Allowances: For Kids, Adults, and Beyond

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and ninety one, which is airing in late February of twenty twenty three. We're going to be talking all things allowances in this episode. Allowances in three parts, first adult allowances, then kit allowances, and then making allowances. That is various rules in our lives and where we make exceptions. So, Sarah, did you get an allowance growing up? I did. I don't have a firm memory of exactly how it worked, but I believe it was something between maybe five dollars and ten dollars, depending on my age, and it was a little bit inconsistent, not on purpose, but because I think my dad just forgot to give it out. Sometimes he was the one who would dole it out, and it was I think, and again memory a bit fuzzy, but I think it was inconsistently taken away for various things, like there wasn't a clear policy that if you didn't do X, Y and Z, you didn't get it. But I feel like if we really made our parents mad, they were like, well, we're not giving you your allowance this week. So if I remember that wrong, parents, and you're listening, feel free to, you know, pop in on the show notes and leave a corrective note. But that is how I remember things playing out. Yes, as we'll talk about later in this episode, you should always assume people are listening if you start talking about them. And do you think your allowance had any effect on your you know, because this is where this all goes with, like allowances, theoretically it's about is giving your kids spending money, and it's also teaching kids about money. Do you think it taught you anything about money or no? No? I mean I guess it was helpful because my parents, I would say, are probably what I would call under buyers and so would not necessarily dole out much of anything for like little fun purchases. So I guess it was nice to have like a defined amount that was mine. And because it wasn't very much money, I was pretty soon looking for other opportunities to earn, like babysitting and camp counselor jobs and things like that. So, I mean, I don't know. I will admit that I would get my allowance, then I would walk to the shopping center by some like terrible paperback book and a clearly Canadian and walk home with like twenty five cents left. All right, I never did that. That was not my experience of I sort of just squirreled mine away for the most part to putting it in stars or whatever. Although you know, I opened a savings account at some point, but I'm not sure that my allowance does necessarily wound up in there per se. I think I got three dollars for like forever, I don't know, it was mostly three dollars, And then when I was away at school for my junior and senior year of high school, I got ten dollars a week I think when I was there, which was a little harder to make stretch you know, for like buying various snacks or personal hygiene items and whatever. But yeah, I don't know that it really affected anything about my adult experience of money. I mean partly in that my experience of earning money has never been like an allowance, right, Like I have had only one job in my life where I got a regular paycheck, you know, post college, like I, you know, worked in fast food restaurants and drug stores and whatever where I got paychecks like during high school and college. But yeah, no it was so I haven't had that experience at all, And so it's a very very different sort of thing in any case, And who knows how many people will be more like me in the future. But I don't know how you work that as an allowance of the vagaries of self employment. The funny thing about that story is that, like, well, I guess both of us had similar we had similar allowance experiences, but both of us and our spending habits as children are kind of align with where they are as adults. So maybe it has less to do with what your parents do and more of those innate human qualities, like we often talk about how our kids can be very different even with the same environment. So I think that's kind of fascinating because even back then I was like happy to kind of like spend out on experiences my allowance. Today that will get to I tend to spend that too, So yeah, very yeah, it's funny. I mean, I tend to agree with you that people are who they are, and many of these things we do as parents are in order to teach our children certain things. And you may be teaching them on the margins within you know how they were going to react to certain things, But on the other hand, they're ten. These are innate to themselves. And yes, you know, whether you get an allowance or not, if you like to spend money, you're going to spend money. And whether you get an allowance or not, if you are not generally given to spending money you prefer to kind of squirrel it away, then you will do that. But speaking of adult allowances, we would have started with that because I think, well, there's some controversy one might say about kid allowances, and I think the research is all over the place in terms of what it does do with kids and money. When we were researching this, found a lot of very positive things about adult allowances because then it's not money coming from the outside that you had nothing to do toget or any you know, you earn this money. You and your spouse if you have one, you know, brought this money into the household and then it is being allocated out for doing fun things. So, Sarah, you guys get an allowance, why don't you talk about the adult allowances in the younger household? Sure? So, I mean, first, I have to say my husband and I I think both tend to or it's being fairly free with money, but we both have savings goals, and while we don't