Now Let's Put a Plan into ACTION!

What is personal finance?

It is everything in your life that involves money. Personal Financial Planning is arranging to spend, save, and invest money to live comfortably, have financial security, and achieve goals. Everyone has different financial goals.

Goals are the things that you want to accomplish. Buy a house? Buy a car? Pay for your education? Planning your personal finance is important because it will help you to reach your goals, no matter what they are.

It is up to you to make and to follow your financial plan. Whether spending or saving or investing money, planning can help you to make big or small financial decisions. The financial planning process has SIX steps to help you reach your goals. You were to list and to describe each of these six steps to developing a financial plan--NOW it is time to put those STEPS into PRACTICE.

Complete the following exercise with a PARTNER. Each of you will need to EMBED your DOCUMENT in your individual BLOGS (make sure to resize the view frame)--but, make certain that BOTH of your NAMES are on the DOCUMENT.

EXERCISE: (Use Either GOOGLE DOCS or GOOGLE SPREADSHEET for your submission Your DOCUMENT MUST BE EMBEDDED in your BLOG).

You and your friend are both employed and work earning together at the same office, you each have your driver's license, and have at least one car available to you. Your Friend's aunt lives in Orange County California, and you know that you can stay with her for a road trip to California--

Let's Go to Disneyland!

You and your friend live in Eagle, Idaho and are planning a trip to Disneyland. You are wanting to stay for four (4) nights and leave for home on the fifth (5th) day. You are travelling on a Monday through a Friday, and you are planning to be gone on the FIRST week of MAY 2016.

You each make $415 a week after taxes. Your fixed expenses are $835 per month and your variable expenses are $420 per month. You always "try" to put $200 into savings every month also. You are NOT going to use your savings for the trip, but you can not put as much into savings since you are planning the trip.

You both decide to SPLIT the costs of the TRIP 50-50, and you are not going to start your Financial Plan for this trip until after the holidays--got to buy all those Christmas Presents!

Design a Financial Plan that will allow you to set-aside enough money to make this trip with your friend. Use the following article as a guide.

Walking Through the 6 Steps of Financial Planning

You can plan like a CFP if you follow these steps

By Kent Thune, InvestorPlace Contributor  |  Feb 17, 2015, 11:44 am EST

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:           Due: 11/12/15

• Create a POST in your BLOG; you may want to write this on a paper and EMBED it, but you can also type the following into your BLOG:
• Create a Budget for your VACATION the BUDGET should reflect the costs of ONE member of the team, and not the total for BOTH members of the team.
• Topics should include:
• Transportation
• Food and Snacks
• Lodging
• Tickets to Attractions
• Gifts and Souvenirs
• Write a description of each and how you determined your budget amount and particulars of your plan regarding each topic
• Create a PERSONAL budget for one member of the team
• Topics should include:
• Income
• Fixed Expenses
• Variable Expenses
• Savings
• Expendable Income
• Write a Paragraph on the process that you used to complete this project, rate the difficulty of trying to make the numbers all work. Demonstrate that you were able to develop a plan that allowed for $200 into PERSONAL SAVINGS each month as well as SAVE enough for your VACATION FUNDS.

EXPENDABLE INCOME CANNOT BE GREATER THAN THE COST OF THE TRIP.

Well, now that you are done with your planning.....

Download the spreadsheet below to your computer. Enter into the spreadsheet the values that you have come up with for each item. Notice that the spreadsheet does all of the calculations for you.

WATCH CAREFULLY..... remember.....

EXPENDABLE INCOME CANNOT BE GREATER THAN THE COST OF THE TRIP.

Directions for Submission of this Project:

• Click on the image of the WORKSHEET. You will be taken to a shared document. You will NOT be able to MODIFY this SHARED document.
• Download the document to your DRIVE; 
• Goto FILE and then to MAKE A COPY.
• Change the Name in the Dialog Box from "Copy of NSCS Journey to Disneyland" to "YOUR NAME Journey to Disneyland" (replace the letters "Copy of NSCS" with your NAME.)
• Fill in the numbers that you and your partner have agreed upon for your trip.
• USE THE WHITE BOXES ONLY
• Fill in explanations for the your budgeted amounts for the items on the worksheet.
• Answer the questions asked at the end of the worksheet
• EMBED into your own BLOG the WORKSHEET and the DOCUMENT that you prepared with your partner for this project

You will receive TWO (2) scores for this project:

• 10 possible points for the "Journey to Disneyland Worksheet"
• 10 possible points for the Documents that you prepared while gathering and analyzing data

SCORE: Worksheet: 10 points for balanced worksheet, and well thought out and developed answers to questions. 9-7 points for answers missing content 6-5 points for a worksheet where Expendable Income is less than the Cost of the Trip

SCORE: Your Submission: 10 points for a well thought out and developed plan, regardless of ending cost, 9-7 points for missing elements 6-5 points for a submission of any relevance.