Talking to Kids About Money | Tips from Tina at Widow’s Wallet

Hi everyone, this is Tina from The Widow's Wallet, and I am so excited to be here with my friend Penny, who is a money coach, and we are going to be talking today about kids and money. So how are you doing today, Miss Penny?

I am great. Thank you for having me.

Yes, I'm so excited that you're here to be a part of my summit. I just want to do a little introduction that Penny was a social worker for 30 years and combined that with her experience of eliminating all of her own debt, including her house, to mentor others who are ready to achieve financial freedom. As a compassionate coach, educator, and Accountability partner to women and couples, Penny takes the shame and embarrassment out of money to create a future you desire. She's been married almost 29 years to Mark and has 2 amazing kids in their 20s who have graduated from college without student loans. We're definitely going to be covering that. And 2 dogs who have taken their place in the nest. Oh, so what are your dog's names?

I have Zoe, who's 14, and Sadie, who's 3. And now I have a bonus cat because my, my adult daughter's home because of COVID So yeah, so she's here and hopefully will behave and be quiet.

Of course, you know how that all works. So, so first of all, as not a lot of people know what a money coach is, so can you explain to the audience in case they don't know, like, what exactly is a money coach? Some people get that confused between a financial advisor. You just want to briefly talk about what the difference those two things are.

Yeah, I get a lot of that because I'll use the term I'm a financial coach and people will be like, oh, you do investments? And I'm like, no, I don't do that. I don't do any of that part. So a financial coach is somebody who helps more with the behavior and the day-to-day spending and planning around money, sometimes dealing with the emotional side of money and our little inner child that wants to stomp their feet and say, "I deserve it." And really it's about the day-to-day plan for either how to make more or spend less and what we're going to do with the money that we bring in. And sometimes that is investing with a financial advisor. Ultimately, that's our goal is to have people have enough to do that, to grow for the long-term wealth. I tend to focus on planning your spending today, and that includes setting aside some money for, you know, irregular expenses such as holidays or travel or whatever, and also eliminating costly debt.

Gotcha. Awesome. And so you do give financial advice?

Nope, I'm not certified to do that. I have to kind of stay in my lane. Like you read that I'm a social worker at my very core. I've done that pretty much all my career. So now I feel like I'm a social worker around money. You know, I help people like, what do they want to do, put feet on the ground and make things happen with their plans and really aligning their goals with their money. Because sometimes we have great goals, but we're not really doing the things that we need to do to get there with the actual money that we make.

Awesome.

I don't sell product, I don't sell insurance or do the investing, mutual funds, those kind of things. I have people that I tend to refer to for those things.

Awesome. So obviously this goes within our topic. So how did you actually start teaching your kids to handle money? Like, what age did you start doing this?

Well, it's interesting because I was in my early 40s before I figured out that I needed to get a grip on my money. I felt like I was doing what everybody else was doing. I was, you know, buying cars and buying stuff and putting things on credit cards and, you know, worrying about it later. And my personal finance journey got started because one of my friends at work, who was a caseworker friend of mine, asked for help and said, You seem really good with your money, will you come help me? But the reality was I just had it in Quicken, but I didn't have any plan for it. I knew how to track it and I knew how to balance a checkbook because my parents had drilled that into me at 12. Because I learned to work very young. We didn't have much when I was a kid, and so we had to work for anything extra above our basic needs. And so I knew how to balance a checkbook, but I didn't know how to do a budget. And so I went over to help my friend and we started looking at how much debt she had. And I went home and realized how much debt I had was, you know, she had probably easily $40,000 worth of consumer debt and then was buying a new house and, you know, just wanting a new car and all those kind of trappings that come with middle class. And I was very self-righteous and thinking, wow, she's got a lot of debt. And then I went home and thought, I wonder how much debt I have and realized I have $50,000 worth of debt.

Okay.

And I was like, oh yeah, okay, I'm not really any better. I'm just one step ahead because I pay everything on time. And yeah. So unfortunately my friend was hit and killed by a drunk driver 2 months into our plan to be accountability buddies together and work on that. And her husband was in the car and he suffered a traumatic brain injury. And so it was that kind of epitome of everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And I watched those 4 children get spread out amongst family members and and know the stress and pain of the cost of losing a spouse and what little life insurance she had. And it kind of rocked my boat and made me realize that that could be me. There but for the grace of God go I, right? And so I'm like, mm, I better get my act cleaned up because that could be me. So in our journey to get our debt paid off and to learn how to budget and learn how to take control of what we had, my kids of course were like collateral damage Right? You're like, what are you doing? You're impacting— why are you changing? So yeah, they were probably, oh, let's say 8 and 12 or something like that, maybe a little bit younger when we started. But, um, I don't think they were super thrilled to start learning the B word and say, no, it's not in the budget, and, you know, we've got— we don't have any money for that yet, but I would be happy to talk to you about what you need to put into the budget. It's not like I cut them off and never fed or clothed them again. Right. But I said, yeah, we're not going out so much. We are, we're being intentional with where we spend our money instead of just, hey mom, buy me this, buy me that. And, you know, the bank of mom and dad closed down pretty quickly. And I made my children start thinking ahead, just like I was trying to start thinking ahead.

