Having Money Conversations With Kids w/ Bobbi Rebell

at my hair. Girl has a super curly hair. And now that you know which one of us is, which we want to talk about having money Conversations with kids. To do that, we brought on our friend Bobby Rebel. Um. She is in the process of writing a book called Raising Financial grown Ups. Um. She is the author of How to Be a Financial grown Up And so we are so excited to have her on today and uh

pick her Braton. But first a word from our sponsors, for sure, of course, also brought to you by man splaining the real art of explaining not so complicated concepts. Two very competent individuals here to tell you that, oh, sweetheart, this is not a real sponsor. It's a fake one. Like when you play monopoly. It's not real money. It's fake.

Do you get it? Man splaining the worst and most degrading way of providing information and definitely not the way you want to explain finances to your kids, for sure. And I'd like to point out that women can man explain. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I realized that as I did it. I'm like, I'm so good at this. Yeah, yeah, I gotta yeah, I know a you with those ladies. Oh yeah, Well, it's almost more cutting when it happens from a female, because because it's we hide it more and it's like

team oh gosh. Unfortunately, no, we're not. No, no, Well, to kick off our December well it's December, so it's not really kicking off, but we are so excited to have our guest for this month, Bobby Rebel. She is the author of How to Be a Financial grown Up. She hosts the Financial grown Up podcast, and without further ado, let's get into our interview with her. Bobby Rebel is an award winning TV anchor and former personal finance columnists

at Reuter's. She is a certified financial planner, author of How to Be a Financial grown Up, and the host of the Financial grown Up podcast. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Bobby, thank you so much for having me, And you forgot my other second job, which is I'm also the co host of Money with Friends, which shows Salty High from stacking Benjamin's. That's my latest venture. So it's probably not even in the bio yet because

the show is only a few months old. But I love doing Money with Friends with Joe, I know, and I actually knew that and forgot to put it in the bio. But you were also nominated with us for best New Personal Finance Podcast and we both lost. Yeah, we also, what's up with that? So we lost together? We lost lost together. So we both have friends in our names, which is also key. Yes, and that's you know they're good shows because you're just talking about money

and frugality with friends. It's probably what it was that they didn't want. They already knew we had enough people to be friends with, so they wanted to give the awards to people who didn't have friends. So well said I think and naw yes, thank you, good word, Jill. So, Bobby, I wanted you to come on the show because I saw that you're working on a follow up to your books How to Be a financial grown up, and it's

how to raise financial grown ups. And so we really wanted to pick your brain on teaching kids about money because personally, my son won't listen to a word I say about compound interests. And how old is your son? To be clear, let's he's on four months, okay, and I feel like at this point he should be listening, more productive, he should be more productive with his days, but he really used You know what, you have a late bloomer. It's okay, thank you. I just have to

come to terms with that. You have to terms with it, but you have to let your child grow into who they are, and you know what, he will catch up and even late bloomers can have successful and productive lives. So you're in there. Good word, thank you. So I'm going to just reference back to this episode in about like a month or two when I feel like he's more ready totally. Yeah, Yes, maybe we'll have my twelve

year old to a coaching session with him. Perfect. We could will schedule that perfect if the twelve year old still speaking to me after all my money lessons, yes, um, so tell our listeners about you and your kids and all that. So I have three kids. I have a twelve year old that we just reference. He's a boy, he's in sixth grade and he gets the everyday money lessons from me all the time, which we'll talk about later. I also have two older stepchildren and they are twenty

two and twenty one. Just graduated from college and has a totally awesome job. So proud of her. She's already a great salary and she's saving up to buy her first home. And then our twenty year old, my stepson, is a sophomore in college and he is no longer studying finance. He has decided to go into film. We're having some money discussions with him about that life decision. We'll see how that goes um And that's the three. And then I have a husband who's wonderful. He works

in consulting. And we have a dog who does not provide income. But we're trying to get her a modeling contract because she's super cute. But she's right now on the payroll only she's not bringing an income for us. Yes, yeah, but you can change out on my Instagram Waffles. She's beautiful. That's amazing. I love that name. We're so excited to hear about all the money lessons, you know, all of them that you're teaching. Yeah, we're gonna be here for

a while. Yeah, there's a lot I can learn, I'm sure. Yes, if it was here, he'd be a major I roll while all of the multitasking playing on his phone. Of course. Yes. So we started talking before we even pressed record about just the generational impact of this conversation. And while we're talking about raising kids to be financially savvy, of course, we can't gloss over the impact of parents and siblings.

