How to Save Money for Your Child’s Education

At the rate that post-secondary education is rising, how can we ensure that our child is prepared for the future. The answer is to start now. If you can set aside a small monthly budget starting when your child is a baby, you won’t have to worry about it later when they are ready to attend college or university.

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How can you save for your child’s education?

1. Start small If you can afford $10/week then so be it, if you can do more than great but get in the habit of setting aside a portion of your earnings to go towards your child’s education. 2. Start early The earlier you start the sooner you can start building interest on your investment. This way, you won’t have to scrounge for money last minute playing catch up. 3. Use gifts  When my children would receive birthday money as a small child, instead of spending it, we’d put it towards my child’s RESP. It was money that was unexpected and we didn’t need it, so we thought why not put it to good use and have it earn more than just sitting in our bank accounts or going towards toys which they have plenty of. Those birthdays and Christmas money gifts do add up. In Canada, you can set up an Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP), to learn more visit RBC RESP. You get to decide how much and how often you want to contribute from weekly to annually. This is super easy with the RESP-Matic program with RBC. The government provides bonds and matches 20% of your investment towards your child’s education fund which is a great benefit, you don’t see that kind of return anywhere else. No worries, what if your child doesn’t attend post-secondary education? There are options there as well. Book an appointment with an RBC advisor to open up an RESP and start your child’s future on the right path.  

What are your dreams for your child? I hope that someday, all this homeschooling will have given my child the best education that they can receive and that they’ll choose a career that they are truly happy in. We’re doing all this work to prepare them for adulthood but I don’t want my child coming out of school with huge debt. That’s what happened with me after obtaining my graduate degree that I’m not using at the moment since I’m a stay at home mom. We are proudly debt free other than our mortgage but we had to learn to manage our finances on our own and it was a long and sometimes strenous journey to get to where we are now. No one taught us any of that and we both had to provide funding for our own post-secondary education because our parents had not set up an RESP for us. We want our children to focus on their education and not how they’re going to pay for it all the best way we can. Disclaimer: I received compensation as a part of the Influence Central network to share about RBC RESP program, however, all opinions are my own.