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Join Gabby Logan every week as she speaks to some familiar faces about their relationship with money, the financial lessons they've learned on the road to professional success, and how they're investing for their family's future.
Visit ii.co.uk for more investing ideas and information.
Gabby Logan: Hi, I’m Gabby Logan and this is The ii Family Money Show. In each episode, I speak to a familiar face about the role money has played in their family life and professional success. This time, I’m joined by Susie Dent, the lexicographer and etymologist, best known for her longstanding role on Channel 4’s daytime quiz show, Countdown. She’s also written several books and regularly appears on TV, radio and in print talking about her favourite subject, words and where they come from.
In our conversation, Susie tells me how her family didn’t really talk about money when she was growing up, why achieving financial independence was always a big goal in her life and why she doesn’t want money to be a taboo subject for her own children.
Susie Dent, it is so lovely to see you and to have you as a guest on The ii Family Money Show. How are you?
Susie Dent: Thank you, it’s lovely to see you again because we were with each other in Dictionary Corner quite recently.
Gabby Logan: We were. I think I’d had a 24-year wait to be asked back. No, that’s not quite true. I had been asked back, but I hadn’t had time or it hadn’t worked out. So we worked out it was 24 years since I was last there, and you were there the first time. You are the survivor aren’t you of the Countdown team.
Susie Dent: Yes. The stalwart, the veteran. I used to say it was just me and the clock left and then the clock was replaced [laughs]. So, yes, I’m still there, just sort of white-knuckles holding on under the desk and, yes, fingers crossed they keep me for a little bit longer.
Gabby Logan: Well you’re absolutely brilliant at it, as you are on Cats Does Countdown as well. We’ll get to all of that and your career now, but we want to go back to the very beginning of your life and your family life and growing up. What it was like for you in terms of how you knew or didn’t know anything about your family’s finances. Were you aware if money was tight or if they were extravagant with you, if they talked to you about money, what was the experience like growing up?
Susie Dent: Yes, I mean I was very lucky. I had a really privileged childhood in that we lived in a lovely house. You know, it was sort of reasonably remote. We were in a lovely village, and it wasn’t the first house that I lived in, but it was the first house that I was aware of. But the one abiding memory of finances from my childhood is that it was top-secret. It was almost a taboo not to be spoken about.
My mum had given up her job as an estate agent to look after my sister and me, and every Sunday evening, she and my father would disappear into one room where basically they would go through the housekeeping. I think my mum would go through these itemised lists of what she’d spent and that kind of thing. That makes my father sound very draconian. I don’t mean it that way at all, but it was very much a sort of hush-hush thing that just wasn’t spoken about in front of us.
So consequently, I didn’t really think about it. I had pocket money. I saved up. Got £5 at Christmas for a trip to Hamleys. So I was definitely a saver in every aspect, including Easter eggs and everything. I just didn’t [laughs] –
Gabby Logan: How long did you make your Easter eggs last?
Susie Dent: Honestly, probably about three months. Just for me, it was like eking out this kind of pleasure every day, and money was quite similar in away, but to this day, my father particularly does not like – if he talks about money, it is in a very earnest, serious way. It’s not something to have very open, light-hearted discussions about over breakfast.
Gabby Logan: That’s quite a traditional British attitude, I think, isn’t it to money?
Susie Dent: Yes, and I think the fact that my mum, it was so circumscribed her income and that it was the sort of housekeeping. I think it made me really determined to have my own financial independence. There was no way I wanted that, a weekly meeting where you’re sort of …
Gabby Logan: Did you get the impression she was having to justify her spending?
Susie Dent: In some ways, I think she probably did and, again, I don’t mean this in a – I don’t think my father ruled her [unintelligible 00:04:20] divine or anything, but when it comes to finances, yes, I think he was the earner. She was given a set amount and then it was all very heavily circumscribed. That must have been really difficult for her, but I wasn’t aware of that. I was just aware of these sort of hush-hush meetings.
