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Up Your Average is the “no nonsense” podcast made for interesting people who think differently. Learn to navigate your life with unconventional wisdom by tuning in to Keith Tyner and Doug Shrieve every week.
I think the most important part of education is parental education.
Heck yeah.
And and and I I was very intentional in the key things that I wanted my kids to know from
our house.
Yeah.
And so the first lesson I taught kids is life is not fair.
If they said that's not fair, then I couldn't care less.
And so they left our house knowing life is difficult and it's not fair.
Welcome to the Up Your Average Podcast.
Where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice to level up your life.
So buckle up and listen closely to Up Your Av.
Good morning, Doug.
Keith, the I don't know who makes this pen bic, but it's got multi-colors to it.
And next to um Anthropo uh what how do I say Claude?
Anthropo what is it?
Anthropo anthropolith?
What is it?
Open AI.
OpenAI.
Claude, all those guys.
Next to those guys, I think this multicolored pen is probably the greatest invention known
to man.
I grew up on the other side of the railroad tracks, Doug, and that was the original Mont
Blanc.
If you think one of those things, man, your family had arrived.
So I'm feeling a little bit elevated this morning.
We have a good friend who he's a he's a consultant to business people and and this is this
is his pen of choice.
And so he re inspired me to break it out.
So thank you to you know who you are.
We um we we didn't advertise that Paul and Bridget are with us, but we we've got a br a
pregnant Paul and Bridget this morning.
Congratulations.
Yeah, and we're we're you know, we we're we're not saying how old they are, but we were
saying that we were kind of hy uh hacking that book, uh, what to expect when you're
expecting.
And and we were wanting to bring some financial ideas to couples.
And I think I I think it's safe to say that at Gimbal, we are
Crow one more child than you thought.
Yeah.
And that normally happens after your youngest turns about eight.
Yeah.
You think, well, I should have we should have had one more.
Rats.
And we know that some of them weren't able to have kids and we're not we're not, you know,
a antagonizing that.
We're just You probably have a niece or nephew though.
Yeah.
And and all of that.
I bet you're one awesome aunt or uncle.
Absolutely.
And so like when Connie and I got married
I'm pretty sure my number was zero.
How many kids I wanted?
I just never thought of it.
That's probably where it was, but I I'm pretty selfish.
Mine wasn't zero, but I just never thought of it.
Yeah, Connie had thought about it long and hard, and her number was six.
Okay.
Yeah.
And we hit an impasse at four because I'd had a change of mind and she had as well.
Okay.
She was cool at four and I wasn't.
And I don't I won.
Congrats.
It's all about winning.
Yeah.
Man, uh that's the one takeaway for young uh families, parents.
It's not all about winning this hoe.
You can be tempted to think so, but it's it's just I think as a husband over the years, I
have chosen to lose more than to win.
I hope I have.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know if I don't have many that I care to win, so
It's not it's not that deep.
So it caused I think both of us look at life that way.
So we don't really have a lot of battles, but there's only so many things that really
matter.
Yeah.
And and maybe some of them are right in line with what we're talking about today.
I I think I think these are h high profile, high stress, high important kind of things.
And and so they they create a lot of thought for me.
So like if you're gonna give the top two or three things that you think a young couple
might wanna start thinking about as they're pregnant with their first and
So what what would be the first one you'd throw out to a young couple?
Well if it's not Paul and Bridget, let's call it Casey and Kevin.
I I think the number one thing I'd thrown out or I'd throw out is is pick a pick a place,
pick a night of the week, and go there.
And so if it's Chili's or uh w
You pick the restaurant, spend the money on each other and go there.
And because what it's going to do is it's going to give you a place to to go and to look
forward to and to talk and to be together eyeball to eyeball, you'll be able to show your
spouse that they matter.
And mattering is a big deal.
My friend Ethan along that same vein told me as a young dad to even take that to the next
level is the
At least once a year the two of us needed to get away just to be a away from the kids to
give us downtime so we can talk about things.
And I I didn't really appreciate what he was telling me at the time, but I tried to
implement that as much as possible because as we started getting into that geometric
growth of having multiple kids, we needed some downtime just to talk about the big issue
things.
Yeah, what's yours?
