PFFAP Ep 7 Foster Cline
[00:00:00] Ben: Welcome to the physician, family financial advisors podcast, where we turn today's worries about taxes, investing and extra money into a comfortable feeling of financial security to last a lifetime. I'm Ben and
Nate: I'm Nate Raenuka today's question is, should I rescue my child from their money? Mistakes to help us answer this question.
We brought on Dr. Foster Cline as our guests. Dr. Foster Cline is a coauthor of the book parenting with love and logic. He's also the co-founder of the love and logic Institute with Jim Fay. He is a child psychiatrist, international speaker and author of many books on parenting with, in dealing with difficult children and their families.
Dr. Klein has worked with parents and children for over 40 years. Dr. Klein and his wife Hermie have raised three birth children adopted one child from residential treatment at the age of eight and fostered three [00:01:00] children. So Ben, when you read Dr. Foster Klein's book, uh, over 20 years ago, parenting with love and logic, you took the idea that humans can make good decisions.
If the decisions are framed correctly and you ran with that, is that right? Yeah,
Ben: that's right. Um, do you want me to go into the story about how I met Dr. Klein? Yes. Yeah. So, uh, about 25 years ago, I was over at a friend's house and these friends are much older than I was. They had a teenage sons and two teenage sons, and I didn't have any children at that time, but I just noticed how lively these kids were and how happy they were.
And at the same time, they were super well behaved. And I just pulled the mom aside. What did you do to these kids? And she said, oh, it's just love and logic. And I said, what's love and logic. So, uh, I was introduced to Dr. Klein's work. Uh, and, um, at that time I decided to pick up a copy of parenting with love and logic and read that and used most of [00:02:00] the information that's in it, the techniques to, to raise my children.
I, I now have two, uh, college aged kids and, uh, occasionally they'll tell me, dad, I really, I really appreciate you. You did a good job raising. Which I just think. Wow, that's amazing. And then I think about the book and, uh, just feel happy and joyful. So I'm, I'm super honored to have you on onboard the show today.
Dr. Klein.
Foster: Well, I'm super honored to be here and. And touched by that story. And I know a lot of people have reached out to me over the years and, and thanked me, but I, I really just am so appreciative of the opportunity to, uh, reach people. Uh, it's a blessing, really. I feel blessed.
Nate: Yeah, that's, that's how we feel.
Uh, Dr. Klein and, uh, while Ben has talked about your book since the day I met him and I sincerely mean that he has, he, I didn't know he was talking about your [00:03:00] book, but he has been talking about your books since the day. Uh, since the day I met him. And although he's been doing that, so that's been several years now.
I have recently just read your book and a section of your book that really, uh, Uh, kind of a cornerstone of, of what you teach and your book really stuck with me. And that is, um, the idea that in order to teach your children life lessons, that you should be taking thoughtful and risk reasonable risk by allowing your children to fail, uh, really a scary thought for many parents letting their kids fail.
Um, well, so.
Foster: Well, you know, Nate, the nice thing is that when, when the kids are small, their failures aren't earth shaky, right? And then when they get to be teenagers and they can fail at drugs and driving and other issues, uh, then it can be more earth shaking. So let's hope they learn lots when they're small, you know, and, [00:04:00] uh, learn from their mistakes.
That doesn't mean we don't care. It doesn't mean we, we don't say geez. I'm so sorry. Would you like to hear how other people have handled that? You know, but the onus is put on the child does solve it.
Nate: Okay. Yeah. So, um, when you talk, I hear Ben, I'm sorry. I can't, it's literally, uh, He, it, it has changed his life so much that it's changed mine.
So, um, it might take me a little while to get over that
Ben: your, your intellectual property is still yours. Dr. Klein. I'm just using the techniques.
Foster: That's all right. I'm happy for it to get out there. You know, credit's not important.
Ben: A little story about this, so. On the last, on the last podcast or our introductory podcast, I talked about a story about, uh, giving my child a choice.
And as you know, the way that you frame choices in the love and logic model is to say, you have a choice, you can do this thing with this consequence, or you can do this other thing with this other consequence, which do you choose? And [00:05:00] so I use that on my daughter when she was, oh, I guess she was, uh, still in diapers, but able to understand speech, I guess she was probably somewhere between one.
