♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaha.com/palms to discover more. - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets, I am your host, and today I want to share with you a simple idea to help you to coach your children to acquiring the skills and ability and knowledge that they will need to be successful and effective in life. And then in the latter part of the show, I will introduce briefly a series of episodes that you'll hear coming in the coming days.

One of the goals that we all have as parents is the success of our children. If you have children and you've set goals, I'm sure that on your list of goals, you have goals related to the success of your children. But as with many things in life and in money, it seems that we often gravitate to the goals that are the easiest to enumerate in clear numbers.

I've worked with many people who say, "I have a goal of saving $50,000 "for my children's college education," or "I have a goal of sending my child "to a private school," et cetera. These goals are useful because they're easily identified. You can understand if you're hitting them or not.

And yet, as with many things that I've observed related to money, while not wrong, they're sometimes not the most effective way of accomplishing what you're really trying to accomplish, what you really want to make happen. What you really want is for your children to be successful, not to have a college degree.

Now, to the extent that the college degree helps them to be successful in life, to live the life of their dreams, to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be competent, to be effective, to be provided for, et cetera, then it fits into that. But the fundamental plan is that you want your children to be successful.

And you know, and the reason why I'm talking about this on a personal finance show, that not only do our children consume a tremendous amount of financial resources, but there are few pains greater for a wealthy person than if that wealthy person has to survey children who are failures in life, in whatever sense you consider someone to be a failure in life.

It's very painful, very, very painful. And yet we have a few precious years where we can make a tremendous difference into our children's lives. Now, during those years, especially in the younger years, we do a number of important things with our children. But at its core, what we do is we install into our children, in some ways, an operating system.

I don't believe in the tabula rasa theory, the idea that children are just a blank slate. It's a little bit, I think that's a little bit excessive. But in many ways, children are a blank slate. And as parents, we install into them the operating system that makes them tick.

They have all the basic hardware, but it's the input that they receive in their life that will largely determine what they think about life. Now, a lot of that input is not accidental, but it's out of your control. I've often imagined, you know, what do people, you know, a child who's raised in the war-torn, in the middle of a civil war, where at eight years old, somebody puts an AK-47 in their hand and says, "Go kill." Right, that's a devastating virus to install into the software set of a child.

And yet, we infect our children so many times with viruses that are unnecessary. And a lot of times, it happens accidentally, happens based upon the inputs and the influences that we allow into their lives, which is why, as parents, we have a responsibility to be so extraordinarily careful and picky about what we allow into their lives, to make sure that, in essence, the operating system that they receive, the way of looking at the world, the way of thinking about things is appropriate, is as correct, is as useful as we can possibly make it, is as genuinely, is as close to truth as we are able to accomplish.

So how do you do that? Well, I think first, it involves living an examined life yourself, doing your very best as a parent to understand what you believe and why you believe it, doing your best to live as a model before your children. Ideally, all of us who are parents should be able to say, "Follow me, do as I do, "model me, imitate me, copy me." I've often found, I think, some of the most compelling words in scripture, "Follow me as I follow Christ." That was, of course, the Apostle Paul, or to put it into a more modern translation, "And you should imitate me just as I imitate Christ." I think that, at its core, as parents, our goal should be to lay before our children an example that is worthy of following, and that, to the extent that we can do that effectively, we can make an enormous impact in their lives.

We all know that none of us will be perfect, none of us will live perfectly, none of us will do things perfectly for them, but we know that if we can do that effectively over time, then that'll be the strongest influence in their lives. They're going to want to be like you.

They're going to want to do the things that you do. And as a man, I find that incredibly motivating, because I often look myself in the mirror, and I think, "Would I want my child to do what I'm doing? "Do I want my son to model me, to copy me?

"Do I want my daughter to live as I'm living? "What do I want them to see? "And if so, I'd better make it real, "because I can't fool my children. "I can't tell my children that I am something, "or I believe something, and it not be the truth, "'cause they will know, and worse, "not only will they know that I was wrong about that, "that I lied about that, "but now they'll know that I'm a liar.

