The financial conversations we’re having with our daughter right now
Most parents want their daughters to be happy, successful, and loved. But if you’re not also raising her to be financially indepe
ndent, you’re leaving her exposed in ways you might not realize until it’s too late.
Emily and I have three kids: a 15-year-old son and 11-year-old boy-girl twins. And when it comes to our daughter Caroline, this topic hits differently. The world has changed, but the underlying assumption that a woman can always lean on someone else financially hasn’t fully gone away. We want to make sure she never has to.
The Basics
There are three things we’re focused on right now.
First: pay yourself first, and start early. Saving isn’t exciting. It’s not something you brag about on social media. But if you build the habit early, the snowball starts. And your whole job is to keep the snowball growing. When it stops growing, that’s retirement. The bigger you’ve built it, the longer it lasts.
Tied to that is delayed gratification. Our kids are growing up in a world of 15-second videos and instant everything. Teaching them to leave $100 alone and not touch it is genuinely hard. But the research backs it up and so does real life. The kids who can wait for the second marshmallow tend to build better outcomes.
Second: understand debt. Not fear it, understand it. Dave Ramsey was a great starting point for Emily and me, but if you stay in that mindset forever, you leave a lot of opportunity on the table. Debt is a tool. Used correctly, with a plan and a short-term path to results, it can be a vehicle to assets that outperform. We’re teaching our kids the difference between debt that traps you and debt that builds you.
Third: know where the money is. I’ve seen marriages where the husband handled everything financially and the wife was completely in the dark. Then things went sideways and she was stuck. Not because she was unintelligent, but because she never had a seat at the table. We want Caroline to always have a seat at the table, regardless of who she marries or doesn’t marry.
The Action Steps
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