Episode #40 - Ideas for Teaching Savings and Investing to Your Children
36:50
Todd Pisarczyk & Nik Miner
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome everybody to the Momentous Wealth Podcast, where we discuss current issues in the world of finance and break them down into understandable terms to further your education. Momentous Wealth Management is a financial planning and investment management firm based in Washington. We've been serving clients for more than 20 years, and on this show we take that experience and put it to the microphone in an effort to educate investors in the complex world of finance and financial markets. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. This is one of your hosts today, Nik Miner, and we've got Todd here as well. Hello there. Thanks everyone for joining. Looking forward to today. Yeah, today's gonna be fun. I've got a question for Todd that I want us to kind of just talk about that I hope is relatable for parents out there. I'm not a parent yet. I got a baby on the way, but I want, we wanted to like have an episode about how do you get your kids involved or interested in being financially savvy or investing early, rather than it being like this thing that just kind of, you, you hit 'em with out of the blue when they get their first job and they're like, all right, time to sign up for a 401k and yeah. Budget. Best of luck to you.
It, it's, it's, it's one of, you know, a lot of these podcast episodes are born out of just issues we deal with with clients and, you know, it's the one of the number one things that we always get asked. I mean, I have so many clients that come in, you know, maybe they're in their forties and, you know, one of the first comments they make is, man, I wish somebody would've taught me this stuff earlier. And then we have a lot of clients that have kids that are often asking if we have any ideas for, you know, how to, how to get them started in it. Yeah. You know, I know that that was impactful in my life growing up. And so it's, we wanted to share some, share some tips today on that. It's a little bit of a deviation from our normal hard hitting news. Yeah. But before we get to the tips, I wanna, I want us to get a little bit personal with our listeners talking. Yeah, yeah. Give me a little bit of background for yourself growing up. What was, what was your experiences with, with finances and investing 'cause or, or have you always been the financial guru that you are now? Did you pop out and be like, well, we need to save for my college started saving for retirement when I was six weeks old. Yeah. First lemonade steam put in a Roth. Yeah.
No, I think it was, it was definitely something in my family that was talked about. I can remember, you know, back, back in the day, my, you know, my dad still is, was always very interested in the stock market. In fact, you know, maybe not the best type of family dinner, but I can remember, you know, I just have a sister. So there were four of us sitting around the dinner table and oftentimes the, the, the nightly news would be on and not, you know, I think it was called like the, the Nightly Business news or something. It was on PBS. Yeah. And it was basically a recap of the stock market for the day. So oftentimes I can remember sitting down to dinner and, you know, the stock market chatter on in the background. And, you know, I actually do remember kind of certain days where, you know, my dad was particularly stressed because, you know, I I I feel like I even remember the day in 1987 when wow, we had that really bad day and, you know, it was, it, it was interesting. Like I didn't really know what was going on at the time, but there was something special about it. Yeah. There was some exposure to it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. When did you start becoming like more involved with maybe understanding your, the family finances or, or even maybe your own personal finances? Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, and I didn't really learn too much about the family finances so much. That's not something that, that we really talked a lot about. But there was something personally that, that I think was pretty interesting that, again, at, at the time I didn't think anything of it, but I can look back now and realize what an impact it had. And I think that this is, you know, part of the thing that happened to me that has translated into some of the things that I'm trying to do with my own kids. But I don't know how old I was, but I remember being in middle school and I would get a check in the mail every quarter that was a dividend check. So my grandfather at one point had given my sister and I shares of Roseville telephone company. So I was born in Sacramento and Roseville is a town outside of Sacramento and my grandparents are from there. My mom was born there. And we would get a dividend check my sister and I every quarter, and I can't remember the exact amount, I want to say it was like 40 bucks, you know? And then later on it was 50, 60, 70, $80. But you know, back then, back then that's a lot of money. Yeah. And when you're a middle schooler, just randomly every quarter. And I never really even, I don't think I even fully understood the cadence of it. Yeah.
