This Nurse is Educating Our Children on Financial Independence - Ep. 31
The struggle to teach your kids about money is over! The folks over at ChooseFI have formulated a K-12 personal finance curriculum dedicated to prevent money mistakes at its source. The best part- it’s totally FREE and promises to graduate generations of financially literate young adults.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy: 03:59 All right. Nurses on Fire. I have the honor of having Rob Phelan joining us today and we are going to learn about how to teach our kids about financial independence. And Rob works with Choose FI to implement this FIRE curriculum in K to 12 schools. And so Rob, I'm going to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about your background because it does have a lot more to do with nursing than you might think. And then we'll talk about this FIRE curriculum that you are huge part of in the Choose FI community.
Rob Phelan: 04:37 Hey Naseema, thanks for having me. Yeah, so I am a high school personal finance and math teacher. So what am I doing on a nursing podcast? But as you know like teachers and nurses, like we are both kind of aligned a lot in terms of our outlook, in terms of how we got into the profession, the reasons that we do the things we do. And in terms of personal finance, like a lot of the lessons that you would have for a teacher are going to transfer over to nurses as well. And then we're going to talk about educating kids, which everybody's got kids. So it's going to be a very applicable conversation I think we're going to have for your audience. But to answer your question, I got into personal finance and financial literacy because I was tasked with teaching it in my school and my principal came to me and said that we have this opening to teach this financial literacy slash math class.
Rob Phelan: 05:22 And, I ended up being chosen to do that and I knew nothing about money at the time. My wife was the financial guru in our house. And so I had to like really start digging deep into like, what is this financial world? How does money work? And that was a long road to get to where I am now. But it was so fun to learn about all these different concepts and it was a great journey to really discover a lot about myself and then also be able to share that with kids as well. And then for myself, like I'm 30 years old. I've been teaching for six years. I came originally from Ireland. So that's where my parents live and my siblings as well. And it's been quite a transition to go from Irish culture to US culture. But I've been here now for about eight years and it's been such a wonderful experience to be able to grow up in, but the US and
Ireland and then also still be able to live in the US now and share in all the riches that come with living in the US. So, I don't know, the interesting point that we want to talk about is that my mom is in fact a nurse. So, I am very close to the nursing world and I also get to teach about, you know, 10 graduating senior nurses every year that go on to become our future nurses, which is always fun to see what they do and how they go and develop their careers. So what does it you want to know exactly about my mom's nursing career?
Naseema McElroy: 06:37 I just want to know how your mom became a nurse and how that nursing impacted you? How has actually helped you to?
Rob Phelan: 06:45 I remember asking her that question like why did you become a nurse when I was probably in elementary school and we had one of those projects where you have to go, like interview your parent about like why did they go into the career they did? She had one of those moments where she witnessed an accident. I think it was a car accident and she saw the ambulances come, she saw the medical professionals there and she just was immediately like enthralled with how amazing and awesome these people were. And she's like, I want to work in the medical profession. And particularly nursing was the one that stuck out to her. So, she got her nursing degree and then decided to specialize in labor delivery and eventually became a midwife as well. And so, I grew up with a nurse for my entire childhood and she is awesome.
Rob Phelan: 07:24 Like she is a supermom. She does her job amazingly and then also raised four children who I think were all turning out pretty well so far. No issues yet. But it did turn me off the medical profession in general I will say. So growing up with a mom who was on call would be disappearing at different hours. You know, you saw her come home with the beeper back then and you're like you know, heart sank a little bit and you're like, all right, you, she's probably gonna get called out tonight. So my dad home or there'll be a babysitter coming in depending on what happens. And it just was something that a child, you don't get it. Like you're just like, mom's disappearing, mom's going to work, not realizing of course, like the amazing thing she is doing while she's at work. But yeah, it definitely was something that was like, you know, I don't want that for myself. I want a job where I'm in full control of my hours and I don't have to work at night.
Naseema McElroy: 08:19 Like me. Yes.
Rob Phelan: 08:20 And then when I went into teaching, I was like, you know, I don't want to work June, July, or August either. Like I'm just lazy.
Naseema McElroy: 08:27 Those are benefits. Okay. Listen, but I love that your mom was actually able to take you back to Ireland. Right? And so she was a nurse here in America first?
Rob Phelan: 08:37 Yeah. So she did her training in Ireland and then took advantage of, there was visas on offer to come to the US because I guess there was a nursing shortage at the time. So in her twenties, she was not married yet to my dad, but they were engaged. She decided, you know what new adventure, I'm going to go live in New York for a couple of years. And my dad was able to follow her like a year later and I don't think she saw lasting as long as it did. So it was supposed to be kinda like a couple of years and go explore this new country, we'll try it out and see what happens. And it turned into 11 years and she was able to work in hospital in Long Island, New York. And I think she really loved what she did. She was able to get her master's degree as well and I'm pretty sure the hospital had some hand in helping pay for that.
