68. Financial Parenthood: Navigating Blame and Responsibility

In this podcast episode, Laura delves into the topic of financial decisions and the tendency to blame children for them. She discusses the cost of childcare, the pressure to justify expenses related to children, and the importance of taking responsibility for financial choices.

In this episode we’ll discuss:

.     Cost of childcare

.     Justifying expenses

.     Taking ultimate responsibility

Learn more about working with Laura Sexton

· Become a master with your money. Learn more here!

· Checkout the resource library here!

Want to ask a question Laura can answer on the podcast? Connect with her here!

Send an email to Laura@AccelerateYourLegacy.com or send a DM on Instagram @accelerateyourlegacy

Elevate your coaching with daily devotionals and prayers from 'Seasoned with Salt.' Get your copy HERE!

Transcript

Laura: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. I'm Laura Sexton, your trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. Join me as we explore the world of money and money mindset while also paving the way for a lasting legacy that extends far beyond money. Together we'll eliminate stress, amplify freedom, and ensure you stop paying for your past so you can start saving for your future. If you're seeking peace in your finances, more margin in your budget, and a legacy that inspires generations to come, you're in the right place. Hey, accelerators, I am so excited to be here with you on this lovely Thursday morning. I wanted to talk to you today about something that I've heard recently, and I just have 0 sympathy for I will explain it more as we go throughout this podcast. I get really fired up and frustrated when I hear people blame things on their children. You're thinking, Laura, this is a financial podcast. Why are we talking about kids? I will tell you why. We're talking about kids because if we are not building the legacy for them, what are we doing it for? If you don't have kids, you might want to stick around for because I'm going to talk a little bit about justification and why we do it and how to stop it. So this all came up recently because I've been hearing about the cost of child care. If you think Me, a mother of 4, do not know how expensive it is, living in Southern California specifically, but for the entire world as a whole, if you think that I do not understand the cost of child care and how it has gone up exponentially, you were seriously mistaken. I understand the cost of child care and how incredibly insane it is. The other thing I've been hearing a lot recently is I have to get a new car because of my children. Then I'm just starting to lose it and then there's the ultimate my friends. I need a new house with more rooms because my kids can't all live together. I'm having to bite my tongue for a 2nd, because it drives me insane to hear this from people. So, let's dive into a couple of these different things when it comes to the cost of child care. Childcare is outrageously expensive. It just is, it has gotten incredibly insane. And part of that is minimum wages are going up, which means wages in all sectors have to go up. Part of it is our litigious society that everybody sues everybody for everything. And we have to have crazy insurance, especially when we're dealing with people's kids. So the cost of daycare is not just the cost of the cleaning supplies and the labor. You're also paying for an exorbitant. Insurance bill that company has to have. I mean, it's insane. They have to pay so much money because if they get sued, they're getting sued over somebody's child. So, we have put ourself into this position in society where we tell women, hey, you have to go to work because you aren't good enough if you don't go to work. But also we're telling them, hey, you have to stay home with your kids because you're not good enough. You stay home with your kids. So, women are in this really awkward place of, I don't know where to go from here. And so we're, we're trying to do everything. We're trying to have it, you know, trying to have it both ways. We want to spend a lot of money on child care, because if we can't be home with our kids, we want our kids to be really well taken care of. So we want the high end luxury daycare. I mean, it could just be the neighborhood that I'm in. Some people may be like, no, no, I don't want to spend any money. I want the cheapest daycare possible. We should not be in a situation where child care dictates whether or not you go to work. But let's think about it for a 2nd. If I go to work, and I make 2600 dollars a month. But 1, 600 goes towards child care. That means I'm only adding 1, 000 a month to our family's budget. That's when we have to really stop and look. Is this worth it? Am I making a dent? Can our family live on 1, 000 less if I stay home with my children? We really have to look at the cost and the benefit, but here's the thing that's most important. I don't want you to blame your children for whether or not you go back to work. If you're saying, oh, the cost of taking care of kids is so incredibly high, I have to go back to work to take care of them. I don't want you doing that. If you say, well, I want to go back to work, but I have to find a job that works around the child care schedule, then you're blaming your kids on the job that you do or do not take. We have to quit blaming our children for the choices that we make as adults. We chose to have these children, so