Emanuel Carpenter ⋅ Alpharetta, GA SDR Master Class ⋅ 20 years experience

Ryan - Here are five free or cheap resources you can use to learn more about financial modeling:

https://www.udemy.com/topic/financial-modeling/

https://www.edx.org/professional-certificate/babsonx-financial-decision-making-for-leaders#courses

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/wharton-business-financial-modeling

https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/financial-modeling-business-plan

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/topics/small-business-and-entrepreneurship

You might have to invest a little bit of money in yourself but I think it will be worth it.

Best of luck.

Peter Holmes ⋅ Arlington, TX U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Sergeant ⋅ 8 years served

Hi Ryan,

I would like to share some tips with you that have helped me to be able to create any complex financial model as well as update any complex financial model that has been created by someone else.

1. The term financial model is just a fancy word for an excel spreadsheet that has various cells linked together in order to help the user reach a conclusion, make a decision, or understand a particular set of circumstances.

2. Understanding some simple formulas in excel will enable you work and create 75% of the models. Know them well. (if you already know these you are step ahead, I'm not sure of your excel level.)
-Sumif sumifs
-Vlookup (though a much better formula is index/match which does the same and is faster. However when explaining to interviewers this skill, refer to vlookup as this is what they all want to hear.)
-countif and countifs
--sum
-Using = to link cells on the same page as well as other pages.
-AVG, DIV, + and -
You can quickly master these by typing the =, then the function name with an open parenthesis , and then hitting the fx button on the formula bar. For example type =countif(, then select the fx button and you will get the popup that walks you through entering the formula.

Any more complex formulas or questions can easily be learned by typing your question into google. Google is your friend and makes it easy!

For practice, you can make your own financial model based on your personal finances. Make a list with your monthly expenses with totals, create a list with your monthly income with totals, and create separate a cell for disposable income on another sheet which will be the monthly income total minus the disposable income total. Put some labels on your columns, make them bold and format the cell to have a lower border, and you have just created a simple model!

Remember Modeling is somewhat like an art, you can be as creative as you want. Think of different things to model and practice building them. For example, buying a house that appreciates using a loan versus saving the money at an interest rate . Have a couple cells that are variables so that when you change those cells (with different interest rates or rates of appreciation) and your total estimated profit will change.

The key here is this: If you think you can you can, and if you think you can't you can't!