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Jamie Bossi
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Farnoosh Torabi
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Jamie Bossi
Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life.
Farnoosh Torabi
Welcome to SEW money.
Jamie Bossi
I think that talking about individual stocks can be really impactful for this age group because they are, they're living it, right? So they are using products or like certain brands. And if you can correlate that to, okay, you, you buy things in this brand, but you could also buy stock in this brand and make money when they are making money. So if it's a company you believe in and you think will keep growing and you're going to keep buying their things, why don't we take advantage of this on both sides, right? Where we're buying Nike stock or buying Dick's Sporting Goods or whatever it is that your kids are into, that can help make it a real tangible lesson. So they are like, oh, okay, I own a share of Nike and Nike is doing well and I just bought shoes from Nike, so I'm helping their company get even better. So that can help make it real for kids.
Farnoosh Torabi
Welcome to so Money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. Our conversation today is digging deep into one of the most important and misunderstood stages of financial development, the tween years. Research shows that our money habits are formed as early as age 7. Yet many people don't start investing seriously until midlife. So what happens if we bridge that gap? What if kids as young as 10 begin learning how money works, how investing grows wealth, and how to make smart decisions with the dollars that they earn, save and spend? My guest is Jamie Bossi, a financial planner, author, and mother of four who helps her clients maneuver through life's transitions and overcome and anticipate potential roadblocks along the way. She's the author of multiple books, including Money Boss mom, as well as the Milton the Money Savvy Pup children's book series and her newest book that's coming out in January, called Invest Tweens. Together we explore how parents can introduce investing in a way that feels tangible, empowering, even fun. Whether that's buying a share of Nike because your kid loves their sneakers or using a custodial brokerage account to let them experience the market in real time. We also talk about helping college age kids understand the real cost of life, how to communicate money boundaries at home, and how parents can teach healthy financial habits and even if they're working through their own financial struggles. Let's get started. Jamie Bossi, welcome to Sew Money.
Jamie Bossi
Thanks so much for having me.
Farnoosh Torabi
I'm thrilled to have you on. We're going to focus on a lot of what your next book is on. You're a prolific author as well as a financial planner and a mom of four. Your next Book, which comes out in the new year, focuses on investing for tweens. And I have a tween in our home. He's 11. I our son Evan. He is, I think, starting to learn a little bit about investing, and that's thanks to us talking about it a little bit with him. I'm hoping that maybe by next year we can start talking about using some of his allowance and his birthday money and using that to buy Nike and what is it, Dick's Sporting Goods, the companies that he's familiar with that he likes to shop at. Before we get into that, though, this is the first time you've been on our show. I've been a big fan and a follower of your work for many years. I'd love for you to just take the floor and tell our audience about how you got into your field of working with families at such critical points in their lives. You often work with folks who are in the thick of it. They're in the middle of career changes, raising families, sandwich generation transitions. What drew you to this work and what are the patterns that you're seeing over and over again?
Jamie Bossi
Yeah, so I've been a financial planner now for 20 years, which sounds weird to say, but I actually got into the field by accident initially went to school to be an elementary education teacher. And when I was in college, my parents filed for bankruptcy. And that just set off a whole chain of events of things where I was asking questions about, what does this mean? How did this happen? Are you going to jail? And how do I prevent this from happening to me? So I ended up taking some personal finance classes at Kansas State University just for me, just because I knew I didn't have a good education in the area of money and I wanted to avoid a fate like my parents had. So I ended up taking some classes and then took another one and thought what a wonderful career choice to help people navigate the complex world of money. Because we're not taught about it in school, right? No one knows how to be good with money automatically. It's really something that you have to practice and learn. And getting into this field has been amazing of helping people feel like they have command of their finances and they know what's going on. Because so much of, you know, what we do with money is just trial and error. And so if we can help people be mindful with their money and make a plan for the future that's really impactful and just a really rewarding career.
