How much grocery money should I give my domestic helper?

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.

Start from one real week, not a guess

Pick a normal week — no parties, no visitors — and let the shopping happen as it usually does. Keep every receipt and note every market spend. The total at the end of that week is your baseline, and it is worth more than any rule of thumb, because it is your household's real number.

Generic advice about what groceries “should” cost ignores the two things that move the number most: how much of your shopping happens at the wet market versus the supermarket, and how your household actually eats. One observed week captures both.

Weekly beats monthly — and beats daily

A month of cash is a month of guessing. A large monthly float makes drift invisible until the end, when raising it feels like an accusation. Daily amounts turn every market run into an errand that needs clearing first.

A weekly float sits in between: small enough that a quiet week and an expensive week are easy to tell apart, large enough that she can shop without asking permission at a stall. The top-up becomes a small, regular ritual — the same day each week, the same way — instead of a reckoning.

Write the float down where both of you can see it

Whatever number you land on, it only stays clear if its record lives in one place: what was given, what was spent, and what is left. SamaKasa keeps exactly this record — top-ups, spends, and receipts in one running ledger that both of you see, in English and Filipino.

Because she writes the record, it protects her as much as it informs you: an expensive week shows up as prices on receipts, not as a question mark.