Episode 25 : When Health Changes Everything

Michael Avery: 00:06

Welcome to Life Chapters, Money Choices. Now, there are certain conversations that I think typically sit outside of the normal grammar of financial planning. Because we can talk about risk, we can model outcomes, we can run projections, you can discuss things like asset allocation and income replacement and estate planning and dread disease cover and all of that. But then life happens. And what is the old Mike Tyson saying? Everyone can have the best plan until someone punches you in the face. And that’s certainly what today’s episode of Life Chapters Money Choices is all about. It’s what happens when life punches you in the face, and one of those is cancer. It’s one of those topics that’s very difficult to talk about. That’s why I’m so grateful for today’s guest, Glen Baker, who was a portfolio manager at WealthStrat, who is sharing his experience of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Glen, thanks so much for coming in. You’re looking really good, to be honest. And I suppose, I hear with cancer you do have good days and bad days. How are you doing today?

Glen Baker: 01:08

Yeah, thanks. And it’s actually nice to be here and chat to you and Kim. And again, thank you for the compliment. Yeah, so you do have good and bad days, and it also depends on the, you know, in terms of hair loss and all those types of things, it depends on the drugs that are in the cocktail that feeds into you in the form of chemotherapy. Yeah. So I have been quite fortunate in that regard up until now.

Michael Avery: 01:41

Glen, before we get into any of the financial planning aspects, take us back to the beginning. You know, when did you first realise something was wrong?

Glen Baker: 01:50

Well, I had a few health issues in this fourth quarter of 2024. And to be honest, they actually masked what was really going on, which was the cancer. But I was fighting infections that I couldn’t cure, that wouldn’t heal in my feet and in my wrist. And then that led to a couple of operations, lots of drugs and antibiotics, which then led to a few stomach issues. The stomach issues wouldn’t go away, and I went for a scan in late 2024.

Michael Avery: 02:33

And can you describe that moment when the diagnosis arrived? And do you remember that moment clearly, or is it something that you’ve kind of pushed to the back of your mind when you were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer?

Glen Baker: 02:49

Yeah, I think this is kind of where the story starts. I remember it very clearly. And certainly the gastroenterologist giving it to me was as surprised as I would have been, because we weren’t looking for it. I wasn’t looking for it and he wasn’t looking for it in terms of the scan either. So what actually happened in that moment, in that half a moment probably, is that I knew that the circumstances that were and the circumstances that are now have changed. There’s been a big line in the sand, but I think I had pretty good clarity of thought and kind of focused on the big picture as best I could.

Michael Avery: 03:45

As someone who works professionally, or worked professionally, I should say, with things like risk and uncertainty and long-term planning, do you think that background helped you a little bit process the diagnosis or maybe made it even slightly more confronting?

Glen Baker: 04:00

Yeah, yeah. I think that’s actually probably in your mind. Obviously, your mind has a certain way of calibrating things, and you’re quite right. I’ve sat at trading desks and I’ve managed money all of my working life. So I do think that I probably look at things on a probability slash quantitative kind of basis.

Michael Avery: 04:30

But then there’s obviously the human element as well, and you know it’s a frightening diagnosis for most people. How did you manage that first wave of information?

Glen Baker: 04:41

I, again, tried to keep it big picture because I think you can clutter your mind, and I did concentrate on keeping it clear and positive. Positive is the best word. Now you might say, well, it’s all very well for you to say, but how did you actually do that? And I did that by thinking about who I was going to tell and the kind of circumstances in life that would unfold going forward. And I didn’t want the people around me, in particular my family and my direct family, to feel that this was the end of the world, as it were. And for that to happen, for them to be positive, I needed to be as confrontational and positive as I could be.

Michael Avery: 05:43

And so what were the first steps for you in terms of tackling this head on and as I know you specifically would do? Do you say, right, well, there’s no point in working anymore. Let’s stop working, let’s continue pursuing other things that maybe I’d put on the back burner. How did you say from day two, I’m going to confront this?

