Dorothy Dix Says...

What kind of advice does Dorothy Dix have for thirtysomething women whose biological clocks are starting to tick very loudly? She weighs in on the subject in a column first printed November 2, 1940.

Dear Miss Dix - About once every five years I take a personal inventory to check up on development and progress, if any. Have just been doing this and realize with a shock that I am 33 years old and that if I ever wish to marry and have the normal life of a woman I must be up and doing. So far I have never been in love. Never thought of marrying. Have let two good chances pass me by because I have to support my mother, and lately an invalid sister who is divorced and has two children have been added to my burden. Now the next five years are very important if I am to marry, and I know that I do want to marry. I know that I am good wife material. Am affectionate, attractive, energetic, well read, and domestic. Can you suggest any way out for me, bearing in mind that there is no other revenue other than my salary coming into the house? I will appreciate any advice you can give me on how, when and where to snare the illusive male.

DOT.

Answer - No other woman in the world has such a good opportunity to marry as the business woman, because she is thrown every day and all day in contact with men. Propinquity has a chance to get in its deadly work and it does so often that there is always a big turnover in the female employes in every establishment where the two sexes labor side by side.

So you have the ideal environment. You are casting your bait, so to speak, in a river that is full of suckers, but it is up to you to have enough skill and adroitness to hook your fish and land him. Nobody can teach you the trick.

You have to evolve your own craftsmanship, and apparently you have so far not taken the trouble to do it. You even scared off the two who came and nibbled at your line. So if you want to make your catch you will have to get busy. Thirty-three is getting along toward the deadline for fisherwomen.

I hate to be discouraging to any woman wanting a good husband, but, being a practical business woman yourself, you are bound to realize that your family is an almost insuperable handicap to you. Not many men in these days make enough money or are generous enough to marry a whole ready-made family and take on their shoulders the support of five people instead of one, as your husband would have to do.

Maybe there is some rich old man who would realize that a young, charming, interesting and domestic wife, such as you would be, is worth the price, but even if such a one should appear on the scene, would he be the Prince Charming you had always hoped to marry?

I think that nothing is more tragic than the fate of girls like you who would like to marry and who were intended by nature to marry and make some man happy, but who cannot do so because they are the family goats.

And I think that nothing is more cruel than the way in which families ruthlessly offer up these daughters, without a thought that they are making girls give up their lives for them.

Mothers who are perfectly capable of earning their own support settle down at 45 or 50 on Janey for the balance of their lives. Sisters and brothers demand that Janey work her fingers to the bones and do without everything she wants to send them off to college and give them good clothes, and then they marry without every repaying Janey a cent and go off about their own affairs and leave her to take care of Mother.

Why shouldn't Mother work if she is able to? Why shouldn't the sisters and brothers work their way through college if they are bound to go? Why shouldn't the sisters who lose their tastes for their husbands put up with them, as Janey does with her unpleasant bosses, instead of coming home with a houseful of children for Janey to support?

I am fed up hearing about parasitic families and I am hoping and praying that I will live to see the day when the nanny goats get up on their hind legs and stage a rebellion and refuse to furnish the sacrificial meat any longer. For why work when Janey provides a comfortable home and three square meals a day?

Dorothy Dix Would be Appalled

Talk about an etiquette disaster... I set up a Gmail account several months ago, linked it to my profile, and promptly forgot about it. Packrat mentioned the other day having sent an email to me, so I logged in and there were 18 messages there - some from as far back as last August! You should've seen me blush with embarrassment. Dorothy Dix would be appalled. I responded to about half of your messages last night and will get to the other half as soon as I'm able. To those of you who've written me at that address, please accept my apologies. If I haven't already replied, I'll be doing so very soon.

Balancing the Books

I've spent a few hours balancing my books for January 2010 and it's an interesting picture. The figures below in bold are the recommended allowances for each category of expenditures by the authors of America's Housekeeping Book (1945). In the case of shelter, clothes, operating expenses, and food, I'm spending less than the recommended allowance. This isn't exactly a surprise --- as I've mentioned before, these allowances were based on a single income providing for (on average) a family of six. I should be spending less than the allowances. When it comes to advancement, my spending is right in line with the recommended allowance. So I have to wonder if - based on the above - there are some "leaks" I might plug in my spending on advancement. My savings is above the recommended percentage of income, and that's appropriate. If I'm able to spend less in other categories (as a one-member household), then I should be saving more of my income than the 1940s family was able to save.

Shelter (if heat must be supplied) - 20% of income
Estimate: $479.25
Actual Expenditure for January 2010: $478.01 (14% of income)

Clothes - 15% of income
Estimate: $140.00
Actual Expenditure for January 2010: $247.20 (7% of income)

Operating expenses - 10-15% of income
Estimate: $186.67
Actual Expenditure for January 2010: $120.86 (4% of income)

Food - 20-35% of income
Estimate: $286.25
Actual Expenditure for January 2010: $417.06 (12% of income)

Advancement - 15-20% of income
Estimate: $594.43
Actual Expenditure for January 2010: $606.64 (18% of income)

Savings (other than life insurance) - 10% of income
Estimate: $490.94
Actual Expenditure for January 2010: $528.44 (16% of income)

When you add up my actual expenses in these categories for January 2010, they only total 71% of my income. (My gross income for January 2010 = $3371.71 (pay + interest)). So where's the other 29%? Well, 19% of it went to taxes ($640.48). Another 4% went to payment on debts ($134.64), and the remaining 6% is accounted for simply by the fact that I happened to have $204.57 more cash on hand on January 31 than I did on January 1. (Not to fear! It'll be spent.)

The authors of The Manual recommend your income be spent in the following proportions:
Food (20-35%)
Shelter (20%)
Advancement (15-20%)
Clothes (15%)
Operating Expenses (10-15%)
Savings (10%)

Here's how my expenses for January 2010 break down:
Taxes (19%)
Advancement (18%)
Savings (16%)
Shelter (14%)
Food (12%)
Clothes (7%)
Operating Expenses (4%)
Payment on Debts (4%)

Phew! Balancing my books was exhausting... I'm going to try this again for another month to see if I can gradually get a more accurate picture of my budget. As you can see from the figures in italics, my estimates were close in some categories. In others, like clothes and food, I was way underestimating what I'm spending! I suspect the food one is off because I ate a couple meals out in January (salads only, of course) and did some treating, as well. This has been a very useful exercise, though, and I've been able to identify several specific financial goals for 2010:

1. Once I begin buying new furnishings, I need to investigate the cost of renter's insurance. After going years without, it's time to take the plunge. I'm making a deal with myself - no new goodies if I don't insure them.

2. I've just made the very last payment on my car. (Yippee!) My plan has been that after eliminating that monthly bill, I would upgrade my lifestyle a bit and invest in a broadband internet connection (at last) and purchase a cell phone for emergencies. I need to begin researching bundling plans and see if I can't cut the cost of my landline (averages $55.37 per month) by carrying coverage for all three utilities through one provider.

3. Here's a tip from The Manual that I've been especially mindful of lately: "Don't sacrifice good lighting, but don't keep lights on in empty rooms." With an electric bill that averages $56.90 per month for a one-bedroom apartment, I'd like to see if I can make some savings here.

4. I'd like to double my emergency reserve from $500 to $1,000 by again transferring $25 each pay period from my checking to my savings just for this purpose. At $50 per month, this should be done by the end of November and be relatively painless.

5. Spend wisely! It's time to put some of that reward fund toward feathering my nest. I must be conscious, though, and invest in sturdy things that will stand the test of time. I want to continue growing my reward fund as I go, however. A new car will be necessary at some point - mine is nine years old now - and, as my credit score improves, I know I'll begin wanting to save toward the down payment on a condo or house. (Note to self: it's been a year, face the FICO and find out where you stand!)

6. When my auto insurance expires in June, I'd like to renew the policy with a single payment and save the interest I'd otherwise be paying with monthly payments. If I begin saving now specifically toward that goal, I ought to be able to make that payment in June.

7. Continue paying down my last remaining credit card.

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.