Financial Literacy-student Guide.docx

Financial Literacy Student Guide

Financial Literacy Today’s guest speaker is a financial planner. He is here to clarify the purpose of creating a family budget, and to reinforce the importance of saving for your future. In this task, you will create a budget that includes calculating your income as well as managing your overall expenses.

Directions Complete each task, reading the directions carefully as you go. Be sure to show all work where indicated, including inserting images of graphs. Be sure that all graphs or screenshots include appropriate information such as titles, labeled axes, etc. If your word processing program has an equation editor, you can insert your equations. Otherwise, print this activity sheet and write your answers by hand. Type all of your work into this document so you can submit it to your teacher for a grade. Show all your work and answer each question as you complete the task, as this is what your grade is based on. Partial credit will be given according to the completeness and accuracy of your explanations. Your teacher will give you further directions as to how you are to submit your work. You may be asked to upload the document, e-mail it to your teacher, or hand in a hard copy. Now, let’s get started!

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Student Guide (continued)

Step 1: Analyzing Components of a Budget Before a detailed family budget can be created, your financial planner has advised you to examine the important aspects that affect a budget such as income, taxes, savings, and expenses. Work through the following questions to start thinking about these aspects of budgeting. a) As a student, you are able to earn extra money by assisting your neighbors with odd jobs. If you charged $10.25 an hour for your assistance, about how many hours would you need to work to earn $8,425? Show your work. (5 points)

b) Imagine that you earned $8,425 in one year. If the government enforces a 15% income tax, how much money would you owe in taxes at the end of the year? Show your work. (5 points)

c) Your parents have been advised to save 5% of their income for your college education, which would include money for housing, tuition, books, and fees. How much would your parents have saved in one year, following the recommended 5%, if they had an average household income of $48,948? Show your work. (5 points)

d) As a smart consumer, you are always on the lookout for sales, coupons, and rebates. While shopping for new clothes, you notice that one particular brand of shirts is on sale for 20% off the original price. You also have a coupon for $10 off a $40 purchase. Coupons are applied after the 20% discount is taken. If each shirt originally costs $17.99, how many shirts would you need to buy to be able to use your coupon? Show your work. (15 points)

e) What would be the total cost of purchasing the number of shirts needed to use your coupon— after your coupon is applied and a 7.5% sales tax is charged on the purchase? (15 points)

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Student Guide (continued)

Step 2: Calculating Monthly Expenses The second step to building a family budget is to outline your expenses in greater detail, itemizing fixed and variable expenses. Suppose the table below shows your family’s monthly expenses by category.

Expense

Income Tax

Fixed or Variable Expense?

Average Monthly Cost

Yearly Cost

Percent of Yearly Budget (Rounded)

Fixed

$400

$4,800

$4,800 = 9.8% $48,900

$950

Housing

$7,800

Food Clothing Transportation

Variable

$75

Fixed

$6,000 $1,200

Insurance & Medical

$100

Entertainment Emergency Fund

Fixed

Savings for College

Fixed

Savings for Retirement Total

$1,200

$50 $600 $100

$1,200

$4,075

$48,900

100%

a) Fixed expenses are expenses that do not change from month to month, and variable expenses are expenses that can fluctuate from month to month. Complete the second column of the chart by determining if each expense is fixed or variable. (10 points – 2 points each)

b) Choose an example of a fixed expense and an example of a variable expense, and explain why they are classified that way. (4 points)

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Student Guide (continued)

c) Complete the remaining columns in the chart by calculating the missing values for each category. Round your percentages to the nearest tenth of a percent. (16 points)

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Student Guide (continued)

Step 3: Creating a Balanced Family Budget a) Using an online family budget estimator, calculate the monthly expenses for a family living in your city. Below are a few calculators you could choose from. http://www.familybudgets.org/ http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/ http://www.nccp.org/tools/frs/budget.php Insert a screenshot of the calculator you used, as well as all of the information you entered into it. If you are unable to insert a screenshot, then list the information below. (10 points)

b) State the minimum monthly income and hourly wage per worker needed to cover monthly expenses for the family you used in part a. Then, explain how to calculate the hourly wage based on the monthly income and state the hourly wage. Assume that each full-time worker works four 40-hour work weeks per month, and each part-time worker works two 40-hour weeks per month. (10 points)

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Student Guide (continued)

c) Keeping all other criteria the same, add a child to the family you used in part a to determine the monthly expenses. How does an additional child impact the family budget and hourly wage? Which category was least affected by this change? Explain why you think there was little impact to this category. (5 points)

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