126. Blue Tree Savings Financial Literacy with Will Rainey

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast. I'm your host Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Will Rainey. So Will, I am super excited to talk to you. We were talking a little bit off camera about where he's at right now. He's all over the place, but he just moved a week ago and he's able to get all of his stuff together to have this conversation with us today. So Will I am super excited about this conversation and tell us where you're at right now.

So I just moved to North of Thailand, so I'm the other side of the world to you, completely almost.

Yeah, that's speaks. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on. And so the first question I'd like to ask, it's the same question I ask everybody that comes on the show and this is gonna be the big thing that gets this whole thing moving and we wanna know about you and your background, your story. So if you could share that with us, how did you get started and obviously you're traveling around the world now, right? Moving all over the world, so that's awesome. So you had to do something to get to this point, so that's what we wanna talk about today. So share your story with us.

Sure. So I'm from the UK originally, and so I'm an ATRI trained and background. So for people who've never heard of an ATRI, it's essentially an accountant who loves statistics. So doing lots of risk analysis for very large companies. So I worked as an investment consultant in the UK for nine years. So helping some of the largest institutions about where to put their money so that's insurance companies pension retirement scheme government. Then we thought we'd do a bit of a change. So my company offered me a role in Hong Kong. So in 2014 my wife and we had a two year old daughter at the time, moved to Hong Kong, and so I got to work covering the whole of Asia. So I was head of investment strategy for Asia and loved it. Again, doing the same kind of role, talking to some of the world's largest institutions about how to look after their money and where to invest their money. Then it was around 2017, I was just talking to someone about my two young daughters and they said to me, enjoy this time with them. They only grow up once, which is a kind of very obvious statement, but it had a real big impact on me. And I was like, Yeah, now growing up so fast, I wanna spend more time with them. And I'd recently just read the Flora Workweek by Tim Ferris. And so we're like, Okay, we've been saving, investing for the longest time. Why don't we plan to take some time off corporate work? And that's what we did. So in 2019, my wife and I left corporate work. We left Hong Kong and we moved to Hoi An in Vietnam, which is like the best place in the world. It's in little town, but it's like beautiful rice paddy fields, beaches. And so we took time off to spend more time with the kids, put them in an international school, so we weren't going completely bohemian. And whilst the kids are at school, I wanted to do a project. I wanted to be doing something, don't wanna just be sitting around. And it took me back to when I was leaving Hong Kong, a lot of people said to me, how come we afford to take this time off work? Like how do we finance it. We're not working full time. And I was like, we've been saving, investing for the longest time, so we're gonna live off that. And we've got, we had property in the UK, so we've got rental from that. And everyone's, Oh, I wish I had done that as well. And it turns out, even though I worked in the financial services industry, not many people were doing what we were doing. They weren't saving investing. I think largely because they're owning good money. They're always like, I can spend cause I can always just earn some more and they had that mentality. So I thought, ah, that's a bit sad that they can't do what we are doing. So how fortunate my wife and I were, and it turns out we've just been. Our parents were savers, so we are savers. And so I really wanted to have that for my daughter. So I want my daughters to be able to have this opportunity to take time off and spend with their kids since they have kids when they're older. And so I started to just teach them about money. But I wanted to make it interesting. As we'll talk about later, like two of my favorite books about money were Rich Dad Porter and Rich Man in Babylon, which is always storytelling way. Talking about money. So I, when I was putting my kids to bed, I would start talking about a different money topic, but using stories. And so then I started to write about these stories. Cause my parent, kids loved them and sharing 'em with friends and family. And then just got bigger and bigger. And one of my blogs around how I taught my kids about the stock market got picked up by the Financial Times in the UK and then companies were like, can you come and talk to us, to our employees about how they can teach their kids about money. And it built on from there. And then after a while I had some number of these little mini stories that then I created a book, which is for those people got on YouTube. I got Grandpa's Fortune Fables which kind of a 14 chapter. Every chapter, a different story about money to try and make it as fun as possible for kids. So that's my story. And then, yeah, we've been Vietnam for three years and then we come to Thailand for a new adventure different schooling for the kids. So yeah, that's my story.

Yeah. Oh, that's just awesome. And it's funny cuz we were talking off camera about, I was telling you about what I thought like immediately when looking at this book was that this is like the children's version of the Richest Man in Babylon. So it's funny because it goes back to how much of an impact that book made on you. And one of the things that I really like about that book too is each chapter is another story about, something involving money or investing or saving just a different topic of how to do it, how to lend money. It was just, it's wonderful. And now you've got this book that talks about this stuff, but in to a child, right? And one of the things that I've talked about in this podcast several times, and it's just so frustrating, is how there's such a lack of financial education out there, especially for young people, right? And you even see that, like when you were getting invited out to go speak at these different corporate events, right? The people, Hey, can you come talk to our employees about money and how to invest, like, how to do this because nobody gets taught this stuff. So you go into adulthood and you're given a paycheck and you're like, Okay, hey, figure it out. And you try to figure out the whole work life balance piece, you try to figure out I gotta pay my bills, and then how much do I have left over? Oh, I'm making enough money. I could just spend it right? Where they should be saving some of that and but the thing is they were never taught to do that. With what you're doing right now with your book and just being able to provide this financial literacy piece, that's something I appreciate more than anything else when I bring people on this show to talk about this stuff. And that's the whole purpose of what this podcast is about, is to teach financial literacy to other people. Cuz there's so many different ways to do it. Yeah I got plenty of real estate investors that come on and share what they're doing. And I've got plenty of other people that come on and talk about what they're doing in the stock market or crypto or anything else like that. But when we could sit down here and talk about some of the basic concepts that you need to understand, it's always a real treat to have someone on to talk about that stuff. So speaking about teaching kids about money, right? Why is it that it's so important, at least, I have a feeling I know why, to me, why it's so important, but what would you say is the most important thing about teaching kids about money and why building wealth is so important?

