This week’s assignment includes a simple budget.
If you’re a student living at home and your parents are paying all of your bills, you may be wondering — why do you need a budget!?
In this Video, I’ll answer that question.
One of the major goals of this course in Personal Finance is to help you prepare for the challenges of managing money once you’re out of school and on your own.
In order to get to that point of financial responsibility, one of the first things you must do is understand how much it costs to live in the world as you.
The fact that — up to this point — someone else has been paying all your bills, doesn’t change the cost of living for you. Every person has a different cost of living.
- If you love to shop at the mall, your cost of living is probably more than my wife who shops at resale shops.
- If you drink specialty coffee-drinks at Starbucks everyday, your cost of living is more than the student who makes their own coffee.
- If you spend $45 to get your haircut every two weeks, your cost of living may be more than mine because I cut my own hair with a razor.
I want you to start thinking about your own spending in a different way. Instead of thinking about the cost of a haircut or a cup of coffee at Starbucks, I want you to start thinking about the lifetime cost of your habits.
We’ll talk about the cost of habits more next week but for now I want you to do a little research and create a simple budget that demonstrates that you “get it”.
The cost of living — for you — even if your parents are paying that cost at the moment.
