Emergency Blog

Hey Y'all. I wish this blog was finding you on happier times, but I wanted to share some thoughts for the readers in this time of concern. We all have ourselves, and possibly others we need to take care of. Here is our biggest motivation!

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has taken over the media and is causing a lot of concern for personal health, safety and general well-being. Because of this, a few people have reached out about their situation and what it means for them financially. It does create a state of a change for many because  of what life may look like in the immediate future, and potentially a few months (or even longer).

I understand that everyone has a different job and working situation. Hopefully you are staying safe, employed and paid, but I know that is not the case for everyone.

The most important thing - take care of your "four walls."

1. Food
2. Shelter
3. Transportation
4. Utilities

To go more in depth with each item...

1. Food - Make sure you have food for your family. I recommend a variety of at home food and meals - fresh and frozen and things on hand. I understand that people want to support local businesses with carry out food and I'm not discouraging that. The main priority just needs to be having the means to provide the amount of food your family needs in the coming times.
2. Shelter - You'll need to pay your mortgage or rent. Ideally you continue to have income that allows you to do so. If you don't, ideally you have an emergency fund that allows you to continue payments. 
3. Transportation - Plan to make your car payment (if you have one) as well as the gas you'll need. It is likely that you will need less gas if you are working from home, or not traveling to other cities on weekends. Is your car payment too much to handle? Could you sell it? What if you went down to one car? Or drove a beater for a little bit?
4. Utilities - Be sure to keep your electric, water and phone bills paid. I believe just this week, it was announced (at least in Wisconsin) that due dates have been relaxed. Now may be the time to get rid of your cable or premium channel package. Looking for a way to save some money? Stream YouTubeTV and split it with a few other users.

At this point, no matter where you are in your journey, the unpredictability of employment, income, etc, it is probably best to not make additional payments on debt of any kind. I would recommend saving the money until life becomes more predictable. At that point, you could put some of the saved chunks of money down to lower or eliminate your debts.

Depending where you are at in your journey, it may be time to make some difficult decisions. Do you need to pick up another job for some spare income? Do you need to stop eating carry out food, buying alcohol, planning vacations? These are uncertain times that can call for extreme measures to get us by. None of this is easy, but we want the best for you, which means taking care of the four walls mentioned above.

We're all in this together and want to get back to normalcy. One of the impactful Instagram posts I saw mentioned what to never take for granted again it had simple things like meeting friends at a park, going out for drinks on a Tuesday, working out at the gym, dining in at a restaurant, and getting a paycheck. We all want normal back. In the meantime, be healthy, stay connected and let's meet on the other side of this in a few weeks or months after socially distancing ourselves for the best of mankind.

Examples of questions I was texted this week:

• Does Dave Ramsey have a plan for Coronavirus? Basically his entire plan is meant to be put in place to take care of yourself during an emergency. It starts with having $1,000 saved, paying off all non-mortgage debt, then building a fully-funded emergency fund.
• Is now a good time to invest? We have continued our retirement investing, but we have set up a very stable situation at this point. We are not concerned about market prices dropping because we have not sold any shares. We will have the opportunity to take advantage of lower share prices as we continue to invest. We are not taking this money out any time soon which certainly helps with our situation compared to some others.
• When can we count on the federal assistance to come through? I don't know much about this other than the government generally tends to move pretty slow and needs to figure what the stimulus package may actually look like, before they even set a timeline for disbursement. Always count on taking care of yourself before the government will be able to take care of you.

Getting personal:

We are trying to make the most of this time at home. On Sunday, Megan took on a project caulking the tub - yes, she did all by herself and I'm cool with that. She's really handy, and I'm not so handy. This works in our household. 

We spent some time on Saturday using Zoom to video chat with groups of friends. One of the groups became a Virtual Diaper Party (male baby shower buying diapers for the dad to be's family). We were bummed we couldn't get together, but we did get together online for about an hour. Saturday night we had a 7 window chat with individuals, spouses and kids. There were times when we couldn't hear what each other were saying because we were talking all at once, but nonetheless, it was cool to all be in one 'room' together, staying connected.

Megan and I have also been cooking at home a lot recently. Its been great to sit at the table for a family meal every night, especially with our daughter eating more foods every day. Our favorite meal was hot chicken! It was surprisingly easy to make and so good that after having it on Saturday night, we chose to make it again on Sunday!

If you're struggling right now, give a listen to the Dave Ramsey podcast - specifically episode #11,084 to help give you some perspective.