Creating a Personal Budget

Class: Personal Finance 30 Teacher: Mr. McLauchlin

The Big Idea: Your financial world is a mix of incomes, required expenses, optional expenses, fixed and variable expenses, as well as, savings and investments. It is how you plan for these items that will allow you to achieve your financial goals and personal financial growth. A budget is a great financial planning tool, and must be monitored, maintained, adapted and reflected upon to be successful. Essential Question: How can I use a budget in my personal life to help me achieve my short-term and long-term financial goals? Assignment: You will create a budget for your personal income, expenses, savings and investments, based on the real world numbers from your everyday life. This budget will be in the same format as we discussed in class, and used in the sample budget. You will need to track your income, spending, saving and investing for each week and compare it to the weekly budget you created, examining the variances. You will also examine this data for a monthly period as well. You will be required to keep four spreadsheets for this class, one due in each of the coming four months, covering a four-week period. The budget spreadsheets MUST include the following, but are by no means limited to this list: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14) A weekly budget for each of the 4 weeks in the period Actual data for each of the 4 weeks in the period The variances for each week between the budget and actual numbers A monthly total budget column A monthly total actual amount column A monthly total variance amount column Your reoccurring or regular income Your irregular income, such as gifts Your fixed expenses, such as your car payments Your required expenses, such as a cell phone contract payment Your optional expenses, such as movies and music Your variable expenses, such as food Your savings and any investments you make Your short-term and long-term financial goals

The spreadsheets only show data and cannot show how you maintained, adapted and reflected on your budget. Therefore, there is a second component to this assignment. You will create a blog (I am recommending Word Press for this but it does not need to be), where you post at the end of the week your thoughts and reflect on your budget for the week.

The actual blog posts, which will occur weekly, will have several components. The first part of your weekly blog/vlog (video blog), will answer - what changes did I need to make to my budget this week and why? As mentioned there will always be unexpected conditions, it is how we handle those conditions that is ultimately important. The second part of the post will include a brief reflection about your spending/saving for the week. How hard was it to stay on budget? Did you stay on budget? Were there any unexpected expenses that arose? Did you make more/less income than you thought? What factors were pulling you off budget and how did you respond? These are all meant as guiding questions, with the purpose of getting you to think about your actual budget for the last week -- you may answer some, all or different questions entirely in your reflection. The third and final part of your weekly post will involve business and finance in general. You are asked to comment on something that you learned in the last week about personal finance or business in general. This can be something you learned in class, something you read in the news or in social media, something you experienced, or something you want to know more about -- the point is for you to think about what you learned and be able to explain that to me and the rest of your blog readers. You may want to consider the following prompts when writing this portion: This week I learned.../I read this article about personal finance.../I was involved in this financial situation.../I need more information about.../I read or watched this business story.../My favourite thing from this week's class was... etc. Again, the prompts are only meant to provide you a starting point. Do not feel constrained to using them. Both the spreadsheets, and the weekly blog posts, will be required for this assignment. You may want to refer to financial items in general on your post, but you do not have to. For example, instead of saying, I got paid 300$ this week, which is 50$ less than I was expecting, you could just say, I got paid 50$ less than I was expecting, which negatively impacted my budget. I have created a Google form, which is located on the course webpage. In this form, you will need to submit to me your name, the web address of your blog and the link to your spreadsheets, which you can share directly with me in Google Drive or Dropbox, etc. You should not share the files publicly, it is unnecessary to share this personal data with the world, the reflections are what people can read, comment on and offer you advice based upon, not the spreadsheets. The first due date is 5 weeks from now, which means you will have 4 weekly budgets/actual results and one monthly budget/actual result for the first submission. There will be four submissions throughout the semester, so once you have your first months spreadsheet done, start a new one for the next month! I will walk you through the set-up of the blog and will assist you in using other services such as Blogger, Wix or Screenr for creating your page. Attached you will find the rubric that I will be using to assess both the spreadsheets and the blog portion of the assignment.

Creating a Personal Budget Rubric

Teacher Name: Mr. McLauchlin CATEGORY /50 Budget Elements (Income, Variable Expenses, Fixed Expense, Required Expenses, Optional Expenses, and Savings) /10 9-10 Excellent Student includes all required elements of the budget for each week and the monthly total, using a format similar to that used in class. Budget is clear and easy to read, and all elements are expertly addressed. Detailed records of the actual earnings, savings and spending for the student is recorded, and these values are very clear in the spreadsheet. Variances are present, easy to find and connected to the related data. Goals are clearly defined on the spreadsheet and are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. These goals are thoughtfully reflected upon in the blog posts. Through the blog posts, it is extremely clear that the student has thoroughly examined and adapted the budget, based on events and new knowledge. The students' reflection of his/her budget was thoughtful and relevant. The reflection shows detailed connections to class material or real-world events. 7-8 Proficient Student includes all required elements of the budget for each week and the monthly total. Budget is clear and easy to read, and all elements are addressed. Student Name: ________________________________________ 5-6 Fair Student includes most of the required elements of the budget for each week and the monthly total. Budget is mostly clear and can be understood. Below 5 Limited Elements are missing from the budget or complete periods are absent from the budget altogether. Budget is not clear and is hard to understand.

Actual Data & Variances /10

Goal Setting and Reflection /10

Record of the actual earnings, savings and spending for the student is recorded, and these values are included in the spreadsheet. Variances are present, easy to find and connected to the related data. Goals are clearly defined on the spreadsheet. These goals are reflected upon in the blog posts.

Records of the actual earnings, savings and spending for the student is recorded, and these values are included in the spreadsheet. Variances may be absent from all or some of the spreadsheet. Goals are defined on the spreadsheet but may not have been reflected upon in the blog posts.

Actual data is either not present or it is unclear what the data is and how it relates to the budget.

Little to no thought was given to goal setting or goals were not created.

Budget Maintenance and Adaptation /10

Through the blog posts, it is clear that the student has examined and adapted the budget, based on events and new knowledge. The students' reflection of his/her budget was thoughtful and relevant. The reflection shows some connections to class material or real-world events.

Through the blog posts, it is clear that the student has examined and adapted the budget, but it is not clear why this was done. The students' reflection of his/her budget was somewhat thoughtful and relevant. The reflection shows little connections to class material or real-world events.

The student did not adapt the budget based on events or new knowledge or the student did not create a post to indicate these adaptations. The students' reflection of his/her budget is not really thoughtful or relevant. The reflection shows no connections to class material or real-world events.

Budget Reflection and RealWorld Learning /10