Annie Hedges

Question #1: How good were Morgan and Alex at budgeting for the 30 day period? 

Alex and Morgan were overall pretty good when it came to budgeting.  At first, they were not sparing any money to buy anything.  They would say that they were really hungry, but they didn’t buy any snacks or food because they didn’t have money to spare. They couldn't afford furniture so they slept on an air mattress and ate what they could get.  Eventually, they got furniture from a store that supplied furniture to people who might not be able to afford it. As the days passed, they got jobs and were able to stay out of debt for the most part.  But when they had kids, Morgan bought them candy and took them out to do fun things, which did not help them financially.  They barely had enough money to begin with, and when he started to spend money on things they didn't need, things got tighter. Also, Alex was a lot more cautious when it came to spending money, and when Morgan started spending more she got stressed.  But overall, they budgeted their 30 days well.  They were prepared and tried to spend as little as possible.

Question #10: Describe how you world make the decision regarding going to the doctor vs. trying to keep the finances in the black. What if children were involved -- would that change your decision making process? If so, how?

I think that the decision to go to the doctor should be decided carefully.  When Alex went to the doctor, she was diagnosed with an infection that she needed medicine to cure.   But when Morgan went to the doctor, all they told him to do was to be careful using his hand.  If they had had the kids at that time, Morgan’s visit would just be a waste of money because he could have rested it on his own without someone telling him what to do and charging $500.  They were also already struggling financially, and going to the doctor put them in debt when they got their hospital bills.  They were lucky that they didn’t have kids at the time because it would have been even harder to pay for their visits.  I think that if it were me, I would try to hold off on going to the doctor for as long as I could because I need to keep my finances down and save as much money as I can for real emergencies.