Episode 217: The End of Two Eras

Hey, everybody.

This is certified financial planner David Chettik, and welcome to this week's episode of the Weekly wealth podcast.

Now, you've heard me say it before.

We are a financial planning podcast, but we don't always talk about traditional financial planning topics.

So we don't always talk about IRA rules and which stocks are going up and down and what's happening in the market.

And today I want to be a little philosophical and we're going to talk about two eras in my life that just came to an end.

So I hope that you enjoy this episode and I.

And I hope that some of the lessons that I've learned from a couple eras in my life will help you.

Okay, and here we go.

Welcome to the Weekly Wealth Podcast.

I am certified financial planner David Chudick.

This podcast and my wealth management practice are both designed to help the mass affluent to live better lives by how they handle their money.

We talk about financial strategies, prosperous mindsets, and simply how to build true wealth.

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All right, well, let's get started with this episode.

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Alright, so a couple eras of my life just ended, and this is beautiful.

We have some new chapters starting.

So the first one is our kids have been playing club soccer and they have been playing high school soccer literally for the last 18 years.

So most of our weekends, or many of our weekends, have been spent traveling to soccer matches and tournaments.

And we've had driving kids to soccer practices before they had the ability to drive themselves.

And we had high school matches and we had expenses, honestly, of club soccer.

And I want to talk a little bit about some of the lessons that we've learned, some of the beautiful things that we've experienced, and maybe how we can apply it to life itself.

I think there's a lot of things that we can learn from our lives and from experiences.

So the first thing that I think is really important that I've learned is that enjoy the journey.

When you start with club soccer or you start with sports, you know that it's literally 1 in 10 million that, that anybody can make it to the pro level.

But I'm thinking When my kids are 7, 8, 9, 10.

I mean, yeah, they're the one in a million.

They're awesome.

They have my genes, right?

I mean, they have to end up playing in Europe, making $25 million a year.

And then as they get older, you're like, you know what?

My kids are pretty good at soccer, but they're not Europe good.

But the fact that you may not end up Playing professionally or D1 is the big thing.

Everybody wants to play D1, Division 1 soccer in college.

The fact that you may not choose to do that or have just hit the genetic lottery, that is okay.

Because what we can do is we can still enjoy the journey.

We can enjoy all the incredible friendships that we've made with other soccer parents.

We can enjoy the wins.

We can learn from the losses.

My kids say they can go into life as they move into adulthood saying, you know what?

We've won.

We're used to winning.

We won the State Cup.

Our team came together and banded together.

So when it comes time for us to go to a job interview, we're used to winning.

So we expect to get that job.

Or if we're trying to sell a deal, we expect to get that deal.

So I'd love for you to think about, what are the things in your life where you just maybe need to say, I'm gonna enjoy this experience.

I'm gonna enjoy the journey, and I'm going to enjoy wherever it takes us.

Cause there are gonna be highs, there are gonna be lows.

We've won some matches, We've lost some matches.

Years ago, honestly, it was maybe too much of a financial stress for us to be as involved with soccer as we were.

But we enjoyed the journey for the most part.

So first thing is, like, ask yourself, where in life are you not enjoying?

And see if maybe a change of mindset can help you to enjoy the journey.

Because looking back, even some of the hard times, I don't know that I would change them.

I don't know that I would trade them, because there's so many valuable lessons.

Now, another thing that I, as a soccer parent, learned is that human nature is, we all find what we are looking for.

Now, a lot of times, to give you some background, you'll go to a soccer tournament, and there's these huge complexes with 10, 20, 30, 40 fields.

And sometimes you'll be walking to the bathroom, and you'll walk behind the parents on another field, and you just hear them yelling, like, literally horrible things at the referee or maybe even at the players that are not on their team.

And you start to think, is this really that important?

There are some parents and no joke, for 15 years, 10 years, every match they walk off the field saying, that was the worst ref match I've ever been to.

The ref screwed us over that time.

And let's face it, like, refs are human.

Yeah, they blow calls, but there's no ref whose sole purpose in life is to make our team lose.

And quite frankly, some of my kids were pretty rough.

And a lot of times I could see that they just trucked somebody and took them out and didn't get called for a foul.

But nobody remembers those.

But the, it's easy to remember the times where you feel like you were wronged by the referee.

The other thing, and I'm as guilty of this as anybody, is we don't notice our own kids failures or mistakes.

And we think our own kids.

I always tell people you got to subtract like 50% from how good you think your own kid is, because your own kid's just not that good.

You don't tend to see your own kid's mistakes, but you see the other kids mistakes.

