#029 Although Silicon Valley in California has a lot of tech companies, a study by Chamberlain University ranks California an "F" in teaching kids about financial literacy. Luke encourages his children to read books about financial literacy and also applies his business knowledge at home.
He also created a company, "Conteneo" that helped enterprises manage their investment portfolios which ultimately helped in participatory budgeting to create better budgeting decisions. This was used in schools involving a process where kids were given money on the condition that they had to manage it themselves. They were guided through a 5-step process including a "theme"; how to spend the money, "ideation"; creation of rough proposals for how to spend the money, "refinement"; creation of details behind the proposals, "Voting"; an opportunity to ensure most students are involved, and lastly "implementation" of the ideas from students. This process gives the opportunity to teach important concepts in financial literacy. The app is free for families.
For complete show notes please go to Raising Financial Freedom
In This Episode:
· [03:05] Introduce today's guest, "Luke Hohmann".
· [03:21] How would you say financial Literacy is in Sunnydale California?
· [05:16] With you being so close to financial literacy, how do you involve your children?
· [011:37] Which age group is adopting financial literacy at a better rate?
· [14:22] What do your kids gravitate to, when it comes to financial literacy?
· [17:50] When did you realize that you had a passion for financial literacy?
· [19:43] How did FirstRoot get started?
· [21:05] What is the biggest challenge you've had to overcome after starting FirstRoot?
· [23:10] At its core, what does FirstRoot do?
· [28:01] What states are you now in as FirstRoot?
· [28:20] The best thing that has happened since doing the pilots.
· [29:30] How can parents get their kids involved in this FirstRoot program?
· [31:46] If you had to give parents good advice, what would it be?
· [33:00] What does FirstRoot have for the future?
· [36:03] How to contact Luke. Website, LinkedIn, Twitter
Links Mentioned:
#029 Although Silicon Valley in California has a lot of tech companies, a study by Chamberlain University ranks California an "F" in teaching kids about financial literacy. Luke encourages his children to read books about financial literacy and also applies his business knowledge at home.
He also created a company, "Conteneo" that helped enterprises manage their investment portfolios which ultimately helped in participatory budgeting to create better budgeting decisions. This was used in schools involving a process where kids were given money on the condition that they had to manage it themselves. They were guided through a 5-step process including a "theme"; how to spend the money, "ideation"; creation of rough proposals for how to spend the money, "refinement"; creation of details behind the proposals, "Voting"; an opportunity to ensure most students are involved, and lastly "implementation" of the ideas from students. This process gives the opportunity to teach important concepts in financial literacy. The app is free for families.
For complete show notes please go to Raising Financial Freedom
In This Episode:
· [03:05] Introduce today's guest, "Luke Hohmann".
· [03:21] How would you say financial Literacy is in Sunnydale California?
· [05:16] With you being so close to financial literacy, how do you involve your children?
· [011:37] Which age group is adopting financial literacy at a better rate?
· [14:22] What do your kids gravitate to, when it comes to financial literacy?
· [17:50] When did you realize that you had a passion for financial literacy?
· [19:43] How did FirstRoot get started?
· [21:05] What is the biggest challenge you've had to overcome after starting FirstRoot?
· [23:10] At its core, what does FirstRoot do?
· [28:01] What states are you now in as FirstRoot?
· [28:20] The best thing that has happened since doing the pilots.
· [29:30] How can parents get their kids involved in this FirstRoot program?
· [31:46] If you had to give parents good advice, what would it be?
· [33:00] What does FirstRoot have for the future?
· [36:03] How to contact Luke. Website, LinkedIn, Twitter
Links Mentioned:
[00:00:00] Eric: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone. Today is a good day to talk about your child and money today. On episode 29 of raising financial freedom, we will be talking about a little bit of money news. And my guest today is a Luke Hohmann of first route. We are going to learn with Luke how first route is helping the kids out there learn and use money.
[00:00:23] So let's get started in,
[00:00:27] Host daughter: [00:00:27] come on, dad, stop playing around and play the music. Sheesh, tough
[00:00:31] Eric: [00:00:31] crowd.
[00:00:38] Introducer: [00:00:38] Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have it all financially? Do well-off parents simply hand their children money or is there more to this welfare? Welcome to raising financial freedom. The podcast, we are here to talk about everything you never knew to teach your children when it comes to starting their financial future, the principles behind wealth and methods that are out there to teach your child.
[00:01:00] [00:00:59] Personal financial freedom. There was no real tricks to earning other than money. We are here to discuss, teach and grow with you. Raising financial freedom, the podcast with your host and concern parents, Eric yard. Let us get right into today's show.
[00:01:18] Eric: [00:01:18] All right. All right. Now let's talk a little bit of money news. It seems like Rhode Island has taken a big step when it comes to financial literacy. And the headline that I'm talking about is that governor McKee signs law requiring financial literacy. Education in high schools. Now that is a big step for Rhode Island.
[00:01:39] And I salute that state for what they are doing now, because as you know, this education is a must and Rhode Island has now woken up and said, enough is enough. Now these are statewide standards. That's going to be. Implemented in Rhode Island public schools. These standards need to be developed and approved no later by [00:02:00] December 31st, 2021.
[00:02:01] So parents enroll on and look out for this to be implemented coming up for next year. Now, me personally, I wouldn't depend on that, but it will definitely help get that message across to your child. That money is important to learn about. Once again, we want to give a Rondo applause to Rhode Island for getting the job.
[00:02:19] Done
[00:02:25] and further news coming up this weekend, June 19th, sister Nomics empowerment summit to educate back women and girls on financial literacy will be happening due to COVID this year. The event will be a virtual one. Now, just to give you a little insight of what the event is about, it's a non-profit organization.
[00:02:46] As looking to teach young girls and women, or about financial literacy. So this will be the national coalition of a hundred black women, second annual summit. So you should register and show your support. All the [00:03:00] links will definitely be in the show notes. Like I was saying before, today's guest is Luke Hohmann of the first route.
[00:03:07] Program. And they have a unique way of teaching financial literacy, which is actually using real money in order to teach the children. So let's get into that discussion. We welcome everybody to another episode of raising financial freedom. Our guest today is Luke Hohmann.
[00:03:33] look how you doing? I'm
[00:03:35] Luke: [00:03:35] doing well. How are you today? What state are you coming out of? I live in Sunnyvale, California,
[00:03:41] Eric: [00:03:41] Sunnyvale, California. So for each state, it's different for me when I interviewed someone. So in California, what do you, how would you say, uh, financial literacy
[00:03:52] Luke: [00:03:52] is in that state? There's a myth, right?
[00:03:53] I live. Right in the middle of Silicon valley. So you would think that with the tech companies [00:04:00] and with a lot of the success that people have, that it'd be strong degrees of financial literacy, but a recent study by Chamberlain university. And especially with children actually ranked California with a failing grade, an F.
[00:04:19] And teaching our children financial literacy, which is pretty frightening and pretty
[00:04:24] Eric: [00:04:24] interesting. That's interesting. I didn't know that. Especially for the big state like that.
[00:04:30] Luke: [00:04:30] Yeah. You would think that in America, the tuitions both under Bush and Obama have studied, like what do we need to teach our kids?
[00:04:38] And they basically validate your entire thesis of your, in your entire website, Eric, that we have presidential commission saying we have to teach our kids financial literacy. Like we need to prepare them for this complex world in which they live in. And we're not doing a very good
[00:04:56] Eric: [00:04:56] look when you were growing up, did you receive any type of [00:05:00] financial literacy courses, classes saying elementary going into high school?
[00:05:05] Luke: [00:05:05] Yeah, I, I, um, didn't have any formal, I would say financial literacy training or any kind of education. Um, but I think that's fairly common. Did you actually have formal training and financial literacy or, or the basics of finance when you were growing up? Like I
[00:05:23] Eric: [00:05:23] got one class and I was in college that wasn't even in high school.
[00:05:27] So I would say that's next to zero. So I'm in the same boat that you were in when you were growing up. So with you being so close hearted to financial literacy, how was your children? What are you doing with your children to make sure that they are financial levels?
[00:05:45] Luke: [00:05:45] I do, uh, with our family is two things.
[00:05:48] I ask them to either take a course or read some books about financial literacy. And there's a couple of authors that are out there that are pretty good. But what I also do is [00:06:00] I take what I've done in business and I apply it in my home. So about 10 years ago, a little bit more than 10 years ago, I started a company continue.
[00:06:11] And it was a company that helped large enterprises manage their emotions, investment portfolios of products and services. So imagine you're working for say a Cisco or a Salesforce, and you've your division right. Has an annual budget. And you've got to figure out how to allocate that money or how to spend that money.
[00:06:33] The normal process for that is pretty awful because you sit around and argue. With all of your peers. So what I did was I looked at that process and I tried to make it better and more collaborative through a technique known as participatory budgeting, which is exactly what it sounds. You sit people down together at a table.
[00:06:57] Either physically, if they're close by [00:07:00] or virtually online, and you talk about the budget and you do it in a very structured way. And through that process, you create better budgeting decisions. And I started doing that with cities to help cities like San Jose, California, get feedback from the citizens on their budget.
[00:07:21] And I started doing it in schools. And Eric, I saw this magical thing happened for the listeners. If you don't know, Eric and I are both fathers and Eric's child, I'm going to guess is probably in middle school. Correct. And so we started in middle school and then we moved into high schools where we would walk up to the middle school and we would give the kids money.
[00:07:43] Under one criteria, the kids were in control of the money instead of the parents or the teachers. And what we did then was we guided them through a five-step process. We would bring the kids together and we would say, okay, you've got some money now. Step one [00:08:00] is what's the theme. How might you spend this money?
[00:08:04] Do you want to spend it on getting equipment for the playground, making the school a better environment, getting more materials, doing something social, et cetera. In phase two it's ideation, we work with the kids and they create proposals for how to spend the money. And those proposals are just raw ideas.
[00:08:26] They're not refined. They're not ready. They might be as simple as we'd like to get some more gym equipment. Okay. In the refinement stage, the kids actually create the details of the proposal. They figure out what gym equipment they need. Let's say that they have an outside basketball court and they want new basketball nets.
[00:08:46] Will they? The kids actually have to do the research and figure out how many basketball nets do you need and what will they cost? And then they vote. The fourth phase is voting and [00:09:00] that gives us an opportunity to open up the process to make sure all the students are involved in. We typically see response rates of 70, 80% of the students get involved.
[00:09:11] And then the last phase is of course, is in some ways the most fun, because we implement the students' ideas and they get to see their ideas in action in the school they get. To make the school that they attend a better place. And it's a really fun process, but what it also gives us. Is this opportunity to teach important concepts of financial literacy.
[00:09:38] What is a budget? How much money do you have? How will you spend that money? What's an appropriate expenditure. Is it a capital expense or an operating expense? How did you get that money? And then Eric took to make it come full circle. We do the same process with families and that's how I've been able to teach some [00:10:00] important financial literacy concepts to my children.
[00:10:02] We do vacation planning, for example, as a family. And we sit down and we talk about how what's our budget, how much money do we have? What do we want to do on our family vacation? And it's a great lesson because you can distinguish, say a family vacation. From a Homeland improvement where most financial experts would generally say that using a loan for a family vacation is not a good, it's not a good idea to use a loan for a family vacation, but using all loan could be a good idea if you're doing a home improvement because of the timeframe and the different impact of how a loan can improve, correct the value of your home.
[00:10:46] So we, and that's what we've done with our app, by the way, our app is free. For families, because we want to promote the idea that we all should be talking about money and finances, [00:11:00] and we can do it in a way that is engaging to the kids. If you don't engage the kids on their terms. They get bored. They don't care.
[00:11:09] And a lot of the financial literacy programs that are created by banks, for example, they ask kids to build a budget. I did this with my 15 year old and I asked her, I said, let's check out what the banks give you to build a budget. And she said, okay, dad, well, let's check out what banks do. And they gave her a spreadsheet.
[00:11:26] That started with three items. What's your car payment, what's your rent payment and what's your food payment per month. And she looked at me and she said, this is stupid. You and mom pay for my food. I live in your house. So I don't pay rent and I don't have a car cause I'm 15. And she said, this is budgeting is stupid.
[00:11:45] And I'm like, okay, budgeting. Isn't stupid, but it's stupid when it doesn't matter to the kids. And it's interesting. So it matters to the kids. Taking that
[00:11:54] Eric: [00:11:54] you have a wide variety, uh, when it comes to age, when it, between your kids [00:12:00] who exists, which age group is exorbitant. Financially the receive more or at a better rate
[00:12:07] Luke: [00:12:07] you would say.
