OCR Text |
Show p I Keeping Record of Home Expenses 1 Prcrarr1 by the United States Department of Agriculture.) WNU Sorvtce. When a family has decided to keep an Itemized record of household expenses, ex-penses, who should keep the account? The one who does the bulk of the purchasing, pur-chasing, usually the wife, Is generally the best person to attend to this task. But so long as everything necessary to a correct picture of the family financial situation Is obtained, It X J x M A Good Place to Keep Accounts. makes no difference whether the records rec-ords of expenditure are made by the s, husband, the wife, or some other mem-ber mem-ber of the household. It Is practical ' to have one person enter all the Items fco that classifications may be uniform. When several dlfTereut people In the household handle money und make Burchntes It Is a good p'an to hang up In a convenient place an ordinary blank book with a pencil attached to it. Then each one who pays for goods or services can note the kind and cost of what has been bought. Personal Per-sonal expenses, if covered by a lump sum or allowance, are not entered among the household Items. The homemaker probably carries In her purse a small notebook for writing down petty cash spent. Some items are doubtless paid by check, either monthly or at the time of purchase. All these miscellaneous entries must be collected and classified In one permanent per-manent record book to obtain a true picture of how the family money is being used. A very good classified record of family expenditures has been designed by the bureau of home economics of the United States Department of Agriculture. Agri-culture. It Is made In loose-leaf form, so that unnecessary pages can be removed. re-moved. The following groups of expenditure ex-penditure are shown In the marginal Index: Food, housing, operating, furnishings fur-nishings and equipment, clothing, health, development, personal, automobile automo-bile and savings. Purchases are transferred trans-ferred at regular Intervals from the miscellaneous entries in the daily notebooks note-books to the proper heading, so that at a glance one may see what Is spent for food, clothes, and so on. Anyone could make such a record out of a blank book, or, by sending fifty cents to the government printing office at Washington, D. C, obtain the special loose-leaf printed forms. Among them are a number of other pages for Information In-formation about family finances, such as accounts payable and receivable, a household Inventory, records of Insurance In-surance policies and Investments, and for the rural family, the value of products furnished by the farm for boms use or sold by the homemaker. |