Rich kid realities with The Myth of the Silver Spoon author Kristin Keffeler

 

Episode Description: Being born wealthy can create priceless opportunities.  But Keffeler joins us to explain how the rising generation still has to do the "inner work of money" and navigate family dynamics, financial education and intergenerational collaboration.

A little sneak peek into Kristin Keffeler’s episode!

Timestamps & Main Points:

  • 00:00 - Introduction

  • 05:24 - We have a pretty conflicted relationship with money…

  • 08:46 - there's probably lots of different ways to look at what are important financial growth milestones,

  • 11:04 - That all becomes clutter that ultimately makes it so people stop engaging or engaging in a healthy way with the money in their lives, and then it becomes a very unconscious game

  • 16:24 - if your kid doesn't need to earn money per se, is it taking a job from someone else to have this kid take this job and the income associated with it?

  • 19:44 - we all probably could do a little deeper money work

Kristin’s Bio:

Kristin Keffeler, MSM, MAPP is a thought leader, speaker, and consultant at the forefront of a global shift in family wealth advising, known as Wealth 3.0. She guides affluent and enterprising families, rising gen, and the professionals who support them in embracing the positive power of wealth and doing the “inner work of money.” Kristin is the author of The Myth of the Silver Spoon: Navigating Family Wealth & Creating an Impactful Life (Wiley, 2022), an Amazon bestseller in its category.

As the founder of Illumination360 and the Chief Learning Officer for the Denver-based Johnson Financial Group, she specializes in human motivation and behavioral change, family dynamics, family governance, rising gen education and development, and intergenerational collaboration. Drawing upon her life experience as the daughter of wealth-creating parents and her years of research and private practice advising and coaching the rising generation in affluent and enterprising families, Kristin believes that members of the rising gen are uniquely positioned to create significant impact in the world, and uses a lens of strengths to help them to ignite their potential.

Keffeler brings a multi-dimensional approach to her work. She earned an undergraduate degree in human biology and chemistry, with an emphasis on human peak performance. She also holds a Master of Science in Management with a concentration in Public Health from the University of Denver, and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Kristin’s top character strengths are love, spirituality, gratitude, perseverance, perspective, and love of learning, which she feels grateful to use in her work every day.  She lives in Boulder County, Colorado where she rides her bike every day she can, hugs her three daughters as often as possible, laughs with her husband in all the spare moments, and works side-by-side with her dog, Olive.

 
 

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Full Transcript:

Bobbi Rebell:

Being a financial grownup, it's pretty hard. We know that, and that's why we need to be focusing on financial wellness. According to PWC, the majority of employees said that financial worries had a negative effect on their overall health and wellbeing. Money stress is expensive for companies. Workers are less productive and more likely to leave a job. They also have higher healthcare costs when they are worried about their money. Not surprising as if healthcare costs weren't already sky high. Financial Wellness Strategies is here to help by providing engaging and yes, delightful workshops and educational programs for employees to better control finances.

Anyone can lecture and run numbers. We talk about real life money stuff. Topics include setting up the best grown up everyday money habits, managing those social media temptations to splurge, strategies to shop for the best deals at the best time, demystifying and really understanding financial lingo, strategies to steer friends and family away from those bad money decisions, and how to know when you should ignore the math that says you should do one thing with your money and focus on your goals even when it isn't the best "financial decision". It's time for your company to invest in peace of mind with Financial Wellness Strategies. Get in touch for more information at financialwellnessstrategies.com.

Welcome my friends to the Wellness for Financial Grownups Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I am your host, Bobbi Rebell. This week we are going to be talking about rich kid problems and yes, they do have problems and the eye rolls that may be going on out there is exactly why we are going to be talking about this. Now, have you ever thought about how great life would be if you never had to worry about money? I know I have. There are people out there like that. They're not worried about money, but that doesn't mean they are worry-free or that their life is carefree, and we're going to talk about that with the author of The Myth of the Silver Spoon, Kristin Keffeler. But first I want to share this week's quote, and once again, I enlisted my new favorite toy, ChatGPT, and here is what ChatGPT gave me when I asked for quotes about silver spoons,

"This silver spoon is a curse as well as a blessing. It gives you the advantage, but it robs you of the joy of achievement," unknown.

