It may feel like forever away if you have a baby, but thinking about your baby’s finances early can make a huge difference in their financial future. Qais and I have already been making financial decisions for Poppy and talking about what her future is going to look like financially. Since, Qais is already in the financial industry he knew that getting her set up now, as young as possible, was the smartest thing to do to ensure Poppy is secure and safe when she gets older.
When it comes to finances for myself, I’m honestly not that organized so thinking about saving for Poppy and making her plans for her financial future definitely had me feeling overwhelmed. So I’m going to share a few tips with you guys on how Qais and I have organized ourselves to be able try and meet her financial goals plus a few other tips we’ve been doing as well!
1. Organize all your finances in one place
So prior to downloading the Hardbacon app I honestly had all of our finances everywhere. We had all of our joint accounts in one place and that’s actually two places because we have multiple bank accounts. We had our investments in another place. And our budget was on an Excel sheet (really who’s isn’t right?!). It was just becoming too hard to keep track of everything until I downloaded the Hardbacon app.
For those of you who don’t already know, Hardbacon is a financial app that can literally do it all. Not only can you keep track of all of your accounts from any bank but you can compare and shop different financial products. So if you’re looking for mortgage rates, for example, you can do it on Hardbacon and compare different banks and rates.
Before even trying to set financial goals I would definitely suggest getting your finances in order by just having them organized, by knowing how much you spend and what your goals are. That way you can have a better idea of how much you can save for your baby, realistically, by knowing how much money is already in your accounts. You can also set budgets for different categories (eg. food or personal care) to ensure you’re staying on track which can help pinch some pennies to put towards any savings or investments for your little one. I’ll leave the link here for Hardbacon so you can play around with it yourself!
2. Invest for the future
I want to preface this by saying that this is not financial advice, so if you are seeking financial advice on how or where to invest your money for your baby I would highly recommend speaking to someone at the bank.
Qais and I have decided to invest for Poppy’s future and currently we are invested in medium cap stocks that have growth promise over the coming years. We also are invested in a few riskier stocks that have higher growth promise. Without Qais, I’d honestly have NO idea how to invest. So I know this may be a tip that may be harder to implement. But I wanted to share how we are investing in Poppy’s future and since this is one of the ways, I wanted to be sure to include it.
Investing really is a great way to grow your money, especially for your little one. We keep track of all Poppy’s investments through Hardbacon. I wasn’t sure if it was possible to see our accounts on Questrade or WealthSimple on Hardbacon. But I was able to link both of her investment accounts and keep an eye on her stocks without leaving the app!
3. Save with a plan
Investments are more of a long-term savings if you will, but I like to have a few savings accounts for a rainy day or for emergency cash because you never know right? So for Poppy we have two savings accounts. We have just a regular savings account where it’s kind of more of if I want to buy any big ticket items for her. And then we have a high interest savings account, so after we save a certain amount we feel like it’s a better choice to move the bigger savings over where it can accumulate interest.
Of course I struggle with meeting savings goals. So what I’ve been doing lately is using the goals section of Hardbacon. It actually just tells me how much I need to be saving to hit the goal that I entered into the app. I don’t always hit it but I have a number that I know every month, and I can change my goal if I need to! For example, you can set the goal for a 10 year length or change it to a 20 year length goal. I’m such a visual person, so for me, the goals feature of the app has really been keeping me on track! And when you set budgets for other categories, you can see why you maybe didn’t meet your savings goal. For me, I tend to overspend in the personal care (can you blame a girl?!) which of course impacts my savings for Poppy. Which helps me for the next month, where I can be more diligent in staying within my personal care goal so I can meet Poppy’s saving goal.
4. Learn about finances
At the end of the day, Poppy having a good financial future really depends on what I can teach her. If I don’t have a good foundation on finances, how can I expect Poppy to? Even if we hit all of her goals and she’s set really well financially when she’s older, she may just spend all her money. Which is why I’ve been doing a lot of homework myself and trying to understand finances a little better. Like what is a RRSP, RESP, TFSA and learning how to invest in stocks. Since I’m no expert on any of these things and don’t even want to try and be one, I’d encourage you to talk to your bank about different investment accounts and how they work, because it really isn’t too late to learn about finances. Especially if it will better your baby’s future!
For more information on Hardbacon, click here!
And for more information on savings plans, check out Canada.ca here!
Thank you to Hardbacon for partnering with me on this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
