Financial Experts: Best Money They Ever Spent on Their Children’s Future
Written by
Jordan Rosenfeld
Edited by
Molly Sullivan
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In addition to being a good career choice, finance professions may offer the individuals who pursue them extra information and sometimes opportunities that help them to make great financial choices not only for their clients, but for their own children.
From investments to life experiences, financial experts understand better than most the importance of the tools, literal and figurative, that children need to do well in life.
Two financial experts explained the best money they spent on their children’s future.
Buying a Home
Melanie Musson, a mother of six and a financial expert with InsuranceProviders.com, said that buying a home turned out to be an incredible piece of her children’s financial stability.
Buying a home is tough for anyone, Musson said, especially when you live where real estate is expensive and you’re barely keeping up with the cost of living, but it’s worth it.
“We bought our first home before we had children, and while we hoped to have children, we were not buying the house for them. As it turned out, that property became our children’s home. It was a place of security.”
Building Equity
That first home allowed them to build equity over 15 years that allowed them to buy a forever home for their children that they could have never afforded had they not started somewhere. But it also conferred other benefits.
“Owning a home keeps your housing payments stable when income increases. So, when you earn more money, you can do things that directly benefit your children, like investing in a 529 college plan, which is our primary avenue of spending money for our children’s futures.”
They invested roughly $200,000 initially but saw a significant return on that investment.
Keeping Housing Costs Low
In addition to providing equity that could be passed on to their children, Musson said, “It kept housing costs the same for years so that as we earned more, we could invest more directly into our children’s futures instead of having our housing costs creep up and absorb the extra.”
While they did suffer through equity loss during the housing crash of 2008, she said the benefits of having stability “started immediately.”
Every situation is different, but she said, generally, “investing in a family home is a good route to take to enable you to build stability.”
Overnight Camp
For Julien B. Morris, CFP, principal and founder of Concierge Wealth Management, the best money he spent was not directly a financial one, but sending his 9-year-old daughter to Jewish overnight camp.
His daughter, who has been attending the summer camp for several years, has “gained confidence and independence,” Morris said. “She’s learning how to do for herself, so she’s becoming more independent than some of her peers that don’t spend two months without their parents.”
Problem Solving and Networking
He has also found it has helped with problem solving at school and in relationship building.
“She has a whole network of other girls that aren’t in her town, so she doesn’t have to deal with their kid girl drama and she can go and have friends that are unrelated to all of that across the East Coast or even the country.”
He feels that this ability to build a network is really important in life in general, “whether it’s a friend network or a business network, the religious aspect aside.”
Confidence Building
Morris also sees the camp experience building confidence in his daughter.
“I’ve never seen my daughter want to do anything athletic. When we go to visit her at camp, she’s a superstar swimmer, she’s climbing up rock walls, she’s doing things on the waterfront, standup, paddle boarding stuff that she never would do with us. So it’s allowing her to try new things and take risks.”
While he acknowledged that camps of this sort are not cheap, for families who can squeeze out the funds, he feels it will help build life skills that will last a lifetime.
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