Don't let Easter festivities throw you into a financial fix

Happy Easter! 

 Today evening marks the beginning of a long weekend and there are all sorts of enticing activities lined up to celebrate the Easter holiday. Celebration is good, but you need to be conscious such that you don’t spend all your money in one weekend, leaving you with no money to pay the living expenses that come after Easter and forcing you to take a loan thereafter to survive. Use this checklist to ensure that the four-day Easter weekend doesn’t get you into a financial fix:

 1. Make sure your pending essential April expenses are handled.
How much money do you have left to cater for your living expenses in the remaining 17 days of April and up until you get your next pay-check? Do a mini budget of the cash in hand versus the pending April expenses such as:

·         Food and groceries electricity tokens

·         water, gas/charcoal/kerosene/cooking fuel

·         mobile phone airtime

·         internet bundles

·         TV subscription

·         fare/fuel, car maintenance

·         Lunch at work

·         child expenses/daycare

·         laundry/cleaning lady

·         allowance to parents/siblings/relatives/friends

·         birthday/wedding/baby shower/bridal shower/occasion gifts

·         Donations to the needy

·         Church offering and donations

·         Toiletries/cosmetics

·         Haircare and beauty for you and the kids

·         Clothes/shoes/accessories

·         Doctor’s appointment/medical bill

·         Movies/events/fun activities/entertainment

·         Due debts

·         Standing orders

·         Chama contribution

2. Do you really have money to go on holiday?

 If after taking your pending April expenses versus the cash in hand you have a surplus, then you can decide to treat yourself and your family for the holiday within a budget that takes into account the amount of money you have to play with.

3. What's the plan?

Think about what you want to do this long weekend. Do you want to travel to the village? Do you want to take your family out for lunch and entertainment? Do you want to go on a getaway to Naivasha or Mombasa? Do you want to go for nyama choma, drinks and dancing with your friends? Do you want to host guests at your home? Decide what you want to do, then go to the next step.

4. Make an Easter budget that fits the cash you can spare for fun.

Make an Easter budget based on what you want to do, then check if the money available to spend on Easter is sufficient to cater for your costs for your selected activity. For example, if you want to go to the village, your Easter budget might include car fuel or fare to and fro, shopping for your parents, some money to spend with family and friends at the local village pub, some money to buy beer for the village idlers who think you are very rich, some money for emergencies, etc. If your plan is to go drinking and dancing from Thursday evening to Sunday evening, you’ll need to budget for fare/fuel/taxi, drinks for yourself and other people if you plan on throwing rounds or buying random drinks for men and women you find in the club, water, snacks, etc. Once you break down your costs and do a total ask yourself if you can really afford your chosen Easter activity. If for example your plan is to go to the village and you only have Sh5, 000 to spend on Easter (from step 1) and your Easter budget comes to Sh30, 000, you either have to cut down or cut out some expenses or decide to choose a different activity that costs Sh5, 000 at most, instead of Sh30, 000 you really don't have.

5. Don't get it twisted!

Do not use money meant for essential bills to celebrate Easter. If there is no Easter money, then there is no Easter money. You will not die for not having money to splurge on Easter.

6. Keep yourself and your spending in check.

Write down every expense that you plan to incur this long weekend and allocate an amount of money next to each expense. Carry the list with you and use it to monitor your spending to ensure that you don't go over budget. Review that list every morning and in the evening to track your spending. Before you head out, have a clear itinerary of what you will do and how much it will cost and ensure that you carry money just for that. If you happen to go over budget, you will have to strike out some things to accommodate the ones that are more important. If you've set Sh20, 000 for Easter weekend expenses, do not go over that. Do not give yourself a blank cheque to spend money without restraint. You do not want to look back on Tuesday morning with regret over your poor spending choices for a momentary holiday.

7. Keep costs manageable if you are hosting guests at home.

 If you are hosting guests to a party at your house, do a hosting budget based on how much you can afford to spend on the holiday. You can also have a potluck, where instead of shouldering the entire hosting financial burden by yourself, you can ask the guests to come with a meal and drinks then form a buffet of all the meals and drinks the guests carry with them.

8. Do you need new stuff for Easter?

 If you are going on a getaway this long weekend avoid the temptation to buy new things just for the holiday. Do you really need a new swimming costume for this Easter weekend when you already have one in your wardrobe? Before you buy something new specifically for Easter, ask yourself, do I need it or am I just buying it for a four-day affair? Will I ever use it again? Can I even afford it right now?

9. Lead yourself not into temptation.

When you set aside money for the remaining 17 days of April e.g. fare money, food money, etc, put it in a different account and don't carry your ATM card as you head out to celebrate Easter to avoid the temptation to withdraw it and use it on long weekend expenses. You can carry some money for emergencies, but remember that it should only be used for emergencies, which are unexpected situations which must be dealt with immediately because they cannot be ignored. For my emergencies, I usually have a debit card with money in it. The card is not linked to a bank account. Think Nakumatt Global or Nation Hela. The good thing about this card is that you can transfer the money from the card to Mpesa if you need it for an emergency. The card is strictly labeled emergencies only (my label) so if I ever take it out, I ask myself, is what I am about to pay for with this card an emergency? If the answer is no, I put the card away. You can even give it to your sober and firm relative to keep for you with strict instructions that it can only be released to take care of emergencies.

10. You can have fun on a budget.

Remember to be conscious of your choices and your spending. Stick to your long weekend budget. You don’t need to take a loan to celebrate Easter and you don’t need loads of money to have fun. You can go to the market, make yourself or family a special meal, and then watch a feel-good movie together or take a photo at a studio or go to the local park and run and play around. 

Happy Easter!


This post is brought to you by #SaveWithMshwari for the #52WeekChallenge
 
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Depression diaries: The thing that is eating me

"Mental illness is not a brand that you wear. It doesn’t scar you (unless you self-harm, of course, in which case you, like I, have carefully hidden the evidence). It isn’t visible, it isn’t something you can easily spot. Partly because when I’m really, really ill, I won’t be there for you to see.” – Joely Black

Photo | Pixabay.com

When I came across this piece by Joely Black on Medium, that articulates what it’s like to have depression so well, I remembered my own account, which I had put down in an outburst one morning when I was starting to feel better, and a trigger jolted me to put down the multitude of thoughts about suffering from depression, that I now suddenly had energy to articulate. I wrote and wrote a note on my phone, until my mind was empty, then I saved it and made a note to return to it later when I got another burst of inspiration, enough to divide it into sections and put it up on my blog in a series of posts.

That was never to be: A thief stole my phone and with it my story. I never did get another urge to articulate what it’s like to be depressed until yesterday. I have the momentum now, but the story will come much later, when it is ready.

The first thing you learn when you get depressed is that nobody understands what you are going through and because of their ignorance, and in a bid to help, they make recommendations about what you should do to be "un-depressed." The most common is: It’s all in your mind. Just think positive thoughts and you’ll be okay.” I’ll tell you for free that when you are depressed, no amount of positive thinking will make you feel better. You can spend a full 24 hours trying to think positive thoughts and proclaiming positive affirmations, but they’ll do nothing for you.

 Here are some other things that people tell you when you have depression that won’t help:

Things not to tell a person with depression or other mental illnesses (with the help of Joely's article):
 

Photo | pixabay.com

1. “Have you tried meditation? You totally should! It works like magic!”

2. “You need to take [insert vitamin] and [insert supplement]. They’re great for depression.”

3. “Exercise is great for mental health. I run every day and I feel fantastic. You should try it”

4. “When I feel a bit down, I do yoga. Do yoga and you'll be fine.”

5. "It's all in your mind. Just snap out of it. Just think positive thoughts and you'll be okay."

6. "What you need is to read the Bible and pray and maybe go for exorcism and you'll be fine. These things are spiritual ..."

Again I’ll tell you for free that I pumped my body with vitamins; in the early days I tried to exercise, before chronic fatigue got the better of me. I tried to meditate, I went to church, went for counselling and prayers ... I tried positive thoughts, I tried everything I could to feel better, that is everything except yoga, but I didn’t.

 I was in constant despair. I was continually exhausted. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t talk. I didn’t even want to. Not even to listen to someone talking -- it was all very exhausting. I just wanted to sleep it all away, to have a blackout that would take away the pain that I felt inside. I was numb. Keeping my head above the water every day was a constant struggle. I was drowning. And I only started out on the right path when I had a breakdown one morning that saw me admitted to hospital for a few days. There, I finally got introduced to the one thing that would work, the one thing that would drive the depression away: treatment.

A lot of people don’t understand that depression is an illness. I didn’t understand that too, or rather, I fought that thought. Surely, doing all those things that people recommended would make me better, not so? I was just feeling down, so if I did all the right things, the clouds would be lifted and I would feel better, right? How wrong I (and every other well-meaning person) was!

Depression is an illness just like malaria and it cannot be wished away. You can’t wave a magic wand on depression and boom, it goes away. If someone told you they had malaria, you wouldn’t say to them, “just take a multivitamin, think positive and exercise and you’ll be healed.” Instead, you’d tell them to go to hospital and adhere to the treatment and the doctor’s direction. Then and only then, would you prescribe prayers and Bible verses, after all, faith/prayer that is not accompanied by action is dead, right?

So why is it different for depression? Why do we assume we can fix depression, an illness, without proper treatment? Treatment in itself is another process, and I only started to get better after more than two years of treatment (that’s another story altogether). And the minute I started to feel better after following a treatment regimen for what felt like ages, that was when it dawned on me that depression is truly an illness and treatment works.

Treatment for depression is multi-pronged, combining medication, lifestyle habits and cognitive therapy among many other approaches. And when it comes to treating depression, one size doesn’t fit all, you have to keep at it, keep fighting it even without energy, keep trying something until it works.

Before then, like Joely says, I wore a mask when going out. I sucked it in and tried to act like everything was fine when it was not. I didn’t want to be outside the confines of my bedroom. Every time I stepped out of my house, all I could think about is how many more hours until I retreat to my cave again? I didn’t want to go out and did not go out unless it was absolutely necessary, like if I had to go to work.

 If anybody asked why I wasn’t showing up, I’d tell them I wasn’t feeling well and that would usually suffice and if they insisted, I’d tell them it was my head – I had a severe headache, if they pressed, – and that would be it. I didn’t want people to know I was depressed because first, a lot of people don’t understand depression, and second, while trying to be useful, they end up being very unhelpful and third, they wouldn’t know how to handle you. But now that I am better, I can speak about it, and I will resume re-writing my depression story. It is quite long, but I’ll do it in bite-size pieces.