Balancing a ₹24,000 Household and a Washing Machine on Instalments
Ramesh earns ₹20,000 a month as a clerk and takes tuition for ₹4,000, which is not guaranteed every month. The family - Ramesh, his wife Suman and two children aged 12 and 9 - lives in a rented room. Rent is ₹4,000, school fees ₹2,500, a loan EMI ₹3,000 and the electricity bill averages ₹1,200. Last month Suman spent ₹5,500 on food, ₹3,000 on clothes for a cousin's wedding, ₹2,000 on a festival and ₹1,500 on medicines; by the 25th she had borrowed ₹2,000 from a neighbour. Suman also works part-time as a tailor for four hours a day, so cooking, washing and cleaning are squeezed into the evening. She now proposes to cut the children's milk and her husband's blood-pressure medicine to balance the month, and to buy a second-hand washing machine on instalments of ₹1,200 a month.
1. Classify the family's expenses and prepare a workable monthly budget, explaining how you deal with the uncertain tuition income.
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Classification
- Fixed (cannot be avoided, same each month): rent ₹4,000, school fees ₹2,500, loan EMI ₹3,000.
- Semi-fixed: electricity ₹1,200 (can be reduced but not removed), medicines ₹1,500.
- Flexible (controllable): food, transport, clothing, festivals, entertainment.
- Irregular: wedding clothes, illness, repairs - these need a fund, not a shock.
Handling uncertain income: budget on the guaranteed ₹20,000 so that a month without tuition does not force borrowing; treat tuition money as savings, not as routine spending.
Budget on ₹20,000
| Item | ₹ |
|---|---|
| Rent | 4,000 |
| School fees | 2,500 |
| Loan EMI | 3,000 |
| Electricity | 1,100 |
| Food | 5,600 |
| Medicines | 1,500 |
| Transport | 700 |
| Household/soap/oil/misc | 800 |
| Total | 19,200 |
| Contingency | 800 |
Use of tuition income (when received): ₹2,500 to savings, ₹1,000 to the clothing/festival fund, ₹500 to the contingency. Savings are used to buy the washing machine outright or to build a medical buffer, rather than paying interest on instalments. Last month's wedding and festival spending came from a fund that did not exist - that is the leak to close.
2. Evaluate Suman's three proposals - cutting the children's milk, cutting the blood-pressure medicine, and buying a washing machine on ₹1,200 instalments - and give your judgement.
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Cutting the children's milk - reject. Two growing children need about 500 ml each of milk or its equivalent daily for calcium, protein and vitamin B12. Two children's milk costs roughly ₹1,200–1,400 a month; cutting it saves about the same as one EMI, but the cost appears later as weaker bones, poorer growth and more illness. Cheaper calcium alternatives - curd, chana, green leafy vegetables, ragi - should replace part of the milk, not all of it.
Cutting the blood-pressure medicine - reject outright. This is the most dangerous of the three. Uncontrolled blood pressure leads to stroke, heart attack and kidney damage, and a single hospital admission would cost many months of income. Medicines are a fixed, non-negotiable expense; if cost is a problem, the answer is to ask the doctor for a cheaper generic or a government supply, never to stop.
Washing machine on ₹1,200 instalments - conditional. It would genuinely save an hour a day for a woman already working four hours as a tailor, and time saved can be converted into income. But the instalment adds a permanent fixed cost and also raises water and electricity bills. Better options: buy a second-hand machine outright from savings after three months of disciplined budgeting, or first try work simplification (see next task) and buy only if the time saved is really used for earning or rest.
3. Suggest practical work-simplification measures for Suman's kitchen and home that would actually recover time, given that she tailors for four hours daily.
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Work simplification means removing unnecessary motion, combining tasks and using better tools - not merely working faster.
Kitchen
- Plan a weekly menu and shop once. One weekly list cuts daily market trips and impulse buying; the same vegetables can be used across two meals.
- Cook once for two meals. Dal and roti at night, with the extra dal or vegetable carried to the next day's tiffin; this removes one full cooking cycle.
- Soak pulses and knead dough in the morning. Soaked pulses cook in half the time and save fuel; dough rested for a few hours rolls out faster.
- Use a pressure cooker for dal, rice and vegetables together with separators - three items on one burner.
- Store at the point of first use. Keep the masala box, knife, board and sieve within arm's reach of the cooking platform; keep the pressure cooker where it is used, not in a far cupboard.
- Batch tasks: chop all vegetables for the day in one sitting; prepare tiffin components while the dal is on the flame.
Home
- Soak clothes while cooking and wash in one scheduled block on alternate days rather than daily.
- Iron school uniforms and her stitched pieces in one batch, once or twice a week.
- Give the 12-year-old age-appropriate fixed tasks (laying out uniforms, filling water bottles, sorting laundry); this is training in responsibility, not exploitation.
- Keep a fixed place for school bags, shoes and keys to eliminate morning searching.
Suman should first apply these low-cost measures for one month and record the time saved; only then will she know whether the washing machine earns its ₹1,200 instalment.