“I always wanted my kids to be a little bit reflective on ‘Did that work?’ and […] treat their own purchases as experiments for the future.”
— Joe Saul-Sehy
Self-professed “money disaster” Joe Saul-Sehy shares his experiences with and insights on raising money-smart kids with host John Lanza. Joe recounts his own credit card debacle, which influenced how he approached money with his twins. He shares how he introduced them to money when they were young, his family’s allowance system, his “circling back” strategy and how he tackled money conversations. He also discusses money tracking, the difference between saving and investing and responsible debt management. Additionally, Joe and John touch on the loneliness epidemic, the importance of financial coaching, having the freedom to make money mistakes and not making a purchase without a payment plan.
Joe Saul-Sehy learned from failure. Destroying his credit immediately after leaving home, he had to gain financial experience the hard way. Ironically, he learned many lessons as a financial advisor. (Yes, he was telling other people how to manage their money!) After 16 years in the industry, he moved to financial media and created Stacking Benjamins, one of the most streamed podcasts in the personal finance sphere. He also co-authored the book Stacked: Your Super-Serious Guide to Modern Money Management. Joe lives in Texarkana with his spouse, Cheryl, and cat, Cooper, and records shows in his mom’s next-door basement.
Links (From the Show)
- Connecting with Joe
- Money-Smart Mentions
- The Credit Union relEVENT conference
- John’s Stacking Benjamins Podcast appearance
- All about Monopoly Junior
- David Owen’s Art of Allowance Podcast appearance
- David Owen’s book, The First National Bank of Dad: The Best Way to Teach Kids About Money
- John’s short essay on the “One-Dollar-Per-Week-Per-the-Age-of-Your-Child” maxim
- Andy Hill’s podcast, Marriage Kids and Money
- Nilay Patel’s Verge review of the Apple Vision Pro
- SNL’s “Don’t Buy Stuff” skit
Show Notes (Find what’s most interesting to you!)
- How Joe, a self-professed “money disaster,” began teaching people about money [3:38]
- Joe introduced his twins to money with the help of the old-school Monopoly Junior. [7:35]
- An introduction to Joe’s allowance system [9:55]
- Joe shares his “circling back” strategy. [12:04]
- Optimizing for allowing your kids to make money mistakes [13:14]
- Of Ruby Tuesday and Duran Duran sweaters: Joe’s disastrous first credit card experience [14:54]
- Turning family finance into a game [20:29]
- Working money failures into conversations [25:14]
- The progression of Joe’s allowance system [26:35]
- Circling back on circling back [30:56]
- What would Joe have done differently in terms of his kids’ money lessons? [32:25]
- The top financial skills kids need to learn: Joe’s version [34:01]
- And aside on tech and loneliness [35:48]
- Joe’s parents were more influential in terms of work ethic than money smarts. [38:21]
- Sue Virgin to the rescue! [39:42]
- Don’t ask Earl from Peoria on Facebook: the importance of surrounding yourself with people who know you, know your financial situation and are smarter than you [43:47]
- Having the freedom to make money mistakes [48:35]
- Third time’s the charm when it comes to circling back! [48:58]
- Not letting yourself be outworked [49:38]
- Purchases, payments and plans … oh my! [50:10]
- Monopoly Junior: Take Two [51:04]
- Getting social with Joe [52:16]
- “Feel the fear, but do it anyway.” [53:16]
If you liked this episode …
Interested in an allowance approach similar to Joe’s? Author and New Yorker staff writer David Owen suggests providing enough money to grant your kids a “sort of flush.” Listen to his Art of Allowance Podcast episode at 42:04 for all the details.
Need more ideas on how to engage your kids in meaningful money conversations? Check out my chat with father and financial advisor Tom Henske. He tackles many topics in his appearance on the podcast, like talking taxes [37:14], relying on mail as a catalyst [56:49] and continuing the conversation with older kids [30:10].
Still worried that your past money mistakes prevent you from being an effective guide for your kids? Mom and money maven Bobbi Rebell discusses the importance of sharing your financial faux pas with your kids in an age-appropriate manner. Start streaming her podcast episode at 22:28 for her advice.
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Unedited transcript (beta)
John Lanza (00:02)
Today I am speaking with Joe Saul-Sehy. Welcome, Joe.
Joe (00:07)
Hey John, how are you, man?
John Lanza (00:09)
Well, I am super excited because I know this is going to be a very fun time. So, you know, I’m, I’m really glad that we connected at the CU relevant conference last year because you know, you did your typical seamless bang up job as the events MC, but we actually, you know, being able to kind of connect and talk. Um, I was fortunate enough then to appear on your podcast, stacking Benjamins.
And I’m really honored now to have you and to be able to turn the mic on you and ask you some questions. But to kick things off, Joe, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Joe (00:48)
Sure. Well, first you made it really easy. It’s very easy to, uh, to introduce John Lanz into the stage and, uh, and all the, all the speakers were so good. By the way, that just, that whole lineup was fantastic. Uh, I’m a guy who was a money disaster myself growing up. I, I was horrible and yet, um, I became a financial planner. And even in my early days of being a financial planner, I was still a money disaster.
At the same time that I was teaching other people to do great things with, with money. In the late nineties, I finally got to the point where I had nowhere to turn and I had to develop better money habits. I’d reached that in my rope. And I realized that I was living a lie, which was that if I just make a little more money, all my money problems will disappear, which is a huge lie. And then the second lie is that really tracking my money and having a budget doesn’t really matter if I make more money.
Also, a complete lie. There has to be this difference between money coming in and money going out, or it doesn’t matter how much money you make. At age 40, I had this big moment in my life where a mentor of mine left the company I was with and, and I was surprised cause he was two years younger than me. And, and, and he said he had other mountains to climb and he worked so hard in financial planning, he didn’t know what else he was going to do. And I, uh, ended up.
selling my business after he left the company, I left the company, uh, because I thought I had other mountains to climb. For me, it was a metaphor. I wanted to be a high school teacher and I got my financial house in order and I’d actually built a nice nest egg and I was able to sell my franchise to this business for him. He wasn’t being metaphorical at all. He actually went and climb Mount Everest twice. He climbed most of the tall peaks around the world. It was a man. He runs an adventure travel company doing what he loves.