So where in life are you finding what you're looking for, even if it doesn't serve you well?

Again, the refs are not out to make your team lose.

You only see when the ref makes a mistake that you feel like goes against you.

But oftentimes you don't notice or you don't acknowledge when there's a no call in your favor or a call in your favor.

The other thing is don't be an a hole when things don't go your way or you don't perceive that they go your way.

I've seen normal or seemingly normal people yell just horrible like personal insults to a referee who's literally like just some retired dude who's making 15, 20, $30 to get out of the house and yell personal insults.

One thing that I've learned is that I think it's important to be rational and I think it's important to look at both sides.

You're gonna find what you're looking for.

And if you're looking for the bad calls, where the ref made a bad call, you're gonna find it.

But if you're also looking to see the other side where maybe your kid knocked somebody over and they didn't get called for a foul, you'll find that as well.

Now, a money example that doesn't have to do with soccer, but I have a friend and he is just absolutely convinced that because of tariffs, he's lost three years worth of growth on his investment accounts and I don't manage his money.

I don't know really anything about what he has invested.

But it's highly, highly unlikely that he's lost three years of growth just because of how much the markets have been up over the last few years.

But this is what this guy is looking for.

He maybe there's some political leanings and that's what he thinks is reality.

So let's just make sure that what our reality is, let's just examine what we think reality is and just question it sometimes and say, is it really possible that I lost that much money?

And is it really possible that we lost three matches in a row because the refs screwed us over?

Or maybe is there something we can do?

Maybe our team works on finishing or better defense or anything like that can help us to win more matches.

And finally, and maybe most importantly, one of the things that I learned from almost two decades in club soccer is that there are incredible people in your life all of the time.

I've made some great friendships.

I have literally probably hundreds of hours of standing on the sidelines with some other soccer dads.

We have people that we've been out of town with and we've helped with rides, taking their kids home or they're taking our kids home and organization and just all of the things.

So we've done life together with some really cool soccer parents and these are friends that'll stay with us forever.

I don't know.

Like, I think there are people in front of us that we just need to embrace more and we just need to look for friendships.

We look to need to say, how can I be a worthwhile, friend worthy person to the people in my life?

And then that just adds to more, to the beauty and fullness of life.

And one of the things that you learn from sports, whether it's youth sports or when you're older, is that things don't always go your way.

You don't win every match, you don't win every game.

So sports teaches you that you have to learn how to deal with the ups and the downs.

So that's another thing that I hope that we've all learned from our journey in youth soccer is that yeah, you win some, but you also, you have to learn how to lose with dignity.

You have to learn how to have sportsmanship and you also have to learn how to say, you know what, if I want to lose less, I need to work harder.

I need to work on My weaknesses and I have to figure out a way.

So club soccer and sports in general does teach us how to be resourceful.

And that is a great skill that translates in other parts of our lives.

You know, that I took from club soccer almost two decades from it.

Let me know what you think.

You think these are good things?

You think these are bad things?

Have your kids been involved with youth sports now?

Gotta be honest, I thought that the last match I was gonna cry like a baby, but I didn't.

It ran its course and we actually lost in the playoffs at home.

So it was bittersweet that we didn't get to go further in the high school playoffs, but we did get to finish on our home field.

And it is an era of our lives that we will cherish forever.

But it's over and now it's time to new and different things.

So I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast that two eras of my life have just ended.

The first one is club soccer.

And yeah, like for almost two decades, like I literally identified as a soccer parent and it took up a huge part of our lives, our energy and our time.

The other era that just ended is my oldest son just graduated from college, so he's beginning like true adulthood now.

And my wife and I, we've, we've made it through putting our first kid through college.

So let's look at some things that you might learn from college or the college experience that maybe can translate into other parts of your life.

So the first thing I think is that like many other things, college needs to be a financial decision, or at least partly a financial decision.

So what do I mean by that?

There are some big name schools that maybe have a higher price tag.

There may be some really interesting majors, but they, they don't really have an earning potential.

There may be like the really nice apartment complexes that you can live in your college town, but maybe there's not much of a rate of return by spending double of what some other apartments might cost.

I think that it's important to look at college from a financial perspective.

There are some things that you can do.

Sometimes you can go to a community college for the first two years and that's either free or almost free, and then transfer to a four year school.

You can sometimes even not go to a four year college.

I don't think that four year college is or should be a definite for everybody.

So a couple things that we did is we used a state school which had somewhat of an affordable tuition rate.

I don't know that any College is actually affordable, but it wasn't one of the big name schools with a super high tuition.

