Connected Family Wealth & Health: Exploring the Link Between Money and Well-being with Matt Paradise

Listen to today's episode, "Connected Family Wealth & Health: Exploring the Link Between Money and Well-being with Matt Paradise" as Renowned Financial Education Specialist, Matt Paradise joins Dori Durbin. Matt shares:

• Matt's Career Journey
• Why Money Frequently Feels "Taboo"
• Educating Pre-Schoolers About Money
• Why Money is A Family Lesson
• Re-Routing Scarcity Mindset
• Money's Affect on Health
• Matt's Book "Financially Capable: A Friendly Guide to Building Whole-Health Wealth"
• What Matt Wishes Kids' Knew About Money

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More about Matt Paradise:
Matt Paradise is a renowned financial educator who is passionate about transforming lives. He has empowered more than 100,000 people to improve their credit scores, pay off their debt, and save enough money to achieve their financial goals. As a highly sought-after speaker, he has taught people in all walks of life, from Harvard University’s lecture halls to homeless shelters throughout New England. 

A man of great faith, Matt has volunteered with multiple nonprofit boards. He served as chairman of Early Childhood Alliance, president of the Massachusetts Jump$tart Coalition, and member of the board of Boston Career Connections. Matt also ran a HOPE worldwide food pantry with his wife, serving 500 families per month. He is currently the treasurer of the MetroWest Nonprofit Network.

On his personal path to financial well-being, he has overcome drug addiction, homelessness, cancer, and a liver transplant. He is a proud father, loving husband, and care provider for his in-laws. His poodle named Odyssey keeps him active, and music soothes his soul. He gave up a professional drumming career years ago, but enjoys playing in his church band and with friends. Matt and his family live in the Greater Boston area.

Follow Matt:
Http://www.mattparadise.com

Matt's Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Financially-Capable-Friendly-Building-Whole-Health-ebook/dp/B0C5FV1VTN/

More about Dori Durbin:
Dori Durbin is a Christian wife, mom, author, illustrator, and a kids’ book coach who after experiencing a life-changing illness, quickly switched gears to follow her dream. She creates kids’ books to provide a fun and safe passageway for kids and parents to dig deeper and experience empowered lives. Dori also coaches non-fiction authors and aspiring authors to “kid-size” their content into informational and engaging kids’ books!
 
Buy Dori's Kids' Books:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dori-Durbin/author/B087BFC2KZ

Follow Dori
http://instagram.com/dori_durbin
http://www.doridurbin.com
http://www.facebook.com/dori_durbin

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:50 Matt's Career Journey
• 5:33 Why Money Feels Taboo
• 8:55 Educating Pre-Schoolers
• 11:17 Why Money is A Family Lesson
• 17:21 Re-Routing Scarcity Mindset
• 26:21 Money's Affect on Health
• 30:32 Matt's Book "Financially Capable: A Friendly Guide to Building Whole-Health Wealth"
• 39:32 What Matt Wishes Kids' Knew About Money
• 42:20 Where to Find Matt

Transcript

[00:00:00.490] - Dori Durbin
Hello, and welcome to The Power of Kids Books, where we believe books are a catalyst to inspire and empower change. Today is an expert edition. And you know, on these podcasts, I love to discover what professionals would love for our kids to know about what they do so that our kids can grow and change. Today we are speaking to a man who has an incredible backstory. He's overcome so much while also being a husband, a father, and a certified financial educator. And he's also written a book called Financially Capable. So today we are welcoming Matt Paradise. Welcome, Matt.

[00:00:39.590] - Matt Paradise
Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here. Dori thanks for having me.

[00:00:42.900] - Dori Durbin
Absolutely. We were talking right before this, and you have so much great content. But before we start in that, give me just a little brief summary of how it is that you're a financial educator now from the past where you were.

