220: Raising Financially Savvy Kids with Hope Seidel, MD

Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. I’ve been getting asked a lot about how to talk to your kids about money, how to approach that and all that good stuff. And so I think I believe I have a prior episode speaking specifically about entitlement, but today we’re going to go a bit more nitty gritty and have a deeper discussion. 

So I’m actually going to play you a call that I had with Hope Seidel. She’s my parent coach. I’ve actually had her on the podcast before to talk specifically about all things parenting. But this was a call I hosted inside my paid program, Money For Women Physicians, where I will periodically bring on experts to talk about various things. So obviously this was specifically about how to talk to your kids about money. 

So I thought I actually would bring that call to you. We’ve just edited it slightly. We just kind of removed the Q&A at the end to protect my clients’ privacy, but otherwise it is the call. I know you’re going to learn so much. The way I think about money and kids is like, you need to know money to teach them about money. And also you need to clean up your money mindset because our kids, even if you’re not saying anything, they absorb, they’re always watching us and whatever we do, they model, right? 

And so if you never talk about money, then they might grow up, well, they probably grow up thinking, oh, we don’t talk about money. Or if you’re constantly talking about how stressed you are about money, guess what? They’re going to start to believe that money is stressful. And if you keep saying things like, I can’t afford this, or we can’t afford that, that also is going to create a model for them, right? 

So I think this is such an important topic. And so if you are a parent, and I’m sure most of you have friends who are parents, definitely share this episode with them as well. 

And before we start, I want to make sure, you know, that the Live Wealthy conference February 20 to 23rd in Hawaii is open for registration. And we are about half sold out right now. And I believe we only have like six rooms available at the group rate. It’s an amazing rate for the Four Seasons in Hawaii. It’s I think around 50% off, maybe even more. And we’re actually giving away three nights at the Four Seasons if you register by November 30th. 

So register by November 30th, get a chance to win three nights free at the Four Seasons, go to wealthymommd.com/conference. Again, wealthymommd.com/conference. All right, here’s my conversation with Hope. 

Bonnie: Okay, so I’m excited to have Dr. Hope Seidel on tonight. I don’t think we’ve had a parent coach come into the program before, but I know a lot of us have kids and most of us don’t know how to talk to our kids about money. 

I think a lot of us worry that they’re going to become entitled because, I think I did a podcast on this, it’s like I think a lot of us have that, like how do we make sure they don’t grow up to be entitled brats? But also how do we talk to them about money? Like what does that even look like? 

So Hope and I talked a bit about what we’re going to talk about. I’m really excited. I think you guys will get so much value from it. Also in the chat, I know we have a small group, but if you want to go ahead and write down in the chat what questions you had, just so we make sure we address it. 

This is a super casual conversation. We have a few things in mind we want to talk about, but also you’re here and so we want to – Let’s take advantage of Hope being with us. So, Hope, I’ll let you introduce yourself. 

Hope: Hi everybody. I’m so grateful to be here sharing this conversation and getting to meet all of you. My name is Hope Seidel. I’m a general pediatrician, board certified pediatrician and I have been in peds for about 21 years. And until last December, I was working full-time. And I’m also a single mom and I have two older kids, one’s 23 and one is 21. 

And I’m also now a full-time parenting coach, although I’ve been dovetailing my parenting coach business sort of while I was doing pediatrics for several years. And then I just really found that the part of pediatrics that I love the most is really helping parents navigate a healthy home and just recognizing that in general kids want to be well and their bodies are generally well. 

And a lot of the ways that, as parents, we get in their way can impact their overall mental and physical health in a way that working with parents felt like I could be the most impactful. So I’m still taking care of kids, but in a different way. 

And Bonnie and I have been talking a lot just as we’ve known each other and also in preparation for this conversation about sort of how you all are learning to navigate maybe a different relationship with your money. And I also think that this is simultaneously an incredible invitation for you to incorporate money conversations into your parenting. 

Questions like, do you discuss money at all with your children? I don’t know how old each of your children are, but do you discuss how much money you make? Do you discuss limits around money? How do you model being a steward and honoring your money in your home? 

And really thinking as you’re creating new boundaries in your own lives around how you want to take care of your money, what financial values do you want to teach your children? What values, with Bonnie, are you learning to honor now? And how do you want to pass that on to your kids? 

For me, not only as working with parents, but just being a parent, I just can’t think of another topic above money as a priority for teaching kids. It’s such a powerful tool for teaching. And as Bonnie alluded to, for the most part as physicians we’re considered fairly affluent by most standards. And a lot of the decisions that we need to make about money with our kids are actually kind of artificial decisions, right? They’re emotional decisions. They’re not financial ones. 

I mean, I have no idea what everyone’s financial situation is, but for the most part, often we can afford what we want to do for our kids. And we have to make an emotional decision about whether or not we want to. And so one of the things that I like to think about in my coaching with parents in general is using a values-based approach to thinking about your parenting in a super intentional way. 

Thinking about what your budget says about what you value, because teaching our kids about money means questioning our own kind of priorities about money. And every conversation we have about money is a conversation about values. 

So let me just give you a couple examples of what I mean by that. So children are actually very hardwired for generosity, right? So if one of your values is giving or philanthropy, it’s a great opportunity to teach your kids about generosity, right? Allowance is a really good opportunity to teach your kids about patience. And then we’re going to talk a little bit more about allowance, if you wish, moving forward, but also about budgeting, right? 

When you’re thinking about the value of perseverance, getting our kids to work, both outside and inside our homes can teach that value. Negotiating our wants and our needs can teach our kids about being thrifty or being stewards carefully of our money. Conversations about what we have and what other people have can give our kids the perspective that they need to be able to develop gratitude and an understanding of their privilege. 

