As a sequel to our last episode, Part 2 focuses on a conversation between Jennifer Edwards & Nikki Wolff. They discuss how she addressed these subjects in her own home, when she introduced certain concepts, and what she learned along the way.
As a sequel to our last episode, Part 2 focuses on a conversation between Jennifer Edwards & Nikki Wolff. They discuss how she addressed these subjects in her own home, when she introduced certain concepts, and what she learned along the way.
Welcome to the 3rd Decade podcast. This episode is part two of two piggybacking off of our last episode. Today, we are speaking directly with Jen to gain some insight behind her strategies as a parent seeking to financially educate her children. You'll hear in this episode when it's the right time to start teaching it, how to go about it and think she's learned along the way. Here's my conversation with Jen. So as a follow up to our last episode, I thought that it would be interesting to get a little bit more insight into your own thinking as a parent raising three children. So I'm just gonna jump right in with our first question. What age do you believe it's appropriate to start introducing these topics?
Jennifer Edwards:Well, I really feel like the first time that they're kind of, they have their own will and assertion of what wants, and they start to say, you know,"can I have this,""I want this thing" and then they can start to connect. How do people obtain things? Where does that come from? I want this candy bar here, you know, I hand it to somebody and there's, you know, some kind of an exchange of some kind. And so at, at four or five, certainly by six they're, they're ready to start handling financial topics and start connecting, um, you know, how you get things and what, what do you do to, to obtain those and start to understand how money plays into that?
Nikita Wolff:How do you go about that? Initially?
Jennifer Edwards:I think that it, it's one of those topics that most parents and people money. Isn't fun to talk about. You know, we kind of wanna go through life, not having to deal with it. If we can. I think all of us think of in a utopia, there is such thing as money. We just, you know, we all work together to get the things that we need and, you know, there doesn't have to be this monetization of everything. Um, so embracing the fact that that's about to happen. When you have a baby, you don't have to think about it, but when they start growing up, just know, Hey, at some point money's gonna start to be important and I'm gonna need to be ready for, with some answers and, um, kind of be ready to deal with that subject. I think that's the case with a lot of subjects. You can, you kind of know it's coming and so get some, get some, you know, be prepared with some responses.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. Start thinking about your answers to them.
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah. So when your child is like,"can I have this?" You're for the first time going, what do I say? Like, no, and then they're gonna have a tantrum and you know, they're too young for me to explain why, u m, you know, get getting ready for that. I think that when your kids start having w ants, you can say right there in the grocery store o r right there in the store. And they're like, can I have this? And it's something that you're not ready to buy for them, or t here, there's no reason to buy that for them. You know, even the automatic response of, you know, it's not your birthday. Maybe that's something that Santa could bring you or, you know, those kinds of things to give them that idea of, we don't just get stuff, you know, there's gotta be some reason or, and then, and then when you get home, u m, you've, you've got this, o h, r ight. They wanted this item and you could start to give them responsibilities and ways to earn those items. And you know, of course, if they're pointing to a bike and, you know, a tricycle or something that costs 40 bucks and you've got a four year old, how are they ever gonna learn to, how are they gonna earn that much? They don't have to earn every single penny. But I do find that giving, this is one of the ways that I brought up my children and not everybody thinks this way. I, but I feel like connecting responsibility with the outcome and the, you know, the things that you have in your life that can be done very, very early. And so you can sit down with the child at four or five and say, you know, I saw that you had this, you wanted this toy or this thing that you saw in this store. And I'd like for you to have a way to earn that. So if you're ready to help me fold wash cloths, or if you are ready to, um, you know, learn how to dust the furniture or whatever responsibility they can handle, I will provide some opportunities for you to earn that, that item, if you, if you want it, that's how I did it.
Nikita Wolff:That's a really interesting approach to implementing these concepts with them at such a young age.
Jennifer Edwards:And you're not paying them. You're not paying them with their worth. You know, they're helping you. No, they're helping you fold wash clothd or match socks. And, and you're saying you've been a really good helper. And, you know, so I think that after this much effort that you've put in, I'm willing to help you obtain this bike or toy or whatever, whatever it is. And then around eight or nine, then they can start to really the numbers. Right. Mm-hmm
Nikita Wolff:<affirmative> okay. Did you choose to do chore pay for your kids?
