The purpose of this book is intensely practical. From long experience in the School of Household Science and Arts of Pratt Institute, where thousands of women have come for help in all phases of their homemaking problems, and from experience with many other women, young and old, earning a money income or sharing in a marriage partnership, I have learned that one great obstacle in planning expenditure - in budget making - is lack of knowledge of the mere mechanics of it. To those inexperienced in financial record it looks like a complicated and a formidable undertaking, whereas it is neither if approached and carried out in the right way.

The book deals primarily with making a budget and keeping accounts, and discusses other matters only as they relate closely to these. "Getting your money's worth" means knowledge of how to choose and how to buy, as well as how to apportion the income, but here, for the sake of brevity, only the latter aspect of it is discussed. The subject of cash payment versus credit, for example, is not touched on, although those who grasp the principle of budget making will have little difficulty in deciding in a given case which method is best.

Miss Gertrude B. Lane, editor of the Woman's Home Companion, has courteously allowed me free use of the material in two articles written by me for that magazine and published in July and August, 1919. Miss Helen Hollister and Miss Elizabeth Condit, of the faculty of the School of Household Science and Arts of Pratt Institute, and Miss Sarah MacLeod and Miss Jessie Ann Long, formerly of that faculty, have contributed much to the development of the plan described, and my thanks are hereby tendered to them.

Isabel Ely Lord. October, 1921.