Are you investing in your children for YOUR future?

Are you saving for your children’s education in the future?

Children’s future is our responsibility. What about our future?

I read an interesting article about financial planning for the future. It’s about how a celebrity couple sharing with everyone that they think it’s their duty to ensure their children could further their studies; education is their responsibility. Plus, it’s not possible to assume that this investment would make the children successful and that the children will then take care of them in the future. Do read the article or the excerpt as below.

Article in nst.com.my The couple firmly believe funding education remains a fundamental parental duty, provided parents live within their means.

Johan stresses that raising children should never be treated as a financial transaction or an investment for old age.

“Whatever it is, if that is all the parents can afford, it means they have done their best.

“We cannot expect anything in return. I don’t send my child to become a doctor expecting them to care for me. That depends entirely on the child. If they love you, they will care for you when you are old. You cannot demand it.” Article in nst.com.my

My views are very similar

First of all, I am less Asian on one side. I do not tell my children that they need to be a doctor or an engineer or an accountant. I do not believe in this. At the same time, I am still Asian on one side, so I have told both my daughter and son that they MUST complete their first degree. If they like to study for Masters and then PhD, I will do my best to support them.

In other words, whatever they do in the future, whether or not it relates to their degree, that’s a separate matter. At least they have a qualification they could fall back on. Be realistic yeah, studying part-time in the future will be super tough. I tried for my PhD and gave up after 2 semesters.

Traveling full-time after retirement?

At the same time, I tell my wife that our savings is our savings and we cannot be working our whole life and then pass every cent to the children. We also need to travel the world and truth is my lifestyle involves taking things slowly but traveling around Malaysia and the world. Maybe traveling the world every week could be just too expensive but perhaps one overseas trip (ASEAN) every month and one overseas trip (out of ASEAN) every quarter and every week we could be at a different city or town in Malaysia. We have just 52 weeks, minus 12 weeks for ASEAN and 4 weeks for out of ASEAN and there’s just 36 weeks left for Malaysia… Maybe the below…

Ipoh – my hometown

Sandakan – wife’s hometown

Kota Kinabalu – can go snorkeling… (no Mount Kinabalu, done twice)

Teluk Intan – my real hometown

Penang – my 15-years hometown

Cameron Highlands – my fav place

Genting Highlands – my fav place

Langkawi – my fav place

Johor Bahru – a place I used to go nearly weekly

Kuantan – quiet and still have the sea!

Dungun – where my god-family is

See my point, just simply write also would tell us it’s not possible to travel across Malaysia even after one year. Let’s come back to my article.

Would I hope my children could take care of me?

I hope they would have a successful life. However, I do not hope they will be able to take care of me. They should take care of themselves very well and I am super happy already. If we understand demographics, we would know that an aging nation is not going to the best place for future generations and they would have to take care of themselves as the tax they pay would have to also be used for many of the retired population too. Just need to look at many aging nations and read about the issues they face and just be very prepared for it. We could not run from it yeah.

Invest for our future, start today

That RM15 latte can wait. Instead of 4 times per week, how about reducing that to once per week and saving RM45 per week or RM180 per month? This amount, if we invest it would be double, triple or quadruple in the future for us. Learn how to invest and stop being greedy and suddenly lose all our money to some scams. Property investment is as easy as it seems, just read more and understand more. Stock investment can be as easy as focus on dividends without so much worry on fluctuations. In fact we can even just save more into EPF for the dividends every year too.

Happy enjoying the company of your children. Be grateful that sometimes they are naughty because that shows they are creative. Sometimes, they refuse to listen to you but that also shows that they have their own thinking and can be independent. I know very soon in the future, they may not even want to go to shopping malls with me! Haha. I think I will accept and then enjoy a movie with my wife instead.

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