Money and wealth can be a hard topic of discussion with children. Kip Kolson, President of Family Wealth Leadership and author of “You Can Have It All—Wealth, Wisdom, and Purpose” shares principles and actionable steps that help teach children of all ages how to value and manage money.
Kip will answer questions like:
- How early can I start teaching my children about money?
- Is it too late for my older children?
- How do I keep wealth from devastating my family?
- Walk away with confidence in how to teach your children proper stewardship of money and be one step closer to creating a stronger family.
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Watch the video here:
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining our Upside Avenue Educational Webinars Series. This series is developed with your input. We surveyed our investors and followers to find out what financial and investment topics everyone is interested in learning about. And then we look for subject matter experts all over the country who can speak on these topics in hopes of providing you with the knowledge and confidence to discover your Upside. So, watch your email for information on our next webinar and we’ll also share it on our social media channels on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So, today we are so grateful to have a speaker who has helped many individuals, business owners, and families discovered their life’s purpose through proper stewardship of what he calls true wealth. He spent 15 years in commercial real estate space before he moved into wealth management in 1993. His firm, Family Wealth Leadership, has helped people discover and refine, their personal value and service to others in order to maximize their significance to their family and to the world, and has shared many of these strategies. In his book: You Can Have It All; Wealth, Wisdom and Purpose; and in his spare time, he is busy being a grandfather, attending all his grandchildren’s soccer, baseball, and basketball games. Although probably not right now, with-with the pandemic that were experiencing. So, without further ado, please help me welcome our friend from Family Wealth Leadership: Kip Kolson. Welcome, Kip, how are you doing with sheltering in place?
Kip: Well, as you just mentioned, with the exception of going through grandchildren sports withdrawal and having to cut my hair ’cause I couldn’t get a barber. Things are great.
Jessica: Good, well,
Kip: I normally have a little more hair than I have right now.
Jessica: Well, I’m really, really excited about this topic about teaching children about money. I’ve got two sons in their early 20s, you know, they’re starting their life on their own now and, you know, I want to make sure that they know how to manage their money and be able to take care of themselves. But not only that, especially after we’re gone, I want to make sure that their kids are taken care of and-and the future generations. And, so, my so I’m really excited about this topic.
Kip: Thank you and let me start by focusing a little bit on you. You talked a little bit about it on your introduction as you’re looking at our logo there, I really want the audience to focus on those three words at the bottom: service, stewardship, and significance. Our Family Wealth Leadership, we really start from the point of view that it’s not about the wealth. It’s not about the money and the possessions. What it’s really about is the people in a family and we believe that everybody has this desire to be significant. The question is, what is that? Well, significance is not the same as success. Success can be temporary, whereas significance is permanent and ongoing and you also need to understand that significance is not something you can do by yourself. It requires other people and that leads us to the service portion of what is on the screen here and service is how we start this process where we try to sit down with people to identify what is the value that they can bring to the world, recognizing that everybody is unique and everybody has different values and talents and abilities. And then, as you indicated, a few minutes ago, it’s the stewardship of what we call the 4T’s of True Wealth, and I don’t have time to get into the detail. But the 4Ts of True Wealth, as we define them, are a person’s: Time, Talent, Training, and Treasures. So, if they can properly steward their time, talent, training and treasures in order to produce the service and the values that they can provide the world, then they can potentially achieve significance.
Jessica: Perfect wonderful.
Kip: So, let’s start with this little proverb at the top of this blue circle: shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations, and that’s become pretty popular in the financial industry because what it’s defining is a rule, basically, almost a law that says: that 70% of wealth. Will be lost every time it moves from one generation to the next. And again, that has been proven throughout history in every society, in every country in the world. So, it’s not a question of if it’s pretty much going to happen unless the family takes steps to overcome that law. It’s also true that 70% of businesses, family businesses are out of business after the first generation, and only 3% survived to the third generation. So, let’s take a look at kind of what that looks like this far as the numbers are concerned. So, for every $1,000,000 of net worth that a family has when they transfer it to their children and that 70% kicks in, that means they’re only going to have $300,000 to play with. And when they transfer it to the great grandkids that 70% kicks in and again, now they only are going to have a $90,000 and by the end of the great, great, great-great grandkids. They’re going to have zero. That’s the point, and that’s what we’re trying to overcome. It is true that the greatest transfer of wealth, and when I say the greatest transfer, the estimate is somewhere between 30 to $40 trillion is going to be going from this generation to future generations. The problem is that that those generations have not acquired the values, the principles, the skills and experience necessary to be good stewards. And part of the problem is what I just define. These children are growing up in a world where they are ill prepared to deal with money and finance and investments in a lot of cases, they don’t-even-they can’t tell a mutual fund from a checkbook, so, they really don’t have the skill set. But there’s a bigger issue and it’s something in our industry we call affluence. And the idea is it’s like a disease like the flu, but it’s a disease that is created by wealth where mom and dad because they can afford to do everything and pay for everything; they keep throwing money at every issue in the family and as a result, he’s children grow up in a world of entitlement. So, let’s take a look at what entitlement looks like.
