How Adam Carroll is Launching Financial Grownups- and you can too (including yourself)

 

Episode Description: 8 years after his Ted talk on the lessons learned from his young kids monopoly games, the author and speaker shares his strategies for setting his now (almost) adult kids up for financial success.

 

Adam Carroll’s Bio:

Adam Carroll is an internationally recognized financial literacy expert, author of four Amazon best-sellers, a two-time TED talk speaker with over 6 million views on YouTube, and is the creator of the Broke, Busted & Disgusted documentary which aired on CNBC and is shown in hundreds of high schools and colleges across the country.

Over the past two decades, Adam has delivered well over 1,000 paid engagements, surpassing 5 figures per gig, all while building a recurring revenue stream business from the stage.

He is the founder of The Shred Method™, a fintech company that is helping individuals and families create massive freedom in their lives in record time.

 
 

Links to resources mentioned in the episode!

Follow Adam Carroll!

Follow Bobbi!


Did you enjoy the show? We would love your support!

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. We love reading what our listeners think of the show!

  1. Subscribe to the podcast, so you never miss an episode.

  2. Subscribe to the newsletter.

  3. Share the podcast with your family, friends, and co-workers.

Full Transcript:

Bobbi Rebell:

Adam Carroll, you are a financial grownup. Welcome back to the podcast.

 

Adam Carroll:

It's great to be here, Bobby. And I'm excited about where this conversation goes.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

Well, the last episode was a few years ago. We'll put a link to that show. You gave a great money story about how mentorship really helped bring along your career. And we're sort of going to expand on that theme. I recently rewatched one of my favorite TED Talks, which, surprise, was yours. You talk about the lessons learned. For those of you just listening, he gave a little like, you know, I don't even know what the little like fist pump.

 

Adam Carroll:

Yeah, the arm pump, the excited arm pump

 

 

Bobbi Rebell:

But anyway, it's about Monopoly and your kids and the lessons that you learned kind of from them. And I'm gonna ask you in a minute to kind of fast forward to where we are now, because now they're sort of in my sweet spot where they're teenagers and 20-somethings and they're ready to be launched as financial grownups . But bring us back, give us a quick summary of that TED Talk.

 

Adam Carroll:

Yeah, the Ted talk, which happened in 2015, which seems like eons ago, was a byproduct of me being on college campuses all across the country, And I was experiencing these students who had no conscious understanding of the money decisions they were making. You know, they were borrowing money in student loans, they were spending money on credit cards, but it was it wasn't real. It was just very abstract. And I was watching my kids play Monopoly one day, Bobbi, and They were rolling the dice and they're moving the pieces, but the money was kind of irrelevant to them. It was just slips of paper. And I thought, maybe I should meld these two worlds and bring real money into this and see if it changes the way they play. And so I did, I went to the bank and got $10,000 in cold hard cash. And we played a cash game of Monopoly with my then elementary age kids. And it was very mind expanding for both of us, I would say, for all of us.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

And it was very different, very different reactions

 

Adam Carroll:

Very different reactions. They were super conservative, which I was surprised by. I don't know what I was expecting. I knew they would play differently, but each of them has sort of a, or had at the time a very different personality when they played Monopoly. So my daughter would always play the luck strategy for chance and community chess cards, rarely bought any property whatsoever. My youngest son bought everything that he landed on with no exception. And my middle son, my middle child, my oldest son, He was very strategic. He'd buy railroads and utilities and boardwalk and park place. But all of them started to play differently when real money was at stake. And it taught my wife and I some great lessons about how we could raise them to then ultimately launch financial grownups, to use your terminology. Because I wanted them to be able to stand on their own two feet financially at 18. And I knew that was not going to be from 17 to 18, they learned those lessons. It was going to be from like age six or seven through the age of 17. We are going to prepare them for, for life beyond, you know, the first national bank of mom and dad.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

So now you are at the time when they are ready to launch. So we're fast forwarding

 

Adam Carroll:

Mm-hmm.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

eight years from 2015 to now we're recording this in the summer of 2023. How old are your kids and their personalities still, I assume, very different. Talk to me about what you're seeing and what strategies you're using as they get older in the sort of later teenage years to make them financial grownups.

