Your Kids Are Expensive, But They Don’t Know It!
My name is Adam Carroll and I’m a personal finance expert who has spent the past 12 years working with high school and college students, many who have lived VERY sheltered financial lives. You’d be shocked to know how many 18-25 year olds have NO CLUE what they’re doing with money, how much they’re borrowing or what their terrible habits will do to them later on. (Here’s a hint: IT INVOLVES YOUR BASEMENT FOR THE NEXT DECADE.)
I’ve been studying the behaviors of kids as it pertains to money for the past 12+ years and the situation has gotten so dire, I knew I needed to get in front of parents to halt this backward slide at an earlier age.
Raising Kids Who Thrive With Money is an online coaching and training program for parents of children from just born to finishing high school. The goal of which is to help parents raise financially independent teenagers. By that I mean young adults who are more than capable of making financial decisions that DON’T involve your pocket book.
With one in college and four more to go, we desperately needed this.
“Coming off of the first year of a very expensive private school and more loans than we imagined having to take out, we went through the Raising Kids Who Thrive With Money course to better prepare the next four financially. We didn’t realize the difference small adjustments in our daily lives would make with the kids, but it’s enormous. We will save tens of thousands of dollars with this information.”
-Angela Garrison
- The average costs to raise a child from 0-18 is $245,000, and another $100-300,000 if you’re paying for college?
- A college student starting this year is expected to graduate with an average of $35,000 in public student loans (and that doesn’t factor in Parent Plus loans OR private loans).
- 93% of all college sophomores have between 1-2 credit cards and if carrying a balance have over $3,000 already!
- Financial education is not yet mandated in all schools in the U.S yet our education system encourages teens to be college-bound, no matter the cost.
- If you had bought 100 shares of Microsoft in 1980 it would have cost you $2100. If you would have sold 19 years later, it would have been worth $1.4M.
- A recent marketing firm reported that kids control $1.2T in spending power in the U.S.
- A Time magazine study recently stated 1 in 3 Americans have saved $0 for retirement.
“People came up to me and poured their hearts out about the fact that they were terrible with money. They wished their parents were more open about money growing up.”
In 2015, I was invited to London to speak at the TEDx London Business School event. It was a surreal day given that I was some no-name guy from Iowa sharing the stage with the head of the largest London gang, the producer of the Nelson Mandela biography, the founder of the largest marketing firm in the world, and a host of other notables who clearly had more to say than I did.
My speech was about what happens when money isn’t real. When it becomes abstract and we no longer associate spending with forking over dollars. Specifically what it does to kids. Then I shared a story of playing Monopoly with my kids using real money. ($10,000 in cold hard American cash to be precise.)
When I took the stage I was terrified that my message wouldn’t translate — then people laughed, and nodded, and after 15 minutes of smiling and nodding, they applauded.
But what happened after blew my mind. One after another, people came up to me and poured their hearts out about the fact that they were terrible with money. That they wished their parents were more open about money growing up because they had to learn the hard way themselves. Some asked me if I worked with individuals to get them out of financial binds. One woman was in tears over her burgeoning debts.
One guy told me my speech was the most impactful of the day! Seriously?! The gang leader read a poem that nearly brought me to tears. The film producer shared intimate details of Nelson Mandela’s life. And yet MY money talk impacted person after person. I had struck a nerve.
When my wife and I left London, I swore to myself that somehow I’d bring all of this to light in a way that real people could apply in real life. A way to help families raise their kids to be financially savvy enough that by 18, they’d be financially independent of their parents.
And then one day you thought, you know what would make my life complete? — A CHILD!
I have told students across the country that you can never comprehend how much love you can have for another person until you bring a child into the world. And as parents, it is our desire to provide, care for, nurture, guide and love our kids to our best extent to help create a positive future for them.
But something has gone terribly awry.
Speaking in very broad generalities, most kids are completely clueless when it comes to money. Parents I’ve spoken with seem to have a ‘I just let my kids be kids’ mentality, sheltering them from any money decisions whatsoever.
