From The Footie To The FTSE With Jill Scott

Holly Mead (00:00.418)

Hello and welcome to Good Money Guide. I’m Holly Mead and today we are joined by Jill Scott, MBE and former Lioness, who’s here to talk to us not about football, maybe a little bit about football, but also about our money and investing habits. Welcome, Jill.

Jill Scott (00:16.394)

Thank you for having me.

Holly Mead (00:18.776)

So, I mean, thank you so much for being here. Is money something you apply your winning football mentality to?

Jill Scott (00:25.774)

You know what, I’ve never been good with money. I feel like it’s probably something that’s in my genetics a little bit. I think even some stories in the past through family, but I always say I wish it’s something that I learned a little bit more about at school. I remember trying to get a mortgage, understanding tax, and it just wouldn’t really go into my brain. And I remember being at university and suddenly you were allowed to get a little bit of debt, like get a car or…

get a phone and I just signed up for all these different things. So yeah, I’ve definitely never been good at managing money, I would say.

Holly Mead (01:04.674)

Have you ever made some major financial clangers along the way?

Jill Scott (01:08.462)

Probably, probably paying £300 a month for like a Clio car about 20 years ago or something for about 10 years. But yeah, I think it was a case of if I could instantly get something, maybe not looking at the long-term problems of that. So yeah, and then I suppose with retirement from football, I retired at the age of 35, which a lot of people retire you a lot later than that. So I definitely wasn’t set up for retirement.

feel quite lucky that I managed to get work and stuff like that. But hopefully by talking about it, I can maybe help that next generation because I think as females, we don’t like to talk about money sometimes. Maybe we think it’s not keeping you humble and stuff like that. So yeah, just kind of trying to like change the outcome of that really.

Holly Mead (02:02.872)

I mean, you struck on the football career there. And I think for sports people, it’s such a strange thing that you earn often a lot of money. I appreciate that in women’s football, we’re not talking a million pounds a week as we are with some of the male. I mean, I wish we were doing it for mine as well. But you have this spike, but for a really short.

Jill Scott (02:19.606)

sure what I…

Holly Mead (02:28.11)

period. Is that a time did you start taking financial advice or start taking a more considered approach to money at that point?

Jill Scott (02:34.604)

and

No, not really. would say my last couple of years, my last few years of playing football, I was earning well, but I think you kind of, I think for me, you just then live to what you’re earning really. So I was never really thinking about putting money away, saving. I probably did save a little bit, but it wasn’t much when I retired. And I remember thinking I was always going to be someone that looked for that next job, work hard, try and make another opportunity.

I definitely didn’t retire in the position of some of my friends that they’d retired. They had houses, they had property, and they’d been really clever with the money. So, yeah, definitely, I definitely could have saved more, but I think it was a case of, I’m earning a little bit of money. Maybe we can take the family on holiday or I can treat the family to something. And I kind of just lived like that. And I always had in the back of my mind that if things didn’t go well,

I’d be fine living to my means then as well because I don’t think I’m a very complicated person. But yeah, definitely didn’t make a plan.

Holly Mead (03:44.078)

It’s interesting you say that about when you did have money thinking about family holidays and things, because I think this is a really interesting thing about women and finances is actually a lot of the time women will run the household budget, but they’re very selfless with their money. it might, if there’s a male in the partnership, he might be the one that does the pensions and the investing and women are, how can I share this with the family? Do you think that’s a pattern you fell into?

Jill Scott (04:12.494)

Yeah, definitely. I know that my personality, I’m a massive people pleaser. Like, I feel guilt if I buy myself something, but if I was buying for someone else. So I like trainers, for example. So I might see a nice pair of trainers and I’m like, Jill, they have a lot of money. So I’ll really think about buying them and I probably won’t buy them in the end. But if I was buying them for a family member or my partner, I wouldn’t think twice about it and I’d just go and buy them. So.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. definitely agree with that. When I say I was kind of living a better lifestyle, it was probably more given rather than suddenly me having all these amazing things. But I think I’ve always been someone that’s living the moment, make memories. But there is a time where you’re like, Jill, you need to make a plan for the future.

