Intro
I know from my own experience how easy it is to neglect managing money among all the other things we do these days, from picking up kids from school to meeting work deadlines to tackling endless chores around the home.
I have discovered some practical, easy methods to keep track of our family money that don’t require as much time as I have. In this article, I’ll share what has really helped us out.
The Money Management Struggle for Time-Poor Busy Families
I believe it’s important to note why financial management might be a challenge as soon as kids, jobs and household responsibilities come into the equation before embarking on specific strategies.
It was so much easier to keep track of money when I was single. Whether it’s a financial decision or not, there’s more to consider: childcare, school, more mouths to feed, unpredictable medical expenses, and sometimes both sets of spending habits and incomes to coordinate.
Then there’s the basic problem of time scarceness. When it’s time to sit down to look over a budget or plan expenses, it’s time to relax, focus, and take a close look time that’s often hard to find during the typical busy family night spent helping kids with their homework, preparing dinner, and getting them to sleep.
As a Family, Getting on the Same Page
I don’t think one of the best things I ever changed was to make money management a family affair, not me handling it all up here and hoping for the best. This involved deliberate communication and resulted in stress reduction and better decision-making.
I began to set up a short regular review meeting with my partner to look at upcoming costs, run through any financial worries, and to make sure I was on the same page as my partner in terms of priorities. What worked for us was having short discussions that we repeated over time, rather than occasional long discussions.
There were also some common financial priorities that we agreed to pursue early on, such as creating a smaller emergency savings account, saving for certain family-specific items, and limiting any new debt being accumulated for unnecessary items. We had a clear list of our priorities and would not have to renegotiate them each time a spending decision was required; we would simply refer back to our list.
We also have our children participate in age-appropriate conversations about money, which has helped. Even simple conversations such as “Why are we going with that particular grocer?” or “Why aren’t we buying something now? We’ll wait for the family holiday” have actually helped create a financial awareness in our family, as well as reinforcing our own family’s financial values.
Making Your Budgeting System Easy
Soon I discovered that any system for budgeting that was time- and spreadsheet-heavy would not withstand the impact of real family life! Making it easy was a key to consistency.
Instead of dozens of categories, we determined it was sensible to use a few core categories, things like housing, food, transportation, kids’ care, saving, and a small Flexible Spending category rather than keeping up to date with all the subcategories. This streamlined system significantly reduced maintenance effort and provided us with a good overall view of our finances.
One of the most significant adaptations we had was being able to automate as much as possible. Constant manual inputting was impractical when our lives each week were consumed with too few moments to do so, so with automatic transfers into savings, automatic bill payments, and automatic categorisation in our banking app, we no longer have to do them ourselves.
We also appreciated financial tools that would make it easier to organise and communicate finances instead of having a bunch of random notes or relying solely on memory. Whether it’s a shared programme to keep a budget of your expenses or a larger group household organising platform, such as the one found at gohighlevel, a centralised solution can make all the difference for busy families who must juggle multiple schedules and financial duties, and keep everyone in the loop without having to store all the information manually.
Essential Budget Accounts for Hectic Families
In case you’re creating a simplified framework of your own, the following are the essential categories I would suggest first starting with:
- Housing and utilities: Such as rent/mortgage, electric, water, etc., and internet.
- Groceries and household goods: Apart from eating out and for convenience shopping.
- Transportation: Including the cost of petrol, insurance costs, and vehicle maintenance.
- Childcare and education: Costs that are related to childcare and education, such as school supplies, activity fees, etc.
- Contributions to savings: Savings and emergency fund, preferably set up auto-draft as soon as each paycheque is received.
- Flexible Spending: A small category of spending for family activities, little treats, or an unplanned purchase.
Just a handful of categories, not dozens of tiny ones, helped us with our budget and consistently sticking with it even in the hectic weeks.
Plan Healthy Meals as a Financial Strategy
One of the categories in most families’ budgets that rises or falls with their discretion is grocery expenditures. When I made this a focus of my budget, it changed more than any other one thing we did in our finances.
I began using each week’s available sale items to plan meals, which helped cut down on the food budget instead of planning meals and shopping for them no matter how expensive they were. This little change in our approach cut our grocery bill noticeably, but we didn’t have to sacrifice our family’s meals for variety or nutrition.
