seeks to address in terms of social problems. Environmental problems are actually caused by the way that our economy is designed and the manner in which we’ve all kind of agreed to be complicit with the way that our economy functions. And actually, philanthropy can can go some way to alleviating some of those problems, but really what it what it ends up doing is treating the symptoms of underlying systemic and structural problems. So we really need to shine a light on the economy, the system of economy and the system of governance. And my guess has prevailed over the last century or so, as we begin to sort of diagnose and unpicks problems and to begin to build new structures and solutions to address those problems, sadly, is very much part of my story. I’ve received philanthropic funding, you know, in part to get started on the good answers to movement. But it’s been I have quite specific views on how philanthropy can be used as part of the solution to meeting some of solving some of the world’s most complex challenges at this time.

Chris
It’s very pertinent that we speak today certainly because the world’s richest man who could choose to spend his money on absolutely anything, including ending world hunger by himself, I would imagine, has instead chosen to use it to buy Twitter. And I make no judgement on the game’s up. I don’t know him, but it does seem to me that that the choices that we make of what to do with our money, tend to be not necessarily what society would want us to do with our money is that a reasonable place to go?

Stephanie Brobbey
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, yeah, it’s an interesting, interesting choice. I think, you know, I wonder what is driving what’s the motivation for that? Choice? Why would you choose to buy you know, a platform like Twitter is it one imagines that there’s this allure of being controlled control of one of the most powerful forms of communication that we’ve had that we’ve seen in the last 100 years, you know, that our choices do have implications to society and I think we’ve been in this I suppose laissez faire environment, and it’s you, do you, everybody can choose to live their life the way they want to and of course, believe everyone has got a right to live to make the choices that they want to to make, but many of those choices have profound implications. For society, arguably, better uses for someone with such a significant fortune.

Chris
I did read a statistic a little while ago that the climate change and the potential sixth mass extinction of humanity from the planet Yeah, fairly big stuff. That that can be ended with an amount of money that could be provided by three people. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, and they would each still have 10 billion left at the end of it. That just really brings into focus the craziness of the wealth inequality that we have in the world. So let’s get into wealth distribution. And because I think this is really the sort of thing that you are all about with the goods and system, and isn’t it?

Stephanie Brobbey
That’s right. You know, our mission is to support the transition towards building a new economy that serves people and planet we want to be able to, in the words of Kate Ray worth, who wrote a fantastic book, don’t economics, meet the needs of humanity within planetary boundaries, but we need a new economic system for that. We need an economic system which is fundamentally regenerative and distributive so that more people have access to more opportunities and resources and prosperity shared more equitably across the globe. I mean, it’s fascinating that statistic that you’ve just mentioned, which indicates the extreme wealth inequality. Oxfam released their latest report, I think it was at the beginning of the year, it was January this year. And in the report, there’s a very powerful quote that says that extreme inequality is a form of economic violence. And, you know, that really made me kind of set up right. And, you know, I’ve been doing this work for a while now and reading around this and developing my own political analysis and thought it was just so powerful to think well, yeah, this is we’re inflicting violence on people through allowing us systems of oppression and inequity to perpetuate in the world when we have such terrifying challenges.

Chris
So one of the things that I’m a great believer it’s definitely, this is my own mental well being is I find this stuff really, really interesting, but I really take so much of it. I can’t do anything about that stuff. I mean, obviously I can there’s that lovely quote, I don’t vote what’s the point line vote doesn’t make any difference? I said 15 million people. Of course we can make a difference, but I can’t right now make a difference. So maybe we can talk about how people can make a difference with their own situation. That kind of brings us into the work that you did with a good ancestor.

Stephanie Brobbey
Yeah, so the traditional model in terms of how we might do good with our wealth and there’s a broad spectrum of wealth and people with lots of wealth, therapy, fairly modest amounts and you know, we still give to charity and things. So what the prevailing model is that we we create wealth, and then we choose to distribute it to various charities we engage in philanthropic activity where as good ancestors movement is really concerned with supporting people to interrogate that broader economic participation.

Chris
Let’s just pause you there a second. broad economic participation. Could you elaborate what you mean by that as a great phrase?

Stephanie Brobbey
Yeah, so I mean, I mean, it’s not gonna, the focus is always on normal. I’m giving X amounts of these excellent causes. And look, that’s That’s great. You know, there’s good stuff going on, but actually, what it was what’s going on beneath the surface. So the classic example, I think, is someone who’s very passionate about climate change and the environment and biodiversity and that sort of thing. And then perhaps making grants to climate justice organisations or environmental charities, and yet they have a huge personal investment portfolio which is invested in extractive industries. And fossil fuels, and also any corporations that are perhaps operating in ways that they wouldn’t really agree with really conflict with their values. And so they’re out of alignment. For that reason, we, the good ancestor movement is all about supporting people to integrate their values across their entire, the entirety of their wealth, stewardship, and to not just to focus on sort of the philanthropic piece, but to actually look more holistically at what is it that my wealth is doing in the world? What are the resources that have been entrusted to me doing in the world, what are they fueling because they’ll be doing something and obviously, we live in a broken system, and it’s hard to avoid causing harm directly or indirectly. But that’s the question and that’s the invitation for people to really take a closer look at what what do I believe about the world what do I believe about the world that I want to live in that I want my children or grandchildren to live in, or my own children to live in? And and what is my wealth doing in the world? And is it getting us closer to the world that I want to live in?

Chris
So how would you go about helping people through that reflection

Stephanie Brobbey
it’s, it’s a long process of a combination of deep listening, and, you know, really allowing people to I think it’s very easy for us to talk about values and time values gets thrown around quite a lot. But what is what does actually mean? What’s important for me in the world is different to somebody else, and may manifest itself in a different way. And so, really trying to support people to talk about what they believe you know about the world about wealth about society and justice and the world they want to live in, and what matters to them and then, I suppose, really helping them to think through what what’s my wealth doing now in the world? And how does that align with my values? And am I at risk of breaching my values with it having regard to what my wealth is doing in the world and that could be somebody that’s invested in very extractive industries, fossil fuels, other any problematic corporations, and really just helping them to get to a place where they’re able to identify actually, you know what these are, these are my red lines are not prepared to do this action or to be invested in this particular way or to taxes is a huge area with a lot of the people that we’re working with. Some of them really believe in in Tax Justice. They believe that progressive tax reform is a critical part of creating a fairer society. But they’re indirectly tied up in structures and other practices which mitigate their tax liabilities or, you know, they’re even indirectly involved in tax avoidance or directly involved in tax avoidance without realising and so it’s really helping them to bridge their beliefs with their actions and giving them the support that they need in order to get their objectives delivered.

Chris
To make it real to some of our listeners, could you give some examples of the sorts of things that people might change as a result of some of this process? You’ll take them through?

Stephanie Brobbey
Yeah, often people will come to us and they’re, they don’t want their wealth to grow. And then they might be happy for it to sort of stay the same, the same amount of inflation will all they’ll want to reduce it kind of dramatically over their lifetime. And so, a typical strategy and I call these regenerative wealth practices or regenerative wealth strategies, because they’re all about how do we help people to embody the regenerative economy that we need an economy which serves ecological and social wellbeing, in which planetary resources are used time and time again, to create shared prosperity. And so a typical example could be someone that’s in a portfolio of investments that could be kind of ESG screened or could be more towards the impact side and actually decides what I really want to make a tangible difference to communities that have been harmed and excluded from the mainstream economy, marginalised and dispossessed. And so actually, I want to start eliminating participation in traditional investment models actually start investing directly in the communities by for example, lending money at 0% to community land trust, that can buy properties in urban areas or elsewhere, and then lease them out to community led housing groups. So housing cooperatives, which you’re probably quite familiar with being based in Bristol, and there’s quite a lot of activity strategies which they might not implement. Conversation is enough, but also too much, and then helping them to figure out what’s the most regenerative way for me personally, to redistribute some of this money back into communities.

