Welcome back to Incorporating SuperPowers. I am super excited about today’s show, because I don’t know about you, but if you were a kid and you grew up like me and middle-class family, and your parents struggled to make ends meet, they were able to provide, but there was something missing, right? There was that financial piece of why did they struggle? Why was it a struggle? Why did that get passed on from them to you, right?
Well, now if you’re like me, if you’re the money minded parent, you have an opportunity to change that pattern of behavior, that mindset that got passed down from your parents to you, you get to change it by giving something new, a different mindset to your kids.
I’m super excited today, because my guest is Stephanie Mackara and she is the Principal Wealth Advisor over at Charleston Investment Advisors. She’s written a book called Money Minded Families.
To me, there’s nothing more important as far as homeschooling, teaching your kids about money, right? It’s one thing to teach them to go out and get a job, right, exchanging their time for money, but actually understanding money, how it works, wealth, all of it is so important today.
Stephanie, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So, I got to ask, what motivated you to write this money minded book?
Yeah, I think your background and my background aren’t that dissimilar, in that I grew up in a middle-class family and my parents made ends meet, but we never really talked about money, it was never discussed. I have a son of my own who is 13, and just really wanted to instill in him, particularly because I’m in the business, and I learned later in life, honestly, I didn’t take a really direct path to becoming a financial advisor, and I learned later in life just how crucial it is to save early, often. Investing is critical to growing and creating wealth.
Just wanted to try to engage my son at an early age and make sure of that.
As I grew up money was taboo. I mean, it was almost like you shouldn’t talk about it. It had a negative connotation to me and I didn’t want that for my son. I found that I’m not unique in how I was raised, and a lot of parents just don’t know how to talk to their kids about money, they don’t know the lessons themselves. So I thought if I could take some of the things I’ve done and put it together in a book, I could help others.
Yeah, that financial mindset is so important. We need more people like you out there educating, telling people that there’s a better way. That financial mindset, it doesn’t really take into account people that don’t come from money, because it’s not taught. It is learned, right? It is a practice. This is what I love about money, it’s fake, it’s fictitious, it’s all made up, it’s numbers on the screen. There are rules, right? There are rules to succeeding.
This is so important. I love the fact that you saw this, you’re in the industry. I can only imagine you growing up, similar background, not really taught about money, then poof, here you get dumped into the world, right? Now you’re on a path and a career that you’re helping people as a financial advisor, because you learned everything. I can only imagine, well, I don’t know what it’s like, because I had my noggin cracked wide open as well. Somebody had been lying to me and it wasn’t my parents, because they didn’t know.
Right.
Right? But somebody’s been lying to me, and well, it was myself, because I didn’t understand how money worked, right? It’s super, super important. What would you say is one of the number one things that we should be teaching our kids about a financial mindset?
Yeah, so there’s two things. Part of the research I did for the book was to really figure out what really does separate people that are successful financially from those that aren’t? It doesn’t have anything to do with a bank account balance, it has to do with just simply being financially well. Meaning you’re not stressing about money, you’re not overspending, it’s just you have a sense of calm and safety when you think about money.
It’s financial socialization, which is financial socialization, I had never heard the term before I did the research, and that’s one word I hope that people start using it more. Essentially, it just means that you’re involved in positive financial socialization. As you’re raising your children, you as a parent are very aware of the message that you’re sending. You’re very aware that you don’t have to be a financial expert, but you have to be aware of the way that you’re engaging in financial conversations with your children around.
Then the other is just, it’s habits. It’s like everything else in life, right? If your child gets their first, if they begin to get money, even cards for what are they called? Just the gift cards. So, anything with money on it. If they learn to save 20% of that to put 10% away for tithing, for sharing, they’ll do it, that will become a natural part of who they are. The more they do that, the more money they make, the more they’ll save and invest. So, it’s positive financial socialization and just really good habits.
Yeah, folks, being money minded to me is one of the most important topics. If you have kids, this is one of the most important topics that you can instill and teach them and train them in. Even if your kids are grown and you’re just now coming into this awareness for yourself, you can help shift that for your own kids by how you talk and what you say and all those kinds of things. This is absolutely fantastic.
Stephanie, we’ve been talking about financial mindset, but before we go on break, where can people go find out more about you?
Sure. So moneymindedfamilies.org is my website, and it talks a lot about what’s in the book. I also have some resources on there that are free to download. One of the things I think is really important as a family is that you have a family mission statement, because I believe that your values drive your spending and if you’re not grounded with the values, then you’re not grounded, right? So, you’re spending mindlessly.
So family mission statement, there’s a lot of 10 steps to a financial plan, things like that. So there’s some resources and resources for your kids, particularly those that are homeschooling and are looking for more content, because they’re long hours, parenting and raising and teaching kids. So yeah, moneymindedfamilies.org is the place to go.
Fantastic. Folks, go check out that website and dive into the resources there, get some ideas and start instilling them and practicing with your family and your kids.
Stay tuned. We’ll be right back, because we’re going to dive down this rabbit hole a little bit further right after this break.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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