Tech Storror

  For most of us, our credit scores determine everything about our lives. They determine whether we get to get that new car or not, whether we get to get a house, how much interest we may pay on that house, or whether we can get loans when we hit a rough patch. Having a good credit score can change your life, and conversely, a bad one can ruin it. So how are these life defining financial scores actually calculated? Well, the first thing to discuss is that you don't have just one credit score. Rather, you have three main ones, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Your score can vary minorly or even by 10s to 20 to 30 points between these three credit bureaus simply due to how they calculate the scores and what's reported to them, like missed payments. There's also an agency called FICO that provides credit scores as well as one called Vantage score. Each one of these credit agencies calculate their scores independently on their own scales and lenders like banks and choose whic...

  On average, you need $1.7 million to retire. That may seem like a massive chunk of money, especially if you're just starting off, but it's easily achievable if you stay diligent. There's not just one way to get there either, but there are tips and tricks that you can keep in mind to improve your overall retirement nest egg. Let's take a look at some different factors you need to keep in mind to determine how much money you need to retire, as well as strategies for growing your wealth along the way.  64% of people think of themselves as savers, not investors, which is an issue if you're trying to grow your retirement savings as much as possible. 54% of 401K participants say they take any additional savings and place it in a low interest savings account. This is obviously advisable if you otherwise don't have some savings to fall back on if you lose your job. However, if you do have those savings, you need to be investing other than 401K accounts you can put exc...

  If you're just getting started in the stock market or have been investing for a while, you might have heard the term ETF. ETF's function like stocks in that they are a security whose value fluctuates, but how they work behind the price is much different than standard stocks. Put simply, exchange traded funds or ETFs are securities that are made-up of a bunch of other securities, usually individual stocks. In short, ETF's track the fluctuation in prices of a bunch of different stocks, usually stocks in certain categories like technology, food and beverage, mining, etcetera. ETFs trade just like normal stocks on open markets, but provide investors a great level of security and less volatility as compared to singular stock purchases.  ETFs are very similar to mutual funds, except that mutual funds aren't listed on exchanges and ETF's are. If you want to put your money away into a safe security and diversify your risk, ETFs are the way to go. Common ETFs are the SPY o...

  The names bond, municipal bond. Bonds are some of the most necessary and fundamental vehicles in the financial sector. They allow towns, governments, companies and other groups to get funding. Bonds are essentially just IOU's to the person giving you money, the lender that says you're going to pay them back sometime in the future. There are a fancy form of a loan that gets companies and governments funding when they need it. What makes bonds different from loans is that there are a form of security in that you can buy a bond and start getting payments from the company that owes you. In essence, bonds are securitized loans. Bonds will typically include an end date in their terms when the entire amount of money is due back to the issuer, as well as terms for the interest payments to be made. These are some core principles about bonds to remember if you're looking for a general overview. Their corporate or government debt, issued by an organization that are tradable asse...

  In most countries around the world, there's a central bank that has a number of tools at their disposal to influence the country's economy. One thing that the central Bank has control over is the federal funds rate, which is essentially the interest rates that banks charge other banks to lend money. This federal funds rate in turn, affects the interest rates that consumers may get on their loans. If a federal funds rate is low, then a bank can borrow money at a pretty low rate.  Meaning that it can also lend money at lower rates and still turn a profit. If the federal funds rate is high, then it costs banks a lot of money to borrow money, meaning that in turn they have to charge higher interest rates on loans to turn a profit. That's some simple background on the federal funds rate, but let's take a look at what the Federal Reserve or Central Bank can actually do if they adjust it.  Interest rates are one of the biggest levers that the Central bank can use to adjust t...

The world is indeed a strange place. These days, it seems like anything can happen. In early 2021, a viral battle erupted in the most unlikely of places, the stock market. It was publicized as a conflict between investors on the Internet and large hedge funds. But what's the full story, and what consequences will we see? It all started in September of 2019 when an armchair investor by the name of Keith Gill noticed something interesting in the stock market. He sat down at his computer, signed into YouTube, and started talking about what he saw. Keith also took to Reddit and would start posting about his observations. Most of the people in the forum laughed at him, but Keith believed that the payoff would be huge. Nobody at the time understood what he was doing, but his decision would set in motion one of the most insane moments in financial history. It would bring multibillion dollar hedge funds to their knees and spark a social uprising between the public and Wall Street. Sit ba...

 By now, you've probably all heard of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and the blockchain. It's received a lot of press lately. we'll go over how these new systems compared to regular currencies and also briefly look at how they work.   The Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen getting grilled by Congress for the Federal Reserve being shady as usual. This kind of thing is normal, but in this situation something unusual happens. What closely?  The blockchain and cryptocurrencies came in the wake of the frustration felt by the world after bad monetary policies from central banks, like the Federal Reserve's commercial banks and hedge funds also had a large part to play. That just had to be another way away where people had control over their own money again. Alright, so to begin, what are cryptocurrencies? Broadly speaking, it is a form of currency that is built on a global digital distributed Ledger called a blockchain.   Bitcoin is is a cryptocurrency, as I say ...

  Facebook has a secret project called Libra. The company acquired the Libra trademark back in June of 2018. However, only recently have details about the secretive project come out. What it is is Facebook's own cryptocurrency? Facebook is reportedly building a cryptocurrency based payment system. The social media giant is recruiting financial firms and ecommerce companies to help launch the payment platform. Users would be able to send a digital coin to each other and use that currency to make purchases on Facebook and online. Facebook's plans may also include ways to financially reward users who watch with ads. Reports have even surfaced that the company has recruited the help of MIT Crypto professor Christian Catalini. So what is Facebook up to in the secret project? Let's take a look.   Cryptocurrencies have seen a very public boom and bust, but that doesn't mean they're going away. The underlying technology behind them is solid. Facebook's interest in devel...

  Hi, welcome to another storror of the technology.  Shortly after the 2008 global financial crash, a mysterious white paper emerged from an unknown entity, a person or group, calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto. In this mysterious White Paper, a new peer-to-peer financial system was discussed. It was to use a digital cryptocurrency called Bitcoin.  It was an omen to people being sick of centralized power meddling with economic systems. Many perceive this new system as a better way of doing things. The technology invented to power this new system was called blockchain, and Nakamoto's paper was its grand unveiling. In this article, we'll talk about some exciting implications of this technology and the impact it could have on all of our lives.  So what is blockchain? It's the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but its use has go far beyond that. It all sounds complicated, but let me try and break it down into one sentence and impor...

I made countless mistakes along the way which made my path to become a software engineer longer than it should have been. I watched countless YouTube tutorials, paid for numerous Udemy courses, and spent hundreds of hours learning things that didn't add any value. If I could go back in time and undo all the things that don't work, I would be in the exact same situation yesterday within six months of starting programming. That's exactly why I writting this article today. I'll remove all the useless fluff and give you the fastest path to go from a beginner to a full time software engineer. Before I begin, there are three major mistakes that can slow down your progress to become a full time software engineer. I'll also share these three mistakes along the way, so stay tuned for that. As a new programmer, the first decision you need to make is which programming language to learn. To answer that question, let's talk about what a beginner wants from a programming l...