Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / April 18, 2002, edition 1 / Page 44
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? I What is I a budget? A budget is a way of keeping track of the 5 money you get and the money you spend. R When you know how much things cost and 3 how you are spending your money, lots of good E things happen. For example, if you know that a candy bar t eosts 50 cents at the drugstore, you won't pay a 75 cents to buy it at a candy machine. If you E know you want to buy a $5.00 movie ticket C Friday night, you wojj't spend your last $5.(X) 3 on something else before then. Some people give budgets a bad rap. They 3 think that budgeting is like gojng on a weight t loss diet where you have to give up things you like. Just the opposite is true. A budget helps 5 you get the things you like the most! On pages 8 and 9, we'll show you how to a| make your own budget. But first, let's look at ? what happened when a boy named Thomas 3 made a budget. 9 Source: The Totally Awesome Money Hook for Kids and Their 3 Parents E hy Adriane G. Berg and Arthur Berg 16. i Activity When you work with a budget, it is important to shop wisely. Practice smart shopping by looking in the newspaper ads tor the best deal on a color television. Write a description of the best buy on these lines. Thomas's totally awesome budget Thomas was always running out of money. There was a long list of stuff this 14-year-old wanted and couldn't have. How did Thomas eventually get what he wanted? With a budget! This is his story. To make a budget, Thomas began by writing down all the money he could count on getting every week. In Moneytalk, all this incoming money is called income. Here is Thomas's income: n $3.00 a day school lunch money (5 days x $3.00) $ 15.00 n $I().(K) a week allowance every Saturday $ 1 0.(X) n $5.00 a week for mowing Mr. Willis's lawn $5.00 n Total income per week $30.00 Thirty dollars a week! Thomas was shocked at how much income he had ? how come he never had enough money? When Thomas did the second part of his budget ? keeping track of his spending ? the mystery was solved. Here are Thomas's regular expenses: n $3.50 a day for school lunch (The price of the school lunch went up by 50 cents; but since Thomas paid no attention, he never told his parents he needed more lunch money.) (5 days x $3.50) $17.50 n $2.50 a day for after-school snack (Every day, Thomas bought the special at the pizza shop: two slices and a soda for $2.50. Thomas only ate one slice and threw the other one away ? what a waste of pizza, and money!) (5 days x $2.50) $ 1 2.50 n Total expenses per week $30.00 t> * c Thomas realized he never had money because he regularly spent all the money he regularly got. And even when extra money came his way ? from gifts, for example ? he spent all that extra money on gum, baseball cards, plastic charms, and other cheap stuff. He 2 didn't save the extra money because he thought a that what he really wanted was so expensive he E could never getrtt. 9 Then Thomas took the third step in making a fc budget. He listed the things he really wanted, 3 his goals: ? n a dog n another Nintendo game n pump sneakers With his budget to guide him, Thomas then made a plan to achieve all of his goals. It took him only 13 weeks to get everything he really wanted! Here's how he did it: Immediately, he told his parents that the price of a school lunch had increased, so they gave him the extra 50 cents each day. And J instead of buying the pizza special, he bought, one slice for $1.50 and brought an extra juice from home. Those changes gave Thomas $7.50 fc a week to spend on other things! <\tter one week, Thomas asked per )s mission from his parents to get'a ' free dog 9 from an animal shel- E ter. I ne manager said there was a $7.50 fee for C the dog's shots. Thomas's parents were sur prised when he had the money to pay the fee himself. 3 After two more weeks, Thomas told every one he knew about the Nintendo game he wanted, asking if they knew where to buy it at a low price. A girl named Judy offered to trade jf her game in return for some baseball cards plus 3 $15.00 in cash. It was a fair deal for both of them. Instead of spending $50.00 on a new game, Thomas spent two weeks' income and traded some of his duplicate cards. Juijy got rid 9 of a game she was tired of and got some E money and cards she really wanted. Ten weeks after that, having saved the $7.50 he had left over each week, Thomas had $75.00 ? enough to buy the pump sneakers. Scftrcc: The Totally Awesome Money Rook for Kids and Their Parents by Adriatic Q. Berg and Arthur Berg lb. C
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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April 18, 2002, edition 1
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