As a father we have an essential role to play in supporting the development and growth of our children, until they reach a point of becoming a functioning adult responsible for making their own decisions.
There are 3 ways we can invest in their development:
- Your health
- Wealth
- Time
Your health
Children follow by example, therefore a great investment you can make is taking great care of your health through eating good wholesome food and exercising.
How you act as a parent sets an understanding for your child of ‘what is normal’.
If you choose to be sedentary watching TV, drinking to excess, smoking, eating snacks and convenience foods then this will leave an impression to young minds as perfectly normal adult behaviour.
Besides, it’s a lot easier to play with children when you are active – imagine the embarrassment you would feel if your kid wanted to play with you in the garden and you had to duck out after 5 minutes through exhaustion!
Wealth
Children are expensive, no debate needed.
Even when they turn that magic age of 18 there are still likely to be costs – as my work colleagues take great pleasure in telling me, with two daughters that two weddings to pay for!
You can reduce the pain of this by thinking ahead, but also think, how can I help give your child a leg up financially as they come of age?
A simple way of doing this is setting up a monthly saver account – even if you are not financially well off, you can setup some of these accounts for as low as £10 a month.
Just by doing this until they are 18, they would have £2160 + interest!
You can potentially bulk up this up by saving all your childs birthday and Christmas money (at least until while they are at an age of not objecting), this could potentially be another couple of thousand*
If you’re worried about them blowing this, then that’s why it’s important to teach your child good financial literacy – after all school doesn’t support the development of this essential life long skill.
Some basics:
- Don’t spoil them
- Show them the value of money
- Teach them how much things cost
- Show them the benefits of saving / delayed gratification with money
(*Dependent on size / wealth / generosity of relatives!)
Time
I’ve preached this before and that’s because it’s important – but think about how much involvement you have in your child’s upbringing!
There is no point working around the clock, motivated to ensure your children want for nothing, when you aren’t around to see the enjoyment!
Don’t fall into the trap of trying to provide the best, when you can’t give your best, missing out on giving children the benefit of your time in the greatest role a person can ever have!
As the saying goes – kids want your presence not presents!
Give them time, attention, show your values, cheer them on and teach them what you know.
The cost of spending time with your kids is free – yet this time is only finite and once gone, no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy it back!
No better investment..
Your kids are the greatest thing you will ever achieve. Love them, look after them and help them flourish.
Perfect Manifesto 
I could argue against a child’s expense. It depends on how, I think, you handle those expenses… give your daughter your last car or buy her a used one, do you count the cost of feeding your son? I would argue that, though there is a cost associated with preparing a three or four person meal, it’s not all that much more than cooking for two.
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There is certainly many variables when considering child expenses and for my own personal preference would take a more minimalist approach – even if I had the money for items such as cars. My thoughts were more thinking about building for the future rather than current costing such as food.
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