The End of History Illusion

In this episode we’re diving into a fascinating psychological concept that influences the way we make decisions — The End of History Illusion, which in short, is the idea that people believe they have reached their final form and will not change much in the future. The guys explore how our personality, values, and needs continue to change throughout our lives—and why we often underestimate these changes. They’ll also discuss the effect this illusion has on our financial decisions, from planning for retirement to making career choices, and share practical ways to connect with your future self.

Oh, and don’t miss Tight-Ass Tommo’s latest round of quirky money-saving tips — they’re as entertaining as they are thrifty!

Welcomes & Introductions

Want to know more about Chris Budd’s The Financial Wellbeing Pulse? Take a look here
Fancy a chat with Tom Morris and the team at Ovation? Contact details here

Whats on Today’s Podcast

Learn about the fascinating psychological concept of The End of History Illusion and how it affects our decision-making. Discover why we assume we won’t change much in the future, even though our past tells a different story.

Tight Ass Tommo

• Save your 2024 calendar to reuse in 2052!
• Meal prep—but don’t overload your freezer.
• Over 50? Stop warming your plates to save energy!

How Underestimating Personal Future Change Effects Your Financial Decisions Today

Why we get it wrong.
Why we underestimate how much we’ll change in the future—and how this impacts our finances.

How this impacts your finances.
From career paths to retirement plans, find out how our mistaken beliefs about the future can lead to financial regrets.

Practical tips for better decisions.
Hear strategies to connect with your future self and make smarter, more proactive choices today.

Conclusions From The Guys

Come and get involved!

We want to hear your Messages From the Future. Record a short 30-second message sharing a decision you’re glad you made (or one you regret) to help others make better choices. Send your voice clips to marketing@ovationfinance.co.uk—and join the conversation.

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Want to explore this topic more:

• Episode 114 – Preparing Your Finances for Parenthood with Katie Dow
• Episode 98 – Your Future Self with Hal Hirschfield
• Episode 19 – Financial Entertainment with Carl Richards

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Transcription

This is the latest in our series of financial well being podcasts

>> David Lloyd: Hello everybody and welcome to another one in our increasingly long running series of financial well being podcasts. My name is David Lloyd. I’m the sort of the host, except I’m the co host really.

It’s always my voice that you hear first. But there’s obviously lots of other people involved in the making of this great podcast and I’d like to introduce them to you now. And we’re going to start with my dear old friend, Chris Budd. Chris, do tell us a little bit about yourself and how you are and.

>> Chris Budd: All of that stuff saying I’m very well. I wrote the Financial well Being book which started all of this off, and four cornerstones of Financial well being and any financial planners are listening to this. If you want to know a bit more about how to measure your financial well being, then the Financial Wellbeing Pulse is available. Just Google it and you’ll find out all about it.

Chris introduced us to the Financial well Being Pulse a few podcasts ago

>> David Lloyd: Now Chris, I’m just going to butt in if I may because we, we talked about a few podcasts ago, you introduced us to the Financial well Being Pulse and could we have an update please as to how that’s going now? It’s been rolled out there.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, well, I’m learning a lot about it.

>> David Lloyd: Not based on the difficulty you had getting into this podcast recording, you’re not.

>> Producer Tommo: Very true.

>> Chris Budd: Being used by quite a few firms and I’m getting amazing responses from it. People are telling me, the impact on their client meetings, the conversations aren’t, I’ve ah, just been transformed. So, that’s, yeah, it’s great, fantastic. But it’s still early days. I haven’t gone big on it and publicising it because I want to make sure it’s working right first. So. But I think we’re getting there now, so. Yeah.

>> David Lloyd: Excellent.

This podcast is coming into its ninth year and was started in April 2016

And of course we have another member of our terrific triumvirate and that’s Tom Morris. Tom, introduce yourself.

>> Producer Tommo: Yeah, I am, as you said, Tom Morris. I am a director and charter financial planner over at Ovation Finance in Bristol who have been supporting and sponsoring this podcast for what is coming into our ninth year. Is that right? I think we started around April 2016, didn’t we? and actually we, it got us thinking, we got us talking at the start. It was my son Toby’s 8th birthday yesterday and remember, it.

