Home Economy System – Episode 524 

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. Today we’re gonna be talking about the home economy system and there’s three E’s to this home economy system. This is applicable if you have little children at home, big children at home, or if it’s just two people because these are principles that we talk about that work across the board for anyone. So Kim, let’s dive into this. Such a fun thing to talk about and just such, such gratitude to Scott Donald and his team at Gravy Stack. But specifically today, I wanna highlight the book that they have out which is called Value Creation Kids. And it’s always interesting when I find a book about personal finance, I’m like getting my hands on it

[00:51] fast as I can, reading through it. And then sometimes I get really disappointed because it’s not based on principles. It has elements of it that I sometimes strongly disagree with. Other times, I feel like, well, I could kind of make this work. Scott’s book, I just read and loved every bit of it. And Lee Benson, his co-author, I mean, it was just a class act of a book. And I know these people a little bit, I’m not gonna pretend to know them well, but knowing that Scott’s in strategic coach, of course, gives him a huge leg up and they have this amazing concept around the home economy. And it’s interesting because I have used the term, your personal economy for years, but I never really thought about applying it

[01:42] to the home economy idea. And in their book, so this is Value Creation Kid, there will be a link to the book in the show notes. It’s available on Amazon. You can get it paperback, audible, and or Kindle. They have these three E’s that they talk about around the home economy. And Spencer, I’m guessing that your family has operated with these three E’s, even though you might not have called it that, because I know the good work that you do with your kids, one of which just graduated. We’ll have to do another podcast on that. I wanna know what a home school, high school graduation looks like. But anyway, the three E’s are the expectations that you set, the expenses that you have your children help with,

[02:29] and the extra money that is available for gigs in the home or in the community. I love it, it’s so good. And I think that our listeners, because they’re tapped into the way that we are guided by principles, not just what’s happening in the news cycle. And so I would imagine that many of them already have bits and pieces of these, and it’s just kind of cemented or articulates it in a very simplified way, which is really helpful. For me, I’m really excited to hear about the extra pay for gigs, like I wanna talk about that one. But let’s go into expectations, because that’s where it has to start. And you’re really good at laying out expectations, like when you meet with clients, be it if they’re starting in their career,

[03:22] or if they’re at the end of their career and they’re saying, whoa, how do we make sure that we have enough? So let’s set up the conversation for talking about expectations, Kim. Well, I’ll share how I used it in our family for years. And it actually comes back to Dan Sullivan as strategic coach, and it’s applying his Dan Sullivan question, which is also called the R factor question, to a incredibly short timeframe, specifically a Saturday or sometimes a whole weekend. And it was enabling me to get clear on what my kids’ expectations were for the weekend. So it goes like this, when we’re chatting on Saturday night or Sunday night, what has to have happened for you to be happy with this day or this weekend?

[04:11] And of course, I had my own expectations too, but offering their perspective to be on the table first opened the door for them to then hear my perspective on what was necessary for the weekend. So for example, Kaylee would say, well, I have a birthday party and I wanna get a gift for my friend. Beautiful, noted, we’re gonna have to make time to go to the store for Kaylee, note, to pick Kaylee’s friend’s gift out and pay for it. And then that would let me say before we do that, it is necessary that we do an extra home gig. And again, I didn’t use those words at the time, but maybe, and again, extra, right? Maybe that was doing a deep clean on the outside patio, not something that was necessary every week.

[05:05] Yeah, that’s really brilliant. What we’re really getting down to is having clear communication. And I think so often on the expectations, when it’s kids, it often is things that they want. And then the older that they get, it can be a feeling. So for example, like I want to go and it could be with friends or it could be go work on a project or whatever. And they’re not, I’m not gonna use the word chasing, but they’re aiming to achieve some type of feeling and having that clear communication, we can all, you live in a house of both, we can all get it instead of just one person dominating the weekend. So talk more about how you have applied that and then what you learned from reading this that maybe you will apply to the next generation.

[05:59] Well, it is so important that the kids feel heard and that the kids feel like they can contribute even at an early, early level. And so that was the approach that I was taking is helping them feel heard. And then I can also think of examples like my sister who had her children washing their own clothes at like five and six years old and having friends of hers think, oh my gosh, that’s child abuse, but it’s not. I mean, it enabled those children to feel ownership around that clothing and it solved all of the nightmare conversations that used to occur on a Sunday night when there were no clean clothes and the kids were going to school in pajamas and things like that because my dad always taught my sister and I

[06:56] the idea of natural consequences. So the natural consequence of not doing the laundry is you don’t have clothes to wear or maybe they’re ones that you picked up off the floor and they’re dirty or whatever. And so I always am so impressed that she did that. I think I did a good job with my kids but I didn’t have them do their laundry and I wish I had. Thankfully, they figured it out when they were a little bit older and so it all worked out just fine. Nevertheless, that ability for them to feel like they’re contributing and for them to feel heard are the two critical things that I think expectations need to be set for so that everybody knows communication, you said it well and then the expenses follow in line with that

