In this episode, Christian Rodwell is joined by WealthBuilders founder Kevin Whelan and investment coach Manish Kataria (Invest Like a Pro) to explore a major shift in the UK wealth landscape: property investing is losing its shine as more investors seek smarter, more passive ways to grow their wealth. The discussion dives into why property is no longer the “go-to pension,” the impact of rising taxes and regulation, and how diversification and passive investing in stocks, gold, and other assets are changing the game. You’ll hear practical strategies for building recurring income, maximising tax efficiency, and future-proofing your portfolio—plus clear, actionable advice for investors at every stage.
Key Topics Covered:
1. The Shift Away from Property
2. Is Property Still Worth It?
3. Smart Investing Fundamentals
4. The Rise of Passive & Diversified Investing
5. Gold, Bonds, and Defensive Assets
6. Tax Efficiency & Fees
7. Mindset, Control, and Personalisation
8. Actionable Strategies for Wealth Builders
Actionable Takeaways:
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Speaker 3 (00:00.024)
You've noticed a real shift recently away from the traditional property investing towards the stock market.
rates went up significantly in the last two or three years and mortgage rates have gone up a lot too which has made property a lot less profitable. Property has grown 39 % in the last 10 years. Stocks have grown 242%. The whole idea that property is your pension is not valid anymore.
Speaker 3 (00:25.646)
Welcome to this week's episode of Wealth Talk. name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for WealthBuilders, joined once again by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan. Welcome back, Kevin.
I was wondering if I was being noticed. You seem to be running the podcast, pumping out some good guests, and I was innocently quiet and thinking, why don't I get away with this? I might not need to come back. Well, I've done two things really fundamentally. I a nice trip with my wife to Porto, which I enjoyed very much indeed, and a little bit of touring in the Duro Valley. As you know, I'm
Yeah, where have you been?
Speaker 2 (01:00.974)
Quite a wine aficionado, I enjoyed particularly the port, of course. So I've done the old sherry country, which was down in Spain, if you remember a couple of years ago, and this was port country. And the two are fundamentally different, but both very strong fortified wines, but they come from different grapes in different areas. Yeah. Fascinating part of Portugal and liked it a lot. And I can see why some of our members enjoy it too, including you when you wrote your book. Richico, one of our.
team members who frequently spends time there. of course, occasionally get out and play some golf over there. But the other thing, I've been finishing a big refurbishment, refurbishment, forget my teeth in, on my home, which is fundamentally now done. It's taken a year. Should have taken six months, but like everything, you you want more, you do more, you see more and you end up spending more. And that's what I've done. And I wanted to see that through.
And of course I've taken just a little bit of time away to be thinking about writing this guide. And I'm obviously under a bit of pressure now for the guide for the complete kind of, what are we calling it now? Sort of a tax raid on pensions and why everybody who's got a pension and a family needs to be aware. This isn't something you can just kick to one side and think it might be a consultation or it might be something to get around to in 18 months time. You've got to be on it now. Lots of sentiment going on.
Lots of views and thoughts going on. Lots of worries and concerns about the coming budget, which I've never seen a budget so late, autumn budget in late November. So I'll be ready with a guide to the budget as well, the day after actually, Chris. So I'm going to be burning a bit of midnight oil in November. So I'll be heading off at the end of November for a little trip to Verona and Lake Garda with my wife again too.
know, sample some of the joys and the hospitalities of Italy, Lake Garda and Bologna.
Speaker 3 (03:00.334)
Sounds wonderful. Sounds wonderful. And of course, we're looking forward to our webinar, which we are hosting next week on the 11th of November. So if you haven't registered for that, head to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash IHT webinar. Okay, on with today's episode, and we're very pleased to welcome back WealthBuilders coach Manish Kataria with us today. And many listeners will probably be familiar with Manish. He is an investment expert.
He's also a wealth coach, so he looks holistically and supports all of our members or many of our members with their own unique wealth plans. we thought we'd bring Manish in today because Kevin, I don't know about you, but I've certainly noticed many more people that I've been speaking to over the last couple of years are not as 100 % focused on property as perhaps they were four or five years ago. And even some landlords now selling up and putting the proceeds into the stock market. So we're seeing a shift now.
Are you noticing this as well?
Look, you always notice shifts because of economic changes. I mean, it's the natural law of economics. mean, in the days when I used to study the data, you would look at tables to say, which asset in any year has performed the best during the course of that year? And you could almost create a matrix for it. And if you looked at the matrix and analyzed it, it was never consistent. One year would be stocks,
Next year would be a different type of stock or a different country, next year would be property, next year would be bonds, and next year would be something completely different. So I think there's a natural changing of the guard when it comes to what's performing well. But bearing in mind, we don't really focus so much on performance in wealth builds, we focus on recurring income, not capital value. think the challenge, that's undoubtedly been the case for those who
Speaker 2 (04:55.448)
Previously, you've invested in property, going back in some cases for older people, baby boomers, for example, they've probably been investing in property since the 80s and 90s. When property prices were rock bottom, they've seen interest rates rock bottom. They will have seen some interest rates very high as well, but you're to get that shift. With interest rates higher than they were in COVID and with government interventions in
Section 24, basically taxing all of your income, not your profit. I mean, if you think about that, it's nuts, right? If you think about that as a business owner, if you're a business owner, you pay tax on your profit. You don't pay tax on your gross revenue. But as a property investor, you're paying tax now, if you own properties individually, on your gross revenue. And then stamp duty's gone up and so the sentiment.
