The beginning

Hi all

This blog is dedicated to a not-so-profound reaslisation that I had whilst pondering why it is that so many upper middle class folk are so poor at managing their money (myself included). It dawned on me that a household runs very much like a small business; there's revenue (wages), overheads (food, clothes, rent), there's things which improve profit margins (budgeting, cost cutting, pay rises) and there's things that kill profit margins (excessive spending, consumer driven desires etc)

Then I began to wonder why it was that when my parents were my age, my father on a lower middle class income (he was a bank teller) could buy 750sqm of land in a near city location with a 3 bedroom house and have 3 children....it's easy to blame me, I just don't budget right (bit harsh)...it's easy to blame the rising cost of living (bit of a cop out)...then it dawned on me....

Success at business is something that successful business-people practice every second of every day. They actively cut costs, avoid expenses, drive hard bargains, meet tight deadlines, strive for more revenue, budegt their time, money and resources all with the aim of maximising their profit margin....a house hold is no different.

That brings me to home economics. It dawned on me that back in a bygone era, men earned money (sales revenue), while women shopped cheaply, made and repaired clothes, budgeted and paid bills (cost control and expenses management. Somewhere along the line society decided that it didn't value these roles as much. It strived for the equality of women and rightly so. But what we didn't effectively do was redress the imbalance that this revolution created.

Now women and men often both 'bring home the bacon', but there's a void left in the home unit. We're now all sales men (and women) with no management on the home front. I think back to what i learnt in home economics at school; how to make boxershorts and a pencil case; how to make chilli con carne and....that's about all. Not that those weren't important skills....they just didnt teach me a lot about the economy of my home....what makes it rich, what makes it poor, what makes it efficient and what leaves in drowning in debt.

As such, this blog is dedicated to home economics, the good old fashioned way. It's aimed at men, women, young and old, married and single, with children or not. It's aim is to help our readers start to evaluate our family unit as a business, our home as a shop front and our lives as a balance sheet of our most valuable asset, time.

Enjoy