Author Snack Series: Bobbi Rebell

did you write this book? I wrote this book because I knew so much on paper and yet was failing fabulously with my almost adult children. And I was so almost embarrassed and baffled at the situation, because I mean, I had like two decades of covering investor news and writing about personal finance. I had become a certified financial planner a few years earlier, and yet my kids just

wouldn't listen. And I realized that there's a lot of advice for parents of younger children who will They might not always listen, in that they might throw a temper tantument just ignore you, but they're not going to just kind of yes, you say, I got a mom, and like walk out the door with their friends. It's a different level and the stakes actually are much higher. You're not just teaching them lessons just as a lesson. This is actually happening to them and there are benefits and consequences.

So I needed help, and I kind of looked for help and there wasn't So I went to my expert friends and there was a book. One thing that struck me was that your father was a big influence on you becoming financially independent at a young age. Can you talk about what led you to buy your first apartment at age twenty three? I mean, that's incredibly unusual. It is incredibly unusual, and you're right, my father had a

huge role. And it's been very interesting watching his reaction to this book because he's sort of looking back and saying, oh, I forgot I did sit you guys all down and just tell you had to tell me what you need for the semester. And he in that case, he was very generous. He wrote a check, but then that was it, and he said, well, I I you know I thought that, well, if you ran out of money, you would just get a job. And we did have jobs in college. So

after school I went to Penn. A lot of my friends had these big fancy jobs, and I was just you know, going to my journalism job, and I was living at home, and we were looking at rental prices in this area called Lincoln Towers on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and the rental prices were like a thousand dollars a month for a ground floor back of

the building studio. So we did the math on that, and we realized that because it was a time when it was the early nineties, real estate was actually in a real slump in New York City, that if I had the down payment to buy basically that same studio and there were they were going for about a hundred thousand dollars. So we did the math on, you know, what a loan would be in all the costs associated with it, and we realized that I could buy one and the total payments on that would be less than rent.

And so oh, I you know, was able to get the down payment through having had savings. And then I did save by living at home for some time, which is something my stepdaughter did. And then you know, you do often need parents co signing for you at that age, so again I had that parental support, which is definitely privileged and definitely not something everyone has. But I was able to buy a co op in that complex it's called Lincoln Towers on the Upper West Side um in

that market flop. But I will tell you no one else is buying real estate in general at that time. So I bought at a time when people were afraid to buy New York City real estate. And that was very risky in that sense. But we did the math and we felt that the amount of money I would save in even two or three years not paying rent, but paying this, you know, partially tax deductible, maintenance and mortgage.

The mass just worked and so I did it. One of the interesting things about your books, you really put it into context how both COVID and the age of helicopter parenting has changed our relationship with how we how we talk about money with our kids. How has that impacted it. It's so interesting, and that's such a good question.

First of all, it's changed our relationships, and that when normally kids adult kids move home, it's often in a situation where they are in financial distress, there's something going on related to them as a person. This they were moving home because something happening to everyone. So it was a shared experience, and there were other things happening. They

didn't have activities to constantly run to. They weren't making plans to go see their friends in person, so they were around and sort of a little less attached to

their friend group than they might have been. We also got to witness, and this is really interesting, we witnessed our adult children working at their jobs, and a lot of parents I don't think fully appreciated how hard their kids worked, and so that was a whole new appreciation of them as individuals, not just our children, and the way that other people see them and the way that

other people might have expectations for them. It also helped create an environment where after a certain point, I mean remember when it was fifteen days to stop the spread. Well, okay, so you got fifteen days, so your kid comes home, so maybe you're doing their laundry and making sure they

have all their meals made for them. But as time went on past that fifteen days, things start to settle in a little differently, and maybe mom is not making all of her meals for her twenties something children, maybe they're starting to make them for their parents. Maybe they're starting to have different kinds of conversations with their parents about their adult money issues that are very different from just oh, i'm short on cash, can I have some money?

Maybe they're really talking more about the things going on in their life and their goals and dreams, and they're also seeing, just through general conversation, the financial realities of their parents, which may not be as perfect as they necessarily assumed. A lot of us assume our parents have things always perfect, And I learned over the last few years even that my parents had more ups and downs than I was aware of at all when I was

growing up that things were not always perfect. And they kept a lot of that from me at an age appropriate time, so it was not a mistake for them to not share it, But it was just interesting to learn that their career path worn't necessarily perfect all the time. What was your personal experience during the pandemic with your almost adult kids and talking about money. It was a

lot of that. I mean, we did have a lot of conversations that we never would have had because, um, the oldest one, well, she had actually just graduated college and started her job, so she was very busy, and I got to witness how as I said, how hard she was working. She worked for a consulting company. And I also was able to see my stepson was he was gosh, he was a sophomore when he moved home. He's at NYU two Film School, so it was interesting to see him adjusting and to see how they related

