Welcome to another episode of the smart dad podcast. This week, I want to talk about why to have a big family. You know, I was thinking about when I was a kid, was I in a big family? I've got one brother. So that's easy. No, but I love kids. I wanted to be a pediatrician.

I wanted to serve kids. wanted to travel the world and help kids. And I realized I could make kids. I got married young and I don't know if it was a personal mission. I don't know that it was a voice from God or it was a divine calling, but I felt comfortable knowing that I could and would be willing to have lots of kids.

10 kids seemed like a reasonable number to aim for and You know, I did that before the age of 35. It's been Quite a blur actually I did that before the age of 40, excuse me, but here's the deal Right now I have seven children in their 20s. Yes ages 20 to 29 and It just got me thinking about

I'm on the halfway mark. I'm right at the midpoint. My eighth just graduated high school. So I have three kids in college, five kids out of college. I've got one in New York, one in Atlanta, one in Scotland, one in Colorado, one here in Houston.

the three college kids are spread out around the state and it's an interesting thing to look and say I'm halfway through. I have seven kids still 14 and under and you may be thinking I can't even imagine how he does it. How

They do it. What's his wife like and and what was the mother of the kid doing at this point in that point in why would she agree to that and what what what is going on in their brains? Well, I want to talk a little bit about why it's a valuable thing to do. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of the numbers I'm talking about today, they're not going to convince you.

We'll just hang around and maybe we can, maybe we can address this at the end. But I was thinking back to 20 years ago, in fact, 20 years ago, this month I had by definition, seven kids ages nine and under a newborn all the way up to a nine year old. Let that land for a second. Seven kids under the age of 10.

Lived in a blur I Lived in a high-energy Coming and going but fortunately at that time I was homeschooling the kids So we didn't have to be anywhere. We could go to the zoo. We could go to the park. We could go for walks We could read we could color We didn't have TV. I don't think we had any TVs in the house and it was

Difficult in fact after church one day Apparently a pastor friend saw me across the parking lot. He called me later that week and said hey, man I saw you trying to kind of make your way Through the parking lot you just looked

overwhelmed. You didn't look very happy. You were kind of barking at the kids and trying to keep everyone moving along and I just want to check in with you. You know, are y'all doing okay? How are you doing? I laughed. I was like, honestly, man, I didn't even see you. Um, I don't know. I was just probably trying to survive and he asked me a very simple question. Are you happy?

And I thought, you know, that's a funny question because I'm okay, but I'm not happy. I mean, this season is hard. It's supposed to be hard. just turned 30. I've got seven kids. I don't expect every day to be happy. I don't wake up and say, if I'm not happy, I'm doing something wrong in life.

I don't believe in epicureanism. I don't believe that your job is to be happy in life. That's really not my worldview. But I am living my life on purpose.

And that's interesting because I've been told that's not a normal mindset for a 30 year old. Well, when you get married at 20 and have, you know, seven kids, like I said, you're going to change a little bit. You're going to mature a little bit. You're going to reframe things. So that's just a simple takeaway. I want you to think about and in your life, just remember you don't have to be happy or feel happy or

even find happiness every day. You have the chance to do hard things and hard things. Sometimes you're not happy when you're doing them. Sometimes you're just happy when they're over. So I want to challenge you smart dads. Don't strive for happiness. Okay. Take the opportunity to be intentional instead of being happy. Here's a challenge for you. What season

Life are you in right now? You might be an empty nester Trying to figure out how to get these kids to fully adult You might have kids all under the age of 10 like I did 20 years ago Are you expecting comfort and leisure and pleasure right now when you should still be building some grit into your lives Or is it a season for you to take a breath and say you know what?

I need to recover. need to recuperate. Take a day, take a week and put some intentional downtime into your life. Here's a challenge for you. Take 10 minutes this week and see if you can name the season you're in or name its purpose. I've heard and I have found that when you name something,

you take authority over it. When you name a child, you name a pet, if you name a fear and you can describe it, then you can put that fear where it belongs. If you name your opponent or your enemy, if you clearly name your goal, you specifically name what you're aiming for, it will actually make clarity out of your chaos. So at that time,

going back to that 20 years ago, I'd actually just hired a full time live in. We had just built a nearly 5,000 square foot brand new house for about $640,000. Now I'm not bragging because it was a very, very efficient house and it may sound like a luxury. Maybe it doesn't.

But we had 10 people in that house. We had six bedrooms and everybody had to share except obviously the nanny. When she had the baby, she'd take the baby in there, but she had a room to herself. And I was thinking about it. You know, the average home at that time was, you know, 2200 to 3200, like 2700 square feet. The average house had, uh, let's say four or five people in it.

So the average person was taking up about 500 square feet of space in a normal home. And I was actually coming out a little bit ahead of the average home. I had 10 people in a house and at a 4,800, 4,700 square foot home. So each person in my house only acquired 480 square feet. And then I did the math on utilities.

This the space in the house the groceries on everything and my actual per person spending Was less than for a family of four or five And because we had someone at the house, right we could cook every meal at home. We bought in bulk We had pretty simple routines two or three kids share every bedroom Everyone shared bathrooms our lives overlapped our lives were shared and that's why we homeschooled even

And you know what? Even though kids are older, we still have, like I said, seven kids, 14 and under. It's still that way today. In fact, I just dropped off my eight year old at a camp that she's going to for musical theater with her 10 year old, 12 year old, and 14 year old siblings. And her 21 year old sister is actually helping run the camp. So I've got five kids at a camp, ages 21 to eight.

That happens all the time, whether they're volunteering, whether they're serving in the community, whether they're going to the same school. I had five kids at a school. I've had seven kids in a system. It's just how we do it. And here's the reality on this. Big families literally do life together.

That's why they often homeschool. That's why they often have non-traditional schedules. A smart dad takeaway for this little point on big families is the more you share, the less you waste. I find that clothes get more wear and tear. Food is not generally wasted.

We know that everybody gets the initial same portion at our tables, then you eat your first portion, but then they go back for seconds or for thirds, and the food doesn't get wasted. The more you share, the less you waste. For me, it's like a small village. It's like a local kind of experiment where we all pull the same direction. I've got a challenge for you here, smart dads.

Can you audit your life like a logistics manager, like an efficiency manager? What's one area of your life, whether it's meals, whether it's routines in the morning or at bedtime, whether it's your money, maybe it's your weekends, maybe it's your commute, but where can you reduce some waste?

by building repeatable systems. Remember system, S Y S T E In my brain that means save yourself time, energy, money. If you have a system, you don't have to have decision fatigue. So set it up this week. That's your Smart Dad Challenge. Find something, even if you just start with a checklist, because systems create routine. Routine creates order and order creates peace.

One of the things I like to talk about with big families is how we win financially. We've already talked about houses and sharing rooms and spaces. Another interesting one is health coverage. If you've ever signed up for a plan from work or one in the marketplace,

You know, the pricing is pretty simple, right? One adult or two adults with no kids, two adults with one child, two adults with two or more kids. And a lot of times they'll say two plus. Sometimes it'll say two adults with three plus kids. At one point, what, a couple of years ago, I had 15 people on my insurance plan, two adults, and then 13 kids under the age of 26. I paid the same

monthly premium as someone with two adults and two or three kids. We had different copays, deductibles, and even the max out of pocket. That plan became essentially a fixed cost. I knew that it was going to cost me this much a month. And then there's no way, essentially no matter what happened as I stayed in network, we knew that the worst case scenario each year would be $36,000 or $40,000 or $24,000, whatever the plan was.

What's my point? My point is that you might think, my goodness, if I had two or three or four more kids, I couldn't afford it. In some areas, you pay nothing extra. Another one is my club memberships. I've had different clubs, whether it's a Sam's Club.

or where kids go swim and they play tennis. Those clubs have one price for family. Families, you mom, dad and kids. I did the math on one of our clubs and I was paying less than 50 cents per person per day to have a club membership.

They have free reign of the lazy river, the slides, the tennis courts, the bowling alleys. There was free childcare. We have pickleball courts. We had arcades. We've got animals. It's an incredible experience. And I pay the same price as someone who has one child. Why? I don't know. I don't care. They didn't put me in charge of pricing. So

I'm not taking advantage. I'm not scamming anybody. They set the prices. We just get to be the outliers. So when I'm traveling, what do I do? I find out from the hotels or from the chains or from the cruise ships. How many people do you charge for? What about a baby in a crib? What about a baby on a pallet? And I walk in and I say, listen, I have all my kids staying in your hotel.

You have breakfast vouchers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me give one for each of your kids. So we can go to breakfast instead of paying 10 or 20 bucks for a kid to eat breakfast who's a five-year-old. They say, you know what, we want to take care of you. We give you all the vouchers. Have you had those restaurants in your town, in your city, where they have those nights where kids eat free?

