hello, and welcome to the accelerate, your legacy podcast, where we talk all things, money and money mindset. My name is Laura Sexton. I am a trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. My goal with this podcast is to encourage and inspire you. As you set out on a financial journey that eliminates stress and amplifies freedom. Today's the day you stop paying for your past and start saving for your future. If you're looking for more peace in your finances and margin in your budget you've come to the right place. Hey, accelerators, I sometimes get really caught up on numbers and I just thought it was hilarious that today is July 31st, and this is episode 31. I don't know about any of you, but I just think that numbers are really funny. My birthday is 11, 11. I got married on 10, 10. Things like that just for whatever reason really bring me joy. My dad and I. Used to call each other right when I was in college, whenever it was 1, 2, 3, 4, during the day. Obviously I was not calling him in the middle of the night because that would've been two o'clock in the morning his time and he would not have been happy. We had a rule in our house, you do not call after 10:00 PM period. He told one of my boyfriends, if he called after 10:00 PM we would no longer be seeing each other, which I just think is hilarious. Anyway, that has nothing to do with our conversation today. I just. Started giggling when I realized how the numbers lined up there. So the history of libraries goes back nearly 5,000 years. You're like, Laura, we were talking about your dad. I know. We're talking about libraries. Don't worry. It goes together. Archives were kept in the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilization, the birthplace of writing. Can you come with me now guys, can you imagine how important they thought these things were, that they went through the process of developing the written word, foraging for clay, painstakingly rolling out the clay, making sure it was pristine, pressing it into one inch thick tablets. Running, read through resistant clay, writing these new words painstakingly slowly, and then baking the clay most of the time in a kiln. If it was really, really important, they'd put it in a kiln. If it wasn't that important, they would let it bake in the sun, but they would do this to make it hard enough to store so they could keep these archives. Now, to me that's absolutely crazy, and I'm sure everybody was really happy when they moved on to papyrus, right? It's easier to, it's easier to dry out and to write on and to turn into a scroll as opposed to carrying around all these heavy clay documents. Oh, that's heavy. Can you imagine how heavy. The stones were that Moses had to carry when God wrote down the 10 commandments on, on stone tablets, those were probably really, really heavy. Right? These big pieces of clay that were hardened into stone with words written on them, they had never been written on before. And they were, they were carefully put aside, and yet you drop when they break. That's the nature of pottery, but they thought it was important enough to risk it. You see, the first public libraries were established under the Roman Empire, and we talked about that a few weeks ago. The, the Roman Empire is established, these first public libraries, beginning with Julius Caesar. Actually, it was one of his lieutenants. One of his lieutenants saw how important libraries were to Julius Caesar, and he did what he needed to do to make sure that happened. What they wanted to do was make sure that readers would have access to the written word. That's pretty cool. Modern public libraries and capitalism. Grew together in the 19th century. It's weird, right? You see the workers had more free time and they needed to fill it. Well, what are you gonna do with all your free time when you don't have Zoom and TikTok? Well, the Victorian Middle class decided to push public libraries as a way to encourage the lower classes to spend their free time on what they called morally uplifting activities. They cited that their cause for this was a greater social good. Huh? You know what's really crazy is that human nature never changes. How many middle classes today? Upper middle classes today are trying to push their values on the lower class and calling it done for the greater good. Hmm. Now you're asking yourself, why in the world am I getting a history lesson about libraries on a money podcast? I am so glad you asked. You see, while the Victorian middle class had a selfish desire to put their beliefs on other classes, I simply have a desire to share with you a valuable resource that can save or make you money. We actually just went to the library today and it's a quick and painless process to check out some books and bring them home. I got a book, that is a modern romcom, and right next to that was servant leadership. I choose to use the library to help me become a better leader, a better entrepreneur, but also to have a really good time reading really awesome rom-coms. I love it. So that's the first thing you can do at a library. You can check out books now, checking out books. Most public libraries are going to have fiction, science fiction, non-fiction. They're going to have, you know, kids sections. They're going to have mysteries. The world is your oyster in a library. And if the library that you go to doesn't have the book you're looking for, here's the cool thing. They can either get it from another library. It's called an intra library loan, or a lot of places have programs where they will buy the book from Amazon for you. It gets delivered to your house and then you bring it back to the