–[a recording begins]–
Dr. Phil: You wrote into me, tell me what you wanted me to get straight with your mom.
[guest on Dr. Phil’s show]: I want my mom to understand that I can’t live off of $1,000 a month and I grew up on a certain lifestyle. She can’t just take that away from me immediately. If someone took her lifestyle away from her, she wouldn’t like that, and I grew up on it-it’s all I ever know. I can’t deal with this.
Dr. Phil: So, you want me to get her to do — what would be the home run for you?
Guest: I need her to understand that I need at least $2,500 a month.
Dr. Phil: Do you want a G Wagon for your 16th birthday.
Guest: Oh yeah, I need my G Wagon. There’s no question I need it. She wants to give me Mercedes C Class. I will accept that car. I would – no-no…
Guest’s mother: –start off with a Honda or Toyota and then barely get–
Guest: I will be happy with that car.
Dr. Phil: B*tch.
Guest: –but the thing is I want my G Wagon. I want my G Wagon.
Dr. Phil: Really, a C class?
Guest’s mother: So we started with like a Honda or Toyota. I got a start with a Toyota–
Guest: Absolutely not! I will not be driving anything that can be considered an Uber X. Uber Lux and above.
Dr. Phil: My car doesn’t cost $231,000.
Guest: Why not? I mean, why doesn’t it?
Dr. Phil: That just seems like an exorbitant amount to spend on a car. It justs seemed foolish to me. I wouldn’t, I just wouldn’t spend it on the car.
Guest: Well, I-I want to, we’re talking about me here. This is my show.
Dr. Phil: You need to work out something where she becomes productive and makes a contribution to society instead of taking from society.
Guest’s mother: I think the best thing would be to start with a job.
Guest: No.
Dr. Phil: Yeah, absolutely. She needs a job.
Guest: No! No!
Dr. Phil: You need a job.
Guest: No, I don’t want a job.
Dr. Phil: Well, I know.
Guest: It’s just so much work. I’m tired from work, I don’t wanna do that.
–[recording ends]–
Kip: So, this this quote here, I think everybody should memorize. It says: every time you give something to your children you take something else away. What is your giving depriving your children of? So, just I’ll ask you a question as you watch that video. Who was the villain?
Jessica: Well, the daughter’s attitude is very villainous. I don’t know if you that’s where you’re going with it, though.
Kip: Yeah, I think again, it’s really easy for us to take a look at that young lady and cast the blame on her. But I think we have to remember what happened here is: the parents, obviously, if they’re giving her $2,500 a month as a 15 year old. They’ve trained this young lady to be who she is today and that’s really the point and the second question I have is: what did their giving deprive this young lady of? And I would submit to you they’ve taken away her self-confidence. So, what’s going to happen, heaven forbid, but let’s assume for a minute after the parents pass away, and for whatever reason, all of the wealth is lost and now this young lady has to actually go out and survive on her own. She’s not going to do well. So, go ahead and advance. So, let’s look at a very simple situation: in this case we have two 6th grade girls. They come home from school one day with notes to their parents saying that the school is trying to raise some money for some additional school supplies, and mom and dad they hand the note to mom and Dad. Now Mom and Dad have a choice. So, let’s assume for a minute that the first set of parents do. Unfortunately, what I think most parents would probably do, and that’s they. They write a check and they give it to her to take back to the school. But let’s assume that the second parents say you know what honey, we could write a check, but wouldn’t be a lot better if this came from you. So, let’s figure out how we can give you the opportunity to raise sufficient funds to give to the school and this is a proverb that underlies everything we do here at family wealth, leadership: “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Please focus on that first sentence. It says train a child in the way he should go. It does not say in the way the parents want him to go in the way the parents want to dictate that he should go or the way the parents want to manipulate him to go. So, let’s-so I took a look at something really very simple that I think most everybody’s probably experienced some point in time in their life, and that’s a lemonade stand. And I like the idea of the lemonade stand, because if you think about it, it’s really what I would call a micro business. And as a business it needs all the things that a business needs to do well. First of all, it’s gotta develop a plan so mom and Dad have to sit down with their daughter and start looking at all of these issues. And one of those issues is location. Well, are we going to set up on the front lawn or do we want to go up on the street corner where we potentially have more traffic? And then there’s the question of design. Are we going to get really fancy or do we want to keep it simple? Because if we get fancy, we’re going to spend a little bit more money. That’s going to increase your costs. If we do go fancy well, then we gotta go down to let’s call it Home Depot. We gotta get some lumber, some nails so we gotta do-we deal with the materials but then we also have to deal with the supplies. Well, we need lemons. We need sugar. We’re probably going to need some ice to keep everything cold. We may need a ice chest so we can transport the lemonade and we need cups and we need a pitcher to keep it in so we can pour it. And then there’s the hours of operation. Well, for example, what day of the week do we want to do this and what time of day? Or do we want to do it maybe two days? So, for example, maybe we do it on a Friday and we catch the coming home traffic at 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Or maybe we go to lunch time, or on Saturday, maybe we set it up again in the late afternoon when it’s warm and people are out jogging walking their dogs. You know, just walking the kids. And then we have to differentiate between the fixed in the variable costs where the lemonade stand is the fixed cost. The variables would be the lemons, the sugar and so forth, and obviously variable cost means if you can sell more lemon lemonade, you gotta have more lemons. The biggest issue is how do we price lemonade? I mean is it a dollar, a cup and I guess it depends on the size of the cup and if you don’t have a profit margin in there at the end of the day, you’re not going to have anything to give to the school and then they have to determine how, what, how they’re going to accept payments. Now, Lemonade stand is certainly not going to have debit and credit card capabilities, but even on the cash. They have to put money in the till so, they can make change and they need to know what dominations. So, the point is there these are really just good financial principles of learning how to make change and how do you know. Count out your money and, so-and then a big one is marketing. How do we get the word out that we’re even selling lemonade? So, are we just going to put a sign on the stand itself? Or maybe do we want to pass out Flyers in the neighborhood, go door to door, or do we want to have somebody that’s walking up and down the street with a sign? And then there’s the financing? And there’s really three options here. The first is they can robe their Piggy Bank. Now, I doubt that a 6th grader is probably going to have enough money to cover the cost of all the materials and the supplies. So, Jessica, what’s the next normal thing that they do?
Jessica: Ask parents for money.
Kip: Yeah, right. But if you think about that, isn’t that in essentially the same as if the mom and Dad had just written the check directly to the school to begin with? So better to actually create it as a loan. Now again, this isn’t because Mom and Dad are greedy. The point is, it’s an opportunity to teach children that when they get it out into the real world, there’s some things that are not going to be able to afford, and they’re going to have to go to the bank or go to a lender and borrow money to buy their house / their car. So, the point is not again. That mom and Dad are trying to take advantage of the situation. They’re just trying to teach the children how to handle debt. Then the third opportunity, potentially, is: the young lady may say, well, you know what I can turn this into a joint venture and I can go get three or four of my friends to robe their Piggy Bank and we’ll create this little business to sell lemonade. And then of course they have to implement and the real I really want to focus on that little phrase there, make it a family project. Again, part of what we’re trying to do is bring the family together and my-dad can help if they decide to build a stand. He can help that or even set up the card table or a folding table and mom is going to help with making the lemonade. But I can assure you that 20 to 30 years later, there’s going to be a time when everybody is sitting around the table when somebody is going to say, hey, remember when we did this or when they have to deal with their children in a similar situation, they’re going to be able to say–well, here’s how we handle that problem when I was your age. And of course, then there’s the operations that gotta deal with sales, accounting, manufacturing and then ultimately have to close down the business. So, what are we going to do with the stand? What do we have with the leftover assets – they probably have maybe some leftover lemons and so forth. If there was a joint venture or debt in place, if you will, they gotta replace that. And then they gotta deal with distributing out the profits. Excuse me. So, looking at these two parents. What child do you think probably will have a much better foundation in preparation for life when she gets out into the real world? And I’d like to think it was the child that was given opportunity. An opportunity is the keyword here, because everything in life is really an opportunity. But it’s also a learning opportunity. So, really think about what you can do to give your children opportunity rather than just handing him a check now it’s going to be a lot more difficult as you can tell, creating that lemonade stand took some work and effort than writing a check, but it will be well worth it. And whole point is: uncertainty is the product of a lack of preparation. And when these children grow up and get out into the real world, I mean, let’s face it, we all know there are no certainties in the world. Every day has new challenges and there’s trials and errors. And sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail. But with preparation, even though it will not eliminate uncertainty, it can provide us the weapons and the confidence to conquer and better prepare the children when they get-get out into the real world. So, I will turn it back to you at this point, Jessica.
