33. Liam Halligan Builds a Truly Rich Life

Listen to this Real Money Stories episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher by clicking the links and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

In this episode I speak to leading economist, broadcaster, writer and author Liam Halligan.

From humble beginnings growing up in an Irish family in North West London, Liam saw his dad work hard to build a construction business during the tough economic times of the late 1970s.

Intellectual curiosity and natural ability led to a life changing scholarship at a leading independent school, which eventually led to studying at Warwick and then Oxford University.  Balancing various casual jobs and a plethora of sporting activities during his student years, Liam thought he was destined to become an academic.

Early economic fact finding missions included walking from the top to the bottom of Sweden, a motorbike trip across Africa and a cycling tour of Washington DC, where he took a research post.

A Subsequent research post in Moscow in the ‘Wild West’ years of the mid 1990s led to a chance opportunity to write an op ed for the Moscow Times, which led to his own economics column in that newspaper. Liam’s reputation as a major economic thinker of the emerging post-Soviet region was sealed. As Liam jokes “A lot of people have made a lot more money than me out of my economic analysis of the Russian economy at that time!”

Despite a short stint in financial services and the potential to ‘make a lot of money’ working for an investment bank, Liam decided to pursue his passion for economics research, thinking and writing, with stints at The Economist, The Financial Times and for over the past decade as economics columnist for The Telegraph.

Working three hours a day fixing up an unmortgageable house before he started work at Channel 4 News, enabled Liam to build the property wealth which underpins his family’s financial security.

Liam likes to live a very simple and relatively low-cost lifestyle, and instead finds real riches in his family, his music and seeking the truth about money, people and the economy.

His one indulgence? A Martin 15 series steel string electro-acoustic guitar. Now that’s living a rich life! A wonderful episode full of the honesty, humility and candour that is Liam's hallmark. 

Check out Liam’s new news and current affairs weekly podcast Planet Normal.

Episode Transcript

Jason Butler 0:08
Hello, and welcome to the Real Money Stories podcast. Real Money Stories is the only UK podcast which shares personal money stories of everyday people. So their insights can help you to be better with money. My name is Jason Butler. And I invite you to join me as I have intimate money conversations with people from all walks of life. Whether you're just starting out on your money, journey, or world on the track, there's bound to be something you can learn from the stories about taking more control of your money, so you worry less and enjoy life more.

Hello, welcome to Real Money Stories this week. I'm Jason Butler, your host and this week, I'm very pleased to be joined by wouldn't like to say one of my icons because I would embarrass him but a very, very, very Very interesting individual who has written countless books, he's done documentaries. He's got a regular column in the telegraph on economics, which I read. He's an economist, a broadcaster, a writer, thinker. And just a generally a leading light when it comes to economics, Mr. Liam Halligan. Hello. Good morning to you.

Liam Halligan 1:20
Hello, Jason.

Jason Butler 1:21
Hi. Thanks for joining us on the show and if you're not blushing already, you know obviously got a man crush on you and all that. let's let's go back because we always do.

I mean, I do know a bit about your story, but obviously a lot of my listeners won't know but let's go right back to the early days of your sort of where you grew up and and your earliest memories of money and kind of the household conversations about money.

Liam Halligan 1:53
So I grew up in an Irish household in northwest London at a time when religions Between the UK and Ireland were very, very bad because of the troubles. We're talking about the 70s. And so the household was quite close for that reason, and our community was quite close. And my dad came over as a child from the west of Ireland and drifted into the building trade like a lot of London Irish, the plumber. And over the years, he managed to start his own company just himself a van and two or three mates. Still doing very basic civil engineering building work mainly for councils rather than private individuals. And I really learned about economics, I learned that economics is really important. Watching my dad run his business from a kitchen table off the back of sort of cigarette packets, basically, during the recession of the 70s In the early 80s, cashflow problems, councils not paying him a sense of always being squeezed by the big contractors pushing down on the subcontractors of which either was be at the end of the chain. At a time when my parents, my mom grew up in a council house and wheels turn green when a 10 kids that managed to buy a pretty ordinary house in a pretty normal London suburb. And that house meant the world to them the fact that they were the first generation in their families, probably ever to own property. The fact that my dad was running his business, the bank had the deeds of the house. The loans for the business were tied to the house. If the business went down, we'd lost the house. So there wasn't poverty by any means. My parents worked really hard to provide for us. My mom always worked. Even though it was the 70s. And many women didn't work. Most women didn't work. She always had a big job in the census. She was a secretary. I've been critical word, she really throw us off into that work. It meant a lot, that she had our own money that she could contribute to the family. That's what she's like. But there was a lot of financial insecurity and a lot of sense that if you're running a business, you really got to look after yourself. You got to get the money in and you're always at the whim of bigger guys, basically, who are trying to squeeze you.

Jason Butler 4:41
So what was your earliest money memory? Can you remember that?

Liam Halligan 4:44
My earliest money memory was making sure that I earned my own money. I was a real worker as a kid I had a job at the famous Wembley market, selling bikes and then selling leather jackets from a very young age. I had paper around the middle ground. I was very, very lucky at the age of 11. I want a scholarship to an independent school, a school that I'm now the governor governor of. But despite working really hard at school, and really seeing education as a liberation as a way out of feeling oppressed, I use that word deliberately as a way of plowing my own Pharaoh, and being taken seriously. In a country where we often felt alien I have to be, be honest, Things are different now, but that's how it was then. For Irish people. Despite really trying hard with my education, I also tried to get money. So I had some independence and could do my own thing and I think my parents really encouraged that and they were proud that I wanted to earn money. And I didn't know back back then kids working class lower middle class kids, they went, they went to work. It was almost, you know, most of my mates had at least a Saturday job and other jobs. Were always trying to get money together. My family by fair means or foul. Yeah. Because you wouldn't dream of asking your your mom or dad for money.