[00:00:56.900] - Matt Paradise
Sure. I came about professionally through a non circuitous way. My wife sometimes joke that we're polar opposites. She's the smart one in the house. She went to MIT. I obtained my ged. I moved out of my family's house when I was 1516 years old and became homeless. It was really drugs. They gave me an ultimatum stay there and clean up or leave. And I left and was a difficult road to, to say the least, overdosed even when I was in high school. Eventually left high school and left the state where I grew up knowing that it would lead either to death or jail and ultimately tried all different jobs. I tried everything from a pizza place for a day. I worked in another restaurant for a day, I worked at a gas station for a week, variety of I did construction, ultimately experimenting, trying to find my place in the world as a teenager, ultimately without a whole lot of direction. Ultimately, I found my way to a nonprofit financial education agency when I was about 19 and a half, and ultimately I just needed a job. It was a menial labor is what I call it.

[00:02:24.300] - Matt Paradise
It was customer service, fairly low skill. I just needed to answer the phone and try to be as polite as possible and take it from there. So financial education or financial literacy wasn't my background before that time being, but learned on the job. I had the opportunity to learn and grow. When I started at that organization, there were about 24 employees. I ended up becoming certified, took some college, all the education to be able to learn, grow, and develop until I was leading the education outreach group that traveled around the country, and now I actually sit on the board. I retired from there about four years ago and was going to start my own company. When I say was going to, I did start my own company, however, about six months after that, was diagnosed with bile duct cancer, calangiocarcinoma and was difficult the prognosis for that disease is very, very grim to say the least, but was fortunate enough to have a liver transplant and by grace I am alive today. The opportunity in the cancer was that allowed me plenty of time to ruminate with all of my thoughts, my 20 year career and put the lessons learned into a book, as you mentioned, "Financially Capable, Friendly Guide to Building Whole Health-Wealth" is the name of that book and really just wanted to help other parents, young adults, people to learn lessons that really shape mold families in so many ways.

[00:04:08.750] - Dori Durbin
I love that your story has made such a big arc. You went from not having money to basically educating people about it. And it's self educated, really, for the majority of that. That's amazing. So I think it's really good for parents to see that even if your kids are following one path, that doesn't mean that that's where it's going to end up in the final rounds of things too.

 [00:04:33.990] - Matt Paradise
It's true. I think the brain is incredibly malleable for adults and certainly for children, as well as fantastic research that shows just the plasticity of the brain and particularly for kids who are developing it, can feel. I know for myself as a parent, sometimes, like this day, this week, this month is going to last forever and start to stress out and worry and anxiety starts to build and can feel it growing in my gut. And sometimes I just need to take a deep breath, relax, regulate myself, meditate, go for a walk and realize this, too, will pass and know that as long as there's breath in my lungs, there's always hope.

[00:05:16.950] - Dori Durbin
I love that you have such a deep understanding of psychology and how we think. And we were talking before we started recording about how money can sometimes have some taboo components. Can you talk a little bit about how people get caught in that? That money is taboo?

[00:05:33.780] - Matt Paradise
Sure. I think that there's multiple layers to that. I think that we both, as a society, love and hate to talk about money. And when I say love to talk about money, I mean most any kid wants to talk about money. If they have an allowance, they're already planning on how to spend it and it's exciting. If they don't have an allowance, they're planning how to spend our money and they're still very excited. It just comes straight out of our pocket. And there's ways, even within society, where the taboo has been built in, for instance, discussing salaries on the workplace, it's generally frowned upon. Laws are changing as we work towards greater equality within the workforce, so that the wage disparities between men and women is shrinking. But it's still very much there. And oftentimes employers don't like when employees start to talk about how much they make with other colleagues and peers. And fortunately some laws and regulations are slowly changing that. But it's become a taboo in the workforce to discuss how much somebody makes. I think also the role of culture weighs heavily as we talk about psychology, as we talk about money as taboos.