has definitely moved away from tradition of buy-to-let. I never ever subscribed to a view that anything is dead because opportunities are created by negotiation skill and connection. They're not created by markets. In fact, it's the antithesis of the market thinking that I go for, that there's opportunities everywhere. And if you see yourself as an entrepreneur solving the problem of others, those problems never go away. And in fact,
It would be true to say that there'll be many opportunities today to solve the problem of the baby boomers who bought properties in the 80s and 90s. So there's always an opportunity that gets discovered or uncovered by a change in sentiment. And so I don't think anything is dead. I don't think anything is fundamentally broken. I think it means you have to look harder.
to find the right opportunities to build your recurring income. And we're seeing a shift towards commercial property, but of course not all commercial property is the same. And we're doing some very nice collaborative work, aren't we, with Suzy Carter on this to try and help people understand how that market is changing. So I think we'll just see people having to dive a little deeper into their knowledge, into their connections and into their plan.
Speaker 2 (07:16.216)
to create multiple streams of recurring income from different places, as opposed to saying, I am a property investor. Cause you can't just be a property investor. You can be an investor or a wealth builder with money and property and business and intellectual property and joint ventures and so on and so on as people understand the pillars. So I'm probably not saying I'm seeing it as much as you or Manish, but Manish is at the sharper end of
people wanting to be smarter with their investing and he's well placed to help people respond to that.
Yeah. And we'll hear Manish talk about the importance of diversification. So within multiple pillars, asset classes, we refer to those of pillars, of course, but also within each asset class, can diversify as well. it's spreading the risk. yeah, Manish will share some numbers with us. I think it's time we head on for our conversation today with Manish Kataria.
Anish, welcome back to Wealth Talk. How are you?
Very well, thank you. Chris, always a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3 (08:17.994)
Yes. Now our members will know you very well as one of our coaches, also the founder of Invest Like a Pro. And I think probably this is podcast number three or four on Wealth Talk. So you're a seasoned pro and you also have your own podcast, don't you Manish?
I do. Yeah, I have a podcast and a YouTube channel. So yeah, learning learning from the experts.
We're talking around property and the stock market today. And you're coaching many of our members, many of your own members, Manish. And you've noticed a real shift recently amongst WealthBuilders members away from the traditional property investing, which has been so popular over the last few years and a shift towards the stock market and alternative assets. So what's driving that change do you think?
Yeah, mean, this is, it's a, it's a fairly noticeable shift actually. you know, a lot of, you know, our mutual clients, your members, our members, you know, they, historically they have, you know, had an interest in property or they've invested in property, but you know, there is a, there is a shift really in, terms of sentiment going forward. So there's been a few factors and all of these factors have come about.
I'd say in the last five to six years, really. So the first thing is the tax changes, which actually came about in the previous conservative government, the Section 24 tax changes, which made it a lot harsher on property landlords, especially if you are investing in your own name. So that created an environment where people, now revenues were taxed instead of profits, which was the case previously.
Speaker 1 (09:57.784)
So that was a big shift. And then we've had a series of sort of increased regulations, which just has made life harder for landlords, right? So we've got the new sort of renter's rights bill coming through in the next few months, actually, which should be rubber stamped in the next few months. Now that's going to shift all the power, a lot of the power from landlords to tenants. So lot of our members are talking about this and fearful about what that will.
mean for landlords. The other thing we've seen in the last few years, last couple of years, higher interest rates. Interest rates went up significantly in the last two or three years and mortgage rates have gone up a lot too, which has made property a lot less profitable and cash flows have really dried up for landlords, particularly if you're buying a new property on the market now, which we'll talk about a bit later on in this session, I guess, in terms of what are the net cash flow and net income levels, which aren't looking too great.
And I guess the other two things are increased management. increasingly the whole idea of management burdens. And I often refer to the problem as the tenants toilets and boilers problem, because as landlords, we are faced with these kind of headaches on a day-to-day basis. the final thing, I think people are realizing that actually, property isn't quite the same asset class as it used to be. It's not quite your pension.
There was a whole kind of widespread belief that property is my pension, but actually some of these changes recently have made people realize actually there might be better asset classes out there. And more importantly, the need to increasingly diversify your portfolio and your pension for your future. these are the things I'm noticing.
Yeah. So are we saying everyone should get rid of their property and move it across to some other asset class now?
Speaker 1 (11:50.806)
No, not necessarily. No, I'm big on diversification, as you know, Chris. And so I own property. I own lot of stocks, financial assets, and I'm not in a rush to sell any of my properties. I'm just not buying new ones because I think what people will find is existing landlords, if they've had property for a while, you know, some of them are probably cash flowing okay. And, but the real problem is with new, new property purchases, because when you buy a new property now,
You know, you are paying higher stamp duty levels, you've got a higher mortgage payments, your cash flows have dried up and your sort of future capital growth potential has dried up as well in recent years. I think it's really more about not necessarily sell your properties, it's more about think about how you can diversify in smarter ways.
who knows where we'll be a month from now when we've had the budget announcement as well. And there's lots of changes that are looming, which property investors, well, business owners as a whole, investors, property investors, slightly concerned about what might be coming.
Absolutely. you know, this is what we've seen in the last five, six, seven years. think, you know, landlords are an easy target. Business owners seem to be an easy target as well. Sometimes it would appear. you know, we all know that we've got a massive hole in the public finances, right? So this direction of travel in terms of taxes and regulations, I think that's only going to go one way. you know, who knows what's around the corner, you know, in the next year or two or three years.
These things can shift very, very quickly.
Speaker 3 (13:26.23)
Let's strip it back, I guess, to the fundamentals of investing, whether it's within property, whether it's within the stock market. I know that there are some essential ingredients for a good investment. Perhaps we could just cover some of those, Manish.
Yeah, yeah. So there are three or four essential ingredients to every investment. I won't go through every single one, but the two big ones in my view are growth and income. So if you're looking at any investment, you need to make sure that it has the potential to grow, not just grow, but grow at above inflation levels going forward. Because if you have a portfolio of assets, whatever those assets are, they need to keep up and
exceed the pace of inflation because your portfolio is there to serve your future financial needs. So they have to grow in excess of inflation, at least. So that's number one. Number two is income. So your assets need to have the potential of generating income. So those are the two big things. And whenever I look at investments, I need to tick at least one of those boxes, ideally both. The other things are, it has to be passive, tax efficient.
and offer some sort of protection. But the two big ones are growth and income.
previous podcast we recorded, Manish, we talked a lot about inflation and inflation, there's one number which is publicized, right? And there's a real number. We've got money supplied, keeps increasing as well. So when we talk about beating inflation, what sort of numbers are we talking here?
Speaker 1 (14:59.022)
Yeah, really good point. So the official inflation rate we are being told is something like, think it was 3.8 % was the latest number. I always say, look, those official numbers are way understated and you just have to look at your own bills, right? You just have to look at your daily expenditure and we can see our bills, our food shopping and everything else that we are purchasing is growing by much more than 3 %
I would say add another 3%, 4%, 5 % to it. It's always hard to put a precise number on it. There is a really good website in the US which monitors these things. It's called shadowstats.com. There's a former economist, current economist I should say, who monitors these things very closely. He's been talking about this for a long, long time. And so I would say it's safe to add 3 or 4 % on top of the official rates.
When we're thinking about currently which asset class should we move forwards in, and as we said, we're not necessarily saying one or the other. Diversification is still a key ingredient of a good wealth builder. But let's look at property first. Most people start quite simple, buy-to-lets, moving sometimes up to a bit more complicated, maybe HMOs and service accommodation, and then maybe even commercial. What's the range for property, you say, Manish?
So if we go back to the sort of framework I was talking about earlier, you know, does it tick the growth box? Does it tick the income box? So I did some numbers, just some kind of simple numbers on a regular buy-to-let, right? So if I imagine a regular buy-to-let, we're buying it for a hundred thousand pounds. You know, if I just do the numbers, rent of 6 % per annum, the average UK rental yield is about 5.5%. Let's call it 6%. And then you deduct mortgage interest rates. If you deduct management.
maintenance, insurance, just a very simple calculation resulted in a pre-tax profit of £820 per annum. know, deducting all of those costs from your average rental yield, you're left with £820 and that's pre-tax, right? So before all the taxes that get deducted. So just using that, you know, if you buy a £100,000 property, your cash invested
Speaker 1 (17:19.31)
is going to be 32,000 pounds. That's your 25 % deposit plus legal and stamp duty. So on a cash invested of 32,000 pounds, you're left with an annual return of 2.6%, which is way below inflation rate. And this is just an average. And I've been generous. I haven't included things like void periods. I haven't included things like other fees that if you buy in a limited company, you've got accounting fees and all of these other things.
I am included taxes, corporation taxes. So yeah, 2.6 % isn't exciting, right? I'm sure you'd agree and it's well below inflation. So property doesn't tick that income box, that's for sure. And so does it take the capital growth box? Well, actually, no. I looked at that over the last 50, 60 years, growth of UK house prices since 1975.
