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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Customer- They buy products from a business.
Consumer- They use business's products.

You can be a customer and a consumer in one business transaction.
Ex. You log onto the Apple website to buy the new I phone 7.

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Need- Something you have  to have to survive
Want- Something you would like to have.

Ex. Need- Food, water, clothing, shelter
Want- Car, candy, games, phone

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Budgeting is a balancing act. The secret to sustaining yourself from day to day while also reaching financial goals is building a budget that balances your needs with your wants. Pinpointing the difference between the two is a subjective proposition.

In 2005, Senator Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi penned a book titled "All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan" that proposes a viable way to distinguish between wants and needs. In the book, the pair introduced the 50/30/20 budgeting rule. This method of budgeting, which calls for devoting half of your net income to your needs and then splitting the difference on the remainder between wants (30%) and savings (20%), is often cited as a reliable way of managing expenses.﻿﻿

Before you can gauge how practical this approach might be for you, however, you have to determine how to divide everything up. Although the process of distinguishing between your wants and needs may seem fairly straightforward, these distinctions can be hard to discern.

Understanding Needs vs. Wants

Some needs are easier to nail down. You need a place to live, clothes to wear, and enough food and water to maintain your health-these are the elemental things that you need to survive. They're indispensable. You can argue that everything else is not imperative, but this is where the lines start to blur. The reality is, we make many of our purchasing decisions subjectively rather than objectively.

For instance, some people consider health care to be a necessity. For others, benefits are a luxury. When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, people began facing stiff fines for going without coverage. Despite this federal mandate, millions of working Americans remained uninsured because they're simply unable to afford the premiums.

Other purchases can technically be categorized as a need, even though most would consider them a want. Does eating an expensive meal at a high-end restaurant qualify as a need? Or what about clothes? Do you have to stick with generic sneakers or can you splurge on a pair of expensive Adidas? Ultimately, it's all about perspective and how you choose to manage your money.

Deciding Between Wants and Needs

Figuring out how to divide your income and prioritize your expenses can be as simple as putting everything down on paper. Prateek Vasisht, editor of TotalFootball and the Business Design Rover, wrote about this exact topic.

In the piece, he recommends using a variation of the Growth-Share Matrix developed by the Boston Consulting Group in the early 1970s. The practice calls for listing your wants and needs individually in four different categories. The visualization technique allows you to see where your expenses fit clearly.﻿﻿

Categorizing your priorities, the chart allows you to list your wants in one column and your needs in the other and then divide the columns in half and designate the top choices as a high priority and the bottom as low priority. From there, you can make informed decisions.

You end up with the following four categories:

High-priority needs

High-priority wants

Low-priority needs

Low-priority wants

Vasisht also suggests trying out the MoSCoW method, which stands for Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have. Like the Growth-Share Matrix, the MoSCoW prioritization technique, conceived by Dai Clegg in his book, "Case Method Fast-Track: A RAD Approach," involves breaking things down in four different categories.﻿﻿ Both of these methods help you to clarify which things should be the highest-priority items in your budget.

Appreciate What You Have

Once you become better at differentiating between wants and needs, you'll probably see that you've been able to fulfill more of your desires over the years than you realized. And that can be a significant turning point.

When you find things that you want to buy or do that you currently can't afford, it becomes all too easy to focus on those things to the point of overlooking what you already have. Take time to reflect on all the ways that you've been fortunate and the needs you are able to meet every day.

When you get clarity about your wants and needs, you can determine what's most important and plan your budget to make those dreams a reality.

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Budgeting and the Difference Between Wants vs. Needs

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Budgeting is a balancing act. The secret to sustaining yourself from day to day while also reaching financial goals is building a budget that balances your needs with your wants. Pinpointing the difference between the two is a subjective proposition.

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As the author of a book called " Not Just a Living," about lifestyle entrepreneurs, and a former long-time columnist on the same topic for The Wall Street Journal's Startup Journal online publication, I have long taken the position that people start businesses primarily in search of independence. Years ago I'd seen several surveys asking entrepreneurs about the particular carrots they were chasing. Terms like "independence" and "self-determination" and "freedom" seemed to almost always rank at or near the top. That settled it, as far as I was concerned.

Actually, it's more complicated. Recent research indicates that entrepreneurs' motivations vary along several different axes. If you know what industry they are in, what type of company they have founded and what country they are in, you can make some generalizations. Otherwise, it's almost as if every entrepreneur has a different reason for going into business.

If you look only at people who have started fast-growth businesses, for instance, you find people whose biggest single motivation is wealth creation, according to this 2009 study for the Kauffman Foundation. When researchers quizzed 549 company founders in 12 high-growth industries, "build wealth" was the strongest factor in starting a company. Other motivators included capitalizing on a business idea, the appeal of a startup culture, a desire to own a company, and lack of interest in working for someone else. Only the last resembles a desire for independence.

Fast-growth entrepreneurs are, of course, a minority. But even when we examine the vast, amorphous, heaving body of small business owners, we don't find that independence and the freedom to make their own decisions is the only, or even the main reason people start businesses.

In 2006, a worldwide poll of more than 4,000 small-business owners found the most common motivation for going into business, cited by 70 percent, was making enough money to cover living expenses. Sixty-four percent mentioned a desire to have more control over the future, which may or may not be equivalent to a desire for independence.

To me the most interesting finding comes from this second survey. It found that in countries where individual freedom is highly prized, independence is, indeed, the main reason for starting a business. That's true in the U.S., for instance. American entrepreneurs are the world's most likely, at 67 percent, to say that being their own boss is an important motivator.

Elsewhere, it's different. Brazilians were most likely to cite providing employment (71 percent) and contributing to society or the community (64 percent) as important motivations. In China, small business owners were the most likely, at 59 percent, to say that an important motivation was to build something that can be passed on to family members. So only Americans are most likely to go into business in search of independence.

Meanwhile, a scholarly research study from the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research basically found that what motivates entrepreneurs is a belief that chances for success are pretty good. The authors report that risk tolerance, self-efficacy -- the ability to get things done, including start businesses -- and perceived net desirability are major predictors of self-employment intentions.

Those net desirability calculations involve trading independence and wealth creation off against the chances of failure and bankruptcy, among other factors. But what it comes down to is that people become entrepreneurs, not strictly because they want to, but because they can. What does this mean to the wannabe entrepreneur? Essentially, whatever reason you have is as good as any other. You don't have to want to imitate Michael Dell to be like Mike.

Mark Henricks has reported on business, technology and other topics for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and other leading publications. Follow him on Twitter
Image courtesy of Flickr user Robert Couse-Baker, CC2.0

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Why Do People Start Businesses? It's Not What You Think

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As the author of a book called " Not Just a Living," about lifestyle entrepreneurs, and a former long-time columnist on the same topic for The Wall Street Journal's Startup Journal online publication, I have long taken the position that people start businesses primarily in search of independence.

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Maximize profits for its owners or stakeholders while maintaining corporate social responsibility