How financial advisors can use Excel to work efficiently

Key quotes:

• "Excel, and spreadsheets more generally, are the default behavior for managing personal finances."
• "Reminder: Envestnet acquired Yodlee for $660 million to get consumer data into its financial planning and portfolio management tools."
• "But this strategy can now be significantly undercut by the high tech firms (Microsoft, Google) that control the default financial management interface — the spreadsheet."
• "Does the bank still control the financial data of its customers, even when that data sits in a tech company cloud and is pulled into personal financial management spreadsheets on the tech company office software? Even more powerful, of course, would be to bring this financial data into the Google Pay wallet as well as its browser."
• "Having Google aggregate your net worth and enable you to take payment, savings, and investment actions from the interface from which you view the world is far more meaningful than squirreling away the experience in your bank account."
• "Imagine a Plaid extension in the browser that also allows you to take financial actions, like those powered by open banking APIs mandated by PSD2, across digital marketplaces."

Key quotes:

• "However, Microsoft Excel remains one of the market-leading tools for data management and analysis, even 30 years after it was launched."
• "Microsoft Excel, launched back in 1985, as an easy-to-use platform for businesses to help them fulfil their data management obligations."
• "Microsoft Excel is a market-leading tool for data management and analysis."
• "The good thing about Microsoft Excel is that you can begin by learning simple but extremely useful tactics to handle your data management responsibilities."
• "This not only wastes time but also increases the chances of incorrect data entry., Microsoft Excel introduced the Flash Fill feature back in 2013."
• "Instead of entering mathematical formulae, again and again, you can simply add up everything by highlighting any cell at the end of a row or column (wherever you want your result to appear) and pressing “ALT” and “+” keys simultaneously."

Key quotes:

• "Investing is one of those things that everyone wants to do but not many know how to get started."
• "The problem with that thinking is that if you don’t start investing, you won’t build wealth.Click To Tweet This post is going to cover my top 5 favorite investing apps — Robinhood, Acorns, Betterment, Stockpile, and Coinbase."
• "I know a lot of people who think of this as either a special savings account for vacations, use it for an actual retirement fund, or even just use it for extra spending money."
• "If nothing else, open an account and check it out and withdraw the money if you don’t like it! This means that instead of hiring a traditional financial advisor that decides where you put your hard earned money, the company Betterment actually uses technology to choose your investments."
• "Our technology helps make this possible by lowering taxes, lowering fees, diversifying your portfolio, and enabling better investor behavior.” If you don’t already have an investment account like a 401k or an IRA, I would recommend setting up a Roth IRA or even a traditional IRA through Betterment."

Key quotes:

• "Does using Excel utility in banks translate to exceptionally analytical utilizes or are there dangerously manipulative tools? The ease of using Excel coupled with its unlimited combinations of analytical computations enables an infinite capacity to do quantitative analysis, from statistical modeling of databases with thousands of records to application of complex estimation tools with user-friendly interfaces."
• "Banks have adopted Excel as a formal analytical tool in every area of operations, whether it is a simple simulation of a business event, a complex financial model or a VAR calculation."
• "The way forward is to utilize a scalable, extensible, customizable web based application to replace complex legacy spreadsheet models."
• "The ideal features of such a web-based application typically focus on bank wide drivers and address different business needs as technology enablers."
• "With the introduction of new and advanced web applications, banking companies can now easily structure web based solutions with stringent information security features, while retaining the user-friendly interface of Excel and encompassing all the complex computational capabilities."

Key quotes:

• "Like the 4 walls that hold a building in place, these 4 financial pillars are essential to overcoming and enduring life’s unexpected and many times unwelcomed surprises."
• "Unless you can predict the future, then you need an emergency fund."
• "The most important benefit of an emergency fund is getting away from owing someone money for something that is no longer bringing you any economic value (a debt with economic value would be a mortgage or business loan)."
• "This value should give you your ideal ‘fully funded emergency fund.’ If that number seems a bit scary, start with $1,000 and work your way to $5,000 then add a little more as time goes by."
• "The best time to start saving for retirement (if you haven’t already) is now."
• "So how much do you need to save each month to get the retirement your want? That depends on a lot of factors, including: when you start to save, what your risk tolerance is and ultimately what you are invested in, inflation, how you want to spend your retirement."