Chris
And the interesting bit of that for me as a financial planner investment advisor for many years is the capital is still there but you’re not getting a return on your money because you don’t need any more money. Exactly. I’d rather like Triodos Bank cover those little shout out to them for their crowdfunding platform. I have a little money in there, not a lot, but I can invest in things. Like for example, a local health food shop, that’s opening another branch. They want to raise a bit of money and your money is tied up 4% I think return and then your capital back. I don’t want to shoot the lights out but I want to make sure that I’m gonna get something back hopefully, hopefully the capital but the money is doing good in the meantime. So that’s the sort of stuff you’re talking about. Not

Stephanie Brobbey
exactly because it’s about recognising Well, if I don’t want my money to grow, and I don’t need to be invested in the traditional way and therefore I’d much rather my money was in the real economy doing something good for the world and I think yes, yes, that impact investing is on the rise and there are suppose lots of advisors call sophisticated solutions for for impact, but actually there’s a real hunger to some actually participate in the real economy and move away from kind of speculation and and to actually invest in something tangible that they can see that they can they know that a community or a group, or you know, even social movements are getting access to capital that they just ordinarily would not be able to access because the prevailing economic structures don’t afford certain groups of people to have access to capital at not a favourable rates anyway.

Chris
But it’s not giving money away. It’s not tact. It’s not philanthropy, but it’s regenerative investing. In fact, I can’t say that would be genuine. It’s investing in a practical way, rather than giving it away and getting to me by so. Stepping I’ve always said I’ve said for many years now, I would make a fabulous billionaire. I think if we can arrange that I will be really good at this stuff. I’d like the opportunity but I will be alright. Because there’s so many things that you could do good with the money rather than buying Twitter or going into space or something. Or there’s stuff that you can do you must have so much fun talking to people about this kind of stuff. Is there any it’s only a bit of fun, isn’t it? Is there anything that you put somebody’s done that you didn’t expect? There was a little bit unusual, a little bit off the grid.

Stephanie Brobbey
Something that I thought was quite charming and and a bit unusual, I suppose there’s lending giving some money to a community, that kind of 0% so they can acquire woodland. Quite nice. Yeah, good woodland rewilding, I think it was so that’s quite fun, but I think there’ll be I end up going it’s nearly eight months but actually, there’ll be some really funny stories coming out of what people decide to do is they kind of redefine the boundaries of what investing looks like in the 21st century.

Chris
So just to finish thing, could you just talk about how you help clients to identify those boundaries, what values they are talking about how therefore they want to invest? They do a

Stephanie Brobbey
series of questions through a values assessment tool around just getting them to engage with maybe the stories that they grew up with around wealth what they were told of getting them to, I guess, in fact, dreaming space, when they’re thinking about what you know, what is the sort of wealth that I want to be part of building what what would I hope for my children and grandchildren and that’s Roman Khazaria, who wrote the good ancestor who very kindly agreed to that, that we could use to get answers to movement in the name of business. It has lovely sort of visualisation exercises around it to very, very powerful and so getting people to kind of connect with that, how they would want to be remembered and what legacy actually means on a broader scale. So not you know, going beyond your own family, your own immediate family and thinking about how future generations might remember your contribution to the earth. And then kind of getting them to step back into the present and having a look at their situation. At the moment. Whether it’s their feeling like they’ve made the most out of various tax avoidance strategies that they want to either unravel or going forwards and redefining new boundaries with with their advisors. So for example, with work with someone recently who doesn’t want to benefit from any kind of state resources, so won’t claim tax relief on any philanthropic gifts, doesn’t want to take a state pension, that kind of thing. So, yeah, we try to sort of help them transition from where they are at the moment, thinking about what could be possible and and walk through various scenarios in terms of what they could do with their wealth, where they’re, where their wealth could find a new home as it were, and kind of stress test it that way and see what possibilities have really appealed to them and put that into a bit of a strategy for

Chris
them. wishes you only the very best of luck with this project and ancestor movement. That’s definitely I think what you’re doing is absolutely fantastic, and I really wish you the best of luck.

