I never knew that some of the darkest days of my life would be during COVID-19. This pandemic has created more fear, more anxiety, and more depression than I ever realized possible.
When my first husband lied to me and left me, I remember going into the bathrooms at the county courthouse, and just staring at the wall…staring, crying, feeling all my feelings of sadness, sorrow, and despair, wondering why life had to be this way. I felt so cheated.
The emotional exhaustion of all the decisions I had to make at that moment felt overwhelming. Somehow, I haven’t felt that way for the last 6 years since my divorce, but COVID 19 has brought back many of those same anxious emotions I felt walking through my divorce when my first husband had an affair, lied to me, cheated on me, and stole someone else’s wife.
Before this pandemic, I felt so much hope. We were planning for the future. Hoping for kids and a family…They say as long as you have a back up plan, you can never be stressed.
With both my husband Steve and I’s jobs possibly on the line during the layoffs and financial turmoil of COVID-19, we both felt stressed. We gave up hopes of starting our family, becoming a mom or dad someday, or buying a new home on a lake for our someday family.
Both our companies had pay cuts.
Steve’s went down 5%. Mine down 8% through a retirement contribution program. At one point Steve’s pay was cut as much as 20% for one month.
We both put a ton of money into our home to have more than half of it paid off, but if we both lost our jobs, then what? How could we afford our mortgage then?
We couldn’t just move to a smaller more affordable house because the housing market sky rocketed and homes were now selling 30% more than we bought our house for on the west coast.
We didn’t have a back up plan. We didn’t have a side business, or a side huddle. The business & LLC that my family ran was running itself into the red during Coronavirus. As a CFO, a CPA, and an MBA, I wanted to help them generate profit. I tried to explain to them how they could have made a net profit the year before the pandemic, but none of my family members wanted to listen to me. They felt I was young, childish, still the baby of the family, and wouldn’t listen to any of my advice (even though it wasn’t my advice, it came from someone else who had done it before). Thus, with that plan not happening, we had no back up plan for our lives.
When the economy is good, our lives are overall less stressful. Everyone is more stressed when the economy is performing poorly.
Before the pandemic, if our jobs were miserable, our pay was cut, and we are working 70-80 hours a week, we always felt less stressed, because back up plans were easy to find. Friends were making tons of money on side Hussles selling makeup and supplies from Arbonne, beauty counter, Rodan Fields, etc. and then there were always tons of other jobs hiring and eager to hire new talent.
During the pandemic recession, all bets were off.
I knew I had to change something. Many people were working from home during the pandemic, safely on their laptops, my husband being one of them. I was an essential employee, so back to the office during the pandemic it was for me.
I knew with the financial crisis, changing jobs to make more money after the pay cuts wouldn’t be an option, so I decided instead to start a spending freeze on my personal budget.
Yep, I decided to try and freeze my spending for the next year.
No clothes, no shoes, no more house decorations, no more non-essential purchases, no purchases of alcohol this year, and I want to see how this year of less for me will feel. I will still buy food, toiletries, and soap as needed, but gone are the days of shopping for merchandise (at least for this year).
Financial Day Dreamer 