Unit 2 Touchstone: Creating a Personal Financial Plan We all have financial goal

Unit 2 Touchstone: Creating a Personal
Financial Plan
We all have financial goals – buying or
renting a home, purchasing a car, paying off a loan, or saving up for a
vacation. And it can be challenging to figure out exactly how to save toward
these goals, given the numerous expenses of daily living. A financial plan
helps you identify how you can reach your short-term and long-term goals and
leverage planning and organization strategies to make meaningful, incremental
progress toward realizing these goals.
Your goal for this assignment is to
build your productivity skill by creating a plan for reaching a specific
financial goal within an identified time frame. You will use productivity
strategies to break financial planning into manageable, organized steps. You
will use Microsoft Excel to develop a realistic plan aligned to your financial
goal – one that considers economic drivers, requirements, and resources.
SCENARIO: Imagine that you are in a position where you need to
move – this could be because of a change in job, a need to modify your living
arrangements, or something else. In addition to searching for different
housing, you want to begin saving for a specific financial goal.
You will use the Assignment Template (an
Excel file) to create a budget that satisfies the scenario. You’ll also answer
reflection questions related to your goals.
ASSIGNMENT: This assignment has two parts.
In
part 1, you will create a financial plan based on the scenario described above.
You’ll use your productivity skills to organize your plan, and you’ll use your
problem solving skills to determine a reasonable rate of savings to reach your
goals. Finally, you’ll apply your technology skills to ensure that your budget
is balanced, and expenditures (like housing) don’t exceed your employment
income.
In part 2, you will answer reflection
questions about the decisions you made and the skills you leveraged while
building your plan.
For this assignment, you will:
·
Create a budget for a
financial plan using Microsoft Excel, ensuring that the information is
organized, accurate, and complete.
·
Identify a personal
savings goal and a time frame for reaching it.
·
Explain how your
choice of housing will help you achieve your personal savings goal.
·
Align your
expenditures to support your goal.
·
Reflect on how
creating a step-by-step and organized approach to the assignment helps you
adjust the financial priorities in your plan.
DIRECTIONS: Refer to the lists below throughout
the writing process. Do not submit your Touchstone until it meets these
guidelines.
1. Creating a Financial Plan
❒ Have you populated the table cells
for income, savings, housing, and other expenditures?
❒ Have you selected a rate of savings
that is realistic in terms of achieving your financial goal?
❒ Have you verified that the sum of
your expenditures (including savings) equals your employment income?
❒ Have you verified that the percent
column for the expenditures totals 100%?
2. Reflection Questions
❒ Have you directly answered each
question that was asked?
❒ Have you provided sufficient
evidence to support each of your answers?
❒ Have you made clear and logical
connections between your conclusions and the data used in the annual budget?
❒ Have you referred to the skills in
this course, if required by the prompt?
❒ Have you included sufficient detail
in your answers?
Requirements
The
following requirements must be met for your submission to be graded:
Abide by the word count limits
where applicable. No answer should exceed 150 words.
Use a readable 11-point font.
All writing and data entries
must be appropriate for an academic context.
Writing must be original and
customized for this assignment.
Plagiarism of any kind is
strictly prohibited.
Submission must include your
name and the date.
Include all the assignment
components in a single file.
Acceptable file formats include
.xls and .xlsx.