I Am Not Your ATM. Rachel Murphy

[00:00:00] Bob Wheeler: Welcome to another episode of Money You Should Ask, where everyone has something they can teach you. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. In this episode, we are going to explore why we do? What we do when it comes to money as a CPA for the past 30 years, wait, let me say 25 because that makes me sound younger.

I have seen it all when it comes to money and emotions. And if you think I’m talking about my clients, I’m not. I’m talking about myself. My relationship with money has been and sometimes still is an emotional roller coaster. Maybe that’s something you’re also familiar with. Good news, you and I are not the only ones. Our next guest is going to share their money beliefs, money blocks and life challenges as well. Buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

[00:01:06] Bob Wheeler: Our next guest is Rachel Murphy, who has worked with young people for almost 25 years as a youth director, a foster parent, a mentor to young adults, and a mom to five children ages 8 to 24. Through the years, Rachel was surprised by how many teens lacked easily taught life skills that would help launch them out independently?

Rachel and her family created raising Confident Teen’s podcast and Facebook community to help teach life and leadership skills to teens and empower parents as they navigate preparing their teens for adulthood. Rachel is the author of the book. “I Am Not Your ATM”, a practical plan for teaching your teen to manage money. And you got to show us copy of the book, Rachel?

[00:01:46] Rachel Murphy: Huh

[00:01:46] Bob Wheeler: Show us that book.

[00:01:47] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, yeah

[00:01:48] Bob Wheeler: I’m not your ATM, not your ATM, I am not an ATM. And Rachel is also part of the FinCon community, which is amazing group of financial money nerds. Which nerd is a positive thing in my book? Rachel, it’s so awesome to have you here.

[00:02:03] Rachel Murphy: Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Because I love you, Bob. Because you make money fun, which a lot of people don’t do.

[00:02:09] Bob Wheeler: It’s gotta be fun. Life is short.

[00:02:11] Rachel Murphy: Yeah

[00:02:12] Bob Wheeler: We get stressed enough in life. And if we can’t make it a little bit of fun, it’s just painful. It’s just painful.

[00:02:17] Rachel Murphy: If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

[00:02:21] Bob Wheeler: Exactly. And we’re our best critics. And so we know all the places to get us with the humor. So…

[00:02:26] Rachel Murphy: Yeah

[00:02:27] Bob Wheeler: That’s my hope. Now, I love the title of the book. I’m not your ATM, which totally makes sense when you’re dealing with kids because it feels like a pay up. I don’t know if your parents had ATMs. So were your parents your ATM or, were they just your bank?

[00:02:41] Rachel Murphy: It was a different ballgame back then.

[00:02:43] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:02:44] Rachel Murphy: I feel like, it’s a lot different now than it was back then.

[00:02:47] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I think so. Now, one of the things I love in your book, I feel like there’s a bit of sarcasm and humor, tongue in cheek kind of stuff. So for example, for people that are thinking, Should I get this book and try and help my teens? A couple things that might help you know if this book is for you, or if it’s not for you, because Rachel doesn’t want to waste anybody’s time.

[00:03:04] Bob Wheeler: So if your teen has a job, pays all their own expenses, can handle savings and delayed gratification, this book is probably not for you. Right? If you don’t want to expend any effort, and just hope it will all work out in the future, this book is definitely not for you.

[00:03:21] Rachel Murphy: Yes.

[00:03:22] Bob Wheeler: So I’m sure he’s like, oh yeah, that’s me. Here’s one thing that is important that Rachel does say, and I really, I can’t stress this enough for so many people that say it’s too late to get started. This has to be a priority. It will never be a good time to start. You just have to make time. Anything new or different feels a little scary. It’s okay. In just a few months, you will look back and be glad you got started. I think that’s the biggest thing for so many people is just getting started

[00:03:49] Rachel Murphy: In any project. Not money, anything, yeah.

[00:03:52] Bob Wheeler: In the people that you’ve talked to in the teens that you’ve worked with, and in the coaching that you’ve done, is there a common theme about this fear that you can share with us about like, just get started, just do it?

[00:04:03] Rachel Murphy: I think for a lot of people, they just feel inadequate. Like I don’t know, especially parents, I don’t know enough to teach my kids because nobody taught me when I was a teenager. So I’m just gonna let the school do it which is not really happening

[00:04:18] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:04:19] Rachel Murphy: Or maybe they’ll pick it up somewhere along the way, or I can lecture them and tell them, don’t do this. Don’t do it I do, or don’t do credit cards, but to them that’s like Charlie Brown’s teachers just like wow, wow, wow, they don’t internalize lectures.

[00:04:35] Bob Wheeler: I think it’s a vulnerable thing. But I think being able to say honestly, to your teens, look, I didn’t get the lessons. There’s no bad guys here. I just didn’t get the lessons. So let’s learn this together, or I may teach you a couple things. And I might get it wrong a couple of times, but let’s tackle this so that you don’t have to go through the misinformation that I did.

