Empowering Adult Children Through Financial Literacy

James Moffitt (00:01.399)
Welcome to another episode of ABC's Apparenting Adult Children, the podcast where we explore how parenting evolves and how we can show up with more grace, wisdom, and purpose in this next season of life. Today, I'm joined by Scott Yamamura, speaker, writer, and someone who brings a powerful blend of personal experience and thoughtful perspective to the parenting journey. Scott is passionate about helping families thrive through honest conversations, intentional choices,

and faith-filled guidance. Whether you're navigating conflict, facing distance in the relationship, or simply trying to figure out your new role as the parent of a grown child, Scott has so much to offer. So let's dive in. Hey Scott, or Scotty, how are you doing?

Scott Yamamura (00:46.51)
Good to see you, James. Thanks for bringing me on.

James Moffitt (00:48.931)
Yeah, I was, I was, was fun lovingly saying that I was going to call you Scotty. Like the engineer on Star Trek, Star Trek enterprise. Even though I think, I think he's a, isn't he's like Scottish Irish. He's more of Irish.

Scott Yamamura (01:03.532)
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right about that. I still like the nickname though, I'll take it.

James Moffitt (01:08.653)
There you go. So, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that, that, intro, there was a lot there. So if there's anything you want to add to that.

Scott Yamamura (01:20.194)
Yeah, absolutely. So my focus is on personal finance. So when you talk about parenting adult children, that's a big thing to educate our children on, especially as their financial literacy, you got it. yeah, so I became a certified financial coach in order to understand the world of personal finance.

James Moffitt (01:34.861)
Financial literacy.

Scott Yamamura (01:47.008)
I wrote a book called Financial Epiphany. It took me three years to get through that and get it ready to share that message with the world. And I'm out there to help families, individuals, young and old, but particularly aim towards the earlier parts of our careers because we have such leverage with our money at that time. So I like to let people know about that.

that leverage and multiplying power they have with their finances if they take action. A lot of us don't know about that. My job is to spread the good news.

James Moffitt (02:23.244)
I got you. So are you a parent?

Scott Yamamura (02:27.18)
That I am. I have a 16 year old son.

James Moffitt (02:30.57)
Well tell us a little bit about your parenting story.

Scott Yamamura (02:34.626)
Yeah, sure. So I know when my son was first born, I had to switch gears. I actually used to be involved in an organization that served the youth in action sports. And that would take hours and hours and hours to be gone away from the home to do that. And I knew when my son was born, I was going to have to switch gears. So I changed from serving the youth in that way to picking up a camera instead.

and serving nonprofit organizations instead. I called it my after nine ministry because my wife and son would go to sleep at nine o'clock. That's when I would flip on the computer and I would start editing videos and photos for these nonprofit organizations to use. And then after that, my son grew up and he around the age of 14, I decided to involve him in that.

that ministry work and we shoot videos for nonprofit organizations together. In fact, we just went to Sierra Leone, Africa and filmed a video together. Yeah, and came back and edited that up for an organization called the Bridge of Hope. And so very much so serving has been part of our family life and my son's life. And that's what I want to pour into him. But also the finances, we started talking about finances when he was probably about seven years old.

James Moffitt (03:37.382)
wow.

Scott Yamamura (03:57.742)
And so I share a lot with him. He knows what's in his college education fund and what's been happening there. We started a custodial count and we started to just so he could see, hey, you're going to get a free stock for your birthday. What do you want to get? Disney. OK, Christmas is coming up. You get a you get a stock. What do you want? Netflix. And then when the pandemic happened, what was really interesting as we watched stocks.

James Moffitt (03:58.142)
wow.

Scott Yamamura (04:24.596)
and how the pandemic caused this one to rise and this one to fall. And he started to understand things very early and that an intimidation that usually falls upon us as adults. And we say, is it too late for me to learn? I feel guilty by not having understood finances early. I'm trying to inject that into his life very early on. So he just thinks it's normal. It's not something to be scared of or something to suddenly go find out on his own and not know who to trust.

He's learning it from dad from age seven. Now he's 16 and feeling pretty comfortable with the whole matter.

James Moffitt (05:03.384)
Well, financial literacy is a very important life skill that I think parents should do their best to impart some wisdom in that area of life. I think some parents maybe are, that's not their expertise or their subject of expertise. And I know at a young age, as a young adult,

My parents never taught my sister and I about budgeting. They never taught my sister and I about, I knew that my dad sat down once a month, they got paid monthly. And so he, he sat down with a checkbook and wrote out checks, you know, those little paper things that we don't see anymore. He wrote out, he wrote out checks and put them in an envelope and stuck, put a stamp on them and put them all out in the mailbox. And he had a list of some sort. don't know.

Scott Yamamura (05:49.08)
Haha, yeah, I heard about this.

James Moffitt (06:00.025)
I doubt it was a spreadsheet because he was very, you know, we didn't have computers or anything back then. So it was just probably a manual list of whatever he needed to pay. they bought a house, a brick house, three bedroom, two and a half bath house and 69 or 70. It was a 30 year mortgage and he paid it off in 15 years. And so he and my adoptive parents were apparently very astute when it came to finances.

For some reason, they didn't find it necessary to impart any of that on me or us. So I had to learn at an early age when I became an adult, I found out very quickly that if you don't pay your light bill, they will cut your electricity off. If you don't pay your car payment, they'll come tow it away. Right? And all of a sudden I was faced with crisis, you know? And I was like, whoa, what's going on here?

