{"id":330,"date":"2023-06-01T09:40:23","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T09:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/?p=330"},"modified":"2023-06-01T09:40:23","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T09:40:23","slug":"a-shortcut-to-financial-wealth-a-bit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/2023\/06\/01\/a-shortcut-to-financial-wealth-a-bit\/","title":{"rendered":"A Shortcut to Financial Wealth, a bit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recorded live from a really expensive cruise, for some reason money and our relationship to it as writers is on my mind. Here&#8217;s a quick account of quickly accounting for all my spending on board &#8211; and a Shortcut you can use to keep on top of any spending. <\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"A Shortcut to Financial Wealth, a bit\" width=\"440\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OOEmg9nUFN8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>LINKS:<br \/>\nJohn Dorney&#8217;s fundraiser: https:\/\/fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org\/page\/big-finishers-for-the-love-of-running<br \/>\nMy Holiday Spending Shortcut: https:\/\/www.icloud.com\/shortcuts\/caf2495be7594adf8a0a4e8f5619cfa2<\/p>\n<p>Support 58keys on Patreon: https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/user?u=86274276<br \/>\nJoin the Writer&#8217;s Mailing list too: http:\/\/eepurl.com\/gQTqTT<\/p>\n<p>MY BOOKS:<br \/>\nThe Blank Screen: Productivity for Creative Writers<br \/>\nAmazon US: https:\/\/amzn.to\/3KhF19P<br \/>\nAmazon UK: https:\/\/amzn.to\/3IzZm94<\/p>\n<p>The Blank Screen: Blogging<br \/>\nAmazon US: https:\/\/amzn.to\/3MhXUKv<br \/>\nAmazon UK: https:\/\/amzn.to\/3nJbKLU<\/p>\n<p>The Blank Screen: Interviewing for Authors and Writers<br \/>\nAmazon US: https:\/\/amzn.to\/40FE4x7<br \/>\nAmazon UK: https:\/\/amzn.to\/3Gh6o0K<\/p>\n<p>If you buy through my Amazon links, they may chuck me a penny or two. Or they won&#8217;t. Either way, it will never cost you anything extra.<\/p>\n<p>SCRIPT:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Hello, I\u2019m William Gallagher and this is 58keys which, as ever, is for writers like you and me who use and who write on Macs, iPhones and iPads. This time I want to touch on the business of writing, on doing this money, and specifically on how &#8211; I may be projecting here &#8211; writers and money don\u2019t seem to go together very well. We don\u2019t have a lot and yet we\u2019re also bad with what we do have.<br \/>\n&#8211; Or I am.<br \/>\n&#8211; Or I have been.<br \/>\n&#8211; But these Macs and iPhones and iPads that we write on can help us. Possibly they could help us most by being cheaper, but the first step to fiscal responsibility is recognising there\u2019s a problem &#8211; and writing a Shortcut to help with it.<br \/>\n&#8211; Follow.<br \/>\n&#8211; I\u2019m on holiday as I record this, and a friend has launched a charity fundraiser that I want to support.<br \/>\n&#8211; Once I\u2019ve done that, once I\u2019ve paid over some cash, look what I get to do next.<br \/>\n&#8211; Swipe to the side to bring up the Today page, tap on Holiday Spending.<br \/>\n&#8211; Enter the amount<br \/>\n&#8211; Say what it\u2019s for.<br \/>\n&#8211; Choose a currency. As I say, I\u2019m on holiday, I need a few currencies.<br \/>\n&#8211; And I\u2019m done.<br \/>\n&#8211; Nothing to see here.<br \/>\n&#8211; Unless I open the Numbers spreadsheet &#8211; on any of my devices &#8211; and choose my Holiday Spending spreadsheet.<br \/>\n&#8211; There it is, there\u2019s the donation to writer John Dorney\u2019s fundraiser.<br \/>\n&#8211; It\u2019s recorded, it\u2019s recorded at the moment I spend the money, just about, it\u2019s recorded so fast that there\u2019s never a need to put it off until later, it is recorded immediately into the spreadsheet.<br \/>\n&#8211; When I get home, I\u2019ll sort that spreadsheet by currency types, look up conversions or whatever, and know how much I\u2019m out.<br \/>\n&#8211; And I\u2019m also going to change that Shortcut from Holiday Spending to General Spending &#8211; and keep on using it.<br \/>\n&#8211; So that\u2019s a Shortcut that I run from a widget in the Today screen, which asks me a couple of questions, and which appends the answers to a specific spreadsheet.<br \/>\n&#8211; If that\u2019s enough for you to do it too, and you think it could be useful, knock yourself out. If you want to see the steps it took, let\u2019s get a biscuit.<br \/>\n&#8211; STING<br \/>\n&#8211; I run this exclusively on my iPhone because it\u2019s the one device that is always with me, and that swipe to the Today view is so fast. Let me show you the Shortcut on my iPad, though, as a) it\u2019s a bigger screen and 2) I\u2019m filming this with that iPhone.<br \/>\n&#8211; First up, open Shortcuts on iPad, iPhone or Mac, click the plus to create a new Shortcur. For each step now, you\u2019ll search the panel at the side until it shows what you want, then you can drag it over to the main part of the screen where you\u2019re building your Shortcut.  And the first thing you want is for the Shortcut to record what the date is.<br \/>\n&#8211; But Shortcuts by default record a lot of information when you ask for the date. Day, Month, Year, yes, but also hours minutes, seconds. Since you want a simple date, use Format Date, and choose Short. Maybe you want the time recorded too, but I don\u2019t care about that for this, so I turned Time Format to None.<br \/>\n&#8211; I\u2019m going to need this short date later, so I save it. I save the short date as a variable, which I\u2019ve imaginatively called DateVar. Look, I have enough trouble coming up with good titles, simple works.<br \/>\n&#8211; Next, I want the Shortcut to ask me how much money I\u2019ve just spent &#8211; and that figure is saved into another variable, AmountVar.  Notice that I\u2019m asking only for a number &#8211; if I tried to type letters into this bit, nothing would happen.<br \/>\n&#8211; Last question, which currency? At the start of the holiday I had this as a text box and just typed a currency symbol in. But on UK iPhones, the US dollar symbols is few taps away, so I added this list to choose from.<br \/>\n&#8211; That chosen currency gets saved in another variable, CurrencyVar<br \/>\n&#8211; And then the only bit that is fiddly, I think. What this last section does is take the Date from DateVar, the Amount, saved in AmountVar, then what I\u2019ve bought in WhatVar, and lastly CurrencyVar, and sends them all off to Numbers.<br \/>\n&#8211; One fiddly bit is getting it to send each of those in one go. You have to choose Shortcuts\u2019 Add to Numbers action, tap to enter the first one, then look for the plus sign that appears, and tap that to add the next.<br \/>\n&#8211; But then more fiddly was this \u201cbottom of Table 1 in Holiday Spending in Holiday Spending.\u201d<br \/>\n&#8211; Like Excel, Numbers has a spreadsheet document that has a name. Also like Excel, it can have tabs within that document, each of which have their own name.<br \/>\n&#8211; Unlike Excel, Numbers doesn\u2019t use the whole screen for the actual spreadsheet, the thing with figures in. Instead, Numbers has what it calls Tables and you can have any number of separate tables on a spreadsheet.<br \/>\n&#8211; So \u201cbottom of Table 1 in Holiday Spending in Holiday Spending\u201d  really means adding a row to the end of the table I\u2019ve created. And that table is in a tab sheet called Holiday Spending. And that tab is in a spreadsheet document called Holiday Spending.<br \/>\n&#8211; Get the names of the document, the tab sheet and the table, and you\u2019re sorted.<br \/>\n&#8211; Except.<br \/>\n&#8211; After running this a couple of times, I got irritated at always getting that Numbers spreadsheet on my screen when I\u2019d pick up the iPhone. I\u2019d like a way to clos the Numbers sheet, but you can\u2019t do that on an iPhone,<br \/>\n&#8211; So I found this as the best equivalent. Go to Home Screen.<br \/>\n&#8211; When I run this, it asks me the questions, it appends everything to the spreadsheet, and then it leaves the Numbers spreadsheet and goes back to where I was.<br \/>\n&#8211; STING<br \/>\n&#8211; You do have to set up the spreadsheet before you do all this. And I\u2019m sure you could do much fancier spreadsheets, maybe with categories for what you bought or what currency you bought it in, maybe it auto-sorts by currency and shows you running totals.<br \/>\n&#8211; But my little Shortcut is simple and it is fast to use, so I use it. And at any time I can open the spreadsheet to see what my latest spending is.<br \/>\n&#8211; That\u2019s all I need.<br \/>\n&#8211; Have a look at my Shortcut, see what you can do to make it yours. I\u2019ve added a link to download it in the description.<br \/>\n&#8211; But for now, that\u2019s it for this edition of 58keys. And as I go off to my account to ask if there\u2019s any way to make a cruise tax deductible, you take care of yourself, okay? Write more, too. And I\u2019ll see you soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recorded live from a really expensive cruise, for some reason money and our relationship to it as writers is on &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/2023\/06\/01\/a-shortcut-to-financial-wealth-a-bit\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/58keys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}