Frugal Framnett

I am going to make this post a high-level and quick introduction to spreadsheets.

Lesson one: rows, columns, and cells
(more…)

What you are looking at is one of my expense detail tracking sheets. It is one of many and is full fledged, no other sheet has more fields than this one does!

Each sheet contains a number of data points, such as date, the location (or vendor), the total amount spent, sale-tax, realized coupon or rebate amounts (i.e. rebates & coupons actually resulting in savings - brainstorm I am going to add a coupon & rebate potential to try to track rebate conversions), and description of the purchase. I then have fields where I total by year, month, and week spending. Click on the sheets to see them close up.

How do we add up the totals? By using the sum formula. in my case that the annual total is =sum(c4:c999) and the monthly & weekly totals are similar. I have yet to add averages, however it will be a bit of time until average numbers are helpful and I have not yet added in the potential coupon savings.

May be found here. Open Office’s Calc spreadsheet. What is the cost of obtaining the software? The cost of downloading and installing it, it is free for the download.

In addition, you can open and save Excel spreadsheets. Compatibility is not 100% but darned near, the only time I have compatibility problems is when attempting to open Excel sheets with macros.

The formulas are not quite the same, but all is close enough you can readily transfer your knowledge of Excel to Calc.

What you are looking at in the above screen grab is the summary sheet from my expenditures spreadsheet. There are roughly 14 sheets, each sheet tracks expenditures by category, for example there are sheets for utility, grocery, and clothing expenditures.

The summary sheet gives at a glance the grand total, and totals broken down by category, and month.

Partially visible are the numbers rendered into percentages against the particular total and not visible are pie charts, both year and for January. Of course, as the year progresses I will create pie charts for each month.

Next posting I will show a pie chart. My Lord, I can almost see this transforming itself into a full fledged web-based application.

One idea I keep coming back to is that of tracking and measuring. Now, many computers come with Quicken, MS-Money, and even my OS of choice Slackware Linux and my windows manager choice of KDE comes with a personal finance manager (I even had In-Charge for OS/2 when I ran that system). However, I have never much cared for any of the available choices and most often the software was at least a waste of storage and at worst money flushed down the drain when the idea is to wisely manage the money..

I recall purchasing Managing Your Money some years ago and noted this to a colleague. He asked why not use spreadsheet software for this purpose, after all, these pieces of software are nothing but spreadsheets without cells. Well Vince, whereever you are and whatever you are doing you were correct it has come down to me putting together a system of spreadsheets.

In this topic I hope to give spreadsheet tips and pointers allowing you to become a Spreadsheet Samurai! I can hear the countless and nameless samurai whose bones are long turned into dust rolling and cussing at their class being associated with geekly pursuits such as computers and money.