The Simple Ways Learning Excel Can Improve Your Finances

The Simple Ways Learning Excel Can Improve Your Finances

Have you ever wondered which new skills could work best for helping you to improve your finances at home? The truth is that there are some simple ways of boosting your household budgeting approach and income potential without having to learn too much.

Among the most powerful of these options is that of learning how to use Microsoft Excel. This is a highly versatile program that you can use to help you out in a number of ways. The following are some of the ideas that might be of interest to you.

Keep Track of the Monthly Household Budget

Many people make the mistake of never truly knowing how much they spend or how much income they have. This means that there is no way of properly budgeting, with each month being a step into the unknown.

With Excel you can set up a very basic spreadsheet where you enter the incoming and outgoing money each day or each week, leaving you with an accurate running total. Alternatively, you could set up more complex formulae that let you identify possible issues. Either way, once it is set up this spreadsheet will take very little time to maintain.

You can then be fully confident that you know exactly how much you have in the family kitty each and every month, without it taking up too much of your time. 

Plan Loans and Credit Card Use

Do you sometimes worry about biting off more than you can chew when you take out a new loan or ask for a new credit card? It is occasionally necessary to borrow money but how will the repayment terms affect your lifestyle in the future? You don’t want to go into this sort of venture blindly.

With some basic Excel Courses you can quickly work out the long-term impact of each loan or credit card, based on its interest rate and repayment terms. For instance, with the PMT function you can very easily compare different loans in a matter of seconds.

This lets you get a more complete picture of your future financial commitments. You can also drop the monthly payment into the budgeting spreadsheet we looked at in the last point, to see the effect that it has.

Decide How to Invest

On the other hand, it is possible that the biggest benefit would be in working out how best to invest your money. What kind of investment is the smartest move in terms of making your money grow?

Calculating how much an investment will grow your money over time can seem like a hugely complicated task. Yet, you can make it a lot simpler by just using the FV function to see what sort of return this will get for you.

This function will only work on certain types of investments, and can also be used to work out future loan repayments too.

Work from Home

The final point is perhaps the most interesting of all for a lot of people. Do you like the idea of working from home in a flexible and interesting sort of way? If you do then learning Excel could be the key.

Companies all over the world need spreadsheet experts to work out their costs, to maintain their databases and for a lot more besides.  Once you are comfortable using this program it will open up a world of opportunities for you in the future.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Microsoft Excel is a boring tool that has no possible benefits for you. By learning how to use it well you will find that it can enhance your life in a number of ways.