“Working to help parents raise money-smart kids.”
Hello, friends!
I’m coming to you from Vegas, the land of conferences, where I’m speaking at CU relEVENT (a credit union conference). While I’m really excited about giving my talk, I can’t help but think, “Why can’t Paris be the land of conferences?” 🤔
Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this week’s “3 Ideas to Share & Save.”
— 1 —
Making Total Cents: Author and friend Tom Henske recently joined me on the podcast to talk about raising money-smart kids.
Tom and I first connected when his book was still just a notion and he was working as a financial advisor. Now he’s retired from his financial advisor business and fully focused on spreading the money-smart messages in his new book, It Makes Total Cents: 12 Conversations to Change Your Child’s Future.
I don’t know about you, but as I get older, my tolerance for small talk dwindles. So much so that I’ve begun collecting interesting questions on my phone. I can do a quick phone check and toss out something like, “What’s the last book, song or podcast that had a meaningful impact on you?”
So, naturally, I enjoyed reading Tom’s book because it is all informed by topics and questions he tossed into family dinner conversations as a way of prepping his kids for a money-empowered financial future. Questions like “Tell me how quickly your money will double with an 8% rate of return?” as a way of teaching them The Rule of 72. (BTW, the answer is 72 ÷ 8 = 9 years.) As Tom points out, this elicits less “gruntful” responses than the standard dinner table question, “How was your day?”
Tom’s book is full of ideas and questions that will improve not only your dinnertime conversations but also your money dialogue with your kids. And as we’ve discussed many times in this newsletter – conversations matter!
— 2 —
Don’t get mad. Get mimicked: An investing maxim Tom shares repeatedly with his kids is, “Never make a killing. Never get killed.” This reminds me of Warren Buffet’s adage, “No one wants to get rich slowly.” Just as virtually no one is an “overnight success” in anything, investing takes time and patience.
Tom has taken a lesson from great politicians and successful company founders, like Jeff Bezos (“Obsess over customers.”), who repeat their mantras ad nauseam in order to make sure they become little mind viruses that we simply cannot forget.
Tom has repeated this saying so much that his kids now ruthlessly mimic him for it.
And he’s okay with that.
As he said in our conversation, don’t get mad when you get mimicked. In fact, he thinks this is an ultimate parenting win.
In that spirit, here are three mind viruses we can try to implant in our kids. Each of these comes from our “Good Money Habits” video series.
“Don’t spend more than you make.”
“Pay yourself first.”
“Learn to use money as a tool.”
Friend of the podcast Bill Dwight told me that our kids are paying more attention than their disinterested looks suggest. We might be surprised how much they internalize.
So find your mantra, and repeat it again and again.
And again. 😉
— 3 —
Making It Up As We Go: Raising kids is hard work. Now that my daughters are 17 and 20, I find myself thinking from time to time that “I wish I’d tried that” or “I wish I’d thought of that.” I’m glad to have this newsletter as an outlet where I can share some of these good ideas that I’ve tried — or have learned from my guests and wished I’d tried — with you.
Still, having just about emerged from going through the teenage gauntlet, it’s gratifying to see, for example, when your kid is making good money at her summer job and allocating some for taxes and some for investing. In short, making smart money choices. 😁
An interesting dynamic I’ve noticed is that parents with younger kids — who haven’t yet run the teenage gauntlet — have a certain misplaced confidence that they have more control than they do or will.
Of course, this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have a money-smart plan in place. We should. And it isn’t to say that we shouldn’t employ mimic-able mantras like, “Pay yourself first.” We should. It’s helpful to bring some humility to the process and understand that it will take us through twists and turns we may not have seen coming.
Nobel laureate and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, puts it nicely:
“The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.”
I also discovered this wonderful, short passage from Arnaldur Indriðason’s book Arctic Chill, a Scandinavian detective novel:
“Life was a random mass of unforeseeable coincidences that governed men’s fates like a storm that strikes without warning.”
Unfortunately, there’s no life manual. (If there were, then I’d link to it here.) To some extent, we’re all making it up as we go along. Of course, we’re all doing the absolute best we can at each moment.
So if you’re feeling overwhelmed at any point on the journey, then know that I’m in your corner. I’m glad you’re on this journey with me to be a better parent and to do the best that you can to send your kids into the world money-smart and, hopefully, money-empowered.
Enjoy the journey!
John,
Chief Mammal
P.S. Please consult with a financial or investment professional before engaging in any decisions that might affect your own financial well-being.
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