April 29, 2026 • 31 mins
Teaching kids about money can feel overwhelming—especially when many of us weren’t raised having open conversations about finances ourselves.
In this episode, Geoff Howard, dad of two and CEO of the Money Confidence Project, shares practical ways parents can help tweens, teens, and young adults build confidence with money, develop healthier financial habits, and learn real-world skills that last far beyond childhood.
From entrepreneurship to goal-setting tools and tough-love lessons, this conversation is packed with practical strategies and tools for raising financially capable kids in today’s fast-moving world.
If you’ve ever wondered: ✔️ When should I start teaching my kids about money? ✔️ How do I help them avoid financial mistakes? ✔️ What tools actually make learning about money engaging?
This episode is for you.
🎧 Listen now on your favorite podcast platform or at mothersofboys.life
#MOBsurvivalguide #FinancialLiteracyForKids #ParentingTeens #MoneySkills #RaisingBoys #SmartMoney #FinancialConfidence #ParentingTips
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Suzy Shaw, mom of two now adult boys
and author of the book,
Mother of Boys Survival Guide.
This podcast shares practical insights,
expert advice, and real
conversations to help moms raise
confident, capable boys. You can find
more episodes and
(00:20):
resources at mothersofboys.life.
Now, let's get into today's conversation.
Teaching Kids
Financial Literacy (00:28):
Real World
Money Skills for Life.
Financial literacy is one of the most important and powerful
life skills we can give our kids. It
shapes how they make
decisions, how they handle challenges,
and ultimately how they build their
future. But figuring out
(00:49):
how to teach those skills
isn't always straightforward. Many of us
didn't grow up having open
conversations about money.
It was a different time. Fraud wasn't as
prevalent, money didn't move as quickly,
and financial decisions weren't showing
up at such an early age.
(01:10):
Now we're preparing our kids for a
fast-paced financial world. Today, I'm
joined by Geoff Howard,
Executive Director and CEO of the Money
Confidence Project, an
organization focused on
economic empowerment with practical tools
and fresh approaches
(01:31):
to financial education.
Geoff, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you
for having me, Suzy.
You know, this topic of financial
literacy, it's been one
that I've wanted to talk about
since I launched the podcast. It was
probably one of the more
challenging parts of parenting
(01:52):
for my husband and myself. And I was
really excited to learn
about the Money Confidence
Project and all the tools that you have
developed. Can you start by
sharing the mission and how it
all fits together with financial
literacy?
Absolutely. Yes.
(02:13):
So at Money Confidence Project,
our actual mission is to take the anxiety
out of money. I know that
sounds a little different,
right? Because we're talking about
teaching about financial literacy, but
really what we've learned
is that it's all about removing anxiety.
Suzy, there's plenty of
(02:34):
curriculum out there. There's
curriculum, there's content. You can find
a lot of information that
teaches you about money,
but what it doesn't really address is the
anxiety that we all feel about it.
To complicate that even
more, each of us has our
own relationship with money.
You brought that up in the opening. You
(02:55):
know, my relationship with
money may be different from
yours and even within a household, you
have different
relationships with money. And that
gets very complicated and that transfers
onto our own kids as
well. So this is a topic that
we're very much invested in. And we
(03:17):
approach it a little different than maybe
some of the traditional
curriculum and tools that are out there.
So we use the power of
entertainment. We want to be
entertaining. We want to be inspirational
and we want to have a
gamified approach. We want to make
this fun. We don't want it to be boring.
If I can give you an example
of this. My kids went through
(03:40):
a, happened to live in California and
it's a requirement here to
have, or at least in their
high school, they had a requirement to
have a personal finance
class. Nice. Yes. I'm very
happy about that. Right? My kids came
home and they, both of
them took the class. They're
a grade apart. And they said, you know,
dad, this stuff is kind of
like boring and this content is
(04:01):
just, it's like anything else we're doing
in school. They're just
kind of teaching us a whole
bunch of things, but I asked my daughter
about it today and she
said, you know, I don't really
remember what they told us. I just
remember it was boring. And so our
mission is to actually
make this not boring and to help you help
inspire people to kind of
(04:22):
take those next steps or to
get on the right track. We want people to
be confident with their
money or at least with,
remove the anxiety about talking about
money. And we want to, just
as important, help people build
healthy financial habits. And I think
those things are important to have a
successful financial future.
(04:43):
So what age range are your
programs targeted and
designed for? So our programs are
actually targeted for Millennials and Gen Z.
That's our target market.
However, all of our programs
can be used, you know, down to, we have
programs that are used in
middle schools and in high
(05:04):
schools and up through even beyond that
with Boomers even. You
know, it's not too late to learn
these sorts of skills. So in doing
research, you know, about
what your organization does,
I've come across a couple of different
products. I'd like you to sort of dig
(05:26):
into them. We can do
them one at a time. Okay. There's a
Venture Valley, Million Stories, Groove,
and Slyngshot. Did I
get them all? Yes, you did. And I'd like
to just maybe focus on the
first three. So Million Stories,
Groove, and Venture Valley, if we could.
(05:47):
Yeah. So let's start with
Venture Valley. Okay. So Venture
Valley is the fun video game
where you can, you know,
build a business from scratch. And
it's won more than 25 awards and it's
available for free, right?
Mobile and PC. Tell us a little
(06:09):
bit about that. Well, a couple of things.
It's not a, what you maybe think of as an
edutainment sort of game, first of all.
So it's fast-paced, it's
competitive, it's multiplayer,
and we actually use it in tournaments.
We actually have
collegiate tournaments that use
Venture Valley where students compete
(06:29):
against one another for
actual prizes. So Venture Valley
takes the gaming experience, I think, to
the next level. So in
other words, your players are
actually learning financial skills.
