Diversify your income they said…. it will be great they said…

Diversify your income they said…. it will be great they said…

by | Oct 10, 2017 | Money Meditations

It’s so easy to throw around words that sound positive. Not only is it easy… but it makes you feel good.

When I say a word like ‘diversification’ I feel great. Especially when I’m talking about finance to a bunch of creative people.

It’s just such a good word. It’s such a good idea.

And when you tell someone else to do it, you get all the good feelings with none of the complicated realities.

… when you do it yourself…. cue complicated realities.

 

Splitting myself between worlds

After about 4 months of purely focusing on finance (and a little bit of vacation) I’m back in the opera world.
Except it’s not that simple.

I’m in the opera world… doing 6 hours of rehearsals, practising, trying to memorize and character study and all that stuff.

But I’m also still in the finance world… doing client work, making appointments, and trying to grow my practise.

And the more diversified I’ve become, the more I evenly spilt myself between these two income streams (and, let’s be honest, sources of identity)… the more difficult it becomes to balance things.

I’m not saying it’s impossible.
I don’t believe that at all.

But it is more complicated than I would have thought, and it deserves mentioning because I often throw the world ‘diversification’ around for all it’s glowing benefits, and forget to mention the fact that, especially for creatives, it’s hard.

 

Less risk. Less time.

I get a ton of benefit from this spilt. I love working with two different sides of my brain. I love meeting people in very different fields.

And I love the fact that I feel better about my financial future, knowing that I have more options to support me and my family.

My diversification has muted the riskiness of my future.

But I also have less time.
Less time to really spend in the creative process.

Less time to challenge myself to the excellence that the operatic craft demands.

And that’s been frustrating lately.

Can you split your focus and still be excellent?

I’m not a very egotistical man.

But I have an immense pressure (which I put on myself) to be excellent. As excellent as I can be in any field or pursuit I attach myself to.

It’s one of the things that drew me to opera.

It’s how I’ve felt in studying finance.

And the question that drives me crazy right now, is whether you can be diversified in the way that I am right now and still be excellent.

I think I can be. I think there’s a way to make my time more efficient and my study and practise more precise.

But maybe that’s hopefully naive.

Time will tell.

Emily Nixon

Emily Nixon

Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator

Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.

She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.

Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com

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How R2R took $1,200 and did some financial good

How R2R took $1,200 and did some financial good

by | Oct 4, 2017 | Social Mission

As some of you know, I’ve got a mission here at R2R to provide one-on-one financial help to everyone who needs it - no matter what their income is.

So I thought I’d let you know how that work has been going.

In August/September I was able to connect more than $1,200 worth of services to people who needed them.

That money came from the R2R fund which is supported by contributing 10% of every dollar I make through R2R and by a fabulous group of Patrons through PATREON.

Here’s how it all broke down:

Office Hours: 

In the last few months there has been an increasing flow of office hours, as we all transition from August to the insanity of fall.

I’ve managed to connect with 15 fantastic folks, some of them new faces and some of them old friends. We did 30 minute Skype sessions and talked about a ton of things, lots of which are hard to boil down into specific questions and point form.

But to give you a little bit of an idea, topics included:  

  • scheduling time for finances when your life is insanely different from day to day (theatre people… you know what I’m talking about).
  • strategies for saving (when you know that if you can see the money… you’ll spend the money).
  • behavioural finance - what it means and where are the best places to learn about it.
  • how to get back on track after dropping the ball for a little while.
  • best ways to use an inheritance
  • managing variable income… always a huge issue
  • and how to take advantage of a period of time when you’re making a regular paycheque.

One of most satisfying things is checking in with someone who’s been a regular office hours participant over a few months and is starting to feel differently about this whole money thing.

There was a moment in early September when someone looked at me and just beamed: “It doesn’t feel nearly so hopeless anymore.”

If you’re ever struggled with money you know how huge of a step it is to go from ‘hopeless’ to ‘not nearly so hopeless’.

Pay-what-you-can Financial Planning

In August I officially launched pay-what-you-can financial planning (even though it had been operating in a more less structured way all year). I got a few great applicants, and have started to work with the first one in September.

For those of you who haven’t heard about it … it works by allowing clients in lower income brackets to set what they can afford to pay, and the rest is subsided through the R2R fund (which is funded by a combination of PATREON and the R2R mission of donating 10% of every dollar made to this kind of work).

I’m sure there will be a lot more to share as this program grows, but I’m very excited about it.

If you know anyone who might benefit from either of these programs please spread the word!

I really have to give a massive shout out to the R2R patrons who are a HUGE part of funding this work. There are currently 18 of them giving every month, and that stable cashflow has allowed me to be able to commit to continuing these programs in the future and being able to do this work that I really love.

If you want to join them (no pressure of course)… you can learn everything you want to know over on my PATREON PAGE.

Emily Nixon

Emily Nixon

Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator

Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.

She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.

Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com

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More Money Won’t Solve Anything

More Money Won’t Solve Anything

by | Sep 5, 2017 | Money Meditations

I spent most of last week being disappointed in myself, and so it shouldn’t be a huge shock that come Saturday… I was so ready for the week to be over. 

