¶ - Intro
Welcome to Navigating Wealth. Today we're thrilled to welcome Jolene Godfrey, founder of Bounce 10. She spent decades helping wealthy parents raise financially capable kids. In today's episode, we discuss how to think about teaching financial fluency as a developmental skill. Same way you teach a child to walk or read. Why shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations is more myth than rule? And what actually puts the next generation at risk?
How to tie allowances to real decisions, and much more. Before we dive into the episode, subscribe to our free newsletter in the show notes. You'll get notified every time a new episode is released. I hope you enjoy.
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The one thing I get asked is what's the one thing you would suggest? And I say every time, you've got to have kids do hard things.
¶ - Welcome to Navigating Wealth: Joline Godfrey
And usually there is this pause and it's like, Well, what do you mean? So I've really gotten to we need to talk about that in a more granular way because of course families can outsource so much these days. But it was from that hard stuff that you're sort of inferring here that we learned resilience, that we learned to struggle, that we learned to persist, all of those things. And when kids are robbed of those opportunities, We are doing them no favors. So yeah. At the core of the new feel guy.
I think is that what does it mean to do hard things and why does that connect in any way to financial fluency in kids?
Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jolene. Yeah, real pleasure to meet you.
Likewise, this is great.
a thumbnail of what your career journey has looked like and who you focus on supporting.
Oh my gosh. Yes. So Jolene Godfrey trained as a clinical social worker. And I would add that this won't mean a lot to a lot of people. I was trained as a real Jane Addams kind of social worker, you know, settlement houses and working with the poorest of the poor. And that was those were the early days of my career and it's kind of what I thought I'd be doing. I ended up in this sort of strange way we all do, having Having experiences that took me into new arenas. So I ended up being for about
a decade, the in house shrink at the Polaroid Corporation, the instant camera company, way back in the day. And that could not have been farther from settlement houses, as you can imagine. Even way back then, Uh Polaroid was one of the first to do serious in-house education, and financial education was some of that. So that was my first. kind of inkling of financial education back in the day. And um over time I continued to
twist in this way and that. And finally Inc. magazine asked me to do interviews with women entrepreneurs. This had to have been you know, early nineties, I think. And they were not really doing a great job of covering women it in that point of time. And so I went out and I did I think eight of the best dinner parties I'll ever have in my life, all paid for by Inc. magazine, while I was interviewing women in different cities around the country.
And it was in fact fascinating. And again, trained as a social worker, I put a what was then just a tape recorder in the middle of the table and boom, I had these killer transcripts transcripts. When I finished The question that was burning for me was how would those women's lives have been different had someone talked to them about money when they were little girls? Because here they were, grown-ass adults.
trying to sort out how to run a business and starting from scratch really. And I realized there was this missing piece. that, you know, for the most part if there was a kind of any kind of financial education, it y usually went to their brothers or to the
guys in the family. So that was my first foray into the world in a real way, and my first book, Our Wildest Dreams, was really all about that. But over time I kept seeing this gap that we didn't we we had learned how to think about developmental stages of life in terms of how kids walk and talk and play and have moral compass and all of those things. We did not as a culture think about teaching kids about financial fluency.
at an early age. We waited until they were grown up and they could handle it. So that is not a very short story, but that is how I got into or kind of backed into the world of financial education and I'll just finish by saying then I discovered, oh my God, there's this one more piece which I refer to these days as financial parenting, because It's not a walk in the park. I mean, you as a parent don't really know how to bring your kid on board, basically. So that's where I am.
¶ - How to Define Success & Failure Raising Kids in Affluence
And that's fascinating. So I think if I think about a lot of our listeners, they're in this situation of saying, Hey, I have been successful relatively early in life and so my kid I probably have more resources to offer my kids than maybe I grew up with or then other people do. To start with, how would you define success or failure for someone raising kids fine um in that situation of affluence?
That's a killer question. I don't think I've ever been asked that, but I think a lot about it and
It is
It's an emotional response. Are you still connected to your kid? Are you still acknowledging that success for your child may not be the same as success for you? I mean, I watch obviously families all the time who's who can do anything for their children, literally, beyond anything. And it has brought me to this notion of the paradox of well. You can do anything for your kids.
But that ness isn't necessarily the best thing for them because it's what we were talking about earlier. Unless kids have opportunities to make their own way, to have their own journey, to have their own difficulties and learn from them. you are not giving them opportunities to learn. Um and so that notion of the hyper successful parent who, you know, one of the great companies in Silicon Valley, for example.
How is that kid gonna figure out who they are? Doesn't matter what they can do with your money or the money you've made. It is who are they and what are they gonna do about it?
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¶ - Shirt Sleeves to Shirt Sleeves: Is the Myth Real?
