DOD13: On Giving Our Kids Money

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that always carries a little cash just in case. I'm Tom Curry, and I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:38 Thomas: Idio.

0:00:38 Eli: This cash you speak of.

0:00:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:00:42 Tom: You guys don't do that? You guys don't have cash laying around?

0:00:44 Thomas: Fuck cash forever. It should not exist.

0:00:47 Tom: My God. I put I'm a fucking crazy person. I think I'm I'm like, I think I'm, like, 70% prepper, like hidden prepper.

0:00:50 Thomas: You're just old.

0:00:54 Eli: Sure.

0:00:54 Tom: Like, I just, because I 100%, not only do I, I don't usually have cash in my wallet, but I keep cash in my car, and I plant cash in my wife's car. Like, there's always $100 in her car and my car. I don't know why.

0:01:05 Thomas: And Plant drugs in your car so that Tom

0:01:11 Eli: There you go.

0:01:13 Tom: Just seems like I should be doing this. It seems like I should have cash. Like, I'm in my mind, I'm like, what if something goes wrong and my wife is stranded and she doesn't have any cash, and I don't know what that means, like, what would happen where cash would get her out of some dire emergency that her phone and credit cards would not fix? I have no idea.

0:01:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:33 Tom: It's, I know that it's pointless, but I would feel fucking insane not, not to have cash.

0:01:33 Eli: I'm am just pictuing Haley now out in the wastelands, like Mad Mad Max, bouncy guy on front of the car, but they do cash still. He's just like, can't break a hundred.

0:01:48 Thomas: I picture her trying to get the last drops of a water bottle and just some dollar bills fall out, and it's like, wow. Tom.

0:01:54 Tom: I know.

0:01:55 Thomas: Great, wish you had given me water instead of cash.

0:01:59 Tom: I am a crazy prepper person. I realize that. My car definitely has a backpack in it with like, what if I get stranded? Here's a blanket and some power bars. It never has happened.

0:02:10 Thomas: A place you could get stranded near you?

0:02:13 Tom: I live in the suburbs. It's the least useful thing, but my brain and is like, I should probably have road flares. Road flares? What do I need road flares for? I got triple A!

0:02:21 Thomas: Yeah. You Land a Plane? I don't know.

0:02:21 Eli: Well, you pop one at the last minute, right in the zombie's face, and then that gives you time to get inside the makeshift shelter, Tom. Watch a movie, read a movie.

0:02:30 Tom: Right.

0:02:25 Thomas: Yeah. It is Funny how, as humans, we, the availability heuristic, like, anything we see or hear about, we're like, well, that's gonna happen to me. Like, there's the whole, there's a story of, like, the family got stranded with a car in the desert, which I, or maybe I don't know if there's more of a California thing, because, you know, there is desert, the whole fucking thing's a desert now, but back in the back in the day, it used to just be parts of California, Arizona were desert. You, the story of, like, they survived by, like, putting the, you know, getting little drops of water, the morning dew, and the hubcaps, and all this bullshit. And then my mind was like, well, that's gonna happen to me, so definitely need to keep a bunch of water. But, but then I got to a certain age where I just, I think I was able to just stop caring about that. Like, I was like, yes, I still feel like somehow that's going to happen to me, but also no, it's not going to. So I just won't prepare for it. That's where I landed.

0:02:46 Tom: Yeah.

0:03:18 Eli: Is there an opposite of a prepper? Is there, I'm A, I'm A waster? Yeah, I'm a emptier. Like, I emptied nearby water tanks that were there for other people. I'll

0:03:22 Tom: A Bosnick?

0:03:30 Thomas: You see the case of water bottles in your car. He just slashes it with a knife. Like, sorry, I can't, I don't know. I can be anywhere where anyone's prepared for anything. Can't do it. Oh

0:03:34 Tom: Yeah.

0:03:37 Eli: Tell you a 100% true story about how, how much of a not prepper I am. When COVID first happened and everybody was like hoarding paper towels and shit, I was like, I feel like I should do that when things are over. And so I came home one day with two cases of bottled water, and Anna was, was like, why, why have you done this? Now, right, because the response when I come in with a new thing is always like, Jesus fuck, what, what now, what punishment have you wrought on us.

And I was like, I bought two cases of water, and the FEMA says you should have water, so I'm gonna put them in the basement and they'll be there. And she's like, let me see them. I bought flavored carbonated water, water I bought like, I bought like two cases of cherry fizz. I might As well, have brought home a bag of, like, a 32 bag of milk. And I don't like seltzer water, so for the next however many months, every time Anna would be like, will you bring me a glass of water, I would come in with a seltcer, like, would you care for

0:03:46 Thomas: God.

0:04:21 Tom: This is amazing. Oh, I fucking love you. Oh my god. I

0:04:33 Thomas: Milk. Yeah. Yeah.

0:04:47 Tom: Yeah.

0:04:47 Eli: A nice? And she'd be like, no, man, I wouldn't care for enough. Yeah.

0:04:48 Thomas: Stop pawning off your bullshit on me. Yeah. That's I want to know, Tom, at the risk of offending you, are you technically a millennial? No.

0:04:51 Eli: Yeah, yeah,

0:04:53 Tom: Yeah. I'm not.

0:04:57 Thomas: No.

0:04:57 Tom: I'm a, uh, Gen X.

0:04:57 Thomas: Okay. So Eli, fellow millennial, as as the cash goes, fuck cash and fuck checks. These are two things that should no longer exist.

0:04:58 Tom: Oh.

0:05:04 Eli: Yeah.

0:05:05 Tom: Checks.

0:05:06 Thomas: When I accumulate any sort of coin, I throw it away. I do not need need coin. That's not real. I don't want that. It's like a rock. Why would I collect a rock? You know, my kids collect rocks. They're kids, but like I'm an adult. Why Would I collect some pebbles that you gave me that you're supposed to don't care about that. But there's always one fucking thing. There's always one transaction in your life. And for me, it's a dip. They take shifts. It'S a different thing. Each month, somebody will be like, Oh, I am a person who now requires you to have cash.

And it's something you can never get out of. It'll be to one fucking guy. Had one guy, I was taking some, some tennis lessons from a guy. And he was like, I only do cash. I was fucking, God damn it. So I like go to the bank. I get, I Was like, what should I just get? Like a million dollars. I have no idea how long am I taking these lessons? What I don't want to do is have to go to every single time I need to pay this guy. That's not happening, which

0:06:01 Thomas: I I was like, should I get like a a billion dollars and just have a thing of cash for this one fucking guy.

0:05:35 Eli: Yep. Right, right. A fishbowl of cash that I hoist into.

0:06:08 Thomas: Yeah. That one asshole. I have been a cashless house. Could have not even had a single bill in my goddamn house, but for one guy. And it's always that I'm done. I'm not, I'm off of that guy. And there'll be some other thing that requires cash.

0:06:20 Eli: Yep, There's always one person. Also, if you haven't pulled up to a parking meter recently and been just baffled by the concept, you're really missing out. Let me tell you, because I pulled up to a park meter the other day that didn't take the boop, and I was just like, you want me to? So I had to, like, a vagrant, like a vagrant in the Dust Bowl, go from business to business. Hello there, neighbor, I wonder if I might change one of these paper shine dollars to four thin rocks that I can place inside that thing.

0:06:54 Eli: So the Government doesn't come take my vehicle away, but I've got my banjo in there, I can't afford to lose. Please, put, put more shine rocks. I, I had a situation, I have so many cash things. First of all, I can't ever carry cash because I'm bad enough with a credit card, right? I can't count, that's the money that can't decline. They would need to invent a cash where HSBC makes like a boop noise, and I'm like, oh fuck, I actually can't, I can't have that hot dog, man, I'm sorry.

0:06:50 Tom: Oh. God, I feel so old on this call.

0:07:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:07:29 Eli: Yeah. I know that you do hear my, yeah, my I would, I would love some counterfeit dollars if anyone's, uh, but yeah, no, I can't carry any cash, but I have several of those, and one of them is the garage, right at the garage. When, when they bring the car around, I like to tip, I always like to tip except now they no longer bring me my car, they just go like it's over there. And so, so now I have, like, a bunch of fives sitting in my fucking dashboard. Also, you can't pump your own gas in Jersey, so you're supposed to

0:07:29 Thomas: Just give you counterfeit dollars, I think that's what yeah.

