Four years before my daughter was born, I started an education fund for her. When she was born, the fund had enough money in it to pay for her independent high school education. Here’s how I did it.
Starting the education fund:
There are many ways to start preparing financially for your child’s education. I might need to write another post which looks at each of them. The focus of this post, however, is to explain how I started and grew my daughter’s education fund. Later in this post, I provide more details about the fund I chose and why. That aside, the fund I chose required me to submit a few documents online to get it started. I also needed to make an initial once-off minimum investment of $5000.
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Regular investment:
I started a recurring automatic direct transfer into the fund from my bank account once it was set up.
At that time, my job paid me fortnightly. I made a direct transfer of $200 from my bank account into my daughter’s education fund the day after I was paid.
Top Comments
Hi, I'm the author of the article. Thanks for your question.
The goal of the fund is to provide my wife and I with the choice of any school for our daughter, regardless of the cost or whether it's public or private.
As I mention in the article, I didn’t go to a private school. I'm a product of Australia's public school system. Hopefully my achievements speak to its virtues.
Why a private school? There are so many incredible public schools and plenty of terrible private schools.
But why not a private school? There are so many incredible private schools and plenty of terrible public schools.
It really depends on the area you live in as to which is best & what you want from a school.
We are public schoolers but I know every parent wants the best for their own child & if that means private then I say go for it!
I think you're missing the point of the article, which was that this sort of investment fund can help you pay for a big expense, with the keys being contributing regularly and having an aim that helps keep you motivated to do that. Switch it to saving up a deposit for a home loan or a major overseas holiday or something else, and it should work the same. Private vs public education is a debate for another article.
Thanks David S. You're spot on about the key aspects of growing an investment and the point of the article.
Australia has excellent schools in both the public and private systems.
My hope is that some people may take on the principles of the article so they can reach their own financial goals, whatever they may be.