WCI #312: Generational Wealth and Teaching Your Kids About Money

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.

This is White Coat Investor podcast number 312. Do you ever find yourself wishing there was somewhere to go to ask your finance, insurance or investing questions? The White Coat Investor community is a great place to turn we we have a thriving community across all of our social, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and our WCI forum. We have been discussing solutions to your money problems since 2011. Join the Conversation with thousands of other White Coat investors. Follow WCI on your favorite social media platform for financial resources, tips and strategies. Just head to your platform of choice and search for the White Coat Investor. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. All right, welcome to the podcast. If you've never listened to it before, I hope you feel very welcome here and realize that this podcast is driven by you. We answer your questions on the podcast. We're not answering any of them today, but we do frequently. You can leave those on the speak pipe whitecoatinvestor.com speakpipe leave a message. We play the message on the podcast and answer your question. It works pretty well, but your feedback's also important. We want to hear about what you want on this podcast, whether you want a certain guest or whether you want a certain subject matter covered. Shoot us an email editorhideinvestor.com and we'll get that done. You know, if we're getting a ton of people telling us to cover this, we do it. So it's driven by you very much. All right, our quote of the day today is from David Swensen. He was the fellow who managed the Yale Endowment portfolio for so long. He said sensible investors rely on themselves. A strategy of professing ignorance and handing assets to a trained professional invites failure. That's kind of an indictment of his own industry, but there's a lot of truth there. All right, speaking of education and becoming smarter about this finance stuff, we try to encourage people out there to educate each other. Whether you're educating your students, your trainees, your peers, whatever, we want to reward those who are doing this fine work. I absolutely cannot get out there and give a talk at every residency, at every medical school in the country. I need other people out there doing it. So to encourage you to do that, we put together the Financial Educator Award. And if you know somebody that's been doing this great work, please, please, please nominate them this is someone who's passionate about improving financial literacy among colleagues, trainees, students, et cetera. They're not a financial blogger or podcaster. They're not a financial professional. They're just a doc out there doing this for their peers. We want you to nominate them for the highly coveted 2023 Financial Educator of the Year award. Not only do they get a nice certificate for that and something they can put on their cv, but we actually send them cash. Thousand dollar prize is what it is. And that's not all. As an added incentive to you for crafting a compelling nomination, we're offering the nominator who writes the best submission for the winner, a free online course of their choice. So where do you go to do this? You go to whitecoatinvestor.com educator and just nominate them. You know, fill out a nomination. You got to do it by May 2, though. This is coming right up. And by the way, on that same page, you will find slides. And they've been completely revamped by our fine Katie F. Who does all kinds of our graphic design work here at White Coat Investor. And she has made the prettiest slides I've ever had. And so if you need slides, there's a set for a presentation for attendings, a set for residents, a set for students. Take them, use them, modify them as needed, and you basically got a canned presentation that you can give and without too much effort. And honestly, this isn't that hard. Once you get to the Q and A at the end, you'll realize your peers have, you know, questions that you already know the answers to. You'll be surprised how easy it is to help educate your peers. But please educate or please nominate somebody who's been doing a great job at that. We've had some great winners in the past, and we're looking forward to getting another winner this year. All right, we've got great doc I met at WCICON23 that we're going to bring on and do an interview with today. So let's get her on the line. Our guest today on the White Coat Investor podcast is Dr. Brittany Halford. She's a clinical instructor at Beth Israel, but also a wealth coach. And I met her at the recent White Coat Investor conference in Arizona. And she also met a number of members of the WCI staff and dramatically impressed them to the point where they came to me and said, you have to get this doc on the podcast. She's awesome. So, Dr. Alford, welcome to the White Coat Investor Podcast.

Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here.

Well, I'm looking forward to getting to know you a little bit better. And I know our audience. A lot of them may not know you either. So let's kind of start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing and what it taught you about money.

Great question. It's really interesting when I reflect on this now, being a physician and also a wealth coach, about how I grew up and what it showed me. I am born and raised from Flint, Michigan, and I grew up in a single parent household. But I had the benefit of having my father in my life. And I actually had this conversation with my mom today. She said, do you know that in 1997, she only made $700 every paycheck? So it's about $1,400 a month. And I didn't feel the burden of that. I knew that money was power, that we didn't have a lot. But my mother and my grandmother were so resourceful that I didn't feel that burden of not having enough. Even growing up in Flint, Michigan, and similarly with my dad, he was an academic. So, you know, both of them would teach me a little bit about money. My mother would always do these mental math exercises with me. Say, well, you go to the store and you have $100. You're buying a shirt that costs $25, it's 25% off. You know, how much are you going to pay? What are you going to get back? And she would do the mental math at the cash register and as the cashier is ringing things up, mostly to make sure that, you know, she wasn't charged an inappropriate amount. Because money for her meant that it was hard to come by. It was earned. And that money had power with my dad more. So he taught me how to make meaning out of money and meaning out of little. So he was pursuing his master's degree, when I recall, maybe four or five. And he would make beans and hot dogs, so not a gourmet meal. And his other favorite thing to cook was whatever is in the refrigerator, stir fry, meaning that he's not going to the grocery store to spend more money to purchase anything else. So we were going to make do with what we have. But even in that, I recall that we would study. He would give me my books. He would have his books, and we would have a can of Pringles, barbecue Pringles, and we would lick the seasoning off of the Pringles. So what that showed me is that, you know, you don't necessarily have to have money? Yes. Money equates to power. Like, you have to work hard for it, you earn money, but you can still make meaning and joy out of what you have. So I'm really appreciative, really appreciative for those lessons that my parents taught me.

Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned the, you know, whatever's in the fridge. And I've seen some crazy statistics about the amount of food the average household throws away. It's amazing how many hundreds and thousands of dollars of food that. That just goes bad in the fridge before we get around to eating it, because we're not good at planning meals and stuff. And there's probably quite a bit of frugal savings you can get from watching that more carefully.

Definitely. Definitely. I mean, I find my lettuce is all withered, usually, and I spend more time and energy because I don't eat it at the time in which I purchased it. And so now I'm, like, sifting through, trying to find the good leaves when I actually want to eat the salad. So I don't adopt what my dad does. As far as everything, whatever is in the refrigerator, stir fry and definitely a lot of food. Waste happens in this household as well, unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah, ours as well. All right, well, at some point you left Flint and you went off to college and med school and residency in your career. Take us up till now from the time you left home.

Yeah. So I went to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. And gratefully so, when I was around 14, my dad sat me down and he said, listen, I don't have any money for you, for your education. I have enough to, you know, fulfill whatever said goal, I think it was, you know, get my hair done or maybe that I could go to the movies once a week or something like that. It was just a small amount that he could afford me while I was in college to support me. So I knew at that time that it was on me and that it required me to do well in school and to apply for scholarships. So I applied for a lot of scholarships. Now when I think about everyone and how much we totaled at the end of high school, I was not the highest earner for scholarships, but I had enough to pay for most of my college education. And when I graduated from the University of Michigan, I had only $10,000 of student loan debt remaining, which was fantastic. I applied to be a resident assistant and was able to pay for room and board that way, was able to study abroad. And my mother, again, she likes to hold on to things, let's just say she showed me an essay that I had written when I was in college and why I wanted to study abroad. And I wrote the essay asking for funding for that study abroad semester. And so I was really resourceful, you know, in that way, and only had the $10,000 when I graduated from college. I also worked as a research assistant in a lab and studied sickle cell. And from there I went on to medical school at Northwestern, had also scholarships to help to fund that education. And when I graduated from there, $131,000 in student loan debt. I went on to do my residency in internal medicine at WashU and St. Louis, and there I started to learn about finances. That's when I met you.

Welcome to residency. That's when I started to learn about finances, too.

Maybe not you personally, but also the white coat investor. I think what happened is that, you know, you get to this realization, especially me growing up in Flint, Michigan, and having this expectation of being a good steward of a high income, more than anyone else in my family had ever earned. But also I was being charged with a high amount of debt, and I didn't know what to do. My mother, my father, they were very frugal, raised me to be a saver, so I knew that I could do that, but I didn't know what else. And I knew that it required more than that to build wealth, to build generational wealth. So, you know, did pslf, as everyone wants to do, and then started to get anxious once I graduated from residency. Paid it all off, and I started my position as a hospitalist at Emory University. I worked there for two years, and now we're in Boston. We relocated for my husband's fellowship, and I've been here for four years working at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center as a hospitalist and recently acquired the position as the QI director for hospital medicine.

Are you excited about being the QI director? I know in my group, that's not the position everybody's fighting over.

You know, I. I actually love it. This week has been a little heavy, but what I love about medicine is that medicine provides us with the ability to discover, to really investigate, get down to the nitty gritty, run all of these tests, you know, test our assumptions. And I love that about medicine. But at a certain point, you start to get a little tired and burned out and you're trying to weigh and balance how do I manage my household, Being a mother, being a wife, and medicine. And then there's qi. QI provides me an exit to some degree, allows me to Be creative and to still be a investigator of sorts, but also to test strategies, to collaborate with others, which provides better patient safety. And I'm really excited for all that's to come with what we're doing, and not only just hospital medicine, but also also hospital to home and the opportunities that will present for patient safety and quality improvement there. So, yeah, there's some dirty work. You have to get your hands dirty. I love that. But also it allows me to be creative, in which sometimes medicine, I have to follow the guidelines, you know, standards of practice. I can't really be as creative as I want.

Well, you've told us about one of your careers. I kind of want to hear about the other one, too, which is kind of how you ended up on the podcast and in this community. You also do some work as a wealth coach. Tell us about what got you interested in doing that.

Yeah. So when I paid off my student loan debt, I was on Instagram, which really not a big social media person. However, I knew that this would be a way to share photos with my family who I don't see and, you know, connect with others. And so I started to share that I paid off my debt, and I didn't realize how rare that was. Yeah, I didn't. There's a certain oblivion I think that I have as I kind of, like, zone and ish down to, like, where I am in my environment. And sometimes I'm out of touch with the realities of what is happening in other people's lives and also their finances. You know, I know statistically, like, what it means for us to carry this burden of student loan debt, especially women, and that women are particularly vulnerable to these financial stressors. And then thinking about not only women carrying the largest burden of student loan debt, but women of color also carrying even a larger burden. And when I share my story, people started to ask, how are you doing that? I'm like, okay, well, clearly there's a need for more financial education. And I was pulled into it. Someone said, hey, can you coach me? Can you help me with my finances? And when the opportunity presents, then, you know, you don't. Well, you can say no. But I did not want to say no to that opportunity because I knew that on the other side of that, that there was a major impact that would not only impact me and my family, but would impact the lives of others. So I started the company More Joy, More wealth, as a wealth coach for women in healthcare. And I educate and empower women to pay down their debts, to invest and save with Tailored money strategies by focusing on joy. And joy is essential because we're tired, especially working in healthcare, as mothers, as wives, you know, serving others. And sometimes we forget to serve ourselves. And so I didn't want to tell women that you have to do everything to pay down this debt in order for you to on the side of it when you're retired or tomorrow to experience life, because we have delayed gratification for so long. And I also know from going up in Flint, Michigan, and losing to any family members too early that tomorrow is not promised. So I started as a wealth coach and have been doing this since 2021. And I love it. I really love it. To present an opportunity to create space for women to have these conversations in which they can absolve themselves of the guilt, the guilt that they carry from, you know, not managing their money correctly. Or a lot of the women who I coach are also mothers. The guilt that they carry from not being able to provide for their families sufficiently in the way that they actually desire. And once we are able to resolve them of that psychological cloud, then we get really strategic. And I teach them, like, the fundamentals of finance. I teach them how to use their money to benefit them and to serve them and to make their money work harder for them than they do for it. And it allows me to also know that what I'm doing today, not only with a person's health and what I do in the hospital and how I improve patient safety and quality improvement on that perspective, but I'm influencing health in a different way. Because when women have more money, they're able to invest in better communities, better living situations, better education for their children, and all of that influences their health and the health of our community.

You know, it's really interesting you mentioned mom guilt, and I think we've all heard of mom guilt, but you talk about it in two aspects that I don't think I've heard discussed before. The first one is feel bad about past money mistakes, which, of course, we've all made in our financial lives. But the other one was also something that I suspect I probably, in the past at least, have seen more often with guys, this guilt of feeling like you're not providing very well. And I think that's an important nuance that you've. That you've brought. It makes mom guilt that much worse now. It's not just feeling guilty by having to go to work. It's also not providing very well and having made, you know, mistakes. What do you tell people to help them get rid of that guilt?

Well, it's individual, but I think one of the things that I do that I work through with my clients is I have them reflect on their own money script and their own money background. And that has been imperative to understand who we are, what we value, the perspectives that we have, because they're all filtered through our lens of our upbringing. And I had a client recently, when we were going through this exercise, she shared with me that her father, like you mentioned, was a provider. He worked a lot, and although he was frugal, whatever the children desired, he provided to them. And she adapted that same perspective of love that oh, I need to give my children whatever they want. And by doing that, she racked up a lot of consumer debt. And so one of the ways that we work through that is for her to also reflect on some of the non monetary moments of her upbringing that she really valued, some of those meaningful moments that she created with her father, and to dive down deep into the characteristic of that and to understand that she could still create those moments without providing her children with a gift, a new cell phone, a new computer, whatever it is that they want. And once we were able to shift that perspective, then she was able to understand that it's okay if I cannot buy them whatever, you know, fulfill every single desire because I'm still giving them love, nurturing attention in a meaningful way. And that has been transformational for that individual client thinking about the desire to provide in a way that her father did, and mitigating that with other ways in which she could build wealth and knowing that by choosing to love them and not spending and not creating more debt, that she actually is providing better and more for them in the long run. So it's just a shift of perspective. But there's a lot of money trauma that we all experience. And even for myself, you know, going back and reflecting on my upbringing, I shared that money is power. And I do believe that, not with the same definition, giving it the same value as I did before, but as I think back to the decisions that I make, and even the decisions that I make now, because it's ingrained in my subconscious, is that sometimes I elevate the cost of something more so than the value that it's going to provide to me. And I will tell myself that, oh, you can't do this, you can afford this. Well, actually, affordability, like there's some latitude to that, right? And I understand now that the cost is, what is the price that someone else has assigned to that? And they have incorporated different Factors to compute that dollar sign. Maybe, you know, if it's a business, their overhead, cost of production, the contractors involved, the time that they spend. But the value to me of that product may be just worth millions. And it may cost $5, it may cost $500. And now I'm able to appraise the value to me personally of said service or good and use that in my decision making.

Awesome. Well, here's the plug. Morejoymorewealth.com that's where you can go if you're interested in hiring Brittany. Just by way of disclosure, we don't actually have a financial relationship. She's not a paid advertiser on this show. A true guest. I'm trying to get better this year at making sure I'm disclosing all those sorts of relationships. So, you know, it's interesting, I was looking at your profile on there, your bio, whatever it was, and found out that your favorite flavor of ice cream is honey and lavender. Where do you buy honey and lavender ice cream? I mean, that is not on the shelves of my store here in Utah. I'm positive.

Not at all. It's not, you know, and Walgreens have been in Jerry's flavor. So when I was in Atlanta, I enjoy running, and we actually did the 5k together at the conference. And one day in Atlanta, I was running by, and I have a sweet tooth. I ran by this ice cream parlor, Queen of Creams, and I tried the lavender and honey, and it was fabulous. It was just enough sweetness, but it was also very mature.

You sound like, like, like a wine specialist. We're going to an ice cream tasting or something here.

So the reason why I said that it was very mature because I've had other honey and lavender flavors, and I'm not going to offer the name of the company that I don't like. It tastes more like Fruity Pebbles. You know, they're Saturday mornings, of course, get a big bowl, big spoon, dive into some Fruity Pebbles. But that's the expectation that, you know, you're just going to get diabetes in a bowl in that one inst. So. But this one, it's just. It's like perfect. And unfortunately, we don't live in Atlanta anymore. But Salt and Straw is a company where you can order like, literally. I think it's like 12 pints of ice cream at once. And my husband surprised me two years ago with a big box. I'm like, what is this big box downstairs? Couldn't carry it up. Like, what is this? You know, it's a little chilly. And he finally gets home. He brings the box up and I opened it up and it had lavender and honey and it has so many other flavors and it is absolutely delightful. I love ice cream. I'm consuming less sweets after Easter and going on a fast for Lent. But definitely, if you haven't tried it, you should definitely try it.

Yeah, it sounds interesting. I will watch for it because now that I've heard how good it is, I got to check it out. Well, we want to cover two topics today. The first one is generational wealth. The second one's going to be kids and money. But let's start with generational wealth. And I want to hear what that means to you because I hear some people using this word and all they mean when they use it is really rich. What does generational wealth mean to you?

So when I think about generational wealth, it really has three components. One, it does have the financial assets. So being maybe not really rich, but having something to pass down and also financial acumen and wellness. And the reason why I include the wellness is because in my work as a physician, in my work as a money coach and as a mother, my own, you know, when we have not tapped into our emotional well being, our social well being, our physical health, our spiritual health, and also the financial health, that we most likely will use our money to fulfill those unmet needs. And so it's imperative that we teach our children how to nurture themselves holistically so that they actually don't use and consume the money in a way that is non productive. The financial assets and the financial acumen go hand in hand. If you pass down all of those really rich assets to your child who has no idea how to manage them, then they're going to squander, you know, and not be a good steward over that money. I read a statistic that 70% of wealth is actually lost in the first generation and 90% the generation thereafter. And I personally, what I'm building today, I want my children to continue to carry on. That's the legacy. So that is the purpose of me exchanging time and energy, increasing my financial acumen so that I can build options for them and for the generations that come.

You know, it's interesting I've seen those statistics as well that, you know, 70% goes away very quickly and 90% within a couple generations and by the fourth generation is basically gone. And part of that's because it gets divided among multiple heirs, but part of it is it's just really hard to pass on the work ethic and the knowledge base from that, you know, the generation that acquired the wealth to these later generations. And I think that's really the trick. So I wonder how we're supposed to measure success at passing on generational wealth. I mean, if. If most of the time, 70% is lost in one generation. If you can get your next generation to maintain 80% of that wealth, is that a win? I mean, how should this be measured?

You know, I think the measurements and the definition of what is a successful transference of wealth depends on the individual. It depends on the goals. And as I mentioned, my whole desire for passing on and building wealth is to provide my children options that they can choose to live where they desire, choose to consume organic foods or not, or eat at McDonald's or go to a fancy restaurant. And so I think when you're thinking about generational wealth and the perpetuity of that, it's really focused in on what are your values, what are the things that you desire for your children? And that is your own individual definition of success. So for me personally, when we designed our estate planning, our legacy plan, we actually mentioned some guidelines on how to utilize the money. And when we are thinking about our children and what's like, what matters most to us. But because our goal is that, yes, they're going to develop into their own persons, to have their own passions and their own desires, but there are certain core family values that we want them to carry on as well. And we wrote those down specifically in our legacy plan. So one of them is that we want them to be good stewards of their money. We want them to have charitable giving. And so we actually have outlined that starting at middle school, excuse me, we want them to attend some type of financial course or have some type of financial curriculum on an annual basis to build up that financial acumen. And then from there, you know, it's that we want them to give. So giving is very important. It helps to build your overall sense of community and your satisfaction. So that is a tenant in which we want that to be carried down. And so if they use their money, if we pass along whatever amount of money, I don't know, $5 million, we'll see, we pass that down to them. And if they choose to give away half of that, at least it still is in alignment with what our family values are, what the core values are. And if they are giving into charity to something that is meaningful and is going to impact the world in a positive direction, then if there's no money at the end of that to pass down to their great grandchildren, then I think that that's okay because they still made the most of the finances that they had.

It sounds like you view it at least as much passing on values as passing on money. You know, you're talking about your family views on money and how it should be used and this kind of steward mentality. And I find that that's awesome. I think that's pretty cool and very refreshing because I think a lot of people aren't thinking that way. They're thinking mostly about, you know, making their kids rich so they have it easier than they had it. Yeah. Speaking of which, what I worry about is, is there such a thing as too much generational wealth? Do you think that you can give them too much?

Yeah, I think the risk or the concern that we all have is, you know, stifling their ambition, their desire to, you know, make meaning out of their purpose. So I think in some regards, there can be too much if you. If you give them everything that they are not able to develop themselves into responsible human beings. And so how we've outlined it in our. Our plan is for their college education that we would pay for whatever the average amount is for the state school in the state that they're currently residing in. And upon graduation, then we'll pay off the rest, because, of course, we want to give them options. We want to give them opportunities that we ourselves and I have. And so at each phase of their life, as they matriculate to graduate school, as they go on to, you know, get married and purchase their first home, we have it outlined as far as how much we will actually cover of that expense. So we don't cover everything. That gives them something still to work for, that gives them some reason to understand how money actually works. Because when you think about financial literacy, it actually has two components. It has the knowledge, but it also has the utilization, the application and you. We know, like, from our medical training. When we exited medical school, we had a lot of knowledge. We could tell you the coagulation cascade, but we could also not tell you how to reverse the coagulopathy or how to dose warfarin. So both of them have to go hand in hand. And I think if you pass down so much money in the way that they get access to it right in the beginning, then you may lose that development, that maturity that is required for them to be good stewards of that money.

Yeah, I always find it interesting to talk to other people about their estate plan, these details, like you're sharing Here, ours is a little bit different, but obviously the same goal of trying to make their lives easier, pass on some wealth without ruining them. And so we kind of split an inheritance into two pieces. They get a little tiny piece in their 20s that we call a 20s fund. It includes a 529 and basically matches on money they earned as teenagers in a Roth IRA and a UTMA account that's designed for them to use for whatever they want in their 20s, whether that's study abroad or a summer in Europe or a first house or first car or a wedding or a mission or whatever. That's what that 20s funds for. And then they don't get squat. You know, if we get run over by a garbage truck tomorrow, they get nothing beyond that 20s fund until they're 40. And then the inheritance is split a third at 40, a third at 50, and a third at 60, just because we want them to kind of develop their careers and develop their habits and develop who they are without knowing that they've. They've got all this money. But the truth is, there's going to be a pretty big inheritance out there for them eventually. But that was kind of how we set it up. Right or wrong, I have no idea. I think this is so individual. You have to know your kids. And who knows, this may change as things go on. You know, as we get to see what our kids do with that inheritance in their 20s. Maybe what they get at 40 instead is, you know, an annuity or some sort of trust fund managing their money because they're terrible at it. I don't know. We'll find out. But the other thing I think about when I hear generational wealth is you read about this, you know, in the news or you see things about it and people are talking about it as being a bad thing, that this is keeping the rest of our society down somehow, that this is a problem. Right? That wealth is staying in these families that become wealthy, and then it stays in the family. What's your response to that sort of criticism of this idea of generational wealth?

I think the criticism is focused at an individual, is not focused at the system. And when I reflect on just the wealth gap in general, the wealth gap for black Americans compared to white Americans. Recently read a Bloomberg and CNBC article that in 2022, Blacks had the greatest increase in their wealth. But when you look at that from like, a more granular perspective of what are the components of wealth in the black demographic and in the white demographic, what you saw is that blacks were less likely to invest in stocks, higher earning assets, and they had more pensions and also a little less real estate. And so when you think about the perpetuity, this passing down of generational wealth, I think when you only direct those comments towards an individual, we forget about all of the systematic structures that have been put in place to enable that. And that's really where the focus needs to be if we want to create a world that's going to be more equitable. So, you know, if my children have X amount of dollars because my husband and I worked really, really hard and we were good stewards and they're able to use that money to create better options for their family, then that's okay. As long as the environment in which we were able to create that wealth, the avenues, the expertise, the strategies that we were able to leverage in order to build on that, then there should be no shame, guilt, negative reflection on us or on my children to have received that. But I think we just need to start to direct attention towards some of the system problems that really are ingrained and weaved into the network of who we are as Americans and how structures and institutions operate and to make things a little bit more equitable so that everyone has a fair chance of building wealth.

Yeah, it's interesting, we talk about these sorts of things so often and about how bad it is that some people have this privilege. And yet at the same time, we all turn around and try to pass on just as much privilege as we can to our own kids. And it's a disconnect between what we want as an individual family and how that affects the society is large. And I think that's something we're going to continue to struggle with for some time, for sure. You know, think back. Neither you nor I had a lot of wealth passed to us. We didn't receive a lot of generational wealth. How do you think your life would be different if you had received that? And is that a good thing, or do you think that'd be a bad thing for you?

I definitely think my life would be different. I can't say if it would be good or bad if I had inherited, you know, X amount of dollars, even if it was just 200,000 to pay off my medical school education. But what I do know is that the fact that I did not have that generational wealth, it helped me to really hone into what matters most to me so that I can spend my money on that, to create a life that is most fulfilling with what I have. It also was the impetus for me to gain this financial acumen that now I'm able to leverage to create a business to pass on to my children, to help to create wealth for our family. Like my nephew, my aunts, even my mom now she's like, well, Britney, what do you think about this? With my retirement? And so we're able to use that. I don't think that I would have had that because there wouldn't have been that pressure. Like there was a pressure, there was an urge, an actual need that I needed to fulfill. Therefore, information and execution and refinement helped me to build that mastery. But if that impetus was not there, then I think I would still be okay maybe with my money, because I was raised to be frugal, but the expertise that I have and the understanding that I have, I don't know if it would be present.

Yeah, I often wonder how my life would be different as well. I certainly would have made some different decisions along the way. But it's hard for me to think that wouldn't have sapped a little bit of the hunger and the ambition that I had. And I worry about that a lot with my kids. We think about this a lot. Speaking of kids, our second subject today is just teaching kids about money. And you mentioned earlier a number of the things your parents taught you about money as you were growing up. I don't know how old your kids are. My youngest is 7. My oldest is now out of the house. I've got an 18 year old in college now. And so it's a very different approach teaching kids about money. How old are your children?

Two. Well, he'll be two May 6th and four and a half, so still fairly young.

So what have you taught your kids so far about money at those tender young ages?

I haven't taught Kevin Jr. We call him KJ. He hasn't learned anything about money yet. Well, maybe the word money. He knows the word money. That's about it.

Don't put it in his mouth. That's all he's learned so far.

We have play money, and he definitely has chewed and probably digested some fake money. With Brooke, what we have started to teach her is I give her, you know, $5 and okay, Brooke, you can go to the grocery store. You can use this $5 to purchase whatever you want. And I actually have a video recording of her looking at all the options and she still doesn't know just quite how to put the decimal point and incorporate that into her decision making. But she knows the hierarchy of numbers that, okay, well, one is less than five. So if I have $5, then I could probably purchase this. So we go through that exercise when we're at the store, and I let her purchase whatever she wants and to give the money to the cashier to understand that there's an exchange here that's occurring. You're giving him money in exchange for this gum. And so you're using the money to acquire something that you desire. And that money is just the tool that we're using for this exchange. She could be exchanging something else. You know, I'm sure they do it all the time at school. Okay, I have pretzels or I have applesauce. Let's do this. This trade or whatever. And the bartering. And I've also started to teach her about budgeting. So one example is we're in the car to go to Trader Joe's, and she absolutely loves flowers. So she's like, mommy, can I get flowers from Trader Joe's? Sure, Brooke. But Your budget is $5.99. Pretty tight budget, I understand. She's like, well, mommy, why do I need a budget? Well, because, Brooke, you know, you want to make sure that you are using your money effectively and that you're allocating it to account for all of your needs and some of your desires. And I said, well, do you know how we actually earn money, how Mommy and Daddy get money? And she said, well, you go to work, say, well, that's one way, but you can also, you know, use a little bit of that earned income when we go to work, and you can invest it and make your money grow. Wow. Okay. Well, what type of investments? What is investments? What type of investments do I have? And so it starts that conversation, you know, just introducing. She's not going to remember all of the conversation about budgeting and investments, but what she will start to learn is that that's going to be the foundation. So maybe she takes one word or one idea from that conversation and we can continue to build upon it. And I think whenever we're teaching kids about money, 1. Money has been this taboo topic that we never want to talk about. And I only discussed money with my mother and my father when it was that, okay, these imaginary situations, you go to the store and you have certain amount, like, so that you can make sure that the cashier is ringing you up appropriately so that you can retain the money that you have or understanding money from that. My father did not have enough money to fund my college education, so therefore, I needed to go and get scholarships. And that was the impetus for that But I wish that the conversations would have been more involved at each stage of my life. So we're starting now. Brooke is 4, and we're going to continue to have these conversations so that she can understand what investments actually means and that you actually don't have to just go to work to earn money. There are other ways. And I think that that is imperative. When we think about allowing our children to choose a job that they desire, that they're passionate about, and that that's the opportunity there. It's your choice. You're not obligated to do this, to exchange your time and energy for that money, because you don't have any other options afforded to you.

So sometimes we teach our kids what we can, you know, and I've tried to teach my kids. One example is, you know, when we drive down the street, we pass businesses, we pass McDonald's, we pass home Depot, and I explain to them that they actually own a little tiny chunk of each of these businesses and their 529s and just get them thinking about, you know, an ownership mentality of that. But at a certain point, we have to give them control, you know, little by little, you know, it's a bit of an apprenticeship, just like a residency would be. But we give them more and more control over money over the years. And sometimes they use money in a way that we don't approve of. What's the best thing to do when you see your children doing that? Whether they're children, whether they're teenagers, whether they're adults, and they're using money in a way that you don't really approve of, what do you think you should do?

I think the first thing that we should do is we should take a deep breath and understand that as parents, we're emotional beings, you know, and so we need to resolve whatever heightened emotion we have, and then we need to get curious. And I think curiosity is really the key to resolving a lot of the issues that we have just generally abroad other domains, not just finances, but particularly when we're dealing with our finances, is because we have this assumption that that individual, when they were using that money, that they have the same values, that they have the same understanding and that they have the same perspective that you have. And I can guarantee that that is not at all true. Especially when you're dealing with a 4 year old, right, or a 16 year old like you, all are not on the same page. But if we just approach them with punishment or trying to push them in a certain direction that we desire for them to go is that we miss the opportunity to intervene, to teach them those meaningful lessons, to understand their thought processes and to help to enhance that, to allow them for shared decision making so that we can make better patterns in the utilization of their money and create better habits. So I'll give one example of how I've recently done this with my nephew, who's 19. My mother has had guardianship over him for and think about the past seven years. And whenever I come home, because of who I am, Dr. Brittany. Oh, she's a wealth coach. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Fill in the blanks. She's always like, well, Britney, you need to talk to your nephew and tell him this. So I say, okay, mom, I'm going to talk to him. I'll have a conversation with him. And the topic this time was that he had a car, he purchased himself a car, but he did not want to purchase insurance for the car. That's a problem. She understands the risks to all of that. She has that knowledge, that expertise, that life experience. And so I'm home, we're in the kitchen together, and I say, hey, Duck. That's. That's his nickname. Everyone has a nickname. Hey, Doug, Grandma told me that you didn't want to continue to pay for your car insurance. And then I stopped because now this is the opportunity for him to fill in the gaps. And he says, yeah, Aunt Britt, when I get my check, I only make X amount of money. And so if I were to pay the car insurance every month, then that means that I have no money left and the car is actually not that valuable to me if I'm only going to work just to pay for the car insurance and I can't afford the gas or I can't afford to go anywhere else. And then he started to talk about the risk. Well, the value of the car is this. If I get in an accident with the type of insurance that it is in Michigan and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then, you know, the numbers really don't work out in my favor. If I had approached that conversation with just like, well, you know, you need insurance, Duck. Like, you can't drive if you don't have car insurance, then I would have missed out on all of the factors that he incorporated into that decision that he made that I would have missed understanding. Where are the opportunities to fill knowledge gaps and to bring him closer to a better point of decision making. So after speaking with him, I said, okay, I get it. I understand. How about, you know, we meet halfway, you pay a month, half of your insurance. I pay half of your insurance because my goal is to make sure that you're protected, that if you get into an accident, you're liable, whatever the case may be, that one, you're protected, but also your future is protected, your future wealth and your assets and all of that also has that protection. And so that was just a really meaningful way for me to just get curious, for me to use open ended conversation to intervene, to enhance and to also let him know that I care about you. I care about what you desire, I care about what you value. And my whole goal is to make sure that you're protected, that you're acting responsibly. And from his computation there was some of that that was factored into his decision making and he just needed me to help to bring him along. And I think if we don't do that with our children, if we don't allow them to participate in the decisions that they're making and we're just punishing and pushing, then we miss that opportunity to really, to help them, to be the good stewards, to develop that maturity that they need in order to manage their money effectively.

