Ep 93: How Wealth and Motherhood Intersect

Today it's all about moms and key pieces that women have the tendency to give up or take on that they shouldn't when it comes to their wealth. 

Motherhood is what we're going to talk about in today's episode. 

Motherhood when it comes to deciding to stay home and raise the kids, what to do when you decide to return to work, and how to bring your kids into a real conversation about wealth. 

So if you know a mother, if you are a mother, if you have a community of mothers, whatever fashion that might be, you should be listening to this episode and sharing it with your friends. 

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Securities offered through LPL Financial, a member of FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Advisors' Pride, a SEC registered investment advisor. LPL Financial, Advisors' Pride, Forethought Planning and the guests of Thrive For[e]ward podcast are separate and unaffiliated parties. The views expressed here are those of the participants, and not those of Forethought Planning, Advisor's Pride, or LPL financial. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. LPL Financial and Forethought Planning do not offer legal services.   

Transcript

Shannon Foreman  0:00  
Hello there friends, we have another episode of The Thrive Forward podcast today for you. And this one is what in the mother lover? What does that even mean? Motherhood is hard and we just celebrated Mother's Day. But every day should be a day that we celebrate Mothers, those that come in different fashions, right, not just those that are we think about from a traditional standpoint, that being said, there are so many things that mothers deal with, and what is it that we deal with, especially when it comes to wealth, key pieces that women have the tendency to give up setback, or take on that they shouldn't, when it comes to their wealth, and motherhood is what we're going to talk about on today's episode. So if you know a mother, if you are a mother, if you have a community of mothers, whatever fashion that might be in, you should be listening to this episode today and sharing with your friends, whether it be on social media, on a text chain that you might have, whatever it may be, share this, let's start having the conversation about how wealth and motherhood intersect. Let's play.