Yeah, I mean I I think there's you sometimes hear about something like shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations, right? So grandma or grandpa make the money, their kids enjoy it, and then the next generation dissipates it. Do you think the risk is really that on the financial side? Or is it more the sense of, sure, their money's still fine, they've got a wealth manager or family office that's holding on to it, but not realizing their human potential?
They're not they don't have opportunities to realize their human potential. They don't even have opportunities to exercise it because problems are solved for them. Somebody else takes care of the credit card. Somebody else calls the attorney. Everything is taken care of. Damn, I mean we know even if we don't use our own muscles and don't take a walk once a week. you know, our muscles are gone. It's the same way with human potential and I like those two words.
It's interesting. The shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves notion has actually been uh turned into a bit of a myth. Doesn't always play out quite that neatly. You know, we're all different, things can happen.
Well, so can you talk more about that? I mean it does seem like there's these two vectors. Hey, are they running out of money and are they really, you know, making good use of their time on Earth? You know, maybe to start with that.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that and that's legit. I think those are real you know, two paths that the bridge off and and either one is real. The kind of dedicated idea of you're if you're in the third generation, you're the the ne'er do well generation and that has to start over again, it's not quite that clean and and simple. So
I don't really look at generations quite that way. I look at who are you and and where are you in your own personal journey. Families that are getting more intentional about this, that don't seem to have answers. but are curious about their children and who
really begin to look at how do I give you opportunities to stretch and grow. Those are the families that I'm interested in working with these days. I for a very long time I felt as though the families who came to me were bringing in families for repair. You know, they put off these hard conversations because they do feel like hard conversations. And then they wonder why we can't get back on track. Well, you know, if we have these habits in place.
then it's like any other kind of habit, hard to break, hard to redo. So that's the repair piece. I'm really interested these days in families who are trying to be thoughtful out of the gate, which is impossible because what is harder than being the parent of a very young child? I mean, really, I don't care how many resources you have unless well, I will say I've had families with five nannies for three kids. But if you really are trying to take care of your own kids
and they're little, you are stretched as a human being and you are experiencing your own hard stuff. But I do think starting early is one of the things I'm looking at these days is core to what makes a difference in success and family and then how authentic are you and how engaged are you personally with your own children rather than hoping you can keep sending them to
your trust attorney or your your financial advisor or a class or a program. Are you engaged with'em? That's the question. Given what you've heard me say. What comes up for you? I mean, what's what's different that you're hearing th and and where are you on these issues? Either one of you.
¶ - The Peer Pressure Problem
So we we struggle. We have three kids. Our kids are twelve, seven, and three, as I I think we mentioned. Right.
Right.
And I think there and we live in a relatively affluent neighborhood outside of DC. And I think there's often a question about
What we're facing today, like real examples, expectation setting and what is normal and what is expected and how do you approach just simple things like spending, right? When you have peers that have just different value systems, maybe similar wealth levels, and are buying X, Y, and Z, this thing that they saw, this usually I have an older daughter, usually they're related to clothing or some some special accessory.
that um has to be the thing to get. And I will we will actually my my wife and I will say, well that's you know, that's great, but let's figure out ac the value for it. And it can be sort of exasperating and exhausting and it it it's easy to give in.
Yeah, so Sirem, what what's the problem you're fighting there? I can I resonate with what you're saying, but I wanna hear you say what what's the problem?
Yeah, I think the problem for me is twofold. One is I didn't have the opportunity to get the latest, let's say, pair of shoes. that we're like everyone seems to have around me. You know, it felt like I was you know, we were we grew up s slightly separately. So I think maybe my main problem, Tad, I would say, is around the the expectation of of getting a a good or service without really realizing all that goes into that and almost really if I had to boil it back, maybe the value of a dollar.
Right? Like what can you get the you know, I get made fun of at at home a lot for you know, they'll want Uggs, let's say. Let's go with Uggs. They want Uggs and I will be the person, I'll be the dad that says we're gonna get Fugs, the fake Uggs, right? They're just as functional, sometimes even better, honestly, in my personal opinion.
But um, you know, we talk about frocs instead of crocs and fugs instead of uggs and, you know, whatever the thing is, we just add the F in front. And it's exasperating because they're like, No, no, no, we need the Ugs and the Crocs. We don't want the Fugs or the Frocs because Yeah.
Yeah, so we tried that with a pink pong puff sweatshirt. My daughter, who's ten at the time, she wanted pink pong puff. My wife was like, Oh, if I kill our deal on pink pong puffs, it's thirty bucks. And of course it came
And it's not the real one. So we're like, Well, it's fine. And she went to school with it. And then the kids were like, Oh, you have the fake one. And in my mind, that was like a terrible place for us to be thrifty. We were putting her in this situation where like she had the fake one.
