Own It! How our generation can invest our way to a better future
By Iona Bain
Release date: 16th March 2021: TODAY!
“What I propose in this book is that the younger generations can, and indeed MUST, use their amazing potential to give the world of money the kick up the bum it needs.”
– Iona Bain
Low wages, high house prices, zero reward for saving and the catastrophic fallout from Covid-19 … young people have had a rough ride.
Own It! by The UK’s leading millennial money expert Iona Bain will help young people own their financial futures once and for all, debunking that investing is just for city boys in shiny shoes, and proving that anyone can invest if armed with the right knowledge.
Own It! is split into two parts – the why and the how. Part 1 makes the case for investing, even (or especially!) in uncertain times like these, and why readers need to prep their finances for it. Iona
discusses two big investments – your first home and workplace pension.
In part 2, Iona moves onto the ‘how’, charting the history of investing and analysing the different kinds of investment tech available today. The book unravels the truth about so-called must-buy
investments (Facebook! Bitcoin! Forex!) before suggesting genuinely effective ways to navigate the markets.
With its fun and approachable tone, Own It! will help younger generations to demystify savings, pensions and investing. Iona gives the lowdown on things like robo-advisers, auto-enrolment and
green investing whilst warning about potential dangers, such as being tempted into the high risk world of forex by glamorous Instagram influencers.
About the author
Iona Bain is one of the most high-profile financial journalists in broadcast media today, frequently speaking and presenting on TV and radio. Iona founded the pioneering Young Money Blog in 2011 and has since become the UK’s go-to voice on young personal finance. She has presented special editions for Radio 4’s Moneybox programme on topics like financial education and fraud, is
a regular pundit on BBC News and recently became Radio 1’s Money Hacker, where she advises young listeners on the station’s flagship advice programme Life Hacks. She also joined the economist Paul Johnson for a special four-part Radio 4 series ‘The Austerity Audit’ in 2020 and other appearances have included Question Time, Newsnight, ITV Tonight and Woman’s Hour.
Iona knows first hand just how daunting it can be to take that first big step on the path towards understanding your money, what it does in the real economy, and how you can harness its longterm
potential to boost your own prosperity. Iona describes her own financial wake-up call in the introduction of Own It!:
“In my early 20s, I was a musician (I know, right?) and back then, I thought money was boring and grubby. But one night, everything changed. I was working as a pianist in a bar in Glasgow… I put the money in a piggybank and kept it in my parents’ house in Edinburgh, where I was living to save money. On that fateful evening, my parents and I arrived home only to discover the house had been burgled. Guess what was missing? Mr Piggybank – and the £500 I had put in him over six months. I was gutted. It was only when a police officer came to take a statement from me, and I sheepishly informed him that I kept my money as a grown-ass 23-year-old woman in a piggybank only fit for an eight year-old, that I decided things had to change. A few months later, I started the Young Money Blog.”
Own it! is the trustworthy, relatable companion that young people need to guide them through the maze that is modern investing, born out of Iona’s conviction that young people have an incredible opportunity to really own their financial futures post-Covid. While other books may pretend that there is an easy smooth route away from the unpredictable, rocky nature of investing, Own It! acknowledges that there is no way to bypass the investing rollercoaster: that everyone just needs to hop on, stay strapped in, and try to enjoy the ride.
