Question

• post a novel and appropriate response to the question(s) posed [max score of 10 points]
• Deadline for initial posts is Friday, Sept 18, at 11 PM.
• respond in a meaningful way to at least two of your classmates' posts [up to 5 points per response, max of 10 points total]
• Deadline for responses is Monday, Sept 21, at 11 PM.

Be sure your posts are written in complete, grammatically correct sentences. Be sure to answer all parts of the question.

You recently began tracking your income and expenses. Examine your spending and distinguish between wants and needs.

1) How do you define a financial need? How do you define a want?

2) What are your fixed expenses (expenses that do not fluctuate that you must pay regularly each week, month, quarter, or year)?

3) Which of your budget categories must you provide for first before satisfying others? To what extent is each of your expenses discretionary -- under your control in terms of spending more or less for that item or resource? Give a specific example of a non-discretionary and a discretionary expense.

4) Which of your expenses could you reduce if you had to or wanted to for any reason?

You do not need to disclose the specific dollar value of any of your expenses if you choose not to. Instead, you can discuss your expenses as percentages of your total expenses for the week (or month, if you already follow a written budget and can extrapolate the data). For example: if I spent a total of $100 last week and $25 of that was spent feeding my Dunkin' or Starbucks addiction, then I would represent that as 25% of my tota

Answer 1

(1): A financial need can be defined as the need for money by a person to cover basic living expenses like food, housing, utilities etc. and other expenses. Financial need, thus, covers expenses for survival, sustainability and independence. On the other hand want can be defined as the desire for something. This is beyond the basic needs of a person and is mainly related to desires. For example suppose that a person has a basic mobile phone but desires for a new i-phone. This is his want.

(2): My fixed expenses are expenses for my rent (monthly), utilities (monthly), grocery (weekly, phone bill (monthly) and tuition fees (monthly).

(3): I have to first provide for my fixed budgeted items as these have to be paid periodically (either weekly or monthly as stated above). Only once I have cleared my fixed payment obligations I then move to my flexible expenses like clothes, entertainment, miscellaneous etc. All the flexible expenses are largely discretionary in nature and I can determine how much I have to spend on them. An example of a non-discretionary expense is payments of my tuition fees and an example of discretionary expense is entertainment expense.

(4): I can easily reduce my discretionary expenses. For instance I can go out less, eat out less etc. to reduce these expenses. The table is provided below:

Fixed expenses (non-discretionary)	% of monthly total
Rent	17%
Utilities	12%
Grocery	15%
Tuition	25%
Flexible (discretionary)
Entertainment	10%
Clothes	7%
Eating out	6%
Misc	8%
Total	100%