Category: Insights

The fact that most of the debtors find them in the vicious cycle of debt is primarily because they fall prey to their own devices. One such bad habit is procrastination from time to time. Most people think that they will repay a loan easily and on time and take on a loan but seldom find things happening in their favor or as they wanted to.

This is because most loans, especially the credit card debts carry on huge rate of interest that is accrued on the principal balance. The most worrying part and the most overlooked one as well is that this interest gets accrued at a compound rate that eventually results in a debt amount as high as the sky.

This is when people look for alternative options to repay their debt and get rid of those annoying and often embarrassing collection calls. In such situations they find that there are two most favorable options available:

• One is to consolidate their debts with a bigger loan at a lower rate of interest and longer terms and
• The other is to settle the debt for a reduced amount and pay it off one time or in installments is the creditors allow doing so.

Now, given the fact that the outstanding loan amount will be significantly reduced, most people opt for debt settlement without even knowing much about it or going through the debt settlement reviews to look at the bigger picture and its consequences. This is another mistake that is often committed by the debtors who love to delay debt payments.

Therefore, when it comes to managing your finances you must make sure that you avoid delaying so that things do not quickly become too expensive for you to handle.

Give up procrastination

This is basic. Since your life is busy you will find less time to deal with your debt given the fact that there are lots of things such as the due amount and due date to remember. However, there is no denial of the fact that you will have to pay the price for your delay or forgetting to pay your bills on time by having to pay enormously in the end.

Irrespective of whatever is the reason behind your procrastination, it will lead to a financial mess eventually. Make sure you move it to the forefront of the to-do list. Even if you are a habitual procrastinator, you must make sure that this is a doable thing by espousing a few small changes in your habits to achieve far bigger results down the line.

Better automate things

If you are predisposed to procrastination it is best to automate things as much as possible. This will keep your payments on top of all things and save you from feeling overwhelmed. This is the best approach to take especially if you have multiple creditors to pay every month.

Automating your payments will also help you to avoid late fees and charges. Therefore make sure that you:

• Set up text or email alerts to know when the payments are due
• To know when there are any changes in the minimum payment amount.

You can set up such automatic payments with the lender directly or through the bill pay tool of your bank. All you have to do for this is to make sure that you have enough money in your account so that there are no deficits of funds to cover the amount you owe.

Consolidate your debts

This is one best way for the habitual procrastinators to pay off their multiple bills. This approach will have several benefits to offer such as:

• Your multiple bills will be reduced to only one
• You will have lower payment to make to one single creditor only and
• You will avoid miss outs and therefore accrued interests and fines.

This will make life as well as your finance management much easier offering you a lot of mental peace and lots of sleep at nights.

Credit card management

Most people have multiple credit cards and use all of them in a month and find them in huge debt in the end. As a prudent person, if you are using credit cards for your purchases, make sure that you keep only two credit cards active at any given time.

• One of this should be of lower interest rate so that you can use it for bigger purchases and get a scope to revolve a balance and
• The other credit card to use for anything else including earning rewards.

Make sure that you pay off the balance in full well within the interest-free period.

Assuming that you have multiple high-interest credit card balances, check out whether or not you qualify for a 0% balance transfer. Though most credit card balance transfer will charge you a 3% fee added to your transferred amount, such an approach often makes financial sense, especially if you are prone to procrastination.

Just make sure you create a proper and effective repayment plan to reduce the balance as much as you can within the no-interest period. This will direct all your payments towards the principal till the time the 0% offer is not expired.

Turn to technology

Technology does not only make your work easier and faster but it may also change your behavior as well. This is very helpful for a procrastinator as they find it very difficult relying on their willpower. If you turn to websites and apps it will help you to change your unhealthy behaviors and transform your bad habits into good ones.

There are even a few apps that will aggregate information regarding multiple accounts. These apps will help you to see the amount due and outstanding on a weekly or a monthly basis. Based on the information you can plan your moves accordingly. Just make sure that you set proper reminders so that you can log in regularly.

Remember, dealing with procrastination is difficult but not impossible. All you need to do is break things down into small, simpler and doable tasks to see big improvements in your finances.

Website development is one of the most successful businesses in the digital era. The age of information in the new millennium has helped countless businesses take over a significant portion of the market. From brands like Nike to Apple, Amazon to Netflix all of them has utilized the power of creativity in design for their company. Look at these larger than life companies initiate a sense of optimism and awaken hope for a web development firm that everything will go as planned without any glitches.

While a positive mindset may help you achieve your goals, it is often not enough to help you succeed. In particular cases like the web developing industry, the market is too saturated for its own good. Competition is ideal for any industry, but a plethora of options even in the rarest of niches sets the present companies in the market for disaster.

Web development and design is the field of creativity, innovation, and for people who strive to achieve complex goals. Finding success in any field is possible by following the right steps and remaining motivated on the path. So if you are in the web industry and are aiming to succeed, here is a list of the top practices that will help you out.

Creating a plan of action

This may seem like common sense, but quite often, ambitious web designers fail to look at the bigger picture before starting the work of coding and creating. Constant rewriting of the website code is a waste of time and energy that can be easily avoided by having a prior plan in place. It is suggested that you must understand your priorities. A keen understanding of purpose is necessary to find success.

Prioritizing the user experience

As a professional creating custom web design, you must be aware of crucial user experience is to any site. Smooth navigation, throughout the design, and creative elements, make any website look genuine and often attract a higher rate of return on investments. Three-fourths of your project is the research and design while only a quarter equals programming.