Glen Baker: 06:08

I focused on the fight, and the fight was going to be cancer. And pancreatic cancer is a bit of a harsh one. They couldn’t operate because it’s at the tail. So right from the outset I was focused on the fight. And as soon as chemo started, which was a couple of weeks later, I stopped working because I couldn’t really work. I wouldn’t have been able to give work the necessary focus — eight, nine hours a day, five days a week — that it required. And as such my mindset moved to what was looking at me. So I love sport. I think you and I have chatted about this in days gone by, and I tend to draw lots of analogies from sport. So, let’s take golf. The ball had got into the rough. I had to go and find it and hack it out. Stay in the hole and stay in the game. And really that’s where my mindset was. Stay in the game, stay in the day and stay in the hour.

Michael Avery: 07:17

Kim, having known Glen for quite some time and listening to the way he’s approached this, I suppose rather unsurprising to see that he’s taken this approach. But there’s a strong lesson here, certainly from a mindset perspective, on how one needs to approach very, very left-field and very difficult life chapters that can emerge completely out of the blue. I mean, what did you make when you first heard of Glen’s diagnosis as a colleague and as a friend?

Kim Potgieter: 07:56

So we were all opposite to Glen. It doesn’t matter that we manage risk and we do all of this work, we were all opposite. I mean, I’ve never seen so many tears in an office. And basically, whenever he was around, because he was so brave, we all put on our brave faces and we pretended. So I think maybe just something to bring in here is that not everybody who gets a diagnosis like that is going to be as brave as Glen. And you might do it completely differently and still be brave. So for some people it is the most emotional thing, and it will be for anybody that they get told. So don’t judge yourself about how you respond. I mean, obviously for Glen and the way he’s done it has been incredible. He’s been a role model for us all watching. But I have worked with other people who’ve got a similar diagnosis and they’ve responded in an opposite way, where they’ve become very emotional. But the thing that I see is the most important, and why it’s an important part that we’re discussing, and why I was so grateful when Glen said he’d come on and talk about it, is if you get overly emotional and you start making a whole lot of moves and doing a whole lot of things, you can do the absolute opposite of what’s needed in a situation. So the way Glen did it, by stepping back, being calm — this is the fight I’ve got to do — he put all the steps in place for himself and his family and all of us at work in order to actually walk this path with him. And he’s been very clear in walking the path. I don’t hug him because he doesn’t want to be hugged. You don’t cry in front of him. So set the boundaries for the family around you and the people around you of what’s going to be helpful for you. And I think so many times, you’re so worried about everybody else that you don’t necessarily help the people around you to also deal with this. So yeah, I mean, I can’t say I did it nearly the same way as Glen did it.

Michael Avery: 09:56

Glen, did you set those boundaries up front with your colleagues when you walked into the office and said, right, chaps, we’re not going to get down on ourselves. I’m going to kick this thing. Using that sporting analogy, let’s get our heads in the game here.

Glen Baker: 10:14

Yeah, I think to a large extent. I certainly like hugging. I’m a big hugger. But yeah, I think in the work environment, as soon as you see people around you getting down, I think it must have the obvious impact. So I guess you can spiral down or do your best to spiral up.

Michael Avery: 10:38

Did it change, shift or alter your view of time? And maybe bring a few things that you’ve been putting off to the centre a bit more. And what was the next move from a work perspective? You can’t work; you’re not working now.

Glen Baker: 10:56

No, I can’t. So I think what was the next move, and I’m going to interpret your question as how to spend your time best. Sometimes the chemo flattens me. In fact, it’s a fairly predictable cycle now, a two-week cycle that I’m on at the moment. I have chemo on a Tuesday, and you feel pretty cuck for a couple of days, and then you come out of it and the second week is much better. And I’m going to bring this into it: the support of family and friends. I’m extremely lucky and grateful that I have friends whose support and love have been greatly appreciated and humbling. I see my mates for coffee and I see my mates for lunch every now and again, and I do that.

Kim Potgieter: 12:10

They take you on amazing trips.

Glen Baker: 12:12

And I’ve managed to get away a couple of times on some wonderful trips.

Michael Avery: 12:18

It’s sad sometimes that in life we need this to start living a bit more of the life that we’d like to live and that sometimes we put off while we’re behind the trading desk or following the markets. Do you think that there’s a lesson in that there, Glen?

Kim Potgieter: 12:38

But what was wonderful about Glen, and that’s something that stood him in such good stead, is that relationships have always been important to him. So he’s always made time for his mates. Even though his work was hard, they’ve been important to him. He’s always had that time for his family. So I think it’s come back as a gift to Glen, but it’s a gift he’s been giving out for many, many years.