we get to choose what to do with them. And if you choose to be a working mom, like, please hear me say, you go girl. Like, good for you, because that is hard. I have a hard time being away from my babies if it's for more than an hour or two at a time. I have a really hard time with that. But also, if you're a stay at home mom, you go, girl. I know what that's like, too, because most of my time is being a stay at home mom with my kids. It is hard work that we are doing. So, it doesn't matter what you choose. Please hear me say that plainly. What does matter is whether or not you take the cost of child care and you blame that on your children. I want to talk about this idea of getting a new car. I've recently had a client come to me and they were saying, you know, we just, we have to buy a new car. We're going to have a 3rd child. We have to buy a new car. And they're talking about how are they going to find the money? How are they going to finance it? Which everybody knows I'm against financing the car. It's just stealing from your future. And they were like, what are we going to do? I don't know what to do. How are we going to make this work? Because we have to get a bigger car. We have to be able to do that because we have to be able to put our 3 kids across. You know what you should not do? You should not justify a 700 a month car payment because you're going to have a newborn. Because what you're doing is you're telling that child that all of this is on you. When you're really stressed out about that car payment, you look at that child and that's your fault. No, my friend. You're the adult. It's your fault. And furthermore, if you have three children, you do not need to have a third row. In all reality, you can fit 3 car seats across most midsize sedans, we can fit 3 car seats across a Corolla. Look it up there, there are multiple websites that tell you how you can configure 3 car seats across most midsize sedans and even crossover SUVs. I had a Ford edge. We had 3 car seats across is great. Now, when I had a 4th child, I did actually need a new row. Right, because I can't fit 4 car seats across 3 seats doesn't work that way. We were going to have six people and we only had five seats in the car. We had to get a new vehicle. That is true. But one, I made the choice to have the fourth child. And two, I had nine months to prepare. So what did I do during that nine months? I went and paid cash for a car. I paid cash for a used minivan. My kids love it. It gets messy. We literally took it to go vacuum it out and get it washed and it was great. And that afternoon there were chips crunched up in the backseat and I was like, how did this even happen? Who gave you chips? Why? I don't understand. But you see my friends paying 700 one time to get three new car seats. We use Diono car seats. I love them. Diono, D I O N O, I am not sponsored. Just love them. We got three Diono car seats. And they fit just nicely, 700 for 3 new car seats, as opposed to a 700 per month car payment for the next 72 months. You do not need to justify a car payment and blame it on your children. And you may say, I'm not blaming them, it's just because of them that I need to do this. Okay, that's blaming. If you are justifying your decision because of a child, you are putting the stress on them. Whether you like it or not, so we have to rethink the way that we're thinking about this. I've told this story before, but I'm going to go ahead and tell it again. When my daughter was, I only had 1 at the time and she was about 7 or 8 months old. We were a 1 car family and my husband had the car at work an hour away and a fire broke out in our neighborhood. Now, if you know anything about Southern California, we have wildfires and they can get crazy and then get crazy really quickly. And this fire was 2 buildings and a street over from us. It was on our side of the freeway, and it was growing quickly. I could see it from my house. It was on the other side of a medical building, so it was our house, a street. Medical building, the big fire. I had no way of getting my daughter out. It was terrifying. I literally cried out to God. Is this how it ends? Is this what happens for us? I was so scared and it would have been completely normal for me the next day, when we survived that night, for me to get up the next day and go down and finance a car, that would have been a normal response, but my husband and I decided that we didn't want to be normal, we didn't want to allow our emotions to dictate what we were going to do with our money. Not anymore. We were in charge now, not our emotions. It was really scary to know that I couldn't get my daughter out of here because I didn't have a car. So what did we do? We doubled down on saving up to buy a car. And what did God do? God allowed us to get a car from a family member at a very low price, completely unreasonable. We should not have allowed her to let us pace a little for this car. She had received a car from her parents. When they had gotten sick and she was helping take care of them. So she didn't need this car anymore. And God blessed us with this wonderful vehicle that served us so incredibly well and served our family through three children. We would have never been able to get that blessing had we gone out immediately and taken it upon ourselves to handle it. God handled it and gave us a big blessing that we would not have gotten had we been normal and gone out and financed a vehicle. This thing about, I