And actually, by the way, the ChatGPT gave me 10 pretty compelling quotes. I chose that one because it really goes to the heart of what Kristin Keffeler talks about in her book, the Myth of the Silver Spoon, specifically that yes, there are absolutely advantages to being born wealthy, and most of us would choose to be born wealthy, but it also takes away a lot of what matters to us as humans, and that is kind of complicated. In our interview, Kristen and I talk about how sometimes parents of rich kids think they're actually alleviating anxiety by telling their kids they're never going to have to work. But in fact, it's more complicated than that because it can be really damaging because then what does that say about their ability to do something?

Do they even matter? Do their parents even think they're capable? Another thing Kristen and I talk about in the interview is, should a wealthy kid take a job when maybe they're taking that job away from somebody who really needs the job for the money and that person would get it if the rich kid didn't get the job? So how do you even make peace with that? It's so complicated. Kristen talks about how people who are inheriting wealth or a family business are often dismissed by society.

But here's the thing everyone, if generational wealth is something that so many of us Americans aspire to, that is what we talk about as the American Dream. We want the next generation to be financially secure, to not have to work, to not have to worry about money. Why do we often vilify it? I want everyone to listen to what Kristin has to say very carefully because I'm betting that it is going to give you a lot to think about in terms of how we perceive the people that we meet in our life that maybe have more money, that maybe it seems that things are just handed to them and the judgements we know we're probably making even though maybe we shouldn't, but we can't help ourselves. Here is Kristin Keffeler.

Kristin Keffeler, you're on Financial Grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Kristin Keffeler:

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here Bobbi. Thank you for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:

I'm excited to have you because I just finished reading and I should say I read it a few weeks ago and that I reread parts of it last night because it was so compelling, your new book, the Myth of the Silver Spoon, Navigating Family Wealth and Creating an Impactful Life. I related a lot to this having grown up in an upper middle class family with a father that became gradually more successful as I grew up. But a lot of people might roll their eyes at this and say, "Oh, come on. Really? Rich people problems." So what's your answer when you get the eye rolls?

Kristin Keffeler:

Yeah, it's super common and understandable for a couple of reasons. One is culturally, we have a pretty conflicted relationship with money and by extension, wealth, money being sort of the day-to-day way we interact with dollars and cents, paying rent, buying coffee, that kind of thing. Wealth being an abstract concept that of accumulated money, which is this whole other thing. And culturally, we have a pretty conflicted relationship with it. We both seek it and envy those that have it and also disdain those who have it, and particularly those who have inherited it. We have a psychological calculus that says they deserve it even less. That's just sort of bred into our cultural psychology right now. And so when people think about the idea that somebody from a significant and wealthy family could actually also have some psychological trip wires and emotional difficulties, people want to roll their eyes like, "Hey, you've been given every advantage. You are starting on third base, so you have nothing to complain about."

And I would say the vast majority of the rising generation clients I've worked with from wealthy families have that internalized message. And they get it. Like no one, I don't have a single client in my practice who wants anybody's sympathy. That's not what they're seeking. And I think what the challenge is that culturally, because we have such a complex relationship with money and with wealth and those who have it, we don't give any credence to the fact that those who have been raised with it may have a unique set of challenges on their path to claiming their own identity. Despite the fact that they've been given tons of privilege and opportunities, it doesn't mean that it erases the psychological challenges of growing up. And in fact, wealth can create a buffering effect that makes it even harder to grow up.

Bobbi Rebell:

And we talk a lot on this podcast about the concept of becoming a financial grown up, and in fact, having wealth can make that much more complicated because for example, when you are a parent and you have to say no to something because you simply don't have the money, it may not be pleasant, far from it, but that's what you are doing. But when you do have the money, it gets more complicated. It gets more complicated when it comes to milestones of being a financial grownup. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Kristin Keffeler:

Yeah, so from a parenting perspective, you're absolutely right. When circumstances dictate what you can say yes and no to, when you say, "That's just out of our budget, I'm sorry. If that thing is meaningful to you, son or daughter of mine, then you're going to have to figure it out." It's different than when you have enough financial resources that circumstances don't dictate that, then you actually have to know what your parenting values are. And so being grounded in those values and being able to say, "You know what, honey? I am 100% behind you and I think it's really important that you have some skin in the game in this, and so let's figure out how we can do this so that you also have buy-in to this." That's something that is sort of like a level two or level three parenting skill that supports our kids' ability to hit those milestones.