I can personally attest to being on over 600 college and university campuses, having met thousands of students, and they’re not able to answer simple financial trivia questions:
- Out of 100, maybe 2-5 can tell me how much they’ve borrowed thus far.
- 1-2 might be able to tell me their interest rate.
- Junior Achievement does a national financial literacy test every couple of years with high school students and the state with the highest score last year was 58%. The highest score. A failing 58%.
MY LAB RATS
My children (as challenging as it may be to have me for a father) are my lab rats when it comes to teaching them money. They are the variables in my experiment around financial education and the control are all of the kids I see being raised in households where money isn’t discussed. While they didn’t fully comprehend the value of the lesson at the beginning, they have had emergency funds since the time they were five. They all started investment accounts before their 8th birthdays. Each has applied for several scholarships for college (yes, already.) They understand the concepts and benefits of saving, investing, giving, and being intelligent consumers. (Their mom is the coupon queen, I only live in the castle.) And they rarely, if ever, ask for anything.
IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
When my wife and I finally committed to raising kids who thrive with money and we used something that was right in front of us the entire time — LOGIC. The logic we unlocked was if kids never have access to money, or never have to make financial decisions of their own that impact them personally, HOW are they ever going to learn how to manage it?
After seeing tens of thousands of students make horrific decisions when it came to spending and borrowing in college, it occurred to me that most of them probably never had been taught to manage cash or credit growing up, therefore they were making mistakes for the first time. It just so happened they were making MASSIVE MISTAKES.
In effect, we WANT our kids to fall down and skin their knees when it comes to money. And we give them many, many opportunities to do just that while they’re under our roof and have a safety net to fall into. It allows us, as parents, to help shape and model what intelligent money behavior looks like by suggesting minor corrections along the way.
What we’re doing isn’t rocket science, but instead is taking logical steps to getting money in our kids’ hands on a fairly regular basis and having THEM make the decisions that parents normally would. In addition, we’ve added elements to the plan that has them investing money in the stock market, applying for scholarships, funding a child in a third world country, and even paying an occasional bill or two.
The logic behind it is simple: at some point they’re going to learn this stuff. Might as well be now and it might as well be taught by us.
A CHANGE IN MINDSET
My goal in getting this content out is to share the wealth. Not just because the cost of raising a child is so astronomical and I want parents to be able to retire comfortably, but because by teaching your kids about money, credit and wealth early on, they’ll be far more likely to succeed financially early in life.
The change in mindset is simply inviting your children in to participate financially in the household. They’ll be a part of the financial decision making, particularly when it comes to issues that directly impact them: sports, friends’ parties, school supplies, going out for ice cream, clothes shopping, all the way up to saving & investing for college.
Best of all, by equipping them with set amounts and the ability to make some decisions on their own, you take away the need to continually tell them no (which often makes you the bad guy).
You’ll be totally convinced when you see how a properly setup allowance program, coupled with rules around who pays for what will spark newfound responsibility and entrepreneurship with your kids. It’s been in them all along, but current parenting trends stunt our kids own reliability on themselves!
What I can assure you is provided you have a 5-18 year old, they’re MORE than capable of understanding what you’re about to teach them. When my son was 6 he understood what credit cards were, how they were used, and that we pay them off every month. Today he’s 8, has $1100 in an emergency savings account, and contributes to investments every month. He knows what dividends are, and has a more complete understanding of how much college costs than most 18 year olds.
What if your son or daughter was able to set themselves up for financial success before they left your home? What kind of difference could that mean to your future retirement?
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
What Raising Kids Who Thrive With Money will teach you is simple, but not always easy. There are systems and processes that you’ll put into place that make daily life easier, and by the time your offspring leave the nest, you’ll be smiling so hard your cheeks will hurt.
In all honesty, you can master these concepts in a short afternoon, though the change you’ll notice in your family dynamics might take a couple months to shake out. The reason is you will be introducing a new way of handling money and decisions in your family, and the two keys to making it work are: Consistency and Communication.
The Raising Kids Who Thrive With Money course contains 5 power-packed modules, each with easily digestible mini-lessons that allow you to take in the content while waiting at soccer practice, sitting in the orthodontist’s office, or after putting the kids to bed. Each of the modules has bonus downloads and extra content to make the implementation a snap.
THE COURSE MODULES
THE INTRODUCTION
- As parents in this instant-gratification society, we’re falling down when it comes to establishing norms, routines, expectations and consequences for our kids around money. Find out how this is impacting you now, and more importantly LATER.
- There are two phrases your kids need to hear from you over and over throughout their life. Learn how and when to deliver them and you’ll experience an emotionally stable child whether they’re getting what they want or not.
- How you, your family, your kids’ friends, and yes even teachers are influencing spending and money management behavior and what to do to correct what you don’t like.
- Why kids today are labeled ‘Entitled’ and how to ensure your kids are ‘The Opposite of Entitled’.
MINDSET & BACKGROUND
- While every parent is doing their best to make sure their kids turn out to be well-rounded adults, there are some things we’re NOT doing that make the biggest impact. Learn these and things change from Day One.
- Pushing financial decisions down to your kids level can be an overwhelming task to think through. This module shows you step-by-step how to decide what your kids will be responsible for allowing you to become a coach, not a buzzkill.
- There’s a part of your kids’ brain that isn’t completely developed yet, but don’t underestimate their ability to stretch what’s there. These strategies help you prepare them for the monumental decisions ahead.
- You and your spouse may be setting precedents that will backfire when you’re looking for positive change in your children. Find out where those blindspots might be and how to correct them.
TO CHORE OR NOT TO CHORE
- Experts disagree fundamentally about how chores should be set up, however this method allows everyone to not only have a say, but also share in the work needing to be done around the house.
- Find out how chores and credit card debt later in life are inextricably linked and what to do to make sure your kids make the best choices when the time comes.
- The where, when and how of chores including keeping things front and center, keeping everyone engaged, and you getting to kick up your feet now and again.
- How “chores” can be loosely defined to include things you want your children to learn in order to be more successful later in life. (Here’s a hint — we now have some favorite books in common!)
HOW MUCH, WHEN & WHAT
- Which accounts to set-up prior to formally launching the framework, including the two you may not have considered which could guarantee your kids never move home again after college.
- Deciding on how much to give your kids in allowance is based on a number of factors. Too much and they’ll feel no pain, not enough and the lessons they should be getting may be lost. Find out how to zero in on the right amount.
- With consistency being the key to long-term success, learn these 3 keys to make sure your system is setup, working, and practically automated.
- Fostering the savings and investment habit takes time, but considerably less time when you implement the included strategy and provide some guidance (also included).
THE RULES OF MONEY AT HOME
- By establishing certain “rules of money” at home you’ll know exactly what to say when asked, “Can I borrow 5 bucks and pay you back later?”
- A primary function of the Kids Who Thrive With Money framework is pushing financial decisions to their level, but what exactly should they be responsible for? Once you begin crafting this list and seeing the results, you’ll wish you’d done this years ago.
- Can you imagine what it will be like when accountability is actually something your kids look forward to? Follow this strategy and they’ll not only enjoy it, they’ll begin ASKING for you to hold them accountable.
- There is one fundamental key that is critical to your success in Raising Kids Who Thrive With Money and it’s called Shared Ownership. Whether you’re talking about money, homework, chores or something completely unrelated, the 3 Keys of Shared Ownership will blow your mind!
BONUS MODULES
PREPARING THEM TO LEAVE THE NEST
- Yes, they’re 18. Yes, legally they’re adults. Mentally, however, they’re still children unless you arm them with these strategies. These 5 reminders will make sure your kids aren’t over-extending themselves when presented with easy to access debt.
