May COVID-19 Check-In with the Happy Hour Ladies
May COVID-19 Check-In with the Happy Hour Ladies
Today is the last Friday of the month and my regular listeners know that on the last Friday of the month, I host happy hour on the podcast where I gather great friends with me to drink cheap drinks and talk about money topics.
This is now our third Happy Hour while under quarantine, which is just amazing. When this all started, I thought it would be a two-week disruption, but here we are. This month we’re not only still in quarantine but it’s also Mental Health Awareness month, so I not only checked on how my friends are managing but also how their mental health is faring during these times. I hope you enjoy catching up with my friends as much as I did.
What are we drinking?
Melanie from Dear Debt, Lola Retreat, and MentalHealthandWealth.com — Underwood Canned Rosé
Tonya from BudgetandtheBeach.com and Tonya-Stumphauzer.com — Huckleberry Vodka
Liz, Mrs. Frugalwoods, from Frugalwoods.com — Box Malbec
Shannon — Box Rosé
Podcast Notes
The five stages of quarantine include bingeing, scarcity, depression, YOLO, and acceptance.
A challenge for Shannon is the sameness of quarantine. Before this, she was traveling a lot. She hasn’t been in the same place this consistently in over 14 years.
Melanie wrote a post last week about how virtual therapy is not the same. There is no difference between where she lives, works, and where she processes her life and feelings. Sometimes you need to get into a different head space. She hopes to publish it soon.
Even when you order food, you still have to eat it at home and clean up the dishes. There is no break in the three meals a day. Spending 24 hours a day at home causes a lot more housework.
In the past, Shannon woke up at 6:00am and she had a two-hour commute to The Gym in NYC. Now, Shannon has three different alarms go off in the morning: 6:00am, 6:30am, and 7:00am.
Every employee at The Gym needs to take a mental health week that doesn’t count against their vacation time. Shannon took her mental health week two weeks ago after a bad meeting with investors.
The first day, she spent the entire day in her pajamas and she binge watched the first two seasons of Jack Ryan in two days. She also watched Never Have I Ever.
Shannon is manifesting buying a beach home, so one day she drove out to the beach. By Tuesday, she started reading more and she did a puzzle. By the next Sunday, she felt like she was back. Her energy was better when she came back to work.
It is Mental Health Awareness month. The time off isn’t necessarily to go anywhere, it is just to take care of yourself. Of the 57 employees, only one isn’t going to take the time off, because he feels better when he is working.
Tonya is moving into a new apartment in a few days. Over the past month, she spent time looking for a new place to live. They finally opened the beaches in L.A., except you can’t play beach volleyball. That may not happen until August.
Tonya is a little nervous to talk about what she has been doing, because of pandemic shaming. She is in a local residence forum where people take pictures of others not wearing masks and it is frustrating.
Tonya has been going to a park for sunshine and to see people, but not big groups. Everyone needs a quarantine person. Since she is single, her friend Dave is that person.
Tonya is a firm believer in fresh air and she doesn’t necessarily think it is good to stay in a bubble. She runs on the beach, and she has been finding creative ways to exercise. She has been very busy the last month.
We are meant to connect, which is why solitary confinement is the worst form of punishment. It is all about finding what is right for you, without being a jerk to others. Getting outside is a huge immunity booster and it has helped Tonya.
Liz is still on the homestead and she feels fortunate to have the acreage, especially with kids. She has a two-year-old and four-year-old and the days have been very long. It is relentless and there is no break, because the kids require so much. It is emotionally draining, but she feels like it would be harder if the kids were older.
Shannon recommends the book, Interrupting Chicken.
Melanie is doing better now than when the pandemic first began and she feels mostly adjusted to the new normal. She isn’t seeing any friends right now, but she is seeing her boyfriend.
On the other side of it, in L.A., it is the law to wear a mask, and she is the one that gets frustrated when she sees people without them.
Mental health concerns are huge right now. For some people, going out and taking that risk may be better than staying in and have the threat of suicide.
There are a lot of antibody studies coming out that show a lot of people have had COVID and are asymptomatic.
There is a balance of social responsibility and personal responsibility and choice for yourself. It is a gamble, but if you feel like you are going to harm yourself if you don’t see a friend or go outside it is worth the risk.
Abstinence-only education is a good analogy of what has been happening with the quarantine. It doesn’t work for the long-term. At some point, we need to talk about ways to take responsible risks, or people will do irresponsible things.
Being outside and being six feet apart or wearing a mask is a great thing to do. The real danger is being inside, in a confined area, and not wearing masks.
Liz feels that any way you can be outside, even if you sit in a lawn chair ten feet away from your neighbor, is a good thing. Data shows the transmission rate is very low compared to sitting down in a restaurant.
The only sure way to not get pregnant is abstinence, but we need options that give us 98% protection. If you stretch quarantine too far, it is like a rubber band that is stretched so far it snaps.
A second wave is going to happen, but there is a way to manage risk that keeps people sane.
The state of New York has seven phases of opening businesses. The Gym is a phase two. New York has checked five of the seven of the checkboxes to get to phase one. Once they get there, how long will it take to get to phase two? The way they are running this, it is possibly September that The Gym location can open. That will be six months of quarantine.
Beach volleyball gyms are affected too. They are phase three or phase four, because they are all touching the same volleyball. Tonya thinks it will be August, because of how many people are being affected from a business standpoint. Tonya foresees that it will be different, with using hand sanitizer more frequently and no high fiving after games.
Last week, L.A. got the official order that they are going to be under the stay-at-home order for another three months, until the end of July. That significantly impacted many people’s mental health.
Trainers at The Gym are seeing more spending happening, not less, specifically retail therapy. They are not seeing a wide-spread decrease of spending.
A listener asked how the Happy Hour ladies keep track of expenses:
Liz loves Personal Capital, because it links your accounts and shows your total net worth. This is a free app. Liz likes to review expenses at the end of the month to evaluate if what she spent was worth it. You need to do this every month. Set a goal to do this for at least a year to get a full picture.
Tonya likes the Spending Tracker app. There is a free version, but the one without ads is about $1.99. She has an Excel spreadsheet, but she doesn’t always use it. She is frugally minded and she has a general idea of what she spends every month, because she has been doing this for a long time. Now that she is moving into a new place, it is going to be very tempting to buy new things. Tonya got a plan done from The Financial Gym and she was told she was doing well.
Melanie loves the app Charlie. Every Sunday, she has a money date, where she looks at all of her accounts and reviews everything and where she is with her spending.
Shannon has been doing this for seven years and also helping others do this. She likes the Expense Tracker app and she does weekly check-ins, so she knows where she is at. There was a period of time where she was using two or three different cards, and it was hard to keep up. A cash diet is another way you can do this, but that may be difficult in the COVID world. Another option is pre-paid cards. Do it consistently.
You have to find the thing that works for you. The most important thing is to be aware of your spending and whatever helps you be more aware is what you need to do. Know the amount of your fixed costs and how much is coming in, and how you track the variable spending is up to you.
A good way to track is by using one form of payment, like a credit card if you are not in credit card trouble. Shannon suggests a weekly pay off of that credit card so it doesn’t get out of control and you can keep up with it in real time. When you are expense tracking, do it without judgement — observe and don’t spending shame yourself. Figure out what is good and what needs to be improved.
TAKEAWAY: My biggest takeaway is that tracking expenses and budgeting is key to financial health, but there are a lot of ways to do it. As long as you get to the point where you feel like you have expense tracking under control then you’ve found the right solution for you.
Now, more than ever, it is so important to have a B.F.F, Best Financial Friend, in your life. While you may want to cut back on your monthly expenses, working with my team at The Financial Gym may be exactly what you need now and we need you as well. We have special discounts happening, so head over to, or send friends to, financialgym.com.
If you have any topics you would like for us to talk about during happy hour, please feel free to email me at shannon@fingyms.com or tweet to me at blonde_finance or join the private martinis and your money Facebook group and let us know. Until next time, take care!!