We all have our claims to fame. You have to score your wins to stay sane.
Another of my wins was that the Solution Selling book by Michael Bosworth has a chapter about establishing a financial proof with an “ROI” (really an IRR, but that doesn’t sell as well). That chapter is 100% me, I taught the Bosworth brothers how I did that with the Capital Budgeting techniques I learned in my Econ degree at Claremont McKenna College. Salt that with some salesmanship, marketing and Excel skills, and you have the CFO of Fortune 500 companies in the palm of your hand.
I retired this year. I’m going to the gym next for my daily 2 hour work out. I’ve never felt better. 62 and free as a bird.
I started with Office 2003. Created a payroll sheet for my business among many others, as well as an ordering system in Access. At some point I switched to Open Office Calc which I’m currently using for a number of things including the Pigskin Pickem Thread weekly tally sheet. You can take anything from Excel 365 open it with Calc and then save it there, there’s very little difference.
The most valuable tool for most casual users of Excel is absolute references in formulas. They give the users an easy way to calculate and display periodic changes in loan balances, interest payments, and the value of retirement savings over time. I taught accounting and finance to college freshmen and sophomores for 35 years. Nothing penetrated their thick skulls like a display of their accumulated interest payments on a 30 year home loan or the value of saving a few dollars a week with compound interest for 45 years.
My favorite example was the spreadsheet answer to this question: How much will you still owe on your (any amount) 30 year home loan at (any interest rate) after making payments for 10 years?
Then I ask: If you pay an additional $100 per month, when will your 30 year loan be paid off?
Without excel, they would have to use math that they don’t know or understand to answer those questions.