how to count my paydays before the due-date of a bill?

J

Judoman

I'm trying to make up a budget for my family. I'd like to be able to
enter in the amount of an upcoming bill (a1), the due-date of an
upcoming bill (b1), then somehow have Excel calculate how many pay-
days I will get before that date (c1) then I will use a formula =a1/c1
to tell me how much money I need to put aside from each of my upcoming
paydays.

Is this possible, to get such a formula for cell c1? I get paid on
Friday morning every second week (eg. next one is Friday the 12th).

thanks very much!
 
J

Joe User

Judoman said:
somehow have Excel calculate how many pay-
days I will get before that date (c1) then I will
use a formula =a1/c1 to tell me how much money I
need to put aside from each of my upcoming paydays.
Click to expand...

Take a look at the NETWORKDAYS function to see if that does what you want.
It does presume that you work Monday through Friday. Your formula in C1
might be:

=NETWORKDAYS(B1,TODAY())

You might want to add or subtract 1 depending on whether or not you want to
include pay received on the due date and "today".

However, this is called living hand-to-mouth. It is not a good way to
budget. At a minimum, you should try to budget with a two-month window, so
that your disposable cash at the beginning of the month is enough to cover
the current and next months' expected expenses. That will give you a
cushion in case actual expenses for the current month.

That approach also means that you do not need to be so precise in
determining the number of paydays between due dates. You can determine the
average paydays per month or the exact expected paydays for each month.


----- original message -----
 
J

Judoman

Those 2 solutions didn't work! i get error messages and/or nonsense
results

:-(

but, thanks anyway for trying, Joe User & Fred Smith

-judoman
 
J

Joe User

Judoman said:
Those 2 solutions didn't work! i get error messages
Click to expand...

Lemme guess (because you neglect to say): a #NAME error when you use
NETWORKDAYS.

RTFM for the NETWORKDAYS help page. It explains how to remedy the #NAME
error.


----- original message -----

Those 2 solutions didn't work! i get error messages and/or nonsense
results

:-(

but, thanks anyway for trying, Joe User & Fred Smith

-judoman
 
F

Fred Smith

What does "didn't work" mean? What results did you get when you entered my
formula in C1?

Regards,
Fred

Those 2 solutions didn't work! i get error messages and/or nonsense
results

:-(

but, thanks anyway for trying, Joe User & Fred Smith

-judoman
 
J

Joe User

Fred Smith said:
What does "didn't work" mean? What results did
you get when you entered my formula in C1?
Click to expand...

You wrote previous:
Try this for c1:
=ROUNDDOWN((B1-TODAY())/14,0)
Click to expand...

where B1 is due date. That formula seems to compute a fraction of a
fortnight (14 day), not a number of days (ideally paydays). Using the OP's
example, if B1 is 12 March 2009 and today is 7 March 2009, your formula
results in 0.

Assuming paydays are all weekdays, clearly the right answer is 4 or 5,
depending on whether or not to count the payday on the due date.

In contrast, NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(),B1) yields 4.

Note: I had written NETWORKDAYS(B1,TODAY()), which results in -4. Clearly
that was a mistake, but one that I think the OP could have recognized if he
had RTFM.


----- original message -----
 
F

Fred Smith

I used 14 because he gets paid every two weeks. He wants to put away money
every payday, not every day.

I stand by my recommended solution.

Regards,
Fred
 
J

Joe User

Fred Smith said:
I used 14 because he gets paid every two weeks.
He wants to put away money every payday, not every day.
Click to expand...

Right. I missed that "little" detail. I was thinking he was paid daily.
My bad!


----- original message -----
 
J

Judoman

I used 14 because he gets paid every two weeks. He wants to put away money
every payday, not every day.

I stand by my recommended solution.

Regards,
Fred
Click to expand...

Good morning guys!

Fred -- you understood me correctly, I want to put money away every
payday (once a fortnight), not every working day. I'm at work this
morning, and couldn't replicate any errors, must have been a silly
mistake on my part.

Joe User -- we've had a communication problem, I'm sorry for the
trouble.

Guys, is there an elegant way to set this so it only counts the 14-day
periods starting from a particular date? (eg. 12/3/2010).

(if you're interested in the challenge - thanks for all your effort
so far!)

I had "Gary's Student" propose this solution that seems to work, but I
was wondering if it could be done any better, without needing to
construct a new column. :

"This is quite easy if we first construct a short table of paydates.

In C1 enter:
3/12/2010
In C2 enter:
=C1+14 and copy down thru C30. In C1 thru C30 we see:


3/12/2010
3/26/2010
4/9/2010
4/23/2010
5/7/2010
5/21/2010
6/4/2010
6/18/2010
7/2/2010
7/16/2010
7/30/2010
8/13/2010
8/27/2010
9/10/2010
9/24/2010
10/8/2010
10/22/2010
11/5/2010
11/19/2010
12/3/2010
12/17/2010
12/31/2010
1/14/2011
1/28/2011
2/11/2011
2/25/2011
3/11/2011
3/25/2011
4/8/2011
4/22/2011


In A1 we enter the due-date, say 4/25/2010
Finally in B1 we enter:


=SUMPRODUCT(--($C$1:$C$30>=TODAY())*($C$1:$C$30<=A1))


This produces 4, which is clearly the correct result.


Have a pleasant day!
-
Gary''s Student - gsnu201001 "
 
F

Fred Smith

Certainly. Put the date in some cell (like D1), then substitute it for
today(), as in:
=ROUNDDOWN((B1-D1)/14,0)

This is a better solution, because it doesn't change over time.

Regards,
Fred


I used 14 because he gets paid every two weeks. He wants to put away money
every payday, not every day.

I stand by my recommended solution.

Regards,
Fred
Click to expand...

Good morning guys!

Fred -- you understood me correctly, I want to put money away every
payday (once a fortnight), not every working day. I'm at work this
morning, and couldn't replicate any errors, must have been a silly
mistake on my part.

Joe User -- we've had a communication problem, I'm sorry for the
trouble.

Guys, is there an elegant way to set this so it only counts the 14-day
periods starting from a particular date? (eg. 12/3/2010).

(if you're interested in the challenge - thanks for all your effort
so far!)

I had "Gary's Student" propose this solution that seems to work, but I
was wondering if it could be done any better, without needing to
construct a new column. :

"This is quite easy if we first construct a short table of paydates.

In C1 enter:
3/12/2010
In C2 enter:
=C1+14 and copy down thru C30. In C1 thru C30 we see:


3/12/2010
3/26/2010
4/9/2010
4/23/2010
5/7/2010
5/21/2010
6/4/2010
6/18/2010
7/2/2010
7/16/2010
7/30/2010
8/13/2010
8/27/2010
9/10/2010
9/24/2010
10/8/2010
10/22/2010
11/5/2010
11/19/2010
12/3/2010
12/17/2010
12/31/2010
1/14/2011
1/28/2011
2/11/2011
2/25/2011
3/11/2011
3/25/2011
4/8/2011
4/22/2011


In A1 we enter the due-date, say 4/25/2010
Finally in B1 we enter:


=SUMPRODUCT(--($C$1:$C$30>=TODAY())*($C$1:$C$30<=A1))


This produces 4, which is clearly the correct result.


Have a pleasant day!
-
Gary''s Student - gsnu201001 "
 

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