April Lifestyles Article

Learning to Budget

Back in the days before credit cards, people had to learn to budget. It's a good lesson to learn.

When my wife and I got married more than 50 years ago, we really had no choice. We had to

budget. I was in the Army in Germany. I only got paid once a month. And my wife got a small

allotment. Together I think we got about $l40 a month...and we had to make it last a month. When we got our checks, my wife had a group of envelopes marked: groceries, rent, gasoline,

entertainment, savings, misc. There was hardly ever anything in the misc. envelope. Essentially we had about five dollars a day.

I know you'reprobably thinking that things were cheap back then. Well, they were a lot cheaper than now, but they weren't that cheap.

We lived in a two-room apartment upstairs in a German family's house. We were lucky. It was a

beautiful house. Their son was learning English in school so a German friend of mine convinced them he could learn faster if they had two Americans living upstairs. He did learn faster and he learned to speak with a Southern accent (which baffled his teacher).

Our budgeting envelopes worked quite well. If we ran out of money in the gas envelope, we

walked. I walked 5 miles to the Army hospital where I worked anyway, so I didn't mind walking.

One month, we ran short of money in all the envelopes. My wife had been at the PX when a new shipment of records came in and she couldn't resist buying an album which took all of our money for 3 or 4 days. We listened to music by candlelight while I considered whether I should

eat her fingers.

When we ran short, we would search the car and our pockets to see if we could find some extra

German coins. Then we would go to a German meat market for some wursts and to a German bakery for some hard rolls. They cost practically nothing because they were the main food that a lot of Germans ate.

I was fortunate because I worked at an Army Hospital and I could always eat for free in the cafeteria. But I didn't dare put food in my pockets to take home to my wife. She lived off of peanut butter and jelly on hard rolls.

I have to admit that I supplemented our monthly income by selling stuff to German civilians.

Every month I would buy a gallon of ketchup at the PX. I re-sold it to a woman that worked in

my office. She took it home and put it in ketchup bottles...then re-sold them individually to her

neighbors. I also bought and sold Jergens Lotion and Old Spice. I don't know what their fascination was with these products. Of course the Germans were eager to buy cigarettes, but

they were rationed and we used our coupons to get smokes for ourselves. I made enough off

my blackmarketing so that we could take a month's vacation all around Europe before we returned back to the U.S. We had a budget of $10 a day...that was for gas, hotel, food, peanut butter and jelly. Some days like when we were in Paris or on the French Riviera we had to use more than ten dollars...but then we made it up when we were in Spain and in Italy where it was so

cheap. It pays to budget.

My wife still pays the bills and I'm fairly certain she still has envelopes for the various expenditures.