Jason Butler 6:27
Even if they didn't have it did they?

Liam Halligan 6:29
If you want to go out, you need money. You want to buy some new clothes, not basic clothes when it's 10 and 11 and 12. But anything beyond the basic when you're 14 and 15, you had to get that money together yourself. And so I grew up in an environment where if you wanted money, you went out an answer.

Jason Butler 6:48
So that work ethic was instilled in you, you saw from example from the parents, and also there wasn't a there wasn't an option. So you've got that work ethic at a very young age, right?

Liam Halligan 6:58
Yeah, I think that's that's right. But it wasn't as if I was unusual among my peer group. Yeah, not everyone, but most most people. Most people were doing that when I mean, I'm still in touch with lots of friends from that period. Yeah, very so a very different life from almost all of them. But we often talk about how the jobs we did and the last we had making making that money.

Jason Butler 7:25
So your environment and your peers do have a big impact out there. This is something we see all the time and we study human behavior and money. Environment does have a big impact. Yeah. So you managed to get your scholarship, which was clear, did you realize how big a thing that was? Or did you just think, oh, I've just done the exam and just seemed that they liked me? Or did you realize how this that was potentially a big thing in it? And did that have a big impact on how you thought about your future in your world of work and what you might do after leaving school? I mean, what What impact did that have on you that I

Liam Halligan 7:53
had an absolutely massive impact on me. I came out the exam. And I'm not proud of this, but it's true. You can ask her, I came out at the exam and I got on the bus and came home. My mom asked me how I'd done and I told her I got scholarship.

Well, I have you at least

Jason Butler 8:17
you're that confident. So you're always good at scaleway

Liam Halligan 8:20
it wasn't. It wasn't the I mean, I've never taken an exam in my life. And

you know, my primary school was was very special to me. And I'm still in close touch with a couple of my teachers from primary school, believe it or not as 40 years ago.

And it taught me a great deal.

But it wasn't a sort of very academic place by any means. But it was a place where inspirational teachers sparked my imagination, and were very kind to me. And so the papers I sat for the scholarship, I mean, a lot of the maths I've never seen before. The whole environment was alien. May Bob just wrote an essay I wrote a bit of creative writing and I set out that we'll do it that will get them funny. Remember what it was about. I just remember it was a really. I thought it was really worked. And you're right what I want you to

Jason Butler 9:13
hear. Yeah.

Liam Halligan 9:15
I just I just wrote I wrote a story. It was something about I'd been out on a boat in clew Bay, off the west of Ireland as a kid and the with some fishermen with my dad and I wrote, I wrote a creative, I wrote a story using that scenery, which I thought very few kids sitting in that hole will have seen will have been on a small boat, you know, 10 miles out in the sea with a bunch of lunatics, roll ups and drink your whiskey. And so I wrote about that in his really heartfelt way. And I thought that I thought that it would at least make an impression.

Jason Butler 9:55
So clearly did so tell me about as you went through the private school Did you still do all your little Saturday jobs and things around the edge? Or did they run you ragged with with lots of sort of extra curriculum stuff? How did it evolve? How did you sort of relationship with earning and spending develop over those?

Liam Halligan 10:12
I had to kind of double life because I was I was

getting on a bike every morning in cycling sort of six miles to the school, a lot of main roads around Norfolk Park round about

doing that 1011 year old do that now.

And I was hanging out with kids who were carrying briefcases to school and whose parents were doctors and solicitors. And yet in the evening, I was roaming the streets with with my mates that I grew up with and still doing paper rounds and working at markets and all the rest of it. So I felt I had a sort of double life.

And there was a sort of class divide as well clearly.

So I kind of sort of tried to keep both sides of my identity going and that meant that I had to keep on earning money on the side. But then when I got to after my GCSEs I did okay, but I didn't do as well as I should have done. I thought, right, I've got to get really serious. And then when as I went into the sick form, I decided to fully focus on my, on my schoolwork. I still did a lot of other extra curricular activities, but I stopped doing paid work when I was about 15 or 16. So I could make sure that I did well in my levels.

Jason Butler 11:27
And what gave you that focus to sort of trim back the earning and spending and focus on these these what was a levels then you start

Liam Halligan 11:35
to get Yeah, yeah. A couple of old fashioned Goodbye, Mr. Chips, public school masters who, who in the nicest possible way, got me in a corner and told me

what they thought I could do.

Jason Butler 11:51
So they believed in you, and then they sort of had a beginning yet, okay.

Liam Halligan 11:54
Yeah, massive, massive and I went to both if I'm thinking of two people in particular I went to both funerals in the last five years, and just very, very clever little interventions speaking to me, you know, eye to eye saying, you really should be here, and you're here. And this is a huge opportunity. And, you know, we all think you can do this.

Jason Butler 12:24
So, so believe in yourself is key, right? This key to anything and

Liam Halligan 12:28
just just thinking it and it goes back to the your, your earlier penetrating question. How important Did you think that scholarship was to you? I realized that the time and you know, I was I was going to school. I was going to my school and then the, the state schools had much longer terms than we had. So I used to go to the state school with my mates at the beginning and end of my school term for half a week or a week because all my friends were there and all the girls I wanted to meet was with their brother. You know, I was well known around the school I didn't even go to because I was always going in there. But the school was, was quite anarchic. And I saw primary school kids who is just as smart as me in many ways, taking on that whole mantle of, in many cases, you know, who cares? You know, working class boys is a big sociological conundrum, isn't it really smart? Working Class boys go to a big school, especially in the 70s. And they just don't do anything and they leave before they do their exams and lots of my closest school, school chums. You know, kids I grew up with literally from the age of four and five, that's what happened to them. So I always had that contrast between their experience and what I was part of at my school. And in the sick form, I decided I really got to take advantage of that.

