need financial planner

In message , Mr Warwick writes

Probably a good place to start would be to play with a spreadsheet.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person " snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net" said

I do =everything= I need finance-wise using Excel, including turning line item expenditure/income details into balances, calculating daily interest, and forecasting 20+ years into the future .. however it probably helps that I can program, since I have to use Visual basic for some of the twiddly bits.

Thanks all. I am v new to this game. What is a spreadsheet? Do I download it, or buy it in a shop? Ditto for Excel. It might help if I outline my needs. I have a PC with WIN98. Currently I am using a financial planning programme that I wrote myself on Qbasic but it is getting out of date. I tried to learn Visualbasic but it defeated me. I also had a look in a shop at the guide for Quicken but it looks much too complicated.

I need to have variables that I fill in myself, something like as follows.

-my investments are A

-their rate of return is B so

-they produce income of C

- my pensions produce income of D

-so my income is C+D

- my expenditure is E

-this produces an annual surplus or deficit of F

- which reduces/or increases my investments A by the amount F

-the value of my house is G

-if I go into a retirement home the costs will be H

-inflation is assumed to be at a rate of I

-so if I die this year I leave each of my kids the sum of J

All this is for year One

Then it needs to have provision for Year 2 and indeed the next 40 years.

Ending up saying that if I die aged 110 I shall either have run out of money, or leave my kids the sum of J.

Most grateful for any thoughts.

Mr Warwick

I recommend a short course. Try your local library, learndirect, evening classes or similar. If you have programmed before, learning a spreadsheet should be easy but you'll save a huge amount of time compared to trying to work it out by yourself.