Hi David, Thanks so much for your detailed explanation of keeping track of money using excel. I hate math and I have never used excel, a table or a spread sheet. So, I think that I will be contacting you off list with other questions. But, I really like your idea. I am going to look into the Money Talks from APH, but your idea sounds a lot like the type of thing I like to do with bill paying, only I use paragraphs, because I have never felt comfortable with real math, tables or columns. But I am looking for a change, so this sounds intriguing.
Paulette -----Original Message----- From: David [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2010 9:23 AM To: Paulette Vickery; 'gwInfo' Subject: Re: Keeping track of money For a few years now, I have been using a spreadsheet, set up in Excel, for all my personal ecconomics. It works just fine, and the big benefit is, you want it to do a different calculation, or sum up particular accounts, or whatever, you just have to learn the formula procedures, set it up once - and hereafter it does what you want. In other words: Excel is fully accessible for this kind of job, so first set up, you don't have to look anything further; and run all the hazzle of getting used to a new software. And, you don't have to have things presented the way others thought it to be 'nice looking'. You even can sort different jobs into different spreadsheets, and store them all on your system under a particular folder. So, if you want one sheet for your day-to-day financies, then put that in one spreadsheet. The next file - or spreadsheet - could hold your financies for that vaccation you are doing in the end of the year. And, if you want to keep a certain balance of how much money your daughter spent on jewelry and cosmetics, last six months, simply make up a spreadsheet for that particular project. More or less, your fantacy makes the limitations. To make a formula in excel, or even to operate excel, is not really that complicated, first you take an afternoon or two to sit down and put your hands on to it. And, if you already have paid the money for the Office suite, why go on and pay a load for another software. I did look into some money software back in time. But the accessibility is only one reason, why I did choose to stay off from them. Another reason is that they tend to cost a chunk. And in almost all cases, you had to follow a standardized setup. A setup that simply did not fit into my ecconomic situation. Some of them might have limitations as to how many accounts you can have, or requires you to put ALL your household expenses into one given spot. What then, if you want to compare how much money you spend in one store, compared to the other? Or, if you want to know, how much of the monthly budget is spend on McDonald, and how much you use for that favorite pizza restaurant down on the corner. Not sure, if the premade softwares will let you split up your financies that much. But in Excel, you simply make one coloumn hold the tag of the expense, and the other the actual number. So in cell A1, you write things like Grocery store, A2 says McDonald, A3 says Pizza-corner. Then in B1, B2, and B3, you input your spendings. And when you reach B4, you go to the menu bar, or ribbon, and choose Insert, and then Formula. Here enter the formula B1:B3, and press Enter. Now save your sheet, and whenever you come home from the store, open it and update the numbers in B1, B2, and B3. The total sum, will automatically be updated in B4. Just a quick example to get you started. Make it as simple, or advanced, as you want and need. If all your Car expenses have been summed up in F30, and all your Clothing expenses have been summed up in F50; now you want the total of all of this in F70. Ok, the formula is this simple - to be entered in cell F70 - F30+F50. As you see, it is a bit of setup the first time. First you have worked out a layout that you feel meets your needs, I suggest doing the following. Let's say, you make a spreadsheet for August 2010. Well name it August 2010.xls. Throughout the month of August, do your play around, and make sure the layout becomes what you really need, and feel comfortable with. This means, for you to put in all the different Accounts, Store names, Tags and so forth, that you will be needing later on. And, it means, you do enter all the formulas for totals, grand totals, comparisons and whatever you want the sheet to do for you, throughout a month. When August is gone: 1. Open your Windows Explorer. Point your cursor at the file named August 2010.xls. 2. Press Ctrl-C, and immediately thereafter, Ctrl-V. You now will have a new file, at the end of the list, named Copy Of August 2010.xls. 3. Point yourself at this one, and press F2. Then rename the file to something like Monthly Standard.xls. 4. press Enter on this file, and it will open in Excel. It now holds all your entries from August. Since we do not want all the numbers to clutter up later months, simply take your time to go over all the numeric cells, and enter 0 in them. Note that, you should leave the cells holding formulas alone in this process. So, in my initial example, the cells B1, B2 and B3, should all be edited to hold the number 0. Since B4 holds the formula to sum up the three above numbers, it should not be edited. It will anyway calculate the three ZERO entries you made, and the B4 cell will read 0, automatically. 