Courtney Pullen talks about preparing your children for their financial futures. He describes the challenges of discussing money, the importance of starting those discussions early, and how to share your money values and expectations with your kids. No matter what, he says, it's important to be intentional and open to facilitate these important family conversations.
Angela and Jaleigh speak with Courtney Pullen about preparing your children for their financial futures, a common situation for members of the sandwich generation. Courtney describes the challenges of discussing money, the importance of starting early, and how to share your money values and expectations. No matter what, he says, it's important to use intentionality and openness to facilitate those family conversations.
Courtney is the author of Intentional Wealth, a family psychologist, and President of the Pullen Consulting Group. He has more than 25 years of experience in individual and family coaching, business and management consulting, leadership development, communication and team building.
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02:10 - Courtney’s journey
05:09 - How to approach taboo topics
10:10 - When to start money discussions
15:49 - Let each family member have a role
21:22 - Aligning money values
26:46 - COVID’s impact
35:43 - Today’s action items
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Find Courtney Pullen on LinkedIn
Find Angela Pittman Taylor on LinkedIn
Find Jaleigh White on LinkedIn
[00:00:00] Angela: Welcome to Invested, advancing Women in Work and Wealth. I'm your host, Angela Pittman Taylor. On this season, we're having candid conversations about the Sandwich Generation. This show is a resource for women navigating this season of life and the changes it brings to personal lives, family health, and wealth.
[00:00:18] Join me and my co-host, Jaleigh White, this season's subject matter expert. Jaleigh is the director of Baird Family Wealth, and an expert within Baird's private wealth management business. Hi Jaleigh.
[00:00:29] Jaleigh: Hey, Angela, so excited to be here. Looking forward to it.
[00:00:33] Angela: Jaleigh has made it her life's mission to make sure multi-generational families can access the resources they need to navigate major life transitions. We're glad you're here. Jaleigh, we've had some fantastic conversations over this season. What stuck out to you the most?
[00:00:50] Jaleigh: I think it was just how many of us are in this season of life. As we all talked about different things going on in our lives, about the commonality we all have with those issues and just really amazed at the insights about what's really there to help us as we go through some of those issues. We're not the first, we won't be the last, but we're all going through it together and the more we collaborate and share, the easier that journey is.
[00:01:18] Angela: I totally agree. And one of the things that really resonated with me was the earlier we start having these conversations, the better. And really normalizing some of those conversations early on and how that can benefit them as time goes on. I really found a lot of these conversations very resonant.
[00:01:34] Jaleigh: every conversation has been engaging. I can't wait for our audience to share in that and hear what we heard and continue on this journey together.
[00:01:43] Angela: Welcome to Invested. We're hosting a five episode miniseries on the sandwich generation. My co host for this miniseries is Jaleigh White. Jaleigh how are you today?
[00:01:55] Jaleigh: I'm doing great, Angela. How are you?
[00:01:57] Angela: I'm doing really well and I'm really excited for our conversation today, which is about preparing your kids for your future. And we have another fantastic guest lined up for this discussion.
[00:02:08] Jalee, I'll turn it over to you to introduce them.
[00:02:11] Jaleigh: Thank you. I'm so excited to introduce everyone to Courtney Pullen. Courtney and I have known each other, we'll say for a few decades, and he has been such a help to us in working with our families. And helping our advisors really understand more about family dynamics. And I've just learned so much from him over the years and so excited to have another conversation today on a very important topic. So Courtney, welcome.
[00:02:39] Courtney: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
[00:02:42] Jaleigh: Yeah, this is really going to be fun. And it fits in so well with the sandwich generation. When we're talking about, women, similar to Angela and I that are dealing with COVID 19. Kids and parents and, and really just the role we have in our families on so many topics that we've been talking about throughout all the episodes of this podcast.
[00:03:04] But today just really, I'd say almost the most important one, the critical conversations, around how do we help prepare our kids really for their lives and what it means to be a part of our families.how do we pass on those shared values? But how do we really get them ready for what's to come for the rest of their lives? Just talk to us a little bit before we get into the topic. How'd you get into this business?
