~138~“Money‑Talk Made Simple: The 3 Financial Epiphanies Every Parent Needs” with Scott Yamamura

#ParentingTeens, #FinancialCoaching, #MoneyScripts,  #CustodialAccounts, #StockMarketInvesting, #FinancialLiteracy

In this power‑packed episode, Cheryl sits down with financial‑coach‑author Scott Yamamura to demystify money for parents of teens. From the Rule of 72 to the “Day of Reckoning” that hits many families in mid‑life, Scott breaks down three bite‑size “financial epiphanies” that turn overwhelm into confidence.

Whether you’re living paycheck‑to‑paycheck, just starting to think about college funds, or worried about caring for aging parents, you’ll walk away with clear, actionable rules of thumb you can start teaching your teen today—no PhD required.

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Speaker 1
00:01 - 00:43
Welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice Redefined for Today's World, where we have the real, raw, honest conversations and support parents and how to support your teens and raise these amazing human beings into the world. And today I am joined by someone who brings clarity to one of the most confusing parts of modern parenting and that is money. Scott Yamamura is a financial coach and the author of Financial Epiphany with 25 years of experience studying communication and in his day job simplifying complex information for more than 300,000 employees at a Fortune 15 company. Scott has a gift for taking the overwhelm out of personal finance.

Speaker 1
00:43 - 01:05
He helps everyday earners unlock what he calls their multiplying power with money through these simple but transformative rules of thumb. And today we're breaking down how this applies not just to us as adults, but to our kids because raising financially capable teens is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. Welcome Scott to the show. Thanks Cheryl.

Speaker 1
01:05 - 01:16
Thanks for what you're doing for parents and teens out there. This is so fun. I'm really excited because I think I'm going to learn maybe more than my listeners on this one. Let's all pay attention.

Speaker 1
01:16 - 01:23
I got my pen here. So let's start with you. What's your why? What's your mission here?

Speaker 1
01:23 - 01:38
Why are you even doing this? What is the point? 10 years ago, I was stuck intimidated by three big things, how to maintain a house, how to fix a car, or understanding money. And I was going to choose one thing to try to get over the hump.

Speaker 1
01:39 - 01:56
And I chose money. So I wanted to turn this intimidation, this overwhelm, this sort of procrastination about learning one of these basic methods of living. I wanted to get past it. And so with money, I decided to focus on it.

Speaker 1
01:56 - 02:14
I started with taking workshops, jumped in, started reading books, and I realized it wasn't as bad as I thought. It was more like a sheep in wolf's clothing. It was scary to people like me who are acting timidly with money for years already. But I realized when I really dug into it, it wasn't as bad as I thought.

Speaker 1
02:14 - 02:53
In fact, I became empowered by that and even got to the point of wanting to study to become a financial coach. And I spent three years coming up with my own ideas and writing a book called Financial Epiphany. That's how big a deal it was and realization it was to go from intimidation to now confidence and empowerment with something just by spending the time to learn it. That you made me kind of take a breath there when he said, you know, it's a little more, you made me comfortable now with this conversation, because honestly, I'm going to start even at the beginning, like our, our money stories, you know, they don't start when we're 20

Speaker 1
02:53 - 03:08
and 30 and 40, or when we get our first paycheck. You know, just for example, growing up, money was never talked about in my house. Like, literally never. How much you paid for your house, how much mom and dad made was none of anybody's business.

Speaker 1
03:08 - 03:33
We didn't even talk about who we voted for. Like, oh my god, you're going to get struck by lightning. So I want to start with that because if those are money stories, what are the conversations parents are having with themselves and then what conversations are they having with their kids to transform these beliefs? Yeah, when I was growing up, my mom used to say talking about money was like talking about your underwear.

Speaker 1
03:34 - 03:56
And what she meant by that was it was a private topic. We're not going to be boasting about what's in our bank accounts. But what I learned over time is that if we don't talk about money, we could be silently suffering because it's such a big thing. The average person is going to earn about $2 million over a lifetime and make about 1.5 transactions per day, about 30,000 financial transactions per lifetime.

Speaker 1
03:56 - 04:12
And we're going to work. 40 years earning money, we're going to potentially retire at 20 years spending the money. And if you reverse to the beginning, you're going to spend about 18 years learning how to earn the money in school. This is a huge thing that our whole life is immersed in.

Speaker 1
04:12 - 04:23
We got to do something about this. So there's those money scripts that you talk about. That was one of my mom's statements about the underwear. And then my dad, he had one sentence answers.

Speaker 1
04:23 - 04:41
Uh, he would say things like when I started my job, invest in your 401k plan, your retirement plan, there's free money there. Stop and make your money work for you. Stop. I certainly would observe them and they had, uh, good practices with money.

