Book Club featuring Bobbi Rebell

george grombacher 0:00
Come on one level this is George G and the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Bobby rebel Bobby, are you ready to do this?

Bobbi Rebell 0:18
Yes, thanks for having me.

george grombacher 0:20
excited to have you back on. This is your third appearance on the show and your second appearance on our book clubs. So super excited about that. Bobbi is a certified financial planner. She is the host of the critically acclaimed Money Tips for grownups podcast. She’s the creator of grown up gear. She’s a speaker and emcee multiple time author, her newest book is launching financial grownups live your richest life by helping your almost adult kids become everyday Money Smart. Bobby, tell us a little bit about your personal life more about your work and what motivated you to write this book.

Bobbi Rebell 0:54
Well, thank you again for having me. I love coming on here and you do a great job. All your interviews are top notch. So I’m honored to be part of part of this podcast. So I am married mom of three and a blended family. My two older ones are my stepkids. And then my husband and I have a 14 year old together. My stepkids are 25 and 22. And they did grow up with us in the city, their mom lives in a different state. So they were truly you know, growing up with us, and they’ve been, you know, the challenge, wonderful. But raising kids is hard in general, raising kids to pay attention to money and make the decisions that you want them to is nearly impossible. And so I was struggling, and I was looking for solutions. And I really didn’t find any books, there were so many books that were for parents of younger children. There were books that were for the young adults themselves. And in fact, I wrote one my first book, How to be a financial grownup. But there really wasn’t a lot for parents. In fact, there was literally nothing for parents and I was really struggling because as with any look, at all ages, you have younger children, children are strong willed, and it’s hard at any age to to sort of force another human being to do what you want them to do. But when you have older kids, it’s that much more complicated. Because ultimately, they are going to live their own lives, they’re going to do what they want to do. Or if they do what you do, and it’s not in line with what they want. You’re gonna have a lot of therapy bills, let’s say later on.

george grombacher 2:23
Yeah, I think that that’s, I think that that’s really well said right there. I’ve got a five year old and a two year old and it’s been on my mind, how do I raise nice, responsible human beings? How do I raise good citizens? And if I can cross those two often, I guess the next level is, how do I make it so they’re not living paycheck to paycheck, so they’re not drowning in credit card debt, so they’re not broke? And I guess so that I’m not responsible for them when I’m trying to retire at some point.

Bobbi Rebell 2:52
Well, exactly. And that is the real pain point to this is what I found alarming is there are many different statistics that points to the fact that a lot of parents are helicopter parents, and we kind of joke about it. And we sort of laugh ha ha ha ha. But that evolves as, as kids grow up to be a, you know, Snowplow parents, we’re sort of making the path smoother for them as they go along, let’s say into college, and then we become what I refer to as concierge parents, as they move into the adult phases where we’re sort of there and available to solve all of their problems for them, often with the help of money. And that ultimately doesn’t really help anyone. So it’s important that we recognize that as parents, and figure out ways to evolve our own behavior, because ultimately, we really can only control our behavior, we can influence our young adults, but ultimately, they need to figure it out for themselves. And we need to give them the space and the confidence to do that.

george grombacher 3:49
Well said, Yeah, I hadn’t really considered the lasting long term impact of being a helicopter parent, or a snowplow, or bulldozer parents or whatever term you want to use. But yeah, the chickens will probably come home to roost and you’re gonna get what you pay for in that deal. And it’s not necessarily going to be a great thing, unless you’re independently wealthy and and all that.

Bobbi Rebell 4:13
Well, no, I actually a big part of the book is the fact that, you know, we often in the personal finance space, talk about almost become from a scarcity mindset where we’re all worried about budgeting and saving money. But the truth is, there’s going to be a huge generational passing of wealth down to kids, and it’s really important that they’re prepared to be good stewards of the family wealth. I talk a lot in the book about intergenerational wealth and how important it is that if you aren’t going to be leaving your children money, you give them the information and the confidence to take good care of it. And very often that might even involve a third party being involved at some kind of a financial advisor. But it is very important. Don’t just assume your kids are going to be struggling. You may, you know, for various circumstances, leave them even more money than you expected and you want them to take care Have that you want the wealth to be passed on, there’s statistics that show 70% of the second generation of wealthy families don’t retain that wealth. And when you get to the third generation 90% are not retaining that wealth that is alarming and so sad. If we work so hard to build up a secure future for ourselves. We don’t want that to go to waste. We want that to be something we can give to future generations to live to help them live their lives.

george grombacher 5:26
Yeah, like that. That’s well said right there. And an excellent point, I gotta get this one wrong. But Warren Buffett said something to the effect of, I want to give my kids enough that they can do anything but not enough so they can do nothing.

