Your “My Future Budget” is a spreadsheet to use as a monthly budget tracker. Bills tend to be monthly. Setting up a monthly budget is a good way to track expenses. Follow these directions to set up a basic monthly budget based on your My Future Project:
- Open up “My Future Budget” in Google Classroom.
- Add your yearly income (from the Occupational Outlook Handbook) to cell F2 on sheet 1.
- Change cell B14 to the name of the state you will live in.
- Change cell E12 to the state income tax rate for the state you choose to live in. Click on the State Income Tax link in cell C14 and then click on your state to find the state tax rate. Remember the percent symbol.
Notice your yearly and monthly net pay is calculated on line 20. This is the amount of money your have to spend on living. This is the amount you will start your monthly budget with on sheet 2 of My Future Budget.
At this point, you know what your net income is and you have a handful of expenses figured out. It’s time to put together a monthly budget.
Start by filling in the following amounts from your My Future Project onto sheet 2 of My Future Budget.
- College Loan Payment
- Rent/Mortgage
- Car Payment)
- Car Insurance
- Gas
The rest of the items in your budget will come from a site called LeavingTheFolks. This site uses cost of living measures to calculate average monthly costs in a handful of categories. It uses data from each state, so you have to choose the state you live in to get the best information.
The next item listed on your My Future Budget is utilities, and after that, your phone/internet/cable package.
Use leavingthefolks to calculate these amounts. Hit the drop down at the top of the page to select your state. Don’t change any of the listed amounts. The estimator will automatically fill in the average costs for your state. Hit the “Submit Data” button under step 3 on the right. This will give you the report you are going to use for the rest of your budget.
Add up the amounts beside “Electricity”, “Water”, and “Gas”. This is your utility cost. Record this amount in cell E10.
Next, add up the amounts beside “Television”, “Phone Service” and “Internet Connection”. Record this amount in cell E11.
Row 12 is Food. Look at the bottom box on your leavingthefolks.com report. Add up the amounts next to “Eating Out”, and “Groceries”. Put this amount in cell E12.
That same box has an amount listed for Clothing. Put this amount in cell E13.
Skip row 14. Row 15 is “Recreation”. Type in the amount next to “Recreational (Movies, etc)” from the bottom box of the table into cell E15.
Finally, change cell A16 from “Personal” to “Gas”. Use the Gas Buddy Trip Calculator to figure out how much it costs you to go to work and back home. Multiply this amount by 21 (estimated number of work days per month). Put this amount in cell E16.
Grocery Shopping
The final piece of your My Future Budget is a detailed meal plan and grocery list . It should look something like this when you finish. Netgrocer is probably the best source for grocery items.
Click the plus sign in the bottom right corner of Google Sheets. This will create a new sheet for you to use.
This document will be a list of things to buy on your first trip to the grocery store. It will include a menu for the week at the top of the page, and an itemized grocery list below. At the bottom of the groceries list, you need to add at least 5 non-grocery, household products you will need for cleaning, grooming, etc.
Once you’ve completed this list, calculate the total cost by using the sum formula.
Clothing
Time to go shopping for clothes. Look at Sheet2 of your “First Budget” doc. Come up with an amount to spend for the year. Remember, the range shown on Sheet2 is a per month amount. You will need to multiply by 12 in order to get a number.
Create a new Google Sheet. Call it “Clothes”. Type the following heading across row 1: Item, Link, Category and Cost. The category options are:
- Outfits for
- Summer
- Fall
- Winter
- Spring
- Rain Gear
- Snow Gear
- Light Jacket
- Cold Weather Jacket
- Hats (?)
- Footwear (x3)
- Athletic Wear
- Formal Wear
Find between 20 and 30 articles of clothing to buy. Fill in the spread sheet with the name of the item, a link to where you found it, the category it fits in and the price. Once you are done shopping, use the Insert menu to insert a formula below the last price you have listed in column D. Choose SUM at the top of the menu, and then click and drag up column D to select all the prices you’ve typed in. Hit enter, and it should give you a total.
