“Working to help parents raise money-smart kids.”
Hello, friends!
I have a big announcement to share with you this week. 🎉
I’m launching a live, four-week course to help parents raise money-smart kids with help from the Maven Course Accelerator program.
Maven has attracted some of the best creators in the business, including Annie Duke of World Poker fame, Tiago Forte of Building a Second Brain (one of my favorite online courses) and David Perell of Write of Passage (another of my favorite online courses).
You can find out all about my course by clicking this link.
And here’s how you can help make it possible. 👇
If you might be interested in joining my first cohort, then please complete this short survey to include your name on our waitlist.
BTW, adding your name to the list doesn’t commit you to anything. However, I need 50 interested folks to finalize my acceptance into the course accelerator.
As a “thank you,” you will receive a $250 discount if you decide to register for the course (but only if you complete the survey and join the waitlist).
Also, I have one more favor to ask. Do you know anyone else who might be interested in my course? If so, then please forward this email to them. Thanks!
Now let’s get to the good stuff: this week’s “3 Ideas to Share & Save.”
— 1 —
The Firehose: Living in a consumer society is equally wonderful and frustrating.
The choices available to us are wonderful. Personally, I love the sound of my clattering keys’ becoming these words as I sit here typing on my MacBook Air.
It’s frustrating, though, to know that this computer is rolling towards obsolescence. Soon I’ll have to think about forking over another thousand dollars or more to keep up. 🤑
My computer conundrum reminds me that we all are drinking from the firehose of progress. And no matter how quickly we imbibe, we’ll never be able to stomach all the liquid blasting at us.
Therefore, we need perspective. A lovely story from Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money provides some:
“At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, ‘Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.'”
And here’s another approach:
“There are two ways to be wealthy—to get everything you want or to want everything you have.”
– The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
So what the heck does any of this have to do with Thomas Jefferson?
— 2 —
The Spigot:
“Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson eloquently gets at the notion that our kids “do what we do and not what we say,” and that is why modeling matters.
As you know from the last of these ideas I shared with you weeks ago, there are three engines that drive money smarts: direct instruction, experience and modeling.
Which is why when we’re drinking from the firehose of consumption, we want to turn the spigot to ease the water pressure. 💧
Here in Los Angeles (and probably wherever you are), there’s no shortage of auto ads. So my kids periodically ask why we don’t replace our older car with a newer one. My typical response goes something like this: “Since you will probably treat whatever car we have like a worn couch, I think we’ll stick with Ol’ Reliable for as long as we can.” For our family, a new car is neither a need nor a needlet.
We can take control of the firehose if we can find the spigot. And helping our kids find the spigot (when they’re watching) is useful, especially when that firehose is spraying at full pressure.
Why? Well, would you ever take out a loan for sneakers?
— 3 —
The Payoff: Have you seen these Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) promotions targeted towards our Gen Z kids?
BNPL is exactly what it sounds like: Get what you want, regardless of whether or not you have the money.
And yes, that includes $200 sneakers.
Yikes! 😬
This second coming of layaway (which is also still a thing) is big with Gen Z. (Our kids!) Friend of the podcast Robin Taub talked about the problem in her recent newsletter and cited this article:
“These buy now, pay later programs incentivize people to spend above their means, because they’re like, ‘Oh, well, it’s only this amount over four months,’” Celesta, a Bay Area fashion influencer on TikTok who posts as @itscelesta, told SFGATE. (She declined to give her last name.) “People almost like brag or joke that ‘oh, it was only 24 payments of $20’ or ‘I got it with Afterpay, so it’s technically free.’”
– From the article “‘Buy now, pay later’ is sending the TikTok generation spiraling into debt, popularized by San Francisco tech firms“
Did you catch that?
It’s technically free?!?!? 🥴
Wait, what?
BNPL is an uber-violation of the first rule of money smarts, which we’ve discussed here repeatedly: living beneath your means.
This is why we talk to our kids about money early and often. And in case you think they’re tuning you out, fear not! My podcast guest Bill Dwight, whose kids are a little older, reassured me that even though it may not seem like it, your kids are listening.
So we should want to be decent models for them. Because eventually they will head out into the real world, where that firehose will be on full blast. And they need to know how to find the spigot.
I’m glad we’re on this journey together. Thanks for reading.
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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