They're learning how to,
as you're building these
businesses, you start off with a dog
walking business and then
(06:50):
you kind of progress, progress,
progress, and then I think there's 20
some businesses and at
the end you end up with a
robotics factory. But as you're
progressing, you're actually, you're
learning how to pay wages. How
much do you pay? Do you pay more? Do you
pay less? Should you
invest in marketing? Should you
(07:12):
invest in R&D? What type of product do
you want to offer? So you
have all of these different
factors that are real-life business
decisions that you're making
and you're learning all this
as you're actually playing the game. It's
not like you're sitting
down and learning a bunch of
concepts and then playing the game.
You're actually starting right in the
game and learning how to play
(07:33):
and using these concepts. I want to give
you an example of how
this actually worked.
So when we completed Venture Valley and
my son at the time was 14, 14 or 15,
okay, and he completed
it and I said, Keaton, that's my son's,
Keaton, I want to get you and your
buddies together and I
(07:53):
want you to play this game. And he said,
I said, I'll buy pizza
and so I kind of, you know,
encourage them to sit down and play the
game and I wanted their
feedback. So, you know, I kind of
left them on their own and they played
against one another
in a tournament style and at the end,
you know, they said, I checked in and
said, yeah, dad, this is a
fun game. And I thought, okay,
(08:15):
they were, you know, just bought a pizza.
So, you know, maybe there's
an nice to me because I bought
them pizza. And then I was driving my son
and one of his friends to
school and they're in the back
on their phones as always and I hear him
talking. And I said, what are
you guys talking? Because it
sounded like they were talking like
playing a game and they said, oh, we're
playing that Venture
Valley game. I said, oh, really? And so
(08:37):
tell me more about that.
And they said, you know, dad,
this was actually a lot of fun where, you
know, we're playing against,
you know, some friends that
were also on their way to school. And
then I heard him talking and
he used the term net worth,
which is one of the outputs from the
game, you know, the net
worth of your businesses.
And I thought to myself, did I just hear
my son use the term net
(08:59):
worth? And he doesn't know,
he didn't know what net worth was before
this game, but here he is
playing the game. And so,
you're kind of indirectly learning all of
these skills as you're
playing the game. And so, I thought
that was pretty fascinating. And I think
it was confirmation that
we were on the right path
in trying to make financial education fun
(09:20):
and entertaining and inspirational.
So, it sounds like Venture Valley could
be played, I don't
know, eighth grade? I mean,
is it middle school and above? Or what do
you think the right age is?
We actually have some middle schools that
(09:41):
create a curriculum
around Venture Valley. And so,
it absolutely, 13 and up for sure. But I
think there's also some
other middle schools that have
been using the Venture Valley concept and
creating curriculum
around that.
I mentioned before we do
tournaments, collegiate tournaments. And
one of my favorite
quotes, there's actually like
(10:02):
three quotes here. One of my favorite
quotes is, one of the winners said, "You
know, I learned more
about running a business playing this
Venture Valley in this
two hours of Venture Valley
than I did my whole entire semester of my
entrepreneurship course in college."
So, I thought that was pretty profound,
right? So, obviously, it's
kind of taking what you're
learning but actually making it, putting
(10:24):
it into practice. And I
think maybe one of the
biggest compliments that I appreciate
about Venture Valley is
this. We had a tournament
and somebody said to me, I said, "What
did you think?" And they
said, "Oh, I loved it. I loved
it." And they said, "You know, I can
actually see myself now starting a
(10:45):
business." And I think
that was, if anything, that's the
inspirational component here that I
thought was the most
impactful from this game. If people can
see themselves starting
a business after playing
Venture Valley, seeing as also owning a
business, I think
that's a big accomplishment.
Absolutely. In fact, as you're
(11:06):
speaking, I'm thinking, I have a
sophomore in high school
who's helping me do some planting and
things like that. And
he's told me he wants to be
a landscaper and have his own landscaping
business, that I am
going to give it to him and
tell him to go, right? Yes.
So, I mean, and that's the kind of action
(11:28):
that a parent or an aunt
or anyone can have with a
young adult, right? Right, exactly. And
this is, by the way, this is
something you can play along
with him. Think about that, Suzy, how
much fun that would be as
your children are playing the
game and learning and you're playing
along with him as well,
(11:49):
because you'll probably learn some
things as well. I can always learn some
more. I love the idea.
Not only did we engage professors
and experts on education
and technical ability, but we also
actually had some of our gaming
developers are from the field
(12:09):
that have been lifelong developers. And
so we were able to blend the education
and accuracy of that
with a fun game together. And so that was
the goal. And that's
what we accomplished.
Well, bravo. Thank you.
And so if a young adult wanted to compete
(12:31):
in one of the challenges that you have,
is it open to the public or you would
have to be at an educational
site to do the competition?
So the game can be downloaded from the
Apple Store. It's
available on Steam and on Android
as well. So you just download the game
and you can create your own
(12:54):
tournament and play it on your
own. If you like, we have sponsor
tournaments where we'll
get universities together and
students to come in and compete against
one another, but it's
certainly available to anyone
to download and play. Wonderful. So
another project that you have done is
called Million Stories.
(13:15):
And it is also really very impressive.
It's a YouTube product.
There are hundreds of videos,
many of them are under 10 minutes.
There's a couple of different programs
and they seem to talk
about everything from the stress of
investing to everyday
(13:36):
decision-making, like the difference
between needs and wants. So what can you
tell us about that project?
So first of all, Million Stories isn't
just YouTube. We
actually are on all the social
platforms as well. And we have our own
channel. So you could go to
millionstories.com and access
the same content directly from there. So
(13:57):
we set out with the same sort of
objective that we did
with Venture Valley is we didn't just
want to have a bunch of
content or that just tells you,
it talks at you, right? We wanted to make
this inspirational and
hopefully then encourage people
to take that next step. At the same time,
we wanted people to see
(14:18):
themselves in the content.
In other words, if some of our content
has people that are going
through difficult financial
situations and we wanted to create a
channel and content where people can say,
"You know, that's me.
That's me. That's the way I feel about
this. And I'm really glad
that somebody is talking about
(14:39):
this and what is it that they did to help
themselves out of it?"