For really no reason. So I guess in my mind it's sort of like are you keeping them in a n quote normal situation relative to their peers? And if you're in, you know, Bethesda and the peers are all making two hundred thousand? I'm not actually totally convinced it's a bad thing for her to be living a h higher end lifestyle there.
Provided it's not like an unsustainable one of like if everybody's flying PJs and you can't afford it. But if it's, you know, quote normal among her peer set, I guess that that's what I'm wondering. Is that really a bad thing? Even if it's not normal on
Yeah.
¶ - The Invisible Allowance
So every kid has an invisible allowance. It is what you each subsidize that allows them to live at that next level up. And the difficulty with that is Most families keep that invisible allowance going way into high school and into college and then kids get ready to um go rent their first apartment and they're looking at their first salaries and it's like what what I'm making how much and I can pay for what?
There is no preparation for the reality of what it took to get to that$200,000 and above level. And that's the the pitfall here. So what What Sram you're talking about is your family is gave you opportunities, however involuntary they may have been, to learn about the value of the dollar and to know what it meant to feel different. And you adapted to that and it's part of what made you who you are.
where things are invisible to kids and they don't even know what they're learning. You are withholding from them information that they actually are gonna need. We talk a lot in my work now about the difference between a visible and an invisible allowance and I'll just say Ron Lieber I think was brilliant around branded boots. He talks about hunter boots, which is what his ten year old daughter wanted. And what he and his wife came up with is
Listen, we think boots are what you need. We agree. And so we're gonna pay X amount for your boots. If you really want the logo boots, no prob. You just have to work for them.
¶ - The Role of Allowance & Financial Responsibility
Jillian, so let me ask you a question here. I could imagine two ways of solving this. One is I say, okay, I am going to help educate my kids or train them, whatever word you want to use.
to be comfortable at a reasonable standard of living and one they can replicate themselves out of college and grow from there. The other one would be some people are situated to say, well, I actually can continue to subsidize them for until their twenties or thirties or something like that, or, you know, if it's a family trust fund.
Is that
You know, I can imagine a lot of personal decisions why I might not want to do that, but is that inherently a bad thing because it leaves the kids feeling inadequate, or is that actually a viable way to to look at this?
The problem with I'll supplement their means is I then get calls. These are not infrequent in which it's usually a trust attorney or a banker or somebody who says, I have this client who has a sixty year old daughter and she's she wants stuff we if you will do financial education with'em. I have to say no. I can't do financial education with a sixty year old daughter. It is not viable. And by the way, they've missed that whole sixty years of what you think of perhaps as a meaningful life.
And so that's the downside of subsidizing up to twenty because or up to thirty is what often goes on these days, because they're constantly losing grants. And I think that takes us into what is comfortable. Maybe you know, getting kids to be, getting families to be different in our culture, where social media is the last word. As opposed to parents being the last word.
is what we're facing here. And it takes enormous strength and courage and hard work for a parent to say, well in our family we and that's my favorite phrase. In our family, this is what we do. In our family, this is what we believe. And the reason we do is because that engaged hard conversation. is what allows us to go on and make sure everybody is comfortable. I don't know, is comfort such a great thing? Why is comfort such a great thing?
¶ - Financial Parenting by Age: Elementary Through Young Adult
We're not gonna teach you at sixty, but let's teach you at five, right? Maybe we can walk through Tad and my kids, we know let's talk let's call elementary, middle, high, and then I know you recently with your update talked about nineteen plus as well. Maybe you can just hit some of the highlights that you find are really important to at least practice teach uh at each of these stages, and I'm sure we'll have questions and and you ask us as well.
¶ - The FISH Framework: Financial, Intellectual, Social & Human Capital
I think no matter what age kids are, very young, tweens, teens and so on, that Expanding the canvas of what we mean by wealth and comfort is the first job. So you've heard me talk about fish, financial, intellectual, social and human capital, because that tells kids they're
their lives are about more than money. So I guess the question I would ask you that we can take off on is how do you do that in your own homes? Both Tad and Saram, how do you give kids the messages that life isn't just about the money or keeping up with Susie's pocketbook or, you know, Sam's sneakers. It is really about something bigger. How are you doing that now?
Yeah, I would say on on our end, my kids are my son's fourteen and my daughter's eleven. I'd say we've spend ninety nine percent of our time. time talking about the non financial stuff. So, you know, drilling into them sort of like tiger parents on you have to get great grades and hey, let's think about your friendships. You gotta have a diverse set of friends and you know, hey, you gotta
play tennis and do viola and all that kind of stuff. You know, one thing we do is they have an allowance, which is not that much. It's fifty cents for every year they are old. So, you know, like five dollars, fifty cents for my daughter.
