Sarwa x Baby Arabia

Why it’s important to save for a family: An interview with Mo Fadlallah, the founder of Baby Arabia

When people talk about wanting to start developing better saving habits, the most successful plans tend to have a goal on the horizon: a long-overdue holiday, buying a house, saving up for retirement – or starting a family. It’s one of the main reasons people cite when explaining why they began saving, and for good reason. Starting a family is something that requires significant planning, and significant funds – but people often don’t think about that until way too late in the game. Planning for a family can’t start soon enough, because unlike planning to buy a home or go on a nice holiday, a child will continue to accrue expenses, well up to it’s 18th birthday and beyond.

Being prepared for starting a family, both financially and emotionally, is worth its weight in gold. Mo Fadlallah, the founder of the parenting platform Baby Arabia, wants to help young parents and parents-to-be do just that. That’s why Baby Arabia is partnering with Sarwa in order to help people get all the information they’ll need when they start planning for a family: financially, emotionally, and logistically.

But First: What is Baby Arabia?

When Fadlallah founded the parenting platform Baby Arabia, he explained that his main goal was to raise awareness among first-time parents: “Baby Arabia is all about planning. It’s about planning for a healthy pregnancy, planning for a healthy child, and thinking ahead for the future.” Fadlallah said that he noticed a lack of resources for young parents in the Arab world, and wanted to create a space that held the weight of professional medical advice but felt like receiving parenting tips from that aunt you really trust.

With the help of experts in nutrition, child development, pediatrics, and more, Fadlallah created a platform that aims to guide parents through pregnancy, fatherhood and motherhood, and a child’s development, from birth to toddlerhood. And while all of this is important, Fadlallah pointed out that one crucial aspect often gets neglected: anticipating future expenses, and adequately planning for them.

According to figures released by the financial adviser Candour Consultancy and cited in Gulf News, raising a child in the UAE can cost families up to Dh 1.14 million by the time the child turns 18. The biggest cost? Education. “Education is a really big cost for families in the Arab world,” Fadlallah explained. “Everything is privatised. There are no state schools, there’s no state education.” So parents will have to shell out for private school if they want their kids to have a good education.

UAE school fees are considered to be the second-highest in the world, rivalled only by Hong Kong. A study by HSBC found that it costs approximately Dhs 365,025 to educate a child from primary school through to university in the UAE. At Sarwa, we believe it’s at least 2x that number. “This is one of the things I wanted to address with Sarwa,” Fadlallah said. “It varies from family to family based on their lifestyle and their income, but there is a serious cost attributed to having a family and raising a family [in the UAE]. So why not plan for this? Given the fact that education can be costly, why not make an investment in order try to create an education fund, a fund for the future?”  

For Fadlallah, it’s important to educate people on the importance of saving up, something that he says isn’t totally normalised in Arab culture yet. “I purely put it down to education and culture,” he explained. “Think about it. In the Arab world, you don’t even have pensions or life insurance policies.”

“So it’s about starting an education process. If they can be educated about why it’s important for them to invest, why it’s important for them to build for a future – it could be very simple content, but it plants the seed in the person’s mind. And if they know that education is really costly from pre-school onwards, then why not start a savings fund and planning for their future education? Why not start the minute they’re born? Why wait?”

So when should families start saving?

“When it comes to kids, [expenses are] a necessity rather than a luxury,” Fadlallah said. This is why it’s important to start as soon as possible, because once a kid comes along, diapers, food, medical costs, and education are non-negotiables. And those are just the necessities. Parents want to give their kids toys, fun excursions, and treats. “I’d put away, depending on my disposable income, maybe $100 a month, $200 a month. It all depends on what you can afford as a family,” he explained.

So why raise children in the UAE?

With all these expenses to consider, what are some of the actual benefits of raising children in the UAE? For Fadlallah, it’s all about quality of life: “The biggest benefit is obviously safety. It’s an incredibly safe environment.” He explained that there’s a very strong sense of community throughout the UAE, and that it’s an easy place to raise a family there. Another benefit? The generally reasonable cost of hired help. While it’s an expense that still needs to be factored in to any long-term planning, the relative low cost of hired help makes the lives of many young families significantly easier.  

With proper planning, Fadlallah believes that the UAE is a wonderful place to raise a family. But in order to be comfortable, the reality is that the sooner parents-to-be start investing in a nest egg, the more time they’ll have to enjoy their growing family instead of worrying about finances. And while this may sound overwhelming, this is where Sarwa can help: by providing targeted advice and achievable goals,

Sarwa takes all the anxiety and stress out of financial planning and gives you the security of knowing that your family’s funds are in good hands.

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