One of the things that I try really hard to do with my own kids is to have open discussions about, you know, things like when I die, what they will get and what they need to plan for and that kind of thing. So I’ve kind of almost gone to the other extreme, whereas in my family, I mean for any family, it’s really hard to talk about death, isn’t it? It’s like, “Well, let’s not talk about that because that’s not going to happen,” but of course, it is going to happen to all of us. So I think that’s really important as well, is to talk about legacies.
Gabby Logan: And also, if you are going to have those conversations, not wanting your children to lose their get-up-and-go and their passion for something or their hunger to have a career or do something because they think they might be getting a nest egg at some point. You know, you have to do it in a way that leaves all of that a possibility.
Susie Dent: Yes, that’s very true actually. I haven’t particularly talked about figures. I’ve just talked about how, you know, and that maybe hopefully they’ll be able to save up for their own house and that kind of thing. But I was just determined to not make it taboo in any shape or form.
Gabby Logan: A secret, yes, and what does your father think about the fact that you’re more open talking about money then?
Susie Dent: I’m not sure that he’s particularly aware of it because he’s not there with those conversations, but I would never dream of saying to him … yes, I just wouldn’t talk about financial arrangements with him at all because it would just be so sensitive. That’s partly because my father really, really worked hard. Both my parents came from a working-class background and they really tried hard to improve themselves, I suppose. You know, they didn’t go to university. They were so proud when I went to university.
My father, he was in business with his brother, in the textile industry. They did well, but it was definitely all his money that he earned, and that probably explains why it was so precious to him and so valuable to him because he certainly didn’t have anything handed down to him at all.
So I can totally understand that, but yes, hopefully he’d be happy that it’s an open subject between us.
Gabby Logan: Well, as you mentioned, I’m sure he’s enormously proud of what you’ve gone on to do and achieve, but academically as well, and not just going to university. Going to Oxford and then going to America to study at Princeton as well. Were you always, from whenever you can first remember, a bookish child then?
Susie Dent: Yes.
Gabby Logan: Did you just devour them?
Susie Dent: Yes, always bookish, and in part, it was escape for me. Well, you’ll remember these, Gabby. You know annuals? I don’t know, did you ever used to read annuals?
Gabby Logan: Yes, I loved annuals. I loved annuals.
Susie Dent: Me too. That was my Christmas. So our house was always freezing. The other thing is my dad did not believe in central heating.
Gabby Logan: Gosh.
Susie Dent: We had it, but it was never switched on. So I would find a sunny spot somewhere in the house and just lie on my tummy and just read, read, read these annuals or whatever I could get hold of.
So my parents divorced when I was about 12, 13, and obviously a tricky time. So I absolutely immersed myself in books and in homework, but particularly in vocab books.
So German and French are my first loves. That’s what I went on to do at university, and it was weird. I mean I have no idea why even then vocabulary lists had this magic for me, but they really did. So we’d go on these long family trips to the seaside and my sister, I always say, she’d be in the back of the car. She was – she still is – very glamorous, very beautiful, and she would be playing with her new eyelash curlers or, I don’t know, doing something like a normal teenager. I would be head down in a French vocabulary book, you know, just lost. I have no idea why I wanted to [cross-talking 00:08:27], but it was –
Gabby Logan: Nobody was forcing you, nobody was saying, “Susie, pick that book up. Do some work”?
Susie Dent: No.
Gabby Logan: This was totally self-driven.
Susie Dent: No, not at all. In fact, both my parents tried to prise me away from the books, particularly when we got –
Gabby Logan: Tried to give you some eyelash curlers [laughs].
Susie Dent: Yes, particularly when we got to this said seaside destination. I just didn’t want to get out of the car because it was too cold and I was nice and cosy in there with my vocab books. But yes, they did try to – so yes, these letters, words have had some kind of mystical quality for me ever since – well, for as long as I can remember.
I think one of my very earliest memories is staring at shampoo bottles and not knowing what was on them, and probably it was [oxy ethyl 00:09:08], whatever, but they just were magic to me. I just wanted to try and decode them. So, yes, it’s not changed since.