Um, and it works so great that I, I brought it into my office. And so, uh, you know, in our practice we serve physicians. And, uh, the first physician I, I ever worked with was very easy to serve. And then she brought her husband in and he was a surgeon. And I had heard that surgeons are difficult and they can be difficult.
They're not, they're not all difficult, but I was having a little trouble with this one. And so I framed up a financial decision using love and logic framework. I said, you can, you can do this thing and you can get this financial result or you can do this other thing. And I think it was like, repay it or buy a car or whatever it was.
And he made a choice and was really happy about it. And about a year or so later, he reflected on that conversation. And he said that was when he began to really like working with me. [00:06:00] And it was at that moment that I realized, you know, love and logic is not a, not just a way of parenting. It's an approach to humanity.
It's, it's an approach to human beings. I found that when, uh, when people have control, they seem to be happier. And, uh, if you're a person who's guiding them, then giving them choices that are both of, which are going to be good for them. Each of which may have different consequences really brings them into the process.
It's collaborative in it, and it makes them feel, I feel happy and, uh, in more secure,
Foster: Really, I always used to say that love and logic is a leadership program masquerading as a parenting program.
Ben: Wow. Wow. Yeah. And I'm just, I'm it's so profound. I don't. I know what to say. I mean, it, it is, it is more of a leadership program than anything
Foster: I did.
Uh, I did many, many trips with a group [00:07:00] called young president's organization. And, uh, you know, if it, if it, the joke is, and it's really true, you know, if it works in the third grade, if you're using love and logic in the third grade, it'll work for general motors, it's sort of across the board type of program.
Hmm.
Nate: Wow. Well, you know, I think that, uh, the first question I wanted to ask you or discuss together, um, it has to do with failure. Um, I have. Uh, so just last night I let my, uh, two year old fail by choosing adult toothpaste, which what he calls, uh, or he would say is it's too spicy. So, um, it was a lot, uh, a lot, uh, more minty than he was expecting.
And, and then the next night I'm assuming he'll choose differently. So that was a really small failure. Um, but really what we want to talk about today is failing. Dr. Klein. [00:08:00] When was the first time you let your child fail?
Foster: Well, I think that, um, as soon as they're able to, uh, give them, uh, some money, a small allowance that they can spend inside a store, or if they're old enough to go to the store with you, they're old enough to decide.
They want a little bit of this or that, hopefully it's not something that will rot out their teeth, but, but if they're with you in the store and, and they learned that you get things, the first thing they need to learn and they learn it when they're very young, is that they get things with money and that you get things with money.
And that even when, when there's a car, there's money hidden inside this car and money is hidden, you know? So the kids learned that money's really important early. And then what you hope they do is make some poor choices in how they spend it. Um, so when something comes along [00:09:00] that they really want, they don't have the money so that we can be empathetic and understanding and say, oh, darn you know, um, when you're in the story, you say, well, well, you know, the BRAF is putting a whole bunch of stuff on there.
Okay. So do you have the money for that? And. He said, no, I didn't even have that much money. And then the parents says, oh, darn. When I don't have it enough money, I don't buy it either. I guess everybody works that way. You know, you don't have enough money, you don't get it. And so you're empathetic. You're not mad, but you hope they spend money on, on something that is.
Important. And I think that as they grow older, you give them, uh, you will give them an allowance. And we always gave an allowance in our home for, for, for being able to walk. You know, I mean, if you're a member of the family, you get allowance. So the nice thing about having an allowance and they also have their [00:10:00] jobs, of course, but they're not being paid for their job.
So the jobs are just part of, if you're in the family, you have to feed the dog and you have to do certain jobs. And, but the nice thing about an allowance is that if they don't do their job, you can pay a neighborhood kid to do. Or you can pay yourself. So the beautiful thing about, uh, starting giving them an allowance is that they feel good about it.
They start making wise decisions with it, and you do that as soon as you can. And I remember, or I can give you a little story. I remember when. Uh, we were sitting at the table and bang the back door open and slammed. And in came Ernie, who was a neighbor next door and he grabbed the dog food and he put it in the dog food dish.
And I remember Andy, my son said, oh, what's he doing here? I said, oh, Andy's, he's feeding the dog. And, uh, and well, that's my job. And I said, [00:11:00] yeah, I know, but did you do it tonight? You know, I, I hate seeing a Ruby dog. It's all take care of yourself thing. I hate seeing Ruby dog, but have you done it? No. Um, and he's doing it and, uh, he'll get paid.
