by Steve Gregory

Created on: August 18, 2010

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program.  In simplest terms, it takes numbers, and small amounts of text, and displays them by row and column.  For most people, this is as far as they go with it.  They might use it for their business to list their inventory, purchase price for an item, sold price, and profit or loss.  But Excel has a lot more power than that, and with a little patience and learning, Excel can help you organize your personal life as well, even if it doesn't involve numbers!

Credit Cards

Just about everyone has a credit card.  We get a monthly statement in the mail, by email, or access it online, and it shows how much is owed, the interest rate, and what the minimum monthly payment is.  You can use Excel to not only list the same information, but it can also show you how long until the card is paid off!  Use the first row to create your headings, such as credit card company, company contact number, card number, amount owed, interest, payment amount, and months to pay off.  Then, underneath each heading, put in the information (for the interest and money columns, be sure to format the cell for percentage or currency, as appropriate, and the other cells for "general").  In the final column put the formula.  You can do a simple one where you simply divide the amount owed by the minimum payment, or you can create a more complex one that computes the interest as well to give you a more accurate look.  You can list over 65,000 items in each Excel spreadsheet (if you have this many credit cards, you have a real problem), so you can list every card you have, see how much total amount you owe, and work out a plan to get it paid off.

Auto Loans

Like credit cards, you can set up more or less the same columns and put in your figures.  In most cases, the company handling your car payments has you set up on a fixed plan anyway, so the number of months is most likely a known factor.  But did you know you can also set up Excel to see how much you're actually paying for that car over the 5 or 6 years?  Gulp!  Throwing in an extra $20 or $30 a month on that payment can literally save you thousands over those years.

Bank Accounts

Excel was designed to crunch numbers, and money is nothing but a number (in some cases, a number we wish was a lot larger).  Programs like Microsoft Money or Intuit Quicken or QuickBooks are not a whole lot more than Excel in a pretty package.  Really. 

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