Chapter 3. Budgeting for a household and an education

Adult learners are usually responsible for their own living costs, and their budget might be more complicated than those of younger college students. Adult learners may have wider categories of expenses as well. However, the fundamental principles of budgeting are the same for everyone. 

How to

To complete a budget, you can use a paper and a pen, a computer program, or a cell phone application. The goal of budgeting is to distribute an amount of income over expected expenditures to strike a balance between assets and liabilities.

When doing so, you follow a simple rule: convert all numbers to be equal in time! For example, if you do a monthly budget, all numbers should be converted to monthly values. If you do a yearly budget, all numbers should be for a full year. Also, don't forget to account for miscellaneous items including wants and needs such as haircuts, car insurance paid every 6 months, out of pocket expenses for vision or dental visits, pets' various expenses, a yearly vacation, etc. 

 

 

 

If you want to learn more about budgeting, please refer to the Budgeting module in our series. 

 

Practice

Now that you know how critical it is for you to separate your household items from your educational needs, think of paying it forward and discuss budgeting fundamentals with a friend or a family member.

 

Congratulations! You can move on to Chapter 4. Credit cards and debt management

To review the full module on Adult Learners, click here.

 

This was made possible in partnership with The Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship. This video and more videos like this can be found on Millionstories.com Links to an external site..