What Rich People Teach Their Kids About Money with Daymond John

Daymond John:

This is going to be my legacy. I've done a couple things in life. I've created a brand called FUBU. I've been on a show called Shark Tank.

But when I die and go to the grave, I want my little girls to say, this is more than a book. I want my little girls to say, my daddy started a conversation that made it popular for everybody to come up with financial, or educational tools, for kids 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 

Marie Forleo:

Hey, it's Marie Forleo, and welcome to another episode of the Marie Forleo Podcast and MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. I get a text from my friend Daymond John, a few months ago, telling me about this amazing project that he was working on all about financial literacy. You guys know how much I love money, this got me really excited. Then he told me it was all about a new children's book designed to help kids and their parents talk about money, get better with money, and have a healthier relationship with money, and I was like, "You've got to come on the show."

Daymond John is the CEO and founder of FUBU. He's also a star on ABC's Emmy award-winning TV show, Shark Tank. Daymond served under President Barack Obama as a presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurship and works with My Brother's Keeper, Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship, and the NAACP to advocate and empower future generations. Daymond is a New York Times bestselling author and his first children's book, Little Daymond Learns to Earn, is available wherever books are sold.

Oh my goodness, Daymond, look, look, look, look, look, look, look. Little Daymond Learns to Earn, I had so much fun reading this.

Daymond John:

You read the book-

Marie Forleo:

Are you kidding me?

Daymond John:

I know you did because you, oh my God...

Marie Forleo:

That's what I do.

Daymond John:

Thank you.

Marie Forleo:

It's amazing. I am so thrilled to have you back on the show. And in the intro I was saying when I got the text from you and Ted and I was like, "Wait, what is this project?" I'm like, "We have to talk about this." This is why I wanted to have you on. First of all, money is one of my favorite topics ever. Money influences every single part of our lives, which is so important that we talk about it not only as adults, but with our kids. And I found this when I was doing research to prep for this. So did you know this, a study commission by Chase found that 59% of adults are uncomfortable talking to their kids about money?

Daymond John:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And 82% are looking for more resources to help teach their kids about good financial habits, so obviously this is right on time. And then we actually, I got so freaking excited about it. We bought a couple hundred books to donate.

Daymond John:

You did.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Daymond John:

And I am so just in awe of that, because your platform and you, yourself and your honey, you're so just amazing. And to just even be able to highlight something like that is a gift and an honor. But then you go and buy to donate these books is just amazing. Thank you.

Marie Forleo:

Well, you're welcome. But books have changed my life and books were the thing that helped me turn around my own financial life. And the thought, I remember thinking to myself when I had so many screwed up ideas about money in my own head as a young adult, like 17, 18, 19, 20. And I was like, "Why did no one teach this stuff when we're kids?" So what inspired this for you? And for anyone that's watching, they're like, "Oh my gosh," what are the kids' ages that this book is ideal for?

Daymond John:

Well, I just don't know why you didn't ask me about my hat.

Marie Forleo:

What?

Daymond John:

Because I'm uncomfortable, you're uncomfortable, nobody's talking about my hat.

Marie Forleo:

Hold on a second, speak for yourself. I am not uncomfortable, because you look dope AF in your hat. Tell me about your hat first, Daymond.

Daymond John:

I used the wrong hat, hold on? Sorry.

Marie Forleo:

Okay, hold for Daymond. Hold for Daymond everyone. Oh, okay.

Daymond John:

Here's the hat.

Marie Forleo:

Okay, so, oh, Daymond, hold on one second.

Daymond John:

I saw this amazing movie that I believe it should have won the Academy Award this year, one year. And it was these two guys, they went on an interview in a hat, I think the movie's called Stepbrothers. And I realized that this is my alter ego. You see, Chef wonderful, Mr. Wonderful has a chef hat. But when I go and I talk to little children, they don't care about my Tom Ford, Brioni suit. They don't care about that. So if you don't meet, as we always talk about meeting the customer where they're at, and the people of interest, when they see me, they go, "Oh my God, are you a magician?" "Yes, I'm going to show you how to disappear at your parents' house by the age of 20." I'm going to show you how to turn $1 into $3.