Well, remember it because we had the recording, didn’t we, where my wife called me and she was very heavily pregnant and I went into blind panic in the middle of the recording. and what was this back in January 2017. And, no, it was just asking if we had any milk in the fridge or not. But remarkably, that was eight years ago.

>> David Lloyd: Oh, can’t believe that you just revealed that earlier before we started recording. And if you just said to me, well, how old’s your son? I would have said about four years. But, but, but, you know, time just whizzes by, doesn’t it?

>> Producer Tommo: It really does.

>> David Lloyd: And let’s not forget the other fourth unseen and unheard member of this team, which is producer Tammy, who beaves away in the background and makes everything work despite our best efforts to cock it up. So that’s basically who we are and we’re here to waffle away about financial well being.

An old friend of mine got back in touch with me about the podcast

Just something else I’d like to add at this point. I had a coffee yesterday with an old friend of mine who is a radio broadcaster. I won’t give his name, but he’s done quite a lot of good, high profile work. And, he said, what are you up to these days? And I told him about the podcast. He, said, I didn’t know you were doing that. So I sent him a link to it and he got back in touch with me last night. He said, this is great. He said, there’s a lovely chemistry between the three of you. It’s funny, it’s informative. so there’s a little bit of a big up from somebody who shall remain nameless.

Psychological theory might explain why we make poor financial decisions

>> Chris Budd: David, if this podcast over these many years have been about anything, it’s been about how we make financial decisions, and, how we use our knowledge to make better financial decisions. So in this episode, we’re going to look at one psychological theory which might just explain why we make poor financial decisions.

>> David Lloyd: Well, if we understand the problem, then surely we’re in a better position to fix it, is that right?

>> Chris Budd: That’s the thinking. So we’re going to look at how we perceive ourselves when we look at the past and how we perceive ourselves when we think about the future. We’ll discuss about how knowing the difference can help us. And, we also have an exciting announcement to make about how we can connect with our future selves.

>> David Lloyd: I can sense all of our listenership shifting towards the edge of their seats now. Exciting announcement. Incoming.

>> Producer Tommo: They’ve just turned on us, turned us on to like Times two to quickly get to this bit.

>> David Lloyd: Well, if they’ve done that, they’ve missed a hell of a lot of good fillers that are about to come. I tell you, we’re going to start with the Biggest, greatest filler of them all, which is Titus Tomo. the, the, the, the mean genius amongst us who, who celebrates, the brilliant ways in which we can save money by adopting money saving tips.

Tomo Chris: To save money, be ill

before we move on to Tomo Chris, have you got anything for us today?

>> Chris Budd: Well, we are recording this the first few weeks of the new year. So my tip is don’t throw away your old calendar. Keep your 2024 calendar because you can use it again in 2052.

>> David Lloyd: Fantastic. Well, I’ve got a tip as well, which is to save money is be ill. So I’ve had a bit of a cold recently. I’ve been a bit poorly and also my car’s been off the road so it’s been a bit of a disincentive to go shopping. So about three days ago we looked in the fridge and thought oh, we really need to go and do a big supermarket shop. But actually we didn’t have either the wherewithal or the gumption to get up and do it.

So we managed to exist for three days with eating stuff out the freezer and using up leftovers. Today, I have to say is the day that we’ll need to go shopping otherwise we’re going to be eating each other. But but it’s been yeah, it’s been quite interesting. So be ill, save money.

>> Producer Tommo: Yeah.

>> David Lloyd: Tomo, you’re the master of all of this. What have you got?

>> Producer Tommo: Well, I got to him but I’ll just quickly say that there is a not very tight ass Tomo incident. Happened to me on the lines of looking in the freezer to try and eek out what we’ve got in, in the freezer. Come on, this is getting overloaded. We need to do a bit of our meal planning needs to involve all this various stuff that’s been chucked in the freezer. Anyway I went, went to open it the other over the Christmas period. There was a clearly a gap that meant the moisture in the air went in and started freezing up. oh, it’s a bit stiff.

I can’t open this. This drawer yanked it so hard being in the gym by the way. and the, ah, the door broke off. and we now got after an engineer come out and look at this freezer. So what was going to be money saving is now turned into money spending.

>> David Lloyd: So strong.

>> Producer Tommo: I know, what can I say? I just really wanted to put in there that I went and did a couple of sessions at the gym. This in 2025. soon to soon to not happen in about a month’s time, but the real one.