0:07:31 Tom: Right. There you go, right.

0:07:42 Thomas: Oh yeah oh

0:07:47 Tom: See

0:08:01 Eli: Tip when that happens. Yeah, so I've just... Yeah, it's terrible. I don't...

0:08:02 Thomas: My god oh yeah

0:08:04 Tom: You need cash, you'd be fine in my world, I'd have you taken care of, you'd reach into the glove box, there'd be a hundred dollars, you'd be good to go, small bills.

0:08:08 Thomas: Yeah But then that's only one, then you run out. That's what drives me nuts, because, like, the online system that I will, like, where I can use my phone or a card to pay things, that's always there. There's not a, oh, I need to stop by a, a fucking building that holds physical objects that correspond with value, and have a handful of them. At, never know when that's going to be, like, oh, is the day today the day I forgot that I ran out of these fucking shine rocks.

0:08:23 Eli: Yep. Right.

0:08:38 Tom: Yeah

0:08:41 Eli: Oh, you need shine rocks? Well, there's two kinds of buildings.

0:08:44 Tom: What?

0:08:44 Eli: There's a very nice building that you can go to. It's open from 1 to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays. All the other time you can talk to a robot outside and the answer's fucking no, or right, so that's option one. Or option two, you can go to the smelliest, scariest bodega in your town. Do you have a place where the meth heads hang out out front and punch each other till the cops come? Well, stroll on inside, you lucky so-and-so, because for some godless reason, in the back right corner, there's an ATM made out of two old Nintendos duct taped together that'll provide you the shine rocks you need to take your tennis lesson, right?

0:09:25 Tom: So, okay, last week, I, this is like a, like, I'm older than you guys, this is a fucking perfect Gen X old people stories, like you can totally make fun, it's a boomer minute for me. I bought used bike from a guy on Facebook Marketplace. I've been looking for a road bike. I found a road bicycle. It was a great deal. I live on the far western edge of the end of the world in the suburbs outside of Chicago. So if you go seven inches west of where I'm at, you fall off the edge of the map. It's corn, and there'll be monsters. There's nothing nothing else for like, till Colorado. There's just nothing at all west of me until like It's just all corn. This guy lived 16 miles. The guy that I found this bike from, he lived 16 miles away, um, about a half hour drive. And it's, it was west of, and I didn't realize, and I never go west. Nobody goes west of my, there's no reason.

0:09:57 Eli: Sure sure

0:10:15 Thomas: Shit maybe you can get stranded. Damn, I shouldn't have said that, yeah, yeah.

0:10:18 Tom: Yeah, it, you can, but there's Thomas, there literally no reason anybody would ever drive one inch west left of my driveway nobody you'd

0:10:24 Thomas: Plus, I assume you could survive on corn for quite a while. You could just eat corn, eat your way to California, actually.

0:10:28 Eli: Yep.

0:10:27 Tom: Be fine it's feed corn it just yeah right so so like I go I'm like okay shit and I'm kind of running late because like the babysitter's running late and this guy's got to go at a certain time so hop in my car and i'M FUCKING DRIVING TO GET THERE AND I WAS LIKE MESSAGING THIS GUY AND I was like okay yeah sorry I'm running a little bit late I like can I zell you and he's like I'd prefer cash and I waslike oh fuck all right well fine you know like Like, I bank at Chase. There's a Chase bank every three blocks in, like, the civilized world. I wasn't worried about it. I got 16 miles to drive. In my mind, 16 miles, I'm going to pass at least nine Chase banks and 12 Starbucks. I'm fucking fine. It's 16 miles. In the civilised world, I don't have to plan to get to a bank, right? So I'm driving, and it's nothing. It's nothing, guys. It's fucking corn and endless corn And endlessly endless corn. And it's getting worse somehow, there's more corn as I go further west it's

0:10:45 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Now. Yeah. I'm imagining a corn based bank that you stopped at. That's like Chase Corn Branch. And they're

0:11:24 Tom: Just right so I like, finally, I kind of panic because I'm almost to this fucking guy's house and there wasn't a single anything between my house and this fucking guy in the middle of the fucking Malachi desert that he fucking lives in, so, and there's this bank, and it is like Heartland Farmers' fucking Sickle and brooms bank or whatever, so I was like, okay, fuck, so I swing over, yeah, right, I swing over to fucking his racist KKK neighborhood bank or wherever he's at, and I go to get money out of it and it's like, you can't withdraw that much money, and it wasn't like thousands of dollars, but it was just right it's just like, that's all the cash we has on hand and I just, so finally, I I pull up to him and I was like, "All right, I'm like, late.

I'm 30 minutes late. I have no money. I'd like to buy a bicycle." And he's like, and he's about my age. So we're both kind of looking at each other, trying to figure out how to do this. And I was like, "So you don't have Zelle?" He's like, "I don't really know what Zelle is. I think he's like, I think my wife has PayPal." And I'm like, "I can download PayPal." And so, like, we're both standing there on our phones, like trying to figure out how to, like, have electronic

0:11:44 Eli: Trust Federal Yeah. Whites Only

0:12:03 Thomas: Like, that's our harvest amount that we need for when the. Yeah.

0:12:34 Thomas: Yeah,

0:12:34 Tom: Commerce. Commerce.

0:12:35 Thomas: How many years of service were you getting out there?

0:12:38 Eli: How did you guys manage to destroy the housing economy with this little competence, Tom? How did you do it?

0:12:46 Tom: Wait, we finally, like I downloaded PayPal and like linked my bank up to it. And he's like, got his wife's fucking PayPal account number or whatever, like log in. And I'm like, I think I sent you money. Can you, can you make sure it wasn't to someone else? He's like I think I got the money. I'm going to ride away. I am taking this bike and you got my number. If I stole it from you, I don't know. And like, which if I, it was a fucking nightmare. It was an An absolute nightmare of commerce.

0:13:04 Eli: Yeah. Facebook Marketplace is truly the Wild West of financial interactions, like there's nothing, even though everyone involved is just a person on Facebook, somehow, somehow it's the sketch. I buy drugs with more confidence than I buy things on Facebook Marketplace. I bought weights on Facebook marketplace like a year and a half, two years ago. And he was like, hey, I live like 30 minutes from you. And like, again, the Facebook marketplace always takes you into like the right.

0:13:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:26 Tom: Yes! Yeah.

0:13:41 Eli: They're just a tumbleweed is like staring at me with a switchblade as I get out of the car. And the guy's like, hey, how you doing? And he's got like a dog, working on a truck in his front yard, it's very upsetting, he opens up his garage and he just has a bunch of sealed boxes of weights, right, which might as well be labeled stolen, right.

0:14:01 Tom: Stolen, right?

0:14:02 Eli: Yeah. He might have, he should have two garages, one that just says "stuff I stole to sell to Eli on Facebook Marketplace," and he is like, why are you here? He said, do you want to take a look around? And I was like, oh, I mean, this is a super obvious felony, so no, I don't want to buy any more stuff. I'm going to buy the original stolen goods, because what am I here for, but right

0:14:21 Thomas: I imagine him doing the jacket thing where he opens his jacket, but it's a bunch of heavy dumbbells. He's like, oh, fuck.

0:14:25 Tom: It's just got huge weights.

0:14:26 Eli: He. Falls to his knees. Please choose one quickly. We've-

0:14:31 Tom: Pants stuffed with kettlebells. Sure, and actually, this is a great tie-in, because this week I gave my 16-year-old son, or 15-year-old son, his first debit card. My 16-year-old son has a debit card, there, like, linked to our bank accounts so we can kind of, you- we can see what money he spends and what money goes in and we can move his money around. But they have- they have electronic money usage now, the kids do. And, um, fact- all the kids except for the eight-year-old now have their own debit cards. So I'm curious, when it comes to money kind of safety net, are you guys thinking about providing financially, like, where do you fall on that idea of, of being the sort of financial safety net for the kids?

