The Repeaters: Raising Money Smart Kids

The only place he actually saw me give was when we put money in the church collection plate. Okay? So, you know, the the plate goes by, and I put in a dollar, and he puts in his dollar, and the plate goes by. And I’m thinking, I I was really proud of him.

Until he leaked he leans over to me, and he said whispers in my ear. Now this is like a five year old. He says, did you have a slow week? And I thought, oh, wow.

He is really watching. Yeah.

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This is kind of a fun this is gonna be a fun topic today. So because it’s so long ago for me.

But we’re gonna really look at so in in the book True Wealth, and for listeners or and viewers that haven’t shared that, there’s there’s two basic books that I’ve I’ve laid out at least so far. First one is Head North, which really is more conceptual about the nine principles of true wealth. It’s everything my mom and dad taught me or tried to teach me, I should say, or that I learned from them about true wealth. But then I felt we needed a little bit more some action items, more life stages training.

And one of the more challenging ones and I I did this okay with two with two of the four boys, and two of them didn’t do quite so well. So I’m gonna lean on your wisdom a little bit more with this. But, you know, most people, when they start looking at book and they go, wait, you’re starting off with the repeaters, those children that are in that zero to ten?

Why is that important in the true wealth concept? So what we’re really trying to do here is financial training. I’m trying to train and teach, and that group learns by experiencing and seeing, right? And, you know, we do everything for the repeaters, these zero to ten year olds.

You know, we put training pants on them, so they we try to teach them when you soil or wet yourself. That’s not a good experience. For our wives too. Yeah.

They do it. Right?

The kids.

I thought you were saying they soil themselves.

Sorry about that. No.

I hope not.

No. I I don’t know.

I clarify that. You’re talking about your kids. So we put training pants on them to teach them what dry feels like and why that’s better. We put training wheels on their bikes to keep them safe so when they fall, they learn by repeating and by example.

Yep. And yet when it comes to money, crickets. In most cases, my mom and dad didn’t talk a lot about money. That was that generational thing as well.

Sure. They taught me a lot about money because I think their focus was right.

But, yeah, we also went through he was a pastor. Think back in nineteen sixty when he started, I hear his salary was like five thousand dollars for the year, and they drove two cars on me. I’m like, how in the world? But they did it Yeah.

And they made it work. So how do you teach this group, you know, by repeating? So, you know, nobody comes out of the womb that I’m aware of that says, I’m a saver. Oh, I’m a spender.

They learn that. Right? And they learn that by either not having it or having an abundance. And it isn’t like if they never had it, now they’re a saver.

Sometimes if they never had it, that’s why they’re a spender. Yep. So part of even the conversation we have with adults is tell us about your first recollection of money because that really opens the door in the window to so much about their philosophies about money.

But yeah, when I you know, and again, so they don’t come out as a spender or a saver. And we spend all kinds of times, you know, we say, How big are you? And we throw our arms up in the air. You know, I’m so big.

And then when they do it, the whole family erupts and applauds, and they think, Oh, I gotta remember that. I gotta do that next time. We should be doing the same thing with money. Yeah.

Teaching them just basic concepts. Yeah. Well, that’s not always easy because we may be struggling as adults, and now we got this repeater in our mix. I don’t have mine figured out, which I think is part of God’s design.

So we’re gonna challenge you to teach your children, and while you’re doing that, you may learn a few things you should have learned along the Right.

Well, but then, you know, we’ve hit this concept of why in a lot of these these first few episodes, and and you and I see people walk through the door constantly, that if they would just have have built a little better foundation and understood some basic concepts from the onset, it could have saved them a ton of issues along the way. Right. And so when you ask, you know, why, what does that have to do with true wealth? In a way, has everything to do with true wealth.

You are establishing the foundation.

Exactly. Yeah, building foundation on a rock.

Biblical. And what greater way to do that than to do it with the children that have been entrusted to us. Exactly.

This is awesome. This is why like doing that. The risk I had when I was laying out the financial stages in the book was the normal tendency of anyone who says, Okay, well, I’m forty four. I’m a juggler.

