Life is all about making plans and breaking plans. Most of the time, people will plan out what they need financially before putting their dreams into place. One of the most important plans that you will ever have for your family is a financial one, and you’ll have those plans before your family is even created. You’ll think about things like retirement funds and life insurance and college accounts that are set up and ready to go before your children have even arrived. Your financial plan is your life’s blueprint. For example, if you haven’t travelled the world yet, you could put your travel dreams into your financial blueprint and ensure that it’s something you’ve saved and mapped out. This way, regardless of how long that you have to wait to be able to go around the world, you’ve at least planned for it to happen.
It can seem really overwhelming to plan out all your finances for the rest of your life. The one thing that you should keep in mind, though, is that time can have an effect on your financial goals. The way that you invest your money and plan it out is going to depend on how much you have invested and how much time you have to reap the rewards of those investments. You can’t predict how life is going to truly turn out, but you can plan for the things that matter to you the most so that when they do happen, you’re ready for them. On the other hand, there are going to be life events that occur that totally mess up your financial planning. Death is one such event that can skew the future in a way that you didn’t imagine would happen. If you want to know what life events can change your financial strategy, check out the four we have for you below.
Buying A House
It’s considered to be a huge luxury nowadays to be able to buy a house and own a piece of land with it. It’s not the norm anymore, as the age of buying a new house is being pushed back further and further by career and savings circumstances. The cost of a new house has not risen comparably with the cost of living or the salaries of today. You can view here about how to prepare to be a homeowner as a young person, but you should also consider what it means to own your own home. The costs don’t just stop with the deposit that you’ve spent years saving, as you have to consider the insurance that you need as well as the emergency costs for repairs and things like boiler replacements. Buying a house isn’t an easy thing to do, and if you want it to factor into your grand life plans, then you need to carefully consider what buying a house is going to mean for you.
Getting Married
It’s a dream for most people from a young age: meet someone, fall in love and get married. The dreams of the grand wedding you’ve always had often end up staying dreams, though, when you realise the sheer cost of a wedding and honeymoon and everything involved in the planning. When you’re in high school you daydream about going to college so that you can start living your life and earning cash. When you’re in college, you think about how amazing your career will be and how it’s going to set you on your path. When you start working, you can’t wait to meet that person that could change your life. Then you do, and you start to plan a wedding and realise just how expensive weddings really are. You have to discuss your financial goals as a couple, because once you know your goals together you can make sound and solid financial decisions as a pair.
Having A Baby
Being a parent is a huge leap in life for a lot of people. It introduces you to a world of responsibility that feels like levelling up in life. It’s magical, it’s life-changing and it’s exhausting all at the same time. The little piece of immortality that you bring into the world is one that will irrevocably change you, and they’re also going to alter your financial situation. Children are expensive to raise; you have to think of their everyday essentials and needs as well as their college funds, paying to get them their school supplies and even the little things, like adding extra expense to your grocery bills because they’re going to eat you out of house and home. The other way that children bust your finances is if you struggle to conceive a child in the first place. IVF and other fertility help isn’t cheap at all and you can really break the bank trying to achieve your dream.
Illness
No one plans to fall ill. The idea of taking an extended period of time away from the workplace can be one that invokes anxiety and panic, because you then have to consider how you plan to afford everything. Your health costs will also alter because of the right health insurance that you will be paying for and then you have to consider the cost of the treatment on top of those costs. Health is something that you shouldn’t skip out on, though, which means that you will be paying for your health your whole life. You should also consider having a separate savings account, because if you were to be out of work due to illness you still need to have some way of paying your bills. Sickness can change your life, but it doesn’t have to ruin everything.
Your financial blueprint is going to be mapped out by you early in life, and once you have that blueprint, you can live your life secure in the knowledge that you are set up and ready for the life that you want.
