If you enjoy this article, please checkout Boring Money Guy

This will sound crazy, but stick with me.

I’ve started investing for a child who doesn’t exist.

Not “not yet born”. Not “on the way”.

Just… not real yet.

We only got married two weeks ago. A baby probably won’t be with us for another couple of years.

So why start investing for it now?

Where this started

I didn’t come up with this idea on my own.

I was watching Damien Talks Money (find him on YouTube—he’s very good) talk about the future of the UK’s increasingly costly pension system¹.

One suggestion stuck with me:

What if the government invested a lump sum—say £5,000—on behalf of every child at birth?

Left alone for 60 years, it could (the usual investing-related Ts & Cs apply) grow into something meaningful—almost certainly into six figures. (My very basic calculations put it somewhere in the £350k-400k ballpark). Maybe even enough to take the strain off the state pension scheme entirely.

It feels like the kind of idea that should be obvious.

Which is probably why it won’t be done.

But I like the concept.

Because stripped back, it highlights something most people underestimate:

In the world of investing, start early enough, and you don’t need to do anything extreme.

Time does the heavy lifting.

Here’s the thing, though.

I’m not exactly wealthy.

I don’t have £5,000 to invest for a child I don’t have.

But I can do something smaller.

Something consistent.

Which is where this really started—

With a spreadsheet.

I do love a spreadsheet.

Especially financial ones.

I love creating them. Tweaking the numbers. Watching how small changes ripple into something much bigger.

I already had one for my own retirement.

Nothing fancy. Just:

• contributions
• growth assumptions
• timelines
• a few graphs

The usual.

But after watching Damien talk about investing for a child at birth, I went back to it.

Not to rebuild it.

Just to look at it differently.

What happens if money gets 20 extra years to grow?

That’s it.

That was the whole question.

And once you see that—

You can’t really unsee it.

What I do now

Right now, I’m investing small amounts on their behalf.

Odds and sods, really.

It averages out at about £50 a month.

Nothing structured. Nothing optimised.

Just getting time on my side early.

But when they’re actually born—

Then it becomes more deliberate.

First up: the pension

Now, you might be thinking—

Pretty weird to be thinking about a not-yet conceived person’s retirement.

And I hear you.

But let’s see how you feel after reading this next part.

£50 a month.

From birth, until they’re 18.

Doesn’t sound like much.

It’s only £600 per year.

But with tax relief and long-term compounding, it turns into something in the region of £25,000 by age 18.

At which point, I’d hope they’ll continue contributing themselves.

But even if they don’t—

By age 60 (assuming my standard 7% growth), that pot could grow to ~£380,000.²

From £50 a month I stopped paying in years earlier.

The rest is just time doing the work.

At that point, it starts to feel less strange than it did at the start.

This part is less simple

The last section was the pension. Something they wouldn’t be able to touch for many, many years.

Now let’s talk ISAs.

(By that, I of course mean Stocks & Shares ISAs.)

Because this is where it gets trickier.

I’ve read a lot about how some people—who can afford to—invest their Child Benefit payments on behalf of their child.

A good idea.

It’s not life-changing money on its own.

We’re talking about £27 a week, or about £1,400 a year.

That figure increases slightly each year.

But even if we keep it flat for simplicity, that’s still around £25,000 in contributions over 18 years.

And if invested over that time at a long-run average return of 7%, it could grow to ~£48,000 by age 18.

Which is, on paper, amazing.

But—

There’s a tension in it.

Because a JISA becomes theirs at 18.

Fully.

Legally.

Immediately.

No conditions. No friction. No delay.

And I’ve seen enough 18-year-olds—six-seven, am I right?—to know what that can look like.

A decent lump sum.

No real experience managing money.

And every reason to treat it like found money.

So instead, I want structure.

Not control—but structure.

The Split

So here’s the plan.

Invest half of it into a JISA.

That’s the “this is yours” pot. The head start. The gift.

Something they’ll fully own at 18. No strings attached.

My spreadsheet puts it at ~£28,000.

Will they blow it on nights out and lavish holidays?

Or add to it themselves as a working teen, maybe with an eye to a house deposit?

Hopefully the latter.

Either way, there’s a fallback.

The other half of those Child Benefit payments—along with anything else I decide to save for them—will go into the pot I’ve already got cooking.

Invisible to them. More patient.

And once they start earning themselves, I want to add another layer to that.

If they choose to save or invest their own money, I’ll match it by 20%.

I want saving to feel immediately rewarding, not some distant idea.

If they put something away, they don’t just lose access to it—they see it grow faster because they made that choice.

A small reinforcement loop, rather than a lecture.

Because the goal isn’t just to give them money at 18—it’s to give them a chance to learn what money feels like before they get full access to it.

Hopefully, by then, I’ll have done my job properly.

Not just giving them money—but shaping their relationship with it long after I’ve stopped contributing.

---

1. The UK state pension is becoming increasingly expensive mainly because people are living longer, while birth rates have fallen. That means fewer workers are paying in through National Insurance compared to the number of retirees drawing out.

   On top of that, the “triple lock” system (which guarantees annual increases based on earnings, inflation, or 2.5%—whichever is highest) has pushed costs higher still, especially during periods of high inflation. The result is a system where spending on pensions takes up a growing share of government expenditure, despite relatively flat population growth.

   For me, this raises genuine questions about how sustainable the current setup is over the long term. ↩

2. The caveat to this, of course, our old nemesis: inflation. Assuming an average of 2.5% inflation over the next 60 years, that £380,000 would feel more like £86,000 in today’s money. Not exactly a retirement fund.

   Which is why continuing to invest matters—because if you don’t, time quietly erodes your future wealth. ↩

If you enjoy this article, please checkout Boring Money Guy