How To Define Wealth On Your Own Terms With Davinia Tomlinson
💸We all have our own definitions of what it means to be “wealthy”. For you, wealth might be purely financial, but it could also be having time with your friends and family, experiences and trips, or the freedom to live life on your own terms.
💓In this episode of The Wallet, we are joined by Davinia Tomlinson, who discovered that her own definition of wealth extends beyond finances and has since been inspired to follow her own path.
💥Davinia founded RainChq in 2018, to help women take control of their financial futures, build long term sustainable wealth and live with intention.
💬As Davinia explains, we can easily move through life from one goal to another without stopping to think about what we truly want. So in this episode, we discuss how to identify desires that might be outside societal expectations, how we can reclaim our financial power, even in a pandemic, and how our differences in thinking and life experiences can be our biggest asset.💕
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You can listen (38 min) and subscribe here:
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1. what does ‘wealth’ mean to you?
“When you approach certain milestones in your life, you start to think - ‘ok, I’m making everyone else proud, but am I making myself proud?’. You can easily find yourself going through life leap-frogging from goal to goal, milestone to milestone and never take a step back and think ‘are these the goals that I have really set for myself, or are they the goals set by someone else, and have I lost all sense of ownership of these goals and agency for my own life?’”
When you think of wealth, what is it that you first picture?
Money?
Property?
Investments in stocks and shares?
Broader financial position?
If this is the case, do not worry, you are not alone. However, when we allow ourselves to delve deeper, we begin to acknowledge that wealth can mean different things to different people and that the concept of ‘wealth’ extends beyond the purely financial. Indeed, Covid-19 has forced many of us to recalibrate our underlying assumptions where the definition of wealth is concerned; Covid-19 has focused our attention on healthcare and spending time with our families more than ever before, enabling us to realise that ‘true wealth’ comprises more than just financial assets. We realise that true wealth is about being able to enjoy our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, ensuring that we have the time to enjoy the fruits of our labours. It is, therefore, crucial that we ask ourselves how we can maximise our own satisfaction based on what our own personal definitions of wealth are, be it:
The power to turn our goals into a reality
The power to have impact
The power to make decisions that are best for our friends and families
The ability to pursue our own paths, free of guilt
Davinia came to this realisation 3 years ago, when she founded rainchq to help women take charge of their financial futures by pioneering a female-focused solution where financial advisory is concerned. She recalls that, in her early life, she had internalised the ‘golden girl’ ideal as prescribed by society: she attended the right business school, worked at two of the most prestigious financial advisory firms and became obsessed with the linear path of corporate progression. Davinia acknowledges that, looking back, she had simply followed the socially conditioned formula for success and that she was not living to make herself proud. Since having left the corporate world and founding her own business, Davinia has been more active in her choices and is more intentional about what she wants to achieve in life, often thinking about what she would like for her two daughters as a benchmark when settling on her own definition of wealth. Davinia defines her wealth as the ability to live on her own terms and the immense satisfaction gained from enriching the lives of other women.
So, ask yourself, what is your own definition of wealth and what can you do to maximise it?
2. take charge of your financial future
Financial goal-setting is an absolute must for women. This is especially the case given the statistically disadvantaged financial position we find ourselves in vis-à-vis our male peers. According to the ONS, the median gender pay gap in 2019 was 9.6%, but it does not stop here. Women are more likely to sacrifice their career to take care of their family and this can culminate in reduced financial independence: according to Fidelity International, a third of women, compared to 19% of men, admitted they would not be financially stable in the event of a marriage breakdown. Further, despite having a longer lifespan on average, women tend to have less money saved than men in later life: by the age of 65, the average UK woman has around £35,700 in her retirement pot, while men have £142,000. Hence, given this alarming context, it is crucial that women capitalise on financial goal-setting to ensure that they work towards their short, mid and long-term goals in order to become financially secure.
Davinia explains that when thinking about setting a financial goal, you should make sure it is a ‘SMART’ goal, since this will increase the likelihood of arriving at your desired destination. Although there are many interpretations regarding what it means to set a ‘SMART’ goal, in essence, such goals are:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time bound
Set specific goals
Your goal must be clear and well-defined. If your goal is not clear and specific, you will lack sufficient direction from which to channel your efforts or the motivation to achieve it.
When seeking to parametrize a specific goal, some important things to consider are: what it is you would like to accomplish; over what time frame do you want to achieve it in; why it is important to you; what resources or constraints are involved; who else is involved.
Set measurable goals
By including precise amounts and dates in your goals, you can measure your degree of success over time, helping you to remain motivated. For example, if your goal is to simply ‘save for retirement’, how will you know when you have been successful? If, instead, you set the goal to put aside 16% of your salary a year for retirement, it will be easier to track your progress and celebrate when you achieve your goal.
Set attainable goals
It is crucial to make sure that it is possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set an impossible goal, you will only demoralise yourself and erode your confidence in the process. That said, it is important to resist the temptation to set goals that are too easy for fear of non-achievement. By setting realistic yet challenging goals, it is possible to strike a balance.
Set relevant goals
Remember that your goals should be relevant to the direction that you want your life to travel in. Essentially, this is about ensuring that your goal is aligned with your personal objectives and that it also aligns with your other goals, avoiding goal conflict. A relevant goal, therefore is one that:
Feels worthwhile to you
Has been set at the right time
Is applicable to your current social and financial constraints
Does not cause a conflict with your other current goals
Set time-bound goals
Your goals must have a deadline – this way you know when to celebrate your success. When you feel a sense of urgency to work towards a deadline, you increase your determination to achieve.
Davinia urges Vestpoders to step-back and write a list of all the things that we want to achieve, prioritise these goals and then target the top 3 goals to achieve in the next quarter (or over a time frame that suits each Vestpoder). Place each goal alongside the context in which it must be achieved to bring it to life, including: the financial cost, emotional cost and opportunity cost. By evaluating each goal against the associated costs of achievement, you engage in the process of self-interrogation to decipher what really matters to you.
3. turn adversity on its head
The Pandemic has proven to be a challenging time for many of us, a period during which adversity has felt almost a fact of life. However, it is during these trying times that it is perhaps most important to be kind to ourselves, embrace our unique capabilities and exhibit authentic resilience in the face of adversity.
In this episode of The Wallet, Davinia shares her hacks for developing grit, mental fortitude and a prevailing positivity with which to tackle life’s challenges and excel. As a black female entrepreneur, she explains that many would expect her to have encountered significant barriers to career progression and in her later business success. However, Davinia inverts this thinking, arguing that there are also distinct advantages to being ‘different’, stemming from the notion that diverse thinking is paramount to success. Referring to herself as a ‘black unicorn’, Davinia celebrates the fact that her different perspectives have always enriched conversations in the business arena. She argues that it is important to recognise the ‘essence’ of your person and to continue to be exactly who you are because even if you seek to conform, you will still encounter resistance.
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You can listen (38 min) and subscribe here:
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Resources:
You can follow and connect with Ness at:
Website: www.rainchq.com
Instagram: @rainchq