Vintage Budgeting
Many of you have read Donna's blog at My 50s Year. She began an experiment in 2009 in which she "lived" in the year 1955. She continued on to 1956 (in 2010). I have followed her since she first began, but I had gotten behind on reading her posts lately. "Budgeting is telling your money where to go--not telling you where it went. That is merely bookkeeping."
This morning I was catching up and came across her post about Marketing. (Click to read.) She included a scan from an old magazine that said this:
We need to manage our money--or it will manage us. Money is not interested in making us prosper, either LOL! It's just a tool that we need to have in order to live. The more control we have over it, the more freedom to live.
The clipping continued with a plan for dividing the food money that I found intriguing. I'm going to give it a try this week and see how it pans out:
Use the Rule of Five for dividing your food money.Doesn't that division of purchases look interesting? I can see how it might work, though I don't think I'd need that much for #5. If I do this, I will keep records and write a post.
- One-fifth for meats, fish, poultry.
- One-fifth for dairy products--milk, butter, eggs, and cheese.
- One-fifth for vegetables and fruits.
- One-fifth for cereals--bread, flour, beans, etc.
- One-fifth for sugar, shortening, salad oils, mayonnaise, condiments, spices, etc.
I'm all for a bit of variety in this particular chore!
7 comments:
Yes, 50's Gal has a wonderful blog!
Never heard of the 5 way division -- very interesting!
It's certainly worth a look! I'm going to try to make my list out with this in mind at my next shopping trip.
It may be a complete failure, but it's intriguing!
I started doing it and it works great, only in my case I tend to spend a lot on vegetables and fruit, but not that much on cereals, so I halved the cereal part of budget and added this money to vegetable part. So far I have saved money every week. I also have a 6th category which includes things like washing powder, toothpaste etc, so in my case my shopping money is divided in 6 parts.
Anon--It IS an interesting way to plan a list, isn't it? Your addition makes sense, too.
Were you already doing this or was this something new?
I'll have to go through my receipts and check out how close to this we are. I tend to buy meat and then freeze it so I'm not buying each week. We buy A LOT of fruit.
K Quinn
"Were you already doing this or was this something new?""
I have always had a certain amount of money in cash to spend on my weekly shopping and tried to stay within the budget. However, I sometimes would spend money disproportionally, buying expensive vegetables and fruit in the beginning of the week, and then I had practically nothing left for the end of the week.
This 1950s system made a lot of sense to me. I wish I were taught Home Economics at school. I have been a housewife for nearly 10 years and still feel not fully competent in a lot of areas.
BTW, Roxanne, your blog is very cool and one of my favourites.
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