Topic
Household Budget
Instructions
Please assume that you are budgeting for 1 adult and 2 children.
Please construct a monthly budget that you believe will be suitable (not extravagant, but will enable you to live a “decent” life) for your “family” to survive on. Include:
Housing Payment (consider: How many bedrooms will you need? Will you own or rent? If you own, you must also account for taxes and home insurance). Where will your residence be (what town/city?). Include these details in your budget.
Utilities such as gas, electric and water (if you own). Include cable, internet and cell/landline phones if you want them. Include details in your budget (how much is each utility bill?)
Food
Child Care (for the sake of this assignment, we can assume that this is 450$ month/child- the cost of the before/after school YMCA programs).
Transportation (will you own a car or two, or walk/bike/bus?) If you will have a car, you must include gas, insurance and maintenance. Include details in your budget.
Medical Expenses (medicine, health insurance, co-pays, etc).
Clothing (you may only buy clothing once a year for adults or twice for children, but this should be included as a “monthly” expense (how much per month will you save for clothing?)
Recreation costs (dance classes, sports fees for kids, entertainment for parents, etc.). Include details (what activity and how much).
Miscellaneous (school items, gifts,etc)
Savings (if any)
What is your total? Please provide your total budget BEFORE adjusting with the budget cap.
NEXT,
Adjust your budget with a cap of $1400.
(What someone would make monthly, before taxes, working full time at a minimum wage job in Erie County, NY.).
Food Stamp Guidelines are as follows:
3 people: 2008.00
4 people: 2422.00
Therefore, you can rely on public assistance such as food stamps, subsidized rent, heap and daycare assistance. You can pretend that food stamps will cover your food, your rent will be 30% of your income, and you will have a 50% reduction in heating and daycare bills.
Next, try to create a similar budget, but pretending that there are 4 people in your household, including 2 adults who both work minimum wage. This would boost your budget cap to $2800 per month. At this point, you will not qualify for help via public assistance.
You cannot rely on family for your daycare- you must budget for this. Tip: The YMCA offers affordable before and after-school daycare. You may want to see what they are charging for this service and budget accordingly.
For your knowledge, those who are in a three-person household are officially living in poverty, while those in the four-person household are not. What is the problem with this?
This is based on the federal poverty threshold:
3 people: 20,090
4 people: 24,250
For the discussion, please write a brief reflection of the budgeting process. Was it very hard to cut your budget down to the budget cap? What did you have to cut out to reach the cap? Are the available social services enough, or are more needed? How do the income guidelines affect families who rely on social services? What strategies did you use to make your budget work?
Answer preview
