Goooood morning sexy budgeters!
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, National Spreadsheet Day arrives :) A day to finally rejoice around something important! Haha…
According to DaysofTheYear.com:
A holiday sure to appeal to some people more than others, Spreadsheet Day commemorates the date that VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers, was released – October 17th, 1979. Since its beginnings, Spreadsheet Day has grown to become a day for celebrating both the advantages and the aggravations of working with spreadsheet software.
I was only two months and 9 days old when this came out, but 336 months later I’d fully realize just how powerful spreadsheets could become. Now I track ALL KINDS of random things using them, as well as of course the almighty net worth. (Not random at all, but very motivating!)
The whole history of how VisiCalc came to be is actually pretty interesting (VisiCalc = Visible Calculator), so be sure to check it out once you’re done with this literary masterpiece ;)
This is the best part of it though:
Screen shot of the very first prototype!!! Created over a weekend on an Apple II computer using Apple Integer Basic, haha… Anyone around here ever use that back in the day? Anyone thought they’d get so many history lessons on this blog? :) (See last week’s article on where “keeping up with the Joneses” originated from. Spoiler alert: they couldn’t even keep up with themselves!).
Anyways, it’s a great day to be alive and celebrate something we so easily take for granted now that spreadsheets are so ubiquitous. And while they aren’t always perfect and have their own set of challenges, the amount of customization and control you get using them is just mind blowing. Particularly with tracking your finances.
My boy Peter Polson from Tiller who tipped me off on this beautiful day today, also emailed me a handful of stats he got doing some sleuthing of his own.
If you’re as much a spreadsheet lover as I am, I’m sure you’ll agree with a handful of these:
- 96% are satisfied with using a spreadsheet compared with the app/s they tried
- 92% are more aware of their spending habits now that they’re using a spreadsheet
- 89% say spreadsheets give them more control over how they track their finances
- 83% think spreadsheets are easier and simpler to use than the app/s they tried
- 81% say spreadsheets have better reporting options than the app/s they tried
This comes from a survey using AYTM.com questioning 100 people who have a) tracked their finances for 3 months or more, and b) who are currently using a spreadsheet, despite having tried at least one personal finance app in the past.
The stat I highlighted is by far the most important in my books. You can automate all you want, but if you don’t take the time to review any of it – and then adjust as needed – what’s the point?? Full automation can hurt just as much as it can help depending on how you utilize it.
Now – the PERFECT TOOL, in my opinion? A combination of both automation & spreadsheet, giving you the best of each of the worlds to really catapult tracking.
But how the hell is that possible? You’d be rich if you figured that out!! Haha… Well, I have no idea how rich Peter and his cohorts are, but after spending some time on his site (TillerHQ.com) as well as in person at our last financial conference, he’s definitely figured out how to merge the two.
And it’s a beautiful thing :)
I’ve only just started poking around and getting a feel for it, but I thought I’d pass the note along to you in case it’s something you’ve always dreamed of too. Could be a cool way to turbocharge your tracking!
How Does Tiller Work?
In a nutshell, Tiller automatically pulls transaction data from all of your credit card, checking, and savings accounts every day, then feeds it into a secure Google Sheet spreadsheet so you’ve always got a current view.
It’s like “if Mint and Google spreadsheet had a baby, and the genes from Google were a lot stronger.” Haha… at least says Kathleen Celmins who you may know from FrugalPortland.com and Stacking Benjamins :) My good friend Derek from HowDoIMoney.com (hilarious blog, btw) is also pretty obsessed with them, and swears it’s changed his financial game.
Some of the perks are being able to create multiple sheets for multiple finance needs, categorize the data however you want, being able to filter the transactions and drill down to identify spending for a specific amount, merchant or date, being able to build your own pivot tables for customized reporting, to modify transaction descriptions, add new columns/rows/ notes, and even share the sheets with whoever in your family or financial life needs access.
