(2) After money has been earned, thrift shows itself first of all in the way the money is spent; and many of us have the spending of the money that some one else has earned. Every time we spend a nickel or a dollar we make a choice—we choose to spend or not to spend, how much we shall spend, for what we shall spend.
A lawyer in a small town reports that in one month he made out the necessary papers to enable 75 men to mortgage their homes to buy automobiles.
Butchers say that during the war they more often sold expensive cuts of meat to wage earners who were by no means well-to-do, but who happened for the time to be getting good wages, than to people of larger means. One reason, perhaps, for extravagance in food and clothing on the part of unintelligent people who find themselves unusually prosperous, is that they see no better way to spend their money. Those who find pleasure in books, in education for their children, in travel, in investing money in serviceable enterprises, and in the higher things of life, have to make A CHOICE in regard to what they shall enjoy, and as a rule prefer to sacrifice the grosser pleasures.
CHOOSING WHAT TO SPEND
People, and especially young people, need a certain amount of sweets in their diet. But when we know that the candy bill of the people of the United States amounts to $400,000,000 a year, that this is almost as much as the total amount spent for public education, that it is about double the amount used to keep Belgium supplied with food for a year during the war, or that it will buy 234 million bushels of corn at $1.70 a bushel, we may well think twice before deciding to spend MUCH money for candy.
TESTS FOR SPENDING
The few cents difference in the price of two articles between which we must choose, and the nickels we spend for immediate enjoyment, may seem to amount to very little; but the New York City street railways collected in a year $95,000,000 in five-cent fares, and the Woolworth Building in New York, one of the largest office buildings in the United States, was built from the profits of "5 and 10 Cent Stores." One thrift stamp a week amounts in five years to $65, and 14 cents a day at 4 per cent interest amounts in twenty years to more than $1500. In one of the "Ten Lesson in Thrift," the following "tests in buying" are given:
Do I need it?
Do I need it now?
Do I need something else more?