Making Mommy Moves Show Episode 11: Breaking Generational Curses

FEATURING LARRY MORTON

Let’s get our hands dirty and talk about breaking generational curses. Larry and I are set on breaking out of our lower-middle-class mindsets and financial status, and we want to help you do it, too.

It can be uncomfortable to talk about money and social structure in relation to your friends, family, and your own private household. Because there’s so much hush-hush about it, less affluent people are stuck in the lower classes, never hearing about breaking generational curses like vicious money cycles and start finding happiness and freedom beyond the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. All that’s about to change: we’re going to break down doors, pull away the curtains, and help you see the light by breaking generational curses for good.

Today’s Goals: Identify the limiting mindsets you’ve inherited from your parents, friends, and community that are keeping you locked into your paycheck-to-paycheck life. Then, identify great sources and mentors who can educate you about breaking free and building wealth.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:

How your family and community can seriously shape your mindset and affect generations to come
Realizing what limiting mindsets we’ve inherited from our parents, including negative views of financial honesty in marriage and going to college unnecessarily
Learning how to flip those lower-middle-class mindsets upside down to begin educating ourselves about investing and smart uses for debt
Emphasizing that where you come from never has to be where you should stay or what your kids should experience – you just need to commit to breaking generational curses

Episode 11 Transcript: Breaking Generational Curses

Alyssa
Hi everyone! Welcome back to the show. We’ve got Larry again with us this week. We’ve got a pretty fun episode that we’re ready to talk about today. Totally different than some of the things that we normally talk about. I think it’s really, really a good one because I think a lot of us struggle with it.

So this week, we’re talking about like some of our past and more specifically our parents and how they’ve impacted our mindsets and how they were like kind of an example of like, what we didn’t want to do if that makes sense. Yeah, without offending them because we love them so much, but they have such some good examples like financially of like what we didn’t want to do lifestyle-wise, and like where we wanted to walk.

So thank you for tuning in again. And let’s dive in.

Let’s talk about how we bonded in our hurt state. So we had been friends for a while leading up to actually like our current state, we were friends for like two years. Our friends had tried to get us together and then we were just like, nah, nah, not right now. So two years later, he had broken up with his girlfriend at the time. Couple months after that, we had a first date, and then we started bonding over really our past and like the way that we grew up. Both of our parents had been divorced like the same year they got divorced. They had like similar like financial situations.

Larry
Yeah, both situations were extremely similar. Pretty much all around. Yeah, different details, but same, you know, financially and relationship-wise.

Alyssa
And we’re not going to dive into that because that’s something we’d want to like bring them on to talk about. But what really like struck us recently, as we’ve been going through these mindset shifts is like, how much of them has been ingrained, like since our childhood, like needing to work harder to make more money and what else…

Larry
Some of the negative ones like spending money as soon as you have it?

Alyssa
Yeah, that’s huge. Like we spent it like there’s a hole in our pocket. Like yeah, trying to break all of those habits has been really difficult. Yeah. So let’s get into that.

Larry
I know a big one for me, at least is like I said, like spending money as soon as you have it. Because growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money at all. And it was like once somebody got a raise or bonus or something. It’s like we had a bunch of extra money. Let’s do something with it.

Alyssa
Yeah. And usually it was like get a new car or

Larry
Get a car and we can never go on vacation. It was never like let’s invest this. Yeah. Being a kid that’s not on the top of your mind. You’re like Yay, we got a new car in the driveway or we got a new whatever, a pool. Yeah. But being an adult now you look back, you’re like, oh, he could have taken that money and put it literally anywhere.

Alyssa
Yeah, could have had something to retire with or yeah, or have something that’s replacing your income now. So they are just doing what you do now for fun, or something. Yeah, we’re still trying to learn this. So bear with us, but like from what we’ve understood, and what we’ve taken from it, like so far is that we want to be taking any extra money that we’re making, and investing it into something that will create an asset for us, something that will give us money every month to pay for the things that we want. So we’re going like we want to start investing in real estate we want to start investing in stocks and like index funds…

Larry
Pretty much anything that you can think of, we want to be as diverse as possible. So have a bulletproof portfolio of income streams from diverse places.

Alyssa
The more passive the better. Yeah. Because that’s like one of the biggest things is like feeling like we need to work for the money, and it’s like if we are able to make the money work for us instead. These are all the things that we didn’t learn growing up and like our parents don’t know about these things or how to make it happen, or how to get out of the middle class world. That we’re in like, a low middle class – like working collar middle class. So we wanted to take you on, like, a journey with us so that you’re able to see the way that we get on to the toll of this middle-class kind of road that we’re stuck in. And everyone around us is really stuck in honestly.

Larry
Yeah, the area that we live in, is very, very blue collar. Everyone gets up early in the morning goes to work. You know, it’s No, I shouldn’t say no one but a lot of people in our area aren’t super well off. It’s a very paycheck-to-paycheck area. And that’s how we grew up. We both grew up, pretty local to where we live now. And that’s just how it’s been for the past 20-Whatever years. It’s just that way of life and being surrounded by people, you know, strangers, everyone’s in the same boat. You know, no one’s got a brand brand new car. That’s expensive. I don’t want to say poverty but it’s close.

Larry
It’s you know, it’s a struggling area. I would like to say…

Alyssa
To put it this way, everybody’s complaining about the gas prices being so high. Like nobody’s just like that is what it is like everybody’s like, “man like I’m gonna need to make more money to be able to get to work”

Larry
Yeah, I’m gonna start walking to work because gas is so expensive. Yeah.

Alyssa
So we were like that. Like nobody has a super easy right now. So some of the things that we’re doing that maybe you guys can at least flip the light bulb and start trying to create some for yourself. We’re trying to use that to make more money. So we took out a home equity line of credit and we’re going to use that to begin investing in real estate and whatever other future opportunities present themselves. We want to have liquid capital, ready to invest when somebody says, “Hey, I got this great thing going on. Do you want in?” We want to be able to say “yes, here’s 100 grand,” or whatever.

Larry
Yeah, that’s the thing that they don’t teach you in school and the things that middle-class parents don’t teach you, is that you can do you know… a refinance, a home equity line of credit, whatever it might be, you have access to a lot more money than you think you have. And if you use that money wisely, and in the sense of investing and putting in the right spots, you make that money work for you, especially because when you take a home equity line of credit, it’s relatively low interest, to put it in an index fund, say that has a higher return rate than your interest rate on your loan. There’s passive income right there.

Alyssa
It might not be a lot but if you take what you’re making, and put it into something else, like let’s say another, well, this is what we’ve learned. And what we plan to do is we’ll take our home equity line of credit, we’ll put it into a house and then we’ll refinance that house, take our money out of it that we invested. And then it’s just the passive income stream because somebody’s paying rent for us.

Larry
If you follow that line of thought, yeah. And we’re the furthest thing from financial experts. Yeah, that there is…

Alyssa
But we’re just trying to share like how we’re trying to get out of the hole that is the middle class. Yeah.

Larry
And how we learned it. Like how we learned what not to be, yeah. Which is the whole premise of this episode. You know, what our parents did and didn’t teach us about how to use and how to misuse money.

Alyssa
Yeah, so one of the things that like my parents like we’re big with, we’re taking loans and then not having a means to invest it into something that would pay off the loan. Like they would use it to get caught up on their bills, and that’s not going to produce any more money. So like, that’s something that we were like debating. Now. It’s like we have a lot of credit card debt. So it’s like do we take the HELOC and pay off the credit card? It’s like no, that would be stupid because we want the HELOC to make us more money.

Larry
Yeah, if we’ve ever paid cards, we’re just taking the debt from our credit cards and putting it into our home equity. We’re still paying, it it’s just lower interest. But it’s not gaining anything they’re just taking away didn’t get off her credit cards, but what you just said my dad did the same thing. In the early 2000s. He refinanced on the house and got like 25 grand and he bought a new pickup truck. And I don’t think that my parents talked about it and I think that they just did it. He just did it and then one day sold that house, my mom sold the house. That was an issue because there was a lien on the house because of that that had to be paid.

Alyssa
So it’s stuff like that where you and it’s like that pickup truck ended up being repossessed, and it didn’t end up making them any money.

Larry
Yeah, that’s the worst thing. that you could invest in because it’s not making you money. Yeah, you buy a used truck. It’s not going to appreciate value at all. It’s just money, literally down the drain that came back and bit him anyway.

Alyssa
So the smart thing that they could have done would be to take that lien that home equity line of credit, put it into something that would pay for the car, and then you have an asset that would pay off the car. That would be paid off and you’d have a brand new car and the asset that’s continually giving you money every month. Now, we’re still learning these things. But we wanted to share what we’ve learned so far. And maybe, you know, at least switch the light bulb because it took us 25 years to switch the light bulb.

Larry
Yeah, and I know that like our parents still haven’t switched the light bulb yet. Our parents are in their mid-50s. And they are you know, they still work their nine to five.

Alyssa
No retirement fund, like yeah nothing. Yeah. So let’s go back again to some other mindsets that they had instilled in us that we’re working to overcome. So many now… what about marriage? Because both of our parents are divorced. And I know my dad has told me multiple times. It’s like, “oh, it’s just a matter of time before you’re divorced, or you better treat that man really nice. Otherwise he’s gonna divorce you.” Or man like…

Larry
“No, I wouldn’t put up with that if I were him.” Yeah, exactly.

Alyssa
Those are all like things that were said to me. And we’ve been married for four years happily, we have marital bliss. And to hear these things coming from my dad. It’s like the most like heart-shattering kind of feeling because it’s like, I’ve never been so happy in my entire life and you think that it’s gonna just go down the drain because we’re going to be stupid and like, cheat on each other or something or get tired of the bullshit, which there is no bullshit.

Larry
Yeah like literally none. And to kind of preface that is that both of our parents didn’t really have you know, solid foundation when they, you know, were married. And, you know, as you said, we’re, they’re both divorced.

Alyssa
Yeah, both kind of were in love with the idea of marriage but didn’t have a solid marriage.

Larry
Yeah, yeah, it was. At least in my parent’s marriage, there were a lot of hidden things. From one another. We won’t get into much detail but like secret bank accounts and just you know, that’s a big thing. Yeah, with financials, keeping an open book. When it comes to my money and her money. It’s, it’s our money.

Alyssa
Yeah, like at the end of the day, like we’re working toward the same goals. We’re pushing the same boulder up the same hill. Like I’m not pushing one boulder up this hill. He’s not trying to keep the other one from rolling down. Like we’re working toward the same common goal. And we personally just believe that we’re in this fight together, like my debts are his, his debts are my debt, and together we’re going to be wealthy. So that’s just the way that we do things that might not work for you, you might have a different belief and that’s fine. But transparent.

Larry
Yeah, that could prove to be a huge strain on your relationship if you’re not transparent with your financials. And the other thing you said before, I make the majority of the money right now, and that’s all towards the bills and credit cards or whatever else. But my paycheck goes right into a joint account, and that money is divvied up. However, I get my allowance out of my own paycheck, which is funny. And you know, the rest of it goes towards the house. Because it’s not my house. It’s our house. It’s not my bills. It’s our bills.

Alyssa
Not my kids, it’s our kids.

Larry
Yeah exactly, and when we’re short, we’ll put a little money out of our businesses to pick up the slack. So it’s, it’s a shared burden is the best way to sum it up.

Alyssa
Yeah. And like I said, like we’re working towards the same common goals. So if he’s putting in like, if he puts in 800 and I put in 200, like, it’s coming from the same account. Like it doesn’t matter. Or he puts 1200 and then I put 2000. And like, again, it’s coming from the same account.

Larry
Yeah, so it doesn’t matter. You know, who’s contributing what, because we’re both contributing to the same pool.

Alyssa
Yes, yeah. For the same goals. We’re getting a little off topic again. Yeah. It’s just so easy to like, go on and on with this kind of stuff. But our parents really set a good example of what not to do for us and our relationship. And we’re trying to have our own mindset that our relationship is strong. We’re going to do really big things together, that their lack of success in their marriage does not mean anything for us, that our kids are going to have our example, that we’re trying to show them what happy marriages look like and how adults talk to each other and that we can build businesses and that we can do things that bring us joy, and eventually we don’t have to work so damn hard to make a life for ourselves.

Larry
That’s our goal, mainly is to work hard now, while the kids are a little so that you know when they’re old enough to be able to go on vacations and stuff like that. We don’t have to worry about any of that. We just go because we can.

Alyssa
Yeah. Are there any other mindsets that have been instilled in us from our parents that were really trying to like, change the course you can think of?

Larry
There’s a lot but something that we’ve talked about a handful of times is college.

Alyssa
Yes, yes, that’s huge. This is just our belief system. Like you don’t have to agree with it or align with it. But my parents in particular really pushed college on me and my siblings, and I personally like we personally don’t believe that college is the right path for everybody. And we don’t think that you should really even go unless you know what you’re trying to do. Because it’s a waste of time and money.

Larry

I’m in the automotive field. And I’ve worked with so many college graduates that have like degrees in like history and economics and all this other stuff, and we all wind up turning wrenches in a garage, and I could arguably make more money than them and they have $80,000 in student loan debt for a vehicle program.

Alyssa
Or even better, there’s some guys that went to school…

Larry
Like you did.

Alyssa
The school like public school paid for the vocational school program, and they ended up getting like, what probably like $40,000 in student loans, give or take. Yeah, especially if they lived off campus to go wherever they were going.

Larry
Yeah. What did they get out of state, you know, tech program? And we’re all in the same boat. We all make roughly the same amount of money. They’re still paying off student loans, and they’re in their 30s. I have not, which, sure, I think could have helped me along a little bit. But in my field, necessarily…

Alyssa
Experience matters more than anything like they want to say, “Well, you’ve been at the same place for five years, come work for me. You’ve done all of this. Great. Oh, you learned under him. That’s phenomenal.” Yeah, like they want to see the actual work experience and how quickly you can do a job and how good you are at doing the job and not just a piece of paper.

Larry
At least for me like in my field, the document saying you can do your job a lot less than you actually being able to do your job. And proving it because there are people that can take tests and they have all the certifications that say that they can do their job and then when it gets down to get their hands dirty, they can’t. And total opposite, there’s something that doesn’t have a sheet of paper saying that they can do anything.

Alyssa
And they’re phenomenal. Talented, skilled and really smart.

Larry
You know, growing up, my parents didn’t necessarily push college on me, but they wanted me to obviously have a direction of where I was going. And my sister, she did a nursing program, and that’s working. Now she’s getting her doctorate and everything. And I just had no desire to go to college. And I’m glad I didn’t do that two-year study program at our local community college just to say I did it. It would have proved nothing. I would have gotten nothing out of it. And a lot of people do and unfortunately, they continue. It’s like the 13th and 14th year by tool. Because

Alyssa
Yeah, I know like my mom, she’s still going to school for like her second or third master’s degree at this point. And she’s a teacher and like she wants to be a counselor of some sort, but like, you don’t need all of those degrees. At the end of the day, but to get back to the point like I have a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration. So I can be a florist. That’s just stupid for me to have that degree because that’s not what I want to do. Like and I don’t want to force that on our kids if they don’t have a clear direction and this is a step that they need to get there. Like for her sister like it makes total sense because she wants to be in the medical field. You obviously need to go to school for that. But if there’s something that you can get the learned experience instead, that’s gonna be far more valuable.

Larry
And, you know, we’ve seen it you know, people that we know that have gone to college, they get their whatever four-year degree and, you know, whatever it is, and they still get a regular job and it’s not worth the $100,000 and student loans that you accrue at 22 years old. It’s not worth it.

Alyssa
You know, even if you think about how you can take that $100,000 worth of debt and put it into a business and you would be far better off with the right skill set. And if you don’t have the right skill set, then you can hire somebody to make up for it.

So I think those were like three big mindsets that we have already overcome that our parents really instilled in us that we don’t need to work harder to make more money, that our marriage can be anything that we want it to be, that we’re not limited by their belief system on their marriages. And that school is whatever you make of it. Like, if you have the right direction.

Please like by all means don’t let it stop you. But if you think that you can get experience doing something else, at the end of the day, you’re probably going to wind up in the same place as if you did go to school. Maybe even a little bit further ahead because you have the work experience, and you’ll be making probably more money without the student loan debt.

Larry
That’s something to throw in with the education. The internet has everything that you could ever want to know about anything ever and it’s usually free.

Alyssa
Yeah, or if not, you could buy a course from someone who does the thing. And that’s going to be far more valuable.

Larry
Yes. Yeah, there are ways depending on what you’re going for. There are way better ways than to be in the education system to learn because you’ll learn a bunch of crap that you don’t need to know.

Alyssa
Yeah, they’ll tell you how it is like from one course that you take from somebody that does it. Like I know when I was starting my floral career, I took a whole lot of mentorships and like online courses directly from successful floral designers, and that’s how we got so far. So really like as opposed to going to like the flower Institute or something.

Larry
Or design school. Yeah, you’ll learn more by doing.

Alyssa
So that was something else I did is I freelance designed with other florists and actually just got my hands dirty. Because the more that you use your hands and actually do the work, the quicker you’re going to learn it.

Larry
Yeah, exactly. But I just wanted to throw that in this, whatever you want to do – Google it first, before you enroll in a degree program.

Alyssa
Good advice. Yeah. I think we’ll leave off there. I think that we touched on a lot of really big mindset blocks and some things that we’re doing to overcome them and…

Larry
We could literally do this weekly with mental blocks to us.

Alyssa
I know. We’ll probably touch on it again, you know, maybe in a couple of months when we’re a little bit further along in our growth process, but thank you guys for tuning into the show. If you guys took something away from this mumbo jumbo of a conversation that was kind of all over the place. Please share with us on Instagram, it’s @lyss.morton and @mortomotoshow on Instagram. All right. Thanks again.

RESOURCES

The LYSST – Never miss an episode, blog, or exclusive deal for my favorite mom friends.
Download the guide to starting your first business here!
Get advice and other tools at www.lyssmorton.com/coaching
HoneyBook– CRM system I use DAILY in my floral design business, totally helpful delegation!

MORE

BRANDS

services

book

contact

CONTACT

ABOUT

book

HOME