Navigating Financial Pitfalls in Relationships: Left Brain Thinking Podcast

Hello again, and welcome to this week's Left Brain Thinking podcast. On the podcast, we welcome dynamic thinkers from the worlds of investing and personal finance designed to help you in your journey of building your personal assets. And a few words and a disclaimer: the opinions expressed by our guests are not endorsed by Left Brain and may not reflect the views expressed by other clients or investors. Depending on the facts and circumstances, public commentary made directly by a client about their own experience with or endorsement of an investment advisor, their personal investments, or their approval of Left Brain is considered a testimonial. Testimonials are based on unique experiences from current clients or private fund investors and are not representative of all client experiences. Testimonials are unsolicited and no cash or non-cash compensation is provided. To learn more about Left Brain and our research service, which provides subscribers 8 to 10 full-length stock reports per month and The Chosen, our favorite stock and bond opportunity of each month, head to leftbrainir.com. With that, we'll welcome this week's guest. Hello again and welcome back to the Left Brain Thinking podcast. We are joined by Vince Carter from the CFO at Home podcast. He has a podcast covering finances, personal finances, and, uh, relationships, and we wanted to have him on the program. As we explore many personal finance topics here on Left Brain Thinking. So Vince, uh, welcome to the program.

Thank you for inviting me, Brian. Of course, you were on CFO at Home, uh, a couple of months back, and we had a great conversation. I have not shared this with you, but it was actually one of our higher-rated episodes. I want to thank you personally for all the knowledge you dropped there.

Oh, I really appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation. That's why we had you over, and hopefully this will be one of the higher-rated podcasts on our side too. So really looking forward to it. So we'll just jump right in, Vince. Um, if you could just tell us a little bit about your background and what got you interested in personal finance, and you know, what, what got you started with the podcast.

All right, sounds good. So, uh, just to give a brief sketch of my background, I am married, um, going on 29 years, so it's been a minute. I have 2 kids, uh, one recently graduated, uh, college, one is a junior in college. And professionally, uh, I've spent most of my professional life in, uh, technical management, so not necessarily in finances, not directly in finances, sure, but I've had an interest in, in finances, you know, going back to when I was a kid. And I always knew I was either going to go the technical route or the finance route. Uh, the technical route won out, but I've always had this passion for the subject of finances, and that's followed me throughout my entire life. Since I didn't quite go that road professionally, I really took an interest in personal finance And I got involved in counseling in my church and really just trying to reach people with that message in any way I can. I did have a brief stint actually in corporate finance, and that really convinced me that I wanted to work with personal finance because personal finance makes a lot more intuitive sense to me.

Sure.

Uh, than corporate finance. But the bottom line is it's, it's just a passion of mine. It's something that I've always been a money nerd in my own life, and I would see people struggling with these things that I felt like if they just had the knowledge to— life is tough, there are a lot of struggles we can't avoid, and the finance area is something that if you have the knowledge, there are just struggles in this life that you can avoid. So let's make life as simple as possible and at least avoid the things we can.

Of course. I mean, it's, it's a subject that everyone needs to tackle at some point in life, and the earlier the better, of course. I myself as well am married, not quite as long as you have, but, you know, seen some of the pitfalls that come along with finance in a relationship. And, you know, that's definitely a subject we would love to discuss with you and go deeper on with you. Because I think it's something everyone deals with out here is, you know, you get married, have a family, and, you know, people— a lot of times people are both professionals, they have their own financial lives, and you got to marry the two together. And there's a lot of conflict there potentially, but also a lot of opportunity for growth. So I think it's definitely an opportunity for us to discuss, you know, what problems you might see in the relationship context from a finance point of view. You know, what, you know, what are the pitfalls that you see? Um, you know, and as you said, you've counseled folks. Um, you know, what are some of the pitfalls you've seen?

My opinions come from a couple of different areas. One is counseling people, and one is my personal experience. And as I kind of marry those two together, uh, I, I have seen certain common denominators. So if you take it from really, let's say the beginning of a relationship, that, that's kind of a good place to, to go, particularly when you get to the point where things get serious enough where you want to combine finances. The thing that people need to understand is so many times we form a lot of our opinions about money from our childhood, and we form very specific, um, concepts. I read something the other day that said that, uh, our opinions about money— some studies have shown that our opinions of money are formed by the time we're 8 years old. That's, that's pretty fascinating. That's pretty early. So we have— let's just say that that's accurate for the sake of conversation. Then you're walking around with this very specific view of money from the time you're 8. So you have that view in your age, you have that view when you're 18. Let's say you're 28 when you finally decide to merge your life with somebody else's. You've been walking around with this very specific view of how money works for 20 years, and you kind of assume that everybody thinks about it the way you do. And when you get into a relationship, it's one of those things that's very easy not to— to have a problem connecting on, simply because you're bringing a 20-year view of what money is and how it works and how you prioritize it into a relationship. Sure. Somebody who has a different view for 20 years of what money is and how it works. And we have to be able to step back and have enough and be self-aware enough to know that that's the case. You'll, you'll read a lot of things about people's money stories. That's kind of the way it's referred to. Okay. And the whole idea that you need to understand your partner's money story. So you need to understand, you know, how did you regard money when you were growing up? What did your parents think about money? What were the rules around money in your household? And if you understand the first step, and it's not instant and it's not magic, but I think the first step is when you do decide to combine finances, and ideally you do this from the beginning, is understand one another's money stories. Now you can do that at the beginning, that's the cleanest way of doing it. Some people can be married 10 years before they get around having that conversation, or 20 years, or whatever. But whether you're just getting together or whether or not you're trying to correct, you know, 10 years of misconnecting or 15 years of misconnecting, I think that's where the healing begins, so to speak, is understanding one another's money stories.

That's really interesting. I never really thought about it. I mean, when we get together with our partner you got to marry all sorts of different things together, your values. You got to make sure you're aligned on, you know, a lot of times religious values or, you know, whether you want to have children, how you want to raise the children. I think a lot of those things are more top of mind for folks. But money doesn't necessarily, you know, isn't necessarily top of mind for people when they're getting together with their partner. And like you said, it's probably the best to figure this all out in the beginning. You know, when you get married, you got to make sure you're on the same page with whether you want to have children, how you want to raise them. This is all part of that, it seems to me. And, you know, talk a little bit about how you've counseled folks to navigate these waters.

Right. Well, first of all, I'll say that The difference between even some of the things you pointed out there and money is, let's take religion for a second. Uh, you can opt to have a conversation about religion, or you could not opt to have a conversation about religion.

Sure.

And your kids would just kind of find their own way. Maybe you decide we just don't talk about religion here, we don't go to church, whatever, right? You could, you can do the same thing with politics. You can bring up your kids to be very political, or we just don't talk about politics, we don't deal with politics here. Right. You can make the decision not to talk about money, but it is going to impact you. So that is the one thing that, you know, you can't avoid. It's like avoiding the discussion of how we're gonna, you know, get oxygen, that kind of thing. So totally not to not answer your question, but I just wanted to go down that road for a minute.

Sure.

So, so I believe your question was about how, uh I counsel people, or in terms of, of having those disconnects.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of people who want to be counseled, unfortunately, it's not, you know, just coming together. Uh, so you're not working with a clean slate. So while you want to get to that point that we were just talking about in terms of understanding money stories The biggest difference is with a lot of people who get to the point where they need counseling, you have to kind of work with them to kind of back things up, because a lot of times there's already a certain amount of acrimony, there's already a certain amount of tension, there's already a certain amount of preconceived notions that he does what he does because he doesn't care about the family, or, or she does what she's does because she's wasteful, right? They've already kind of painted themselves into the— into a corner where they're both kind of cartoon characters in a way.

Sure.

