The Importance Of Sticking To An Investment Plan: Market Insights From Plan First Wealth (We’re The Brits In America S1:E20)

Richard Taylor and James Boyle are in the trenches, giving you the latest reports and their unfiltered takes on what’s going in the world of investing and financial planning.

There’s been a 25% increase in the markets from Oct 2023 to March 2024, followed by a noticeable downturn in April. Most of us know the importance of sticking to investment plans, but how do we create one, and how do we keep a steady hand in volatile times? Rich and James also talk about non-US investments for Brits living in America, and the inevitability of dealing with Passive Foreign Investment Companies (PFICs).

Also covered: Richard shares his reflections on turning 40 – it’s a milestone in our personal life but it’s also a key step along the way as we plan for our retirement.

Three main takeaways from this episode are:

1. Market Volatility and Investment Strategy – financial markets are inherently volatile, it’s important to stick to investment plans and maintain a steady investment strategy despite fluctuations. Endure short-term losses, achieve long-term gains.
2. Tax and Investment Compliance for Expats – the complexities of managing investments in the US for British expats are numerous, navigating the tax implications and reporting requirements of PFICs is essential to know. It’s critical to be compliant with tax laws and potential consequences of mishandling foreign investments.
3. Personal Reflection and Life Planning – Ferris Bueller said it best (Richard’s 40 – excuse his dated references), time moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it. Planning the time you have is essential – balance professional focus and success with personal satisfaction and wellbeing.

We’re the Brits in America is affiliated with Plan First Wealth LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Plan First Wealth.

Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Plan First Wealth does not provide any tax and/or legal advice and strongly recommends that listeners seek their own advice in these areas.

About Richard

Richard Taylor is a British expat, dual citizen (UK & US). Originally from Bolton, he now lives in Greenwich, CT, where Plan First Wealth has its head office.

As the firm’s leader, Richard launched Taylor & Taylor, now Plan First Wealth, and continues to fuel the firm’s growth. Richard is a Chartered Financial Planner (UK – CII) in addition to holding the IMC (CFA UK) and Series 65 (US – FINRA).

Connect with Richard on LinkedIn

About James

James Boyle is the lead financial planner at Plan First Wealth. He is going on ten years in the industry on the American financial planning side, including having certification as a financial planner in the States. James is also CFP level four UK cross-border certified, making him exceptionally qualified in the niche in which he works.

Connect with James on LinkedIn

Transcript:

Richard Taylor:
[00:00:00 – 00:00:32]
Welcome to the inaugural episode of From the Trenches. In this show, my Plan First Wealth colleague, James Boyle, and I are going to get together to bring you behind the curtain at Plan First Wealth to share with you our thoughts and opinions on what’s going on in the world, to provide some technical information useful to Brits in America, to help them thrive here, and finally, to bring insights and observations from our life and work. So, James, hopefully everyone knows who I am by now, but will you introduce yourself?

James Boyle:
[00:00:32 – 00:01:06]
Thank you, Richard. My name is James Boyle. I’m lead financial planner here at Plan First Wealth. Anyone listening to We’re the Brits in America is going to hear my accent now, which will betray me. I am American. Ten years in the industry came up on the American financial planning side, so I am a certified financial planner here in the States. Also level four qualified in the UK manage client relationships here at Plan First Wealth, the book of Business. Also help onboard new clients. So anyone who’s listening, if you do have a chat with us, you’ll have the misfortune of talking with me, most likely.

Richard Taylor:
[00:01:06 – 00:01:10]
And cross border qualified! Shout out to Ashley for the Global Financial Planning Institute.

James Boyle:
[00:01:10 – 00:01:11]
Absolutely.

Richard Taylor:
[00:01:11 – 00:01:36]
You are CFP level four UK cross border. I strongly suspect you’re the most qualified UK/ US financial planner in this little niche thing in the US. I can’t back that up, but I bet it’s true. Good, right, well, look, let’s spend a couple of minutes introducing the show, seeing as it’s the first one. So this is all subject to change, but we’ve sketched out three topics, or three things, that we’re gonna cover each and every month that James and I get together and do this.

Richard Taylor:
[00:01:36 – 00:02:02]
We’re working on a catchy name for it, but the first part is gonna be like the month in review. We’re gonna look at what’s gone on in the last month from an economic investment perspective and share our take and analysis on that. Then going to have Technical Corner, which is where we’re going to pick a topic from our technical series on our website. It’s twelve topics relevant to Brits and America. And each month we’re going to pick one and we’re going to talk about it briefly and what we think experts should be thinking of, aware of, should know about.

Richard Taylor:
[00:02:02 – 00:02:32]
And then finally we’re going to have what we call Open Mic, this is just going to be every month. We’re obviously living life, experiencing things, talking to clients, talking to prospects, and we learn a lot from that, from living, from speaking to people, from doing our day job. And we’re going to just pick stuff from this that we want to share with our listeners. And then finally, we’ll do what we tend to call Pick and Mix where we’re just going to look at, we’re going to talk about what we’re consuming, listening, reading, watching at the moment and share that with you, our fellow listeners.

Richard Taylor:
[00:02:32 – 00:02:57]
So that’s the loose subject to change format for this show, but before we get into it, I also just wanted to position this show in comparison to the rest. Now, we put out a lot of content, not just this podcast. We also have a YouTube channel. We have lots on our website that’s aimed at all Brits in America, or Brits coming to America, particularly successful Brits in America who need to protect their hard work and their assets and their wealth.

Richard Taylor:
[00:02:58 – 00:03:08]
But this show in particular, I’m approaching this, James, from a perspective of what do I want to say to our clients, our current clients, and we get…

James Boyle:
[00:03:08 – 00:03:09]
Requests for this, too.

Richard Taylor:
[00:03:09 – 00:03:10]
Yeah, right. Totally.

James Boyle:
[00:03:10 – 00:03:15]
A peek behind the curtain almost, right. What are we thinking about? Talking about looking at monitoring.

Richard Taylor:
[00:03:15 – 00:03:34]
Exactly. We meet with people one on one every day, but there’s only so much time in a day and even less time in a working day. And as I found out, even less time. When you have two kids, there’s almost no time, it seems, and there’s only a limited amount of time that we could spend with people one on one. But there’s so much more that we want to say.

Richard Taylor:
[00:03:34 – 00:03:55]
Half our job, right, is repeating the same message over and over again, especially in times of strife, which is why this is a perfect month to have our first episode. So I’m approaching this from if I could have unlimited time with my clients or more time with our clients, what would I want to say to them? What would I want them to know? What would I want to be sharing with them? Far more people who aren’t clients listen to the show than our clients.

