Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew! If you’re new, you might want to check out my top 9 money-saving tips.
In this issue, I’m going to discuss how we’re responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a few tips for saving money and preserving financial sanity along the way.
How We’re Doing
My wife and I have two young children in a major US city that is under quasi-lockdown.
Although we face a few challenges, we are fortunate. We have green space nearby and can go outside and get fresh air with our kids (while dodging others and trying to keep our kids from touching things and touching their faces). And we are young and mostly healthy.
Like many others, we have no childcare, are both working from home and are alternating watching the kids with working. It’s challenging, but doable so far (though this is only day 4 for us).
What We’re Doing
We’re staying inside as much as possible, leaving our apartment only for 1-2 walks during the day and picking up packages, grocery and meal delivery from our building lobby.[1]
We have:
Taken our kids out of daycare (surprisingly still open for now)
Stopped using babysitters or any household help
Stopped seeing friends and extended family (including our parents)
Started washing hands religiously, and showing our kids pro-hygiene propaganda like this video
The challenge of making sure we have enough food and household items has become a part-time job. I never imagined that the highlight of my day might be snagging a recently-restocked 3 pack of disinfecting wipes on Amazon, or grabbing a grocery delivery slot before they were all taken. But here we are.
As always, the bulk of our (and most Americans’) online shopping takes place on Amazon and my traditional Saving Money on Amazon advice applies (use Amazon Smile or cashback if possible, and pay with the Amazon Prime Chase Visa for 5% cash back). Amazon is coping with the strain, trying to hire 100,000 new workers at higher salaries, while also de-prioritizing stocking of goods other than medical or household items.
A couple of tips I’ve found useful:
Use email alerts for Amazon items (generally available on the right side of the product page if an item is unavailable) to receive immediate alerts when an item is restocked. Most of our orders of hard to get items have come through clicking through an alert link soon after receiving it.
Try sites other than the obvious ones (Amazon, Walmart, and Target). I recently rediscovered Staples (remember them?) and have found many household items available from there. Make sure to use cashback if you can.
Speaking of tips, I urge everyone to be very generous with delivery workers. They are (quite literally) risking their health to make sure we all have enough food and household essentials while maintaining social distancing, and are surely facing more challenges than most people. We are doubling our tips (added online, we’re not using cash at all of course), and encourage everyone to do the same.
Financially, we’ve focused on a few things:
Cancelling/suspending anything that we won’t be using for a while (including trip reservations, daycare, school meal plans, and any kids classes). In some cases this has *not* been automatic and has required us fill out and submit forms.
Making sure we have enough cash available in our bank account to cover our credit card automatic payments (we keep just enough physical cash on hand to cover a few days’ expenses in an emergency).
Not watching investments closely. Like everyone, we’ve been clobbered, but as I discussed in Please Don’t Trade Stocks, we keep things fairly simple with diversified, low-cost index funds in our retirement accounts, and there’s not much point in stressing about it right now when the focus is simply staying healthy and well-supplied.
Most importantly, we’re all in this together. Every decision we make now will likely echo ten- or hundred-fold in the next several weeks. By following the simple CDC guidelines, we have a much better chance of slowing the spread and saving lives.
I hope this has been helpful. If you liked it, please share it with a friend! Also, please send me your feedback, requests, and stories.
[1] How do you know if you can trust food delivery? You can’t, really. But we have limited our orders from restaurants that have sent out emails describing their sanitary practices and offer “no-contact” delivery. We also found this article from The Atlantic helpful. We wash hands after handling any packaging or food containers, and have started pouring all food out onto clean plates before eating.