For you, Bobby, what has what's been the impact of your parents and siblings on your spending habits as an adult. It's really interesting, guys, because you see what your parents we're doing so differently when you yourself become an adult, and especially a genkin of course, relate um when you have children and you're having money discussions with children starting at you know, four months old. So I did not have a lot of money discussions with my mother directly.

I had a lot with my father, who worked on Wall Street, and he would sit us down, my siblings and I, and he would ask us specifically what we needed money for and what our budget was, and then he would give us the money for that budget. And we also always had jobs, I should say, starting from h fifteen. I had a job at a bakery. I had a job at a department store. So we also always worked for our own money. But my mom it was more observing. And this is where it gets interesting.

She's no longer with us, but at the time I would observe her making these decisions that were extremely frugal, despite the fact that, from what I can tell, we were relatively comfortable. As I said, my father worked on Wall Street. So for example, I remember whenever we went on a plane, we were bringing homemade meals. Always we went to the local um, I don't know what we'd call it. It It wasn't a pool. It was more of like a homemade lake, kind of which is a kid

is like huge. It was like a massive beach around this beautiful lake with all of these food stands and all this activity. Go back and it's like it was a muddy puddle. Totally totally it's like a puddle, right, But we would go there. It was called Darlington Park. I remember in New Jersey. Oh my goodness, I can't believe that came to me. And we would always bring our own food, and we never were allowed to buy the food like the cool kids. And you know, I

didn't really think. I wasn't happy about it at the time, but looking back, I realized this was her way of being frugal. That we wouldn't go and just buy the store about food. We were always bringing her own. She would slice up salami slices on white bread, always white bread, and we would have um. It's interesting because in that era, and this is the seventies and eighties, I don't know why we didn't just drink water, but for some reason,

we were always drinking like juices. Like she would literally on purpose put color die and sugar into our water to make it into juice. She would mix the juice at home and would be like the packets that she would dump in and it was like sugar and die and like, I don't know what, why why did we do that? We had water that was perfectly good, but she would do that, and then we would have our fruit drinks that you she'd pour into the little cups

that she would bring. And so, you know, I grew up not knowing what was going She wasn't having discussions with me, but it was more observing, so we would do these things. And I remember even when my father started doing clearly they never told us, but start things. We moved to a better house, he started driving a really fancy car, and so we moved into this house and my mom would be decorating, and I remember one day she was putting up towels over the windows and

I said, Mommy, why are you doing that? And I was about thirteen, and she explained that, you know, we spent so much on the house that we're just not going to buy curtains for a while. So these were just observations. There's never an on purpose discussion with her. So it's just interesting how those things stick with you. And even in my own home, we've done things in stages.

So even today we're talking about we still have a dining room table that predates my marriage, which is thirteen years and we're talking about it's really time we need to do that, and I'm like, let's wait, wait, right,

there's something wrong. It's perfectly good. You know, it's a little scratched up, but you can put a tablecloth over at guys, right, right, And it's interesting, it seems like what you're describing is is a lot of what we talked about on our show, just defining frugality, because I think there's so many different versions of it, or people use that word in so many different ways. But frugality isn't necessarily just a reflection of how much money you have.

Certainly some people are choosing frugality while not choosing it's being chosen for them because they they don't have a lot of money. But it can also be a lifestyle that, regardless of what amount of money you're living off of, you choose like the bologna sandwiches on the airplane and the towels for curtains. Do you feel as though those types of things are you've adopted and do you do you like that about yourself or or is that something

that you'd rather change. I think there's a balance. I think there's nothing wrong with being aware of what things costs, of making deliberate choices. I also think that we are all very much a product of our parents. So now I look at my parents and I think about, well, what was their background, right, So my mother, she's acting in irrationally frugal ways. She had a husband that was certainly able to provide enough that we could have curtains. And by the way, my father listened to me talk

about that story on a podcast and corrected me. He said, we absolutely had money. She just had issue spending it. But we had the money to buy curtains, so you know it. But she had she had lost her father at a very young age, and it was at a time where her mother, my grandmother, who as a woman, did not go to college in that eerra, which was common.

