Аннотация:The methodology and methodology of budgetary studies conducted by Russian statisticians at the end of the Х1Х - the beginning of the XX century is considered. The main attention is drawn to the indicators of peasant and working budgets, the use of a budget card, the representativeness of the sample, the application of the method of filling in income-expenditure books, the method of "self-filling" in the studies of A.M. Stepani, S.N.Prokopovich, M.N.Davidovich, and I.M. Shaposhnikov et al.