Farnoosh Torabi
Can I ask a couple follow up questions about that moment in your life? Because we just talked about bankruptcy and my so many members club. One of the things I really wanted to communicate to the group was that often bankruptcy is cast as this really shameful event and we often don't even want to think about pursuing it, that we should never even think about filing it because, oh, what will it say about me? What will it say about how deep I've gotten into this debt? What will it say about my family? And so I'm wondering, how was that story around the bankruptcy? How did that impact you specifically other than obviously it inspired you to get educated. You took it upon yourself to get literate about personal finance. Finance. Did it. But did it have a trickle down effect on your finances? I understand you were still in school. Did it affect your ability to finish college or pay for college?
Jamie Bossi
Yeah, great questions. So with my parents bankruptcy, I think it just opened my eyes to what's out there and what are the consequences of not knowing how to use your money well. And for them, I would like to tell you it was some something that wasn't their fault, maybe like a big health issue or a business deal gone south. But it really wasn't. It was just they got in trouble with credit cards, they didn't know how to use them. Right. They carried balances, they ended up with a big balance that they couldn't pay off and those interest rates just kept piling up and piling up. So I think for other people who are considering bankruptcy, it's worst case scenario, right? Like it is, it is. You've hit an area where you can't maybe come back from, but it can be a resource and a way to get back on your feet and you shouldn't be ashamed of it. Right? Because I, like I said before, people just aren't taught about how to handle money well. And you know how to navig these things so it can, you can easily fall into these traps. I think for me as a college student, when my parents were going through this, I was already paying my own way in college and had student loans and scholarships and things. So their income wasn't impacting my ability to stay in school. But I had a credit card myself, right. So I already had the start of what could have been disastrous for me too. So that really helped me learn about, okay, how am I using this credit card wisely and what are the consequences if I don't?
Farnoosh Torabi
Wow, thanks for sharing that. So in your work, you really focused as well on helping parents communicate around money with their children. And your next book is focusing on tweens specifically, how to talk to your tweens and educate them about investing. Why do you think this age group, and I guess we're talking 10, 11, 12, is a critical juncture for investing literacy, investing education.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah. So a lot of the habits that we get around money in our childhood stick with us forever. Right. So some psychologists say that our money habits are formed as early as age 7, at least by age 10. So this tween focus is really the age 10 to 14. And my goal is to empower kids to really understand how money works and how it can grow and be a resource for you. And if you think about just the timeline you have, if you start learning about investing when you're in middle school, just think about the compounding over time. Right. Most people don't really get into investing or get serious about investing until they're 30 or 40 years old. And then that Runway is just not as long to feel the compounding effects of investing. But if you're comfortable with investments, if you're confident about investing when you're a young tween and utilizing the market in a way that is helping you, that can be an amazing impact over the long run. Because I've. I've never ever met with somebody who said, man, I started investing too early and I'm sad. I have all this money built up. Most of the time we hear, oh, God, gosh, I'm. I feel behind, or I haven't started vesting, or I wasn't taking advantage of my company 401k, or I had a Roth IRA, but I just wasn't investing it. It just had cash in it. And helping people start the conversation sooner in life can really give these kids a leg up.
Farnoosh Torabi
So now, practically speaking, how do we engage the kids as adults? We know that the smart money just tracks the market passively. We don't get bogged down on the specific investment picks. We don't pick the hot stocks, so to speak. But with kids, I feel like there's a benefit to introducing them to individual stocks, at least to show them how companies trade. And not because we want them to become traders, but there is some value in that. It brings them into the world of investing to talk a little bit about how we bring them into the. So talk a little bit about how we bring them into the world of investing in a way that can be educational and at their level and also fun.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah, I agree. I think that talking about individual stocks can be really impactful for this age group, because they are. They're living it right so they are using products or like certain brands. And if you can correlate that to okay, you, you buy things in this brand, but you could also buy stock in this brand and make money when they are making money. So if it's a company you believe in and you think will keep growing and you're going to keep buying their things, why don't we take advantage of this on both sides? Right. Where we're buying Nike stock or buying Dick's Sporting Goods or whatever it is that your kids are into that can help make it a real tangible lesson. So they are like, oh, okay, I own a share of Nike and Nike is doing well and I just bought shoes from Nike so I'm helping their company get even better. So that can help make it real for kids.
