May 19, 2025 • 40 mins
🎙️ TMIT 08: Family Money
In this episode, we explore how to make the implicit explicit when it comes to money at home. This isn’t a how-to talk about chores and allowances (no jars labeled Spend, Save, Share here). Instead, we reflect on the subtle ways money influences us—and how to start naming (and questioning) those influences out loud.
TMIT about Family Money: Accept that money influences our family culture, whether we realize it or not.
Our 3-step process to becoming more intentional about money:
- Reflect on our own money beliefs.
- Normalize money talk within our family.
- Invite kids into the process.
We also discuss:
- Why reflecting on our own money stories is the first step (shoutout to Money Scripts by Dr. Brad Klontz).
- What kinds of low-stakes, everyday money stories we want to start sharing with the kids.
- A moment from Way of the Warrior Kid, where a boy buys a $2 junkyard bike and spends the summer fixing it—highlighting the value of hard work, creativity, and time well spent.
- How what we value highly (in our case, time) determines many of the choices we make daily—and what that means for the next generation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey guys, it's Greg. Real quick before we jump in, we
know we're throwing a lot at youin these first eight episodes,
so we made a little CHEAT SHEET with the most important
takeaways. Let's be honest, Danielle made
it. If you want it, sign up for our
newsletter at tmitpod.com. That's TMIT, the most important
thing, pod.com or e-mail us at high at tmitpod.com and we'll
(00:26):
send it your way. Hope you're loving the show.
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. Indeed it is.
(00:46):
Indeed. Hi, Greg.
Hi, Danielle. So today we are.
That is what you call me. So today we are talking about
family money. So why did we want to have an
episode on family money? My answer is because it feels
like something that we ought to be talking about that we haven't
(01:11):
really. I mean, you and I are pretty
intentional and we haven't necessarily discussed what we
will talk about with the kids about money.
We've said we don't like buying lots of plastic and we don't
like many things. Yeah, but more than that, it
seems like it's been pretty illusory.
Yep. So unlike some of the previous
(01:34):
episodes where we had done some of the work, I don't think that
we've done very much of the workat all.
And part of the interest in creating this episode is to
learn what work there is to do for now and for later and for
Sunday. Yeah, and I would say we had a
conversation with a friend the other day that works a lot with
(01:56):
multi generational wealthy families.
And we were talking about how family culture comes up in the
context of her job. And one of the things that she
said to me at the end of the conversation was, you know,
Danielle, I know you don't really feel like talking about
money with your kids, but you probably should.
And she said it in a very nice way, But that was my take away.
(02:17):
And I was like, you know what? She's right.
Yeah. It's something that you and I
are so close to in the sense that we've both spent more than
a decade in the investment world.
And talking about money as far as a deal that gets done or
investment performance is something that we do day in and
day out. But it hasn't been something
(02:39):
that we've navigated intentionally with our family.
Yep. Also, it's close to two decades.
Yep, that's true. OK.
Yeah. So as far as setting the context
window is concerned, then we have tried allowance,
particularly with Hunter, and that ended up just being a
(03:03):
situation where every couple of weeks when she got enough
allowance, she would beg us to go to Target and buy junk.
And that didn't really feel likeit was driven by our values.
Yep. And you know, a lot of questions
about money in the house from the kids.
Like what? They're just curious, like, how
(03:24):
much does the house cost? How much money do you have?
How? Much money do you have?
Yeah, those are common questions.
Those are common questions. Yeah.
And so I think ultimately I'm looking for a way to talk about
and socialize the idea of money as a tool to live within our
values. Let's talk about what this
(03:46):
episode is not about because that was actually my biggest
sticking point when we started talking about having this
episode. This episode is not called How
to Teach Your Kids about Money. This is not an episode where we
are going to get into the debateabout whether you should give
allowance for chores or just give allowance.
And we are certainly not going to suggest that you give your
(04:08):
kid 3 jars and write on them. Spend, share and save.
We have those in a closet. I just gave them away.
Oh nice. Well, so then everything was in
the give there. You go.
Not that those things don't work, maybe they do.
They haven't worked for us. But really I think that there
(04:31):
needs to be a foundation prior to that.
Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't.
I think you and I are pretty caught up in this idea of like,
why am I going to go to the ATM and get my children paper money
when that is not anything that we use in real life?
So that's number one. And #2 is our kids just buy junk
(04:51):
so far. So I have no interest in giving
them money. And I'm sure there are a couple
of other things. But so this is really for us,
maybe y'all are ahead of us, butfor us it really has to be a
foundational episode of what do we even want to talk about when
it comes to money and how do we make those decisions.
(05:12):
Yeah, money represents values and actions, and the actions
that we take with our money really do reflect our values.
And I think that just finding a way to communicate those back to
our children about why we spend money the way that we do and why
we don't spend money on certain things is a really good
foundation for us to then build on.
(05:34):
Yeah, OK. I feel like we probably have
enough of a context window. Definitely.
OK, great. So what is the most important
thing about family money? It is accepting the fact that
money is influencing our family culture already, whether we
realize it or not. Yes.
And therefore I suggest a la Claire Hughes Johnson, one of my
(06:00):
personal role models in the former COO of Stripe.
We make the implicit explicit. And so I have a plan as usual.
Yeah, they think it's a three-step process.
Step one, reflect on our own money stories.
Get clear on our personal beliefs and values around money
ourselves, both individually andother couple.
(06:20):
Step 2, Normalize money talk andeveryday life.
I would like us to start weavingin mini, honest, low stakes
conversations about money with the kids and then step three,
once they've had a foundation ofthose types of conversations, to
invite them into the decision making process around money.
(06:44):
How does that sound to you? It sounds great.
OK, so step one, reflect on our own money stories.
So I asked you to take a quiz from the folks at Money Scripts.
And so Money scripts are unconscious beliefs we hold
about money, often shaped by ourupbringing and life experience.
The term was coined by Doctor Brad Clontz and Dr. Ted Clontz,
(07:08):
2 financial psychologists and researchers.
Their work includes studies in peer reviewed journals like the
Journal of Financial Planning. They identified 4 core money
scripts. The first one's money avoidance,
believing that money is bad or undeserved.
The second is money focus, thinking that more money will
solve all of life's problems. The third is money status,
(07:32):
linking self worth to net worth.And the 4th is money vigilance,
being cautious and secretive about money.
So the idea is that understanding your money script,
presumably by taking this quiz, can help you see how past
messages about money may be influencing your present day
decisions, often times without you realizing it.
So did you take the quiz? I sure did.
(07:52):
OK, what did you think, What didyou find and what did you think?
So according to this quiz, I'm hot most highly correlated with
money focus. Which makes sense.
I work in venture capital. I focus on finding companies
that can grow very quickly, veryrapidly, to generate large
outlier outcomes. And I live in South Florida, so
(08:15):
the fact that I'm a 3.5 out of 6feels about right.
OK. Sounds good.
Yeah, I can see that in you. OK, Money focus, that is the
script that you most dominantly hold.
But even that it's relatively loose according to their scale.
Interesting. OK.
So for me, the money script thatI held most strongly was money
(08:36):
vigilance, and that's the one that says you must be careful
and responsible with money. I don't think that's surprising
to either of us. I mean, when you met me, I had
all of my savings in one bank account as opposed to any type
of risky investments, right? So I think that I hold that less
strongly than I did 10 years ago.
(08:56):
But it is definitely the one that stands out for me the most.
And I can say for certain that comes from my parents.
Yeah, it's definitely the way that I was raised is to not take
financial risks and to save everything possible.
And so I looked at the tips theysaid for the people who are
money vigilant, and they had a couple of good ones, but the one
(09:20):
I like the most is to budget forjoy.