So they go to the chapter about jugglers, now they think they’re an expert. If they didn’t learn the right concepts when they were repeaters, challengers, and launchers Yep. You know, they gotta go back and start all over. Absolutely.

And that’s that’s not always a fun conversation either Right. When you’re in the life cycle. But that’s why let’s get it right. Let’s raise up good, financially responsible young adults by teaching them good concepts as a child.

Make sense? It does. Yeah. So you’re probably doing you’re kind of an you’ve got do you have a challenge?

You do.

We have a We have a repeater.

You have a repeater, a challenger, and a whole bunch of things. Yeah. We got a whole bunch of repeaters and and a couple challengers. Yeah.

Yeah.

So with the repeaters, what are some of the things you’ve done?

Well, so, I mean, the biggest thing the biggest thing you see with them is that and and you hit it. More more is caught than taught. Yep. You know?

But they they do what they they do what they see. And I think our culture these days is is a total instant gratification society. And so that’s probably the biggest thing I I see is that they they have a want, and they want it now. And and so the how do you get them how do you get them to look beyond that a little bit?

I was our our daughter, she I came home one day from work, and she had this new stuffed animal. And I said, well, how how’d you get that? You don’t have any money. Yeah.

She goes, well, mom mom bought it for me. And Stacy goes from the kitchen, she’s like, she’s paying me back.

And I was like, oh, so you’re in debt?

She goes, well, no. Like, yeah, you are.

Yeah. I said, you bought something that you didn’t have the money for, and now you owe mom money. I said, how excited are you gonna be when your birthday comes and your birthday money has to go to mom because you bought she goes, oh, probably not that excited.

Way to dampen the new stuffed animal.

Thanks, dad.

Good job.

I just wanted to show you my stuffed animal. You’re talking to me about debt. Yep. But it’s like but but getting them to just process those those concepts, and for us, I think the biggest thing has been just beating this idea of of stewardship into their into their lives.

That I I think if, from the onset, they have an understanding that it’s not it’s not theirs. You know, they don’t they don’t own it. That everything that they have, God has given them. And and Stacy and I have to live that out too.

Right. You know, we have to we have to set that example.

But they are watching you.

For sure. Yeah. For sure. But but I, we we process for years, how does that actually look? Because you can say it, and and it doesn’t necessarily land. You gotta have a way to show them. And so one of the one of the simple things we’ve done with our kids is just this idea of the jar system.

Right.

Where they have a give jar, they have a save jar, and they have a spend jar. Yep. And so every dollar that they get, you know, we help them divide the the money between them. And and then we tried that for a little while, and you realized that that I was almost a roadblock to them doing that, because I wasn’t, I was never carrying cash.

Right. So they’d get a twenty dollars bill for their birthday or something, and they’d be like, well, put this in your, well, we don’t have, we don’t have shelf of Break it down for me. I can’t tear it in. Yeah.

I wasn’t able to break it down. So it’s like, whatever. Just it it’s fine. And so eventually, I decided I need to quit being a roadblock because this really is not working and and doing its intended purpose.

So I decided to go do like a dad a dad bank.

And and so I just went to the I just went to the bank and and took out some tens and fives and ones. And so now every time they get money, their their first stop is to the dad bank, and I’ll just change them out. So I’ll take their twenty. I’ll give them a a ten, a five, and five ones, and and we’ll go through.

It it it’s a good math deal too. Yeah. So they’ll go, okay. If if if you need to put, you know, fifteen percent or ten percent or whatever we’ve decided into their give jar, you know, what what is that?

And they’ll do the math, and they’ll put it in their jar. How about the save jar? They’ll do the math, and they’ll put it in there, and they understand that that I I still have money that I get to that I get to spend. Right.

And so we’ve tried to we’ve tried to utilize just some of those basic, you know, financial management concepts with them, which which seems to it seems to be working. I mean, at least they they understand the importance of not every dollar that I ever get has to get spent immediately. Right. Right.

Need to be able to give. You know? I need to be able to to save because there’s other things I’ll want down the line, and I still have the joy of being able to spend a little bit along the way too.