Trying to batch cook on the weekend was another helpful practice. That meant we reduced our food waste and did not have to rely on takeaway when things got hectic during the week. This approach also saved a significant amount of time throughout the week, which was an important factor in reducing our feeling of having too much to do, as well as the pounds saved!
Having children plan meals and get involved in the supermarket provided a surprising bonus as well.
How to Control Childcare and Activity Fees
Child care and activity expenses were among our highest and least flexible, so strategically planning for these expenses made a world of difference in our finances.
The first step was a careful look at all of the extracurricular activities available to our children and which were most interesting and covered our family values, versus out of guilt or comparison. This is a deliberate strategy which resulted in a significant decrease in unessential spending and an increase in supporting our children’s real interests and growth.
Looking into community and school-based resources revealed community centre activities, free or low-cost, and/or sliding-scale child care, which provided similar benefits to more expensive alternative services we had not previously thought of. It occurred to me that there are a lot of resources in our area that I was unaware of until I did the research to find them.
Taking turns and phones to take children from reciprocal families to activities, coordinating their care schedules, or occasionally swapping babysitting responsibilities also saved both expenses and trouble. This type of informal support network was not something that we just were able to do, but building it has been worthwhile in financial terms and also about the pressure we have on the scheduling.
Creating a Family Emergency Fund
Unexpected things happen all the time, and it’s particularly hard on families when medical bills, car repairs, or an appliance breaks down. We just had a very small emergency fund, or didn’t have a large emergency fund at all.
Our initial goal was to get in line with a realistic amount, rather than the six months of savings recommended by other financial advice that just did not seem feasible at first. We tackled the smaller goal, which was easier to achieve and gave us confidence and continued momentum to increase our savings further down the road.
We were able to build up our emergency fund because we decided to have a regular, small payment made into a separate account and not have to make any monthly determination to save. We found it not difficult to do without, as we could well afford it in our normal budget. With this buffer in place, I feel like we’ve approached financial surprises as a family in a different way.
Educating Kids About Money The Easy Way
I believe that a product strategy of having our youngsters engage in age-appropriate conversations about money has improved our overall family financial skills and strategies, not just our children’s!
We would share what we chose to do out loud, and this would clarify to me my own thinking and intention in my spending. We began to give our children little sums of money to manage for themselves as an allowance or for doing little bits/ bits of chores, and we gave them simple guidance on saving, spending and giving.
It was fun for them to make their own minor decisions about how their money was spent, including the occasional wrong ones – it was also very instructive for me, and it was also a good way for us to have a good discussion about our other family finances.
When we make a significant family financial choice – we also take care to explain to our children why we are saving for something, why it is important to save for that, or why we chose to forgo a costlier item to save. This isn’t making the money subject a taboo, or something that we’re not allowed to talk about openly in our household; it’s helping to normalise the money conversation.
Money Lessons Made Easy for Busy Families
A few simple ideas of how we’ve incorporated financial education into our everyday family life:
- Consider giving an age-appropriate allowance of funny money related to age-appropriate responsibilities and give it consistently.
- Get children to take part in budget planning when shopping for food, compare shopping prices, or stay on the shopping list.
- Discuss the reasoning behind financial choices, keeping it simple and tied to family goals or values.
- Provide a system of savings, spending, and giving gifts of any money given to children, developing a balanced approach to money from an early age.
- Let children participate in activities that teach them about delayed gratification, including helping to plan for the family, such as saving for a holiday.
Sure, these practices are small and good practice for our kids, but they’ve helped us to practise better money habits as a family.
Reducing Financial Stress via Improved Systems
Justin and Nicole Eldridge are working together to alleviate financial stress via improved systems. In addition to the practical budgeting strategies, I have discovered that decreasing the “mental load” of family financial management has been essential, as well as the numbers themselves.
Even if you can track and manage the money, it can be exhausting to think about and worry about your finances constantly. We used to send a lot of information back and forth and have to call each other just to find out what’s going on and what the balances on the accounts are and how much we need to save or how much is due, etc and just to get the information on how much is in the accounts and what needs to be paid.
Summary
Money management for the busy family does not revolve around a complicated spreadsheet or hours of in-a-row planning sessions, but simple, realistic money-management systems that fit into the busy lives of a family.
Here’s what that’s been for us: open discussion, automatic savings, planning our meals, and then, age-appropriate, putting our children to work with money as part of that plan.
None of these have gotten rid of our financial stress, but combined, they’ve made our money feel more manageable and far less overwhelming even during the busiest seasons of our family.