Dear Penelope:

Your letter came this morning and you needn’t apologize at all for writing me again so soon, for I am always delighted to hear from you. It is very evident that you have an attack of the blues, so I am writing you at once—now that I have a little spare time—to see if I can’t help you out of them as quickly as possible. Being terribly busy this week you must forgive me if I plunge at once into the subject and end when I have said my say, without any bits of gossip to enliven the letter. I will tell the girls to write you all the latest news.

It isn’t at all surprising that you feel as though economy were drudgery when you are simply trying to live on just as little as you can with no other object in view. What Dr. Richard Cabot says in his book that you and I read together is so true, “Work is doing what you don’t now enjoy for the sake of a future which you clearly see and desire. Drudgery is doing under strain what you don’t now enjoy and for no end that you can appreciate.”

Now that you tell me you have started the plan of laying aside a certain sum for marketing and find it works well, and that it is interesting to see how far you can make a particular sum of money go in this department, I am encouraged to do some more suggesting along the same lines. I would advise you to take a quiet time, when your husband is not tired, and together think carefully over what all your other regular expenses are, making a list of them something like this: rent; service; lights; fuel; ice; milk; cab and car-fare; doctor’s bills and medicine; postage; incidentals; presents; travel; charity; marketing; groceries; your dress; your husband’s clothes; amusements. Some of these items, such as doctor’s bills and medicine, belong to the unexpected and you cannot make an allowance for them. Others, such as light, fuel, milk, etc., after some experience, you can make an approximate allowance for. But there are some, such as rent, service, charity, dress, etc., that you have under your control and for which you can make a definite allowance. Now, let us see if we can’t turn drudgery into pleasant work. You have already put aside a definite sum for marketing; decide also upon a definite sum, that seems reasonable and liberal to you both, for some of the other accounts that are under your control, and think what fun it would be at the end of the month to surprise your husband with savings from any of these accounts and occasionally to use this money for a little spree which you both can enjoy, or for some much-needed article for one of you or for the house, or else to put into a nest-egg for the future. You will find that you can do this if you “cut your garment according to your cloth.”

Of course, in order to know just what you have saved on any one item of your account, you would have to keep a careful record of everything that you spend, and this you can do only by carrying a list with you when shopping and writing down at the time the cost of everything you buy. At the end of each month separate these expenditures, whether paid for by cash or check, into their separate items, adding all of one kind together under one head, thus:

Keep this statement somewhere, either in the back of your account book or in a blank book kept for the purpose, so that you can always tell at a glance how much you have spent any month on any one item. This memorandum is very important and should be a great help to you, for, after several months of careful watching you will begin to know about how much you really need for your different regular expenses. Sometimes, after looking over the figures, you are led to feel that you have spent more than you ought on some one account, sometimes on another, and then the accounts have to be gone over to see how you have been careless. Even now I find it of use to look back on this memorandum when money seems to be going a little faster than it ought to. Each family has to decide for itself what proportion should be allowed for these different expenses, but, with your income of $2200 a year, it is safe to allow fifty cents a day per person for all food. The house rent, so business men say, should not be more than a quarter of one’s income, if possible a little less than that.

Neither of you will feel happy, I know, unless you lay aside something for your church interests and also to help, if only a very little, some of the public-spirited efforts for good. You can’t improve on the Biblical proportion of a tenth of one’s income for this, or more if you are prosperous. Some people could get almost that from the waste in their households. You can see how you could enjoy giving when you knew just what you had to give and were not worried with indecision.

Above all things, be very frank with each other in money affairs. Lack of this frankness is sometimes responsible for a man’s getting into debt because he can’t bear to deny his wife what she wants and she doesn’t know that he is living beyond his means to get it for her. I hope you won’t think me cruel when I advise you to keep away from shops unless you have something to buy; in fact, waiting until you have quite a list, for if one doesn’t see the fascinating things one doesn’t feel the need of them. Bargains are a snare and a delusion, and, depend upon it, one spends less money by getting something at its regular price when one actually needs it than in getting something very cheap to lay by for a possible need which may never come.

I can understand your feeling perfectly well that economy seems so mean, but all danger of its being mean is removed if you waste nothing on yourselves or your household in order to be able to do something better or wiser or more generous with your money. We have nothing but admiration of the French thrift (we don’t call it economy), and why should not we Americans follow their example?

You may have an income of your own some day, and I shall venture to advise you about that even if that beloved husband of yours is looking over your shoulder! I hope you won’t fall into the mistake, on account of the love and confidence you have in him, of putting it into the common purse for regular expenses. It doesn’t reflect at all on that confidence to keep your own accounts separate from his. The most devoted of husbands and wives often differ in their ideas of what they want to spend money for, and many a good and kind husband would soon begin to feel a right over his wife’s money if it went into the common purse, so long as he was spending it conscientiously in the way he thought would bring her the most comfort. In the first glamour you can imagine how a wife would enjoy the sacrifice of giving freely all her possessions into her husband’s care to control as he thought best, but later she might awaken to such a sense of the responsibility that the possession of money entails that she would feel that she ought to decide for herself how it should be spent. To make the change then would be likely to cause hurt feelings or even a misunderstanding. For a woman to keep her accounts separate need never interfere with her helping out at any time when she saw the need of it, and that would be a genuine pleasure.

If there is anything else you want to talk over with me, now is the very best time to write, for all my children are going off on visits and the house will seem so lonely that I shall be more glad than usual to devote some of my time to you.

Very affectionately, with apologies to Tom for the last part of my letter,

Your friend,

Jane Prince.