[00:04:58] Rachel Murphy: And I think it’s good that they see Yes, get it wrong. Like, for a long time, many, many years, I always felt like I’d make a budget. And I would feel like that would have to be the budget. I didn’t realize you change it every month, you know, it fits whatever you’re doing for the month, I thought I’d have to spend all these hours crafting this perfect budget.

[00:05:16] Rachel Murphy: And this is what is going to guide me the rest of the year. And it took me a long time to realize this is a fluid thing. And it’s going to change every month, depending on what I have going on in my life. And they need to learn that they don’t learn that, you know, by osmosis.

[00:05:29] Bob Wheeler: They don’t and like myself, for the longest time, I thought if you said yes to something, you had to go all the way through, you couldn’t stop and say, wait, this is painful, I changed my mind. It’s no longer a priority. I thought once you sort of like the budget, once you commit to it, you have to stay the course forever, and life is fluid.

[00:05:50] Rachel Murphy: Right.

[00:05:50] Bob Wheeler: And we do have to be able to stop and say, wait a minute, this isn’t serving me or it is serving me. It’s a little uncomfortable, but it’s serving me, whatever that might be. For me, I did not get a lot of those skills. And again, this is not a blame game here. My parents did what they could, they didn’t have a lot of resource and information. And so we were all just blindly doing it.

[00:06:10] Rachel Murphy: Right

[00:06:11] Bob Wheeler: So not about blaming our parents. It’s about, oh, I didn’t get the information most people didn’t.

[00:06:16] Rachel Murphy: Right. And our parents’ generation were in a different boat, they didn’t have credit cards. So naturally, they had boundaries, like you run out of money, you have to stop spending

[00:06:27] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:06:27] Rachel Murphy: So they didn’t know to teach us. This is how you manage credit. This is what you need to avoid. Look at what this will do to you. If you put this on a credit card, how much is really going to cost you and they didn’t know to teach us those lessons?

[00:06:39] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I’m going to share one of your stories in the chapter, Chapter One, but it’s so relevant, because I think like with my parents, and your parents, and almost everybody’s parents, everybody had really good intentions. Nobody said, let’s mess them up financially. Let’s see how we can hold them back, educationally there was this, I have a dream.

[00:07:03] Bob Wheeler: And I’m gonna take this little being and I’m going to do the best that I can. And then life gets in the way, I want to share this first little paragraph that I love. Because I think for a lot of people that can resonate with this, because all of a sudden, here we are, right. You start with this senior in college who met this long haired rocker wannabe. They would spend hours and hours planning their lives and talking about how great life was going to be.

[00:07:27] Bob Wheeler: They wanted to have a house and a family and work with young people. They had lots of big dreams for the future. Like most young couples, they began their marriage full of positivity, and ready to change the world. But less than 10 years later, their dreams had all seemingly slipped out of their grasp.

[00:07:45] Bob Wheeler: And then we’re into reality. And where did the fairy tale go? And I just want to give you a chance to sort of talk about for you how that was this idealistic, we’re gonna make it all happen. And then several years later, oh my gosh, how did we get here?

[00:08:03] Rachel Murphy: Yeah. It’s not always, oh, we live the high life. And we spent a lot of money on, you know, cars and good times. For a lot of people, it is just living. And we made some bad choices. We started a business, we started internet service provider.

[00:08:19] Rachel Murphy: Back in the day, when that was a thing. We just kept it going longer than we should have. Because a lot of times people start businesses and they can’t let them go because it’s their baby.

[00:08:29] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:08:30] Rachel Murphy: And so we kept it going with credit cards and ended up $50,000 in debt when we sold it, and no income to pay for that. And like you said, we turn around or like, what happens?

[00:08:43] Bob Wheeler: What happened? And do you think most people have to reach the crash before they can change their mind? Like how do we get past? And maybe it’s partly the sunk cost bias? Maybe it’s because it’s our baby? How do we and what did you do? Was it the crash that made you say we have to stop and rethink this?

[00:09:00] Rachel Murphy: Well, we just knew we couldn’t go on any further. But it was a just because we decided we’re going to pay this off. We’re going to get out of this debt. We didn’t magically all of a sudden, have a perfect life. I mean, it took years and years of digging out of debt. And our biggest problem was not our financial problem. Our biggest problem was we didn’t believe in ourselves,

[00:09:21] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:09:22] Rachel Murphy: And we’d gone through that business loss. And then I talked about my husband went through three layoffs in nine months during the dot com crash. And we lost a baby in between there. And so it was like, we totally didn’t believe in ourselves. And we didn’t think we were capable of succeeding.

[00:09:40] Rachel Murphy: But he drove a taxi for six or seven years. And we lived in the worst neighborhood in our town drove $1,500 cars. We were still digging out of debt. But I feel like if we could have got hold of getting our mindset right, we could have gotten out of that mess a whole lot faster.

[00:09:59] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. And you talked about how, like making that decision to dig yourself out was a really, really hard decision. Even though in the midst of comfortable, not moving forward, it was still a really difficult conversation and a decision to like, we’re going to push through it, and there’s not going to be overnight success and driving a Ferrari, it’s there’s going to be some painful years or some lean years.

[00:10:27] Bob Wheeler: And you made that anyway, is it faith? What’s the light that keeps you going? When you’re telling yourself? I’m not enough? We didn’t do it right. We’re not meeting our expectations. How did you keep it going?

[00:10:40] Rachel Murphy: It’s really weird, because I talked about how like, we went back and forth, should we declare bankruptcy? Should we not declare bankruptcy? We talked to tons of people, and everybody was telling us to do it. So I can totally understand people who have been there and done that, because it’s, you are beat down. But then once we decided it became more like a challenge, like, can we do this? And then it was never after we decided it wasn’t like, tomorrow, we’re changing our mind. It was I don’t know, commitment, I guess.

[00:11:10] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:11:11] Rachel Murphy: It’s like taking action. Like we’re talking about how action is the hardest part. Once you decide to take the action, that’s the biggest step you have to take.

[00:11:17] Bob Wheeler: It is so hard. And I was doing a show a couple days ago. And I was thinking about how when I was up to my head drowning in debt, how I kept thinking it wasn’t possible, and then creating little savings accounts of 5 bucks and 20 bucks and automated myself to try and start just getting little bit so I could feel like I had at least something I could grab on to.

[00:11:41] Bob Wheeler: And it seemed impossible at that time. Yet, consistently chipping it away. I was able to finally poof, least my heads above the water

[00:11:52] Rachel Murphy: Right

[00:11:53] Bob Wheeler: Oh, now I’ve got a foot on the bottom of the pond.

[00:11:56] Rachel Murphy: Something that really helped back then, is listening to other people. Like we didn’t have much back then.

[00:12:03] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:12:04] Rachel Murphy: Like we do now. There’s so many books and so many resources back then it was pretty much Dave Ramsey.

[00:12:08] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:12:09] Rachel Murphy: And we would listen to the debt free Fridays, where people would get on and scream, I’m debt free. That was pretty motivating. Because we’re like people are doing it.

[00:12:18] Bob Wheeler: Right.

[00:12:18] Rachel Murphy: We’re not the only people out here. Finding people who are going through what you’re going through, I think is huge. When you’re going through something like that. Don’t get around your friends who are spending all their money, and living on the edge with their credit. You got to find new friends. If that’s where you’re at.

[00:12:33] Bob Wheeler: You got to find new friends. I think one of the other things that it feels important to me, it seems like it might have been important to you, at the end of the book, you actually expressed appreciation for your husband, Keith, for letting you dream your dreams and going through it with you. And I know sometimes when I’m working with couples, I’m not surprised anymore, where they’re not even on the same page financially, we’re on the same page of nurturing each other’s dreams.

[00:13:00] Bob Wheeler: So it feels to me like having the right team having the right partner can do 1000s quicker advancement when you’ve got somebody that doesn’t always have to agree with you. But that supports you fully and doesn’t knock you give you an extra punch when you’re down. But they try and comfort you and hold you up in the midst of all this stuff.

[00:13:22] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, because they’ve been through it all with you. And they’re gonna celebrate it all with you. But when we were going through all those hard times, and he was like, totally not believing in himself and driving the cab. I let him be there.

[00:13:34] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. Which is hard, right?

[00:13:36] Rachel Murphy: Yeah

[00:13:37] Bob Wheeler: It’s hard.

[00:13:38] Rachel Murphy: Look Bob, you made me cry.

[00:13:41] Bob Wheeler: Listen, this is why I love your book, because you spill it all, and you don’t hide anything back. We don’t have to be vulnerable, but when we’re vulnerable.

[00:13:52] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, that is where the change happens. We went through this. This has been 20 years ago, but only in the last year. Have we told our story to anybody, like even our parents, we didn’t tell.

[00:14:03] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:14:04] Rachel Murphy: They didn’t have a clue what we went through. And it was so freeing to just like, what did we wait for, right?

[00:14:12] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:14:13] Rachel Murphy: That’s what I love about you is you get on you’re so open with your scripts.

[00:14:21] Bob Wheeler: And I have many scripts. Yeah, for me, I had so much shame. I was a CPA, and I was just making all these personal bad choices and the shame I had to keep it hidden. And…

[00:14:34] Rachel Murphy: Yeah

[00:14:35] Bob Wheeler: That’s so much pressure.

[00:14:36] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, but people need to hear your story because I had a friend who read the book. She was part of our launch team and she came to me and said, I had no idea. I’ve been looking at you and like you guys live in a nice house and you don’t have to work outside the house. And your kids are in private school and I had no idea, the mess you had to go through with that.

[00:15:00] Bob Wheeler: Right, they see the snapshot and go, wow, must be nice.

[00:15:04] Rachel Murphy: I was totally not relatable to her.

[00:15:07] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:15:08] Rachel Murphy: Until she read my story.

[00:15:09] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. And then that’s why I love doing these podcasts. I love connecting with people, because I’ve met people that other people say, Oh my God, I wish I were just like them. No, actually, if you knew the story, and the sacrifice and the pain that it took to get there, you might rethink it, right? It’s a journey.

[00:15:28] Rachel Murphy: Yeah.

[00:15:29] Bob Wheeler: And journeys are not just a straight line to happiness and riches. It’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of choice.

