Budgeting For A Quarantine

Like much of the world right now, we are in semi imposed self isolation to help flatten the curve. Now in case you were wondering, I'm somewhat invincible as I will live to 116, so I'm not all that concerned. Martha tells me I'm an idiot, and to sit my defective pulmonary system butt down. But what does she know? She only has a four year nursing degree. Don't mind the cough; it's only allergies.

Budgeting for the month of April has been interesting this year. We are largely hanging around the house other than for the occasional grocery pick up or me having to jaunt down to the office to count chemical inventory or deal with computers from the field. One might think that this is a great month to save money as what can you do? You can't spend it anywhere. I counter with have you met Amazon, Pinterest, and a spouse with landscape construction ideas?

Being in quarantine is highly dangerous to the budget. First, many are furloughed or without a job entirely. For you folks, you need to read my earlier blog about the COVID-19 Economy where there are helpful tools for dealing with this crisis such as how to prioritize your spending and how to weather this storm in a manner that leaves you the least harm financially so you can quickly rebound and continue on your financial fitness path. For those fortunate to enough to still have work and a steady paycheck, sitting at the "home office" with little to do but putter around the house, your budget is at a real risk of being decimated if you do not remain diligent. Amazon and UPS are in full force still and one may be tempted to seek a little retail therapy to ease the pain of no human contact outside of the children bouncing off the walls like they are hopped up on pop at a Chuck-E-Cheese birthday party. BE CAREFUL!!

This is the time to set a strict budget and really stick to it. Ask yourself this question prior to hitting the "Buy Now" button: Is this a NEED or a WANT? For clarification, needs are food, utilities, shelter, transportation. There may be a few other things that become needs as time goes on, yet for the most part, right now, anything you can buy outside of the four fundamentals is pretty much a want. Avoid indulging in the wants right now. Really focus on stretching your money to last you. Take a page out of the Gen Z playbook and become thrifty. Reuse things, get creative in finding ways to avoid spending money. The reality is we do not know how long this will all last and economically this has the potential to be very decimating. By focusing in on the essential needs, you will be able to make your money last far longer and weather this storm. It is going to suck. It already sucks. It is absolutely frustrating having all this extra time to do projects yet not wanting to spend the money in case you need it for the long term. What we all need to do is look at the long game; to stay focused on where we want to be in 10 and 20 years down the road. The decisions we make today either allow us to continue down the path to financial fitness and outrageous generosity or set us back in a life of debt and frustration.

A couple of other things to note about budgeting this month. Martha and I found that we needed to up the food budget a bit. Some of the staple items are getting difficult to find and so we are having to pay a bit more to get them from other sources. For example, eggs are impossible to get unless you are able to stand in line for most of the day in the hopes the stores are re-stocked. So we found we could buy eggs from some of the local restaurants. They are not outrageously expensive, however, they are more expensive than what we normally get at Sam's Club. Almost everything has become a little pricier due to scarcity.

We also found that our vehicle fuel usage has been nil. We also looked at various other areas of our budget and found that we were not spending in certain categories. We have diverted a lot of those funds to increase the food budget and to increase our miscellaneous fund in anticipation of there being other unknowns that might require purchase.

That all said, I encourage you all to really look at your budgets this month, see how far you can stretch them, and expect to pay a bit more for food and electricity for all those Netflix marathons!

#coachcashmoney #quarantine #budget #GenZ #Thrifty