Money in my mind is about habits and the actions that you take. It's not so much about how many textbooks you've read and all how many acronyms, about money and all the jazz. It's about what actions. So as we just talked about the richest man in Babylon, right? So you've got an adult who reads that and they go, Okay, this is good, but they've gotta then read it and go, I'm not doing 90% of this. So I've gotta change everything that I'm doing to try and follow the kind of principles. So saving one out of every 10, investing, blah, blah, blah. It's really hard to change what actions you've been doing for the last night. It could be years and decades you've been doing the same actions, and we all know how hard it is to change. Whereas kids, they're completely fresh. They don't have these inbuilt bad habits of always spending overspending consumption. So if we can teach kids from the youngest age to have these habits of just every time they get some money, they just put it away straight away. And so when they're adults, that's just what they do. They know about investing. They know that money can grow, so they don't have to think about it when they're older. They're just doing it. And so there's actually been research by Cambridge University in England where they looked at when people start to form like their money habits, and it's surprisingly it's the age of seven. So by the age of seven, most of our money adult behaviors are already starting to be formed. Not to say they're like hard coded, but they're starting to be formed. And you can probably see that cuz when children are given money, In the western world particularly ,most adults will say, What are you gonna go and spend that on? What are you gonna go and buy? Oh, that's really exciting. And they'll just see that their parents are going out spending. So in their minds, in those first years where their brains are forming all these connections, they're just seeing money, spending money, spending. And then as they get older, you have to then go, All right, you need to try and rewire that and that become, we know the longer goes on the harder it is. So if we can teach kids from the youngest age save a little bit of money, don't save all of it cause that's boring. But save some, get into that habit and then when they're older, it'll just be easy to save and have those great habits. And if they start to save, they're less likely to use debt. They're less likely to gamble and all that kind of bits that we get when we don't have that patience and we don't haven't had that sort of emergency buffer kind of building up. And plus they get to see the small little bits of saving adds up. And then once you start to see that compounding of money growing, then you go, Oh actually savings fund. Cause it's everyone who I know who saves love saving now, it's just getting past. That first hurdle where it's small, it doesn't, it seems all insignificant. If kids can learn that and see it from the youngest age they've got such a head start in life in my mind.

Yeah. The perfect thing that you brought up at the very beginning it's about the habits and the actions that you take, right? So one of the things that we have for our kids, we have them, we have It's like a piggybank system, right? So it's three different piggy banks that they have. One is their spending money, one is their savings, and one is charity, right? So when they get, let's say they get 10 bucks, they would put $6 into what they could spend $3 into their savings and then a dollar into the charity. And what we do is over time when they build up enough money in the charity bucket, they'll either go buy a toy that we go donate to something or they'll go give it to a charity of their choice, Or they'll give it back to me and my wife and they'll tell us what they wanna donate it to, and then we'll do it online or something. So there, there's that portion of it, right? So the giving back aspect, but then also the savings, right? So now they're saving like 30% of the money that they're making, right? So that's what we wanna have ingrained in their heads. Hey, try to live off of 60% of what you make, save 30% and give 10%. And that, that's just, and it doesn't have to be that way. If you don't wanna give the 10%, you don't have to. But that's just being a good steward to the people around you. And I think that when you have that type of abundance mindset it comes back to you tenfold, right? So I think that's important. So going into, how you do things and. I just, I think the biggest takeaway that I got from that whole thing was just starting to build these habits at a very early age. I didn't know that seven years old is like when that trigger starts right. When they can start learning about actual money and saving. So that's really good to know. So for the parents out there with young kids, this is something for you to think about as your children get older, maybe at seven years old, go set up a system like this where you get a couple different piggy banks for them to use and utilize. That's fantastic. Alright. Now money can be very, Boring sometimes. Especially even for us adults, sometimes we talk about it. You wanna talk about finances, You're like, Ugh, come on. Really? Again. When you try to sit here and explain some of this stuff to the children, it's like, How do you make it engaging? How do you make the conversation fun for them? Now I understand now you've got this book and the book is gonna be very helpful, but how do you like start a conversation with your children to make it like they actually want to talk about money? Cuz most of the time when I talk to my kids about it Oh yeah, we know we're gonna save it. We're gonna put this to the side whenever we give them money. They're like, Oh, okay, I know I can only spend this much, they get a little frustrated about it. So how do you make that engaging and fun?

