I have always talked about the importance of saving for retirement and be prepared for an emergency, and most of the response I get is that there is nothing left at the end of the month. Most of the time we hear this famous quote by Warren Buffet: “Don’t save what’s left after spending, spend what’s left after saving.” As a financial advisor, my belief is that when you cut down on your expenses, you will find enough to start your savings. Be it an extra $25 month to jump-start your savings plan is better than having none at all.

However, there are instances that the solution is for us to earn more income in order to start our savings plan. Putting in $25 monthly can be a good start, but how long do you need to save in order to be financially prepared for whatever comes in the future? We need to look into how we can make more money in order to save more.

How do you earn more income from your workplace, especially when there is a glass ceiling that seems impossible to breakthrough? Or how do you find a better job with better pay if competition out there is tough? We all need to learn new skills in order to continually be marketable in the workplace. Having a job does not mean that you can stop learning. You need to continually improve the skills you have.

There are a lot of online academies out there. One of them is Goskills.com. They offer an online platform where you can learn specific topics and at your own pace. Do not be afraid to learn new things and work hard to reach your fullest potential, and become the best version of yourself.

Learn New Skills

Learning new skills can greatly improve the opportunities that come your way. You need to be software savvy when working, regardless of which industry you are in.

If you work in an office environment, most of the time you are required to use Microsoft Office applications; Word, Excel, PowerPoint – to name a few. Even office email applications seem daunting, and what is a “cloud”? In order to be competitive in the workplace, you need to learn essential, most in-demand skills related to your job.

Goskills.com offers flexible, self-paced learning that you can fit in your schedule. You decide the pace you are taking and the hours you will invest in your learning. They offer you a quick skill test to identify your strengths and weaknesses so you can focus on skills that matter the most to you. When done with a course, you get a certificate that you can add to your resume and LinkedIn profile, thus giving you an edge in relation to the other applicants or candidates.

Excel, Microsoft Office & Finance

One of the most used applications in my job as an Inventory Costing Analyst as well as handling my business is Microsoft Excel. I have to create spreadsheets to support my reconciliations and analyses. Having even just basic Excel knowledge is important especially if your job deals with numbers and money: bookkeeping, accounting, purchasing, sales, etc. This is also an important tool for businessmen and investors. Even my personal banking, expenses, goals and to-do lists are all recorded using Excel.

Microsoft Word is an important tool in creating various correspondence and reports. Being able to produce a professional-looking document makes a difference.  Microsoft PowerPoint is essential in creating presentations for meetings and events. Being able to create a presentation that is engaging to your audience is essential in a successful lecture, demonstration, or launch.

Becoming finance savvy is not limited to people with finance specific roles. Learning finance can help you understand basic financial principles that can affect how you run your business, creating business proposals and reports, understanding your business performance, and making a sound and solid decision. By taking the Finance Course, you will be able to interpret financial documents, gain insight into its profitability and understand how to move forward to improve your business profitability.

Soft Skills

Goskills.com also offers training to develop your soft skills including Business Writing, Public Speaking, Body Language, Team Leadership, Customer Service Training, and Leadership Training. Whether you are a key person in an organization or just starting on a career, developing these soft skills will help how others perceive you in how you fit in their organization. Businesses lose good employees because of the lack of these soft skills on the people they report to. A lot of managers do not have the people skills needed to handle their employees professionally. This can be a good platform for team training in an organization.

Development & Design

Programming courses include Introduction to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, SQL and Ruby Programming. If you want to build your stylish website, start web development, or want to understand how to use HTML on your blog, these modules are perfect for you. Taking Python is a highly marketable skill and will help you create apps. Learning the Basic SQL can help you understand database management. Another highly marketable skill is Ruby on Rails. This is a fun and a comparatively simple language to learn that will also help you in creating apps.

Design courses include Photoshop & Adobe Illustrator for both Beginners and Advanced. This course is designed for people who want to create illustrations or use techniques to create custom designs and layouts.

Conclusion

In order to be attractive to employers in today’s competitive market, we all need to strive to increase and improve our skills set. With the above basic skills that have now become a minimum requirement in every company’s hiring matrix, it is to our advantage to get on with the learning.

You can also gift Goskills.com to family and friends, or start your own free trial. The gift of learning is a gift that will keep on giving in their future. The skills they learn will become a stepping stone to jump start their career or their business venture.