I just hadn’t done enough. 

I told myself that next week I had to buckle down and do more. 

But here’s the problem with that entire line of thought… ‘enough’ and ‘more’ are goals that are just begging for another Saturday of disappointment. 

What is ‘enough’?

How much ‘more’? 

I can do ‘more’ but still have it not be nearly ‘enough’. That happens all the time. 

I was talking to someone about this last week during office hours… that so much of life is about managing expectations… and so much of finance is about the question of ‘enough’. 

How long did I walk around assuming that the answer to all of my financial problems was more money? 

And still, I end every week assuming that ‘more work’ is the one thing that I need to do in order to be more fulfilled. 

But it’s not… at least it’s not in a vacuum.

More is great, more than enough is even better… but it’s absolutely useless if you don’t have an idea of what enough is.

What’s your enough? 

At this point I feel like I’m writing a terrible version of an E.E. Cummings poem: more is the lesser of less’s enough…. so let’s cut the poetry and bring on the prose…

  • How much money would be enough to get you through this month? Do you know?
  • How much money would be enough to float you through the whole year…?
  • How much do you need in the next 5 years? 

I used to answer all of these questions with a laugh and a snide… ‘more than I have right now’….

But now I have real numbers, and so I know when I’m making enough… and when I’m not. I know when it’s been a good week, and when it’s been a bad one. I know when I need to cut back, and when there’s actually some extra money to spend on fun stuff.

I don’t know how to do that with my weekly workload yet. 

My work attitude is still the blanket pursuit of more: more writing, more work, more contacts, more social media reach, more traffic, more income. 

…and more disappointment at the end of every week when I fall short of a finish line that keeps moving further down the road. 

Thought for the week…


If more money were the solution, than doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers would be the most financially stable people on the planet. 

They’re not. 

Many of them have the same problems that we in the creative class have… they don’t have enough. 

And they never will until they figure out what ENOUGH actually is. 

This week I want you to think about how much is ‘enough’ for you. What does it mean financially? What does it mean for your weekly work? However that question rings true for you….

Have a great week.

Emily Nixon

Emily Nixon

Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator

Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.

She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.

Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com

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It’s not too late to start fighting (even if you might not win)

It’s not too late to start fighting (even if you might not win)

by | Aug 22, 2017 | Money Meditations, Retirement

I’ve never found the delivering ‘hard truth’ part of this job easy. I’m not really a tough love kind of guy.

But it’s important. 

And there’s nothing more difficult for me than sitting across from someone who’s just been hit with a heavy dose of financial truth… and who honestly believes it’s too late to do anything about it.

“I’m almost 70, there’s nothing I can do about this now…”

“I’ve made so many mistakes, the damage is done…”

“I am so screwed.”

It’s hard because they’re not necessarily wrong.

The cold hard truth of the numbers

One of the big questions people have when they come to talk to a financial planner is about retirement.

Do I have enough? Am I doing okay? Am I on track?

So, you go through their numbers, and see how much they’ll probably need to fund the lifestyle they want in retirement. Then you see what resources they have available - governmental and personal.

And even though that’s a pretty simplistic way to look at the problem, it gives you a good overview of whether they’re in the ballpark or not.

But let’s imagine you’re in your late 60s and have a potential need for over a million dollars in your retirement, but only have 50,000 saved … what are you supposed to do?

What if you’re also staring in the face of some pretty serious health concerns?

Without the benefit of years of income coming in, or time for COMPOUND INTEREST to help you… it’s hard not to agree that it’s actually too late to do anything that will fix everything.

It’s worth fighting even if it’s too late to win

We always want things to be simpler, to divide the world into a series of yes or no questions.

Can I fund my retirement?

Yes or no.

But if the answer ends up being ‘no’… what then? What next?

The common sense answer is that you adjust expectations. You change your needs in the future. You make the formula balance.

But I’m not talking about the people that can make that work.

I’m talking about the people that feel like they can’t. I’m talking about the ones who see a retirement ratio (needs : available resources) and who feel like making those two sides meet is a fairy tale.

I’m talking about the people who won’t even go talk to a financial planner because they’re convinced that their future is set. That they’ve made too many mistakes. That’s it’s absolutely too late.

To those people I say:

Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is too late to win this financial fight.

Fight anyway.

Fight because inevitability can go %$#& itself

I am only 32.

But when I look back at the last 10 years there are many things that happened and that I did that would have seemed absolutely impossible to my younger self.

Clearly the word 'impossible' (or at least things that ‘feel’ impossible) isn’t as absolute as I used to think.

But let’s say you aren’t in the mood for any of that ‘anything can happen’ nonsense.

You should fight anyway.

You should fight because there are never just two choices.

You should fight because your finances are so much more complex and run deeper than just answering the question: will I have a funded retirement or non-funded retirement?

There are so many little things that can be changed.

And I’m sure that those changes will be accompanied by the constant chorus of “if only I would have done this X years ago”. That’s fine. But don’t let it stop you.

Don’t let the feeling that the future is set stop you from trying to change it.

Because then it'll really be set in stone.

