Pandemic Savings: How I survived

The Pandemic for me, financially, was a blessing. My boss who I adore, he’s a very talent individual and an accomplished film composer. Before I took this job, he made it very clear to me “I don’t believe in remote working” and I thought.. oh, one of “those” but I was willing to be flexible.

And the Pandemic hit, I remember cheekily saying in one email. “What’s the policy on remote working now?” He just said “Whatever the government says” sadly though, the British Broadcasting industry, like most industries has taken a big hit, but we still had a vault of content and our directors just had to get clever with new shows.

I viewed the Pandemic probably the same way my grandparents viewed the Great Depression, which made me be even MORE CAUTIOUS about my savings. My generation, we don’t save, we spend. We really need to change our ways of thinking around this.

You look at Coronation Street, they did the first “pandemic kiss” on air, if you missed it or not a Corrie fan. Check out this behind the scenes’ video, it’s pretty awesome how they did it. I personally love seeing the magic behind film productions.

The first couple of weeks, he was checking on me more and more.

To be fair, I think he’s been burnt before. I knew I had to earn his trust, I tried to put it to him this way, because he does go to LA quite a bit.

When he’s in LA, I’m left on own, I still make my deliverables and readily available to him for anything. I think that may have triggered something.

I try to find opportunities like this with my managers if they have doubts, to bring up examples and show them I have to confidence to get things done, they should have the same in me.

The first thing I noticed, my cashflow, I wasn’t spending money on travel or lunches. However like most of you, I did get a bit lazy and relied on Uber Eats a bit too much (we will save that for another blog) but I roped myself in and came up with a food budget for a “WFH” situation.

I’m the type that will pay off what I can weekly with my credit cards, so I came up for a budget for that. I really hate credit cards, but I keep them on hand for emergency purposes and making sure if I do make a purchase, I can afford to pay it back without too much interest.

And finally my savings, this is big one — I thought no matter what, I’m putting in X amount every week and just leave it through, unless there is an emergency or I need to balance out my current account, which I never let it drop an X amount.

Now onto my investments, I was in a good place with crypto thanks to the crash course my former colleague Jay Smith. I bought in early, to my surprise my investments performed usually well. When Tesla spilt, my investment doubled. There’s this saying HODL (Hold on to Dear Life) when it comes to long term investing. You can view my portfolio here.

Here are some of my top tips on investing on etoro.

Don’t invest in crypto: UNLESS you properly do your research and you know what you’re getting into. So many people jump on the hype train or hang on to “Crypto Bros” every word, I’ll put Elon Musk in that category. I can’t stress how important research is when it comes to the crypto and blockchain technologies. One key aspect, even the crypto bros overlook is the B2B strategy blockchain technologies have with heritage brands. LOOK INTO THE B2B strategy, this will give you an indication where the coin and technology is going. While people were dismissing and dissing Stellar.org (XLM) I was embracing the low dip, because of their partnership with IBM. If IBM saw something in them, perhaps others were dismissing them too soon. Now when it dips, I’m still coming from a position of strength because I bought it at a low price.

Invest in companies and industries you like: Despite popular belief you shouldn’t be driven by “emotion” when it comes to your portfolio, if you are, you’re probably investing more than what you can afford. I can’t think of anything more BORING and a WASTE OF TIME than researching industries I have no interest in. Even if it’s a “safe investment” if I’m bored about researching something, I’m not utilising my time correctly. I can talk confidently about the gaming industry, airlines industry, disruptive technology, pharma industry and crypto because those are all industries I like. When you invest in industries you like, it makes things a little more exciting. People look to you as a thought leader, because they can feel your passion and conviction in your confidence.

Don’t invest what you can’t afford: This should really be my number on tip, but I wanted to give you some shock treatment as a crypto investor myself, almost discouraging you from investing in crypto, because you need a stomach of steel, it’s not for the faint hearted. There’s too many reckless influencers trying to sell you a pipe dream, it really bothers me. My etoro profile is public, you can see in 2018 when I was ALL into CRYPTO, it was a bloody mess. But this was the best tip Jay Smith gave me, especially when I really wanted to invest in bitcoin but it was at 8800 at the time, Jay told me that I could put in as little as 25 dollars (etoro works in dollars but you need to deposit at least 50 dollars into your account, you can’t deposit anything lower than that) so on a weekly basis I’m depositing at £36 to £79 quid, to buy in dips. But if your portfolio is keeping up all night, if you are stressing about it, none of us like losing money — but if it’s a MASSIVE worry, you should start scaling back. I’m being serious, in the 2018, sadly some people took their own lives because they were way in over their head. I can’t stress this rule enough, I’m always talking about it on etoro, I think I’m getting a mother hen reputation on there. But I don’t care, I care about communities I either work for or I’m a part of. That’s why I’ve always been passionate about community management.

Buy in Dips: This is actually a new strategy I’ve adopted this year, I look back on my initial investments with Tesla or Bitcoin, I wish…ahhh if only I could’ve afford a little more. This year I’ve introduced some Pharma companies that have the potential to be hard hitters with covid and variants. So when it “dips” I never buy higher than my last point of purchase, it has to be lower than that. Once the stock picks up again from the dip, I’m making 2x more than what I would have if I just locked it in at one price like my previous stocks. It’s working well both for traditional stocks and crypto. You never want to buy when a stock is rising, always buy in the dips so you have a greater advantage.

Research: I love researching not just in the financial sense, but in a historical sense. If you been following what’s been going on with Norwegian Airlines these past couple of weeks, the fleet has been saved and they are restructuring. Although their stock took a massive hit, today on etoro, those who lost big are screaming SCAM SCAM SCAM. Which is totally ridiculous. My pin post goes through the highs and lows of the airline industry for the past 60 years. From forming alliances with other partners, PAN-AM & Lockerbie, hijackings (Google DB Cooper — no relation to me thank goodness), Restructure and Hires, 911 and the pandemic. It’s truly the “comeback kid” of the stock market. With Space Travel almost being a reality whether your following Branson’s Galactic or Musk’s SpaceX, it’s an exciting time. And you still have time to invest in Galactic, which everyone thought was dead, but they had another successful mission a few weeks ago. They are really thinking outside the box of how they reinvent the industry.

I hope you found this blog useful and insightful, I’m always available to answer any comments or speak at your events. Feel free to leave a comment or drop me a PM.