20 Things Your Teen Should Aspire To
In this episode, Matt and Charla discuss their philosophy of avoiding a too-cushy or pampered lifestyle for their children. They focus on how to balance generosity with teaching the value of hard work, responsibility, and realistic expectations. By doing so, they aim to prepare their children for a successful and fulfilling adulthood.
Key Points Discussed:
- Philosophy of Balancing Generosity and Responsibility:
– While they want to be generous, Matt and Charla believe it’s important not to make their children’s lives too comfortable. This helps their children understand the effort needed to achieve their goals and appreciate what they have.
– Overindulgence can lead to unrealistic expectations and lack of motivation, so they strive to provide opportunities for their children to work for what they want.
- Examples of How to Teach Responsibility:
– Work and Financial Independence: By giving their children a budget for sports equipment and other activities, they teach them to prioritize and earn upgrades through their own efforts.
– Gifts and Material Items: Instead of providing the latest or most expensive items, they encourage their children to work for and earn their desired possessions. This approach fosters a strong work ethic and appreciation for what they have.
– Room Decor and Living Standards: Avoiding extravagant room decor helps prevent unrealistic expectations about future living conditions. It also motivates children to work towards creating their ideal living space on their own.
- Challenges and Benefits of Their Approach:
– It can be difficult for parents to resist the urge to provide everything for their children. However, stepping back allows children to experience the value of hard work and responsibility.
– This approach helps children develop resilience, independence, and a realistic understanding of their future. It encourages them to strive for better and understand the effort required to achieve their goals.
Call to Action:
– Download the Printable: Get the full list of 20 items and strategies for teaching responsibility and hard work. Find the link in our show notes.
– Share Your Stories: Email us with your experiences of how teaching responsibility has positively impacted your family. We may feature your story in our next episode!
– Subscribe and Stay Connected: Subscribe to our blog and podcast for more insights, tips, and resources on parenting and personal development.
Connect With Us:
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The post 20 Things Your Teen Should Aspire To 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 the way. And now for today's episode. Hey guys, it's Matt and today I'm here with my pampered wife and creator of Beyond Personal Finance, Charlie. Uh, pampered. Pampered? Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, what was it last time? Uh, I don't know, but it was hilarious. Okay. This one's funny because this week we're going to talk about one of your key parenting philosophies around not providing our kids with too cushy or too pampered of a lifestyle, and I think it's hard to argue, Charlie, you're not pretty pampered. Well, I, yes, I, you know, I am pampered. I have things, you know, I grew up in a single parent household, which wasn't even a house. It was an apartment. We never went north of Dallas, except for one time I stayed with my uncle. I think they were trying to get rid of me, honestly. I can see that. That makes a lot of sense. It's going to go. But anyway, I really, you know, so I, I've gone more places and I have more things than I did with the kid and it, it, it went, when I was a kid, but it's hard for most of us because we do have it much better than we did growing up and our kids are kind of just along for the ride, honestly, they are benefiting from a lifestyle that we worked hard for. And we want to be generous and we're not suggesting we not be generous with our kids, but we're really saying we have to be careful because it could be bad for them to give them too much. You said a standard of living that is so high that it's difficult for them to understand how to maintain that as they launch onto their own and it can actually be demotivating for them as they look forward to leaving our house. I remember, you know, years ago when Jack was in high school and he was like starting to get motivated around school and put us, put forces, best efforts and, you know, do all the applications and all things for college and we were driving and he said, I just, I'm not super excited about the future. Like, why would I want to move out? I have it so good here. I may never have a home as nice as we have. We'll be able to go on vacations like we do, or eat out at restaurants. That just feels like a lot. The work content required to get there feels like a lot. Yes, yes. We were very lucky to have his honesty because the truth is when you take a look at our house, I mean, it's, it's super average, it's super average. You know, we are not eating fancy food. We don't have private planes, we're not like, there's nothing about our life that was overly fancy that yet Jack saw it with a lot of intimidation and we were, it was very helpful to see what he was struggling with because then it helped us parent him in a way that helped him mature. Well, it did, but I would say he didn't always like that. He didn't appreciate what that, how that manifested itself in our parenting stuff. That is correct. So for example, we had him work early in his life starting at age 14. He volunteered even before that because he wasn't working hard in school. We had him take the city bus because he wasn't responsible with the car. We had him take a gap year to earn money to pay for college because he didn't do enough in high school to reduce the cost of college. So we've always sort of helped him see that the choices he makes came with consequences so that he didn't have an easy life, he understood that if you get a ticket in a car, there's a consequence for that. You're going to have to pay mom for the increase in insurance like he understood. Cause and effect. Yeah. Like responsibility and privilege. Exactly. Like you're not working hard in school. Okay. Well, you're not just going to sit on the couch and play video games. If you don't want to work hard in school, I get that. You're going to take that extra free time and