necessarily want to retire early, we want to be responsible and make sure we've saved enough for some kind of retirement and things we want to do for our kids. So for us, the allowance has two benefits. First of all, it's money that we feel like we can spend freely on frivolous things without asking, which is, in my opinion, just a really nice thing to have. And there's been many times when like I'll say I'm going to do something and it's like I'll be like and it's with my allowance, and it's like oh great, or same with him, Oh I'm going to buy this giant expensive beer brewing kit with my allowance. Okay, wonderful. Enjoy that right, So it definitely is fun to have that, but it also keeps us responsible because once your allowance is gone, you don't get to keep spending on frivolous fun stuff. And so you know, we have a lot of our money that automatically goes into various savings buckets and other money that goes into more short term savings buckets. But because you need a budget, we know that the money in our allowance has been already earmarked as such, and so it just works really really well for us. Recently, I invested in my running coach that's with my allowance. I will admit I have a couple of like female upkeep things I don't keep in this category, like specifically my hair streetening, because I do feel that society places different pressures on men and women, and I don't want my allowance to necessarily have to take the heat for that. I guess my rationale, as fair or unfair as it might be, is that we can both enjoy me feeling confident and not having to spend lots of time on my hair. You can certainly rationalize that any way you want, but it's true there. I mean, like, for instance, well, you do you include makeup in your allowance? I mean because I would presume Josh does not wear makeup expect him to, but I actually don't because I feel like can make up. Well, there's no real logic. I just probably because my makeup overall is cheaper by more than my hair, so it doesn't bother me. And I guess for me, there's such a range that I could spend on makeup where it does really feel self indulgent if I make certain choices versus like if I want straight low upkeep hair, it's going to cost a certain thing. And like I've kind of I've been doing it since two thousand and seven. It's just like a part of my life upkeep at this point. So yeah, this is not rational or logical, so you know, feel free to call me out on that. I understand, But makeup does go within our allowance, and hair and perhaps other appearance upkeeper purchases would go outside of my allowance. Yes, okay, And why did you guys start doing this though? I mean because I feel like I you started it in the time that I have known of the shoe box. I think, oh yeah, I think we started it when we started with wine app okay, because before we had wineap we weren't tracking, so it was very difficult. And you know what, it was fine, like we didn't tend to have fights about money, but I think we also we had certain like rules about certain amounts that you were supposed to talk to the other person about, and like sometimes that got humbersome because like what if I did want something frivolous but I felt like I had kind of saved up for it. I think there was like an argument about a hair straightener that I bought that was it's all about straight hair? Did I This was a long time ago, that was like very expensive. I believe I was pregnant and I couldn't get Japanese straining, so I like dumped a bunch of money into some expensive hair strainer, which I still own but never use because I get my hair strained. And my husband was like, why would you spend that on that? And it's like that's the kind of thing where yes, it was above our thing and I didn't have quote permission. And by the way this fight ended, like it wasn't like a fight fight like it was fine, but with an allowance, that kind of thing is a non issue. Or if I want to splurge on we include tech in our allowance, so if you want to like upgrade your phone, that's an allowance purchase as well. Although that brings me to a question like do you need to then save up your allowance month to month? Can you borrow against a future allowance? Like how does this work? Is there like a credit line with the allowance? We don't get that granular. I have definitely borrowed against my allowance in the past. I don't think he's needed too necessarily. And you know, if I do that, like let's say I'm using two months at once, I just make a note of it, and then the next month, I don't put anything in my bucket, or you could put like negative the way why not works, you could put negative in there. So yeah, you can borrow against the future allowance, or you can think about like, oh, I want to upgrade my phone this year, so I should probably you know, set aside a bit every month so that by December I can buy my new phone in full. That's okay, gotcha? And have either of you ever like violated the terms of the budget of the allowance, I don't think so. I mean I did ask for kind of like a little bonus when I turned forty. I don't know if you guys remember, but it was the pandemic and I wanted to upgrade my wardrobe. I kind of took funds that we were going to use to take a trip, but it was COVID, so we didn't. So that would be sort of like a way that I padded my allowance for that very particular thing. But it was like an agreement in a very specific circumstance. So no, I think we're both quite honest. And yeah, I would say the biggest wiggle room is with the stuff like my hair, but he knows about that. Yeah. No, It's interesting. When I was researching this topic, I came across a lot of very positive writings and various economics things about this concept because it's freedom within guardrails, and so it's certainly helpful if either party has a tendency to overspend. As you're not arguing about the particulars, there's the parameter of the allowance. But also if you struggle with spending, some people really like it because then you're not comparing this sweater against say, your retirement, which is something that people might do, It's like, no, no, this money is earmarked for things like sweaters because the retirement bucket has already done. And that's separate from this allowance, which is supposed to be sort of frivolous spending. It can keep couples from fighting over smaller purchases. The downsides the only ones we really sort of came up. There's the question of what falls into the allowance category. So what is discretionary, what is required? What is sort of feels required, as in like hair straightening, even if you know somebody looking at that may not all agree with that, for instance. Or also what is a hobby versus a personal expense? So if one party, say in your marriage, enjoys purchasing lots of plants, let's say, is that a hobby or is that for the house in the yard? I don't know. You'd have to agree on that kind of thing, and you also, I guess the other thing to be careful of is if one person is a spender and one is a saver, you have to make sure the allowance is high enough that the person who likes to spend doesn't feel like controlled or deprived, and that might not be something that the saver would naturally do, like they might not put it at an amount that they would, but you know, it can work for a lot of people. Have you changed the number over time? Does it get in fact? Is it tied to the CPI or anything like that. No, and we're probably due for another quote raise given inflation, although I feel like in order for that to happen, we also have to have an equivalent race, like getting the CPI inflation. You're getting that. So, yeah, we did increase it in twenty twenty two about fifteen percent, and that's the only increase we made in many many years. We may have done an increase several years probably actually don't remember, but we did do one in twenty twenty two. Sounds good. Yeah, we don't actually do this because both of us are fairly frugal people, and so there's just not a whole lot of stuff that gets bought along those lines. There are occasionally, but then it's kind of rare enough that you know, it doesn't doesn't wind up mattering that much. But yeah, something to keep in mind. We're going to take a quick ad break and we will be back talking about kid allowances. Well, we are back talking all things allowances. We opened with a discussion of adult allowances, the fun money. Some couples and families, you know, assign the adults there so that everyone can spend on what they wish without arguing about it or asking about it, or feeling like they're trading off their retirement to do so. Kid allowances kind of a different matter, Sarah, you guys are doing kid allowances right, So why you've gotten a very elaborate system which you do not manage. Yeah, I will say I don't feel particularly impassioned one way or the other, especially with the kids, the ages that my kids are about giving an allowance or not. But for whatever reason, we decided to do it, and Josh manages it pretty much entirely. Like I don't keep track of when they give the money out. He figures out how to account for their allowances and why not and all of that. There are some elaborate parts of it. So first of all, the formula is your age times fifty cents plus fifty cents. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, Sarah had sent me, you know, age times fifty cents and I was like, oh, yeah, that makes total sense. She's like, no, no, no, I was corrected. It's age times fifty plus fifty. Maybe the kids negotiated for that extra fifty cents. Good for them, I'm not sure. So that's weekly. Often it is not given out weekly, but he does keep track of when he gives it out, basically using yaps, so that you know every couple of months. I feel like they're getting a lump sum. However, there is an elaborate daddy bank system where like if you save money, it has some crazy high rate like fifty percent interests or something like which I told him. I was like, this could get out of him, like how many times can their money double before we're just out of money? I don't know. So there's this and then also we do encourage donation, and I do feel like the fact that we're giving out in the slump sum actually helps them want to donate, because I think if they were just getting like eight bucks or whatever, it might be hard. But if it's like, oh, we owe you for a month and here's fifty dollars, then they're more likely to say, oh, I want to give fifteen dollars to this cause I heard about So that's pretty cool. In fact, Annabel the last time she got allowance, she kept maybe a third of it invested in the Daddy bank a third of it, and then donated about a third of it. So and we didn't like tell her to do that, but I thought it was great. So they use their allowance for things like, oh, I want to go to Target and get something random. Oh, you know a gift shop somewhere. Usually it's that kind of a context. It's not like to buy things they need like, you know, ballet shoes or some soccer equipment, or even like their toiletries. Like Evandibal wants a certain type of leaving conditioner, I'm going to probably buy that for her. I think, you know, we could get to the point where it starts to feel like some of the things they ask for are more wants than needs. But right now, like practical items, we pretty much pay for. Yeah, that makes sense. We are also not doing kid allowances. This is I got an allowance growing up. My husband did not, and I think he feels that not getting one is a better idea. I don't know that it really matters one way or the other. As we discussed earlier. Kids are who they are, but he felt very strongly about it, so I didn't push. We got some We did our research for this episode. T ro Price does surveys on these various things. About seventy five percent of parents do get an allowance. The majority of parents, it turns out, tie this two chores, and the most common reason for this is that parents want children to learn the value of working for money. Right, So the idea of you do a job, you get paid. That's the idea. Now there are some obvious issues with this is I'm sure people are flagging, like if the payment is tied to the chores, a kid can decide they don't want to do the choor right, like I don't want the money. If you're the kind of kid who squirrels away as money, they may have enough in there that they're like, screw it, I'm not taking out the trash for the next month, which may not be an acceptable answer in your house, in which case, you know, what do you do? And so some families separate the two. They say you do specific chores because you are part of the family, you get an allowance as a way to learn to manage money. However, it turns out that there is some research saying that this is maybe loosely none of this is very strong, but like loosely correlated with less financial savvy in adulthood, because the idea is the money always just comes, as opposed to the reality where very few of us in life have the experience where the money just comes, I don't know, from your trust fund or your dividend fund, that whatever got set up for you, as it doesn't happen that way from most people. And so there's also a third category which is more like what we are in, which is that children don't get an allowance. They ask if they want money for something specific. And it turns out that that is good for negotiating skills that people learn. You know, what's a good argument, what is worth asking for and what is not. And so in life, you know, if you are going to be in a situation where you're going to wind up negotiating a lot, as it turned out I would as supposed to money coming in every week or whatever, that that can be helpful to figure out how to do that. But it's funny people have very strong feelings about this. That was the other thing I took away ours is not tied to chores either. We do require the kids to help out in various ways, but we've never linked the two systems. Yeah, well that is what it is. You know. The amount was also entirely like arbitrary, So a lot of people did have a rule of thumb, like x amount per year, but it was like a lot of it was just arbitrary too, like because if it's being tied to chores, like this is the amount I will pay you to take out the trash, or this is the amount I will pay you for x. The mean amount of the kid allowance was nineteen dollars and thirty cents per week, though I suspect this is probably affected by some outsider high amounts. I was telling Sarah about a family I had heard of that gave their children three hundred dollars a month clothing allowances, which you know, had to get in on that elvis. I wanted three hundred dollars a month clothing alone. So you know, yeah, similar to you we pay for clothes. So far, we've just said, you know, it's not been totally outside the realm of whatever. Although there was a pretty crazy Nordstrom shopping trip that my husband and Jasper took at one point that I just am not going to he wasn't looking at price tags and then they got to this anyway. But for the most part, it's like Target and Old Navy, so all good, and then we buy books since I say books is something I want you to be doing. I'm generally very favorable to non screen activities. Kid asks me for something non screen, I'm often inclined to get it, and activity stuff we pay for all that, So sports equipment or if you are traveling with your school team somewhere, we would cover that as well. Your clothes thing hasn't gotten your kids were uniforms right, So yes, although prior to Sleepwoy Camp last summer, there's a very popular chain of stores that caters to the Sleepway Camp crowd and they also label all your clothes and we had a shopping spree there that was like a little bit. I don't think Josh was thrilled that way. So yeah, the uniforms definitely help, and for the most part, I enjoy sometimes splurging on some clothes and then filling in the gaps with Target, so it kind of balances itself out. I will say I think this is like possibly an upcoming challenge because even though she's attending the same school, for the middle school, uniforms are not required. It's part of like an escalation of privilege. And so she's already like, oh, I want to do a shopping spree for middle school. But she mentioned going to that fancy store plus Gap and Target, and I'm like, okay, like we can get a couple nice things and then everything else at Target and it'll be great. Yeah. Yeah, And you've hired your kids for special things, right, you know, like outside of the nose chores that are required. Yes, actually I left one thing out of here. But one thing we've hired them to do is shred paper, which you get like a dollar per bag. The bags are not like huge, so you know that's a good job. And then I have quote hired Annabel for like four hours of keeping everybody quiet while I did talahealth during the pandemic. But that's not a typical occurrence I have had. Annabel in particular, I think she might be like, so far the most entrepreneurial will have all kinds of schemes and things. She wants to sell her services she's already talked about being a mother's helper. She wants to sell organizing services, which is if you saw her room, you might wonder that was a physician healed itself, right, exactly, No, but I think she would be great, and so she has all these ideas. So at least I can tell you that our allowance has not quashed her desire to earn additional money, even if I'm not sure she knows what she wants to spend it on. So that's awesome. I love it well as the kids are who they are, right, if she interested in money, then she's going to be interested in money allowance or not. Do you think you're gonna have them have real jobs when they're teenagers? Yes? I think so. I mean we were actually talking about it yesterday about like what teenagers do with their free time, and if they're like really deep into various passions and they're like learning and growing and that's great and enjoying it and that's what is preventing a job, then I think I'd be behind that. But if they're not, and instead it's like, oh, I have all this free time, I could play video games. I'm going to really encourage a job. And I had a lot of jobs, and I think many of them were really great learning experiences. Help me figure out what I enjoyed doing, what I didn't enjoy doing, and just have that little bit of sense of independence and sort of like self value in a way as a teen. So I am pro job as long as you know they understand their first job is to focus on schoolwork, and yeah, explore other passions as well. Yeah so, and Jasper's mentioned, you know, hope the work at Starbucks. He enjoy's Starbucks. At some point, the one issue is like needing a ride to get there, and so it becomes then more that the grown ups in your household are exercising the responsibility of getting you there, and so I'm kind of hoping like, well, let's just wait until you actually can drive yourself. I think that's a reasonable thing because then it's the kid getting the experience. Although I know many families who do make that commitment, and I admire that they are willing to do that. Yeah, we've hired the kids for things like, you know, babysitting. Obviously that's a need that we have. I normally do not ask the kids to babysit for Henry all that much, just because I mean, they have their things that they're doing. But if it's something that I for instance, I've had like an evening virtual talk and I didn't have anyone else, and so the kids took Henry, like my big kids took Henry, and I paid them for that because I felt that that was a reasonable thing to compensate for. We have paid Sam to build ikea furniture and he is quite good at it. It turned out that so when we ordered a bunch of stuff like Ikia links you up to task grabbit if you want to hire somebody from task grabbit to come assemble it, and looking at the prices they were charging, like Sam, could you cut us a deal like less than that? He would, so he assembled the various desks and chairs and things like that. And yeah, we've also paid for outside things, like when we had a big party in the fall, we had the older three kids direct parking and we paid each of them for that. That you know, was something that you would have had to kind of hire a parking attendant to do. I mean, you know, you would have had to hire an adult to do because you couldn't have them park on our road, and so they had to park certain places in our yard and that worked well. I thought that was a fair thing to pay for. I think that's awesome. They feel useful. You're getting actual help. They're kind of like learning what it feels like to work, like in a very tiny, measured out amount. I think that's that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, Well, part three of this Allowances episode is about making allowances, so exceptions to various things. And Sarah, you had a blog post recently about you could have a rule like about when you exercise. Oh yeah, that was kind of a I didn't mention that in the notes, but well, this is more just like the idea that sometimes you might have a rule that then you might need to reevaluate the role, like maybe the rule made sense at a given time in your life, but now your kids are older and you're in a different place, or your work is more flexible. And I used to feel like if I did not work out in the morning, then that's it. I could just like right off the day. It like wasn't going to happen. I was never going to do it. And recently sometimes I have just worked out later. In fact, I have not gone running yet today, and I've planned to go after we are finished, And yes it's going to be hot, but I live in Florida and that's just the reality. And you run a little slower, that's okay. So I've learned it break my own rule, because it turns out my rule was kind of taking away from my flexibility in a way that didn't totally make sense. So yeah, yeah, totally true. Yeah no, I mean, well, we all have certain rules and some make more sense. I mean, we were both listing out our house rules, Like we have one that at age eight you start making your own lunch. Up until age eight, you can have an adult make your lunch for you, but once you turn to eight you need to be responsible for that. You can buy lunch. Our kids can buy lunch at school, but so that they have a choice. Then at that point you can buy or you can make your own. So Alex recently turned eight and he is now making his own lunch, and I have to say it's been very responsible about it. I found a lunch in the fridge this morning. She must have made yesterday. I don't even know, So that's pretty exciting. If he was thinking a day ahead, like doing it the night before. I mean when I was making lunches, I wouldn't do it the night before. But if a child wants to have that concept, that's totally good. Shoes off in the house, you do something musical, something physical as an activity. No screens at the table if you're I mean like eating with multiple people. If it's just you having a bowl of cereal, you are allowed to look at a phone. You know, my bedtime is eleven PM. No food in the rooms. But then we wind up making some exceptions, like Alex isn't doing anything musical because I don't think he would sit still to do music lessons and practice, and I think it would just be a bad experience. So I'm kind of waiting until they introduce instruments in fourth grade in his school, and so he'll be able to choose an instrument, and then it'll be part of the school, and then I'll hire a private teacher so that he can actually really learn it. But I think it would behoove us to wait for that point. Of course, this has caused all sorts of unhappiness among other people who feel that they spent years before fourth grade learning how to play instruments and learning how to do things, and I are am I not making him and I'm the most unfair mommy ever. So anyway, that is a hilarious resentment, Like I never would have called that one, but interesting. We have a I will say, if you ever wanted to like loosen that rule. Our variation is something active and something artistic, so that if you don't feel inclined to play an instrument specifically, you could do drama or some kind of visual art or something like that. You know that makes sense. Yeah, well it does color with markers all the time, So there you go that. Sorry, how about you, Sarah? What exceptions are? What rules do you have that? Yeah, we have a lot of similar ones. We generally don't like screens. I would say even if any equals one, we don't really a low screens at the table. We pretty much limit eating to the kitchen and dining area unless we are watching a movie and then popcorn or whatever treat is being served, go for it. One rule we have is generally screen time starts after one pm on a week and my husband actually was lobbying yesterday to change it to two or three pm, just so that, like I don't know, to encourage more other stuff. Our kids do not really read much at all, So usually if we do something act they have often have sports, just sling active in the morning and we come home and we would love them to do a little bit of reading before they dive into their virtual reality helmet or whatever they're going to do. So we'll see, we'll see, and then that way we would feel better about just letting it continue until infinity the next day, really like, so we'll see what happens with that with the acception, and usually we say you have to clean up sort of basically pick not like deep cleaning, but just not have your toys and stuff everywhere prior. But then every once in a while we make an exception and we're just too tired and we say, go take your screen, do whatever you want, just leave us alone. And that happens, and that's when I'm like so happy that I like don't have a two year old because a two year old cannot follow those instructions and our kids actually can. And if we need that emergency nap, then it's there for us. An emergence snap is there. Yeah, my bedtime is eleven PM, but I will definitely stay up later if I have a good reason, or sometimes if I don't have a good reason, because honestly, I would naturally stay up later. And I think it's funny because we had a long weekend recently, right before we were recording this, and I generally do get up by seven thirty. I mean I would naturally, I think, wake up seven to seven thirty. But right now we need to be up at six thirty to get the kids to school. Curiously, we are now going to start different start times in the fall, but it doesn't help us that much because they just shifted around. So the idea is high school student. Currently high school student start at seven thirty, and they are shifting that to eight forty. But the middle school moves earlier, but not much well, from eight fifteen to eight and then elementary moves to nine twenty so they can run the buses. But because we're currently doing Sam has jazz band, which meets before school, I mean, we'll see if they just moved that earlier, like then we don't win at all with the middle school, but anyway, we'll see. So I will stay up late. No food in the room. I keep finding food in a certain child's room. And this is the only child who doesn't have a rug in the room, So on some level it is okay, but you kind of have to pick your battles and maybe there will be an insect experience at some point that will then teach a valuable lesson, but we shall see. And yeah, so that's what we've got going here. A natural consequence, Yes, natural consequences question. I want to hear your answer to this Eric question we got from a listener your husband's. Do they listen to the podcast? Do they ever have strong feelings about the topics? Do you bounce ideas or topics off of them? And in general how involved are they in your career decisions? And I guess in general, So, Sarah, what was your answer for this one? Yes, so Josh listens. I had to ask him. I knew he listened sometimes, I did not think he listened all the times. And I wanted a breakdown of which podcasts and he first said, like, oh, twenty five percent of both of them, and He's like, no, I think it's actually a little more than that now because I'm running more and I tend to listen to them while I'm running. And I'm very flattered by that because I mean, he knows what's going on in my life, so it's really really nice that he does listen to some of my podcasts. So he said about maybe thirty percent. And he does sometimes suggest topics or have a comment when we've had a episode where he feels like I would have added this angle or something like that. Sometimes I take it very well. Sometimes I'm like not as open to feedback. Probably depends on my mood and how I felt about the particular topic, but I do. I really love that he listens and that he actually has things to say, So it's great, So keep doing it. And then career decisions, I'd say I have made all of my own career decisions, from quitting my PhD to taking the program director job to going part you know, all those shifts have in me. None of them were suggested, although maybe there were various points when I was exhibiting such stress that the possibilities of changing direction were maybe like brought up to me gently, not pushed on me at all, but you know, like just a reminder that you can do what you want to do. And in general, I have just always felt like he has helped me think through pros and cons and provided support, but that I've never had pressure to go into any particular direction. Yeah, And I think it's also that both of us are making career decisions within somewhat of a narrow lane, and that like, I mean, if I was saying, oh, by the way, I'm thinking of taking a job in Sacramento, I think that would be more involved feedback and discussion than was like should I take on this different podcast versus this or you know whatever. That's not something that you would really do feedback on per se. Yeah, Michael listens. Sometimes I will think he isn't because he hasn't mentioned anything, wow, and then he'll pop out something like he was talking about the Nick soon and episode that you guys had done that's a recorded or there. He's also not into inbox zero and neither am I. So he's like, you know, I don't know that you guys you were advocating in boxero. I'm like, wasn't me, it was Sarah. That's okay. We are you know, neither of us into inbox sero. But we can all disagree, agree to disagree on that. Yes, But yeah, I would say in general, I think we both have learned that as a general podcasting note, you should assume that anyone you mentioned is possibly listening to the show. The thinly disguised person you are talking about is listening to it. They know what the thin diskies is that you know. It's just as you should assume that your children, your husband, your neighbors, your kid's teachers, you're, you know whatever else, everyone is listening. Even if they aren't. You should just assume that they are, because somebody might tell them, or they might listen to it like five years later. Yeah, that's what I mean too. This is this content is ever green. I mean, Genevieve could pull up her baby episodes someday and like, hey, mom, you study cryed a lot, Like thanks for sharing the detail of that horrible, horrible diaper change, right exactly, yes, exactly, No, It's very true. And that's that's also why I like the idea of like an anonymous blog. I've always felt like is very dangerous because like someone's gonna figure it out. It's better to just be completely like this is me and to remember you have an audience. Yeah, or sometimes other people just figure it out. I once figured out an anonymous blog like who a person was? I mean I'm not sure how deep cover they were, but you know, I figured out multiple anonymous. Yeah, it's not that hard. Most people are not that good at disguising themselves eventually, if you read like consistently because you pick up loop people there. I was like, yeah, yeah, and I know where you live now, I know. Oh that sounds forabilia. Yes. Anyway, all right, Sarah Love of the week. What do you have this week? Yeah, so video game Truck as a home birthday option. So if you don't want to go to a place that you want people to come to your house, but you don't want to have to like have any pressure of entertaining anyone, video game Truck is the way to go because everyone will go on that truck, play their games, be happy, adults and kids alike sometimes. And it's actually a very low maintenance, low work birthday party as a host. And we did it two years in a row and I will probably do it again next year. Cameron wants it again. Yeah, well we have done it two years in a row as well. We did it for Sam, you know, in twenty twenty one, and we did it in twenty twenty two. It's yeah, very easy, just book. It's a semi competitive industry too, if you live in a reasonably large city, because it's not that hard to start a business doing this, Like you just need a truck and a couple game consoles and then the people to staff it. But we, uh yeah, park it in your driveway. It's good. I'm a big fan. My love of the week. We have a portrait of Henry up in the hall now. So a couple of years ago, four years ago, we got portraits taken of the four kids we had at the time in fall. So there's nice colorful leaves in the background, and in our old house. We hung these in a wall perfectly spaced with like four you know. And then we had another kid, and eventually he noticed that he was not part of the portrait series, you know, we had them up here. He's like, well, I'm not here, you know, where's Henry? And the we took some pictures this fall, he you know, so they would match it, like the bright fall colors. And now that has hung up on the wall as well, So we have a complete set of all five children, even if they are separated by about three four years. In terms of creating a so Alex and Henry look pretty similar at age in terms of even though they are obviously quite different. But people get to look at it, they can ask about it, you know, and we'll mention that that they weren't all taken at the same time. I love it. Complete set, complete set, Yes, anyway, this has been best of both worlds. We have been talking all things allowances, both adult allowances, kid allowances, making allowances in our lives. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.