The Millennial Optimist

Why Your Credit Score is Important What Is It? A credit score is just one of those essential numbers that is needed to become an adult. This three-digit number, ranging from 300 to 900, is an indicator of how trustworthy you are as a borrower and represents the overall health of your finances. Credit scores are intended to help alleviate financial risk and to help companies “take a risk” on you. This risk might be providing a loan to you (can they make sure you will pay it back on time and in full?), offering to give you a new credit card (will you be able to consistently make the monthly payments?), or even providing you a line of credit (can you afford to pay it back?). Credit scores are designed to help predict the chance that you as an individual will be able to pay back the amount of money borrowed.  If you have low credit score, meaning below 500, or even no credit score as you haven’t started building it, you are considered high risk and if you decide to buy a house,...

How Much Rent Can you Afford? Calculating the Right Rent Payment If you are currently looking to rent an apartment, usually the first thing you need to figure out is how much rent can you truly afford per month. As you are limited by your income, most landlords will take this into account when discussing your monthly rent because they just want to make sure you have enough money every month to pay them. But, what they do not take into account, and what you should definitely take into account, are the other monthly living expenses that expensive and that people sometimes forget to include when determining how much rent they can pay without breaking the bank. Just because you can get approval from a landlord saying that you can rent an apartment at X dollars a month, does not actually mean you can afford it. Its important to take a look at your entire personal budget before seeing what you can and cannot afford to pay in rent. Once you have considered your current situation and your ...

Saving Extra Money by Cutting my Hair at Home So there I was, 2 months into quarantine with a fully stocked fridge, because I was eating snacks every hour or so, and a full head of hair. Now, as a young professional working in an office, I was used to the staying clean-shaven and getting a haircut every 4 weeks. This was an expectation as it would not be good for you as an individual and as a company if your employees looked like they had just come back from a camping trip in the middle of nowhere. So I was always expected to be clean and to have a nice haircut the moment my hair got a bit out of control. Fast-forward 2 months into quarantine, no need to go into the office and no need to see anyone who would get mad at seeing a young guy with a crazy amount of hair flowing in all directions. Now I think it’s important to give some background, I have thick hair and it’s not curly but it does stick up when I wake up and unless I comb it back down, it doesn’t move for the day. So du...

Top 12 Financial Tips that we Can Learn from Previous Recessions COVID-19 has changed the way we act and react to the world. Countries have locked down and the economy has suffered. With millions of people out of work and struggling to keep up with rising rent and bills, it is a comfort to know that this is not the first time the economy has crashed; nor will it be the last. Here are some tips from previous moments of economic instability that we can use and adopt to our present circumstances so that we can come out of this pandemic stronger and more financially stable. 1.) Emergency Funds are for Everyone If you are making 30K a year or even 150K a year, I promise you that an emergency fund is a necessity that will help you sleep at night when things go wrong. As those once in a lifetime situations occur, the COVID-19 pandemic too many by surprise. Those who lost their income and had built an emergency fund, a fund where you hide money away for a rainy day, were thankful for a...

My Most Decadent Brownie Recipe Ever   These brownies are going to make sure you always get invited to the party! They are soft and decadent in the middle but gives everyone the right amount of chewiness that we look for in a good brownie. It takes about 45 minutes to make but is worth every second. It makes about 16 good-sized brownies. I have doubled (and sometimes tripled) the recipe and the brownies are still very tasty! Try not to eat them before they are fully cooked; it is worth the wait. I advise you to have a glass of cold milk handy because you will definitely need it! Prep Time: 15 minutes / Cook Time: 30 minutes / Total Time: 45 minutes Ingredients: 1 cup of melted butter 1/2 cup of cocoa powder 2 cups of white sugar 4 eggs 1 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder 1 teaspoon of salt  Directions: Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Begin by greasing a 9x13-inch pan or an 8x11-inch pan for a cake-li...

