Estate Inventory Worksheet: Fill & Download for Free

The list goes on and on. After the military, my dad worked as GM dealer, an IH truck dealer, he ran the Dallas used car auction used by all the dealers and even had a Shell franchise on the side. I grew up around showrooms, lots and yards full of cars. These days I get pretty reasonable deals on cars by frustrating their techniques, thanks to what I learned back then combined with what I've learned in my job of making games.Buying a car is an iterative game requiring a fluid strategy over multiple turns. There is no single play, minimax solution.One of the most powerful advantages for a dealer is the bundle represented by the worksheet called the 4 square. It contains a space for new car price, trade in value, down payment and financing/monthly payment. Each of those are basic games unto themselves, where you have a nearly even chance to win. Not quite even, especially if you lack perfect information. However, when they bundle all 4 together, you are almost certainly going to lose.If you demand fair trade-in value, they reduce the discount on the new car price to compensate. Or the reverse, giving too little for your trade, to give the appearance of knocking down the list price. Or, if you focus on a target monthly payment, to fit your budget, you invite abuse on all 3 other vectors. If you have too little cash or trade, watch out for gimmicky financing.One big finance fad now, is batching up dotty car loans into investment instruments, exactly like the mortgage bundling scam that almost destroyed the global economy.They make buying a car take all day, to wear you down and meet in backrooms to plan a strategy against you. If you survive, the finance manager has a list of high pressure up-sale tactics to run on you.Like mattress sales and real estate, auto sales are a dirty business. "Buyer beware" hardly covers it. Go in with tabs open on a laptop or phone showing real factory list prices, incentives, destination charges, local average price paid, blue book trade values and competitors' Web sites.Every time they leave you alone, visibly shop the other dealer's inventory. Maybe even call them.

I'll make my usual "maverick" contribution, here.The tips and tricks to speed up manipulation of cells, auto-insertion, formatting, etc. are most useful in my experience when working on an "ad hoc" kind of project, such as importing external data, reformatting it, setting it up for some computational tasks. You just sort of "know" what to do and fingers fly across the keyboard. This may be favorably compared to the skills of an accomplished carpenter, who knows when to cope instead of cut, knows how to find the center of a board with no calculation, knows how to handle a dead end in crown molding, etc. There's no blue print; just accumulated experience.But the situation can be different when Excel is deployed to produce a working system on a continuing basis; perhaps a reservation system or inventory or sales system. Basically, anything that would benefit from using various lookup routines to avoid entering the same data twice. Much of this kind of work can benefit from planning and testing the various formulas and arrays which eventually combine to make a reliable and easily revised "system."In truth, development of a useful and reliable worksheet relies more on logic, precedence of mathematical operations, and understanding of data structures then it does on keyboard short-cuts. Thus the time saved over-all arises from time applied in the early going. Here, it is helpful to know what formulas and functions are most appropriate for the task at hand. A classic example is VLOOKUP vs. INDEX/MATCH. Vlookup is, at first blush, conceptually easier to understand than index/match, yet it has limitations. I/M may be difficult to understand at first, but once understood, will most often be a better choice than V/L.In my opinion using more real estate to handle simple and comprehensible formulas which act on each other is better than just a single cell which combines multiple operations in one long formula; the former is certainly easier to debug.Often, when my advice is sought about an Excel "problem," I find that the user simply lacks a grasp of underlying conditions or logical processes which really have nothing to do with Excel. Sometimes, much can be learned by working out a problem "by hand" so that there is a clear understanding of the process which will ultimately be executed by Excel.Finally -and I am often assaulted for this view- the operation of a spreadsheet should be so transparent that another Excel user would be able to look at it and understand how it works. Einstein once said that if you couldn't explain your theory to a child, then you probably didn't understand it yourself. That may be a bit extreme, but it is true enough.My 2 cents.

Financial institutions rely on public records, UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) filings, financial statements, tax returns, bank statements, credit reports, title companies, and all manner of titles, registrations, and other proofs of ownership to determine if any other lender has already used the property for collateral. Bankers are very thorough! Each lender that has used collateral as a basis for making a loan wants to know what lien position they are in. A lien position is important, because in the case of a borrower going into default or not paying back the loan, it determines who is the first to recover funds when the collateral is sold, and if any funds are remaining, who is the second to be paid back, and so on. It is perfectly reasonable and normal to have multiple loans against a single piece of collateral if it meets the criteria for each lender, and in your example, the collateral is your home.Public RecordsIn the United States, property records tend to be a part of the public record because they are often recorded (meaning they are copied and archived) among the records of the county courthouse where the property is located. When this happens, the records are available to anyone who wants to check them out. Many counties have this data available online, for free, and can be searched by address, owner name, tax lot, parcel number and other elements. I can ask you to provide me with a copy of your property deed, or I can contact the courthouse and ask them to provide me with a copy of any recorded deeds. These records are usually the best place to find other lenders who already have a lien against real estate.UCC FilingsSometimes a business will use a piece of equipment, or their inventory, or something else (like a backhoe) that isn't titled like a vehicle, and does not have a trust deed to look for. A search of the UCC records under the business owner's name, or the business name, can reveal if another lender has already staked a claim on those assets.Financial Statements, Tax Returns, and Bank StatementsBookkeeper or CPA prepared statements are good sources of information to document the assets of a company as well as any cash outflows for loan repayments. Hidden in the tax returns and worksheets are many areas that will reveal a loan payment, or other activity than can reveal undisclosed borrowing. Bank statements can also show loan payments or other outflows that can indicate a borrowing relationship.Credit ReportsI can't tell you how many times I've heard a borrower tell me he or she has two debts, and the loan application has two debts listed, but when I pull the credit report I see five, or six, or more! So reviewing credit reports for the individual involved but also for the business itself can be revealing. Sometimes debts that people thought were not going to be reported do find their way onto the credit reports.Title CompaniesWhen processing a loan that involves real estate, it is common to engage a title company whose primary role is to review a wide range of avenues to determine exactly that liens or obligations are attached to the property. Since they are being paid a fee and are giving assurances as to the state of the property, they are very diligent in their review.Titles, RegistrationsThe most common are truck and automobile titles and registrations, but many other things can have titles or registrations like horse trailers, boats, boat motors, and boat trailers, airplanes. Most of these have documents that will be requested in the loan process and can show the presence of other lenders right on the documents themselves.Surprising, isn't it? There are many, many ways that lenders conduct due diligence as the stakes are very high. Sometimes it can be as simple as a verbal interview with the borrower that can tip off a banker to undisclosed and unrecorded debts. But with a combination of approaches, lenders can gain a high confidence that they are aware of all loans and encumbrances before approving a new loan.I hope I have helped answer your question and added to your knowledge.