Ep. 208 — The World Turned Upside Down

So he had like a lounge night and then brunched the next day and had the nerve to have on gloves and brunch like I just saw I just know via like his Instagram stories.

last week. I officially started working from home, I would say last Monday. And since then, you know, offices have been closing, businesses have been closing. You know, the virus is spreading all over the city. In the suburbs where I am, everything is a ghost town. You know. My husband was still going into the office until the end of last week. Now he's working from home, quote unquote working He actually can't do his job from home, so he's been here in the house creating how home improvement

projects to do instead. But that's beside the point. But has said that the trains are just, you know, completely empty, and it feels, you know, nless you're a grocery store. It feels like everything is sort of abandoned, which seems to be the best thing to do, you know. Like I don't know, I you know, I saw a couple of my guy friends on Saturday night.

had enough water. My mom, I mean, she's been playing her whole life for this as an African woman with a deep freezer that's six feet off. Yeah, she said, we have enough food for a lifetime, which they do. But my concern was they didn't have enough water. So I dropped off some water, and I just felt like a filter was probably best for them anyway. But I remember I was on the road and it looked like a normal Tuesday afternoon on the road, like people are

still driving places. So I'll say that. I mean, I haven't been out out like that was really the only outing is to make sure my parents are fine and check in on my sister. But yeah, as far as driving, it looked it wasn't. There were people out and about what about the stores?

that for a second, the panic shopping. You know, a few weeks ago, my mom and I went to Sam's Club and got some essentials. I was worried because we didn't have children's tile and all or ibuprofen. You know, like if we were going to get sick and you don't want to go out and spread germs, like having some medicines at home seem like a good idea. And we did get like dipe and essentials, but we just

basically did grocery shopping. It feels like people are out there shopping for the end of the world and that is causing all these shortages, which to me, like and you know, the government, uh local governments here have you know, officials have said it's not necessary you know, at a minimum or a maximum's you know, good enough for a couple of weeks. But they're not going to be closing down grocery stores. If anything, those are the essential businesses that will you know, remain remain open.

food shopping the day before it all went crazy. I went on a Tuesday, and I remember like, there's plenty of water on the shells and things like that, and I was but I had bought because my sister always sys I over food shop, which I do, so I didn't have enough space to put water on the cart. And I was like, I'll just come back tomorrow for the water Manye I came back the next day, I'm like, what did the zombie apocalypse happen? Yeah, it was so coral.

It just I couldn't and I was just honestly grateful that I had gone regular food shopping. But I will say, actually, know, I'm gonna save it for my brown boost about like who has been bay during this time? But yeah, it's just honestly, it's been crazy. But aside from just the health kind of like fear fear stuff, there's also the financial stuff that's happening as a result. I mean, the sky is literally falling when it comes to the market. I'm like, I was looking today like, oh my goodness.

I mean, it's just crazy. I'm like, I don't know, I've.

It's yeah, but the anxiety over not just you know, your four to one k anymore, but it's like the economy itself. People who are the small business owners who've had to close down, you know, everyone from like my hairdresser who just opened her salon a couple of years ago, you know, canceling appointments, to the woman who was going to paint my son's room having to cancel all her

clients this month. The bar owners and restaurants that are having to be closed down, the people who work there, waitresses, hostesses like you know that those type of gig economy are like wage workers are really the ones who are going to be floored by this whole situation. And I think where the anxiety comes to is like where's the leadership from the top, Yeah, you know, who's looking out for these people? And you know, Trump has not necessarily

been a small business president. He's been a big business president. And I feel like much in you know, in the last recession, it was very much all about the big banks getting the bailout. But there needs to be some

sort of bailout. Congress needs to work. I know they canceled their recess and they came back this week, which is good, but like it still feels like too much politics and we need to create some sort of safety net and tell people you're going to be okay, we're going to make government work for you, and you know your bills will be delayed or.

that that's what a lot of like. Honestly, some young people are thinking that, and I'm like, well, the last time there was a huge run on the bank, so it was the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, and that's why

they created the FDIIC. So you can have insurance up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for your like the amount of money that you have up to two fifty meaning that if that bank were to go under, the federal government will give you back your money up to two hundred and fifty thousand, and if you have a joint account, it doubles to five hundred thousand, and you know, if you have more than that, you're certainly welcome to say, you know what I actually have, you know,

six hundred thousand, So I'm going to put another one hundred thousand in a different bank so I get coverage that way. I can understand that. But pulling out your money and putting it at home is probably one of the worst things that you can do, or was sharing you know that with I can't believe how many people were really that, you know, that that was they thought