And I try and make it look like a real thing where we set them up a a bank. I went to open a bank account with them. We actually direct deposit their allowance so it looks real. And then I'll do a match. If they invest it, I'll do a dollar for dollar match and I have them actually I've got accounts for them. Fidelity and they will go click through the stocks they want to buy and and that sort of thing.
But I would say my biggest they don't seem all that interested. Like I feel like they understand the concepts and they're like, Oh, daddy's into investing so you know, occasionally I'll get them into it and what you know, my daughter will buy some Ulta Beauty and she thinks that's cool.
We haven't yet had a lot of these arguments about spending money. I I'd say my son, he just doesn't think things are interesting. So I think he is yet at fourteen to spend a dollar of his allowance. He's, you know, always just wants to invest in the stocks, which is great. My daughter to lean into gender stereotypes, you know, cares a lot more about clothes and has more desire on spending stuff.
But I'd say it really does not come up nearly as much as the social and human and, you know, intellectual. And I don't know if we're just lucky there or by the fact that I've been pushing a little bit, that's gotten ahead of the issue of them needing to fight against it.
Mind me how old your kids are again?
My daughter's eleven, my son's fourteen.
Um it's Rom. Your youngest is seven, right?
Uh no, our youngest current is three three, seven, and twelve.
¶ - Practice Money vs. Allowance: Why the Language Matters
Yay. Okay. Well, first, Tad, I just want to say you're not making it real for your kids. I mean, there is absolutely no correlation between their age and how much they should get for an allowance. That has no connection. And so they're already just off on a wrong path. I'm sorry, I'm just going to go.
I welcome feedback.
Yeah.
So my
They don't like I pay at for everything for them, so they don't need any money in a sense, so I'm not really sure what I'm doing.
However, it is fascinating the extent to which uh b even very young kids connect as soon as it gets real. And so even if it's just look, you've got ten dollars this week for junk food. Or, you know, whatever it is you buy for them, stop and put that in, even if it means giving them twenty or thirty dollars, it gets real fast because they see the income and outflow.
Well so so let's let's get tactical on that. The approach I have taken to date is if it's something I think they should get, I will buy it. You know, if it's tennis lessons, again if it's food, if it's clothing, I'll buy it.
Subsidizing.
If it's something I don't think they should like junk food video games, I say that's out of your allowance. Yeah, I'm not gonna pend pay a dollar ever for video games. So if you want that, you can save up your allowance for a year to buy it. Otherwise you're never getting it. Is that an appropriate framework or should I say, hey, here's a hundred dollars a week?
Their agency, Tad. You are killing their decision making practice. I mean, let's say you give them enough money to buy whatever snack food we're gonna call it. We won't call it junk food. And you say you've got twenty twenty bucks this week or whatever the number's going to be, because you know what you pay for whatever. But I'll digress for a moment to say that one kid when asked So where do you think money comes from? His response was carts. And when the mum said, What do you mean cars?
He said, Well, you know, it's when grandma gives me a birthday card, there's money inside. And so there isn't a connection to what's real. And what you're hearing me say is the more real it is, the younger they are. the quicker they take it in.
¶ - Sriram's Daughter's Coloring Book Business (And What It Teaches)
You know, one thing we did with my now twelve year old and it's it's interesting. So two years ago, she launched a coloring book on Amazon. Well. We helped her promote it. She built it with, you know, some Canva tools. She self published it. Um might have it here. But and she she did a couple things with it. So we we obviously helped promote it initially and I'd say that she launched this two years ago almost to the day.
Um, she has had a number of experiments since date. Um, most recently, she's gone door-to-door with friends and she sells like$100 per session almost. She understands that the the book costs three to four dollars to publish. And if she sells it door to door, she can make six or seven dollars per book. If she sells it online, she only makes three dollars per book because of the way the Amazon margins work. So she has netted, I'd say like two thousand dollars.
from from this over the last two years. Gross of all of all net of all costs rather. And what we've struggled with, and I think we've not done a good job here, is basically saying, well, how much can you spend? Because she's like I want to enjoy the spoils and you know, we're like, well invest in Amazon ads and look how Roas works and and she's done that and she's like, Oh well if I put fifty cents into ads, I'm actually earning a dollar fifty. So now she has this uh
Uh she has a monthly passive income now of like ten to fifteen dollars that comes from the net spending of ad spend to book sales. Um and it seems to be working, oddly enough. Um we're sort of surprised by that. Um, but we have struggled with, okay, well, once you hit this goal, you can spend fifteen percent of your gross proceeds to now and sh and it was tough. Like so basically for all of last year she had like a hundred and sixty five dollars that she had we'd set aside for spend.
