Fiscal Liberty: How I Wish My Financially Underconfident Mother Gave Herself Enough Credit

There are some financial tasks my financially underconfident mother aces without assuming her due credit for it. However, before I begin listing those tasks, let me tell you a little backstory. 

When I was working at an internship, I was asked for my PAN details for crediting my stipend. I conveyed that I wasn't sure I owned a PAN card. I was immediately advised to ask my father about it. 

My senior told me, “your father must be knowing”. As it turns out my father didn't because my mother is usually more aware of all of our identity documents and their whereabouts. However, this simple statement of expecting my father to know better about bank-related documentation, made me think about the position of women as perceived concerning finance. 

Despite making progress in the finance and banking sector, women are still counted as inferior to men when it comes to numbers. And what do women think of themselves? 

We still have women who despite championing financial tasks doubt their skillset with numbers. My mother is one of them. 

Women are made to believe that finance is a domain for educated men till they start believing it themselves. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

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Financial Tasks My Finanially Unedrconfident Mother Aces And Doesn't Realise 

Daily Accounting

My mother keeps a small notebook with her where she daily journals. This is not a journal for feelings or daily occurrences but purely for numbers. She keeps an account of her daily expenditure. And as is an Indian mother's nature when they spend on themselves, she sheepishly comes up to me and tells me on some days, “I think I went overboard. This was not required.”

She accounts for every single penny that she spends in a day in that little notebook of hers. If I walk up to her to talk to her while she is accounting, she tells me, “wait, let me get this done. I'm not good with numbers.”

Investing

My mother does not invest in stock markets or cryptocurrencies. I have a spendthrift nature when compared to my mother's care towards money. She walks up to me and tells me this from time to time, “when you get a large sum of money make sure to keep it in a fixed deposit with your bank. Invest in gold jewellery for yourself in the future. Invest less in diamonds because a diamond has a lesser resale value than gold.”

She invested in mediclaim for our family. She invested in a separate fund for me to access when I need money. She also invested in life insurance. 

“Your father understands the stock market,” she tells me. “He's good with numbers." 

Saving

“Always save for a rainy day,” my mother emphasises when she hears me complaining of very little in my account. Out of both my parents, my mother's saving skills have kept our family afloat at times when that did not seem like a possibility. 

“Keep an emergency stash in your wallet. Remember, it's not for spending on chips,” she tells me while handing me that money. 

I operate on plastic money. When immediate cash is needed at home and my mother is not around, she asks me to check her savings tucked beneath the shrine in the house or her spectacle case. 

Money Is Sacred 

There are very few people who treat money with respect. I do not necessarily mean associating Hindu Gods with it. 

“Please keep the money in your wallet, do not keep it lying around when I give it to you.”My mother treats money like It's sacred. “Learn to take care of money and you will find it when you need it the most,” she tells me.

Palki Sharma Upadhyay once said in one of her speeches that saving and budgeting come naturally to Indian mothers. The myth that finances and men work synonymously in a sentence needs to be urgently busted. 

More mothers, Indian women, and little girls need to be taught that financial literacy is important even when they opt out of math. Finance is a life skill. This sensitisation needs to begin at both Indian homes and schools. They need to be taught that finance is an 'everybody' domain and not just a 'male body' domain. 

The opinions expressed are the author's own.