From Dreams To Dollars ( Help Your Teen Plan for a Financially Secure Future)
In this episode, Matt and Charla delve into the importance of preparing teens for financial independence and realistic career planning. Charla, creator of Beyond Personal Finance, shares insights from her curriculum designed to help teens understand the cost of living and plan effectively for their future.
Key Points Discussed:
- Understanding Financial Goals:
– Many teens lack a clear understanding of how much things cost and how to plan for financial independence.
– By helping teens visualize their future, including potential careers, living expenses, and lifestyle choices, they can make informed decisions and set realistic financial goals.
- Examples of Financial Planning:
– Career Choices: Charla shares a case where a student had to choose between being a composer or an engineer. The student used the financial insights from the curriculum to understand that being an engineer would provide a more stable income while still allowing for composition as a hobby.
– Budgeting for Lifestyle: The curriculum includes a detailed breakdown of average living costs, such as housing, utilities, and transportation, helping teens understand what income is needed to support their desired lifestyle.
– City and Career Research: Teens are encouraged to research the cost of living in different cities and the financial implications of various careers, such as choosing between a basic car or a luxury vehicle.
- Benefits of Financial Education:
– Informed Decision-Making: By providing a clear picture of living costs and career earnings, teens can avoid making uninformed decisions about their futures.
– Long-Term Preparation: Engaging in financial planning early helps prevent frustration and financial struggles later in life. It prepares teens for the realities of adulthood and helps them set achievable goals.
Call to Action:
– Watch the Excerpt: Check out the 3-minute excerpt from Charla’s Beyond Personal Finance class to see how it helps teens understand financial planning. https://vimeo.com/997728375/f7eb2b5714?share=copy
– Explore Beyond Personal Finance: Visit https://beyondpersonalfinance.com to learn more about the full curriculum and how it can benefit your teen.
– Subscribe for Weekly Updates: Sign up on our website to receive weekly updates and resources directly to your inbox.
Connect With Us:
You can read more about this (or past topics) on Charla’s blog: https://beyondpersonalfinance.com/our-blog
To subscribe to the weekly email with links to our podcast and blog, go here: https://beyondpersonalfinance.com/subscribe-1
To learn more about our unique products designed to increase your children’s understanding of how money works in the real world, go here: https://beyondpersonalfinance.com/
The post From Dreams To Dollars appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.
Welcome to "It's Not About Money" hosted by my parents, Matt and Charlie McKinley, and produced by the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network. This podcast is all about helping parents raise responsible and ready adults through insightful parenting advice that goes beyond financial matters. Join them as they explore practical strategies, share valuable insights, and provide meaningful tools to navigate the challenges of parenting in today's world. Whether you're looking to instill essential lifestyles, cultivate emotional intelligence, or nurture a sense of purpose in your children, Matt and Charlie are here to support you every step of your way. And now for today's episode. Hey guys, this is Matt, and I'm here today with my wife, Sue Sayer, and creator of Beyond Personal Finance, Charlie. We just needed to talk these out before. No, I like to surprise you. I think of these, I surprise you, it's one of the joys, obviously you're just hearing us, but I get to look into my wife's face as I come up with these, and she's always got these shock looks, and she always wants to start recording, but I just kind of slap her hand and keep her away, and we just kind of keep going. So Sue Sayer today, today we're going to circle back on a topic that's really a core point, Charlie, to your business, your class, Beyond Personal Finance. And this philosophy that is really opening our team's eyes to the future and helping them create a journey to get to where they want to go. Right, so many teams have no idea how much things cost, and as a result, they often enter the next phase of their life without a clear understanding of the financial goals they need to achieve, right? Like they don't know where they're going, they don't know how much stuff costs, because most of the time, parents are paying for everything for their kids. Now, if you've been listening to us for a while, you know that I'm recommending not to do that, because it, you know, helps open their eyes when they have to pay for their own food, and they have to pay for their own clothes and blah, blah, blah, with your money, of course, like I'm not saying they have to exist on their own, but helping them visualize their future, which is what I'm trying to do in Beyond Personal Finance, where they want to live, the kind of car they want to drive, whether they want to travel, and so on. We can guide them to make informed decisions about the careers and financial planning that it's going to take to get to these goals. Right, and kids have goals in these areas, like they've thought through, when they vision themselves, they've got a vision for the house who I live in, the car they want to have, the places they want to visit, and what they don't have is any clear vision at all about what it takes to get there and how much, how expensive that is, and frankly, price tags are just massive for so many things, and they're getting bigger every year. College costs, you know, in state, $100,000, even start our home prices are way over $300,000, they've just gone crazy for the last couple of years. It's not fair to write children to let them just pick a path with these visions without some kind of sought information that helps inform them on their choices. Right, so I had a student in one of my live classes in Raleigh who couldn't decide between being a composer or being an engineer. Are there still composers? Are people still composing? Yes, yes. I didn't have to tell him which one to pick because as he began to design his life in my class, he could quickly see that being a composer would not pay him enough to live on his own, seeing the numbers helped him understand the path better and put together a plan to become an engineer while composing as a hobby. So you're not suggesting he give up on composing? No, of course not. He just will help him get to that lifestyle that he actually is envisioning for himself. That's right. And the dream would be to, you know, to have a job that gets those bills paid, compose as a hobby and then build the hobby into a full time job, right? Like, that's the dream. I love that idea. And starting out as a full time composer wouldn't get the bills paid and you don't want to start life in your creative life, like being frustrated because you're making this great music, but you can't actually like eat, right? So you're like having to eat ramen every day and live in a tent down by the river. So how do parents, Charlotte, inform their students and help them get this clear picture about lifestyle and income requirements? All right. Well, today in the blog, I've got an excerpt from lesson one of my Beyond Personal Finance curriculum. Is there a list there too? No. No list. Okay. So it's just an excerpt from lesson one on the Beyond Personal Finance curriculum. Yes, that's right. So you just watch the video. It's like a three minute video. It's just from a piece of my lesson one where I walk through the average budget for an adult in the United States. So I just say, you know, here's how much it costs to live. Here's how much it costs for a car. Here's how much it costs for clothes, blah, blah, blah. Once they see how much everything costs, you know, I add that up, then I show them how that equates to an income number. So you're kind of saying like, here's what a typical kind of average middle class life would look like in the United States. And you're going to have to have this much income in order to kind of create that lifestyle for yourself. What you're shooting for. Exactly. Now, of course I'm really broad on items like rent, utility, food, car, giving, car, giving and more, right? Like, I'm really broad about it, but I just want them to see and understand how the process works when we are, when they say, you know, I want to be a YouTuber and we are negative about that, then they don't necessarily understand why. And I think when they see it laid out like that and they go, oh, wow, this is how much money I need to have these things paid for. Oh, yeah. YouTube is never going to provide that income. Like they begin to have some more concrete information. And then if they want to design into really dig into designing their life, they should look into your class beyond personal finance. Right, of course, in this one semester class, and it is self-paced, all my videos are recorded. Now, when you watch that three minute, you know, excerpt, that is literally a piece of the video. So that's what it's like and they'll play those videos on their own. They'll design their future from age 22 to 42. They'll start with a career in lesson one. That's what we talk about. Then they're going to budget for housing, utilities, car, food, insurance, clothes and much more. Each lesson represents a year of their life. As they age from 22 to 42, they see their budget change with each choice they make. So I have a lesson on car buying and then they make a choice to buy a car using the choices and dollars that I've given them. It's really the best way to open their eyes to get them to understand because they can see it. And I think one thing that's important is you're talking about 22 to 42, thinking through a career, starting a career, getting married, buying a house, having kids like those things like that, that age is fraught with great joys and opportunities. But also if you're not planning for it in advance, you're going to run into a ton of trouble. So there's a lot of risk out there that we can help our kids prepare for. And I think, you know, there are other things in the class, if you think about like living in a certain city, your class encourages kids to go out and research that city and the cost to live there if it varies from the mean, like New York City or San Francisco, these cities that just have a really high cost of income or when it looks at, you know, a car and they want a specific, oh, I don't want a basic car, I want a Mercedes or I want a Lexus, that's fine. You can