Shannon Foreman  1:21  
as mothers, we have the tendency to put ourselves last i we i think this is something that is a faux pas about motherhood, that we have blindly been told for centuries that you are a good mom, if you put everybody else before yourself, that is not a reality, I subscribe to the reality of I've got to put myself first I've got to be able to fill my cup up. If I can be a good mom, if I want to play hard with my kids, if I want to craft with my kids, if I want to listen to them deeply about their feelings, I have to be in tune with who I am and what is important to me and have my cup filled up. And for you that might look different. And that's okay. All of these things look different for us no matter what, whether we're working from home mom, or working out of the house, mom, whatever it is, separate all the titles, you're a mom, and you have the right to make decisions the way you want to. But let's talk today about how wealth and motherhood intersect. And let's put aside that element of us having to put ourselves first, but what is it that we really truly want to be able to achieve on our own for ourselves and for our families. One of the main pieces that set women apart from our male counterparts or partners, is often that of childcare, and making that decision once we decide to become mothers, or get the joy of becoming a mother or sometimes the whole crap. Now I'm going to responsible for a tiny human, what do I do, you make that decision of whether or not you're going to stay at home and raise your family, or you're going to work outside of the house, maybe you will stay at home and you work from home and raise your kids at something that has definitely become a lot more popular things to COVID-19. That being said, what are some of the things that you should be thinking of again, this is a personal choice to yourself. So you need to be grounded in what it is that you want to do, but also need to understand that if you do decide to stay at home, maybe that's a complete lifestyle change for you and your family. You might be saving money in the short term on daycare, but what is it that you are sacrificing in the long term? For instance, if you are going to stay home for five years with one child, right? Not? Well, let alone if you have two or three or more, how many years are you planning to stay home? That means how and assuming that you are not going to work from home, right? Because you very well might work from home maybe even negotiated that absolutely more power to you. Let's use negotiation as one of our superpowers. That being said, you need to think about what is the salary that you are going to be losing over the next five plus years? What are the benefits that you're going to be losing over the next five plus years? Is your employer participate in matching your five very your 401 K contributions? Are you saving into your 401k? How are you not going to be able to do that? How are you going to continue to be able to do that? Will that also be a lifestyle adjustments for yourself? Understanding how you're going to be able to prioritize that. We are going to include a cool tool website again all times you should be seeking personal financial advice. That being said, we'll put a tool on our show notes that allows you to kind of calculate this. If you're thinking about staying at home with your children. How much are you going to lose out on from an income and wealth standpoint and how are you going to strategize to make sure that you still keep pace with your overall plan. financial goals of wanting to retire and maybe never work of traveling with your family, sending your children to college, whatever that might be, how are you going to keep pacing with that if you take time out of the workforce, that is one of the biggest hurdles for women, and then it's re entering the workforce after that. So we'll include a couple articles on what that means. But I know for myself, actually, we've hired one of our team members at fourth that is an amazing woman who reentered the workforce and we utilized a resource called busstop. Mama's there are tons of resources out there. For women who are reentering the workforce, I would caution you, if you're listening to this website, and your hiring manager or recruiter, don't think that a mom doesn't have plenty of qualifications for your job, even if she hasn't formally been working. There are plenty of things that moms do at home or volunteering at school that apply directly to the workplace. So be be creative thinking about outside the box. Also, if you're a mom, reentering the workforce, be creative with your resume. Instead of saying that you have a gap in your job, how do you list out like, Mom, household CEO, you know, volunteer at XYZ, like break those down into jobs and years and responsibilities that you've had, I think that's pretty badass, if you asked me to come into the workforce and say, You know what, this is what I've been doing for the last five, seven years. And this is how this correlates to this job and why I'm hiring or why I'm applying for this job. The second piece, that is something that we don't necessarily consider, and this is for, you know, moms who are still employed, and moms who are taking some time out of the workforce, budgeting and savings is even more important now than ever. The reality is you're gonna have added expenses with a child. On average, I would say, I mean, there's lots of different bases on what it costs to have a child on an annual basis. But yeah, I think it costs probably, you know, 20 to $40,000, depending on the age of your child, what they're participating in, what their special needs might be. All of those things, if you really broke it down to the added groceries, that you're going to have the savings that you need to participate in the activities, the childcare, whatever it might be their added expenses. So being in touch with your cash flow is something that's very important. In reality for millennials, 90% of households are run by the women in the household. And that also means finances and decisions on purchases and things that needs to be made. That being said, thinking about them and aspect of not living to the element that we want to live with everybody else. But living within our means and having a true understanding of what that means for us. And you know, if you are a mom that has multiple responsibilities outside of the home, and maybe you are working, and maybe you're traveling a lot for work or running a team, don't be afraid to understand as a part of your compensation packages, negotiating raises to account for someone to help clean around the house, someone to help with grocery shopping or meal prep, somebody to help clean that, like prep for the kids or watch the kids or nanny or whatever it might be. We need to start thinking about these things when we come into negotiations as well. So budgeting and savings and understanding your cash flow is even more important, so be empowered around those pieces. The third piece, which I kind of touched on a little bit already don't fall into that lifestyle of comparison, the reality is that our kids don't actually understand all those things. And if we explain the why our kids are so much smarter than we think they are. My kids and I've said this to clients before. In fact, I've had clients who said, You know what, I don't want to do this, or I want to buy this because I feel like my kid, that's what my kid wants. And I said, Do you know that your kid wants that?

