Transcription
All right, check it out. You only need to have two of the three properties. The moment you can put three houses, a minimum, on each one, I want you to build. And make sure you always will yourself to hit Free Parking to get all the money in the middle. Yeah, if I was your dad, that's what I would be teaching you about the game of Monopoly because I'm super passionate about teaching my kids about money. In fact, there are seven things that I teach them specifically to set them up for their brightest financial future. Here we go.
So years ago, when I took my kids out of the public school system, I basically hired my own teachers. I brought them into our home, we started traveling the world, and I started giving my children a very different education. And every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., they know that Dad's going to come into the classroom and he's going to have a money moment. He's basically going to teach them about the game of money. And if you're curious what I teach my children specifically about money, there are seven things in particular that I feel are super foundational to preparing that entrepreneurial mind for having success as an adult. And here they are. By the way, a recent study came out and said that only 24% of Gen Z was able to answer very basic financial questions.
So the first thing that I teach my children is to not be entitled. Dad's rich, you're not. In other words, my children aren't entitled to like crazy privileges for the rest of their life because of who I am. In fact, it's super important for me to make sure that they understand, you are your own person. Like, I'm going to teach you how to make your own choices in life, and the world doesn't owe you anything. When I was a kid growing up, there was this old black and white cartoon of Goofy singing this goofy song, going over this mountain in a trailer, and it was basically, "Oh, the world owes me a living." And I'm like, no, it doesn't. Like, the world owes you nothing. My kid's success does not depend on how much money I make or how successful I am. It depends on the choices that they make, how hard they work, and the actions they take when opportunities present themselves. However, it is my job to really help them understand, hey, here's how you find opportunities, here's how you take on acceptable risks, here's how you calculate how much risk you can take because in life, there's only reward. Rewards for the risk-takers. So instead of developing this relationship with risk that risk is bad, because that is the message of the world, I say risk is actually your friend if you know how to maneuver it the right way. In fact, if you want to be an absolute guaranteed flunking failure in life, never take a risk. In fact, I think it's more important to try and fail than to never take any risks so that you can say that you never failed, because you are guaranteed then to fail in the end.
The second lesson that I teach my kids is that money is good. Now, I've taken my children to Kenya on our mission trips where we're building orphanages. We've got a trip later this year to Guatemala that I'm taking my children to. I've taken them to Mexico this last year, showing them the good things that we can do with money. And the reason why I do this is because there's such a heavy stigma about what money is. There's this weird stigma about money. You don't talk about money, you don't ask people about money. And basically, too much money is also bad. Poor people see money as evil, and it turns out that they use it poorly. They save it, they spend it, but ultimately, they don't know how to multiply it. They don't know how to get more of it. The very first video I ever posted on YouTube was years before my account was actually made, and I basically got demonized because I uploaded a video of me basically filling up a kitty pool with water and I dumped like $10,000 of cash in it. And I had my five-year-old daughter dress up in a bathing suit, and we went outside, had some summer fun, and we were basically playing with the money. We were dressing ourselves, sticking it all over it, we were playing with it. I was teaching her these mantras, affirmations that she was saying out loud that money is good, and with money we can do good things, and money is on and dot dot dot. And my wife demanded within 24 hours that we take that video down because I was getting death threats, hate mail. That video went so viral, and that's when I realized the world has this perverted notion of what money is. And basically, all of these parents came charging and thinking, you are literally destroying your daughter by training her that money is good. The rich, on the other hand, see money as a tool, and they use it to build wealth and lasting legacy of good. They invested in things like stocks and real estate, and ultimately things that generate more without sacrificing more of their time. Not only do I talk to my kids about money, but I talk about how money is neither good nor evil. It's really just a tool. It's neutral, and it's up to us to magnify based on what our soul is, what money is as well. In other words, people that are making really bad decisions will make bad decisions with more money, and people that are making good decisions will make good decisions with more money. And I get it. Like, my kids know that we live in a really big house, they know that we travel around the world, they see Dad's private jets. But this is where I want them to understand, understand that money is a stewardship. And if you choose to master it and get good at making more of it, then with that comes a responsibility to make good choices with it, to help people, and to be the change in the world that you want to see.
