How to Talk to Your Parents About Money, with Behavioral Economist Etinosa Agbonlahor

24:14You want to give them a chance to process, work through it and kind of be at a place of, okay, before you touch anything, just kind of have a chance to sit in the grief and then we can talk about and work through things. I actually have an example in the book of a mom who was grieving her husband and just wasn't in a place to discuss finances for a couple of months until they were at a place of like, okay, now I'm open. Now let's talk about, can you help me with this bill? Can you help me? Like, let's talk about the balancing checkbooks or however that plays out. But in terms of when people stonewall and say, I'm not ready to have that conversation or brush it off, it's okay to step back and bring it back up at a different time.

24:56You do want to be persistent. You do definitely want to bring it back up again so they understand, like, we are going to have this conversation. It might not be right now. And also exploring different tactics and different openings, right? In general, that vulnerable. I've been thinking about my finances and how things are going. I'm worried about. or how are you feeling about your finances? How do you think everything, how prepared do you feel now that we're like in this position with this partner passing away? Do you need any help? Can we help you with anything financially? Are things okay? And it might even just be that offer of help to start with, right?

25:32Do you need anything? Do you need any help with anything financially? And that allows them to then say, actually, yes, he handled all the bills. I have no idea what's going on. Or he said, if anything happened, I should go talk to Gary, the financial advisor And so I have a meeting with Gary on Friday and we'll know where things are. But starting with that offer of help might be a good way to start by approaching that or getting around the stonewalling. What do you do if you bring it back up over and over, but they just continue to stonewall? I once gave the example of I live in a neighborhood that has a lot of dogs, but I don't have dogs, so I don't know how it works.

26:06But sometimes I see someone like trying to take the dog on a walk and the dog just sits on a pavement. They have no intention of moving at all. And what does the person do? They stand there until the dog is ready to move. They try with a leash and they jack and eventually they're like, all right, when you're ready, I'm ready. That's eventually what happens. You can't force people to have conversations they don't want to have. That's the truth. And so this book only works to the extent that your parent is open and cooperative and you're able to get around the stonewall and unable to have vulnerability and empathy and care for each other enough to get to a good financial discussion or financial plan together.

26:38where a parent is absolutely not willing to discuss that, then who do they want to talk to? Who do they trust? Do they have a best friend who they trust? Do they have a spiritual leader who they trust? Do they have, is there anybody else in their community who they look up to and who they would be willing to have a conversation with? Because then you might have to go to that person and say, they're not going to talk to me about the money. I'm worried about blah, blah, blah. Could you take them out for lunch and just ask a couple of questions? I have a mentor who a while ago, one of their children was going through something and they were teenagers.

27:10So my mentor wasn't quite sure how to like, they just don't talk to her. And so she invited a psychologist that this teenager really liked. They just got along as like buddies. She invited a psychologist to dinner and said, I would like to know this, this, and this. If you could find a way to bring it up during the conversation, I just want to know what's going on. And so the psychologist came as a friend of the family. They had dinner together and just casually, oh, what do you think about this? How would you, So, you know, it just brought up the bits and pieces that my friend was able to understand.

27:37Ah, okay. Nothing to worry about. It's okay. Right. So sometimes it might not be you who has a conversation. If your parent absolutely refuses to speak to you about it, you might have to get somebody else who they like, who they trust, who they respect to have that conversation. Right. I can imagine that for many parents, it would be awkward to talk to their children, their adult children about money because to an extent they view their adult children as children children. Exactly. Like, it's like I told you how to brush your teeth and put your shoes on. What are you talking about? My money. But it's also why you want to start those conversations early.