[00:03:31] Courtney: Like, did you wake up one day and say, this is my mission in life? Or, did it evolve?The, kind of the quick story on that is, I had a counseling psychology practice in, Denver. And I started transitioning out of that. I accidentally specialized in trauma. And after doing 10 years of that, I decided I was feeling traumatized. So I transitioned into family business consulting at the time, which is a combination, as you can well imagine, between, business dynamics and family dynamics.
[00:04:04] And it just felt like a really a good fit for me. And then probably about seven years into that process, I was approached by a financial advisor at a bank who said, would you be willing to work with our largest client and they are what we call an enterprise family in the business. They don't have an operating family business, but they're multi generational family.
[00:04:30] And I'm like, sure. How hard could it be? I mean, I work with family businesses. It's all the same, right? And then I started doing a little bit of research about how are they different? And that's the first time in my career I encountered that shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves proverb. That basically what happens is the first generation creates the wealth, the second generation maintains it, and the third squanders it.
[00:04:55] Around 80. So that was just a wake up call to me in my career, you know, we've all had these turning points in the career. And that was one for me. I like, I want to be able to make an impact on those families. So. For the last, man, 25, 30 years, that's been what I've focused on primarily. And one of the things I've also learned along the way is that families of significant means struggle with money and all families struggle with money. So, all the things we're going to be talking about on today's podcast will apply, I believe, to all families.
[00:05:37] Jaleigh: I can't think of the number of business owner families that you've really helped us help them, especially when the business is going through a transition where that's trying to move it to the next generation or sell it or grow it to really help make sure that every member of the family is united in that purpose and has those really transparent conversations about it.
[00:06:03] But when we talk about. being intentional about it really starts with some foundational things just about what are the family's shared values and, and I know you do, very structured values retreat, but, but also just things that, it can be more informal conversations around that. How, how do you just even get those conversations started within a family? That maybe money was a taboo subject and never talked about.
[00:06:33] Courtney: See, you're speaking to something I think is really important, which is money is the most taboo topic in our culture. We talk about money less than we do talking about sex, which we don't talk about very much at all. So, anything that's taboo, that's hidden, Has the psychological force to it. So it's so important just to normalize the fact that let's talk about money. Let's talk about what we mean by saving and sharing and spending. And let's talk about what are our expectations, regarding the money. And like you said, just a few minutes ago, starting with the, just the, fundamental foundation of what are our values as a family, what's our mission as a family, and again, you don't have to be a family of significant means to benefit from that.
[00:07:24] All families would benefit from that degree of intentionality to say, let's, let's talk about what do we stand for as a family? And how do we make our, not only identify our values, but live from them and make them overt?
[00:07:39] Jaleigh: one of the places that starts maybe even before you, well, it should be before you talk to your children about it, is making sure the parents agree with each other because they were raised often in very different environments and, over the years of doing this, whether we're talking about retirement planning goals or legacy planning, as advisors, when we ask. So what are your thoughts on this? And you see them look at each other and you're like, Oh my gosh, they have never, ever talked about this topic. We're just stopping the meeting, giving you some homework questions, because it's really important that they I at least come to some agreement on what their intentions are before they start talking to their children and shared with the rest of the family.
[00:08:27] Is that pretty common that we, you know, we're just so busy with life, sometimes these big things we don't talk about until we're actually at the precipice of that door.
[00:08:38] Courtney: Oh, it's so common that I would say it's the norm. I was working with a family recently that I did a, what I call a wealth integration workshop with them. Why we were having that workshop is their children were all living very entitled lives and their parents were just mortified by their, by their behavior.
[00:09:04] So we did this workshop, and I identified what you were just talking about, is the husband, the dad, grew up very poor, so he had a very frugal deprivation mentality about money. Then he marries, so then the mom, her love language was gifts.
[00:09:28] So, of course, what she passes on as her love language for her kids was giving them gifts. So, the kids that were being identified as the problem looked at their parents and said, this has been confusing as heck. Because there's the money messages are so dramatically different from you two.
[00:09:48] And I'm, I'm sitting there thinking, no wonder they're kind of messed up about money because they're getting mixed messages. So the work became, how do we get mom and dad in alignment on the same page?
