Lockdown positives
So I was a bit busy recently and sort of disappeared from the social media bubble or I would say instead I got hooked up on reddit and got off from Facebook. To be exact just deleted the Facebook app from my phone as it was way too destructive and conveniently replaced it with Reddit.
We are already in the end of January 2021 and the time is flying so just wanted to reflect on the quarantine madness a bit and also a little about the past months. We are over the festive period and the food coma that comes with it and I believe I tackled it better than previous years and so did many of you too. What do I mean by that?
Well, Britain become the nation of savers, you can read about it here. To put it simply, the disposable income of the people rose from 9.6% to 29.1% this is more than double than the previous record of 14.4% set in 1993. Due to the various lockdown measure from 1-5 and god knows how many more in the horizon brought the best out of most of us. Being on Furlough or working from home means that most of us don’t need to pay for travel, as restaurants and pubs are closed we can also save a large chunk of money on that even though binge eating and food ordering sky rocketed, despite that, the average Briton saves a large chunk on that too.
Positive effects of reduced consumption for a large part of the society are invaluable. On another note, the banks offering right now and since the beginning of the pandemic to freeze for months the repayments and instalments on mortgages, credit car loans, personal loans and 0% financing become more accessible with also new players on the so called buy now pay later market. These measures combined with the reduced traveling, shopping, eat-out opportunities contributing to the large scale savings.
On the positive side, I can also say that since October apart of a pack of underwear I haven’t purchased nothing, even though at Christmas I received few useful gifts, such as plants, a hat, gloves, electronic toothbrush and a super cool urban botanist ecosystem, what a fancy name it is, in reality a fancy plant jar with moss and plant inside designed by myself a sort of DIY gift from my parents. Just loving it.
If you managed to get through the article I linked above, you can see that the positive effects are felt by most people however some found themselves in a misery, losing their jobs, livelihood, health and in some cases their lives which is very unfortunate and sad, but like with most of the things, let’s focus on the positives.
This pandemic is a challenge for all of us in one way or another but it utterly depends on us how we take it. What are we doing with our time, our resources and what is truly important for us.
Saving money for a rainy day never been more important than now, but saving is not enough, we have to preserve our hardly earned capital from inflation and most of the UK banks have inflation tracking checking account. As I also wrote about my trouble with banking and importance of cash, I am definitely recommending to keep some cash around too, just in case.
One thing that this pandemic thought me is to always have savings to fall back on, stop buying things that I don’t need otherwise I will have to sell things that I need like Warren Buffett would have said. Being content with myself and to learn to keep calm and carry on was another big take on for me.
Minimalism is on the rise, this pandemic just added to it without most people even realizing it. Less clutter and junk and more awareness of our vulnerability, that’s a major take away.
Keep it simple.
Your sincerely
To/Minimal
