By Samuel Rosenberg From Caribbean360

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Friday June 5, 2015 – Are women or men better at managing the household finances? We all like to believe that we are all very skilled at looking after the money and management of a family’s finances, but then we all believe we are all good drivers, but we see plenty of poor drivers on the road.

The stereotypical response is that men make the larger salaries and women find a way to spend it at the shopping mall. The reality is that both partners need to be involved with the management and budgeting of the family finances to ensure that both understand where their money goes and how they can plan for the future.

In decades past, the natural concept was that the man went out to work and the lady stayed at home to care for the property and young children. The woman was perceived as the one who had the time to manage the money, pay the bills and look after the family budget.

Those days are long gone as most families require both partners to be out at work and earning money, and most home-related tasks are allocated to one or the other partner. Unless you are extremely unlucky, those tasks are allocated fairly and to the best of the abilities of the people concerned.

A MasterCard survey published last month showed that 83 per cent of women believe they are more focused on the household finances compared to 78 per cent of men.

What was surprising, from the research, was that people like monitoring their money and, generally speaking, women have the power over the purse strings. The former may be due to online facilities that allow you to check your money over the Internet, but the latter may be directly controlled over the different influences attributed to men and women, who are as different as Venus and Mars. Men have a tendency to spend money on entertainment, whether there is money in the budget for it or not, while women, who take fewer risks with finance, are more likely to put the family and their needs first and consider the future for savings and efficient planning. As with all surveys, circumstances and results, there are always exceptions to the rule.

Alarmingly, the report suggests that just 66 per cent of people read all or most of the communication that they are sent by their card provider or bank. Unsurprisingly, especially after the recent recession period, only 54 per cent of people trust their banks.

In modern times, just 35 per cent of people visit a bank branch regularly. Women are more likely to regularly check their bank balance and while men believe they are in charge of the household finances and make most of the household budgeting decisions, that is often just an illusion.

The easy answer is to ensure that both partners take the best approach to household finances and budgeting, by collaborating, which requires a consensus of opinion. It might be difficult to get there, but the decisions and the results will be much smarter and both partners will have a clearer understanding about the family’s income and expenses, and set aside enough as savings for the future.

The key decisions about managing personal finance is to ensure that both partners take a personal responsibility at every stage of money management and that communication is key to successful planning now and the future.

The writer is the founder and CEO of Axcel Finance Ltd., the leading regional microfinance institution. Share your thoughts and email your questions to [email protected]

IMAGE: Write some checks to make payments for household expenses

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/opinion/should-women-or-men-manage-the-household-finances-samuel-rosenberg#ixzz3cId0EeWe