Assessment : Financial Budgeting

In this module, you have created a realistic personal budget that includes costs for education, savings,
housing, transportation, food, and other items. You have considered the how and why of staying (or getting)
out of debt, building credit, and saving for short and long term expenses. For your assessment, please show
that you have considered carefully all these items.

Part I: Net Salary

1. Please explain what you see as some of the benefits and challenges of creating and sticking to a budget.
- A benefit of sticking to a budget is you know how much money you are spending at all times. You
never fall into a lot of debt and can visually see how much you are spending. A challenge of having a
budget is not making or having enough money for something.

2. Using the budget you created in the module as a guide, explain at least five items that should be part of a
budget and provide a brief explanation of why these items are important to include.
- Insurance - health, car, dental insurance all help in case of an emergency and incase something
happens
- Food - necessity for life. You need food to survive and need to spend money on this
- Transportation - our day and age we go to all different places and to get from place to place you need
a car to be able to transport yourself safely
- Internet and cellphones - we all have cellphones and nowadays nobody can live without it. You need
to spend money on this so incase of an emergency we are able to get ahold of 911 and our parents.
- Housing- spending money on your home is most important. This keeps you warm and safe and is a
roof under your head.

Part II: Savings Strategy

3. Using the budget you created in the module as a guide, explain why someone would save every month for both
short term and long term expenses. State how much is reasonable every month to save according to your
personal budget.
Some people might safe short term and long term incase some months they don’t have enough money or
have spent a large amount of it. Also by saving up each month, by the end you have enough money to live and
not work and have an income.

Part III: Surplus or Deficit

4. In the end, does your budget ended with a surplus or a deficit?
My budget ends in surplus. After managing my budget I have 140 dollars left over each month. As much as
this is a small number I am not spending more money than I am making.

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 5. What decisions did you make about your budget that led to that final outcome?

NOTE: If your budget ended with a deficit (you were spending more than you were taking home each month),
this is not sustainable. You would need to redo your budget until your net income covers all of your monthly
expenses.

- I made the decision of not eating out more than 1 time a week and not paying for a very expensive
car that sucks money out of me. I also made the decision of getting the simple tv plan instead of the
high end plan.

Part V: Summary
6. Identify two lessons you learned by completing this salary-based budget.

- There's many wants in my life that I don't need to spend money on

- Finding a lot of roommates would be beneficial when coming out of college to help split the costs of
many things