And then managing limits and boundaries around money can teach our kids the value of restraint. And the reward system in a child’s brain is not really wired that way. The amygdala on the inside of our brain is really very reward-based and children especially have a very high intense need for reward as they’re younger. 

And so as they age, their frontal lobe, which is better at sort of thinking about logic and planning and improved executive functioning tend to override that when we use the forward part of our brain. But restraint is a skill that our kids need to learn and can be learned very early even though it doesn’t come naturally for them. 

But I think more valuable than any other amount of money to leave to our kids is to leave them with a relationship with money that is healthy so that they can direct the flow of their own money as they age to their highest commitment. 

And so, Bonnie, do you want to talk about, like I want to make sure that I answer questions. Oh, good, allowance. So we’ll talk about money and savings. So let’s talk a little bit about that, about chores and allowance, unless you want to make any comments or add anything to the comments I made. 

Bonnie: You covered a lot of stuff. And so Hope is my current parent coach. And as we were sort of brainstorming what she wanted to talk about, I gave her an example. And so remember the example about Jack wanting to buy a Halloween costume? So this would be a good example of teaching them restraint and also having a boundary as a parent. 

Because I was telling Hope, because most of us do have money, it’s just so easy to say yes. And sometimes it’s just easier. Hopefully, you guys can relate. Sometimes it’s just easier to just give in. It’s like, okay, it’s a $20 toy. Who cares, right? Especially if you’re at Target. And I realized I was doing that a little too much. 

And so he said he wanted to be a policeman for Halloween. And I said, well, Jack, I bought you costumes not that long ago. You have Pikachu, you have a fireman, and you have that pirate costume from last year that was too big. And so now it fits you well. And then he was like, okay. And then the next day, Mom, I want to be a policeman. Let’s go to Target. And then he just had his birthday, so he got some gift cards. He goes, I have Target money. 

And again, I could have just been like, all right, fine, whatever. You have Target money, let’s go to Target and buy it. Or whatever, order it, he has Amazon gift cards too. 

It wasn’t hard to say no, but I realized that it’s just easier to say yes because we just don’t want to hear the incessant questioning. But I said no multiple times and then he stopped asking. 

Hope: One of the things that I love about using a values-based approach to thinking about your parenting, especially when it comes to boundaries, is that it’s going to be different for all of us, right? So things that are really important to me from a values-based standpoint might not be as important to you. 

And I use the example at times when I think about how for some people faith is a really big – This has nothing to do with money. Well, it could actually when you’re tithing and whatnot. But faith is a really important value to some people. And that informs a lot of the decisions that they make and the way that they set up boundaries in their home. 

And so thinking about your relationship with money and the work that you’re doing now is critical for you to develop a good understanding. One of the things I want my children to be able to do, my daughter specifically, for example, is to be able to take care of herself. And if I’m always nourishing the things that she wants, then she’s not going to develop the skill that she needs to learn to be able to be industrious with her money, to learn how to save, to figure out how to get extra money when she needs it to pay for something. 

And it’s also really, in my opinion, completely appropriate, especially as your kids get older, to tell them that you do have enough money and that you’re making a choice not to give them what they wish to have in an effort to teach a skill, right? I don’t pretend like I don’t have the money. As a matter of fact, I’ll often say, you and I both know I could afford to give you that, but I don’t want to give it to you because I want you to understand what it feels like to earn your own money or to know that you should wait because those are values that are really important to me. 

So there’s not really a right way to set a boundary when it comes to your kids. It’s just important that you’re being intentional about it. Because anytime we set a boundary with our children, they don’t like it. That’s how you know you’re doing a good job. 

And so the boundaries that you’re creating around any behavior in your home, when they’re anchored in a value that you really love, are much easier to be consistent about. And our kids’ behaviors or their opinions about the boundary are unlikely to change our mind. 

For example, you guys do this all the time when it comes to seat belts, right? If your value is safety and your kids have to wear their seat belts, then when your kids are protesting because they’re too tight or they feel like they shouldn’t have to be in a booster, very few of us, especially as physicians, are going to say, you know what? You’re right. Just come sit up front. I’ll just hold you right here and just pray. We don’t do that because we love our why. The value that we are anchored in around safety, or maybe we just don’t want to get arrested, is really important to us. 

And so, Bonnie, when you’re in a place where you’re like, I really just don’t want my kid to have that many things, or I want him to understand that there’s only one and that’s enough, that even though he has a want, that isn’t more important than him being uncomfortable with not being able to get everything he wants, then all of these moments are invitations to practice that skill. Which is what our kids need, especially when the part of their brain that really wants, wants, wants, wants, wants to kill you is really still present all the time. 

Bonnie: He tried to sneak in that want another way because he said, okay, I’ll be Pikachu at school. And then for trick or treating, I’ll be the pirate. And I was like, great. He’s like, but I lost my telescope and the sword. I was like, okay, we’ll buy those because those are really cheap. They didn’t have a pirate sword, so we bought a ninja sword, but it’s like, who cares, right? 

And then yesterday he goes, mom, this is a ninja sword. I need a ninja costume. He tried to sneak that in and I was like, nope, we’re not buying a costume. 

So one thing that I’ve noticed with working with you is like, we wish that they just wouldn’t even do that because it would make our job easier. And I think one thing I learned is like, just expect some resistance from them. Like, of course, they’re going to ask for what they want. 

Hope: Right. 

Bonnie: I was just wondering why they keep asking. It’s like, of course they’re going to ask. It’s like, it’s not a problem. And you’ve got to keep saying no, at least for this specific instance. 

