Afford Anything - PSA Thursday - How to Avoid Parental Burnout, with Andy Hill

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

Andy Hill, father of two and founder of Marriage, Kids, and Money, joins us to discuss parental burnout in the midst of the pandemic. He shares his best tips on creating a family schedule, learning to embrace the reality of working from home with interruptions, and maintaining sanity as kids venture back to school - all while being a good enough parent and partner. For more PSA Thursday episodes, go to https://affordanything.com/psathursday Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to PSA Thursday. This is an occasional bonus segment of the Afford Anything podcast in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the context of the new environment that we are all living in in the pandemic of 2020. In previous PSA Thursday episodes, we talked about the CARES Act and how that affects student loan repayment, ways that you should rethink your student loan repayment strategy in the context of this new act. We talked about PPP funding for small business owners and entrepreneurs and alternative ways to find funding if you need money to keep your small business afloat in 2020. We talked about donor advised funds if this year has inspired you to make more charitable donations. You can find all of this and more in our PSA Thursday archives at afford anything.com slash PSA Thursday. If you're a new listener, the thing to know is that these PSA Thursday episodes are stripped down bare bones basic versions of the Afford Anything podcast. On these episodes, we don't have intro music, we don't have

outro music, there's no crazy production value, our interviews don't have key takeaways at the end, we keep these episodes intentionally ad-free, so in these episodes we cut straight to the chase. They're typically much shorter than our usual episodes, and they focus on one very specific and usually timely topic. Towards the beginning of August, we interviewed two teachers, a middle school teacher and a high school teacher, for their perspective about what lays ahead in terms of schools. How can parents best support their kids in an environment where some kids are going back to school physically,

back to the classroom in person? Others are learning from home and others are doing a hybrid model. So we talked with two teachers in a previous episode about how to manage a school year that is like no other. Now, as the summer break ends, in today's episode, we are going to turn to Andy Hill, the host of the award-winning Marriage Kids and Money podcast, For his perspective on how to avoid parental burnout.

Now, Andy and his wife have two children, a six-year-old and an eight-year-old. They live in Detroit. And many years ago, Andy got really hooked on the idea of how to manage finances for a young family. It was from that that he started Marriage, Kids and Money, which has grown to national acclaim. He's been featured by major media outlets like CNBC, Market Watch, Business Insider, NBC News. And his focus is very strongly how to manage family life, specifically the personal finance side of family life. But what we're going to talk about today is the burnout side. We're going to discuss how his family made it through that transition back in March, that very startling transition,

what they did when their summer camp plans fell through, how they're managing working from home, running their own business, being entrepreneurs while also having young kids at home. They're going to talk about what worked and what didn't work during lockdown. Tips for how to prepare for the upcoming school season. Tips for how to deal with the reality of frequent workday interruption. and tips for overall how to avoid burnout when you're trying to do everything and you're trying to do everything all at the same time. So with that said, here is Andy Hill discussing how to avoid parental burnout. Hi, Andy. Hi, Paula. How are you doing?

I'm great. How are you doing? You know, all things considered, I'm doing pretty good. Excellent. Well, Andy, tell me about yourself, your family. Introduce us and tell us about what your life was like in January of 2020. Awesome. Well, yes, 2020, the year of every. Everything, right? Yeah, now my name is Andy Hill. I host a podcast called Marriage, Kids, and Money. I started that full time this year in January. I cover those topics because I have all of those. I am married. I have two small kids and I really like personal finance. So in January, I made the leap to do the podcast, the blog, sort of this digital entrepreneur thing full time. And it was quite the year to leap because come March, our world got.

sort of flipped on its head. So for the first couple of months of the year, it was me getting used to entrepreneurship as an employee somewhere for 15 years, two months rolling into my entrepreneurship journey. It was a lot of me just getting used to it. You know, paying attention to the bills, making sure people get paid, you know, sales outreach. Everything is done by you as an entrepreneur, as opposed to when you're an employee, you have one specific role. So by the time, March rolled around, I'm like, all right, I think I got a good flow here. And, you know, things are starting to make sense. And, you know, we've got the kids at school full time and I'm trying to figure this all out. And then, you know, coronavirus hit.

