Last week, I found myself digging through old boxes in the attic, searching for tax documents. What I found instead was something that stopped me cold: a yellowed notebook from 1992 where I’d meticulously tracked every penny we spent raising our two boys.
There it was in my careful handwriting: diapers, formula, doctor visits, baseball cleats, school supplies, summer camps, college savings.
Page after page of numbers, all adding up to what felt like a small fortune at the time. I sat there on that dusty attic floor, calculator in hand, updating those figures to today’s dollars.
The total? Well over half a million per kid.
But here’s what really got me: right next to that notebook was a stack of photos from those same years. My boys’ gap-toothed grins, family vacations where everything went wrong but we laughed anyway, quiet moments reading bedtime stories. And suddenly, I realized I’d been tallying up the wrong investments all along.
The spreadsheet that missed the point
Don’t get me wrong. Financial planning matters when you’re raising kids. Linda and I scraped and saved, skipped vacations, drove our cars into the ground. We thought we were being smart, responsible parents by focusing on the bottom line.
But looking back now, watching my sons navigate their thirties with families of their own, I see clearly what that spreadsheet couldn’t capture. The real investments that paid dividends weren’t the ones I could track in dollars and cents.
Remember when everyone was obsessed with those “What to Expect” books? We had them all. We knew exactly how much to budget for the first year, for preschool, for college.
What we didn’t know was how to budget for patience when homework battles stretched past midnight. Or how to calculate the value of showing up to every single Little League game, even the ones in the rain.
Time was the currency I should’ve watched
My older son recently told me something that knocked the wind out of me. He said the thing he remembers most from childhood wasn’t the expensive hockey equipment we bought him or the SAT prep courses we paid for.
It was the Saturday mornings we spent together at the hardware store, just talking while we picked out supplies for whatever project we were tackling that weekend.
Those trips cost maybe twenty bucks each time. But they built something money couldn’t buy: connection.
I think about all the overtime I worked, convinced I was doing the right thing by padding the college fund.
Meanwhile, Linda was the one helping with science projects, learning the names of every Pokemon (trust me, there were hundreds), sitting through piano recitals where “Chopsticks” was played with the enthusiasm of a concert pianist.
She got it right. I was so busy being the provider that I sometimes forgot to be the dad.
The mistakes that became expensive lessons
Here’s something I rarely talk about: I pushed my older son toward engineering. Made perfect sense, right? Good salary, job security, respectable career. I even helped him fill out applications to all the “right” schools.
Four years and a mountain of student loans later, he graduated with a degree he never used. Took him another three years to work up the courage to tell me he hated every minute of it. He’s a teacher now, making a third of what an engineer would make, and he’s never been happier.
That engineering degree? Most expensive mistake I ever made. Not because of the tuition (though that hurt), but because of the three years of misery I put him through by not listening to what he actually wanted.
If you’re a regular reader, you may remember I wrote about the importance of letting kids find their own path. Well, this is where that lesson came from. The hard way.
What compound interest really looks like
You know what actually compounds over time? Not just your 401k. It’s the small moments of presence. The bedtime stories that turned into conversations about fears and dreams as they got older. The family dinners where phones were banned and everyone had to share one good thing and one hard thing from their day.
My younger son still does this with his kids. Last Sunday, his eight-year-old told me, “Grandpa, we do good-thing-hard-thing just like Daddy did when he was little.” That tradition cost nothing. Its value? Priceless.
I see it now in how my sons parent their own children. They’re not perfect (who is?), but they show up. They’re present. They’ve learned to value connection over achievement, presence over presents.
The retirement account nobody tells you about
Speaking of compound interest, let me tell you about the best retirement investment I never knew I was making. It’s called relationships.
Linda and I are in our sixties now. Our friends are starting to deal with kids who rarely call, grandchildren they barely know. Some spent fortunes on their kids’ education and activities but somehow ended up strangers to the very people they worked so hard to provide for.
Meanwhile, our sons call just to chat. They bring the grandkids over for Sunday dinners. When I had my hip replaced last year, they took turns staying with us, not because they had to, but because they wanted to.
You can’t buy that kind of return on investment.
The portfolio I’m building now
These days, I’m investing differently with my grandchildren. Sure, I’ve got college funds started for all four of them. But I’m more interested in the memory bank we’re building together.
Every Thursday, I pick up my three-year-old granddaughter for what we call “adventure day.” Sometimes it’s just the park. Sometimes it’s the library. The cost is usually just gas money and maybe an ice cream cone. But she’s learning that Grandpa is someone who shows up, someone who has time for her.
With the older ones, I’m teaching them things that weren’t on any spreadsheet: how to fix a leaky faucet, how to change a tire, how to write a thank-you note that actually means something. Life skills that cost nothing to teach but save them from feeling helpless in the world.
Closing thoughts
That notebook from 1992 is back in the attic now. But I kept one photo from that stack: it’s Linda and me with our boys at some beach somewhere, all of us covered in sand and sunburned, grinning like idiots. I have no idea what that vacation cost. I remember everything about how it felt.
If I could go back and talk to that younger version of myself, the one carefully tracking every expense, I’d tell him this: Yes, keep saving. Yes, be responsible. But remember that the most valuable investment you can make in your kids isn’t measured in dollars.
It’s measured in moments. In presence. In really listening when they talk about their day. In admitting when you’re wrong. In showing them how to fail and get back up. In teaching them that love isn’t something you earn with good grades or touchdowns.
So here’s my question for you: What are you really investing in?