Holly Mead (05:01.774)

think finding information about finance, learning this stuff, as you said, we don’t get taught it at school. If you happen to have parents that are into it and communicate that, that’s great. But a lot of us don’t. And then women do seem to fall at that. And as a result, be less financially confident. Where did you start learning about or talking about money? Where did that come into your life?

Jill Scott (05:28.824)

Probably just when I retired really. remember talking to a couple of the lionesses and they’d been speaking to someone about their finances. So I kind of signed up with this company and I remember them being like, yeah, Jill, you’re in a little bit of a mess, but we can solve it. So it probably took a couple of years for them to get us to a position where they’re like, right now we can look at saving and investing and stuff like that. So that was probably the first time at the age of maybe

34, 35 and I think because I’d always gone from when I got paid, I was getting paid off a club and the money was like tax or whatever I got was mine. But then when you kind of become self-employed, that was where I was like, wow, you could get yourself into a lot of trouble here because if I was getting paid, say a thousand pound, like that thousand pound wasn’t mine because I knew I was going to get a tax bill, et cetera, on top of that.

and it was going to be a year later that you would then get them bills. Obviously, I’m telling you what you obviously already know. But for me, it was just like a whole new world. even now I have to think, right, what’s in your bank, Jill? It’s not actually yours. So yeah, it wasn’t until probably the age of 34, 35. And then even now there’s things that it seems really simple, but it just doesn’t go into my brain. And I think it’s because I didn’t learn from a young age.

Holly Mead (06:57.102)

And so you have been to try and counter this. You’ve been doing this seven day challenge, haven’t you? Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

Jill Scott (07:03.542)

Yeah, so I’ve been doing some work with eToro and you know what, I’ve really, really enjoyed it. At first, they asked us to take part in a loud investing challenge, which was seven days. And I remember being like, I’m not very good at learning. I don’t have good concentration. I don’t know much about investing, but it helped us so much because one, there were just 20 minute sessions, which I think is when your brain can concentrate.

Two, I didn’t know anything, but I learned so much and I hope by me kind of going on this challenge, I can show females that you don’t need to know a lot to get started. And then I started being opened up to so many different conversations and I didn’t even know that there was a 574 pound billion gender investment gap. There’s so many more men investing than women. And then you find out when you look back that…

People always tend to tell women what they are. You’re not confident, you’re this, you’re that. And I think maybe going back, I remember a conversation with my grandma and I remember her saying, your granddad used to come home, he’d work, did he give us my allowance for the week? And I’d be like, but why were you getting an allowance off of him? But that’s how it’s always kind of been. So I think the world’s changed now for the better and women have their own money and very career driven.

And it was just so interesting to learn on this course about investing.

Holly Mead (08:31.992)

What was the key tip you picked up with regards to investing?

Jill Scott (08:37.326)

loads, loads of stuff. think one, when I thought saving my money was in my bank account, I was like, well, at least it’s mine, it’s there, it’s not doing anything. But really it’s losing money. So I think that was a big one. I was like, well, I don’t want to be losing money. thought, well, it’s safe. And then I think I was like, it was so interesting because it’s not like people were investing everything they got. It was like, if you have a certain percentage of your savings that…

If you lost it, wouldn’t make that much of a difference. And then I realised that there’s so many analogies with sport. was like, well, I’m used to the highs and lows, winning a game, losing a game. And I’m used to kind of keeping this like patient level and not getting too high with the highs, not getting too low with the lows. And I know in investing, you can have a good day, then a bad day, but you kind of have to be in it for the long run. So there was so many things that excited me about it.

And then just how much e-toro can actually help as well. So I like the fact that we’ve got practice money, so you could try it for a bit, but you weren’t losing anything. And I was thinking, this is like when I played like pre-season matches. Didn’t matter if you lost, but you were learning along the way for when it was that moment to start the sneezing, start your investing journey. So I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m not an expert and…

I felt like I was asking stupid questions along the way, but I realized that no question is stupid and as a group we learned so much from it.

Holly Mead (10:13.358)

Do think you would now continue investing?

