TIRUCHY: Managing personal finances is a job many find taxing, even when everything is hunky dory. Add to that a pandemic, pay cuts, job losses, uncertainty, and it became a nightmare for many. Some, however, managed to find the silver lining in this gloomy year.
On one side, you have the people who lost their jobs or faced pay cuts, making it difficult to make ends meet, on the other, salaried professionals, working couples managed to save a lot more than usual, owing to lesser spending.
24-year-old Satish (name changed) was working in a call centre in Tiruchy. He was laid off in June, and was without a job for more than three months. He says that those three months were the toughest times in his life. Having to take care of an ailing mother, this only child had to resort to borrowing money at a high interest rate in the third month.
“I had to dip into my savings for the first two months. We cut down massively but the fixed costs remain. From earning Rs. 25,000 a month, I went to zero. As my mother’s treatment costs a lot, my savings also weren’t much. I borrowed money and I am still paying that back,” says Satish.
Several people like Satish had to resort to borrowing money and taking a huge chunk out of their savings for survival. 49-year-old Rajesh, the only earning member in his family of four, faced a deep cut in his salary from July. While his expenses remained the same, this cut caused a huge dent for him, and many like him.
“I have to pay EMIs for my house and personal loan, which is almost 25% of my salary. After this pay cut, I found it hard to pay the EMIs. My daughters school fees remain the same and food costs also remain same. We’ve had to buy extra laptops for the kids too and pay for their online classes. I had to borrow money from friends to tide over the crisis,” says Rajesh.
However, the year wasn’t all that bad for some. For couples like Sooraj and Nithya, both I-T employees, the year was a blessing in disguise as they managed to save a lot. With no way to travel and a complete cut down on entertainment costs, the couple managed to invest a lot.
“Usually, we like to travel every few months. In the whole of 2020, we haven’t travelled anywhere, which saved us a lot of money. We also didn’t go out to eat, didn’t buy clothes; therefore our entertainment costs were greatly reduced. We managed to invest quite a good amount of money,” said Nithya.
Entrepreneurs like Subha faced a bit of downturn in March and April. However, things looked up after that. Subha echoes Nithya’s statements and said that her family managed to cut down on some expenses. She also says that her investment patterns changed.
“As we weren’t travelling to work and the kids didn’t have school, we saved on travel costs. We also saved on entertainment costs and ended up eating a lot of home-cooked food. We also moved out of some of our equity investments as a precaution,” says Subha.
People also put off on buying cars, or doing home remodeling due to the pandemic.