to their friends. And you know, you just talked to them more because they're there and you didn't have distractions. They weren't going out to meet their friends at night. They were just home. And so I remember we went the first few months we were um in the kind of upstate New York at a house and we had dinner the first night there. I remember it was a Taco Tuesday, and we all sat down to dinner together at the same time on a weeknight, not a special

occasion or a holiday. And my youngest who is fourteen, comments and he says, we've never had dinner together, and everybody liked it. And we did start to really have dinner together where even if someone so wasn't hungry or whenever, they came and sat at dinner time, and so many conversations happened then and just getting to know each other in a way that wasn't as purposeful. It just happened sort of. I hate the word authentically, but it did.

It happened authentically, and that that was a great experience for our family, and I think that they came to respect us. They saw us as adults, not just parents, which is also really healthy. They saw more of our lives because they're seeing it from a different perspective as young adults, not kids that are in high school getting ready to go to college. They're let they weren't as only focused on themselves. Were there any kind of financial stories about your ups and downs that you shared with

them during this period of time that they didn't know? Yeah, well that I always share them because I think it's really important, So I don't I have to think that. I'm sort of struggling about the timing of when I share things. I certainly share the fact that you talked about the apartment. Well, after I got the apartment, I then wanted to do a Hampton share and I was so tight on money that I took out a load, which is not going to do and I have shared

that publicly, It's in my previous book. But um, yeah, so don't do that so they know that, so they know we do all you know. Look, we are always making mistakes all throughout life, and it's really a question of being able to course correct and make different decisions. But we all make mistakes, and I think that they're more than aware of that. There's also a fine line, right, and then I think parents try to struggle with what is too much to share and how do you figure

that out? Well, you look at first of all, the child's personality, maturity, age, need. For example, in the book, I started age sixteen, because they need to know things if they're going to start driving a car, if they're going to have a job, there's a need that they have to understand the basics of what's going to come out of their paycheck and and the responsibilities that go with having a job. So you focus on all of those things, but remember that you may unintentionally give them

reason to worry. So if you think that they are sort of getting a sense of things, it's important to talk to them directly so they're not just getting it from overhearing things. Sometimes we aren't as discreet as we think we are, and I think that's the worst case scenario, is when you unintentionally are giving them information to be worried. About so if that's happening, you need to be more

direct with them and let them in on things. But it is important to give them a general sense of you know, your values when it comes to money, more than a scarcity mindset. You want to avoid that. So you can talk to them about where you're prioritizing your resources and maybe there are times when you're gonna be a little bit more careful with money because you have a goal like saving for their college. So you can talk to them about those kinds of things. You don't

have to assign dollar numbers to everything. For example, if you want to talk to them about what we call state planning, which is a terrible name because it implies that you have to be uber wealthy. But the truth is all that means is kind of where everything goes, you know when you pass, and you can tell them the general ideas that you have without telling them dollar amounts.

That said, a lot of information is available on the internet, So even if you have a little kid like Aby with a seven year old, if their kids, if their friends got curious, they can all look up what everybody's houses costs and things, so they can figure stuff out. Because of technology, they have a lot more information than we had when we were young, and so don't be naive and think that they don't know things. So control the information if you think that they're getting it. I

used to host a radio show. It was a college show, and people would call with our problems, and the second most common problem was a failure to launch discussion of what do I do. My child won't leave the house in terms of, you know, financial independence. They don't make an of money, and my spouse says we should kick them out. How do we handle this? Every case is different, but in general, you need to sit down with the young adults and talk about your expectations, your hopes for them,

and really come up with a plan. And one of the toughest things to do is tell them that their dream. You know, they may be saying, well, i'm home because I'm working on this business. So I'm working on my big project. You have to basically say, okay, but you need income too, So if you want to be here, I need to see an income producing job. I don't

care if you don't like it. You need a job just to have a job for money, and unless you do, you're gonna have to find another place to live by this time, and of course it depends on the context. If they've been home a week, give them a break. But they have to have an exit strategy, and that is one of the themes that I talked about in

the book. But along with expectations, you also have to let them know that you have confidence in them, that they can do it, and that you believe in them, and that you're there as a resource, not a financial resource, but as a resource to come up with ideas and to brainstorm and let them figure out the details. But let them know that this is a very temporary situation and that they you know, set a timeline work backwards.