[00:15:35] Rachel Murphy: And when you’re going through it, you don’t think to yourself, oh, in 20 years, it’ll all be great. And I’ll be on a podcast talking about you know, you’re like, I want to die.

[00:15:46] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, yeah.

[00:15:47] Rachel Murphy: I wish a car would come across and hit me. You know, because I don’t have the guts to kill myself.

[00:15:51] Bob Wheeler: Exactly. I exactly know that feeling of, I’m not quite courageous enough to go through with it. But man, stay in here is a little bit intolerable, right?

[00:16:01] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, it’s painful.

[00:16:02] Bob Wheeler: It just doesn’t feel like I can. It’s painful.

[00:16:04] Rachel Murphy: Yeah

[00:16:05] Bob Wheeler: And lonely. It’s very isolating in those financial strokes.

[00:16:08] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, yeah, I remember we you know, we go to church. And then after church, everybody go out to eat, and we go home and eat ramen noodles.

[00:16:16] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:16:16] Rachel Murphy: It’d be like, and I wasn’t really sad about it at the time. But like I could have been, that could have been really depressing.

[00:16:23] Bob Wheeler: That could have been. I went through my ramen noodle phase, and for a long time, I couldn’t even eat. Those little plastic bags of…

[00:16:30] Rachel Murphy: My kids called it man soup

[00:16:33] Bob Wheeler: Man. Hey, it’s helped many people. It is an important piece of that survival kit. Now you have made it a mission to really help children with financial literacy. And it’s not taught in schools. And so for the folks that are letting their kids learn it in school, they’re not going to learn it.

[00:16:51] Rachel Murphy: Right.

[00:16:52] Bob Wheeler: Right. And you’ve got some great statistics in the book. Why for you is it important to pay this forward?

[00:16:58] Rachel Murphy: Well, I don’t want my own kids to go through what we went through. It was that’s hard on your marriage. That’s hard on everything.

[00:17:04] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:17:05] Rachel Murphy: I don’t want any kid to have to go through that, you know, why go through it when you can avoid it? You don’t have to suffer like that. A lot of times we teach our kids when they’re a little bitty, you know, we have the giving and the saving and the spinning envelopes.

[00:17:17] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:17:18] Rachel Murphy: But between that, and kicking you out into the real world, there is nothing. You may get a few lectures, but there’s no real practical knowledge. It’d be kind of like, Okay, we’re gonna teach our kid how to drive. So at our house, when we just had our third one learn to drive so at our house, you start out in the parking lot. And then you go from the parking lot to the subdivision.

[00:17:44] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:17:45] Rachel Murphy: And then you go from the subdivision to a not so busy highway. And then you go from that to maybe in town, and then from there to the interstate, and then from there to Atlanta, right.

[00:17:59] Bob Wheeler: That’s a good drive.

[00:18:01] Rachel Murphy: But the normal kid, this is how they kind of learned finances, is the equivalent of here. Let’s start out in the parking lot. We’re gonna do spending savings giving now from there, let’s go to Atlanta in the rain at night.

[00:18:15] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:18:16] Rachel Murphy: Like, there’s nothing like you know, you hear so many stories of kids in college where they like get their first card and they just maxed it out. They have no clue what they’re doing.

[00:18:24] Bob Wheeler: No clue. It’s free money.

[00:18:26] Rachel Murphy: Just to do with their friends.

[00:18:27] Bob Wheeler: It’s free money. It says you’ve got $10,000, you got to spend it.

[00:18:30] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, eventually I’ll get that job, I know I will and then it’ll all be fine.

[00:18:34] Bob Wheeler: It’s coming.

[00:18:36] Rachel Murphy: Yeah.

[00:18:37] Bob Wheeler: Now can they parallel park?

[00:18:38] Rachel Murphy: Oh, not very well, I can’t parallel park so.

[00:18:42] Bob Wheeler: I have to out my sibling she can reverse park If there’s five empty parking spaces, she can coast in and take the one in the middle.

[00:18:52] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, that’s probably me.

[00:18:55] Bob Wheeler: I’m like, that’s not really a reverse park. Fortunately, that is a skill I learned. But yeah, parking, and driving and actually driving your finances, it takes developing skills.

[00:19:07] Rachel Murphy: Right, and you got to learn ownership. They don’t learn ownership of anything involving money a lot of times.

[00:19:13] Bob Wheeler: Well, there’s this great quote by ran that you have, money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. So with the finances, we still have to be in the driver’s seat.

[00:19:27] Rachel Murphy: Right

[00:19:28] Bob Wheeler: And be intentional and be conscious. And I love that you’re working with your kids. Of course, it’d be fun to interview your kids. And I’m sure if people listen to your podcast, the kids spill the beans on some of that stuff. Because they’re on the receiving end of parents going through their own personal struggles and their own journey that may not be parallel to the kids.

[00:19:48] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, they hear stories and the older ones that are like the younger ones have no clue what we went through you know.

[00:19:54] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:19:55] Rachel Murphy: The Music Man that comes through the neighborhood.

[00:19:57] Bob Wheeler: That’s right.

