![\"After](\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/wp-content\/uploads\/Smit-Family-Photo.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cIf I see something I can\u2019t just buy it, I have to look at our finances and look at what we have going out and what we have coming in and evaluate it,\u201d Smit said. \u201cWhereas previous to having children if I wanted something I bought it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smit said she remembers it took the couple about ten months to get pregnant with Graydon and even that wasn\u2019t enough time to save or plan out a financial strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hadn\u2019t really taken into account the fact that when you\u2019re on maternity leave you\u2019re at 50 per cent of your wage,\u201d she said. \u201cWe hadn\u2019t really saved a ton.\u201d<\/p>\n
David McGoey, a consultant with Investors Group, said he generally suggests creating a budget when clients ask about financial planning for a child.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people have a regular income and everything, they know how much is coming in, they know the big ticket items,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s the little miscellaneous things that they don\u2019t really know how much they spend a month. They need to know how much they\u2019ve actually got for income that is disposable income.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that one child can cost an additional $7,000 to $12,000 a year over a family\u2019s yearly pre-child expenses.<\/p>\n
Smit agreed that it\u2019s all the little things that add up. She said a big cost was the extra food and clothing for the kids. Now that Graydon\u2019s in school, Smit said she makes sure the clothing he wears is neat and new.<\/p>\n
One way the couple lightened these expenses was having a diaper party for each child rather than a baby shower. These parties supplied diapers that lasted for about a year. Now diapers cost them about $80 a month.<\/p>\n
When Smit was on maternity leave she was only receiving 50 per cent of her salary, so when the year was up she went back to work. At this point the couple put their children in daycare. Though the cost is about $1,400 a month, Smit said it\u2019s more financially beneficial to pay the fees and work full time than to quit working and stay home.<\/p>\n
Apart from the day-to-day expenses for the kids, Smit said their added expenses included a new vehicle and investment into Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs). They also have life insurance for their children, which McGoey said is a good option for families that can afford the monthly premium.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want your child to outlive you, but in the event that something happens to your child you\u2019re going to do everything you can to try to help out with payment,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
He said that insurance allows parent\u2019s to cover a child\u2019s funeral costs, receive income supplements if they need to take time off of work to care for their child and cover some of the costs associated with the child\u2019s illness or treatment.<\/p>\n
Ritika Sharma, an insurance representative with TD Insurance, said there\u2019s a process to evaluate the best insurance options for parents.<\/p>\n
Though the institution doesn\u2019t offer insurance for people younger than 18, Sharma said parents need to factor in costs of their children when deciding on their personal life insurance. In this way she sees children more as a liability rather than an asset. The recommendation is to make sure that parents use their insurance to cover themselves if something happens to their children.<\/p>\n
For Smit, she said they learned to save and budget after their first child.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew that we wanted a second [child] and we had verbally agreed that we wouldn\u2019t start trying again until we had a specific dollar amount in our savings account to be a floater for expenses when we were on maternity leave,\u201d she said. \u201cIt really relieved a lot of the stress for us to know that we had that savings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Natasha Smit and her husband Aaron knew they wanted to have kids, but what they didn\u2019t know was just how<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-finance-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3796"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4514,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions\/4514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}