Jennifer Edwards:Absolutely. Yeah. So there, there were no freebies in my house. Um, I mean, everybody got food and clothing and shelter. Right. But, you know, as far as, um, you know, extras there, you know, if you wanted... I shouldn't say there are no freebies, but everything was basically tied to you gotta, show some responsibility. I mean, I never had children that were real big rule breakers, but that certainly would have correlated to a loss of privileges. Um, so, you know, if they were not keeping up their grades or obviously breaking the law in certain ways, then you know, their, their privileges would've been curtailed.
Nikita Wolff:At what, at what age do you kind of make that switch from, um, like to that actual dollars, like giving them money, real money for chores?
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah. I did that right at around eight or 9, 8. About eight years old. Um, when they, they could understand math concepts mm-hmm<affirmative> so they could, they could get, I want something that costs$10. I get paid$2 for this chore. I'm going to have to do this chore for, you know, five different times to be able to have this thing. So they have to understand the math concepts. If you've got somebody that's, um, you know, maybe delayed developmentally with math, then you might wanna continue to use more liberal, you know, just general concepts of responsibility to translates to things that you want. That's not quite as monetized until they can handle those, those math concepts.
Nikita Wolff:Keeping that, but keeping that message the same, that you, you work for what you get. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I think it's really valuable skill to just develop throughout your life, because then you don't become an adult and feel blindsided by that concept being true a hundred percent of the time.
Jennifer Edwards:And that was one of the things I wanted to make sure that we discussed today was to keep the end in mind as your, as your parenting children in all aspects, but, you know, as especially applicable to money, because it kind of can to like a Mac truck, right. When you graduate, if you haven't been prepared for it. So, so parenting with the end in mind, what decisions and dilemmas are my children going to encounter as adults and how can I prepare them, um, to make those decisions. And so, you know, as soon as they can handle a concept, you, you give'em whatever little piece they can, they can handle.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. What, what ages do you think are in general, good benchmarks for introducing some of the more complex topics like credit card debt and, um, compound interest or education, that sort of thing,
Jennifer Edwards:Pretty much, as soon as it becomes relevant, you, you heard in the previous podcast, when my daughter was saying, you know, she didn't, wasn't listening to some of the stuff about maybe housing decisions, and I can promise you that I tried to sit down and teach compound interest at different stages, but if people aren't ready for it, if it's not really relevant. And that's one of the things that we found with the 3rd Decade was that if we can catch people, you know, we'd love to teach these investment concepts in high school or junior high, and you can kind of get excited about, you know, money doubling and, and that's, that's really cool. And at least to know that that's possible, but if you're not in a position to save and, and have some discretionary income left over at the end of your month, and if you're, if you're still living at home and your parents are covering all of those expenses, I mean, they learned about compound interest through our discussions about what we were doing with our retirement savings, but not their money. Wasn't, you know, they needed it for more immediate things. So they weren't saving their own money for like a house down payment when you're 14. I wasn't making think about that, but basically as soon as a subject becomes relevant, I'm definitely, and, and before they become relevant with regards to s omebody a s adult choices. So I'd sat down with my kids when we would get those credit card offers in the mail or those checks that come, that are associated with a credit card, or here's an installment loan have$10,000 today a nd make this small monthly payment, you know, with all the advertising, sat down with them i n as teenagers with those kinds of a nd said, let's just look real quick at if we took out this loan and we paid it back by the schedule that they're talking about, how much would we pay in total for that$10,000 that they're offering us today? Oh, that's a really good idea for an exercise. And then I would sit them down with those checks and, a nd I would say, so what's the first thing you see when you're looking at this promotional offer, whatever it was. And they say, you know, 0% for six months or d a, d a, d a, d a, d a, right. And, you know, no fees or something like that for period of time. And I s aid, okay, so that's the main message they want you to get. And then I would say, let's look at these t wo tiny little words here at the end that they're hoping that you skip over and you just sign and start using these checks. And we would read through t hat, all that fine print of the promotion is going to end. And if you still have a balance, then you're gonna have to pay the, the back interest for all of that balance that the, u h, a cash o ut your credit card c osts a lot more i n interest than actually swiping it for a purchase. So, you know,
Nikita Wolff:These are so predatory?