 

Adam Carroll:

My children now are aged 20. That's my oldest, my daughter. She is going into her junior year in college. My next oldest is 18. He's just about to enter school here and actually next week we take him to move into his dorm. And that leaves one at home who will be 16 in December. And what we've been doing to prepare them to launch financially is, you know, ultimately Bobbi, they were given money as an allowance for chores done from the time we played that Monopoly game through the age of about 14 or 15. They were still expected to help around the house. But by 14, every one of them, all three of them had more than enough money in their savings and checking accounts that they could go do what they wanted to do. They could go to games, they could go to movies, they could buy their friends gifts if they were invited to birthday parties. And we basically from... you know, seven or eight until 14, what we did was we taught them really solid financial habits, like, uh, delayed gratification when spending money. We taught them the intentionality of saving 10% of whatever you make. We taught them how to invest money. And I had built, uh, what we call the family 401k plan, which was whatever they put into investments, we would match up to $50 a month. And the goal was to get them. in the habit of putting money away and seeing it grow. And as a result, you know, what started out as $500 in savings by the time they were nine, grew to a thousand and two thousand and four thousand. And one of the things that I really hang my hat on is I told my kids from the time they were 10 or 11 that by the time you go to college, I want you to already have an MBA. And the MBA stood for a massive bank account. So we set a watermark of whatever that number was and all three of them, well, two of them right now have hit it. And the third one who's 16 and has been working for about maybe a year, he's slowly saving to get to that point. But all three of them will leave with probably more in savings than the average American has.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

One of the things I try to be very honest with our audience about is that while the end result may be good, it doesn't mean that there weren't stumbling blocks along the way. Can you share some of the setbacks and challenges that you have had that maybe make it a little more relatable? Because to me right now, this sounds great, but if I'm listening to this, I'm going, yeah, because their dad is Adam Carroll, but I am not a money expert. I'm barely able to manage my own money, or maybe I even can't manage my own money well. What do I do?

 

Adam Carroll:

You know, the number one thing that I tell young audiences when I talk to them and young being could be high school or college age, could be young professionals, but I'll tell them that your money story is probably given to you by your parents, but your money story does not have to be their money story. And so for parents that are sort of struggling financially, what I want you to know is that your children, even from the age of five or younger, have a really, really profound sense of how money works or how wants work. And this is one of those things that I think for families with young kids has to be just absolutely drilled into their heads that there is a limit, there is a lack to the amount of money that we have. And what most parents do where they fall down is they'll take their kids to Target or to Walmart or to name your store. And the kid pitches a fit because they want something and the only way they know how to get it is to pitch a fit. And so even if you have limited resources to give your child a dollar or $2 or $5 a week and say this is your money, this is used for the things that you want, not for the things you need, as your parents will do our best to provide everything you need. But if you want something that is on you, that's not on me. And in those $1, $2, $5 increments. let your kids fall down and skin their knees. My wife and I had lots of arguments about, I would say it's their money. They get to decide. And she'd say, I know, but it's such a dumb purchase. Why would they get X, Y, or Z? And I'm like, I get where you're coming from, but it is their money. And

so in teaching the lessons, we have to let them fall down. And I think that's the hardest part.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

Can you give us an example of something where you had to let them fall down and you were maybe tempted to rescue them? And maybe you did? Not that I've ever done that, of course.

 

Adam Carroll:

Yeah.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

But you know, we're as parents, we are far from perfect. Speaking only for myself, you're perfect, Adam.

 

Adam Carroll:

And what is so hard is that I think as a society, we have conflated love and struggle. So we go, I love my kids, therefore I don't want them to struggle. And in reality, it really should be, I love my kids and I want them to struggle, but I want them to struggle within the confines of my safe boundary. And so some of the mistakes or the foibles, the fall downs we've seen are, our kids will amass or accumulate a certain amount of money. It could be from birthday money that they're getting or holiday money, could be part-time jobs, but they've amassed it. And then they get really excited about the next iPhone. And so they're like, I'm gonna go get the $1,200 iPhone. And this is one of those where my wife said, this is ridiculous, we should not be allowing them to go get a $1,200 device. And I kept saying, it is their money though. And at some level, we need to let them do that. We have to determine how much that is. And so I kept telling my sons, guys, 1400 is a lot of money. Go get the SE, go get this lower version of the phone. Don't go after the iPhone 17 or whatever the latest one was gonna be. And by and large, they went out and they did it anyway. They said, dad, I made this decision. I went out and did it. I spent the $1,200. And then the very next week, of course, my son had tire issues on his car. And so we're going, well, maybe we need to chip in. And my wife said, no, this, you know, you've set the stage here. He needs to feel the pain. And, um, again, hard lesson and hard for a parent, not to say we'll just stroke the check for $600. Um, but I will tell you this, my kids learn the lesson and they learn that it is necessary to have money in savings because these kind of things are going to occur. Um, so I think the hardest part of it for parents is not to jump in and rescue when you 100% have the means to do it. Um, but it's a really good, hard lesson for the kid to learn in the moment.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

How does your approach change now that you have emerging adults, let's say older teenagers of 20 something versus 15 years ago when you, I'm sorry, eight years ago in 2015 when you were doing the Ted Talk, the famous, by the way, the Ted Talk I didn't say has more than six million hits, my friends, just so you know. It's not just this little one. It totally went viral globally, the whole thing. These are, they're always been real humans, but these are adults basically with... Sometimes, unpredictable emotional reactions. Teenagers are hard. Just speaking as the parent of a 16-year-old right now,

 

Adam Carroll:

Yep.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

teenagers are hard. It's different.

