Who runs the world? Homemakers 🏡

It is women’s history month, a month dedicated to celebrating and talking about the achievements of women worldwide, from Oprah Winfrey, Kalpana Chawla, to Whitney Wolfe Herd, and the list goes on.

While it is essential to celebrate these women for their influence in shaping the masses’ opinions and building a more gender-neutral and equal world, I think it is imperative to admire the ones closer to our heart, our mothers, the homemakers.

While growing up, I always thought it was my father’s job to provide, and my mother was just an accessory who sits in the house. Of course, I was very young, and as I grew and a part of the responsibilities came to me, I realized she is not the accessory. If the house is a machine, she is the fuel that keeps it running. That job is hard, and now that I look back and compare, I believe how they managed money led to the foundation of modern-day finance.

Kitties became the foundation for P2P lending, buy now pay later, and Mutual Fund investments: Kitty refers to the amount collected at the party where every member shares an allotted sum of money each month.

The kitty is given to one member of the group every month. Now that I think of it, the fundamentals of peer-to-peer lending are pretty similar to this. A bunch of people, having access to your life via your SMS and banking history, lending you money based upon that.

Make every penny count, budgeting 101: I remember my father giving a part of his salary to my mother, and it was her job to manage the entire month’s grocery, our demands, her needs with it, and she did a pretty good job. I think we can learn a thing or two from them. Homemakers manage money somewhere in the back of their head or in that little black notebook that someone gave during New Year. We do have modern-day apps to do it now, but they were the OG.

Secret Stash (Emergency Cash; became Insurance policies: The budgeting that I earlier discussed also includes a small part of it taken out as ‘secret stash’ by homemakers to buy themselves something nice but often used for rainy days or buy something toward making the life of family better.

The GOLDen opportunity: Not mentioning this would have been a blunder. A study suggests that Indian homemakers hold 11% of the world’s gold. Thanks to our mothers, gold is an integral part of India, not only culturally but also an ever-growing liquid asset. That helped in birthing and understanding Digi-gold and asset-backed investments.

My list can go on; this pandemic gave me a chance to reflect on all the jobs homemakers do without complaining, and they truly deserve our immense respect.

Their pieces of advice, tips, tricks, and as today’s generation calls it, ‘Life Hacks’ built the foundation of modern-day replacements. I’m pretty sure I must have just missed a few, so don’t forget to drop a comment.

Another day, another month, and another year of celebrating the great female leads of our lives.