User Experience & Interaction Design

I was working out a simple calculation for my personal finance, trying to figure how much should I save for my annual savings like Insurance, ULIPs, Bonds etc. It then iterated on and on and on, and I even included a wishlist column.

What does this Spreadsheet do?
The spreadsheet attempts to capture your monthly expenses, then capture your savings (captured for Per-Year, but automatically calculates for Per-Month internally) and a Wish List - items that you wish to buy the next year. For example an LCD TV, or Gadget or BlueRay player or even a Home Appliance.


What will it show to me?
Using this spreadsheet, you can find out how much you should save each month for meeting your yearly-savings and to buy Wish List items. This is not a Finance calculator, but a tool to give a ball-park idea to meet the savings need.



Instructions:
The Spreadsheet was created in OpenOffice and exported to Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP formats. I've given both formats here. You can download both and checkout for yourself.

1. Fill all the pale-yellow colored cells with the amounts. You can add/delete irrelevant heads.
   
2. The spreadsheet automatically calculates the Monthly shell for savings (such as Insurance, Bonds etc)
   
3. Additionally, if you fill out the Wish-List columns, it will calculate Monthly shell for Wish List too.
   
4. On the top you need to enter your monthly salary to find out how much you spend towards expenses, Savings instrucments and optionally for wishlist.
   
5. The cash-in-hand is the estimated amount remaining after all expenses are deducted from your salary.
   

Download
OpenOffice 2.0 Spreadsheet : myForeCast.ods
Microsoft Office 2000/XP : myForeCast.xls

- Rajesh Sundaram