How to Manage Household Finances for Newlyweds

Marriage life pushes you to make several adjustments, including finances. You used to only focus on your own finances, but now you have to manage it together with your spouse for your household needs fulfillment.

Since this is such a new habit, it’s normal that you and your spouse start to get confused. However, managing your household finances is not as complicated as you imagined it to be. Here is the complete guide.

Set a Financial Target
In order to effectively implement the steps of managing household finances, you and your spouse must first set an achievable target. It can motivate you to consistently manage your household finances and help you avoid any possible financial problems in the future.

The targets can be anything that you want, it can be purchasing a property, compiling emergency fund, education fund, or pension fund. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that you are not allowed to have a more recreational financial target. For example, overseas vacation or buying your dream gadget. It’s more than okay to set targets like those two examples, as long as all your primary financial needs are met.

If you have a personal financial target, discuss it with your spouse from the very beginning to avoid any unnecessary conflicts.

Make Mutual Financial Rules
After setting the financial targets, it’s time for you and your spouse to arrange several mutual financial rules. First, be open about each party’s financial condition, starting with the total of funds in each savings account, total of monthly income, investment value, and any ongoing installment or debt. Therefore, you and your spouse can easily allocate household funds to several different expenditure items. 

In listing the expenditure items, sort it based on the priority scale. Normally, expenses that have the highest priority are the kinds that cover your daily needs, such as electricity and water, groceries, insurance premium, and taxes. After that, you can move on to other important expenditure items, like savings and investments or paying off installments. If all crucial expenditure items have been covered, you can start allocating money for recreational purposes.

Follow it up with discussions about who will have to pay for each expenditure item. This step of managing household finances may sound simple, but proves to be useful in the long run which will help minimize any human error. For example, you are tasked with paying for the electricity and water, whereas your spouse must pay for the groceries. 

Have Monthly Income and Expenses Evaluation
Expenditure items have successfully been arranged, but your monthly expenses always exceed your planned expenses. This problem is most common, especially for newlyweds who are not used to managing household finances. It’s not something to be ashamed of, and that’s why you and your spouse are advised to have a routine evaluation on your household monthly income and expenses. 

Perhaps this month you suddenly receive an additional income and a recently disbursed freelance project invoice, even though the project had been completed before you got married. Then, expenditure A may not be as big as what you have anticipated.

These kinds of scenarios must be evaluated together during each month. Therefore, you and your spouse can arrange a more accurate household budget for the following month. If there is an expenditure item that exceeds any planning, you and your spouse are ready to cut several expenses.

Plan for Savings and Investments
In arranging your household budget plan, make sure that you and your spouse are not neglecting savings and investments. Ideally, you are advised to set a minimum of 20% from your salary to be allocated to your savings and investments.

There are numerous types of investments that you can choose based on your preferred time period and risk profile. By using the PermataMobile X application, you can easily choose and purchase various investment products offered by PermataBank, anytime and anywhere.

For a stable household financial state, the steps to manage household finances as mentioned above can be implemented by newlyweds like you. But remember, you must consistently perform these steps for better results. You and your spouse must also be firm to each other if there are ever moments where your finances are not on track with the household budget plan.