So, Million Stories is all about
the inspirational
content. And we use both real
people like you and me telling our
stories, but we also use
celebrities and influencers to also
tell the stories or to help tell these
(15:00):
stories as well. For
instance, Richard Sherman,
instance, Richard Sherman,
he's a former NFL football player. He
does a series called
Adulting, which is kind of fun
because it talks about kind of like some
of the things that even
million dollar football players
aren't doing that they need to do, right?
Basic finance things. So to
(15:21):
listen to Richard Sherman,
it's very entertaining. We have other
programs. Let's see, Wags to
Riches. That's another one.
So Wags to Riches is a program where
people are talking about all
of the ideas they had to do
something with pets and then bringing
those to market. So all these stories
about pet businesses
(15:42):
that you can create from, you know, with
your, from your pets. We
have things like George Goes
Everywhere. George Goes Everywhere is a
series where George travels
to a city and, and we'll do
this on less than a hundred dollars a
day. And he talks about how to spend
money and how you can
still do these fun things on these trips.
So Million Stories is
(16:03):
all about the inspirational
content, getting people to not only
learn, but to be inspired to
kind of take that next step.
And which, you know, ones resonate the
most, do you think, with younger
audiences? Because it did
seem like a lot of the content was
focused to, you know, 20 some things.
(16:26):
It did. I think there's, well, we
actually have a series
called Startup Kids. So, and that,
in that targets shows kids eight to, I
think it's like eight to
16 who have actually started businesses.
I think that is very relevant to this.
I think Wags to Riches is fun to watch because,
(16:47):
because kids can look at, Oh my gosh,
that's a really cool
business. They, I have a pet myself. What
if I have an idea? You know, so it's,
because it's all about
creating opportunity and inspiration in
the kids. We have Pay to Play.
So, I know this is
a show that also has a kind of emphasis
on, you know, mothers of boys
(17:08):
and Pay to Play is about the
gaming industry, you know, there's a lot
of games, a lot of boys that
play games and statistically,
and here's about how that works. They may
find that interesting.
You're right, there are some
pieces of content that maybe the
kids wouldn't find as
exciting to watch, but maybe the
parents would, you know, and again, it's
(17:30):
all creating this
environment in your home that
encourages healthy conversations about
money, because one of the
things we have learned is that
a lot of our relationship with money
starts in when we were kids.
And so what it is at home that
we learn and what we observe from our
(17:51):
parents is very relevant to how our
relationship, it's a
good indicator of how our relationship
with money is going to
be when we become adults.
Well, and it's not like when your kids
turn 20, they suddenly stop needing you.
That's correct.
Both, both of my sons are engaged right
now. And, and some of the videos, you
(18:13):
know, I found really
interesting and sent some of them, you
know, there was a
conversation about, you know, joint
checking accounts.
Yes!
Like, should you have
a joint checking account
or should you keep separate
checking accounts? And that's going to be
a different answer
for, for every couple, but
really interesting, you know, topic and
(18:34):
discussion around that.
You know,
that's actually one of
our, our series is Heartbroke
and it deals with couples and their
relationships with money
because they're coming at it from
different perspectives. Maybe somebody's
a saver, somebody's a
spender, and how do they resolve
that? And so the Heartbroke series, I
think maybe one that, that,
that would be very relevant to
(18:55):
your, to your sons.
Yeah. So, so the other product that you
that you have is called Groove.
Another super interesting tool that seems
to be focused on goal
setting and building,
you know, healthy habits.
Yes.
And it made me remember when my kids went
(19:17):
off to college and
they suddenly had access
to credit cards. I mean, to a real debt
that they could get on
their own. And that was not
necessarily a positive learning
experience. It was a learning experience
and how nice it would have
been to have something like Groove
earlier. Can you tell us
(19:37):
a little bit about that?
Sure. So first of all, we worked with
researchers from Duke University's Common
Sense Lab to develop
Groove. And so it's grounded in
behavioral science, first of all. So
let's talk about that. So it's
actually, it's designed with behavioral
science in mind. That's,
(19:57):
that's number one. Number two is,
but it's a, Groove is a personal finance
app that as you observed
also has some goal setting
features as well.
You could say and it categorizes your
expenses. So it does the things that a
traditional finance app would do. You
would expect a personal
finance app to do, except as you
observed, it does two things that are
(20:18):
very unique. Number one is
the goal setting feature. The goal
setting feature allows people to set
these financial goals
or actually non-financial goals. It could
be a goal like I want to
get a new job, you know,
whatever the goal is. And you can set
these goals and then it
breaks that goal down into
many steps. So for instance, if you said,
(20:40):
if you had a goal that,
let's say you watched a
episode of Million Stories and you were
inspired, you said, I like that idea of
creating an emergency
account. I don't have emergency fund. I
want to do that. If you set a goal to
open it to, to have an
emergency fund, it would take you
probably a couple of years
to get it funded all the way.
(21:00):
So we'll take a goal like that and break
it up into little
steps. Maybe step number one,
just go open a checking account or
savings account, step
number one. And then when you do
that, you get rewarded. Oh, that's
wonderful. You get the narwhals and the
dopamine hit from the,
from accomplishing that particular task.
And then step number
(21:20):
two, maybe put $5 in.
So we take something that's, that seems
like it's a big goal
and we break it into these
little goals. So in each stop along the
way, you're getting rewarded from a, from
accomplishment, right? So then you're,
you're feeling inspired. I
(21:41):
can do this. I can do this.
I can do this. So, so that's the, the
goal setting feature
of Groove.
What really differentiates Groove is that
we assess a person's money
personalities. We have one of
eight different money personalities that
existing Groove. And you, you,
you, you, we assess that when
(22:02):
you first log on to Groove and then we
reassess that later on, you
can assess it kind of any, and
based on what your money personality is,
Groove will then adapt to
that and make sure that it's
talking to you in the way that you relate
to money. So again,
Groove's going to provide a
different experience for me than it is
(22:22):
for you based on our, our
unique money personalities.
So what are some of
the money personalities?
Yeah. So there's a thoughtful manager,
there's the dreamer and we
have some others as well.
