5 Ways to Save Money RIGHT NOW!
Let’s talk about crisis budgeting. With the current economy, these are a few of the budget changes we’ve made during the COVID-19 crises. Everyone’s situation is different, your circumstances may be completely different from ours, but I hope you can find something that might be helpful.
Talking about money may seem too personal, but here we go anyway!
We were on a track to pay off all our debt and build up our emergency fund, and then the pandemic hit. We don’t follow any specific plan or program for budgeting, because we’re self employed, we’ve had to come up with a plan that suits our family. Now, since we’ve had to go into crisis budgeting mode, here are a few of the changes we’ve made.
Crisis Budgeting
Eliminate extras and put all you can into an easy to access savings account.
#1 – We’ve stopping making additional payments on our monthly debt.
I’m now making minimum payments. Now we aren’t spending and throwing a party on the money, we are putting everything extra into our liquid savings fund. We aren’t tying up our money in stocks or bonds or investments. We want the money in our cash savings fund, quick to get to should we need to.
#2 – We are cutting out all extras
Put a pause on anything that you were once paying, that you can do without. I know some of you had expenses cut for you, perhaps you were paying daycare and now are working from home.
We last went out months ago. We are staying home a lot more and we saved a lot of money by not eating out. Cut expenses where you can.
#3 – Cut down to essentials only
If things have gotten really tight, you can cut all but essentials. My husband has a gym membership and we have had a lawn care service for years. But if we need to, we can cut those additional expenses. When I do our budget, I list the essentials…gotta pay the mortgage, the insurance, utilities…and a separate list for non-essentials like gym memberships. We can cut those monthly memberships like subscriptions for the kids and membership fees.
#4 – Deferring monthly payments
I don’t want to give anyone financial advice, but you may be able to defer your mortgage payments. Our lender allowed us to move 3 months of payments to the end of the loan. For us there were no penalties, so it made sense to do that. Again, we take that extra money and pad that cash savings account, no online shopping sprees! Put that money in savings. In some cases you may be able to do this with car loans. You are still getting charged interest, but you can defer those payments for a few months.
Also research student loan payments. There are some special programs to defer student loan payments or they have stopped charging interest at this time.
#5 – Selling items you no longer need
I don’t know about the landscape right now, if people are really buying things, but be sure to check out Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. Especially if you are using this time to declutter, perhaps you can sell some of the furniture or other items you no longer need.
Again, just another way to pad that crisis savings account.
These are some of the things we are doing to deal with our crisis budget. Hopefully you found something to be useful in your situation. We want to be good stewards of our money and be able to take care of our family and give back whenever we can.