Hope: So Elizabeth is asking, I have a seven-year-old and would love tips on how to teach her about the value of money and also about saving and investing. She has an allowance and I’m trying to teach her about the value of money and saving, but I’m not sure she has any idea about the value of money and thinks we should just buy things and spend money. 

Okay, and then do you give her allowance, just she gets a certain amount of money, Elizabeth, that she gets just because she lives in your home or is the allowance that you currently have tied to doing things in your home? 

Elizabeth: So I struggled with that a little bit, about whether it was better to pay her for chores versus just give her an allowance. And I decided just to give her an allowance as being a family member, but she does have chores, not a lot. And she probably needs more. All she really does is give the cats food and puts her stuff away and makes her snack for school. 

So she probably needs a little more, but she does get a weekly allowance that we’ve divided into short-term savings, long-term savings and charity. But I don’t think she really pays attention. When we go out and she buys something and I tell her it can only come from short-term savings, I don’t know that she really understands. 

And she doesn’t understand the value of money at all in terms of the cost of things. I try to teach her at the supermarket and when I buy things, looking for sales and using coupons and things, but I don’t think it registers. 

Hope: Yet. It doesn’t register yet, I always say. Add yet to every time you say something like that, for sure. 

Now, let me ask you this, when she really wants something, what is her short-term savings money for? Like let’s say you go to the store and she wants a candy bar and you allow her to spend whatever she wants of her short-term money. And she has $4 and the candy bar is $6, then what happens? 

Elizabeth: She doesn’t get it. I did make one exception this weekend where she wanted these little backpacks for her Barbies at Five Below. And usually what ends up happening is she doesn’t have her money with her. So we buy it and she pays us back when we go home. But I thought she only had enough for almost two backpacks. She initially wanted four and I said, no. 

And against my better judgment, I told her that if she didn’t have enough for the two, that we would front it, but that she wouldn’t get the second backpack until she earned it. But then we got home and she actually had enough money in her short-term savings. I was wrong, but I told her they weren’t hers until she paid for them. 

Hope: Yeah, I love that because had you given that to her, you would have been teaching her about credit card debt, right? 

Elizabeth: Well, she does think we just put everything on our credit card because we do. 

Hope: Well, right. But what I meant by that is that when you have an allowance, I’ll get to the minutia, but like when you have an allowance for your kid and then when they don’t have it with them, you let them borrow it from you. And then they have to pay you back, let’s say even later if they don’t have the money. That skill that you’re building is how to have debt, right? Because the money that they really want to spend, they don’t yet have in a theoretical sense. I know that wasn’t the case in this situation. 

Elizabeth: So it sounds like I think maybe I shouldn’t have allowed her to get it. Or was it okay because I kept it until she paid. It’s okay that you kept it until she paid, but those are the kinds of intentional moments that you want to have. 

When you say I want my daughter to understand the value of something, right? The value of something is created in your home based on how much something costs and, well, there’s a lot of ways. But one of the ways is how much something costs and how much money they actually have. 

And so one of those ways would be, we’re going to this Five Below, do you need to bring your money? If you don’t have money, like if you went to the store and didn’t have money, the cashier wouldn’t say, just call me and let me know your credit card number. I mean, usually you’d have to have it with you. So that’s a skill that isn’t critical you build at seven, because you might go on an errand she can’t predict, but whatever. 

And then additionally, if we’re not certain she has the money, then we’ll just have to come back another time potentially, because we don’t want to take a chance that the money isn’t there, right? But no, you did the right thing by not allowing her to have it until she proved that she had the money. That’s a good skill. 

Our kids don’t understand the value of money and many, frankly, many adults don’t, because they don’t work. And so one of the very best ways to teach the value of money is to give them chores. Not because you should pay them for the chores, but because they can understand how long something takes and how many hours it might take to earn it. 

And so I separate, I’m going to get to the allowance piece, but I separate chores and allowance and agree with what you’re doing in that way. I think chores should never be paid for. For example, like anything that is the running of your home that your kid wouldn’t be paid for as an adult in a home, I don’t recommend paying your kid for. 

But I do really like the idea of having our kids earn money for tasks in our home that aren’t typical things. Maybe there’s a list of things that they could do to generate a certain amount of money. And then when they work for an hour, two hours or however long it takes, and then they get money, they start to create a relationship between what they’re doing and how long it took and the income that they received. 

And that’s a really great way to get our kids to be industrious, to want to be able to save for something. I know that you really want this, you’re too young to work at Chick-fil-A yet, but these are the things that you can do around our home that would generate a certain amount of wealth that will allow you to either save or spend on something that you really want. 

The key is less about the money and more about the invitation for restraint that you provide so that they can work towards building their savings enough to get what they wish for. I don’t think it’s reasonable, given that their brains are still evolving, that they’re going to have a really good understanding of the value of money until they’re practicing it on a regular basis. So this is a really good strategy that you have to give them that skill. 

Like they’re not going to understand the S&P, the high-yield savings account, all those things that you want them to use. But those words and that language you’re using will put them far ahead of most kids who don’t even get that skill set until they’re far into their early 20s. 

Bonnie: I’m with you, chores and allowance should be separated because it’s like you do things for the household because we all live here and things need to get done. Yeah, just like I don’t pay Matt when he takes out the garbage, right? 

Hope: Right. 

Bonnie: He’s supposed to take out the garbage, by the way, but he hasn’t lately. That’s a whole nother conversation. 

