Manage Your Finances Using an Excel Workbook

Get your expenses in order before the holidays with free ebook Within Your Means: Financial Planning for Hidden Expenses. Writer Michael Ham rolled an ebook and an Excel workbook together into one hybrid financial management tool. In addition to learning about implicit and explicit costs, you interact directly with the workbook by entering your income, expenses, and goals. A series of interrelated Excel formulas slowly molds a snapshot of your current financial situation.

An Excel workbook to help you create a budget that recognises not only your explicit expenses (rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, auto insurance and registration, and the like), but also implicit expenses: the money you implicitly spend by gradually wearing out things you must replace (car, tires, mattress, TV, furniture, and the like).

I spent an hour going through the workbook earlier this week and was pleased at how well the workbook complemented traditional financial software like Quicken, Money, Wesabe, and Mint.