Financial Modeling in Excel For Dummies

Book Preface

I discovered financial modeling in Microsoft Excel when I worked in investment banking in London (as most young Aussies do). Back then, it wasn’t even called “financial modeling,” but I was hooked. Since those days, I’ve devoted my entire career to working in Excel and building models for the purpose of business cases, reports, budgets, and dashboards. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients in many different countries to help build their models for them or train them on how to build their own. Financial modeling in Excel takes me all over the world and I hope that it brings you the same fun and excitement!

About This Book

I wrote this book based on the experiences I’ve had with the many insightful people I’ve trained or worked with over the years. I cover the tools and techniques that are the most commonly needed for building models. This book is aimed at people who have a good smattering of Excel knowledge but want to improve their skills to perform better in their current roles or to get better jobs.

After reading this book, you’ll know exactly what a financial modeler does and how to apply the principles of financial modeling to your work. You may not call yourself a “career” financial modeler. Instead, you might think of yourself as a “casual” modeler — maybe it’s a side interest for you, or it’s just one part of your job. But after reading this book, you may be bitten by the modeling bug and want to pursue a full-time career in this field!

You don’t have to read this book from cover to cover — feel free to jump around and read the sections that are of most interest to you! In most cases, I demonstrate the tools and techniques covered by applying them to a simple model — usually what I would expect to be just part of a full financial model. In Part 3, you create three full financial models from start to finish. I encourage you to read this book with Excel open and not too far away because you’ll want to try out many of the exercises and techniques described in these pages.