Multiple short equations in columns

Question

I have a lot of short equations that I want to place in two columns to save space. When I use multicols to do this, the equations are not aligned vertically, how can I solve this? I saw some questions to achieve similar effects but the answers did not allow for numbering the equations individually.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{amsmath}



\begin{document}
I have a long paragraph here and below this text I want to list some short equations, to save space I want to have them in two columns but doing this makes them misalign:
\begin{multicols}{2}
\begin{align}
a &= b \\ 
c &= d 
\end{align}
\begin{align}
e &= f \\
g &= h
\end{align}
\end{multicols}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Like this:

I would instead of multicols use minipages:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}
I have a long paragraph here and below this text I want to list some short equations, to save space I want to have them in two columns but doing this makes them misaligned:
    \begin{center}
\begin{minipage}{0.5\linewidth} 
\begin{align}
a &= b \\
c &= d
\end{align}
    \end{minipage}\begin{minipage}{0.5\linewidth}
                    \begin{align}
                        e &= f \\
                        g &= h
                    \end{align}
                  \end{minipage}
    \end{center}
\end{document}