The Ely Miner

Make Budget of Living Expenses
Good Reasons for Planning Use of Income in Advance.

(Prepared by the United States Department of Agriculture.)

Various reasons are given for not budgeting household expenditures. By a budget is meant planning the use of the income in advance, after analyzing past expenditures, so as to get more for one's money this year, if possible, than before. One home maker says, perhaps, that she is poor at figures; another that she handles only part of the family money; a third that the income is variable, so she cannot tell what there will be to spend. Still others believe that they are already practicing every possible economy and that planning for forthcoming expenditures would do them no good. "I never spend a cent I don't have to!" cries this type of woman, while another may confess, "I don't want to know where the money has gone!"

But almost every home maker on a moderate income has common sense enough to admit that by planning ahead for certain major expenses—a graduation dress for the daughter, say, or music lessons, or even bigger things like owning a home or a car—these advantages have been achieved although it looked fairly hopeless at the start. So it is only a short step from that admission to the next, which is that by applying similar planning to the whole range of household expenditures, haphazard living could be converted into steady forward progress for the entire family. Every business, even the United States government, is run on a basis of a fixed sum allowed for future expenditures, each class planned in detail. The family budget is different only in the amount of money involved, but the same in principle.

Many home makers do not realize that part of their work is the management of a business, that one of their important tasks is the handling of part or all of the family income, and that the success of their many other activities depends largely upon their success in doing this well. The home maker who says she does not wish to know how her money was spent is ignoring this aspect of her job.

The United States Department of Agriculture has recently issued a circular intended to help you with the details of budget planning. No authority can supply a budget ready-made, for a good spending plan in one case might be a very poor one for another family of the same size and income, each living in the same town.

Miscellaneous Circular 68, "Planning Your Family Expenditures," is free while the supply lasts. It contains many suggestions as to how to group the usual household expenditures. Special attention is given to the matter of farm household records, since some of the products of the farm are used in the household. At the end are a number of questions which suggest where to look for leaks and how to approach the solution of some of your individual problems.