Rob Phelan: 09:19 So she got her masters in midwifery and became a qualified midwife while out here. And then she and my dad made the decision when I was about, I think it was 10 years old that they were going to move back to Ireland with my four siblings who had also been born while we were living in the US and I think one of the driving forces behind that was a, that all our family, so their extended family and brothers, sisters and so on really in Ireland but also that's college in Ireland at the time was paid for by the government. It was completely free. And since then, there's been a couple of fees brought in but you are still sending a child to a four year undergraduate degree for about like less than 10 grand. It was a great geo arbitrage move in terms of like money that they were going to save and you know, I'll talk to my dad now and he's like, yes. That was hands down one of the reasons why we did it.
Naseema McElroy: 10:04 Yeah. So you are able to graduate with your degree with no debt. So that gave you a really big headstart in life and kudos to your parents for understanding the importance of making sure that you started off with such a leg up. So, but you did leave Ireland, moved back to the States and eventually became a teacher. Awesome. I love teachers and my partner is a teacher as well. So he's an educator. I have to say he's a superintendent. [Rob Says "He's an important educator. Don't tell him that though, right?"] Yeah. Please don't. Yeah. So now you're teaching financial literacy. So you got on that path, you started learning about personal finances, stopped leaning on your wife, did handle all the bills, and you got on that path to teach financial literacy. When did you connect with the Choose FI people?
Rob Phelan: 10:58 So I started with Dave Ramsey, got very deep into that because I really liked, I liked Dave himself. Like, you know, he's that crass, really blunt, you know, tells you exactly how it is and kind of yells at you a little bit like, yeah, I gravitated towards that in the beginning 'cause I was like, all right, I've got to get my finances in order. I've got to get my butt in gear and get out of debt. So my wife and I, she didn't want to hear anything about the podcast, but she was like, okay, you know, there's some sort of plan here for getting out of debt. I'm on board with that. And we got out of debt in about a year and a half, some of her student loans, I took out a really small student loan for grad school. It was actually on advice just to build credit that I took out a small grad school loan.
Rob Phelan: 11:35 And in hindsight, I probably didn't need the loan. I could have built credit other ways, but it wasn't a bad thing overall, since I didn't take out like $100,000. It was 10,000 and we had some new cars to pay off as well. So we made those financial decisions that were not the best when we first started our new careers. Started teaching and it went from a salary of like $12,000 a year up to, I think it was probably starting on $40,000 a year. And so yeah, the money came in and I was like, yes, spend it all, get all the nice things. And so once we got out of debt, I started looking for more like you got kind of to the end of Dave Ramsey, you almost graduated from his stuff. So you get to the baby steps where you have built your emergency funds and it's just kind of like invest and give and that's where it stops and there's not really much more after that.
Rob Phelan: 12:16 So I was like looking for more, I started experimenting with more podcasts so I came across Choose FI, Afford Anything, Stacking Benjamins. Like those were the three that I really listened to on heavy rotation. And when I was tasked with teaching this class, I went through it the first time using actually the Dave Ramsey curriculum. It was okay. It had a lot of gaps. There was certainly some of his ideas that were in there that I didn't fully agree with. They weren't quite FIRE ideas, so I looked for something else, couldn't really find anything. That was great. So, I reached out to Choose FI, to Brad and I asked him, you know, I want to create a financial independence curriculum. Are you guys interested in being a part of that kind of work with you some way? And they were like, yes, absolutely. We are thinking the same thing.
Rob Phelan: 12:58 We've got some wheels in motion already, but yes, let's make this happen. So I was able to come with Choose FI and with two other people we created a K through 12 financial education curriculum that has a financial independence lens to it. So it's not just about the financial literacy component, like learning what the words mean and how things work. It's also about the behaviors and the mindset that you need to get to this idea of financial independence.
Naseema McElroy: 13:21 I love it and the most important thing about it is is that it's 100% free.
Rob Phelan: 13:27 It is 100% free. It is fully sponsored by the Choose FI International Foundation. So they have a lot of really cool people who said, you know what, this is so important that any barrier to entry such as a cost or a fee, it's not worth it. So we want to give this away 100% for free. Any teacher educator, homeschool parent, parent in general, like you can go access these lessons and use them whatever way you want. You can integrate them into your teaching curriculum. You can say, I want to do some of these activities with my kids at home. It's been fully open and able to be used by anybody. So ,we are really excited about that because it's going to be launching the end of January. So hopefully by the time this airs it will be up and available at choosefi.com/k12.
