The author spends about 16 hours each month managing her family's finances.
Courtesy of Katherine Frankowski
To better understand which tasks were consuming my non-working hours, I tracked everything I did in my off hours for one month.I was shocked to learn how much time I spent managing my family's finances.Coming to terms with the size of the workload helps me take pride in it—and recognize its value to my family.<body>A few months ago, I was feeling too busy, and I wanted to know why. I knew how many hours I was giving to work each day, but where exactly were my non-working hours going? I decided to track everything I did in my weekday off hours for one month. My most surprising finding? How much time I spent managing my family's finances.It's an important but hidden roleTracking my weekday off hours confirmed some things I already knew. For example, I knew I was spending a lot of time shuttling my three school-age kids around. I also knew that housekeeping, meal planning, and grocery shopping were taking up big chunks of time, too. But I didn't realize how much time I was spending on my family's financial health.It's not that I didn't realize I was the one paying the mortgage or monitoring the checking account. It's that I somehow lacked a conscious understanding of how much time these tasks collectively took — until I tallied up the hours.I tracked my activities during my weekday off hours in 15-minute increments. At the end of the month, which was not unusual in any way, I tallied 16 hours of financial work. This means I was spending about 10% of my off-hours managing my family's finances. I checked the math three times before I could believe it.These tasks add upHow could I be so unaware of how much time I was spending on my family's financial health? One reason is that the work consists of countless small tasks: removing a duplicate credit card charge, tracking down the beneficiary form for an old 401(k), comparing insurance premiums. These tasks undoubtedly add up, but they are also hard to tally mentally.
