What steps have you taken to plan for your future?  Have you taken out a pension?  Set up a savings account? Or have you made other plans?

When you are young it's difficult to even think about buying a pension but in actual fact, the earlier you start the better.

The longer you have to invest in a pension the more you will have paid out to you when you retire, it's simple really.

Of course, planning for the future doesn't just involved pensions.  We have to plan for many things.  One of those can be planning for when your benefit payments end.  This is the case especially with something like Child Benefit which pays out until the child reaches the age of 18 or leaves full time education.   So it makes sense to plan for when the time comes that you no longer receive this benefit.

What can you do then?  Well, to start with calculate when the payment is due to end and work backwards.  For example, if you only have two years left, then you should calculate how much you will be short per month after the two year period and start by looking at either increasing your income, perhaps by working more hours, or taking on an additional part time job, or by decreasing your expenses a little each month.   

It could be that your child will be leaving home at that time, so some of your regular household expenses will be automatically reduced anyway. You can take this into account when making your calculations.

So why not take out some time now and see what you need to plan for and how you can make a gradual transition in order to avoid a sudden income loss jolt when the time comes.