library. You didn't have to pay for it unless you don't bring it back. If you don't bring the book back, they're gonna charge you for it. But I just think this is a crazy awesome program. Now they're not gonna do it with anything that is, that is brand new, because more likely than not, they already have multiple copies of a brand new book, and they're not going to do it with things that are mega bestsellers. And they're not gonna do it with certain books that are over$75. They're not gonna do it with textbooks. That's not how the library works. But if it is a book and it's on a back list and you wanna read it, guess what? There's a way for you to get it so you can have fun for free. You can learn and grow your business for free. All you have to do is go check out a book. Now, there's some other cool things about checking out books. You can check out audible books. Check with your public library to find out how they operate their audiobook system. My husband gets books on cd. That he has in his car and he sometimes will get one in his car and he'll get the same book in print so he can listen to it in his car and then come inside the house and keep reading. But he gets to be in here with us. And sometimes I don't have it on cd, but they do have it on like an audible type. Program they have overdrive. Libby, check with your library to find out how they have audible books because you can listen to books the same way you listen to podcasts while you're doing other things, while you're folding laundry, whatever it is you're doing. If you haven't been to the library in a while, go back to the library because you are going to find that there is magic on those shelves. Another thing you can get from the library is DVDs. This is free entertainment, my friends. Some libraries do have a charge for DVDs. Some libraries charge like a 25 cent per night rental. However, most libraries are getting away from that. CDs and DVDs are so incredibly cheap these days to purchase and to have that they can generally get them and it's not gonna cost'em a whole lot of money. So you're not gonna pay to rent some places you still have to pay to rent DVDs. I will tell you that we just picked up Tiny Tune adventures for my kids to watch because they've never seen Tiny Tunes, and I just felt like that was a travesty and I'm so thankful that my library had that for them to check out. And that brings me to the next thing that you wanna check in for your library. Most libraries these days have a pretty good kid section. My library has a huge. Children's section. The children's section of my library is bigger than the library that I used to go to. Kids and adult section, like it's just humongous and my kids love it. Here's what they get to do. They have summer activities. They have a summer reading program. How many books can you read this summer? How many pages are you reading? They have programs, where they have a find the special character. He is hiding in the library somewhere. You have to go find him. They have a how many jelly beans in this jar kind of thing, which is kind of silly. But throughout the summer program, you have to come, you have to keep showing up because the, the stuffed animal gets hidden in different places. And the jar of jelly beans are. Buttons or whatever it is this week, it's always going to be changing and you get to win points and whoever has the most points at the end wins. I guess I, it doesn't really matter. Everybody wins something if you participate. If you sign up for it, you get a tote bag. And depending on where you are, like then the person that reads absolutely the most, I think they're giving away an iPad or something ridiculously crazy. My kid does not need that. My kid's also not gonna be winning, so it doesn't really matter. But they wanna make it fun. And there's a reason why the library's trying to bring people in. It's because they have all kinds of enrichment programs. They have resources, and they want people to be reading and to be learning. You see, that's the other thing. That we're doing in this kids section. We are investing in their love of reading. We want our kids to be lifelong learners. I do not like the way that the college system has been developing lately, but I do think that continuing education is incredibly important. That's why I'm constantly reading books on growing my business, growing my mind, growing my marriage. I'm constantly reading on being a better parent. I'm. Reading a book right now on helping my kids sleep better because my six month old does not sleep and I would like for her to, because I'm very tired. Our kids section also has a really big toy area, and that got cleared out during Covid, which is just really obnoxious. And my kids cried about it all the time, and thankfully they put it back. Now it's even bigger and better than it was before, which is absolutely wonderful. And my kids will go and they will sit. And they just wanna play with everything. And so I get to sit and read a book and it's lovely. This is free fun, my friends. This is free fun. So I mentioned earlier the enrichment programs that a lot of libraries have. Our library specifically has a afterschool tutoring where they have people that will literally come and sit and if you have questions about. Literature, if you have questions about math, if you have questions about science, they have somebody there that can help answer your questions and I think that's super cool. Our library also has parenting enrichment programs. They have learned to code programs they have for adults. They have learned to use the computer program. I am hoping that my library will have some sort of personal finance for beginners program that I can run because it's a place where you get to give back and I just think that's super cool. So I mentioned also growing my business, the library. There are so many business books. Out in the world and your library has most of them. So you can get business books for growth and development. You can get business books on leadership. You can get all kinds of different things. What, what industry are you in? What industry might you want to be in? If you can't decide what you wanna do, pick up Ken Coleman's paycheck to purpose, right? Like there's so many things you can do, so many books to read, and I firmly believe that great leaders are great readers. You should always be learning, always be growing. I don't think that knowing. Who won the latest reality show. I don't think knowing which housewife did what is going to get me further in my life. I am currently watching Claim to Fame on ABC. I think it's absolutely hilarious. These celebrity adjacent people who are trying to guess each other, which celebrity related to, and I just think that's super fun because. I don't know if you guys know this, but I was an actor for a decade and so my seven degrees of separation to most people is like one or two, or at least it was in the 2010s, maybe not so much now in the 2020s. I don't know. but I worked on a lot of projects and so I'm really just enjoying watching a lot of these people who are related to people I know people. I've met people that. Know people that I've met, you know, that's the separation is rather small and I think it's just really fun. Anyway, that's not helping me grow my business, but the books that I get about business are helping me grow my business. So if you want to develop your kids' love of reading, show them a parent who loves reading. This is something that's really, really important to me. I don't want my kids to see me on my phone all the time, so I don't read books on my Kindle. I don't read books on my phone. I don't read books on my iPad. I read a physical book, and I want them to see me sitting down with a physical book in my hands because I want them to sit down with a physical book in their hands, and I want them to love stories. We connect with each other through stories. So let me tell you one of my own. Reading books with my dad on the couch is one of my favorite memories. We read a whole lot of the Hardy Boys books. I remember one time specifically, he was reading a Hardy Boys book and I was reading over his shoulder and I caught him skipping words. And I just, I felt so smart cuz he, how we would do it was he would read a chapter and then I would read a chapter and then he would read a chapter and then I would read a chapter. So I was having to practice reading, but I was still getting read to. So it was still pretty cool. And my dad reads like paragraphs at a time. He reads full sentences at a time, so he'll read. A sentence, and it's two lines, one sentence, two lines, and he reads the whole thing and then he goes down to the next, because he's been reading so long and he's so good at it that his brain just kind of skips over things, skips over filler words, just keeps going, makes comprehends things really quickly. And so he was sitting down, he was reading. I was like, you skipped a word. And he's like, no, I didn't. He's like, yeah, you did. You skipped this, this whole line. He's like, no, I didn't. So he went back and he's like, oh look, I skipped that whole line. But he knew exactly what had happened. He had told me he had, he had paraphrased it, but that was the first time I caught him. And then I was like, I'm so good at reading. I'm so good. I'm better than him. And it's just a silly thing cuz I look back on it now and I realize that his brain was working faster than mine, but I felt so smart. And, you know, my dad and I would also, pick up a book on tape. It used to be on a cassette tape book on tape. We would pick up a book. Our favorite, our absolute favorite was Hank the Cow Dog, the, the guy that played Hank's Best buddy. Just crack me up. One of my favorite memories with my dad is writing in the truck listening to Hank the cow dog. My parents were divorced and I will talk about this at another time, and my parents were divorced and they lived four and a half hours away from each other. So every other Friday night and every other Sunday I was driving. Halfway with one parent and halfway with the other. And this gave me a really great time to have conversations with my parents and gave us a really great opportunity to read more Hank the Cow Dog, which I just love. I have so many memories with books and I wanna pass that on to my children. This is a legacy I wanna leave and I want to instill that they should always be learning. So I want you to utilize the free resources at your disposal. Develop prudent lifelong readers and learners and enjoy a book or two for yourself. All right guys. That's it for this week. Go out and make a difference. Thank you for spending some of your most precious resource your time. Working on yourself today. But don't just listen to the show. Implement something you heard. If you found a piece of today's show, valuable chances are you have a friend who will too. So please share this with them. And please rate and review the podcast to help spread the word. Remember the legacy you leave is not just dollars and cents and a bank account, but the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. If you have questions or need encouragement, send me a DM on Instagram at accelerate your legacy. Or check out the resources listed in the show notes. I'll be back next week. Bye. For now.