Glen Baker: 13:00

It’s not like the priorities changed. No, it’s just that you’ve got a bit more time, as you say. You have time to reflect. So going back to your original question about what your concept of time is now, there is definitely a change. The reality is you’ve got a little bit less to look forward to, and how do you jam-pack that? I certainly haven’t been scared to look back in time and think of happy things, happy thoughts, happy occasions, and that brings a smile to my face.

Michael Avery: 13:49

And I’ve got to ask the obvious question around the financial planning element. Were you prepared for this financially? Did you have the typical insurances that no one likes talking about, the life insurance, the dread disease, income protection, all of that? Has that allowed you to at least not have to worry about that and then focus on what should be the priority?

Glen Baker: 14:12

Absolutely. And if I can, I’m just going to throw in a little bit about me and my background here. I’ve worked in the SA investment industry pretty much all of my working life, and that is now about 35, 36 years. You would therefore make the assumption, and I think people make the assumption understandably so, that okay, you’ve got a good grip on finances, and therefore don’t worry about Glen or anybody who works at any of the banks or the asset management businesses because they’ll know how to look after themselves. And to answer your question, I do have that in place, but it’s by luck. It’s not by my own risk management and allocation of capital to my future. So I’ve been put into those products by financial advisers and, in particular, Chartered Wealth. Because the skills of advising and looking after the financial and holistic well-being of your client, which we would call, and I don’t want to bore the listeners here, a category one business, which is advisory, and a category two business, which is an asset management business. So think about traders, think about portfolio managers. Sure, there’s an overlap, but in fact the skills are different. Completely different. It’s a very important but frank admission as well. And I’ve been lucky, but I’ve had all those things in place to answer your question. It’s made a huge difference to me.

Michael Avery: 16:00

Yeah, my partner, as listeners to the podcast will know, suffered a stroke in her mid-40s. And she had also, by dint of luck, not because I was telling her, because I speak to all of these financial planners on my various platforms that you’ve got to do this, but through a group cover, through I think Liberty, had a really good financial adviser at the time there, and put everyone into some kind of product that had dread disease, income protection, all of that. And again, it’s not something that you sat down and said, well, what if this happens? It was through more good fortune than anything else, and thank goodness because it has allowed us not to have to worry about the financial element and come back and then reprioritise and refocus what is actually important. And I think that’s often what we miss. Certainly in the financial services industry, to your point, Glen, you think, well, people who work in financial services in particular would know this, they would understand it, they’d plan accordingly, but it is a particular skill set. Kim, do you often find that when you sit down with clients?

Kim Potgieter: 17:12

It’s a real grudge purchase. So whenever I mean, let me go back to even in our company, all of our staff have all of those as benefits because we’re a financial planning business, so we insist that the staff all have it. But the amount of times that we’re hiring a new person who’s in their early 20s and they’re coming to work for us, and now we’re telling them that a portion of their salary has to go to not only their life insurance, but their disability and their income protection and funeral. And you can just see the look on them. I just want more take-home money. Please can I just rather have more take-home money? And yet when we start it earlier, it just starts becoming a habit, and then we’ve got it in place so that if anything does go wrong, the unexpected is taken care of. And I think it’s the same with our clients when they come in. We’re not big sellers of commission-driven products, but having a look at the risk planning and assessing what the consequences would be if you could no longer work for two years, or the consequences if you’ve got a dread disease and you were fighting for your life. Well, how would you be able to take care of your family? So these discussions, as difficult as they are, should be happening because then when there is the unexpected, the outcome is so different for your loved ones. Instead, I think a lot of times in financial planning it is sexier, if you want to call it that, when we talk about what your returns are and your investments. But this is one of those elements. So there are different elements to having a holistic financial plan. And this is definitely one of those elements that is just as important as the others.

Michael Avery: 18:53

Given that, I think people often underestimate the complexity and the quantum of non-medical costs of illness, the specialist consultations, family logistics, household costs, the emotional costs of having to manage all of the paperwork as well while you’re unwell. What was your experience and what has been your experience so far, Glen, in terms of the costs of fighting this illness?

Glen Baker: 19:21

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. There are ancillary costs and associated costs that you don’t really think about perhaps on day one. So I’ll give you one or two examples. In my example, I was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. So you’re advised to get a palliative team. And we know what the role of the palliative team is. So they come around and check up on me, and if I need anything in an emergency, they are at hand, basically. And then obviously you’ve got the oncology and the chemotherapy, which is, I would say, a direct cost. But again, the cocktails change sometimes. Or the oncologist will say, okay, well, you’ll have a scan and say, well, this is working, we’ll carry on, or this doesn’t seem to be working, we need to change the cocktail a bit, and then your costs change. So it is a bit of a moving goal; the goalposts do tend to shift. So what you’ve got to do is see, okay, I’ve got this on medical aid. I do have a fairly comprehensive medical aid, which I must say I’ve just whined about and moaned about most of my life. I’ve got four kids. So you can imagine. I was a contributor. But now I’m very glad and grateful, almost, because there hasn’t been a question. They have a look at the facts, they ask for the records, and it’s been running into the millions, yeah.

Michael Avery: 21:13

I’m sure. But I mean you’re 20 months in. This is stage four pancreatic cancer. You’re looking like you’re fighting this thing. You really are, Glen. It’s an inspirational story, to be honest. But what do you think has been key in that for you?

Glen Baker: 21:33

I would go to the support base and the breadth and depth of it. And it’s always good to get up and get moving in the morning, knowing that I’ll be seeing Mike for coffee or going to rugby with Skip and Austin over the week. Those types of things.

Michael Avery: 22:01

You’re going to go watch the Springboks England this weekend at Ellis Park, of course.

Glen Baker: 22:05

I am. I am. Yeah, that’s certainly the plan.

Michael Avery: 22:09

Sad to see that, sorry and just to digress a little bit, they have reached, I think, their saturation point with some of the ticket prices, because we’re not sold out yet. Ellis Park, England. I think they’ve got that wrong a little bit. But then you talk to John Smit, they were in a deep financial hole through COVID, not having any ticket sales through the Lions series. I think that put them 400 million in the red. So they’ve had to catch up a little bit, but I suppose that’s a conversation for another day. So important there, Kim, to have support, to have family, to have friends, to have that around you. And as you’ve said so many times on this podcast, financial planning, yes, there’s rands and cents, but it’s really about the life you want to live and the relationships you want to cultivate. That should sit at the core of our financial planning, shouldn’t it?

Kim Potgieter: 22:59

It is at the core of everything we do. So even just as a consideration, watching Glen, he’s got his financial planner. Jenny comes in, has the meetings, and the three of them have the meetings together and put all the plans in place. So he’s had that support, and then when he’s at home, he’s got, as he says, his four children, they’ve all come home, they’ve been there for him, they’ve done what they need to do, just to show the appreciation, and I think it’s given Glen the absolute strength to do this fight because he is looking amazing. He looks way better now than he looked this time a year ago. This time a year ago, we were all very worried about him, but the fight is in him and it’s been wonderful to watch the actual courage of his whole family and then him, because now we’ve got a role model that we’re all looking at for when things are tough, because things do get tough.

Michael Avery: 24:01

Exactly. I’m sure there are dark moments, Glen, days where you just don’t feel all that great. For sure. How do you get yourself through those without getting too personal here? But have you developed a strategy, something that tends to lift you out of the fog?

Glen Baker: 24:19

I kind of wait, and I’m patient because you can only go on what you know and what you know is two weeks ago and four weeks ago and six weeks ago. And last year I was in chemo every week, and you know what happened last week. So I tend to be patient. I’m certainly reading a lot more, and I am listening to and inhaling podcasts at a furious rate. I have got TDS, you know what that means? Trump derangement syndrome. I can’t believe it, but I actually listen to a lot of it and I shake my head and think actually in South Africa we don’t live in too bad a place when governed by a maniac like that. But anyway, those are my personal opinions. And that’s how it is. I keep current.

