[rat_1234]

I wonder how many bankruptcies could be avoided if more people just had some basic spreadsheet literacy.

Before I bought a house, I built a stupid simple model to understand what my monthly expenses would look like. What you get an appreciation for is that very quickly you can go from comfortable to precarious with just a few additional fixed expenses (childcare, a new car, a boat).

Without laying it all out and seeing how your numbers change, it's hard to get a visceral appreciation for your finances.

[ghaff]

Spreadsheets can be extremely powerful for what-if analyses. They can of course also be abused in that respect, especially in a business context, where complex spreadsheet models can get conflated with reality.