Uh, my first my first one that I wrote down was that you need to get a will.
And it's not so much that you have stuff, but you have to communicate on the idea that you
could both pass away and you need to determine who's gonna be the guardian and Well and
Indiana has some goofy rules.
If you don't have kids and you and you have a spouse and you die, your parents could
inherit some of your stuff.
Yeah.
So so there's some goofiness from state to state.
That's why a will is really important.
Yeah, and for Connie and myself, we we spent a lot of time talking about who the guardians
are because our worldview guardians of kids.
Yeah.
Our worldview was unique to us.
And so rather than just, you know, checking a box of a family member, we're really
thoughtful of our worldview and who might be able to instill that on our kids if we were
around.
And so
And and people I've talked to over the years, that's kind of a big big deal to figure out
who those guardians are gonna be.
So you might as well start talking about it.
You can still talk about that while the little one's not even out on planet Earth.
Yeah, and and you can always change them.
When we did that, we we made a change once and it wasn't it wasn't critical.
I mean the the odds of the kids becoming an orphan are pretty small, but you know, when
you have high risk
situations, low probability, high risk, you might as well make a decision.
Mm-hmm.
And with that, I mean another one is I think buy some life insurance.
You you could disagree or agree on that, but if if you're gonna have a will and have some
guardians, those kids are going to need some money and those guardians are are probably
really wonderful people and they're gonna need some money too.
And so I think having some life insurance is a good idea.
So we we didn't have any money really to speak of when we started
having children.
So we we used uh twenty, twenty-five, thirty year what's called level term policies and
those are things we can help cons consult you with and encourage you with as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's next on your thoughts on that, Dykes?
Well, I didn't rank them in order, but I I would in include give yourself and give your
spouse a ton of grace.
How's that for a financial podcast decision?
Because one of you are probably a spender and you're gonna do stupid stuff.
You're gonna pull up in the driveway with some shock and awe.
Look what I got.
And maybe you didn't communicate that as well as you should have.
And so giving your spouse some grace allows allows them to eventually see who they are.
And they're not having to operate on habits or impulses for the rest of their lives.
But if you give someone some grace,
you might just start to condition them to uh think a little more deeply about their
financial purchases.
From past experience, I could tell you that has been very Caroline is very kind to me in
that department.
You know, it just struck me when you're saying that that a like a stock market investing
principle that probably fits right in that is incremental decisions because you could be
all in that the other person's wrong or you could incrementally say, okay, let's give this
thing that you did shock and all with six months and then uh and then maybe we can reverse
it if we don't agree well.
But you don't have to be right.
Like you can incrementally kind of navigate towards one another.
And it's important to give yourself some grace 'cause you you could be all in that you're
right, but you're stupid.
And so y give yourself some grace to realize that your frontal cortex hasn't just
completely developed and and so you might make some stupid decision.
You might even think you were impulsed right, but be wrong.
That's a that's uh that's some, you know, PR for last week's podcast with uh Dr.
Lee Warren.
He is talking about that frontal cortex a little bit and it's okay.
You you you don't know what you don't know.
Right.
What's next on your thoughts?
Something else jump out at you.
I got I got stuff, Keith.
I got stuff.
yeah, yeah.
I I would drive around and find a community that you want to be in.
I wherever you live, there's there's a community, there's there's a little pocket of that
place wherever you live.
And I I would drive around and say, Yeah, that's the place for us.
And then I would start visiting and frequenting those areas of town often.
And just start dreaming and talking together about what this can look like for you because
odds are you're gonna have some kids go to school there and you're gonna build a life
there.
And these are gonna be the people that you socialize with and interact with.
And the desire to want to be a part of that is great.
Fast forward twenty years and it's home.
That's really cool.
I love it.
I sat in a Starbucks when I first moved to Indianapolis.
And I wondered, will I ever be able to have community here?
And and and I'm just I'm I'm so thankful to say yes, we do now.
Boy.
That is huge.
It's a big deal.
It's a big deal.
There's a lot of isolation in our culture today.
And the the more that we as adults can lead the way to become part of a community that
that maybe it's more of a pathway for our kids as they develop.
Well, people make the community, and so the the younger families, they're going to be
They're gonna be the folks representing.
They're gonna be the business owners and and getting smaller will allow you to just know
people and make connections and might even land you meaningful work.
That's really cool.
That's cool.
I you know, next on on you know, beyond the things we've already spoke of, I I just think
you have to battle the cultural temptation to view kids as an expense.
And I I just wrote down view them as an asset.
Like that's
That sounds very financial, but I I don't think when we were in agrarian culture that that
anybody viewed their kids as an expense.
They said, I didn't I need somebody out there on the farm and they viewed them as an
asset.
And there's a lot of other things that go along with that because there were there's a lot
higher survival rate for children today than there was back in the agrarian thing.
So you had to have more kids because you for a lot of reasons, psychology and everything
else.
And so
Um, I already said like when you view as an asset, uh I I put consider one more.
Wherever you are, consider one more.
And there's not probably too many financial people telling you that, but th they're
considering the other assets rather than those that have eyes.
And I think those that have eyes are the real uh high high critical ones when you're
developing in life.
And so one of the tag alongs with that.
is when you decide to have one more, the financial implication that can take a lot of
pressure off is maybe you just decide I'm gonna work five more years than I thought.
Because five more years should take care of everything you thought of with the whatever
expenses are associated with it.
And five more years of work isn't gonna hurt you.
It's gonna keep you in community.
Yeah, that's good.
I in that same vein, I when I'm thinking about as an asset, realize a lot of
cultural norms today don't have to be.
I was thinking of a friend of mine who didn't he was a professional and he didn't pay for
any of his kids to go to college and they seem to be doing just fine.
So I thought, you know, college, weddings, cars, all those things that people think that I
need to do this for my kid, that they aren't necessary.
The kids they may feel like they've been deprived, but that's probably not gonna um
Tell you know, hand me downs were normal when I was little and and you know, you don't
have to have all the the private label brands on the things and uh you can find all those
private label
Brands for fifty percent off on Facebook Marketplace too.
I know whoever's listening to this, if you have young kids, you're not even on Facebook.
It's just old people like me.
Yeah.
But you you could find the Patagonia jacket on Facebook Marketplace if you want.
Well, and and I would tell the young people right along the lines of that is go find some
old friends like Keith and Connie, too.
We'll be giving a lot of stuff.
man, we we didn't even buy clothes for years, thanks to what what's the what's the word?
Uh best best bestowal?
Bestows.
Thanks to bestowals.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, we we bestowed upon a number of our nieces and nephews a lot of female clothes to we
didn't have any male ones passed down.
So yeah, I think I think not getting locked into thinking the way culture does will open
up possibilities that you can't ever imagine.
m I put also in that thought process, and and that's kind of my books here, is I put begin
a souling philosophy.
And um that was yeah, that was huge for me.
Connie wasn't necessarily right on board, but it just jumped out at me.
I I don't know if if maybe the still small voice in me started telling me that at a young
age as a young dad.
But my mom was a reading specialist teacher in Evansville and she loved to help people
learn to read.
And I just realiz I didn't I didn't really start reading books till I got out of college,
which is really an absurd idea.
But I I learned to really love to read as a twenty-five year old.
And I realized that that is a game changer.
That will set you apart.
And so the difference between being able to read and not be able to read is critical.
So that was the first step in my stooling philosophy.
And this is these I'll share this with you because it it uh
Uh it's just a couple things that came to mind with with this thought process with me.
it the the back in the seventies when I was growing up, they would say reading is
fundamental, that RIF is uh is the idea that reading is fundamental.
And then my friend John showed me this podcast, Sold a Story, and um
My opinion on this was not political, but when I listened I listened, I think, to almost
all the episodes of that sold a story.
And I think it I think reading the methodology became a political issue with one of the
bushes.
Somehow the the the political parties started getting antagonistic.
But essentially, phonics is breaking a word down by its sounds and whole language reading
is memorizing words and
For me, when I learned that those were two different things, I don't have very good rote
memory.
And it occurred to me if my kids had to learn and they got genetically rote memory like I
have, they wouldn't read well.
But phonics allows you to kind of know the roots and start figuring out words and be able
to read better.
And so I I'm not political about it.
I don't care what politics you are.
I I'm as a child of a reading specialist, a big advocate of um
Phonetic sounding reading.
I just think it helps you read better and learn better.
And so that in my education philosophy has a high priority.
Yeah.
I think another one for me, and I'll just speak to those who are working would be uh don't
work from home.
And what when you're a young mom or young dad, you know, may maybe one or two days a week,
that's probably all right.
But I would encourage you to, if you have an office, go to an office.
If you're a lone wolf, um rent a space in in a shared office complex because what you're
gonna pick up is mentorship.
There's gonna be somebody there who likes what you're doing.
And they're gonna be curious about you and you're gonna be able to pick up things from
them and you're gonna be able learn from them.
Maybe if you can't afford a an office, uh it's it's a coffee shop and you're gonna meet
people there who you can develop community with, who are interesting people.
And they're gonna share things about their lives that you might be able to pick up.
You might be able to pick up some parenting nuggets, or you might be able to pick up on
where uh a good church in town is or or you know, what what's going on in the community
that could be free and interesting and fun for your family, what new park just opened up?
And this type of mentoring ships is just so invaluable.
Like you can't pick this stuff up from scrolling online.
Because everything you might search for online probably agrees with you.
And so to find somebody who can pour into you and challenge you is a big deal.
And then on the flip side, you get to take your energy and inspire up.
And so working from home, it has some benefits.
You know, maybe maybe one or two days a week, but get out there and and get to know some
people.
That'll be really important for your young family.
What else do you have that you're thinking of they might want to know do?
gosh.
I have some stuff on just practical things, but you know, I I I think any I think most
problems in life are communication issues.
And so if you were to get on chat and ask about financial advice for young families, I
don't know what it would tell you.
But I I think anything you can do to simplify your communications so that you're on the
same page, like take courage and just realize that that's it's okay to have an opinion.
But it's okay for your spouse to share their opinion too and and listen to them.
And so if you could simplify your finances, maybe it's you know, you're you're joining
your bank stuff together.
Maybe it's having one credit card for a time period, having one car that works and one car
that kind of doesn't.
But but just just really simplify yourself so that you're setting up for maximum freedoms
by the time those kids are hitting their strides.
Well, I think one of the things that's really helped me simplify like financial things and
I I didn't have this written down, but like maybe if you could get involved with an older
couple that's downsizing and or maybe a a peer who's having to downsize for their parents
or something and get hands on, get your hands dirty, downsizing somebody's house.
I think it just builds a mental picture of what you really need and what you don't need.
And I can't tell you what you need or what you don't need, but when you go in and help
downsize, which I've done that a couple of times for people, it really makes you stop and
consider what you really need before you flip out that credit card.
It's it's it's really I think a worthwhile worthwhile exercise.
I think another worthwhile exercise is to be a host.
And you know, today is social media, it it's
It's hard to get it's harder to gather, I think, because people are just doing stuff or
they just don't want to do stuff.
And so if you if you can be a host for your for your cousins or be a host for your family,
uh you're you're gonna bring community.
You're gonna you're just gonna allow your kids to have a lot of fun.
with interpersonal relationships with uncles and aunts and and even if it's a little
messy, your family is is a great thing to pour into and lean into.
And so
Host host a meal, host a holiday, but be the host.
Boy, I think I I didn't I didn't really put that.
One of the ways Connie and I have hosted a ton is we've um we've had, I think, ten to
fourteen borders over the years.
And that's that's hosting on steroids.
But I think if you were to ask tiny kids, th that process taught them stuff that words
tend
Teach there were lot of awkward situations, a lot of conflicts, a lot of situations that
we just had to navigate and we helped a lot of people through challenging times.
So I'm not saying everybody needs to do that because that's that's an all in hosting thing
there.
Well, and and you know, I know you host a Monday night get together.
I host a couple of things throughout the week.
And one of the benefits of hosting is the people who come will pour into your kids 'cause
they care about 'em.
That's true.
Yeah.
We've had some really cool
Things happen with And they'll be able to say things to your kids.
Maybe you're saying the exact same thing, but one of your buddies or an uncle says it to
them and it clicks.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
One of the things that occurred to me from meeting with Dr.
Warren last week is uh well, let me circle back around and I I'll kind of close out with
this.
But one of the ideas
that I did not really have to spend any time on as a parent.
And uh it causes me to kind of like like get hives when I think about kids as screen
strategies for for parents today.
Cause I didn't it wasn't something I had to think about.
I mean we had to think about the television and how much Barney or whatever they watched.
But that I would encourage you to, like you say, go to chat GPT, drop whatever
And ask ya for some s you know, best practices, ideas, because that can just become really
dangerous if you if you don't have a strategy.
Just let it happen.
It I think you gotta check yourself first.
Like I'm just speaking for me.
You know, I've I've got I've gotta check myself and say where where are my eyes going on
my screens?
And um, you know, I hear this thought about what are productive apps and unproductive
apps.
And and so the the problem is is there's all these agents behind the scenes that are
pulling for your attention and they're taking it and running with it.
And so we're given permission that we don't even know we're doing.
And so I I think for the for the parents out there is check check yourself.
Well, that's uh I I did a ton of AI research.
So I came up with a whole list of things there and I when I was looking at it, that was
one of the
The point of view, whatever you're gonna whatever you're gonna try to incorporate for your
family, you need to be an example of it because if you're staring at your screen or thing,
there were some really I thought thoughtful things in there.
But I I would encourage you to come up with a a process before you before it hits you
because one of my kids started negotiating with me and I have somewhere in my stuff, I
have a contract she was writing with me to get a phone when I wouldn't let her have one
and it
It takes a lot of courage to say no to your kids.
Yeah, it really does.
And I I don't know what age kids are getting phones today.
My wife's a middle school teacher and and we've got a middle school kid and so we waited
till thirteen and that's probably that's probably late in today's age.
I have no idea.
Um, but but I can tell you that there's a lot lot of kids in elementary schools who have
phones and that's that's just gonna have to be a family culture decision that you decide.
Yeah, and they you I think you need to be proactive.
But my my research from Grok said it's around eleven now.
And I was just thinking back in my own life and like, wow, because I assume that's gonna
be a little bit if you don't do anything, it's gonna be a little bit of disintegration of
your family unit because if you're not intervening, it's gonna pull towards the screen and
away from one another.
I was calling Gabe Green to come over to my house and and play some Hot Wheels or shoot
some hoops probably at age six or seven.
And so
you know, communication's a big deal.
Yeah.
One of the things that I asked when I was doing my research about the screen time was what
are some creative ideas parents can do to kick that can down the road?
What are things we can do to keep our kids engaged in things that are kind of a big deal?
And and it gave me a laundry list of them there, but I I think you could do that same
thing.
And so what can we do as parents to keep our kids engaged in things that are much more
interesting than
Staring at a screen and it's probably gonna be outside.
Yeah, yeah.
That's what I was just gonna say.
Like I I mean, I only know what I know from raising the boys that we have.
Every boy, every kid's different.
But we h we have we have really have two purchases that were awesome.
And one my insurance agent won't like.
You bounce up and down on it.
Right.
Uh and tell your insurance agent if you got one of those things.
But I will tell you.
that was a awesome experience for us.
But the other uh purchase that I would highly recommend people make is a basketball hoop.
yeah.
And and so we constantly pushed our kids to get outside.
I mean, there for a while, Caroline and I even had a deal where it was an hour outside no
matter what.
Or you guys or for the kids.
Everybody.
Oh.
And and so I would encourage to push those boundaries to get outside.
If you live in a neighborhood.
Um, hopefully you got some some neighbors who are who have some great kids, even if they
don't have great kids, is still have them over to your house and shoot some hoops.
Um a highlight for us and for our neighbors has and I learned this from my friend Spencer
Smith and his family had one.
They had a uh a drink fridge.
Oh nice.
And if you if you have a drink fridge in your garage, you can load it up with Capri Suns
or whatever you want.
And that's just that's just kind of a
cool, a cool bar for the kids to to belly up to.
And so I think by creating community where you can be outside, outside of uh your upstairs
or a room or a screen or a video game, not that those are all bad, but but just getting
them outside is is such a healthy thing for their for their mental state and and for what
they can take in.