John Lanza (02:29)
Mm-hmm.
Joe (02:39)
And for me, I realized I love teaching people about money. So this long circuitous path led to a blog, which led to a podcast, which led to stacking, Benjamin’s. We’ve now had about 1500 episodes, which led me to be on a podcast with John Lanza and these goosebumps I have right now.
John Lanza (03:01)
You’re living the dream, Joe, you’re living the dream.
Joe (03:03)
This is it. Pinch me.
John Lanza (03:06)
Well, you know, you’ve done, like you said, 1500 episodes of Stacking Benjamins, and now you have a book, Stacked, which is helping thousands, if not millions, get money smart. You did that with Emily Guy Birkin. And it’s, you know, so folks probably have a pretty good idea of what makes your money heart tick. And I love the fact that you came at it from this, from the vulnerability standpoint, because it’s kind of when I got into this same type of thing.
It’s like you rack up a little bit of credit card debt and either keep going that way or you decide you’re not gonna go that way. And we want more people to not go that way, right? Is to become money smart. So, but I think because everybody kind of knows how your views on money, I think what I would like to do is just do a deeper dive into raising money smart kids, right? To talk about that, just have a nice discussion because we are on the Art of Allowance podcast after all.
Um, how does that sound, Joe? Does that work?
Joe (04:06)
That sounds great. And I, and I don’t get to talk about this a lot. And I’m very proud of what my kids did. I’ve twins who are 28 now, almost 29 here in a couple of months. Um, and they are doing phenomenally well with, with money.
John Lanza (04:17)
Yeah.
Nice, nice. And in fact, well, what’s nice is because we’re just moving into this empty nester territory. So you can give, this is advice. Really, I’m just looking for advice for myself. So it really is an excuse. But let’s start with this. Let’s start with, take us back to your young twins and how did you introduce your kids to money?
Joe (04:33)
The podcast is an excuse.
You know, the, the early concepts, uh, for my kids were just the different sheet. First of all, the, the idea that these things in your wallet, physical money actually, um, had value number one and number two was that the values were different. So at a very early age, we talked about the difference between, uh, between a dollar and a quarter and a nickel and a dime. And.
John Lanza (05:15)
Mm-hmm.
Can I ask you, roughly what age did you start this?
Joe (05:18)
When… Yeah.
Yeah, this is, this is like four years old. This is, this, this is very early. So the very earliest thing was, was that, was that we are going to, that this is different than this, that, uh, that these have different meanings. Um, there was, there was a game that I actually really, really liked, uh, monopoly junior, um, and by the way, I don’t like the new monopoly junior, but if anybody listening goes on eBay.
John Lanza (05:24)
Yeah, okay, great.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joe (05:49)
And finds the one that has the roller coaster and it’s you’re at a theme park and you own a theme park, that version. What I really like about that version is you buy different rides. And I remember at four and five years old using this game and my kids having this big aha, because in the game you have a $1 bill, a $2 bill and a $3 bill. And so, you know, it’s, it’s these different numbers and different rides cost different amounts of money.
John Lanza (05:55)
Mm-hmm.
Joe (06:16)
So my kids would just, I remember we first started playing this job. My kids would hand me just a random thing. And when they realized that the number on the piece of paper mattered, that was like a big pow and that the roller coaster costs more than the popcorn stand, it was going to cost me, you know, and, and the fact that three of this thing that looks very much to a kid, exactly the same as one of this thing, right? It’s three, $1 bills equals the $3 bill.
John Lanza (06:16)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mmm
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Joe (06:46)
That was wild. And then to take those lessons and transform those into, here’s a $10 bill. Here’s a 100. It takes 100 of this to equal that. Those, those early physical money things, um, where, where we started.
John Lanza (06:54)
Mmm. Yeah.
So did you incorporate any kind of allowance at that How did you kind of get money in their hands on a consistent basis? Or was that even a thing that you focused on?
Joe (07:10)
I did, but allowances didn’t really start until six or seven. I was thinking about that preparing for today, but it was in the six, seven year old range before that. I think the allowance might’ve been lost on them. Um, the, what we did, um, was we gave them more money than they needed. Um, which was a big discussion that Cheryl, my spouse and I had. And, and the reason we did that was because.
John Lanza (07:15)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Joe (07:39)
The reason I failed with money was because, and I’m not blaming my parents here. This is every parent on earth. I feel like most parents, my parents never trusted me with much money at all. And my parents would always say, no, you’re not getting the, what do you need with that kind of money? I wanted my kid to have enough money that they could make a bad $10 decision. Um, and so what I did was we gave them a weekly allowance that was double their age.
John Lanza (07:46)
Sure.
Ha ha.
Yep.
Joe (08:09)
So my six-year-olds were getting $12 a week and we would go, we would take them to Target and they could go buy stuff or they could save it. My kids are so interesting too throughout their lives and they learn this about themselves early. My son, I, you never saw that money again. When he got $12, it just, that money seriously disappeared. What’s funny is he’s 28 years old. He has 14 rental houses and I hope he’s listening to this.
because he works for Microsoft as an engineer. He makes so much money, John. I have no idea how much money he makes, but he makes so much money. He’s always still happy to let me pay for stuff. Always happy to let dad pay wherever we go, whatever we do. Because money just disappears. He is a money hoarder. My daughter is much more like me. You put $12 in her hand and you were at Target. It was gone. Like within three minutes at Target, the money was completely gone.
John Lanza (08:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ha ha.
Joe (09:10)
What, What was important to me though, wasn’t just the allowance. It was then making sure I wrote on my calendar after Autumn and I went to target and then she bought something that I knew was not going to be great. A great move putting on my calendar two weeks later, circling back and going, how do you think that move two were two weeks from you buying this? Not great thing.
John Lanza (09:25)
Yep, yep.
Hmm.
Joe (09:38)
the Dr. Phil, how’s that working out for you? And it was, it was always not always, but, but in those cases, she was like, yeah, I shouldn’t have done that. Like that was, and what’s cool is my daughter’s really good with money because at a much younger age than me, she learned to pump the brakes. Like I’m always going to feel this feeling that I can’t control, that I really want that thing right now. And that will change my life. And then she goes, no, it won’t.
