Nandish Desai
July 7, 2014
Are you Scared of Having a kid due to money reasons ? Here are 5 things you should know
Day by day I am realizing that the impact of money is huge on our decision making capacity. The conversation of money is very deep rooted and not just limited to financial goals or wealth creation.
Today’s article is based on interaction I had with one my relative, who works in IT sector. We do not meet very often but as and when we meet, we make a point to update each other about, what’s new is happening in our work and life. He and his wife both are doing extremely good in their career and their pay scales are also good.
Here is how our conversation went
Relative: So, Nandish How is life after becoming father?
Nandish: Life is wonderful, it is great becoming father and playing with my kid is great fun. I and my wife feel becoming parents is the greatest gift to receive in life.
Relative: That’s wonderful to know Nandish but I am really scared of this idea of “Having a kid”
Nandish: Scared? Why are you scared? What is so scary about becoming a parent. If you want we can have a conversation that can forward you in this matter.
Relative: Thanks Nandish. I always like having conversation with you. You are my lifetime coach. Honestly speaking, I and my wife want to plan a kid, but we are scared whether we will be able to handle all the expenses that are related with kid or not?
Nandish: But you can always plan for your children related expenses and children related goals. Your savings per month and year according to me are sufficient.
Relative: When we see other people’s kid, we feel like we should plan a kid – but somewhere we are not confident about this whole process. I personally feel that becoming parent is a huge responsibility and it also calls for financial commitment.
Nandish: Yes, but why don’t you and your wife first get friendly with the thought of becoming parents. It may appear scary, but in reality it may not be so. There are some thoughts or beliefs that are holding you back.
Relative: I and my wife stay alone in a rented premises. Income wise we are good, but we still feel we are not ready financially. We dont know – how other people manage this big change but we are scared. Really scared…(He literally started crying)
Nandish: Hey don’t cry my friend. In life sometimes, we find ourselves on a cross-road. Such cross-road moments are painful but it is a point where you gather courage to make some BOLD choices in life. Over thinking or over worrying wont help you and your wife. Be clear whether you guys want to step into the realm of parenthood or not?
5 things I learnt from the interaction I had with my relative on parenthood
1. Imaginary world is scary
Our imaginary world is always more scary than the real world. We anticipate all the worst things to happen to us, but in reality things turn out very differently.
I feel that a lot of people like my relative are sailing in the same boat. They have strange notions about parenthood and they envisage those strange notions will soon convert into reality. They always come-up with reasons like let the family income reach to X level, or first let me first buy my own house. etc
(Here reason is not important, but the point is you are in grip of money related concerns)
2. BOLD step is required
Life demands you to take BOLD steps. You have to step beyond your so called fears and worries and you need to take a stand in life. Take a stand to accept parenthood with a lot of power and grace. To bring new life into this world demands commitment.
I am not saying, don’t examine your situation – but get present to what is stopping you and take a bold step in this area.
3. Don’t let conversation of money rule your decision
Don’t hand over all your power to money. Money is an integral part of your life, but at the same time money is not everything in life. When it comes to parenthood don’t let the money conversation hold you back. Take a step forward and don’t get stopped by financial concerns.
4. Trust your ecosystem
After the transition takes place you will start experiencing support coming from different corners of your family. Sharing from my own life, our parents have brought huge strength and support into our life. After becoming parents I and my wife started experiencing true power of our family ecosystem that we are into.
This whole transition became smooth for us, because of the family support we have. Look around and get in touch with your family eco-system.
5. The Age factor
I am not an expert in this area, but all I know is that age of women matters when the couple wants to plan a kid. I have interacted with some clients of ours who kept on pushing parenthood for some initial years and finally they had to face some complications due to age factor.
We suggest you to go and consult right person who can guide you better on age factor thing.
Conclusion
Don’t let the conversation of money hold you back from experiencing parenthood or any other beautiful experience in life. Have conversation with your spouse and make a choice that serves you most. It is a sensitive subject and our intention is to share our observation, we just want to share how money impacts our life decisions.
We are not asking you to do something or don’t do something, it is about getting present to the impact that money have on us. Jagoinvestor as blog is not limited to personal finance education, we really want our readers to be happy in life.
We want to spread happiness along with personal finance education. If you have experienced something like this in your life – feel free to share in comments section, if you want. Sometimes we are afraid of writing articles on such sensitive topics but as I mentioned in the article we also have to show boldness in our writing.
In these days when cost of raising a child are zooming, its natural to feel scared this way but the best way to dispel the fear is by having a well defined financial plan ..because the exercise of making a financial plan itself takes into consideration of all expenses that one may incur from birth to higher education , marriage etc & includes expense management and savings plan for such life events. Once you know quantum required & means of savings and once you have planned how you are going to meet these expenses, you go into the life event in more informed way and hence feel less scary…financial plan will just give a reality check about the kind of upbringing you can afford for your child.
Yes. . thanks for sharing your views !
Hi Nandish,
First i would like to thank you for the wonderfull article . Yes i am your regular reader and made bold decision in Financial Life. and Keep spreading word of mouth about jagoinvestors to my friends and relatived. This is my first comment and will keep reading ur Blog.
Manish recetly i purchases your books from Flipkart and it is must for every reader to buy and review through their life to check their financial stability.
Please continue your service and have a good day.
Thanks
Saravanan
Thats great Saravanan…We invite you to register for our workshops that we are doing in 6 cities. It will be fun and good learning experience
nandish
I planned for my child aft 8 yrs of my marriage, cause I thought I need financial stability. worst thing that i did was sent her away to my relatives place. I did not trust day care. They pampered her so much. But she stopped taking food and was never force fed. When she came back aft some months to me – she was totally sick. It’s like she was 6 months old baby with bad habits (keeping herself very dirty) and refusing food day in and day out. Day care was where she learnt to stay a little clean, bit desciplined, started having food.
I am telling this as word of caution to people who want to send their child to their relatives. I am not saying that they do not have good intention – probably they do not have strength in their body as a small child requires to attend to and to continuously pester them or to teach them good habits. You are constantly negotiating with your child. As the recent article of Pepsi Co prez. Indira Nooyi says- you need to build a support system around you to raise a child.
Yes you are right.Thanks for sharing your personal experience in this area
nandish
Totally Agree with you. For working parents, it (Sending to day care) has to happen sooner or later.
Every option has +ve and -ve side to it. That does not mean you should not try the option just because you think it will not be as good as home environment. If both husband and wife are working, it is a very important point to be discussed and agreed to before planning to extend your family, rather than being in that situation and then wondering what to do!
Hello Nandish, Manish
In one of your suggestions you mentioned about 5k as child expenses. My Experience says its double of that. If Husband and Wife both are then the Expense would touch close 15k (Medical Expense, Baby Sitting, Day to day Baby care Items where we do not get discount on the products what we want). I would personally say that the Happiness created by having child is far more better than Scary Thoughts.
Thanks
Vishnu
Vishnumoorthy,
You are right the expense can be double in some cases….We just shared the basic minimum expense (it came from my experience)…But yes if you add more things the expense would go up…..and you are right having child is far more bettr than having scary thoughts
nandish
@satish – That’s a very nice and practical thought. Thanks for sharing.
Hello Nandish,
I truly like and appreciate your efforts of guiding people in the area of personal finance.
And believe that nothing comes free in this world. So, keep selling your “Investor Workshops”
Thanks,
Abhay
Thanks abhay for your encouraging words
Yes that is very much true… one year back i had the same fear but just then i realised that expense is directly proportional to income because of various factors and if we have to sort out my financial issues and then go ahead we may come out of our financial problem but then it might become too late and we might end up missing out on something very very beautiful for which we had struggled all these years. I convinced my wife saying we can make money even at the age of 60 or 70 but that is not the case in achieving a parenthood. Now we realised that our fear was just an illusion and my wife is enjoying her motherhood Most wonderful days of our life is yet to come and we are getting a feel of it right now very excited 🙂
Manish and Nandish, Your all articles are always near to realistic situation. Thank you both of you for providing such informative story. I have one question, How can we plan expense for future baby? What kind of investment need to be done?
Amrita,
You can start by first saving money for maternity expenses which can be from 50k- 1 lakh depending on the hospital you select, after that you can save for first 3-4 years of expenses (it is minimum 5k per month) by opening a recurring deposit in any bank. For future goals like children education if you save 5-10k pm in any equity fund it will help you to create good corpus…… I invite you to join our workshop Design your financial life where we do some indepth conversation around financial goals.
Dear Nandish
As there is an issue with having an issue [ 🙂 ], so also there is another set of people who are confused whether to have second child or not. For many this can be a pressure game, as the relatives often pester them with questions ” When are you takinf second chance ?” Whilst for many of such parents, one is not enough and two are MORE than enough. Further, the situation gets complicated when on of the member (husband OR wife) wants another child whereas another one does not want. There are lot of emotions involved into this besides economic factors.
Jit
You can send them this letter when they ask for the second kid – http://myapplemartini.blogspot.in/2014/02/an-open-letter-to-all-aunties-who-want.html
Manish,
That’s really cool blog about Aunties. Simply Superb. I have observed that most of the girls don’t like this question after 1-2 years of marriage. But don’t know what happen to these girls when They will have their own child or become grand mother after few years. She start irritating other girls who just get married.
Yea 🙂 .. thats the issue , over the generations , people are doing the same things to others which they didnt wanted to happen to them !
Nice thoughts and nice words by the blogspot author. !
Thanks for sharing the link ! 🙂
As you delay to have the baby , the cost of bringing up the child also increases year by year for the expenses like medicines, education, school, college & marriage etc due to inflation.
I assume a delay by 4-5 years will double up the cost of bringing up the child in long term. The formula of compounding also works here but against Our savings ..:(
In a life term at least one will have to Plan for a kid at any point of time.
So earlier the better.. 🙂
I would rather advise the couple mentioned in the article to adopt a child. Considering how crores of orphans are languishing in various orphanages all over India, its not only selfish to keep giving birth to more and more babies but we are also doing a great disservice to this already severely overpopulated nation.
There is only so much resource that a country has and we are already paying the price of this overpopulation in more ways than one in our daily lives. Things will only get worse with each passing year unless we stop thinking with our emotions and take up some responsibility. So please, do the noble thing and adopt a child if you really want a kid.
“In a life term at least one will have to Plan for a kid at any point of time.”
And that’s just a big sack of bull. Nobody should have kids unless they want to. I always hate it how relatives tend to force their opinions down our throat. I know many happy couples who lived their lives to the fullest without any kids.
Praveen your thoughts are inspiring to me
nandish
I really want to see a time come in India, where people are not forced by society to have kids if they do not want it. Life could be equally enjoyable without children.
Sangita,
Yeah there should not be any kind of force…life has to be about freedom and choice whether in india or any part of the world.
nandish
you are lucky that your parents did not thought so…
We are 4 sisters. My parents spent their 50 years of life in hard struggle to raise us and to give us good life, and education. I wish they had enough courage to face the society when they were blaming my parents for having daughters. and stop having more kids.
My parents cared for us like goddess Lakshmi n Saraswati. Still they could not face society and felt really terrible for not having son.
Of course, now we all are well settled and my parents are happiest. Whole of our relatives envy my parents. But I have seen such darkness, I wish I was not born – for the sake of my parents.
There should be choice – of having child or not.
Sangita,
My wife is an Engineer. She is an Assistant General Manager with SAIL. We live in Juhu, in a flat provided by her company. I work for L&T as a Senior DGM.
We have 2 children – our daughter is 15 and our son is 10.
We became parents when I was 27 and she was 26. A year after we were married.
We loved every second of the last 16 years as parents.
I feel sorry for you. And your husband. You have our sympathies.
Regards,
Gautam Satpathy
Pitying someone else for their beliefs and their choices in life makes you look like a total loser. Pity yourself instead, Gautam.
Great that you have enjoyed your parenthood but it doesn’t mean everybody has to tow your line to achieve that happiness. What makes you happy may not make someone else happy. Is that too hard for you to understand?
I think, Gautam is sympathizing for the hardship that Sangeetha went through and not feeling sorry for her belief. I think you are misunderstanding his intention.
I have a daughter.
Do not feel sorry for anyone who chooses to live a life how he wants. cause you don’t know what circumstance make him a person he is now.
Feel sorry for so many bad things that happen within our society and we keep mum or turn our eyes closed.
very true.
To plan well and start as early as convenient is a good idea.