One of the biggest concerns for expecting parents or once they have brought that bundle of joy home, is the worry if they are saving enough for the family.

Do we have enough to take care of the baby’s needs, for the growing list of purchases small and large that tend to come? Do we have enough to get and setup a home? Will we have enough to afford day care? Will we have enough to afford the doctors, vaccinations and hospital visits that are the norm for a growing child? We will have enough to send the kid to a good school in future?

The worries never stop. (My mom once told me that the essence of being a parent is to worry. And that it never ends even when they grow up!)

But worries around finances can be managed with a simple plan.

Here are a few steps.

Start with tabulating your current earnings, spends, what you have as assets and what you owe.

Use automated services like Mint, MoneyDashboard or Yolt to bring together a view of spends, assets and liabilities across cards and banks. Alternatively, start with a simple excel sheet and pull in the info.

Create buckets to group spends (like ‘daily essentials’ or ‘healthcare’) so that you could track and predict future spends in these.

Early parenting is a good time to start investing in insurances (if you already haven’t!). Making sure we have enough for provide for little ones come rain or sunshine is a critical responsibility as a parent.

The first type of insurance to consider is life insurance. These payout monies to your family in the unfortunate event that you are no longer around to provide for them. They are also usually cheaper to buy earlier in life, and hence the sooner you get them the better. How much insurance you need is usually a subjective call, but make sure it is enough to cover family spends for at least 5-10 years.

The second type of insurance to consider is health insurance. These payout monies in the event of a hospitalisation and sometimes even for at home treatment, but are critical particularly to support doctoral or hospital visits that are a norm in a household with growing children. Consider getting this for the entire family.

If you are expecting, make sure you have enough coverage for maternity costs. But ensure you setup a family wide health insurance policy, to which you can add your newborn as soon as they are here.

The third type of insurance to consider is disability. These help manage the risk of a disability event that prevents you from earning and providing for your family. Consider taking enough to at least partially cover a key part of your earnings and at the very list your essential spends for 1-2 years.

Finally, if you own your house (whether it’s under mortgage or not), make sure you cover it with property and household insurance. These protect you from loss of your home in the event of fire and other hazards, and are important to keep your family with a roof over its head whatever the situation.

A good place to start looking for good insurance products is a broker portals like moneysupermarket or utilise local brokers available via BIBA.

Another point of note. Even if you are covered for some or all of these risk with your existing employer-sponsored insurance, it is worth still getting an additional private cover. Employment these days is far from predictable for most and getting insurance when you don’t have stable employment is a nightmare!

If you followed the first part about tabulating spends and incomes, you should already have a good grip on spend patterns. But early childhood is the time when new spends can rise.

Take a look at new parenting cost portals like to get a sense of how much it would cost to feed, clothe, take care of that bundle(s) of joy.

Then put in a savings plan to meet those goals.

Financial goal planning tools can help give you a quick estimation of how much you may need to set aside periodically, and how to manage those investments.

Financial planning is no simple cup of tea for everyone, even if we try to make it simpler with all the advise.

If you are feeling overwhelmed about the millions of things to do (as more early parents are!), do not hesitate to seek professional financial advise.

Finding financial advise is increasingly easy these days. Use tools like Unbiased, VouchedFor or the PFS’s search tool to find an advisor who fits your profile and ask.