Brandon Taylor FIRE 301 Due: 3/17/2022 1. What topic(s) did you discuss during your appointment with your money coach (budgeting, goal planning or both)? Explain why you chose budgeting or goal planning. During my appointment, I chose to discussed budgeting because currently my time is split between work and classes. Since I am working roughly 60 hours bi-weekly instead of my usual 80 hours, I must budget differently to counter my pay difference. 2. Explain why the topic you chose is essential to the financial planning process/ your financial plan. Budgeting is important to my financial plan because I still retain majority of the same expenses regardless of the total hours worked. Additionally, I still have long-term and intermediate financial goals that I would like to meet. 3. What are some things you are going to do in the next 90 days to improve your budgeting or goal planning? In the next 90 days, I want to have an additional month of expenses considering my rent will be increased in the next few months. This will allow me to offset the difference of cost for my apartment by having that additional income saved. This will allow me to not have to limit my disposable income greatly for my future lease term. I also want to have more than 2 months of income saved in the event of an emergency. Since I can predict my income and know the exact amount of my take-home income, I can easily plan and manipulate my spending to make sure I have money saved for an unpredictable event. 4. What resources or tips, if any, were provided to you during your appointment? Will you utilize these in the future? Why or Why not? I was advised to utilize spreadsheets to keep track of expenses. Although a bank statement can show your expenses, a spreadsheet allows you to easily categorize where you spending goes and gives you the opportunity to input different variables to manage your budget. I was also advised to look more into small expenses such as a subscription, convenience purchases like buying candy while filling up for gas, or buying extra things at the grocery store that weren’t initially budget for. These small expenses sum to a larger total and can hinder my ability to save. I will implement both tips to improve my budgeting because the more I save now, can benefit the future me. I typically track my expenses, but I don’t use any visual tools. This can help me to be more accurate in my personal accounting.