was a viable option. I'm like, don't do that, like, you know, it's bad enough that you're you know, we're not going to be earning much an interest, but now you're guaranteeing you earn nothing. And the problem with money that's not earning, it's actually losing because of something called inflation, which is basically the devaluing of money over time, meaning that your dollar can do less over time. Think about how much candy used to be able to buy for

a dollar when you were a kid. Think about how much candy you could buy now with that same dollar. The candas to candies are saying, I used to love sweetish fish, and it used to be like ten cents for a sweetish fish, and now it's twenty five cents for that same little pack, same sweedis fish, same size, same dollar. So why is it that my dollar can do less? I used to be able to buy ten, Now I could buy four. That's inflation. So if your money is actually not earning, it's by nature losing its

value due to inflation. So you don't want to pull your money out of any little bit of earnings that you could possibly But I will say, if you are in retirement, or if you are in close to retirement, like within five ten years, then I mean we're kind of here now I don't even know about switching up now. But if that's you really sitting there with your financial planner advisor to talk about what should I do. Hopefully they've reached out to you before now if you have one,

because some moves you know should have been made. But if you have over ten years before you retire, so fifteen, twenty, whatever you are going to be, I'm gonna use air quotes fine in that the market is cyclical. Just ten years ago we had the Great Recession and then we had you know, last like what how many years of prosperity, And that the market does is up down, down, down down, up up, down, down down. So if you have over ten years, you will see it go back up again,

and you should be fine. It's those people who have less, or those people who are already in retirement, that I probably worry about most.

return since January is down twenty six percent. I have lost a fourth of my savings. Why am I not doing anything? Though? Okay, because, like Tiffany said, I feel like I am young, I feel like I have time on my side. I have a bit of a hard time like telling myself, Okay, for sure, you're gonna be okay, because honestly, this is un This is unprecedented precedent, none of us kind of It's an interesting experiment, is kind of how I'm looking at it. How will the US economy bounce back from this?

The people who are thinking about taking your money out of the bank, I mean at least in the bank. Like Tiffany said, you have FDIC insurance. Your money is protected up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars per account, per institution. So putting it under your mattress is about the dumbest thing you can possibly do. Someone please convince my dad of this. I've been trying for twenty years now.

stock right now. If you look at it that way, and if you invest now, the idea is that when those stocks go back up, when those assets go back up in value, you know, maybe you're able to buy ten shares of whatever you're trying to invest in today, but because things are on sale, but like last year, you maybe could only afford one. You know, when that asset or stock increases in value, You've got ten now, so your growth is potentially ten times as great. Now,

this is all hypothetical. I have no idea if it's actually going to happen, but I'm gonna be optimistic. I have emergency savings, like I know Tiffany has as well. I do have cash that's liquid that we can tap into in some sort of crisis. So for me, I'm fine with my four one K sitting there struggling strugs defunk, and I just hope that it bounces back. I worry more for the people who don't have just cash on hand, you know. For this is you know, a situation like this,

and I'm curious to see what happens. It's like people are not going to be spending like they used to store grocery stores. Yes, are struggling to meet demand, but people aren't out, you know, using and feeding the economy, fueling it with their spending in the way that we have been before. And girl, I have no freaking idea. And if experts tell you they have an idea, no one knows.

no upselling, no nothing, just for free. And so last night we had Tila talk about stocks, like how do you buy stocks, you know when the market crashes, And she talked about she's not buying stocks currently right now, she's waiting, and she showed like how to look at a stock chard and what to do, so she was amazing. And then tonight I'm teaching how do you budget and save during an economic downturn? And then on Wednesday, Sandy is teaching how do you make money from home? So

I think that's critical. And then on Thursday, the final class is Kara Stevens, the frugal Feminista. She's teaching how do you because Kara does a lot of wellness, you know, how do you manage your wellness and your money during a crisis, because I think it's really important to end with that component. There's a lot of anxiousness going out. So all of that is happening on the budget Insta

Facebook page. The good thing is if you miss it or whatever it will be, it's the replays are always pinned to the top of the page, so you can watch Tila's By the time you listen to this, mine will have already gone out if you haven't joined already, and if you just wanted to get like updates as we do more, because I'm going to do more of these with other experts, like I'm sure i'll have someone how do you teach your kids at home? So I'm

just trying to do my part. But if you go to a budget NISA goodies, so that's budget mestaya, y'all should not spell that, but Goodies is g oo d e s dot com. I'm just sending out notifications, reminders and links to the free classes. So because people keep asking, like on my social you know where and where? So I'm like, you know what, it's just easy and if that's just my email list, and what it is is that I send out like hey, classes tonight at nine pm.

Here's the link to join. So, yeah, it's just you're right, there is no answer. I will say, now is the time to drop down and get your frugal on, girl, like for real, like it's time to really. The biggest, biggest regret that I had during the last recession is that I didn't get frugal enough fast enough. And now I'm not a big spender anyway. I think you like y'all know that me and Mayor are not like these big old spenders and we're pretty are like, you know,

it's pretty frugal already. But there were things that could have done, that could have trimmed up a little faster. And that was one of my big, I guess regrets because I could have had a little more more money to last me. I think I still had cable on until like the last minute, and I was like, girl, this was like two hundred bucks a month for the

last six months. You know that's a lot. That's twelve hundred dollars you could have used, you know, so really considering looking at your finances tonight and say what is not a necessity and removing as much as you can while still being able to maintain a decent, like you know, standard of living, but having access to cash and savings is really going to be ideal right now, because you

don't know. I thought that when during the last recession two thousand and nine, I thought as a teacher, I could not lose my job because teachers didn't lose jobs, and then I did and I wasn't really prepared. This time, I am prepared because I know anything can happen, like despite that, like you know that my business does well in financial kind of turmoil because people are looking for answer that there's no guarantee that the budget needs to

will still be here. So I'm really conscious the fact that, like what do I do if if, like you know, the business tanks and like what does that look like for me and my family? So living frugally, saving as much as you can. I honestly I see people are going hard with paying off their debt. Normally, I'm like, yes, go hard. I wouldn't right now that extra money you need to be setting inside for yourself to pay bills

in the future. I would not be putting like I'm normally me and men are normally like, go hard with your debt. I would not be giving my debt double and triple. If that's what you've been doing, I would be preserving capital and making sure I had enough money to last me. Should your income decrease or be eliminated in the next couple of months, now's really time to hunker down.

couple of shows. But let's talk about like kitchen table finances and how you can talk about this as a family and plan ahead for whatever there is to come. So you want to take a quick break and we'll come back and do a quick we can just continue talking about, you know, families and how you can be doing this, and I'll share how we've been handling in my household as well. Okay, all right, we are back.

So we were talking about, you know, Tiffany, very very wisely, like us, the budget needs to or something is talking about like people who people need to hear this. It is time to resist the temptation. You know what's funny, I can tell that retailers are trying to take advantage of the folks sitting at home, bored out of their vimes because I have gotten so many alerts. H and M's having a sale. Bye Bye Baby sent me a coupon,

Bert's Baby sent me something like. It seems like these businesses are like, oh, you're at home, you bored, you want to buy something. And I am really trying to resist because, like Tiffany said, yes, I have savings and I do feel prepared. But you know, even my job in the financial sector, anything could happen. You know, if people you know and I have always been in that position, we all are. Look at the folks who work for airlines.

You know, airlines are already having layoffs because of what's happening. So, you know, without creating another sort of panic, let's talk about looking at your budget today and looking at what you can cut back on. So personally, my husband and I, he didn't really want to do it, but of course I kind of forced him to sat down and we

looked at our finances. You know, what do we have coming in, and what are our expenses like right now, and what can we start thinking about might be on the chopping block cable, Well, certainly one of them are eating out budget, thank goodness. You know we're naturally not going to be using that anymore. So I was trying to find money in our budget to start putting more into our emergency savings account. And we don't have a

ton of debt right now. We have like a low we have a zero interest loans still we're paying off relating.

we're here now, But I didn't. I didn't, like I said, I mean, I make a joke of it, like drop down to get your frugal on. As soon as like we're here now, you should be making this decision tonight like hey bay, hey, hey self, what are we going to cut out tonight? So that was like, you know that that's a huge component also too if you do have income, like I'm looking to get a little bit

more liquid. So I said to myself, you know what, I this is the opportunity for those who are in a solid position, those are this is the opportunity for me to invest more heavily when like the market finally starts stops dropping. It's a little more stable. Y'all know that I purchased the house my husband. I purchased this house and we paid for it cash, and so that

means we don't have a mortgage. But I'm going to pull out some of the money from the house to set aside to potentially invest alongside with my financial plan. And we talked about it, because what that means is like, you know, you have a unique opportunity when things go really low, for when they go back to normal, to be able to get certain investment investments pennies on the dollar. Like for example, in two thousand and in ten, my house that I bought my condos that about for two

twenty was sold for one fifty. So the condo was not worth one fifty. It was because of the times we were in it was procession, and so that person bought it for one fifty and then five years later it went back up to two hundred thousand, so they bought and they were able to say, woo, I made a fifty thousand dollar profit. So I want to put position myself and my family to be able to do that. Now that's only people are wanting to invest but you

don't have an emergency savings. You want to make sure that you shouldn't be putting necessity money toward risky investments. I mean, we're not I'm not going to make risky investments anyway, but do you know what I mean? Like, it's not like I because I feel like I'm not gonna lie. This is a bad habit that I have that I've been positioning myself like I always work from a place of fear when it comes to my finances

because the recession totally jacked me up. So I've been like, I feel like I've been prepared for this day, like I have my zombie bunker. I'm like, what all the bad habits that I have about stashing too much cash, about buying everything in cash, the things that normally are and honestly not the greatest in a recession. I'm like, oh yeah.