John Lanza (09:41)
Right, right.
Yeah, yeah.
Hmm.
Joe (10:05)
Um, she, she still likes fashion, but she has become the world’s best, um, thrift store shopper. Like she is in a, my daughter has become an amazing shopper and you go to her house and she doesn’t own much stuff.
John Lanza (10:17)
Mm-hmm. You know, I like the fact, so you were kind of optimizing for allowing them to make mistakes, right? And the other key thing is this idea that recognizing the money personality kind of sticks with you. It’s just, I totally understand, because I’m more like your daughter, I’m probably more like you in that sense, that I’m a reformed spender.
Joe (10:25)
Yes.
John Lanza (10:42)
So I still go through the process of, gosh, I would really want for me, it’s like tech, I really want this new computer. But now at least I know, one day, two days later, it’s just going to be another computer. Right. And so it’s understanding and it’s easier for us to understand our own personalities, right. Versus the, the personalities that are slightly different than money personalities that are, that are different kids have,
Joe (11:07)
Well, just on that note, I think it’s interesting that it’s in the time of making mistakes that you figure that out. It’s not in the times when you did things, right. It’s in the times when you mess stuff up that you figure that out is, is.
John Lanza (11:12)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yes. Well, your approach is similar to David Owen, who wrote the book, First National Bank of Dad. And that was one of the points he made. He was on the podcast as well. And he said, you know, your kids, I wanted to make sure my kids felt a little bit flush with money, which is exactly what you’re saying here. And that idea is because you want them to be able to have meaningful money, you know, versus
You don’t want to give them too little money, in which case then they don’t have any spending power and it becomes kind of a pointless exercise. If you’re going to give them an allowance, allow them to use that allowance on some…
Joe (11:58)
Absolutely. No. Well, and you know, I look at my story. What I was trying to do was the opposite of what happened to me. I went to the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. And the first, one of the first days on campus, I stood in line and I don’t remember John, what they were giving away. I don’t remember if it was a Frisbee or a pizza or a stadium blanket.
But I get in this line and I sign up for an American Express credit card, which is funny because I became a spokesperson for American Express financial advisor division later on. I was like, you guys didn’t do your homework because of what I did. I had never been trusted with money. And of course, two weeks later, I very honestly said, I have no income. I’m going to a military college. I have zero opportunity to have any income. And I, um, and I still get this card, this beautiful card that says member since today.
John Lanza (12:20)
Yep.
Wow. Yeah. Ha ha ha.
Yeah.
Joe (12:47)
And the first time we got leave, I went, we went to this mall in North Charleston, me and a bunch of my friends. And we went to this high-end restaurant. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s called Ruby Tuesday. It’s this wonderful high-end place, salad bar, everything. But the bill came and I’d never had any, I’d never been trusted with any money. I didn’t have any money habits, good or bad. I had zero money habits because I never had money in my hands. And I took that card and I went, I got it.
John Lanza (12:53)
Mm-hmm.
Hahaha
Joe (13:16)
I’m paying for this because I just want to make friends with these people. I didn’t know. And guess, guess who became everybody’s best friend that day. And I paid for it. And I never thought about how am I going to pay this bill? Like not, not once John did that enter my mind. Like where’s this money going to come from? I didn’t end there, by the way, I went down to the other end of the mall where Nordstrom I was like a magnet to the most expensive store in the mall. And I bought this.
John Lanza (13:40)
I’m out.
Joe (13:40)
I should have worn it today because I still keep it. I’ve got, it’s this bad-ass Duran because it was 1986. Uh, look in sweater, this beautiful sweater, by the way, it holds up. It still is good quality today, but it was like, you know, the price of a Buick. And I, and I buy this sweater using my American express card. Like if my kids can avoid this disaster that happened a couple of weeks later, I go to, you know, then it was before email. So I was really excited that I was getting mail.
John Lanza (13:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Joe (14:10)
And you go and, and you know, in our post office, we would have these mailboxes with these clear fronts and whenever there was a letter in there, I would get super excited, you’ve got mail. And so I opened it up and I remember there’s a letter from American express. And I’m thinking, these guys are probably thanking me. Like we’ve got this good relationship. We didn’t mean American express. They hit me plastic. I use it. Like, how great is that? Like, thank you, Joe. You and I made friends together. We bought a sweater that you can’t wear it. Cause you’re at the military college of South Carolina. You’ll never be aware of it, but it’s a great sweater.
John Lanza (14:32)
Ha!
Joe (14:39)
And no, it was a bill. And that was the first time I thought about it. It was the first time I thought about money in a very serious way at 18 years old, I’m finally making a big mistake. And by the way, it was probably a, you know, a $350 mistake. Um, and my mom did something that was interesting. I, of course, that’s the first thing I did. What any smart person would do. I called mom and I said, we have a problem.
John Lanza (14:39)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Joe (15:05)
And my mom, by the way, who must’ve read the one minute manager meets the monkey book, which is, you know, the problems, the monkey. And if I come up to you, John, I go, we have a problem. Now the monkey’s not just on me. It’s on us. Right. And then John says, and this is where managers get tricked all the time. Managers go, okay, I’ll take care of it. And then all of a sudden I don’t, I walk out of your office and you’ve got the problem, my mom did the perfect thing that they talk about in that book, which is she goes, we don’t have a problem. You have a problem. And I destroyed my credit.
John Lanza (15:16)
Yep, yep, yep.
Mm-hmm.
Joe (15:33)
that for that first use of my, of my card. And I spent the whole next summer paying a collection agency to get rid of this, you know, $300 problem. That was now a $600 problem.
John Lanza (15:36)
for that.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, we’re going to definitely come back to your mom because you are recording in your mom’s basement. So we are definitely going to come back to that. And we’ve, uh, you know, I remember I was, I was looking through the book stacked and I, I realized that we have gone through this similar type of experience because mine was getting a credit card, um, in college, you know, now they, you colleges are not allowed, our credit cards are not allowed to do this in two colleges, but.