Bobbi Rebell 5:39
That’s perfect. I love that. Yeah, Warren. Yeah. Yeah.

george grombacher 5:43
And those statistics are real, you know, I sort of spaced that about family business and wealth. And it just does not transfer from generation to generation very well, because we probably haven’t done the necessary things to teach your kids how to be good stewards of businesses or wealth, or whatever it

Bobbi Rebell 6:00
might be. Yeah, exactly. And your point earlier about retirement is very relevant. Because if we are helping our adult children in their 20s, let’s say, at a time when we really need to be powering up to load up our retirement in those peak earning years, that can be very damaging. The last thing you want is to be not only have you, we don’t want to say no to our kids when they need money. But we also don’t want to be at the point where we need to ask them for money. And the even worse scenario is we’re at a point where we have to ask them for money, and they don’t even have it, that’s just terrible. We are usually when kids are in their 20s and 30s, getting their life established during the time period that I’m talking about in the book. That’s when we’re in our 50s and early 60s, maybe and we really need to be paying attention to setting our lives up so that we’re prepared for retirement, especially because as we’ve learned in the pandemic, George, we don’t always retire at the target date that we want. We may say we want to retire at 70, or 65, whatever it may be, but we may lose our job at 55 and never get the same level job. Or we may have a disability, many things can happen. So we can’t assume that our target retirement date is going to happen. So it is essential that we have our ducks in a row when it comes to our own financial financial well being before we are helping our grown up kids. And very often, the grown up kids that we’re helping, it’s with things that they will figure out on their own if we’re not there for them. And I really advocate for parents. And of course, if that’s a true emergency, that’s the exception, but really try to help with the nice to haves, you know, pay for your grandchildren’s camp, subsidize, you know, if they need tutors, or if they have a need to go to private school, whatever it is do those things, rather than paying their mortgage. Because if you’re paying a mortgage of someone who’s in their mid 20s, maybe they’re not in the right house, maybe they need to restructure their life, maybe that’s how you advise them rather than an endless subsidy that’s never going away. If it’s a short term thing. Be there for them. If you could afford it, of course, I believe strongly and family support in the right way, but not in a way that sets them up to fail the minute you’re not there to bail them out. I love it.

george grombacher 8:14
I also love the language of the book title, helping helping your adult kids become everyday Money Smart. What do you mean by every day Money Smart?

Unknown Speaker 8:26
It’s important too. We talk a lot about these big concepts, George about, you know, your 401 K and your Roth IRA. And, you know, there’s a whole IRS, you know, alphabet soup. But the truth is most of our many decisions are made in our everyday habits, the things that we do each day and we can joke about the latte factor and David Bach did write the foreword for the book. He’s a friend. I’m so grateful that he contributed to the book. He’s often misunderstood. When he talks about the latte factor. He picked lattes, just a metaphor, but the truth is, there’s dribs and drabs of thoughtless spending that we do in our everyday life. And I think that’s important to be cognizant of, for me, my latte is endless subscriptions, or whatever it may be. You sign up for things and you forget about them, and then they keep billing you, especially if it’s once a year if it’s once a month, you’ll usually catch it. If it’s once a year, it’s pretty tough. So it’s really important to teach your kids everyday money tips, because every day you’re making a million minute decisions about where your money is going. And that’s really important. Even the decision to do nothing about investments is a decision. So every day is a day to improve your financial standing. I love it.

george grombacher 9:34
I imagine that when people are thinking about this kind of stuff, one of the things that will stop them from doing anything is a fear of or a thought of, well, I don’t know much about money. How am I going to teach kids to be better at money?