Stop warming your plates, save yourself some money and save the planet

So here we go. The, the tight ass tommo tip. This episode, it’s mainly focused at those over the age of 50. Okay, yep.

>> David Lloyd: Dave, put your hands down’s gone up.

>> Producer Tommo: Stop warming up your plates. A bit of context. And Chris knows about this. over, I think it was just in December time I had my father in law around, we were having a bit of food and he said, oh, do you mind warming my plate up? Nobody else wanted their plate warmed anyway. He said, yeah, yeah, sure, whatever. And I realised my parents do this. They warm their plates before their food and then I’m in this little WhatsApp group, that we love our cricket and I knew that there was a broad range of those that were all over 50 and those under 50, so I just put this little poll out there. It’s like, do you warm your plates? And it was literally split down the middle that everyone over the age of 50 said, yeah, I warm my plates. And everyone below the age of 50 doesn’t.

Well, clearly the warming of the plates requires turning on the oven and using energy. That costs money. And it’s no wonder Greta Thunberg is so angry with your generation. Using up these various energy sources just to warm your bloody plates. Then it gets even worse. Chris tells me he pre warms his kettle before he has his tea. You know, the, not the kettle, the, the tea pot, the teapot. There’s boiling water going in it, for goodness sake.

>> Chris Budd: Honestly, make one little comment. What has also been noticed amongst that WhatsApp group is that some of the millennials tried warming their place, realised what a blooming good idea it is. They’ve started doing it themselves. Now, that kettle, before making your tea, you’ll hear, you’ll taste the difference in the quality of the tea.

>> David Lloyd: Chris, obviously being another person in the over 50 camp, I’m agreeing with you 100 because warming. Except my son, who is in his mid-30s, he, he, he, not only does he not warm his plate, but he actively opposes the notion that I might want a warmer plate of his for his dinner. But it’s not ecological with him, he’s just a bit weird. But I’m a big fan of warming plates and I’m a big fan of preheating a teapot on the rare occasions.

>> Producer Tommo: There you go. Over 50s. Tammy, show your hand. Do you warm your plates? No. There you go, look, Tammy is under 50, you guys are over 50. Stop warming your plates, save yourself some money and save the planet. At the same time, for the next generation that are coming, please.

>> David Lloyd: Right, listen, get on our socials, please let us know how old you are. What doesn’t. We don’t need the exact amount, we just need over 50 or under 50. Do you warm your plates? Let’s have a poll.

>> Chris Budd: We have found the battleground of the generations anyway.

>> David Lloyd: Okay? So if you want to be weird like Tom, do that and save yourself a little bit of money. Thank you for that. Right, Chris, over to you. Let’s get on to the meat of this dish. It’s time to take us time travelling.

>> Chris Budd: Yes, yes.

David says we all make mistakes and when we look back we have regrets

So let’s start off by telling you all about a research paper that I found by somebody called Daniel Gilbert and there were others as well from Harvard University, which they published in 2013. And, it’s called the End of History Illusion. They describe in this paper how, as we go through our lives, we all make mistakes. Of course we do. And then when we look back at our past, we have regrets and we recognise those mistakes that we’ve made.

>> David Lloyd: Now, I’d just like to raise this notion about regrets because certainly when I look back on my life, I have made plenty of mistakes, but I’m not a big fan of regret. If you take regret to mean that you spend a lot of time dwelling on those mistakes, thinking about them too much and letting that regret inform the way in which you get on with your life. So I know that’s a little bit of a semantic distinction, but I’ve certainly made mistakes and I certainly wish I hadn’t made many of them, but I don’t necessarily regret them because I made the mistakes that I made when I made them. And for me, it’s about learning from those and moving on.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, I totally agree, David. in the introduction to the paper, just to give this a bit of context, they give an example of, say, a tattoo that somebody might have had when they were younger, which they then get paid to have removed later on. So whether that was a mistake or not, it wasn’t at the time, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the tattoo done. But later on, they viewed it as a mistake and then corrected it. So I thought, to start off, we might, just, for fun, share some mistakes that we’ve all made in life.

>> Producer Tommo: Is this wise?

>> David Lloyd: Actually, I’ve got to go now. Sorry.

>> Producer Tommo: Yeah, that’s me done. you’ve had my tip. I’m, off.

>> Chris Budd: Ah, Tommy, you can use the fact that you haven’t been warming plates up until this point, if you like.