The third thing that I teach my children is the difference between an asset and a liability. When we're playing the game of Monopoly, the goal is to buy property and get two or three of the same color. I've been the rules, I only need two of the same three colors, and then as quickly as possible, you want to build houses. And one of the things that I teach him is that you never put one or two houses on to get a good return on your investment. You need to put at least three. After you have three, your next upgrade should not be to four, it should be to a hotel and putting five on. Because what I'm teaching them is that when you put money in, this is how you get the most money out. In fact, how you win the game of Monopoly is by having people land on your houses and your hotels so you can collect as much rent as possible. This is such a basic principle, but so many people either don't know the difference or make choices as if they don't know the difference. Bottom line is, an asset is something you buy that increases in value, and a liability is something you buy that goes down in value. But the game also gives you an opportunity to pay for things that you don't want to. Like, I've got a doctor's fee, or I've got a speeding fine because of a choice that I made, or I have to advance to the nearest railroad, pay someone rent, or if it's free, I can buy it. And I always tell my kids, don't buy the railroads, they're $200 each, and it's $800 to maximize the benefit, but you'll never make nearly as much money as if you own a property with a hotel on it. Other words, some assets make you a lot of money, other assets make you little money. And if you're like most people, you'll save your money and then you'll spend it on dumb crap, and then you will have no money.
The fourth principle I teach them about good debt and bad debt. I teach him that debt is awesome if it's good. And you might be thinking, Chris, how, how can debt be good? I get what you're thinking. I bought a boat, and the boat costs me money, and that's a liability, and it goes down in value, so that's a bad debt. Or I didn't have the money, so I swiped my credit card, and then I got in the habit, and 90 days later, I racked up $55,000 on my credit card, and I bought makes me money. Literally, it just costs me interest, and it costs me more money. What I also teach my children is that the reason why we save our money is because when you buy assets, sometimes you have to go into debt to get them. Like when Dad buys real estate, I don't buy a house free and clear, I don't pay it cash. What I'm doing instead is I'm putting a down payment on the property, the bank's putting up the rest of the money, and I'm going into debt. But I show them how I leverage that debt to make money and win financially the game of life. Do you understand that to be as financially successful as possible, that you want to have as much good debt as you possibly can have? Like, one of my goals in life is to have hundreds of millions of dollars of debt. And if it makes you money, you should too.
The fifth lesson that I teach my children is that there are two ways to make more money. Number one is to increase your income, or number two is to decrease your expenses. Now, when kids make money, it's fun to spend it. And you can already at that young age start teaching them that everything that that they got is actually meant to be spent. But the truth is, when they're in their youth, that's a perfect time for them to be saving money so that they can actually invest it. Which means that you need some type of system for how to save money and invest it. At the end of every month, I look at how much money my kids have made. I help them take 10% of it and either put it to church or charity or something that helps other people. We take what's left over, half of it goes into savings, which is really about making investments, and then the other half is money that they get to spend. In other words, I do want them to get the payoff of knowing, I worked hard, I earned money, and now I'm going to spend it. Now, the reason why I want them to spend it is because my wife and I, we don't do allowance. We don't believe in socialism. We don't think that you're entitled to money just because you're a member of our family or because you did some chores. You get to do those chores because you're a part of this family, and everyone makes sacrifices. But what I do on top of that is I give my kids all sorts of extra side gigs and books to reads and things to learn about. I say, if you do these things, I'm going to pay you $10 for this, and $20 for that, and $50 for this. So my children have the opportunity of earning hundreds of dollars every month. And in turn, I make them pay for the things in life that they want instead of Mom and Dad just giving it to them. For example, it's my friend's birthday tomorrow. Cool, you want to get them a present? Use your money and get them a present. Oh, that's awesome. You want to do football? Cool, that gear costs money. Let's make sure that you save up the money to get it. Oh, wow, you want a nicer iPhone? I totally get it. You get to pay for that. My oldest daughter's 18 and is moving out this fall, and she has all sorts of questions. She says, Dad, a private room in the apartment complex costs $700 a month, and then if I want a car, and I want some of these other things, you know, how do I make sure I can pay for all that and have leftover money for investing? And that's what I'm now showing her how to do because I've been showing her her entire life. And now becoming an adult, she gets to practically apply everything that she's been learning.