I happen to be a, you know,
part of the dreamer category,
if you will. So, and I will say that your
money personality changes
over time. It depends on,
(22:44):
sometimes when I've taken the, taken the
assessment, I've been, they,
I've been thoughtful. The other times
I've been the dreamer.
So changes over time.
And, and what age do you suggest parents
start introducing
something like Groove? And it's a,
it's available on, on mobile systems.
(23:04):
Yes, it is.
And iPads too? That's correct.
Okay.
Yes. So, so Groove can, can connect it to
your bank accounts if
you choose to do that.
So, so it has that feature as, as any
other personal finance
app, you would expect. So kids
don't have a bank account that they don't
(23:26):
need to connect at, but they
still have access to all of
the content in Groove. They can still
take the, the money personality. But I
would say that Groove
is sort of for those who have bank
accounts, maybe have a credit card or
thinking about trying to
save for something, you know, that's
where, where, where Groove really fits in
because it, it takes,
(23:48):
it takes these things and allows you to
create these goals to see
content around what it is,
the goal that you're trying to, to
achieve and then tracks all that for you.
So, financial literacy isn't
just about numbers. It's
about confidence and decision
making and promoting independence. So
(24:10):
what, what do you think are
three things parents could start
doing to help build those skills?
For the financial skills for their kids.
So number one, I would actually start
talking about money with
the kids. For whatever reason,
I think a lot of people are, they, they,
(24:30):
they don't want to expose
the kids to it, but I think
having a conversation about money and
what is it? You know, kids don't even,
they just know sometimes
they get things and, you know, there's
food on the table and there's
gifts that come in, but they
don't really understand where maybe those
things come from. And so I
think having a real, honest
conversation about the kids about money,
(24:51):
first of all, this is the
way the household works.
I've seen some examples that we've
actually used ourself with
our kids where you take your
monthly income and put it into envelopes
and show the kids how the different
envelopes, how the money
is spent in the, in the household. And so
that's, that's one way
is to, is to just kind of
(25:13):
teach them not be afraid to have a
conversation about money.
Number two is I really do believe there's
this, the content, being
able to not necessarily teach
them how to do a budget, but have content
that allows them to get
inspired, right? Because I
think the next thing we want to do is
inspire them to do the right thing. I
(25:34):
didn't tell my kids,
I need you to put part of your, your
money away in a Roth IRA
to do these things. I said,
Hey, here's the benefits. If you, if you
do these things, and this is what, if
you, you know, if you
are able to save, I think the number is
$40,000 by the time you're
30, that's going to give you a
million dollars at retirement. If you did
(25:56):
nothing else, you know,
those, those inspirational
conversations are in, in importance as
well. And I was, and I don't, and then
the thirdly I would say
is that I would encourage them to create
healthy financial
habits. Now get in the habit of
taking an allowance. If you give them an
allowance and saying,
let's put some of that
(26:17):
in a savings account, let's actually do
that and teach them savings.
Well, you know, the, the responsibility
part is, you know, I
think one of the trickiest as
parents, which often comes with tough
love, I guess. I know when
my son got himself over his
skis on, you know, the credit card, it's
(26:40):
like, well, what are you
going to do about it? You know,
it's like, we're not going to bail you
out with this. So you're
going to have to get a job on
campus and you're going to have to pay it
back. And what's the
minimum amount and what's the plan
to pay it back? And I think, you know,
(27:01):
not bailing your kids out
can be one of the best things.
You can do for them.
So Suzy, I have the, my son had saved
spending money for college and he's,
in his freshman year, most of the way
through the year, he ran out of his
money. So now he is,
(27:22):
you can't do the things that he wants to
do. He was going
snowboarding and he was, you know,
ordering from DoorDash all the time. And
now the money's gone. So
you're right. It's the,
I'm sorry that happened to you. You know,
maybe this means you'll
have to get a job in the summer
again, or maybe you're out to get
something on campus to supplement, but
you're right. Letting
the kids make the mistakes now. And
(27:43):
Suzy, this is the, this is
actually the time you want them
to make the mistakes. You want them to
make it when they're young,
when the stakes aren't high.
You know, if a spending problem
progresses and you don't address that
early on and you don't
understand what happens when you are on
your own, then the stakes
(28:03):
are so much higher. I actually
believe that I've even said this to my
own kids. I think you have to make
mistakes to actually
learn. So you actually, it's okay to make
a mistake because you're
going to learn from it.
Yeah. I fully agree. Completely agree.
(28:23):
And, you know, it's, for some kids,
that's the only way they learn. Geoff, I
ask all of our guests at
the end here of the podcast,
if you could leave us with a simple
motto, something that a
parent can say to themselves
as they're trying to teach their kids
(28:45):
about money. Is there
anything you said to yourself
during those moments? Yeah. So I'll have
two things maybe if I
could offer up to you.
One is, I would say is, say to yourself,
I'm not alone and there's
plenty, there's people out
there, there's resources that want to
(29:05):
help. I think that's the
first thing to resolve the anxiety
is, okay, I can do this and there's help
available. And secondly, I'm going to
refer back to what I
said, which is you have to make mistakes
to learn. So it's okay.
It's okay to have these little
mistakes right now. So it's okay. In
(29:26):
fact, that's the way you're going to
learn is through these
mistakes. Right. And building on that
relationship, hopefully you have an
honest relationship and so
your kids will come to you and not dig
themselves a deeper hole.
That's right. Which then depends
on your reaction. I mean, if your
reaction is to go nuclear, then they're
(29:50):
not going to have that
trust and want to learn with you. So
Geoff, I really, really appreciate
everything that your
foundation is doing and the tools that
are available for
parents. I just feel this is so
powerful. Where? What is the best place
powerful. What is the best place
to go for more information about the
(30:11):
tools we've talked about?
Yes. Visit MoneyConfidenceProject.org.