Jill Scott (10:16.802)

I’ve actually, I’ve got the app on my phone now and I do check it daily. As I say, I’m definitely not an expert. I’m still getting help and advice, but at E-Toro, they’re so, so helpful. And as I say, this loud investing challenge, people can go on the website and they can participate in it. And it was even times I was football coaching and I was finishing at say 7 p.m. and I was like, right, I’ve got to get to the car and…

log on and I was just sat in the car doing it, writing little notes, but it was so easy to take part in and just learning about yourself as well. was like, what kind of investor are you? Do you like to take risks and stuff like that? So I feel like even though it’s an investing journey, you can do that journey in your own way, which I think is really interesting as well.

Holly Mead (11:07.158)

Are you able to share with us a couple of the investments you chose even in your practice account?

Jill Scott (11:12.846)

Well, what I actually did was there is people who do the investments and then you can choose to copy their journey. So I’ve done a couple of them to begin with. So I’ve just been kind of following what they’ve invested in. So I think one of them invested quite heavily into Nike and I obviously wear a lot of that brand. So it was just kind of things that I would think about like using on a day day basis.

I think as I get more confident, I might try and think about like, what’s going to do well. But there was loads of things. It was like when to buy stock as well. There might be that it’s not doing so well. So it kind of, used an analogy that you’d be close shopping and you find something in the sale. And I was like, that’s a good way of thinking about it. But then you might buy it cheap and then it’ll do well kind of as time goes on. So.

Yeah, as I say, I’m not there yet, but I’m enjoying learning. I really am.

Holly Mead (12:13.484)

Yeah. And so, I mean, we talked earlier about there being this gender gap in investing and women are a lot less likely to do it. What would be your tips for someone who wanted to get started, but perhaps didn’t feel confident enough?

Jill Scott (12:27.468)

I think it’s always about, I love a good quote and I always say, you never get to the top of the staircase without taking that first step and you might not feel confident, but as you climb the stairs, you definitely get more confident. And I think through learning, you gain confidence in any industry. And an interesting study actually showed that women do outperform men when it comes to investing. I know obviously a lot of women’s traits, which I actually don’t think I’ve got, but…

they’re probably a little bit more patient, probably like to read up on things a little bit more, which obviously helps in the investing world. But I think it’s just about believing in yourself and kind of you might feel a little bit scared, but it’s not about asking people to put the whole life savings into investing. It’s just about giving it a go and the fact that your money could be sitting there now and losing. I think people aren’t aware of that one. I wasn’t aware of that at all.

Holly Mead (13:25.132)

Yeah, I think there’s a real, false security. And as you say, that idea of having money in the bank, you think, well, I’m not losing anything, so it must be safe. But it’s that idea of it keeping up with inflation and that’s what stock market can do over cash in the bank. But it’s a real difficult psychological barrier to get past, I think.

Jill Scott (13:46.178)

Yeah, it is because you always think that’s your comfort zone, don’t you? You’re like, that’s mine. Nothing can kind of touch it. But again, going back to sport, we always said nothing great would happen from your comfort zone. Sometimes you have to step outside of it. So yeah, that’s what I’ve done. But you know what, met so many amazing women on this course as well in such a different age range. There was girls in the 20s and then…

There was some women who I know they won’t mind to say, but in the 60s and they probably had had savings off over the years and then they were just getting the confidence to do it. But they were asking so many amazing questions. the pun, but they were so invested like in the Live Investing Challenge. we actually met up after and we had a meal and we got talking and yeah, it was just, it was such a lovely experience and something that I think now I’ll sit down with my friends and

I don’t mind talking about money and I feel like sometimes them conversations are hard to have, but I’ve been saying to my friends like, so if you’ve got savings and stuff, and then I might, if you heard about investing and they’re like, I want to go and do that challenge and learn about it. So I think it’s just the only way we’re going to bridge this gender investment gap is one conversation at a time. And I think if you go for a cup of tea with your friend, a cup of coffee with your friend, maybe just open up the conversation. You don’t have to suddenly.

tell them your life story and your life earnings, but just getting more confident talking about money, because it’s such a massive part of our lives really.

Holly Mead (15:21.198)

Do you think part of it is generational? Like you say, you’ve gone from your granny, got her allowance to you who’s obviously a lot more financially independent, but investing still feels tricky. And I feel like when I speak to women in their early twenties, they feel a lot more empowered about that. And I don’t know if that’s generational or social media or, I mean, it can only be a good thing, I guess.