So for for the adults that are listening, I I don’t think we have repeaters tuned into this.

We might we might not.

I don’t know if my kids are tuning Anyway, so we we try to develop the concept of live, give, owe, grow.

And I actually go live, give, owe, owe, grow. Yep. And that’s because there are certain things you owe that you really don’t think of, like taxes. Yep.

So you owe the government when you make a dollar. You the the other things that you may owe, the second o would be things you’ve you’ve leveraged and need to pay that debt back. So, again, being and you don’t really work with your kids at that level. Now we’re really focusing on just the living, the giving, and what’s the other one you use?

You have say them again. You got three jars.

Yep. Spend. We have a save, a spend, and a give jar. Yep.

So that would be That’d be your live. That would be your live and grow. Right? So live, give, grow. Yep. Grow is your save. Yep.

Yep. Now we used envelopes when we were at that point. I’m gonna go back and go through a little therapy session for myself. So I started off as a a clothier.

I mean, we I had a clothing store. It was doing very, very well. I was just arrogant and young enough and cocky enough to think I could just always make more money, so I didn’t do any budgeting. That’s kind of how I got into the industry.

So farm crisis hits in the early eighties, had a lot of money borrowed. I my O was pretty big, and and it was I could cash flow it because it was at five percent, but all of sudden, interest rates went to sixteen, seventeen percent, and I I couldn’t cash flow it. So I wound up losing the clothing business and having to give it back. And that left a hole in me that I can still get emotional about today, and that was, you know, I should have been better responsible for this.

So got in this great plan.

I started looking for a job. I’m going do anything we can. We did a paper route. You know, was a pretty good sized paper route.

And I shared it with my kids. They helped me do it. But we were doing that just because we were trying to get money from any source that we possibly could. Eventually, I started selling advertising for the ARGUS leader, and I wound up in front of a financial planning company.

And they they well, tell me what you guys and gals do. Well, they started laying on.

I thought, where the heck were you people Right.

Several years ago?

Somebody if somebody would have sat me down, I would have been much, much better positioned than that. Yep. So long story or I’m making I guess I’m making a short story long here.

But What’s good at that?

Just to look back. So what we got to with the kids, the reason we used envelopes is because that’s where we put had to put the paper people’s their invoices in to pay their paper bills, so we just use them. But I like your jar. You just got some jars and labeled them.

Yeah. Just Mason jars.

Yep. So we would write on each envelope, you know, for living, and that’s what your clothing was. And I did it not only to teach my kids, but I needed to we needed to do that. Yeah.

And it was that was not that was not fun initially because you think to yourself, well, okay, but I wanna I want that, so I’m gonna take that out of this budget. Well, it’s not like I found money. I just made a choice to spend it over here than there. Well, then all of a sudden, got a a hole in one of my pair of jeans, and I need a pair of jeans.

Well, the clothing envelope was empty. Yeah. So, okay, I had to wait or take it from the food. Right.

So it’s it’s a it’s teaching management.

It that’s exactly what it is. It’s it’s not it’s not there’s no magic to it, really. It’s all it is is helping process choices.

You know, that it’s a, you know, if you if you do that, then you might not be able to do this. And when you start when you start the conversation and you actually make them process through, know, thinking through those things, they can they can they pick up on it.

So we now we took our kids to to Disney.

It was their it was their Christmas gift, and one of the pieces of advice that we got was just give them each a fifty dollar Visa card for souvenirs. Otherwise, you’re gonna spend way more than that. We guarantee it. And and you’re gonna be stressed because they’re gonna want something everywhere.

Well, that’s a good idea. So we gave them each a fifty dollar gift card.

And and sure enough, first store, they all come up, and they’re loaded with things that they wanna, you know, they wanna buy. What are Forty nine ninety five. Exactly. One of our kids has this monster stuffed animal, and it’s like that’s exactly what it was.

It’s like, that’s forty nine ninety nine. One, you don’t have enough because let’s talk about taxes. Right. I didn’t go there.

But I was like I was like, you can you can get that. But I said, that’s that’s all. Like, you you won’t be able to do anything else the rest of the trip because that’s your that’s your fifty dollars.

You do things. They just couldn’t spin things.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Could do things, but they couldn’t get any more souvenirs. Right.

Like, that’s that is your souvenir. And they kinda go, oh, okay. Well, yeah. Maybe I don’t wanna do that.

And then they like, they became very intentional with how they spent their money. And it’s it’s not that we couldn’t have gotten them the souvenirs that they they wanted. It’s it’s that, you know, one, we wanna be reasonable about it, and and we want them to understand that, you know, money money doesn’t grow on trees. You know?

You don’t have a need for all of these things. These are these are wants, and let’s process through these wants and maybe sleep on it and make make better decisions. And so they can they can process through those things just fine. And and even the even having the live jar, you know, or the or the spend jar is is nice because you they’ll they’ll come and they’ll say, hey, can I get, you know, my son, can I get this LEGO set?

I don’t know. How much do you have in your spend jar? And he’ll go get his spend jar, and he’ll count on his money, and and he’ll go, well, you have you have enough, but you’re gonna have three dollars left after Do you want it that bad?

He goes,

Yeah. No. I think I might wanna save up for this, that, and the other thing. Right.

It just, as opposed to us just going, well, sure. Why don’t we get that? That’ll be that’ll be fun. It’s it’s at least making them think and and process, and they start to understand the value.

So another layer too on the grow jar, because some sometimes that’s probably the latter envelope. Start with the earlier ones just with those three, but then the growth jar, and then I actually would match them. So if there was money you want to put in that one, I’ll put the same amount in that. Trying to teach them of, yeah, when you get the opportunity and you’re a young adult and you have a four zero one available and there’s a match, that’s free money.

Exactly.

Need to take advantage of that.

Yep. So we would match on the grow chart. The one that was the most challenging for me was the give. Yeah.

This is probably one of my most humiliating life things. But again, going back to more is taught than caught. Yeah.

So, you know, we were teaching tithing, you know, and of course, there’s a lot of conversation on this as well. Tithing really was a New Testament or an Old Testament kind of a concept, you know, give from your first fruits. And really, New Testament is more you shouldn’t limit it to a set percentage. But that’s a whole another episode to get into.

But anyway, so I was teaching them, look. If you get a you know, you need to put ten percent in that jar, and we’re going to give that. And they did it with the greatest of disciplines. I was I was proud of them.

Well, I was on a on a not a fixed income at that point, so I my income fluctuated dramatically because I was in sales at that point, which I don’t wanna be. We’re gonna still unpack the difference between sales and advice. Yeah. But I was in sales at that point, so my income fluctuated all over the place.

So without thinking, I hadn’t laid out to them the concept of we do give a lot of other places, but the only place he actually saw me give was when we put money in the church collection plate. Okay? So, you know, the the plate goes by, and I put in a dollar, and he puts in his dollar, and the plate goes by, and I’m thinking, I I was really proud of him. Until he leaved he leans over to me and he said whispers in my ear.

Now this is like a five year old. He says, did you have a slow week? And I thought, oh, wow.

He is really watching. Yeah. You know?

So that that was kind of a humbling thing. And then I had to have a whole another conversation, which was great because now the communication line was open.

Right. But it really drove home to me, they are watching.

I had a similar one. We during COVID, you know, like a lot like churches stopped passing plates, all those things. And I I hit a point where where it was like, you know what? I’m just gonna set this all up online because you can do it everywhere.

Right.

And so I just set up automatic, you know, contributions to these places on online, where normally, like Sunday morning, I’d get up and and I’d write out a check. Sure. Oftentimes, the kids would see it, you know, because I’d I’d write it just before we go to church or whatever. And and almost the same thing. Like, we I set all this stuff up online. The very next Sunday, we’re going to church, and and Ben looks at me, and he’s like, do we not do we not write that thing to church anymore?

We don’t give it. Was like, what oh, well, yeah. We do.

I just I just set it up online. He’s like, oh, it’s like he almost didn’t believe me. I’m like, sure, dad. Yeah. Sure, dad.

Gotta see you drop that.

