This is merely a suggestion of the way in which a housekeeping plan is worked out. Every family has its own needs and wants, and its income must be proportioned to suit them as far as possible. If your income is larger than the one used as an example, you will find that the department of miscellaneous expenses will grow and need to be subdivided many times—you will have more concerts than cabbages—if, on the contrary, your income is less than the example, you will find that the food and rent departments will begin to swallow up the other departments.
An example of the extreme of this is exhibited by a budget of housekeeping expenses given by Mr. Arthur Morrison in the Fortnightly Review a few years ago, for a family with an income of £1 10s. a week—about $7.50 a week and $390 a year.
| s. | d. | |
| Rent | 7 | 0 |
| Meat and fish | 5 | 5 |
| Bread and flour | 2 | 1½ |
| Groceries | 1 | 8 |
| Cheese, butter, eggs, bacon | 1 | 11 |
| Green groceries | 1 | 3 |
| Fuel | 2 | 0 |
| Oil, etc. | 1 | 7½ |
| Clothes | 2 | 0 |
| Club and insurance | 1 | 0 |
| Beer and tobacco | 2 | 9 |
| Balance | 1 | 3 |
| £1 | 10s. |
This table, roughly calculated, gives the following proportions:
| A little more than 2/5 for food. |
| A little more than 1/5 for rent. |
| A little more than 2/25 for running expenses. |
| A little more than 1/15 for clothes. |
| A little more than 2/15 for other expenses. |
Nearly half the income was used for food; the same proportion for rent as it is reckoned should be paid by a family with an income of $2,000; and about a third ($2.50 in our money) was left for fuel, clothes, and every other need or want. Yet Mr. Morrison says that if the wife is not lazy and the husband does not drink, a family can live in London on this income and manage to be well and decent. "Pretty hard!"—yes. "Pretty sordid!"—no. Courage and perseverance and self-denial made that budget, such as most of us save up for heroic occasions, and would not think of expending upon marketing and meal getting.
One cannot be as definite about housekeeping plans as one would like to be in dealing with such a definite and practical subject. In the nature of things, each family must decide on the purposes for which its income is used, and on the amount to be devoted to each. I cannot, however, emphasize too strongly the necessity of definiteness on the part of those dealing with their own actual incomes. A carefully thought out plan of expenditure, written down and earnestly adhered to, is a family backbone. A first plan has to be made somewhat in the dark, but every year brings enlightenment and confidence. Though the purposes for which their income is used are for each family to decide upon, yet I venture to lay stress upon three purposes which are often subdivisions of that general and entirely voluntary department of miscellaneous expenses. For convenience, I shall call them, "Allowances," "The Tenth," and "Savings."
There is an odd sort of innate privacy about money matters. Children are taught that it is ill-bred to open other peoples' pocketbooks or checkbooks, or to ask them what their possessions cost. As they grow up they find that business affairs are considered confidential, and that no honourable person investigates another's money affairs without some authority. It is desirable that these rules of honour should be preserved, and one simple way to help in this is to arrange that each member of the family has an allowance, if it is only five cents a week—an allowance for which he is responsible to himself alone. These allowances should go down in the family accounts as "Allowances," the details belong to the individual. The members of families in which this arrangement is made should conscientiously keep their private expenses within the amount agreed upon, for allowances not only teach the right of individual privacy, they teach that old and difficult lesson that "you can't eat your cake and have it too";—that one can't have marbles and candy the same week. An allowance also supplies each person with something to give away, which is really his to give. He may not have earned it by work, but he has earned it by going without something he would have liked to spend it for. There is yet another purpose which allowances serve. They help to prevent the failure of a plan of expenditure. For they keep a strict and careful plan from becoming a galling chain. They prevent the absorption of personal privacy and freedom by the regulations of the family as a group against which the individual, sooner or later, invariably rebels.
"The Tenth" is that part of the family income, more or less than an actual tenth, which is given away. It is not mine to offer advice as to the size or use of this division. I merely emphasize its necessity. It is the small thing, which keeps meanness and bitterness out of the management of scanty means, and selfishness and brutality out of the management of ample means. Establish a give-away division in your plan, for the sake of your own disposition, if you are not urged to it by any other consideration.