# Total income program: budget and savings calculator

I started my cs50 course this week and I will be trying to make little projects alongside to reaffirm what I've learned thus far. Here I have made a very basic budget and savings calculator, I am hoping to increase the complexity as I improve.

Where could I improve this in terms of simplicity & structure/slickness? Also are there ways I can make this more complex and add things into it? thanks!


#include <cs50.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)

// Prompt for Monthly Income
{
int Monthly_Income;
{
}

// Prompt for total Expenditure
int Expenditure;
{
}
int Income_Remaining = (Monthly_Income - Expenditure);

printf("Income remaining %i\n", Income_Remaining);

// Prompt for savings per month

int S;
{
S = get_int("Enter your target savings contribution per month");
}
// Calculate total Discretionary income
int Discretionary_income = (Income_Remaining - S);
printf("Discretionary income %i\n", Discretionary_income);
// Calculate Savings total per month
int i = 0;
int Total = 0;
do
{
Total = Total + S;
i++;
printf("your total savings are %i\n", Total);
printf("total months %i\n", i);
}
while (i < 24);

}

• @G. Sliepen Ah yes I see, now declared & initialised the variables at the same time, not sure why I did it like that. The redundant comment being the // Prompt for Monthly Income or most of the // comments? I was just practicing including comments really, but fair point. That makes sense I will try splitting them up to make it more efficient. and I don't mean just for the sake of making it complex, just so that I can practice and engrain the knowledge ya know, I don't want to make an overcomplicated program if there's an easier/more efficient way however. Oct 23 '21 at 19:06

# Declare and initialize variables at the same time

You can simplify the code a lot by declaring and initializing variables at the same time, like so:

int Monthly_Income = get_int("Please enter your monthly income");


You were already doing this for Income_Remaining and Discretionary_income.

Avoid writing comments that don't really add any new information. A lot of code is self-explanatory, for example if you see:

int Monthly_Income = get_int("Please enter your monthly income");


It is evident that you are prompting for the monthly income, from both the properly named variable and the text passed to get_int().

# Split your program into multiple functions

For larger programs it will become a necessity, but it is good practice to also see if you can split up a small program like this into multiple functions. Even if a function is only called once, it can be beneficial to make it a separate thing with its own name. For example, printing the savings over time could be split off:

static void print_savings_over_time(int monthly_saving) {
int total = 0;

for (int month = 1; month <= 24; month++) {
total += monthly_saving;
printf("Total savings in month %d: %d\n", month, total);
}
}

int main(void) {
...
int S = get_int("Enter your target savings contribution per month");
...
print_monthly_savings(S);
}