So how did you handle like, I mean, when you first start to make these kinds of changes, there's a lot of like, we don't like this, that, that, you know, the throwing the fits, the backlash. Like, how did you manage that without that like changing and giving in?

I was a social worker anyway, so I was sort of that tough love mommy anyway. Okay. Yeah, we're not, we don't live in that house. Sorry. You know, you know, but my friends get to whatever and right. They get to, you know, live in that house or wear those shoes or whatever. I'm like, because they're not your parents, you know. And I want— you can't see right now why this is good for you, but you're gonna, you know, have to trust me at some level that I want to be able to bless you for a long time, not just for today. You know, it was just conversations and saying And teaching them on little moments, like just thinking about talking to you today, you look back and you go, "I don't know what I did." I just took little everyday moments and said, "Here's an opportunity to teach you about the cost of groceries, about what we pay to keep our house afloat." Because in a kid's mind, any money is a lot of money, usually.

Right.

So, "You make that much?" And you say, "Yes, and we paid this much for the house and we paid this much to heat the house and oh, there's groceries and then there's the car and the insurance." Yeah. And then I'd get, "Well, that's stupid. Why isn't everything free?" I'm like, "Well, that's a whole nother conversation." You know, but it's hard and, you know, kids depending on their age cannot necessarily fully understand it. But to teach those little moments of, you want the football. It takes money to get that new toy. Do you have the money to do that? No. Well, I'm going to start giving you a certain amount of money, you know, paying commissions or tour allowance type money, and say, you can either work more and have more, or you can work less and have less. But, and there are certain things that just go with part of being a part of this family that I don't pay for. We were never the parents who paid for grades or anything like that. We just were like, this is an expectation in this household. This is the minimal threshold. So I didn't, I was trying to be very careful to not tie everything to a monetary reward because if they didn't want the money, they didn't do the thing. Well, that didn't, fly right with me either. Like, no, you set the table if you want to eat. I'm not going to pay you because— but there are some things that you can pay for to help motivate if your kid is motivated by things and money, right? So each kid is different. And, but I think just being a little bit transparent when money is so— I don't know, there's all this shame and baggage and stuff in our society around money. And instead of just saying, yeah, this is how much we make, and it looks like a lot of money to you, but believe it or not, we are not wealthy and we're not making the biggest amount of money, and— but we have enough to meet your needs. You will not go hungry. You will have clothes on your back. Will they always be your favorite ones? Maybe not, right? But showing the cost of things and then the comparison piece, I think, was also huge to say Well, you can buy the name brand whatever, or the generic and look at the price difference. And if I hand you $20 and say you can keep the difference, which one are you going to buy? You know, did you actually—

like, I know with my son, I actually have given him like a set amount of money. And then I'm like, okay, so let's say I give you $100 to go school shopping. And then you do what you want with it. So if you buy one shirt, you got one shirt. Is that pretty much— is that kind of what you did?

Probably at least by high school, maybe, you know, maybe 9th grade, 8th grade, something. But I know by high school, we said this is about what we would spend on you for clothing, especially back-to-school shopping, right? Because I think that's such a weird— it's become like that cultural norm. But do you really need new shoes? Because it's August. Yeah. Do you need 3 pairs of jeans when it's 90 degrees out there? So their, you know, prices are higher and stuff. So helping them see that, sure, I appreciate you want a new outfit for the first day of school or whatever, but I know next week you're going to be wearing your basketball shorts and t-shirts. So, you know, do you really need— so I do think at a certain level, age, and maybe younger even than I did it, kids could handle that. But you're trying to teach them. And I would go with them most of the times. They got older, then it was easy to go, you know, yeah, go buy what you want, but don't come hollering to me in November when you didn't buy the right whatever. And there had to be grace in that. We were not very right about that.

I mean, especially if they're growing and their shirts are like way— it's like, you know, it's like up here.

Since last April, I didn't realize it didn't fit, you know?

So— Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so I had a lot of grace in that process, but, and then trying to realize, is it better sometimes to spend the more expensive thing? Because like my son's feet, I just could not get by with cheap shoes for him.

No, no.

We went to the doctor and I'm like, all right, we're gonna have to spend a lot for your shoes, but I can get you out of the doctor's office, so.

Yeah, shin splints, all that good stuff, yeah.

Different than toys, you know, then it's the video games or the, you know, everything I could think of that my daughter would want, you know, and she was a spender, my son was more of a saver. So each child is different too. So you can do the same thing with everybody, but you got to meet their personality.