And it used to be the case, I don't know if you remember Chris, but a lot of people used to say, well, property doubles every 10 years. And that used to be the case, but hasn't been for a long, long time. actually, if you go back to the 70s and 80s, property was growing at around 12 % per annum. In the 2000s, it was growing, you know, 10 % per annum. And then we had the financial crisis, if you remember that, in 2007. And that changed everything for property and...
other assets like property. And we had a new normal after that. We had a new normal of growth of around 5 % in the 2010s. And then we had a slight blip up post COVID because everyone wanted to buy a house, but we've got a more normalized level now. You know, the latest numbers have been tracking at 2 to 3 % growth in the last three or four years. So as you can probably tell by what I've said over the last 50 years, the rate of growth
has just been declining for a long, long period of time. This is a long-term decline in the rate of growth for UK house prices. So again, we're back to levels of two to 3%. And again, that doesn't tick the box because although prices are growing in real terms, inflation adjusted terms, they've actually been falling. UK house prices peaked in 2007 if we take the inflation adjusted number. So in real terms,
Speaker 1 (19:46.222)
UK house prices have been declining for more than 10 years, more than 15 years.
So comparing that to the stock market, what's the pitch being like over the last sort of 10, 20 years there?
It's been a big difference actually. you know, there's been a huge difference in returns. Property in the last, let's take 10 years, property has grown 39 % in the last 10 years. Stocks have grown 242 % in the last 10 years. And I'm talking about globally diversified stocks versus residential property, by the way. So, you know, those are the two asset classes we're talking about. So that equates to an annual growth rate of
3 odd percent for property versus 12 % for stocks. So yeah, there's been a huge difference between the two. On an income basis, property gives you anywhere between 2 and 5 % net yield and stocks give you 1 to 4%, 1 to 5 % dividend yield. So those two are comparable, but the growth rate has just been on another level for stocks.
You talked about globally diversified stocks there. So I know that you use the word stocks to kind of all encompassing for many different kind of investments. What would be kind of included within that, Manish?
Speaker 1 (21:00.77)
Yeah, so I kind of use stocks as a generic term. Actually, the way we invest, put together a, I should actually call it a financial assets portfolio. So in my financial assets portfolio, in the type of portfolio I teach other people to put together, you know, that's not just stocks, but it's gold and it's options and things like money market funds, it's bonds.
So it's not just sort of stocks, which can be a little bit more volatile than the other asset classes. But if you put together a well-balanced portfolio with all of these other asset classes, you can get a really good level of diversification and balance. And interestingly, you can even put property in there. So you can put REITs, real estate investment trusts, property is still a reasonable asset class. And actually with REITs, you can get exposure to commercial.
property and industrial property and sort of storage and logistics and care homes and all of these other interesting asset classes. So yeah, that's the key thing. guess the one downside with stocks, I've talked about all the sort of positives, of course, but the one downside is that stocks have higher volatility, right? So they go up and down more than property. And that's the sort of flip side. you know, if
You can accept that and longer term, stocks have always been more volatile, but they've always had periods of ups and downs, but they always come through that and they always continue to make new highs. So the numbers I gave you earlier, 13 % annualized, they include all the ups and downs. That's just an average number, but your listeners should remember that volatility is the price you pay for that additional growth.
I guess someone could come with the argument that go back to financial crisis, as you mentioned, and all the markets were hit, right? Property market, stock market, of course, pensions being invested in the stock market as well. So someone wishing to retire around that time, if the stock market has plummeted, and obviously they've massively reduced the capital there. But within property, even if the price of the property is reduced, they're still getting that regular rental income. what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 (23:18.476)
Yeah, that's a good point. So I go back to holding a diversified portfolio. when not everything, not all financial assets came down during the financial crisis. So stocks came down, but gold went up, bonds, government bonds went up a lot, gold went up a lot, government bonds went up a lot. And there are lots of asset classes which didn't decline. we have what we call a GPI portfolio. Our portfolio consists of three elements, growth,
protection and income. So within our protection bucket, we own things like gold and government bonds and money market funds. All of these are very secure defensive assets, which actually rise during a period of volatility. so yeah, think stocks are one part of it, but you these other assets protect you as well. And by the way, property did come down a lot during the financial crisis, the capital values came down.
20 % plus. And I remember actually during the global financial crisis, I had a property which was rented out and the same for COVID and lockdowns. And these properties were sat empty because there were so many people who are laid off and they couldn't get a job or they couldn't afford to rent out. So the whole rental market did come down quite significantly as well. So no asset class is completely immune. You have to be invested in
in a balanced way as we keep saying that's the key to success.
Yeah, you mentioned gold. It's a topical conversation at the moment with the increase that we've seen, but gold is more of a hedge. And I saw you write about that in one of your newsletters recently.
Speaker 1 (24:58.41)
It's a great hedge and I own it alongside my stock portfolio because the great thing about gold is that it typically moves inversely to what stocks are doing. when there is an event going on in the world, go back to the financial crisis, go back to COVID and lockdowns, any other sort of fear or uncertainty going on in the world as there is now to an extent, gold does really well. having gold in your portfolio,
is a really smart way to hedge against uncertainty. So yeah, I own gold. I've been a big fan of gold for a year or two now. Not always have I been a massive fan because gold doesn't give you income unless you do it through options and you get income through doing gold. But yeah, it's increasingly amongst my community and increasingly a popular asset. yeah, you want, I guess the other question about gold is, know, how do you own it? You you want to...
