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cryptoandfire · 4 years

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Life Lessons From The Virus Pandemic

Life lessons learnt from the virus pandemic has been enormous. The unprecedented pandemic has completely changed the mindset of people after a multi-month Shelter in Place. This is the first ever time I’m seeing a huge disaster like this in my adult life. I wasn’t an adult when Great Financial Crisis happened.

Virus case tolls continue to rise, deaths continue to rise, unemployment has skyrocketed, people have stopped spending and there was BLM protests (in some cases riots with vandal elements sneaking in) around the country. Flatten the curve was the mantra, it seemed like it worked, before everything again went bonkers. Dreaded second wave should never come.

All days seem to be the same with the Shelter in place, going through a lot of emotions. I think I’ve seen the full picture by having complete good days and bad days and still pondering over the meaning of life. Things have been a little better lately and I’m optimistic with each passing week, we’ll continue to evolve and adapt ourselves to these difficult times.

I have a habit of watching the same movie or listening to the same audio book multiple times. Processing information deeply from important movies that aligns with my goals is important to me. I’ve been trying to take time to reflect on what lessons I can take from this pandemic time alone at home.

Here are some of those lessons that I have in my mind

A larger emergency fund

The main important lesson for me so far is that the emergency fund or cash cushion needs to cover atleast a year or two of expenses. That is when, you can peacefully think of your next plan, even if you are laid off unfortunately in this situation. It is important to find the balance between investing aggressively and prioritizing the emergency fund.

What chunk of your portfolio should be the emergency fund? What is the right number or percentage? I’d rather chase the higher returns of investing as much into the stock market as possible, since we’re investing for the long-term on our road to financial independence.

On the other hand, “The best defense is a good offense” is an adage that has been applied to many fields of endeavor, including games and military combat. It can be easily applied to life as well. Fortunately, my day job remain stable at the moment, but I would be much more stressed without my emergency fund in place. It gives me the freedom to experiment, even at this troubling times.

I think, especially with the pandemic, it is not worth it to fret over how much emergency fund you hold. The more, the better. You just need to be cautious and improve your cashflow and cash position. Peace of mind is the ultimate goal in these disturbing moments.

Gaining a few percentage points of return is not worth it, at this point, when the markets are irrational and you never know what could happen to your life savings. That said, do not touch your long term investment. Let them grow with the market cycles. I’m just stressing on the need for an adequate emergency fund over short term investments during the pandemic.

Spending More != Increased Happiness

A lot of personal finance “experts” will tell you that the key to making money is to stop spending more. They’ll tell you to stop buying that coffee, and cancel your favorite trip if you want to save for retirement. I do not subscribe to those thoughts and think that you should spend more on experiences, rather than doing it for keeping up with joneses. Rather, concentrate on your own life lessons.

If your spending has not mostly gone down during this shelter in place, then there is something wrong with your budgeting. Sure, I could have an easy life by ordering Pizzas, Grubhub, Doordash or Uber Eats everyday or splurge more on online shopping to shower new gifts for myself, but ultimately that won’t fix what’s going on.

Spending more money won’t buy fulfillment or lasting happiness in my life. Prioritizing experiences, preserving true friends and pursuing our passions are much more effective and prudent thing to do.

Importance of simple pleasures

I’ve learnt that I generally tend to ignore life’s simple pleasures and understood the importance of them, only after a forced Shelter in Place, for the greater good. I really miss simple things like taking a walk and greeting people on the way, sitting at a restaurant and having a nice (but affordable) dinner, watching live sports on TV and getting haircuts from my barber (I have learnt to cut my own hair now).

It is natural for anyone to miss things to anticipate for, be it anything from music, sports, movies, vacations, nightlife with everything either cancelled or postponed. I was so excited for my New York trip that I booked during January, for the apparently peak Covid season around the memorial day weekend. I don’t have a Car and I miss renting a car and touching the steering wheel for more than 6 months now. Get your life lessons and passion going. Nothing can stop you.

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I fall into a routine of doing my 9 to 5 and then taking care of my Instagram with more than 10K followers and write my blog from 5 to 2. I start to forget how much I value the people and opportunities around us. It is important to make a constant decision at this time, to be more thankful and never take those simple pleasures for granted.

Importance of health

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being. Better health is central to human happiness and well-being. It also makes an important contribution to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer, are more productive, and save more. Learning these life lessons early is important.

For a healthy life cycle, a person needs to have a balanced diet and has to regularly exercise. One must also live in a proper shelter, take enough sleep and have good hygiene habits. Intuitively we know that health is extremely important, but how often do we live this way? How often are we eating right, exercising, and treasuring the time we have on left on this earth?

We all run behind something in a rat race. This is exactly why, FIRE improves your health and well being. I talk a lot about building wealth on CryptoandFire, but it means very little if you don’t have your health intact.

I have made a conscious decision to treasure the time I have with family and friends, prioritize my health, and live my life to the fullest while I still can.

Using time sensibly is a challenge

I post a lot of motivation posts on Instagram to motivate myself and my followers. I mostly write about how we should all be using this time to learn new hobbies, build up a side hustle, manage money and build wealth. Allow me to be a hypocrite for a moment, when I say, there needs to be a balance. I want to use my time wisely, to continue to learn and grow, but that can’t happen 24/7.

The more time you have available to complete something, the longer it takes is one of the most important life lessons. It is humanly nature to procrastinate. We all do that. Did you ever have a meeting with your manager that was due in a week? If you were like me, many times the bulk of the work was done the night before it was due. It’s easy to have that inertia or resistance to push tasks to the next day or taking more to do it than normally it would take at the last moment.

Even though I feel I’m learning a lot of new things since I started the blog, I’ve still found it to be a challenge to use my time wisely. I cheat myself sometimes thinking that this is going to be helpful in the future and gaze around watching random things.

For every productive day filled with amazing day job work, insightful blog work, exercise, reading, and cooking, there are stagnant days where I don’t get much done. It is important to try and find the balance between pushing oneself and giving some grace or cheat period.

Parting Thoughts

The pandemic has entirely changed my work and personal life mindset. Overall, we live in an uncertain time with not so bright future in the short term, but I’m continuing to try my best to look at the big picture. While there is a lot of negative news out there, it’s not all bad. Cut out the negative news and look out for life lessons instead. Stop watching the virus case and death ticker everyday and cut yourself from the news outlets or TV on negative things.

Blog was born in the midst of Pandemic. Try to see the positives in negatives. Pollution levels has gotten much lower, less of stressful commute to work, more time with immediate family, and Covid death rate has been steadily decreasing despite what you see in the news about Cases going up.

We normally live a frantic paced life, slogging long hours at work and packing our schedules full, with not much time for family and friends. This pandemic is a Stop Sign for society, where we stop our cars (lives) and look around for others.

These are the Personal Finance and well being lessons that I’m taking away and will continue to reflect on, I hope you found them useful too. Leave a comment on what you think and let’s discuss what your lessons from the pandemic are.

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