Lois_E begins a long MFW journey

gallygirl

julliff wrote: »

Hey Gallygirl -

If you are serious, would you be willing to take a copy when I do the first cut? It will be nice to get some feedback!

May be a couple of weeks yet. I want to put reports and charts on it.

Thanks

Oooohhhhh, yes please, always wanted to be a guinea pig, I like salads :rotfl:

gallygirl

julliff wrote: »

Cool! More willing victims.

Anything in particular you would like to see? I mean do you often wish there was a report or chart that you don't have?

Don't know . Progress against target in some kind of form, highest amount paid, lowest amount paid, average amount paid, as one off and monthly figures. Also, if I do xxx what is the impact on pay off date? At present I can see that on my spreadsheet, but only if I scroll down a lllloooooonnnnggggggg way till the balance turns negative. I'd like it in a little box, always on the screen. And how much interest I would save by OPing, at the mo I have to total before and after inputting the details. Also for it to work for the above on one-off and regular multiple payments.

That'll do for now

Lois_E

julliff wrote: »

Cool! More willing victims.

Anything in particular you would like to see? I mean do you often wish there was a report or chart that you don't have?

Well, I make my own on Excel, so I can always have whatever I want, if I can put in the effort to work out how to make it do it.

I have a couple of pivot tables with categories down the side and months across the top - one does income and the other does expenditure. They are linked to a couple of stacked bar charts (is that the right name?) that are next to each other and have the same scales, so I can directly compare how much is coming in from various sources and how much of it is going out to what.

Finally, I have the inevitable line graph of mortgage amount outstanding plotted against date. Once I've got my starting point clear, I'll be adding something to that to show what the balance would have been without any OPs, so I can see how much improvement I've made.

Then there are the macros I've written to manage the spreadsheet data rather than analyse it. For example, I have one called newmonth that I find saves a lot of time. One of my columns on my main sheet (which has in/out and balance for each of my accounts) is one that tells me what sort of transaction it is - DD for direct debit, MC for Mastercard, OL for online and so on. Some of those have : or ; in front of them if they are regular monthly things, using : for things that are the same amount every month and ; for things that vary. So the mortgage is :SO but the DD that pays off my credit card is ;DD. They show up in different colours to make them more noticeable, too.

So, when I'm ready to add the next month to the sheet, all I have to do is select the line where the current month begins, and run newmonth. It goes through all lines from the selected line to the bottom of the contents, copies everything with : or ; and adds them onto the end. Then it goes through the new stuff advancing all the dates by a month. Well, actually it advances them all by a month except for a few things that it knows have to be advanced by four weeks instead, or to the last day of the month whether that's 31st or 30th or 28th/29th. It puts the values in for the : ones and leaves the values blank for the ; ones but highlights them in yellow so I can see they need filling in.

I've also written a little function that will take an annual interest rate and calculate the interest due on a balance between two dates. It adjusts for the fact that interest is compounded monthly, which makes the calculation a bit more complicated.

I've already admitted being an Excel geek but I've really confirmed it now, haven't I?

Lois_E

I have listed a book on Amazon! So easy compared with ebay, no listing fees, and I can leave it on there as long as it takes to sell, which might be a long time because it's a bit of a minority interest computing book that I had at university a very long time ago, but it's still the most up to date book on the particular thing.

Spending diary still up to date. That's a whole week of my "keep spending diary for May" minichallenge.

mummyofonechild

"I've already admitted being an Excel geek but I've really confirmed it now, haven't I?"

Am I the only person who doesn't know how to use Excel

I do know how to overpay though

MOOC xx

earthgirl

Well done on your mini challenge! Just wanted to stop by as you have posted some lovely comments on others diaries, and I wanted to support you in your mf quest too!

stedwell

Hi Lois_E
I have often thought about selling books on Amazon. The thing I am not sure about is the P&P. How do you wrap your books and is it expensive? Thanks
PS listed our first ever item on Ebay this week and it is over £10 already. Can't quite believe it!:D

Lois_E

The instructions are here. stedwell.
HTH

LilB_3

mummyofonechild wrote: »

Am I the only person who doesn't know how to use Excel

I'm a complete technophobe and have no idea either!

I managed to keep a spending diary for a whole year - it was interesting to see how much I actually spent and gave me a big insight on where I could save.

Good luck with your mini challenge :T

poppyoscar_3

mummyofonechild wrote: »

Am I the only person who doesn't know how to use Excel

No you're not - I don't either!
I think I need to go on a course as I sometimes have to use it at work and I'm rubbish. I use MSWord for everything!:o

PO xx