But it was like, oh, like I'd go get the mail and Oh wow, I got a check for 60 bucks, like for doing nothing. Like what is this? And yeah, they were shares of this Roseville telephone company that my grandfather had got for my sister and I, and that was the dividend check. Yeah. Because, and, and you know, and as investors, I think that's one thing, you know, frankly, with everything going online that's lost Yeah. Is the fact that a lot of people own these stocks and all we pay attention to is how much they go up and down every day. But in reality, like, you know, most investors are probably getting dividends that are just paid into their account reinvested, and they don't really see it's happening. Yeah. But back then you actually got a check. And so that, that was impactful I think. 'cause I think later on that really I think started the, you know, the kind of the knowledge, right. Yeah. Of investing. Now, not a great end of the story. 'cause when my grandfather passed away, those shares got turned over to me. Of course you liquidated 'em. Of course. Yep. Yeah. I sold 'em and bought a Mazda Miata. Wow. Nice. When I was in college. Yeah. It wasn't a lot of money, it was like $7,000. Hey. But that's still, I mean, but there's still value in that.
Like, you know, there was saving, accumulating, you had dividends, but along the way, and then because you were a good investor, you're forced to be a good investor. Thanks grandpa. Yeah. You got to reap this cool reward. Yeah, yeah. That you wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Yeah. Well, but that did, having that experience, did, you know, I do remember too, like in high school, and my parents had to help me with this, obviously, but they, you know, I, I, I did open a Charles, so when I got those shares, I, I did, I didn't sell 'em immediately. So when I got those shares, I opened up a brokerage account. I can remember putting the shares in those brokerage account. And, and it was fun. 'cause I can remember again, back then I would, it's so funny 'cause I, when I had my first job, I mean, this goes on, but I, I can remember working in the summers and I would go in the break room and I'd call, 'cause back then you could call the 800 number and check your balance. Yeah. Yeah. I, I called every day. What's my balance today? You know, and I, I did put some other money, you know, and some mutual funds kind of in the same account that those shares were in.
But had I have not been given those shares, I wouldn't have gone to opening the account and putting more money in and getting in interested in it. Yeah. But again, ultimately I had those shares in the brokerage account for a little while and then, you know, I did sell most of it to buy the car. Yeah. Ultimately. And as you're like experiencing these and being exposed to these dividends, at any point were you like, I want to grow up and make this my job to like work with investments and finances? Yeah. So probably not the story that we were hoping for on this, but no, I actually wanted to be a weatherman. I was growing up, should not know that here. I mean, since we're getting personal, so yeah. Wanted to be a weatherman. I played a lot of golf, so I played golf in high school. I played some golf at a small college. I played at Western Washington University. So it took probably longer than it should have for me to realize that I wasn't going to be on the PGA tour. Yeah. Because when I was in high school and college there, that there wasn't a plan B Todd. Have you, like, even still to this day, have you realized that? I think I finally have, I finally have, but I'm still hoping for the senior tour now. Yeah. For the, the Champions tour.
But no, it took me a while to like actually come to grips with the fact that okay, like, you know, the dream of professional golf is gonna go away and, you know, I, I did major in business, so, so actually I wanted to be a weatherman in high school. And I went to college and ended up majoring in business because I actually found out that being a weatherman's actually a lot of science, and I was actually terrible at science, but I was always good at finance. Yeah. And so I ended up getting a business degree. It's not like the movie Anchor Man. Exactly. How about you? What was your experience growing up? Yeah. Mine was not that involved. I, I didn't have much exposure at all to investments, like stocks and bonds. You know, as a kid, if I ever got a allowances or money on birthdays or for Christmas or whatever, like every kid does, my thought was immediate like, oh, what kind of toy am I gonna buy? Yeah. What's the next video game? And so much of it was just about like, you know, enjoying the money here, spend it while you got it and it, it, and I like you, I didn't know my parents' finances, you know, you're just a kid, you know, having a good time.
And I really didn't start to learn about finances until I was probably, I don't know, probably maybe junior in high school my mom was like, we should do a financial piece, university class. It was this thing hosted by Dave Ramsey. Yeah. And that, that was good because like, I really had, didn't have any exposure to any of it. And then to just kind of see how money worked and how you should actually think about money. And I hadn't had a job like in high school or growing up. You know, some kids delivered the mail, not mail, what is it? Newspapers. Yeah. And then in my town, and then other kids picked strawberries. I never did that. Yeah. And so having that class was kind of my first introduction into like being financially responsible. Yeah. But I'm like, man, I wonder, I wonder where I've been, been at if I had had kind of those like early experiences like you did. Yeah. Where, you know, it's like, you know, thinking about stocks or something. And I don't know. And I, what's kind of fun now though, is I've, I help out with the high school youth group at our church and kids are always asking me. And so I always telling them about like some principles and stuff. And they're always like, oh, when I turn 18 I wanna open up an account and do all this stuff.
