Share with Teachers Assurance your thoughts on children and finance: you could win a £100 voucher! NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

Teachers Assurance, a friendly society and provider of savings and investments for children, has asked us to find out from Mumsnetters the attitudes or plans that you have for continuing to financially support your children, even when they’re all grown up.

They say “we know that, at the moment, you’ve probably got your hands full with a young child and understand that it may feel like you’ve got plenty of time until they’re old enough to need financial help for the things they want to buy or do. But children grow up fast and soon enough, they’ll be experiencing the later costs of life such as university fees, a first car, or finding a deposit for their first home”.

So, have you made provisions for your child’s future? Maybe you encourage your child to start saving from a young age instead? Or perhaps you’re planning to gift them some money on a milestone birthday? Please share your thoughts on this topic on this thread and you will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £100 Love2Shop voucher (additional Teachers Assurance T&Cs* apply).

Please note that any comments posted on this thread may be used by Teachers Assurance in further marketing material.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

*NB Standard MN terms and conditions apply – see here.

**Prize draw closing date: 20 November

DD is only 4 so since birth we've been saving £20 a week - not very much but hopefully we can add to it in time. She understands that we need to work to earn money so that we can buy things so we encourage her to save any coppers / loose change that she comes across so that she can save to get the things that she wants.

We are trying to save £120 a month. At the moment this is in an ISA in ds1's name, but I am a bit worried about him blowing all the money when he is 18!

I will encourage ds to save and budget when he is older. I am good at budgeting and think this is a vital life skill.

I would love to save for them but we are struggling enough to pay for rent and bills while slowly saving for a deposit. This seems like a bigger priority ATM. They were both lucky to be born while the govt did that £250 thing (can't even remember the name) but we haven't been able to add to it yet.

On a smaller scale, I'm teaching DD to save her pocket money for things she really wants rather than blowing it all! It took a while but she is starting to understand it.

Unfortunately we do have to say "we can't afford that" a fair bit when they want to do something but the flip side is it leads to a discussion on looking after our money and thinking ahead etc.

We save the equivalent of the DCs' child benefit, in a tracker fund for DS and a CTF for DD. We involve them in planning the family budget so they'll be well prepared for independent living when the time comes (though that's a few years away yet).
We have the Motley Fool guide to saving for children, it has some very useful advice on compound interest and share investment.

We currently save £20 a month for each child. I would like to increase this, but it is better than nothing. Dd1 is starting to have an awareness of the value of money (5yo) and has pocket money to teach her this.

We've bought two buy to let flats, one of which we plan to sell when the oldest DC is 18 to use for three lots of uni fees, the second of which will be sold once the mortgage is paid off and will be split three ways to give DCs a deposit for a first property.

They also have child trust funds but they're not v big.

At the moment, we don't have dedicated savings for the dc beyond accounts that birthday/Christmas cheques are paid into (both are under 5).

Our plan is our mortgage should be fully paid off by the time dc1 is 15 (or earlier if we can over pay), then we will save that each month until uni/hand it over to pay for uni bills.

After that, I don't intend to give big hand outs, perhaps if they don't go to uni I will, and we both got help with paying for our wedding, so possibly something towards that, but no big 18th/21st payout.

Oh and agree that saying "we can't afford that" is actually good to teach children the value of money. Saying no but then explaining why is a good way to teach child budgeting, along with meaning they are more likely to appreciate what you say yes to.

Both children have their ctf which we try to put money in every now and then but we can't afford a lot. Trying to encourage them to save any money they get, which doesn't always work but it's a start. We can't put much away as we would be depriving ourselves now bit I'm sure if we can afford to help them when they are older we would. At the moment I am only part time but when they are a bit bigger I will hopefully be able to up my hours and start saving properly

my parents save for the grandkids, we concentrate on paying off the mortgage, hoping to save in a few years when that is paid off
i am v worried about university debt. far bigger than our savings could ever be

We put the child benefit into an account for the boys as well as birthday or Christmas money. They have so many toys, they don't need more; the savings will be very useful to them later on in life. Their too young for allowance but we'll start that in a couple of years.

We started our daughter saving from birth with birthday money, Christmas & then pocket money to get her in the saving habit. She then had interest (claiming tax) and eventually an ISA which is tax free.

I have a child trust fund for each of them...they were both born in that brief window when these existed. I pay a bit into each month. It is in a stocks and shares account, so no idea if there will be any money in it when they reach 18. Other than that, I think my financial support of them out of my wages and then pension will go on for quite some time.

Not that much spare to save but both children have an account which I pay into as much as I can when I can. I also pay their birthday and Christmas money into this as they have a toy mountain and are only 3 and 5 so don't need or miss it at the moment.

Both DC have had savings accounts since they were very young. We paid in a small amount monthly by direct debit and added birthday and Christmas money. When I earned more I increased the monthly amount and cut back when I earned less. They missed out on child trust fund but I have now opened junior ISAs for them both as the interest rate on their savings account was poor.

I added some extra cash to the ISAs this year from my redundancy money!

The eldest is now 17 and has his own bank account and a part time job that he saves from, he has a plan to go on holiday with friends next summer. I haven't told either of them about the ISAs yet. I would hope they use the money for a (small) house deposit and get loans for uni costs if they go. Although I also accept that when they turn 18 the money is theirs and they can do what they like with it!

We would love to have enough money to help the children out, but we don't have enough to save for a pension, let alone any left to help them buy a house/car whatever.

I feel guilty, but they need food and clothes now!!

We arnt in a position to be able to put money regularly to one side for dc, but at Christmas and birthdays we always ask a few people for money, and this gets added to their isas.
We chose isas for them because if money ever got really really tight we could dip into them to keep our family afloat

I opened bank accounts for both of our DDs, and pay in any cash they get as gifts for Christmas/birthdays/christening etc, but we don't contribute any regular savings. I don't have a pension either, we just don't seem to have enough left at the end of the month for saving.

I would like to save for my daughters but just do not earn enough.

Just like when I was younger - I think they will also be taking out student loans if they choose to go to university. Things like driving lessons, a first car, deposits on homes, student fees etc were never paid for by my parents, I had to work for them myself. I will be instilling a message into my children 'you work hard for what you want'. It's the best lesson I can teach them. In the meantime, if we become millionaires things might change, but until then it's a tough love policy, after all they have to face reality at some point - we cannot provide for them forever!

So, have you made provisions for your child’s future?

Both our children have got savings accounts and bonds/trust accounts but although their combined savings are more than ours , they haven't got enough to make a huge difference to life once they reach 18. Ideally we'd have 'uni' funds for both but that's beyond our finances.

ourage your child to start saving from a young age instead?

Afraid that they're both spendthrifts,taking after DH. After DD wasted all her B'day money on 'tat' think future given money will be going straight into the bank!

No we're not planning on gifting them any money on a milestone birthday. Afraid we have a rather old-fashioned view that we didn't have money gifted to us so why would we do it for our DCs. Might be different if they showed some financial responsibility but yet to see the evidence. Plus not sure we will be in a position to gift any reasonable amount of money to them. We are 'older parents' and we're not exactly flush and can't see our income wildly increasing as they get older (although expenditure already is as they get older!).

My two are 6 years and 18 months.
We save £20 a month for each of them. One has a child trust fund, the other has a children's ISA (I think).

We don't intend gifting them money on a significant birthday, mainly because we don't have any money to gift.

We will try and teach them about saving. DD1 has a piggy bank. She gets given money by family members when they visit. We give her pocket money (should be 50p a week but we usually forget). We then talk about how much money she has, we count it up, and if we are going somewhere special I let her take it. We then have a look round the gift shop (or whatever) and we talk about what she could get. We also remind her that if there's nothing she really wants then she doesn't have to spend it, and that would leave her even more for next time. If she wants something that she doesn't have the money for, then tough.

We don't lend her money! We learnt the hard way. We went out and forgot her purse, so DH gave her some money for the thing she wanted but we told her, several times, that she would have to pay him back. All seemed fine. When we got home, we reminded her that she had to get her money to pay Daddy back. She told everyone for weeks afterwards that Daddy had taken all her money. Just taken it out of her money box. She was quite upset - genuinely didn't seem to understand the paying back concept. Now, we don't lend. She has her money, she pays. Or if we're somewhere really special and she hasn't got her purse, we just buy her a treat and don't mention pay back!!

We got our daughter a money box for her birthday and she already has her own savings account.

We can't afford to save regularly for my daughter at the moment as I am saving up for my second stint of maternity leave. However, it's something I would like to do once we are more financially straight

Change in family circumstances in the last year. Our children are teens. The provision we are making for their future is talking to them about what we can afford and what not, now; about how we save money, what we choose to spend more on and how we make the decisions; supporting them to earn and to generate income; and giving them some money each month to save or spend, so they can practise making those decisions themselves.
All family savings going to overpay mortgage, and while they will always have a home with me, and I will help towards their living costs at university, I can't see that I'll ever be in a position - or choose - to get them a car or to pay off their tuition fees. Would like to help towards deposit for house, but think its unlikely.

I save a fair amount each month into savings for DD; I'm working on the basis that the older they get, the more expensive they get. We can afford to save a couple of hundred pounds per month in a savings account while she is small - so when she starts getting more expensive and we're paying for school trips, hobbies etc there's some money we can use to fund things. This money isn't in her name, though - just earmarked as for her.

I was brought up by careful parents, so she won't get everything she might want as I hope this will teach her the value of working and saving for things, but it is nice to have the funds to support her too. She's also learning about saving for the things she wants - her weekly pocket money from grandparents goes in her pig; if she wants to buy something (usually Lego!) she saves up for it and pays from the piggy bank. Any Christmas/birthday money is in a separate account (her own account).

I doubt we will have enough for her to come out of uni debt-free, but my parents supported me through uni to the extent that by being careful with my money I left with no debt (though this was in the days of £1k tuition fees) - assuming she's careful with money, I'd like for her to leave uni with only the tuition debt to repay. I don't plan to gift her money on a particular birthday, but as she is an only if there's anything left after university it would be nice to be able to help her get on the property ladder, or at least help her out with getting set up in her first home, as otherwise I think for her generation it will be almost impossible. All depends on our finances though - if we need the money as a family because of redundancy or ill health in between, that will have to take priority.

We have a Junior ISA for our 2 year old and Grandparents have the same. We will also encourage saving from a young age as we were both, DH and I, taught the same and managed very well in financing our first home at a time when none of our friends could do the same. Our DS will have the choice on what to do with his money but I hope he puts it to good use as we really want the best for him.