About our family
Even though we want to keep this blog anonymous, I think anyone who reads it would appreciate if we opened the curtain just a little. One of my goals is to make this project relatable to families who are at a similar point in their lives — with small kids and a dream of building wealth for them. That wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t share at least some details about ourselves. Still, I try to keep it focused on our investing journey and finances.
We are a family with two small kids, aged 0 and 3, living in Finland. The parents are in their thirties (but feel more like twenty). We’ve been investing for our children for about three years, ever since our first was born. The journey hasn’t gone quite as well as we had hoped, but luckily we’re still in the early days.
Our family in terms of money
We are by no means wealthy — not even particularly well-off. We’re a middle-class family with a middle-class household income. We don’t have any significant assets - just a modest stock portfolio (the parents’) and a 10 000 euro car. That’s about it. Both parents work in jobs that typically require higher education.
Every month, all the money that comes in also goes out. And it doesn’t go into investments - not a single euro. It goes toward paying bills, groceries, and everything else. Our biggest monthly expenses are:
At the moment, we’re unable to save - in fact, it’s quite the opposite. But we’re still doing our best to build the foundation of our kids’ portfolio. After all, the easiest way to impact the portfolio size in 18 years is to start strong. If you double the starting point, you also double the ending point. Investing in our children’s future just feels too important not to do.
Where has the initial money come from?
You can see the history of all cash inputs to the portfolio (along with their sources) on the portfolio page. As you’ll notice, there have been two larger contributions in the past three years. Both of these were simply transfers from the parents’ own investment portfolios to the kids’ portfolio. We’ll try to donate as much as we can in the future as well - of course without paying gift taxes. Let’s hope the parents’ portfolios do well enough to make that possible.
In the previous post, I estimated (guessed) that we might be able to donate 5 000 euros per year on average over the 18-year period. That estimate assumes that the size of donations increases gradually toward the later years. Even though we don’t currently have much extra money, we do see a path toward a slightly more flexible state of living by growing our income.