I'm going to show you how to not have to hang around certain people, because you can do what you want, because money's a freedom. So I'm a magician. And you know what, when I talked to my little baby girl and her friends, they love the hat. So the problem is with the hat is, a couple of adults have said, "Well, the hat's a little stupid." I said, "No, you know what? You got caught in that trap growing up, because if I would've left this hat around you when you were a kid, you loved Cat and the Hat. You loved Frosty the Snowman, you loved Willy Wonka, you loved everybody." So I wear the hat, I'm a ringmaster now. I'm turning into a ringmaster and I got three rings. One ring is going to be time for the children, time worth money. Time and money, the value. You see they taught our children about the train leaving the station, but why the hell did the train leave the station?

What if the train left the station a little bit later so you could play it a little bit longer, or you worked harder so it left a little bit earlier and you can do more of the things that you wanted to do when you got there. That's how we teach kids these type of things. So I'm putting on the hat for my children and your children, because I'll wear anything for them. But I have a three ring circus. Time, money, and then I'm going to show later on, nutrition. This is going to be my legacy. I've done a couple things in life. I've created a brand called FUBU. I've been on a show called Shark Tank.

But when I die and go to the grave, I want my little girls to say, this is more than a book. I want my little girls to say, my daddy started a conversation that made it popular for everybody to come up with financial, or educational tools, for kids 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 that wasn't being taught in school. So when they're 17, 18 years old, they don't acquire 6, 7, $800,000 worth of student debt for a career they're not sure they want to have, so that they have to pay that off by 50 and 60 years old and they can't afford the American dream. And this is going to be my legacy, and I want anybody and everybody to jump in. I'm going to highlight you, whoever it is, please jump in. But this is why I'm wearing the hat.

Marie Forleo:

Yes. This mission is incredible, by the way. I would like to be your partner on this mission to keep doing it and to keep sharing it.

Daymond John:

Well, I'm going to need to co, because this is my alter ego. See, the best thing is I can get on somebody with a really sophisticated, trying to be really cool and all that stuff and wear this hat my alter ego. I can tell them they smell like hotdog water. And I'm in my skin and when I jump out, you jump in. But then when they question me about anything, I'll say, "Well, the GDP of India...." and then I put the hat back on.

Marie Forleo:

And you're the magician again.

Daymond John:

That's right.

Marie Forleo:

I love it. When did you start to learn about money as a kid? How old were you and what was your first money memory?

Daymond John:

Well, my first money memory was that at six years old, I used to sell pencils in class. And so my understanding of it was that money or the process of a business is solving a problem for somebody else. And hopefully you bring them joy, but if you solve their problem, you bring them joy. But actually earning money, meaning a regular job, not a regular job. My father left when I was 10, I didn't have any siblings and my mother had stopped working and I'll never see her speak to my father again. My mother had to start working three jobs and I wanted to contribute. So it was about that. But I was always good in regards to processing and understanding money. I live in New York, and so when it snowed, I lived in Queens. So it's called a two fare zone. You have to take one bus to a train and then you get to the city.

But I knew that when it snowed the snow days, all the kids would go out and play snow. Not I. I went out and I shoveled snow, but I realized one thing, if it's a two fare zone and people have to leave in the morning when they come home, the snow is icy. So I used to say to everybody, "Listen, no matter what I promise you for $5 I will shovel your snow. And you don't even have to wonder about it." And then so when they would all go, because they'd come home, I said, "Just leave the money in the mailbox." So what happens is I would get all the kids to shovel the snow for 2.50 and I would get about 30, 40 houses. I knew they couldn't poach my customers, and then I would stay home and just watch TV and drink cocoa and get paid.

So I realized about money in that sense. But I got to tell you, and I'm a normal and everyday American and growing up and thinking, the more money you make that you are going to be rich one day. And it wasn't that, because if you now look it's 65%, of lotto winners and athletes are bankrupt. Three years after winning the league, or excuse me, leaving the league or winning the lotto, well then they didn't know how money worked. Or if you look at the trust fund kids, well, where are the Fords and the Carnegies and the Mellons? What happens is the first generation makes it, the second enjoys it, and the third destroys it. If they're not taught how to earn it and how it operates, well then why aren't the Fords and Carnegies and all those owning the Twitters and the Instagrams and the Facebooks and the Amazons of the world?

And that's the beautiful thing about this country, because if you don't know whether you are poor and you can't make it, but if you are wealthy and you don't understand, well, then it leaves room for our everyday people to climb and become who they want to be. So I went bankrupt almost twice, when I was broke. And almost once when I had $10 million in the bank. So I was still learning about money in my early 30s, and I decided one day that I'm going to stop going, "Yeah, accountants, you do this, you do this, you do this," because I didn't want to seem stupid. And a lot of us do that. We go to our accountant people and we don't go, "Well, tell me why this is happening." And they don't tell us, because they think we know already. I was already worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So the guy said, "You don't know all this." No, I didn't know all this. So it's a process.

So that's what happened with me with money even trying to teach my oldest girls, I have three girls, about money. I realized that I didn't teach them the right... I taught them some lessons. You want a car, go work, I will match that. I was teaching her work ethic, which is great. There's nobody, I don't believe, I'm an optimistic person. I don't believe anybody ever wants to just be lazy. Most people want to work and maybe they don't have focus. But I realize now going into the schools and teaching my little girl right now, I only found princess and pony books and how many times and should I tell my little beautiful girl at six, seven years old, should I keep telling her that one day her glass slipper's going to fall off and a prince is going to rescue her, or a prince is going to slay a dragon and rescue her, or she got to throw down her hair, or somebody's going to rescue her, or she definitely shouldn't live with seven men, seven dwarfs. She definitely don't do that. That's not going to be a good look.

But I want to teach her how to sell glass slippers, or make them for her friends, or own the slipper factory. And I want the prince to go, "Damn. Who owns this factory?" "Miss John over there owns this factory." My godson, am I going to keep telling him that webs are going to come out his wrist, or he's going to fly? Well, if he loves the Avengers, I have something else here. I have, you know what? Instead of this Thanos that's coming in, and I want you to believe, and I want you to dream, but you know who your friends are, your friends are the super friends. The same way that your godfather had three super friends and we created a company called FUBU, or four other super friends on this Shark Tank panel, or you and your community, and you know how to sing, you know how to dance, and you gather together in anything that you buy, you can sell. Anything you do for free, you can get paid for.

And if I can start teaching them that at 6, 7, 8 years old, their minds are open to the world. They're not us adults. "Oh, I never heard about that." "Are you kidding me?" "That never hap..." "That's not that easy." When they're like that, all they start to do, when you read this book to them and you read it to them, my kids love books to be read every week, every month. I read Catcher in the Rye once, I still don't know why I read it. But when your parents read this book to you and then next week and next month, you go, "I want to get that. What did Little Daymond do? I could do that." And if your parent is reading it with you, your parent's not going to go, "No, you can't."

A lot of our parents did that out of love. They said, "That's never been done before. Don't do it. You're going to embarrass yourself. You're going to embarrass us," because we grew up at a time where our education system is the same education system. It taught you a very special skill, because we were in the industrial era. You needed to get up and have a skill because we were building war machines to go to war and or this country was being built. Or they wanted you to learn how to be a great employee. We are in the information age. I want to get back to that information age, because I think women are going to dominate this entire planet. This is the century where women are going to take over and we are in trouble as men. If you don't respect them, value that. That's a whole nother story.

Marie Forleo:

In partnership, in partnership, yes.

