Budgeting has been quite of a struggle lately ever since Pandemic striked us a year ago. I lost my job and everything seems to be blurry and uncertain.

Kids schooling was challenged as well, my eldest daughter wasn’t able to have their much awaited moving up day. School year switched over from having face to face class to online class only.

My employer advised us that our account will close and was given only 3 weeks to wrap up everything and submit all necessary reports. Government on the other hand announced an Enhance Community Quarantine protocol were no one is allowed to go out except for doing the essentials like grocery shopping or buying medicines.

Everything turned upside down. My mom has just died then and still coping up from losing her. I was quite worried as I don’t have any savings left and no emergency funds to hold onto. I am thinking on where to get funds to pay the bills like electricity, water and internet school tuition fees for the kids, medicine expenses for the husband and our budget for everyday expenses.

Very limited people are allowed to go out to work for those establishments that need manpower like manufacturing companies, food industries, medical front liners. Others are encouraged to work from home.

Glad I was also able to utilise and claim for the loss of income or unemployment benefits as I searched on where to get funds to learn more and be able to pay our debts. I used the funds I received to buy a new set of computer package as I am determined to get a new job.

It took me almost 3 weeks to land a job online ( permament work from home arrangement) thankfully!

Our budgeting style has also changed as we adapt to the challenging economic status of the government and remaining money that we have.

Glad I was able to stumble upon this tips in budgeting: https://www.moneymax.ph/personal-finance/articles/tips-on-saving-money

Below are some of the helpful hacks we’ve learned and apply.

• We have jotted down all our expenses– paper and pencil style and I have created a spreadsheet tracker to avoid overspending.
• Grocery lists – Our grocery trips has been reduced from weekly to bi weekly and ensure that we check and revised according to our needs. We also resort to do some online shopping for some items like buying home equipments, electronics, essentials like facemasks and faceshields that has been part of our budget since Pandemic.
• Paying bills– We switched over from paying it over establishments to enrolling them over online transactions. Saved a lot on time and effort- no need to go out and saved some extra by getting points!
• Travel fare, kids money budget– This has been converted as savings or has been used to allot to pay for internet bills.
• Loans, amortizations– This is always taken into consideration before we splurge into buying wants to keep up paying them on time and avoid paying penalties.
• Online bank accounts– we have created separate accounts for our bills and savings. So we can monitor properly to cash flow.
• Budget for food– This is taking most of our budget, glad that I have a very good cook husband and knows how to budget and make our food menu without sacrificing the quality of the food and healthy for the body!

Since it would take 2-3 more years for this Pandemic to be over, we’ll surely save lot for travelling expenses! No more out of t he country trips for the meantime. We’ll probably do within the country travels or a nearby city trips without sacrificing our money, leisure and health!