Hope: And how much allowance you give your kids is arbitrary, right? It depends on what your intention is of what they’re going to do with it and their age, right? I have a good friend who teaches money to children and she gives her kids a budget at the beginning of the year and they’re in charge of their food and their clothes. I mean, she literally makes them pay for absolutely anything. 

That’s not a value that’s important to me as much as it is to teach my kids what they can and can’t have just because I don’t want to, right? When my kids went to private school, they had a lot of children in their class that had expensive shoes and whatnot. And that just is not a value of mine right now. But I did encourage my kids to save money to buy those sorts of things. Not that I’m judging parents who might be in your group, but I didn’t pay for my daughter to get a manicure. 

All those things to me are things that are a privilege that she should really want to get on a special occasion or something that she would have to earn. I didn’t want her to think that the world was going to show up for her that way. And now she lives in New York City and couldn’t afford a manicure if her life depended on it. So thank God that she doesn’t have that expectation. 

But those are the kinds of values that you want to think that feel right for you, right? There is not an exact way to do that. Some of us have more abundance than others. 

One other thing I want to comment on that we were talking about the other day, Bonnie, is this idea that one of the things that chores gives you as a value is gratitude, okay? So probably there’s no finer way to teach your kids both work ethic and gratitude like chores, right? Because most chores, most things that we do around the house are not particularly entertaining. And so having our kids really commit to the workings of the home tends to really generate a lot of gratitude. 

My kids have been doing their laundry since they were eight. And anytime I do their laundry now as grownups, you would think I gave them like a Rolex. Thank you so much. I’m so grateful. They know exactly how much work it is. They know exactly how much time it takes. And they know that the folding is a pain and the putting away is a pain, they’re super crystal clear on what that responsibility is like so that when they don’t have to do it, or when they notice that I do it for them, it bolsters gratitude in a way very few things can. 

What age is appropriate to start chores too? I mean, as long as your kid can pick up a plate, they can help. There’s never an age that’s too early to start chores. And I even like to think of it less as that word, which just, I don’t know, it’s just loaded with just misery. Just what we do as a family is we contribute. Everybody has a job that helps our family run well. We pick up after ourselves, we clean up our rooms. 

With younger kids, if the chores involve cleaning, a couple of things I will say, number one, you want to be very specific about what you mean, because clean your room might sound to your teenager or your toddler very different than what’s in your head. So you want to be crystal clear about your expectations around what the chore is, you know, what you ask them to do. 

And then you also want to be really comfortable with imperfection, because the quality of the way the chore or the activity is done is less important than the contribution to your family. Over time, they will build the skill, but depending on what commitment you ask them to give to your family, there’s going to be a learning curve that they’re not going to be able to do really well. 

Bonnie: It’s not going to be spotless initially, is that what you’re saying? 

Hope: I mean, maybe not ever, right? But the point isn’t that. That’s managing your type A mind around handling it or going back over it after they’re done. But the contribution and the way they contribute to your home, and the responsibility they feel is the most important thing. 

Bonnie: Yeah. At age two, in case this is helpful, Mabel, I remember we would just have him help us wipe the table, like after dinner. 

Hope: Yeah, feed the dog with a cup. 

Bonnie: Yeah, a two-year-old can do that. Like spraying, I don’t know, I feel like kids like spraying stuff. Jack loves spraying stuff, so that’s what he did at two. I think about these things, right. Because I don’t want him to be, because like I think of it as him as an adult, I want them to be able to do these things. Not just be able to do these things, but like, have experience actually doing them so they know that they could be helpful in a relationship, for example. 

Hope: Well, the good news is that children have a drive for competence. Like they want to be responsible. They love when adults count on them.

One of the things that feels hard for chores around parents of affluence is that we feel, I like to call them kind of philanthropic chores. Like we just give them things to do because they just seem like we should be parents that give our kids chores. 

One of the best gifts of being a single parent, especially when my kids were in middle school, is that I really needed their help. I needed them to prep dinner. None of the things I asked them to do was a luxury. I mean, I really did not have time to be doing their laundry. That isn’t the reason they did it, by the way. But even so, it wasn’t an option. 

It’s important that you remember that in families where wealth is not available, in families where parents’ work is not negotiable, or they don’t have help, kids help out all the time at any age, right? Because it’s not an invented chore. It’s something that the entire family system is counting on. 

And you can generate that kind of energy around the ways your kids contribute, whether you have a ton of money or you don’t. It’s still available to you. I can just tell you firsthand, I’ve done it. So it’s totally possible. But it has to be intentional. 

Audience Member: I was curious about how to approach the whole money and saying no when my daughter sees all of her friends with so much more. So she attends a private school. A lot of the families have more money than we do. Some probably just spend more than we do. 

So she goes to her friends’ houses, they have so many more toys, every week they get new toys. They’re always going out and getting treats and having expensive drinks at the restaurant and just spending money in ways that we don’t. 

Hope: Why is that hard for you? 

Audience Member: Well, I explained to her that we work hard for the money and that we need to save it and that this really isn’t a necessary expense. And she can save if that's what she wants. And Hanukkah is coming up and her birthday is coming up. But I meet a ton of resistance, which I know is normal. 

A part of me feels a little guilty and some of it’s probably because I was raised in a very, very frugal house. And so I have trouble sometimes spending on things that I don’t see value in, like a soda at a restaurant. And when we go somewhere on vacation where the ice cream is $10 in some touristy area, I have a hard time spending that. I know my husband feels very differently. So that’s probably part of it. I feel a little bit conflicted, because I don’t know if maybe I’m just being too strict. 

Hope: So I want you to just consider taking the judgment for yourself out of it and think back a little farther on to like, what is the lesson you’re trying to teach your daughter, right? Because you clearly could spend the money on a $10 soda. I mean you could go to Starbucks and get yourself something right now, probably, and not think about it, right? 

