The first step to making better financial decisions is to start with understanding your current spending habits. Having a better understanding of how and where you spend your money, you can more effectively budget for your educational future.

This assignment will require you to track your spending habits for one week starting on Sunday morning when you wake up and concluding on Saturday evening when you go to sleep (unless your teacher gives you a different time frame). During the week you will need to collect and document all of your spending. This means you should collect all receipts when you spend cash, be able to access your online bank account to view your transactions and ATM withdrawals if you have a bank account, and be able to access your online credit card account to view all transactions if you have a credit card. Please note, this means all expenditures during the week should be documented regardless of what you purchased. That morning coffee or pack of gum should be documented.

Directions

Step 1: Decide how you will categorize your spending for the week. Make a spreadsheet that indicates each category title with a short description of which expenses fall within that category. Remember that everyone will have slightly different categories and likely gives different definitions for what falls into each one. That’s ok. It needs to make sense to you, and how you think about expenses.

Here is a sample spreadsheet that you can make a copy of and adjust for your spending. Remember your categories don’t need to match the examples given. You might consider makeup part of a category called “Personal Care” that is a necessity along with soap. Or you might group everything you buy from a large grocery store, hand lotion, paper towels, and food into a category called “Groceries”. Please customize this spreadsheet for your specific circumstance, or you may create your own.

Step 2: Track your spending for the week by entering each expense into your spreadsheet. Make sure to at least enter what you spent your money on, how much you spent, and the category for the expenditure.

Step 3: Now that the week is over, total your total expenses to determine how much money you spent during the week. If you used a spreadsheet program, you can sort your sheet by your categories and total each category.

Step 4: Now it is time for you to analyze and reflect on your spending habits for the week. Review your spreadsheet to see how and where you spend your money and write a short reflective text of a minimum of 400 words that describes where you spend your money, what surprised you about your spending habits during the week, and what changes you plan to make based on this data.

Rubric