Budget Lesson Exercise - Project Wired



Budget Exercise

The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize yourself with basic functions of the Excel Program and how to create a budget using a spreadsheet. You could try to create a real budget for yourself (you would be surprised at how much money is wasted!), or if you prefer, you could make one up.

Before you begin, think about your activities and expenses for a day, a week, then for a month. Under “income”, think about every source you have for getting money, or income. Whether it is a salary, a state or city check, a program incentive, gifts from friends or family, “hustles”, etc. All of this is “income”. Under “expenses”, walk yourself through a day. Think about all the things you spend money on in a day. This includes snacks, cigarettes, transportation, and other activities. Think about what bills you pay monthly. All of this goes in the “expenses” category. Try to only include recurring expenses and income, rather than ‘one-time’ expenses. There is also always the “Miscellaneous” category. Take as long as you need to do this.

1) Plan your budget first. List all these items on a piece of paper, here, or a word document to be printed.

Here is a checklist that might help:

1- What ways do you get income? Here are some examples:

Salary ___________

Stipend Position ___________

SSI ____________

HASA ____________

Other ____________

Hustle? ____________

2- How much do you pay for rent each month? ________________

3- Do you pay utilities? If so, how much?

Gas ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Electric ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Cable ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Phone ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Cell Phone ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Internet ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Other ___________ (D) (W) (M)

3- What other expenses do you have daily, monthly? Circle whether it is a

daily (D), weekly (W) or monthly (M) expense.

Here are some examples:

Cigarettes ___________ (D) (W) (M) (how many packs a day, week, month)

Food ___________ (D) (W) (M) (groceries that you buy for your home)

Snacks ___________ (D) (W) (M) (if you eat fast food, food while you’re

out)

Metro Card ___________ (D) (W) (M) (do you buy a daily, weekly? How many

times a month?)

Clothing ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Cosmetics ___________ (D) (W) (M) (soap, shampoo, deodarant, toothpaste,

etc)

Household Items ___________ (D) (W) (M) (cleaning supplies, cooking supplies, laundry detergent, anything you use for your home)

Laundry ___________ (D) (W) (M)

Pets ___________ (D) (W) (M) (pet food, kitty litter, vet bills)

Leisure Activities ___________ (D) (W) (M) (movie, eating out, etc)

Medical or Dental Expenses _____________ (D) (W) (M) (medications. Co-

pays, etc)

Luxury Items ___________ (D) (W) (M) (jewelry, things you don’t NEED but WANT.

4) Next—go to the START button on the bottom toolbar (called the Task Bar), then PROGRAMS, then MICROSOFT OFFICE, then MICROSOFT EXCEL. It opens to a blank work sheet. Before you begin, go to FILE, SAVE AS, and name the file (Your Name’s Budget, for example. Mine would be “robins budget.xls”). Highlight the cells you are using in spread sheet. Then go to FORMAT on the top toolbar, then CELLS and click the “NUMBER” tab, then click the option that says “Currency”. Click OK. Click SAVE.

5) In Cell number A1, type “Income”.

• In Cell B1, type “Daily”

• in Cell C1, type “Weekly”

• in Cell D1, type “Monthly”

• in Cell E1, type “Annually”. .

6) Starting at Cell A2 and continuing down the A column, start typing your list of “Income”. Income can be any means that you get money, whether it be daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. In the appropriate cell, type the amount. At the end of the list, type “Total”.

7) Skip a line and type, “Expenses”. Continue down the row, typing the lst of expenses that you wrote up. At the end of the list, type “Total”. Fill in the amounts in the correct cells, whether they be daily, weekly, etc.

8) Skip a line and type “Savings”. This is your income minus your expenses and so is the amount left over that you should be saving.

Open Excel Program. Go to START, PROGRAMS, MICROSOFT OFFICE, EXCEL.

For purposes of this exercise, we will use the figure in the example of Figure 1 (See Below). For your own spread sheet, use the Cell that your numbers are in. For help, ask instructor.

Income:

1) To figure out Monthly salary, type the formula in Cell D2:

=Sum(C2*4)

in the cell under the monthly column. Hit “ENTER” on the keyboard. (“C2” is the Cell that contains a weekly salary, “*” is the multiplication sign, and “4” is the number of weeks in a month.) So, you are multiplying the weekly amount by 4 to get the monthly amount.

To figure out the annual amount, it is the same formula (making sure that you have the right cell to start with) only multiplied by 52 instead of 4 (there are 52 weeks in a years). If you are trying to change a monthly amount to an annual amount, you multiply by 12 (there are 12 months in a year).

2) To Figure the Monthly Total Expenses, type the formula:

=Sum(D2:D4)

This is going to add all the amounts from Cell D2 to Cell D4 and give you the total.

Do the same for Annual amounts.

Expenses:

1) Fill in the amounts of your expenses in the appropriate cells.

2)Using the same principle as above for Income, figure out the monthly and annual Totals.

Savings:

1) For the Monhtly savings, type this formula in Cell D16:

=Sum(D5-D14)

Hit “ENTER” for the monthly savings

2) For the annual savings, type this formula In Cell E16:

=Sum(E5-E14)

Hit “ENTER” for the annual savings.

See how much you could save of you tried??!!

Figure 1

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