[00:06:57.750] - Matt Paradise
Some cultures broadly don't really care for children to talk about money whatsoever. So as we were talking before dory, we started recording. And in my neighborhood, lemonade stands are awesome. People invite their friends and try to have signs to wave people down and come and purchase maybe a cookie or snack and a glass of lemonade that the kids then learn. Entrepreneurial spirit and managing money and lots of different on the quote unquote job lessons, but in a really fun, exciting way. In other cultures, it's not the same whatsoever. It's actually frowned upon for kids to talk about money, having money, managing money, and that's the adult's job. The children's job is just to go and play and focus on play. And even here we in the United States, we do believe that play is the work of children. That's how they learn and grow. In my opinion, the taboo of money really makes it boring and scary and nerve wracking. And there's a lot of anxiety that's tied up into managing money and the ways that it impacts even health in our entire world around us. There's no reason why discussing it can't be fun.

 [00:08:22.850] - Matt Paradise
There's no reason why we can't engage children in a culturally appropriate and age appropriate, developmentally appropriate way. And I fully advocate for that.

 [00:08:35.510] - Dori Durbin
You were talking and I was trying to ask Matt, what age do you start working with kids? And you surprised me. You said preschool. And I said what? Oh, that's so cool. So talk to me a little bit about how you talk to preschoolers about money and how much importance you give it.

 [00:08:55.100] - Matt Paradise
Sure. I suppose in the short answer, we operate preschoolers and I on the same wavelength. I think that helps a lot. I just like to play, and my wife is like, come on, we need to be serious in this moment. So I suppose that helps. But in all seriousness as well. And I am serious in being able to play and interact. And the Bible even says that we need to act, we need to be more like little kids in our hearts. And there's something magical and innocent and also it opens us up for the opportunity to learn as adults. We have so many preconceived notions preschoolers don't have that they don't have preconceived notions of bills of all of the financial stresses that come with adulthood. And as a result, they're open and free to learn. So in working with little kids, there's lots of great books that certainly introduce the concepts of money from the Berenstein Bears and Trouble with Money. There's lots of books that also help equip parents because as a parent for myself, how I speak about money, how I engage, interact with money is learned by kids. It's not just in the book.

[00:10:18.740] - Matt Paradise
They're watching what I do when I go out and how I pay for something. My son watches that. If I sit down and think about whether I can afford something or not, my son watches that. If I have anxiety and stress around money, my son watches that. And he picks up on that from the earliest of ages. So I think that being able to interact and getting back even to, as you mentioned, the psychology of children and psychology around money, financial psychology, learning lessons like self control is really important for life and dealing with money in this particular instance. So being able to have fun and be introduced to financial concepts, what different coins are, what bills are, and learn some basic math, learn that self control and the mentality around money is really important from the earliest of ages.

[00:11:17.930] - Dori Durbin
You said something that's sticking with me right now. You said how excited kids get when they get money and they want to spend it. And I think the hard thing is that saving component of I have this dollar bill burning a hole in my pocket right now. What do I do with it? And I think about what we try to teach our kids is to be generous and to give away back to that whole psychology piece of like, okay, so when do we start teaching our kids to save? When do we start teaching our kids to give to others? Is it at preschool?

[00:11:56.330] - Matt Paradise
I think it's at a family level as far as when the best time is again that gets into making sure that what we're teaching is culturally competent. So I know for myself, I have my particular opinions and views, but I know that that's not the same for everybody, and that's perfectly okay. So at our family level, we decided with our son. He was adopted. It was through the Department of Children Family Services, and he moved in with us when he was four years old. And it was a transition for anyone who's adopted that first day, first week, first month is not the time to introduce our opinions, beliefs, thoughts, values. It's really providing a safe and secure loving environment and building attachment. And as that attachment was built, over some time, after about a year, he began to trust us to know this was his forever home. Even though the adoption still took two years, that attachment continued to take place during that time period. So that's a little bit of the backstory for us in our decision. But when he was about five is when we introduced him to the concept of share, spend, save.

