How Kids Change You — and Your Financial Plan

How kids change you can be delightfully surprising. But they’ll change your financial plan, too, in ways that might be challenging if you don’t know how to adjust. Here’s what you need to consider to ensure your finances can keep up.

In what is probably news to no one, things change when you have kids.

But not everyone thinks through the true impacts of those changes. In fact, in some ways, that’s actually impossible to do… because how kids change you is to change who you are as a person.

The tricky thing about something like having kids is that the experience itself changes who you are. The person who must decide to have children is not the person who will have the lived experience. And therefore, you cannot possibly predict with a high degree of accuracy what life will be like post-kids.

Sure, you know your responsibilities will shift. Your schedule will probably get upended. The smaller your children are, the less personal freedom you may have.

How you experience all this, however, is unknowable.

The process itself alters who you are now, and how you perceive and react to your life with kids in ways that you could not have even imagined when you were childfree.

If you yourself are changed, you can expect your financial plan needs to be adjusted, too!

You’re going to have new goals. Your regular, ongoing expenses increase. You’re financially responsible for more; more can go wrong simply because there are more variables in the form of another human being in your life that you must care for and protect.

Kids change your financial plan, too, in more ways than you might expect. We dig into all this and more in this episode, where we share:

• The trickiest part of transformative experiences on our lives
• Our suggestion for solving the “wild problems” we all encounter (from the decision to have kids to any other major life choice or transition)
• How having a child changed each of us personally
• Updates you might need to make to your goals or priorities after having children
• The impacts kids can make on your present-day cash flow as well as your long-term financial objectives
• What strategies might need to shift within your financial plan to accomodate a growing family
• Why saving what you can when you can is so critical
• What you need to consider if generational wealth is important to you

Tune in to this episode of the Beyond Finances podcast for all the details on how kids change you… and your financial plans:

• Listen on Apple Podcasts
• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Overcast.fm
• Listen on PocketCasts
• Listen on Stitcher

Want specific financial advice for your unique situation? Request a complimentary consultation and one-page financial plan from the pros at Beyond Your Hammock: www.beyondyourhammock.com/schedule