How to Avoid Financial Struggles When Starting a Family

Starting a family is one of the most rewarding endeavors in a person’s life. It can also be the biggest challenge. Before moving forward, make sure you are ready to take on the immense physical, emotional, and financial demands of raising a family. Here are some tips for being financially secure as you take this massive step. 

Anticipate the Costs

Never go into anything blindly, but especially something as vitally important as raising a family. You need to have at least a basic understanding of the costs. One source has calculated that the average cost of raising a child in the United States is around $13,000 a year. 

These costs include prenatal care, labor and delivery, doctor visits, diapers, clothing, formula, food, housing, childcare, preschool, illness, entertainment, extracurricular activities, schooling, and more. Make sure that you can at least cover the basics.

Create a Solid Financial Foundation

Financial security is vital to your children’s physical and emotional health. Studies have shown that material-need insecurities are heavy predictors of poor health. Material-need insecurities are defined as the limited ability to pay for basic needs, including food, housing, clothing, and utilities. These kinds of financial insecurities impact everyone in the family. Material insecurities can hurt teens’ potential for success. You can create a solid financial foundation in your family by getting the education or training you need to be competitive in today’s job markets and obtaining (and holding) a steady job.

Limit Your Spending

It’s easy to get sucked into the downward vortex of wanting to keep up with the Jones’s. Unfortunately, this mindset has led to the financial downfall of far too many families. Learn to differentiate between needs and wants, then create a budget that prioritizes needs and saving over frivolous wants. Developing the discipline to stick to a budget could be the difference between financial stability and financial ruin. Buying things simply to maintain a certain image is no way to spend your hard-earned money. It will only cause you stress and grief. Learn from your pioneer forebears and exercise the waning virtues of thrift and industry! The peace and satisfaction that comes from living within your means are worth far more than the glitter, gold, and false promises of consumerism. 

Your budding family needs and deserves the very best you can give. And you will be required to give everything you have to make it work. Thankfully, while no endeavor is as challenging as raising a family, there is also nothing out there that can even remotely compare with the joy it brings! 

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