Some women obviously went to college, but many, many did not have that opportunity, and my grandmother talked about being upset that she did not have the opportunity that her brother had. So my my grandmother was widowed young and had no real ability to earn money, and so they had a real financial crisis. And I think that my mother's sometimes irrational frugality came from that era of not having the money, of being worried about what's going on

versus my dad had grown up. His father had been born in this country, but his grandparents had been immigrants, and they had moved up a traditional economic path of success in that they had their own family business and a grew and my grandfather went to college and my father not only went to college. He went to private high school and then went on to Ivy League schools for college. So my father came from a very privileged background, and so that may have contributed to his feeling a

lot more secure spending money. And so it's interesting to look at what informs our perceptions of frugality. I like that term irrational frugality. Same not only going to be helpful for us, Yeah, definitely, we also do that. We

all do things like that. I think that I brought the same irrational frugality when I was, like in college, like still nickel and diming, making all these small purchases, but not believing that I could spend money on larger purchases and save money and pay off debt, like believing I was too broke to do that, but I had enough money to buy all the Latte's and the dollar things in the target like dollar section. Yeah, and I definitely had to learn and like some people call a

scarcity mindset to um. But I like the term irrational frugality. But back to teaching kids about money. Let's start with young kids. What do you think are the most important things that parents can do to teach young kids about money. Make it part of your everyday life, and you will get some of the eye rolls, which I certainly get.

But I, for example, whenever we take a taxi, which I hate to do, but there are times when I have to because I have to get from point A to point in a certain amount of time, and that's the only way it's going to happen. I will have my twelve year old um take my phone and he puts in the code to uh pay. We pay through the through an app, and he can see how much is going to the tip, how much is going to tax,

and so he understands. Right now, we've had had some new taxes in New York City, so when that happened, he understood the price just to get into the taxi had gone up because there's certain automatic taxes, flat fee taxes that go onto every taxi bill. And so that's a big lesson about taxes and why things sometimes cost what they cost even though the driver may not be

getting that money. And we've had discussions about how a lot of the drivers don't even own their own taxis that they basically rent them, and so that goes into your net profits because you don't always keep all the revenue, which is what people pay. So he understands now what people pay to the taxi driver is not necessarily what they're earning for the day. So everyday life is the best way, whatever that may be. Hopefully you guys are not paying for over priced taxes in New York City.

But whatever you're doing, even you go to the gas pump, that's a great way help them. Have them help you pump the gas. Have them see if there's a different price for cash and credit. Have them see what the taxes on that, and understand how that all works. Explain when you go through a toll booth in the car um where does that money go? In theory, it's going to maintain the roads. Not always, but you can tell them it is right, keep simple. So everything, everything in

life is a lesson. How do you balance that eye roll right of teaching them but yet not making them despise this thing? Where's that one for you? So the ey roll is new because so I will maybe put it out to your audience, maybe the book of right in and tell me some tips because I'm certainly struggling with that a little bit myself. Part of the eye rolls because he's kind of over it because he knows what I do for a living, so he's used to it. Um,

So I don't know. I think just be cool about it and just know that that that's more of a teenager thing. He's a tweet technically, I guess at age twelve. But it's also you have to know when to shut it down a little bit. We had a little injured toe. He fractured his toe last week, and I did ask him if he understood that we were in an in network provider and what that meant, and he actually did explain to me what that was. And I said, do you understand the deductible and how great it is that

we're pacity the deductible right now? And he did explain what that was and he said, okay, Mom, can we stop exactly? But it was on it. Actually. I was kind of really impressed with him that he did understand what I was talking about, So that was pretty cool of him. What about when he was younger? How soon did you start with these lessons and how did you

make them age appropriate? You start when they ask something will come up, So for example, you might be picking out a birthday present for a friend of theirs, and there should be a budget because otherwise, what if they just gravitate towards this hundred dollar toy, which, by the way, is not our budget for birthday toys. You don't need

