The Private Household

Günter Schmölders

Chapter 3 in The Psychology of Money and Public Finance, 2006, pp 49-135 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract When it comes to money management, then I cannot approve of the approach taken by most men of standing, who give their spouse a certain sum which they must get by on in running the home. This creates a conflict of interest; the wife is placed in the category of servants, is tempted to act out of self-interest, seeks to make savings, finds that the husband is too fond of his food, pulls a face if he invites a good friend home to dine; the husband, if he is not noble-minded, always thinks he is not dining well enough for his hard-earned money, or, if on the other hand he exercises excessive sensitivity of thought, does not dare occasionally to request a further modest repast, for fear of embarrassing his spouse. So give your wife… a sum of money appropriate to your circumstances for her expenditures! If she has spent this money, she should come to you and ask for more! If you find that too much has been spent, then ask to be shown the bills! Consider together with her where economies might be made! Do not make any secret of your financial circumstances; but also set aside a small sum for her innocent pleasures, for her toilet, for modest acts of charity, and do not ask for any account to be made for these!1 How should we imagine the division of economic roles in the private household today, two centuries on from Knigge?

Keywords: Current Account; Financial Asset; Private Household; Saving Bank; Precautionary Saving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-62511-2_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230625112

DOI: 10.1057/9780230625112_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().