Yeah, so I use analogy, which is getting children's think of money like seeds. And that's not my analogy. I've, that's in number of books, even The Richest Man in Babylon that we talked about earlier, but other ones. But I've just really gone home, gone to town with this analogy. And my kids love it, so we say to them, look, think of money like seeds. So my youngest was about four years old when we started talking about this and I said you can give those seeds away and that's just like spending and they get that. But then they're straight away, they're like a seed, they know you plant. And I was like, they're like, what does that mean? And I was like, yep, you can plant a seed and if you leave it long enough it'll grow into these trees. So it's getting them to visual about these kind of money trees growing and their job is to grow this kind of money forest. And it just works on so many levels because I just teach them about the easiest way to talk to anyone about compound interest. Get a seed, plant a tree. That tree produces more seeds. You plant those seeds, grows more trees and compound interest, and you've got a whole forest if you wait long enough. But they also just, they can visualize it. And I think that's the key piece. And they can talk about it. So when I give my kids money, Pocket money, allowance. They'll say Daddy, can I put this towards my blue trees? So we call the trees, blue trees, and hence the name of my website is Blue Tree Savings. And so they're like, Oh, can I put towards my blue trees or Daddy how many blue trees do I now have? Or how many does my sister have? And so they love it and they can talk about it, and they're like, What does it mean, when we do plant? And then as they get older, we can explain, Okay, that's when we invest the money and the money is growing. What does the seeds mean? And again, we can, as they get older, we talk about those different elements, but also it gives 'em that sense of security. So I said to my daughter, It's right when you get to 18. Are you just gonna chop down all of your blue trees and just don't spend it ? And they're like, No. Cause they're learning about the environment and all that at school. So they've come quite protective of their trees and we've used it and said mommy and daddy are taking time off to spend more time with you because we've got these trees growing. So we're using those seeds to finance our lives and have this time off. Is that what you want as well? And they're like, Yeah. So I find that a really powerful analogy and it's looking, it's helping them see money into the future as well, cuz kids know that if you plant a seed, you don't wake up tomorrow and there's a magic tree just appeared. They know it's gonna happen in the future. And so it's just an easier way for us to talk about it, and then we then apply the detail as they slowly, as they get a bit older, but even from, as say from the age of four, they know that they've got this kind of magical forest growing. And then the other thing I do is I say I use stories and characters to bring concepts to life so it's not just giving them a lecture, it's saying, Oh, it could be this kind of person or this kind of person. And these are the kind of challenges.

Hey you know what? As you were sitting here talking about that, I just thought of maybe another fun story you could add to maybe a future book or something. But cuz there's, there are things out there so a lot of people think, Oh yeah, I can go and do this program and get rich quick, or whatever. And like you just said you can't just plant the seed and then wake up the next day and have a tree. But, I was just thinking about You know how there's some things out there that are like overnight sensations like the whole crypto rise that we saw, right? I picture that as like jack and the bean stalk, right? You got the five magic beans, you plant the magic beans the next day, you have the giant beanstalk and yeah, you're getting the golden eggs for a little while it's great and then now the giants chasing you and you chop down the bean stock and you have nothing. Oh man, I just, Sorry, I just thought about that as you were talking. I was like, Oh man that's pretty cool cuz as soon as you said, Oh there's no, nothing that grows overnight. I was like that's a good way to try to maybe teach kids to stay away from stuff that anything that looks like you can get rich quick, stay away from that. Just stay away from that. Cause it's not something that is gonna help you. Yeah. Oh man. That's fantastic. Yeah. You can't plant the seed and expect it to grow overnight. As a matter of fact, right now we're growing some mango seedlings that we have. So my wife has this place over on Maui. It's the one of the next islands over, and she loves the mangoes that come from this place. And every time that they ship 'em over here on O'ahu, she'll go and buy them like in bulk. And they're very expensive. They're like $10 mangoes, it's ridiculous. So she likes to stock up and she's like, hey, she's like, Why don't I plant some of these some of these seeds and see if I can get 'em to grow? So right now we've got two really nice sproutling and then two others just starting to come out. So she's hey, maybe in a couple years we can have that same kind of mango over here. So yeah, it was pretty neat. Definitely like that. So fantastic. Now there's other things to teach the children about money, right? So we, you talked a little bit about compound interest, but there's different things you have to invest in to get that compound interest. You're not gonna get that just from planting the seed and just watering it and letting it sit there, right? Because that's like a savings account and you just water it and you just water. It's gonna grow slowly. It needs fertilizer, right? It needs something that's gonna help it grow. So I would think of that as like the stock market or something, right? Or real estate. How do you talk to kids about something like that, About the stock market and how to do something like that safely?

