56 + 1 = 57... and Life Insurance

Sayonara, 138! I weighed in at 137 this morning, for a loss of 1 lb. last week. It was a week that tried my willpower. Lots of chilly temps, cloudy skies, and rain. Conditions that conspired many times to making my walks seem so not the thing to do. And wouldn't you just rather curl up indoors on a day like that, eating comfort food and watching season 4 of The Office on DVD? Well, I managed to pull one out in the end, but it wasn't always a given. Onward and upward! I've got 3 more lbs. to go to reach my mini-goal of 134 by Saturday, February 20...

Life insurance - the face of your policies should amount to 2 or more years' income

When it comes to life insurance, the authors of The Manual don't have any insta rule-of-thumb on what percentage of your income should be spent on premiums. Probably because the amount and type of life insurance policies varies so much per family.

How much life insurance? For a family of two, enough insurance to pay bills in case of the husband's death, and to provide a temporary income for the wife - say a $5000 ordinary life insurance policy type costing $80-$100 a year. When a child is expected and for every additional dependent in the family another policy should be taken out in temporary-term life insurance of $1000 to $5000 or more, costing only $10 a year for $1000, and carried until the child reaches majority.

As a one-member, single-income family, I guess the only life insurance I need to carry at this point in my life is enough to pay any bills related to costs of death - funeral expenses and something to cover whatever costs there might be in closing my estate, however small it might be. My employer pays about $1 every two weeks to carry a basic $15,000 life insurance policy in my name. That's probably enough, right?

The Manual goes on to address retirement savings. For those without a pension or who couldn't look forward to any kind of Social Security income, it was recommended that they purchase an "old age annuity" from their life insurance provider. I've been contributing to a state retirement plan for two years now and have been paying into Social Security since I was 16 years old. I'm not always sure that the Social Security will even be there by the time I retire, but at least I have something else now for retirement savings.

Most teachers look forward to a pension, and are depositing annually 5 per cent of salary for it; through Social Security legislation, most workers anticipate old-age pensions; any family that does not have this old-age protection should devote 5 per cent or more of income to an old-age annuity secured from a life insurance company.

Finally, some sage advice on payment plans. You can save big bucks - or purchase a better policy - if you pay the premium in one lump sum instead of in monthly payments. This is something I need to begin doing when it comes to auto insurance.

Families that are buying their life insurance by weekly payments to a collector should transfer to a plan payable every three months, or once a year, at the company's office, thus increasing their insurance by half as much again at the same annual cost. In a few states it is possible to buy life insurance cheaply through savings banks. This type of insurance should be made legal in all states.

Life insurance is the last of the categories of expenses for which the Manual provides some guidelines in its "pattern" budget. Next up: a summary of my income and expenditures for the month of January 2010. How do my actual income and expenditures compare to what I've estimated I'm spending in each category?

Dorothy Dix Says...

This week's column - which dates to January 25, 1940 - is a back-to-the-basics lesson in etiquette. The letter writer must have written the morning after a dinner party she hosted or attended was ruined by a very late guest.

Dear Dorothy Dix - What do you think of a woman who never keeps any appointment or arrives at any function on time? When she is invited to dinner she keeps her hostess and the other guests waiting thirty or forty minutes while the soup scorches and the souffle falls and everybody gets hungrier and hungrier and crosser and crosser and the affair is ruined. Otherwise this woman is charming and pleasant, but she is losing all of her friends by her utter disregard of other people's convenience.

Answer - It is said that promptness is the courtesy of kings, and certainly nothing shows utter lack of breeding as for a selfish individual to make other people wait for him or her. I knew one woman who solved this problem of the dilatory guest very satisfactorily. In her house when dinner was at 8 it was promptly at 8, and the guests who arrived late were served the course that was then in progress, and if they only got in for the salad it was just too bad for them. The result was that as far as Mrs. B., who was noted for her famous food, was concerned, her guests were always on time. I recommend this plan. It always works.

Savings

Savings (other than life insurance) - 10 per cent of income

Moving from expenses to savings, the authors of The Manual take an interesting tack when it comes to the kinds of things that qualify as "savings." I'd never really thought of it like this before, but they count payments on the principal of your mortgage as savings. Makes sense. Unlike us schlups in Apartment Land, you homeowners are building equity every time you make a mortgage payment - at least with a portion of that check! Here's a rundown of the other things considered savings:

Another column of your tentative budget lists savings and investments. Figures for payments on property (exclusive of interest), annuities, endowment policies, life insurance, stocks and bonds, deposits in the savings bank and your reward fund are entered in this column.

Well, I don't own any real property. I'm also not building any kind of annuity or endowment policy, but - as a state employee - $151.72 is deducted from my paycheck every two weeks ($303.44 per month) and deposited in a state retirement account. That money is mine should I leave the state's employ at any time, so I guess we could consider that an annuity of sorts. Life insurance will be considered in my next post. I don't purchase any stocks or bonds. During the past month, I've transferred a total of $187.50 from my checking to my savings account. My total savings during the past month then are $490.94 or 13% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67. Good news! Though I doubt my savings would be quite this healthy if that retirement contribution wasn't whisked away without my even seeing it, I'm toeing the 10% mark set forth in the "pattern" budget.

Some families whose incomes boast a small surplus, or who can "manage" to reserve a few dollars over and above expenses, like to build up a separate bank account as an emergency reserve or "balance wheel." This account should never be drawn upon for minor emergencies or to make up deficits. Authorities recommend that $500-$1000 be built up and maintained in this account.

There are various types of savings accounts described by the authors of The Manual. The first is your basic emergency reserve. $500-$1,000 may not sound like much, but in today's dollars it's actually more like $5,921-$11,841. Wow! My emergency reserve only totals $500 - and I was darn proud of having put that aside for the first time in my life! The figure recommended by vintage "authorities" is closer to the "three to six months' expenses" often cited by financial experts today. I'm falling far short of the mark of a healthy savings in this respect. I built that small emergency reserve by transferring $25 each pay period ($50 per month) into that account and stopped when I reached goal. It sounds like I'd best go back to doing that. Pronto.

One dollar a week seems a minimum amount to save, and as income increases one should save up to one dollar in every ten dollars earned or more; these savings should go part into life insurance and part into the "balance wheel" account.

$4 per month in 1945 dollars = $47 today. So $50 sounds like a reasonable contribution on a monthly basis toward building a more healthy emergency reserve.

Another type of savings account described by the authors of The Manual is a reward fund - or a fund designated with specific expenditures in mind:

The reward can be big or little, ranging from a new set of dishes to a car or a house. You may decide to make a five-year plan or a one-month plan, depending on the goal. The important thing is that a reward is in view. This reward should be of interest to the whole family, of course, and a council should be called to decide on something that the majority are eager to have.

Get the family together and list everything that everybody wants: the clothing items each one needs; new equipment for kitchen and laundry and tools for work bench or garden or garage; household furnishings for living room, dining room and bedroom, whether repair of old or purchase of new; a rug, a picture or a musical instrument; and then personal needs - for games at home and sports outside, for recreation, for arts and crafts, for reading, music, plays and movies. Of high importance are books, magazines and lectures that will aid father in his vocation and mother in her homemaking. When the lists are made, discuss them in a breezy family round table and choose the most important items to try and secure month by month for next year. Many will have to be deferred, but why miss the thrill of thinking that we will have it too! Such goals are good for family ambition. Some things desired can be made at home; free books and magazines are awaiting us at libraries, free lectures and music are available for the asking or the arranging of a committee to provide them which we might help establish. Once the goal is established, set the date for achievement, and plan to put aside a certain sum each week or month until the reward is won.

Now you are ready to construct the rest of your spending plan, in order to find the ways and means to save the reward fund. You may find so many small "leaks" after a month or so of budgeting that the reward fund will accumulate more rapidly than you had hoped.

My reward fund started out as a relocation fund. I hated feeling trapped in this town and wanted to build enough in a savings account so that moving "home" would actually be an option for me one day. These days, relocation is not a priority. To be frank, I have a hard time imagining living 3,000 miles away from my darling Kitten and Poppet. For any reason. So the relocation fund has become the money I'm planning on spending to feather my nest this year. To buy some new furnishings, a new mattress and boxspring, maybe do a little decorating. I've managed to sock $2,256.76 away over the past nine months. (Funny - I guess I started building that account just about the time I started my vintage fitness and reducing plan. I hadn't realized that!) Next up: Life Insurance.

55 + 1 = 56... and Advancement

Advancement - 15-20 per cent of income.

The title to this category caught me off-guard at first. What could they mean by "advancement"? Here's the scoop:

Now for another main heading of our budget - advancement or development. Under this heading come health, recreation, pocket money, personal care, automobile expenses, gifts, contributions and education.

Okay, I get it. The "pattern" budget includes separate columns for both "health" and "automobile expenses" - acknowledging that these items probably make up the lion's share of expenses related to advancement. This is such a wide-ranging category it's going to be tough for me to come up with any kind of estimate as to what I'm spending, but I'll give it a shot.

Under health we list medical and dental care and drugs. Regular visits to your physician and dentist are cheaper than emergency measures necessitated by neglect. The Chinese pay their doctors to keep them well, and this seems to be the best idea of all. Hospital insurance, costing two to three pennies a day, is a wise investment for every family, even though they may never need it. And meeting bills caused by illness, through membership in an insurance association, is a method which is now becoming available.

Thankfully, in 2010, I can count on more than just "hospital insurance" - as long as I'm employed at my current job, that is. I spend $73.70 per month on medical, dental, and vision insurance premiums + $39.16 per month on long- and short-term disability premiums. During the past month, I've also spent $70.00 on co-pays. As near as I can figure, I've spent $35.58 on medication and vitamins during the past month. Though my premiums are steady from month to month, these last two figures will always vary. My total spending on health during the past month is somewhere in the neighborhood of $218.44.

Monthly automobile expenses include my car payment ($210.14) and car insurance ($60.17). I've only spent $26.33 on gas during the past month, but I'd better deduct from that the $18.63 I estimate spending on gas for my commute to work during the past month. (That falls under the "shelter" category in my vintage budget.) That leaves $7.70 spent on gas for non-commuting travel. I haven't had any maintenance or repairs this month, so my costs are definitely on the low side. My total spending on automobile expenses during the past month is about $278.01.

Recreation almost deserves to be listed under health, so essential is it to well-being and happiness. It is not at all necessary to be extravagant in order to have fun, but neither is it wise to be stingy to the point of starvation.

Sadly, I can't think of anything I've purchased during the past month that truly counts as recreation. Something to think about...

Magazines, newspapers, books and circulating-library fees all come under the head of education, as do fees for professional associations, school expenses, etc.

Nope, nothing here. I don't have any magazine or newspaper subscriptions. I rarely buy books, and the libraries I visit don't charge any circulating fees - unless you're late! I don't have any expenditures to chalk up to education during the past month.

What's left? Personal care --- here's where beauty products, haircare, and other toiletries come in ($63.24 during the past month). I've spent $10.79 during the past month on gifts and $11.00 on contributions. The one item I haven't really been able to categorize, but seems to fall into the "advancement" area, is a bouquet of tulips I bought last weekend for my desk at work. I guess I'll just have to consider that $12.95 as pocket money!

My total spending on "advancement" during the past month = 594.43 or 16% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67. I fall squarely into the 15-20% figure recommended by the authors of The Manual when it comes to this category. Next up: Savings.

PS: I weighed in at 138 this morning --- 1 lb. closer to my mini-goal of 134 by Saturday, February 20. All aboard! It's full steam ahead on the reducing train!!!

Dorothy Dix Says...

Dorothy Dix has been currying a lot of favor for the last few weeks, but this week's advice may be a bit more controversial. In a column first printed on December 17, 1940, she weighs in on the issue of publicizing adultery.

Dear Miss Dix - I have been married for 30 years. My husband has been kind to me and a good provider, but he has always been a philanderer. Recently I discovered that he had been having a love affair with a young business girl in our home town and that this had been going on for five years. I came across some love letters in his coat pocket from this girl. After reading them I passed them on to my 15-year-old daughter and also to several friends. Finally I gave them to the girl’s employer to read. I knew he was a man of high morals and that he would dismiss the girl if he knew of her conduct. He did so reluctantly, for she was a very competent and dependable worker. Now I would like to know whether I did wrong in publishing my husband’s shame to the world and causing the girl to lose her job?

MRS. L. M. D.

Answer - It is easy to see how a wife, driven mad by discovery of her husband’s infidelity and with jealousy of the woman who has supplanted herself in his affections, does things in the stress of her emotions that are neither wise nor right. Much excuse is to be made for her. Not many of us can be calm and judicious in our reasoning when our hearts are torn to tatters and our world is crumbling about us.

No one can wonder that in your fury at being betrayed you took the first means at hand to revenge yourself upon your husband and his lady love. But you have found, as we all do who try it, that revenge is not as sweet as we thought it would be. It is gall and wormwood in our mouths. For it makes us do and say things that we spend our lives in regretting.

I know that you must be very sorry that you showed those incriminating letters to your young daughter, because they shattered her ideal of her father and forever killer her respect for him.

Never again can he be a hero in her eyes. She will always see him as an amorous old man having a sordid intrigue with a girl and double-crossing his wife. To the young elderly Romeos are not romantic. They are disgusting.

No matter how your husband has treated you, you were not justified in hurting your daughter in order to hurt him. To shake a child’s faith in her father is almost as bad as to shake her faith in God.

And you must also be very sorry that in the fury of your passion you blazoned your husband’s shame to the world, because that puts you in such an undignified position if you go on living with him. The only way a married woman can save her face when she has a philandering husband is to pretend that she does not know about his infidelities.

Food

Food - 20-35 per cent of income (the smaller the income, the larger the percentage that must be spent for food)

This is going to be the shortest of my budget posts as I've taken an in depth look at this category in the past. Last winter, I spent a month tracking my food expenditures - adding the total amount spent and breaking it down by food group. Six months later, I tried the mission again and the difference my reducing plan had made was dramatic. The total amount I spent on food for a single month had dropped from $375.67 to $286.25. The majority of my "food dollar" (37%) was spent on fruits and vegetables. Six months before, the majority of my spending (66%) went toward fats, sugar and miscellaneous items!

I'd like to try this mission again sometime just to keep myself honest, but the information from August's tracking should be helpful in estimating how much I spend on food today. If I'm spending something like $286.25 per month on food, that's only 8% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67 --- a far cry from the 20-35% recommended by the authors of The Manual. Part of the reason my food expenditures seem so small is that I'm not using one income to feed six mouths. My income only has to feed me. The other reason is quite simply that food costs a heck of a lot less now than it did during the 1940s. When you allow for inflation, the average American bag of groceries is astonishingly cheaper now than it was in grandmother's day. This is good news for the hungry, but bad news for the family farm. Government-subsidized agribusiness has pushed the inflation-relative cost of food so low that the small family farm is no longer viable.

At any rate, I guess I'm in good shape when it comes to food. Next up: Advancement.

Power Marketing

As I was doing my marketing yesterday evening, it occurred to me that this biweekly trip to the grocery store is a great opportunity to burn some calories. Having a tough time trying to figure out how to fit a workout into your busy schedule? Make your marketing work for you!

1. Park on the edge of the parking lot.
Do you drive to the grocery store? Well, put your legs to work next time and park your car at the very edge of the parking lot - as far from the store as possible. Not only can you avoid all the congestion near the closest parking spots, but you'll burn some extra calories walking to and from your car.

2. Take that cart up and down every aisle.
Every aisle - whether it contains items you need or not. Weave it in and out every stack of fruits and veggies in the produce section, too. And don't forget the bakery! As your cart gets more and more full, you're adding resistance to your workout. Not only is this a great opportunity to burn some calories and tone leg muscles, it keeps me from forgetting anything I need at home. I always take a list to the grocery store with me, but there's inevitably something that slipped my mind as I was making up my list. Walking up and down each aisle reminds me of anything that I'm low on and need to add to my cart.

3. Return your cart to the cart corral.
It's always been a pet peeve of mine when people leave their grocery carts willy nilly all over the parking lot --- ripe for rolling right into other cars or blocking off just enough of another parking spot that it has to be bypassed when spots are scarce. Take an extra minute and return your cart to the nearest corral. You'll be doing your fellow drivers a favor and burning a few extra calories at the same time. A win-win!

4. Take your time getting the groceries into the house.
The fact that my apartment is on the second floor of my complex gives me a chance to combine a stair-climbing workout with my marketing. Instead of trying to carry every one of my grocery bags into the house in one trip, I take just two bags at a time. One in each hand. If I've got a particularly heavy bag that needs to be hoisted and carried in my arms, I'll take that up by itself. I carry my bags all the way into the kitchen. Set them down on the table, then head back downstairs for the next (small) load.

I've never used a pedometer to try and calculate the amount of calories burned by adding these extra steps to my marketing trips, but all these little steps have got to add up when taken week in and week out. Think of it as "power marketing."

In a February 1944 advertisement, the Borden Company (think Elsie the Cow) offered up four tips of their own for weary wartime housewives. These tips were designed to make marketing a little easier during an era of food shortages and ration points, but the last one would be a great power marketing tip for those of you who live close enough to a grocery store that you might be able to turn a "quick run for a few things" into a workout. The Trader Joe's I shop at on Wednesday evenings is just two blocks from my apartment complex and I've always stopped there on the way home from work to do my shopping. Maybe it's time I start driving all the way home, then walk back to the store to pick up my groceries and carry them home in my own two arms. I never buy more than one bag worth on Wednesdays...

1. DO YOUR WEEK-END SHOPPING EARLY IN THE WEEK! Miss the Saturday mob - and get better service.

2. PLAN YOUR SHOPPING LIST AT HOME! Means less time in the market - and helps budget ration points.

3. KEEP UP-TO-DATE ON POINT VALUES! Check ration calendars... Know when points expire. Your grocer will love you for it - and you'll get your points' worth, too.

4. CARRY YOUR PACKAGES! Then you won't have to worry about slow deliveries.

53 + 2 = 55... and Operating Expenses

Another week, another weigh-in. And a successful one at that. I weighed in at 139 this morning for a loss of 2 lbs. during the past week and a total loss of 55 lbs. since April 2009. It's time to set a new mini-goal! How 'bout this: by Saturday, February 20, I want to weigh in at 134. Now, on to the fun stuff:

Operating expenses - 10-15 per cent of income

Operating Expenses is a wide category. From electricity to toilet paper, it covers all of the basic utilities and supplies - with the exception of food - that it takes to keep a household running smoothly. I may have a tough time estimating how much I'm spending for some of the items listed under Operating Expenses, but I'm going to give it a whirl. I'll know more as the new year progresses and I'm tracking my actual expenditures every month.

Electricity
I logged on to my electric company website and can see that during that last 12 months I've spent $682.83 for electricity (Yikes!) or an average of $56.90 per month.

Gas
I suspect they're not referring to automobile gas here, but natural gas piped into a home. None used here.

Fuel
This category covers any alternative sources of energy. In the '40s, coal, wood, and kerosene might typically have shown up here.

Telephone
Here's another place where those online accounts come in very handy. During the last 12 months, I've spent $664.48 for telephone service (Double yikes! That's for just a single land line!!!) or an average of $55.37 per month.

Garbage Collection
My rent includes garbage collection, so nothing extra here.

Water
My rent also includes water, so nothing here.

Ice
This item made me giggle at first, but I suppose it was a very real expense for homeowners of the '40s who still owned an icebox.

Service and Repairs
I'm not sure what kind of subtle differences the authors of The Manual might have intended between "service" and "repairs." Any ideas? At any rate, most of my household repairs are taken care of by the landlord at no expense to me.

Furnishings
Can't wait to spend some cash on furnishings during 2010! My expenditures in this category have been few and far between, so it's hard to hazard even a guess here...

Household Supplies
I've saved my supermarket receipts for the past two weeks, so I've got a little something to go on. My purchases in 2010 that have fallen under this category include toilet paper, dishwasher detergent, a refill for my hand soap dispenser in the bathroom, garbage bags for the kitchen, a box of envelopes, and some of those one-time-only mini loaf pans I used to make up the rest of my holiday quick breads. I seem to be spending an average of $14.60 per week on household supplies - which works out to about $58.40 per month.

Laundry
I spend $4 per week (or $16 per month) to do my wash in the laundromat in my apartment complex. Haven't bought any new detergent yet this year, but that'll also fall under this category. As would any other items somebody might regularly use, like dryer sheets or spray starch. Do you send anything to the dry cleaners? Better include that expense here...

So my best guess is that I spend about $186.67 per month on Operating Expenses. That's 5% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67. I'm sure once I start indulging in some of the new furnishings I have in mind for 2010, I'll have no problem spending something more like the 10-15% figure recommended in the "pattern" household budget! They were planning for the expenses needed for the average family, though. One income split six ways - where I'm only splitting one income one way. The authors of The Manual also have some suggestions when it comes assessing your expenditures on Operating Expenses:

Are you amazed at the present cost of running your house? Which items seem too high? Can you cut them? Don't sacrifice good lighting, but don't keep lights on in empty rooms. Learn to operate your kitchen range and electrical appliances economically. Keep track of telephone calls so that you won't exceed the limit unless absolutely necessary. Operate your heating plant efficiently. Buy furnishings with an eye to wearing qualities and cleaning ability. Don't waste water by letting faucets drip. As you see, there are many ways to cut operating costs if you are determined to do so.

Dorothy Dix Says...

Ah, the eternal problem of the not-so-empty nesters... A stepmother trying desperately to wean her grown children from home wrote to Dorothy Dix for advice. This column was first printed on December 27, 1940.

Dear Dorothy Dix - I married a widower with three nearly grown children. I was good to them and they love me. So well that they are not willing to leave mother and her cooking. The two girls married soon after leaving college and they chose fine, sensible, well-educated young men, but was it easy to get them out of the house? I should say not. They never would have gone if I had not kept moving into smaller and smaller apartments. Because they can’t come home, where there is no room for them, they have settled down to a salutary routine of cooking and housekeeping and baby-rearing. Now the problem is the boy. He is 21. Won’t go to school. Won’t work. Hates the slightest physical or mental exertion. Sits at home and does nothing but play solitaire and read newspapers and detective stories and smoke. How can I get him on his way out of the nest in a way beneficial to him?

MRS R. J. H.

Answer - Get the boy a job and tell him that henceforth he is his own meal ticket, and that if he wants to eat he will have to work. Then go to live for the time being in one room in a hotel so there will be no place for him. Evidently he is one of the birds that will never leave the warm home nest of his own accord. He will not only have to be pushed out of it, but you also will have to destroy the nest so he cannot return to it.

There is no problem that parents have to face that is more difficult than that of what to do with their lazy, purposeless children who settle down on mother and father to be supported, and who refuse to make the slightest effort to provide for themselves.

It is a problem so complicated with a false idea of parental duty, and so mixed up with maudlin affection, that most fathers and mothers lack the nerve and backbone to solve it in the only rational way. Which is by turning the youngsters out on their own and locking the door behind them.

But few parents have the hardihood to apply such a drastic remedy, although they know it is the only cure. They can’t bear to think that Mamie may be having to cook a poor meal over a gas jet, or Sammy may have no nice, comfortable bed to sleep in. So they let Mamie and Sammy sit around idle year after year, with nothing to do but play golf or pool or follow some sort of temperamental occupation which brings in no pay envelope.

All of us know dozens of cases like these. We know plenty of homes in which there are husky young men and women with plenty of intelligence and plenty of energy in amusing themselves, who positively refuse to leave home long years after they should have been out of it and about their own business.

It is the knowledge that there is always home to stay in and three square meals a day that is responsible for nine-tenths of the no-account loafers that encumber the earth.

It is the boys and girls who know that they can always go back home and be taken care of who are the quitters and shirkers, who throw up a job the minute it gets hard sledding and there are disagreeable bosses to be contended with.

The boys and girls who have no one but themselves to depend on, nowhere to go but the room their labor pays for, nothing to eat but what they can earn, are the ones who stick to their work and put their hearts and backs in it until they win out to success.

So the parents who are afflicted with parasitic children who refuse to take an education or hold on to a job do their youngsters the greatest kindness they can possibly perform when they follow the example of the birds and push them out of the nest and make them try their own wings.

"The Family"

First, the disclaimer: I haven't yet finished this book.

I know, I know, I've had a month. I'm out of practice when it comes to reading... Exercise and housework have taken up most of my spare time for the past year. I did read as far as Part II, Chapter 19, so I'm going to base tonight's post on what I've read thus far. Guess I can't spoil the ending for anybody! I don't want to postpone this discussion any longer in case there are any of you who've already finished the book, so I'll just add any thoughts on the rest of the book in the comments.

Nina Fedorova's The Family (1940) was the #10 bestselling novel in the U.S. during the year 1940. A hot commodity --- and I can see why. Though I haven't found anything myself that's particularly special in the author's style of writing, the premise for the book is fabulous. It's set in the British Concession in Tientsin (today spelled Tianjin), China beginning in May 1937 through the Japanese invasion and occupation of the city in July - and I've read as far as March 1938, when the American regiment stationed in Tientsin was moved to another location. The background for the story is truly dramatic. Where else in the world would every one of the peoples who would be major players in the Second World War find themselves nose to nose during these pivotal years before war had "officially" broken out in most of the world? Japan, China, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, the United States, the Soviet Union: all these powers had a presence in Tientsin, whether they leased one of the city's "concessions" from China or whether their people were refugees or natives. The British Concession, where the story takes place, is a sanctuary of sorts for its residents and an attractive focal point for a community of refugees from Soviet Russia. The Japanese aren't able to either bomb or invade the British Concession without damaging themselves politically, but they do begin censoring all the mail which reaches its residents and maintain an active network of spies within the concession.

Fedorova always capitalizes the phrase "The Family." And in the beginning, it refers to a small family of Russians who operate a boarding house in the British Concession. Granny, Mother, Lida (Mother's daughter), Peter, and Dima (Granny's grandsons by now deceased sons). You quickly begin to see, however, that The Family extends to include many of the residents who come and go at the boarding house. They're all refugees in their own ways - people without a country - yet they bond and celebrate each other's joys and mourn each other's sorrows. Khan, the manservant, is a refugee from the poverty of the Chinese countryside. Madame Militza, the Bessarabian fortuneteller, was born in a land which has changed hands so many times she can't obtain the visa needed to leave China. Mrs. Parrish is an alcoholic, recently widowed and waiting for her brother to come from Great Britain so he can liquidate her late husband's estate and she can leave. Until Granny's death prompts her to become sober, you might say Mrs. Parrish was a refugee from reality. The elderly and opinionated Professor Chernov and his wife Anna Petrovna are Russian refugees, imprisoned for dissidence before fleeing for sanctuary in China. Irina Gordova, orphaned and alone in the world, is also a Russian refugee. She's in love with an American soldier who cannot legally marry while deployed overseas, so they live together from time to time and he supports her financially. Mr. Sung is a Chinese university professor who narrowly escapes the Japanese when he's forced to flee Tientsin with underground knowledge of some sort. Then, of course, there are two memorable appearances by the dressed-from-head-to-toe-in-brown Miss Pink, a "reformer" determined to convince Irina that she's living in sin:

Like all great reformers, she was quite alone in this huge overpopulated world.

Life in Occupied Tientsin is grim. Poverty and hardship and suspicion are everywhere. Neither Peter nor Lida is able to find paying work as the only available jobs are all but closed to Russians. Lida has an out - she's engaged to an American boy who's gone back to the States for college. Dima has an out - Mrs. Parrish wants to take him to Great Britain and raise him as her own. Peter is screwed - he can't find work and, without a visa, he can't leave the concession. At least as far as I've gotten in the story, he's contemplating traveling overland with a band of gypsies and criminals, sneaking across the border into the Soviet Union, turning himself over to the authorities, and hoping that they'll grant him citizenship of some sort after he does several years in prison or a labor camp.

"Aunty," - and a deep bitterness sounded in Peter's voice, - "it seems that whatever way I go I am doomed to be killed... If such is my fate, let me be killed on my native soil - be killed for something."

Mother manages to scrape together enough to keep the boarding house afloat, but she eats very little herself and is always very tired. Yet Fedorova seems to be trying to tell us that we can find the strength to carry through the hardest of times if we make the most of the people around us. And that even a big collection of strangers can be a Family to each other if they need one badly enough. There may be some big finish to this story which drives the point home, but I haven't gotten there yet... I can only guess where she's taking us!

Nina Fedorova was a Russian refugee herself, eventually settling in Eugene, Oregon, then in San Francisco. America is viewed as nothing less than the promised land in this book. A place Dima dreams about, where "children eat ice cream and candies daily," where both the young Russian women in the book plan to escape and build new lives in democracy and freedom. According to a 1947 newspaper article, Fedorova wrote a sequel to this book, titled The Children - you know a book's got to have been popular if a sequel was written! - and there was interest from Hollywood in making a film of the first book. I gotta tell you --- the entire time I was reading this book all I could picture was the action taking place on the silver screen. It was so easy to picture one of those melodramatic black and white films of the era with the bad foreign accents, the rainy Chinese setting, sweeping overhead battle scenes, and the fade-to-soft finishes on teary heroines. (Greer Garson would've made a perfect Mother!) They would have had to shrink the cast of characters though. Maybe combine a few of the characters. There are just too many to keep track of... Can you see this book as a classic Hollywood film? Who would you have cast in the roles?

Next month's Book of the Month Club selection will be the #8 bestselling novel in the U.S. during 1940: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck. I'm going to get an early start on this one, dear readers! Please join me on Friday, February 12 for the next meeting of our club.

51 + 2 = 53... and Clothes

Take that, holidays! I lost 2 lbs. last week and weighed in this morning at 141. It's been awhile since I tried setting a mini-goal for myself, but I'm going to try one now. I want to weigh in at 139 by Friday, January 22. Boy, would it be swell to see a 3 on that scale!!!

Clothes - 15 per cent of income

At first glance, the authors of The Manual appear to be mighty generous in the allowance allotted for clothing in the "pattern" household budget. When I added up my spending on clothes for the last 90 days ($420) and divided it by three, I find that I'm spending on average $140 per month on new clothing and shoes. That's 4% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67.

Wait a minute, though. I bet that 15% figure applies to the amount ideally spend on clothing for an entire family. And the average family in 1945 was a family of six. If you split 15% six ways --- well, I probably ought only to be spending about 2.5% of my income on clothes - or $91.67 per month. If I wasn't dropping clothes sizes at the rate I've been dropping 'em, 2.5% would probably be just right. These are unusual times, however, and I have to take into account the fact that during the last nine months I've dropped from a size 18W to an almost-maybe-super snug size 8. I've had to replace my wardrobe four times!

The authors of The Manual also acknowledge that various members of the family would ideally spend differing amounts on clothes. The figures in the passage below are annual expenditures. I've included its equivalent in 2008 dollars in brackets after each figure:

In a wage-earner's family, the wife's clothing may cost about $70 [$829]; the husband's nearer $100 [$1184], and the children's from $25 to $60 each [$296-$711]; but older-teen and working young people's more of course than their parents'. On a $2400 [$28419] family income the mother's and the father's clothing may each be about $100 [$1184], hers perhaps a little more than his; on a $3600 [$42629] income they will each have $150 [$1776] or more and hers will be definitely the larger. Yet every wife knows the importance of her husband's appearance being suitable to his vocational position; and every mother knows that children involve sacrifice of parental outlays in dress or other items.

My income is closer to the $3600 figure (in 1945 dollars) than either of the others, so I guess I might reasonably allot myself $1776 or more per year (in 2008 dollars) for clothes - or $148 per month. That's just about what I've been spending. I don't have a husband whose vocational position relies on his appearance being "suitable," but my own vocational position sure does! The lines they draw in that last passage are interesting. Older teenagers and "working young people" are expected to spend more for clothing than either their parents or younger siblings. I guess the authors of The Manual recognize that a polished appearance is vital when you're of marriageable age. Wives of wage-earners are expected to sacrifice what they'd like to spend on new clothing (or fabric and other supplies to fashion new clothing at home) so their husbands and children will have all the clothes they need. Wives in the middle class have a little more leeway and are expected to spend as much or more than their husbands spend on clothing. After all, they've got a social ladder to climb.

However, many factors affect the amount that must be spent for clothing - climate, activities, interests and social or business obligations, all are involved. A list of the year's needs should be made for each member of the family, and the items on hand checked off. It is often necessary to look ahead two or three years in order to plan wisely for a major purchase such as a winter coat. An estimate of the cost of items to be purchased can then be made. Actual expenditures depend upon your ability to compare quality and price, to watch for sales at reliable stores, to read labels and to follow directions for care. If you know the best methods for laundering, mending and pressing, you can prolong the useful life of clothes.

Some very sensible tips, these. Planning far ahead of major purchases would come in particularly handy for mothers of several children. (Especially when they're at that age where they're in a new shoe size and new dress size every year!) The last two tips remind me that the budget worksheet in The Manual includes a category under clothes for "clothing upkeep." They don't seem to count laundry costs in this category - these fall under "operating expenses" - but I imagine this would include things like tailor's bills, sending clothes out for special care, supplies used at home for mending, the purchase of new ironing or pressing equipment, shoe polish, and so forth. Can you think of anything else that might apply? I haven't made any purchases yet this year that seem to fall into this category, but I'll keep my eyes open. Next up: Operating Expenses.

Dorothy Dix Says...

Dorothy Dix's column on February 17, 1949 featured a short, but sweet letter from a delegation. In a world where divorce still carried great social stigma, their question was of vital import to young women with marriage on the mind.

Dear Miss Dix: How can a girl tell whether or not a man will make a good husband?

TWO GIRLS.

Answer - Unless she is a seer with second sight and has the gift of prophecy, there is no way by which a girl can absolutely foretell what sort of husband a man will make. She has to take his word for it that he will be as good a lover after marriage as he is before, and that he will never criticize her cooking, or ask her whether that thing she has on her head is a hat or last year’s bird’s nest.

But while picking out a husband is always more or less of a guessing game, there are certain signs and portents that will give a girl a few good tips on what sort of husband a man will make. For instance, the bad risks are: Mama’s baby boy, the man with a Yale lock on his pocketbook, the gourmet who thinks he knows how to cook, the man who passes into silence if he can’t have the floor, or else breaks up the party with his monologues. And, most of all, beware of the man who begins bossing you even before the marriage.

A Long Couple Days

Just a quick one this evening...

It's been a long couple days at work. Catching up after 10 days vacation and filling in for my supervisor - who's out sick. I haven't had a chance to finish reading The Family so will have to reschedule the first meeting of our book of the month club for this coming Sunday, January 10. 'Bout all I've got the energy for this evening is my exercise routine and bed.

More soon!

Shelter

Rent (if heat is included) - *25 per cent of income

Rent (if heat must be supplied) - *20 per cent of income

(If you are buying your home, or already own it, the "rent" is the total of interest on mortgage, taxes, interest, upkeep and repairs which should not ordinarily exceed 1/8 to 1/10 of income. If payments on principal are included it may reach 1/4 to 1/5 of income.)

*Provided that in your community it is possible to provide safe shelter for your family for this amount.

One of the things I really like about The Manual's budget advice when it comes to rent/mortgage is how inclusive it is. Their attitude seems almost modern - it's so green. And yet in that day it was just considered good old fashioned logic. Gathered in with all the other things you might normally consider housing-related costs is "Transportation to Business." Take a look:

Shelter
1. Rent or Mortgage Interest
2. Taxes
3. Insurance
4. Improvements
5. Repairs
6. Transportation to Business
7. Other

When deciding whether what we're spending on our rent or mortgage is in a financially healthy proportion to our income, we must take into account how much where we live impacts what it costs us to get to our place of business. After all, if you think you're saving money on housing in a metropolitan area by living far out in the suburbs and commuting one hour each way every working day, isn't it fair to include the costs related to that two-hour commute with the money you spend on housing? Only then can you get a true picture of what you're spending on shelter. If you had opted for more expensive housing in the city but your "transportation to business" expenses were the cost of a subway token, you might find things come out quite even in the end. Financially, that is. (Your carbon footprint is another picture entirely.)

I rent what my landlord calls a junior one-bedroom apartment for $425 per month. My rent does not include heat, but it does include water and garbage collection --- though not recycling collection. (There are some advantages to living in a dump of a city. Cheap apartments is one of 'em!) I don't now - but ought to - have renter's insurance. If I did, the premium would fall into this category.

For "transportation to business" expenses, I'm going to include gas and parking. As crazy as it sounds to have to pay for parking at your place of business, the university I work for requires that employees pay for annual parking passes in their garage or lot of preference. (I bristle at this sometimes, but I know it makes good environmental sense. They're trying to encourage as wide a use as possible of public transit and other means of transportation to campus.) I pay $29.42 per month for parking. I drive a 12.76-mile round trip to work each weekday. That's 255.2 miles per month x my 2001 Toyota Corolla is supposed to get about 26 miles per gallon with city driving x $2.53 per gallon for gas (running price around town this morning) = $24.83 per month for gas to commute to work. These are very rough figures, of course, but they should give me some idea to start with what I'm spending on shelter. I'd probably own a car whether or not I used it to commute to work or not, so I'm not going to include any other car expenses in this category.

My total spending per month for shelter then is approximately $479.25. That's 13% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67. I fall quite safely within The Manual's recommendation that no more than 20% of your income should be spent on rent "if heat must be supplied." So far, so good!

In addition to kind of guessing where I stand now in relation to the The Manual's "pattern" household budget, I'd like to track all my expenses - at least for the next month - to see if there are any leaks in my spending that I'm completely unaware of. I've uploaded images of the Suggested Budget Form included in The Manual that I'll be using to record my expenses every day. Maybe it'll come in handy for some of you as well! If you click on each page, you should be able to open an extra large printable version. Tomorrow: Clothes.

Week Fifty-Nine: The Mission

Who keeps the budget? Some authorities say the man of the house should accept this responsibility. Other believe that the homemaker, who spends 85 cents out of every dollar, is the logical person to record expenditures. We believe that the choice should be made by the family, and that the one who takes most naturally to figures and records should keep the budget.

America's Housekeeping Book (1945)

I slept restlessly last night and woke early this morning wondering why my New Year was off to such a restless start. I've spent the last week recovering from a bad cold and - still feeling weak as a kitten - gave up my plans for a New Year's Eve out on the town with friends to spend the evening at home with a cup of herbal tea. I had a hard time falling asleep, though, and got up early this morning after tossing and turning all night long.

At first, I wondered if this was an ill omen for the year ahead, but now I think it's just a sign of a woman itching to get started. That's why I'm restless. It's been kind of a crummy autumn. Between changes at work, the lump in my breast, and my grandmother's death, it's been hard to get any real traction for awhile now. But they say bad things come in threes, right? Something about this new page on the calendar makes me feel like I've got a chance to gain some real momentum again in transforming my life.

After all, this is the first New Year in as long as I can remember that my resolutions do not involve radical new hoped-for changes in my lifestyle. This year, in 2010, my resolutions are continuations of progress I've already made in the last year: 1) I resolve to lose 26 more pounds - and continue making my body more strong and flexible. 2) I resolve to pay off my car, finish paying off the last of my credit cards - and continue paying down my student loans and building my savings. 3) I resolve to take better care of my skin, my hair, my nails, and my teeth - and continue taking better care of my insides, including regular self-breast exams! 4) I resolve to re-furnish and redecorate my apartment - and continue learning how to become a better housekeeper so that I can take care of my new things. 5) I resolve to date - and continue putting myself out there to make new friends and feel more settled here in this new city which has become my home.

Nope, nothing radically new this time 'round. I think it's a good sign that my New Year's resolutions for 2010 are all works in progress. And there's no time like this morning to get started. First order of business is a weigh-in. I've put off doing so for the last few days because my cold made me feel like I was retaining water, but that feeling has started to pass. My net damage for the holidays = 1 lb. I weighed in at 143 this morning. Well, I guess that's not too bad in the grand scheme of things --- but the season for indulging is over, so that's as far as I'm going to allow that damage to go. It's time to move that scale in the right direction again. And I know exactly what I need to do - and need not to do - in order to make that happen!

For centuries, a New Year's tradition for heads of families was to get the year off to a fresh start by settling accounts. Paying debts, entering new contracts with employees, and taking a hard look at the household's assets and liabilities. How better for me to begin my year than to do the same for my own small household... The authors of The Manual dedicated one of their earliest chapters to "Money Management." Before they even get started on housekeeping methods, laundering, or home decoration, they focus on one of the most important issues facing the 1940s housewife: how to make ends meet. That's no easy task during the Great Recession, but aren't we incredibly lucky we don't have rations, shortages, and skyrocketing postwar inflation to deal with? So many of our own financial troubles today are entirely under our own control - in our spending habits, our savings plans, and our lifestyles. Here's a rough "pattern" The Manual's authors set forth for the healthy household budget:

Rent (if heat is included) - *25 per cent of income

Rent (if heat must be supplied) - *20 per cent of income

(If you are buying your home, or already own it, the "rent" is the total of interest on mortgage, taxes, interest, upkeep and repairs which should not ordinarily exceed 1/8 to 1/10 of income. If payments on principal are included it may reach 1/4 to 1/5 of income.)

Clothes - 15 per cent of income

Operating expenses - 10-15 per cent of income

Food - 20-35 per cent of income (the smaller the income, the larger the percentage that must be spent for food)

Advancement - 15-20 per cent of income.

Savings (other than life insurance) - 10 per cent of income

Life insurance - the face of your policies should amount to 2 or more years' income

*Provided that in your community it is possible to provide safe shelter for your family for this amount.

If you're scratching your head about the category titled "Advancement," you're not alone! The Manual goes into further detail about each of these budget categories, and my mission for the week ahead is to share these details with you as I examine my own household budget. How does it compare to the pattern? How 'bout yours? Where can I make changes in my own spending habits to help speed my way toward the second of my New Year's resolutions?

A Happy New Year to you all! Wishing you each the greatest success with your own resolutions for 2010.