This project focuses on family budgets, defined here as all monetary and non-monetary ways of "making ends meet", with an emphasis on the small middle classes, understood as households with a standard of living below the median but above the monetary poverty line. They have been the subject of few recent studies, particularly in contemporary France. How can we organize our domestic economy in the face of substantial increases in food and fuel prices in the short term, the introduction of low-emission zones (ZFE) for automobiles, and energy prices and constraints for real estate? How, then, are we to think about the future of future generations, and of our children in particular? To address these issues, the project proposes to carry out monographs of families surveyed using the ethno-accounting method, which, in the tradition of Leplaysian surveys, consists of reconstructing budgets by means of statements commented on by the people concerned, supplementing the monetary dimension by taking into account other aspects that make it possible to maintain these budgets (use of time, menus, public services), and giving a place to tastes and to the devices and objects of daily life. This method is complemented by the use of national public surveys (INSEE Family Budget survey, Transport survey for automobile equipment, demographic sample for professional trajectories), which allow us to give orders of magnitude, to frame the rise in generality, and to reflect on the categories mobilized by the interested parties as much as by national surveys. The project pays particular attention to career paths, ecological changes and evolving gender relations.