to spend a hundred bucks. Um. So you know, let's say you want to spend twenty bucks for to go to you know, let's say he's four and you're four years old, that four months and he now has some say in what you're going to be getting for his friend for the birthday party. You can give them a budget and show them how the price. Hopefully you're a store where they display prices, or you can maybe go up to the person working at the store. I love

to patronize. We have some small toy stores in my neighborhood and you go in with them and you say, what do you have or have your your child say, ideally, we're buying a present from my friend. They like this, this, and this. You know, they're into Star Wars or whatever it is, and our budget is between twenty and twenty five dollars. Can you show me some options and that way they can get a very granular understanding of how to spend money and how it works. And it's fun

because they're picking out a present. Or do you did you have your kids interact with money at all, even at a young age, as in like a version of an allowance, or here's how we set percentages aside it, or how did you approach that we did not have allowance as for the older kids. For my twelve year old, he want an allowance and so we're starting to do

that at ten dollars a week. Um, but he hasn't gotten it all the time because of things that he's done in terms of media, because he now has a phone, so that's been arounding. What we did do is we talked to them about money, and they had jobs. And I really like the idea of kids earning income themselves, not just being paid to part of the family. UM. I'm still unsure how I feel about allowance, and I

see both sides and I'm conflicted. I think it's nice to have kids have spending money, and I definitely understand parents that just say, well, I want my kids to focus on their activities and on their school work and there's no need for them to have a job job, And I think that's great. But both both of my older stepkids have had jobs, and I will tell you that my stepdaughter who is saving to buy her own apartment, and we're really proud of her. She has a nice bace.

She's not quite there yet, but a lot of it is money she earned over the years. And my stepson also very cognizant of money that he's earning. And I think there's something really tangible and wonderful about earning money themselves. But then people say, and again I'm conflicted about this, People say, well, then pay your kids to do household tours.

I don't like to do that. I think that if you're part of the family, you clean up after yourself, and if someone else leaves something out and they left and they forgot it, pick it up. It's okay. We're all a family. So I don't love the idea. I don't want to say to my child, take out the garbage and have him say, pay me five dollars you take out the garbage. That's just my feeling, but I totally respect that other people have different things that work

for their family. So I'm just figuring it out, and a lot of my my next book, Raising Financial Grown Ups, is about me figuring it out with the older kids, because I'm going through a lot of questions where I am conflicted and I'm a little bit unsure of what I'm doing in terms of getting them to be truly financial grown ups, as I say, to have their own financial independence, because as a parent, you do want to

help them financially. I personally cannot just write a check to buy my stepdaughter in apartment, But part of me feels like, well, if I had a mountain of free cash, I would want to because I just wanted to have our own apartment and be happy and free, and isn't that great? And we have to resist that temptation because kids won't learn financial independence if we just buy everything for them. That said, if they want to earn many I think that you can help them set up a

business if that's something that they're interested in doing. So instead of whatever it is a chore around the house, maybe they instead of maybe you're not going to pay them to rake leaves off your lawn, but you can help them make a business where they rake the leaves for your neighbors. They learned business skills. Um, we have

not done that. I think that's a great idea though, So I'm learning from you guys, but I just for me, just because they're not paying me to pick them up from from their sports practice, right, Yeah, yeah, I totally Yeah. It would be kind of one way. And I guess I'm dealing with older kids now, but I make them dinner, I you know, pick them up. With all these activities, we provide shelter and food and all this stuff and

don't expect to be paid. So if I asked someone to take out the garbage, I want them to just say sharing a problem and get up and do it right. I support that. I like that. But yeah, trying to help them set up maybe a business where they do these simple household tasks for other people so they can separate it from like their home. I love that idea exactly. Yeah. I think we've gotten away from doing the paper route and those kind of things in this generation. Maybe it exists.

