Personal Finance Online Or Personal Finance In Excel?

Posted on September 5, 2022 by dayat

Wherever you are in the World, be it New York City, New York or Mumbai, India, before technology made things easy and before the explosive use of online services, personal budgets if they were done at all, were largely done on computer spreadsheets, and by far the most popular choice was doing personal finance in excel.

Now that apps and technology have made so many things easier, accessible and convenient online, including managing budgets online, it’s time to reconsider if personal finance in excel has had its day, including all the variations of family budget worksheets, financial planning spreadsheets, or any other offerings of managing money in excel.

The Benefits Of Managing Personal Finance In Excel

The most obvious benefit is that calculations are done by a formula processor so that the mechanics of adding up and making calculations can be automated and easily repeated, pasted, and copied.

That much is obvious, and all sorts of elaborate versions of family budget worksheets in excel can be created by anyone who can write a basic formula. So ease of creation is a major benefit, even though cost of time is high in order to create the formulas, and format the financial spreadsheet as you build it.

Another benefit to managing a budget worksheet in excel is that it could be free, certainly it will be free if you invest the heavy hours to do it yourself. Given that creating family budgets is not exactly a fun day out in the first place, however, many people look for free family budget worksheets or spreadsheets.

These products are invariably created by someone else online and sold or given away free – fully formatted and formulaic.

The Problem with Managing Personal Finance In Excel

The problem with personal finance in excel though is exactly that – personal finance in excel!

It sits on a personal computer or laptop, and is not much use on a smartphone – no-one wants to sit squinting at a finance worksheet or spreadsheet on a phone. Also, the time it takes to personalise these standard financial worksheets in excel can be wasted with one little slip, an accidental delete, formula mismatch and everything clogs up and numbers and columns don’t match up.

It is incredibly hard to recover a corrupted formula unless you are professionally trained in excel.

Also, personal finance in excel is limited to basic calculations and can’t really be integrated easily to a wider range of financial budget decisions. Each personal finance worksheet created in excel is for single purpose, not multipurpose use. One obvious danger is localised loss of the PC, laptop, or attack from virus or malware – spyware and identity theft from an unsecure system.

One very real danger in downloading free financial excel spreadheets is that these are so often given away in promotions, as ways to harvest personal details, or include hidden shipping costs, or suck you into buying something much more expensive later.

You can never be sure if you have bought or loaded illegal pirate copies or OEM software. These localised personal finance spreadsheets might even contain malware, spyware or tracking cookies to steal your data – you just can’t tell.

The Explosive Benefits Of Personal Finance Online.

Managing money online has a lot of the benefits of finance in excel without any of the drawbacks.

In fact the only problem with it isn’t really a problem at all. It costs more than free – but comes with dedicated service, it never crashes, you can’t lose it, someone else has to maintain the connections, and a bunch of employed people are concentrating 100% on making it work and work well.

There are no install problems, hidden costs, or personalised mistakes. The best ones have encryption software to protect security, they make it really easy to use, access it and maintain it.

Financial budgeting online can even be fun, and money saving. Chose one which pays back a user dividend or uses your details anonymously with your permission to find you really cheap deals and money saving opportunities without spamming you to death.

Personally, I think personal finance online software is the only way to go, way better than personal finance in excel, which frankly is decades out of date and not at all convenient.

Think about it – If I’m going to invest time to create a family budget, a critical component of mastering money – why would I not want to gain some benefit through a finance online service which sourced cheaper prices on my behalf – why go and do all that searching myself, all over again?

Surely, conducting personal finance online is a no brainer?

Mark Donnan is A former CEO in Financial Services an

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Easy Ways to Protect Your Personal Finances From Further Economic Contraction

Posted on June 5, 2022 by dayat

While the economy has already certainly softened, there may be further economic contraction for American consumers to face. Increasing job losses, higher inflation rates, and the growing food and energy costs are making personal finance budgeting difficult for most American families to achieve. The variable interest rate of recent mortgages makes critical, and the prospects for personal finance do not look bright for the next several years.

However, an ounce of personal finance planning is certainly worth more than a pound of monetary cure. It is not too late to start preparing your personal finance budgeting efforts to brace yourself for further economic contraction – ensuring that when America does recover from its economic weakness, your personal finance will be intact and still healthy.

Debt management strategy: watch your interest rates

When economic uncertainty is on the horizon, interest rates are the first to react – making debt management critical. Powered by both the Federal Reserve rate and each banking institution’s tolerance, interest rates can either soar or plummet, depending upon several factors.

Whereas our interest rates were at historical lows, the Fed Chairman Bernanke made adjustments to the rate in order to curb inflation, while attempting to simultaneously stimulate economic investment. What does this mean for your debt management? In essence, banks will now offer you great interest rates if you have good credit, making your debt management easy. If you have bad credit, then banks will increase your interest rates, as the risk of a default grows greater during an economic contraction.

Therefore, for debt management that will prepare for further economic contraction, you want to lock in low interest rates, which will be easy for those who already have good credit. You can refinance your credit cards by consolidating your debts, or you can even renegotiate your interest rates with your existing credit card company.

For those who have less than stellar credit, you want to carefully watch your mortgages, loans, and credit cards to ensure that they are not raising your interest rates. You may be particular susceptible to interest rate hikes in further economic contraction.

Smart personal finance budgeting

Keep in mind that regardless of how much income you earn, the key to maintaining financial stability is through intelligent debt management and personal finance budgeting. Even if you earn millions, your spending habits and debt are what determine your financial stability. In preparing for a further economic contraction, it is important that you take several personal finance budgeting steps:

o Tally all of your required expenses including your mortgage or rent payment, car payment, health insurance, and utilities. There are the bills you must pay each month, and therefore, are part of your mandatory personal finance budgeting process.

o Allocate a set amount each month for groceries. Keep in mind that you should try to purchase everything “on sale” for smart personal finance budgeting. Research shows that simply by purchasing the brand that is on sale, you can save approximately 20% each time you go to the supermarket.

o Minimize your entertainment expenses. Smart personal finance budgeting means limiting how frequently you eat out, or spend money on entertainment. For example, if you have a four-person family and you typically watch a movie at the theater each week, cutting this expense out could save up nearly $200 each month. Or, brown bag your lunch instead of eating at the local sandwich shop. This small change in your personal finance budgeting can save you conservatively $150 per month. Just these two small changes alone in your entertainment expenses can give you an extra $350 per month for your personal finance budgeting.

o Set money aside for your savings. In a further economic contraction, the greatest, yet most probably fear, is losing your job. Therefore, by taking conservative approaches with your personal finance budgeting now, you can still set aside emergency funds that will help your family if times are difficult. Saving 10% of your income each month is a healthy, yet reasonable, amount to save in your personal finance budgeting.

The key to protecting your personal finance against any additional economic contraction is through smart debt management and intelligent personal finance budgeting. By taking several preventative measures now, you can ensure that your financial situation will remain healthy – regardless of what happens to the economy.

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