And those milestones, there's probably lots of different ways to look at what are important financial growth milestones, but I would say as you talk about to be a financial grownup to say like, "I get that I'm responsible for this and by being responsible, I'm going to understand my cash flow. I'm going to understand how I spend money and why I spend money. I'm going to understand what it means to hire an advisor and how do I hire a good advisor? What questions do I ask?" These are all things that are part of actually being a grownup and owning your whole financial life.

Bobbi Rebell:

One way that you present it in your book that I think really clarifies a lot of your messaging and a lot of your research is the concept of clutter, money related clutter. You have four areas, the podcast isn't that long, but let's go through them. So the first one is money clutter and wealth.

Kristin Keffeler:

Money clutter is basically our limiting beliefs around money and around wealth. It's the stories that we've inherited from our parents and grandparents about what money is, and that could be across the spectrum from I'll hear stories from rising gen family members who will say like, "Yeah, in our family, the message was we put our pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. We are no different." For other families, it was like, "Honey, you'll never have to worry about having a job. We have enough for you to never have a job." Those messages are internalized and then become part of our narrative, and unless they are examined and we understand and consciously adopt them, they can be very damaging, including something that seems so freeing like, "Honey, you'll never have to have a job." More often than not, when I hear someone say that they've been told that, I see in their lives that they're very, very stuck because ultimately that gets translated to, "Wow, my mom or dad or grandma or grandpa didn't think I was capable. They just said like, I'm going to take care of you forever."

So money clutter is, it's the messages that we have that really muck up our ability to have a very clean and conscious relationship with money and with wealth and ultimately gets in the way of things like being willing to engage with like, "What's my credit score? What's my cash flow? How do financial systems and structures work?" That all becomes clutter that ultimately makes it so people stop engaging or engaging in a healthy way with the money in their lives, and then it becomes a very unconscious game.

Bobbi Rebell:

Right. And then it feeds into how we perceive ourselves, our identity, that's identity clutter.

Kristin Keffeler:

So identity is based a lot on false beliefs about who we are and who we need to be in order to be acceptable. And money can create a lot of noise around that search for identity particularly when identity formation, one of the most important times for that is late teens through one's twenties and being out in the world and building experiences and having crummy jobs and all of that kind of stuff is part of what really builds a strong identity, a sense of who am I separate from my family, what is me, what's not me? And money and wealth can create a huge buffer to one's ability to actually find that authentic voice.

Bobbi Rebell:

And speaking of authenticity, you talk about the fact in the book a lot that especially in our teenage years and early twenties when we're forming these friendships and relationships with friends and also coworkers, having that identity can also become relationship clutter because how much do you reveal about your life? And you talk about the fact that sometimes, and I forget your exact terminology, but some overstate that they use their wealth, but some people really almost hide from their wealth. I think of the scene in Crazy Rich Asians where this couple's been dating for quite some time. He's bringing her home to meet his family, and suddenly they're in first class and suddenly he's gradually revealing that in fact has a lot of wealth and he's clearly been very proactively hiding from his girlfriend who's now serious enough that she's meeting his family, and I kept thinking about that. Tell us more about relationship clutter.

Kristin Keffeler:

I love that movie because I feel like it really does capture in an engaging way, a very common experience of someone raised with financial significance. So relationship clutter, you're spot on Bobbi that identity clutter very often leads right into the relationship clutter that a lot of people can experience when they're raised in wealthy families and that is this feeling that you may not be acceptable for just who you are, but it's hard to tell and detest that with friendships and with romantic relationships when all the trappings are very attractive.

So this sense of like, "Well, are people hanging out with me because they really love me or because I have the coolest house or we have a cool vacation home, or why are these people my friends?" And being able to pressure test that authenticity is much more difficult and without oftentimes the ability to actually even fine tune that authenticity meter. It's something that takes time and takes... There's active parenting in that as parents will say, "Hey, does that really feel like that is what a good friend would do?" But when you don't get that kind of feedback and you're not in situations where you can really pressure test and see the equality of our relationship, it can extend into adult years of a lot of relationship clutter that gets in the way of having deep, rich, rewarding relationships.

