_9. Willingness to grow is the most necessary factor for success.
Marriage is a life program of going on together that requires maturity; failure means that there is a holding on to childishness._
We are all immature at some points, but we can welcome opportunities for growth, painful though they may be. The man and woman who find their marriage yielding diminishing returns may be sure they are attempting to hold it to an adolescent level. As this is an impossibility, they are aware of increasing dissatisfaction. That does not mean they are unadapted to each other. They are afraid to leave the known pleasures of their first youth for the unguessed satisfactions of maturity, so they try to stand still, hoping to keep their marriage, unchanged, in its first stage of promise.
If both husband and wife accept maturing responsibilities as they come, their marriage relationship will keep pace with their own development and will therefore become increasingly satisfying to them. A truly mature couple do not look back with longing to the early part of their married life, but appreciate its value as a phase that led up to the deeper content of each succeeding phase.
Having invested years, their youth and hopes, in their marriage, it would be poor business for any couple to fail to follow up their initial investment by putting in such small regular amounts of thought and effort as will make a go of it. The difference between success and failure is the hairline difference between caring and ceasing to care for one"s investment.
Married life is serious business, as living always is, but it is easier and at the same time more rewarding than single life. To be human is to be lonely. To be successfully married is to have an inner bulwark against loneliness.
_Elizabeth Bussing_
CHAPTER SIX
_Marriage Makes the Money Go_
"And they lived happily ever after!"
The romance in the old storybook always ended blissfully in marriage.
The valiant Prince Charming slew dragons, vanquished giants, and worsted sorcerers; but once he had attained the fair lady of his dreams, he left all his worries behind him.
Today, however, Prince Charming, unless he is an incurable romanticist, realizes that the real struggle begins only after marriage.
"Now that you have won the fair lady how are you going to support her?"
is the question he must solve satisfactorily before he can qualify as a suitable husband. The answer is determined by two factors: "How much money is earned?" "How can that sum be spent most efficiently?"
The first query is quickly disposed of. The second, however, requires careful thought and planning. Its solution is up to both the husband and the wife, for each couple must work out their individual problem. We wish we could do it for them, but we can"t. At best we can only give the rules which we have evolved as the result of our own experience.
The first step in the art of orderly spending is the preparation of an adequate budget. This is not so formidable as it seems, for the budget is nothing more than an inventory of resources and a calculation of needs that will help you develop a schedule of spending which should be fair to both you and your partner. It will differ in detail for each couple, because no matter how similar circ.u.mstances may seem to be, senses of values will vary.
At the start, however, it is well to keep an itemized account of expenditures to aid in adjusting your budget to actual needs and to learn just how much you are spending for each item. You may find that you have been paying more for some things than you thought you were.
Once you have settled on the approximate amount to be allotted to each purpose, however, you probably will find that keeping a written record of every purchase is more of a nuisance than a help.
It may help you to plan your budget if you study some of the model estimates published from time to time by savings banks, life-insurance companies, and other financial organizations. You who are just planning to be married, however, will find that these statements are compiled usually for families with two or three children. At best they will only roughly approximate your special problems.
Let us consider the situation faced by a young couple just starting out in married life. Generally speaking, if you live in a big city and your income is about $100 a month, you will pay about $35 to the landlord.
Rents, unfortunately, are disproportionately high in the largest urban centers, for persons of limited means. In smaller communities, you undoubtedly will find quarters for somewhat less.
Your food, at the present price level, will cost at least $25 a month for an adequate diet--and this a.s.sumes extremely intelligent and careful buying.
Transportation to and from work for one person will cost not less than $2.50 a month. Total transportation costs for both of you--if only one works--will be between $3 and $4. Not more than $10 a month should be spent for clothes, and at least $6 must be set aside for insurance and savings. This leaves roughly $20 a month for all other expenses. It is not easy for two to live on $100 a month--but it is being done.
While it is not true that two can live as cheaply as one, two persons who are in love may live more happily if they marry and both continue to work than if they undergo the strain of a long engagement. This problem, however, must be worked out with reference to the particular case, for, as pointed out in an earlier article in this series, it is more difficult for a man to get a foothold in certain professions if he marries before his apprenticeship is complete. It seems obvious that if you are wed before the man finishes his professional preparation, you will not wish to have children for the time being and that the wife will continue to support herself. I have seen many complications caused by the arrival of children before the husband had completed his professional training.
One young couple I knew were getting along very smoothly while the wife was working and her husband was spending his last year in medical school. The arrival of a baby made it necessary for her to quit her job.
This, in turn, made it imperative for the man to earn a livelihood. He took a position in a department store where today--ten years later--he is still a junior employee. By now, in the ordinary course of events, he might have been established in the profession for which he was studying.
All young couples, fortunately, do not encounter such tragedies. If your income is around $2000 a year, your financial position is relatively more secure. You may find a suitable apartment in a large city for between $50 and $60 a month--including heat and hot water. The rent in a smaller community will be less, but remember that if you furnish your own heat and hot water, you must add the cost of fuel. If, to save money, you move beyond the public transportation system, you must include the cost and upkeep of a car. But even considering the added expense of an automobile (provided you take care of it partly yourself and thus save some service charges) you may have better living conditions and derive more enjoyment from life than if you lived closer to town.
Your food budget now may be about $40 a month--enough for a liberal diet. Your clothing allowance should be sufficient for average needs--say, $15. Insurance and savings should be greater than those of the couple in the $1200 group. At least 14 percent of your income now should be set aside for these purposes.
If you plan to have children on an income of between $2000 and $3000 a year, you still will be able to live comfortably, but you probably will be happier if you move into a community made up of young people of your own income group. This will enable the mothers to make various sorts of cooperative arrangements for child care, which serve the threefold purpose of giving the children desirable social experience, providing the mother with more freedom, and keeping costs down. It also contributes toward a congenial social life for the adults.
The proportions to be spent for the larger items hold true in general for the family whose income is between $2000 and $3000 a year. Without knowing your individual circ.u.mstances, however, no one can make a budget for you in minute detail. The amounts you should allot to various items are governed by many considerations.
For example, there are some types of employment that require more expensive clothes than others, while some professions necessitate the purchase of equipment. Again, the major proportions will change with the needs of your dependents, whether these are children or older persons who look to you for help. Moreover, a wife who confines her activities to the home will do many money-saving ch.o.r.es and require fewer clothes than she would if she, too, went to business. Notwithstanding these individual variations, the foregoing rules of thumb will be helpful in keeping you within safe bounds.
But the proportion of your income to be spent for various purposes is only a small part of your problem. Don"t be surprised if your budget fails to balance. Probably 95 percent of those who attempt to budget their family expenses have this experience. The primary reason is that few persons really know what it costs to live. This is due, in part, to the fact that we often confuse _total_ expenses with _day-to-day_ expenses. Most people think of living costs as the immediate outlay for food, clothing, and shelter, disregarding the important item of depreciation.
The average housewife understands depreciation as it applies to food in a refrigerator, but gives very little thought to the same process as it applies to furniture, appliances, motorcar, clothing, and the house she lives in--if she and her husband own it. When replacement or repair of these more durable goods becomes necessary, there often is no fund available for the purpose. If replacement or repair is made, the budget is thrown out of balance. If neither is undertaken, depreciation sets in all the faster.
In order to catch up at this point, many couples take what seems at the time to be the easiest way out--they borrow money. This may appear to solve the problem, but actually the repayment of the loan throws the budget farther out of balance. Not only that, but a substantial interest charge must be met. To cover such obligations, you will have to curtail your living expenses, and you will find this much harder to do than to save for these emergencies in the first place.
One of the greatest financial difficulties encountered by young people (and many older ones, too, for that matter) is that of making an intelligent decision in the purchase of such important and costly items as a house, mechanical home appliances, furniture, and life insurance.
The reason why it is difficult to select these things is that we buy them too seldom to acquire much experience with reference to them.
Life insurance is a subject on which very few of us have specific information. It is as important as it is trite to point out that the amount and the type of insurance should be governed by the kind of hazards against which you should provide. Yet it is necessary to realize that the need of protection changes as life progresses. A father with young, dependent children should carry considerably more insurance than a man with no dependents other than his wife. Consequently, it is desirable to carry two types of insurance: on the one hand, a straight life contract, entered into preferably early in life when annual premiums are lower, and, on the other hand, successive renewable term-insurance policies which may be purchased when temporary responsibilities, such as the rearing of children, are undertaken.
Protection for a childless wife might be limited to an amount equal to two years of the husband"s salary. Roughly, the same amount of term insurance may be taken out for each child. The earlier in life such policies are acquired, of course, the smaller the annual premiums.
Renewable term-insurance premiums are lower than straight life insurance because in the former there is no cash surrender value. Term insurance, like fire insurance, buys protection--and nothing else.