5. When done, save your file with Ctrl-S, and exit by Alt-F7. 6. To ensure you don't clutter this file later on, point your cursor to it in Explorer, and press Alt-Enter. This will open the Properties menu. Make sure the Write Protected checkbox is set to checked. Then press OK. So, what then about September? Do the following: 1. Open Windows Explorer. 2. Point yourself to the Monthly Standard.xls file. 3. Press the Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, sequence. 4. the new file Copy Of Monthly Standard.xls, will be at the bottom of your filelist. 5. Point yourself on that one, press Alt-Enter, and uncheck the Write protected checkbox. 6. Press F2, and rename the file September 2010.xls. 7. open the file in Excel, and start your filling in for september. Well, as you see, first things get rolling, it will be a breeze to track your future spendings, and expenses. Many will feel uncertain about an approach like this. Mainly, this might be due to a lack of understanding of what a spreadsheet is, firsthand. So, just a couple of lines, that hopefully will leave you a bit more informed, unles you already know a spreadsheet. If you took , a blank page. Now make four horizontal, and two vertical lines on the page. You are left with a page, holding a grid that consists of five lines, and three columns on each line. In other words, fifteen small boxes. Now, we name each box a cell, and we tag each line with a consequtive number, and each column with a consequtive letter. This gives us the top left cell the tag A1. The cell immediately to the right of this one, will be tagged B1, and the upper right cell will be named C1. Next Line, will be named A2, B2, and C2. and so forht. You get the idea. In a spreadsheet, each individual cell has the chance of being a Text cell, holding whatever characters you enter into it. Or, it can be set to hold date and time stamps. Or, it could be a numeric cell, holding numbers with or without decimals, as you like it. It is up to you, what each cell should hold. Excel will basically determine the kind of cell, from what you enter. If you want to force it to handle the contents in a given way, place the cursor in the cell, and press Ctrl-1, then tab once, and explore the menu choices. Press Enter when done, and the cell will be locked to handle the entered info in a particular way. The forth kind of cell, is the ones that hold formulas. I already have covered how to enter a basic formula. You can use the plus symbol to add cells, the dash (or minus) to subtract cells, the Slash and Star symbols for dividing and multiplying cells respectively. If you are to sum up a range of cells, i.e the cells from A2 through A15, you use the Colon symbol - and your formula will read A2:A15. You can place a formula anywhere in the spreadsheet, have as many formulas you want, and have the formulas depending on each other. Like in the example above, all the car expenses - that might be running in the cells from F25 through F29, will be summed up in F30, by the formula F25:F29. All your Food expenses we already showed was summed up in B4. The total expenses of the month are all summed up in F70, which might have the formula: B4+F30. If now, you make a change in cell B1, since you just got in from the grocery store, the sum in B4, for all your food expenses will be updated, but likewise the grand total in F70, since it is set to depend on B4. As you keep playing around with spreadsheets, you will find them to be very powerful. The biggest tasks to overcome, often will be your mathematic knowledge as to figuring how you want the summing done, and the fact that you might have to become familiar with the actual notation for how to enter a given formula. I have just covered the very basics, so as to get you started. The rest will need some exploring, try-and-failing, and a load of fantacy. :) Feel free to ask more questions, if anything was unclear in my explanation. Hope this helps you, or anyone else, that has been wondering what to use Excel for. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paulette Vickery" <[email protected]> To: "'gwInfo'" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2010 11:09 AM Subject: Keeping track of money > Hi all, > > Does anyone know of a program or programs that work well with Window Eyes > that can help me balance my check book and keep track of financial > transactions made using debit and charge cards? I hardly even use checks > anymore. Also, we do a lot of bill paying online. I have heard a lot about > programs like Microsoft Money and quicken. I don't care what the name of > the > program is, I am just getting tired of running out of money before I run > out > of month. Thanks in advance for your help. > > Paulette > If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender > only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is > related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to > [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. > > GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can > manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv. > If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv. No virus found in this incoming message. 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