How do married couples deal with financial planning for the family? Essay

When doing the financial planning for the family, married couples need to agree on how much each will contribute to shared household expenses and savings. They also need a set of ground rules, such as should not have any new creditcard debt. They may have joint account from which household bills are paid. For example, the couple should have a responsibility to contribute the rental payment, electricity bills and expenditures on grocery. At the same time, each spouse needs a certain amount of money over which they have complete control. This gives each partner a sense of autonomy and financial independence,
Once those needs are met, they are free to each do what they want with their separate pools of disposable income. For example, if a wife wants to buy a handbag, she does not need to be approved by her husband. At the same time, the husband can free to buy as many computer games as he wants if he uses his spare money.
Before evaluating your familys financial status
It is important to have the necessary family financial information ready when you begin the evaluating your family financial status process. It will shorten the time it takes and makes the process smoother. Before you begin, gather the relevant items of your family members. The following items would reflect your family finance. We should advice Mr and Mrs Wong to collect the following records before evaluating their financial status.
‧ Identify information reflecting your family finance
i. Financial services records
Including cheque book, savings passbook and bank statement
ii. Employment records
Such as monthly income slips and bonus records
iii. Credit records
List of credit card and debit card numbers, monthly statements
iv. Loan records
Such as mortgage loan, personal loan, tax loan records as well as their repayment schedules and records
v. Tax record
Including salary tax and property tax records and copies of past returns
vi. Expenditure records
Such as the credit card statements, bills payment records such as monthly statements for water, gas, electric, mobile phone etc, and purchasing slips
vii. Housing records
Rental payment record, mortgage loan repayment record, home purchase and improvement records
viii. Insurance records
Including policies, past claim reports, premium payment record
ix. Investment records
Including Certificate of Deposits, investment account statements, brokerages statements
x. Estate planning and retirement records
Such as will, pension, Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) information and records
As in the case of Mr and Mrs Wong, they need the above financial records to evaluate their current family financial status. The records can track a familys income sources and also where is their money gone.
For example, Mr or Mrs Wong can check that whether they have overspending on an item of the familys expenditure. If they found that the payment from their credit card statement is mainly for clothing expenses, they should consider cutting such kind of expenses.
They should not miss some kind of income source such as the investment income. Thus, they should also keep the investment account statements.
much as the result value would be negative.
Note
1. The indirect method is not used as long as the contact resistance measured directly between any two points is below the standard/specified level.
2. It is used only when the measured contact resistance is below the specified resistance level.
Fig 7.4 Megger MOM200A (Instrument used by the company for contact resistance measurement)