Top 5 things a Parent Can Give.

As a parent myself, the responsibility of taking care of the family double or even triple, depending on how many dependants you have and family obligations. Besides providing the basic needs to your child such as a shelter, food and clothes, there is other necessary bucket list of items a child should have and to give him or her a good headstart. I used to have people asking me how do I manage with my 3 kids, how can I love them all. My answer is simple, for parents who have more than a child, the love for your children multiplies, it is not divided. However financially, we also need to be better prepared such as planning for your kid's education and our own retirement planning. The whole list of financial planning just get expanded.

Being a seasoned parent now, my personal opinion on the top 5 things a parent can give to a child are as follow

1) Unconditional Love and time (of course!)

2) Providing them the basic needs such as home, food and clothes.

3) Teaching them the correct values.

Afterall, children look up to their parents as their role model. What we do, say and how we bring up our child, will have an impact on their upbringing.

4) Getting them a life plan.

Parents often neglect giving their children a good financial head-start. It is understandable as providing them the basic needs are more important. However, insurance is not totally bought with wealth but most importantly with health. Personally, for me, this is one of the most important gift a parent should gift to their child, this is what I call, a gift of love. In my line of work, I have personally known of colleagues who joined this industry as they have lost their young child to an illness such as cancer or leukemia. And of course, we are also being bombarded with news of crowd funding for seriously ill children in the social media space almost on a daily basis.

5) Starting an education plan.

Below is a simple illustration on potentially what would happen if an education plan is started. Afterall, we would not want to borrow money and pay interest because of our inability to plan much earlier. Of course, there are also different ways you could make your money work harder for you by doing sound investment as well.

Generally, there are many sacrifices a parent will make, I am not a perfect parent myself. There are many gifts which we can give to our children but instead of gifting them toys at every shopping trip, these are the top 5 things which I gave to my 3 children as my gift of love for them.

If you are a parent or parent-to-be reading this, what do you think are the BEST gifts you can gift to your child? I would love to hear from you :)

Opinion(s) expressed are solely in my personal capacity and do not express the views or opinions of Prudential and does not represent any professional advice in the capacity as a PACS representative.

335/12Jun21

#financialtips #educationplanning #parentingtips