When I had a job with a set paycheque every 2 weeks, I’d spend HOURS imagining what I would do with that money.
I make up spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of dreams, and play with the numbers and cells for many hours.
And I still find this a lot of FUN.
Most of it was dreams of how fast I could use the money to clear my debt, but it got to the point where the MINUTE the money deposited into my account, I’d have paid all my bills and allocated the cash in 3 minutes, tops.
There was no agonizing, or wondering what I should pay or do.
I had already spent hours (of fun not torture) doing that before.
I just like playing with numbers I guess.
It feels slightly obsessive, but if this is my idea of fun and I am actually enjoying it.. I’m going for it!
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
I DO THIS TOO!
I am pretty much obsessed with allocating each check and calculate debt reduction over and over until the amount is paid a FINALLY clears my account (seems like that part takes forever). Then I immediately move on to obsessing about the next check. :0)
I do this too! I recently moved out and I’m still buying things for my apartment. Right now I’m saving up for a nice leather couch.
I’m similar in that I will spend hours with my spread sheet (I actually started keeping a spreadsheet in 2009 based on reading your blog 😉 and I love numbers and equations. However, for me it’s moving around buckets of water in a sinking ship because we’re at a point where we’ve gone from a two-income couple to a one-income family (had a baby this year) and we’re struggling to make it work. While I get excited to see, “if things continue we will be debt-free in x,” the daily realities leave me feeling a little down. I don’t stop playing with the numbers and I haven’t given up because of it.
Sounds about right! I get a natural high from having the money get deposited in my account and allocating it to my costs – namely my debt. Seeing the total debt decrease makes me happier than any shopping spree would! You aren’t alone 😉
I am the EXACT same way. I do the same thing, and I like it. I like figuring out how I’m going to pay off stuff, and shift things around. My roommate would see me staring at my spreadsheet and she’d say “has it moved yet? haha…” LOL.
I feel better knowing that I am not the only one! I do this to figure out how much from each paycheck will go to my debt, expenses and savings. It helps me figure out how fast I will get to each debt milestone ($5000 less in debt).
I TOTALLY DO THIS TOO! I’ve never been in debt, nor had a problem with spending. I love projecting my income and savings based on my company’s stock price and seeing at what point I will be done re-paying my savings buckets after buying the condo. Projecting mortgage balances based on different levels of pre-payments is also addicting…
I’m glad to know there is a whole club of us who do this 🙂
So not the only one! I just switched over to a new job – it’s the first time in over five years I’ll be getting biweekly paychecks instead of monthly checks, and between that and the bump in salary, I’ve been playing with the numbers like crazy!
I definitely do this too! I love playing with the numbers to see how they will affect the different categories. I also like making graphs and charts with the data!
I paid down over $20k in debt right after I graduated from college, and that was on a $13/hr job back in 1999. I followed Suze Orman, who was groundbreaking in the “if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it” philosophy at the time.
A dozen years later…I’ve started over again. Probably $100k in debt (I don’t really know the total!) I have a failed business behind me, lost a house, my dog died, lost a great job (that was what lead to the business, long story) and my car was totalled twice, most of that in 2009 alone!
I recently downloaded a freebie budget spreadsheet from cnet.com downloads and I love it. 75% of my paycheck now goes straight to the debt and I’m dreaming of the day when I’m back to zero!
I get paid monthly and have been doing this several times a day for two years. 😀
I do the same. my husband hates it.
I just want to know at what date my (our) debts will be paid off and how i get through them quicker, and then how i can budget our money etc etc etc.
I could probably do it all day.
Now if i had all that money now, that would be a different story….
I do this too. Before, when I was happily racking up consumer debt, I used to work out how much certain things would cost while traveling and equate that to time worked. For example, one hour of work would equal one night in a cabin on the beach in Thailand. Now I work out how much interest that hour of work will save off my mortgage. Sad 😉
I love my spreadsheets, especially now I that I don’t have any debt. I can sit and. Play with numbers all day if I let myself, even though everything is pretty automated.
My financial spreadsheets are my porn!
I spend hours going over them and it works because I always manage to find a little extra to pay to the credit card or a little more to add to the savings. There are no surprises and I know exactly where I stand. Maybe if I’d been doing this 3-years ago, I wouldn’t have run up $40K on my AMEX card. My husband teases me but my debt is shrinking, my savings are growing and it’s exciting!!
i do this…pretty much every week. And i run different scenarios to figure out how to pay things off and then how much i’d have left over.
Lol, I definitely do this. I do this for how quickly I could clear my debt, and what I’ll do with my money once it’s all paid off. I used to think I was the only one who did this; I’m so grateful to have found a whole network of people who geek out over the same things as I do 🙂
I do this every morning at work – it’s my morning ritual (and much more stimulating than a cup of coffee!).
I love doing this too. I think I should have majored in accounting or economics in college instead of Engligh.
Engligh …. good one.
I do this in a notebook! It’s so much fun!!! LOL but then I come back to reality and end up sending it all to savings, and feeling poor again.
I do this too. I can spend hours adjusting my budget and calculating goals/wants. It’s so much fun for me!
I used to do it a decade or so ago with Quicken, until the software crashed and I found out the backups it was making were corrupt. Losing all the data from over a years worth of work left such a bad taste in my mouth I haven’t played around with financial software since.
Nope, you’re not the only one 🙂 I do this every single week
Yep. I do this. But then I feel so broke immediately after I get paid because I’ve already “spent” the money in my mind, even if it’s still in my chequing account.
That is totally how I feel. Although, I am a college student living off of an internship… Payday can be bittersweet sometimes. :/
Oh yes, absolutely I do this! After years of ignorant spending and financial meltdowns, I know exactly where every single cent goes and I love it. It’s fun 😛 I haven’t had one financial meltdown in 4 years now and I probably won’t ever have another one for the rest of my life. For me, this way of living is much more preferable to the former stresses of having way too much debt, a house I couldn’t afford, never seeming to earn enough income because of all the frittering, etc etc. It’s still a work in progress mind you ~ I have to constantly stay on it.
Yep, I do this, and LOVE it. My idea of an awesome, relaxing evening is to have my budget book (yes I do it by hand (in pencil)) and sit on the couch with my calculator, planning and rearranging and figuring out how long (with interest) it will take to clear certain debts…my husband thinks I’m nuts but, it makes me happy AND calms me.
I TOTALLY do this. I map it all out and that same day all the money gets sent out so that I have maybe $100 in my bank account until the next paycheck.
It helps keep me motivated since I can see that if I cut money from X, I can put it toward debt!
I do this too. Especially when I buy lottery tickets.
For regular checks, not really.
I do buy a lottery ticket when it’s over $100M. After the reduction for immediate payment to $50M, and taxes, we’re down to about $30M net. It’s fun for me to think about the things I could do with that money. Lives I could change by sponsoring classes for a Vet who can’t get work. My efforts would be for a limited number of people, but really change for them, not blindly mailing out checks to charities I don’t know well.
Heck yes! I do this all the time. Because of my taxes as a student (being almost non existent sometimes), I never know what I’ll be paid, so I do a worst-case and best-case scenario. When I finally get my pay, it never goes as planned, of course!
Oh girl, when I was paying off my debts in 2005-2006, I had a spreadsheet broken down by income and month, and projected how far into the future I could reach all of my goals at my current income and spending rates. When I got to ‘buy a house’ projected in about 2040, it all became a little disheartening, so I stopped there. 🙂
Thank you! Yes I do that too, and I thought I was a bit weird for having ‘spreadsheet staring’ as a hobby. Then again, spreadsheet staring is one of the very few hobbies around where it doesn’t cost you anything and more likely than not, it’ll SAVE you money!
I’m right there with you! For awhile, I felt like such a geek since I love playing with numbers, setting goals, and learning about personal finance.
But then I realized: Hey, this is my hobby! I’m not crafty, I don’t bake, but man, I can spreadsheet.
Lol I love that last line! I love making spreadsheets too!