E11 - 5 Lessons About Wealth I Want My Kids to Know (That Have Nothing to Do with Money)

It’s Thanksgiving week, and instead of talking about deals, football, or what’s on the dinner table, Jaden is shifting the focus to something deeper: the kind of wealth that has nothing to do with dollars.

In this special episode of Before the Returns, Jaden shares the five lessons about wealth he wants his kids to know — lessons that shape character, purpose, relationships, and long-term fulfillment. These are the principles that guide everything else: money, business, stewardship, and legacy.

You’ll learn why money should serve your life (not stress it), why cash flow is more powerful than net worth, why generosity creates more than it costs, why wealth is always a team effort, and why you — your skills, habits, mindset, and character — are your most valuable asset of all.

This episode is a reminder of what truly matters, especially during the holidays:
 Money is the tool. Purpose is the goal.

💡 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why money is a tool, not a scoreboard
• How cash flow creates freedom in ways net worth never can
• Why generosity enriches your life more than consumption
• How generational wealth is built through relationships, not isolation
• Why you are your greatest investment
• How purpose gives money meaning — not the other way around

🔑 Key Takeaways:

“Money should serve you, not stress you.”
“Cash flow is freedom — not net worth.”
“Generosity multiplies what you keep.”
“Wealth is a team sport.”
“You are your most valuable asset.”

Learn more at www.jadenzubal.com | Follow @jadenzubal | Join the *Before the Returns Weekly* newsletter

📩 Questions or ideas? Email: jadenzubal.wealth@gmail.com

⚖️ Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.

Transcript

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If I could only teach my kids five things about wealth and money, these would be the ones. And none of them have anything to do with dollars. With it being the week of Thanksgiving, I wanted to focus this week's episode on a topic that follows our core message here money is the tool, but purpose is the goal. But I want to talk about the side of purpose a little bit more than just the side of money today. Right? It's a week where most people are focused on the food, the football, and the Black Friday. And I want to spend our time on why wealth can impact our lives in a positive way. And really those five main lessons that I think make all the difference. Okay, because the money part, it only really matters if the meaning is there first. So Thanksgiving, the holidays, all of it, it forces us to while we sometimes feel like we're moving faster, we're really slowing down in a lot of ways. I've been working with clients now for about 10 years. And what I found is every year around this time, so really from mid-November to probably January 1st, everything just moves a little bit slower. It takes a little bit longer to work through processes and work through things with clients. And there's just a lot more going on with family and friends and really the things that matter in life, right? It's like we all get more involved in those things for these couple of months. And so I think it's a great time to have a conversation about these five lessons, the lessons that I would want my kids to know about wealth. As a dad and a husband and someone building a legacy, this week always reminds me what truly matters. Okay, because this episode is again, it's about that second half of our motto here. It's about purpose. Welcome to another episode of Before the Returns. I'm your host, Jaden Zuball, and today we are going to talk about five lessons that I would want my kids to know about wealth. All right, and make sure you stick around to lesson number five. It is really the most important lesson of everything that I could share here. So let's get started, though, with lesson number one. Lesson number one: money should serve you, not stress you. Okay, so what do I mean by that? We've talked at times about this, but what I really mean is that money is a tool. It's not a scorecard. It's not in a past episode, if you've heard anything on our podcast so far, I talked about how net worth is not as important as cash flow, right? And that's because money's not just a scorecard, it's a tool to enable us to do things that enhance and better our lives, right? It doesn't, it's not meant there to define you, but it's meant to give you options. It's meant to give you ways to enhance and better your life. We see it all the time. I do it personally, but as adults, we often panic about money. We get stressed out and we feel like we just need more of it sometimes. We can solve some of that panic by having systems and processes and structure around the money by making sure that we keep that big picture in mind that if what we're doing with our money is not serving us, then we maybe need to change what we're doing, right? We need to reevaluate, shift our focus a little bit, and find a purpose where the money actually does serve us. Because if it's not serving us, then we're just wasting it, right? We're wasting the resource that we have worked hard to obtain. Lesson number two cash flow is freedom. So this ties into that net worth versus cash flow, right? Cash flow is the freedom. When you create cash flow, you create freedom with your time, with your energy, with what really matters in life, right? Now you have the ability to choose what you do with your time, who you spend your time with, and your life is a completely different, completely different feel, really, right? You talk to anybody who's obtained what we would consider to be financial freedom, and it's always the idea that, hey, I now have enough cash flow to cover all of my expenses and not have to worry about it. But typically the net worth figure doesn't make all the difference there. In fact, I meet with clients all the time where I've seen people who have millions of dollars, but their cash flow still makes them feel like they're broke. They cannot, they can barely cover their expenses and they're just playing at a low level, right? But they have millions of dollars in the bank or they have millions of dollars in properties or businesses or whatever. Even worse, right? You have all of this money in assets, but you can't access any of it, and it's not doing anything for you. So cash flow matters more than net worth. Okay, lesson number three: generosity multiplies what you keep, right? We've all heard some sort of play on this before, but being generous with our time and our resources and our money is one of the best things that you could possibly do. There's no better feeling than having the ability to help somebody else and lift people up, right? There's no reason that we need to simply hoard our resources and keep everything to ourselves all the time. By helping other people, you will find more satisfaction in life than anything else that you could possibly do. Generosity is not loss, but it's creation. It's creation of relationships and of the things that really matter in life. I think about this a lot, but when we die, when we leave this earth, you're not taking any of the things that you bought with you. I would much rather leave a legacy of relationships and of the building up things that left feelings and emotions with people of joy and happiness and things like that, than leave a nice car or something to my kids. And so it's far more important to understand that being generous with our time and our money and our resources will pay major dividends in life. So a generous life is a rich life, right? Now, lesson number four. Lesson number four is that wealth is a team sport. Okay, so real wealth is built by families or relationships, not by individuals, right? You can be rich all by yourself. And I've met people like this. They have tons and tons of money, but they're alone and they're unhappy. Wealth is not about just growing tons and tons of money and keeping it all to yourself and just hiding out with it, right? The pictures we have up on the wall behind me that the Rockefeller family kept their wealth because they operate as a family. They have systems and processes and procedures and things that keep the family together. They have all these tools in place that the family works together. In fact, I just had a conversation with somebody this morning about this where they're putting together their family trust and they want to make sure that they have language in there that enables the family to work together and make decisions together to better the outcome of the family, not just better the outcome of one single individual. So wealth is meant to be a team sport and help us all grow together, right? It just like any other team out there. The team always functions better if we work together and work harmoniously. Now, I said this at the beginning and I really meant it, but lesson number five is the most important one. If I could give nothing else, this is the lesson I would want to leave with my children. So lesson number five is that you are your most valuable asset. There is nothing better that you can do to grow wealth than to invest in yourself, in your education, in your experience, in better understanding the world and how you want to fit into it, right? Because it's one of those things where as you get better at specific things and find things that you really enjoy and you really love doing, you will create more value there and therefore get more return of value, oftentimes in the form of money, but you will get a better return of value there than on anything that you could invest in. There is no investment that you could make that will return more value than your own experience, education, and the time that you spent bettering yourself. Okay, so your I talk to clients all the time about this kind of stuff as well, but in fact, there's one client in particular that I was down visiting them. We went to lunch and we were having a conversation about their business and them maybe making some outside investments, and they asked me about investing in real estate, which is something that I do. And in that conversation, it basically came down to the consensus was it's not quite time to invest in real estate because if you take the hundred thousand that you're considering putting there and you put it back into your business, you can grow that money so much faster in your business than you ever could in the real estate, right? Then you can start to invest in real estate because the business still has plenty of room to grow. There's a lot of potential there. But that business doesn't just grow automatically right now. It grows because of the experience of the people running it, of the owners. So they are their best asset. And by investing in their business, they're really just investing in themselves. Okay. You are your most important asset, your skills, your character, your habits, and your mindset. All of those things need to be worked on and developed. And by doing so, you will see incredible dividends. You will not ever find a better return than you can get there. Okay. Okay, so let's do a quick recap here. Lesson number one was money should serve you, not stress you. Lesson number two was cash flow is freedom. Number three, generosity multiplies what you keep. Number four, wealth is a team sport. And number five, and the most important thing, the most important lesson out there, you are your most valuable asset. So with that, money is simple when life has meaning. Money is confusing when life has none. Okay? So go enjoy an incredible Thanksgiving with your families, with your friends, with the people around you. Spend this time with the people that really matter. And we'll get back to our regular episodes next Thursday. Thank you so much for joining us. And please subscribe, share, spread this message around, and help other people find these resources. And we'll talk to you next week.