With COVID and the sheltering in place that I have been doing, along with the loss of my job, I finally have time to not only write another post, but have also been doing a good bit of thinking about the concepts of Financial Independence and finances in general. Below is a somewhat free flow of some of those thoughts.
For Such A Time As This:
We are currently facing an unprecedented time in the entertainment industry. National newspapers are even writing articles about the almost 120,000 entertainment workers that are currently without work. I could never have imagined something like this ever happening to our industry. Whenever I thought about financial hardships I may face, they were things like a tour I was on closing early, or me not getting along with coworkers and choosing to leave a tour, but I always imagined there would be another tour or another job in the industry to which I could transfer. I never imagined potentially months and months with nothing in the entire industry.
While I did not imagine these circumstances ever happening, my journey to financial independence has prepared me for them. I have an emergency fund that can sustain me for at least six months, and probably more like a year, in this unprecedented period. I have a habit of savings and frugal living that will allow me to keep my expenses low, and based on tracking my expenses, I can easily identify areas to cut expenses to save money if these circumstances persist longer then experts are currently predicting. While I do not believe a global pandemic was on anyones radar as a reason to save money and live frugally, following the steps for Financial Independence allows me to weather at least the financial impacts of the storm. Having extra money has also allowed me to invest more in my Vanguard account during this downturn.
Side Hustles
Side hustles are mentioned often in the Financial Independence community and I am so grateful that I have pursued a couple. While my side hustles do not bring in a ton of extra income (renting my vehicle on Turo and owning rental real estate with my family) they still bring in cash in my time of unemployment. These side hustles not only bring in extra cash, but they also allow my brain to flex and explore other income producing opportunities. Instead of just being stuck in the entertainment industry and touring jobs, these extra sources of income allow me to think outside the box for more income producing opportunities.
Minimalism
One thing I have said I have wanted to do for years is to go through our attic and work on sorting and organizing the numerous things I have put up there through the years. Now that I have this unprecedented time off I have been pursuing doing just that, and I must say I never want to buy another thing in my life. I have found boxes and boxes of things that I cannot for the life of me imagine why I thought it was a good idea to keep. Granted, I have also found boxes that have brought back many happy memories and surrounded me with love. While I am still keeping more than I should, it is definitely making me consider my purchases and if I will actually use them as I should before I buy things.
Focus
I have used Craigslist and OfferUp to both purchase and sell things through the years. I currently have numerous items listed on OfferUp. As I have been going through the attic I have found many things I have been tempted to list, but if I did would be things that would sell for maybe $5-$10. Not only would these items not sell for much, but while waiting for them to sell I would have to store them somewhere, thus defeating the purpose of cleaning.
One of the main reasons for this cleaning is that I want to be able to fit a bed into one of our spare rooms that has become more of a junk room. When we do get a bed in that room I have thought about listing it on Airbnb. While I could keep the items I wanted to sell around and maybe make $100 off of them over the course of who knows how long it takes to sell them, I could instead donate them to Goodwill or somewhere similar and list the room on Airbnb, potentially earning multiples of $100. Sometimes you have to focus and let the good go ($100) for the great (multiples of $100)
Reuse
In this process of cleaning we found numerous years of tax documents that needed to be destroyed. We started to shred them until our shredder made a horrible noise and quite working. I took the shredder apart to investigate the issue and see if I could easily fix it and discovered that one of the gears had a broken tooth. I then started researching new shredders online and found a few promising ones. Thankfully, I thought about OfferUp and messaged people about a few that I found on the site. I ended up purchasing a barely 6 month old shredder from a company going out of business for $35 that retails for $165.
I know this post was a departure from my usual, but I hope they help you to think about your finances in a slightly different way. As always, let me know if you have any questions!
*Image by Thor Deichmann from Pixabay