The user experience needs to have a balance of blatant promotions and subtle clues. Since the customer today defines the market, it is compulsory of the web designer to understand the target audience to the nth degree. Any negligence in the research can lead to significant loss of time, energy and resources.

Be smart with the code. Instead of overwriting in an effort look clever, we suggest web developers to spend their time writing a simple, yet powerful code that works well for the audience and the company. In other words, your job as a web designer is to prioritize the customer through the lens of the client. Each line of your code must have a definite cause to be written. Unnecessary coding is an invitation to devastation. Hence we would reiterate the importance of brevity in the code for the umpteenth time.

Remember that progress is a process

The ideas always considered shippable are quite often the ones that lead to break downs. Letting a huge feature hold you back is like dreaming of an Apple watch before the development of the first computer. The use of Lean, Agile, Scrum and XP is a safe bet.

Since development is not an event but a process, there’s no harm in continuous trial and error. Incremental changes throughout the project would reduce the chances of major pitfalls. Hence we suggest our readers be practical and score singles, instead of wasting precious moments to hit the grand-slam of a home run!

Write to the present

It is only natural to try to predict the future trends of your market to succeed in the critical competition. However, that does not mean that the developer over engineers for an undetermined future trend. Disregarding the trends of today in favor of a futuristic possibility is like closing the bakery at lunchtime while hoping to make sales in the snow!

Depending too much on a hypothetical situation may leave a negative impact on your user interface which will inevitably worsen the user experience? Create backends that you can either fall back on or give yourself enough space to improve with the trends of the time. Leave sufficient flexibility in your web design so that you don’t necessarily have to do a complete overhaul; which is not only expensive but also tedious. We suggest our readers test the code that they create.

We believe that testing is a crucial element in the process of serious web development. Writing overcomplicated or illegible code is an error no professional should do. It is your responsibility as a creator to ensure that your code is updated and has undergone severe tests.

To conclude this article, remember to continue practicing and growing. The more you exercise your skills the likely you are to get better and improve your own mistakes. Your experience in the field of coding and creating will get you the insight no one shares. Keep reading, keep learning!

About the Author

Alma Causey is a Freelance writer by day and sports fan by night. She writes about tech education and health-related issues. Live simply, give generously, watch football and a technology lover.

It’s no secret the tech field is dominated by men. Even though women now make up roughly 46 percent of the workforce, they only hold 24 percent of computer science jobs and about 11 percent of executive-level jobs in Silicon Valley. Of the women who do make it into Silicon Valley, they make 61 percent less than their male counterparts. That evens out to an average of over $16,000 less per year.

There is no direct reason for the gender discrepancy; however, speculation largely lends itself to the rise of the “male tech geniuses” like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs whose overpowering success overshadowed females in the field. Additionally, women are viewed as too emotional and face the problem of pregnancy bias that men do not.

When a man fails or makes a mistake at work, they are allowed the opportunity to explain themselves and fix their mistake. The same can not be said for women. When high-powered women make a mistake, they are met with a much higher level of scrutiny. Their failings are seen as a reason they shouldn’t lead rather than a simple misstep.

How do women actually stack up?

Although women are not as prevalent as men in the tech industry, that’s not due to lack of skill. On the contrary, female-powered companies have historically performed 3 times better and generated 12 percent higher revenue than those led by men.

Furthermore, in a GitHub study, code written by women was actually accepted 4 percent more often than code written by men. The catch? The coder’s genders were not disclosed prior to the acceptance of their code. Women in the study were in fact, better coders, but only when the judges were unaware they were women.

What is the effect on women?

The turnover rate is more than twice as high for women as it is for men. 41 percent of Women in tech are leaving their jobs as opposed to 17 percent of men. Of those women, 56 percent leave in the middle of their careers; 24 percent of whom leave the tech field completely, 20 percent leave the workforce altogether.

Why? Most often it’s because 30 percent of women over 35 still hold junior level positions while they see their male colleagues moving up around them. Rather than stay in unfulfilling jobs they will never advance in, women choose to leave in search of fulfillment elsewhere.

What are companies doing for women in tech?

Diversity initiatives

Many companies are dedicating time and money to work on diversity initiatives. Though only the companies who are truly diverse tend to be the ones who report, they’ve proven organizations with a more diverse workforce perform better. But that’s not all. High-diversity businesses also have more satisfied workers and a leg up on the competition.

Pinterest has one of the most diverse executive teams at the moment; however that number is only about 8 percent. Google also has higher numbers than the national average with a 30 percent female workforce but that number is still much lower than men. Tech companies are putting in the effort to catch up, but still, have a long way to go in diversifying their teams.

Reducing pregnancy bias

Pregnancy, maternity leave, and motherhood seem to be the largest biases against females in the workforce, especially in the tech industry. The United States is one of the only countries that does not require paid parental leave for businesses. As a result, many women are forced to choose between their careers and their children and leave the workforce. Some companies though, are making a point of actively combatting that.

For example, Netflix provides unlimited paid parental leave for a year following childbirth or adoption. Tech giants Google and YouTube give new mothers 18 weeks of paid leave while also give families $500 to invest in the stock market for their children.

Women still only account for about a quarter of the workforce in the tech field and are often overlooked. However, they have proven to be just as successful as, if not more successful than, their male counterparts. Though the tech industry has a long way to go before bridging the gender gap, they are slowly adapting practices to get there.

A big thanks to Amanda Peterson, to writing and submitting this piece to us.