And, so I learned very quickly that if you want to keep your utilities on and keep your car under you, you got to pay those bills on a regular basis. Otherwise you're going to, you're going to suffer the consequences. So I learned budgeting fairly early on, and now I use a spreadsheet and I use quicken and you know, tools like that to kind of keep a bird's eye view of what's, what's coming in and what's going out. But yes, parents need to try to,

teach that life skill or find somebody that can teach the life skill to them.

James Moffitt (07:42.968)
I'm not hearing you for some reason. What happened?

James Moffitt (08:05.173)
I heard something there.

Scott Yamamura (08:18.754)
All right, use that word crisis. And I use that word too. You think about how much we hear it in the headlines and articles. You've got the student loan crisis. You've got the retirement crisis. You've got the housing crisis. Crisis, crisis, crisis. It's pretty normal. We've normalized that term as if it's something we just live with. And you've got these days low financial literacy. And you've got

Most of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. In fact, many studies will show around 78 % of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. And just about as many of us are in debt, around about $100,000 due to things like a mortgage, credit cards, student loans, and the like, car loans. And so what we see on the surface when we look around is we see

shiny things, we see wealth, see wonderful vacations being had, we see all these things that look so nice on the surface, but most of us are actually struggling with money underneath. And so when you look to the culture and you see that we're marketed to, we're advertised to, the biggest message that we get out there, the prevailing message is buy, buy, buy. And really our money will go buy, buy if we don't.

James Moffitt (09:39.725)
Right.

Scott Yamamura (09:42.658)
try to do otherwise. And so I do look at parents as the first line of defense for teaching their children because the culture is teaching us otherwise. Our country, it's a wonderful economy, but it is built off of everybody builds products and services, and then we sell it to each other. We just don't know when to stop. We need to be able to say, this is how much money I have. Let me stop short of that.

because the advertising messages will tell us to keep going and going and going if we don't ourselves have the self-control to put it to a stop. Well, there's a big reason why we have billionaires in this world. It's because we're centralizing our money towards many of the same places making the billionaires.

James Moffitt (10:20.76)
And you, and you know, who's getting rich, you know, who's getting rich, right?

James Moffitt (10:31.618)
Well, it's the banks that are getting rich.

Scott Yamamura (10:35.447)
yeah, you could say that. You could say that.

James Moffitt (10:37.346)
Yeah. And so I used to work, I just retired from IT after 30 years. I didn't want to, I was kind of forced into it because I kept getting laid off and nobody wants to hire an old geezer like me. They didn't want to pay for my experience, I guess. But I worked at the college of Charleston in there as a server analyst in their Bell South building, downtown Charleston. And that was the first time I actually worked on a college campus. And so I had a

I had an epiphany or an awakening because I really did not understand college life. I never went to a four-year college myself. I attended community college. So anyway, when I went down to the first floor of the building, that was kind of the lobby. so all the student activities stuff was on the walls. some of that stuff just blew my mind anyway.

I'm a little old fashioned. I'm a baby boomer. get that. I was raised in a different world, or a different culture or age, I guess you could say. But one of the things that really kind of angered me was that, when the kids would get out for class or they'd be going in between classes, they go from building to building, whatever, or they'd be going to lunch. there was a, an intersection and these credit card companies would.

station themselves, they'd be like five or six people from banks. They'd station themselves on all the corners and they'd have these little handheld devices, whatever those were, cell phones, don't know, tablets, and they'd hand that to the kids and get them to sign up for a credit card on the spot. And so they were inducing or they were compelling those students to

Scott Yamamura (12:09.624)
Mmm, yeah.

James Moffitt (12:31.352)
Get free stuff, you know, sign up for a credit card and you can buy all the toys you want. And so the kids are signing up for these credit cards. And so what happens? They, they graduate not only with student debt or student loans, they graduate with these, these credit card debts with high interest rates that, that they can't afford. And so guess who winds up paying that bill nine times out of 10 is the parents. Right. And so I was, it just really kind of made me mad when I saw the predatory.

lending practices that they were doing. were like, they, yeah, let's get these kids, let's suck these kids into these shiny little credit cards so they can buy, you know, iPads and stereos and I, you know, iPhones and all this other stuff, you know, and, and, and so, part of financial literacy is understanding credit card debt, understanding interest, interest rates and why it's important to not send in your

Scott Yamamura (13:13.144)
Yeah.

Scott Yamamura (13:17.422)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (13:31.833)
the lowest possible amount, the minimal amount at the, that the credit card companies will allow you to pay every month. And they want you to, they don't want you to pay the debt off. They don't want you to pay that balance off because they want to continually accrue that interest. Right.

Scott Yamamura (13:35.222)
Mm, yeah.

Scott Yamamura (13:43.022)
No.

That's right, 20 some percent plus sometimes.

James Moffitt (13:50.742)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, so yeah. now I have a lot of questions to ask you, believe it or not, none of them have anything to do with financial literacy. And since, and since, your Forte, or expertise lies in the financial industry, I want to give you an opportunity to spend as much time as you want on, educating.

Scott Yamamura (14:02.894)
All right.

James Moffitt (14:19.582)
listening audience on this sort of stuff because I think it's a very critical need.