Farnoosh Torabi
Do you recommend opening a brokerage account, putting real money at stake? I know there's also simulation programs online where it's just a game at first, no actual money is invested. Or do you think it's helpful to actually have some skin in the game, some real financial skin in the game?
Jamie Bossi
Yeah, no, I think it's a great, both can be great as long as you're getting some practice with the market. But I do think actually investing can be really powerful so they can see what actually happens and that way you're building the assets as you go too instead of a play scenario. So you could do custodial brokerage accounts or even if it's just a brokerage account in the parent's name where they're earmarking it for the kid, but just using it as a learning tool that can be effective. There's a lot of apps and different things or companies that do kid based investing accounts like Greenlight app so they can see the product that they're investing live. Yeah. So I think just anything to get them practice and get them used to seeing what the market does and how it works.
Farnoosh Torabi
Your book is called Investing for Learn Essential financial Skills to achieve your money goals. What I appreciate about your book is that you don't just go into the investing principles. You start talking about things like earning, saving, budgeting, banking. Because even the adults need to know this. Like you have to get your ducks in a row. You have to get the basics squared away. You have to have these safety nets before you dive into investing. And so what are the things that you want? This cohort of children, these tweens, which is I guess 9 to 14, you've identified in the book. What do you want this group to know about these other, other Financial principles, these sort of pre money rules, money basics before they get into investing, the personal financial literacy before you get into the investing game.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah, I think getting into just good habits around money. So if you're not able to save money, you're not familiar with that concept, then it becomes really hard to invest because you're not able to set money aside anyway to invest. Getting that concept of every time I earn money or get money as a gift, I don't just spend it all right. I allocate some to saving, allocate some to investing, maybe even allocate, allocate some to giving if that's something that's important to you. But just knowing that there's multiple ways to use money instead of just spending it right when you get it. And I think with that comes the decisions you have to make around money. Right. Because when you use money, you can only use it once, right? Once. Once it's gone. So if you spend it on shoes, then you don't have it to buy a Nintendo Switch later or to invest later or whatever it is. So helping them understand that with money becomes a lot of responsibility, comes a lot of decision making because you can only use it once. So how are you going to use it to maximize what you want for your goals?
Farnoosh Torabi
You know what I'm excited about? I'm excited about teaching both my son and my daughter because I remember growing up and being in high school and we did have an investing club in high school, believe it or not, but it was all guys. It was not even a single girl. And I remember going to college and being in the finance department. I was a finance major and there were a handful of. Handful of young women, including me. Now there are more, but it's still very male dominated. Whether you're talking about business school, the stock market, investing, personal finance, it's still very much male dominated. So I'm curious, do you find differences in how we introduce girls and educate girls around money to money versus boys? And what are those differences? How can we do better?
Jamie Bossi
Oh man. So I have seen the. Where people are just gravitate toward telling the boys about money more than they tell the girls about money about money just because they assume they're not interested in it, which is something we should avoid. Right? Like I think assuming that both girls and boys are interested in money, they would be interested in investing in the companies they care about and just ignoring those old stereotypes because it's time to move on. I feel like it wasn't that long ago that like husbands didn't even tell wives how much their money, how much money they were making. But the more they know and the more we normalize these conversations, the more empowered they can be to have a great life in the future and build the life that they want.
Farnoosh Torabi
Wondering if we could go a little higher up the age ladder and maybe talk about the college age kids and even the kids who've graduated and are now back home with their parents. I have many friends, neighbors who are in that world and they are having different conversations and not really having the language or the scripts for this. They're not sure how to talk to their adult children about money and creating financial boundaries around what are we going to pay for and what are you going to pay for? What are we expected to afford? What are you expected to afford? It's also this sort of underlying concern of how do we as parents motivate our adult children to leave the house? It's unexpected a bit. And how do we motivate them to go out there and take jobs that maybe aren't the perfect dream jobs, but it pays and they need to learn how to earn and be on their own two feet. And we know there are constraints in the economy, we know that jobs are tough to find, but there is something about this desire to hang on for that perfect job. And parents are having a hard time convincing their kids to go out there and just like, work, roll up your sleeves and do something, even if it means volunteering. And are you hearing any of this from clients, even if you don't even have advice? I would just love to hear what you're hearing if you have any anecdotes to share.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah, yeah. I would say today's kind of colle age kids, high school kids, and even young adults are the product or of growing up with money being invisible. Right. Because they really did grow up with money as a digital world. Right. Where they didn't see money changing hands. Right. So if they weren't being taught about it, then they weren't really learning about it because they couldn't see it. Right. So a lot of times with college students, even they are fully funded by their parents, their tuition gets paid, their housing gets paid, their car insurance is paid, phone bills paid. So they may not even know how much these things cost to run their life. So I think we have to make these things tangible and build awareness around them. With your college student saying, okay, hey, these are all the things that I pay for you and that I'm not going to pay for you forever. So here's what your phone bill costs, here's what your car insurance costs, here's what your housing costs, here's what insurance costs, like those sorts of things. So just giving them at least a framework of hey, this is how much it costs for you just to survive a month. Right. This is your base living expenses. And then helping them set up a plan for when they do have money, which bills are they responsible for paying? How are they going to plan for that each month? Because I think it's just hard to see. Right, because their life has just been happening and they haven't really been aware of all the costs that come with it.
Farnoosh Torabi
And then the next part of that is, which of these line items would you like to cover?
Jamie Bossi
Yes. And then if there's only so much that you're going to pay for as a parent asking them, okay, what should we cut? What's going to go away? If you're not paying for it and we're not paying for it it, then you know, what's your plan?
Farnoosh Torabi
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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com so money to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quins.com somoney yeah, a friend of mine, when she sent her daughters off to college, she was like, we're going to cover the basics. And here are the basics. Tuition, your room and board, your meal plan, and that's it. You want to go and join your sorority and there's a dues payment every month. You want to get clothes on top of the suitcase we sent you to college with. You want to go on that ski trip you want to go to. You want to do this club, you want to do that club. And there's a membership fee. Fantastic. We encourage all of that. That's on you though. So you know what? They went and got jobs. They paid for those things because nothing encourages working more than wanting for things. No joke, no joke.
Jamie Bossi
No joke. That's right. That's right. And then if you can have these conversations like before, it's an issue, that's even better. So before they go to college, talk about what you're paying for and what you're not. Before they leave college, talk about what they're staying on the payroll for, what they'll be responsible for going forward.
Farnoosh Torabi
Exactly. So I, I have an 8 year old and she wants to know what everything costs, what we pay for, what our house is worth, how much we make. She asked me the other day, how much does your ring cost, Mom? Your wedding ring. And she's very money minded, she's very curious and I don't want her shut her down. But I'm also like, you know what, there's a time and a place for everything and this is not the time or place. And what is she going to do with this information? It's so out of context for her. It's just going to be a random number. But she knows she can probably go online and find ballpark figures, right? She can go on Zillow. There's all this transparency out there. And she's eight, right? So maybe she's not going to write, go do that right now. But when she becomes a teenager, she can go find out these things. How do you have these conversations when you get these awkward questions from your kids?
Jamie Bossi
So I think with the awkward questions around money and what things cost, I think it's good to ask more questions yourself. Oh, that's interesting that you picked up on that. Tell me what's on your mind. I mean, maybe they'll tell you more about whatever they're thinking, right? Because maybe they're thinking, are we okay financially? Do we have what we need? And then, and maybe getting to the root of what their actual question is might be different than what you think it is. Or maybe they're just trying to figure out, okay, I want to save up for a house one day, so what is this going to cost? So I think asking questions is a good idea. And then definitely not saying don't ask those questions or you don't need to know that. Just because we want to keep money open, we want to make money a topic that we can talk about and you want them to come to you with more questions about this and not ask other people. So I think just staying open, but you don't have to necessarily reveal all the details. You could just maybe be a little more vague of, oh, the engagement ring cost three months worth of salary or we had to save up for X amount of time. Maybe it's something around like how long it took you to save up.
Farnoosh Torabi
I'll tell you when you're 15 or 16. Funny story, the other night at dinner, my husband and I were chatting about our car and it needs a tune up. The software for the dashboard, we've been putting it off, it needs an update. It's like a eight year old car and the update costs like $3,000. It's not necessary, but it's starting to break down a little bit. And this is the dashboard, right? So it deals with the GPS and all that stuff. So it's starting to create problems. And I guess we were talking about it and I was like, I guess we're just gonna have to cough up the $3,000. And we were just annoyed by the whole thing. And we were saying this all in front of our son, who's 11, and he goes, are we okay? Are we broke? And he's 11, so he likes to throw out these zingers once in a while. He likes to say things for attention. And we're like, no. It's just that we're trying to understand whether it's worth it. Because $3,000, we can do a lot of different things with $3,000. Right, right. And we're fine. But, yeah, kids pick up on things, and so we have to be careful with our words. And I should know this, but it does create sometimes unnecessary stress or it just raises flags.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah. And they're watching you too. They're. If they see you fighting about money or being stressed about money or being excited about money, they. They feel that, and they. That's how they react too.
Farnoosh Torabi
Test often we give. Give schools a lot of blame for not teaching financial literacy to kids. Whether it was like, we didn't get it in a classroom, we didn't have a program. And I do wonder if even if we had that, if it would have done the trick. Because learning about money, it requires a lot of life experience. It requires failure. It requires going through the emotions and going through stuff that a class could never teach, a textbook could never teach. What would even. Would it even be memorable? Do you remember anything you learned in middle school, high school? It's the experiences, the trips, the friendships, the teachers that you had that you remember that stick. And what would that experience of financial literacy even be? I just would love your thoughts on that, because I feel like we're blaming a system that isn't really the right system for teaching financial literacy.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think we schools maybe could be a good baseline for learning some concepts. And I know a lot of high schools are implementing the programs now. As we talked about before, a lot of our money behaviors are already set by the time we're 7 to 10 years old. Maybe that's even too late. So I do think there is some responsibility of the parents to help kids get some practice with money and make some mistakes while they're still under your roof. When the stakes are lower. Right. You know, you want kids to. When they get money for allowance or for a gift, let them make some of the decisions around how they're going to spend the money or how they're going to allocate it to saving or charity. Versus investing and then let them feel the consequences of those actions. Right. So we want them to have experienced some pain and stress if they made a bad purchase or made a bad decision, but then use it as a learning opportunity. Right? So if you have, your kids have made a decision to spend their money on this giant pack of Pokemon cards and you're, you let them do it and then follow up with them a week later and say, hey, are you still glad that you bought that big pack of Pokemon cards? And tell me about how you're enjoying it and using it and then listen to what they say. Maybe they have already lost this packet of Pokemon cards or they threw it in the trash accidentally or got it wet. And so if that is the case, you can say, okay, would you spend your money on that again and what would you do differently next time? And then use that as a good learning opportunity. Even though it was a misstep, it was still a good thing because you learned something. And then on the flip side, if they buy something or use their money in some way that they really enjoy and get value out of, then celebrate that and say, this is great. You worked hard for this money and you've used it on something that you care about and that's what money is for. Yes.
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah. You say that money habits are formed by the age of seven and sometimes I think it just happens when you're out of the womb. I have two kids under my roof. They have obviously very different personalities and that informs how they sometimes behave with money. My son is very, how shall I say this, he likes immediate results. He has ADHD and we have done a few episodes on this program about having ADHD and how it generally manifests in your financial life. Not obviously everyone with ADHD has these characteristics, but, but typically folks with adhd, they like the quick wins. And that shows up in your financial life, sometimes in your relationship with money. And for my son, when he receives money, whether it's a gift card or cash, he wants to spend it right away. He wants that dopamine hit. And my daughter has more patience with money. She's willing to save. She doesn't need the quick hit as much. Of course, she loves to, to shop, she loves to receive.
Jamie Bossi
She.
Farnoosh Torabi
But she doesn't need that instant gratification like my son craves. So we have to work with him on that more. She, on the other hand, I think has more of a over saving tendency, which is also not always great. Right. She has, she hoards her money and for the sake of saving, like Saving just to save. And I think it's important that we teach her the importance of saving for a goal rather than just saving to save so they can both learn. I don't think one is better than the other. My point here is that just they have these personalities. Right. That they're born with, and those personalities are showing up in their relationship to money. It's just very interesting, and I think. So it's a combination of nurture and nature, for sure.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah. And then I think part of the battle is just understanding, what are those pieces for you, even as an adult, what's your natural tendency with money? And then how do we flip that script if it's. If it's not working for you, how do we change that or put some distance between you and the next purchase? And then also recognizing that spending money isn't a bad thing. It's what money is for. And so in the case of your daughter, thinking about what's a meaningful way to use this money and helping her kind of go through the motions of actually spending money and using money in a way that's valuable to her.
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah. And I want her to have an appetite for risk, which is important when you're investing. Now a question for the families, the parents who, speaking of risk, are not comfortable with money in general. Like, they don't feel confident in this area in their lives. Maybe because they did go through a bankruptcy, maybe because they are currently working through their own financial struggles and they're worried about their kids growing up, following in their footsteps or picking up on bad money habits. How can they compartmentalize, put their own financial struggles aside, their own money stuff aside, and focus on teaching their kids healthy habits. And I think that's a lot of us. I'm working on a tight budget. I'm paycheck to paycheck. Like, how am I supposed to teach kids how to build wealth? I don't feel like I'm an expert. Parents don't feel like financial experts. Yeah.
Jamie Bossi
I think the statistics show that somewhere between 60 and 70% of parents actually don't feel very comfortable talking about money with their kids because they don't think they did a good job managing money or still do a good job managing money. So I think in that case, if you're feeling that just knowing that avoiding the conversation is actually making it worse for your kids. Right. So if you can start normalizing money conversations and helping them understand how money works, they're. You're setting them up to have a better future than you did. But if you avoid the conversation, you're making it hard for them and they're going to learn by trial and error, just like you did. So I think just keeping in mind that having those conversations, even if you're not sure where to start, is going to help them. And just think about like day to day, right? So if you're at the store, you're making a decision on purchasing one item over another. Like narrate that for them so they know how you're making your decision and why you're choosing what you're choosing. And then if you're saving for something like a vacation or something that the kids are invested in, right, like they want to go to that Disney vacation or, or spring break or whatever it is, talking to them about, okay, this costs a big chunk of money and here's how we're planning for it, here's how we're saving for it. So that way when they have something they're saving for, they can use that as a reference of, okay, I can't have everything I want right when I want it, but I can make a plan and save to get there.
Farnoosh Torabi
And to not be ashamed of where you're at, be transparent about your hustle, be transparent about how you're working through stuff, age appropriately, maybe not, not telling your four year old everything, but if your kid is mature, to really take it in, I think your kid. We often underestimate our children's ability to really grasp the financial things. I remember being a financial editor at Seventeen magazine during the Great Recession in 2008, 2009, and we would receive letters from the girls who read the magazine, which, by the way, it's called Seventeen. But a lot of the readers were 12, it was an aspirational magazine. And they would write in during the recession and they'd say, hey, my mom's laid off, times are tough and I want to help. What can I do? How can I open this conversation with her? She's shut me out, she's not talking. I know she's struggling and I'll never forget that because it really, for the first time woke me up to this, to this reality of how mature actually tweens were. And I repeat this story to this day as a reminder to the adults and the parents to say, don't underestimate your child's ability to be there for you and to step up and help even in small ways, whether that's to be more mindful of the electric use in the house, to the food usage in the house, to not be wasteful to go and get maybe a part time job to cover their tiny expenses. Looking at your kids as partners in your journey to get out of whatever financial trickiness you're in. It's not being a bad parent, it's you're teaching them.
Jamie Bossi
Yeah. I think you're involving them in the conversation. And hey, we're doing this for the good of the family and I want you to understand why.