And these Uggs this is the Uggs come back and we're like, you You can spend it. She's like, Well, I don't know. I don't know if I really wanna spend that money and that went on for like a year. And then finally she's like, You know what? I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna spend it and I've earned it and it it felt better.
But I'll tell you, Joe, it was a painful year, like for everyone involved, you know? Like and to Tad's point, everyone has them and she's like, This is so unfair. I have to work so hard. No one else has to work this hard. Like I don't know. Is this a disservice we're doing here?
¶ - The Importance of Practice Money
Uh no. The applaud you. That is amazing. One thing to watch out for is that particularly when kids are precocious and they are making money early on, and this goes on through if they have a tax refund, there is a phrase that props up, which is It's my money, I can do anything I want with it. What I love, it seems in your case, you have said, here's spending money, basically. I would I think you have many opportunities. The phrase I want you both to start using is you have practice money.
Your our job as a family is to learn how to be thoughtful about all of our capital, our intellectual, social, human, and financial capital. And we want you to be in a place where the stakes are low and you can screw up. You can make hard decisions and you can make decisions that are wrong. Better we do that now. So no, I think you're doing a good job. I think you're just not going far enough.
¶ - Balancing Family Values & Financial Agency
Julian, can I ask you that?'Cause I think, you know, SRM not going far enough or in my case to say, Hey, you're doing a
All wrong.
Where where do you which I I take the right way. But like the extreme would be to say, Okay, your tuition for your private school is thirty thousand a year, so I'm gonna give you a thirty thousand dollar a year allowance and you know, you can choose And they might say, Well, I'm gonna go to public school now and spend the thirty thousand on a car like w where do we draw the line on what uh what we're deciding versus what we're empowering them to.
This is where the culture and values of the family become paramount and why you need to spend most of your time there. And it sounds like you are doing that, but you are you are taking away agency. If you say as a family, education is one of our highest priorities. And so I'm willing to give you a thirty thousand dollar. allowance because we want you to go to the the places that are going to allow you to develop your intellectual capital in a way that matters to you.
Not just to us because we think going to Yale is the best thing we you could possibly do. Giving back agency, giving them back practice opportunities to screw up as well as t to have triumph. early on when the stakes are lower is the opportunity they have then to make decisions that are bigger stakes later on. I honestly think you are both doing
as well as any family possibly can, given the cul the larger cult culture you're working in. But you both can claim your family cultures and your family va your family's values in a much more um explicit way. to really help guide how to use their practice year. So I don't think you should give up your guidelines. That's what your job is as a p parent.
I do think you should allow in your case, Tad, I think screwing up and making a mistake is paramount in the early years. And Saram, I think for you she Is right, these are hard years. This is a hard thing to do. And she's in a culture where not everybody has to work so hard to get their UGS. And yet Ultimately, that kid is going to acquire more intellectual, human, social, and financial capital than some of her peers for whom it's all gonna be so easy. Get Uggs whenever you want.
And, you know, it means stepping up as a parent, holding on to, I know this is hard, honey, and I know even my friends are gonna look at me and say, Why are you being so hard on your daughter? And yet you know in your heart which values you each want to put forth in your families. Claiming family culture is harder today. We don't think about it, we don't use it, we have a bigger culture that's telling us what our family cultures so are supposed to be. Pushing back is the hard work.
It really is. And and I would say, what are your friends doing? And can you count on them? I'm curious what they're up to.
¶ - Family Culture vs. Peer Culture
What do you mean by that question?
So You are talk as though you're a kind of solo in the world here. but I'm curious what other other friends parent friends are doing with their kids. It used to be the the neighbor next door also said no to the UGS, but now they're also pushed by social media to say yes. So what are your friends doing? Are you talking together about what's appropriate?
Let's say in our community a high standard of consumption is very normalized, which is part of what makes it. me more hesitant say, Well, you know, we should be the one kids who are, I don't know, not as nice version of X, Y, or Z. It feels almost like artificial deprivation. Which may be wrong, but that that that's how it feels.
Yeah, I I would say so too. I think it's a uh well, I don't know that we've been very intentional about it. That that's not totally fair. I think there are p I think the phone is a good example. You know, I think she was definitely one of the last people to get the phone.
And we're still no phone at fourteen here, so uh I'll flex that on you.
Yeah, she's not fourteen, Tad. She's not fourteen. He's
That's true.