I mentioned options already. A lot of people own gold physically. think a far better, more tax-efficient way to own gold is through ETFs. But yeah, it's a great asset cloud.
Sometimes I use these kind of acronyms ETFs and not everyone may be aware of that. Just explain what an ETF is and the benefits of one.
Yeah, an ETF is an exchange traded fund. when you can buy stocks through ETFs, you can buy gold through ETFs and various other asset classes, bonds. And so when you own gold through an exchange traded fund, ETF, you can put that in your pension. You can put that in your ISA, unlike physical gold, which you can't put into your ISA, for example. So it's a really smart, low cost way and a tax efficient way of owning gold.
Speaker 3 (26:42.04)
Talk about income then. Someone who perhaps is wanting to build wealth to become financially secure, financially independent, perhaps replace their income. How can you generate income from the stock market?
Yeah, so three ways. So you can buy high dividend stocks. There are some really good quality blue chip shares that give you dividend yields, annual dividend yields of somewhere between three to 6 % per annum. So the benefits of this is you get a reliable income by way of dividends, but you also get the potential for capital growth because you own the shares and over time they'll grow.
you're also getting dependable income. So that's one way. Another way we talked about it earlier, REITs, another acronym, Real Estate Investment Trusts. So they are a smarter way of owning property, commercial property, industrial property. these REITs typically give you income of between 3 to 7 % per annum. So both of these are income-rich investments with the potential of capital growth. And the final one is through options. So I'm pretty active on options. A lot of my community is
pretty active in options and we're getting income levels of somewhere between 1 to 3 % per month. So, you know, per month. So that's quite a high annualized level. And so that's a really interesting way of capturing income from the stock markets.
Yeah. And you mentioned your community there invests like a pro. Many of wealth builder members I know have trained with you, Minesha, and benefited massively from what you teach. How important do you believe education is when it comes to someone entering the stock market and knowing exactly what they're doing?
Speaker 1 (28:27.776)
Yeah, it's super important. You know, it's so important because investing is a lifelong learning, right? And so, you know, once you're set up, the hardest part of investing properly is the initial setup. you know, you you make sure you're invested in tax efficient way in the right platforms, in the right stocks and the right ETFs. And once you've got all of that done, it's pretty much set and forget. So all of your work is front ended. and so, and, and the interesting thing is if you do things properly, the
compounded benefits over years and decades ahead will amount to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, you know, net benefit to you. But if you don't do things properly, you might end up giving too much away in fees and taxes and, you know, being in the wrong stocks or the wrong funds and the wrong ETF. So if you are doing things properly, you know, if you spend a little bit of time educating yourself and to learn to do things properly, that will have massive, massive, massive
long-term benefits for you. The benefits will outweigh the costs by 100x or more. So it's so important. It really is important to do that. It's probably one the most important decisions you can make in your life apart from your health.
Now, many of our members value control. with a property, bricks and mortar, you can see it, can feel it. Stock market's a bit different. So how can people invest in markets without feeling like they're giving up that control, do you think?
Yeah, it's a bit of a mindset shift, right? Because as you correctly say, know, property, you can touch it and feel it. You can say you own it, know, stocks, you still do, right? And remember, when we own stocks, funds, ETFs, we are legal owners of the best companies around the world. We're not just investing, you know, to see squiggly lines or to, we're not investing for charts. It's not some sort of speculative activity. We are legal owners of
Speaker 1 (30:27.128)
high quality companies, the best companies around the world and you're legally entitled to dividends which you get. So it's a bit of a mindset shift to do that. But I just think about how much easier it is. With property, there's the whole management burden, which a lot of people are increasingly sick of. When you own a portfolio of financial assets, you can manage them from anywhere in the world. It gives you so much flexibility, geographical flexibility.
flexibility of time and flexibility of your day-to-day hassle factor. So I think that's far more important than the illusion of control because at the end of the day, we think we have control, but if you think about it, when you own property, the control is being shifted to your tenants with the renter's rights bill. They are increasingly getting control in terms of tax and policy changes, all of that control.
is increasingly being determined by the government and HMRC. So, you know, all of these things are being gradually being taken out of our hands. So I think the control thing is debatable, but really, you know, I focus on the flexibility and, you know, the passive nature of owning stocks and REITs and ETFs for all of the reasons we mentioned earlier.
No, it's a good point you make there. don't have a crystal ball, of course, but we have seen indexes hitting all time highs this year. Where do you see the next 12 months in the markets?
The thing about markets and stocks is over the long term, they are super simple, super predictable, right? They've returned 8 to 10 % year in, year out. Long-term average, you go back to 1871 and they've been consistent over the long term. What you lose control of in the stock market is knowing what happens in the short term, right? So in the short term, it's kind of anyone's guess. Stocks go up eight times out of 10, but the two times out of 10, they don't go up.
