How to Teach Kids the Principles of Prosperity – Episode 373

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[00:00] This is a special episode because we are going to make this the most simple version of prosperity thinking. So there is a children’s series book out there called the Tuttle Twins. It’s awesome. I recommend it. I’ve got them all. Now, what they do is they take these incredible principles and values and they distill it into a kid’s book. We want to do the same thing with prosperity thinking in the way that is going to help you with your finances. So Kim, I’m going to turn the microphone over to you and I am going to be taking notes as well. I love this because children are so teachable and there are so many age appropriate things that we can do to teach them. And as we are all aware, our society does not have good financial teaching in it

[00:53] and that that is out there is most of what we call typical financial planning and it’s not prosperity thinking. It’s not prosperity economics, which is the term that we’ve coined to differentiate our work from everybody else’s. And so what is that biggest, most simplest differentiation and it comes down to control. So I’m thinking of the child that gets a dollar for a birthday present or an allowance or something like that. That child now fills in control of that money and that’s awesome because they can make some decisions with it and they can be educated on the difference between a candy bar as an example that is eaten and gone immediately and a toy that they could have for a little bit longer and enjoy numerous times.

[01:46] So that’s control, right? That’s the ability to choose, has timeframes involved with it, etc. So as a slightly older child or you could say teenager, I guess, it’s still a control issue. Do you want to, for example, be saving up some money to purchase a car or maybe that’s not important to you and you would rather build an account where you could grab an Uber every single time you wanted to go anywhere. Again, it’s about control and choices and flexibility and freedom and starting to create independence so that you’re not relying on your parents all the time, etc. And I apologize if parents think that putting a child, a teenager in Uber is not the right thing to do. I know people that do it all the time.

[02:34] So no judgment there on my part. It could step up a notch into maybe the young adult where they now have their first job and they have a decision to make about group benefits and oh my gosh, I remember this like it was yesterday, like all these health insurance benefits, life insurance benefits, disability benefits, 401k benefits and now of course it’s worth regular 401k, Roth 401k, etc, etc, etc. Not an easy thing to go through. Well, 95% of what they are going to read out there says max out the 401k and just like doesn’t even cover the protection component. Things like no training on car insurance, home insurance, renter’s insurance, any type of savings account, disability insurance and a young person’s ability to get up and

[03:24] go to work every day is their biggest asset at that time in most cases. So the disability insurance that is necessary to protect that, that’s again all about control so that as they’re gaining independence, they’re not having to look at moving back in with mom and dad or having to borrow from the bank of mom and dad and parents. We want to teach our children this because we don’t want them borrowing too much from student loans. You know, that’s a whole nother area again, control these kids that take on just unreasonable amounts of student loan debt because they truly don’t know what else to do. And I think it’s so valuable to consider, especially here we are at the end of the summer of 2020, consider other ways to get educated, consider other ways to learn, consider other

[04:20] ways to have rites of passage so that maybe it’s service to your country or maybe it’s service to a community or maybe it’s working for a little bit of time until you get a little clearer on what you want so that when you are into school, you can be a little bit more focused on the classes that you want. This is again, all about control, all about choices, all about as much freedom and flexibility as you can possibly heap onto your side of the table. And with that, guess what comes? I want to, I want the drum. Responsibility. So the more choices and control you have, the more responsibility you have. I mean, I remember again, like it was yesterday, waking up in my very first apartment and I went to a school where the food was still very controlled by the school.

[05:21] And so my apartment was the first time that I really had complete control over what I was eating. And I remember kind of being shocked, like, oh my gosh, I could have ice cream for breakfast and not only would nobody know, nobody would care until I felt horrible later in the day and couldn’t function at my job because I didn’t eat a proper nutritious breakfast. And you know, same with sleep habits. Yeah, I could do whatever, I don’t know, I’ve never had sleep issues and I’ve never watched TV a lot. But nevertheless, I could do something at night that would disrupt my sleep, then have an impact on me the next day. So these are cool things. They’re awesome times. It’s wonderful when we can help us and our society become more aware of them.

[06:13] And when kids can make conscious choices about what’s important to them, first for their family, because when you live in a family union, you have to make decisions that way. But then when they’re out on their own, what’s important to them? Not what your friends are doing, not what the media is promoting, but your own decision. I’ve got a young daughter and her boyfriend, they’re both at work and both her dad and his dad gave them some specific advice about something that they thought that they should be doing or not doing at work. And both kids were like, noted, appreciate the advice, and no, we’re not going to do that, we’re going to do this instead. And I said to her, good for you, you know, but who’s to say, I mean, that was

[06:59] a human opinion, happen to be two human opinions from people you respect, and you can grant them that respect. And you can go on and make your own decision. That’s control. Isn’t that great? It’s like planting a garden that you just don’t see for about 18 to 20 years. It’s so wonderful when you have kids like that. Wonderful, Kim. You know, for our listeners, is this episode here is to help teach your kids, so giving them the tools so that you can teach them the principles of prosperity. If you need a reminder of what those are, then click on the link inside of the show notes down below. And that will take you to partnersforprosperity.com forward slash subscribe. And on there, you can get the principles of prosperity video, you can get a PDF and ebooks

[07:49] and a lot of valuable information. So just go there, check out partnersforprosperity.com forward slash subscribe. You can get all of those and share them with your kids. And if you happen to have parents or relatives or others that need it, let them know as well. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.