And from
MoneyConfidenceProject.org, you'll learn about
MoneyConfidenceProject.org, you'll learn about
Venture Valley, Million Stories, and
Groove. So that's where I
Fabulous. And we will include the
information in our show notes on this
podcast and hope you
(30:32):
podcast and hope you
continue to develop new things and come
back and tell us about it.
We absolutely will. And thank
you again for having me, Suzy.
If this episode meant something to you,
please follow and share the Mothers of
Boys Survival Guide
podcast on Facebook, Instagram,
YouTube, and LinkedIn. Sharing helps
(30:53):
other moms discover the
show. Be kind to yourself, moms.
I'm Suzy Shaw, mom of two now adult boys
and author of the book,
Mother of Boys Survival Guide.
This podcast shares practical insights,
expert advice, and real
conversations to help moms raise
confident, capable boys. You can find
more episodes and
(00:20):
resources at mothersofboys.life.
Now, let's get into today's conversation.
Teaching Kids
Financial Literacy (00:28):
Real World
Money Skills for Life.
Financial literacy is one of the most important and powerful
life skills we can give our kids. It
shapes how they make
decisions, how they handle challenges,
and ultimately how they build their
future. But figuring out
(00:49):
how to teach those skills
isn't always straightforward. Many of us
didn't grow up having open
conversations about money.
It was a different time. Fraud wasn't as
prevalent, money didn't move as quickly,
and financial decisions weren't showing
up at such an early age.
(01:10):
Now we're preparing our kids for a
fast-paced financial world. Today, I'm
joined by Geoff Howard,
Executive Director and CEO of the Money
Confidence Project, an
organization focused on
economic empowerment with practical tools
and fresh approaches
(01:31):
to financial education.
Geoff, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you
for having me, Suzy.
You know, this topic of financial
literacy, it's been one
that I've wanted to talk about
since I launched the podcast. It was
probably one of the more
challenging parts of parenting
(01:52):
for my husband and myself. And I was
really excited to learn
about the Money Confidence
Project and all the tools that you have
developed. Can you start by
sharing the mission and how it
all fits together with financial
literacy?
Absolutely. Yes.
(02:13):
So at Money Confidence Project,
our actual mission is to take the anxiety
out of money. I know that
sounds a little different,
right? Because we're talking about
teaching about financial literacy, but
really what we've learned
is that it's all about removing anxiety.
Suzy, there's plenty of
(02:34):
curriculum out there. There's
curriculum, there's content. You can find
a lot of information that
teaches you about money,
but what it doesn't really address is the
anxiety that we all feel about it.
To complicate that even
more, each of us has our
own relationship with money.
You brought that up in the opening. You
(02:55):
know, my relationship with
money may be different from
yours and even within a household, you
have different
relationships with money. And that
gets very complicated and that transfers
onto our own kids as
well. So this is a topic that
we're very much invested in. And we
(03:17):
approach it a little different than maybe
some of the traditional
curriculum and tools that are out there.
So we use the power of
entertainment. We want to be
entertaining. We want to be inspirational
and we want to have a
gamified approach. We want to make
this fun. We don't want it to be boring.
If I can give you an example
of this. My kids went through
(03:40):
a, happened to live in California and
it's a requirement here to
have, or at least in their
high school, they had a requirement to
have a personal finance
class. Nice. Yes. I'm very
happy about that. Right? My kids came
home and they, both of
them took the class. They're
a grade apart. And they said, you know,
dad, this stuff is kind of
like boring and this content is
(04:01):
just, it's like anything else we're doing
in school. They're just
kind of teaching us a whole
bunch of things, but I asked my daughter
about it today and she
said, you know, I don't really
remember what they told us. I just
remember it was boring. And so our
mission is to actually
make this not boring and to help you help
inspire people to kind of
(04:22):
take those next steps or to
get on the right track. We want people to
be confident with their
money or at least with,
remove the anxiety about talking about
money. And we want to, just
as important, help people build
healthy financial habits. And I think
those things are important to have a
successful financial future.
(04:43):
So what age range are your
programs targeted and
designed for? So our programs are
actually targeted for Millennials and Gen Z.
That's our target market.
However, all of our programs
can be used, you know, down to, we have
programs that are used in
middle schools and in high
(05:04):
schools and up through even beyond that
with Boomers even. You
know, it's not too late to learn
these sorts of skills. So in doing
research, you know, about
what your organization does,
I've come across a couple of different
products. I'd like you to sort of dig
(05:26):
into them. We can do
them one at a time. Okay. There's a
Venture Valley, Million Stories, Groove,
and Slyngshot. Did I
get them all? Yes, you did. And I'd like
to just maybe focus on the
first three. So Million Stories,
Groove, and Venture Valley, if we could.
(05:47):
Yeah. So let's start with
Venture Valley. Okay. So Venture
Valley is the fun video game
where you can, you know,
build a business from scratch. And
it's won more than 25 awards and it's
available for free, right?
Mobile and PC. Tell us a little
(06:09):
bit about that. Well, a couple of things.
It's not a, what you maybe think of as an
edutainment sort of game, first of all.
So it's fast-paced, it's
competitive, it's multiplayer,
and we actually use it in tournaments.
We actually have
collegiate tournaments that use
Venture Valley where students compete
(06:29):
against one another for
actual prizes. So Venture Valley
takes the gaming experience, I think, to
the next level. So in
other words, your players are
actually learning financial skills.
They're learning how to,
as you're building these
businesses, you start off with a dog
walking business and then
(06:50):
you kind of progress, progress,
progress, and then I think there's 20
some businesses and at
the end you end up with a
robotics factory. But as you're
progressing, you're actually, you're
learning how to pay wages. How
much do you pay? Do you pay more? Do you
pay less? Should you
invest in marketing? Should you
(07:12):
invest in R&D? What type of product do
you want to offer? So you
have all of these different
factors that are real-life business
decisions that you're making
and you're learning all this
as you're actually playing the game. It's
not like you're sitting
down and learning a bunch of
concepts and then playing the game.
You're actually starting right in the
game and learning how to play
(07:33):
and using these concepts. I want to give
you an example of how
this actually worked.