Richard Taylor:
[00:03:55 – 00:04:13]
So if you’re not a client, you’re thinking, oh, I might as well turn off now, don’t. If you fit a similar profile to our client, I, a successful British expatriate living in America, it’s going to be just as relevant for you. I’m trying to position it in a way that when I’m sketching what we’re going to talk about, I’m thinking of what do I want to say to my clients? What do I want them to know.

James Boyle:
[00:04:13 – 00:04:25]
And what are the things that we need to remind them of? Right? I mean, all of us in our professional lives personal lives need to be reminded of lessons we’ve already learned. Especially, like you said, when things are volatile or feel uncomfortable or uncertain.

Richard Taylor:
[00:04:25 – 00:04:26]
Right.

James Boyle:
[00:04:26 – 00:04:28]
It helps to go through what is my plan here?

Richard Taylor:
[00:04:29 – 00:04:44]
What are we sticking to exactly? So what did we say the first topic each month is going to be? We’re going to do these shows at the end of the month and we’re going to look at what’s happened in the month that’s just gone by. So this for us has been April. What a perfect time to do this.

Richard Taylor:
[00:04:44 – 00:04:47]
Cause it’s kind of gone a bit silly in April. Right.

James Boyle:
[00:04:47 – 00:04:55]
To be expected in some ways right after. After a pretty significant run up last six months or so, it’s all blown.

Richard Taylor:
[00:04:55 – 00:05:02]
Up a little bit. So we just need to talk about the US market. But you said it’s a proxy for global market, the bottomed out in what? Of October last year.

James Boyle:
[00:05:02 – 00:05:03]
Yep.

Richard Taylor:
[00:05:03 – 00:05:20]
And then it was just been on a remarkable run since then. Six months from October 2023 to March 2024 have been fantastic. 25% up, just straight up. Thank you, Nvidia. And then we’ve had a pretty.

Richard Taylor:
[00:05:20 – 00:05:24]
Not serious is the wrong word, but a significant pullback in April.

James Boyle:
[00:05:24 – 00:05:25]
Noticeable.

Richard Taylor:
[00:05:25 – 00:05:25]
Yeah.

James Boyle:
[00:05:25 – 00:05:28]
Yeah. I think our clients are noticing the.

Richard Taylor:
[00:05:28 – 00:05:56]
Last few days have been schizophrenic. Every time we’re in earnings seasons, every time one of these main companies, especially in the magnificent seven markets, up and down like a yo yo with these earnings, no one likes to see it. No one likes looking at their statements or going online and seeing your investments backslide. But it’s an inevitable and necessary consequence of investing in the market. If you want to participate in the 20% six months that we had, you have to be prepared for months like April.

James Boyle:
[00:05:56 – 00:06:21]
It’s almost the price you pay. Right. That short term volatility is what gets you the returns in the long term, the actual returns above and beyond. Rising cost of living or inflation over a 1015 20 plus year time horizon that most of our investors have. Certainly anyone who’s retiring and expects to live past 85, 90, you need to be comfortable.

James Boyle:
[00:06:21 – 00:06:29]
To an extent. It’s okay to feel unmoored but know that it’s inevitable. And the answer is going to be to ride it out, to stick to your investment plan.

Richard Taylor:
[00:06:30 – 00:06:41]
It’s absolutely the price you pay. If you don’t want to pay that price, there are other options. There is cash. But then you just have to accept that you’re not going to beat inflation. Over time, the purchasing power of the money you have is going to be eroded.

Richard Taylor:
[00:06:41 – 00:07:09]
But you avoid the volatility or there’s fixed income. So corporate bonds, treasuries, and 2022 is a bit different. Pretty horrible. But in general, you will avoid the vast majority of this volatility, but you sacrifice significant, meaningful investment returns that significantly add up over long term, and for most people mean a different way of life, a different lifestyle. And if you don’t want to do that, then you have to accept the volatility.

Richard Taylor:
[00:07:09 – 00:07:19]
The challenge is we’re human beings and we’re complicated, and we want the upside without the volatility. We want that, but it’s not an option.

James Boyle:
[00:07:20 – 00:08:06]
Yeah. In the US in particular, an entire industry that has been carefully engineered to try to speak to and solve this human, valid emotional response to volatility and sell any number of products or solutions. This illusion of we will offer you safety, illusion, and you’ll still get returned. Doesn’t exist. Certainly not to say that there’s no place for some of that in your plan, depending on how it fits in your plan overall, but there are a lot of actors out there that are looking to capitalize on your short-term discomfort as an investor.

Richard Taylor:
[00:08:06 – 00:08:29]
Yeah. So obviously, one thing that spooked the markets in April was inflation. It was coming down a clip, and now we’re kind of plateauing in the three to four range, three to 4%, and it’s rise a little bit. It was never going to be a straight line down, and people just need to zoom out a little bit and we’re heading in the right direction still. And we were expecting it to be stubborn at this level.

James Boyle:
[00:08:29 – 00:09:23]
The other thing to keep in mind, too, when we look at sticky inflation, as people are paying attention to central banks, to the Fed, if we’re just looking at the US for shorthand, you can see that in tech stocks, any kind of business that’s fueled by ultra low rates coming into this year, and certainly in quarter one, I think the markets were pricing at something like three or four rate cuts with a sticky inflation print this month. Obviously then chances are, or estimates of significant number of rate cuts in 2024 comes down. You want to play devil’s advocate, though, and think about kind of talking around this idea of could it we predict where the market’s going? The answer is no. But if you want to play devil’s advocate, you could also say that if the fed started cutting aggressively this half of the year or in quarter three, does that mean then that they’re responding to some economic picture that doesn’t look great?

James Boyle:
[00:09:23 – 00:09:40]
Is the solution worse than the cure? Is that the phrase? Yeah, yeah. The point being that people who are fingers crossed, adamantly praying for immediate and rapid, steep rate cuts in that world, that may be underlying a.

Richard Taylor:
[00:09:40 – 00:09:44]
Pretty careful what you wish for, right? Careful what you wish for, exactly. Yeah.

James Boyle:
[00:09:44 – 00:09:54]
So just keep that in mind. And again, it goes to that idea of to try to predict these things and certainly to try to trade in and out of the market is going to derail an otherwise successful plan.

Richard Taylor:
[00:09:54 – 00:10:20]
I was listening to the compound and friends, which I know we both listened to big fans of that show, and they had some long-time guests or regular guests on this week, great guests, Nicolas, and I think it’s called Jessica. Anyway, they basically were talking as if, like, a recession was imminent and almost guaranteed to happen. Oh, that’s the impression I got. Anyway, and I’m not saying it’s not. I’m not making any call on this.

Richard Taylor:
[00:10:20 – 00:10:32]
I truly learned my lesson in 2022, end of 2022, going into 2023, when everyone, the whole entire world, myself included, truly believed that recession was imminent, and it never happened.

James Boyle:
[00:10:32 – 00:10:57]
I was looking up some numbers, rich, since we talked about that. We’re up 40% since that October 2022 low. So all of these headlines, all of these analysts were predicting a severe, hard-hitting recession, quarter one of 2023. If you had made the wrong decision, if you had panicked and sold or went to bonds, you miss out on that 40% rally we’ve seen since then.

Richard Taylor:
[00:10:57 – 00:11:13]
You know, James, I was convinced everyone was. Every professional, every central banker, every single person was convinced. I was convinced. But because I’ve done this long enough, I knew not to make any personal investment decisions, of course, never to make any company investment decisions. Right.

Richard Taylor:
[00:11:13 – 00:11:33]
We’ll end on our philosophy. But I was convinced, and it was only because of nearly 20 years of doing this job and just, you know, repeating and repeating and repeating myself that I knew not to take any action. And thank God I didn’t. But how many people did? How many people sold out to protect themselves in inverted commas at that point?

Richard Taylor:
[00:11:33 – 00:11:35]
How many professionals did it?

James Boyle:
[00:11:35 – 00:11:51]
And we’re convinced in the moment that that was the right call. Right. That’s what’s so sort of insidious about this, is that you think everything is screaming and all these talking heads are telling you you’re making the right decision, and it’s only in hindsight that you realize you made a major error.

Richard Taylor:
[00:11:52 – 00:12:08]
Yeah. And ironically, if you’re an advisor, clients like this approach because people like action. You know, we are predisposed to action. So when things are scary and difficult and hard and challenging. Being told to sit tight is not a comforting message.

Richard Taylor:
[00:12:09 – 00:12:28]
Despite all the research and decades of history proving that it’s been a successful strategy, it’s not comforting someone turning up and saying, I believe this, this, this, I can see this, this, this, we should do this, this and this. The action is comforting, even if it’s wealth destroying in the longer term, or even in this case in the immediate term.

James Boyle:
[00:12:28 – 00:12:52]
Don’t just stand there, do nothing. Yeah, right. That’s not always comforting. We have this human need to respond to current events, or I need to change what’s happening because of this headline I saw, and that is the exact wrong instinct. We never want to come across as condescending or making glib or ignoring the actual valid human psychology below that.

James Boyle:
[00:12:53 – 00:13:11]
But you need to fight those instincts or have a plan in place that when those times are tough and volatile and you’re thinking, oh, there’s going to be a recession and everyone’s saying it, go to your investment plan and say, okay, if there’s a correction, what do I do? Normally, the answer is going to be nothing. Normally it’s going to be to stay invested.

Richard Taylor:
[00:13:11 – 00:13:19]
You’re reacting to something, aren’t you? Acting. You’re reacting. And if you’re reacting, you’re always too late. And eventually it will be there.

Richard Taylor:
[00:13:19 – 00:13:34]
Always going to be a recession coming. Always. Even in the middle of a current recession, there’s another one coming at some point. And Jamie Dimon was talking today, he’s getting a bit circumspect about the prospect for the US economy. All these things are true and right and accurate, but no one knows.

Richard Taylor:
[00:13:34 – 00:13:46]
This is starting to say, oh, we’re not going to have a soft landing. My personal opinion is that we had a soft landing. Now, I know we’re not through it, so maybe it’s better to say we dodged a bullet in 2024. Will we continue dodging another bullet or is something coming around the corner? We don’t know.

Richard Taylor:
[00:13:46 – 00:14:13]
I did see something about seasonality and that showed that this year, in an election cycle, market tends to go up in the first quarter, then it goes down for four to six months and it rises towards the end of the year. And essentially, at this point, we’re following that pattern more extreme, right? It went up more in the first quarter, it’s gone down quicker. But essentially, at the moment, we’re kind of following that pattern. We’re not a million miles off what one can expect.

Richard Taylor:
[00:14:13 – 00:14:35]
But the point is we could talk about this stuff to a blur in the face. One of the most frustrating things for us is people want us to have answers. And sometimes it would just be so easy just to waffle on and give answers because it makes people feel comforted. But the truth of the matter is markets cannot be consistently timed. Economies cannot be consistently forecast.

Richard Taylor:
[00:14:36 – 00:14:57]
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. But consistency is the point here. Therefore, the only way to capture the permanent return of equities is to sit through the inevitable and temporary declines. It’s been this way for 100 years. That’s taken from the master of this field, Nick Murray, before anyone comes after me for copyright or whatever they want to do.

Richard Taylor:
[00:14:57 – 00:14:59]
But that’s our thinking on this.

James Boyle:
[00:14:59 – 00:15:23]
It’s a great point. And keeping that in mind, obviously, is always easier said than done sometimes. One of the things that we had looked at, and that we will continue to look at, is that there are intra year drawbacks every year, right. And on average, stock market’s up. So if you look at since 19, 80, 33 out of 44 years are positive long term stock.

James Boyle:
[00:15:23 – 00:15:48]
Again using S and P 500 large cap us stocks as a shorthand, 1012 percent a year per annum over the long term, average drawdown intra year. So in a calendar year, what’s the most you’ve drawn? Down from a high to a lower 14% on average. So this kind of volatility is perfectly normal. These kind of drawbacks are perfectly normal in the long term.

James Boyle:
[00:15:48 – 00:15:51]
Up and to the right. That’s the way the chart goes.

Richard Taylor:
[00:15:51 – 00:15:58]
Yeah. So even in an up year, you can expect at some point in that up year your money’s going to fall by 14%.

James Boyle:
[00:15:58 – 00:15:59]
Yep.

Richard Taylor:
[00:15:59 – 00:16:12]
So we’re not even there yet? No, not even close to that yet. Just to add to your point, there really important stuff that I often throw at people is three out of four years, markets rise three out of four years. We just don’t know which three years.

James Boyle:
[00:16:12 – 00:16:12]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
[00:16:12 – 00:16:41]
So all you have to do is just sit through all of them rather than trying to guess which one’s going to be the down year. And also we should say three out of four years. One of those years is probably flat or at 1%. It’s those two years and sometimes even just one year where it flies up. And if you sit out that one year or that one and a half years or that two years, where it really moves, because the fear mongering that is everywhere around us, everywhere, if you sit it out because of that, that’s how you destroy wealth.

Richard Taylor:
[00:16:41 – 00:16:43]
It’s really simple. It’s just not easy sitting out the.

James Boyle:
[00:16:43 – 00:16:57]
Best trading days that’s another stat. Maybe next episode, next month, we’ll talk through that because it’s pretty staggering. Like we said, if you make the wrong decision and you do panic or you sell or you don’t invest, it’s really hard to make up for that. Those lost gains.

Richard Taylor:
[00:16:58 – 00:17:12]
Just always bear in mind that famous Wall street saying, bears sound smart. The bulls will make you money. So whenever you’re picking up a paper, whenever you’re turning on the tv, whenever you’re listening to some podcast, I’ve fallen into this anarcho capitalism. Have you heard of it?

