As a parent, you would want your child to have access to better-quality education. Starting with the pre-primary and going on to senior secondary and graduate school, therefore, you continuously strive to provide with an environment conducive for learning.

In India, however, the challenge to ensure quality education remains a daunting task. While India has many world-class institutions for higher studies such as the IITs, NITs and IIMs, given the high number of aspiring candidates, only a handful can get into these reputable institutes.

Thankfully, globalisation and ease of financing have helped level the playing field for students from all parts of the world to empower themselves with top-quality education and knowledge. Nowadays, students have more options to select from and pursue their dreams.

Thus, if you are keen on watching your child graduate from a renowned educational institute such as Harvard, Princeton or Oxford, here’s what you can do to help realise this dream into a reality.


Studying abroad in top universities and institutions can be prohibitively expensive. For example, a master’s courses from Ivy-league colleges in the US may cost up to Rs 35 lakhs in tuition fees. Then there are other expenses such as the cost of accommodation, conveyance and educational supplies, to take care of as well.

Moreover, factors such as inflation and rupee depreciation also play their part in increasing the expenses. Thus, if you are planning to send your child to pursue higher studies abroad, you need to keep a target of at least Rs 50 lakhs for a 3-year course.

While the seven-figure amount may seem daunting, it is achievable if you start early in your life with disciplined investments into equities, depending on your risk appetite and saving capabilities. With a SIP in place as soon as your child is born, you can easily reach your target wealth amount, without putting much burden on your overall finances.

Starting early will also give you time to put a dynamic strategy in place, increase the amount invested with the increase in your income, vary the asset allocation depending on the market changes, and invest in high-yielding instruments.



You can only benefit from an early start if you invest in the right instrument. That said, the choice of investment tool would depend on crucial determinants such as asset allocation and the number of years left for the goal.

For example, you should prominently invest in equity funds if you have more than 8 to 10 years before the goal. Equity mutual funds and ULIPs have delivered significantly high returns than their counterparts in the past ten years. With a sufficiently long investing horizon, thus, even moderate risk investors can safely direct 65 to 70 percent of their investments to equities to build the required corpus.

Moreover, you can choose to vary the asset allocation to include both equity and debt funds into your portfolio. This would not only help overcome inflation and market volatility but will also help earn significant tax benefits on the investment.

You can also include conservative investments such as PPFs and bank deposits if you are particularly interested in protecting your capital and wish to avail assured returns.


Financial security in the form of life insurance is a key determinant if you are looking to provide for your child’s dream of studying abroad. Given the fact that you have to make disciplined and sustained investments for accumulating the amount required for your child to pursue education elsewhere, you cannot let life’s uncertainties get the better of your goals.

Any severe accident or your untimely death could result in cutting short your investment journey. With an appropriate instrument such as an online term insurance plan, however, you can make sure that your hard work and investments remain relevant into propelling your child’s education dreams.

Online term insurance plans from reputable insurers such as Future Generali offer significantly high amounts of life cover at low premium rates, along with a host of other benefits (at a nominal cost) such as critical illness cover, accidental death/disability cover and waiver of premium, to help you make sure that your child’s goals remain relatively unaffected from life’s uncertainties.


In the fast-paced world of technology, geography is hardly a limiting factor in curbing your child’s blooming. With the number of institutions for higher learning from around the world becoming more accessible, you are presented with a myriad of possibilities of giving your child the education he or she deserves. All you need is a solid foundation of comprehensive and efficient financial planning, as soon as possible and you can successfully lay down the framework that will fuel your child’s future education.

(Image source: Shutterstock)