Kel Galavan

There's all the different things kids need nowadays, getting a car under them when they hit a certain age, hoping they get into the right college as accommodation, creche, clothes, sports, you name it.

And you have to take that into consideration.

And that often comes at the cost of maybe a more filled out pension or even having an investment portfolio or getting the mortgage paid off a bit earlier.

And when you have kids, you do have to make a lot more hard decisions for a longer period of time than somebody who doesn't have kids.

Yes, you could talk about contraception and all that kind of thing.

But part of it was that there would be somebody to take care of you because pensions are relatively a new enough concept.

We only have pensions for just over 100 years.

And even at that, it was 1908, I think it was brought in.

And even at that, it was brought in at the age of 70.

It was a tiny paltry amount and people were only expected to live for four years.

Whereas now, generally, retirement is in around the 65, 66 mark.

We're living potentially a decade, two decades longer.

So retirement is a different ballgame.

So

Your kid could be your pension, absolutely.

But what I would always, always say to anybody who does have kids, there's two big gifts you can give your children.

And it's not the car, it's not even the college education.

One is a healthy relationship with money so that they're not making all the mistakes that we made, that they understand the concept of saving, they understand the concept of investing, they understand debt, they understand all these simple things.

but also feeling confident that they can save and can do these things.

There's a whole relationship with money that if you can have them feeling good about their money and managing it, even in a rudimentary way, that is a massive gift you can give your kid.