The Millennial Optimist

4 Easy Ways to Lower Your Car Insurance Premium Do you find yourself sometimes wondering why your car insurance premium seems to be so high even though you have never had a speeding ticket or a major accident? You are not alone! Although it is known that your car insurance premium is based on many factors – your age, gender and driving experience – there are actually many ways to lower your car insurance premium quickly if you have a quick moment to spare. Trust me; by taking only a couple of minutes out of your day, you can save a lot of money every month that you could put towards your savings and investing.   Here are a couple of ways that you can lower your car insurance premium immediately: 1.) Increasing your Car Insurance Deductible Before delving into the benefit of a higher car insurance deductible, we must first define it. As an example, you are in a car accident where you end up damaging your front bumper. You get towed to the mechanic shop and they tell you it w...

17 Essential Laundry Tips for Beginners Laundry can be difficult to understand even for the most experienced of people. There is nothing worse than wanting to put on your favorite dress shirt and seeing a massive stain from that time you accidentally spilled ketchup on yourself. Oops, you forgot to wash it. When you are just starting off and learning how to do your own laundry for the first time, there are many questions that you might ask yourself. How do I remove a stain? Does it matter if I wash everything together? To help, I have created this essential laundry tips and tricks list to answer any potential questions that might come up on your pursuit to clean clothes. 1.) How Do I keep my White Articles of Clothing White? Are you having an issue where a white t-shirt has gone grey? Does it drive you crazy that your clothes never stay the same white as when you bought them? Here is a safe washing method for keeping your white clothing white: soak your white pieces of clothing...

Credit Card Basics – What You Really Need to Know When most people think of credit cards, they think of free money. With a small plastic card, they are able to buy things that they would normally not be able to buy, as they might not have the money to pay for it in their bank accounts. Credit cards give you an alternative to cash to help you buy things that you may want / need. However, you have to be careful because although credit cards are great tools to help you with purchasing things you need, they can also become a burden and force you into bad debt if you do not pay them off every month.  Although there are both pros and cons for a credit card, it is important to note that a credit card is the easiest way to improve your credit score as they are easily opened at a young age. Building up your credit score as early as possible will help you get closer to life-changing decisions like buying your first house / apartment or even leasing your first car. Here are a few basics...

Overdraft Protection: Simplified When most people think about overdraft fees, they are filled with dread. Overdraft fees sometimes feel like you are kicking someone who is already down as you add fee on top of fee. So what is overdraft protection and what are the fees involved? Have you ever had that embarrassing moment when a check has bounced or you handed your debit card to a merchant and they said, probably way too loudly, that your debit card had been declined? It is not only embarrassing but it could also have additional consequences that far surpass the momentary embarrassment. For example, some lenders will actually charge you an additional fee if you have a bounced check. So instead of just being embarrassed that you wrote a check for money that you do not have, you will in fact get charged extra money that you do not possess. So you are stuck in a lose-lose situation no matter how you look at it. What is the solution to avoid this terrible situation? Overdraft protection ...

How to Pick a Credit Card Wisely When picking a credit card, no two cards are the same. What might be a perfect credit card for you might not be the best credit card for me. So how do you choose the most rewarding credit card for your lifestyle? Well it comes down to your spending habits and your credit score. Often times, you should be looking to open a new credit card every couple of years. Experts say that you should only shop around for a new credit card every 3 years so that you can consistently improve your credit score by increasing your credit limit and avoiding too many hard inquiries in a short amount of time. The rule is 3 years because when you apply for a credit card, this involves a hard inquiry on your credit report (where if you have too many inquiries in a short period, this actually decreases your credit score) and it is easier to have only 2-3 credit cards as less cards are easier to manage.  I have listed below a couple of the things that you should de...

25 Tips to Save Money on Groceries We all know the struggle of grocery shopping, with long lines and people everywhere, you might sometimes feel anxiety trying to figure out which fruit is ripe before the man behind you tries to pass you. Even without all of this stress, grocery shopping is one of those activities that takes time and can be expensive if done incorrectly. Whether you just want to start creating tastier meals or just simply trying to cut your grocery bill to save a bit of money, there are a ton of ways to cut costs so that you can get a more budget-friendly grocery bill. Today, we are going to take a deep dive on some tips for when you go grocery shopping. Please note that these tips do not require you to be an incredible chef (although we know that you are quite skilled with a knife!). Feel free to mix and match any of these grocery tips and let me know which tips you found the most helpful below! 1.) Freezing Perishable Ingredients If you have a large enough fr...

What Smart Investors Do in Volatile Markets 2020 has been one of the most volatile years that the stock market has ever experienced. Just to recap the past few months: we hit all-time highs in February before the Coronavirus outbreak in the US and Canada. Then when the Coronavirus hit us, the markets dropped over 34%. Since the end of March to early June, the stock market has mounted an incredible rally and even recorded the best 50-day stretch ever before it began slumping once again these past few weeks. Like most of you, I have been watching the news and pandemic updates to see its effect on the stock market. All of this news and fear created a whiplash response in the markets that nobody could expect with rapid increases and decreases in entire sectors occurring moments after each other. As nobody knows what the future holds and what could happen next, the question everyone is asking is what can I do to reduce this volatility in my portfolio? It has been said time and time ...

How to Build an Emergency Fund Everybody knows that they need a little bit of money saved up for a rainy day because you never know what could happen. It is always better to be safe than sorry to avoid a disaster. But the numbers and the amount you need to save can be daunting. On average, experts say you need about 3-6 months of living expenses saved up. On average, 27% of American families have begun having conversations on building up their emergency funds since the start of this recession and approximately half have actually started putting money towards their emergency fund. So what is the point of an emergency fund? Well an emergency fund is a safety net for all kinds of situations; it could be as simple as an unexpected car repair to losing your job. An emergency fund is meant to be saved until an emergency comes and than to be used immediately so that you do not need to take on any unnecessary debt to keep yourself afloat. So how do you save money when you are already...