For someone who creates relationships through selling, being restricted from my prospective buyers was a haunting circumstance. The idea of staying at home stormed my mind with rephrased versions of the question: How do I keep my monthly cash flow running while in quarantine?
It was hard at first, just like everything that is rewarding. Disclaimer: I am not a Financial Guru. But these are three of the money moves I made in 2020 to be fiscally fit while being physiologically healthy at home amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Buying IPO Shares
This might be the most daring impulse the lockdown made me do, but as what they say: Life is for those who dare.
“An initial public offering (IPO) is a process in which a company sells its shares of ownership to the public for the first time.” Read more about IPO here: https://grit.ph/ipo/
Using a humble slice from my emergency fund, I bought an IPO share of a supermarket chain. It made sense for me to invest in a company that sells essential and pharmaceutical needs. I thought that the demand for these products would be high in a pandemic. After six months, its value is now seven times more.
Read more about investing in stocks. Create a Philippine Stocks Exchange account ( https://easy.pse.com.ph/). Open an online stock brokerage account now. Download its App. Fund it with an amount you can dare to invest. Buy shares. Join several Traders’ Group on social media to read about their experiences. Monitor the movement not just daily, but per trading. Learn it by doing with a reliable internet connection at home.
Rekindling my Love for Cryptocoins
When you are able to trace the Evolution of Money, from the Barter system to printed paper money up to the latest QR code payment mechanism, you would definitely buy the concept of Cryptocurrency like I did. I owned some values of it last 2015. That was not as traded as Bitcoin yet. In fact, it was still at its pre-Initial Coin Offering stage. I fell out of love with it over the pre-Covid years, though. I forgot about it. Completely.
When the quarantine started, people stayed online longer while staying at home. Hence, the digital currency industry was somewhat given a rebirth. I dug in my account details from my previous email and revisited my coded coins. With a reliable internet connection at home, I was able to reactivate my account. The coins were still there, six years old, rediscovered with a higher value.
Read more about Cryptocurrency. Pick a trading app. Open an account and fund it as you can tolerate. You can own a little bit of every coin on display. Be a user of your coin too. Use some when you buy online. Usability helps it to survive and appreciate.
Achieving Zero Liability
Yes! It might be the best time to pay off your debt when there is a pandemic. Read more about the Credit Card Amnesty Program in the Philippines.
The same year I owned my first crypto money, I also received my first credit card. It was euphoric. That year was the splurging peak of my money behavior. I maxed the limit out in forty- five days. Coincidentally, a budgetary problem plagued the family that same year, and I had to shoulder the clan’s expenditure for a longer time than I expected. My expenses were greater than my base pay and incentives combined. Then, the bank collector started phoning me. It was noisy. With my balance unpaid over the years, my liability had gone four times higher. The collector started sending emails to me. It was choking.
Despite this, I never really stopped communicating with them. Being at the other side of the line AT ALL TIMES was the only leverage I knew to be offered with less noisy and choking terms, if not an emancipating amnesty program.
My constant friendly replies to the agent worked out at last. Due to the pandemic, the bank offered an amnesty arrangement. I was asked to settle ten percent of my obesed debt to certify my name with a fully paid account. I paid it the soonest I could.
Every debt has its premise and promise. Whenever you are in debt, my advice is never to the other side feel disconnected. The connection you have with the collecting agent is a prelude to paying right. Consequently, paying full. Thereby claiming once again a glorious reputation of your name. That matters. Finally, it is dulcet and harmonious now. That was the longest negotiation in my life.
A real working internet connection turns your home into a bank.
Despite a world health crisis, one must push through with transactions, may it be trading, value investing, or simply paying. With all the transactions which succeeded last year, I realized that trusting a working internet connection at home is synonymous not just to the mere survival of your funds but to the growth, minimal or exponential of your assets. Indeed, a real working internet connection turned our home into a bank, ran every money movement that matters.
JOHNDAPPERCLOSER 