It’s natural to have the dream of sending your child to a world-class university abroad. Studying overseas offers a kind of exposure and holistic development that you just can’t achieve, staying within the confines of your comfort zone. Moreover, studying abroad often opens doors to higher paying jobs and secures a career path to a considerably higher income trajectory.
As a parent, in terms of helping your child secure admission into a great college abroad, you can’t do much apart from providing guidance. But, the part where your role becomes critical is finance. It’s rather sad to have your child forgo an amazing opportunity due to lack of financial planning by you at the right time.
In order to help your child reach and achieve their true potential, here are some things you can do as a parent:
In order to plan your finances, you must always begin with the most rudimentary step – striking a balance between your income and spending habits. Fulfilling the desire to educate your child in a foreign university calls for a good amount of funds.
The exact expenditure, of course, is hard to ascertain, since it is to be incurred years later. However, you must be conscious of your spending habits from now itself, in order to accumulate finances in a planned and comfortable way.
A good way is to start budgeting with planned expenditures so that you don’t feel burdened at the time of incurring lumpsum expenditure. In fact, with the expenditure levels today, if both parents are working, they should work collaboratively towards this.
Saving money is often not enough. It’s planned and structured savings that are mainly useful if there is a specific goal to chase. If you save without a defined purpose, the odds are usually in favour of using up saved money for something else. However, with a dedicated purpose, there will be absolutely no scope for that, which will ensure that your goal is not compromised.
If you are serious about sending your child for education overseas, it is a wise idea to set up a separate education fund. This is because sending a child abroad has many more expenses than just the exorbitant foreign university tuition fee.
These may include university entrance exam costs, application fees, travel and visa expenses, accommodation and of course, living expenses. Maintaining a separate resource for this purpose helps in meeting the huge extra expenses that often go missed when you are planning your finances.
You might assume that it is perhaps too early to be acquainted about scholarship opportunities. However, you must familiarise yourself with how much financial aid your child can actually receive from the government or other scholarship or grant bodies.
If your child has merit and can rake in a good scholarship, your expenses can really come down. Alternatively, in case he or she is unable to make it, you must build a cushion for that.
Hence, being well aware in good times makes much more sense. You could check out different scholarship opportunities, the process to apply and acquire them. This will also help you to gradually prepare your child according to the needs of specific scholarship.
You might think this step isn’t important now since your child is quite young. However, as he/she grows up, inflation is going to rise. Investing some of your savings at the right time is essential to make it grow with time. Intuitively speaking, the earlier you invest, the more compounded returns you will generate.
A good way of investing in your child’s future foreign education is by investing some money in the best child education plan. A good and comprehensive child education investment plan puts your money into the hands of experts, who grow it for the future, by strikinga balance between debt and equity funds.
Doing so provides a boost to your long-term finances and helps secure future expenses for your child. Additionally, they reduce your taxable income with the premium being counted as expenses, which actually increases your saving levels.
Lastly, it is not wise to be rigid. Education costs will always differ depending on the university, course, the level of higher education, and so on.
As your child grows and develops an inclination towards any particular subject, you have to start foreseeing future options and amend your plans accordingly. Consequently, you might need to increase the amount you are saving as per the need of the hour.
Follow these simple steps to make your dream come true and save yourself from the regret of not getting yourself to act at the right time and give your child the future he deserves.