MTH 154: Project - Yearly Budget

Project Directions:

Construct a budget sheet that assists you in analyzing your financial status, set goals, make changes, whatever the case may be. This project will have more meaning to you the more it reflects your real life. You can use this to create a budget for your future life based on your plans of a future job, future housing, expenses, etc. I assure you that, should you choose to include personal values, I will be assessing your work only on if it was accurately represented and interpreted. Please work to be realistic so you can gain from the experience. There will never be any judgement made on my part nor any information shared out.

Your sheet should address both regular and unexpected monthly expenses, necessities and luxuries, and any debts/savings plans. Your first sheet should create a baseline budget of your expenses (list what you spend/think you will spend each month for each category without regard to if you balance) and then create monthly and yearly budget as well as totals by category. You should have a minimum of 10 to 15 categories with amounts for each month as well as monthly and yearly totals. Your second sheet should be a tracking sheet for each category that tracks your expenses for each month of one year. In sheet two enter your data for three months and leave space for entering data for the rest of the year (these can be left blank). You should have space to enter the date and each expense under the category and month. You should have totals by category (both month and year) as well as monthly totals and a year to date total. Totals will currently only reflect your three months you entered but should update automatically if you add data for the remaining months. These totals should then be compared to your planned budget in sheet one by category and month. Sheet three will be your reflection as described below.

• Provide visually appealing formatting to allow for quick differentiation among the categories and months and for quick location of individual items.
• Provide visually appealing and correct formatting to allow for ease of data entry without disrupting the form or function of sheet one and two. (What if electrical budget is changed from $150 to $125 a month? What if you have to add another gas receipt for January?)
• Accurately calculate your totals in each category in dollars for each month on sheet two.
• Accurately calculate your totals in each category in dollars and percentage of total for the year on both sheet one and sheet two.
• Accurately calculate your expenses and savings as new items are added to sheet two.
• Create two charts on sheet one that compares expenses by month and one that compares expenses by category. (Remember, in Excel, a chart is a graph.)
• Create a chart sheet two that compares actual expenses to budget amounts.

Reflection:

• Paragraph I What did you learn from this process of creating a sheet to model something in your world? Talk about successes and struggles while doing the project.
• Paragraph II In what other ways in your life might you create another sheet to help you make decisions?
• Paragraph III Analyze your situation. What do your graphs and tables tell you about your financial habits? Where do you see the need for change? What barriers were there to balancing your budget?