Shannon Foreman  9:16  
Do you know that your kid wants to go to college? Do you know that your kid wants to live in this neighborhood? Do you know that your kid wants to go to that school? Communication is so necessary with our children and having realistic conversations with them is something that we have the power to be able to do. And we're starting to teach them financial responsibility and communication at an early age that life's hard and sometimes we aren't making the same money as somebody else. Or sometimes we're making more money and somebody else might not have the same thing. So how are we able to communicate with our children to make sure that they understand that we're not always going to communicate or compete with the people outside of this house? I say this to my girls all the time, what somebody else's rules are at their home I respect but what hap in this household is the choice of your dad and I. And we make team decisions here, we make decisions that are different from us. One example with our girls, we made the decision this last year that we were going to do Christmas as an experience. We celebrate Christmas in our household. And we had previously I had to come to like, I want all of the things magical. In my life, I subscribe to this, I don't I want to give my kids everything. Even if I didn't have it, I want to, I want to show them that they can have all these things, the reality of my kids in and play with any of the things I got them, they wanted me. And they wanted time. And they wanted something fun. And it didn't matter what it was. And so our kids actually told us that they would prefer to go on a trip and travel throughout the year then have massive amounts of gifts. So and my kids at that age were seven and eight years old. So I mean, these are conversations that are kids don't have to be teenagers or kids don't have to be middle schoolers to have, we can have some of these conversations at a young age, and defining for ourselves and educating our kids on the different amounts of wealth that are out there. And what we have and what we're capable of doing doesn't mean that they aren't capable of doing something later in life, let them know that if this is something that they want to do, how can you help prepare them financially to get to that place by them doing it independently? So that being said, I would say the last piece is that you don't have to like framework this whole future for your children. From a financial standpoint, I got asked earlier this week, is it important to be able to save for our kids college? Is it important to you to save for your kids college? If it is Do you want some level of flexibility to be able to what if they don't want to go right? Maybe they miss you off and you don't want to pay for it anymore? Maybe they're just suddenly mad. I mean, I get it like we're parents. So that unconditional love is real. But the reality is something might have changed. And we don't have that. So how do you have the flexibility not putting all of your eggs in one basket, not just contributing 529 plans, but looking at other options that are out there for you to save and invest to get you to those goals, having a real conversation with our children, giving them the knowledge and opportunities to grow. As we pause in today's episode, we want to highlight one of the nonprofits that we will be supporting in the month of May. As I've shared on the podcast before our wealth circles are a group of women who get together monthly for 12 months. They donate their funds dedicated to a nonprofit, and we match their donations up to 5% of our profits to nonprofits that we have selected this month. In the month that we are honoring mothers, I couldn't think of one that is more deserving of a spotlight than mothers Academy emerge, which is a multi service nonprofit services include work preparation, social support, financial literacy, education, parenting classes, mentoring and micro loan grants. For initiatives for those mothers, mothers emerge Academy is continuing to grow and expanding their services throughout the Twin Cities. If you would like to support them, we will include the link to their nonprofit on our page to learn more about how you can get involved, whether it be volunteering, donating, or even participating in the services that they have. And their website is emerge, twin cities.org. Now, back to our episode on Mothers and wealth, the intersection of

Shannon Foreman  13:53  
both. So here are the action items I have for you today. Create a level of financial stability by having your own healthy relationship with money by reviewing your cash flow, allow your kids to participate in grocery shopping, allowing them to have a good understanding of the small decisions that you make as a family. What are the things that they want to be able to participate in? Do they want to be able to go out and buy their own clothes? Okay, here's this XYZ dollar amount that you can have. This is the amount that I set aside for you for clothes, not oh my god, the amount you can have whatever you want, because I want to make sure that you feel like you can have everything that you want. What kind of behaviors are you instilling to your children by providing them a level of financial stability? We're looking at that from an element of what you're teaching both indirectly and directly. And that second point leads me to education and communication again, our kids aren't stupid. They're very smart. And they're smarter than a lot of us and as many gentlemen Asians always say, kids are the future. And they are. And so don't be afraid to talk to them about that there are great resources and books out there. In fact, two of my favorite ones, I say this a lot, but the for money bears by Matt Gardner is a great book for younger children. They are launching an app called Berryville. You can go to for the for money bears.com. Or we'll include that as a resource on the blog, you can start to pilot or beta test that app and teach your kids about being entrepreneurs and having money and the abilities to be able to grow if they're going to be on the internet, and they're going to be on an app mindless will teach them something positive that's going to serve them in the future. And lastly, mindset. So remember that what you learned as a child is likely what your children are going to learn from you. So if you haven't corrected that mindset for yourself, and you haven't corrected that story, think about how your story is impacting your children as well, and how you can take the steps forward to have a healthy relationship with money. At the end of the day, we have a lot on our plates as moms, and I'm telling you that it is hard. And I know there's so much more and I know that I'm asking you to take steps to be able to make changes, but I know how powerful mothers are and what influences we have not only to ourselves, but the church to the other children that our kids interact with, right? So let's take those extra steps to provide that financial stability, confidence, and mindset going forward not only for ourselves, but for our children as well. So be clear and concise about what it is that you want. The expectations you have in your household, communicate that with your partner come together to be able to teach your children that and remember at the core of all of this, you are worthy of wealth. The views expressed here are those of the participants and not those of forethought planning, advisors, guide or LPL. Financial all investing involves risk including loss of principal no strategy assures success or protects against loss securities are offered through LPL Financial and member of FINRA and SIPC advisory services offered through advisors pride and SEC registered investment advisor LPL Financial Advisors pride forethought planning and the guests of the Thrive Forward podcast are separate and unaffiliated parties

Transcribed by https://otter.ai