12. Personal Budget

Lab Quiz

The quiz will be available during the first few minutes of lab, which you will complete individually.  Your lab TA will open the quiz and tell you the password you will need to get into the quiz for your section. For convenience, please click on your lab section below to access your quiz:

• Section 10 am -  https://forms.gle/JxYSpdVueCPUAPhq5 

• Section 11 am - https://forms.gle/eDxMdVLVWtfAv8Pe9 

Lab Activity

Use Google Sheets to create a personal budget reflecting your estimated income and expenses after graduation.

You will start from the template shown below, and finish filling it in and formatting it.

Note 1:  Working with the spreadsheet and getting it to work for you is more important ( for the lab assignment ) than the actual numbers.  If you don't know some value, just give it your best guesstimate and move on.

Note 2:  If you feel that any of the requested information is personal and confidential, then feel free to use made-up numbers instead.  ( But try to keep them reasonable. )  See Note 1 above.

Note 3:  You may find this spreadsheet useful for your personal use after the lab is over.  In that case you should probably make another copy for your personal use, separate from the one turned in for lab credit.

Follow these steps to complete the lab:

1. Create a copy of the template by clicking this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gNoaFpqW0Mris7Xcb-vpXffjzKOWrohvh3HkDr8Sp8Q/copy

2. Format columns B through L to display numbers using dollar signs (currency format) and no decimal places.

3. Modify your gross yearly income depending on salary estimates for your major and expected job, using values from this page.

4. Use formulas to calculate your taxes, net yearly income, and monthly take-home pay. Use this value of monthly take-home pay for the income in the monthly budget.

5. Insert three or more new rows in the range of rows 9-15 for additional expenses (e.g. Netflix, Cell phone, Internet, Entertainment, Gym). Provide your best estimate of reasonable monthly values for the monthly budget and for the actual expenses for these in the months of January to April.

6. Enter formulas into the rest of the purple cells. These formulas should calculate the values based on the description provided in the spreadsheet.  This way when any value changes in the spreadsheet, the rest of the spreadsheet updates automatically.

7. Use formulas to place averages of the actual expenses between January and April into the red cells.

8. (Extra credit) For the month of January, create a pie chart which shows the total expenditures including all the categories.  Also create a bar graph showing potential savings (Income - Expenses) for the four months.

At this point, all the cells with ??? in the template should be filled in with the appropriate values/formulas, with the addition of a few extra rows of expenses. Changing any of the values (salary, expenses) should automatically result in everything else being updated.

This Microsoft Excel tutorial may be helpful. It includes information on formatting, using formulas, and a brief intro to graphing. This page from the Google Workspace Learning Center also has lots on information on using Google Sheets.

Once you are done, you must set the permissions to allow us to access and grade your work!  Do this as follows (also shown by means of the images below):

1. Select the green "Share" button near the upper-right

2. Select "Share with University of Illinois at Chicago" to change the behavior (If you are logged in with a non-UIC account, it will instead say "Change")

3. Select the option for "Anyone with the Link" is an "Viewer"

Once you are done and once you make sure the permissions are set correctly, copy the link to your spreadsheet (to do this, click on "Copy link" under the sharing settings, seen in the middle image above). Turn this in on Gradescope, under "Lab 12: Personal Budget." 

This lab must be completed by 11:59pm on Tuesday, November 12, 2024. No late submissions will be accepted.

Grading Rubric:

0.25 point: Numeric values are formatted as dollar amounts with no decimal places.

0.25 point: Gross yearly income is updated based on salary estimates for your major and expected job.

0.5 point: Three or more new categories have been added to the monthly expenses, with values filled in for the monthly budget and for actual expenses spent on these categories for at least 4 months.

0.5 point: Values in all the purple highlighted cells come from formulas

0.5 point: Values in all the red highlighted cells come from formulas that calculate the monthly averages

Extra credit (0.5 point): For the month of your choosing, create a pie chart which shows the total expenditures including all the categories.  

Extra credit (0.5 point): Create a bar graph showing potential savings (Income - Expenses) for the months listed.