28:12And, you know, that position of let them teach you what they're doing with their money, because then it gives you insight into how they manage it. Right. And over time, that kind of balance of like, oh, this is what I'm thinking about doing. What did you do? Oh, I'm investing in this property. What did you buy? You know, over and over and over. eventually you build trust at the point of them being like yeah this is how we're thinking about retirement this is what we have kind of saved up this is how we're like it might not be actual numbers it might just be like vaguely like yeah we're gonna buy this house we're thinking we might do half the time here half the time there or we've been handed by student loans for the last 60 years and we're not quite sure what we're going to do about it but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it and then that might be like okay let's have a real conversation and figure it out but over time, slowly is how the conversations develop.

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31:49We've touched on debt and retirement planning. Some of the questions that you do want to ask go beyond the obvious. So with retirement, for example, there's sort of the obvious, all right, have you saved enough for retirement? But then beyond that, going a little bit deeper into it, there are some more philosophical questions around, look, are you prioritizing security or are you prioritizing legacy or are you prioritizing adventure? You know, like kind of getting a sense of their values as well. Can you talk about that? Absolutely. So with the retirement conversation, the earlier conversations are really about what is the life you want to leave in retirement?

32:27Is it more adventure? Do you want to travel all over Europe? Is it more hunker down, leave a legacy? Is it more this guy wrote this book, Die With Zero, I believe it was. Is it more of a direct zero, you know, let's understand what is the life that you want to live in retirement. Okay. Where are you now with relation to that, right? What is the gap between what you want to do a couple of years from now and where you are? If it's, oh yeah, we're good. Well, we bought the house, we bought, you know, everything was secure. We're okay with that. Then it's a conversation of, okay, let's keep going.

32:59Let's keep checking in. And, you know, if you need my help with anything, I can lean in, happy to like help out. Or as you get closer to retirement, there might be decisions around things like with your investments, you know, distributions, things like that. We can have those conversations or you can tell me what you're learning and teach me about it as well. If it's on the other side of just want to get into retirement and hopefully social security can't like help me not live on cat food, then let's talk about that and let's figure out, okay, maybe you need to work a little bit longer. Maybe it's, can we help you out for a while, so you defer taking Social Security for as long as you can before, so it grows a little bit more.

33:37But the depth of conversations around retirement, it starts with what is the vision? What do they want to do in retirement? What do they envision it being like? What is the difference between what they want and where they are right now? The next level then is, can we bridge that gap if there is a gap? Or if you've crossed the gap, you're okay, great. What are the things that you're going to need my help with or for as you get to that place, right? Like let's keep talking. Or sometimes you just bring it. Maybe you feel like they're okay. Every now and then you bring the conversation up and you just do a bit of a brief check-in.

34:10But those kind of clear themes around what do you want, where are you now, what do we need to do to like bridge that gap if there is a gap can help you understand the depth and the breadth of the conversation around the retirement planning. Another element of having effective financial conversations with parents is understanding at a more broad level, the parents' framework, their philosophy on money, the lens through which they view this. Can you talk about that? So in the same way, before you have those conversations, you want to be aware of the lens through which you view money, your biases, your beliefs, etc.

34:49it's also important to understand how your parent also thinks about and what their approach to money is right and also being aware that that can change over time right so when they were raising you their priorities might have been to scrimp and save and so they had that kind of focus because the season of life that they were in required it right it's like if we need to take care of you guys we need to make sure we hit all the marks and we have to be careful with the money around that maybe in a different season of life, they've done all the things they wanted to do. And so they're in a place of, I'm investing more in the grandchildren's education.

35:25I'm spending money in ways that may not resonate or that you may not recognize from when I was raising you, but those are decisions I'm making now. So being aware that those scripts and those beliefs can also change over time in the conversations around money, it's also what you're also trying to do is understand what is the framework, right? I understand that, you know, the fishbowl analogy, right? What is water? I understand the water I'm swimming in. What is the water that they're swimming in now? Right. I want to understand that because then we're not talking at cross purposes. I'm not talking as if you should be saving and, you know, scrimping and making sure that all your investments, you're maximizing it.

36:00Whereas they're more in the space of, I did all of that and now I'm going to spend it all. So it allows us to just understand and have empathy for the lens to which one is viewing the money at least. And so fundamentally, this goes back to money scripts. right? It's kind of the recognizing what money scripts your parents hold. What money script they hold, what phase of life they're in, what they want to do and how they're viewing the money. It's really interesting. Sometimes the money scripts don't necessarily change. One of my parents, for example, it has always been, I would rather fly economy even if I could fly first class forever.

36:37I'd rather fly economy and just like, because I'm used to that. That's just BAU, like business as usual. That's almost a habit, right? It's less of a, I believe that by flying in Calamia, I can save a few hundred more dollars that maybe my estate and my legacy plan doesn't need. But it's just a habit. That's what I do. I fly the cheapest way possible. And so the conversations we have with that parent is like, hey, did you know that comfort is a real thing? And it's okay for you to try and experience that when you fly long distance. We're not saying doing it every time, but every now and then, like, you know, live a little, like breathe.

37:07And so going back to the idea of everything at the end of the day is, is manuscripts, is our habits, it's also having these conversations allows us to start to open our parents' manuscripts a bit, right? While we're learning them and we're like understanding where they're coming from, what is a habit, what's a belief, what is a manuscript, it also allows us to put things in front of them they may not have thought of. Like, you could try this, you could do that. Have you thought about a walk-in group? Oh, maybe you're at the place where you actually do need a financial advisor. Maybe now is the time to start to think about estate planning.

37:38Maybe you should have some of those properties in trust, right? In the same way, they're also allowed to look at our lives and say, I feel like you should have my insurance for the kind of life you're living. So it's also that kind of give and take. And that comes from that base belief of, or that base understanding of where you're now, what is the way of you in the world when it comes to your money and vice versa. What are some good questions that you can ask your parents to prompt a better understanding of their money scripts and their place in life? what makes you feel good now like in terms of spending money what are you saving for what are you saving for what makes you feel good now what are some lessons that you've learned about money throughout your life and have they changed what does success look like for if you could live not even success what does a good life look like to you now moving forward what are the things you still want to experience i'm not asking like what is your manuscript what are your values We express those in the things that we buy.

38:35We express those in the things that we forego buy. We express those in the things we invest in. Our financial decisions reveal our values and our beliefs, right? And so having conversations around, what are you spending? What are you saving? What do you still want to do? Allows you to start to understand, okay, they're in a place now where the script is, they're moving slowly away from that. Everything is abundance, abundance, abundance script, and I can just do whatever. And it looks like they're moving more towards, we're thinking about you guys and how do we support you guys financially. And so we're thinking about legacy and that's impacting our financial decisions, et cetera.

39:09So just bringing it back to what are you saving and what are you spending and what are you looking for to those financial decisions, asking questions with curiosity, not condemnation, allows you to start to understand what are the beliefs, what's sitting behind those financial decisions. Yeah. What does financial success mean to you? What's your definition, your personal definition of financial success? Moving off of the topic of money scripts, so we've talked about asking them about their debts, asking them about their retirement planning, and also more broadly, getting an understanding of their money scripts.

39:45All of those topics that we've covered so far have been fairly general. What about more specific conversations around long-term care, long-term planning? advanced health directives. I mean, these are things people really don't, some people really don't want to talk about. How do we approach and what questions should we be asking? When it comes to down the line, what do you want? Do you want to live at home and have like a nurse who's with you if you need a nurse? Do you feel like you might want to be in like a retirement community with other people who are your age? Do you want to downsize? Do you want to listen to your episode where you're recommending somebody live in Ecuador?

40:29Do you want to do your arbitrage and live in a different country? If you're from a different country, do you want to go back home? It's the first broad question of what do you want? What do you envision in your latter days? Do you want to be at home? Do you want to be somewhere else? What's your plan? And the reasons, one of the reasons you want to have these conversations early enough is that you can actually work towards a plan versus if you're asking it when the plan is, whatever we talk about we have to implement in a year. Maybe that's not the right time. But if you're at that place, it's also, okay, I know what you would like to do.

41:02What can we afford to do? What is reasonable? Maybe we actually can't afford to have a full-time nurse in the house with you unless we downsized and took some of that money and then used it to pay a nurse. Maybe there's trade-offs we're making, but we start with what do they actually want to do? Next level around the POA, advanced directives, all of those things, those come with the estate planning conversation. Want to highlight that not everybody's ready for that conversation. I still have a parent who absolutely refuses to deal with it. And I have written a book on it that they've read. So when they are ready to have that conversation, and it might not be, you know, I know the book is how to talk to your parents about money, but sometimes it could be how to have another expert talk to your parents about money.

41:47and so it could be your friend marlene has a great financial advisor or has a great estate planning lawyer who she was raving about maybe you guys can grab coffee and you can just have a chat with that lawyer and the lawyer the estate planning lawyer can walk them through okay this is why you need a poa this is why you need an advance directive this is why you need this part and that part this is how everything comes together and makes sense you don't have to be the expert in the room all the time and so that allows you to then go okay it's important that you have an estate plan. Maybe you don't do everything at once.

42:18Maybe you do the power of attorney to start with, because health-wise, we just want to make sure that everything is okay. I can sign for you. I can help you make the decisions that you would want to make if you were not able to. So maybe we start with, I have a very limited power of attorney to help you execute certain things. And then we kind of go from there. With the very specific niche kind of conversations, it's either, you know, use the book. We talk through like all of the different elements and angles you might want to talk or think through or have an expert an estate planning lawyer somebody else who can sit down with them and go step by step by step by step this is how you think about it this is why it makes sense this is how everything fits together I remember when I was doing my estate plan and I will say I have a friend who's a lawyer and she's very successful high powered all the good things has run her own law firm for decades and she says the day you turn 18 you should have a will, you should have everything.

43:13As soon as you become an adult, you absolutely need to have that. And if you don't have that, the government will make one for you. So it is very important that every human being listening to this, if you can go get all of that stuff taken care of, all of that to say, where you don't know what it is that you should be talking to your parents about with regards to things like estate planning, wills, power of attorneys, you can talk to an actual attorney. You can talk to somebody who's qualified to do this and it can help you out with that as well. There's the estate planning piece and then there's the end of life care piece.

43:42And you touched on this a little bit earlier because there's the option of at-home healthcare, there's also assisted living, and then there's also nursing homes and those are all different. But I think a lot of people don't necessarily even know like, okay, what is the difference between assisted living versus a nursing home? And what are the costs for all of this? And how do we even start to wrap our heads around the just enormous costs that are associated with this. In addition to the difficulty of even broaching that conversation with your parents, there's also, let's say in the best case scenario, your parents are eager and open and happy to talk about it.

44:20There's also the very real dilemma of, this is all really expensive. How do we solve this? research start with the and they're really great websites out there there's humble dollar it's um jennifer clements and it's a community of adults who are older or aging talking about what they're experiencing they talk about things like we chose assisted living because over time it transitions into as we get older and we need more and more help that help is available to us as we kind of get older in the system, right? So we might start out with, we have a nurse who stops by once a week, three, four, five, six, seven years later, it's transitioned into, we have somebody who's around the house full-time, right?

45:07And it's like an assisted living program. People talk about what is the reality of what they're experiencing. Or we've chosen to downsize. And so this is what it looks like for us to sell a big house that we raise a lot of children in. And now we're in a smaller community, it's 55 plus. And so here's what we experienced with the HOA. Here's what they actually talk about. the granularities, the actual day-to-day. So it's not theoretical. It's people who are your parents' age talking about what they're experiencing day-to-day. And that's the Humboldollar community? The Humboldollar community. Jennifer Clements runs it, but it's fantastic.