Yeah, so I, yeah, so we've been investing a little bit of money each month for our kids since the youngest of age. And so we've been using like a Vanguard Global Equity Fund, to invest in thousands of companies around the world and we don't do anything really with it. And so my daughters knew that we've been doing some savings and growing these kind of trees. And it was around, I think my oldest, who's now 10, she was seven. And we're sitting in a McDonald's in Hong Kong and I thought I'm gonna use this opportunity to see if I can teach her about what are these actual trees that we've been growing. So I said to her each month we mommy and daddy put a little bit of money and invest it. And what that means is that means you own a piece of this McDonald's. And she was like, What? And I was like, Yep, you a little bit. Cause you give McDonald's a little bit of money. You own this, you own it. And she's I own this tray. I'm like, Yep, you own this tray. You own the table, the bins over there. But more importantly, all those people queuing up. To buy their Happy Meals and their Big Macs, they're gonna give some money to McDonald's. And because you own a little bit of McDonald's, That some of that money is yours. And she just lit up. She's so excited. She's Really? She's just like standard watching the little transactions happening. And I was like, Yep. Not just this McDonald's, but all of the McDonald's around the world. Some people were giving you a little bit of money. And then we walked out of the McDonald's and around the shopping mall we saw the Apple store. I was like, Yeah, all those people buying their iPads and iPods, some of that money's yours. Starbucks and then we lived in Hong Kong, so they had Disney as on the way home. So it's yep, you own a bit of Disney. And they just, she just couldn't believe that she owned this. Again, we didn't really go through how tiny fraction that she actually owned, but she just loved that. And I was like, Yeah, and that money we give to McDonald's. McDonald's creates new restaurants or they create new burgers. So more people are gonna give McDonald's more money and the more money that McDonald's gets, the more money that you get. And that's how your blue trees are growing, the more money. And yeah, she just got it straight away. And now she wants to own those different bits. And she loves investing and seeing that kind of money. And I was like, in purest terms, that when people spend money, they get a little bit poorer, but the companies get a little bit richer and companies are owned by people. And those people are you. Even at seven years old, she got that and I, I just thought that's amazing to have that not just consumer mindset, but owner mindset. And now we apply that plus the tree analogy is that really works well in terms of investing, cuz we say, so that's how your trees grow. But every now and then there's big storms that come along and those storms can break your trees and your trees will get smaller. And so this is just teaching them about stock market falls. And it wasn't long after we'd had this conversation in McDonald's that coronavirus happened. And so we, I said, Yep. So I showed her the chart and showed the stock market going down in wherever it was, March February, sort of 2020 and the stock market going down. I was like, Look, the coronavirus happened. Everyone's at home, so no one's going out and buying their burgers. So McDonald's isn't getting that money, and therefore, The less money McDonald's makes, the smaller your trees are getting. But don't worry, in the future, people go out and buy burgers again and they'll restaurants and it'll grow. And they saw that. And again, just shows that if a storm comes, breaks your tree, we don't just go, All right, let's chop down the trees and never plant a tree again. , we say just a tree breaks. After a time, it'll grow back bigger and stronger. And that's exactly what happens with investing in the stock market. So yeah, so that was my whirlwind tour of her, how I taught my daughters about investing in kind of the simplest terms and hopefully give some something that most adults don't seem to fully appreciate.

Yeah that's just a fun way to, to explain that to a child, right? So when you're sitting here having this discussion, especially when you're sitting down in the restaurant itself and you're saying, Yeah. Like you actually own a piece of all this because you own that, fraction of of McDonald because you have shares, right? So that's that's really awesome for them to know. And I've not really explained it to my kids that way in the past. And I think I'm going to now, because I have the same thing. I have a joint investment account that's there for the kids, it's to be, They don't each have their own. We have one that's for both of them, but we might actually split it off so they each have their own. And then I want them to start making some of their own decisions as to where they want that money going. And let them start picking what accounts they're going into and what kind of stocks they're picking up. But right now it is, it's all vanguard too, right? We stick with pretty much Fortune, 500 companies and just keep it nice and safe and diversified and don't really go into any individual stocks. I want them to understand though that, it is fractional. Like you have different little pieces of all these companies, right? So that's just a really fun way to explain it. I think I am gonna take them to the mall. We're gonna walk around and I'm gonna start pointing out some of the different companies there and be like, Yeah, you actually own a piece of that. You own a piece of that. I think that would make it a little bit more fun for them. And but actually knowing my youngest daughter, she'll probably walk in there and start talking to the employees, like she's their boss. She's really sassy. So I could see us walking into the Apple store and be like Yeah, can I get the employee discount? I'd like a new iPad Pro and actually, because I own this company, I'd like it for free .Cause I could see her doing that, man. She is, she's a little sassy. Awesome. All right. Now besides like the stock market, have you talked to your kids about real estate at all as well? And how you can use that to grow your blue trees?

Yeah. Yeah. So we actually distinguish between different ones. So blue trees are their investments in the stock market, and we have talked to 'em about real estate and say that we own property. So we own real estate in the UK and

We land to grow your trees on.

Yeah, , and we call that, we call them purple trees, just to distinguish. And we say that they're much bigger but you don't have a whole, generally don't have a whole forest of them growing. And so we've, we have talked to 'em about we have someone living in our home or our old home in the UK and it's growing, but we have these kind of what we call red bushes on surrounding our purple tree, and that's our mortgage. But luckily we're trimming them down. Using them, the seeds from the purple tree to pay to get those red bushes cut down. But it provides them with an understanding, okay, they're different from our blue trees. They're much bigger, so you can't just buy lots of little ones. You have to have quite a big one. And so that in their minds, they can understand the difference and they know that they can't have a purple tree. Now cuz it's, you have to have quite a big investment or large amount of money to have that. But they know that's what they want in the future. They're not worried about these red bushes. They know that they need to cut them down, but ultimately they're there to support the Purple Tree as it starts to grow over time. So they know that. So yeah, we've talked to 'em about that. We've talked to 'em about other types of investments, crypto and NFTs, et cetera. And that's actually been some of my most popular blogs about how to teach children, which is mostly, whilst it's to teach children, most of the adults are going, Actually, it's really useful for me cuz it's doing it in a language. It goes very back to basics. But ultimately we want 'em just have that core foundation of investing in the stock markets, the most sustainable way to, to grow wealth over the long term. And then we're gonna let 'em know that they do have some aspirations, have these purple trees, but not gone into loads of detail given the likelihood of them owning them in the short term.

Yeah. No that's great. And that sounds fun. Especially, cuz you add the red bushes in so they understand what the mortgage is and everything and how you wanna start trimming those away. They're pretty much like weeds, right? So you wanna be pulling these weeds out as you're keeping your yard nice and well maintained. Or keeping that purple tree free from all the weeds so it doesn't suffocate it too much. Oh yeah. I love it. That's awesome. Now, when it comes to like teaching your children about financial literacy you had mentioned that you give your children like an allowance, right? From what I understand you call it the most underrated financial education tool. So why is that? Yeah.

So going back to what we talked about start, about money being about habits and behaviors. And if they get an allowance every week or month, whatever it may be, but regularly, it allows them to start making money decisions and start to form those habits. Cuz again, habits takes practice. And if children are only really seeing money on special occasions, like birthdays to ferry any kind of holidays, Then money becomes a bit sporadic and it becomes over excited. If you only get money every three months or something and you get, I don't $20, whatever it may be, then you wanna go and spend it cuz it's a novelty, whereas you get it every kind of week then. Okay. You can still go and spend most of it and have that fun with it, but if you get to save a little bit, it's not really taking away lots of their enjoyment from that money. And so having that means that they can form those habits of saving every time, just saving a little bit every time that they get that money. And it also allows them to make mistakes so they can go and spend impulsively. Even if you are as a parent going, that's a complete waste of money. It's junk , it's definitely not worth that. They can make that decision they can see for themselves. Actually, I wish I hadn't have bought that. I haven't used it. And it's much better for kids to make those kind of regular small mistakes as children and learn, or if they help parents help learn from those mistakes. Such that when they're adults they don't make the same mistakes. Cuz clearly what happens is most children never talk about money. They get to become adults. The amount of money that is involved increases 10 times plus. And then they make mistakes and it's so powerful and it makes money depressing. They don't wanna think about money cuz of the mistakes, big mistakes they've made. Whereas if kids make a little mistake, grant they might have lost $10, $20. It's not the end of the world. They'll learn from it and move on. And so I think that's one. The other big piece for me about allowance is taking on financial responsibility. So people often ask me, Oh, how much allowance should I give my children? And clearly every family is gonna be completely different about their values or how much they can afford to give. Someone told me about this framework, and I think it's fantastic, and I use it with my kids, is to say when kids are young, they've got no financial responsibility. When they get to 18, you want 'em to be pretty much independent, as much as independent, making as many financial decisions as possible. And allowance lets your children take on, slowly take on that. Responsibilities, they get older. So with my children, we've said we're not going to, we're only gonna buy toys on your birthday and Christmas. We're not gonna buy you any toys in between, but we're gonna give you an allowance every week and you can use that money to buy toys. And so they know that allowance has a purpose. It's to buy these toys. And we worked out about right. How many toys would we buy over a course of a year? Broadly and then split it into to weekly chunks, and so they can now choose if they have 50 very small toys. Or they can start going, Actually, I want a bigger toy, Okay, I'm gonna save up four weeks. And then as they get older, we'll give 'em a little bit more responsibility and we'll give 'em a bit more of allowance. So we might be casual clothes, right? We're not gonna buy you any casual clothes anymore, but we're gonna give you more allowance every week. And that is to help you pay for these casual clothes and we'll work out what we think so they can go and buy cheap t-shirts or they can save up and buy, say nicer if they want to. And again, as they get older, we'll be say, we're not just gonna sporadically give you money for the cinema, we'll give you a slightly bigger allowance. And that would mean you can go to the cinema twice a week or whatever. It's with your friends. But you might decide not to go to the cinema by so else, that's your prerogative. But again, it's just upping the amount of responsibility. And then probably when they're, like sometime in, teenagers will say we're gonna give you this responsibility, but we're not gonna give you any more allowance. Go figure. Go and work out how you can get that money and then that will start introducing the concept of needing to earn some money to pay your way.

Oh introducing the concept of real life. Sometimes you have to take on more things and you don't get paid for it. That's a very good point. And, it makes me think about, so we're coming to a period now where my daughter's about to be 13 and We're talking about getting her cell phone. Right. And we figured, hey, 13 is a good age that we feel comfortable doing it and we can manage it and make sure it's not gonna get outta control. One of the things that we talked about is, because on our plan to add another line, it's like an extra 10 bucks a month. So we said, Okay, we were gonna add her to the plan, but I want her to pay the $10 a month. She's gotta pay her own cell phone bill. So she'll be doing that with her allowance money. So not only does she have to put the money to the side and save and then put the money away for charity, I want her to pay bills. So she understands the responsibility of what to spend that money on. Then with whatever she has left over, that's the stuff she can go out and buy a toy with if she wants, or if she wants to buy in like Roblocks or something for her game. This is so she's not blowing it all on that stuff because if I don't give her some type of bills that she's gonna be responsible for, I already know what that money's gonna get spent on. This gives that opportunity right, to give her a little more responsibility. And still like that sense of pride when she's able to take care of these responsibilities that she has and she could do it on her own without asking mom or dad for money. She's doing it with her own money. And if you give your kids a little bit of that self independence, it could really carry itself a long way, especially as they get older and go into adulthood. Because it's something they've been experiencing now. They're not experiencing it for the first time when they graduate high school and they get a job. And they move out on their own. And the first time they're paying a bill is when they're paying their rent payment, right? Because mom and dad are still paying their cell phone and still paying for their car insurance and things like that, right? That can be very surprising and alarming to some people when they've never been in that situation before where they had to pay any bills or anything like that. So I think that's really huge that we start trickling these things in as they get older to have them understand the responsibility that comes with an income, right? Whether it's an income or even if it's passive income. Cuz if they're getting an allowance, most likely it's passive income. Unless you have them doing chores and stuff, which they're doing chores, right? They're earning their money, but at the same time, I want them to know that what they do with their money is very important and how they spend, it's very important and they should be very responsible with it. That's awesome stuff Will. Yeah, sure.

