Essential Money Tips for Surviving the ‘Pandemic Spiral’

In a story for The Atlantic, writer Ed Yong put forth the idea that, thanks to the coronavirus, America is stuck in a “pandemic spiral” that’s destroying, among many things, their budgets.

“Many Americans trusted intuition to help guide them through this disaster,” he wrote. “They grabbed onto whatever solution was most prominent in the moment, and bounced from one (often false) hope to the next. […] The country is now trapped in an intuition nightmare. […] Americans are walled in by their own unhelpful instincts, which lead them round and round in self-destructive circles.”

While trusting your instincts can be productive, it can also sometimes be disastrous — leading to financial ruin if you’re “going with your gut” with every money decision amid the pandemic. Here are a few money tips that may go against your gut reaction, but that can save you from ending up broke by the end of the coronavirus pandemic.