Personal Management Merit Badge

How to fill in your 13-week budget

Requirement 2 has four parts, and the budget above follows them in order.

1. Before week 1, fill in the plan (2a): what you expect to get each week from allowance, gifts, and wages, and what you plan to spend and save. If your money changes from week to week, use a typical week.
2. Balance the plan (2b). The line under the plan says whether you're planning to spend and save more than you'll get. If you're over, cut back until it balances. If money is left over, decide what it's for, like a new goal or more savings.
3. Track it once a week (2c). Fill in one row with what really came in, what you spent, and what you saved. The last column shows whether you saved more or less than you planned that week.
4. Compare it after week 13 (2d). Print the record and look at the weeks that went off plan. Why did they? What would you change next time? That's the conversation your counselor wants to have.

Your record saves in this browser, so use the same phone or computer each week. Clearing your browser data erases it, so print a copy every few weeks as a backup.

The official pamphlet has a few budgeting tips worth copying. Pay yourself first by treating savings as the first bill you pay, aim to save at least 10% of what comes in, and expect 5 to 10% of your budget to go to things you didn't see coming. If you want to split your spending into categories like snacks, phone, and gifts before you total it, build the split with our kids budgeting tool first.

Personal Management merit badge requirements, explained

Here's what each requirement asks, in plain words, plus the free tools that help. Your counselor signs off against the official wording, so read the full requirements on Scouting America's badge page before you meet.

1. Save and shop for a big family purchase

Pick something your family might buy that counts as a major expense, such as a laptop or a new refrigerator. Write a plan for how your family would save for it, and talk it over with your counselor and your family, including how the family's other needs fit around it. Then write a shopping strategy: check quality with consumer reviews or ratings, get prices from at least two sellers, and think about sales, coupons, buying used, or waiting. To see how long the saving would take, put the price and a weekly amount into the savings goal calculator.

2. Plan and track a 13-week budget

Budget your expected income, expenses, and savings for 13 weeks in a row, balance the plan, record what actually happens over those same weeks, and compare the two with your counselor. The fillable budget at the top of this page covers all of it, and the steps above walk through each part.

3. Talk through five money habits

Choose five of these eight topics to discuss with your counselor:

• How getting money makes you feel
• How the amount of cash you carry changes your spending
• Buyer's remorse: how you feel about something three months after you bought it
• How being hungry changes what you buy at the store
• Whether something you bought after seeing an ad worked as well as the ad said
• What happens to money you put in a savings account
• Why people give to charity, and what you think about it
• What you could do to manage your money better

Your 13-week record will hand you real examples for most of them.

4. Explain saving versus investing

Explain how saving and investing differ and when you'd choose each, how return and risk are connected, simple versus compound interest, diversification, and why it's worth saving and investing for retirement. The compound interest calculator shows how money grows when interest earns interest, and the Rule of 72 calculator shows how fast money doubles at a given rate.

5. Describe six kinds of investments

For each of these, say what it is and how it works: common stocks, mutual funds, life insurance, certificates of deposit (CDs), savings accounts, and U.S. savings bonds. One way to prepare is to answer the same three questions for each: who holds your money, how it earns, and what could go wrong.

6. Explain four kinds of insurance

Talk through why people buy car, health, homeowner's or renter's, and life insurance (both whole and term), and how each kind works. If a parent will show you a real policy or bill, find the premium and the deductible on it. The discussion gets much easier once you have seen both.

7. Explain loans and credit

Cover what a loan and interest are, and how the annual percentage rate (APR) shows what a loan really costs. Then compare the ways people borrow, explain how charge, debit, and credit cards differ (and why paying only the minimum on a credit card costs you), and talk about credit reports and ways to pay down debt.

8. Plan and follow a one-week schedule

Write a to-do list for the coming week, ranked by importance. Build a seven-day schedule around your fixed activities, such as school, practices, jobs, and meetings, and fit your to-do items in between. Follow it for a week, keep a daily log of when each task actually got done, then review all three with your counselor. An ordinary school week works better than a holiday week, because it's the kind of week you'll actually have to manage.

9. Write a project plan

Plan a project on paper (you don't have to carry it out), such as a camping trip, a service project, a school or religious event, or a patrol plan. Define the goal, lay out a timeline from start to finish, describe the project, list the resources you'll need and how they help, and write a budget for it. Then walk your counselor through it.

10. Research a career and what it costs

Pick a career you might want after high school or college and talk with your counselor about the qualifications, education, skills, and experience it takes. Then work out what getting there could cost, like tuition, supplies, and room and board, how you'd prepare for those costs, and how you'd cover a shortfall. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook lists the typical education, training, and pay for hundreds of careers.

Tips for parents and merit badge counselors

Give the Scout real money to manage. A longtime counselor quoted on Scouting America's badge page points out that requirement 2 means little if a Scout has no income and the parents pay for everything. The suggested fix: stop covering one regular expense, like school lunch, for the 13 weeks and let the Scout earn the money for it.

Ask for the plan before week 1. The same counselor wants to see the budget before tracking starts, so it can't be filled in afterward to match what happened.

Let the Scout own the numbers. Help find a receipt or remember a birthday check, but let the Scout type in the numbers and explain the misses. A week that went badly teaches more than a perfect record.

Know what a counselor can ask for. The popular usscouts.org workbook says on its cover that counselors may not require it or any similar workbook, and that no one may add to or take away from the official requirements. And requirement 2 itself says a computer-generated budget is fine.

Let your Scout try investing before explaining it

Requirement 4 asks a Scout to explain how return and risk are related, which is much easier after trying it. Penny Time, our free app for kids 8 to 14, lets them do that with their own allowance. The app adds the allowance you set to their balance automatically. They can back small story ventures with part of it, see the risk and the possible reward before saying yes, and learn risk without losing a cent.

You set the allowance and a growth budget, invite your child, and they scan the code on your screen to open Penny Time on their own phone or tablet. No device for them yet? Penny Time still works as your allowance tracker from your phone.

Where this comes from

• Requirements and Eagle status: Scouting America, Personal Management merit badge page, 10 requirements, marked Eagle Required. Source.
• Budget tips: the official Personal Management merit badge pamphlet (2026 edition), a free PDF from Scouting America. Source.
• Counselor tips: a counselor interview on Scouting America's badge page. Source.
• Workbook: U.S. Scouting Service Project, Personal Management Merit Badge Workbook, a free and unofficial PDF. Source.
• Career research: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook. Source.

Last reviewed September 2026. Scouting America updates merit badge requirements from time to time, and the official wording is what your counselor goes by. This page is for educational purposes only. It is not financial advice and not an official Scouting America resource.