Gabby Logan: Wow, and a lot of people would assume when you sit in Dictionary Corner that it was English you studied and that was your major, if you like, in going to America, but foreign languages obviously captivated you. The English language must have come very quickly to you, very easy to you in terms of learning as a kid. Were you the kid that got 20 out of 20 in every spelling test then?
Susie Dent: Spelling, yes. I mean I definitely was rubbish at physics. Any kind of really practical subject, I was terrible at. I used to say I was rubbish at maths, but Rachel Riley has told me that actually, she finds that so annoying because it’s such a defeatist attitude. So many people reel off this mantra, “I’m really bad at maths,” and actually, obviously, I’ve been on Countdown, what, 30 years now. I’ve been exposed to a lot of numbers games. I am getting [cross-talking 00:10:05].
Gabby Logan: Well, I sat next to you a few weeks ago and you were getting those numbers just as quick as Rachel most of the time, and I did say to you, “Have you learned the shortcuts?” I was watching you write down and you said, “Yes, I’ve got so much better at maths through doing this show.”
Susie Dent: I have. I have. It’s a brilliant brain exercise, Countdown, I have to say, but you say I’m as good as Rachel. I cannot work out what 113 x 17 is in 0.3 seconds, which she can do, but I love the way she just breaks them down. So she takes a number and then will herself sort of divide it into lots of little bits that then become easier calculations. It’s incredible how she does that. She can just see it.
Gabby Logan: Well, there’s a pattern recognition I think isn’t there that you can see starts to happen. Is that what happens to you with words when you’re coming up with the words very quickly as well? Do you have a route to an eight-letter word through joining certain letters together? Has that become a pattern?
Susie Dent: I think it’s definitely practice. It’s definitely a muscle. So, obviously, Countdown regulars will know to look for the I-N-G at the end of the word or they’ll know to stick the ‘S’ on to make a plural, or ‘I-E-S-T’, you know, to get a superlative out of that. But I genuinely still have days where my brain is just not working and only come up with four or five, and it’s no secret that Damian Eadie, one of our producers who used to be a contestant on Countdown, that he’s there up in the gallery as well and his mind is just incredible. So, yes, I mean I get a lot of them myself, but some of the absolute gems come from Damian, and thank God he’s there really.
Yes, I don’t go around looking at [sign-posters? 00:11:46]. I think Damian does and then immediately coming up with some kind of fantastic anagram. I don’t do that, but yes, I think words do – I immediately start interrogating the origin of a word if I see it and don’t know it.
Gabby Logan: We’ve looped about a bit here. I’m going back to your – you had a brilliant education, studied at Oxford, went onto further education in America. How did the leap come from that academic life, because it could have carried on. You were working for Oxford University Press, I think, weren’t you at some point?
Susie Dent: Yes.
Gabby Logan: How did that leap happen then to TV?
Susie Dent: Well, it was never intended at all. I did think about becoming an academic, but I went to Princeton purely really because, well, I wanted to pursue German. So I did German and comparative literature there, but I just didn’t know what I wanted to do and I quite fancied living in New York. So that was my main impetus, and it was a wonderful time. I did my MA and I was on a sort of PhD trajectory, I suppose, but then I just didn’t have it in me to sit for hours and hours and hours. I’m quite a restless person and I think I go for breadth rather than depth and realised that that wasn’t for me.
So I stayed on an extra year to teach German actually to freshman. I don’t know if they’re called freshpeople now. First years who had to take German as one of their languages and had a fantastic time. Then came back. Then joined OUP as you say and was really happy there. I was working on bilingual dictionary, started right at the bottom. I was an editorial assistant doing lots of filing, as you do, and then essentially, I knew about Countdown. Yes, I mean everyone has seen Countdown. I think most people have seen it at some point in their lives, but then I discovered that Oxford had a relationship with Countdown whereby they would send someone to sit in the corner and be the word referee. There were at least four or five people who went.
My boss’s boss, who was the marketing director, Simon said, “They’re looking for more people to do this. Would you do it?” and I said, “No, it’s not really for me, but thank you.” Didn’t think any more of it, and then he came back three weeks later, and I genuinely think they really did need more people at this point because we all rotated. There was a team of people, and I think it was maybe three or four times he asked me and eventually told me that it would be a great thing for my job, which to me sounded like, “You don’t really have a choice in this.” So I went, and thank God for Simon really.
