These things felt normal growing up. Almost boring.

But looking back, I realize they quietly wired me in ways that set me up financially and mentally for adulthood.

Lately I’ve been thinking about them a lot.
My nieces and kids are getting older. And I keep finding myself in conversations with friends about money, work, and how we actually prepare kids for the real world.

I am not a financial advisor.
I was never the “super smart” kid. I wasn’t exceptional at school. And as an adult I’m pretty sure I’m an undiagnosed dyslexic. The kind that flips letters around, smushes words together, and has absolutely zero sense of direction. (Thank god I was born in the era of spellcheck and Google Maps.)

But here’s the thing. I adapted. I worked really freakin’ hard. I learned my superpowers.
And I had a really great guide: my dad.

Now that I’m parenting in the messy middle of life, I catch myself saying things like, “My dad did this thing…”

And almost every time, people lean in.
Wait… he did what? Tell me more.
Can you share the template?

For context, I crossed a $1M net worth by the time I was 32.

I’m not saying if you do these things your kids will magically hit that number too. More that I know, without a doubt, I would not have gotten there without this wiring.

And the reality is most parents and schools aren’t teaching this stuff. Kids get thrown into the real world with no framework, no confidence, and no language around money. So they avoid it. They hide from it. Which usually makes everything worse.

I also want to say this clearly. I know I’m privileged. My parents set me up in ways not everyone gets. That is not lost on me.

But here’s the thing.
Most of what they did wasn’t flashy.
It wasn’t trust-fund or even private school level.
It was just intentional.
And a lot of it is replicable.

I hope this might even inspire you to rethink birthday or Christmas gifts this year.

So here’s the stuff we just did in our house.

(If you’re skimming today, skip to Get in the Game.)

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Choose Your Hard

There’s a saying I’m pretty sure I first heard from my dad: Choose your hard.

Life is going to be hard either way. You don’t get to avoid hard. You just get to decide when you want to feel it.

Saving money now is hard. Being broke later is hard.
Studying now is hard. Scrambling later is hard.

My dad lived this.

His dad was a plumber. He grew up in a big Catholic family with five sisters and A LOT of red hair. And when it came time for college, my dad could have gone straight to a four-year university and taken on debt.

Instead, he went to community college for two years and then transferred into Mizzou.
Not because he couldn’t get in as a freshman. Because he could. He just chose the long game.

Why pay for four years when you can pay for two, save money and graduate with the same degree?

He put ego in the corner and chose strategy. He chose the hard thing early so his life could be easier later, and that mindset quietly shaped everything in our house.

Get in the Game

My dad always says, “Get in the game.”

He says this about everything. Technology. Business. Investing. Life.

It’s why he bought the first Apple computer. It’s why he experiments with new tech instead of sitting on the sidelines. Cybertruck? He’s there. Tesla’s humanoid robot? He’s on the waitlist.

That mindset rubbed off on me.

It’s why I bought a little Bitcoin back in 2015. It’s why I bought the stock my company offered me. Bought into the GameStop craze (yeah lost money there…). It’s why we own a 3D printer and use AI every day. Geesh, it’s probably why I moved to Serenbe and walked away from a traditional corporate job.

And it’s fun to be in the game!

The one game everyone should be in is the game of getting your money to work for you.

Which is why when I turned 16, he sat me down and opened a custodial Charles Schwab account with me. (this is just a investment account for kids that a parent helps manage until they’re adults).

He put in some starter money as my birthday gift. I think it was $2,000.

Quickie Note: When I did this with my nieces recently for their 18th birthdays, I started them with $200. The number is not the point. Just start, start with what you have.

The point is that he made me sit in the driver’s seat and “Get in the Game”.

I pressed the buttons. I selected the trades. He stood behind me guiding. He did not take over and tell me what stocks to pick. And yes, it was scary and I begged him to just do it for me.

Instead he asked what brands I liked and believe would grow in the future. When I said Limited Too, he helped me research what companies were actually publicly traded.

I ended up picking Disney and McDonald’s. (Not bad for a sixteen year old.)

The Yearly Match Program

There is more. My dad made a deal with me.

The Match Deal:

• If I saved $2,000, he matched it.→ $4,000 invested.

• If I saved $500, he matched it.→ $1,000 invested.

• If I saved nothing… there was no match that year.

The catch: This money was for savings and not to be touched for a verrrry long time. IE Retirement, a future house down payment.

Note: We always maxed out my Roth IRA first, which — funny enough — back in 2005 was exactly $4k.
(Hah. I see you, Dad. Touché.)

FYI for 2026 the max annual contribution for Roth IRAs is $7,500.

And you better believe I hustled all year because I wanted to max that match.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was wiring something much bigger into my brain. He was wiring my brain for delayed gratification. Ownership. Comfort with investing. And showing me in real time that money you save can grow.

And without realizing it, he was also teaching me something I would use in my first corporate jobs: always max the match. (If you’ve ever had a job with a 401k match, you know exactly what I mean.)

Most importantly, he made the stock market feel normal instead of scary.

And that money became the down payment on my first house.
Thank you, dad. You are the best.

The Yearly “Finance Meeting”

It didn’t end there. Once a year we had a “finance meeting”.

Those meetings were serious business in our house. I would walk in oh so nervous.

Looking back, they were my first executive meetings. They prepared me for boardrooms long before I knew what one was.

We would sit down, review the account, and decide what to do next. Sometimes I invested in something new. Most of the time I left everything alone.

And we just talked about what was happening and why. I’m sure those meetings were packed full of lessons, some big feelings and frustrations. I can’t remember exactly but I do have a strong memory of feeling a sense of pride.

Make Money Visible

When I was 18, during one of those finance meetings. My dad showed me a spreadsheet he had been updating every January 1 for years. He told me something simple that stuck: it’s better to know than to be blind.

If you’re in debt, know it. If you’re ahead, know that too. Avoidance doesn’t change the number. It just adds anxiety to it.

The spreadsheet itself was simple. Each row was an age. The columns were assets, debts, and net worth. That was it.

I adapted it over the years, but the structure stayed the same. Every January 1, I update it. I also added a column for major life events, so it’s become this weirdly grounding money snapshot + life timeline.

It takes 10 minutes to fill in each year (if you know where your money is and all the logins) and it removes half the stress because the numbers aren’t lurking in the dark.

If you want the Google Sheet template, I’ll send it. (Reply or comment and tell me where to send it.)

Everything Is a Negotiation

The rule my dad had for me and my siblings was simple: Ohio has incredible colleges. He would pay unless we got a tattoo or went out of state.

But here’s what I learned early. With my dad (and honestly in life), nothing is ever a hard no. You could pitch him. You just had to be strategic.

My sister is the master negotiator in our family. I learned by watching her. When she tried to pitch him on going to school in Colorado, he told her she needed three solid reasons why Colorado was better than Ohio for him to pay. She came back with one. Skiing. She never came up with two others, so it was a no.

But did she convince him to buy her a convertible? Heck yes she did. I’m still over here wondering how she pulled that off.

There are rarely fixed rules if you understand what motivates the other person.

Earlier this year, I told my niece to pitch her dad on the exact stock market match program my dad had for me. I said, think about what he values. He wants to teach you to be independent and financially smart. So frame it that way. Tell him you want to learn how to invest and ask if he’ll match what you save.

He said yes.

And damn, that feels like the greatest gift I could ever give my niece.

None of this felt revolutionary growing up.

It just felt like our house. But now that I’m raising my own kids, I see it differently.

In my twenties I chose the hard of chasing achievement. These days I’m choosing the hard of building presence and balance. Ambition and softness.

Both are hard.

But I’m incredibly grateful for the foundation that lets me choose.

And now I’m curious about you.

What did your parents do that quietly set you up financially? Or what are you intentionally doing with your kids that more of us should borrow?

I’d also love to hear if you try any of this with your kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews… anyone really. I’ve told these stories hundreds of times in conversation, but this is the first time I’ve actually written them down. So if anything is confusing or you have questions, let me know.

Let’s steal the best ideas from each other.

It takes a village.

Oh and by the way… My moms spectacular too. That’s a story for another day.

xx, Gina

P.S. If you’re in a season of quietly rethinking things — work, life, identity, money, all of it — I’m building something you might like. A small experiment where I’ll share the exact shifts and tools that helped me prepare for my own leap long before I made it. If you want early access to the beta, just send me your email and I’ll add you.

Local friends — quick FYI: The “locals-only” section now lives in Around Here, my biweekly Serenbe + Chatt Hills local scoop. You’re already subscribed and the next one hits next week. If you missed last weeks, you can read it here.

New here? Life at Play is where I share stories and experiments about building a life that actually feels really good — parenting, ambition, balance, money, a bit of woo, community, and the random lessons I pick up along the way. You can subscribe below if you want future stories like this one.