>> Producer Tommo: That’s A L. Yeah.

>> Chris Budd: So look, I think as long as we keep them clean, legal and humorous, I think we’ll be okay. All right, so let’s keep on, on safe ground.

David says he regrets not following his dream of becoming an actor

I’ll go first. in my early 20s, early to mid-20s, when I lived in London, I struggled to make friends. I’m believe it or not, an introvert and I don’t always find making friends particularly easy. When I reached 27 or so, somebody I, knew nagged me to join their cricket club, East Horsley Cricket Club, shout out to them that was looking for new members. I played two seasons for them and I absolutely loved it. And I realised that when I first got to London, what I should have done is joined a cricket club and play cricket. I’ve had a whole load of instant friends. So not only is that five years of peak cricket playing time I can’t get back, but I miss the opportunity to have a much more active social life in my mid-20s. So there you go, that’s one from me. What about you, David?

>> David Lloyd: Yeah, now it’s interesting, that five year thing. So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I mean I’ve made, as I said earlier, many mistakes, some of which I wouldn’t dream of repeating. But there’s one that I do when, when I was 18, and I know I come across now as I generally am, a fairly outgoing and confident person. When I was 18 I came across as being that person. But inside I was crippled with self doubt and really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. At the behest of a careers teacher at my school, I went to teach training college. He said, you ought to train to be a teacher. So without really having a great vocation for it, I said yeah, I’ll do that. What I wanted to be was an actor.

Okay? I’d been in school plays and I wanted to be an actor. Nobody in my family had ever been an actor. I didn’t know anybody who was an actor and I didn’t really know how you went about going to drama school. So I went to teach training college instead and studied English and drama. After six months of that I realised it wasn’t for me, and I dropped out. Not only did I drop out, I wrote a letter to RADA, the ah, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art asking for an audition. I thought, now is the time, now is the time. To my shock I got a letter back saying yes, we’d love to offer you an audition. And my big mistake That I made is I never went to the audition. I never went to the audition because I thought, oh, I’m not going to get in. I don’t really know. I was scared. I was really scared.

And so I didn’t go. five years later, I ended up going to study, drama at university when I was a bit older and a bit more confident. Still didn’t have the courage to go to drama school. But eventually, having done that when I was 26, 27, started work as an actor. So the mistake I made was really not following that dream. I’d got so far, I’d got to the point where I’d got an audition. I’m not saying I would have gone in. and so I look back on that and wish that I’d gone to that audition.

>> Chris Budd: Very, very good. Very. Thanks for sharing that, David. Appreciate it. What about you, Toma?

>> Producer Tommo: That’s far more profound than mine.

>> David Lloyd: I’m a far more profound person. Tom.

>> Producer Tommo: There is probably why that I think is fair, Fair comment. bit tongue in cheek, but I always regret having that second nightcap. Whiskey. You know, I, I enjoy, I enjoy socialising, I enjoy meeting up with friends when I, when I get the opportunity. I enjoy having a few beers with people and then I get to the end of the night and I’ll have. You know what, let’s have a whiskey. Stop there, guys. Just have the one job done and it probably means that you’re going to get into bed at a sensible time, but no, it’s. You then get all excited and giddy and then it turns into a really late night banging headache the next day and then you remember that you either got parenting duties, work duties, you’re not as young as you once were. So. Yeah, my regret is, is not necessarily saying no to the extra night cap.

>> David Lloyd: Yeah. Do you know what? I’m absolutely with you on that one. I’d like to add port into that category as well. The only time anybody ever drinks whiskey or port is when they’ve already drunk two bottles of red wine or several pints of beer and it does no good at all.

>> Producer Tommo: I am, I am prone to, to having a midweek whiskey though, so I am a fan. This is the problem. it’s once it touches the lips. If anyone’s watched, anyone’s watch Old School, the movie. Oh, it’s so good when it touches the lips. Anyway, if you get that reference, you’ll grab a giggle.

>> Chris Budd: I’m sure there was somebody’s grandma who said nothing good ever happens after Midnight.

>> Producer Tommo: Yeah. Right. And I think. I think I’m beginning to really, be on board with that.

People expect their personalities to change very little in the future, study finds

>> Chris Budd: Let’S move on. When we think of our past, we can see the mistakes that our younger selves made. We can see how the person that we are now is different from the person we were then and how those mistakes moulded us into the marvellous people that we’ve become today. The interesting thing is that when we’re asked to think about our futures, we significantly underestimate the chances that our values, needs and wants will change and that we will even make any mistakes. The research paper I mentioned, it showed that people expect their personalities to change very little in the future, despite knowing that they have changed a lot in the past and as a result we all make poor decisions now.

>> David Lloyd: that’s really interesting. So, changed personality in what way?

>> Chris Budd: We won’t get too much into the detail, but there were five aspects that they looked at. One was, how introverted or extroverted you are, or enthusiastic you are. Another one is how critical or quarrelsome you are. How dependable, self discipline was in that area as well. How anxious or easily upset you are and how open to new experiences or complex a person that you are. So I’m going to ask you to an interesting question. To what extent do you think you have changed in some of those ways over the last decade?

I’ll pick. I’ll pick one for me. I asked you this question before, so hopefully you’ve prepared some thought. I pick one for myself. Critical. I’m definitely less judgmental and quarrelsome than I used to be. I still have lots of strong opinions about things, but I go about expressing them in a different way. So when I then think about the next 10 years, I can’t help but think that I’ve kind of sorted out that aspect of my personality to the extent that I want to. So I’m unlikely to change anymore, which is exactly what the study found. So when I thought this through, I realised that, yeah, it was true about me.

David says he’s become infinitely more patient than he used to be

So, David, you go first. Would you be willing to consider something you might have changed in the last 10 years and if you’ll think it will change in the future?

>> David Lloyd: Yeah. It’s interesting you asked this because I was reflecting on this just the other day and I think I’ve become infinitely more patient than I used to be. I think I used to be quite impatient. If I was in a car and there was somebody in my way, I’d go get him.

God, get out My way. Get up, I need to get there, I need to get there. If, if I just missed a bus, I’d be cursing. I’m gonna wait here for 20 minutes now for another bus and actually now. And that may just be to do with being a little bit older, having less stress in my life around work and things. I’m just a lot more patient. I go with the flow a lot more. And if something doesn’t quite work out as I expected it would do, I tend not to get that bothered about it in a way that I used to.

And my son reflected this back on me, because we were driving along, he was driving me somewhere recently and he got all stroppy and I went, just calm down, calm down, Rick. And he went, dad, I learned my road range from you. And he was right. You know, I used to be, for God’s shake it out of the way, where do you learn to drive? You know? And now I just go, oh, that’s fine. We’re not in any hurry. So I think that’s probably the biggest way or the most significant way anyway, that I’ve changed.

>> Chris Budd: and what about in the future? Do you think you’ll become more patient in the future?

>> David Lloyd: I don’t know. I mean, if you follow the standard sort of demographic of getting older, I’ll just get crabbier and more miserable. I, I, I, I don’t know. I don’t, I, I, I, I’ve not thought about it actually. About predicting the future in that way. Yeah, I hope so, I hope so. More accepting, I think, is the, is the.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But as you said, the reality is probably not, but we can’t particularly imagine ourselves changed that much. What about you, Tomo?

>> Producer Tommo: yeah, I had a thought about this and I think some of I have a couple of aspects have changed for me. One relatively recently, one in the past five years. About what, and it’s more about what we’ve experienced has sort of changes one’s outlook or changes one’s reaction to things. I think is, was a thread for me. So the first one, as you mentioned, you were an introvert. Well, I’ve always been quite an extrovert. but I found that has certainly been tempered or even my ability to socialise and, and it’s more of a struggle than it used to be was Covid was going through a couple of years of not networking work with work, or going out to the pub as much or going to sporting events with friends. It was almost like I’ve had to relearn the ability to socialise. And I definitely feel as though I’m not quite as extroverted as I once was. Maybe the, the other thing is that.

>> Chris Budd: What about in the future, though?

>> Producer Tommo: In the future, it’s interesting. I think, again, experiences will probably make me better at that again, so my personality may come out as more confident again.

>> David Lloyd: Children, you haven’t got the time or space to be as. As well as you used to be because you’ve got to be focused on work and them and that’s. You change. And as they grow older and you grow older, you know that. That might go the other way.