Sometimes it has to be, you know, two kid meals for each adult meal or some sort of formula. We'll even take friends with us. Say, hey, you want to go out to dinner? They've got no kids or they don't bring their kids at night. For adults, I can have eight kid meals for free. Again, I don't make the rules. They know we're coming. They offer it. We maximize it. So my point is, is that just because you don't know,

how to pay for large families doesn't mean it can't be done. Resourcefulness isn't about being cheap, it's about being wise. So that's one of the takeaways I want you to take away. Be resourceful. If you have another kid coming, I used to go to the hospitals and say, if I prepaid cash,

for this baby, how much would it cost? That was back when I didn't have maternity insurance. Excuse me, yeah, maternity insurance. They'd say, it's $13,000 or $5,000. So I'd start making payments, $500 a month, $200 a month, whatever it was. And guess what? If we didn't have a baby, they would give me a refund. Now, of course, I did have babies. I kept doing that. But I just kept coming up with creative ways to make sure that my dollars stretched a little farther.

So here's a challenge for the week. Make a list of five places you already spend money. Do some brainstorming. Maybe it's a gym, maybe it's a restaurant, maybe it's a club, maybe it's a store you go to, maybe it's a way you travel. What can you do to save with a better question? I don't want you to leave value on the table just because you didn't ask. You have to ask.

I call this maximizing your dollar. And not to be cheap, but most systems out in the world actually have some hidden advantages for big families. Sometimes you have to be a digger, you have to be a researcher. Sometimes you have to be bold enough to look and to ask. So my smart dad challenge, another one for this week.

If you want to pick one of these, don't assume the sticker price is the final price. The way I help businesses save money is I tell them, pick up the phone and call or email one of your providers and ask for a price break.

Ask them do they have a family policy that they can include your kids for a discount. Maybe it's your insurance, right? Maybe it's your school. Hey, if I send another kid to this private school, can you guys give me a bigger discount? Teach your kids that wisdom shops with courage.

Don't shop because you have to and you're a victim. Be bold and say, hey, you know what? What if I didn't want to pay full price? What if I wanted to buy three of these? Again, negotiation. I really believe everything's negotiable, but people will argue with me on that. But this week, find something. You can go to your cable provider, your cell phone carrier. Go down the list. Even your, I mean just anything.

and ask, can I get a discount? What's the best price you can give me? Speaking of maximizing and eating out, I do eat out with the kids and I do study the math. Restaurants essentially become a game of portion economics. Let me tell you what I mean. Some restaurants you go to, the kids meals are huge. And you're like, wait a second, I can eat a small soup or a small salad.

If every kid gets a kids meal, man, we are done. We can all eat. I can nibble off their plates and that's fine. Or maybe one kids meal feeds two kids. Sometimes the kids meals aren't the greatest value. You find that the grilled chicken has a huge portion or the sides are big or whatever. Some places have free dessert. Some places they swap the free dessert out for free fruit. You can go in.

and start using your poo. I tell my kids use your poo, P-O-O, powers of observation. They always get a kick out of it. Kids, use your poo. So use your powers of observation. I actually have a waiter at a Tex-Mex place we've gone to. He used to be a manager and he said, don't get the large guacamole, get the medium because it's almost as big and it's half the price. Okay, I he's cutting into his volume on his ticket, but of course I'm gonna tip him better because he's saving me money.

Also, sometimes the to-go can feed your family for another meal. So just figure it out and start putting things into place. Hey, some places offer a birthday meal, a birthday dessert, sign up for our club, for our list. If you have a Gmail account, by the way, a little pro tip, if your first name is Bobby at Gmail, you can put a plus after your actual

name Bobby and then put the restaurant name or a code after it. So I'll do like Bobby plus, you know, RW for a certain restaurant or Bobby plus, you know, carport or again, whatever at gmail.com. So if you have a Gmail, you can do that.

and then you can tell one if they sell your email. You can tell two if you're signing up for it and they say hey Bobby plus GW or RR or whatever has signed up for this to unsubscribe click here. But what you could do is you can have separate emails for every place and then you can actually find them easier and look them up in your email. So a little practical tip there. So if that doesn't make sense you shoot me an email or look on the internet it'll tell you about all that stuff.

So here is another challenge for you. Find a restaurant, two or three restaurants you've already gone to. Figure out what the best value is on the menu. If you had to save and scrimp and maybe you had to save $3 or $5 or $10 eating out somewhere, what could you order to get the most bang for your buck? So Smart Dad challenge on this one. The next time you go out, involve your kids in the planning.

Show them, guys, we have 50 bucks to spend on this meal. Are we all getting a Coke? Are we all getting a Dr. Pepper? Are we all getting an iced tea? Are we getting drinks? The restaurant, you don't have to order and pad your bill. If you could all order water and you save 10 or 15%, order water. Being on a budget tells them our dollars are already accounted for and...

Strategy beats impulse. Dads, sometimes moms are weak, sometimes we are weak. Sometimes moms cave, sometimes we cave. Have a plan, get them involved, and then see what happens if you can execute that plan. Hey, what's the cheapest thing on the menu? Hey, what's the most expensive thing on the menu? Hey, what's the largest portion?

for the best price. All those things just have them thinking a little bit outside the box. Another thing outside the box, I pretty much have homeschooled every one of my kids at some point in their educational journey.

But I'm a product of public school from kindergarten through my undergraduate days. And in Texas, public schools are funded by property taxes. So people will move into a district. They'll buy a home that's a little more expensive, that they say, quote unquote, nice home, because they want access to strong schools. Well, if I were in a district,

And my neighbor had two kids going to, let's say kindergarten and fifth grade or eighth grade and 10th grade. And they have the nearly identical house as I do, but I had seven or five or 10 kids in the public school system. Who's getting the better value there, right? It's a hidden value in the system. Same house, essentially the same taxes, but I'm

getting five, seven or 10 kids in the school system and they're only getting two in. So sometimes things we literally have to have like food and shelter and transportation, we can find ways to add value, add efficiency and maximize the system.

And I really believe in investing in strong local systems. I've sent my kids essentially to the same schools, public or private, eaten at the same restaurants, lived within three miles of the same intersection almost my entire life, about 90 % of my life since I was five years old. I've lived super close. I've moved, bought houses, built houses. And I like to invest local.

because it reminds me of that tree in, I think it's Psalms or Proverbs where it says a tree firmly planted by the stream has deep roots and the leaves never wither and it produces fruits in season and out of season. And I think of being planted and having deep, deep roots. And what happens when you're a big strong tree? You can withstand storms.

You can provide maybe just shade, shelter for people to rest under, people can climb, produces fruit, and then the water that's deep into the ground. That tree that's been there for decades and decades can reach down and grab that water even during a dry season. So if you can be the established strong tree for your immediate nuclear family.

maybe your extended family, maybe your family that you pick, that's your friends, your neighbors, maybe those who live across the city, state, country or world who are passing through and they know this house is steady.

and it's ready for me to be a part of, or this family is always welcoming. It reminds me of my mom and dad, and every year for 25 years or so, maybe almost 30 years, we've done Thanksgiving, and it's like a family reunion. My mom and dad welcome everybody from all over the country. They come even from Canada and Europe if they're out of town, out of country.

and we pour into our local roots. In that case, it's family. Maybe for you, it's geography. Maybe it's where you went to high school or college. I don't know, but when you invest in strong local systems, you're gonna multiply your return just by showing up. In fact, my kids have now outpaced me in giving.

to the local community. I'm very much a volunteer humanitarian.

giving back philanthropically with my time. But I started adding up my first one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight kids plus nine, 10. My first 10 kids, they've all volunteered in the local church, in the local community. And their total hours have actually surpassed my total hours. And it's one of my love languages, acts of service. So my point for this dads is whether it's public schools, local churches, restaurants,

theater, invest where you are and you're going to get a return that's beyond the money, beyond the efficiency. It's going to be an emotional, relational and deeper root return.

I don't know how many people you have to haul around. I don't have anymore 15 passenger vans. I used to. And when I did, man, they were not the prettiest vehicles. It was not gonna win me a popularity contest. But at one point we had two of them because none of the kids were the age of 16. And we had to be able to haul kids around.

And I'll tell you what, my cost per mile per passenger was the best in town for a non-commercial vehicle. I could move 10 kids, seven kids, I would throw some neighbor kids, could whatever. And...

It was not a beautiful $50,000 or $70,000 SUV. It was a $13,000, $21,000, 15-passenger van that got the job done. In fact, they were pretty nice leather captain's chairs.