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah. And so, you know, sitting down with them, that would definitely be in, you know, in the teenage years, getting them ready for when they start getting those credit card offers themselves. So, you know, teaching about money is like teaching about most concepts. There's just there's layers to it, right? I mean, a four year old can understand that people have to work to get money so they can buy things. They, they can start to get that a typical four year old, an older child can start to understand concepts like compound interest. You can, you can show them how something doubles if I take this dollar today and I double it in a month and then I double it another month, and then I double it in another month, you know, just for being patient, what have I turned that dollar into? And then later on, you know, and that's, that's, that was kind of, I introduced that concept when they started learning about exponent in math, because that's what compound interest is, is an exponential equation. So that's how I made it real, was like, well, it's not just this thing to the something power. There's an actual, there's an actual application for it. And comp found interest is one of them. And then of course, teenagers, um, you're getting them ready for adulthood. I find that the teachable moments they happen pretty naturally. And, and I don't want anybody on this podcast to think that I didn't have my own money anxiety. I just knew that if I didn't prepare my kids, then, then it was, they were gonna make mistakes that I was gonna regret that they would have made. So I had to overcome that hurdle of, I don't like telling my kids everything about my decisions about money and having their judgments on'em they're they have lack of maturity and it's kind of, sometimes it feels like a none of their business, but if I don't, where are they gonna learn it?
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. Yes, exactly. And I think that's, that's the piece that I think a lot of parents miss is, is that they don't learn it elsewhere, as we've all learned. If you don't learn it at home and have those uncomfortable family talks and open conversations, you also don't learn in high school and then you become an adult who's completely financially clueless. And it's, it's like definitely a sacrifice up front, but one well worth making.
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah. And I, I think that, that was one of the things that was hopefully helpful from the last podcast is if you are at that stage where you're either thinking about having children or they're kind growing up, or you're kind of envisioning what are you gonna do? And, and when it comes to money, teaching is to say, okay, it could be worth the uncomfortable conversations if they come out informed. And I just, I just wanna make sure everybody knows<laugh>, it's not fun. It's, it's like having the sex talk. You just, you have to have it, right. You can't, you don't want your kids to learn from just any other source that kind of comes along and you don't know for sure if they're gonna be, um, if that's gonna be good information. And so another concept I wanted to address here too, was a lot of parents. And hopefully our 3rd Decade are feeling more empowered. But if there are listeners who haven't been through 3rd Decade, or don't financially literate themselves, or have, you know, habits that they wish that they didn't, and they're carry some regret from some of those habits is to, um, for one to give yourself a lot of grace and just say, Hey, one of the things that kids love is when adults admit they're wrong and they, if you have messed up with money. And, and so this was, this is kind of an interesting thing is that my parents were really poor stewards of money. And they were very open about that. And they said, you know, we know that we're not doing it right. And we really don't know how to tell you how to do it better. Um, there was a time when they invited a family friend to come and teach me some concepts about budgeting.
Nikita Wolff:That was thoughtful.
Jennifer Edwards:Right, right. Before I went off to college, um, somebody from our church came and said, parents don't really know how to do this well, but, uh, they think that, um, you could probably learn this lesson and it might help you. So if you're willing to sit down with me...
Nikita Wolff:And look at how much it did,
Jennifer Edwards:It was enormous. It was enormously impactful. Um, so it's okay to reach out for other resources. I think kids love it when, uh, you know, teenagers are making all kinds of mistakes and they just, there's a lot of, there's a lot of connection that would come. If you say, Hey, I don't really feel very, um, like I'm in a very good position to teach you this. So let's work on securing some resources together so that we can learn in them. Um, cuz I really feel like you need to enter the world of adulthood with some, you know, armed with some better knowledge than what I had. There's nothing wrong about doing that. And that's okay. It's okay if you, if you don't know it yourself, there are resources out there and to explore those with your teenager.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah cuz it's so much better to, to reach out out and have somebody else do it then to not
Jennifer Edwards:Do it at all, not do it at all. And you know that and, and one of the things that will help you maybe is to envision your grandchildren. Okay. Cause you're teenagers. You don't like them very much. Most of the time, I'm just telling<laugh>, you're kind kind of done. But if you think about how will this impact my grandchildren, if I can get over the hump and teach my children, some of these concepts, then you're like, oh, I have a lot of love for that imaginary grandchild. So maybe I can get into the subject matter that's difficult.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. Whatever, whatever gets you to, to do that. So did you have any big AHA moments as a parent while you were navigating this?