Daymond John:

But we are at a different time and age right now where the data shows that 50% of kids today graduating college, will retire with a job title that doesn't exist today. So that means that 20 years ago if I said you were going to be a podcast, social media expert, AI, whatever, drone operator, little you were like, "What the hell is that?" So now of a sudden no financial intelligence, you get to 17, 18 years old, you acquire $700,000 worth of debt for a career you don't even know you want. That is what's killing us. And as you just said in, I think in the opening, you said it creates other bigger issues. You know what it creates?

Well, domestic violence, lack of money is the number one reason for it. Divorce, gang violence and things of that nature, because they have no hopes. When everything happened in these streets, people were burning businesses instead of building businesses, because they had no hope, no dream. The lack of poor nutrition, because the cheapest things to sell in this country are sugar, salt, and butter. It's expensive to eat properly. And all of these come from money. So whether you are an entrepreneur like us, whether you are working at a company, or whether you're home, the one thing we all have in common is we have to operate and work off of this system of credit, interest, money, good debt, bad debt, and they don't know what it is.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah, yeah. No, it's so big. And I love that you mentioned Minka, and Destiny, and Yasmeen, and now this incredible tool. So has Minka read the book and is she-

Daymond John:

Well, Minka doesn't like to read the book because she's shy because Little Daymond Learns to Earn, Little Daymond wants to go get his poster of his famous pop star Minka J. And so every time I read that she hides underneath the cover and goes, "Daddy, that's not me," and I got to kiss her after that. But she does love it. But we'll get into it. I want to give people, we always have to be of value and of service, and whether it's in this book or something else, I want to give parents easy takeaways to do today. Today.

Marie Forleo:

Hey, real quick. And then we're going to get back to this amazing conversation with Daymond John. So if you are excited about starting your own business, but you have no idea where to start, or maybe you got a million ideas and you don't know which one is going to work, I have a free tool for you. You need to go to marielovesyou.com/bizidea. That's marielovesyou.com/bizidea to get this free tool, figure out which idea is going to work and get your business started.

Well, getting this book, first of all, it's an amazing book. It's so beautifully illustrated and it's fun to read. But let's just jump here. And then I want to go back to your money story too, because again, I think that for our audience, we have so many parents in our audience, and I believe one of those reasons that most parents are uncomfortable talking to their kids about money is because they're uncomfortable about money themselves. And they could see someone like you who's a shark, who's so incredibly successful, and I want to talk about this. I've made money mistakes in my life, I'm sure... 

Daymond John:

Of course.

Marie Forleo:

The more we can just have these conversations, then all of a sudden the parents feel comfortable like, "Oh, I'm not stupid for not knowing. We just never got education on this," and then you feel more comfortable with your kids. So let's go to the takeaway, so we get that in. One of the things I love about this book is it outlines very clearly the five core steps of entrepreneurship. So you want to go through them together?

Daymond John:

Yeah.

Marie Forleo:

Step one.

Daymond John:

You read them all to me, and I'll elaborate on them, because if I can keep speaking and then all of a sudden it's-

Marie Forleo:

A Daymond John show, which we love, and we love watching you on Shark Tank, and we love anytime we get to see Daymond. But step one, think about what you like and what you're good at. This is your special skill.

Daymond John:

It is. It's your special power. So Siskel and Ebert, if you're old enough like us, they never directed a movie. But don't you have a movie that comes out without them being critics. So it's your special skill. There's a lot of amazing players, Michael Jordan or athletes, Muhammad Ali, if you ever look at their coaches, their coaches generally weren't the most successful people in that sport themselves, but they analyzed it to such a point where they can break it down. So I want kids to know that for every Michael Jordan, there's 15 other professions around it, and you get to do what you love. The only reason that FUBU really worked is that I couldn't rap, sing, and I definitely couldn't dance like Marie Forleo. Well, so what did I do? I want to get on their rap sets. Well, the rap video says, "Well, they were kicking everybody off."

Well, I just had that dirty ass shirt like this, "I'm here to dress the artist." And I got to sit on the video sets and watch the most amazing music artists of my time Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Salt-N-Pepa perform, and I would've paid to be there. 