So when we completed Venture Valley and
my son at the time was 14, 14 or 15,
okay, and he completed
it and I said, Keaton, that's my son's,
Keaton, I want to get you and your
buddies together and I
(07:53):
want you to play this game. And he said,
I said, I'll buy pizza
and so I kind of, you know,
encourage them to sit down and play the
game and I wanted their
feedback. So, you know, I kind of
left them on their own and they played
against one another
in a tournament style and at the end,
you know, they said, I checked in and
said, yeah, dad, this is a
fun game. And I thought, okay,
(08:15):
they were, you know, just bought a pizza.
So, you know, maybe there's
an nice to me because I bought
them pizza. And then I was driving my son
and one of his friends to
school and they're in the back
on their phones as always and I hear him
talking. And I said, what are
you guys talking? Because it
sounded like they were talking like
playing a game and they said, oh, we're
playing that Venture
Valley game. I said, oh, really? And so
(08:37):
tell me more about that.
And they said, you know, dad,
this was actually a lot of fun where, you
know, we're playing against,
you know, some friends that
were also on their way to school. And
then I heard him talking and
he used the term net worth,
which is one of the outputs from the
game, you know, the net
worth of your businesses.
And I thought to myself, did I just hear
my son use the term net
(08:59):
worth? And he doesn't know,
he didn't know what net worth was before
this game, but here he is
playing the game. And so,
you're kind of indirectly learning all of
these skills as you're
playing the game. And so, I thought
that was pretty fascinating. And I think
it was confirmation that
we were on the right path
in trying to make financial education fun
(09:20):
and entertaining and inspirational.
So, it sounds like Venture Valley could
be played, I don't
know, eighth grade? I mean,
is it middle school and above? Or what do
you think the right age is?
We actually have some middle schools that
(09:41):
create a curriculum
around Venture Valley. And so,
it absolutely, 13 and up for sure. But I
think there's also some
other middle schools that have
been using the Venture Valley concept and
creating curriculum
around that.
I mentioned before we do
tournaments, collegiate tournaments. And
one of my favorite
quotes, there's actually like
(10:02):
three quotes here. One of my favorite
quotes is, one of the winners said, "You
know, I learned more
about running a business playing this
Venture Valley in this
two hours of Venture Valley
than I did my whole entire semester of my
entrepreneurship course in college."
So, I thought that was pretty profound,
right? So, obviously, it's
kind of taking what you're
learning but actually making it, putting
(10:24):
it into practice. And I
think maybe one of the
biggest compliments that I appreciate
about Venture Valley is
this. We had a tournament
and somebody said to me, I said, "What
did you think?" And they
said, "Oh, I loved it. I loved
it." And they said, "You know, I can
actually see myself now starting a
(10:45):
business." And I think
that was, if anything, that's the
inspirational component here that I
thought was the most
impactful from this game. If people can
see themselves starting
a business after playing
Venture Valley, seeing as also owning a
business, I think
that's a big accomplishment.
Absolutely. In fact, as you're
(11:06):
speaking, I'm thinking, I have a
sophomore in high school
who's helping me do some planting and
things like that. And
he's told me he wants to be
a landscaper and have his own landscaping
business, that I am
going to give it to him and
tell him to go, right? Yes.
So, I mean, and that's the kind of action
(11:28):
that a parent or an aunt
or anyone can have with a
young adult, right? Right, exactly. And
this is, by the way, this is
something you can play along
with him. Think about that, Suzy, how
much fun that would be as
your children are playing the
game and learning and you're playing
along with him as well,
(11:49):
because you'll probably learn some
things as well. I can always learn some
more. I love the idea.
Not only did we engage professors
and experts on education
and technical ability, but we also
actually had some of our gaming
developers are from the field
(12:09):
that have been lifelong developers. And
so we were able to blend the education
and accuracy of that
with a fun game together. And so that was
the goal. And that's
what we accomplished.
Well, bravo. Thank you.
And so if a young adult wanted to compete
(12:31):
in one of the challenges that you have,
is it open to the public or you would
have to be at an educational
site to do the competition?
So the game can be downloaded from the
Apple Store. It's
available on Steam and on Android
as well. So you just download the game
and you can create your own
(12:54):
tournament and play it on your
own. If you like, we have sponsor
tournaments where we'll
get universities together and
students to come in and compete against
one another, but it's
certainly available to anyone
to download and play. Wonderful. So
another project that you have done is
called Million Stories.
(13:15):
And it is also really very impressive.
It's a YouTube product.
There are hundreds of videos,
many of them are under 10 minutes.
There's a couple of different programs
and they seem to talk
about everything from the stress of
investing to everyday
(13:36):
decision-making, like the difference
between needs and wants. So what can you
tell us about that project?
So first of all, Million Stories isn't
just YouTube. We
actually are on all the social
platforms as well. And we have our own
channel. So you could go to
millionstories.com and access
the same content directly from there. So
(13:57):
we set out with the same sort of
objective that we did
with Venture Valley is we didn't just
want to have a bunch of
content or that just tells you,
it talks at you, right? We wanted to make
this inspirational and
hopefully then encourage people
to take that next step. At the same time,
we wanted people to see
(14:18):
themselves in the content.
In other words, if some of our content
has people that are going
through difficult financial
situations and we wanted to create a
channel and content where people can say,
"You know, that's me.
That's me. That's the way I feel about
this. And I'm really glad
that somebody is talking about
(14:39):
this and what is it that they did to help
themselves out of it?"
So, Million Stories is all about
the inspirational
content. And we use both real
people like you and me telling our
stories, but we also use
celebrities and influencers to also
tell the stories or to help tell these
(15:00):
stories as well. For
instance, Richard Sherman,
instance, Richard Sherman,
he's a former NFL football player. He
does a series called
Adulting, which is kind of fun
because it talks about kind of like some
of the things that even
million dollar football players
aren't doing that they need to do, right?
Basic finance things. So to
(15:21):
listen to Richard Sherman,
it's very entertaining. We have other
programs. Let's see, Wags to
Riches. That's another one.
