Stephanie LiebergenCoronavirus Cash Crisis: How should I set my pandemic budget?
"Boil down to the essentials, like housing and food and medical care. And get rid of everything else, and anything that you don't really need," said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher and vice president of research for Savingforcollege.com.
"So you write down information like how much it costs for housing, transportation ... as well as things like food, utilities, insurance, medicine. And then, of course, debt payments. And you look at all this information and you also look at paying the bare minimum on everything. Because right now we are really thinking about preserving cash, especially if there's been a reduction in income," said Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial.
"It really helps to go through and look at all of your credit card statements and your bank statements from the last three months to actually see where your money has been going. And then visually tease out what's a necessity and what's not. So you can make changes if you need to," said Stefanie O'Connell Rodriguez, a personal finance author.
