Super Savers emerging from the pandemic

[Axtremus]

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/09/saving-money-pandemic/615949/

Talks about how some people materially add to their monetary savings for various reasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Simple things like eating out less and traveling less add up. It seems as long you can keep your income streams, the pandemic forces you to save because there are much fewer things and much fewer places for you to spend money on. Yet “keeping your income streams” is the tricky part for a lot of people.

[jon-nyc]

We’ve saved a ton. Probably 3 major vacations not taken so far. Even eating the tickets to Paris I’m still probably up 15k for not traveling.

Another 4.5k for camp the boy didn’t attend. Surely another grand on local outings.

[George K]

Our condo's declaration has a clause that states that water fees are shared among all the residents, and that includes the restaurant downstairs. When it opened, we got hit with a serious increase in our assessments because of the increase in water delivery to the restaurant. Naturally, people were upset, thinking "Why should I pay for the restaurant's water usage?"

Well, guess what...

Yeah, with the shutdown, we've saved a ton of money since the restaurant's not been open.

But, to add to what Jon said, I cancelled our April trip to NoLa and our August trip to Portland (whew!) and San Francisco. Probably saved about $5K.

[89th]

Agreed, same here. Didn't have daycare for 6 months (at $2,300 a month), and our overall monthly spending is way down. In February, in a pure coincidence, I started some remote-work 1099 independent consulting (in addition to my normal W2 job) that added to the income. We've been very fortunate during this pandemic including the many, many, many hours spent with my 2 year-old daughter as we explored creeks among other fun activities. That has been by far the best part of the shutdown.