today – Worried about helping your kids financially in the future?

Worried about helping your kids financially in the future

Does the thought  of helping your kids financially in the future play on your mind?  I think about it all the time. When you think back to growing up (the last bits of it, not the baby years) do your family figure prominently in helping you out financially? I would guess for lots of you they do.

Mine started me on the path of learning to drive, thought his took 16 years and 5 tests and they had long given up paying for my lessons when I finally passed!  In terms of University luckily really they didn’t earn enough to help me out. I had five years of full grants  (in them days there were no fees) and I left with just a few thousand in student loans. In terms of buying a house mum and dad  were in no position to help me out but a good friend was and actually gave me the deposit for a tiny little terraced. By investing in property (however titchy) at just the right time I was able to double my money in just a few years and pay a deposit on what is now our family home.

I was lucky perhaps to be educated under the right government and to have a generous friend. I was lucky too  that I was bright enough to go to University and to buy a property at the right time. My parents were spared a lot of worry and possibly even debt.

However.

All the extras

Weddings, care packages whilst at Uni, furniture for my new home, help with big baby purchases, money towards car insurance, all of these things were funded by my parents when I was in my 20’s and were not cheap. Add to that for many people University fees. a first car and lessons,  help towards the deposit for a first home and blimey twenty-something kids are expensive!

Photo credit: Corey Leopold 

Paying out for your kids most certainly doesn’t stop at 16 and to really send them on their way is going to take some saving and planning.  I’m thinking a bit of a mix myself I don’t want to hand them everything on a plate but I do want to give them a head start.

Have you got long terms savings plans in place for the kids? Or do you think they need to make their own way? Are you worried about helping your kids financially in the future?

 

 

Worried about helping your kids financially in the future is a collaborative post – you might also like my post on can you really afford to send your child to university?