Jill Scott (15:46.688)

Yeah, I think it’s definitely generational, I really do. And I think in the world now, if you look at like women’s sport, if you look at money, like women are getting more opportunities and rightfully so. That’s what we’ve always said, we need more opportunities. But sometimes with opportunity, just because maybe you get something that a guy’s getting, say, but you haven’t had the same journey. So there’s this massive equity piece that you’re missing. So…

You might have the opportunity to go and invest, for example, but there might be a guy that’s been investing for 20 years, so you don’t know what he knows. So I always say that it’s great to get these opportunities, but it’s okay to ask for help as well, just to try and educate yourself to do the job, you’re being asked to do. And I think again, definitely a generational thing. think sometimes even now I’m like, if I ask for help, it a weakness? Like I’m to be strong, like.

We always used to work on don’t show the opposition like any weakness, but I think the strongest people are the people that can show them emotion, speak about how they’re feeling. And I think that’s definitely a generational thing. They’re so much better at that than I suppose we were.

Holly Mead (16:59.714)

There must be a sportsman’s mentality as well though. You don’t want to, you never give up. So cutting a loss would be very hard. Yeah. Asking for help. Yeah. I think that must come, come with the territory of where you’ve had to get your own mindset over the years.

Jill Scott (17:14.409)

Yeah, I think it definitely does. And we were told years ago, I don’t begrudge people now, but it was like, if you’re unhappy, like don’t show it. So you’d be inside, you’d be pretty much crying, but you’d be walking around with a smile on your face because it was classed as a weakness. But now people will speak if they’re having trouble because there’s so much awareness now about mental health. And I love that, but it’s just so hard sometimes for me to navigate away from

kind of what I’ve been taught for all them years, but it does help in investing because I can kind of keep a steady head, I think, and I can think, okay, this is maybe a bad day, but a good day is just around the corner.

Holly Mead (17:56.974)

Yeah, that is a good shout. I think there’s a lot more information out there to help people as well versus say 20 years ago, it’s a lot more easy to get that. And one thing we always ask people at Good Money Guide is have you got a book or podcast about money that you found particularly interesting? I don’t know if you’ve come across one in this course.

Jill Scott (18:18.254)

Well, just after doing the course, we were just like on a kind of online forum, but I did actually buy a book recently, but you know what? I cannot remember the title of it. But I’m so, this just sums up what I said at the beginning. This is why the loud investing challenge was so good for me because it was 20 minute snippet. And I remember I got this book, read probably the first chapter and I haven’t read anything else. So.

probably good that I don’t promote it because people will think it’s a boring book, but it’s more the fact that I don’t have good concentration. And so, yeah, I think for me, this was just better because it was like 20 minutes at a time. And then I could kind of have a day to reflect and then come back to it. Yeah. It’s important to me though, if you want. Yeah.

Holly Mead (19:05.325)

You

Holly Mead (19:08.598)

loads. mean, I’ve got a shelf full. So what would be the lesson you would take forward from here? am I going to speak to you in 10 years time and you’re going to have like a multi-million pound investment portfolio?

Jill Scott (19:23.04)

I hope so, maybe if we put it out to the universe. One thing I’ve learned is you don’t have to be great to start something. I think that’s definitely what I’ve learned. with each day that I work with Eetoro, I’m definitely building my confidence. I’m never going to be an expert in this, I know that, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t start the investing journey. And yeah, I think that would definitely be the one thing.

If there’s someone out there thinking about it, I would just say go and learn as much as you can. But it’s definitely worth doing because you don’t want your money sitting there. As I say, it’s not doing nothing. It’s actually falling behind. So yeah, that would be my takeaway.

Holly Mead (20:06.734)

Well Jill, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. And thank you for listening at home as well. And if you’re thinking about getting started with investing and want some tips, tricks or ideas of where to go, head to Good Money Guide and we’ve got plenty of that for you and more.

Jill Scott (20:09.838)

Thank Thanks so much.

Jill Scott (20:24.046)

Thank