So Wags to Riches is a program where
people are talking about all
of the ideas they had to do
something with pets and then bringing
those to market. So all these stories
about pet businesses
(15:42):
that you can create from, you know, with
your, from your pets. We
have things like George Goes
Everywhere. George Goes Everywhere is a
series where George travels
to a city and, and we'll do
this on less than a hundred dollars a
day. And he talks about how to spend
money and how you can
still do these fun things on these trips.
So Million Stories is
(16:03):
all about the inspirational
content, getting people to not only
learn, but to be inspired to
kind of take that next step.
And which, you know, ones resonate the
most, do you think, with younger
audiences? Because it did
seem like a lot of the content was
focused to, you know, 20 some things.
(16:26):
It did. I think there's, well, we
actually have a series
called Startup Kids. So, and that,
in that targets shows kids eight to, I
think it's like eight to
16 who have actually started businesses.
I think that is very relevant to this.
I think Wags to Riches is fun to watch because,
(16:47):
because kids can look at, Oh my gosh,
that's a really cool
business. They, I have a pet myself. What
if I have an idea? You know, so it's,
because it's all about
creating opportunity and inspiration in
the kids. We have Pay to Play.
So, I know this is
a show that also has a kind of emphasis
on, you know, mothers of boys
(17:08):
and Pay to Play is about the
gaming industry, you know, there's a lot
of games, a lot of boys that
play games and statistically,
and here's about how that works. They may
find that interesting.
You're right, there are some
pieces of content that maybe the
kids wouldn't find as
exciting to watch, but maybe the
parents would, you know, and again, it's
(17:30):
all creating this
environment in your home that
encourages healthy conversations about
money, because one of the
things we have learned is that
a lot of our relationship with money
starts in when we were kids.
And so what it is at home that
we learn and what we observe from our
(17:51):
parents is very relevant to how our
relationship, it's a
good indicator of how our relationship
with money is going to
be when we become adults.
Well, and it's not like when your kids
turn 20, they suddenly stop needing you.
That's correct.
Both, both of my sons are engaged right
now. And, and some of the videos, you
(18:13):
know, I found really
interesting and sent some of them, you
know, there was a
conversation about, you know, joint
checking accounts.
Yes!
Like, should you have
a joint checking account
or should you keep separate
checking accounts? And that's going to be
a different answer
for, for every couple, but
really interesting, you know, topic and
(18:34):
discussion around that.
You know,
that's actually one of
our, our series is Heartbroke
and it deals with couples and their
relationships with money
because they're coming at it from
different perspectives. Maybe somebody's
a saver, somebody's a
spender, and how do they resolve
that? And so the Heartbroke series, I
think maybe one that, that,
that would be very relevant to
(18:55):
your, to your sons.
Yeah. So, so the other product that you
that you have is called Groove.
Another super interesting tool that seems
to be focused on goal
setting and building,
you know, healthy habits.
Yes.
And it made me remember when my kids went
(19:17):
off to college and
they suddenly had access
to credit cards. I mean, to a real debt
that they could get on
their own. And that was not
necessarily a positive learning
experience. It was a learning experience
and how nice it would have
been to have something like Groove
earlier. Can you tell us
(19:37):
a little bit about that?
Sure. So first of all, we worked with
researchers from Duke University's Common
Sense Lab to develop
Groove. And so it's grounded in
behavioral science, first of all. So
let's talk about that. So it's
actually, it's designed with behavioral
science in mind. That's,
(19:57):
that's number one. Number two is,
but it's a, Groove is a personal finance
app that as you observed
also has some goal setting
features as well.
You could say and it categorizes your
expenses. So it does the things that a
traditional finance app would do. You
would expect a personal
finance app to do, except as you
observed, it does two things that are
(20:18):
very unique. Number one is
the goal setting feature. The goal
setting feature allows people to set
these financial goals
or actually non-financial goals. It could
be a goal like I want to
get a new job, you know,
whatever the goal is. And you can set
these goals and then it
breaks that goal down into
many steps. So for instance, if you said,
(20:40):
if you had a goal that,
let's say you watched a
episode of Million Stories and you were
inspired, you said, I like that idea of
creating an emergency
account. I don't have emergency fund. I
want to do that. If you set a goal to
open it to, to have an
emergency fund, it would take you
probably a couple of years
to get it funded all the way.
(21:00):
So we'll take a goal like that and break
it up into little
steps. Maybe step number one,
just go open a checking account or
savings account, step
number one. And then when you do
that, you get rewarded. Oh, that's
wonderful. You get the narwhals and the
dopamine hit from the,
from accomplishing that particular task.
And then step number
(21:20):
two, maybe put $5 in.
So we take something that's, that seems
like it's a big goal
and we break it into these
little goals. So in each stop along the
way, you're getting rewarded from a, from
accomplishment, right? So then you're,
you're feeling inspired. I
(21:41):
can do this. I can do this.
I can do this. So, so that's the, the
goal setting feature
of Groove.
What really differentiates Groove is that
we assess a person's money
personalities. We have one of
eight different money personalities that
existing Groove. And you, you,
you, you, we assess that when
(22:02):
you first log on to Groove and then we
reassess that later on, you
can assess it kind of any, and
based on what your money personality is,
Groove will then adapt to
that and make sure that it's
talking to you in the way that you relate
to money. So again,
Groove's going to provide a
different experience for me than it is
(22:22):
for you based on our, our
unique money personalities.
So what are some of
the money personalities?
Yeah. So there's a thoughtful manager,
there's the dreamer and we
have some others as well.
I happen to be a, you know,
part of the dreamer category,
if you will. So, and I will say that your
money personality changes
over time. It depends on,
(22:44):
sometimes when I've taken the, taken the
assessment, I've been, they,
I've been thoughtful. The other times
I've been the dreamer.
So changes over time.
And, and what age do you suggest parents
start introducing
something like Groove? And it's a,
it's available on, on mobile systems.
(23:04):
Yes, it is.
And iPads too? That's correct.
