How have your expenses changed with the Corona Virus?

[jkern]

While I'm not actually spending money on recreation, entertainment, golf and travel. I allocate the same dollar amount each month. I will just have more money to spend later. The only real savings is gas.

 

[FANOFJESUS]

Our spending is down 25% and we are frugal to begin with. LOL

 

[gerntz]

Rubber bands expense about to go up for my budding ponytail.

 

[RetMD21]

Well hoping to survive until planned retirement this summer. Travel plans have been modified and will be flexible. Expenses have dropped significantly.

 

[caninelover]

Carol, I was scheduled to get my haircut and colored and then the shutdown. I had waited 3 months so things are looking pretty bad. The dogs can’t get groomed either. Of course these are all minor issues in the big scheme of things.

I am in this boat as well. I am kicking myself for not getting a cut before all this but oh well. I may ask my SO to just hack some off if this goes on another month. No one but him sees me anyway since we are home.

Expenses are down, like others. We are both working from home so we still have our salaries and benefits intact for now. Groceries are up since both of us are eating lunch at home now but eating out is only down slightly - we are trying to order take out a few nights a week to help our local restaurants.

Gas is way down as our only trip is to/from grocery store once per week.

Entertainment is zero as all shows, movies etc cancelled.

We had a small weekend trip planned in May for a graduation but that is cancelled as well, so travel also down.

While good for the budget - not so good for the spirit

 

[Tallman4123]

Will ultimately be down.

There will be NO golfing this year and therefore no annual golf club membership. DW and I made this decision even though golf courses are currently open in CT despite the governor's stay-at-home and "essential businesses only" edict.

Travel will likely be down though we are currently in a Florida vacation rental until April 11th unless we decide to head home earlier. We left Connecticut on March 10th which seems like a lifetime ago as it relates to the Covid-19 epidemic. We will save on hotel costs on the way home given that we had planned to take four days to get home. However, we will be making a non-stop "mad dash" home when the time comes (~20 hours plus gas and "comfort" stops).

 

[Retired Expat]

I envy you all that can get things delivered. Where I am food delivery is limited to pizza or burgers and fries. On low carb diet so cooking constantly it seems which means grocery shopping since they don’t really deliver groceries.

But just the little things, dining out, hair, gym, gas and tolls has to be $500-$700 a month. I fully expect it will be like this until the fall. Add in all the travel and other shopping that was planned and savings could exceed $50k

May change some spending habits before it is over.

However did get dressed up and went for dinner and dancing last night. Dinner in the dining room and dancing in the living room! Can’t remember the last time I wore a tie and jacket!

 

[HI Bill]

• Travel: Down. Cancelled RE and remaining 2020 travel, so that will save us ~$68K in planned travel costs this year.
• Gas - Down to about 2 gallons a month.
• Diving - Down. No place to get air fills, few open beaches. $0 cost now, no diving.
• Food - Down. No more eating out.
• Electricity - Up. Running an extra computer and two extra monitors for w$rk now at home. Streaming a bit more video.
• TP - Up. No more free TP at the office!
• Amazon - Down. Fewer orders, lower $. No need for extra stuff just staying at home. Most purchases were travel-related.
• Federal Taxes: Up $15K. Sold a bunch of stock with LTCGs, which I had been planning to use the LTCG MFJ 0% tax rate for...now that I'm still w%rking, they'll be taxable.

 

[PatrickA5]

YTD expenses down 16%. Month of March expenses down 40%. Both due mainly to less travel as we always go on a Spring Break trip.

Only expense higher was medical as I had several tests done in February, but even that is lower than it could have been since I canceled three doctors appointments.

I expect this years expenses to be significantly lower than the last several years. If DW loses her job, then we'll need to cut back even more. We way overspend anyway. It will do us some good to get back to reality.

 

[travelover]

Got the first request from a relative for money. Grandson is a college student and was to start a job at Starbucks when the stuff hit the fan.

 

[Ready]

Got the first request from a relative for money. Grandson is a college student and was to start a job at Starbucks when the stuff hit the fan.

Amazon is hiring 100,000 employees. Have him look there.

 

[GravitySucks]

Got the first request from a relative for money. Grandson is a college student and was to start a job at Starbucks when the stuff hit the fan.


Give him a few bucks contingent on staying home

 

[travelover]

Amazon is hiring 100,000 employees. Have him look there.

Thanks. That is what you or I would do, but the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. I'll shut up here.

 

[KB]

Spending less, no going out and only ordering groceries occasionally.

Because a good amount of my income is from my investments, I wasn't sure if it would drop. So far, so good. So I'm bulking up my cash, instead of spending.

 

[2017ish]

Half our spending is travel. March will be the first month ever with zero balance on CSR credit card. Depending upon how things shake out worldwide, our spending is likely to be substantially less this year.

 

[ncbill]

Got the first request from a relative for money. Grandson is a college student and was to start a job at Starbucks when the stuff hit the fan.

Just paid April's rent on my student's empty apartment...May, June, July remain.

Fortunately Uncle Sam pays all their tuition & fees in return for military service after graduation.

We have a relative with a trailer on their property who lives about a half-hour from campus.

So I told the kid to plan on living there this fall until we know if there will be future school cancellations due to a possible second wave of Covid-19.

 

[Rambler]

Spending is WAY down, since we don’t go anywhere or do anything. I’m actually looking for ways to spend a little to help keep local stores/shops/restaurants open. We’ve been trying to order deliver or takeout MORE because there are less other things we are spending on. I’m guessing, but I’ll bet our expenses will be about 1/3 the usual until this blows away.

 

[Dtail]

Our expenses for March were 67% of our monthly budget.

 

[jldavid47]

My wife started working from home on 3/16. I'm retired. We are spending a LOT less on gasoline and eating out. Any increase in electricity or water or toilet paper is minimal at best.

 

[travelover]

........ Any increase in electricity or water or toilet paper is minimal at best.

Whoa! You've got TP?

 

[jldavid47]

Whoa! You've got TP?

Yeah. Wanna buy some? I can make ya a great deal. Just meet me behind the Kroger at 2AM. Bring plenty of cash.

 

[Mdlerth]

No such thing as normal at Casa Mdlerth

Impossible to separate virus-related changes from confounding factors. We haven't been at steady-state since three years ago, and everything is in flux.

I retired end of December. At the beginning of January, DW was injured in a fall and missed two months of work. Now she's working again, but from home.

One daughter, son-in-law and new baby just moved out. One son remains in the house, also working from home (with two jobs).

Amid all this, we're slowly relocating to our retirement house on the lake. We'll make the permanent move late this year or early next. Expenses will go WAY down when I'm down to one house, and with no kids in it. Only then will I return to a baseline, and it will be different from the old one.

None of this is unexpected, but it will definitely be more pleasant when it calms down.

 

[Helen]

Our spending is up based on what we had planned to spend but way under budget.

We decided to stay in Southern California an extra 2 months which also means paying our house/cat sitter for 2 more months. The house sitter was really happy to stay, she has roommates and one of them works at a hospital.

Since most vacationers are gone and all the big events have been cancelled we got an excellent deal on a rental house. It has a private pool and hot tub, outdoor kitchen, pool table, ping pong table, dart board and a ton of TV channels. And, the house is huge. There are also tennis courts close by and it's nice and level for bike riding. So I don't think we will be bored, we may not want to leave.

We would have stayed in the condo we rented in Palm Springs but Palm Springs closed the shared pools and it's too hot to be here without one. Also, they aren't allowing new rentals so we found something outside of Palm Springs.

 

[W2R]

OK, I'm sitting here on semi-lockdown, a little bored, but you all KNOW how I love to do these spending analyses to try to figure out where the money went.

Anyway, here's my comparison by category for March 2020, vs March 2019:

Category | March 2020 | March 2019 | Comments
Miscellaneous | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Video Gaming | $181.11 | $0.00 | Favorite video game ever was released last month
Food | $598.30 | $662.62 | Only slightly less; scarce grocery items cost more, and restaurant delivery charges
Car | $24.52 | $35.92 | gasoline only
House | $70.00 | $70.00 | lawn guy
Utilities | $184.43 | $184.89|
Fitness | $0.00 | $42.00 | Gym is closed in 2020
Clothes | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Medical | $481.57| $378.67 | Got 90 day refill of all prescriptions & OTC in March 2020
Total | $1540.93| $1374.10 | Main difference is video game spending in March 2020.

Much to my surprise, I spent MORE this March than last March!

Looks like any savings in gas, gym, or food was greatly overwhelmed by my video game spending, and also to a lesser extent by the expense of stocking up on my usual pharmaceuticals. Oh well! At least I have something to do that floats my boat.

 

[Tiny Kingdom]

We didn't have any trips booked, but were sketching out some. We would have spent money on NCAA basketball tournament trips and we were planning a graduation trip for my son. His senior year is effectively over which is very sad for all of us. He misses his friends more than social media can assuage and could use a something to look forward to, but not sure what that is right now.

We're probably spending more on food, although I don't track it that closely. We are trying to keep the restaurants we love in business by getting take out at least twice a week. I'm trying to stay on a keto diet, so I buy what I need to buy. Same for the rest of the household even though they aren't on diets. I stock up on TP when it's on sale, so I have that. And I told the spouse I NEVER want to hear him complain about how much TP is in my trunk ever again.

Saving on haircuts and personal care. All the humans and dogs need one. I cut my own bangs. I'm not going to say I look like Mamie Eisenhower, but if the micro-short bangs fit... If I ever get another pedicure, it will cost eleventy billion dollars to deal with the fallout of months of DIY nail care.