Adopting Microsoft Excel for home budgeting

[MomToTwoBoys]

DH bought me Microsoft Office and Student 2007 for my budgeting and book writing. I'm stoked!

We installed it today and while I was editing Chapter One, he was playing around with Excel on his PC. Now I've been really resistant to using any computer program for my finances, but this is really neat. They have an actual personal budget template that is modifiable to put in your own income and expense names, etc.

The one thing I was really interested in was the Calendar option. You can use the calendar part for making notes and keeping track of bill due dates and amounts.

Anyone else use Excel that's not totally put off by it?

[madhen]

I love Excel and use it for all sorts of purposes. I even use it when Access would work better, because I like Excel so much more.

[sueh]

I use Excel to track my finances.

I have been using it for years. I think it has helped very much because I am a visual person.

[MomToTwoBoys]

I'm a big notebook type of person, though, which is why Excel sort of feels weird to me. I told DH that what happened if I lost the file and he goes, "Well, what happens when you lose your notebook?" and "How many times have you had a hard drive crash on you?" I sort of saw his point after that since I've lost my notebook a ton and haven't had a hard drive crash on me yet (and I've had two).

[madhen]

I have an external hard drive that I back my computer up to about once a week. They aren't very expensive, and they are SO worth the investment. My work computer crashed a few months ago, with no warning, and hardly lost anything, because I had just backed it up about three weeks earlier.

In addition, because I float back and forth between my personal computer and my work computer, I keep some of my files on a thumb drive, so I can check them, regardless of which computer I am at.

And if you need a transitional period, you can always print your Excel spreadsheet out and keep it in a notebook.

[MomToTwoBoys]

Yep we have an external 80G hard drive that DH swiped and took to work with him. I'm tempted to buy a 1T HD and use that (and it would seriously be six times larger than the one in my computer at the moment). They're about $140 at Best Buy but I also told DH I'd rather have some of those 2G memory sticks to put the budget on.

[fixer]

I am going to try Excel for our financial records next year. I have been wanting to do some thing on the computer for a while. We use a notebook but, the data is not used to it's fullest since it is hard to do comparisons. I picked Excel since it was already of our laptop and I have used it in the past.

[MomToTwoBoys]

I was just primarily concerned with going from a paper and pen system to Excel because I tend to make little notes each time I do a budget. When DH showed me that I could make notes on the calendar, I was floored! That was the selling point for me. At the moment, I'm using Microsoft Word 2007 for my book editing but I'm sure when I get through the 32 pages of Chapter Two, I'll take a look at Excel.

[geckoace]

i love excel i have our bi-weekly budget in one workbook with a tab for each month, then a year forecasted budget. then i have project budgets and savings projections in workbooks. i keep them all on my flash drive that i store...... in my binder LOL

if you are worried about a crash you can always upload it to google docs periodically

[MomToTwoBoys]

I told DH that he had to sit down with me one of these weekends and actually show me how to do more with it than just entering data. I have no idea what half of the commands do!

I got all irritated yesterday because out of my own newness to Excel, I didn't know how to put lines in order and how to figure out why I was $0.47 off budget. I don't know which was more sad...

but DH did tell me he might have an Excel textbook downstairs from when he was going through school.