Damia: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Self- Reliant Steward podcast. Again, I’m your host, Damia Shimmin.
Today, I have a special guest with me, Harmony. She is one of my best friends and she’ll be popping into the podcast occasionally to discuss different topics with me. So welcome Harmony.
Harmony: Hey, thanks for having me on.
Damia: Okay, so as always, we’re going to start off with our money trivia question. So, Harmony, I’m going to give you an opportunity to answer. And it’s okay if you don’t know. Most people don’t know these things. Well, they don’t even know some of these things until I research them.
What is the average cost of raising a child to adulthood?
Harmony: Like from when they’re born to like when they’re 18? Okay, let me think. I think I’ve heard this answer before and it was like a large… It was like really big, but I don’t remember is it like 2 million or something?
Damia: No, it’s lower than that. I Found it kind of ranged between like $200,000 to $400,000. So, the average is like around $300,000. Still a lot of money.
Harmony: Yeah, that’s a lot of money.
Damia: So depending on how much you actually spend on your kids will depend on how much that ends up being. Well, today we’re continuing our discussion on mistakes teens make with money and how to help them avoid or overcome those mistakes.
And today we’re talking about wants and needs, helping our kids realize and recognize their wants versus needs and that there’s a difference. And how to balance their spending with those. That also brings up things like impulse buying. We don’t want them to be spending all of the money that they earn.
So one question I was thinking about is how do you define a need versus a want?
Harmony: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think this question is also hard for adults as well. Like, if you think about it, there’s a lot of adults who are like, “I need a boat.” And, for me, I’m like, I don’t. But, for some people, that adds value to their lives. Their family spends time boating, so then, a boat would enhance family time. So, in a sense, that’s a value put on that.
For teenagers specifically, like, the biggest thing is trying to differentiate their needs between their wants. Because kids need different things. They need school supplies. They need food. They need different things. But, I think the problem is that parents provide a lot for those needs and so then the kids are kind of left with not a lot of things that they actually need.
Damia: Yeah, definitely. And that’s why we’re having this conversation. Becausec if teens don’t ever get a chance to distinguish those, then I think they’ll end up impulse buying more, or just spending more on their wants. Or wanting to start off their life living away from home with all the things that their parents had, because that’s what they’re used to. And they may not recognize that they can live with certain things and they can live without certain things.
And I think just also in the world today, with all the technology we have, and the creature comforts we enjoy, I think you’re right, it is really hard for everyone. And it can especially be hard for the rising generation, even our generation, to distinguish that and to rein in a little bit. I definitely think it is important to spend money on things we want, but it needs to be in moderation.
Harmony: Yeah, for sure. With that, when you’re having a lot of different needs going on, because for some people they do have different needs, there are different things that help balance their lives, and so it’s hard to have a cut list, I think, between needs and wants. I don’t know that there’s a hard list. Like, you need food, water, air, and like that’s basically what you need to survive, right?
Damia: I mean I would add shelter and clothing.
Harmony: Yeah, shelter and clothing. I’m like “there’s more to that I can’t remember.” But, at the same time, like, those are just basic needs that we all need. Everything else is kind of just supplementary to that lifestyle of just survival. But then if you add other aspects of your life where you’re like, okay, how can I enhance different parts of my life, then it’s important for us to figure out what’s necessary to keep within those aspects. That was my thought.
Damia: Yeah, I think going along with that, what comes to mind is prioritizing. So, when we create a budget, which is our way of creating boundaries around money and deciding how we’re going to spend our money so that money doesn’t control us, we can start with those basic human needs. And then from there, we need to prioritize, okay, then what is an additional need? And then from there go into the wants.
Because, we could say electricity isn’t a need if we’re defining needs just by the basic human needs. But, in today’s world, it kind of is a necessity, it is a need, because we use electricity to cook our food, and to see in our house, and to heat it and air condition it, depending on the season of the year. So, I think it comes down to prioritizing.
Harmony: Yeah, it’s kind of like what you said in one of your podcasts recently. You were talking about how you prioritized buying tickets to Hawaii and going to Hawaii over a car or something else at the time. Because that was something that was more important at the time for you to focus on. The other thing wasn’t a need at the time that you needed to focus on.
