Saturday, September 5, 2015

Quick Budgeting Tip..

Lets take it up a notch! Instead of only calculating your monthly expenses, try calculating your expenses for the entire year. I'll give a quick example using random numbers of average monthly expenses. I'll try to make it as simple as possible to follow.

Rent-$700
Utilities-$150
Phone-$65
Car-$300
Insurance-$150
Food-$150
Gas-$100
--------------------
Total-$1615 per month

Multiply that by 12(months in a year) to get a total average of your yearly expenses, which equals $19,380..

Next, take whatever your salary is per year and subtract $19,380 from it. For example, lets say your salary, or what you make per year, averages at $30,000.

$30,000-$19,380=$10,620, which means $885 per month that should go into your saving.

So $10,620 is what you will have left from the year if you stay true to your monthly/yearly budget. Lets say you want a little leeway. Once you know the amount you should have left over from your yearly expenses-income, then make a goal of how much you want in your bank account at the end of the year.

Lets say you want to make sure that at-least $8500 makes it into your savings account for the end of that year.
So you then subtract the $10,620-$8500, and you will get $2120, which is your leeway money for the year.

You can divide that $2120 by 12(months in a year) to get your leeway money for the month, which averages about $175. That's the money you can use to shop, for emergencies, for entertainment, to invest, etc. etc....or to just save and add to your next month for a big expense, travel etc.

My overall point is to always have an idea of what you are working with, and not only for the month, but for the entire year. That way you get even a clearer picture of how your money is spent, and you work towards a clearer goal.

Also, IMO Cable is not necessary when there is youtube and so many places on the internet where you can see your favorite shows, movies, etc for free. You may have to wait a day or two, but that wait can save you hundreds per month, and over a $1000 per year. Just something to think about.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Teach Yourself to Code...Beginners Guide

Welcome!

I want to learn to code! In doing a bit of research I’m gathering the information I’ll need to finally get started, and I’d like to share it with you what I’m learning along the way, especially if you too are a beginner and you are not sure where to start.

1st, I read that the first thing to do is to figure out what it is you’d like to code. Have an end goal in mind. Do you want to build an App? Website? Game? Etc. Just try to figure out what you want to do so you will get an idea of what you’ll need to learn. For example, I’m curious about building Apps and Websites.

2nd,This is optional, but consider taking a free Computer Science online course to get a better understanding of computer science and learn about the different languages involved. Here are courses that you can take for free and most at your own pace.

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x

HTTP-The language used to build webpages.
CSS-The language used to design webpages.
Javascript-The Language used to program.
Via w3bschool.com

Top 10 Languages for Web Development, with their top five languages included at the bottom.
Top Languages for App Development
Good blog on Game Development

HTTP/CSS, JAVASRCRIPT, JAVA, PHP, C++, C#, PYTHON….seemed to be the most common used programming languages. Again, it seems its best to figure out what you’d like your end goal to be and work from there doing research.
A few free resources on the internet for learning coding are.

Youtube resources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXmVym6L8dw&list=PLAC325451207E3105

And so many more…

Anyway, I hope this proves to be somewhat helpful and useful. I definitely plan on getting started myself and possibly updating the blog with what I’ve learned and what’s good to know. Happy learning!