I mean it wasn't a beater, it was nice on the inside, just nothing to look at on the outside. One of my buddies actually asked me, hey, can we rent your van from you to take my daughters for a trip to the beach for her birthday? They didn't invite my kids to the daughter's party, but they took their daughter, and of course I didn't charge them. But they drove it to Galveston, played music, drove it back, and they said they had a great time, it was so comfortable. That was way before Uber. I was like the Uber dad, right? I was always hauling kids around. But the point is,

It might look ridiculous in a parking lot. It might be terrible to park. In fact, my wife, we had about seven or eight kids, and she was backing up into a spot and there was a low oak tree branch and just the right rear window just boom, shattered, exploded. And it was like, well, that's gonna happen sometimes. You pay, you know, you get a fix and you go on with life.

It doesn't always look pretty, but it was very efficient. So stop asking dads, does this look cool? That's a challenge for the week.

You don't have to look cool. you have a dad bod? Okay, let's work on that. Do have a dad car? Okay, accept it. Do have a minivan? It doesn't define you. It might be your stage, your age, right? Might be the reason for your season. I need to have this. So if you're not doing it for the image, if you're doing it for the efficiency, if you're doing it for the, really just the practicality of it, pat yourself on the back.

That's what we have to do sometimes. If you need a midlife crisis sports car, I'm not gonna consult you on that one. it's really, really about setting things up for your kids to be able to achieve greater levels than you did. I think I've told you before, but one of my Jewish friends told me that when she grew up, she always heard in the Jewish community that...

The success of a parent is determined by whether their children achieved more than they did. In other words, if we ever achieve greatness, it's only because we stand on the shoulders of giants. So put your kids on your shoulders and help them hit a higher level. One more thing I want to talk about is meals at home. You know, we eat at home a lot together. We don't run a restaurant. When it's meal time, we make one meal.

If it's leftover time, great, you can pick from whatever's leftover. But we eat what we're cooking. I tell my kids, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. As long as there's no allergies, no one's sick.

We don't get picky eaters. We don't get wasted food. We get rhythm. We get sanity. Sundays after church, Asian beef broccoli on rice with dumplings on the side. I don't like dumplings. Fine. the rice is to this. Fine. We're still eating it. That's our meal. Taco Tuesday. That's Tuesday nights. Crispy shell, soft shell. You want flour tortilla, corn tortilla. You want black?

refried beans, want pinto beans, you want white rice, yellow rice. We do have lots of options on Taco Tuesday. We're in Texas, what are you gonna do? Thursdays we do Indian food, usually chicken korma or butter chicken. Fridays, pizza night for the kids so I can take the sweet wife out on a date. Here's the deal, do life your way. Don't be mean, but don't let your kids drive you crazy. I don't eat that, I don't do that, okay?

You know what, it takes seven or eight times trying something before you know if you like it or not. Again, try it, try it, try it. Take it with salt, without salt. With this on the side, without that. Some of the kids like their chicken korma kind of soupy, some like it dry. Some like their Asian beef broccoli soupy, some like it dry. Pick a meal this week, guys. Turn it into a rhythm. Hey, you know what, let's try doing this.

every Monday or every Friday or every Wednesday or every Sunday. Prep it together, serve it together, teach your kids how to make it, teach your kids how to clean right after they've done it. Clean before the meal, clean after the meal, set the tone and watch how much gets built around a meal. So your challenge for this week, pick one meal and turn it into a rhythm. See what happens. All right, dads, listen,

Final Reflections, I want you to have a big family.

but you're not going to have 15 kids at a time, five kids at a time. You might not ever have two or three kids at a time. So as you do that, just know that's your chance to grow. That's your chance to develop. There's a Bible verse that says, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. You know, God oftentimes only gives you enough for the next step. You can't see what's coming. Nothing is guaranteed or certain about your future. So if you're hesitating,

because you don't have a full plan, stop it. You don't need a full plan. Yes, you need some strategies to think about and plan about the future, but what is the next right step? What is the next right thing? And then if your premise, if your foundation is right, you're gonna end up in the right spot.

This week dads, I want you to know it's hard to be a dad if you didn't know that already. It's hard to have a kid. It's hard to have 10 kids. Is it always happy? No.

Is it sometimes incredibly painful? Yeah, I'll tell you more stories later on. But is it worth it? Absolutely. I would do it all over again. It's hard, it's beautiful, it stretches you, it changes you, it challenges you, it breaks you, it rebuilds you, and...

you get to choose. You're not a victim. You get to say, I want to live a life and pass it on to the next generation. It's literally what we're wired to do, men. So make some babies, invest in them, build your family tree. You have the DNA.

You have the life experience to change the world through your kids and they can leave it a better place than even you found it. That's it for the week. Thanks for joining me on the smart dad podcast. I go out and be a smart dad. Let's do this together guys. We got it.