Spending After the Pandemic

We ended up having our daughter made your back in 2020, and she's been doing good along with the rest of our kids. Business was. I'd say kind of stagnant and there was some growth, but it wasn't the growth that I was kind of expecting for 2020, but at the end of 2020 in the first half, almost of 2021, cause this is May 5th now. Cinco demise. And business has been flying through the rough. And so I thank everyone for listening.

Anyone that's been referring people to me or my podcast, it's definitely been noticed. Now I have people coming from all different kinds of situations and different. Content now that I create a lot of referrals of people that I know people I'm friends with and existing clients. So it's really cool. It's probably the most fun part of my business I've had now other than the initial launch. Right?

Because obviously that's exciting there, but without further ado, I will dive into today's topic of how the pandemic has impacted your finances and just right out of the gate. There's a lot of things just. That happens from a government standpoint that really impacted finances. So if you had student loans or if your partner has student loans, it was actually a huge relief to have the forbearance on those student loans and also not have them accrue interest pretty, pretty phenomenal.

As far as what people were able to do, how confident they were. With that off their plate to, to be able to do a lot of other fun and exciting things. I had a lot of clients purchase their first home over the course of 2020, and that was something that's. Wasn't on their radar. Initially thought it was kind of an impossible situation. Then interest rates fell to all-time low. So that's just another way. How the pandemic kind of changed personal finances.

A lot of clients who already had homes ended up refinancing and getting lower rates. If they needed to, they were taking cash. An equity out of the home and using it to pay down credit card debt and other high interest debt that they may have had. And so, yeah, the pandemic was pretty, pretty intense on the financial side of the situation. There's also stimulus checks.

If you're eligible there's new things, moving forward where the child tax credit has been increased, if you're eligible for those. So still a lot going on, on the. Government side of things and the pandemic and how that's impacting you financially. There's also a lot of things that you just haven't been able to do. So travel was just out of the question for a good portion of 2020, and things have been easing up now. And so that's one thing that you'll definitely want to keep an eye on.

I think that's the biggest and most obvious thing. That a lot of my clients who like travel, I don't know a single client I have where travel's not a somewhat high priority for them. And as you can imagine, not a lot of traveling going on a lot of, kind of smaller camping trips, hikes things, just kind of exploring nature in your own area, which is a lot less than a international trip or Trip to Florida trip to Disney and all of these things that have huge dollar amounts associated with them.

So if you did not end up traveling, you may have found that you've saved quite a decent chunk of funds, especially if you're receiving stimulus, especially if you didn't have those student loan payments. There's, there's a lot of ways that you could have come out of this whole pandemic financially stronger than you did had an into it, which is kind of surprising if you think about it. So if. Anyone by early 2020 were to say, Hey, there's going to be a huge pandemic issue.

It's going to be a huge problem for a lot of small businesses and businesses in general to navigate traveling is going to be out of the question. But you're going to be fine. Financially unit come out way, way ahead in this situation. And so that's, that's pretty insane to think about it. If someone told you that you probably find it hard to believe there's a few other ways too, that you probably have noticed that maybe you weren't spending as much as you may have been previously.

And most people had been working from home for. Almost all at 2020, and that may even continue in 2021 for you. So gas prices is really a minimal part of the budget, even for my family. I think we've filled up a gas tank maybe three times in over a year, which is pretty insane. It was definitely a once or twice a month. We're not big commuters even before the pandemic hit, but once, once it did hit, we.

Basically had nowhere to go other than our kind of site excursions on the weekends dining out. That's something that we didn't do initially. And we're finally kind of diving back into that, but that's, that was a huge savings off of our plate. Where get, if we're going out and about, if we're doing things we'd stop and get a smoothie, we'd stop and pick up a buck to eat was just really easy and convenient to, to dine out and.

If you've ever dreamed up versus buying things and making it all yourself, there's definitely a cost savings to be had there. If you're doing it smart in the right way. Another huge thing that we weren't able to do. And I'm sure a lot of people weren't able to do. Our form of entertainment is movies drive in movie theaters and, and things like that.