45:37And it's a great place to go and just kind of poke around. Also ask questions because it would be answered, presumably by people who are in the same stage of life as your parents. Outside of websites like that, even just going, just typing in the basic question of, My parents is this age. If we don't have a lot of money, what are our options? What are the options that are available to us in terms of helping them retire or live comfortably? What are the insurance options? Will Medicaid cover some of it? Just understanding what are the options that are available to us. There's a lot of great websites out there that can help you do that.

46:13And just starting with that basic, the searching of it. You talked earlier about estate planning attorneys and how important they are as part of this. Are there other experts who can help with this component of it? Outside of financial advisors, I can only think about people like maybe in the insurance industry who can help or actually going directly to the nursing homes, the assisted living facilities, actually going to the 55 plus, the program directors for the 55 plus communities, and understanding what is the difference between what you offer, what does it look like to live in a 55 plus community, Who is it best for?

46:51What level of health do I need to have? Versus what if it was assisted living? What does that cost? How do the costs change year over year as my health needs get deeper and more complex? I feel like it's a little bit fragmented. There might be professionals who bring all of this together and can put it into one place, but I'm not aware of. Doesn't mean it don't exist. I just don't know. Yeah. But a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor is always a good first step. I will say, I lived in a 55-plus community when I was 19. How? My parents had a house there. They used it as a second home. And so they were rarely there.

47:25And so I just kind of moved there and set up shop. And I was the 19 year old in the 55 plus community. It was great. Everyone just loved you. Yeah, it was so great. I was like everyone's collective grandchild. Oh man, that must have been amazing. Did you just like had dinner prepared for you there? Dinner, breakfast, lunches, everything. Yeah, the neighbors loved me. It was wonderful.

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50:41one thing that strikes me as we've talked about having financial conversations with your parents is that it's clear that this is as you said in the beginning this is not just a conversation this is a series of ongoing conversations should there be some sort of structure or routine around this? Should there be like quarterly check-ins or is it more organic? I think it can be more organic, but it also depends on your family and what their nuances are. Some people, like my Dutch friend, would strongly prefer to have very structured check-ins with her family. It depends on your family, but as long as they're consistent, right?

51:18And it doesn't have to be a formal, we're going to sit down and talk about the money stuff today, more organic, you know, but in the back of your mind, you know, okay, when I see them at Thanksgiving, we're going to have a conversation about finances. Maybe we'll talk about where they are in terms of, and it's also important actually, before you have these conversations, any conversation, just understanding what it is you want to get out of the conversation. Do you want to learn something about what your financial position is? Do you want to understand where they're looking forward to get to in the future?

51:46Or is it just, where are you right now? How's everything going? Do you need my help with anything? Right. So understanding what it is that you specifically would like to get out of the conversation also helps it not be a muddled conversation where nothing really gets accomplished and no one is quite sure what's going on or you know you get the brush off and that's it going back to the routine of it it doesn't have to be like a formal every Tuesday we sit down and talk about it it can be a little bit more organic it could be hey if you don't live in the same state or in the same area as your parents it could be whenever I see them you know if we're together for Thanksgiving, if we're together for Christmas, if we're together over Easter or whatever that looks like, we'll have a brief, a light kind of, how are things going?

52:30It might be that you initiate the first couple of times, you know, just a light sort of check-in, right? My parents are Nigerian, for example. And so in Nigerian culture, we don't have direct conversations. We kind of go around, go around the room to like get to the issue. And so we might go around the issue and like get to a place of like, well, by the way, you're going to do X, Y, Z with this properties. Like, where did you get to with that? Oh, you know, you know, I can ask those questions that I built on because I have knowledge from the last conversations that we had. And so in the same way, as you continue to have those conversations, those routine conversations, it's not always that there's a formal agenda.

53:05You might want to do that if there's something you are both working towards. But if everyone is in a good place and you're not necessarily working towards something specifically, then it could be just that checking of where are you, how are things going? etc. But you're doing that with some sort of cadence, right? It's not a formal set calendarized date, but it is whenever I see them or every so often. Every quarter, I have a brief, just kind of like a light check-in. It doesn't have to feel like an overt thing. It's the same way you have a casual conversation about their health. You're doing the same thing about their finances.

53:37How often should you ask your parents about their health? A lot. All the time. I will So occasionally one of my parents would tell me something that freaks me out. I'm like, what? Why didn't I know you were doing this? Just health-wise, I banged the drum about gyms and walking until they finally were like, all right, if we sign up for a gym, maybe she'll shut up. So we won that battle. But I think when you care about somebody, and we assume that everyone who's listening to this and has been plugged into this for however long we've been talking cares about their parents, which is why they've stayed around and stuck around for the conversation.

54:13But when you care about somebody, you don't need a formal structure to express that care. Right. There's a way of just as I'm checking in with you as we're catching up on what's going on with our lives. I'm like, how are you feeling? They say something on like your ear kind of like, why are you having trouble walking? Why are your knees hurting? Tell me more about that. Right. It's the same way it happens with the money. Oh, you bought a new car. Tell me more. How should you approach? You know, it's one thing to have a conversation with your parents, but when it comes to step parents, particularly step parents that maybe a person only met when they were older, a step parent that you didn't necessarily grow up with from early childhood, should any of these recommendations be modified?

54:58And if so, how? It depends on the depth of the relationship they have with the step parent. If they are very close and they're checking with each other often, and it's almost like the step parent has become like a sort of surrogate parent then you can sort of copy and paste all of these things to it if it's more of uh there's one step removed so the depth of relationship isn't there then maybe the conversation is more with the actual parent and less with the the step parent it depends on what that depth of relationship is and how open they are also to because you're not necessarily you're not their child do they see you as their child right are they open to having that conversation with you because if not then maybe you're not the best person to have the conversation with them about it i think part of all of this is understanding and it's having that self-awareness right of even though i feel like i have opinions about what this person should do am i the right person to brush that with them i might have opinions about what my step-parents should do i might write presence to have that conversation if yes then like i have the scripts and i have the tools with which to have those conversations we have an okayish relationship but maybe they'll be more upon if this was coming from one of their children that they gave birth to.

56:10Maybe I have a conversation with that person instead around, hey, just so you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm having this conversation with my dad. Maybe you want to have it with your mom as well. So just understanding and having that self-awareness of what is your role and what is the depth of relationship will help you make an informed judgment about how to approach conversations with step-parents or other types of relatives or friends. Right. Yeah, because I was thinking that actually as we were talking. For a lot of people, there are people who play a parental role in their life who are not technically parents.

56:42So for example, maybe you were raised by a grandparent or you were raised by an uncle and aunt, or maybe you even have an older brother or sister who is significantly older than you, maybe a sibling who is 10 or 15 years older than you. and so you actually have more of a parent-child relationship with your eldest sibling you know if there's a big age gap between the the kids yeah absolutely and it all goes back to what is the depth of relationship right what is the kind of relationship i have with them would i be open to this kind of conversation maybe i broach it with some of those i statements being vulnerable and see where things go if it's a shutdown immediately then somebody else needs to have this conversation with them right if you're open to it then yes let's have the conversation with that care with that curiosity and let's cooperate on a financial plan that makes sense for them.

57:31Even if their financial plan is, let's get you a financial advisor. Right. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to know more? They can find me at etiosa.com and that's E-T-I-N-O-S-A-A.com. And the book, How to Talk to Your Parents About Money is on Amazon in the print and in the digital form. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I'm a big fan of Team Afford Anything. I think there's a level of excellence that you guys have brought to everything that you've done. And I'm a massive, massive fan of that. As you know, love Sunny.

58:04Love all the work you guys do. Oh, thank you. Thank you. And you are a student in your first rental property. I am. I am. Loved it. And I still have a bunch of properties now. I'm not going to say how many. But I still have the very first one I bought because of the course. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Just chugging along, doing well. Same tenant for all these years. How many years have you had the same tenant? It's been like five years. Can you believe it? It's been almost five years because I think I took the course in 2020. I registered for it in 2019. I took it in 2020, if I'm correct. Yeah, I think we're like in COVID lockdown.

58:35So I sat down and I took the course and bought the property while I was in Australia buying a house in America. It was a crazy experience. But yeah, I still have the house five years later. It's done very well for itself. Wow, that's incredible. I love hearing the success stories like this from our YFRP students. Are you your first rental property students? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And we've done many more since then. So it's been good for us. Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Etiosa. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, your financial scripts are invisible, but they're powerful.

59:15So we all carry these hidden beliefs about money that we're not even aware of, right? And these are called, quote unquote, money scripts. And these money scripts shape every financial decision that we make from how much you save to whether or not you feel guilty about spending. You know, it goes beyond just spending. It goes into retirement planning and the way that you invest. Like these are all shaped by your invisible money scripts. And the problem is we assume that everybody shares those same hidden money scripts. And that creates conflict when we talk to family members who operate under a completely different set of invisible scripts.

59:53And so unlocking these unconscious assumptions, these hidden money scripts, is a big part of being able to have productive conversations with other people, including your parents, about money. Confirmation bias. Assume that everybody else thinks like us. And so when we go out into the world, we're looking for confirmation around our beliefs. Everybody must believe saving is the right thing to do. Of course, how could you not save, right? How could you not be in the fire movement? That's the only way to do it. And so because we have some of these subconscious scripts, when we sit down to have conversations with other people about finances, it can be easy for our scripts to start to leak out, right?

1:00:27Our beliefs start to be this. It's the standard. How could you not be saving for retirement? What are you doing instead? And that can then bring the accusation and kind of crumble the conversation. So that's the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, start money conversations with vulnerability rather than advice. The secret to having really productive financial conversations is not to have all the answers, but rather to ask the right questions. And in doing so, share some of your financial struggles, share some of your financial story. This creates a more collaborative dynamic, a give and take, like a mutuality, a reciprocity, so that you're learning from each other rather than lecturing your parents.

1:01:13I talk about using iScripts. So I've been thinking about savings. I've been thinking about investing. I've been exploring student loans. And wow, did you know so many people in this country carry student loans? Isn't that crazy? When you guys were my age, how did you do it? How did you think about navigating the situation? How are you thinking about it? What are you looking forward to in the next XYZ with regards to your money? How do you feel about retirement, right? Curiosity. But we started a conversation with an I statement. And why you want to start with I is that you are also being vulnerable.

1:01:46Finally, key takeaway number three. You can't force people to have financial conversations if they don't want to have them. because some people are going to refuse to discuss money no matter how carefully you try to approach the topic. And so when that happens, you just have to accept that you can't control other people's willingness to talk about money because money is a really sensitive topic. But maybe if they are not willing to talk to you about it, if your parents aren't willing to talk to you about it, maybe they're willing to talk to somebody else, a trusted friend, a trusted advisor. As long as someone is having that conversation, a trusted someone, ultimately what matters is that your parents are taken care of.

1:02:28And ensuring that someone is having those conversations with them paves the road for that. I once gave the example of I live in a neighborhood that has a lot of dogs, but I don't have dogs, so I don't know how it works. But sometimes I see someone like trying to take the dog on a walk and the dog just sits on a pavement. They absolutely have no intention of moving at all. And what does the person do? They stand there until the dog is ready to move. They try with a leash and a jack and eventually they're like, all right, when you're ready, I'm ready. That's eventually what happens. You can't force people to have conversations they don't want to have.

1:02:58Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Etiosa Agbon Lahore. Thank you so much for being part of the Afford Anything community. If you enjoyed this episode, please do three things. Subscribe to our newsletter, affordanything.com slash newsletter. Leave us a review in your favorite podcast playing app. and share this with friends, family, with your parents. Share this with your parents. Share it with parents, step-parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts. Share this with that elder generation in your family. Thank you again for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything Podcast. I'm Paula Pant, and I'll meet you in the next episode.