I believe in teaching your nippers about the value of money and the
importance of budgeting early on. I believe in it so much, as a matter
of fact, that I have been helping my sprogs learn the tricks of the
budgeting trade from the time they were 10-years-old until today. As my
twins maneuver into the macrocosm of higher academia (and the mounting
expenses accompanying this brand-new adventure), my family style budget
has never before been more valuable or efficacious.
Our Family Budget
To understand our family budget, you have to understand how we
manage our money. We all have a joint account, our family account. Then,
each of us has our own individual accounts.
We use the family
account to pay monthly bills, buy groceries and as a savings vehicle.
Individual accounts are for individual expenses. All money goes into the
family pot for my husband and me, and then that money is split up
between our individual accounts, once the bills are paid and money put
in savings.
While the twins' accounts are linked to ours, their
paychecks are deposited directly into their individual accounts, and are
not part of the family budget.
Mint.com
About two years ago, I signed us up for Mint.com's
free budgeting website, and I've never looked back. Every member of my
family has a username and password that grants them access to the
household budget and (likewise) access to their own "micro-" budgets.
We classify and plan for each person's income and expenses together at
the beginning of each month. We do this for the conjoined budget and
for each of our children's individual budgets. We help them set goals
they can stick to and discuss what money is being spent, versus what
money is being saved. And since Mint.com synchs up with each separate
bank account we have, we never have to do any manual updating.
Accountability to the Family Budget
I am a humongous devotee of answerability. And by "huge devotee", I
mean enormous. The reason I opted to have our family budget commingled
with separate budgets for our kids is that it gives me the ability to
track family spending, set independent and household nest egg goals and
provides me with a hard-hitting, kinesthetic learn-as-you-go tool.
Thanks to Mint.com's portability (you can use it online or use their
app), my family stays connected and coordinated with our idiosyncratic
and household funds at all times. In the event someone overspends using
either family funds, or personal resources, we get an email informing us
of the faux paus. By catching money mistakes as they happen, we can
work collectively to correct our course before spending gets out of hand
and before our budget is completely blown.
Why I Believe it Works
My system of rules works for us because it affords each individual in
my family (from my 11-year-old to my 17-year-old twins) personalized
control of her own cash flow, but also a more accomplished and
across-the-board understanding of the budgeting process, and the
aftermaths connected with not adhering to a budget. In fact, I would
even go so far as to say that my 17-year-old's have a better
understanding of budgeting and consequences than most 30-year-old's I
know.
The entire family uses money, so the way I see it, the
entire family should know what's going on with the money, and be able to
understand the importance of sticking to a family budget.
How does your family do it?
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