question 1 create a household budget
Use one of the provided household budget spreadsheets on Blackboard—either RENT or OWN—to create a detailed and realistic monthly / annual budget. If you live at home, interview a parent or relative to fill out the information line by line so that you have a real life picture of what it costs to run the household, which is the point of this assignment You can change the text in any cell on this spreadsheet so feel free to rename expenses or to delete extra lines.
Please remember the following:
1. If there is only one income earner in the household, you can delete the second earner line
2. For the OWN budget, if the mortgage is paid off, indicate that on the spreadsheet to explain why the amount is zero
3. We are learning goal-focused budgeting so pay special attention to the expense lines for saving toward specific financial goals under the Financial Obligation section. You can rename these and list your own financial goals if appropriate
4. The expense line Credit Card Debt Repayment is only if you are paying down a credit card balance. If there is a monthly payment amount here, you also need to fill in the Debt Repayment Schedule tab of the spreadsheet. [If you use a credit card to pay for regular monthly expenses–ex. groceries–and pay the balance in full every month, the amounts spent will show up in the other sections of your budget]
5. If you have more than $200 left over at the end of every month, you should be applying more to your financial goal saving expenses. Conversely, if you end up in the red, meaning that you have a negative amount left over every month, you either need to explain what is going on or check your work. There are some situations where people spend down savings and run up credit card debt for a short amount of time—for example, when they are between jobs–but this is rare.
6. You can use the blank rows to the right of the spreadsheet to include explanations for unusual expenses or situations.
Question 2 create a net worth statement
Using the model reviewed in class or that you find on the internet, create a complete net worth statement for the individual or couple for whom you prepared the household budget. You can create this statement by hand, type it into a Word doc, use an Excel spreadsheet or use a template found on the internet. All are acceptable formats. Please do not upload a networth statement prepared in Apple.numbers format as that is not readable on Blackboard. Uploading a photograph of your hand written net worth statement usually works.
Grading: Please check your math! Remember that if you include a mortgage balance you must also include the market value of the home. The more detailed the net worth statement, the higher your total possible points. Bear in mind that a personal net worth statement is a “point in time” valuation statement similar to a corporate balance sheet which means that it should contain the date for which the asset and debt values are accurate.