Scott Yamamura (14:25.362)
absolutely. All of us have to deal with finances our entire lives. It's the one thing that we do every single day throughout the day and we're educated to earn money. We spend 40 years earning the money. We might spend up to 30 years spending the money purely in retirement. And so it's here to stay. It's not going away. And we owe it to ourselves to continue the learning here. Learning doesn't stop at the high school.

door or at the door of the College or University. It's got to continue on. We owe it to ourselves to understand money. And like you were just saying, I call that the path of snares and traps. The world will be willing to take as much of our money as we're willing to give it. And there's all sorts of ways. You've mentioned credit cards. The average debt is about $6,000 on a credit card.

And then you've got car loans that might be in the $20,000 range. And then you've got student loans that might be nearly $40,000. And then I like to even look at weddings and things like that. The average wedding goes into debt about $10,000. then you've got your... And then, yeah, and even more than that. mean, that was a figure that I came across about a year ago. And then you've got...

James Moffitt (15:34.693)
probably more than that.

Scott Yamamura (15:45.676)
We've become house poor by buying too much home and buying a bigger home or a more expensive home than we can afford as well. So there's a path of snares and traps waiting for us. And if we don't tell our money where to go, we'll be wondering where it went. And so we got to have a plan. And that's what I do is I developed a very, very simple plan. If most people are struggling in this way and just not showing it, just not talking about it, then really all we need is the simplest tool.

in order to get on track because we're overwhelmed or intimidated by money, it's scary. We don't want to look back. There's guilt and shame and regret wrapped all around this thing. But if we acknowledge that and we give our young adults just the simplest understanding so that they can get started right, because it takes a long time to build up finances.

then that's what I've worked on, is to give people that simple message. Three rules of thumb, in fact, that we can get into and I can explain. All right, you want me to jump into those?

James Moffitt (16:52.632)
So before we get into that, can, is there anything we can do for the federal government? Because they're, they're obviously have no clue about budgeting money or how to pay bills because we're, what we're like, what 32 trillion, $37 trillion in debt as a nation.

Scott Yamamura (17:01.751)
Hahaha!

Scott Yamamura (17:05.55)
yeah. Yeah, you would hope that the leadership would set the greatest example about financial responsibility. It's not the case, unfortunately. Wish it was. So that's why we need to, as individuals and family units and communities, do what we can do and not wait around for the government to change or take care of things for us.

That's the big hope, that one day we do get out of that huge hole that keeps growing. It is irresponsible as a nation to be continuing down that path, because it's there's a potential cliff, and we don't know where that cliff edge is, but we keep heading towards it. It's a lot better to put on the brakes, pump those brakes, turn around and go the other direction, and work towards zero or work towards a surplus.

James Moffitt (17:58.742)
Right. Yeah, but go ahead. And I don't know. I was just thinking that keeps running through my head every time I turn on the TV and every time, you know, it's like every time I turn around, it's like, wait, like the big, big, big, bill that president Trump's, you know, pushing through Congress. I, and like that big, beautiful bill has probably got a lot of garbage in it. A lot of pork, a lot of stuff that does not need to be in there. But anyway, I digress. ahead.

Scott Yamamura (18:02.658)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Yamamura (18:24.238)
All right. hear you. OK, so if we're going to boil things down to three rules of thumb to help young folks look out for their financial future, the big part of this is saving for retirement and being able to realize our ability to multiply money is what I like to call it. In fact, you use the word epiphany earlier, and that's the that's the name of my book is Financial Epiphany. So I had an epiphany.

James Moffitt (18:52.804)
wow, awesome.

Scott Yamamura (18:53.74)
Yeah, I had an epiphany when I wrote this thing. So we'll talk about these three financial epiphanies. But yeah, what they accomplish is they empower people with multiplying money. Realizing that power causes you to get out of debt because you have this power that you need to be feeding. And then there's money, hopefully, left over at the end of the month after all your bills are paid.

that you can put towards your purpose. I call it funding your purpose and so get out of debt. Learn how to steward your money. Put it towards your purpose. OK, so the three financial epiphanies under a general most common way of investing money. Call it like a 401K retirement plan, individual retirement account or brokerage firm, stocks, bonds, index funds, mutual funds. These are all.

very common accessible ways of investing money. If you just put money in the bank, it's going to sit there and earn a timid amount of interest. But we have the ability to actually grow this money. Now, how much does it grow? That's a huge mystery to most people, right? Remember, financial illiteracy. Now, generally speaking, 7.2 % that rate of return is a fairly normal rate of return.

So if you put money in any of these vehicles that I just talked about, if it's gaining 7.2 % on average, that means after 10 years, that one injection of money has doubled. So you put in a thousand dollars into a 401k plan, say, wait 10 years, it's 2000. If you put in 10,000, well, it's 20,000. So that's the first epiphany is that if we simplify money, we can actually think to ourselves, hey, invest it, and it can double about every 10 years.

Now that's like having an inch mark on a ruler. Now let's talk about the ruler. Who works 10 years and then stops? Not too many people. The average amount of time that we work is 40 years. So let's take that same principle and say if money doubles every 10 years, OK, well, 1,000 turns to 2,000, but I'm going to work 10 more years. After that, 2,000 turns to 4,000. Work 10 more years, 4,000 turns to 8,000. And then 8,000 turns to 16,000 in our 60s, about the time

Scott Yamamura (21:17.006)
average person retires. So what we're talking about is a single injection of a thousand dollars when you start your career can end up being $16,000 when you retire. What if you put another thousand in and another thousand in and another thousand in? It's just going to keep multiplying, multiplying, multiplying. And so now what we're doing is we're telling people you have an input and now we understand the output instead of people saying, I have no idea what my 401k is.

and what it's going to turn into. I have no idea. Well, if money doubles every 10 years and you have this multiplying power of 16, now we're starting to understand and create a ruler for our career and our finances. And here's one thing, is that I was sitting at my dining room table one night and I was like, OK, it excites me if I put in $1,000 and it turns into $16,000. But most people, that doesn't excite. it kind of, it,

It confused me. Why don't we get excited about that? And that's because it's not now. It takes waiting. So I thought to myself, how do we turn this thing around? How do we take that concept of waiting and turn it into something exciting now? Well, if you flip this chart, like I like to put it, or if you say instead of waiting for $16,000 later, if you flip this and you say instead now I have this ability to multiply money by 16, when I start my career,

James Moffitt (22:22.146)
Right?