Damia: Yeah, I prioritized my savings categories in the order that I did it in How many do you have any stories that you can think of in your life about when you did or didn’t prioritize or Look at your needs versus your wants?
Harmony: Yeah, growing up we didn’t have a lot of money in my household. So, when we did get money, we would go straight to the dollar store. Like five dollars for your birthday, you know, from your grandparents, Easter change you’d get in eggs and stuff like that. It would all go, the majority of the time, to, to the dollar store. Because it was like, it’s cheap, it doesn’t cost a lot of money. You get a lot of little things, instead of just one thing for like four dollars.
That’s kind of the mindset that I grew up with, where it would just be like, “oh we gotta go to the dollar store.”
But, when I was seventeen, it kind of changed a little. My mindset’s slowly changing about money. I’m still figuring out how to view it and stuff. Numbers don’t really work for my brain very much. So, it’s kind of hard to visualize how much the money actually is, you know. But when I was I think about 18, there was a family reunion in California. And so we decided to save up our money. And so we worked really hard. We helped babysit, and we did a lot of stuff to earn money, like extra chores, and outside the home a little, a couple things.
And we earned our money for Sea World and for the trip in general, for extra things we wanted. And my parents covered the basic needs of the Airbnb and stuff like that, and food. And so we didn’t have to worry about that.
So we could buy souvenirs and we bought our own tickets to Sea World, which are usually like 60 or 70 dollars. But my brother was buying a ticket and he was just barely like 12.
So, me, my brother, and my sister (I think my sister was like 15 at the time), we all earned up our money to buy tickets to Sea World. And it was kind of cool because it was like the first time in my life that I ever like really bought something that was like an experience, I guess, because my family doesn’t travel very much. So it was like we bought this experience, and I did it myself, and I worked for it. And it was just crazy to, like, we went and we could just spend our money and it wasn’t like, “don’t waste your money.” It was like, we earned our money for this specifically, so that we could think about using it for that.
And so that was really cool to have that moment, to be like, okay, I did this and I can save money and I can build up. And so that was cool that my mom had us do that. And my parents, honestly, they couldn’t pay for something like that. They’re like, if we’re all going together, we all got to pull our weight to get there. And so that was able to create a memory for our family as well, because we all earned our way to go on that trip.
Damia: That’s really cool. And I love that you brought that story up because while we’re talking about prioritizing needs in this episode, we also want to be careful not to develop that scarcity mindset or think that we can only spend money on things that we need.
And in thinking about that, that actually reminded me of a post that I posted on social media about a month ago. I said something like, Does the Lord want us to obtain riches? I believe he does, as long as we have the right mindset and the right purpose for them. I do not believe that he wants us to be poor or barely able to meet our financial obligations.
I believe he wants us to enjoy our resources, to bless our families and others, and enjoy, he wants us to use our resources to bless our families and others, and to enjoy life.
And Brigham Young said, “When this people are prepared to properly use the riches of this world for the building up of the kingdom of God, he is ready and willing to bestow them upon us. I like to see men get rich by their industry, prudence, management, and economy, and then devote it to the building up of the kingdom of God on the earth.”
I definitely think part of building up the kingdom is creating those experiences and those memories with our families. And yes, we can have experiences that don’t cost us any money, but it’s also really fun to work and to see in a big experience, like a family vacation, what we can do with our money and create a bigger memory as well.
Harmony: Yeah, and we definitely learned that with that experience of doing that ourselves. I love that quote. That’s really good.
Damia: So my experiences, in relation to wants and needs, I feel like over the last few years, there have been times where I had a job and I had money and I was able to prioritize needs and, you know, obviously I still had like fun money in my budget as well. And then there are periods of time after that, that I didn’t have a job.
And when I got a job again, I just had this feeling like it was built up of all these things that I had seen over that period of time of not having a job that I wanted. I definitely have mindset things to work through still. I really had the desire to spend on a lot of things that I wanted, because I wasn’t able to for a long time.
And so I did go and spend on some things. I was able to keep it reined in, but I think I want to, in the future, help myself not have that feeling as much. And I want to help other people to help their teens not experience that, so that they don’t go and impulse buy.