It is a mistake to look at life insurance as a primary form of saving because, generally speaking, the more the life-insurance policy conforms to a savings account, the less effectively and economically it affords protection against the hazard of death. Buy the life insurance as life insurance and put your savings into a savings account. It is well to remember at this point, too, that if you can acc.u.mulate enough to pay your insurance premiums yearly--rather than weekly or monthly--you will pay a lower rate.
The purchase of a home is another difficult undertaking for the newly married couple because the average person cannot tell the difference between a well-built house and one which is poorly constructed. Unless there is some understanding of this matter, it probably will be wiser to defer the purchase of a house and live in rented quarters until one acquires such knowledge. It must be remembered, also, that the upkeep of a dwelling is likely to come to a substantial figure and that the budget may be severely strained if one does not know in advance the actual costs of owning real estate.
Not the least of these items to be investigated is the amount of a.s.sessments which are or may be levied against the property. The likelihood of such levies is seldom pointed out by the real-estate salesman. Furthermore, if one"s position is insecure or there is a possibility of being transferred to another section of the country in the course of one"s employment, it would be wiser to live in rented quarters.
It is a good general rule to pay no more than twice one year"s salary for a house; of this amount, not less than 10 percent will be required generally as a "down payment." Then you will have to pay interest and amortization on your mortgage, which, with taxes and upkeep, probably will come to as much as the rent for a similar house. At the end of a period of years, however, you own the house, which is a definite advantage.
Perhaps you have decided, as many young couples do today, that you will both work for wages. The arrival of a baby or possibly some other unplanned event may force the wife to give up her job. If you would avoid real difficulties, therefore, try from the outset to meet the big items--rent, food, essential clothing, and the minimum of insurance and savings--out of the husband"s earnings. Let the wife"s earnings cover only those items which, though desirable, are less important to your welfare, such as "luxury" clothes, recreation, and items of a similar character.
Any couple who depend on the wife"s earnings for such essentials as food, clothing, and shelter should be prepared to adopt a lower scale of expenditure for any of or all these purposes, for as a general rule her contribution to the family income is likely to be less certain than that of her husband. The time to take on additional expenses is after an increase in the husband"s wages--not before. Guard against the a.s.sumption of obligations which you could not meet if your combined income were reduced.
Simple as this rule would seem to be, I have seen it ignored time and time again, usually with the same unhappy result. I have in mind the case of a couple whom we shall call the Browns. Doris Brown supplemented her husband"s salary by giving piano lessons at home. They planned to have a baby and could well have managed to do so with but a short interruption to Doris" teaching activity. But--and this is what so many couples contemplating children overlook--complications set in which made it necessary for her to spend the last six months of pregnancy in a hospital.
Not only did the family income decline by the amount she had earned, but expenses increased greatly. Some of the deficit was made up by borrowing, but there is a limit to the amount that can be obtained in this manner. That limit was reached before the last $150 was paid on the grand piano which Doris required for her work. As a result, the piano was taken back by the dealer.
The Browns, fortunately, are persons who do not give in readily in the face of adversity. They will work out their own problem and regain lost ground. Indeed, they have already moved into cheaper living quarters, not only to adapt themselves to a smaller income but also to work out of debt and re-acquire a piano. Much of the heartache in this situation might have been avoided if the couple had depended less on the wife"s income to meet essential expenses.
One of the greatest pitfalls in the path of any young couple is the feeling that they must "keep up with the Joneses." We all think of ourselves as belonging to a certain social group--whether we express it in sn.o.bbish terms or not. But we need not on that account maintain a standard comparable to that of a neighbor whom we admire if, in doing so, we overextend ourselves. Intelligent persons are not impressed favorably by pretense.
What impresses is training and ability. Since the best time to acquire these is when we are young, it may be necessary for a while to practice the very opposite of ostentation--self-sacrifice. If your husband is a professional man and you have married early, he may still be working for an advanced degree. This entails fees and--what is even more exacting--time. It means sacrifice--giving up social engagements and many comforts which you would be able to have on your husband"s present salary. There is no more basic part of the budget today than provision for more vocational training.
Most of us waste money on nonessentials. We have gla.s.s curtains before we can afford them, whereas no curtains often make our houses lighter and more restful. We have fancy trays, knickknacks, and extra little tables that we do not need. The most attractive houses are in many cases those which show no evidence of overcrowding.