Planning for your child’s future – Your #BabyGotPlans, Do you?

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When I was a kid, my two favorite things to do were, building PowerPoint Presentations and creating Origami Paper Balls. I was fascinated by everything computers, the programming part of it and the architectural aspect of Origami.

I would go about announcing to everyone that I would be a Computer Engineer or an Architect when I grew up. My dad being a small-time businessman and my mom a housewife, would often blanch at my lofty (and expensive) career plans.

I did end up becoming a Computer Engineer after all, but I watched my parents save every penny, sacrificing their plans for our career goals.

Cut to 25 years later, I am watching Miss P, as a 3-year-old, argue with her best friend that she is the doctor and he should be the patient when it hits me! Déjà vu! Gosh! What if she grows up wanting to be a real doctor? Are we prepared financially? 

Admit it. Irrespective of whether you are confident about your parenting or not, you wonder at times — am I doing all that I can for my child?

My knee-jerk reaction was just like what my parents probably had. I announced to my husband in a sad but proud manner that I was willing to make all the sacrifices to fulfill my daughter’s dreams. No more holidays, no more movies and no more eating out!

Thankfully my husband, being the financially savvy one, reassured me that by planning early, we could afford our daughter’s education as well as plan our aspirations too.

Being a parent puts a lot of pressure on most of us. Raising kids is a responsibility that is both marvelously uplifting and crushingly stressful. Our kids have dreams and so do we. How do we manage both? By planning for both, of course.

Planning for Your Child’s Future

One thing we were sure of, to plan for Miss P’s needs; it always pays to start early. This is because if we start saving and invest early, it would give us enough time to meet our financial goals. E.g. – If your child is 3-4 years old, you have a good 13-14 years to save.

But it became very clear to us that saving alone was not sufficient. It was important to set aside a monthly sum and invest it systematically in suitable investment avenues.

Our savings bank account would not earn high returns, and might not enable us to create the necessary corpus to meet our financial goals. Considering 10% inflation and an FD / savings bank interest rate of max 6%, we couldn’t keep up.

Our Financial Plan –

• We decided to forecast the expenses that may arise in future – Approx 35 lakhs for Miss P’s education
• Begin the process of saving and investing early – We started when Miss P was 3.
• Choose a good investment portfolio mix of Risk – We invested in some Gold, some land, some SIPs, MFs and Children’s Plans.
• It is also important to review the progress of our investments every year. We also kept monitoring the cost of education on a yearly basis and accordingly adjusted our investment requirement.
• Keep some money aside for other priorities (Retirement, Medical expenses, Housing rent etc.)
• Have a good Insurance Coverage to mitigate expenses even if we are not around

One of the best ways to finance our child’s education is through a long-term savings plan that matures when our child starts College.

Child Plans such as IDBI Federal Life Insurance Wealthsurance Future Star Insurance Plan, help us Secure our child’s future with Customizable Plans. These combine savings, protection, and investment elements to help us grow the money we want to set aside for our child’s future.

Then IDBI Federal Life Insurance came out with their latest campaign for children’s future solutions – A quirky, humorous video that packs a punch with style. Sharma Ji’s son is busy making plans. Is Sharma Ji doing the same? Hah! We were the Sharma Family a few years back!

Watch to know more…

The campaign prods us as parents to start preparing for our child’s future without sacrificing our individual dreams. This really got me thinking and we reviewed our Child plans now that Miss P is nearly a teen.

Contest Alert #BabyGotPlans

The second part of the campaign is a fun contest – where parents send photos/videos of their kids and tell IDBI Federal Insurance what they think their kid is thinking about. I can’t wait to see all the entries. Here’s my entry – Miss P, my little fashionista posing for the camera.

You can participate too. Just click a photo of your child and guess what he/she must be thinking and upload it to IDBI Federal’s Contest Page by 5th November, 2017. 

Whatever route you choose to finance your child’s education, the best way to do so is with plenty of research and action. And there’s no better time to start than today. Just like Junior Sharma, your baby’s plans may seem simple right now, but that could change a few years later.

Since your #BabyGotPlans, so should you!