Tactical Financial Action: Learning how to use Ms Excel with financial planning

Back in college, I took one class all about learning how to use spreadsheets. On of our projects was to plan out savings and retirement.

When I got my first job, I kept track of my expenses and put my life down on spreadsheets immediately.

Below is an example how to make simple spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel.

This is a simple spreadsheet to illustrate the point. This took less than a half minute to make.

In cell A1, put age. In cell B1 put savings.

In cell A2, you can put your current age. For this example, you can use 25.

In cell A3, you can type in a formula =A2+1

Press enter and 26 will appear into the box.

Make sure that the cell A3 is selected. There should be a small square in the corner of the cell.

Click and hold the square and drag the mouse down to cell A22. Release the button and Excel should fill in all the age until 45.

This is the fill function in excel. The same thing can be done with the column for savings.

This is just an illustration. If you know how to make this, you can replace the numbers with those that apply to you.

In the following example. Jack is 30 and saves $10,000 every year.

The spreadsheet shows Jack's total savings at any given year.

Tactical Financial Action