Читать книгу Buy Now - Lloyd Edge - Страница 24

A lot of my underlying principles, like being a straight shooter, relate to my own story. My parents gave me and my brother everything we wanted that they could afford, but we were always on a budget. There was only so much to spend on groceries each week, and snacks were limited luxuries. I'm sure that was a good thing! Holidays too were on a budget.

I was fortunate to go to a private school. My grandparents had sold their orchard when they retired and put money aside for their grandkids' education. If it weren't for them, I would not have had the sort of education I did.

So, looking back, I am aware that I've set things up differently because of this early experience. Financially, providing well for my own kids has always been an important goal. That was a big ‘why’ for me when I got serious about investing.

I have two sons: Riley was born in 2019 and Caelen in 2021. So I'm a dad now, and the world has changed a lot since I was a kid. Growing up on a farm in Orange in central New South Wales, I had plenty of freedom. I used to ride my bike everywhere during the day. I'd ride into town and ride 8 kilometres to school.

These days you need to be so careful about what your kids are up to, while trying not to become ‘helicopter parents’. It's still early days for us as parents, and we recognise it will get more difficult to protect them from things like the influence of social media as they're growing up.

I can already appreciate the pressures on a lot of parents who feel they have to ‘keep up’ with other parents. Some spend thousands on kids' toys and clothes, even when they're struggling to pay the mortgage. Some kids wear these really nice clothes to day care, while Riley rocks up in his old workaday clothes. He may look a bit daggy, but he's just going to get paint and mud on them anyway!

People know we have a nice house and drive nice cars, but Caelen is still happy to play with a box. Riley's favourite toy is a five-dollar plastic lawnmower we bought second-hand on Facebook.

There's a front room on the second level at our place overlooking the Port Hacking estuary. Riley has his breakfast there because there's a cheap little table set up perfectly for him, and he loves that; in fact he insists on eating there. Of course, he has little to compare it with yet.

I've learned a lot about the importance for my clients of buying in school catchment zones, but we bought in this area simply because we loved the house. The local primary school is pretty good, by all accounts, so that's where my sons are going. We've booked them into a private school from year five or year seven, whichever works out.

I want my sons to treat others as they would want to be treated themselves, because that's how I like to treat people and that's how I was brought up. For me, teaching them to behave with honesty, integrity and humility is vital. I want them to be really accepting and to go to school with kids from all types of backgrounds and financial circumstances, where they can share what they have with others with humility.

What's important to me as a father is that Riley and Caelen are happy with what they are doing. People ask me, ‘Are your kids going to take over your business some day?’ They may, but then again they may not. But I will give them a good grounding on investing and looking after money — subjects they'll learn little about in school. Each of my boys will have a good financial head on his shoulders.

I had to learn all that the hard way.