Greatest Investment You Can Make: $CHILDREN

Definition of Invest

I wanted to step away from some of my usual topics to discuss a topic close to my heart, children. I was listening to my friend Michael Baisden on the radio speak about Dad’s and being a part of their children’s lives. It moved me to chime in a little on the subject. I have had a little experience at this now and after some practice think I got it. My first attempt at parenting came during a time when I was significantly misguided by the orders of priority. Well, I understood priority but at certain phases of your life some of us just weigh certain things much higher than others. It is clear to me now what wasn’t so clear to me when I was 19. Here I was a young teenager heading around the curve to adulthood with a newborn child. So what do you do at 19 (or less)? Teenagers who can successfully answer that question now with an adult mentality are definitely light years beyond. My first answer to the question was to quit college, go get a good job, and be a good dad. The problem with that approach is who hires a teenager with no experience, no real college education, and not a whole lot of life experience. Plenty, you could assume: McDonald’s, Burger King, Sonics, Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut….etc. However, just how much support can you really provide? In either case what is important is that you find a way, any way. My way included staying in school. I decided to finish school and use my student loans to help me with child support while I remained in the classroom. The problem with that scenario is [1], I lost physical touch with parenting simply because I was focused on school. [2] I managed to accrue a ton of student loan debt with interest that when I finished college it was virtually unmanageable without a huge salary. The way we manage parenting is equally a part of your lifelong investment as a retirement plan, pension, annuity, etc…

One of my lessons learned that came out of bad parenting stems from my lack of understanding of support, specifically child support. If I only knew then what I know now. I hope I can reach any dad out there that complains about child support. If you don’t want to pay it, you don’t have to. It’s an easy formula (kids-absent dad=no support). If you don’t want to pay support simply get your kids. Get a visitation schedule that progressively leads to you and the other parent having equal/shared physical custody. That’s the trick to being physically and financially vested in your children’s future. I must warn you (guys) that there are some women who live for the child support and their only goal in life is to piggy back off of your success and hard work. This means that their goal is to keep you from being injected equally in your child’s life. The more they can show that they (women) are the dominant provider, then the more money they get. Don’t get me wrong this is not a large circle of women. It’s actually a smaller ring. Don’t make me name names, but even I know one. I am no adviser on how to weed out those kind of women, but definitely those are the ones to stay far away from. I have two children and one of the mothers has absolutely no interest that I take our child to the library “every” week, spend two entire days with our child every week (to include overnight) and keep our child every other full weekend. This value non-soever. Every female I talk to wonders why my daughters mother doesn’t appreciate it. It’s simple. It is those that are looking for a handout that have issue with two parents equally vested. The strong and successful women out there that march to the beat of their own drum have a different mindset. Their mindset is “all I need is co-parenting and equal share of responsibility”, “I have my own money and I don’t need yours”. However, once you remove the dollar signs from their eyes then you learn just how much fun and enjoyment parenting really is. I am having the best time of my life being an active parent while one of my kids mother is absolutely miserable because her child support money stopped. I started spending more time with our child and she stopped speaking to me (laugh). So, we are going to coin women like this “Dead Beat Moms”.

In short, invest time in your kids if you are remotely/geographically able to do so. I have been the long distant dad before and that’s not cool either. The greatest investment you can ever make is with your children.

For more blogs like this you can find me at– www.darrenjohnson.org. You can also follow me on Twitter @DWallStreetGuy