So it was absolutely not, “I want to be on telly,” which I think is still very obvious by the fact that I’m still there. I think I said to you when we were sitting together, I’m sure some school friends tune in and say, “Oh my God, she’s still there. She’s not got onto anything else,” but I absolutely adore it. It’s the best gig in the world.
Gabby Logan: And it spawned, as I mentioned, 8 Out of 10 Cats as well, and your kind of character, if you like, on that as well almost seems to play into that slight kind of indifference to the whole of telly and the way Jimmy pokes you as well, which you do brilliantly.
So let’s talk about the financial part of it then. When you were working in Oxford University Press and you’re working in something that you love and is passionate – it doesn’t sound like your career motivation at that point was to earn lots of money and have lots of material wealth.
Susie Dent: No.
Gabby Logan: Yes, so going from university, that was never on the radar for you. It was always about enjoying the job?
Susie Dent: Yes. No, I mean I had very little money when I was – well, I was always in debt when I was studying here and then at Princeton, I had a small scholarship there, which was really nice to have but it wasn’t very much. I used to work in the Porter’s Lodge at the Graduate College and get a bit more money, and that was fine.
So as long as I was getting by, and then most of the time, in the early years at least that I was working at Oxford University Press, I was living in a fair rented flat in Soho. So I was commuting from Soho to London and it’s still the most wonderful flat. It looks down onto Berwick Street. It’s on Broadwick Street. You know, a tiny bit shabby, but the best views. It was just a wonderful place to live, but happily the rent was quite low, and just lived with a succession of friends there, which was brilliant, and then commuted on the bus every day to OUP, getting up at stupid o’clock. No, money was not a motivation at all. When I started, I think I was on £11,000, maybe even less than that.
Gabby Logan: So there wasn’t much to put away and save at that point?
Susie Dent: No, not at all. No, there really wasn’t, and in fact, if it wasn’t for Tim, my lovely flatmate in Soho, I think I would have fallen behind on the rent a few times too. I wasn’t being extravagant, but then if I’m honest, living in Soho, it was quite nice to meet friends in the evening and go out, but yes. So money, it wasn’t sloshing about at all.
Gabby Logan: Telly obviously opens up the door to more opportunities and different ways of improving your income stream, if you like. At what point did you start to think then, “OK, I’m going to have to get a financial plan here,” or have you ever thought that?
Susie Dent: Yes, I did. I mean I think for a long time, I was a bit bemused by the expectation that if you work in telly, you’re a millionaire. I remember turning up at various things in this sort of clapped-out VW Golf and people expecting this Ferrari outside. I’m sure you’ve had that as well.
Gabby Logan: I once had an ex-boyfriend text me and say, “Congratulations,” a job at the BBC it was, as if I was just about to win the lottery and I was like, “No, it’s licence fee payers’ money,” but yes, there is an expectation of a different lifestyle, I think.
Susie Dent: I think there is, and obviously we are incredibly lucky, but yes. I went full-time at Countdown just I think probably 2004 and that’s when my eldest had been born and I figured it would give me more time at home with her. So I went full-time there, but wasn’t again on a huge salary at all, but I did realise at that point – well actually, I say at that point. It probably took me a good five years to realise I needed a pension, and got in touch with a lovely pensions adviser called Byron who I still chat to, still full of wisdom. He said, “What you really need to do is power of attorney,” which I really have to do, but that’s his new thing and has been for the last 10 years, and I still haven’t got round to it. So that’s what I need to do, but yes.
So he made me set up a pension. He said, “It doesn’t matter how low your contributions are, you just need to get one in place.” So that was in my late-20s. So it took me a while.
Gabby Logan: Not that I’m the judge of these things, but a lot of people haven’t done that by then and they’re certainly not making regular contributions. So you’re in a habit at that point then aren’t you, which is a really good habit to get into.
