Food $ 344.93
Shelter 144.00
Clothing 100.00
Operation 150.00
Advancement 312.00
Incidentals 46.85
-------
$1,097.78

"When the income is over $1,200," Mrs. Bruere adds, "the family has
passed the line of mere decency in living and entered the realm of
choice. Their budget need not show how the entire income _must_ be
spent, but how it may be spent to gain whatever special end the family
has in view."

That any estimated schedule for any income will fit exactly the needs
of any family of father, mother, and three children in any given town
in the United States no one supposes, but it is at least a basis upon
which to work. And perhaps the main point from an educational
standpoint is that it is a schedule at all.

The happy-go-lucky, spend-as-you-go style of housekeeping does not
constitute efficiency. The homemaking expert we are training will have
a better plan. She will have been long familiar with the idea of
apportioning incomes. She will have applied the tests of efficient
decision to her personal income before she has to attack the problem
of spending for a family. The ideal homemaker of the future will be a
woman who has had a personal income, and preferably one that she has
earned herself and learned how to spend before she enters upon
matrimony and motherhood.

By the less scientific plan of merely recording what one has spent,
when the spending is over, it is more than likely that some
departments of home expenditure will gain at the expense of others. If
we can afford only $150 for rent, and we pay $200, it is evident that
we must go without some portion of the food or clothing or advancement
that we need. If we dress extravagantly, we must pay for our
extravagance by sacrificing efficient living in some other direction.
The budget is not entirely or even in large measure for the sake of
saving, but rather for the sake of spending wisely. When women become
as businesslike in the administration of home finances as they must be
to succeed in business life, or as men usually are in their business
relations, home administration will be placed upon a secure financial
footing and will gain immeasurably in dignity thereby.

Feeding and clothing a family are perhaps the fundamentals of the
homemaker's daily tasks. And upon neither of them will the application
of scientific principles be wasted. It is not