Jessica: Great, thank you. Please use the Q&A function everyone to ask your questions. And while you’re putting your questions in, I have a question — so my kids are, you know, college age kids. They’re in their early 20s. Is it too late for them? There they are adults now.
Kip: Yeah, no, it’s a great question and-and the simple answer is, it’s never too early and it’s never too late. But let me use a relatively simple example and I will use your family, ’cause I do know you have two children. Let’s assume for a moment that your older son, who has graduated from college, maybe with an MBA degree. He’s gone out into the world. He’s been very successful at the job that he’s had, but he comes to you one day and he says, you know, mom and Dad. I’m really at that point where I want to have my own business. I know I’m going to inherit some money sometime in the future, but I can’t wait 20 or 30 years and I need capital because I’m going to have to hire some people. I’ve gotta buy equipment. I’ve gotta rent space. It would sure be great if I could get an advance if you will on my inheritance. And I need about let’s call it $200,000 to get started. Now at that point, you and your husband, I would imagine would probably be thinking, well, you know, he’s a good kid. This could be really great for him. We think he could be successful. I think we should consider this now. I know your boys are really good boys, but let’s assume for a moment that the younger one. He really barely got out of high school. He really has never had a job. I live in California, so, listen–he’s the surfer type that he likes really likes to be down on the beach every day with all of his buddies. But at that point when he hears about his older brother getting this advanced, what’s he going to do?
Jessica: Oh, I hear a lot of kicking and screaming. No fair, I’m just, you know, jealous reaction probably
Kip: Exactly-exactly and at that point you and your husband are in a very difficult position. So, for example, the three choices that you actually have is again, if you give it to the first son and not to the second son, well, that’s going to create disharmony in the family. You could give it to both. The problem is if you give it to the son who has not learned how to produce and be a good steward. It’s basically like giving it to that young lady in the video. The chance that that 70% statistical kick in is that he unfortunately potentially would lose it all. Or the third alternative is you say you know what I’m not going to do anything ’cause this is kind of a no win situation. Did that solve the problem? No, because the older son now is like he’s looking at his brother and saying, you know, you’re always messing up my deals so-so, that’s not a good situation either. So, let’s take you and your husband out of the picture for a moment and let’s replace you with something we call the Family Enterprise Holding Company. The industry calls it a family office. And there’s thousands of family offices throughout the world, but let’s assume for a moment again that we do our create this, and this is an actual entity. It has a legal structure, and the purpose is: it retains the assets of the family in this business, and the reason we like calling it a holding company is because of that implication that the purpose here is to take those invest for-those assets and keep investing and investing him to grow them overtime to give to-to build more wealth for the entire family. So, if we do that now, when your older son comes in, it’s like going down to the bank. He’s gotta produce a balanced or a business plan, a marketing plan. He’s got to demonstrate how he can repay the loan, ’cause it’s again, it’s got to be repaid. This isn’t a gift. Or it could be that the family holding company that is made up of all of the family, they acted as a board of directors, so, the board of directors may include you, your husband, both sons, and then you might probably want to have a couple of non-family member third parties as part of that board of directors and their purpose is to review all the investments. They’re like a loan committee and an investment committee, and if this makes sense and they can see how it will continue to build the assets and the value of the family holding company. Then your son potentially gets the loan. So, but let’s go to your other son, your younger son, so, he now can come in potentially and ask again, but he’s gotta jump through the same hoops. And if he doesn’t want to jump through the same hoops, then he doesn’t get the money. But now, that’s his decision. That’s not your decision, so, he can’t turn around again and say, well, that’s not fair. The second alternative might be that you would then be able to say, you know, let’s get you tested. Let’s find out what you could really be good at. And then we will get you trained, we’ll pay some money to do that, and we’ll try to help you be successful. Now again, that doesn’t work. I’m not suggesting that’s Utopia and that it works all the time, but at least now the-the point of it is he’s made the decision. You didn’t make that decision. And let me in, closing cover up just a couple of more benefits of why we like doing this type of thing instead of giving traditional state planning, is what I call, divide and divide, which is usually most estate planning is done by math, you know — I’ve got five children, everybody gets 20%. The problem with that it almost encourages that 70% statistic to kick into some of those kids will lose the wealth. So, to that point the heirs will potentially be even wealthier if we keep it in the family. Because remember, the heirs are actually still