Susie Dent: Yes, it’s really true and I think that’s the key, is it doesn’t matter if it’s even £20. I mean I really wasn’t contributing very much at that point, as long as you’ve got something in because, of course, it’s then matched by the government and that’s how it accrues. So I was quite lucky. I think had it not been for the recommendation of Byron, then yes, I’d probably be flailing about a bit now.
You know, being self-employed and just I think every freelancer – I mean I love the etymology of freelancer, which is that it was first applied to knights who were free to use their lance for anyone who paid them essentially. I kind of feel like that’s what we still are.
Gabby Logan: That’s brilliant.
Susie Dent: But there’s always that kind of, “Will my contract be renewed? Where will I be in two years’ time?” and particularly in the media industry, you just know how quickly you can either be overlooked or just, you know, obliterated.
Gabby Logan: Life changes very quickly doesn’t it, yes. So does that mean that you have always because of that – and also freelancers are very guilty of taking all the work thinking the work might stop. So you kind of, you know –
Susie Dent: Yes.
Gabby Logan: Have you been good at putting stuff away for a rainy day?
Susie Dent: Off and on. So I look after others in my family financially. So that always comes first, and then yes, I basically put away what I can. I tell you what’s completely revolutionised things for me, and I’m sure for a lot of other people as well – and you will have heard this a lot – is being able to have apps on your phone, because you can instantly see what you have where. You know, you can transfer money in two seconds, and actually, you just have that permanent dashboard on your phone which is incredible, whereas before, it was just leafing through endless files of –
Gabby Logan: Bits of papers, yes.
Susie Dent: Yes.
Gabby Logan: I think it does, and also, if I go into my app and I look at transactions, say, for the week, it does make you more mindful about what you’re spending and where it’s going, I think. I definitely feel in my 20s, I was much mor of an ostrich in terms of what I was spending and where it was going and putting my head in the sand and just not even wanting to look at my bank statements. So, yes, you’re right. I think the technology has definitely – and of course, it makes it so much easier as well to transfer money to things doesn’t it, and put money into different accounts.
Susie Dent: Yes, definitely. I mean it has its downsides obviously because you can buy a dozen dresses at midnight and then regret them at 7:00am. But I think the biggest financial regret for me was way before online shopping. It was buying clothes and then never quite getting around to taking them back to the shop or missing the return date, which sounds ridiculous now, but in those days, you just couldn’t send them through the post. You had to go back to the shop.
Gabby Logan: Sometimes it was a week as well, wasn’t it? You know, it wasn’t always a month that you had to take them back.
Susie Dent: Yes. I feel like I’ve wasted thousands on clothes I never wore.
Gabby Logan: Yes, and I’m sure many charity shops have been very, very happy to receive things that you’ve decided to throw out down the line still with tickets on.
Susie Dent: That’s very true.
Gabby Logan: So we’ve established that you’ve got a pension and it’s been going for quite a while, which is great. What about other investments, ISAs and things like that? Did Byron suggest those?
Susie Dent: Yes, Byron did and also Martin Lewis did. Yes, so I have a cash ISA, which is good and I try not to touch that. I’m always a bit wary of fixed savings accounts because I always think, “Well, what if I have to take some money out? What happens then?” So, yes, I like things to be flexible, I suppose, and usually instant-access.
Yes, so I do make the most of that. I don’t unfortunately contribute enough to my pension to make the most of all the allowances that the government give. So I’m not as financially savvy as Byron would like me to be, I have to say, but I do my best, Gabby. That’s all I can say. I do do my best, and I am much more aware of –
Gabby Logan: And any shares or anything? Have you ever invested in a start-up or anything like that?
Susie Dent: I’m not particularly impulsive financially, but I was massively impulsive, I don’t know what I was thinking of, when Deliveroo decided to list themselves and I invested a very small amount in Deliveroo. Honestly, they’ve sunk beyond [unintelligible 00:23:20]. They’ve kind of proved to me that if I ever do this again, I need to get some help because I quite like the idea of –
Gabby Logan: Has it put you off investing in shares?
