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Budgeting

6.5 Your Health: Insurance & Other Costs
Activity

Name

Your Other Health Related Costs

Health insurance and its related costs make up a large percentage of your monthly health costs. That said, there are many other potential budget items that fall under the health umbrella. Work through this activity to estimate what you might budget for health post-graduation.

1) Determine Which Health Costs You’ll Need or Want

For each of the items below, write on the line an N if you’ll need to budget for the item, a W if you’ll want to budget for the item, or an X if this is something you definitely won’t budget for post-graduation. You can fill in one to three other categories that are not already included.

_____ Eye insurance or eye care / _____ Medical treatments you know won’t be covered by insurance / _____ Prescription or non-prescription medicines you take regularly
_____ Haircuts or other salon treatments / _____ Grooming costs (cosmetics, soaps/lotions, hair care, etc.) / _____ Luxury services (massages, facials, personal trainer, etc).
_____ Vitamins, health supplements, etc. / _____ Monthly gym membership / _____ Participation fees to other sports/athletic activities
_____ Other: / _____ Other: / _____ Other:

2) Research the Monthly Cost for Each N and W

Fill in this chart with each Need and Want from your list above. For each item, conduct your own online or personalized research as to how much the item will likely cost each month. Complete the entire chart except for the last column, using the first row as an example.

Need or Want Category / Specific Spending / Estimated Monthly Cost / How You Arrived at the Cost / Will you budget for it?
Ex: Participation fees to other sports/athletic activities / New shoes (1 pair every 2 months) for outdoor jogging 4 times per week / $40 / Current running shoes are $80; buying a new pair every 2 months is ~$40/mo
  1. Now that you’ve completed the chart, what is your monthly health budget (excluding health insurance) if you include all of your Needs and Wants? Does this amount seem reasonable to you? Why or why not?
  1. Go back and write Yes or No in the final column for each of your costs to indicate whether you’ll include it in your final budget.
  1. If you eliminated items, how did you decide and what is your new monthly cost?
  1. If you did not eliminate any costs, why not?

3) Revise Your Salary-Based Budget

Go back to your Salary-Based Budget project from Lesson 6.1 Budgeting Basics and revise the categories for Eye Insurance, Haircut, Other Grooming/Hygiene, Gym Membershipand any other health categories from the exercise above based on your budgeting knowledge and work within this activity. Remember, your ultimate goal is to end your complete budget with a surplus, and you’ve still got two budget lessons to complete.

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