I have Numbers Fatigue

[BeachOrCity]

Suggestion
Model three scenarios. Use a spreadsheet with three collums to the right of categories for your income and expense figures.
The middle collumn is most likely
The left collum is "worst" ( which fo4 income items is lowest, expense its are highest)
The right collumn is 'best' (opposite of above)

Then run firecalc on income expense for all three collumns.

Most likely 'worst' will be a far miss off what you need because if everythig goes wrong then for most of us we will miss. So dont too concerned about point of the exercise is to show you that you cant plan for everything bad happening at once. No one can. So if it were me i would base my decision off having a comfortable margin say 95 percent on mostlikely collumn.

....Then if life hands me lemons i would adjust.

 

[braumeister]

Get with the 90's girl. Seriously, excel will change your life, certainly did for me (only partially in jest).

Flashback to 1980. The TRS-80 and the Apple ][ were the frontier of microcomputers, and people were saying "Why in the world would I want one of those?"

Then VisiCalc came out and suddenly everyone said "Oh, that's why I want one of those!"

The original "killer app."

 

[Danmar]

Flashback to 1980. The TRS-80 and the Apple ][ were the frontier of microcomputers, and people were saying "Why in the world would I want one of those?"

Then VisiCalc came out and suddenly everyone said "Oh, that's why I want one of those!"

The original "killer app."

I remember my first experience with VisiCalc. Was working at E&Y early 80's. Blew me away. E&Y trained the whole firm on how to use it. Then Lotus and finally Excel. For financial types the world changed.

 

[MichaelB]

VisiCalc? The beginning of my road to ruination. A lifetime of addiction. My first true platonic love.

What if ...

 

[googily]

I remember the first time I opened Lotus 1-2-3 on a PS2, in about 1990, having absolutely no idea what a spreadsheet program might be, and was totally baffled when greeted with a screen that was nothing but squares. I've figured it out since then, though!

 

[karen1972]

Two years in I'm still running numbers, but I love it, now usually for relatives and friends.

To me a budget depends on how predictable you are. We have a budget (a do not exceed budget), but I find we have a $2k/month swing in expenses depending on if we are paying attention to our spending or not. That leaves us lots of room for mistakes.

I pulled the plug a bit early so still in spreadsheet mode. At 45 there is just too much unknown not to pay attention. However, for me its simple, no matter WHAT the market brings, I still will have 10 times as much money as most of the people in my family and they will be fine and figure it out, so I can too.

I like to re-run firecalc every 6 months or so and see how "on track" we still are to give me the warm and fuzzy.