You know, I'm the responsible one, and oh, you know, she just wastes money, or, you know, he's— he's the irresponsible one, all he wants to do is go out and, you know, buy sports equipment, and I'm the serious one. And it's really kind of a matter of de-escalating that, because one thing about managing finances is a lot of times you do have one person who is naturally more interested in that subject than the other. And one of the biggest mistakes I see made is you have one person who's really into that, in the finances, kind of money nerds like you and me, and the other person is normal. So So the, the person who is normal is getting, you know, beat about the head and shoulders by, by the money person. Okay. And they've kind of established this dynamic where, you know, I'm, I'm good with money and he's not good with money, so I'm gonna make all of these decisions. And for better or for worse, that's the dynamic. And sometimes the partner, well, is not that interested in the subject anyway, so they'll give up. So it's kind of a "whatever you say, dear, that's your department" type thing. Sure. And I worry about other things. That works in theory for a while until we realize that while that partner may not be interested in money, money impacts all parts of our lives, all portions of our lives. So they're interested in something. They may not be interested in watching the bank account go up. They may not be interested in keeping the budget, but they're interested in those things that life brings them.

Sure.

So there has to be a certain amount of working together. So part of the process is, is once you kind of de-escalate the conversation and get people to start regarding, you know, themselves as as, you know, cartoon characters. It's really getting them to realize that both parties have a part in managing that part of life.

Sure, absolutely.

I mean, even if it's, you know, one person, you know, operates the household, that kind of thing, and the other person, you know, runs the budget and that kind of thing, you know, just, just operating your household is, you know, a financial job, whether you think about it that way or not. So it's a matter of not so much kind of run— running on parallel paths, which is when, when a lot of people get off of track and they get out of sync, but looking at this as a we endeavor. We are managing our money, even if I'm playing, you know, a role that you wouldn't necessarily think was was a part of the management of our money so we can feel like we're working towards a common goal.

Yeah, it seems what you're sort of alluding to is it's really a communication issue, um, just like anything else with relationships, and that's not too surprising. I guess I'm kind of interested in how do you get that buy-in from— like you said, you know, a lot of the time one person's really interested in these matters and the other person like you said, they care about the direction of their household and the finances, but maybe not as conversant in these matters and things along those lines. Can you talk a little bit more about how we can get buy-in from that, maybe the person that's a little bit less interested in finance to get involved with the situation? Because I know, I think it probably feels intimidating if you're not, so financially inclined to even put a word in, right, when you know the— your partner is pretty competent. You know, talk about a little bit more how people can get that buy-in and, and make it a little bit more of an equitable situation.

I think one of the keys is, as I call it, you got to find a hook. You've got to find that area of common interest. And a lot of times, like, that area of common interest is not so much, you know, money per se, but it's a life goal that's attached to money. So once we have a common goal to work towards, then things start to fall in place. So if that common goal is, let's say, You know, you have kids. We want both of our kids to get a good education, and we don't want them to go in debt for that education. That, that's a shared vision. That's not really a money thing. That is just a life goal. Um, we want to have a particular retirement lifestyle. That's a goal. So bringing both sides together on the goal is important. It's kind of that begin with the end in mind. I'm stealing from somebody there. I can't quite remember who right now. Uh, Stephen Covey. I think I just stole that from Stephen Covey.

Okay.

But once you do that and then kind of reverse engineer roles, I think that works pretty well, but you have to have that common area of interest. And once you have the common area of interest and you start to work backwards, you know, that, that role that, that non-interested partner may have may not necessarily be something you even see, think about traditionally as a financial role. I mean, it could be the decision for that second partner to to maybe go back to work for a season to work towards a goal. It could be just really understanding that while we're working for this goal over here, and that's important, we also have to live life. So if one partner is the domestic partner, let's say, then giving that person more say-so in terms of how we budget to run a household. One of the most backwards things that— I'll just start from the beginning— that I found myself guilty of very early on was, uh, in, in my marriage, I, you know, was the predominant earner, so I decided that I needed to, you know, be the budget guy. So I'm budgeting, but yet my wife is running the house. So I'm telling her how much she gets for groceries. I'm telling her how much she gets for this, that, and the other. How differently does it play if instead of me telling her, I'm asking her, what do you need? And we talk about it. Sure, but at the end of the day, then I'm playing the role of helping her to fulfill what she needs. In the corporate lingo that, that we use on the podcast, I'm behaving as the CFO, she's behaving as the COO, and I'm there to support her in doing that, right? And you know, that's not what you would call— that's not a role of high finance. You know, to play your role in that part of the play, if you're that quote-unquote COO, you don't need to understand a thing about mutual funds and ETFs and worry about the market, what the market is doing. You're just running the household. Well, I say just running the household. You're running the household. I had to catch myself there. But that is critical in terms of the finances of the home, particularly if that person is good at what they're doing on that side. I mean, and you can't really underscore things like that. We're living in inflationary times right now, so, you know, home economics and making sure that things, you know, the spending at home is efficient you know, it's going to play right into the amount that you have to invest. So you may have a tendency to, to discount that, but you can't. Again, value what each partner brings to the table.

I really like what you said there. Um, I think we sometimes— we're all egocentric, kind of get wrapped up in what we do and how important it is. And, um, I think that's certainly a potential source of acrimony and resentment in a relationship. And I like what you said, is this really valuing what the other person is doing and, you know, trying to support them, right, is really important. And I think that hopefully can open the lines of communication for people on all these matters. I think, you know, as a, as an advisor myself, I understand people don't really want to talk about money a lot of times, and there's a lot of inertia You know, sometimes when we work with new people, they've been thinking about it for 3 or 5 years and finally they've, you know, taken that step to speak with us. But, you know, a lot of times talking about money can be difficult. And I think we want to, you know, push against that door and try to open that door not only for, you know, our, you know, for the household, but inside the household as well. So I definitely, I definitely like what you said about valuing the other person. I think, you know, money can be the source of difficulty in relationship, but kind of you're putting it on, you know, trying to stand it on its head and, you know, making, making the financial, the financial life of the household is actually possibly a source of connection. So I really, really like what you you know, what you preach.

I want to go back. And yeah, I was gonna say, and that really kind of speaks to the power of money. And like any powerful thing, it can be used for good or used for evil. Very rarely is something powerful really neutral.

Sure.

So you almost have to use it for good in order to keep it from not being a destructive thing.

But yeah, it's funny because we're talking about one small aspect of a relationship, but it just kind of You can see how it really, you know, the financial part of the relationship is really intertwined in everything. And, you know, you see like the source of divorce a lot of the times is money and we want to avoid that. You know, there's plenty of other problems and issues to deal with. So, you know, getting everyone on the same page and being supportive and valuing everyone's contribution in a relationship is really important, it seems to me. I want to go back to your concept of money story. Really intrigued by this. I mean, you know, we, we don't live in a, in an old school feudal society or anything like that. So, you know, a lot of times partners come from one walk of life and, you know, maybe grew up one way. And then the other partner may have grown up a different way with a different amount of money in the house and I think this is really a difficult thing to kind of put together sometimes. Love to hear your thoughts on, you know, if people come, you know, two partners come from very different backgrounds, how to kind of square that circle.

Well, the first step is really, believe it or not, just getting people to share. You would be surprised how difficult it is for people, you know, particularly in, in certain circumstances, to just share those stories, particularly if there is some, you know, pain associated with it, or if there's something uncomfortable with it. Or sometimes it's just, you know, the thing that you don't talk about. Maybe there's not, you know, trauma or anything in your background, it's just that, you know, we don't talk about that. A lot of times people don't even think about it. So when you ask a person initially, uh, they almost assume that they don't have a money story. So one thing, you may want to avoid using that word because it, it has certain connotations to it, but it's really getting into a conversation with a person, like I said, to understand, you know, how they saw money growing up. And it's really just starting to exchange stories. I mean, just literal, you know, did you get an allowance when you were a kid? What were Christmases like? Just things, just little basic things that we take for granted that because it was our reality, we just assume it is reality. So once you understand that about another person, and the conversations have to unfold over time, but once you really understand that other person, then empathy can start to build. And at a minimum, I think getting the empathy is important because It's the difference between, you know, your partner maybe in your mind being wasteful with money, and it's the difference between them being wasteful and if you can kind of see the whys behind that.