And although we could have done those things, we had a little baby and the drive-in movie theater or any movie theater with a little baby is a little tricky. So. We did not have barely any normal entertainment spending that traditionally we would have done in the past. And if you like concerts, if you like, just going out to the bar is your form of entertainment, going to the casino, whatever it be a lot of times.

The pandemic and just kind of all those restrictions that we're putting in place really reduced those options available to you. And so you probably weren't spending as much on more of that traditional entertainment that you would do in a normal set situation where the world's not kind of closed. They're not suggesting that you stay home as much as possible. So those are just a handful of the ways that I've seen my family and my clients change in and have that potential.

Opportunity to save that the problem is. Yeah, yes, you could have saved, but a lot of times things just shift. So if you have money, if you tend to spend the money that you have, regardless of what's going on in the world, you probably found a place for some of those funds to go. Maybe not all of them. Maybe you still do come out ahead as far as savings goes, but there there's a high probability. You found other ways to spend that money. The biggest one on.

Our end debts has really been a significant expense. It's not a huge one, but it's still significant and noticeable. And one that we definitely have to talk about. Tangent in the future, if that's doesn't fit into our goals and it's the food delivery not fast food delivery, which also there's surcharges and things like that. So you might fall into this, but ours was just grocery delivery tip and all of that fun stuff. We also shifted to in-home entertainment.

So now, instead of going to the movie theaters, we definitely been buying movies. So when the neutrals movie came out, we bought it. When the scoop movie came out, we bought it and our kids both love those. So it was well worth the Investment per playtime, for sure. We're probably talking about pennies now that we paid per watch on that. So that's definitely something we have bought in a few video games.

We ended up buying them tablets because not having a babysitter, having to work from home, having meetings where we need children to be quiet. It's a little bit easier with the tablet, unfortunately. So we're, we haven't been the greatest at that, but Yeah, that that's just some of the ways that our spending had shifted things that we traditionally wouldn't have done.

I'm not a big fan of usually a purchasing movies, but it just seemed like, Hey, if with everything going on, if we can make this more bearable, more enjoyable, let's go ahead and do this. And we weren't going crazy. Cause obviously we're were saving a lot of money on some of those other things I've mentioned to you home goods. Buying a few more things for the house. We bought a new coffee machine, which is because we stopped going to Starbucks. So we were Starbucks, a holic.

So we'd go we'd each go once a day, every day, a week, we wouldn't just get that bear coffee. We'd get the sweet Inns, venti sugary drinks. And they were delicious. We were addicted. But when the pandemic hit and we weren't sure if we should be going to a Starbucks and having a barista, staying over our coffee and make that for us while my wife was pregnant at the time, we decided that we can't really go cold Turkey and we can't really do some of the Keurig things.

So as we had tried a lot of those things in the past and wasted money on those types of machines, we never getting like a, I think it was like $600 espresso machine that's really robust. And it was a huge. Kind of risk, but that's something we spent a lot of money on. Luckily we've fallen in love with it still. Haven't gone to Starbucks in over a year.

And so we're, we're ahead in terms of savings, but initially if we would have made that purchase and then just went back to Starbucks anyways, then, then we probably would have been upside down that investment there. But there's, you probably found different things in your house, different. Investments, may you bought workout equipment, which I know is a popular one for a lot of people being stuck at home, not being able to go to your gym for the first few weeks was pretty scary.

There was actually a shortage of workout equipment from what I've heard, which is pretty interesting, but that's probably something that either you or someone, you know, kind of ran into with different home goods that you ended up buying and purchasing. You might've developed a new hobby or passion project. I have quite a few clients with different passion projects and hobbies and potential career shifts that they had been able to make.

One thing that's not the topic of conversation for this episode is just how the pandemic change more than just your finances. It kind of changed a lot of things and there's a lot of people making huge, gigantic shifts. A lot of these things do impact your finances a little bit, as far as like moving away from a career that you're well established and senior in where you're getting a certain amount of pay and that's something to be.

Aware and interested in, yeah, it might've been been something that popped in your head like, Hey, how much longer can I keep going at this? And the pandemic put a lot of stress on people in a lot of different ways, not just working from home, not just not seeing your loved ones. It was a combination of all these different things.

