Financial Planning For Young Families

Financial Planning For Young Families – As a young family, your life is always in flux. Between working, taking the kids to daycare, going to soccer games, etc., it’s hard to find time for yourself, let alone time to manage your family’s finances properly. When you add kids, your financial life suddenly becomes more complicated and your cash flow has more competing demands than ever before.

You may have googled “financial planning for young families” and been surprised by the number of responses. Unfortunately, every family is different and has different financial priorities. There really is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to financial planning.

Financial Planning For Young Families

Financial Planning For Young Families

However, there are five financial questions that concern almost every young family that can help point you in the right direction to properly manage your family’s finances.

Financial Priorities Young Families Should Address

Keeping money is like adding salt to food. You don’t want too much or too little. You want just the right amount to make the food taste good, but even that amount can be different for everyone (my wife has a lot 😂).

When I say cash, I mean the total value of checking and savings accounts. There are two parts to figuring out the right amount of cash – the objective part and the emotional part.

As long as your income is stable, you usually don’t need to keep more than 3-6 months of living expenses in cash. With cash, you get a very low interest rate, and housing expenses of more than 3-6 months can be used better, such as for investing or paying off debts.

However, the problem is that most families do not know what they are spending. It is difficult to keep track of all the expenses of children, home, travel, etc. However, consumption is the most important factor in financial decisions. How can you make any kind of financial projections if you don’t know how much your lifestyle costs?

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There is a huge difference between tracking spending and setting a budget. Spending tracking makes you aware of where your money is going. This way you can reflect and ask yourself if your spending is in line with your values.

On the other hand, the budget sets specific goals for expenditure categories. The reason most people stick to a budget is because their budget wasn’t based on their actual expenses.

If you’re not sure where to start, I suggest you check your spending in March and April 2020. This was the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and probably reflected the minimum cost of their lifestyle. You may have spent more on Netflix and the kids’ games, but you didn’t go out to eat, you didn’t travel anywhere, and you barely spent any money on gas.

Financial Planning For Young Families

If you take that number and multiply it by three, that’s the minimum amount of cash you should always have in a separate savings account. If your results are variable or partial, you can multiply this number by 6.

Creating A Shared Vision For Blended Family Finances

This part is more difficult to disassemble. Money is emotions and money makes us feel safe. It is possible that one spouse wants to keep a lot of money, while the other wants to keep as little money as possible.

These attitudes are likely related to all the experiences you have with money throughout your life. Some people associate money with anxiety. Other people associate money with opportunity. A spouse who associates money with anxiety tends to hold a lot of cash. A spouse who sees money as an opportunity tends to hold very little cash.

That’s why it’s important to understand how both of you are used to handling money and be open about your money history.

The right amount of money is a responsible combination of the objective and emotional part.

How To Choose A Financial Advisor

Most people don’t. Usually people just ignore their student loans and continue what they have been doing since the payments started after graduation. Maybe you’ve been so busy with work and kids that you haven’t reviewed your student loan strategy in a while.

Are you trying to pay them back as quickly as possible? Can you get tax-free loan forgiveness? How does the tax loan cancellation take place? The answer to this question has a huge impact on your student loan repayment strategy and can make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars.

The sad truth is that student loans are very complicated. Most people think that the best way is to refinance and pay off the loans as soon as possible. While this may work for some people, you should carefully consider the federal student loan benefits you are giving up when you refinance.

Financial Planning For Young Families

Even if you have already refinanced your loans, you may want to refinance them again. Interest rates on private student loans have dropped significantly, and you may be able to get a much better deal on student loans now than you could a few years ago.

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If you don’t have a well-thought-out investment strategy, you won’t have the confidence that you’ve invested correctly. This makes abandoning ship much more attractive when the market is in free fall. You start to second guess why you invested in the first place.

An investment strategy isn’t just about picking funds for your 401(k), it requires you to answer five things:

It’s hard to answer how you should invest until you answer why you want to invest. Now that’s not easy. This is a loaded question, so hiring a financial planner can be very valuable to you. This means you and your partner say what you want your money to do for you and how you would live your life if money wasn’t an obstacle. This is so important because you don’t want to spend your whole life climbing stairs only to realize you’re leaning the wrong way.

The peace of mind that all of your investments are invested in a specific way that will help you achieve specific goals is a huge comfort in the turmoil of the investment market.

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You may have already started saving for college, or you may be just getting started. Either way, I encourage you to ask yourself these 3 questions to help you figure out what your college financial plan is.

Just like creating your own investment plan, it’s hard to trust a college financial plan if you haven’t fully answered the why and how first.

Why you and your partner should have an open discussion about your desire to finance college for your children. Want to save enough to pay for 4 years at Harvard? Or 4 years in public school? This is likely related to your college experience and how/if paying for college affected your life.

Financial Planning For Young Families

To do this, you need to understand some of the different vehicles you can save for college. Should you save in a 529 plan or a taxable account? The answer is not simple, especially given the uncertain university landscape over the next 15+ years.

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Once you’ve created an initial long-term financial plan, I encourage you to break down your college funding into an annual decision instead of a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. There are so many variables to consider each year—travel plans, kids’ sports, home renovations, and more—that you can limit yourself from investing in other meaningful experiences for your family if you put your college savings on autopilot. What if you skipped a year of your college savings so your family could go on an African safari? There are creative ways to invest in your child’s education beyond saving money for the uncertain future of tuition.

It is important to find a responsible balance between saving money, paying off debts, but also living life now. It’s best to do this annually to reflect your ever-changing life.

*I do not sell life insurance. I am completely independent and do not sell insurance of any kind. I am writing this from a purely objective point of view 😊.

If you have children but don’t have life insurance, start looking for it now. Seriously. You don’t want to leave your spouse and children behind with the mess. You’ve probably heard horror stories before where someone didn’t have life insurance.

Family Budget And Financial Planning Concept With Married Couple. Family Money Savings Concept With Young Couple Expecting Baby, Flat Vector Illustrat Stock Vector Image & Art

Not sure if you need life insurance? If someone is financially dependent on you, you need life insurance. It’s that simple.

As with saving for education, this is not a set-it-and-forget-it plan. The amount of life insurance you need when your child is born is very likely to be different than what you need when they are 10 years old. Why? Because your life has changed in the last 10 years.

There are two parts to determining the right life insurance plan – the amount of life insurance needed and

Financial Planning For Young Families

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