How To Plan Your Family’s Future: 5 Things Everyone Should Do

Planning for the future is an important part of being a parent, partner, or spouse. Financial planning helps protect your family no matter what happens and can give a husband, wife, parent or partner, peace of mind knowing that they will not leave a financial mess and a struggling family behind if the worst was to happen.

Here are five things that everyone should do when they are planning for their family’s future. By taking just a few of these simple steps you can help to ensure that your family will be well provided for in the future.

Prepare The Paperwork

If you are a spouse in a civil partnership, you should begin making plans for your loved one’s financial future if the worst happens. Many families can lose a parent or spouse and can struggle financially while also having to deal with a massive amount of grief.

Wills and inheritance can be difficult to consider but without this kind of paperwork in good legal order, bigger problems can await family members. The grief of losing a loved one can be compounded by tense and divisive legal proceedings that can take up a lot of time, energy, and money. 

There is help available if no will was made, or if not being named in a will is causing you financial hardship. The Inheritance Act of 1975 allows spouses and civil partners of the deceased can make a claim against an estate. 

This Act helps people to establish that they had a financial dependence on the deceased family member and require financial assistance to maintain their standard of living. Inheritance Act claims will require some assistance from an experienced legal team, like Hugh James, to help ensure you get the financial help you need. 

Secure Your Children’s Future

If you have children, you should make planning for their care the main priority of your financial planning. They should be your primary care and concern. Arranging life insurance and planning a will is the most straightforward way to ensure children have financial support if they lose a parent.

For a very little monthly cost, you can make sure that there are funds available for your family to maintain their living standards and get the kind of financial assistance they would have received from a living parent. 

The funds from life insurance policies can be discussed in a will and entrusted to a guardian or private trust to make sure children are provided for through to adulthood, and perhaps beyond. This can give parents peace of mind, knowing that if the worst were to happen their children will be financially secure.

Making regular savings is a good idea too. Even at low-interest rates, it is worth building a pot for your family’s future. This could be for emergencies or a rainy day. It could also be put towards the holiday of a lifetime when the kids are old enough, or to cover the costs of expensive home improvements or repairs.

Invest In Your Home

Buying a house is one of the biggest financial investments you will make in your lifetime, and the return on this investment will form a big part of your retirement plans and your family’s financial future. By making further investments in your home that increase property value, you can help save for retirement and provide for your family while also enjoying some upgrades to your home.

There are many sensible home improvements that can add a lot of value to your property, and make it desirable to prospective buyers, while also giving you a fun new feature for you and your family to enjoy. Features like a conservatory, loft conversion, an outdoor cooking area, or adding solar panels to the roof can all add a significant amount of value to your home, paying for themselves over time.

The return on these investments is often at a higher rate than you can find on savings accounts at banks and building societies on the high street, making them a smarter choice than simply putting money in the bank. They can help you build a nest egg for retirement, or to create equity in your home that you can tap into in an emergency or use to provide for your family if the worst happens.

Popular home improvements that get a great return include adding a home extension, upgrading the garden with landscaping and a patio or decking, and upgrading your central heating system to something modern and energy efficient. All of these upgrades give you a great feature to enjoy and make your home more valuable and desirable.

Reduce Debt And Outgoings

Having a little extra money in your pocket can make a big difference to your day-to-day life and can also help you to save and invest for the future. Many households across the UK pay more on their regular bills than they should. 

By switching suppliers for things like energy, home insurance, and car insurance, you can make significant regular savings that you can save for the future or use to pay for investments like life insurance costs. This simple hack can help you to make plans for your family without having to find extra funds, just make some savings and invest the extra money.

Taking steps to reduce or consolidate debt from loans or credit cards can help you to slash your outgoings, giving you extra funds to save for the future or invest in your home. Make sure that the terms of any loan suit your needs, and put extra cash in your pocket every month, to maximize your saving.

It only takes a few small regular savings to begin to build a significantly sized monthly pot to play with. These savings will also add up to a lot over a year, potentially a thousand pounds or more, which you can use to save for the future or spend on making family memories with special holidays and trips out.

Make Emotional Investments As Well As Financial Ones

Providing for your family’s future is about more than finances. You should also be taking steps to build lasting memories and act as a positive role model for your children to help them prepare for their future, and for a future without you when they are older.

Invest your time in your children and your spouse or partner, not just your money. Create memories with them that will last them their lifetime. These can come from holidays or from special day trips to theme parks or cities. These memories will be very important to your children when they are older and will set an example for them to follow if they become parents. This can be a way to provide emotional support not just to your children, but also to your grandchildren and perhaps even more generations of your family in the future. Investments like these get you something that money cannot buy, and your positive influence can be felt in your family for decades to come.

Planning for the future can be intimidating, but it is an important thing to do if you are going to protect your children and partner from financial hardships in the future. You can also make sensible and worthwhile investments that you and your family can enjoy and reap the financial rewards later.