And, but yeah, it, it really getting, that was just kind of my first introduction. But that was more even way more basic than the stuff that we do. That's just more of like, you know, you shouldn't have debt. Right. You should save money, have an emergency fund. It really didn't get into, I didn't start to understand stocks and bonds and the investment world until I started pursuing this career. Yeah. And what drew me to this career was working with people and, and being able to help people with their money. I knew nothing about the investments, but I, I knew the principles of like, okay, we need to be goods to savers. We need to be thinking long term. And then all the other stuff I, I learned as I went through and luckily I was like, wow. Yeah. The more I did it, I found I loved it. Yeah. But, but yeah. It wasn't until late in the game. Yeah. And so it's something I think about too, going back to the, the topic for the podcast. Something I think about for my future daughter, she's due in February. Maybe by the time this podcast comes out. Could be Right. Yeah. She's already here. Probably right around then. Yeah. Good luck. Future, Nik. It, I mean, your, your experience I don't think is uncommon.
I do think that that's one really interesting thing is that we don't, you know, at least where we are, I don't hear about it being taught a lot in schools. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. There's some basic, you know, maybe some basic courses on finance, like how to balance a checkbook, that kind of thing. Yeah. I dunno. Do you guys balance checkbooks anymore? I, us do. I don't even know what a checkbook is, but Just kidding. You know, it's, it's, I know some schools are, I've actually, I used to teach a, a class through junior achievement. And, and I, I, I can remember going in and doing, you know, the like a, I can't even remember how many weeks, but I would go into these middle schools and do like a, you know, four week kind of thing on, you know, personal finance. That was really fun. A a couple times I've gone into the high school that my kids go to and I can remember at, you know, your story about all the kids wanting to open accounts. Like I coached baseball at a school here in Vancouver. And so I have a lot of players that I know. And, and I can remember going in a couple years ago and, and teaching a class. One of the teachers asked me in our school actually has a financial literacy class at our school. In fact, no joke.
Like, we are getting ready to do this podcast. And I got a text, I'm showing Nik for proof. My daughter just texted me and said, when will you be home? Do you have 15 minutes to help me with some financial literacy homework? Wow. I mean, who better Yeah. In our family, I guess, to help her with that hopefully. Yeah. But I've been asked to teach at that class and I remember one time in particular when all this stuff was going on with GameStop. Hmm. And I, I could remember I was literally getting text messages and phone calls from our players wanting to open accounts to get into the GameStop. Like Yeah. I didn't, I wasn't in there teaching financial literacy for a prospecting. I wasn't in there trying to get new business out of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. But a lot of 'em know that our kids have accounts. So my boys have opened accounts and they kind of talk about it at school. 'cause you know, they're, they're both actually in college now, majoring in financial planning. So, yeah. Yeah. Lemme ask you a, a segue loaded question. Yeah. You should be able to max one of the part. But do you think there's value in introducing these like financial ideas and interests to kids before they're like adults? Yeah. Yeah. 'cause I think it's like with anything, it's just a matter of building habits. Yeah.
You know, so, you know, this is kind of where we'll start getting into some of the tips. But if you're a parent and you're interested in getting your, you know, kids kind of more involved, I, I think it's, it's just like anything, I feel like when you teach them habits young, it's just so much easier for them to maintain those habits. And like, one thing, you know, the basic thing would be saving, we've always, since I can remember even back in the days when we paid our kids an allowance, you know, we're paying them the money and you know, we, we believe that we should give 10% to our church. And then also, you know, I always tell 'em that they should get in the habit of saving 10%. So we would give our kids an allowance, you know, back when they were little and Yeah. And they would take, you know, we'd give 'em 10 bucks and whatever, they'd take a dollar and put it into their tithing bucket. Yeah. And they'd take another dollar and they had a, we opened up a savings account for 'em, you know, when they were young. And so they just got in the habit of every dollar I make, I give 10% to our church and I put 10% in savings account. Yeah. So yeah. Just building those habits. Yeah. That's great.
