Planning to grow your family can be one of the most exciting times of life and while setting yourself up to successfully support new members of the family might seem intimidating at first, there are a variety of ways you can prepare to grow your family while sustaining a solid financial situation.
Examining how your credit may affect the future of your family is an integral part of effective financial planning and knowing how to improve your credit can pay big dividends later on. Whether you’re looking at new lines of credit to help pay for household expenses or you’re interested in knowing more about how to plan for your child’s education, carefully considering how you currently make money and how credit changes based on your family can help you create an effective financial game plan.
How Marriage Might Impact Credit
While getting married doesn’t always directly impact your credit, it’s important to know how tying the knot changes your credit options and why. Your credit report doesn’t state your relationship status, but applying for new lines of credit with dual incomes might affect interest rates and new opportunities to obtain new loans and credit cards.
As a married couple, the two of you will keep separate lines of credit even after you are married, but applying for new credit cards, taking on a new mortgage and applying for loans together might impact both of your credit scores down the road. In the event that you’re pursuing a divorce, it’s important to note that lines of credit and some accounts will remain in both your names and therefore, continue to affect both of your credit reports.
Your Growing Family
There are plenty of new expenses to consider when thinking about growing your family. You might be thinking about changing your living situation or want to start a fund that supports a reliable healthcare program. Down the road, financing a new car and paying for college might become a substantial part of your overhead. Being able to afford many of these future costs will likely in part depend on your credit history and what you do to improve your credit if necessary.
With the added costs of a new family member taking a pragmatic view of your credit and potential debt will help give you a better idea of how you can prepare for children. If you have a new baby on the way taking on debt can seem like a daunting proposition, but it is a fairly common occurrence. Americans with children tend to have a significant amount of debt compared to those without leading to lower credit scores for those parents.
Knowing what credit cards are best suited for certain purchases while keeping interest rates low is something that can help you afford the costs that come with a growing family. There is a range of credit cards with different perks that might help you afford everything you need for a new baby.
Stores like Target and Costco offer credit cards that provide cashback benefits and rewards at gas stations, so if you’re a consistent patron of these stores, it might be worth considering whether their credit cards will help you and your family save money long-term. There are also certain cards that offer 0 percent balance transfers for parents trying to avoid interest charges while decreasing their debt.
Future Employment Opportunities
You might even be thinking about pursuing a new job opportunity in order to support your growing family, in which case it helps to understand how a potential employer views and interprets your credit and why. In some cases, having good or poor credit might impact your success while seeking a new job or career change. Some employers make credit checks on their employees to reduce risk and ensure employees have the fiscal discipline to successfully manage funds. If you can show your employer that you’ve successfully managed your credit and other relevant finances, you might be in a better position to secure a new job that allows you to afford everything you and your family require.
Affording Higher Education
Examining how your credit is impacting your financial situation can also help you plan to afford your child’s higher education, with college having the potential to be one of the most costly expenses in your child’s life. Successfully managing your credit will help you when applying for student loans which the majority of American students require to pursue their degrees.
Once your child turns 21, they’ll have the option to open lines of credit without having a co-signing parent. Until then, knowing how co-signing with your child for a new line of credit and new loans can affect both of your credit reports equally is an important part of sustaining positive finances.
When the time comes for your child to build their credit, cosigning can be an effective way to help begin this process and help your child cultivate a solid credit score for the future. There are plenty of free online tools that can give you insight into your credit score and how to improve it. Ensuring that payments are made on time will help keep both of your credit scores in good standing.
It might also be helpful for parents starting college funds to know about credit cards that offer rewards that can assist in paying for college. Some credit cards match a percentage of what you spend and deposit those rewards directly into an education savings account.
Final Thoughts
Knowing how your credit may change as your family changes and what you can do to create a stable financial situation as you grow your family is an important part of balancing your finances. By taking advantage of certain credit card benefits, adjusting your plan to pay off debt and managing your credit responsibly, you can put yourself in a good position to help support your family financially.
Starting to examine how you can improve your credit and plan for change now can make a big difference as your family grows and you move into new stages of life.
It’s never too late or early to consider how your credit may impact your plans for the future and your family.
