What if you were able to come out of this time of social distancing and economic crisis with a stronger and healthier financial life? What if you looked at this as an opportunity to take a little bit of your extra time each day to work on your finances?
Since it takes me about 35 minutes to drive to work in the morning and 45 minutes on the way back home, I have an extra 1 hour and 20 minutes of my day that I don’t have to drive while I’m working from home that I can use to accomplish something. This doesn’t even take into consideration all of the networking and social events that would usually take up some of my time throughout the week.
Obviously, your situation is different than mine (and probably a whole lot different if you have kids at home who would otherwise be in daycare), but I’m guessing that we all have at least a little extra time right now that we can dedicate to our personal finances.
It looks like we’re going to continue to practice our social distancing skills at least through April, and now is a great time to work on creating a better financial situation, so I’m giving you 30 days of stay-at-home personal finance wins throughout April.
Unfortunately, I understand that there are many who have (and who will) lose their jobs during this time of uncertainty and objectively will not come out on the other side of this with a stronger financial situation. Hopefully, many of these personal finance wins can help to lessen the blow and make things easier on them. On the other hand, I think that many of these wins are still relevant to those who are fortunate enough to be in a position to not have to worry about their job and their finances to help them build healthier finances.
Day 1: Understand The CARES Act
Yes, I already posted about the CARES Act earlier this week, but I’m sure that there are plenty of people who still haven’t taken the time to understand how it will affect them.
I’m not asking you to read the bill, but I think it could be very beneficial to understand the provisions in it that could have a direct impact on you. Even if nothing within the CARES Act directly impacts you it may impact someone you know and you could end up being the one who tells them about the part of the bill that turns out to make a difference in their life.
In case you’re not aware, the CARES Act is a $2 trillion relief and stimulus package that was signed into law last week. It includes many different provisions meant to help both individuals and small businesses that are being affected by COVID-19 and social distancing.
I wrote two articles on my employer’s blog page about many of the provisions within the CARES Act and how they could affect individuals, small businesses, and the self-employed that you can read here:
