As a parent, you always want the best for your children without any compromises. You want to offer them a secure future and a comfortable life. But with rising costs of living, it can be challenging to meet the financial responsibilities of raising and educating children.
The article looks at how parents can overcome challenges while saving for their child’s future.
- Determine the goal correctly
Your current income may be sufficient to pay for your child’s school expenses, but higher education costs come at a price. While your child’s preferred higher education course may be unclear at the moment, you ascertain the cost of a current professional course. Suppose, if an MBA course costs Rs.10 lakh, add inflation to it to factor in your estimates. If you expect your child to take up education overseas, account for such additional costs in your plan too.
The key takeaway here is to avoid picking a random lumpsum amount as your investment goal. It is a good practice to know exactly how much to invest to create a college or marriage fund for your children.
- Be an early bird
It is never too early to begin your investment journey. If you invest Rs.5,000 each month to build a corpus by the end of twenty years, you would amass Rs.49.95 lakh at an assumed annual return of 12%. However, if you start ten years later, even with a monthly investment of Rs.10,000, you would only be able to build a corpus worth Rs.23 lakh. It is imperative to realise the power of compounding and start working towards your goals as early as you can.
- Choose the right investment plan
Whether the goal is to save for your child’s education or marriage, both are long term in nature. Equity as an asset class has proven to be an excellent option for wealth creation over the long run. You can consider investing in mutual funds based on your risk profile, investment horizon and financial goals.
You can invest in mutual funds via regular SIPs and diversify your portfolio of stocks across different sectors to minimise the risk. It can help you save tax and deliver better returns compared to other traditional investments. Another benefit of mutual funds is they are professionally managed by fund managers with years of experience in the stock markets. They can help you invest smartly and reap enhanced mutual fund benefits easily and systematically over the long term.
Conclusion
Early planning is the key to building a substantial corpus for your child’s future. You can start by reading about what is a mutual fund, the various types of mutual funds, and how to invest in mutual funds online. Once you become more confident, you can start making small regular mutual fund investments to generate a large corpus over the long term.