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Life by Design is a podcast that shares the experiences and tools to help couples align their wealth goals and reclaim their time, enabling them to experience freedom, abundance, and a life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (00:00)
Welcome to the Light by Design Podcast, we're Jessilyn and Brian Persson struggling to align your financial goals or confidently invest in real estate as a couple.
Brian Persson (00:18)
That's why we created this podcast and the Riches Relationships and Real Estate program to help you build wealth and strengthen your relationship. Visit weekendwealth.ca to take our quiz and discover your real estate investor type. Let's create the life you deserve together.
Jessilyn Persson (00:35)
Welcome to today's episode where we're diving into a topic that reaches far beyond dollars and cents, generational wealth and intentional financial parenting. This isn't just about passing down assets. It's about passing down mindsets, values, and habits that create empowered, financially capable generations. We'll explore how to raise wealth-minded kids, how to pass on legacy without entitlement, and how to design a family wealth Brooklyn that lasts.
Because true wealth isn't just about what you build. It's about what you build into your family.
And so today we're going to start with raising well-minded kids and stealing financial values early.
Brian Persson (01:21)
Yeah, and I think this is probably the most important part about generational wealth because obviously your kids are the next generation and if they don't understand wealth and they don't understand how to manage it, grow it, keep it, then it is going to disappear very, very quickly.
Jessilyn Persson (01:39)
Yeah, and I know we talk quite openly about money in our house and real estate and investing. So our kids at some level understand all of that. And while we haven't, I think, gone too deeply in some of these things, they definitely know, I believe, the difference between assets, which is our real estate, and we have other investment assets that we haven't talked about, but they definitely know real estate. They know income because they know I work a full-time contract.
And that's the money that's the day to day, pay the bills kind of a thing. And then liabilities, which can be a tricky one depending on age appropriateness of our kiddos, right? But I think we have definitely over time explained, you know, like our vehicle, like, cause you know, they come home and they're like, they're like, well, my friends have like three vehicles and they have toys like quads, skadoos, like all boats. And we're like, great, but those are liabilities.
not exactly assets that we choose to invest in real estate instead of all those toys and vehicles.
Brian Persson (02:42)
Yeah. And I mean, you say that income assets and liabilities are perhaps complicated subjects, but we truly believe in like teaching them as early as possible because even if they don't understand what the idea of a liability is that say nine or 12 years old, well, they've heard the word. Now they get into their teens and they're, you know, they're 18, 19, 20 years old now, and they've heard this word.
right? Or these words, assets and liabilities over and over and over again. Well, that repetition is already ingrained into their head and suddenly they'll get it. So imagine it's kind of like learning math, learning basic algebra, you know, when you're, when you're like quite older, you're, you're, now you're starting at 20 to take the 12 years of schooling that is going to take you to learn all the math. Instead, they, start you at grade one and, and now you learn all your math.
We believe in just starting earlier so that there's less barriers going into the future of what they have to learn.
Jessilyn Persson (03:45)
Absolutely, and it also teaches them the responsibility of money. when they ask for something, ⁓ we evaluate the cost of it. And sometimes, if it's like, ⁓ it would be like, okay, this is what it's going to cost. Are you willing to pay for that? And our oldest, who is a little bit more into just buying things, he's always like, yeah, yeah, I'll buy it, I'll do this. But then we're like, okay, but it's going to take the cost of your four weeks.
of doing your paper route to buy that asset or that Lego, I should say, it's not an asset. And that's when he'll be like, ⁓ wait, I gotta work for four weeks on my paper route to get that. Then he really considers, it worth the effort for the toy?
Brian Persson (04:31)
That's a lot more effort than he thought it would be. And you can start quite early. I remember when they were even younger than nine and 12, which they are right now, we would equate not so much money, but like things they understood, like Lego sets. So as you were saying, our oldest, he's very much into Lego. And when he wanted something, we would be like, okay, well, do you understand that that's the equivalent of like 15 Lego sets? And he's like, what?
that many Lego sets and he didn't understand the value of a dollar, but he understood the value of how much he could get out of it for his toys. so the number representation was still there and he could understand the volume of what he was asking.
