Marching Onwards

Y’all, I bare­ly even know where to begin.

Life is insane.

My world, and all of our worlds, have been tossed upside down in the last 30 days. Peo­ple are falling ill with a new virus that no one has immu­ni­ty to and dying in record num­bers. Entire com­mu­ni­ties are under man­dates to shel­ter in their hous­es. Life as we knew it is basi­cal­ly sus­pend­ed for the near future.

Sounds very gloom and doom eh?

It’s all a mat­ter of perspective.

For me, this has been a time to slow down and re-exam­ine my life. Who has been there for me through this? What am I par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful for? What was I doing that was­n’t nec­es­sary? What activ­i­ties do I miss the most?

My life has, and has­n’t, changed dras­ti­cal­ly in the face of social dis­tanc­ing to flat­ten the curve. On a day to day basis, my life looks very sim­i­lar now as it did 2 months ago. I get up, I go to work, watch shows on the TV, play video games, call friends, read books, play with the cat and make myself food.

I no longer have a com­mute. Instead of dri­ving 10 min­utes on the inter­state and walk­ing into the office, I walk from the kitchen to my spare room (which is doing dou­ble duty as office and craft room). My job remains more or less the same, but with more Skype chats and less inter­ac­tion with my cube mates. I’m sav­ing mon­ey by eat­ing at home and not get­ting whole milk caramel lattes or lunch from the cafe­te­ria. My boyfriend and I still text through­out the day, but now we can’t see each oth­er in per­son after work a few times a week. Now that we’re basi­cal­ly in a long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship, we’ve added in phone calls, video chats, and watch­ing shows togeth­er online. (We’re going on week 3 of no con­tact as he is immuno-com­pro­mised and would get very sick if some­one were to pass it on to him.)

In-per­son mee­tups have all been can­celed. I don’t go out after work to talk finances with the local Choose­FI group, or do fun things with the local Young Pro­fes­sion­als group, or do geeky things with the Nerdy 30’s Wom­en’s group. Instead, I join Vir­tu­al Hap­py Hours with cowork­ers or friends from the com­fort and safe­ty of our own couch­es. I don’t get to trav­el to see friends or fam­i­ly on the week­ends, which is espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult after I learned my aunt is cur­rent­ly going through treat­ment for breast can­cer. My boyfriend and I don’t have to wor­ry about coör­di­nat­ing sched­ules to Meet the Fam­i­lies for East­er. Instead, I’ll cook a piece of ham at home and video chat with peo­ple while we eat.

Life on the sur­face has changed, but has stayed rough­ly the same if you look deeper.

I am so grate­ful for all the priv­i­leges I have in my life. I have an incred­i­bly sta­ble job that I can do from home that pays me on the same sched­ule as always. I have no out­stand­ing debts being called in. I can still pay my rent and all my oth­er bills. I have tons of food in the fridge and a pack of TP in the closet.

When the Great Reces­sion hit in 2008, I was large­ly unaf­fect­ed. I was a senior in high school who had 4 years of col­lege to get through before I wor­ried about try­ing to find a job. I did­n’t sell any invest­ments or lose a ton of mon­ey because I did­n’t have any. I was­n’t wor­ried about the hous­ing mar­ket col­lapse because I lived with my par­ents in their paid-off house or in a col­lege dormitory.

How­ev­er, I was shaped by the Great Reces­sion as I got more inte­grat­ed into the per­son­al finance com­mu­ni­ty and met peo­ple who had been affect­ed. I met peo­ple who had lost every­thing in their real estate empire and start­ed over from scratch after short sales and fore­clo­sures after being unable to find ten­ants who could pay rent. I met peo­ple who had very near­ly lost every­thing but were able to hang on by tak­ing on large amounts of con­sumer debt to stay afloat. I met peo­ple who sold close to the bot­tom and took years to regain what they’d lost. I met peo­ple who had sta­ble jobs and were able to invest as much as they could in the mar­ket and retire ear­ly less than 10 years lat­er. I lis­tened and learned from them. I start­ed this blog (over 5 years ago!) to help share what I was learn­ing and doing with oth­ers my age or younger in hopes that the next time some­thing like that hit, we’d be in bet­ter posi­tions to sur­vive the storm.

And I am. I feel a lit­tle guilty my life has large­ly been unchanged when there are oth­ers out there who’ve lost their jobs and have no way to pay their bills. But, as some­one told me in a call recent­ly, I’ve made dif­fer­ent choic­es. I chose to find a job with sta­bil­i­ty over flex­i­bil­i­ty. I chose to live sim­ply and far below my means. Because of those choic­es, I’m now in a place where I can help oth­ers out as much as I can. When you fly, you’re told to put your own mask on first and then help oth­ers. My hypo­thet­i­cal mask is on and now I’m help­ing oth­ers put on theirs.

My expens­es have changed over the last 4 weeks. I’m no longer dri­ving as much, so my auto expens­es have gone down. The weath­er is warm­ing up, so my util­i­ty bills are going down. I’m not eat­ing out as much. I’m not going out and shop­ping for stuff in stores any­more (not that I was doing much of that any­ways but it still adds up). As some cat­e­gories have gone down, I’ve start­ed spend­ing more on oth­ers. I’ve got­ten box­es from the local farmer’s mar­ket and kept my share with my local CSA to get fresh, local, organ­ic foods. (This lessens my need to go to gro­cery stores and poten­tial­ly get exposed.) I bought a self-care box from a local busi­ness that had to close. I’ve ordered deliv­ery from local restau­rants and tipped well. I’ve donat­ed to my church back at home to help off­set the loss of tithes from some that have lost their jobs and can’t give any­more. A local por­trait pho­tog­ra­ph­er offered stoop shoots, so I signed up for one and When the stim­u­lus checks come out, I’ll share that bless­ing as well. If your finan­cial posi­tion isn’t as secure, focus on becom­ing more sta­ble by spend­ing less and buff­ing up your emer­gency sav­ings accounts.

When I was about 16, I devel­oped a fas­ci­na­tion with the 1918 Influen­za Pan­dem­ic. I read books about it and tried to find out more about that time in his­to­ry that so many his­to­ry books had glossed over. I nev­er thought that fas­ci­na­tion would come in handy over a decade lat­er as we grap­ple with our own pan­dem­ic. After read­ing so much on the 1918 pan­dem­ic, I’m heart­ened by a few things. One, our med­ical knowl­edge is so much bet­ter now. What killed mil­lions a hun­dred years ago will only kill thou­sands now. Two, this is nowhere near a mass extinc­tion event for human­i­ty. Covid-19 is no laugh­ing mat­ter, but it also won’t kill us all off. Three, life in 1918 def­i­nite­ly sucked for a long time. Peo­ple stayed home because schools, church­es, pool halls, and shops were closed. How­ev­er.…. life flour­ished just a few short years lat­er. My own grand­moth­er was born in 1921.

I see the same seeds of hope plant­ed here in 2020. My friends are still get­ting new jobs, hav­ing babies, get­ting engaged, buy­ing hous­es and doing incred­i­ble work for them­selves and oth­ers. Life will con­tin­ue as nor­mal soon! All we have to do is hang in there and wait it out. We can do it!