Susie Dent: Yes. I like the idea of robo-investing. I mean it was probably the worst time. I mean at the moment, everything is plummeting isn’t it, including pensions to be fair, but I honestly just thought I don’t gamble, I don’t do anything. I just thought, “Oh God, this is bound to do really well.” It was post the pandemic, just post the pandemic, I think, and I thought all these delivery companies have really made their mark now because people will be used to having stuff delivered to them at home. No, it turned out to be probably the worst financial decision I’ve ever made, but hopefully it might bounce back at some point.
Gabby Logan: So shares not really for you.
Susie Dent: Not after that experience.
Gabby Logan: You’d say that’s not, no, and you love what you do. So going to work doesn’t seem to be a chore at all to you. Do you just want to keep doing this for as long as you can, or have you set a date when you would really like to feel you can reap the rewards of the investments and the pensions?
Susie Dent: No, I feel like I’m going to be working, if I’m lucky enough, until I’m in my 90s. I can’t see that stopping, (a), because of financial commitments, but also just because I do absolutely love it. You know, Countdown has been a wonderful shop window for me and it’s enabled me to get into lots of other areas, so podcasting like you. I write books. I write for various newspapers and things. So it’s a lovely portfolio if you like, that I can just dip into all these different things and I genuinely love that, and I think I would be very scared at going back into an – well, an office job, I don’t know if they kind of exist in the old sense anymore, but I think I would find a single focus quite difficult. So I really like skipping from one thing to another. I think that suits my mind quite well.
Yes, so I’m really hoping that at least I’ll be writing for many years. I have no idea how long I can stay on screen, but for as long as they’ll have me basically.
Gabby Logan: And do you have novel ideas? You write books about words and your podcast is also about words. Do you have stories that you want to tell?
Susie Dent: I tell stories. I wrote a screenplay ages ago. I mean I squirm when I look at it now, but it was fun to write and, again, just like those vocabulary books when I was little, it was a bit of an oasis for me really. I just can disappear into them. So if life is ever stressful, I think it’s so important to have those little pockets in your brain and you can just bury yourself in them for a little bit. Yes, so stories like that, definitely.
I always fear though that because people expect me to be really good with words, that the expectation of any fiction would be immense and that I would always fall short. So that would be a major worry for me. I can just already imagine critics saying, “Well, yes, I mean call herself a lexicographer.” So yes, that’s a big stumbling block for me.
Gabby Logan: Are you hypocritical of grammatical errors and words being misused when you see it in either print or on signage? Is that something that kind of grates with you?
Susie Dent: Usually, they make me laugh. Sometimes I kind of wince on the radio if things happen, but no, for the most part, lexicographers, we’re sort of hippy liberals really because we chart language as it’s evolving. We don’t say, “This is how something should be used.” So ‘literally’ has gone into the dictionary to mean both literally and anything but, as in “I literally laughed my head off,” and a lot of people hated that, but that’s the way it’s being used. So we have to put that in and –
Gabby Logan: Yes, where did the etymology of the new ‘literally’ come from? How did it come to be?
Susie Dent: I think it’s just part of this bigging up of language that we have all the time. So this hyperbole that – because there’s so much noise around us and there’s so much information. There’s a big cacophony that we have to be heard above and so everything is uber intense or super cool. Everything is tragic. So when something really tragic happens, we’re kind of slightly lost. Heroes, the same. You know, all the [coffees? 00:27:27]. There’s no small [coffee? 00:27:28], is there?
Gabby Logan: Icons, legends.
Susie Dent: It starts at some incredibly mega Italian adjective. Yes, so I think that’s why we just have to add in all these fillers, but I do remember when there was one particular Love Island episode from a few years ago. Everyone was up in arms because the word ‘like’ had been used, I don’t know, 74 times in two minutes or something, “And she was like, and I was like,” and I looked up in the dictionary the very first use of ‘like’ as a filler and it was 1778. So sometimes, you realise that actually, we’ve been complaining about this for centuries. You know, we’ve been complaining about disinterested versus uninterested, less versus fewer, ‘nucular’ versus nuclear for, you know –
Gabby Logan: So less versus fewer is one that it does make me slightly – if I’m driving along and I hear it used incorrectly, I do have a moment.