Joe (15:52)
Yes.
John Lanza (16:17)
And I bought a computer, $2,000 Gateway computer on that credit card, which, you know, it was a fairly inexpensive mistake or a way to learn because that thing ended up costing $3,000 once I paid it off and the interest off. But I never after that, knowingly, there were a few times where I just forget to pay, I would incur a charge and I have to call, but I’d never carried a balance after that.
Right? And that was, yeah, that was, it was a, it was a learning, a good learning experience. We’ll put it that way. Right. And, uh, and this is why we do, this is why what you were talking about with your kids doing it early, it’s allowing them to make these low stakes mistakes before, cause you know, our mistakes were fairly low stakes mistakes as well. Yours is $350. Mine’s 2000. Again, fairly low stakes mistakes, but
Joe (16:45)
Well
Yeah.
John Lanza (17:12)
If you have no experience and then you start, start your first choices to your, your first money choices are going to take out a student loan, which could then be a shackle for the rest of your life. That’s a big problem. That’s, and so that’s why we’re talking about. It’s like, if you’re going to do any, just start these conversations as early as possible. And yeah, so I want to ask you like how, one of the things, how open were you with
your money with your kids as they grew because that are you one of these radically honest money folks I’m sure you’ve talked to folks on your podcast about this concept like the radical you know money approach or not so I’d like your perspective on
Joe (17:51)
Yeah.
Yeah, I never gave, I never gave kids a balanced numbers. Um, I didn’t give them exact numbers that way, but, but I did, I did teach them what, you know, what the funds were. We, we looked at, um, we looked up some of the funds that we had and talked about how we invest money. We actually, uh, we did go through paychecks with our kids.
John Lanza (18:00)
Yeah.
Hmm. Yeah.
Joe (18:22)
And look at the withholding and the, the amount coming in, which I was even then uncomfortable with, you know, showing them, this is the amount coming in the front door. I just, I just still always, and by the way, I get people that, that are radically transparent and from uh, very cerebral level. I like it. I actually like it. I think I just have so many in.
John Lanza (18:22)
Okay.
Yeah.
Joe (18:43)
you know, growing up and we didn’t talk about money at all. Like, I’m like, are you kidding me? I’m not sharing that with you. Like that, that just, that just is, it’s, it’s really an emotional way was difficult for me, for me to get around. I was very honest about the fact that we had an energy bill problem. Um, so once again, low stakes things where I was pretty, pretty open. We, this is, this was kind of funny. I would come home every day and I get very frustrated because
John Lanza (18:46)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Joe (19:11)
You know, it’s, it’s the middle of fall in Michigan, all of my, the doors of the house are open, all the lights are on. Like it’s Disneyland. Nobody’s inside the house. We had three televisions. They’re all on. Nobody’s watching them. Right. So I took out graph paper and I said, we’re going to turn this into, I had a choice. We could either, we’d either, you know, yell about it. That gets mad. Then you get the eye roll. You get me versus my kids, or we can become a team and solve this together.
John Lanza (19:15)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Joe (19:39)
So we, uh, I told them it was a problem. The energy bill was too high, took out a graph paper. And every month when we still got a paper statement, then when the bill would come in, we’d look at it together and we tried to graph it being lower. And I didn’t even remember what we did. If it was pizza or just high fives or something, we, we just, as a family started attacking the energy bill and turning a game into working on family finance stuff like that together.
John Lanza (20:03)
Mmm.
Joe (20:06)
ended up turning, which could have been me angry into a lot of fun was a blast. Um, in fact, well, sometimes it wasn’t a blast. I remember I was watching this football. I was watching my Detroit Lions lose again, which they used to do all the time. Um, and I walk out of my living room to get some water. I remember coming back and my daughter’s turned off the television. She’s like, dad, you left the room and you left the TV on and she’s lecturing me, John, about leaving the TV on. I’m like, Autumn, I just went to get a drink. Like I was coming back.
John Lanza (20:11)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Joe (20:36)
But I love it. The fact that my daughter was lecturing me about being energy conscious was pretty, pretty cool. So we’d involve them in that type of money talk. We would involve that there’s money consequences behind things like our utilities, uh, and, and grocery shopping, by the way, I got very tired of. I got very tired of, uh, can I have, can I have, can I have, so I would remind them they had an allowance. They can have whatever the heck they want.
John Lanza (20:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe (21:05)
You can, you can go ahead and buy whatever you want with the allowance. But even better than that, I like taking the grocery list and separating it between, and we did this by the way, from the time my kids were, well, at, uh, at younger ages, they stuck with me. But when they got maybe just before middle school, we would, we would, we would divide and conquer around the grocery store and, uh, we would look at things like unit cost.
I remember having phenomenal discussions about unit cost and they would compare unit cost to decide what product to buy. And then we’d have some great discussions about quality and maybe it makes sense to not get the cheapest toilet paper because you’ll regret that later.
John Lanza (21:48)
Yeah, you know, I love that gamification excuse me, gamification of it’s so much better than the lectures. I also think it’s funny to see that kind of generational. We’re turning into our parents like you come home, see all the windows open. And then you’re then you see your daughter and all you can do is accept the lecture and just put your hands up like you just you know got to the NFC championship game like the Detroit Lions so
Joe (22:03)
What are you born in a barn?
Right?
John Lanza (22:17)
Now they took a step. They took a step in the right direction, so that’s good.
How were you able to kind of work in your money failures into conversations with your kids or did you? So I know you weren’t radically honest, but did you talk about that in any way?
Joe (22:31)
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I remember before college even going into, uh, and, and by the time my kids went to college, all the laws have been passed, so they could, but, you know, you still see credit cards still find a way to find our kids. Right. And, and they’re going to be exposed to these offers at, at some point, some way. And, um, you know, these are very crafty companies. So, uh, I, I told them that story. And I think the fact that it’s kind of a funny story.
John Lanza (22:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe (23:01)
you know, about how I messed it up, really helped them get the message without, again, without a dad lecture. Um, so, so we, we talked about it a lot then when they were older. I don’t think when they were younger, them knowing what a money disaster I was when, when they were younger would have had any utility, you know, it wouldn’t have really mattered. They didn’t know enough. So them knowing what dad went through, but you know, when we got to 16, 17, 18,
John Lanza (23:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Joe (23:31)
We were talking about some of the hard lessons that I had learned that I didn’t want them to have to go through the same thing.