[00:13:17.790] - Matt Paradise
So we have a little bank and gave him some money each week and allowed him to put a certain amount in spend and a certain amount in save, and had to put some money into share. It was his money, and he still determined how he wanted to give and donated it. And varied from year to year, depending on what his interest was. But it helped him to think beyond himself. And as far as spending and saving, it gets back into the financial psychology and building that self control because there's opportunity cost. We didn't introduce at five years old the idea of opportunity cost with its big word and big term, or maybe I did, and my wife was like, he has no idea what that word means. And we bring balance to each other in that, even as I might tend to bring on a lecture. But ultimately, kids understand the idea of opportunity cost. If I wait to get whatever the toy is or piece of candy or something like that, that means I can't have what I want today. And it's that constant battle for kids as well as adults, that balance of feeding our present self or saving for our future self, right?

[00:14:37.100] - Matt Paradise
Our future self wants to be comfortable and all of that. But it's hard in our present moment to fully realize and understand that because we want to be comfortable now. We want what we want now, and particularly for a developing mind. The frontal lobe isn't fully developed until early 20s. So when we see, oh, well, he just shouldn't do that, or she just shouldn't do that. Well, maybe, but why are you fighting biology? It's that frontal lobe that's still being developed so that the decisions continue to become more and more clear, understood and well thought out. So as adults, sometimes, even if my frontal lobe is I'm showing air quotes for those just listening in is fully developed, I still make poor decisions. That's the financial psychology of it. In my book, I talk about some different other books that I purchased behind the screen. I have an array of to be read books that I look forward to at some point. There's online courses that I've purchased and haven't quite gotten around to yet. There's food that sometimes sits in the back of the fridge and starts to grow legs, and ultimately that's wasted money.

[00:15:52.290] - Matt Paradise
But ultimately, there's other precedents that took place between cooking that spinach that week. Well, I should say this week in our house, my son just wouldn't eat and forcing it or is only going to develop additional insecurities and anxieties around food. So we just have a basic rule. We have to try it, but we're not going to force it on him. So there's a lot that goes into that. Again, psychology of dealing with money. But in our house, we believe that it begins in an again, age and developmentally appropriate age. I continue to emphasize developmentally appropriate because it's easy just to say, oh, well, here he is, seven years old, this is what he should be doing. Well, no, kids develop. Adults develop at all different rates, and that's okay. We're unique. That's part of what makes the world so magical, right? We are all different. The world would be a scary place if everybody was like Matt Paradise. They'd be like, that's a little much. Settle down now we need some peace and calm. I play percussion and gave up a professional career in playing drums. But sometimes I start tapping on desks and things and start dancing to the tune and beat in my own mind.

[00:17:13.000] - Matt Paradise
And my wife is just, okay, let's bring it down a few notches, please. So we need those different personalities.

[00:17:21.870] - Dori Durbin
Yeah, it's very true. And I'm enjoying the tapping. I can see it, you guys can't see it, but thank you. You're welcome. So what if your family has a scarcity mindset? They have bills and debt and when we talk about money, it's painful, but we want to teach our kids that there is a way around that. How do we do that? How do we structure our conversations so that it's not being passed on to our kids that they feel like money is a good thing?

[00:17:56.420] - Matt Paradise
Yeah, I think that's such a great question that has a lot of nuances to it. You raise in my mind even the thought of a book that's actually called Scarcity. And one of the statistics in that book is that poverty alone causes a decline in IQ intelligence quotient. And that's significant because we can say to somebody, oh well, just cut that out of your budget or don't spend on that, or just don't spend more than you make and you'll be good. Ultimately, the brain processes are much more complicated than just don't spend more than I make. Dealing with money is complicated and it can go back to generational trauma. Traumas that we endured maybe ourselves in our generation. And those traumas and financial traumas, money traumas impact the way that we think about dealing with money. On my website I have a worksheet that is about our first money memory. And ultimately our first memories about money are very formative in the ways that we manage money today. And doing some work to think through why we do what we do really is very much important. So in your question, I think about things like social media that show from a variety of different health points.

[00:19:21.720] - Matt Paradise
So the reason why in my subtitle I call it Whole Health Wealth is because just being rich. The traditional thought about being wealthy doesn't eliminate problems or stress or anxiety or worry. Sometimes it's just as large. Just because someone has a six figure paycheck, they too might be living check to check. They too might have food insecurity and that might blow the minds of some listeners and think, wow, how could that even be? It's very true. It's amazing. But when we look at things like social media or TV, when we think about what it means to be successful and follow other people's definition for successful, that means I have a lot of money in my bank account. That means I have the nicest clothes and drive the nicest car and have the nicest house or biggest house on the block. And all of those norms are skewed and form our perception of reality. And it's the same with other forms of health too, right? Our physical health is skewed by models on the covers of magazines on what we think healthy is. And obviously that gets into all different types of process addictions, whether that's problems around food, whether that's problems around drugs, whether that's problems around money, be it getting into debt, be it gambling.

[00:20:46.630] - Matt Paradise
So I think one of the first things in combating that is getting to a place where we understand what healthy is as we define healthy for ourselves, what we define as being wealthy for ourselves. Through my cancer, I completely reevaluated everything in life. It didn't matter if I had millions of dollars in a bank account. Ultimately, I struggled every day to survive and was just eternally grateful for the medical staff, for the support of friends and family that helped get me through that. But I was completely dependent on others, so my definition of wealth wasn't how much was in my bank account, because that couldn't make a difference day in, day out in surviving that very, very difficult time period. But the intangible things, the support of friends or family, the fact that I could get health care and the disparity in health care wasn't lost on me as I fought cancer through COVID and watched even in other countries. And parts of our own country try to live with, whether it's different viruses through the pandemic, specifically COVID or other health challenges, and not have access even to basic health care. And I get emotional even just thinking about how fortunate, how lucky I am to even just sit here and have this conversation with you, dory and to me, that's wealthy.

[00:22:23.050] - Matt Paradise
The fact that I can be surrounded by friends and family, the fact that I still have breath, the fact that I can help my son. Some of the most painful, difficult questions through my illness were, dad, are you going to be around when I'm a teenager? Are you going to see me grow up? And not knowing that answer was difficult, to say the least, but completely flies in the face of what the world around us considers being rich, being wealthy, and having money in the bank ultimately. Not that it doesn't matter, because it does. It pays bills. When we talk about being impoverished, I'm talking about it from a place of privilege. I was privileged to have access to the best health care in the world, to have a liver transplant. And I realized and know that not everybody has that. Before I went through cancer, I took something like that for granted. It was like, oh, whatever, I'm not sick through my 20s, through my 30s, I'm now in my early forty s. I was indestructible. I didn't consider slow. You know, whether or not cancer was going to get me. That wasn't even a thought in my mind, right?

[00:23:41.350] - Matt Paradise
It was being consumed with the day to day life. So I could go on and on. I'll stop for the sake of just I would say brevity, but I've already been going on and on, but for the sake of going too far. It's such an important question of how poverty influences and impacts households and families. It's significant and it's beyond just stop doing that or just work harder. I've worked in homeless shelters throughout New England. I know I said I was going to stop on this one, but I get passionate about it. I've worked in homeless shelters from domestic violence shelters and family shelters, and I've met some of the hardest working people in those shelters in what most people would consider the poorest of circumstances. People who couldn't afford rent or living and fell on hard times for one reason or the other. Many worked multiple jobs. The idea that there are working poor is very much a reality that too many, I believe, are disconnected from. So just the idea of work harder, work more, and all of a sudden your financial circumstance will change is somewhat of an ignorant statement, ultimately. Sometimes the cards are stacked against us and we have wage discrepancy, wage disparities in the US.

[00:25:09.380] - Matt Paradise
So I'm a firm believer of legislative action. I'm a firm believer in advocacy on all different levels because we do have poverty, and I think that is a travesty in our country in particular. So that's something that I'm passionate about, I could go on and on about, but thank you for asking.