So what are some other, like, let's say some parents are like, yeah, I want to start introducing these habits, thoughts. What are some other things? Like even let's, let's say beyond that piggy bank stage, and obviously like, we still encourage those same practices Yeah. Even as adults Yeah. Right. Of like, you know, save a little, give a little, do stuff with the rest. Yeah. But are there other, other things that parents can be doing to, to be cultivating Yeah. Good financial stewards. Yeah. So, you know, some things that, that we, that we think, and again, you know, this is, these are just ideas, right? We're not, yeah. We always have to say we're we're not recommending a certain investment strategy. We're these are just some ideas for maybe getting your kids interested in personal finance and savings and things. So, you know, a couple things I've learned throughout the years, just, you know, seeing things we've done, but also just things that some of our clients have done. But, you know, one, one thought that I really like is, is to get them started early, managing their own money, like their own budget. Meaning we at a young age and, and actually learned this from a client, this isn't an idea that I, 'cause I didn't even realize this, but you kids can actually get, you can open checking accounts pretty young now.
You know, if you're under 18, your parent has to be on there as a custodian. Yeah. You know, you, your kid. You can generally open bank accounts, credit union accounts for your kids at a pretty young age. And the other thing is earlier than I thought, and this is the idea I learned from a client, you can, you can get them a debit card. Hmm. So, so we got in the habit pretty early of instead of like buying our kids clothes or buying them meals or whatever, we just gave them money and said, okay. Like, we'll put this money in your account and then it's up to you to, to feed yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And not, you know, we, our own personal thing was like, Hey, obviously if we're going out to a family meal, going to Chipotle, I am not gonna be like, Hey Aiden, you got this one. Right? Yeah. You know, I send your 5-year-old to the grocery store, Hey whoa, that's, that's my age. Right. Right, right. But just stuff like, you know, they wanna buy clothes. Right. Instead of like, Hey dad, can I buy this? Whatever. It's like Yeah. I mean, we, whatever, like we're, we're giving you money Yeah. So that you can, and and that got them in the habit of really kind of realizing like, oh, if I, if I buy this then I can't buy this other thing or saving. Yeah.
So there were times where they would want something really, really big and so they would save money. And I think the one thing we learned from that is, you, you just gotta realize like, you know, let 'em, the stakes are low at that point. Right? Yeah. So if they end up blowing money on something stupid, but they saved for it. Like, you know, at the end of the day in the whole scheme of things, totally let 'em mess up with when the stakes are low. Yeah. Right. Rather than when they're older and they're going into debt on a a hundred thousand dollars car they can't afford. Right. Yeah. So, you know, we really like tried to turn over them managing their own little finances. And then as they got older and as the responsibilities grew, you know, and again, this is like before they could work, right? We're talking whatever, I can't even remember, but, you know, this is like pre when they can work. Yeah. It's instead of Yeah. Instead of us buying them that sweatshirt, it's like, well here we're gonna give you X amount per month and you buy your own sweatshirts. And they would even save, it was pretty cute to see them like, save money to buy each other gifts. Yeah.
So like when the birthdays came around, they, it was really like, pretty cool to see them buy their siblings gifts or even, you know, me and my wife gifts with money that they kind of saved and it just made it a little more special and to them as well. So. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. And it, I feel like that's a good practice too for the parents of like slowly letting go Yeah. And like passing some of that responsibility off. Yeah. Because like at the end of the day, you want your kids to leave the household Yeah. As like adults that are ready to take the, the reins of their own life. Yeah. 'cause you know, they're gonna get jobs and have real expenses and take out real big loans for college and apartments and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. That like, I mean, we probably all have seen cases of like parents that are still holding those reins into college Yeah. And like telling their kids, you know, what you can and can't do and spend. Yeah. Yeah. I imagine that's like a good segue for the parents too. It it's, it's neat and it also, I think it allows you to see early on maybe if they are starting to head, nah, I mean, I don't, not to sound bad, but like kind of head in the wrong direction Right.