Another thing that we did is we were able, and we're very fortunate, and this was during a time of very low interest rates, but we were able to buy a small house.

We put some money down, got a mortgage, and then we rented out two of the rooms and brought in some revenue and our son lived in the other room.

So instead of having an outflow every month of money to pay for his rent, we actually had a little bit of an inflow.

And we also have a piece of property that is appreciating in value.

So sometimes a little creativity and thinking about things from a financial standpoint can be really good.

So what about you?

What financial implications are you thinking about with regard to your kids college?

What ways can you maybe save a little bit of money?

What ways can you just be more reasonable with money?

Are your kids looking at potential salary and incomes with their degrees?

Should they look at salary and income for their degrees?

Are your kids borrowing money?

What are the things?

So in what way are you looking at college as a financial decision or at least looking at the financial implications of it?

I do know some people, there have been some people that I've crossed paths with in my life and they had some stifling student loans and that thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand dollars per month loan payment, that's going to stay with you for a long time and that may bring you a lot of stress.

Another thing that I think is important, both from a parent standpoint and from a student standpoint, is you have to figure out how, what's the right amount of support, and I'm talking mostly financially to give to your kids.

So my experience when I was in school and is that the kids that don't work, maybe there's more time to drink and do other things that aren't that productive.

But while you're at work and developing your resume and you get in a little bit less trouble.

So think about how much is the right amount of financial support to give to your child?

Should you give them a little bit of money but still expect them to work and pay for some of their own things?

Should you support them?

So maybe they don't have to work at all and then they'll have plenty of time to work after school for the rest of their lives.

So how much financial support are you going to give to your student and what's the right amount?

For us, we gave some financial support, but we also expected him to work and Pay for some things and be resourceful and we didn't provide an incredibly lavish lifestyle.

But I think it is important while kids are in school to start thinking about money and start thinking about how they're going to pay their bills and honestly developing a resume.

Now, yes, while you're in school, you may not have the highest level job, but at least when you go for your first job, if you could show, hey, in addition to waking up and going to school and studying, I also was responsible enough to go to work and I did develop some skills.

I developed some of the skills of being on time.

Maybe I did an internship and learned a little bit about my chose in industry and I think it's really important.

So I think working during college is a great thing and it's a way for you to start making connections.

And I think that is what we did and I think that had some really good results for us.

Now something else is networking.

I think when you're getting out of school and you're looking for that first job and maybe you're just putting resumes on.

Indeed.

Or any of those services, like everybody's resume looks the same.

So how are you going to get that actual job interview?

How are you going to get your your foot in the door?

And I think the obvious answer is, who do you know?

Who knows you?

What is your network?

So start.

I think it's important for college students and all of us, quite frankly, to develop a network of people.

And hopefully most of these people think highly of us and maybe they can put a good word in for us.

Maybe they can help us to get an interview or make some good introductions to people who might be in a position to help us.

So networking, whether it's digital networking on LinkedIn and some of the other social media outlets and also just personal networks, I was not even really a fan of fraternities.

I wasn't in one when I was in school, but my son was in one and I think that benefited him tremendously.

They say that your net worth is in your network.

So build your network while you're young and that'll stay with you forever.

And finally, just like soccer, college is a chapter of your life.

It's a period for you to enjoy.

So don't spend all of your time thinking, man, I can't wait to get out of school and get my job and start making all this money.

Take some time and enjoy the experience.

Enjoy the journey of being in college.

Because as a dude with a career and kids, that college experience doesn't last.

Forever.

And there's plenty of time to be responsible and to have all of other things pulling at you in different directions.

So just enjoy that chapter of life.

Get as much as you can from it.

Build memories, build friendships, build your network, build your skills.

And make it a time that you can look back at and you can cherish.

So what do you think?

What do you think about some of my lessons from soccer, from almost two decades of being a soccer parent?

Some of the lessons that I learned?

And what do you think about some of the the lessons of college?

Be interested to know what you think.

You can email me davidarallelfinancial.com or how about making a comment on one of our social media outlets to let us know what you think.

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Go to www.weeklywealthpodcast.com, click on the Contact Us button at the top and that'll take you to my calendar and there you can set a 30 minute Zoom appointment or even a in person appointment if you're local.

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It really is that simple.

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So www.weeklywealthpodcast.com click on the Contact Us at the top and let us know if you'd like to meet and if you'd like to talk about some of the things that you have as goals or financial fears.

So I hope that you enjoyed this episode.

I hope everybody has a great week and let's make sure to make it a goal.

You see what I did there to enjoy your journey this week.

All right everybody have a blessed week and we'll see you next time.

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