Bobbi Rebell:

And you do talk in the book about the fact that many of your clients that are rising gen, which a lot of people call that gen, you call it rising gen, and I like that term. I'm going over that from now on. They have trouble forming these friendships because they do have a distrust and maybe it's also an insecurity in themselves in terms of, "Why are people friends with me," especially, and then if your clients have... You don't use the names for most people. You use a couple, which I'll leave for people to find that in your book, but I wasn't surprised at some of the names that you did use because they're famous for talking about their wealth relative to their very famous relatives. A lot of these people have names that in the community are recognizable instantly, so there's no way to hide. They even move away sometimes to different towns just to be authentically themselves.

Kristin Keffeler:

Yep.

Bobbi Rebell:

It's complicated.

Kristin Keffeler:

It's super complicated, and then it takes an immense amount of emotional awareness to detangle that identity from a family name and what other people project about that family name from who you are and trying to find that balance we talk about over and under identifying with wealth. Over identifying is melding too much with the family wealth story and not finding your own individual voice. Under identifying is running from that as far as you can and not having a healthy integration of family and family legacy into your life. And really the middle point is this hyper agency where it's really about who am I as an individual and how do I use and connect with my family wealth story and legacy and still have individuality? And being able to find that is truly a balancing act and something that takes time and effort.

Bobbi Rebell:

The last clutter is contribution clutter, and you use the word contribution rather than work, but that's what it's effectively alluding to and inspiring meaningful purpose. It's very tricky because I also think, well, and right now in the US we do have a situation where there's a lot of job availability, so you're probably not taking a job from someone else, but one thing I think about is if, do you send your kid, if your kid doesn't need to earn money per se, is it taking a job from someone else to have this kid take this job and the income associated with it? Is that ethical? That's one thing right? And then also, what if they aren't going to work for money? How does that play out? Finding your way, your purpose sounds all woo woo, but there are some very specific tangible things associated with it. Tell us more about the whole idea of contribution clutter.

Kristin Keffeler:

This one is such a big one. They're all so big and important and I did use the word contribution instead of work because work has such a strong connotation with a transaction of money and it's not necessarily a core element of clearing this clutter and becoming a financial grownup to have to work for money. There is something that is helpful about it actually because it is the way that the vast majority of your peers are going to be experiencing how they impact the world and how they get rewarded for that. And there's something that in that cycle that can be self-validating. But I used contribution because that's not everybody's path to really figuring out how to engage and impact the world. And I think the core piece to this one is the recognition that removing the financial need to work doesn't remove the human need to work.

We are wired as beings from birth, we are wired to see what we do, you drop the rattle out of the crib and what happens in return is someone come running, that is just part of this action consequence is just part of how we are wired and ultimately our ability to experience true meaning comes in some form or another through work. That work can be defined in lots of different ways. It can be defined through active parenting, it can be defined through philanthropic work, it can be defined through a really high end high drive career, but we have a human need to work and removing the financial need doesn't remove that human need. But very often we have those things tangled up and that's where I see rising gen really struggle is when there's not a financial need to work and then they don't really go find their true metal, really figure out their edge, then they can get really stuck and feel very inconsequential.

Bobbi Rebell:

And one thing you point out in your book is that inheritors are often discounted by society. It's one of the few things that everyone feels it's open season to discount somebody who has inherited wealth or grow up with a family business maybe they grew as they were growing up, it's not always straight up inherited, but maybe they might have a family business that they have to grow into, but sometimes they aren't always want to take over the family business. So it's not always so rosy on that end. When advice do you have, not so much for the inheritors, but for everybody else who might be listening to this who might have that pang of envy, jealousy, or just not knowing how to deal with their friend who maybe they don't talk about it, but they may have a friend that is in this category that they know has a lot of money and is never stressed out about money and it seems to have it all at least?

Kristin Keffeler:

Right. My advice there would be that across the economic continuum, we all probably could do a little deeper money work. We could all understand a little bit more about what our relationship is to money and how to come into a healthier conscious relationship with it and that recognizing that we will always have people in our lives who have more than us. No matter where you fall, there's someone else who has more and that we can easily ascribe a vision for what that must be like for them, right? Oh, I feel stressed about paying rent. My friend who has more than me probably doesn't feel stressed about paying rent, so their life must be better. And I would say we all have our own journey and I have never met someone who doesn't have some amount of pain or growth that they're working through in their life regardless of whether they have money or don't have money.

