Sorry I'm very new to JAVA, and I need to format:

So, apparently, it takes out the spaces I added. lol I need the $ to line up for each number. If you understand what I'm saying.. I also need them to only show 2 decimal places.

Bill Robinson
Gross Amount: $3575
Federal Tax: $536.25
State Tax: $125.12500000000001
Social Security Tax: $205.5625
Medicare/Medicaid Tax: $98.3125
Pension Plan: $178.75
Health Insurance: $75.0
Net Pay: $2356.0

to look like :

Bill Robinson
Gross Amount: $3575.00
Federal Tax: $536.25
State Tax: $125.13
Social Security Tax: $205.56
Medicare/Medicaid Tax $98.31
Pension Plan: $178.75
Health Insurance: $75.00
Net Pay: $2356.00

This is my current code:
outFile.println(name);
outFile.println("Gross Amount: $" + grossAmount);
outFile.println("Federal Tax: $" + fTax);
outFile.println("State Tax: $" + sTax);
outFile.println("Social Security Tax: $" + ssTax);
outFile.println("Medicare/Medicaid Tax: $" + mmTax);
outFile.println("Pension Plan: $" + pPlan);
outFile.println("Health Insurance: $" + HI);
outFile.println("Net Pay: $" + netPay);

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. I seen in my book how to do this, but didn't quite understand it. Maybe after seeing this example, I'll understand it better.

This post was edited by ben_graham7 on Mar 3 2013 05:27pm

Use tabs ("\t" in your printlines to align correctly; you may need more than one per line)

Use NumberFormat to format your currencies:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/NumberFormat.html

The examples in the book are like:

input: System.out.printf("%5d %n", num);

output: __num

printtf ist different to println!

what you are looking for is

which prints:

but this will work with "System.out." and print it to the console. If you want to write it to a File you should use a logger and pass the log to a FileWriter...

I am not quite sure what this is for but if you want to use output on console I suggest using arrays.
Something like: