. For him, as for
several other classes of young business men, the locality which he can
choose for headquarters changes with the requirements of business. He is
under orders and must go at a moment's notice across the continent,
perhaps. It is not his fault but the exigency of business that destroys
the desire for a permanent abiding-place. The numbers of such homeless
young people are far greater than any one but the real-estate agent
realizes. Then this loosening of the home tie renders easy the shifting
from city to country and seashore. A considerable proportion of the $2000
to $5000 class shut up the flat or leave the boarding-house several times
in the year. There is usually one place where the furniture and
bric-a-brac and the other season's clothing are kept, but it is only a
storehouse or a temporary retreat that holds their property, growing less
and less as they move, until they may practically live in their trunks.

The legacy which outranks all the others in disastrous consequences is the
notion that the young people must begin where their parents left off; that
the house must be, if anything, a little more elaborate. Therefore in
starting life the rent is allowed to consume one third the income in
sight, without considering the cost of maintaining such an establishment.
With a probable income of $2000 a year the young man does not hesitate to
pay $500 for a house, not realizing that at least half as much more should
be spent on wages for the care of the nineteenth-century house, and as
much more on incidentals, car-fares, and unexpected demands. What wonder
that the young people find themselves in debt by the second year?

The parents are quite as much, if not more, to blame for encouraging this
extravagance. The father and mother are entitled to their ease and to the
use of their income for it, but the newly married pair have, in this age,
no right to assume the same attitude. They have their way to make, their
work to do in the years ahead of them. They should not mortgage the future
for the sake of the present luxury; and because of the uncertainties of
occupation and of health it is wise to take out of the expected income one
fourth or one third for a reserve fund and divide the remainder for
expenses. For instance, from $2000 a year subtract $500, then divide the
$1500 into $300 for rent, $300 for food, $300 for operating expenses, $200
for clothing, $200 for travel, leaving $200 for the other expense