The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about unprecedented circumstances for the majority of people around the world. Among the tragedy and illness, there have been significant knock-on effects for families and businesses. This has put many people in financial predicaments.
Being financially stable and money-savvy is always advantageous. Having money set aside gives you the opportunity to provide for yourself and your family when you need it the most.
The problem with saving money is that it can be quite difficult. In the COVID era, this is particularly tricky. However, it is possible to take certain actions that will better enable you to save.
Whether your goal is to save money for you or your business, here are four smart money-saving decisions that you can make during the pandemic.
Review your weekly spending habits
Keep track of what you’re spending your money on. It’s easy to overlook certain spending habits that you’ve become accustomed to. Go through all transactions each week and look for ways to reduce spending. Often, changing supermarkets or switching to cheaper brands can save you a lot of money in the long-term.
Create your pandemic budget
If you’ve never budgeted before, now is a perfect time. It makes you set goals, project potential earnings, anticipate future spend, and determine how much you can afford to spend each week.
The first step is to establish clear savings goals. Set a clear figure that you aim to reach and give yourself a timeframe. It’s important to be realistic with these targets.
Next, you must project your future earnings and expenditure. Align these figures with your savings goals and calculate what money you have left to spend each week.
Budgeting focuses your mind on saving money and forces you to shop around for better value.
Make strategic investments
People need to realise that with every difficult situation, comes an opportunity to improve. Use this time to make strategic investments. Will you ever have this much time again to commit to a project?
For businesses, now is the time to make those changes to your premises, office, or warehouse that you never have the opportunity to go through with. If you need to update your industrial flooring as shown here, https://impactfloors.co.uk/sectors/factory/, you may never get a better opportunity.
At home, there may be home improvement tasks that you’ve been putting on the long finger. Take this chance to invest in something to better your life while you have the time.
Although spending to save money might not make sense initially, it’s vital to think long-term. Be strategic with expenditure.
Explore remote work opportunities
One positive to be taken from the pandemic is that it has opened up much of the world to remote working. While working from home has been a career choice for many people in recent years, it has been an absolute necessity during quarantine.
There are several ways to create a side hustle through online remote work. Consider teaching, writing, blogging, or other roles that are suited to your skillset. Platforms such as https://www.upwork.com/ and https://www.fiverr.com/ are fantastic resources for finding remote work.