[00:12:08] Yeah, that's that speaks to, I think how kids age, if you actually look at the research on financial literacy, it's a progression throughout your entire life. We, we know from research that financial literacy actually starts at age two. When a child makes a purchase request, your you've got your child in the basket at the supermarket.
[00:12:31] And they say, oh, I wanted to get apples or I want to get cereal. That's actually in financial terms, right? That's a want, I want this. And by kindergarten or they understand some basics of finance state. They know that to buy things, you need money. And mom and dad have a means of making money and they may not understand credit cards, but they understand cash.
[00:12:56] And so you can actually see a progression of [00:13:00] financial literacy. And financial concepts starting at age two, but progressing through the entire life of the child. Now my son and my 20 year old, he's getting ready to take the next step in his journey and get his own apartment. So now we're talking about what is a lease.
[00:13:19] And what are these terms? And what's the down payment. What's the security deposit. You wouldn't talk about a security deposit of on a lease with your child. They're too young, but for my 20 year old and my 19 year old, actually 18 year olds, so it's 2018. He turns 19. I actually
[00:13:42] looked at as not good. If he's listening to this, that's not good, man. Yeah, I know. Thanks, Eric. I'm just going to like, hold this against me, everyone who's listening, or this is going to, he's going to snip it out and send it to my story. [00:14:00] That happens when you have a lot. Yeah, it happens. I got four of them.
[00:14:03] It's hard to keep track, but our children are older than your child, so they have different needs. They have different insights and understanding. So they have their own checking account. They have their own bank account. They may be a little atypical for Silicon valley parents, but all my kids have summer jobs.
[00:14:20] And so they're starting to learn what a paycheck is. And then of course, Eric, I don't know if it's you remember when you got your first paycheck and you said, oh man, I worked so many hours and they made so much money and then you open it up and you're like, who is this uncle? Sam guy? Wait, he took mine.
[00:14:37] Hey, what's going on. And then you have the conversation with the stances.
[00:14:40] Eric: [00:14:40] So now that your kids is, they all different in they own sort of way. What do they gravitate to when it comes to financial literacy, you have your savings, you have your budgeting. I personally like investing, but I know budgeting is big, but where do these seem to gravitate
[00:14:58] Luke: [00:14:58] to more?
[00:14:59] Yeah. [00:15:00] And I'm going to simplify a bit because it's always hard to take a complex topic like financial literacy. And overly simplified, but if I were to overly simplify it a bit, I would say that my oldest son, he tends to be a slow and steady person. He's I have taught them some basics of investing and they have a E-Trade account that they.
[00:15:24] Invest in and I give them a little bit of advice about investing. So by all, this is a, I would say, a slow and steady, but what's interesting about him is that he will spend money. So he's, I wouldn't say he's a spender, but he will spend money. Now, my second one, he just saves. He just doesn't seem to like to spend, but he's also a little bit more.
[00:15:47] I'd say aggressive about his investing. I felt like I had a really good dad moment. You know how Eric, every now and then you're, it's like, you're assessing dad performance and you're like, did I do okay as a dad? But I think I had a pretty good dad [00:16:00] moment because he texted me. He said a few months ago and you'll know exactly what I'm going to talk about in a second.
[00:16:06] He said, Hey dad, what do you think about me buying some stock and game stop? Yeah. Ooh boy. And I said, do you want to lose your money? You could, you, you probably have more fun if you just went to Vegas. And, and gamble. I said, oh, what do you mean? And I'm like, okay, Chris, what have we talked to you about all these years?
[00:16:23] Like, what is value investing? Why, what are the underlying fundamentals of the company? Why would you invest? Do you use the product? Like when you're talking with kids a great way to talk about. Investing is to simply ask them a question. What are the products that mom and dad use and why are those maybe good investments for mom and dad?
[00:16:43] Now, they may not be the full set of investments because kids know a limited number of brands, but think of some of the potential stocks that you might own. Eric, my kids have iPhones and I use an apple Mac. And so they know. Apple as an, as a [00:17:00] potential stock. We can talk about that now. Of course, apple has been a pretty decent stuff though.