Maybe it's just because them in New York City and people don't buy them any physical papers anymore. But the idea of having jobs when you're young is a really great thing. Another thing I think is that we've moved away from because we have so much digital is actually understanding counting actual many My son had saved a lot of coins because he did the three jars that run

labor advocates in the opposite of spoiled. And we went to put them in the bank, and the bank explained that if we were going to deposit them, that we had to put them into little sleeves and if you take them to a machine. I looked up the machine, it's like eleven percent they take. So I gave my son the choice. By the way, he did not want to give up eleven percent. So score one for young Harry. And we sat there at the bank and and we were wrapping all these coins. It was forty seven dollars

worth of coins, a little more than forty seven. I don't remember the exact number. There's an Instagram story on it somewhere. And he said to me and said, Mom, this is kind of nice. I feel like this is kind of a soothing activity. We're just sitting here literally

counting penny's and spending time together. And there was something really tangible about actual physical money that I think can younger children can really get a lot out of understanding and then bringing it to the bank teller and depositing it in his account. He I made him speak to her. I just stood a foot behind and nodded, and he made the transaction himself. I love that. And that's the thing.

Most of us are tangible learners, tactile visual. It's not enough to just do the auditory spoken lessons, but to actually interact with money and to know what that's all about, that's priceless. Yeah, but it's a struggles. Let me just tell you one thing I do struggle with and and it'll be interesting if you get any listener feedback on this. Right now, kids can buy things that are virtual. They

don't exist. So a game in some of the games that say they can buy things, and he does get a trickle of allowance when he's, you know, doing the right thing, and he wants to sometimes use that to buy these virtual things. And I'm really struggling with it because you want to say, okay, let him learn his to me, it's a mistake. I don't know. I feel like there's a munch of whatever, a bunch of WHOI let's say it's I don't know, it's a g rated show here, but I don't want him buying that. I

just think that's the dumbest thing ever. And he's like, but mom, you know everyone else is at this level and I can't get to level because they're all buying this stuff. And I'm like, oh boy, this is really keeping up with the Jones. Is this is you know, and you're literally throwing away your money. But yet, shouldn't I let him learn his money lessons himself? Right? So what do you do with this world of virtual stuff?

Because you talk about tactile things, what do you do when a kid wants to buy something that's not even a thing. Yeah, And I think that's why we're talking about young children and that it does start young. So if they had interacted with real money at an age appropriate level at three, four, five, six, seven, by the time they get to interacting online with virtual things, there's a greater understanding and value for it than just like, yeah, I don't know, this is just a number on the screen,

clickly okay button. Yeah. And you mentioned the three jar system, which is um I believe like, save, spend and give correct me if I'm wrong. Yes, And so if you're teaching kids to save before they spend, I think even and then they get to spend on whatever they want, even if it's imaginary. But you empower them to spend.

I think they'll make mistakes. They'll make a bunch of mistakes at first, but then eventually they'll get tired of not having anything to show for their spend a jar and see all the great things that they have gotten after they've saved. And I think that in itself, I think that will, like course correct as long as the you know, you're teaching all the parts of money to give, save, and spend. I hope you're right. I don't know right now. Right now, I'm not so sure. He's pretty to the

virtual stuff we'll see. So, speaking of older kids, teens and even young adults, what can be done by parents? What are some top tips to help them understand these important money lessons as they are about to leave the nest, and and how to be able to even act on those lessons actually put it into practice. This is a really hot topic right now, and that is what I'm writing my book on because I am, if we're being completely honest here, I am struggling with this myself. It's

very hard. I love that you said, as they get ready to leave the nest, you're making a big assumption that they're going to leave the nest right as you prepare to push them out of the nets, and they prepared to go on with everything in them exactly. But you guys, okay, so you're talking to I'm a gen xer, and so we are the generation of helicopter parents, and we are now morphing into they call them bulldozer parents, snowplow parents and so on. So it's really unrealistic. Oh yeah,

what is a snow ploy? Like like they're just they're just mowing over every They're just hovering to a degree that they are going to And I did not just going to the the the job interviews. So for example, this is bad. This happened, So this almost this almost happened in my house. So my my one of the children. I don't want to make this one Anonymous had a little hiccup at their you know, work, and I literally said to my husband, can't you go in and just

fix it? Like I know, he looked at me, He's like no, no, you know, because I was like, oh, but you know, like it's almost like but I want them to get an A, so can you just fix the test? And I had to catch to myself, that's so bad, right, so bad? Right, So we're having troubles.

