Vol. 23 - Teaching Kids About Money
Our CFP Leisa Peterson discusses money lessons she taught her daughter which she shares in the recently released Mindful Millionaire Book. We discuss:
Integrating money conversation into everyday life
Empower children to make educated decisions and be available to answer questions.
Setting up accounts early.
Encourage ways for them to earn money on their own.
Learn how to overcome your money stories to become a Mindful Millionaire! Get Leisa’s Mindful Millionaire Book.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy (00:00): All right. Nurses on Fire. We have Leisa Peterson back with us. And today we are going to talk about kids and money. What do you teach your kids about money and is it affected by your background and how do you think you're showing them through their childhood in their youth translates into them being an adult in handling money. So let's talk about it.
Leisa Peterson (00:27): Let's talk about it. Yeah. It's funny because even as you asked that question, I realized that there's two very different things going on. One is my understanding of the inner relationship with money. So the narrative, like what's those stories that they're being told and the fact that they might need therapy for something that I told them. So I'm trying to not have them need a lot of therapy later in life because of my parenting. So there's that piece. Cause that's what I study a lot and I help a lot of people move out of their trauma with the stuff that happened when they were little. So I'm trying to learn. And then there's like, actually there's three parts. So in the third one is what are you teaching your kids? And so when you think of what are you teaching your kids, what are you modeling? And then what kind of stuff is going on behind the scenes that they might need therapy for later? Like of those three? Which one do you think your listeners would want to focus on?
Naseema McElroy (01:28): Well, everybody wants to know the practical things like, so do we set up a 529? How do we set up like a RA or start contributing to their retirement? But honestly I think those things that you can Google, but what's super important is how you're modeling your money in front of your kids. And so I think we should focus on that.
Leisa Peterson (01:52): So, you know, I can just speak for what we've done in our home. And so I have a 23, almost 23 year old and then a 15 year old. And what we have done is made a point of not having money conversations, be completely separate. They are witnessing it. If we're going to talk about buying something and we're going to have, like, I wouldn't say fight about it, but like a disagreement about, you know, I want to buy these chairs and he's like, it's too much and we don't need them. And we go back and forth about kind of the process of deciding and the kids witnessed that they are comfortable with it. And they know that it's okay to have differing opinions about what to do and that maybe mom wins out more often or maybe dad wins more often and then they're making their own decisions about what was the conflict and what were the disagreements. And they're making their own choices, which is super important. Everything like, I'll give you another example. We don't talk politics. As far as being Democrat or Republican in our home. We want our kids to make their own decisions. Same thing with money. We don't want to dictate how they should believe. We want them to make educated decisions for themselves, get educated about what the issues are and then have us here to answer questions rather than feed them beliefs that later might not be the beliefs that they actually have.
Naseema McElroy (03:22): Yeah. I think that's great. Even when you're talking about it, I was like, that's probably How you teach about religion or spirituality. You just kind of open it up because I feel like, you know, a lot of that is ingrained and there's trauma around that. But I know that in your book, the Mindful Millionaire you talk about many issues and I believe you talk about it in regards to your older daughter. So can you highlight some important points that you shared in the book?
Leisa Peterson (03:53): So with my daughter, I mean, there's, you know, she's 23 and she would be more on the conservative side with money. She's always been very interested. I would say, she's like you and I, where she's curious, she wanted to learn more. She started working and making money. We didn't let her have a cell phone. We didn't let her have texting until she agreed to clean our house, which was like a 4,000 square foot house. We got the deal of the century, but she was so eager to get it.
Leisa Peterson (04:24): That that was what she was willing to negotiate. And we paid her extra money too, but it's always been this. You're going to earn things, but you're also going to be expected to do stuff we didn't do. We haven't been a big, what is it called? Like chores. And then you get an allowance. We were like, if you do a, do a job that we've talked about, what you're doing, then you'll get paid, but we never really stuck to a regular allowance thing. It just didn't work for us. I mean, not bad or good. Also setting up accounts early, knowing and telling them what they have in an account. And like my mom passed away. She left some money. I would tell the kids from an early age, like this is going to be money that you get after 18. Hopefully it's used for school, but you won't have to use that.
Leisa Peterson (05:13): It will be in your own discretion. So knowing that they're going to be able to make some big decisions later in life, my daughter chose to use it for school. My son is only 15, so he's not got access to that money yet. But the other big thing that my daughter with just being when she wanted to go to college and we started looking at the options and we decided be at least a hundred thousand dollars or something like that at the time, um, for four years of school going away, she took it upon herself to apply for 12 different scholarships and grants and things and turned out that she ended up getting about a total of $57,000 of that. So her college education about 43,000. And she was the one who was responsible for going back to the entities, that nonprofits that had given her and chosen her for their lead scholarship in our community and Tahoe, like very serious about it.
Leisa Peterson (06:12): Never missed a deadline, took it upon herself. And then when she got awarded all that money, this is also, I think very important is that other kids were like jealous or like, why did she get that? You know, I could feel some of that animosity, but then when I started digging deeper, I was like, well, did your children apply to like all these, you know, did, and did they stay with it and did they train for their interviews? And did they, I mean, just like one thing after another and a lot of people were like, they had applied for three, not 12 or 15, right. It was like taking that upon. But it's that idea that if I want to go to college, I am responsible for figuring out how to help make this happen. I love it. I love it. That teaching of responsibility is one thing that I feel like is priceless.
Naseema McElroy (07:01): And like I said, I think that we get so caught up on like techniques or tools that we can use, but it's really about empowerment, right? Which we talk about all the time, empowering people with knowledge so that they can make decisions. Because I find that, especially if we are really rigorous about teaching, like this is where you do this, this is how you do this. It doesn't give them the flexibility when something happens outside of that realm to be able to cope with the situation. So I really love the way that you just raise your kids in general and that money is seamlessly integrated in that. And I think that that's how we should look money talks and how we deal with money in our family. So I think that so awesome.
Leisa Peterson (07:49): Can I add two quick things to it? One thing is she wanted to do people to people when she was in fifth grade and I just remembered this. And I said, you know, that's kind of out of our price range right now. I had made a big job change. And.
Naseema McElroy (08:01): what is people to people.
Leisa Peterson (08:02): it's like kids basically apply to a program. They get accepted, they're supposed to raise some of the money. And in this case it was people to people, Washington, D C. So she was going to go off and spend a week with kids from all over the country as like designee, you know, like kind of mock trial designates, like designated, I don't know programs, but she was going to learn all about DC and legislation and everything. And she ended up collecting, asking all the neighbors in a pretty big neighborhood. If she could collect there in California, their recyclables that were able to be traded in. And she saved over a thousand dollars in fifth grade to be able to go on that trip.
Leisa Peterson (08:43): The other thing she did, so that continued when she was a sophomore, I think at the end of the sophomore year of high school, she saw an assembly. They were organizing for teams to raise money, to bring shoes to kids in orphanages at the time it was in Kenya. And she was like, I have to do this. I'm getting, I want to go to Kenya. I want to raise some money. And so she sent that next year, raising the funds, earning the money, getting donations, and then collecting shoes. And they brought lightly worn shoes. In the end. They didn't go to Kenya. They went to Ghana. She spent three weeks in Ghana working in orphanages. And she had paid for all of that. But the big thing for her there was, she was like, mom, these are the happiest people I've ever met in my whole entire life.
Naseema McElroy (09:32): And they're living on less than $5 a day. And it was a total game changer for her whole entire life. Like she's never forgotten it. It is like money does not equal happiness. She's very, very clear as a result of that. I love it. I love it. It's the experiences that these kids are just, Ugh, I love it. Your daughter is awesome. And I'm like, your daughter is a unicorn, but she's not really, I mean, I feel like it's admirable, but it's something that can also be modeled for a lot of people to raise their kids, to, like I said, be empowered and to kind of be innovative in the way that we think about approaching money. But it's also important that they understand money conversations and understand that there's differences and that there's disagreements and how to deal and talk about money in general, instead of it being like this big taboo, this elephant in the room, this thing that we don't talk about.
Naseema McElroy (10:39): And so, um, I'm glad that you were open with your kids. I feel like more adults need to have just basic money conversations around just wages, about expectations, about knowing that you can negotiate and that you have a lot more control over money. And so you shift that relationship early because the way I was taught, it was just like, you know, uh, hustle, hustle mode when we, and you know, when you're in hustle mode, it's the other way around it's that that money is driving you. And the earlier that we can reverse that and normalize the power that we have over money and give them the tools to be able to tap into that. I feel like we equip them with all that they need to be financially independent adults. So thanks for letting us learn about your daughter and sharing her story. And it's also in your incredible book, the mindful millionaire. Thank you. So you guys
Naseema McElroy (11:44): Make sure to check out the mindful millionaire it's sold at all the great retailers. And we say you have been getting some amazing reviews from this book. And so I just know that it will bless a lot of people. So thank you for the book. Thank you for your stories and thank you for always being so willing to share with the nurses on fire community. Thank you
Leisa Peterson (12:06): Everybody. Thank you. In a schema.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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