Right. I do want to come back to one thing that you did talk about. You said like with the allowance, because I know that that's always a hot topic. Do I do allowance? Do I not do allowance? But I liked your concept of like, there is a minimum level that you have to have just to be a part of the family, and then you would pay them for other things. So could you give us a couple examples of like, this is like part of the family kind of household? And then what would be a couple examples of things that you might pay? And then—

full-time job, right? And we were very busy, high-stress, lots of hour jobs anyway. So you know, did I do it perfectly? No, I will tell you that. But I did know, partly from being a caseworker and always trying to help parents deal with behaviors with naughty kids, and my own children feeling like, you know, you're not going to hold me hostage to be like, well, I'm not going to do that if you're not going to pay me whatever. I started with like the commission thing and say, okay, I'll pay you for each job. And we'd have chore charts and we'd give a let's say a quarter for every job or whatever it was, right? And our amount of ability to pay was different than somebody who made twice what I made. So, you know, you have to kind of go based on what you can afford to do. But I was trying to teach the concept of if you work harder, you make more money. And yet I came home and cooked dinner and you're going to sit down and eat dinner. I'm not going to pay you necessarily to set the table, right?

If—

then if that's the case, you're going to pay me to cook the dinner.

Exactly, exactly.

You want to do that, you know, tit-for-tat kind of thing, then, right, that gets ugly. And part of being in a community and a family is saying it's not always fair, but it's equitable, or whatever, right? So I tried different things from chore charts when they were younger. It seemed like as they got older into high school, it worked better for me to just, you know, they didn't get paid the same because they weren't the same age. The older kid usually made more. Kind of tried to go on that rule of thumb about if you're 8 years old, you got $8 or something like that, right? So you got $12-ish, you know. But then by high school, I also was saying I'm not paying for you to eat out every day because you're wanting to eat at McDonald's and Taco Bell every day. That's— I'm not funding that. So here's your lunch money, make it last. Same like we did with clothing money. Now with a child who can't leave campus and they're eating in the cafeteria or whatever, then we would maybe decide, do you want to eat in the cafeteria or do you want to take your lunch and, you know, they're still being— so by high school, to be able to say, here's your lunch money, make it last. It was amazing how often they would come home and fix a PB&J because they didn't want to spend that money I gave them.

Right.

I'm okay with that. If you come home and eat the lunch here, I'm not making them pay for that. That's just groceries. And then they kind of kept the difference, but then they could choose to, okay, some days I am going to go out with my friends. It became a choice then instead of I have to have $50 a week so I can go out every day for fast food. I'm like, I don't eat out every day, so why am I going to give you money to do that? Right. I think giving those choices and helping them decide, it helps you not have to micromanage everything. I got enough things to do as a parent, you know? I'm like, pick your battles, right?

But— So what would you do today? Because like with my son, we do— the electronic stuff, it automatically, once it hits like a minimum amount, it automatically goes in. And, you know, I do a— that I would— the convenience of just knowing that it's pulled out. But then I also, I look on their thing, and it's like ice cream and cookies and all this other stuff. And I'm like, dude, what in the world? And so what advice would you give on that?

Do they get rejected if they don't have money in their account?

My thing is once it hits $10, it automatically pulls and puts a new amount in it.

So that's dangerous. So they can really shop whatever they want. There's no amount. Because we had some, some ability to load their lunch. So my kids right now are 26 and 22. Just my second one just graduated from college. So I'm old, but there was still some ability to like load their account or whatever, but maybe you can turn that off where it doesn't auto-pull. Maybe that's not such a good thing. And it's so from a budgeting standpoint, I don't want to just have something always pulling without me having a plan. I want to say, you know, here's my max, $50. Once you hit $50, you're done.

Right.

Take your lunch the next day until your $50 turns over again. I, you know, if I had a choice with the school, and hopefully you do have some control because they can't just expect you to have unlimited funds, but if you, you know, could set it up so that, you know, on the 1st and 15th you get extra dollars in your account and, you know, buy ice cream towards the end of the month if you want, but you might want to, you know, be smart at the beginning of the month because I think our schools would do something where they would sort of front them a PBJ or so if their money got down to zero for a day or two. And then I don't remember if it was elementary school or junior high where they got like stamped on the hand to be like, oh, I'm out of money, I need to send money. Because the kid inevitably would forget to tell their parent until they had no food. And the school was, you know, trying to not have hungry kids, but at the same time, we're not going to feed them every day if you don't put money in their account. So I mean, cash, we know, you know, that we spend less typically when we spend cash. But it's getting harder and harder to spend cash, especially during this COVID pandemic time. So we're having to get more creative with how we give money to kids and how we, we as adults even spend money. Right? I found myself that if I take cash, I'm less I'm more likely to live within a budget. You know, I got $20. That's all I got. But if I'm swiping, you just don't feel it the same. Well, how can we expect our kids to feel it?

Yeah, because I know when I was in— which was just a couple years ago, right? When we were in high school. Yeah. And my dad would give me like just $2. And it was like, okay, here's your $2 for the day. And you got what you wanted. And you know, that was it.

