Best Gift Ideas for Your Dad’s Secure Financial Future
Depending upon your own financial situation, there are many ways in which you can ease your dad’s financial burden. Here are a few you can consider.
The next time you are planning a gift for your dad, why not look beyond the obvious choices and consider gifting him a more secure financial future instead? Sure, it goes against the grain – especially in our country where the traditional role of the patriarch has been to ‘take care’ of the family, financially speaking. But why not, considering that it would be an extremely thoughtful and useful gift? Depending upon your own financial situation, there are many ways in which you can ease your dad’s financial burden. Here are a few you can consider.
Assistance with High-Cost Debt
High-cost debt, such as personal loans or revolving credit card debt can not only be very dangerous to our personal finances in the long run, but it can become a cause of immense mental stress as well – especially in our senior years when we live off our savings or pension. If your own finances permit, you can consider easing your dad’s financial burden by paying off any high-cost debt that he may have ended up incurring and is struggling to pay off. Doing this would create room for taking further money-related measures that could empower your dad even more financially.
Health Insurance
The need for health insurance becomes more and more pronounced as the years go on, as the chances of lifestyle disease rise with every year after the age of 60. Unfortunately, the cost of health insurance rises exponentially as well. In such a situation, a high-quality health insurance plan would be a wonderful gift to give your dad, as it would remove the stress of worrying about escalating healthcare costs. The icing on the cake would be a preventive health check up option that many health insurance plans provide, as it would help him with preventive screenings and health check ups without having to shell out a large sum of money every year for the same.
Retirement Planning Contribution
An investment contribution to your father’s retirement planning account would be another wonderful gift. The importance of a sizeable retirement corpus has gone up over the years, with increasing lifespans and escalating medical costs. Even a one-time contribution, if invested into a high-quality equity mutual fund for 10-12 years, can compound into a very useful sum of money that your dad can enjoy or fall back upon during his retirement years. Just make sure that you avoid investing this money into fixed income assets or annuities and go for growth assets like blue chip shares or equity mutual funds instead.
A Mutual Fund SIP in his name
Needless to say, a SIP in a mutual fund is one of the most fantastic ways to achieve long term financial goals. If your dad has 10-15 years to go for his retirement and your own finances allow it, a SIP of even Rs. 5,000 per month that is stepped up by Rs. 1,000 per year can potentially growth to a large sum of Rs. 55-60 Lakhs by the time your dad finally retires. A corpus of this size can give your dad’s retirement corpus a substantial boost. Just make sure that you run this SIP in an aggressive equity fund and start out with the right expectations with respect to returns, as continuity is key when it comes to SIP’s!
The Gift of Financial Planning
Last but not the least – the gift of financial planning is probably the best gift you can give your dad. Set up a session with a trusted financial planner whom you trust. Financial Planning can help your dad put his finances in perspective, take wiser financial decisions and set him up for a fantastic, stress-free retirement!
The author is Chief Business Officer, FinEdge. Views are personal