Simple Budgeting and Consumer Math

Every dollar gets a job before you spend it.

🧱 See It

Picture three money jars on a table, labeled Needs, Wants, and Savings. Before a single dollar gets spent, the whole pile of cash gets split up and dropped into the jars. Once every dollar has a jar, you already know exactly what it's allowed to be used for.

Needs
Wants
Savings

Nothing gets spent until it has a jar. That plan — jars and all — is a budget.

✏️ Draw It

A budget is easier to see as one bar cut into pieces instead of three separate jars. Here's a paycheque split 50% Needs, 30% Wants, 20% Savings:

Needs 50%
Wants 30%
Savings 20%

One bar, three pieces. The pieces always have to add up to the whole bar — 50% + 30% + 20% = 100%.

🔢 Write It

Every budget follows the same balance rule as a bank account:

Income − Expenses = Balance

To split an amount of money into categories by percent, use the same method as the Percents page: turn the percent into a decimal, then multiply.

Category % ÷ 100 × Total = Category Amount

Splitting a total into percents doesn't erase the total — it just relabels every piece of it. All the pieces still have to add back up to 100% of the money you started with.

💡 Worked Examples

Example — Split a $40 allowance: 50% Spending / 30% Saving / 20% Giving

  1. Turn each percent into a decimal: 50% = 0.50, 30% = 0.30, 20% = 0.20
  2. Spending: 0.50 × $40 = $20
  3. Saving: 0.30 × $40 = $12
  4. Giving: 0.20 × $40 = $8
  5. Check: add the three category amounts back together: $20 + $12 + $8 = $40
  6. $40 matches the original allowance, so the split is correct. Spending: $20. Saving: $12. Giving: $8.

🧠 Quick Reference

A budget is a plan for money in vs. money out. After splitting a total into categories, ALWAYS add the category amounts back together as a check — they must equal the original total.
👪 For Parents & Tutors

BC Curriculum (Level 1 / Grade 6, Data and Probability — Financial Literacy): "Simple budgeting and consumer math."

Watch for: The trap isn't any single category calculation — it's allocating percentages that each look individually reasonable (say, 50%, 30%, and 30%) without noticing they quietly add up to more (or less) than 100% of the total, silently over- or under-allocating the money. Always add the category amounts back together as a final check step, the same way the Percents page checks a discount by confirming the final price plus the discount amount rebuilds the original price.

Comes up again: This resurfaces at Level 2 (Grade 7) with financial percentage calculations like sales tax and tips, and at Level 4 (Grade 9) with banking, simple interest, and savings.