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Learning Sequence

Activity 6: A budget to live by (Maths)

IMAGINE that you have moved into a share house with friends. You'll need to prepare a yearly budget because you have decided to go on an overseas trip which may take you 2 years to save for.

To prepare the budget, you'll need to calculate your income and expenses. Imagine you are working in the Information Technology industry and your nett income (after tax) is a fortnightly wage of $970.00.

2. WORK OUT how much you would be earning weekly, monthly and yearly.

Weekly:  $970 (divided by) 2 = ?
Yearly:    $970 x 26 = ?
Monthly: $970 x 26 (divided by) 12 = ?

3. Your expenses will be less predictable than your income. You'll need to allow for recurring expenses so you don't get caught out by unexpected bills. CALCULATE the monthly expenses and the weekly expenses from the yearly expenses below.

Remember there are 12 months in a year and 52 weeks in a year. You can't divide monthly payments by 4 to get a weekly figure. You must work from the yearly figure. 

	Yearly	Monthly	Weekly
Car registration	$277	$23.08	$5.33
Car insurance	$600
Car repairs and service	$399
Health insurance	$250
Gym membership	$330

4. Quarterly means every 3 months or one-quarter of a year. CHANGE the quarterly costs below to a weekly amount. If you'd like to write your answers in tables like the ones below, you can go to the PDF A budget to live by .

	Quarterly	Monthly	Weekly
Electricity	$87	$29.00	$6.69
Telephone	$102
Gas	$45
Water	$22

5. CHANGE  these weekly payments to monthly payments:

	Weekly	Monthly
Rent	$80.00	$346.67
Kitty	$25.00
Car loan	$49.00
Petrol	$28.00
Fares	$12.00
Eating out/Takeaway	$15.00
Clothing	$25.00
Credit card	$30.00
Internet ISP	$7.00
Entertainment	$42.00

6. PREPARE a yearly budget that includes the income and expenses above. Alternatively, you could prepare your own spreadsheet that totals your income and expenses.

7. ANSWER the following questions:

a. Are you living within your budget? How did you know?
b. If yes, how much will you be able to save in one year?
c. You will need to save $6000.00 for your overseas trip. How long will it take you to save this much?
d. If you decided to move your trip forward so that you were leaving in 10 months, how could you adjust your budget to achieve this?

This activity can be found in the NSW Money Stuff Teacher resource book – Mathematics page 13 .

Explore additional learning activities (which include extension and revision tasks) in the print resources section under Print resources - Victoria.

Linked Learning Outcomes - NSW
Theme 6: Mathematics in the Community
1. The student chooses and sequences arithmetic operations to solve problems.
2. The student selects and uses appropriate mental written or calculator techniques to perform a variety of operations involving fractions, decimals, percentages and positive integers.

Learning Outcomes – Victoria
Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) Discipline-based learning
Domain: Maths
Dimension: Number, Space, Measurement, Chance and data, Structure and Working Mathematically
Level 5
Students use efficient mental and/or written methods for arithmetic computation involving rational numbers, including division of integers by two-digit divisors.
Students formulate conjectures and follow simple mathematical deductions.
Level 6
Students carry out arithmetic computations involving natural numbers, integers and finite decimals using mental and/or written algorithms.
Students choose, use and develop mathematical models and procedures to investigate and solve problems set in a wide range of practical, theoretical and historical contexts.

Learning Outcomes - Western Australia
(Maths)
N 8.4 Calculates with whole numbers, money and measures, drawing mostly on mental strategies to add and subtract two-digit numbers and for multiplications and divisions related to basic facts.
WM 5.5 Draws on mathematical knowledge to give reasons for conjectures before testing them, and refines and modifies conjectures as a result of testing.