Sure.

You come at it with a level of empathy where it's not wasteful. You may still see it as wasteful, but it's like, oh, now I understand. Is because, you know, um, you know, his parents broke up when he was young, so his mother would, you know, spoil him and his father would spoil him, and that's why he sees the money the way he does.

Sure.

So it's really just getting people to open up and understand those, those stories. Now, in order to do that, you know, that's not necessarily something you can just sneak into conversations and go, you know, yeah, I was thinking the other day, uh, tell me about how your mom, you know, who managed money in your house when you were small. That's not something that you necessarily can just sneak into a casual conversation.

Sure.

Uh, if you can, great, but it does have to be a little deliberate, right? So if you're the partner particularly who is initiating that, you know, I also recommend that you be very transparent in terms of the whys. And it's really, hey, I just want to understand where you're coming from. This has been a source of friction for us, um, and, and I just want to understand better because sometimes I feel like I overreact to certain things you do. 'But if I understand, you know, where you're coming from and, you know, why you do the things you do, maybe I wouldn't overreact.' So, you know, approach them in that kind of disarming way and not a, you know, 'There's something wrong with you and we're gonna figure this out. This is the last thing we do. What did your parents do to you?' It's not that approach. It's really more of a, you know, I want to understand because sometimes I overreact. So, you know, and if you've been with your partner any period of time, you know, you, you kind of know hopefully how to approach them in that way. But you have to be conscious in approaching them in a disarming way and not an accusatory way, because so many times, if you've been together for any amount of time and you've had money fights, then anytime the, the word money comes up or the subject comes up, you know, everybody gets into their defensive stance.

That's right.

You have to kind of disarm, and the first part of disarming is, is to admit that you have overreacted.

It's funny, I feel like we're, uh, doing a couples counseling podcast today. Um, But it's, it's interesting because, you know, and we've kind of alluded to is, is, you know, finances, goals are also central to a relationship. You know, be an adult about it. We've got to, got to, you know, take these things head on and really address them in an open and honest way. And, you know, again, in my own relationship, you you know, we definitely— I wouldn't say we have friction, but this is not something we necessarily attack explicitly on a regular basis either. So—

Right!

So I can relate to what you're saying and, you know, the more you— the more open you can be, I think the better you're going to be and I think the results are going to be better too when both people are kind of pulling on the rope in the same direction.

Yeah! And it's interesting that, you know, you compared it to, you know, it's almost like we're having a conversation about couples counseling. I like to regard myself as one of the least touchy-feely people on the planet. That's the way I like to regard myself. But my interest in this area is much out of necessity as it is anything else. And I think that's an important point to drive home to maybe people who are listening to this conversation and going, Yeah, not gonna do it. I'm not that, you know, touchy-feely type. I'm talking about this from the angle of 100% pragmatism.

Sure.

A lot of my interest in this area was the fact that I am more inclined to grind the numbers and get very technical and get very down into the details. I'm much more technical. Than anything else. But you get to a point where I had too many situations personally where I crafted, you know, the budget to end all budgets. You know, it's, you know, old school, like in Excel. It's like the most beautiful thing that you've ever seen in terms of numbers and fonts and everything else. Behold the great budget. And I would present that to my wife and it's like, we will live by this budget. And she'd go ahead and do whatever she wanted to do. So, you know, you go through that for a certain amount of time and just for practical purposes, you back up and go, why isn't this working? And it does kind of lead to more of the soft skills. Than it does, you know, well, we need to ground the numbers better.

Right. And flexibility, you know, life throws different challenges your way in a marriage and flexibility is important. You know, of course, it's important to have a plan like you're inclined to do. But when push comes to shove, that's not always going to be— it's not going to always be practical to stick to that. To the letter.

So everybody's got a plan until they get hit in the mouth.

Absolutely. I like it, Vince. Okay, let's take a little bit of a turn here. I know a lot of people are bringing up children, you know, especially folks maybe that have a nice amount of money and they don't want their kids to become spoiled or expecting certain things in life without having to put the work in. And I think that's a concern a lot of people have. I guess I'm interested in your thoughts on how can we instill good money values in children? Because a lot of times children just kind of see the net result of things and, okay, well, I live in a nice house. Folks have nice cars, and we don't really struggle for anything, but they don't really see, you know, like a duck, you can see above water, it looks real placid, but they're kicking the legs real hard underneath. You know, how can you instill these values into your kids and make sure that they are set up for success?

That's a good question, because there seems to be a lot of focus on that right now. Um, just, I mean, even in, in national conversations, I know here in Georgia, which, which is where I am, and several other states, they're starting to pass these, uh, bills, uh, about financial literacy being taught in the schools. And I think that's an important I think that's a great step. I think it's nothing but positive.

Sure.

Uh, so I think there's this recognition that we're not doing enough to educate our kids financially. So I think, I think that outside of the home is a positive move. But in terms of what we can do, I think the first thing we can do, and it kind of comes back to what we were talking about, because I think all things kind of come back back, uh, to what's going on in the household is first we need to model the behavior we want our kids to have.

Okay.

I mean, uh, what's the saying? Um, more is caught than taught.

Okay.

So, so, so that, that, that's the very first step. And a lot of times, if you have a parent or parents who have their own money shame, or they don't feel as though they're handling their money well and that type of thing, you know, one, you know, they may, they may not be modeling, you know, the best behaviors, but it also makes them very hesitant to talk to their own kids about money. So managing your own money well not only sets you up to be a good role model, but it also gives you the confidence to talk to your kids about money. Uh, because again, if you're not managing your own money well, your own money shame may keep you from having conversations. And if you're, you even if you can get the courage up to have the conversation, you know, kids can see when there's a misalignment between what's coming out of your mouth and what you're telling them to do. So that's probably one of the most important things. I think people overestimate some of the debates, you know, that people have, well, you know, well, should you give a kid an allowance or should you, you know, make them work for everything? Should you teach them the value of money by strictly having them work for it? And if they don't earn it, you don't, you know, give them anything. Those things are important, but if you don't lay that foundation, it's very hard to teach those other things if you're not modeling things well and having the, the confidence to talk to your kids even from the perspective of what's going on in your home. I'm also a fan of— and not everybody really likes this— but particularly as your kids grow, I think it's wise to actually unfold more and more of what's going on with your household expenses.

Okay.

It surprises me that, you know, how hesitant people are to even let their kids know how much they make. Like, no matter how old their kids are. I got to a point, at least the one who's interested— one of them ain't even interested— but the kid who's interested, you know, like I said, both of my kids are, are, you know, you know, college age or beyond. But there was a point where, as I wanted to get them acclimated to life and let them have an appreciation for what it takes to live a certain lifestyle— not that, you know, I live and they live an opulent lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination— but I wanted to drive home the point at a certain age that if you even want to live like this, and, and this is not anything extravagant, Do you realize how much it costs? So I think also getting to that point where you're actually using real life, your real life, to teach them money lessons is very valuable.

I love what you said there.

I—

because you don't want your kid to be, you know, graduating school, be 22, 25, not really know what, uh, what all goes into things, right? And And it even impacts what they decide to do in school, what they decide to study, and what field they decide to go into for a career. I think it's all really important. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I was gonna just use one of my own kids as an example. Oh, please. My oldest son, from, you know, the time he could pick up a pencil, loved to draw. So, so, so he has that, that, you know, design art type of mind, which naturally led him, you know, when he was younger, even, you know, in high school, you know, I want to be an illustrator, I want to be, you know, you know, some— something blatantly in the art world. Sure. Which, as a parent, you want to encourage your kid in terms of what they like But, you know, your heart drops when you hear that, or at least my heart dropped, particularly as I started to look into it. And you have these art schools that charge, you know, you know, you know, tuition's $80 grand and they have this information like on their websites just so they can say they're being transparent. But if you look at what the information they have readily available, It's like, hey, you know, pay this $80,000 tuition for several years, and you too can get a job making $30K a year.

Yeah, the math doesn't really work out there, does it?

