There’s no job as demanding as being a mum, but being a business owner is a close second. When you’re responsible for both a family and a business, it’s not hard for mums to experience a lot of challenges when it comes to staying on top of both household and business responsibilities.
The good news? There are some strategies you can employ to ensure that your bank account remains in mint condition. That said, handling finances responsibly is not something that can be done on a whim—you need to be smart about juggling both family and entrepreneurship to ensure both categories are properly cared for.
If you’re on the lookout for ways to improve your financial future, then you’re in the right place. We’ll dive into five clever money moves you can follow as a busy mum to ensure that your financial future is green and intact now and for years to come.
Let’s jump right into it!
Separate Personal and Business Finances
One of the first things business-owning mums should do is to create a distinct separation between their personal and business finances. This is a vital step as it helps prevent a blurring of finances, making it easier for you to concentrate on either personal or business finances when the time calls for either of them.
Besides marking a separation between the two buckets for your own convenience, there’s also the matter of tax filing that needs to be taken into account.
If you put business funds and revenue inside a personal account, this can make it difficult to distinguish personal and business transactions when it’s time to file taxes. This difficulty is even more amplified when you delegate the tax matters to a third-party staff member who may not know the context behind certain purchases.
The best thing to do is to apply for a dedicated business account for your business and track all business-related transactions there. By making this separation, you’ll prevent any confusion when tracking expenses and make it easier for you to file taxes, giving you a good jumping point to scale your operations and increase the precision of your business accounting reports.
Build a Realistic Budget
Another smart money move for business-owning mums is to build a realistic budget that covers both personal and business expenses.
It’s easy for mums to underestimate costs or overcommit funds when juggling between two major responsibilities. The solution? Build a clear budget that clearly lays out a roadmap for where your money should go.
A well-structured budget helps ensure that you stay on top of both business and family matters. It can help you visualise and plan your cost allocations more precisely, ensuring that you’re not overspending on a certain category or forgetting to account for certain expenses.
With a budget, you not only know the destination of your costs, but you can also use it to plan and project your present and short-term decisions to align with your financial goals. This allows you to have even greater control of your finances, making being a mumpreneur something actually achievable.
If you’re having trouble staying on top of your budget, consider leveraging technology to make the process simpler and smoother. This article by one of Australia’s top currency exchange banks, OFX, highlights nine expense management software systems that can help you free up time and budget your cost buckets more wisely.
Automate Savings and Payments
Another way mumpreneurs can stay on top of their finances is by harnessing the power of automation.
There’s a wide variety of tools with built-in automation features that can cut down the time it takes to fulfil certain tasks, whether it’s filling out details for an invoice or scheduling a payment on a set period.
For instance, you can call your banking partner to set up automatic transfers from your business account to your savings or emergency fund every month. You can also arrange auto-pay for recurring bills like utilities, rent, or loan payments, thereby removing the risk of late fees.
Using these features can be a great way to remove unnecessary mental load from your already busy schedule. Instead of worrying about whether you’ve paid the bills on time or transferred funds to your savings, automation ensures these tasks take place while you’re focusing on other things, granted that your account has the money to cover them.
Over time, this frees up your schedule significantly and gives you more freedom to focus on the things that matter, like scaling your business or spending time with the kids and family.
Build Emergency Funds for Each Side
No matter how thorough you are with your business plan or passion project, you’re not exempt from encountering problems with money when you least expect it.
In case such unexpected situations occur, it’s critical to build an emergency fund to ensure that you can respond to these surprises immediately without having to wait a while to gather finances to resolve the problem.
For mumpreneurs, it’s best to set up two separate funds, particularly one for personal needs and another for business operations. This way, you will have different accounts to get money from in case you encounter problems on both ends.
Naturally, building an emergency fund for both of your personas will be doubly hard. But it’s crucial to ensure that you’ll remain financially stable if things go awry in your business or family life.
Whether it’s a sudden medical emergency or an equipment breakdown, having an emergency fund ready to use can be the difference maker in keeping your life together or leaving you in a very stressful situation.
Use Credit Wisely
Another way for entrepreneurial mums to stay on top of their finances is by leveraging credit.
Credit can be a powerful tool to help mums accelerate their business plan, offset everyday costs, and stay financially flexible for both their business and motherly duties.
Research different lenders and shop around for amenable terms. Westpac, ME Bank, and Heritage Bank have some excellent loan options available for Australian individuals seeking business loans, for instance. From there, evaluate each lending option offered by these banks and pick the plan that resonates with you the most.
If you don’t have a good credit score, then prioritise building one so that you can secure better interest rates and loan terms. Credit can be very useful for taking out loans and giving your business room to grow without taking on unnecessary risk, provided that your ability to pay back is sound.
We hope that these strategies can serve you well as you navigate motherhood and entrepreneurship. All the best in balancing both your business and your family!