Your Family and Your Money (Focus on the Nuclear Family)

Being married brings you to a place of responsibilities, it doesn’t matter if you are the man or the woman, it is, however, more important for the man to quickly understand that his income has become ‘our income’ based on our culture and the female gender belief. I also understand that we have a class of ‘Super Women’ who are the ones footing the family bills (We will discuss more on this soon)

The truth is, for you to be a responsible parent a minimum of 60% to 80% of your income has to be spent on your family. On expenses ranging from providing shelter to food, medical, clothing, etc, this is a reason to critically look at how to manage the home front well when it comes to Money matters.

It is sad that many divorce cases are based on money matters and the fact remains that a happy family can degenerate into a shadow of itself fast if money and finances are not well managed. In fact, some are already on the edge of breakup, no thanks to money matters. While some are just managing or patching up things, or are not discussing money matters in a bid to avoid fracas and face off. Though we have another group that is totally enjoying the home because they have learnt to manage the money matters well enough.

The fact remains, that every family would have gone through a phase of financial friction, where the husband and the wife and sometimes with the children must iron issues out. This is necessary to stabilize the family on money matters.

The truth is to live a good life as a family, you do not need a lot of money, what you need most is mutual understanding and respect, good communication, and the ability to readily compromise. A vital tool in the early stage of the marriage to avoid running into financial pitfalls.

One big mistake most families run into is spending all their income on living expenses, we all want to have the ambience of success because of what people will say, especially the single income families (This are families with only one partner earning), even the double income families are not immune from it. This has ultimately led families both young and old into unwarranted debts, making them live above their income (LAI), and thereby in a long-term financial trap.

Another mistake is that of improper budgeting and planning, most people do not consider it well to put a budget in place in the running of the home. It is sad that this mindset is prevalence in this day and time. Everything must be planned from the number of kids, to what kind of life you want to live, to the school your wards will attend, to the area, you will be living and lots more, all these impacts on your finances and it boils down to proper planning.  So start early.

In a country like ours, you need to have achieved some level of financial comfort (e.g. owning your own house) before your kids enter the secondary/high school as the case may be. And this is one of the basics you should work towards and that is why frugal living is critical for a family. This is just an example of being project conscious and working towards realizing it.

I remain your friend and Personal Finance Coach Babatunde Ayorinde, follow me on twitter @pistis03,
And if you like to engage us to speak in your program or for adverts send us an email at babat09@gmail.com.
Thanks for reading, invite your Family, Friends, and Foes to read the blog, as we move ahead to our financial freedom.