John Lanza (23:38)
Yeah, that makes sense. Can I ask you, so your allowance, you started off with paying them double their age, which is the typical is you pay the money per week per age of the child. So $5 for five year olds, you’re paying $10 for a five year old, or six, you said six, so $12 for a six year old. How did the allowance progress? So one, did you incorporate chores into your allowance at all?
Joe (23:54)
Yeah.
John Lanza (24:05)
And then as they transition to say tweens and teens, did you increase the allowance? Did you tie it to other responsibilities? Did they have jobs and you decreased the allowance? Like if you could just kind of just roughly take us through the progression to the extent that you can recall the progression, that would be helpful.
Joe (24:25)
Yeah. The, the, the allowance started to go away at, uh, 14 and 15 when they started taking on jobs, when they got jobs and we never did. Um, we never did tie it to tasks. And I love, you know, some of the people that I’ve spoken with this about over the years on stacking, Benjamin’s, I love people that have had, uh, boards for their kids, you know, job boards. I love the
John Lanza (24:49)
Yeah.
Joe (24:51)
radical people that even had kids. I remember one guest we had their kids that would bid against each other for the job and he took the low cost bidder. And this is where they learned that it was better to collude against dad. Like collusion was great because they were screwing themselves out of money. All this, you know, they, they very much learned that, that being the low cost provider was not necessarily the best answer, cause you could get stuck with this horrible job. We didn’t do any of that though.
John Lanza (25:01)
Sure.
Hahaha
Ha ha
Sure.
Joe (25:20)
Um, and I don’t know if it was that we were just busy people, but we just kept it very, very simple. And when they got jobs, it wasn’t that we also phased out the allowance as much as it just went away. They were learning that lesson someplace else and maybe one week I forgot and they didn’t complain cause they still have money in their pocket and it just kind of faded, faded away. Um, and instead we made those discussions around how do you.
John Lanza (25:26)
Mm.
Nice.
Joe (25:49)
How do you treat this paycheck that’s coming in? And the fact that our discussions then, then transferred into just because you made $10 an hour doesn’t mean you need to spend $10 an hour and that’s the, and tying your expenses, what you’re going to spend to the amount of money coming in is one of the, you know, it goes back to that great lie. If I, if I make more money, I will, uh, somehow solve my money problem. Well, not if I.
John Lanza (25:52)
Yeah.
Joe (26:19)
begin, if I never begin disassociating my expenses from my income, that will always be a lie, um, because for the average person I get a raise, I just spend more. So we, we began talking about that and saving money. And then also a little bit of, and there’s people that have done this much better than me. I’m thinking of my friend, Andy Hill at marriage kids and money. It, Andy has this great thing about being a part of a community.
John Lanza (26:28)
Yeah.
Sure. Yeah.
Joe (26:45)
And making sure that when the kids got their paycheck, that they gave back to their local community in some way. And he helped them with that. We didn’t do any of that, but I fully respect it and absolutely love it. I had one client, John, one more thing I really liked. I had a client that gave his, he was self-employed and he really wanted his kids to feel the tax burden. So what he would do is he would give them their allowance and then he would take away the taxes in front of them and put it back in his pocket.
John Lanza (27:14)
Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. I, yeah, it is a little bit cruel, but you know, I think, I think you’re getting at a great point here, which is there are all these different ways. This is actually the reason this podcast exists, you know, is this is to share these ideas because, you know, one parent is going to think that’s never going to work for my kid. But then the parent might just grab on to this idea like your gamification of utilities.
Joe (27:18)
A little bit cruel.
Sure.
John Lanza (27:40)
And so there’s gonna be some parents that is going to say, that is a great idea, I’m gonna try that out. And it may work, it may not work. These are all experiments that we’re trying. And I remember my daughter asking me one time when she was 10-ish, she was like, are we an experiment? And after a little bit of reflection, I said, yes, you are an experiment. Yes.
Joe (28:00)
Well, and I’d say that’s the successful pieces with my kids were the gamification. But then also when they had their jobs and they would buy something, I would still do the circle back two weeks later on whenever they bought John. And this was this for me was, it was a lot of fun to have those talks two weeks later. Did you like that purchase? Was that worth your money? Um, cause I always wanted my kids to, to.
John Lanza (28:11)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep. Yeah.
Joe (28:26)
be a little bit reflective on did that work and kind of treat them their own purchases as experiments for the future.
John Lanza (28:33)
I think that’s a really smart idea. We didn’t do that as consistently as it sounds like you did, but it is, that’s one of the key elements of giving them, providing them with an allowance and letting them have those experiences,
then you have a reference point to say, well, remember that one thing you bought and two weeks later you were not interested in it, are you sure you wanna spend your money on that? And as you build those up, their thoughtfulness around money continues. And it also gets to this issue, you mentioned the idea that you wanna get rid of the, I want them or can I have that?
And the allowance is the number one way to do that because now we turn everything into sure, it’s your money. Do you have enough? If you don’t, save for a goal and that’s all great. Now, I wanna just quickly turn here because you were talking about how you didn’t do any of these things with your kids that Andy Hill did with regard to community. But I did pull a quote from an interview that you did after you won your Plutus Award for stacking Benjamins. And you said, my kids are financially responsible and community minded.
My daughter is headed to Japan to teach English as a second language. My son rode over 4,000 miles from Austin to Anchorage to raise nearly $1 million for cancer research. If you’re a parent, you never know how well you have parented, in quotes, until later. And my kids continue to make me proud. They’re responsible giving humans. So I just wanted to kind of read that because, you know, you’ve obviously done something with regard to that. And I wanted to just say like,
Joe (29:40)
Yes.
John Lanza (30:10)
Looking back, so you’ve clearly instilled that kind of giving side into them. That you’ve instilled this, you know, the openness about around money and money conversation. Is there anything that you kind of might have done differently in raising your kids when it comes to money?
Joe (30:28)
Oh, I think I, I love, I love, love that, uh, that, that task, uh, bar so much and it, uh, the task board where I’ve got tasks around the house I want to do. Um, and when I heard about the bidding process, like this was too late for me, but man, if I, I would have totally done that. I are so many, so many, so many lessons there. Um,
John Lanza (30:42)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe (30:57)
that’s something that I think that I would have done differently.
John Lanza (31:02)
Before we talk about your mom, which is next, What are the top one, two, or three skills that you think kids need? I’m sure we’re talking here like the key skills
Joe (31:16)
Yeah, I think number one is just, just the concept of, uh, money tracking, um, is, is important having this, you know, that, that circling back two weeks later, I think has led both of my kids to be reflective about their money and using later on than using technology to do that. So leading them toward, You need to have a money tracking system and it’s not just tracking it, it’s looking at it later because it wasn’t, you know,
John Lanza (31:28)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Joe (31:43)
We can track anywhere that my daughter made this purchase two weeks ago, but going back and looking at it two weeks later is the thing. So the concept of how do I have a budget? cause that action leads to a budget that works. Right. I think that leads him there. So this concept of budgeting and then, and then saving and investing is, is number two and the fact that there is a difference between the two of those having a saving mindset, um, where I have money go into savings, but that’s not investing.
John Lanza (31:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep.
Joe (32:12)
and investing in something different, I think is number two. Number three is the fact that debt by itself is not evil, but debt can get you into this big hole and debt is definitely a weapon and knowing how to, uh, hold onto that weapon in the right way and use debt responsibly, I think is, a key key.
John Lanza (32:13)
Yeah.
Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah. It’s kind of like looking at debt as a kind of technology, you know, technology like nuclear power, you know, it’s like, or, or as a nuclear technology can be used for positive power can be used for negative destruction. And that’s an interesting way of looking at debt.
Joe (32:54)
We were talking about this just yesterday. We did a, we did a podcast episode, a roundtable podcast episode that was talking about this new Apple vision pro, uh, the new headset that people are walking around with and what was wild is, is that, you know, technology to your point can be a great weapon, but it can be phenomenal, but what, what struck me about this, uh, review in the verve, the
John Lanza (32:57)
Hmm.
Yeah, sure.
Joe (33:22)
most negative thing they had to say about this. They said it’s the single greatest piece of technology yet. And they said, and that’s the problem. And the problem is the reviewer, John felt lonely wearing it. And the word lonely popped out to me that there’s this great technology and it’s making us more isolated and more lonely is this wild thing. Yet using technology to build community, it’s a great way to build a community. But if you don’t use it the right way, it can lead you down this horrible path.
John Lanza (33:27)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
That is very interesting because there’s our, I mean, we’ve already heard all about the kind of loneliness epidemic that seems to be, you know, gripping the country and social media tends to be, social media technology tends to be blamed for that. And now you have this, you know, this device that’s, that can maybe increase loneliness. That is very interesting. It will be interesting to see where this Vision Pro ends up. I saw some picture of a kid using it.
on the subway. And I’m not really sure what to think about it, honestly. My, if I, one of my failings is that I tend to be a little bit too techno utopian. And so I just love technology and I’ve eaten a lot of crow for that approach. So I’m just gonna sit here and say, I don’t really know where it’s gonna go.
Joe (34:23)
Right?
I’ll tell you, well, I like you love following technology and the most damning thing about this that I saw after I read that review, I saw literally this morning a, a Tik TOK video of two dudes wearing them sitting at lunch quote together. And you can see the person across from you and they’re literally both eating a sandwich in one hand and reading stuff on their screen, sitting together, not talking to each other, not doing anything with each other could
John Lanza (34:51)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Mmm.
Right.
Joe (35:14)
might as well be in different places and you know, the loneliness thing, like you could see it all over that video.
John Lanza (35:17)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Something to watch. Okay, so you’re in your mom’s basement. This is where you record your show, Stacking Benjamins. And I have to assume that your mom is probably the most influential person in your life when it comes to the way you think about money. Is that true?
Joe (35:42)
It’s funny in my family. Yes. My, my, my mom, uh, definitely had a good budget. Um, you know, what’s funny is that in a lot of ways, no though, because, and again, this isn’t my parents, it’s all parents, my parents, John, my mom would never talk about money in front of us would never ever, my brother and sister and I, and if my parents were having any discussion about money, we were told to leave the room.
John Lanza (35:56)
Hmm.
Joe (36:11)
Like we had to leave the room and I’ve interviewed so many people that had that experience or a similar experience. So influential, the way my parents were influential was they taught me that working hard mattered to, uh, make sure that, um, that, uh, my, uh, um, that I would had a good relationship with my boss and that I was serving customers. Well, like that was the customer was, was the answer. And, um, so anything about.
John Lanza (36:17)
Sure. Yeah.
Hmm.
Joe (36:41)
work ethic. Yeah. About money. Maybe, maybe not, not so much. I’m not sure. I think the biggest money person in my life was actually a woman named Sue Virgin. And, and Sue was an accountant that I found when I was a, I was a huge money disaster and I was in this pit and I was looking at almost no way out. And, uh, I had taken my taxes. And by the way, at this point, I’m a financial planner.
John Lanza (36:43)
Hmm
Joe (37:10)
And I took my taxes my first year. I think I made around 85,000 bucks, which today, if you look at inflation, just to give people an idea, that’s like make it $170,000 today. Right. Uh, because it was so long ago. So I had made some seriously good money that year and I spent every dime of it. And when did I think about my taxes? It was funny. I’m giving everybody else the advice of, of withholding and all this, and not for me, I just, does that even apply to me? I’ve given everybody else great advice. I’m teaching them how to do their thing.
John Lanza (37:20)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Hehehehe
Joe (37:39)
I didn’t think about it until like three weeks before tax filing day. I give it to this guy named bill. Bill gives me this, uh, tax bill that is, you know, somewhere just south of 20 grand. It doesn’t, it could have, it could have been $3,000 John. And I didn’t have the money. I’d blown every dollar of it. So I got angry at bill, which is kind of hilarious in retrospect, cause it wasn’t Bill’s problem. It was my problem, but I’ll tell you what was really cool was
John Lanza (37:40)
Yeah.
Yep.
Sure.
Hmm.
Joe (38:08)
After I did the very smart thing then and just didn’t file taxes. Because if you don’t have the money, just don’t file. And I’ll tell you, right. Please, if people don’t hear the sarcasm in this, file your taxes on time. So it. Good. It was, it was maybe, it was maybe a year and a half later. And the IRS is sending me of course now nasty. They’re onto the fact that I didn’t file shocking that they could find me. Um,
John Lanza (38:19)
Right, right. We have a disclaimer at the end of the show too.
Yeah, yeah.
Joe (38:36)
I find another accountant with the heart of a teacher who sat down with me and went step by step. And this was, this was the time that I realized that having the right friends and the right people in my corner that could, that could apply these things that I knew cerebrally to me and have shine the mirror in my face. That was, so I, I think Sue more than anybody.
John Lanza (38:50)
Hmm.
Joe (39:03)
when it came to money was she was the first step in me getting my act together going, Oh, I’m teaching all these people this stuff and I can use it too. Like it seems so dumb sitting here saying that, but it was this big aha that wow, if it’s working for everybody, I’m telling to do it this way. It could probably, I could probably do the same. And that was the Sue made me realize that I was in control. Nobody was coming to save me.
John Lanza (39:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe (39:28)
I need to save myself by surrounding myself with the right people, ingesting the right lessons. And what was amazing, John, was from that day forward, uh, things got better way quicker than I thought they were going to like my life went from just horrible to pretty decent in three years and really good in five.
John Lanza (39:28)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm, yeah.
Wow. Sue really came to the rescue. How did, and how did you find, did you just kind of randomly find her? How were you directed there?
Joe (39:56)
I was referring people to accountants because of my role as a financial planner. I referred people to accountants. I refer people to, uh, to, um, estate planning attorneys, you know, I’d refer them to all these different people. And I was at a networking meeting and I met Sue. And, uh, so then I came clean with Sue and just said, Hey, Sue, I got this big problem and different than Bill who was like, yeah, not my problem. Why are you yelling at me? I just did your taxes.
John Lanza (40:09)
Hmm. Yeah.
Hehehe.
Joe (40:24)
Uh, Bill didn’t have the heart of a teacher and I needed somebody with a heart of a teacher in my, in my corner.
John Lanza (40:31)
Very nice. Yeah, it’s nice to find those people and to your credit to listen to them. So that’s…
Joe (40:38)
Well, I had to touch the stove 67 times before I listened to them. But yes.
John Lanza (40:42)
Ha ha
Okay, before we go through the fast and fun round gauntlet that defines the Art of Allowance podcast, what is, is there any kind of surprising fact about how you think about money? It could be related to your, ideally if it’s related to your kids too, but that someone in your audience, okay, this guy who’s done 1500 episodes about money, any surprising fact that someone from your audience might not know about you?
Joe (40:50)
Yes.
I’m always surprised that people, I’ve been a financial planner in a long time now.
John Lanza (41:21)
Hmm?
Joe (41:24)
trying to do the math quickly math on the spot. It’s not my thing, but, uh, 16 years, it’s been 16 years of the financial planner. I am still very pro advisor full well knowing. And we talk about on the show, how many advisors stink John. And, but we, the thing that frustrates me is when somebody’s been listening to my show for a long time. And they’re like,
John Lanza (41:30)
Hmm.
Joe (41:45)
Well, I listened to your show because I, you know, I just, I need to handle all the stuff myself, by the way, handling it, knowing how to handle it yourself is big time important. You need to be in charge of your money. But the smartest people I worked with, when I went, when I had my own aha, I also began looking at my most successful clients. My most successful clients are people that could have done everything I was doing for them themselves. They totally could have done it.
John Lanza (41:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Joe (42:12)
But they were surrounding themselves with people who were fantastic. They were, it was their herd of sheep, but they hired a shepherd to make sure the sheep were good at, at all times. And I get, and the degree that I get frustrated when I go into online communities and I see people asking perfect strangers, some intimate questions about themselves and about their money situation.
John Lanza (42:35)
Hmm.
Joe (42:40)
drives me crazy. And I think people would, because we have an online community. Um, and I do think they can be useful, but why am I asking Earl and Peoria who I don’t know what I should do with my 401k plan or by 529 plan for my kids college, um, in intimate detail, what I should do and Earl gets mad at me when I don’t take his advice. I don’t know Earl. Earl doesn’t, Earl can’t zip up his own pants.
John Lanza (42:44)
Hmm.
Right.
Joe (43:09)
I maybe, I don’t know. Earl, Earl spends all day on Facebook. Why am I asking somebody who spends all day on Facebook that I don’t know their story and if they’ve been successful. I know that Sue, Sue Virgin was very successful at what she did. I handpicked her to be my mentor in the area of taxes and you know, she ended up mentoring me about the, this importance of having good people around me.
John Lanza (43:25)
Yeah.
Joe (43:34)
And I think that would surprise people because, you know, on the, on the outside, looking in, I have a podcast that very much is a do it yourself kind of, kind of, uh, thing we attract. Of course, money podcasts are things that do it yourself first. Like, and I’m all for do it yourself, but do it yourself by still surrounding yourself with people that know you know, your situation and are maybe a little smarter than you are at their specific area of expertise.
John Lanza (43:50)
Yep.
Well, you know, I know you know this, but it’s like the there’s no substitute for coaching. I’m training now marathon training and I have a buddy of mine who is coaching me and I recently asked him, it’s like he is he’s training for a bike race. He’s actually doing the Giro d’Italia. Yeah, so he’s not he’s not in it, but there’s a kind of group that goes kind of right in front of the riders. And I asked him and he’s like, Yeah, I have a coach too.
Joe (44:20)
Wow!
John Lanza (44:32)
You know, it’s like everybody, everybody needs a coach, you know, accountability partner, whatever it is, it, that is such a key element for succeeding in anything is having someone that can kind of help you along and see you look at you objectively because you can’t look at yourself object.