[00:19:59] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, my brother out did it out and said that guy sells ice cream. I am like what? The kids are supposed to know that.

[00:20:07] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. It’s just a music truck. Don’t tell them. So I know money is taboo for a lot of people. We just don’t talk about it.

[00:20:14] Rachel Murphy: Right.

[00:20:14] Bob Wheeler: Was money taboo in your family with your parents?

[00:20:17] Rachel Murphy: No, it wasn’t really tap. Well, in some ways it was. In some ways, it wasn’t. My parents were good about talking about money, and they tried to teach me about money. But I think a lot of it is because it’s just theory, and you don’t grasp a lot of it. They were, my parents were amazing with money. I do not know to this day how they did it, because my dad was enlisted military, and they saved a third of their income. They gave away a third of it. And they lived on a third of it.

[00:20:44] Bob Wheeler: Wow.

[00:20:45] Rachel Murphy: They were like wizards. I don’t know how they did it.

[00:20:47] Bob Wheeler: Wow.

[00:20:48] Rachel Murphy: Yeah. Like they put a couple of my uncles and aunts through college, the 18 bazillion incident.

[00:20:54] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:20:54] Rachel Murphy: And they’re very, they would probably not want me telling you all this, but they’re very humble and giving people but you know, they could make the money stretch. Like, we’d be eating stuff out of the yard, like, oh, look, there’s an edible plant here. Did you guys know that you know.

[00:21:09] Bob Wheeler: That is awesome. So do you think being in the military helped with their structure on that, or even if they hadn’t been in the military they would have just been creative and able to make that dollar stretch. That’s a great way to hey, we’re learning science. You can eat stuff in the [inaudible 00:21:25], and we’re saving a buck.

[00:21:28] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, this funny story. One day, my dad comes running in the house and says, Honey, give me a pot. I just hit a frog. Yeah, they would eat pretty much anything. I don’t know if it’s because my mom was raised in the third world country?

[00:21:41] Bob Wheeler: Uh huh.

[00:21:42] Rachel Murphy: They weren’t really poor. Her dad was a businessman. But I mean, they had lots of kids. So they were pretty good at stretching the money.

[00:21:48] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:21:48] Rachel Murphy: And my dad was raised on a farm, kind of like a sharecropper.

[00:21:52] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:21:52] Rachel Murphy: Some of that was their generation, just like resourceful and…

[00:21:55] Bob Wheeler: And I have a sense, I could be wrong. But I feel like, especially people that come to the US from developing countries have a much bigger appreciation, and less of a sense of entitlement when it comes to living and making things happen. It seems to me there’s a bit more awareness for the majority of people that we don’t all get born at Buckingham Palace and we don’t all have it rolling in. Do you think any of that played a part?

[00:22:23] Rachel Murphy: Hmm. I think it depends on the country actually. Because my parents work internationally a lot. There’s a difference between Chinese from China and Chinese from Taiwan.

[00:22:34] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:22:34] Rachel Murphy: You tend to have all the Chinese restaurants and you know…

[00:22:36] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:22:37] Rachel Murphy: Some of those countries, there is a lot of wealthier people now, whose kids are just like American kids who think that, I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, your parents how you were raised to think about money.

[00:22:48] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, you’ve got this money plan path

[00:22:50] Rachel Murphy: Right

[00:22:51] Bob Wheeler: That lays things out about setting out your goals, and picking your categories. And you also emphasize, charity, community service all those kinds of things. And you even you have a contract that you, did all your kids signed the contract?

[00:23:07] Rachel Murphy: No, we didn’t do that.

[00:23:08] Bob Wheeler: Oh, you didn’t do that but that’s, because it’s a great idea.

[00:23:11] Rachel Murphy: Yeah. I just added that in for parents that wanted it, because some parents like to be all official and stuff.

[00:23:18] Bob Wheeler: Well, there is something to being held accountable, right?

[00:23:21] Rachel Murphy: Yeah.

[00:23:22] Bob Wheeler: To acknowledging I’m going to get a salary…

[00:23:23] Rachel Murphy: Right

[00:23:24] Bob Wheeler: Of so much money. And there’s consequences of it if I don’t contribute, and there’s an expectation for you to participate in the family. It’s very transparent.

[00:23:33] Rachel Murphy: Right

[00:23:34] Bob Wheeler: I like that kind of stuff.

[00:23:35] Rachel Murphy: Yeah. Can I take a second here and just explain how this works? Because I want people to be able to do this, whether they buy my book or not.

[00:23:41] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:23:42] Rachel Murphy: So how we teach our kids is once they turn fifth or sixth grade, we start turning over parts of the budget to them that are related to them, like something they would be interested in.

[00:23:52] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:23:52] Rachel Murphy: So like, say your family goes off for ice cream once a week, instead of mom or dad, standing at the counter and paying the bill for everyone the first of the month, you hand the kids their salary, this is your ice cream money for the month.

[00:24:06] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:24:07] Rachel Murphy: You have to budget it, keep up with it. If we get to the fourth week, and we go for ice cream, you know, and you don’t have the money then I’m sorry, you don’t get ice cream, you gotta be a little bit tough sometimes.

