Iona Bain believes that investing can change the world.

And not just by lining a few savvy investors’ pockets - but by supporting, in cold hard cash, businesses and industries that align with our values. That said, she doesn’t believe investing is for everyone. And for the Millenials among us feeling left behind financially, locked out of the property market, and ashamed at our struggle to save, Iona’s philosophy is a breath of fresh air. The author of Own It! Iona believes that our generation’s money issues require political solutions, not just personal ones. “We cannot pretend that this is a situation that can be resolved by you just eating fewer avocado brunches, that's really insulting”, she says.

In Episode 3 of the AllBright Money Podcast, Iona tells us how the system is stacked against Millennials - and what to do about it. Here are 11 tips we’ve taken to heart...

1. Keep money in your head and not in your heart

It's a journey, you're never going to get to the end point where you're perfect with money. I still make mistakes with money. And I certainly wouldn't hold myself up as being a perfect example of how to handle money. But I make it a priority in my life, and I commit to learning about money. And I don't pretend that it isn't important, or that it can just be put off to another day. I accept and understand the role of money in the world, but I think there's a big difference between that and chasing money. And there's a great quote from the author Jonathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver's Travels. He said, "Keep money in your head and not your heart," and I think that sums up my approach to money.

2. The pandemic has changed things

I think we have seen a real divide in society between those who have been able to keep working, possibly from spacious homes with gardens and lots of resources at their disposal. Those people have really been able to consolidate their finances and improve them. But on the other side there are those, generally speaking, younger people, who have lost work, lost income, been forced into more debt, have had to raid their savings, and so on. And I do think that broadly speaking younger people have been way more damaged by the economic fallout from COVID than older people. And women have been as well, the research is very clear that women have really borne the brunt of a lot of the shifts and disruption that we've seen over the past year, both financially and personally.

3. You need to shift your mindset

It's going to take potentially a very long time to resolve that divide, and to try to bridge that gap between the haves and the have nots. And it was there before COVID came along, let's face it, it's not like we were living in a utopia where we were all on an equal footing. I think we're going to have to have a very deep conversation around how we resolve those gaps after COVID. But I think just to be a bit more positive, I definitely have seen younger people who have been able to keep working and haven't had to raid their savings. They have, I suppose, been forced to adopt a conserving mindset. And so they've shifted away from a spending mindsets or conserving mindset, maybe for the first time, and that's no bad thing.

4. Find a happy medium

Here in the UK, we're starting to reopen our economy. Bars and restaurants are going to be open again in a couple of weeks time, everyone's going to go mad, and it's going to be like the roaring '20s on steroids. Which I totally get, and I'm going to be out there enjoying myself with everyone else, don't get me wrong. But I suppose part of my mission is to help people understand that there can be a happy medium. It's all about balancing today and tomorrow, your short term needs with what's in your long term interest. It doesn't have to be either/or, you don't have to get stuck in a kind of binary mindset.

5. Let go of shame

When it comes to COVID, nobody really foresaw how that would pan out. And very few people predicted that it would result in lockdowns where people's jobs would become unviable, pretty much overnight. I mean nobody could have foreseen that. And therefore it is understandable that a lot of people just did not have that resilience built into their finances.

6. Examine how you feel about success

We're living in a culture that really forces people from a very young age to constantly think about their success and their worth in terms of their salary, and their material possessions, and their status in society. And when we drill that into people from a young age, it's no wonder when they get to their 20s and 30s that many of them are spending so much time at work, and then spending so much of their money outside of work, that once in a while they'll step back and go, "Why am I doing this? Is this making me happy? Is this what I set out to do? Is this fulfilling any of my goals, my spiritual goals, my personal goals, my relationship goals? Or is it just something I've fallen into?"

7. Property isn’t the answer for everyone

Here in the UK, we are obsessed with owning your own home. And I think younger people have got a lot of issues in this area, because the UK housing market is crazy. We have a situation now where your average young professional, who could be earning quite a decent sum, above the average wage in the UK, will really struggle to save enough, and to be approved for a mortgage on their first home in the UK. And that's frankly scandalous. So we need political solutions. We cannot pretend that this is a situation that can be resolved by you just eating fewer avocado brunches, that's really insulting.

8. There’s no shame in renting

Firstly, there's no shame in renting. And especially when you're young and you're finding your feet, you want to make sure that if you buy somewhere, that you're doing it for the right reasons. You're not just doing it because you think it's the cash cow, because you've seen your parents buy a house for 100 quid and it has gone up by 1,000% over the years. That's not why you do it. You do it because it makes sense for your personal situation, for your career, that you're buying somewhere that will be adaptable in the future. That you can afford, frankly, because over-borrowing to buy your first time is very risky, because you could always end up in negative equity. And therefore you've got to be really careful, and if you're going to rent for a period while you figure this stuff out, then by all means go for it. Because there's absolutely no shame in that option.

9. Investing isn’t always the answer

You should only invest if you are going to be in the stock market for at least five years. So if you think that building your deposit is going to take more than five years, you might want to consider investing. But even then, you should only do it if you are comfortable with the idea that you could in theory lose your deposit.

10. Investing is not just for rich people

You can start investing with £50, $50, as little as that every month. So anybody that says to me, "Well you need a huge sum of money to start investing." I say, "No, you can start with about as much as you would spend on a night out, or as much as you would spend on a new dress, or a meal out." It really is as accessible as that. And also now, it's possible to open an account on a trading platform in minutes. So firstly, you don't need a lot of money, and secondly, it isn't going to be a huge hassle. You could open an investing account today, and you could start that habit right away. So that's why it's not just for rich people.

11. Align your money with your values

Here in the UK we've got workplace pensions, those are invested in companies, but actually we can decide whether those companies are oil producers, or if it's going to be invested in the renewable energy revolution. And so we can align our money with our values. If we make those changes, I think that's way, way more powerful and meaningful than just making those little tweaks in our daily life, important as those are.

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