I'd love the fact that you talked about surprises and I think this is, every family hopefully will start doing some different things with money and there's no right or wrong answer. As you just talked about chores, some families do chores for pocket allowance and some don't. There's no right or wrong, really. I have, we have our own view. And people, some parents even charge tax on the allowance, et cetera, strategies. That's up to them.

I thought about it.

And it's different views and I think it can all work in that kind of depends on your family, but I think the key piece, and it's about that surprise. So when, whenever we change anything with our daughters, We don't just say it right today, we're gonna change and now you're doing this. We say to them, At some point we are gonna do something different, so we're gonna give you more allowance and you're gonna have more responsibility. And this is the reason why we're gonna do that. But we don't do it here and now today cuz children don't like that kind of change, but they can buy into stuff if it's in the future and they know that it's coming. So when we do introduce it, they understand it and they know it's coming. Whereas I think you've heard some horror stories where parents just go we've just read this blog and Right, we're gonna change everything about what we do with our family finances. Kids, you've now gotta go and mow the lawn and you're gonna get an allowance and we're not gonna buy this, that, or the other. And it's just the kid, they just get into a massive argument and the kids hate it. Whereas if you teach them in the say we're gonna change it and this is why we wanna give you more responsibility, so when you're an adult, blah, blah, blah. So I think that word surprises. And the other thing on that is I know a lot of parents or families who are saving money to give their kids when they're 18 or 21, whatever it. And but they're not telling their kids about it. And so they're like, Cause they don't want their kids to be entitled, blah, blah, blah. But my fear is that if you give a child an 18 year old, a big cash, and they have no foresight of it, they're just gonna see it as like the lottery win . And we know how good lottery winners are with money. They're just gonna feel this. They don't where it's come from and they're gonna get overexcited and spend it. And so parents who are saving for their kids, I strongly recommend that you let your kids know about it so they can start as early as possible planning what they're gonna do with that money. And those plans can be changed and ordered, but the more you plan for it, the less likely it's gonna be wasted in an impulsive kind of way.

Yeah. That is a fantastic point. As a matter of fact, it, that is something I actually do with my kids. I explain to. This is how much money that's saved in here. This is what it's invested in and, this is how it's going. As a matter of fact, I recently had to explain to them how much they lost. As things have been dropping. But I said, don't worry, don't fret. As you would say, the trees grow back. Those branches will mend and they'll grow back. I haven't explained it to 'em in that way, but I think I'm gonna start talking to them about the seeds in the trees. I think that is just so much more genuine. Like I told you before, I'm really excited to read this book to them and make it part of their financial literacy curriculum cuz you know, we homeschool our kids, so I think it's part of their homeschooling is learning financial literacy. I think that's huge. And then the other thing too, like you said you don't just wanna spring a big surprise in them, let them know something's coming. Because in the real world, yes, sometimes you'll have something just sprung on you and you gotta react right away. But most of the time you can foresee a couple things coming, like it, like changes at work and things like that. And you have time to prepare and get ready for that. So make it realistic for your kids that they have time to understand. And because that's a very good point. If you just try to drop something on them it's not gonna bode well. And you need to sit down and have that conversation. I'd just be like, Surprise, here's what we're doing now. in some aspects, that could work for certain things, but not for something. If you're gonna be telling that you're gonna be taking some of their money away or you're gonna be giving them more responsibilities, trust me, kids would rather play more games than do more responsibilities, especially when it comes to stuff around the house. That's a very fair point, and I'm glad you brought that up. Now I'd like to transition this a little bit into something that we call the final round. And this is gonna touch a little bit more about you personally Will, and your own journey as you've gotten to the point where you are right now. So I'm pretty excited for this point because it sounds like you've done some amazing things throughout your time and just in your journey in life in general. And now living in Thailand after where were you at before Vietnam? Just being able to live in these different areas and immerse yourself in these different cultures, you have a very exciting story and a very exciting life that you're given to your families. That's awesome. So if you're ready to go, we'll get the final round started.

Yep.

Okay. Let's do it. All right. So the first question is, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made?

So I think if, again, I'll talk about in money terms cuz I think I, when I first started earning, I got a bit like everyone else. I got overexcited about having some money and so I actually bought some kind of expensive watches and at the time I loved them. I felt l lived. Look at me I'm an, actually, I got earned some money. And I got these watches and they're expensive. They're super expensive to maintain as well cause you have to go and get them serviced. And now I don't ever wear them cuz I'm don't wanna walk, You don't walk around in Vietnam and Thailand with very expensive watches on cuz generally wear a watch. And I just wear a sports watch now. And now I wish I was looking back on that and going, why did I buy them? Was it for me or was it for everyone else, and feel that I was shying off a little bit. felt that it was keeping up the Joneses my way of saying, Look I'm doing well, but actually, yeah, I wish I hadn't done that and just saved that money and had that money and kind of invested and didn't do it, do more for myself, even if I'd gone on fancy holidays or something like that. I think that's one of bit I. I wish, cause I hadn't, wouldn't get money back from 'em anyway, near as much as I paid for them. So I think, yeah, that's my biggest kind of financial mistake that I've made

Yeah. Yeah that's a good point. But, it depends though, cuz some of those collectible watches do go up in value over time. So for example, A couple different versions of Rolex. Some people buy them actually as an investment, so you might wanna check to see how much some of those watches might be worth. Now you might be able to sell them now at this point and invest that money into something else.

Yeah. So I think that's kinda key. So I don't want people put off all spending cuz, but I think it's why you've bought them and I think at time,

Yeah, absolutely.

I didn't buy them for investment. I wasn't trying to be clever. I was trying to be showing I that's, Yeah, I think that, Yep.

No that's a great point. Cause, and a lot of people that when they start getting to a point where they're, they have a, they're getting a higher income or they're starting to make a little bit of money and they think, Oh, okay, I need this to, to prove to everybody else that, that this is what I'm doing. And you, realistically, you don't need to do that. If you just spent that on something else maybe instead of buying the Rolex, you invested the money in the, in, in the company itself. Or instead of going buying the brand new iPad, you go and take that money that you would've invested to buy the iPad and invest it in the stock in Apple stock, and then go buy a used one maybe. Maybe that's just something to think about as well. All right. Awesome. This all kind of ties into what the next question is, and throughout your time, I'm sure you've learned quite a bit especially, during these transitions as you've moved to different countries now. What is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first got started?

Okay. And I think it's very similar to I was one, it's about, so moving to Vietnam was just a game changer in terms of kind of my mindset towards money. So I say I've worked in the financial industry, I've worked in London, in Hong Kong, where there's just a whole amount of abundance of people spending lots. And in Vietnam, People don't have as much. It's a developing country and we got to meet so many Vietnamese families and get involved in their kind of daily lives. And there are some of the friendliest, kindest people I've ever met. Like we had, we're like the foreigners and there was a big sort of storm coming one day and amount of people came to our house to make sure we taped up our windows and were okay, they obviously thought these foreigners have no idea what's coming in terms of storm makers. But the key bit for me was that you don't need loads of money to be happy and it really hit home more than you hear that and different people talk about it, but that life experience of actually seeing that these families were fun. Like we had the most amount of fun just when they had they have a Vietnamese new year called Tết and just all their family around loads of food bits. But it's all no thrills. It's just good food, good company sitting on plastic stores on a sort of metal table. But it's the most fun and they're all so happy. And so I think it was a great experience for my daughters again, from, especially going from Hong Kong where you are paying, like going for like a pizza meal and paying sort of 60 US dollars equivalent and you're like, Oh, that's just a plan. Whereas, and that I didn't want that to be there, just like their expectation of life and they've just seen this whole other side of the world. So yeah, really understanding that you don't need loads of money to be happy. Clearly. You have to have some. And why? Teaching my kids about looking after their money. But it's not so that they have loads of stuff. It's to have opportunities to, to do stuff and see new people experience the world, these new coaches I think is the biggest lesson about money.

Yeah, no, that, that is fantastic because you know that time that you get that quality time is huge. And when you can spend just enjoying your family, enjoying the people around you. It might not be, they say money can't buy happiness, but it gets you time, right? So if you have enough of it to where you can be comfortable and get that time back, which is what you know, you were able to do, get away from the corporate world, Get your time back because you planted enough seeds and grew this forest that you had this money that you can live off of and not have to worry about spending that time trying to earn more. That's fantastic. What a great way to, to live life. Exactly. All right. Awesome. Okay. So the next question I have, and this kind of ties into that as well. And so you know, you've, again, you've had so many different experiences as you've gone through and have done this, but do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today?

So I think the key one is to keep it super simple. And I think what most people do is they go too hard. They try and change too much. It's a bit like dieting. Like I'm fortunate I haven't had gone, you hear I've gone to try to do lots of exercise. So you get up to January 1st shot, right? I wanna do a run every single day. I'm gonna run five or 10 kilometers every day. But you set the hurdle too high. And you don't eat, you don't have any fun. Cuz you're like I'm not gonna eat all this junk. I'm not gonna have any beers. I'm not gonna, And it becomes too much. And then people, it never lasts and it people quit. And so I always say if you're gonna make a change, just keep it realistic. Just keep it so you can still spend majority of what you're spending, but reign it back a little bit and make sure you save at least 10 or 20% of your money before you go spending. Don't make it that you go, you're gonna save 50%. You go from zero savings to 50% of income savings, cuz you don't wanna be in baked beans every day on toast. It's just not sustainable. And it's too big. And most people don't just give up. So I say it's fantastic that you want to change, but start small. See that impact, be patient and over time just gradually increase. So when you get your next pay rights, don't change your lifestyle. . So shouldn't have an impact. And then you can just save that increase so you're not changing much today, but in the future you're gonna change and that's gonna be game changer. It's all about those habits. So just start small. Save. Just even if it's 10%, do it and do it all the time. And then over time, that'll be a game changer. Don't try and go for the full guns fireworks approach. It's just never sustainable.

Yeah, no that's great point. Will, it's all about those habits and just small habits that you can be repetitive with and just keep doing that every single time. And As you, force yourself to do it at first, over time it just becomes so ingrained that you're not forcing yourself anymore. It's just a natural thing that you do. Habits and taking action, I absolutely love that. All right, fantastic. So I have one more question in the final round and I have a feeling I know what some of these might be here. So I'm gonna say besides your own and besides. Richest man in Babylon and Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

So yeah, you've just taken away two of my best ones. But I love, so one of the books I've read a number of times is I love the Marshmallow Experiment. I just thought that book. So for people who don't know that it's all about delayed gratification. So it's a fantastic experiment in the 1970s where they got children to just essentially decide to eat one marshmallow now or wait 15 minutes and eat later have too much minutes later. But just the background behind the experiment, the different types of experiments they did, and then outcome I just thought was fascinating and it again, changed a lot of my mindset towards money, but also how I think about money and talk to my children about money. And then what I really like in terms of a podcast. Is there's a podcast in the UK by the guy called Jason Butler. And what he does, he gets people on the show and just talked about just their money experience, so their people of all different backgrounds. And so I find that really fascinating cuz everyone has a different money story and as you started this, the, this podcast about my story but people have different backgrounds of what, so it goes right back to their childhood. About why? What did your parents think about money? How did your parents think about money? And in just hearing some of these stories, you start to get a real good understanding about why people think about money the way they do today cause of that. And that's the hard thing about when we, you're doing your podcast and I've written a book and there's always other books. Everyone's getting this new information, but starting at completely different points. And once you start to appreciate other people's points, you can try and say, Oh, okay. I wish my parents had done that, or I can see why that person might have an advantage over me. And it starts to give you a little bit more empathy towards people's money stories and how they've, they're thinking about money. So when you see other people who might be struggling, it's not because they're just stupid and don't know it's because that's probably just what. Just been going through. So yeah. Jason Butler's podcast. In the UK I found fascinating stories.

Yeah. And that's a great point that you brought up as well. Will, especially when you talk about everybody comes from a different background. Everyone learns differently. Everyone, everyone has a different story when it comes to how they got to where they are today. Everyone has a different money story. Everyone has a different relationship with money. But I, the thing that I find that everyone has in common, for the people that are successful with their money, is that they all took action, right? Yeah. They took action and like you said, they built habits, right? So stuff like that is huge. So there's so many different ways to do it. You could build your wealth in real estate. You could build your wealth in the stock market. You can even build your wealth in crypto if that's the route you want to go. I don't know too much about it. So that's, I don't really mess with that stuff, but, There are so many different ways you can build a business. There are so many different things you can do to build wealth and build a legacy for yourself and your family. You're never gonna get there if you don't take action and if you don't make moves on it, and that's I think the biggest thing that people get scared to do is to take that leap. To take that jump and that leap of faith. That's huge. So I appreciate you sharing. That aspect of that and with what Jason Butler shares on his podcast with the different stories, cuz you never really think about that. What is like the background of this individual that we're talking to? Like, how did your parents teach you about money? Did they teach you about money? How did you learn about money? So those are little things that are awesome. And now that I think about that, I might add some of these questions here as I'm bringing more people on the show. . But yeah that's fantastic. So that's the, that's it for the final round. Will, but I do have one more question for you, and this is probably the most important question of all because this conversation was awesome. I really enjoy it. I really enjoy how you put these stories together to make this so much more understandable for kids, but not only for kids. Like I'm telling you, if an adult goes and picks up, Grandpa's Fortune Fables, and they can't understand it I don't know what else to tell you there, but if you're having a hard time reading Richest Man in Babylon, like I know some people do because it's written very much like it's the King James Bible, right? But if you're having trouble reading that, go read this book. It's gonna explain some of those same basic principles that you need to understand. And I'm really glad that I have a copy of it and I appreciate that so much. But now so speaking of that people might wanna say, Hey, I wanna get a copy of this book, right? Or I wanna find out more information about Will. So where can people find this information about you? Where can we find your book? Do you have a website, social media, or anything like that you could share with us? Yeah, certainly.

So my website is bluetreesavings.com, so that's all one word, bluetreesavings.com and on there, so luckily that was that's Family Finance Blog of the year in the UK. So every week I produce a new blog, which to help parents teach their kids about money. So just yes, just recently written one, which is the movie Frozen that everyone knows, but rewritten to be about money. So instead of uncontrollable ability to freeze everything, she just can't control her spending. But same storyline but on my website. Got all my blogs to cover pretty much every money topic that you wanna teach your kids. And it has more about grandpa's fortune fables on there so you can learn about the book but the book's available on Amazon and so yeah, please go to Amazon. You can buy ones if you wanted to buy multiple books for schools, clients, friends, then yeah, on my website you can buy, if you're buying five or more, then you get a discount through that. But I'm on LinkedIn, so just Will Rainey on LinkedIn. I generally try and post a few times with some tips. Also on Instagram, so grandpa's fortune, fables with underscores between the words and not so much on Facebook and Twitter at the moment, but that might change under Blue Tree Savings. But just on that, on about the book and your last point, the luckily enough I get quite a number of really positive reviews about the book and but the ones that I've really take to heart are the ones where people say, We've read your book, and my daughter or son is now starting a business, or We are now investing so they're taking action. And that's the best thing about the reviews is when I hear people not just enjoying the book and the stories and characters, but they're taking action. So yeah. So that's Blue Tree Savings and Grandpa's Fortune Fables.

All right, fantastic. Hey everybody, I'm gonna make sure those links are in the show notes to make it easy for you, so you can just click 'em or copy and paste. But hey, key thing, if you're not getting anything outta this episode, it's to go take action. And I feel the same way Will, when I get a DM or something like that on LinkedIn or Instagram or on Facebook Messenger or somebody leaves a review and they're talking about how, Hey, this episode like really opened my eyes to something, or this helped change my life. Things like that mean more to me than. Anything else that I can get out of doing this podcast. I definitely appreciate you taking the time to, to chat with me today especially since you just moved a week ago. I know it's probably, you're probably not even finished unpacking yet, but greatly appreciate this and this was really fun great conversation and I'm really excited about your book and I hope some people go check it out. But yeah, again, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me on the show. It's great talking with you.

All right, Aloha from Hawaii.