Friday, January 19, 2018

Household Financial Management by the Housewife

Ever since I became a housewife, I have lost my fixed monthly pay that I earned. However, I am lucky enough as my husband giving me monthly allowance which is not including the household expenses such as groceries, and family entertainment. Even though, the allowance amount is not as much as I earned when I was worked, it is more than enough for me. My husband will bank in my allowance in RM base on current exchange rate.
In the first year we arrived the rate was RM3.60  and  my USD allowance  fluctuate based on the currency rate . What did I do with this amount? As I promised to myself after I started work, I will give my parent pocket money. And before I agreed to quit job and followed my husband to Saigon, I told my husband that I have an obligation to support my parents as my parents are not as fortunate as his. But I never asked specific amount for my allowance. What I wish is just his consideration from him to give me some pocket money, so that I can share and continue share some of my pocket money with my parents. An amount of monthly allowance  is actually  a bonus for me as I can do some saving out of it. Surprisingly,  even though the amount of my allowance is much lower than my salary that I had earned, I did much bigger saving than before.
Ok, first what did I do with my allowance?. The following is the distribution based on my priority:

40%    - for my study. As I am taking Master in Management course and art class.
10%    - will go to my parents
25%    - personal saving
5%      - personal life insurance + my daughter's education & life insurance
2.5%   - my daughter's saving
5%      - sponsoring my brother's uni's expenses
10.5% - credit card and Digi's bill ( normally less as most of the time I only need to pay the Digi's bill as i hardly use my credit card). I always make myself use a debit card as I will only spend as what I have only.
2%       - my personal needs and entertainment.

So, basically I use my allowance based on the priority and will only spend for my personal needs and entertainment should I have balance which is about 2% from my allowance.

For the household my husband has allocated around 20 mill vnd  or around USD900 for household. Normally we will allocate it for the following expenses :

Utilities bills (electric, water, tv subscription , internet)       - 30%
Groceries                                                                               - 40%
Weekend outing & family entertainment                      - 30%

So basically, as housewife, you should not only know how to clean the house and cook but most importantly managing your financial household.

I hope this would benefits other housewife and husband too.