So it has less to do – I like to think about it when you’re thinking about values for the same reason that like some of my friends are like, why won’t you let us have alcohol before 21? Like I know my kids are drinking in college and I know that they’ve tried alcohol in other places. And I know that their friends’ parents allow that. 

But I have a very high value on safety and I’m a physician and their dad was an alcoholic. And so like, there’s no universe in which I’m going to be okay with that. And I recognize it’s hard for them to notice that different families do things differently. 

But when we’re explaining it to our kids in a way that’s more objective, like we can agree with them. It is unfortunate that you did not get the mother who wants to buy you $40 ice cream. Like that is unfortunate. You could even empathize with them about how unfair that can feel. But my highest priority is teaching you to be a good steward of your money. And your dad and I just don’t spend money like that. Even when we have it, that’s not how we want to spend it. 

Or this is the value that we have in our home around getting things just to get them. We don’t get things now. We get them when Hanukkah starts. Hanukkah is a time where we’re waiting for things. We’re going to wait. There are eight days. So eight days of gifts you’re going to get and so let’s put that on the list. Those are ways for you to really build their capacity to see the values that you have in your home around money. 

I also, like I’m on one of these PMG sites where there are all these women who sell things that are very fancy that they buy that they no longer want. And I’m always thinking to myself, like that must be so fun where you could just have so many purses that you could just want to just sell them all. I’m thinking this every time. 

And yet then I look in my bank account and I probably could afford the purses, but that’s not my value. And I don’t care that it’s theirs, it’s not a problem. But you want to just really be explaining to your kids that she gets to decide what she values in her money and the money that is in your home is yours, not hers. And you do get to decide what you do with it. And she’s allowed to be disappointed. 

What does the guilt come from for you? Do you know? 

Audience Member: Yes, maybe because my husband sees it so differently. So we’re a little different on spending. He’s a minimalist, so he really doesn’t buy anything, but we just have different ideas of where to spend much. 

When he does buy things, he always spends the most money possible on it because he seems to think it’s better. When he goes out to eat, he doesn’t worry about the price, he always gets a soda. When we go to an amusement park, he doesn’t care about the cost of the drinks or anything, and I do. But then when we travel, he always wants to scrimp and save and spend less on the travel. And I like to spend the money and really enjoy the experience. 

So we just have different views on it. And I guess maybe some of the guilt is that, is that I know it’s a little bit different if my husband’s with my daughter than when I am. 

Hope: Yeah. 

Audience Member: Because he does get her a drink and different things. But the biggest thing is I just want her to understand the value of it and how hard you work for money. And she doesn’t get it and she wouldn’t at seven. 

Hope: Yeah. No, you can just let go of her need to understand. There’s so many things you’re going to be teaching your kids in the next – How old is your daughter? Do you say seven? There’s so many things our kids are going to be learning in the next, in the first 18 years that are going to make no sense to them, that they’re going to have to just be okay with that this is the way it’s going to be. 

She has no capacity, unless she’s literally making her own money and spending it exclusively there’s not a capacity for her to understand that. And to your point about your husband, and you I guess at times, how we model restraint is helpful. 

Like I can remember sometimes with my own kids, I would be at the mall and I’d really want a Starbucks and I could afford the Starbucks. And I might just say artificially in front of them, I really want a Starbucks, but it’s $5 and I have the $5, but that’s just really not where I want to spend my money. And I know if I wasn’t thinking, I’d go over and just get it really quickly. I really want it, but I’m just not going to get it. 

And just let them kind of sit with that whole experience that I do out loud so that they can see that sometimes I actually want something or we’d be at a store and I’d see a purse I love. My daughter would be like, get the purse. And I was like, I know I have the money for the purse, but it’s just not a good use of my money. What if something happens and I want it, or I want to save for something else? 

I’m doing that kind of thing out loud, modeling the kind of thought process I want my kids to adopt, knowing full well we have no control over what they’re going to do with their own money. 

Let me just tell you the good news, okay? When we think about our kids being spoiled, there’s a really good book if you guys have not read it yet. I mean, you don’t have to read it because a lot of this is what we’re talking about, but it’s called The Opposite of Spoiled. It’s a really good money book for kids. 

But anyway, one of the things that the author talks about is that there’s several definitions of being spoiled, right? Kids that are spoiled have limited rules. They have limited responsibilities. They are often lavished with a lot of time and attention and activities, and they get a lot of material things. 

And the truth is that you can give your kids the material things, most of which our kids are getting anyway, and still work hard on the other three and still teach your kids to show up in the world with a level of responsibility and understanding and gratitude and accountability and perspective and restraint and still give them things. 

And we all know that because most of our kids have more than most, right? So you can still achieve that skill even if you do soda from time to time. 

Audience Member: Okay, yeah, that thinking out loud with her, I like that. 

Hope: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s super, super helpful. And sometimes it’s helpful for me to stop spending, you know what I mean? Because when I’m sometimes somewhere where I really know I could, and it’s just an impulsive choice, or I’ll even have my older, my 23-year-old on the phone, and she’ll be like, what are you doing? I’m putting stuff on my Amazon cart so I can look at it in a week and decide if I really want it. She’s like, why don’t you just get it? I’m like, well, because I might not want it. I like to give myself a couple days to be sure. 

Do I always do that? No, but I say it out loud so she can be thinking that’s not a bad idea. And she can start to sort of generate a decision point on her part about how she wants to spend her money too. 

Bonnie: Oh, I like that idea of just saying out loud what you’re – I always want to buy stuff. So that’s easy. 