Jason Butler 13:50
So you did your a levels. Was that a sixth form college or did you stay at the FIFA in school? No, I

Liam Halligan 13:55
stay I stay the school and by the time I ended, I was I left I was head boy. All sorts of bells and whistles, you know, it's a big experience big leadership position. Loads of extracurricular sports at a, at a high level, it was a wonderful experience. And then I went to I did economics at Warwick, I did maths English, an economics a level, a really strange combination, either economics or Warwick. And then I went on to do economics at Oxford. And then I went into basically into into academia for a few years. Okay.

Jason Butler 14:34
Sure. So before we go past that, I just want to understand how to negotiate and navigate the whole uni world when it comes to money and kind of did you have a job there? And did you have grants or did you mom and dad help you out? How did you because that is quite a big step. Even within the car slowly, still big. It's a big issue for many people, right?

Liam Halligan 14:52
Absolutely. So again, everybody, as you remember, Jason or maybe you don't, but everybody got a full grant for their fees back Then I remember we qualified for some assistance on the maintenance side and not full assistance because by the late 80s my dad's business has picked up a bit and and, and so on. So we've qualified for some assistance. But again, I I got a job. I remember calculating that it's a Saturday night, everybody's going out. Everybody's going to the same pub. And then everybody goes to a house party afterwards. So I've been a I've taken a year out. And during that year, I'd worked in bars. I've got a cocktail license, I toured around, you know, under buying steam, quite a few countries of the world. I'd spent seven or eight months working in quite a high profile bar in in Kings Cross in Sydney, Australia. And I'd also worked in a lot of pubs all sat behind the bar and many pubs throughout my life, I mean, Irish culture, we saw Grew up in pubs. So I understood a bit about how bars works and so on. So when I was at uni, I remember thinking on a Saturday night if I, if I work in the bar, the coolest bar there everybody goes, I can have a few beers anyway, I can sort of, you know, be cool behind the bar, you get paid rather than pay out money. Turn up at the house party, and I'm sort of 40 quit up. Because I haven't spent 20 quid another 20 quid.

Unknown Speaker 16:28
This is a classic.

Liam Halligan 16:30
In those days, that was a lot of money. If you have 40 quid up that was a lot of money. That was like a whole day's money, you know, hard labor.

Jason Butler 16:37
without all the conversations I've interviewed in my all my career, over 1000 1300 people. I have never heard that logic, but he's brilliant. It's so obvious when you hear it. It's just brilliant. So that's my big takeaway, even if you don't share anything else. So what did you learn about yourself when you came out of uni? You were you you weren't in debt, but you didn't have a lot of money. You were just sort of zero. Were you?

Liam Halligan 16:59
Yeah. Yeah, I was I was I was zero. But what I've managed to do over the

summers is I managed to do some quite big journeys, believe it or not, I was into doing. I was a very gregarious person, but in the summers I like to like to do sort of loan journeys that I'd funded from the savings that I put together during term time at university. So, one summer I walked most of the length of Sweden, but he felt up from the from Lapland all the way down to a city, a town called quickie up. There's a wonderful path down the length part of Sweden and into Norway called the cons Laden, the Kings trail. And I walked that and in the second year, summer, I rode a motorbike around half a dozen countries in West Africa because I'd been studying development economics I'm reading about all these World Bank projects. And I just didn't believe what we're being told about these projects. So I just went to see them myself. Believe it or not, a lot of them turned out to be completely nonsense compared to what we're reading in these glossy reports published out of Washington. So I used to summers Yes, I did work. I did quite a lot of work on building sites with my relatives, my dad, my uncle, my brother, other people that work with my dad growing up with my dad in in mayo. So I was building was was was was lucrative. You could you could earn good money even if you were just carrying bricks or tiling or I wasn't particularly you know, I wasn't a carpenter by any means. But after a while, I was quite useful around a building site. So I earned money there. And I'd spent it during the summers on these sort of big trips. And then as soon as I literally as soon as I can finish my finals. And before I went off to do graduate graduate school, I had a job. One of my undergraduate tutors. I'd helped him on some research work. And he was going off to an institute, a research group in Washington, DC. This summer I graduated and, and he took me with him. So I got a full grant to do that. And that was amazing. And while I was there, I own you know, good money, I could rent a place in downtown Washington, I could put a bit of money aside. So that was that was the first sort of proper academic job I had was being a research assistant to a couple of American as it turned out, econometricians and I spent the summer I spent the summer while cycling around Washington DC, which is a fabulous thing to do it but also learning the rudiments of economic modeling. And econometrics and getting paid for it.

Jason Butler 20:02
So it seems to me that the one of the big themes so far is that you've been very keen to invest in experiences and broaden in your perspective and horizon, which is a great investment in yourself as well as your education. You were learning about countries and the website clean and walking. That's, that's an amazing thing. Something I do, I've got my new book coming out which which is, which is seems to be what laid the foundation for your subsequent skills and perspective and communication skills. Would you say?

Liam Halligan 20:31
Yeah, I was a very curious kid.