get a job like you just trying to help him see that, you know, there's a work requirement. There's a work requirement. There's effort to show up for life is great. Yeah. And I think, you know, for us, we, we purposely made his life a bit harder than it had to be. A lot of these things we could have just paid for ourself or done ourself. We wanted to use these opportunities to teach him. And we also intentionally scaled back on the things that we gave him. So a, it's something to work towards to aspire towards versus us just going out. The best baseball bat or the nicest bike or a brand new car, things we could have done, but we chose not to. That's right. And so like, for example, my mom, um, she, can you hear our dog Snorri's dinner? He's in the, uh, PPF, World Headquarters and he is snoring finally. Yes. I just didn't want y'all to think it was mad, uh, anyway, Matt doesn't snore. No, sure. Okay. Back to the podcast. Anyway, my mom, um, as I mentioned, we didn't have much money growing up. She has now, um, grown in her finances, et cetera. And so she really loves to spoil my kids because she doesn't feel like she was able to spoil me, um, which is very sweet. And I want to honor that and I can appreciate that and respect that. But when she goes overboard for their birthday or Christmas, I scale back. But it could be if I really, really wanted to, I could take that extra money that I would have spent on them for Christmas and put it away for their future and just said to them, one time I made a little certificate and I said, a deposit has been made into your savings account for your birthday, worst birthday gift ever. Not at all. It's just that they got too much and they didn't need anything else. So I wasn't going to just pile on more gifts for the sake of piling it on. Well, I want to introduce kind of the printable this week, which is long time show listeners will be excited about this. It's a list. It's a legit list. It's a list of 20 items. Charlotte, tell us about the list. Yeah. So these are 20 things that your teen should aspire to if they, you know, and, and, and pay for if they want to upgrade things that don't, don't give them the best in these categories. They should aspire to these things. All right. Give us some examples because this is not going to be popular and it's kind of hard to get your arms around. So can you make it a little bit more tangible for me, Charlotte? All right. So trying to have the top of the line is chasing the wind, right? But if our kids don't have the wisdom that they yet, because they've been on the planet less than 20 years, they believe that the marketing tells them that their lives will be better with something new. So I want to recommend that I'm putting things on here that are, you know, that they don't need to have brand new things. They don't need to have top of the line things. So for example, you know, a laptop, you know, I mean, they can have a laptop that's a little slower. They can have, you know, a hand me down laptop. The only reason when I was a kid, the only reason I got a job was because my mom refused to buy me guest jeans. And you know what? That's totally motivational for the guest jeans. My mom was like, you know what? Here are the jeans that you're going to get. If you want anything nicer than that, you better go out and get a job. And so I did. And I was tremendously proud of the day I got my first paycheck and I went straight to Dillard's to buy my first pair. Like I was so proud of myself. Right. So your mother, we're not suggesting you not provide for your kids. Of course. You're just suggesting, hey, it's okay if they get some kind of basic jeans versus a branded jean is a good example or a computer, you buy a new one, you give them your old one. They don't need a high power processing computer. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I do get this idea that when you work for it and you sacrifice for it, there was a sense of accomplishment in that. And that's we grow self-esteem and confidence for kids when they actually accomplish something, even something as simple as getting a pair of guest jeans, which you have none of today, by the way. I don't. Give me another example. I'm looking at the list now. Let's talk about hobby gear and a little bit stronger because that's something you get like crazy expensive for folks. Yes. Right. So providing kids with the most advanced hobby gear can reduce their drive, whether it's musical instruments, sports equipment, art supplies, having the top of the line gear can just lead them to complaints and see, right? We want them to work, but we don't really give them to anything to work for, right? We just say, well, you need a job. Why? Well, because you do. Like no, we need to, if they have the nicest things, then in their mind, they really are wondering why they need a job. So this one is not so much a when you have a house of your own, you can get nicer stuff. Instead, this is a, I only value this activity so much because I have other obligations. But if you value this activity more, then I would suggest you invest your time to earn money to pay for the upgrades. This helps them understand that they have the power to change their circumstances and that we believe in their ability to do so. Like, we're proud of them. We're not holding them back. We think it's great. You want a better bat? Go get a job. Bats were big for us. You're like sun-played baseball and you had like a fall season and a spring season and there were kids that he played with who got a new baseball bat, whatever was top of the line for that season. So a couple bats a year, maybe three bats here, always the best, the best, genius one. We always, we know, gave our son a budget. We said, "This is your budget for baseball. If you're going to upgrade your bat, the upgrade on that is on you. If you want to get two bats in a year, that's fine. But the second bat is fully on you." And he learned, A, about what his priorities were. And B, he learned if he wanted to get something nice, he could go out and work that. So he learned some responsibility there. Right, and so this is a tangent on gratitude, but the thing of it is, if we would have bought Jack the nicest bat for that season, and you know, we would have saved and, you know, made a real sacrifice in our family to get him top of the line bat. Woo! $500 bat. He would have been