and simultaneously keeps a household budget book.
That’s always a good idea.
I’m too lazy to keep a proper one where I have to record every coffee I buy. I made myself a big Excel wallpaper.
At the top is what comes in monthly. Below that are the fixed costs for house & living. Then below that the fixed costs for contracts.
Then there are some fixed costs for insurances and leisure. I used to have a section for liabilities (smaller loans or something). Then another section for savings rates/reserves.
And below that I have a section where I accept flat rates for the variable monthly costs: groceries/drugstore, cash, gasoline, clothing. These are just estimates that I calculate every month with the same amounts.
At the very bottom of the wallpaper I offset the balances against each other, then I arrive at a "result after fixed costs" and a "result" (the variable ones are also deducted there). And that way I know on average what we have left at the end of the month.
Sometimes it matches better, sometimes worse – you don’t buy clothes every month, for example. But it’s a great overview and I work a lot with the table. For example, I also mark every month in green what has already been debited. Then when you look at the account balance you always know whether most of it has already been paid, or whether someone still debits a larger chunk.