Yahoo Finance I Grew Up Rich — 5 Ways It’s Changed My View of Money
Christine Landis graduated magna cum laude as a member of the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa collegiate honor society from the University of Southern California with a degree in business and managerial economics. After seven years of corporate ladder-climbing, she spent eight years as the CEO of a global fintech company, which she sold for eight figures in 2018.
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The millions she earned from the sale of her company allowed her to retire at 36, but early retirement didn’t suit her. She soon returned to the business world to launch her passion project, Peacock Parent, a platform she uses to help parents manage their time, their households and their schedules in a way that maximizes quality time with their children.
Although she’s now a millionaire several times over, wealth is not a new experience for Landis. Her affluent childhood — and her parents’ money-management philosophy — provided the foundation for her success and her commitment to spending her hours as cautiously as her cash.
“My upper-class upbringing definitely shaped how I view time and money as an adult,” she said.
Rich on Paper, but Not in Daily Life
Landis grew up with two highly accomplished professional parents. Her mother owned her own business and her father was an oral maxillofacial surgeon — but their lifestyle did not outwardly exude wealth.
“I always thought of our family as middle class because of the way we lived our lives,” she said. “But now, as an adult, I understand that we had more money than I realized. It might be more appropriate to say that we had upper-class money but lived within middle-class means.”
She Dipped Her Toes in the Good Life — While Wearing Payless Shoes
Landis’s parents neither deprived her nor over-indulged her.
“First-class tickets, private drivers and personal stylists were not a part of how I grew up,” she said. “We lived in a nice neighborhood in a 5,000-square-foot home, traveled out of the country once a year during the summer and annually to Hawaii, but never flew first class. We always carried our own luggage and used public transportation to get everywhere. We shopped at our local Vons and would buy clothes from the exchange military base or go to the mall to visit Payless Shoes.”
Despite the public transportation and bargain footwear, Landis experienced glimmers of what most Americans would consider upper-crust affluence.
“One area my parents did choose to spend money on was a weekly housekeeper and eating out at restaurants almost nightly,” she said. “They both worked and didn’t want to cook themselves. We always rotated through the same group of restaurants — Asian, pizza, burgers, Greek, calzones. So we were regulars. But again, none of them fancy.”
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5 Childhood Money Lessons That Support a Healthy, Wealthy Adult Life
Landis is a wealthy woman whose undercover millionaire parents doubled as her first financial educators. Whether they meant to or not, they taught her five key money lessons that she carried into adulthood.
Time Is the Best Thing Money Can Buy
Landis launched Peacock Parent in her post-corporate life to help parents reclaim their most precious and nonrefundable resource — quality time with their children. It was a lesson she learned during her family’s nightly visits to restaurants, which were less about the luxury of dining out and more about the luxury of spending time together.
“We would talk as a family and play card games at dinner, which is what I remember and value most from my childhood,” said Landis. “That time to connect and be heard and share laughs.”
The lesson was that the true value of money is the family time it can buy — and it never left her.
“I’ve made a conscious decision to use the money I’ve earned from selling my company in 2018 to buy more time in parenthood,” Landis said. “Buying time in the form of mobile wellness services so I don’t have to drive around town rushing to get to appointments, or delegating low-joy tasks to a virtual family assistant, and even hiring a personal stylist who can dress my body type and save me from interacting with salespeople. They all help me reclaim time and energy so that I can choose to be more present with my family.”
Live Well Within Your Means
Landis’s parents could have easily afforded first-class tickets and concierge services, but they flew coach and carried their own bags because those luxuries weren’t what they truly valued — and they couldn’t afford both.
“It was very important to my parents to save and build a nest egg for their retirement,” said Landis. “Their financial goals were to send me to private school, pay off the house, pay the full balance on the monthly credit card statement and never go into debt.”
Landis also carried this lesson into adulthood. When she sold her company for eight figures, she splurged on one fancy car but ended her spending spree there. Like her parents, she has no room in her life for lifestyle inflation.
There Are No Shortcuts Around Hard Work
Landis entered the workforce right out of school and dedicated herself to her profession so thoroughly that she worked her way up to CEO in just seven years. Here, too, the seed was planted by observing her parents in childhood.
“They both worked really hard,” said Landis. “My mom would do bookkeeping late into the night and be up at 5 a.m. to get to the office for East Coast hours.”
There’s More to Life Than Work and Money — Make Sure To Live Before You Die
Landis’s parents instilled in her the value of hard work, and her work ethic was the foundation of her success — but she also learned that balance is key.
“To say they both carried stress is an understatement,” said Landis. “They believed that if they saved and tried to ‘do it all’ for the sake of the family, then we would all prosper in the end.”
But the true end came too soon — and no amount of money could ever buy it back.
“My mother died too young at age 66,” said Landis. “And unbeknownst to me there were millions in the bank, which was still in my father’s name. She had just come back from a trip to India, entering her retirement years, and flew first class for the first time. She was finally allowing herself to spend the money she had worked so hard to earn for all of those years and then — bam! Her breast cancer returned ferociously and she died two months later.”
Life Is a Balance Between Spending Time To Make Money and Spending Money To Buy Time
The final lesson comes back full circle to the first. In modern society, time and money are inexorably linked. You need both to have a full life, but too much of one usually leads to a deficit of the other — and those who manage to strike a balance master one of the great secrets of life.
“The combination of how I grew up and my mother’s death absolutely informed the way I value money and, therefore, time,” said Landis. “I studied economics and believe in having a strong financial statement for your household, but as a society, we can go too far with chasing security. The reality is that we can’t control the future, we can only live in the now. So I choose to buy more time in parenthood for my family.”
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