Why spreadsheets? In a world brimming with specialized financial apps, why anchor Tiller to the seemingly humble spreadsheet?
On the “Money Matters Life Matters More” podcast, Peter Polson of Tiller shares with Alice (me) what was behind the decision to go with a spreadsheet approach for Tiller rather than an app.
The full episode is not yet available (still debating the logo
) but we hope you enjoy this clip from the podcast.
As Peter discussed on the podcast, Tiller’s commitment to spreadsheets is not a casual choice. It is a deliberate decision, deeply rooted in a philosophy about financial empowerment, genuine control, and the very personal nature of how each of us manages our money. This article explores those powerful reasons in more detail, showing why spreadsheets, when combined with Tiller’s automation, offer an unparalleled way to navigate your financial life.
1. True Control and Data Ownership: Your Financial World, Your Rules
Knowing who holds your financial information and how it is used is incredibly important, especially today when data itself is so valuable. This is where spreadsheets, working with Tiller, truly stand out.
- Your Data Belongs to You, Always: With Tiller, your financial data flows directly into your private Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel files. You own it. You control its destiny. It is not stored in an opaque database owned by a third party app, subject to terms you might not fully understand or security practices beyond your view.
- Freedom from Vendor Lock In: Have you ever felt stuck with a particular software because your entire history was tied up within it? Spreadsheets free you from this situation. Your financial history, organized by you, remains accessible and usable no matter what tools you might choose in the future.
- Transparency Instead of Black Boxes: Many financial applications function like black boxes. Your data goes in, some insights come out, but the processes happening in between are often hidden. Spreadsheets are the complete opposite. You can see every transaction, every formula, every piece of the logic. This openness builds not just trust but a real understanding of your finances.
Tiller believes you should never have to sacrifice control for convenience. We provide the automation; you always retain ownership and oversight.
2. Limitless Flexibility: Designing Finance Your Way
Your financial life is unique. Your income, your spending habits, your savings goals, and your investment strategies are unlike anyone else’s. So, your financial management tool should not force you into a generic, one size fits all structure.
- Escape Rigid Structures: Standard financial apps often come with predefined categories and reports that may not perfectly match your actual needs. Spreadsheets, however, offer a completely blank canvas. You decide what financial aspects to track, how you want to categorize them, and how you prefer to visualize your progress. If you want to monitor freelance income by specific clients, track spending based on unique dietary needs, or chart progress towards a highly personal savings goal, spreadsheets give you that power.
- Ultimate Customization Capabilities: From straightforward budget trackers to complex financial models, you can build exactly what your situation requires. You are not limited by the features a software developer decided to include. This ability to adapt is vital because your financial needs will certainly change over time.
- The Richness of Community Templates: One of the most exciting aspects of the Tiller Community is the amazing variety of custom templates and financial workflows our users create and generously share. You can find detailed net worth trackers, innovative debt snowball calculators, or specialized investment dashboards. The inherent flexibility of spreadsheets allows our community to innovate and support each other in truly powerful ways. This is how you truly manage your money, your way.
3. Absolute Transparency: Understanding Your Money’s Mechanics
Achieving genuine financial literacy involves more than just looking at your account balances. It is about understanding the fundamental mechanics of how your money works.
- See Every Calculation Clearly: With spreadsheets, there are no hidden algorithms determining your financial picture. You can click on any cell and instantly see the formula that produced the number. This clarity allows you to understand exactly how your savings rate is being calculated, how your debt payoff is truly progressing, or how your investment returns are actually shaping up.
- Build Deeper Financial Intuition: Interacting directly with your numbers and building your own financial reports fosters a much deeper understanding than passively consuming pre generated charts from an app. You learn the intricate relationships between different parts of your financial life.
- The Power of “What If” Scenarios: Do you want to see how increasing your savings by one hundred dollars a month impacts your retirement date? Or how a change in income might affect your budget allocations across various categories? Spreadsheets make it easy to build and experiment with these types of scenarios, empowering you to make proactive, well informed decisions.
4. A Financial System That Grows With You
Life is constantly changing, and your financial system should be able to change seamlessly with it.
- Adapts to All Life’s Changes: Whether you are starting a new job, welcoming a new member to your family, buying a home, or planning for retirement, spreadsheets can easily adapt. You can add new accounts, create new categories for spending or saving, design new reports to reflect new priorities, and modify your entire financial setup as your life circumstances and goals evolve.
- You Will Never Outgrow Your System: With many apps, users eventually reach a point where the software can no longer meet their increasingly complex needs. Because spreadsheets are inherently limitless in their potential for customization, you will never outgrow a Tiller powered system. It scales alongside you, effortlessly.
- Consistency and Long Term Value: Spreadsheet software like Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel is incredibly stable and here for the long haul. The skills you build managing your finances in a spreadsheet are durable, valuable, and transferable.
5. Tiller: Supercharging Your Spreadsheet Journey
While the inherent power of spreadsheets is immense, the task of manually gathering all your financial data can be a significant barrier. That is precisely where Tiller steps in, transforming your spreadsheet from a merely powerful tool into an effortless financial command center.
- The Wonder of Automation: Tiller automatically fetches your daily transactions, current balances, and other financial data from thousands of institutions. It then feeds this information securely and reliably into your chosen spreadsheet. This is our core promise: your financial life in a spreadsheet, automatically updated each day. This means no more tedious manual data entry and fewer more time consuming CSV file downloads (still need this approach for Amazon purchases for example).
- Foundation Templates to Start Quickly: While you possess the complete freedom to build your financial system from scratch, Tiller provides a robust Foundation Template. This help you get started quickly with budgeting, expense tracking, net worth monitoring, and many other common financial tasks.
- The Tiller Community: Your Collaborative Support Network: Our vibrant community is an invaluable resource, a true treasure trove of shared knowledge. It offers peer support, innovative custom templates created by fellow users, and a constant source of inspiration. If you have a specific question or need a particular solution, chances are very high that someone in the Tiller Community has already explored it and shared their insights.
- Dedicated Customer Success Team: Beyond the incredible community support, Tiller offers dedicated customer success resources to help you with any technical issues or questions you might have about using our service effectively.
Beyond Numbers: Aligning Money with Life
At Tiller, our guiding vision is that “money matters because life matters more.” When you are in better control of your money, you gain the ability to align your financial resources with your deepest values and most important life goals. The clarity and control that a Tiller powered spreadsheet provides is not just about tracking numbers. It is about giving you the confidence and insight to make financial decisions that actively support the life you truly want to live.
Peter Polson’s conviction in the spreadsheet model is, at its heart, a belief in your ability to take charge of your finances, understand them deeply, and build a financial system that genuinely serves you and your aspirations.
-Alice
Tiller Evangelist