We are moving forward with our 1943 History Project. We study what was it like in the home during 1943 while world war 2 was going on.
Since this is living a year like 1943, we are learning about our town, our food rations that start in March. We have found a way to figure out how much money we make here in 1943, what our food costs our electric, newspaper, telephone cost and we are wondering how we will make in on such little pay.
With much research to find the average cost of household expenses in 1943, here on February 1st we are starting to live using the real 1943 average pay and bills. If you are up for a very interesting part of this history study and want to jump in on this part of the study to see if you can make it, just follow along with the information we will give you or you can do this same research.
This would be a wonderful study for homeschooling or just for any of us.
There is no television in our home, no dishwasher, we do have a wringer washer, no electric drip coffeemaker, just a metal pot that percolates on the stove. There are no electronics in our home other than what I need to do this blog post and what Charles needs for his work (which we consider separate from this study).
Here in 1943, we are about to make a decision if we can afford a telephone.
I have had questions about gasoline rationing so I would like to explain how we are doing our gasoline rationing based on our research.
This study is getting very real to us now that we are one month in to this 1943 history study. Charles is doing the actual 1943 gasoline rationing and has a notebook in his car where he knows how many rationed gallons he can get.
Charles came home from work last week and told me that he almost ran out of gasoline and barely made it to the station. In real life he wasn't going to run out of gasoline because he has a safety net so to speak which I will explain. But to him it truly felt like he would run out of gas because he knew the mileage on his car that he would run out and it felt real.
This is what Charles does to make this gasoline rationing as real as we can make it.
He put in a benchmark of where is a half a tank based on what his (real car) says. So he filled his tank to full and on his modern day car and on our dashboard, it shows him that he can go 400 miles. So instead of using the empty mark for empty, he uses the half tank mark for being empty for the 1943 study. So then he wrote down the mileage in his petrol/gasoline notebook after he established the half way mark. Now the whole study will be based on this.
His real car gets about 30 miles per gallon. An automobile in 1943 will go approximately 15 miles per gallon. His real car can go 120 miles on four gallons. The 1943 car it will go 60 miles on four gallons.
How does he know when he needs to get gasoline? When his modern today car shows that he has 200 miles left then he knows he is almost empty for the 1943 car. He no longer thinks about what his real car is doing as he drives he thinks like the year of 1943, using this formula.
For the gasoline rations. We get a book of gas stamps that have 8 stamps to cover two months of gasoline. One stamp per week. People had to be very careful and plan their trips to the store and work and such as that. Being that Charles is a salesman in real life, he gets an additional gasoline ration of twelve gallons a week, just like in 1943. That is three four gallon stamps.
This formula was based by the government on the average miles the salesmen traveled in a year. For a regular person they got four gallons a week in this area that we live because some places in the country would get only three gallons. There were other exceptions for gasoline, if you had a B class or C class status but we have not needed this part so we have more to learn about this.
HOWEVER! No one could get gasoline without an inspection of their tires. This was mandatory and you had to have proof of the inspection from the place that inspected your tires. You had to keep that proof to be able get your gasoline rations. Tire inspection were about every two months or what was announced in the newspaper or radio. Rubber and Fuel were very important for the war needs. Also, if you got a speeding ticket you could loose you gasoline rations and the Victory Speed was set at 35 MPH. Boy that will take awhile to get there. But the boys that were fighting needed us to help them win this war so everyone had to do their part.
Now our household management Journal
Our 1943 income
After much research to find the real and actual income and expenses during 1943 we are ready to start posting this part of our history project.
We have used the average pay for this year of 1943. Our income is as follows.
Gross $1,980.00 per year
Net $1, 762.20 per year (take home)
Monthly $165.00 Gross - $146.85 net
Weekly $41.25 Gross - $33.67 net (take home)
Breakdown of the weekly pay.
$41.25 Gross weekly pay
-$4.54 Federal Income tax withheld
-$2.63 Victory Tax
-.41 cents Social security
$33.67 take home pay per week after deductions
War bonds were being encouraged so we have to study on how much we can afford just like we are trying to decide if we can afford a telephone. We are starting this living on this 1943 pay starting February 1st.
My next post ( hopefully tomorrow) will be about our expenses and that post will include this weeks Diary reading.
The cover photo of the little dog at the large window is Katherine when she was very young. She was visiting her brother Frank at his new house.
Grandma Donna
