What Do Excel, aviation, sewing, guitar, crafts, and drones have in common?

I'm writing this from Nashville, Tennessee. For the past three days I've been surrounded by experts from all these fields. What brought us together?

We're all teachers, helping people master new skills.

Teachable, the platform we use for our courses, hosted a conference for their top teachers, and I was grateful to be invited. I got to meet amazing teachers, share insights, and learn how to add even more value to our courses.

Coming here was a big time commitment. And getting to Nashville from Austria wasn’t cheap.

But it was all incredibly worth it. The ideas and feedback I’m taking away will change how I share and offer courses. Even how I teach and communicate.

It's funny. I've been running XelPlus for nearly a decade. But in that room, as I listened to others, I learned about things I never noticed or thought about. When you're used to doing things a certain way - whether it's building a business, or mastering any skill - it's easy to get stuck in a routine and just think that's the way it is. Or you don't think at all and just work on autopilot. It can happen with everything. Even Excel. 😉

So, speaking of growth and learning, let's talk about a handy Excel tip that helps you track growth over time:

Why You Should Know Your CAGR

Are you curious about how much your investments have truly grown over time? The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) is a key metric for this purpose. It smooths out the market's ups and downs, giving you a clear, long-term view.

What is CAGR?

When you invest money, yearly growth can vary significantly. Some years your investment might grow a lot, while other years, it might not grow as much or even decrease. To find the average growth rate over several years, we use CAGR. It shows the steady rate at which your investment would have grown, assuming it grew at the same rate each year.

Understanding the CAGR Formula

To calculate CAGR, you need three things:

• the initial amount of money you invested,
• the amount you ended up with, and
• the number of years the investment was held.

The formula is:

For example, if you start with $1,000 and after 3 years it grows to $1,500, the CAGR is 14.5%. This means your investment grew by 14.5% each year on average over the 3 years.

How to Calculate CAGR in Excel

1. Direct CAGR Formula Method

Set up your Excel sheet with the year-end values of your investment, for example from 20X1 to 20X6 for a 5-year investment.

Enter the formula:

=(B7/B2)^(1/5) - 1

(where B7 is the ending value from 20X6, and B2 is the starting value from 20X1). Apply percentage formatting.

2. Using the RRI Function

The RRI function calculates the equivalent interest rate representing the growth of an investment over a set period. The formula will look like this:

=RRI(5, B2, B7)

The first (nper) argument is the number of completed periods, the second (pv) - the initial amount, and the third (fv) - the amount at the end of the period.

You don't have to remember the complicated formula. Just provide the relevant values, and Excel will calculate it for you.

3. Using the RATE Function

This function is typically used for loan interest rates but works well for investment growth too.

=RATE(5, , -B2, B7)

It is similar to RRI, with an additional argument that you actually omit. And you need to provide the initial value (pv) as a negative.

Three ways to arrive at the same result. Use the one that is easiest for you

Check out our 👉 blog post to download the workbook with all formula versions. And also to learn about the Average Annual Growth Rate (AAGR).

Knowing both AAGR and CAGR helps you make wise investment choices. By learning these calculations in Excel, you can easily track your investments' performance.

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🤓 Geeky News

📧 Improved protection from spam in Outlook

Microsoft has upgraded Outlook's spam protections. These updates are rolling out to all Outlook platforms.

They include displaying sender email addresses in the Junk folder. This makes it easier to spot suspicious emails without opening them.

You will also see an alert before opening links in Junk emails. Also, blocking and unsubscribing when flagging spam should be more effective now.

You can expect suggestions to unsubscribe and warnings for unverified senders. These features help to manage high-volume and suspicious emails in your Inbox.

We hope Between the Sheets is on your 'Never Block' list 😉

BTW, if you were forwarded this message, you can get the free weekly email here.

➰ New integrations in Loop for better project tracking

Microsoft Loop now works with GitHub, Trello, and Jira.

Loop is a collaboration platform that aims to integrate content from different workspaces.

GitHub, Trello, and Jira are all popular project management platforms.

If your organization uses any of them as well as Loop, you no longer have to switch between apps.

You can import boards, add tasks, assign users, change due dates, all within the Loop page.

These integrations keep your data synced across platforms and improve teamwork.

🌈 Google Search is getting AI and Web search

They've been testing it for a while, but generative AI search experience is finally coming to Google.

It will be called AI Overviews and give you quick summaries based on your search queries. It's expected very soon in United States. The rest of the world should get it by the end of the year.

But what's that about a "Web search"? Isn't it what googling is in the first place?

Well, yes. But Google results these days are enhanced (or cluttered, depending on your opinion) with other content. You get sponsored posts, infoboxes, top stories, "people also ask", etc.

The new "Web" button will filter search results to show only links and preview text. (You will still get ads.)

It'll be one of the options, like "Images", "Maps", or "Videos".

Since "AI Overviews" will be one of such "extra" content blocks, switching to "Web" will be a way to opt out of AI search.

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👏 Power Stories

Have you found this week's tip on CAGR useful? Would you like to learn more about financial analysis? Then check out Fundamentals of Financial Analysis.

This is what Stephen had to say after completing this course:

As ever, I'm grateful for the wonderful review. But most of all, I'm happy that the acquired skills prove useful and Stephen gets to apply them in his work.

Got a success story about using your XelPlus skills? I’d love to hear it! Hit reply to share the details, and inspire other students 😇

See you next week,

Leila

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