You’re all not on church, but we changed. I went back, and I was like, you know what? If they’re watching that close, then then that’s a cool thing for me to be able to to model for them. Because that was probably like, if I look at lessons that I took from my parents, you know, we didn’t have we didn’t have tons of money conversations growing up either, but the one thing I always witnessed was their generosity.

Sure.

You know, I would say I learned sacrificial giving from my mom and dad. You know, we could have done a lot of other things as a family, but but they chose to invest, you know, in in other ways, in helping the community and helping church and doing things like And we witnessed that. And so if my kids are gonna witness those things, you know, then I wanna be intentional about doing it in a way that can encourage them, you know, in those ways.

Which gets back to that trickery moment. You know, when you try to teach a child, you will find out that the student is really the teacher. Yeah. It’s kind of that Mr.

Biyagi kind of thing. You know, they will point out your inconsistencies. Yeah. And they will make you better at what you need to do, and the goal then is they become better financial stewards.

Yep. And if you’re not doing it at that age, wait till they get to be a challenger because they will challenge every principal when it comes to money at that point. Right. So you need to lay that good foundational principles and getting them used to live, give, oh, grow, and getting them to do it by repeating it through actions.

Yeah, and that’s also why we ask adults, like I said, what’s your earliest recollection of money? Did you have to buy your own clothes? Right. Or did was that provided for you? Yep. Because that will give us insight into the missing adults.

But the cool part is, like, you can you can start to see fruit pretty easily in these conversations too. Like, I one, you know, like, even take the take the the generosity conversation and things like You know, they so my daughter, she has this gift jar, and their church always does this this they raise money for the Speedlite program, helps missionaries, all these different things. And and so they had these goals that they had set as a youth group. And she came, and and it was the night where they were gonna do their big their big give.

And she grabs her gift jar, and she came up to me, and she goes, hey. Is it a like, can I can I give more? Like, if can I give more out of my spend jar? Can I give out of my spend jar too?

And it’s like, you start to see the fruit of those things. It’s like, that’s really cool. And where you start to understand that, okay, by doing that jar system, you know, by them understanding what stewardship means, they are starting to process.

Like, money is not grabbing ahold of her life in any sort negative They haven’t got the bad habits yet.

Right. Right?

So they’re free to give as, and they’re some of the greatest customers They are, and she sees the joy in that. Like, it was cool for her to be able to say like, oh, I I can I can give this?

Right.

To be able to purchase You have a great saying about giving does what?

It free Breaks the power of money in your Right.

It does. Yeah.

So I think we’ve seen that over and over.

But then, hey, the other the other fruit piece is, that this one was my nephew. But we so it’s kind of a funny one. We were at my in laws, and we did like this we had to do a staycation during COVID. Sure.

You know? And so we couldn’t really go anywhere. We always do a vacation with them, but the place shut down. And so we did like this staycation, And they set up like this Olympics kinda deal, and I I can’t remember what game we were playing exactly, but but there were prizes all over this table.

And if you won, you got to go pick a prize. And so there were baseball cards on the table and some gift cards and different things like that. And and, you know, if one of the boys would win, it would be a race up to the table to grab baseball cards. And I’m starting to see as this happens, I have a nephew that hadn’t won anything, and over time, I just see him smiling.

And I’m like, why is he why is he smiling? I don’t get and then finally, wins. And he goes up, and he grabs this gift card, and he goes, you guys don’t know how many cards I’m gonna be able to buy with this thing. Like, knew but he knew.

Yeah. He understood the value of what what he had there. Yeah. You know, that he knew that those packs of cards were like two dollars and twenty five cents at the store.

This gift card’s ten dollars. Right. And I’m gonna go buy my I’m gonna go buy myself four packs. Right.

Right. Gonna be.

But it’s just But he understood the concept, and he also delayed gratification that Exactly.

Yeah. He was willing to he was willing to wait and say, oh, well, I’ll get a bunch more cards later if I don’t grab those grab those today. Right. So just by, like, being intentional about the conversation and and starting to have it, again, you know, it’s nothing magical. Right. You don’t have to there’s no there’s no magic bullet to to getting your kids trained up in the way they should go in terms of finances. It’s just simply having the conversation.

