2023-05-25_Invest_in_the_Social_Climate_of_Your_Children
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00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight,
00:00:34.200 | and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:37.600 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:40.400 | My name is Joshua Sheets. I'm your host.
00:00:42.200 | Recently, I completed a 17-part series on how to invest into your children at a young age.
00:00:51.000 | This series discussed an important theme for me,
00:00:54.800 | which is simply that you can spend money and invest money effectively into children
00:00:59.800 | at a very young age in many ways other than buying mutual funds for their retirement or for their college, etc.
00:01:06.800 | Nothing wrong with college plans, retirement funds, etc.,
00:01:10.200 | but that shouldn't be the first thing that you do with your money.
00:01:14.400 | And if you have to choose between doing some of the investments that I talked about and a college fund,
00:01:21.200 | you should choose the investments that I talked about.
00:01:23.000 | If you can do both, do both.
00:01:24.400 | Now, as I was getting towards the end of that series, I wanted to finish it.
00:01:27.800 | And so frankly, I just hurried to finish it because I wanted to finish it up.
00:01:31.400 | I didn't want to lag on.
00:01:33.200 | I didn't want to lose listeners who don't care about it and wanted some other content.
00:01:37.400 | So I hurried just a little bit to finish it.
00:01:39.600 | And as I reflected on it in the weeks after closing out that series,
00:01:43.400 | I realized there were several topics that are too important for me to not come back and append to that series.
00:01:50.400 | And so in today's episode, we're going to begin with the first one that I neglected to cover as far as an investment.
00:01:58.400 | I'm leading off with this one because it is a very significant expenditure of money
00:02:05.000 | that also makes a very significant difference in the lifestyle of your children.
00:02:12.600 | To put it very succinctly, if you want to invest into your children effectively,
00:02:18.800 | you should invest into the social climate and environment of which your children grow up,
00:02:28.800 | in which your children grow up.
00:02:30.800 | Invest into the social climate and environment in which your children grow up.
00:02:36.800 | Now, there are many ways to do it.
00:02:38.400 | And of course, you will go quickly in your own mind to the things that are applicable to you.
00:02:44.200 | But we need to not skip past the obvious, but rather stop and acknowledge it.
00:02:49.000 | And recognize that the children, the peers that surround your own children,
00:02:54.800 | will make a massive difference in your children's lives.
00:03:02.000 | Success gurus for years have said that more or less, we pretty much model,
00:03:06.400 | or we're very similar to the five people that we spend the most time around.
00:03:09.600 | And I think that's absolutely true.
00:03:12.000 | That if we look at your life on virtually any dimension,
00:03:15.400 | and we make a list of the five people, the five friends that you spend the most time with,
00:03:20.800 | we will come away from that list recognizing that you reflect the average of those people.
00:03:29.200 | We could measure this financially.
00:03:31.400 | And while there may be one or two outliers,
00:03:33.400 | somebody who's unusually wealthy or unusually poor in general,
00:03:36.800 | you spend time with people that are at a similar amount of wealth,
00:03:40.800 | a similar income level to yourself.
00:03:43.400 | And they reflect on you.
00:03:45.800 | This would be the case in terms of careers.
00:03:48.600 | You generally spend time with people who are involved in careers
00:03:52.600 | that are similar to your own on some dimension.
00:03:56.000 | Interests, hobbies, worldviews, political affiliation or political conviction,
00:04:03.400 | religious affiliation or religious conviction, even to the basics of your life.
00:04:10.000 | One of the things that I find interesting is as my wife and I have had children,
00:04:15.400 | most of our friends who haven't had children basically disappear from our lives.
00:04:20.400 | I still love many of them and I would like to spend more time with them,
00:04:24.000 | but the lifestyles just seem incompatible.
00:04:26.600 | They don't seem to particularly be interested in spending a ton of time with us,
00:04:32.000 | with we who have children, and the ways that they live their lives,
00:04:35.800 | the things that they do are just incompatible with our own responsibilities.
00:04:39.600 | So we spend time with a lot of other people who have children.
00:04:43.200 | Even the number of children that a family has is probably reflective
00:04:47.200 | of what is relatively normal in their social circles.
00:04:50.800 | The average number of children for the people that I spend the most time with is about four.
00:04:55.200 | Sure, there are some who have two, some who have six, some who have more,
00:04:58.800 | but usually it's about four.
00:05:00.600 | And that just kind of reflects my social group,
00:05:03.800 | whereas that would be a very unusual number for some people in other social groups.
00:05:09.000 | What's perhaps more important for the long-term success and development of our children
00:05:15.000 | is that the kinds of people they spend time with
00:05:19.000 | are going to make a significant impact on their ambitions in life,
00:05:24.800 | on the kinds of things that they do with their days.
00:05:29.200 | If your children are spending time around a bunch of people
00:05:32.800 | who think that joining gangs and committing violence is a cool thing to do,
00:05:37.000 | then your children have a much higher likelihood of joining gangs and committing violence.