And I don’t want to go through cycles of not having a lot and so not spending at all, and then going to having some things and then spending all of it.
I think to help with that, you can give your teens responsibility for paying for some of their needs once they start earning money. So, like Harmony said, when she went and babysat and did some other outside chores teens can go earn money that’s not from their parents. I don’t think parents need to be providing their children with the money that they need to start practicing budgeting and managing their money. They can go to other sources.
And if you want a resource for that, I have a free “20 best jobs for Latter-day Saint Teens” download that you can download through the link in the description. And then you can give your teens opportunities to and responsibility for paying for things like their clothing, or their phone bill, or gas, or saving up for and buying a car for themselves.
Harmony: Yeah, I like that. And, one thing, I know my younger brother, he used to mow lawns. He helps every once in a while, but he was like 14 and he was going out and mowing lawns for people. And he was like really good at it. And so having those skills also can help in the long run as well.
And you can develop them really young. Like there’s a lot of skills that people are like, you have to wait until you’re older, but there’s teenagers, there’s even kids, that are starting businesses. They’re selling things, they’re being entrepreneurs. And that is changing the way people view teenagers in a sense.
Where they’re like, oh, you know what, they can do that. I think there’s a block in society on how, when people become teenagers, they’re like, “Well, once you turn 18, you can [work], but before then, just don’t care about it, like, don’t worry about it.”
Damia: Yeah, I think teaching children how to work has not been a priority. I don’t know culturally what happened. Well, I guess maybe, if you think about the pioneer times, literally everyone had to help out. In order to provide for the whole family the basic necessities of life, and now it’s no longer that way.
But I love, I found a talk by Elder Ballard, now President Ballard, but, at the time, when he was Elder Ballard. I love this talk and I’ll link to it in the show notes.
He said, “Parents need to teach children very early that a solid financial base is a very important element in a happy home. We can do much with our young people to help them find satisfying, rewarding employment. We should encourage them to do well in their schoolwork and to learn to take advantage of opportunities that will help build a solid base for their future security.”
And I love that. And I think that giving teens the responsibility for paying for some of their financial needs, and then, and helping them to learn how to work early on can help them, one, develop that work ethic, and then also, if they get a part time job when they’re a teenager, it can help them get a job later on.
Whereas, like, I know for me, getting a job when I turned 18 was really hard, because I didn’t have any job experience. But, if teenagers start working, and find places that will hire them, and they start working as a teenager, then getting the next job will be easier. And hopefully the next job and the next job. And then they can maintain a more consistent income than I feel like our generation has been able to.
Harmony: Yeah, and to add on to that real quick, like, I feel like shadowing should be done more when they’re teenagers. I know I was looking into engineering when I was, like, 15-16, and there was a lady who did CAD designing, which is, like, where you just draw on the computer. It’s, like, 3D designing on the computer and stuff for architecture.
And I was like, “Oh, I really want to learn how to do that.” So, I asked to shadow her. And I was able to shadow her for like an afternoon while she did her job and kind of showed me her thing. And eventually, I decided not to go into engineering. But for me, that was an opportunity where I could go, and I could be like, “I like that.” Or, “Oh, you know, I don’t like the aspect of that job. Maybe it’s not something I want to go into.”
So then, by the time they graduate high school, they know what they want to go into more than just being like, “Oh, I don’t know what to do for college, or I don’t know if I want to go to college.” Then they’ll know, “I want to go to tech school.” Or, “I want to go to college.” Or, “I want to wait a little bit to figure out what I want still.”
Damia: I love that. And that leads right into next week’s episode. It’s my first interview about a career. I’m interviewing a nurse practitioner.
And I’m going to be doing other interviews, about one a month, in the podcast of different people in different careers to help your teen see if that may be something that they could be interested in. And then they can go shadow or interview somebody that they know and find out more about that career to learn if that is what they want to go into. And to learn what their education path needs to look like, so that they don’t waste their money on going to college, if it’s not what they need to be doing, or go to college for several semesters trying to figure out what they want to do. And then maybe figure out what they want to do, maybe not. But they may have wasted some time and money trying to figure out what they want to do.
So, join me next week as I interview a nurse practitioner and I’ll see you in the next episode.