And if you get the rest, Yeah, exactly. But that's a good, um, societal lesson, you know. If you spend less and you get to keep it, great. But if it's, you know, socialist, if you, you know, spend more or spend less, it's all still the same for everybody, then there's no motivation to actually, you know, spend less. And so that's what I liked about when the kids got old enough to say, I'm giving you this you know, here's $100, $200 for your clothes. And that's probably more or less, probably more than I would have paid for them if I was with them. But I wanted some sense of, wow, I get to keep this $20 and do what I want with it, or I can buy music, I can buy whatever. I don't have to have the name brand. Just seeing money makes a difference. You know, I had to teach my kids how to count change One of my friends owns a local little like farmer's market type thing, and it makes her crazy when she hires adults who cannot count change back. And they can't say, you know, they'll just go, here, the calculator said you have this much change. And, you know, she's like, no, you will count it back and you will say 75, 85, 95 dollar, you know. So my kids learn that just playing with coins at home, you know, as a young age and saying, let's get it out and then depositing into the bank and, oh, you got 10 cents for free, which It's really hard to get any interest right now. But right, trying to teach savings versus instant gratification is super important for a grown-up to learn how to not just go buy everything, every car, every trip, whatever. And, you know, unfortunately, as a financial coach, I'm working with people who have kind of created a big mess trying to get them out. I was motivated to teach my kids how to be good hopefully better than I was. And I wasn't the worst in the world. I did better than most of my friends, but I still had a ton of debt and was not where I could have been had I learned younger.

Right. Well, I know one of the things that I do is we play the game called Payday. And that was like really popular when I was younger. And then, and now I play it with them. And one of the cards that you draw are like a credit card. And you have to pay, like, you have to pay it all off at the end of the month. And if you don't, then you have to pay the interest. And then you have to, you know, every month you have to at least pay the interest. And whenever you get a loan, you also have to pay all that. And I remember one time my son was like, why don't you just put it on the credit card? And I was like, don't you remember in the game of Payday, like, you have to pay interest on this if we don't pay? Oh yeah, I forgot about that. And it's like, so those little things like If you can associate it, like you said, those little bitty things of sharing along the way and having those little teachable moments and stuff.

So little kids, like even going to the grocery store, you know, and they say, okay, your bill is $198.72. And kids with their eyes would get so big and they'd be like, I have $12 in my bank. That grocery store was— why is that that much? I'd be like, see why I'm saying you can't have every ice cream bar and bag of chips or whatever? Because just this was almost $200.

Right.

How hard do we have to work to get to— what if you had to buy the groceries? You know, right? Every, you know, every age comes with a new challenge. And as they get older, or as my kids went into college, it had a whole new, you know, story. But because I started young, I really truly believe that my kids are better with their money than their friends are. They're not perfect. They sometimes carry debt and makes me crazy. And I've just had to decide, we have the conversations, but they still will call me and go, Mom, what do you think about this? And we'll talk it through and say, is it worth it to you? Is it? And sometimes it is just like it is for us grownups, you know, yeah, really, I want to buy that. Or I, you know, I've already— my son just bought a truck and he's been sinking money hand over fist into his old truck. And At some level, you just go, okay, but just know the cost is that you're gonna have that payment. I know, but I paid my last one off really quick. Okay, you did, and I don't fault you for needing a better— it is a need for him.

Right.

Need as much as he bought? Maybe not, but—

Right.

Some people, you're grown up, your choice now. But, oh, by the way, now that college is done, you're gonna start paying for your cell phone, and your car insurance and pretty soon your health insurance. And so I start adding back in those expenses as a grownup that I've seen a lot of my friends not doing with their adult children.

Right.

Why, why do I have to keep paying for that? They have a full-time job now.

Yeah. So do you think if your kids are in middle school and in high school and you really haven't started, do you think that it's kind of a lost cause or are there still ways that you can start teaching them about money even at those ages?

It's never too late. You know, I work with people that are in their 40s and 50s and they're just learning. We're not, we're not done. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people think they quit parenting when a child turns 18. Let yours— you go, okay, well, they're an adult, they want to go to NYU, and they're just gonna sign up for all these student loans. Like, no, You do not just turn over the reins and tell 18-year-olds, you're on your own, unless you truly are going to let them be on their own and they have to deal with it. But that's not what I want for my kids because our brains are still developing way long into our adulthood, right? So, right, it's not too late. I truly— my kids were late middle, late elementary to middle school when we started. And of course, you know, you ramp up and you get better at your own game, so you get better with them. But no, it's never too late. And I think the more you talk sooner than later, instead of being very private— I mean, you don't have to open your checkbook to them and tell them what everything costs. But at a certain age when there's an ability and you know your child is not going to run out and tell all their friends, my parents make X and whatever. But it's like, this is an important thing for you to understand. We bring home this much money, but oh, by the way, we also pay taxes and look how much we pay for health insurance. And then we try to set some aside so that we don't have to move in with you when we're old, you know. Is it worth it to you? You know, our kids are like, "You really want me living with you when you're old?" You take them, you know.

Exactly.

So I'm like, if you're lucky, we won't have to go live with either one of you, but we have to not spend every dime we make on you or on simple pleasures today so that we have we don't run out of money in our old age. So you're starting to have those conversations, especially in junior high and high school. And to say, okay, I'll show you what we make. Now, this is one of those family confidential things that we, you know, but I also want you to see, here's how much the utility bill is, here's how much the grocery bill was. Oh, and we pay insurance just in case the house were to burn down. We pay that every year. And we, you know, those hidden costs, and then the sinking funds of Christmas and vacations and car repairs and things that you don't necessarily have a tangible thing every month, right? But when you want to go do those, and then setting limits on how much can we go do and how often— travel—

are those things that you would have like more of a high school kid? Is that what you're saying with those? Like, and slowly start doing it in middle school, and then the older they get, the more you start—

jobs in middle— in high school, you know, part of the gig was you get 16 and we'll try to get you some wheels, but with that comes you got to help pay for some of your expenses and you need to be working, you know, and banking money for college. So, um, it, it just was not a free ride. And I truly to my core believe that it builds character to not hand your kid everything, even when you can. You know, to say I could give you that money, but I'm not gonna. Yeah.

Well, and I know, like, it's also nice because I had my son who's about 16, he's gonna be 16 in December. And we were just, he, my dad was like, okay, I'm gonna give you this car. It was a truck. It's like an older truck. And I said, okay, well, what is it going to cost for insurance? And when I took him, you know, 16-year-old boy driving a, even though it was an old Chevy, like, I don't know, whatever it was, kind of pickup truck, was gonna cost like $300 a month. And my son's eyes just like bugged out. And it was so good for him to hear it because it wasn't me like saying, no, you can't have this. It was just like, Here it is. What do you think of this? And he's like, oh my gosh. And I'm like, yeah, that's, you know, and then I— yeah, so it was just like, okay, dude, I can do this and I can pay for this, but this means soccer is gone, or competitive soccer is gonna be gone. He's like, oh, no, that's okay. Let's, let's go find something else. Yeah, okay, exactly.

Huge when Instead of— it's kind of like as a coach, I don't tell people how to spend their money. I don't say, oh my gosh, you have to get rid of that, you have to cut that, that's stupid, and you're wasting money. You kind of have to come to those decisions yourself. Exactly. Yeah, that's a lot of money. Well, kids are no different. But like you said, I can do that, but it's going to mean I can't do this. So let's talk through how that's going to work. Or could you work and you can pay half and I can pay half? You know, I think so many people think it's like child abuse to make your children work or to have jobs. You know, I hear it all the time, "Oh, I can't— my kid doesn't have to work in college because I want them to get good grades." And they— I was like, I was a college student, I know how much we partied and we still got good grades.

And we worked. Yeah, exactly.

How many extra hours in the day you're not accounting for, for most of us?

Yeah.

So, you know, to saddle kids, that's my next big, you know, march around with my sign is to not be burying kids, young adults with student loans that then they get to carry around for 10 or 20 or 30 years because they don't have a plan to how to pay them off. They can't, they don't make what they think they're going to make when they get out of school. They went out of state and got these horrendous debts. And those are the people who tend to hire me later in life because they're like, how do we get out of this? And I think it's a whole lot easier to be proactive and tell your child no, or here's the limit, here's what we can do as a family. And that became our next big goal after we paid our house off was I don't want my kids to be saddled with a bunch of debt. So how do we do that? What can we do? What can they do to win the race as a team without getting burdened by a whole bunch of extra, you know, long-term money that you just— for a short-term instant gratification.

So what did that kind of look like for your family? Like, how did you start saving for that? I mean, were you letting them know that again, like, hey, we're doing— we're cutting— we're keeping it in our spending plan, but this money is going towards saving for your college? Like, how did you kind of I probably wouldn't. Did your spouse talk about it? And then how did you? I mean, because a lot of us widows, we don't have anyone that we can really bounce that off with. So how did you start managing that?

So I'll answer the last question first. So if you don't have an accountability buddy, I would find one, whether it's your friend, your sister, your Coach, you know, somebody that you can be transparent with and talk through. Because you're right, when it's just us in our head, and you've already gone through the grief and loss and stuff, and you have whatever misplaced guilt there is about the dad is gone or whatever, right? So I have to give them everything they want. And, you know, hopefully you get past that sooner than later. But I think there are a lot of people who have that kind of loss and then they compound it by poor choices later. And so you need that accountability person for sure to help you process and to think long-term and short-term. And to, you know, is there a way to do that? So, but going back to your initial question, what did we do? I can say that probably our last big money fight was around whether we're going to pay for the kids' college or not, because we hadn't— we weren't one of those people who started a 529 when the baby's born, you know. We were just always trying to keep up and keep the, you know, mortgage and keep the debt sort of down, but we didn't have— we had some retirement going, but we didn't have any college fund going until my daughter was about 9th grade. And that's about the time that we had just maybe started making some traction on our own debt. And I was like, well, how are we gonna pay for college? We don't have, you know, $160,000 laying around for her to go to school. And so, and my first gut was, well, she can pay her way. I paid my way. Well, okay, yes, I went to school in the '80s and I was— came from a family that was pretty low income, had 4 kids, and the government assistance was much better then. And so I graduated with minimal debt, but I had much of my aid was either grants or it was work-study, right? And so I worked to make a lot of my financial aid through college, but I still had some student loans and I I'm pretty sure I carried them around for 10 years because nobody told me you could pay them off early, you know. So I paid the minimum for 10 years because that's what the term was for my student loan. Now granted, it was much smaller than people today graduating with.

Well, I worked at a college and I was working in an office. And I mean, I worked with students that were coming out with $100,000 in student debt.

Yeah, and that's more, even more. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing now. And so I knew that that was a very real thing, and I didn't want my kids to be saddled with even half of that, right? And because it's hard, it's hard enough to have a car, right, let alone the equivalent of darn near a house, you know. So, um, it's— so that was important to me. And so, you know, my husband felt like it was our job to pay for college. I thought they could do it on their own. And so we had to find a middle ground. So there's lots of conversation and how will we do that. And we were on a path just because the interest rates had come down, we kept refinancing our house. So our, our house got shorter in, in terms of how long it took to pay it off. And so our numbers were just about when the first child was to go to college, our house should have been paid off. So it wound up being one year of overlap. But So my, my concession was, okay, fine, we're going to do that. We're not going to pay any more than what we've been paying in mortgage because we're used to paying the mortgage.

Right.

8 more years of paying a mortgage to— but now it's going to the university, right? What I didn't realize was that that wasn't even enough to cover college. I was like, you mean $1,300 a month or whatever is not going to cash flow a year's worth of and it didn't much. And so we actually wound up probably paying more than that, but because we had no other debt, we didn't have car payments and stuff like that, we just found it, you know, you just spend what you make. And so we were able to just keep that afloat. And my daughter traveled abroad for a year in a group called Up With People, and she had to raise money for that. And again, that was one of those, what I felt like at some level I was mean mommy because I wouldn't, pay for it, but it was like $17,000 for a semester, and then the next semester was another $8,000 because it was only half price. So $25,000 to go for a year. I said, I don't have that kind of money. I can't just write a check for you, but I will help you raise the money at whatever you can raise. And we had more than a year to raise money for her to go, and I had tons of great ideas, and she wouldn't do any of this work, you know. And so I finally had to say, okay, am I nagging you or am I cheering you on and encouraging and kind of being— and she said, I think you're nagging. And I said, I think you're right, I'm gonna shut up. And so when you're ready for me to use these great ideas I've got for you to make money, I'll come back. But in the meanwhile, you do you, you know. You're a senior in high school, you're doing all the plays, you're doing all— so she didn't get to go the semester she wanted to go because she didn't have enough money raised. And that was one of the hardest parenting moments ever to not just figure it out and I'll pay for it and she can pay me back, yada yada. Mm, sorry honey, you didn't have the money raised and now you missed the opportunity to have that great network of people that we could have raised money with. We're gonna have to figure out something else so you can go when you have the money raised. And that was hard, but she went, you know, then she was motivated. Holy cow, watching all her friends go off to school and she didn't get to go do what she said she was doing. She all of a sudden kicked it into gear and she raised the money. And a lot of family members helped us and friends that— but that was part of the fundraising plan is I'm happy to open my address book of contacts to ask for support, not until you've done your part. I'm not even giving you an address until you show me you've done the work first. Because my brother was actually giving her money that senior year because he had traveled with Up With People. So he was all excited for her to go. And he started her fundraising, and I basically had to ask him to quit giving her money because she wasn't doing her part. And that was like, ugh, you know? But it was the best thing, and she knows it now. It's like— and he— his kids were younger, but he appreciated that whole parenting lesson. Right. Yeah, okay, I'll wait until then. And he wrote her a nice letter and said, when you're ready to fundraise, I'll kick back in again. But until then, I'm not gonna be sending you any more money for your— So, you know, those moments. And she said to me before she left, we were like packing clothes at midnight when she finally did get to go, I am so proud of the fact that I earned, you know, she appreciated that a lot of it came from other people, but she worked hard for a lot of it.

Right.

She said, I'm so glad I earned it. And then on the flip side, she would say, This was so much better because I paid for it versus the kids whose parents wrote a check and they just went because they didn't appreciate it.

Right.

Yeah. Sometimes doing the right thing is the hard thing, and you have to remember that as a parent. It's like you don't let your kid just run amok into the street. Well, why do we quit thinking there's— we should have some boundaries around money, you know? And we have to do the tough thing because it's good for the kid.

Yeah, I've actually started making my son pay for half of his competitive soccer. And oh my gosh, I got such backlash. He's like, no one else's parents make them do that. And I'm like, well, that's okay, you know. And it was like, you know, and now that he does it, it's like, okay, I mean, I have had to be, you know, he was supposed to get a job this summer, but then COVID hit and like everything. And so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have to be some flexibility. But, you know, he's gonna be 16. And I'm like, okay, dude, you're gonna be be paying for some of this other stuff. And, and I— you can tell like he doesn't want to like spend all of his money. And it is good because I let him choose. Like when you go and get— he does like lawn mowing and all this other stuff. And he's like, okay, part of this goes to you, part of this goes to me. And I'm like, alright, like, you know, I don't want you to like, not enjoy some of it, all of it. But you know, no, I agree.

And I think that's just life. And if they want to do that thing that's fun. And we did that with probably many expenses through high school, like especially if I thought they were kind of dumb and I'd be like, all right, I'll pay for that yearbook you're probably never going to open, or I'll buy the ring you're going to wear for 6 months and never look, but you have to pay for half. Is it worth it? Can you come up with half? And sometimes the answer was yes, and other times they'd be like, yeah, no, I don't care. They didn't care. If it was my money, they'd freely spend it. But if it was their money, they think twice. Yeah. You do have to have some grace, and I was not that kind of, you know, rigid parent that, you know, I was keeping track of everything. And truly, we weren't even to the point of like, we paid this much for this kid, so we have to give this much to this kid. And I've gone back and looked at the numbers, and it was really— actually, I did it to get that kind of pat me on the back because you won't tell me how great I am. When this Christmas, I think it was, I presented to the kids how much we paid in school. You know, and it was over $100 grand. And I'm like, well, how did we come up with $100,000 over? But between both kids, now they each got some scholarship and they've worked and we gave part of their housing costs and they had to meet the rest. And I'd be like, hope you can make your rent, you know, hope you got food on the table because this is all I'm giving you. And there was only— I'll bet 2 times where they'd call home and say, I'm really broke, can I have a few dollars? I'll pay you back, you know. But they were very proud. They didn't want to ask for help at that point.

So did you have like a set amount of money that you said, okay, we're gonna— if you choose a college that's outside of this, this is the X amount of money we're giving you? Or would you have done—

I wasn't that organized, unfortunately. Okay. We were just winging it too, trying to cash flow school, so we didn't have this pot of money that I could divvy up and say, here's what you can do. So it was more about looking at the cost of colleges. My daughter who wanted to go to NYU realized how— I said, that was one time I remember putting my foot down saying, no, I know you love theater, you think you have to be in New York and you got to go to that school. I said, my dollars won't go anywhere in NYU, but they will make a difference here in Colorado. And so you choose a Colorado college and then, you know, then go to New York. And that's what she did. She's been living in New York and working in her field, and until COVID, of course. But, you know, I'm very proud of that. And she sees her, her friends in the theater district who have $100,000 student loans to be an actress and work at Starbucks, you know. Yeah, it's like Yeah, I'm really glad because, and especially I think this moment in time where life threw us all such a big curveball, to use this as a teachable moment. Like, who planned for a pandemic?

Right?

Who thought all the world was going to shut down in so many drastic ways? This is why I want you to have some emergency money, right? And try to use that again, not to pound them with a hammer, but to say—

Or make it feel bad and shameful and you have other issues later. Yeah.

And yet say, What can you do to make this right now? Because next year something else is gonna come, 10 years from now something else is gonna come. We, you know, hopefully, God forbid it's not this or this big of a deal, but we all have our personal pandemics. And that's one thing I've noticed during this time is that, you know, we're kind of blessed because it's happening everywhere and there's money getting thrown at us from all different ways to sort of fix the solution. Well, if it was just you, and you lost your spouse or you lost your car, nobody runs in and goes, hey, here, let me give you— Exactly.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to use that as a— again, they're in their 20s, they're not stupid, they're done with college now, and— but I'm not done parenting. And, you know, I don't think— and they'll tell me when I'm overstepping, you know, like, okay, Mom, I got it. You know, I'm, I'm a grown-up now, I'm gonna make— and I said, okay, but then when you're a grown-up, you don't come running to your mom either.

Exactly.

Right? At least that's my, my belief. There's lots of people who are in their 40s and 50s and their parents are still paying for— yeah, no, everything, you know. Or, oh, my parents pay for the kids' back-to-school clothes or their books or the— I'm like, yeah, we didn't have that. We took care of our family. Yeah.

So are there— were there things— I want to go back to the college. Like you said, there— are there things that your kids that you did make them pay for while they were in college? What were some things that they paid for while they were in college?