Unknown Speaker 9:49
I talked about that in the book. And you know what? I have impostor syndrome myself. I often feel like oh wait, I forget how does the backdoor Roth work? How does this work? I forget, I, you know, I’m a CFP. So I have to take continuing education classes. And trust me, I sometimes really need them and things change. But the truth is, the best way to teach your kids is through your life experience. And if you’re bad with money, well, you got some really good lessons to teach them. So don’t be shy about that. Don’t stand on your pride, keep it age appropriate, keep a child, keep it tied to the child’s personality, if they have, you know, strong fears of you know, of whatever it may be, that could be triggered by a very candid money conversation. Obviously, be careful with that. But if a child is ready to hear it, try to get yourself to the point where you’re comfortable sharing those things. And in the process of this book, I heard a lot from my dad that I had no idea about nothing. And you know, that’s private for him. He shared it with me, but I don’t need to share it with the world. But trust me, nobody’s career is a straight arrow up. And he was very successful in his career, and has been incredibly generous to his family and given me so much wonderful support. But at the time, growing up, I had no idea that he had these major career setbacks. And I don’t, it’s for him to decide when it’s appropriate to tell me and like I said, I mean, I didn’t hear too, like now. So he did not open up about that. And I think to some degree, I might have benefited if he did open up earlier, only because I see him as so perfect. You know, I see him as flawless that he’s never made a bad decision. But learning Well, oh, wait, he did make a bad investment. Not because he didn’t vet it enough, not because you didn’t, you know, nobody was doing. But sometimes investments just don’t work out. And a lot of that is luck. Especially, we all think someone’s so smart if they made all this money and a great investment. But it’s not always that easy. It wasn’t clear. For example, I remember in the early days of the Internet and aging myself now, it wasn’t necessarily clear that Google would be Google. Sure, it would become a verb. There were other search engines. So what set Google apart I’m not a specialist in this, I would imagine money marketing strategy that was just super smart. But they became by far the dominant force. And to this day, I mean, we really That’s it, there’s a few other ones that maybe you can come up with, but they really dominate the market. Why aren’t there 10s That are equal? Who knows? But somebody’s been on Google and somebody’s bet on Sunday, we can’t even remember. And at the time, they might have looked very similar. If you’re smart, maybe you bet it up better. Both of you have enough resources, right. But it’s it’s good to hear from your parents, that they were bad with money about, at least in some case.

george grombacher 12:35
Yeah, I haven’t. My kids are five and two, I think I’ve already said that. But it’s not a time where I could tell James my five year old, hey, I made all the bad money, decisions and mistakes when I was in my 20s.

Unknown Speaker 12:48
I tell people that they were five. I understand that.

george grombacher 12:52
But I tell people that all the time when I speak because I want people to know that the person that’s talking has made mistakes. And I’ve also made good decision. But so it Do you think that that’s right to to be open and honest with your kids about the struggles that you’ve had sort of what we just talked about, but

Unknown Speaker 13:10
at the right age at the right age, and every child is different. And if your kid if it’s really going to make your kid feel so insecure, then that’s not the right time to do it. But if it’s also going to give them confidence that they can make mistakes, and they can take those risks, that’s can be very powerful. It’s a balance, and you have to gauge your own child and when they are ready to hear that information. And when you’re ready to give it but I would push yourself to err on the side of being a little more candid, not to the point where they feel insecure. But you know, I have a friend who found out very late in life that her father had been paying her student loan debt, or I guess parental loan debt for her college for many, many years. Well after she had paid off her college debt, and she had been doing just fine financially, but he never wanted to tell her. He didn’t want her to feel that she should pay it. And she didn’t. But had she known she could have written a check, probably to cover most of it. Instead of having her poor dad pay it till he’s in his 70s. So communication can be really powerful. For sure hard.

george grombacher 14:13
Yeah. Well, there’s there’s no doubt, no doubt. All conversations with with so many conversations can be hard. conversations about money can be really hard if we’re not comfortable having them. So I totally get it, which is why you wrote the book. I’m sort of assuming Bobby. So what what do you hope people get out of reading it.

Unknown Speaker 14:36
I hope people take action, that they get the confidence to give their kids confidence and to really have conversations with them. And to not assume that when you’re young adult children say they got it that they did it’s really important to check up on them because they might say that they read the HR website for their job and they signed up for their benefits correctly, but they might not have and they mate, they’re not lying to you. In most cases, I go with the attitude. Most kids are good most kids want to do well, most kids love their parents. If they say they signed up for everything, they are telling you their truth, but it may not be the truth. So I would go over things with them. For example, even when my stepson was getting renter’s insurance, I had him get quotes from a few places, I got a quote from my place, which was a disaster or my traditional insurer, they were horrible. We went online to it, it was a site called, it’s lemonade. And I have no affiliation with them. But so lemonade, you know, they gave him a quote. And if I hadn’t gotten into it with him, he would have just paid that, quote, It was the best quote he got. But what we did is we because I sat with him, and I had him, you know, him pressing the keys on the keyboard, that’s something very important that I talked about, we looked at what made up that quote, for his renter’s insurance, and we were able to see the different components. So one quarter of what determined the quote was, how much they would cover if you, if you were displaced from your apartment, they would cover a hotel for a certain number of days, and there was a lever. So you could say, okay, they priced it at the standard, the default was, let’s say, 10 days, and you could move it up if you wanted more, and your rate would go up, and you could move it down, and your rate would go down. And we thought, well, logically, since he goes to college in New York City, and we live in New York City, if something happened to his apartment, he wouldn’t stay in a hotel, he could stay with us for free. So we just knocked that down to zero and the price went down, that wouldn’t have been discovered, if I hadn’t pushed him to look within the rate, what’s actually going on. So it can be really valuable to ask questions with your kid, they might push back, it’s not easy. But you have to kind of find a time maybe you make an appointment. Maybe. I mean, there were times with my older kids, were I sort of, you know, how can I say this nicely. I mean, I basically, if I was gonna give them money for something, I’m like, you’re not getting the check until you do this. Because they’re always too busy. And it’s amazing how because there’s always so much busier than you. It’s amazing. My stepdaughter in college was too busy to pick up her prescription. So she had it mailed to New York City for my husband to mail to her. There you go. Because she was too busy. I’m like, wait a second, really. So you got to push back a little. And tell them they’re the adults, they need to, you know, this is basic stuff. Face, I’m not, you know, this book is a very gentle book, it’s not cut your kids off at age 18. It’s really realistic, I think, because if we told them, If we told parents to cut their kids off, I think people would read one page of the book and just put it back on the shelf, they wouldn’t even buy it. That’s not who we are. We are we are helicopter parents, for the most part. It’s a different levels. But we’ve got that in us because we’re sort of reactive to how we were raised. And we were raised very hands off. And so we have a desire to really be hands on with our kids, especially dads are so much more hands on in general, than previous generations. And we’re very invested in our kids. We identify with our kids so much as their parents, we really view them as the most important thing in our life. And in theory, that’s always been the case, but maybe not so much in previous generations. Now we really derive so much of our identity from our kids. And that has turned things upside down.

george grombacher 18:17
A lot it. How long did it take you to write? How was that process?

Unknown Speaker 18:23
Oh, that’s a tricky question. Well, it’s been six years since my first book. So you could say six years. That said, this idea really gelled about three years ago, when I was having my own struggles, as I said, with my kids, and getting them to just do the things I knew they should be doing. And these are good kids, I do address what you should do if your kids are sort of off the rails. But for the most part, as I said, I approach this as your kids are good, they want to do a good job. They want to live a happy life and they love you. But that doesn’t mean that they are going to set up the 401k correctly.

george grombacher 18:54
Well said, love it. Bobby, thank you so much for coming back on where can people learn more about you and engage? And where can they get a copy of launching financial grownups live your richest life by helping your almost adult kids become everyday Money Smart.

Unknown Speaker 19:09
So the book is available everywhere. Of course, we’d like to support your local bookstores. But if you do buy it on Amazon, or even if you don’t, please leave a review that really helps me because there’s some kind of algorithm thing going on. And if Amazon sees more reviews, they maybe they liked the book more, I don’t know. But you can find out more about me at my website, which is just my name, Bobby rebel.com. There you can also get to grownup your.com, which is my merch site. It’s really cool. adulting merchandise, hats, sweatshirts, T shirts, lots of baby gear that make great gifts for graduation for Mother’s Day, for Father’s Day and for celebrating all of life’s adulting milestones like engagements and new babies and that kind of stuff. And I would love to get out there. I’m trying to you know, not only talk up the book, but hopefully make a difference in people’s lives. So if you’re looking for a speaker for a corporate event, or you know organization, even nonprofits I would love to hear from you. And I’m excited to talk more about the book with people. So be in touch.

george grombacher 20:07
Excellent. If you enjoyed as much as I did show Bobby appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas or anybody that has kids, for goodness sakes, go to Bobby rebel.com It’s B OBD. I R E. l l.com. And check out her grown up gear are some really really, really cute funny baby stuff. One of them said like I know I’m having a hard time believing you’re the adult also kind of stuff like that. I was awesome. And then pick up a copy of launching financial grownups live your rich life by helping your almost adult kids become everyday Money Smart wherever you buy your books. And if you do buy it on Amazon, do leave a review and if you need a speaker coming up, ping Bobby about that as well. Thanks again, Bobby. Thank you. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai