Saving for your child’s education is extremely important!
After the birth of my daughter, we set up an RESP for her as soon as we could. Once my son was born, we also set up an RESP account for him. We have comfort knowing that if one of our children chooses not to pursue post-secondary education, we can put all the money we’ve saved towards the child who does go. If both don’t go, well, that’s a story for another day. If both don’t go, well, that’s a story for another day.
Over the past 10 years, we have learned some tips that have helped us to save a good amount of money for education.
3 Tips for Saving For Your Child’s Education:
For families who see a tax return when tax season is complete, one of the easiest ways to save money for an RESP is to take that money (that was “unexpected money” to begin with) and to put it immediately towards an RESP. Depending on how much this is, you may decide that is your annual contribution, but at a minimum, it alleviates the month-to-month stress of trying to set aside money.
On my hubby’s side of the family, we made an agreement very early on that we would spent half of birthday and Christmas gifts on a gift for each child and half would go towards the child’s education fund. It is always nice to count on that money a few times per year.
Recently, I had a fantastic discussion with a friend of mine who feels the same as I do about the overabundance of birthday gifts at birthday parties. It was in this conversation that we very easily could have made a similar agreement as we did with my sister in law years ago. Instead, there was an unspoken agreement that either side would be more than happy to receive some money towards an RESP as part (or all) of a birthday gift. While I definitely want my children to receive special gifts on their birthdays, I also want them to understand that saving for their education is very valuable too. One day, they will likely (and hopefully) appreciate what we worked so hard for them to have.
Great tips here, I should look into doing this for my granddaughter!!
Our children are all adults now, so that is no longer a problem. I really love the tips you gave, especially the one about putting half of birthday and Christmas money toward RESPs. This makes really good sense to me.
And, don’t forget that the government matches contributions up to a certain amount. That’s worth taking advantage of.
Great tips! We have all members of the family who contribute money for the boys’ birthdays, special holidays, etc. split the money evenly between their “fun” money and their “education” money; the boys are used to and understand that a portion of their gifts will be automatically placed in their RESP accounts. Everyone in the family (including the extended family) follows this rule for all the kids, so there is no “comparing” between them (it was something our parents set up for us when we were kids and we just continued the tradition). We also automatically contribute money to their RESP’s so we don’t miss it…
There are some really good tips here thank you! It’s really difficult to save these days, but, I bet our parents felt that way too
These are great tips! These are tips I’m gonna need with a new baby on the way!
saving to help your children with their education is very important, it amounts to an enormous amount of money in the end and would be extremely difficult to do without savings of some sort.
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