And so the humanity is where the place that we can connect and I really feel like our ability to use what we have, we have a capitalistic system, so we're not going to change that tomorrow and in a capitalistic system there are... it incentivizes the creation of wealth. That's what capitalism does. There's a huge opportunity to use the lever of what's already in our system, which is the power of concentrated wealth to really turn outward and create an immense amount of good in the world, but we all have to have a more healthy conscious relationship with the money that we have and those in our community who have money and right now, we continue to have a push-pull, us them mentality around this and I feel like we're missing a huge opportunity to use the lever of wealth in the system that we currently have.

Bobbi Rebell:

Thank you so much for joining me. Tell me more about how people can be in touch with you. I know your book is for sale all over the place, but where can people find out more about you?

Kristin Keffeler:

Yeah, thank you Bobbi. I'm on LinkedIn so you can find me at Kristin Keffeler, K-R-I-S-T-I-N K-E-F-F-E-L-E-R, and my website is Illumination 360 I-L-L-U-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N 360. And I would love to meet there and have more conversations.

Bobbi Rebell:

Thank you so much. The Myth of the Silver Spoon is an amazing book, so we really appreciate you joining us and sharing more of your insights.

Kristin Keffeler:

Thank you, Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:

We all want to live our best financial grownup lives. One way to do that is to know that the people that we care about are also in a good place when it comes to their money. That might mean our kids, our grandkids, and yes, even our friends, but how? I mean, it's kind of awkward. You see them struggling pretending to know more than they do or just making bad money decisions, but you don't know what to say and even if you say something supportive, then what? That's why I wrote Launching Financial Grownups. In Launching Financial Grownups, I share the tools and strategies so you know what to say to take the pressure off and give those you love the confidence they need. It's all about giving those we care about the right amount of help at the right time so they can not only learn what they need to know about being financial grownups, but also be confident that they can do it and that you'll be there to cheer them on. Pick up a copy of my book Launching Financial Grownups. I promise you'll be so happy that you did.

It really hit home when Kristin said, "Removing the financial need to work doesn't remove the human need to work." The work can be defined in many ways and she says it can be active parenting or it can be philanthropic work or a hard driving career, but it needs to be something. Time now for our extra credit assignment, this one, not so hard to guess. We talked about how basically the whole premise of Crazy Rich Asians is that this couple is dating and the guy hides his wealth and then as it is gradually revealed, and it is a large amount of money and a large amount of social pressure, it throws a wrench in their relationship. So if you haven't seen Crazy Rich Asians, I want you to check it out and if you have, I want you to watch it again with a perspective of, "Why was this rich kid moving halfway around the world and very actively hiding his wealth?"

He wanted to be seen for who he was, not what he was worth, self-worth, not net worth if you will. Just think about it. All right, I'm going to share more insights on this in a future newsletter, so I want everyone to be subscribed. It is free. You can subscribe at bobbirebell.substack.com or use the link in the show notes. You can get both on my website at bobbirebell.com. And like I said, free, totally free. Big thanks to the Myth of the Silver Spoon author Kristin Keffeler for helping us invest in peace of mind and live our best lives as financial grownups. Wellness For Financial Grownups is a production of BRK Media. Editing and production by Steve Stewart. Guest coordination, social media support and show notes by Ali Bourbon, artwork by Chelsea Perez. You can find the podcast show notes, which include links to resources mentioned on the show as well as show transcripts by going to my website, bobbirebell.com.

To get even more out of this podcast, make sure you are also on our newsletter list to get more free content to live your best financial grownup lives. There is a link in the show notes, but you can also sign up by going to bobbirebell.com or financialwellnessstrategies.com and be a friend. Share the podcast with your friends and anyone you think might like it by taking a screenshot and sharing it on social media. Make sure to tag me on Instagram @bobbirebell1. While you're there, follow me. If you DM me that you listen to the podcast, I will follow you back. You can also leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcast. Reading each one means the world to me and please support our merch shop grownupgear.com by picking up fun gifts for your grownup friends and treating yourself as well. Finally, my grownup friends, don't forget to invest in peace of mind. Thanks everyone.

 

 
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