So they suggested creating a funmoney budget and using that to
design some kind of like weekendgetaway or use it for a new
gadget or a hobby that I've beenputting off.
So I thought that was good. And it's something that you and
I have discussed over time. I think we're taking a lot more.
(09:43):
We're taking more vacations and adventures this year and
budgeting for that, which feels nice.
It does. So I feel like I'm working on my
money vigilance in that way. I have a couple other notices
around the money that I wanted to mention that didn't
necessarily show up on the moneyscripts Quiz 1 is that we value
our time greatly in our home. So that often means that we use
(10:07):
money to pay people to do thingsthat we don't think it's worth
our time. This is something I have
definitely learned from you. Yeah, I don't know where I got
it. Greg thinks his time is worth oh
man, like an infinite amount because he rarely does something
if he can have someone else do it.
That's true, so I wanted to mention it.
(10:28):
So examples would be we always get our groceries delivered.
We have a handyman that comes over often to do everything from
hanging pictures to building bunk beds.
We think a lot about commuting times from anything from doctors
to extracurriculars or even the schools that our children go to.
(10:51):
It is definitely a strong element in the way that we use
money and I wanted to mention itbecause it is something that I
did not learn growing up. I came from a family where we
spent almost every weekend fixing up the house or doing
some type of project that would never even occur to my family to
(11:15):
outsource. I mean, my dad still washes his
own windows and he really doesn't need to.
And so I wonder if there is something worth exploring here
because I do think our kids do not know anything about what it
means to not hire out and to consider doing things ourselves.
(11:37):
I will never forget when we lived in New York in our New
York City apartment and Hunter was two years old and a light
bulb went out and she said call Hom D, which is was the name of
our handyman in our New York apartment building.
So it's definitely something thekids have learned.
I mean, Carlos is like Maverick's favorite person
(11:58):
because he's always doing handiwork around our house.
Greg's looking at me and kind ofshaking his head.
So historically you have not been open to the idea of using
your free time to do things around the house.
Yeah. Which you know, you are handy
(12:19):
actually when you. White handy unless it has.
To do with technology or electronics, that is the only
thing that you will not let anyone else touch.
But you would never ask Carlos to help you set up a computer or
something like that. So I developed this framework by
myself, but it's been reinforcedby some pretty smart people that
I've listened to, like Remit Sethi who talks about how he
loves really nice clothes and drives a Toyota Camry.
(12:42):
That's his trade off. Or Naval Rabacon who's like, I
won't even return anything on Amazon.
I just throw it away because it's not worth my time.
Like I'm actually a pretty frugal person and will go
through the process to return things or getting money back on
a banana that shows up. That's not good.
And that gives me joy to know that I can take some of that
money back, but I get no joy from doing the activities that I
(13:06):
hire out for. And so while I understand the
perspective of modeling for our children, our children don't
have to tire out for these things.
They can certainly do themselves.
But that's my value. And that's the thing that I that
I pride myself on is I've got only so many hours in a day.
I need to learn to delegate. And I still am learning to
delegate things everyday that I want to take on myself.
(13:29):
But I'm like, no, I can't touch that.
Sure. OK, so I'm hearing it's a no for
now, which is just fine with me.But I guess I just wanted to
make the implicit. Explicit in the sense that if we
could even just talk to our kidsabout we made this choice.
Like, Daddy could have built your bunk beds.
But we think very highly of Carlos's work.
(13:50):
He is a trusted person in our life.
And we are paying because we would rather spend that time
playing with you on a Saturday or Daddy would rather spend some
of that time working than doing it ourselves.
Yeah. I grew up doing a lot of the
handiwork and stuff with my dad,but the thing that always struck
(14:11):
me as particularly odd was that he didn't have any of the tools.
Like he would always go and borrow them from our neighbor
who have the nicer tools. That's.
Funny. Yeah, like we would be building
TV cabinets with the little screwdrivers and Allen wrench
things that came in the box. And I'm like, where's the drill?
Having the right tools is also abig deal for you.
(14:33):
I understand. OK, Well, it's a notice.
You know, I'm recalling that recently the girls and I read
the second book in one of our favorite book series, which is
called The Way of the Warrior Kid.
It's by Jocko Willick, who's theformer Navy SEAL.
And basically the point of the book is discipline equals
freedom. And it's all these kind of.
(14:53):
Do pull ups. Yeah do pull ups.
It's amazing. Highly recommend.
But anyway, in the book, the boyMark buys a bike at a junkyard
for $2.00 and he and his friend Nathan, who has no money, spend
the summer fixing it up togetherfor Nathan.
So it's kind of like the joy of a job well done and quite
(15:17):
frankly, something productive todo with their time instead of
being bored over the summer. So it's just a different
perspective on how to think about hard work and time.
I think you did a great job embodying this while outsourcing
the other day, by the way, you had the brilliant idea of asking
(15:37):
Carlos to stain the shutters that had gotten sun bleached as
opposed to us hiring out to somebody to make new ones or
going to buy new ones. That I thought that was
brilliant because he did a beautiful job.
And that was you repurposing something that existed,
outsourcing it to a person who was not in the business of doing
(15:58):
that, but came away with a really great product.
Reminds me of that $2.00 bike. And it just happened to be that
it was Carlos doing the work. Interesting.
I, I will add that you are excellent at sourcing great
talent. Thank you.
And so and and maintaining wonderful relationships with
(16:18):
that talent. So while you do like to delegate
things, you have found a host offolks from our nanny to Carlos,
our handyman to the pool people.I can keep going that are
excellent at their craft and have a very high standard for
all of the projects that they dohere.
And you are great at making surethat they know both verbally and
(16:43):
monetarily that we value them. Yeah, as are you.
Thanks. OK, so we really value time.
We really value time because we really value things like sleep,
we really value things like exercise, we really value things
like togetherness, We really value things like food, food
that we make at home. Anyway, you're getting you're
(17:04):
getting down the Neufeld rabbit hole.
But yes, more to be revealed there.
OK. And then so, but I want to
circle back on this idea of the kids can make their own choices
about whether to delegate something or hire out for it.
And a question that came up in some of my research that I think
(17:25):
it's worth considering is, are we passing down a lifestyle to
our children that they will havea hard time supporting?
It's a very good question. I think that when it comes to
values, every person is going tohave their own values and we
need to communicate why these are our values and see if it
(17:45):
matches up with theirs because there's always choices.
There's always choices with money.
You can do this or you can do that.
You can learn to do your laundryso that you don't need to send
it out when you go to college, or you can send it out and then
not have the spending money to go out at night.
(18:07):
Like these are all choices. And I don't think that 1 is
better than the other. I actually think that there's a
lot of shame that's placed on not doing something like laundry
yourself. But who cares?
I mean seriously, who cares? Like, if you don't want to do
laundry and that's something that you hate and you have the
money to send it out and you're willing to take that trade off,
(18:31):
good for you. Like that is a thoughtful
choice. OK, well I'm going back to this.
Make the implicit, explicit ideaof we have chosen to have
someone do our laundry. There probably will come a time
where we will teach our childrenhow to do laundry so that they
(18:53):
have choices. There were many decades of my
life that I did my own laundry, right and did laundry for other
members of my family. Right now is not one of them.
So I think it's just an important thing to consider as
we are making choices because weare preparing the child for the
(19:13):
path, not the path for the child.
I think that's one of our core tenants as parents and so we
want to make sure that they havean opportunity to develop those
life skills, even if we are currently using money to allow
them to avoid it. Agreed.
So I think that we had a great first conversation reflecting on
(19:36):
our own money stories just now. Right?
OK, Step 2. Normalize money talk in everyday
life. So I would like to broaden,
maybe not this conversation, butI would like to broaden the
topic to mini money conversations with our family.