Joe (44:53)
Yeah. And I love that. And listen, you know, I just ripped on online communities. There’s also a place for the online community and surrounding yourself with like-minded people, there’s nothing, but that’s not an advisor, right? That’s not a board of directors member. I mean, part of it, you know, I’ve run 11 marathons. I didn’t care about running marathons until we moved to Texarkana. And I, all my friends ran marathons and because of the surround sound that I was bathing in.
John Lanza (44:59)
Yeah.
Sure. Yeah. Right.
Hmm.
Joe (45:21)
I went from not caring to running 11 just because everybody else was doing it. It truly matters who you surround yourself with.
John Lanza (45:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, no doubt about that. All right, so now let’s hit the gauntlet, the fast and fun round questions. Okay, so first question to Joe, Saul-Sehy is, what does the term money empowered mean to you?
Joe (45:32)
Oh, boy. Here we go.
Money empowered means specifically to me, the freedom to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes. If I don’t think I’m money empowered, unless I am doing something that could, uh, that, that could potentially go against me.
John Lanza (46:03)
Very nice. What’s the best investment of time or money you’ve ever spent on your kids?
Joe (46:11)
Man, I thought about this so, so much. And I think the best, oh boy, this was the hardest one, by the way, because there’s so many different things. I think it’s the circle back time that I talked about earlier. The circle back to the decision we made two weeks ago is the best time that I spent on my kids.
John Lanza (46:25)
Hmm.
I can see why, makes sense. What advice to your kids do you most hope that they will heed? Listen to.
Joe (46:50)
The advice that my dad gave to me, which is there will always be people smarter than you, but you should never be outworked. And I know that doesn’t have anything to do specifically with money, but that’s always translated to, to more money in my corner, um, work harder for a solution. If you, if, if everything else fails.
John Lanza (47:14)
Good lesson. If you could transmit a message that everyone would see, whether it’s sky written on a billboard, everybody can see it. What would that message say?
Joe (47:25)
I struggle with this one too. And it’s, uh, don’t buy it if you don’t have a plan to pay for it.
John Lanza (47:35)
I think we’re gonna have to link to that SNL skit about, don’t buy it if you can’t afford it. If you haven’t seen it, please check out the link. It’s like less than five minutes. It’s Steve Martin and Amy Poehler and it’s absolutely brilliant.
Joe (47:42)
It, I love that.
The third person might be Jason Sudeikis. Now that I think about it, I was like, who’s the third person that skit.
John Lanza (47:58)
Yeah, I can’t remember who the question, it might be, it’s who asked the questions, but it is just, it is so worth it. So Joe, what is one parenting or Money Smart’s book, podcast, other than your own, of course, that you return to or gift the most often? And it could be really any media.
Joe (48:02)
Yeah.
I’m actually, I’m actually going to go a little off on this one. I know that you’ve got the specific question, but the thing I, I returned to the most is that board game. I know you didn’t ask board game, but it certainly is media that old version of monopoly junior has helped so many parents with that early differentiation that I love it. I’m very sad that they discontinued that went a different way. That isn’t as instructive, but man having that $1, $2, $3 bill.
John Lanza (48:33)
Mmm. Yeah.
Joe (48:50)
And helping my kids get this mind blowing thing that these different bills have different value was a huge first lesson for my kids. So Monopoly Jr.
John Lanza (48:57)
Yeah.
Very nice. That’s how I feel about the original Balderdash. You can’t get the original Balderdash game. You can luckily, with eBay, get the old versions. But that is great. Monopoly Jr. That is a great answer. I like the off answers. They’re always interesting. but we’re going to direct people, obviously, to the podcast and your book. But how can people
find you on social media and the web. This is probably this is this is what we call the layup question.
Joe (49:29)
Yeah. And please, uh, I love, I love chatting about, uh, money topics. I love chatting about, um, I love chatting about how we make the show. I love all that stuff. So, uh, I am average Joe money on Twitter or X or whatever we’re calling it today. Uh, you’ll find me more often lately. It seems like on, uh, Instagram, I do have my own profile average Joe money on Instagram, but you’ll find me at stacking Benjamin’s podcast.
If you go to Stacky Benjamin’s podcast and follow us. And by the way, every Tuesday and Thursday, we have interesting guests there. We go live on Instagram a lot and it’s super fun.
John Lanza (50:04)
Yeah. Oh, nice. Nice. Joe, you have definitely internalized your dad’s advice about working harder than anybody else, because I don’t think there’s anybody in the podcast world that’s working harder than you. I don’t know how you do it. I’m incredibly impressed. So what is one is there any action you’d like people to take? That would be helpful to you before we close.
Joe (50:26)
You know, the, the biggest action, this was my second choice for the billboard question, there’s a mantra, John, that I has gotten me through life. Um, which I saw in the 1980s affiliated with, uh, Nike before they said, just do it. And it was feel the fear, but do it anyway, which I can see why they went with just do it versus that longer one. But just do it doesn’t speak to me the same way, cause I’m a guy that’s afraid of everything and I know there’s a lot of people that are listening to you and me.
And every time I get up on a stage, every time I turn on a microphone, every time I’ve made any money move, I get all this trepidation. And, um, and I would, I, I think that’s good for all of us. Go ahead and feel the fear, but don’t let that stop you.
John Lanza (51:14)
Well, 11 marathons, 1500 podcasts, and you still feel the fear. You know, I am glad you got over that and come came and join me for a conversation. Joe, because this, this was, this was really was an honor and I, I’m just excited about, I just knew this was going to be fun. It’d be fun for my audience because you’re a funny guy, much funnier than me.
Joe (51:26)
Well, you’re a scary guy, dude. You are a scary.
You
John Lanza (51:43)
because I’m just a scary guy. And so this is just, this has been kind of all that I wanted and more, and I appreciate you taking the time to come and talk about your kids, money, and all the things. It was a lot of fun. Thanks, Joe.
Joe (52:01)
I’m so glad you asked John and likewise, I feel like you’re a guy that if we lived closer together, it would be dangerous.
John Lanza (52:09)
I would agree with that.
Well, thanks again, Joe. This was terrific. Appreciate all your insight.
Joe (52:17)
Thanks man.