The Game of Life

Part 2: Creating a Monthly Budget—where am I going to live and what am I going to eat?—

▪Step 1: Using the job you will have after high school/college that you found from Part 1 create a Budget—(60 points)

▪To figure out how much your take home pay is go to:

oMake sure you have the state as Texas, and that you are looking at annual figures. Choose how often you will be paid (monthly is most common). Do not fill in any other information on the form and press calculate!

▪You will need to recreate the following chart and fill in the information:

Income, Taxes, Take Home Pay
EXAMPLE / Budget 1 / Budget 2
Income/ Gross Income (before taxes) / $36,000
Less income taxes, Social Security, & Medicare / -$8926.70
Net income (take-home pay) / $27,703.30
Living Expenses
Housing (Apartment Rent, Mortgage, etc). You need to attach the actual apartment or housing listing to your report. / $12,000 ($1000/ month)
Utilities and Cable TV
Find out how much cable is for a year? List the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $600

Cell Phone Find out how much for a cell phone a month.
List the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $600

Groceries, Laundry, incidentals Make a shopping list of all the items you need to survive for a month. This needs to include your food, laundry, personal products, etc. Calculate your weekly needs, multiply that by 4.33 to get a monthly budget then multiply that by 12 to get a monthly budget. BE SURE TO ATTACH A COMPLETED SHOPPING LIST / $3600
Car Payment Find the car you want and figure out how much you have to pay each month to afford the car. List the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $2400

Car Insurance How much will it cost to insure that car for the month? List the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $1000

Gasoline, car maintenance, registration How far do you need to drive from your house to work? Figure out how much gas will cost for the year. (Multiply the number of miles you drive per day by how many days you work (ex: 10 milesx5 days=50 miles per week). Then, multiply this number by 52 to get the number of miles per year. Then, divide this number by the average cost of gas (ex: 5000 miles per year/3.19 per gallon=$1282 for gas). This is the amount you will pay in gas per month). List the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $1500

Clothing Do you have to have designer clothing? How much can you spend a month on clothes? List the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $1000

Restaurants, travel, & entertainment Would you like to take any trips? Or go to a nice restaurant for your anniversary? Figure out how much it will cost…Don’t forget you need to list the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $2000

Gifts & Other Expenses How much are you going to spend on holiday gifts for family and friends? What other expenses may you have? Do you have special hobby (scrapbooking, snowboarding, hunting, fishing, watching TCU football, etc) that costs money? List the website or ad that you found your amount from. / $1500

Total Living expenses (add up all of your living expenses) / $26,200
Money left over for savings: (CANNOT BE MORE THAN 10% of your income)
Net monthly Income –monthly living expenses = / $1503.30

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Part 2-Continued….

Step 2: Type up a 1 page response to your findings from your research. Do not simply answer the questions—write a 1 page paper/essay (40 points).

▪Were you able to get all of your wants with your budget?

▪What items did you have to give up in order to pay all of your bills?

▪What items on the above list can be sacrificed for a while, in order to save more money now?

▪What did your learn from this activity?