The entire population is experiencing a worldwide pandemic at this moment. For most, this is the first time we are forced to function outside of your comfort zone. It is uncommon to peruse around the neighborhood without feeling a little uneasy about the current situation. Having to don a facemask before driving to the local grocery store is a must. The world is going through a serious crisis at this moment.

But with this crisis we are in, there is an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before. Maybe due to lack of time or lack of awareness, we now have the chance to better ourselves financially. 

With time on our side, probably more than ever, read on for 22 ways you can look for the “financial” bright sides during your quarantine.

Table Of Contents

• More Quality Time With Family
• Less Going Out = Less Spending
• Focus On Your ONE Thing
• Start That Side Hustle
• Don’t Cut The Cable
• Manage Your Stimulus Money Wisely
• Learn To Invest
• Physically Distance Your Savings
• Visit Your Local Library (Or Amazon)
• Learn A New Recipe
• Switch Cell Phone Plans
• Unsubscribe From Unwanted Emails
• Ditch Your Gym Membership
• “Kondo” Your Home
• Dig Into Your Overall Spending
• Plan For Your Big Goals
• Pay Yourself First
• Negotiate With Your Insurance Provider
• Connect People With Their Wants
• Play A Board Game
• Meditation
• Bank Account Churning
• Conclusion

More Quality Time With Family

Although this won’t make you physically rich, it will make you emotionally wealthy and that’s just as important. Spending time with the ones you love is a commodity and should never be taken for granted. What better way to spend time with them than now.

Talk with each other about your lives, your goals, and your ambitions. Tell your children how different it was for you growing up. Teach them about their grandparents’ upbringing. Help them learn who they are and where they come from by building that solid foundation. 

Less Going Out = Less Spending

As more families shelter in place, their overall spending should be decreasing. Obviously, grocery budgets are probably jumping up a bit as cooking at home becomes more prevalent. But at the same time, families can pocket the money they would have poured into dining out directly into their savings account. 

Use that extra cash to build up an emergency fund, save for a vacation, invest for your future, or just plain old savings. No matter which way you look at it, extra savings is always a good thing. You don’t have to know what you plan to do with it right now. 

Focus On Your ONE Thing

The concept of the “One Thing” became widely popular from Gary Keller, co-founder of the largest real estate company in the world Keller-Williams, and Jay Papasan, the Vice President of publishing at Keller-Williams. Their book promotes the importance of prioritizing all your focus into a single task rather than attempting to complete more than one task at a time.

They pose the question, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” This single question can be applied to various areas of your life. Whether you want to improve work, personal, family, or spiritual, everyone has a One Thing they can concentrate on.

Start That Side Hustle

Our future, at least in the short term, seems unclear as to when we will go back to a “normal” life. So what better time to start that side hustle you’ve been thinking about than now. As long as there aren’t absurdly high upfront costs to start, time is on your side to start now.

There are many interesting and highly lucrative side hustles you can try today.

• Join InstaCart
• Transcribe YouTube videos or podcast interviews
• Start a blog
• Teach english online
• Become a virtual assistant
• Write an eBook
• Manage social media for small businesses
• Sell services on Fiverr
• Pick up a freelance project on Upwork
• Start a YouTube channel

Don’t limit your options by the thoughts in your head. Developing new skills to use in the world once this shelter in place order has been lifted could help diversify your income streams or just give you a new hobby that pays you well. 

There is a niche for just about everything someone can think of. The best part is if you can find a way to monetize your idea, you may not need your full-time job much longer.

Don’t Cut The Cable 

Times might be hard right now but if you can afford to keep your streaming services, use it to your advantage. Rather than watching a movie you have seen a few times, give yourself an entrepreneurial treat to learn from this time.

Here are a few movies you can build inspiration from.

