Briefly and clearly—as a trust not to be committed to the chances and changes of his individual ventures. No investment should be made of his wife’s money without her knowledge and full consent. In all that he does, where her funds are involved, he should be her actuary, and what profits result from “operations” with her funds should be settled on herself and children. By this course alone can he retain his self-respect, his reputation as an honorable man, and certainly disabuse his wife’s mind of any possible suspicion that his affection was not wholly for her.
CHAPTER XLI
MORE ABOUT ALLOWANCES
THE arrangement between husband and wife concerning money matters should be no more definite and businesslike than that subsisting between father and children. To be taught early the real value of money is a distinct assistance to financial integrity in later life. To have in one’s possession, even as a child, a sum wholly one’s own, conduces to a feeling of self-respect and independence. As soon as a child is old enough to know what money is and that, for money, things are bought and sold, he should have an allowance, be it only a penny a week. Suggestions, but not commands, as to its expenditure should accompany the gift. Gradually the weekly or monthly amount should be increased, and instructions should be given as to its possible use.
A child may be advised properly to divide his small funds between pleasure and charity, or between the things bought solely for his own benefit and those for the benefit of others, the value of the expenditure, in each case, being dependent on the freedom of his choice. As he grows older he should be taught to expend money for necessities. He should be trained to buy his own clothes and other personal belongings. This sort of training, often disastrously neglected, is of far more practical value than many things taught in the schools. The feeling of responsibility engendered in children or young people by trusting them with a definite amount of money for certain general purposes, can scarcely fail of a happy result. It binds them to a performance of duty while it confers, at the same time, a delicious sense of freedom. An allowance for necessities gives its recipient liberty of choice in expenditure, but the choice must be judicious or the recipient suffers. This it does not take him long to find out.
RUNNING UP BILLS
Many a man who refuses his sons and daughters allowances, permits them to run up large bills at the various shops where they trade. Exactly what the amount of these bills will be he never knows, except that it is sure to be larger than he wishes. The children of such a man never have any ready money. They do not know what to count on and, in consequence, not being trusted, they exercise all their ingenuity to outwit the head of the family and to trick from him exactly as much money as possible. A young woman with somewhat extravagant tendencies, who belonged to the class of the unallowanced, begged her father for a new gown. She pleaded and pleaded in vain. Finally, he said if she had anything that could be made over, he would stand for the bill. This word to the wise was sufficient. She took the waist-band of an old gown to her modiste who built upon it a beautiful frock for which she likewise sent in a beautiful bill. Fortunately, this daughter had a father who was a connoisseur in wit, and who could appreciate a joke even at his own expense. But the example will serve, as well as another, to illustrate the lengths to which a woman may resort when not treated as a reasonable and reasoning creature about money matters.
THE CONVENIENT ALLOWANCE