Here’s some cool screenshots of it in action:
The downside is that it costs $5.00/mo to use, but you get a free 30 day trial to test it out first and see if it’s something worth continuing or not. And people like us can figure that out pretty quick as we’re better testers than the average person :)
So yeah – check ’em out if it looks interesting or you’re not happy with your current set up! You can poke around and learn more here: TillerHQ.com
(PS: If you’re a student you can use them FOR FREE for a year :) Similar to what YNAB offers as well – another great budgeting option if you haven’t investigated yet (see our full review here))
Actually, would be super interested in learning how YOU GUYS are currently tracking your money? Are more of you using spreadsheets vs automated apps like Mint or Personal Capital? Or even a combo of both? Is anyone already rocking Tiller?
However you’re tracking it, as long as you’re DOING IT you’ll be well on your way to Wealth Nation, USA in no time. And I’m proud to share such a beautiful day with you here today :)
Happy Spreadsheet Day* to all!
———-
*2nd to only International Be Proud of Your Money Day!
FYI: Went back and included affiliate links to Tiller once I found out they had a program (which means I’ll be compensated if anyone ends up testing them out). But you can rest assured I genuinely love what they’re about as I was going to write about them anyways for free! Haha…
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It’s awesome that spreadsheet day exists! I didn’t know about it, so thanks for telling me – I’ll have to open one of spreadsheets in honour of that :)
Tiller sounds good – is it just for Americans or is it available in other countries like Australia?
Spreadsheets ARE awesome – we look at our savings rate with that, along with our bank’s (free) expense tracker. It works well together for us.
Tristan
Tristan, our service is so far designed for U.S. users and our current templates are designed for U.S. dollars, where we support most banks big and small. We’ll be building more currency support into future versions of our templates. Cheers, -Peter (Founder, Tiller)
Today just became one of my favorite days. Hardly a day goes by where I’m not using a spreadsheet.
For personal expense tracking I’m a fan of Personal Capital for aggregating and I then load the days into my excel file for customization. I’ve been using both for every and it works perfectly for me.
Happy Spreadsheet Day!
Happy Spreadsheet Day, indeed!
Thanks for the history lesson again J. I typically spend all day at work working in spreadsheets, I love them and have become an excel master, but now I’m a little more excited about it since I now I’m using spreadsheets on spreadsheet day.
I use a mixture of automation and spreadsheets to monitor our finances. I use Personal Capital as a way to gather the data without having to go looking for it all over the place. But I then enter in all of the information into spreadsheets that I use to analyze the information. I actually maintain two separate finance spreadsheets. One on my home computer that tracks our day-to-day spending, budget, high level net worth, and a few of the specific spending categories (10 tabs). And another spreadsheet at work that I update daily to track the net worth, investments, goal progress, early retirement plans, high level budget, etc. (13 tabs). So that puts me at a total of 23 financial based spreadsheet tabs that I use on an almost daily basis.
Haha… I don’t have any words to describe how awesome all that sounds :) You’re the poster child for spreadsheets!!
That demo looks pretty awesome – I primarily use personal capital and only use a spreadsheet to make minor tweaks for our Net Worth Updates.
I review spending at a monthly level, but since I don’t use a budget that is about as far as it goes
Looooove Tiller.
I was using a spreadsheet I made myself for years and punching in all the transactions by hand. Then I found Tiller! Tiller automatically pulls your banking transactions into a spreadsheet and all you do is (quickly and easily) categorize them.
It’s the perfect blend of automation and hands on budgeting!!!
-DEREK
It’s because of you that I started paying attention to them!!
And I’m glad I have. They’re def. shaking up the game a bit :)
I never would have guessed such a day existed but very cool and I like the stats. I still do most of my stats by manual loading in excel. I don’t use mint because of an ingrained fear of giving a service my account logins. My undergrad had a focus in information security which always stresses no master password for multiple accounts. The risk is probably low, but it’s too ingrained in my psyche to do otherwise.
As someone who has had to change credit cards every 6 months it seems, your safety concerns is fairly attributed :) I consider the convenience still worth it which is why I’ll connect all my accounts anywhere, but if it wasn’t I’d have stopped many moons ago. Always gotta stick with what makes you comfortable!
