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If you want to keep your job that is. I have worked with some people who have experience in the financial sector and they tell me that Excel is used a LOT in this industry. If you don't know your way around VBA then you are at a competitive disadvantage.

I can just imagine being sat in front of a pointy headed boss. He likes the ideas behind my mathematical model, we wants to use it, he may well give me a bonus if this works out right so when he says

"Implement this by tomorrow and let me have the spreadsheet so I can play with it"

I am not going to say

"But sir, you really should learn Mathematica or R - only idiots use Excel"

Nope. I like my paycheck. So I am going to code it up in Excel. Of course I am mindful of its limitations so when I need to do some maths I pass control over to a decent math's library - NAG immediately springs to mind (quite easy to do - check this tutorial out). I'll just use Excel as the front end to keep my PHB happy.

Years later I will be the PHB and THEN I can demand that my minions use Mathematica, Matlab or whatever.