I think every teacher should take a martial arts class, and I don’t say this because I used to teach Karate. I say this because in Karate you will eventually hear a sentence similar to the following: If someone ever tries to grab you on the street…

Like many people, I hated Math. I hated Algebra in particular and have often felt like I’ve never use it. The problem is that no teacher ever told me: If you need to make a household budget in Excel…

That’s right. Today I’m going to touch on the idea that you can use a spreadsheet for you household budget, but I’m going to take it one step further so that everyone can play along. For starters, there are people out there who live check to check and others who have one or two jobs and never know how much they might make in a week. I becomes hard to plan your bills when you don’t know where the next check is going to come in.

Well lets just assume you don’t have the money to get Excel. That’s where OpenOffice.org comes in, and because we love things that are free but effective, that’s what we’re going to use today. If you don’t have OpenOffice, you could still use Microsoft Office since they work the same. But this demonstration is with OpenOffice.

Budgeting 102
A Budget is pretty simple. Step 1 is taking all your bills for the month, Step 2 is adding all of them together, Step 3 is setting aside that much every month, Step 4 is spending what’s left on Amazon.com… or maybe that’s just me.

As I said before, the hard part comes when your paychecks fluctuate. And here is where Algebra (I know, I hated admitting that) comes in to play. Look at this Formula:

B2*B1=B3

In your spreadsheet you put the words:
Pay Per Hour in A1
Hours Per Week in A2
and Pre Tax Pay in A3
You leave B1 and B2 blank but type =(B2*B1) in B3.

Now, when you type the amount you make an hour in B1 and the hours you work in a week in B2 you will instantly see a number appear in B3.

Using this simple little formula you can look at how much you make and determine how many hours you need to work. Is it worth it to get that second job? I don’t know but =(C2*C1) in C3 will allow you to use column C to add in that second job.

Mind you all of this is pre-taxed and clearly you can add more complex formulas. But even at this level you can predict if you need to work more hours at your current job, just ask for a $0.25 instead, or just find a job that pays just that much more. Since the formula is alive the data changes to not only budget your money, but help predict what you will take home.

 In my own spreadsheet I even have all of my bills being totaled. I then have the Est. Paycheck reduced for what I estimated my taxes to be, and then have the bills subtracted from that total amount. Now , hold on to your hats, I then have that amount divided by 4 so that I know, more or less, my own weekly budget for imported beerI mean online books!

 When you look at it this way, Algebra isn’t about finding out what X is. We always know what X is because it’s the trip, the gift or the outfit we want. But in this way Algebra becomes a system for asking: If X is the cost, then what’s the best way for me to aquire the funds.

To me, that’s the real meaning of working smatter over harder.