Well, the other the other interesting thing that I have found at least with with this repeater group is just like I said, no one’s born a saver or born a spender, but I do think there is there’s a I do believe by by by design, there is a hole in all of us. Yeah. There there we’re created with a with a emptiness, with a and and people try to fill that with a lot of different things. As you get older, it could be alcohol.

It could be things. We all are aspiring for something. Yep. So we’re trying we’re trying to to fill that hole.

Well, managing of money can also provide that. Now I think there’s a deeper spiritual reason why that hole exists, but for the podcast today, we won’t go into that.

But what we’re trying to do is nurture their nature. I mean, you have certain kids. You know, I’ve got four boys, and I got my wife and I will joke about it, and I hate to admit it which ones are which. But, you know, they’re and if they’re listening, it’s gonna be kind of an interesting conversation later.

But, you know, there are times we we’ve joked and said either a gene fell asleep or woke up in this child versus this child because they did not get that from me. Yep. But they all are all similar, but they still have a different nature. And if you don’t train that right, by the time they get to be teenagers, if they’ve just had an open checkbook, your challenges are gonna be just that, So getting this right, I think, is incredibly important.

Absolutely.

Well What are what are some other things that have happened? Well, I think just on just on that one, like, it’s this whole this whole concept of of, you know, they think they’re owed something, you know, that they that they deserve.

They deserve this. And so I think even, like, we get asked all the time, well, should we give our kids an allowance? And and I think, you know, I I think there’s value in helping them process through, you know, what what what do we do around the house simply because you’re a part of this family? Exactly.

You know, we we clean our room. We make our bed. Our clothes go in the dirty clothes. Like, all just the basics of we we pick up after we’re done with something.

Right. We flush the darn door.

If you’re gonna give them a budget, and I agree totally with this, if you’re gonna give them an allowance Give it on things above and beyond. Yep. Exactly. Should just be expected.

Yep. Exactly. So if if sweeping out the garage isn’t one of your tasks, you could say, well, that may be the other child’s, and you typically just went and did that above and beyond Yep. I’m gonna I’m gonna reward that.

Yeah. The thing I have to have to be a little bit careful with budgets and allowances for repeaters and challengers, as we’ll get to, you don’t want it to be a form of manipulation. Yep.

I do this.

Therefore, I get this.

Exactly.

It has to be you know, you’re already going to get that.

If you don’t do it well, we’re gonna take it away or don’t do that. We’ll find another free punishment because how you handle that can set other I’m not a psychologist by any means, but I have seen that work out.

Oh, you’re exactly right. But well, but then to I mean, to unpack it further, some of it becomes just an understanding of wants versus needs. Exactly. Like, Stacy and I have been very clear with the kids that we will we will supply all of your needs.

Right.

You know, you you do not have to worry about about covering a need that that you have, but you also have a lot of wants in your life. Right. You know, the the candy that you wanna get when you go to every single, you know, of your siblings’ football games from the concession or or whatever games that they’re at is not a need. Yep.

That’s a want. Yep. If you wanna buy something there, then you can you can bring some money. Or, you know, if you wanna buy that that stuffed animal or that toy or that Lego set or that ball, what you can you can buy that.

Right.

You know? And so just just allowing them to process through that that wants and that wants and needs piece, and and we want them to be able to do some of the things that they that they want. And and they don’t they’re young enough that that some some the older the older ones have ways to kinda earn some some money along the way. They can, but the younger ones don’t necessarily.

And so allowing them, you know, the experience of managing some money and understanding the JAR system and Well, even use it for math.

It’s good. You know, that’s another thing, because they don’t have a concept of what a penny is. Right. So, you know, you give them five pennies, you teach them math with that, and when you get ten of these, ten is equal to a dime.

Yep. We’d have a funny experience with that because I had one of my parents or step parents, they would give the kids money occasionally. And and what was really funny was when the one and he’s always been the josher when it comes to money. He would say, grandpa, I like the gold I like the silver ones too.

I was like, okay. He gets this.