much of your money as you can. If you are in a pretty decent spot, considering getting a little bit more liquid if you can, so you can, you know, invest in the market, real estate, whatever is going to be the thing that you could get pennies on the dollar because those opportunities are coming. Some of them have already come. Like for example, there's some stock and I won't say well, because I don't want you to be like I want to go buy it. There's some stock

where I noticed that, like huh last year. The stock was because I follow certain stock on my on my robinhood app and I was like, oh, this stock is pretty strong, and I was considering investing because I saw it was on the way up. It dropped nearly half, but I know that it dropped because of the current coronavirus,

not because it's not a strong company. Because I've been following that company for a while, So that might be stocked that I would invest some money in because I know that it's a value company that just happens to be undervalued right now because of the times we live in. But I'm still watching to see and so it's things like that. But that is for like I said, that is for folks who are already in a decent place with their budget and their savings if you don't know

what to do when it comes to stock. Like Teala's free class yesterday was perfect. It was great. Teala's pretty conservative. You know, she didn't give like any stock tips. It wasn't about that. She really talked about when to buy, what platform to use, how do you know that a stock? How does she even pick her stock? So it was just a really great free class. Like I said, it's

on the budget needs to Facebook page. You could take a look and watch, and she just gave so much free value and even she gave us like this free link to a tutorial where if you want to learn how to read a stock chart, Tila has this free tutorial how to do. So what I love is that so many people are just stepping up and using their gifts and talents and service to others. So it's just been that part has been amazing.

like everyone was really anxious. And I talked to my number two and I said, you know, do you think it would be a good idea for us to just have one big zoom call, like just call it a happy hour optional half an hour on Friday afternoon at four pm, Like, why don't we just give people a chance to come and vent?

childcare and things like that. So a boost for that and an encouragement to those of you working online ask for that if you feel like you know you can't host it yourself, or consider hosting an online happy hour yourself, just to be connected. My other boost was just to encourage people to check.

if she needs anything to let us know. And I saw my other neighbor Joe, checking in on Rosemary too, And I feel a really nice sense of camaraderie with our neighbors right now, like people will check in on

us and we'll check in on each other. And I feel that's helped me with the anxiety around the situation, because you know, I can't cure coronavirus, I can't solve the economic crisis that we're in right now, but I can check in on my neighbors, and those stories have been trickling in with the other kind of headlines in the media right now. But just try and embrace your neighbors and be a good neighbor yourself, and and hopefully we can just get through this together.

every where. I'm not sure what to do. And I saw someone post, girl, you better hit up some of these neighborhood stores that a lot of them have great stock, and so I said, you know what, I So I went and I just kind of like drove around Newark and the first kind of like corner bodega store, I went in and they had toilet paper piled up to the ceiling, and I bought like, you know, like two packs to like I think, like two eight packs. And then I was curious that I went like around the

corner there was another local neighborhood store, bodega. You know, they were playing like I don't know if it was Dominican music, but they were getting it in. Like then I was like, okay, and they had but it was just like a vibe and they had all the things. They had cases of water, they had you know, toilet

tissue as well. So I didn't buy anything from there because I was all good, but I went to four stores just to look, and I posted on like my my ig stories and I said, wow, like I think it's an underutilized place, not for the people who lived there, but for people who are like racing off to these big stores that depending on where you live, if you have a local neighborhood store, bodega or otherwise, it's a potential place where where every place else is sold out,

they have plenty of things. And when I tell you it was so chill, people were in there like buying like a lollipops. I'm like, no, so you're not gonna buy a water. People were coming in for like you know, like like it was just a number, like a regular ordinary day and just getting like small little things. So but like I said, it was you know, I was grateful for that, knowing that like my local like neighborhood stores had plenty of stock, and so I said, idn't.

I didn't want to overdo. I just got her enough that she should be fine for two or three weeks, so I wanted to save some for other people in case it gets to that point. But it was nice to see that there wasn't this sense of panic and there was plenty, plenty, plenty.