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah, sure. Several, um, myself, when I was growing up and my kids and my husband, while he was growing up, we all made money, mistakes. Every one of us that we regretted, um, spending money on things that weren't really important to us all lost money, um, lending money that was never repaid. Um, and I'm really grateful that we had the opportunity to learn those lessons with small amounts, um, when our basic needs were being taken care of by our parents. Right. So I was taking care of my kids and my kids were making mistakes, but it wasn't gonna land them in the streets or, you know right. You know, keep them from being able to survive. Okay. Um, you know, so I, I think that one of the big aha moments for me that, that I had was when one of my children lost a wallet with$200 in cash in it. And for a teenager, that's a big amount of money.
Nikita Wolff:That's a lot of money for a teenager
Jennifer Edwards:Mm-hmm<affirmative>. Yeah. Um, and when they lost that, it took a lot of self control not to save them from it.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. Especially if you knew you could but like the lesson behind that would've been a really hard judgment call to make as a p arent.
Jennifer Edwards:It was tough because as they, they were in distress, they had goals for that money. Um, you know, nothing that was gonna keep them from Sur. I mean, they're not paying their expenses, so they were gonna be okay, but there was a lot of pain and, and I made the decision. I remember very vividly, like talking with my husband about, you know, should we maybe replace part of it or some of it, or provide an opportunity to earn that in kind of an accelerated rate or maybe, you know, pay them$200 to do some chore around the house that really isn't worth$200, but you know, to help give them that back. And my husband and I threw a lot of discussion and thinking about it, decided not to save them from that and not to, just, we just empathized and we're like, oh man, that just is so painful to have lost something like that, that represents so much effort on your part. And you know, I'm really sorry you're going through this. And there was a lot of empathy in that feeling, cuz we have also been through that where we've made poor decisions or we've done something that wasn't smart with money.
Nikita Wolff:But you kind of have to feel that pain sometimes to actually learn the lesson.
Jennifer Edwards:And, and I think so that child and the other children watching that child go through that, there, there was a lot, people were a lot more careful and I think people are still a lot more careful about their money and it, I think it solidified to that person, how valuable money is it represented? You know, what would it take for me to get back this$200? Well, it's several hours at the burger joint of work, you know, to do something like that. Um, and so, you know, not to be careless also not to be, you know, take, be frivolous with your expenditures too, cuz that kind of honed in how valuable that money was. So that was kind of one of the things that was like, oh, okay. You know, that's really tough, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna let them learn that experience from that experience was yeah, it was hard. So, you know, aha moments come along mostly and the, those unexpected ones and you just gotta kind of navigate it as best you can.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah.,How, how did you improve your process with each successive child?
Jennifer Edwards:There are some things that are just kind of universal all of my children, you know, if they, if they had learning disabilities or something like that, I would've definitely slowed. So some concepts down or, uh, adapted, um, but taking into account each child's unique personality, their characteristics, their learning capacity. Um, and then, you know, what their natural tendencies are. So just a, a funny story for my growing up years. Um, I I'm one of those people that's neat and tidy. I like to have things in order. That's not actually unusual for people who are good with finance, um, you know, to kind of like to create control in order in their lives. So this was just something I was bornwith. And so my room was pretty much always clean all the time. And if I made a mess with my toys, with my friends, it was cleaned up just automatically before my parents would even need to tell me to clean it up.
Nikita Wolff:Every parent's dream come true.
Jennifer Edwards:You know, maybe I didn't get any kids like that.<laugh> I thought it would be nice. But one of the things that happened was in, in my growing up years, because I naturally picked up my room, we had financially strained household. I never got paid for my chores when we had, we had allowance, but a very, very minimal allowance. And then I remember that diminishing like by, it was only around for a couple of years and then I had to start babysitting and making my own money. Um, and so I would clean up my room without any, without any proding and then chores around the house those were just because you live there. So, um, I would just clean up my room because I wanted it clean. And um, I came home from college one day and I opened up the cupboard to the, to the glass cupboard and I saw this chore pay list and it had, so cuz I'm the oldest. And so all of my younger brothers were still at home and it had this chore pay list and it said like clean room,$10, clean the bathroom,$15, you know, Mow the lawn$20. And you know, these were things that I had done for free my whole life.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. Like you guys owe me.