If they say they need more times, they explain to me why, and make a decision if you think that's valid. But you need to really set the bar high and let them know that they can do it. That's the biggest thing, because there's usually more psychology than fact in why they're staying home. They're probably afraid to fail. They're

afraid to disappoint you. They might have set a goal and set it publicly and they haven't gotten they haven't made it yet, right, so they don't want to disappoint anyone it's okay to be doing a job job while you're following your dream. So much of your book, what I enjoy about it is that it's not just like here the facts, here's how to set up a rath. I R right. It's it's infused with emotion, which I think is such a big part of our relationship with money. Yeah,

because that was the hard part. It is more psychology then fact. I do have the factual information in there, but I had that and I was failing, and that's because I wasn't communicating well. It's important to really think about, for example, the tone in which you speak to your children, and make sure it's a supportive tone, not a judgmental tone, that you're accepting them, that you're hearing what they are saying.

One of the people interviewed in my book, and I believe you've interviewed her on this this podcast, is Tory Dunlap. So she's right in this category. She's twenty five years old, and the most important thing she really said, and I think she's spot on, is listen and hear what your child is saying, because if you just yell at them to get out of the house by a certain date, date probably won't, by the way, and it's going to ruin your relationship and create tension. And what's the point

of that, right, You're basically saying you're a failure. Get out of my house. So that's not what you want to do. You want to just listen to them. Tell me why you're here. What is this, you know, season of your life doing to get you to where you want to? How can I help you besides just indefinitely providing a place to sleep, I want to help you proactively, you know maybe, And I say in the book, if

you have connections, life is hard enough. Make the connection, Make make the introduction, make sure your child is going to follow up, make sure it's going to be well received. But do the things that you can do within your power reasonably to help them leave. Did you talk to your kids before you wrote the book about the fact that you felt like you were failing. I'm connecting with them on this front. Yes, yes, And what did they and what did they say? Okay? So Ashley wrote the

epilogue and it's my favorite part of the book. And I had to so and I can be a helicopter parent even though I was aware of it, and didn't want to be it. I see it. I see it all the time. And she, you know, she wrote this epilogue which gives her perspective on what I wrote, and it gives her money tips and her justification of a lot of things that we thought about. And so it's really funny. So she defends her decision in the epilogue, which I talked about in the book, how she's live

thing at home, rent free. You know, we're not charging her for anything except the phone, but which has done another thing. But but we're basically and she's living free. And I am watching her savings bill that she's doing great. And the pandemic helped because she wasn't running to go out with her friends. There was a lot less temptation. And then all of a sudden she's like, oh, um, my boyfriend and I are buying season passes to Disney World. Now we live in New York City, Disney World has

in Orlando. There's a pandemic. Her number one priority is saving for this apartment that she's wanted since she was thirteen, basically since she met me and moved in and she heard my story. She's been saving for this apartment for you know whatever, almost a decade, and I'm like, this is not aligned with what you've told me you want to do, and it's my job to help you. And you know, I'm also thinking and I need you, I love you, but I want you to go out and

be happy. And you know, because we had everybody home for the demic and she just was adamant and we thought about it. I was so angry and she justified it and I sort of went, well, I can't control it. She'll be home forever and this is not going well. My book will just my book, you know, my book. I'm like, well, it'll work out if she buys the apartment. If she doesn't, that'll be just a reality check, okay.

And in the epilogue, I'm not going to go into the whole story, you will hear her perspective on how she justified buying season passes for Disney World while living in New York City in a pandemic the Disney World in Orlando. But Ashley, he's really grown into her own and she has look she has to choose her priorities and that's the other thing. She's getting a puppy now. She waited, so she had sort of more money in

her emergency fund. And she's been in the apartment for a year at this point, and so now she's literally getting a puppy in a few days. So she waited for it, and she's researched that since she researched all the costs. Do I think she should get a puppy out? No, I think she should wait a couple more years. But she I have full confidence I'm not paying for the puppy. What kind of financial grown up advice would you give

to college students considering graduate school? You need to actually talk about it and run the numbers and say, Okay, if you are going to use the law degree and this is important to you, that's fine, but look at what it costs and really think about what kind of law you're going to practice, because that's where it really falls apart. You have to look. I mean, I saw I just opened to TikTok account, so everybody please follow me.

It's just my name. But I saw a TikTok and it said and it was mortifying because it said, the five jobs from that you get an undergraduate degree, that are the worst jobs, the worst value. In other words, if you like, if you have student debt and you need to pay them off. These are the five worst jobs. And journalism, which is basically what I've done my whole life, was like top of the list of like jobs where you can kind of earn your money back. So that

would be a bad move financially. It doesn't mean you don't do it, but you need to recognize. So if you're going to go into law, I think I don't know enough about which areas of law necessarily pay the most, But you should think about if you're going to have have a lot of law school debt, what is the plan to pay it off as quickly as possible. Think about what kind of law will pay really well? Where

is the demand for lawyers right now? For the highest paid law You may not seeing it forever, but just go for it. Because the other thing is people think their money is tight when they're in the lowest paying jobs in their earlier in their career, but actually, because you often have no dependence, you have the most discretionary money and it's the easiest to pay off those loans. So really focusing down when you're young and just out

can really help. That's something that's very relevant. Unfortunately in places like medical school, but also even undergrad I mean, think about the career you're going into and now a quick break. What is your perspective on women and money? I mean you have worked with at this point, I would imagine thousands of people and are their gender differences in In why I think there are gender different because I think a lot of women it's a stereotype, unfortunately

for a reason. And I think you've seen this, and that's something that you've been such a wonderful advocate for that women are many it's it's I don't like to generalize, but women can sometimes fall into the trap of wanting someone to just take care of them and deal with that because they perceived that they're not good at money. But the truth is money is not that hard. Don't spend more than you have, make sure your money is

invested and diversified. That's really kind of it, right. So I don't I'm not a specialist in that, but I think that women have more need for money because we earn less and we live longer, and we often in cases of divorce and by the way, I'm divorced, I've seen my husband went was divorced from his from his ex obviously, and so I've seen how the money goes. And what women need to understand is that sometimes a marriage will end, even not through divorce. Sometimes you can

be widowed, or all kinds of things can happen. Your husband could lose their job. Both men that I was married to have had career ups and downs, and you have to step in. I have twice had to be the breadwinner unexpectedly. Right now he's the primary breadwinner, but I always make sure I'm earning money. He's been very supportive of it. He keeps saying he wants to be a kept man. So I think that you are always going to feel more confident and more secure if you

have money that you control. And by the way, my first marriage that I just alluded to, had I not had both money and wonderful family support, I think it would have been much harder for me to leave. And it makes me very sad. And I am on the board of a charity that works to educate women that are victims of domestic violence on financial literacy, because without money, it is very hard to leave a bad situation. And that's the extreme version of it. But I'm very passionate

about that problem. And finding ways to get women to advocate for themselves when it comes to participating in family money decisions and not just step back. What is one piece of advice that you would give that isn't in the book. I'll tell you somethings that have happened since the book that are just personal anecdotes that really show that even as far along as I have come, the

journey really does continue. As much as that is the cliche, that I still catch myself doing helicopter and snowplow things. So just recently, for example, we notice we're going so we're going on this trip to Alaska, but we have to go through Canada, and so we want to make sure our passports are up to date, which everyone should do anyway. So Bradley is twenty two years old, and

we noticed his passport was expired. So we because we know that when you have children, you have to go to the passport office of the post office together to get it renewed. My husband and I went to the post office to get it renewed, and we were informed that he's an adult and he has to do it himself. We wanted to renew his passport. Are you getting the connection, like we don't perceive our child like it didn't occur to us to just like tell our twenty two year

old to renew his past for it now. When we did, he was like okay, and he just like made an appointment. He did it like he's perfectly capable. And the other thing that happened that's not in the book is for the high holidays last year. So we're Jewish, we go to the synagogue, and the way that it works if you get tickets for the high holidays and you write to them and you say how many you know you need, and they allocate appropriately depending on you know your membership.

And so I said, well, we need to for my husband and I we need three for our children. And I get back a note that said, well, we're gonna give you, you you know, two adult tickets for um, you and your husband will give you. You You have a fourteen year old, no problem, you can or he's thirteen at the time, um, and you can, you know. And then there's a college student ticket, no problem. And they said, but Ashley needs her own membership. I was so offended. I was like, what do you mean? Oh my god.

I went to my husband, like they want her to have her own membership, and you know, I wrote back and I was like, what do you mean, and she said, she's twenty five, she needs her own membership. But she's my child. And they're like, but she's an adult, and so all this this day, but it keeps happening, and you know, I'm trying. I'm right there with all of you. I guess it's my advice that's not in the book is that it doesn't magic like go away. We always

see these adults as our children and they're fine. I mentioned Ashley and she was like, we ended up not going because Delta Vera got crazy and we didn't want to be in person. But she was like, oh, maybe I'll look into my own membership like it's not them, it's us. And so that's the advice I would give. It's just kind of like check yourself because we all have these moments where we just can't like process that even though there are children, like literally legally they are adults.

You legally cannot do certain things. You cannot renew your adult child's passport for them. Society is stopping us. But it's hard. It's really hard to let go and it's hard to understand that they are fine. The book is launching Financial grown Ups, and that was Bobby Rebel. I am going to be giving this to every teen parent

on my list and highly recommend reading it. If you enjoy What's Her Story with Sam and Amy, please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts, and do let us know what you think of the author snack series by commenting on Instagram at What's Her Story Podcast