 

Adam Carroll:

They are. They are. And I will say that each one of mine are different. And I don't know how many kids do you have, Bobbi?

 

Bobbi Rebell:

Three, the youngest

 

Adam Carroll:

Three.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

is 16, yeah.

 

Adam Carroll:

Okay. Yeah. So same here. And they always say when you have three kids, you have a leader, a lover and a lunatic. And

 

Bobbi Rebell:

Do we? Oh my goodness, I'm going to have fun discussing this one later.

 

Adam Carroll:

Yeah, and I've seen it play out in many families, whether it's, you know, I'm talking to the child who is one of three or they have children, you have three children. In my case, my daughter, who is the leader is very good at saving and managing money. So she's very frugal like her mom. She was wired that way loves to coupon loves to thrift. You know, was seeking out free things on Facebook to furnish her apartment with which we love. We thought it was hilarious. And then my middle son, he is the saver. He does not spend money. He just, he kind of hoards it and he likes having it, but he's very intelligent about it. So he wants to invest that money and he's studying investing and all of that. And then my lunatic, the young one, he's a maker. He makes it. He just, he, he will be in sales. He will never have a problem making money. And we're trying to teach him that you're really good at making it. Let's get really good at keeping it and really good at growing it. And so. I think the difference is when they're young, what we're trying to do is really put the right habits in place. And as they get older, we start to say, hey, your natural skill set is you're really good at this. So leverage that, use that, employ that however you can, keep the habits going, but know that you have a skill set there that you could leverage and deploy into greater things. And I think it's just the maturation. And we're seeing our kids go from. skinning their knees on a $25 purchase to making really intelligent $500 and $1,000 and $5,000 purchases. And they're doing it in a very thoughtful kind of intentional monitored way. And I think they did that because we let them skin their knees at $25 a pop.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

What is one thing you wish you had done differently looking back now?

 

Adam Carroll:

Um, I did copious amounts of research into scholarships. And I think I was so wrapped up in doing my own research and espousing what I knew about scholarships to the general public, that I didn't do an effective enough job with my kids of drilling it into their heads. This is what we're going to do to pay for school. And for the parents out there that have a 529 plan or you've got savings or you've told your kids, hey, don't worry about... college money will pay for it. I think at some level, students have to know that some of that financial onus is on them. And then there's gotta be this motivation to go find free money because it's plentiful. You know, there's allegedly $8 billion that goes unclaimed every year in scholarships. And I did not do enough of sitting my kids down and saying, it's scholarship Saturday for the next hour, we're working on this. You're gonna gripe, you're gonna complain, but you're gonna love it when at the end of your college career, all that 529 money's going into a 401k for you. I wish we would have done that.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

And you're referring to a recent change in the law, which is really exciting. It used to be a lot of people were hesitant to put money into a 529 because it was sort of stuck there in a silo and now there's other options, which is another episode. Maybe we'll do a newsletter on that, but it's a really interesting point. Lots of options when you have money in a 529 that did not exist until recently. So thanks for bringing that up. And so I do wanna, before we wrap up, I know that you have a really cool perspective on interest rates and mortgages and debt, because interest rates, they stink right now, Adam. It's terrible. And I know a lot of people are interested in not having a mortgage at the current rates. We don't have time to go too much into depth, not debt, depth, on this topic, but I just briefly tell us, you've got something called the Shred Method.

 

Adam Carroll:

Yeah, this is a basically it's a piece of software. It's a course that we've created in addition in a community of people who basically said, I don't want to have a mortgage for the rest of my life. I don't want a 30 year fixed. I want to get it paid off much, much faster. And so what we do is we teach people how to create efficiency with their income and blast away debt and record time record time for most of our clients is somewhere between three and seven years. where they could have everything taken care of, mortgage included. And the reason I'm so passionate about it is my wife and I did this in 2012. And we started the process with about a $300,000 mortgage. We blasted it away in 3.7 years. And from that point forward, realized the power of having liquidity in our home, you know, in the way of equity, but really the power of discretionary income at a high level. And you're... you know, it's able you are able to build real wealth in short order when you minimize the amount of money that's going out in interest expense on debt. And so we're teaching how to do that.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Okay, where can people find you and learn more about all things Adam Carroll? Because you do a lot of things.

 

Adam Carroll:

Adam Carroll, they live at adamcarroll.info. That's two R's, two L's, adamcarroll.info. And if the Shred Method is at all intriguing to anyone looking to just blast away debt, you can go to theshredmethod.com for more info.

 

Bobbi Rebell:

Thanks so much.

 

Adam Carroll:

Thanks for having me, Bobby.

 
Bobbi Rebell KaufmanTemplate