Where it's like if you start to see habits forming early where, where they're overspent, you know, you can kind of like correct it and get 'em, get 'em thinking the right way and kind of see where the faults are early on. Yeah. You know, because if Yeah, that's a good point because like if, if your kid never has the opportunity to make a sacrifice of like, I want to save for this big thing, but I also want that something small now. Yeah. Like there has to be a give and take, but if they never have that opportunity Yeah. Then they're, they're not gonna grow that muscle of like learning how to sacrifice now for later. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And, and one of our kids, yeah, it's fun to see. We have three kids, so it's been fun to see how all of 'em are quite different. Yeah. Right. And I, you know, I I think with personal, personal finance, I, I actually think a lot of it it's like kind of eating and dieting in a way too, right. Where it's like, you know, there are some people that whatever, eat three meals, five meals, six meals a day, smaller meals. Some people that I know, you know, you hear about, well no I don't eat anything till lunch. 'cause that way I can pig out at lunch and dinner. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
It's kind of the same thing with finances where, you know, I've noticed like some of the kids have been more snackers. It's like, you know, they're like constantly buying the kind of the little whatever I wanna buy this T-shirt or that cool hat or sweatshirt or baseball glove, whatever. But then, you know, again, I won't name. But then, you know, we've got one of our kids who it's like, would save a ton of money and just buy something that we are like, oh my goodness gracious. Yeah. I can't believe that you wasted hundreds of dollars on this. But it's like, at the end of the day, like, you know, I won't say he or she 'cause it'll give it away, but you know, they would just, it's like, well hey, it's their money. Right? Like, they saved for that and that that's what they wanted and they weren't going into debt for it. And they, you know, it's like we talk to clients all the time about, you know, hey, like this is what I, my one of my favorite things about doing retirement planning for younger couples is to get them on the right path and say, look, yeah. If you're trying to retire at this age or you're trying to buy this house or buy this car, whatever, like, what are all your financial goals? We get all that down on paper and we let them know how much they need to save.
And it's kind of fun. 'cause it's freeing in a way. It's like, hey, if as long as you're, you're saving money Yeah. And you're not living above your means. Totally. It's like great. Like enjoy it, blow it. Like some people love to save up and take extravagant vacations and other people would rather go do a bunch of smaller it. That's the beauty of it is like once you do what you're doing, you're, or putting away the money that you need to put away and you're meeting your goals, then it's like, then great. Like, do whatever you wanna do with the rest of it. Yeah. And it's freeing in a way. 'cause you don't have to feel guilty about it. Yeah, totally. And I think that's like, it's a little counter to a lot of, I think the money tips that youth here nowadays. It's like, don't buy Starbucks don't get, and then there's always like the cliche, don't get the avocado toast, you know, put every dollar away and it's like, no. Like put away what you need. Yeah. Define your goals. Yeah. But then once you're, once you, once you get there Yeah. Like, then you should be able to happily blow something Yeah. On something that everyone else may think is stupid but brings you joy. Right. Because everything else is taken care of. Like if you're not able to do that, then what's the point of even Right. Exactly. Doing any of this.
Right. Right. Yeah. So, well one, let's take it a little bit further for kind of like for parents and, and kind of some application tips. Let's say kids are getting a little bit older, kind of understanding a little bit of their budget. How can we, I say we, I'm not quite a parent yet, but how can parents start cultivating investors? Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is the, the exciting thing to talk about. So one thing that we've helped several clients with, and we've done this with our own kids as well, is I think it's fun to get them involved with an investment account early. Right? So, you know, you've gone through the stage of okay, saving and budgeting and you know, not living above your means and kind of some of those basics, right? Yeah. And then you get to that, okay, well I've saved this money, right? So now, now that we've built those habits of saving, it's like, well now that the money's saved, what should I do with it? Yeah. And so just kind of teaching 'em the concepts of interest. And the cool thing is when you start running the numbers when they're young and you say, Hey, like if you save X amount per month, starting at 16 years old, I mean, it's crazy. You don't have to save that much money to have millions of dollars by the time you retire. Yeah.
