My flatmate’s friend has been asked to take unpaid leaves for the next four months. He came home today and narrated the whole story. His further plans are to move home and start preparing for higher studies. He has anyway resigned. He sounded more relieved and less concerned. Things fell into place for him. He also told that pretty much everyone in his firm has been asked to do the same. I couldn’t help but wonder about people who are the sole bread earner of the house. How are they going to cope with this sudden change? It is worrying and disturbing. Not only because it has to do with finances but also because this directly impacts the mental health of the family members.
The above incident also made me feel the importance of the emergency fund. I heard about this concept in a YouTube video. Initially, I didn’t think about it much but in the current scenario, it appears to have monumental significance. So, the idea is to first figure out your mandatory expenses for a month. Mandatory expenses include the money that you spend on the essentials and cannot be avoided in any month and in any scenarios. For example, money spent on food, house rent, bills etc. Once you come up with a figure for one month then multiply the amount with six. This will give you the emergency fund amount for six months. Now all you have to do is build this fund and don’t touch it ever unless a pandemic like the current one happens.
I know you cannot build an emergency fund on a whim. This needs planning and time and I think each one of us should take a step in this direction. There cannot be a better time to realize the importance of this fund. If you aren’t affected financially during the current pandemic and still think you don’t need it. Just remember people who are affected used to think the same. We never thought a pandemic like this would happen, but it has and how. Let us not underestimate the uncertainties that our future entails. Thinking about money is the last thing that one would want to do under a situation like this.
I am yet to figure out what to make for dinner. Cooking is such a task, deciding what to cook is even a bigger one. How have we not given awards to our mothers already for doing this all their lives? Its taxing and I don’t really enjoy it much. I can clean, I can clean as you have never seen before but cooking doesn’t come that easy to me. But I can say it with the utmost pride that I am managing it quite well. The idea is not to sleep hungry and not to acquire another level of culinary skill.
I have been witnessing amazing sunsets pretty much every day. It is a blessing indeed. My heart swells with happiness every time I see this huge orange ball go down. The colours of the sky are new every day, probably it knows some secret proportion of colours to mix and come up with a new unknown colour every day without fail.
This blog is part of free writing practice, which essentially means that you write everything that comes in your mind until you hit 500-word count.