What are the Girl Child Marriage Plans?

Girl Child Marriage Plan

Right from the time a child is born, parents start dreaming of the perfect wedding for their child’s future. Over the years, marriages in India have become a costly affair, so much so that parents run into debts just financing a wedding. While the focus is now slowly shifting to prioritizing education for most kids, marriages continue to remain an important dream for the parents.

How To Plan Your Girl Child’s Marriage?

In order to finance your girl child’s marriage, you need to take into consideration a lot of factors such as the venue, the number of people, jewellery, clothing, catering, etc. With each of these becoming huge individual businesses, it is unlikely that you will be able to fund all that with just regular savings.

What you need is an exclusive girl child marriage plan that takes care of all possible contingencies including a financial backup in your absence, and a wealth accumulating investment plan that beats inflation. Before you decide on the plans to invest in, you need to form an idea of the total corpus that this wedding will cost you. Ideally, your budget should be larger than what you will require to compensate for extra costs. The amount should also be inclusive of the number of children, their age, your annual income, and the number of years you have to grow the desired corpus.

Types Of Plans For Girl Child’s Marriage

A well thought out girl child marriage plan should include a term insurance cover to create a financial safety net for your daughter and your family to fall back on in your absence. Further, a child investment plan such as a ULIP can help you in wealth creation through market-linked returns. The best girl child investment plans are inclusive of an insurance component, an investment component, flexibility of fund options, and investment strategies. In addition to these, a safe and low risk option would be to open a savings account for your girl child.

The accumulated funds from all these options can help your daughter finance her marriage expenses when needed. Let’s look at the plans in a little more detail and see how you can benefit from them.

Term Insurance

Term insurance covers the risk of death of the life assured for a specific term. The life assured (in this case the parent) pays a premium against their desired coverage. In the unfortunate event of his/her death within the policy term, nominees can claim the death benefit as financial compensation to fund their future needs. What this means is - if you were to die under unfortunate circumstances, your girl child will have access to the proceeds from the term life insurance policy if you assign her as the nominee. She can use these funds to pay for her marriage expenses once she turns 18 or her education.

You can now enjoy the Return of Premium option with term plans, which means that the money you invested comes back to you in full. Essentially, the life assured receives a refund of the total premiums paid towards the policy if they survive the policy term. You can use the whole amount towards your girl child’s marriage if you choose to.

Child ULIPs

Child plans come with insurance and a savings or investment component. The latter helps you get significant returns through market-linked investments. ULIPs invest a part of your premiums towards equity/debt funds and the other half on a life cover for yourself. In the event of your death, the insurer waives off future premiums due but keeps the policy in force. So the fund value accumulates till the end of the policy term without having your grieving family pay the premiums in your absence. The final sum can be used towards your girl child’s marriage or other expenses at the discretion of the nominee. You can also choose girl child insurance plans that offer a savings avenue for your child’s financial freedom.

Savings Account

Small savings deposit accounts such as Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana can add to the corpus that you are creating for your girl child. While it may not be sufficient alone, couple such accounts with an investment or an insurance plan and you will see your savings growing much faster. The SSY account allows partial withdrawal from the accumulated funds once the child turns 18 years of age for her marriage.

Key Pointers To Note Before Buying Girl Child Marriage Plan

You should start early when the girl child is still young. This gives you more time to invest and a longer horizon to create a bigger corpus.

Starting early also helps you invest smaller amounts and generate higher returns through the power of compounding.

Remember that you understand your finances better than anybody else. Stick to the budget you have prepared and do not be burdened by societal pressures.

Your investment portfolio should reflect your age, income, risk appetite, and your child’s dreams.

Choose to allocate assets in a diverse manner to balance out the uncertainties of the market.

Make sure to have a plan in place to take care of your debts under unfortunate circumstances. The corpus that you build for your girl child should be spent on her needs and not towards other expenses.