[00:25:33.160] - Dori Durbin
Yeah, I think the biggest part of that in my mind too, is that they're not stuck. There can be a choice. There can be, like you said, a resetting of perception of what's important and then hopefully steps towards feeling less stress about money and having it be less of a concern. So then you can focus on family, you can focus on relationships, you can focus on the connectedness and not have that as a driving force against you.

[00:26:05.350] - Matt Paradise
It is. I'm just one person. I can use my story as inspiration and hope for others. I've slept on the street. I've couch surfed. I've been homeless. And it's not easy by any stretch of the imagination. It's difficult. It's difficult physically not knowing where your next meal is going to come from or going days without food. But it's also very difficult emotionally and psychologically. And I think to your point, dory there's always hope? There's always a way. Sometimes it's just getting up. For me, I was extremely depressed during that time of homelessness, and it lasted for a few years. It wasn't like a day, a week, a couple of months, but it lasted a few years. And sometimes it was hard just to get up, get going, and do even one thing that was healthy to influence my future. But ultimately our futures are built one step at a time. And even when we have a hard time getting up, getting out of bed, doing the next thing, ultimately it just starts. We can make our bed and that one act of making our bed and doing one thing and feeling success and building on that can cause a chain reaction that continues to build as we work towards changing our circumstance.

 [00:27:30.210] - Matt Paradise
But I also really there's something called there's the concept of just health and it's called the social determinants of health. And ultimately look at and focus on from a public health perspective, what is it that allows people or contributes to people being healthy? And one of the significant parts of that is our social network. I'll try not to go off on too many tangents with it because there are many and that tends to be what I do. But I'll try to stay on point. But with the social determinants of health our social network really has a significant factor in our day to day life, our month to month, year to year and overall growth and personal development too. So when we talk about dealing with money as an example, who we know influences how we manage our money, I'll give a specific example. In a smaller city in Massachusetts, I was teaching a workshop in the Public Housing Authority and had a conversation with the director there who said that many of his residents either directly had experience or knew somebody personally who was incarcerated. And he went on to say that very, very few of his residents knew somebody who graduated from college.

[00:29:00.620] - Matt Paradise
And not that college is the end all be all. But what it illuminated was the idea that working professional might take for granted of asking out to another professional friend or peer advice, direction, instruction personally. Now I've been able to build my network and have a close friend who's a lawyer. So when I have a legal question, I can ask him as a friend and trust his professional and his counsel based on his experience, his education, all of the above. As we build that network, it makes just a huge difference. The closest few people, handful of people most definitely mold our thoughts, our perspectives in life. So one of the important things that I would encourage for all of the listeners is build a network. Not just to have lawyers or other professionals but even people who think differently than us. I know for myself sometimes I get stuck in my own ways. Like my thoughts are the best way and my wife helps bring me back to reality to say you might want to think about that a little bit differently. And we balance each other out. But expanding and growing our network and being able to really thoughtfully consider the ideas of others who have professional expertise as well as lived experience can really brighten the path.

[00:30:32.730] - Dori Durbin
I love that because you're also opening the door up to conversations that you didn't expect and connections you didn't expect just by reaching out and expanding your network. So, yeah, that's great advice. Probably something too. I hate to tie it back, but that we could teach our kids is not to kind of segregate themselves to certain groups and to have that openness. So. Yeah, I love that. Matt, before we get too far, I do want to ask you, can you tell us about your other two parts of your book?

