Teach Your Kids These Lessons to Help Them Grow

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00:00:02.580 | - You have children, I now have children.

00:00:08.520 | You've spent a lot of time thinking about money

00:00:11.400 | at a level and purpose and identity

00:00:14.280 | at a level that I haven't yet.

00:00:15.920 | And I certainly haven't for my kids,

00:00:18.480 | two months, two years old, maybe it's too early.

00:00:21.160 | But given what you've thought

00:00:22.320 | and for any parents listening,

00:00:24.040 | what advice do you have for taking some of these lessons,

00:00:26.640 | whether they're purpose-driven,

00:00:27.920 | whether they're financial-driven,

00:00:29.640 | and teaching them to children as parents?

00:00:33.480 | - Get it together yourself,

00:00:35.680 | and then model that behavior and your kids will follow suit.

00:00:39.120 | I think we often talk about

00:00:40.520 | what exercises we should do with our children,

00:00:42.840 | what we specifically should teach them didactically,

00:00:46.280 | what we should get them involved in.

00:00:49.600 | I'm thoroughly convinced

00:00:51.040 | that the way your kids actually learn

00:00:53.000 | is watching how you navigate the world.

00:00:55.920 | So it sounds a little funny,

00:00:57.840 | but I think that we as adults

00:00:59.560 | should concentrate on ourselves,

00:01:01.320 | develop these great, meaningful habits,

00:01:05.960 | and live them out in front of our children so they can see.

00:01:08.760 | And I think that, more than anything else,

00:01:11.720 | will give them a good handle

00:01:13.000 | on what living a purposeful life, a full life looks like.

00:01:16.720 | - I'll add a caveat to what you said,

00:01:18.400 | which is for some of these lessons,

00:01:21.160 | just doing them only works

00:01:23.480 | if you also expose your children to it.

00:01:27.080 | So from a financial standpoint,

00:01:29.160 | I might be organized and thoughtful

00:01:31.200 | about my personal finances,

00:01:32.920 | and maybe at two years old and two months old,

00:01:35.480 | it's not the time, but at some point,

00:01:37.280 | I can't just live that,

00:01:39.080 | I also have to bring the family into it.

00:01:42.960 | So whether that's talking about what you're doing,

00:01:45.440 | making sure that you're not just doing it,

00:01:47.000 | but you're also sharing that you're doing it,

00:01:49.840 | for some of these things matters.

00:01:51.160 | Maybe for doing a job you're fulfilled,

00:01:54.040 | people will kind of get that through osmosis

00:01:56.120 | with you in the house.

00:01:57.440 | But I do think that when it comes to finances,

00:02:00.040 | some of the things that I want to do in the future,

00:02:02.240 | or at least just not make them taboo topics

00:02:04.760 | that we don't talk about as a family.

00:02:06.880 | - Yeah, and I think also part of that modeling good behavior

00:02:09.880 | to go the next step forward and be a little more explicit,

00:02:13.240 | is also giving them the space

00:02:14.840 | to then try those techniques and fail safely, right?

00:02:17.880 | So in our household, one way we did that

00:02:20.240 | is our kids could watch

00:02:21.640 | how we dealt with things financially,

00:02:23.400 | but then we started giving them a yearly allowance,

00:02:26.000 | which we gave to them the first of the year.

00:02:28.520 | We clearly stated what they were responsible for

00:02:30.800 | and what we were responsible for.

00:02:32.040 | And then they had to decide what to do

00:02:34.120 | with that allowance the whole year.

00:02:35.360 | They weren't getting any more from us.

00:02:37.360 | And so that was a way we'd been modeling

00:02:40.040 | for years good behavior,

00:02:41.160 | but then we could actually set up a controlled experiment

00:02:44.440 | where the truth of the matter was,

00:02:46.960 | there was no real risk for them,

00:02:48.680 | but they could then experiment,

00:02:50.240 | try some of those things,

00:02:51.760 | those techniques that we had been modeling,

00:02:53.400 | see what worked for them, see that hadn't,

00:02:55.640 | make some mistakes, have a little egg on their face

00:02:58.040 | when they did something wrong, and then learn.

00:02:59.800 | So I think that's part of that modeling

00:03:01.760 | is then to give them some space.

00:03:04.440 | - And how did the allowance

00:03:06.160 | for the year upfront experiment go?

00:03:08.800 | - You know, in some ways it did some unexpected things,

00:03:11.640 | but then at least we could address it.

00:03:12.920 | So for instance, my daughter,

00:03:15.440 | we found became ultra scared of spending

00:03:17.680 | and always had way more left at the end of the year

00:03:19.720 | than she probably should have.

00:03:21.280 | My son, on the other hand,

00:03:23.120 | was confident everything would work

00:03:24.880 | and often spent too much in the beginning.

00:03:27.120 | And then a catastrophe would hit

00:03:28.680 | and he'd find that he didn't have enough money.

00:03:30.040 | A perfect example is, you know, he spent most of his money.

00:03:33.600 | He had just a little bit left

00:03:34.640 | and he had about three or four months left,

00:03:36.040 | and then he dropped his phone into a lake

00:03:39.760 | when we were paddle boarding.

00:03:41.960 | And so all of a sudden he's like, I have zero money.

00:03:44.680 | I can't buy a used phone, I can't do anything,

00:03:47.120 | but I didn't foresee this coming

00:03:49.440 | 'cause I thought I was doing a good job,

00:03:51.240 | but I didn't see that something unexpected might happen.

00:03:53.600 | So, you know, it plays out differently with different kids,

00:03:56.520 | but the idea then is then they can, you know,

00:03:58.520 | to have those gentle conversations.

00:04:00.920 | With my daughter, it might be, hmm, you know, it's great.

00:04:03.880 | You had a lot of money left over,

00:04:05.240 | your bank account's really growing,

00:04:06.600 | but are you enjoying that money, right?

00:04:08.520 | And then for my son, it might be like,

00:04:10.320 | yeah, money's a powerful tool,

00:04:11.840 | but if you're not careful and a good steward of it,

00:04:13.840 | you may find you don't have it when you need it.

00:04:16.000 | And so those are different conversations you can have,

00:04:17.760 | but it all starts with the modeling,

00:04:19.600 | then kind of those simple experiments,

00:04:21.400 | and then the talking to him.

00:04:23.720 | - So did you loan your son money

00:04:25.320 | against his future year of allowance,

00:04:27.880 | or how do you handle that one?

00:04:29.400 | - The darn problem with my son

00:04:30.760 | is he's so goddarn innovative that I think he,

00:04:33.360 | here's a perfect example.

00:04:36.120 | My son is known as the electronics guy on the neighborhood,

00:04:39.200 | so people give him old or broken electronics.

00:04:42.040 | The other day, someone gave him an old or broken phone,

00:04:44.360 | and he realized it was still under warranty,

00:04:46.080 | sent it back to an Apple, and they sent him a new phone.

00:04:49.520 | - Okay, so he figured it out himself.

00:04:50.920 | - So he's a pretty savvy guy.

00:04:53.200 | He figures out either how to fix most things

00:04:55.400 | or to find his way into something new.

00:04:58.080 | The problem with this phone

00:04:58.920 | is it ended up at the bottom of the, above the lake.

00:05:01.320 | He couldn't get it back.

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Teach Your Kids These Lessons to Help Them Grow

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