How to start fighting … when the war might be lost…

If the new goal is to jettison inevitability … where do you start?

Well, anywhere is fine.

There’s no perfect beginning because you’ve completely rejected the end.

My friend Kate recently wrote about how CLARITY COMES FROM ACTION NOT THOUGHT, and even though her post isn’t directly related to what we’re talking about, the core statement is bang on.

Fight first. Direction later.

As another friend so often puts it:

“Just do the next good thing.”

Because sometimes the big picture is so insanely overwhelming, any remotely positive outcome so impossible, that that kind of focus becomes counterproductive.

It can’t be about the end anymore.

Honestly, I don’t know if the future is inevitable or not. Poets have been arguing about that for hundreds of years. But I can’t believe that it is. I won’t believe that it is. And I’ll leave you with the last words of one of my favourite poems by Edna St Vincent Millay (she’s talking about another kind of inevitable end (death), but it still rings true to me).

“I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”

I know the numbers.

I see the facts.

I understand the hopelessness.

But I do not approve.

And I am not resigned.

Emily Nixon

Emily Nixon

Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator

Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.

She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.

Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com

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Can I be an artist AND be profitable?

Can I be an artist AND be profitable?

by | Aug 17, 2017 | Building an Arts Business

I’m not a bad driver, at least… I don’t think I am.

Turns out my family doesn’t agree.

I always had my suspicions, but I found out just how wide spread this belief was last weekend when I DROVE my mom, brother and girlfriend up to a family cottage.

When we got there (safe and ON TIME might I add) everyone waiting for us was shocked to find out that I had driven.

They had been talking and I had been the least likely choice because... I was not a good driver.

Everyone believed it, even people that had never set foot in a car with me.

And if you’re honest with yourself, I doubt you believe me either.

Why I am clearly lying about my driving skills:

I’m not going to lie. The whole thing bugged me.

Why did everyone think that about me? Was it true? Am I actually a really bad driver and I just didn’t know it?

And then I realized that part of the reason everyone thinks I’m a bad driver, is that I’m always talking about how I’m a bad driver.

Let me explain…

I’m a pretty self-deprecating kind of guy, and one of the things I often joke about is my driving ability. I joke about how slow I like to drive, how out of practise I am, and how many times I almost died when I first stepped behind the wheel at 16 (I was not a good driver then).

And apparently people started to believe the things I say.

Which is really not their fault… it’s mostly mine.

Turns out sometimes the way you talk about stuff shapes what people think about you… who knew?

The things the world believes about the creative class:

How often when you meet someone new and tell them about your work do you get some version of this question?

“You do that for a living?” or “You actually make money?”

This conversation hasn’t changed as I’ve slipped from the opera world to the online world.

I usually answer with some version of:

“It pays the bills!” or “I get by."

And I walk away pretty smug. Knowing that it is a lucky thing to be able to cobble together a sustainable income from a combination of singing and online work.

But I doubt the other half of the conversation watches me leave with thoughts of Warren Buffet in their mind.

The world doesn’t think working in the creative class is a good financial choice, and the way I answer that question sure doesn’t change any minds.

Doctors don’t get asked that question. Programmers don’t get asked that question.

So how can the creative class stop getting that question?

A bad driver and a shitty business owner too:

I’ve been reading a book called “Profit First”. It’s got a ton of great ideas in it, but there’s one big thing I’ve been stuck on every time I pick it up.

What is ‘profit’?

I’m not sure if the author expected someone to struggle with that simple business basic… but I am.

I have carried a belief, which I have talked about a lot, that I’m not interested in being rich… I just want ‘enough’ to live my life.

Now, that word ‘enough’ has changed from being ‘enough’ money to get through the month, to ‘enough’ to get through the year (especially December), and is starting to encompass ‘enough’ to get through my life (retirement, risk management, all of that).

But profit… by definition that’s when you have MORE than enough.

Despite never officially naming my business a non-profit, I have adopted its core tenants. In the way I speak to others, and in the way I speak to myself I have decided that I want to have ‘just enough’.

And I’m beginning to think that it’s holding me back in a huge way.

Creating a profitable and thriving creative class

… just look at those words for a little bit… it was weird to write them.

A profitable and thriving creative class.

How could that be possible? How could we start to reform the way the world sees us… well… I have a hunch it starts by changing the way that we see ourselves.

I don’t think most of us believe that we can be profitable, at least not without losing some core artistic value.

That’s how i’ve always thought about myself, and my business.

Now… I’m not so sure.

After reading ‘Profit First’ I’m starting to think there’s a mental shift around the idea of ‘profit’ that could be a powerful one.

I’m starting to realize that ‘profit’ isn’t the same thing as ‘paying yourself a salary’… and that there’s a way that you can have ‘more than enough’ without making 6 figures a year.

If that all sounds vague, I’m sorry.

I don’t have any answers yet, but I’m starting to question that core belief that so many of us carry around the creative industry.

That breaking even is enough.

That paying the bills is enough.

That building a profitable creative business is next to impossible.

What if what everyone believes about us is wrong?

Emily Nixon

Emily Nixon

Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator

Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.

She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.

Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com

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