Naseema McElroy: 14:08 Awesome. And I will put the link to that in the show notes. So you guys don't want to miss this free curriculum. Even if you don't have kids in school, I'm sure that you can definitely benefit from it for yourself. So check out that Choose FI curriculum and can you highlight some of the most important points that people can learn or what kids can expect to learn through the curriculum?
Rob Phelan: 14:36 Yeah, so when we went to make this curriculum, we as adults ranging from, I was in my late twenties at the time to I think the oldest person was in her late thirties and we asked her, well, what should a graduating high school senior know when they're going to leave high school that would prepare them for the financial world and still a relevant lesson for them? So okay, in the curriculum we started with the tenants of financial independence, which is to earn more, spend less, invest the difference, and then enjoy the journey along the way. So when we started with earn more, we thought about things like we want to teach kids about entrepreneurship. How do you earn money? How do you create income for yourself as opposed to having to rely on an employer? That's something that I feel like is a really useful lesson for anybody to learn.
Rob Phelan: 15:18 But if we can teach that at the high school level, like imagine the doors that it's going to open up where you're suddenly like you have that mindset, that's my only source of income, doesn't have to be the job that I have. Like I can create money if I need it. So that led to creating a whole unit about entrepreneurship, which is really exciting. And you see that kind of go down to the elementary level where you started talking about like opening a lemonade stand and just that idea of selling a product and how you make money that way. So really cool to see that go all the way up through the different levels. Then you start talking about, well how do I get a job and negotiate a salary for that. So if I have a job right, how do I negotiate for higher salary. If I'm just starting out, how do I evaluate jobs based on what is the kind of total value of that job?
Rob Phelan: 16:01 So when you take into account the salary, the benefits, the other perks that may be come with it, like what is the true value of a job as opposed to just the dollar figure that you might be getting for it. Then you start going into the spend less, which is what we hear a lot about in the financial independence community. Like how do you cut costs down? So we're talking about making smart buying decisions, talking about needs versus wants. Like what do you truly need? What is a want? How do you practice delayed gratification on the things that are wants. So you're always trying to keep this idea of having that gap between what you make and what you are saving and spending so that you're building a nest egg for the future. So you're always coming up with this idea that you're going to earn more than what you spend and that difference is something that should be invested along the way. We talk about credit and how you can manage credit effectively.
Rob Phelan: 16:45 Talk about investing different types of investing that you can do. Investing in yourself. Investing in the stock market is an obvious one. The real estate market is another and then return on investment for things like college. So if you're going to get a degree, like a nursing degree, how much should you pay for a nursing degree to get a good return on your investment? So the general rule would be don't pay more than one year salary for your degree. So as a teacher, if I'm going to be earning $40,000 as my degree, it does not make sense to go to the private school down the road here, which charges 40 grand a year for that degree. And especially in things like education, I'm going to hazard guess that nursing is probably the same, that the name on the degree. So the issuing body doesn't really matter that much. Like what matters is can you do the job that we're hiring you to do?
Naseema McElroy: 17:28 Of course, can you pass the board? So then can you do the job? Yes.
Rob Phelan: 17:33 So you're probably looking for at least a college that has a good reputation for getting used that level to be able to pass the boards. But beyond that, does it really matter whose name is on that degree? Does anybody ever see it?
Naseema McElroy: 17:44 It doesn't even matter if you have a higher degree. I'm like way... I have way too many degrees for my job, like and I get paid the same as a nurse that has a community college degree. So, there you go.
Rob Phelan: 17:55 Yeah, like the teacher with a, imagine if Harvard has a teaching degree, like if you have a teaching degree from Harvard versus like the local state school, like it does not matter. Nobody knows the difference. It's not displayed anywhere. You don't get paid any differently. So making that smart decision about where you're going to go to college is a really big conversation that I have with my seniors and if I do get the opportunity to talk to juniors, that's a big one for them as well. So like trying to prevent kids from making those bad decisions in terms of like getting huge amounts of student loans for a degree that's not going to pay back what they needed in order for it to make sense.