[00:17:04] Oh, and then the other two. So the other two, I haven't figured out Joe's kind of financial posture and then my youngest, uh Danella she's kinda my she's kinda my entrepreneur man. When she wants something, she'll go get it. And she's just one time she really wanted to get a tablet. Cause she's also an artist and she came to me and she said, yo, dad, I want to get this tablet.
[00:17:28] And I'm like, whoa, that's a lot of money. I'm not going to spend that money on a tablet. She's like, oh, I got to figure it out. I've got this much saved and I'm going to do this work to earn this money. And then if no one gives me an, a presence for Christmas and instead gives me cash between grandma and grandpa and mom and dad, I think I can get it like, okay, you, you,
[00:17:48] Eric: [00:17:48] you need to water it every day.
[00:17:50] Oh my goodness. If she came in like that full plan. Oh
[00:17:55] Luke: [00:17:55] man. Yeah. So she is my she's the one that's going to be much more [00:18:00] of. Yeah, I haven't figured it out completely yet, but I don't have to it's, you know, uh, you know, she's only in 10th grade, she's got plenty of time to figure it out.
[00:18:09] Eric: [00:18:09] You started, when did you realize that you had a passion for finance and financial literacy?
[00:18:16] Whew.
[00:18:16] Luke: [00:18:16] I grew up pretty poor and I won't go into all the details, but I grew up. Pretty much pretty modest at best. And when I moved out, I, I was really trying to figure out, well, how am I going to, in a sense, survive and live on my own if you will. So I remember the very first time I started to really understand finances was I got a little notebook and I wrote down every single solitary thing.
[00:18:44] That I had purchased or every, literally every penny going in and out every penny that I had going in and out, and it was what kept me afloat. And, and I remember juggling, like this was quite awhile ago, so gas and [00:19:00] stuff was cheaper, but I remember saying, okay, I've got $9. I'm going to put in $4 into gas.
[00:19:06] And I'm going to get this kind of food. I actually became a vegetarian because it's cheaper to eat vegetarian then than to eat meat, which is more expensive. So I did lots of things that started me on the path to financial literacy, but I can't even remember who Eric. But I remember I got a job at electronic data systems EDS, which was an old supplier of software services and a long time ago, but my boss said, Hey, there's this thing called the employee stock ownership program.
[00:19:36] And you should just right now set up your account so that you will put a little bit of your paycheck automatically every month into buying stock in the company. And over time, that will accumulate. I was like, okay. Right. And I just did it because this really successful older person said it was a good idea.
[00:19:56] And I trusted him and it was a great idea because by the time [00:20:00] I had left, it had accumulated pretty well. And that's what started me. What let's talk
[00:20:06] Eric: [00:20:06] about first route. How did that
[00:20:08] Luke: [00:20:08] get started? Well, earlier I talked about my last company can Teneo and that built. A software platform for large companies to do participatory budgeting.
[00:20:19] So our customers were BMW and Cisco and eBay and Salesforce and companies. And then I started doing it in cities and that was pro bono work. So I didn't charge for that. And then I started doing it in schools and again, that was pro bono work and I just. Saw how powerful it was, especially for title one schools or low-income or economically disadvantaged areas of the country.
[00:20:45] A lot of times kids just don't have access to money. Like they can't manipulate it, if you will, they know what money is, but they don't ever make decisions about money on their own. And even to pass that an opportunity came up to sell my company and [00:21:00] I wanted to sell it because the buyer was someone I had known and worked with.
[00:21:03] And. I really trusted them. And I thought they were a great, a great company to buy it. So I sold the company and then after selling the company, I worked there for a year at the buyer and completed the integration tasks. And then I decided that I really wanted to have my own entrepreneurial spirit again.
[00:21:21] And decided to start. First of all, you definitely had
[00:21:23] Eric: [00:21:23] been on a journey with this. What would you say is one of the biggest challenge you've had to overcome starting first rule?
[00:21:30] Luke: [00:21:30] The biggest challenge is it's for everyone. To be honest, if starting a new company in the time of a pandemic is a challenge for anyone.