I mean, 'cause the, the whole interest compounding when you start that young, the numbers are crazy. Yeah. So, you know, you can go online and there's any, any, there's a million compound interest calculators, right. You go on and you can, you can put in there like, Hey, what if I am 16 years old and I save a hundred dollars a month from now until I am 65? And, and just I encourage you to go online and play with it on your own. 'cause the numbers are pretty staggering. Right. But so I think for one, giving 'em the motivation, right? So it's like, here's why. 'cause if you do this and you start young, you know, here's, here's kind of the payoff in the end. But as far as investing and actually getting 'em interested in that, one thing that I've found really kind of fun to do, and again, I I gotta say a million times 'cause we're about to talk about like some different in this is not a recommendation. Yeah. Okay. This, I'm just gonna explain what I've done with my family and, and we've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it, is I, I gave each of our kids a thousand dollars and in exchange for that I told 'em like, we're the thousand dollars is to be put into an investment account. And, and they have to, you know, in order to get it, they have to meet with me. Yeah.
So that's, you know, they gotta schedule their annual review Yeah. But for a thousand bucks they're willing to sit down and talk about investing. Yeah. But what we did is I opened an account, I put a thousand dollars in it, I just, you know, gave 'em a little blurb and we've offered to do this for clients a number of times. Like, hey, we're willing, we're, we'll have that meeting with your kids too. It's, it's really fun. But, and I just tell 'em like, 'cause at the end of the day we talk about, you know, stock market and long-term investing and, and all that good stuff. And basically I say it, it's up to you pick any five stocks you want, you know, and, or, or, or 10, whatever. Yeah. But the idea being take that money, try to encourage 'em to find, you know, 5, 6, 7 stocks that are, you know, so don't pick Apple, Microsoft meta, like all doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we talk about the idea of diversification, but it's fun because generally what will happen is they'll pick five or six companies that like, you know, Macy bought Lululemon and Apple and Chipotle and, you know Yeah. But it's fun to watch her like, ask me all the time, like, how are my stocks doing? You know? Yeah.
And, and I think that the benefit, 'cause I will say from an investment standpoint, like, 'cause we have clients that come in and we're not recommending that a client with their retirement portfolio comes in and buys five stocks. Yeah. Right? Yes. It's, it's not a good investment strategy. No. Like to just say, Hey, but what's cool is it gets them very emotionally attached to it. Yeah. Right. So it's like, and the fun thing is what I've learned, again, not not a recommendation. What I've learned from watching my own kids is that if they pick companies that they like and that they know and that they support, it's just so much easier to take a long-term approach. Right? Yeah. Because like, if they're buying a company that they love, like my daughter loves Lululemon, right. She just whatever and, and you know, confession, so do I Yeah, I was gonna say she's her Yeah. Father's daughter for sure. Oh yeah. So I just go there to bring Macy's shopping. Oh yeah. Okay. That's the only reason I go. Yeah. It's not that every time you drive past me, like, Nik, do we have time to stop? No. We have a meeting we gotta get to. Might've recently gone shopping at Lululemon with Nik or for forced him in there, but, so it's, she just loves it. Yeah. So there's not a thought like of trying to, I'm gonna time the market out by, you know? Right. Yeah.
It's just, I think when you're that emotionally invested and tied and just you feel that good about a investment, it's just much easier to stick with it. Yeah. You know, and realize like, oh, sometimes it's gonna go up, sometimes it's gonna go down. The idea being it's a long-term thing and you know that the company is Right. And so, but I will just say it's not even about the invest. So it's not about the investment or the returns or what's gonna make the most money. It's just really the idea of like getting them excited about an investment. Yeah. And I, I, I imagine too, like, I can't say from experience, but it would, it would really set their mind set up to understand the framework of our country a lot better. Yeah. From a business standpoint. Yeah. Because me growing up, I walk into a Nike store and I'm like, it's a company selling shoes and I'm not really even considering where that money that I'm paying go for the money that I'm paying where it goes or who it goes to or Yeah. Or why these things are the cost as they are. Yeah. Yeah. But if I as a kid have Nike stock Yeah. And I've met with you and you've said, Nik, your stock's gonna go up, you're gonna get dividends. As for every time that Nike sells shoes. Yeah. Like it's more complex than that. Yeah.
