Clever Excel Template For Tight Budgets

[Iggle Piggle]

Surely someone really clever with Excel software could write a template that helped people on a very tight budget....
I'm thinking a template where you enter store cards, credit cards, loans etc and their interest rates and terms and then say you get a windfall of £20 it shows which one to pay the £20 into for the best effect.
Then throw the template open for anyone to use.

Get your thinking caps on.

[factor-fiction]

A spreadsheet isn't necessary in my opinion- if you get a windfall of £20 you should just pay it off the one that charges the highest rate of interest- or should just pay enough to pay off the minimum monthly charge on as many as possible

[RATTER15]

But the spreadsheet will only show you the highest rate of interest if you enter that information to begin with. I don't imagine they will be changing their interest rates so wouldn't it always display the same information that you entered in the first place or am I missing something here?

[Old_Geezer]

The Martin Lewis site has a very comprehensive budget spreadsheet. You can leave empty anything you think too detailed to be bothered with, albeit with a corresponding loss of fidelity.

[Old_Geezer]

Unsure it makes decision on who to pay though. You may need to add that yourself, but surely the one to pay is a simple case of spotting any about to take you to court, and if none of those, whoever is charging you most interest. I'm unsure that would be useful to try to code into a spreadsheet.

[Old_Geezer]

Ah I see ff said as much.

Yeah Ratter, but a spreadsheet can have a page where you enter the existing values that can change, and you keep that up page to date. One needs to be careful though. It'd be ok for budgets showing a snapshot of your financial situation, maybe less easy for spreadsheets showing change over time since one would need to code in dates when changes occur and it'd all get too complex IMO.

[dancecaller]

The sort of people that understand spreadsheets may not be the same sort of people who solve their 'tight budget' problems with store cards.

[Iggle Piggle]

Ha ha Dancecaller. It's mean but I like it !