If you think your wedding was expensive and you can sit back and heave a sigh of relief, think again. It is natural for a baby to be on the way sooner or later and it is the start of another lifelong journey of expenses. Planning for your baby starts the moment you wed and this should include a host of considerations to make it an easy passage rather than a stressful voyage.
Get together and plan finances
It is normal for both soon-to-be parents to be working and the mother to be should consider that she will have to take leave from work for at least six months to a year. Sit down and plan your finances as to how you would possibly manage with a single income in the event your wife’s continuing employment is an issue. Put aside a small sum in a separate account to take care of expenses you expect from the seventh month of pregnancy, until delivery and postpartum care. This implies scrimping on things like dining out and shopping for fancy goods. Buy at thrift stores and make full use of coupons to save on groceries. Plan finances to take care of:
- Delivery costs and associated expenses of child care you will need to buy for your child.
- Put aside a small sum on a regular basis in a long term deposit to take care of the child’s college education.
- Put aside a small sum for emergency funds to take care of unplanned medical emergencies for the child or the mother in the event insurance does not cover it.
- If all else fails and you haven’t had time to save, consider getting a personal loan to temporarily help with the financial burden.
It is worth mentioning here that both of you would need to learn time management skills because a baby will need lots of attention and care.
Insurance
Talking of insurance, make sure you take out adequate insurance disability insurance and also life insurance before the child is born. Once the child is born get his/her name added as a beneficiary and the same goes for any other type of health or disability insurance cover so that, as a beneficiary, the child gets the benefit. Make sure that you assess all the different insurance options that are on offer, as you will find that some are tailored to your preferences more than others. A Health Insurance Finder will provide you with the best options available and make taking out insurance a hassle-free process.
Will
Speaking of beneficiaries, it is important to make out a will and that goes for the mother and the father. If a will is already prepared then you may want to have a codicil or draft out a new will so that the child benefits should anything untoward happen. And, by the way, once your child is born you can include your child in the returns and reduce the tax you pay!
The nursery
You will want your child to have his own nursery, his own room where he or she can grow up. This means redecorating an existing room and buying a crib, toys, apparel and other accessories like baby monitoring devices. This is in addition to baby-proofing your home which means closets to keep risky stuff out of harm’s way, use of less toxic cleaning products, electrical outlet repositioning and so on.
When buying items for the baby’s room, you may want to make it profitable to seek online bargains and make informed decisions, such as buying reusable cloth diapers instead of disposable ones. This may go against the innate wish for parents to have the best for their newborn but you will see it does not make a huge difference if you try to save money that can be better spent elsewhere.
Learn how other couples managed it
A lot can be learnt from people who have had babies. Get some helpful advice from them.
Save for yourself
You may focus all energies and money on the soon to arrive child and forget about yourself. This could be a cardinal mistake. Always save some money for your retirement because the child grows up, grows wings and flies away.
Contingency
Even with the best financial planning when a newborn is on the way you never know when Murphy may strike and things go bad so much so that you may need extra funds. This can be taken care of by finding sources of personal loan lenders who will provide emergency cash within 24 hours of applying.
Why worry? Millions of parents have raised and brought up their children down the centuries and you too can do it and do it better with some financial planning. Money is not everything; it is certainly a lot to many people. To that end, careful financial planning goes a long way in keeping the family happy.