0:14:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I'm Safety nets are for cowards. I want my kids to be like Robin's family in Batman forever where they was their like circus performers and they all die. Yeah, that's my, that'll be my kids. Toughen them up.

0:15:23 Eli: Yep. Absolutely.

0:15:27 Tom: You gotta- Have to, we already talked tough kids are- that's, that's important. No, you're not, you are a hundred percent not what- Where do you fall, do you think about this? Idea I think about this all the time, and I've, I've come around to many schools of thought about this. I'm really curious where you guys are at.

0:15:27 Eli: Oh.

0:15:32 Thomas: I don't know. Oh, I think about this all the time too. I think I remember I heard that Warren Buffett, you know, raised his kids like they didn't have any money at all, even though he has bazillions of dollars. And I've always thought about that ever since. Like, if I had a billion dollars, what how would I raise my kids? Would they ever have to have jobs? You know, would I give them all, or would I pretend I didn't? I really don't know. What do you think, Eli?

0:16:04 Eli: So I see, I was ready to be the opposite, to be the counterpoint to you.

0:16:09 Thomas: Go.

0:16:09 Eli: And Tom being like, like, "Here's a nickel, whistle, son."

0:16:12 Tom: Jesus.

0:16:12 Eli: Remember, a tune will lift your spirit when the darkness is here. And I'm like, if my son works a day in his life, I've failed as a human being. Sell me for meat.

0:16:21 Tom: Christ. What? What?

0:16:22 Thomas: Is that going to work? What? That's not even a, are

0:16:25 Eli: Not a day. If I can prevent it, not a fucking second in his live. Will my son labor? Labor?

0:16:30 Tom: Wait, are- You serious? What?

0:16:33 Thomas: You going to?

0:16:34 Eli: Like a laborer?

0:16:35 Tom: Well, wait a minute, it- do you consider what you do working?

0:16:41 Thomas: It's like, that'S an important question.

0:16:41 Eli: You sound so many people on Twitter. Tom, Yeah, yeah, I do, this is work, this is work.

0:16:44 Tom: I know. I know. You

0:16:49 Thomas: So wait, then, so then, well, thatS even more insane. So you don't want your son to even have to podcast.

0:16:54 Eli: We Never. I want my son

0:16:55 Thomas: Oh.

0:16:56 Tom: Won't even set the bar as low as talk into a microphone with the record button pressed, what?

0:16:58 Eli: No. I want my son to lay in soft hammocks eating hard cheeses for the rest of his fucking life. I'm not saying he won't fill his days with beauty and fun and delights, of course there will be different kinds of fakes to try, but the notion the notion that my son will ever have to do anything marks me as a failure in planetary history.

0:17:07 Thomas: Wow. Wow.

0:17:26 Thomas: The Fuck is going on here, not since you killed that baby have I been so flabbergasted.

0:17:31 Tom: The Oh god. Damn. Well All right, I guess if that's the continuum that we're working on, I, and you're being serious, you are being, being serious that you, you want to create a world where your kid, where Max grows up and is just like, I don't know what work even is like the

0:17:38 Thomas: Yeah. Jesus.

0:17:49 Eli: I Don't I want my son to never do anything that he doesn't want to do, I want him to pursue a life of delights and art and music and I'm sure he'll find, right, everyone finds something to fill their days, I don't know if you guys know rich people who don't suck, right? They're rare, but rich people who don't suck, they fill their days with shit. They do charity.

0:17:55 Thomas: Christ. Interesting.

0:18:10 Tom: Rich people I know that don't suck, work, what?

0:18:13 Thomas: That's

0:18:11 Eli: See, I would say there is a... Let me throw this out there, and perhaps this will make me seem more sane. I think there is major difference between having something that you do to fill your days and having something you must do to fulfill your days. I, if don't create the funny times on the podcast waves, they come and take my house, right, I would do this for free, I love doing this, but I also have to do it, I don't want Max to ever have to anything, yes.

0:18:46 Tom: Wow, okay.

0:18:48 Thomas: Interesting, I first off, I had Phil Ferguson on OA like, you know, some years back to talk about the fact that it's like you actually should just save in your retirement. And then if your kids need money, you can use your retirement to do it. Like that's the smart financial decision. Just want to throw that out there. So like, it's not, you know, not just being an asshole parent to not.

0:19:06 Eli: I would have loved to heard that off air and three years ago.

0:19:12 Thomas: Yeah. But that aside, side not that it's the worst thing in the world if you do those uh child college fund thingies Because there's some

0:19:18 Eli: Well I'm glad to hear it's not the worst thing in the world. You

0:19:19 Thomas: No well No, no, it's, yeah, Eli, this is not meant for you, you, you and finance is a different thing, I'm not, I'm speaking to people who try to make finance decisions in a way that's like know, yeah I'm just trying to word this, yeah But But Because when you do the savings account the money's like locked away forever and it's like it's harder to get at in an an emergency than if you just put it in certain other funds for your retirement, different accounts. And so it's smarter to just do that and then use that money for the call. But anyway, that aside, I don't, wow, Tom and I are flabbergasted by this. I say there is that famous fucking quote. Who is it? John Adams or whatever. I don't know. The one where he's like, you know, we do such and such so our kids can study such and such and they'll study such -and -such so their kids can fucking have orgies all day. Whatever that quote is. You know what I'm talking about.

0:19:23 Tom: Not insane not insane yeah like, uh like, yeah, right right

0:20:07 Eli: Do love that quote, yeah.

0:20:10 Thomas: It's a famous quote that I can't remember, but I do feel that somewhat, like I do feel like as a parent I would love it if my kids had the ability to pursue artistic endeavors, but I also feel, I feel a little weird about it just because it, it's, it, weird just delivering the massive amount of privilege that that is to my kids, like does it, does that make them assholes, I don't know, but it sounds like Eli is just fine having an asshole kid, that's, he's totally cool, that doesn't matter.

0:20:12 Tom: Yeah

0:20:38 Thomas: Yeah

0:20:38 Eli: Yeah,

0:20:38 Tom: I, it's so funny because like as I'm sitting here thinking, I, I have exactly the same view that Eli has for my wife, but not for my kids not for my kids like, like, kids will outlive me by like a fair margin, and based on the way I treat myself, a pretty wide margin, so feel like my responsibility and the responsible thing to do is like, I want to instill in them a work ethic and a safety net so that they can find work that is fulfilling to them and that they have some reasonable amount of time to navigate through that and make some mistakes and take some chances, but like I fucking die and they are useless fig eating debutantes, they're fucked, fucked.

0:20:47 Thomas: I was actually gonna joke are you marrying your son, yeah.

0:20:48 Eli: Not if you leave him enough money, Tom, not then

0:21:32 Tom: Well what if I don't get a chance to make enough money. Eli, like your your pat your plan is so risky.

0:21:34 Eli: You fucked up, my guy.

0:21:39 Tom: Your plan has like your plan isn't sanely risky, man.

0:21:39 Thomas: You seen the price of figs lately, man?

0:21:46 Tom: Like if they are not competent, you think of a work ethic as part of competency, or is that, not is that really not valuable in your worldview?

0:21:46 Eli: No, the key, I guess it's hard to define work ethic because it means so much to different people. Right. So many people define work. Ethic is like you will labor under the hammer of Grapthar until the blood runs from your eyes. And I'm like, I want you to be enthusiastic about the things you love. I want to find things that you're passionate about and work hard on them. I, Anna like doesn't have a job aside from doing the podcasts and she is the kind of work I want my son to do, which is that my wife falls in love with things and works very hard on Them. But most importantly, whenever she doesn't want to do something, she stops. And that's what I want for my son. I want my son to never be at a place being like, I fucking hate it here. I wish I could leave, but I can't because I have to eat food. Like the goal should be that they never feel that way. Not that they don't have difficulties, not that they Don't work hard, but that they're never doing something they hate for survival.

0:21:55 Tom: Yeah is a time limit on that help for you, in your mind, I mean I know Max is little, so like, like they'll

0:23:04 Eli: Yeah, like 65, like once they're ready to retire, they should probably have their own thing worked out.