Speaker 1 (32:29.11)
You can't determine the timing of that. So that's the only thing you don't have control over. But what I always say to my members is that, look, that is your advantage, right? Because when there are periods of volatility, you take advantage of that. And when we invest properly, we do it through pound cost averaging. So what pound cost averaging is, it's essentially a way to drip feed your money into the markets. when you do that, when you do that properly, you
get to take advantage and you actually welcome the volatility. You welcome that. if any, you know, I had a load of members who kind of started, you know, investing early part of 2025, early part of this year. And if you remember, we had the sort of Trump sort of tariff volatility back in April this year. And at the time it was sort of looking uncertain markets corrected, but all of my members who are pound cost averaging drip feeding their money in.
Looking back now, they were delighted because they were able to buy good quality stocks and ETFs at knockdown prices. And that's what always happens, right? If you go back historically, whenever you see the COVID crash or the April tariff tantrum, I call it, these are always solid opportunities to buy assets when they're on sale. So I can't give you a precise answer on what happens over the next 12 months,
Eight times out of 10 markets go up. if I was to give you, know, based on historical reasoning, you know, markets will have another eight to 10 % a The last three years have been up between 10 to 20 % per annum. This year is up pretty strongly as well. you know, and next year there's a lot of interesting things going on with AI and you know, we've got a pretty benign economic backdrop. Interest rates are not being cut massively, but they are, they are on their way down.
So that's always supportive for equities and for stocks and for bonds and earnings growth. At the end of the day, when we buy stocks, we're not buying stocks for the sake of buying stocks. We're buying future earnings and earnings growth is looking pretty solid across the board. So I'm always positive on markets and that's always been the case and it's been right to be positive, but I can't sort of, I don't really have a strong view what's going to happen in the next few months. That's the only thing I can't do.
Speaker 1 (34:49.378)
But what I do know is if you have a properly balanced portfolio, you're going to be fine whatever happens.
If someone's really new to investing, where would be the first place for them to start? talked about AI there and there's a lot of hype around that as a sector. But in terms of just really simple steps, just to make sure that you're really maximizing the cash perhaps you've got, as you said, you could have some money in an ISA, but you're not really sure about how to shift that into stocks and shares, what would be some simple advice?
first thing is don't necessarily buy individual stocks. And that's where people sometimes go wrong. You want to be diversified, right? So buy diversified global funds and ETFs, low cost stuff. don't go buying the big branded funds, right? So go with something like ETFs, tracker funds, which diversified, have low fees. So that's probably the first step to do and have it balanced so it reflects your risk profile. there are some
more adventurous funds, there are some balanced ones, some kind of cautious ones, but you need to be aware of your risk profile. Are you adventurous? Are you balanced? Are you cautious? That's the first thing to think about and match up your investments to your risk profile. The second thing is think about what your long-term objectives are, right? So again, match up your investments to your personal objectives. Overall, most of my holdings are in balanced, diversified global funds, low cost funds.
which are there just for set and forget purposes.
Speaker 3 (36:17.102)
and start with your ISA allowance of $20,000 a year.
We'll see what the budget brings, but we still have very generous tax allowances and ICERs, pensions. know your members and listeners will be geared into the whole SaaS pension space. whether you've got a SaaS or a SIP or a work pension scheme, invest within these tax efficient wrappers because there are leakages. You want to prevent leakages. So one of the big leakages is taxes. So don't invest in your personal name if you've got your ICER allowance remaining or if you've got your
pension allowances remaining, know, fill your tax allowances as much as you possibly can. And all of the things we talked about today, know, stocks, ETFs, REITs, gold, all of these things can be invested inside your pensions, inside your ICES.
You mentioned low cost funds there. What's the kind of benchmark figure if someone's having a look at how much they're paying in fees, what would you be looking for?
On average, I would say my, they're called TERs or total expense ratios. So my total expense ratios, somewhere between 0.1 to 0.2%. So, you know, certainly don't pay much more than 0.2%, that's for sure. So if you can keep it, if you keep your portfolio average below 0.2%, you're doing really well there.
Speaker 3 (37:38.574)
And then just the final point, you talked about your risk profile. Does that change as you get older? Typically, as you get older, perhaps you wanna reduce the risk in the portfolio.
Your risk profile can change. Absolutely. It can change. And your age obviously changes as you get older. So those are the two dynamics, right? So you can get somebody who's in their seventies, who's very adventurous. Equally, you might get somebody who's in their thirties, who has a very cautious risk profile. So those two things can be separate, but typically they can be linked as well. But yeah.
You want to be really aware of your risk profile and invest accordingly as a result. So that's the really key consideration. Absolutely. When you get older, the typical, the traditional IFA advice is to have more of your holdings in bonds and away from stocks. So change the composition of your portfolio more towards bonds and away from stocks. a little bit, I think that traditional level of
of thinking has really been challenged in the last few years. And I kind of have a slightly different approach, because for one, for example, there are lots of bond proxies out there. A lot of people may have property holdings. They may have other assets, like gold, for example. Gold does a similar job to bonds in periods of recession, et cetera. So you have to think about your portfolio as a whole and not necessarily be wedded to this whole idea that you
As you get older, you own more in bonds. One very recent example, going back two or three years, remember we had that whole massive inflation shock when interest rates went up, when inflation went up. Stocks sold off that year and most people would have thought actually bonds will hold up really well. Actually bonds were even worse than stocks.
