186. How Money Stress Is Affecting Your Kids More Than You Think

Does money stress make it harder to parent with patience, consistency, and intention? In this episode, Laura talks about the hidden connection between financial stress and parenting, and why getting your money life calmer is one of the best things you can do for your kids. If you’ve ever felt reactive, overwhelmed, or too mentally drained to teach your children responsibility, gratitude, delayed gratification, or wise money habits, this conversation is for you.

Laura shares how money anxiety affects your emotional bandwidth, why kids learn more from your patterns than your lectures, and how a simple financial plan can create more peace in your home. She also breaks down practical ways to start teaching kids about money right now—even if your finances are not perfect yet.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How money stress impacts parenting, patience, and emotional regulation
• Why kids are shaped more by your money habits than your money talks
• How financial calm creates space for intentional family leadership
• 3 simple ways to teach kids about money starting today
• Why earning, waiting, saving, and choosing are essential life skills for children

If you want to raise money-wise kids without feeling like a hypocrite or a hot mess, this episode will encourage you and give you a practical starting point.

If you want help creating a calmer money plan for your family, schedule a free clarity call and take your next step toward more peace, margin, and intentional parenting.

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Transcript

Laura 0:00

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to teach calmly When you feel stressed internally, it's hard to talk to your kids about patients' responsibility and wise choices when you are mentally doing math in the background, worrying about your bills, or wondering if you can afford groceries, sports, or summer activities. Today I wanna talk to you about why getting your. Own money. Life calmer. It's not selfish. It's one of the best things you can do for your kids. You are listening to the Money and Legacy Podcast with Laura Sexton. I'm helping families pay off debt, grow wealth, and build a legacy without sacrificing what matters most. This is where money feels easy. Hey, accelerators, we are gonna talk about a few things today, but the main. Plot point here is that money stress is going to steal the emotional bandwidth that is needed for consistent training of your children. We are going to talk about many different things, but I want you to come along this journey with me as you hear from me that I'm in the thick of this with you. I have a very strong desire to train my children well. I wanna teach them responsibility and gratitude and work ethic and generosity and self-control. I'm trying to teach them to be good humans, but when money is chaotic, we can often stick in survival mode. And survival mode makes it hard to parent with intention'cause we're just trying to make it through the day. I heard this recently and it hit me really, really hard. Sometimes as parents, we choose to numb out. We put some lidocaine over our money stress, and that could be, over striving, that could be burying our head in the sand and pretending like it's not there. That could be for some of us having a glass of wine at the end of the night for some of us, when we have money worries, we spend more money. Yes. That's a thing. That's actually how some people handle their money. Stress. They just go overboard. I used to be one of those people ask me how I know. I heard on a podcast, the Dr. John Delony show, he was talking with a guest and I can't, for the life of me remember his name, I'm. Kicking myself now for not getting that before I got on this podcast here. But he was saying that sometimes we numb out, we put some lidocaine on the situation. Lidocaine is the chemical they would put if they're numbing your teeth before doing or an extraction. Said, sometimes we're putting lidocaine on a problem, but that doesn't mean there's not still damage being done. If they're going to remove a tooth, they put lidocaine in your gums and the tooth is still removed, there's still a giant hole in your gum. So even though we don't feel the pain of the stress of our money, the feeling of stress, our body still is experiencing the drama. And therefore we continue to make decisions and have feelings that are based on the stress, even though we have numbed out and are not paying attention to that stress. Does that make sense to you? This was mind blowing to me. I was like, oh, so you're telling me that on those days where I put my head in the sand and I pretend not to notice, and yet I still make decisions that. Would be indicative of me feeling like there's money trouble. I'm making those decisions because my body's actually feeling the stress of the money trouble, and I'm just pretending like I don't feel it. Yeah, that's how that works. Crazy, right? So when you're worried about money, you are more reactive as a parent. Because that low level stress and anxiety are ringing alarm bells in the background and you just aren't paying attention. So you becoming more reactive. You have a shorter fuse. Was explaining to my daughter this last week what a fuse was and I was like, we have not watched enough Wiley Coyote. I. Cartoons in his house because she doesn't know what a fuse is. And I was like, when the fuse is really short, you're close to the explosion. But when the fuse is really long, the explosion's really long off. When you have money, stress, whether you're paying attention to it or not, you are more reactive because you closer to that dynamite. When you tell your child yes, when you really wanna say no, but you're tired. Yes, you're tired and you don't wanna go home and cook. So you just say yes to going through the drive through. That's really not where you wanna be.'cause then what you've just done is you've added more pain later to deal with being tired now. You may be in a situation where you were overwhelmed with money and you say no with stress or shame. Instead of leading calmly, you may avoid money conversations because they feel too loaded, and so you just sweep it under the rug and you worry about it later. You delay teaching your children because you feel like a hypocrite, so you allow them to grow up not knowing the things that you wish you had known at their age. You do not have to be perfect to train your children. In fact, they may learn from you better if you share with them where your mistakes came from, but I will tell you it is much easier to train them when you are not constantly in a financial panic. Money. Stress does not just affect your spreadsheets, it affects the tone and voice and patience and consistency and follow through that you show to your children. So what are the kids actually learning from us? Well, they are learning far more from our patterns than they are from our speeches. I can give a good speech. I can talk to my children till my face turns blue, but they aren't hearing any of that. Instead, they're watching. They're watching how we handle our wants, how we handle delays, how we handle disappointments, how we talk about money, how we respond to pressure. They're watching whether we spend impulsively or intentionally. They watch whether we give, whether we save, whether we plan, whether we communicate with our spouse. Our kids are being trained by our habits long before they will ever be trained by our lessons. And that is a very difficult thing for this mama who likes to give a lesson. I love being able to tell you, but knowing they're playing fall leader, knowing that they are being trained by watching how we react when we're tired, watching how we react when we're stressed. If every single stress will lead to impulse spending, they're gonna notice if every money conversation becomes tense, they notice. And if parents work together, they make a plan, they stay calm, they're gonna notice that too. So the goal is not just to teach kids about money, the goal is to become the kind of household or wise money. Behavior is normal. I. Now I, I will tell you, if you're coming to this and you're like, okay, I, I hear you, Laura, but I'm so stressed out. I don't even know where to start. I will tell you that a simple plan creates margin for meaningful training. If you're like, great Laura. A simple plan. Got it. Do you have any idea what I'm dealing with? I've got bank notes and I've got car notes, and I've got parents that I owe money to and we're trying to figure out school tuition and we don't know what we're gonna do. And you know, housing prices are just going up and we feel like we're never gonna be able to. I understand. I understand. And I feel that with you. Trust me, I do. If you don't even know where to get started, I want you to scroll down in the show notes to where it says, schedule a free call and jump on a free call with me, and I'll help you create a plan. It's a chance for me to figure out what the best next step is for you, and I promise that when we get done with that call, you will have a clear next step towards creating meaningful margin in your life so that you can create meaningful training with your children. When money is calmer, parents can be more thoughtful with how they respond, right? We're no longer reacting, we are responding. Somebody said that to me one time and I was like, what's the difference between reacting and responding? Reactive is often explosive. A response is going to be calm. We're gonna be able to use everyday moments as teaching moments. I love doing that. My mother used to do that with me with television shows She'd just mute it. And so we were missing part of the show while she was teaching me a lesson. Now at least I can pause it so you don't miss anything. Getting the chance to use those things that your kids love to teach good money lessons is so helpful. When money is calm and parents are calm, we can let kids wait for things instead of instantly rescuing them. We can let kids wait for things instead of instantly buying it for them, and we can let kids wait for things instead of instantly coming in and being a snowplow parent and removing all of the obstacles. I've heard it said this way. When you remove obstacles from your children, what you're doing is you're taking them to the gym, putting them under a squat rack, and then removing all of the weight and holding up the bar as they do their workout. When you do that, you're not helping them. You're actually harming them, and you're letting their muscles weaken instead of strengthen your kids need some problems. And you want them to have better than what you have right now. So bring them along as you learn and show them what it looks like to change and teach them what it looks like to start from a position of strength and move forward.'cause that's what you're doing for them. I can't tell you the number of. Parents that come to me and they're like, I just want my kids to have better than I have. So I give them this and I give them this and I give them this. And I said, you are just teaching them how to have no impulse control. Every time you put something on a credit card for your children, you are teaching them entitlement and you're creating bratty children. I'm sorry. And the only reason I'm sorry is because that's really hard to hear, and if that hurt your feelings, I'm sorry that your feelings were hurt, but somebody needed to say it. I don't want you to feel like you're rescuing your children because if you do it too much, if you never let them fail while they're under your roof, they will go out and fail in the real world. And then because you spent so much time putting yourself in a precarious situation so you could give so much to them, they're now in a precarious situation. And guess what? You can't help. I feel like somebody is listening to me today and they're really upset with me, and I'm sorry. I would love for you to. When we look at this simple plan, and we're creating more margin in our life for meaningful trainings, I want you to realize that you can't just teach them how to spend their money and save their money. You also need to teach'em how to earn money. They need to learn the value of earning money. And I will have a book coming out called Rosie Ernst herself, and it teaches them all about that. And you can read them the picture book if you'd like, you can get on the wait list for that@accelerateyourlegacy.com slash rosie. Teach the kids to practice generosity on purpose. This is something that you are going to be able to do when you have more margin in your life. See, when we have created, we've set a simple plan and we've created margin, which allows you. To meaningfully train them on generosity. There's nothing more beautiful than generous people. No one wants to work with stingy people. Everyone wants to work with a generous person, not just generous with their money, but generous with their time, generous with their words, generous with their spirit. It will get you so far. If you've ever read the book, how to Win Friends and Influence People, generosity on so many different levels, generosity is the key. I want you to connect money to your family values, and I don't mean that having money is a family value. I mean, what are your family values and how does money help with those? Money touches everything. Money is going to touch your family values. Have conversations about goals and trade-offs in stewardship. When your money has a plan, your parenting gets more intentional. So you need to have a goal, not just for yourself, not just for you and your spouse, but for the whole family and bring the kids along. There are trade-offs. You can't have everything. Teach that to your children. Let them come along on the ride, sit down with them and go, okay, we're looking at these two things. Which of these do you think most aligns with what you say you want most? And stewardship. How can we steward what we have so that we're not just keeping it for ourselves, but making it so it goes out in the world and does the best? That it can do does the most good. Okay. Here are three simple ways to start training your kids right now. I wanna keep this very practical and very encouraging. I know I got a little heavy, so I'm just trying to lighten the mood here. Okay. Narrate your decisions to your children. Let your kids hear your simple explanations. We're not buying that today because that's not on the budget. Oh, we're not gonna spend that right now because we're saving for something much bigger. Oh, we chose this because it fits our values. These are really simple explanations. We're moving in a few short months, and so when I get asked, well, why can't I do ballet class this year? All of our money is going towards the move that's coming up. It's imminent. And so that's where our focus is right now. She's able to go play with all of her friends and do all of her play dates and she's not wanting for anything. But when she comes to me and she's like, but I wanna do ballet. Okay, I know that you do, and when we move and we get into a new area, we'll find you a new ballet studio. But for right now, we're choosing to spend our money on something else. It's very difficult when you're a child to hear the word no. We're explaining to them why it's not no, just because it's No, because we have chosen to put our money towards this new house. No, because we're choosing to spend money on movers instead of having to do it all ourselves. Trust me, now that I'm near 40, having movers is a value that I have. The second simple way to start training your kids right now is to let them earn money. Teach them that money comes from work, from effort and from contribution. Keep it age appropriate, but put'em on a commission. They don't need an allowance. They are allowed to live here. Put them on an age appropriate commission structure. Let them do small jobs. Again, they don't have to be huge jobs. And they don't have to be perfectly done jobs either, but let's keep this age appropriate, give them small things they can do in ways that they can contribute to the household. Family contribution is key, but there are also family contribution. Things that they can do that are earning opportunities. So with my kids, they have certain chores that they have to do every day, laundry, dishes, that kind of thing. Trash is not every day, but it's often. But they don't get paid for cleaning up their own messes. So why do we have to make our bed every day? Because you're part of the family and you're part of the culture that says we want a clean room. We like clean, tidy spaces because it makes it easy for us to maneuver and play. It makes it easier for our brains to stay calm. That's why we do those things. And then the third lesson to give to your children. Something you can do right now is practice how to wait, save and choose. Teach them delayed gratification in real life. Save for a toy, split money into spend saving gift jars. Let them make small decisions and learn from them. You do not have to complicate everything. You don't have to turn everything into, you make this decision. You have to learn from this. You have to fail here in my house. Not everything has to be that. You don't need a complicated system to raise money-wise kids, but you do need to be consistent. You need to have conversations, and you need to remain calm. If you have felt too stressed to teach your kids about money the way that you want to, let me encourage you that it's not too late. You don't need a perfect pass to build a better future, and as money gets healthier, your home gets calmer, and that gives you more space to train your kids with wisdom, confidence, and peace. If you want help getting your money calmer so that you can lead your family with more confidence, I want you to book a clarity call with me where we will give you clarity on what your best next step is. I promise you. You do not want to miss out on this because you are afraid to click a button and schedule a call. I have times available in the month of March, and if you're listening to this in the future, I'm certain that I'll have time to speak with you then please do not wait. The longer you wait, the longer you stay stressed and the more your kids feel it. I would absolutely love to have a conversation with you, so jump on that clarity call. But remember. Simple things you can do. Narrate your decisions, let your kids earn, and then practice. Wait, save, and choose. That's it for this week. Accelerators go out and make a difference.