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah, we don't want to burden them, but if they're coming to you wanting the help, you're doing something right. They're paying attention and they're caring. And it's all about the narrative. It's how you tell the story and work through this chapter in your life together. And speaking of story, I want everyone to pick up your new book, Jamie. It's coming out in January. It's called Investing for Tweens. We've got the pre order link in our show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show. So glad we could make this happen before the holidays. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you have a wonderful finish to the year, Jamie. We appreciate you and we hope to have you back in the new year.
Jamie Bossi
All right, thanks so much.
Farnoosh Torabi
Thanks to Jamie Bossi for joining us. If you like this show, remember to hit that follow button and leave a review in the Apple podcast review section. I'll see you back here on Wednesday. And I hope your day is so Money.
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Jamie Bossi
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Guest: Jamie Bossi (Financial Planner, Author of “Money Boss Mom” & “Investing for Tweens”)
Release Date: December 1, 2025
This episode explores why and how parents should introduce core money and investing lessons to children—specifically tweens (ages 10–14). Host Farnoosh Torabi and guest Jamie Bossi discuss the critical window for instilling lifelong financial habits, translating real-world money lessons, and empowering both children and parents (even those with limited financial confidence) to talk openly about money. Along the way, the conversation covers gender differences, college milestones, family struggles, and hands-on approaches for making money tangible for kids.
"No one knows how to be good with money automatically. It's something you have to practice and learn." (06:53, Jamie Bossi)
"I've never ever met with somebody who said, 'Man, I started investing too early and I'm sad I have all this money built up.'" (11:11, Jamie Bossi)
"If you can correlate, 'You buy things in this brand, but you could also buy stock in this brand and make money when they are making money' ... It can help make it a real tangible lesson." (02:38 & 12:23, Jamie Bossi)
"With money comes a lot of responsibility, comes a lot of decision-making, because you can only use it once." (15:25, Jamie Bossi)
"Assuming that both girls and boys are interested in money ... just ignoring those old stereotypes because it's time to move on." (16:42, Jamie Bossi)
"They may not even know how much these things cost to run their life. So we have to make these things tangible." (18:55, Jamie Bossi)
"Nothing encourages working more than wanting for things." (25:36, Farnoosh Torabi)
"Ask more questions yourself ... maybe they're thinking, are we okay financially?" (27:00, Jamie Bossi)
"They're watching you too. If they see you fighting about money or being stressed, they feel that." (29:11, Jamie Bossi)
"Let them feel the consequences of those actions ... and then use that as a learning opportunity." (30:27, Jamie Bossi)
"Avoiding the conversation is actually making it worse for your kids ... Just keeping in mind that having those conversations, even if you're not sure where to start, is going to help them." (35:41, Jamie Bossi)
On Investing Early:
"I've never ever met with somebody who said, 'Man, I started investing too early and I'm sad I have all this money built up.'"
— Jamie Bossi (11:11)
On Letting Kids Learn by Doing:
"Let them feel the consequences of those actions ... and then use that as a learning opportunity."
— Jamie Bossi (30:27)
On Financial Gender Stereotypes:
"Assuming that both girls and boys are interested in money ... just ignoring those old stereotypes because it's time to move on."
— Jamie Bossi (16:42)
On Parental Financial Shame:
"Avoiding the conversation is actually making it worse for your kids ... having those conversations, even if you're not sure where to start, is going to help them."
— Jamie Bossi (35:41)
Throughout the episode, the tone is practical, supportive, and candid. Farnoosh and Jamie use warm, real-life anecdotes and a reassuring approach, making financial conversations feel accessible, empathetic, and encouraging for both parents and children.
Farnoosh and Jamie underscore that financial education for children—and especially tweens—needs to be tangible, intentional, and ongoing, regardless of parents’ confidence with money. Mistakes and conversations, not just classes, generate true financial literacy. Parents should empower all children, overcome personal anxieties, and make money lessons a family affair.
Jamie Bossi’s new book “Investing for Tweens” releases January 2026.