THE WHOLE pandemic experience should have taught you one big lesson — get financially prepared for whatever worst-case scenarios. Whether you’re caught completely off guard or spared by the coronavirus crisis, your mindset and approach to managing your finances must have been changed, and these are the key areas that you should seriously start reassessing soon.
[1] Household Budget. Retool your household budget as it might have gone volatile through the quarantine days — cutting back on this and that, receiving meager or no income at all, stretching government’s social amelioration subsidies, and saving a little on food allocations with relief goods. Your retooled budget may at first be on a big trial and error while trying to accommodate other needs brought about by the crisis, and constant reviews and reallocations are all necessary.
[2] Emergency Fund. Your dedicated savings, aka emergency fund, might have been used up. If this is the case, then you’re now probably running your personal finances off guard. You cannot afford another emergency to come your way, and rebuilding your emergency fund as soon as possible does make sense.
[3] Savings. Apart from your emergency fund, your regular savings might have also been badly hit after getting furloughed from work or beyond-the-budget spending. As soon as the outbreak subsides, you better start over making savings little by little. From the retooled and constantly reviewed household budget, you can find new opportunities to make simple savings that grow over time.
[4] Income. You can even speed up your rebuilding of emergency fund and all other savings by generating passive income on the side of your regular eight-to-five job. As the term passive implies, you need not much work to do or resources to exhaust just to earn extra. Opportunities are always endless, and you better grab them right away.
[5] Debts. You can always categorize your current debts as good and bad. While you may consider those accumulated through the quarantine days as bad debts, you can never get ahead with your financial goals without getting them paid off. What you need then is a solid debt payoff plan, and there are always two schools of thought for this — start with the biggest or the smallest one.
[6] Investments. You’ve learned a lot from your pandemic experience, and that includes a big lesson on making wise investments. Whether you still have something available for your regular investment goals or not, you’re never exempted from at least reviewing, if not rebalancing, your investment portfolio.
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