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Is A Family Compound A DREAM or a NIGHTMARE? (Willie Robertson vs. Dave Ramsey) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  are multi-generational compounds a dream or a nightmare? Jeff and I are going to dive into this. We have strong opinions here at Family Teams, but it's fascinating to see how people are describing these things. We're going to look at Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty, what he says about living close to his family, what Dave Ramsey says about why maybe you wouldn't want to do this. And then we're going to give you guys our take on this. But first of all, check out what Willie Robertson says about why it's awesome to live close with family.
• 0:26
  One of the greatest things I've done that I can actually brag about, I live right here and my kids, I can hit all their houses with one set of golf clubs. That's great. So there's something to when your kids want to come back and actually be around you. I mean, I've seen it in people's eyes going, oh, so many people are like, if I could have just that. Yes. It's not the money. That's right. If I could, where you can see those grandkids, they're at my house every day. Now, the cheater I did there, in-ground trampoline.
• 0:56
  Nice. Awesome. In-ground trampoline. Jeff, have you guys figured that out yet? Yeah, I would. I mean, I'm not at the grandparent stage at all, so I want to hear from you guys, and I think you guys have done this well. But yeah, we actually say that with hosting, and I actually want to 100% believe it translates to grandparent era of like, kind of make the home you want everyone to have like a magnetic force towards. So for us, we like over-leveraged to making sure we always have the food, making sure we have the trampoline, making sure we got the pool, making sure we got the pickleball courts.
• 1:21
  all that stuff for hosting and friends so that we can be that magnetic force for our neighborhood and for other families while the kids are young. And then I think I hope that energy will definitely translate to like a grandparent household as well. So that's kind of the cheat code. I do think that's a cheat code is make it a house that everyone wants to go to. And then but I would say from the serious side of the family compound, yeah, they have done, you know, the Robertson family is amazing.
• 1:44
  And being friends with them and having even visited, like, he's right. There's, I don't know, six, seven, eight homes all kind of sprawled throughout this, like, acreage and property. And they're not all living under the same roof. They're not all in one house. But it's just a beautiful kind of symbiotic relationship of homes and relationships. And I think he nailed it. At first, you want to create an atmosphere where they want to come back. And then I think, second of all, what you then leave open the door for is a million homes.
• 2:09
  probably nothing short of a million, probably more than a million unplanned, spontaneous interactions that you get to have for the next 25, 30 years of your life before you die, when you're a grandparent. I'm like, that is the goal. The goal's not so that you just have a formal Wednesday, one-hour tea. The goal is that you just have these unplanned decades of interactions.
• 2:27
  and lived together, and planned, on mission together, in relationship together. And so, yeah, I think it's deeply, deeply important. I think a lot of, most of human history has lived like this, and I love how he framed it. But what would you say?
• 2:40
  Yeah. You know, one of the things he mentioned was how people's eyes light up when you say this. And I've seen the same experience. Like, it's almost like people are like, wait, like that's the dream. Like, isn't that amazing? And they get emotional immediately because they sense that there's something just right about that. But there's also, it's almost like, man, are we given permission to do that? I was speaking at a...
• 3:02
  homesteading festival, the Azure standard homestead festival. And I'm like, why am I here? I don't have a homestead. I don't know anything about homesteading, but they're like, no, to just share, share about family. And, um, after I was done just sharing about the idea of multi-generational family and living multi-generationally, there was so many tears in conversations with people. And, um, you know, one of the other speakers said, Hey, like Jeremy, you have to understand this is what, you know, people are really into homesteading, but this is really what they want. Like, like they're chasing a dream of family, like, and they realized that if we had enough land.
• 3:31
  Maybe maybe our kids would come home, you know, and and so we've all sort of been a little bit brainwashed into like figuring out how do we maximize our kids independence so that they get as far away from us as possible and live this this lifestyle of whatever the hyper independence completely separated. And then we're all, you know, sort of sitting in an empty house saying, was that was that the dream?
• 3:52
  And there are people who feel like that is the dream. And, you know, one of the odd things about these clips we're going to share with you guys is that that that last clip of Willie Robertson was actually on the Ken Coleman's show, which is a part of the Dave Ramsey kind of network of shows. But Dave Ramsey actually has his own hot take.
• 4:14
  on Family Compounds, a very boomer in my opinion. He's like not into it. He gives a very strong like reaction to why he thinks this is a terrible idea. And I think we need to grapple with his thoughts here. So let's give Dave his say on this. Physical boundaries. It's a good thing. Man. So...
• 4:37
  You know, we are now getting calls in the last three years that in 40 years of doing this show, I've not gotten much of. The parents? Much of. Just this idea of multi-generational housing. Yeah. The parents, we're going to—
• 4:53
  I mean, I've had the mother-in-law question. We're going to build a mother-in-law apartment, right? Or we want to add on to our house and she wants to give us $200,000 to do that. And then she's going to give us that at her death and she's going to live over there. That question I've had. But now we're seeing this thing of the family compound. Yeah. You know, and four families are moving on to one single piece of property and there's no exit.
• 5:19
  These things, you know, and they're doing it because they think it's more affordable to do it. Yeah. But you guys have got to be real careful. You have to think through what happens in divorce. What happens in disability? What happens in death? What happens when the sister-in-law across the way starts doing cocaine? What happens when you decide you just don't like these people? Well, that could happen easily. You know? This is family after all.
• 5:48
  Jeff, what happens when your sister-in-law wants to do cocaine? I mean, these are the questions. I mean, we're talking about family after all, of course. What happens if you don't like these people? Come on, Willie. What are you doing? What are your thoughts about this? Oh, man, there's a lot of layers there. There's a lot of layers there.
• 6:04
  I mean, I think I do get his concern. I think his overarching concern was don't rush into something. Be realistic about something. I think that's kind of what he's saying too, right? Because, you know, we've lived with our family over years and years.
• 6:22
  had him on the property in different ways. You obviously have done that over a decade now in different versions. And so I think, yeah, the thing that is really pertinent is, hey, let's go into these with wise eyes of like how just, yeah, I think it's just wisdom is the first thing.
• 6:37
  And I love your take where you say, one kitchen, one vision. And I think that was something that solved it for us. We're like, we're not talking about all of us living under one roof. But yeah, but there is ways to split this pie where we can enable ourselves to have an experience we want to have, which is actually leaning on one another, depending on one another. See, what I'm not trying to do is create a life where I'm so non-dependent on other people.
• 6:58
  primarily even most of all family. I think relationally, emotionally, financially, spiritually, that's what family is actually for. Now, do you have to put up different boundaries based on the spectrum of health of your family? Absolutely. So would I probably not move on to a family compound with a sister who does cocaine? Probably.
• 7:15
  I actually think all of his reasons he said were very pertinent, right? Whether, you know, be mindful of what does happen in a divorce, what happens in disability, what happens in cocaine. I actually think the fourth reason that the lady said was kind of like, oh, actually, that's the problem. I think just because you don't, you know, the, hey, we don't, what if you don't like someone? And I'm like, that's a whole different category. That's a whole different category. That actually is the job of family. I think the job of family...
• 7:37
  You have 18 years to fix that problem. Yes. Yeah, exactly. You not only have 18 years to fix that problem, but I think the job of family, and this is actually the microcosm of also with the family of church, is to rub the hardened edges off every person. God gave you a family to sanctify you, and that's also true with the capital F family, the church. That's why you shouldn't just go to a church where we all look the same, talk the same, have the same car, have the same amount of money, and live the same life. I want church to actually be able to be representative of,
• 8:05
  of people with different worship styles, different socioeconomic styles and all these things. So that, and even like sin entering all the pictures and all of us holding each other's sins and dreams and hopes and visions, because that the messiness part of that is actually what life is for. But that's really challenging. And so I think regular family, biological family, that's the same job. It's the same job. So I would actually have kind of more of a bone to pick with that last framing. But the other ones I do think you want to be wise about for sure. That's right.
• 8:29
  Yeah. He starts by talking about boundaries. Yeah. I mean, this is the word, like we are so like obsessed with the way that you create peace is you just separate, separate and isolate, separate and isolate. That's the only tool that generation seemed to have. David Brooks, you know, he famously said recently that, um, when Americans become wealthy, they purchase loneliness.
