Hey people, by now, you’ve probably heard about the 14-day lockdown in Lagos, Abuja and Ogun starting today! Non-essential businesses have been asked to shut down and all public gatherings have been banned. What this means for you as an individual is that sooner or later, your finances might take a hit because Nigeria is still one of those economies where you literally have to work to “chop”.
So what to do? In this article, we have put together 4 ways to help you manage your finances so you can come out unscathed post-COVID. Let’s dive in!
- Create a crisis budget: With the level of uncertainty surrounding the virus, it’s advisable to stock up on food, water, medicine and other essential products in the case of a country-wide shutdown. Relying on your regular monthly budget would not be realistic because your monthly expenses would suffer an increase due to bulk purchase of food and other needed goods and services, hence a special budget that allows for this change needs to be created.
- Reduce unnecessary expenses: In times like this, every cash is important. Hence spending on non-essential items is not advisable. Cut down on bills that are not necessary and instead use that money for other things that would make surviving this period easier, like a strong internet service if you would have to work from home.
- Protect yourself against any potential loss in income: As the virus takes its course, business operations would be crippled, resulting in pay cuts, layoffs and general income loss for employees and even business owners. To guard against this loss affecting you adversely, you can use some existing skills you have in taking on remote/virtual jobs that can provide you with extra income.
- Limit your cash exposure: Handling cash has been said to be one of the ways by which the virus spreads. Reduce the risk of contracting and spreading the virus by limiting your cash transactions to the barest minimum. Paga makes this easy — Go digital with your bill payments and money transfers. You can also enjoy our zero fees on bank transfers from N5,000 below!
Stay Safe and Just Paga It!