[00:31:05.430] - Matt Paradise
Sure. Thanks for asking. So my book is organized into three different sections. So again, the title Financially Capable and the subtitle is a friendly Guide to building whole Health Wealth. So the first section is about the world in which we live, our financial environment. So it gets into regulation and some things that some people might find less exciting. But our banking system, it's all over the news right now, whether the Fed raises or lowers interest rates, inflation, and all of these terms that some are more familiar with and some might be brand new terms, but they're very important. They're external factors that day to day by ourselves, we don't have full control over, but certainly influence our finances and our overall health and well being. Part of that includes systemic racism. It exists, it's real, it's well documented. And within the financial world, it definitely influences the racial wealth gap that exists now. So there's one statistic that shows for every dollar of wealth that white people have, those people of color have about ten cents, and it's a significant wealth gap. So there's some legislation like Baby Bonds and some other things to address that wealth gap, but it's very real.

 [00:32:30.610] - Matt Paradise
The government actually just levied the largest fine ever to a bank out in San Francisco for redlining. And redlining means literally, the term came from drawing a red line on a map to neighborhoods that lenders would not lend to. And they were predominantly neighborhoods with people of color who lived there. And it exists even though it's illegal, it still exists today. So that's part of the world in which we live understanding, that allows us to navigate, to make decisions in the world in which we live. So the second section, as you mentioned, ori is about why we do what we do, a variety of different things, but we need to follow up behaviors with the knowledge. I could have all the knowledge in the world, but if I don't act on it, it's virtually useless. Knowledge alone doesn't get me anywhere. I need to get up and off the couch and implement it. Right. We find that in parenting. I could read 10,000 parenting books. I could read 50 million parenting books in preparation of adopting. But until I actually go through it, experiencing is completely different for all the parents out there. They know what I mean.

 [00:33:50.890] - Matt Paradise
I don't need to elaborate there, but that lived. Experience is important, but we need to enact whatever it is that we learn. The third section is what I consider the nuts and bolts of financial education. So that includes understanding budgeting and understanding credit. And when it relates to parenting, the more confident and competent we are with our own finances, the easier it will be to transfer that knowledge, skills and behaviors onto our children. But even more than that, it directly speaks to our overall well being. And that's why entitled with the subtitle building Whole Health Wealth. Because our emotional, spiritual, psychological health is directly tied into our financial health. Many, many people are very, very stressed as a result of their finances. And that affects us spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, it affects our overall well being. So all of those three key components tie in together to allow us to become financially capable. So we need the opportunity to act so that's the whole financial environment, if we don't have fair, safe, equitable opportunity, then we're not able to have a fair shake at life and obtaining the success as we define it in our family.

 [00:35:15.990] - Matt Paradise
We need to have the behavior as well as the opportunity. We need to have the knowledge to appropriately move in the direction of building whatever our dreams might be. For some that might be paying the bill this week, for some it might be a new outfit, new shoes for our kids. For others, it might be buying a house. For others it might be working towards retirement. It's looking where we are today, learning the steps, learning from those who have walked before us, and taking one step today towards building the future that we desire. And in our house, that doesn't necessarily mean the biggest bank account. I took a pay cut in retiring from working for the financial education company so that I could be more involved with my son. We were able to get him into a special education school. I drove him back and forth through the transition because prior to that we were walking to our local neighborhood school. So getting on a bus, never mind to go to a whole new school in a different city, was scary for a seven year old kid. So I was there to be able to help support him.

 [00:36:28.690] - Matt Paradise
And for us, that was far more important than adding some more money to our bank account because he was and is our future. He'll outlive us in a lot of different ways. So just having that money there for him in the future is not going to replace having loving parents in his life, having the peace and comment and focus. And again, I know for us that was a place of privilege to be able to do that and I know not everybody can. But I give that example because just because somebody else says they have the way and there's plenty of advertisements, financial companies that say if we just follow their advice they have the way. One of the most important things with personal finance is to keep it personal. Just because what I do works for us doesn't mean it's best for everybody. We found our own way, some of it through trial and error. And part of my goal in writing this book to help people that they could learn from the mistakes of others, including ones that I made. I've been able to and had the opportunity to learn from over 100,000 people in my career teaching, educating, coaching, counseling.

[00:37:43.000] - Matt Paradise
And I put those different lessons learned into the book. Because when we learn from others and we work collectively, whether it's around personal finance, whether it's around health and well being, whether it's around parenting, it really does take a village to raise a child. And the more that we work together, the farther that we're able to go, the healthier we're able to be as well.

 [00:38:04.750] - Dori Durbin
I love it. I think your book sounds just amazing, and it sounds like it's something that anybody could pick up and really benefit from as well. It's not overwhelming to people.

 [00:38:15.870] - Matt Paradise
I tried not to make it overwhelming. I even make the disclaimer some places. Be careful. There are some spots that some eyes might glaze over with data and statistics. But I try to put a little personality, a little flavor, a little fun into it as well. So I hope it comes across that way. In addition to the book, there's a lot of resources, so I continue to build on them for readers that can go for free whether you get the book or not. If you go to matparadise. Comcapablebonus, there's a lot of different financial, education, personal finance related resources that are there, ranging from those for kids, and there are many money as you grow. The CFPB Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a fantastic site for all ages and stages. I know we've talked about preschoolers, but certainly all the way up through high school, all the way up through young adulthood. As we continue and learn and grow and developing our parenting, there's different resources to help on that journey too.

 [00:39:23.220] - Dori Durbin
I love it. Okay, so we have just one more question for you. What do you wish kids knew long before they became adults about finances?

 [00:39:32.470] - Matt Paradise
I guess the thing that comes to mind is that they're loved and readers are like, wait a second, she said. But that one thing about finances. I mean, in so many ways, so many insecurities and so many process addictions come as a result of the lack of love. And I mentioned process addictions earlier a little bit. So it's not necessarily just drug addictions, but ranges everything from gambling, from getting into debt, from shopping. And there are twelve step programs for those process addictions. There's Gamblers Anonymous and Debtors Anonymous. Spenders Anonymous because psychologically and physiologically in the brain they're very, very similar. So knowing that a child is loved allows them to grow up and explore the world, knowing that there's a firm foundation of support as they continue to learn, grow and develop their own personalities, their own individual belief systems, as it relates in this case directly to money as well. Because for my son, he's very different than I am and my tendency is to want to help mold him to be like me. And ultimately he's not like me. And I need to constantly take a step back and remember he's not like me.

 [00:40:51.890] - Matt Paradise
He's his own unique, special individual and I can provide the support and love as he continues to learn and grow and develop. He's now twelve years old, so going through a change in exploring who he is and who he is in relation to the world around him. And ultimately I have ways that I think that he should act. Air quotes again for those listeners not seeing the video, but how I think he should act might not be what he actually does or what he actually chooses. And if I lack love in my interaction and nurturing with him, then he's going to grow more and more distant on into the teen years. And no amount of knowledge that I might try to impart when it comes to finances will overcome that distance that I create through the gap of lack of love and lack of trust and support that's able to be built through it. So that's a long, maybe different answer than like that one key lesson, but I think it's really important and ties back to the idea, the concept of building whole health wealth. It's not just the biggest bank account at the end of our days, whenever we take our last breath, we're not going to sit and wonder why didn't I just do that one more thing to have another dollar in my bank account?

 [00:42:18.170] - Matt Paradise
But we are going to look at the people who hopefully surround us and know at least they were loved. And now I have them to love me.

 [00:42:28.180] - Dori Durbin
Awesome. Can you give us to your website one more time, Matt?

 [00:42:31.770] - Matt Paradise
It's www.matparadise.com paradise.com. And are you on social media anywhere else that they can find you on LinkedIn? Primarily. I am also dabbling in TikTok, so trying to learn it, trying to figure it out, trying to have a little bit of fun. So on TikTok. Um, matt Paradiser. And on LinkedIn. If you search Matt Paradise there as well.

[00:43:03.610] - Dori Durbin
Awesome. Well, I appreciate all of your information about finances, but especially your heart for kids and families. Thank you so much Matt, for your time today.

 [00:43:13.610] - Matt Paradise
My pleasure. Thank you. Dori.