Pandemic Financials

I just closed my books for 2020. I use regular Excel with some smart formulas for my finances. Boris and I came up with these formulas many years ago, even before Excel. In the times of MS-DOS, there was one primitive program that could calculate some sums and averages, and that’s what we used. Now, for many years, I have one Excel file for each year, two tabs per month, plus the Totals tab.

I was curious to see how much did my budget change in comparison with 2019. To my surprise, the changes were minimal. Same as last year, my regular expenses were a little bit under the budget and irregular – a little bit over, but in the end, everything was in balance. Most of the averages were surprisingly close.

I spent way more money on groceries this year and less on entertainment, but surprisingly almost the same amount on clothes and extras. The latter proves that I like nice clothes not because I care about other people’s opinion, but because I like how I look in these clothes, even if I am at home alone.Christmas spendings were the same, and birthdays spendings were lower, because we decided to postpone all family birthdays celebrations till the time after.

One of my friends posted the link to this NYT article about the current economic situation, and it looks like it can be applied to me. The only kind of expenses which stand out are my huge medical bills from my three surgeries and multiple other medical procedures. 

Usually, when I start new Excel for the new year, I review my spending limits and financial goals and make some adjustments, but I didn’t feel I need it this year. It will be interesting to see in six months how things will turn out.