0:23:10 Tom: Retire on your money, like yes

0:23:12 Eli: Yeah, that's the dream. That's the fucking dream for

0:23:12 Thomas: I've got so many thoughts on this there's so there's so much going on like and one hand I don't want my kids to be ethic bullshit for me a lot of that in our society is you a piece of shit that your boss can you whatever to because that's what capitalism likes and that's a lot the like, mindset that we have in this country. On the other, other hand, descriptively speaking, I think it is useful to know, like my, my did kind of prepare me a little bit in this way, or just the realism I have prepared me in the, in this way that no, that, that you're, when you get a job, you know, you're fucking, your boss is your boss.

Like you got to do what you gotto do, you but part of me is like, well, maybe if I can give my kids enough privilege so that they can be, maybe they could be good enough at creative pursuits that they could make money that way, then it's a different, you know what I mean? Like that's another goal I have, but I don't know. Part of me, I think I'm not the opposite of where Eli is. I think that it is important for people to be able to make their own way.

0:23:48 Eli: The Hunger Games. Yeah, sure.

0:24:18 Tom: Yeah

0:24:18 Thomas: And t plan on helping my kids whatsoever, honestly, if I'm being good with money. I plan on putting them through college, whatever college they want to do. And that could be no college, but whatever they want zu do, I will fund that. Like, I think it's a component of human dignity to be able to fend for yourself. And know. I think that you do lose something if you if you are unable to take care of yourself.

0:24:23 Tom: Man look, yeah to To live a life without any independence is to live a life without liberty, can't imagine that. I

0:24:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:51 Eli: Think financial independence is one of the most important forms of independence. Independence, right? I think, I think society is so filled with poverty traps that if you don't send your kids out there without tremendous, like we're all aware of systematic inequality, right? And if we could provide some systematic inequality to our kids, we have seen what happens when you make any mistakes, right.

0:24:58 Tom: Do. I do too.

0:25:18 Eli: Without a Leg up in the world, don't right, know about you guys, but I have had financial mess ups in my life and was lucky enough to have a safety net there to to catch me. There is no question that I would be at the very least desperately in debt, um, probably in some way, shape or form in legal trouble if I hadn't had, I financial, because here's the thing, right, when you don't have money, everything that costs, right, there are these little monies, legal money traps in the world, right, so if you don't set your kids up for them to have, have safety nets, when that shit goes down, you got, because right, you hear these horror stories of ladies who can't afford parking tickets, so they lose their driver's license, but then they get caught driving without a license, and their dad is like, "Ah, but they got some independence," from the independence to fuck all of that, I don't need that, that is none of it, that's

0:25:17 Thomas: Mm Mm hmm.

0:25:46 Thomas: Yeah, that's true. It costs so much to be poor. That's absolutely true.

0:25:47 Tom: Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

0:26:03 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah it's

0:26:13 Tom: I don't think Thomas and I are talking about that though. I don'T, unless I don't Thomas, you're not talking about that. I'm not, let me refer. I don't want to speak for Thomas.

0:26:20 Thomas: No.

0:26:20 Tom: I'm not talking about that. I have had, I have had a mix of experiences where I've had very little help. And then twice in my life, um, from a very close friend of mine, I have had some very short term help that really got me out of trouble, that really got me out of a lot of trouble. Um, so I totally recognize the value of having a safety net. And I don't think that there's a hard and fast, like, cut off date or cut off milestone. But I do think that, Thomas said, independence from other people to make your way in the world is an important part of just being your own person. I think it's ultimately in many ways safer than relying on the largesse of someone else. But I think 100% the people in my life that I can't help avoid the sort of like parking ticket to payday scam, you know, yeah, I would fucking help that, I would yeah, yeah,

0:27:17 Thomas: Yeah here's what I would love. Tom, let me see if you agree with this. Here's what my goal, in, I don't know the 100 percent details of it, but like the goal of what I'm going for would be, I would want my kids, in the tightrope analogy, that were the safety net fucking analogy, I would want them to think they are walking this tightrope and there's no net below, whereas I will secretly have a fucking net that deploys if they fall. That's what I want. For their minds, I want them to think that they need to achieve things on their own and achieve independence on their own so that if and when they do, they will feel like they achieved independence on their own. And that is good for a person to feel like. But if they fucking fall off, I'm going to to catch them.

0:27:35 Tom: Oh, Okay. Wait, Kind of how I lived as an adult, so I did not understand that my dad could or would help financially, financially. Paid my way through college with my own job and checks and didn't have help or student loans, that kind of thing. I had a lot of financial independence from a fairly young age, and I thought I had no safety net. And I will say, that did not do me a lot of favors.

0:28:29 Tom: That was not good, Thomas. And maybe your idea is a good idea, but I can tell you my personal lived experience. I went to school to be an English teacher, and for a variety of reasons, I did not teach right away. And then I got involved in a sort of drudgery career in an office and I absolutely loathed it. I mean, to express to you how much I hated the first 18 years of my working life would be nearly impossible, and their own podcast in and of themselves. But I hated it, and I wanted nothing in my life more than to go back and recertify and be a teacher. And I couldn't afford it. I did not have the money to go back and take eight weeks off of work and recertify and then get

0:28:28 Eli: Bad, that's a bad way to live, this

0:29:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:17 Tom: A job as a teacher at a much lower salary.

0:29:18 Thomas: See, I would fund that kind of thing. I would find that kind.

0:29:19 Tom: Right. And that's not falling though. If you don't know you have that, you would never raise your hand and ask because you're not in trouble.

0:29:25 Eli: You don't know if you tell the kids there's No, yeah.

0:29:28 Tom: You're not In trouble. You're just like, fuck, I fucking hate my job. And then you tell your dad, like, Like, I fucking hate my job. And your dad's like, yeah, jobs are sometimes hateable. That's just kind of how that works because you're not in trouble. So nobody's like extending the net. I think there's like a middle space I want to hold for my kids. And I think, Thomas, you and I are now on the same page. Like, I want a hold out a space where I don't want them to be desperately unhappy just to prove a fucking point.

0:29:27 Thomas: That's fair. Yeah, that's fair, yeah.

0:29:28 Eli: Yeah.

0:29:53 Thomas: No, I don't want that either. I, I'm struggling to find where I want to be because also another component of this, and I think this is an immense privilege.

0:29:59 Eli: I think we're all coming over to Team Eli.

0:30:02 Thomas: Well, I think I am somewhat, no, no Eli, I think I am a little bit, because just in and of itself, saying that I would like my kids to be able to pursue creative things in their lives and possibly for their, you know, work or pastime or whatever, just that in and of itself is a massive privilege, like, just and that requires yeah and that requires a massive amount of, like, safety net that they would have to even know that they had, because and so I guess maybe I'm already contradicting what my goal is, because if I, if that's my goal, then I think there's no way to do that without, because immediately the way our shit society works, you, you have to somehow know what, what you want to do at the age of fucking 17, when you're applying

0:30:02 Tom: No, fuck that. No.

0:30:21 Tom: Oh yeah. This whole conversation is privilege. Yeah. Right.

0:30:44 Tom: Right

0:30:44 Thomas: To colleges, apply to a certain thing. And then let's say you want To do some sort of artistic thing, then you're faced with the choice I was faced with, because I always wanted to be a musician. But I also had, in my mind, the knowledge that I needed to make my it own way. So I went to business school, and I figured I could make money and use that to pursue creative stuff. And weirdly, that did work out.

0:31:09 Thomas: It actually is what I did. I got a decent job, not a great job, but I got decent job. I will say my parents, what they provided for me was co -signing on student loans so that I could fucking get a bunch of debt. But they didn't do anything beyond that. They said they would pay $5,000 a year for college, which covered 5,000 of the fucking 40,000.

0:30:45 Tom: Yeah right yeah

0:31:29 Eli: A book.