Michael Avery: 25:23

Yeah, yeah. I love the Ruckman podcast at the moment. I think he had some great guests on recently talking about the kind of Indo-Pacific political theatre and how that’s changing with what’s going on with Xi Jinping and his leadership for life. And yeah, there is so much opportunity in today’s world to inhale information through the, what do they say, through a fire hose almost. At the same time, I also worry about the advent of AI and the slop that it’s producing, the effect it might have on us cognitively, people who lean too heavily into this technology, the cyber risks that it’s introducing. We’re talking about this as well, Kim. I want to bring it back to your financial planning a little bit, if you don’t mind, Glen. I mean, you’re obviously a seasoned veteran, portfolio manager, so you understand financial resilience really, really well. When it became personal, was there anything that maybe some of the theory didn’t quite capture as neatly for you? And did you sit down and, after processing this, sit down there with your financial plan and say, right, this is now how the plan has got to shift?

Glen Baker: 26:36

Are you talking about specifically in terms of the financial products and the returns that the portfolio generates? Or are you talking about the more holistic life?

Michael Avery: 26:47

For you, more the holistic life approach and this is now how much I want to leave behind, or how did that conversation go for you personally?

Glen Baker: 26:58

It was pretty easy. And Steph, who’s my planner and also was a colleague for three or four years, I know she’s as sharp as a button. I know that she knows me personally, and she will get to know my family better and better over time, and I was completely comfortable with that. So nothing really needed to change except the focus being on, rather than her focusing on me as the client, to focus on Jenny and the kids as the client. Did you then bring them into the conversations a whole lot more than you had been previously? Certainly Jenny on a direct basis and the kids at home, yeah.

Michael Avery: 27:49

So what did that entail in detail? Have you got now much more a letter of wishes or an expression of your will codified and in paper form? I have, but it hasn’t changed.

Glen Baker: 28:03

It hasn’t changed at all. At this point, it hasn’t changed. And maybe that’s because I do think perhaps there is a cloak of distorted reality that I’ve put over it. Because I’d rather things were too good to be true than too true to be good, sort of thing. If you understand that. But there may well be a time where the need for that arises, but I haven’t felt it thus far.

Kim Potgieter: 28:41

But I think Glen would, possibly because Glen had done the process before he even knew that he had cancer. Now he’s doing it during it. But at the same time, just the reason there weren’t those changes is because everything was in place. The conversations have changed, and if the conversations need to change in the future, he’s got the right team around him for those conversations to change. So he doesn’t need to worry, and that’s sometimes what people don’t realise when they’re choosing the person that they work with as their financial planner, that it is a person that the whole family can work with, that it is somebody that would be there, maybe even post them. And that’s why spending time, and I say this so often, spend time, find the right people, resonate with them. And when I say resonate, resonate from a relationship point of view, from an intuitive point of view, someone that you know has got your back. I mean, we can talk about cancer, we can talk about dementia, we can talk about all of these, but if our planner can’t talk to us about the emotional side of money and only talks about the number side of money, that’s not the support people are looking for. People are looking for the combination of being able to sit with this discomfort and being able to be unemotional to put the plan in place. I mean, if I think back to when it all happened, Glen, the paperwork that has to happen in order to get income protection paid out, in order to get disability paid out, the paperwork is unreal.

Michael Avery: 30:16

I think that’s something people underestimate as well, isn’t it, Glen? One hundred percent. I mean the amount of paperwork, the follow-up tests, and I’m just speaking from my personal experience with my next focus area, also on income protection. Was it, and I think for many people their ability to earn an income is critical. Was it as critical for you? Were you in a position to retire early and not have to lean in on that so much?

Glen Baker: 30:46

No, it was critical. And the real-life example is that I honestly think that if my income had gone to zero on the day that I stopped working, which was very soon after my diagnosis, we would have had to sell our house and downscale a bit. I think that would have had to come to pass.

Michael Avery: 31:10

I mean that’s not just breathing room, I think. And it’s just a stark reminder that these products, yes, they’re grudge purchases, as you said, Kim, but they are vitally, vitally important, aren’t they? Absolutely. How do you approach getting the balance right? And I recall us chatting the other day to Dr Ryan Fuller about increasing life insurance and, as you approach 50 and then 60, you’ve got to pay a lot more, but how do you get the balance right? Where should your focus be around income protection, disability? I think for many people that becomes a bit of a tricky conversation.

