For many years, I always stand by this idea that if you're not growing, you're regressing. I heard this idea once on one of my senior courses back in college over a decade ago and it has stuck with me ever since. I always go back with to this phrase and it has propelled me in my career thus far.

My career has been in software development from day one, ever since I finished college. It was the career that I chose and from the start, my mindset has been to become the best software developer that I can ever be. I want to know everything that there is to know, which these days is very unrealistic for anyone working in or trying to get in this space. I set an expectation or a goal for myself and I strive to push myself to meet that goal.

I defined growth as being better than I was the year prior, and that is to learn something new every year. Since I'm a software engineer, that was to learn a new technology and be able to master that specific skill(s) every single year. Learning something means that I need to be able to put it into action, and use it in practice. I was growing my skills but I put fitness in the back burner.

I neglected my health and conformed to how I was physically. I was working out but only focused on the workout side of things, and zero attention to what I eat. I wasn't happy with how I look but I decided to be content and accept it. My doctor told me that I was obese, but yet failed to accept it and make changes. Even with all the information that's available to us, I failed to connect the dots, partly because I was a.) too stubborn to change, and 2.) didn't know how to start.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the entire country to shut down, it gave me some time to reflect. We spent a lot of time indoors and I actually took a moment to stop and think about my fitness level and my career. I appreciate being able to spend time with the kids and the family. It was honestly a blessing in disguise for me since I never ever took the time to pause and spend time with myself.

During summer, I set out to put myself in a new fitness routine. For the longest time, I was in bodybuilding mode. I did a little bit of functional type of routine and crossfit for a little while, many years ago. I was stubborn and refused to re-invent myself physically --bodybuilding splits are my crutch and always fall back on it when things doesn't work out. ###Time to re-invent I incorporated fasting while doing restricted calories, and from July to November, I lost a total of 40+ pounds. I might have lost quite a bit of muscles in the process, but I feel amazing. I went from weighing 265 pounds to 220 pounds in a matter of 4 months. I also started adding a lot of bodyweight movements as part of my routine. I love being able to walk, run or being able to move a certain way, effortlessly.

The best part of it all, my mind is clearer, and I feel like I can conquer anything. I am a very motivated person to begin with, but being physically in shape gives me an extra edge. My goal now is to never return to that overweight self and strive to keep improving from here on out. I understand that everything flows internally to externally (mentally then physically) but feeling good physically really drives my mental being. It's like that scene from "limitless" where I can visualize everything come together.

Late September in 2020 is when I started putting all my thoughts and ideas into my journal. I have an app where I would log everything --my goals, what I'm grateful for (very important), achievements, and what makes the day memorable. I want to be able to go back to these ideas, a year or many years from now, and be able to see my thought process, or where I was in life.

I also take pictures of my kids and family on a daily basis and attach it as part of the journal. Since the kids grow so fast, I want to be able to preserve these moments and look back into those photos and relive them. I haven't missed a day of journaling and taking photos of the kids so far, and it can be difficult at times. I keep myself accountable, and it has now become a habit to record and recap my day into my digital journal.

I'm hungrier than ever before and I started working on myself and what I want to achieve even before 2021 started. 2021 much like 2020 is just a number to me. I don't look at each year as a new opportunity to make a change but instead, I measure growth on a daily basis. I write where I'm at on a fitness level including my weight and my goal on a macro level. I spend at least an hour a day reading a book, and listening to audiobooks. I am on Pluralsight or Udemy and adding more skills to my arsenal.

I also have been spending a lot of time learning the business side of real estate, and the process (more on this on a future blog). And more importantly, spend more time with the kids either by taking them to the park, teach my 5 years old son some math, or play Frozen with my 2 years old daughter.

If I'm not spending time with my family, I'm educating myself every single day and spending my time each day with a purpose. Life is too precious and short to be spent on things that in the end doesn't contribute to my growth. See you on the next post.

I've been using Acorns for many years now, 2014 to be precise. For many investors who are new to investing in general, it's a great way to get started in investing. Most people especially college students don't think about investing until later on in life. Since investing is an afterthought for a lot of people, Acorns offers a huge benefit by letting you invest based on round ups or small monthly contributions. It's a great option if you don't know what you should invest in and don't know how to get started in investing.

