Managing Home

Your son is your son till he gets himself a wife.

The quote mentioned above holds true. The marriage of son puts parents and their son in a situation making it very difficult to manage home especially when parents are not financially dependent on their son.

I would not at all hesitate to say that I have experienced the state of being in such a situation. I would say that marriage brings many troubles one would have never imagined before getting married.

In our case, the trouble aroused because of dominating nature of my mother coupled with my feeling to create an impression, before a newly brought bride, that of not being a parent’s son who behaves only in accordance with what his parents think is right.

To some extent we (my wife and I) were right. For example, my mother, to keep her dominance prevail, she wanted me to hand her over the monthly salary I earn. However, the system adopted long before I got married worked fine helping us plan our expenses well in advance which had provided the needed financial security. But, the only thing that we did not like was the dominance of my mother. To keep track of the monthly expenses she wanted us to ask her for the money needed in our day to day needs.

I found it very embarrassing to ask money for condoms and sanitary pads, apart from many small things we needed money for. Since, both the items considerably contributed to the expenses made in those early days of married life. The point was that, to curb the rising expenses, my mother would not have prevented herself from telling us to control the use of condoms and sanitary pads or trying some low-cost options available in the market had she been told about the expenses we incur in the purchase of such kind of stuff.

We retaliated to this, and proposed to change the system. We sat together, discussed things in detail and charted out a new amicable solution to manage household expenditure in a better way. We introduced a new system where I was not supposed to hand over all my monthly salary. From that day we started recording common household expenses like Electricity Bill, Telephone Bill, Building maintenance Expenditures, Municipality Bills, Provision Bills, Maid-servant payments, etc. At the end of every month, we divide the total expenditure by 2 to work out my share to be given for that particular month. The rest of the things like school fees, clothing, etc. I take care of by myself.

The system has been working fine for last fifteen years without making compromises since it allows me to have a free hand in managing my money the way I want. It has not only made me independent but also taught me the importance of investing and helped me understand money matter better.