Murphy’s Law and the Pandemic

Murphy’s Law – famous for “whatever could go wrong will go wrong”. And when things go wrong, it usually happens one after the other, when you think: “When will I ever get a break?”

Case and point: the pandemic. Sure, people are adopting, coping, and trying their best to stay sane to the ‘new normal’. We humans are creatures of habit, and when our habits change, our behaviors and brains scramble to make sense of what’s happening and try to make sense out of everything that’s happening.

Here’s our experience of the things that happened during the pandemic, and how we’re trying to cope with it: financially, psychologically, and mentally.

Murphy’s Law and the New Normal

I’ll be honest: the pandemic fried my nerves up. It was a time when unemployment was going up, businesses were struggling, and everything is uncertain. Heck, even my brain is uncertain.

Everything Happening at Once

In terms of jobs, my husband and I are lucky enough to still have them, so we still have access to health insurance and our 401(k)s to contribute to. Our jobs are our main source of income seeing as we’re not FI, and we can still pay our day to day bills.

On the other hand, our small businesses needed to adapt during the pandemic. Our rental property needed to be filled during the height of the pandemic and trying to sort through qualified applicants was a bit of a pain. Once we found a renter, we needed to do a few things maintenance-wise (more on that below).

For our rental #1, we needed a new garage door opener, fix a leak in the bathroom, finish the painting in the first floor, replace a lost visitor tag and key card. Fun stuff.

At the same time that was happening, the fridge in our residence decided to give us a hard time by not cooling. We managed to fix the issue a bit through DIY and got it working but we may not be out of the woods yet.

While this was all raging on, our baby developed his first ever fever, and trying to juggle a cranky baby, a fridge that we were trying to DIY, fixing stuff with the rental property, and working remotely was getting a bit much in terms of my brain power and sanity.

It’s OK to not be OK

All of the things above happened just in the month of August. However, in April, things also happened at the same time: an electrical issue in our personal residence that cost us a bit of money, our child’s hospital bill that needed to be paid (from 2019), but thank goodness for the stimulus check: those paid for those unexpected expenses from April.

My point is – not every day is all dandy, fun, and as per usual. If you’re feeling down, blue, or sadder than usual, it’s OK to not be OK. As long as you’re acknowledging the reasons why you feel this way, either through writing on a journal, a blog, or talking to a friend, you’ll find it will lift a load off your emotions.

The Power of the Emergency Fund

Because all of these Murphy’s Law events were happening at the same time, I am just glad we have set up an emergency fund. The stimulus checks and the EIDL grant helped of course, but I’ll credit a lot of my financial sanity from the above to emergency funds.

A few people in the FI space do not like emergency funds: this is money that’s sitting on a high interest earning bank account, normally around a few months worth (we try to keep around 3-6 months in total). Some people like investing that money so it can earn more returns, but I digress.

The main point of our emergency fund is to pay for unexpected life events that happen – Murphy’s Law. It sure sucks having to dip in to these funds, and it is also a pain trying to replenish it, but it is essential to helping keep you sane in times of uncertainty.

One reason why it hurts to tap into the emergency funds is due to psychology: it’s painful to lose money you have (like, you experience actual physical pain). It’s just the way we’re hard-wired as humans, unfortunately.

Frugality and Savings

The more frugal one is, the more one tends to cope better when Murphy’s Law gets thrown at you. With the pandemic, we are not spending as much as we were on discretionary items. Things like international travel and eating out as well as shopping has taken a back seat. Heck, we’re not even flying anymore.

This pandemic definitely gave us perspective: we don’t need as many work clothes or shoes as much now that we’re working from home. We don’t pay much for gas or car maintenance since our commute is just a few steps away from our bedroom to our office room, and we definitely don’t need as much as we thought we need before.

We are spending more on groceries though as we make more of our own food, as well as utilities. Being at home means a higher electric, water, and sewer bill, which is as expected. Everything else has been pretty much status quo.

Murphy’s Law happens but one can prepare for such eventualities

This post is mostly written as a way to keep me calm and sane during the pandemic. In times like these, it helps to jot things down as a sort of brain-dump to get that load off your brain and to help you stop thinking about it.

Financially, we are ready to handle Murphy’s Law to an extent, but our main driver for getting through Murphy’s Law?

The Power of Family and Relationships

Without our family, we probably would not be able to get through this.

Kid has a fever and it coincided with my in-laws visit? Mom-in-law stepped in to help out while we juggled our home and work life.

Rentals needed maintenance and repairs? Brother-in-law and Father-in-law stepped in helping us save money on labor, and we just paid for the expenses (and our overwhelming gratitude for their help).

Need a sanity break from work? Kid is there to entertain me and the husband with his cuteness.

Want a shoulder to cry on or vent out? The husband is there for additional support.

Keeping in touch with family on the other side of the world? The internet/video chat is there to help my mom see the progress the kid has been making throughout the weeks.

It all ties together, so again, while this post is deeply personal, it does help me write everything down. This makes me appreciate everything that’s been happening and not feel so crazy about the little things that piled up all at the same time.

This too shall pass

Everything will be OK in the end. Things will go back to normal – or on the other hand, we may be able to adapt to a new normal. Travel is slowly coming back to our family, and we have been embracing more time at home.

We may not be able to do everything that we wanted before the pandemic, but this time has definitely made me stop and appreciate all that I did, think of more things that I want to do or achieve, and well, just live life.

After all, even if Murphy’s Law is there, it only encompasses a few days. There are still more good days out of the bad. All it takes is to just look at the good in every single day.