But at their level, when they walk into that Nike store, it wouldn't be a stretch, I imagine for them to be like, okay, I am one of the people that this store is selling for. Yeah. Like I kind of see my place Yeah. In the greater Yeah. Economy and it might not all click right away. Yeah. But just the fact that they're like having ownership in those companies. Yeah. When it comes to the point where they're thinking about, you know, actually investing or looking into the com country and saying, how did these businesses operate? What is everybody doing? Yeah. I have to imagine that it's helped build their framework for Yeah. Like what is our economy. It it's a really great point. 'cause one of, one of my kids owns some Starbucks, so it's actually kind of fun every time we walk in to kind of joke like, Hey, I'm an owner here. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like, I own part of this and, but you're right. Having that mentality, you know, like, 'cause when you own, a lot of people don't realize it's like when you own stock, you own part of that company right now. Sure. It's a small part. Unless I don't know who's listening to this podcast. Yeah. Maybe, maybe Bill Gates is listening, who knows. So Bill, you own a bigger part of your company, but most of us Yeah. Own smaller parts of your company.
Company we're on like 0.0, zero, zero. Yeah. But it's, yeah, it's really cool for them to have that ownership mentality of like, yeah. The, you know what, like, I own a part of this. 'cause when you own stock, you own your shares, you own your small part of the company and Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's fun. And again, it, it's not for everyone. I think the biggest thing is just like we've encouraged them to open investment accounts and whether that's us giving 'em some money to start it, I know that with our kids, that's also, they, they add more. So we kind of get 'em started than they, you know, some of my kids put money in every month. So one of my sons actually 50 bucks every single month goes into his account and it's fun 'cause they're just, they're just interested and they're always asking me how it's doing and they're looking it up and, you know, we've done this for other people where they actually just have bought mutual funds. So, you know, and again, it's not what we really wanna stress is it's not about what they buy or what they invest in. This isn't like, what should you invest in? The idea is just getting them interested. Yeah. Right. And like when I was a kid and I had that Roseville telephone stock, I never even once thought to look at what it was worth.
It was just like, I'm getting a check in the mailbox every month. Like my share of the profits. Yeah. 'cause I own part of this company. It, I wasn't even thinking about the stock price or what, you know Yeah. What CNBC said it was worth that day or if it was a good, you know, so anyway, that, that's something that's worked for us that I've seen work well for other clients as well. And it's super easy to set up. Yeah. And I, I, I think a big takeaway from both of our stories and kind of what we're trying to get at with this podcast is that you and I have had different upbringings, but both of us were influenced by our family members desire to invest in their own way, in our financial futures. For, for you as your grandpa buying you some stocks that you got access to the dividends. For me, it was my, my mom taking a financial class with me shouldn't have the means to gimme a thousand dollars. But at the end of the day, both of those things are, are moving the needle or are having a positive impact that are, you know, that led us to be in a place where later in life where like, I want to be financially savvy. Yeah. I want to be mindful of my finances. Yeah.
So whatever, like the app, the application really is, I think that simple of whatever it looks like in your family structure, invest in your kids' finances and be intentional. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be perfect or look, you know, like what we've talked about, but in whatever way that you do it, it it will have an impact. Yeah. People come into our office all the time, 30, 40, 50 years old, like just getting started. Right. And 'cause, and they say, man, I wish somebody would've taught me about this when I was younger. Yeah. I wish, you know, we, we have those stories all the time about so many things in our life. Like, oh, I wish someone would've told me this when I was younger. Right. Yeah. You know, and obviously our world is financial, but you know, it, it's, it's a big impact, so. Totally. Yeah. Well, thanks for tuning in guys. That's all we've got for today, but we're excited. Have more good stuff, fun to, fun to deviate from the normal, the normal plan for the pod. But really, really appreciate you listening. Hope you find this valuable for, you're a parent and you know, again, if you, if you find this useful, I, I would just encourage you to, you know, subscribe. Yeah. To, to the podcast. And it's available on all, you know, Spotify, apple Music, whatever, wherever you listen to your podcast.
But really help us out if you click that subscribe button and so we know who's listening. And if you have any ideas for episodes, feel free to put 'em in the comments as well. Happy to, happy to put together episodes on what you all think would be useful. Yeah. Last question before we close out. Todd, do you podcast because you couldn't be a weatherman? I never thought about that, but yeah, maybe, maybe. So. So think of Todd Weatherman to you guys. The opinions expressed in this podcast are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry to determine which investments may be appropriate for you. Consult your financial advisor prior to investing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any indices reference for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always, please remember, investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. Please seek advice from a licensed professional. Momentous Wealth Management Inc. Is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Momentous Wealth Management Inc. And its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by Momentous Wealth Management, Inc. Unless a client service agreement is in place.