[07:45] and the Value Creation Kid book gives such amazing examples, huge long list of examples of home gigs that can be done, brain gigs, which I love. So you’re getting your kids to think also as well as the necessary weekly things that are necessary to have happen in a home that are just a part of living in that home. So they’re not paid for, they’re not allowanced. There’s not money passing either direction and it enables, again, that child to understand that there are things that have to happen in the home for the home to operate. And this is so perfect for a lot of families that have adult children living with them because they came back from college or they came back from a mission trip or whatever

[08:40] and they haven’t, the adult child that’s 18 to maybe 30 hasn’t figured out what their next step is. Well, the whole Value Creation Kid book is perfect for that. I mean, maybe you have to toss a couple of the things that are clearly for the younger set but it’s a ideal space and it gives everybody something to point to. So there’s not blaming going on. There’s just like, well, here’s one family’s way. It’s actually the summary of like 6,000 families way. What do you think? Could this work for us? How could we apply it? So I love it for even those adult children. So I’m looking at this and I’m listening to the conversation and whenever I talk with someone especially like reading this book I can see all of the effort

[09:32] that the author and the researchers went through and there’s just a mountain of expertise in there. And then what I’m doing with this is and we’re having this conversation and I say, okay, well, Kim has an expertise of living daily with a prosperity lens. Like you just have developed that and then you have the expertise of what you know like the work that you do which is legacy work for families. It’s not just like normal financial work. It’s like legacy. So in my mind I’m trying to marry this expertise from the book of these three years Kim’s prosperity lens and your financial piece. And if we can somehow like pull a couple of nuggets in there and say, okay, well what is it from your perspective on the expectations?

[10:25] Maybe there’s one or two things in there. You’re saying here’s a take that I have. Could you lead us out with that? Absolutely. And the expectations is a perfect one because our home expected that people would adopt a prosperity lens. And that is a daily, sometimes hourly effort. Like you come home and you’ve had a bad game or whatever and you need 30 minutes to chill then say, so take that time. But when you come back out of the bedroom you’ve got your prosperity thinking hat on and you’re ready to go and to present yourself in a way of being that our family and this home can have positive possibilities with because when you come home from the game and you’re all ticked off cause you lost or you played poorly or whatever

[11:21] there isn’t room for positive possibilities when your mental state of being which of course then equates to your physical state of being and your attitude is in the room in that lens. And I get it. Mom comes home from work frustrated sometimes too. And maybe it’s not a half hour. Maybe it’s one minute, but I don’t care. Go behind the door, shut it and take it. And that’s the coolest thing about prosperity thinking. It can happen. The shift in the thinking can happen instantaneously. I don’t believe that it takes very long. Now maybe it takes some practice to get to where you can do it quickly or quicker. Nevertheless, it is so important that that expectation be made clear and that it’s obvious that the adults

[12:14] and the family are working on it also. Like I said, this is a daily hourly practice. This takes much, much effort for our lifetimes. Oh, I love it. So I’m going to extract and kind of throw action items around it. So for parents, if work was really tough that day or an encounter at whatever, the grocery store. On the car ride home, that’s your time to get it right. Or if you have to go put the groceries away and you’re standing in the pantry, then that’s your moment to get it done. And then you come out with a prosperity lens. Now you said something that was really critical in there which is then you can have the conversations with the prosperity conversation. Meaning you’re not sitting there and saying,

[13:01] okay, this never happened. We’ll avoid it and tuck it in there in the shadows. But you actually are coming to it from a positive perspective that you can then solve the problem. So maybe next time it’s different or you can get insight from someone else. That’s amazing. That’s absolutely how it should be. It’s seeking out the positive possibilities that we know are there in our lives. And so sometimes that means we have a gratitude practice that shifts our thinking. Sometimes, like you said, we go in the pantry, shut the door and have a good cry or we do jumping jacks or something else to change our physical state which then will change our mental and our psychological state. Whatever your thing is,

[13:52] find a way to do it and find a way to do it quick because the quicker you can do that, the more time you get with the good. Yes, absolutely. So let’s tie in the last two because they’re separate but I wanna lump them because you are approaching this again from your prosperity lens. And so how do we take expenses and extra pay because we don’t wanna be, as they mentioned in the book, just giving out an allowance is more of like socialism. So we definitely don’t want that. And as parents, we could say it’s closer to communism but we really want it to be like capitalism. So if it’s in there, what’s your take on that? Well, the coolest suggestion that is in the book which is such a-ha is not the first part about expenses

[14:39] which is help your kids pay for some of their expenses. It’s the second part which is then there is money freed up for you to pay them for gigs and this is why those two are tied together. So again, it’s extra money that you were spending that you are now going to shift and pay them for home gigs and brain gigs. Again, long lists of these things in the book where then they will pay for some of their expenses and I kid you not, there is nothing better than to get a kid’s expense paying habits aligned with their own sense of values, their own sense of right, much of which has been installed from you the parent because they are the ones seeing those dollars make it literal if you can. Sometimes cash is very valuable.

