spreadsheet – dalebasler.com

The Decay Rate of Gift Cards

April 9, 2023June 13, 2023 Dale

After staring at some gift cards that we received back in December, I started thinking about their decay rate.

If you didn’t know, many gift cards can charge an inactivity (or dormancy) fee if they are not used within 12 months of activation. The 12 months waiting period is actually the result of a federal law, and some states have additional rules that protect the consumer. For example, some states do not allow inactivity fees while other states require the cards to have an activation or expiration date printed on the card.

In my state (Wisconsin), we only have the federal laws to rely on. So, if you wait too long, then that $10 card for Kwik Trip can disappear. This is also something to consider when giving gift cards — don’t buy them too early or re-gift an old one from the drawer.

To better appreciate the impact of gift card decay, I made a spreadsheet that illustrates the loss for a variety of gift card values. I set up the spreadsheet in Google Sheets using two functions that I’ve never worked with before: ceiling() and ArrayFormula(). These two functions allowed me to limit the displayed rows based on the gift card’s initial value.

You can get a copy of this sheet if you’d like to explore these functions for yourself.

Baby Names versus Dog Names

May 14, 2018February 19, 2023 Dale

What happens when the 2017 list of top baby names and the 2017 list of top dog names appear in my news feed on the same day?

I’m going to have questions.

Like… How many names are on both lists?

Wow! Oliver is #9 on both lists! And look at all the female names compared to male names!
It’s 27 to 10.

I don’t know what all this means but maybe some graphs will help.

If you have kids named Oliver or Chloe and plan to take them to the dog park, be advised.

Google Sheets missing full Autofill; Text Mechanic to the rescue!

March 26, 2015January 30, 2016 Dale 2 Comments

Let’s say you need a long series of numbers in your spreadsheet and you are trapped on a Chromebook. Yes, I could drag down to fill but this takes way too long if you have a long list of numbers.

I hate that Google Sheets cannot do what Excel can do below:

Fortunately, there is Text Mechanic– a website that provides a collection of text manipulation tools that work in your browser. I used the Generate List of Sequential Numbers tool get the series of numbers I needed.