Speaker 1
04:42 - 05:03
Uh, they did not overspend, they were wise, they were savers, but that's really hard to see if I'm not being told details or being able to look behind the curtain and see what's there. If money scripts were so short like that. And so what do you do when you don't get big messages about big things? You only get small messages.

Speaker 1
05:03 - 05:26
Well, you take small actions. And so I acted very timidly with my, I believed the advice I heard save early save, you know. and make your money work for you and save for retirement. I believed in all those things, but you just don't act with the vigor that you really should and could if you heard it in a different way.

Speaker 1
05:26 - 06:03
And that's why I set out to quantify what save early means and to simplify by creating three rules of thumb, because I figured that's exactly what I wanted to hear. What if I could go and tell others what I wanted to hear so that they could take 10 years of studying and research that I've done and learn it in a matter of minutes if they wanted to. You know, and I want to keep talking about the money, but as you were talking about your parents, and we have sandwich generations now. And my parents were very good with their money.

Speaker 1
06:03 - 06:29
They didn't talk about it. I don't know how they did it, and I don't think they worked on credit cards ever. But I'm very, very blessed, because if I had to financially look after my parents now, And my kids, I would be screwed. And so because my parents did whatever it is they did, and hopefully that's what you're going to talk about, whatever it is they did, they are set.

Speaker 1
06:29 - 07:09
They are, you know, my dad's gone, but my mom is set. So that even in the worst case scenario, you know, if there's reverse mortgage, like she's put herself in a place where I know that's one thing, like it's hard enough to watch our parents get old, it's hard enough to watch them pass or get really sick. But to think that, oh, you know, something might happen and I have to pay for private care and I have to move into her house. And so, parents, I really want you to pay attention to this, not just for your teens now, but for when you get older, you don't want to put that kind of pressure on your kids.

Speaker 1
07:09 - 07:30
I think that's a really good thing to really like put in your ear right now. Absolutely. I call it the day of reckoning where most people, if you put off thinking about money somewhere around middle age, we're going to almost be forced to think about it because things will start happening. It may be that we need to start thinking about our parents and helping out in a financial way.

Speaker 1
07:30 - 08:04
That may occur. And the statistics say that there's a retirement crisis happening where many people don't have enough saved because saving takes decades to have a comfortable retirement where we're having about the same level of comforts and level of living that we did while we were working. Many will say you want to live on about 80% of the income that you were having while working in retirement. But then other things happen to at this day of reckoning, it might be taking care of parents, you start to realize you need to contribute financially.

Speaker 1
08:04 - 08:17
It's your own retirement that you need to start working towards if you haven't started already. And then maybe things like kids college. Oh boy, you know, I want my son to be able to go to school. Do I need to start saving?

Speaker 1
08:18 - 08:31
So these things, if we haven't started thinking about them earlier, they're coming for us. And there's this day of reckoning where we need to start thinking about these big money decisions. Yeah. Day of reckoning, man, that's just the perfect term for it too, honestly.

Speaker 1
08:31 - 08:38
I mean, I'm 61, so we're at different stages. So I know, I feel that. When you say that, I feel it. Yeah.

Speaker 1
08:38 - 08:43
There's a feel with it. Yeah. Yes. So why is it important for parents to teach their kids about money?

Speaker 1
08:43 - 08:56
And let's even say they're listening to it right now and their kids are not three and five anymore. They're 14 and 18. Can we say it's never too late? And how do we start talking to our kids about money?

Speaker 1
08:57 - 09:16
That is a very good age. I say almost any age, even into college years. That's the perfect age to finish setting them up so that they can go out into the world on the right foot, fresh out of the gates. as they start earning money and having the option to save it.

Speaker 1
09:16 - 09:40
And so I started teaching my son when he was seven years old, and that's when we started an account for his college. I would have started even earlier if I had understood money, but I didn't yet. In fact, when we called up the bank and we said, hey, does it make sense to start saving for a college fund for our son? They said, oh, you got plenty of time, because he had just been born.

Speaker 1
09:40 - 10:06
If I know what I know now, I would have started when he was born because money grows over time. Time is almost your biggest factor. We started when he was seven years old. Once he was old enough, I actually started showing him his college fund and the fact that you can put money in and it just grows on its own because what we ended up doing was saving from age seven until age nine and we stopped.

Speaker 1
10:06 - 10:20
My wife was asking me, why are we stopping? Don't we need to keep saving until he's in college, at least until then? And because of these three rules of thumb we're going to get into later, I'll share it all with you. It's very simple.

Speaker 1
10:21 - 10:37
I understood that the amount we put in could grow into what we would need later. And it certainly has. My son's 16 now, and he's had enough money to pay for his entire undergrad at a state school. for since he was nine years old, it grew into what it needed to.