Yeah. Wait for it. Yeah. So it's it's there is and the the the flip side too is right, Jolene. Like the the peer pariahness is also can work both ways, right? You could either be an extreme on a wealth level or you could be the you know, oddly enough, not the extreme out of like you're the only one that doesn't have Uggs. Like you your parents can't afford eggs Uggs? Of course you could, but that's not like that's a choice that's been intentional. And it's like
Oh my God, what's going on? I wish we were I've heard that I've heard this before too actually sometimes. I wish we weren't so wealthy kind of thing. Or like what is what does that mean? Or like I don't want to bring kids home because of, you know, some of the things we have in our house. Like It's an odd and we're we're sort of
you know, we're was s obviously slightly more well to do, but I think that has its own uh you don't really recognize this. You don't recognize this as a um a flaw almost to some
Well, and you also don't recognize that you are being forced into a place where you have to role model in two places, to your children and to your peers who are making this harder because everybody's giving into this consumption.
And I'm saying this as a consuming capitalist. Let me be clear. It's not that I want everybody to withhold everything from their kids. I just want them to make choices clear and to make to make it less likely that you're even as a grown up gonna give in to the the culture because you do have standards and if you can't hold standards, they surely cannot.
¶ - Guidelines for Financial Decision Making by Age
So two things I'd love to get your tactical advice on. One is clearly with a newborn, you're not gonna give them any agency, right? You just put'em in whatever onesie you want to. Do you have some rules of thumb or something like that of okay, when somebody's in elementary school, they should make this set of decisions and high school they should make that set and in college it's this other set. Is there anything you can share about that?
Sure. What we know is the kids are paying attention at eighteen months. had a conversation where a three year old says to their dad, This is serious, this is not a joke. Why don't we have a second house? Why don't we have a summer house? Now, that's because somewhere they've heard this and probably on a cartoon somewhere or TV. Who knows? Um and I'm using that to say, look, at a eighteen
No, an infant is not going to have agency. An eighteen month old or a three year old isn't going to have agency. You make decisions for them. But that's where the modeling becomes so important. It's why your conversations with your friends are so important. So in terms of the do I have guidelines?
Yes, you have to be a parent and you have to be very clear very early about what it is intentionally you want that kid to to grow up with. Do you want them to grow up within their means? And if the means are very big
What does that actually mean? Does it mean they're gonna put all of their stuff into clothing and how they look externally? Or are they going to think about what else do we wanna do with that money? Very early on, these are And the earlier you start thinking about all of their money and get explicit about what the invisible allowance is. how intentional it's going to be. And the sooner you start having those messages, by the time they're six, this should be part of the family.
conversation. That is going to mean you have to think about it yourself. What is it we really want this kid to be thoughtful about? Because they're not going to be gazillionaires themselves out of the box when they get out of college. And if you really do want to subsidize them for an extended period of time, there will be consequences of that.
Okay. So you're saying let's say we don't,'cause I think, you know, let's say Sureman and I probably don't want to be subsidizing them. Are you saying then kind of glide path them into the Maybe ignoring like their elementary school tuition'cause that's not an expense they're gonna incur as a twenty year old, but thinking about you're saying stuff like clothes or food that will be real expenses, those are the things to try and push onto their decision plate.
If your kid takes horse riding classes, what is the cost of that house? What does it cost to feed that horse? if they're taking music lessons. What are the cost of the music lessons and the instrument? If they're ta you know, all of that. What's the reality of their lives? And why are you as a family choosing to put money in there? As a family we value m music. We think this is a really wonderful thing.
Put it out there in terms of why you're doing this. So that when it comes time for them to make their own decisions, they've got some experience there. They understand how you've been making decisions.
So I think you're saying you don't just give them the choice. Like you don't say, Hey, we are spending five thousand a year on horse riding lessons. You could choose to put that all into video games, but you're more just explaining it. Is that is that what you're saying, Jolene?
Yes, though I think if you bring it down, uh'cause I think you gave you know, they've got fifty bucks. Are you really no no parent would let a kid buy fifty bucks worth of chocolate. bars and just consume them. You're gonna give them some instruction there. But you know, you've got fifty bucks to play with in terms of your snacks. How are you gonna use that money? But but I would be very careful about taking
Not letting them make any mistakes. You you had more cavities last year. You don't want to go to the dentist? Okay, how do we deal with that?
¶ - The Family Meeting: Making It Real Without Making It Boring
Uh my question was on the formalness of this and I don't recall if you talked about this or not, but like the family meeting, let's say. Let let's talk about that. Is that when and how and often and, you know, attention spanning and maybe yeah, best practices around that. Uh'cause we my wife and I have talked about this. Like, should we be more intentional, let's just say, and then maybe hit, let's say, fish going forward, you know, in these
in these meetings that we or and meetings is a strong word, but you know, maybe it's a intentional dinner, yeah, or what have you. But I'd love to hear what have you seen work well and how early to kinda and maybe more how for I mean, I think there's the informal like way of life you'll, you know, imbue from osmosis and
kind of see, well dad's making this decision because he talked about it and things like that. But how how more pedagogical, in intentional, meeting-wise do you encourage uh families to practice
Both. And think of meetings with six-year-olds as an opportunity to play together. Because play is the work of children. And so don't overlook the importance of that. So uh I think formality is important. For me it would be one shared dinner a week minimum. That's formal. That's a family meeting and you're gonna devote it to a topic, any topic. But it could be a fun topic.