James Boyle:
[00:17:13 – 00:17:15]
No. It sounds like. Oh my God, it sounds like a dish or something.

Richard Taylor:
[00:17:15 – 00:17:30]
Yeah, it’s just these libertarian nonsense, this media that you’re consuming, that’s all. Bears sound smart, but the bulls will make you money because three out of four years, it goes up. But it’s the bad news. It’s the fear mongering. That’s what sells.

Richard Taylor:
[00:17:30 – 00:17:34]
That’s what get eyeballs. That’s what gets ears. So just bear that in mind.

James Boyle:
[00:17:34 – 00:17:35]
The attention economy.

Richard Taylor:
[00:17:35 – 00:17:44]
The attention economy, exactly. Alrighty. So should we put a bow on that? I wonder what may has got in store for us? We shall see.

Richard Taylor:
[00:17:44 – 00:17:50]
But the message will remain the same. The ultimate message. You know, the philosophy that underpins it all will remain the same.

James Boyle:
[00:17:50 – 00:17:56]
Yeah, it would be good for us to beat that drum, right? We’re not reacting. That’s the whole point of what we’re doing here.

Richard Taylor:
[00:17:56 – 00:18:23]
So, technical corner, as I mentioned before, on our website, we have this thing called the technical series. Twelve topics, mostly one blog per topic, but sometimes there’s two or three. Each of these topics is relevant for Brits in America, helping them thrive here when they’re here or when they leave. So April’s topic is non us investments. So let’s talk very briefly about non us investments for Brits in America.

Richard Taylor:
[00:18:24 – 00:18:36]
Now, these are commonly referred to as. Well, no, that’s not fair. Most of them are pifs. So if you ever hear someone talking about PFIX, this is what we’re talking about. PFIX stands for passive foreign investment companies.

Richard Taylor:
[00:18:36 – 00:19:04]
Let me set the scene here a little bit. And the reason this is important is most of the people we speak to, we know, we come into contact with moved here mid career. If you moved here mid career, you’ve had a few years working in the UK, you’ve built up assets, pensions, isas, investment accounts, other stuff, right? You’ve built that and then you move to America. And most of the time, unfortunately, these people don’t seek pre immigration advice and they just move America with this stuff, right?

Richard Taylor:
[00:19:04 – 00:19:17]
Thinking, I’ll deal with it in the future. This is another topic because people take years to deal with it and there’s an opportunity cost there. But they’ve not taken any advice pre to leaving. So they just have this stuff there, right? They have the isas, they have the pensions, they have their investment accounts.

Richard Taylor:
[00:19:17 – 00:19:34]
Most of the time these are invested in funds, ETF’s, mutual funds. Super common, super normal, super benign. For the most part, investment funds, ETF’s, it’s just normal. You have a nicer in the UK, you invest in funds. Easy peasy, right.

Richard Taylor:
[00:19:34 – 00:19:55]
The problem is, once you become a us person, the US looks at these non us investments differently. So the US. My interpretation, my take on this, is that US wants to discourage people from investing in non us mutual funds. If it’s not in the US. The US authorities have got less control over it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:19:55 – 00:20:08]
There’s more likely to be seepage. They’re going to get less tax, they don’t like the way the dividends are distributed or not. They don’t have any oversight. They’re not getting 1099 when they’re sales, all this stuff. They’ve got less oversight, they’ve got less control.

Richard Taylor:
[00:20:08 – 00:20:32]
They’re going to get less tax. Therefore, as a result of factor, which is something for us to talk about another time, they’ve developed this regime that refers to them as PIFs, passive foreign investment companies, PIfs. Long story short, if it’s a PIF, there’s additional reporting requirements which are time intensive and therefore cost money to have someone to do them for you. And a punitive tax regime is applied to it.

James Boyle:
[00:20:32 – 00:20:37]
And punitive is, we mean that it’s not friendly to investors.

Richard Taylor:
[00:20:38 – 00:20:38]
It’s really ugly.

James Boyle:
[00:20:39 – 00:20:39]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
[00:20:39 – 00:20:56]
There’s more details to this, but you should think of it as the top rate of income tax. So currently 37%. Historically, 39.6%. Plus you got state tax issues, plus interest. When we come across someone with PFIX as a back of an envelope brits, listen to this.

Richard Taylor:
[00:20:56 – 00:21:10]
I can say back of a fag packet, back of a fag packet calculation. I will just assume 50% taxation on gains if you’ve held them for a long time. I once came across someone who would have held them since the eighties. It can be much, much more than that. Much more.

Richard Taylor:
[00:21:10 – 00:21:28]
60, 70, 80% plus because of this interest issue. And James, if people got pifs, no one’s doing the reporting unless you’re working with a UK US cross border tax adviser, which most people aren’t. You got PFIX, you’re not doing the reporting. You’re not doing the reporting. So it means, one, you’ve got this massive growing tax liability.

Richard Taylor:
[00:21:28 – 00:21:39]
Two, you’re not in tax compliance. That’s a problem that carries issues. Right. And three, because you’re not in tax compliance, you’re not submitting these forms. Statute limitations on your return potentially is never closing.

Richard Taylor:
[00:21:40 – 00:21:42]
It’s just you’re layering issues on top of issues.

James Boyle:
[00:21:42 – 00:21:44]
But other than that, they’re great.

Richard Taylor:
[00:21:44 – 00:22:05]
Yeah. Right. The message here is if you come to the US from abroad, we’re talking to brits, you come to the US from Britain, and you’ve got these legacy accounts that are investing in funds. Probably not such a big deal if it’s in a pension, if you’re holding mutual funds, ETF’s otherwise. And critically, this includes in an ISA.

James Boyle:
[00:22:05 – 00:22:06]
That comes up a lot.

Richard Taylor:
[00:22:07 – 00:22:11]
Right. This is the one we see on an almost weekly basis.

James Boyle:
[00:22:11 – 00:22:13]
And it’s understandable.

Richard Taylor:
[00:22:13 – 00:22:14]
Oh, it’s totally understandable.

James Boyle:
[00:22:14 – 00:22:14]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
[00:22:14 – 00:22:27]
I don’t want anyone to think I’m endorsing this regime. I’ve learned a lot in the ten years I’ve been doing this. Kind of horrified still at the complexities and difficulties and the penalties and how much it sucks, quite honestly.

James Boyle:
[00:22:27 – 00:22:43]
We’ve even, in the case of ISIS in particular, we’ve had conversations. I’ve had conversations with people who are aware of P fix in general. You know, understand that to avoid them, but think mistakenly, unfortunately, that their ISA is protecting them. That vehicle.

Richard Taylor:
[00:22:43 – 00:22:43]
Yeah.