Hope: Yeah, and that’s offering empathy, right? It’s like we can agree with our kids that it is hard and we want all the things. And the other thing that I would just invite you guys to consider too, which you know, of course, because you’re learning to manage your money in a different way, I’m assuming with Bonnie, is that we know by now that having this much abundance does not translate into happiness, right? 

And our kids still, because they have such a profound reward seeking part of their brain, do have that thought that they think that if I had it, I would feel so much happier. And Bonnie and I work a lot with people as coaches around this idea that things outside of us don’t generate our happiness, that of course, we create our own emotions inside of ourselves. 

And when we constantly reward our kids with material things, just effortlessly or thoughtlessly, we sometimes are teaching them that those two things are linked by accident. And that’s never true, and so that’s another place where you can really have some really good intentional and thoughtful parts around restraint and holding off on saying yes. 

Mabel: I have a story that I would like to share. 

Hope: Yeah. 

Mabel: So I might say the opposite of Elizabeth. I’m an immigrant. I came from a country when I was six, and we always were very frugal. I mean, even in the country that we lived in, we lived a very frugal life. But I think something happened to me that I was like, I never want to live like that. 

So I’m actually the opposite, where I overspend. And like, I’ll get the Starbucks. I never think like that. Like I always get what I want. Like I never look at prices in the shopping. And I don’t spend, I don’t have expensive purses and that, but like if I’m in the grocery store, for example, and I want the mac and cheese that I see or whatever it is I’m looking at, I’ll get it. 

Like I don’t look at prices. If I want a pair of shoes, I’ll get it. Although I’m very conscious about it. I'm not going to buy expensive shoes or purses, et cetera. But if I want it, I’ll get it. 

And I don’t know if that was my upbringing. Like I remember in first grade, this really experience that I had with money, where they will give you money if you behaved well, and I got a lot of money. And there was a store that came, like I guess people donated toys, and there was a special store. And then all the first graders got to go to the special store and use their money to buy the special toy. 

And I didn’t want to buy the toy, I wanted to save it. So guess what? At the end of the day, I came home, I have a twin brother, I came home, my twin brother came home with a little piano, a little keyboard, and I came home with nothing. And then the store went away. And it was called Funny Bucks, and then the Funny Bucks went away. And I was like, I felt so bad. I was like, I never want to feel that way ever again. So I don’t know if it came from that. 

And we never went out to eat really growing up. I went to a restaurant when I was in my late teens for the first time ever, my family was very frugal. And rightfully so because we were an immigrant family, and they wanted to buy a home, which they did after being here for a few years only. So my family worked, my parents worked really, really hard. 

But I find myself as an adult not teaching my kids about money. And my 17 year old just started doing chores. And my seven year old does not do chores. Yeah, I had a parent pleaser. So like my mom, my parents were very, very loving, but they never assigned us chores growing up. And yeah, that’s, you know, so I wanted to get your feedback on the money spending, and obviously the chores I have work to do. 

But just in terms of the spending and how I can become better in terms of being conscious and making those better choices and teaching my kids better in terms of handling money and valuing money. Because obviously I value money, but I think I value the experience more. And that’s not good all the time. I mean, I don’t feel like I have that balance in general. 

Hope: What has the way that you’ve handled money up until this point cost you? Not like the actual money, but like what does it cost you? 

Audience member: I think I mean, in terms of the fact that I don’t really pay attention to money, which is why I’m in this course is causing me stress. And it’s very stressful and like a heavy burden on your shoulders. I don’t want to feel that way. 

Although I’m a physician and I make really good money, I still feel like it’s not enough. And I feel like it’s not, you know, it’s stressful. 

Hope: I don’t want to speak to the coaching piece on just sort of scarcity mindset, which I’m sure Bonnie is working on with you guys, ultimately, as well. But a lot of this is rooted, you know, I would imagine is rooted in some level of scarcity. 

Like one of the advantages of thinking about your money journey through your kids as an invitation to reconsider sort of what your choices have cost you, not to judge yourself, but just to notice that like, wow, being materialistic, having all the things actually doesn’t make me feel any better. 

As a matter of fact, you’re not wrong. Materialism is correlated with higher levels of both depression and anxiety in adults, 100%. And one of the things that you didn’t have as an immigrant child, I’m guessing that our kids have, which makes things 10 times worse is social media, right? 

You can go on TikTok and Instagram. And television had commercials when we were little, but in this day and age, there is always someone in our kids’ faces, if we don’t have boundaries around social media, telling them why they need something from Sephora or something that they just have to have in order to make them feel better. 

So you’re also up against that as a parent, which can feel really challenging to you. Sometimes when we’re trying to model what we want our kids to learn, it’s easier for us to model it for ourselves, right? Like if you’re trying to teach your kids, unless you have different rules for your kids than you do for you. Like if you’re trying to teach your kids to be respectful, then the best way to teach that is to speak to them respectfully. 

If you’re trying to teach your kids restraint, then the best way to teach that is just to demonstrate how difficult restraint is. You don’t have to be good at it in an effort to try and teach it. As a matter of fact, the fact that you stink at it is helpful because you can offer them the kind of empathy that they need when the urge feels so big and they want something so much and they have to hold off. There’s probably no one better to teach them that skill than you, because you’re so aware of how challenging it is. Does that resonate? 

Audience member: Yes. Yes, and it’s very hard. It’s very hard not to, because I guess I’m like my parents where I’m a parent pleaser too. So not only am I dealing with the scarcity mindset, but I’m also dealing with the parent pleaser and wanting to please my child. 