Jessilyn Persson (05:18)
Yeah, yeah, build in, you know, in this, build a healthy relationship with money and we talk quite openly about scarcity versus abundance on our podcast. And, and when we speak in public and our kids are aware, cause I, you know, there's times where they'll say things and then I, know, do the old, what all parents do, bring up my past. I like when I was a kid, right. And I share what I had to do on the farm and they,
Because they've never experienced it, they'll be kind of like, yeah, okay, whatever, mom, no big deal. But then when I explained the magnitude of it, like, I'm like, when I mowed the lawn, it took three days. They'd be like, what? I'm like, and when I finished, I had to start over. Like, that's just how fast the grass and how much grass we had on the farm. For them, when they see like our lawn, which is maybe 30 minutes to mow, once a week, at least when I can relate time, I think time's a good thing for kids at this age.
to equate to because like, especially our kids when we're like, okay, you get, you have to read an hour to get an hour of video games. They now really equate an hour what that means and what they have to do versus what they can get out of it. Like it's not necessarily all about money, but just getting them to understand the concept of time because at some point we do is talking about money for time, right?
Brian Persson (06:37)
And ultimately time is your greatest asset. Yeah. So if we can teach them early to not waste time and spend that time into something that can multiply and replicate itself, ⁓ then their time is going to be significantly more valuable. Not only just in what they get to choose to do with it, but like how much value it can truly generate. Like perhaps in money, perhaps in relationships, perhaps in, you know,
family, whatever their value is, they can now start to increase the amount of time that they can put towards that because they've learned early on what the value of that time is.
Jessilyn Persson (07:16)
Yeah, and we instilled quite early on the value of when it comes to chores, chores and money. And we decided right our lot that we were not gonna pair kids to do your typical daily chores like dishes, clean the floor, laundry, because when you're older and you're out on your own, there is no one doing it for you. You have to do it and you don't get paid. And so it was, we did an exchange. It's like, okay, this is part of being the family. You have to upkeep these things as chores.
and then you get to be inclusive in the family, vacations and things that we do with and for our family. But there are times where we have odd jobs that they can do and we will pay them, like picking all the rocks out of the grass in the spring so we can sit along in coming mode without wrecking the lawnmower and then we'll pay them. And so they learn that like, okay, these are jobs that might have to be done around the household, not necessarily.
but you can get paid for odd jobs. And then I know you went and taught them like, okay, if you're gonna pay them five bucks to pick all the rocks out of the grass and it takes them 10 minutes versus an hour, because sometimes they just like to play around, goof around, or like you still get the same five bucks. So do you wanna make five bucks for 15 minutes or five bucks for an hour?
Brian Persson (08:31)
Yeah. And that's just to prevent them from falling into the, you know, dollar per hour ⁓ mindset trap where you are then maximized or like you're, basically like locked into a certain number of hours a day where you can only make that amount of money. then, you know, your, your dollars per hour becomes unreasonably high. If you want to make more money in an employed or contract position.
You just simply can't get paid that much. So if you can learn to do it on a unit basis where you can, there are ways to figure out how you can multiply the number of units that you were getting paid for, like picking rocks or whatever other job it is, ⁓ then they can understand that, okay, the more efficiently I do my job, then the more money I can make because I am like multiplying the number of units that I'm able to take on.
Jessilyn Persson (09:25)
Yeah, absolutely. Getting paid per job or per project, if you will, versus per hour. And yeah, I fully agree. If you're really efficient, you just make more because you can set how long it's going to take you to do that project and you get paid the same, whether it took you 20 hours or 40 hours.
Brian Persson (09:44)
Well, and efficient versus effective as well. Yeah. Right. It could take you the whole hour to do it, but, efficiently you only spent 10 minutes on that whole hour on it. Whereas you could be effective and just spend a single 10 minutes on it and get the job done right away. And then you have 50 minutes left of your time to recoup in whatever way you want.
Jessilyn Persson (10:05)
Yeah. And moving on to the second one where it's like kind of legacy versus entitlement. So how do you pass down wealth without weakening future generations? And I know we've seen, you know, some friends of ours, boomers, ⁓ who did very, very well for themselves. And so their kids were raised in that and some of them are literally don't even have a job. 40 some years old and don't have a job and will never have a job because they're just so used to the money from the family.
We all know that's not going to carry down generations because that's how this person lives and it's going to get spent. But teaching it upfront, teaching the values of your So making firstly, like we keep saying money, it's a conversation. You shouldn't hide from it. You shouldn't be scared of it. Have it so kids get used to the fact that this is part of daily life. Money is always part of daily life. Whether it's paying bills, groceries, inflation, income, it's life.
And so if you teach them the words, how to understand it, then they get a better understanding and it becomes the norm. Like for our kids, we talk about investing all the time. And so I remember when Jack graduated grade, grade six there and they had this slides up. What do want to be when you get older? And he's like soccer player or investor. I'm like, how many? He was the only kid, let's say out of a hundred students who had investor on there. It is so awesome.
And I'm going to guess most of those kids don't even know what it means to have that as a career. ⁓ but he does because we take them around to our properties and we talk about it almost probably every day, just because we have so much real estate going on with our tenants, with investing, with buying, with our portfolios. But it's the norm to them. You know, we bought them books, I think it was last year, the year before for Christmas. One was on money, how to understand it. One was on investing for kids and they both, they both read.
each books and so then they just start to understand the concept. So to them, investing is... it's not a weird word. To them, it's probably weird if you didn't invest or didn't know what it be because to it's normal. They're looking at stocks so they know which one to invest in. Like, I didn't even know what a stock was until I was probably in my late 20s.
Brian Persson (12:23)
Well, and the FYI for the audience here, we're at, our province, we're having a teacher strike at the moment. And so the kids are at home. And so I was like, there's no way these kids are driving me nuts for the, these couple of weeks or whatever that the teachers are going to be on strike. So I actually made them set weekly goals. And one of their, both of the weekly goals was to try and invest money. They're too young to open up an investment account. So I'm like, okay, we, we'll figure it out. We'll make.
We'll make a way to invest, but the very first thing I made them do was educate themselves. So they had to like understand why they wanted to buy a particular company. Like is the company doing well? Is the company doing bad? Is the stock at like a discount? Is the stock at like a high point? Nine and 12 years old, I like, just gave them the direction to go out and find that. And now the, like you were saying, the word investment has kind of.
All the power of it has been taken out of it. Yeah. In a way, like the negative power of it, where people are like afraid to invest or like afraid that they don't have enough investments. Here they are at nine and 12 and investment is just a normal thing, right? Not necessarily like, why don't you invest it? But by the time they actually get around to being capable of doing the actual investment, it will be more like a hot knife through butter. It will not be any difficult.
of a procedure, right? They'll already have been imbued in it for the last 10 years by the time they get around to the actual physical action of doing the investment.
Jessilyn Persson (13:58)
Yeah, I'm going to share, think, what's a great parenting tip, just because I can. All the raving I hear, I hear every parent say it like, yeah, my kid's into video games and stupid YouTube videos. And we know our kids are the same. We'll catch them watching some of the weirdest, dumbest stuff on YouTube. And I'm like, how, why, nevermind, just turn it off. Right? But now we found, like a couple weeks ago, I found our nine year old watching YouTube's on how to invest. I was like, okay, now that's amazing.
So it could be a bit of a trade off. Like if they're watching YouTube on money, how to grow it, how to earn it, how to invest it, great. That's the YouTube you want to encourage your kids to watch. And maybe you do it as a trade off. So it's like, okay, you can watch 15 minutes of your crazy, weird YouTube stuff. But before you do that, you got to watch 15 minutes on something around money YouTube. And then this way they're learning and educating themselves. They're minimizing some of the dumb YouTube stuff.
And it's kind of a bit of win-win in their eyes and for the parents.
Brian Persson (15:04)
Yeah. And then the only thing I would add to that is make them come back and tell you about it and don't and be zero judgmental about whatever they tell you. cause they, you know, they're going to be young and they truly will not understand it. But again, like you're, you're, you're starting early and you're making sure that that, concept and those, that language is in their head early on. So just listen to them based on what they think that it is. And if there is anything like.
absolutely fundamentally wrong with what they're saying. Maybe, maybe give them a little correction or tell them to go back and do a little more research, but let them grow on, on how they understand investments as much as they possibly can, because that will encourage them to keep going and going without like feeling like they're doing wrong somehow.
Jessilyn Persson (15:52)
Yeah, absolutely. best way to support them. ⁓ Another way to help legacy ⁓ versus entitlement is encouraging personal responsibility and family vision. I mean, we do this early on and we still do, but both our boys have their own job, right? One does the paper route and one does data entry for PAPA's books. And that is their responsibility to ensure that work gets done.
And so they get paid. And so we've taught them, you know, of course how to do it. And then they get to see their bank account on where the money goes in so that they can see the reward for their effort. But it is ultimately in their responsibility to ensure they're getting their job done.
Brian Persson (16:38)
And another thing that we talk about with our kids, again, with the Stitcher Strike, I set them on some little tasks throughout the week is to define sort of buckets of their money. So they have, you know, their kids right now, so they have really no expenses. So they, normally you would have like 50 % of your bucket would be expenses for an adult, but like for them, you know, it's 10%. And so I got them to define exactly how much of their total
income they need to like put towards each bucket. So investing their toys, maybe a little bit of expenses here and there for whatever they might want. But that allows them to like understand that they have a limited capacity with what they're earning right now and that they need to be ⁓ thoughtful and choiceful about like where they're putting their money.
Jessilyn Persson (17:32)
Yep. And I recently started talking a little bit more about giving back. Now, I shouldn't say recently, we give back and I teach them that every year around Christmas. They have to go shopping with me and they fill a shoe box for a kid in need school here locally. Yep. And ⁓ every year we've been doing, think three or four years now, and they really, they really like it. And I explain why and what it means and what happens, but I buy, I pay for all the things that go in the box.
Brian Persson (17:49)
fundraiser
Jessilyn Persson (18:02)
But so more recently I started to talk to them about them giving back some of maybe their stuff, their money. And of course, questions are coming up of like, why would I do that? Or what does that mean? But again, instilling it now, even just talking about it, whether they do it or not, at least talking about it, they start to understand that everyone isn't in a situation like we are. And sometimes there are others who need support and we...
have the ability to do that. And these are some ways we can go about doing that. Like we always donate to the food banks several times a year as well. Right. And we just kind of show our kids like how to give back. Just again, it's a way for them to have some respect for the world outside of the house that they know and just good tools to teach the kiddos.
Brian Persson (18:53)
Yeah. And the consistency of doing this stuff is, a big thing too. So, you know, consistently, like you were saying, you, do it every single year. You go to this fundraiser, fill those shoe, shoe boxes for those families at Christmas. We consistently talk about money. We consistently talk about our investments. We consistently talk about, ⁓ many, many other things that I think some families kind of keep as taboo and they don't talk about very much. Or if they do, it's like a big deal that they talk about it once and then they, and then they kind of forget about it and like.
You know, don't want to deal with the uncomfortability of, whatever that conversation is, but you have that consistency in there. Even if it is only filling a shoe box once a year. Well, they've done that for six years now at at, this particular school and it, it's now almost a habit. Like every Christmas, this is what we do. Yeah. And, ⁓ even if they choose to make their fundraising or their donations in some other different way.
It's just going to be like a normal habit of their life now. ⁓ and they won't have to think about it as much.
Jessilyn Persson (19:56)
Absolutely. So, uh, just rolling into our third kind of takeaway here is designing a family wealth blueprint. So creating multi-generational wealth plan, uh, with intention, not by accident, which is generally, I think how it happens is accident. And it starts with educating your kids, right? As we keep talking about, so they know how to earn it, multiply it, keep their wealth, but it's not just educating on earn, multiplying and keeping it. Sometimes it's.
the values and the dynamics in the family. And I say that because more often than not, we hear stories about one person in the family, generally the male manages all the finances. And then if something happens, the mom doesn't even know where to start or what to do. so we don't do that in our household. course, we both, even though you manage holistically the finances, I review it, we talk about it, all our accounting, all our books.
I I make a lot of money, I watch how that comes in, I negotiate for raises. So we kind of equally play the parts. So our boys see that it's not one person's responsibility.
Brian Persson (21:06)
No, no, and that's just it is that there is consistent conversations between you and I on exactly what is going on in the household. And so, like you said, even though I manage most of this stuff, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, yes, it would be difficult for you, but it wouldn't be like you were starting from zero. No. You would understand where a lot of, you would understand the mechanics of what is going on inside of our.
finances and inside of our wealth. And it would be a little bit of an uphill learning curve for you, but you know, you'd get it, right? Because now you're starting at like a fairly educated level. Too often, like you were saying, it's almost shielded from the rest of the family. Whoever is earning that money, ⁓ even if it's both parents earning the money, the parents shield that information from their kids.
and then their kids end up not understanding what they're growing up in.
Jessilyn Persson (22:07)
Yeah. And I think it's very similar. If you're setting shared financial goals, investment principles or philanthropic strategies, whatever that is. Again, we talk openly about it in front of our kids. mean, you and I plan, like we're on the same page with our financial goals, our investment principles, even what we're doing for philanthropic ideas. But we also talk at dinner or openly in the kitchen. So the kids hear a lot of that talk and they know that
Firstly, you and I talk, we're aligned, we're doing it together and that we have them in mind, right? We include them in certain things. mean, of course, age appropriate, they can only be included in certain things, but we're also planning for their future and generational wealth for past that, that they might not really fully understand yet, but they hear enough talks to probably at some point they'll connect those dots to be like, my mom and dad did this when I was eight years old. Yep. Right.
And that means they were plotting my future, like when I was eight, as opposed to someone being 18 or 28 and going, I got nothing for my future.
Brian Persson (23:16)
Yeah. Consistency, consistency. Like they might have to hear the same conversation eight times before they really understand what that conversation is about. Yeah. I mean, there are things that I've read about, you know, three, four different times and, and I'm kind of like, I think I need to give it a fifth time, like to really get my head around it. And, know, I'm, I'm baked in some of this stuff. So as a kid, it's just like, like, just literally like.
dipping them in the pool of whatever knowledge you have on your wealth and your finances and making sure that they're just getting soaked in that information.
Jessilyn Persson (23:51)
Yeah, and while designing a family wealth blueprint, you want to make sure your building systems, build them while they're young. And that could be family banking, investment clubs, real estate portfolios, networking, just you want to keep growing the wealth and you want your family and your kids all involved in that. Now, we have our kids involved in real estate as we talk about it, and we've invested for them into some of our real estate. We always talk about networking and...
We know at some point when they hit a certain age, we will start bringing them to the conferences, to the real estate investment ⁓ networking. So they just start, even if they're just kind of sitting there not fully understanding, they're starting to see the crowd, understand the dynamics, learn the language and get to know that world. And that is just something we, I mean, we decided several years ago where we're going to do when our kids are age appropriate to start bringing them into those rooms. And that's just part of them learning and growing. Yeah.
Brian Persson (24:47)
nine year old really, really badly wants to come to a lot of these events with us. and we, we just picked up a multifamily property and, and, it's about an hour and a half out of town. And, and he was a little bit upset when I went out there without him. Yeah. I was like, when do I get to go? When do I get to go? He, he just wants to be involved with everything, which is great because like it, it'll just remove any of the barriers of, you know, the, those money mindset blocks that, that he has. It's just.
something he does instead of like something he has to learn and something he, he, you know, has to struggle through. It will just be how he grew up.
Jessilyn Persson (25:24)
Absolutely. So we're going to roll into the most important takeaway from what we discussed today. And I'd say mine is teach your kids early how to be responsible and intentional with money.
Brian Persson (25:36)
Yeah, mine's pretty well the same. Like educate your kids. ⁓ make sure that you start, start early and don't worry if they understand it or don't understand it because like they're going to hear what you're talking about. And one day it's all going to click together.
Jessilyn Persson (25:49)
Thanks so much for tuning in. Listen for more real estate investing stories in the next episode of a Life by Design podcast.
Brian Persson (25:56)
Before you go, don't forget to visit WeekendWealth.ca to take our quiz and discover what type of real estate investor you are. We release new episodes every two weeks, so be sure to hit that subscribe button on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for joining us on this journey to create your life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (26:14)
Thanks again for listening. It's been a pleasure being with you today.