Family Ledger

Herein is kept a plain and honest account of what the household may safely spend between paydays.

Each night a clerk reads the bank, sorts the day’s spending into its proper places, keeps note of the bills and when they fall due, and puts by for the larger costs that come round only now and then; nothing is written into the ledger until the household has agreed to it.

From all this is drawn the one figure that matters, what may be spent before the next payday, with the reckoning beneath it, so that no sum need be taken on faith.

Not a penny of the household’s is ever moved, nor a word of its business peddled to any huckster.