"They'll know that I'm an inauthentic liar," which would, of course, be devastating to their image of me and what things would happen. But in addition to that, I think we need to install into our children positive ideas, ideas that have served the test of time, ideas that will help them in life, ideas that are empowering to them.

And I believe that if you're a parent, you're nodding your head with me. I can't imagine anybody would brook disagreement with what I'm saying. But the question is how, how do you do that? Well, I think at its core, ideally, you do it intentionally. And where I see the biggest weaknesses in life is often with regard to philosophy, instilling philosophy, a way of thinking, a way of living, a way of being into children.

If you participate in the mainstream school system, your child will receive basic instruction in math facts, basic instruction in literacy, basic instruction in basic knowledge of the world, perhaps an appreciation of some bare facts of history and geography, et cetera, maybe an appreciation of how to wield a paintbrush or how to do a breaststroke.

But at the end of the day, the philosophy that is going to be articulated to your child in a formal school setting is often not a philosophy with teeth. It's often not a fully well-rounded philosophy. There will be a philosophy accompanied by it because facts don't exist in a vacuum.

Facts are always laden with a philosophical worldview. And that's why you and I have a responsibility to be so cautious and so careful as to the teachers that we allow into our children's lives. But at its core, since that kind of training and instruction is fundamentally religious in nature, it's difficult for avowed non-religious schools to do it, which means that children often pick up their philosophy from their friends or from popular sources.

And we don't install a better operating system. We don't install a better philosophy. So I wanna give you some suggestions on how I think you should install a better philosophy. At its fundamental level, you'll of course wanna begin with a religious worldview. You'll wanna begin with the great questions of life, the meaning of life, the purpose of life, et cetera.

And so if you ascribe to a particular religious tradition, it's made simpler for you. It's made easier for you because you say, hey, this is what we believe, and we're going to install this operating system, these ideas, this philosophy into our children. For someone who comes from a structured background, who's part of a structured religious tradition, many times there are catechisms or family instruction manuals that you can use, and that can be very, very helpful.

That may form the base. But there are a lot of other philosophies that would not be taught in that kind of religious tradition that you'll want to pay attention to, especially philosophies and points of thinking with regard to money, life, success, how much control you have over what happens to your life.

And I believe that you can install from a very early age philosophies that will make a big difference. You can do this in many ways. You might just be a purveyor of pithy proverbs, and as such, you drop these little gems into your child's heart. These are the classic things that perhaps your grandmother said.

A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still. There's a great truth and meaning in that axiom that if a child grasps it can make a big difference. Or related to money, profits are better than wages. Profits are better than wages. A simple statement like that, repeated hundreds of times throughout a child's life, whenever appropriate, will have a profound impact on the financial philosophy of a child.

Profits are better than wages. Pay yourself first. Whatever your little sayings are, they make a big impact in your children's lives. There may be things that you don't say. For example, I'm very cautious to never say something like, I can't afford that. I never use those words, either to myself and especially not in the presence of my children.

I never say, I can't afford that. Because I know that I can afford anything that I choose to afford, it's just a matter of am I willing to pay the price to accumulate the resources necessary to be able to afford it. And so I'll use language of responsibility, such as, we choose not to spend money on that.

Or, I don't think that's worth spending money on. I don't think that's a good buy. I don't think that's worth it. Similar things. I never say, I don't have time. I might say sometimes, I feel like I don't have time, but I don't say, I don't have time. And I especially am never gonna say that to my children.

I don't have time. The answer is, I have the same amount of time as anybody else, so it's not the matter of having time, it's a matter of my personal priorities. But this goes far beyond. This goes far beyond to things like complaining. It goes to, how do you talk about other people?

It goes to the respect that you use to talk to other people. The example that we set before our children makes a tremendous difference in how they think about life and how they think about others. I think there's still a need, however, to install deeper level philosophies. And I want you to think about how to do that in your child's life.

If there's something that you think is important, how are you going to install it into their life? How are you gonna cause them to think what you think? What it's core, you're gonna have to tell them what you think and why you think it. And that's our responsibility as parents to say, this is what I believe is correct.

This is what I believe is right. And here's why I believe it's correct. Here's why I believe it's right. One of the most powerful ways to do that, in addition to your personal example, in addition to your personal stories and your personal instruction, is to invite other people who are qualified teachers into your home to give those lessons.

And so this is what you do when you're helping your child with their numeracy. This is what you do when you're helping your child with their piano. You invite a teacher into your home. But how do you invite the teachers that can speak broadly? I would say the simple and obvious answer to that is read to your children.

The books that you choose to read to your children will make a tremendous difference in their life and it will shape their thinking. It will shape their way of operating. And if you'll give them the tools that they need to be successful in life, both through your direct instruction and by passive instruction with books and things that you put before them, you'll help them to be able to navigate situations.

Now this is intensely practical. At an early age, there are so many things you can do. You know, I just recently, a while ago, I found this wonderful book for children. It's not in English, it's in Spanish, but it's called Mis Palabras. And it's written by someone who's a Montessori teacher.

And it's this really well done story where it involves a boy and a girl having an argument on the playground. And in the first example, they have an argument. They wind up kicking each other, they wind up throwing sand at each other 'cause they're angry 'cause they don't know how to use words to communicate, to solve their problems thoughtfully.

And then the protagonists in the book teach the Montessori method of using basically a speaking stick where you speak and you listen to one another. And then of course, magically in the storybook, the children work it out and they resolve their problems. Now it's a great kid's book. But it teaches a lesson that if we teach our children and we give them the tools, or here's how you settle conflict and you do it in a peaceful, nonviolent way, it's extraordinarily helpful.

It helps tremendously. And yet, do you do that? Are you giving your children the tools that they need? The simple everyday tools of society matter tremendously. I'll give you a simple example. I teach my children with very modest success at this stage of their life, but I aspire to be able to do this with more success in time.

But I teach my children how to talk to people. And a simple tactic, for example, I teach my children that when somebody finishes talking, you should wait three to five seconds. I make them count to four. You know, three, four, five seconds to make sure that they're really done with their speech.

It's an incredibly valuable technique that you and I use every day, that when someone speaks, you just simply cultivate the habit of not responding immediately, not interrupting, not correcting immediately, but stop and wait just three to five seconds to see if they're fully done. And it's a powerful tool in communication to help you become a better conversationalist.

And yet, were you ever taught that as a child? Did your teachers ever say, "Let me teach you how to be a conversationalist?" Years ago, I used to go to networking events and cocktail parties, and it's often been hard for me to talk to people that I didn't know.

And I stumbled across in a book a list of 10 conversation starter questions, just general, normal stuff that some people don't have to study. Things like, "How did you get involved in this business?" Just simple things like that that are simple, open-ended questions that facilitate and lubricate the early stages of a conversation in that kind of context.

I memorized them, and I just practiced using them. Well, one of the things that I will do as my children get older is I'll give them similar questions. Here are ways that you start a conversation. I remember my wife, when she was younger, she tells me that she felt just very awkward.

She didn't know how to talk to people because she didn't know how to start a conversation. And yet, if you just simply input into your children's operating system, read them a book on how to be a great conversationalist, and then have them memorize, as part of their education, 10 questions that you can use to start a conversation, and then have them practice, you can help your child to be a great conversationalist.

And that little bit of practice in their operating system is incredibly valuable. Now, I think your basic tool is simply to have your child read books. But I think many people wait too long to start to have their child do it. They wait until their child is 15 and say, "Okay, when you're 15, I'm gonna give you a book on money," instead of starting earlier.

And so I think that we should start earlier. I think that we should read our children useful books that teach them lessons. Now, the best way to do it is usually in the context of a story. A story or a parable that has a lesson, a moral lesson, a practical lesson embedded within it, is the most powerful teaching device that we have.

And so you can choose and should choose carefully books, resources, et cetera, that are going to help your children to learn lessons. And you should read them intentionally to your children. What I would encourage you today, however, is don't stop with children's books. I see no reason not to take the very best resources for adults and then share them with your children and to do it from a very early age.

So I'll give you an example and I'll tell you how I'm doing this. And you can watch over the years and we'll see how effective this is. But sometimes I like to say things in advance so that if it is effective and if it works, you know it's not by accident.

Kind of like when you're playing pool, you call your shots so you know it wasn't just slop. I read all kinds of books to my children. And I try to choose lots of books, storybooks, first of all, that are perfectly clean, that have model character, model behavior, that have the values that our family stands for.

And it's very difficult, but we actually work very hard often to weed out the most, the bad example. I don't have any data, I've never really been able to prove this, but I don't think it helps children who don't have a very good filter to see examples of badness, whatever that badness is.

I'll give you a silly example, you'll laugh. But it's a true example. A number of years ago, my wife kicked Curious George out of our house. Now, it's hard to find anybody who's gonna say, Curious George is not, is anything wrong with Curious George? You got this classic book that's just fun about a monkey.

But if you look at the Curious George stories, in every single story, Curious George is basically naughty. He disobeys almost everything that he's told, he gets into problems that are very significant problems, and then through some great stroke of life, stroke of luck, he escapes by the skin of his teeth, and everything is fine, and he bears no consequences for his behavior.

And I loved Curious George when I was a child, and she pointed out to me, like, no, but I like Curious George, and then I realized, you know what, she's right. This is nothing but an example of a naughty monkey who never pays for his misdeeds, who's never held accountable.

Now, is that going to turn my child into a delinquent? I don't think so. But in that same time, where we're reading a negative example, that's just, oh, this is fun, this is harmless, I could be using a positive example. And instead of filling my child's mind with the idea of a naughty monkey, who's forever causing problems and getting away with his mischievousness, I could choose to do an example of kindness, of love, of people being obedient, of people behaving properly, because the examples that are held in front of us impact us to a very high degree.

So think carefully about what you allow into your life and into your children's lives. So practically, that's an example of getting rid of the negative. Now, if negative comes in, I think you can mitigate the negative by talking about it, by discussing it. And this is something I think that we need to continually do.

You will not be able to as a parent, nor necessarily should you always shelter your child from negative things. But what I think we need to do is when they come in, we need to think critically about them and learn how to engage with them in an appropriate way.

Number of years ago, my children were playing with another boy, and this boy told them that if you did such a certain thing, I'll give you a piece of candy when you get to the car. And so my children happily complied. And then they got to the car and they asked him for the candy.

And he said, "Oh, I don't have any candy." And the boy had blatantly lied to them and really hurt them. They didn't know that at that time, they were fairly well-protected. They didn't know that people lied. They didn't know that people would lie to them. And so it really hurt them.

And of course they responded, "Well, I'm not gonna be your friend, et cetera." And so those are kind of examples are inevitable and they're important. Our children need to face conflict and problems, et cetera. But then they're an opportunity to say, "How do we respond? "What's the proper way?

"And how can you understand things like this in the future? "How do you understand the real world?" I think one of the most valuable things you can do with young children is read them the kind of books that you read and you should be reading, especially as it relates to life skills.

So whatever you think is necessary for the success of your children, read them that book. So I read my, right now, as an example, right now I'm reading my children, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. That's a book that is appropriate for a 70-year-old man and a seven-year-old child, in my opinion, because it basically gives useful things to think about, useful principles of getting along with people, how to win friends and influence people.

And what we do, what I do, is number one, I fill the house with books, and I try to make sure that those books are all quality books, that all have some benefits. Some of them are technical books, some of them are stories, et cetera, but they're all gonna have some significant purpose to it.

So there's lots of books available that the child can read on their own. I also wanna make sure that I read to them. And so I do this in a couple different ways. Number one, at the breakfast table, I always read at the breakfast table, about 15 to 20 minutes, something that's going to be specifically helpful and instructional to my children.

Most of the time, this is materials that are aimed towards children, parables, stories about so-and-so, and with a lesson, an important lesson of a character quality, et cetera, associated with it. Right now, I'm using that time to read an adult book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People." In time, I'll use it to read books on how to be a conversationalist, how to read, how to speak, how to listen, how to be a friend, how to handle money.

And if you would be, I mean, I guess I shouldn't say you'd be amazed, but it's impressive how much adds up with 15 or 20 minutes of reading right at the breakfast table. And what I like about it is by having a focus at the start of the day, at the breakfast table, on one specific thing that we're focusing on, as a parent, that now gives me a tool to point out to my children some way that we're doing a great job on it, or some way that we're not doing a great job on it.

So, you know, principle one on how to win friends and influence people, never criticize, condemn, or complain. And so we're working hard in our family on complaining at the moment. There's never a reason to complain about anything. Nobody wants to hear you complain. And yet it's hard to get that through to children without examples and whatnot.

When I read to them chapter one of "How to Win Friends and Influence People," then we had enough examples of showing how complaining, but now there's a more clear example. My children are starting to catch themselves. Oh, I was gonna complain. Well, there's no reason to complain. So there's never a point to complaining.

So let's just move on. And it's great. Principle two, right? Give honest and sincere appreciation. And so by reading it over the course of several days, now I can remind, again, honest and sincere appreciation. Then I work to catch them. We do sticker charts in our household. So let me catch you appreciating somebody, selling someone, you know what?

You know, brother or sister. I appreciate this about you. I appreciate you for this. I appreciate this. And getting them in the habit of expressing appreciation to other people. And if you can instill that habit when a child is young, it just becomes a part of who they are.

They're accustomed to expressing honest and sincere appreciation of other people. And of course the principles go on. So I would encourage you, as I wind down today's episode, these things that we're talking about, if you do them, as I want to say, if you do them, you'll often save yourself the money on the backside to have to pay someone else to try to make up for what you didn't do.

So financially, for example, I have the blessing that when I sit down at the breakfast table, I can sit down, we have breakfast, I can read for 20 minutes. It's a leisurely thing. And then I go to work. But you can do that too. Maybe for you, that's what financial independence means.

It means adjusting your work schedule so that you can have breakfast with your children and dinner with your children every day. Maybe it means changing to a business so you can do it. Maybe it means you cut back your hours so that you have more of that time available during those important years of parenting and plan to make it up later with hours.

Think about it. But if you can spend 20 minutes a day of specific focused instruction on the moral character, the operating system, the personal philosophy of your children, that makes all the difference in the world. And I would encourage you, go out and look for the books that make the difference for you.

Look for the books that are gonna help you to do this effectively. Maybe in the days to come, I can do something like a YouTube video and share with you some of the books that have been useful in our family and then solicit your recommendations, things that have been useful to you in your family.

But go out and look for them, buy them. Start reading them to your children. Read to them in the morning, read to them at night. And what you'll find is that that will help you. The best way to learn something effectively for yourself is to teach someone else. So if there's something that you wanna get better at, get a book on it and start reading it to your children because now you'll have the motivation to get better together.

And don't be scared of older books, meaning books that are aimed at older children. Again, I'm reading currently "How to Win Friends and Influence People" to a six-year-old, a four-year-old, a three-year-old, and a one-year-old. Now, a one-year-old will give him a pass, right? But on the other hand, the others, they absorb some of it.

And what I like about also reading adult-level books, and I don't recommend nor do I exclusively read adult-level books. I like to read children's books because I don't want my children to be so lost that they don't understand and then they just tune out. And so I read lots of stories and children's stories.

But I think it's important to even read adult-level books to your children so they understand there's more. And it helps with their vocabulary development. And they'll ask you questions about, oh, this word and that word, et cetera. And it helps them to think and see things from a mature perspective, even from a young age.

So don't be shy about reading adult-level books to your children. It's worth it and it can really help. Read to your children, instruct your children, engage with them, and install a philosophy that will lead to success in their heads. Don't teach them to be victims. Teach them to be victors.

Think through carefully what a philosophy that will lead to success is, what it looks like, and then get engaged and teach that to your children and you'll set them apart in life in a really powerful and profound way. ♪ Get in zone, auto zone ♪ - Welcome to Auto Zone.

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