Jennifer Edwards:Right. I pulled my mom aside and I said, what is this<laugh> I never got. And you know, she said, she said, Jen, they still don't do it. Even with all of that incentive, they're still not quite. And it's, you know, it's such a pain to get them to do any chores. They're not getting paid either. They're just not doing the work. So anyway, just unique C hi children and their own personality and characteristics, what they can handle. U m, but it's i t, you know, there are just some universal things that everybody needs to know and y ou wanna make sure that everybody knows those at the appropriate t ime.< affirmative>
Nikita Wolff:Can you speak to how you feel about money, shame within family conversations and whether or not you deliberately worked to overcome that?
Jennifer Edwards:Um, I just know that I came from a family that didn't have enough and my parents admitted that, that they were, they had made mistakes with money. They said things like just don't do it the way that we did. We're not really sure how to do it better. This I was actually raised before Google. So we couldn't just Google"How do you succeed in finance?" If you didn't have a book on it or your parents didn't know you kind of, or a friend. Yeah. How interesting out of outta luck. Um, so they were open with me about that and they made it very clear that I was gonna be navigating that space on my own, but they weren't saying, um, they weren't hiding it. And so I came with that then I just feel like when it comes to money to, to recognize how much of yourself is wrapped up in your money decisions, because it really is a manifestation of the things that are important to you. So how you spend your money and how you spend your time. You know? So when my, when my child has a different value from me to recognize that they that's just something I should be learning, not judging. Right. So when my, my child is like, I wanna buy this and it's like, what, why do you wanna buy that? You know not thinking of it that way, but saying I, oh, this is, this is a great opportunity to learn about. What's important to my kid. And, and who, and who they are and who they wanna be. Um, and maybe they're gonna learn that that's not as important to them down the road. And I don't wanna be the person that, you know, pointed a finger of shame and then made them feel like, like they couldn't express that to me or share that part of who they were with me. So I hope that I did that or it
Nikita Wolff:Took away a good safe space for them to like have a trustworthy adult mm-hmm<affirmative> and like a financially knowledgeable adult that they could rely on. If you shut down that conversation by shaming in any sort of way, it kind of kills the pathic communication.
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah. And that's gonna be the case with all subjects, not just, not just money, but I love how money is such a window into a person's what's important to them, to their values. So if my son buys this thing, then I go, okay, now I know something about you that had you, you know, have I, not in the, that you bought that, I wouldn't know that you were, um, that that was important to you and to just be able to also admit your own wrongs on any subject matter, including money, if it's like, boy, I kind of blew it on helping you prepare for that when I should have, I should have been more communicative or I should have helped you with this. Or, you know, I'm, I'm just, I'm sorry. Those kinds of things. Those are really, so, yeah. I mean, obviously we, we don't wanna, we don't wanna create that. That's it's, I mean, it's damaging. And then I don't know. I, hopefully my kids would say that they don't have any shame around money choices. I've tried to tell them that the, the main thing is to spend within your means. And certainly if my children were to get into credit card debt, they would feel, they would feel ashamed of doing that because they have been taught that that's, you know, not a prudent way to live, but I don't think that they would feel like I was saying that that was a poor reflection on like, I didn't love them. Right. I, I hope that that, that they would be able to say, I know better than this. And my parents are always gonna love me no matter what I do with my money, even if it's make mistakes with it, I hope that they have that message.