Speaker 1 (39:36.322)
Bonds don't always do what they're supposed to do. So that's the key thing we should think about.
So guess if I'm looking at everything we've talked about today then Manish, we're still saying diversification is key. We're saying that there are fundamentals and some ingredients that you always want to be making sure you're ticking those boxes, whatever kind of investment you're looking at. And we're certainly not saying just dump all your property and move everything into stock market. But definitely, as you've highlighted, we are seeing some trends and the property market seems to be on somewhat of a slightly downward trend when it comes to returns.
compared to the stock market, which is moving up.
Exactly. you know, and, and, you know, so those, think you've summed it up pretty well there, Chris, you know, be better diversified. The whole idea that property is your pension is not valid anymore. I don't think that's been valid for a while. So I think if you are very heavy in property, think about having a better diversification of your portfolio. Think about ticking the growth and income boxes, ideally both. So have investments that grow in excess of inflation and produce income as well.
And the other things you correctly mentioned, be as tax efficient as possible because that's a massive leakage. The difference that would make to your bottom line when you're retiring is going to be huge. We're talking potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds and also be efficient on fees. That is the same concept. You want to avoid that leakage. And finally, think about being passive, right? Because the older we get, the less...
Speaker 1 (41:07.97)
the less sort of busy we want to be on and certainly less busy in terms of doing management heavy tasks. So, you know, the more passive you can be, the more flexibility you're going to have, you know, geographically flexible and time flexible. So those are key considerations, I would say.
Let's toilet some boilers
Yeah, definitely. That's the way that some boy is.
So I'll say on behalf of all of the wealth builder members, I know who have worked with you, Manisha, a big thank you because your guidance is invaluable. But for anyone who wants to really dive deeper into investing, where can they find out more about Invest Like a Pro and courses that you provide there?
Yeah, so the best way to find out more would be to go to the website, investlikeapro.co.uk. There's all the information on there, on our programs and just right at the top of that homepage, you can just leave your email and I send out weekly investment insights to people just once a week. sort of give people, you know, hopefully valuable investment sort of insights and updates on a regular basis. So yeah, that's probably the best place to go.
Speaker 3 (42:14.446)
Brilliant. All right. Always a pleasure speaking with you, Manish. Thank you very much being a great guest on Wealth Talk today.
Thanks Chris, see you soon.
Speaker 3 (42:23.926)
Okay, so a few stats, a few numbers thrown in there, Kevin. I know as a former economist, you love a stat and you'll probably pick a few of those apart, I'm sure.
I'm not dead yet, so you know, I don't think you ever become a former anything unless you
A former student perhaps is the best.
I don't spend the time looking at the numbers anymore. really don't because I think historically, as I mentioned, you have to because your life when you're building your career is about looking at the numbers, looking at where the growth is. But as you get a little wiser, you realize it's the recurring income that drives everything, not the value of anything.
So one word, the phrase Manish said was, property is my pension. We hear that quite a lot and there's nothing to say that that still isn't the case for many people, okay, who've built a good portfolio and they're managing that efficiently. But more and more people now are starting to look at diversifying away from that. So it's not as concentrated and that's just good WealthBuilders kind of practice and teachings.
Speaker 2 (43:27.886)
It could be, but there's another alternative view and I'm not going to subscribe to the view. I'm not so certain, Chris, that what I'm seeing myself is people making economic decisions. I think they're making emotional decisions. I think we're seeing inevitably you hear language like, my property is my pension, my business is my pension. You see that language played out.
And I think what happens is people fall out of love with what they're You know, so when they fall out of love with what they're doing for whatever reason, that what they used to do, they no longer want to do. And that happens to all of us at some time in our life with all aspects of our life, whether it's a career, we move into business, whether it's the first business we set up, whether it's the second business we set up. I think we're getting that. And if I was giving an alternative viewpoint, I'd say.
You don't need to sell your portfolio and crystallize the capital gain to shift into property. You could just release equity from it. Because if you release equity, you're not paying anything for it. You're not paying stamp duty. You're not paying any kind of tax. Any money you take out of equity, whether it's your own home or properties you own, there's no tax to pay. So you could reinvest some of that if you wanted to. look, everybody's different. Older people, I get it, don't want to do those things anymore. Don't want to be involved.
want to feel like life is simpler. And I understand all of that. So the stock market has always been a good place to invest and also a place that Manish often will teach not just to invest for value, but you've heard me talk many times, Chris, that one of the problems with not understanding the stock market is many people have money in it, but then have got no way of creating certainty in their life because the asset and the volatility is fundamentally uncertain.
