If you are in your forties before you consider financial planning then you may have to realize that you have been doing a great deal of "living" already and may either have to pull your horns in to maintain it or realize that your retirement years will not be Fjord Cruises and Lattes.

Your financial drains in your forties can potentially be your highest. You may have older kids or teens and, despite the rhetoric about babies being expensive, this pales into insignificance when they start picking up phones, buying clothes and borrowing your cars (particularly if you are underinsured!).

So how can you begin? Firstly by identifying where your money comes from and where it is going. Secondly by involving your significant others in the decision-making. Where do THEY want to be in ten years? Will you all get there at this rate? If not, what will each person sacrifice now to allow that later?

Teaching children to earn and invest their own money is about the soundest financial planning that every parent can do. My children all have their own online allowance accounts and we reward them for every action which delays financial gratification. Weekly allowances can incur bonuses if saved not spent. We match dollars spent on presents for Christmas, to get them in the mindset of looking out for others and seeing joy in the needs of others satisfied at these times.

In addition, we offer them the option of "locked savings" in high interest-bearing, zero fee online accounts which can only be used, eventually, for assets (like a first apartment, or stocks, or to buy or start a well-researched business idea). It is motivating for them to see their balances and have the responsibility for financial decisions now. We never just hand out cash for spending. Everything must come from one of their own sources of income. If there is no money, it is either not bought or the children choose extra jobs to do to make money.

If you do this in your forties, you will significantly minimize the outflows to your children in your fifties, whilst making them financially independent long before you leave the planet. Then you can continue to use your money to concentrate on retirement whilst in your 50's and putting it is places where you have the greatest amount of time to change your mind if you ever need to draw some out for an expense!

Learn more about this author, Mick Wilkinson.
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