There’s been a lot of money talk around here lately, what with a windfall from the  Sun deal, the arrival of the famed “orange envelopes” with our pension information, and our finally getting around to setting up decent savings plans for the kids.  Olof even went so far as to have a meeting with a financial advisor yesterday, and he walked away with a modest interest in some Brazilian agricultural enterprise or other.  Looks like we’re practically all grown up now.

One of the very many advantages of raising a family in Sweden is that higher education has relatively little out-of-pocket cost attached to it.  Students have to buy books and study materials, and to pay their own living expenses, but tuition is covered by tax money, meaning that parents are spared the college-fund nightmare.   The money we’re setting aside for our kids is intended more as a gift than anything else, meant to finance travel or the set-up of a first apartment or something else “fun” upon their reaching majority.  All things considered, it’s not that important.

Even so, getting it all arranged and making sure the distribution is more or less equitable has been a headache.  It would have been much easier, of course, if we had started saving for each child at birth; then we could just have started with a set monthly contribution and not had to think any more about it.  Instead I had to use fractions and algebra and other methods of calculation too terrible to relate.  Consider yourselves lucky not to have been witness.