That is some great advice because until you're in their shoes, you don't understand why they're doing that. And that applies, you know, obviously in the emergency department I interact with people from all flavors of life, you know, and I get parents coming in and, and Junior's got a drug problem or something and they want me to fix the drug problem in the ER in the next two hours or want me to lock him up into some sort of drug rehab, which of course I don't have the power to do. And it's amazing when you go in and talk to the kid alone, what he's struggling with, what he wants, what his concerns are, how he sees the drug use. And it really, it's eye opening to try to bring them together in a way that's, that's going to do the most good. That is actually going to work. Because even if I was able to lock him up for 72 hours, you know, because somehow he was also suicidal or something, you know, that's not going to solve the drug problem by itself until he wants to change. So it's great to get them involved and really understand where they're coming from. I think that's fantastic advice. Well, our time is starting to get kind of short, but I wanted to give you a chance. I mean, 30 or 40,000 people are going to listen to this podcast. By the time all is said and done. What have we not talked about today that you think these white Coat investors should know?

I know many of the white coat investors are very in tune with their finances and they're focused on enhancing their financial literacy. But I also know that there is another component to our competence and that is our confidence. And sometimes that confidence is not present. And when the confidence isn't there, you don't engage. You try to wait for the next moment. You wait for the opportunity. And what I would just encourage you is that if you're considering, like, how do I have these conversations with my children? Just start today. Don't wait for the perfect moment. Don't wait until you have the confidence to actually have the right verbiage in order to ask. When you're thinking about generational wealth and creating that, the financial acumen is a critical piece. And that only occurs with our children making mistakes, with learning and actually practicing. So I would encourage you to, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, if you have debt or not, if you make a lot of money, if you don't, whatever you have, then you can use that and leverage that to create a meaningful moment with your children and to have conversations. And that in itself, I think is going to guarantee as much as you can guarantee anything, the perpetuity of generational wealth, because those values will be instilled in your children from the beginning.

Well said. We've been talking to Dr. Brittany Halford of MoreJoy MoreWealth.com thank you so much for coming on the White Coat Investor podcast and sharing your wisdom with us.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. It was a great conversation.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview. It's always great to have different people, different voices on the podcast and Dr. Alpert's had an awesome financial life up until this point and is also doing some great work in this space. So it's a pleasure to promote her and what she's doing. Do you ever find yourself wishing there was somewhere to go to ask your finance, insurance or investing questions? The White Coat Investor community is a great place to turn. We have a thriving community across all of our social, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and our WCI forum. We've been discussing solutions to your money problems since 2011. Join the Conversation with thousands of other White Coat investors. Follow WCI on your favorite social media platform for financial resources, tips and strategies. Just head to your platform of choice and search for the White Coat Investor. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help don't forget to nominate your favorite financial educator. You got to do it by May 2nd. Go to whitecoatinvestor.com educator to do that. You can get a free WCI online course. They can get $1,000 plus some recognition, so please do it today. Don't forget, they'll really appreciate you for nominating them. I'm sure that's also the same URL as where you get those slides I mentioned earlier in the podcast. Thanks. For those of you who've been leaving us five star reviews, those do help to spread the word about the podcast. Here's one from an interesting name. This is what they put in there. Tired parents of newborn twins, they said. Excellent podcast pro tip. You don't have to be a doc to benefit Dr. Dali gives sound, well researched, important advice for anyone looking to maximize an investing strategy. While not falling for the latest gimmick, he's incredibly consistent with suggestions and directions. His website is also a great source for details like examples of screenshots or walking through spreadsheet formulas. Very little specifically doctors, so don't let the title keep you away. Five stars. Thanks for the kind review, but don't give away the secret. The personal finance is the same for Everybody. At least 95% of it is. Maybe 99% is the same for all high earners and only 1% for is truly doctor specific. That's okay. We'll talk about all kinds of financial problems here. We talk about, you know, most of them honestly are first world problems. But they're real problems if you've got them. And we're here to talk about them. Here to help you solve them. Here to help you have the most financially successful life that you can. So as Dr. Halford said earlier, you can build some generational wealth. Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We're here to help. See you next time on the White Coat Investor Podcast.

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