Unlocking the Power of Excel for Kids – Miyagi Mornings Episode-112

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Here is the comment that spurred todays episode from MeWe, remember it is the best way to get in your question onto Miyagi Mornings just join MeWe and follow me, you can find the sticky post at the top of my profile here https://mewe.com/i/jackspirko

“I’m looking for a short show to share to older (grade 8-12) home school students on building the excel sheets, particularly for different life events. You've discussed for college vs direct career, which we have built. But other events include quiting a job, moving to or out of the city and giving up higher paying jobs vs cost of living, military vs civi jobs, having kids, etc, and of course opinions vary on what to include. What factors do you find important to include, what to exclude, and any tips or tricks you suggest for research, building the sheet, or formulas.”

I love this topic but I am not sure how much I can specifically give to the question. I have always seen each Excel project as something you build to the situation. I don’t have a list of pre made formulas or anything like that, I take each situation and break it down to what I need to know about this. With the most basic math knowledge and the mnemonic device ,Please Remember My Dear Aunt Sally, (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction) - I have found that you can do about anything you need.

There are two things I want to bring to this today, first my method of teaching children, young or young adult alike revolves around giving them a task and letting them determine the what of said task. So instead of build me an Excel model that can function as a take off estimate for building an outbuilding, I prefer, what is something you want, now let’s build that model. This is like teaching writing by saying, write about anything and critiquing the spelling, grammar and punctuation, vs. saying write a report on some person you don’t give two shits about.

Next while I am betting the guy asking the question knows about this resource based on how long he has listed to my podcast, EVERYONE should use this free Excel tutorial and I don’t care how much you think you know about Excel. After 15 years in sales and marketing doing modeling and forecasting for 100s of millions of dollars in business, I considered myself an Excel ninja. And I still learned a ton in this tutorial. It is like a free college course in Excel in my opinion. http://bit.ly/free-excel-lesson

All that said here are some ideas to spur a young adult to make some models and gain more experience.

Do you want a car? Which is better lease or purchase? How are you going to pay for it? What is the real cost of the car?

Have you considered starting your own business? What can you do? What would a revenue model look like in that area? Can you do enough volume in it alone or would you need to hire employees? What is the real cost of an employee in such a business?

How could you buy a piece of land or home and make it pay for itself? I mean don’t just think farming, what about AirBnb, Hipcamp, private events, etc.? What can you come up with to live the way you want for basically free? Does it actually make sense to buy a more expensive property if you do it this way? How will you get financing to buy it? How can you convince an investor that they should give you the money you need?

In the end Excel is a tool to examine what you think you want, determine if it really is what you want and then to design a way to get it. It is indeed that powerful because all it really is, is basic automation of math.