Wade and Catherine Reed explore how childhood lessons about chores, responsibilities, and work ethic can shape financial habits and secure future success. They discuss the importance of teaching kids to contribute to the family, instilling values of hard work, and creating small opportunities for earning and celebrating accomplishments. Reflecting on their own farm-influenced upbringings and their parenting journey with six children, they highlight how these principles foster resilience, independence, and gratitude. Listeners are encouraged to examine their own childhood experiences for valuable lessons to guide their financial and personal growth today.
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Training Your Kids For Future Success
Introducing Catherine Reed
What’s up, Money Masters? It’s Wade Reed here for another episode of the Wealth Acceleration Podcast. This episode is coming out on December 18th, which is my wife’s birthday. Who better to have with me than my gorgeous wife, Catherine? Glad to have you on with me.
Happy to be here.
We’re going to do a little bit of an interview style and talk about some interesting things related to childhood, chores, the value of doing chores, the value of having jobs that are contributions to the family versus paid jobs, and how that plays into, as parents, those of you who are parents, how that will help you be even better with teaching your kids about money. How you guys who are not yet parents can just look back at your childhood and check in with the role of chores and work and how that has influenced you in your day-to-day life as well as how you handle money. Catherine, welcome.
Thank you. I’m so excited. We’re going to have a blast.
Awesome. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and your upbringing.
Close your eyes for a minute unless you’re driving. I want you to picture sunny St. George, Utah, Southern Utah. We’ve got beautiful weather. It’s a Saturday afternoon and my mom throws my brother and sister and I carrots that we rinse off in the kiddie pool water to be able to eat from our own garden. It was one of my happiest childhood memories. Now, of course, this is Saturday afternoon. In the morning, what were we doing prior? We had done our Saturday chores. That’s what we always call them. We did our family. We worked together as a family. Work hard, play hard. I feel like my mom would say that, and we say that to ours with our six children.
Work hard, play hard. We always had our job list every single Saturday. I don’t remember a Saturday unless we were out of town that we didn’t have a job list. My cute mom would say we had the garden and feed the sheep, the goats, the chicken. I grew up on a small farm and it was just like work hard, play hard. My mom would say, read twenty minutes or smile along with the pot, wash the pots and pans, or sweep or vacuum or whatever. We’d have this long job list and then also some fun things on there. We got to play as a family.
Sometime in that day, I loved this. I shared this with Wade when we were dating and it’s been fun to see with our own kids. We had a mommy store, we got tickets for some of those jobs. Now I didn’t get paid to clean my own room. We’ll talk about that later. Contributions, we just contribute to the family values. We are family members. We all are needed in that family work. Just those extra Saturday-type chores, we got tickets. We would take our tickets to the mommy store. My cute mom now calls it grandma store. We do it for family reunions.
At the mommy store, I would buy gosh. It’s the ‘80s guys. Maybe there was some strawberry shortcake, a little coloring book or crayons and treats, all sorts of probably Hostess Twinkies. I cannot believe it, I mean, that was in the ‘80s. It felt like this, like a carnival. We got to just choose from the mommy store. I was motivated, but then of course there was that intrinsic, this feels good. Our home was just more peaceful and cleaner. There’s a song that we learned growing up. Saturday is a special day. It’s the day we get ready for Sunday. It’s, we do all the chores on Saturday.
On Sunday, we could connect as a family and go to church together, worship together, and just have a hopefully peaceful Sunday and take naps and read the comics. That’s my painted story. I wanted to paint that picture in your mind. Man, I loved the ‘80s. Just such a happy childhood. It wasn’t without imperfections and trial. I didn’t always love doing chores. Neither did my siblings but we just knew that was just expected in our family. We did chores every Saturday. We’re expected also to do our dishes and clean our rooms midweek as well. The big vacuuming and everything, weeding the garden, all that was on Saturday.
Sounds like a nightmare to me.
No.
You guys ever did was chores.
Yeah, right. I said work hard, play hard. We were in the pool.
No, I’m teasing.
That was your Saturday or run through the sprinklers. We loved those sprinklers. That was like on a Saturday.
Growing Up In A Farm
I know your parents, your mom in particular were on a farm.
Yeah. She grew up on a dairy farm and a potato farm. Then we had some cows, sheep, and goats, and then we’d rent out some of the acreage of land to a few neighbors. We never owned horses, but what a dream that was for me as a child. There were sometimes horses on our property that I could just like go talk to on the horse. Our sheep were Awesome and Blossom. We have chickens now that I’ve named my kids and I have named.
Yeah, we have chickens named Awesome and Blossom because of that. You had a mom who was on a farm. I had a mom who was on a farm. My mom was a potato farmer in Idaho as well, no animals, but they had sugar beets. My mom talks about the days when she had to hoe the row when they were long. They were like really long rows to hoe and they would spend their days doing that stuff. We have this interesting background that I think farming background is really helpful. Neither of us were actually farmers growing up, but we had some land. My family probably had a third to a half of an acre. Catherine had an acre.
We had a farm with animals ourselves, but then we got rid of all the animals, but the chickens when I was, I want to say like twelve. That’s when we had my grandparents build a house, but they were such hard workers growing up in the depression, just learning how to work hard. I loved working with them. It didn’t feel like work. I was like helping Grandpa D with his fixing my bike tire. That was like such a happy part of my childhood is going to help them out too.
Cool. There are really interesting lessons to be learned guys. For those of us who have that background, I’m sure not everyone reading to this has a background like that where your parents were farmers, your grandparents were farmers, but probably 2 or 3 generations back, that was the case. If you didn’t grow up in a household where you had land and a place to do a garden or have a dog or goats and sheep, as you had, it wasn’t huge.
I know her farm wasn’t that huge, but there was enough to keep the family busy. Us as parents now looking back, we were just chatting about this earlier that the chickens we have, we don’t get very many eggs. We have thirteen chickens, we get like half of them are laying right now and it’s frustrating because it costs a lot to have chickens, but we joke about, it’s not about the chickens and the eggs, it’s about what we get to help our kids do because of that.
Getting Children To Do Chores
We want them to not be afraid of hard work and they are literally in there. Two Saturdays ago, we were cleaning out all of the chicken poop. That sounds disgusting. We had gloves. I really made sure we washed and showered after because it was so gross, but that was just important. That’s what you do. Even if it’s a small mini chicken farm, like ours, or we have a dog and we have a cat and they hate cleaning out the cat litter box, it’s gross.
It is not fun.
It’s important. It’s important to still do it. I’ve tried to try to teach the kids and you’ve taught our kids. As they’re having breakfast, “Did you feed the dog because the dog needs to eat his breakfast too.” If we’re eating dinner as a family, “Did you feed the dog? Did you feed the cat? Did you feed the chickens because the animals deserve to eat too?” I know it helps them in their minds become more just thoughtful and mindful because they’re like they’re thinking of others. Hopefully, it’s going to help their parenting someday because they’re thinking of someone else before themselves.
Teaching kids to take care of animals makes them more thoughtful and mindful of others. They begin to think of someone else before themselves.
I’m also thinking in that context about how the role of responsibility that as kids take on jobs, whether it’s outside jobs or inside jobs. Those of you who don’t have land and animals and things like we did growing up or don’t have that now, you might have toilets that need to be scrubbed and floors that need to be cleaned, windows that need to be washed, and cars that need to be washed, grass that needs to be mowed, maybe some flower beds that need to be taken care of.
There are all kinds of things that can be done at a small level, even kids 2, and 3 years old start to want to engage in doing the family work and following the example of mom, dad, and siblings that they want to learn independence and how to do those things. I have experienced personally that because of the upbringing I had, I’m more proactive in the way I live my adult life. I’m willing to take on the responsibilities of my work and take things to completion. Whereas, others who maybe didn’t have the same upbringing might not be as proactive in their life. I’m curious how that’s been for you.
I think you’re spot on. It actually reminds me of as we’re talking about hard work and teaching our children to work. It reminds me of that study that you and I were talking about earlier. I always say research shows and Wade laughs at me, but I love some tangible good research from these different universities. Harvard right now, they’re doing a long-running study, which indicates a strong correlation between children doing chores and their later success in life. It’s an extensive study. It found a significant link between children who regularly did chores and their later professional success and overall, overall well-being and happiness.
I believe that and I have seen our two oldest children, Emily and Johnny particularly, we have to leave the house without making their bed. Emily was seventeen months old when Johnny was born. They’re not quite Irish twins, but I call them my Irish twins. I was primarily the one from home with them. I always made sure that Emily made her bed when baby Johnny was little. She would smooth, pat. It was just the quilt that Grandma Eileen had made for her. Johnny did his and made his bed when he was only 18 months and 2 years old.
We’re teaching them to work hard and to be proud of their work. Like one thing, especially our middle kids, I think we were even more exact with our older two, what a bath, a clean bathroom looks like. We had pictures actually of what their clean room looked like. If you have a clean room, it should look like this. Our middle kids, I came to you and I told you that I had just heard what we don’t inspect, they won’t respect. Do you remember that? Wade’s better than I am at this, that he’s like, “Let’s go check the bathroom.” “Awesome. Let’s celebrate together.” I love that you do that as a daddy because we get to celebrate them after they’ve done bathrooms in particular.
With sweeping and vacuuming. Sarah just vacuumed yesterday because she was going to be gone snowboarding all day today. Guess what? Saturday chores ended up on Friday night for our 14-year-old. The younger brothers and I helped pick up things so that she could vacuum more thoroughly. We don’t have to move the couch and the bed every time, but let’s do a good job and teach them to do a good job because they’ll be proud of that. They really will.
How Children’s Upbringing Translates To Real Life
This translates well into a meritocracy, meaning that if you are doing your jobs and your responsibilities, then you get privileges. You can earn more privileges by doing more. If you want to be proactive, you can earn more tickets toward actual dollars or experiences with mom or dad, which then helps them recognize it in a work environment, they may be able to do the same thing. In fact, our capitalistic society is largely built around meritocracies where we go in and we add value to the organizations we work within.
It’s not the time that we’re paid for. It’s the value that we deliver during the time. If we recognize that early on, that’s the value we’re delivering in the family that is why I’m getting the money or why I’m getting the privilege. I think that’s going to translate well into those who become entrepreneurial. I’m not all of our kids are engaging in entrepreneurial thinking right now, but we’re training them to think about the value they’re creating, whether it’s in an employment role or in a self-employed type role.
They’ve done some lawns around the neighborhood. They’ve done some raking around the neighborhood. Some snow cleanup, babysitting. We give them those opportunities around the neighborhood and encourage that type of behavior for them to step up and do something a little uncomfortable. That I think is training them to be proactive as adults. It’s then will help them as they have more and more financial resources to manage that well because they’re seeing mom and dad and how we’re managing things well.
They’ll have that good behavior and guidance that we’ve given them so that they, as this podcast is called, accelerate wealth requires consistent earning. It requires good management. There’s a surplus and so the investment decisions can be made, which include investments in self to become more valuable to the employers that you work for, shifting from one company to another. I had a guy just tell me the other day. In fact, it was just last night. He had a 30% increase in his income just by shifting companies. That’s a wealth acceleration step right there.
Recognizing you don’t have to stick with just one employer. You’re valuable at other companies. I have a cousin who had a similar experience as an IT professional who moved from a university to I think it was Oracle and doubled his income for the same exact. The things that you’re teaching your kids and that we’ve been teaching our kids, I think have a great influence on the acceleration of wealth in the future and wealth not just being dollars, but wealth in family life, wealth in physical health, wealth in your spiritual life, wealth in your relationships outside of your family. What do you think?
I love it. I’m just, I’m over here going amen. I agree with all of that. Like with the value that we bring sometimes when our kids are like, “How much am I going to earn for doing all this?” The spring cleanup and the fall cleanup that are just the really nasty ones? The kids are like, “How much am I going to earn?” We don’t like to say, “$2 per hour, $5 per hour.” It’s like, “Let’s look at maybe it’s $15 per job.” Maybe we go out to dinner as a family after because it was really a good job. We celebrate in other ways, but we want to teach them to have that abundance mindset and that intrinsic like pay them physically and have that intrinsic I’m proud of this.
Just barely. I was with the children. I don’t even remember where we were. We were driving home from something. I said to our middle boys, “We went to Christmas around the world at BYU.” On our way home from the field trip. I actually want to share this. One of our kids was like, “Another red light.” I said, “Yes, another red light.” I tried to validate like, “Isn’t that frustrating?” That’s a whole other episode. We can teach about some power, how to empower kids, and whatnot. With how to listen and validate.
I was like, “Isn’t that frustrating?” I’ve been focusing on gratitude more in this beautiful month of November, and today is my birthday is just for December but throughout the holidays, I’ve been trying to focus on gratitude more. I said to Matthew, “Do you know what this red light means? It means that we are out and about and adventuring because if we were home, we wouldn’t have a red light or a green light.” He told me just like, “Mom, you’re lame.” He’s like, “What does a green light mean?”
I was like, “A green light also means that we’re out adventuring.” We had just gone on a really epic field trip to appreciate cultures of beautiful dress and costumes and dance at BYU. This Christmas around the world. He was like, “What does a green light mean?” I said, “A green light, red light means that we’re adventuring. We’re on this fun filter field trip.” I went on to say because we were actually listening to your show. You guys, I love his podcast. I just have to say that our kids all listen to it.
