I use a variety of spreadsheets but haven't touched Excel in years.
What a spreadsheet gives you, assuming you have enough math skill to operate one reasonably (i.e. at least a year of college algebra), is an ability to create tables of data following certain assumptions that project various scenarios. This is most helpful as a visualization tool. You could probably do something similar with R and some CSV files, but I find spreadsheets are actually really helpful here.
PS, I really don't like Excel, just because I have run into so many braindead issues with it. That doesn't say spreadsheets are not a very good tool for certain kinds of problems though.
What a spreadsheet gives you, assuming you have enough math skill to operate one reasonably (i.e. at least a year of college algebra), is an ability to create tables of data following certain assumptions that project various scenarios. This is most helpful as a visualization tool. You could probably do something similar with R and some CSV files, but I find spreadsheets are actually really helpful here.
PS, I really don't like Excel, just because I have run into so many braindead issues with it. That doesn't say spreadsheets are not a very good tool for certain kinds of problems though.