James Boyle:
[00:22:43 – 00:22:49]
Is protecting them from Pfic treatment. And our understanding is that it’s not the case. You know, without.

Richard Taylor:
[00:22:49 – 00:22:50]
Just not the case.

James Boyle:
[00:22:50 – 00:22:51]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
[00:22:51 – 00:23:06]
Like this. This is the situation. You’re in the UK, you have an ISA and it’s invested and that money is gonna grow tax free in the UK and you’re gonna take it out tax free in the future. Happy days. You move to America, you don’t know anything about it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:23:06 – 00:23:21]
You don’t know about this. I mean, that ISA goes from being a tax free simple account to an account now that has. Causes you to be in non compliance with the US and that’s consequences. And it’s gone from being tax free to massively taxable.

James Boyle:
[00:23:21 – 00:23:23]
Pendulum swings way the other way.

Richard Taylor:
[00:23:23 – 00:23:24]
Way the other way.

James Boyle:
[00:23:24 – 00:23:26]
Yeah. Just from getting under the purview of.

Richard Taylor:
[00:23:26 – 00:23:41]
Yeah. So if you have an ISA and you are investing in funds, there are some exceptions, right? Foreign collectives, there’s certain elections they can make, they exist. But I promise you, you’re not in one of these funds. It’s okay if you’re in an ISA.

Richard Taylor:
[00:23:41 – 00:23:55]
If you’re in what we call a brokerage account in the US or a GIA in the UK and you have these funds or you hold them directly, you got a PFIC. More than likely it’s a problem. Here’s the other piece of advice before we sign off on this. Deal with it. Don’t bury your head in the sand.

Richard Taylor:
[00:23:55 – 00:24:04]
It is fixable. Well, it’s going to be painful. If you got a heat fake and there’s gains, it’s going to be painful. Yeah, but it’s fixable. And you know what’s worse?

Richard Taylor:
[00:24:04 – 00:24:20]
Doing nothing about it and leaving it for ten years. It just gets worse and worse and worse and worse because of this interest issue. Or what’s even worse than that is panicking and just selling it and trying to move on and declaring them as something else, because then you’ve potentially committed tax fraud and that’s way, way worse.

James Boyle:
[00:24:20 – 00:24:33]
And the stress of having that hang over you, right. Knowing that this hasn’t been addressed properly and at any point, not to, you know, fear monger, but you don’t want that hanging over you, the threat of an audit or something like that.

Richard Taylor:
[00:24:33 – 00:24:54]
And just know this has happened to nearly every expat. I promise you, if. Unless you came over here at 21, straight after school, you know, fine, maybe it hasn’t happened to you. But anyone who came here in the late twenties and beyond who worked in the UK, yeah, pretty much everyone has come over here with a pep now. And Isaac, we still come across things like endowments.

Richard Taylor:
[00:24:55 – 00:24:59]
You’re not alone. It’s incredibly common. Just deal with it. We can help you.

James Boyle:
[00:24:59 – 00:25:13]
We should say, too, we have listeners in the UK who are planning potentially to come to the US. Absolutely. Get advice, make sure you have the right team in place prior to that move. Because if you can avoid these things from the jump, that makes a huge difference.

Richard Taylor:
[00:25:13 – 00:25:15]
Absolutely. Yeah.

James Boyle:
[00:25:15 – 00:25:33]
We should say, I mean, you mentioned at the top, but if any of that sounds like it might apply to you, go on the website planfirstwealth.com dot. Under the resources tab, we have a whole technical series of which one of the topics is this non us investments. Well worth taking a look at the articles. We have videos, resources available.

Richard Taylor:
[00:25:33 – 00:25:55]
Yeah, check it out, folks. All right, so our last one is open mic. So this one, I’m gonna take this 1. April was a big month for me. I turned 40, which is, you know, every time you have these big birthdays on the decade, it’s just a cause for a bit of reflection, and as part of my 40th birthday, we went to Mexico.

Richard Taylor:
[00:25:56 – 00:26:14]
And when we were in Mexico, I went scuba diving for the first time in a long, long time. And as part of this, you have to give your certification. You have to prove to them you’re a certified diver. I had to do a refresher course, but before that, I had to give them. I had to dig out my certifications, show them that I was a certified diver, and I.

Richard Taylor:
[00:26:15 – 00:26:27]
Luckily, I saved into Dropbox. I went and had a look, and I got this paddy card in October 2000, 617 and a half years ago. So I just turned 40.

James Boyle:
[00:26:27 – 00:26:29]
Do they expire ever?

Richard Taylor:
[00:26:29 – 00:26:39]
Well, no, but you can’t just get back in the water after you had to do a refresher course. But it was super easy. It’s like riding a bike. I got back in the pool, literally, the pool, the hotel, doing the refresher course. I was a bit nervous.

Richard Taylor:
[00:26:40 – 00:26:53]
I’ve not been diving in over a decade, and even then, I’d only done two dives in a day. I hadn’t properly dived for 17 years. And I am a bit nervous, honestly. And I’ve got all the gear on, and I go under water. I’m in, like, three foot of water, maybe not even that.

Richard Taylor:
[00:26:53 – 00:27:04]
Okay. But as I go underwater, I’ve got the mask on, I’ve got the breathing apparatus on. My reptilian brain kicked in and was like, what are you doing? You’re not. Humans aren’t meant to be underwater.

Richard Taylor:
[00:27:05 – 00:27:09]
Stop it. But after that, momentary panic is the.

James Boyle:
[00:27:09 – 00:27:15]
Refresher do you run through? So I was certified in 2017, and I would. I would not be able to get.

Richard Taylor:
[00:27:15 – 00:27:16]
Oh, you. But you would.

James Boyle:
[00:27:16 – 00:27:16]
I would have to.

Richard Taylor:
[00:27:16 – 00:27:18]
You would. I promise you. Within.

James Boyle:
[00:27:18 – 00:27:24]
Did they make you do the thing where you grab, like, you know, you take the mask off and you grab the rebreather?

Richard Taylor:
[00:27:24 – 00:27:33]
Didn’t take the mask off. I had to take the regulator off. Yeah, but within 30 seconds, I was like, oh, I know this. It came right back. And then the next day, I did two dives.

Richard Taylor:
[00:27:33 – 00:27:43]
It was amazing how quick it came, but just for that 30 seconds, maybe not even 30 seconds, but it was just sheer panic’s probably overdoing it a little bit, but it was just like, wait. Humans are meant to be above ground.

James Boyle:
[00:27:43 – 00:27:55]
At the risk of tying into the finance chat too much, it’s that baseline psychological response to something that feels uncomfortable in the moment, but you can override it and have good results after.

Richard Taylor:
[00:27:55 – 00:27:58]
It’s exactly what it is. Well done. Well done. Point that back.

James Boyle:
[00:27:58 – 00:27:59]
But we didn’t even practice that.

Richard Taylor:
[00:27:59 – 00:28:20]
No, but I was already in a reflective state of mind because I remember my 30th birthday. My wife and I took a trip up to the Ritz Carlton, a newly opened hotel in Ras Al Khaima. We’re living in Dubai. We took a road trip up to another emirate, Ras Al Khaima, to this newly opened fancy hotel. On our way there, I’ll never forget it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:28:20 – 00:28:33]
Six lane highway. And we witnessed someone driving with their feet. This person was driving with their feet. This road was quite empty. Once you get past Dubai in Sharjah, the next emirate.

Richard Taylor:
[00:28:33 – 00:28:56]
But it’s massive and there’s big tankers on there and you’re basically in the desert. This person was driving with their feet whilst playing a game on their phone, and they had no idea we were alongside them trying to get their attention. And he is undertaking and overtaking using his feet. So it’s one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. We’re talking for miles.

Richard Taylor:
[00:28:57 – 00:28:59]
You just don’t see that in most places anyway.

James Boyle:
[00:28:59 – 00:29:07]
And this is. I’m thinking all these jokes about self driving cars are coming through, but this is before we would have even had, like, lane assist and all that.

Richard Taylor:
[00:29:07 – 00:29:14]
Oh, God, no. We’re talking like a basic car. Like a really, you know, truly basic. There’s none of that technology whatsoever.

James Boyle:
[00:29:15 – 00:29:16]
His lane assist was like his kneecaps.

Richard Taylor:
[00:29:17 – 00:29:37]
Maybe this is a person who was put on cruise control, is driving with their feet whilst playing a game on their phone, and is undertaking an overtaking with their feet. I truly. I’ll never forget that. Sigh anyway, there’s a. I remember vividly, I was in this birthday, had no idea that ten years later we’re gonna be American citizens with American kids.

Richard Taylor:
[00:29:38 – 00:29:53]
So much has happened and it’s kind of exciting at 40 to think, where am I gonna be at 50 now? It’s not gonna be the same. I’ve got roots here, I’ve got business, I’ve got kids. It’s not gonna be quite so seismic, the shift, but it’s not gonna be what I expect. And we’re planners, right?

Richard Taylor:
[00:29:53 – 00:30:21]
We believe deeply in planning, but you kind of have to also learn to go with the flow. So that was the first part. I’m already in a reflective state of mind and I’m realizing that we’ve got no idea. I had no idea at 40, at 30, that I’d be living in Greenwich, having lived in San Fran, New York, along the way and all the stuff that’s happened then I’m looking at my scuba card. And when I did this qualification, I envisaged, like, diving every year, going around the world, having all the adventures.

Richard Taylor:
[00:30:21 – 00:30:39]
And in the 17 and a half years since then, I had dived twice. Ten years ago, and also in the last ten years, I didn’t know. I used to, like, do all sorts of stuff. I used to be master into my golf, I played tennis. I would go scuba diving, did loads of traveling, love skiing.

Richard Taylor:
[00:30:39 – 00:30:57]
In the last ten years, I’ve done hardly anything. It’s been all about work and family, and that’s great. But then I was looking at this scuba card thinking, wait, I’m 14. Another 17 and a half years, I’m gonna be touching 60. Like, I don’t want to be touching 60, thinking, I’ve dived once in ten years.

Richard Taylor:
[00:30:57 – 00:31:08]
It’s been a real rude awakening for me because we’re financial planners. We preach life. This is not a dress rehearsal. Precious time is slipping away. We get one shot at this.

Richard Taylor:
[00:31:08 – 00:31:29]
We get one chance, and work is important. And all this stuff and financial security, you know, all this stuff is really important, but so is doing the things that fulfill you. And I haven’t done a lot of those in recent years. And part of that is because I’ve got a young family that’s super labor intensive. But looking at that scuba card, I realized I need to find a way.

James Boyle:
[00:31:29 – 00:31:51]
Part of it’s a season, right? We’ve talked about this, too. It’s different. Seasons of your life and demands are placed upon you that you couldn’t have predicted or known what it would have looked like. But making time and being mindful about the activities you pursue and how you’re spending your time is an enormous part of what we do, certainly in helping clients see what’s important to them.

Richard Taylor:
[00:31:51 – 00:31:55]
We’ve talked about this. Nothing prepares you for kids. Life.

James Boyle:
[00:31:55 – 00:31:59]
Just. Life just changes completely for any listeners. I can’t relate here just yet.

Richard Taylor:
[00:31:59 – 00:32:11]
No, he puts on a good act. He’s very empathetic and understanding, but inwardly he’s thinking, oh, my God, everyone has kids. How hard could it be? Because that’s what we all do until we have kids. And then you realize, yeah, I can’t.

James Boyle:
[00:32:11 – 00:32:15]
Pretend to even have an iota of understanding of what it’s like.

Richard Taylor:
[00:32:15 – 00:32:32]
That’s the season I’m in of my life. But also, if I’m not proactive about this, if I’m not on top of it, another five years will slip by, another ten years will slip by, and I’ll be 50 thinking oh, yeah. But, you know, now in my fifties, I’ll go diving. I’ll do it, and I won’t. We’ve got to be deliberate about our lives.

Richard Taylor:
[00:32:33 – 00:32:53]
Planning is absolutely integral to this, and if you don’t, you’ll just end up working. Even if you love your job, every year that goes by, it gets more and more imperative that you don’t let this happen. At 22, when I got this certification, I wasn’t thinking about this. At 30, it was on my radar. At 40, I’m anxious about it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:32:53 – 00:33:06]
At 50, you know, I know it’s getting more and more imperative that you take control of this, that you don’t just let your life slip through your fingers through inertia or apathy.

James Boyle:
[00:33:06 – 00:33:21]
Inertia. That was the exact word I was going to say. It’s something we deal with day in and day out. It’s just so pervasive and having the tools and wherewithal and knowledge and awareness of it to try to fight it, because it is. You go to your default state.

James Boyle:
[00:33:22 – 00:33:41]
We all do. And then two years go by, five years go by, seven years go by, and you haven’t done what you thought. We use another term. You’ve watched our webinars leaving life on the table. It’s that idea of have you position yourself to take advantage of everything you can and want to do in the next 510, 15 years.

Richard Taylor:
[00:33:41 – 00:33:54]
The incredible Paul Armson, who I got to credit those, I said for life is not a dress rehearsal. Precious time is slipping away. That comes from him. He has this fantastic analogy, and it might not work for you because you’re American, so you don’t do two week holidays. But he talks about your life.

Richard Taylor:
[00:33:54 – 00:34:03]
Think about your life as a two week holiday, right? First day you land at the resort, you’re like, oh, this is great. I’ve got two whole weeks. That’s a Saturday. On the Monday, you’re like, oh, my God, I’ve been here two days.

