As a mommy of four I worry about my children’s future all of the time. I know no mother likes to think of their children’s lives without them in it, but being prepared for everything and anything is important for your children’s future. We live in such an uncertain world nowadays and both me and my spouse try to plan for them the best we can, but I often ask myself what would happen to them if I were to pass away suddenly or what would become of my family if my husband were to pass away as well? That’s why after my third son, me and my husband sat down to talk about our options and I want to share what I have learned with all of you.

Looking at options for your family in the case of your own passing can be difficult, but what if you were a stay at home mother and suddenly your husband was to pass away? Would you be able to afford the mortgage or car payments, how about the kids’ school and college? Could you afford the funeral costs? These are the reasons as mothers we need to make sure we are prepared for anything and that’s exactly what I did and now I’m going to take you with me on my journey to finding the right ways to make sure my kids are set up for a successful future no matter what the future holds.

First my husband and I both wrote out wills saying who we’d like to be the designated guardians for our four children if something were to happen to us. We did this with our attorney after we made the appointment  and after that we had to think about who else we would include in our wills and what we wished for them to have. I left my jewelry to my sister and my husband left his fishing gear to his best friend and anything else we wanted to leave for loved ones was written into our wills. 

Once we were done setting up our wills and designating beneficiaries we had to decide what would be the best way to ensure our children wanted for nothing after we passed. That’s when I remembered my father talking to me about the whole life and term life options he and my mother had used to help them plan for the future.

That’s when I got to work studying the options. Whole life insurance and term life insurance are both options we looked at while doing our research. The largest difference between the two is that whole life insurance is there for you as long as you’re alive. While term life insurance is typically only for a few years.Whole life insurance has a cash value and you can withdraw cash value as a loan, but the premiums are often more expensive. Term life coverage is meant to the last few years of your life and does not have a cash value option and you cannot borrow against it. Your premiums are lower when you are younger and increase as you age. 

The reason we chose whole life insurance is because we wanted to be prepared for the rest of our lives since we are not old enough yet to need just term life coverage. Whole life insurance was a guaranteed cash value growth and we knew we could take our dividends and reinvest them into our policies and allow our death benefit cash value to accumulate more quickly. We also knew if we ever had to we could also borrow against the policy. Whole life policies protect us for the rest of our lives so long as we pay our premiums on time and that gives myself and my husband a piece of mind and if my husband or I were to pass the other would receive a tax free amount we set ahead of time called a death benefit to take care of all of the necessities. 

Our payment options were to pay our policies for as long as we wanted the whole life insurance and as long as we pay that premium we are covered and then be covered for our lifetimes. 

After getting our affairs in order we opened up four bank accounts under our kids names and started investing money every month into those bank accounts like an allowance, so that when they are older they will have a little bit of savings for college or cars or even an apartment. This ensures that once they reach the right age they will be able to take money out of the account that you invested in, even if you’re no longer there. 

I also added my oldest two boys onto my credit cards as authorized users so that by the time they are 18 they will already have an established credit score allowing them to more easily purchase things such as a car, house or apartment and it will make getting a loan with a good rate much easier for them as well. My husband has put our youngest two on his cards as authorized users as well so that they will receive the same benefits as their older siblings.

Why did I decide it was time for us to do all of this? 

I worried if I kept putting off planning for my children’s future I may not be able to be prepared when they are older if something were to happen. Now I know my children are set up for success no matter what the future holds, because my whole life insurance plan protects my family in the case anything were to happen to myself or my husband.  There are many ways to approach your child’s future, but this is how my family prepared for it and I hope some of you out there found this post helpful in your decisions about the future and also gave you some options you can use to help ensure a great and open future for your kids as well.