New Britain Herald Newspaper, April 12, 1929, Page 31

That's Where 6‘ : T Accounts A | the Evidence of Real Partnership Co.opevation Between Husband and Wife. By ALLEN R. DODD. CAN remember that period I of the Gay Nineties when the “bicycle built for two” was evident in fact as well as in song. I can remember, too, that the person on the front seat of a tandem bicycle seemed to have the unalterable conviction that the person behind comilunt!‘y did less than his fair share of the peda.\h;fi. In these later vears 1 have found 8 similar situation often interfering with the smooth run- ning of that tandem affair called marriage. [ have been talked to by husbands convinced that they could get somewhere financially if their wives would only give them some real co-operation in keeping the family expenditure within a reasonable figure. 1 have overheard wives complain- ing that while they grew gray hairs in the hopeless attempt to manage & home and save money on insufficient funds, their hus- bands bought seventy-five dollar suits and twenty-five cent cigars and joined clubs or lodges with gay disregard for the limitation of the family income. Now, in most of these cases, 1 do not believe there was any intent to be unfair on the part of either husband or wife. The trouble came from a misunder- standing of present-day living conditions and a profound ignor- ance of where the family money actually went. When the generation 1 hate to confess that I belong to was young, & few thousand dollars bou‘gt a respectable home, serv- ants were cheap, and almost every family had a Cousin Annie or Aunt Maria to help with the housework, and the butcher gave away liver and dog_meat as a goodwill offering. Then a cer- tain amount of casualness in the management of the family finances made little difference, when there was what might be considered a fair income. Today the cost of housing has more than doubled in many places, the price of help is almost prohibitive when it can be had at all, and an extrs mouth at the table is something to be reckoned with in dollars. To sdd to the Financies Could Be Managed to complexity of living, our stand- ards have changed abruptly. We must have a motor car, radios tiled bathrooms and a host of other things that earlier genera- tions never even imagined. These things are all excellent; they have increased our comfort and well-being immeasureably. They have made us broader minded and more interesting, and life more interesting to us. But they all have to be paid for—some- how. When my wife and 1 awoke to the fact that our income fell far short of our needs — or, rather, what we thought were our needs—we decided, as the first n.cg in reorganizing our affairs, to borrow a few leaves from the books of business. We made up our minds that home finances have to be managed as carefully as corporation finances, if un- lovably squabbles about money are to be avoided. Generally speaking, financial management in business rests upon two foundations—accurate cost accounting and the budget. Accounts are financial history. They tell what nag happened. The budget is financial prophecy. It attempts to tell what is going to happen. We decided, im talking the matter over, that a reasonably truthful sct of ascounts and a budget were as essential to hap- piness in the home as light pie- crust and a cheerful disposition, and these were our reasons: Accounts, in the first place, tell in unmistakable language what you are getting for the money vou spend. Are you ac- comulating a capital that will support you in old age? Are you laying the financial founda- tion for a home of your own? Are you having a good time now —going to the theatre, giving arties, joining clubs, enjoying ooks, 8 radio, a car? Are you on the other hand, not really get- ting your money’s worth—letting your income slip through your fingers in all sorts of little ways that, added together, represent the price of some greater pleas- Keeping the Cleaner Clean Vacuum Mackines, Like Any Others, Must Be Cared For. HERE are really but a few things to be kept in mind in caring for your vacuum cleaner. In the first place the cleaner has moving parts-motor, whesls, perhaps a revolving brush, etc., where metal runs on metal. These parts will require lubrica- tion. The proper quantity and quality of oil or grease applied to the bearings of the cleaner will prevent wear and insure long life. Manufacturers of vacuum cleaners always furnish directions as to the places on the cleaner which require lubrication, the kind of lubricant that should be used on their particular cleaner and the quantity. The manufae- turer, of course, knows hit own machine best and it ix good sense to follow his directions. It may be difficult to judge when to lubricate becaute this is dependent on the frequency of use. However, it should be kept in mind that the more the cleancr is used, the more luquentl; it will have to be lubricated. You should know that it is possible to use too much oil. If there iz an excess, the oil may drip into the motor and cause serious damage to the windings. Some cleaners are now being made with ball bearings, which are packed with grease at the fac- tory and should not require addi- tional lubrication for a long period. Some manufacturers pro- vide an ofl hole above the bear- oil may be introduced once in a while to keep the grease soft. In any event, ball bearings require very little attention if they have