Susie Dent: Yes. No, I’m with you, I’m with you, but again, that’s the way it will go. My big bugbear which I have now decided to be really fascinated by rather than irked by is mischievous. Yes, it’s just people are adding an extra ‘I’ in, but now if I go to schools and talk to school children, 99 per cent of them will say ‘mischievious’. They won’t spell it ‘mischievious’, but they will say that.
Gabby Logan: Mischievous.
Susie Dent: And there’s lots of reasons why and these kind of patterns have been going on again forever, but we don’t have any ‘evous’ words anymore, but we have lots of ‘evious’, like devious. So we’re matching it to more familiar sounds and that is the way that English evolves. So I’ve decided that this is actually just a snapshot of language change and I need to get over myself [laughs].
Gabby Logan: In the financial world, have you noticed any changes in language that have either permeated the daily speak of life or any words that you’re quite interested in that have crept into our daily usage, I guess?
Susie Dent: Yes, that’s a really good question. I would say for the most part, in terms of what most of us are all aware of has actually stayed, I think, reasonably stable, although – I’m mentioning Martin Lewis a lot, but he’s come up with his own vocabulary for various things, like stoozing and stuff. But I think some of them just have the most lovely, very innocent beginnings. Like to invest originally was literally to put on a vest, but albeit, the robes of office, the kind of quite posh vests, but it literally was to take something [on? 00:30:03].
Gabby Logan: Like a tabard.
Susie Dent: Yes, exactly, or if you were –
Gabby Logan: To vest, so you were bringing something –
Susie Dent: We were putting on, yes. Yes, so you were entering into something, so at an investiture for example. You would be adorning the robes of office and so when you invest in something, you’re again taking it on. So I love that.
I think during the credit crunch, everyone was suddenly talking about deleveraging and various terms that no-one had ever heard of. So I remember all these glossaries being printed in the papers to try and explain them. I still don’t know what deleveraging is, I have to say.
Gabby Logan: Where does the hedge into hedge bets, hedge fund –
Susie Dent: That’s a really good question. I think it is – you’d have to explain to me what a hedge fund is, but I think it is the idea of circumscribing something. So if you’re hedging your bets, you are being careful and putting boundaries around things, just as a hedge might grow around a garden or whatever. But if you were to ask me to define a hedge fund, do you want me to give the dictionary definition?
Gabby Logan: Now, I wouldn’t ask you to do that. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.
Susie Dent: Good.
Gabby Logan: And what about your children then, just to finish off, in terms of what they want to do in life? Do you think you’ve kind of let it be a very open space and not giving them your opinions about what you should do in life?
Susie Dent: Yes.
Gabby Logan: Have they found that themselves?
Susie Dent: I hope so. So my youngest has not decided yet at all, and my eldest is definitely ploughing her own furrow and is really happy doing that, and I’m so proud of her for that. Neither of them have expressed the remotest interest in going into telly, which is just as it should be because I don’t really see myself as a telly person. I don’t think other people do really either because I am very much about words. I love the fact that if anyone knows me at all, it is for that rather than just on telly. So many other people have said that actually just saying, “I want to be on telly because I want to be famous,” is just sad, yes.
Gabby Logan: Well, yes, and it’s not really. I don’t think it’s a way to a long, successful and happy career because there has to be something a bit more behind it doesn’t there, and the proof is in the pudding.
Susie Dent: Proof is in the pudding, and I think if I’ve said anything, and I hope this is the one that’s hit home, is just find your passion. That’s all you need. Just find your passion, and I was just so lucky that it kind of found me so early on because I realise that doesn’t happen to everybody. As long as you find that passion that actually what you do is somehow feeding into that, I think you’ll be OK.
Gabby Logan: What a lovely way to finish, find your passion, and if you can, like Susie, find your pension in your late-20s. I think that is a very good message as well.
Thanks for listening to The ii Family Money Show. If you’ve got time, please give us a follow in your podcast app and leave us a review or rating. You can find loads of ideas on how to plan for you and your family’s financial future at ii.co.uk. I’ll see you next time.