Reddies are cool, but one of those Those silver ones are kinda nice.

So just teaching them good money concepts. Yep. You know, the thing that really irritates me today is when when I was brought up, we had to we had to teach we had to know how to count change.

Now if if the person behind the register enters it wrong, they have no clue what to do. Or even where I have fun because I was brought up a different way. If if it’s, you know, say it’s sixteen dollars and ten cents, give them twenty ten and watch them freeze. It’s like, wait.

What do I do with this That is hilarious. When we were taught if something was, you know, sixteen ten and they gave you a twenty, you counted it back. Yep. You would go twenty plus five is twenty five, plus three quarters is seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

Now they plug it in, and they they let the I think that’s we’re missing some of that. Now, again, I’m showing my age. Yeah. I’m really old school.

But But that that too, though.

So you you go from the parenting perspective. I I remember my sister.

So my my mom growing up, she said my sister wanted something, and her mom said, no. We we can’t afford that or something like that. And she goes, well, just put it on that plastic thing. Then you don’t have to pay for Yeah. They don’t process through the that plastic thing. Oh, man.

We can share we can share horror stories with that because we my one son, when we were going through a tougher time financially, this is the same one who said, did you have a a bad week?

Yeah. He wanted something, I said, we don’t have the money for it. And he said, well, go to the grocery store. And I was like, go to the grocery store? Well, early on, my wife and I were on a budgeting process, you know, where we each carried a small envelope. We wrote down everything we spent.

I I I learned really early on in life.

I never I never ran out of money, but I always had a lot of months left, you know, because I I simply didn’t make it go far enough.

Well, we found out that two two really great lessons. I can’t go into Best Buy alone. She doesn’t like to go into Best Buy, which is not good, but I that’s my spending Yeah. Nemesis.

But I also found out we don’t eat everything that we supposedly spent at the grocery store because that’s where she would get changed and then he was at the other but he he saw that and thought, yeah, just go to the grocery store because they give you money outright and free. So they’re watching. Yep. Teach them.

No better time. You cannot start early enough. We’ve got other lessons in life things that we can train and teach on. What’s cool is when you get to be an adult and you come in and you start sitting down looking at the financial plan, one of the things we have in there wants, So we’re just reemphasizing what you should have been teaching early on.

The great thing is we’re going to come.

This is not a one and done.

We’re going come back because there’s kids with the greatest teachers, that’s where we find a lot of humor because they’re very transparent when it comes to Yes, they are. Anything else you want to add before we wind it up?

No, think just from a practical perspective, you know, we’ve kind of identified, at least for this age group of kids, six, what I would say just six practical applications, ideas that you can kinda implement with them. We’ve talked about a lot of them, but I think one is just just make sure you’re creating intentional conversation is the biggest piece. That jar system has worked wonders in in our family.

Get them involved with that too.

Right? Absolutely.

Have them have them get their own jars and decorate them the way they Exactly.

Yep. That’s huge. They love it. Yep.

Having the parent bank available just so that you can actually, you know, not be a Not be a herd of cash.

To them that I keep available for them until spend.

Exactly. Exactly. But then, like, even outline the family responsibilities versus what do you get an allowance an allowance for.

Start talking to them about goals. You know? Short term, long term, they can process those things, and and you’d be interested. It’s kinda interesting what they actually do do process in in that way. And then, honestly, I I would say, like, you’ve referenced it a couple times, but a shameless plug for for your book. I mean, if you’re looking for a simple place to to start, this honestly is a a a great resource in terms of just understanding, you know, what does this even mean? How do how do I as a parent help?

But then also, like, how how do I myself begin to process through these things?

To be clear, literally could write a book just on that subject. So this is not in-depth there. It’s high entry level things to just start implementing that can be simple. And then when you get that master to come back, we’ll give you some more things to dig a little deeper.

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The opinions voiced in today’s true wealth podcast with Kevin Ingers, Nick Omlund, and Ryan Ovieden are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendation by any individual. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss. To determine what may be appropriate for you, consult with your attorney, accountant, financial, or tax adviser prior to investing.