Blog
Tuesday August 11th, 2020
Compound interest. The most common term used by life coaches and financial gurus when trying to sell you on a savings and investment plan. They talk about investing that dollar you spend a day on coffee and donuts so that in 65 years you have over a million dollars! The problem is, if you ask them why and how compound interest works, humans are biologically wired to not have a good grasp on math that isn't intuitive. Compound interest is definitely not intuitive.
Let's try a little mental exercise. Let's say you invest $100 at a rate of 4%. This would mean that after one year, you'd have $104. Now try to think about what that means in two years. For most people, you probably assume you'll get $108 considering you made $4 the last year anyway. Unfortunately, compound interest is not that simple (a little pun for my financial nerds out there), the idea of compounding stems from the concept of interest upon interest. This means that instead of the intuitive multiplication, you're working in exponents and decimals, not concepts you learned in elementary school I'd assume.
The complexity of this idea leads many not to believe in the true power of interest. Particularly, very few people in Canada and the U.S. have any savings or investments and I'm sure an even smaller minority could explain to you how much interest they earn per month. I was one of these people! Forum after forum, website after website I never quite got an understanding of exactly how Canadian savings accounts "calculate interest daily and pay monthly".
So, me being as obsessive as possible decided to create an excel program that shows you the daily, monthly and yearly breakdown of your savings account that is considered to compound monthly. After numerous tests and verification by hand, the final product (or at least what I'd call a public beta) is ready for upload. If you are considering opening up a new savings account, download the program and try it out for yourself, you won't be too dissapointed :P
Wednesday July 8th, 2020
Funny story, in the 2nd or 3rd grade I had this obsession with making my own website and having a blog and games on it. 2nd or 3rd grade! I remember travelling to my home country Pakistan and begging my cousin to setup a domain for myself. Sure enough, he complied and my first website was born. I wish I could remember what that domain was or what that website actually did but all I remember is that it once did exist. Some of my friends from that period still rememeber the existence of the site to this day.
I point to that story as one of the main inspirations to finally designing this website and code it myself. It didn't take too long, about 2-3 weeks I believe have passed by so far and I'm proud of how this has come along. With my interests, I've always been all over the place. I am a creative person who somehow really likes math. This website is my time capsule as I progress through life and hopefully continue to update this as often as I feel. It may not have that much appeal to outside users (unless you are an employer doing a background check, in that case, hello!) so it is a personal project. If you're reading this, thanks for stopping by, enjoy your stay while you surf through the web.
So, my advice to you thinking of starting a new blog and for some reason coming to this specific website? Make sure you know what reason you're doing it for, and then accept those reasons. Don't lie to yourself. If you think you want to dive in and build sites by learning code, go for it, just don't act like it's for a job if it isn't. Don't be afraid to use Wix or SquareSpace out of fear that those aren't as professional. They will always look more professional than something made from an amateur programmer.
Whatever you choose to do, always stay true to yourself and make sure you have fun with it. If it wasn't enjoyable, you're never going to get it done.
