IF A MAN or a woman has a home the spending of money assumes even greater importance than with the individual. No matter how successful the earner may be, it is too often the case that the spender gets rid of money as fast or faster than it comes in. The home, the household, the family, by whatever name we call it, is too frequently a great sieve through which hard-earned wages disappear.

The sad experience of ages proves that just as infatuation is not love, so two can not live so cheaply as one, and that five can not live so cheaply as two.

On the other hand, a successful mistress or housekeeper, be she wife, mother or sister, fights half the battle. Women, once they get the idea of saving, order, system, efficiency, into their heads, can beat the men at it in many instances. Women are probably more persistent savers than men, and it is said, I do not know on what authority, that at the end of any given number of years a relatively greater proportion of women than men are still saving. James J. Hill was once talking to a convention of farmers:

"Remember that the farmer's wife is one-half of the family, and she is the bigger half, too. The farmer's success or failure, his going up or down in his scale of accomplishment, depends upon her.

"A helpful thrifty wife, who is conserving his capital, his health, his earning ability, not to mention the pocketbook, closing the avenues of waste, will make him succeed. He can't help succeeding, while with a wasteful, careless wife, he might as well give up.

"These are facts. Make the test - take two men, one with the right kind of a wife and one who has the wasteful careless kind, and see how real it is in the actual progress of that family."

The wage-earning member of a family is spurred to renewed effort and increased earning capacity if the home is comfortable, well ordered and economical. Housekeeping is a science, and an extremely important one. It is sometimes said, and truly enough, that if a wife can not earn as much as her husband she should save more. Women are said to do eighty-five per cent. of the family buying. But their function is a more dignified one than such a statement seems to indicate. For let me repeat that the judicious spending of money is fully as important as the making of it, because money is made only to spend, sooner or later. And the housewife is the spender.

Not only must the housewife feel the dignity and importance of her calling but she should put her energies into it just as fully as her husband or brother or father does in regard to his business. Otherwise she fails to measure up to her position. Neither men nor women realize how serious has become this business of the mistress or housewife. Its literature grows as fast as that of medicine or law. To be a successful home manager requires study just as it does to be a successful teacher of philosophy.

Too many men in the past have considered that everything was accomplished if only their salary checks were large, and too many women have failed to realize that housekeeping required brains as well as physical drudgery. Even now the brains of American women have not been brought to bear in full force in this, her undisputed field, a field for the display of masterly generalship. But, as just stated, there are already many excellent books on household economy to be found in any library. Then too the Department of Agriculture furnishes free any number of useful bulletins on food preparation. Why shouldn't the housewife read portions of the home magazines just as diligently as the writer of this book reads the financial publications?

One of the newspapers recently ran a symposium as to whether a poor or rich wife was the more desirable for a poor man. I am inclined to think that the advocates of the rich wife, by which they merely meant one trained in a rich family, had the better of the argument. It was pointed out that the girl who had been accustomed to money knew how to take care of it, would quickly analyze her husband's affairs and help him to get along on a small income. Whereas the poor girl, so it was said, would regard even her husband's small income as so large in comparison with the little she had been accustomed to that she would embark upon a career of extravagance.

Of course there are plenty of exceptions both ways to this generalization, but it contains a significant grain of truth. Far too many girls know nothing of the value of money until they marry. There is not much to choose between the rich and the poor in this respect. It is not my purpose in this chapter to deal especially with young girls except to point out that to manage the finances of a family with any degree of success one must know the value of money, and if it is not learned in youth, it must be mastered later.

"A lack of knowledge of the value of money on the part of women is the most powerful enemy to domestic happiness that exists," declares Judge Arthur Lacy of the Domestic Relations Court in Detroit.

It takes just as much ability to run a household well as to run a big business enterprise. The budget is just as complicated. The great items are rent, food, wages, fuel and light, laundry, dress, incidentals, charity and refinements, amusements and possibly insurance and savings. A consideration of all these items does not properly come within the scope of this book. But it is possible to make some pointed remarks about a few of the leading ones, and about the wisdom of the budget system in general.

One young wife, whose husband earned eighteen hundred dollars a year, made a careful study of home budgets. The income had never been sufficient to cover their expenses without worry, and she determined to see whether it could not be administered more scientifically. She kept careful account of all expenditures, and she found that the key to the whole situation lay in spending the income in definite proportions. In other words she established a home budget. Applying this system, she divided their monthly income of one hundred and fifty dollars as follows:

Perhaps, without knowing it, she established the same system for her home that every successful business has found indispensable. As explained in the previous chapter, no large corporation uses a hit or miss policy of spending money.

One of the women's magazines, The Ladies' World, has published an admirable little booklet containing sample budgets and also blank pages for the use of the housekeeper in keeping count of her expenses for a period of many months. According to this booklet, entitled Where the Money Goes, one woman who tried to keep a budget, had this to show at the end of the first three months:

Of course, she and her husband saw at a glance how out of proportion many of their expenses were. In the first place, they had exceeded their income by $17.60, for the "Insurance and Savings" was merely the premium paid on the husband's life-insurance, and no money had been put into the bank. Their rent and food had cost too much, their operating expense was far too heavy, and they had only a very small sum for improvement and recreation.

Husband and wife sat down and talked it over. They found, for instance, that a little more fish and a little less meat would make a difference; their house supplies had run over twenty-two dollars for the period, and some of these could have been dispensed with. Moreover, they were paying too large a proportion of their income for rent, and they decided to look about for another house.

It didn't take so much planning as you would think. They simply readjusted their scheme of living a little, with the result that this family is now saving twelve per cent. of its income, and the woman reports that they never knew before how comfortably a family can live on sixteen hundred dollars a year when the money problem is given real study.

It is impossible to prescribe the exact divisions which it is proper to make of a given income. The tastes of the family naturally must be considered. But you will be interested to see how the best experts in home economics look on the matter, and you can get some guidance in making the home budget by comparing your budget with theirs.