Short guides for households with a domestic helper — written from the real friction points of market runs, cash floats, and receipts that never come.
Give a weekly amount, not a monthly one: enough for a normal week of wet-market and supermarket runs, plus a small buffer for price swings and guests. The reliable way to find that number is to watch one real week of spending together, then fix the float from what you both saw.
Replace asking with a shared record. When every top-up, spend, and receipt is written down once — in a place both you and your helper can see — questions like “how much was spent?” and “how much did I give?” answer themselves, and the awkward conversation never has to happen.
You cannot collect a printed receipt at most wet-market stalls, so capture the spend another way: the amount, noted at the stall while it is fresh, in a record both of you can see. The habit that keeps household money clear is freshness, not paper.
Either works, because the payment rail was never the real problem. What employers want from an e-wallet float is a record they can check anytime — and cash plus a shared, written-down ledger gives you exactly that, without moving the money onto a second system someone has to manage.
A handwritten receipt is only as doubtful as the gap between the stall and the record. Captured at the stall — photographed if there is paper, typed in if there is not — the amount becomes a shared record both of you see while it is fresh, and 'easy to alter' stops being the point.
Make it a ritual, not a reckoning: five minutes at the same time each week, over a record both of you can already see. When the week's top-ups, spends, and receipts were written down as they happened, the check-in confirms what the record says instead of reconstructing it from memory.
SamaKasa is the dual-language grocery list and shared cash record these guides are written around — free for helpers, forever. See how one market run works.