SO WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO IS DO SOME RESEARCH AND WRITE SOMETHING LIKE WHAT OTHER STUDENTS WROTE. THERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF OTHER STUDENTS' WORK I PUT THEM THERE IN CASE YOU GET LOST ON WHAT TO DO YOU CAN THEY CAN HELP YOU

Personal Financial Planning and Budgeting ( Required - 200 pts)PreviousNext

In Chapter 8, we began our discussion on budgets. This topic is not only one that is extremely important to a managerial accountant's life, but also a business manager, homemaker, entertainer, personal planner - everyone needs to understand the topic of budgets and the role they play in our financial well-being.

For our second discussion, please do the following:

1. Read the Skills Development Case S8-2 on page 144 of your ebook (or at the end of Chapter 8 if page numbering is off slightly). Choose a minimum of two online budgeting sites and input financial and budgetary information for yourself or a typical person of your age (feel free to use fictitious information if you feel more comfortable). As noted, please pay strict attention to the site's privacy policies in order to protect your personal information.
2. Complete Question #1 for each online site visited.

Instructions for interaction and actions required:

1. POST a complete response to Question #2. Be sure to compare (similar) and contrast (different) the two sites, using supporting statements in justifying your response from material you learned in Chapter 8 and the online sites themselves. Include a link to each site in your response to allow your classmates ease in reviewing each site. Complete responses require a minimum of 5-6 strong statements . Discussion posts are due by Wednesday, 11/22.

EXAMPLE OF OTHER STUDENTS WORK:

1. EXAMPLE

The two sites I used were Mint and Goodbudget.

Mint is a site that connects to your bank/credit card accounts to automatically track your spending and saving. It helps you make budgets based on the data it gets from your accounts, shows where your money is going, and can check your credit score.

Goodbudget is a site that works like putting money in virtual envelopes. You manually add your transactions because your accounts are not added into the app, and it helps you try to stick to your budget. If you want a bit control and prefer doing things by hand.

Mint being automated means you don't have to be quite as hands on to tackle it. Goodbudget far more involved due to having to manually input each transaction, good for people who prefer keep their cards and accounts private, and want to be a little more aware of how they spend money. Personally, I like not having all my accounts updating my budgeting app automatically because one, I like to try and keep my data private and two the more I have to manually update the information the more cognizant I am of my spending habits.

The two websites I used were:

https://goodbudget.com/how-it-works/

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/budget-worksheet

2. EXAMPLE

Goodbudget uses something called the "envelope method", where you distribute your money into different envelopes that could be labeled with debt payoff, groceries, eating out, etc, and whatever is left in each envelope is considered savings. I like how Goodbudget makes it easy to put however much money you want into each envelope, which helps college students with being able to control all their money. Nerdwallet used a 50/30/20 method, where it put 50% into necessities, 30% into wants, and 20% into savings, which is something that can be useful for college students like myself who is just recently starting to budget my own money. One difference between the envelope method that Goodbudget uses and the 50/30/20 that Nerdwallet uses is Nerdwallet has broader labels for each category, but also makes it easy for college students as their monthly paycheck is split into 50/30/20, not giving them the chance to put more into their wants, like they could with Goodbudget. I like nerdwallet better because it forces students to be responsible with their money. Most college students spend money on things they don't need.