[00:24:16] Bob Wheeler: You do you do you actually have a consequence. You need to understand consequence.

[00:24:20] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, don’t bail him out. Because would you rather have him learned on ice cream or on a $10,000 credit card?

[00:24:27] Bob Wheeler: Right.

[00:24:28] Rachel Murphy: That’s how we start. We start small with things that don’t really hurt if they blow it, maybe you give them money for school lunches, give it to him once a month, and let them do it. And if they run out of money, then they can pack a lunch. You don’t just give them more money. And so every year we add more categories and they get a higher salary. And by the time they graduate high school, they’re managing 10, 15 categories that you know they buy their own school supplies.

[00:24:54] Rachel Murphy: They do their own haircuts, clothes makeup, if they are in sports, they do concessions and food out when they’re away games, youth activities, gasoline, so that gives them a chance to practice the skills of managing their budget, they get to learn, oh, this is one a lot of people have struggled with the sinking fund. Okay, I don’t need a haircut this month, but I’m gonna need one next month. Girl’s haircuts are not cheap.

[00:25:22] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:25:22] Rachel Murphy: So I need to set aside some money this month and next month, kind of like our insurance bills for a lot of people. Like it is not a surprise, you’re getting an insurance bill, you know, you have an insurance

[00:25:33] Bob Wheeler: It’s common

[00:25:34] Rachel Murphy: Payment, but then you don’t think about it, and then it blows up at you. They learn it in a safe environment where they can ask questions. Because if they have to learn this all on their own, it’s so much easier. I start when I’m in fifth or sixth grade, and then I only have one or two categories

[00:25:49] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:25:50] Rachel Murphy: And then I reconcile one or two categories. And then next year, I maybe have five categories. And then that’s way easier than going from nothing to oh, now I’m in college. Oh, there are 200 transactions on my statement.

[00:26:02] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:26:03] Rachel Murphy: What how do I do that? You kind of ease them into it.

[00:26:06] Bob Wheeler: You ease them into it?

[00:26:07] Rachel Murphy: Yeah.

[00:26:07] Bob Wheeler: Okay, I’m going to be that parent that says, intentional parenting is a lot of work.

[00:26:13] Rachel Murphy: Right. Well, my thought on that is do you want them to come back and live in your basement, that’s my thought.

[00:26:22] Bob Wheeler: That’s something to think about. I know many people that have their 30 year old children now living with them.

[00:26:26] Rachel Murphy: And sometimes that’s necessary. You know, there are cases where that’s needed. But sometimes it’s just because they didn’t learn to adult.

[00:26:33] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:26:34] Rachel Murphy: They’re not going to go out and ask their friends when they’re in college. Hey, how do I do a budget?

[00:26:38] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:26:39] Rachel Murphy: Because that is totally not cool

[00:26:40] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:26:41] Rachel Murphy: If they don’t learn it from you, they’re not going to really learn it. It’s going to be they’re going to have to recover from all the mistakes they made during the period when they could have been building well.

[00:26:50] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:26:51] Rachel Murphy: So I say, you know, if you’re interested in starting this with your kid, just think of one category that start with just one and then just start, here’s your money for the month.

[00:27:00] Bob Wheeler: One step at a time, baby step, baby step, and you can walk a few miles.

[00:27:05] Rachel Murphy: Yeah

[00:27:05] Bob Wheeler: When you just start doing it. I’m going to read one more quote, because I loved all the quotes and I’m a quote person. I loved all these quotes. This one is from Ralph Waldo Emerson and he says, “Without ambition, one starts nothing, without work one finishes nothing”, the prize will not be sent to you, you have to win it. For me, what that’s just saying is we got to participate. Whether it’s for the children’s success for our own success for our own financial literacy for future generations, we got to put some skin in the game.

[00:27:38] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, yeah, it’s Publishers Clearing House is not coming to your door?

[00:27:43] Bob Wheeler: No, I’ve actually had, I’ve had a couple clients do this, where they’ve called me up and they’ll say, Bob, I think we need to probably set up a corporation for me. I think I might win the lottery. And if I get the $30 million, I want to be ready for it. And I’ll say, that’s great. You’ve got some time when you get the winning ticket, I can get you incorporated when you get the ticket and let’s talk then Publishers Clearing House, is probably not coming.

[00:28:08] Rachel Murphy: Yeah. Sorry to break it to people.

[00:28:11] Bob Wheeler: It’s just not, oh man. So we are at our Fast Five, which is brought to you by Greenlight, which is the debit card for kids managed by parents. So Rachel, we’re going to shift the energy just a little bit. And I’m going to throw out some questions for you top of mind, when did you stop becoming an ATM to your children, or are you still sometimes an ATM?

[00:28:32] Rachel Murphy: No, I’ve never been an ATM, except the monthly [beep]. The monthly withdraw, and I don’t even do that anymore. It automatically goes to their accounts. It just eliminates so much of the stress of, mom can I have money? What to do with the money I gave you last time? You know, like kids love control.

[00:28:50] Bob Wheeler: It’s very empowering.