Speaker 1
10:38 - 10:52
And I'll share that, that understanding trick with everybody so you can get how this works. Yeah. You know, and well, you know what, and let's talk about, let's start, let's talk about the three financial epiphanies. Cause I want to get to make sure we get to the bones before we run.

Speaker 1
10:53 - 10:57
Yeah, let's do it. Okay. We're growing impatient here. Let's do it.

Speaker 1
10:57 - 11:04
I got my pen. All right. All right. Well, there's a very common financial rule out there called the rule of 72.

Speaker 1
11:05 - 11:47
And what that simple rule is, is it says if you take the number 72 and divide it by a common rate of return, that money will grow by. So 7.2% is, it's a pretty common number out there for money to grow by when you invest in say a 401k retirement plan or a 529 college savings vehicle. These different ways of saving stocks and bonds and index funds and mutual funds and individual retirement account, all these most accessible ways of saving, it's so beautiful because they can get to this very common rate of return. 7.2.

Speaker 1
11:48 - 12:07
So when you take the number 72 and divide by 7.2, the amount that money can grow, you get a number 10. 72 divided by 7.2 is 10. What is that 10? The 10 is the number of years it takes for that money to double on its own without doing a thing else.

Speaker 1
12:08 - 12:30
That is amazing. And when we understand that money under common circumstances can double every 10 years, we suddenly have the simplest understanding and rule of thumb that we can apply throughout our life. It's kind of like understanding what an inch is on a ruler, right? Or a centimeter or a millimeter or however you want to be measuring today.

Speaker 1
12:30 - 12:48
So when you understand that, you can start measuring things and making decisions in your life. So let's apply it back to my son's college. If I understood that money doubles every 10 years, we could say from age seven to age nine, and save half of what we thought we needed. And that's what we did.

Speaker 1
12:49 - 12:58
then it doubled, because he's 16 now. So we started when he was seven and stopped when he was nine. So it's doubled. So we really haven't done anything since he's been age nine.

Speaker 1
12:58 - 13:14
And the money doubled faster than the tuition grew. So he's been ready to go to college for quite some time now. And that's by simply allowing, putting the money on this boat, sending the boat off. It's coming back doubled and more.

Speaker 1
13:14 - 13:35
And all we did was wait. So understanding that money can double every 10 years when we put it into very common, accessible ways of investing, and then just waiting, that's an amazing thing. It allows us to take big actions early, right? Remember, I acted timidly when I started working, but now I don't anymore.

Speaker 1
13:36 - 13:47
That was a massive move to make, to say, let's save half of what we think our son will need for college. It took a lot of faith also. Let's save, stop. Like, that was one of the biggest experiments in my life.

Speaker 1
13:48 - 13:57
And now to see that it actually does work. My wife is, her mind is so blown. She says, let's put money in here for our son. Let's put money in there for our son.

Speaker 1
13:58 - 14:09
Let's do all this and it'll grow into this massive amount. I say, whoa, we want our son to work one day. We don't want to eliminate his need to earn. and put his hands to work himself.

Speaker 1
14:10 - 14:20
So we've calmed down a little bit. I had to convince her. But it's funny because I was trying to convince her. And now that she's seen at work, she's on my case by why aren't we more gung-ho about this?

Speaker 1
14:21 - 14:30
It's amazing. The biggest thing you can witness is to get started and to look back. And that's what grows the biggest confidence. So, okay.

Speaker 1
14:30 - 14:43
So let's talk about then before we go further, but, but Scott, and that was just one financial epiphany. So before we get to the second one, I want to say, okay, okay. But Scott, great. But I live paycheck to paycheck.

Speaker 1
14:44 - 14:53
I don't, I don't, I, there's nothing left. How do you expect me to start saving? What does that look like? Okay.

Speaker 1
14:53 - 15:14
So here's the analogy. Um, We're all athletes, I like to say. And just like an NFL football player or a Olympic ice skater or gymnast, many of these sports were at our best in our early twenties. And it just so happens to be the same with money.

Speaker 1
15:14 - 15:29
that we're the best at multiplying money. We have an ability when we're in our early 20s, because we could be earning a paycheck and we could be potentially saving. And we're saying that age is the biggest factor here. So money is the same way.

Speaker 1
15:29 - 15:38
So the first thing is just understanding that we have our biggest multiplying ability. in our 20s when we're earning and have the potential to save. So we just need to know that. And that's just how money works.

Speaker 1
15:38 - 15:57
And, and that power, that ability decreases over time. And so when we understand we have like an athletic ability, what do athletes do? They go out and make it happen no matter what. Now, let's say they have bad grades, and so they can't play on the school sports team.

Speaker 1
15:58 - 16:12
And the coach says, well, you cannot play unless you move that F up to a C or so, or that D up to a C grade. You need to get a certain grade. Then when you get that grade, you will be able to play. Now athletes are going to figure that out.