[00:09:59] Jaleigh: you know, often couples will meet, let's say in their twenties or thirties. So they only know what each other's lives are like then, unless they really are intentional about having discussions about where they came from. My favorite question to ask someone when, when I first start working with them is what was your house like when you were 10? Like who was in it? What did your parents do? How was money discussed? It's like once. I know what their 10 year old house and view of life was, and you kind of understand the lens they view the world through. It's just hard to change once you have that mindset, right?
[00:10:36] Courtney: yes, It is. I love that question. And you're, you're speaking to something really important, which is at 10, that's a very open dynamic time. So you can learn a lot. So often, people come to me when their kids are in their thirties or forties and they're like, well, could you help us? I'm like, well, I'm, I'll, we can sure talk about it, but boy, we should have done this 20 years ago.
[00:11:03] Jaleigh: is there a too early to really start imparting those money values to have discussions with your children? When can you start even introducing principles and thoughts and providing guidance? And
[00:11:19] Courtney: I mean, I don't, I think the earlier the better. I mean, literally, I remember that I'm really dating myself. My daughter is now 34, 35.so this is back before bill pay. I had all my bills out on the coffee table and I'm like sorting through them and paying them and so forth. And my daughter comes up and says, it, it looks at all these papers and I'd like let her look at everything.
[00:11:49] And she saw me write a check for, for her was a large amount. And she says that the house payment, And I said, no, no, no, that's the energy bill. This is the house payment. And she was just mortified about it. So I think those conversations as parents, we need to look for teachable moments. Which is what that was.
[00:12:15] So she was open to the conversation about, let's talk about what this means. What doesn't work is to sit her five year old, seven year old kids down and say, okay, let's talk about money. I bet all three of us did something similar on a family vacation. Is you give, if you have more than one child, you give your kids a certain amount of money and say, hey, this is yours to spend in the vacation how you want.
[00:12:39] And their money personality will emerge. I know with my kids, the girls would be like looking for a deal, waiting to get the best value. They would almost agonize about it. And my son would buy a, like a plastic bat within minutes and be whacking his sisters with the bat. And then his money was ruined or the bat was destroyed after one day. The question becomes, dad, can I have more money because I broke my toy? No, it's natural logical consequences.
[00:13:13] Jaleigh: Isn't that one of the most hardest things to do as a parent, but also one of the most important is to early on, let the children learn from the consequences of their decisions.
[00:13:26] Courtney: Yeah.
[00:13:28] Jaleigh: So hard you wanna go rescue them
[00:13:31] Courtney: So common. I mean, I'm like the two of you. I've, I've had many things I've done in my life and successes and failures and everything in between. And being a parent is the hardest job I've ever had. It's, It's hard to say no, so I can really appreciate that and want to acknowledge that, that I'm an expert in this space, I still struggle with saying no or allowing for those natural consequences.
[00:14:00] My favorite parenting quote is by D. W. Winnicott, who said, The primary job of a parent is to optimally frustrate our child. I just love it.
[00:14:10] Angela: That's fantastic. You know, it's interesting when you were talking about the vacation money. We, we did something similar, for Christmas. Each child from, relatives got a 25 gift certificate to Target. And so we took them to Target and we took them up and down the toy aisle. And similar to what you described, my daughter's nine and my son is six. they're going through and they're making their choices. And then they learned very, interesting things, interesting lessons about sales tax, because they were doing their simple math to try and add things up and they said, well, okay, so this equals 25. And we said, okay, but now you have your sales tax that you have to consider.
[00:14:53] So you've got to put some stuff back so that you can now afford sales tax. And the look on my daughter's face at the injustice of sales tax was just Amazing to just kind of see her, her compute with that. so yes, all these lessons and teachable moments around money, and finding those opportunities to help them not only exercise their math skills, but also add a little bit of finance in there, a little personal finance.
[00:15:20] Courtney: Well, good for you, Angela, that you did it like that, because I would bet a lot of parents would say, Oh yeah, it adds up to 25. I'll cover the sales tax. Then we would have missed that teachable moment. So good job of leaning into it and allowing for it.
[00:15:38] Jaleigh: Yeah. It's, it's hard.
[00:15:39] Courtney: The sad face of your daughter.