Number six is maybe one of the most important lessons that I'm teaching my children, and it has to do with delaying instant gratification. It's this idea that I want everything now, and I don't want to wait to get it. A number of studies have come out actually showing that if you want to ruin an adult, the best way to ruin a child is by just giving them everything for nothing. Instant gratification is the need to fulfill a want or a desire instantly. There's no patience, and it usually leads to impulse buying or impulsive decisions in life. There's always a short game and a long game, and if a kid is always about playing the short game, then they won't learn or have developed the habit when they're an adult that good things sometimes take time. I remember when I was a kid, and my dad got me a paper out, he basically made me save the majority of the money that was earning after paying tithing to my church, and a small amount went to money that I could spend. And there was this inline backpack that I really wanted for later that summer for this 50-mile hike. I saved month after month after month, and I remember how proud I felt when I got to go to REI, I got to pick out the backpack I wanted. I remember it cost $400, and because I got to pick the backpack and I was the one spending the money, I took so much pride in that thing. I took care of it, and it lasted for years, and I really valued it because it didn't come in instantly. I learned the value of learning to work for it. Because the reality is, children need to learn first, you save, then you invest, and then from the proceeds, the winnings of your investing, now it's time to spend. When my wife and I bought our first house, we could have bought something a lot newer, we could have bought something a lot nicer. And one of the things I see with this current generation is they want that first house to be like an amazing showpiece, something that they can show off to their friends, something that they can feel really proud of. But instead, my wife and I bought this little bungalow from 1956. And when we bought it, it had a basement that we rented out. We put a family down in there, and the rent that they paid us actually covered the entire house, which meant that my wife and I were throwing away our rent money at the previous apartment. And when we bought this house, we got to move in the expansive three bedrooms upstairs, and the tiny little one-bedroom basement actually paid for the whole house. So the house wasn't new, and the house wasn't really nice. We had to put some money into it, carpet and paint to make it nicer. But what felt really good is that the day we bought it, we walked into $40,000 of equity because we bought it $40,000 below market. And if you look at what we did with that house, we used the equity in it to buy a second house. We used the equity in the second house to buy a third house. We were doing a lot of house hacking. And then over the next four years, we bought 25 homes. Those 25 homes gave us a six-figure residual income. And then it was our time to basically build this $1.5 million castle of a house in a beautiful neighborhood right out of Sundance. And when I think of myself as a 27-year-old living in that beautiful custom-built house, and we made it, it was because we delayed gratification. A time for spending came. In fact, in my life today, I have time for spending because I've done so much prioritizing towards investing. And that's something that my children are learning right now, and something that even adults need to really be practicing, which is you're earning money so you can save it, so that you can invest it, so that the time and season will come when you can spend it guilt-free.
Now, I get that there's a world of a difference between this fake money and actually the real thing, which is why the seventh lesson is teaching my children to make money work for them. You can work for your money, or your money can work for you. And if you get good at making enough money, instead of just putting it in the savings account, instead of just trying to pay off debt, instead of just trying to be debt-free, I teach them, make your money work for you. In fact, often before you even pay off debts, there's something more important: getting performance on your dollars. Think how much time you trade for this money. If you want to get your time back, you then have to reverse and flip the script, and now make the money work for you. Time does not equal money. If done correctly, money can work for you passively in the background, generating revenue to the point where you can quit your job, get all your time back, and basically do whatever you want with your life. And that's the stage that I'm in. I make these social media videos, I get to travel the world with my family, I work as much as I really love and enjoy working. And then outside of that, it's really just time for personal enjoyment, pleasure, spirituality, time with my kids. That level of freedom only comes from being a great steward of money, and that happens from learning and mastering how you make money work for you. In the beginning, I talked about how to win the game of Monopoly, but what we're really doing right now is we're talking about winning the game of life. And I've given you seven really important principles that I teach my children. But the reality is, as they become adults, they graduate to Dad's real Financial Almanac on how you really get rich and stay rich. How do you actually make money when you're starting with nothing? It's found in the book, "Have It All." It basically shares the five investments that you need to make in your 20s and 30s so that you can be set up for the rest of your life to really live life on your terms. And today is a gift for me to you. I'm not just giving this book to my kids for free, I want to give it to you. I want to give you the gift of knowledge that has set me free and can set you free as well. If you click the link below, go ahead and put in your name and information and get a free copy of this book. You will have to cover the shipping, so I want you to have a little skin in the game. But ultimately, take this book, consume the knowledge, put it into practice, and find out just how few years it actually takes to financially get on top and live the life that you want. And so for your kids, teach them these seven principles. But for you, grab a copy of this book, live its principles, and become financially free so that when they become adults, you can give them the same gift as well.
Listen, I know they're just kids, and you're thinking they're too young to learn investing. But did you know there's a number of investments that literally take $5 or less that allow them to invest and learn these principles? My kids are doing it. Have your kids do it as well. Click right here and let me show you how easy it is to get in the game of investing.