Speaker 1
16:12 - 16:21
They know they have this window of time. And they know when the coach is saying, you've got this amazing skill. Don't squander this thing. You've got to get out on the field.

Speaker 1
16:21 - 16:26
And you can score. And you can go big. And you can take us to the championship. Let's take action on this.

Speaker 1
16:27 - 16:38
And so when an athlete hears that, they're going to get their grades up. And they're going to go play. They're going to make it happen. And I like to motivate people in a positive way like that and say, you've got this ability.

Speaker 1
16:38 - 16:55
You're living paycheck to paycheck, or you're in debt, and now you're just figuring this out. And that's OK, because guess what? 80% of the United States is like that, and most of the world is like that. We are amazing spenders and amazing subscribers.

Speaker 1
16:56 - 17:14
And our biggest message on money is to buy and to spend. If that's the main message we're getting, it takes intentionality to do the opposite. But I like telling people you're like an athlete with an ability And don't squander this thing. This ability, which we're going to describe later, is so incredible.

Speaker 1
17:15 - 17:39
It does diminish over time, but it's so incredible. I need you to get out there and start taking advantage of this. And you're going to find a way and make a way because we're using this positive reinforcement here. Not only can you do this for yourself, if you're a parent, you're going to be able to teach your kids using these three rules of thumb so that they can enjoy the most leverage ever just by three simple rules of thumb and they can take action on these

Speaker 1
17:39 - 17:54
and they can really make something of their lives to in an area where most of us are having hardship because we're just not being taught early enough. But a parent has the ability to change their financial future and for their kids. I love it. And for everybody.

Speaker 1
17:54 - 18:13
So today is the 29th. Which means yesterday was Black Friday on Amazon. So when you get all your shit delivered that you really didn't need, you can return it so easily on Amazon and start investing some money. And I'm saying that for myself.

Speaker 1
18:13 - 18:19
Don't tell Amazon. Okay. Epiphany number two. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1
18:19 - 18:31
OK, here we go. So if money can double every 10 years, who works 10 years in their life? We need to extrapolate this along the most common duration of work, which is 40 years. Most people work about 40 years.

Speaker 1
18:32 - 18:49
So if money doubles every 10 years and we didn't touch it, what happens if we don't touch it another 10 years into our early 40s? Well, it's going to double again. So if 1,000 doubled to 2,000 after 10 years, 2,000 is doubling to 4,000. Now, let's wait another 10 years and do nothing.

Speaker 1
18:49 - 19:03
$4,000 doubles to $8,000. And then finally, the last decade, until we reach retirement age in our 60s or so, that $8,000 can double again to $16,000. That's amazing. So we didn't touch things once.

Speaker 1
19:03 - 19:15
We just put in an input of $1,000, and it's $16,000 on the other end. after 40 years. That's an amazing thing. That's how compound interest works, this magical process that we hear about.

Speaker 1
19:16 - 19:28
But now we're quantifying it, right? We're saying you can multiply by 16 times. Now, people like me, a money nerd, when we hear something like that, we're very excited about that. And we can act on that.

Speaker 1
19:28 - 19:37
But guess what? Most of us want instant gratification. And certainly, our culture is teaching us that. We spoke about ordering something and getting it tomorrow.

Speaker 1
19:38 - 19:51
And email is an immediate communication. And so is texting and cell phones. Life is more immediate than ever before. And with our money, once it comes in, we will have this likelihood of spending it right away.

Speaker 1
19:51 - 20:03
Because guess what? We're looking around, and we're all doing it. We're all living on the edge together, spending as much as we make. sitting on the edge of the cliff together, but we aren't looking at each other's bank accounts.

Speaker 1
20:04 - 20:31
And what's really there is most folks, 60, 70, 80%, we're spending about as much as we make, even though it looks like we got nice stuff, nice vacations, our Facebook and Instagram lives are picture perfect. But it's not the case. When we realize the statistics that most people, we are challenged, We need to make a different decision for ourself, right? Because what we show and what we actually have, they're typically two different stories.

Speaker 1
20:32 - 20:53
So back to this financial epiphany. If most people are like, 40 years, you want me to save and wait for 40 years? That is not very exciting to me. I was sitting at my dining room table one day with my feet up and I thought, okay, if that excites people like me, multiplying money by 16 times, but not others, what we need to do is we need to flip this around.

Speaker 1
20:54 - 21:09
And so. what I did was flip the mindset around to say, this is not multiplying a thing by 16 times. This is your ability to multiply by 16 times. Remember ability and athletic ability.

Speaker 1
21:09 - 21:32
If you have an ability to multiply money when you start working and we put a number on it, 16, that's your ability that you have going out the gates and multiplying power of 16. And we're going to jump into the third financial epiphany here, but what happens 10 years later? Oh, the multiplying power halves to the power of eight in your early 30s. That's what's happening, or multiplying power is halving.

