{"id":135,"date":"2006-05-25T08:25:03","date_gmt":"2006-05-25T16:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/25\/handy-personal-finance-spreadsheets\/"},"modified":"2019-09-11T01:38:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T08:38:31","slug":"handy-personal-finance-spreadsheets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/handy-personal-finance-spreadsheets\/","title":{"rendered":"Handy personal finance spreadsheets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good personal finance spreadsheets are hard to find on the web because <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Splog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sploggers<\/a> monopolize the search results. Still, I&#8217;ve managed to collect links to a stack of them that I&#8217;d like to share.<\/p>\n<p>Spreadsheets more useful than web-based calculators because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You can modify the fields and formats to meet your own needs,<\/li>\n<li>You can create &#8220;what-if&#8221; scenarios by making copies of a sheet, and<\/li>\n<li>You can save the data for later use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The following links are all real sites from real people with real useful information to share.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I mentioned <a href=\"https:\/\/pearbudget.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PearBudget<\/a> in a previous entry. It&#8217;s an excellent (though elaborate) budgeting spreadsheet.<\/li>\n<li>If you find PearBudget intimidating, this morning <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lifehacker<\/a> pointed to another spreadsheet-based budgeting system. It&#8217;s bare-bones, which may appeal to some.<\/li>\n<li>Foxway offers a budget tracker spreadsheet that is somewhere between the previous two in complexity. It keeps all expenses for a single year on one page. (For some reason the file has an .XLR extension; you&#8217;ll need to change it to .XLS to open it.)<\/li>\n<li>If, like me, you&#8217;re following the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/in-praise-of-the-debt-snowball\/\">debt snowball<\/a> method of debt reduction, check out Mr. Peanut&#8217;s Debt Snowball Calculator.<\/li>\n<li>Patrick Holt has created a ginormous spreadsheet filled with all manner of personal finance calculators. This thing is mammoth.<\/li>\n<li>GRS gives you a way to check your report for error.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/free-credit-report\/\">How to get a free credit report<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s Your Money offers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/excel.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>22<\/b> different personal finance spreadsheets<\/a>, including several related to auto expenses.<\/li>\n<li>As one might expect, <a href=\"https:\/\/templates.office.com\/?legRedir=true&amp;CorrelationId=1d133040-2cc9-4602-9181-79b7b47fe4a6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft offers many excellent personal finance spreadsheets<\/a> for free download. These are more polished than most of the home-brewed spreadsheets I&#8217;ve listed, though not necessarily as useful. (<b>Addendum:<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/templates.office.com\/?legRedir=true&amp;CorrelationId=79ef6088-e9a0-4c46-bb97-aa0191934140\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">more here<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<li>Ask the Builder has a column about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.askthebuilder.com\/save-for-a-rainy-day\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">saving for a rainy day<\/a> so that home repairs don&#8217;t take you by surprise. There&#8217;s no downloadable spreadsheet here, but there&#8217;s brief mention (and an image) of one that you can easily recreate on your own. (Besides: this is an excellent column for homeowners.)<\/li>\n<li>Num Sum had a huge collection of spreadsheets, but most of them are junk &#8212; and they aren&#8217;t available on the internet any longer. It used to be that if you had patience, you could sift through to find some gems, such as the home maintenance schedule &#8212; but that&#8217;s not true today. Num Sum spreadsheets were not downloadable, and registration was required to use them.<\/li>\n<li>And from Get Rich Slowly, you can download Vintek&#8217;s power of compounding spreadsheet and the default Excel amortization table, a useful loan calculator. (Vintek sent me a generic revised version of his spreadsheet, which I&#8217;m dubbing the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/power-of-compounding\/\">magic of compound returns<\/a> spreadsheet.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There must be thousands of other great personal finance spreadsheets out there. I&#8217;ll share the best of those I find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good personal finance spreadsheets are hard to find on the web because <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Splog\">sploggers<\/a> monopolize the search results. Still, I&#8217;ve managed to collect links to a stack of them that I&#8217;d like to share.<\/p>\n<p>Spreadsheets more useful than web-based calculators because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You can modify the fields and formats to meet your own needs,<\/li>\n<li>You can create &#8220;what-if&#8221; scenarios by making copies of a sheet, and<\/li>\n<li>You can save the data for later use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The following links are all real sites from real people with real useful information to share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[475],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}