I love automatic processes and saving time on mundane activities. Excel helps me do that lal the time with its fancy functions and awesome macros. This week while I automated the standings for the Alexa Challenge in Google Spreadsheets, I learned two amazing functions that are currently competing for my favorite.

The first is ImportHtml, which pulls in data from the site of your choosing into a cell. It’s how I get the data automatically (using a today function).

The second is Sort, which allowed me to bring in the information I want while automatically sort the standings by any row I choose, in our case “Today’s Alexa Ranking.”

Just thought I’d share that. What’s your favorite Excel or Google Spreadsheet function?

Let’s start off this week by featuring a post by Own the Dollar on why Your Stockbroker May Not Be Your Friend. How do you feel about commission based brokers? I could never use one because, like Hank points out, they are discouraged from employing the buy and hold strategy.

In contrast, Evan at My Journey to Millions asks: Why Does Everyone Hate on Financial Planners? He highlights some of the reasons why we need financial planners and makes an excellent point that many people need advice and we can’t do what they do, so we should pay for their expertise.

Studenomics provides some Unconventional Personal Finance Advice. I love his ideas and the thought of earning money off of credit cards (while others are paying crazy fees) excites me!

Jim from Bargaineering tells us why Being Frugal is Foolish. My time is not worth much (I spend a few hours a day lounging around), but I do agree that spending your time improving yourself or finding a way to make more money is probably more lucrative than making your own detergent.

Finally, Five Cent Nickel goes through Visa Credit Card Acceptance Guidlines. Merchants are not allowed to set minimum purchase amounts and this drives me absolutely crazy. At the restaurant next door to my apartment, they insist you pay in cash, but it’s hard to argue with a worker who doesn’t care about merchant agreements.

This week, I was a part of the Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by J Money at Budgets are Sexy.

Finally, FiscalGeek let me guest post about my opinion on budgets in response to his pro zero based budgeting stance.

Think of a fun excel function or tool yet??

Whenever I have a money question, I go to Cash Commons. There, users ask and answer all sorts of questions in a very helpful way. When I received this question, it seemed like a matter of opinion, so I wanted to get a few views on what the best idea way, and more importantly, why.

Matt asks:

I have both a mortgage on our house, and a home equity line of credit. The mortgage rate is fixed (4.4.%) for 15 years. The home equity is variable, right now, it is only 2.24%. I am trying to accelerate payments beyond the minimum to get out of debt more quickly.

When the home equity rate is higher than the mortgage rate, it is a no-brainer – pay the minimum on the mortgage and throw any extra money into the home equity loan.

However, when the home equity loan is lower, like now, it is a little more tricky. It may seem obvious to pay the minimum on the home equity and pay off more of the higher interest mortgage. That would be the clear choice, if I could count on not needing to tap the home equity line down the road. But, what if I anticipate some large expenses down the road, for which I would need to borrow?

If my home equity is close to the ceiling, then I won’t be able to borrow against it when I need it. No matter how much I’ve paid off my mortgage, I can’t get more from that source if I need it. So, what’s the best strategy in this situation? (And, you can ignore the issue that as the home equity gets closer to the ceiling, that hurts my credit rating a little. For the current purposes, I don’t anticipate taking out any other loans, and I pay my credit cards off each month.)

After posting this question over at Cash Commons, I got some interesting opinions.

After breaking down the situation, Mighty Bargain Hunter was a proponent of building up cash reserves, then paying down the Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), then the mortgage. He argues that cash in the bank buys time, even if it costs a little in the short run and that the rate on the HELOC will eventually increase to a rate higher than the mortgage, making it worth it. I agree that the cost of building up cash is low (Matt would lose less than 1/2 a percent in interest if he chooses a savings account instead of the HELOC).

Dr. Dean agrees and says that rates will rise this year so the HELOC should be the biggest concern, and the more that is paid in the short-term, the less left over there will be when the rates increase considerably. Again, a good point, and he notes that what the market will do in 2010 is his main reason for his thinking.

My take is a little big different. It’s extremely hard to know what will happen in the next year in terms of the market. At some point, interest rates will rise, and when they do, some think they will rise to a high rate in a short period of time. Whether this happens in the next year, nobody knows for sure.

The uncertainty of the situation is what makes this question difficult. Right now, Matt can make larger payments on the mortgage and effectively “earn” 4.4% on his investment. Alternatively, he can pay down the HELOC, “earn” 2.4% in the short-term, and when the interest rates rise, ”earn” more. But when will the interest rates rise to 6 or 7%?

Since it’s impossible to know, I am a proponent of taking the guaranteed return after building up some cash reserves. That way, Matt can pay off a chunk of the HELOC when the interest rates rise while only “losing” 2.4% (4.4% on the mortgage – 2.% that he can earn with a savings account such as SmartyPig), and then earn that 4.4% by paying off the mortgage. In this scenario, he doesn’t take too much risk, spreads out his “investments” slightly, and knows what kind of return he is getting.

When the interest rates on the HELOC begin to rise, it may be time to switch to making payments there because once the markets improve (whenever that may be), they may rise quickly and it will make sense to pay that down as quickly as possible. But until then, my vote is to pay the mortgage and earn a guaranteed return on your investment rather than trying to time the market to come out slightly ahead.

When do you think interest rates will rise? Do you have other advice for Matt or a different reason than the ones outlined above? Let me know in the comments!

I hope all of you read Financial Samurai’s post yesterday. I figured since the point of this challenge is to encourage each other and to grow as a group, not just individually, we should be spreading the love around more. I think that if we make the Alexa Rankings Challenge page a traveling page that can switch hands every two weeks and give lots of people a chance to host, we would be better off as a group. I’ve gotten a nice bump because of it and you will too! And who knows, maybe 6 months won’t be enough and we’ll want to continue the effort!

The time commitment is actually very small, especially because I spent several hours this week automating (almost) the entire process. Now, the rankings update automatically in the spreadsheet, and the work required is minimal (less than 30 seconds a day!) The big reason to automate is so that we can get daily updates, which aren’t delayed!

Once you are done hosting, your responsibilities don’t end there. After your week, you should take down the rankings but leave the page up with a link to the following week’s page.

Thanks everyone for your wonderful ideas and critiques. I love the feedback and I think we’ve made some nice improvements over the past week. I’ll keep it here for the next week until we see that everything is working smoothly and then we’ll start getting this page on a bunch of other blogs!

Also, congratulations to Planting Dollars on landing in the top 100 on Wisebread’s list! You’re motivation to the rest of us to keep going. Fiscal Fizzle, Monevator, MBA Briefs, and I are right behind!

If you’d like to host, shoot me an email: DanielPacker@SweatingtheBigStuff.com and I’ll explain the process in a little more detail. Thanks!