00:05:43.400 | If your children spend a lot of time around people who think that
00:05:47.200 | playing video games all night is a cool thing to do,
00:05:50.200 | there's a much higher likelihood that your children will also play video games most of the night.
00:05:56.400 | If your children are spending time around people who think that
00:06:00.400 | doing well in school is a cool thing to do,
00:06:03.000 | there's a much higher likelihood that they will do well in school.
00:06:06.800 | If your children are spending time around people who think that
00:06:10.000 | doing well in school is an uncool thing to do,
00:06:13.800 | there's a much higher likelihood that your children will not do well in school.
00:06:19.200 | If your children are spending time around the kinds of people who don't go to college,
00:06:23.800 | there's a good chance that your children won't go to college.
00:06:27.000 | If your children are spending time around the kind of people who know that
00:06:30.400 | we are the kind of people who go to college,
00:06:32.400 | there's a good chance that your children will go to college.
00:06:35.800 | If your children are spending time around other children
00:06:39.600 | for whom the family culture is that you apply for Ivy League education,
00:06:45.200 | Ivy League schools,
00:06:46.600 | good chance your children will think about applying to Ivy League schools.
00:06:50.200 | If your children are spending time with people who think it's normal to
00:06:54.400 | go abroad and take a gap year,
00:06:56.600 | there's a good chance that your children will go abroad and take a gap year.
00:07:01.600 | If you spend time with people who think it's normal to go and
00:07:05.000 | spend a year in missionary service following high school,
00:07:08.600 | there's a good chance your children will go and spend a year in missionary service
00:07:13.400 | following high school.
00:07:15.200 | The list goes on.
00:07:16.400 | The point is that the peers that your children are surrounded by
00:07:21.400 | will affect their life choices.
00:07:27.800 | They will do certain things because of the peers that they are surrounded by.
00:07:33.600 | I guess one personal anecdote that to me is just a simple example.
00:07:37.800 | I was homeschooled prior to seventh grade.
00:07:40.200 | In homeschooling, grades are not particularly important.
00:07:43.800 | You don't spend a lot of time on grades.
00:07:46.000 | I didn't really understand the importance of grades,
00:07:48.600 | but generally my teachers, my mother and my grandmother who schooled me,
00:07:54.400 | taught me to do well and taught me to study hard as best as I could.
00:07:58.000 | I didn't do well in everything when I went into a traditional conventional school,
00:08:03.000 | but I did fairly well.
00:08:05.000 | And I remember how surprised I was the first time I got back a paper that had received an A,
00:08:10.800 | 100%, no incorrect answers on it.
00:08:13.600 | And I just thought it was normal to look at the paper and set it on my desk.
00:08:17.800 | And some of my fellow classmates in the school,
00:08:19.800 | and by the way, this was a not inexpensive private school,
00:08:24.400 | some of my classmates started commenting on the grade that I had gotten.
00:08:29.600 | And I learned almost immediately that doing well on tests is not particularly cool.
00:08:36.600 | And from then on, for the duration of my scholastic career,
00:08:40.800 | I always hid my grades whenever tests were handed back.
00:08:45.200 | Now that doesn't mean that my name didn't appear on honor roll lists, etc.,
00:08:49.400 | with some kind of public acclaim,
00:08:51.400 | but it wasn't cool to do very well and get a 98% on a quiz or a test
00:08:57.400 | when the guy next to you got a 70%.
00:08:59.600 | It brought in all kinds of social trouble.
00:09:01.800 | And so some people would have scored fewer points.
00:09:07.000 | I wasn't one who did that, but I was one who learned to hide my grades.
00:09:12.200 | Another personal anecdote is simply college.
00:09:16.200 | I went to college almost exclusively because I was in the kind of social group that went to college.
00:09:25.600 | I had really very few other reasons.
00:09:28.200 | Now, of course, there were some background reasons of,
00:09:30.600 | "I want to go to college and get a good job," etc.
00:09:33.200 | But I went to college pretty much because we're the kind of people who go to college.
00:09:37.000 | All my friends are going to college.
00:09:38.400 | Why wouldn't I go to college?
00:09:40.000 | I didn't have any alternative plan.
00:09:44.400 | That's not necessarily a bad thing.
00:09:47.400 | The peer pressure to go to college, at least for people who are capable
00:09:50.400 | and have the cognitive ability to succeed in a college environment, is great.
00:09:56.600 | But it's an example of how peer pressure impacts your children.
00:10:03.000 | So what can you do as a parent?
00:10:05.800 | Well, you can teach your children your perspective on life, your worldview,
00:10:10.800 | how you think about the issues that you're going to face, and that will be very impactful.
00:10:18.200 | But if your worldview and your perspective, your family values, are significantly different
00:10:26.400 | than the peers that your child is surrounded by,
00:10:29.200 | then your influence will be substantially diminished.
00:10:34.800 | On the other hand, if you will surround your child by peers who generally reflect the kind of values
00:10:42.200 | that you and your family believe are important,
00:10:46.800 | then your influence will be more effective in the life of your children,
00:10:52.600 | because it's backed up by all of the people that are surrounding you.
00:10:57.600 | And we know this intuitively, but it's important to identify it explicitly,
00:11:03.200 | because this can make a huge difference when you're making some very large financial decisions.
00:11:10.200 | The first decision that will make a huge impact is simply the zip code in which your house is located,
00:11:17.200 | the neighborhood in which you live.
00:11:20.000 | When you choose to buy a house or to live in a certain neighborhood,
00:11:24.800 | you're not only getting a functional building to live in,
00:11:29.600 | you're getting a whole lifestyle that goes with that building.
00:11:33.800 | I've talked about this in other episodes by talking about the expenses that come with certain houses.
00:11:39.400 | It's very important that you make an appropriate decision with your housing,
00:11:44.400 | because, for example, if you buy a house in a cheap neighborhood,
00:11:48.000 | then a cheap car looks pretty normal, cheap vacations seem pretty normal.
00:11:53.800 | And if your children are hanging out with the peers that are in your neighborhood,
00:11:57.000 | then they're not going to be worried about the fact that we drive a Chevrolet and not a Cadillac.
00:12:02.200 | They're not going to be worried about the fact that we go camping on vacations and not to ski resorts, etc.
00:12:07.400 | And so that can be a blessing. It can cause you to have fewer expenses that are associated with it.
00:12:13.600 | On the other hand, if you purchase a house in a different kind of neighborhood,
00:12:17.800 | then your inexpensive Honda Civic is going to look out of place.
00:12:24.000 | And now you need to upgrade to a luxury brand.
00:12:27.400 | Your camping vacations or fishing out by the lake is going to seem a little out of place
00:12:33.200 | when your neighbors and their children are consistently inviting you and your family
00:12:37.400 | to go on international vacations or to expensive ski resorts, etc.
00:12:44.800 | Even the activities that you do, the way that the kind of clothes that you wear,
00:12:48.600 | everything that you do is going to be impacted by where you live.
00:12:53.800 | This is something that you can, you need to consciously consider
00:12:58.000 | and make a choice that is right for you.
00:13:01.200 | Make the most fully informed choice that you are capable of making.
00:13:07.400 | It's not an easy choice.
00:13:10.600 | If you choose an inexpensive house in a low-cost neighborhood,
00:13:15.000 | then yes, your personal outlay of cash might be different,
00:13:19.800 | but perhaps your neighbors and your neighbor's children
00:13:23.800 | are not going to press your child to accomplish all that he's capable of.
00:13:29.200 | On the other hand, if you move into a tony neighborhood with wealthy people,
00:13:34.400 | perhaps those networks are going to be very helpful to you and to your child.
00:13:41.000 | But the cost of maintaining those networks might be really significant
00:13:45.200 | and your personal expenses might be pretty high.
00:13:49.800 | I can't tell you what's right.
00:13:52.600 | All I can tell you is it's an important set of considerations.
00:13:57.400 | It's an important thing to consider.
00:14:01.400 | There may be ways, by the way, to navigate that environment.
00:14:06.800 | So for example, I've drawn a very simple comparison
00:14:11.400 | between a less expensive neighborhood and a more expensive neighborhood,
00:14:15.000 | but life is not always like that.
00:14:17.400 | You might live in a city where there's much more mixing of cultures.
00:14:22.600 | You might live in a downtown city where people of differing cultures
00:14:26.200 | are much closer together.
00:14:27.400 | The big challenge though in the United States is simply
00:14:30.600 | that's hard to do in the United States.
00:14:32.800 | It can be easier to do in some international contexts,
00:14:35.800 | but it's hard to do in the United States.
00:14:38.600 | Years ago I read Charles Murray's book called "Coming Apart,
00:14:42.200 | the State of White America from 1960 to"
00:14:45.200 | I can't remember what his ending date was,
00:14:46.600 | but basically 50 years on from 1960, probably 2010.
00:14:51.400 | And one of the most dramatic trends that Murray traces in that book
00:14:55.800 | with overwhelming evidence is the separation of the classes
00:15:02.200 | in the United States of America.
00:15:04.400 | How we used to live in an environment where the company CEO
00:15:09.400 | could live very close to the low-level managers of a company.
00:15:14.800 | But today that disparity, that cultural disparity is so wide
00:15:19.200 | that it's very unusual for people to live near people who are unlike them.
00:15:24.200 | I think that's a tragedy, I think it's a shame, but it is what it is.
00:15:28.200 | And so there's a good chance that you're going to have to choose
00:15:31.000 | to move near people who are like you or who reflect the kind of values
00:15:35.600 | that are important for you in order for your children
00:15:38.800 | to be surrounded by those people.
00:15:41.400 | So be careful and consider it very carefully.
00:15:44.600 | That's your biggest decision is where do we live?
00:15:47.400 | Everything else is going to pale in comparison to that.
00:15:51.000 | Now, after the importance of where we live,
00:15:55.000 | we go to where do your children go to school?
00:15:58.600 | And here there's a very frustrating set of decisions.
00:16:03.200 | On the one hand, you have government schools
00:16:06.400 | that you don't have to pay any extra for.
00:16:08.800 | And sometimes those government schools can be great.
00:16:12.000 | And here I'm measuring them on the scale of social, well-run socially.
00:16:18.200 | Not a lot of people in those schools who are unfit for school,
00:16:21.400 | who are poorly disciplined, etc.
00:16:23.200 | Or they can be terrible.
00:16:25.000 | And a lot of this is driven by where you live.
00:16:27.600 | In many cities there will be a pocket where there's a school
00:16:30.000 | that is surrounded by very wealthy people,
00:16:33.000 | people who take good care of their children,
00:16:35.000 | who have their children under control and well-disciplined.
00:16:37.400 | And you'll pay a massive premium to purchase a house in that neighborhood
00:16:41.000 | because of the access to the local government school.
00:16:45.600 | And it goes the other way as well.
00:16:48.200 | So you have a choice.
00:16:49.800 | What's the environment of the local government school?
00:16:53.600 | What's the environment of the local private school options?
00:16:58.000 | Which of these environments is going to be better for my child?
00:17:04.000 | If you're looking at a tuition bill of $20,000 a year, $40,000 a year,
00:17:10.200 | I guess in some cases you can find smaller schools, right?
00:17:12.600 | But $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year
00:17:15.800 | for some of the most elite private high schools,
00:17:19.800 | that's an expensive, expensive bill.
00:17:23.600 | It's a big investment.
00:17:26.000 | And yet it's one of those things that can be very impactful
00:17:29.200 | into the lives of your children.
00:17:32.000 | If you're around children whose parents are together,
00:17:36.200 | high rates of marriage, high rates of family stability,
00:17:41.200 | families who are not falling apart due to financial strain and stress, etc.,
00:17:46.800 | makes a big difference in the way that your child looks at life
00:17:50.600 | versus your child being surrounded by children being raised in broken homes,
00:17:55.600 | low socioeconomic ability,
00:17:58.000 | people wondering whether they're going to get kicked out this month or not.
00:18:01.400 | Huge difference in the experience of your child.
00:18:04.400 | As you start to get older and more career-oriented,
00:18:08.400 | the kinds of opportunities that your children have,
00:18:10.800 | the kinds of summer jobs that your children can have,
00:18:13.200 | the kinds of internships they may take,
00:18:15.200 | the kinds of volunteer opportunities they have,
00:18:18.000 | are going to be driven based upon who they go to school with
00:18:20.800 | and who their peers are.
00:18:23.200 | It's a huge impact.
00:18:26.000 | Go to one school, you're going to get a summer job working at the local fair,
00:18:30.200 | dipping ice cream at the local ice cream shop.
00:18:32.800 | Go to another school, good chance that you can get a summer job
00:18:35.800 | working in the local lawyer's office,
00:18:38.200 | interning for the local stock brokerage.
00:18:42.000 | Huge difference based upon what school your children go to.
00:18:46.600 | As you move into college, this is even more pronounced.
00:18:50.600 | I consider that one very legitimate reason to choose one school over another
00:18:56.000 | is the social environment and the social dynamic.
00:19:01.800 | I don't know how to say what it's worth.
00:19:04.400 | I don't think somebody should go and get a giant pile of student loan debt
00:19:09.400 | to go to an expensive school that's not a good fit for them
00:19:11.800 | just so they might meet somebody.
00:19:14.200 | But on the other hand, if they meet the right people at that school,
00:19:16.600 | they have the right network, it can pay off massively.
00:19:20.800 | Simple example.
00:19:22.400 | I think and worry a lot about the marriage of my children.
00:19:26.400 | As a parent, one of my responsibilities is to help my children to marry well,
00:19:31.400 | assuming that in the fullness of time, the desire to marry,
00:19:33.800 | which I don't see why they wouldn't.
00:19:37.800 | Of course, many children don't desire to marry,
00:19:39.800 | but I think that's largely driven by what they see in marriage.
00:19:43.400 | I live in a community in which marriage is the norm.
00:19:45.800 | Most people are married, almost no divorces,
00:19:48.600 | and so it just seems like the natural default option.
00:19:51.800 | We'll see if that continues.
00:19:53.800 | But because of that, I want to make sure my children are around people
00:20:00.600 | who are suited for marriage.
00:20:03.800 | And one of the most important ways that a child is suited for marriage,
00:20:08.400 | is a good marriage prospect, is simply by growing up in a stable family
00:20:16.000 | where the child saw a healthy, successful marriage lived out before his eyes
00:20:21.800 | his entire lifetime.
00:20:24.400 | One of the great tragedies of our day,
00:20:26.200 | in the wake of widespread collapse of marriages,
00:20:31.000 | is simply that many children are growing up without a concept of strong family unit,
00:20:38.400 | strong marriage environment.
00:20:40.200 | And that can make it very difficult for them to model healthy behaviors.
00:20:45.000 | Whereas, if a child has always seen healthy, loving, respectful relationships
00:20:51.400 | between mothers and fathers,
00:20:53.600 | it becomes fairly normal and straightforward to do what they have seen.
00:20:59.600 | So, we want to make sure that our children are around,
00:21:04.400 | or as they're looking in a dating pool and considering a pool of potential mates,
00:21:10.200 | we want to make sure that the mates that are around them are going to reflect them.
00:21:13.800 | What does that mean?
00:21:15.000 | Well, often it means that you want your children to be
00:21:18.600 | in a higher socioeconomic sphere of students.
00:21:24.000 | And you want your children to be in an environment
00:21:26.800 | where the fellow student body is going to largely reflect
00:21:31.600 | your child's religious, political, and general worldview perspectives.
00:21:38.800 | And you often are going to pay for that.
00:21:41.400 | I think it's probably a good investment when it works out.
00:21:46.000 | Wealthier people, why do I talk about wealth?
00:21:48.400 | Because, ironically, one of the greatest predictors of stability of families
00:21:55.800 | is wealth and income.
00:21:58.400 | People have this, I guess we could go to Sight Murray's book,
00:22:01.600 | again, that book is getting old, long in the tooth,
00:22:03.800 | maybe it's been updated by someone else,
00:22:06.600 | but one of the most interesting things I learned from that years ago,
00:22:10.400 | when I first read it, was that you have this weird dichotomy
00:22:14.600 | in modern American society.
00:22:17.600 | People, many people, have the idea that middle class and low class people,
00:22:24.000 | measured by socioeconomic scale, not by class,
00:22:27.200 | but middle and low income earners, middle and low wealth,
00:22:30.600 | people in the socioeconomic scale, are devout religious conservatives,
00:22:36.800 | and that they have high rates of marriage,
00:22:39.200 | and they have children in wedlock, etc.,
00:22:42.400 | and that wealthy people are more likely to be secular,
00:22:47.200 | more likely to not be religious, of course, that's what secular means,
00:22:50.600 | excuse me, to be secular, to not worry so much about traditional moral values, etc.
00:22:57.400 | The data indicates the exact opposite.
00:22:59.800 | Wealthy people generally verbalize a very loose and accepting language.
00:23:07.000 | They say, "Oh, anything counts, there's no need for marriage between men and women,
00:23:11.800 | you can do what you want, live how you want, you do you."
00:23:15.600 | That's the kind of language, that's what they say with their mouths,
00:23:19.200 | that's what they say with their institutions.
00:23:21.800 | It's not how they live.
00:23:23.600 | They live in long-term, committed marriages, close family units.
00:23:28.600 | On the other hand, people in the middle and lower socioeconomic scale
00:23:33.600 | tend to not marry at all, huge numbers of children born out of wedlock,
00:23:38.800 | marriages often end in divorce, you just have chaos in families.
00:23:42.600 | And so a good reliable predictor, if you want your children to marry well in the long run,
00:23:46.400 | which of course makes a huge difference in their overall long-term economic success,
00:23:51.200 | is to be around the kinds of people for whom marriage is considered normal,
00:23:56.200 | and there's a high pressure for them to stay married.
00:24:01.000 | Similar things with religious, political affiliation, etc.
00:24:05.800 | If you're going to fall in love with somebody,
00:24:07.600 | it's kind of dumb to fall in love with somebody who's very dissimilar to you.
00:24:12.600 | It's a lot better if you fall in love with somebody who reflects your values.
00:24:18.000 | After the choice of home, after the choice of school,
00:24:21.200 | then we get to community events, or clubs, organizations, etc.
00:24:26.000 | Because regardless of what neighborhood you live in,
00:24:28.200 | regardless of what school your children are a part of,
00:24:32.000 | there are other things that you can do.
00:24:34.800 | Where does your family attend church?
00:24:37.400 | What activities are you involved in during the week?
00:24:40.800 | What kinds of community organizations do you spend time in?
00:24:44.600 | All of these are important.
00:24:47.200 | Lest you think that I'm encouraging you to spend all your money
00:24:51.600 | on some kind of hoity-toity lifestyle, I'm not.
00:24:54.800 | I believe that diversity of life experience is extremely valuable, helpful, and important.
00:25:01.600 | Don't just spend your time with rich people.
00:25:03.800 | Spend some time in the slums. It's important.
00:25:06.800 | But in terms of the long-term impact of your children, on your children's lives,
00:25:14.200 | you want to make sure that the majority of their time,
00:25:18.400 | the vast majority of their time, is spent with the kinds of people
00:25:24.200 | who you want your children to be like.
00:25:28.200 | You want to make sure your children are spending their time with the kinds of people
00:25:33.000 | that are likely to make the choice of the life decisions that you think they should make,
00:25:39.200 | to reflect the values that you think that they should have.
00:25:44.800 | It can be quite difficult to control one by one
00:25:50.800 | the people that your children spend time with.
00:25:52.800 | Not impossible, and I think you should do it.
00:25:55.600 | It can be difficult, though.
00:25:57.400 | But you can make certain structural decisions at the outset
00:26:04.000 | that are going to make it likely that the kinds of people that your child wants to spend time with
00:26:09.400 | are the kinds of people that you want your children to spend time with.
00:26:14.600 | Before I close this show, I want to respond to one objection that many of my listeners have.
00:26:20.800 | And that objection is this.
00:26:22.800 | "Joshua, are you saying that I should be some kind of an elitist
00:26:26.800 | and I should separate my child from all of the bad influences?
00:26:30.400 | Why can't my child be a leader?
00:26:32.600 | Why can't my child be the kind of person who brings other people up to his level?
00:26:37.600 | Because after all, my spouse and I, we're super parents,
00:26:41.200 | and we're going to make sure that our children are super kids.
00:26:44.200 | And so why can't my child be the leader?
00:26:48.400 | And isn't that part of our duty?
00:26:50.200 | Isn't that part of our duty and responsibility?
00:26:52.200 | Isn't this love of neighbor to go
00:26:54.400 | and maybe my children are around a bunch of poor kids,
00:26:57.800 | but that's okay because my child can teach them how to get rich?
00:27:01.800 | Or maybe my child is around a bunch of gang members,
00:27:04.400 | but that's okay because my child can be the one who influences them away from violence.
00:27:08.800 | Or my child is around a bunch of atheists,
00:27:12.000 | but that's okay because my child is going to tell them about Jesus."
00:27:18.000 | I think this is one of the stupidest things that people think.
00:27:22.200 | Not that it's not admirable, the motivations.
00:27:25.200 | Of course, we all want our children to be leaders.
00:27:28.600 | Of course, we want all our children to be positive, good role models.
00:27:33.600 | But they're children.
00:27:36.000 | And we cannot and should not and must not put adult expectations onto children.
00:27:43.200 | For every one child who has the unique personality characteristics
00:27:48.400 | to buck the trend, to defy the social environment,
00:27:53.800 | to not fall prey to the stupidity of his peers,
00:27:58.200 | there's another 19 of them that have fallen under the weight of peer pressure.
00:28:05.000 | It's hard enough for adults to withstand negative pressure.
00:28:12.600 | For crying out loud, just look at politics.
00:28:15.400 | Look at all your friends that you thought reflected your values.
00:28:19.200 | All your friends that you thought had principled positions in politics,
00:28:23.000 | and here they are 10 years later,
00:28:25.000 | and they have abandoned every one of the principles you thought they held.
00:28:28.400 | These are adults, and this is politics.
00:28:30.000 | This isn't even personal life.
00:28:32.000 | You take it into a child, and it's vastly worse.
00:28:36.800 | Children should not and must not be expected to be leaders
00:28:43.000 | until they have been trained diligently for years to be leaders,
00:28:48.600 | until they possess the mental faculties and the maturity
00:28:52.800 | to consider the impact of their actions,
00:28:56.200 | to think, to engage in long-term thinking,
00:28:59.800 | to understand logical analysis,
00:29:02.000 | and to logically and mindfully choose the things that they believe
00:29:06.400 | based upon a clear analysis of the alternatives.
00:29:10.200 | A 10-year-old is not in a position to do that.
00:29:14.000 | A 15-year-old is in the position to start to do that.
00:29:18.600 | A 20-year-old is in the process of doing it.
00:29:22.400 | But you don't send a 5 or a 10-year-old off to war because you can.
00:29:28.800 | You send men off to war.
00:29:31.400 | Children should be raised in protected, sheltered environments.
00:29:38.800 | They should be raised in a place that's safe,
00:29:43.600 | where they can grow and mature in safety
00:29:48.600 | and avoid experiencing trauma, abuse, etc.,
00:29:53.400 | all of those evil negative things that screw them up for life.
00:29:57.200 | No matter how hard you try to protect your children,
00:30:00.600 | ultimately you're going to fail.
00:30:02.200 | And so they're going to face plenty of difficult situations.
00:30:05.400 | They're going to face bullying and discrimination and cruelty.
00:30:10.400 | They're going to face poverty and death and sickness and sin.
00:30:13.800 | They're going to face all of those things.
00:30:15.200 | You cannot protect them from it.
00:30:17.400 | But you better try.
00:30:19.600 | I think where I used to hear this,
00:30:20.800 | and by the way, I don't hear this very much anymore,
00:30:23.000 | there's been a real revolution in people's appreciation
00:30:27.200 | of how vulnerable children are.
00:30:28.800 | When you see the epidemics, the contagion of ideas and thoughts, etc.,
00:30:34.400 | that flow through children.
00:30:36.400 | And so I don't hear this objection much at all.
00:30:38.800 | But where I used to hear this is simply,
00:30:41.600 | it was primarily from the Christian community.
00:30:43.400 | There was a subset of the Christian community
00:30:45.600 | who would say to those of us who homeschool, etc.,
00:30:48.800 | and say, "Well, you need to send your children out as evangelists
00:30:52.000 | into the secular government school system."
00:30:55.000 | It was nonsense then, and most people realize it's nonsense now.
00:30:58.800 | Children are not evangelists.
00:31:00.800 | They're children.
00:31:02.800 | Don't send children to do what adults need to do.
00:31:06.400 | The adults can barely do it.
00:31:08.600 | Adults can barely stand the test.
00:31:11.600 | Don't send children to do what adults need to do.
00:31:15.400 | Protect and shelter your children.
00:31:19.000 | Make sure that they're exposed to the diversity of experience
00:31:22.800 | that the world offers.
00:31:25.000 | If your children are wealthy, they need to know poverty.
00:31:29.000 | But they need to know poverty with you.
00:31:32.800 | They need to be exposed to poverty
00:31:35.600 | by going with you and spending time with people who are poor,
00:31:39.400 | ministering to people who are poor, giving to people who are poor.
00:31:42.800 | If you're from a wealthy family,
00:31:44.800 | and you want to go and build a school to help poor people get a good education,
00:31:49.000 | so that they, in the future, can become wealthy,
00:31:52.400 | you don't go and build a school and then enroll your child in that school.
00:31:57.400 | You can't do that.
00:31:59.400 | You keep your children in a very high-level, high-quality schooling environment,
00:32:04.600 | so that you can build a school,
00:32:06.200 | and so that they can build a school when they're older.
00:32:08.800 | Celebrate the success of your village school that you've built,
00:32:13.800 | but don't enroll your children in it.
00:32:16.800 | I shouldn't need to make obvious caveats,
00:32:19.400 | but obviously there are times when all of these things can be broken.
00:32:22.200 | I'm speaking generally.
00:32:23.000 | I'm trying to speak in big picture terms, just speaking generally.
00:32:26.000 | The point is, children need to be protected.
00:32:29.200 | They need to be sheltered,
00:32:30.600 | and you need to intentionally surround them with the influences that they are going to build them up.
00:32:38.400 | That should be the majority of it.
00:32:40.000 | As they reach adolescence, as they develop their skills of logical analysis,
00:32:44.600 | that's when you start to introduce the difficulties of life,
00:32:48.600 | when they're capable of dealing with it.
00:32:50.800 | But even there, you don't do it 100% of the time.
00:32:54.400 | You do it 20% of the time, and you walk with your children through that.
00:32:58.200 | "Oh, so-and-so doesn't believe the same things that we believe."
00:33:00.600 | Why not? Let's talk about that.
00:33:02.200 | Let's talk with so-and-so.
00:33:03.200 | "So-and-so, why do you believe what you believe?"
00:33:05.200 | "Here's why we believe what you believe."
00:33:06.600 | You start that process.
00:33:08.000 | It's 20% of the time, then it's 40% of the time, then it's 50% of the time.
00:33:12.200 | And then, down the road, there'll be a time in which your child is going to make his own decisions.
00:33:17.400 | But even as adults, you don't ever want to put yourself in a situation
00:33:22.600 | where you're spending all your time with people who are engaged in behavior that you find horrific,
00:33:27.800 | because it will reflect on you.
00:33:31.000 | As an adult, I don't spend all my time reading books that model values that I think are bad,
00:33:38.000 | or watching YouTube channels of people who live perverse lifestyles.
00:33:43.800 | I don't want those people around me.
00:33:45.800 | I want to be surrounded by people who are going to build me up.
00:33:50.000 | And I want to spend time, and I want to do my best to encourage and minister to others,
00:33:55.200 | help those who I'm able to help, etc.
00:33:58.000 | But I cannot take the risk of spending all of my time in an environment that is immoral,
00:34:04.400 | in an environment that is dedicated for failure, people complaining about life
00:34:08.600 | instead of pursuing success and working, etc.
00:34:12.200 | Spending time in people who have no control over their money,
00:34:15.200 | who engage in poverty-based thinking instead of wealth-based thinking,
00:34:19.800 | and abundance thinking, people who think the future is bad and getting worse
00:34:24.000 | versus people who think the future is good and getting better,
00:34:27.000 | people who feel impotent and black-pilled against the system.
00:34:31.600 | I don't want those people in my life.