[00:28:52] Rachel Murphy: Yes, and they love whipping out their wallets when they ask their friends. Let them be.

[00:28:57] Bob Wheeler: They’ll still have a home to come to and they’ll still get fed even with the mistakes.

[00:29:01] Rachel Murphy: Yeah.

[00:29:02] Bob Wheeler: What was a memorable money moment in your childhood?

[00:29:09] Rachel Murphy: And memorable money moment? Well, I you know, I always used to like I was a saver. I would hoard all the money and my brother would blow all of his and then he would come to me and try to work deals.

[00:29:23] Bob Wheeler: Right

[00:29:24] Rachel Murphy: It’s funny how like, our personalities show up even at a young age, you know?

[00:29:28] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:29:29] Rachel Murphy: I had that saver thing. You know, even candy, I would add this little white purse, and I would shove all my candy in it and he would eat all his and then he’d come Hey, how about we split that?

[00:29:41] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, sometimes the ones that are doing the work get punished or guilted into having to share their good.

[00:29:46] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, that’s hard when you’re a saver and marry a spender, yeah

[00:29:53] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. Okay, we know, we know…

[00:29:55] Rachel Murphy: He’s way better now. It’s way better.

[00:29:59] Bob Wheeler: How often do you revise your budget now? You know, we talked about that earlier that you found it. Oh, you get to revise it every…

[00:30:05] Rachel Murphy: Every month.

[00:30:06] Bob Wheeler: Oh, every month.

[00:30:07] Rachel Murphy: I look, yeah, I work on it. Yeah, every month is different especially with five kids.

[00:30:11] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:30:11] Rachel Murphy: I mean, there’s all kinds of weird stuff that pops up.

[00:30:14] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. I one of five kids. What is one of your financial habits that you don’t want your kids to follow?

[00:30:21] Rachel Murphy: You know, sometimes I can tend to be a little too stingy. Like, I don’t want to spend money on myself and I don’t want them to feel like you can’t enjoy life and I’ve gotten better about it. Once I started doing sinking funds, and like there’s a clothing budget…

[00:30:38] Bob Wheeler: Right.

[00:30:38] Rachel Murphy: So I don’t feel like I’m spending the groceries on clothes. You know, that helps a lot. If you don’t do that already. Do that.

[00:30:46] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:30:46] Rachel Murphy: That just makes you takes away the guilt of spending money.

[00:30:49] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. Now, is there anything that you’d like to splurge on regardless of cost? Is there one thing that like, I don’t care, this I’m getting this?

[00:30:58] Rachel Murphy: No, I’m bad. I don’t really, I don’t like to spend money.

[00:31:03] Bob Wheeler: That’s if I see. And everybody knows this about me sushi. I will spend on sushi. It’s my favorite meal. If it’s good sushi, I will pay for good sushi.

[00:31:12] Rachel Murphy: I love a good sweet tea.

[00:31:14] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:31:15] Rachel Murphy: It’s hard to find good sweet tea.

[00:31:16] Bob Wheeler: That’s is because you’re in Florida, because I grew up with sweet tea in Tennessee. And now it’s like, at least in Tennessee man, it’s almost syrup.

[00:31:38] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, that’s the way mine is. I can’t make it anymore because I have hit that age or just goes to the waist. I didn’t I wasn’t raised on it.

[00:31:34] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:31:34] Rachel Murphy: I don’t know. I think it was when we were building the log cabin. And it was so stinking hot, like 100 degrees every day. And I’d be like, it’s something cold to drink. I don’t know.

[00:31:44] Bob Wheeler: Yeah.

[00:31:44] Rachel Murphy: It’s my advice, Sweet Tea.

[00:31:45] Bob Wheeler: That’s a good advice. Well, we’re at our M&M moment, our sweet spot and money and motivation. I’m wonder if you could give the listeners a practical financial tip or a piece of wealth wisdom?

[00:31:55] Rachel Murphy: Yes, this was a game changer for me. If you are struggling with your money, and it’s so tight, do whatever you can to get one month totally ahead on everything. And then forget that you are one month ahead on everything.

[00:32:12] Bob Wheeler: Yeah

[00:32:12] Rachel Murphy: Like have a month in reserve pay this month’s bills with last month’s income. A lot of people pay this month’s bills with this month’s income.

[00:32:21] Bob Wheeler: Right.

[00:32:22] Rachel Murphy: And then they’re always stressed out because they have 20 cents in their account. If you can give yourself margin that just relaxes you and gives you so much more peace.

[00:32:33] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I think that’s so important because so many people live paycheck to paycheck. And if you can just start to inch away at saving some money so that you’ve got that little bit of reserve or cushion. And if you can get to six months, fantastic, but just even getting a month. Man that gives you so much breathing room.

[00:32:50] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, it just does

[00:32:51] Bob Wheeler: It just does. It just does. Well, Rachel, you know, what I loved about this conversation. And what, I just love about you and what I love about your book is that there’s a lot of vulnerability. I don’t hear any blame. I didn’t hear any blame for the good stuff, the bad stuff. I didn’t hear blaming your parents. And it’s interesting, because I do hear some guests that really don’t have a lot of blame.

