gmsc’s money tips #12:

While these programs in my previous money tips post are specially designed for financial tracking, people have been using spreadsheets for the task ever since VisiCalc was first released. Yes, they’ve grown and changed, but Excel is still a popular choice for financial management. There are numerous specialized spreadsheet forms to make this process easier, and Mind Your Money has some excellent free files to help you get started.

If you don’t wish to pay for Excel, OpenOffice offers most of the same features, but is a free program! There are several versions available for different systems, but all work off the same basic engine, and offer a great amount of compatibility with Excel. For Mac users, the version of OpenOffice I recommend most highly is NeoOffice.

Sometimes, especially in the case of planning, you need financial calculators to help you out. The best selection of free financial planning calculators I’ve found is at DinkyTown. Not only can you use them on the site, but you can embed them on your own site to help out others!

I have two other calculator related goodies to mention before I wind this up. First, there’s bankrate.com, where you can find an amazing array of data to use when comparing various financial data, from interest rates, to taxes, and much more!

However, what if you read about a new calculation in a financial book, but there is no ready-made calculator for it? Learn to use instacalc, and you can quickly create one! Not only can you create your own custom calculations, but you can save them and share them with others, and you can even embed them with no more difficulty than embedding a YouTube video. There are many handy and unusual calculations, with my favorite being which actually saves you more money - farther cheaper gas, or closer, more expensive gas? (MPG version. Here’s a KPL version for those who use metric.)