Yeah. So one of the things that, you know, we tried to do was make sure that my, you know, kid knew, you know, what, what, what does your life look like, you know, if you're making $30K a year? And that's not a slap against people make $30K a year. But you have to make sure that things are realistic. So we would be driving through some of the nicer areas of Atlanta, you know, downtown where, you know, all the condos and everything are, and the young— sure. And, you know, the work-live-and-play areas, you know, the hip and trendy areas. And, you know, kids will be going, oh yeah, I want to live in a place like that one day. That's a perfect opportunity to say, you know, you realize how much rent is there? Let's relate that back to that earlier conversation about the $30K a year job. It's not connecting. So there are all these little teachable moments that it's not necessarily, you know, sitting them down and, you know, like you're going to have the sex talk or something, and we're going to talk about money. Look for the opportunities that life presents you. Okay. And have those conversations organically over time.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Um, so I guess what are a couple, you know, what are like 2 or 3 lessons you think are important for parents to, um, impart to their children so that they can become, you know, the CFO at home? In their household when the time comes?

I think first of all, if you could somehow gradually help your kids to understand that— believe it or not, this may be counterintuitive— but in a way, in a society, we overvalue things. Uh, and in, in a weird way, we even— I don't want to say overvalue experiences, but we overvalue the, the social media version.

Sure.

Of what life is. Parents have a challenge now that there are certain things that their kids are absorbing every day that they have to, um, unwind from. They have to de-educate. And one I think is, is helping your kids realize the, the, the, the heightened fiction, or the heightened reality rather, of what a lot of times you see on social media and things like that. And help them to understand, you know, that may be entertaining, but it's, it's kind of fantasy. And in the real world you know, this is how money works. This is why, you know, mom and dad go to work every day. This is— give them a sense of the value of how money works in, in the real world. So if you have that appreciation for money, and it kind of goes back to the money story thing, when you understand what money can do if you use it properly— don't let it use you, but use money as a tool to do the things that you want to do in life— then that is the CFO mindset that you want to set from the very beginning. So don't let the things lead you, and all of a sudden it's all about the things. And, you know, you're kind of, well, whatever I need to do to get that thing, it justifies me because that thing is going to make me look, you know, um, impressive. Realize that you are in control. And again, this is why mom and dad go to work every day. And getting control of your money is really getting control of your life. And help them to understand that you need to build that from a foundation. Give them a sense of what I have in life is related to how much I make. And if I want these nice things, it's not get these nice things at any cost, is get myself in a financial position where I can afford those things, where I own those things, but those things don't own me, right?

Yeah, you want to build that solid foundation that— so that you have options, right?

I mean, at the end of the day, money equals— yeah, I mean, I mean, it's kind of a perspective of properly managing your money equals freedom. And, and there are a lot of places that they can hear those messages from people closer to their age too. I mean, you know, if they're at all interested in, in money, I mean, you know, turn them on to some of the FIRE movement information, that type of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I like what you said about things, and that's something we're trying to instill in our kids and I think my parents' generation, they were more kind of— it was like, let's get the next thing and fill a house full of stuff. And, you know, I appreciate everything that my folks did. But from my point of view, I'd rather, like you said, focus on experiences, real experiences, not about putting it on social media or anything. But it's just a little bit of a different value system and Again, that security and that freedom is really the bottom line of what we're trying to achieve, and that's what we want for our kids. And I think, um, yeah, I really like, like your perspective on things.

Thank you. And, and I'll briefly mention that you talked about your parents. I mean, I, I am a, a gentleman of a certain age, uh, and my parents— because my father was of a certain age when I was born. So my parents were like— both my parents were in World War II.

Sure.

So, you know, I was raised by— I mean, I'm either a very young baby boomer or an old Gen Xer, depending on how you look at things or whose graph you believe. But, but my parents were, you know, hardcore, you know, Greatest Generation era And, you know, they, you know, played all the hits of the 20th century. I mean, you know, Great Depression, World War II, uh, you know, being, you know, Black in Mississippi, you know, all the civil rights struggles, you know, they, they played it all. And that gives you a certain mindset about money and life. And, you know, it was simple for me. I felt— I mean, I, I had such a good template laid for me in that All I had to do was, was follow the dots, just, just, just connect the dots. A lot of that I think has gotten lost. So part of my mission, part of what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to impart things that— thanks to that upbringing— are intuitive to me, to people that it's not as intuitive for.

