Activity Days: Budgeting Activity

We had our budgeting activity yesterday, the one I made the felt piggy banks for. I thought it went pretty well.  We started with a quick math lesson on percentages then went through the line items on the budget to talk about them and make sure the girls understood what each meant.  Some of these line items were

Pay
Savings
Rent
Car Payment
Groceries
Cell phone

That wasn't everything, just a sampling.  For the activity we were assuming that each girl had just graduated from college (or trade school or whatever applies to the career she chose) and was about to start her first post-education job.

Once we went through the budget items I had each girl choose a job - I had 24 different jobs they could choose from.  I've got a sampling here of what each job card looks like: an image of the job on one side and the associated monthly pay and student loans on the other side.  I looked up the pay based on the zip code I live in then adjusted for things like taxes, health insurance, and 401k contributions so the pay that shows would be the take home pay.  I completely made up the student loan amount.  I had them fill in their budget with this information.

Then I had each girl choose a car.  The options were public transportation, the junker they had in college, a used sedan, a used convertible, a used SUV, a new sedan, a new SUV, and a new electric car.  Once they chose their car they  filled in their budget with the information on the back of the car card: monthly payment, gas, maintenance.  The car payment amount came from some research on the internet while gas and maintenance were made up by me based on what I pay for those.  I had to tell one of the girls that maintenance costs weren't optional - she tried to get away with paying no maintenance on her car.

Next, each girl chose a place to live.  They could rent a studio apartment, a one bedroom apartment, a two bedroom apartment, a condo, a townhouse, or a house.  The line items they filled out after choosing these were rent, utilities, and HOA fee (which only applied to the condo, townhouse, and house).  For this information I looked up available rental properties in our area (they even recognized the house and townhouse from being in our neighborhood).

Then we filled in the rest of the line items.  They had three choices for their cell phone: $80 for a data plan, $40 for a regular plan, and $20 for just a land-line (I don't think they knew what a land-line was).  For their cable they also had three choices, well four if you count not having any at all: $100 for premium, $60 for upgraded, and $30 for basic.

The final line item was "Everything Else".  When all the other line items were filled out I had them calculate the number for the Everything Else item: -$20, -$176, -$1,010, and -$1,020.  They were way off! (Just as I suspected - but I didn't suspect I'd have to tell them that negative numbers were bad.)  This was when I got to talk about having to make sacrifices and different choices in order to be able to live within a budget.

They ended up making some changes to their plan.  The architect and doctor decided to be room mates, saving the architect about $950 a month.  The architect wasn't willing to give up her data plan but did switch from premium to basic cable.  The flight attendant gave up her used convertible to take public transportation, downgraded her cell phone and cable plans, and gave up her $1,600/month house for a $500/month studio apartment taking her from -$1,020 to about $680.  Well done, flight attendant.

At the end of the lesson/activity I asked them what they thought of it.  One girl said it was fun, one said it was Ok then asked if she could throw her budget away (lol, kids), and the other two didn't answer because they were too busy trying to figure out their new Everything Else after making changes.

Personally, I liked it . . . a lot.  I love numbers and money and math and figuring things out.  In fact, I based the activity off a project I did in my 7th grade math class.  The difference was that in 7th grade we had to look through the classified section of the newspaper to find our job, apartment, and car.

Anyway, if this activity sounds like something you'd want to do and you'd like to see my cards, budget, and notes, just let me know and I'll email my spreadsheet to you.