• 8:50
  Like, that's exactly what he's advocating for. It's like, Hey guys, can we just have enough money to be able to all live separately? And all of a sudden a generation, it begins to emerge. They can't afford it. And so of course we can, we, we had a generation that was exceptionally wealthy. We spent our grandkids money. And so now we can go off and into the blue and enjoy our isolation while leaving me with the bill.
• 9:11
  I mean, this is such a disaster for future generations to be sending this message. And this is why, so I am a little bit more hard on this. Like, I feel like I completely agree with all the concerns, but it's important to understand that historically this was totally normal. This was, this is difficult, but you could not afford to totally live an isolated life for most of human history. You needed to inherit those places from your parents. In the Bible, when it says that, you know, that talks about,
• 9:38
  leaving and cleaving, right? The two will become one. A lot of times when we look at what is actually going on for millennia, wasn't that they were completely separating and moving two states away from their parents and completely new housing. They were actually building a separate room onto the house. That's why Jesus said in my father's house, there are many rooms.
• 9:57
  Because he's talking about a multi-generational family house. If you go to Israel today or anywhere in the Middle East, you'll see most of the houses are actually designed so a different generation lives on each floor. And the Muslims can figure this out. They can figure out how to live in enough peace to be able to stay in one house across generations. But as Christians, we're like...
• 10:14
  No, we can't really handle that. We need to all separate. And there's ways to do this. There's really, there's like one kitchen, one vision, making sure that there are very separate living areas that each wife has her own kitchen, that we be careful to make sure that there are healthy boundaries in terms of authority. We're not taking authority over our kids. Yeah.
• 10:30
  Those are really important. One of the things that we've learned to do, because we live in a four generation house, two of our adult kids that have kids live with us and they have their own, you know, their own apartments, their own kitchen. But we do have regular meetings. And part of what we do is I really want to honor particularly the fathers in those meetings.
• 10:45
  They are the heads of their family. I don't exert authority over them. And so part of what we want to do is figure out how do we do this healthily? And so we have these regular meetings where they'll share, you know, what's a word that describes a seizure and what's a goal you're going after that we can help you with? What's an obstacle that you're facing? And how can, because we live this...
• 11:01
  very tight life proximity-wise, how can we figure out ways to help each other? So I think there's ways to do this. And I think that sometimes we're actually giving up before we've tried or we've tried with such weird reasons, right? We haven't really faced, like we don't have generational wisdom on how to make this work. And so once you've sort of
• 11:21
  blasted past that. And now you're trying to reestablish something that was very normal a hundred years ago, but nobody in living memory knows how to do this. There are a lot, there's a lot of trial and error going on right now. And we have to be really careful to construct this well. And that's why I think what we need is advice from people that are succeeding at this, not people that are saying, throw in the towel, don't even try this to a generation that is going to not be able to, for the most part, afford to live the lifestyle of their parents.
• 11:48
  Yeah. And one thing I thought of as you were talking about that is back to the Willie clip is, you know, this, even though this could be discouraging and encouraging on both sides of it, I think it's more encouraging of think about how much it took for them to get to that vision. Right. So, you know, they do again, I can't, it's like six, seven, eight, nine homes, something like that. You know, three, three generations, you got grandparents.
• 12:08
  parents and then you have a bunch of adult kids, maybe four generations with grandkids or great grandkids, all running around on kind of similar acreage, similar houses. I'm like, think about what that actually took. That wasn't just one meeting of like, let's buy a property and let's all move in together. It actually probably was, you know, buying one home 25 years ago.
• 12:25
  Then probably five years later, it was maybe carving out another track. Then five years later, it was this. And then think about what it actually took for how they had to raise their kids, right? From a 30-year methodology perspective, from how they discipled, how they trained, how they disciplined, how they talked about the Lord, how they talked about the scriptures. Like, this is like a real big tidal wave energy, where now he's living in the massive fruit, right? They're living in the massive fruit where he says people see in his eyes, you know, how special it is.