need a new house so that my kids don't have to sleep in the same room or I have 3 kids and so we need 4 bedrooms because the kids can't all be in the same room together. Or I have 3 kids and we need 5 bedrooms because we need to be able to have them all in their own room. And then we also need to have a spare room. That could be like an office, but also, like, when people come over, they can have places to stay. How 1st world is that? We, we do not need, you don't need that many bedrooms. I have my kids, all four of them in one room and it is not a big room. They have bunk beds, a trundle and a crib. And you know what? They cry when they're not in that room together. They love it. They absolutely love being in that room together because they're the best of friends. You do not need a bigger house because you have children. You do not need more rooms because you have children. Eventually, you can get there, but don't overextend yourself today. Do what makes sense today. And eventually, if you end up in a place, we've told our kids, eventually we're going to get to a place where they're going to have a farm and everybody gets their own room and last night when I was talking to my kids, they said, well, I don't want to sleep in my own room. They literally said that to me, what if we want to sleep in the same room? Great, you can stay in rooms together and we'll give you your own personal space, which is even great for me because those spaces can be even smaller. We can just make sure they have their own place where they can get some alone time, because we all need alone time sometimes. The whole point of this podcast is not for me to go on my rants, although I have obviously done that, but because I want to go ahead and I want to say this over and over and over and over and over again. Do not blame your kids for your choices. I don't want to hear I can't buy food because we have to pay your tuition. Or for your child care. I don't want you to put everything on a credit card because you don't have enough to do kids sports and buy food or kids sports and put gas in the car. I don't want you to spend every dime you have on your children and not have a single dime in savings for retirement. All of this, the only thing it leads to is stressed out parents and entitled children. It's okay to tell them no sometimes. In fact, it might be better for them. Anytime you say something like, I can't buy food because of tuition. Everything has to go on a credit card. We didn't put any money into retirement. You did all that and you said that it was your kid's fault. And so a kid's going to feel shame. They're going to feel guilt. They're going to feel it. If it's in your house, if you're stressed out because of money, they're going to feel that, and they're going to take it on. And even if you don't say these things, they're going to think it's their fault because that's what kids do. Kids take it on and say, I must have done something to make mommy and daddy feel so stressed out. Don't put that on them. Dr. John Deloney says it this way. He says, the best thing you can give your kids is a mom or dad who's well. In this instance that we're talking about right now, that means that mommy and daddy do not let their emotions dictate their decisions. Mommy and daddy have a handle on their money. Mommy and daddy are going to take care of me because they love me and they have first taken care of themselves. We hear it all the time. When it comes to being on an airplane, oxygen mask falls down, you have to put your mask on first. My friends, if you are in a vicious cycle of blaming things on your children or justifying them because it makes your children happy, it may make them happy in the moment, but is it going to help them in the long run? Much like the day after that fire, and we chose to not go purchase a car 700 a month would have been okay and totally normal in the short term, but it would have been incredibly stressful in the long term. And it would have put us backwards in our financial goals. Curious if anything I said today resonated with you. Will you tell me? Was this helpful to you or do I need to take a total left turn and talk about something else? Because I'm happy to do that. This is a podcast that is for you. I already hear myself talk all the time and I don't want to just be talking out into the world. I want to make a podcast that is based on you and what you need. So if you wouldn't mind jump on over to Instagram at accelerate your legacy and tell me what you think, or shoot me over an email, accelerateyourlegacy. com. I really want to hear from you. I truly want to make sure that this podcast is the best that it can be because this is about you, your life, your money, and the legacy that you are going to leave. So my friends, you know what I'm going to tell you to do. Go out and make a difference. Thank you for investing your time with us today on the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. Remember, your legacy isn't just measured in dollars and cents, but in the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. Don't just listen to the show, but take action on what you've learned. Share this wisdom with a friend who can benefit and help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. For questions or encouragement, reach out to me on Instagram at Accelerate Your Legacy or explore the resources listed in the show notes. I will be back with you next week. Until then, build your legacy with intention.