>> Producer Tommo: That’s a really good point, David. And maybe because I don’t have as much time for myself and you’re focusing on sort of getting through the day, maybe, maybe I’m just going to be in this period where I’m not as well practised or feel as comfortable, out there as the extrovert that I once was. and I’ve always been labelled as a bit of an extrovert and yet I’m not as good as that. I don’t know. That’s one aspect. The other one, I would say the anxiety, the anxiousness. I’ve, improved on that over the years and that I think is down to again, experiencing things and speaking. And I’ve had coaching, myself.

I talk about coaching clients all the time. I have coaching myself where it helps me to spot when I might have some triggers going on in my life and it gives me some mechanisms to be. To deal with it better. and all of a sudden it starts to become an automatic reaction that I have. That means that I’m a less of an anxious individual. I wasn’t overly anxious, but there are some circumstances where I go, oh, hang on, I can spot myself being a bit more anxious, but I’ve got these tools to be better. But I don’t know whether that’s personality or whether, yeah, actually experience is making me project a different individual. I don’t know.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s personality. What happens is personality becomes more stable as people age and mature, which is, you know, kind of what you’re describing, I think. Thomas. So this end of history illusion, that that name, meaning that we think that history ends today, that history is something in the past, but of course history isn’t. It’s the future as well. And so we tend to think that that personality change only happens before now and, then reduces as we get older. But in fact it doesn’t go away with age and we continue to assume we will not change much future even as we get older.

>> David Lloyd: Wow. Yeah, that’s really interesting. Now here’s a question. When asked to think about ourselves in the past, is it possible that, that people that we’re just remembering incorrectly?

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, I, I think that’s a very valid question. The researchers did cheque this by referencing the results of their study with a large longitudinal study about personality change which showed that people’s personalities do actually change as much as their own survey had suggested. So it is therefore the prediction of our future selves that we’re getting wrong.

Our values change enormously when we have kids, Chris says

>> David Lloyd: Now, this is all fascinating stuff and I think we’ve all bared our souls and allowed ourselves to be a little bit vulnerable here in a way that’s been deeply moving and very interesting and quite touching in some ways. But what the hell has it got to do with financial well being? Chris.

>> Chris Budd: Thank you host. So giving ourselves the illusion that our personalities are not going to change in the future can have an important impact on making big life decisions. we might choose to take paths that we might later regret. For example, I, think as Tommo’s touched upon, our values change enormously when we have kids. We might have stronger ambition in careers or want to earn high salaries and do high profile things, but when kids come along we get a huge injection of perspective and start to think about doing things that we enjoy. Tom, I mean this is, you know, you are the one with, with an 8 year old and and a daughter slightly younger. So how’s your outlook on life changed since having kids?

>> Producer Tommo: I’ve had to become far less selfish. Is, is one way. so my outlook, you definitely think about more people because you have to, because you’re responsible for them. I think in your 20s you can be quite driven and focused on your own, on your own life where you’re trying to get to where all of a sudden you’ve got two very dependent individuals, you need to support them. so yeah, that, that was one element. It’s interesting you say about the creator. I actually found this switch that when I had Toby I had this innate need to provide and that was quite, I mean I was fairly driven individual professionally as it was, but that definitely put the afterburners on for me.

>> Chris Budd: Interesting.

>> Producer Tommo: pardon? Yeah. When do you think that was? Cheers, Grace.

David: Tom, having kids changed your outlook on things

>> David Lloyd: All right then Tom, given all of that, you’ve acknowledged that having kids changed your outlook on things. Is there a financial decision that you made 10 years ago, perhaps a new set of golf clubs and investment in some Very expensive whiskey that you might not have made if you could have spoken to yourself. Now.

>> Producer Tommo: I’m going to flip that around a bit, David, for me, because before I started getting involved with financial well being, before I started getting involved with the work we’re doing at Ovation, I, think my. And if anyone listens to, episode 114 with Katie Dow, it was fascinating because I’m quite a security mindsetted individual. So it actually I was very driven by money security and almost we say tight ass tommo. I was too tight. So I would say speaking to 10 years ago south, if I was just. And thankfully I came through it. But it’s to shake him and go, it’s okay to spend money on the right things, but in order to do that you have to kind of educate yourself on what those right things are.

