2 replies to this topic

[cn12096]

I'm looking for something that is very easy to use (I do not know excel) and with little to no cost - I want to be able to plug in income and have it show me what the recommended amounts are for home, auto, groceries etc. Any recommendations?

[Jeremy09]

What do you mean by "recommended amounts" - I'm a bit confused on that.

You mean percentage of gross and/or net income? Or actual dollar amounts? There is no "set in stone" way of doing things. For instance, some people spend a bit more on their car payments because they enjoy having a nice car. Some people are "house-poor" or "apartment-poor" because they want to live in downtown NYC or have a huge house. Other people are "toy-poor" and spend tons of money on pools, four wheelers, dirt bikes, boats, jet skis, etc etc.

What, exactly, are you looking for? I think we just need a little bit more information before we can accurately answer your question.

[jnesbitt82]

You could definitely use Excel to build such a program. It would take time as all of the columns would have to be set up and the proper calculations inserted in order to get the correct amount. An example would be, Block A1=total amount of income, Block A2=percentage of income for mortgage, Block A3=percentage of income for utilities, etc. A stated above, everything would be based off of your families needs and wants. How much are you willing to dedicate to each category? All of the calculations are already preprogrammed into Excel and can be found in the Formulas tab. Or if you are unsure what calculation you need, you could describe what function you want to do in a Google search and and then manually type in the formula. Hope this info helps!