the stakeholders. So, when Mom and Dad passed away, they now will become the owners of the holding company. So, they potentially will have more wealth. And if we would give it away and have that 70% statistic kick in. There’s also something that I that I call mass and influence and that idea is that- if you have $10 million versus $1,000,000. You can do a lot more with $10 million and people look at you a little differently. You know if you go down to the bank to–because you want to borrow money and you only have $1,000,000 and you-you can put the bank versus $10 million. You’re probably going to get the loan a lot easier with $10 million. And then there’s opportunities that could be created because the families investing in other things, specially if they’re doing like private equity deals or buying companies or starting companies. And again, I realize I’m talking about big stuff here. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that big and I’m thinking of it, let me also say: for the family that can’t afford to do all of this very fancy stuff, even if it’s a lot simpler, we can still set up what I would call a virtual family office. So, it doesn’t have a formal structure, but the principles and the methodology’s can still all be applied even in a much simpler situation. So, anyhow, there’s these potential for the child getting involved in, for example, a business that the family office buys. Diversification. Well, using my 10 million 1,000,000 analogy, if you can invest $1,000,000 that maybe allows you to get in two nice investments versus $10 million, you could get into 10 to 20. And then there’s access to a large pool of wealth that all of the heirs and the children still have in that if they need to buy homes if they need to go to college and get educated if they need to buy a business, they can still come to the family office and present their proposal. But the point is, it will fund what is needed. It won’t fund all of their wants like a G class Mercedes. And then there’s the relational-relationship advantages. You know, in today’s world, families are so dispersed in many cases throughout the world that’s really difficult for the family to come together. Maybe they get together at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I will tell you with my two sons who all live in the same area. We have not spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together since they got married, ’cause there’s now there’s all the other families that are involved. But my point is, if you have this business, it has to have at least an annual business meeting to determine what we’re going to do in the future and-and see the results of what they’ve done in the past and make decisions. Well, now we can turn that family or that business meeting into a family event. So, for example, if the families is, you know what we’re going to go to Disney World this year. That’s where we’re going to have the family business meeting. Well, the 1st morning – 4 hours in the morning would say before lunchtime is the business, but then the rest of the afternoon and evening can be about fun. So again, the idea is we’re bringing the family together for opportunities for family bonding and, you know, a lot of times in today’s world sometimes nephews and nieces don’t know other nephews and nieces and cousins. Access to wisdom and knowledge and innovation. Not unfortunately, in today’s world, sometimes see the seniors have kind of been put on the shelf and they’ve got this wealth of information, and wisdom that they’ve accumulated over the years and nobody’s asking them, you know, how do I tap into that? But likewise, we have this younger generation that’s much more innovative. Much more advanced. It would be good for the older portion of the family to have access to that information and experience. The biggest factor in families is being destroyed by the wealth is a lack of communication. So again, what we’re doing? We’re creating an environment for communication and managing expectations because two people can look at the same situation and come up with completely different ideas of what they should expect. But this way we have open communication. We have the opportunity to put all the problems and I guarantee you, based on my experience in working families, they’ve got issues that go back to childhood, but they’ve been sweeping under the rug that when it comes time for mom and dad when they pass on to distribute the estate if it’s done normally, the people sitting around the table will be the kids and their lawyers and it will become a big-huge battle. And the other issue is trust. As communication goes down, trust in families goes down with it. And those are the two issues that hopefully we can start to address by having these conversations. So that’s it
Jessica: Great and I-you know, just to summarize, I think, you know, if I’m understanding correctly, if we take that family office model and then from a more practical standpoint, basically what you’re-you’re suggesting is to have regular, you know, family meetings, family, you know within your, you know, Mom, Dad, and kids have family meetings, establish you know as like a family office would establish what the overall goals. Are you know for spending the money? So as a family you would meet with your kids, you know even at a very young age. Hey, were, you know, planning on going vacation or you know we-we want to do this and involve those kind of discussions with the kids so they get exposed to communicating about money and-and having a part in making a decision on how to spend the money within the family. Is that basically what you’re doing?
