Financial planning tips for parents

Parenthood comes with so many responsibilities that juggling them all can be overwhelming. It’s no wonder long-term financial planning often takes a back seat.

Sparing an hour or so to review your finances and chat to a financial adviser can help you feel more in control of your finances and improve your long-term financial security.

Here are five ways to get started.

A guide to investing for children

Everything you need to know about investing for your child or grandchild’s future.

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1. Build a rainy-day fund

Emergencies can strike when you least expect. You should typically have six months’ worth of essential expenditure in an easy-access savings account. This could help pay the bills if you suffer a period of unemployment or cover unexpected emergencies like your boiler or car breaking down.

Having a rainy-day fund reduces the risk of going into debt or tapping into savings you’ve earmarked for longer-term goals, such as your child’s university education.

2. Create a financial safety net

While no-one wants to think about illness or death, it’s important to ensure your children would be financially supported if the worst were to happen to you.

Income protection pays out a proportion of your salary if you suffer from a long-term illness and are unable to work. This could help you to keep paying the bills, childcare, school fees, or after-school activities, so your children’s lifestyle isn’t unduly affected. Income protection policies vary, so make sure you seek financial advice on which one is right for you.

It’s also worth considering life insurance, which could provide an important financial safety net should you pass away prematurely, paying out a lump sum if you pass away during the policy term. This could help to pay off the mortgage, alleviating some of the financial pressure on your family at a stressful time.

You should also check you have an up-to-date will – this allows you to appoint guardians for your children and ensures your money and assets go to the right people after your death.

3. Invest in your kids’ future

Finding money to set aside for your children’s future might be challenging, but if you can afford it, it’s well worth doing.

With the cost of university rising and house prices considerably higher than five years ago, your child could face significant financial pressures as they enter adulthood.

While you may wish to keep your money in a savings account because investing tends to involve more risk than holding cash, history shows that over long periods, the stock market tends to perform better.

Investing relatively small amounts of money each month could grow into a sizeable sum over time, particularly if you start investing early. Our analysis shows that if you invested £100 per month over ten years, your child could have a pot worth nearly £15,000, assuming investment growth of 4% a year after charges but before inflation (2%). If you invested the same amount over 18 years, they could have a pot worth over £31,000. If you invested £300 a month, these figures would be around £45,000 and £95,000, respectively.

A great way to invest for children is through a Junior Individual Savings Account (JISA). Investment gains are tax free, and your child won’t be able to access the money until they reach age 18, at which point it will automatically convert to an adult ISA.

4. Focus on your pension and savings

If you’ve taken time off work to look after your children, it’s really important to look for ways to top up your pension savings. Your retirement might seem like a lifetime away, but stopping or reducing pension contributions for only a few years could have a big impact on your quality of life in retirement. The good news is there’s still plenty of time to get your pension back into shape.

The first step is to protect your state pension. The full state pension is worth around £11,500 a year and while this alone isn’t likely to be enough to live on, it can take some of the pressure off your private pension savings. To qualify for the maximum amount, you need to have paid national insurance (NI) contributions for 35 years.

If you’re not working, you’ll get NI credits automatically as long as you claim child benefit and your child is under 12. You can still receive these credits if you’ve claimed child benefit but have opted out of receiving payments (for example, because you don’t want to pay the high-income child benefit charge).¹

The next step is to consider topping up your workplace or private pensions. Pensions are a cost-effective way of saving for retirement because of the tax relief you receive on personal pension contributions. This means a £100 pension contribution will only cost you £80 if you’re a basic-rate taxpayer, £60 if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer, or £55 if you’re an additional-rate taxpayer.

Even if you aren’t working, you can pay up to £2,880 per year into a pension, and you’ll still benefit from 20% tax relief, meaning your contribution will be grossed up to £3,600. If you receive any cash gifts or inherit some money, saving it into a pension could really boost how much money you have at retirement.

It’s really important to get a clear understanding of how much your pension is likely to be worth in the future and how much retirement income that could generate. That way, you’ll know whether you’re likely to achieve the retirement you want or need to prioritise your pension savings over other financial goals.

If you’re facing a pension shortfall, one option could be to increase your pension contributions while reducing or even delaying saving into your child’s Junior ISA until they finish nursery. That would still give you around 15 years to build up their savings.

5. Get some financial advice

When you have several competing savings goals – your rainy-day fund, children’s futures, and retirement – it can be difficult to know how to balance them all. This is where getting some financial advice can help.

By understanding you and what you want to achieve in life, a financial adviser can help you decide how much you should be investing – and where. They’ll also check you’ve got the right protection in place, so you can feel confident you’re doing everything you can to build a more secure financial future for your children. Let our ideas help you plan for the future with confidence.

1. https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit/what-youll-get ↩︎

The value of investments, and any income from them, can fall and you may get back less than you invested. Tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each client and may be subject to change in the future. You should always check the tax implications with an accountant or tax specialist. Neither simulated nor actual past performance are reliable indicators of future performance. Information is provided only as an example and is not a recommendation to pursue a particular strategy. Forecasts are not a reliable indicator of future performance.