thrilled. So excited. He would have gone in that season. He would have hit that bat. He would have done blah, blah, blah. But the next season that came around, sure enough, some other parent fell for whatever marketing ploy that says you have to have the best and the brightest. So that parent would have bought that kid a newer bat than what Jack had. So instantly Jack would once an upgrade, right? And so that sacrifice, we're only the hero for one season, then after that he's turning around with his hands out. Yeah, you're there for like two weeks. Right. But if he bought the bat, then he understands the work that went into it. And he is far more likely to be happy with that bat for longer. Please excuse our dog as he is now digging on the carpet to make a mess. He's making a bet. He's making a bet. So you go back to the sleep. You woke up. He's now digging. Gonna go back there. Hey, bro. We're in the middle of the podcast here. Okay. Well, let him live us alive. You're in the BP at World Headquarters Recording Studio. Stop it. All right. Well, those are good points, Charlotte. Let's talk about one more. And that's around streaming platforms. Ah. It's interesting because, you know, not everything is a physical beer, sometimes it's just like a service, but it's still something that kids are asking for. Right. So this is another great time to let them think about what their future will look like. Right. You can say something like, in our house, we are only paying X number of dollars to be entertained by a screen. Your house rules might be different. And that's one of the best parts of being an adult. Being in charge. They don't even, you don't even have to say if you go get a job, you can pay for Netflix. It can be like in our house, these are our rules. The good news is you don't always have to live in our house. You can go and be an adult and have your own rules and just cast a vision for their future in a way that helps them see, I mean, I was happy to get out of my mom's house because I wanted to live my own life, right? We want to put that out there for them. It's also important that we are kind of consistent with our messaging. If you're arguing with your children around the time they spend on video games or the time they spend watching TV, and then you've got every single streaming package, you're giving like you're asking, you're creating the problem, don't incentivize the thing that you argue about. It's a terrible idea. All right. So we may have time for one more for quick about it. That is like room decor, because I know like when I met you, one of your favorite things to do was like redesign your room. That was a big thing for you. I had the same room since I was like six to when I went to high school. Yeah. Well, now redesign means I just moved my bed around a lot. But if you had money to go and upgrade with wall paints and chandeliers and all the things. Of course I would have. Oh, and a heartbeat. Yes. It's not pretend that you were just going to furniture around. That's all you had to do. Yes. You're going kids to have extravagant room decor. So remember, there's 20 of these and we're just picking a few of them and room decor is one allowing them to have this fancy room will set unrealistic expectations for their future living standards. Right. When they leave home, they may not. How do it dorm? When they leave home, they may not be able to afford the same level of comfort immediately. Which can be a little bit disheartening, right? Like, their home is more cushy than the place that they are moving to. You know, if you're already kind of intimidated about the future, then leaving a place that's way more comfortable than they were moving to will just add to that anxiety. So by giving them more modest decor, not having the world's most comfortable mattress, the world's most comfortable pillows. Biggest TV. Yep, not having a bathroom that's attached to their room, right? We encourage them to work towards creating their own ideal living spaces, appreciating the effort it takes to achieve that. Let them see, hey, when you get a house, you know, you could have a master bedroom with a bathroom like you can get wallpaper. You can get that upgraded light fixture, chandelier, television. Right, right, right. If it's so cushy at our house, can we really be frustrated or surprised that they don't want to leave? Right, so this gets back to this idea of we all know men and women who picked high school. They had their best clothes then, they had their nicest car, they were on the nice vacation, like high school was their glory years. Our job as parents is not to have our kids speak in high school, but to peek in adulthood where they're driving and striving to kind of build a life that they're excited about. Right, by not giving our kids the top of the line, everything. We teach them the value of hard work and the satisfaction of earning what they desire, right? It motivates them to strive for better. It fosters independence and resilience. They learn to appreciate what they have and understand that achieving a higher standard of living requires effort and dedication. Boom, that's the whole thing. I think you just did it. That's it. That's the story. So we're going to be at a time. Good news. There's a whole list. It's a printable for today's episode. It's 20 items long, which is maybe a new record for us and go back and check our database. Well, it's not like I don't want you to do every one of these. I want you to pick some just to get an idea of, you know, what I'm talking about and how not to, you know, splurge on your kids. All the time. But you can splurge on some things. Yeah, like there's Christmas. There's birthdays. And Christmas, if you celebrate birthdays, like there are opportunities to splurge for your kids as long as they recognize it's a splurge that you made a sacrifice for. Okay. I'm going to encourage you to go to our blog and get the printable. The link to the blog is in our show notes. If you want to get that link sent to you weekly, just sign up for, sign up on our website. Then subscribe with the link and you'll be good to go. And we'll talk to you next week and until then, go be great parents. Thanks guys. Bye. 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. And 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. I'll see you right back here next week. (upbeat rock music)