Richard Taylor:
[00:34:03 – 00:34:13]
I’ve got so much time left. A couple of more days, you’re like, oh, this is just wonderful. We’ve still got, like, eight days left. A week in, you can’t believe it. You’ve been here a week, got a week left.

Richard Taylor:
[00:34:13 – 00:34:29]
Fantastic. You know, you’re gonna be so relaxed. Then, boom, that second week just flies by, and before you know it, you’re at the airport, and I have been on a two week holiday, and it is exactly like that. He said, I’m re reading his book right now. He says, if you’re at 40 or 45, you’re in that second week and I’m.

Richard Taylor:
[00:34:29 – 00:34:45]
I’ve just turned 40. I’ve just hit. I’ve just started my second week. All of our clients, all of them are well into that second week, and it’s our job to help them make the most of it, not leave life on the table.

James Boyle:
[00:34:45 – 00:34:46]
Yep.

Richard Taylor:
[00:34:46 – 00:34:55]
This last month, these milestones for me have really hammered home this message to me personally. So expect me to be coming at you with increased zeal. Clients.

James Boyle:
[00:34:56 – 00:35:01]
Did you have this existential crisis early in the Mexico trip or late?

Richard Taylor:
[00:35:01 – 00:35:15]
It wasn’t so much an existential crisis. I don’t know what it was. It definitely left me thoughtful. 17 and a half years since I got my scuba and I’ve done nothing with it. So I want that to change.

Richard Taylor:
[00:35:15 – 00:35:20]
It’s gonna change. Also made me very excited, though, for when my kids get a bit older and we can start doing all this stuff with them. That’s very exciting.

James Boyle:
[00:35:20 – 00:35:31]
Yeah. In a way, it’s affirming, right. Because you think about all the adventures yet to come that you wouldn’t be able to predict that 40, and looking back at 50, you’ll think, wow, we got to do all of this that I hadn’t thought of.

Richard Taylor:
[00:35:31 – 00:35:36]
Yeah. All right. That’s all I wanted to say. I just wanted to share my musings with people.

James Boyle:
[00:35:37 – 00:35:57]
You opened the episode saying that, you know, we want people to see a peek behind the curtain and get to know us and what we do and what we’re thinking about and talking about. So I think all that’s important. I wonder if that guy, do you think that guy who was driving with his feet was at a resort outside of Dubai at like 50 and thinking, wow, ten years ago I was driving with my feet?

Richard Taylor:
[00:35:59 – 00:36:00]
Dubai is a funny place.

James Boyle:
[00:36:02 – 00:36:03]
That’s pretty impressive.

Richard Taylor:
[00:36:03 – 00:36:13]
It is, isn’t it? It is, yeah. Incredibly dangerous and stupid, but also quite impressive. Shall we wrap this up with Hick and Mix? So this is borrowed from our friends at the compound.

Richard Taylor:
[00:36:13 – 00:36:22]
When I say friends, they have no idea who we are. We just listen to them every week. So I’m going to call them friends. They do this favorites at the end of each episode where they just talk about what they’re listening to. Watching, consuming.

Richard Taylor:
[00:36:22 – 00:36:30]
It’s quite an interesting little. I’ve read and watched programs as a result. The best one I’ve watched is last of us. Have you seen last of us?

James Boyle:
[00:36:30 – 00:36:31]
Well, I have really enjoyed it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:36:31 – 00:36:32]
God is so good.

James Boyle:
[00:36:32 – 00:36:39]
Yeah, HBO, I mean, we have these conversations. They really knock it out of the park consistently too.

Richard Taylor:
[00:36:39 – 00:36:46]
Right. So do you know what mine was? I’m gonna do two, actually. I’m gonna be completely honest. My wife and I are rewatching, we think for the fifth time.

Richard Taylor:
[00:36:46 – 00:36:50]
It might be the fourth time we were rewatching the Sopranos because it’s his 25th year anniversary.

James Boyle:
[00:36:50 – 00:36:50]
So good.

Richard Taylor:
[00:36:51 – 00:36:55]
It’s so good. Still. It’s still. So.

James Boyle:
[00:36:55 – 00:37:03]
That was a. That was a COVID watch. In my household. We had seen bits and pieces, but. So we watched a few years ago and it’s just unbelievable.

Richard Taylor:
[00:37:03 – 00:37:23]
And I just want to encourage anyone who hasn’t seen it, go back and watch it. You will not regret it. But I also want to say anyone who has seen it, if you’ve only seen it once, and especially if that was a long, long time ago, go back and watch it again. Because I’m saying this from a position of just being inundated with incredible tv. The options are available to us.

Richard Taylor:
[00:37:24 – 00:37:37]
And yet the soprano is still singular in how incredibly good it is. One of the episodes introduced me to a song. It was the kinks, right? Oh, it was living on a thin line.

James Boyle:
[00:37:37 – 00:37:37]
That’s it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:37:37 – 00:37:39]
Living on it. I didn’t know this song.

James Boyle:
[00:37:39 – 00:37:41]
What episode? Do you remember the episode?

Richard Taylor:
[00:37:41 – 00:37:43]
No, I don’t.

James Boyle:
[00:37:43 – 00:37:47]
It had an incredible soundtrack. I mean, like the needle drops of songs that would kick in.

Richard Taylor:
[00:37:47 – 00:37:53]
Yeah. But I saw. I found a new song from it. I’m gonna add one more to this, though. Bluey, you’ve got this to come.

James Boyle:
[00:37:53 – 00:37:55]
I’ve been hearing a lot about this lately.

Richard Taylor:
[00:37:56 – 00:38:16]
I found out it was the second most watched show on Disney in the US last year. And it’s just wonderful. I’m so glad that I get to watch it on repeat basically with my kids because it’s just so good. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve got a bit sweaty eyed. There’s one episode on the new series about cricket.

Richard Taylor:
[00:38:16 – 00:38:26]
It’s not about cricket, obviously. It’s about much more than cricket. I don’t even like cricket, which is kind of sacrilegious to say as a Brit, but there you go. But it’s just fantastic. It’s just fantastic tv.

Richard Taylor:
[00:38:27 – 00:38:31]
It’s fantastic for an adult, let alone kids. So the Sopranos and Bluey.

James Boyle:
[00:38:31 – 00:38:39]
Probably the first time that the Sopranos and Bluey have been recommended in one go. You’ve really covered all your faces.

Richard Taylor:
[00:38:39 – 00:38:40]
What have you got for us?

James Boyle:
[00:38:40 – 00:38:56]
Well, you know, it’s funny not to bring it back, but I think on topic for what we chatted about today. So I’m a big reader. I read one earlier in the year called 4000 weeks by Oliver Berkman. Incredible book. Very much in line with what we were talking about.