He says, oh, you paid him for that. And I said, no, Andy, I'm not paying him. You are. And he said, well, how much am I paying him? His eyes were pretty big. You know how much you might pay, but I said $5. You said $5 for feeding the dog. And I remember saying, well, Andy, you know, it's overtime for you. Over time.
It's always more expensive. So it's not overtime for you, but it's overtime for Ernie
Nate: is terrific. Yeah. Um, I, I, I, I think about, um, I listened to a podcast, uh, from the, the love and logic podcast that you guys have. And, um, I, I, what I grasped onto from what you just said is hoping your children make mistakes.
[00:12:00] Um, that that's one of the main, uh, Takeaways. I got from the podcasts. I listened to that. You're, you're looking for mistakes because those are opportunities. So I bet you couldn't wait for the dog not to be fed that day. Huh?
Foster: Well, the dog, the dog was always late, had been late, you know, and, and, um, love and logic looks at like, um, as you know, love and logic is a parent centered family, you know, sorta, it's not a child centered family, but we want the kids to be happy.
We want it to be win-win. One of the big mistakes that parents make is they allow the kids to not enhance the parent's life. In other words, the parent's life is not rich. Because they have kids. And as soon as my kids are annoying, I want to make an important point here. As soon as my kids are knowing to me, they put me inside them as our kids put the parents inside, put the parent inside them as their guide.
Yeah. [00:13:00] In light or internalized ego or whatever the heck you want to call it. But the point is, if my kids are annoying to me and then they put me inside them, there are knowing to themselves and that's called poor self-image. So almost all kids who are difficult with their parents have a poor self image because they're putting that parental image inside them.
So it's important that we raise our kids so that they're responsible, respectful, and enjoyable to be around most of the time.
Nate: Yeah, I think that the other piece there is, is that you said that you do this at a very young age, and I see what you just said about, um, my, even my two-and-a-half year old self image all the time.
And sometimes when we recently had another child, that's an infant and, um, You know, when he feels, you know, ma maybe you're right. Um, it's, it feels harsh to say annoying, but when you're feeding a [00:14:00] three month old and the two year old is constantly asking for your attention, I could see his self-image going down when we shoo him away all the time.
So, um, and, and he acts out when that happens and we have to realize it kind of the reason why. So that's interesting. I'm reflecting while I'm listening to you.
Ben: So, Mr. I want to ask a question about. About the framing of choices. Um, I, I have an answer to this question, but I want to see what your answer is.
When is the so making good financial decisions is, is about making decisions in the first place. So when do you begin teaching your children to make decisions? When do you begin to allow them to make decisions? Like what, what are, uh, two or three developmental milestones a child needs to have reached before?
They're, they're ready to begin making this.
Foster: Well, you have to remember. We expect dogs to make good decisions. Okay. I mean, you know, don't you out on the furniture, you know, don't tear up the rug, you know, bark. When you want to [00:15:00] go out. Now, a kid passes the dog in basic intelligence at about eight, eight months.
Eight months is a wonderful month. If we can say, oh good Jenny smarter than Rex. Yeah. You know, so, so, so, so we start, so there going to make mistakes, um, early and it's, and you know, it starts, uh, in those early months when a kid knocks their, their food off of their highchair, You know, and, and the question then is what keeps them from learning.
Well, what keeps them from making wise choices? If the mom gets upset and picks up the food five times, because she becomes a five food retriever, you know, and the kid knows that whenever he knocks it off, this kid is learning that whenever I knock my food off, or I throw my food on the floor or whatever, mom gets mad, picks it up and puts it back on the plate for me to eat.
[00:16:00] Versus. So he never learns that he's making a bad choice because it always works well, mom, mom is annoying. You see? And the food gets put back versus the mother that when he first knocks the food off says that's too bad. And she puts it back once, of course, maybe twice, but then the third time that the milk bottle or whatever it goes on the floor, she says, oh, all done.
I bet you'll have a good lunch or whatever the next meal is. And she pulls out the tray and down and he gets, and he learns like, geez, you know, this is a very small kid. When I knocked that off, it disappears if I knock it off three times. So learning started taking place very early in life in the way parents handle things, but you handle them with love.
So I was thinking about what Nate just said about his two year old being. Obnoxious when he's feeding his three year old and sometimes you. Call the two year old in [00:17:00] and put your arm around them and say, you know, if, if you really, if you choose to be really quiet here, then maybe we can feed baby together or maybe we can be together.
And then if he's still being, you know, obnoxious or something like that, you, you give that three year old little kiss on the top of his head and say, oh, it's so sad. I find the way you're coming through right now. I don't have as much fun feeding the baby. So where can you go? That I'm not. So you just shoot the kid off very loving way because they're making it more difficult for you.
Not because they're being a bad kid, not because they're doing something wrong. It's just that you find them annoying. Mm. Mm. I mean, and that's, that's, that's not hard. I mean, kids have to learn very early that if you're annoying to another person who doesn't annoy easily, but if you're annoying to another person, then you're generally not around them.
That happens in the adult [00:18:00] world. And it will happen with the kids first three spouses too, if they're annoying. First three spouses won't want to be around him. So the difference is that as a parent, we always want the kid back. And the first three spouses usually don't, that's the
Ben: difference? Foster is I is I hear you telling the story about, uh, young children.
I can, I can see myself working with my kids at, at, uh, about that age. But I, as I, you know, kind of leave back through your book, prepping for this visit, I started thinking to myself, well, what about that person who is in their mid forties and their parenting, uh, you know, kids that are ages nine to 14 or 15 who are discovering love and logic for the first time ago.
And wow, this is a really amazing concept, but they haven't been framing things as, as choices in consequences for. You know, the last 12 years, what do you, what do you tell that person? Is it, is it too late for love and logic? I mean, where do you begin then?
Foster: It it's, it's [00:19:00] never too late. It's just that when you change direction, On something that has been going one way for a long time, there's this issue that's called momentum.
You know, it's the wait time speed. So as the kid grows bigger and it's been going on for a long time, we got more momentum. So it takes time to change direction. There are some things that the parents can do that make that change much easier. The first thing to do is not lay it on the kid. Like, boy, we're going to, I mean, some people are so happy when they first find out about loving logic.
You know, I can hardly wait to try this on my kid. You know, boy, is this going to be a shock to her and boy, you know, because it works really well and it takes care of the parents. That's pretty well. And so they get overly enthusiastic. And it's sort of like if your wife came home and said, well, I got a book and boy, are we going to be happy in this new marriage ideas I've found, you know, [00:20:00] it's not going to go, you know, boy, I got new marriage ideas, hardly wait to try them out on, you know, so what we do is we say to the kid, you know, first of all, he asked.
Um, how would you grade me as parents? You know, how, how do you feel we get along? So you have a listening routine with the kid, and then you're thinking, and then you say to the kid, you know, ma. My issue is, I wonder if I've been a parent that has really prepared you for the way the world works. For example, when you do this and this and this, I kind of rescue, I love you so much.
I rescue you a year and I've done this for you, and I've done that for you. And I've been thinking. About a new way of coming through since you're so smart and you're so intelligent and well, heck you have my genes, you know, so since you're able now to be older and think for yourself, I'm thinking that I'm going to love you just as [00:21:00] much, but not rescue you as much.
How, how does that sound to you, James? Does that sound like something might work or does it scare you? And if the kid has been difficult, he'll say it oh, fine. And stomp off, but he'll think about it, you know? So you're including. The child in your ideas about how you might be coming through in a different way.
And you're excited about it because you think it will help them prepare for adulthood and making good decisions. And that's why you're doing it, you know? And so I think
Ben: you'd have to sit down with a kid and say, how am I doing it at being your fare? But I've actually done this before. Uh, had a really bad parenting moment with my kiddo.
I thought about it for a couple days. And one day I walked in and sat down on the side of her bed in her room. And I said, I'm just curious, how, how am I doing it? Being your dad? And surprisingly, she gave me a pretty good mark, but she said, [00:22:00] you yelled too much. And I said, how would it be if I never yelled again?
And she said, that'd be great. And I said, stop yelling. And she started responding better. And so it was amazing. It was almost like an interview. And I would've never thought to do that before, but it works, you know, it really does. Yeah.
