How to raise a "rich" kid ??

Growing up, my dad taught me everything I know about money. He has a way with words and can drop these backwoods one-liners that make you think and laugh at the same time.?

He didn’t care how much money anyone had, he cared more about how they acted. He would say things like, "people are either good, bad, or broke." To him, being broke was never a moral failing, it was just a symptom of fear. He taught me how to treat money like a boomerang saying, “if you have the courage to ask for it, money has no choice but to respond.”

It wasn’t just money, though. He used the same approach for everything in life to show me that I was in charge of my own destiny and success. I remember being around Beau’s age when it finally dawned on me that daily tooth brushing was a?never-ending responsibility. Every time I would complain about it, my Dad would always respond?with “well just brush the ones you want to keep!”

I know his parenting style might not fly in this day and age but back then, he gave me a sense of agency and confidence that has served me well in my adult life and that’s something I cherish.

But not everyone learns about money from their parents. In fact, most parents don't feel ready to talk to their kids about money at all. A survey by Capital One found that only 22% of parents felt prepared to have money conversations with their kids.

A separate study by Merrill Lynch reveals how this problem actually cuts across all income levels. They looked at the family dynamics of high-net-worth individuals and asked how parents felt about different financial tasks. The one they felt the least confident about was "teaching children about finances" ??

It turns out that even rich parents don’t want to talk about money with their kids, and it’s not like they don’t have their reasons.

The most common reason given was they worry that telling their kids about their wealth will make them lazy and spoiled. Some of them want their kids to stand on their own feet and earn their own money. Others feel nervous or guilty about the money talk and don't want to mess up or confuse their kids. The rest say they just don't know how to talk about money because no one ever taught them.

But none of these reasons are good enough to avoid “the money talk” because our kids are watching us anyway. If we don't talk to them about money, we're leaving them in the dark about something that will affect their lives every day. We're setting them up for unrealistic expectations or misunderstandings about how much money we have and how we use it. And we're risking conflict and resentment later on when money issues come up.

So I want to help take the pressure off. You don't have to worry about how your kids will use the information you give them in the future. Research shows that half of them may choose to do things differently anyway, just like our generation did.

You also don't have to be a perfect communicator or a financial expert to talk to your kids about money. There’s a study that shows that kids as young as 5 understand that the world is not fair and that some people have more power and money than others.

Kids already understand what’s happening around them and they’re capable of more. But when we don’t tell them the truth or answer the questions they have, they freak out. They look for answers elsewhere and they find stuff that is wrong, biased, and scary.

Our kids are the first generation of kids who will grow up in an incredibly information-rich environment. A lot of it is crap, but we can help them build a stronger knowledge base than any other generation if we just focus on the facts.?

On the podcast this week, we're talking about how we're raising Beau to be as rich and as regular as possible. Not by giving him everything he asks for, but by teaching him how money works from the jump. We also talk about the stress we feel as parents to do more for our kid, and how we set some limits to teach him accountability. At the end, we talk to Beau himself, who tells us what he thinks about saving money and what makes a "perfect life"?

Click here to listen to episode 151 now or watch it on YouTube below

I also wrote a blog post about it!?You’ve already read the first half, click the link below to read the rest.