been properly assembled and grease-packed by the manufac- turers. Plain bearings, however, must be lubricated regularly in order to insure long life. The carbon brushes in electric cleaners, which conduct the cur- rent to the moving parts of the motor, will wear in time; the evi- dence of wear ir usually indicated by sparking. If unusual spark- ing occurs where the brushes make contact with the commu tator, it would be well to have your cleaner serviced, for prob- ably the brushes are worn, or the commutator {# pitted or scored or there may be trouble in the motor windings. The connecting cord, expecially where the wires are fastened to the sttachment plug, may be a source of trouble unless care i taken to handle it carefully. Do not run heavy furniture across the cord or drag it over sharp ob- jects. Remember there are deli- cate wires enclosed in the cord; handle it with care. When dis- connecting the plug do so by grasping the plug itself rather than by jerking on the eerd. When you are through using the cleaner, wind the cord earefully, on the cleats provided for that purpose. Attention to these mi- nor thins I free you from an- noying delays and the necessity ings so that just a few drops of for servicing. Greater Advantage ure or worthwhile investment? The answer is in the account book. In the second place, accounts are the only satisfactory basis upon which to plan a working budget. How could we, for in- stance, decide in what Vi would probably spend our next year, until we knew what ways we had spent it last year? Accounts, finally, are a won- derful help in avoiding husband- and-wife arguments about Our Money Goes ! @ A Husband Speaks Up on How He Believes the Family A Few Minutes Each Day Spent at the Desk With the Account Book Will Keep the Finances in Order. money matters. Does the hus- band fail to understand why the $£40 he gave his wife on Satur- day is totally non-exisent by the following Wednesday? The account book shows why. It may even convince the husband that he is asking his wife to perform financial miracles he would not expect of any one else. Ac- counts are the evidence of real partnership and co-operation between husband and wife. They are the wife's certificate of com- petent management—tke hus- band's proof of fair dealing. Once my wife and 1 had de- cided that accounts and a budget were nece: of our 'home, the next ques was—How to acquire them? Be- yond such obvious items as rent, insurance, and doctor’s French Ways with Meat Left-overs With Proper Care They May Be Made Not Only Appetizing, but Attractive for the Family to Look at. O a certain degree, it is pos- T sible to plan meals so care- fully as to eliminate left- overs. However, when roasted meats are served there is bound to be a surplus which must be served at another meal Great care must be taken in the cooking and serving of left- overs. Make the dishes attrac- tive; a little parsley, thinly sliced pickles, sliced lemon, or hard- cooked egg make inexpensive and appetizing decorations. It is most satisfactory, in these days of ex- pensive living, to succeed in mak- ing left-overs so that they are thoroughly appreciated and it is well worth the little trouble taken. In any of the following recipes calling for sliced meat, it is difficult to give the exact num- ber of slices required, because the slices are bound to vary in size. But in every case, see that the meat is cut in slices as thin as wafers. This adds greatly to the palatability of a left-over meat dish. In all the recipes des- ignating shiced meat, use enough to weigh from three-quarters of a pound to one pound. The following methods of serving will make palatable even boiled beef which may have been left from the making of soup stock, etc. These directions may also be used for preparing left- overs of roast beef or pot roast: Cut the beef into very thin slices. Cream together two table- spoonfuls of butter or margarin, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, one-half teaspoonful of salt and one- eighth teaspoonful of pepper. Add slowly one table- spoonful of lemon juice. Spread a little of this mixture over each slices of beef, using about three quarters of a pound of the beef Arrange the slices of beef thus red im a greased baking- add five tablespoonulfs of het stock or water and sprinkle over all two tablespoonfuls of fine, dried bread or cracker crumbs. Bake in a hot oven 10 minutes—no longer, or the meat will dry and toughen. Serve baked potatoes with this. Thinly sliced corn beef is delicious pre- pared by this recipe. Omit the salt in this case. For another method of prep aration, cut two slices of bacon in small dice and try out in a hot frying-pan. Add two small Left-Over Beef Served With a Sauce and Boiled Rice Makes a De- onions and one clove of garlic very finely chopped, one table- gpoonful of minced parsley, one- half teaspoonful of salt and one- quarter teaspoonful of pepper. Cut the beef in wafer-thin slices, using about one pound, and ar- range in a greased baking-dish, alternating layers of beef with layers of the onion mixture. Moisten with one-quarter cupful of hot water or stock, to which one tahlespoonful of vinegar has been added, and bake, covered, in a hot oven of 400 degrees F. for fifteen minutes. Serve with creamed potutoes. Serves six. Here 15 another delicious wa of serving left-over boiled bee Wash and pare potatoes and thin- Iy slice emough to make one quart. In a baking-dish place one large slice of bacon cut in tiny dice; over this arrange alter- nately layers of the sliced pota- toes and cold beef cut in very thin slices, having a layer of po- tatoes on the top. Use about three-quzrters of a pound of the meat. For seasoning, mix to: gether one finely chopped onion, one tabelspoonful of minced pa sley, one and one-quarter te spoonfuls of salt, and one-quar- ter teaspoonful of pepper. Sprinkle part of this mixture over each layer. Add one cupful of hot water and one cupful of stock. Spread over all one-quar- ter cupful of dry crumbs and dot with one tablespoonful of butter or margarin. Bake one-half hour in & hot oven of 400 degrees F. Serve six Left-overs of roast beet or steak may be transformed into delicious and attractive dishes by Copyright, 1929, @ Wing Festures Wyndicste, ine. Dish. either of the following sugges: tions for their preparation: Cut the beef into wafer-thin Place one tablespoonful na frying slices. of butter or dripping: pan or chal small onion chopy until yellow. Then add one ta blespoontul of flour and one cup: ful of water graduai stirring constantly and season with one teaspoonful of salt, one-quarter te of pepper and three ta fuls of tomato catsup. When well mixed, place beef it There will be sufficient sauce for eight or ten very thin but large slices. Heat for ten to fifteen minutes and serve with boiled rice. This may be varied by sub stituting mustard pickle for the catchup. Then this: Melt three table- spoonfuls of butter or margarin in a saucepan and cook in it until yellow two medium-sized onions finely chopped. Then add three tablespooniuls of flour and one tablespoonful of parsley. Stir together until bubbling and add adually two cupfuls of hot water. Stir constantly until thickened and season with one and one-quarter teaspoonfuls of salt, one-quarter teaspoonful of pepper and one teaspoonful of prepared mustard. Then drop in the beef, about 12 slices cut tain, and cook just long enough to heat the meat through, not over ten minutes. To serve, ar- range the meat on rounds of bread which have been fried in drippings and pour the sauce over all. Serve with plain boiled potatoes. Serves six. Houselieeping ¥ona types of household men and vowen. ¥ orthe pine, being evolved ty sare steps, fime on evices coe tested L a (o of uIeY i T 2 wre constan’iy Or 10 housebespers Al verijes are tested ond standardized and will cliraus wek {f @lrectione cre care. fully followed otherwise specified. bills, we hadn't the ghost of an ides of where our money was go- inz. We didn’t even know where it ouzht to go In the beginning we asked ourselves, frankly, what we wznted to find out about the money we spent. Certain broad channels of outflow — insur- set down for u: Certain others — food, household, help and supplies, clothes— appeared almost automatical- ly as divisions of expense to keep track of. It was the more obdcure items that worried us. Was my tobacco bill as small as 1 thought it was? Were we spend- ing too much in entertaining our- selves and our friends? All these we tried to itemize in detail. We were, parenthetically, ap- palled before the year was half over by the sum total of formerly nickels, dimes and quar- ters. Onething we found out quickly. A too elaborate ac- counting system is almost worse than none at all. There is no sense, we de- cided, in trying to make household accounts balance as accurately as & checkbook. All we wanted was an in- telligent idea of what we were get- t:n§ for our money and even if a whole dollar es- caped us now and then, theresults were close enough for practical pur- purposes. The system we eventually found most workable had for its basis a summary sheet divided inte thirteen vertical columns— one for each month and the last for the annual total—and ruled horizontally according to the fol- lowing expense headings: In- surance, taxes, rent, gas, elec- tricity and house telephone, food except milk and ice (which we itemized separately), but includ- ing family meals eaten outside the home, miscellaneous house- hold supplies and expenses, help, child's school, clothes and miscel- laneous expenses, wife’s personal expenses, husband’s personal ex- pen Th st twe items we subdivided into clothes, carfare, doctor and dentist, club dues, to- bacco and the like, as seemed desirable, and posted on separate sheets, For people new to the game of family account keeping it is not a bad idea, for a starter, to buy one of the so-called “Family LExpense Books,” in which the columns and standardized head- ings are already laid eut. 1 be- lieve, too, that some banks and nce companies offer ac- 1t books or account sheets without charge. For our day-to-day records 1 carried a small notebook, and my wife kept a small blank book in her desk. She usually carried & scratch pad or piece of paper in her bag when she started on a complicated shopping tour, eo that items could be jotted down before she forgot them. Both my book and hers were roughly ruled into columns according to the branches of expenditure in which we were each particularly interested. This saved the time and bother of writing out the destination of each dime er dol- Iecipes printed on this puage scrie sir peupic unless — lar and then sorting cut the whole business every week or every month. With this system, we found that our account keeping re- quired surprisingly little time and trouble. Five or ten minutes a day, plus