“Money nerds unite!” What better day than “National Spreadsheet Day” to say that? :)
Yes, my weapon of choice has been the spreadsheet for a couple of *ahem* decades now. We track our Net Worth (updated about every 3-6mths), Savings Rate (updated yearly: 55%+ last year) and any other financial and non-financial goals we have for ourselves (fitness, skills, education, trip & business expenses). It’s also my default calculator when I’m at my computer.
Only one word of caution when we get into the fancy spreadsheet stuff: when we’re making projections, we need to document our assumptions! A projected number is useless unless we do a brain dump of what we were thinking at the time we made the projections (and that includes budgeting!). How are we supposed to know why we’re off if we don’t know what we were thinking at the time we initially wrote the number down? That’s where spreadsheets are so powerful compared to apps: we get into them, understand the numbers and present the info in a way that works best for us…including documenting our crazy attempt at predicting our future behaviour.
Agreed! If it weren’t for my monthly net worth updates here on this blog I’d think my brain worked the same tracking it all 8 years ago as it does now – when in fact a # of things have changed. Fortunately I can go back and see the documentation on the site, but without it I wouldn’t know why I was tracking it as I was…
Great tip :)
Tiller sounds interesting. May be worth a try. I currently use YNAB, Mint, and a big picture spreadsheet (just total spent, donated, and invested each month). This has been a good balance for me. YNAB helps me manually track my day-to-day expenses. Mint tracks my net worth. And my spreadsheet tracks my saving and giving rates.
I like that you track donating :) We tend to *talk* a lot about it on $$ blogs, but not actually *do it*. Or at least I’m that way. I feel like by manually tracking it though it would encourage more of it to be done, so I may have to copy you on that one :)
I’ll check Tiller out for sure.
I use a combo of Mint, Personal Capital, and two Google Sheets currently.
My spreadsheets are a monthly budget and a month over month balance sheet.
I love Mint for tracking and categorizing but I can’t print reports or get to the level of customization I want, so I wind up spending a lot of time entering data multiple places.
Look at you go! Haha…. love it.
If only there was a way to combine ALL services/sheets into one major spot :)
As someone who manually tracks everything (glutton for punishment?), this sounds really interesting. I like the idea of speeding up the process but still having the precision of a spreadsheet.
I’ve used good budget for the last year and am loving all the pretty spreadsheets and charts. =) But it has actually been awesome tracking each expense again. It had been a few years since we had done that. It’s giving me a much better idea about what will be doing after our year long sabbatical is over.
Never heard of Good Budget? You blog about yet? It doesn’t sound *as* good as Sexy Budget, but I’m sure it suffices ;)
They probably should consider renaming it! I use their charts in my monthly expenses, and when I hit a year I am going to pull up all the awesome charts and do a big post. =) You manually enter each expense, but it’s an app you can use on your phone or pull up the website. Even Mr. Mt has gotten the hang of it, which is saying a lot. And it will track your donations as well. =)
Sounds like something more people need to hear about :)
National Spreadsheet Day? Excellent! I haven’t been this excited since IPA day.
I don’t recall using VisiCalc, but I did once input hundreds, maybe thousands, of football cards I owned into an Apple II spreadsheet. That was my idea of a good time in 5th grade.
Cheers!
-PoF
oh man…. I heard that now you can track all that stuff easily online. I considered doing the same a decade or two ago (I was a basketball card fan) but then girls and college got in the way, and ya know… :)
I am devoting this National Spreadhseet Day to pouring over my spreadsheets in order to post my 3rd quarter update! ;)
Do it!
I used to be happier with my spreadsheet, I have been using mint for a few years and may start just tracking all expenses in one lump as I am getting tired of budgeting. I think the anti budget might work better for me. Say I have 2500 left over after saving and mandatory bills. once that is gone it is gone. Ill admit though I still play around with my loan amortization spreadsheet at least once a week.. I know get a life right? I still think its fun to run different scenarios tho
I think if you have $2,500 left over to do whatever you want, you’re doing just fine with budgeting :)
I wish that were the case. I should have described expenses as variable and non-variable. as in the $2500 is for variable expenses like groceries, target, walmart, Home Depot, clothing, etc… Sounds like enough but in reality with 6 family members and 4 of them growing boys…..food is a KILLER. I’m talking about $1200+ every single month. I refuse to eat boxed garbage, I try to buy more produce, I don’t eat organic because that 1200 would easily be double, and please no one say anything about farmers markets, maybe in your area of the US you can get a deal, here in the DC/Baltimore area the prices are triple that of the grocery store. Most of the time we are at that $2500, leaving maybe $200 a month unaccounted for. Which I don’t include in the budget because it acts as a psychological barrier if we hit our number in Mint we know we need to stop.
What I am saying is that accounting for the variable expenses only should be simpler than accounting for the aggregate. It would also have the added benefit of getting rid of clutter thus highlighting the items we really need to pay attention to.
Ahhhh, yes – totally different situation. And I feel your pain about DC :( (And will soon about the boys eating habits in no time too!)
I do mine in a basic spreadhseet, using a downloaded template because I’m a dummy and can’t use excel.
At secondary school we had to do a series of exams on different Microsoft products. I passed Powerpoint and Word easily but I think I took the Excel one something like 12 times, with months of revision and classes and never passed it.
http://www.rosieleizrowice.com
if it makes you feel better I only do the simple tasks in Excel myself :) pretty much just the addition/subtraction/division stuff… I’m always amazed at how people harness the full calculations with it, but really with $$$ you don’t need to be able to do much! (complicated forecasting aside)
That’s great. I love working with spreadsheets. My whole financial system from my ledger to my net worth and investments tracking is all in a spreadsheet that I’ve used for over 15 years and have customized and tweaked along the way.
oh wow – hardcore! I like it!
Happy Spreadsheet Day!
Wow, seems like there’s a day for everything. :)
Mr. Picky Pincher and I have a shared spreadsheet on Google Drive for tracking our expenses. I have to say that I like it WAY more than any app I’ve tried (and I’ve tried a lot of them). While having an automated app is nice, I personally think it’s too passive and it’s not granular enough to identify problems with spending.
Yep – tracking it manually does wonders to your money (and mindset, really!)
I use Mint. I only use a spreadsheet to track my mortgage pay off schedule. My payments are not the same every month, but they are predictable (March occurs at the same time every year). I haven’t found a mortgage pay off calculator anywhere online that lets you put in extra payments at specific times, so I had to make my own.
Good move customizing one for yourself like that :)
I am attached to my spreadsheets. I created them myself to make them work according to how my mind and my finances work, so I have a very hard time letting them go. That said, I do use Personal Capital because I like the free tools and I’ve recently been using YNAB, which has been rather eye opening as it forces me to be even more accountable.
Will definitely check out Tiller, though, as I love the idea of the spreadsheet feature that I’m so accustomed to.
Let me know if you end up testing them out!
Excel is life! I love this day. Lol, I use an Excel workbook to track my cash flow and net worth. It also has my budget plan and tracks my savings goals. I also use Personal Capital and an app called My Budget Book to manually track expenses but can’t give up my Excel spreadsheet. I also have a spreadsheet that logs my running and bike commuting (8 years & 45,000 miles and counting!) and a google sheet for my grocery list that has prices included and tell me while I’m making my list if I go over budget.
I can’t imagine life without spreadsheets. What would I do for fun?
Hahahahhaahaa..
You officially earn the “best comment of the day” here – congrats :)
(It’s almost as impressive as hitting 45,000 miles!)
I had no idea there was a National Spreadsheet Day, but now that I do, I’m in love. This may easily become my favorite day, because I absolutely adore spreadsheets, Excel in particular. I use Excel for EVERYTHING.
To answer your questions in the post: I tried using Mint and my own bank’s online expense tracking (PNC), but it just wasn’t for me. Every Friday, I sit down and manually go through my and my fiance’s accounts, and input the expenses into a tracker spreadsheet (that I found on one of your posts, actually). I like the feeling that I’m personally keeping an eye on my spending, rather than letting Mint or whatever do it for me. It keeps me more accountable.
And, I just get so much joy out of doing financial things, that it’s hard for me to let software do it for me!
I think you’re in good company here :)
I went with Tiller for a while when I heard about it on Stacking Benjamins. Awesome to see you’ve got some experience with it as well. It’s definitely useful if you’re a spreadsheet guy. Myself, I don’t really use spreadsheets all that often, but maybe I need to look at getting back into them!
I’ll stick to watching you use spreadsheets on your website and me using Mint :)
I guarantee I’m spilling excess funds everywhere but overall I have my spending dialled and I have no debt so for the time being I will stay the course. I am mindful of where I spend but the basic trends and budget snapshots Mint provides are satisfactory. I do like excel spreadsheets and the power they harness for anything really though. Pretty cool that the first spreadsheet was a household budget hey
Hey – if it’s working for you and you’re happy, keep going! Doesn’t matter what you’re using to make your life better. I’m sure it’s hard to bring all those spreadsheets into the outdoors with you anyways ;)
I’m a big fan of spreadsheets, but I love the automatic import available in dedicated financial tracking programs. If this Tiller tool were free, I would definitely be interested.
Currently, my main financial tracking tool is Quicken. I was a Microsoft Money user for a long time, but when they killed it off I transitioned to Quicken.
However, I recently tried Personal Capital and am very impressed with it. Mint was a little to basic for me.
J$, wow, thanks for the fun write-up about spreadsheets and Tiller. We of course love spreadsheets, and it’s awesome to read this thread and hear about everyone’s stories with spreadsheets. There’s some real passion!
I’m smiling and nodding at many of these comments, including folks who’ve been using their spreadsheets for decades, and who are just dialed into their money because of their spreadsheets. Awesome.
So cheers to everyone who is using spreadsheets on this mighty fine day!
-Peter Polson
(Founder, Tiller)
Thanks for the heads up and inspiration for this post!
I haven’t been that excited to write a post in quite some time ;)
I use a bunch of spreadsheets, but they stink, as I have to constantly update them. If I were FI, would I even have them? I don’t know, but I would be less stressed in FI. I guess I need them to reach FI, oh well darn spreadsheets will be around for a few more years.
Interesting question about spreadsheets in FI…
I feel like you would still use them just to track and make sure all is good and you don’t need to adjust anywhere or go back to picking up a gig, but i bet it’s much more relaxing indeed… And those of us who just love numbers and spreadsheets in general might even spend *more* time in it because we’ll have more time for hobbies :)
Happy Spreadsheet Day! I sure do love mine. I wish that either Mint or any other aggregator were smarter but there’s always at least one area they hate on one of my accounts and so I’m stuck with a partially manual, partially automatic update system that doesn’t quite do the trick. This could be the answer :)
I remember that from when I used to try Mint and others back in the day :)
If you end up giving Tiller a shot, let me know if it fixes the problem! I know some banks are often wonkier than others too, especially with all the different security issues going on w/ technology, so that could be a part of it all too.
Happy Spreadsheet Day! (My wife will be thrilled to hear about this as she’s the spreadsheet nerd in our house.) We currently use a combo…tracking everything in Quicken and then transferring numbers to a spreadsheet for customized reporting. Tiller sounds pretty interesting.
I love spreadsheet! The story of VisiCalc is just fascinating! Very cool as I had no idea.
Yeah! Every now and then you actually get to learn something here ;)
I far prefer my budget/net worth spreadsheet to any other tools out there. I’ve tried things like Mint & Personal Capital, and they never categorize things correctly. I spend more time trying to correct their approximations than I do just typing in our expenses once a week or two. Plus, I like having the control. :)
So, yeah, hail the mighty spreadsheet…organizer of my financial life.
“…they never categorize things correctly.” Yes, we agree! A big part of our philosophy at Tiller is that it should be fast and easy to categorize yourself. That small process of touching a transaction a second time also creates awareness. Gone are the frustrations of having an algorithm guess wrongly how your most recent coffee or Amazon purchase should be categorized.
You’re probably not old enough to remember Lotus 123 (Google it).
You ran it by commands that resembled this:
/ – b – r – g
It gets worse.
I spent a summer using it on a Compaq computer with a screen size slightly bigger than my phone’s current screen size putting together a pricing model for a phone company. It was between my two MBA years and while it was a hassle, they paid me quite well, so who cares??? :)
As for current uses of spreadsheets, I use one to set a budget, but track all my expenses in Quicken. I’m 20 years into it, so it’s too late to turn back now!!!!
Haha…
And obviously it worked since you’re now retired ;)
I will take a look at Tiller – it almost sounds to good to be true.
I use Mint, and I have used mint for about three years. It isn’t the most seamless tool, but it is the best free tracking tool I’ve tried. I have not tried Personal Capital, but many bloggers have recently recommended it. What I like about Mint is they keep updating their budgeting tool. It has become much easier to use compared to a few years ago. Now, it is easier to tag expenses to different budgeting categories.
Well that’s good! It was a bit wonky the last time I tried it (4 years ago prob?)
Tiller def. sounds too good to be true and prob why it took me a while to finally just go to the site and check it out, haha… It also helps talking to the founder of companies face to face so you get a better sense of their values and reasons behind the things they build :)
I was super impressed with Peter, so from that point forward Tiller was on my “good” list!
Hooray for spreadsheet day! I use Quicken (old school, I know) to keep track of all my spending, and it gives me the ability to drill down into detail if I want, and to run a whole bunch of customizable reports. I really dig it.
Also, I just learned that you and I were born just two days apart! Weird! You said you were two months and 9 days old when the first spreadsheet came out, and I was thinking wait a minute, **calculating** I was just two months and 11 days old!
Nice!! All the fun people must have been born that month ;)
If this is national spread sheet day, then I’m the Grand Marshall! Throw me some beads!!
Something tells me they don’t celebrate this in New Orleans ;)
I never new there was a national spreadsheet day but I love it!
Tiller sounds interesting. I may have to check it out. I have primarily used Excel to track our spending, net worth, and investments. I’m actually redoing everything right now and plan to create a system that uses Mint and Personal Capital to help aggregate all the information, and then load it into an Access database that links to Excel, which will then update the calculations for my wife and I!
Maybe a little over the top, but what can I say? I’m a nerd!
Sounds like you should def. look over Tiller then in case it helps automate it more for ya :)
I let Mint aggregate it, but keep a simple spreadsheet that tracks my net worth weekly. I manually add those numbers, and like to watch the numbers change.
I use MS Excel for our personal tracking because we use Excel at the company I work for. I can keep our expense/budget ledger up in the background while I’m doing “real work.” Then I don’t have to mess around with all the numbers when I’m at home. Just gotta remember to email a copy home once in a while. ;)
Hah! Beautiful.
I am still amazed with how spreadsheet changed the way I budget and how I save. It has really contributed so much as I know how I spend and save money, J Money. It also let me to fully know our needs and expenses.
Hey, no mention of Lotus 1-2-3? Those wonder geeks gave us the “Menu Bar”. Broke my heart when they lost that lawsuit.
And to add my voice to this day I use spreadsheets to do my creative writing. Each sheet is a chapter. I even use a spreadsheet when I “script” something: On assign each line of script its own row. Then with that row I enter the char motivation, synopsis and/or location in one column, the name of the character speaking in the next column and the actual speech in the last column , I came up with this when I realized how easy it would be to sort by a particular character to list all their lines together. Simpler than using a word processor. And Publisher is just too bloated with stuff I don’t need.
HAH! Love it… Even though I only understood about 23% of it ;)