[00:21:38] I don't care who you are, how much money you have. Everyone is struggling. Every community is having a problem. I had a whole bunch of investors lined up. And then they all went away because of COVID. I had a bunch of schools lined up, ready to try it. And then they had to put a way their plans to trial or become our pilots [00:22:00] because they were dealing with more important issues just for the basis of getting food to kids and helping kids through.
[00:22:06] So it's really just been navigating the pandemic. And then what I know how to do as an entrepreneur, because my last company was bootstrapped, even though I was in Silicon valley, I didn't use VC money. And that's not a Dame against venture capitalists. They provide an important part of the ecosystem of growth of companies, but you don't have to have a venture capitalist to be successful.
[00:22:28] What you have to have our customers and a solution for your problems. That's what you have to have. You don't need a venture capitalist to be. Successful, they can help for sure. But that's venture capitalists don't make you successful. Your ability to serve your customers is what makes you so successful.
[00:22:45] So what we've done is we've taken a slightly slower growth model. We've decided that we don't have to like run down hill and spend a lot of money that VCs often want you to do. And we've been quietly impatiently building out our [00:23:00] solution. Erica, I don't know what grade your child is in, but we just signed up three.
[00:23:05] Fifth grade classrooms at Hugo elementary school in Madison, Wisconsin. So we're really excited because now we've got middle schools and high schools and elementary schools as part of our growing network. And, and to me, it's just the simple truth. If you're going to provide a product or a service, a company, your company will be successful.
[00:23:28] That if you, if you find something
[00:23:29] Eric: [00:23:29] on that same note now, What is the problem and how is first roots solving it for the people out there and basically getting into the core of what firstfruits it
[00:23:42] Luke: [00:23:42] does. Yeah. I think you are. I think that's the right question, right? What is the problem? There's actually two problems there's and I think of them as two thirds and one third, two thirds of our problem in our society is the lack of financial literacy.
[00:23:57] People are just at a [00:24:00] structural disadvantage. When they don't know what money is, how it works, how to manage it, how to manipulate it. They are stuck in our society. If they can't understand and manage money, they just are. The second problem is that we've had some pretty toxic politics over the last several years, horrible top politics.
[00:24:24] And what's happening is our sense of civics. Our sense of community has eroded. Badly. And so w what, if you go back to participatory budgeting in a school, it creates a positive civic experience. The kids see what it's like when they work together, they actually experience. Positive outcomes from collaborative democratic behavior.
[00:24:54] We really desperately need that. I like to say, to say six, because it helps understand and frame the [00:25:00] problem. Tufts university did a study and they ended up titling the report. Our Republic is still at risk and they found, and this is a pretty frightening statistic that 24% of millennials. I think that democracy is a bad way to run the country.
[00:25:21] I mean, they're not saying like there's problems with voting. They're not saying there's problems with accessibility. They're not saying there's, you know, it, it, you know, certain parts are unfair. They're saying democracy itself is a bad idea. We can't let that happen. Like we can acknowledge that we've got problems.
[00:25:38] But we can't throw it out completely. So part of my motivation that drive and I work really hard on this element of the dry is to make sure part of what I work on is, and what drives me to success. And not just me, my entire team, we're all committed to this. We know that there's a big problem. Is that [00:26:00] we don't want to let our society fail because of economic inequality and a lack of civic engagement.
[00:26:07] And so. That's what drives us. That's what motivates us. That's the why we're doing this now. The product itself is an integrated platform. It's a software platform that guides kids at all grade levels in doing participatory budgeting for the teachers. We have an integrated curriculum it's aligned with the jumpstart financial literacy standards, which is a well-respected set of, so it aligns with the jumpstart standards and guidelines and jumpstart is a.
[00:26:37] Highly regarded and well-respected set of financial literacy standards organized by grade level. So we're creating a complete solution. That's helping teachers introduce financial literacy and civics in their classrooms through a very, I don't want to, I don't want to make it more complex than it is. We teach kids.
[00:27:00] [00:27:00] How to manage money by giving them money to manage interesting.
[00:27:05] Eric: [00:27:05] How much money are you giving them to manage?
[00:27:09] Luke: [00:27:09] I'll give you the two answers, the consultant answer and the straightforward answer. The consultant answer is yes. You want to give the kids enough money that they think it's meaningful, but the adults won't take over.
[00:27:22] And so if I walked up to your kid and I said, Hey, we're going to give your school $10. Even your child would say that's meaningless. It doesn't matter $10, who cares, but if I walked up to your child and said, Hey, we're going to give your school, uh, a million dollars. You and other parents might get a little nervous and get involved.
[00:27:44] Oh, we, I don't know if we can trust our kids with a million dollars. So what we usually recommend is. Somewhere around $2,000 to $10,000, which comes from the PTA or the [00:28:00] principal's discretionary fund is a good number for the budget given to the kids. And we, that we've seen some schools go higher. We've seen schools go as high as $50,000 to the kids.
[00:28:13] But those, those numbers seem to be pretty solid in terms of what you can get from the principal or the, what states are you in right now, actually global, uh, right off the bat. So we've got pilots running in New York, Wisconsin, Indiana, California, and we're planning and starting some pilots in Mexico. And once we get a little further past.
[00:28:38] The COVID crisis in India will actually be starting. Some Indian schools
[00:28:44] Eric: [00:28:44] happened so far since doing these pilots. Yeah. I'd say
[00:28:47] Luke: [00:28:47] the best thing is just watching how manipulating money in a way that kids understand and they're in control. It takes the fear out of [00:29:00] money. It is, it takes what is this thing and how does it work?
[00:29:03] And can we talk about this and can we really make change happen? Will the adults really trust us? Can we work together as students? There's a whole set of, I think, powerful things that happen in this process. So it's almost hard to pick the single best idea. What I can say is that. The data shows kids regularly will choose infrastructure.
[00:29:26] So they buy equipment for their school. They buy equipment for their gym. They renovate cafeteria. As they renovate bathrooms, they do lots of stuff that adults. Would never imagine because you and I don't go to the school. One school put in an upgrade to their playground when you and I don't play on the playground the kids do.
[00:29:50] So who is best equipped to know what the playground needs? The kids.
[00:29:55] Eric: [00:29:55] Now this just say a parent comes across your website [00:30:00] and they want to get involved. How can they get involved? How can they get the child? Involved in this program with first fruit is providing.
[00:30:11] Luke: [00:30:11] Yeah. So parents can go to DubDubDub dot first route.ceo, and there's a button in the top left that says free pilot and they can send a note to us and eventually, and when I eventually in the next few weeks, they're going to be able to.
[00:30:28] Create their own account for free, for their own family to use. And then if they're a teacher, a, if a parent is the teacher, if the parent knows that the teacher can completely self administer a single classroom in our platform, they can. Register and they can produce the event for their students completely in our platform.
[00:30:51] Now, as you get more kids involved, like at the level of an entire high school or a middle school or a school district, then they'll [00:31:00] probably want to negotiate with us to make sure that we're following the school guidelines, whatever they are. For implementing a program like this, but we're designing it.
[00:31:11] One of the things that is as a parent, most of the software that our kids uses is awful. It's hard to use. It doesn't make sense. It's rather ugly most of the time. And so what we're trying to do is. Take a Silicon valley style into building our software to make it engaging a beautiful, we just did a retrospective with 55 students from the academy of American studies in Queens, New York.
[00:31:40] They're a customer and the kids loved it. I know I'm going to sound self promotional, but it was really true. The kids were saying that the app is easy to use. It's understandable. It gives you clear directions. It gives you clear guidance. I know what to do. We think that there's so much improvement that can be made to how traditional [00:32:00] apps are done for kids and we're committed to making something.
[00:32:03] That's absolutely beautiful that too,
[00:32:06] Eric: [00:32:06] if you have to give the parents out there, one good piece of advice, what
[00:32:10] Luke: [00:32:10] would it be? Include your kids in the conversation. About money. If you're going to make charitable donations, if you're many people in America are still there, they still go to church. And one of the functions of the churches.
[00:32:23] So you make a donation or you have a charitable donation. But when I was growing up, we never really talked about where the money went, but I'm giving it to the church or I'm giving it to a charity. What happens and why should we give it to that charity? So that's an area where you can talk to your kids.
[00:32:39] Another area you can talk to your kids. Is in the whole improvement, you know, they, they have their ideas of what the home I'm sure if I asked your child, Hey, how would we make our home better? They'd have ideas. Same for the family vacation. Right? Hey, where do you want to go? And what happens on the family vacation and what do we want to spend our money on [00:33:00] from our family vacation budget?