But it's when you come together as a family and maybe you're using fish as a way to have the conversation that night. But that has to go hand in hand with the informal, and I think of that as the drip drip drip. approach to financial education or financial parenting because if a kid's attention span is like a mosquito, then it's gonna be three seconds or ten seconds or two minutes.
you want to use that as a captive teachable moment. Use it. Don't let it just go by. Begin to notice where you have some opportunities to interject. and use those teachable moments as times to drip in, whether it's your values, an observation, a question, a curiosity. Well, why do you think you chose that? Why why did you choose
Those boots over these boots, and is it just because everybody else in the class has them? What what what do you actually like in your boots? Why do you like those boots? Curiosity goes a long way to helping kids begin to sort out their own response rather than just your response.
to the things that they are acquiring in their lives. But I think it's more information, more real information, and more consequence that gives them the practice they need starting very early so that Years later they will come say to me, Oh, I remember my dad always said to me My dad always made me, and those are the stories I get from grown ups all the time, that make me understand today, that it is those early repetitive messages that make them crazy today. that are so important down the road.
Your instincts are right. You just need to pay attention to them.
So we are in our family, we're planning to start doing a family meetings maybe quarterly or so. We're gonna do a first one over spring break and like start with a family mission statement. We weren't really going to lean as much into the finances talking more about the values and, you know, yeah, what do we value as a family? Is that an appropriate way to do it? Or do you think we are dodging by not, you know, starting with the finances?
Yeah, I think make it all uh it's not one or the other. It is all. And at a family meeting and also don't make it so boring that kids just check out, obviously. We should talk offline about this because I'd love to chat with you. But um Y it's easy to start with, you know, we've got an extra ten thousand dollars here and we're gonna use the family meeting to talk about what are the ways we'd like to use that ten thousand dollars. And get their voice, get their thinking.
And don't make it so easy as, well, you get a thousand and we get a thousand and we each get to do whatever we want. Cooperatively, what do we see here together that we would like to do with that money and why? And again, it's your opportunity to model and message what's important, but it's also your opportunity to hear what they think is important.
And giving them a chance to exercise voice and to use agency and to see the power of their influence in the family within some guidelines. I mean this is not just Whatever. Don't give up your own agency around values. That's what they are looking to you for. But also don't take all of their agency away. It's a balance, it's attention.
¶ - Avoiding False Scarcity
You know, another thing that seems like a potential tension is I could imagine creating a sort of false sense of scare scarcity and like, oh we're never gonna get you the ping pong puff or whatever the thing is that you want.
That could also edge into being a bit of a killjoy, like, okay, well, we actually do have, you know, I I don't care about cars. So I drive a cheap car and I tell the kids, Hey, look, we don't have a nice car like your friends do,'cause I just don't think it's good use of money. But we do like to travel. And so we travel a lot. Any thoughts on that tension between yeah, not not being a killjoy while still setting limits?
You know, your kids are gonna grow up understanding that uh they'll probably have fancy cars. That's okay. They just won't travel as much possibly. But that's the trade-off. And I think you can you can exercise that awareness by saying, these are why I these are my values. If you really want a fancy car, at some point you'll be able to do that. What would you give up for it? The issues you're bring bringing up are so important.
And your role in the financial parenting is so critical because they are looking to you both for a place to be safe while they learn these things, but also guidance. You know, who are you? How do you think about money? W why do you choose this car versus that one? You've got these kids for such a short time, and you both seem to be very aware of that. Don't waste this time. Keep giving them opportunities to engage with you. I think what I see working in the families I do is
Parents are overwhelmed. These are hard questions and you are busy and they take up time and it is really annoying some days. But it is both the formal and the informal and it's the sticking with it, even when it's hard. that pays off when I see these kids when they're in their twenties, you know, coming out of college and they're either confident because their parents have been intentional Or they're still kind of floating around trying to figure it out. And it's hard in a world in which
Social influencers or social media is telling them what to do. But they've gotta have practice with agency very early on.
