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Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

bou.ke

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Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#41

Post by the_fire_friar »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #40
jplr8922 wrote: post #37

I have an MSC in quant finance, and i'm seriously considering learning Django (in top of my backend skills) to build an complete app for personal finance management. Key features ; - Budget (aka cashflow management, what am I doing with my paycheck next month?) - Project planning (aka balance sheet, what is the purpose of my inflows and outflows over time?) - End of year results(aka do my projected budget match my pr…

Why do you want to pay less taxes?

I'd guess to keep more money to use for things that are important to them.

Do people actively look for ways to pay more taxes?

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#42

Post by madamelic »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #40
jplr8922 wrote: post #37

I have an MSC in quant finance, and i'm seriously considering learning Django (in top of my backend skills) to build an complete app for personal finance management. Key features ; - Budget (aka cashflow management, what am I doing with my paycheck next month?) - Project planning (aka balance sheet, what is the purpose of my inflows and outflows over time?) - End of year results(aka do my projected budget match my pr…

Why do you want to pay less taxes?

It isn't illegal or even immoral to reduce your taxes to as low as you can legally. You shouldn't pay more taxes than you need to even if you believe in socialism.

If you are American and not reporting the right number of allowances on your W-4, you are giving the gov't a free loan.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#43

Post by Alupis »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #40
jplr8922 wrote: post #37

I have an MSC in quant finance, and i'm seriously considering learning Django (in top of my backend skills) to build an complete app for personal finance management. Key features ; - Budget (aka cashflow management, what am I doing with my paycheck next month?) - Project planning (aka balance sheet, what is the purpose of my inflows and outflows over time?) - End of year results(aka do my projected budget match my pr…

Why do you want to pay less taxes?

It is not somehow patriotic to pay more taxes than one legally owes.

Overpaying taxes (what a lot of people unintentionally do that don't have resources to navigate every nook and cranny of the labyrinthian tax code) accomplishes nothing but make the individual more poor than they already were. Minimizing overpayment is the best possible thing an individual can do.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#44

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

basseq wrote: post #20
jldugger wrote: post #8

Okay, now do one for taxes: given a taxable income, and a table representing the tax brackets, calculate the taxes owed in a single formula.

Because I like a challenge: =SUMPRODUCT( (bracket_min bracket_max)*(bracket_max-bracket_min)) ) *bracket_rate ) Where income is your income, bracket_min is the range of bracket minimums, bracket_max is the range of bracket maximums, and bracket_rate is the range of bracket tax rates. Demo on Google Sheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z0vx8TJeWr-hbJ3q6E7r...

The biggest problem with this is trying to model tax payments in the future.

In ten years, you have no idea what tax rates will be. But you can be pretty confident the Fed will have devalued money by 30%+.

Even if you just want to have tax brackets adjust to inflation - this function gets to be really complicated.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#45

Post by jplr8922 »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #40
jplr8922 wrote: post #37

I have an MSC in quant finance, and i'm seriously considering learning Django (in top of my backend skills) to build an complete app for personal finance management. Key features ; - Budget (aka cashflow management, what am I doing with my paycheck next month?) - Project planning (aka balance sheet, what is the purpose of my inflows and outflows over time?) - End of year results(aka do my projected budget match my pr…

Why do you want to pay less taxes?

Its not that I want to completely avoid them. Its that tax laws of many countries are poorly written (or applied) and not doing optimization is financial suicide.

Consider tax sheltered accounts (TFSA-RRSP in Canada, 401k in the US). Many people do not understand how they work or even what they are ; a lot of stranger tell me they ''purchased RRSP at their bank last month''.

Also consider the case of freelance consultant. If you are your own business, you must understand what is tax deductible, and what is not.

Finally, different countries have different fiscal law regarding property. A lot of people in Canada invest in real estate because they do not have an easy access to financial markets. Here, capital gains of non primary residence is not tax deductible... oops.

You get the point. The is not financial planning without tax planning. From a dev point of view, consider the fiscal laws of a country like COBOL legacy code. Do not assume it will work as intended.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#46

Post by [deleted] »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #40
jplr8922 wrote: post #37

I have an MSC in quant finance, and i'm seriously considering learning Django (in top of my backend skills) to build an complete app for personal finance management. Key features ; - Budget (aka cashflow management, what am I doing with my paycheck next month?) - Project planning (aka balance sheet, what is the purpose of my inflows and outflows over time?) - End of year results(aka do my projected budget match my pr…

Why do you want to pay less taxes?

[deleted]

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#47

Post by B4CKlash »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #40
jplr8922 wrote: post #37

I have an MSC in quant finance, and i'm seriously considering learning Django (in top of my backend skills) to build an complete app for personal finance management. Key features ; - Budget (aka cashflow management, what am I doing with my paycheck next month?) - Project planning (aka balance sheet, what is the purpose of my inflows and outflows over time?) - End of year results(aka do my projected budget match my pr…

Why do you want to pay less taxes?

Paying less in taxes doesn't have to be nefarious.

When you put money into a 401K you're shielding income from taxation. A 401K is an explicit tradeoff the government has created; individuals saving more today will hopefully translate into less reliance on the safety net in the future.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#49

Post by wintermutestwin »

usrme wrote: post #16

These are awesome and exactly the kind of formulas I wish I would have been taught earlier on my life! I've personally been using a free spreadsheet-based tool called the Investment Portfolio Tracker by The Measure of a Plan ( https://themeasureofaplan.com/investment-portfolio-tracker/ ) and it's been absolutely wonderful; it never ceases to amaze me how much power spreadsheets have. The author has other tools as wel…

This looks so awesome, but there is no way that I am putting this kind of personal data into the cloud (and am particularly not wanting to feed Google's stalker AI).

From the FAQ, when asked if there was an Excel version:

-------------------

Unfortunately not.

For those keeping score at home, you’ll know that I have a preference for excel over Google Sheets. However, I haven’t been able to find a reliable way of getting current and historical stock/ETF price data to import automatically into excel.

While Office 365 has a new “Stocks” feature that lets you import real-time stock prices into excel, this unfortunately doesn’t work for historical prices (yesterday, last month, last year’s price, etc).

This spreadsheet uses historical pricing info to calculate portfolio performance between any two dates, so historical prices are a critical input.

-------------------

I'm finding it hard to believe that finance professionals don't have some kind of programmatic access to "current and historical stock/ETF price data." Does anyone know? I'd be willing to pay a reasonable "individual investor" level fee.

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