Naseema McElroy: 18:26 I think that, I love that because it's a huge paradigm shift because I just remember when I'm graduating from school, my counselors are like, get into the best college that you can. Here are the loan applications, here's like a scholarship site. Just you know, by any means necessary, go to the best college. Not even really fully understanding what I even wanted to do with my life. Like you know, like I said, I could've got a community college degree and been a nurse 10 years earlier. So, it's totally different. And I love this emphasis on making sure that your degree is going to be cost effective in relationship to your career. And that's just not talked about enough. And I know especially for parents nowadays, the pressure is on to kind of get your kids in the best school and making sure that you can pay for their school even if that means taken from your retirement account just because that's what you're supposed to do. But I feel like this curriculum is super powerful because it gives you the tools and empowers you with the knowledge to know that things can be different. And you can set your kids up for a strong financial future.
Rob Phelan: 19:31 Yeah, like a conversation that I have with my seniors and a kind of stops them in their tracks a little bit is the statistic that came out last year, and I forget who gave the stat, but I think it was that for current retirees or people around their sixties seventies the highest debt that they have is typically a mortgage and then student loans, like people going into retirement are still carrying student loans because they're taking them out for their kids. And then of course, well, when you stop working and you don't have income and we're not preparing as well as we should for retirement, which is a big problem that's happening in society. Well now, kids are being responsible for their parents and they're kind of having to pick up the tab a little bit because the parents are still paying down so many different debts. It's like you don't want your parents to have to take care of you. You want to be independent of them. You want them to be independent of you and if you can make better decisions in the beginning, that helps them. Well, why not?
Naseema McElroy: 20:22 Right. And so I just wanted you to talk about how in your program in particular you guys are graduating and CNAs and the impact that the curriculum can have on them going into the workforce. And then we'll talk about your book.
Rob Phelan: 20:35 So, in my school, we do have a lot of future nurses that come through and I kind of mentioned that already. So in Maryland, I don't know if this is true across every state, but particularly my County, we have a career and technology education program where the schools in my area group together. There's one central location that we'll do different kinds of career technology programs and one of them is nursing. So I have a lot of students who in their 10th grade, 11th grade year will go and part time, start working on getting their nursing credentials. And I believe they come out with a CNA certification by the time they are seniors. So I get a lot of my students who maybe are with me in the morning doing this financial literacy curriculum and then the afternoons are going doing their nursing classes. And it's really fun to see the impact that it has on them because they're already kind of a little bit more future-minded.
Rob Phelan: 21:24 Likethey already have an idea of what they want to do, they've got a better plan about like how they're going to get this degree and then they're starting to make decisions that can really impact them in the future. So you'll see those kids are the ones that will really evaluate like what college they're going to go to because they already know what degree they want to do. They know roughly now how much they should be paying for it. So if they were trying to decide between two or three schools, they're making better decisions about it, which is so nice to see and so gratifying. It's one of the most gratifying parts of my job. Like I don't really get to get the feedback from them that they learned a lot. But I get to see in the background the decisions that they are making and you know, I'll see kids who are starting brokerage accounts because they're like, you know what, I liked the sound of this investing thing.
Rob Phelan: 22:03 I want to get started. The ones who are working part time, I've seen some good starts and Roth IRAs while they're in high school and that's really awesome to see. Like could you imagine if you started a Roth IRA at 17 or 18 and you know you're putting like 100 bucks a month in there, it's not huge. But for them it's huge. Like 100 bucks a month. You could stop at 25 and just let it ride and you've got a million by the time you're 65 like, and then if you just keep contributing that day comes closer and closer and closer to like financial independence is so easy if you start at that age.
Naseema McElroy: 22:30 I love it. And you're just setting these future nurses up to not even start off a life that's full of lifestyle inflation and doing the things just because other people are doing it. But you're setting them up with the tools to be able to become financially independent in a short amount of time if that's what they wanted to do. But yeah, and they could retire early, but the ability to make work optional is super empowering. But I also think it makes you like as nurses a better nurse because you can just focus on being the best nurse. And I feel like it's the same as teachers. Like we come, you know, into our fields because we're givers and we have this service mentality. But oftentimes our finances does get in the way of our ability to function in our full capacity. So I love that just from the jump, these people have the tools to be empowered in their career. So this is awesome. And then Rob, you also are working on something a little bit special to teach people how to be empowered financially. So can you share that with us?
Rob Phelan: 23:35 Yeah. I know it's a topic that you talk about, we hear about in the FIRE community a lot. This idea that you don't have that limiting belief about yourself anymore, that as a teacher or a nurse we are worthy, willing, able to actually build well like we don't have to be just givers. We can also take care of ourselves too. And it's something that I struggled with a little bit in the beginning. Like I got into teaching, I didn't get into teaching for the money. That's the way to say it. I got into teaching because I like working with kids. I love being able to basically to teach. I love being able to see them, learn something new, develop their skills, grow as a person, become better people. And then I liked the working hours. Like it was part of the reason I chose teaching as a career.