Kip: Yeah, that was very intuitive. And a lot of times when we’re talking to families, we get this responsive-well, I don’t want the children to know how much money we have, ’cause I’m afraid it’s going to spoil them and there it’s gonna disincentivize him and the example or the metaphor I use for that is it’s a little bit like let’s assume that the family has a family airplane and Dad is the pilot, mom’s the copilot and all the kids are loaded in the back. Well, if Dad has a heart attack and nobody else knows how to fly that airplane. That planes gone into the ground. Wouldn’t it have been better to have a situation where everybody has their pilots license, if you will, and has learned they know how to read a compass, they know how to read an altimeter, they can get back to the airport and land the plane successfully. Well, it’s very exactly what you’re just talking about. Why not bring your children into this process right now? Even in a simpler you know. Again, for you with-with children that are in their 20s. All these decisions they should know what they’re ultimately going to be responsible for, and we should-and you should have those conversations now because part of it is in those conversations when you bring up issues, you’ll also start to see which of the children are going to be responsible and which are not. Because again, if especially if you are talking about significant amount of wealth. You may not want one of the children to have all that wealth, ’cause you know it will screw him up and you would prefer to have the child who can be more responsible, even if it means that child taking care of — that last comment. It is impossible to create documents, wills, and trust that can anticipate all of the issues that your children and grandchildren will face sometime in the future. ’cause you don’t know yet who’s going to get married, who’s not going to get married? You don’t know what’s going to happen is-was who’s going to have children or not have children you don’t know about physical issues? You know grandchildren, great grandchildren could be born with issues where they need help and they may need more help than somebody – you don’t know which one is a doctor and one is a teacher. Well, does the doctor really need the same amount of inheritance that the teacher may need, or a missionary or somebody like that? So, that’s-your-that was a great question.
Jessica: Perfect, we’ve got some questions from our viewers here. One question is, are there any reading recommendations or maybe even tips that you have that–have that you have for parents on this topic on how to have this conversation with young adults?
Kip: Well, I’ll be a little self-serving and say yeah read my book. That was the whole purpose of writing the book, but yeah, there are plenty of people out there that another one that I would suggest that you read is called: Preparing Heirs. That’s H-E-I-R-S. Preparing Heirs. It was written by a gentleman. He has since passed away. He was here locally in my area, Roy Williams, and he’s got a coauthor, but it is really kind of one of the best books to read. I will tell you this-and again, I know you’re going to flash up my information here shortly. If anybody has some-those kind of questions, because again I I’d like to go through my-my library and I can give you some more names and titles. I’d be happy to respond with an answer to those kind of questions and send you whatever information I can
Jessica: Perfect. One person wants you to comment on how do you think the current education system has helped or created this current cultural problem of kids not understanding how to properly handle money.
Kip: I will be unfortunately a little political and biased at that point. I think they’ve done a terrible job. The truth is you don’t learn anything in college. I mean now, maybe if you take a business course or an accounting course, something like that, yes, then you might get a sense of these things. But again, remember so many of these kids, unfortunately, they come out of colleges today with degrees that really aren’t going to prepare them for the world. I mean, even in today’s world, especially on-because of our technology, they may be able to come out of college as a-a good programmer, but that really doesn’t tell him how they are going to be able to survive in life and what kind of decisions they have to make. I really believe that-and it kind of is everything I’ve been talking about, this is really a family issue. The other issue to your point and to that question is-the colleges, the universities today, the education system. I will tell you, I believe is not teaching your children the values and principles that work out in the real world. That’s gotta be a family issue. You have to—I’ll use a simple example. One of the other things we like to Do, if there are if the family is open to it, is create a Family Foundation. ’cause we’re really big fans on getting the family involved in philanthropy and the reason for that is not only it doesn’t do good, obviously, for the causes that you’re funding, but more importantly,it’s the values that it teaches your children that it’s not about you. Again, going back to that video, no, it’s you don’t get a $2500 allowance, so, you can go have a fancy car. Let’s take that $2500 and let’s go help some other people and we’re really also big fans of what I call boots on the ground philanthropy. It’s not just about writing checks. I would much rather see a family go on a mission trip. Go-go down into whatever their-their mid-city is to help feed the homeless. Or maybe to help go-again, to Africa or whatever. Help drill a water well or go down into Mexico to help build an orphanage or a hospital or a church I mean–the value again going back to my Disney World example: I can guarantee you if the family takes a vacation to Disney World versus the family going off to again a foreign country to help feed children or whatever the causes as a group, again, 20 or 30 years from now, you’re not gonna be talking about Disney World, they’re gonna always remember what the family did when they went and saw the smile on children’s faces when they were had something to eat or they were able to put clothes on their back or give them medication-medicines so…
Jessica: Perfect.