One of the decisions we made along those lines, Doug, was that our our
neighborhood where we were living at the time had a retention pond behind our house.
And and we were one of the first.
So we built the house and as we got settled in and we noticed around the retention ponds,
the houses started putting fences up, kind of like dominoes.
They just worked their way around the pond.
And as it was coming towards us, we thought about it and we intentionally decided not to
put a fence up.
And what we intentionally had to do with that decision
was decide we're going outside anytime the kids are because yeah.
We didn't have a lot of kids 'cause we wanted to lose one.
So it forced us to be involved.
And that that seems intimidating, but I think the more that you're outside with them, the
more you can help them navigate dangerous situations because you can have conversations
with them and help them think through that.
And that's really healthy, I think.
So I I wanna circle back to one other thing that I had thought about and that was um the
schooling process and
I would encourage you to do a little research on the history of uh public education and
then ponder what is the purpose of schooling.
Because coming to your own conclusion of what's the whole point of education can help you
better decide what you really want to happen for your kids.
Because originally I think you'll find that it was designed for the Industrial Revolution
to to have
Education to prepare workers for the factory.
And um some things just in life, when you get bureaucracies, they don't change very fast.
They they could be it could be it could be grade school, high school, even universities.
We were talking about that where they they have a hard time shifting their direction.
And so once you decide what the purpose of education is, then it can help you make some of
those decisions.
And for us, I just thought first of all, what's formal education?
What do we want
To come out of formal education.
And like I said, reading was the primary thing for me.
Cause I figured if they can read, they can probably figure out most other things,
particularly today with YouTube.
Like Caleb knows so much stuff I don't know because of YouTube has helped him learn things
that I never knew that you could learn on the internet until he's first shown, man.
Then then I think the most important part of education is parental education.
Heck yeah.
And and and I
I was very intentional in the key things that I wanted my kids to know from our house.
Yeah.
And so the first lesson I taught kids is life is not fair.
And it did away with that response from my kids.
Like they just knew if they said that's not fair, that I couldn't care less.
And so they left our house knowing life is difficult and it's not fair.
The second thing that I wanted them to know from parental education.
was there is nothing any of you can do to cause us to love you more or less than we love
you today.
That's basically what unconditional love is.
And if they knew nothing else about their dad, that's what I wanted to know when they got
out of the house.
And then the third thing that um I really wanted to know as they got out of our house, it
comes from the psalmist in Psalm one thirty nine.
I wanted them to know that they are fearfully and wonderfully made and they're a big deal.
And that God thinks are a big deal as well.
If they knew those three things when they left my house, I was gonna be content.
And all those things can be covered during family dinner.
They can be covered all the time.
Our our friend Stan uses the word inculcate and and I had to look that word up.
And it just means to teach through repetition.
So I would encourage any of you that are joining us that that you think about what do you
want parental like learning to be.
What do you want your kids to really know when they leave your house?
Because I I think if you're not intentional about it, they may leave it with some They may
leave it with they may leave it with straight A's, but they might not have learned
anything.
Right.
They may not learn what you really want to learn.
And I I can pretty much assure you the normal education process isn't gonna teach the
thing that you want to know.
What else, Doug?
Anything else?
It's exciting.
Kids Man, I I kids are great.
I again, if you're an aunt or an uncle, you don't have kids, kids are great.
If you have a bunch of kids, kids are great.
I would be a know it all if I didn't have kids.
And so I'm very grateful for the lessons I've learned.
And I would encourage you And then I'm still learning.
Yeah, I would encourage you if you don't have kids or your kids are grown up.
Um, I would look for young couples, like if you're my age or older.
Um, we had a friend Helen Spencer that she never was able to have kids and she babysat the
tiny kids for until Cal came along.
He he he was too he was too different from the girls and but
But she basically had our kids.
Like she got to know So you can We've got a lady like that in in our lives.
Her name's Stella, and she's ninety years old.
Yeah, and you can invest in kids no matter what, where you are in life.
And and you can teach principles that maybe that that you found important and and the
family I'm sure will be pr appreciative of your love for their children.
Well, thanks for your thoughts, Doug.
I hope you all are are able to pass this on to some young families that can use some
encouragement and just keep living large.