Is this your savings plan?
We dream big for our kids. Regardless of how we grew up, many of us strive to provide a better life for our children than we had. Whether it’s living in a more comfortable neighborhood, being able to take family trips, or sending them off to college, we want our kids to have opportunities.
While all of those sounds great, there’s one thing they all have in common – they cost money. Lots of money. And when you want to be able to afford something that costs lots of money, that means you need to start saving and planning early. Figuring out a financial plan for your family, on top of doing your jobs, housework, taking care of the kids and (the ever-wishful) time to relax, can seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, saving for the future can start with a few small, and manageable steps.
The recent MassMutual State of the American Mom study offers these suggestions for gaining control of your family’s finances.
- Understand what the family’s fixed expenses are each month and how much money can be used for discretionary spending by creating a budget.
- Set savings objectives for the family’s short- and long-term goals and then incorporate them into the budget’s fixed expenses. After a few months or a year, evaluate the progress toward those goals and re adjust allocations if needed.
If you’re planning on sending your kids to college, they recommend treating the savings like a monthly bill, so the savings occur regularly. If you come into a little extra money or have another payment that ends, route some, or all, of that money to go towards the college savings. I definitely suggest putting the savings into an interest-bearing savings account. Every little bit helps.
Don’t forget, that as we plan for our family’s financial future, it’s also setting an example for our kids. Teaching our kids about saving and being responsible about money will only benefit them in the long run.
What are you doing to prepare for your or your family’s financial future stability?
Take the financial personality quiz below to discover your financial personality and for a chance to win $100. I’ve been handling my finances for quite awhile and am a “Successful Planner”, although I know there’s still so much for me to learn.
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Disclaimer: I wrote this post as participation in in a blog tour for Mom Central on behalf of MassMutual and received compensation in the form of an Amazon gift code to thank me for taking the time to participate.
What a great tool! My first job out of college was working for Mass Mutual (my grandfather worked for John Hancock and I wanted to follow in his footsteps), and I likd it although I quickly determined it was not the right fit for me (I ended up being a CFO!). Anyhoo, people should take this quiz regularly, because it is so hard to fall off the financial planning “bandwagon.”