Juggling Mind and Money

Steve Rowe and Jessica Schlupp-Taylor
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Welcome to the Juggling Mind and Money Podcast with Steve Rowe and Jessica Schlupp-Taylor.Steve Rowe is the founder of Lucent Financial Planning and an award-winning independent financial planner. He helps you to use your money and have a great life. Jess Schlupp-Taylor is a psychologist supporting people through change, challenges and forks in the road of life.Together they will help you unblock the sludge in your mind, stopping you from achieving financial and psychological happiness.

  1. Sep 10

    Ep.47 The next generation of financial planning

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Ellie Pemberton, chartered financial planner at Lucent (and, at 25, one of the youngest chartered advisers in the profession) while Jess is off on holiday. It's the second in a semi-planned series where Steve turns the microphone on the people at Lucent that clients may or may not have met the ones actually doing the work. Ellie fell into financial planning the way almost everyone does. She googled "finance places near me" during the summer after her first year at Liverpool, messaged a handful of managing directors on LinkedIn, and one said yes to a coffee. Six years on, she is a chartered adviser at Lucent, has done her professional exams faster than most, and has already built a book of clients who have walked over hot coals, retired years earlier than they expected, and one who was told after seeing five advisers that Ellie and Steve were the only ones who actually listened. In this conversation, you'll hear about: The Liverpool coffee-and-LinkedIn story that got Ellie into a financial planning firm entirely by accident, and why she thinks the profession is far too invisible to young peopleWhat she loves about the job the blend of technical problem-solving and human psychology, and the professional euphemism for being "very nosy"Getting chartered fast: the six-month diploma sprint (an exam a month for six months), and why Lucent having all five advisers chartered is unusual in a profession where only around 20% carry the qualificationThe lesson the exams could not teach her that it doesn't matter how technically correct the plan is if you cannot communicate it in a way the client understandsBeing young and female in a profession where the average adviser age is 48, and Ellie's blunt take on the "clients won't like you because you're young" advice she was given at 20The genuine advantages of a younger adviser thinking about your retirement rather than their own, sticking around long enough to see it through, and helping the next generation tooThe fire walker story: the client who retired, then went on to do charity events walking over hot coals, glass and breaking arrows on their neckThe moment Ellie first told a client "yes, you can retire" and the 74 times she'd checked it firstEllie and Steve's new YouTube channel, Ellie and Steve Tackle, and why they think the profession's information needs unpacking for a generation getting its financial advice from TikTokCarl Richards' line that clients don't hire advisers for technical knowledge they hire them for what that knowledge lets them doThe closing case for peace of mind: why the best question a client can ask is not "what does it cost?" but what they'll know afterwards that they don't know nowKey takeaway Ellie's argument is that the future of financial planning does not sit inside the exam syllabus or the pension calculator. It sits inside the ability to sit with a person, actually listen, and communicate the answer in a way that lets them do the thing they came in wanting to do retire earlier than they thought, take on the fire-walking gig, give a leg-up to family, or simply relax into the plan they have already worked their whole life to earn. The exams matter. The chartered status matters. But communication matters more.