• 12:51
  and they already sees in their eyes. But that's like a 30-year play. Like, that really is. And so you have to really put that in perspective, and I hope that's encouraging, because I do think sometimes the rose-colored glasses, and this is kind of that COVID problem a little bit, a lot of people have, like, oh, let's all move in together and buy a plate and do it. And it's like, well, sure, sure. But it's like, you probably will, yeah, going in that rash, that quick, that unwise, without kind of learning from other people who have done it,
• 13:19
  might lead to a little bit of like blaming the wrong problem of oh this is terrible i don't want to live my family well it's like no that actually probably wasn't the issue the probably the issue is you probably could have done building blocks you probably maybe there was 30 years previously that weren't trained well weren't disciplined well weren't in this you know there's all these layers that i would just say like slow the roll and build it like a metaphorical house like you're built you're that you're kind of building it like a metaphorical house you're studying you're doing land surveys metaphorically you're you know of like what it's going to take to actually do this as a family
• 13:45
  The relationship is most important. If actually getting that close in proximity would hurt the relationship, then always do what's best for the relationship. But oftentimes we haven't really explored how to allow relationships to flourish when we get close to each other.
• 14:01
  And so much of this is, I know that, you know, people like, I could never do this with my parents. And that's totally understandable. A lot of people, that's not a great move going upstream if there's huge differences and it wasn't healthy, you know, maybe in your home growing up. But the question is, will you consider going downstream with a vision like this? Maybe if you are a family and you've got young kids right now.
• 14:23
  Is this a dream that you want to begin to consider making an option? I think it should always be voluntary. I think that there should always be an exit. We told all of our kids, like, you can come and go. Like, we're not trapping you here. We didn't expect them to move in. We did create an atmosphere where that was possible. Yeah.
• 14:40
  And we definitely expect there to be kind of a bit of a revolving door over time in terms of who's living with us and who's living independently. And that's all completely fine with us. We just want to make sure that this is possible. And to have all of our kids living on a street right now, we've got three adult kids that have kids. I'll show you guys a real quick clip. My oldest daughter, Kelsey, she did a little Instagram reel of April. If you guys are on the podcast, you can watch this over on the YouTube version.
• 15:07
  But it's really interesting. You know, she just threw this up. It's very short, but it got almost half a million views on Instagram. Because I think people just are like, ah, and over the comments are just like, this is the dream. So I'll play this for you guys, and we'll close up here. What do we have here? Oh, hi. Oh, hi. I'm in a wagon. Are you in a wagon? I go on a date. Oh, wow. Wow.
• 15:36
  Baby and Ate right here. Hi. It's a baby and Ate thing. Are you guys on the Softa Express? Oh yeah, Softa Express. Come on to you. Have fun. Thank you.
• 15:54
  That's amazing. Well, also props to April with her leg power too. It looks like she was pushing four, you know, kids uphill or something like that. But yeah, that's the dream. And sometimes all it takes is you to see it like that. It's these little flash of moments of like, oh, I want that. But that doesn't happen when you're 60, that how 50 or 45 that have starts happening when you're 25 and 32 and 38. And you're married with little kids and trying to make small investments to get to that dream in 15 years.
• 16:20
  Yeah. Yeah. I don't think April would trade her life for anyone's right now. It is, it is so, it is amazing. I just want to say like, it is, is incredibly beautiful. She has invested so much in this family and each of those kids and for her to have this experience as a grandmother, to be that close to her grandkids, to be there and available for her daughters. You know, she, we got four daughters and so there's a lot of support that they need.
• 16:43
  It's just been, it's been so Osman, her daughter-in-law, Angel, who's amazing and helping her as well. So yeah, I would just say, guys, please don't give up on the dream, but be realistic about it. We want to talk about like there are lifestyles that are really beautiful. We've got over at familyteams.com slash transform, just a really quick little podcast.
• 16:59
  five-part email course that helps you understand the mindset shifts that begin to cause you to think about family in this multi-generational way, because we've noticed a lot of people just don't know how to do that. They've never really heard about this in any deep way. So we want to help you guys kind of think this stuff through, but man, maybe this is the dream, you guys. I
• 17:17
  you'll see a different kind of family emerge within the Christian world especially that knows and has these ancient skills of how to get along across generations. And I think the world's going to look at that and say, oh my gosh, that is beautiful. And that is very worth pursuing.