Covid, Cost, and 2021

 There was a business report today, via N-TV (commercial news) and it was one of those topics that you'd reflect upon.

The German Institute of Economic Research (DIW) sat down and figured up the cost of Covid-19 to Germany.  DIW is usually a group of think-tank folks who have the PhDs and the data to say something is factual.

They say at this point (end of 2020, and roughly 10 months of effect on the nation)....the total amount of cost is 391-billion Euro (figure around 425 billion US dollars).

Then they add this paragraph onto the analysis.....the current shut-down has to end shortly.  If it goes through to Easter....4 Apr 2021....like some people think, then it's a total disaster for Germany and would take years to recover.

The positive side?  Well, behind this big mess, they say that regular Germans held back buying things in 2020.  They didn't spend real money on vacations....cars....RVs....a whole list of things.  They didn't go out to bars, pubs and restaurants as much.  So DIW thinks they got cash in their pockets and if the vaccine strategy works....this whole gloomy-and-crappy 2021 feeling will not occur.  

Are they right?  I sat and examined my own habits. In a typical year (without the wife supervising me and sneaking off on exotic day-trips in Hessen or the Pfalz), I  would spent around 1,500 Euro on rail-trips, museums, and the forays.  After mid-Feb, my free-living status went to zero.   The money wasn't spent.

On ice cream, coffee and German cheesecake in 2020?  Well....I would have spent in the range of 600 Euro over the year.  About 85-percent of that amount was never spent.

That fantastic trip to Japan that I had planned back in March, for around 9,000 Euro?  Never spent.  That cruise I was planning for October, for around 3,000 Euro?  Never spent. 

The 200 Euro that I would have spent at the Wiesbaden Christmas market on crazy-sugar food, crapes, and gluhwein over that four-week period leading up to Christmas?  Never spent.  

So yeah....there's a ton of money I didn't spend in 2020, and I could cut loose in 2021 (maybe)....if things improved.  We (including myself in this German group) could stand up and just start spending money left and right.