[00:15:40] Jaleigh: wait till she gets her first paycheck and she thinks she made X amount per hour and already has it added up. And then so sees all the taxes that come outta it. That's always a rude awakening for, for kids. But it goes back to what Courtney said that we hear so many times, parents that are just appalled that their kids are so entitled.
[00:16:01] They're 30 years old, and they don't have the skills, that come with failure. Knowing what to do when things don't go wrong or when emergencies pop up, how to deal with those basic life skills if you've never had to before.
[00:16:20] So letting them fail, recover is, it's an important part of giving them what they need to, you know, really have successful lives going forward. How do you, courtney would then, you know, start to facilitate conversations in the family so that every person's value is recognized and acknowledged by the other members who may have a very different skill set that they're bringing to the family.
[00:16:53] Courtney: A philosopher by the name of Ken Wilber taught me something 20 years ago that I've used a lot in reference to what you're saying, is he said, that there are eight lines of intelligence. So there's the traditional academic intelligence that we think of often when we think of intelligence. There's emotional intelligence. There's physical intelligence. There's creative intelligence, so forth and so on. So we need to be seeing our kids beyond the traditional form of intelligence to say, who is this person as a human being and do they, can they bring their heart, can they bring their emotionality, their creativity? So we need to emphasize those other more non traditional forms. And really have that be a conversation with the family. What are your gifts that we all bring to this family?
[00:17:52] Jaleigh: It's hard unless you really, and as parents talk about it and, and really, share what you appreciate about each child and help siblings do that as well. It's hard for adult siblings to,
[00:18:08] Courtney: Sure is.
[00:18:09] Jaleigh: do that as well, which kind of brings us to the sandwich generation point of this. While we are talking about talking to our kids and raising kids, some of this also, when you're in that sandwich generation, it's like, how do you talk to your parents when, if you grew up in a family where money was a taboo topic and you've got elderly parents where you really need to learn some of what their wishes are, even where their stuff is.
[00:18:39] How, how do you help them? Understand your intent in, in wanting to be helpful. if, if it's, if you're 60 years old and you've never talked about anything around money with your parents before,
[00:18:55] Courtney: I was really hoping we could get through this podcast without you asking me that question.
[00:19:00] Jaleigh: well, it's, it's
[00:19:02] Courtney: struggling with it right now with my elderly father, 88 years old, and he's never talked about money. He keeps score with money and hasn't been successful financially. And so now as he's aging, he has all this embarrassment about what he doesn't have. And he's, a good candidate of, of scams. So I've had numerous conversations with him about how to protect himself, how to stay on top of that.
[00:19:38] This whole sandwich generation thing, it's like he's sitting there like, hey, but I'm the dad, I shouldn't be happy to tell you about all this stuff. It's like, well, dad, the rules are changing. Part of my commitment to you is to support you. And the purpose that needs to be loud and clear about why am I, I'm not being nosy, I care about you and I want to be able to support you.
[00:20:03] Jaleigh: Absolutely, absolutely. And what you're saying, Courtney, about how hard it is to have those conversations really resonates with me. With my dad, I had similar kind of challenge with, you know, the feeling that he as an authority figure as the head of households, you know, that feeling that like, you know, he had.
[00:20:20] Angela: Earned that position too, as, as the provider for the household for all of those years and really feeling a little bit of a, not really threatened, but, but kind of feeling like maybe it was disrespectful that, you know, his baby girl would come to the house and be asking him, questioning him about these, you know, just like feeling like it was that even no matter how deferential.
[00:20:44] The questions might be put. And it, it's very challenging and, and you know, it, it can lead to a little bit of, of hurt feelings, no matter how, how, how much you, you try to do it in a loving and respectful way. Continuing to work through it and, and not shrinking away from it. Cause it is such an important conversation and to try to move through it. Cause that's the only way is through, is very, very important to do. And ultimately we did get there, but it was, it was not an easy road.
[00:21:19] Courtney: Congratulations on getting there.