I mean even we were cleaning out, we redid the boy's room, and even cleaning out, you know, my my son had done relatively well it at chess in that there would be a hundred kids, and he's sometimes one eighth or ninth place, okay, but out of a hundred, it's not that bad. You know, they give you whatever, they give you a trophy. And I could not throw away the trophies because and my son was like, yeah, whatever,

get rid of I don't care. And I'm like, oh, but remember the time, you know, and we're so proud of their like, you know, eighth grade trophy, eighth place trophy, and that has to end. So anyway, So a lot of the issue is really the parents when it comes

to older kids. I believe, just owning it a little bit myself, but you go through these things where you say you want them to be independent, but then well, why would you If you're already paying for a Netflix subscription, why would you make your adult child pay for another one? That's just dumb, right, So why would you? And then the phone bill is another tricky thing because now we have um my daughter has she rents she chose to rent a phone from Apple, so she always has the latest,

greatest one. And then we also have her portion of our family bill, her line and some other stuff, and the taxes and the insurance that goes with that. So I want her to be putting all of her money into saving for a new apartment, right to buy an apartment. And she's making progress. She is living at home, she's banking all her money, she's doing all the things. Guys, I see the little bit she spends. It's so it's such a trickle. She's really doing everything she should be

doing right. But yet on principle, I feel like she should be paying her phone bill right. She's got an awesome job, she's twenty two, she has no overhead, but it seems petty. So I'm sort of torn. And you know, we recently talked about it and she's like, Okay, I'll pay this portion of it, and she's doing all the things. But then I'm kind of like, oh, but do I really want to take forty a month from her when she's doing all the things right. So I don't really know.

And that's kind of what the book is going to be about, is how do you figure out where the right balance is, you know, especially when the kids are kind of doing what you taught them to do right, But we don't want to let go. We're providing subsidies that may or may not be as needed as we think they are. But I don't know, what do you think. Should you pay your twenty two year old phone bill if you can't and you want her to save money, or should you say, well, you're twenty to pay your

own phone bill. It's so interesting. I had my my mom paid for my phone and and most of my bills until I got married. At it was so crazy and I didn't think about it, like it never crossed my mind. We never talked about it. And I lived at home for two years after college, so I was used to being on my own and paying most of

my bills. So I was used to paying rent um and utilities and stuff like that, but for my health insurance which was cheaper to be on her health insurance, and then like a phone bill, uh, those things she always paid. I never I never even crossed my mind that I should be paying for them because we never had that conversation. But now looking back, I'm like, yeah, I should have been paying sing that, like, I would definitely make my kid pay their portion of their phone bill.

But yeah, but it did help me because I was, like getting my master's degree, I had a very small income because I was only working part time and like paying for rent and stuff. So it did help take a took a lot of burden off of me to not have those few little expenses. So yeah, I'm as a product of it. I'm also torn because it clearly I still have okay money habits even after having the privilege of having that stuff paid for me for so long.

It's interesting you never you never had a conversation about it, but later I did, after I was already you know, paying from all my own stuff. And what she said was that because she felt guilty for not being able to provide college for me, because I had to take out student loans for my master's, she felt the least she could do was pay for my insurance and phone bill. So that made some sense to me. But yeah, I

wasn't until later that we have that conversation. And health insurance is also tricky because you can say, okay, the total cost of paying for a young adults health insurance, you want to pick whichever one is better overall. So if you're getting them completely separate, would cost whatever a certain number and you could save half the money if they were in the parents plan. You don't want to

create an extra expense ever for a child. But then just because they're in your plan doesn't mean that they shouldn't pay their portion of it. So there's two things you're deciding. One are they on your plan or their own independent plan? And then two are they paying for their portion of your plan? If they're on your plan, does that make sense? And it goes for the phone

as well. So to bump Ashley off the family plan would have been a lot more money than her simply paying a portion that is allocated to her of our plan. So you never One thing I feel very strongly about is never create false expenses or unnecessary expensive to prove a point triple your You know, if you can have them on your plan for thirty or forty bucks and it's going to be over a hundred for them to

be completely independent. If you want to make a point and you want to have them pay, have them pay the third or forty bucks of your plan. Don't create more expense as a family. I call it a family ecosystem. It's one of the concepts in the book that we should all support each other. I don't believe it just cutting people off, and it should be multigenerational. There may be times when your parents need your support, and you should be prepared to do that in a loving way

as well. It's really a family ecosystem, and everyone should be there to support each other, and not in a dependent way, but in a supportive way. Yeah. I think the most important is having the conversation and to determine right, to determine, like what's working for us? Are we going to do this while you're in college? Are we gonna wait until you're done with college? Just kind of talking with each other to determine the plan of action. There's no one right plan of action for everyone, but to

figure it out together. You know what else we can figure out together? Yeah? And what else that I really love? The best time of the week. Yeah, it's the bill of the week, that's right, It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That bill Buffalo bills Bill Clinton.

