How to manage money in a family

Family and money are a very sensitive topic. When you live alone (or alone), all your money and expenses are only yours. And how is it in the family? The products in the refrigerator are now common and can be bought by everyone. Apartment bills, expenses for equipment, furniture, recreation, entertainment - everything became a joint one. Here the child has grown up, and now he also needs money. How to properly build joint financial management? There is only one answer: the family budget.

What is a family budget?

The family budget is when each family member with income contributes part of their own funds to the general fund, which is then spent on family needs.

Why do you need a family budget?

The Common Fund makes the management of family finances more convenient, simpler, more efficient and more transparent.

Family is trust, right? But everything has reasonable boundaries. It is unlikely that someone will like it if they are required to give everything to a penny or report on every ruble spent. The family budget solves this problem elegantly, as its size is formed based on the capabilities and needs of the family.

How to manage your family budget?

How to be aware of who, how much and on what took and spent? How do you decide who is in charge of the budget? It all depends on the specific family and whether you keep money in cash or on a card.

Family budget in cash

If everyone fully trusts each other, then any family member simply takes the amount he needs from the family store and records it and the expense item in the accounting application or simply in an Excel table. This is a great way to finally start managing your family budget and gain an understanding of where the money is going.

If there is a spender in the family or a person prone to impulsive purchases, then the most responsible and disciplined manages the budget. If necessary, he also decides whether to issue money or not, in what amount. Everything is written into an application or spreadsheet.

Family budget on bank cards

If you have a bank card, then there is the account to which it is linked. We are used to the fact that the card has one account and it is personal, that is, only the cardholder has access to it.

Now banks are expanding the capabilities of cards, allowing you to create additional accounts with shared access. Simply put, your card can have several accounts: your personal one, which only you can see, as well as one or several joint ones, to which you can give family members, relatives, and so on.

We will tell you how a family account at Alfa-Bank works.

Go to the Alfa-Bank mobile application, create a family account and give it a name, for example, “Family budget”

Add family members to your family account. The account can be accessed by four people.
Set rights and limits for each family member. For example, limit your kids' monthly spending allowance and block access to your transaction history. This way they will not spend more than they should and will not know what their parents are buying, but you will see the entire history of their actions.
Turn on the monthly auto-top-up of the family account from your personal one for the amount that was agreed at the family council. This will eliminate the need to manually transfer money each time.

On this, the family budget can be considered created. Now the family's financial life is as transparent as possible, and the history of payments and top-ups is always available for all account participants on their smartphones and in their personal account on the website.

The Alfa-Bank application allows you to instantly select the account from which money will be debited when buying with a card. You pay for personal purchases from a personal account, and family purchases from a joint one. Everything is very simple and convenient.

To become a member of a family account, it is not even necessary to be a client of Alfa-Bank. If your relatives use the services of Alfa-Bank, you simply add them to the family account through the application, if not, quickly issue cards for them, indicating only their phone number and full name. At the same time, neither you nor your family will have to go to the bank office - the courier will deliver the cards to the required addresses.

If you are not a client of the bank either, you first need to select and order a card on the Alfa-Bank website, receive it from a courier or at a branch, and only then enter the mobile application and order cards for all relatives.

At the same time, the use of cards of the same bank within a family means a guaranteed absence of commissions and instant transfers.

But what about one-time large purchases?

Each family is faced with the need to update the park of household and other appliances, someone decides to save up for a car or even a new apartment, and many more like to relax abroad. All this is expensive and requires savings to be realized.

In this case, the family creates additional budgets for specific purposes. Here, too, a family account at Alfa-Bank will come in handy, since the bank allows the client to open up to four additional accounts. You can also call them: "On vacation", "On a new TV", "On the car" and so on.

The required amount and the estimated time by which the money needs to be raised are usually indicated by the family council and are approximately known. Based on them, the size of the contribution of each family member with income is determined.

Often, in order to successfully accumulate the required amount, adjustments to other items of expenditure are required, and here the budget plays an important role in the ability to manage money. You start to think ahead, and financial planning is a great addition to family accounting and the best way to streamline spending.

In what other situations is a shared budget useful?

Anything when it comes to joint expenses:

Let's say you already have grown-up children with their families. In this case, you and the parents on the other hand can add up and support the young family financially or with gifts.
Let's say you don't have a family yet, but you have a dream to go on a trip with a group of friends. Part of the costs will be shared (at least a hostel or a room for three or four, to make it cheaper), and it is more reasonable to discount them.

The advantage of sharing a budget is that together people can do more. Whether it is family life and recreation, financial care for parents and children, a gift to a loved one or a trip with a friendly company - it is always better to fold, and with a family account in Alfa-Bank it is easy and convenient to do it.