50 Plus 5 Plus 5: A Unique Savings Plan

As parents to be when we were in our mid twenties there were many things we were nervous about.

How do you keep a newborn safe? How would we help our newborn go to sleep? How would we know if we were feeding him enough? Would we be good parents?

These were all things that we began to learn through a great program at the Denver JCC called Jewish Baby University. While we were still deer in the headlights during these classes, they were skills that we could learn.

But then about three months before our son was born, I heard something that shocked me. There had been a news piece about the cost of raising children from infant to eighteen years old. At the time, I think that the study said it was about $250,000!

Here I was, a 26 year old nonprofit professional with a wife that worked for a hair salon. Yeah, that’s right, we were rolling in the money... okay not really. Were we crazy? Why would we add all of these new costs when we were not financially stable.

I looked at my wife and said we had to do something to help pay for his clothes and diapers.

That is when I created a unique savings plan.

For the first year, we would put away $50 a month on the 27th of the month (the “monthiversary” of his birthday) and then on his next birthday we would add $5 a month and so on.

Little did I know that nine years later we would still be using this savings plan and while the usage of this money has varied over the years, we have created an account that has allowed us to purchase new clothes, pay for school activities, birthday parties, camp, etc. None of this has felt like a financial burden because the money is already set aside. Even the year where we bought three new pairs of shoes for our son in six months. (Both growth and because he is very hard on his shoes).

Currently we put away $90 a month for our son and $75 a month for our daughter. Not a lot but also not an insignificant amount of money.

While there was no rhyme or reason to the $50 plus $5 plus $5, etc. amount of money, it has helped us.

How have you paid for or saved for unexpected expenses?