Taking a pay cut is never easy and unfortunately, many people have experienced this lately with the current environment. So, the question stands, “how do you recover and prioritize spending once you’ve had to take a pay cut?”

We were introduced to a South Florida native, who was among the thousands of people who have been affected by the financial impacts related to Covid19. Kevin works in sales and although he is still making some, he isn’t making nearly what he was before everything happened. As he adapts to his “new” normal we wanted to pick his brain on how he’s doing it.

Q: What were your thoughts once you were told there was going to be a cut in pay?

Kevin: Like anyone would, the first question I asked myself was, “how am I going to pay my bills?”

Q: Did you start using Get Beyond Money’s resources off the bat or was it something that you started later?

Kevin: I tried a few pay cycles without Get Beyond Money and they were stressful. I knew that I couldn’t continue living how I was and some things had to change, but I didn’t know how to do that.

Q: How were you introduced to the Get Beyond Money community?

Kevin: I’m part of a few professional’s group in South Florida and when I expressed my frustrations to another member, they suggested I check out the Get Beyond Money (GBM) community to find the resources I needed. She herself is a community member and told me about how GBM has helped her, so I thought I should give it a shot.

Q: You’ve been using the Get Beyond Money Budget Planner, tell us about it.

Kevin: It’s really been a helpful tool for me. The fact that it’s free and that I can not only print it out, but email it to myself, use it on my phone and even my tablet is also a plus. Even though I’m just listing out my expenses, it helps me see in what areas I am maybe spending too much and instead where I could be allocating the funds.

Q: Did you ever budget before now?

Kevin: Not at all. I had an idea of my expenses and what I spent, but never did I take the time to sit down and understand a budget and the true impact it makes on having a healthy financial relationship with my own wallet.

How Budgeting Has Made a Difference

Kevin started out using Get Beyond Money’s Budget Planner and he shared that the two major ways this helped him see his expenses more clearly was by being able to visualize and prioritize the most important expenses and work from there. Using the budget planner, he used similar strategies shared by community members which starts by noting the necessities first such as rent, car payment, cell phone bill, electricity, etc. From there Kevin, was able to dig deeper into his finances and see what else his monthly income was going towards. For example, he was paying a lot of money for services such as grocery delivery and dog walking services, but since those aren’t absolute necessities and to free up some of his monthly budget he decided to put those on pause for now.

Taking a pay cut isn’t easy, especially during an uncertain time in an expensive area like South Florida. However, that doesn’t mean life is over. Like Kevin, taking some extra steps to visualize and prioritize expenses can really help and when the time is right working those back into the monthly budget are okay too.