This is the bill of the week. So Bobby, every week we have either listener or our guests share their favorite bill for the week, and we wanted to invite you to share yours. You mentioned it a little bit before we started recording, and so I'm excited for you to share. Tell us about your bill. So the bill of the week is my new computer that I am finally buying. Right now, we are recording on my soon to be retired MacBook Pro and I will soon own

a new MacBook Pro that is super fancy. I got the top of the line because I realized that I'm running my business on this computer and my current computer is overheating, it cannot handle updates of software. There's all kinds of problems going on and they're not going to be solved, and so I do have to buy the bullet and buy a computer. And it was really hard because I wanted to buy something that was much more,

not necessarily the cheapest, but mid tier. And I really made a decision to buy a top of the line computer because I am amortizing it in my head over seven years. Because this current computer lasted seven years and on a perier basis, the difference between getting something that's okay versus something that's great is really minimal. And I see where our businesses are going, and we really use these computers to run our whole business. And I think

it's going to be a really good investment. Nice. Yeah, And I love that you You made the decision because you value your business. You are doing something that's going to make your life easier in your business. And I love that. It's it's choosing to do things that will make your life easier instead of pinching pennies and making it more inconvenient, and that is super frugal. It's an investment. I'm not happy. I'm still cringing. Yeah, awesome, Thanks so

much for sharing your bill with us. If you all want to submit your bill of the week, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill. Leave us a bill. It can be that great computer that's going to serve purpose your purposes, or any other kind of bill really doesn't matter. We want to hear it. Yeah, the guy named Bill that sold you the computer whatever, if you really liken and then it leads us to the lightning round you guys are scaring me. I don't like a

lot of scary segment. Yeah, that's that's reasonable for you, for you to feel that way. I often feel nervous. You're raising the bar. We get to the end of the podcast and we start getting loud. Yeah, Jill does I still get scared. So our lightning round is super short. We really want to know three tips or however many tips you want to give for how we as age adults can be financial adults are financial grown ups, as you call it. So what are your tips for all

of the adults and parents nonparents out there? Okay, number when you have to actually like look at numbers, it's so scary, but you have to open the mail or the virtual email, or open your accounts and actually know what you owe, know what you have, know where your bills are, and just own it and just run those you know, summaries where they'll lay everything out and you can see where your mini is going. Because if you just have that information, It's kind of like when they

started posting the calories on food. I don't know if you guys have that, but here in New York, when you go to restaurants, they will post the calories and let me tell you, you're eating. Habits change very fast when you see those numbers, right or my guilt level totally um number two. Automate things because it's so much less stressful because also as you get your memory is going to go. So this way you don't have to

remember to pay all your bills. You automate them. But with a caveat, you still have to go back to step number one, to tip number one and look at what's going on. Because, for example, I recently caught the fact that I had unwittingly subscribed to some magazines that I didn't want, just because even though I love them, there are time suck and I never get to them and they just sit there piling up. So I didn't want the magazines. But you know what I didn't do.

I didn't cancel the auto pay on the subscriptions. And it was a three dollar and sixty seven cent charge, but it really upset me, and it was on auto and it was going to keep going forever. They were never gonna let go, so I had to cancel it. So even though you automate, you need to still like put it on your calendar, like this is what I did. Now.

I actually put it on my calendar every three months to go through everything because you need to check that you're not automatically paying for things that you don't actually want, but that you should automate the things that you do want to pay. So pay for things automatically and and pay also includes paying yourself things like you're um four O, one K or whatever else is going on. I ra

any savings five twenty nine if your parents all that stuff. Um. And then my third tip is to forgive your mistakes because we all mess up. I do constantly, as you've heard, UM, So just know you're gonna mess up, and so be forgiving of yourself and just deal with it. It's okay because we all mess up. Like like I just said, like I'm paying for magazine subscriptions, so I don't I literally don't want. And by the way, on that phone call, guys they were they didn't want to let me drop it.

