For this lab, you will create and fill out a personal budget representing your monthly “costs” as a student. To start, check out
the following website, which discusses how to fill out a budget.
Read through the tips provided to get some slightly more specialized budget information. We recommend taking a close look at the sample monthly budget for teens.
You’ll be making a customized budget for yourself. You can use the provided blank template on the site (“Your Monthly Budget”) to form the basis of your budget sheet, or you can create one yourself using other online templates as a starting point and inspiration. For each item in your budget, consider what it costs to fill that need in an average month.
Start with income. If you don’t have any income, that’s ok! It’s still useful to know how much you spend each month, regardless of whether you have money coming in. If you do work, have an allowance, or in any other way reliably generate some cash from month to month, be sure to note that; otherwise, create an income entry that just says “N/A” or zero.
When it comes to tracking where your money goes, being more specific is great, but for this exercise you can always bundle items into subcategories. For example, gas, water, trash, and electricity costs are all good to account for individually, but you can total them up and list them as “utilities” to save space. When deciding on the categories where you will allocate your spending, take a look at the categories on the provided template if you get stuck; they provide great examples. For instance, most of you surely spend money on “entertainment” (movies, monthly Netflix costs, etc.), and if you’re an avid reader or eat out a lot, specialized entries for those categories will make sense.
Even if you yourself don’t buy the groceries that you eat, you should have a sense of how much is spent to feed you each month—ask your parents for help, or go to the grocery store with a calculator! And don’t forget your “share” of utilities—for example, your cell phone bill, rent, electricity, cable/internet, even how much any insurance costs each month. If getting exact numbers is tricky, you can usually search online to find average costs for most of these expenses by neighborhood or zip code. If you can’t even begin to figure out how much your share of a cost is, include it anyway by noting N/A or “???” to indicate the amount is unclear.
At the very least, your budget should absolutely include categories for rent, utilities, groceries, and at least one column with discretionary/fun/charitable spending.
After you’ve identified all sources of income and figured out everything you can in terms of how much it costs to just be you each month, check out this website for more detailed instructions on what to do with a budget.
In particular, you definitely want to focus on breaking expenses into two categories: fixed and variable. Divide your items into those two categories, then sum up the values for each one. Which costs you more each month?
Write a short paragraph reflecting on this experience; in particular, examine the overall costs per month and assess the difference between your fixed and variable costs. Does this encourage you to change anything about the way you might spend money in the future?
For this assignment, submit both the spreadsheet containing your budget and your paragraph of reflection.