Foster: Yeah. I mean, really it's, uh, it's really letting your kids no, that, uh, they have the responsibility to figure some of these things out.
I would never promise them that I'll never yell again, but I would say, you know, I, I think I'm going to make a definite effort to yell less, you know, that's going to be, that's a good point. You tell him that's a good point. I probably do yell too much. I I'm going to make a definite effort to yell less. I think I'll be doing much better.
There's an old adage. You never make promises that, you know, you might find, I mean, she might put, you know, if you had a really difficult kid and you said I'm never going to yell at you again, but that's, the kids own is to really [00:23:00] act out. We'll see. And you're not going to yell at this guess again, dad, you know, but you have a sweet little girl, so that didn't happen.
Nate: That, that makes me think of a, another part of your book that hit me pretty deeply, which how is how devastating it is to children to have what appears to be a perfect parent. I'm never going to yell at you again, and somehow you succeed that that's a pretty, a high standard to live up to. But, uh, Ben, I, I know that are around Lisa at work.
We talk about failure all the time. It's not just letting your kids fail. It's kind of addressing your own failure. Um, yeah, I want to ask, cause I, I actually am, you know, as an advisor, I'm still nervous about, um, money with my kids and, and I'm interested to know foster, if you have ever made a mistake with money and how you've, um, relayed that to your children so that they [00:24:00] could learn from it
as
Foster: well.
To tell you the truth, the mistakes that we made, uh, we made early on when, before even the kids were born, going to medical school and getting in debt and stuff like that, but we all make mistakes or we buy something that we wish we hadn't. And then we say in front of the kid, darn, you know what I did, I bought this and this and this.
And, you know, I realized now I haven't used it yet. What a waste of money. See, you know, so you talk about the mistakes you made in front of the kid. Like, oh, darn. I wish I hadn't done this, or I wish I hadn't done that, but you know, the good thing about it is I've learned a lesson from this. That's a good thing about your dad is.
I only have to make mistakes three times and you laugh. You know, I don't have to make the mistake three times before I get it. I think this was my third time of going in debt on a credit card, you know, I'm not going to do it again. So it, [00:25:00] the kid learns when we handle our mistakes out loud, but we handle it well, in other words, right?
Feel overwhelmed by them on, and, and we don't whine about him, but we look at our own mistakes as a learning experience and it sets the model for the child. Um, cause we all make thinking about.
Ben: So when we're teaching kids about making decisions and decisions with money, you know, if you go to the store and you, you waste your, your money and you come back and you're like, ah, dad, I need more money.
I'm sorry, you spent your money. And I feel sorry for you. And I wish you'd made better choices. And this was kind of how it turned out, you know, the whole living with your consequences concept. Um, that seems pretty easy to me, but there are decisions that I'm seeing. My older children make teenagers where they're, uh, The, the choice that they make and the consequence that they face are separated in time.
[00:26:00] Like, uh, maybe they'll use all their money to buy something now, and later on, they really need it. Like they blow a head gasket on their car. Um, and you know, I think about saving as one of those things. And one of the questions I hear from clients on a regular basis is how do I begin to get my child to save?
And so, you know, saving is really. It's the deferred gratification part of it. That's difficult. And so, uh, how do you kind of begin to bring those, those things that are in different time periods together so that the, the lesson and the consequences can be felt when there, you know, there's such a big distance between the time when a child makes a decision and the time when they bear the consequences as, as is the case.
Foster: Well, kids need to learn that the time value of money. And then you do that. You start with little kids. So, I mean, when they're in latency years, You know, early teens that you, you almost have to draw them a graph and [00:27:00] say, you know, there's certain things you can do. Like if you take a a hundred dollars right now and spend it, it's totally gone.
But if you put that a hundred dollars in, at, at the bank or, or you buy Adidas or whatever the kid is excited about, as far as that goes, if you say that. The money that, that, that saves goes back into the hundreds. So now you have, you're not just, you're not just getting saving a hundred dollars now you're saving $105 and then the next year.
That grows and then you're saving $110 and before, you know, it, it grows and grows and grows. Right. But, oh, darn. I don't think that might happen with you because you put your arm around him. You're kind of a spender. So I, I think there might be hard times ahead for you. I'm I'm sorry to say that, but I think that could be, I hope not.