[00:33:15] Bob Wheeler: There’s other people that are like, oh, yeah, I could blame my mom and my dad at my school and my. And it’s just it’s great to hear this place of not blaming anybody, not blame, Oh my God, we had five kids, it’s the kids fault that we had to have all this extra spending. And the willingness, even though it took a little bit, the willingness to be vulnerable and say, this was my story, this is my struggle. And if I can help one more person, help themselves or help these kids help themselves.

[00:33:43] Bob Wheeler: Like there’s something just really refreshing in actually just looking forward, knowing the past learning from the past, but not holding on to it in a way that keeps you held back. And I just really highly recommend this book. “I Am Not Your ATM”. There’s just so much great practical information there. And there’s a lot of just personal information. And you’ve documented all of it. And you have stood in your birthday suits and said, this is us and we’re enough.

[00:34:12] Bob Wheeler: And I think that’s a piece and we didn’t talk about it a lot. But this piece about so many people think they’re not enough and knowing that you are enough, just as you are, whether you’re living in a mansion or whether you’re a busboy, working your way to something else. You’re enough.

[00:34:29] Rachel Murphy: Right

[00:34:30] Bob Wheeler: And things are changeable. Life is fluid. There’s always possibility when you’re committed, and you talked about that being committed, and just taking a forward motion a forward step. There’s so much possibility.

[00:34:42] Rachel Murphy: Yeah, there’s always a way out.

[00:34:45] Bob Wheeler: I think what your book does is gives people hope.

[00:34:47] Rachel Murphy: Yeah. I just want to talk a little bit about you, Bob. We met at FinCon.

[00:34:53] Bob Wheeler: Yep.

[00:34:53] Rachel Murphy: I was brand new to the financial content space because, I’ve done financial stuff for a long time and I’ve done content for a long time but never financial content, the book just came out. Like, all of a sudden I said, I need to write a book and that just happened last year. And so I didn’t know anybody in fin con. And I met you at the book table.

[00:35:12] Bob Wheeler: Yep.

[00:35:13] Rachel Murphy: And you are just, I don’t know how to be a friend to everyone. Like, you just love to talk to people. And you’ve been in the space a long time. And you could be, and I have seen other people that are like this, where they think they know everything they think they’ve arrived, you know, they like, you’re a newbie, you don’t know anything, but you don’t, you’re not like that. You’re a good soul, a good friend.

[00:35:40] Bob Wheeler: I appreciate that I will be learning till the day I take my last breath. I don’t ever want to think that I’ve arrived. I want the journey to keep lasting for as long as possible. And there’s so much great rich information so with so many people. And so I want to, I really do want to stay open to hearing everybody’s story. Because it may be just a piece of information that I need to pivot.

[00:36:02] Rachel Murphy: Yeah

[00:36:03] Bob Wheeler: To raise me up to the next step.

[00:36:05] Rachel Murphy: Well, you’re just so approachable, and you’re a great asset to the FinCon Community.

[00:36:11] Bob Wheeler: Thank you so much. I love this stuff. I’m passionate about it. I know my money struggles, we’re not fun. I don’t want other people to have to feel like they’re in it alone. And that there’s no shame in not having gotten to financial literacy, or being handed a silver spoon like we can all change our future. And so I live on hope, and forward motion. So thank you. Oh, it’s been so great. Where can people find you on social media on the Internet that we can get you to the New York bestseller and tell you millions of books?

[00:36:41] Rachel Murphy: I am on Facebook and Instagram at Rachel Murphy coaching. I’ve set up a special page just for listeners of this podcast on my website, rachaelmurphycoaching.com/money. And I’ll have some free resources on their recommended books for helping you teach your teens a tracker, if you’re like who I really would like to start doing that a tracker to help you keep track of all the money you spend on your team. So you can formulate a plan and just links to our podcasts that we have for teens.

[00:37:10] Bob Wheeler: Awesome. Hold up your book one more time. I want everybody to see this book. Take a picture. Go get it. There you go “I am not your ATM”. Folks, check out that book. Rachael Murphy. It’s an amazing book. We’ll have all that in the show notes. It’s an awesome read. If you want to be intentional in your parenting, which I hope everybody does. Give your children some resource. And this is a great place to start. Rachel, thank you so much. I hope that I’m going to see you at FinCon next year.

[00:37:36] Rachel Murphy: Yes

[00:37:36] Bob Wheeler: And I can’t wait for your next book. And I look forward to all that you have to bring people listen to her podcast, get your kids listening, get empowered, get inspired, and buy a book.

[00:37:47] Rachel Murphy: Thanks, have a great time.

[00:37:50] Bob Wheeler: It’s a great, thank you.

[00:37:57] CLOSING: We hope you enjoyed this episode. Did you learn something new about your relationship to money today? Maybe you have a friend who has some financial blocks or beliefs that are holding them back. Please share this podcast so they too can get off the roller coaster ride of financial fears and journey towards financial freedom. To learn how to have a healthy relationship with money, visit themoneynerve.com, that’s nerve not nerd. We’ll be back next week with another perspective on ‘money and the emotions that bind us’.