The Financial PlanBuilder

FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY

The Financial PlanBuilder service

A “done for you” service for those who would like to have a 10-year financial plan for their life as a parent, created just for them.

We’ll show you the financial impact of your parental life choices (work, leave and childcare) on your household income and childcare costs, and write a report for you with recommendations and multiple scenarios.

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WHERE YOU ARE NOW

You need a coherent financial plan for parenthood.

(But you’d rather someone else did the work).

  • You’re too busy working (to earn the money to fund your plans) to spend ages analysing your finances.
  • There are many ways you might make parenthood work. Modelling the impact of them all is daunting.
  • You haven’t got time to fully understand the government support schemes for childcare and all the tax implications.
THE PARENTHOOD PLANNER

Hi, I’m Helen, and I help people like you create affordable plans for parenthood

Helen Cammack, the founder of Preparental

I have 20+ years experience in financial planning including as a Commercial Finance Director for a FTSE-100 company and running budget processes for companies like Virgin Media.

I know how tricky it can be to manage a demanding job at the same time as making plans for having children. After a hard day’s work, I didn’t have the headspace left to start on another area of research.

That’s why I’ve set up a “done for you” service, The Financial PlanBuilder, to solve this problem.

If you’re looking for a solid Return on Investment, I promise this will be one of the best investments you ever make.

More About Me

What’s Included for £99?

The Financial PlanBuilder is a “done for you” service to turn your assumptions about how you’ll manage parenthood (your work, your parental leave and your childcare) into a personal financial plan, with recommendations and scenarios.

It’s designed to bring you clarity on the overall shape of your household income (after tax) and your childcare costs (after all the schemes you’re eligible for) when you become a parent – based on the choices you make.

Comprehensive online financial questionnaire

You don’t need to talk to anyone to use our PlanBuilder service – just complete our online financial questionnaire (complete with short help videos) at your own convenience. You don’t need to have analysed your finances as we don’t ask about your expenditure.

Your own bespoke financial plan report and spreadsheets

Once we’ve received your questionnaire, within 2 weeks you should receive your own bespoke financial plan report including detailed spreadsheets, and 2 alternative scenarios (specified by you).

1 month of support to help you interpret your plan

We understand that you might have questions about your report, and we’re there for you for 1 month on WhatsApp or email, to answer your questions and make tweaks to your report if necessary.

1 month’s access to The Preparental Calculator

After your report is delivered, you can use The Preparental Calculator online yourself for an additional month (worth £19), so you can plug in your own scenarios, now that you understand how the numbers work.

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HOW YOU’LL FEEL

Feel confident that your plans for parenthood are affordable

(or if not, know what changes to make)

  • Feel confident to make decisions about parental leave, childcare and work after kids, knowing the financial impact.
  • Feel brave enough to discuss money with your partner (if you have one) using our report as a starting point.
  • Feel smart as you learn about ways to improve your parental finances that you may not have thought of.
  • Feel knowledgeable about how the government schemes and tax benefits will (or won’t) help you
  • Feel calm, as you know you can get all your “what if” financial questions answered
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WHAT CLIENTS THOUGHT

“Helpful and easy to comprehend, with its potential solutions and suggestions….

Particularly helpful was the summary and details regarding the financials of childcare vs. F. stopping work, as this is something that had previously come up in chats with family members/other mothers who had advised that staying at home was more financially beneficial….

We also found the information regarding the option of a Nanny very helpful as this highlighted the different options for childcare and which options do not make financial sense, along with the reference to certain companies and regions”.

– D. and F., North London

Did you know?

The Financial PlanBuilder service is currently included in membership of The Parenthood Planning Club.

Join The Club

YOUR QUESTIONS

You might be wondering….

Preparental is the home of parenthood planning, offering practical support to non-parents.

Preparental is a registered trademark, and Preparental Ltd is a limited company registered in England and Wales, with company number 14589489. The street address is Tiverton, South Road, Woking, GU21 4JS, United Kingdom.

Please read Preparental’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy here.

To contact Helen at Preparental, email helen@preparental.com

Yes! Currently this personalised service is included in membership of The Parenthood Planning Club, although this may not always remain the case.

Find out more about The Club on the homepage.

No.

It’s not for anyone outside the UK, due to tax rules and costs that are specific to the UK. It’s also not for low income families who are on Universal Credit or Tax Credits.

Yes, yes, and yes.

It takes account of all of these benefits that you may be eligible for, in its final calculation of the financial impact on net household income after childcare.

To the greatest extent possible, it also takes into account regional variations in the UK – eg the difference between rules in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Yes.

Check out The Preparental Calculator which you can access for 1 month for £29. It is self-guided so you need to figure out what numbers to put into the Calculator at each stage, and interpret the spreadsheets yourself.

We keep your data as safe as possible, in accordance with our Privacy Policy, but we do need to store your data while we are working on your bespoke plan. We store your data in Airtable, with whom we have a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) ensuring that they protect your data to the highest standards.

This is a tricky question.

We keep the underlying models up to date with the latest costs, tax rules, eligibility rules and government schemes.

The last update was on 24th March 2024 and included a change to Child Benefit thresholds (announced in the Spring Budget 2024) and changes to National Insurance (also announced in the Spring Budget).

However, the numbers we produce are intended to be directional and not accurate to the nearest decimal place.

We can’t be held liable for whether it’s correct for your location and your particular situation.

The point of this modelling is not to predict costs with a pinpoint accuracy. It’s to use some assumptions to give you a ‘best guess’, and explain those assumptions, and to enable you to make decisions. And as such, please do not rely upon all the numbers in it without question.

No.

The largest costs of having children for most households (unless you plan to use private education) are (1) lost income from working less, and (2) childcare costs.

Most families are unable to avoid either of these costs – unless you’re very lucky to have a free source of childcare on tap!

So that’s what we focus on.

Other costs associated with having children tend to be VERY variable, and will depend on your spending habits and needs as a family. In addition, you may also reduce certain expenditure types when you become parents, to balance out additional costs.

Preparental will be building further tools to help plan for these other cost impacts too, but because they are so family-specific, they are not included in this service at the current time.

Our financial model does have the ability to vary the inflation rate, and we will run scenarios using inflation, to see if inflation will change your eligibility for child-related schemes and benefits. If this is a risk, this will be outlined in the report.

Yes and no.

If there are two parents we combine their finances into a single household for the purposes of the report.

It is possible to separate out the impact on each partner’s income, however we cannot make any assumptions about how to split childcare costs between partners, or how to compensate a partner who’s doing more of the childcare and taking more time off work.

READ AROUND THE SUBJECT

Featured Blog Posts

“Purposeful Parenthood Planning with Helen Cammack”
How To Plan | Podcast Episodes

“Purposeful Parenthood Planning with Helen Cammack”

Tamsin Williamson, The Parenthood Coach, interviewed Helen Cammack, the founder of Preparental, for her ‘Do Your Thing’ podcast (it’s episode 27), about how the act of purposefully planning her experience of parenthood ahead of time has had a profound impact on how she does her thing in her life and Motherhood. How to Listen You…

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