• The Intern : The plot follows a 70-year-old widower who becomes a senior intern at an online fashion website bringing an old-school vibe into the millennial workplace.
• Chef : Jon Favreau plays a chef who, after bickering with a food critic, quits his job at a popular Los Angeles restaurant to work a food truck with his young son.
• Moneyball : A film based on the analytic approach to assembling a competitive professional baseball team despite having a small budget.
• Pursuit of Happyness : A true story how Chris Gardner, a struggling father, goes from a homeless salesman to working for a multimillion-dollar brokerage firm.
• The Banker : This story follows two of the first African-American bankers in the United States building their business empire.
• Margin Call : Takes place over a 24-hour period at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the financial crisis of 2007-08.
• The Big Short : Describes several of the main players who sought to bet against the financial bubble of 2007-08 and profited handsomely.
• The Founder : The film portrays the story of Ray Kroc and his creation of the McDonald’s fast-food restaurant chain.

Manage Your Stimulus Money Wisely

If you’re reading this, hopefully you were fortunate enough to receive a stimulus check in the mail or directly deposited into your bank account. Have a plan for this newfound money. It could be used several ways that could benefit you financially.

Instead of spending all your stimulus money, here are a few alternatives for you to consider:

• Pay the upfront costs to start a side hustle
• Build up an emergency fund
• Wipe out high interest consumer debt
• Training and/or class fees for learning a new skill
• Invest into a retirement vehicle (401 (k), TSP, IRA, etc)
• Save for a future vacation

If you don’t need the money, consider donating to your favorite charity or small business. Donating your money won’t help you financially but it will reciprocate through the economy and help provide assistance to those who really need it.

Learn To Invest

Back in the day, investing your money was a long, drawn-out, tedious process that not many people had access to. To some, it wasn’t worth the hassle of wiring your money or mailing a check. Nowadays, the process is much different.

With the click of a button, you could instantly be an investor. There isn’t much to it other than having the capital to deploy. The bigger question is “How do I invest my hard earned dollars?”

What you invest in is dependent on your risk tolerance. If your retirement horizon is far from now, then your tolerance for risk should be pretty high. The opposite would be true if you plan on retiring soon. Either way, there are many resources online that can teach you how to invest, assessing your risk tolerance, and much more.

Some of the best resources and people that teach you how to invest are:

• Seeking Alpha : Crowd sourced content containing stock market analysis and investment insight.
• The Motley Fool : For over 25 years, The Motley Fool has provided investing insight and financial advice.
• Investopedia : The world’s leading source for anything and everything involving finances.
• JL Collins : His stock series is considered by many the “bible to stock investing 101”.
• White Coat Investor : An emergency physician turned blogger, White Coat Investor gives his advice on Investing 101.
• Project Life Mastery : Stefan, an online entrepreneur, shares his on investing and how to get started.
• Graham Stephan : Watch his video of his five favorite investments, why he invests in them and how anyone can get started.
• Ray Dalio : This 30-minute video will explain the ABCs of economics.

The simplest method to investing is finding an index fund or ETF (exchange traded fund) that mirrors the total stock market and buying shares of it. This way, you are buying shares into various companies rather than individual companies which lowers your risk substantially. 

Physically Distance Your Savings

According to Business Insider, more than 75% of Americans don’t have a high yield savings account. Their money just sits in a low yield savings account, a checking account, or worse, in a safe box at home earning them no interest at all.

It doesn’t take much time to open a high yield savings account. Create that distance between you and your savings. Don’t make it easy for you to spend that savings. Keep that money out of “arm’s reach” and continue building it. Open your high yield savings account as quickly as today.

Don’t let your money sit stagnant earning you 0% interest. Look at depositing your money into one of these high yield savings accounts:

Visit Your Local Library (Or Amazon)

Reading a book is a dying art today. Technology has granted us access to so many books online that some of us have forgotten what it feels like to just hold a book in our hands. A real tangible asset that can open up your mind to your hidden financial potential.

If holding a book isn’t your thing, then buy an eBook online and read it on your preferred smart device. There’s no telling how long this quarantine will be. We might not go back to a normal life for another couple months. In that time, just think of how much you could have learned to apply in your life.

A few solid books I’d recommend to transform the way you think about finances are:

The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins

Save yourself the money and check your local library if these books are available.

Learn A New Recipe

Know what the biggest expense is for people after paying their loans? Dining out. This is considered to be one of the highest expenses you will spend money on throughout the year. Why not use this time to learn a few new meals to make?