Kip: Did I answer the question.
Jessica: I think so, yes, thank you. We have one more question here: what are your services for parents? Do you have these services in India an in-in case it’s you know, how can we start-start exploring in India? Wow, that’s a great question I have-I don’t have a client in India yet, although I can tell you through my LinkedIn, I’m pretty well connected to almost every country in the world right now and India is certainly one of those. And India is quite honestly, I do have some connections through my LinkedIn of people that are doing this in India and other countries. I will tell you this though, we have the advantage of what we’re doing right now in that –because of technology we can have, we can work with families everywhere. I mean we have-we do have clients right now. In other States and obviously we can’t be traveling back and forth all the time. Now, if it’s a situation where we have to get heavily into the family coaching part of what we do, then we probably would get on an airplane and go and spend time with the family. But a lot of times it’s a lot of it can still be done virtual-virtually if you will, through the kind of things we’re not doing with zoom, web access, and so forth.
Jessicae: Perfect,
Kip: Let me-let me add one more thing while I’m thinking of it: I wanna go back to. Yeah, I talked about giving your children. There’s five phases of what happens in giving. The first gift is what we call appreciation. That’s that unexpected gift that you get, and you’re really thankful for it. The second gift is what I call anticipation. And that’s the idea, well, I didn’t know, Gee, I got a gift last year. There’s no reason that I should get a gift this year, but maybe so-and-so will give still give me a gift. And then when it shows up you’re still appreciative. Then we moved to expectation, while expectation is that point where now you expect the gift. And if you don’t get it, you’re really disappointed and you know again, all of us husbands know what happens when you forget your-your anniversary. That doesn’t work really well. That’s an expected gift and then we get to the level of entitlement which is kind of like we were talking about with that young lady on the video. And then the fifth level. Is dependency. And that’s when it’s really destructive and we’ve come up with 10 questions that you can apply every time you give a gift that could kind of help you sort that out, or whether this gift is going to help or hurt somebody. And again, if anybody wants to email me and ask me to send them those 10 questions and what I just talked about, I’d be happy to do that.
Jessica: Perfect and so I think you know, taking the-your lessons from a lemonade stand. I think the first actionable step for-for our listeners as parents to take is really just have that family meeting with your children no matter what age they are and determine you know as a family what is our purpose for spending the money. And you know what-what are-what are? Why is on how we want to spend our money and then come up with a plan on how to earn money if it’s not being, you know, just given help them learn how to basically could develop a plan to earn that money and-and give them loans if they need to, with the expectation of paying it back so, they can Start learning those, you know, Business management skills on how to handle their money in the future.
Kip: Every opportunity is a learning opportunity.
Jessica: Alright, so, our first step is communication with our family.
Kip: Absolutely again, that’s the whole point. That communication is creating that opportunity for that open communication and discussion, and again to manage expectations.
Jessica: Right. Well, thank you, Kip, for joining us and helping us learn a little bit more on how to have you know those difficult conversations about money with their kids and to ensure that the wealth, you know, we pass on to them have a greater chance of lasting through the generations and thank you to our listeners for joining us. If you’d like to contact Kip, we’ve shared his contact information on the screen, an if you’d like the content we’ve been sharing with you or have suggestions on other financial or investment topics you’d like us to cover, let us know. We will find the subject matter experts, like Kip, who can speak on these topics. So, watch your email for our next webinar and we’ll also share the information on social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. And we want you to discover your Upside with Upside Avenue. So, we provide access to professionally managed diversified portfolio of income producing multi-family real estate for as little as $2000. And you can visit our website upsideavenue.com or send us an email or call us with any questions you might have. Thank you for joining us. Kip, thank you, again
Kip: Thank you.
Jessica: Stay safe everyone and see you next time.
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