[00:33:01] A lot of financial literacy programs will say, you have to save for your family vacation. That's a start. Right, but what do you actually do on your family vacation? If you want to do activities, do you want to go to museums? Do you want to, whatever it is. You should plan for that and you should have that conversation first route.
[00:33:17] Now,
[00:33:18] Eric: [00:33:18] what do they have planned for the future? Soon as COVID is over. And I would say for the next five years,
[00:33:24] Luke: [00:33:24] I'm a Silicon valley entrepreneur. So five years in the future is, seems big, but let's go there. We're building out our platform so that it can be massively scalable. By having a single classroom, self provision, or even a single school self-provision meaning go to the website, create their account and start using our stuff.
[00:33:44] So what you'll see from us over time is just increasing to make it increasingly easier. So we're going to increase our efforts in making it easy to use. I keep telling my team super high quality. Super easy to [00:34:00] use. So we've probably got another year of that kind of work ahead of us, but here's what I think is exciting.
[00:34:07] Eric, if I walk up to a classroom of say, 30 kids and I give them each $10, they've got $300 that as a classroom, they can spend. Using participatory, budgeting and make their classroom experience better. And we can give them some good education. If I walk up to a school and I'll pick a high school. And I give the high school.
[00:34:31] And from the, again, from the teacher or from the PTA $10,000, that's a pretty meaningful number. And those kids can do some interesting things with $10,000 to improve their school. But what if we allowed schools to work together? Not just within the schools, but between the schools in California, there's 3,200 high schools.
[00:34:56] That's $30 million. That we could [00:35:00] put into the hands of our children. And then the question becomes, what would our kids do with $30 million? What kind of change could they make in the world with that much money? And if I keep going and I say there's every high school in America. Every school in America, there's 98,000 public K through 12 schools in America.
[00:35:30] If we gave each of them $10,000, now we're putting a hundred billion dollars. Into the hands of kids to make their school and our environment a better place. I have no idea what they would do with that much money, but I'm pretty sure
[00:35:49] Eric: [00:35:49] it'd be good. What would be good? And our first food is definitely doing this at a unique level.
[00:35:55] So Luke, I want to thank you for sharing with us and coming [00:36:00] on the show and letting us be. Exposed to what first food is doing for financial literacy and what it has in store for the future. But please
[00:36:10] Luke: [00:36:10] let us know, Eric, thank you so much for allowing me to be on the show. You've been a gracious host and I'm just so excited to share what we're doing with everyone,
[00:36:21] Eric: [00:36:21] where they can find you, how they could continue this conversation with you.
[00:36:25] And. Anything else that
[00:36:27] Luke: [00:36:27] you@firstroutemayhavegonethebestwaytogoisdubdubdubdotfirstroute.co. And then you can connect with me. I'm at Luke Hohmann, L U K E H O H M a N on Twitter and LinkedIn. So I'm pretty easily accessible. And we're, we're just continuing to expand the company's presence over time. And I'm just, I was just really excited about what we're doing.
[00:36:53] We're building out something pretty cool. It sounds very
[00:36:55] Eric: [00:36:55] special. Trust me. So once again, thank you Luke, for coming on the show, [00:37:00] as you can see what Luke and first food is doing is very unique. Your child will be able to get their hands familiar with money in a school and a team environment. So, yeah, I am all for this.
[00:37:14] That's one thing here at raising financial freedom, we will not stop short when it comes to learning ways of teaching your child money and all things dealing with financial literacy. Once again, as always, I would like for you to share with other parents and. Don't keep this information to yourself, let other parents know what you're listening to.
[00:37:35] And if you enjoy like where you can and I will definitely see you on the next show until next time stay safe.
[00:37:45] Introducer: [00:37:45] We really hope you enjoyed this episode of financial freedom. The podcast stay connected with us directly through raising financial. Freedom.com. You can also join the discussion on social media, which you can also find links on our website.
[00:37:59] If [00:38:00] you would like to speak with us, please send us an email to info@raisingfinancialfreedom.com and as always thank you for pushing your mindset towards the reality. This concludes the most thought provoking portion of your day. Don't forget to please like, and subscribe to stay fully up to date until next time.
[00:38:17] Be kind to yourself and each other.