Stephanie Brobbey
Thank you so much,

Chris
Chris, thanks for joining us. It’s definitely thank you so much for joining us on this podcast.

David
Well, you know what, Chris, you’ve done many interviews over the years. There will be good. You’re a very good interviewer. I just like to put that on record and, and I’ve enjoyed the interviewees to varying degrees. And I have to say, I thought it’s definitely, absolutely fantastic. And what she said, her broad philosophy, she didn’t go into too much detail, but broad philosophy really, really chimed with me. I think she addressed that issue and managed to express it in a way that put exactly into words what I believe which is there is enough money in the world. And why is it that there are still so many poor people, and why can we not find a system that perhaps distributed in a in a more equitable way, he was at pains to point out that philanthropy is the silver bullet it won’t solve all of the problems, but what he does say treats the symptoms, but it doesn’t address the underlying economic issues. And as you correctly pointed out, Chris, if the three richest men in the world are in a position that they could end poverty and well hunger, but it’s not happening. Surely, the system by which we all live our lives has to be wrong, and I love some of the things that she was saying about building new economy to support the needs of people in the planet spreading more money more equitably across the globe. And I was very taken with the thing that she said she’s extreme inequality is a form of economic violence, and with the way that the world is going at the moment, obviously, we’ve got the war in Ukraine, we’ve got the climate crisis, the real, desperate, desperate situation of build poverty. We have to start thinking about doing things differently and I’m not in any way advocating communism or you know, a world revolution down that lines but I think if we’re going to continue with a capitalist based economy, we have to look at different ways of making sure that that money is spread more fairly, so I really liked what she had to say.

Chris
announcing your standings and Bristol Mayer or something

David
I would love to I would I just think that for me, if there was anything that I could do to support the work that she is doing, I would love to get involved because I mean, that is absolutely spot on.

Chris
And that that to me is the point here is that I think lots of us can chime with what she was saying I think we could bring true with us. She’s doing something about it. And what I really like is the fact that there are actually a lot of super wealthy people who want to give more tax. You know, there’s a whole list of 100 or so billionaires who have said please tax us more. So if they actually have that attitude, she is helping them do some self reflection on what is responsible wealth. I think it’s a such a fascinating concept. I think we’re gonna hear a lot more of

Producer Tommo
what we will do with it in the show notes links to where you can find Stephanie, the work that she’s doing. I got absolutely nothing to add to what David just said. I think you summed it up wonderfully, and be a great interviewer and Chris address.

David
The one thing as well, I’m going to float this is something we might want to perhaps discuss in a future podcast actually, because it’s just, it’s just occurred to me. And that’s the notion of a universal basic income.

Producer Tommo
Okay, that’s a big one to unpack. This

David
is a big one too. Does it? How well does that fit in with financial well being? I would argue that it does. But anyway, yeah. I’ll put that out there. Because that’s something I believe, quite strongly in actually. So I put that out there. We know we know which side of the fence you’re on. So we’ll try and make sure we come with a

Producer Tommo
reasoned debate when it

Chris
I will just say this, about that kind of thing. And I don’t know enough about that particular one to make too much of a comment on it, but some of the books that I have read the reaction of people to being given some basic level of money is not what traditional think tanks think it will be the practices. So the reality has been is that people work harder when you get their basic emergency level. Funding covered.

David
Excellent. Okay. All right. Well, that’s all for later on. But for certainly for now. Thanks again, Chris. That was a really great interview and sections definitely for the work that you’re doing. And the three of us will be back with you again, very, very soon, with another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.