I'll start off by briefly mentioning the benefits. The biggest benefit to using Acorn as I mentioned is it automates the process of investing for you. It gives you a starter set of portfolio that are solid and most are based on stocks in the S&P 500. The monthly contribution and round ups essentially takes away the guesswork of frequency as far as funds contribution. They also partner with tons of companies that offers a percentage investment if you purchase their products.

With the benefits out of the way, I'll be discussing a few reasons why Acorns is not a good platform for you and should be avoided.

This is probably obvious to most people but worth mentioning that Acorns is meant to be used for long term investment. Since Acorns purchases stocks based on market value and set schedule, you can't just trade whenever you want. The platform is not designed for moving cash in and out.

For starters, it costs money to invest in Acorns and they charge $1 per month at a minimum to maintain your account. At the cheapest plan, they essentially charge you $12 per year. If your account is less than $1,000, the fees associated with the account would easily eat up all your unrealized gains assuming that you stop contributing. As you grow your account, the dividends pay out and gains will eventually offset those costs.

When you sign up with Acorns, they provide you with 5 different investing portfolio based on your risk (conservative, moderately conservative, moderate, moderately aggressive and aggressive) to invest in. Each portfolio provides a set of stocks or bonds that are chosen automatically for you. For beginners, this is a good thing since they pick and choose which options would best fit your situation including investing in bonds if you're somewhat on the conservative side. If you know what you're doing, you might want to look elsewhere so you can have more choices while not being tied to their monthly fee.

At some point in time when you're a much savvier investor and know what you're doing, transferring an account out to a different broker account will cost you. According to their terms, there's a fee of $50 per ETF which means that you will have to pay for each one that you own. In my case, since I have an aggressive account, I will have to pay $200 since I have 4 ETF associated with my portfolio. If you have a moderately aggressive account, you will have 5 ETFs which will cost $250 to transfer out.

Another thing to keep in mind when transferring is, they will only transfer whole shares and the rest will be liquidated back to your account. For instance, if you own 5.005434 shares of large company stocks (VOO), they will only transfer 5 and the fractional shares is sold. This is not entirely their fault as a lot of broker accounts don't support fractional shares and only allow you to buy and sell whole shares.

In the end, those are some reasons why you should avoid Acorns. It boils down to your level of experience with investing. Regardless of your age, there's a portfolio that will fit everyone. As long as you're investing, it's all that matters. If I would do it over again, I would 100% use Acorns as it gave me an incentive early on to start investing. When you're contributing $5 or $10 here and there, the impact on your account is minimal while putting you on a path to financial growth.

If you would like to get started with Acorns, please usemy link to get $5.

Why you should avoid Acorns investing platform

I’ve been writing code for many years whether it’s for a backend service or front-end code, I have collected a few tools that I install whenever I setup a new computer.

Whenever I’m debugging a service and need to see what’s happening behind the scenes, I use Fiddler. I can see all HTTP traffic and see the request/response output all in one place side-by-side with my IDE. It’s very useful especially when debugging SDKs that interacts with the cloud like Azure, etc. I still have yet to find an alternative and it gets the job done for my specific needs.

The VS code is one of the most versatile IDE there is and a popular choice within the developer community. It’s fast and versatile because of its huge ecosystem of extensions. It’s also lightweight which is a favorable option so you can open a project and navigate to code quicker. I use Webstorm and Visual Studio (the paid version) if I’m working on an older project or with more advanced debugging features, but for most things, VS Code is more than capable.

Before the Chrome developer extension, I was a Firebug fanatic. It was a simple but great tool for debugging the front-end and I stuck with it for a while even after the Chrome extension came along. I like sticking with the same tools and re-learning a new tool all over again just to do the same thing didn’t make sense. When Chrome started becoming more popular, I had to switch and the developer extension has been my go-to for quickly debugging front-end development. The tool already comes when you install Chrome so it’s just a matter of toggling it.

Using GIT as a distributed version control for your code is a must-have. I started out with Subversion and TFS (Team Foundation Server) way back when I started developing but GIT is today’s standard when it comes to tracking code changes for good reasons. I can’t imagine developing code without GIT and I use source tree to speed up code commits and easily view code changes.

I’ve used many to-do apps and switched a lot and as of today, this is my go-to for keeping track of my daily tasks as well as future and recurring tasks. I can view it on my desktop and on my phone so I can create my to-do list anywhere. I also use a notebook to plan out things before committing it in the app itself and it makes it easier to visualize what I need to do.

This is the same as the to-do app, I’ve used a lot of tools but I’ve been trying to be consistent with the apps that I use for productivity. I can write my notes either on the iPad, my phone, or on the desktop so it’s a very versatile app on keeping track of things and having access to it virtually everywhere. I sometimes scan items and add it to a page so I have something that I can reference later.

A great tool that has evolved over the years from being a Chrome extension to a full desktop application. It’s such an indispensable tool for testing third-party services and APIs quickly (including GraphQL, etc). You can bookmark API resources and categorize based on the project and share them with your teammates. You can also use it for documentation purposes in conjunction with Swagger.

This software is only available in Windows which is where I code 70% of the time but I haven’t found any text editor better than Notepad++ in terms of versatility and ability to open any type of file (at least in Windows). Whether you’re opening a configuration file, JSON, XML or some other file formats, this is the style to use. It has plenty of plug-ins from formatting your code, or simply making a piece of code easier to view.

Do you have any tools that you use that is indispensable to development that I should check out? Do you have an alternative to what I have that I should also check out? Please leave a comment as I love to see what the community is using.

I will be posting bi-monthly so if you like my content, please add yourself to the mailing list and get notified whenever I publish a new content. Thanks for reading.

Developer tools I can't live without (2020)

With the current pandemic that we are in, it can be a difficult times for some people as unemployment numbers are up. COVID-19 has affected us in different ways whether it's our job, way of living or plainly how we approach things. It changes how we travel and we interact with people. Things will never go back the way it used to be and wearing a face mask will be the new norm.

The positive take away from all these is, now, people are doing more things to care for themselves such as taking supplements and do preventative measures to have stronger immune system to fight off the virus and various illnesses. What is a happening now in wake of the pandemic is, people are learning to do more and take much needed steps to embrace healthier lifestyle and be more conscious of how we live.

Since the majority of us are working at home, I've put together a list of things that I do to boost my productivity.

Staying productive is especially tough since most people are at home and work can be challenging especially if you have kids who are at home as well. Things are always changing so learning to adopt to the current situation is essential. Here's a few ideas that I use and always keep in mind in order to stay productive.

As much as I love coffee to wake me up, you can't rely on coffee and I can't think and work effectively with less sleep.

2. Write down ideas on a physical notebook

I put a lot of things on OneNote but I find an actual notebook to be more effective for making to-do lists and keeping track of ideas. I can type faster but I find that having a notebook in front of my makes information more accessible. Every time I come across an idea, I write it down.

One of my favorite hacks to keep myself productive throughout the whole day. Whether I'm working on my standing desk or in the kitchen, I\'m always standing. I'm standing 95% of the day and I unplug my laptop when I'm sitting down to force me to stand up if my laptop is running out of battery. Once I sit down, I know that it's game over.

Walking is fine but if you're physically capable of running or doing some weight lifting, you should. I feel more focused and can think clearly after a good workout versus without. If anything, keep moving and get those steps in and set some goals and strive for better fitness. I also use a watch to keep track of my sleep and steps so if a device helps, you should use it as well.

I follow the pareto principle which basically states that 80% of the outcome is a result of 20% of input. I don't like wasting my time or effort on things that are not contributing to the task. This is about assessing a task and finding out the most productive way of accomplishing it and getting rid of the rest.

Before I power up my laptop, I grab a notebook (see step 2 above) and write down the things that I need to get done today. I make a list and check it off as I do them. During the weekend or non work hours, I'll open the notebook and write down weekly or mid to long term goals.

The hardest thing about being a developer is to step away from the computer, especially if we're in the middle of developing something or stuck with a problem. I've solved a lot of problems and had best solution when being away from the keyboard.

I hope that the few steps above helps someone in becoming more productive.

Dennis Rongo

Back to growth mode

Why you should avoid Acorns investing platform

Developer tools I can't live without (2020)

7 tips for productivity