You know, so you're giving them the, [00:28:00] you draw that line. Time value graph and how it grows and, and let them know that they have those decisions to make and they will make some wrong decisions. Yeah. I mean in the credit card companies, I mean, you tell your kids when they're old enough to have a credit card that the credit card company really hopes that they make mistakes on that.
Because if they, if they build up a hundred dollar bill on the credit card, they'll get a bill at the end of the month that says, yo, the credit card, $5. That's what it says right at the top. So you look at these things and you laugh about it with your wife in front of the kids. You say, can you believe it?
People get back there had a card and they've spent a hundred dollars and the credit card deal comes in and says, you owe $5 this month. And they don't even realize that the rest of it's going to go into interest, all those things or people, you know, so you have this conversation back and forth in front of the kid and [00:29:00] you're, you're setting the model basically.
Hmm. And are you hearing a
Ben: lot of maintenance? A lot of modeling yeah. Doing what you would want them to do in front of them, uh, modeling that behavior, which, uh, going back to your original comment, it looks a lot like leadership.
Foster: Yeah. And you can have fun as you talk that over with your spouse, really, you know, like, oh, look at some of these young people can make this mistake or that mistake.
And you're not talking about your kid, your adolescent kid, but you're talking about other kids, you know? And that's when you say, you know, you know, you say to your wife in front of the kid, Angie do you, do you know what wealth really is? And Angie says, well, you're in the financial yeah. What is wealth is?
It's not, it's not how good the car you drive is it's how much money you have to spend on a car. If you were dumb enough to spend it on a new car. You know? So you're saying [00:30:00] the people who have well don't show it and the people who don't have. Often, you know, spend it to look like they have it, but you know, you just, you, you, you, you joke about it with your wife, you know, that you see someone in a Mercedes and you know what I always say, honey, when I see someone with their Mercedes, I always say they've gone in debt, a hundred, they've spent a hundred dollars of their hard-earned money on the Mercedes.
There'll be. Mm, probably, you know, this much money in three years or whatever it is. And you just talk about those things and in speculate on it in front of the kids and have fun with it. You know, I always told my kid that the most expensive trip they'll ever make is driving the new car home. So it's more expensive than weddings.
It's more, it's more expensive than funerals. It's about the most expensive thing. The most expensive that you could do is drive the new car home. So, you know, I always put my arm around [00:31:00] him. You can drive the new car home, or you can have a Caribbean cruise, which would, which do you want to know?
Nate: That's great.
Yeah. I, this makes me think of. Talking about cars makes me think of my first car experience. I think I talked about this last week, but, um, it's, uh, it, it re it reminds me, mom did a great job of letting me make my own choices, but I wouldn't say, I think the part where maybe she fell short was she would seem to save me a lot.
So she let me buy the. Uh, the car that was really in really bad shape and that was expensive to fix, but then when it needed to be fixed, um, she would, she she'd give me the money to fix it. So I'm, I'm torn with young children on, when is the, uh, where do you draw the line between, uh, on, on reasonable risk with these mistakes that they can make.
And, um, when do you step in and not allow, uh, a mistake too?
[00:32:00] Foster: Well, I, my tendency is to allow the mistake to be made unless their life or limb or in probable or likely danger, you know? Um, usually their mistakes, they can pull out of it. And I might, if, if my kid thought he got a really great deal on a used car, and then it blew a head gasket or something like that, I would be understanding.
I mean, if I have a, if I have a good kid, I'd be understanding that they made a mistake on it. And I would say, you know, I think I can understand you're buying that use car and I can understand you thought you were getting a really good deal on it and now it blew a head gasket. And then you say, Roger, do you think that it would destroy the learning experience of this?
If I helped you out on it? If I paid part of that, isn't going to make you, is it, is that little rescue and make you learn less from this, or are you going to [00:33:00] think I'm really going to have a quality check, done our car before I buy a net by next, when my, my worry and helping you out with this is that it'll make you more stupid.
I don't want that to happen. You know? No, it will make me more stupid dad and I've learned my lesson. Well, okay, then I'll help you out. Three quarters, whatever it is, you know, whatever we can easily afford. That's fun for us. And we have, most kids are going to learn from their mistakes. If. If, uh, we help them, we can help them out on it that I, I'm not talking about completely rescuing them, but I'm, I'm talking about here.
