• 12.1 Students understand common economic terms and concepts and economic reasoning.
• 12.2.8 Explain the role of profit as the incentive to entrepreneurs in a market economy.

The budget in ten years project required students to assemble a complete budget based on a salary they could expect to earn in ten years. We included everything from our taxes to insurance to monthly payments and savings. Specific items in our calculations included car and house payments, insurance (car, health, and home), utilities, groceries, savings, charity donations, and taxes. In order to find the necessary information, we used public databases like Salary.com to find median salaries for careers we might go into. We also used the sites of utility providers in the region we wanted to live in to calculate these portions of our budgets. Further, we included estimated house and car payments and added them to our expenses. The final compilation of data was assembled into a spreadsheet with a brief explanation.

This project was particularly illuminating for me because it showed me that I could liver comfortably with a nice car (Mustang Shelby GT500) and a nice house (comfortable condo in Newport Beach) on the median salary of a mid-level aerospace engineer. A $160,000 salary was enough to cover monthly payments on home and car loans, insurance, utilities, and anything else that might come up after taxes with still money left over at the end of the year. The result was extremely satisfying, and gave me confidence in the path I have set for myself in life.