Report

I used Microsoft Excel to complete my spreadsheets for my earnings and expenses as well as planning My Dream. I was pretty familiar with how to use Excel as I have experience making spreadsheets, however I did get a refresher by going to a tutorial homepage at Microsoft Excel Tutorial.

I thought that Microsoft Excel worked very well for this project.  It was a nice tool to use to help layout my expenses and estimated income and expenses for My Dream.

I found this online home down payment calculator in which you add values to categories to determine what your monthly net budget should be after making expenses and a mortgage. I added all of my expenses into the calculator, along with an estimate to how much I want to spend on a home. The results were not very accurate. It is still hard to tell about the outcome of my earnings and expenses because I expect them to change over the next year with my career in nursing.  I didn’t find this tool helpful for me because I don’t have many expenses because I still live with my parents. However when I start working as nurse this summer, my income is going to increase and this money is what I plan to use to save toward my goal. I think that this tool would be more helpful for somebody who had a diverse amount of expense (completely independent). Also, my goal is not to have a monthly mortgage payment because I want to save for a down payment. On this online calculator, there is a space that reads: Down payment (if any).

However, looking at this tool from a brighter perspective, I think it did have helpful components because it gave me an idea about mortgage loans, payments if I needed them. It also gave me an idea of how much my estimated homeowners insurance and property taxes may be. These expenses are a few that I did not even initially think of while doing this project. The link to this online calculator is at Down Payment Calculator.

I can see myself using the online Down Payment Calculator  in the future when I actually do have more of my own payments such as rent and electricity. I think that this tool would be beneficial when I do know exactly how much my income is and what my expenses will be. However this online calculator was helpful to see exactly how much taxes and mortgage payments would be.

I do feel that all of the tools I used in this project expanded my thinking toward My Dream and I have learned much more on how much it will exactly take and in what timeframe before I can make a down payment. There are more issues that even savings accounts that are taken into consideration.