Covid Cash Lessons
Money Management
Covid hit the world by storm, and many of us were not prepared while others thrived. What was certain is how we lived our lives beforehand and whether we were prepared or ill-prepared financially for what was to come in 2020 and now 2021. We shall discuss what we’ve learned and what we plan to achieve for our future in this post. We invite you to join us on our journey to financial comfort and what that means to each of us.
The journey starts by finding out where we are with our financial circumstances. We need to understand how much we’re spending compared to how much income we’re earning. We are ahead of the masses through discipline if we meet our financial responsibilities, expenses, savings, and investments. Yet, we still want to enjoy our money. We must not forget that everything in life comes in cycles. We must prepare for the rainy days to continue to enjoy our green pastures.
However, if we are like the masses living check to check without any savings, Covid taught or should have taught us that we can’t afford to keep living like this. If we don’t make enough money to cover both our expenses and save money, we only have two options. The first is to lower our costs, with the second being to increase our income. The bonus option is to do both. It doesn’t matter how much we make. What matters is that we condition ourselves to put our future selves first. That is not negotiable. If we make $100, we should automatically save at least $10. If we make $1000, $100 should be saved at a minimum and so on. We should practice not living our lives to the minimum, but the minimum shall suffice if we start somewhere.
Once we begin to save, we must not use our savings as petty cash. It should be separate from an emergency fund. Savings should have a goal of making us money because if our money is in a bank, the banks are investing our money, making money off of our taxed dollars. We should save before we pay our bills and manage everything else according to our new budgets.
Covid has changed the way that we can make money. More companies are offering flexible working options. Many people had started small businesses out of necessity when our employment ended. This opportunity is a great time to get outside of our comfort zones and see what we can accomplish if we try working for ourselves. Even if we have stable employment, it’s still a great time to put effort into side hustles. No one person should have a single source of income. It’s dangerous to give one source total power on whether we can eat and house ourselves.
Covid is still around, crippling the economy. Until it passes, we have to use this pandemic as a reality check to have a positive relationship with money.