BARITA Investments last Wednesday launched its ‘Tuition Builder Account’, a money market fund set up with the aim of helping parents manage their children’s education expenses in the future.

The fund, which offers interest rates greater than those provided by a regular savings account, allows investors to pool their funds and take advantage of investment opportunities that would not otherwise be available to them as individual investors.

Rita Humphries-Lewin, Barita’s chairman, noted that the minimum investment of $2,000 is a good way to ensure that “when the eventful day of babies growing up to face you comes, you can rise to the challenge of providing for them comfortably”.

“What this programme is really going to do is to stave off the harsh realities that are going to come to you when they grow up,” said Humphries-Lewin.

The idea for the Tuition Builder Account came from a member of the Barita staff who started to invest $2,000 per month since 1996 and today is able to pay her son’s university fees quite comfortably, buy him a car and have money left over, noted Humphries-Lewin. “This is the concept of regular savings. Regular savings imposed on yourself, by yourself, can turn out to be a wonderful foundation for the future.”

Finance ,Minister Audley Shaw, who presented at the ‘Financing Education’ function hosted by Barita, said parents should invest in their children’s education early.

“Education is not something that the government alone can afford and it is not something that the parents alone can afford,” said Shaw. “The truth is that it is something that everyone has to come together on.”