“Working to help parents raise money-smart kids.”
Hello, friends,
Drumroll, please! 🥁 My new course begins October 3rd, and registration is now open!
Come join us for a live experience that will help you build an allowance system that empowers your kids, grows with your family and gives you the confidence to be a money-smart guide.
And as a subscriber to this newsletter, you get a special bonus if you register today — a $50 discount AND an additional one-on-one coaching session after the course is complete.
Register here by this Wednesday, and don’t forget to use the promo code 3IDEAS to claim your discount and complimentary coaching session.
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Live Learning Is Better: If you have never participated in a cohort-based course (CBC), then I’m not sure you know what you’re missing.
Some of my favorite educational experiences happened in a pair of CBCs that set the standard for online learning: David Perell’s Write of Passage and Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain.
Of course, David and Tiago are both terrific instructors. But ultimately, the live cohorts of students from all over turned these learning opportunities into memorable experiences.
Truth be told, Coursera, MasterClass and Udemy have wonderful facilitators and interesting topics, but taking a self-paced course on one of these platforms is like having a plain hamburger. On the other hand, participating in a live CBC is like ordering “animal style” from In-N-Out Burger. Sure, both options feature chopped meat on a bun. But only one meal is memorable. 😋
And as far as I can tell, there is nothing else like my course available on the internet (or anywhere else):
So if you’re at all interested, then I hope you sign up. At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, you have nothing to lose! If you don’t feel like the course lives up to my promises, then I will refund you 100% of your money.
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Back to School: I love my kids, but I also love when the summer ends and they head back to school.
BTS (the season, not the K-pop group 🙈) is a great time to kick-start your allowance program. Think of it as an opportunity for your family to go back to the school of money smarts.
So get started today by downloading our Allowance Launcher.
Also, here’s a tactic you might find useful. My wife and I implemented it when our daughters started middle school.
If your kids buy lunch, then give them a monthly allowance to manage rather than dole out money every day. Or better yet, make this meal part of their Breakthrough Allowance.
(In case you’re wondering what the heck a Breakthrough Allowance is, it’s the step up from the starter allowance that I talk about in this post and in my book, The Art of Allowance.)
Want to kick things up another notch? Then have your kids make their own lunches! We told our daughters either they could use their allowances to buy lunch or we would provide the basics to make it.
This plan worked out spectacularly. They ate better, and we all, by allowance extension, saved a lot of money.
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It Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated: As my daughter and I were chatting about investing recently, she began to tremble when contemplating the seemingly endless options available to her. Finally she threw up her hands and exasperatedly blurted, “It’s complicated!”
(All right, I exaggerated the trembling to make a point.)
Truth be told, I’m not sure that investing is necessarily complicated. What is certain, though, is that many of us tend to MAKE it complicated.
As I explore in my essay “We’re All Born Stupid Investors,” we are apt to complicate concepts like investing because:
- We are pattern recognition machines who “see” order even when there is none.
- We think we can predict the future when, in reality, we’re terrible at doing so.
- We are averse to losing and, when left to our own devices, often sell at exactly the wrong time.
So much of what makes us who we are also makes us crappy investors. 🙃
Individual stock investing is complicated because of the amount of work it takes to research each stock, the sheer number of stocks that are out there and the sometimes unsettling truth that we have no idea what the future ultimately holds. Don’t believe me? September 11th, the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic underscore how life can change over the course of just a few days or even in the blink of an eye.
Which is why I keep coming back to the “boring is better” approach to investing that Art of Allowance Podcast guest Chris Browning offers:
Will there still be risk? Yes. Never underestimate that even the most conservative portfolio is in jeopardy of minor, if not major, disruption. It’s just that a basic index fund greatly reduces your risk while also potentially setting your mind at ease. If I were a MasterCard commercial, then I might say this advice is priceless.
Of course, we can always use William of Ockam’s razor as a guide: When given a choice of solutions, we ought to opt for the simpler one. That’s the one less likely to make us tremble. 😉
Until next time, 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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