Hope: Yes. Yes. Well, yes. And I appreciate that you separated those out, right? Because making our kids uncomfortable is critical to their emotional resilience, which is a totally different topic, but equally as important, right? Like when we are afraid to set a limit for our kid because we want them to be happy, if our higher priority is happiness one of the most significant costs of that is that we cripple their emotional resilience because they don’t, they’re not generally prepared for a life that half of the time isn’t awesome. 

Like you’re a physician, you made it to wherever you were hoping to be as a doctor and you have a great income and you’re still half of the time feeling not awesome. Like that’s just the way the world works. 

And so part of the resistance that we need to have for our kids, part of the boundary work we’re doing for our kids, even if it’s not about money, is in an effort to build their capacity to experience a negative emotion. Which is very important for them to live a healthy emotional life because otherwise they’re just going to be avoiding it all the time. 

So one of the ways for you to be super intentional about money with your kids is to on purpose make them unhappy so that they can build their capacity to have a negative emotion and move through it. The other way that you can do it is to teach the skill of restraint or of, it doesn’t even have to come from scarcity, but just intentionally teaching them restraint or managing an urge when you want something badly and you have to wait for it so that they can build those skills too. 

And when you think about them as skills for them to build, it’s no different than teaching them to read if you’re really committed to it. And I think our kids are always the biggest mirrors for our personal growth. That’s why I love coaching parents so much, because most of the ways that it’s the hardest for us to parent are when they are demonstrating skills that we lack in ourselves. 

Bonnie: One thing I’ve started doing, and tell me what you think of because I have a funny story, is when we are at Target, his favorite store, of course. He knows exactly, he just makes a beeline to the toy section. And I’ll have him look at the price. I also have him look at the age, right? Because sometimes he gravitates towards baby toys. So I’m like, we’re not buying Duplos anymore, right? 

And so I have him, like I’ve trained him to look at a toy and see what the age is and then look for the price. And then he says the price. So I don’t think it’s so much that he knows the value of money, but obviously he knows there’s different numbers and different numbers are higher. 

And so we were actually at a grocery store and he saw one of those fly swatters that electrocute the insects. We live in Florida, so they’re really popular. And so he was like, mom, we wanted that, right? I’m like, oh yeah, let’s go buy it. And I see the price, it says eight bucks, but he was focusing on a different number on the handle. 

It said 50,000 and he goes, oh mom, it’s really expensive. So I just was like, oh, he notices. Like he noticed it and I was like, oh, that’s not the price because he doesn’t, I don’t think he knows 50,000, like what that actually means. But I think he noticed that that number was a lot bigger than his usual 20 or $30 toy. 

Hope: It’s so good. That’s so, so good. You can even send your son, your seven-year-old – You can send your kids in the grocery store to pick out, like I used to send my kid. I'm like I need black beans and I want you to get the one that is the least expensive or one that’s on sale. It’ll have a yellow tag on it. 

And sometimes he would get it and sometimes he wouldn’t, it would keep him busy in the store. It wasn’t a huge store and kept him busy in the store and he’d come back and he’d get it. And even now when he’s in college and he’s paying for his own groceries, he’ll be like, got a really good deal on the beans. Like he can tell it’s just a skill that we’ve been working on. 

Could we have afforded like 10 cents more on the beans? Yes. But I want him to notice that it’s the exact same thing for a different price. And when it’s something that in my own value is a want and not a need, I always point it out to my kids. Not because we don’t always make the choice to get the want, but because I want them to know the difference. 

And so this is just a really good opportunity for you, especially Mabel, for you to think about picking one or two goals that you really have about what you want your kids to earn or learn, and then be radically committed to seeing all of the opportunities to practice it. 

It doesn’t have to be like this overwhelming hall where they just do all the chores, but maybe from now on, you’re not going to just give your 17 year old gas money. You’re going to pay for the car and you’re going to pay for the insurance, but the gas is on her or whatever. It doesn’t matter. 

Just in a way that she can start to have some agency and responsibility over her financial security, because you’re not always going to be around to be able to give her that money. And even if you were, it’s not going to create a healthy relationship with her, an independent relationship for her with money long-term. 

Mabel: How do you calculate, like we live in Miami, Florida here where things tend to be really expensive. How do you calculate what's an appropriate allowance for like, let’s say my son who’s 17? 

Hope: I think, for your son who’s 17? 

Mabel: Yeah, versus my daughter who’s seven. 

Hope: I think it depends less on the number and more about what you plan on intending them to do with the money. Like does your 17-year-old have a job or no? 

Mabel: No. 

Hope: Okay. So what would you be giving the allowance for? 

Mabel: I don’t know. I guess contrary to me, like he really doesn’t, he’s a minimalist. He doesn’t spend much. And every time we go into a store, he doesn’t really ask for anything, actually. I guess I would be giving it to him for miscellaneous things here and there that he would, but he gets a lot of money from his father. So he has a very expensive family, so for his birthday he’ll get like $500 for example. And he just has it laying around in his room and he never does anything with it. 

Hope: Okay. Maybe that’s not the right question to be asking. Maybe you don’t need to be giving him an allowance because he has plenty of money, but maybe the skill he needs to build is how to be a better steward of the money he has. Like maybe the question to be asking yourself is not how much allowance I should give him. 

Like I never gave my kids an allowance ever. That just wasn’t a thing for me. I just was really good at restraint. And if they wanted things that they wanted, then they had to get a job. And if they didn’t have a job, then we would have an expectation before we went to Target about how much money I was going to give for them to have something. Or actually I never bought them anything at Target like that. 

