Do you have five minutes to talk about investing?

This article is the latest installment of The FT’s campaign for financial literacy and inclusion

My best friend and I have had countless conversations over the years about life, the universe, and everything else. But this week we had our first proper investment conversation.

Yes, we’ve had conversations about money before — including a lot about property — but never about the nuts and bolts of stock market investing. So why did it take so long?

If you’re also in your 40s, chances are you’ve received or expect to receive an inheritance. The growing number of families caught in the inheritance tax net is prompting older generations to transfer money earlier in the hope that they will survive seven years after making the gift and reduce any liability.

Even if this isn’t the case, many people in their 40s find that they can afford to invest in a much more meaningful way as their earnings increase and expenses (such as childcare costs) hopefully decrease . Regardless, there’s definitely a knowledge gap about investing – and this week I’ve launched a new FT podcast series in an attempt to fill it.

Sitting around my friend’s kitchen table, it felt a little strange to hear my “work voice” explaining what had been going on in the US stock market for the past few weeks (isn’t it funny how you can know people so well practically your whole life life, but often have very little idea what they actually do all day in the office?)

The Magnificent Seven – some of the biggest and best-known US companies that dominate global market indices – did not look so powerful after worries about their future growth prospects caused sharp declines in the share prices of Meta and Tesla in particular. One of my contacts joked this week that we should rename them The Magnificent Five.

However, my friend had never heard the term. Nor had she heard of Nvidia (for the uninitiated, I agree that the AI ​​chipmaker does sound like face cream), even though those seven stocks represent a growing portion of the passive funds favored by hands-off investors.

As someone who wants to take a more active interest in investing and securing her financial future, she wanted to know more – but here we run into two problems: finding the time and finding the inclination.

I have noticed over the years that the money rich are usually time poor. We are so busy making money that it is often difficult to find time to take care of it. This can lead to our finances being neglected instead of optimized.

Even working in the financial world is no guarantee that you know what to do with your personal finances. Nor is being born into a wealthy family where talking about money is often taboo. But asking for help can also be difficult, as we fear looking stupid for not knowing.

If you set out to learn more, you’ll run into a third problem: financial jargon. Over the years, I’ve learned how to speak the language of finance, and the new Money Clinic podcast format I’ve come up with translates some of the key terms investors are likely to encounter into more human and relatable information.

Called The Five Minute Investor, our first episode of an eight-show series was released this week on the Money Clinic feed. Each week I will challenge a renowned FT expert or special guest to explain concepts such as the power of compounding, investment returns, liquidity and price/earnings ratios in a way that anyone can understand, giving practical and tangible examples that will hopefully, that will lead to more penny-pinching moments for investors.

Katie Martin, the FT’s market commentator, got things off to a delightful start this week with a five-minute Magnificent Seven masterclass. As Goldman Sachs’ David Costin notes in the episode, the important thing to remember is that by the end of The magnificent seven (the 1960 film of the same name) four of the seven are dead.

Early feedback shows that people like short podcasts. My hope is that people who think investing might not be for them will find it easier to get moving and work it into their daily lives.

Learning a new topic can seem daunting, but technology is fueling the microlearning trend. You may have used apps like Duolingo that help you learn a language in small, daily chunks. And the rise of social media platforms (mostly owned by these Magnificent Seven companies) means that short-form video content about money and investing has exploded on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube in recent years.

Critics might argue that this kind of explanatory content is dumb, but I see it as a less off-putting entry point. We encourage listeners who have enjoyed our five-minute investor shows to listen to longer than the previous Money Clinic catalogue, and we provide free links in the show notes to relevant FT articles as part of our wider financial literacy mission.

On this matter, a 10-minute video that I would encourage everyone to watch on YouTube is a talk by Kevin Liang, an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In it, Kevin reveals how, as the son of two blue-collar immigrant workers, he worked hard, won a place at Harvard, then landed a job at an investment bank. A fantastic achievement, but he realized that he knew very little about money and wealth compared to his peers.

At his first job at Citigroup, he was surprised to learn that colleagues in their early 20s already owned stocks and shares. A colleague had bought Apple stock from his mother at the tender age of 10 (clever mother!) Much later, a mentor told him about ways to diversify and grow his wealth using tax-efficient investment products like Roth IRAs (retirement account — in the UK consider pensions and stocks and shares Isas). But, as Kevin says, they may have been talking nonsense.

His plea is simple: “Let’s normalize talking about money. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and seek financial advice. And if you are more financially savvy, share your knowledge.”

As for my friend, I got her to subscribe to the podcast and I hope our chat this week will be the first of many conversations we have about investing.

Claire Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and FT writer Get your financial life in order a series of newsletters; [email protected]; Instagram and TikTok @ClaerB.