Spoiled Rotten: How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t

What would you say to a 3-year-old who asks, "Why don't we have a summer home?" Stumped? Ron Lieber was. And he writes about money for The New York Times.

That question from his daughter -- as well as pleas for advice from other baffled parents -- drove Lieber to rifle through the toy box of research and interview families of all financial stripes to produce a thoughtful and practical guide for raising financially grounded children. Read on for our interview with Lieber about his new book, The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money, or download the episode for free on iTunes and Stitcher.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

This is Motley Fool Answers. I'm Alison Southwick and, as always, I'm joined by Dayana Yochim and Robert Brokamp, personal finance experts here at The Motley Fool. And today we have a special guest ... It's Ron Lieber. He's a personal finance columnist for The New York Times and he's also the author of the new book The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money. Because who wouldn't want to do that? Thanks for joining us today.

RON LIEBER:

It's a pleasure to be here in FoolLand.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Yay! Well, I'm going to set expectations a little bit here. Robert Brokamp, you have four children.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

That I know of, yes.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

I have one child. She's 2. Ron, you have a child and another on the way.

RON LIEBER:

Uh-huh. We're talking to the kid in the womb about money already.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

And Dayana, she sleeps soundly on a mattress full of money...

ROBERT BROKAMP:

As all the childless do...

DAYANA YOCHIM:

I'm rich! I'll be able to retire!

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Yes. Our children will take care of you in your old age.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

That's true. Yes. Absolutely. Someone's got to pay that Social Security.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

So when you wrote this book -- I have this vision of you getting the inspiration where you're standing in line in a grocery store. Maybe there's this kid who's like rolling on the floor and having a fit going, I want it! I want it! I want it! And I just imagine you being like, "Aw, hell, no." That is not happening in my family. I'm going to get to the bottom of this.

RON LIEBER:

No children were harmed in the production of this book. It was not, in fact, inspired by any particular spoiled children. It really was parents turning to me, almost out of desperation, trying to figure out how to talk to their kids about money when the kids were asking really complicated questions at really young ages in ways that left the parents stumped and confused.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

So when did your child start asking questions about money that made you start thinking along these lines?

RON LIEBER:

Our daughter was 3 and she wanted to know why we didn't have a summer house, which may sound like a bratty, entitled question, but it came from a place of pure curiosity because we had been out for the weekend at somebody's place that they had rented for the summer. She didn't know that they were renting it. She thought that they had two homes. This was confusing to her. She wanted to know why we didn't have two homes because it sure seemed to her like having another home near a beach somewhere would be a fine thing for a 3-year-old and so she wanted to know. And that's her job -- to figure out how the world works -- and I was stumped.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

It's nice that you're being honest about this. So you did not offer a good answer?

RON LIEBER:

I didn't have any answer at all. I sat frozen in the front seat of the car. I looked over at my wife. She sort of raised her eyebrows as if to say wordlessly, "All right, Doctor Money. This is your moment."

ROBERT BROKAMP:

[Laughs] I have three sisters, and two of them definitely have much nicer, bigger houses than we do. We got that same question and it's tough to answer because you don't want to make yourself look bad. You don't want to make them look bad and pass judgment on their housing choices or anything like that...

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Right.

RON LIEBER:

You don't want to pass judgment...

ROBERT BROKAMP:

I will. In my head, right now, I'm passing judgment on all of you, but in front of my children it's a difficult discussion. 

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Surely you could use some setup like, "Here's the Barbie Dream House and there's the Skipper Dream House. ... And then Ken's living in the garage off his parent's house. We fall somewhere in between."

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

[Laughs] So this might be written in the book. How would you go back and answer that question?

RON LIEBER:

I would say to her 3-year-old self -- it has to be an answer that a three-year-old would understand, which makes it a little more complicated. I would say to her, "You know what, Talia? We actually made a choice. If we wanted to have another house, we probably could, but that means we would have a smaller apartment. Maybe you would not have your own room when your sister comes. Maybe we would not be able to send you to summer camp. Maybe we would live farther from the park that you love so much. And it might be harder for us to save enough money so that you can go to whatever college you want to and that's a big goal that we have for you -- that someday you'll be able to do that.

So we've made a choice not to have another house. It's not because we don't want to. It's just that there are other things that we think are more important."

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

See? Look at that.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

That was good. I'd buy your book.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

I don't want a summer home anymore.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Meanwhile, Talia, to this day, is going, "Man, dropping that truth bomb on me ... I'm angry now. Actually, I would trade the park."

RON LIEBER:

Well, we managed to engineer things where we rent a pretty decent house on Cape Cod for a couple of weeks each summer and then we get ourselves invited (or we just invite ourselves) to other people's summer homes. That seems fine for now.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

More life lessons.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Yeah! The moral of the story is be careful about your friends. Choose your friends wisely.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

That's right. If you can't have it, make sure you're related to or friends with someone who does.

RON LIEBER:

Yeah, really rich, really generous friends.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Now you, in your researching of the book, found that there are four signs that lead to a spoiled child. What are those things? Let's just talk about all four of them, shall we? We have time.

RON LIEBER:

Sure. The first one is families that basically have no rules at all. It's like utter anarchy. There's no expectations for the kids at all. They can more or less do as they please. That is kind of prime, spoiled territory.

Number two is where you do have at least a couple of rules and there are absolutely no consequences for breaking them and the kids know it. So there might as well be no rules in that situation.

Number three is parents who lavish time and attention on their kids -- and not just like the normal amount...

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

What is normal? Can you tell me that? Because I feel like I'm already messing that up.

RON LIEBER:

You know those parents -- and we all know them -- where the kids are literally not allowed to fail. Where every bump in the road is smoothed over so that the kids never experience a moment of pain or discomfort or confusion or conflict -- that's a problem.

It's sort of interesting. I've been making the rounds, the last couple of months, since the book came out. And there are a whole bunch of parent/speaker series all over the United States that bring in people like me to talk about various things. And the founder or proprietor of one of them came to pick me up -- I won't even say whether it was a him or her -- came to pick me up in its car...

One of the children was in the car and this parent would not let the child finish a sentence, or answer a question, and kept jumping in to sort of buff up the answer or remind the kid of what the right answer was. We were just having a conversation here. This is the person who's bringing in the speakers to try and set everybody else straight. Maybe this person understood that there was an issue in their house. But anyway, you've got to let them fail. You have to let them make mistakes and work things out for themselves -- otherwise you may well be spoiling them.

And then No. 4 is just having a huge pile of material possessions or experiences (really expensive ones) that most other kids don't get to do and not being grateful for them or gracious about them when they happen.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

So now that we know what a spoiled child looks like -- and what leads to a spoiled child — what is your solution? I don't want to give away the book, of course, but what is your next step for a parent when it comes to despoiling your child? If that's proper verbiage. Despoil. Whatever.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Just take them out of the freezer and thaw.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

Freshen them up.

RON LIEBER:

Well, I think the place you have to start is that they have to stop getting everything that they want whenever they want it. It's good for kids to wait. It's good for kids to yearn.

People often ask me, "What's the right amount to set their allowance at?" And it differs for every family. Some families can't afford to give very much away in allowance.

The way I try to explain it to them is I say to think about it qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively. You want to give the kid just enough so they can get some of the things that they want, but not so much that they don't have to make a lot of really hard choices. So they don't feel pain and yearning and desire and envy, even, because this is good. It's good to wait. It's good to be patient. And then you think really hard about which things are going to deliver the most happiness to you when you've actually saved up enough money for them.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

You interviewed a lot of families for this book and a lot of this is about giving your kids experience with money ... to give them the training wheels while they are under your watchful eye. 

There are two parts to this question.

The first is what about the parents out there who say, "I don't know how to do this stuff. I'm no good at managing our finances. How am I going to teach my child that?"

And then the second part is getting down to brass tacks: Tell us some practical ways to teach our kids about money in the household -- what you should do.

RON LIEBER:

Yeah. Look, this is hard for all of us, me included. None of us are perfect. We have shame about whatever it is that we don't do well in our own financial lives and everybody has something. So don't cut yourself down or think that you're not a worthy teacher. The kids are looking up to you no matter what.

And there's no time like the present to shape yourself given that the kid or kids are taking it all in by osmosis. So this may be sort of shock therapy for you. Or maybe just as simple as see one, learn one, do one, teach one. You're learning it as you go. You're frantically trying to learn the lesson so you can teach it to them.

As far as the practicalities go, allowance is a tool. Money is a tool for learning. Allowance is for practice. Try to think about it that way -- the same way you would as a book or art supplies or a musical instrument. Generally in families that are lucky enough to have more money than average, the more of those tools of learning, the better.

And as much as the family can afford they're usually willing to give, so give your kids ever-higher amounts of money within reason to practice. They get the allowance for saving and spending and giving, but maybe you hand over the clothing budget to them when they're 9 or 10. Maybe you bring them in on the family vacation planning. Maybe you turn over the electric bill or grocery shopping to them.

And let them make some different choices. Maybe then you would about how money gets saved or how money gets spent. Let them make terrible mistakes -- first of all for the sheer amusement value of seeing how they screw it up, because they'll mess it up in so many ways you might not imagine -- but also so they can learn those lessons, themselves, when the stakes are lower because they're still under your roof.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

And you don't think, necessarily, that allowance should be tied to chores. So explain that a little bit, please.

RON LIEBER:

Sure. The most basic and practical reason not to tie allowance to chores is that if you do -- if you are giving money in exchange for chores - there will come a point, without a doubt, when your smart-aleck child will fix you with a gaze and say, "You know what? I have enough money for now, so I'm not going to do the chores."

ROBERT BROKAMP:

Right. Or you ask them to do something, in addition to what they normally do, and they say, "OK. Well how much are you going to pay me to do that?"

RON LIEBER:

Right. And do we want to make our family transactions into transactions? I mean, do we actually want it to be transactional? Or do we want it to be something else? Do we want these things that we do to be things that we do for one another, because we're all members of the family and that's just what you do when you live there.

I understand that people want leverage. They want to be able to yank the allowance when the chores aren't done. I think you'll get much more impact if you yank the things that they like to do the most -- the screen time or the ride to soccer practice, or whatever it is that the kid likes. Take that away and the chores will get done right quick.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

Yup. I have to say. My wife and I disagreed about this when the kids were younger. She was much more of the "just have money go straight to the bank account every week and they could see it grow." And I was saying, "They've got to do something for that money." So thanks for giving her another reason to say to me, "I told you so."

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Ron also wants to get rid of the piggy bank.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

That's true.

RON LIEBER:

Yeah. Your wife doesn't have it all right. If it goes straight to the bank, then it's not visceral. They can't see it. They can't count it. They can't touch it. They can't pour it out. They can't take the giant jar and walk to the Humane Society, or your church, or whatever and dump it all out on the desk of the shocked fundraising professional there.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Get the receipt, by the way.

RON LIEBER:

It's totally delightful to do that by the way -- to have them take the money to whoever they want to give it to. You know, the organizations love it. The kids love it. It makes the kids feel good. It's addictive.

But yes, I'm not a big fan of piggy banks because quite often, they're opaque. You can't see through them. They have these little, tiny slots. You've got to fold the dollars up into little squares and corners and there's inevitably not enough room. They're not divided into enough cylinders.

I think you should take these big, old, Rubbermaid rice or flour bins that hold 32 ounces, or something, and let them keep their money in there. That can hold a year's worth of singles and it gives kids a sense of accomplishment when that thing really gets stuffed and they can see it in ever-increasing amounts behind the clear plastic.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Not just one bin, but three bins.

RON LIEBER:

Yes, three bins. I'm a big believer in the three-jar method -- save, spend, give. I like the fact that that's sort of a stand-in for the budgeting that adults do. I also like that save, spend, and give are sort of a stand-in for all of the values that we're trying to imprint through these money conversations.

Spending is about modesty and thrift and prudence. Saving is about patience and delayed gratification in a world that conspires against waiting. And giving -- the give jar, the charity jar -- that's really about gratitude and generosity and what it means to help others.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

One of the points in your book that I really liked was how you talk about what we spend money on is what we value. So you talk about how your kids are watching everything you do and learning about money through what you do. But what you're spending your money on -- whether it's clothes or experiences or charity -- that's how your kids learn their values. It's not just money.

RON LIEBER:

It's totally true. As my friend Carl Richards puts it, "There's no better way to know what somebody stands for than to look at how they spend their time and look at how they spend their money."

We went through this transparency exercise with our daughter, last year, with charity. We put 100 black beans on the dining room table and we divided it up into piles. We said, "Talia, for every $100 that we give away, this is how we divide it." And we showed her what all the piles were and where the money goes. And then we asked her whether she agreed with that choice -- whether there were any piles that were missing -- just because we felt like she's part of the family. What we give and who we give to has a direct connection to our values and the things that are important to us. It reflects on her, too, so she ought to have a say in it.

So she came up with a pile that did not exist that she thought should. She wanted to give to the scholarship fund at her camp, so we gave her a couple of beans and she got to decide what to de-emphasize. She picked which pile the beans would come from to make the new pile for the camp scholarship.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Oh, how cool. She's 9?

RON LIEBER:

She just turned 9, so we're going to give her another bean or two each and every year. And we expect that those conversations are going to grow more and more interesting and sophisticated as she gets smarter. And I imagine she's going to ask many more pointed questions about our own stupid choices or our blind spots.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

So speaking of transparency, you're all for it ... but to a point. What is age appropriate? What should you let your kids know about your family's financial situation and at what age is that appropriate?

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

I know you can't do this, but I want a chart where it says, "Ten years. Here: Do the bean exercise. Eleven years..." Give me a road map.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Eighteen years. Have them rebalance your 401(k).

RON LIEBER:

Look. We can get that done in 60 seconds, here:

Ages 6 to 10 -- straight-up allowance. Ending at age 10, they get the clothing budget. They're starting to spend three-digit amounts of money by then.

Ages 10 to 14 -- that's household finance. So age 10, groceries. Age 11, electric bill. Age 12, vacation budget. Age 13, home values, mortgages, other monthly bills.

And then 14 to 16 -- that's the discretion test, where you remind them that yes, you are going to tell them how much money you make and what your net worth is, but only when they've proven themselves to be discreet, because that's the only moment at which they're ready, when they're not telling other people friends' secrets or reading their siblings' diaries or being a tattletale.

And then and only then at the age of 17 or so, are they ready. At which point you remind them that this information really is not useful outside of the family, and if they do talk about it, they're going to sound like a jerk.

No kid wants to flunk the discretion test. No kid wants to flunk the jerk test. They don't want to disappoint their parents. By then they're ready. And really, we should tell them by then, because they're making really big decisions about college, and how much to spend, and what they might want to do for a living. They should know what it takes financially to provide whatever life you've been able to provide for them.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

I remember being in college and not really understanding the value of a beer and being like, "Oh, my gosh. This is expensive. I had no idea."

RON LIEBER:

And your parents never bought you beer?

ROBERT BROKAMP:

[Laughs]

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

It wasn't until after school. We lived in Walla Walla, Wash., and you can get very good beer in Walla Walla, Wash. So I grew up drinking like Black Butte Porter while everyone else was drinking Bud Light and I don't know what else in college.

RON LIEBER:

You didn't drink Ollie?

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

No, I should. ... Well, no, because I was like, "Whatever. It's money. More!" And then when I graduated from college, and became a working stiff, I'm like counting my pennies to buy a pitcher of ... I don't know.

Whatever. This is perfect. This is totally what I wanted -- a conversation about beer and a mapped-out next 18 years of discussions with my daughter.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

In your book, you wrote about Scott Parker, the guy who went to the bank and got out his monthly salary in dollar bills. Did that really happen? He went to the bank and got $12,000 in dollar bills and brought it home?

RON LIEBER:

We do not make stuff up in The New York Times...

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

[Laughs]

DAYANA YOCHIM:

[Laughs]

ROBERT BROKAMP:

[Laughs]

RON LIEBER:

And I do not make stuff up in my books.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Now you have to explain the story.

RON LIEBER:

So Scott Parker. Living in California at the time. House full of kids. Decides that they aren't really square enough about how all of the money flows in and the money flows out. He comes home one day with $10,000-$12,000, his monthly salary, in singles. He dumps it all out on the kitchen table. The room falls silent and all the kids gather around. They get very excited.

Then he starts peeling off the bills and making piles for taxes, and for mortgage, and for Boy Scouts, and for groceries, and for the weekly pizza night, and for their tithe to the church, and for savings. And before too long, there's really not very much money left at all.

It turns out Scott was sort of annoyed that his parents never explained any of this stuff to him. And he was also starting to get a little bit annoyed at how blithely his kids went about living their lives without any real knowledge of what it took financially to make it all happen for them and so he just decided he was going to show them.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

That's a great story. And by the way, didn't it take a day or two for him to get it from the bank because they didn't have that much cash lying around?

RON LIEBER:

Oh, yeah. You can't just show up at a bank, these days, and ask for $10,000 in singles. They barely keep any money around, at all.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Well, before we go, I want to talk about one last thing that you put a really fine point on in your book, and that's the importance of gratitude. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of gratitude, one, and also how you bring gratitude into your daily life and make it matter?

RON LIEBER:

Sure. There are a whole bunch of social scientists who have looked at this very closely and determined that regular gratitude rituals can make a huge impact on our mental health and on our physical health, even. It's true for kids and it's true for grown-ups. So I have my own gratitude ritual that I do when the subway's coming each day -- when it's pulling into the station -- where I think about the three things that were most awesome in the last 24 hours and just have a little conversation with myself to remind myself that I was lucky that those things happened.

With a kid you can do it in all sorts of ways. Some of the experiments that people may have seen on video, on the Internet, is where a kid writes a letter to somebody who has been really important to them and then calls them on the phone and reads them the letter. Everybody bursts into tears, and you burst into tears...

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

[Laughs]

RON LIEBER:

... then it goes viral and there's 10 million ads that are viewed...

DAYANA YOCHIM:

And then there's the book deal and a TED talk...

RON LIEBER:

All that, right. But if you want to do the nonvideo version in your own house, you can do it around the breakfast table or around the dinner table or whenever everybody manages to gather. It can be a gracing ritual if you are people of faith, and if you're a godless family, that's cool, too. No sin there.

You can just raise your glasses -- Olympia beer or not -- glasses of milk or whatever and give toasts. You know, slosh the glasses together. Make the water and the milk spill all over the place and give a toast to whatever or whoever made you happy in the last 24 hours. If you do that enough, you start focusing more on the things that you have and not quite so much, maybe, on the things that you want that may stay out of reach for a little while.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

My mom's going to love hearing that, because even to this day (literally last month) she sent me an email. She said, "Remember that professor you had in college? You should send her an email, or write her a letter and tell her how much she meant to you."

I'm 36 years old, by the way. I couldn't even remember the woman's name. I said, "I think I know what professor you're talking about." So you and my mom -- you've got it all figured out. I should have done it.

RON LIEBER:

I do that a lot more than I did a couple of years ago when I first learned about the gratitude research. It means so much to people when you do that and it really does not take very long. You can do it while you're waiting for the train. You can do it while you're waiting for the plane to take off. You can do one note for 60 seconds right before you go to bed every night. Spread that gratitude around. It makes a difference.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Dayana, what's one thing you're grateful for today?

DAYANA YOCHIM:

You guys.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

Ohhhh!

DAYANA YOCHIM:

No, I'm not just pandering. I always love our conversations ... and we get to have the great Ron Lieber with us today.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Yeah. Robert, what's something you're grateful for?

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Top that.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Wait. I know. I really like doughnuts and Skipper Jack's.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

I was home in Florida, this past week, talking with my sisters, and we actually talked about some of the favorite teachers we had. So I know it's cheesy, because I used to be a teacher, but I really am thankful. I'd like to call my English teacher, Ineeda Hanky, who taught me how to write, and our science teacher, Dan Noyes, who was also my track coach. He was a great guy.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Oh, that's cool.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

You know what? Shout-out to Mrs. Wheeler from Broken Arrow Elementary School in Lawrence, Kan. She was very encouraging of my writing at a young age.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

And look where it took you?

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Yeah!

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

To this podcast.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

On the flip side of it, my mom pulled out a plate that I had made in kindergarten. I had spelled my name wrong. I spelled it "Roberet," and the teacher said, "Ugh, you spelled your name wrong, again." And that's the only thing I remember about that teacher. She made me feel bad about myself. So teachers, listen up. They'll remember your bad words.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

All right. And my gratitude is going to go out to my eighth-grade teacher, Mark Quinn. He was a great, amazing teacher. I have not kept in touch, but he's a good guy. So, Mark Quinn, thanks for being a great teacher. And thanks, everyone else.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

You're welcome. It's hard work being a teacher. I'm sure they would love getting an email from someone they taught 20 years ago saying, "I remember that you did this. It was awesome and I appreciate that you did that."

RON LIEBER:

Yeah. I invite all of my teachers to all of my book parties, and they are so stoked to be there. Well, look. They really had a lot to do with it. They're happy, but they also feel like they did something. And they did.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

I'm thankful for you, Ron Lieber, for joining us today. Thanks so much for hopping on our podcast and I'm also thankful for Dayana and Robert.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DAYANA YOCHIM:

Aw!

ROBERT BROKAMP:

And Rick.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Oh, Rick. Oh, Rick Engdahl.

ROBERT BROKAMP:

We're most thankful for Rick. And the Internet. Thank you, Internet.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

All right. Thank you, listeners.

_____________________________________________________

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

We got a lot of great advice from Ron, but we wanted more! So we asked a few Fools for their best piece of advice that they've received about money and we're going to cover it in this week's episode of Ask a Fool.

KATE HERMAN:

Hi, I'm Kate Herman. I handle internal communications and member events here at The Motley Fool. And some of the best financial advice my family ever gave me was to not ever carry a credit card balance. I sleep really well at night knowing that never in my life have I carried a balance month to month, and it makes me happy to know that I don't spend money I don't have.

ALICIA FUENTES:

Hi, I'm Alicia Fuentes. I work in office operations and events. And when I was younger, my dad told me to save 10% of every check and I've been doing it ever since.

NATE HALL:

My name's Nate Hall and I am an executive assistant at The Motley Fool. My father gave me this frank advice after my first teenage encounter with overdraft fees. Never give banks a chance to mess with you or your money.

JENNIFER PARKER:

Hi, my name is Jennifer Parker and I'm the executive assistant to the co-founder at The Motley Fool. And the best piece of advice I've ever gotten for finance is to never lend money out that you can't live without. And if you do lend money, to think of it more as a "gift" so that if you don't get it back, you won't be upset.

SARA KLIEGER:

Hi, I'm Sara Klieger and I work on internal communications at The Motley Fool. And the best financial advice I ever got from my family was to start saving for retirement as early as possible. So I started in my twenties which was great because now I have a leg up over all of my millennial friends.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

I want to thank Ron Lieber again for joining us. His book is The Opposite of Spoiled and you can get it on Amazon and points elsewhere. You can also read his column at the New York Times or follow him on Twitter. He's @RonLieber. @R-O-N-L-I-E-B-E-R.

Before we go, I want to give a thank you to NewtonTootin, who gave us our first review on Stitcher! Thank you, Newton. He says that we are really educational but hip and hilarious. It made Dayana's week to be called hip. Or maybe it was the hilarious part?

DAYANA YOCHIM:

It was both. It was the combination. It really did make my week.

ALISON SOUTHWICK:

Hip, hilarious, and educational. What more could you want? Nothing.

So thanks, NewtonTootin. And to you guys, thanks for all of your reviews and ratings. Please keep them coming. We truly appreciate them and it helps us get promoted on iTunes and that spreads us to other people and it's great! All right!

The show is edited by Rick Engdahl with theme music composed and performed by our own Dayana Yochim. Our email is [email protected]. For Robert and Dayana, I'm Alison Southwick. Fool on!

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