By the way, I was eating all the free foods at the craft table and I was talking to all the video girls. So I wanted to be there. So it was something I loved. And anything somebody loves, like being a blogger, you may not have ever traveled, but if you can analyze and break it down why that's part of your dream, guess what? 99% of the world probably haven't been to that place either. And that's their dream too. And you're connecting with people. So it's about that's your superpower, what you love.

Marie Forleo:

Step number two, look for a problem that needs to be solved, and now it's time to take action.

Daymond John:

There's always a problem that needs to be solved. Every single entrepreneur that I have met that have been successful has said, "There's a problem out there in the world, and I thought somebody was going to solve it. Nobody's going to solve it. I'm going to solve it." And by the way, these problems don't have to be another valve in a heart. The largest company in the world, one makes a sugary brown drink with bubbles.

Marie Forleo:

Coke.

Daymond John:

What are the top products in Shark Tank's history? Number one, my company. So just so you know, when all those other underachievers come on here, you just make sure they know it's socks. It's called Bombas socks. There's nothing new about it. They make a great sock. But you know what they realized? They sell direct to the consumer, and every time they sell a pair of socks, they give away a pair to the homeless community. And they realize that America and the country has voted that, you know what, we can buy from anyone, but we want to buy from you, because every time we do something, we do something for somebody else. So now I'm buying something and buying 10 for you, because I want you to know that you gave the 10 other people. Its socks. What's the second-best product on Shark Tank history, which I lost out on?

Marie Forleo:

Which one?

Daymond John:

Damn Scrub Daddy.

Marie Forleo:

Oh – Scrub Daddy.

Daymond John:

Laurie, Scrub Daddy. And every time I walk into the grocery store that Scrub Daddy. You know what, I'm going to make them do a little Scrub Daddy of Little Daymond, you know what I mean? So again, you don't have to create anything new. There's nothing new in this world. The Voice is just American Idol, they just turn the chairs. American Idols really showtime at the Apollo. Showtime at the Apollo is just the Gong Show. Facebook's a nasty chain letter, there's nothing new. It's a new form of delivery and a new customer. And you may make it lighter, faster, stronger, but it's nothing new. And you can solve that problem yourself.

Marie Forleo:

That's right. That's right. So step number three is what can you do to solve the problem, this is your business. So really taking that idea of looking for the problem, identifying it, and then making it your business. And then step number four, ask your friends for help. Working together is always better. I thought this was so sweet.

Daymond John:

But by the way, you know this better than I do. Being an entrepreneur, you need to be vulnerable. Everybody thinks you got to be this tough person. No, you should be very confident about what you deliver, but if you're in a room, you need to say, "Hey, I know this, but I don't know this. You know that because if you do, well, I can help you with yours you can help me with mine," and be vulnerable. And people love to hear vulnerability. If you walk into a room, listen, when I first made some money, I got invited into, I think it was like in Nebraska, Colorado. I went out there, I had my $300,000 crusted FUBU chain with the cheapest diamonds you'll ever see. I had my big old beefy bodyguard looking all ugly in the corner.

I was in this room and I saw it was, I think some guy named Buffet, some guy named Gates, some all these people roaming around. None of them had on any Louis Vuitton belts and they didn't have any Alizé at the bar. This place was obviously trash. And I was in there with my big beefy bodyguard, and none of those people talked to me. I had no idea why they didn't talk to me. But I was in there, because I used to go to hiphop clubs where I needed that. You know how much knowledge I missed, because I was unapproachable, because I thought I was cool being around Buffet and Gates and some of the people who have changed this planet. So again, being an entrepreneur is about being vulnerable and people love to fight for you.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah, being humble. And it's probably the thing that I say the most to my team, and I just said it today, and we're setting up this new space. I'm like, "Guys, I have no idea how to do X, Y, or Z. I know, that's figure-out-able, but B, I need your help. You guys have eyes, and ears, and skills, and strengths, and talents that I don't." So step number five, I love this. Make sales and decide what to do with the money you make.