  2. Aug 27

    Ep.46 The hidden side of financial planning

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined for the first time by his business partner and Chief Operating Officer, Hannah Knight Niblett the person who runs everything that clients don't see, and the reason Steve gets to be the swan gliding across the lake while she does the paddling underneath. Hannah has spent 25 years in financial services, starting in a bank at 18 and qualifying as a financial adviser at around 20, in an industry that was even more male-dominated than it is today. She and Steve first crossed paths at Norwich Union without ever meeting, and eventually connected through a LinkedIn message Steve sent at three or four in the morning from a tent while camping. Nine years on, she has helped turn Lucent from a one-person operation into a fully-fledged business and this episode is the honest tour of what has actually gone into that. In this conversation, you'll hear about: Hannah's route into financial services at 18, and the comment from a senior adviser early on "you can't do this, you've got no life experience" that became a driver rather than a stopperThe tiny bits of advice (like don't wear fluorescent nail varnish) that were meant to give a young woman in a male industry the best possible chanceThe Michael Kitces line on suits younger advisers should wear them to project authority, older ones shouldn't because it becomes intimidatingThe scale of the work behind every client meeting: evidence gathering, research, compliance, data protection, money laundering, reports, risk management, marketing and disaster recoveryWhy Lucent has 5 financial advisers but 18 people in total, and the external annual audit the firm has become an "example of what good looks like across the UK" forHow Steve and Hannah actually met the four-figure number of people Steve says he tried to hire before her, the LinkedIn message sent from a cold tent, and the second-interview "coincidence" where a photographer just happened to be thereThe Christmas tree Hannah brought to the office on her first day in 2018, and the three years of Steve's health scare, COVID and network collapse that followedSteve and Hannah as visionary and integrator (courtesy of Gino Wickman's Rocket Fuel), why Steve comes back from every holiday with a hundred new ideas, and why Hannah occasionally wishes he wouldn'tThe Cambridge hotel story: Steve, recovering from an operation, overhearing another firm's adviser bore a couple to death with pie charts, and how close he came to throwing the china on the floorHannah's take on what makes a great financial planner today empathy over qualifications, probing for feel rather than fact, and being properly humanAI in financial planning: Hannah's view that it gives time back for the human bits but will never tell you what your actual goals areThe two questions Hannah wishes people would ask a prospective planner instead of "how much does it cost", "how much better off can you make me?" and "what's the cost of not doing it?"Key takeaway: Steve and Hannah's argument is that a good financial planning firm is a machine of many hidden parts, most of which the client never sees. But the reason those hidden parts matter is that they free up the adviser to do the one thing no piece of technology or compliance policy can do: sit with another human being and actually listen. Financial planning isn't a pension, an ISA, a portfolio or a pie chart. It's a conversation about what you want your life to look like, held with someone who cares enough to ask, and backed by a team who care enough to make sure the answers hold up.

  3. Aug 13

    Ep.45 Why successful people find it so hard to spend their money

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined again by Jess, the podcast's resident psychologist, to look at the strange irony at the heart of a lot of financial planning: the very habits that get people wealthy in the first place frugality, self-denial, careful choices are exactly the habits that stop them enjoying the life those savings were meant to buy. Jess has a name for it: FEDS - Financial Permission Deficit Syndrome. It isn't clinical. It isn't in a textbook. But Steve sees it every week in the office, and Jess sees it every week in her practice: people who have more than enough money, who know it's fine to spend, and still can't bring themselves to do it. This episode looks at where that habit comes from, why the numbers on a spreadsheet often can't fix it, and the small tools people can use to give themselves permission to actually enjoy what they've built. In this conversation, you'll hear about: Jess's made-up-but-accurate diagnosis: FEDS, or Financial Permission Deficit SyndromeThe great irony of financial planning: the habits that get you wealthy are the ones that stop you enjoying itWhy nobody ever set money aside thinking "I'll save this so I can never spend it", and why drawing down should feel like paying yourself a salary you earned earlierMuscle memory, identity and the tribal "how we do things around here" that shapes 50 years of spending patternsInheritance guilt: how careful parents can leave children too anxious to enjoy what they've been leftLoss vs gain framing: why "spending £4,000 on a holiday" hits differently to "gaining a family memory"Scarcity stories from childhood ("money doesn't grow on trees") that stick in your head like worms decades later, whispering "you don't deserve it"The five things money is actually for: security, freedom, experiences, relationships and making a difference and the sixth thing (more money) that Jess and Steve say does not belong on that list once you already have enoughJess's regrets about turning down GB kayaking training and an England basketball tournament in Italy because anxiety got in the waySteve's Machu Picchu regret the trip with a mate at 23 he turned down for a settee that's now sitting at his mother-in-law'sThe financial fix: showing people the numbers year after year and why that often still isn't enoughSteve's "forfeit" trick pay yourself more, and if you don't spend it, buy him an ice creamJess's "joy budget" idea pair the boring budget (Wi-Fi, water, electric) with one for horses in Morocco, super-fast cars, breakfasts out, and shows with friendsKey takeaway: Steve and Jess's argument is that money that never gets spent isn't wealth it's just numbers on a spreadsheet that quietly follow you to the grave. Life is not a rehearsal, money is a tool, and the mistake usually isn't spending too much on the holiday, the horse-riding, the cowboy hoedown, or the friend's round at the pub. The mistake is the one you never take. Notice the scarcity story you're still carrying, question whether it still applies, and give yourself the permission you've spent 50 years earning. Fill your cup up. Then fill someone else's.

