This is a recorded conversation (YouTube video) hosted by Richard Canfield exploring practical definitions of "legacy" and how to pass financial wisdom and values to children. Speakers emphasize teaching core financial habits (simple rules like 10-10-10, family banking meetings, donating a portion of income), using stories and demonstrations (e.g., Beaver Bankers) to make lessons memorable, and anchoring those practices in family values and faith. The dialogue links these parenting practices to broader concepts like profit-first and Nelson Nash's infinite banking as cultural/behavioral frameworks rather than purely technical products.
Chapters
With you and Amanda, you know, helping, helping people. I guess design, best word I could say is legacy. Right, Design, Legacy. So given that you both do that, how do you define legacy in a way that's simple and practical? Not like Richard and I often run into definitions of it that are really just, they're just poetic. So how do you define legacy in a way that's simple and practical?
So that's a hard question, I think, because it's very unique to each person. And you guys have done financial analysis. I've done so many of them. And they're like, I just want time, freedom and to be able to live on the beach and whatever. And, you know, all the fun things of financial freedom, whatever that means for me. I'm like, I want my son, legacy wise, to be able to understand how finance works now, or money. Like right now he's an investing club with his mom. You know, they do Investing Club. He's 6 or 7 now, and he's learned. I have this shirt. Don't interrupt my compounding. He has one too. Um, and so with this shirt, he's like, how come you guys got a shirt? And I didn't. I was like, well, because you weren't at an event. He's like, well, I'm going to be an event. So he was at an event recently and he's seven again. And so for me, I'm like, what that means is teaching him the core. Not about, not about which ETFs to invest in or any of this. It's about the 10-10-10 savings rule. The 10% of all you earn is for you to keep or tithing. Those kind of principles, I think are more important. And what I want to teach along the lines. And so our book is Five Smooth Stones. And what that is is a moving from chaos, which we call confusion, haphazard, anxious, overwhelming and stressful, to still setting your sights, tracking your in and out, inspecting your progress, looking for 1% and living deliberately. What I believe is most people are sleepwalking through life. A policy is setting your sights, tracking. And that's what we do in financial analysis, right? We're asking those questions and we're just like, okay, now you have to live deliberately, put premium in. And so that's something that I want my son, I only have one child, but how do I get that and how do I help him not just get the money because he's going to get rich, you know, I know that's going to happen, but I want him to have the values of what it means to be a, I don't know, person of faith, a person of integrity. Does that make sense, those kind of things?
That makes perfect sense because it creates a very stable, just a very stable way of being.
Yeah. And right. Like life insurance.
I don't know.
It's.
I find that with, with kids and we express this at every opportunity where we can give kids credit where credit is due. They're much smarter and more conceptual than most would give them credit for because they don't have that broader language that we as adults can use and throw around like ETFs and dividend reinvesting and stocks and equities and securities and they don't have that language. But if they have a very stable way of being because they're well grounded in family values, they're well grounded in blessing other people's lives in a positive way, just the very act of doing that.
Yeah.
They grow into very conceptual, kind giving adults and all. And all that we do as parents is just keep them between the guardrails.
So what do you guys do? I'm curious because I know with us our family is nearly show up when we serve in our church. And I said, well, 20, 80% of people aren't going to show up, but Neely's do.
We give, we give 15% of every gross revenue dollar that we earn from any of my companies. 1 5% I think though those things.
Right.
How do you, how do you guys do that with your kids? What do you, how do you do that yourself? Like that's, that's me. How do, what do you guys do? I know your kids. I've seen them on stage.
Yeah, well, my son, my oldest son, he has a part time job and he's adopted the very same. Not because he just believes that that's the right number, but because he's observed and there's some proximity influence there. And so he wants to do the same thing. And so we just little, just little things. We go into a Safeway grocery store once a week and we buy all the food bank prepped bags from all the, all the cashier lanes and it doesn't matter how many are there. And the cashier asks the same question every time. Are you sure you mean just the pile that we have here and. No, across eight lanes of traffic where we're just going to buy them all. That's proxy. He sees that. And so Rich knows he can expand on this too. I mean, with our family, banking meetings are not just centered around keeping money in the family. It's also keeping the, keeping the values close and reiterating those family values and recognizing and acknowledging people with real genuine love that they've been embodying those values. And it's wonderful to see especially as the kids grow older like your son right now at his age when he turns 18, with everything that you're, that he's observing in proximity, influence to you is going to, he's going to carry that with him. And so it's incredible and what a privilege it is to influence kids in that way.
Right Rich? Well, and I want to give a shout out to Becca Wilhite who we were able to see here just. Well, yeah, two days ago when we were at the Nelson National Institute Coaching Academy and she put together the Beaver Bankers book, which is an illustrated book for kids. And really it's actually for parents I think as well to understand the impact of Nelson's teachings in a story oriented environment with some visual engagement and recognizing the importance of those types of meetings, those types of conversations, but in a way that tells a story about an ecosystem and that's fundamentally what we're living in. It's just a financial ecosystem. So relating it to that of an ecosystem created by some beavers so that they can thrive for generations and you know, the reason I want to give a shout out is that, you know, our most recent family banking meeting, that was what we used as our topic of discussion. My, my kids are seven and nine and we, we use that, they've read the story, they ask questions about it every once in a while and you know, coincidentally I shared this with Becca just the other day. I took my kids on a hike last weekend and it's a place that we've never been before but it's a hike to a beautiful lake. It's a bit of a drive there and back and the kids stuck it out. We didn't know how long it was going to take. It took a little longer than expected. But when we got to this beautiful lake their first question was hey dad, do you suppose there's any Beaver bankers over here in this lake somewhere? And you know, so that's kind of a, you know, people learn I think and kids especially learn through stories and we can and, and demonstration like Jason identified. And so we, we show them things and they're going to learn the good things and the bad things, whatever you show them. So they're always watching is what we're getting at. Yeah, but, but stories are memorable and we're taught that through at our own, in our own life One of the reasons why, why do we read books, why do we read stories, why are they attractive for us to watch movies and television? Because there's a story being told and you remember the story, you don't remember the content necessarily. And so I think there's a real power as we look at embracing. Maybe it's whether it's profit first, whether it's some of the things you want to do around your faith, whether it's Nelson's principles, what's a relatable story about that and that you've walked the path. In fact, I was recording for my TV show earlier today with my friend Jimmy Jays and Scott Donnell, and we spent a lot of time talking about what they call roots and wings. How do you establish a root system of core values and things that matter that's infused in the family and then you're giving them wings, which are the, the actions, the elements, the skill sets by which they can take that value system and move forward. And if you, if you have skill sets and confidence, you can do certain things. But if you don't have that anchoring system and the roots, then you know, you're not going to, you're not going to see the result of what you want. And if you want to have your, your kids and your grandkids connected to the family, well, then they need that root system. That's the, that's the value system. That's the things that you guys are talking about, you're establishing. And so regular family banking meetings, in my opinion, and maybe they're regular profit first meetings. I'm sure you can just combine the two together. You're, you're bringing people to core elements that matter to you and having open discussions about them where they can be fun and engaging. And you know, I know, Jason, something that I love that you've done and I've certainly incorporated is that when you have this book with you becoming your own banker, you know, Nelson's picture, thanks to David Stearns, is on the back of the book. So he's with you at every meeting and being able to connect people to Nelson. You know, Brandon, you talked about how much of an impact seeing Nelson on the Banking With Life video was for you. Well, similarly, we receive and hear that feedback all the time for people that watch the Nelson Nash documentary film, when they go through that, they become connected to the spirit of Nelson and what he stood for, his value system, which is the, which is the element of creation for the infinite banking concept that's now, now tied through all of our lives right here on this, on this podcast, the people watching, most likely it's tied through your life. And that connection point is done because of Nelson and his value system. That's really where this stems from. It's not about whole life insurance and it's not about, you know, it is about human behavior, but it's all derivative of the belief system of one man.