And so you might've found a new hobby or passion projects that you're able to do simultaneous, or maybe it's something that you're going to shift entirely and leave your job, quit your six-figure income in and go and start something. Brand new from scratch that might not be able to, to generate that type of income right out of the gate.

But. I'm sure you'll, you'll do your financial plan and get your eggs in order and make sure that it's going to make sense for you, but those things cost money, right? To, to start investing in different machinery equipment, whatever it is that your new happier passion project is, those things cost money. And a lot of times, most, most hobbies are not necessarily cheap. So that that's where I saw some stuff. Increased bender for sure.

And then there was just that whole, if you were eligible for a stimulus check and you didn't actually need it, cause you've maintained employment. Just having money given to you like that for free, with no strings attached. It does a lot of times it's just kind of burn a hole in your pocket, so you just find ways to spend it.

So there might just be a whole bunch of frivolous things that were not really meaningful or tied to anything particular that that's going to add long-term value to your life, but you had the money, so you just spent it. And the problem with that is you might've created new habits. That's. Are not going to serve you moving forward. So the tricky things with habits is they do tend to stick. Even this podcast episode.

Originally, I was thinking in my head, you know what, I'm going to do a live video. It's been about four months since I've done that. And prior to that, I was recording videos a couple of times a week, super comfortable with it. And that was my heavy, right. I created a habit of that under 2020 to record by videos and do these types of things. But today the thought of it made me sick to my stomach. Almost made me not even want to hit the record button if I was going to force myself to do live.

So I created a new habit of not doing these things, and it's just not comfortable to go ahead and dive right in. So if you start to build these habits of spending, spending on certain things, it's going to be hard for you to move away from some of them. And so that's, that's really the tricky part in the sticking point. Moving forward, you have these other things that you haven't been able to do kind of pent up demand.

I know we can't wait to book our first travel and once we're comfortable with doing so maybe go to Starbucks occasionally and hopefully what will happen for you and for me and for my clients, is that. We'll find a new equilibrium and not try to stack all your new habits, all your new spending habits. And add all of our old ones back on top, because unless you've got a huge pay raise or something changed significantly in your financial life, that would allow these things to work.

That might be too much in expenses. If we're second, all your old expenses on top of these new habits, it's just going to be a rough ride and. I, I mentioned the grocery delivery thing has been a topic of conversation. That's actually been one that me and my wife have kind of agreed to her, said, you know what? Even though it's significantly more than we used to spend on groceries, it's, it's a work that we have three kids and life is chaotic and busy and it's kind of nice having this community.

So that's something that we know. Is locked in at least right now, as far as the conversation goes, we have to see how these other things stack up like travel once. Yet she has to start commuting back into work and things like that. But yeah, I think the grocery delivery is going to be a fixed expense moving forward that we're, we're going to absorb. And that just means that we'll have to make adjustments elsewhere, try to find ways to increase our income and things like that. And so.

That might feel a little claustrophobic and frustrated that, oh man, you have to make a decision. And the nice thing about it is it's your decision to make you're in control of this. And the best thing you can do is get out ahead of it. Start planning in advance and. Think about where your money's actually going. Cause that's, that's usually the trickiest part is I don't even know if I'm above or behind. I don't know if I've seen, you don't know the governance.

So money at me, I stopped paying things. Student loans are going to start up and all of a sudden you start getting claustrophobic and stress out about it, but you don't have to do all you had to do is sit down and get organized and figure out well, where is my money going currently? Find out those kinds of key categories, especially if they're newer ones, if they're ones that have showed up in the last year, that means they're brand new categories for him.

So identify what those are, find out what the expenses are going to be for those things. And then think about those goals, those other short-term expenses that are really important to you. Things that you've really missed, that you can't wait to go out and do and find out what those dollar amounts are, because then you can start back in your way into those numbers. If you want to travel this time next year. So let's say June, 2022, and you want it to be an epic trip. It's gonna be 12,000 hours.

Well, if you don't want to go in a day, if you don't want to really impact a lot of other, your real life, you're going to have to find a way to save $1,000 between now and then. Within your spending within your statements for retirement and other goals that are important to you and start to prioritize these things in worst case scenarios, you see that, you know what, there's a lot of new habits I have that I don't really want to tweak.

So maybe, maybe that's going to have to be a $6,000 trip, or maybe it's a 3001 and it's, that's not dizzy and it's going to be just the next state over just some go somewhere really nice and relaxed. A huge spectrum of how you can decide to split these things, but you're never going to be able to do it and do it confidently unless you start getting these things organized and actually plan ahead and start kind of building that, that track between here and where you want to go.

And the cool thing about that and the thing that I hear every time, once I do that, these types of things with my clients, when we build their comprehensive shared, yeah. I feel so much better now that I know. What is kind of the situation. So now that I know I need to save more, it's crazy how quickly people will save. Once they actually see everything laid out all the facts and they have that clarity, then they can act. Now they have actual information that they can act.

And that's, that's what I'm telling you to do here is provide yourself the information it's all available to you. It's not like some mysterious thing where someone else is spending your money for you. And things are just disappearing and things are just showing up at your house and Amazon boxes, if you have a partner or children and they have their own cards and things like that, it might feel like that.

But then the day you should be somehow able to tap into that and know where the money is going and how it just takes a little bit of initial effort to kind of get organized on that front. So as you stack these things up, As you get that clarity, it's going to be really easy to identify. Well, this is way more valuable than some of these other expenses. And then it's easy to cut those lower value things out.

Well, if it's a low value and it's taken up all that stuff, you, you hopefully can find a way to get rid of that or remove that as a line item and. Crossing these things off or avoiding these expenses in the first place. Those all add up as well. So at a positively where you're not taking on all these miscellaneous expenses, I'm like, oh, I can do it. I'll just do it. Well, if it's not an antenna value, don't just do things to do that.

I mean, it's, there's other things you could do down the line. There's a lot of flexibility and opportunity and options you have. If you make better financial decisions. And I always use my being able to start level of financial planning and my company as being one of those things. I didn't want to become a business owner, but luckily, because we didn't spend a lot of money at things that weren't valuable to us, we did save up a decent amount.

And when it just made sense for me that I couldn't see myself working for my current employer, I couldn't see myself working for. Any other employer, because I had this goal and vision of being able to help people like myself in my kind of age range, so that don't know what to do.

So I would say I'm a financial planner and I enjoy this, but I know there's the exact opposite of people, my age range that just need that guidance and that clarity so that they can act so they can act confidently and move in the direction that they want to move. And so.

With that, I'll just say that your, your finances are always gonna be change of pandemic or not, but the pandemic did speed things up and it did jumble things up, probably a lot more complicated than normal, mild kind of life transitions and changes. This was thrown into a blender basically. And so. As things start to move back to normal, there's going to be a huge impact to your spending potentially.

And the best way to get out ahead of it is with these steps of going ahead and getting clarity and organize with where your money is currently going, those expenses that you're currently using, then what things do you anticipate kind of coming up in the future that you need to start adjusting for so that you don't end up running a deficit. You don't end up going in credit card debt and having. All these negative things that come with not having control over your financial situation.

Definitely do not want that. I've seen it night and day where people kind of get out of that situation, how much better they feel, how much more competent they are. And you definitely don't want to backslide into bed financial habits that are not going to serve you or your family or your loved ones. You really want to, to be confident and Clare and in control of everything that. You have going on financially and you'll just have a much better life as a result.

Thank you for joining me for this first episode of season 3.0, I'm super excited for the lineup of guests. I already have lined up. I can't wait to share their stories with you and kind of, hopefully it will inspire you also give you a good. Insight into some of the obstacles that people face. I have mine personal obstacles, you have your own personal obstacles.

And the crazy thing is, is that you're getting, we're gonna listen and hear some similarities, whether it's my story or other people's stories, and you're going to be able to relate to them and understand that you're not alone. I think that's one big thing I got out of season 2.0. And my guests and a lot of the friendships I made, even though I wasn't able to meet people in person. It is ridiculous. How many cool people are out there?