Speaker 1
21:32 - 22:04
And then in our early 40s, the multiplying power halves yet again to the multiplying power of four, and then to the power of two 10 years later, and one. And certainly we can shift things all around. We can work longer and save longer. But if this is the most general way of looking at things, working 40 years, earning a 7.2% rate of return on our money, Now we have a measurement stick to actually a very simple tool to use on our finances that tells us, ah, I need to save because

Speaker 1
22:04 - 22:22
now there's a sense of urgency. Multiplying power halves every 10 years. So that creates what's called loss aversion, which is When we feel that we're losing something, we're more likely to act. Actually, two to three times more likely to act than if we were to gain the same amount.

Speaker 1
22:22 - 22:42
Losing something gets us to act. And so we feel a sense of urgency and we now want to do something about it because our multiplying power halves every 10 years. And that's the third financial epiphany. Going back to the second one, once again, we threw a number on our multiplying power, the power of 16, when we start working.

Speaker 1
22:43 - 23:09
And back to financial epiphany number one, money can double every 10 years. These three rules of thumb. If money keeps behaving the way that it does, if artificial intelligence doesn't just blow everything up and create a totally new world, which it may, but for now, at least that's how it's working. And these three rules of thumb can certainly be simple things to remember to operate with money for the rest of our lives.

Speaker 1
23:10 - 23:31
And so I've been applying it for 10 years and love the results. And I'm out here to share this with parents so they can learn from themselves and teach their kids, because boy, when we see our kids succeed, that warms our hearts. And even if we're a little late to the game, they don't have to be. Yeah, good point.

Speaker 1
23:31 - 23:54
Good point. So, okay, now, the very first conversation parents are going to have with their kids, they're listening to this, they read your book, like, okay, we're in this Scott, we're in this, we're doing it. What does that conversation look like with their kids when we've never had these conversations? Yeah, so I'll have to think back to when I ordered things for my son.

Speaker 1
23:54 - 24:19
So once again, we showed him. his college savings account, and over time, he realized what it was like for money to double. And I'm just gonna focus on the investing part, the growing of money part, because there's saving and giving as well, which is a big part of finances and spending. But I also started, and I recommend this for parents as well who are able to, starting a custodial account.

Speaker 1
24:19 - 24:51
And so what you would do is go to a discount brokerage firm like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, or Vanguard, start an account as a parent for your child. And so it's called custodial accounts. You can also do this at the bank and other ways of parenting a child with creating an account for them. And so what we started to do was around birthday time or the holidays, we would say, OK, hey, you can buy one of three things to choose a stock.

Speaker 1
24:51 - 25:04
Do you want it to be you're familiar with Amazon, you're familiar with Netflix, you're familiar with Disney, just just choose one. And we're going to get it for you. And then we're going to watch what happens. So before the pandemic, my son chose Amazon and he chose Netflix.

Speaker 1
25:05 - 25:18
So what happened when COVID hit? Oh, my God, we're ordering a ton online, right? Oh, my God, we're streaming a ton online. And so he saw the stocks just massively jump.

Speaker 1
25:18 - 25:27
And he was like, Yay. And we're like, Wow, good choice. But now you see how the market and market disruptors affect a stock. And now you're understanding how these things grow.

Speaker 1
25:28 - 25:48
And we started to add in more and more and more stock. So he would get, you know, a Tesla or a Microsoft or a Costco wholesale. And then when things happen, he would see a change. Well, back in the day, and back in the days not too long ago, he liked, he got this virtual reality headset.

Speaker 1
25:49 - 26:04
Uh, and we thought, okay, do you want to get a stock that supports what the chip that's in there, you know, or do you want to get one of these other ones? And he said, I want to get, I love virtual reality. I want to, I want to buy the company that makes those chips. So we bought a bunch.

Speaker 1
26:05 - 26:24
And we thought, eh, let's just see what happens. Well, that chip was made by a company called NVIDIA. And NVIDIA happens to be the number one artificial intelligence stock because artificial intelligence relies a lot on those chips now. So we got in with his account before this big artificial intelligence boost.

Speaker 1
26:24 - 26:33
Wow. He saw that massively boost. That single stock is worth probably half of his custodial accounts now. And it's grown uncomfortably high.

Speaker 1
26:33 - 26:49
He's about where I was in my 30s with his savings. He's 16, hasn't even worked a day in his life yet. So what parents can do for their children with gifting stock, it can teach early. And here's the other money script.

Speaker 1
26:49 - 27:16
I thought investing in the stock market was gambling. And that's how I thought about it. But I realized now I had to get over that and realize it's it's actually putting money and believing in the US economy, or wherever, whatever country you're in, it's believing in your your country's economy, and in the innovation that's there and investing in that. And if you work at a company, and you believe in that company, that's where you're putting your money.