I want to make an important point. If we usually don't rescue our kids, it's okay to show him mercy and rescue him. In other words, a non miscuing parent can do something great for their kid and the kid will always say thanks because they didn't expect it. I really appreciate that, dad. Thank you. But if you always rescue your kid [00:34:00] and then you don't rescue them, then they get mad about it, then they're.
So it's better to be a consequential parent and know, it's just like when you get stopped by a cop, you know, you're going to get a ticket, you know, you're going to get a ticket, but then if the cop says, well, I'm going to give you a little warning on this run. Oh, cop, thank you so much. I mean, I drew on the windows side of the, you know, on the syllabus a window, he's giving me a warning.
Thank you. Thank you. You know, but if the cops always gave war. And then he gave me a ticket that son of a gun gave me a ticket. He must have had a bad day, you know, then I'm mad. So you see, you can be a non miscuing parent and occasionally on something like a cylinder head or something like that, that could happen to any of us, you know, help out the kid, but they should pay something certainly
Ben: innate, um, to kind of go back to the question that you, [00:35:00] Dr.
Klein just addressed, you know, part of it. Part of, uh, rescuing your children or not rescuing your child is to not put them in a situation where they have to be rescued. I I've told my kids, uh, when they were young to say, dad, I want to climb that tree, put me up in that tree and always said, you know, I can't, I don't want to put you up in that tree because you won't be able to get yourself down.
You're welcome to climb any tree here that you can get yourself into. Cause I know you'll be able to get yourself out. In in the financial world, it's, um, I've seen adults, uh, you know, have teenage kids go out and help that child borrow to buy a car they'll co-sign and this is a kid who doesn't have a job.
And so you're, co-signing on a loan for your kid to buy a car, particularly a brand new car. And that kid doesn't have the ability to repay the car. You are going to risk that CA kid. I mean, you're setting yourself up to fail and you're setting them up to fail. It's a terrible, yeah. Yeah.
Foster: Yeah. That's that's right.
Uh, I think, you know, and it depends on, [00:36:00] on how responsible your kid is, the more risk, the more responsible they are, the freer we feel and in helping them out. To a certain extent, but, um, you know, uh, certainly if you co-sign on a car, then you're taking a risk that the whole car is going to end up on your.
Doorstep, you know, so you can only, I mean, I would mind co-signing on a car if I had a really super responsible kid and it wasn't a brand new car or something like that, because my kid is responsible enough that if they don't make the payments, they know that. I'll probably turn the car in as a second hand, or I'll say, good.
I always needed a second car myself, or I'm not going to get mad at him about it, but there could be consequences. They might, they might actually lose the car, but probably not. If they're responsible kid we'd work it out, but the [00:37:00] kid would have to come up with the terms. I mean, I want the kid to know that I, I love him, but.
The best way we can rescue kids is to be a guardian angel. And the thing that makes guardian angels work is that they're invisible and they're unreliable. You know, nobody drives a zillion miles down the highway. It's George is sitting over there. He's my guardian angel. You know, I'm sure I won't have an accident.
No. Guardian angels, your help. If you really need a big to do a big thing for your kid, for some reason, if you can do it behind the scenes. Great. That of course it's best not to have to do it at all. And, and, and if the kid doesn't expect it, I tell parents who rescue their kids or do nice things for their kids.
I always say you're on the right track. If your kid looks you in the eye and says what's with slight surprise, gee, thanks. As long as [00:38:00] you get that. Gee, thank you. Thank you. You're on the right track, track, right trail, you know, but if you get your kid a car or help him with a car, they said, well, I wanted a red one and this one's blue.
Now you got problems, you know? Yes. It's the G thank you. It's that eye contact and smile that, that they say, gee, thanks, dad. You're on the right trail. Okay. Right.
Ben: Wow. To make sure you're on the right trail. Ask us a question we might use on the upcoming episode, visit physician, family.com. Send us a question to [email protected] or call our answer line at (503) 308-8733 again, 5 0 3 3 0.
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Foster: for listening to the physician, family financial advisors podcast. Is there a question you would like answered on our next show? Go to physician, family.com to record your question while you're there, sign [00:39:00] up for our newsletter and gain access to tools you can use to turn worries about taxes, investing in extra money, into a lifelong feeling of financial secure that's physician, family.com.