I’m just with Mom in the car, the older two on their own, but I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing. You are leaving a legacy for our kids. I hope our viewers, our guests, readers, hopefully, appreciators as well anyway, and wealth accelerators. Anyway, I love that. I went off on this tangent with them because I often do. I said, “Do you know what a messy kitchen is? A messy kitchen means that we have money for food and that we’re eating at home.
Do you know what dirty laundry means?” I mean, you guys get it, the dirty laundry and dirty house means that we have a home to live in. Unmade beds mean that we have a comfy bed that we slept in that night. Just that gratitude. I tried to focus more on that. Again, we can do a whole another episode just on gratitude and teaching our kids gratitude because that is absolutely a great way to accelerate our wealth is to focus what you focus on expand. Anyway, I’m sorry, what we’re talking about like I just go off.
Gratitude is a great way to accelerate wealth and focus on things you can expand.
Understanding Marriage Masterminds
I just loved having you on the show. Guys expect to have more of her. I think it’s going to be a fun dynamic to do some more dialogue between husband and wife here. It’s been an interesting ride. I’ve been really blessed to be married to this woman. She came into our marriage with a healthy relationship with money. That’s not always the case. For those of you who are married, if you feel like there’s some discord with regard to money, it’s really important that you have some conversations together regularly.
What we call a marriage mastermind on your Sunday is the most common day but have some time, specifically 30 minutes to an hour, where you can connect and talk not just about money, but about the fun upcoming things. Money is really only the means to get what you want in life. If you have a trip coming up that you want to plan for, when is it going to be? How much money is it going to take? Are you already saved up for that? You might have to cut back on something and recognize, as I’ve said before, that you can have anything in life that you want, just not everything.
Too often we get sucked into the marketing that tells us to give our money away to all these other things. We get these small instant gratifications by buying things. If you want something bigger in life, you can have it. You just have to delay that gratification a bit and plan for it and prepare for it. That’s what those marriage masterminds can do. Those of you who haven’t been taking weekend getaways on a quarterly basis as husband and wife.
Catherine and I early on in our marriage determined that it was crucial for our long-term success. With the financial resources that were greatly limited early on in our relationship, we still had date nights, that we had a weekend, that we had an overnighters together away from children, we had some time to go plan and prepare for our future together, to envision our future together. It’s my first episode. If you haven’t listened to that yet, go back and listen to that, because it’s about creating a vision for your future, a financial vision.
I love that one.
Also a family vision. Like what is it that you want your family dynamic to look like? What legacy do you want to live today? Not just leave behind, but live today. What values matter to you guys and are unique to you? Don’t let everyone else’s influence tell you how to manage your money and how to make whatever investments they’re making. You need to make investments that are right for you. Back to the childhood thing.
I’m your upbringing brought to our marriage, a sense of unification in our belief systems, yet we still took a personal finance class together in 2005, which ultimately was the catalyst for me to become the financial coach that I am today and to do this podcast because you were willing to have that experience with me to study about money and to make sure we’re on the same page. Really grateful that you’ve been here.
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
To wrap things up, our encouragement to you is for those of you who are married, and have children, be thinking about how you can engage your kids regularly in small and simple jobs and chores around the house that they are just contributing to and then have some opportunities for them to earn tickets. Have some household store possibly where you bring home things from the actual store that they can have in your home so you don’t have to drive off to Target or Walmart or whatever your local store is where the fun, interesting things are, but you can have it at your home.
They can get their jobs turned into experiences with mom or dad, toys, bikes, whatever, and have a little economic household yourselves. We encourage you to look at your childhood and say, “What were the gifts that my parents gave me?” Some of you might be negative about your parents and your upbringing about money. Maybe you didn’t learn anything interesting about money or you learned that money was scarce and it was really stressful, but look at that and go, “What were the positive lessons as well?
What were the things that I learned about how to live my life that will help me be successful with managing money?” Money again, is the by-product, the receipt of the value you’re creating. It’s not the time, it’s the value you are creating for your customers, if you’re a business owner, for your employer, if you’re an employee, be respectful of that. You’ve worked hard for that, it’s your skill that’s bringing that.
As you respect yourself, and the lessons that you’ve learned growing up, and how that’s applied to how you’re earning money today, you’ll be more respectful of the money that’s come in, and you’ll be more likely to manage it well, so you can get the bigger things in life. That’s our encouragement to you, is look back at that and find the positives that you can use today to catapult and accelerate you forward. We’ll see you in the next one.
Thanks guys.
Episode Resources
- Catherine Reed on Facebook
- Do You Have A Vision For Your Future? – First Episode
About Catherine Reed