But if I knew we were going to go to Starbucks or we were going to do something, like this is the amount of money you have to spend. And that was it. We went on a trip, I would give them a certain amount of money and that was all there was. And so I was limited when I decided to give them money, but I didn’t give them on the regular because I could never remember and it was entirely too stressful. 

When they had jobs I made them save half of their money and put it away. They could do whatever they wanted with the money that they had. And both of them had jobs at 16, 15. But your son doesn’t need an allowance just to say you have one, like it’s not a critical parenting skill. But if you want your kid to be a better steward of their money, and you’re noticing that like $500 and dollars are all over his room, that’s a skill he needs to build because he’s not caring for his money. 

I like to think about money like a relationship, right? We care about our relationships. We don’t just discard our partner’s feelings. How do we care for it? And if he’s not caring for it well, that seems like a better skill to teach. Does that make sense? I don’t think allowance is critical. Chores I feel very strongly about. Allowance I don’t think is critical. Although I do absolutely love the idea of giving your kids an amount of money and teaching them how to save and spend. But if you don’t have a spender, right, it’s not as big of a deal. 

But pay attention if that’s actually true, Mabel, because if you’re the kind of parent that just gets whatever they want to get, then you could be getting him things that might be a really good thing to teach him restraint about, right? 

Like if you’re someone where we always go to Starbucks and get something and you want to be the kind of parent that teaches them, for example, that that’s a want, not a need anymore, then you could say, I’m going to give you, let’s say, 20 bucks a month or a week or whatever it is. And you’re welcome to get some Starbucks, but I’m not buying that anymore. 

Bonnie: Yeah, I had a thought about the 17-year-old. Oh, because yeah, Jack’s grandparents sometimes also give him like $500 for his birthday. And so he has an investment account. Obviously, he doesn’t understand what that means, but that’s just an opportunity, Mabel, like he can open a –  Well, he’s almost 18. So I think at 18, he can actually open his own adult brokerage account. 

But you also could open up, it’s called a UTMA, which is basically a child’s brokerage account. And then you could teach him like, oh, if you put this account and you put it in this fund, the money will grow. So I think he’s old enough where he can understand that. He’s also old enough to read Rich Dad Poor Dad, by the way, Mabel. 

Hope: Yes, agreed. 

Bonnie: Yeah. 

Hope: That’s a great gift for the holidays, for sure. 100%. 

Bonnie: Yeah, don’t get the audio book though, because the narrator is like, just breathes heavy. It’s very poorly narrated. So that’s the only thing I’ll say about that. 

Hope: Well, I was just going to say, I’m glad you asked that question because that’s a great example of something that may not be a high value for you or me, but might be for somebody else. And it’s just there’s not a right about that. 

Like I think that it’s crazy that we don’t give our kids more financial education. They are going into the world, literally swimming in the ocean with no swimming lessons. I think financial literacy in children is the biggest missed opportunity that we have on the planet for our kids. 

And there are so many easy ways in your home to teach the kinds of skills that we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation. And I do think it’s our responsibility to hold our kids to those standards so that they can turn into adults who are fiscally not needing to rescue themselves from all their childhood wounds about the way that they were parented poorly or whatnot. 

We have this gorgeous invitation on the regular, and we have so much privilege and so much money that we can teach these lessons in any way that we want compared to families that have less. We didn’t even talk about the part of philanthropy and how we demonstrate giving to our kids and how we show them what we do with our money and how transparent we are with that. 

When we’re talking about at the end of the year, when charities are asking, or we want to donate to the Middle East or to a presidential campaign. Like these are conversations we should be having out loud with our kids. This is what I value. This is where I put my money. Sometimes we’re so effortless with just spending here and there that we’re not good stewards of our money, and we’re not showing our kids what’s our underlying beliefs and what’s really important to us. 

And the way we spend always reveals that on what we value. And that’s going to be different for everyone. I don’t mean that with judgment. That’s going to be different for everybody. So is the way that you’re demonstrating to your kids what you value, is that what you want to teach them? Is it intentional? Is it on purpose? And if it’s not, they are like sponges at this age and there’s really no lesson you could teach them that wouldn’t benefit them. 

I mean, I just feel like it’s everything. That’s my soapbox about that. I think one of the best things about you guys having this group, and I’m so grateful you let me come and speak to some extent, is that you can do this alongside your kids. If there’s work to be done for you, they’re learning the same lessons that you are right now. And it’s appropriate to be transparent about that. 

My kids know how much money I make. They understand what I do with my money. I show them. And it’s not always age-appropriate at every single age, but when your kid asks you if you’re rich or they want to understand the comparison between you and other people, these are such gorgeous conversations to have with our kids on what it means to be wealthy. 

What do you mean are we rich? What do you mean? How are you deciding if we’re wealthy? Are we wealthy in our health? Are we wealthy in our money? Are we wealthy in our family? There’s so many ways for us to decide about what wealth means, money is just one little piece of that. 

And so, I think that our kids are naturally very curious about money. And they’re going to give you lots of opportunities to practice talking about uncomfortable conversations. 

Bonnie: All right, anything that you think we haven’t said, Hope, before we close? 

Hope: I don’t think so. I think I gave a lot, probably more than everybody could tolerate right now. But my intention when Bonnie invited me to come is just to use your kids as an invitation to sort of have a different lens on how you’re learning and spending in front of them so that you can use it as a springboard to really generate the wealth that you wish. Whatever that looks like for you, whatever you want to spend your money on. And wanting to really be thoughtful about what you’re modeling for your kids so that they can learn and make decisions for themselves. 

Bonnie: Yeah. Okay. 

Hope: Well, thank you all for having me so much. 

Bonnie: Yeah. All right, have a great night everyone.

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