Saving for a bar mitzvah, the army and university: the kids' calendar

The hall looks exactly as you pictured it. The dance floor, the light, a spot for Grandma's table. The events manager slides the contract across and explains that to get this date you need to book now, a year and a half before the bat mitzvah. You sign, you smile, and on the way to the car one of you asks quietly: "Hang on, where is this coming from?"

It is a strange question when you think about it. You have known this date for twelve years. It surprised no one. And still it lands like a surprise, and gets paid from the current account, from savings meant for something else, or with a loan.

Saving for a bar mitzvah you have seen coming for years

Two beliefs keep this going. The first: "the child savings plan will cover it." The second: "we'll deal with it when we get there." There is also a fix that looks responsible: one big pot called "the kids", which every child-related cost draws from, until one day it is empty, right before the big event.

You want to give your children what you were given, or more, without stress and without apologising. In the same breath, you have no wish to think about a cost eight years away when this month is already full. Putting it off pays something real: quiet today, and a pass on the uncomfortable question of how much is "enough". There is no contradiction to resolve here. There are two fair wants, and a good plan makes room for both.

And research has a name for this pattern. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979) named it the planning fallacy: we underestimate the time and cost of future things, even when past experience says otherwise, and Buehler, Griffin and Ross (1994) showed how consistent the pattern is. As for the big pot: Dilip Soman and Amar Cheema (2011) found that savings split into separate, named pots tend to stay there. One pot called "the kids" is built to empty, because every child expense looks legitimate to it.

What the child savings plan does, and what it does not

According to Bituach Leumi, the National Insurance Institute deposits 58 ILS a month into Chisachon Lekol Yeled (חיסכון לכל ילד), the savings plan every child gets, and parents can add another 58 ILS, 116 ILS a month in total (from 01/01/2026; figures as of September 2026, and they change). It is money held in the child's name, under withdrawal terms Bituach Leumi sets; check the withdrawal age and current terms on its site. Our guide to the child savings plan covers the programme itself.

Either way, that money was not built to pay for the hall. It belongs to the child. The events you plan for them get planned separately.

The children's calendar: one row per child

The first step needs no arithmetic. One page, one row per child, and in each row a birth year and three big events you already know about: the bar or bat mitzvah, the driving licence, the army years, university, maybe one day help with a wedding. You choose the year for each event, and check official ages, such as the licensing age, on the Ministry of Transport's site.

Even this small table shows something: events do not arrive one at a time but in waves. With three children, some years carry two big events at once.

A goal for each event, and a monthly number

The second step is giving each event an amount. Not an average from other families, which says nothing about your home, but the amount you want to give. A modest party, a big one, a trip instead of a party: each is a legitimate choice. Deciding the amount is the hard part, and also the freeing one. Once there is a number, there is a plan.

What about clubs, summer camps, the school trip? Those are not calendar events; they come back every year. They belong in the monthly budget, in a category of their own, so they don't quietly eat the money meant for the big day. The calendar protects the big ones; the monthly budget carries the small ones.

The third step is dividing. Say you set 30,000 ILS for Noa's bat mitzvah and 4,000 ILS is already put aside. That leaves 26,000 ILS over roughly 20 months, about 1,300 ILS a month. Try it here:

Noa's bat mitzvah: months to the goal

Monthly deposit₪1,300

Time to the target

20 months

One pot, or a goal per event

Aspect	One "kids" pot	A goal for each event
What you see	One big sum	What each event needs, and when
Clubs and camps	Taken from the same pot	A line in the monthly budget
Before the big event	Sometimes already empty	Its amount is set aside
With two children	First come, first served	Each has a goal of their own

One "kids" potA goal for each event

One "kids" pot

What you see

One big sum

Clubs and camps

Taken from the same pot

Before the big event

Sometimes already empty

With two children

First come, first served

Notice the name you give the goal, too. Money labelled "Noa's bat mitzvah" is far harder to break open for a summer camp than money labelled "savings". That is what Soman and Cheema found: money with a clear purpose tends to stay where it is. The name is not decoration. It is part of the plan.

In AlphaHome: in the savings plan, add each event as a large one-off future expense with a date. The plan works out the required monthly deposit, shows a month-by-month projection and warns you when it cannot reach the target. If you enter an expected return, that is your assumption, not a forecast. Alongside it, open separate savings goals, "Noa's bat mitzvah", "Itai's licence", each with its own progress bar.

The crowded years, and when to start

The fourth step is reading the calendar across. A year with two events needs an early start. If Noa's licence and Itai's bar mitzvah fall close together, you don't wait for the first to pass before saving for the second. Two years of preparing instead of two weeks of pressure: that is the whole difference.

Once a year, say at the start of the school year, open the calendar and check: are the amounts still right, has an event been added, has anything changed? Ten minutes. For a method that covers every large known expense in the house, not only the children's, see sinking funds.

When the date is too close

Some events the calendar finds late. The bat mitzvah is eight months away and almost nothing is set aside. That is not the plan failing; it is the reason you wrote it now. Decide what can be scaled down or simplified this time, put the rest into the plan from today, and start the next event on time.

Then there is the month you took from one child's goal for another child's event. That happens too. Record the withdrawal with a description, update the date or amount of the goal it came from, and carry on. A goal that moved is still a goal; a pot that emptied quietly is not.

What the calendar buys you on the day

Without a calendar, every event will arrive the way the last one did: a contract on the table and a question on the way to the car. With one, the same event arrives as a line that already has an amount and a date. The children don't need to know. They will simply get calmer parents on the day.

In our house, the children's big days wait for us; they don't surprise us.

This week, write down each child's birth year and three events with their year, and add the nearest event to the savings plan in AlphaHome.