Arti Arora, CFP | Head Financial Planner

It’s quite natural to prioritize our children and cater to their needs ahead of our own. I am certain most readers would agree with this.

With the kind of importance we attach to our children, a lot of times we get trapped into buying investments that are not as productive and sometimes even futile as they do not yield us the kind of returns or grow to a value which may be required towards the funding of their important milestones.

Let us discuss our child’s higher education goal as an example. There are some important steps one to needs to follow towards effectively meeting this goal.

First, you need to identify the amount required towards your child’s higher education in today’s value. Then, calculate the number of years you have in hand to plan to for it. Finally, you take a note of the education inflation to arrive at the goal value in the year in which the goal is due.

Having done this scientifically and with complete clarity and conviction, the next steps involvedetermining the savings and investments required to be done on a periodic basis and at an assumed rate of portfolio growth. Alongside this, a periodic review of your investments mapped to this goal is highly important to keep a check on the investment performance as well as to keep a track of percentage goal funded.

So, as you can see, this is an on-going and a continuous process with complete due diligence being followed and each step has its own importance and requires great expertise of the subject matter.

If you think, you have the time, expertise, research, patience and set systems to do it all, there is nothing better than that. But, even if there’s an iota of doubt, it’s really not worth the risk. Getting in touch with a professional will help.

Your children are your world and you will always want to see them shine. The small steps you take today will you inch closer towards this dream of yours.