I usually just gave them like a stipend and said, we'll pay for the tuition, we'll pay for the books as much as we can. If they took something really stupid I did make my— oh, here's a good one. I made my son pay for summer school because he dropped a class that he wasn't doing well with. It was like, you know, I want to drop this class, the teacher's a jerk, blah, blah, blah, I'm not going to get a good grade. And he could still drop it, but he had to pay for it kind of thing. And I said, I've already paid for those credits. You'll have to take that again or fill the credits in summer school. That's on you. So he said, okay, that's fine. But what neither— I didn't even think about at the time that summer school was crazy expensive to go because he had to pay all these fees. Like they make you pay for the UC building, blah blah, student center, and the something, things you never use, but you're going to school in the summer. And so that's part of your fees. So that one class he chose to drop was about $1,500. And I tried, like, you know, of course I'm a bargain shopper. I'm trying to figure out, could you do it online? Could you take it here? Can you transfer in from the community college? And finally he said, Mom, it's just not worth it. I'm just going to take it here and I'm going to pay for it. I said, okay, it's your money. That's fine. And I had to shut up. I thought I was just wasting money, but I wouldn't have dropped the class either. I would have sucked it up and gotten through so I could finish that class with whatever grade. And, you know, so You're trying to let them use their critical thinking skills and their choices. And so yeah, I wouldn't pay for that. I paid for the credit you dropped. That's awesome. And then there were, you know, any kind of social things or traveling, you know, of course Mallory traveled around the world for a year and she had friends around the world. I was afraid she was going to be traveling to Europe to see her friends. And I'm like, but I'm paying for college. This isn't fair because I'm not getting to have those great trips. Yeah, you know, I would try to kind of leave, not give them so much that they, they had to work. She worked a lot of jobs, like Starbucks at 5 o'clock in the morning because she had theater till midnight. And, you know, they stayed out of trouble because they were busy, you know. They, yeah, a lot of time to monkey around, but they, they still had a good experience, you know. They weren't nose to the grindstone all the time. And I tried to be reasonable, and it was fun to then bless them to all cover that you know, I'll pay for that, here's an extra, whatever. That to me is a fun way to give, but to not have them expect it.

Exactly.

And to say, I'll give you $300 a month towards your rent, when their rent is $500 or $600 or $800, you know, and they, they have to work enough or save enough that summer before so that they could then offset, you know. Yeah, so they never went hungry, but they sometimes didn't have as much excess ramen instead of like, yeah.

So what is one specific action that you would tell the widows here today that they could take? Like, what would be something that's like a tangible action that we can just start implementing right now?

Well, first of all, do your own budget, have a sense of your own money. You can't really teach what you don't know how to do. So you have to kind of be starting to get your own house in order. It's that whole adage of more is caught than taught. Your kids are watching how you behave with money. And so if it becomes a do as I say, not as I do, you're not gonna win, right? You have to kind of walk the walk. So I would say start creating some kind of budget for yourself and setting a limit. And, you know, along with that goes dreaming and goals. What do you want? And what became our why was I didn't want my kids to be saddled with a bunch of debt, and I wanted to start them out on that trajectory. Did I have to pay for college? Did— could they have done student loans and paid them off? And Of course, you know, anybody can do that, but I wanted them to have a different experience than we had, you know. And my husband went back to college late in life, and so, you know, I like to say, "Your parents didn't pay for your college, I did," you know. We were working and we were the ones carrying the new student loans and paying too much so that he could go to a, you know, private school online on the weekends so that he could still work full-time. Right. You know, but yeah, I think, and just being a little more transparent, showing kids numbers, no matter if they're 5 or 15, right? Oh, look, honey, this matchbox costs, you know, 99 cents, but this one's 79 cents. And here's how, you know, and using tangible, I really do believe kids will, at a tiny age especially, they will learn more with real cash. So go get money from the bank. I know coin is hard to get right now, but go get money, and then show the difference on what things cost so that when you're shopping and they're taking their little, you know, allowance money to the Toys R Us that I guess doesn't even exist anymore, Walmart, wherever they shop, right? But they, they know I've got $27.32. But that thing is $42. Oh, bummer, dude, you don't have enough. You're gonna have to wait and save some more. But they want something that minute, right? They've gone, they're shopping. So you can see their character and their, you know, are they willing to wait till they get the thing they wanted or they just want something today and they'll buy junk, whatever. And let them fail. Let them choose that and be okay with that because, but it's okay to give them a little bit, okay, just so you know, if you do that, now you're not going to have enough to save for that thing for a long time. And then let them decide. I think you have to let kids fall down. You know, it's like walking. You just can't hold them up all the time. They have to walk and fall down and get up, and we all do that, and so we learn more. But have some grace in the process, you know. I think we don't have to be rigid, but sometimes no is the right answer. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, Penny Kidd, for being with us today and giving us some amazing tips that we can start off with. How can people get ahold of you if they want to work with you?

Probably the easiest way is my website. So as you know, my name is Penny and my business is called Pennywise Coaching. So my website is just www.pennywisecoaching.com. And all my contact information is on there. And on the page, there's a last page by the blog just says Contact Me, and they can, they can schedule 45 minutes for free to talk with me and to talk about their own personal scenario and whether coaching might be a fit for them or somebody they know. And, you know, sometimes it's not them, but maybe they know somebody else who maybe could use somebody to up their game. So I would love to do that. Yeah, so, and I have a Facebook page that if you search for for Pennywise Financial Coaching, you'll find me and my photo. And, you know, we try to put helpful tips on there. So that's probably the two best places. Awesome.

And I'll make sure to list those below for you all so you know where to find her. So again, thank you, Penny, for joining us today. And we'll see you guys in the next session.

Bye. Thanks, Tina.