Ep 536 | How Your Childhood Shapes Your Wallet (and What to Do About It)

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today we are going to get better at money. It's a favorite topic of mine and one I should be addressing a little bit more, uh, it's something obviously always on my mind as a business person, as someone trying to build big things, make profit, and influence and impact others to do the same. But I wanna talk about money specifically with respect to your childhood and how your upbringing might have shaped your ways, the ways that you think about money. If your parents never talked about money, or maybe only talked about it when they were stressed, that didn't go away for you. It likely got buried pretty deep, and today it actually might be driving your decisions way more than you realize. See, for me, in my upbringing, I, I was, I, I was very fortunate in the way that I was, was raised. My parents were entrepreneurs. They absolutely had some success. Uh, I, I lived a charmed childhood, just a very fortunate person, and I, I owe it all to my parents. But there was a money story there. I have my own money story. And it's one that I didn't choose, but I know it still influences how I think about money today. See, in my household, money wasn't studied. We didn't talk about tax strategy at the table. We didn't talk about investment. We didn't talk about leverage or compound interest. What we learned, right or wrong, was that hard work was what got you success. And frankly, hard work alone was the key. That was the message. And don't get me wrong, hard work absolutely matters. I think it, I think it's number one on the list. Like, you've got to be, you've got to be focused and you've got to be willing to put in the work, especially in the early years. But while hard work matters, it's not the full picture. I saw people invest in what others were doing, but I never saw a lot of homework being done to understand what— why others were investing in that way. So the idea was, if it's good enough maybe for them, it's good enough for us. That's not a strategy, that's actually crowd following. I observed that when I was pretty young. And, and lastly, I was pretty fortunate in that I learned that risk-taking was okay. I saw risk-taking and I learned that was okay. That was the entrepreneurial spirit that my parents passed along to us. But what I realized in my later years is while risk-taking was okay, I don't know how calculated that risk was. There was courage, no question, but there wasn't a plan. And I think that, that may have left a big hole when it came to making smart and repeatable financial decisions. So, even as I grew in business, those early lessons, they didn't go away. They shaped how I saw money and how I handled it. And without question, especially early in my business career, there were moves that I made that because I wasn't calculated around my risk, because I didn't study and do the homework that I do today, I left myself tremendously exposed, and when the real estate market crashed, I crashed with it. That crash reshaped the way I looked at money. But again, I was only looking at money in the way I was at that time because of my upbringing. And I'm so grateful for my upbringing. But your story, your upbringing, it, it absolutely influences how you see money. Now let's zoom out. Because I think most of us carry a few inherited money scripts. And here are 3 money scripts that I see all the time. Number 1, I, I see the script of there's never enough. There's never enough. And again, I think a lot of that has to do with how you were raised with respect to money. There's never enough. So what do you do? You save obsessively, or you fear spending, or Fear investing. Even when you know it's smart, you fear investing those dollars. You operate from fear, not from a position of growth. That, that's a tough one to overcome. There's never enough. Another script that I see that's inherited a lot of times: if everyone's doing it, it must be safe. So you follow trends or you invest in what's hot without actually understanding why. Maybe you lean on others' confidence instead of building your own conviction. And the last money script that I've kind of already alluded to, risk is a badge of honor. I see that one a lot. You associate boldness with worthiness. You confuse action with direction. You might leap before actually building the landing pad. So again, the mindset of, hey, there's not enough, or everyone's doing it, so it must be safe, or Risk is great. Risk is a badge of honor. If you're going to be wealthy, you got to take risk. And I think those are money scripts that need to be broken from time to time. None of this makes you weak, by the way. It just makes you human. And it means you've got programming that probably needs to be examined if you want to go to the next level. I know that was absolutely the case for me. So what do you do about it? You know, what do you do about it? If you're recognizing what I just described as things showing up in your world, or there's other things that I didn't mention but you know that your upbringing absolutely influenced the way you think about money, what do you do? I think you've got to start rewriting the script. I think you've got to start rewriting the script. Number 1, I think you got to get clear on what you learned. Write it down. Like, what messages did you pick up about money growing up? And which ones of those are serving you well right now? And which ones are actually quietly sabotaging you? So let's get clear on what you learned, good and bad. Number 2, study what you missed. This was a big one for me. If no one around you really understood investing or cash flow or taxes, okay, go do something about it. Go learn it. You're not behind. You're just kind of getting started on your own terms, right? Unfortunately, you would have liked to have learned it growing up, but you didn't. So now go do something about it and get started. Number 3, I think you take calculated risk, not blind risk. Calculated risk to me means using frameworks. It means asking better questions. It means not just running the math, but deeply understanding the math that you're running. Risk is not the enemy. Stupid risk is the enemy. And then lastly, number 4, and you probably knew this one was coming, pass on the upgrade. What do I mean? If you have kids, Make sure you pass this down. Don't pass it down in silence. Talk money. Show them your learning process. Let them hear you talk about investing and decisions and mistakes. I think your transparency might actually become their edge. And let's make it— let's make a generational change. So, the good news, I think, here, your money mindset wasn't born. It was handed to you. So, you can actually hand it back. You don't have to keep operating on someone else's blueprint. You can combine, you can combine the hard work with financial wisdom. You can swap the blind risk with more informed, calculated risk. You can choose your own path and you can build wealth your way. So here's my challenge for you. I want you to write down 3 financial lessons that you inherited growing up, things that, that were instilled upon you Growing up, good and bad, whatever, whatever comes to mind. What are 3 financial lessons you inherited? And then rewrite one of them into something more useful, more honest, or more aligned with the future that you're building. That's it. That's it for today. I, I don't want you to chase more. I want you to chase, to chase better. And I also want you to remember, trauma might be part of your story, but it doesn't have to be your ceiling. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.