They're like, well, we'll let you have another year for free, and I'm like, I don't share. I don't want twelve magazine stacked exactly. They're stressing me out because they feel like a to do list, right, because you feel like someone worked hard on this magazine, I should read it and so yeah, and you know, and by the way, when that your ends, you know what's happening three dollars and hitting your bill one more time. So that's a big mistake, right, All those subscriptions that you have, you

got to get rid of them. I'll, I mean, whatever you're not using, which is probably a lot of them. If you're using them, that's cool, but you know, sure, yeah, that's great. Thanks so much Bobby for coming on the show. Where can people find more from you? If this just was not enough, which clearly it won't be. Oh, you guys are so kind. Um. Well, first of all, I have a website. It's my name Bobby Ravel dot com. So that's the easiest thing. But please check out my podcast,

Money with Friends. All podcasts with the word friends and them are awesome. So money just like friends. Right then of course financial grown Up and you can check out my book as well, which is how to be a Financial grown Up along the same theme. And thank you guys for having me. That's it. Would follow me on the socials please, I'm really sad on Instagram. I'm really trying. I'm trying, um, but Bobby Rabel one B O B B I R E B E L and then the

number one. Thank you Bobby for coming on. I'll mention her. Her book Financial grown Up, How to Be a Financial grown Up has like awesome interviews with like all these famous people, So definitely check it out. You will love it. And all those podcasts that you're on check them out too many podcasts, Yeah, please check them out. Yes, great, Thanks Bobby, Thank you guys. Awesome. That was a fun time.

Bobby is so great and uh, we were so happy to have her on and we hope that you picked out something from that interview that you could take and use either in your life or in your family's life. If you are joining us for our book club this month, we are reading my new book, pay Off Your Debt for Good, and uh, I'm super excited about it. I mean, I'm totally biased. We're all excited. And there's even more

exciting news. If you want a free copy of Jen's book, leave us a review on iTunes, Screenshot that review and email it to us at Frugal Friends Podcast at gmail dot com, and we will select one winner for every five reviews we get. So the likelihood of you get in a free book is parity big. And if you want to know a good example of a helpful review, here's our review of the week. It is from at Toad and Cake love that name, and it is five stars and it's the best. That's the title. I also

feel that way about the review though. This podcast is so good. It's the perfect combination of entertaining and informative. And I can't get enough of the fake sponsors. Well I'm glad we didn't have to explain that to Todencake. You know they always cracked me up. I've been binging it all week and can't get enough. I'm so inspired by all the practical tips from the hosts and guests.

Keep up the great work. So thank you. That was a very helpful review and helps people know what they can expect from the podcast, and that is the point of reviews. Thanks Tod and Cake. See you next week via Frugal Friends. Is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Siria. I'm sorry for the awkward introduction. I just felt it was time that we told people who was who on the icon because we had a thread in our Facebook

group about everyone mixed us up. It must be something psychological for people when they when they look at our picture, they match my voice with your body, your voice with my body. It's like, um mythical creatures really swapping of voices and bodies. One of the things I think is, so you're the first one on the picture, but I'm always the first one speaking, like doing the title. So maybe that's why they just think the first person is

the first one speaking. I don't know. We could probably do a whole thesis and dissertation and research process on it, or we could just go with what you just said and assume that's the case. I don't know. We would love to hear why you think who is who? In their Facebook group, Yeah, people had some strong opinions. What if we're getting into territory? Yeah I know, I know, as I'm thinking, I'm like, where are we going? What would be? Yeah? No, I am curious why would they

think that? I don't know. I can't wait to hear. Also, we put up a thread about a week and a half ago asking for tips, not tips, but ideas for episodes. So we are writing our episodes list. So if you are listening and you have a topic that you'd really like to hear about please head over to our Facebook community group, find that thread and put your idea down and if we've already done it, we will link to

the episode. But you could hear your idea in an episode in in a few months if you're still listening, because this is like the outro of Ultro of Autros. But yeah, thank you if you're If you're still listening, if you're that committed, you probably have some good ideas for podcast. Okay, signing off, Sionara