WHEN a family have made a plan of yearly expenditure, they must have some way of testing at short intervals whether they are keeping to it or not, and some record by which at the end of the year they can tell whether their plan is a good one. These tests and records are furnished by accounts.
Accounts are as old as the brick books of Assyria. They have been found necessary to business transactions for ages. One of the reasons that housekeeping does not receive its proper recognition as a business and a profession is that it does not bear the stamp of either in the form of accurate accounts and statistics. Perhaps these are lacking because so many women are driven to tears or fury by accounts. It is odd that they are, too, for they keep golf and tennis scores, and devote themselves to whist, and are madly fascinated with jig-saw puzzles, and all these things are a good deal like accounts.
A favourite excuse for not keeping accounts is this: "I have just so much, and I can't spend what I haven't, so what's the use?" This ignores two things. The first is, that spending a little more than one's income, and thus gradually running up a debt, is an extremely easy thing to do. The second is, that people who do not plan their expenditures, deprive themselves of the chance to choose what their expenditures shall be made for. If you plan to have strawberries and cream on the first Monday in February, and bread and tea on the next Saturday, and you like that, then there is nothing more to say—except to hope for improvement in the next generation. If, however, in the exuberance of appetite or hospitality you have strawberries and cream on the first Monday in February, and are awfully surprised to find you can only afford bread and tea on Saturday—then you need to realize that you have deprived yourself of the freedom of choice, whether right or wrong, and that you had better keep a few accounts. The moment a family have one penny more than they need to buy the food which will keep them alive, there comes to be an element of choice in the spending of that penny. When the penny grows to an amount not easily calculated mentally, that freedom of choice is only obtainable by accepting the bondage of some sort of accounts. It is like the bondage of the truth, it makes us free.
There are many methods and variations of methods of keeping accounts. Mr. Morrison's woman with thirty shillings a week undoubtedly kept her accounts in her head, but she kept them. Many women keep accounts with a collection of small boxes or envelopes, each marked with the name of the commodity for which the money within is to be used. They find it easier to calculate with the actual money than with figures. It is well enough if they cannot do better, but it is primitive. I suppose that some six or seven thousand years ago, it was the latest thing in account keeping. No woman wants to be as far behind the style as that.
Accounts kept in figures have several obvious advantages. The symbol of five thousand dollars—$5,000—takes less room than that amount in money, and is no temptation to a thief. Another advantage is, that these symbols of money do not have to be paid out, but remain in a book, and furnish a record of just what has been bought and what money remains. They also make it clear to the owner of the money whether she has had what she most needed or not. That is one of the reasons accounts are so disagreeable; they often say, "You made a fool of yourself that time."
Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
The Account Book
There are two sides in accounts, which are usually represented by opposite pages in a book. The right-hand page is the Credit side; the left hand page is the Debit side. On the right hand, or Credit, page are written the sums of money we have or acquire. Credit is related to the word creed. The reason for this relationship is, that a credit page represents how much we may be believed in financially; and to what amount people believed in us who paid us for work; and to what amount people believed in us who gave us gifts in money. On the left-hand, or Debit, page are written the sums of money we have paid out. The word debit is related to due and duty and devoir. Therefore, on this page go the amounts which have been due to others for the things which we have had, and which it has been our duty to pay because we have had these things. If we are honourable people, we will do our devoir in this matter.