My 4.5 year old daughter started crying last night. You might ask why or, if you have a child around the same age, might ask what else is new. This specific crying incident was because we did not go to an open house. Not that there was an open house we were supposed to go to. We had driven past several signs but they were all at the same time as the nap and so we just did not go. Evidently, it was upsetting for her when she realized the day was ending and we had not been inside any new houses.

My husband and I have popped into open houses for years, it’s a favorite pastime of ours, and that interest is one of the reasons we chose to invest in real estate. Now that we have kids, we bring them with us. Apparently, it is now one of our daughter’s favorite pastimes as well. Tears aside, this makes me very happy. We want to share this journey with our kids.

By definition, generational wealth must encompass multiple generations. In order to do this, we need to set our kids up for success and give them every advantage that we can going forward. Ideally, they will be able to take what we build and expand on it for their own offspring. That is our goal anyway. It will be a lot easier to attain this goal if they have the same passion for real estate that we have. 

Ken and I have started to talk about how we can incorporate the kids into REI. We want to teach them the importance of passive income and owning your own time. I know we can’t teach them about cash on cash returns or creative financing quite yet (maybe once she’s five). However, we can introduce basic ideas like saving and letting your investments grow overtime. We can also bring them with us on our journey and get them involved whenever we can.

Already, our daughter has asked to come with me the next time I go visit a rental property and she constantly asks questions about the houses we have looked at. She has learned about Ohio now, so we’re also helping with geography. Hopefully, we will be able to continue to include her in our investments and keep adding kindling to her interest until she has the same fire we do.