¶ - The Impact of Wealth on Financial Literacy
Given the number of families you work with, Jolene, one question that comes up pretty often is, you know, we're we're fortunate to be in a higher net worth group and, you know, the the community is that such. In the twenties, th these that you recently added here. to you to your book as well. I think many people struggle. I think two e the example is really more around how do you think about
when to give what and how much. You mentioned, you know, the sixty year old being left with, you know, inheritance or something similar and asking for financial literacy then versus the twenty year old. We'd love I'd love to hear your opinion of how you approach much larger sums of money with intentional use or n or unuse, depending on how you approach it. But, you know, leaving someone with let's say five million dollars when they're fifty or sixty
is clearly there's a pr the value there, obviously, but the value is dramatically different if it's one or two million dollars in their twenties, potentially. But I'd love to hear stories from you on what you advise, what you see what works, and how you approach it.
Yeah, I've ha I have clients whose infants have a billion dollars when they're born and so you can barely wrap your head around that. But I also have clients who have put five million dollars in an open account for a seventeen year old or an eighteen year old and put no guidelines on it. That's nuts. Like learning an instrument or learning to be a better athlete in something. You need practice.
And so if you are not giving kids sufficient time to practice with guardrails, then you are leaving them vulnerable in a way that's not competent as a parent. And so I think what you're trying to figure out as a parent, particularly for a young adult, is how do I let them suffer?
¶ - Encouraging Resilience Through Financial Challenges
How do I it give them these opportunities for things to be hard? Recently something really struck me. It was some parents said to me, Well, should I stop going to nice resorts? Because we love to go to nice resorts and I'm not gonna leave my kid behind. What should I do? And I said, go to the nice resort, but go on a hike, a really tough hike. And when that kid says, I don't want to anymore, you have to say, kid, we've got to walk home. And I say this because
Every time you make it too easy, you are again robbing them of an opportunity to understand persistence and to understand what it takes to overcome something. Those are the kids I see that are in the most trouble in their thoughts. Because nobody's given them a chance. to really try the hard things. You both clearly have. And I think it's it's why I asked you earlier and I come back to this again. What kind of conversations are you having with your peers around what do you do for your kids?
to do hard things and learn that they can triumph.
I mean in my mind that comes these non financial things like the sports team of hey, you know, you gotta finish that race or push yourself there or yeah, really the non financial, whether that is Boy Scouts or dance or or what have you.
So here's a a a modern problem that I'm struggling with, and that is we don't really have Boy Scouts or not much of Girl Scouts any longer. We have club sports, which is a big business. And parents are chasing all over the place, transporting these kids and buying fancy gear and paying coaches. And it's like, wait, the tail is wagging the dog here because I agree with you. I think there is mastery in sports. There's mastery in all kinds of things.
But if it's not being driven by your family, it's being driven by forces outside your family. You aren't making choices and you aren't teaching those kids to make choices. Somebody else's. And it comes, you know, When I can, I try to have parents who are not related in the same room because empowering parents to bring their voices back. Parental voice has been so diminished.
because you're competing with the club sport co coaches, with the social media, with the peers who are telling their kids what what purse to buy. Your voice is diminished, and when I can get parents in a room to chat together about what they think is right. their values bubble up pretty quickly. And I I don't think I'm like the little girl putting her finger in the dam. I don't think this is hopeless. I think that Children today are looking for a moral compass, they're looking for your children.
Strong guidance and you can go to the fancy resorts and still keep your yacht, but you still have to give those kids opportunities to make decisions and do hard things. Fundamentally I I think Tad you're right. It's the ish and the fish. for me that is really important. But it's also, um, I love Sram what you are doing with your daughter around, you know, this this book because she's gotta remember that.
All her life, no matter what. I think you have opportunities you're not taking advantage of. And that's where I think you can make s some differences here. This is such a cool, crazy, fabulous opportunity in your life and theirs. Don't miss it. It's just too fun.
Well, I...
You know, w I would love to have you back on'cause we didn't even get to a whole set of things, you know, building on what Surrounds talking about in terms of work and how you, you know, think about you know kids earning money or what to push them into. You know, I don't necessarily want all the investment bankers, yeah, philanthropy. But you know, given that we are at the top of the hour here, can you just share a little bit of
¶ - Connect with Joline Godfrey
how if people want to learn more about you or follow your work or get in touch, what's the best way to do that?
You can reach me. It's just Jolene and it's with an I J O L I N E at bounce. B-O-U-N-C-E-10.com. You can Google me and find me pretty easily. I'm pretty accessible. But I would say what's tough about this conversation is that it's hard to say, here are the three things you do and your child is going to be fine. It just doesn't play that way. These are lifelong col conversations and thoughtful engagements. And so I would love to come back, but I'd also love to have you on my podcast.
And it would be fun to be in a real live room with you all at some point. So there's all of the all of those opportunities.
Excellent. Well, thank you so much uh for your time.
Thank you, Jolene. Really appreciate the time.
Thank you. I've I've enjoyed you immensely.
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