[15:40] I get it, we’re in a very technological world the GravyStack app gives them a debit card, et cetera but nevertheless, especially when they’re super young seeing those dollars be traded for fill in the blank that they need to live. We’re not talking some money for candy or a trinket at the store. We’re talking the clothes that you need to buy, the lunches that you need to feed yourself so that you feel good so you can do well in that soccer game. I mean, the list is endless and it’s such a wonderful shift in perspective of I’m not gonna give them money so that they do what they need to do. I’m going to let them create extra value in the form of a gig, again, home gig or brain gig so that then they earn that money

[16:32] and then they get to go spend it on the things that they need to live their life. Like we’re talking five, six years old, it’s doable. And the small amounts of money. So have you, if you can take a moment, have you thought of a time in the past maybe with one of your kids or a client where they’ve said, oh, this was the aha moment. Like they finally got it. Can you think of one of those? And I’m putting you on the spot because that’s a tough thing to think about right now. Well, interestingly enough, there really are many, many, many and I don’t tend to get involved with my clients on this level of conversation. I just don’t have the time. I wish I could, that’s why we do the podcast. Hopefully that opens some doors

[17:18] for them to have their own conversations. So most of my examples, I think are gonna be more personal. Nevertheless, I trust that they’re valuable for people. And so I used one of my children as an example. I’ll use the other one this time. So with Robbie, it is so interesting to watch. He started out from his college graduation in an employee space. So he had an income, he had his own expenses, he was clear. He shifted to an entrepreneurial space fairly recently and it’s been very, very fun to watch him navigate what is a truth that we know that can be learned younger. And he clearly learned it, which is cashflow issues don’t go away. They just get bigger zeros on them, right? So when you are a child and you’re first earning money,

[18:15] what is coming in and what is going out is in balance because your parent is gonna help it be that way because you have to learn in layers. You can’t learn all this one fell swoop. As you progress as that child and you get into maybe middle school, early high school, you can accommodate the fluctuating nature of what is so common for people these days because the gig economy is a very effective way for work. People don’t always have very static cashflow. They have very bumpy cashflow. And so why not learn this when we’re in middle school and high school, which Robbie clearly did, because now he’s dealing with some pretty massive swings because of what he’s trying to do for his next step with grace, with a positive possibility,

[19:12] with a prosperity thinkers mindset. And I’m just watching it from afar going, this is so cool. What awesome proof that learning that message is enabling him to live a life of peace and faith around money because he knows that he can work the job that is necessary. I don’t mean job in the literal sense that way, but work the work that is necessary to enable that faith to play itself out. I love it. So here is a final take that I have on all of this, which is the system that Scott and the team have put together is incredibly valuable. And we’re just looking at the home economy and you can go the full route and get the app and really dive into it. And you can set clear expectations. You can be clear on your expenses.

[20:15] You can have extra gigs and it can be from your little kids all the way up and you can follow that and do a good job. To me, a good job feels like it’s like a six out of 10, a seven out of 10. It’s not amazing. And so where I look at all of this is that there’s one other factor that has to be like the encompassing, like the blanket that sits over all of it, which is a prosperity lens, because if we are just teaching kids how to save, it’s going to be money and it’s going to be fairly emotionless or it’s going to be tied to stuff. But when they think prosperously, all of a sudden they start to collaborate with others. They start to realize that there’s challenges and then they accomplish what they need to do

[21:03] and they go through the challenges themselves, maybe with us at first, but then with themselves. And so taking what we’re sharing in this episode, matching it with the prosperity, thinking we now get a 10 out of 10. It’s not just like a six or a seven out of 10. Right, and it’s not just the first principle, which is think, it’s all seven principles. That’s where that 10 comes from, because we’ve identified seven specific principles around that prosperity economics perspective. And you as a listener can take them and throw them on your fridge and use them yourself, but even better would be to come up with your own set of principles and operate within that realm. I love it. This is so good. So for all of you listeners out there

[21:59] with any of your questions on how to implement this with your kids, we’ll put a link inside of the show notes and what Kim just mentioned of taking your own family principles. If you have some that are working for you, we always love to hear them. Send an email to helloatprosperitythinkers.com. Let us know what some of those are. And I know for me, having received feedback from others and asked them, hey, what are things that you’re doing as a family? We’ve adopted them. So they’re incredibly valuable. So this was a fun episode for our learners the very earliest of ages to, we’ll call it the aged expertise or whatever we’re gonna go there. But yes, thank you Kim. A lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast.

[22:57] To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.