And it was our life got flipped upside down, right? You have two kids, yes? How old are they? Yes, we do. So we have a six-year-old Calvin, my son, and then a eight-year-old daughter named Zoe. What grades are they in? So Zoe will be rolling into third grade and Calvin will be going into first grade. Nice.

And you live in Detroit? Yes. We live in the Metro Detroit area, yep. So tell me about March when schools shut down. Talk about how you managed that transition back then. Yeah. Yeah, it was a tough time for us. My wife had gone back to work in a part-time capacity for a job she really liked.

At that time, things sort of stopped for her because she was supporting these two gentlemen that were globally traveling as like an administrative assistant. She handled their travel, their expenses, and all of a sudden, they weren't globally traveling. anymore. So her hours went from maybe 30 hours to five hours per week. And that was not only a morale hit, but it was an income hit too for Nicole. She reverted back to this spot for herself as a stay-at-home mom that she was doing for the past five years. And she was not happy with it. And so it was one of those things where we're both trying to work together to say, what can we do to work together to get through this? Because our kids are all of a sudden home all of the time. And we're trying to manage this online school that was put together by our school district.

And, you know, kudos to our school district for putting it together as quickly as they did in the fashion that they did. But our kids did not thrive on Zoom calls and lost passwords and homework and things like that when mom and dad were trying to figure out how to work and how to keep our family safe and healthy. So March was a really tough time for us. And at that time in Michigan, the cases were starting to spike quite a bit. So, you know, listening to the news, hearing from family members that have contracted or friends that have contracted it, you hear the scariness of the whole thing. So not only are you dealing with difficulty at home and trying to manage education, you know, parenthood and your marriage, but you're also hearing these societal things that

are happening right now that are adding on the stress. So it was a pretty tough spring. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it. How did you get through it? I mean, one day at a time, of course, but do you have any advice for anyone who is dealing with, regardless of the circumstances, who is dealing with that level of stress that you describe? Yeah, I think you nailed it there as just taking it one day at a time because all at once, it was very overwhelming. I felt like within one week, we had difficulty with our work situation, difficulty with our marriage, difficulty with our kids situation.

So for us, some of the things that got us through it were a lot of communication together. You know, we were spending a lot of time together. So Nicole and I opened up our communication that much more. And one of the things that we started to do was like giving each other nights off. And, you know, so she would get mommy's night. I would get daddy's night where it was like, okay, tonight I'm not doing any parenting. Just let me relax after we have dinner. And I'm not putting the kids to bed.

I'm not reading any stories. I'm not making sure that they stay in their bed. it's just my night to chill. So we would give each other those breaks. And we would also be very open to saying, hey, you know, you've had a really rough week. What can you do to spend some time out of the house, exercising, you know, getting some more time to yourself? And during that time, what we also tried to do to the best of our ability was create a schedule that the kids could understand and that the kids could roll with. because our kids, they thrive under some sort of schedule, you know.

And so when things went a little chaotic in March and April, they felt, you know, uneasy and didn't really know what was happening. So we started to set up a schedule on a daily basis saying, hey, here's what we're going to be doing from the morning until the end of the day and what you can expect. And that helped us all feel a little bit more calm and helped us to get through things. It wasn't perfect, but it definitely helped us to. weather the storm of a crazy spring. On those nights off, since that was a time in which people couldn't leave their homes,

I would imagine that the parent taking that night off would still be at home. Did the kids respect those boundaries? I mean, particularly at that age, did they respect like, look, don't talk to dad tonight? That's a good question. Yeah, and sometimes it would be physically closing the door on the room, whether it was your office or your bedroom and just saying, this is the night that we're relaxing and this is the night. obviously, you know, they'll bust in.

They'll peek their head in as just like a little joke. But really, after we had some conversations with them and said, hey, mommy really needs a night off and mommy or daddy really needs a night off and had those discussions with them, they got it. And, you know, we'd find time when we were one-on-one time with the kids where that could be a special time too. Because sometimes if it's all four of us, it can be a little chaotic at times and it can be also special. But there's also something to be said of just having one-on-one time with your kids. So they get full focus from dad. They get full focus from mom during that time, whether it's special reading time or going for a walk or just watching a movie together and goofing around. So it ended up being kind of nice.

And it was very nice for the parent who got the night off as well. So that is how you transitioned in March. Tell me about the last five months. How has, you know, I imagine many things have evolved, things have iterated. Tell me about how you've been managing. over the span of the summer. Yeah, absolutely. So as summer approached, you know, for both of us, we had both found work that we really

like. She was digging her job that by the time summer came around. Her hours had come back up to 30 hours. They'd figured out away because they really liked working with her. And I had, you know, a small business that I was growing and I was really excited about it. So what we did was we planned for the kids to go to summer camps and have them all set. So they're going to be playing at this great camp just down the street and another one. that's sort of an adventure camp, and we were all set.

We were excited about it. And then at the beginning of the summer, those all started get canceled, right? So we had to get inventives. So we said, okay, what can we do to still allow ourselves time to do work that we like while the kids are entertained, educated, and having fun? So we created our own random schedule for the week. My mom, who's a fantastic person, would take them on Monday afternoon and then we'd pick the kids back up and Tuesday afternoon. So we would get a 24-hour period where the kids were with

their grandma spending time with them and they would have an overnight. So Nicole and I would actually be able to spend time with each other on Monday nights and enjoy just some, you know, adult time and have fun together. And then on Wednesdays, we would have a sitter, somebody from the neighborhood that would come by and spend time with them during the day. And then Thursday, Friday, Nicole and I would swap. So she'd be full on with them on Thursday. and then I would be full on with them on Friday. So both of us were getting a good four-day work weekend through a little help from family, a little help from, you know, paying for a sitter that was local in our community and then

getting through it. So with that cobbled together schedule, we have gotten ourselves to the end of summer now and we're all still a little bit, you know, we're still sane now. And then now we're approaching this what will be fall virtual school or hybrid school and we're still trying to figure out how that's going to work, but we're doing our best. So what is the situation with the kids' school going to be this fall? It changes daily here where we are. Not only just, not just a week ago, there was some news in our community that it was for sure

virtual, everybody's going virtual. And then a couple days later, they said, well, it's going to be, you have the choice of going virtual or you have the choice of going in person, but in person's just going to start out as virtual and maybe we'll move to hybrid and then maybe we'll move to in-person. This all depends on the amount of cases, governor's orders, et cetera. So we have chosen to go with the in-person school, which is really going to start as virtual. It's as confusing as I'm describing it because it is. But we've chosen that in hopes that in the future, as things are safe and our school district

feels good about it and we feel good about it, that the kids can then return to a normal situation. But for the time being and everybody in our community saying whatever situation you've chosen, it's going to start out in this sort of digital virtual format. So we've gone from, I guess, disbelief to anger, all the stages, right? And now we're in that sort of stage of like, okay, I guess this is really what it is now. And we need to embrace it. So we're preparing. We're in that sort of preparation mode. So we're looking at what space in our basement can we carve out to be like the classroom.

So that they're not doing their work in their bedroom or doing their work at the kitchen table and getting confused about what we're supposed to be doing. We want to have a separate area in the house if we are able to, which we seem to be able to. And now we're looking at where can we find some desks that they can sit in so they can have that comfortable situation and creating a new schedule that they can get used to in combination of what the school schedule is. So we're looking at ways that we can still spend some time outside together, working at ways that they can spend time, yes, on the screen for them to do their schoolwork, but also some what they're calling asynchronous time off of the screen where they are reading or doing their schoolwork so they're not staring at a screen all day long. So we're trying to figure out what schedule that might be. And since I have some flexibility with my business, I'm going to be the leader of this exciting venture in the,

fall and help our kids hopefully thrive, at least survive, but thrive in their education in the fall. What other models have you been seeing as you interact with other people from their school and other people in your community, in your neighborhood? It's been a hot topic of conversation with a lot of parents that I've connected with. Some people right away, just based on health reasons or just feeling comfortable, they were virtual all the way, just saying, hey, this is the best situation for our family, and it's going to work best for us. Some people have taken a look at just homeschooling in general because the

curriculum that's been set up by the school system seems a bit too overwhelming or they don't want their kids on screens that much. So there are some other homeschool type programs that you can run from your house and maybe you feel a little bit better about, especially during this pandemic season. We've also seen parents getting together in this term is kind of loose, but parenting pods. So they're partnering together with another family or a few other families to take care of the responsibilities of being a parent, whether that's watching their kids for a little bit of time or co-parenting during the education responsibilities that are required for schooling and just trying to figuring it out. And almost in this little smaller pod. So it's not a large school where you've got 20, 25 kids. It's maybe three, four, something like that.

So they're working on it in that fashion. Some people who've got maybe a little bit more money are working on creating. there's only a little micro schools where they've got the ability to hire a teacher, maybe pay for their salary, pay for their benefits. That is something that would be awesome, but we don't really have the dollars to do that right now. Where does that happen? Does the teacher like come to a person's home? Yes. Yeah. So what we've been seeing is that, you know, people will hire a teacher and then they'll come to the individual's home and they'll be, you know, four or five or six students there. And they'll help facilitate the exercises that need. to be done based on the curriculum. It's definitely interesting. Long term, I feel like that could be

obviously very costly and could cause some issues like if the teacher was working in the school district versus working in these homes. That might be difficult for the school system in general. Right. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Lots of different options. And some parents are just switching schools all together saying, hey, we're going to get out of the public school system and just go to these private or Catholic schools that are feeling more uncomfortable, feeling more comfortable with in-person learning. So yes, it's everywhere, man. It's all over the place. What have been some of your best practices in terms of preparing your children and yourself for this upcoming fall? For us, outside of getting them used to a schedule, it is starting to get back into the normal

routine for bedtime because the summer was a little hectic. You know, the rules are a little more loose, but it's very important for not only our kids to get good sleep, but it's really important for us to get good sleep because we are going to be trying to walk into this fall season and try to manage something that is completely new, something we've never seen or done before as parents or really as a society for a long time. So it's going to be very important for us to get sleep and make sure our kids understand the importance of sleep. Also, it's just going to be really important for us to carve out time for ourselves. I know that's going to be very difficult to do because it seems like education comes first. Obviously, we have to work to make money,

but we still need to make sure that we have time for relaxation or just chill time or unplugging because I think we're going to lose it if we don't. So we've talked about that. We've talked about the importance of that, whether that's getting out for a run in the morning before the day starts and allowing the other spouse to sleep in or you go get the run. I think it's for us, Nicole and I, it's just going to be partnering together, having that open communication, especially keeping our eyes open for that parental burnout saying you look like you've had a little bit too much going on with work or school or whatever and just supporting each other to make sure that we can get through this season together.

So two themes that I'm hearing. One is sleep and the other is the importance of having a schedule, both a daily schedule as well as a weekly schedule. Yeah. And I think that's great for the kids and it's also great for the parents too because having some understanding of where we can go long term and making sure that there's a plan is going to help everybody's mental situation as well as their physical situation as we get through this.

And yes, sleep is so important because when we don't get it, we're not able to function in school, not able to function in our work or business. And I know when I'm at a lack of sleep, I'm not in a good situation. And my kids are in the same fashion as well. What are you doing with regard to your kids having the ability to play with other kids? Yeah, that's a tough one right now. A lot of parents are either feeling very uncomfortable with any sort of contact or, and then there's the opposite side where it's like, hey, it's a free for all, right? So we're kind of somewhere in the middle, you know, where we try to plan activities with kids, but almost with this pod idea in mind. We're limiting the amount of kids that they're interacting with.

It's a smaller group activity. So for example, we had a friend whose gym closed because of all this activity. And he transitioned and pivoted quite successfully to doing, hey, we're just going to bring the activities to the houses. So his gym is specific for kids. So we understand. invited him over and then we invited five other kids to be a part of this activity. So they were outside, they were away from each other, but they were still having fun and getting physical activity. So it's being inventive with ideas like that as opposed to the large birthday party where you're going to the play place or things like that. It's probably going to take a time for those to actually come back where we're trying to reinvent ourselves as parents because we know how

important it is for our kids to have social activity, but we also know the realities of staying safe at a time like this. My son is one that requires a social interactivity, needs to be around other kids to thrive. And if he's not playing with other kids, then it's mom and dad playing with him. And that's fun. We like playing with him. But after a while, we need a little break where my daughter, she can be okay with a little less time around people. So I think it depends on the child. but overall, that's a big part of the reason that we had them in school in the first place is that social interaction, learning how to deal with conflict, and just learn how to, you know, be a human. So we're going to try to interject that at certain points within our community, people we've spent

time with for a long time now and figuring out ways that we can do that in a safe and fun way for our kids. Going back to the question about best practices, so you talked about the importance of building a schedule, both a daily schedule as well as having a weekly routine where you know that Monday afternoon through Tuesday afternoon, Grandma's got them, Wednesday, the babysitter comes, Thursday is one spouse, Friday is the other spouse. You have a very locked in weekly routine so that you know exactly what's coming. And on top of that, you have a daily schedule. I guess let me ask, what have you tried that didn't work? Well, I think since I'm such a structured person, I tried to do a lot of things that worked well for me for a really long time into the pandemic season and they didn't. So what I would try to do is load up my workday in a fashion where I'm going to be the most productive and get the most done. And I would all the time fail because of this new situation. So I would set up these big goals and these big business goals or things like,

they're even parenting and marriage goals. Like I would love to go on a date with my wife each month. I would love to have one on one time with my kids. I would love to be super successful with my small business. And as I found, trying to be a big success in all those areas with a global pandemic going on and everything else made me feel like a failure. When the reality was I really probably just needed to be a little bit easier on my. myself and insert the realities of what was going on into my plans and my goals. So that's been a learning for me over this period of time where it's okay to dial things

back a little bit because this is really an emergency situation. And hopefully, you know, we're not going to be experiencing this forever. But for the time being, it's okay to dial things back a little bit. We don't have to be excellent in every one of these areas right now. I think it's good enough to be good in all of these areas just to get by. And that's something that I'm trying to make myself learn during this period of time. Tell me more about how you organize your day as an entrepreneur. You sort of touched on it in the last answer.

But given that you are an entrepreneur, given that you have the ability to create both a daily and a weekly schedule in whatever way you want, we know, we know these standard advice for entrepreneurs in terms of, you know, do your hardest task first thing in the morning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, have a morning routine. How have you reshaped that common wisdom for entrepreneurs in the context of homeschooling your children? Yeah, I think a part of it is when I'm scheduling out my day and I'm scheduling out my goals, I'm inserting the realities of what is now true in my life. So I use a planner every morning to say, hey, here's what my day is going to look like. And when the kids were at school, there wasn't much involvement of those kids during the whatever 9 to 4 time frame. And now I'm inserting my kids as a part of my family goals.

And inserting my kids as a part of our family schedule throughout the day in order to make sure that I'm being realistic with what my goals are. For example, I've laid out a schedule for our typical day if we are at home school now. And so I've laid out what the kids are going to be doing during that time. and then I've laid out what I'm going to be doing during that time. And I've put in some real, real goals for the amount of work I'll actually be able to get done. So, for example, let's say I've got maybe a six-hour workday while the kids are doing what they're doing. I've even laid out half of that time to be interrupted work time and then the other half to be uninterrupted work time.

So I'm probably going to be getting up a little earlier in the day to get uninterrupted time. But during the time when they're going to be doing their synchronous learning or their asynchronous learning, dad's going to be required. So I'm going to just put some reality around my goals and the amount of time I'll be able to work during the fall. And at least that'll help me to not feel so disappointed or disappointed or feel like a failure when the fall comes around because I'm at least preparing myself. You've had to rethink your goals on two fronts as an entrepreneur because not only have you had to rethink it in the context of your schedule, you've also had to rethink it in the context of the opportunities that are realistic for entrepreneurs in this economic context as well.

So you've described yourself as somebody who likes structure, but it seems as though this year more than any other time, you make plans and they go out the window within 24 hours. That's super true. Absolutely. And it's one of those years that I never thought would come into my life because I'm always one of those people that have, you know, said, hey, you set your goals and you work hard and you can get them. And yeah, that's true most of the time. But I think in a year where there's a global pandemic, there has to be some, I guess, flexibility for that. So it's been a really difficult year for me for a guy that loves planning because even before I took

the leap to entrepreneurship, I saved over a year's worth of expenses for any sort of headaches that we'd have. My wife went back to work. You know, I had saved for my retirement, you know, a ton of money so that I feel like I'm good, you know, pausing retirement for a while until I build up things. And I still couldn't plan for the situation that we're in right now. So I think it's one of those things where I'm learning to be okay with the realities of life. It sounds like you went through the denial and anger and bargaining and now you know, now you're at acceptance. That's right. Yes, this is my acceptance time.

Ask me again tomorrow. We'll see where we are. Do you have any other tips? Either based on what you've done or based on what other friends, neighbors, people in the community have done. Any other tips for the parents who are listening to this who are nervous about how to deal with the upcoming fall semester? Yeah, I would say one tip would be, be kind to any parents that are out there that are making their decisions for their kids in the fall. Because everyone's situation is different. And parenting, just like personal finance, is super, super, personal. So be kind, be open to helping people, having an open communication stream. And this is going to be a really difficult time for a lot of parents in the fall. So yeah, I guess

do your best to be kind and wear your empathy hat because everyone's situation is different. Thank you, Andy, for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they want to know more about you? Excellent. Well, thanks for having me, Paul. It's been a great conversation. You can find me at marriagekids and money.com. I've got a blog there. And if you are into podcasts like you are listening right now, you can type in Marriage, Kids, and Money and your favorite podcast player and check out my show.

Awesome. Thanks, Andy. Thank you. Thank you so much, Andy. If you enjoyed today's episode and you want to chat about it with other members of the Afford Anything community, head to Afford Anything.com slash community, where you can connect with other people to share your tips about

managing the back-to-school transition, about paying off debt, about reaching early retirement, about investing, any topic that you want to communicate with other people in this community about, you can do so at afford anything.com slash community. And if you want to get the show notes for today's episode and for all of our episodes, you can get that delivered directly to you for free by going to afford anything.com slash show notes. Thank you for spending this time with us. As I mentioned in the most recent episode, coming up,

in the month of September, September 2020, I will be taking a one month, September sabbatical. So for one month, we will be airing episodes from our archives. We'll be airing an interview with Mark Manson, where he shares some of his best advice about adulting. We'll be airing an interview with Jill Schlesinger from CBS News, where she talks about dumb things that smart people do with their money. How can you avoid some major common mistakes with money management? We'll be airing an interview that we did with Gretchen Rubin, the New York Times bestselling author who discusses how to find happiness through habits, productivity, having an organized life. All of those interviews are coming up in the month of September. So if you haven't heard any of those

interviews or if you heard them a long time ago and want to listen to it again because it might hit you in a different way at this point in your life, then stick around. I think you'll learn a lot. All of our guests have some incredible wisdom that they share, so enjoy it. And in the meantime, I will be spending the month of September doing that deep work around reading books and writing scripts and getting Afford Anything on track to have a really powerful year ahead. So that is what's coming up in the month of September. Make sure that you hit subscribe or follow in whatever app you're using to listen to this show so that you don't miss any of our awesome upcoming episodes. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant.

This is the Afford Anything podcast. And I will catch you in the next episode.