James Boyle:
[00:38:56 – 00:39:26]
So 4000 weeks, roughly is average life expectancy. And he kind of walks through not putting things off just because you think, well, I’ll get to them eventually. And that sounds kind of like it’s, you know, that he’s like prescribing how to live. But it’s more, much more about don’t let fear or uncertainty or hesitation get in the way of things that when you really put your mind to it and what’s meaningful to you, make sure you’re organizing your life in a way that lets you do those things. So that’s.

James Boyle:
[00:39:26 – 00:39:35]
That’s one that just today’s chat made me think of it. Oliver Berkman, 4000 weeks. Completely unrelated. I read memoirs too. A lot.

James Boyle:
[00:39:35 – 00:39:52]
I find that I go into a phase where I start reading memoirs. I read now this person’s music, I have to say, I’m not overly familiar with. I’m not even really a fan. I would know their hits. It’s a book called the Storyteller by Dave Grohl.

Richard Taylor:
[00:39:52 – 00:39:53]
Oh, okay.

James Boyle:
[00:39:53 – 00:39:55]
Yeah, I mean, he’s got it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:39:55 – 00:40:04]
No, but again, I’m not a huge fan, Foo Fighters fan, but their hits are great. And his story, Nirvana to the Foo.

James Boyle:
[00:40:04 – 00:40:18]
Fighters, I mean, his story is unbelievable. And he. The book is written and I’ve heard that if you’re in audio books, I’ve heard that he narrates and it’s supposed to be really good. So it’s very down to earth. It’s like he’s chatting with you.

James Boyle:
[00:40:18 – 00:40:37]
And he goes through his whole career from, you know, the eighties, starting out in the punk scene. And I think he grew up in outside of Virginia and then moved to Chicago, got involved with a metal punk band there. Became the drummer for Nirvana, kind of by coincidence, and then went on to found.

Richard Taylor:
[00:40:37 – 00:40:40]
Really? So he wasn’t like childhood friends with Kurt Cobain up in Seattle?

James Boyle:
[00:40:40 – 00:41:00]
No, no, he grew up like outside of DC, I want to say. But in sort of a, you know, nowheresville suburb, USA. Single mother. The father had left them, I think, you know, didn’t have much in the way of means. Started drumming by setting up pillows.

James Boyle:
[00:41:00 – 00:41:26]
So he tells these stories about he’d be a kid in his bedroom and he’d set up like different cushions that he had and he’d be wailing away at them, put the record on and try to match the. I’m no drummer, but it’s just unbelievable what he went through. And the perseverance he had. I mean, he tells a good story about this is after Foo Fighters had, which, to be honest, I didn’t know. They’re like, enormous, worldwide, huge, huge rock and roll band.

James Boyle:
[00:41:26 – 00:41:47]
They’re playing some stadium concert to, like, 70,000 people in Sweden or something. And he fell off the stage, you know. Cause he’s one of these that’s running back and forth, and he’s jamming out everything. Falls off the stage, tries to put weight on it, immediately knows that his leg is shattered, broken. They get him set up.

James Boyle:
[00:41:47 – 00:42:00]
He says, I’m not stopping the show. They splint his leg. They set him up in the center of the stage on, like, a makeshift wheelchair, essentially. And he plays the rest of the show with a. I think it was a cup of, you know, crown royal whiskey or something like that.

James Boyle:
[00:42:00 – 00:42:15]
And he gets through the show, and it’s just a crazy story. But, yeah, if you’ve ever. If you’re into nonfiction, if you’re into memoirs, you don’t have to be a fan of Dave Grohl or the music. I thought it was a fantastic read. Really good.

Richard Taylor:
[00:42:15 – 00:42:19]
Does he. Does he talk about Kurt Cobain and what happened?

James Boyle:
[00:42:19 – 00:42:37]
He does. So then it’s funny because I don’t honestly know much about it other than, you know, the basics, everything that Nirvana went through and Kurt struggled with. But I would say he does, like, a cursory. That’s not the focus of the book. And it’s all through his perspective of joining the band, what it was like.

James Boyle:
[00:42:37 – 00:42:53]
I mean, he joined right on the cusp of them exploding. So, like, I think it was smells like teen spirit came out that fall, and they were just starting to pick up steam in, like, the indie circuit, but, yeah, really good.

Richard Taylor:
[00:42:53 – 00:43:17]
So just talking about Nirvana, anyone you after this should go on YouTube. It’s on Spotify as well. But not long before he died, they did unplugged in New York on MTV, which used to be this great. Yeah, you’re really great. So Nirvana did this MTV unplugged in New York, and he finished with, where did you sleep last night?

Richard Taylor:
[00:43:17 – 00:43:35]
And every time I listen to it, and every time you watch it, I just get chills. Yeah, it’s one of those songs and performances. Just every time talking about it, I got goosebumps knowing what happened afterwards, knowing that, obviously struggling and just listening to him sing. You should listen to it. You should watch it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:43:35 – 00:43:41]
And it’s just a powerful, powerful song and performance, especially in, like, what happened.

James Boyle:
[00:43:41 – 00:44:00]
MTV unplugged. There’s a lot of artists that have done that, that are really good performers. Kurt Cobain, obviously, in particular. It’s one of those things, you know, when you’re looking at the dates of Nirvana and when they blew up, he was like, 23 years old. It’s just staggering what they accomplished and so incredibly young.

Richard Taylor:
[00:44:00 – 00:44:03]
Yeah. Right. Should we leave it there, then?

James Boyle:
[00:44:05 – 00:44:08]
So that’s the first half. Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
[00:44:08 – 00:44:28]
This is a work in progress. We’ve got this loose framework that we’re going to cover, but people, if there’s anything clients or anyone wants us to talk about, wants us to cover, tell us if you have my email. Email me or James. If you’re part of our Facebook community, wealth hub, us UK, let us know in there. There’s many ways you can reach us.

Richard Taylor:
[00:44:28 – 00:44:45]
Honestly. If you have something you want us to talk about, you have something you want us to cover, be it technical, be it economic, be it personal to a certain extent. Right. Something about the workings of the business plan first, wealth, whatever, let us know and we’ll try and incorporate it. As I mentioned before, we want this to be a line of communication.

Richard Taylor:
[00:44:46 – 00:44:50]
We’re trying to torture you directly and have a conversation with you if we can. So feel free.

James Boyle:
[00:44:50 – 00:44:51]
Absolutely.

Richard Taylor:
[00:44:52 – 00:44:56]
Wonder about my friend. Well, one under our belt. We’ll head to the next one.

James Boyle:
[00:44:56 – 00:44:58]
Absolutely. Sounds good.

Richard Taylor:
[00:44:58 – 00:44:58]
All right, cheers.