00:34:33.600 | I want to be aware of what they think.
00:34:35.600 | I want to consider their arguments.
00:34:37.600 | I want to be aware of where they wind up.
00:34:40.400 | But I don't want those people in my life.
00:34:43.400 | So if that's the same for me as an adult, or for you,
00:34:47.800 | then how could we ever justify exposing our innocent, impressionable children
00:34:54.000 | to the wickedness of that philosophy?
00:34:58.400 | I hope this rant is not too intense, but it drives me crazy, and there's so much of it.
00:35:03.200 | Let me give you one more example.
00:35:05.600 | One of the things that drives me crazy is how so many adults have infected children
00:35:12.600 | with a despondency and a sense of despair about the future,
00:35:17.200 | most notably here I'm thinking about things like global climate change.
00:35:22.600 | Children, I use that word very carefully,
00:35:26.600 | children report themselves to be stressed and worried about climate change.
00:35:33.800 | That is an immoral thing to do to a child.
00:35:38.600 | To tell a child that your world is going to go to hell because of climate change,
00:35:42.800 | and there's no hope for the future.
00:35:44.800 | You've got 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 20-year-olds,
00:35:49.600 | who genuinely believe that their world is going to be over in 5 years, 10 years, etc.
00:35:55.600 | The impact of that on an impressionable mind is horrific.
00:36:00.600 | It's totally immoral.
00:36:03.400 | You don't do that to children.
00:36:05.800 | It's nonsense, and it's evil.
00:36:10.000 | You got young people out there saying, "Well, my life's, I don't even know where I'm going to be in 2030.
00:36:14.400 | Not going to get married, not going to have children, not going to pursue a career,
00:36:18.400 | going to go and..."
00:36:20.400 | It results in drug abuse and depression and all this stuff.
00:36:23.800 | It's horrible.
00:36:25.800 | And yet people are doing that to children all day, every day.
00:36:29.400 | It's a wicked, wicked worldview to give to a child.
00:36:34.000 | Give your children a perspective of hope, of confidence, of belief in the future,
00:36:39.200 | belief in their ability to affect their own life,
00:36:43.000 | belief in their ability to affect their own future,
00:36:45.800 | belief in their ability to influence their community.
00:36:49.400 | It's a much, much better way to live and much vastly healthier for them.
00:36:57.200 | Consider carefully how you can spend money on the environment,
00:37:01.000 | especially here the social environment of your children.
00:37:05.400 | And make sure that you're very satisfied with those decisions.
00:37:14.000 | Deal with your finances as they are.
00:37:16.000 | Don't go into aspirational spending and spend more money than you have.
00:37:20.000 | But if you need to make a choice, you need to move to an expensive house,
00:37:23.800 | an expensive neighborhood, you need to enroll your children into the extra tutoring that's expensive
00:37:29.000 | but gets them around the kind of students who are doing extra tutoring,
00:37:32.000 | all of these things are fine. They're good expenditures of money.
00:37:35.800 | They're for a temporary time.
00:37:37.400 | You can save more money in the future when you've accomplished your purpose.
00:37:40.800 | But if you live like a miser and expose your children to influences that drag them down,
00:37:46.400 | destroy and poison their minds, you're going to regret it.
00:37:50.800 | And no amount of money spent in your children's college fund is going to be able to turn them around
00:37:57.200 | when he ended his life prematurely because of his sense of hopelessness and despondency about the future
00:38:02.400 | or because he faced bullying at school for some issue, not being cool.
00:38:08.200 | The college fund matters, but it's the tip of the iceberg.
00:38:13.600 | It's the cherry on top. It's not the foundation of the cake of success.
00:38:19.600 | Thank you for listening to today's show.
00:38:21.200 | I want to remind you that for just one more week,
00:38:24.200 | I am still accepting students for the beta class of my new course called How to Retire Successfully,
00:38:31.400 | where I will teach you in detail everything that you need to know about retirement,
00:38:36.400 | to consider whether retirement is right for you, how you can get there quickly,
00:38:40.200 | how you can get there at a moderate pace, how to know when you've gotten there,
00:38:44.400 | how to use all of the creative strategies to get you there faster.
00:38:48.400 | We're going to go through in detail all the technical financial planning, how to do the analysis,
00:38:52.600 | how to set up your income streams, how to live in retirement, how to know if you've got enough money, all of it.
00:38:59.000 | Registration at the moment is available for another week.
00:39:00.800 | I'm getting very close to the cap on students.
00:39:03.200 | I think I've got 17 more registrations available.
00:39:06.400 | I don't want to have too many students in this beta class because it's going to be a live class
00:39:09.200 | and I got to have enough space for the Q&A.
00:39:11.200 | So I think I've got 17 slots left. I haven't checked the numbers this morning.
00:39:15.000 | If you would like to join that class, there's still one week left.
00:39:17.800 | Go to howtoretiresuccessfully.com.
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