  4. Jul 30

    Ep.44 Why financial planning isn't really about money

    Send us Fan Mail In this solo episode — the first time Steve has recorded without Jess — he opens with three impressions (Martin Luther King, JFK and Steve Jobs) before making a case he's been making his whole career: that financial planning isn't really about money. Money matters, of course. But investments, pensions, ISAs and tax aren't the destination. They're the vehicle. The destination is the life someone actually wants to live. This episode is a walk through what it takes to uncover what that life looks like, why most people arrive at their first meeting with symptoms rather than goals, and why the best answer isn't always a rigid 30-year plan. In this conversation, you'll hear about: ● Steve's three-impression opening — MLK's dream, JFK's moon, and the Steve Jobs calligraphy story that ends with "you can only connect the dots looking backwards" ● Why "I want a better investment return" isn't really the goal, and the question that gets underneath it ● The difference between symptoms ("I want to reduce tax", "can I retire?") and real life goals, and why the money is a hammer, not the house ● The Five Whys technique — asking "why?" five times until you get past the round numbers and into something meaningful ● Goal discovery questions that don't mention money at all: what is important about money to you, what does success actually look like, if money wasn't a concern how would you live ● The magic wand question, and why the answer is almost never about ISAs ● The Maldives visualisation exercise, including the client who ends up flirting with the barman ● Why over half of specific savings plans never actually happen — because you change, circumstances change, and the area you loved five years ago doesn't feel the same today ● The slightly controversial line: too much planning can be the thief of joy ● Steve Jobs and the people who never set fixed goals but took interesting opportunities and let the dots connect themselves ● The three things money can actually do for you: pay for what you want now, pay for what you want later, or go to other people so they can live better ● The closing reframe: people don't want pensions, ISAs or tax planning — they want the things those tools let them do ● Steve's own admission that he didn't plan to be a financial planner, and the pork-scratchings story in a Norwich Union interview that shaped his career ● The closing line Steve borrows: "enjoy yourself, it's later than you think" Key takeaway: Steve's core argument is that great financial planning isn't really about the money. Money is a tool. The plan is a tool. The real work is understanding what someone wants their life to be, then making sure the money supports that life rather than replacing it. The best planners are students of human behaviour, not portfolio composition. And the biggest mistake most people make isn't with their investments — it's saving hard for a future they might not get to, while quietly missing the present they're already living in. Set a direction, stay flexible, and don't sacrifice today's happiness for a tomorrow you may never have.

  5. Jul 16

    Ep.43 Why imposter syndrome quietly wrecks financial decisions

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Jess, the podcast's resident psychologist, to look at why so many of us secretly suspect our success is a fluke, why the term "imposter syndrome" is more medically specific than the way most people use it, and how that quiet inner voice can be one of the most damaging forces sitting between people and their own money. The tribal wiring that once kept our ancestors safe from being picked off by the group still lives inside modern brains. The problem is that fitting in and keeping your head down was a useful survival strategy for a hunter-gatherer — and a much less useful one for someone trying to run a business, sell a company, or spend the money they've worked their whole life to build up. This episode looks at where that voice comes from, why it hits so hard around money in particular, and what to do about it. In this conversation, you'll hear about: Why Jess has a chip on her shoulder about the term "imposter syndrome", and where the clinical version sits compared to the everyday one most of us mean.The concept of self-efficacy — confidence in specific situations — and why you might feel like a natural in Tesco but a total imposter in Waitrose.The evolutionary story: how tribal survival made standing out risky, and why our brains still haven't quite caught up with the modern world.The Marianne Williamson passage Steve reads out — "our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure".The gender research: why women are more likely to attribute success to luck or the team, and men are more likely to own it — and why "you go, girl" is Jess's take on that.Why the 70% figure people quote for imposter syndrome is, in Steve's view, probably far too low.The financial consequences: people who won't spend money they've earned, people who cling to it because they're scared it will never come back, and people who feel guilty just for having it.The pattern with inherited money — how careful parents can leave their 60- or 70-year-old children unable to enjoy what they've been left.Business owners at the point of sale, and why a lump sum can trigger a whole new wave of "do I really deserve this?" thinking.Jess's practical approach: notice the thought, question it, ask if it's true or helpful, and try a different response.The horse-riding-in-Morocco daydream Jess keeps talking herself out of, and Steve's own story of being terrified into stage-fright and forcing himself onto the podium anyway.Why "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" is a cheesy line that has genuinely earned its keep.The closing reminder: you do deserve it. Try. See what happens.Key takeaway: Steve and Jess's argument is that imposter syndrome, in the loose sense most people use the term, is a normal human experience — but the way we respond to it is a choice. The thoughts themselves aren't the problem; the problem is treating them as true and letting them quietly shape decisions about money, work and life. Notice the voice, question where it came from, and then take the shot anyway. The Aston Martin, the horses in Morocco, the posh tea bags, the safari, the business sale, the inheritance you were left — none of them are less deserved because someone in your head decided you weren't good enough. You do deserve it. Now go and do the thing.

  6. Jul 2

    Ep.42 Money that makes sense for families with special educational needs | Rhiannon Goff

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Rhiannon Goff, founder of SENDA (Special Educational Needs and Disability Advisors) and a financial adviser with 26 years of experience, the last 10 of which she has spent working exclusively with families who have a child or relative with special needs. The traditional financial planning playbook assumes a future of independence: get money into the client's hands, maximise their inheritance, plan towards their retirement. For around one in five children in England, that playbook can quietly do harm. Inheritance can wipe out means-tested care. Junior ISAs that mature at 18 can disqualify someone from support. And money in the wrong hands can turn an already vulnerable person into a target. This episode looks at what financial planning actually has to look like when the person at the centre of the plan might be non-verbal, dependent on means-tested care, or at risk of exploitation — and why this work shouldn't sit on the periphery of the profession. In this conversation, you'll hear about: Rhiannon's personal route into the field via her 16-year-old son Tristan, who has complex autism and is non-verbal, and how that lived experience shaped her practice.The ARC framework — Access, Risk and Care — and why every special needs financial plan has to be tested against all three.Why the natural estate planning instinct (get the money to the child) can be the single most damaging move a family makes.The role of trusts in special needs planning, particularly discretionary and disabled or vulnerable person's trusts, and how they protect against the "three harms"."Mate crime" — financial exploitation by people who befriend a vulnerable person — and why protection has to be balanced against autonomy.Why Junior ISAs are usually the wrong vehicle for a child with complex needs, including a real-world story involving a car auction, four bangers and a cul-de-sac.Steve's lived experience as a brother to someone with similar needs, and how his family has navigated bank limits and the tension between protection and independence.The importance of building "a team to carry on" — solicitors, trustees, accountants, planners and family — before the parents' hand is forced.How to find the right professionals: looking for TEP (Trust and Estate Practitioner) members, vulnerable client experience, and links to professional trustee corporations.The launch of SENDA in 2024, the LIBF-accredited foundation course now available for financial planners, and the community Rhiannon is building to support both advisers and families.Rhiannon's closing call: be ambitious. Don't plan around what someone can't do — plan towards what they can.Key takeaway: Rhiannon's argument is that special needs planning isn't a niche corner of the profession — it's a field where standard financial planning instincts can actively cause harm if applied without thought. The damage is rarely about bad intentions; it's about gaps in knowledge, professionals working in silos, and well-meaning grandparents funnelling money into vehicles that quietly disqualify a young person from the care they need. The fix is genuine collaboration, the right qualifications, and a mindset shift towards ambitious, hopeful planning. Build the team while you still can, look forward not back, and signpost to the right specialist even if you're not one yourself.

  7. Jun 18

    Ep.41 What Couples Get Wrong About Money | Sonya Lutter

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve is joined by Sonya Lutter, a researcher and money psychologist based at Texas Tech and the founder of the Institute for Systemic Financial Professionals. Sonya has spent years studying what actually happens inside couples and households when money turns up — and turns up the temperature. Most fights about money aren't really about money. They're about values, identity, and what we want our lives to mean. And yet the financial planning profession still spends most of its training time on investments, tax and retirement, while the human bit — the bit that decides whether any of the plan actually gets followed — usually gets a single course. This episode looks at why money sits so close to our sense of self, what the research actually says about couples, conflict and joint accounts, and the small, practical tools advisers and clients can use to make better long-term decisions rather than panicked short-term ones. In this conversation, you'll hear about: Sonya's accidental route into the field, from wanting to teach deaf children, to financial planning, to marriage and family therapy.Why the profession still underestimates psychology — and why "we haven't got time for that in a one-hour meeting" is the wrong answer.The research finding that how much a couple argues about money early in a relationship predicts long-term relationship satisfaction more reliably than later arguments do.Scott Rick's two-year study on couples and joint accounts: why being told to combine accounts measurably increased relationship satisfaction, while the other two groups declined.Why disparity in earnings — and especially women out-earning their husbands — is statistically associated with more money arguments and a higher divorce risk.The "values bullseye" exercise Sonya uses with couples who've spent decades skirting around the same disagreements, and how it turns vague conflict into a shared centre.The childhood roots of financial anxiety, and the research showing that hearing parents argue about money tracks into adult behaviour — while simply receiving an allowance largely doesn't.Why cold hands are a literal red flag for short-term decision-making: the fight-or-flight response routes blood away from the brain, and we end up agreeing to things we don't actually want.A practical "sandwich technique" for opening up emotional conversations with clients who came in to talk about investments and don't think they signed up for anything else.Why financial advisers carry more emotional weight than the profession admits, and why some form of study group, supervision or coaching is not optional once you're listening to people for a living.Key takeaway: Sonya's central argument is that the psychology of money has been approached haphazardly so far — a tool here, a technique there — without a proper framework. Money isn't just a preference like toothpaste or what to watch on TV. It's a near-direct reflection of values, identity and the family system someone grew up inside. The advisers and couples who do well are the ones who stop treating the emotional layer as a tangent and start treating it as the main event. And the tip Sonya leaves listeners with applies whether you're an adviser, a client or just a human being in a relationship: see a need, meet a need.

  8. Jun 4

    Ep.40 - Why we crave certainty and Why money can’t give it to us.

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Steve and Jess talk about why our brains chase certainty, why money can't really deliver it, and how to build a financial and psychological life that bends with whatever comes. Certainty is one of those things almost everyone wants and almost no one can have. Our brains are wired to chase it, our spreadsheets pretend to deliver it, and politicians, advertisers and well-meaning financial guarantees all dangle versions of it in front of us. This episode looks at why that craving sits so deep, why money is a particularly bad place to look for it, and what a healthier relationship with uncertainty actually looks like in practice — across investing, careers, family life and the small daily routines that keep us functioning. In this conversation, you'll hear about: Why we crave certainty in the first place, and what evolutionary wiring has to do with predictable berries, hypervigilance and modern information overload.Morgan Housel's line that "the illusion of control is more persuasive than the reality of uncertainty", and why feeling in control often matters more than being in control.Alex Hormozi's idea that the wealth you build later in life depends on how much uncertainty you can put up with, and what that means for jobs, businesses and investing.Why guarantees in finance usually come at the cost of lower returns, and why money sat in the bank can quietly lose value to inflation.How to build a financial plan that's "bendy like the grass" (courtesy of one of Steve's clients), with cash buffers, diversification, stress testing and plans A through F.Why obsessing over forecasts and spreadsheets doesn't change the universe, and where that energy is better spent.How OCD, eating disorders and addictions can begin as attempts to feel in control before quietly taking control of the person instead.Practical ways to train your brain to sit with uncertainty: keep some routines to lower your mental load, then deliberately push your comfort zone in small ways like changing your route to work.A few tangents along the way, including Santorini photoshoots, a German sun-bed lawsuit, galloping horses in Morocco and whether tea is due a comeback.The closing reminder: "Ships are safe in the harbour, but that's not what ships are for."Key takeaway: The only real certainty is change, and trying to engineer guaranteed outcomes tends to cost you twice: once in the price you pay for the guarantee, and again in the smaller, duller life you have to live to keep things predictable. The healthier move is to control what's worth controlling (your coffee, your keys, how you load the dishwasher), then build enough flexibility into your financial plan, your mindset and your week that you can ride the wobbles instead of trying to flatten them. Plans A, B, C, D, E and F. A bit of jelly wobble is what makes the whole thing worth eating.

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Welcome to the Juggling Mind and Money Podcast with Steve Rowe and Jessica Schlupp-Taylor.Steve Rowe is the founder of Lucent Financial Planning and an award-winning independent financial planner. He helps you to use your money and have a great life. Jess Schlupp-Taylor is a psychologist supporting people through change, challenges and forks in the road of life.Together they will help you unblock the sludge in your mind, stopping you from achieving financial and psychological happiness.

Information

  • Creator
    Steve Rowe and Jessica Schlupp-Taylor
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    47
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Juggling Mind and Money
  • Show Website
    Juggling Mind and Money