Speaker 1
27:17 - 27:41
And so when I realized that's what it was, then I could jump in with both feet. And my son now, my hope is that he gets over that intimidation, that fear and their overwhelm, and actually doesn't even know what it is because he's learned this from the beginning. And his money scripts or his money stories align with how actually the economy works from the beginning. We're not getting those same shameful stories that we got as children.

Speaker 1
27:41 - 28:10
Um, don't talk about it. This is this is taboo. We're not going there You know, it's it's now I want to break that mold and say this is something that's very empowering and confident and we have a responsibility To know this for ourselves and for our families and to introduce it early. So parents Uh this I I want to empower you and say this is something to quickly learn and to pass down this message That's why I break it down into three simple rules of thumb because that's, that's all it takes.

Speaker 1
28:10 - 28:18
You can always become savvier later and become a money nerd like me later, but start out simple. Yeah. So, okay. I'm, I'm a parent.

Speaker 1
28:18 - 28:36
I'm listening. I'm going, okay, Scott, like, do I need to put $5,000 to buy a stock? I don't have $5,000 to start. What if we're just starting and we're just, you know, trying to show our kids what's realistic in starting just to, I just want to start.

Speaker 1
28:36 - 28:57
Absolutely. And I was asked that by college students at the local university, not too long ago, because they just wanted to know how to start as well, a hundred dollars or any sort of rounded off number that you like. You can start with $50. You can start with a thousand dollars, but if you go in there and one of the most common paths to take, you can always choose your own path.

Speaker 1
28:58 - 29:29
If you start an account at one of these discount brokerage firms, we talked about earlier. And you take 15 minutes to plug in your name and your date of birth and various other things, your social security number. And you start an account and you put $100 in, you can link your bank, or you can take a check into a physical office and say, here's $100. then you can buy what Warren Buffett, who is the number one investor in the whole world, suggests that you get.

Speaker 1
29:30 - 30:03
And in the US, that would be the S&P 500 Index Fund. That is investing in the 500 top public companies of the United States. And you'll have your own index fund like this in whatever country you may be in. But if you start there with what Warren Buffett suggests, boy, now you're investing in 500 top companies, and they're all doing their best to grind and with grit and earn as much as they can and reward their shareholders and innovate and keep being better and better and growing

Speaker 1
30:03 - 30:17
every year. That's a great place to start. And you can always, once again, since time is your biggest factor with growing money, you can always look back later and change it if you like, but you might really like what you see as time passes. That's a good starting point.

Speaker 1
30:18 - 30:31
Okay. And then And then, you know, we hear about something in Europe and all of a sudden the stocks take a dive and our kids are like, what the hell? I'm getting out of here. I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1
30:31 - 30:38
There's no way I can. Can you talk to that? Cause even I, I know nothing, but I know that one. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1
30:39 - 31:01
So some will say it's a roller coaster ride, not investing in the stock market because there's ups and downs, but ups and downs that continually go up over time. So it's kind of like taking five steps forward, one step back, five steps forward, one step back. Yeah, there's going to be the step back, but which direction are you going? You're going forward.

Speaker 1
31:01 - 31:21
And so some will say it's a bigger risk to just stuff your money under your mattress or leave it in your checking or savings account where it's growing very timidly. We used that word before. That's the bigger risk. Growing your money, no matter what the ups and downs, as long as it's headed in the right direction.

Speaker 1
31:22 - 31:46
is what is recommended by economists and financial advisors and those that want you to retire with dignity and look back and say, well, I did the right thing. I have financial peace about this. And so, yes, there's going to be the ups and downs, but there's more ups than there are downs. And once again, don't just think about it being an object, about this being an accumulation of money.

Speaker 1
31:47 - 32:00
Think about it being all those companies Are all those companies going to go out of business at the same time? Are they going to stop doing what they're doing? No, because we drive forward. Are you going to sit still?

Speaker 1
32:00 - 32:11
No, you're going to get up and you're going to go to work and you're going to make things happen because you care about your family. You care about your kids. You're going to provide. And these companies, they're going to do that as well.

Speaker 1
32:11 - 32:32
That's where we're putting our trust. And Warren Buffett says, if you bet against investing in this way, you're betting against your country. I mean, if you live there, you probably trust and believe in your country, and you want to contribute. That is such a good point.

Speaker 1
32:32 - 33:03
And that's one thing I learned in investing years ago, is that you don't invest with the bank. You invest in the bank. And when you look in like downtown Toronto in Canada, all our biggest, most extravagant buildings are CIBC, TD Bank, Scotiabank. So the money's going into that investment, great, as opposed to putting it in your, whatever we call it, GIC, less than 0.002% that our parents are still investing in.

Speaker 1
33:04 - 33:20
So I want to ask, you know, we, you touched on spending and giving, so we're not just investing. We're actually get, we get to spend some money. We get to give some money. If you want to break out of just the, uh, the money story, we could talk about some of the other ones.

Speaker 1
33:21 - 33:40
So starting out simply being a parent, uh, there are banks, physical banks that you could buy to place. dollar bills in to place actual money and coins in for your kids. So when my son was young, we bought him one of these banks and it's got three sections. It's got spend, save and give.

Speaker 1
33:41 - 34:03
And so any parent can early on decide, Oh, what are those percentages? Um, so one option is that give is 10% save is 20%. and the remaining 70% is spent. And a family can determine any sort of allocation that they want to teach their children.

Speaker 1
34:03 - 34:26
But that's, that's what we started with. And so the give can go to various things, nonprofits, church, things like that. The save can go into, typically it's going to be our son's bank account because once again, the investing money is coming from gift money, things like that. And then the spend, oh, That changes day to day.

Speaker 1
34:26 - 34:43
I mean, it started out with, back in the day, his first love was Thomas the Tank Engine, and then went into Disney's Cars, and then it went into Legos, and now what is it? Well, he has a girlfriend, so let me tell you. That's where the money's going. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1
34:44 - 34:57
So it's going to change over time. But if you are allocating money from the very beginning, then it's not so hard to create discipline later. Oh, I've been spending 100%. Oh, now you're just telling me I need to save and give.

Speaker 1
34:58 - 35:30
And really, the reason why I teach these three financial epiphanies, these three rules of thumb, is because, okay, If 60, 70, 80% of the country we live in is living paycheck to paycheck, if about the same amount is in debt, if there is a lower level of financial literacy, which is true, most of us won't be able to pass a basic financial literacy test. If this is the case, this is the state of the nation that we live in. All we need is a simple solution, right?

Speaker 1
35:30 - 35:37
That's all we need. We don't need anything complex. Start simple. You can always become savvy later.

Speaker 1
35:37 - 36:02
So that's all we're trying to do here is equip people where they're at to look at what's really happening. Let's just give them this simple, simple message, and we can always teach them later. So it's get people out of debt, empower them with the three financial epiphanies so that you can fund your purpose. That's where I want to get people to, is funding the purpose.

Speaker 1
36:02 - 36:25
Because there is nothing like having freedom and being able to invest in things of choice and of meaning and of purpose. So quick story here. So I went to Sierra Leone, West Africa years ago. And it was with an organization called the Bridge of Hope, and they build schools, churches, and clinics for people that won't be able to build that for themselves.

Speaker 1
36:26 - 36:54
Some of these kids would previously have to walk two hours on a dusty road alone to get to a school, and things would happen along the way. Think about strangers and cars and kidnappings and all sorts of things. So when you build a school in their village and they go to that school, they're going to grow up to be a contributor to their village and to their society. Well, I went there to film a video for the nonprofit so they could raise money for that cause.

Speaker 1
36:55 - 37:10
And I came back after a couple of weeks. and worked on this video. I went to the fundraising breakfast that this video was shown at, and I sat near the front of the room next to a tall guy named Ernie with a cane. And I wondered to myself, this is assigned seating.

Speaker 1
37:10 - 37:30
Who is this Ernie here over to my side? Well, I realized Ernie had paid for my way to go, and I didn't even know it. He had funded my trip, all my travels, all my costs and expenses, and the cost to create a 100-hour project, this video. Wow, that's generosity.

Speaker 1
37:31 - 37:41
Well, this video played. Yeah. And this was the first time he was seeing it. He leans over to me after the video plays and he says, Scott, That's the first time I've seen this video.

Speaker 1
37:41 - 37:55
My wife and I, when we were driving here this morning, we had decided how much we were going to give. He leans over and he says, don't tell my wife, but we just doubled it. So he doubled, he doubled his giving that morning. He had sent me to Sierra Leone.

Speaker 1
37:55 - 38:08
He paid for the entire video project. And I thought, Oh my goodness. I looked over and this was the most joy, the most elation I'd ever seen in a human, a human being ever. And I thought, Ernie's my new hero.

Speaker 1
38:09 - 38:29
I want to be a mini Ernie one day. And I haven't seen that ever in my life. And I want that for everybody, for everybody to have this financial freedom and to learn how to multiply their money and to learn how to teach their kids so they can have this long runway of doing the right thing so that they can live the purpose out too. It's an amazing thing to have witnessed an Ernie.

Speaker 1
38:29 - 38:48
I'm trying to work on that myself. I'm teaching my child and who doesn't vicariously live through their children? And you know, for those sitting there who grew up with the money stories or money is evil and if you get money, you're greedy. If you want more money, you're greedy.