And I’ll be very frank with you, I’m going through this again right now. Last year I just alluded to provider trying to, trying to create a place for my family to grow up in. Me and my wife are not the only provider in the family. and we bought a bigger house because we needed more space. And that came with spending more money on the mortgage, having a little less each month. And that had an impact on me. And I’m working through that and having this. It was interesting when Chris mentioned this podcast is it got me to just sort of really think about what would I be telling myself in 10 years time.

>> David Lloyd: Yeah. Because we have talked before, haven’t we, in one of our previous podcasts about how hard it is to connect with ourselves in the future.

>> Producer Tommo: Yeah. Yeah. And it is. And we did a podcast with, with Hal Hirschfield at episode 98 who went into this far greater detail than we’re going today. And I highly recommend you look at this. Oh, sorry. Listen to this. And it was all connected to our. How can we connect to our future selves to make better decisions? But I almost think we’re thinking about it the other way.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, the two go together. That’s really what I’m getting to because it shows that we all live with a mistake that the research that we started off the end of history research shows that we all live with the mistaken belief that things aren’t going to change in the future, anything like as much as they did in the past. To quote Carl Richards, who was on, podcast episode 19 all the way back in 2017, there’s only one thing we know with any certainty about a plan for the future, and that is that it will be wrong. Yet we constantly underestimate the amount that our expectations are going to be incorrect and continue to believe that life will be relatively constant.

>> David Lloyd: Ah, that’s really interesting.

David: Sometimes we make decisions based on experiences rather than what might happen

So, Chris, I guess the next question is how can we use this knowledge to make better decisions?

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, absolutely, David. That’s got to be the end of every podcast we do, really, isn’t it, to bring that conclusion? The issue is that we’re making financial decisions now based on the assumption that we aren’t going to change. So we end up making reactive decisions based upon experiences rather than proactive based on what might actually happen in the future. If we need to make a big decision, one with a financial implication, perhaps we could do some research by speaking to people who have been through the thing that we are about to experience ourselves. If you think of having children, speak to older work colleagues and ask them how it changed their lives, particularly their financial life. Speak to people who’ve retired, people who are doing things that we would like to do.

>> Producer Tommo: just thinking on that. And again, I’m going to reference this episode 114 with Katie Dow, where when life changes, it does shift your. It shifts your whole world around and it can be really hard. You take quite a few years to get settled again. I almost think what you’ve just said there is, gives us a shortcut to feeling settled as well as if you’re going to speak to somebody, go, what, what was it kind of like for you? And they can say it’s almost like when you’re experienced, like, hang on a second, this is normal, okay. And you, it might just make you feel a little bit more comfortable in this change that goes on. Kids is an obvious one. Retirement is another one.

But yeah, sorry, I just thought I’d, I’d chuck that in there. And one other thing that I’d love to mention here, that point about Carl Richards said, and you also doubling down on that, Chris, about how what we think is going to happen changes massively. This is why when a financial planner speaks to you, they will set up a financial plan initially, but they’re, very likely to talk to you about an ongoing. Let’s sit down and speak to each other at least once a year. And the reason for that is things change more than you think they’re going to. And if you just set a financial plan and fire and forget, you could be in the danger of continuing to do something with your finances that is no longer aligned to what is actually going on in your life. So I just thought I’d I’d. I’d stress that, and I would say that as a financial planner, but that’s where the value is.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, great point, Thomas, great point.

Ovation Finance want people to record their messages about how major decisions turned out

>> Producer Tommo: but coming back from my. My diversion. So, since Chris told me about this concept, the Ovation marketing team have had what I think is a great idea. and if a way of making better financial decisions now is to have a message from future you about how that decision turned out, we thought it would be a good idea to get people to record their messages about how things turned out for them following a major decision.

>> David Lloyd: Oh, I like the sound of that. Probably could tell us about whether they wore their plates at the same time.

>> Producer Tommo: There you go. Double bubble. but I think this could be really helpful because it could mean that you get quite a few people talking about a similar topic. You know, we’d like people to record a short voice message about something that happened to them, say, a decade or so ago. You know, preferably something that’s likely to happen to others, and then share the one thing that they glad they did or that they wish they had not done. It doesn’t need to be more than 30 seconds, just a brief message for others to think. Think about. The one other caveat is it needs to be something that’s universal, then the other people can relate to it. I don’t know if I’m doing a good job here, Chris. Perhaps you could give this a crack.