Industries that are Thriving During COVID-19 It is clear how much our lives have been affected these past few months because of the pandemic and ensuing quarantine restrictions. As we enter this new way of life, with countries opening up for the first time in months and the economy beginning to improve, there are a number of industries that have had success these past few months while the world was burning. Be it from price gouging or simply providing a necessary product to the consumer, some industries have far outpaced others and have remained profitable through COVID-19. As there are many sectors in each industry, we will concentrate on certain sectors that have thrived these past few months. The Gaming Industry As we have all been stuck at home, potentially unemployed or with reduced hours, it makes sense that gaming companies would have seen an improvement in their consoles and games sold. Now that we have more free time around the house, games like Animal Crossing or Doom...

Why I Do Not Own a TV and Why That Changed I don’t own a TV, there I said it. Like most of my family and friends, you are probably shocked by that statement. Who doesn’t own a TV? Isn’t a TV one of those things that just magically show up in a new apartment? What do you do when you get home after school/work? Well I will tell you a little secret: it was not my idea not to get a TV, it just sort of happened.  When I moved into my new apartment, I had gotten all of the basics, food, a place to sleep and a nice comfortable sofa to relax in. Now I had just moved to a different city for my new job, which was the reason why I had gotten my first apartment in the first place and felt like I was finally becoming an adult. As you can imagine, a new city and a new job kept me busy! What started as a simple procrastination of saying “I will go to Best Buy this weekend to buy a TV” soon became “I’ll do it next week!” And suddenly it had been a month since I had moved in and no TV or mo...

David’s Easy and Tasty Banana Bread   You will not find an easier banana bread online, it is quick to prepare and trust me when I say it: people always come back for seconds! Ingredients: 3 ripe bananas, mashed (you can use fresh or frozen, if frozen, thaw in hot water for 5 minutes) 1 cup of white sugar 1 large egg 1 teaspoon of salt 1 teaspoon of baking soda 1 1/2 cup of flour 1/4 cup of melted butter 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips Directions: Begin by preheating your oven to 325 degrees F and grease your 9x5 inch loaf pan with either oil or butter. Combine bananas and sugar together, add in your egg and melted bowl. Mix together in a bowl. Add your flour and baking soda and salt together in a separate bowl; mix. Add your wet mixture into your dry mixture and mix together until well-combined. Add chocolate chips in and stir until you find that the chocolate is evenly spread throughout the batter. Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan Bake in the preheated oven...

Shower Thoughts When I think back to my very first apartment search, I always laugh a little to myself. I was so inexperienced and did not know what to do. I remember the landlord, a very nice older woman, taking me around the apartment and blurting out a bunch of dimensions and rules and possibilities with this empty space in front of me. Having no idea how to properly respond, I looked at her and agreed with every hint and tip she gave out. I ended up taking the apartment, at a good price of course, and moved in quickly, excited to start my new life of being independent from my family.   What I did not realize was that there are actually a lot of things I had gotten used to from living with my family that my nice, small and rather strange apartment did not have. Now I am not going to talk about regrets but if I had one thing I could and would have changed, it would have been that awful shower. So to give you some context, everybody has that one room or area or activity ...

My Irrational Fear of Spiders I can’t tell you when it started or how, I can just tell you that I don’t like spiders, like at all and I probably never will. I’m not sure if it’s their sneaking skills, always showing up when you least expect them or if it’s the idea that they will bite me when I’m not looking, I have never been a fan of spiders. When I was growing up, I was lucky enough to have a brother that was not scary of spiders, every time there was a spider in my general vicinity, I could call him over and he would kill it without even paying attention. I nicknamed him the spider killer. Originally, I had tried to teach my dog, a Labrador, to eat spiders but like me, she was never a big fan of spiders so that did not work. So there I was, in my apartment on my first night. I still remember that very first night in my apartment; it was so terrible. I organized myself to get ready for bed and as I got nice and comfortable in the covers, right before I turned the light off, I lo...