Do you have savings for your DC?

[tiffanysaudrey]

I’m sorting out the best way to save for my little one who is due very soon!

I’ve been putting £2.50 a week in a seperate account to move into his own once he is born and also have a change pot. Any birthday or Christmas money whilst he is too small to know/want to buy toys will be saved also and I think me and DP will probably add some each birthday and Christmas too.

I want it to be a good amount for when he is an adult.

How much do you save (if at all!) any little tips to add little extra bits that won’t be noticed or missed but will add up?! If that makes sense.

I never had a savings account as a child but love the idea of having a little bit of money towards his first car, or buying a house or whatever :). Any success stories where little bits have added up?

We save about £20 per month for DD.

She also had a small inheritance from great grandparent.
She saves some of her birthday and Christmas money.
I use KidStart which is a cashback site. I also use Quidco, but sometimes find that retailers offer a higher rate on KidStart. I've accrued about £30 on KidStart this year (on top of about £200 on Quidco which I spend on Christmas shopping).

We did put £10 per month. Unfortunately can't afford now but hoping grandparents can put it up to £2000 each.

Albus would it not be wiser to throw all you can to over pay your mortgage rather than putting it aside for your child? Then you will pay less interest and be in a better position to help them in the future?

I’m not judging, I’m just looking at the situation another way.

I’ve saved £100 a month since each of my daughters was born. Oldest (11yo) has around £10K, youngest (8yo) has around £7k.

It is spread across ISA’s & savings accounts. None of it is accessible until they are 18. The savings accounts, they can’t access without my say so, but the ISA’s they can. I’ve stopped putting into those.

The reason we can afford to save is we only have the one child. 19lottie, yes we still
Have a mortgage but fairly small house. To the people saying if you can afford to save CB you shouldn’t have it, that’s remarkably unfair as people prioritise different things, if you have only one or two children a small house in an affordable area and live within your means it doesn’t mean you are less entitled to something than someone who isn’t doing these things.

We have 3 DC and save roughly £150pm into an account (in my name) for them. Occasionally, I withdraw all of it and buy premium bonds (which they've never won).

I was worried that this is nowhere near enough, so this thread is very reassuring

There is never anything left at the end of the month to save! My child benefit goes almost entirely on kids shoes, uniform, and essentials. I don't understand how people manage! I'm a teacher and live frugally but after childcare, bills and petrol I have nothing left.
I do worry that they don't have savings.Even.if Ido put a bit aside the boiler breaks, or the car needs doing and i'm back to zero again. We don't have any rich relatives either. I suppose they might inherit money from my house if I manage to pay it off before I drop down dead!

When my dc were little, we needed the child Benefit to do those trivial things like buy food, and clothes and shoes and turn the heating on. I can't help thinking if people can afford to just be putting it by, then the threshold for who can claim it is probably too high

I agree with this. I'm surprised so many people can afford to put it aside and it begs the question of whether those people need it...our CB is spent on shoes, coats and to contribute to food and bills that benefit our DC.

What a goady pile of twadle. So you’re happy for the government to subsidise your inability to provide for your family 🤔 but think the bar should be lowered so that other families miss out?
Two families on the same income can lead very different lives. Dependant on their rent/mortgage (debts and outgoings) one could be on the breadline whilst the other is vacationing in the Caribbean!

🤔 how about you move to a much cheaper area or work more so that you don’t need benefits either? Or better yet, how about we scrap benefits all together (excluding those with disabilities) and instead just offer parents working full time free childcare?
Sounds great but would very quickly expose a lot of very lazy people.

I’ve always saved my children’s child benefit into savings accounts which are in their name but held in trust by me. I save extra by taking padked lunches into work and not buying coffee in coffee shops, so that’s about £100 a month.

Because I’ve Always done this I’ve never missed it. Any spare cash I have liked bonuses at work I spend some and use the rest to pay off my mortgage. Once my mortgage was paid off I put all the extra cash into the chikdrens accounts and my pension.

I aim to have enough to put them through university without any debt and / or buy driving oesssons and a car and / or deposit on a flat.

None. We do save as much as possible but everything is in our own name. We hope in the future to help the children through university (if they want to go) and maybe one day to get on the property ladder but our priority is to provide for them now and ourselves in our old age. Certainly wouldnt want to be handing over a lump sum at 18 - everybody I've known who's inherited at this age has splurged it and regretted it later. We dont save into the CTF for this reason.

Their grandparents are saving something for them but I've no idea how much. The kids know nothing about this money though and won't receive it til they're 24.

Save your family allowance that's what i did and never touched it fo 18 years. It adds up

We're prioritising paying the mortgage off as soon as possible. I am not concerned at having no specific savings for dc. I got a weekend job at 15, worked ever since and saved for my own deposit, car, wedding etc without parental help/handouts and frankly, will expect the same from my dc also.

