The College Journal: Creating a Weekly Budget

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Should I Keep a Budget in My Journal?

Absolutely! Creating a budget, one week at a time, can help students who've never created budgets before start thinking about financial goals and responsibilities.

The College Journal includes template pages for Weekly Reviews, and one of the prompts in the Weekly Review asks students to gather receipts and bank statements from the previous week to help them create a budget for the following week.  Especially helpful for visual learners, the prompt is accompanied by a pie graph template for the budget. 

Each student budget will be unique because each budget must take the student's income or money available for spending into account. 

How to Create a Weekly Pie Graph  Budget

Determining Weekly Income

As stated previously, a budget requires a knowledge of both income and expenses. A student generally receives income by paycheck, allowance, financial aid, or through savings. When income arrives once a month, then that income must be divided by the number of weeks in a month (4) in order to determine how much income the student has per week. If income arrives once every nine months, as may be the case if a student receives financial aid during the academic year and works in the summer, then the income must be divided by the number of weeks per nine months in order to determine a weekly income (36). In some instances, income will come from a variety of sources, like financial aid, work-study, and savings or allowance.

Determining Weekly Expenses

Weekly expenses for a week may be categorized as simply "savings," "food," and "gas." However, some weeks may include "rent and utilities," "entertainment" (like going to the movies), special "school supplies" for projects, "textbooks," or even "medical appointments" or "medication." By planning for the upcoming week, students can learn to schedule when, how, and how much income is spent. 

Using the Pie Graph

Once income and expenses for the following week are determined, the budget can be drawn into the pie graph template on the Weekly Review page. First, divide the pie graph into divisible areas with a pencil. If your income is $340.00, for example, each 1/4 of the pie graph equals $85.00. Alternatively, use percentages to determine how much of your income is being used for each expense, and divide the pie graph by percentages, like the example below. If your portion of the rent is $300.00, that is 88% of your weekly income. 

Feel free to work ahead on your pie graphs (in pencil) if you prefer to work out your budget for the entire month instead of one week at a time. You could also keep a list of your weekly or monthly expenses and bill due dates as one or more of your Freestyle Journaling entries. Lastly, one of your daily entries might be a "savings tracker," in case there's something you need or want in the future (like an out-of-town trip, a formal dress, or car repairs).

Raising Awareness

Some expenses will be inevitable, like rent and medications, while others might be "wants" and not "needs." In order to raise awareness of financial responsibilities, you should make as many notes in the margins as possible or necessary.  This can help with planning for future weeks or even for reminding yourself of important lessons learned. For example, you might write down what you want to do with your paycheck the following week before you forget: You need school supplies for a project (will cost about $34.00), you have a date to go to the movies (about $17.00), and you have a dental appointment with a copay ($30.00). 

Notes or not, the most important part of tracking your finances is that you are tracking your finances and learning more about where your money goes so you can make better and more informed financial decisions each week.

Want to read more about The College Journal? Try

The College Journal: A Fill-in-the Blank Journal for First Year College Students
The College Journal: Prompts for Freestlye Journaling
The College Journal: Ideas for Your Special Tracker
The College Journal: Supplies on a Student Budget

Copyright Amy Lynn Hess. Please contact the author for permission to republish.