Budget+Basics

What IS A Budget?

A budget is a spending plan that you decide upon. It is based on how much you make in income and what your monthly expenses are. By understanding your monthly income and expenses, you will be better able to manage your cash flow and determine how much debt, if any, you can assume.

 In this activity you will create a 'mock' budget based on your life at 30 years old. In order to do this you have to envision what you want out of life and what you need. It is important for us to be able to separate NEEDS from WANTS.

NEEDS: Food, shelter, clothing, medicine, etc WANTS: Vacations, Eating out at restaurants, designer clothes, Smartphones, video systems, etc.

In order to be successful, our income must be equal to or greater than our monthly expenses. Therefore, we must determine: 1. How much money we make per month 2. How much we spend per month 3. Where we can make changes to make things better

STEP 1 Make a T-Chart titled **Budgeting Basics.** One side will be for NEEDS the other side will be for WANTS. Make a list of what your NEEDS and WANTS will be (remember that you are 30 years old now!). You need at least 5 on each side.

STEP 2 You need an income, so you need to find a job! Use Job Finder to locate your source of income. Be sure to look through the list of various fields to locate the type of job that you are interested in having. **Annual Mean Wage** (next to last column) is the average yearly salary. Keep in mind that this wage is BEFORE taxes. Because you are now 30 years old we are assuming that you have already graduated from both high school and attended college or other training for your career.

You need to look into fields that you are interested in or think you may be working in as an adult. You also need to explore at least three other fields (that's 4 total). Create a bar graph comparing the salaries for each career that you looked at. Make sure that you label each career.

Please keep in mind that these salaries are just an average. Your actual salary would depend on your specific employer, your experience, how long you have been with the company, etc. Just because it is listed does not mean that is exactly what you will receive, but it is somewhere in that range.

STEP 3 Complete the **Make a Budget Worksheet. In order to do this accurately you will need to find out how much things cost. You will need to look at the following websites:**
 * [|Housing] Choose Rental, type a location you want to live (Lillington, NC for example) and then set the minimum and maximum amounts you want to spend per month on rent. (Choose Rental even if you are planning to buy. We are just looking for a monthly charge).**