[00:21:22] Jaleigh: one topic around families that probably also is not talked about enough, but it is a happier topic is, one around philanthropy and, and starting those conversations early as well of giving not only of your money, but time and talents and having a culture around that. Some of the challenges with it that, that we're seeing is, especially grandparents that are really wanting to, encourage philanthropy and, caring about your community with their grandkids, but sometimes we what their grandkids are passionate about aren't aligned with the values of the grandparents or much different than what they would have do. So how do you navigate some of those conversations about doing good when different people in the family may have a different interpretation of what doing good is?
[00:22:17] Courtney: Boy, that's a big question. I think, in part, it starts by being transparent. I know in my own family and many families I've worked with is that philanthropy and charitable giving was always something that was done in private. So I think it's important to let our kids know at a pretty early age these are the causes that we give to and this is why we give to these causes.
[00:22:43] And ultimately when you start really actively involving the kids is to talk about what is our shared purpose of giving. You know, is it to make a difference in the world? Okay. That's something we can all agree on, but specifically, what areas do we want to be helping out in and have that conversation about, is there any shared purpose that's large enough that encompasses our political differences or our individual differences? So that's what I try to facilitate is how to have those conversations.
[00:23:21] Jaleigh: And I think, you know, up until I'll say that maybe the last five or 10 years, it was fine for it to be personal because the parents do what they want to, but it's the advent of the popularity of donor advised funds, knowing that as advisors, we can see the parents aren't going to give all this money away, most likely in their lifetime, even if it's not a huge amount.
[00:23:46] So used to we'd only have to worry about that in, larger families where they had family foundations, but now because of the tax law changes, it's not uncommon for many, many, many of our clients to have donor advised funds. And when they pass, someone has to continue that giving and figure out what to do, and that means usually the sibling.
[00:24:08] So those conversations are just so much more critical because there's It's going to have to happen. And, so that's why we're trying to facilitate some of those conversations with many more clients than what we used to in the past on a multi generational level.
[00:24:26] Courtney: What relates to that as you're talking is legacy. Is that really to identify, and sometimes legacy is too big of a word for some people, that makes them a little bit uncomfortable. They're really describing what, how is it that you want to be remembered? When, when people think of you, what is it you hope they will be thinking about?
[00:24:50] At your funeral, what are you hoping people will be saying about you because you were in this world? having those conversations is really important to know up front. And with the donor advice fund, if I'm, you know, in charge of that, how can I protect your legacy? Which gives, moves me beyond my point of view about what cause to give to, to how can I be of service to you and your legacy.
[00:25:19] Jaleigh: that's a great way of, Stating it and being able to frame that conversation, for, to have with children and parents, because it's just coming up so much more now.
[00:25:30] It's never too early to start creating a culture of philanthropy and my daughter in law, we have a two year old grandson just told me this weekend, my, grandson and I, he's only two, but we have this family dessert every year. And so I have videos of him when he was five months old. And I said, we're going to do that again this year. She's like, well, this year, I really want him to start to view that as something he gives to other people. So we're coming up with a list of people for him to take it to. And I was just so impressed with her, wanting to instill that culture of giving, for a two year old that this is something we do for others. so it's, yeah,
[00:26:11] Courtney: Oh, that's
[00:26:12] Jaleigh: I, I thought it was, it just warmed, warmed my heart. because it's something my grandmother taught me how to make when, when I was in grade school and we would give to people. But so it, it doesn't always have to be financial of creating that culture of giving.
[00:26:26] Courtney: Yes, absolutely.
[00:26:29] Jaleigh: let's talk about another, big event the last five years and that's COVID. so COVID, we saw impact families a lot. First of all, they started doing a ton of zoom calls. So people that didn't maybe talk to each other in families on a regular basis, when COVID kind of happened, first of all, a lot of families just had to live together, which was, it's bizarre, and it created a new environment for many people. so some really good things came from COVID about connecting families together, but also depending on your age and where you were in school or starting career also was a disruptive time. So how have you seen Courtney in your work with families, seeing things starting to.
[00:27:15] shift or new trends as a result of us all going through that event in, in history.
[00:27:22] Courtney: Early on, I saw, just like you described, it was so interesting, and in my own family, our kids are scattered all over the country, one in Guatemala, so we did weekly Zoom calls, and there was this sense of connection that I just loved, and as a dad, I found myself kind of lingering on longer than maybe I should have, you know, it's like, can we keep doing this?
