ACCOUNTING HABIT

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21083, 9 April 1940, Page 7

ACCOUNTING HABIT

PERSONAL BOOK-KEEPING INSURANCE AGAINST MUDDLES The importance of personal bookkeeping is stressed by W. H. Fox, in The Accountant (London). “It should be the accepted rule and not the exception to keep personal accounts,” he declares. “The Bankruptcy Act and the Companies Act only insist that the individual and the company shall keep records of their business transactions, and I suggest that the necessity for recording personal transactions is at least equally important. “An accurate record of personal finances is an index to character; orderliness leads to thrift and serenity of mind, and in these days of increasing strain, when the complexities of modern affairs lead to the restlessness that is so typical of the modern generation, a quiet mind is one of life’s most valuable assets. It has an incalculable moral effect on mental habits, and without orderliness, judgment and prudence cannot play their normal part. It has been truly said: ‘All habits gather by unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.’ When Crisis Comes “How frequently do accountants find that the individual in financial difficulties will not face facts and figures, and that he is unable to gauge the extent of his liabilities and commitments? The result is that when the crisis which he realises must come does arrive, the position, which could have been retrieved if faced at the outset and if matters had not been allowed to drift, has become so involved that the only course is the Bankruptcy Court. “There are ways and means, not to be found within the covers of any textbook, by which the accountant and the lawyer, acting together, can in many cases repair or rebuild an apparently tottering structure, if the full nature of the trouble can be made apparent without delay. In the vast majority of cases the individual who is in difficulty is the one whose financial affairs lack that order and arrangement for which I am making a plea. Not Fully Realised “Apart from this aspect, there is no doubt that the layman does not fully realise that in these days when the State may appropriate as much as 25 to 33 1-3 p.c., or even more, of every £1 of income, it is not merely desirable, but essential, that his personal records shall be such that he can, if necessary, account for his accretions and relate them to his savings and expenditure in order that, if necessary, proof may be available over a period of years as to the source from which they came. “We are a nation of individuals, law-abiding to a degree, but within that limit intensely jealous of personal freedom and the absence of undue restraint. For that reason the approach of the accountant to his client must be governed by a degree of tact and care which will induce rather than drive his client to keep such personal records as are requisite.”