Peace, Love & Spreadsheets

Used car or new car? Gas or hybrid? Everyone will tell you these are extremely personal decisions but I'm here to tell you a better answer: math! With the price of used cars being kind of nuts these days, you might decide it's worth it to get those extra miles to yourself and buy new. It all comes down to how much money you're going to spend per mile. If you spend $10K on a car and drive it for 100,000 miles, that's ten cents per mile. If you're considering a car that has an extra 15K miles on it, it'd better be $1500 cheaper. RIGHT? Enough explaining, easier to just math it out. Oh this all says "miles" but if you use all kilometer numbers, it'll work. Same idea it doesn't care. This does not include loan interest, insurance, electrity cost for hybrids. I can only do so much. First... how many miles will a car have on it when you get rid of it? What's the price of gas these days? Now compare up to 3 possible car...

I'm reading "Financial Feminist" by Tori Dunlap and might have a few entries on this really interesting book, but she said something that shocked me so I wanted to run the numbers.  In her chapter on "The Financial Game Plan", she says our FIRST goal must be to have a 3-6 month emergency fund. "Even if you're hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, do not move on to the next step until you have your emergency fund." The scream I scramed! I've said before that I'm more of a percentage budgeter... and in this book, she does get to that, starting with the 50/30/20 needs/wants/savings budget as a starter. But my shock about the idea of having a 3-6 month emergency fund before high interest debt drove me straight to my spreadsheets. Let's say you take home $60K a year, and for the last two years you've spent 110% more than what you make... earn $5000 a month, spend $5500, wracking up debt on a credit card with 20% interest. For simplic...

Posts about index funds aren't usually Instagram viral material, but it happened in 2023! It was about the Hypatia Women CEO fund - an index of companies lead by women - and it caught my attention for pretending to be a new idea. Don't get me wrong, it's a good idea. I do support diversity and I do think women can lead companies that grow our money! But WCEO is far from being the first... there are lots of versions of these funds and there are questions to look into before we invest in them. Disclaimer for this post: I always say I'm not an advisor giving advice, but on this one I'm REALLY not, I have not found the magic questions for index funds. But I will tell you what I look at and what I'm in. I've invested in several of these, but I'm not turning over my whole portfolio. Another disclaimer... a lot of these funds haven't been around for 5 years so I'm listing 3 year growth. This is a terrible time to list 3 year growth because 3 years ago, ...

A while back I made a savings calculator to answer the simple question... what would it take to retire in (X) years? But if you're like me, online calculators are fun once. Spreadsheets are fun FOREVER! Here's how to make your own spreadsheet to tell you the answers.  Both Excel and Google Sheets have a PMT function that calculates payments on a loan - or in your case, a fund that will set you up for a future of withdrawals without actually going down. Full disclosure: talk to your own advisor. I have not retired, don't plan to retire in 10 years, I just like math.  The payment (PMT) function needs to know... 1) Rate - what interest are you getting on your investments? I've read a whole range on what values you should use for this, from 4% to 10% or more. I used 5% in this example. 2) Number of payments - this is years x months since you're saving monthly. You can swap out every 12 for 26 if you get paid every other week and like to think of savings as per paycheck...