[00:27:46] It's like, no, come on, dad, we have our lives to attend to. But then seeing how it took a toll on people, and it really, that, I think there's a little bit of a correlation, at least in my experience with my work with families, is that COVID and the political divide in our country has been really hard on families.
[00:28:10] And that's been much more on the surface in the last number of years. And it's taken families a while to heal from it, quite frankly. And a lot of families are just kind of getting the point of saying, at least with the political divide, we just need to agree to disagree here.
[00:28:29] Sorry to kind of combine COVID with a political divide, but it seemed to be kind of hand in hand, in my work with families at least.
[00:28:39] Jaleigh: Now that's, that's good insights and, and just how to help families move past, heal from whatever might've happened in the last, several years.
[00:28:48] Courtney: But if you're in that sandwich generation and starting to age, how and when and how much should you share with your children about your legacy intentions? The word intentionality that we talked at the beginning of this podcast about, and transparency. Those two words come up a lot as I'm listening to your question, is that we need to be very intentional about getting over our reservations, about talking about our wishes, our legacy, the money we have, what we, how we want it to be used.
[00:29:23] We need to be involving our kids earlier than we would think in those conversations. And one of the things that I've noticed about. What we're talking about with that sandwich generation is that what's happened with my dad has been a teaching point for me with my kids about my wife and I. As I've said, we've sent all of our kids down and said, we've updated our will.
[00:29:48] Here's what to expect. Here's what it's going to look like. Here's how it's going to be divided. We have a vacation home, for example, that the kids love. I bring a bias to this, which is families argue about vacation homes once the parents die. A lot. Some of my living is on that big address. So we sit down and explain to everything that we're going to sell both of our properties and divide it five ways evenly, so that we don't want you having to share anything.
[00:30:22] And we, we've been really open about all of that. So I think that. That's the bottom line for me is to be very clear, very transparent, and really communicating what are our intentions.
[00:30:37] Jaleigh: And when we talked about letting our kids fail and live by the consequences of their decisions as well, it, something that I learned from my parents, when I was like in my forties was before I was born, when they were newly married, some financial struggles they went through caused by my grandparents, that they had to step in and help solve those. And I had already been through something similar and struggles in, dealing with some similar issues. I'm like, wow, that would have been really helpful information to have had earlier. They're like, well, we just didn't want you to, you know, worry or think bad of anyone.
[00:31:18] I'm like, but that would have been really helpful information to know. So, we became more intentional with our children to say, Hey before you were born, you know, things weren't always this rosy. Here's my husband's in a very commodity based business. That's a rollercoaster that we, we live on. And I'm the even studied CPA.
[00:31:39] And, we, we talked about what that was like and, and shared with them that they're, you know, The way you might have lived and what your memories are aren't the way it always has been and started sharing with them some of those struggles in our journey rather than shielding them from things. We think, oh, we're protecting them, but we're also not helping them learn anything.
[00:32:01] Courtney: You're not doing them any favors. Yep. Boy, that is so smart. I don't know if you've encountered this research just in the last three or four years I saw in the New York Times the first time, but you know, we all in our profession have a list of best practices of families. You know, they communicate well, they're intentional about values and mission and so forth. And have healthy boundaries. So that's, that's a few of the classics. Something that's been added in the last few years, and again, this is research based, is that families that tell their story of their successes and their failures have more grit and resilience than families who don't. So just what you were just describing, we need to do a better job of sharing those stories
[00:32:52] Jaleigh: I remember when specifically my oldest, my son was nine and said something. And, and, and I thought, oh my gosh, you have a capacity to understand so much more than I thought you did. And so I started sharing more. I'm like, wow. okay. If you can, if you were picking up on that, I might as well share with you the rest of what that story is.
[00:33:15] But what we want to give everyone today too, are some actionable items. So people listening today are at all different places in their life. And they, as you're going through and describing some of those best practices, someone will go in, yep, check. Yep. We did that. Nah, not that so much. For everyone who's, who's listening in today, what are some concrete things that they can start doing? That would be the next best step in really having those transparent conversations within their families.
