Parents serve as a major influence in their children’s career development and career decision- making. Parents want their children to find happiness and success in life and one factor which influences happiness and success is career choice. Research also indicates that when students feel supported and loved by their parents, they have more confidence in their own ability to research careers and to choose a career that would be interesting and exciting. This is important because studies show that adolescents who feel competent regarding career decision-making, tend to make more satisfying career choices later in life. (Keller 2004).

Parents influence the level of education or training that their children achieve; the knowledge they have about work and different occupations; the beliefs and attitudes they have to working; and the motivation they have to succeed. Most of this is learned unconsciously – children and teenagers absorb their parents’ attitudes and expectations of them as they grow up.

Child Future Plan – before birth

So what’s the solution? It’s always prudent to enter into a situation well prepared and in a planned manner which is going to affect your financial Life. In fact planning for child’s future and managing of the finances should start much before a child is born. Have a proper plan (please read this as planning because people think a plan means a product) for the children’s future. You can do following few things as soon as you get married:

Start a baby fund by regularly setting aside an amount every month to manage the expenses. You should have a thorough understanding of your finances. You should not enter into this responsibility if you are burdened with debt. Your EMI should not be more than 10-20% of your income at this stage since your expenses are going to increase soon.

Start saving with a proper asset allocation: You should be clear on the money value of your goals before starting any saving. Goal value should be inflation-adjusted.

Try to use only those instruments which provide tax-free returns like Equity Mutual Funds.

If the returns are taxable then the return amount will be added back to the parent’s income and taxed as per the slab in which parent is in.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. Someone rightly said “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow”.