Think about learning meals in a strategic way that will benefit you. Normally short on time? Meals that are quick and easy to make will serve you best. Need to feed a family? Meals that can be cooked in bulk will last your family for multiple days. Have a slow cooker? Using one to basically “set it and forget it.”

There are many approaches to cooking that can keep more money in your pocket. Just think of the problem areas you usually encounter on a normal basis and find the solution to counter them.

Switch Cell Phone Plans

People stick with a single mobile plan usually for three reasons, 1) loyalty to their provider, 2) too much hassle to switch plans, or 3) never heard of cheaper plans. There are better alternatives you can save money with instead of sticking with the big name companies.

In fact, some of the mobile alternatives are owned by the big name companies. For example, Cricket Wireless is an owned subsidiary of AT&T. Many companies offer these substitutes as more flexibility to their customers.

Other plans that offer better pricing for you are:

• Google Fi
• Visible
• Mint Mobile
• Metro by T-Mobile
• Cricket Wireless
• Ting

Before signing up for any plan, double check they have coverage for your desired area. Some plans require you to purchase a new phone through that provider. Make sure you read the fine print before buying into anything.

Unsubscribe From Unwanted Emails

Seeing email after email from a company you signed up for by accident just so you could take advantage of that one-time offer? What about the email constantly shoving the next best protein powder in your face that you never buy?

Distractions are everywhere and they can be dangerous for your wallet. If you don’t have the financial discipline, seeing product after product may trigger an impulse buy. Rid yourself of these handcuffs and take the time to unsubscribe from all the emails that don’t bring you any value but remove the temptation to spend. 

Ditch Your Gym Membership

Gyms are still charging their users a monthly fee even though they’ve been empty for weeks now. With fees as high as $110 per month, you could definitely find better use for that money.

Before cancelling your membership, keep in mind that you may lose out on another monthly fee depending how your contract was written. If you don’t want to cancel your membership because you plan to use it when the quarantine rule has been lifted, at least look into suspending or freezing your account for now. 

If you haven’t been in the gym lately, you may have found other ways to stay active like jogging around the neighborhood or working out from home. You don’t even need gym equipment to get started.

Slip on your workout clothes, grab a bottle of H20 and stay healthy at home with these free-no-equipment-needed-options:

Each of these channels offer free programs that you can follow along with. If you’re a beginner don’t worry and just start at your own pace. Even if you consider yourself more advanced, these channels can still be challenging for you.

“Kondo” Your Home

Marie Kondo, a Japanese organizing consultant, has written four books on how to simplify your life by unloading physical items that do not bring any joy into your life anymore. You can begin with tidying up your home, room by room, tackling the ones with most clutter first.

Decluttering can lead to a few financial benefits. You could post your items on eBay or your local Facebook garage sale page and make a small profit. For the unused items that are still in great condition, look at giving those as gifts to your friends or family. That way you don’t have to spend money. 

Having less stuff to worry about creates more bandwidth in your personal life. That extra bandwidth can be applied to other money saving opportunities.

Dig Into Your Overall Spending

When was the last time you really looked at your spending habits? Not just glanced at your statements but really dug into the weeds. People who know where their money is going usually manage it better. When your money is managed better, you ensure more money stays in your wallet.

Go back twelve months and review all your accounts. Track every dollar on a spreadsheet, organized by category, and average out your spending for each one. Do the final numbers make you happy or do you wish you hadn’t spent that much? Now would be the time to make the financial switch to manage how you spend your money.

The major categories people spend on are:

• Groceries
• Eating out
• Tobacco / alcohol
• Transportation
• Utilities
• Recreation
• Entertainment
• Clothing / shoes

Look at reducing these areas first. Sit down and calculate which category you could save money in and how much. The common area people spend most of their money is eating out and entertainment. Reducing costs in those areas will not only save you huge amounts but you will find that you can enjoy more out of life with less.

