My classmate was downright frustrated with the Excel exercise that we were asked to work on during my weekend class. It wasn’t easy for me either. We were building a financial benchmarking analysis dashboard and I was trying to figure out the CAGR 5Q formula “B/A)^(1/5)-1”.
She said that she just couldn’t grasp how Excel worked, but I told her, “Take baby steps. Using Excel is necessary if you want to make good money in today’s world. Every company uses it, and we should also use it for personal finance planning.” I think she was convinced.
Later on, I shared with another classmate “The Joy of Pulling Formulas Across Cells” and her eyes widened.
Few people understand the importance of Excel until they start work, are forced to use it, and realise the wonders it can do. I, too, was ignorant until 2007 when I was 31 and joined Microsoft (literally the Home Kingdom of Excel). At every job, I’ve learned and used more Excel features to do PnL tables, market analyses, and product management. This year, I got to learn how to use Excel for building Neo4j knowledge graphs, and now, financial forecasts and benchmarking. How fascinating!
I’ve found that the people who tend to be most resistant to using Excel are people in the arts. No, please don’t believe the myth that only STEM people should use Excel and other number-crunching tools. There’s a reason why every major company uses Excel – numbers and data make the business world go round, and the great news is that you don’t need to have done well in mathematics in school to use Excel.
Numbers matter, and surely you want to be good at wielding the things that matter?
Start now, however old you are.
(I generated this image in Midjourney using the Excel logo.)