What Should You Do Financially Before Starting a Family?

I've been thinking about what I would tell a guy who came to me and said, "We're thinking about starting a family. What should I be doing financially?"

You probably already know the normal answers.

Get rid of your debt. Have some money set aside for emergencies. Buy a house when you're ready and have a plan to pay it off. Start putting money into your 401(k). Keep working on your career and increasing your income.

I wouldn't argue with any of that.

If you were sitting across from me, I'd probably tell you you're doing a lot of the right things.

Then I'd ask you something.

Your Financial Plan Looks Great… Until Life Shows Up

How much of your financial plan depends on life going the way you think it's going to go?

Because right now, before kids, you can actually plan pretty well.

You know what you make. You know what your bills are. You can figure out how much to save each month. You can map out paying off the house. You can run the retirement calculator and see what happens if you keep contributing for the next 30 years.

It all looks pretty good on paper.

Then you start a family.

Maybe you planned for one baby, and the doctor tells you there are two heartbeats.

Maybe your wife goes back to work after the baby and six months later you both realize this isn't what you want.

Could you live on one income?

Maybe you're doing great and then your company eliminates your position.

What happens to the plan then?

Maybe it's nothing bad at all.

A piece of property becomes available that you've wanted for years. A business opportunity lands in your lap. Your family gets the chance to do something together that you'll probably never get another chance to do.

Do you have access to money without dismantling everything else you've been building?

That's where I think the conversation before starting a family needs to go deeper.

How Many Times Do You Want to Start Over?

I've talked with thousands of families, and I've watched this happen over and over.

Good income. Good intentions. Retirement account growing. Some money in savings.

Then life changes.

Money comes out of savings. A new payment gets added. The credit card gets used. Retirement contributions get reduced for a while.

You get through it.

You build things back up.

Then life changes again.

At some point I started wondering, is there a way to build your finances where change doesn't always mean starting over?

Because once you become a father, you're not just trying to make enough money anymore.

You're trying to provide.

You're trying to protect.

You're trying to create choices for people you love.

And you have no idea today what those choices are going to cost ten years from now.

That's one of the reasons I became so interested in controlling the banking function in my own life.

I wanted a place where I could consistently put money, let it continue growing, protect my family and still have access to that capital when life happened.

Build for the Life You Can't See Coming

Eventually, properly engineered dividend-paying whole life became that foundation for our family.

We've used our system for debt. Taxes. Vehicles. Vacations. Opportunities. Things I couldn't have possibly put on a spreadsheet when we started.

And every one of those experiences has made me think differently about what it means to prepare financially for a family.

You're not preparing for one version of your life.

You're building something that needs to survive all the versions you can't see yet.

Your career will change.

Your kids will need things you never expected.

There will be emergencies.

There will also be opportunities you don't want to miss.

Twenty years from now, I don't think you'll care that your original financial plan worked perfectly.

It won't.

What you'll care about is whether you built something strong enough to change when your family needed it to.

Because life is going to change.

The question is whether every change knocks your financial life apart, or whether you've built a foundation that allows you to say:

We're ready. We'll figure this out.

It is as easy as changing one thing and if you’re ready to change your life by changing one thing, schedule a call here.