Automate College Savings - Investing 101

To save for college, especially if students wish to pursue education abroad, is a huge challenge. However, higher education should not be so hard to save for and invest in with an automated saving facility. If parents wish to save and invest to build a nest egg for a child’s education, they can easily and conveniently think of an automatic savings plan to reach a financial goal for funding higher education.

Begin Early and Watch Savings Grow

Unless you plan for your child’s college education in advance, you will not be able to afford higher education with the rising costs influencing college fees. Planning beforehand means that you not only save for your child’s higher education corpus but budget your income accordingly. There should be some part of your regular income that you put aside every month for the purpose of saving it.

The next wise thing you should do is invest the saving amount in an investment product that grows your capital. While most parents have all the ability and good intentions to save, they rarely ever get down to doing it. Furthermore, they may not be aware that simply saving isn’t enough. To beat the effects of inflation over time, investing capital is the only way to make it grow into a significant amount for higher education costs. To be stringent and diligently save and invest over a long duration, parents can automate their savings and invest it automatically, with small amounts of cash, and thus, build a solid sum for the future.

The Concept of Automated Saving and Investment

Good colleges may be difficult to get into, but if you don’t have the funds to spare to meet the fees, you have bigger challenges on your hands. In the current age, the competition to gain admission into any international college is tough and fees may be high. Additionally, if you are thinking of sending a child abroad to study, you have to beat extra living costs and other incidental expenses. Nonetheless, a parent who earns a regular income is able to save and invest small amounts gradually. These grow over a period.

The concept can be explained by the fact that you can fix a predetermined sum and an interval for investing. The process is automatically conducted, regardless of any other factors. This is a way to grow your wealth with little effort and no hassle.

Finding the Right Approach

The key to a good investment plan which is run automatically is finding the correct approach to investment. You must remember that the cost of education is high, and if you rely on any automated service, you must save and invest enough in the right instruments to build your capital. Furthermore, if you wish to diversify your investment portfolio, by hedging your risk, you will probably have to employ more than one automated process. In the case of automated investment plans, you “pay yourself first” with a small amount that is strictly kept aside for future growth. This is a way to ensure that you don’t use the money for other purposes. You can opt for different amounts of cash to be automated and credited to different investment plans on a regular basis, the moment your income comes into your bank account every month.

Why should you consider automated saving and investment?

The cost of higher education can be met by strategies for saving and investing on a long- term basis. Although parents do save and invest for their children’s futures, they may tend to spend more than is required, and when you have funds coming in from regular income sources, they may not always be wisely allocated to investment. Here are some advantages you get when you save and invest for higher education through an e-wallet app or any other automated saving and investment strategies:

• Precise Saving and Investment - With a plan that automatically saves and invests money, there is no room for error. You are unlikely to miss a payment towards the plan as it is a prefixed process and is conducted automatically without your involvement.
• Consistency in Investment - An automated savings and investment strategy is based on the premise that your investment is made regularly without any interruption.
• Convenience - Your money is saved and invested automatically without you having to think about amounts and investment protocols. You can take a backseat while your money grows.

Reliable Automated Investment

Globally, the world is moving in the direction of automation in all spheres of life. Investments are not to be left out, and automation in the banking and finance sectors has played a prominent role in many areas of service. If you want to save a portion of your income and allocate it to investment products, you can do so with automation. Initially, you may need to put some effort into figuring out what investment channels to allocate funds to for higher education costs, but once you do, you can consider the following:

• Unit-Linked Insurance Plan - A unit-linked insurance plan or ULIP is a good investment option for your wealth to manage itself. You get a long-term plan so your money is collected over a period, all set for you to fund your child’s higher education. In such a plan you get the dual advantage of insurance for a period along with investment.
• SIP and Mutual Funds - Another investment channel you could explore with an automated investment option is to invest in a systematic investment plan or SIP, or a mutual fund. Both can give significant returns over a period.

Let Money Manage Itself

Under the purview of new ways to effectively fund your child’s higher education through saving and investment, automated investments can be a great aid. The main issue that parents face while saving and investing for their children is indiscipline, wherein investments made for a child’s higher education may be used for other financial purposes along the way to building a corpus. This hampers the overall corpus, and the only way to protect your investment from yourself, so to speak, is to strictly rely on automated investments which prove to be accurate, consistent and affordable. This is a system that forces you to save and invest regularly.

Sources:

1. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/financial-advisor/how-to-build-wealth/
2. https://www.livemint.com/money/personal-finance/there-is-no-short-cut-long-term-investment-is-only-way-to-grow-your-wealth/amp-11665977054208.html