Nikita Wolff:I'm sure they do, knowing you I'm, I'm sure that they have that message. So would you say that it's appropriate for children to know the details of their parents' finances or is it appropriate for them to know about financial struggles that their parents might be facing
Jennifer Edwards:Sometimes? Sure. Yeah. Especially if it comes down to, you know, older children, you definitely wanna take the maturity level of the child into account here. We're not talking about young children, young little kids need to trust that their adult caregivers are gonna take care of them. They need to feel that space, their or else they can't up as well. They have to have, you know, several years into young, uh, you know, older adulthood, young teenage years where they just feel safe and then they can handle things like, you know, mom and dad aren't paying the bills. Well, we might have to turn off the, the heat for a while or you know, whatever it is that, that they can't, they have to think that you're in charge and that you've got everything together before that. But you know, in the maturity, in the teenage years, I would say, especially if you're having to say things to them, like you're all your friends are having these kinds of experiences and we're not able to provide them then yeah. You should be talking about it. And um, if you're are open about your mistakes, that is really empowering to help them do something better in the future. You're I feel like it's almost selfish not to. Because then because then they're gonna grow up thinking that there's a fiction. Like you can spend the edge of your income and there's no consequences to it and then you're not arming them with the truth, t hen that doesn't help anybody. I t doesn't help them. Yeah.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. That's really
Jennifer Edwards:True. It's gonna be uncomfortable one way or the, the other you don't get to choose to, if you're, if you're facing some struggles, you're either gonna have the uncomfortableness of saying no or having the uncomfortableness of going into debt for things or having, you know, there's, you can't, you can't avoid it. It's gonna be uncomfortable one way or another. So you might as well be open with your kids about it and at least not have their y our problems multiplied through the generations with them.
Nikita Wolff:So is there anything else that you think our listeners would benefit from hearing from you?
Jennifer Edwards:I'm very flattered, Nikki that you think I have anything to offer our listeners, but I will<laugh> um, I will just one more thing. A couple, maybe wrap up points here is I would suggest that our listeners get information from lots of different sources. So I did one thing. I have a certain perspective and experience that I came to my parenting experience with. Um, and my husband came with his and we integrated all of those, but I would really suggest that you look around for different approaches and pick and choose from what you think will work in your family. I read lot of books and listen to, I asked lots of other adults how they were handling certain subjects and sometimes I would implement their ideas. And sometimes I would say, okay, that's one that I don't think I'm gonna implement, but I'm glad to have been exposed to the idea. Um, and it's probably for most people just because of what we know of about debt and just how people don't feel financially literate in general, which is one of the things that 3rd Decade is trying to tackle. This is one area where you probably don't just wanna go with your gut o n, o n. You probably wanna find out what different approaches are and be thoughtful and deliberate about it. There are lots of things where we can say, just go on our intuition, but when it comes to money, there's a certain formula that works. There are certain financial literacy, you know, concepts that actually lead to success. So it's not just all abstract. Um, so find out what those are, think about ways to implement them, be deliberate about it. Um, you know, get a big basket ideas, pick the ones that you think will work. You might do it wrong. You might pick the wrong thing and it might end up bad. That's okay. Um, you know, keep trying, give yourself a lot of grace, understand that we're all gonna make mistakes when it comes to parenting and you don't, you shouldn't blame yourself for everything that that happens. Um, there's a lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error. Uh, yeah, but you can, you can kind of tell if your kid is coming out well because they're appreciative. Okay. If there's a sense of gratitude for the things that they have, then you kind of know they've got a little bit of that connection, like money doesn't just grow on trees. This represents some work or effort that my parents have done or that I've had to do. Um, so you can kind of see if you're working. And I just did wanna give a little bit of a background into actual policies that we have in our family so that, you know, cuz my kids kind of commented on some of those. So in our family, um, when it came to necessities up until, you know, you could start to earn money around 12, 13, we had a little bread sale business. We made homemade bread and sold it so that as soon as they had the opportunity to make their own money, they were responsible for all, all the extras outside of the things that we really valued or felt like were too expensive for them to have to earn. Um, so clothing was in that category, but sometimes I would, you know, like if I was on a shopping trip with my, with my daughter, who's more clothing oriented than boys typically, if she was like, man, I just really love this thing. And I could just tell she wanted it. I might buy it and then bring it out later when I saw maybe she did really well on a test or something like that. So, you know, to try to provide some, you know, make up the, a difference sometimes when there were needs or, or wants that they couldn't necessarily fulfill themselves. Um, our policy for college was that we would help them with their undergrad and what we were paying for was the, t he tuition and the books and the housing and the food a nd that they, if they wanted other things outside of that, they needed to have either a, a part-time job during school. And you can find a lot of campus jobs that are maybe 10 hours, you know, not really impairing your ability to continue to study and have social opportunities or they could work during the summer, save up that money and then not have to work during the school year. And they would have to handle the things outside of those four necessities. So if they wanna, you know, and then when it comes to cars in our family, um, we provided the teenage car at home and we paid for the insurance as long as they kept up their grades. U m, so they didn't have that expense. But then when they w ere to buy their own car, the idea was what we said was, you know, your freshman year, pretty much expecting not to have a car. You're kind of learning how to be on your own. And that's kind of an extra expense. And t hen campus is a small enough place. You can ride a bike o r walk. U m, but then the summer afterward is when we expected our kids to really be gung h o about saving up for their car, if they wanted one in college. And we haven't to this point, had to help the child earn that or, o r supplement that. But if, if we saw them working really hard and they couldn't quite earn e nough to buy the whole car, I think we would pitch in and help.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. So the car that you use for them when they're teenagers, is it just like a family car that's being recycled for each of them?
