Another very useful tool is something like SteemPeak which lets you control how strong your vote is. For example, unless it's something I really like, or someone I know and wanna support, my voting strength is usually 30-50%. This can help extend our your resource credits longer.
It's great to see users and groups on here helping newbies and those starved for resources some help! It can be rather hard to get over that initial "starvation" period.