(19:57):
Again, minimum viable product. They're 75 and three.
Only one of them kind of knows math, so there isn't too much to
do here. But I do think that we can weave
some money talk into our some ofour existing experiments,
particularly with stories aroundsharing successes and struggles
(20:22):
with money with our children andalso with our values.
So money as a tool to live with our values within our values.
As I said in our values exercise, I love this idea of
success as the state of living and working according to our
values. And I think that that applies to
money as well. So we can think about noble uses
(20:45):
of money, right? So I asked ChatGPT to come up
with some everyday ways to be noble with money, and I came up
with a bunch of stuff. Some of it I hated. 2 of them I
absolutely loved. 1 is this ideaof delaying gratification, which
I think is so paramount in life in general, but it certainly
(21:05):
applies to money. To be able to say things like
we're not buying that right now because we're saving for
something more meaningful. And then also to be open about
money missteps. Like I overspent on that.
I'm learning to be more careful.That shows that growth is
(21:26):
ongoing and it can build trust within the family.
I never would have thought of that.
So thank you, ChatGPT. I like that a lot.
So I have some more ideas. Like we recently got our pool
resurfaced and talking to them about how we made that decision
over a year ago and put money aside specifically for this.
(21:49):
And then we did it in the month of April when we understood that
supply costs would be the lowest.
Just things like that and sharing with them why we make
certain choices. Like we buy you relatively
expensive shoes because they're more supportive for your feet
and we care about foot health, but hell.
That's funny. That's true.
(22:09):
But this means take care of them.
Please don't ruin them immediately.
Yes, right. I think that the conversation
for Jade and definitely for Maverick will also be about why
they don't get new things, right.
So you have this bike because webought this bike for the family.
This is not Hunter's bike. This is a family bike and we
(22:31):
bought the best bike that we could get so that we can use it
three times. Yep.
It's a great point, totally. I think it's just good to
reinforce the why when, wheneverwe give anything to these kids,
let's just say the value that itfulfills and why we were willing
to purchase it. And if we're not willing to
purchase something, same thing. The why and the value that it
doesn't fulfill. I think that's great.
(22:53):
That goes back to our stories episode about sharing meaning.
Yeah. OK.
And then step three, invite kidsinto the process.
So once we've laid the foundation with some of these
mini conversations, I think it makes sense to involve them more
in some decision making overtime, especially low stakes
(23:15):
things where we can help them with experiential learning
opportunities. I've heard it said in finance
circles that I would rather my kid blow $60.00 on some junk at
Target than $60,000 on a degree that isn't going anywhere.
Yeah. So start small.
So one of the things I thought about, which we have six months
(23:38):
until birthday season here, but we could give Hunter in
particular a budget for her 8th birthday party.
Yeah, and for school supplies and for tuition.
School tuition, I mean, it's oneyou keep bringing up.
Because I think if she can pay that bill out of her own
brokerage account and see that every month that that's how much
(24:01):
is going, I think she's going tolike school a lot more.
She doesn't have a basis for thousands of dollars versus
hundreds of dollars versus 10s of dollars.
I think she will have a basis for thousands of dollars just
talking amongst like, if she's paying that bill, hear me out,
(24:21):
she's going to go to school and be like, do you know how much it
costs the school? And that's a good conversation
for kids to have. Esther Wojacki talks about how
the Japanese don't have janitorsand how they sweep up the
classrooms and clean everything up themselves.
And that is really what taking pride in your school means.
And so, you know, if you're paying that tuition bill.
(24:45):
Interesting. Well, I encourage you to support
her through that. Run that experiment with her.
Absolutely, I'd like to try it for this.
Have her pay her tuition? Why not?
Exactly. OK, great.
Well, so that leads into my nextquestion, which is what
experiments are we willing to run around family money?
Oh, and by the way, that's an Esterwood Jackie practice around
paying tuition that I stole around paying college.
(25:06):
But yeah. You want to apply it to 3rd
grade. Basically, I don't see why not
like that gives a basis for big numbers I think.
OK, Hey, why not? If it doesn't work out, it
doesn't work out. That low stakes here.
This is a lot of fun. Yeah.
OK. So what experiments are we
willing to run around family money?
I think with regards to Step 1, you and I have started the
conversation around being more explicit about our use of money
(25:33):
in a values oriented way. And with regards to #2 as far as
the normalizing money talks in everyday life, what would you be
willing to commit to? This either starting with the Y
or incorporating the value into everything that is spent on
(25:56):
them. OK, great.
Right. So how how Yeah.
What's better way of of saying that?
OK, so I think it comes down to sharing stories around struggles
and successes with money and then also leveraging.
I mean, there isn't much of A better value in our family cheer
than Noble for talking about money and noble uses of money
(26:21):
and then #3 inviting kids into the process.
I mentioned the birthday and yousaid tuition, but I'm thinking
even small things again, minimumviable products like allowing
them the opportunity when we're doing our weekly grocery check
out to look at the relative costof things and decide whether
they want two types of fruit or one bar of chocolate kind of
(26:43):
thing. Yeah.
OK, so there's so much to unravel about money, huh?
A ton to unpack. I'd like to suggest that we keep
it simple for now, but notice when there are opportunities to
weave money conversations into our everyday comings and goings
(27:04):
and choices that we're making. Yes.
So to recap, what's the most important thing about family
money? It is influencing our family
culture whether we realize it ornot.
That's right. And so we're going to do three
things. Reflect upon our own money
stories. Yep, and share them and.
(27:25):
Share them with one another, normalize money talk in everyday
life and invite kids into the process.
Love it. And we'd love to hear from
families that are doing this already with their kids, with
older kids that, you know, we'regetting some responsibilities
around money, how you're handling this, especially in the
(27:48):
age of no more paper money, no more checkbooks, no more going
to the bank and talking to the teller.
Yeah, and what are your values around money 'cause I would bet
that they would differ from ours.
So we would love to hear how youuse money as a way to live
within your values as well. Agreed, I think there's probably
(28:12):
some deep dive into the Reddit fire and fat fire communities
that we could do here as well for some creative ideas.
All right, love you, Goosy. Love you Goosy.
Welcome to our experiment updatewhere we recap what we've tried
at home, how it worked or didn't, and what we're tweaking
next. Danielle, we've been running a
(28:34):
lot of experiment updates, probably the most of any of the
listeners. What do you think about how
they've been going so far in aggregate?
Do you think that we're on to something?
I really do. I felt great about the flow of
this weekend in particular. I feel like we are dedicating
space. It feels like we have different
(28:57):
zones for different types of connection and that feels really
good. It sure does think these kids
really notice. I mean, Maverick gave me a huge
hug after nap yesterday and thatnever happens.
Yeah, you guys have definitely been strengthening your your
bond lately. Indeed, So I don't want to take
(29:18):
up too much time on these experiment updates, but I do
think that they're all important.
So should we start with the family meal?
Absolutely. All right, so minimum viable
product was let's go outside andeat popsicles together after 5.
Yes, but Jade and Maverick chosethe popsicles and we made them
together on Thursday, which I think was a cute add on, so they
(29:41):
were very excited about it. Yes, now great call doing them
outside because my gosh were they messy.
Indeed. But tremendous results with a
boomerang effect because of the sugar.
So the kids were so happy, firstof all, that we were there with
them, especially that I was eating with them.
(30:02):
I do not eat. Dessert.
Dessert ever? Yeah.
Or at 5:00 ever. So it was actually really
exciting to all sit down together in a different location
outside on the turf. We were very relaxed and to eat
something yummy and messy, yeah.It was it was very special and
we could have just gone inside and we were ready to clean up.
(30:24):
But we started talking about howwe were going to show them
family movement and they were like, why would we wait?
Oh, wait, no, hold on, Greg. We also asked questions about
how the week went. Oh yeah.
And what do you not want to bring into next week?
And we had some awesome responses.
(30:46):
Awesome responses. So Jade really had some adorable
play ideas at her school, but Hunter?
So on Thursday morning, she was going on a field trip and she
didn't think that her best friend was going to be there.
And she woke up in the morning and pretended that she was sick.
And then about an hour later said, you know, mommy, the real
(31:07):
reason why I don't want to go isbecause my friend's not going to
be there. And during family meal, she
said, I want to change the way Iacted yesterday because I
actually had a great time on thefield trip without her.
And I wish that I hadn't not wanted to go.
And we both separately later that night and she told me, you
(31:29):
guys are so weird. You both told me that that was
such a reflective response, but it was really fun too.
It was a really nice, nice little moment that we had, I
mean, to start to see kind of that metacognition, I guess, if
you will. But Hunter, also Hunter for the
win during family meal said, Mommy, you cannot give me all of
(31:52):
this sugar and then not ask me to move my body.
Let's do family movement now. And Greg and I looked at each
other and we're like, oh, well, OK, sounds good.
We're going to stay up a little bit later, but that's all right.
And if, meanwhile, it was actually already happening
because Jade was running around in circles like a dog trying to
catch her table. So that's just normal.
(32:13):
So we ended up doing family movement for the next, what, 30
to 45 minutes? We practiced throwing and
catching with footballs and large balls.
It was so nice. It was really a lovely way to
start the weekend. It sure was.
I can't believe that was Friday.Like that feels like so long ago
given how many experiments we'vebeen packing into the weekend.
(32:34):
But it's it was that was the best way to start the.
Week. It was so nice and they've
already picked out lemon popsicles for next weekend, so
they're very excited. Great.
I got 2 thumbs up on Saturday morning.
I asked them how it went. Everybody give it 2 thumbs up.
Yeah. So then on Saturday we did our
pre meeting and our family pre meeting is an important and
(32:58):
necessary part of our family meeting, we're finding.
So hope that as you're trying this at home that you set aside
some time to create an agenda together and really get
intentional about what you're going to do.
I think the kids look forward tothe Saturday pre meeting more
than they do the Sunday meeting because as soon as they woke up
on on Saturday morning they toldme about how we have to start
(33:21):
voting. They wanted to vote before you
even came downstairs, Greg. Yeah, I think they want to win.
I think they're darn competitive.
They all want their own ideas. Also, the idea of choosing the
snack in the game feels fun. Yes.
So yeah, on Saturday we had our Saturday pre meeting and we've
continued it throughout the weekto try to talk about our family
value of the month, which is being noble.
(33:43):
And so I've consistently said that noble means doing the right
thing even when it's hard and tovarying degrees I think that is
caught on. We also read, I attempted to
read a couple of noble stories, particularly about Clara Barton
this week, the founder of the American Red Cross.
And well, like me me muscle menos, I would say.
(34:05):
But this weekend, the Kocha Jar came back with a vengeance,
people. We didn't really use it too much
during the week, but over the weekend we had five or six
different submissions by the kids noticing noble acts of one
another. And Jade had the most adorable
innovation to turn one of her scraps of paper into a necklace.
(34:28):
She said, Mommy, I actually wantto take this piece of paper and
make a noble necklace out of it because she was so proud of her
noble act. So before you knew it, we had
three noble necklaces going on this weekend.
From the kids, it was very, verysweet.
And the safe hand strong hearts call and response has also.
(34:50):
I'd say it's been about 70% effective, which is something.
For sure. It's definitely catchy.
I mean sometimes they will scream it in the same second of
biting or hitting. They'll be like, oh, say.
Hey, there's been no biting thisweek.
So yes, often Maverick will be screaming strong hearts while
pinching someone. But you can see that he has the,
let's call it like a simultaneous behavior and
(35:14):
thought process, right? So it feels like.
Progress. It does.
It does. And then on Sunday we had our
third family meeting. Yeah, that was very smooth.
Yeah, I think that everybody knew what to expect this week.
It was our third time doing it. Everybody knew what to expect by
the third time, which felt good.I felt a little bit different
(35:35):
kind of moving from that storming to that forming phase,
if you will. Yeah, it really did.
I personally really liked learning how to do something
together. So this week we did learn how to
make paper airplanes. And I still can't really make a
paper airplane, but I'm improving.
But this idea of like this tactile learning and not
(35:55):
watching a video, Greg kind of led the way was great.
And you know, I think that I quickly dismissed your idea of
Hunter teaching us about dinosaurs last week.
But I think that upon further reflection, it seemed almost
like you did teach us how to make paper airplanes this
weekend because you're the only one that knew how to do it.
And that was really nice. So sorry, and I'd like to
(36:22):
consider that for next week. We tried this idea of someone
teaching us how to do something.OK so to recap, family meeting.
We still love the Saturday pre meeting and we're learning what
works as far as the Sunday meeting itself.
But before the play, it was onlyabout 25 minutes this week, so
that felt like the right amount of time.
(36:43):
Yeah, we're not talking about hours.
Here, and this was actually the longest play that we did at the
end of our family meeting because it really was family
play as well as family stories. Typically our play has been like
a game of Zingo or a round of Pictionary.
Right. Yeah.
So this week I brought out a bigbag of photos that I had already
scanned into an online album. And it's kind of meta because
(37:04):
I'm like, actually these photos would be perfect for the kids to
to learn about my family and to make a physical album.
So I think I pulled a lot of these out of a physical album.
And now I'm having the kids remix them into an album while
teaching them about my parents and my grandparents, who none of
them are alive, unfortunately. So the kids are learning that
way. And I think we all had, I think,
(37:25):
a beautiful time just sitting there going through photos and
sticking them in albums and reading another album.
What do you think? I thought it was wonderful.
So this definitely hits upon family stories, but did it feel
like play to you as well becauseyou had said that scrapbooking
would be a great idea of of playfor you I.
Mean, I could have done that foranother hour or two.
(37:45):
But did it feel like play? Yes.
Cool. I didn't check my phone once.
I wasn't thinking about anythingelse.
So I think that's what that would be my definition of play
these days, Something that takesmy mind off of everything else.
Cool. That's great.
And then on family space, so we have the kids, individual areas.
That has been fine. I asked them how they feel about
(38:06):
it. They like having them, but there
hasn't been much movement in thespace so far.
But the swap of the dining room table to now become our kitchen
table has been awesome. We have played Settlers of
Catan, done about 7 different puzzles on that table.
It's where we're having our family meeting, but it doesn't
feel stuffy and we had a couple meals there, which is awesome.
(38:30):
We actually ate dinner together this Sunday.
We did wow crazy before the family meeting.
Yeah. So what strong beliefs are you
holding on to at home? The strong belief that we were
holding on to is, yes, we eventually wanted a table in
that room, but it couldn't be the table that was in the other
room like that, just. Yeah, that's the fancy black.
Table. That's the fancy black table.
(38:50):
And for whatever reason, this isthe furniture we bought the
house with too. You know, there's COVID times,
times are rough. Couldn't get any furniture.
Now you can't get eggs. The furniture was staged that
way and we just kept it that way.
I think it was we had walked into the house and we're like,
oh, this is the way the house issupposed to be downstairs.
And Danielle was like, you know,I kind of want a table in the
(39:11):
other room, but we should have around kitchen table.
And I agree that should be the ultimate goal.
But you're just let's do the MVP.
Let's do the easy thing. Hit press the easy button and
just swap the furniture one roomto the other.
Game changer. Absolute game changer.
I agree, family space making it adaptable.
(39:32):
Yeah. All right, so experiments are
working out. Well, they are.
