How do you manage the plethora of financial information that pours into your life everyday? Many people sing praises of Quicken and Money. I personally haven't adopted either program. I've seen both in action, and even ran the trial versions of both for a while.
They certainly have nice interfaces, and eye-candy graphs and charts. I also like it's ability to go and mine information from my online banking accounts. For some reason though I never continued using either of these products.
For me, Excel is where it's at. I have used Excel for the past seven years as the primary means for managing my financial information. I am a spreadsheet junkie. If there is data to be analyzed, I'm plugging it into a spreadsheet.
I'm not sure why I enjoy using Excel so much. It's an extremely powerful tool that's features are underutilized by most people. I love the challenge of creating a spreadsheet from scratch, and having it organize and analyze a complex data set and returning all sorts of calculations and valuable information for my disposal.
Many will argue that this is an extreme waste of time, since products like the aforementioned will do these calculations for you, of course! But I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy. I don't just want some program to tell me this information; I want to know what goes into it, how to process the calculations, and what that data means. I think it provides a fundamental understanding of finances that goes overlooked by most.
I love the challenge of trying to figure out a complex formula that scours a half dozen other workbooks to derive it's calculation. It's a great sense of accomplishment when it produces the desired results.
Excel offers other advantages as well. The file format is one that can be manipulated, imported, exported, archived, and analyzed by any number of other programs. It is the raw data. It's not stuffed into some proprietary database or other file format that is unreadable by other programs.
I'm also not tied to XYZ Vendor or stuck in a perpetual upgrade cycle. I can take my Excel data and use it just about anywhere. Yes, Excel is a licensed product that is not free, but I can certainly take my spreadsheets and use them from a product like OpenOffice (free). Spreadsheets are what we are really talking about here; Excel is just the conduit by which 99% of people access them, so the terminology is ubiquitously interchangeable.
These are the sorts of things that appeal to me. Excel allows me the ability to create, customize, and manipulate my financial data in ways that other programs cannot. This freedom of creativity is what makes Excel the choice for me TODAY().
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
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4 comments:
I never got into Quicken / Money either. I use Yodlee online for a quick look at all my accounts, then use Excel for any calculations I need to make.
I tried Money out for a little while but I found it more difficult to do the things I wanted to than just plugging them into a spreadsheet. I suppose you have to be a certain level of "power user" though to appreciate those things.
Yodlee is the best I've used. It's web based (no software to download), does all the calculations needed for me i.e. keeps my budget on track, calculates net worth, bill notification, I can do a trending analysis of my spending and even keeps track of my reward points. It does all of this and it is FREE!!!!!!!
I'm a spreadsheet guy myself. I've tried using a version of Quicken a couple of times in the past (as in tried for 3+ months at a time) and just never could get it to work for me. There was always something I wanted to do but couldn't figure out, but knew I could do it in a spreadsheet. (I write software, figuring out the formulas was never too difficult for me.)
I've actually got excel/open office versions posted on my budget page, granted they're out of date a month. It gives a general idea of how I keep tabs on things though.
I like Excel too. I have tried Microsoft Money and Quicken and I still end up going back to Excel. I've made a couple of spreadsheets that I use and can change them as needed.
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