Food, $500 a year, $9.61 a week, $1.37 a day—we shall probably think this a possible allowance.
Rent $400 a year, $33 a month—here there may be a difficulty.
If we own a house in a country town or a suburb, we can probably pay the taxes and make repairs, and have something left from $400. If we rent a house in a country town or in a not too popular suburb we can perhaps get it for less than $400, but in the latter case, the remainder may need to be used in carfares if some member of the family has to go to the city every day. If we live in a flat in a large city, it is an uninviting one that can be had for $33 a month, and even so, nothing is left for carfares. Regular carfares are usually reckoned in the department with the rent, because the place where one's home is situated determines their amount.
Here are two cases, then, in which the proportion for rent does not work. The first, in which there is more money than is necessary to provide a dwelling, is easily arranged. The surplus can be used for more clothes, or more "help," or to satisfy more of the unfailing supply of miscellaneous needs, or it can be put by for future needs.
The second case, in which we feel we must have a $40 flat and have only $33 with which to pay for it, is not as hopeless as it looks. For the next thing in the table of proportions is $300 a year for running expenses, that is, wages, fuel, light, water, etc. Here is at once a partial solution of the rent difficulty. In that forty-dollar flat, heat and water are supplied. If we use gas for cooking, $7 a month will be an average gas bill for a careful family, that is $84 a year. This amount will likewise cover the expense if we use gas for light and coal for the range. Then if we pay three dollars a week to an inexperienced girl, or $1.50 a day for two days a week to a combination washerwoman and scrubwoman, that will be $156 a year. Our running expenses will then be $240 a year. The $60 saved will pay $5 a month on the rent, and we shall then need only $2 a month more to secure the forty-dollar flat.
Next, $300 for clothes. In a year when things have lasted over, we may be able to get the $2 a month for the rent from this department. If, on the contrary, there is a new overcoat, or a new street dress to buy, or a new member of the family to clothe, then it cannot be spared.
The next division is $500 for holidays, recreations, books, charity, savings, doctors' bills and all unclassified expenses. This is the division which is most difficult to manage. If we think we cannot spare that $24 from the clothes department, we shall need to consider very carefully whether we take it from this, or from the food department. We shall have to consider the price of food in the neighbourhood; the health of the family; how much they need a holiday; whether there is any special purpose for which we must save; whether there is some piece of furniture much needed; whether there is a present which we greatly desire to give. And these are only samples of the things which will need to be considered. A choice must be made, though, however difficult, for when one item of expenditure in the family life is exceptionally large, there is but one thing to do, that is, to decide, reasonably and carefully, in what other department of living the expenditure can be lessened.
In this case of a high rent which has just been described, see in the table below what has happened.
| Food | Rent | Running Expenses | Clothes | Miscellaneous Expenses | |
| Mrs. Richards's Division | 500 | 400 | 300 | 300 | 500 |
| Division for high rent | 500 | 480 | 240 | 300 | 480 |
| 80 | 60 | 20 |
The high rent is balanced by a saving in running expenses and in some item of miscellaneous expense.