My mother (and I am sure yours too) has always been a support to me no matter what - whether it is my choice of clothes, my career decisions, relationships I should or should not be in, she has always been by my side. It is said a mother-child relationship is the most unconditional relationship ever.
This mother’s day, gift your mother (the love and support) she has given you in return by making her financially independent. She is the reason you can do whatever you want to in the world. Be her reason to be financially confident and be adaptable to what comes next. Whether your mother understands money, finances, English or just banking in general or not, this blog is to guide you on what kind of conversations & learnings you can have with your mother.
As a step 1 - Understand where your mother is financially today and then guide her on what more she can learn to be financially secure and confident. Let's get started.
What are the financial things you can talk to your mother about?
1. Keep her informed about what you do
Before you tell her what she should do, it is important to tell her what you are currently doing. Discuss your job/work with her, explain to her your work profile, your salary, where you invest and why. We tend to discuss our expenses with our mother because she has some great answers on how to save better. Take it to the next step - discuss your investments with her.
2. Where the money is Invested
Keep your mothers informed. How she knows about everyone’s health issues, food preferences and other things. Inform her about financial things as well. Whoever may be the decision-maker (you or your father or grandfather), get her involved in financial discussions of the family. Tell her where the family money is invested and how she can access it when and if the time arises.
3. Basics of banking
One of the first things to make your mother confident about money is to guide her with banking work. Ask her to go to the bank and deposit cheques, visit the branch for any work that may need bank help, update the passbooks frequently and withdraw cash from the ATMs.
Explain to her how a credit card works and how she can make the best use of it, it will encourage her to use it to spend on her shopping and earn points too. You can buy things for her from the reward points earned on the card.
These may seem very simple for us but for her, it means freedom and access to money without asking us or our father constantly.
4. Guide her to be digitally smart
Gpay, paytm, phone pe is the way to go ahead and it only makes sense that your mom can shop by paying via gpay. I mean even our next-door sabji wala is now taking money on UPI payment apps. It may take time to explain to her how to do this, she may be scared, confused and ask you the same thing again and again. Do not lose hope and patience, explain to her slowly and trust me she would get it.
I now get shagun on gpay from my mom for festivals, so it is a win-win for everyone.
Where your mom has gotten the basics right, you can start by explaining her mobile banking and online shopping. Again 2 very important life skills are needed in today's time. Ask her to start with small ticket things and then move ahead. It will give her confidence and eventually reduce the calls to you about how to send money to someone, or buy a new dabba for the kitchen. She will do it all herself.
5. Make her aware of financial fraud but don't scare her.
The reason our moms are not going and doing everything online is that financial frauds are scary and very much real. She must be knowing someone who has been a part of it and does not want to meddle with family’s or her money. Take it as your job to build her trust in the system, teach her how to do it right and never to do it around strangers.
Most importantly make her feel secure that if anything does happen, you are there to take care of things. One line will change her entire approach towards this process of learning UPI and more and she will do it overnight.
6. Insurance - check if she has one and she is informed about others
Continuing from our earlier discussions on keeping her informed about the various financial situation of the family. You must inform her about insurance as well. Keep her informed about insurance you have/other members of the family have and where are the papers for the same.
Check if she is properly ensured (health insurance), if need be get a top-up for the same and also tell her where the documents are and how to access them. For example, my mother books her annual free health check-up (which is provided to her by her health insurance) by herself now and gets a check-up done. One thing she knows is that it is important and FREE. So she never misses it. Give your mother the incentive to learn and see her fly.
Wealth Cafe Advice:
Do remember that it will take time, patience and a lot of arguments (I must have left it thrice and then gone back to explain her again), the end result is beautiful and it will make your mother confident and independent. Yes, loving your mom, cooking for her that one day or handholding her with different things does make us all happy. Along with this, work towards making her independent too. The confidence she would feel when she goes to the bank or transfers that money to you cannot be compared to the best compliment ever given her.
Our mother may lack behind in investments, but you all may agree she is best at saving and budgeting.
We need to motivate her and tell her how good she is managing her monthly budget, how good is she at bargaining and finding the best deal while buying groceries or shopping, and how well she has managed to teach herself to spend wisely. Just take it to the next level and teach her on how to do it all online and invest too.
You can enrol her to our Be a Fe-Money-ist Webinar that we are conducting this Saturday, i.e on 7th May - for more details - click here.
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