Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Chicks on the Right
podcast where we talk to our friend and sponsor of
the show, Zach Abraham from Bulwark Capital Management, And today
we're going to talk a little bit about babysitting. And
the reason is is because producer Karinn saw a thread
on x or Twitter or whatever you want to call
it where people were talking about how much babysitters cost,
and how much that cost is creeping up and up
and up and up and up, and how it's basically
impossible to go out if you have young kids. And
so it got us like reminiscing about our own babysitter
days and like what we made back in the day
and how young we were. But like, one of the
things that I guess was talked about in this thread
is that now there's younger kids, Like when we started
babysitting around twelve years old, that is not a thing anymore,
and more often parents are looking for babysitters for their
twelve year olds because it's just a whole different world.
You're a dude, so you probably didn't babysit, but like,
did you have sisters or anything?
Speaker 2: Did you know, Yeah, my my older sister baby sat
quite frequently, and actually I did too. There were some yeah,
they we had some families around that had that. My
mom was friends with their moms and they had younger boys,
and so they the boys loved the idea of you know,
another a guy coming over and watching them.
Speaker 3: Playing with them and doing all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And then the reason I liked to do it was
because I was always My jobs were always like manual labor,
right like and and that was great, and I did
that during the summer, but like I was sitting there,
you know, I'd be going, Okay, so I'm going to
get paid seventy five bucks to come sit with your
sons for five hours with video games like yeah soul, right,
that's easier than yeah yeah, oh yeah, like rather than
clear I remember, you know, like one job was like
clearing brush for this guy that had an ostrich farm,
you know, uh, you know, just his stuff like that,
like I worked on I mean, this was later, but
you know, did construction, worked on a fishing boat, like,
you know, so I as a guy, I was like, wait.
Speaker 3: A second, man, this whole baby sit, this is the deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're gonna and then the moms, you know,
they'd buy us, you know, they'd buy their kids like
junk food and stuff like that because it's fine.
Speaker 3: Babysit over.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting there going, Okay, so I get pizza,
I'm watching movies. I'm wrestling with these kids, you know,
and we press the boundaries a little bit. Usually we'd
end up in the backyard, you know, manufacturing some kind
of like weapon of some kind.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, i'd be.
Speaker 2: Teaching them to kind of throw spears and stuff like
that and better for it. Yeah, And we had a
good time, and so, you know, and I don't see
I don't see any of that anymore. As a matter
of fact, we started allowing my daughter to babysit our
two younger boys when she was like twelve.
Speaker 3: And the looks we got from people like, you're gonna
do what it.
Speaker 4: Was your own kid, right, And I'm sitting there going
when we were like when my sister and I were
like eleven and thirteen, twelve and fourteen, yeah, like not
only could he stay home, but we could stay home
and run the house.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, the kids at home and we were on
our own.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I watched baby, like one two week old
babies I feel feeling so tiny, and I was like
twelve years old.
Speaker 5: I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well I remember my baby sister was born
when I was seven, and so I mean, I mean,
it's my kid.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: As seven years old, I knew how to change the diapers,
I knew how to feeder. I could do all that stuff.
And we there's this thing that I've watched happen. And
my wife and I, you know, all just full disclosure,
were more like this probably than my parents or her
parents were with us, meaning like we're more old school,
Like we're more new school than my parents were with us,
just because of like I don't know, I'm gonna blame
it on somebody else here, like cultural and societal drift,
you know what I mean. But we hold much closer
to those kinds of things than most people do, and
people look at us like we're out of our minds.
Yeah wow, And I just I think it's really odd.
I don't think that we ask enough of young people.
I think that they are capable of more. I think
that they bloss someone given more under the right circumstances,
you know. I think increased responsibility is one of the
easiest ways to get your kids to be more responsible.
Speaker 5: I totally.
Speaker 2: And the other thing I would say is, I think
we need to look at it a little bit differently.
If you do not feel comfortable. Now, each kid's their
own deal, right, Like, so I'm saying, all things being
held equal, if you don't feel comfortable letting your twelve
or thirteen year old watch their younger brothers and sisters,
I think that that should prompt different questions, right like
why don't I and what do we need to do
in order to do that? Because a twelve or thirteen
year old is plenty old enough to sit with kids
out a house for four or five hours on a
Friday night and make sure they don't burn it down.
Speaker 3: Right totally, you know.
Speaker 2: And if they're not, then, like I said, that should
prompt some other conversations and some other things. And I
think the goal should be to get them to that
point as quick as possible.
Speaker 5: Now, But what But what about the cost?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 6: Because like we were talking before we went on this
podcast about how I made like four bucks an hour
babysitting about New Year's Eve, I'd walk away with thirty bucks.
Speaker 5: I'd be like, yeah, thirty dollars for seven hours.
Speaker 6: Of work so other but nowadays, like I asked my
sixteen year old daughter, I said, huny, because she does it.
She's not babysat and plus a lot of I think
a lot of kids are so bogged down with activities nowadays.
Speaker 3: Is so bad. It's part of me too. Yeah, and she's.
Speaker 5: One of those kids.
Speaker 6: And so I asked her, I'm like, if you babysat,
how much would you charge? She's like, I mean if
it's like one kid, like twenty dollars an hour.
Speaker 5: And I was like, oh my gosh, but that's it.
Speaker 1: But I looked that up before we started, because I
looked it up and it's like the average is twenty
to thirty dollars.
Speaker 5: An hour, and that is mind blowing.
Speaker 1: Hey, you go to a movie, Zach, and you're paying
one hundred bucks for a babysitter.
Speaker 3: O crazy? Oh I know. Hey, look we we This
isn't every game, but like we just did. Uh, we
just did well.
Speaker 2: We didn't go, but we were talking to a family anyway.
There's a triple A like minor league baseball team right
by where we live, right and and it used to
you know, you'd go there as a kid, you'd pay
like six bucks to get in or you know whatever,
hope he gets fly ball.
Speaker 3: Its minor leagues. They went the other night, took their family.
It was like fifty two dollars a seat. This is
this is minor league, Yeah, minor league baseball. I'm sitting
there home.
Speaker 2: What is what does that does that come with? Like
a World Series ring and like a Hall of Fame
and die? Like what what fifty two bucks for minor league?
But okay, but here's the here's the problem, at least
here in Washington. And I know that we've got one
of the most aggressive minimum wages. But like my my
daughter has friends you know that worked at like dairy
queen fast food restaurants making twenty one twenty two an hour.
Speaker 3: Reach, which is which is nuts?
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: And the funny thing is is like there's such it
and I don't want to get this off track. There's
such a strange dichotomy going on in culture where there's
this great line that everybody is repeating over and over.
Speaker 3: It's just, oh, it's too difficult. Young people don't have
a chance. Da da da da.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, I look around at these young industrious kids right
now that are now. Granted, it's different getting a job
making twenty two an hour than is getting a career
post college. Okay, but still this lie that there are
odd opportunities out there is nonsense. If you're a kid
and you're industrious and you're willing to work hard, you
can graduate high school with thirty to forty thousand dollars safe.
Speaker 3: Just do the math. It's not hard, right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Talking like, I mean, it's true that would take some
willpower and some determination, but I guess.
Speaker 5: And no, Lulu Lemon, if you're a girl, that's right.
Speaker 2: But even like we're talking guys, we're talking fifteen to
twenty hours a week.
Speaker 5: I totally hear you. I hear you, and so and.
Speaker 2: Think about think about what you like. I sit there
and I do the math on compounded returns and all
that kind of stuff. If you're twenty eighteen, nineteen years
old and you got thirty to forty grand sacked.
Speaker 3: Away, like you are so far ahead at that point
and it's so doable.
Speaker 2: Like we live in this culture now where and I'm
not saying it doesn't have its difficulties.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 2: Every period of time has, But we live in a
culture where all of a sudden, we have embraced the
idea of giving people excuses for why they can't do
something more so than we've embraced trying to inspire them
and convince them that they can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's just it's this failure culture and it's
just b s yes, and everybody's like, well, it's.
Speaker 2: So much harder today, and I go in certain ways,
it is. In certain ways it isn't. I look at
my intern that we hired this summer. You know how
he got a job with us. He got on the
internet and looked up a bunch of different locations around
him and sent in applications and then followed them up
with phone calls and didn't quit bugging us until we
answered the phone, until we gave him an appointment.
Speaker 3: Then he came in. He was impressive. Boom. I paid
him twenty four dollars an hour over the course of
the summer.
Speaker 2: Right he he he made it happen, went out there,
pushed knocked on doors, and it was impressive.
Speaker 3: And it's it's out there, you just got to go
find it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I and I think the babysitting thing
we talk about an angle right, put three or four
friends together. That way, anytime somebody calls, you can become
a place where everybody knows, hey, we might not get
Alice tonight, but our friend Stephanie's always there, and Stephanie's not.
Speaker 3: There, Brittany. And you know, put a group together, walk
it down, man. You could do it two or three
nights a week, making bank.
Speaker 5: Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now as far as the parent's paying for it, find
a younger kid, like play the game. If a sixteen
year old is gonna want twenty, I guarantee you you
got a twelve or thirteen year old that's responsible around
somewhere that to do it for twelve or fifteen. The
other thing I tell you is maybe adjust what you
think of in terms of dating, like in terms of
parents going out. I would look at you and say, look,
paying a paying a babysitter two nights a month is
a lot cheaper and a divorce. It's true, right, Like prioritize,
you know, prioritize your money a little bit better. But
and I think you know that's samarial advice. But I
just I don't think people do that enough at all,
like date each other yet alone, I talk to people
all the time where I'm like, dude, what you got
to do? You need to plan a vacation without telling
your wife. You need to find somebody to take care
of the kids. You need, you need to remove all
of the obstacles. And then look at her and go,
the vacation is planned to pay for. It's just you
and me.
Speaker 3: She's like, she'd never go for it, and I go,
it's because when you do this.
Speaker 5: You wouldn't her.
Speaker 3: But my point is, I don't. I don't think she exists.
Speaker 2: What he's saying is she won't go for it because
when I bring it up in the past, it meant
that it was all on her on top of all
of the things that she had to do right. And
so I'm like, hey, clear the schedule. He's like, we
you know this friend I'm talking. He goes, our oldest
kid's ten years old. We've never spent a night away
from any of our children. Yeah, And I looked at
him and I go, that's yeah, yeah, that's nuts. That's nuts,
nuts easy, And you're not. And listen, you call me
judgmental all you want. When me and my wife were broke,
we figured out how to do this kind of stuff.
You know, borrow a friend's cabin and the cabin was rough,
but guess what we got it for free.
Speaker 3: We spent three nights away. It was wonderful and just like.
Speaker 2: If if, if you, if you had to make it happen,
you could figure it out. And I also think like
the greatest gift that we can give our children, and
the data shows this over and over. The best thing
you can give your kids is a good marriage.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, so.
Speaker 2: Work on that first. So whatever the babysitter work around,
look for younger people. The other thing, train your kids, right,
give your tell your twelve year old they got a
shop to make twelve to fifth tea box?
Speaker 3: Four?
Speaker 5: Why people have four and five kids? Right, so they
have built in babysitters. Hello, Yes, the point you got
one work one for babysitting. This is the whole point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have like you have one or two kids
for the general purpose of having kids, and then you
pick how many extra you want for backups.
Speaker 5: This is exactly right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so like my you know, my third born and
I told him, I go, you're the backup kid, bud, Like,
you know, if we lose one, if we.
Speaker 5: Sit alone in the roller coaster when we all go
to six flags.
Speaker 1: This is what.
Speaker 2: Happens, all right, right, yeah, yeah, I just yeah, I
would say, hey, hey, make reprioritize things. The other thing is, oh,
it's too expensive, we can't. Whenever I sit there, you know,
and I deal with clients with this all the time.
Whenever I hear somebody say it's too expensive, we can't,
I look at them and I go listen, what you
mean again?
Speaker 3: In general, we're.
Speaker 2: Not talking about buying four hundred thousand dollars cars or
anything like that. But in general, what that means the
minute you say that is that we have not prioritized that, right, right,
because I guarantee you I can dig through your monthly
bank statements and I can find much more nonsensical type
of spending that has far less dividends going on.
Speaker 3: So it's about how you allocate your capital.
Speaker 2: And when you say we don't have enough, what that
usually means is we didn't prioritize it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one hundred percent. And who knew that you could
get marital.
Speaker 1: Advice and addition to financial advice from Zach Abraham at
Bulwark Capital Management.
Speaker 5: How can people get in on this action?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all we have designations and backgrounds that
prove our competency in finance. We do not have those,
so full disclosure, we do not have those, and I
and my wife may agree or disagree depending on the topic,
so we'll take it a grant of salt. But now
as always easy to find. You can find us at
Bullworkcapitalmanagement dot com. Find our daily podcast that summarizes everything
that's gone on in the world of finance, economics and
politics at Know Your Risk podcast on YouTube. So super
easy to find Know Your Risk podcast, Butworkcapitalmanagement dot Com
not hard fund.
Speaker 3: Thanks Zach, Thank you ladies, thanks for having me. Investment
advisory services offered through Trek financialc and SEC Registered Investment advisor.
Speaker 2: The opinions expressed in this programmer for general informational purposes
only and are not intended to provide specific advice or
recommendations for any individual or on any specific security. Any
references to performance of security so it thought to be
materially accurate and actual performance may differ investments involved risk
and are not guaranteed.
Speaker 3: Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Trek twenty four three
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