Gift a nest egg
By cutting down on the amount of presents we buy at Christmas time, we can instead invest money in the future of the next generation. As an alternative to buying young children expensive presents that are often only used for a token few winter mornings, some parents are instead ask for family to put money towards a growing nest egg.
The Times note that a £100 deposit in a middling investment trust 18 years ago would (as of last month) now be £481 according to figures from the Association of Investment Companies (AIC).
They go on further to observe that if you had invested £100 every Christmas for 18 years, your child’s nest egg would have grown to £6,197. Further to this investment in the best performing sectors, biotechnology and healthcare, would have seen an investment grow to a massive £9,858.
There is an ever growing trend emerging of parents spending huge amounts of money on children in their developing years, a trend which sees a huge amount of excessive waste, including a huge strain on the environment as plastics and other materials are readily bought and binned.
The idea would not be to completely turn the back on traditional Christmas gifting, but that aside from a few token gifts, extra money could be put into something concrete for the future.
By asking family members to buy less extravagant gifts and contribute a small amount of money to your children’s nest egg, you could grow a large fund that they could then use in the future for education, buying a house or paying for a wedding.
Whilst it’s not the route that everyone would choose to take, there is certainly an argument that gifting a nest egg is a valuable endeavour and would help the future in more ways than one.