>> Chris Budd: So the, the universal point, let me illustrate by, in the business advice space that I work in, I advise business owners on succession planning and their own futures. and there’s lots of people in businesses with grey hair giving advice on what they think other people should do. You get a lot of people on boards, particularly, who’ve had a lot of experience, and they tend. Not always, but they tend to say, you should do this because it worked for me.

The trouble with that is that it’s very often based upon their own experiences and values. And, often, if I’m honest, ignores outside issues such as luck. So we want people to tell us ideas or things that happen to them that they just did. So factual, if you like. Not. My big tip for everybody is to. We don’t want that sort of thing. We just want your life experience, really.

>> Producer Tommo: So we want to have messages from the future to be informative rather than just giving advice. If that makes sense.

>> David Lloyd: That makes total sense. And how do people send these messages to us?

>> Producer Tommo: just record a clip to no more than 30 seconds on your phone and email it to Marketing@ovationFinance.co.uk

>> Producer Tommo: Obviously anyone sending us a message, agrees for us to play it on the podcast.

>> Chris Budd: So I thought to get this ball rolling, we might offer a short message from the future of our own. my best decade, I think, was my 40s. I did loads of things in that decade. I had kids. I set up a cricket youth section with you, David. I started writing novels. I wrote the Financial well Being book. But one thing happened which kind of kicked all this off. A friend asked me to join his band. I hadn’t really picked up a guitar for a few years, and I said no to begin with, but he badgered me, so I joined the band.

And then for about 10 years, we rehearsed once a week and we played loads of gigs. So when I look back, the one thing I was really pleased that I did was to say yes to something that I was going to say no to.

>> David Lloyd: Yeah, that’s really interesting. So I’ve got something. It’s kind of a bit similar and, yes, it’s a bit different. So, about 15 years ago, I was in my mid-50s and I wasn’t quite, you know, I felt I needed a new challenge and I was offered a job out of the blue to go and having been a writer and an actor, reasonably successful. I was offered a job out of the blue to go and work for Bristol City Football Club, you know, the football club that I supported. And it was doing something I’d never really done before, but I thought, oh, should I do that? Or should I stick with what I’m doing? But I was a bit bored. I was in a little bit of a rut. I needed to get out of the house a little bit more. So I said yes.

It felt. I can never forget that first day going to work, and it was like going into a completely strange environment. I thought, what am I doing here? What have I done? I actually had eight great years then. Really, really enjoyed it. Presented me with a whole set of different challenges, opened me up to lots of new opportunities. I then reached the point where I thought, you know what? I’ve had enough of this. And I left because it had kind of served its purpose. So it’s about, In a way that I regretted when I talked earlier in this, podcast about not having gone to the RADA audition this time. I was offered an opportunity and I went, yes, I’m going to do it. And it took my life in a wholly unexpected, very enjoyable, direction that I hadn’t been expecting at all.

>> Chris Budd: Brilliant. Thank you, Dave. That’s a wonderful example Both of a really good bit of advice, to share from the future but also just shows how hard it is to keep these under 30 seconds.

>> Producer Tommo: Yeah, I’m thinking about, I’ve try and give a parent related one but it’s probably not quite 10 years. I think the thing that I’m glad I’ve done is my boy Toby, he’s really into his rugby. We start taking him along to, to play rugby and the thing I’m pleased I did was I could spot the coach needed some help and I’m really glad that I reached out to him and said do you need somebody to just support what you’re doing? And I could. I have so much fun on a Sunday helping coach in these. We got 20 old kids playing rugby, me and several other coaches. We have great fun. I’m just really glad I plucked up the courage and asked to get involved and I’m so glad I did.

>> David Lloyd: Yeah. So we all made decisions that came as a little bit out of the blue that took us in directions that we weren’t necessarily expecting us to go, but that have worked out pretty well for us. So we’d love to hear yours, and also to hear about whether or not you warm your plates. so please do send those, so those into marketing@ovationfinance.co.uk and we will incorporate them into a future podcast past.

It’s been a really interesting chat today guys. I think we’ve, you know, we’ve talked about a lot of quite personal stuff and I think that always adds a little bit of credibility to these podcasts. Makes us sound like we’re not just making stuff up. We kind of to some degree know what we’re talking about and I hope you will have enjoyed that listening at home and that you’ll join us again for another one in our series of financial well being podcasts.

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