Becoming a parent is an amazing experience and carries many responsibilities. Those responsibilities are almost entirely about ensuring your kids are safe, happy, healthy and that they have the best foundation possible for a good life. No matter where you live that’s the bare minimum that you must do as a mother. And that’s in addition to thinking about your career or essential me time. So, how can you build financial security for you and your kids? It’s not easy if you live to paycheck to paycheck. Here are tips to balance family finances, a key parent’s responsibility.
A Parent’s Responsibility as the Family Accountant
But you also have another huge responsibility. You need to be the accountant of the family and look after the finances, either on your own or with a partner. Yes, as an adult and a parent, you’re in charge of the family’s cash and that’s a huge parent’s responsibility.
After all, not much can be done for the family without money. You can’t buy food, or pay for housing, whether it is mortgage or rent. You’re in charge of the purse strings, and that can be a hard job. Taking care of family finances is almost as difficult as the task you have on your hands of looking after your kids. Almost.
What Balancing Family Finances Involves
It’s a duty that you need to take seriously. Finances can make or break a family and lead to periods of extreme stress. Your family need to be safe and secure, and that includes fiscal safety. If you aren’t looking after family finances properly, then the financial security of your family is at risk, and that’s not good.
Caring for kids isn’t a cheap task, which can make a parent’s responsibility hard to fulfill. You’ve got to put your hand in your pocket for a lot of things when you’re a parent. If you’re not buying food, there are bills to pay instead. If you’re not paying for bills, then you’re buying clothes or paying down the mortgage. There’s a lot of expenses!
The financial security of your family is always going to be of paramount importance to any concerned parent, or it ought to be this way anyway. If you take family finances seriously, you may not have to live from paycheck to paycheck. No family should have to scrape by, for any reason. But this situation can happen and if your family is scraping by because of financial mismanagement then maybe it’s time to change things?
If you are smart and thrifty with your cash, your family might be a bit more better off and they won’t have to scrape by any longer. It’s a parent’s responsibility to think about this very thing.
Family Money Management Tips
What you need to do is to set a budget. Record what you spend and what you bring in income-wise every single month. When you do so, you can start to get a clear picture of where your money is going monthly. When you start to see where your hard-earned cash is going, you can work on reducing your spend.
For instance, if you spend too much on food, you might look for deals or start to buy in bulk. Or, even look for cheaper ingredients. If you can find any way, big or small, to reduce the amount that you spend then you can have more savings at the end of the month.
That leftover money at the end of the month can lead the way to financial security for yourself and your family. Why? Well, with this cash you can save up for big things. It’s part of a parent’s responsibility to decide where that money will go. You might use it to:
- Pay more off of your mortgage
- Build an emergency fund
- Save it to invest
The key thing here though is that you save money so you can do something. Ideally, you’ll save the family finances so that you can do all three of the above things.
Finally, Pay Off Any Debts
You might use this excess cash to pay off debts too, which is incredibly important for healthy financial security. Debts affect your credit rating. If your credit rating is poor, you might find that when applying for cash loans, it’s difficult to do. Loans are a part of family finances, especially when considering the home and any improvements to it. So, try not to damage your rating by accumulating debts.
In summary, it’s parent’s responsibility to put your family first. So, ensure your spending habits help the family and don’t hinder them. Save up, be secure, and invest in the future of your family.
Well thought out and well-written!
I home school my two girls and just recently started using quicken, for the first time in years I could sleep peacefully at night knowing our family was well taken care of! Budget = Success! Great post, thank you!
Excellent to hear your success story, Julia!
Thank you!
Great post 👍🏾. I also agree with stopping bad spending habits to look out for the family fortune. A budget is also a great tool to track expenses weekly, monthly, and even yearly. I appreciate the time you took out of your busy day to write this blog. Such a motivational peace. You have earned a new follower! ☺️
Thank you for following and for the kind comment :) Budgeting is essential, right?! So many people find it boring but heck if it saves money and feeds the family then it’s a good thing!!
I totally agree with this! Being a young mum, it’s so hard to have enough money when you’re torn between ‘experiencing life’ and travelling and juggling kids. Obviously, our kid’s future is way more important than our travels. But I am slowly learning that yes, we are responsible and we need to be important with how we spend out money. Growing up my parents went through alot of hardship (they were refugees and started over at 30 with a baby) but they never let us know about it. My patents sacrificed everything for us, we had private schooling, swimming lessons and even piano lessons.
Oh wow, your parents sound amazing. And here you are now learning from their wisdom.. from what you saw them do rather than what they said.. and that’s priceless xx
Yes they are amazing! If I’m half the parent they were, I’d be happy! Xx
Great post. Raising a family is not always an easy thing to do, especially financially. It is very important to prioritize and have a plan for your money.
I’m glad you find it helpful. Money is a touchy subject for many people but it’s important to use it wisely. Let’s educate ourselves :)
This is a really important message. Thanks for sharing! Something that doesn’t get taught enough
That’s nice of you to say!
Well said!
It’s kinda weird reading these blogs out in the real world, after watching the TV series “Shameless” the night before. LOL
I’ve never seen the show. I take it that it is totally not real life?
Oh, no. But if you’ve lived in urban neighbourhoods like that…probably pretty accurate LOL
William Macy and Joan Cusack are among the major characters in it. It’s pretty good, but dark, and not to watch when the kiddies are in the room LOL
hi Christy nice post and i just nominated you for the Real neat blogger award
OH thank you for the nomination :)
I really understand how it is. When I lived with my wife and kids, we experienced hard times but we never let our kids acknowledge it. We always found a way to keep the boat afloat.
Yes, now that I’m an adult I have learned that my parents had harder times – yet they never let me in on it. Kids think their home is how all homes are (usually they think that, there’s always exceptions). Thanks Alessandro for making time here
Thank you for your precious articles.