Daymond John:

That's right. So once you make sales, you have to decide what to do. So here is a takeaway that everybody can get to understand, and I'll give you two or three. This is the way that money works. And this is very, very simple, and I had to learn this probably 30 years into my career. Whenever money comes in, there is, what you do with $3, $30, $3 million, the first dollar goes to what you have to pay for to live, whatever it is. Medicine, mortgage, whatever the case is. The second dollar goes to an investment. Now, an investment can be a new business, it can be Amazon, it can be real estate, it can be your education, but this second one eventually flows into the other two. And then the third dollar goes for what you would like to have but do not have to have.

And if you don't spend all that, you go back to number two. But it's human nature, if you are looking at money when it comes in, as we've been adults, we weren't taught this as kids. You go to number three first because you work so hard, you want to treat yourself, or you want to treat your family. And then what happens? Well, you never get to number two. And then number one, you spend so much on number three. Well then number one, the only way to pay that is loans. 18% credit cards and various other things. This corrodes everything else. But if you start to understand as a child, wait a minute, mommy and daddy told me that, "Oh look, three, it has to come in this way," you start to understand that at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, it just becomes your way of life. And that's what you have to do with money.

Marie Forleo:

I remember when my stepson was nine years old and he had just come into my life and I was trying to think about how to talk with him about money because it was such a huge pain point in my life, and I wanted to see if I could do better. And I remember, so Zane's an actor. He's 29 now, so he's an adult, and it was like his first gig, and he had got this indie movie and he was playing opposite of Nicole Kidman.

Daymond John:

He's 29?

Marie Forleo:

He's 29 now.

Daymond John:

You never age.

Marie Forleo:

From your lips to God's ears. So anywho, I remember when Zaney came home and I had asked his dad, Josh, my partner, I was like, "Hey, Zane's got money now. He's like 12." And I remember pulling out a book actually from, I think he's a mutual friend of ours, David Bach, and it was a whole financial table about the power of compound interest. And I remember showing him like, "Hey, if you put this money into that number two zone," where it has the potential to grow, I was like, "Zaney, by the time you're 30," which I know sounds like eons and lifetimes away, but it was such a great conversation just to back up that notion of deciding what to do with your money when you get it and opening up these conversations about, I love the 1, 2, 3 framework. I love that.

Daymond John:

Yeah. It is just very simple. You see, you'll go out and you'll say, "Well, let me put my money into the bank," because by habit, "Let me put it in the bank," that's 3%, but yet you still have 18% interest on your credit cards. If you just paid off your credit cards, you'd make 18% back on your money. Or you put it in an investment and you be like, "Oh, well let me put it in Apple," and you're happy about it. And I made the mistakes. Oh, you made a couple of dollars. You're like, "Let me pull it out."

Well, if you pull it out before a year, well, then you pay 50% on that instead of capital gains, you pay 20%. Most of the billionaires I know, you know what they do? They walk around with pads and I say, "Well, what are you writing down?" Well, they're looking at tax codes and various other things. And I say, "Well, why?" I used to say why. They go, "Well, Daymond, I can start a new business and maybe make 50 million or a 100 million, or I can find out how to save 200 million off the taxes I already have to pay legally. Why spend more if I can retain more?"

Marie Forleo:

And it's also about life energy too. If I can break down what I just heard you say, it was looking at the potential of, well, how am I going to create more in this bucket? Or where am I going to get the best return? From my life energy. And life energy is what we're all trading for. This thing called money and our time and our life.

Daymond John:

Listen, end of the day, finance is not sexy. End of the day-

Marie Forleo:

But money and freedom is sexy.

Daymond John:

It is. And I can get that. Dave Ramsey basically says, if you have an automatic $100 deduction on your paycheck around 18 or 20 years old, just a hundred dollars a month by 60 years old, that's worth 1.5 million. That's it. You don't have to look at that. That's not sexy. We know all the guys who sort of Shopify, but I had Shopify, I got it at $28. Well, let's say $30 six years ago, the thing went to $1,900. If you look at the market now, you don't want to be an entrepreneur. Well, Amazon is 30% down. Well, if Amazon, they're not opening more malls. So Amazon owns all the boxes coming to your house, all the food you eat, and then they got Ring camera, the security, and they're showing you content. If it just goes back to where it was, you made 30% off your money.

So again, this is how money works. Now, I want to give you another tip you can give kids, what I do. My godson, he loves trucks, one of my godsons. So what I do is I used to buy them like a caterpillar truck, a little truck, but I also bought him one stock in Caterpillar at the same time. And I used to take a picture with him, me, the truck, and the stock.

And then I did that during Christmas and I did whatever his birthday, Disney stock, bum, boom, boom. 10 years later we looked and I said, "How much are all those toys worth?" "I don't know, we got to throw those away." "How much is stock worth?" "$6,000?" And it was just his understanding of the comprehension. Now you give a kid a stock at seven years old, they're like, "What is this crap?" But you give it to him with the toy. Well, now you have the interest level of it. These are simple things we can teach our children, and it's a beautiful portfolio. It's a beautiful book that you can look through history and you have a fun time with it.

Marie Forleo:

Daymond, this is so good. I'm going to ask you another question. This is actually, so we got a kiddo here on Team Forleo who read the book, loves it, actually made you a video. I'm going to show you after we cut. And his question for you is this, how much of what I earn should I try to save? Now I know about this particular little boy, and he does not have debt at this point. What would you say to our friend?

Daymond John:

You should always try to save 30%. In worse scenario, is 20 and even 15, but try for 30. Now that becomes discipline of course, how much you are going to spend in life. But at a early age like that, it's critical to try to save as much. And if you are at the age where hopefully a lot of people are gifting you and rewarding you for a lot of things you do, try to save as much as you can. So yes, 30%, one third of it should go to that. Everything works in thirds. Your credit score should be 30% of your overall, I mean your credit usage overall. And all these things in thirds. So 30% is perfect.

Marie Forleo:

So I'm curious, I have two questions for you. I'm keeping an eye on the time. I'm always learning more and discovering more about my own relationship with money every year, that goes by. So I'm curious if there's any change mindset-wise or behavior-wise for you as it relates to your money, or a big or recent aha for yourself.

Daymond John:

I think the big or recent aha was really about the children, because I'll tell you, they're our biggest investment. And there's also another aha moment I had. There's this thing that even if you save money, you make a lot of money. Let's say you work really hard and all your money grew to $2 million, $3 million over the period of time. Well, at 40 or 50 years old, what you can do is you can get an insurance policy where it's more like an annuity, but it is for like senior living and those type of things for you and your parents. And what happens is today, sometimes you have to protect yourself, because if your parents get sick, or you get sick, right now, that insurance probably would cost you a thousand dollars a year let's say. But at 60, 65, God forbid, you need to go into someplace for senior living and stuff like that. That right now is averaging out $20,000 a month.

So what if you buy that insurance for you, your parents and various other things at a younger age, and maybe even if they're 50, if they're healthy, they can get it, or 60, they can get it at a decent rate and it's an annuity. Well, you can have 2, $3 million, but if you have two parents that need to go and get additional care and live in an area like that, well, you're going to be out of $200,000 a year because the government's only going to pay $5,000 of it a month. So it's also about protecting yourself against these type of things and understanding what kind of insurance is out there.

But again, it also goes to the children because how many parents, kids are now staying home up to 35 years old. The average rate of a child staying home is up to 35 years old. And if you want to be selfish about it, the facts are that many for the hardworking Americans here, many of the times our children are going to take care of us two times longer than we took care of them. So they don't have financial intelligence. And then you find yourself sitting outside in public with a dirty diaper on somewhere. Oh, then you need to be selfish about these things.

Marie Forleo:

No, wisdom all the way around. I love chatting with you. I feel like it's been way too long since we've gotten together. Before we wrap up, is there anything else? Anything else that you want to make sure either people take away or something that you're excited about?

Daymond John:

I'm excited about the book, but let me give you just a quick little story. Here's something you could all do with your children. I opened up Minka's little piggy bank at the end of the year, and she had $300. Now I understand that's a lot of money, inflation. Tooth fairy is giving $20 a tooth these days. I got $2.25 cents for all my teeth and my tonsils. Now, I told her what to do with the money. Three steps. Now remember, when we tell our children, "Don't you know how hard I work for this money?" You know what they really want to say? "No, I don't, because you brought me in this world and I have no idea. Why is it my problem?" I said, "You're just saying anything." I gave her the rule of three. I said, "Baby, the first hundred, goes for mommy and daddy to help pay the mortgage or whatever."

And she's basically looked at me like, "Who cares? Okay." The second though, "Let's open a business. Let's solve a problem. What do you want to do?" "We live by the beach. I want to put seashells in something because I want to give to all my friends and pick these special seashells, or maybe I'll sell them." No problem. And number three is what you would like to have. What you don't have to have. "What do you want?" "I want a pet." "All right? What type of pet you want?" "A giraffe." Can't bring the giraffe in the house. I got her all the way down to a betta fish. We go to the store, we get the betta fish, bring home. She puts the betta fish there. And I said, "Baby, do you realize the money just bought you freedom?" She said, "What do you mean, daddy?"

I said, "You didn't have to wait for Christmas, your birthday. You didn't have to tell me. And I go and get you any kind of fish you want. This is freedom right now, sweetie. And freedom could be giving to a charitable organization, traveling with your friends, staying home. This is freedom. Let's go back over to your business now."

We bought 30 bottles, little bottles at Michaels for her to fill. She had 20 to give away. And I had to explain, "Baby, you, when you give these away, you're going to be bankrupt. You can give away five, and you have to sell 25, and then you can get 60 and you can give away 10." She started to understand, really, it was simple as that. Not that she's the most educated at this point, but she's six, seven years old. What do you think we're going to do next year, and next year. And she starts to understand freedom. Buying, and by the way, that small percent. You know what that is? That's either tithes or charity, right? And she starts to... It's simple. She understands it's over something that she loves. Every parent can do that right now. It's as simple as that.

Marie Forleo:

Daymond, thank you so much for being you. Thank you so much for being such, like I said, I've said this to you before. I say so when you talk, but every time I watch you on Shark Tank, I'm like, "Daymond's heart is so big. That energy just leads in front." You're brilliant in every way, but your heart and your love is, it's just tremendously, it's a beautiful thing–and I adore you. 

Daymond John:

It is an honor, and I'm such a big fan of all you do, and thank you so much for letting me and Little Daymond, his Little Daymond, he's hanging out.

Marie Forleo:

Little Daymond can hang out with us anytime. Let him stay on the show because he's going to keep learning. We're going to keep learning with him. And yeah, keep me posted. Like I said, I'm your partner in crime on this one, or your partner in goodness.

Daymond John:

And any way that I can always help you, please spread the message and let's find some things that you can do that we could just put it in a soluble way for children, because everything you do is so actionable that-

Marie Forleo:

You know what, maybe we can do something around money or just entrepreneurship, and the figure-out-able.

Daymond John:

I like that. It's figure-out-able. That's it.

Marie Forleo:

Love you.

Daymond John:

I love it.

Marie Forleo:

Wasn't that amazing? And now, Daymond, and I would love to hear from you. So I'm super curious. We talked about a lot of things. What is the single biggest insight that you're taking away from this conversation? And most importantly, how can you put that insight into action starting right now? Leave a comment below and let me know. As always, the best conversations really do happen over at the magical land of marieforleo.com. So head on over there and leave a comment now. Until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams, because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll catch you next time on the Marie Forleo Podcast and MarieTV.

Now, before you go, if you loved this money conversation with Daymond John, then you have to watch this one next. It's with my friend David Bach, and it will teach you how to live rich in every sense of that word. So click here, watch it now.

David Bach:

We've got financial goals, but we're going to look at values first. And when we get clear on your values, you'll be unstoppable.