Welcome Back, Future Funder!

Today’s a spicy edition.

The #1 message that children are given these days is to follow their dreams. 

Seems like a reasonable thing to do, right?

Well, that completely depends on how you actually go about pursuing those dreams.

Are you setting your children up to go into debt and not be able to pay rent because they only pursued their passions (and you didn’t ever teach them another way)?

Or are your kids going to build a solid foundation from which to pursue their dreams in a healthy, stable way?

In today’s issue of Dinner Table Discussions:

✅ Why Just “Pursuing Your Dreams” Isn’t the Way to Go
✅ How to Help Your Children Actually Follow Their Passions
✅ Heart Check: Have You Let Your Own Dreams Fall to the Side?

Bon appétit! 🧑‍🍳

Presented by our partner Stocks & Income

The Real Traders Aren't on CNBC

Your current options for finding stock trades:

Option 1: Spend 4 hours daily reading everything online

Option 2: Pay $500/month for paywalled newsletters and pray

Option 3: Get yesterday's news from mainstream financial media

All three keep you broke.

Here's where the actual edge lives:

• Twitter traders sharing real setups (not TV personalities)

• Crowdfunding opportunities before they go mainstream

• IPO alerts with actual timing

• Reddit communities spotting trends early

• Crypto insider takes (not corporate PR)

The problem? You'd need to be terminally online to track it all.

Stocks & Income monitors every corner where real money gets made. We send you only the actionable opportunities. No fluff, no yesterday's headlines.

Five minutes daily. Walk away with stock insights you can actually act on every time.

Please support our partners!

🍽️ Main Course: Should You Let Your Kids’ Dreams Be Dreams? (No, but…)

We all dislike the stereotypical parents in movies who don’t support their kid’s dream. “Janet and Bob are so mean, they should just let Willy compete in underwater basket weaving like he always dreamed of instead of making him be an investment banker!”

But do you know what is worse than a parent who doesn’t support his or her kid’s dream?

A parent who doesn’t set the kid up for success by supporting the dream in the right way.

“Oh, but there’s no right or wrong when it comes to my child’s dreams!”

Ok, but what if your kid is unemployed in 20 years with no backup plan and no savings/investments built up so he or she can pursue that dream from a more stable financial foundation?

Letting your kid spend all of his time playing video games to become a streamer and make it big on YouTube without having any form of income or fallback plans for the future is not loving them well. It can be quite destructive.

Example: your child has only ever pursued his or her dream all throughout high school. You then allow your child to live at home (for free) after graduating while he or she tries to build a business, band, or project. 5 years later, your child has not had any success, and there’s no backup plan. No savings. No income. And no place to live except your house.

This might seem like an extreme example, but I assure you it isn’t. It’s a shockingly common situation that could possibly be avoided by teaching your children strong financial values and understanding from a young age. Teach them to build a foundation from which to pursue their dreams. Don’t teach them to make their dreams the high-pressure Plan A from the start, because that could end up hurting them really badly.

And I know, I know, your children may get upset when you bring this stuff up. But the key is that your encouragement to them to have a form of stable income is a really crucial form of supporting their dreams.

Of course, it’s still important to show your children you care about their passions in more directly supportive ways (going to their sports games, watching them play music, driving them to tournaments, conventions, or meetups; asking them about their passions, etc.). 

But if you only do that without instilling solid financial values in them, you’re actually setting them up for failure even though it might “feel” more loving to not make them think about the future.

Hear me when I say this: I actually believe very firmly in pursuing your dreams, and I personally have started several businesses and pursued multiple passions of mine, from music to writing to photography. And after all of that experience, I have learned that the best way to venture out and chase your dreams is by having a solid foundation of financial stability to lean on first. 

That way, your children’s dreams won’t be so make-it-or-break-it all the time; they’ll be able to take some risks without it causing their lives to fall apart if/when things don’t work out with their Etsy store, golf career, debut album, or business idea.

Practically, What Does That Look Like?

A fine question, Future Funder.

Practically speaking, supporting your child’s dreams in this way could look like several things. Here are some examples:

• Sitting down with your kids and walking them through what they’ll need to save up in order to start a business, including living expenses and making enough to put away savings too. (Key point here: the purpose of this conversation is to help equip your children and to help problem solve, NOT to show them why their dream is a bad idea financially.)

• Exploring ideas for what her main job or part-time job could be while she plays shows around town and tries to build an online presence for her music project. (Here our guide to 15 ways your child can earn money.)

• Teaching him how to budget, save, and invest, showing that “pursuing your dreams” (unless your dream is a salaried position) doesn’t always pay the bills—but also pairing that with a clear emphasis that you want him to thrive and to be able to do what he loves.

• Setting your kids up with high-yield savings accounts and brokerage accounts for investing, and maybe even starting them off with a couple index fund shares (while explaining that the purpose of those shares is to be held for a long time, not to be cashed in immediately).

Ultimately, you can’t control your children, and I’m not advocating that you try to control them. But it’s 100% true that we get our core values from our parents. And if you teach your children solid financial fundamentals and show how to pursue their dreams from a balanced perspective, you could actually be giving them the best chance possible for their dreams to work out. No joke.

Pursuing YOUR Dreams

With all this talk about dreams, I’m curious if you’re thinking about your own. Maybe you’re actively pursuing your passions. But maybe it feels like passions are a luxury you can’t afford as you work hard and parent and provide a life for your children. 

If that’s you, I want you to know that this time of focusing mainly on raising your children will eventually pass, and there will (someday) be more time for you to do what you love. 

Even if you maybe feel like you left your dreams behind.

Just remember:

• J. R. R. Tolkien didn’t publish The Lord of the Rings until he was 62.

• Eric Yuan founded Zoom at the age of 41.

• Stan Lee didn’t write a hit comic (The Fantastic Four) until he was 38.

• Colonel Sanders didn’t start franchising KFC until he was 62 years old.

• Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie, didn’t publish her first book until she was 65.

• Jane Lynch had a breakthrough acting career in her mid-40s.

The point: you have time. Plenty of time, actually.

And what if the things that this time of your life are forming in you right now (if you press into them) are what will equip you for future success?

This might not just be a difficult time in your life—it might be directly preparing you for the next stage of your own journey in your life, eh?

Bottom Line

In the end, you know your kids the best, and we wouldn’t tell you that we know how to parent them better than you do. However, these are some good principles to live by, and if you haven’t been preparing your children for “real life” in these ways, we strongly suggest that you start.

Because encouraging your children to be realistic about their finances and to have a backup plan actually sets them up for the highest possible chances of achieving their dreams.

This isn’t disbelief in their dreams, it’s a desire to support them in the best way you can: by preparing your kids for the future and teaching them about pitfalls, all while celebrating their dreams and helping chase after them.

Cheers to getting 1% better each week! 🥂

👂 We’d love to hear from you

👂 What dreams does your child have, and how are you supporting them?

We’d love to hear about it, and your story could help someone else chase their own dreams.
Just hit reply and share.

Thanks for reading,
—Your friends @ Future Funders 🍽️

P.S. Forward this to a friend who’s passionate about his or her kids’ dreams but probably needs to teach them how to budget. 😁