We are all experiencing a major change in lifestyle and personal financial transformation. The extent of the current epidemic is nothing that anyone could have been prepared for. If you prepared a budget for 2020, take a look at it and see if you can adjust it over the next few months for whatever financial events the current circumstances necessitate. If your budget is beyond repair, start formulating monthly budgets until your life normalizes over the next few months.
None of us know for sure if we will get help in our businesses or a personal stimulus check since none have gone out so far. If your income is below the limits in the bill set for your 2018 or 2019 check, individuals should get $1200 for each of the husband and wife and $500 for each dependent child. If you are disabled or retired and not required to file an individual income tax return and did not file in either 2018 or 2019, there is an online form that you can use to apply for a stimulus check. That check may take several weeks to be sent. If the person or couple filed electronically and used a bank account to receive a refund or pay taxes due , the stimulus money should go directly to your bank account sometime after the 13th of April.
If you have a small business and have employees, or if you and your family members are employed in the business, you can go to a local bank, preferably a smaller bank, and fill out the forms to get a forgivable loan. As the legislation presently stands , each time there would be a payroll in the future for those employees for two months , the owner can return to the bank and be reimbursed as long as the employees are still on the payroll. If any of the small business has employees that applied for unemployment and are not presently on the payroll as being retained, the owner will not be eligible to collect funds for those people since they are no longer employees.
I am sure the priorities as far as grocery items has changed for virtually every family. Generally more food is needed now that people are supposed to stay home. Grocery store shelves are bare when it comes to toilet paper, cleaning supplies, sugar , flour, eggs , and some other items. Stores are limiting the number of each item individuals can buy. If you purchase items on line , toilet paper is not available on Amazon or Ebay. Much of the toilet paper comes from Korea, China, and other places and takes over a month to receive. The prices for items like toilet paper and disinfectants have been raised to unreasonable limits. Also there are many scam artists on both Amazon and eBay selling items that are in short supply. One example I have is I ordered six rolls of Northern Toilet paper on eBay. The seller was only charging a $1 on this add and $0.92 shipping and said he was cleaning out his supply room that is why it was so cheap. That seller also had another similar ad selling the six rolls for $10 plus $3 shipping. About ten days later I got a regular letter envelope with a plastic sandwich back in it with one sheet of toilet paper. I wondered if someone was playing a joke on me , then I read the feedback on eBay for the guy selling the six rolls of TP for $1.00. He had sent one sheet of TP to a lot of buyers and they were filing cases with eBay. I then knew that the envelope was from this scam seller. I filed a case with eBay. The seller told eBay his ad was not clear that he was only going to send one sheet rather than six rolls , eBay did nothing to the guy. The guy offered to refund $1 if I would send the sandwich bag and one sheet of TP back to him. I requested his ad be removed and charges be filed against him because he had sold over 1,000 , some for $1 and some for $10 , so this scam was a felony using the mails to defraud the public. Ebay did remove the ad, I hope they do more in this case? Another scam is advertising on Amazon and eBay that the products are coming from California here in the United States , then about three weeks later, you start getting emails from China that your order has reached the U.S. and should be there in a week or so. These products seldom look like the photos shown on the ad. For instance one ad shows 24 rolls of toilet paper that looks like Northern but it is Korean TP and is a tight roll with no hole in the center and is five ply which is not good for plumbing systems.
They have special shopping times for seniors here in Arizona at Safeway and Walmart. Only seniors are allowed in between the hours of 6 A.M. and 9 A.M. We went to shop at 6 A.M. there was a line a block long just to get in the store. Over 75% of the people living in this area are over 65 years of age. If you go shopping later in the day many shelves are bare.
We all need to pray a lot that this pandemic will soon be over and we can slowly adjust back to a more pleasant life. I have all the sympathy in the world for President Trump and all the leaders and professionals that are trying to get a handle on the pandemic.