Okay.
Yes. So, so Groove can, can connect it to
your bank accounts if
you choose to do that.
So, so it has that feature as, as any
other personal finance
app, you would expect. So kids
don't have a bank account that they don't
(23:26):
need to connect at, but they
still have access to all of
the content in Groove. They can still
take the, the money personality. But I
would say that Groove
is sort of for those who have bank
accounts, maybe have a credit card or
thinking about trying to
save for something, you know, that's
where, where, where Groove really fits in
because it, it takes,
(23:48):
it takes these things and allows you to
create these goals to see
content around what it is,
the goal that you're trying to, to
achieve and then tracks all that for you.
So, financial literacy isn't
just about numbers. It's
about confidence and decision
making and promoting independence. So
(24:10):
what, what do you think are
three things parents could start
doing to help build those skills?
For the financial skills for their kids.
So number one, I would actually start
talking about money with
the kids. For whatever reason,
I think a lot of people are, they, they,
(24:30):
they don't want to expose
the kids to it, but I think
having a conversation about money and
what is it? You know, kids don't even,
they just know sometimes
they get things and, you know, there's
food on the table and there's
gifts that come in, but they
don't really understand where maybe those
things come from. And so I
think having a real, honest
conversation about the kids about money,
(24:51):
first of all, this is the
way the household works.
I've seen some examples that we've
actually used ourself with
our kids where you take your
monthly income and put it into envelopes
and show the kids how the different
envelopes, how the money
is spent in the, in the household. And so
that's, that's one way
is to, is to just kind of
(25:13):
teach them not be afraid to have a
conversation about money.
Number two is I really do believe there's
this, the content, being
able to not necessarily teach
them how to do a budget, but have content
that allows them to get
inspired, right? Because I
think the next thing we want to do is
inspire them to do the right thing. I
(25:34):
didn't tell my kids,
I need you to put part of your, your
money away in a Roth IRA
to do these things. I said,
Hey, here's the benefits. If you, if you
do these things, and this is what, if
you, you know, if you
are able to save, I think the number is
$40,000 by the time you're
30, that's going to give you a
million dollars at retirement. If you did
(25:56):
nothing else, you know,
those, those inspirational
conversations are in, in importance as
well. And I was, and I don't, and then
the thirdly I would say
is that I would encourage them to create
healthy financial
habits. Now get in the habit of
taking an allowance. If you give them an
allowance and saying,
let's put some of that
(26:17):
in a savings account, let's actually do
that and teach them savings.
Well, you know, the, the responsibility
part is, you know, I
think one of the trickiest as
parents, which often comes with tough
love, I guess. I know when
my son got himself over his
skis on, you know, the credit card, it's
(26:40):
like, well, what are you
going to do about it? You know,
it's like, we're not going to bail you
out with this. So you're
going to have to get a job on
campus and you're going to have to pay it
back. And what's the
minimum amount and what's the plan
to pay it back? And I think, you know,
(27:01):
not bailing your kids out
can be one of the best things.
You can do for them.
So Suzy, I have the, my son had saved
spending money for college and he's,
in his freshman year, most of the way
through the year, he ran out of his
money. So now he is,
(27:22):
you can't do the things that he wants to
do. He was going
snowboarding and he was, you know,
ordering from DoorDash all the time. And
now the money's gone. So
you're right. It's the,
I'm sorry that happened to you. You know,
maybe this means you'll
have to get a job in the summer
again, or maybe you're out to get
something on campus to supplement, but
you're right. Letting
the kids make the mistakes now. And
(27:43):
Suzy, this is the, this is
actually the time you want them
to make the mistakes. You want them to
make it when they're young,
when the stakes aren't high.
You know, if a spending problem
progresses and you don't address that
early on and you don't
understand what happens when you are on
your own, then the stakes
(28:03):
are so much higher. I actually
believe that I've even said this to my
own kids. I think you have to make
mistakes to actually
learn. So you actually, it's okay to make
a mistake because you're
going to learn from it.
Yeah. I fully agree. Completely agree.
(28:23):
And, you know, it's, for some kids,
that's the only way they learn. Geoff, I
ask all of our guests at
the end here of the podcast,
if you could leave us with a simple
motto, something that a
parent can say to themselves
as they're trying to teach their kids
(28:45):
about money. Is there
anything you said to yourself
during those moments? Yeah. So I'll have
two things maybe if I
could offer up to you.
One is, I would say is, say to yourself,
I'm not alone and there's
plenty, there's people out
there, there's resources that want to
(29:05):
help. I think that's the
first thing to resolve the anxiety
is, okay, I can do this and there's help
available. And secondly, I'm going to
refer back to what I
said, which is you have to make mistakes
to learn. So it's okay.
It's okay to have these little
mistakes right now. So it's okay. In
(29:26):
fact, that's the way you're going to
learn is through these
mistakes. Right. And building on that
relationship, hopefully you have an
honest relationship and so
your kids will come to you and not dig
themselves a deeper hole.
That's right. Which then depends
on your reaction. I mean, if your
reaction is to go nuclear, then they're
(29:50):
not going to have that
trust and want to learn with you. So
Geoff, I really, really appreciate
everything that your
foundation is doing and the tools that
are available for
parents. I just feel this is so
powerful. Where? What is the best place
powerful. What is the best place
to go for more information about the
(30:11):
tools we've talked about?
Yes. Visit MoneyConfidenceProject.org.
And from
MoneyConfidenceProject.org, you'll learn about
MoneyConfidenceProject.org, you'll learn about
Venture Valley, Million Stories, and
Groove. So that's where I
Fabulous. And we will include the
information in our show notes on this
podcast and hope you
(30:32):
podcast and hope you
continue to develop new things and come
back and tell us about it.
We absolutely will. And thank
you again for having me, Suzy.
If this episode meant something to you,
please follow and share the Mothers of
Boys Survival Guide
podcast on Facebook, Instagram,
YouTube, and LinkedIn. Sharing helps
(30:53):
other moms discover the
show. Be kind to yourself, moms.
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