You know, so what are we now? 2025. If we look back 2008, we saw anybody in the stock market screaming, you know, because they lost 30, 40 % of their money and they wouldn't be thinking, oh, well, I've diversified out of property. I'm now in the stock market because they've lost 30, 40 % of their money. The challenge for me isn't what you're in. It's having diversification. It, how do you turn the asset you've chosen to be in?
Speaker 2 (45:56.406)
in the amount of time in the way you want to engage it, how do you turn that into a security of income? Because it's only security of income that gives you true freedom and true choice and a true legacy. Because if you don't have that, you can't really plan what you've got in your ISA, in your stocks and shares portfolio, and then your pension because you need to live a life from an asset that's fundamentally going to go up and down.
You've got to engage with that, which means you're shifting one form of responsibility, one form of management into another. Now it's fair to say that Manish knows lots of tactics and techniques to help mitigate, manage risk. And for those who want to be interested, and we've definitely seen some of our clients do that, change their life by becoming more involved with the stock market, but it's a conscious and a deliberate decision to do so. think we heard recently.
From Bimby Fernando, didn't we? Good old Dr. Bimby saying, you know, he's changed his life, not through property necessarily, but because he's taking a much more proactive, involving stance in dealing with the stock market. But that's not for everyone. So you have to determine who you are as a person, where you are now on your life cycle, how much security you've already got. So Manish and I generally agree, but sometimes we don't.
Yeah, I think you're right. It comes down to the individual plan, which is, you know, it's not going to be one size fits all. And it's the process that we follow with all of our members is understanding what's your reason why, you know, taking different resources into consideration, how much time, how much leverage across different assets and leverage of relationships and leverage of intellect and all of these things are important, which help you then decide on what the right plan is for you.
that plan has to evolve over time as the landscape changes because momentum moves people when they start building their wealth and they see things they didn't see when they started. So the plan always changes and part of that, to be honest with you, Chris, is wisdom as you build more knowledge. And the reason why I always sound so relaxed about life is because I'm not fazed by anything. I don't get FOMO. I don't get knee-jerk reactions. I never knee-jerk to anything.
Speaker 2 (48:16.632)
because I like to consider things. I'm like, okay, I understand that. Of course, I'm really disappointed, right? And fed up, not fed up, probably not the right word, but I'm really disappointed with the inclusion of inheritor's tax and pensions, right? Definitely. But I'm going to do something about it. So rather than go, no, woe is me and let's lament it, let's do something about it, which is why I'm putting a lot of time, a lot of energy and intellect into creating a guide to help people make a difference.
Not just with their wealth generally, but with their pension in particular, because I think it's the asset which for the most part is in the stock market and very often not doing very much that's in control with fees that are too high, with a lack of understanding what's going on. And so many people have lost track of their pensions, as we've said, on so many occasions. So I'll keep circling back to try and help people find and get better control and understanding.
of what they got because from that clarity comes a place of being able to make a better decision. So let's keep doing that. And we thank Manish for his clarity and he brings it with, with an incredible intellect and an intention to help people. You can tell that because he's, what did he say he was paying? 0.2. Right. Can you remember how much people on average in the UK are paying Chris for their money management? Yeah. So.
2 %
10 times more than they should. 10 times more than they should. Why? And it becomes, it's not ignorance. Well, you could argue people don't know, but it becomes, I suppose, just an acceptance. And that acceptance becomes no longer delegation, but complete and utter abdication. And people say, my pension's doing okay, but okay, this year it might be, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (50:14.382)
it won't be in the future. yeah, the stock market has a role to play. And of course, I've got money in the stock market and you'd expect that, but it is not the driver of my recurring income. It's really, to me, it's a hedge to keep some value and to keep me giving myself an opinion about what's going on in the stock market. So whether it's in my SaaS, in my ISA, in other things, yeah, you have to have money in those things to
have real opinion because then you're experiencing what you feel about it. But my reaction would be different to somebody else's. That's why I never worry about how somebody else is feeling. I like distinctions they make. I love that. Manish often makes a great distinction. I listen to it and see if that changes my view or whether it reinforces the view that I've gotten. That's the value of that rather than FOMO and somebody says this and somebody says that. Well, that's fine, but they're not you.
back to that episode we did a few weeks ago, knee-jerk reactions. You mentioned just moment ago, don't listen to this episode and suddenly knee-jerk and think, I need to get into the stock market. That's something that can cause issues. Okay. Thanks to Manish once again for coming on the podcast with us today. A final reminder, if you haven't registered for the webinar next week, Kevin, you'll be unveiling all of the
news around pensions and inheritors tax and all the changes that are upcoming. So if you really want to get plugged in and be on top of the game and know what you can do to protect your legacy and your family, then register by heading to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash ihtwebinar.
I'm getting you really disappointed you invited me back in Chris because all I've done is spout off again and get on more.
Speaker 3 (52:08.046)
No, I think that's what people love you for, Kevin, is your honest, challenging way. And we'll be back with more of that, hopefully, next week.
Until then my friend, see ya.
Speaker 2 (52:24.728)
We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the WealthBuilders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership right now for free access. That's wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership.