Time for a quick residential break from all the Excel awesomeness. I have an exciting news to share with you all.
We have a home in New Zealand.
New Zealand? I thought you are in India!
In the middle of 2016, we moved to New Zealand. We have been living in windy, lovely and beautiful Wellington ever since. After renting a house and sampling life in NZ, we decided to call it home for next few years. The next natural step is to buy a home and move in. Unfortunately, this is where things went crazy for a few reasons.
Buying a house in Wellington
- The housing market in New Zealand (more so in Wellington) was going gangbusters with prices increasing every week.
- There is very limited stock and any modern, warm, well situated house would go in to a bidding war and sell for ridiculous amounts over asking price.
- I never liked the idea of paying a mortgage. I have bought all my houses (except the first one) with cash. But that was in India where prices are amazingly cheap compared to markets like New Zealand. After shuffling around some funds from India and living well below means for the last 18 months, we had enough to pay good chunk of purchase price. We still needed some mortgage, but it is not terrifyingly large and I could pay it off if needed.
So after going to numerous open homes, reading heaps of builders reports and losing half a dozen bids, we were ready to give up. Then almost randomly, we ended up purchasing our home.
Details and pics of new Chandoo.org HQ
This is by far the biggest house we have ever owned or lived.
- Size: 170 sqm house, 625 sqm land
- 4 bedrooms (3 rooms where we will sleep and other will be the real Chandoo.org HQ, my home office) and open plan living with dining and kitchen
- Location: northern suburbs, Wellington, NZ
Check out the pictures.
All the furniture is seller’s. We are moving in this Friday (24th of November).
From outside:
Living room:
Kitchen:
Master Bedroom:
View from back:
Thank you & Thanks to Excel
It is amazing how much of my life is owed to you. Thanks to your enthusiasm to learn, I get to live in a beautiful home in one of the best cities in world. I get to raise a family, travel, do awesome things and feel purposeful, all thanks to you.
It feels fitting that we are moving in to our new home on thanksgiving weekend.
Thank you.
I am also thankful to Microsoft, for creating one of the most wonderful software ever. Without Excel, you wouldn’t be reading this blog, I wouldn’t be living in New Zealand. Thank you MS.
Thank you also to my family, teachers, friends & colleagues for helping me learn, grow, make, fail, prosper and understand.
More Personal Stories
If you would like to learn more about the personal side of Chandoo.org, have a read thru these,
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.