Speaker 1
38:48 - 39:05
Listen, if you are a good person with money, you are a good person with money. And if you're a jerk, you're a jerk. It doesn't matter about the money. So you're, you know, the guy with the cane, like, yeah, look what he can do because he's got the money.

Speaker 1
39:06 - 39:24
He did all like, that's just, that's so incredible because you do hear sometimes, well, you know, they don't, you know. They don't need that, or what do you need to drive a Porsche for? You know what, those are the people. You don't know, man, they might be driving a Porsche, but they might be sending double what the Porsche costs to a charity.

Speaker 1
39:24 - 39:39
They could be good people with money, or still good people, period. That's right. I learned a lesson that I thought marriage would make me better. Well, marriage just multiplied who I already was, including my flaws, because now it was shared with another person.

Speaker 1
39:40 - 40:04
The same thing with money is that money actually just multiplies who you already are. So the question is, what are your values and who are you before the money comes in? And it's good to get that figured out first, because if you follow these principles and you do double your money again and again and again over time, Suddenly, you're going to have it. And you don't want to be looking around wondering who you are at that point.

Speaker 1
40:04 - 40:28
You want to already have that figured out. But once again, with Ernie as our example, he landed in a sort of place that I hope for myself and many, many of you, maybe many of you are interested in that as well, to have this sort of joy and gratification that just can't be found anywhere else. That's incredible. That is so incredible.

Speaker 1
40:28 - 40:48
I love it. Scott, this has been, I mean, interviews are great, but honestly, I've got more notes with you than I've ever taken in my life doing a podcast because this totally applies to me. I had a story and it's never too late and I got shit to do now. This is great.

Speaker 1
40:48 - 41:05
But Scott, tell us where to find you, how to work with you, your book, all the good things, Scott. Oh, absolutely. Financialepiphany.com is the place to go for anything to be able to see what the book is about. And I spill all the beans there as well.

Speaker 1
41:05 - 41:17
This podcast will be linked there as well. So all my talks are available from there. There's a free download for the Money Basics. So we talked about something a little bit more advanced, hopefully in a simple way, investing.

Speaker 1
41:17 - 41:36
but there's a free download for learning how to get out of debt and learning how to meet with a financial advisor and to start your first investment account. That's a really nice basic. And even how much total should I save for retirement? There's a free download there.

Speaker 1
41:36 - 41:45
You can email me from there as well. I'll answer and look at every email. So great way to connect is financialepiphany.com. Fantastic.

Speaker 1
41:45 - 41:53
I'm going to put everything in the show notes. We're not sitting here trying to memorize Scott. This has been phenomenal. I am so grateful for you.

Speaker 1
41:53 - 42:09
And this conversation, I know there's a lot of people listening going, Oh my God, there's an answer. I can stop freaking out and putting my head in the sand. You, you've really made it clear and manageable. And I'm actually for the first time excited to get started on something.

Speaker 1
42:09 - 42:17
Like I think I'm going to just put my first hundred bucks in something. I'm so excited. So thank you, thank you, thank you. This has been amazing.

Speaker 1
42:18 - 42:28
I love it Cheryl. This is the idea and thanks for spreading the word and helping other parents and teens out there. Really appreciate what you're doing. Thank you and thank you for listening and taking the time.

Speaker 1
42:29 - 42:45
Parenting Teens Advice Redefined. I'm your host Cheryl Pankhurst and I'm so grateful you're here and we will see you next time. Thank you for listening to another episode. I hope you loved this one as much as I did.

Speaker 1
42:45 - 43:20
And I just wanted to share something with you because, you know, parenting teens is not just about managing these challenges that we talk about on all the episodes. It's also about evolving alongside them. And I'm Cheryl, and not only the host of this podcast, but I'm also the creator of Insight to Impact, coaching and consulting. And I help you moms of teens reconnect with your true selves so you can lead with purpose, you can parent with clarity, you can create stronger, more meaningful relationships with your kids.

Speaker 1
43:21 - 43:30
Because here's the truth. The transformation starts with you. Together, we will break free from the stress and overwhelm. We will rediscover your power.

Speaker 1
43:30 - 43:45
We will create the life and the family dynamic you always dreamed of. If you're ready to start this journey, let's do it. You might just not recognize your life in the next 90 days. It all starts with a call.

Speaker 1
43:45 - 43:51
There's no pitch. There's no pressure. Just a call to see if I can help. We'll talk about your goals.

Speaker 1
43:51 - 44:11
We'll talk about what's making you feel stuck and what might be getting in your way. everything you need to connect with me is in the show notes. Again, I'm Cheryl. Thank you so much for joining me here on Parenting Teens Advice Redefined for Today's Complex World and the creator of Insight to Impact Coaching and Consulting.

Speaker 1
44:11 - 44:12
Have a great day.