Oh and I have a lot of respect for those who admit to having nothing to save whilst not making derogatory comments about it/ those who do.

It’s ‘nice’ to be able to put something aside but not essential - I grew up dirt poor but with the best family in the world. Also after years of a struggling family business our fortunes changed and now our parents have helped us loads financially. Just because you can’t save now doesn’t mean you won’t be able to help your children in the future xx

12k left to him by my late Father, he has saved up 2k himself from his paper round of 3 years and opened an ISA when he was 17.

I may buy him a house when older, I have said nothing regarding this. I am not going to tell him and I want him to make his way in the world and not just think well my parents are buying me a house so I don't need to try. He knows we are ok for money but absolutely no one in either of our families knows what DH and I are worth.

I put £20 per month into each of their savings accounts. I used to put £80 per month into each of their Child Trust Funds. But I got a bit worried about how much money they would have access to at 18, so a couple of years ago I switched to paying it into a pension (the tax relief means that they get more than that added each month).

We don't, father in law does. He set up their accounts and only he has access to them until they are older. Both DH and I are against it, we had savings saved for us when we were young but both frittered them away on crap. It didn't do anything for us and we feel that we would have learnt the value of money by working hard and earning it ourselves rather than having access to a large sum each in our late teens/early twenties.

I save a little every month for my DC, but nowhere near the levels some PPs can afford.

If we had spare cash it would go into 1. pensions, which we don’t save enough into 2. overpaying the mortgage (to try to be free of the payment through the university years) 3. building up buffer savings on our own behalf. Only then would we start to save more for the DC.

I think a lot of it is what you’ve been used to growing up - my DPs paid for university but not house deposits, my gran gave us a small lump sum at 18, we were encouraged to save and budget as we knew what my DPs could and couldn’t afford. But now they have good pensions in retirement and we don’t have to worry about them financially in their old age (and in contrast my MIL is a constant worry as she gets older what will happen financially as she has just the state pension).

So I expect to help myself first, in order not to burden my DC in later life, but continue to support them through higher education or a financial equivalent.

Also music lessons, activities and opportunities as well as general family life like holidays are more important to me to provide now than the extra £000s to them in the future.

Not goady at all MetoerMeadow. Just because you don't agree with another poster's opinion, doesn't mean it is goady. You'll see even before you posted there were others who also thought that Ch Ben was there to support families with the extra cost of having dc.

So you’re happy for the government to subsidise your inability to provide for your family 🤔 but think the bar should be lowered so that other families miss out?
Well, that is kind of how welfare benefits work. I'm not entitled to lots of things some other families need to live on, because I'm fortunate enough to be able to WOTH in an above national average paid job, yes, so I don't expect to get the same support that people who can't work because they are carers or who work in Min wage jobs or can't get enough hours, etc. I'm really glad I live in a country that (just about) supports people who can't afford to support themselves. I just happen to hold the view that maybe we need to direct more support to those families who really struggle, and not to those who then put benefit into savings accounts, yes. It isn't really what my understanding of a 'savings net for those who need it' is.

I don't think it is such a controversial thought, tbh.

Absolutely fair point DeadBudgie. Point taken

I save £50pm each for my DTs, in an account in my name. I’ll increase this when I’m back at work and have more spare cash. I’d like to set up a stocks and shares isa for them too if I ever get a chance!

I forgot to say that my kids don’t know that I’m saving for them. And I won’t pay their university fees / student loan off until they have graduated ( unless they drop out for some reason that isn’t their fault like a health problem ).

And the money to buy them a flat will have a charge over it so technically it will be a loan. This protects it from going to some cocklodging boyfriend.

We have a direct debit set up for £10 a month into a building society account and DH parents put £2.50 a week in a money box then give us it when it’s full. Other bits have been added ie - birthday / Easter he is 5 now and there is £1400 in there . It soon adds up.

When I was 18 I got £6000 that my parents had been saving for me, that paid for my first car and has provided a buffer for savings (never got below £3000) meaning I have no debt apart from mortgage and car loan (which incidentally I have enough in savings to pay off now but it wouldn't leave me with much of a back up and I'm currently on mat leave).

For DS (4 months) we put away at least half of our child benefit plus £20 a month from DH. Money from grandparents etc will go in too, he currently has just over £500  when I'm at work I'll contribute too hopefully up to £100 a month in total.

To those that are saying they are saving for university that’s £51k ! That’s a lot to save ( well it is to me )

Oh I'm not saving to cover tuition fees, they'll need to get a loan for those. It's to help with living costs - they reckon on a parental contribution of about 6k per child per year.

19Lottie82 no mortgage since we were in our late thirties, no child benefit either.

Neither of us were given money by our parents, DH is from a wealthy family but I am not.