fandomhigh | Adulting 101- Monday- 2nd period

Back in the classroom today, where everyone had a some handouts on their desks, along with a calculator and pencils. "Good morning, and welcome to probably one of the most important lessons you're going to have here," Kitty greeted them. "Today we're going to work on budgeting. By now you should have an income, and that means you have to pay for how you live. First off, I want to have you list off the things that you think will be monthly expenses, like rent. Anything else you have to pay for to live. Just go ahead and yell things out."

Once they'd done that, Kitty continued, "These monthly expenses are important, and take first priority. If you don't pay your rent, you'll end up being evicted. If you don't pay your utilities, they'll turn them off. If you don't pay your car insurance, you'll get in trouble with the law if you get caught. Do you have credit cards? Because you should be paying more than the minimum due because the interest will get you on anything you don't pay off. And what you have left over after you pay all that stuff is called expendable income. It's what you get to use if you want to hang out with friends, or save up for vacation or a rainy day or whatever. And you probably don't have a ton of it. Four out of five workers in the United States live paycheck to paycheck, which means they're mostly living to pay things off, and they don't necessarily have savings in case their car breaks down, or they have a medical emergency. So what we're going to do today is work out a budget. Let's say... you've got an even $2000 a month to work with. You have some handouts. Pick an rent price off one of them, I don't care which one, and then check out prices on utilities, and then fill out this worksheet. Put down what you pay for your phone, if you use Netflix or have monthly subscriptions, if you have any medical expenses that need to be paid every month. Just figure out what you got and then we'll talk about it."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Like you have to learn about money.

Astrid Magnussen

Norman Babcock

Beaker

What expenses do you think you'll have?

"Food," was easily the first thing to come to Astrid's mind and out of her mouth, because that was the one thing she had to usually take care of herself. "Electricity, water..."

Things for kids if you had them came to mind after that, too, but that just made Astrid feel awkward for even thinking about it, even if it was kind of true, and the whole reason her mother had to even work jobs she hated in the first place...

Yeah. Definitely just leaving it at that.

"Very good," Kitty said, writing those on the board. "All very important. Water may or may not be included in rent where you live, so that's a good thing to check, too."

"Meep meep meep meep meep meep--"

Most people don't need quite as much put aside for co-payments as Beaker, but...

How in the hole are you?

Well, budgeting was just basic math, really, so Astrid didn't have too much difficulty with it, especially now that she actually did have money of her own, without the expenses that would have gone along with it, like rent and transportation. She'd always had to scrape by on what she could pick out of her mom's purse, anyway, so frugality came almost naturally, as did being able to budget on a shoestring if she had to.

A part of her kind of liked the neat orderliness that went into assigning every dollar to a spot and making it all balance out in the end.

Sorry for potentially depressing you.

Is it Friday yet?

Adulting 101- Monday- 2nd period

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