- 90% of college students can’t answer these 3 questions. Whether or not they rely on you financially for an extended period of time after college, is dependent on them knowing the answers.
- When ambiguity is the enemy, this is the series of conversations that needs to be had a number of times prior to them being away from your watchful eye.
SCHOLARSHIP MASTERY
- There are billions of dollars in unclaimed scholarships available for your child whether they’re 8 or 18. Find out how to find the funding opportunities appropriate for your children.
- Apathy and Ignorance are the two enemies of getting free money for school. This video will share with you and your kids how to Apply With Ease, including the tactics that savvy scholarship winners have used to earn hundreds of thousands in college tuition.
- When asked what they dislike the most, students will answer point-blank: writing essays. This Effortless Essay framework will cut the time in ⅓ from what you’d normally take to write a 300-2000 word essay.
COLLEGE PREP FOR PARENTS
- FAFSA, CLEP, 529s — There are more acronyms in the college market than you can shake a stick at! This section goes through what you most need to know prior to making those college selections. It’s like having an advisor right there with you the entire way.
- Websites and resources abound to help a student pick their major and identify how much college will cost. This resource guide is the end-all, definitive guide to making wise choices of major and school.
- How much your kids actually need for school is a tricky question. This form will show you how much they realistically need from you to live a “normal” college life.
WHEN GRANDPARENTS MEAN WELL
- These conversations, had at the right time, could mean the difference between a houseful of junk and tens of thousands in student loans, or a streetwise graduate with no debt after graduation.
- Birthday and holiday gifts are wonderful, but do you ever feel like it’s just SO much to deal with? These gift ideas are a bonus to everyone — parents, grandparents, and kids.
Course curriculum
-
1
Introduction
- Welcome
- Do You Love Your Kids Too Much?
- Shaped By Experience
- The Opposite of Entitlement
- Additional Reading
-
2
Mindset & Background
- Realization!
- The Pre-Frontal Cortex
- Why Kids Pitch Fits At Target/Crying To Get Their Way
- Why Kids Pitch Fits At Target/Crying To Get Their Way
- The Guide to having the money reset discussion
- Love Your Kids Let Them Struggle - An Article by Adam Carroll
-
3
To Chore Or Not To Chore
- Viewpoints & Opinions
- Work Ethic
- Keeping It Front & Center
- Keeping It Interesting
- Chores Suggestions
- Chore Chart Ideas
-
4
How Much, When & What
- Accounts to Setup
- How Much?
- Allowance Calculator
- When?
- How To Create Shared ownership
- What?
- 10-10-10-70
-
5
Rules Of Money At Home
- Lending Money
- Their Responsibilities
- Accountability
- Ambiguity Is The Enemy
My goal in getting this content out is to share the wealth. Not just because the cost of raising a child is so astronomical and I want parents to be able to retire comfortably, but because by teaching your kids about money, credit and wealth early on, they’ll be far more likely to succeed financially early in life.
The change in mindset is simply inviting your children in to participate financially in the household. They’ll be a part of the financial decision making, particularly when it comes to issues that directly impact them: sports, friends’ parties, school supplies, going out for ice cream, clothes shopping, all the way up to saving & investing for college.
Best of all, by equipping them with set amounts and the ability to make some decisions on their own, you take away the need to continually tell them no (which often makes you the bad guy).
You’ll be totally convinced when you see how a properly setup allowance program, coupled with rules around who pays for what will spark newfound responsibility and entrepreneurship with your kids. It’s been in them all along, but current parenting trends stunt our kids own reliability on themselves!
What I can assure you is provided you have a 5-18 year old, they’re MORE than capable of understanding what you’re about to teach them. When my son was 6 he understood what credit cards were, how they were used, and that we pay them off every month. Today he’s 8, has $1100 in an emergency savings account, and contributes to investments every month. He knows what dividends are, and has a more complete understanding of how much college costs than most 18 year olds.
What if your son or daughter was able to set themselves up for financial success before they left your home? What kind of difference could that mean to your future retirement?