Spreadsheet Lab #1

Home Budget

HOME BUDGET

Develop a 6 month spreadsheet that charts your monthly household budget as you would believe/like it to be ten years from now. Don't be too wildly optomistic or pessimistic, and you don't have too be accurate, either, no one will check in 2011*. The budget should include all reasonable sources of income and an income subtotal. It should also include a good set of expenses (housing, food, clothing, education, utilities, gas, car insurance, entertainment, etc.) Provide an expense subtotal.

*This clause has been added for those of you who are still living in your parent’s back room.

There must be two income sources and at least five expenses each month. They must vary somewhat from month to month. Make it look real. Use amounts that seem real. Rent may be $1,800 each month, but your grocery total and gas consumption should vary each month. Build this spreadsheet across a page, with each month having one column and each income or expense item having one row. Provide annual totals (row totals) of each income and expense item to see how large it is in the course of a year.

The most tricky part will be creating a savings formula that acts as the place where extra income goes and where extra expenses come from. The savings cell must go up and down, at least three times each during the year. I don’t want to see it increase by the same amount every month. To get it to drop, try giving yourself a big christmas present one month, buy a new car another month. Note: This means that your expenses MUST vary from month to month.

All computations must be done by spreadsheet formulas. Only actual values (the amounts of income or expense in a given month) may be entered as numbers.

FORMAT CELLS

Format cells as currency where appropriate.

WHAT TO TURN IN

Submit a hardcopy (printout) of the spreadsheet and a hardcopy which shows the formulas you used. To see your formulas, use a combination of the Ctrl key and the tilda ( ~ ).