Top 5 Investment Tips for Parents

It can be hard as young parents maintaining your first home, working 50 hours a week and raising a young family and you may think you have years before you have to worry about investing. Think again! During this Holiday season I saw a commercial produced by a company that reminded me of how quickly life goes by. The scheme was a man pushing a small boy that looked to be about 7 years old on a swing in the back yard; he pushes the young boy and the boy and the swing go out of frame and when the swing comes back the boy now looks to be a 200 pound adolescent and knocks the wind out of the man pushing the swing. The tag line says "Life comes at you fast".

The other day, I received a Christmas card from a good friend of mine in Virginia and inside the card was a picture of her two beautiful children ages 9 and 12. I have been residing in another state for 5 years now and I haven't seen them for sometime and only remember the youngest as a baby lying in his bouncy chair. My friend wrote me a little note in the card to tell me that her oldest was in the 7^th grade and the youngest in the 4^th. I thought to myself "wow, where does the time go?".

Since we are all aware that time is our greatest commodity, it's time to prepare for the coming New Year and make some plans regarding finances. This month I am going to give you some investment tips for children, Parents and Empty Nesters in order to better prepare yourself for the future. Today, we will focus on Parents and give you some investment ideas for the future.

1. Follow the 10-10-80 plan. (some refer to it as the 80-10-10 rule) but I believe in giving first, saving and investing second and then living on the rest. This is the first and basic step in investing. You first invest in others or the Kingdom of God, then you save or invest for yourself and then you live on the rest.