Non-cash Money in the Family Budget: do the Financial Management Practices Change?

In this paper the study of the non-cash money management practices in the family budget of contemporary Moscow households is presented. The focus on the non-cash finances is caused by the fact that there is a reason to believe that due to the transition to the electronic economy, the promotion of non-cash assets, financial management practices were supposed to react to the changes in the financial system. In the current study 20 semi-structured interviews with couples living together for more than half a year (10 households were included in the sample) were conducted. Subsequent analysis of the collected data led to the following conclusions. The feature of non-cash financial management practices lies in reproduction of the habitual practices in new forms using new ways, paths, services and opportunities in the budget management, provided by the electronic economy. At the same time, these new forms can be very specific when it comes to reproduction of the systems of financial management, developed by Pahl and Vogler, financial power-sharing arrangements, access and control mechanisms of partner’s money in the electronic economy, as well as from the perspective of meanings that are invested in the distribution of new forms of money.