Post-COVID19 Personal Finances

Preparing for the New Normal

I have been a financial advisor for more than three years.

When I entered the finance industry, I’ve heard the warnings of experts, even before the global market crashes brought by the COVID19 pandemic. A crash would soon happen. It is bound to happen, they say. Like the “boom and bust” business cycle.

The more than a decade bull run of the stock markets, not only in the US but globally, was too much of a good thing. Then, BOOM! With a global pandemic, governments rushed to shutdown economic activities to prevent the spread of the disease. And in a single crash, we are facing something that is said to be worse than the 2008 global financial crisis.

But some things remain despite the global changes. The need to secure the future one’s family and loved ones. The need to prepare for SAD events (sickness, accidents, disability/death). The need to prepare for retirement (once described by a financial coach as your dream vacation or your longest nightmare).

Literacy on personal finances, therefore, is all the more needed in the “new normal” of the post-COVID19 world. Knowledge is not enough, of course. No amount of literacy would start the personal finance cycle rolling; that circuit of “earn - save - invest - repeat”, which has been continuously preached by financial advisors everywhere.

One has to earn first. And that is the hard part. The global lock-down to prevent the spread of COVID19 has resulted into a job hemorrhage of colossal proportions. Virtually unheard of especially for the younger generations. The reorganization of the economy will be drastic.

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