a couple of hours once a month, proved ample. In fact, the monthly summarizing de- veloped into a kind of game with “Beat last month’s record” the goal. We made no attempt to lay out a regular budget until our ac- counts were a year old. Our working principal was, “Find the facts f then budget.” Of course, made certain redis- tribution of our income as the story told by our account sheets began to take shape; that is, we actually—though not on paper— drew up three or four rough budgets before the year was over. When the time came for mak- ing our first real budget, we had for tolls our last year’s accounts, our next year's estimated income, and—we hoped—a fair and open minded attitude. We first put down what we had come to call our “overhead” —insurance, rent, taxer. These were, we considered, unalterable items. Our rent was a bit high for our total income, but it rep- resented a comfortable, health- ful, home for ourselves and our child, and we decided that what- ever cutting of expense was done must be done elsewhere. Next we established a “sinking fund” and deliberately assigned to it five per cent of our ex- pected income. This was to take care of emergencies and over- optimism in the cuts we planned to make in certain branches of our year’s expenditure. en, guided by our accounts, we distributed the balance over the other headings, always with the thought in mind before put- ting down a set of figures, “Is it worth the money?” Finally, we wrote “Cash Savings” on our budget sheet, and built up this new item by careful slashes in our proposed living costs. The resulting sum wasn’t overpower- ing, but we felt that we had at least made & start in the right direction. Of course, our budget didn’t work out exactly as we planned it. We had no expectation that it would. We stuck to our esti- mates as closely as possible, but we had no intention of becoming slaves to them. A budget should be a plan of action—not a set of rules and regnlations that must be followed to the letter, come what may. 1 believe that it is a good idea, when laying out a budget, for you and your husband to decide if you can, what the chief thing is that you want your money to do for you not only now but in the future, aud then build your budget around that one thing. As to your future plans, it may be an old-age fund, a house, a better education for your chil- dren, a trip to Europe, a new car. Whatever it is, keep working toward it in your financial plans, and eventually you will have something worth while. Remember, finally that all the accounts and budgets in the United States will not keep you from spending beyond your means if your scale of living is more expensive than your in- come justifies. Generally — very generally— speaking, on a rather moderate income, about a quarter of one’s total income can be spent for housing, from a fifth to an eighth for food, depending on the size of the income and the number of people in the family, and slightiv less for clothes. Most so-called “standard budgets” demand a savings account amounting to at least one-tenth of the income. As the income drops below $2,500 or $3,000 a year, these proportions tend to rise. As it approaches tae $10,000 mark, the percent- ages for food, shelter and clothes tend to fall, while savings may shoot up to a fifth or more of the total income, The Colorful Fruit Cocktails They Set Off the Table as Well as Add Zest to the Meal. fruits, vegetables, or fish should often appear as the first course of luncheon or din- ner, to replace or precede the soup course. As so-called “cock- tails,” these not only serve as re- freshing appetizers, but often add just the needed touch to an otherwise simple meal. For Mint Grape Cocktail.— Arrange in each cocktail glass two tablespoonfuls of diced, canned pineapple and two table- spoonfuls of seeded Malaga grapes. Over the top arrange three fleshy sections of orange cut in halves, and two fleshy sec- tions of grapefruit cut in halves. Last, pour two tablespoonfuls of red grape juice over each and serve topped with a sprig of mint. Pineapple Cocktail is attrac- tive arranged on small glass plates. On each plate place a slice of canned pineapple, which has been cut in several places without losing its shape. lay a emaller slice of orange, also cut in several places, on top of each slice of pineapple. and pile halves of seeded grapes in the center. CO[.ORFL‘L combination2 of Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar and serve. For Cauliflower Cocktail— Cook one medium-sized head of cauliflower until tender. Sepa- rate the flowerets and cut them up rather coarsely. Chill well. Add to tomatoes which have been skinned and diced, and one tea- spoonful of chopped chives. Mari- nate in one-third cupful of well- seasoned French dressing for thirty minutes. Serve in cock- tail glasses, allowing one-third cupful for each serving. This e Cocktail—Finely shred and chop one-third of a medium-sized cabbage. Cover with cold water and chill for one hour. Drain, dry well and add one-third cupful of finely chopped green pepper, and two table- spoonfuls of cooked salad dress- ing for every cupful of cabbage. Chill well. * Serve in cocktail glasses, allowing one-third cupful for each serving. Sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serves six. Fer Green Pepper Cocktail— Use equal parts of shredded green pepper, celery and cooked stringbeans. Serve with Russian dressing. e o e