And also, I understood very, very early the the the impact of politics and economics on real people. So there was I living in a in a house where people were working hard, but quite often, they'd get their whole financial security taken away from them because the economy was so volatile in the early 80s, and then again in the late 80s. And we were running a small bank And yet my dad still had to get the money together to pay the guys at the pub every Friday night. Right? So it's not like we were living in some house where the state just paid us all where there was a big company looking after us. You know, we were the company. We were the company. And you know, the last person that we paid was my dad, frankly. And I've got a lot of, you know, he grew up in a stone hut in the west of Ireland. And he travelled a long way in his life, no real education. But I'm, I'm proud that during that period, rather than late lay the two or three guys off who he had it find a way to pay them. Yeah. And that was his ethic. And if it hadn't been his ethic, he probably would have made a lot more money for himself, but that's just the way he is. And so I understood how economics impacts and I understood our politics impacts because of the troubles and, you know, I turned up at an English public school very Anglo Saxon, Protestant place as a working class. was Irish Catholic, you know, during the H block troubles and the hunger strikes. And not not that, I mean, there was there was a lot of playground jobs and cruelty but on balance that the friends at the school and teachers at the school were incredibly welcoming at a time when many of them wouldn't want to have been coming. So that was that's one reason why I'm so grateful to the school. But you realize, you know, the importance of economics and politics and the the sort of interaction between them and I've always been that kind of a, an economist, somebody who takes a mathematical approach and all of that, but always tries to see the impact of politics and the broader world on economic theorizing,

Jason Butler 22:46
and humanity and the empathy. Yeah.

Liam Halligan 22:47
So I've always been a humanities person and I'm part of that was just wanting to, you know, I like a lot of suburban kids. I grew up on the edge of London, and it's It's good in some ways, but you always feel that it's happening just over the horizon if you can just get over the horizon is where

Jason Butler 23:05
it is where it's really nice is greener grass is Korea and

Liam Halligan 23:08
so I just, you know, I'm from a if I think about it, my mom's wanted 10 as I said, and seven of them emigrated.

I'm from a long line of

immigrants as you can imagine a west of Ireland, Irish Catholic. I've got a photo in my study of my grandfather and his seven siblings and Okay, six of them emigrated.

Jason Butler 23:33
Did you have many siblings?

Liam Halligan 23:35
that my grandfather on my dad's side had seven siblings. I've got a photo of him outside the house where my dad grew up, right the photos from the mid 20s. So you know, just after the Irish civil war and everybody's there in looking very poor. And, and if those seven siblings six emigrated most of the states coupled to the UK so it's in the blood this or wanderlust, I think

Jason Butler 23:58
Yeah, yeah. Curious. And you're you've got brothers and sisters.

Liam Halligan 24:01
Yeah, I've got one brother who's, who's a roofer.

Jason Butler 24:05
Right. Okay, so your mom and dad actually had quite small family then really essentially competitive. And

Liam Halligan 24:10
that was partly a response to living in such massive fabrics. Okay. And it was it was a sign of it was a sign of, you know, escaped from the working class if you had a smaller family, no disrespect to their parents, but that's how it was. And so children aren't

Jason Butler 24:26
cheap either. Let's be honest. So yeah, that's

Liam Halligan 24:30
all their siblings all had, you know, maximum three kids rather than six or 10 years, the norm when they were chosen.

Jason Butler 24:40
So when you You did a research job, you started to earn money, what how was your relationship with money developing then Then did you start with Were you a saver or a spender? Or did you just not have any opportunities to spend it you just built it up? I mean, how are you evolving as a person in relation to this earning and spending you know, in your relationship with money

Liam Halligan 24:58
Um, I think Always I've always tried to strive for independence in money and not having to rely on anyone else. And that's one one part of my psyche, but its a part of my psyche, and it's just how I grew up.

I mean, I'm more I can't stop myself. If I'm with friends. I'm always the first guy to buy around a drink. I don't know why I just am. I just am. is the way I've always been. I'm sometimes unwisely generous with think. So I've always liked to spend money. And I've always, when I've, you know, obviously analyze, politics and economics for living. My animus in doing that has always been for most of my career, most of my life, anyway, has been to sort of understand it for its own sake and for its interest, rather than to sort of make it make a buck. I'm very conscious of of the dangers of not having enough money. But I wouldn't say I'm a really commercial animal in that what I'm driven by is the accumulation of money. I'm just not, I'm driven by the determination. It's different, to make sure I'm secure and the people that I'm responsible for and who rely on me as secure. I've never been an accumulator. I have always been determined to make sure that everything's fine so I can enjoy other aspects of life. So you don't see you've never eat at a young age, you didn't see money as a status or a kind of measure. It was just a kind of byproduct, you needed to have stuff. It sounds like you needed to have stuff so no one could mess with you basically. Yeah. And so and so you had the scope and space in your life, to do what you wanted to do. And I've always felt that my purpose in life has been to talk and Write and think rather than make lots and lots of money, but I do value the very much having enough money. So, you know somebody with high level prestigious degrees in economics, I could have spent a lot more time in my career in financial services then I have I have spent a bit of time, but I spent most of my time you know, being according to lots of people in my life, woefully underpaid for what I do but then again, on the other hand, I really value the experiences I had have and will have in and around the politics economic policymaking and travel over and above accumulating huge amounts of money. You know, I I'm not the kind of guy who has a number in my head. You often hear about people in financial services, I've got a number. Once you get that number, then then then you hit the beach. That's that's not me at all. I don't think I'm ever going to stop working. As long as I can type and talk, I'm going to work. And as long as I can keep a base level of wealth and security for for for my immediate family, that's going to be fine. But I'm always going to be motivated

within that context by other things.

Jason Butler 28:21
So after the you came back from Washington, how do you manage to save money?

Liam Halligan 28:26
Yeah, I do a bit of actually. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I couldn't, I couldn't do any other casual work in America because the rules are quite strict there if anyone's listening, but I was reasonably well paid for the internship. And so I and then I got I was very, very fortunate. I got a very strong undergraduate degree and back in those days,

just a few people would get a grant for

graduate work and so I got all my fees, graduate economics fees, pay And I got a maintenance paid. So when I went to Oxford I was in good shape financially.

Jason Butler 29:10
So you came out of your research job then you had a bit of savings, but that was just a sort of byproduct of the fact you weren't really spending much as opposed to accumulating. Yeah, you came in what was your first recording proper job after research.

Liam Halligan 29:24
My first proper job it was actually research after after a couple of years doing post grad work. And even then I didn't spend a huge amount of money Oxford I spent a lot of time on the river rowing, rowing for the university. And yeah, I did a lot of extracurricular stuff that didn't really cost much, much money. So I saved quite a lot of money Oxford then again in this in the holidays. I worked a lot on building sites that was incredible. I love that contrast in my Life literally I was, you know, one. In the morning I've been down at Putney rowing in a top class eight with a bunch of guys from you know Eton and Westminster School. And then in the afternoon during the holidays, I'd be on a building site with a bunch of parties having a crack. I loved that contrast. And I felt that I was I felt really alive and experiencing the world because I was able to be within those different worlds. I think a lot of people in my life at that time found it all quite interesting that I was riding many horses as it were. But I wasn't out there spending huge amounts of money and buying cars and stuff. I got around on a on a on a 50 cc motorbike most of the time back in those days. He's called fizzies, didn't they? fizzies Yeah, with the baffles out That's right.

Jason Butler 30:56
Yeah.

Liam Halligan 30:58
D restricted. That's right. Isn't it? So you've got a 50 cc and somehow you've managed to get it to sort of 60 miles an hour. Let's say

Jason Butler 31:04
you thought you're rocking here, happy days. So you're only a little, you're going around a 50 cc stroke, 65 cc motorbike, and you you finished now the research job. And

Liam Halligan 31:17
then the job I went into I got a god tremendous break, partly based on the work I've done in Washington and other accurate. I mean, this time, Jason, I wasn't going to be a currency dealer. I wasn't going to go and work for Goldman Sachs. I was going to be a professor that was that was what everybody in my academic life thought I was going to be I was going to be a professor. That was that was the the aim. And I got a break a tremendous opportunity from a really world class economists at the LSE called Richard Layard who's still around Professor Richard loud and in fact, he wrote the foreword to my latest book came true. He offered me the chance to go to Russia with him. He was going to Russia a week ago. And believe it or not, he was advising ministers there. That was the way it was. It was the early 90s. The Soviet Union collapsed,

Jason Butler 32:11
Mikey seriously, that must be an amazing time.

Liam Halligan 32:14
You have a lot of young

you had a lot of young ministers in what was just become Russia. And they were very keen to talk to the Western world. And so, there were a very, very small number of people, many of whom have, you know, people in their 20s, many of whom have gone on to incredible things, who went to Eastern Europe and Russia in particular, and worked with ministers on a sort of semi formal basis and sometimes under the auspices of, of highly regarded economics professors and Professor Richard Louv was absolutely at the center of that effort. And I was one of the people who went with him and I went to Russia for a week and I ended up staying for two and a half years. So that and it was in Russia. I mean, I was well paid there. He had grants from various fund making bodies. And I had my rent paid and my apartment in central Moscow, the economy was on its knees and I was being paid, you know, in dollars. So relatively wealthy.

Jason Butler 33:21
So you're accumulating money here by default, were you just because you're earning

Liam Halligan 33:26
low because I was accumulating a lot of money, because I was being paid cash in Moscow and I was being paid cash. I was being paid into a bank account in London in the UK, I wasn't spending very much. I mean, I think back and I wish I'd work less but I was working with a really interesting group of young Russian and Western American, French British economists. I was probably the youngest there. And we we set up the first independent source of database of macroeconomic data in post Soviet Russia. And the data that we use was the basis of the IMF negotiations between Russia and the Western world. It was heady, heady stuff and during that period I just put work crazy hours it was wild China's you know, keep keep across of the fact that history was on speed outside the office. Yeah, there's a Moscow 9399 this Moscow 9495 96 incredible, incredible scenes. And during that period, I just didn't spend that much money and the money that I spent was in rubles and I was being paid in pounds and dollars so

Jason Butler 34:41
but you weren't being conscious about this you just you just weren't you didn't you don't sound to me like although you have lots of experiences do lots of interesting things. You don't sound to me like you, you you ever developed at that stage. high octane expensive lifestyle?

Liam Halligan 34:54
No way. No, I never have an even now. I mean, even now. You know, I've never I've never had a flashcard

I spend almost no money on me. I mean, the only indulgent thing that I've, I've bought in the last sort of 15 years is a is a Martin steel string acoustic guitar, which was about 1200 quid. Oh

Jason Butler 35:16
yeah, that's optional. You need to have instruments. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I

Liam Halligan 35:19
spend, I spend. We try not to spoil our kids, but we would, you know, I do spend money on the kids, but I don't really spend much money on myself. I don't, I don't really have a sort of wardrobe of sorts. I mean, for somebody that's on telly, a lot of painters. I've never, I've never been that kind of person and maybe it will change you know, maybe the midlife crisis will come and I'll just order the Harley Davidson or whatever it is. I can't I can afford to do it if I want but in our inside me is still an eight year old kid, right? Is that eight year old kid like watching his dad, you know almost in tears because he's like, Money for the work he's done by the Council and the council hasn't paid him. And then then he's got to pay his men. And my mum's there, my God, we're going to lose the house, because

Jason Butler 36:10
part of you didn't thinks, you know, you just need to keep a little bit in the back pocket kind of thing

Liam Halligan 36:14
early. Absolutely. And yeah. And then in the end, I've always valued I've always valued experiences,

way above material

gains, you know, objects that I can buy for myself. That's kind of

Jason Butler 36:34
and, and, and again, maybe, maybe that will change. I'm not sure but that's certainly the way I've been in the first 15 years of my life. But all the research shows that there's two things there two key points that you're illustrating their intrinsic motivation. You do things because of values or because of passions or because of in your internally referenced those people tend to have higher financial well being than people who are extrinsically motivated for status action. Things possessions being judged by others. And also experiences are always, always give a better bang for the buck than material possessions. That's not to say you can't get value and enjoyment out of material possessions like your guitar, but but experiences you're illustrating those key key points that research says to help. So you moved on then you then what did you how did you navigate this sort of? Presumably you met your your paradigm, I think and you had children. So how did that? Yeah. So how did that all because that often when a partner when you get married to someone or you get into a long term relationship, there's a there's either they people don't there's different ways of approaching it. Did you have a big conversation about the role of money or did you just to evolve into it? It just always seemed to you still be on the same page or or how did that evolve?

Liam Halligan 37:46
Well, we so we got to like the mid nine, the mid to late 90s. And I had a tremendous I had just this torturous, very privileged set of choices Jason that I think illustrates What we've been discussing. So I was I was living in Russia. And I had either Oh, by the way, and when I was in Russia as well as like earning quite good money as a consultant.

I also got another job.

I carved myself out a job as a newspaper columnist. There was a there was an is a tremendous English language newspaper in Moscow called the Moscow times funnily enough, and again, it's been a seed better, a nursery if you like, for, for many people across the firmament of journalism, English speaking journalism. And it was a very, very influential paper in Moscow in the mid and late 90s. And it's still quite an influential paper. And I basically met the editor of the Moscow times at a party and talk myself into, you know, in giving me a newspaper columnist. Had no, I'd done student journalism I'd never. And he said I'll bet you've got no experience. And so a couple of days later, I met somebody from Wall Street Journal in Moscow. And again, I talked them into giving me a chance and I faxed that person. An article about what was going on in the Russian government and the bond market and so on. And it appeared on the op ed of The Wall Street Journal, like two days later now just astonishing, just astonishing. just astonishing. Yeah. And, and off the back of that I called Moscow times.

And I got hate mail. Yeah, yeah. I had no, you know, journalism is a very, very nepotistic

industry. A lot of it, I'm afraid still, especially now is who you know. And I, you know, I had no background in journalism at all. But I was determined. And so I got this column on Moscow times. And I began to Realize that that the statistical work I was doing the academic papers I was working on the policy notes I was writing in conjunction with economists and the literally the Russian economics ministry literally gained to talk to Yegor Gaidar and Boris further often some of the early post communist ministers, including the Prime Minister, believe it or not, that was that was very, very interesting. But what really I really loved was writing this bloody newspaper column I called it the invisible hand. Because it was about you know, market economics, bursting through in a sort of anarchic situation like the term that Adam Smith coined during the Scottish Enlightenment in in the Wealth of Nations. And so I realized that what I really liked to do was to write these these columns and so then I ended up with these Mad Mad Mad choices for you know, a working class boy from bloody Kingsbury. I could either go back to Oxford

and do a D fill and you know, row more.

Or I could join a number of investment banks both established Western investment banks who were working in Moscow or West investment banks that were starting up in Moscow and a couple of job offers to do that. And all of the strength of my columns in the Moscow times ridiculously I had a job offer to work for the economist who would literally contacted me out of the blue which was a tremendous accolade. And of course, that by far if you compare the investment banking route to the journalism route, I mean, I was literally being offered hundreds of thousands of dollars, because that it must go in that time I I'd help set up this incredible database that everybody used and I've been quoted The newspapers for the last two years there weren't that many Westerners around who had that status. And the fact that I was 25 didn't matter. I knew a lot of people in government. And so a lot of people were trying to throw a lot of money at me to work for them, people in the emerging financial services industry. And yeah, I decided to go for journalism, even though it was financially, you know, again, I went for the experience rather than for the money, because I, I felt, and it sounds pompous. But I felt a tremendous responsibility here Was I being offered this chance to work at some of the best newspapers in the world. And I just thought I had a sort of, it was my duty to take that chance. And to do it, I felt that was a bigger deal and a rarer accolade than being offered to, you know, run a bond desk or equity research house or something.

Jason Butler 42:53
So you probably do your integrity and your guiding principle and your passion was what helped you decide it.

Liam Halligan 43:00
I would I think, I think you're being overly generous a part of it was, you know, vanity or, you know, look, look how, for me it was a bigger achievement. So you know, look at look at look at this, I'm, I'm helping to write these incredible newspapers. You know, I grew up in a, I grew up in a household and this form is part of my sort of mental makeup to this day, I grew up in a household where, you know, I was delivering newspapers, and I was reading what newspapers were saying about certain things that I knew a lot about, like the politics of Ireland. And I just thought this is this is crap. This isn't actually how it is. You know, I grew up seeing certain people on television voiced by actors and blacked out, you know, I mean, I'm referring to the Irish troubles and I was living in an Irish Catholic household. So I I felt a kind of responsibility that I'm being offered this incredible chance to be a part of the media establishment. And I, I absolutely should take that chance, partly for me, and the sort of wow factor of it, because it's so rare to sort of make that huge leap from a working class, if you like manual working background to that kind of accolade. But also I felt a duty, because this was a tremendous gesture, if you like the sort of social mobility, that these newspapers were offering me to be part of the mainstream media. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but that is literally how I felt that was more important to me as long as I could make a certain level of money and be, be free of, of the nohrin worries of, of going down financially. If I had that base level, and I've proven to myself in the previous four years, I've made quite a lot of money without having to, you know, just focus on making money while doing other things. I figured I could do that in journalism. So that's a really key

Jason Butler 45:02
point. That's a really key point. Sorry to interrupt, but that's a really key point there is cuz your expenses and your expectation of your lifestyle costs were low, you could afford to take the job that was still well paid, but a lot less well pay out the thing that gave you that freedom, right? That's

Liam Halligan 45:19
it my background nine out of 10 times, just take the big money, right? Go for the big money here. But because I'd managed, I'd managed from, you know, from the age of 16 to 25, when I was facing these mad choices. I've managed to sort of gain a certain amount of financial independence and kind of confidence and poise if you like. I didn't feel I had to go for the big money and sell my soul and just sort of spend, you know, 24 hours a day doing nasty or Yeah, with a load of narcissists.

Jason Butler 45:51
So I knew when you join toga,

Liam Halligan 45:54
and so I figured I could join, join the economist joined the Financial Times. I remember when I joined I went back to London to join the Financial Times, which is just an incredible thing to do. I blew out my D film, you know, my doctorate, I blew out my rowing career. I was very promising oarsmen. And but I got a chance to go to be a reporter at Westminster, you know, the end of the major and the cusp of the Blair government. I mean, it was, you know, I sat next in a in a team, political team with, you know, sat next to Robert Peston for three years. And my best mate on the team was George Parker, who's the F T's political editor to this day, and I just got to meet all these politicians who I spent, you know, all my sentient life watching on television. I forgot to mention I was often late for school because on my paper, and I just read the papers, you know, suddenly I'm sort of having lunch, me and Michael Heseltine, you know, and he sort of impressed me because I've read the report is just incredible experience and that and I figured that was a lot more important to me than then you know, the getting the big numbers on the

Jason Butler 47:07
board. So you can just go back to the household situation So were you married and children when you joined the FT and what No, no,

Liam Halligan 47:13
no, I hadn't even I hadn't even met Lucien that that was a bit of a

security's way of answering your earlier question. I met Lucy because I was working for the Financial Times in the parliamentary press gallery and, and a year or so later she turned up she was working for The Guardian. So we were literally the two youngest people pretty much national newspaper correspondents in the parliamentary lobby in the days of Alastair Campbell and all the rest of it. And that's that's where we met doing press trips and

and so it wasn't long before.

Two or three years we got a house together and our first year was on the way.

Jason Butler 48:01
So, anyway, we're thinking about you know, so Lucy's a journalist as well as it. Cheers. All right. Yeah. Yeah. And do you do have you always approached your finances as a kind of it's all in the same pot together. Do you have your bit and she has her bit or are you?

Liam Halligan 48:16
We have we have we have a bank account each but we have a joint account that we've had pretty much since we bought our first house. And we've always done everything financially together and I'd say, you know, everyone has their ups and downs, but we've never really fallen out about about money that we've, you know, we we wanted, we were very, very lucky we got together in the late 90s. You know, the average house was four times three or four times average earnings compared to eight or nine times now. It wasn't hard. She had already offered journalistic salary. She already had bought a little flat in

Hi, Bree fields.

I'd already bought a little flat in Pimlico off the money that I bought back from Russia. So we were in a tremendous for two people who come from no money. Her parents were both educated. They both went to university but they weren't wealthy people by any means. We were in a tremendous position, we could sell our respective flats and we bought a little house in East End.

And that's where we had our our children. Right, and,

and how

do you say go and so we've always been money. Money's never been a huge part of our relationship. We've never argued about money. We've always been quite careful with money. Once we bought a little house in the East End, and after a few years as our family was expanding, and I mean, I went back to my roots in some ways. By this stage, I was working with Channel Four news and a channel four news. You didn't have to turn up the first meeting. Because it's almost late, you know, relatively late at night and you don't stop finish work. So it's all 830 the morning meeting was at 930 10 o'clock. So, what I did is again, I I, I still had some money left from from living in Russia.

I

I basically found a house that was

derelict isn't the right word because people were in it. But it was, it was you couldn't get a mortgage on it because it was structurally unsound. And I found this house and an old couple were living in it, and I got to know them. And they all they wanted to do was sell their house. And so I did a deal with this guy where I would fix his house and get a get it through a survey. So we could get a mortgage on it and then they'd sell it to me and he'd sell it to me for you know, less than the market price. Because I was solving his problem each once again retire on the coast. And that was a house on Victoria Park at the time when Victoria Park was in London's East End was becoming quite fashionable. And so we did that. And we renovated that house from top to bottom. And I did that by basically turning up on site at 730. And I was my own architect. And, you know, then getting on my, by this time, I'd have Vesper rather than a little Yamaha and turning up at Channel Four news at 930, having sort of been on site for two for an hour and a half, talking to these local builders to renovate this house and did that for sort of three or four months and that was the real basis of our sort of financial. The financial strength, to the extent we have financial strength was when I was able to renovate that houses, we ended up with this really interesting, nice, spacious house, and we'd spend a lot less money on it than most people. have spent on it. We added a lot of value to that house just by making it structurally sound and basically gutting it and turning it into a sort of Morgan.

Jason Butler 52:10
Point adding value, whether it be fear, or whether it be for assets, or whether it be through a situation or a business. That's how people build true wealth. Right? And that seems to me like the hallmark of what you've done and and how are you teaching your children to have respect for money and money to be a force for good and bear in mind that you're in a much more comfortable position your parents and we've got a world out entation and expectation and so on?

Liam Halligan 52:34
Yeah, I mean,

just before we do that, I should say that for for about five years, from after left channel for news and as economics as a Sunday Telegraph for about five years. At the time of the financial crisis onwards, I was part of an asset management company, an asset management company that I knew well, because it had been set up in Russia when I was in Russia. It had been started by friends of mine, too. And this is the only time I've spent working in financial services, even though during this period, I still wrote newspaper columns. This is a company that was took in money from institutional investors from around the world, particularly Europe and Scandinavia, but also the states in the Middle East. We would invest in in equities across the post Soviet Union. So we caught a couple of really good waves. And the company got up to about 5 billion under management. very reputable company, and it's still around to this day and still has many stellar, blue chip institutional clients again, all for outside Russia. So I had that experience in financial markets too, and dealing with very, very powerful, important, prestigious clients from around the world dealing with their investment committees, you know, running presentations for them running investment trips for them around Russia. The former Soviet Union. So I had that experience as well. And when it comes to the kids well, only one of our our kids are 1416 and 19. And so the 19 year old, she's a university. Well, unfortunately, she's locked down now, but she's at university. She's always been a really good worker. So she said she was old enough, she's always had jobs working out waitressing and she works a lot in in a in a pub near our near us in our hometown. So she's a very good, she likes to earn money. And we've always encouraged that as long as it doesn't interfere with our schoolwork. And our middle child. She's made quite a lot of money actually. Because she's a really fabulous traditional Irish musician. She plays really, really good fiddle and starting out with me, I'm a musician and now without other friends that she's assembled around her, they go out and they Bosque. And they make a lot of money for busking, believe it or not. So again, both my kids so far less the other 14 year old lad gets on. They, they both show the same, I think, sense that if they want to spend money, it's better if they go and own it themselves, and they got some autonomy and they both seem like earners. But they understand they talk to their grandparents that they realized that the life they've had is built on the efforts of their parents and both sets of grandparents so I only hope I only hope because they're much more so artistic people. Obviously both their parents are writers, their languages, kids, their music kids. I only hope that they can find a way to make decent money in their generation. It's harder than than ours. I'd say Jason While doing stuff that they like to do artistically and aesthetically and that's that they're gonna have to navigate that. And I do think it's gonna be tougher for their generation than it has been for ours. Will tough in different ways

Jason Butler 56:14
here. Liam, it's been you've been very generous to be time we could I could speak to all days I can move along, I guess. But here's the thing just before we finish, do you want to just sum up in terms of kind of what you wish you'd what you know, now that you wish you'd known when you were 1820 when you were young, or your tops are two or three tips you want to leave people with about kind of your thoughts about money?

Liam Halligan 56:37
Yeah, I guess I wish that I'd been bolder.

I wish that I had.

Back to my analysis more. I've been somebody that's written newspaper columns that other people have made a lot of money out of. And maybe I should have got out from underneath this session. That I have to sort of keep a certain amount of money back and off the table in order to guarantee my own financial security. You know, I've talked at length, maybe too much about sort of feelings from childhood. And how they've made me very, very cautious with money, maybe I should be a bit more confident and get out from under those and use money more to accumulate more money. So, I think that we should always be aware of the need to have a certain amount of money, but we should also back our instincts and intuitions, especially when you see other people benefiting from your instincts and intuitions. The basis of the wealth that I have, such as it is is always been

property.

I've got to position where you know we have a decent amount of wealth. I've a lot less canny and success. With sort of liquid wealth, I'm always quite resentful of, of going through buying funds and going through financial services industries that take their cut, despite having been an asset manager, myself, and I think as I go forward,

I'm probably going to become

a bit more adventurous in that sense.

Because in the end,

there's there's you can sit

on money, and I've probably sat on money too much rather than putting it to work. And in the end that just gets spent Okay, in a period of low inflation and when the various currencies, I've had my money, and I've done very, very well, but I do think we're entering a period of higher inflation. I do think we're entering a period where Western currencies are likely to be debased and go down relative to other major currencies in the world. So I do think I'm going to have to get more active with my money as I get older.

Jason Butler 58:58
That's great. Well, I mean, Liam Lots and lots of wisdom in there both historical and forward, you know, you don't realize herbies mentioned? No, well, kind of in a way, as I said to you, it's amazing how people do open up and it's you've been very gracious, you've been very honest. I'm very open and very grateful for you sharing that with people. And I would highly recommend before you go that your book home truth is about what's wrong with the UK housing market. What how to fix it is a brilliant read. You can get it on Kindle. You get it on paperback, but it also is it on them? Do you do an audio version?

Liam Halligan 59:32
No, there isn't an audio version at the moment.

There may be when it comes out in paperback, I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, again, a lot of the opening of the book is, as you'll remember, Jason is sort of semi autobiographical. Yes. goes back to that little house, my parents.

Yeah. But it's not just a book about homeownership.

It's also book about social housing is a book about overcrowding, homelessness. It's about the dignity. Having somewhere decent to live? And that's what I love about. Yeah, yeah. Whether you own it or whether you don't own it, it's also about absolute and going wrong or very restrictive. oligopolistic house building market, house building industry that we now have in the UK. And it's also it's, it's a, it's a

area of policy that I know, a lot of people at the

top of politics are very, very interested in. And, you know, I'm lucky to have good contacts across the various political parties. And since since the book came out, I've given that evidence to a couple of select committees about its contents, both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. So I think once we're through Coronavirus, leveling up agenda is coming with a big sort of policy upheaval bigger than anything since the Thatcher era and probably a lot bigger than that as well. And I'm I'm hoping and I'm confident that housing will be very much front and center of that new policy drive.

Jason Butler 1:01:00
Great stuff. Liam Halligan, economist, author, documentary maker and general all around good guy. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for listening to Real Money Stories with me, Jason Butler. If you'd like what you hear, please do tell your friends. And more importantly, please rate us on your preferred podcast app, because it really does help us get the message out there. So until next time, good luck with your money journey.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai