Predicting Checking account Balance day-by-day into the future. Is Excel a good tool?

[BigFatGuy]

First off, while I'm not a particular expert at any programming language, I am an electrical engineer, and I've done more than my fair share of code-slinging over the years, including VBA.

I'd like a tool where I can start with a known balance in an account, schedule multiple recurring and one-time transactions (direct deposit every payday, monthly auto-billed deductions, big planned expenses, that kind of thing), and generate a graph showing the day-by-day (or weekly) balance going into the future.

I've always wanted a good reason to get better at Excel, and I'm hoping this might be it... but I'm not so sure Excel is the right tool.

To be honest, I'm thinking Matlab or Mathmatica might be the way to go, but I'm already pretty good at those tools... so there's less benefit.

If excel is a decent tool for this, any advice on setting the project up properly from the start? Good functions I should get to know? Any recommendations for good youtube videos or online articles or some such?

Thanks!

[FDibbins]

Excel may be a useful tool for this, but what sort of formula/s would you use to show what you want?

[BigFatGuy]

I would figure out the balance for "today", then find out if there were any transactions for "tomorrow", then add and subtract the transactions to "today"'s balance, then take a step forward in time.

[JohnTopley]

Attached is a simple pro-forma used by myself for many years which broadlly does what ( I think) you require. There is no graph facility but that could be added,

Separate tab for each month.

And I have a simple VBA routine which checks a download of my bank statements (done monthly) vs my records.

No complex formulae required!

[BigFatGuy]

Thank you!

Rest assured I'll tear every line of code apart, and learn what I can.