A short TV interview (Father’s Day) featuring Louis Barajas, a certified financial planner and author, advising fathers on financial lessons to teach their children. He presents four "P" principles: Provide (budgeting, saving, credit), Plan (college, marriage, house down payment), Protect (life insurance, estate planning/trusts), and Play/Perspective (spend time and create memories). The tone is practical, family-focused, and advisory.
Very important day. This, of course, Father's Day. And because it is Father's Day, Luis Barajas, certified financial planner and author of My Street Money, joins us once again today.
He's here to tell us what children should be learning from dad when it comes to finances. We want to welcome you back to the show. This is a day that we honor dad, but this is a day that you say dads should be preparing for their children and teaching lessons, right?
Well, you know, I focus on working with dads and taking a look at how they can become great dads when it comes to financial responsibilities. And the very first thing I said, you know, dads are providers. Dads are providers. And so they really need to sit down and take a look at. I've got a child now, I've got a different level of responsibility and I just can't be spending money like I used to when I was a bachelor, didn't have kids. I've got to start budgeting, saving, taking care of my credit because there's going to be a lot of responsibility.
Yeah. And Louis, you're a father of three, I'm a father of three, you're a mother of two. How do you start to play plan for our children? How do we map out their financial.
Right. Well, the second P here that I'm talking about is we talked about providing all this planning and you have to think about, okay, what are their life defining moments or their milestones that are coming up? Let's think about that. We've got a young kid, we know that we want them to go to college. You need to start planning early enough. So planning is really important. Planning for that. Planning for. Are you going to help them with a marriage down the road? Are you going to help your children with a down payment of a house? You need to really start thinking about that and doing something and putting in writing.
We also need to protect them.
Protection. That's what our kids depend on us for, Right. Not only are we providing them money, but we're protecting them. And what happens, we have all these wonderful plans put in place and God forbid that something happens and we pass away. We need to get life insurance for the children. And what we can do is it's buy life insurance on yourself based on what I call level term. If you've got a child that's 10 years old and you say, you know, when my child is 25 years old, they should be financially independent. Let me get an insurance policy that's 50, 15 years long and for a certain amount of Money, and it's very inexpensive. The other thing that you want to do to protect them is also think about maybe getting an estate plan. What happens if you pass away? How do you transfer all those assets to your children? You just cannot give a life insurance policy to a child, to a minor. So you have to put it in a trust. So think about protecting them from that regard. Great.
And the fourth P, Play and perspective.
Play and perspective. Keep things in perspective that. Listen, I've been to a lot of funerals in my lifetime, and everybody, all the kids that are up there talking about their dads, they. They never talk about the cars they gave them, the education they got for them. It was the time that they spent with them. So save some money to create memories with your children. That's the most important thing. Like I said, I've never seen a U Haul behind a hearse. Create those memories. Gain that perspective. It's important that you spend time with your children.
And so you've broken it down, though, into these P's. List them for us one more time.
Okay, Very simple. Start off as you're a provider for your children. The second thing is what you want to do is you want to plan for your children. The third thing is you want to pretend. Protect your children. And the lasting play with your children. Have. Create these wonderful memories.
The four P's on Father's Day.
The four P's. Very wise. P's. Thank you, Louis.
Thank you, Kay. Happy Father's Day to you.
And to you too, my friend.
Happy Father's Day. Thanks, Kai.
Thanks for joining us on this special day.
We always got to include Amy, too. She's a great mother, by the way.
