What if the most valuable financial gift you could give your children or grandchildren isn’t money at all?
Many families spend significant time thinking about inheritances, college savings plans, and investment accounts. While these tools can create opportunities for future generations, they are only part of the equation. The reality is that financial success is often shaped less by how much money someone receives and more by the habits, values, and behaviors they develop over time.
In this episode of Retire in Texas, Darryl Lyons explores the difference between leaving an inheritance and leaving a legacy. Using the introduction of new government-funded investment accounts as a starting point, he explains why financial discipline, work ethic, and healthy money habits remain the true drivers of long-term financial success. Darryl shares practical lessons from his own experience as a parent, along with insights on how families can teach children to navigate money in a world filled with consumerism, emotional spending, and financial distractions.
Whether you are raising young children, guiding teenagers, or helping grandchildren prepare for the future, this episode offers a thoughtful framework for building financial wisdom that can last for generations.
You’ll learn:
• Why financial habits often matter more than financial gifts.
• How education and inspiration work together to create lasting financial behaviors.
• The importance of involving children in real-world money decisions and experiences.
• Why different children learn about money in different ways.
• How work ethic and responsibility contribute to long-term financial success.
• Why emotions can be one of the biggest obstacles to making wise financial decisions.
• Practical ways parents and grandparents can leave a lasting financial legacy.
If you’re a parent, grandparent, or anyone hoping to help the next generation develop a healthy relationship with money, this episode provides practical guidance on teaching financial responsibility, building character, and creating habits that can benefit families for years to come.
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Transcript:
Money is inherently a spiritual thing that requires discipline, it’s a human behavior that’s much greater than just a math problem. I would suggest to you that the greatest gift you can give your child or your grandchildren is not necessarily money, but habits. These are five ways you can leave a legacy if you’re a parent or grandparent.
Do you want a wealthy retirement without worrying about money? Welcome to the Retire in Texas podcast, where you will discover how to enjoy your faith, your family, and your freedom in the state of Texas. And now here’s your host, financial advisor, author, and all-around good Texan, Darrell Lyons.
Hey, this is Daryll Lyons, CEO and co-founder of Pax Financial Group, and you’re listening to Retire in Texas. This information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax, or legal advice. Visit Pax Financial Group .com for more information. So I’m going to talk about guidance to kids and grandkids relative to money. The reason I want to talk about this is because July 4th, 2026 is the start date for the Trump accounts.
The Trump accounts are an account that can be set up if you’re born between 2025 and 2028; you’ll get $1,000 from the federal government. It’ll go into an S&P 500 fund, and it’s designed to help solve our savings crisis. This is an example in the US news that I’ll give a link for, but as an example, a child who receives $1,000, that’s again money from the government.
I do, I did a whole show on this. So you can go back and find that or you can chat GPT it now, but if they put in $1,000 and then the family then makes a contribution each year, so that’s $5,000 a year that you can put in, you know, you could have a substantial amount of money if you think about it, if you put in $1,000.
Again, this is the example from the US news, $1,000 from the government. And then the family puts in $5,000 every year up until age 18 and just let it grow. You could potentially retire early for, you know, at age 55 with, in the US news example, with millions and millions of dollars because of compounding. So theoretically, it’s an amazing vehicle for a child.
And so look into that if you haven’t already. But the point I want to make is that the responsibility of money doesn’t fall on the shoulders of the government. Now I’m speaking to the choir, but let me tell you why the government’s doing this, why Trump’s doing this, why this new vehicle was set up.
And there’s a process that we use in business a lot to try to get to the bottom of things. And it’s called the five why’s methodology. You might have heard of it five why’s. You ask yourself five why’s to get to the root problem. So why does the government set this up? Well why? Because people are broke when they’re old.
Why are people broke when they’re old? Because they’re not saving enough. Well, why aren’t they saving enough? Well, because people like to buy things and they buy things when they shouldn’t. Why are people buying things when they should buy things? Because it feels much better to buy things than to save. Well, why does it feel better to buy things versus savings?
Because, money is inherently a spiritual thing that requires discipline, and it’s a human behavior that’s much greater than just a math problem.
So I would suggest to you that the greatest gift you can give your child or your grandchildren is not necessarily money, but habits, creating good habits. And so I want to share with you five habits that you can instill. And I hesitate a little bit because I don’t even know if I could call them habits. You know, I have a phrase that I use a lot, and it’s an inheritance is what you leave to somebody, but a legacy is what you leave in somebody.
So these are five ways you can leave a legacy if you’re a parent or grandparent.
So let’s talk about the first one. And the first one is just recognizing that education. So five of these I think I have five. Hold on I had six and then I changed it. Yeah I did five, I consolidated one education plus inspiration equals transformation.
There’s a lot of financial literacy programs that have been adopted across the country, and it’s good. Don’t get me wrong, that is important. It doesn’t move the needle. We’ve got to do more than just simply educate. And you can educate somebody on how to be healthy, how to work out. And that doesn’t move the needle. We know that to be true.
To credit to Dave Ramsey, because he has tapped into the inspiration of many Americans. He actually has a piece that and I’ll put a link in the show notes that often inspires people. If you’ve done a financial piece in university class, you remember he did this thing called Ben and Arthur and it’s very interesting. It shows. It’s simply an Excel table.
One column is a guy named Ben, and the other one is Arthur. By the way, if you Google Ben and Arthur, there’s a romance novel that has been in Arthur, which is kind of peculiar. But anyways, because I was looking for the data. I hadn’t seen it in a while. So Ben invests $2,000 a year at age 19, and he does that until he’s 26, and then he just stops saving after that and he just lets the money grow.
Arthur was busy, like most of us, from 19 to 26, doing nonsense stuff and didn’t wake up to savings until age 27. And then he puts in $2,000, but he does that. He’s 65. Turns out Ben put in a lot less money, but because of the compounding effect, he has a lot more, according to Ben and Arthur.
Again, I’ll send you the links. It’s 2.2 million versus 1.5 million. Ben wins this race. And when people see this and it’s illustrated and it’s the math, they’re on the math. But inspired by what it can do, that’s when the transformation takes place. So I want you to know that education is important. So as you see in a financial literacy class, that’s good.
I can often have some sense of cynicism because I know a lot of the financial education classes are sponsored by credit card companies, so that makes it hard for me to believe that they have the inspiration element. And there’s a bias towards debt. But there are reasons to support financial literacy, but that alone isn’t going to move the needle, especially for our kids and our grandkids.
It takes inspiration. The second thing it takes to to really create these habits, to be able to leave a legacy, is involvement. I think it’s important that parents open bank accounts. You can open joint accounts with kids very young. Just open one for my 1212 year olds, a joint bank account. She gets a debit card and gets them to start using the debit card.
I had my daughter over draw her bank account on her debit card. And that’s good for her to do it under my roof and for me to recognize, hey, that’s a problem. You can’t do that. And it showed read and we talked through it. And they need to do those things. They need to make mistakes.
They need to see a bank service fee or the account balance. And they need to recognize that they might have had they might have made a purchase on. And this is really hard today because it is so easy to click on an Apple trial app that you might find to be interesting. Maybe it’s a new, new camera tool and you’re like, oh, this is great.
And then all of a sudden after the 60 day trial is 20 bucks and maybe it’s 20 bucks a month, you need to be able to see that that happened with your own money. And it makes a difference if it’s Mom and Dad’s money, you know, that’s it doesn’t feel as bad. And so those types of things, being involved with their own bank account, with their own real bank account.
Now, there’s other tools out there. There’s one called green light. I used it in the early adoption. I didn’t find it to be as effective, but some people love it. I don’t, I don’t know, I just use the normal bank accounts because it’s easy for me to see them next to theirs, and then I can talk to them about how to resolve things and just having conversations, but just being involved.
There is a story of this lady named Jessica. She took her son to Target and pulled out a $20 bill at the register to buy something for her son, and her son freaked out and he said, mom, don’t pay for it. Use your card instead. Think about that. They’re watching us. And so that’s a conversation piece.
One of the things that we do a lot, it’s kind of annoying an hour by the way, let me also say this I’m going to give you, but I have four kids. I’m still figuring this out because my kids are constantly changing. But I’ll share with you some of my stories. But one of the things that I do with my kids all the time is have them guess how much the meal was.
It makes them think about everyone’s individual meal and the teas and how everything adds up. And you know it’s not. I don’t pass out an award to whoever gets closest, but it becomes a little bit of a game. So involving them and even dining out, let them make business money mistakes, just keeping them involved. I heard one story when I wrote the book, The Grand Money Chasm, just a little tiny book that was on the shelves, Borders and Barnes and Nobles.
The one story in there that I heard from one of my clients is the way she learned about money was just watching prices right, with her grandmother and just sitting down and watching prices right, and having conversations and learning about how much things cost. So being involved is really critical. So first one it’s education plus inspiration equals transformation.
The second one is certainly being involved. The third one is this is the one I didn’t know until later in life. Not every child learns the same. You know, as you would imagine, idealistically, when you have a young child and your financial guru with air quotes. I had all the spreadsheets and the modeling, everything figured out in my son Luke.
He digested things in a, in a way that was very orderly, systematic, and just differently. But my daughter, she just didn’t resonate with her at all. And so I’ve had to recognize that my four children learn completely differently about money. And so I should not in any way get frustrated. I just have to adjust my learning style.
And like, my son just picked up investments real easy. And my other so far, my other kids just haven’t really picked it up as well or has much. And I know they will because we are starting to get some traction, but it’s just different how. It’s just crazy how kids just pick up things differently. Research has shown that a part of that is Mom and Dad’s fault because, and you may catch yourself too, but research shows that Mom and Dad’s talk to money to the boys way more than the girls, and I’ve got to catch myself there making sure that my my girls know how to save and how to invest and how to spend. But, you know, it’s just it’s just a matter of just making sure that you meet them where they’re at. I think about some of these personality profiles. I have my kids take personality profiles, and you know this already. But don’t forget, some kids are more disciplined than others. Some are more generous than others. Some are spenders.
Some are savers. Some are researchers. Some are more risk averse. Some are optimistic, some are decisive, some are content and and trying to find how to meet them where they’re at is what I’ve learned over the years as I’ve, you know, as I raise four kids. And I think that’s important for all of us to remember. The fourth thing, I think it’s important as we continue to recognize that, you know, us having this obligation as parents and grandparents to lead our kids is in the world actually and I could talk a lot about this.
The world’s teaching us something, a different message about work. And it’s important for us to instill in our children that work is inherently good. And this actually comes down to the decision that we have to make. Do we want our kids to have chores, or do we want to give them an allowance and an allowance?
So there’s debate on this, some interesting research, I don’t think I don’t know. From what I’ve seen there’s not anything conclusive but allowance. The only reason I have concerns with allowance is this degree of entitlement, that you get the money no matter what. So that’s the downside of it. Of it. The upside is it’s consistent. It’s predictable.
You know, a lot of us grew up with an allowance. So it was like it was just a part of the deal. I don’t think it’s entirely bad if you add some of these other elements to it, but the chores for I think a lot in this generation have been more of the adoption versus the allowance.
I think people are now, you know, you get paid when you do the work. The challenge there is you tell your kids to do the dishes and they’re like, how much am I going to get paid? That may, may or may not happen, but that is the side effect of making every chore, you know, assigning a dollar amount to a chore.
It really the research that I’ve seen on this stuff is neither one really has as much of an impact as just having lots of conversations, sticking with it, being consistent, letting them know that that what you’re really trying to instill is this idea that work is important, work is good, we’re made to work, and if you work, you get these certificates of rewards called, you know, money for, you know, Dave Ramsey.
You talk about that. But I think that this idea of work is important and how you compensate for that work may even change as they get older. But continuing to instill work ethic and the idea that you get rewarded and you get paid for work should be very much a part of the equation. Finally, the fifth element that I believe is important, that’s incumbent upon us as parents and grandparents, to really leave a legacy to create good habits is just recognizing that money and motion and money and emotions, they just don’t mix.
It’s like orange juice and toothpaste. And this is tricky because we are absolutely fighting against a culture of consumerism that’s tapping into our emotions, and they’re doing so in such a way that it’s so easy for us to let our guard down and then end up finding ourselves spending money there. You know, I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t see it in my family or my community.
But this betting world is really tapping into these emotions now. And it’s a big deal. Sports betting. But that’s just one element. You know, there’s department stores that will put the scent of apple pies into the stores because they know it increases the likelihood of you purchasing a luxury item. So consumerism is very much tapping into our emotions and in many very scientific ways.
And so it’s important for us to just train our children to recognize that there’s somebody that said, hey, if you want a hack, then have your kid every time they’re going to buy something, imagine, have them imagine that it’s full of spiders. I thought that was kind of, you know, silly but fun for young kids.
I mostly try to wait 24 hours. Just wait before you, you know, you may want it now, but just wait 24 hours. It’s really probably one of the better habits that you can adopt personally, but you can also instill in your kids, hey, just wait. And you find 24 hours later they don’t buy it. And in the midst of all of that, I think, you know, just helping them understand that emergencies happen and you know, how to handle how to weather these emergencies unemotional and just navigate through them financially.
Of course, it’s best if you’re prepared financially. But even in the midst of chaos, when things are tight, just taking a deep breath and trying to weather some of the the financial challenges, I think the most, most of the time, the way I’ve trained my kids is just sharing stories of how we’ve navigated financial challenges or financial setbacks over the years, and sharing those stories of how we made mistakes or, and being vulnerable.
And that may be something that some of you guys are listening to and saying, you’re not, you’re not comfortable sharing money about money because you’re not good. I think your default is simply stories. Stories about where you made mistakes and stories about what you did right. Those really are important, and even sharing them in real time. Like if the car breaks down or the AC breaks down, just kind of saying, man, we’re in a tight situation, guys.
We’re going to have to hunker down. And I just want you to know, we can’t eat out for 3 or 4 weeks. That may not be you, but that may be people that are around you that are dealing with this. Either way, I think it’s just important that we share these stories because what we and you know, this, but it’s not that money is the root of all evil, but it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil.
So attaching an emotion to money is where we often get tripped up. So as I landed this plane, I didn’t realize I was running a little long here. I don’t believe that the government can teach discipline. I don’t think it can teach generosity or work ethic. I don’t believe that the government can teach wisdom. It’s still the job of mom and dad.
It’s still the job of family, grandparents, and the community. But, but, but namely the family. And so the greatest financial gift that you can give to children isn’t money. It’s really it’s habit. And as I have said before, I repeat myself. An inheritance is what you leave to somebody. But a legacy is what you leave in someone.
Remember, you think differently when you think long term. Have a great
References:
Financial Literacy Education in the United States
Trump Accounts: What Are They and Should You Invest? | Financial Advisors | U.S. News
Teach Your Teenager About Money (or they will live w/ you forever)
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