How your plan costs children and goals

Your plan covers the big life costs in two parts. It costs your children from pregnancy to university, and it turns every goal you set (a wedding, a car, a renovation) into a scheduled expense and a savings target.

How much does my plan assume a child costs?

Every child, current or planned, is costed year by year from pregnancy to university. Each life stage has its own yearly cost and length.

This is the only cost table your plan uses, whatever the path or gender. Your choice of pre-university path, Junior College or Polytechnic, sets the cost for that stage and the university stage after it. Costs are split by your cost split, or land on one person.

Planned children and NS

Your plan defaults a planned child to female, Polytechnic path. For a planned child it asks only the expected age, not gender or path. A current child sets both.

Sons get two $0 cost NS years right after the pre-university stage. That pushes university back two years compared with a daughter on the same path.

There’s no “support until age 23” setting. A child’s cost always runs this full stage sequence, so “Family & children” has no support age field.

How does my plan handle goals?

A goal is one-time (a wedding, a car) or recurring (a yearly trip, a hobby budget), entered per occurrence. A recurring goal can grow at its own rate, or follow a percentage of your take-home pay instead of a fixed figure. Each goal has an importance level.

A couple’s goal can also be shared, funded by you, your partner or both. Enter a combined amount and “Your share”, and your plan splits it into two goals sized by that share.

How much does my plan save ahead of a one-time goal?

For a one-time goal, your plan works back from its date and adds a savings target to your minimum cash in the bank. The share of the inflation-adjusted amount it aims to have saved, rather than rely on investment growth if you’ve set a return, depends on the goal’s importance and how many years away it is.

These are your plan's defaults. You can change them per person under "How one-off goals are funded" on the Goals and milestones screen, under "Customise the savings split".

With no return set, the whole percentage goes into savings. Your plan only leans on growth once you’ve told it to expect some. This build-up is for one-time goals only. For a recurring goal, its own scheduled spending counts towards the minimum instead. See Cash and assets.

See Goals and milestones for where to set this in the app.

This same cash projection gives each goal card its feasibility badge. It’s green if cash never dips below your minimum around the goal, amber if it dips but stays positive, and red if it goes negative.

Where do children and goals show up?

Child and goal events are marked on the pathway chart: a birth, the start of university and the start of each goal. Their costs sit in the spending breakdown.

Goal cards on the plan dashboard show each goal’s feasibility badge, plus pre-saving progress for one-time goals.