James Moffitt (22:25.73)
Yeah

Scott Yamamura (22:44.546)
I have the multiplying power of 16 and it's like an athletic ability where you're have it and it's gonna actually dissipate over time. 10 years later, that multiplying power halves into the power of eight. In our early 30s, we have the multiplying power of eight, generally speaking. And then in our early 40s, it's the multiplying power of four and then 50s, multiplying power of two. And then hopefully you're enjoying the fruits of your labor in your 60s.

So when we understand that we have this multiplying power of 16 when we start our careers and it halves every 10 years, that now tells us a sense of urgency that tells us we need to steward this thing. We don't want to squander it because it's like athletic ability where, Hey, if you're going to be the quarterback, are you going to be, you know, the pitcher or soccer player? You're not going to be as good 10 years later or 10 years after that, or 10 years after that, this ability will diminish. And that for the average worker.

James Moffitt (23:35.874)
Right.

Scott Yamamura (23:39.786)
is what is happening to our money. So when we have these three financial epiphanies that money can double every 10 years, we start our careers with a power of 16 to multiply money. And that multiplying power halves every 10 years. Now we have a framework to actually understand what's happening, something that was formless and intimidating before. Now we've got a set of three rules of thumb that tell us what's going on.

When I learned that that was happening, I actually took confident action and put money in early I wouldn't have otherwise I was acting timidly before I knew this now I see that money doubling and And it's pretty incredible I can get into some examples later about about what I've seen and how it worked in some people's lives

James Moffitt (24:31.448)
I wish I'd known you, uh, 40 years ago.

Scott Yamamura (24:35.438)
And that is what we all say. That is what we all say. We say, even myself, I say, if I knew what I knew now, I would have done things differently. I wish I could go back and do things, you know, and save earlier. And that is the one of the largest retirement regrets is I wish I had gone back and saved more earlier. Well, if that's what all us retirees are saying, as young workers, why don't we listen to that and do that? Because we will become them.

So yeah.

James Moffitt (25:05.88)
Yeah, my wife and I, apparently that ship sailed. didn't, we didn't know what that word retirement was and we didn't understand how important it was to put money away, for retirement. So, so now we're, now we're in the working class of living paycheck by paycheck, you know, and, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I,

Scott Yamamura (25:25.432)
There we go, so it's a true story. You're telling it like it is.

James Moffitt (25:31.307)
I just, luckily I, qualify for social security benefits. And so I signed up for that. And so I have a little chunk of money coming in every month that that's paying a lion's share of our, you know, the mortgage lot rent car payment, you know, the, the, the big things. And then I'll hopefully have a little leftover for food or whatever. And then my wife's still working as a teacher and then her income pays the rest of it. Right. And, so yeah, it's a, it's a real thing. And I, I'm no,

Scott Yamamura (25:44.398)
Good. Yeah.

James Moffitt (26:00.555)
I know I'm not alone.

Scott Yamamura (26:01.804)
Yeah, no, no, that's the majority that is America. And thanks for being open and honest about that. folks, is a true story. America has a path for us if we don't cut out this path for ourselves. But what I like seeing about in your life, James, is the purpose that comes in, is that nothing's going to stop your purpose no matter what amount of money is coming in. So thanks for making a difference in our young people's lives. Because that's the other thing is,

is if I've done things one way, and I certainly did, and I could have optimized my financial life better, I am looking at the younger generation. That's why I wrote this book. That is why I'm teaching my son, and he's 16 right now, because the world is ruthless. It is going to take our money if we allow it to. It certainly will.

James Moffitt (26:49.858)
Bye!

James Moffitt (26:53.41)
Well, I see the results of addiction, job loss, economy. I work a part-time security job at Walmart at night and just to kind of help ends me, right? Because I'm not making millions on social security, right? And so I see a lot of homeless people, you know, and...

It's really, it's really sad because some of those homeless people are my age, you know, or even older. And there's, you know, I, I see people that are probably in their forties to fifties and sixties. And, know, there's, you know, addictions play. It's a multifaceted problem, right? But ultimately people become homeless because they don't have the money or the finances to take care of their basic needs, which is housing, food, electric, transportation.

You know, stuff like that. And, you know, when I was a young man, I lost a, I lost a job. lost my apartment. lost a car and I wound up being homeless. And I was, I was in my twenties. I was in my twenties. Yeah. Yeah. And homelessness is no joke. I'm here. I'm here to tell you it is not, it's no walk in the park. As a matter of fact, it's not only is it not a walk in a park, but you might wind up living in a park, right? On a park bench somewhere. And.

Scott Yamamura (28:02.392)
Is that right? You experienced that.

Scott Yamamura (28:17.774)
Ha, yeah, there we go.

James Moffitt (28:20.424)
And now, you know, these big box stores, Walmart, Target, whoever, know, you just slap a name on it. A lot of those are, are on land that is surrounded by woods, you know? And so we have what's called tent cities and we have people living in tents, in the woods behind these big box stores, you know? And it's, it's, it's really sad that, like I said, I know it's a multifaceted problem. Some of, some of the problems is a

Scott Yamamura (28:35.628)
Yeah.

Hmm, yep.

James Moffitt (28:50.227)
addictions, you know, that causes job loss. But once you, once you become homeless and you're there, it is damn near impossible to get out of that situation. It's not impossible, but it's very, very difficult. You know, it's very difficult to get a job. You know, if you don't have, if you don't have a physical street address, if you don't have a mailing address, if you don't have, you know, if you don't keep your, your identification current,

Scott Yamamura (29:04.91)
That's what I hear. Oh yeah.

James Moffitt (29:18.231)
You know, I mean, just think about the hiring process at a job. go through this onboarding process where they put you under a microscope. You got to have two forms of ID. You got to have this, you got to have that. And if you don't, if you don't have those things, then they can't hire you because of, you know, state and federal hiring laws that are out there. Right. And so, so people, you know, they wind up, they wind up living on the street because, you know,

Scott Yamamura (29:38.936)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (29:46.603)
One of the problems is a lack of finances. You lose your job. It's like you said, people are living from paycheck to paycheck. say most people are two paychecks away from homelessness, you know, and you, if you lose your job, like I lost my job, I got laid off, you know, for the third time in five years from my, my IT contract job, working for the state health department and, COVID ended or the COVID funding from the federal government ended on April the first of this year. And the state was like,

Scott Yamamura (29:49.55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Scott Yamamura (30:09.304)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (30:15.084)
They got all 30 of us on a, on a conference call and said, well, COVID funding ended and we don't have the funds to keep paying you. So you, we're going to let you work till the end of next Friday. And then that's your last day. And so they didn't even give me a week's notice. Right. And I was like, you know, I've been on this, I've been on this, merry-go-round before, so I wasn't a stranger to it, but it's not, it's not a comfortable feeling, you know,

Scott Yamamura (30:30.232)
Wow. Yeah.

Scott Yamamura (30:38.882)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (30:44.35)
And I, I knew I was going to have a hard time finding another contract or job. And, and so I just said, you know, screw it. I'll just start taking retirement early. And at least that's, that's money that's sitting there that I can use to, you know, pay, pay for the basics, you know, that way we know we have a roof over our head and food to eat, electricity and stuff like that. but yeah, there's, there's real world consequences for not managing your money.

You know, obviously, you know, life happens. There are things that are outside of our control that we can't control. you know, that's where putting money away and stocking it away for savings and retirement. What's this financial wizard? I think I forget the name. He's a Christian.

Scott Yamamura (31:40.194)
Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey, perhaps.

James Moffitt (31:43.491)
Dave Ramsey. Yeah. Dave Ramsey is like, you should always have a thousand dollars in savings for emergencies. Right? I've, I've never.

Scott Yamamura (31:49.38)
yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you start is 1,000. And then from there, it says three to six months of expenses saved. Yeah.

James Moffitt (31:53.623)
Yeah!

James Moffitt (31:57.265)
I have a confession. I've never had a thousand dollars in savings. Ever.

Scott Yamamura (32:00.888)
Yeah, that's common, very common. Yeah.

James Moffitt (32:03.256)
Because we're so busy paying our bills, right? We're so busy just keeping the freaking lights on. Yeah.

Scott Yamamura (32:06.666)
It just comes in and goes right back out immediately. Life is expensive.

James Moffitt (32:12.856)
And then when you have a few X, when you have a few extra dollars, you want the shiny thing, right? Got to have the newest iPhone.

Scott Yamamura (32:17.356)
That's right. Yes, yes, yes. If it's not going towards a bill, then it's going towards the next shiny thing. The next widget or gadget. You got it. All right.

James Moffitt (32:22.668)
That's right.

James Moffitt (32:30.348)
Alright, what about, what's your next epiphany?

Scott Yamamura (32:32.898)
Well, so those are the three financial epiphanies. so what we do now is start to apply them. So I'll give you an example. So I mentioned that the college student loan is the $40,000 typically around there. And so that means when a student goes to college and borrows money to go, about 10 years after, they're paying a good chunk of money every month towards that student loan.

So the greatest multiplying power that we have is in our 20s when we start working. We just mentioned that the power of 16. But if we freeze that and we're instead paying a student loan and putting our money towards a student loan, we're losing our biggest leverage in our lives to actually double our money. And so what I like to do is teach people this rule. Okay, if money doubles every 10 years.

Okay, let's say, yeah, $40,000 for college tuition. What if we saved up half of that 10 years earlier? Because that's $20,000. Now 20,000 doubles into 40,000. Now what if we got even more clever and we saved 10 years before that? Well, instead of saving $20,000, now we only have to save $10,000. 10 turns into 20, 20 turns into 40.

And so we started to get the idea that when money doubles every 10 years, we can start to front load or set money aside. Now setting aside $10,000 is near impossible for most folks, but you can certainly set aside something and know that it doubles and doubles again by the time your child goes to university. And so I like to encourage parents to invest early and to understand how money doubles because it can be

put towards college education for the kids. So that's one example. There's another example where a friend of mine wanted to buy a car around $30,000. And we talked about how money doubles. And so instead of buying new at 30, he bought used at a $20,000 price tag. And he said, all right, I'm taking that $10,000 and investing it into my retirement because I know that $10,000 can double into 20.

Scott Yamamura (34:51.502)
And that 20 will double into 40 by the time I'm ready to retire. And then here's another big example is I met with someone who had a windfall. I mean, a major windfall. And they had a half million dollars that landed in their bank account. And they were young. And we talked about how, OK, well, if you take that half million dollars and and invest it and you have the power of 16.

A half million turns into $8 million when you retire. You won't have to worry about a thing. Yes, you can spend some of it. You may not need $8 million at retirement. But they didn't understand at first. And now that mystery became very clear of an input and an output. And that's how we apply these epiphanies. They're like a ruler. You just look at, well, how many years is it till I retire? Or what age am I? And do I have the power of two, four, eight, 16, or somewhere in between?

And it's so simple. I use it all the time. Over the past decade, even though I don't need to use it as much, I still do. It's so simple that I just continue to love applying it in life. And it's for my biggest and my family's biggest money decisions that we we use this really quick mental calculation and it and it works. So there's there are some examples there.

James Moffitt (36:13.816)
That's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's very good. You have any heavy, you have any other thoughts for parents along those lines? Yeah.

Scott Yamamura (36:22.168)
Thank you.

Scott Yamamura (36:27.51)
all sorts, all sorts. mean, yeah, because as a father and a husband, and my son is 16. so besides front loading a 529 college account, another thing that we can start up is this custodial account that you and I had talked about earlier.

And that's where a parent can start an account for their children at a brokerage account. And I recommend discount brokerage firms. Those might be something like Charles Schwab or Fidelity or Vanguard. You can look these folks up on the web and create an appointment to get a brokerage account started or maybe even just do it online entirely. And yeah, go ahead. Yeah, there you go. That's good place to be at.

James Moffitt (37:18.294)
I've got a, I've got a fidelity account. Yep.

Scott Yamamura (37:23.766)
And so, yeah, if you yourself don't have one, you can start one up for yourself. But I recommend parents. Most parents aren't very familiar with stocks, bonds, and all these investments. But what if you started an account for your child and said, OK, yeah, let's put this birthday money and this Christmas money into it. And I'll learn as you are growing your money and the child is going to benefit.

and learn, but also the parents will as well. And that actually happened to me. Yeah, I wasn't the foremost expert on individual stocks, but we certainly did invest in some safe funds, some index funds that track the S &P 500 index, which is highly recommended by folks like Warren Buffett, the most renowned investor in the world. So investing in the 500 biggest companies of America sounds like a really good way to go.

But then also some single stocks just to teach the children what's happening. So for instance, to go deeper into what we saw when the pandemic happened, Netflix and Amazon just shot up because everybody was ordering things online and watching entertainment online. And boy, I'm trying to think of some stocks that went down, but that would have been places that relied on people physically gathering or

or getting together using a venue. So at that time, we saw restaurants and movie theaters and things hard hit for a time. Or even I would say that this is not a stock or bond, but a business. But my in-laws, they came from Korea and they ran a dry cleaner. they, without knowing, they sold it right before the pandemic. And that was a very fortunate.

business move for them because who was getting their dry cleaning done when nobody was going into the office? yeah, nobody. So the custodial account is another tool I like to give people. here's another one I like to tell people. I call it the forever fund. this could be, a forever fund could be created for anybody really. And what you do with a forever fund, I'll talk about it in terms of having a business, a personal business on the side.

James Moffitt (39:27.96)
Nobody.

Scott Yamamura (39:51.936)
is that if someone has a personal business or a business account, they can put money in there, money in there, money in there. Let's say there's, you know, let's say there's a just for easy math, this is going to be an outrageous number, but someone for their business has $100,000 saved up. Okay, so now what you do is you, you actually allow that fund to say it's invested in index funds.

to get that 7.2 % rate of return we talked about earlier. That means that after a year, it grows $7,200. OK, so there's $107,200. Well, what if we remove that $7,200 and you spend it? The $100,000 is still there. Your golden egg. Well, I should say it's your goose laying golden eggs. Next year, it gains another $7,200. Can you take it out, spend it?

100,000 still there. It creates another 7,200. You take that out and you spend it. And so that can be done for a business account. It can be done for an account for giving, where the original goose or 100,000 never is touched. Just the golden egg is taken and spent and used. And you can do that for a child even. You can build an account for a child or tell them about that this is even possible.

And I call it the forever fund because it just keeps going and going and going and going. And yes, the market can go up and down in some years. You might need to pause if, if the market had a hard year and other years, you're going to make more. it's in the real world. It's called an endowment. And if hospitals, universities and such, they all do this. Why don't we on the scale that we're capable of doing it, we can teach our kids about this. And I certainly, created my own, forever fund for the,

James Moffitt (41:20.15)
Right.

Scott Yamamura (41:44.75)
creative ministry that I'm a part of, Created to Create. I mentioned that my son and I, we went to Africa to film videos and we filmed videos for nonprofit causes. And so we have a fund like that for Created to Create that we're working on now. Now it takes some time to build it up to a good healthy amount. So it'll lay a nice sizable egg. But yeah, I like to tell people about the Forever Fund too, because we can get on the offensive here with money. Like you say, it's hard if we...

if we don't have enough time to build that up. But we're talking to adult children. We're talking to the early folks in their career, in their early earning years, and they can do something about this. When they know about these tools, the three epiphanies or the college fund, the custodial account, and then this forever fund, they can take action in whatever amount that they can. And boy, I've been doing this.

10 years intentionally knowing what I'm doing now. And I love seeing what happens after 10 years. It's pretty incredible. It does take time, but boy, I like to say that instant gratification lasts a day, but financial wellness is gratifying every day. And that's what we want for people, not where you have to buy and then that feeling goes away. Then you have to buy again and buy again. Meanwhile, you're losing all your money. But if you have money that's growing and you can put that towards

James Moffitt (42:58.22)
Right? Right?

Scott Yamamura (43:09.73)
funding your purpose, which we can talk about as well, then that's gratifying every day because the money is there. You know it's growing and you are making plans on how to better your family's lives and the lives of the community and maybe others in the world. So I like to call that funding your purpose.

James Moffitt (43:28.441)
So I had a friend of mine years ago told me that I needed to invest in Bitcoin. And I was like, what? Okay, whatever. So just to get him off on back, I like invested $10 into Bitcoin. I didn't know squat about it. It's like $107,000 per coin now. And so I was at a poker game with a friend of mine, friends of mine. And well, I should say I was at a card game because it's illegal to play poker in South Carolina.

Scott Yamamura (43:57.644)
Right. There you go. There you go. Yep. Card game. Yep. Of course not poker.

James Moffitt (43:57.656)
So I was at a card game.

Hey, we're playing pinnacle anyway. so we, we got to, we got to talking about Bitcoin and investing and Lala this Lala that. And so my friend George was like, I told him, said, you know, I invested $10 on Bitcoin back in 2000. I don't know. Seven, something like that. Well, he was like, well, well, can you log into your account? You know, I think I had Coinbase or something on my phone. said, yeah, I can log in and look at it. And,

Scott Yamamura (44:04.59)
Of

James Moffitt (44:30.904)
I don't know. think I had to re-register or something like that. But once I got everything straight, 2FA and all that, that $10 had turned into $45. And I was like, what? That's crazy. So he told me to, he told me to sell trade that or sell that $45 and, and put it into something called XRP. It's a, it's a little more, it's a little safer investment, right? So that $45 has turned into like $90 or whatever.

Scott Yamamura (44:40.206)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (45:00.492)
You know, and I need to, I need to start putting like every payday, I need to start putting 10 or a hundred dollars more into that and let that thing grow. it goes up and down. It fluctuates. And I, know, I don't know. I'm not, obviously I'm not a financial wizard. So what are, what are your thoughts on, on Bitcoin and, cryptocurrencies?

Scott Yamamura (45:24.076)
Yeah, personal finance, it's personal. It has it in the name. And money is personal. So we all need to make our own choices and make our own plan. And what we're comfortable with and what we know, that's where we should put our money. And we should fully understand the risks as well.

James Moffitt (45:30.742)
Right, right, right.

Scott Yamamura (45:48.586)
Most things I'm talking about here, index funds, stocks, bonds, there's the potential for loss and there's also the potential for loss with cryptocurrency. Now it has been named and called by many a speculative investment choice because we're just not sure what's going to happen in the long run. Is it going to disappear or is it going to become obsolete? Is it going to become widely accepted? We don't know. These are the things that have been around quite a lot.

quite a while, stocks and bonds and such. so, of course, you want to look at things like what are companies involved with and what is our financial system involved with and what is the government involved with? And, you know, that's why I point people towards, well, companies do these 401k plans and governments are involved giving people tax advantages. So that's a good place to start. Now, if you want to go beyond that, usually the recommendation by financial advisors is

take 1 % of money that you can invest and put it in risky investments. And the other thing on top of that, I like to say is make sure your retirement and all these other things are taken care of, then go ahead and take risks. But if you take risks with your primary money and it poof goes away, whoa, that really was risky. I like to say

James Moffitt (47:13.25)
That's painful.

Scott Yamamura (47:13.964)
That's painful. like to say get 99 % of your money all figured out, safe, secure, growing, and then take that 1 % and go play with it. Go ahead, see what happens.

James Moffitt (47:23.094)
Right, right. So you're not real keen on the idea of cryptocurrency, huh?

Scott Yamamura (47:30.102)
Well, I certainly have put some money in and tried it out. And I like to observe what's going on there, but I don't look at it as my primary retirement account source or the way I'm going to grow my business or anything like that. I look at it as that's the play money and it's interesting. And if something happens with what's in there, all right, we were going along for the ride. That's wonderful. But yeah, I'm a little bit. Uh-huh. Go ahead.

James Moffitt (47:54.636)
Right. We wish we'd have bought Bitcoin 20 years ago, right?

Scott Yamamura (48:01.422)
I think we all do. Now that we know in hindsight, that's the funny thing about all of this is you would do things way differently in hindsight, seeing what grew and what failed. certainly if we knew that it did grow, I absolutely would put some money in and enjoy the fruits later.

James Moffitt (48:03.286)
Yeah. Wow.

James Moffitt (48:13.639)
sure.

James Moffitt (48:23.296)
I think now is the best time in the world to buy Tesla stock, don't you?

Scott Yamamura (48:27.086)
Well, they do say if you believe that a company is going to be around for a while, that go ahead and buy when it has a downturn, right? Because the value of stocks is based on sentiment quite a bit.

James Moffitt (48:43.064)
Tesla, Apple, IBM. I had a buddy of mine that's worked for IBM for, I don't know, 30 plus years. And he has some IBM stocks. I don't know how much he has, I would dare to say he's probably sitting pretty. I don't think he's going to have to worry about retirement like I do.

Scott Yamamura (48:58.19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you look at companies that have been around a long time and have done well in our household names and you say, if you own their stock for a long time, then that most likely was a good ride.

James Moffitt (49:15.853)
Amen.

All right. so, so I'm going to give you like three to five minutes for an elevator speech. What would you tell the listening audience? Parents of adult children.

Scott Yamamura (49:28.014)
Yeah, absolutely. It all goes back to the big takeaway is the three financial epiphanies. I like to tell people those three tools. So set yourself and your kids up with this. Once again, money can double every 10 years if it's invested in common ways of investing, 401k, IRA, brokerage account. We start our careers with the power of 16 in our early 20s.

And that's the ability to multiply power by 16 times like athletic ability, right? We got it now, use it well. You got it before you lose it and steward that. And then the third epiphany is that our multiplying power halves every 10 years. And so that creates a sense of urgency. I'm going to give one other example that I didn't give earlier, which is if you worked a week of work and got paid, you signed up for that. You got paid what you agreed to.

Now, if you worked a week of work and you got paid double as if you had worked two weeks, we'd all be ecstatic. That's what it's like when your money is doubling. It's like we should be very excited about the doubling of money and we should get involved with this. Now, what's the power of 16 feel like? That's like working a week of work and getting paid for four months. Now that is off the charts ridiculous. And we don't understand how powerful that multiplying power is with money when we're in our 20s. And I like to give that example.

Because it sounds so ridiculous that until we put it in context like that, we don't necessarily get excited about it. But after we hear about that, we take action. And so there you go. That's what I like to tell folks. And then since you said elevator pitch, also let people know that my website is financialepiphany.com. If people want to learn more about this book that I've spent three years writing or to get in contact with me.

That's the place to go to to reach out. And yeah, the way I like to put this multiplying power that people have is it's the subtitle of my book here, which is I want to help people discover their ability to multiply money so that they can reimagine their financial life. And that to me is the sort of life change I want to offer people. And it's funny that reading a book for four hours can be like a rudder.

Scott Yamamura (51:50.552)
to a ship, can reroute your financial life, which is pretty amazing.

James Moffitt (51:54.006)
Yeah, I need to, I need to get a copy of that. I need to get a copy of that book so I can, I can realign my rudder.

Scott Yamamura (51:59.554)
Yeah, I'm going to email you afterwards and offer you a book. I'll have one sent out to you, so we'll talk after.

James Moffitt (52:07.736)
Oh yeah. I want to, I want to read that book and, uh, uh, make some adjustments because I mean, I don't have a hundred thousand dollars to invest. don't even have $10,000 to invest, but I, think the key takeaway here is, that a, we need to change our spending habits. B we need to learn how to save money. We need to save money for retirement. Hello. If you're, if you're in your fifties or if you're in your thirties or forties, hear me now, you know, uh,

Every paycheck, but 10 or a hundred dollars away into, into an IRA or a 401k or whatever, and start realizing this power of 16 or power of eight or whatever it is. and, and just do it. Your, your future self will thank you. Right.

Scott Yamamura (52:56.27)
And listen to James, everybody here. He's got the perspective and he's got the experience to know what he's talking about here. So yeah.

James Moffitt (53:04.364)
Yeah, I'm living it. We're living it every day.

Scott Yamamura (53:07.15)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (53:08.972)
Don't don't do as I say, or don't do as I do do as I say, because what I, what we didn't do is we made a mistake, but that's okay. Because you, know, every day that you're breathing, you can make course adjustments. You can make changes, right? We don't all need that shiny new iPhone or MacBook pro or whatever the Sant shiny gadget is that the marketing experts are trying to suck your money out of your account.

Scott Yamamura (53:21.646)
Yep.

James Moffitt (53:35.993)
Uh, you don't need that. You don't need a new iPhone every year. You know what? iPhones are like what? $1,600, 1200, 1200 to $1,600, depending on if you get the pro or the max version, you spend an entire year paying for the stupid thing. Right. And then every year Apple comes out with a brand new shiny device, shiny gizmo that you just have to have, you know, and

Scott Yamamura (53:58.124)
And the cycle continues if you allow it to. Yeah.

James Moffitt (54:00.888)
That's right. That's right. So Scotty, thanks for being here. Thanks so much for joining us today on the ABC's of parenting adult children. A big thank you to Scott Yamamura for sharing his insights and experiences. What a thoughtful and honest conversation. If today's episode resonated with you, be sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you know someone navigating the challenges of parenting adult children.

Share this episode with them. It might just be what they need to hear. You can find more resources, past episodes and ways to connect with us at parentingadultchildren.org. Follow us on Instagram at parentingadultchildren125. And if you have a story or question you'd like to share, send me an email at parentingadultchildrenatproton.me. That's parentingadultchildrenatproton.me. If you're on your shiny

iPhone and you're on Apple podcasts, listening to an episode. There's also a little link in the description that says, text me. You can actually click on that link and send me an SMS message. Go James. I love this episode. I want to start saving money. Blah, blah, blah, whatever, you know, or, thanks for reminding me that I was an idiot for the last 40 years. What, you know, that's me anyway, but yeah, text me, send me an SMS message. Cause it works and I'll let it, I get it. It just drops into my email and I get it and I can respond to you.

Scott Yamamura (55:16.247)
Ha ha ha.

James Moffitt (55:26.424)
So anyway, thanks for the privilege of your time and Scott, thank you for being here. And I'll look forward to getting a copy of that book. And then after, after I read that book, we can have another episode.

All right. Bye bye everybody.