[00:33:49] Courtney: When I teach financial parenting, I always frustrate my audience because I say, you all are expecting me to give you the top eight things to do, and you're going to take notes and go forth and deliver on it. It's an inside out job. So, what I encourage people to do is first take a look at your own relationship with money. We all have a money script that has had an impact on us. A money script, for example, would be, What do you think I am, made of money? Or, money doesn't grow on trees. So, we hear these messages when we're little kids, and they are partially true, money does not grow on trees, but what the heck does that mean? Money My dad's was a minister. And his money message that I heard countless time is that a rich man's getting in to the odds of getting into the kingdom of heaven are the same as a camel getting through the eye of a needle. Okay, so I'm a five, six, seven, eight year old kid trying. What the heck does that mean?
[00:34:58] Well, it obviously means money is bad. To have money means you're not going to get into heaven. So that money message followed me throughout my career until I was a young adult trying to make my way, and I had to really undo that money message. So that's one quick example of it's an inside out job. Come to terms with what money messages have I received.
[00:35:23] Where do I get kind of screwed up and emotional about money? What money messages do I hope I am conveying to my kids? Because our kids are watching us, how we role model. That's why Angela, I love the story you shared a few minutes ago. They're, they're watching that. They're learning from that. So that's what I mean by it's an inside out job.
[00:35:48] There's a piece of research that, came from an insurance company many, many years ago is something around, of fluent families, 75 percent of families think it's a good idea to talk to kids about money. And in reality, 34 percent of those 75 actually did it. So that's the next inside out job is we need to really sit down and look for those teachable moments to be in conversation.
[00:36:20] Another classic kind of to do is save, spend and share. Talk about the value of saving, what we do with savings, how that ties into giving money away, and what's it look like when you're giving money away to share, what kind of causes. These are little, little kids, you can talk to them about organizations they want to be in charge of.
[00:36:48] So save, Spend and share. And allowances, I think, are really a good training ground. Now, I have a bias about alliances, about allowances, which is, I always said as a parent, I'm not going to pay you to be a member of this family. My expectation is you do your chores. Allowance is separate from that. And that allowances can be a nice training ground for how do you share for that game that you want or that soccer ball that you want and it opens the door to many nice money conversations.
[00:37:27] Expectations is the last thing that comes to my mind. And that's on my mind because you just talked about your business, the client of yours who is having this big liquidity of it and how uncomfortable the husband and wife are about the money. The kids are going to be uncomfortable too. So let's talk about our discomfort.
[00:37:48] Let's talk about our feelings about this money. And let's talk about the expectations and keeping in mind that our kids have different money. Messages and money personalities, I should say, is that sometimes if I'm going to say, we're going to give you X amount of money, I've got five kids, probably three of them will say, hallelujah, thank you, dad.
[00:38:12] The other two will say, you can't control me with that money of yours. Not my intent, but we have to be really sensitive and aware to how are the kids going to receive that gift. So let's talk about our expectations and what it means, and then let's talk about how it's going to be received.
[00:38:35] Jaleigh: Wonderful wisdom. And Angela and I are probably receiving it differently. My kids are 32 and 35. Hers are 6 and 9. And, it's, relevant to all of us at different points. Angela, any, final thoughts, final questions you might have for Courtney?
[00:38:54] Angela: Now, I just think everything you said was so resonant and, I'm going to continue to apply these lessons as I can with my kids. I think it's, it's really important. It's just such an important conversation for us to have with our children. And particularly, you know, you can't necessarily expect that they will learn these lessons elsewhere.
[00:39:14] And a home needs to be the first and primary place that they, that they learn. That they learn about money and, and learn about, finances and learn about family legacy and learn about all of those things. So thank you very much
[00:39:26] Courtney: Oh, thank you.
[00:39:27] Angela: So Courtney, if our listeners are interested in learning more about your insights and expertise, where can they find or connect with you online?
[00:39:36] Courtney: A couple of things they could do. I wrote a book called Intentional Wealth, which really talks about a lot of these concepts, so that would be just another educational touch point to learn more. And then online, my company's name is Pullen Consulting. Very creative, right? Courtney at Pullen Consulting.
[00:39:57] Angela: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:40:02] Courtney: Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure.