Welcome back to Math at Work Monday! (We took time off from this regular feature, so that we could spend more time celebrating Math Appreciation Month.) If you’re new here, each Monday I post an interview with someone about how they use math in their jobs. I’ve interviewed Maryland’s Commissioner of Health, one of my former students who is a glass blower and my sister who is a speech therapist.
Because we’re focusing on personal finance this month, I thought it would be a great idea to reintroduce you to Jameel Webb-Davis, a financial organizer and budget counselor who helps people get realistic about their finances.
Can you explain what you do for a living?
I help people get their finances organized. Sometimes that involves actual bookkeeping work – going into people’s offices, balancing their checkbook, organizing their mail, entering stuff into a computer, generating checks for them to sign, and then making little spreadsheets for them to look at telling them when they’re going to run out of money. This brings a bit of money which provides time for me to be a budget counselor.
The Budget Counseling is much more fun. That’s where I sit with people one-on-one, have them tell me how often they get paid, how much they make, and what their bills are, amount due and due dates. I plug everything into a spreadsheet (it takes about 30 minutes) and then I counsel them around whatever money issues they may have. Some people are struggling and don’t know how to pay their bills, but most are making good money and don’t understand why it disappears on them. Most sessions turn into therapy sessions rather than a discussion about making or saving money.
People with a lot of money are just as bad, if not worse, at managing their money as people with a little money. In fact the amount of money and education you have has nothing to do with how well you manage your day-to-day money life. It just takes arithmetic and subtraction, but many people find this hard to believe.
When do you use basic math in your job?
I use it every day. Addition and subtraction. Easy stuff, but people run from it screaming. The spreadsheet I designed looks basically like a checkbook register (see it here). I use it for my own personal finances. I plug in how much money a person has today. Then I list all the times the person will have to spend money in the future (date, reason, amount). Then I list all the times the person is expecting money in the future (date and amount). Then I sort the list by date. I’ve basically created a checkbook balance for the future. This way they can know exactly how much extra money they have or when they’re going to run out of money.
Read the rest of the post here. If you have questions, feel free to ask them here or in the original post. I’ll see them in both places, and I’ll be sure to let Jameel know.