How to Do Money Right As a Family

It's not uncommon for family members to have differing views and habits when it comes to finances. 

That said, addressing these differences and finding common ground is important for a harmonious family life. 

In a recent special episode, I had the privilege of being interviewed by The Good In Media on this very subject, and I'm thrilled to share the insights from that conversation with you.

We covered a wide range of topics, including how to navigate discussions about finances with your children, the unique challenges faced by men as providers, and the dynamics of managing money as a couple. These conversations are helpful because they lay the foundation for a harmonious financial journey.

I invite you to listen to the full interview. It's packed with insights and actionable advice that can transform the way you handle money in your family.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS: 

• The dynamics of managing money as a couple
• Navigating money conversations with children
• The concept of balance vs. harmony in life and work

RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU 
If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:

• The Tipping Points to My Wealth Journey with Corene Phelps
• Getting Your Partner on the Same Money Page
• My Greatest Money Lesson Came from a 6-Year Old
• How Money Conversations Can Strengthen Your Marriage with Corinne Acampora

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:45 Balancing work and family life
• 7:49 Shifting from "balance" to "harmony"
• 14:08 Taking action to gain clarity
• 18:57 Effective money conversations between spouses

Transcript

Mel Abraham [00:00:00]:

Hey there.

Mel Abraham [00:00:00]:

Do you ever wonder, what does it take to do money right as a family? Whether you're just a couple or you have kids? How do you have the conversations? How do you gel?

Mel Abraham [00:00:11]:

Let's face it, money is one of.

Mel Abraham [00:00:15]:

The biggest stressors in a relationship. It's the second leading cause of divorce behind infidelity. So how do we use money to bring people together? Well, in this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show, got a special episode where the Good in Media came out to my house and interviewed me on this whole topic of money and the money journey and how to do it. And I want to give you access to that interview. We talk about all the things about the kids. How do you do it as a man and a provider? How do you do it as a couple and everything? I think you're going to find this tremendously valuable on your financial journey, because if our finances, if our money isn't creating the life we want to live.

Mel Abraham [00:00:59]:

Then what else are we doing it for? So let's do it right.

Mel Abraham [00:01:03]:

All right, so welcome to this episode, the Affluent Entrepreneur Show. I can't wait. Hear what you think. See you soon. This is the affluent entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

Interviewer [00:01:45]:

I've heard you tell this story before, but it's something that obviously, like, with our kids here. This is something that I'm really actively trying to work on as a parent, is bringing our kids along into what we're doing and what we're building and allowing them to learn as honestly as I'm learning and working my way through it. One of my favorite stories that you share is when your son Jeremy drew that picture of you, and it just hits my mama heart. So I would love for you to share that story and how that's impacted.

Mel Abraham [00:02:15]:

How you moved forward through that business, that drawing, actually. So what happened was I was a single full time dad. I was raising my son from five and a half years old. I was an entrepreneur. I had my business, I had partners. And the same year that I became a single full time dad of Jeremy is the same year that my partners came in and said, we don't want to be partners anymore. And so here I was in a situation where I had no clients, I had no client backlog, I had no cash flow. I had $300,000 in debt because I just bought a house and this gift of being a father was given to me. And I'm sitting back saying, what do I do? How do I survive? And my choices were like, all right, go get a job or figure this thing out. And so I did what most entrepreneurs do. I got on the treadmill and I started running. I put my head down. I just started running, running, marketing, speaking and getting out there to start build my practice. And over time, I started to get clients. Things started to work. I started to get cash flow. Everything was hitting. And I'm looking at Jeremy going, dude, this is going to work. We're going to be okay. We're not losing the house. All of those things kind of came into play. And then one day he runs in from school and says, daddy, Daddy, daddy. I drew a picture of you school today. And so he was so excited. It was like it was the morning of his birthday or the holidays or something. And so I just stopped everything and I knelt down expecting to see this picture of me having fun with him. And it was a picture of me standing in front of two computer screens and a phone in each ear and another one on the desk ringing. And it was a shot to the gut to realize that I was screwing it up. So as much as it was a picture, it was a mirror. It was a mirror for me to reflect on and to look at things. And I could have looked at this and said, kid, this is what I need to do so we can do the things that you love to do. We need the profits so we can do the Disneyland, so we can do the ball games, we can do all that. But we weren't doing that. And it was in a realization when people were in my ear constantly saying, well, you need to get work life balance. And I started to think about this whole idea of balance and said, balance, it's a myth because it insinuates that you got to have two counterweights. So in effect, balance requires you to play tug of war and like, yeah, but that would be no different to me than saying, well, I'm going to put my feet in the freezer and my head in the frying pan, and on average, I'm warm. I mean, it doesn't work. And it was then when I started to realize it's not balance that I'm lacking. It's harmony. And harmony comes from being intentional, because what I knew was that Jeremy didn't need my prophets. He needed my presence. And I could fall prey to the traditions. I could fall prey to the expectations. I could fall prey to what was done before. I could reinvent the way I did business, the way I did money, and the way I did life. Because being a dad, it's probably one of the greatest gifts. Now, I'm a granddad, but it's one of the greatest gifts that I could ever have. This is one of my greatest teachers, and I think I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for that picture that he drew. It shifted and changed everything in our relationship. It shifted and changed everything. Everything I teach comes out of that because I realize that the moments actually matter, the moments of life matter. And when we give each moment the reverence it deserves, and you stack those moments up, that's when you create a life that's full of richness. And that's the thing that I think we often miss. We're going after the carrot. We're going after the million dollars. We're going after the gold watch. We're going after the big cars or the big houses. And in the end, it's how we experience life that really drives everything. And I think that's kind of what came out of it. And we can go full circle. When he was 16, why they did this, I don't know. He was at a football camp, and it was Father's Day, so Lord knows why they do a football camp on Father's Day. So we weren't together on Father's Day, but he sent me an email with a picture, and it was a silhouette of a father and a son walking on the beach together. And the saying on it said, he didn't tell me how to live. He just lived and allowed me to watch. And it was a different picture than the one that he drew when he was six years old. And that's when I said, all right, I'm doing okay, I'm doing okay. But I think that we're not stuck in the norms of society. We're not stuck in the expectations. And I think when we take the time to sit back and say, what really matters, what really do we care about, what are our values? And then we build to that, and there'll be a lot of people that are going to criticize you on the way. That's what happened with me. But I am happy with all this choices. I'm not going to say they were easy, but I'm happy with the choice I made where I am today.

Interviewer [00:07:49]:

That's beautiful advice for Dads. I feel the same pressure as a woman who's building a business too. But I feel like men especially feel this weight of being the provider, being the person that is whether that's this idea of I'm going to create this success from an ego standpoint or a genuine standpoint of like, no, I just want to provide for my family. I feel like men especially have that kind of mantle on their shoulders. And what advice would you give to men out there so that they can create that work life harmony? Because it's not saying you're a villain if you're having this successful business, we want that, too, but how do you create that harmony?

Mel Abraham [00:08:35]:

So I think that one of the things to realize is, first to get clear whose life you're living. Because I was a CPA, I came out of school going to be a CPA, was going to walk down the path as a CPA. And the expectations were that I was going to become partner. And too often, I think that we submit to the expectations of a degree, the expectations of society, the expectations of parents, siblings, spouses, all of that. And yet Bronnie Ware wrote the book seven Regrets of Dying. She was a hospice nurse, and she said one of the biggest regrets that people had when they were in their last days of their life was the realization that they didn't live their life. I think that's a problem. Now, on the other side of that, I think that there is a societal element and a desire for most men to want to be the provider. I want to be the provider. And there is something that we take away from that that gives us self worth, that says we matter. And I think that it's important, but it doesn't mean that it's a number in a bank account. What does it mean to be a provider? Because there's plenty of people that have lofty bank accounts, but they're not there with their kids, they're not there with their spouse, they're not present in the home. And to me, I remember meeting Bill Marriott one time at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, and we had lunch, and he told me, this is Bill Marriott. And he says, unless I'm traveling for business, I'm home every day at 05:00 p.m. So the family can have dinner together. And I think that the thought that to be successful, you have to forsake the other things. I think it's a challenge being in business. There's the bottom half of the business, the below the line stuff, which is the mechanics of business. It's the process of business, it's the methodologies, all that stuff. And most men are really good at getting that stuff down, but that's not where the value is. It's above the line, and above the line is where your legacy is, where your values are. I think that the first thing is to get clear in your own mind, in your own heart, what really, really matters. What does life feel like? Not just what do you want it to be like, what does it feel like, how you want to experience it. And when we understand what that is and we're clear on it, then the second thing is, especially in your relationship as you have a conversation, one of the first things I tell people when we talk about money is I said I want you to go home and have a conversation with your spouse to make sure that you're on a journey together. That one spouse isn't doing money and doing success and the other spouse is doing house and kids or vice versa. You're creating a life together. And that requires communication and that requires people having conversation around it. And a lot of people say, well, money, and money is one of the biggest causes of divorce, second to infidelity. So it's a problem. But the reason it's a problem is because we're having money conversations in the way of you need to provide or you spent too much. So they're money conversations born out of judgment versus money conversations born out of a vision for your life. And so what I want couples to do is say, let's look at our life. What do we want? And let that vision inform the decisions that we make business wise, money wise, life wise, because we're filling and trying to move towards a vision. Whether we get there, at least we know we're on the road to it. And I think that's the first thing, because harmony comes from intent. Intent comes from clarity. Clarity will come from action. A lot of people think, I'll get clarity. I'm just going to contemplate. I'm going to sit here and think about it. No, clarity isn't from contemplation. Clarity comes from action. You take an action, you get a reaction, you sit back, say, I don't like that I'm going to do it differently, or I like that I'm going to do more of that. And I think now all of a sudden things become clear, the things you don't want, the things you do want. But you're in movement and you're moving in an intentional direction.

Interviewer [00:13:16]:

Yeah, I feel like anytime we're doing it in reverse, that's when things break down. So people are living and they're reacting. Something happens and then they react to it instead of creating what they want. And so what does that look like? You talk about, okay, take action to gain clarity. What are some action steps that people can do to even gain clarity on that vision of what they want to create?

Mel Abraham [00:13:37]:

So first thing I think we ought to do is we actually should be thinking in decades because when we think short term, we start making decisions that are more emotionally based, based on what's happening in the moment. And yet if we think in the term of decades, we now have a longer term vision and we can ask ourselves, the choice I'm trying to make today, is it going to move me closer to what I want in a decade? And if it isn't, we know it's probably not the right choice. So that's the first thing, is that I think we expand the vision of our thinking to a longer term vision to do that. The second I really think is for us to start asking ourselves what's really important to us. List it out, to literally journal it, to detail it out in a way that you get really clear, not with what's important to everyone around you, but what's important to you. That if you each night accomplish these things or each night you live true to these things, you could go to sleep in peace. Because when we have those types of things in place now, we can start to say, okay, if I want to make $100,000, great. What's the first step to do that? How do we do that without forsaking the values and the things that we already put in place? Otherwise, what ends up happening is we compromise our values and we wonder why when we get to a destination or we get to what we think is the result, we're not happy, or we see marriages collapse, or we see health erode. It's because we didn't operate in the level of values and standards that we wanted to set ourselves because we weren't clear. And so now we put a plan in place. So get clear, know where you're going. Now we can start to craft things down. The way we do it is I say ten years. Bring it back to five years. Where do I need to be in five years to hit that ten years? Where do I need to be in one year to hit the five years? I break it down to 90 days from there and say, all right, so now that one year is broken down into 490 day sprints. And now I'd look at 190 day sprint at a time, say, if I hit this, if I think about life as a relay race, the first leg of the race is that 1st 90 days. So what are the three projects I need to do in these 90 days? Financially, relationally, health wise, to get me to that point? Now I'll put the next projects in place for the next 90 days and we build backwards. We reverse engineer from the ten year plan to the 90 day plan, which brings it down to action steps. That's how I do all the planning with my clients and myself.

Interviewer [00:16:34]:

I love that breakdown and I even think about what that can look like in practice, because I feel like some of the most clarity that I've ever gotten is when I've gone on solo trips and listened to no one there's. No even with family not connecting on my phone, this turns into a podcast episode because I always want to talk during I'm just nodding silently. But yeah, I love that so much either. Just taking that time to listen to yourself and what it is that you really want as someone who got married really young, had kids really young, I didn't really build that muscle up. So now as I'm in my early 30s, I'm like, oh, who is Brienne? What does she want? So love that.

Mel Abraham [00:17:17]:

The other thing to think about is that it's okay to change because life changes. And that's why I don't really sit back and say, well, plan for 40 years because look, I'm here. I find myself as a single full time dad and then stephanie comes into my life, change things. Then cancer comes in my life, change things. Then my grandkids come into my life, change things. So we need to be okay with saying, hey, that fit for them. That was the season. It's a new season and I'm okay.

Interviewer [00:17:51]:

Yeah, but you're gaining skills all along the way.

Mel Abraham [00:17:53]:

Oh, yeah.

Interviewer [00:17:53]:

So I love that. And you have a focus because we're not going to get where we want to go by aimlessly. Just like we don't want spaghetti on wall type stuff.

Mel Abraham [00:18:02]:

We don't want to live life by coincidence.

Interviewer [00:18:05]:

Yeah, right. So I would love to bring it back to spouses talking about money. What are some actionable things that they can do? Because I know for us, this is something we got to get better about doing again. But money dates and actually setting aside time to be like, hey, you know what? We're going to make this even want to make it romantic? Make it romantic. Open a bottle of wine, make it fun. Like, go out of the house and be in a different environment. What are some tips that you have for spouses to come together and talk about money?

Mel Abraham [00:18:32]:

So we always want to anchor to the vision. So what do we want for our life? What do we want for our family? What does that look like in ten years, five years? One year? So now we can now have a different conversation because the tendency is to sit back and look at, we're going to have a money date. So they pull out the credit card statements, the checking statements, and they look at it and they go, you spent $300 on a fishing rod. What was that for? Well, it's never going to go well. Or you spent $200 on your hair. Are you kidding me? It's just not going to go well. But when we take a top down approach and we start to say, okay, we've agreed we want this vision, so what do we need to do together to support that vision? Because now we're making those choices. Now there'll be hard choices. Sometimes we got to cut things. Does this make sense anymore? But it has to be not on the person, because when we personalize it, this is when we start to have the problems. And I have a client, Karina Kampora, that she sent me a note because her and her husband hadn't really had money conversations. And I said, just start talking, okay? And they were both very successful and they have a great marriage, but she sent me this note saying, I had no idea we were rooting for each other from the sidelines. But now we're on the field together and we're going to play the game together because we know where we're going. And she says, in fact, we just booked another honeymoon after 20 years together. And I think that when you start to look at it from that perspective, it starts to help the idea. Look, money is an emotional topic. It's a topic we've been told we're not supposed to talk about. But money is totally useless unless it allows us to live the life we want to live. So without choosing, without defining the life that we want, all the money in the world doesn't give it to us. So what ends up happening is that let's define the life we want, and let's figure out what the price tag is on it, and let's figure out how to make it. And now we as a team work together. My wife's amazing at what she does. She is successful in an executive. She don't need me. I'll tell you, I got the better end of that deal. But we look at it and say, how are we doing this together? How many trips do we want to take a year? What does that look like? And we plan the experiences that we want to experience in doing that. So I think that as a couple, when you start to look at it from what do we want to feel? What do we want to experience first? And then say, okay, how does the money, how does the finances come into play to help us do that? Now there's something let's just talk about men versus women. Men want to provide, okay? In general sense, they want to feel like they're needed. They want to feel like they matter, and they want to feel like they're providing on the other side of it. And I'm not a woman, so I'm speaking from what I know. But women want safety. They want certainty. They want respect. They want to feel cared for. And when we understand that, then we can have a conversation that can feed those elements of a relationship. Because I also understand that when someone says that when a husband comes home and says, I'm quitting my job and I'm going into business, well, the uncertainty factor for the wife goes way up, and she goes, wait a second. How are we going to survive? We got the kids. We got the house. All right? So instead, I say you come up with a plan and you get on the same page and have the conversation. I think that we need to understand that there are two different people in a relationship, and the roles could be reversed by the same token. But we need to understand what are the needs of our partner? Do they need certainty? Do they need safety? Do they want an adrenaline rush? I mean, what is it they need? And how can we use our finances to provide that? Because if we are actualizing the vision for our life through money decisions that we're making now, it makes it easier to have conversations around the money. But too often, we're just looking at a checking account, which is just judgment, and judgment never works in a relationship.

Mel Abraham [00:23:20]:

Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneurship. With me. Your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to Melabraham.com group, and I'll see you there.