Iona Bain: Solo Finance, Living Alone & The 'Single Supplement'

08/18/22 • 58 min

Iona Bain is a personal finance expert who appears regularly on BBC Morning Live and writes a weekly column for the i Paper. She’s written two books, her second is Own It – a millennial guide to investing. On a personal level, she’s also recently made the big step of buying her first flat as a solo buyer – a process she described to me in an email as a ‘learning curve’. In this episode, we discuss questions around solo finance – including the cost of living alone and the dreaded ‘single’ supplement’ – which, as many of you will know, is the additional cost often associated with doing things solo, from getting a hotel room to buying food in the supermarket. So many of you had specific questions you wanted me to ask Iona, so in the second half of this episode I’ll be bringing out some crowd-sourced audience questions.

We discuss, among other things:

How Iona went from a musician who stored cash from gigs in a piggy bank, to a leading money expert.
Iona's journey to buying her own place alone (and why she's transparent about having had help)
Why our relationship with money is about more than just numbers – there's emotion involved, too
The Single Supplement and how to navigate it
How learning to spend time alone can help us not only save, but also spend on what matters to us

You can order Iona Bain's latest book, Own It, now from Bookshop.org.

You can also order my book, Alonement: How To Be Alone and Absolutely Own It, which is based on this very podcast, now from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.

Thank you so much to Flash Pack for sponsoring this season of the podcast. Flash Pack is a travel company that offers boutique group adventures for solo travellers in their 30s and 40s. Visit flashpack.com/alonement to learn more and quote ALONEMENT at check-out for £100 off your first trip.

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Contact: [email protected]

With a one-off payment of £5, you can listen to the Alonement podcast ad-free. https://plus.acast.com/s/alonement.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We discuss, among other things:

How Iona went from a musician who stored cash from gigs in a piggy bank, to a leading money expert.
Iona's journey to buying her own place alone (and why she's transparent about having had help)
Why our relationship with money is about more than just numbers – there's emotion involved, too
The Single Supplement and how to navigate it
How learning to spend time alone can help us not only save, but also spend on what matters to us

You can order Iona Bain's latest book, Own It, now from Bookshop.org.

You can also order my book, Alonement: How To Be Alone and Absolutely Own It, which is based on this very podcast, now from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.

Twitter:

Instagram:

Contact: [email protected]

With a one-off payment of £5, you can listen to the Alonement podcast ad-free. https://plus.acast.com/s/alonement.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Abigail Bergstrom: Hanging Out With The Best Version Of Yourself

Welcome to the tenth and final episode of season 6. This week’s episode is the second of two live recordings I did back to back at Kings Place in London – which was recorded in front of an audience. My guest is Abigail Bergstrom, the literary agent behind some of the biggest bestselling books in the past few years. More recently, at the beginning of this year, Abigail published her own debut novel, titled What A Shame. It is a beautifully-written story which explores everything from heartbreak and healing to the occult. I can testify to loving Abigail’s book so much I read the whole thing in one sitting, over the course of an evening. During our conversation, we discussed among other things the importance of turning up as your ‘best self’ for alonement (i.e not completely hungover or tired – because you wouldn’t turn up like that for a date!); the role that alone time plays in emotional healing; plus, why despite being a lover of solitude Abigail will never be taking herself off to a cabin in the woods – and feels a little bit miffed when her boyfriend goes for solo breaks in a log cabin. I hope you enjoy listening.

You can order Abigail Bergstrom’s book, What a Shame, now from Amazon and Waterstones.

You can also order my book, Alonement: How To Be Alone and Absolutely Own It, which is based on this very podcast, now from Amazon and Waterstones.

Twitter:

Instagram:

Contact: [email protected]

With a one-off payment of £5, you can listen to the Alonement podcast ad-free. https://plus.acast.com/s/alonement.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Me Time | Alain De Botton: The Art Of Getting To Know Yourself

Welcome to ‘Me Time’, Alonement’s new, weekly series of 10-minute mini episodes from the archives. We’ll be showcasing the very best wisdom from some of our favourite former guests, in bitesize episodes designed for those smaller pockets of Alonement that you get throughout your day.

I'm kicking off with a slice of Alonement history: an excerpt from the episode with philosopher, author & School of Life founder Alain de Botton, originally recorded in November 2019. It was actually the first ever episode I recorded of this podcast, and one of the few I got to record in person ahead of the pandemic – at Alain’s office in north London. This recording happened at a time where I was still shaping my own understanding of alonement, and why it matters. Alain was challenging, in a way that proved invaluable. There’s no instant magic in taking time alone, he argued. Long periods of time alone won’t lead to self-knowledge, just like that. Essentially, we need to think about what we’re doing in that alone time, and make sure we’re spending that time in a conscious way - in order to make it ALONEMENT. In this clip, he takes us through a practical exercise we can do when we’re alone: an exercise that involves asking ourselves hard questions about our relationships, our career, and our friends – in order to work out who we are, and what we want; to tune into our intuition, rather than let our major life decisions be dictated by external influences.

With a one-off payment of £5, you can listen to the Alonement podcast ad-free. https://plus.acast.com/s/alonement.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.