To ask how much you are saving for your children?

[Namechangemum100]

Following on from another thread about savings, how much money do you aim to save a year for your children.

For us as parents, we are trying to aim for £1000 for each year of their life, DD is 18 months and Ds is 4 months. This money excludes birthdays, Christmas's and gifts from family friends (but that's virtually nothing anyway).

So how many children do you have, and what saving plans do you have for them.

I save money in my own name.

I hope, of course, that my DC will be responsible and capable of mature decisions at 18. But I know they may not be.

History is littered with young adults who are alcoholics or drug adults who were able to drink/drug themselves to death courtesy of savings/trust funds which parents were not able to prevent passing to them at 18/21.

Well we were able to stop passing his 18th money to ds1

But he'd never given us any cause to doubt him so we didnt

Appreciate that some children would just fritter the money or worse use it for harder and harder drugs, as a friends child unfortunately did

I think the children are due a small inheritance but it may well be given to dh and i to hold as their grandparent wants them to use it for a house deposit

One child. DP puts about £2,500 in her savings account each year. I will also start putting money in when I work more than 2 days per week. GPs also put money in.

Family allowance has gone into separate accounts for each child since birth. We also have some share investments running for them.

We saved absolutely nothing for the apart from burthday money and grandparents money.
However we have paid several thousand on each child on driving lessons, cars and car insurance ( over £2,000 each, each year) so they have done ok.

Our savings and our money to support or not as we see fit.
We’ve supported them all in one way or another and will continue to do so. Major things are deposits for houses and helping them furnish, smaller things are holidays when they’re trying to save and sort housing and cars as they enter adulthood. We’ve given them each a car lease for three years to help start them off and reduce worry of unexpected car bills, tyres and servicing etc. They had interail tickets to travel Europe post A levels and funding for accommodation etc for a month. We’d help if they ran into problems such as large house expenses. We paid off / will pay off university fees and loans on successful completion of degree of 2:1 or above.
We’ll pay a decent chunk towards wedding costs (one probably next year and we’re thinking around £30k probably).
Our children know they are lucky but we aren’t as generous as some friends. There are expectations placed on them rather than simple hand outs. We’d have no problem funding them differently for, say, weddings if one of their intended spouses families was less able to contribute. We’re quite Marxist- each to receive according to their needs etc.

The question you are asking wont have an answer as its not a necessity. Some wont be able to afford it, others will - and some of those will still choose not to.

We saved, but not particularly for the children. They are making their own way now they are in their 20s but if they need some help with a house deposit we will use our savings. If not, we might buy a campervan!

Dd9 & ds8 both had the child trust fund acct with £250 each. That is now about £330.

Ds6 didn't get that so he has a junior saver with £175. We will pay into his acct until we've paid in £250 & then let it accrue interest on it's own.

In 2020 our financial situation will improve & we will be overpaying the mortgage & going on holidays!

We have a small amount of emergency savings which we will add to!

Can I ask - if a parent is saving money in their own name, when it is handed over to the DC is there tax to pay?

We'd like to have about £25-30k in it by the time he's 18 and the idea is to let him have it as a deposit for a house when the time comes.

I wish took the very best of luck with that.

18 years old an access to £25k

I genuinely hope your DS grows up the way you think he will!

Currently between £10-30 a month. Depends on how tight the month is. I have the £10 as a standing order and the extra I put in at the end of the month, so depends entirely if there’s anything left over. One DS, 13mo.

We will buy DD her first car, brand new when she starts driving,
Will have 20k saved by the time she is 18, but that will be kept with us and secret, until I’m sure that she is working hard to create a good life for herself. Same with I will be taking rent/board off of her, which will all be saved for her but I’m quite intent that the funds will only be released to her at a point when I know she’s making the right steps to buy a home, at which point she may well not even need the savings.

I know it’s going to sound awful of me, but I’m not saving for her to blow the money on whimsical things, the money will hopefully be used to help set her up in life.

I want her to be able to start adulthood with a reliable car that will hopefully be usable for 5-6 + years without worrying about the cost of finance, we hope to take care of insurance for the first 3 years for her.

We will do all we can to ensure that she is in a position to buy somewhere for herself to live, and has a financial cushion once she owns a house.

It’s far more than our parents did for us and I’m not sure if there’s much else we could do in reality. I just hope that she grows up and feels motivated to work hard and stay at home until she’s in a position to buy, and that she doesn’t get herself into debt or fall in with drugs because those things would mean the saved money wouldn’t be going to her.

@Icequeen01 thank you for the reassuring words. Your DS sounds very mature and sensible.

We have no choice about our DC’s inheritance - the will states that they get access to the money at 18 so that’s that. It does worry me a little though. DS is pretty sensible with his monthly allowance at the moment, so I hope it will continue.

"Can I ask - if a parent is saving money in their own name, when it is handed over to the DC is there tax to pay?"

I think there is no tax to pay ( in the UK) unless it falls under inheritance tax rules. There is no tax paid for making someone a gift of money.

We have one child, who is 6. We put £50pcm into his bank account (the rest goes on school fees), and my parents put in the same. All birthday/Christmas money goes straight in too. My parents bought him £1000 worth of premium bonds when he was born, but he's only ever won £25 once!! My parents have also set up lots of trusts for him (he's their only DGC), so we're very fortunate that he'll be well provided for in years to come.

We have one, and hoping when he gets 30 free hours we can save. I'm hoping to be able to give him 10,000 in his 18th/21st

£100/month here. All birthday and Christmas monies also go into that acct too.

Nothing. Not an option for us.

Each DS has £200 a month deposited in a savings account for them. Its forecast to reach about £50K each at 18 which they will then use for a deposit on a house wherever they choose to go to uni or work and we will pay the mortgage on it until they graduate / qualify instead of paying their rent.

We only have one but we are aiming to save £100 a month excluding birthday and Christmas gifts. Hopefully once she's 21 it's a nice lump sum for a house or a postgraduate degree.

DC and her cousins are named in a will. Relatives are mid 80's and I hope that they have many years to go yet. DD will get quite a few thousand and I remember well a friend who inherited about £20k at 20 who spent the lot on holidays and designer clothes, watches etc for her and her boyfriend at the time. A two bedroom house was about £40k.

I've got 2 boys - 6 and 7 years old. And I put £500 a month into each of their accounts. Have been doing that for a year; before that it was just when I remembered! Been very busy the last few years and I just didn't think about it so making up for that now.

We just had personal savings. None in dcs names. Spent 50, 000 each on 3 of them to put through college. Not all from savings. Now continuing to save perhaps for weddings but also for our own future.
Surprised at someone saying they only paid for a 2.1 degree. Here in lreland it would be all paid anyone and we couldn't ask for it back.

I would save for my kids, but only give access at 25 or 26. I was fairly sensible as a teen, but only recently got my head together and started saving. When I spent I spent. I bought a lot of clothes and make up and easily started spending almost £100 a month on just make up alone.

I had a few grand in a savings account when I hit 18 (started when the £5 of premium bonds DGM had bought me at birth came up with £50 before I was 1 ). I’d like to reassure people that there it sat and I added to it from summer jobs st uni and then my first job until DH and I bought a house when I was 32! It was very comforting when I was first starting out just knowing it was there...so your DC might never blow it all!

We’re saving £300 a month for two DSs. In our name lest there’s an unspeakable crisis and we need the cash! But with the thought that it may be neede for uni (my DPIL got completely caught out by uni fees and my DH is still paying back his loan).