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah, exactly. U m, when they were, when they were growing up, it was just one k ind of older car that was, u m, gonna get good gas mileage. We had a, i t had several m ile, it wasn't anything new, y ou k now, it went through all the children, they all rode in tis. It actually gave out before Preston. So he rode in it with the other kids, but he, and he learned on it, but then it died. Um, s o now he drives something else, but, u m, t hey didn't, they didn't get a new car that was just theirs or anything like that. Right. It was just the family ca r t hat was designated as the teenager vehicle. Um, s o I just wanted to make sure that people understood like, kind of, that was, that was sort of our policy. And I felt like it was, you know, I want the children to my, my idea was okay, when you have wants. And you know, we would provide things like music lessons and musical instruments and, you know, things like that. But sometimes we did make them earn some of their lessons if they, you know, if it was like, this is important to you, you need to find out we would pay for the sports fees. And, you know, things like that, that we felt like were important to them. They might not do them if they had to pay for it themselves. And when it comes to cell phones, that was an interesting thing. When, when Samantha bought her first cell phone and nobody was able to have a phone until 16 that's when they got their smartphone before then they, we had a family cell phone that they could take with them for like, if they were going on a trip or something. And then they could just take that with them, for emergencies, but they didn't have their own cell phone until they could buy it themselves. And so they would buy their own cell phone. So it was usually not the top of the line type thing. And then there were, um, different kinds of cell phone plans that were just like pays you use type of a thing. And so they did have to kind of cover that expense themselves.
Nikita Wolff:I had to do the same thing when I was a kid and it kind of, uh, I think it was one of the first little foundational pieces of me knowing how the world of finances works. Mm-hmm<affirmative> so,
Jennifer Edwards:But I can see how, you know, some parents would choose to do that differently.
Nikita Wolff:You have to find what works for you?
Jennifer Edwards:Yeah, you just gotta find kind of what works for you. I looked at the, what my children were earning and I wanted them to, that was one of those bills. It was like the only bill and I kind of wanted them to see how, if you don't pay your bill, then you don't get that service and you have to plan ahead for bills. So if you know, you're gonna have a 25 or$35 monthly payment, you gotta earn at least enough to make that payment. So that's how I kind of cuz they don't have any other bills.
Nikita Wolff:Yeah. I think it's a, it's a nice bite sized version of bills and adulthood that, you know, it's achievable for a kid, a take on. Thank you again for, for sharing your perspective. I like that we were able to kind of follow up hearing your kids' version of, uh, their upbringing and then hearing kind of the brain that went behind it. So I really appreciate you sharing your ideas and your thoughts. Hopefully for the benefit of other potential parents or future parents, to be able to apply to their own families someday,
Jennifer Edwards:Hopefully there's a little something in there that somebody might need. And even if they say, oh, that's not what I wanna do. At least you made a decision.
Nikita Wolff:Thank you for listening to today's episode. We hope these two episodes provided value to you. And if you have any friends raising children who you think could benefit from this, please share our episode. If you've been enjoying our podcast, consider leaving us a rating on whichever service you use to listen to it. That's all for today. We hope you have a great rest of your week. We'll talk
Speaker 3:Soon.