Plan For Your Big Goals

Most families will take one big vacation per year. Vacations are vital for families to reduce stress, increase productivity, and build everlasting memories. While most families say that plan for these trips, this usually means they’ve thought about a date, reserved their flight and hotel, and paid for it by credit card.

Paying with a credit card isn’t the problem if you have money reserved to pay it off. The problem comes from not planning the trip financially. Saving up for a vacation helps to keep that financial burden of your back. Knowing you’ve put money aside for this upcoming memory will allow you and your family to enjoy that vacation better.

Pay Yourself First

Doing manual transfers with your money, in between your accounts, should be obsolete. There are times when doing it manually makes sense. But if you want to allocate money from your paycheck into another personal account, do it automatically.

Paying yourself first means before you ever let that paycheck deposit into your checking account, you’ve set aside a portion of your income into your 401(k), an IRA, or a savings account. 

Start with as little as $5 and let that money compound into whatever savings vehicle you choose. You won’t even miss that small amount of money. If left untouched, that could turn into a very substantial amount for you (or your children) in the future.

“When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters — one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.” 

John F. Kennedy

Negotiate With Your Insurance Provider

Don’t feel like you are stuck into the price you pay for home and auto insurance. Saving money could be as simple as shopping around for other companies that offer you better coverage. It might feel time consuming but this could save you hundreds of dollars.

Here are a few things to consider when looking to save money on insurance.

• Do your research
• Shop around
• Raise your deductible
• Combine your coverages with one provider
• Take advantage of every available discount

Periodically shop around with other insurance providers to ensure you are getting the best possible rate. If you find a lower rate, contact your current provider to see if they can at least match it or, even better, beat that rate.

Connect People With Their Wants

A very interesting idea was discussed recently by Noah Kagan in his interview with Tom Bilyeu. Basically, he talked about how people, in our current condition, are looking for certain items but don’t have the resources or connections to buy them. 

He explained how one of his members was in the market for home gym equipment. Noah, not having any gym items, proceeded to contact a hotel who, just so happened, to be getting rid of old gym equipment. Giving his member’s address to the hotel so they could deliver the items pocketed him an extra $10. 

An additional $10 was made from simply calling around and connecting someone with their personal want. This may or may not be easy to duplicate but it does spark the interest of what opportunities are out there for those who seek it.

Play A Board Game

If you’re an adult, playing a board game may not help you much with money. But this could be a great learning opportunity for your children or young relatives. 

Certain board games were created with the goal of teaching important financial lessons while having fun. Making the game fun keeps the child engaged all while they learn how to manage their money better. 

These board games were designed to help people develop and master their personal finance skills.

Cashflow Board Game

Monopoly

Payday

The Game of Life

Act Your Wage

The Allowance Game

Meditation

If you feel that your spending habits have gone haywire, meditation could assist with bringing more mindfulness into your purchases. Find a quiet place in your home or outside where you can be grounded and focus more on your needs and wants.

Getting started isn’t for everybody. While some find it relaxing, others are struggling to find just a few minutes for themself. There are many options for people who need some extra help. Look online for meditation apps like Headspace or Smiling Mind.

Bank Account Churning

Zero interest is earned for money sitting on the sidelines. That same money could be earning you interest or a nice hefty sign-up bonus. Various banks will offer these sign-up bonuses to brand new accounts but there are some requirements involved.

The common steps are to open a bank account, complete a few requirements, receive the bonus, wait for six months before closing the account, and repeat it an a year when they come out with another bonus. Other requirements usually involve maintaining a minimum balance to avoid fees, avoid closing the account too early, and having to make a certain amount of transactions.

Keep in mind, the money earned from the sign-up bonuses will be taxable. Just remember that when it comes around to tax season again. The best source for knowing bank account bonuses is Doctor of Credit.

Conclusion

With so many options to choose from, I hope you are able to take advantage of at least one of them during your quarantine. Some of them will require more work than others. Before giving any of them a try, ensure that the savings outweigh the potential stress of doing them.

Let them something good come out of this pandemic. Surely a few extra dollars wouldn’t hurt during this time of uncertainty.

What method did you find most helpful in your situation? Are there other ways you can financially optimize during quarantine?