Yeah, I think What's cool about what you said is your folks laid that foundation for you and, you know, you've gotten far in life and you can look back fondly on the lessons that your parents taught you about money and moving through life. And that's the type of legacy I think we all want to leave for our children so that, you know, down the road when they speak about us, they can say, you know, my folks really did set me up properly, teach me the right lessons. And I think that's what we're all driving for. And that seems to be kind of the ethos of what you do with the CFO at Home podcast. That's what really attracted me to sort of to what, to what you do. And I really appreciate, you know, all these lessons that you're trying to impart to the folks out there. And that's why we wanted to bring you on the show today.

Awesome. It is a passion, it is a mission, and it also brings me together to have great conversations with other money nerds like yourself. So it's all good. [Speaker:CLAY_FINCKE] Okay.

I think we're going to sort of start wrapping it up here, but I just wanted to see if you had any final thoughts of the best way you think people can take control of their financial lives as it relates to relationships, teaching the right lessons to their kids and things of those nature— of that nature.

Yeah, we've hit on a lot of those individual points during this conversation. I will say, and we talked about this at, at the top, um, we're going through some interesting economic times right now, to, to say the least. I mean, you know, inflation, unsteady markets, that type of thing. I think particularly in this environment when there is so much uncertainty out there and so much, frankly, negativity in the news, uh, this is a great time. If you haven't had these conversations, believe it or not, this is a great time to circle the wagons. This is a great time to, to come together as a family and decide, hey, regardless of what's going on out there, regardless of what— of all the noise, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Because I think with, with all of these distractions and all of the change, it's easy to get off mission. It's easy to get distracted. It's easy to get kind of hopeless if you're a person who, you know, has a long commute and that gas is, is taking more and more out of your check every week. Or heaven help you if you have a small child who's, uh, still, you know, on formula right now, right? A lot of those things can be very discouraging if you're not focused on your goal. So this is a time, an important time, I think, for people to take stock. And if you're not on the same page, if you're not working towards a mission, if you don't have that family goal and have a financial plan to get there, um, this is the time to do it. Keep yourself focused on those things. The more you're focused on those things, the more you can kind of shut out the noise. So particularly now, I think this is why this is a unique time to have this conversation. And I just consider it kind of a call to arms, a call to action as far as getting your financial house in order.

Yeah, it's interesting because you kind of alluded to your folks with their experience in the Depression. And, you know, my grandparents were of that time, and it seems like people that came up in those more difficult times had, you know, maybe healthier relationships with money and better approaches to that. And so maybe, like you said, this is an opportunity for people living in today's day and age to do the same and instill those values, passing it on to the next generation, which is, at the end of the day, that's what we want to do when we have families and we want to pass these traditions and these skills down. So yeah, I think, I think that's a great place to leave it today. I really appreciated having you on, Vince. I, you know, on this show, we often talk, you know, the nitty-gritty details of, of investments and finance and things like that. And I think, you know, part of what I wanted to do with this this podcast to start talking more in general about, you know, these are the things people really think about from day to day is, you know, these personal finance details and how do I actually approach money with my partner and my family and set a foundation for my kids. So I hope everyone's really enjoyed the content. I've enjoyed the conversation with you, Vince. I want to thank you so much for being with us. And if folks that are listening want to learn more about what you do and want to find you, where can they— where can they do that? Where can they do that?

The online headquarters for the CFO at Home podcast is thecfoathome.com. Episodes are released weekly. You can find the episodes there. You could also find ways to contact me either through email or social media. So that's the home base.

Excellent, Vince. Hopefully everyone will take a look at thecfoathome.com and listen to Vince's podcast. Really, really enjoyed all your insights, Vince. And thanks everyone for being with us. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you again next time.