'Stay the course': Don't let COVID-19 anxieties dictate your personal finance plans, says consultant
Keep an emergency fund, and focus on the long term: Preet Banerjee
Each week, Cross Country Checkup devotes the last half hour to an interview with a high-profile newsmaker or expert who takes calls from listeners.
Amidst growing financial anxiety over the COVID-19 outbreak, one financial consultant says many Canadians will feel additional stress in the coming months, particularly those already walking "a bit of a tightrope."
"With this market uncertainty, and the unknown impacts, a lot of people are wondering: well what could this possibly mean?" said Preet Banerjee, founder of the financial advice app Money Gaps.
"What happens if there is a restriction on travel; or, is this going to result in job cuts, job losses, [or] reduced hours, and how will that impact the income side of my cash flow, let alone the expenses," he told Checkup.
Stock markets have fluctuated up and down in recent weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 968 points on Thursday, or 3.6 per cent, wiping out recoveries earlier in the week.
Analysts told The Associated Press that the uncertainty is likely to continue as long as the number of deaths and confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus accelerates.
Despite the uncertainty, Banerjee said that most Canadians probably shouldn't take new, drastic measures with their personal finances out of fear of a theoretical pandemic down the line.
"For most people, I'd say just stay the course and focus on the long term, not the short term, because we can never predict the short term," he said.
He advised people to maintain an emergency fund of three to six months' worth of expenses, as well as setting up a savings account if they haven't already done so.
Banerjee acknowledged that building an emergency fund could be difficult on short notice, "especially [for] people on the lower end of the income spectrum."
For those in a tight spot, "having two thousand dollars or thereabouts set aside in an emergency fund is a good, at least, first target if you don't have a fully topped-up emergency fund," he said.
Health more important than stock markets: economist
The Bank of Canada on Wednesday cited COVID-19 worries when it cut the key interest rate by half a percentage point — the first such cut since 2015. It followed a similar cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve a day earlier.
James Brander, an economist and a professor at University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, cautioned that economic policies have limited effects on something like a viral outbreak.
I'd rather be alive and a little poorer.- James Brander
"Lower interest rates … might make you more likely to buy a car or a house. But they don't make you more likely to go out and expose yourself to the virus," he said.
Brander said the U.S.'s rate cut "might have been an overreaction," but added that Canada likely didn't have a choice but to follow suit.
"It's just very hard for Canada not to be more or less in step with U.S. policy," he explained.
Brander noted that the travel industry has so far borne the economic brunt of the outbreak. But he said that as time progresses, it could hurt other industries as well.
The closure of auto plants in China over the past few weeks, he said, may eventually lead to parts shortages for manufacturers in North America if their doors remain shut in the months ahead.
"But as time goes on, those shortages will emerge, and people will be laid off from the auto producers in North America, because they won't be able to get new parts from China for a while to keep production going."
However, Brander had no objections to global economics taking a back seat in the interest of public health in the short term.
In particular he praised China's "very drastic actions" to work on containing the virus, whose original flashpoint began in Wuhan, Hubei province, at the expense of grounding several industries to a halt.
"A lot of things have just stopped in China. … Their economic growth will actually be negative for the first quarter almost certainly. But I think the public health issues are more important," he said.
"I mean, I'd rather be alive and a little poorer."
Written by Jonathan Ore. Interviews produced by Richard Raycraft.