They are and I'm sure you heard at the beginning of the episode,
but we have the most important thing tip sheet that Danielle
here made for all of you to follow along and understand the
most important thing about each episode as you're going in or as
(39:54):
you're refreshing yourself on some of these experiments.
You can get that from usifyouemailushi@tmitpod.com or
sign up for our newsletter on our website, tmitpod.com.
We will send you the resource and look forward to learning
(40:15):
more about you all. Right.
Great. Thanks everybody for listening.
Love you Goosy. Love you goosy.
Hey guys, it's Greg. Real quick before we jump in, we
know we're throwing a lot at youin these first eight episodes,
so we made a little CHEAT SHEET with the most important
takeaways. Let's be honest, Danielle made
it. If you want it, sign up for our
newsletter at tmitpod.com. That's TMIT, the most important
thing, pod.com or e-mail us at high at tmitpod.com and we'll
(00:26):
send it your way. Hope you're loving the show.
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. Indeed it is.
(00:46):
Indeed. Hi, Greg.
Hi, Danielle. So today we are.
That is what you call me. So today we are talking about
family money. So why did we want to have an
episode on family money? My answer is because it feels
like something that we ought to be talking about that we haven't
(01:11):
really. I mean, you and I are pretty
intentional and we haven't necessarily discussed what we
will talk about with the kids about money.
We've said we don't like buying lots of plastic and we don't
like many things. Yeah, but more than that, it
seems like it's been pretty illusory.
Yep. So unlike some of the previous
(01:34):
episodes where we had done some of the work, I don't think that
we've done very much of the workat all.
And part of the interest in creating this episode is to
learn what work there is to do for now and for later and for
Sunday. Yeah, and I would say we had a
conversation with a friend the other day that works a lot with
(01:56):
multi generational wealthy families.
And we were talking about how family culture comes up in the
context of her job. And one of the things that she
said to me at the end of the conversation was, you know,
Danielle, I know you don't really feel like talking about
money with your kids, but you probably should.
And she said it in a very nice way, But that was my take away.
(02:17):
And I was like, you know what? She's right.
Yeah. It's something that you and I
are so close to in the sense that we've both spent more than
a decade in the investment world.
And talking about money as far as a deal that gets done or
investment performance is something that we do day in and
day out. But it hasn't been something
(02:39):
that we've navigated intentionally with our family.
Yep. Also, it's close to two decades.
Yep, that's true. OK.
Yeah. So as far as setting the context
window is concerned, then we have tried allowance,
particularly with Hunter, and that ended up just being a
(03:03):
situation where every couple of weeks when she got enough
allowance, she would beg us to go to Target and buy junk.
And that didn't really feel likeit was driven by our values.
Yep. And you know, a lot of questions
about money in the house from the kids.
Like what? They're just curious, like, how
(03:24):
much does the house cost? How much money do you have?
How? Much money do you have?
Yeah, those are common questions.
Those are common questions. Yeah.
And so I think ultimately I'm looking for a way to talk about
and socialize the idea of money as a tool to live within our
values. Let's talk about what this
(03:46):
episode is not about because that was actually my biggest
sticking point when we started talking about having this
episode. This episode is not called How
to Teach Your Kids about Money. This is not an episode where we
are going to get into the debateabout whether you should give
allowance for chores or just give allowance.
And we are certainly not going to suggest that you give your
(04:08):
kid 3 jars and write on them. Spend, share and save.
We have those in a closet. I just gave them away.
Oh nice. Well, so then everything was in
the give there. You go.
Not that those things don't work, maybe they do.
They haven't worked for us. But really I think that there
(04:31):
needs to be a foundation prior to that.
Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't.
I think you and I are pretty caught up in this idea of like,
why am I going to go to the ATM and get my children paper money
when that is not anything that we use in real life?
So that's number one. And #2 is our kids just buy junk
(04:51):
so far. So I have no interest in giving
them money. And I'm sure there are a couple
of other things. But so this is really for us,
maybe y'all are ahead of us, butfor us it really has to be a
foundational episode of what do we even want to talk about when
it comes to money and how do we make those decisions.
(05:12):
Yeah, money represents values and actions, and the actions
that we take with our money really do reflect our values.
And I think that just finding a way to communicate those back to
our children about why we spend money the way that we do and why
we don't spend money on certain things is a really good
foundation for us to then build on.
(05:34):
Yeah, OK. I feel like we probably have
enough of a context window. Definitely.
OK, great. So what is the most important
thing about family money? It is accepting the fact that
money is influencing our family culture already, whether we
realize it or not. Yes.
And therefore I suggest a la Claire Hughes Johnson, one of my
(06:00):
personal role models in the former COO of Stripe.
We make the implicit explicit. And so I have a plan as usual.
Yeah, they think it's a three-step process.
Step one, reflect on our own money stories.
Get clear on our personal beliefs and values around money
ourselves, both individually andother couple.
(06:20):
Step 2, Normalize money talk andeveryday life.
I would like us to start weavingin mini, honest, low stakes
conversations about money with the kids and then step three,
once they've had a foundation ofthose types of conversations, to
invite them into the decision making process around money.
(06:44):
How does that sound to you? It sounds great.
OK, so step one, reflect on our own money stories.
So I asked you to take a quiz from the folks at Money Scripts.
And so Money scripts are unconscious beliefs we hold
about money, often shaped by ourupbringing and life experience.
The term was coined by Doctor Brad Clontz and Dr. Ted Clontz,
(07:08):
2 financial psychologists and researchers.
Their work includes studies in peer reviewed journals like the
Journal of Financial Planning. They identified 4 core money
scripts. The first one's money avoidance,
believing that money is bad or undeserved.
The second is money focus, thinking that more money will
solve all of life's problems. The third is money status,
(07:32):
linking self worth to net worth.And the 4th is money vigilance,
being cautious and secretive about money.
So the idea is that understanding your money script,
presumably by taking this quiz, can help you see how past
messages about money may be influencing your present day
decisions, often times without you realizing it.
So did you take the quiz? I sure did.
(07:52):
OK, what did you think, What didyou find and what did you think?
So according to this quiz, I'm hot most highly correlated with
money focus. Which makes sense.
I work in venture capital. I focus on finding companies
that can grow very quickly, veryrapidly, to generate large
outlier outcomes. And I live in South Florida, so
(08:15):
the fact that I'm a 3.5 out of 6feels about right.
OK. Sounds good.
Yeah, I can see that in you. OK, Money focus, that is the
script that you most dominantly hold.
But even that it's relatively loose according to their scale.
Interesting. OK.
So for me, the money script thatI held most strongly was money
(08:36):
vigilance, and that's the one that says you must be careful
and responsible with money. I don't think that's surprising
to either of us. I mean, when you met me, I had
all of my savings in one bank account as opposed to any type
of risky investments, right? So I think that I hold that less
strongly than I did 10 years ago.
(08:56):
But it is definitely the one that stands out for me the most.
And I can say for certain that comes from my parents.
Yeah, it's definitely the way that I was raised is to not take
financial risks and to save everything possible.
And so I looked at the tips theysaid for the people who are
money vigilant, and they had a couple of good ones, but the one
(09:20):
I like the most is to budget forjoy.
So they suggested creating a funmoney budget and using that to
design some kind of like weekendgetaway or use it for a new
gadget or a hobby that I've beenputting off.
So I thought that was good. And it's something that you and
I have discussed over time. I think we're taking a lot more.
(09:43):
We're taking more vacations and adventures this year and
budgeting for that, which feels nice.
It does. So I feel like I'm working on my
money vigilance in that way. I have a couple other notices
around the money that I wanted to mention that didn't
necessarily show up on the moneyscripts Quiz 1 is that we value
our time greatly in our home. So that often means that we use
(10:07):
money to pay people to do thingsthat we don't think it's worth
our time. This is something I have
definitely learned from you. Yeah, I don't know where I got
it. Greg thinks his time is worth oh
man, like an infinite amount because he rarely does something
if he can have someone else do it.
That's true, so I wanted to mention it.
(10:28):
So examples would be we always get our groceries delivered.
We have a handyman that comes over often to do everything from
hanging pictures to building bunk beds.
We think a lot about commuting times from anything from doctors
to extracurriculars or even the schools that our children go to.
(10:51):
It is definitely a strong element in the way that we use
money and I wanted to mention itbecause it is something that I
did not learn growing up. I came from a family where we
spent almost every weekend fixing up the house or doing
some type of project that would never even occur to my family to
(11:15):
outsource. I mean, my dad still washes his
own windows and he really doesn't need to.
And so I wonder if there is something worth exploring here
because I do think our kids do not know anything about what it
means to not hire out and to consider doing things ourselves.
(11:37):
I will never forget when we lived in New York in our New
York City apartment and Hunter was two years old and a light
bulb went out and she said call Hom D, which is was the name of
our handyman in our New York apartment building.
So it's definitely something thekids have learned.
I mean, Carlos is like Maverick's favorite person
(11:58):
because he's always doing handiwork around our house.
Greg's looking at me and kind ofshaking his head.
So historically you have not been open to the idea of using
your free time to do things around the house.
Yeah. Which you know, you are handy
(12:19):
actually when you. White handy unless it has.
To do with technology or electronics, that is the only
thing that you will not let anyone else touch.
But you would never ask Carlos to help you set up a computer or
something like that. So I developed this framework by
myself, but it's been reinforcedby some pretty smart people that
I've listened to, like Remit Sethi who talks about how he
loves really nice clothes and drives a Toyota Camry.
(12:42):
That's his trade off. Or Naval Rabacon who's like, I
won't even return anything on Amazon.
I just throw it away because it's not worth my time.
Like I'm actually a pretty frugal person and will go
through the process to return things or getting money back on
a banana that shows up. That's not good.
And that gives me joy to know that I can take some of that
money back, but I get no joy from doing the activities that I
(13:06):
hire out for. And so while I understand the
perspective of modeling for our children, our children don't
have to tire out for these things.
They can certainly do themselves.
But that's my value. And that's the thing that I that
I pride myself on is I've got only so many hours in a day.
I need to learn to delegate. And I still am learning to
delegate things everyday that I want to take on myself.
(13:29):
But I'm like, no, I can't touch that.
Sure. OK, so I'm hearing it's a no for
now, which is just fine with me.But I guess I just wanted to
make the implicit. Explicit in the sense that if we
could even just talk to our kidsabout we made this choice.
Like, Daddy could have built your bunk beds.
But we think very highly of Carlos's work.
(13:50):
He is a trusted person in our life.
And we are paying because we would rather spend that time
playing with you on a Saturday or Daddy would rather spend some
of that time working than doing it ourselves.
Yeah. I grew up doing a lot of the
handiwork and stuff with my dad,but the thing that always struck
(14:11):
me as particularly odd was that he didn't have any of the tools.
Like he would always go and borrow them from our neighbor
who have the nicer tools. That's.
Funny. Yeah, like we would be building
TV cabinets with the little screwdrivers and Allen wrench
things that came in the box. And I'm like, where's the drill?
Having the right tools is also abig deal for you.
(14:33):
I understand. OK, Well, it's a notice.
You know, I'm recalling that recently the girls and I read
the second book in one of our favorite book series, which is
called The Way of the Warrior Kid.
It's by Jocko Willick, who's theformer Navy SEAL.
And basically the point of the book is discipline equals
freedom. And it's all these kind of.
(14:53):
Do pull ups. Yeah do pull ups.
It's amazing. Highly recommend.
But anyway, in the book, the boyMark buys a bike at a junkyard
for $2.00 and he and his friend Nathan, who has no money, spend
the summer fixing it up togetherfor Nathan.
So it's kind of like the joy of a job well done and quite
(15:17):
frankly, something productive todo with their time instead of
being bored over the summer. So it's just a different
perspective on how to think about hard work and time.
I think you did a great job embodying this while outsourcing
the other day, by the way, you had the brilliant idea of asking
(15:37):
Carlos to stain the shutters that had gotten sun bleached as
opposed to us hiring out to somebody to make new ones or
going to buy new ones. That I thought that was
brilliant because he did a beautiful job.
And that was you repurposing something that existed,
outsourcing it to a person who was not in the business of doing
(15:58):
that, but came away with a really great product.
Reminds me of that $2.00 bike. And it just happened to be that
it was Carlos doing the work. Interesting.
I, I will add that you are excellent at sourcing great
talent. Thank you.
And so and and maintaining wonderful relationships with
(16:18):
that talent. So while you do like to delegate
things, you have found a host offolks from our nanny to Carlos,
our handyman to the pool people.I can keep going that are
excellent at their craft and have a very high standard for
all of the projects that they dohere.
And you are great at making surethat they know both verbally and
(16:43):
monetarily that we value them. Yeah, as are you.
Thanks. OK, so we really value time.
We really value time because we really value things like sleep,
we really value things like exercise, we really value things
like togetherness, We really value things like food, food
that we make at home. Anyway, you're getting you're
(17:04):
getting down the Neufeld rabbit hole.
But yes, more to be revealed there.
OK. And then so, but I want to
circle back on this idea of the kids can make their own choices
about whether to delegate something or hire out for it.
And a question that came up in some of my research that I think
(17:25):
it's worth considering is, are we passing down a lifestyle to
our children that they will havea hard time supporting?
It's a very good question. I think that when it comes to
values, every person is going tohave their own values and we
need to communicate why these are our values and see if it
(17:45):
matches up with theirs because there's always choices.
There's always choices with money.
You can do this or you can do that.
You can learn to do your laundryso that you don't need to send
it out when you go to college, or you can send it out and then
not have the spending money to go out at night.
(18:07):
Like these are all choices. And I don't think that 1 is
better than the other. I actually think that there's a
lot of shame that's placed on not doing something like laundry
yourself. But who cares?
I mean seriously, who cares? Like, if you don't want to do
laundry and that's something that you hate and you have the
money to send it out and you're willing to take that trade off,
(18:31):
good for you. Like that is a thoughtful
choice. OK, well I'm going back to this.
Make the implicit, explicit ideaof we have chosen to have
someone do our laundry. There probably will come a time
where we will teach our childrenhow to do laundry so that they
(18:53):
have choices. There were many decades of my
life that I did my own laundry, right and did laundry for other
members of my family. Right now is not one of them.
So I think it's just an important thing to consider as
we are making choices because weare preparing the child for the
(19:13):
path, not the path for the child.
I think that's one of our core tenants as parents and so we
want to make sure that they havean opportunity to develop those
life skills, even if we are currently using money to allow
them to avoid it. Agreed.
So I think that we had a great first conversation reflecting on
(19:36):
our own money stories just now. Right?
OK, Step 2. Normalize money talk in everyday
life. So I would like to broaden,
maybe not this conversation, butI would like to broaden the
topic to mini money conversations with our family.
(19:57):
Again, minimum viable product. They're 75 and three.
Only one of them kind of knows math, so there isn't too much to
do here. But I do think that we can weave
some money talk into our some ofour existing experiments,
particularly with stories aroundsharing successes and struggles
(20:22):
with money with our children andalso with our values.
So money as a tool to live with our values within our values.
As I said in our values exercise, I love this idea of
success as the state of living and working according to our
values. And I think that that applies to
money as well. So we can think about noble uses
(20:45):
of money, right? So I asked ChatGPT to come up
with some everyday ways to be noble with money, and I came up
with a bunch of stuff. Some of it I hated. 2 of them I
absolutely loved. 1 is this ideaof delaying gratification, which
I think is so paramount in life in general, but it certainly
(21:05):
applies to money. To be able to say things like
we're not buying that right now because we're saving for
something more meaningful. And then also to be open about
money missteps. Like I overspent on that.
I'm learning to be more careful.That shows that growth is
(21:26):
ongoing and it can build trust within the family.
I never would have thought of that.
So thank you, ChatGPT. I like that a lot.
So I have some more ideas. Like we recently got our pool
resurfaced and talking to them about how we made that decision
over a year ago and put money aside specifically for this.
(21:49):
And then we did it in the month of April when we understood that
supply costs would be the lowest.
Just things like that and sharing with them why we make
certain choices. Like we buy you relatively
expensive shoes because they're more supportive for your feet
and we care about foot health, but hell.
That's funny. That's true.
(22:09):
But this means take care of them.
Please don't ruin them immediately.
Yes, right. I think that the conversation
for Jade and definitely for Maverick will also be about why
they don't get new things, right.
So you have this bike because webought this bike for the family.
This is not Hunter's bike. This is a family bike and we
(22:31):
bought the best bike that we could get so that we can use it
three times. Yep.
It's a great point, totally. I think it's just good to
reinforce the why when, wheneverwe give anything to these kids,
let's just say the value that itfulfills and why we were willing
to purchase it. And if we're not willing to
purchase something, same thing. The why and the value that it
doesn't fulfill. I think that's great.
(22:53):
That goes back to our stories episode about sharing meaning.
Yeah. OK.
And then step three, invite kidsinto the process.
So once we've laid the foundation with some of these
mini conversations, I think it makes sense to involve them more
in some decision making overtime, especially low stakes
(23:15):
things where we can help them with experiential learning
opportunities. I've heard it said in finance
circles that I would rather my kid blow $60.00 on some junk at
Target than $60,000 on a degree that isn't going anywhere.
Yeah. So start small.
So one of the things I thought about, which we have six months
(23:38):
until birthday season here, but we could give Hunter in
particular a budget for her 8th birthday party.
Yeah, and for school supplies and for tuition.
School tuition, I mean, it's oneyou keep bringing up.
Because I think if she can pay that bill out of her own
brokerage account and see that every month that that's how much
(24:01):
is going, I think she's going tolike school a lot more.
She doesn't have a basis for thousands of dollars versus
hundreds of dollars versus 10s of dollars.
I think she will have a basis for thousands of dollars just
talking amongst like, if she's paying that bill, hear me out,
(24:21):
she's going to go to school and be like, do you know how much it
costs the school? And that's a good conversation
for kids to have. Esther Wojacki talks about how
the Japanese don't have janitorsand how they sweep up the
classrooms and clean everything up themselves.
And that is really what taking pride in your school means.
And so, you know, if you're paying that tuition bill.
(24:45):
Interesting. Well, I encourage you to support
her through that. Run that experiment with her.
Absolutely, I'd like to try it for this.
Have her pay her tuition? Why not?
Exactly. OK, great.
Well, so that leads into my nextquestion, which is what
experiments are we willing to run around family money?
Oh, and by the way, that's an Esterwood Jackie practice around
paying tuition that I stole around paying college.
(25:06):
But yeah. You want to apply it to 3rd
grade. Basically, I don't see why not
like that gives a basis for big numbers I think.
OK, Hey, why not? If it doesn't work out, it
doesn't work out. That low stakes here.
This is a lot of fun. Yeah.
OK. So what experiments are we
willing to run around family money?
I think with regards to Step 1, you and I have started the
conversation around being more explicit about our use of money
(25:33):
in a values oriented way. And with regards to #2 as far as
the normalizing money talks in everyday life, what would you be
willing to commit to? This either starting with the Y
or incorporating the value into everything that is spent on
(25:56):
them. OK, great.
Right. So how how Yeah.
What's better way of of saying that?
OK, so I think it comes down to sharing stories around struggles
and successes with money and then also leveraging.
I mean, there isn't much of A better value in our family cheer
than Noble for talking about money and noble uses of money
(26:21):
and then #3 inviting kids into the process.
I mentioned the birthday and yousaid tuition, but I'm thinking
even small things again, minimumviable products like allowing
them the opportunity when we're doing our weekly grocery check
out to look at the relative costof things and decide whether
they want two types of fruit or one bar of chocolate kind of
(26:43):
thing. Yeah.
OK, so there's so much to unravel about money, huh?
A ton to unpack. I'd like to suggest that we keep
it simple for now, but notice when there are opportunities to
weave money conversations into our everyday comings and goings
(27:04):
and choices that we're making. Yes.
So to recap, what's the most important thing about family
money? It is influencing our family
culture whether we realize it ornot.
That's right. And so we're going to do three
things. Reflect upon our own money
stories. Yep, and share them and.
(27:25):
Share them with one another, normalize money talk in everyday
life and invite kids into the process.
Love it. And we'd love to hear from
families that are doing this already with their kids, with
older kids that, you know, we'regetting some responsibilities
around money, how you're handling this, especially in the
(27:48):
age of no more paper money, no more checkbooks, no more going
to the bank and talking to the teller.
Yeah, and what are your values around money 'cause I would bet
that they would differ from ours.
So we would love to hear how youuse money as a way to live
within your values as well. Agreed, I think there's probably
(28:12):
some deep dive into the Reddit fire and fat fire communities
that we could do here as well for some creative ideas.
All right, love you, Goosy. Love you Goosy.
Welcome to our experiment updatewhere we recap what we've tried
at home, how it worked or didn't, and what we're tweaking
next. Danielle, we've been running a
(28:34):
lot of experiment updates, probably the most of any of the
listeners. What do you think about how
they've been going so far in aggregate?
Do you think that we're on to something?
I really do. I felt great about the flow of
this weekend in particular. I feel like we are dedicating
space. It feels like we have different
(28:57):
zones for different types of connection and that feels really
good. It sure does think these kids
really notice. I mean, Maverick gave me a huge
hug after nap yesterday and thatnever happens.
Yeah, you guys have definitely been strengthening your your
bond lately. Indeed, So I don't want to take
(29:18):
up too much time on these experiment updates, but I do
think that they're all important.
So should we start with the family meal?
Absolutely. All right, so minimum viable
product was let's go outside andeat popsicles together after 5.
Yes, but Jade and Maverick chosethe popsicles and we made them
together on Thursday, which I think was a cute add on, so they
(29:41):
were very excited about it. Yes, now great call doing them
outside because my gosh were they messy.
Indeed. But tremendous results with a
boomerang effect because of the sugar.
So the kids were so happy, firstof all, that we were there with
them, especially that I was eating with them.
(30:02):
I do not eat. Dessert.
Dessert ever? Yeah.
Or at 5:00 ever. So it was actually really
exciting to all sit down together in a different location
outside on the turf. We were very relaxed and to eat
something yummy and messy, yeah.It was it was very special and
we could have just gone inside and we were ready to clean up.
(30:24):
But we started talking about howwe were going to show them
family movement and they were like, why would we wait?
Oh, wait, no, hold on, Greg. We also asked questions about
how the week went. Oh yeah.
And what do you not want to bring into next week?
And we had some awesome responses.
(30:46):
Awesome responses. So Jade really had some adorable
play ideas at her school, but Hunter?
So on Thursday morning, she was going on a field trip and she
didn't think that her best friend was going to be there.
And she woke up in the morning and pretended that she was sick.
And then about an hour later said, you know, mommy, the real
(31:07):
reason why I don't want to go isbecause my friend's not going to
be there. And during family meal, she
said, I want to change the way Iacted yesterday because I
actually had a great time on thefield trip without her.
And I wish that I hadn't not wanted to go.
And we both separately later that night and she told me, you
(31:29):
guys are so weird. You both told me that that was
such a reflective response, but it was really fun too.
It was a really nice, nice little moment that we had, I
mean, to start to see kind of that metacognition, I guess, if
you will. But Hunter, also Hunter for the
win during family meal said, Mommy, you cannot give me all of
(31:52):
this sugar and then not ask me to move my body.
Let's do family movement now. And Greg and I looked at each
other and we're like, oh, well, OK, sounds good.
We're going to stay up a little bit later, but that's all right.
And if, meanwhile, it was actually already happening
because Jade was running around in circles like a dog trying to
catch her table. So that's just normal.
(32:13):
So we ended up doing family movement for the next, what, 30
to 45 minutes? We practiced throwing and
catching with footballs and large balls.
It was so nice. It was really a lovely way to
start the weekend. It sure was.
I can't believe that was Friday.Like that feels like so long ago
given how many experiments we'vebeen packing into the weekend.
(32:34):
But it's it was that was the best way to start the.
Week. It was so nice and they've
already picked out lemon popsicles for next weekend, so
they're very excited. Great.
I got 2 thumbs up on Saturday morning.
I asked them how it went. Everybody give it 2 thumbs up.
Yeah. So then on Saturday we did our
pre meeting and our family pre meeting is an important and
(32:58):
necessary part of our family meeting, we're finding.
So hope that as you're trying this at home that you set aside
some time to create an agenda together and really get
intentional about what you're going to do.
I think the kids look forward tothe Saturday pre meeting more
than they do the Sunday meeting because as soon as they woke up
on on Saturday morning they toldme about how we have to start
(33:21):
voting. They wanted to vote before you
even came downstairs, Greg. Yeah, I think they want to win.
I think they're darn competitive.
They all want their own ideas. Also, the idea of choosing the
snack in the game feels fun. Yes.
So yeah, on Saturday we had our Saturday pre meeting and we've
continued it throughout the weekto try to talk about our family
value of the month, which is being noble.
(33:43):
And so I've consistently said that noble means doing the right
thing even when it's hard and tovarying degrees I think that is
caught on. We also read, I attempted to
read a couple of noble stories, particularly about Clara Barton
this week, the founder of the American Red Cross.
And well, like me me muscle menos, I would say.
(34:05):
But this weekend, the Kocha Jar came back with a vengeance,
people. We didn't really use it too much
during the week, but over the weekend we had five or six
different submissions by the kids noticing noble acts of one
another. And Jade had the most adorable
innovation to turn one of her scraps of paper into a necklace.
(34:28):
She said, Mommy, I actually wantto take this piece of paper and
make a noble necklace out of it because she was so proud of her
noble act. So before you knew it, we had
three noble necklaces going on this weekend.
From the kids, it was very, verysweet.
And the safe hand strong hearts call and response has also.
(34:50):
I'd say it's been about 70% effective, which is something.
For sure. It's definitely catchy.
I mean sometimes they will scream it in the same second of
biting or hitting. They'll be like, oh, say.
Hey, there's been no biting thisweek.
So yes, often Maverick will be screaming strong hearts while
pinching someone. But you can see that he has the,
let's call it like a simultaneous behavior and
(35:14):
thought process, right? So it feels like.
Progress. It does.
It does. And then on Sunday we had our
third family meeting. Yeah, that was very smooth.
Yeah, I think that everybody knew what to expect this week.
It was our third time doing it. Everybody knew what to expect by
the third time, which felt good.I felt a little bit different
(35:35):
kind of moving from that storming to that forming phase,
if you will. Yeah, it really did.
I personally really liked learning how to do something
together. So this week we did learn how to
make paper airplanes. And I still can't really make a
paper airplane, but I'm improving.
But this idea of like this tactile learning and not
(35:55):
watching a video, Greg kind of led the way was great.
And you know, I think that I quickly dismissed your idea of
Hunter teaching us about dinosaurs last week.
But I think that upon further reflection, it seemed almost
like you did teach us how to make paper airplanes this
weekend because you're the only one that knew how to do it.
And that was really nice. So sorry, and I'd like to
(36:22):
consider that for next week. We tried this idea of someone
teaching us how to do something.OK so to recap, family meeting.
We still love the Saturday pre meeting and we're learning what
works as far as the Sunday meeting itself.
But before the play, it was onlyabout 25 minutes this week, so
that felt like the right amount of time.
(36:43):
Yeah, we're not talking about hours.
Here, and this was actually the longest play that we did at the
end of our family meeting because it really was family
play as well as family stories. Typically our play has been like
a game of Zingo or a round of Pictionary.
Right. Yeah.
So this week I brought out a bigbag of photos that I had already
scanned into an online album. And it's kind of meta because
(37:04):
I'm like, actually these photos would be perfect for the kids to
to learn about my family and to make a physical album.
So I think I pulled a lot of these out of a physical album.
And now I'm having the kids remix them into an album while
teaching them about my parents and my grandparents, who none of
them are alive, unfortunately. So the kids are learning that
way. And I think we all had, I think,
(37:25):
a beautiful time just sitting there going through photos and
sticking them in albums and reading another album.
What do you think? I thought it was wonderful.
So this definitely hits upon family stories, but did it feel
like play to you as well becauseyou had said that scrapbooking
would be a great idea of of playfor you I.
Mean, I could have done that foranother hour or two.
(37:45):
But did it feel like play? Yes.
Cool. I didn't check my phone once.
I wasn't thinking about anythingelse.
So I think that's what that would be my definition of play
these days, Something that takesmy mind off of everything else.
Cool. That's great.
And then on family space, so we have the kids, individual areas.
That has been fine. I asked them how they feel about
(38:06):
it. They like having them, but there
hasn't been much movement in thespace so far.
But the swap of the dining room table to now become our kitchen
table has been awesome. We have played Settlers of
Catan, done about 7 different puzzles on that table.
It's where we're having our family meeting, but it doesn't
feel stuffy and we had a couple meals there, which is awesome.
(38:30):
We actually ate dinner together this Sunday.
We did wow crazy before the family meeting.
Yeah. So what strong beliefs are you
holding on to at home? The strong belief that we were
holding on to is, yes, we eventually wanted a table in
that room, but it couldn't be the table that was in the other
room like that, just. Yeah, that's the fancy black.
Table. That's the fancy black table.
(38:50):
And for whatever reason, this isthe furniture we bought the
house with too. You know, there's COVID times,
times are rough. Couldn't get any furniture.
Now you can't get eggs. The furniture was staged that
way and we just kept it that way.
I think it was we had walked into the house and we're like,
oh, this is the way the house issupposed to be downstairs.
And Danielle was like, you know,I kind of want a table in the
(39:11):
other room, but we should have around kitchen table.
And I agree that should be the ultimate goal.
But you're just let's do the MVP.
Let's do the easy thing. Hit press the easy button and
just swap the furniture one roomto the other.
Game changer. Absolute game changer.
I agree, family space making it adaptable.
(39:32):
Yeah. All right, so experiments are
working out. Well, they are.
They are and I'm sure you heard at the beginning of the episode,
but we have the most important thing tip sheet that Danielle
here made for all of you to follow along and understand the
most important thing about each episode as you're going in or as
(39:54):
you're refreshing yourself on some of these experiments.
You can get that from usifyouemailushi@tmitpod.com or
sign up for our newsletter on our website, tmitpod.com.
We will send you the resource and look forward to learning
(40:15):
more about you all. Right.
Great. Thanks everybody for listening.
Love you Goosy. Love you goosy.
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