0:31:31 Thomas: Yeah. So that was a a meaningless amount of money, and I ended up with a lot of debt, but I did get a good job. I'm not using this to say, like, because I turned out fine, this will be fine, but what I'm saying is that already is a choice that that is very limiting, and so maybe, maybe I am coming around to Eli in that, if I wanted my kids to not have to make that choice, if I want my kids to not say, well, fuck, I'll go to school for fucking something that I don't really care about in order to pay the bills, to do another thing I care about, I guess I would, if I had the ability to prevent them from doing that, maybe I would do that.

I actually am genuinely unsure. I think I'll have to think about it as they and I think it will depend a lot on my kids and what they're doing in their lives. Like, I think you have a lot of notice and a lot of time as their lives develop and grow to kind of see where they're at, you know, and, and judge it based on that. I

0:31:32 Tom: Oh

0:32:07 Eli: Here's

0:32:20 Thomas: Don't know.

0:32:20 Eli: What you do is you cut the tightrope down, you put it on the ground, and you say, Daddy would sure appreciate it if you would pretend that you were walking on a tightrope. Right? And occasionally, because they're human, they'll be like, oh, I stepped off it, and you'll be like, that's okay, kiddo, it's not real, none of it's fucking real, we're all just rotten meat in the circus tent, you want to stop doing that, we stopped doing that for 10, 20, 30 years, it doesn't matter, no one's keeping score we all go back into the void, right

0:32:48 Tom: My god I oh man, I just, like, I, you know, it's funny, because, like, I'm, I'm, I'm on this podcast right now with two incredibly hard-working people, and I cannot help but point out in this moment that you have to attribute at least a significant portion of both of your successes to, well, I mean, obviously the, the biggest piece is fucking luck and privilege, right? So, like, it's fucking luck in privilege, that's the biggest part of why any of us on this show are fucking successful, but

0:33:16 Eli: Right

0:33:20 Thomas: I, agree, but it's, I'll moderate that with there's a whole fucking fucking fuckload of difference in the privilege that Eli and I grew up with. I grew up poor on a fucking dirt farm, and then Eli's got the like, Pulitzer Prize winning mom or whatever the fuck. A little bit different.

0:33:28 Eli: Right

0:33:29 Tom: Yeah absolutely but like, hey, like yes a hundred percent, right, a hundred percent, we all three of us have, have different, but I think, like, it's also important to note, like, we are all bright guys, right, like we, we did well in school, we were naturally fairly smart guys, like, we were all naturally, like, fairly funny guys, like, without much effort, like, those are kinds of privileges, right, you didn't do anything to earn being smart, you just leveraged the intelligence that you have through school, right? So there's a lot of different kinds of privilege, and most of our success comes from luck and privilege right, but yeah so but, but also, I have to point out that all of us work real fucking hard, right?

We're on this show, and Eli, you're saying like, I don't want my kid to work, and, like, but like, a huge amount of your success and your ability to spoil Anna and to spoil Max comes from the fruit of your actual fucking labor, so like, it seems weird to me to not value, at least in part, and try to impart some value you into that to your own son, that which has enhanced your life and given you that same ability, enhance the lives of other people, that

0:33:47 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Yeah. Totally. Well, all of it. Ultimately, I don't believe in anything other than moral luck, so yeah. Well,

0:34:06 Eli: Well

0:34:48 Tom: That's the part that I have, that I'm struggling with about this with you

0:34:50 Eli: I it's because I, in my head, I separate work ethic from must, from need, right, so like, if I won the lottery tomorrow, I would still do all of my shows, right, little would change, change about my day.

0:35:05 Thomas: There's probably one you'd quit. No, I'm just kidding. I wanted to start some shit. I'm not going to say which, but there's one you would definitely quit. Yeah.

0:35:07 Tom: Citation needed yeah

0:35:06 Eli: I would still do all my shows. I would still, do all of my shows, I love my work and I work hard at it because I love it, right? The must part isn't the fact that it feeds my family isn't what makes me work hard. What makes me hard is that I love doing it. Um, and the parts of my life where I did jobs, where I worked hard at jobs that I hated were bad for me. I think they were, I don't think they made me better or stronger. And so I think you can develop a great work ethic without ever having that must in the background, without ever Having that fear in the background.

0:35:36 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:35:37 Tom: Same. Yeah. Uh,

0:35:46 Thomas: I think that's true.

0:35:48 Tom: I Well, I don't know, I don't t agree with with that at all.

0:35:49 Thomas: I know, I want to say this, I, Tom you kind of approaching it the same way you did in just thinking about Eli as a person, it is making me really think about and question what I want, what I'm going to want to do with my kids because Eli is an immense, immense creative talent. And I don't know that Eli would have been able to be doing what he's doing now without this, this kind of safety net, massive amount of help you want to talk about. You know, I can imagine if Eli had had to live my life, I don't, I don't know what, where you'd be. Like if you, if we had to sub Eli in, you know, if we were switched in the hospital and you still had all your, you're in eight gifts and everything, I wonder like, what would you have been able to do?

0:35:51 Tom: Right, Yeah,

0:36:14 Eli: Yeah, no shot.

0:36:16 Tom: 100%.

0:36:30 Eli: I would have Died in the first chainsaw day. The first time I would have wandered out into the woods and never come back.

0:36:34 Thomas: That's probably true.

0:36:38 Tom: Yes.

0:36:38 Eli: I would have been like, that wolf looks friendly. And yeah, I mean, when I think about you people often and like, it's really important for people to understand, like, I have made all the mistakes that's quote unquote like hard working people or lazy people or bad people have made. I just had a safety net, right? So like, when I got busted for pot in college and they dragged me down to the NYPD and like slammed my head against a wall and yelled at me, right? I called my mommy who called a high powered Jewish lawyer who came down and was like, "He's Jewish.

You let him go." And they were like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. We couldn't tell. He didn't have the beard yet. Right this way, Mr. Bosnick, right this way." But like, had I been a young person of color or a young person without the wealth of a lawyer who came in 40 minutes right in the middle of Manhattan, that would have that whatever that charge was and because I had a bowl with me, so it was a felony because I was displaying paraphernalia or whatever, and then they reduced it down to a ticket, which my mommy paid, right? So like,

0:37:05 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:42 Eli: That, that a path towards criminality in the justice system, right? When I got into credit, credit card debt in the middle of the college and had to come to my mom with my head hung between low, saying like, "Can you bail me out of this? I bought too much Chinese food from" my dorm. You know, I laugh about it, but like, there are a bunch of people who that instantly puts them in the poverty cycle and the pot and you can, it's so hard to escape the poverty circle. It is made to be impossible to escape the poverty.

0:37:58 Tom: Yeah.

0:38:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That's why when fucking racists talk about how there's just more crime in the black community, I just want to fucking punch him in the face. Like it's it's so obviously a product of all this.

0:38:14 Eli: Right.

0:38:18 Tom: Right. It's Nonsense. So

0:38:23 Eli: Yeah. So I want to eliminate that and I want to eliminate the hard moments. Right. So like the story I always tell is like how I started doing street magic is that there was a gap between a show I was in in college and the school you're starting. And so I didn't get, um, for that like six week period. And because I was too proud, I started doing street magic, like doing magic on the street and I would feed myself with that money. Now I had a safety net, but again, I was pretending the net wasn't there because because I had this idea of hard work and I was ashamed and it was pretty close to me getting into the credit card debt. So I didn't want to go back to my parents. And I ended up having some really, really miserable experiences while doing that. Now, I also had some awesome ones as a result, but I had some really bad ones that did not grow me as a person because of that fear about

0:39:13 Tom: Gotta bring this up because it's it's embedded in this conversation there, I think that there's an assumption there's a assumption built in here that the kids will be, and I don't mean this in in a bad way, I want to say, like, I just in case my kids are listening, I fucking genuinely love and appreciate all of my kids. I do. I think that they're wonderful, all four of them. I love them deeply. But I don't know how talented they all will be and One of the things we can learn.

One of things that I think there's a lot of reasons, I think I'm a fairly successful person in my career, but I for almost 20 years I was a fucking drudgery guy, right? Just a fucking drudgery guy. Like, I'll tell you a quick story. Like, I time got in the elevator to go to my office and the elevator broke down, and instead of hitting the oh shit button, the call button, I just laid down on the floor and slept, and I was hoping nobody would find me because I I fucking hated that job so much. So I get that a bad job, especially over time, can really do damage. It did

0:39:19 Eli: Jews.

0:39:38 Thomas: Same. Who knows?

0:40:17 Thomas: Oh,

0:40:17 Tom: Damage to my Psychological health. It did damaged to friendships and relationships. It did to all my body, all parts of my life. I get it. I don't want my kids to go through that. But I also, I look at my kids and I'm like, some of you might be welders. Some of you guys might be carpenters. Some of your guys might have to labor. You might, that might be the way that you choose to make a living. That might be where your talents lie.

You might not have a lot of innate gifts, and I might have a heart attack like my dad did at 53, and I'm I fucking die before I can accumulate generational wealth to just hand down for the fucking fig party that Eli wants to have. Have So I I worry so much. I like a lot of the, like, success that I think I've had in my life is I've looked around and been like, fuck it, I can outwork them, everything is a competition, and I can't work everyone in this room, and I outworked everyone in the room, and eventually I find myself in a very good place with my career.

But I look at my kids and I'm like, could die of a heart attack, I could get hit by a bus, I could getting a car accident, I could pass, pass nothing on.

And if I don't pass on to them a work ethic, and they aren't gifted with the kind of talents that, like, Eli and Thomas, you guys are gifted with, if they're just regular guys, the fuck are they going to make a living, you know, like, ethic as its own safety net, does that make sense? No

0:40:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:55 Eli: Big party.

0:41:38 Thomas: I don't even know that you can instill a work ethic. I really don't know that you can. Well, you know what?

0:41:42 Tom: I Don't Know if you

0:41:44 Thomas: I say that I actually think you only can by example. You only can by example because I've talked about the fucking drudgery that I had to do growing up that Eli said he would die in the first wave of you know the Fucking chopping down the trees, all that bullshit, and talked about with my brother on our show, and we talked about all the shit we had to due. There's one that is, it is comical how fucking it was, like something they would have set up for it, was the literal Sisyphus thing. Like one time one of the trees that my dad wanted to cut down for the firewood for the season were at the the bottom of a straight up fucking hill. And we, I had to load up a wheelbarrow with this fucking as much wood as I could carry, which wasn't much because the incline was unbelievable and

0:41:42 Eli: No. I think you can instill.

0:41:45 Tom: Can't Either But

0:41:55 Eli: I would. And

0:42:27 Thomas: Just carry a wheelbarrow, push a wheel straight up a hill for one trip out of the, I don't know, a hundred I had to do. And was, it was the hardest thing in the world. And joked with my brother on the show. I was like, and I don't think that made me a better worker at at all, like I do, I actually don't think that gave me any, I'm I'm incredibly lazy in certain ways, which has actually been to my benefit, so always inspires me to find the most efficient way to do everything and

0:42:27 Eli: You were a child. No, How?

0:42:53 Tom: That but being efficient is not, should not be synonymized with being lazy, right?

0:42:57 Thomas: But I think it's, it comes from not, I, I guess I won't say lazy, I, I am unable, I am very much unable to work on anything that that doesn't perfectly make sense to me as a good idea to do. That I can't do. And I

0:43:09 Tom: But That's your ADHD that's an executive function issue

0:43:13 Thomas: That also might be the example of my dad being super selfish. Like I'm not willing to do something with my time that I don't think is a good idea. And sometimes in certain ways. But of that is when I think something's a good idea and I understand it, you, Tom, I can work night and day on it. I can go into a mode where I just complete incredible amounts of work. And that is the ADHD as well. I have to be really focused on the right thing. So maybe you're right there. But I realize now that I think about it, maybe I've been talked more over to the Eli side of things. Not exactly. I don't want fig parties. But I don't know if being able... Here's my conflicting thoughts. Sorry, I've bee talking a minute. But Tom, here's my conflicting thought.

0:43:13 Tom: Okay Yeah.

0:43:54 Eli: Dare

0:43:54 Thomas: When when I, when I think of, when I think of one component of my personality that I think is good that I would like my kids to have, and this is all tentative, I could be completely wrong about this, but there is a sense that I have that it is up to me to everything, fucking everything's up to my life is like in terms of being okay, I will always be okay. I will always find the way to to make the money, to whatever. I always have. When I had a bullshit job in massive student loan debts, I've always been very good with money, and I've known exactly what I need to do.

Like, I do the fucking spreadsheets and I figure out, here's exactly what I have to do to pay this massive amount of debt with this little income that I have, and figure out, and I'm always, that has just been something I've known, and I worry that, that I've actually seen things that, like, part of the problem of living in a bit of an abusive, abusive household is you develop this like fierce independence and you, pathologically, you can't depend on anyone else. And I do feel like that's kind

0:43:54 Tom: Yeah. Right. There's

0:43:54 Eli: You

0:44:57 Tom: Nothing

0:44:57 Thomas: Of what that is. I know, I know. I worry that that's what that is. So like I, on one hand, I, I on one head, I like that, but on the other hand, maybe that's not good. I don't know. What do you think?

0:44:57 Tom: Wrong with that, Thomas, fuck you don't Don't you see me on this show?

0:45:07 Thomas: What is, what is Eli going to tell me? Can

0:45:07 Eli: Oh, We're getting to three for three, everybody. We're gonna be three for three by the end of... I mean, here's what I would say when it comes to the talent thing, and this is really true, the the difference is, and and what you've both expressed here is the, like, it is me and me alone, right, is what was, what into your bones is, like, you have got to survive, you've got to to fight, you've got to make your way through this. And that comes as work ethic, that comes as intelligence, that becomes as hard work.

0:45:13 Tom: No,

0:45:34 Eli: Whereas

0:45:34 Thomas: I make one very critical clarification?

0:45:36 Eli: It yet?

0:45:36 Thomas: Cause I don'T want to be the fucking boomer. I'm not saying that I was responsible for all of my success in a fucking boomers way. Way, I'm just saying when it comes to like finding my next way to do something I am in charge of like I need to make sure that happens is all I mean.

0:45:42 Tom: Right, right.

0:45:36 Eli: No, do it. No, no, of course not. But that, right. That, that fear was planted in you. That was the message you were sent by your parents, right? It was like, you got to do this. You got to figure it out. This is how you will survive. Since I was literally two, I was two years old. I was in where the wild things are at my preschool, I realized I wanted to be a performer and I didn't want to do anything else in my life. And the adults in my wife, every single one to a person said, yep, you can do it. You're great. You deserve it. And we believe in you.

And therefore work ethic came from not, you're not going to be okay if you don't do this. It became from, this is an obligation of your talent, this is an obligation of your passion, you know, I think about, um, of the like harsh moments from my high school, which I appreciate so much, is I was in the the play as like an eighth grader, um, and I played the doctor in uh The Miracle Worker who only has like two lines, right, and so I half-assed it and just sort of walked on because I only got two lines in this thing. I don't know. It looks like she'll be blind. All right. Got to go. Boom. Walk off stage. I came off stage and my mom was like, what the

0:46:15 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

0:47:01 Eli: Fuck was that? And I was like what? And she was like what was that. That's not a doctor. You didn't look like a doctor you didn't talk like a doctor.

0:47:00 Thomas: I love this, oh, I love that, I love that so much. Well,

0:47:10 Eli: And she booked me a dance studio that weekend and a movement teacher and we worked on the embodiment of that doctor and she Imbued in me that work ethic, that notion that, like, like, every thought matter, not because I wouldn't be okay. Right. Because I needed it to survive, not cause it was paying me or because it was a job or because I was on my own. It was the obligation of talent.

0:47:17 Tom: Jesus Christ.

0:47:34 Thomas: Is a huge problem in theater, um, who don't get get cast, cast of the lead roles, who then get in filler, you know, like smaller side roles, um, they're such narcissists that they can't fucking work at all and put the work in necessary to be a small character with a couple of lines, and I think it is such a good message, and would say that's an obligation to the people around you to the creative endeavor you're doing to put everything you have into that small role. And I love doing, really love that example because, but do you think that your son, if he's eating figs all day, do you think he's going to have that same feeling of, I need to do this for other people, even if I'm not the focus of this thing, I need to have selflessness in this case. Oh,

0:47:40 Tom: Yeah, right? Yeah. I

0:48:14 Eli: I think here's my hot take. I think more so, right. Because you

0:48:18 Thomas: Interesting.

0:48:18 Eli: Know, one of the things that she says in How Toddlers Thrive that I love, that I think reflects so much, is that they've done studies on empathy in toddlers. And the number one difference between empathetic toddlers and unempathetic toddlers is how safe they feel at home, right? The truth is the human condition is empathy and kindness, I think. I think fear and sadness and boredom and being ground down by the world makes you mean, makes you cruel.

0:48:19 Thomas: Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. That's a great point.

0:48:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:52 Eli: I think societally, we have an impression that sitting in hammocks, eating figs makes you cruel, makes you mean, but I don't think so. I think the moment you spend enough time in a hammock, the moment you have enough kindness and gentleness in your life, you turn around and you want to do that kindness and Gentleness.

0:49:09 Thomas: Okay. Okay. How do you explain Jared Kushner then? Tell me how you explain Jared Kushler.

0:49:12 Eli: I would

0:49:14 Tom: Wish this was a video podcast. You could see my face. I am by this. I like I I this I don't have anything to argue against it because you're coming to it with studies and I don t want to can't possibly tell you how viscerally untrue this feels to me it I like it just feels so like you're probably right, like I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'd want to be clear about that, like if you're saying that there are good studies that this is the

0:49:20 Eli: Tom is it's

0:49:33 Thomas: Really? Well, Wasn't that the whole thing with the marshmallow test, Eli? Didn't they do it where it was like people were using,

0:49:47 Tom: Marshmallow

0:49:45 Eli: Yeah that's a that's big part of the marshmallow well

0:49:47 Tom: Tells about

0:49:47 Thomas: Well, Yes, but part of that same, okay, you're right, it's not empathy, I suppose, but it was that same thing where it was like, yeah, wouldn't you know it, the kids who were able to do that were the ones who felt like they would have their next meal fucking no matter what at home. And it wasn't that like, oh, these certain kinds of kids aren't able to do this thing as well. It's like, ja, they don't have as much food security in general, so they feel like They need to take the thing that's right in front of them more. I think that's the same kind of idea. I think security is actually what breeds these things.

0:49:47 Tom: Delaying gratification, right?

0:50:11 Tom: Yeah I can't tell you that your studies are wrong, I'm not going to do that, I just like it, they're like, just, I'm just viscerally cannot bring myself to that idea in real time, well,

0:50:30 Eli: Look, it's a, very because of the way you are as a father, I think it's probably a very scary idea to just be like, nope, my kids can sit in in hammocks and they'll be okay, right?

0:50:40 Tom: For all the very practical reasons I suggested before, right, I think there's a, there's a whimsy to that that the rest of the world is structurally opposed to, and that unless I come to that with massive generational building wealth in hand at the, the time I begin that process, I have to have a fucking backup parachute, and I literally, my dad had a should have died heart attack at 53, the only reason he survived is he had it in the hospital, so like had he not had it while he was in the hospital, there is a zero percent chance he just survived it. So I, I should have lost my dad at like 17, 18. I only reason I didn't is he was very lucky. I could have that same heart attack, right? I could be riding my bike tomorrow and get hit by a bus. Like, the idea that, and have a heart attack.

0:51:13 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:51:31 Thomas: And then have a heart attack because you got hit by... Yeah.

0:51:33 Tom: Right. And yeah, like, but I mean, like, those are real things that I think we have to literally plan to have happen. Right? I mean, mean that's why everybody has insurance. It's I-

0:51:46 Eli: I have so much insurance that when I have my heart attack, you know, before next week's episode, good spoiler by the way, um, Like, Max and Anna will never have to Patrons

0:51:52 Tom: Right. So

0:51:54 Thomas: Patrons have already heard you have your heart attack. Normies have...

0:51:56 Eli: Have already Patrons have already heard the very special episode, like-

0:52:00 Tom: I just, like, that's what I mean by, like, a, like, a, like, work ethic. And Thomas, you may be right that it may be a work ethic cannot be instilled, uh, okay.

0:52:09 Thomas: Well, I think it can by example. I think your work ethic comes from your very good example in your dad. Jokes aside about your Hitler dad, he walked the walk. Yeah.

0:52:11 Tom: Yeah. Right. Yeah. The man can work Yeah.

0:52:18 Thomas: And I had this shitty example of a dad who fucking loafed and sat around all the time, which is why my instinct all the time is to just sit around and fucking watch TV. That's I have to fight against that at all times. That's, like, always what I want to be doing. But to example is so powerful. I think that's really what matters. I don't think you can talk tell your kids into anything, into a good work ethic, into whatever. Whatever. But like the other night, Phoebe and she does this a lot. Know, Lydia starts cooking dinner and Phoebe goes, I want to help you. And was like asking Lydia, like, what does anything need to be cut? Because we have these little like kid knives that she uses, plastic ones

0:52:18 Tom: The men can work.

0:52:50 Eli: Yeah.

0:52:50 Thomas: She cuts and she loves it and she wants to help. And I had this moment where I was like, What the fuck? Like where? What? Because in my bullshit house, house, everybody had the worst example. So any chore, any task, anything was a fight. It was like, oh, fuck. All right. We have to do this fucking thing. You have to be a parent. You have to have to, you have to. You know, and I was just thinking like maybe having the example of around parents you. And I know this is just mind blowing for me, but not for you people who are actually had like real parents, having the sample of people doing stuff or being passionate about Something or working on something in front of you all the time. I think that is very powerful. And that's the reason why it's not something where I'm telling Phoebe, you need to do this of your chores. And she's like, oh, I want to help. I want To do stuff with you. You know,

0:53:41 Eli: They want to help, and and these are your chores is a terrible motivator, as opposed to, help me. And the fact that she wants, right, you did not spoil Phoebe by not creating, a and on Mondays you help mommy by cutting all the carrots, right? Instead you instilled in her the empathy and the wherewithal that when she sees someone who needs help, she wants to offer it. And I think that that is a core thing that we can imbue in our children. I honestly think that if you put your kid in a hammock and you tell them they're safe and loved, no,

0:54:15 Thomas: Now that's where I'm jumping off. I'm not.

0:54:18 Eli: If you Put Your Kid in a Hammock, they're there for a while, and some days they lay in the hammock, but what they do eventually is they get up and they help other people because they understand it's their obligation. Like I know spoiled shitty people, but every spoiled shitty rich person I know is shitty because their family life sucked.

0:54:18 Tom: I Yeah. I can't

0:54:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:54:40 Eli: Right. I don't know a single spoil. And I know, I know like really, really rich people. I'm related to really, really rich people who will never work a day in their lives, who it would be physically impossible for them to spend the amount of money they've been left. And some of them are shitty and some of them aren't.

0:55:00 Eli: The shitty ones, to a person, it's not because they don't work. It's because they lacked that kindness and that gentleness and that love from their family. And I think by not putting our kids in that hammock, we set them up to be taken advantage of and ground down and hurt and abused by the world in ways that we had to be. Right, our parents could- my parents put me, I was pretty, I had like two feet in the hammer, I'm- I'm laying most of the way in the hammock, if we're being honest, I'm pretty- I'm, for me, pretty fucking hammocked, uh, and I'm only not- not hammocked in comparison to people whose last names are part of, like, anti-Semitic screens. So, but I, I think the ways in which we were abused, are- have told ourselves it made us strong. We have told yourselves it made a stuff. Um, but I think we would have been better versions of those things without that abuse. I don't think the abuse made us stronger. I think it made the abuse stronger. I think that the abuse made us sad,

0:55:00 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:56:00 Tom: But I don't think it's all abuse, I just- I don't know, like, I I- you, and I think it's lovely, I think everything you're saying is lovely, and I absolutely, I- I just viscerally and fundamentally disagree, like, completely, and I just- I do. And it's not because I don't want to provide my kids a safety net, I do think that there's a balance in terms of how much safety net you you should and could provide your kids.

I think, of as as you were talking, I was thinking about conversations that Haley and I have had. So this is like fairly personal, but, like, you Haley does not work. She certainly could work. She's very educated. She's Very Talented. She's VERY Capable, but she does not Work. And we've had conversations about whether she would like to work. We don't financially need her to work in order for us to have the lifestyle that we want to have.

And so she's at a place where we have decided that- would she rather stay home and not work and take care of the kids and just, you her personal interests and personal passions. But the other side of that coin is that is an incredibly vulnerable position because she

0:57:05 Tom: Relies entirely on the largesse of others, i.e. me, for her very survival. Survival. So as long as I am a decent person, and as long as I'm, uh, stable, and as long as all these things that I can continue to do, then she's fine. But she is intensely vulnerable, and every year that ticks by, she actually becomes more vulnerable, because we do live in a competitive capitalist society, whether we want to live in it or not, doesn't matter, it's where we're at. And I think about my kids, and it's like, if they are not able to be independent, they should have the choice of being independent in ways that they find, hopefully, fulfilling. But ultimately, if their well-being relies on the largesse of others, they are incredibly vulnerable. They're more vulnerable than I am ever willing to leave them. Oh,

0:57:05 Thomas: But that- here's the thing, that where I jump off from you, and what Eli said as a joke earlier is actually not really a joke. The whole horror scenario of what if you have a heart attack? If I have a hard attack, my family's hit the lottery. I mean, they, they get the life insurance, the any assets I have of which I'm hypothetically discussing, do I leave them this asset or this? That all just goes to them. Like they just fucking get that anyway. So I don't really, I don't see that that as much of a risk. Like if I die, if anything, not only do they get my assets, they Get the life endurance payout. So they'll be fucking, they'll be even better than if I don't die.

0:58:13 Eli: Yep.

0:58:34 Eli: Right. And just to point out, like Haley's not in like a bad place, right? If you die in 30 years, right, when it would be hardest for her to enter the workforce, she's not in a bad space because you will have provided for her for the rest of her life. That is in my that my argument would be it is your job to make sure there is nothing that can touch her. Right. I think I think you understand that and you feel that when it comes to Haley. Right? Like Like there's, there's no, I don't know what your situation is, but I don'T think there's a thing if you died tomorrow that it would mean Haley was not okay. I think Haley will be okay forever, no matter what.

0:58:39 Tom: No.

0:59:11 Tom: But that's the thing is that I do think that there are real risks to that, like and not outside crazy chance risks that something could go bad. Look at like my uncle. I've got an uncle that found out suddenly in his like late 50s, early 60s that he had ALS and it was financially he was very well off, but it ran through all of his money in Very short order. It doesn't matter, like, unless you have Rockefeller-style wealth, there are real things that can happen, and our kids - it's one thing for our spouses to, as adults, make that vulnerable decision with us. It is another thing, I think, for us to not leave our children with the safety net of being - being independent and, and knowing how to be independent.

0:59:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:59:36 Eli: Right.

1:00:02 Thomas: But once they get in that situation, don't you think they will figure it out? Like if the argument is we have this ability to fend for ourselves because we're fucking left with no safety net. Worst case scenario, you're just putting them in that same situation and then hopefully they'll fucking figure it out like we did.

1:00:02 Tom: Yeah.

1:00:18 Eli: They're just back there again. Do

1:00:19 Thomas: Yeah.

1:00:19 Tom: But it's it's yeah but but but timing matters, right? Like and I do think timing matters, timing matters a lot in a very practical economic sense

1:00:22 Thomas: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Let me say where I've where I'm landed as of now, provisionally, as a result of all this discussion, I

1:00:29 Tom: Yeah wait

1:00:34 Eli: It in the hammock metaphor though, because it's very confusing if you don't use the hammack.

1:00:36 Thomas: Want there will not be any fucking hammock. That's I'm sorry, Eli. I'm not that's not happening. I want my kids. I realize now I change, amend what I said before. I I will provide my kids if I can't assume me. I can. I mean, good financial situation or something, whatever. I don't want to provide them with the ability to do what they want to do. Do. That means doing something. I am not going to put them in a hammock with figs. That's not doing something, but if they come, if they in life are like, I want to fucking play the goddamn flute. And I'm like, well, there's zero money in that. That is never fucking going to make you any money. It will make you a negligible amount of money, but that is great. I would love you to be able to pursue that creative thing. And, I will do my best, if I can, to make that happen for them.

1:00:40 Tom: A Minute

1:01:23 Thomas: And so in that's

1:01:24 Eli: That's a flute hammock. That's a flute. Hammock. You

1:01:26 Thomas: Yeah.

1:01:25 Tom: I Yeah, no, Thomas, Thomas, you and I are almost there. What if they're fucking terrible at it? Like

1:01:32 Thomas: No, They're terrible at it. I think I will, I will support them at that. Like, I mean, here's the thing, you you guys know me, Mike, if I think they're fucking terrible at the flute, I think my kids will figure out that I think they'RE fucking terrible. I don't think there's, I'm not good at hiding.

1:01:34 Tom: Yeah.

1:01:45 Tom: Because Eli's Kids would never figure It Out because Eli Would Hear The notes as the softest, sweetest music That ever Touched His ears, no matter how weird and honking and discordant they actually Were.

1:01:48 Thomas: No. No. They Would Think they're Grade forever. Yeah.

1:01:49 Eli: Not One Chance Fuck Yeah. I'll Rent out my son Carnegie Hall tomorrow, tomorrow.

1:02:03 Thomas: And Hire a bunch of actors To be in The

1:02:04 Eli: I'll Be Like, yep, I'll be like, "There you go, kiddo, there's your flute," and he'll be like, "Blueberry," and I'll be like, "Fuck yeah, that's the best shit you ever heard," and people will be like, "I don't think your kid knows how to play the flute," and I'm be like, "Shut the fuck up, Ryan, you You Meat sack, who are you, some guy with a brain, get out of here, you 300 year old monkey, my son is playing the flute beautifully."

1:02:15 Thomas: You're, you are not Getting your check, I

1:02:31 Eli: All Right, gentlemen, before we, important question, what do you call a fish wearing a bowtie show?

1:02:30 Tom: No idea.

1:02:48 Eli: Fish to kated. Yeah.

1:02:50 Tom: Oh.

1:02:51 Thomas: Actually, like that one.

1:02:52 Tom: Do

1:02:56 Thomas: Where's the show? So you just, the idea is, you the sh is in everything, show fish To, okay, gotcha. Yeah. Just Trying To make sense Of it all. And I just want to tell our normies here that, Patron, uh, Bonus Story will be one, Thomas Smith announcing whether the Twitter poll results. Whether it's Escombert or a Chine.

1:03:01 Eli: Show Fish To Kate Yeah. Stop

1:03:14 Thomas: I think I'm going to talk.

1:03:14 Eli: Is It a Scombered Or a shine for

1:03:16 Thomas: Is it a a scombert or a chine.

1:03:16 Eli: As Little as A dollar An episode, you can find out if it's a scombered or a chine.

1:03:22 Thomas: All that, we go into more detail and we talk about vasectomies. And Tom has a very curious vasectomy story that you must hear. Also, if you jump on Patreon, you can get a week ahead. Next week, we talk about whether or not we should send our kids to college or encourage them to go and all about our college experience. Experience, after which we get to a funny surprise discussion on our science fair experience as kids, and it is three totally different experiences, very fun.

So hop on patreon.com/dearolddads for that. Tease, we finally figured out our August bonus. We're going to be talking about some very popular movies and some perhaps bad parents in those movies. And here's the thing, these are movies that I don't know that the mainstream society is viewing these folks as bad parents, and these are, these are good, these are like oscar-winning movies, so that's gonna be fun. All that's on Patreon.

And if you can't pledge the Patreon, that's okay. We still love you so much. Join that Facebook group. Keep on listening. Send us an email or, you know, just be part of the silent majority and listen and enjoy the show. That's like 95% of you probably. So we really appreciate that. And if you could share us with a friend, we'd appreciate that even more. All right, we'll see you next time.

1:04:46 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.