Kim Potgieter: 31:50

Well, from my side, when you’re doing it again is to look at the whole picture. So if you do have retirement investments and you do have other investments, how much would that play a part in it? And if they are short, then you would need to have more of these insurances. So I think always looking at the holistic picture because all the elements are important. A lot of times people just go, well, I’m just going to have life insurance. But that’s not taking care of a time like this. So it is way better to make sure that you have a part of income protection, a part of dread disease, and a part of your life insurance. And you can look at those numbers, but it needs to be taken into account with all your other numbers. And this is where I think people get it so wrong. Somebody comes to sell them something, it’s a little bit they fear-sell them, you know, what will happen to your family, they make up a number, and you got that number when you were 35. Like, have you reassessed it to look at what you need when you’re 55? So it should be just part of your planning process that that’s brought up on a regular basis.

Michael Avery: 32:57

And I think there’s a big difference between having cover and understanding cover, because not all cover is the same. Sometimes there are big exclusions that you need to know about, or there are waiting periods. And in a situation like this, the last thing you want to be doing is waiting, I don’t know, six to nine months. Kim, what is your experience around how people understand actually what it is that they’re buying?

Kim Potgieter: 33:23

Well, they don’t even know what income protection is. So I’ve seen cases where people have been sold income protection but they’re stay-at-home moms. So it’s got to relate to what you’re earning. And again also, when you get, so let’s take cancer for example. If you’re stage one, you’ll only get a percentage of your payout of your dread disease. I’m not talking income protection, I’m talking dread disease. Stage two, you get another payout, three and four. So you need to have somebody that explains it to you as opposed to just rushing. Because what do we all do? We’re busy, we’re so busy. We rush in, okay, okay, I need it. Yeah, you’re right. I need it. What do I need? A million, do I need two million? And then we sign the paper and then we quickly get on with our lives. It’s just, I suppose, being a little bit more intentional. It’s actually going, if this happened, would we have it? If this had happened, wouldn’t we have it? It’s a discussion, and you know what? That discussion can take half an hour that you can do once a year, and then it’s in place. Instead, what do we do? Four, five, six, seven, 10 years, 20 years. We haven’t re-looked at it, and sometimes the inflationary increases aren’t keeping up with our lifestyle expenses because we’ve just got so many expenses. I mean, as our kids are getting older and they’re going to high school and then they’re going to university, our expenses rise hugely.

Michael Avery: 34:46

And so many of them are choosing international universities because they’re seeing what’s happening to some of our local institutions ever since the former president, in his infinite wisdom, ignored the HEA commission and just said, let’s have fee-free tertiary education. Those costs, try sending a kid to a university and paying euros and trying to find accommodation, all of those things certainly add up. Obviously, and I think we focused on a lot of this over the podcast series, at the heart of these big life events is really the quality of the structures that we built beforehand often determines the quality of the outcomes. So what structures would you say matter most when illness arrives? And what we’ve heard from you, Glen, is that having a good medical aid, and everyone whinges about their medical aid, but you’ve got good cover when that happens, it actually comes in handy. Income protection, what else haven’t we touched on that you found important?

Glen Baker: 35:48

I think probably people look at the financial aspect as being the most important, but the human element of it is absolutely critical as well. And I’m not going to sit on the fence in terms of answering your question, but it’s extremely personal, and Kim did speak about that earlier. How people absorb and then deal with these types of things really is up to them. But in my personal circumstances I’ve been very lucky in terms of the structures that I have, and really those are work, family, friends, and sport. So I played less sport, but there’s nothing I love to talk about more or watch.

Michael Avery: 36:46

Yeah, yeah. Those are things that you’ve got to invest in over time. You can’t build that overnight. And again, why it’s so important not to neglect those things. I sadly know far too many people who invest maybe a bit too much time in their careers and wake up too late to say, oh, I’ve left my friends behind, or I now have very thin surface-level family relationships, and then you really need them when something like this happens, and then sadly it’s too late, isn’t it? Absolutely. You’ve worded it much better than I could. Kim, just as we end off the time, it’s been a very courageous conversation talking about something like this with a colleague who, but I must say, Glen, you’ve made it a whole lot easier because your attitude is one of just absolute courage that you’re going to fight this thing and the proof is there, you’re looking really good sitting in front of me. What would your advice be to someone listening to this podcast who hasn’t really given much thought to this at all in their financial planning? Because let’s face it, we all think we’re invulnerable, no matter how old we are, we think it’ll never happen to us.

Kim Potgieter: 38:05

Just to start, so small steps. I mean, maybe what we’ve spoken about today, if you haven’t got any of it, it seems a little bit overwhelming, but it’s getting that plan in place. And once you’ve got that plan in place, then you can start doing the implementation of everything. But if you’re sitting listening to this and then you do nothing about it, then your outcome won’t necessarily be what you want it to be. So, like all financial planning, it’s taking that time and investing it for yourself and going, I’m going to get off my busy hamster wheel of life and I’m going to look into all these aspects and get a financial plan. But I think what I’m leaving today with more is do that in parallel to making sure that you are spending a focused amount of time with the people you love and the people who are there for you, and be there for them also. So I’m leaving with that as my biggest takeout, and Glen always teaches me a lot every time I have a conversation with him, and yeah, for me it would be that.

Michael Avery: 39:14

Well, Glen, I’ve got to ask you which way you see the Test series against the All Blacks going, this greatest rivalry tour, someone who loves his sport and I’m sure loves his rugby as well. A year out from what could be a three-peat World Cup for the Boks, we’re without one of our star flyhalves in Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, and Handré Pollard didn’t have a great one for the Bulls in the final against Leinster. So we’re looking a bit thin at 10. I think our depth is going to be seriously tested. You’ve got Dave Rennie coming in as the coach of the All Blacks. He’s actually got a pretty good record against South African teams. How do you see that one going?

Glen Baker: 39:52

Yeah, so I certainly think the All Blacks have got a couple of things in their favour. One is that, and that will make them incredibly hungry, they haven’t had a good success rate against the Boks. But the main thing is there hasn’t been a tour like this for so many years, and if we go back to my childhood, and I understand that I’m in the room with people quite a bit younger than me, but going back to the legendary stories of the 1974 Lions and the Lions tours and the All Blacks tours, which were proper rugby tours.

Michael Avery: 40:32

Yeah.

Glen Baker: 40:32

Four tests, midweek games, you had this expression of dirt trackers versus test, all of those types of things. And I think we’ve got so much to actually look forward to, but they will be hungry. They’ll be well organised and they’re a rugby nation, and we know of their passion and skill. But I’ve got to say I am a Rassie Erasmus convert. If someone were to ask me the question, and let’s pretend it’s one of you in the room, who would you like to have dinner with? I would have dinner with Rassie because he’s changed the game and he’s actually gone a long way to changing the mood of the country because I think rugby is now an aspirational sport to such an extent that I think it will hold us in good stead. We won’t always be the number one rugby nation, but we certainly are a very powerful one, and I would say that man to man we would have a better side than the All Blacks.

Michael Avery: 41:39

Yeah, I couldn’t put it better myself. And in terms of Rassie Erasmus’ impact, maybe apart from Madiba donning Francois Pienaar’s number seven jersey in terms of nation-building, there are few who have done as much as he’s done. And anyone who’s watched Chasing the Sun, go and have a look at how we approach things like transformation. I know in business we have this debate around BEE, the costs versus the benefits. Is there a sunset clause? Can we just move on, move to a merit-based approach? And he sat down, he said, these things need to be spoken about. We’ve got to talk about the elephant in the room. There’s still far too many sevens in townships in Zwide who are not getting picked, they’re not even on the radar. So we’ve got to go out and he invested in those academies and those specialist units that now go out there. And everyone who plays with the Springboks, who puts that Springboks jumper on, knows they’re there on merit and they play like it, and the team benefits from that. And the mood in the country benefits from it because ultimately you want to support winners. I mean, look at Bafana. They started the World Cup, there was a bit of doubt. We lost the first game, then we drew, and then we won. And look how quickly the mood changed. Everyone wants to support winning teams. That’s a pity what happened against Canada, but they put up a good fight. And I think Rassie, he’s got an EQ in buckets, doesn’t he? Wonderful man. But he’s also got what you’ve got, Glen Baker. He’s got the dog in the fight, and I think it’s what the Springboks have got as well. So thank you so much for courageously coming on and sharing your journey on the podcast Life Chapters, Money Choices. There are often interviews we do that are technical, in areas of strategy or lessons in investing, but I think this one was deeply human. So, Glen, thank you very much and all power to your elbow in continuing the good fight. Thank you. Thank you. Much appreciated.