After completing 4 years of college and earning a degree using 2 years of federal student aid, you land a job earning you $50,000 a year. You are planning to live in your current city and are beginning to plan for retirement. To do this you need to look at your current budget and determine how you will save/invest and how much you are able to put towards this. What types of expenses will you have? How will you decide what to invest?

Compose a short justification in which you share your reasoning about these questions. Include why you made the choices you did and not some other options. Your reading audience is the GER Assessment Committee so you will need to provide context, setting the stage for your argument as well as provide information about other options and why they were not chosen.

**You are not asked to create a budget or investment plan, only to explain how you would make the decisions.**