Rob Phelan: 24:14 The idea of summers off was something that I had in the back of my mind because I always knew I wanted to have a family and I always looked at other teachers and I saw that the amount of time they got to spend with their kids in summers, I was like, okay, you know, this is a career that I could see myself doing. And then I actually really love teaching when I started as well. But I got to have the opportunity this year to write my own book. And that for me was like a huge step out of my comfort zone and a real limiting belief. I had that, you know, I'm a math teacher, a physical education teacher, a personal finance teacher, like none of those spelled book writer. So I had to get over this idea that I had to be an English major to write a book and instead be like, well, I've got a message, I've got some skills, I've got knowledge that I think are valuable to other people.
Rob Phelan: 24:59 And something like this doesn't exist already. So the business mind to me is kind of like, okay, well there's a business idea here. It just happens to be in the form of a book. So this book is called The Simple Startup: A Beginner's Guide to Starting a Business and it was originally geared towards high school students. So I was like, all right, there's nothing at the moment that really helps guide a teacher and students to start their own business. But then I realized, you know, this is very applicable to most people out there. This is that first step that a lot of people don't know how to take when it comes to creating your own income. So, it is a workbook. It has 12 chapters in it. It takes people from coming up with a business idea all the way through, you know, writing that business plan, getting the marketing strategy going, figuring out how you're going to finance it, how do you track the finances of your business appropriately.
Rob Phelan: 25:45 Like it's not super technical, it's not like your, I dunno if they think of some book that's very fancy and expensive that teaches you how to start a business. Like it's not that. It is the beginner level one. So this is the one that gets your business up off the ground. And then if you find this is when you really like, you can take it further or you can keep it as that small side hustle that it manages itself very well and you can kind of keep this thing going. So that was a huge project for me and it is going to be published at the end of January.
Naseema McElroy: 26:12 Awesome!
Rob Phelan: 26:13 Yes, it is just on the verge of being released and hopefully again by the time this podcast comes out it will be on bookshelf. So it should be in Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and your most major booksellers. It's going to be really exciting.
Naseema McElroy: 26:26 And we will have the link in the show notes for them book and I'm super excited to share with my community. So Rob, what's one last thing you want to impart on these nurses? If there's one major lesson that nurses who are aspiring to be financially independent should know, what would that be?
Rob Phelan: 26:44 I would say I'm going to talk to the beginner nurse. So the one who is just starting their career out, you've gotten used to living on a lower income, you're starting off in this new job, you're increasing that income dramatically probably with this first job really take time before you start inflating your lifestyle. Don't feel like you have to match the lifestyle your parents had right away. So you are going to build up to that. There's going to have lots of time to have all the fun things. You don't have to deprive yourself from the beginning. Like you can still do fun things, but it's gotta be with a plan. And then for those existing nurses out there, you've got to unwind it a little bit probably. So, if you have a little bit trouble with lifestyle inflation, you've got to try and unwind it.
Rob Phelan: 27:24 You gotta try and ravel it. Think of the things that you truly value in your life. So if you haven't seen the playing with FIRE documentary, there is that really great lesson in there that Scott talks about with his wife Taylor. And he asked her, what are the 10 things that you value most, bring you the most joy and happiness on a daily basis? And she listed those out and they realized that none of the really big expensive things in their life are on that list. So, it caused them to get rid of their expensive car, their expensive home, and then downsize their life to one where they still had those things that brought them joy but at a much cheaper rate. And then they were able to invest that difference and really, really accelerate that path to financial independence.
Naseema McElroy: 28:04 Yeah, that's awesome. I love that movie and I recommend the documentary and I recommend people watch it and it's on Amazon now. It's super accessible. So if it's something that you want to stream, I'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. So Rob, how can people get in contact with you and can you share those important links again one more time?
Rob Phelan: 28:23 Sure. So you will find me on choosefi.com as part of the team there if you want to reach out. On Facebook, I am all over Facebook. In most financial independence communities, you will find me there. So you are always welcome to reach out with any questions, thoughts, ideas, you know, I love to hear from you. My book, thesimplestartup.com. I have an email link there, so you're welcome to reach out to me that way as well. And their curriculum will also have my name and email, I'm sure it's splashed across it somewhere and that is that choosefi.com/k12.
Naseema McElroy: 28:55 Awesome. And all the links will be in the show notes. And thank you so much Rob for joining me. This has been so great. I love hearing your story. I love that your mom is a nurse. Tell her I said what's up. Thank you for taking time out to share with the Nurses on Fire community.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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