topic Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets! in Personal Finance

Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 23:23:39 GMT

I currently use Mint and Credit Karma to keep track of bills, inquiries, etc. However, I am looking to keep a detailed record to keep track of relevant data for each of my credit cards. Does anyone here use excel (or another tool) to keep track of CC information? Did you start from scratch or use a template? What categories do you use? I need all the help I can get!

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 23:39:00 GMT

I just downloaded an app called "Prism." It acts as a biller and displays your credit card balance, due dates, last payment, etc. I haven't been using it for a long time, but you might benefit from it.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

JR_TX — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 23:44:47 GMT

Yeah I use excel spreadsheet stored via OneDrive so I can access it anywhere with desktop or mobile. I never use templates and prefer custom ones. I have spreadsheets for everything in my life! Lol
For instance my main spreadsheet I call CashFlow which details all my bills recurring or not and my incoming funds and even savings that I allocate each month. I color code my categories. I start it from 1st day of the year til the last day then rinse and repeat. I can tell exactly how much I have available and disposable funds at any given time of year. It also serves as my budget plan that I adhere and stick to like my life depends on it! Works wonders for me! Though my siblings think it’s a bit Obsessive Compulsive but who cares!

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

expatCanuck — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 23:58:38 GMT

I rolled my own -- used it to track my way back down to reasonable util (<5%) when my balances were way out of line (~90%). Of course, it didn't start with all of these fields -- the number of columns grew over the course of six months or so. Here's most of the left half:

'rope', btw, is the credit limit. Delta is the change since last reported value. Blackout is when I don't use the card 'cause the statement is too close to cutting. I created an algorithm to identify how much I should pay to stay on target for reduction, manual target for overriding my planned value. The Projected value took the auto or manual target into account. Recur contains any recurring charges against a card.

In the right half, I calculated what I'd need to pay to get a card below a certain utilization percentage.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

SomewhereIn505 — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:15:53 GMT

I made my own because there are certain datapoints I wanted to track and have it help calculate payments based on what utilization I wanted to report. I placed these as rows and the credit cards as columns.

Utility is calculated based on the balance entered versus the total CL. Goal utility is the utilization percentage that I want to report and would calculate the payment I would need to make to meet that goal utility.

Color coding is based on which paycheck funds I’m going to use to make payments. When I had high utilization, I would see how a few extra dollars towards a payment would lower the utilization. Kind of like instant gratification while planning out what I was going to do.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

expatCanuck — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:20:24 GMT

I like the cards as columns. Anticipate a reconfiguration in the near future.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:37:38 GMT

As long as you enjoy it! IMO, if you actually NEED this, you are one or more of:

1) overthinking credit scores

2) overspending

3) or have too many cards.

CCs are a tool, don't let them take up too much of your time, unless it is a hobby!

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:47:07 GMT

How about if spreadsheets are the hobby?

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

SomewhereIn505 — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:52:45 GMT

@Anonymouswrote:
As long as you enjoy it! IMO, if you actually NEED this, you are one or more of:

1) overthinking credit scores
2) overspending
3) or have too many cards.

CCs are a tool, don't let them take up too much of your time, unless it is a hobby!

Not necessarily so.

Had a family emergency a few months ago which ate up all my savings and max out my cards. This was one way I could re-gain control and plan out my recovery.

Happy to say I’ve got 4th out of my cards back to $0. The 5th will be at $0 in a few weeks. Planning on continuing to AZEO for a while to keep recovering from that emergency.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Kforce — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 01:00:31 GMT

@Anonymouswrote:
How about if spreadsheets are the hobby?

You need to take up credit card collecting

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

expatCanuck — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 01:17:16 GMT

@Anonymouswrote:
As long as you enjoy it! IMO, if you actually NEED this, you are one or more of:

1) overthinking credit scores
2) overspending
3) or have too many cards.

CCs are a tool, don't let them take up too much of your time, unless it is a hobby!

Absolutely I had been spending too much. And using a spreadsheet to visualize both my indebtedness and my spend helped me get both under control. (And, at the time, I had all of 4 cards. I'm now more disciplined with 7.)

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Catatonico — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 12:30:28 GMT

@JR_TXwrote:
Yeah I use excel spreadsheet stored via OneDrive so I can access it anywhere with desktop or mobile. I never use templates and prefer custom ones. I have spreadsheets for everything in my life! Lol
For instance my main spreadsheet I call CashFlow which details all my bills recurring or not and my incoming funds and even savings that I allocate each month. I color code my categories. I start it from 1st day of the year til the last day then rinse and repeat. I can tell exactly how much I have available and disposable funds at any given time of year. It also serves as my budget plan that I adhere and stick to like my life depends on it! Works wonders for me! Though my siblings think it’s a bit Obsessive Compulsive but who cares!

I am so glad that I'm not the only one that does this. Mine is called "Psychic Checkbook Register" because that's what it looks like. I run mine out about 3 years and update it multiple times a week (yeah... I AM obsessive about it). I have all my recurring/non-recurring bills in there that I know about... utilities are estimated at the highest amount they were for the year prior. Everything is color coded based on auto-pay, income, debt snowball, or savings. I even have payments listed there for credit cards that don't have a balance or for loans that are no longer owed... they all get re-categorized as debt repayment.

Anytime we plan on going shopping, I go through it and see how much money I have to spend (even if I plan on using a card). My husband thinks I'm crazy because I do it even before we go spend $30 going out to eat. We aren't struggling, but I do have a fair amount of debt that I am aggressively paying off and this helps me see every spare cent that I have.

***Funny side story... A few weeks ago, I was a little too aggressive in paying off a loan and spent about $300 of our rent money because I didn't look down far enough in my spreadsheet to see that I needed it. Not a big deal... I could've just pulled it out of our savings, but my husband... LOVE THAT MAN... knows that I hate to do that, so he went to his ultra cool boss and asked him for an advance on his pay to cover it (0% interest, paid back $50 week). I know.. it seems crazy that he would go to his boss when we actually had the money, but I would seriously beat myself up over my mistake (and yeah... it was a BIG mistake on my part) and he didn't want to put me through that. At least we laughed about it as I was updating his income for the next few weeks. And the loan that caused all of this to begin with? Yeah... its paid off now and gave me another $200/month to roll into my debt repayment.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

iced — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 16:43:40 GMT

@Anonymouswrote:
I currently use Mint and Credit Karma to keep track of bills, inquiries, etc. However, I am looking to keep a detailed record to keep track of relevant data for each of my credit cards. Does anyone here use excel (or another tool) to keep track of CC information? Did you start from scratch or use a template? What categories do you use? I need all the help I can get!

I use spreadsheets for a lot of things, but not for tracking credit cards, bills, or inquiries. I don't have enough of any of those that I can't easily keep track in my head what's due when, and my head has yet to fail me.

I occasionally lay out my spread of brokerage, retirement, and savings accounts into a spreadsheet, but that's not for monthly maintenance so much as viewing where my money is at, how much it's grown, what to buy/sell next, and to assess if my portfolio is still diversified to my satisfaction. It's the 21st century equivalent of the king counting his piles of gold.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 22:57:49 GMT

@Kforcewrote:
@Anonymouswrote:
How about if spreadsheets are the hobby?
You need to take up credit card collecting

I think I've got both covered.

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Goal_Getter — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 00:12:15 GMT

And here I was.....thinking i was the ONLY person obsessed with a spreadsheet. Lol! Mine is setup to buget bills for the month on one tab, one tab is for my cards and cc goals, another tab is used to track my monthly credit scores. I am literally on my spreadsheet everyday and at least 3 hours a day sometimes. I’ve been using it for about 7 months and it has helped me tremendously!

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 01:35:40 GMT

+ 1

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 01:36:25 GMT

+ 1 on what longtime said

Re: Let's talk about spreadsheets!

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 04:34:54 GMT

I made a "Corvette Budget" excel sheet last year and plan on sticking to it. The plan is to pay for half of it (40k) in cash in about 18 months lol.