look at that and figure out what it costs to buy that car, ensure that car, maintain that car. Really, a lot of flexibility in terms of how you budget that so they can then understand the type of salary they need to end, salary or income they need to be able to generate and provide for that lifestyle and that helps preparing them for a journey because you want them ready as a head out so they're not just kind of wandering around in the wilderness trying to find a destination they don't have to get to. Right, right. Like as the saying goes, if you don't know where you're heading, you'll end up simply sales, right? Without a clear goal, teens may find themselves in careers that don't satisfy them or don't pay enough to support their desired lifestyle. So this lack of direction can lead to frustration because they've got the training or the education for a career, but they don't have the life they thought that career was. I remember, you know, there are kids who think that getting a college degree is enough that they'll get paid. Regardless of what the degree is. And that's just not the case, right? So it isn't, you know, I don't want you to think that I am just wanting them to set their future based on money, but realistically, they need to understand the cost of the dreams that they have and then they can begin to build a plan to make those dreams come true. Right. And that's a mistake I made. Like when I went back to college, I had the vision for what I wanted to do and earned money, but I didn't really understand how much what I wanted to do was going to pay me. And after two or three years on the job, what I found was I was, had a college degree. I was making less than the Taco Bell guys were making just on the corner. And I was frustrated. I was really focused. I was working hard. I was doing my 40, 45 hours a week, but I was struggling to pay my bills. In fact, I wasn't being able to pay my bills on my own, I needed support to do that. And it was frustrating because I knew even after 20 to 30 years, I would never be able to afford a house, a car, a trip with my family. And I just, I wish I'd had a class like BPF when I was in high school, because I knew where I wanted to get financially what I wanted to be able to afford from a lifestyle perspective. I had no idea how to get there. And I needed a chance to kind of walk through that and understand what it's going to look like. Right. Yeah, exactly. And say that the key is to engage your teenagers in these kind of conversations early. Get them thinking about their future, listen to them about their dreams. You know, I remember Jack was really, really little. He drew a minivan type car and it had flames all over it. And he came out and said, this is the kind of car that I, you know, that I want to have. Who doesn't want to have a minivan with playing that? Well, we had a minivan. And you've got a minivan with flames on it, please send us a picture. We will publish it. Sure. Sure. Anyway, you know, they have dreams and getting them to understand that those dreams come with a price tag, come with a cost, effort as well as money is very important. And you got to help them, as they grow older, you know, as they're in their teenage years, they need to explore different career paths and consider how each one aligns with their goals, right? Now they can begin to talk to people with a little bit more interest. Oh, what do you do? And, you know, do you like it? And what do you do? Do you like it? Like they can, you can begin to sort of hone in because, you know, the, the cost of college, I know we've talked about this in the past, the cost of college is so expensive. You know, if it's a hundred thousand dollar investment, we would never make an investment without having understanding what the return is at the end. So sending our kids into college and letting them figure it out along the way. Risky proposition. Risky proposition. It is super, super. It's like going to go in and just have a hundred thousand dollars on water tickets. Right. You might, you might get two or three million dollars. There's a good chance you're going to burn a good portion of a hundred thousand. All right. I think we're going to wrap it up. And remember, everybody, I know you're disappointed. There's no list today, but instead the blog has a link to a three minute excerpt from Charles class beyond personal finance that your teens can watch, help them understand the importance of planning. If you're interested in learning more about beyond personal finance, you can go to beyondpersonalfinance.com. The links to the blog and the website are in the show notes. If you'd like a link sent to you weekly, you can sign up for that on our website and we'll just email it to each Wednesday morning. That is correct. All right. Have a great week, guys, and go be great parents. Bye, guys. Thanks for tuning in today's episode of It's Not About Money. We hope you found our parenting insights valuable and empowering. If you've enjoyed the episode and want to continue exploring strategies for raising responsible and ready adults, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly blog at beyondpersonalfinance.com/subscribe. Also, if you have a friend or family member that would find our show helpful or entertaining, please share it with them. Thanks again for spending some time with us. We'll see you right back here next week. (upbeat music)
